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fanfic-scribbles · 5 years

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Lunch Buddy: Chapter One

Masterlist

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Overall Story Facts:

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: Steve Rogers makes a friend. A prickly, generally people-averse friend, but they'll both take what they can get.

Quick Facts: Friendship (/Eventual Romance) – Steve Rogers & Reader (leading to Steve Rogers/Reader) – Female Reader

Story Warnings: Reader-insert that verges on OFC, written in 1st person past tense

Chapter One: Oblivious

Chapter Word Count: 2612

Tldr A/N: I don’t do tags (sorry!), this is a ‘slice of life’ I write when the mood strikes so updates will come when they come, this is set shortly after the first “Avengers” movie and any canon that pops up will likely be different so keep an open mind, Reader (or OFC, depending on your preference) is female/bisexual/plus-sized because it’s important to parts of the story but otherwise remains undefined.

(Long) A/N: This is weird(ish), but I'm posting it, because I've been writing bits and pieces for this thing for over a year now and I keep chickening out of posting it. So I'm doing it! First off, a few general warnings: this (to me) still counts as reader-insert since I haven't ascribed a detailed physical look or name to the POV character but I do know some extra things about her. Those being: female, bisexual, plus-sized, asocial. That's it for actual set details and I mention them because they will come up in the story. Also, this is written in first-person past tense. I'm sorry if any of that bugs anybody (I know some people are very 1st person averse) but it's just the way I wanted to write it. I can't honestly say it's self-insert but I can (and should) say it's pretty self-indulgent.

Secondly: this is a 'slice of life' type thing that I write bits and bobs for on occasion. Since I've been adding to it for over a year I have kind of a meandering story and a lot of little pieces that add up to something I enjoy. I'm just trying to finish this first arc so I'll just say for the time being it is Reader(or OFC) & Steve friendship but it's eventually going to be Steve/Reader (or OFC) and we'll see how it goes from there. I aim to update every other week but, again, this is the one thing I have that is for pure relaxing so we shall see. I will not be tagging for this fic. Sorry! I’m way too forgetful and this doesn’t have a planned schedule, so there’s no way I can trust myself to be an actual Adult and do something that responsible.

Thirdly: This is after the first Avengers movie but I have already altered parts of CA:TWS to fit in with what I'm doing. I'll explain it as I go, just keep an open mind.

Stupidly: I have a thing for Oblivious!Reader. It never fails to amuse me to think of different ways for a character to go 'wait, *that* guy?!' Idk why, but sorry not sorry.

I had a routine.

I actually had several, but one of my most sacred involved my lunch break. After half a day of staring at papers and screens, I took an hour to fortify myself for another half day of staring at papers and screens. By…staring at paper and screens. But this was by my choice, at least, and done in a nice, airy café, with a good drink (and sometimes snack) nearby.

I’d been coming to the same shop for almost two years, ever since I got my job just a block or so over, and I rarely missed visiting it on a weekday. Even a fucking alien invasion didn’t chase me off for long– people still had to eat and businesses still had to run. As soon as the infrastructure was back to (mostly) functioning, I was back to doing what I did in every way.

I had noticed when some of the other regulars stopped coming around (I really hoped they had just decided to go somewhere else and that they hadn’t gotten caught up in that nightmare) and I also started to notice some new regulars. One of them was a jerk and I only noticed her as much as it took to avoid her. There were a few people who just came in to get drinks and left right away. Then there was one guy who ended up causing a bit of a stir.

I really only noticed him the first time because he was attractive enough to literally turn heads. Even some of the guys I had assumed were straight took a peek and whispered to themselves. And he wasn’t unaware– his cheeks flushed and he ducked his head and I was pretty sure three people fell in love with him on the spot.

It was funny, but aside from noticing he was attractive and was very nice to the cashiers, I went back to ignoring him. I only had so long in a lunch break and I wasn’t the type to introduce myself to strangers, no matter how cute they were.

So, we simply existed in the same general space at the same general time for a couple of months. He became a regular and also found ways to disguise himself– hats and glasses, and jackets with the lapels turned up. It was funny to me because it seemed like such a movie star thing to do, but even funnier was that, when he remembered to do it, it worked. He drew eyes from strangers less and less the more he figured out how to hide himself, and the other regulars got used to him being around. Just from basic interactions I knew his name was Steve, he tipped well, he was always very polite to the people working, and he liked to sit down with a sketchbook and a cup of coffee. That was about all the ‘interaction’ we had and it was fine.

Until one day.

My headphones were in and I didn’t notice him standing nearby until he leaned closer. I yanked out one of the earbuds and straightened up to see what it was he wanted. He went from concerned to contrite in what could have been a new record. “Oh I’m sorry; I didn’t see–”

“It’s okay,” I said and pulled out the other one so I could give him my full attention. “What do you need?” I surreptitiously checked myself to make sure he wasn’t coming over to tell me about an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction.

“I was just wondering…” He extended an arm to the (very full, I just realized) shop. “There’s nowhere else to sit and your table is so large, could I sit here? I promise I’ll be quiet.”

“It’s not like I’d hear you anyway,” I said and he smiled. I quickly pulled my bag off the chair next to him and pushed it out.

“Thank you,” he said, I nodded, and we went back to our solitary activities.

After that, though, if he ever saw me in the shop he would give me a friendly nod or say hi if I didn’t have any headphones in. I responded in kind, but we otherwise left each other alone. Except that busy periods hit and, given that one interaction, I seemed to be his go-to. We left each other alone and he seemed just as fine with that as I felt about it. It was nice– technically could it count as socializing? It sort of felt like it, but it was my favorite kind of socializing: respecting each others’ boundaries.

AKA: Leaving each other the fuck alone.

It was great.

Except he eventually started to get a little more friendly; subtly, and slowly. Like the day he asked for my name.

“I just feel like I should know who I’m apologizing to every time I take over your space,” he said.

“You’re a big guy, but you’re not that big,” I said. But I told him my name. Then, weirdly, he just…went back to his sketchbook.

I stared at him for a second. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t really do this ‘meeting people’ thing that often, but don’t you normally give your name when someone else gives you theirs?”

He blinked and stared at me. “You don’t–” He stopped himself. “I didn’t tell you?”

“No,” I said. “I’d remember if you told me. And I’d remember if you told me and I forgot, because I would never, ever bring up your name or anyone else’s name ever again.”

He laughed, and looked startled by it. I was a little startled too, but he recovered pretty quick. “How do I know you’re not just covering for the fact that you forgot?” he teased.

“I am excellent at remembering when I should know someone’s name and deftly avoiding any chance at using it,” I said.

He chuckled, but he did say, “It’s Steve. Steve Rogers.”

I wrote ‘Steve’ in the front cover of my notebook, and expected to forget all about it.

I didn’t. Steve was friendly in an unobtrusive way. His greetings were warm and genuine and he was honestly pleasant to be around. I knew nothing of him but his name, that he liked to draw, and that people liked to gawk at him.

“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” one of the employees commented as she cleaned a nearby table.

“Uh…I guess so?” I pulled out a headphone just in case and sure enough, she stood and faced me and looked me up and down.

“How is he?” she asked.

I flinched, because seriously, what the fuck? “Um, he’s just some guy I sometimes share a table with. I don’t– I’m not– I don’t ever see him outside of here.”

“Oh I know; I didn’t mean it like that,” she said and grimaced. “And I didn’t mean that like– I just mean…is he nice?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t sit anywhere near him if he wasn’t,” I said. “I have no patience for douchebags.”

She smiled. “Nobody should,” she agreed. “Just, a guy like him…you sort of hope he’s nice, you know?”

“I…guess,” I said. I didn’t really know what to say to that. “I’m definitely not into him, if that’s what you were worried about?” She stared at me blankly so I tried to figure out a non-awkward way to say ‘fucking go for it.’ “He’s a nice guy and you seem nice, so don’t worry about me, just ask him. Even if he’s not into you he’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t be a dick about it.”

“Oh. Oh, no!” She laughed and waved. “I have a boyfriend, so I’m not– no, but, uh, thanks.”

“Oh.” Then why was she so– well, maybe she just liked seeing a pretty guy like that also be a good guy. God only knew the world needed more men who weren't jerks. I didn’t get to find out though, because she got called away by her co-worker and I went back to my notebook and my headphones. Why was everyone suddenly so social?

“What are you listening to?”

I shrugged. “Just my library on shuffle; nothing really cohesive.”

He chuckled and went back to doing what he did. Today it was fitting in stealing bites of his two strawberry croissants while he sketched.

It was a little strange for me, but I was getting used to Steve asking questions out of the blue. He was a nice guy and I didn’t want to be a jerk, that was part of it, but he also seemed to know when it was okay to talk to me and how far he could go. If I ever really didn’t want human interaction he somehow clued into it and would sit quietly. If I was open to it, he kept the conversations light and just something we both did in the background. Several weeks into this strange lunchtime camaraderie I accepted that some days he was there, some days he wasn’t, but it was just a nice easy thing we both slipped in and out of as time went on.

I was realizing I never really asked a lot of questions though. I cleared my throat. “Do you work around here?” I asked.

“No,” he said, smiling at his drawing as he worked on it. “I work…well, I’m sort of ‘on call’ I guess you could say,” he said. “My schedule is really irregular. I like to come here just to get out of my apartment from time to time.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“And you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I work in the area,” I said. “I like to get away from my desk and out of the office for at least a little bit. So I come here and just relax for an hour before I finish out the day.”

“That sounds healthy,” he commented. Before I could figure out if he was being sarcastic, he snapped his head up and waved his hand. “I didn’t mean– shit; I’m sorry,” he said and put his pen down. “That sounded bad. I meant it sincerely though. I have a lot of friends who are…workaholics, I guess you’d say.”

“Yeah, I do my fair share of overtime, but I definitely prefer not to,” I said. I thought about asking him what he did, but then he’d probably ask what I did, and I didn’t want to talk about it. It was fine– paid the bills and that was always a good thing, I just hated watching people feel like they had to feign interest in my bullshit. So we settled back into silence. And it was good.

“Um…excuse me?”

I looked up and so did Steve. The kid was looking right at him though, and I went back to looking at my book. I did keep an ear open, though, because I was nosy. Steve asked the kid’s name and I heard nothing, but when I glanced, Steve was scribbling something on a piece of paper.

His name.

I squinted, because he was signing an autograph, really?

Suddenly the woman’s comments, about hoping that ‘a guy like him’ was nice, made a lot more sense. Also the ‘movie star disguise’ thing. Was he actually a movie star? He hung out here way too much for that to be true, but I was baffled. Steve went back to his sketchbook like nothing was wrong or weird and I tried to figure out how to Google a tall blond buff guy named ‘Steve’ while somehow not getting stuck with a bunch of porn. Ugh; what was his last name again…

“You know you can just ask me.”

I looked up from my fruitless search. He smiled patiently, but he looked…tired.

Well then.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked, but I didn’t have all day. When I looked at my phone again, I realized I barely had five minutes. “We’ll see how many lunch breaks it takes me to figure it out.”

He let out a surprised little laugh, and then he smiled for real. “How many do you think it’ll take?”

“Hmm.” I tapped my chin. “If it takes more than three, I’ll buy your coffee.”

“If it takes less, I’ll buy yours,” he said, we shook on it, and I packed up to leave.

“By the way– this one doesn’t count,” I said and skipped out to his protests.

There were a lot of blond buff guys who did porn.

So I maybe got a little distracted.

“Jesus.”

I leaned my head back and shut off the screen at the same time. “You’re blond and your name is Steve; I don’t have a whole lot to go on. Also, he had most of his clothes on.”

“He wasn’t going to,” Steve chuckled and sat back in his seat. “Should I try a latte? I also heard mochas were good.”

“If you really wanted to take advantage you’d go for the frozen drinks.”

He made a face like a five-year-old. It was so ridiculous I had to laugh. “I’m not sure about cold coffee,” he said.

“Ah, not even iced coffee?” I waved my sadly-not-iced drink around and took a long sip. “You’re missing out.”

“I’ll just take your word for it.” He glanced at the menu, and then back at me. “Next time then?”

I stared him down. “This is only lunch break number one.”

“Two.”

“One.”

He was grinning and I stuck my tongue out at him. “I’m gonna add ‘stubborn brat’ to my search parameters,” I said. And I did. He laughed at me.

There was only so much internet searching I could do before I got a little bored.

“Do you want to just give up now?”

“Never,” I said and swiped at my game. “I just need a little downtime. This is my lunch break after all; I’d rather have fun and relax before getting back to work.” I cleared the stage and looked up at him. “I’ll figure it out next time.”

“You are so strange,” he said, somehow sounding like he was laughing without actually laughing.

Search: “steve” “blond” “famous” “-porn” “douchebag”

“Hey.”

I didn’t get the full lunch break to try to figure it out one last time.

“Oh my god is that Captain America?”

I perked up and saw a flabbergasted gaggle of teenagers looking right at…Steve.

Steve.

Steve…

Steve Rogers.

Oh.

Holy shit.

He kept at his sketchbook, as he usually did, and I sat there and digested that information. The teenagers were too shy to approach (and as friendly as Steve was whenever people did come up to him, he never really encouraged that behavior) and so I got to sit quietly and take that in.

“Well?” he asked and looked up. At me. Like he was awaiting my judgment or something.

“Uhhh…” Whatever I thought I was going to say fled my brain and I was left with nothing. I scrambled for something. “Um…thank you for your service?” I said, eventually. He blinked and I let out a sigh. Why did I ever open my mouth nothing good ever happened. “Help me out, what do people normally say?”

He stared for a second longer and then he laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Once he settled down his eyes were bright with humor and it didn’t feel like he was being mean. It took me a little bit to realize he sounded relieved. And, like that, I felt a little more relaxed. Enough to go completely deadpan when I said, “Wow. So ungrateful.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He grinned like a total jerk. “Thanks.”

Yep, total jerk.

No wonder we got along.

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#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers & reader #captain america fanfic #avengers fanfic #reader insert #lunch buddy

166 notes · View notes

darkspellmaster · 6 years

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Update and Edit and Master Post to the Fokker Conspiracy: A Guide to this whole mess.

Firstly a special thanks to several people that have helped me with this. I couldn’t have done this without more than my eyes.

Secondly: To those that are determined to believe these leaks, I’m going to say this right now. I am not going to judge you, I’m not here to be spiteful and say you’re wrong, I have no horse in this race. So if you want to believe in the leaks, then do so, I’m not going to harass or bug you about it or tell you you’re wrong.

Third: This post is designed to be informative as possible, and if anyone needs to correct something, please shoot it in the notes below so that I can go in and correct them. I want people to have enough info to make their own call on this, and all I’m doing is laying out the facts.

So without further ado, all details and information is below the cut here.

Adding in updates and edits as I go...Edit: 2.0.2

Edit: (I’m going to be polite as I got a note from tumblr in regard to BTI Studio, which makes me think that it’s the name and they are doing blanket purges as their name is being used by this. I am trying to find a way to contact the person that copyrighted me, a Mr. Rachel, who works as part of the IT Manger at BTI Studios. Which makes me think that this is more on the use of the name than the pictures themselves.

Anyone know if he’s on Twitter? I got this on the 24th, it is now the 29th and I did not receive any further notices. As I’m not on linked in and don’t have access to email him directly. This makes me think it’s the name as if it was all of NBC Universal all other forms of these images including VSI would be asked to be taken down. As was the Pidge and Lance image that was made to be a fake to show how easy it is to make one. This doesn’t mean that the leaks are real, only that the name, like all company names, should not be used without the consent of the copyright holder.)

Edit: According to Anon, the Plance photo which was a fake used to show how anyone can make this sort of thing was also copyright struck. Meaning that regardless of just fan art, or not, real or fake, you could be hit by a notice to remove the work. This is what is considered a kind of blanket purge meant to just clean everything up, even if it’s not even a leak. As long as there’s some bit of what is considered Intellectual property connected to the peice (character, name of studio, logo, even something as simple as “Property of X” it can be copyright struck.)

So let’s start with the Real Leaks that happened from both France and the US and Mir.

So let’s go with Kimiko’s leaks. For those that don’t know, these are real leaks from the Voice actress of Ezor, who was working in New York at the time for Broadway and was dubbing over lines that they either changed or didn’t get a strong enough take for her.

This photo was taken way back on April 18th 2017, since the date on the image dates the day of the photo taken.

So Several things you need to note about these picture.

1. The photo has the timer on the top and the side showing the take, we have a transparent property of DreamWorks, and the full locked and updated note with date and time on the bottom to denote that voice recording was locked in and updated at that point in time. There are also codes that give editors information.

2. The name of the studio is real, and they have their water mark in a way that doesn’t distract from the actors recording as well as it being transparent enough for them to do the recording as the water mark is put over as another layer on the screen for various legal reasons. Hyperbolic Audio is a dub studio in New York that works with several clients.

3. This photo was taken down within a few hours of it being put up by DreamWorks and basically the studio put out an announcement that requested the leak be taken down, as did the actors and other people working for the company. Word got out really fast and this image was removed and did later show up in the show.

Then there was the leak from Stuido Mir. This one I don’t have pictures of since most were taken down or deleted.

1. Confirmation of the photos were made by Mir itself.

2. The original poster of the pictures took them down and then requested that others take down the leaked images.

3. Someone tried to blackmail the studio holding the artwork, which lead to them being basically forced to take down the images.

4. This all within a few hours and days of the leaks coming to light.

Now this one is important because this one plays a role in everything that we’re going to discuss below.

So from my understanding the French actor of Keith Lionel (hope I’m spelling that right) took a photo of himself and others in the recording studio during the earlier seasons.

(This was removed more recently by him because people found it.)

So several important things to note here.

1. The photo again was taken by someone directly connected to the show and within hours of it coming out it came down. As dated by the discord server, this was done way back in 2017.

2. As you can see the program is very unique and that’s because it is a one of a kind program that was built for the dubbing studio.

3. As you can see here, the picture spreads over the screen and stops short of where the table is on the left.

4. You can see the text on screen is far smaller and transparent so you can see the words.

4 a. According to Anon, this may be the work of DreamWorks themselves. As the water marks would have to be done by them directly. Again I have never seen this sort of water marking on anything before, and no other studio has done this, and they have never done this to any of their other shows as far as I’ve seen. We’ll have to wait and see if they do this with She-ra as it’s another 2D show vs. 3D which is harder to do a lot of edits for.

5. The setup shows the words below, etc.

6. The words do not go over into the dark area of the screen and never cross over the table on the right side of the screen.

7. The photo was taken down within a few hours of it being put up and the studios were fast to take it down and tell the actors to tell their fans to make sure it’s not distribute the image. Same as with Kimiko’s leak.

With all this in mind. Let’s take a look at the latest leaks and try to clear this all up.

Recent leak with the French Dub team.

So let’s go over this piece by piece.

1. The fact is that this is a real photo of the cast of Voltron from France, that is not the issue. The issue is the screen behind them.

2. The bottom screen where the words are…

Okay so I did some digging on this studio. You can find information regarding them in the links below.

So Chinkel S.A. has a very unique program for dubbing created by Cappella systems. This was built just for them and there is no other studio that owns this sort of set up. This is really important to note because all of the leaks have had an altered version of their watermarks.

The important things here…

1. The words would not stretch across the whole screen like this. As the cut of the projected image would be set directly before the text boxes as you see in the studio image.

2. The words are too big, and are not opaque, and are too few. As the original real leak shows the “Do not copy” has 8 lines, the fake one here only has 5.

3. Yellow words are wrong and should be a way lighter color. As the color is yellow in the fake leaks and the real ones are transparent and name Chinkel S.A. not VSI which is wrong.

4. The image that is being used is that of a cropped shot of the previous leak as they cut off the other mouse, which you would not do as we see in the original real leak shows that the image stretches across the screen.

4a. Edit: Thank you anon for pointing out the mouse. My mistake here as the image I saw on my home computer makes the image look far more blurred then on the bigger one at work. You are right that it does have the mouse there, and the non studio shot that I have with the BTIStudio logo on it doesn’t have Pidges shoulder in it. I mixed those two up. I do personally though find it odd that the mouse is in the same position as the first shot.

5. The bottom line of the text doesn’t bend properly.

As shown by @huntypastellance post, the bending of the light of the projector is way off on the bottom of the shot.

Normally a projector would be bending and curving around the actors’ body and in this case they are not fully being wrapped around. Which is, as @aquaburst07 and @ladynoctern told me, as both are graphic designers, not at all how this is supposed to work in a legit picture.

Also something of importance that I must call to mind. The words on the bottom of the screen. They are not on the bodies of the actors. If this is a real projection then the light and worlds should be bending and shaping around the actors and this is not behaving in the way that it should. Also the word would not be cut off like that, even if you pause the scene, and you would never pause in a scene like this to take a photo.

Ask any VA, they would tell you that you would not waste time in this way. You’re costing time that you need to record. So if you take photos like this, it’s done before or after the recording session starts.

Additionally the light is off in regard to how a dubbing room would be used.

There is also the very blunt issue of the table on the right being way wrong, as you would not have a scene in there and have it read carton. As you see with the studio image it would have a list of the different recording aspects in there.

In the photo that was leaked there is none of that. And also there is no red lines near the end to be used to mark for audio recording purposes.

In another photo from the Chinkel S.A. website through the VSI website when translated they show their font on screen. It’s not very hard using Adobe products to create fonts and part of Graphic design is learning to do that. There is no words over the actors like there should be since this “scene” comes before the “wedding scene”.

Another small factor that’s been bugging me about the order of these scenes, the art story makes no sense. As a narration due to the time it reads like this.

First you have the older picture scene of them as a group, since the timer reads 22:09, then you have Keith’s scene at 22:30, and then you have the wedding, at 22:42. Here’s the reason this is bothering me. In normal structure you would have the picture of the younger group, then the moment of Keith, then the older group, and then end it on the wedding.

So if you notice that the show is doing the Final Fantasy XV way of making a character look older by giving them scruff on their chin. If Shiro’s wedding happens before the picture, where is his husband? If the wedding is taking place after the second group photo where is the scruff on their chins.

Also if you’re doing a sort of nostalgic moment you end on the group shot, you don’t star on it, that’s doing things in a backwards style and no storyboard writers group would do that. You want your story to flow.

Example: A- First shot with the statue in the back.

B -Keith shot

C -Wedding

D- Time skip shot with the group in color.

As I said in my large anon asks, the point of sepia is to make the tone of the scene feel nostalgic or memory like.

(I’m simplifying a lot of this because there’s so much here from a graphic design angle that a lot of people will be confused here)

6. The water mark on the screen is off, and the wrong type. Chinkel uses it’s name as the water mark and not the studios owner VSI.

7. Also the fact that the picture is too clean and sharp vs all the other aspects of the photo which are pixelated and blurred.

So onto the others. Let’s start with the Wedding and move our way down…

(Using Cinderella III because the stance is similar to the leaked image)

(For those wondering why I keep calling the character Roy, it makes it easier for me than calling him “That one dude that looks like a famous character from Macross that is supposed to be a homage to him, and clearly isn’t him.” )

8. This image was cropped at the top.

8 a. As Anon pointed out to me in inbox, the characters in the back are static and not moving. This would not be normal and, as I said in my post that got deleted, the characters were probably redrawn from either a posed picture, or some sort of promotional art and then traced over. Newtype magazine does a lot of illustrations that have moments that are not in the shows and weddings are sometimes used for their articles when they want to push a couple.

9. It’s been layered. The fact is that only Chinkel has the software to do this, so this was created by duplicating the layers and then taking and cutting and stamping and a lot of things in photo shop.

10. As per the Chinkel real leak, the property of DreamWorks on the bottom is not in stroke.

11. We have the fact that this guy looks way to much like Roy Fokker to be legally allowed. If this is supposed to be Adam then there’s something way off with him.

12. As I detailed before you can’t use images or look a likes of Roy Fokker due to Studio Nue and Harmony gold and Tatsunoko’s huge legal fight, and he wouldn’t be accessible until after 2021. So no…no Roy would be allowed even if he is Adam or just meant to be a look alike.

12 a. As @rsasai points out in this post using Roy would cause massive issues in Japan alone. http://rsasai.tumblr.com/post/179513598638/reminder

13. Also pidge’s eyebrows are off slightly and in the kiss scene you can see that Roy’s hand and arm vanishes

13a. Cleaner image shows that the arm is there, it’s just very hard to see, which again is why normally you don’t use the sepia tones there.

Link to image here

Since the Image has the BTIstudios name on it, and seems to be the reasons for the take downs, I’m linking it.

The interesting thing though is, again, I’m talking here from the perspective of framing a scene.

Closest one that I could find with the same or similar arm movements.

As you can see the more natural grip would be on the upper arm, it might be that Shiro’s arm can’t do that anymore? It seems like an odd place to put his arm.

Similarly here’s a shot that is a lot like the leaked one. Again the arms placement would naturally fall on the chest or arm of the other person as they are being pulled into the kiss, so you’d rest your arm where it feels natural.

13 b. Anon also pointed out that Shiro’s hand is resting on a location that would be more suited for a shorter character in place of Roy. Also his line of sight in the other pictures doesn’t match up, as he is looking down possibly at someone shorter than him, and also the art could allow for rotation on the head, as it’s easier to do that in profile than in person.

14. As per Malaysian posters, the wording on this is wrong and would not read that.

15. NBCU would not have it’s name on this period. You don’t have a stroke around a water mark.

16. BTI studios doesn’t have this program and would not just go by BTI studios.

17. Water marks do not work like that. You wouldn’t have a pause thing either.

18. And there is a lot of issues of where the words are being put because you can’t and shouldn’t have it hard for the voice actors to see the lip flaps.

19. Pause would not look like this and not be placing like this at all. Also the image of the kiss may be modeled on artwork from Macross do you remember love.

So with the second set of leaks we see changes.

20. Lance and Allura are possibly a redraw of Allura and Lotor.

21. Again BTISudios do not have the same type of equipment as Chinkel so this text over the screen should not be in there.

22. Allura’s crying is in the wrong spot. As I showed with the superman reign shot

23. One thing that I need to point out is the extra strand of hair for Allura, which she should not have.

24. Again this has been cropped and you wouldn’t have it in this tone as Voltron for past memories has shown it uses a white filter.

See with how Romelle and Bandor’s memory scene is framed in a light white edge to it, so show that it’s in the past. If the scene with these two are happening in the past then both should be in a white light not a sepia tone.

Jumping ahead to Keith’s leak.

25. Again wrong colors, we know that BTI Studios do not have this type of software.

26. Keith would still be with Voltron, and why is Zethrid wearing a BOM uniform while Ezor has a patch over her eyes. This is all very wrong.

27. Keith’s scar is not quiet right either.

The last one has a lot wrong with the group shot and more to the point the one on the top is far worse.

28. Pidge’s eyebrows are cut wrong, her hair is based more on Lotor’s bangs then her own.

29. Pidge’s nose was half cut off by the altered glasses placed on her.

30. Keith’s fingers look weird and his hand is off, and if it’s lance’s it still a bit weird.

31. You wouldn’t have the image cut like that, and have the “Do not copy” would not flow off the screen in the way it does.

32. Coran hasn’t changed at all, and his ears are off.

33. Shiro looks more like an older version of Yu Narukami than himself.

33 a. Edit: As per @leavesandroses “Studio Mir also does statues in 3D, not drawn animation” And they are right. If you look at artwork from Legend of Korra and at Aang’s statue because that’s some of the best shots, you can see how it’s done via CG rather than via traditional hand drawn.

Even Lotor’s statue is similar in design and uses the same type of rendering only with a filter over it as it’s a memory.

Allura’s statue doesn’t have this same affect where you can tell it’s CG as you should in the shot.

Thanks to @rsasai , who did some testing, you can see the art work doesn’t over lap right.

As you can see if these are all the same product they should line up…they don’t. No matter what way you try to overlap the screens will not match up.

Then there’s the added fact of the weird words that would not be on screen in this way.

34. Screens are all fucked up, you wouldn’t have the water marks cutting into the Property of DreamWorks

34 a. You would also not have the “One year later” on top like that.

35. Also no studio would do it in this way. No one would be this dumb. This is way too close to how they would do some weird stuff in the 1990s, which would never be done here in the states now.

36. There’s also the bad translation which would not be allowed.

On top of all of this and several other things that others have pointed out over and over again, you would not have three leaks of this magnitude and not have this pulled fast off the net. As I said with the original real leaks both were removed very fast by DreamWorks.

All three studios would have been pulled from the Netflix list and most definitely in the case of VSI and Chinkel SA they would have their preferred vendor award taken away. "Netflix Preferred Vendor of the Year - Timed Text (High Volume) for 2018.”

Not only would the actors from the shows be blacklisted for their willingness to participate in what would be seen as a very big Legal copyright issue, but also Netflix, WEP, DreamWorks and NBCUniversal would probably, along with other companies, never want to work with them again.

Then there’s the fact that romelle-against-the-antis got a confession from the first leaker saying that they faked the leaks.

With all this being said…and I’m sure others can add onto this with their own information, you can make your own call if this is fake or real. I’m not going to tell anyone what to believe, but for me there’s enough proof that make me believe that this whole thing is an elaborate hoax set up to drive the fans into extreme case of worry.

So please guys…. Forget about this, just wait till the season comes out and let the chips fall where they may. Go outside, find another show to watch for the time, enjoy the fact that Halloween is only a few days away, get ready to go shopping for the holidays, make something! I just hope the Voltron Fandom will relax.

Links here to all the stuff:

https://huntypastellance.tumblr.com/post/179486029100/leaks-discourse-update

https://www.vsi-paris.tv/nos-services/voice-over

https://www.vsi-paris.tv/en/dubbing

https://www.vsi.tv/news/netflix-preferred-vendor-year

https://www.vsi.tv/facilities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSI_Group

http://romelle-against-antis.tumblr.com/day/2018/10/23/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Gold_USA#Legal_issues_regarding_Macross_copyright

Thank you’s go here.

@aquaburst07

@rsasai

@springofviolets

@ladynoctern

@romelle-against-antis against antis

@huntypastellance

And a whole lot of Anons. With this being said, this will be my last update until something major comes out.

Side note So this..

is a actual photo from the screening of the actual end of the show with JDM and LM. It’s from JDS’s twitter account. Actors and crew and whoever came to see it signed an NDA and I expect that anyone claming to be leaking from this would be taken down and probably fired or fined for leaking anything from that screening.

Honestly with the clues here I”m betting that Matt and his girlfriend will be the ones having the wedding, or someone there previous screening that they already decorated and left that stuff up there from that event. Either way, everyone take a deep breath and relax until December...then you can freak out.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron leaks #fake voltron leaks #false leaks #real leaks #real photos of Jds and Lm #staff has seen the ending and have signed NDAs #meaning that if there are legit leaks you better believe someone will be fired.#master list of voltron leaks info with pictures #hope this helps

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solastia · 6 years

Text

Shadow Song | 1

We are the Shadow Knights. We stand for justice and truth. We bring retribution to those that defy that. And your name is on our list.

Pairing: Yoo Kihyun x Reader

Summary: Yoo Kihyun is an Assassin that’s been paid to take out the heir to a vast corporation. However, after a week of staking out his target, he finds he can’t pull the trigger.

Word Count: 2,133

Genre & Warnings: Assassin Au, will be a mix of every genre, some angst/some fluff/eventually smut. Will have violence to some degree but nothing overly graphic. Monsta X being adorable and charming.

Notes: This was just going to be one long one shot, but it was becoming too long, so I’m breaking it down into chapters. Enjoy!

The light should be turning on in 5...4...3...2...1...

Yoo Kihyun smirked at the reliability of his latest target’s routine as the apartment lit up. He had it down to the exact second at this point.

Her alarm would go off at 5:55 am, and she would hit the button three times before finally getting up at 6:05 am. She’d get ready and go for an hour-long jog. During this run, she’d only stop once for precisely eight minutes to give treats to dogs in the fenced off dog park. Afterwards, she’d head home to shower and eat before heading to work at 7:45 am. She’d stay in her office working until 6:15 pm, only leaving once to have a salad in the company cafeteria for lunch at 2:10 pm. She would be home at precisely 6:32 pm. From there, she usually didn’t leave the apartment. She’d cook dinner, then watch Netflix, read, or play with her little orange cat. After a quick five minute shower, she’d be in bed by 9:30 pm. And she conveniently left her curtains open at all times, making his job that much easier.

Kihyun was beginning to wonder why she was a target, though. As of today, he’d been evaluating his mark for an entire week. He knew she liked her coffee sweet, knew that she always kept a book in her purse to read during lunch, knew that when a song came on that she loved she’d pick up her cat and dance around her living room. However, he hadn’t found a single shred of evidence that warranted her death.

L/N Y/N was the CEO of Hekami Corp, the most substantial architecture company in the entire country. She’d inherited the position after her father passed away two years ago. There were rumors that she was one of the top five wealthiest people on the planet since her company worked globally. Only other family was a stepmother and stepbrother. He’d scoured everything from her bank accounts to every grade she’d ever gotten in school. He’d unearthed everything that could be found. The order had said that she was responsible for using her money and connections to fund all manner of underground dealings. Sex trade, drug trafficking, child labor. Kihyun hadn’t seen anything so far worth shooting her over except that she left dishes in the sink overnight.

He was beginning to get that feeling in his gut. The one that he felt in the courtroom when he just knew that something wasn’t right.

Have they been had? Had someone actually dared to use a Shadow Knight to do their dirty work? It was generally well known in the underground networks that while, yes, the Shadow Knights were technically Assassin’s, they only took out the worst of the worst. The guys that slipped through the cracks of the corrupt legal system. Hell, they were practically the Justice League with .300 Win Mags.

Kihyun found himself growing increasingly more agitated as he once again focused on his target. She seemed to be unusually chipper today, dancing around her kitchen as she made what appeared to be curry. He was pretty sure she’d put in too much powder and not enough water making him feel slightly triggered, but he managed to bury his irritation since there was nothing he could do about it.

He actually felt himself blushing as the bottom half of her appeared from behind the kitchen counter and he realized she’d kicked off her pants somewhere along the line. He’d seen much, much more than that observing his previous targets, so he didn’t get why the sight of panties had him blushing like a schoolboy. No matter how cute she looked in the flimsy scraps of blue lace. He shook his head as if to clear all of his wayward thoughts and refocused on his task.

With his earpiece, he could hear her singing (if what she was doing could be called that) along with some music. He’d bugged her apartment on Sunday while she’d been at the cafe down the road working on her day off. There had been nothing much of interest from this either. No phone calls except when she ordered takeout, her cat Misha was talkative as hell, and she had a cute voice when she wasn’t singing.

He set his gear down and sat back in the chair he’d set up on the rooftop opposite her apartment building. He chewed on his bottom lip as he contemplated his choices. He was ninety-nine percent certain that this target was an innocent, but he’d do one last apartment sweep to be sure. Then he’d go to the boss tomorrow with his suspicions. He sent a mission update to headquarters, took a short nap as he waited for her to go to bed, then made the familiar trek to her apartment.

Kihyun let himself in using the key he’d made earlier in the week, closing the door with a barely audible creak. Misha the cat curled himself around Kihyun’s leg in greeting, recognizing him from earlier visits. He leaned down and scratched the cat’s ears a bit before pulling his night vision goggles down over his eyes. He crept around the apartment like a ghost, searching every visible cabinet, drawer, window sill, all the usual suspects for hiding suspicious information. Finding nothing in the living room or kitchen, he decided it was time to hit up the bedroom. This part was going to be tricky considering she was still home, but he had no doubt he could pull it off.

He put everything back in its proper place, only complaining a few times about the layers of dust and drawers full of junk. Just when he turned to walk down the hallway, the light turned on, illuminating the female leaning casually against the wall with crossed arms.

“The last Assassin they sent was cuter.”

“This is awkward,” Kihyun muttered as he lifted his goggles off. The errant thought that she was even cuter up close ran through his mind as he observed her. He wasn’t really sure where to go from here. He’d never been caught by surprise before. Does he try to make a run for it? Taze her? Throw the cat as a distraction?

“First of all, ouch. Secondly, don’t worry I’m not going to hurt you...wait, the last Assassin? Are you saying there have been other orders on you and you’ve survived?” Kihyun asked in surprise. She merely sighed and gestured towards the couch. When they were both sitting, she began observing him from head to toe. He felt like she peering into his very soul, and he wondered what she saw.

“You’re the sixth in the two years since I inherited. A couple were brave and tried to take me out in broad daylight, but security got ahold of them. The rest I’ve been able to pay off. So how much do you want?” She sighed wearily and pulled out her phone, bringing up the bank app.

Kihyun grimaced as he processed this new information. He waved the phone away and with a frown of her own, she put it back in her pocket.

“Do you have any suspicions as to who is giving the order?”

“I do.”

“And...?”

“And I haven’t found proof it’s them yet. Even if I do, I don’t know what I’ll do with it. They are...close to me. I never would have thought them capable of this.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. Kihyun wanted to smooth the crinkles between her eyes.

“Look, they made a huge mistake this time. They picked the wrong assassin for this. Yes, technically I...well for lack of a better description...kill for money. However, we only take out the people that deserve it. The people that are so vile they can barely even be called human.” He stared, observing every emotion shining through her eyes as he explained.

“Are you guilty of the crimes of which you have been accused? Sex Trade, Child Labor, extortion, etc.?” He asked her calmly as he held eye contact.

“No, of course not!” She looked genuinely horrified.

“Okay,” he responded breezily as he tapped his thigh to call Misha.

“Okay? That’s it? So you believe me just like that?”

“Mmmhmm.” He responded as he pets the purring cat. “To be honest, I’ve been looking into your case for a week now. I already thought you were innocent. This was just one last sweep before I reported back to my boss.”

“So without a shred of proof you’re just going to listen to me when I say I’m innocent? You’re not very good at this job, are you?” She laughs, the tension slowly leaving her shoulders as she recognizes he’s not going to hurt her.

“On the contrary, sweetheart, I’m one of the best if not the best. Also, I can spot a liar in an instant. Perks from my day job. Speaking of, I have to get going. Can I leave peacefully, or did you want to try calling the cops or something?”

“The assassin is offering to let me call the cops on him? You really suck at this job. You let me go, so shouldn’t I do the same? Besides, Misha likes you, so you can’t be all bad.” She giggled, and he decides that was one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. Kihyun looked at her in wonder, grinning a bit as he shakes his head.

“What?” She huffed.

“It’s just funny is all. You expect someone to scream or beat you up with a frying pan at least when the assassin word starts getting thrown around. You’re acting like I’m just some dude that showed up for a cup of tea.”

“Would beating you with a pan help my situation? I have plenty.” She smirked.

Kihyun chuckled. “Touche.”

Kihyun pushes the cat off of his leg and stands up. His gaze roams her face as if it might be the last time, although he was sure he’d see her again.

“I have to tell headquarters about this situation. Do you want me to help find your proof? I know you think it’s someone close to you that you don’t seem to want to do anything about, but you have to think logically. They’ve straight up hired someone to kill you six times. It doesn’t sound like they are going to stop anytime soon. I’m going to make a wild guess here. Stepmom and Stepbrother?”

Her sharp, indrawn breath was all the answer he needed. He sighed and nodded. “It’s almost disappointing that it’s so cliche. Did they not inherit anything?”

“They got the main house and allowances. Very, very generous allowances. They don’t need to lift a finger for the rest of their lives. Unless they somehow think they’d inherit the business, there is nothing else to be gained from killing me.”

Kihyun picked up on the keyword of somehow. “Are you saying they wouldn’t? Who would it go to then?”

“Until I have children of my own, it’s some distant cousin. Not really sure. The board keeps the information, and since I never planned on kicking the bucket anytime soon, I never bothered to look into it. I figured they’d probably show up asking for money sooner or later, and then I’d learn all about them.”

Kihyun nods as he takes in this new information. He’d look more into it when he got a chance.

“I’m going to head out, sweetheart. I’ll stop by when I learn more. I might even knock next time. Bye, Misha.”

“You’re a weird assassin.” She grumbled, but he noticed she was fighting off a grin. Damn, he wanted to kiss her.

NOPE NOPE. Stay on target.

“Mmhmm. Also, you might want to try closing your curtains from time to time. Blue is definitely your color.” He threw in, chuckling as he closed the door on her blushing face.

#kkreationsnet #KWritersKollection #kpopwritingnet #monsta x #monsta x fanfic #yoo kihyun #yoo kihyun fanfic #kihyun fanfic #kpop #kpop fanfiction #Monsta x fluff #monsta x smut #kihyun fluff #kihyun smut #kihyun angst #monsta x assassin au #Kihyun assassin au #kpop fic

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lastbluetardis · 6 years

Text

And Babies Make Five and Six (2/16)

Summary: Sometimes the things we want the most stay just out of reach. But after an extra helping of heartache as they try for a third baby, James and Rose are blessed with double the joy.

Ten x Rose AU, teen, 5300 words

Betaed by @chocolatequeennk: thank you so much, Nancy!

Tagging @doctorroseprompts because it’s a Doctor/Rose fic :)

NOTE: This story will contain themes of infertility. I will explicitly tag those chapters in case anyone needs to skip them. And remember, I’m only updating every other week, at least until school has finished, or I completely finished the second half of the story.

AO3 | TSP | FF | Perfectly Matched Series

Ch1 | Ch2 | Ch3 | Ch4 | Ch5 | Ch6 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9 | Ch10 | Ch11 | Ch12 | Ch13 | Ch14 | Ch15 | Ch16

“There’s my birthday girl!”

James turned around from where he was tending to the banana pancakes, and he watched Rose crouch down to embrace their now five-year-old. He impatiently waited for the pancake to cook, and once it was golden-brown, he set it on the serving plate and took his turn greeting Ainsley.

“Happy birthday, my darling!” he exclaimed, hoisting her up into his arms to twirl her exuberantly around the room. She laughed in his ear and tightened her arms and legs around him. He pointed to the clock, which read 7am, and he said, “Five years ago today, right at this very minute, I had no idea that my beautiful little girl was about to be born that afternoon and change my entire life.”

“I was born really early, right Daddy?” Ainsley said, even though she’d heard the story dozens of times.

“That’s right,” James said. “You weren’t supposed to be born ‘til December. But then you gave me and Mummy the best surprise of our lives. I love you so much, Ainsley.” He pressed a smacking kiss to her cheek then said, “Go on and sit down at the table. Your banana pancakes will be ready in just a tick.”

James turned back to the pancakes, and he cooked up the last of the batter before setting the steaming plate in the middle of the table beside the eggs and bacon Rose had placed there moments ago.

He worked on plating everyone’s food as Rose poured everyone something to drink, and soon the family was settled around the table, tucking into Ainsley’s birthday breakfast.

“This is really yummy, Daddy!” she said, stuffing a loaded forkful of pancake into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out as she chewed, and James chuckled at his daughter.

“Thank you, but perhaps try a smaller bite next time?” he suggested.

The clanking of silverware against plates and the occasional unintelligible chatter from Sianin was the only sound for the next few minutes as they all enjoyed their breakfast. Then Ainsley reached for her cup of orange juice, and her sleeve pulled away from her hand to reveal her wrist, where a smudge of black ink decorated her skin. Rose saw it and gasped, forgetting she was in the middle of taking a sip of tea. The scalding liquid spluttered into her mouth and down her throat, causing her to choke.

She coughed and hacked as James patted her back unhelpfully, and she tried to stop her eyes from watering while she also tried to draw breath.

“All right?” James asked when her fit seemed to subside.

She shook her head and reached out for Ainsley’s arm.

“Sweetheart, are you… did you…?”

James’s attention was finally brought to the ink on his daughter’s wrist, and his eyes bugged.

“Hmm?” Ainsley glanced between James and Rose, furrowing her eyebrows at her parents, before she realized what they were looking at. “Oh, no. That’s just me. I wrote a message to my soulmate but haven’t gotten a reply yet.”

The knot in James’s stomach loosened, and he sighed with relief. He knew the eternal joy that came with a soulmate, and he wished for his children to experience the love he felt for and received from Rose, but not quite yet. She was still just his little girl, after all. It was only five years ago that he’d met her and held her for the first time. Selfish though it was, he didn’t want to share her with anyone yet, not even her perfect match.

Over the next few weeks, James and Rose continued to watch Ainsley go around with an unanswered message on her arm. After awhile, their hearts stopped jumping into their throats when they saw the ink they always thought belonged to their daughter’s soulmate.

“Are you sure it’s healthy for her to be doing that?” Jackie asked when she spotted Ainsley re-tracing the word ‘hello’ on her forearm.

“What do you mean?” James asked.

“Well what if she doesn’t have a soulmate?” Jackie asked. “Ever. She’s getting her hopes up, and you’re encouraging it.”

“I wrote ‘hello’ on my arm when I was five,” James said, his tone a little frosty. “And look what came of it.”

He gestured vaguely in front of him, at the living room of his and Rose’s house, which was full of kid-induced clutter.

Jackie snorted. “Pull the other one. You were a teenager before you contacted Rose.”

“First off, I was eleven,” he said. “Secondly, it’s true! I walked around with ‘hello’ on my arm. Ask my dad.”

“Did you really keep it on your arm for six years though?” Jackie asked dubiously.

James’s ears burned. “Well, no. Not exactly. I sort of gave up on the idea of having a soulmate after a few years. But then that wonderful New Year’s Day happened and I met the love of my life.”

“Yeah, but what if that doesn’t happen for Ainsley?” Jackie stressed. “You’re setting her up for future heartbreak. Have you and Rose talked to her about the possibility that she might not have a soulmate?”

“Rose and I will cross that bridge if we come to it,” James said firmly, effectively ending the conversation.

Truthfully, he had no idea how to broach the subject with Ainsley. His five-year-old was hell-bent on the idea that she had a soulmate out there somewhere. She was so vehement in her belief, he didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise, and so he indulged in her musings about soulmates.

But did that make him a bad father for not preparing her for potential disappointment if it turned out that she didn’t have a soulmate? He just didn’t know, and so he preferred not to think about it.

December was soon upon them, bringing with it chilly weather and a house bursting with excitement for the impending arrival of Santa Claus.

Rose loved Christmastime, even if it was her busiest season. Everything was so beautiful, and the world seemed just a little bit kinder at this time of year. And decorating their home was always an enjoyable activity for her.

She looked into the kitchen, where James was entertaining their two daughters by teaching them how to bake Christmas biscuits. Well. He was entertaining Ainsley. Sianin was toddling around and running circuits through the kitchen and into the living room and back again.

As James and Ainsley baked and Sianin ran laps, Rose continued to decorate the house for Christmas. Ainsley’s interest in decorating had stopped once the tree was done and the stockings were hung, but Rose didn’t mind. It was fun to transform her home for the holidays. She moved to the wall of photographs in their living room and took them down to replace them with their Christmas photos through the years.

She enjoyed watching the progression of herself and James from fresh-faced kids into parents. Her eyes raked over her husband, who was seemingly unchanged by time. He was tall and thin as ever, and while there were a few more lines around his eyes and mouth and the occasional gray hair that he always tried to immediately pluck out, he was still as sexy as he was when she first met him.

She, on the other hand…

Rose sighed as she watched how her body had changed over the years. Her hips were wider, her boobs bigger, and her stomach seemed to have developed a permanent sag to it, more so after Sianin’s birth. She’d picked up weight around her face and in her thighs, too.

“Penny for ‘em.”

James came up to her with a biscuit in hand.

“Just thinking. You’ve stayed so gorgeous over the years.” Rose gestured to the photos on the wall. “You’re even sexier now than when you were twenty-three. You’ve aged like a fine wine. I’ve aged like moldy cheese.”

James frowned. “Don’t say that. You’re sexier now, too.”

Rose snorted. “Thanks, love, but no, I’m not.”

“Rose, you are,” he said softly. “You become more beautiful with every passing day, and I fall deeper in love with you every day, too. Yeah, your body has changed, but so has mine.” He lifted his jumper to expose his tummy, where the slightest paunch rested above his belt. He pinched it and screwed his face into an exaggerated grimace. “You’ve fattened me up, you have.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rose said, laughing as she patted his stomach. “You needed a bit of meat on your bones.”

“You never complained before,” he murmured, stepping up into her personal space.

She shivered as the length of his body pressed up against hers.

“Rose, your body is so gorgeous,” he whispered into her ear. He trailed the hand not holding the biscuit down her side and across to her belly then hips. “This body grew our two beautiful daughters, then gave birth to them.” He raised his hand to just under her breasts. “It fed them and nourished them for their first year of life. Your body is so, so incredible, Rose. I don’t care what it looks like. I wasn’t soulmated to your body, I was soulmated to you, no matter the package. But for what it’s worth, I am still as attracted to you now as I was eleven and a half years ago, and I still think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Rose grinned and leaned back against his chest.

“Have I told you recently that I love you?”

He hummed in her ear and pressed a soft kiss to the skin just below it.

“I don’t think you have,” he teased. “I’m feeling a little insecure about it, honestly.”

Rose giggled and spun around in his arms. She lifted her arms and draped them around his neck as she rocked onto her tiptoes.

“I love you very much,” she murmured, her lips a fraction of an inch away from his.

“Brilliant.” His breath puffed against her lips, making her shiver in anticipation. “Because I love you very much, too.”

Finally, he ducked down and pressed a kiss to her lips. It was a relatively chaste kiss, as there were two young children that could walk in on them at any moment, but it still felt amazing. She always loved kissing James. It warmed her from the inside out and made her so giddy she felt like nothing would ever be wrong in the world.

“Did you bring me a snack?” Rose asked, slightly breathless, as she pulled away from James.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” The hint of amusement in his voice puzzled Rose, until she saw the biscuit in his outstretched hand. “Ainsley didn’t quite press down hard enough on the biscuit cutter. A bit of dough was left in a very unfortunate place.”

Rose cackled as she saw the Santa biscuit with a small piece of dough hanging between his legs.

“Santa has a cock!”

“I thought this would amuse you. Care to eat the vulgar Santa?”

Rose grabbed it out of his hand, and bit off one of Santa’s legs.

“I always love these photos,” James said, gesturing to the wall of past Christmas photos.

“Me too,” she said. “It’s fun watching the girls grow year to year.”

Her eyes scanned across her daughters, watching Ainsley grow from a tiny infant and into an equally-tiny child, while Sianin grew from a pudgy baby into a pudgier toddler.

Rose’s eyes lingered on the photo from two years ago, and at her swollen, pregnant belly. James seemed to catch her view, too.

“Maybe next year’s photo will have you big with Baby Three,” he mused, tapping a fingernail against the glass overtop her pregnant stomach.

“Or with Baby Three in the flesh,” she said hopefully.

It was nearly six months since she’d thought she was pregnant, but wasn’t. Six months since they decided to try for another baby. Nothing yet, but Rose was optimistic. It took over seven months to get pregnant with Sianin; remembering back, at the time it had felt like it had taken forever to get pregnant. But seven months was hardly any time at all. As it was, it felt like the last six months had flown by. Besides, Sianin wasn’t even two yet. There was no rush.

“No, Sianin, hot!” James and Rose wheeled around at Ainsley’s sharp shout and Sianin’s indignant squeal. “No touch! Don’t touch the oven!”

They entered the kitchen to see Ainsley with her arms around Sianin’s waist, hoisting her away from the metal pan of biscuits that had recently come out of the oven.

“No, no, no!” Sianin shrieked, flailing in Ainsley’s arms. “Bisky, Ainsley! Bisky!”

“What have we got here?” James asked, smoothly gliding up to their girls and taking Sianin up into his arms.

“She tried touching the oven,” Ainsley said unnecessarily.

“Yes, I heard,” he said. Sianin was still whimpering in his arms and leaning towards the hot biscuits on the pan, so James reached over for a cooler one from their first batch. “Here you are, darling. Little bites, now.” James then turned to his other daughter and said, “Thank you, Ainsley, for making sure she didn’t get hurt. I’m sorry you had to do that. I should’ve been watching.”

“S’okay,” Ainsley said brightly. “I’m not gonna let her burn herself.” She spotted Rose munching on Vulgar Santa. “Did Daddy and me do good?”

“Very good,” Rose praised, finally popping the last bit into her mouth. “Do you like baking with Daddy?”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Daddy lets me taste the dough.”

“Not too much, though. We don’t want you getting sick.” Rose caught James’s eye, and then glanced meaningfully between the girls. “Right, I’m gonna go decorate in the bedroom. You stay out here with Daddy, okay.”

“M’kay,” Ainsley said distractedly as she made more cut-out Santas from the dough that was rolled out on the counter.

Before Rose could turn and walk out of the room, James stepped up to her and murmured, “Are you sure you don’t want any help in the bedroom?”

“Behave,” Rose chastised with a giggle. “Insatiable, you are.” She pushed lightly against his chest. “You keep Ainsley entertained out here while I wrap some of her gifts. Then maybe later tonight we can revisit the idea of your assistance in the bedroom. There’s a sprig of mistletoe I have yet to hang… it might look good above our bed.”

She pecked a kiss to James’s cheek and sauntered out of the kitchen, being sure to sway her hips more than normal to give James a parting show.

As Christmas drew nearer, the girls came home with more crafts done at school and daycare. Of course, the daycare aides were the ones making Sianin’s, but nevertheless, Rose loved the little green handprint that was supposed to be a tree and the white footprint that was a snowman.

Their Christmas tree was soon adorned by the kids’ ornaments, hanging proudly front and center.

On the last day of school before the holidays, Rose noticed Ainsley seemed subdued as they drove home. She chalked it up to the excitement of the holidays finally tiring her daughter out, but when they got home and Ainsley still hadn’t said much, nor had she fallen asleep on the car ride home, Rose suspected something else was weighing on her five-year-old’s mind.

“How was school today, sweetheart?” she asked, hanging up Ainsley’s jacket and her own in the closet.

Ainsley shrugged. Before Rose could ask what was wrong, Ainsley looked up. Her brow was furrowed and her face looked troubled, and Rose’s heart sank, her mind running through all of the possible scenarios of why Ainsley looked so distressed.

“We were talking about families today as we made gingerbread houses,” Ainsley said. “Because some stupid boys were teasing William about having two mummies. And so we started talking about family, and all my friends have two grans and two grandads. But I only have one. Why do I only have one, Mummy?”

That had not at all been what Rose was expecting. She’d steeled herself to hear Ainsley tell her she was being bullied or something in school. But not this.

“You do have two grans and two grandads,” Rose began gently. “But Daddy’s mum died, and so did my dad. You remember all the stories of your Grandma Vera and Grandad Pete?”

Ainsley nodded slowly, but she still looked troubled.

Rose sighed and beckoned Ainsley to sit on the couch with her. On the way there, Rose grabbed two photo albums that she knew would contain photographs of James’s mum and her dad.

“My dad died when I was just a baby,” Rose began, flipping to the photos of her father. Her mum had brought that album out a lot when Rose was a kid, particularly when Jackie had had a bit to drink. She remembered sitting with her mum on her bed and listening to the stories of how Jackie met Pete, and their wedding, and how happy he was when he held Rose for the first time. “Here he is.”

“How old were you?” Ainsley asked, her eyes scanning across Pete’s face.

“Just a baby,” Rose repeated. “About six months old, I think.”

“Does it make you sad you don’t have a daddy?”

Rose shrugged. “A little bit, I suppose. I don’t have any memories of my dad, though, so that makes it easier. But it does make me sad to think of all the lost potential… My dad never got to see me grow up, or get a soulmate, or meet you and Sianin. But at least I’ve got my mum. Your Gran.”

“Gran lost her soulmate really soon,” Ainsley noted. “A lot sooner than Grandad lost his.”

“Oh, no, my mum and dad weren’t soulmates,” Rose corrected.

Ainsley blinked in surprise.

“Soulmates are the exception, not the rule, sweetheart,” Rose reminded. “Remember only a small portion of people are soulmated. Yet there are plenty of people who find true love anyway. Like my mum and dad.”

“But it’s not really true love,” Ainsley said.

“Don’t say that, of course it is,” Rose reprimanded gently. “People fall in love regularly every day, without being soulmated. Like Uncle Mickey and his girlfriend. Or Auntie Donna and her boyfriend. Loads of married people aren’t soulmated but are still extremely happy.”

“Oh,” Ainsley said quietly, as though the thought had never occurred to her.

And perhaps it hadn’t, Rose realized. Ainsley’s main frame of reference was Rose’s relationship with James. She loved James so much, and she loved how much he loved being soulmated to her, but Rose worried he’d romanticized soulmates far too much for Ainsley and had her believing that was the only way to find true love.

“You know it’s okay to not have a soulmate, right Ainsley?” Rose murmured, covering her daughter’s forearm where she knew the word “hello” was still written.

“I guess. But I really want one. I want to have someone who loves me like Daddy loves you,” Ainsley said.

“I want that for you, too. So much. No matter how it happens, though.”

Ainsley nodded, then she closed the book in her lap and took the other photo album from Rose. Vera’s face smiled up at them from the pages, lodging an aching twinge in Rose’s chest, as it always did when she thought about Vera, and how close they’d come to meeting, knowing, and loving each other.

“Hey, she looks like me!”

Rose looked down at her daughter’s excited exclamation and smiled when she saw the photo Ainsley was pointing at. It was an old photo of Vera when she was Ainsley’s age.

“Technically you look like her,” Rose said, playfully nudging her elbow into Ainsley’s ribs. “But yeah, you look similar.”

“She’s really pretty,” Ainsley said, flipping through the book to later photos of Vera. “Is that Daddy?”

Rose saw a dark-haired baby sleeping on Vera’s chest with his pudgy fist in his mouth and a layer of drool covering his chin and Vera’s shirt. Vera looked so at peace, cradling her son to her chest as he slept, and Rose smiled at the scene they made.

“Yeah, it is,” Rose said.

“Are there pictures of you as a baby, Mummy?” Ainsley asked as she flipped to a new page and saw a photograph of James when he was a toddler.

Rose nodded and went to the bookshelf to select a few more photo albums for her daughter to peruse.

They spent nearly an hour pouring over the albums together, with Ainsley laughing at antiquated fashion trends and hairstyles of her mum and dad, and gran and grandad.

“How old was Daddy when his mummy died?” Ainsley asked, finally reaching the part of the book where Rose replaced Vera in the photographs with James and Robert.

“Twenty-three,” Rose whispered, her mind painfully recalling that awful night when she’d learned what had happened. “I was almost eighteen.”

“She died on April twenty-fifth?” Ainsley verified, and at Rose’s nod, her eyes widened. “Did you miss your first meeting with Daddy?”

“Of course not,” Rose said. “It was a little delayed, because Daddy got a little hurt in the car accident too, but no, sweetheart, we still had our first meeting.”

“How did it go?” Ainsley asked.

“It was perfect,” Rose said honestly, remembering the utter joy in meeting her soulmate for the first time. “Your daddy made me the most wonderful dinner my first night with him. Then a few days later, he took me to a romantic restaurant where we danced beneath the stars.”

“That sounds nice,” Ainsley said with a soft sigh. “I wish I could’ve met Daddy’s mummy and your daddy.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I wish they could’ve met you, too,” Rose said, giving Ainsley a tight squeeze. “They would have loved you so much. You and Sianin.”

oOoOo

They set out for Scotland two days before Christmas. After reassuring Ainsley that Santa would still know where to drop off her gifts, they loaded everyone into the car. Robert had stopped by earlier that week to take Ainsley and Sianin’s gifts to the manor so that they wouldn’t see their parents bringing them, and he had promised to hide them in the cellar for James and Rose.

The drive passed by relatively uneventfully. Sianin had slept through most of it, and eventually Ainsley fell asleep too. Robert was the only one there when they arrived, but the rest of the family would be coming on Christmas Eve.

“It’ll be quite crowded,” James noted. “Jackie’s coming with Mickey and his girlfriend. And Rita-Anne. Donna and her boyfriend. Wilf and Sylvia. Grandma. Have I missed anyone?”

“That’s everyone.”

“It’ll be an early start for everyone on Christmas,” James said. “Seven is the latest they get. That’s the latest Rose and I could push it for Ainsley. If she had her way, we’d be up and opening presents at five in the morning.”

Robert laughed. “I’ll make sure I program the coffee to be ready by seven. I made up the master suite for you, Rose, and the girls. Whoever wants to sleep through Ainsley’s early morning can take the upstairs bedrooms.”

Though as it turned out, nobody wanted to sleep through Christmas morning.

Promptly at seven in the morning, James and Rose—carrying a drowsy Sianin—made their way to the living room, where all of the presents sat beneath the lit tree. Almost everyone was bleary-eyed, but they all gathered in the living room to watch the magic of Christmas through Ainsley’s eyes.

It took less than a half hour for Ainsley to open up all of her presents. The majority were from Santa, but James and Rose claimed credit for a few.

Sianin opened one of her presents, but after she got it open, she was more interested in the shiny bows littering the floor.

“Can I open Sianin’s presents?” Ainsley asked as Sianin picked up another bow and added it to her collection on Rose’s lap.

“Oh, sure, go ahead,” James said. “Sian, darling, Ainsley’s opening your gifts. D’you wanna help her?”

“No,” she said, but she stepped up to her sister and took the bow Ainsley had ripped off.

Once all of the gifts had been exchanged among the family, James and Robert started on Christmas dinner.

“Birdy,” Sianin chirped as she wandered into the kitchen just as James was seasoning the turkey. “Nakey birdy. Dead birdy.”

James chuckled and said, “Yep. Naked, dead birdy. But a tasty birdy.”

“Tasty birdy,” Sianin repeated. “Up, Daddy.”

She thrust her arms up towards him, but Robert was the one who scooped her up.

“Daddy’s hands are a bit yucky,” Robert explained as Sianin leaned around him to see her dad.

“I’ll hold you in a minute,” James promised, before he flipped the turkey upside down in the roasting pan and popped it into the oven. He washed his hands then motioned for his dad to give him his daughter.

“Turkey birdy,” Sianin said, pointing to the oven. “Supper birdy turkey.”

“Indeed,” James said. He flicked the interior oven light on then crouched down with Sianin so she could see inside. “The turkey birdy is cooking so it can become our supper.”

She grinned and babbled some more about dead, naked birds as James kept her on his hip and started getting the ingredients out for the dinner rolls.

“Are you being Daddy’s big helper?” Rose cooed as she stepped into the kitchen.

“Big helper,” Sianin said.

“Yep! She’s my little chef,” James said proudly, pinching her stomach lightly to get her to laugh.

Sianin remained with James in the kitchen until her afternoon nap. Rose and James were worried that she wouldn’t sleep because of all of the excitement of it being Christmas, but thankfully she managed to fall asleep and stay asleep for nearly two hours.

When her nap was over, it was nearing dinner time, and James’s prowess in the kitchen was finally showcased.

“Wonderful, as always,” Rose praised with a kiss, having sampled the turkey as she helped carve it.

The rest of the family trickled into the kitchen to help carry the dishes of food to the dining room table, and after everyone was seated and the traditional Christmas dinner prayer was said, everyone took turns filling their plate with food.

James kept Sianin in his lap and made toddler-sized bites for her on his plate, while Rose helped Ainsley get servings of all of the dishes she would like.

The conversation was sparse at first as everyone tucked into the food and praised James on what a delicious turkey he’d made.

“Tasty, nakey birdy. Dead birdy. Yummy birdy, Daddy,” Sianin had squealed, earning her a round laughter from the room.

The rest of the Christmas holidays were uneventful. Jackie and Donna wanted to go out shopping on Boxing Day, and Ainsley had wanted to join in the fun, too. The rest of the family stayed home to recuperate from Christmas, and to watch a football match. Rose had never really gotten into the sport, but James enjoyed the game, so she sat beside him with her head on his shoulder and watched the players run up and down the field.

The good thing about having the family around was that it gave James and Rose extra eyes and hands to take care of the girls. Everyone was eager to dote on Ainsley and Sianin, and play with them.

After Boxing Day, people began to head home. Mickey and Martha were the first to leave, as Martha had a shift at the hospital the next day. By the twenty-ninth, only Robert and Jackie remained at the mansion, where they were going to be babysitting the girls as James and Rose went on their anniversary holiday.

They chose to stay in Scotland for their anniversary, and they planned a four-day tour of four different islands. While it was quite cold for the duration of their trip, they enjoyed sampling the local culture.

They were on the Isle of Skye for New Year’s Eve, and they listened to the fireworks outside and enjoyed the bursts of color illuminating their room as they rang in the year in their own private celebration.

“So, where d’you wanna go next year?” James got the sentence out before he let out a low moan.

“You really wanna talk about next year? Right now?”

Rose ground her hips down on him harder and faster, making James’s brain short out on anything that wasn’t the extreme pleasure he was feeling.

“Just popped into my head,” he breathed after a minute, gripping her hips as he arched into her thrusts. They were quiet for a few moments, minus their exhales and soft moans of pleasure as they leisurely made love.

“Any ideas?” he asked as he flipped them so Rose was on her back now.

“I have a few ideas of how I can make you stop talking,” she said with a tongue-touched grin.

“You can share those too, if you’d like,” James said, and he smirked when he thrust sharply into her, making her eyes scrunch shut and her mouth fall open.

“Wanker,” she panted.

“Not at the moment I’m not.”

Their banter gradually dwindled as their desire for release grew. Wordless grunts and groans took over, before finally Rose tipped over in pleasure, bringing James with her moments later.

“God, that’s good,” she sighed as her muscles gave a few final pulses around him.

James nodded in agreement as his world swam, even behind closed eyelids. Making love with Rose was always so amazing and Earth-shattering.

When he felt like he could move again, he rolled off of her and instead tucked himself into her side. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders as he draped his arm around her hips and his leg across hers.

“I want to go somewhere special next year,” James whispered. “It’s our ten-year anniversary, after all. We should go somewhere nice.”

“Did you have a place in mind?” Rose asked, carding her fingers through his hair

“Somewhere tropical, I think,” he mused. “Beaches and sunbathing and seeing you in a bikini.”

Rose snorted, and the sound made him grin in return.

“Yeah, you in swim trunks isn’t a bad view, either,” she drawled.

“And we can dine outside for our anniversary,” James said, tracing random patterns across her hip bone. “We can never do that; it’s too cold, usually.”

“Do you wish we’d gotten married in the summertime?” Rose asked.

“Nah,” he said. “Our wedding day was perfect as it was. I don’t need warmth and summer vacations to celebrate our anniversary. Just being able to celebrate with you makes me happy.”

Rose grinned at him and pressed a kiss to his hair.

“So what sort of tropical island were you thinking?” she asked.

“Dunno. ‘Tropical island’ was as far as I got in my mental planning,” he admitted. “I figured I ought to run it by you to see if you were agreeable.”

“I am quite agreeable,” she said. “Let’s see… There’s the Caribbean.”

“Fiji,” James added.

“The Bahamas.”

“Tahiti.”

“Maldives. That was a beautiful island,” Rose said, reminiscing on her second honeymoon with James when they toured the world together.

“I think I want to go somewhere we haven’t been yet, if that’s okay,” James said.

“Absolutely. I always love going new places with—” A huge yawn cracked her jaw then, and she nuzzled closer to him. “—With you,” she mumbled against his chest.

James chuckled and pressed a kiss to her hair. “We can talk more about it later. Happy New Year, love.”

<-- Ch1 | Ch3 -->

#ficandchips #dwfic #doctorroseprompts #doctor who #ten x rose #au #soulmates #soulmates au #kid fic #perfectly matched series #and babies make five and six #my fic

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fcklifeex · 6 years

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Dean Ambrose - Request 3

Request: Hey there darling ! First off I’d like to say I love your work. Secondly I was wondering if you could a Dean Ambrose x reader where the reader is the Bella Twins’ younger sister and secretly dating Dean and Nikki and Brie and a bunch of the other women on the roster find out on Total Divas or something ? Fluff and all that good warm fuzzy stuff ? (If not I’m sorry for bugging you ❤️)

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Total Divas - Episode 1

Interview Segment: “Hi!” I gave a little wave to the camera. “I’m Y/N and I’m a WWE Diva. I’m 28 years old and as most of you know, I’m Brie and Nikki Bella’s little sister. Being in the business with my older sisters has its ups and downs. In real life, the twins usually outnumbered me so things went their way but when I came into the WWE, that wasn’t the case. I chose make a name for myself separately and so far I’d say I’ve done pretty well.

I never would’ve thought that I’d been working for WWE much less that I would’ve been a Diva’s Champion not once but twice and to top it all off, I’m dating the WWE World Heavyweight Champion - Dean Ambrose.”

My cheeks turned pink as I blushed and I couldn’t help but smile offering a shrug to the camera. “It’s great.”

---

“Dean!” I called out walking through the front door making my way towards the kitchen.

Catching my breath from my run, I walked into my bathroom to wash the sweat off my face. The Vegas heat was cruel this time of year but I saw it as a way of building endurance.

“Dean!” I yelled out again, walking into the kitchen only to see a trail of clothes leading out towards the backyard.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of water, taking a sip before I followed the trail out into the backyard where I saw him swimming in the pool.

Interview Segment: Unbeknownst to almost everyone, Dean and I have been dating for a little over 2 years now. We bought a home together about a year into our relationship and it’s our own little escape from the 300-plus days on the road.

“Hey babe.” He smiled at me as he swam to the edge. “How was the run?”

“It was alright. Mind telling me why you’re in the pool in boxers?” I laughed, approaching him.

“Well, I worked out and I was going to take a shower, but then I heard the pool calling my name. You know I can’t resist that…” I laughed and he reached for my ankle. “And now you’re going to join me.”

“Ahh!” I laughed, backing away. “Like hell I am. These leggings are brand new.”

He cocked his head to the side before a smirk crossed his face. “They make your ass look great.” He replied then he was all of a sudden out of the water. “But you’re getting in this pool one way or another.”

“Dean!” I squealed, laughing as I tried to run away around the pool.

He chased after me, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me up into the air.

“No! Don’t you dare suplex me, Dean Ambrose!” I warned but he called my bluff, throwing both of us in the pool.

---

“Drinks and Karaoke?” I asked, throwing on an ACDC tank top.

Dean laughed, tying his sneakers. I slipped into my boots and walked closer to him so he could tie them for me. “We’ll be on the road for the next three weeks, Josh and Mel wanted to hang out before then so this is what I picked.” He replied, standing up from the bed to kiss me.

“God, you’re amazing!” I smiled as he spun me around.

After meeting our friends at the bar, we all let loose with a couple of drinks while catching up with them regarding family and and work. Dean threw his arm around me, keeping me tucked into his side while we all hung out, ordering us two more shots of whiskey which we downed pretty quickly.

“Dean and Y/N? You’re up next, here’s the song book.” One of the staff said, handing us a binder full of songs.

Dean placed it in front of us flipping through the laminated pages. “What’re you feeling like this time?”

“Ooh! They got Rebel Yell.” I pointed at the song name on the list.

He laughed, nodding his head. “Billy Idol for the win.”

Once the other couple finished, we walked up, grabbing the mics. Dean cleared his throat, shaking his legs to gain some adrenaline before he looked over at me with a wink.

The music started and on que, Dean began to sing.

“Last night a little dancer, came dancin’ to my door. Last night a little angel, came pumping on the floor. She said -”

I danced around him, bobbing my head to the music before joining him on the verse. “Come on baby I’ve got a license for love, and if it expires, pray help from above.”

“Because -”

I shook out my hair before singing with him.

“In the midnight hour, she cried more, more, more!” We sang together, laughing and bobbing along to the music. “With a rebel yell - she cried more more more!”

Interview segment: Our favorite thing is karaoke. Both of us are music junkies and we get really into it. We’re always dancing and singing oldies in the car or at home - wherever. It’s one of the things that’s always bonded us.

The song came to an end and everyone cheered as Dean pulled me into his arms giving me a gentle headbutt before kissing me and returning to our seats.

---

“Pizza’s here!” Dean said, walking out to our backyard and setting the box down on the table. Pulling two bottles of beer out of the pockets of his shorts, he sat down beside me, grabbing a slice. “You all packed for tomorrow? Flight’s at 4:40 in the morning.”

“I’m packed, just my toothbrush and dry shampoo.” I replied, grabbing a slice and putting my feet up on the table looking through my phone.

“Ugh, i hate when you use that, your hair just feels like powder.” He replied, making a face, before taking a bite out of his pizza.

“We can’t all be lucky as lucky as you, walking around all greasy headed.” I retorted.

“They don’t call me the lunatic fringe for nothing.” He laughed.

“Hey look!” I said, showing him my phone. “There’s finally a new Lore podcast.”

“Do you wanna save it for tomorrow on the plane or -“

“No way, I’ve been waiting way too long.” I shook my head. “Besides, i already filled me laptop full of Ghost Adventures and Unsolved Mysteries to keep us busy the next few weeks.”

“That’s my girl.” He smiled, grabbing another slice.

After eating, he laid down beside me on the patio sofa, both of us with one headphone in as we looked at the string-lit trees listening to the spooky stories on the podcast.

I curled into his arms, my legs resting on his lap as he traced circles on my back with his fingertips. He laid his head on mine, kissing my hair softly as he held me close.

Interview Segment: See, people have this expectation of wrestlers that they’re always eccentric and hyper like we are during shows. Well while that is the case at times, we’re also human. Dean and I might be at the height of our careers but we’re just like everyone else.

We like listening to music and scaring ourselves with horror movies. We binge on pizza on the few nights we’re home because neither of us feel like cooking. We go out and embarrass ourselves with friends. Hopefully all this gets to give you guys a peak at how we are outside of the ring.

Monday Night Raw - Backstage Screening

“Well?” Sean asked, looking at the room full of Divas but all of their eyes were on me.

Tonight we got to screen the first episode of Total Divas Season 6. The screening however was shown to us during a Monday Night Raw show, which meant any Diva and Superstar that wasn’t busy could drop in and watch if they wanted too.

“What...the...fuck, Y/N!” Nikki hit me in the arm while both her and Brie demanded answers.

Unfortunately, I was going to catch a whole lot of heat seeing as nobody knew Dean and I were dating. Until right now.

For the last 2 years we were able to keep it on the low. We had our home in Vegas. We had our own group of friends we hung out with that weren’t in the WWE. During shows we’d arrive separately, we never really ran into each other and we’d only meet back up in the hotel room. It was the only way to make it all work between super crazed fans of both of ours as well as my nosy family.

See, while I adored my friends, family, and fans - they could be overbearing at times which is why we kept it to ourselves. We were extremely private about our personal lives and aside from the company execs, nobody had known. Even the company had been kept in the dark until we had to go update our addresses when we moved into our home.

Then WWE decided I needed to be on Total Divas. They said they wanted to add fuel to one of Dean’s upcoming storylines and since I’d appeared in background scenes of the show every so often with the Twins, they thought the show would be the perfect way to do that - despite all of our protests.

But once the decision was made, Dean and I talked and decided we would give it our all. If it had to be shown, they were going to see us on our terms and get a real glimpse at our relationship. It was only for one season and people were bound to find out anyway.

“What?” I asked, trying to play dumb but this time Brie took a turn to hit me in the arm.

“When the hell did you start dating Dean?” She asked, placing her hands on her hips.

I shrugged, rubbing my arms in the spots they’ve hit. “Chill - I don’t know exactly when. We just were talking all the time and then we were together all the time, and then we bought a house - it just kinda happened.”

“You BOUGHT the house?! Buying a house with someone doesn’t just ‘kinda’ happen, Y/N” Nikki said wide-eyed. “How could you keep this from us?”

“Is that why you never invite us over to visit you in Vegas?” Brie asked, just as bewildered.

“You’ve literally watched me flirt with Dean every chance I get - how could you never have said anything?!” Renee said while Naomi and Natalya laughed.

“Guys relax - it’s not that serious.” I shook my head. “Dean and I -” “How could you call that not being serious?!” Nikki interrupted.

“No - not that - it’s just -”

“Just what?” They said together, interrupting me again.

“Woah - what’s going on in here?” Dean asked, stepping into the room with Roman.

I opened my mouth to speak but Brie answered instead. “You’ve been dating Y/N this whole time?!”

He looked at me instantly then at the TV with a Total Divas screen paused.

“Oh.” Dean shrugged, eatting something then coming around to throw his arm over my shoulder, offering me some of the starburst chews he had in his hand. “Well guess the cat’s outta the bag.”

“You guys are so cute together! How could you keep this from everybody?” Nattie asked looking between the two of us. I grabbed a piece of candy, tossing it into my mouth before looking at everyone. “Guys - it’s not a big deal. We just went with the flow, this is where it led us. We just share so much of everything all the time, we wanted to keep this between us. And I mean, Brie - you’re so caught up with Brian and Nikki’s so caught up with John, all you guys do is talk about them to anyone that’ll listen. I’ve just never been like that. What Dean and I have …”

“Is pretty kickass.” Dean said, finishing my sentence as he looked down at me with a smile.

“That is adorable.” Naomi nodded. “Good for you guys.”

“I just feel like we’re so out of touch with our own sister.” Brie pouted.

“Everything just makes so much sense now.” Nikki finally gave in with a small smile. “Missing from holiday get togethers - never hanging out after work…” “We just wanted to keep it to ourselves for a little while.” I looked up at Dean, turning to wrap my arms around his waist as he hugged me into his chest. “We knew you’d have to find out eventually and we figured at least this way we could show you instead.

Dean smiled down at me, leaning his head down to kiss me for the first time in front of people. “What can I say, I wanted her to myself for a little while. I love her.”

“AWWWWH!” They all said, watching us.

I kissed him back as my cheeks flushed red in blush before everyone came around to hug us.

**GIFS not mine

I hope you enjoyed, as always - let me know if you have a request.

#dean ambrose #dean ambrose fanfiction #dean ambrose imagine #dean ambrose x reader

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terrible-tulip · 7 years

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The Mythos That Devours Itself (part 2)

Section I: The Four Signs of the Gasterpocalypse

[Go here for the introduction]

Let us begin with a quick acknowledgment of the biggest problem with the core element of the common interpretation of Gaster. Namely, the fact that there is absolutely nothing in the game files or narrative that supports the idea that Gaster was erased from time and space.

But, Waste of Time, there's no evidence against it either! Just because there's no evidence that explicitly supports it doesn't mean it isn't canon!

First of all, the assumption that “a lack of evidence is the same or as good as having evidence” is a fallacy. In theory for fiction or really any kind of narrative media, no evidence for an idea is no better than having evidence against it. It implies an expectation for a shocking swerve with no foreshadowing presented for the whole audience and little build-up. You know, the sort of thing generally avoided by good writers because it can alienate the audience and break the suspension of disbelief. Writers generally make a point of hinting at things in a way even laypeople can pick up (foreshadowing) or, at the very least, in a way that the clues leading up to that moment will become apparent in hindsight. There is no excuse for a fan theory without evidence to be treated as canon in a series wherein the foreshadowing is overall excellent and generally avoids being overly cryptic and vague.

Secondly, this is NOT the case here. Allow me rephrase my opening statement to make my point a little more clear. When I say nothing supports the idea, I don't mean so much that there is a lack of evidence as there is a surplus of evidence against it.

The idea that Gaster was retconned from existence after falling into his creation (usually assumed to be the CORE, but not always) is the one element of the conventional interpretation of his character that’s widely considered the most indisputable and essential, and yet every part of Undertale, from Toby Fox's own statements as recent as the latest official interview to the narrative itself, seems to loathe it.

Even fandom convention contradicts itself in this regard as it is eager to accept both this concept and Mystery Man as Gaster despite the fact that they are ultimately incompatible concepts. What few game details exist that are popularly touted to support the theory both contradict and cannibalize preexisting elements of the canon and each other (and, indeed, butcher or outright ignore terms from the English language itself in order to advance its own cumbersome mythos) so we are left with a Frankenstein's monster of a theory that consumes everything it touches while ultimately adding nothing of value to the narrative itself.

The problem begins with the four primary factors in the idea's creation: a programming error, a miscalculation, disrespectful and overly imaginative dataminers, and the deterioration of the art of fan theory.

[Contains spoilers for Naruto, of all things]

The First Sign: The Error in the Code

It shouldn't, and indeed didn't, come to anyone's surprise that parts of the code weren't working properly or that dead code was present in the files. It happens. Some examples are the set ups to Sans' responses to the player's deaths and additional dialogue and flavor text for various battles. These are generally accepted as being errors, flaws in the coding, and cut content. Despite this, there are certain parts of the code that initially (or so we were told) had to be manipulated in order to work properly that were (and, indeed, still are) claimed to have been broken this way on purpose, namely the "Fun" events that are intrinsic to the popular interpretation of Gaster.

Was the code for the Fun events specifically meant to be broken and only accessible to those with the know-how of manipulating game files? No. This flies in the face of logic. Consider for a moment the fact that, in order to assume this, we must also assume that Toby Fox was either lying when he asked people not to datamine and spoil the game's secrets or wrote the game files to cater specifically to buyers who know how to mine game code for data at the expense of potentially locking out the rest of his buyers from part of the story, that he fully intended on selling a purposefully broken game that only those who know code and how to mess with it could fully appreciate, and that all the Gaster mentions and "Fun" events allegedly related to him were only included for the sake of providing a spooky mystery to entertain a specific kind of player and not in the interest in progressing the game story and narrative in a meaningful way.

A common assertion frequently voiced by fans to excuse the obvious issues with the aforementioned assumptions is that Gaster's alleged "existential tragedy" was included in the files as a super secret teaser for a sequel despite the developers treating anything relating to Gaster down to his name as a major spoiler to be tread around carefully and directly asking dataminers not to spoil the game's secrets, with the strong implication that they are talking about Gaster in particular. This is, in fact, very much the opposite of how teasers work. It also suggests an expectation for storytelling and professional world-building to work in much the same way as planning bypasses does in the Earth of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein important notices for those directly affected by such plans can be found on display "in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard" in a dark cellar missing stairs.

Another problem with the "purposeful error" assumption is that the game code itself provides solid evidence that most of the direct mentions of him, outside of his stats, were coded to be rare Easter Eggs with a woefully low (less than 1%) chance of occurring, sometimes depending additionally on how far the player has gone in a genocide run. That's an awful lot of work into something you're writing to be a "cut content mystery or creepypasta bonus or whatever". There is no point in including code to limit when and how frequent an encounter can occur if it is going to be only found in the game files anyway. Many of Gaster's direct mentions also provide possible foreshadowing for the True Lab and Alphys' depression, some trivial bits of game world history, and hints about the skeleton brothers' mysterious past. If these mentions really were purposefully created to exist merely as cut content, then it comes off as being a particularly pointless, even malevolent, case of trolling the audience to no apparent benefit of the developer.

That's not to say there isn't cut content in Undertale. There are, but those moments weren't coded to be fun events (essentially Easter Eggs) as the Gaster followers and Mystery Man were, and don't contain any content that would add to the story or world-building in a meaningful way. Some just plain state the obvious as in the case of the bug-hunting room with the mention of the friend with a creepy smile, obviously referring to either Flowey, who we can spot following us now and then when we back track, or Sans, considering Sans is implied to be keeping an eyesocket on Frisk as well and to be wearing a fake smile throughout the majority of the game. Fake smiles tend to be a tad bit creepy, so really it can work for either of them. There is an argument that the room could be referring to Chara, even though the game consistently implies Chara and Frisk are sharing the same body, or the existentially shattered Gaster, which wouldn't work as he is supposed to be lost to the void or trapped in a gray room within the void or something (that part of conventional Gaster interpretation is very confusing in retrospect).

The Second Sign: The Developer's Miscalculation

Unlike the other factors in the creation of the Gaster fanon as we know it today, this one's effects only really took place after the January update when the fun values for the "Gaster content," as the majority of fandom refers to them, were fixed. In spite of this fix, there are two problems that prevent the fact that these events are not and never were meant to be cut content from becoming common knowledge in the fandom.

The first problem relates to the first sign. Gaster theorists have used the fact that the fun events started working after the bugfix update to argue that Gaster is reinserting himself into reality and will one day appear in the game as a bonus boss or new final boss. This became a popular concept in the fandom, despite the fact that there is nothing to back up this claim at all and it truly does seem to be a simple bug fix. New dialogue and flavor text were added to a couple of scenes with the skeleton brothers, but the "Gaster content" was left untouched other than now working properly in the game. Their case is certainly not helped by the fact that people have brought this up to Toby Fox a few times only to have him tell them essentially "no".

The second is that the fun value rates of the Gaster followers and Mystery Man are horrendous. Unlike the error itself, this doesn't have much to do with how the Gaster fanon started, but rather why it persists to this day. Two followers, the Licker and the Gossip, have the best chance of appearing out of the four NPCs and they have only a .5% chance of appearing. Like most fun event NPCs, they will not appear during a genocide run so that's a five in a thousand chance encounter for just pacifist/neutral runs. The remaining Gaster follower, the Rhymer, is unusual in that it is allegedly said to be able to appear in even a genocide run, but they have an even worse spawning chance at only .2%.

Mystery Man has the absolute worst spawning chance at .1%. That's a one in a thousand chance. Such low percentages work in, say, fast paced clicker games like Clicker Heroes or battle bonuses, but for character spawning in an RPG game, this is pretty much guarantees that, unless your game is terrible enough to deter dataminers from approaching it, the secret will be rooted out of the game files long before it discovered via regular gameplay. Of course, the fact that the code was apparently bugged the first three to four months it was out doesn't help at all, but even if it wasn't, the Gaster followers and Mystery Man still would've been discovered by hackers instead of regular players and it could've taken fans a long time to realize that it wasn't cut content, but actual game content.

Because the spawn rates are so rare, most fans are not aware that the "Fun" values work properly now and quite a few consider the “Gaster content” to be cut content, even though the very fact that they're fun events means otherwise. Some players to this day also swear that they still need to mess with the game files to get the Gaster related content, even though a number of lucky players have successfully stumbled upon the "Fun" events without doing so, including in a couple of blind let's plays.

The Third Sign: The Disrespect of the Dataminers

“The hardest cookie, though, is that if you make a secret very, very difficult to find, chances are that dataminers will discover it before it ever gets discovered legitimately."

"As a ROM hacker myself, I completely understand the drive to do it, so I don’t have any ill-will towards these people,” says Fox. “But the truth is that if you want your game to have a secret that’s discovered legitimately, the amount of time that it takes for regular people to find it has to be less than the amount of time it takes for people to take it by force.”

Toby Fox; The Vanishing Secrets of Video Games

This is where most people, if they're going to get annoyed with the popular Gaster interpretations and theories, do so. What are widely considered some of the retcon theories worst characteristics are its blatant dependency on disrespecting the creator's wishes and pretending nothing wrong was done when the dataminers shared the game's secrets and kicked off the idea that Gaster was erased from existence after falling into “his creation.” While it is not outright stated here, it has been strongly implied that when Toby talks about the dataminers disregarding his wishes that he's talking about the Gaster fiasco specifically. Mostly because Undertale doesn't have any other secrets that could've, theoretically, been found by regular players but were discovered by datamining besides the Gaster mentions.

When the Gaster stuff was first publicized by the dataminers, many fans actually disapproved of this, expressing they had no intention in acknowledging Gaster as a thing or associating with those spreading the game's secrets (and the idea that Gaster had been erased from existence after falling into the CORE yet was still conscious of the world around him). This is why many fans put anything regarding Gaster under spoilers.

Other fans have the idea that we put Gaster under spoiler tags because of what "happened" to him, so feel no need to use spoiler tags themselves since this seems “common knowledge”. However, this seems rather flawed thinking. Spoilers refer to things that actually affect the plot and the perception thereof. Gaster as presented by the majority today does not fit either of these. Imagine for a second that this interpretation of Gaster is in fact canon. The fact that he was erased from time and space would be inconsequential to the events of the plot since:

He wouldn’t technically exist and take no active role in the game itself

People being erased from time and space via science creations is not a plot point and has never been hinted as such.

People don't know why he is treated as a major spoiler by the developers or what is so important about him as a secret that Toby Fox has repeatedly expressed disappointment that dataminers shared it to the world instead of allowing regular players to find it naturally, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the case. I have my own theory that, if correct, would mean this treatment of Gaster by the developers is entirely justified, but that's just me and this is inconsequential to the topic at hand.

The fact of the matter is, if Gaster was designed to be found in the game files, then Toby Fox's consistent and repeated comments on how he doesn't like the fact that dataminers spilled his game's secrets wouldn't make sense. Some have insisted that he is trolling the fans, but this doesn't follow because we know how he trolls and this isn't his M.O. His trolling style is quick, simple, and lighthearted.

There's no humor to be found in this and it'd be a bit mean-spirited for him. This has also gone on far too long for him to be trolling the fans. Not to mention arguably too consistent for the amount of time it's been going on. You'd think if he really was trolling he'd change his tune at some point over the months just to confuse the fans.

The Fourth Sign: The Deterioration of the Art of Fan Theory

I know a lot of fans are probably questioning how I can call fan theory an art, but believe it or not there was a time in fandom history when solid supporting evidence and narrative credibility were widely encouraged for building a good fan theory, when they weren't considered outright necessities. Theories without these two elements still existed, but for the most part they were known as crack theories and not taken seriously. Anyone who tried to push one as a legit fan theory would generally get called out for it.

A good example of an attempt to push a crack theory as legit is, unfortunately, the time a friend of mine presented a theory that Naruto’s Gaara was secretly a woman. Yes, that Gaara. No, not trans. Just secretly a woman because Suna politics somehow required her to present herself as a man. The only source of evidence my friend gave were ambiguous tiny art flaws in the manga. The fact that no one in Suna had problems with kunoichi in canon was never addressed or countered, neither was the fact that Naruto was the last place anyone would expect such a plot to be used.

Naturally, when she shared this theory to fans in all seriousness, she was rebuffed and the theory quickly faded from memory. Nowadays, a theory as flimsy as "Lady Gaara" can be presented in all seriousness and gain a following. Of course, there were exceptions, but these were generally given the "Sans is Ness" treatment where only gullible fans would buy it and everyone else would either shun or snark at them while pointing out the obvious problems, even when as charismatic an idea as conventional Gaster theory.

Naruto was one of the many fandoms where I held an interest in the fan theories and the last where my thoughts on the favorites were generally positive. Mostly because it wasn't until Naruto neared the end of its 15 year run that the shift in the world of fan theory became obvious. The history of the Naruto fandom still gives some of the best examples of how creating and presenting speculative ideas used to work. "Minato is Naruto's Father" was one of the most popular and widely accepted theories in the fandom, as it used their similar messy blond hair and blue eyes and the parallels between the two ninjas, as Naruto heavily utilize the generation xerox trope even back then, as evidence for this. Because both the evidence and narrative lent their support to the idea for the most part, the theory was well thought of and nobody was surprised when this turned out to be canon, though some were disappointed with how obvious the reveal was.

There was a competing theory that the villain later revealed to be Pain (or Pein) was Naruto's father on account of his similar hairstyle and always being shrouded in shadow. However, due to his antagonistic role in the story and meaningful unique eye design, this never had the same degree of traction in the fandom as the Minato theory. It certainly didn't help that Pain came into the story much later or that it was one theory created more because some deemed a more popular theory "too obvious" than anything. Personally, I am not a fan of creating theories for the purpose of competing with popular theories that are allegedly too obvious. I'm more in support of people creating theories to compete with popular theories that are nonsensical and just all around bad.

Sadly, gone are the days when seeing a powerful ninja with messy blond hair and blue eyes led to popular theory that he is Naruto's father, and presenting a theory without narrative credibility and evidence as serious was frowned upon. Now we have the contemplation of a dying child on how the world will continue without them being widely accepted to be cryptic exposition about a vanished scientist's fate worse than death. The complete contrast in logic used to support one theory from the other is truly immense when viewed side by side.

As I stated previously, when the fun values were revealed to work after the January '16 update, Gaster theorists explained it as "Gaster reinserting himself into reality by sheer willpower," surmising that Gaster will be restored one day and the players will get to fight him as a boss in a DLC. However, despite the Undertale fandom's obsession with conventional Gaster theory and insistence on its canonicity, if this element of the Gaster interpretation turned out correct and suddenly became an important plot element in a massive game update, it would be much less like Minato turning out to be Naruto's father and more like the highly unpopular reveal of Otsutsuki Kaguya as the true villain of the series after only mentioning her for the first time in passing fifty chapters earlier. It would come across as an unnecessary and forceful shocking swerve that betrays the heartfelt and simplistic feel of the original narrative to the casual fans of the game. I'm not even sure fans of this take on Gaster would like it (they might end up suffering the same "theorist's remorse" that one faction of Naruto theorists felt during the final arc). It would not be good storytelling, nor would it be particularly entertaining.

Addendum

The factor most frequently cited as the cause for the decline in fan theory quality has been the rise of Tumblr, Reddit, and similarly structured social media sites, which I don’t quite agree with.

While the quality of fan theory presentation does seem to be at its lowest in fandoms that use these sites as their primary base, it is unlikely that this factor are to blame and not simply the fact that the quantity of fan theories has drastically risen as fandom itself becomes more and more mainstream, much like how a fanfic archive's average work tends to be of lower quality the more mainstream and popular the site is.

As such, the shift in how fan theories are crafted, though arguably unfortunate, can be seen as the result of the natural progression of fandom culture.

#undertale spoilers #undertale #gaster #gaster meta #fan meta #utbarebones #critical fan analysis #reposted from ao3 #and updated considerably #undertale theory #gaster theory #naruto spoilers #fandom.exe

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winckl9r · 7 years

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5/13/11 Before reading this piece that I wrote for a Media Journo class, understand that almost every implementable idea I came up with and present has in fact become a driving force of incredible revenue building seen implemented by internet moguls such as, Google, Facebook, Youtube and Hulu. Google bought out Youtube, who couldn’t figure out how to make substantial profits, while having one of the biggest populations of both subscribers and viewers, by simply adding those obnoxiously annoying advertisements we’ve all come to hate before almost every video on the site (but they bought this non-profitable domain for what some said was far too high, 1.65 billion, and turned around and transformed it into the projected 45 billion dollar net worth by 2016 behemoth we know today.) These ideas that I predicted and developed have made hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 4 years since this piece was developed in my sophomore year of college. (4/21/15) Q 3. On the faithful day of September 2, 1969 at UCLA, two computers were connected, and for the first time were able to communicate with one another. Since that day the technology, although slow in its progression at first, has now become one of the most heavily traveled and utilized pieces of technology man has, some argue, ever conceived. Its simplicity allows anyone from virtually anywhere with a computer, internet connection or phone to send, share, receive, create, and countless other seemingly impossible acts with a few clicks of a mouse. No one the day those two computers were first connected could of comprehended the effect or firestorm that would soon follow their, at that current moment, pointless discovery. “Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet. Newspaper, book and other print publishing are having to adapt to Web sites and blogging. The Internet has enabled or accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and small artisans and traders. Business to business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. The commercialization of what was by then an international network in the mid 1990s resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population have used the services of the Internet” (Wiki). So as it grew into the behemoth we now know today as the World Wide Web, people still hadn't thought of the potential cash cow it could be. Which eventually led to the question of today, should websites be paid for or free? This might seem like a fairly straight forward question, but in all honesty if it was it wouldn't still be up in the air after all these years. Clearly both exist today, it typically depends on what the user is looking for. If their looking for viable information not accessible to many sources, with the security of total truth then more than likely it’s going to cost them. Where as if that same users looking for say the weather for that day, week, or any other fairly common information theres without a doubt going to be most likely a couple hundred, maybe even a couple thousand of free accessible sites willing to hand that data out, costing the user nothing more than a click and the time spent visiting the site. When it comes down to me picking sides, paid or free, I just don't see me or anyone else for that matter, being able to assess all the angles, data, and everything else that compiles the internet to give a fully understood and knowledgeable answer. Websites work in a few fairly simple manners, one way is by individual viewers pays a fee to enter the site and have full access, this can be a monthly payment or a payment for full time access. Another, is viewers are given access to websites for free, but instead they are, and most of the time obliviously exposed to large amount of advertisements. Another similar way websites function is by, again allowing full exposure the visitor and every click that person clicks is tracked and the website owner is paid depending on the amount of traffic that passes through his or her site, it’s also a way advertisement owners can track how kind of exposure their ad is getting, hugely important information. One of the last ways websites, typically this is associated with online news, makes money has to do with allowing views to see fragments of stories and breaking news but for the full stories there’s a charge, which in turn grants that viewer full access. Free sites are the most frequently visited websites that most everyday users visit, there the most abundant and for the most obvious reason, people love things that are free. Why would they subscribe to a site that requires payment to, say get the weather every day, when they can just as easily go to weather.com or use a quick and easy application on their phone to do it for free. The Web has also enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available. Publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however. Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result” (Wiki). Also, free sites tend to make users want to come back more often, sites that viewers find use full or catch our attention are better off getting “bookmarked” and that then leads to, typically, frequent use. Now free isn't the only big money maker online, Netflix and iTunes have used the “convenience factor to lure their customers. These users tend to be older, less concerned about money but the younger people, those of us like me, and most of my generation would rather keep that fifteen extra bucks in our pocket a month; we end up paying for our savings in the form of time. Instead of having the convenience of iTunes or the Netflix sites that have what we want to watch on command with a touch of a button, we have to spend time searching the deepest depths of the net looking for that one free site that has the show, game, or movie we're looking for. Now, Hulu is kind of an exception. Hulu has taken an old style of media and modernized it, they've taken our beloved movies and shows and put them on one easy to use and accessible website that anyone can use. Yes, it’s free, but it has its draw backs none the less. Instead of just being able to click, and watch, Hulu has incorporated commercials, thus the way they make money. They do give you a choice, if you would rather watch a longer commercial in the beginning of your chosen show or movie, or if you would rather have smaller ones, breaking up your viewing more frequently, very similar to television today. Personally, don't enjoy using Hulu, it doesn't have every show and movie out there, but I guess no one does; regardless, I prefer to crawl around in the depths of the web looking for that one song, show, or video for free and with no commercials. Picky, maybe, but the easiest way of looking at this is simple, very few sites out there on the net today are completely free, I would say at least 95% of all pages are making money in some way, shape, or form; people who pay for their preferences lose money but gain convenience, those of us who would rather not spend that money, spend more time searching for what we're looking for, and lastly, those of us who use “free” site, such as Hulu, pay by watching the advertising. What I am getting out if that we all pay for our media, in one way or another, there’s no way around it. This world runs off money, and the Internet's no different. Paid web pages on the other hand, are a whole other animal. They make truck loads of money collecting on your money, given just to access their site. It’s a fairly strange idea, if you think about it, you’re paying a monthly fee for what, to use someone’s virtual tool or service. Sure, it take money to keep sites updated, bug-free, and functioning, but most sites are built, updated, and kept maintenance on by someone other than their owners, thus leaving me to ask the question, why so much money. Now, I understand the answers obvious, its because those people who are doing the updating and such cost money, but more importantly, the owners want as much money as they can squeeze out of their little virtual worlds they call sites. And I completely agree, I'm an American, I'm in that same search for more money, who isn't; but where I would change things up is in the price of entry, of subscribing. For example, why not have your original price set at whatever it may be, but next to that price have another option, say for half the original, the only catch is that joiner must bring with him or her, ten other subscribers. This does two big things, for one it just brought you in a hundred and five dollars a month rather than just ten, and secondly it ups your subscribers, thus jumping your traffic. Now, this could potentially be huge for those just starting out, if you have something impressive that people want, and those who find it are going to spread the word, except now it’s not just because they might think it’s cool, or could come in handy for their family or friends, but now it’s going to cut their costs, and who doesn't love that. One online writer for the Love to Know website wrote, “Luckily, one of the things that has not changed about the internet is the prevalence of free website hosting. Though it never quite delivered the return on investment speculated in the 90's, internet advertising has proven to be somewhat lucrative. Many websites are happy to give you space on their servers in exchange for a piece of the real estate on your website. These ads are usually banner pictures which change with every new visit to your website, and the best ones will even target your particular audience” (lovetoknow). If I were to create my own website in the attempt of a lucrative business I would probably incorporate a little of both aspects, paid and free. First I would need to think of what kind of website I was going to make, what I was looking to accomplish with it. In my case, it would be a type of combo site having a part devoted to videos, another devoted to blogging, and another for selling equipment. It too, would encourage video sharing and commenting, but more then that I would like to slim down the scope of interest to just skiing and snowboarding. There would be a homepage, introducing what the site was all about, for example it would have some crazy pictures of skiers and snowboarders doing intense stuff, like hitting huge jumps and dropping into next to vertical mountain faces. There would be another page that would link you to all the videos various people have posted, of themselves and their friends having fun on the slopes; there would be available lines for those who wanted to leave massages and such. I would also have a search bar at the top, that would allow views to search for whatever their particularly looking for, for example “craziest jumps ever” or “biggest air”. One other page I'd have would consist of a sales page, where views could buy winter gear, skis, boards, bindings, gloves, hats, basically anything related to winter sports; and on the same page would be listings of random prizes we were raffling off. The raffles would consist of prizes such as a free board or a pair of skies, there would be a vote about every six months; whoever posted the most extreme or likable video wins the prize. This would potentially increase both sales and viewership, both hugely essential for maintaining a profitable site. A writer for Buzzle.com had this to say about the simplified fact of a revenue producing web pages, “For your website or online business to be profitable, you need to get as much traffic as you can to it. That's because, no matter how good a website or service or product you have, if people can't find it, they can't buy it. But not just any web traffic. What you need is targeted traffic, traffic that is interested in your product. There are many things you can do to achieve this. You can increase website traffic by paying for it, or you can work for it and grow free web traffic organically” (Buzzle); so with that, it all comes down to traffic, it doesn't matter what type of website your going after, paid or free, you need people to visit it in order to get business. Without traffic you mind as well not even be online. Again, Buzzle.com tells us, “Paid web traffic has the merit of bringing visitors to your site almost instantly. You can use it for launching a site, or to do a sales promotion. You can also use it to jump start free traffic; but free traffic does not shoot up overnight. It takes time to grow and nurture; hence we have paid traffic. This is traffic you don't have to pay for, free traffic or organic traffic. You should try to get this, on top of any paid traffic. For one thing, free is good; for another, your visitors come because your site had something they wanted. That makes them more receptive to buying” (Buzzle). What it comes down to is all traffic is good, its the task of getting to your audience. Another way of increasing your web traffic is by getting your name and site details out there, spread the word. This can be done with the use of social networking sites, for example Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube. These websites can give you free exposure, its a quick and easy way of getting people to “hear” about your site, whatever it may be. You can make videos that show what your selling, or what your service might be, and most importantly why what you’re doing so unique that people are going to want to stop using who or what they already are and switch to yours. Facebook and Twitter is the similar idea, it gets the name of our site out there, getting it to more than one place, the more exposure you have out there the more traffic, thus more money you’re going to make. Joelle Rene’ Hughe, a professional artist from Wildfire Video Marketing explains, “In a single day you can produce a video of your fine art and have it hosted on YouTube. YouTube also provides a button that allows you to 'share' your video on Twitter or Facebook. So if you are already an active member on those social networking sites you can instantly share your videos with the click of a button. As a YouTube member you will have your own Channel that you can customize. Your Channel not only provides you a central location for all your videos, it also has a subscriber list sign-up that will help you grow your customer base. Each time you post a new video to your channel, your subscribers will be automatically notified” (Planetprose). It doesn't get much easier than that. With all the YouTube surfing I do, I can't believe how little business related videos I come across, being such a easy and free interface. In the future of our great internet I could see things changing, evolving, as does with almost everything else in our daily lives. I don't see things going one way or another completely but I do believe the way the internet works is about to change tremendously, and also in the question of paid or free, my beliefs are things are going to move even more heavily towards free. Lets face it, as it stands now the majority is a free place to search, surf, do with what you will, but as did with newspapers, adds started small and quaint, but look at them today, their getting bigger and moving to more valued areas, for example the front page. The newspapers been around as long as this nation has, and as the world turns today, its heading for changing times, that much is clear. If such changes as these can affect such a old and respected piece of history why couldn't the internet be next. What I'm getting at, is an idea of a type of centralized internet, so to speak. An easier way to explain it would be to take a look at Google. Google has such a strong grasp on internet users; some might say they run the internet. Now, this isn't completely false, so much traffic goes through them they, in a way, determine who and what gets seen. Or more importantly what does or doesn't get seen. Could the internet on day set up like this, with one super power at the center and all users most go through them, sure, but it would have to be governmentally run, otherwise it would be a concrete monopoly. So many argue against this, but the fact government has such little control over the internet is a little suspicious. The creator of the great Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has a similar idea, “envisions a more personalized, humanized, web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire. Rather than tapping the cold mathematics of Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, rights where Google is right now” (Fred Vogelstein). Still different from what I am trying to explain but on a similar track, a “social graph” as Mark Zuckerberg put it, has a nice ring to it. One problem we still will face, is the overload of information we have to pick through every day trying to find either what we particularity enjoy or just what we want. This isn't anything new, this problems one of the reasons people argue the newspapers are failing. Now, the internet is a much easier way to blaze through massive amounts of useless information, looking for that one fact or story but another problem that almost levels us back to the papers status is the fact that information put on the internet typically never leaves it. Thus, creating a unbelievably large compilization of information we must pick through. Bree Nordenson, wrote a article called, “Journalism's Battle for Relevance in an Age of Too Much Information,” quoted Paul Duguid saying, “Living and working in the midst of information resources like the internet and the world wide web can resemble watching a firefighter attempt to extinguish a fire with napalm” (Bree Nordenson). Another man quoted from that same article was David Shenk, who said, “in the world with vastly more information that we can process, journalist are the most important processors we have” (Bree Nordenson). With that said, with my idea, of going through a so called “social graph” with the help of journalist's helping consolidate the important stories and information and this “social graph” people would have an incredibly easy way to find the information they wanted. By going through this graph system people would talk to friends and family that have already done or heard what that persons looking for, thus taking out the searching, and what some call “googlenomics.” Jay Winckler Q 2. Media companies are nothing new, they've been around for hundreds of years, but what makes some of the newer media companies so universal is the fact that some only exist on the internet. This was obviously not possible a couple decades ago, when the web had yet to be introduces into society for anyone to utilize. The web changed things forever, no longer does it take millions of dollars to create monstrous controlling businesses. Now companies can start out as a online company for virtually nothing down and slowly grow themselves to unbelievable measures. The best examples are Google and the ever growing Facebook. Both companies are power houses on the web, but Google some say, and in reality does run the internet in many ways. All five of my roommates and myself have Google as our home pages, coincidence, I doubt it. It just comes down to the blatant fact the majority of the searches done online go through Google in some way shape or form. Also they control what ads are shown, how often those ads are shown, and another huge part of their control derives from picking what links come up first. I mean if that’s not power what is, the internet runs the world we know and love today and one business controls a large chunk of that pie, it’s a little intimidating to think about. It’s strange to think there’s someone out there controlling what I'm searching for in the sense that I may not be getting the best results but the ones that are most popular or create the most turn over. Facebook on the other hand is working its way to, if not already there, becoming the most heavily trafficked site in the world. The wildest thing about Facebook is that it started out in a dorm room; Mark Zuckerberg took the idea of wanting a quick and easy way to meet new friends, keep in touch with family and friends and turned it into a worldwide sensation. Its blows my mind how big Facebook has become, its incredible. I believe what makes Facebook so exceptionally extraordinary is that it managed to take the strange stalker factor out of it, that had, in my opinion brought Myspace to its knees. MySpace kind of had this weird deal with friend competitions, who ever that the most friends was cooler, so people just were friends with more people they didn't know then those they did. Also it didn't take long for the stalkers and perverts to come out of the wood work. Facebook is about staying in touch and staying up to day with people you may not get to see a lot. I guess the best way to describe the differences between Facebook and Myspace, is that Facebook is more real and sincere where Myspace was more of a Sims world. With that, its clear making the big bucks on the internet doesn't have anything to do with charging those initial fees to enter the site. I can't tell you what the majority of other people do but in my case, and my best guess for the rest of us don't enjoy, thus staying clear of those types of site. Sure they have more turn over at first, it big bucks coming in from every subscriber, but subscriptions might start high but there going to slow at time, killing profits. This isn't the case when it comes to those websites that use systems similar to those utilized by the ever growing Facebook king and Google monster. Between the two my money would be on Facebook to soon, if not already take control of the internet. It started like most sites, small and aimless. If I were to be a investor, or someone on the Facebook team working on new and better ways to make money there’s a few things I'd bring up. First I would up advertisements, there pretty none existent now, and at least for me ads don't have any real effect on me, do my best to ignore them, regardless there going to bring in huge new profits. Secondly, I would add certain applications and make downloads available to those willing to pay for them. These could range anywhere from simple games, to more elaborate dating site additions. Finally, I would have promotional ads on the site giving away access to those new applications and such that cost money, and give them away free to those who get, say 20 new members to join and create accounts on Facebook. Simple, ideas that could potentially raise Facebook's turn over tremendously. In the stage of advertisements, these could range from really whoever was willing to spend the most for the space. Big companies such as Monster, Ebay, and FedEx, for just a few could potentially pay huge amounts to have ads on the busiest site on the World Wide Web. Nick O'Neil, a blogger from All Facebook believes, “Facebook’s single most important revenue channel is advertising. The company has always been ad supported and most likely will always be ad supported. While some have claimed that Facebook will one day charge for access to the site, those rumors are completely false. Facebook generates over half a billion in revenue each year, the vast majority of which comes from advertising” (All Facebook). He also explains how this all works, “Over the past few years Facebook has increased their targeting capabilities, including the ability to limit advertising to metropolitan areas as well as the following target variables: gender, age, network, workplace, schools, profile keywords, relationship status, and more. Facebook recently released the Facebook Advertisements API which provides large ad buyers with the ability to build robust ad managers on top of the Facebook advertising platform”(All Facebook). These ads could be like those that exist now that change almost every visit, or could be permanent ads that are in locked locations that don't rotate through other but these would be reserved for those willing to spend the big bucks consistently to keep that spot. My guess would be if a spot with that type of power existed on Facebook it would be fought over leading to huge sums of profits and if and when a particular buyer gets tired of page for that spot it probably wouldn't take long to find another willing party. Secondly, the applications would be phenomenal money producers. It’s a similar idea to giving users partial access and charging for full, the only difference is the full potential to the site is free, but if users want the side products its gonna cost them. Some examples of these applications could be the games they already have, such as Mafia Wars and Farmville; but rather then being free they would have a free trial period, maybe a month, and after that users would be required to purchase access to continue playing. Other examples for these bonus cash cow applications could be advances in the site it self, for example creating a dating service type arena, using the already tremendous population of Facebook. Of course this dating field would be closed to only those that have joined the “dating arena”, thus keeping those people who want nothing to do with it clear of it. Again, this could be paid for monthly or one single pre-payment leading to total access forever; knowing the little I do about business the choice would be pretty clear set on the monthly charge, just explaining the possibilities. These are just a few examples to convey my ideas of increasing revenue, it goes without saying there is no end the the number of games or any other type of application that could be offered to users for a access fee. This particular type of profit building is not only loved by companies but is just as crucial, with these, every month there are regular, sizable amounts of income no matter what; there is no waiting for say advertisers to a. buy a spot and b. run the risk of not being payed on time or at all without court proceedings. It can be simply set up linking user’s credit cards or PayPal accounts directly to the Facebook account, doesn't get much easier than that. The way Facebook makes money now is rather simple, as Nicholas Carlson explains, “We picked FishVille, the latest hit from Zynga. It came out only in November, but already its monthly active users are up to 20 million people. It grew 4.68 million in the last week alone, according to Insider Social Game's AppData. The object of FishVille is to build a magnificent virtual aquarium, full of spectacular fish and designer decorations. The way you do it is spending fake money to buy small fish for one price, and then, after tending to them for a few hours or days, selling them for more fake money then you paid. Then you use that money to buy more fish. If you want to speed your progress, you buy fake money with real money (Business Insider). I find it crazy people might spend money on something as clearly worthless as the trade of real money for “virtual money,” but then again people spend money for virtual items all the time, such as programs and data. The last option I believe will work with the best results of turnover for Facebook in particular has to do with growing the scope of the site in the form of users. With more users, the more people will be paying for the now optional games and applications freshly offered, and possibly even more importantly the more users is directly related to the number of those using the site and its links and such raising the margin for advertising prices. It’s not a hard concept, the more users, equals more traffic, which in turn makes the sites net worth go up. The ideas also simple, when Facebook was first getting its start I was just getting done with Myspace, and I vowed never to get a Facebook, I said, “that time of my life is over.” The only problem with that is that Facebook has become so large and in charge that a person is really at a disadvantage if they don't have a Facebook. One great example is I have no other way of contacting my Contemporary Issues in Mass Media teacher, except through the use of Facebook. As ridiculous as that my sound, Facebook actually has now become a more used form of communication, thus, at least for my generation killing the ever popular Email. There’s nothing wrong with this, its more simple, more people I care about directly are on it more frequently then they check their Email, and all in all we wouldn't be anywhere if technology didn't change and progress, its all part of how we move forward. Now back to the idea, its has to do with the way I was introduced into Facebook, I was sent, by about twenty different people AIM's to join. Its this type of simple addition that makes it so easy to spread the word and get those who may never of joined to finally give in after being pounded by their friends day after day. The only thing I would add is the idea of giving those applications and those other extras that cost money away for say a free month if a user brings in, say twenty new users. Obviously, this number is very loose, it could be anywhere from five people to fifty. That’s not the point, it’s the fact that people are enticed by freebies, even if its for things they're never going to use; they'll do it because that little voice thats in the back of everyones head that says, “well maybe I could use that at some point, what’s the harm.” With a system out there, such as this one my estimations of subscribers would sky rocket, maybe not as high as when Facebook was first getting its start and was nothing short of an international web firestorm, but it could bring them way higher then what they've been lately. Within the first year Facebook made it to their one millionth member mark, only a year later that number shot up to over five million, from there that number kept jumping anywhere from fifty to a hundred million members a year leading up until today (Facebook). That’s just with word of mouth and other such less effective ways of the word being spread, with this system offering up awards for those who make a point to get new members to join, that number could climb to unimaginable heights, maybe bring it from fifty to a hundred, to two or three hundred million new members per year. With such a vast member enterprise Facebook could become so large; it would start to be looked at as a monopoly of sorts. Its power over so many users would be unrivalled for other social networking websites and possibly news organizations. It could raise advertisement prices through the roof, therefore only the largest of the large business owners could afford advertisement, therefore cutting out the smaller businesses trying to build themselves up and create new ideas.. “The social network flexes its legal muscle. Now they're just being greedy. After suing Teachbook.com for using the word "book" in their company name, Facebook is trying to trademark the word “face,” as well. According to TechCrunch, any business starting with the word "face" could be at risk. It gets better. Not long ago, Aaron Greenspan,, one of Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard classmates, claimed he had helped Zuckerberg create Facebook. Though the case was settled last year, Greenspan's back for round two. It turns out, his company, Think Computer, runs a mobile payment application called FaceCash. Rather than admitting defeat to Zuckerberg once more, Greenspan asked the Trademark Office for a time extension to oppose it” (Facebook Monopoly). This just shows the power Facebook has already it also sued, and won against Power.com, who wanted to use Fcaebook to interlink it with other social networking sites, such as Twitter. Facebook figured they were loosing at least some viewer ship so they shut them down. Sure they did it legally, but was it right, was it ethical, its hard to tell with such sites as ABYZ News Links and other that take data from other sites or simply provide links that gives users one easy place to go to get all their information in one place, the same reason Power.com was shut down. “Facebook overreached because it’s acting like a traditional media company with monopoly control of its channel. Remember, if you can, the days before the web, when every medium, TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers, were filled with ads. Everybody always said they didn’t like advertising, yet that didn’t stop people from consuming these traditional media in massive quantities and creating huge profit margins for large corporations. How did these media companies get away with making so much money by running ads that in most cases people didn’t really like; because they controlled the channel, and we had no choice. Then the web came along and exploded these natural media monopolies, nobody controlled the channel, the “user” is now in control. Except for Google, which developed two de facto new media monopolies, First the gateway through which all other online media are accessed or searched. Secondly, an ad network (AdSense) that became the most effective way for small, independent publishers to monetize content, they monopolized the monetization, not the channel. So what does this have to do with poor Facebook? Facebook’s user news feed, which are published to each of their friends, began to look like the next monopoly in new media. Want to find out what’s going on with your friends, who are all on Facebook, you HAVE TO go through Facebook; just like you had to subscribe to the local newspaper if you wanted to get news in the morning. The problem is that Facebook isn’t really a monopoly medium it just has high switching costs, it’s a pain to get all of your friends to switch to another social network” (Facebook Beacon). In other words Facebooks popularity is what’s lead to its power trip were seeing now. Because people are already devoted to Facebook they'll bend to their rules and regulations as they grow, for example the newly instated privacy settings. People are locked in to Facebook for its simplicity, all their friends are on it, why switch; its not until another social networking site comes along with something that really differs from Facebook in some mind blowing way, their only going to grow and flourish. For those still having doubts about Facebooks concrete lock on our lives, here is another reason for its tremendous success and achievement; adds to my reasoning; in Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. She states, “Our culture is one of multitasking, of cramming as many activities as possible into as short a period of time as possible. We drive and talk on our cell phones, check e-mail during meetings and presentations, eat dinner while watching TV” (Maggie Jackson). She goes on to say, “such multitasking is part of a wider value system that venerates speed, frenetic activity, hyper-mobility, etcetera, as the paths to success. That's why we're willing to drive like drunks or work in frenzied ways, although it literally might kill us” (Maggie Jackson). This is the exact reason why Facebook is such a global hit, it doesn't require people to scour the newspapers, websites, or magazines for the information we crave now a day more then ever, and thats the “news” happening among our closest friends and family. Sure, we are always going to need newspapers and other such news delivering devises to inform us about important events and issues going on be them in our back yards or across the world but people would rather here that their best friend broke up with his or her boyfriend or girlfriend before they hear about the latest acne cure or any other random events happening in the news. Bree Nordenson wrote in his article, “Journalism's Battle for Relevance in an Age of Too Much Information,” how the overload of our information intake each day is just to explosively high that we begin to either start shutting out large amounts or just never hear about it to start with. He goes on to say, “Many young people multi-task the extreme, particularly when it comes to media consumption. I've witnessed my twenty two year old brother watch television, while talking on the phone, IMing with several friends, composing an e-mail, and updating his Facebook page. A widely cited 2006 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that 81 percent of young people engage in some form of media multitasking during a given week. But as cognitive psychologist have long known, human attention is quite limited. Despite our best efforts, when we try to do more than one thing at once, we are less efficient and more prone to error. This is because multitasking is actually a process of dividing attention, of toggling back and forth between tasks” (Bree Nordenson). In other words in the mad frenzy of what we like to call our everyday lives we try and do, more than not, more things than we should be, and especially what our minds can effectively handle. This is why so many people use Facebook as a type of short cut to manipulate their time in finding out the information that is important to them rather than using newspapers or the web; sure more young people then old, but Facebook is still young, half my older family now has a Facebook. The internet powerhouse referred to as Facebook will continue to grow and expand exponentially, this will lead to more users and obvious revenue increases, but if my ideas stated earlier were implemented, both those numbers would potentially be much higher. Syllabus Q 2. Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline Facebook Monopoly - http://www.inc.com/staff-blog/a-facebook-monopoly-on-nouns.html Facebook Beacon - http://publishing2.com/2007/12/01/facebook-beacon-a-cautionary-tale-about-new-media-monopolies/ Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-completely-addicted-to-a-stupid-facebook-game-2009-12 All Facebook - http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-makes-money-2010-01 Maggie Jackson – Annual Edition, Mass Media Bree Nordenson – Annual Edition, Mass Media Q 3. love to know - http://web-design.lovetoknow.com/Free_vs._Paid_Website_Hosting Buzzle - http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ways-to-increase-website-traffic-paid-vs-free.html Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet PlantProse - http://planetprose.com/2010/10/24/internet/how-to-increase-web-traffic-with-free-youtube-videos/ Fred Vogelstein – Annual Editions, Mass Media Q 2. using your own media usage and the current media landscape as guides, predict how a media company might increase revenue over the next ten years. All predictions must be possible. Be sure to cite current predictions and practives, both from readings and other. Q3. should websites be paid or free and why? Be sure to give at least three concrete examples, including at least one not mentioned in class and that support your theory and reasoning. Also be sure to reference at least one other person's theory on the matter.

Romulous Cooper, prior to the Google purchase of YouTube, as to which it couldn’t find a effective way to produce revenue. I clearly lay out the simplistic style in which the world works. If you have read this in its entirety I am incredible impressed! Thank you.

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