#what I came across trying to reverse image search for the origin

[deliciouskeys]

Take a wild guess as to which caption is the original description of this (granted) illustrative image.

#tw needles #what I came across trying to reverse image search for the origin #diabetes #crazy antiv4xxers #t1d

[mr2swap]

The great shift: Swap Sindrome 1

In a dimly lit room, I was masturbating with my fingertips in front of a pale white monitor. As I watched the images of boys around the age of high school students lined up on the screen, I fantasized about taking off their clothes and touching their naked bodies.

-ahh, ahh… ahh-

I closed my eyes as I fantasized about the scenes that were still etched in my memory, the memories of my body and my Gymbros in the locker room flooded my mind, At this moment there was nothing erotic about looking at my best friends or touching their oily and muscles to feel The Progress we had made in the gym, but now it was different, I was different.

I continued looking at the photographs that were shown on the Instagram profiles of my former friends, while the desperation and excitement with which I moved My small cock increased more and more.

I kept changing the photos until a photograph of my old body was displayed on the entire screen. I enlarged the photograph just so I could rotate the most erotic parts of my old body. I focused my gaze on the armpits that still had a couple of drops of stinky and sticky sweat running down towards my abdomen.

-FUUUCK! What I wouldn't give to smell those musky holes again-

The shameful and perverted words that came out of my mouth really embarrassed me, but right now I had no control over myself the only thing I wanted was to fantasize about my old hairy armpits, lick his hard biceps and play with his grazed nipples, The memory of the last time I could smell a sweaty t-shirt from my original body made me ejaculate violently, the semen spread across the keyboard of the old computer that was in front of me.

At that moment my head cleared, from one moment to the next the animal instincts that dominated me a few seconds ago immediately disappeared... and then only remorse.

I took a piece of paper that was within my reach and began to clean up the mess that I had caused myself. When I finished cleaning my little cock, I threw the ball of paper into the trash can that was saturated with balls identical to that one in a yellowish color. And they left a disgusting smell in my room.

I stood up, pulled up my pants and slowly walked towards the kitchen, avoiding looking at my fat old face on the relevant surfaces that were in my messy apartment. After doing this, I feel disgusting, but no matter how hard I try to stop thinking about my old life and in my old body.

-The swap syndrome…-

I said quietly trying to justify my depraved obsession with my old life, I had all the symptoms I had read on the internet:

“ Swap syndrome is a disorder characterized by a persistent and overwhelming obsession with a person's past life after experiencing a body swap with another. This syndrome manifests itself when two individuals involuntarily exchange their bodies thanks to the event known as “The great shift.”

People affected by SS experience intense longing and nostalgia for their previous life. They feel a deep disconnection from their new body and struggle to adapt to their new physical identity. Meanwhile, they constantly long to return to their old lives, including their relationships, daily routines, and everyday activities.

Symptoms of SS may include episodes of obsessional love, masturbation, anxiety, depression, and dissociation, as well as a decrease in social and occupational functioning. Affected people may manifest compulsive behaviors related to the search for ways to reverse the body exchange and recover their previous life.“

I've been trapped in the body of this overweight middle-aged man named Hiroshi for two years, and one day I just woke up in a room full of trash and on the other side of the world. It had been a few hours since all this had started So it was easy I searched what was happening on the internet I tried to contact my parents, but none of them responded to me even now I haven't seen my parents after so long, maybe they have They've gotten better bodies and now they're having fun. Or maybe they're in one of the many prisons trapped in the body of some convict, I don't know...

At least they can put me in contact with the Old Hiroshi who was now on the beach in Miami enjoying that new teenage body. At first, we wrote to each other every day, trying to go unnoticed among all the chaos of the world. I had to eat. So I decided. Not to tell anyone that he was actually a 16-year-old American teenager instead of a Japanese man my father's age.

The real Hiroshi helped me adjust to my new life, while I naively believed that this was something that would be resolved in a couple of days. But over time I got used to my new job in a restaurant as a dishwasher, I didn't understand the language very well. , but he didn't need it, the real Hiroshi was a quiet and submissive guy, Very different from what the real Hiroshi is like in his new life, as a popular teenager. That he spends his afternoons tanning on the beach and flirting with beautiful girls.

I used to talk to the real Hiroshi every day, but over time he took longer to respond to the messages, then to look at them and just not respond and over time he started ignoring my calls, now the only thing I know is because of the photographs I uploads to Instagram and social networks of my former friends, I didn't dare tell them the truth, that their former friend was now trapped in the body of a 45 year old obese loser…

I've been saving everything I can to be able to travel back to America and reunite with my old life. Although the salary as a dishwasher is shit, it's better than nothing, but once I'm in front of my old body I don't know if I can control myself... look down and a tiny bulge formed again in my pants from just being in front of my old body.

-Shit….-

Hello, if you liked this story, and you want more, you can take a look at my new Ko-Fi page to see my most recent stories, see my new stories and support me to continue creating this hot content.

#body swap #male body swap #bodyswap #male transformation #body switch #the great shift

[aquaheartgirl]

So I already have a post about this, but it got long so I thought I'd make a more concise one. If you've seen Cinderella 3 and, like me, got a kick out of all the paintings during the end credits, you might know that some of them (all of them? idk) are inspired by famous artworks. I came to tumblr for help a couple weeks ago because I wanted to know what might have been the artwork that inspired this one:

As you can see, the picture is incomplete - the credits sequence has the camera continuously panning across all of the pictures, so you can't see any of them fully. The above is what happens when I stitch all the pieces on top of each other. But you can tell by the symmetry of the design on the frame that there's still a lot missing.

Because I'm a sap and I find this picture adorable, I thought it would be fun to try and recreate the rest of the image - but first I needed something to work from, so I had to find the original. Reverse image searching is definitely not built for this kind of thing, but luckily tumblr came through for me (still amazed at that since I'm a nobody!) and I received the answer: Fragonard's "The Meeting."

And the rest was just a matter of patience and experimentation! I'm sure I didn't do a perfect job, but I just kept messing around until it started looking cohesive, and then I messed around some more until I wasn't sure how much better I could get it. Here's the result:

This took such a long time, but it was fun, and it actually came out better than I expected!

#still waiting for more content with anastasia and the baker lol #they're just so cute together and she deserves to be happy #cinderella #anastasia #disney #ahg

[c-cracks]

SteamCloud

So I've been doing some good old HackTheBox machines to refresh a little on my hacking skills and this machine was a very interesting one!

Exploitation itself wasn't particularly difficult; what was, however, was finding information on what I needed to do! Allow me to explain the process. :)

Enumeration

As is standard, I began with an nmap scan on SteamCloud:

Other than OpenSSH being outdated, all that I could really see was the use of various web servers. This led me to believe that there was a larger app running on the server, each service interacting with a different component of the app.

I performed some initial checks on each of these ports and found an API running on port 8443:

I noted the attempt to authenticate a user referred to as 'system:anonymous', originally thinking these could be credentials to another component of the application.

Some directory scans on different ports also revealed the presence of /metrics at port 10249 and /version at port 8443. Other than that, I really couldn't find anything and admittedly I was at a loss for a short while.

This is where I realized I'm an actual moron and didn't think to research the in-use ports. xD A quick search for 'ports 8443, 10250' returns various pages referring to Kubernetes. I can't remember precisely what page I checked but Oracle provides a summary of the components of a Kubernetes deployment.

Now that I had an idea of what was being used on the server, I was in a good place to dig further into what was exploitable.

Seeing What's Accessible

Knowing absolutely nothing about Kubernetes, I spent quite a while researching it and common vulnerabilities found in Kubernetes deployments. Eduardo Baitello provides a very informative article on attacking Kubernetes through the Kubelet API at port 10250.

With help from this article, I discovered that I was able to view pods running on the server, in addition to being able to execute commands on the kube-proxy and nginx pods. The nginx pod is where you'll find the first flag. I also made note of the token I discovered here, in addition to the token from the kube-proxy pod (though this isn't needed):

After finding these tokens, I did discover that the default account had permissions to view pods running in the default namespace through the API running on port 8443 (/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods) but I had no awareness of how this could be exploited.

If I had known Kubernetes and the workings of their APIs, I would have instantly recognised that this is the endpoint used to also add new pods to Kubernetes, but I didn't! Due to this, I wasted more time than I care to admit trying other things such as mounting the host filesystem to one of the pods I can access and establishing a reverse shell to one of the pods.

I did initially look at how to create new pods too; honestly there's very little documentation on using the API on port 8443 directly. Every example I looked at used kubectl, a commandline tool for managing Kubernetes.

Exploitation (Finally!)

After a while of digging, I finally came across a Stack Overflow page on adding a pod through the API on port 8443.

Along with this, I found a usable YAML file from Raesene in an article on Kubernetes security. I then converted this from YAML to JSON and added the pod after some minor tweaks.

My first attempt at adding a pod was unsuccessful- the pod was added, but the containers section was showing as null

However, it didn't take me long to see that this was due to the image I had specified in the original YAML file. I simply copied the image specified in the nginx pod to my YAML file and ended up with the following:

I saved the json output to a file named new-pod2.json and added the second pod.

curl -k -v -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer <nginx-token>" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://steamcloud.htb:8443/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods [email protected]

This time, the pod was added successfully and I was able to access the host filesystem through 'le-host'

The Vulnerability

The main issue here that made exploitation possible was the ability to access the Kubelet API on port 10250 without authorization. This should not be possible. AquaSec provide a useful article on recommendations for Kubernetes security.

Conclusion

SteamCloud was a relatively easy machine to exploit; what was difficult was finding information on the Kubernetes APIs and how to perform certain actions. It is one of those that someone with experience in the in-use technologies would have rooted in a matter of minutes; for a noob like me, the process wasn't so straightforward, particularly with information on Kubernetes being a little difficult to find! I've only recently returned to hacking, however, which might have contributed to my potential lack of Google Fu here. ^-^

I very much enjoyed the experience, however, and feel I learned the fundamentals of testing a Kubernetes deployment which I can imagine will be useful at some point in my future!

#kubernetes #hacking #hackthebox #cybersecurity #steamcloud #capture the flag #boot2root #kubelet

[inks-books]

Please im begging you to tell me more about these alchemists

AAAHHHHHHH okokokokok so here's what I said in the tags for those that missed it:

#I have a race of people called the star-skinned alchemists that have the constellations reflected in their skin. #And they use that to align their alchemical transmutations with the stars so that they work properly #so their constellations are constantly moving. And their blood is made up of philosopher stone material #And that's where the stuff originated from. And why it's usually red in color. The way you make a philosopher stone is to #get a drop of blood from one of them #and mix it with your own so that no one else can use it #but they are very protective of their blood and don't let this happen often #They are often mistaken for angels or gods because they have many forms. Like biblical angel kinds #not just humans with wings #idk I just love them they're really cool #imo #Sorry this was derailed from what you originally asked but I wanted to ramble about them. They don't get enough love in my book yet.

(a LOT) more below the cut:

So they're based off of ancient Chinese alchemy where I read in some footnote you needed to align your transmutation circle up with the stars in order for it work properly in certain circumstances and I saw this picture by Len-yan on Deviant art on Pinterest (did a reverse image search to find the original) (also found here on Tumblr) (and this picture too) and got really inspired to build off of this idea that people could walk around with this star and galaxy skin tones - like imagine if you will the God's eye nebula on someone's chest and the constellations inside it just circling around their skin as they move to align themselves with the universe, and another person walking around with the milky way across their FACE like freckles!!!

Then I was like "Well just seeing them as humans with wings is kind of boring, what if they could take on any kind of shape and their mark was the star-skin was their trademark?" and I just ran with it from there. I have one that's basically all eyes and wings. I have some that take on the half human half animal form like the Egyptian gods - Apep shows up at one point and gets addicted to an Alkahest (the perfect solvent that can dissolve even magic and the veil between the worlds itself if it's channeled properly. It's like crack to them - they're the only ones that can destroy it by letting it interact with their blood) and he attacks Gabriel, another star-skinned alchemist, who's trying to prevent him from going on another chaotic spree like he did in ancient Egypt.

BUT BASICALLY

The star skinned alchemists - also known as Anunnaki [uh-NOON-uh-KAI], nephilim, deities, angels, demons, etc. - were the original alchemists that came and spread knowledge of Alchemy to magic and nonmagic kind alike. Capable of transmuting without a circle or any ingredients, they are very powerful alchemists. Sometimes they take on the appearance of humanoid people with wings or horns or even human/creature hybrids or various other combinations. 

Because their skin holds the traced constellations of the night sky, they are their own planetary alignment. Since they live considerably longer than humans, though are not immortal, many cultures saw them as deities. Often times, their descendants would be a mix of human and Anunnaki, being given the name Nephilim. Though the Nephilim were still powerful, they were considerably less powerful than the Anunnaki themselves. The humans even less so, though there were a few fairly talented humans. 

There were, in recorded history, only a small handful of non-Anunnaki that were granted the power of the original Alchemists. This came in the form of a philosopher's stone. A philosopher's stone is a stone made of the blood of an Anunnaki. This is the very substance that allows them to create, deconstruct, and perform alchemic transmutations so easily. The blood of the Anunnaki is mixed with the user in question to form a crystalized stone, as well as make it impossible for anyone else to use the stone, aside from the two whose blood it contains. Merlin was one of these users granted a philosopher's stone. Moses was another alchemist permitted this honor.

My character Rodney is Chinese-Asian and uses Alchemy as he is a descendant of the Anunnaki, and through using Qi he is able to eventually transmute without using crystals. See, alchemy can be learned by anyone with the ability to control their Qi. The more in tune with it you are, the better you can control your Qi. It's an everyman's magic, but you can't perform spells with alchemy, just transmute things from one state to another. You can create things with it, but you can't bespell someone with it. However those who don't have constellations on their skin have to align themselves with the planetary alignment by using crystals with metal embedded in them.

This allows them to:

Store information in the crystal such as a transmutation circle for a particular element or specific mutation

Use the planet's magnetic field to align the crystal

Transmute on the spot without having to draw a transmutation circle and gather ingredients to make it work.

That being said, when Rodney's disguise spell (that made him look human in the non-magic world) is broken and he is revealed to be part Anunnaki, he is able to transmute without crystals and becomes a very powerful Dai-Ne that becomes one of the few people in history granted the use of a philosopher's stone (his blood isn't pure enough to create a real one on his own) from the Anunnaki to eradicate the Alkahest!

Then there's the Alkahest itself which can only be contained by imbuing it with your blood much like that of the Anunnaki and their philosopher stone blood. But it eventually begins to eat away at you. You can only last as long as you can normally without food and water. Humans will only last a few days should they create an Alkahest, because anything you consume is destroyed by said solvent before you can digest it. Elves can last 2 months if they're lucky, but most other creatures have about a few days to a few weeks.

Soren, my half elf who is half inuit half irish descent, creates an Alkahest because everyone is taken from him in an instant and he vows revenge. He leaves a trail of Alkahest behind him as he goes on a killing spree and this attracts the attention of Apep who learns about the creation of the Alkahest from the other Dai-Ne looking for help on how to stop it before it destroys everything in its wake.

And that's when Apep and Gabriel start fighting to try and gain control of the Alkahest before the other does. But they only show up in book 3 and 4 in passing and aren't a huge part of my story. I really want to give them a bigger role because I really love them and think they could be a cool plot point to go over. But there's so much going on in the world at the time they show up that they don't really get the spot light for long and it is sad.

Sorry for the tangent! I just really like this aspect of my characters and books.

#Inks RAMBLES #star skinned alchemists #anunnaki #egyptian gods #apep #apophis #gabriel #angels #nephilim #the tale of dai ne

[austim]

How To Source Gifs When There’s No Source

Unfortunately, stimboards with uncredited gifs are a fairly common sight on stimblr. It’s easy to just source the stimboard you’ve found them from even when the stimboard-maker clearly stole the gif (and I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of this too) but the least we should do is try to find the original source. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to do with Google’s reverse image search!

This guide is a bit long, so I’ll be putting it under a readmore to spare your dashboards.

NOTE: I don’t make stimboards on mobile, so this guide is desktop-centered, but you should still be able to do this on mobile!

Step 1: Acquire the unsourced gif you want to use in a stimboard. I like to right-click and copy the image url so I don’t have to save the gif, but you can save it if that’s easier for you!

For this little guide, I’ll try to find the source of this purple dragon eye gif I found in an source-less stimboard I came across in a random stim tag.

Step 2: Once you’ve acquired your gif via saving or copying the image url/link, head over to Google Images. It’s easiest to just google a random thing, then click on the ‘Images’ tab circled here.

You’re going to want to click the little camera icon on the right (circled below) to open the reverse image search tool.

The reverse image search tool will be a little pop-up like this:

Step 3: Reverse search that image! Here, you can paste the link/url of the gif you want to find if you’ve copied it, or you can click ‘upload an image’ to manually upload the image to search. I’ll paste the url of the dragon eye gif here.

And then click ‘search by image’ and see what comes up;

So it looks like this particular gif wasn’t made by a particular tumblr user, but someone else who posted it to tenor/giphy or another gif hosting site. But when I checked giphy, there was a source attached, which unfortunately is a deleted tumblr user named memorylapsearchive. But now we can link the giphy page that at least has credit, which is better than nothing at all!

For another example, I’ll try to find the source of the black skull gif in the same stimboard:

First result is a tag;

Then a stimboard with the gif (and sources!):

And then we have the original gifs with the video source!

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect solution every time; I often have to go digging around for the sources even with the reverse image tool, but I think it’s worth knowing how to at least look for gif sources so we’re not all just crediting gif thieves when we can’t find the original gifs in tags.

Thanks for reading, and happy stimming!

#stimboard guide #stimboard tutorial #gif source #gif sourcing #gif making #stim gif making #stim gif guide #not sure what else to tag this as! #guide #guides #tutorials

[themountainsays]

I was scrolling through the Encanto tag, as one does, and came across this post that has so many things wrong with it.

1) No credit to the artist. I wanna know who the wrist is! This is really pretty art.

2) No. Everyone does not agree seeing as all human beings have different people have different opinions. Also someone had to draw the uncredited ray. Seriously, who drew it? They’re talented as fuck.

3) In the tags it says “fypage.” . . . Honey, there is no algorithm. Go back to your natural habitat somewhere else. Do not try to migrate for you will find you are an invasive species here for many reasons. To name one, not crediting where the art you used in a post came from.

I know the art has a signature but it’s so goddamn blurry because they (person who made the post, not the artist)made it so small that I can’t read it even with my glasses. This is really just me wanting to know who the artist is and wanting to poke fun at someone thinking this website has a for you page.

I can't express how angry I feel right now. Your art is like your baby. To have it disrespected and insulted like that feels like a stab to the heart, and I can't imagine how the artist must feel.

I'm trying to do a reverse google search to find the original artist. It's not looking pretty.

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse. I feel horrible for the artist right now, because they really do deserve better.

But, I mean, maybe I can find SOMETHING about the artist through these videos? A name? A screenshot of their twitter page, maybe?

Well, aside from the fact I'm seeing more wonderful artists be slandered and insulted, some of them with several thousand likes, that doesn't seem to be working. Clicking on these links keeps taking me to general "nasty Encanto ships" search pages with more videos than I can watch, I can't seem to find any about this specific piece, and the ones I can find aren't accompanied by credit. My next step was to ask the folks over at the server. While I wait for a reply, I try to sharpen the image a little so see if I can read the watermark.

If I had to guess, I'd say it looks a little like it says Erakim, maybe? I'm 97% sure the first letter is an E, and there's clearly a k, but it's the last two or so letters that confuse me.

I looked through TikTok again to see if I could find ANYTHING. I learned the madrigalcest tag over there is a cesspool of hate and vitriol. Don't recommend looking for ship content there because it's almost entirely antis disrespecting us and our work.

found... this.

At first I thought, oh, nice, it looks sharper! Surely I can read the... nope. They went OUT OF THEIR WAY to crop the image and hide the artist's watermark. I admit I have mixed feelings about that, because while I don't think for a second that this person was trying to protect the artist, being unknown could have saved them some harassment. To destroy their art like this is a horrible insult GOD you see how little respect they have for us? They don't "simply dislike us", because you can dislike someone and treat them with basic decency. When I don't like someone, I try to be nice and quietly avoid them, because that's what social etiquette dictates you should do. You don't insult, you don't attack people, and if they're an artist, you don't disrespect their work. I don't expect antis to not hate our ships, but I think all conflicts should have a level of respect between the different parties. There are lines you don't cross, and Antis insist on crossing them over and over again. Of course, any anti reading this would be thinking "why should I feel bad for a proshipper?" I don't know kathelyn, why should you feel bad about anyone you don't like? Because that's what cultural values dictate, kathelyn, that's why. If you're not using aggression to defend yourself, you offer other humans unconditional respect, and proship artists simply exist without hurting or attacking anyone. But, of course, we're just words on a screen, so it's easy not to have sympathy for us.

(the person on tiktok goes by "proshipslander" btw, which says a lot already. They have only a few videos, all of them about proshippers, all of them disrespecting some truly beautiful works, two of them "fixing" the works of friends of mine. I suggest reporting them).

Anyway. Okay, so whoever made that ugly meme must have gotten the picture from somewhere else, and not directly screenshot the tiktok in question. That means it's at least two instances of this work being disrespected, which makes me feel even worse, but okay, this picture is sharper, maybe I can find something if I reverse google search this one. But nope. No results.

Then I remembered I had a brumira work saved on my phone with a very similar style, you know, I thought, maybe it's by the same artist, maybe I can find the watermark there annnnnnd no, it was no good, because that one doesn't have any watermarks, and it doesn't look all that similar now that I visit it again. yay.

Oh, but maybe I could google Erakim? Uh, no, it doesn't lead anywhere.

Let's be honest - it's very likely that the artist is no longer online, probably because of this. Seeing the "fypage" tag makes me suspect the meme might have been made by this "proshipslander" person, who most likely has a copy of the piece saved. Which, imo would be even worse, because it means they just keep beating a dead horse for the sake of shitting on people's work. I don't know, I might be wrong so don't take my theory too seriously.

I'm just... really angry. We don't deserve this treatment. At all.

The folks at the server haven't replied yet. If anyone recognizes this piece and the artist, please share their name, because they are the one who deserves the credit, not fucking "proshipslander on tiktok".

I have to admit, it made me more angry to see my friends' art in there, but at least we all knew about it already and, well, I know who drew what. The worst part is that there is no fixing it, once they put your art out there to be ridiculed. It breaks my heart, both for my friends and for this one artist.

The general Encant0 tag has become a landmine. As much as I love the film, I can no longer visit it without feeling nauseous, which is why I stick to madrigalcest spaces even though sometimes I want to shut my ship brain off and think about cute "normal" family dynamics, but see, they drive you away like this, polarize the fandom, eliminate neutrality, and before you notice it's become a witch hunt and you can only rely on your fellow freaks.

All I can say is... look, Madrigalcest Week is in six days, and we're all going to be posting new works. Let's try to celebrate respectfully and look after each other. Take the time to block as many antis as you can to avoid harrassment, because it's very likely that they too are waiting for Madrigalcest Week to do their thing and go after us. Block and report if you encounter anyone acting too violently. REBLOG people's works if you like them, DO NOT REPOST THEM WITHOUT PERMISSION, comment on fics and fanart, share them with friends, and make next week a nice moment for everyone. At this point that's what we can do.

#madrigalcest #shipping discourse #proship

[alixanonymous]

How A Demon Commissions An Angel ~ A Daminette FanFic ~ Chapter 6: A Need For Clarification

From the phone of Damian Wayne: 

Chat Name: Unknown Number

Unknown Number: Hi, Damian? This is Marinette… 

Me: You’re late.

Unknown Number: I know, I’m so sorry! There was a bit of an emergency… 

Me: Oh?

Unknown Number: Yeah, sorry! I know you said you’d only be free for about another hour right? Can we work fast maybe?

Me: I suppose it’s better late than never, but in the future, know that I don’t tolerate tardiness.

Unknown Number: Look, things in Paris are kind of crazy right now. I can’t promise I won’t have to change plans unexpectedly but since we only have an hour to get things done, could we leave that talk for another time? I’ll try to let you know beforehand if something comes up. Okay?

Me: Fine, one second. I need to change your contact name.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay, let me do yours too!

Me: Do I want to know what you put me in as?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I bet you could guess :)

Me: … 

Me: It’s not Arthur’s little sister, right?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Well, it wasn’t! :P

Me: No. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Yes.

Me: Change it back!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: You don’t even know what it was originally!

Me: Anything is better than that. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Fine… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: But that means you can’t complain about what it is since you’re the one who told me to change it back.

Me: Fine, I don’t even want to know.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: But I do! What do you have me under?

Me: …  

Me: Your initials.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Isn’t that a little too on the nose?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: (Not to mention totally uncreative)

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: But also, what if your brothers see?

Me: Well, not those initials… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: ???

Me: Weren’t you the one who talked about how we only had an hour to do this?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Right! Sorry! Are you ready for some fast questions?

Me: Yes.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I’m going to start with Grayson’s sweater.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: What in your opinion constitutes a “tacky Christmas sweater”?

Me: Aren’t you the fashion designer? Shouldn’t you know this?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Well, I can’t say “tacky” is a style I’ve had much experience in sooo… 

Me: Right… 

Me: Well I guess I’d imagine it’d have to have a lot of bright colors.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: But you said Grayson likes navy blue, right?

Me: Right.

Me: Well before he liked navy blue, he used to wear a lot of neon red, yellow, and green.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: … 

Me: You know, as a child.

Me: Plus they’re sort of Christmas colors in a way, right?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I see… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: So when you said bright, you meant traffic-stoppingly bright?

Me: I suppose.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I see…

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: While I can’t say I would have ever thought to put those colors together before, if he wore them as a child I guess they would have kind of a sentimental value, like a nostalgic factor.

Me: In a way, it’s like an inside joke too, I suppose.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: How so? Me: Well, you see…

Me: After I moved in with my father, I needed clothes so I wore some of his. 

Me: Well, they were clothes in his image.

Me: Of course, they weren’t hand-me-downs.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Huh. Whenever I pictured you, I can’t say it was in traffic light colors

Me: You picture me?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Hahaha, no! Silly, it was only a figure of speech.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Right! Well, we only have an hour so we better get back on track! I think the colors are a very good personal detail!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: So beside those, what else makes it a tacky xmas sweater?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Do you want a holiday design? Like Santa or a reindeer?

Me: Perhaps?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Or are there any other images you’d think he’d appreciate more?

Me: Well… 

Me: Maybe a bird?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: A bird? Like a penguin?

Me: No! Definitely not!

Me: A robin

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: A robin? Why?

Me: As a child he also really liked the superhero Robin. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Oh! Batman’s sidekick, right?

Me: He’s Batman’s partner!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Right. Is that also where the traffic light colors come from? Me: I suppose you could say that, yes

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Well, doesn’t he have a logo or something? Would that be what you want on the sweater?

Me: No, he’s an adult now, even if he doesn’t act like it. 

Me: I think if the design’s the actual bird it would seem more subtle.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: And thoughtful too! Less generic.

Me: I suppose so.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Cool, I’m starting to picture it. So do you actually want any Christmas aspects? Like do you want me to put a santa hat on the robin or maybe some wording on it like Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

Me: No, no santa hat and not “Merry Christmas” either.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay. Any text?

Me: Could you put “The First” on it?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I could… Why?

Me: Well, he is the oldest. So he was the first.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Right, no that makes sense.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: But I wonder… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Hey Damian, is your brother as… formal as you?

Me: No.

Me: Definitely not. He has no manners.

Me: Why?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Well, a lot of young people use the term OG now. Maybe he would like that more.

Me: … 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: It means like the original. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: You know, I think it actually stands for original gangster… 

Me: I see. 

Me: You know what, that’s actually very fitting.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Really?

Me: Yes. It seems like I should be grateful for not only your fashion expertise but also your knowledge of popular culture.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Thank you?

Me: Very well, is that all for Grayson?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Uh, just a few more things. So no Christmas details then?

Me: Nothing more than similarities in the colors and style. 

Me: What I’m picturing, at first glance, one might think it looks like a tacky Christmas sweater but if they were to look closely, there wouldn’t be actual references to the holiday.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Got it!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: So no hoods or pockets for this one?

Me: No. I think they’d be unnecessary.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay. Now, the main detail left is the thickness. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I’m going to have to knit this by hand so would you prefer I use a thin or thicker, fluffier yarn?

Me: I guess it would depend.

Me: Would a thicker material be scratchy?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: No, Damian. Nothing I make is scratchy.

Me: I see.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: The only differences would be a thicker yarn would make for a thicker and fluffier sweater and it would also be a bit warmer too.

Me: Oh well Gotham is pretty cold most of the time.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Gotham?

Me: It’s where my family lives. Well, Grayson also spends a lot of time in Blüdhaven.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Oh, I see why you guys like Robin now! He and Batman are based in Gotham right?

Me: Yes.

Me: Paris doesn’t have any superheroes right?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Oh no, we do.

Me: I’m sorry, excuse me? I’ve never heard of any!

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Ladybug and Cat Noir are the main ones.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: And our mayor tries his best to keep it out of international news to keep tourism going.

Me: So you’re telling me that those outlandish stories on the Ladyblog are true?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Most of them, yes.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Wait, you read the Ladyblog?

Me: I came across it while I was doing research on you.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I see… 

Me: Is this a joke? If there’s supervillains in Paris, why hasn’t the Justice League gotten involved?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I don’t know? 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I’m not really the person to be asking about this stuff.

Me: Right, sorry. It’s just hard to believe.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Yeah, I get it.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: That’s actually why I was late today. There was an akuma attack earlier.

Me: What?!

Me: Are you okay?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Oh I’m fine, Ladybug’s powers reverse all the damage. 

Me: … 

Me: I think this is going to take some time to sink in.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Right, well should we get back to the commission?

Me: Yes. Let’s.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay, so you’d prefer the thicker material then? 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: It will cost more by the way.

Me: Yes, and money is never an issue.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Okay, then I think I have enough to get started on the sketch! I know we have two more brothers to go through but it’s getting late here and I still have some things to get done tonight… 

Me: Of course.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Would you be free to talk some more same time tomorrow? 

Me: I believe so.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: I’ll try my best to not be late this time. :)

Me: I understand now that it may be out of your control.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: Unfortunately, but hey what can you do?

Me: Right.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: If you have any time before we talk again, I’ve been thinking it might help if there’s any reference pictures you could show me. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: You know if you see anything online or in a store or even if there’s any pieces your brothers’ already own that you’d want me to take some inspiration from, could you maybe send me some pictures so I can have a better idea of what you’re looking for?

Me: I see. I’ll do my best.

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: That’s all I can ask! Goodnight, Damian! Talk to you tomorrow!

Me: Goodnight, Marinette.

Google Search History 

What does P.S. stand for?

MDC

MDC Fashion Designer

The Ladyblog

Albert Einstein Human Stupidity Quote

What does fyi mean?

Aesthetic

What’s an aesthetic?

Aesthetic Urban Dictionary

How To Delete Search History 

OG Urban Dictionary

Parisian Superheroes

Ladybug and Cat Noir

Ladyblog

What’s an akuma?

How To Get Paris News Updates

Chat Name: Father

Me: Father, were you aware that there are superheroes in Paris? Why hasn’t the Justice League done anything?!

Father: I’m sure the Justice League is monitoring the situation. There’s no cause for concern, son.

Me: Right. Of course, Father.

From the phone of Jason Todd:

Chat Name: The Boys (Minus The Demon)

replacement: ummm…  sooo… 

replacement: just walked into my room and guess what I see?

big bird: A mess?

replacement: no!  the demon’s standing in front of my closet taking pictures of my clothes!

big bird: ? 

Me: uh wat

big bird: How the hell was I supposed to guess that?

replacement: so then I ask him what he’s doing… 

Me: anddddd

replacement: and he doesn’t even look at me but just says research… 

replacement: ???

big bird: (shrugging emoji)

big bird: Maybe this is a good thing? I mean what if he is doing research for Christmas and actually paying attention to what we like?

replacement: okay???

Me: i dont know he has been acting weirder lately

Me: like when i came home he was glaring at his phone and kept checking it for like five min without noticing i was there

big bird: Oh!

big bird: I passed him in the hall earlier and get this: he was smiling at his phone as he typed!

Me: what1!!

replacement: why didn’t you warn us?!

big bird: Because guys? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like a threatening smile. I think it was an actual like happy smile.

Me: yeah right! demon spawn doesnt know how to do that

replacement: do you know who he was texting?

Me: ?

big bird: No! And I didn’t want to ask…

replacement: well we need to figure it out.

Me: agreed

big bird: Unfortunately, because she helped him with the encryption, Babs can’t hack into his phone.

Me: well then well ned to steal it 

Me: he has patrol with you guys tonight right

replacement: yes… 

Me: ill get it from babs after you leave

replacement: good plan but we don’t know his password… 

big bird: Oh, it’s I’m Batman!

Me: duh its im batman

replacement: ???

replacement: How do you know that?!

Me: like your password hasnt been it at one point

replacement: … 

big bird: We’ve all been there!

Me: its practically a right of passage

replacement: *rite

Me: shut it replacement

Chat Name: carrot top

carrot top: do I even want to know why you stole the demon brat’s phone?

Me: uhhh no?

carrot top: great

carrot top: just make sure you return it before he gets back

carrot top: I have no wish to get stabbed with a katana tonight

Me: great thx babs!

carrot top: oh and by the way, its programmed to delete all unsaved data after five hours

Me: what!!! 

Me: is there anyway you could retrieve his texts?

carrot top: of course I could!

carrot top: but Im not gonna

Me: why not???

carrot top: one word:

carrot top: katana

Me: fineee

From the phone of Damian Wayne:

Me: who is this?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Damian, it’s five in the morning.

Me: who are you and why are you texting this number?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Uh, it’s Marinette. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: remember me?

Me: hello, marinette.

Me: why are you in damians phone as t.g.y.t.t.b.?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: uh, I have no idea. it’s too early for this.

Me: so, tell me… 

Me: what business do you have texting my brother?

T.G.Y.T.T.B.: ???

T.G.Y.T.T.B: oh, you’re Damian’s brother then?

Me: Yes, i’m Jason.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: You mean Grayson?

Me: i think i know my own name

Me: but to answer your question grayson is our other brother

Me: demon spawn likes to call by our last names

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Oh I thought it was just more… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: nevermind

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Wait, Demon spawn?

Me: damian

T.G.Y.T.T.B: thats… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: ironic.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: and kinda mean

Me: trust me he loves it

T.G.Y.T.T.B: So which one are you, Todd or Drake?

Me: todd

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Wait, why do you guys have different last names?

Me: uh cause all of us were adopted except for damian

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Oh

Me: but back to my question

Me: why are you texting my brother?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Uh well I’m not… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I wasn’t… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I was trying to sleep… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: And then I was texting you sooo

Me: Right but you were texting him earlier right?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: What does it matter to you?

Me: What business do you have texting my brother?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: None of yours

Me: … 

Me: Im his brother!

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Exactly, his brother. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Not his parent

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Not his warden

T.G.Y.T.T.B: So if you really want to know why I’m texting Damian, maybe you should ask him instead of stealing his phone and bothering innocent girls at five in the morning.

Me: well to be fair its only 11 over here 

Me: how was I supposed to know? 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: By talking to your brother instead of stealing his phone?

Me: how did you even know I stole it?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: … 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: really?

Me: hey now

Me: im only doing this because im concerned

Me: the kids been acting weird lately

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Gee, I wonder why.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Do you think it maybe has something to do with the fact that you’re all threatening to send him away?

Me: he told you about that?!

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Yes. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: So if that’s all, how about the next time you feel like sticking your head where it doesn’t belong, try talking to your brother first.

Me: wait

Me: can’t you give me anything to work with here?

Me: why did he tell you that he might be sent away? he barely mentions it

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Why does he even have to tell me in the first place? What kind of brother lets his sibling be shipped away?

Me: look

Me: you only know what damians told you

Me: there’s another side to the story.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I’m sure there is.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: But Damian is my friend not you, so I don’t particularly care to hear what you have to say.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: To me, you’re just the person who wants to send my friend away even though you say he’s your brother.

Me: So you’re demon spawn’s friend?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: No, I’m Damian’s friend.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Good night, Jason.

Me: wait

Me: i don’t really want him to be sent away or anything

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Have you done anything to help him stay?

Me: i’m trying to right now. 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: How is any of this helping him?

Me: my brothers and I are trying to figure out what’s he getting us for xmas so we can make sure its good enough to satisfy dad

T.G.Y.T.T.B: How about instead of that you have some faith in him and try to convince your father to stop threatening to send him away?

Me: our old man isnt really the type to change his mind

Me: again i dont want him to leave or anything but he does need to get better

Me: i mean hell he broke a kids hand! that stuffs gotta stop

T.G.Y.T.T.B: … 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: WHAT?!

Me: i see he didn’t tell you that

Me: look hes my brother 

Me: i dont want him gone but things cant keep going on like this

Me: i know your his friend but he has to change and our dad is just trying to do what he thinks is best for him

T.G.Y.T.T.B: That’s enough! 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I told you I didn’t want to hear from you.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Damian’s my friend. He gets to decide what he tells me and when and it was very wrong of you to breach his trust like this. T.G.Y.T.T.B: Whatever Damian has done, it doesn’t mean you have the right to call him a demon and steal his phone. I want you to return it now.

Me: … 

Me: your right 

Me: im sorry. 

Me: i guess we’re all just trying to do what’s best for him

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Maybe you should stop assuming you know what that is.

Me: i cant promise anything

Me: but im glad damian has you as friend

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Well… 

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I’m glad that he has a brother who wants him to stay.

Me: he has three

T.G.Y.T.T.B: That’s even better.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Surely the three of you would be enough to change your father’s mind?

Me: its not as simply as that

Me: but i can promise you our dad wants whats best for damian too

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I’ll hold you to that promise.

Me: Im sure you will, spitfire.

T.G.Y.T.T.B: ?

Me: thats your nickname

T.G.Y.T.T.B: I see

T.G.Y.T.T.B: :)

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Maybe one day I’ll tell the very first nickname I gave your brother.

Me: anyway that day could be today?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Considering it’s now only eight o clock and you woke me up at five in the morning, no. I’m afraid not.

Me: wait

Me: it hasn’t already been three hours has it?

T.G.Y.T.T.B: It wouldn’t have been if you responded faster… 

Me: uh oh

Me: crap crap crap

T.G.Y.T.T.B: What’s wrong?

Me: demon gonna kill me

Me: night sunshine

T.G.Y.T.T.B: Bye?

From the phone of Alfred Pennyworth:

Chat Name: Master Bruce

Master Bruce: Alfred, please hide as many of Damian’s weapons as you can.

Me: On it, Master Bruce. May I ask what happened?

Master Bruce: Jason stole Damian’s phone and used it to text one of Damian’s friends.

Me: Oh, I see.

Master Bruce: Hey, has Damian mentioned anything to you about a girl?

Me: A girl? No, not that I can recall, Master Bruce. 

Me: Is that who Master Jason was texting?

Master Bruce: Yes, but I wasn’t aware Damian made any new friends.

Me: Neither was I. Perhaps he is progressing?

Master Bruce: I suppose we’ll see.

Me: Indeed.

I literally posted this just so I could say that chapter nine is on AO3!!! 

Master List

#MariBat #Daminette #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Damian Wayne #FanFic

[sxveme-2]

blueberry pancakes // bucky barnes

MASTERLIST

Description: A single mother. Juggling being a mom, a full time pediatrician, and a difficult ex who believed now would be the best time to finally be a father. A soldier ripped out of time. Ex-assassin turned superhero. Learning how to balance a new domestic life with handling demons of his past, while facing the trials of the future. a love story began over something as simple as chocolate chip pancakes with hidden blueberries.

Disclaimer: I do not own any original Marvel characters! All canon plots and canon characters belong to Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. This is an original work. You may not publish it anywhere else

Status: Edited

Note: Takes place after endgame. I have elected to ignore Tony's death and Steve's leaving. Did not happen. Quick Reminder! My works are only published here, AO3 and on Wattpad, thank you.

Chapter Fifteen: The One Where There Might be a Future

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 3247

Lily didn't like the effect Bucky had on her sometimes. She wasn't sure if it was the way he was so good with Hunter, or how he was always so gentle with her. Or maybe it's whenever the two were alone he looked at her like she was the only girl in the world. Or perhaps it was the way his hands always lingered places for a second too long to go unnoticed. She couldn't place it. But if anyone asked how she felt about the boy, she brushed it off. They were simply friends. Nothing more. The kiss they shared in the kitchen didn't get spoken about, and the two never felt a shred of awkwardness over the following few weeks.

But it didn't help that his lingering looks and her soft touches didn't go unnoticed by those around them for very long. Lily had found herself living every teenage girl’s dream. She became friends with the freaking Avengers. It didn't help that her sister had begun to get all friendly with Mr. Sam Wilson, either. She wasn't sure if it was because of her lack of love from her ex, or the need for a rebound. But Lily would be there to support her along the way, no matter what form her heartbreak and hormones took.

And although things were great in Lily's social department, the legality of her divorce had become messy. It had been a month since the incident where Cedar supposedly attempted to break into her ex-husband’s house, leaving Lily with the entire month of October being filled with legal battles and a complete rewrite of the separation agreement. All while the police continued to question her younger brother. She wanted to keep that part of the issue secret from Hunter, for the little boy looked up to his uncle as though he were one of the superheroes on the boy’s wall. And Lily did truly believe her brother was not behind this, that something must have happened to him. She knew Cedar, he wouldn't have done this.

However, to distract herself, Lily decided to hand-make her and Hunter's costume for the holiday quickly approaching. As well as busying herself with shopping for Hunter's birthday, which was just a week after Halloween. however, in proper Rose and Gen fashion, they had other plans for the candy-filled day.

"I am not going to a Halloween party with the Avengers!" Lily exclaimed as she spun around from her sewing machine, arms crossed, "And I am not matching with Bucky."

"Come on Lily!" Rose whined, grabbing her sister’s hand, "You've been stressed to the high heavens all month! With finally being granted full custody, as well as this Cedar thing? You deserve to go out and have some fun."

"And Bucky tells us he's had to make you dinner every night when he comes over. And don't act surprised that we know- you send Rose out every Thursday and Saturday. We're not stupid." Gen countered, raising her finger to Lily.

"He talks too much," Lily mumbled, "But I wouldn't be able to anyway! Hunter and I have traditions to keep up. We match costumes, then go out trick or treating, then come home, watch Halloweentown and then go to bed." she stated, stealing her hand back from her sister, "plus Rose, you're pregnant!"

Lily furrowed her eyebrows as she watched her sister and best friend share a look. One that the mother knew all too well. They had planned something. And what that was? Well, Lily didn't know. All she knew is that she wouldn't like it. She never enjoyed their plans. The last time she went through with one, she ended up racing home and having to take her husband to court because of the neglect of their child. Plus, she'd much prefer to stay home and spend time with her son. After the month she had, she just wanted a night in with the two of them.

"We figured you'd say no..." Rose began, flicking her hazel eyes to Gen.

"...So we came up with a backup plan. That was actually, Hunter's idea." Gen smiled softly, offering her hand to her best friend, "Come with us and he'll explain."

Lily cocked her eyebrow at the two of them. Standing, the blonde laced her hand into Gen's and was soon led out into her own living room where Hunter sat on the floor with Joey watching national geographic. Lily smiled softly at the boy before she was essentially forced into sitting on their sofa, with both Rose and Gen coaxing Hunter to explain whatever they had decided to try and convince Lily on.

"Mum, what if Mr. Barnes joined us for Halloween this year?" the boy commented, turning off the television and turning towards his mother.

Lily was taken aback by her son’s bold offer. Glancing back and forth at the two women on either side of her, only to be greeted with raised hands of innocence. Moving onto the floor, Lily took her son’s hands into her own, searching his face for any sort of blackmail being used by the two girls behind her. But he seemed genuine. She knew this because there was a rosy hue to his cheeks, meaning he was even embarrassed to ask her something like that.

"Are you sure, Hunt? It's always just been us on Halloween." Lily hummed, running a thumb across the boy’s cheek.

"Mum if I didn't want to I wouldn't have asked. I like Mr. Barnes. He's fun." Hunter stated simply, tilting his head into his mother’s touch.

"If that's what you want buddy, then sure. We can have Bucky here for Halloween." Lily agreed, ruffling the boy’s hair before standing up and turning towards her sister and best friend, "I'm guessing you already asked him?"

When the two gave energetic nods, the young mother shook her head with a laugh, making her way back out towards her office to finish the costumes.

-----

Lily still lived in the real world. And held a full-time job. As did Rose and Gen. Which meant, there was no one to watch Hunter on the actual day of Halloween while Lily worked. well, that's what she thought at first. But of course, who were Rose and Gen to let anything peaceful happen in the life of their best friend and sister. Though Lily was far from bold enough to make such a request, she didn't have much of a choice. Plus, he was already spending the evening with them. Lily still hadn't enough trust in babysitters, despite having a plethora of neighbours whom she did trust...she just trusted him a bit more.

"Thank you for coming on short notice." the blonde sighed softly as she opened up the door to her house, "Gen has a meeting today and Rose is in upper manhattan, so neither were available."

"It's no issue, Lily," Bucky's gruff morning tone cooed as he took a step into the house, "I like the kid, no stress. Sam and Steve may swing by around noon, mind if I bring Hunt with us out for some lunch?"

"That would be amazing, Buck." she hummed, not even giving the nickname a second thought, though her cheeks did subconsciously heat up, "Here." the blonde smiled, digging her hands into her purse, only to have his flesh hand rest on the arm of her thin white cardigan.

"No need. It's my treat." the man smiled, his hand lingering across her wrist before he pulled it away.

The way that he looked at her made Lily's heart skip a beat. His steel-blue eyes pouring into the mossy green of her own. All of the air in the foyer seemed to be sucked out, as though the world paused around her. Neither moved, and the world melted away. It was Hunter who had managed to snap the two out of it. The sound of a glass breaking against hardwood made Lily jump, her hand resting above the pale purple scrubs she wore, gripping her name tag.

Glancing at her watch, Lily sighed, dropping her bag, "I'll go clean that up then head to wo- "

"Let me." Bucky hummed, picking the woman's bag back up, "You head into work. I'll take care of the kid and the mess, I promise."

With one more glance towards the kitchen, Lily nodded slowly before bidding her goodbyes. When she got into the car in her driveway, the blonde let out a deep sigh. Her eyes glanced up to the door of the place she called home for a few years now. She spotted Bucky and Hunter standing in the doorframe, Hunter still in his pyjamas with a new cup of orange juice in his hand. Bucky's hand placed securely on the boy’s shoulder. The picture warmed Lily's heart, and she found her mind wandering ever so slightly.

The same scene, but with Lily standing there. A baby in her arms as Bucky placed a kiss on her temple. Hunter, aged up a few years with Joey by his side. But this image found itself framed, upon the wall of a different home.

Chiding herself, Lily shook her head, reversing from out front of the home. Away from the moment that made her heart swell.

-----

Another day, Another pay. Don't be mistaken, Lily loved her job. She adored being able to spend the day with children and make them feel better. But today was a rough one. Lily had a patient come in with severe symptoms. It broke Lily's heart. He looked around the same age as her son, and that was what she always found most difficult. Seeing the children that were experiencing the same sort of year as her son. Just turning twelve or not even quite there yet. It broke her heart, really.

Pushing the door open to her quaint home, Lily perked an eyebrow up at the smell of something sweet. That of a certain morning breakfast that seemed to be a reoccurring theme in the most recent months of Lily's life. A small smile spread across her lips as she placed her work bag down onto the front bench, kicking off her shoes before passing the stairs and through the hall back to the kitchen where she ducked around the corner, leaning on the wall.

"Well now what do we have here?" she chuckled, catching the two boy's attention.

Sliding her phone from her pocket, the blonde snapped a photo of the mess of a kitchen the two had made. Both had flour on their face, and the mother of the younger boy giggled. The number of blueberries that were on the floor, or should she say, making their way into Joey's stomach, was more than she saw in the bit of batter the two had made.

"We wanted to surprise you." Hunter grinned brightly, lifting his hands in a stance of innocence, "It was Bucky's idea!"

"Hey-! Way to through me under the bus buddy." the taller man laughed, hands dropping to tickle at the blonde boy's sides.

Lily shook her head with a hearty chuckle escaping her lips. Running a hand through her golden strands, the young mom sauntered forward and pressed a kiss to Hunter's head, before giving Bucky a soft glance. Shrugging off her cardigan, the doctor sent a teasing eyebrow raise to the two boys. Tossing the piece of fabric across one of the chairs at the table, the blonde shooed both away from the counter.

"Before you blow up my kitchen," she quipped, "Allow me to take over."

One brand new batch of batter and a new pack of blueberries later, Lily placed a large stack of fluffy pancakes atop the refurnished birch table that Bucky and Hunter sat at. Placing her hands on her waist, Lily merely smirked and shrugged the entire event off as though it were nothing. The main thing that made her happy on the inside, however, was watching the two dig into the golden brown delicacies she had made moments ago.

"Sit and eat, Lil. They're amazing," said Bucky, a mouthful of blueberry pancake muffling most of his words.

"Alright alright. Then we have to get ready to go out. don't want it to be too dark." Lily chuckled, pulling out a chair next to Bucky.

With dishes and the kitchen cleaned, the trio found themselves all dressed and ready to go for the Halloween festivities taking place outside of the home. Kids were already knocking on doors and stuffing their faces with candy. While Hunter was still trying to get the bandana we wore to properly stay on his head, or actually tie it. Hunter and Lily had already planned on taking on Halloween dressed as pirates, and Bucky just happened to have the proper rugged look for it.

Lily herself, well she wore quite the getup. The ripped fabric of white, burgundy, and plaid making up a skirt that hugged her waist. A white peasant blouse that hugged off of her shoulders sat underneath a black leather corset vest that dipped just below her chest. A pirate hat with gold trim and a peacock feather sat atop gentle blonde curls. Suede boots hit just below her knee with fishnet tights underneath. Bucky wore a fairly standard get-up, simple black pants with a loose cream-coloured top underneath a suede vest and taller boots.

"Mum I can't get my bandana tied!" Hunter sighed, dropping his hands against his own dark pants, "Can you do it?"

Lily grinned and made her way over to the boy, doing up the piece of fabric before handing him a pillowcase for the candy he'd be collecting. Turning to glance over her shoulder, the blonde caught the eyes of Bucky. His eyes were already glued to her, and the way they moved up and down her made a bright red flush fill the girl’s pale cheeks. She pursed her lips and let her hands fall to Hunter's shoulders, her eyes unwavering from those cool blue ones of Buckys.

"If you two are done staring into each other’s eyes," Hunter quipped, "I have candy to collect."

"Hunter!" Lily exclaimed, looking down at her boy.

"Yeah doll," Bucky winked, "Keep focused. The kid's gotta get his candy."

Lily watched in shock as the two walked out the door, leaving the blonde dumbfounded as she hooked Joey's leash onto his collar. Rolling her eyes, the blonde followed behind, shaking her head until she caught up to the two.

-----

"I didn't mean to make the kid freak out!" Bucky laughed as the three re-entered the house, "It's not like I'm in a mask! Plus the arm doesn't help give away who I am."

"Oh, please you totally knew he recognized you!" Lily retorted, unhooking Joey, "You kept rolling your sleeve up whenever we saw him!"

"I'm with mom on this one." Hunter commented, dumping the large stash of candy he had collected into the middle of the living room floor, "I think you liked seeing Kellin dressed as you, Bucky." he chuckled, sorting through the pile.

"Well obviously!" the man chuckled, sliding his vest off, "I think what shocked me most was the number of people dressed up like Sam. We can keep the information here. It'll only make his head inflate even more."

The trio continued the night, laughing, eating candy, and watching the iconic Halloweentown. At around ten-thirty, Lily put the young boy to bed, leaving her alone with the ex-assassin that was sitting in her living room. Which she didn't mind, she'd begun to see yet another new side to Bucky. One that made her realize just how much the man yearned for the security and domesticity of a family. And how Lily wished to give that to him. To lay that troubled mind of his to rest at last, and allow him the peace and tranquillity of a modern day family. And for a while, she believed the two had that. That night. He now changed into a t-shirt and sweats he had left at the house last time, Lily in a pair of baby blue plaid pyjama pants and an oversized white sweater. Both sipping lightly on coffee while they sat across from one another, legs touching.

"You've got something good going here, doll." the man hummed, eyes averting towards the fire at the other side of the room, "Back in the ‘40s this is something I believed I'd have one day."

Lily watched the man with a soft expression. The way his eyes seemed to cloud with troubles when he began talking. It broke her heart, knowing that this sweet and gentle man had been through more than Lily could ever fathom. He had murders attached to his name, yet he petted Joey like he would break the dog, and acted as though Hunter was the most precious thing in the world. And when he would touch Lily, her hand, her wrist, it was though she were made of glass. He was sensitive, and Lily's heart grew ten sizes whenever she saw him allow his guard down, even for a split second. Allowing her to peak into that complex mind of his.

"Why can't you have it now?" Lily questioned, "Find a nice girl. Settle down somewhere quiet. Have a family. Why is it so different now?"

The man turned his attention back to that of the woman sat beside him, "That wouldn't be fair to them. The kids...if I had them. The past I have would follow them everywhere, they'd learn about what I did in class. I was a monster, Lily."

Setting her mug to the side, Lily moved a bit closer to the taller man. She took his coffee from his hands and placed it to the side. She wasn't sure what came over her. Her mind believed it to be that of her having such a lovely night with him. Watching him with Hunter. Seeing the way he would look at her. She wasn't sure. She just knew he felt something back towards her. Maybe the kiss they shared was what drove her, but she just knew this was her window.

So she took his face in her hands, "Buck you had no choice. And now? You're one of the most loved heroes. You beat the darkness. I give stickers out of you at work now!" she chuckled, running a careful thumb across his jawline, "I know if I was the girl you settled with, there would be no fear of having a family."

Bucky looked at the girl with a tender look in his steel eyes. His hand reached up and tucked a stray hair of blonde hair behind her ear, moving forward. The air in the room grew thick and a sense of anxiety washed over Lily. She watched intently as he continued his advance forward. Before she could comprehend it, the two shared their second kiss. This one was different though. There was something new behind it. Lily couldn't put her finger on it. But they didn't break apart, no, they moulded together and paused for air every so often. Lily tangled her fingers in the man’s long brown hair, tugging gently.

But a knock at the door interrupted them.

"We'll talk about what you said tomorrow, okay doll?" Bucky cooed, running a thumb across the girl’s cheekbone, "You stay here. I'll grab the door."

Well, that was how Bucky Barnes met Lily Osborne's parents.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x female oc #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes fluff #original female character #female oc #OC #oc tag #oc x canon #marvel #marvel fanfiction #the winter soldier #the winter solider fanfiction #the avengers #fanfiction #fanfic #tfatws #single mom #sebastian stan #fluffy #romance #comedy #james bucky barnes

[sardonicnihilism]

A Biography of the Woman Who Never Was

Part 3 The Young Adult

Chapter 32

Shannon looked over her list of damnable tomes. *The Liba Lnteus*, *The Beale Ciphers*, *The Voynich Manuscript*, *Magic of Abramelin the Image*, *The Codex Gigas*, *The Book of Soyga*, *The Rohonc Codex*, *The Great Omar Book*, *The Ripley Scroll Book*; each one of these horrid abominations was said to bring death and madness to all those who sought them out. These were grimoires of the most blasphemous and dangerous depths. Yet, none of these were what she was looking for.

Shannon lifted her head, staring off into space, tapping her pencil off the library table she was seated at. She was trying to clear her mind, think of new avenues to approach. The continuing elusivness of the book made her feel uneasy. Certainly there had to be some mention of it somewhere.

She looked over to her right and saw a typical, pink eraser. She stared at it for a few moments and opened up her left hand. The eraser wiggled a bit, and then jumped into her hand. Shannon smiled as she ran it between her fingers.

She then noticed a strand of her hair, resting on the book she had been reading. She put her hand about one foot over top of it. The hair began to move like a snake. It reared up, standing straighter and straighter, until it left the page and floated in the air.

Shannon moved her hand to and fro, the hair following suit. Her hand and the hair danced in the air. She stood up and began to actually dance - swaying, gliding, bending, and reaching. The hair began to glow and catch on fire. It elongated and started to spin around her. The two dance partners floated up into the sky.

They were suddenly no longer in the library. She doubted if they were even still on Earth. It was night here. They were in a forest with trees and vegetation that had no root in Terran soil with the cries of animals that had never trod the world of man.

Shannon's clothes had now been burned away, but she didn't care. All there was, was the dance. The string of fire encircled her even more closely. Eventually it touched her and she burst into flame, but she felt not one ounce of pain. Indeed she was in a state of euphoric rapture.

She and the flame were now one. She flew across the night sky, leaving streaks of light behind her, creating complex, geometric patterns. In her mind she heard a young boy ask what was that; to which the voice of an old woman responded, "That is the Sky Dancer of Chaos and Eternal Night". She then exploded across the sky. Shannon was then back in the library; same position, mindlessly drumming away.

Shannon took her glasses off, laid them on the book, and slouched back into her chair. She was unnerved at her apparent day dream. She was even more upset at her lack of progress.

"Hey stranger," Sam's voice called out.

Shannon looked over in the direction it had come. "Hey. What are you doing here?" She was legitimately curious. She had come to Chambersburg Public Library because her college library had failed to yield any results in her search, but it was more than sufficient for the tasks of any college assignment.

"Looking for you. I haven't seen on campus for a while. I called to see if you were ok, and your mum said you were here. I found a ride in and decided to see if you were ok."

"I am. Just - looking."

Sam pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. "That bloody book again?" he asked both concerned and annoyed.

"I still hear things, see things, sometimes even feel them. Prayers and church haven't worked. Maybe if I find something, anything, it'll help."

Sam put his arm around her shoulders. It was striking how large and muscular she was. She felt more of stone than flesh. Yet her face was scared, sad, and tired.

"Listen," he said softly, "you said yourself, they gave you a strange liquid to drink, yeah? I'm guessing that it was some sort of hallucinogenic and it's messing with brain up there," he gently tapped on the side of her head which made her smile. "Instead of looking for some book which may not even be real; maybe you should go to the doctor's instead?"

Shannon leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. "And say what? I might have had some bad acid? Besides, everyone had masks on. I have no idea who all was there. Hell, my doctor could have been one of them for all I know. Shit, you could be one," she turned her head and looked him in the eyes.

"Nah, ain't me mate. I don't believe in any of that mumbo-jumbo. Strict atheist here. Of course, you could think I'm just lying to you. Not like I can prove my innocence."

"Honestly, at this point, I really don't give a shit if you're legitimate or a spy. You're the best friend I've ever had. So if this is a performance, all I ask is that you keep it up."

"Will do," Sam answered back cheerfully.

Shannon looked at her list again. She tore the paper from the notebook and crumpled it up. Real or not, she was done searching.

Suddenly something came to her, something Jen had said. She had called Lovecraft a seer. She also said that his works were based on the coven's text. Finally her last thought sprung up in her mind again, *real or not*.

She ran up to the librarians desk and asked to sign into a computer. The librarian told her what number to go to, and she ran over and started typing.

Sam was extremely confused and worried. He ran over to her and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Checking out a thought," she said, super focused on the screen.

"Alright, and how's that?"

"I found this new website called Amazon. They're an online bookstore. Fairly large selection too," she said excitedly. "Hopefully they don't try to start selling other things as well and just stick to books."

As soon as the page loaded, she typed "Lovecraftian horror" in the search bar. Once the search was done, she began to scroll through the selections. Her brow furrowed with frustration, not seeing what she had hoped for. Then a look of absolute joy came across her face as she said, "There!" Shannon pointed to a listing and Sam started to read it aloud.

"*Behind the Bleeding Veil* by Shawn Baxter, 1934. *Behind the Bleeding Veil* is the first book in the Goddess Saga. This book of Lovecraft inspired horror revolves around a sheltered young girl, her mysterious past, and her bizarre college roommate. Originally banned due to its graphic depiction of lesbian sex and gore, it was later reprinted in 1967. Includes the standard cosmic horror troupes such as cults, horrifying, unknowable gods, and cursed books ( *The Book of Forgotten Nightmares *)." Sam stopped and looked at Shannon who was smiling ear to ear.

"I don't get it," he said confused.

"It was all made up. Whoever started that coven, must have read this book and thought it was real. Just like the publishing companies made a *Necronomicon*, they must have made a version of *Nightmares*. It's nothing more than a story someone took seriously." Relief washed over Shannon in tidal waves, washing her clean.

"Pretty much how all religions get started." Sam added jovially.

"Unfortunately, that means you were right and I am having a prolonged, psychotic reaction to a hallucinogenic compound."

Sam turned to Shannon and asked, "Hospital?"

"Hospital," Shannon agreed.

As they were leaving, Shannon turned around and saw a massive black shadow, bubbling with white, distorted, grotesque faces. She raised her hand and the mass was blown away in an explosion of fire.

"I am the Sky Dancer of Chaos and Eternal Night," she whispered underneath her breath and walked out.

***************************************

"Can we talk?" Shannon asked, in a low, shy, almost mournful voice.

Chris wiped the sweat from his brow and gave her a suspicious look. "I got some time between sets. Never was a fan of deadlifts anyway. So, what is it?"

Shannon handed him a piece of paper. "It's for your friend. It's the name of the toxin that was used and the drug that's used to treat it."

Chris took it and looked it over.

Shannon hung her head and looked at the floor as she continued to talk. "Given how long it's been, the damage might be permanent. The doctor said that I might have some continuing effects given it's been almost two years. Still, it should help him a little."

She then lifted her head and looked Chris straight in the eyes. "I'm so sorry. I should have listened. You tried to be a friend and I was a bitch. I hope you forgive me, but I don't expect it, and that's more than fair."

Chris handed the paper back to Shannon. "He committed suicide last year." He paused for a beat, then added, "But thank you anyways. I, I know you must have been going through some stuff, and I'm guessing still are. I understand. I might have reacted the same way if the roles were reversed. Understanding doesn't equal forgiveness though. And forgiveness doesn't mean things will go back to the way they were. It's been a while, both temporarily and emotionally."

"I know," Shannon said as she took the paper back.

Chris stuck out his hand. Shannon took it, shook it, turned around and walked away.

Shannon got to her car where Sam was waiting for her.

"Well, how'd it go," he asked sympathetically.

"About as well as I had any right for it to go," she answered back, putting her sunglasses on.

"You going to be ok?"

"Eventually," she said flatly, and got in her car.

Sam got in the passenger side. "You know, you've missed most of this semester. You got a lot of work to make. You think you can do it? Maybe you can take a leave of absence, all things considered?"

Shannon buckled up, turned the car on, and put it in drive. "I'm not going back," she simply said.

#dark #fiction #drama #sad #slice of life

[wild-aloof-rebel]

anonymous asked:

This is a fashion question, though not SC related. Do you have any advice for trying to find the designer of a piece that’s fairly generic in terms of description? I’ve been trying to find a hoodie I saw and I’m certain it’s probably designer, but I’ve been coming up empty. Thanks for any advice you can give!

lots of searching and a bit of luck is really the key, but here are the basics of the process i go through for finding things.

even if it’s fairly generic, look at the item from as many pics/angles as you can and figure out what the identifying features really are. they may or may not help you in your search, but you absolutely have to have an eye for detail to be able to know when you’ve finally found the right piece. look at the stitching, seams, visible tags, embellishments, size/style of hems and collars and sleeve cuffs. with a hoodie in particular, does it have a kangaroo pocket or not? what do the strings look like–are they the typical cord kind or is it something unique like a ribbon or flat shoelace style? what color are the grommets where the strings come out of the hood? again, those things may not help you in your search (like searching black hoodie with black grommets prob isn’t going to really get you there tbh), but it really is essential to knowing if you’ve found the right thing in the end.

if you saw it on tv or in a movie, etc., check websites like wornontv or spotern. someone else may have already identified it, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time searching. spotern also allows you to submit things you want to have identified, so if all else fails and you can’t find it yourself, you can submit it there and see if someone else can find it. be aware that they do allow “close” matches though (which aren’t always that close tbh), so you may get some false positives if you go that route.

search, search, search, search, search. specifically, use image searching (as in, type in a search string to google and then click images–don’t try to sort through websites, just go straight to the pictures.) try every possible minor variation on the search terms that you can come up with. i would say most of the time, unless i already know who a piece is by without a doubt and/or just have REALLY good luck, i go through at LEAST 15-20 different search strings before i land on what i’m looking for.

if you have a particular designer you think it might be, include that in your search to start. if not, or if that doesn’t get you any results that match, try including websites that sell or catalog designer clothes–farfetch, ssense, modesens, lyst, poshmark, therealreal, etc.–as part of your search string, one at a time. ebay can also be your friend in this. last but not least, try searching for fast fashion brands instead like zara, asos, h&m, topshop, etc. the entire point of fast fashion is that it capitalizes on runway trends, so it’s entirely possible that it’s not truly designer and is just something that looks like a designer piece (which is part of how schitt’s creek filled out their wardrobe–there’s tons of zara and asos throughout the show).

google will allow you to search images by color, so try taking the color out of the search string and then using the color search tool instead. if you’re not familiar with how to do that, click on the tools button on the right side under the search bar, and then click color. there are only 12 options, and it’s not perfect, but if something is listed as let’s say aqua instead of blue or whatever it is you’re searching, you might catch it this way instead. (just remember to turn it off again if you go to do more searches.)

if you think it’s possibly the kind of thing a designer would have put in a runway show (if it’s just a hoodie that’s… not the most likely, but it depends on the designer and the show), try searching on tagwalk. it only goes back through 2017 though, so it needs to be recent. for the search options, i would only narrow it down by either womenswear or menswear in the select a type dropdown menu, and then put hoodie in the keyword search box on the right.

be patient. it takes time. typically if i can’t find something within half an hour, i’ll give up for now and come back to it another day. some things, even with distinctive features, are just elusive until you hit on precisely the right search terms, so patience is absolutely key. i looked for david’s sweater from “rock on!” pretty regularly for about three months before i finally happened across it on ebay one day. it’s not like i hadn’t searched ebay before, and it wasn’t even a brand new listing, but through whatever magic, i landed on the right search term on the right day, and there it was. i still haven’t managed to harness that magic to find david’s bomber from “ronnie’s party,” and it has a lot of distinctive features. but i typically look for it a few times a month anyway, and someday it’s gonna pay off.

i’m gonna put this last bit under a cut because most people prob won’t care, but let me give you an example of how this kind of search plays out in reality…

this is what my image search process looked like for finding the valentino sweater david wears in “happy ending” which i KNEW i had seen before while searching for something else. i was pretty sure that it was either valentino, paul smith, or gucci just based on a combo of the general style and what i thought i had been searching for when i had previously seen it, so i kept that in mind while i looked, but here’s what my search strings looked like…

love sweater stars love heart sweater stars love heart sweater stars poshmark love heart sweatshirt stars poshmark (because maybe it’s one of those instances where it looks like a sweater but is really a sweatshirt?) love heart sweatshirt stars farfetch love heart sweater stars farfetch love heart sweater stars valentino love heart sweater stars paul smith love heart sweater stars gucci love heart sweater stars prada (because, okay, maybe i was wrong about who it was?) love heart sweater stars saint laurent love heart sweater lyst love stars sweater lyst love stars sweater farfetch love mutlicolor star sweater love mutlicolor star sweater gucci love multicolor star sweater saint laurent love multicolor star sweater givenchy love multicolor star sweater valentino love rainbow star sweater valentino love rainbow star sweater love rainbow star sweater poshmark love rainbow sweater heart stars love rainbow sweater heart stars poshmark love sweater heart stars poshmark love sweater heart stars (even though i had basically started with this same search, this time it managed to get me to a knock-off version of the sweater, listed as a jacquard sweater by the brand “dorla cool” and produced in 2018–i knew it wasn’t the real thing, but it’s something to search) dorla cool love sweater jacquard love heart sweater 2018 (at this point, i used the image of the knock-off to do a reverse image search–where you upload the picture to google and it searches for that same or similar images–and browsed through the similar images. nothing helpful really came up though, so back to the original searches we go…) love rainbow heart stars sweater valentino love rainbow heart stars sweater gucci love heart stars sweater therealreal mens love stars sweater paul smith mens love stars sweater givenchy mens love stars sweater gucci rainbow stars sleeve sweater rainbow stars sleeve sweater mens poshmark intarsia love sweater poshmark intarsia love heart sweater poshmark intarsia love heart sweater farfetch intarsia love heart sweater valentino (bingo!)

so as you can see, i went through A LOT of searches with minor variations to try to find a sweater with a very clear and distinctive design on it, and that i already could narrow down a likely designer for. and, on top of that, the result where i finally found it was indeed a picture on farfetch, but it didn’t come up in the search right before it that specifically included farfetch. so like i said, it really is a combo of lots of searching and a little bit of magic to land on the exact right terms to bring it up. it’s quite likely going to be harder with a more “generic” kind of item, but best of luck, and if you don’t find it today, keep coming back to it and hopefully it will land in your lap soon!

#oh my god i hate this website #reposted since it fucked up the other one #a million apologies to anyone for whom the cut isn't going to appear #sorry you have to look at the world's most boring post lololol #anon #replies #fashion #fashion reference

[comickergirl]

Alright. Let’s give this a shot.

SPOILER-Y DISCUSSION OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, INCOMING:

I figure the best way to do this is chronological; my prior attempts have not been chronological, which might account for their feeling a little...all over the place and unorganized.

This will also be a good test to see how much of the film I remember.

RIGHT THEN: First and foremost, (and we gleaned this from the trailers, obviously) MEMORY-LOSS PLOT. Which is Classic Carol™. She’s lost her memory like. Four times.

(her poor brain D:)

All of this to say: The premise of the movie, a kind of reverse origin story in which Carol figures out who she is, in a very literal but also figurative sense, was a great way to go, IMO.

Love all the moments from Carol’s past. I was admittedly surprised that we didn’t get more of that? But what was there was effective and given the amount of ground the movie had to cover, I think it was sufficient.

So after the dreams** we get the early morning fight with Yon-Rogg (who I was absolutely certain was Yon-Rogg, in spite of all the back and forth speculation and Marvel attempting to ‘hide’ his identity) and there’s exposition, obviously, and the set up of Carol’s struggle with Yon-Rogg’s forced Kree values clashing with Carol’s humanity but MORE importantly...

PHOTON BLASTS.

Love the way they render the energy pulsing just below the surface of her skin. Looks so cool. 

Then: Chit Chat Time with The Great Intelligence!

I thought for sure it was gonna be Helen Cobb.

BOY WAS I MISTAKEN. (More on that in a sec.)

Favorite Visual #1: The slow pan of Starforce and the excellent shot of Carol’s helmet as they swim to shore on Torfa.

The whole rescue mission sequence/Carol’s kidnapping is...Truly a Highlight, in my opinion.

I mean!

She’s running around the enemy ship! Without her boots! Pummeling the Skrulls with unwieldy metal shackles! And growling in their faces!

#BOSSOFSPACE

Also, comic connection alert: Carol was kidnapped and experimented on by the Brood, which resulted in her stint as Binary.

So, back to the movie:

Talos man.

TALOS.

We’ll get to him later.

Okay what month of 1995 does Captain Marvel take place in? Because I was honestly offended that no one, and I mean NO ONE made a Buzz Lightyear joke re: Carol’s outfit and being a member of STARCOMMANDFORCE who checks her wrist communicator to try and make contact.

(Toy Story came out in November so if this takes place in the summer I GUESS I will let it slide.)

But otherwise dug all of the 90s references.

The little Gameboy sound when she calls Yon-Rogg!

(Also, train chase was great but I’m trying to save time though I do feel inclined to mention Kelly Sue DeConnick! Bringing some quality side eye! Very nice.)

Young Fury + Carol = excellent buddy cop combo, 14/10 would take an entire spinoff of their wacky 90s road trip adventures.

‘You look like someone’s disaffected niece’ might be favorite line in the film.

Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the score, shall we? Pinar Toprak CRUSHES IT; the Captain Marvel theme feels like something out of The Rocketeer but with about 400% more sci-fi synth and I LOVE IT.

**Love the piece of score played when Carol wakes up. (Appropriately titled “Waking Up” I think, on the soundtrack.)

I also like the songs they picked for the movie? This is probably the complaint I’ve seen most often, that they feel obvious and easy, but. I dunno. I was never expecting something like Guardians of the Galaxy? So I wasn’t mad about it. 

(In related news, I’ve been listening to “Connection” on repeat ever since the special look trailer dropped.) 

Anyways.

GOOSE.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE.

MY GOOD FLERKEN GIRL.

(So, yes, breezing past the bar interrogation--though I do like the ghostly images of Carol’s past that crop up--as well as the trip to Pegasus, again in the interest of time.)

(WAIT. NO. THE TAPE JOKE.)

(Okay for real. Moving on.)

So then. THEN.

The Rambeaus. And the feelings.

Unpopular(?) opinion: I love that this big budget action movie focuses on female friendships and platonic relationships instead of romance THERE I SAID IT

ALSO LIEUTENANT TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spelled Lieutenant right on the first try. Just sayin’.

But in all seriousness, I love the time we spend in Louisiana. We get a lot of good stuff. Carol getting answers from Maria, Talos arriving with his soda (milkshake?) The standoff with Goose.

(Oh, and how could I forget Maria bidding farewell to the neighbor, shutting the front door as Carol continues to glower???)

‘What’s happening?’ ‘It’s loading.’ XD

Favorite Visual #2 (Chronologically, but actually the one I like best in the movie) The Pysche-Magnitron Light Speed Engine explosion.

(Thank you, Marvel, for changing it to ‘light speed engine,’ which is much easier to spell than Psyche-Magnitron)

But yeah, that was the visual that sold me, in the earliest trailer. I wish I had some profound reason for that, but the truth is I just love blue-glow-y stuff.

BUT ALSO

(And, okay, an additional spoiler- warning because this is a big one. Like. Big.)

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Seriously, go away if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

................................................................................................................................

MAR-VELL iS A WOMAN

LIKE THIS WHOLE TIME. EVERYONE WAS SO FOCUSED ON JUDE LAW. And then there was that blip, right before the release, when Annette Bening revealed she was the Great Intelligence, again after months of secrecy so we were all like, HA we know the TWIST.

BUT NO. NO WE DID NOT.

Well played, Marvel. Well played.

This was something I was thinking about before the film came out; I just kind of assumed, because of the lack of an apparent ‘Mar-Vell,’ that Carol would be the first and only Captain Marvel in the MCU. And she basically is, b/c we have no indication that Dr. Larson was moonlighting as a superhero, but regardless this is SO COOL. SUCH A GOOD TWIST.

(A quick Google search on how many ‘L’s are in Mar-Vell led to a serendipitous discovery: an article on the gender swap decision, and apparently it came very late in the game. Like. ‘Already looking at guys to play Mar-Vell’ late in the game. *insert themoreyouknow.gif here*) 

Right, okay, back to Feelings:

When Carol’s like: You don’t know who I am! I don’t know who I am!

I was. Emotional.

(Brie Larson is perfectly cast and does a wonderful job.)

Maria’s pep talk? Also caused emotions.

And Maria got to come on the mission! I was pleasantly surprised, and really glad that the visit there wasn’t like. Just a pit stop, you know?

RIP Science Guy, we hardly knew ye.

Again, jumping ahead, but may I just say: It was truly an Experience, watching this movie with folks who had no idea what a ‘Flerken’ was.

Both my friends at the first screening I attended, and then like. Half the theater at the second one. XD

The whole row was like: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT when the tentacles came out.  

So yeah, Talos and the 180 on the REAL villains: Nice. The enduring complaint leveled at the MCU is a lack of compelling villains. (I guess Talos technically doesn’t count as a villain by the end of this, but. We’re going with it.) And Carol’s commitment to helping the Skrull refugees lifts plot elements from my favorite portion of the DeConnick run, so. YEP. LOVED IT.

(I was also trying to determine if Talos’ daughter was perhaps meant to be like. a Tic expy. Did it say ‘Tic’ on the pinball machine? Or ‘Tig’? Or something else entirely?)

Loved the...mind prison? sequence. All of it. “Come as You Are,” the Great Intelligence rockin’ out in the jacket, Carol’s Big Damn Hero moment. Brilliant. Spectacular. Amazing.

“My name is Carol.” 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS

(Or does she say her full name? I can’t remember.)

And then the subsequent fight scene where Carol’s like. Simultaneously kicking butt but also enjoying all this newfound power/strength? A+++++

Favorite Visual #3: Carol sitting on the railing with the lunchbox.

Sad to see Minn-Erva go, but. Was so cool that Maria gets her own hero moment.

And then this big ol’ fight scene where Carol DESTROYS SPACESHIPS WITH HER BARE HANDS. 

Favorite Visual #4: Carol going Binary in the red, blue, and yellow suit with the helmet FLYING THROUGH SPACE, LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

All of the visuals from this portion are so on point it’s like they’re pulled straight from the comics.

Favorite Visual #5: When Carol’s staring down Ronan and she like. Does that thing, where you hit your palm with your fist? (IDK the technical term there) And there’s this awesome energy burst and AGAIN, BLUE GLOW-Y THINGS. I love.

I’m pretty sure there’s an interview where Brie Larson talked about watching Indiana Jones? And wanting to be the female equivalent of that.

WELL, that’s the movie I immediately thought of when Carol blasted Yon-Rogg into a boulder, mid-goading.

(Y’know, like the scene in Raiders where Harrison Ford was too sick/tired to do the fight choreography, so he just. Shot the bad guy.)

ALSO, when she drags his sorry butt across the desert? I was IMMEDIATELY reminded of Kara dragging Astra into the DEO.

DANVERS GIIIIRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLS

*ahem*

THE FAMILY DINNER AT THE END?????

LITERAL FOUND FAMILY OF ALIENS AND SOLDIERS AND SUPERHEROES JUST. HAVING DINNER. PLAYING UNO. WASHING DISHES AND SINGING "PLEASE MR. POSTMAN”?

Thank you, Marvel, for this beautiful gen fic material.

 WHOOPS I forgot the costume colors bit. (Admittedly confused it with the ending wherein Monica gives Carol her jacket back. Sans ketchup stain.)

So backtracking ever-so-slightly...

Let’s see if I remember this right: We get

Red and gold (Binary send-up, possibly? Or maybe the original Ms. Marvel costume?)

IDK what to call it....Lite-Brite? (♪ makin’ thi-ings with lii-iii-ight ♫) 

Black and Gold (bathing suit costume?)

White and Green (original Mar-Vel/Kree colors) 

That last one’s the only one that’s like. Obvious and deliberate. I’m just guessing with the others.

BUT CLEARLY I am ABSOLUTELY ONTO SOMETHING with the Lite-Brite.

BACK TO THE ENDING Lt. Trouble gives Carol her jacket and that’s my fav look, out of all the costume variations we see in the movie. I mean. I love the black and green, admittedly, and the helmet looks SO GOOD for being something that should be ridiculous, but my go-to answer for superhero costume design is: add a leather jacket.

Favorite Visual #6: Carol in the suit and flight jacket, floating above Earth, ready to go save the day.

AND THEN SHE’S OFF.

Ooooh, ooooooooh, but we can’t forget the scene. The scene that I’m certain ticked off The Continuity Police. (You know the types.)

See, remember when Marvel was like, ‘Carol’s the first Avenger!’ and haters were like, ‘UH HELLO IT’S STEVE????!????’ 

And then Marvel was like, oh ho ho ho, we meant LITERALLY the ENTIRE INITIATIVE IS NAMED AFTER HER CALL SIGN AND SHIELD STARTS LOOKING FOR SUPERHEROES BECAUSE OF HER ERGO SHE IS THE FIRST die mad about it.

That was so very, very satisfying to see.

(Also I guess she’s a literal Captain in the air force? If the rank on the jet is legit. Pretty sure she’s a Major in the comics, though. But I assume this change is to help sell the ‘Captain Marvel’ name.)

And then, friends. And then.

I was fully prepared to leave the theater, uncertain of when we’d next see Carol.

EVEN AS THE MID CREDITS SCENE PLAYED. I was like. ‘Well, they’re gonna cut it off before we can see anythINOHMaNTHERESHEIS!!!!!!’

‘Where’s Fury.’

*insert aesthetically pleasing keyboard smash here*

BRING ON ENDGAME.

And before we wrap up here, one final note:

The Space Stone, sought after by Trickster Gods and Mad Titans alike, was for a brief time, nothing more than a glorified furball.

FIN

(Nope, wait. One little anecdote before we go: of my core group of buddies, I am the Comics Nerd, and thus I am often consulted after we’ve watched a Marvel movie. So I had to explain that YES, Kara Danvers had the last name Danvers first, but she was adopted, and her GIVEN fake name was Linda Lee, so in all fairness, the same-name thing is a little less plagiarize-y, b/c ‘Linda Lee Danvers’ does not necessarily match up as well as ‘Kara Danvers’--which wasn’t even used until really recently--to ‘Carol Danvers’. ...Honestly, I was just really happy they called out the connection MY WORK HAS NOT BEEN IN VAIN XD )

Also, I sometimes get replies on posts like this which is totally fine BUT, I would ask that folks keep really spoiler-y stuff out of ‘em. At least for a little while.

#captain marvel #captain marvel spoilers #MAJOR SPOILERS #PLEASE BLACKLIST THIS AND SKIP IT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET #long post #hark! a text post!

[sciencespies]

How to Avoid Misinformation About COVID-19

https://sciencespies.com/nature/how-to-avoid-misinformation-about-covid-19/

How to Avoid Misinformation About COVID-19

In mid-February, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an international security conference: “We’re not just fighting an epidemic. We’re fighting an infodemic.”

As COVID-19 cases have surged across the globe, so has misinformation. According to research by the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy, every day in March 2020 an average of 46,000 new posts on Twitter linked to inaccurate or misleading information about the crisis. The rapidly changing situation means that people are naturally grasping for information about the pandemic. So what’s the best way to separate the trustworthy from the fake? Smithsonian asked experts who study science communication and misinformation what readers should keep in mind while watching the news, reading an article or scanning Facebook.

Why COVID-19 Misinformation Spreads

If you’ve found yourself unsure whether a soundbite or headline you saw or shared was true, know that you’re not alone, says Dietram Scheufele, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies science and political communication. Uncertainty and anxiety about the pandemic, combined with the political overtones and partisanship that influence how we respond to new information, create an environment ripe for misinformation. Research on political misinformation suggests emotions like anxiety and anger impact how people process fake news, which itself often goes viral due to its ability to provoke emotion. On top of that, nearly half of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center agreed in 2017 that “[t]he public doesn’t really know enough about science to understand findings in the news.”

Another fact to remember: We are all more gullible than we might think. A 2016 Pew survey found that 23 percent of Americans reported sharing fake news at one point or another. When shown untrue or misleading articles about COVID-19, only 30 percent of people recognized the news to be false, according to research published in the Washington Post by New York University and Stanford researchers.

“When we see something, the first thing we want to do is believe it,” says Reyhaneh Maktoufi, who researches misinformation as a Rita Allen Foundation Civic Science Fellow at NOVA WGBH.

But it’s easy to fight misinformation, too: Simply taking a moment to pause and assess the accuracy of the information you’re spreading helps. People are less likely to share COVID-19 misinformation after being “nudged” to consider the accuracy of an unrelated headline, according to a study researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Regina in Canada just published on a preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) server.

Maktoufi advises a three-step process: Check the source, check the author and check the content. Read on for a step-by-step guide explaining the expert-recommended way to vet news, plus guidance for what to do if someone you know shares misinformation.

Table of Contents

How do you know whether a news source is trustworthy?

If the source isn’t one you’re familiar with, then Google it to make sure it is a legitimate news organization, says Emily K. Vraga, an associate professor in mass communication at the University of Minnesota who researches health misinformation on social media. The site “Media Bias/Fact Check” rates various news organizations on “factual reporting” as well as ideological skew. Major health organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are among the most credible sources of information on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once you’ve made sure that the news source is reliable, Scheufele and Maktoufi recommend checking out the author. Consider whether the writer is a coronavirus or pandemic expert or just a scientist in a related field. If the author is a journalist, check to see what their usual beat is. Is this a health reporter with experience covering scientific topics?

Another rule of thumb: “Don’t just rely on one source,” Scheufele says. Instead, practice what communication scholars call “lateral reading” and gather information from a variety of diverse news sources. If a certain conclusion appears repeatedly in different reliable sources, that should increase your confidence in it.

How do I make sure the information in a report is legitimate? What are red flags to watch out for?

Check when the story was published. “Especially for COVID-19 [news], the date matters so much,” Vraga says, because “a lot of the facts on the ground may have changed,” like case counts.

Try to determine where the information presented is coming from. Is it from a state epidemiologist, the CDC or another trusted organization? If there’s a link to the source, click on that link to double-check the data yourself. The “click the links” rule also applies to scrolling past headlines on social media: Read the article before you share.

“Take a deep breath and be skeptical,” Vraga says, especially when you see the following red flags: too-good-to-be-true headlines or news that plays strongly to emotional cues instead of taking a level-headed approach.

What should I know about how scientific research works? How can I tell strong research from weak research?

In a 2016 National Science Board survey, 77 percent of Americans said they didn’t understand or couldn’t define the concept of a ‘scientific study.’ “Science is always an iterative, ongoing, self-correcting process,” Vraga says. Treat any single study as a blurry data point that needs further research to back it up and put it in sharper detail. The scientific community calls this reproducibility, which a 2015 National Science Foundation report defines as the “ability of a researcher to duplicate the results of a prior study using the same materials and procedures.” If this process reveals a major error in the original team’s work, which happens rarely, the research will be retracted, which signals to the scientific community that the data is flawed or unreliable. Academic journals may withdraw retracted studies from publication, but news of that retraction may not necessarily make it into previous coverage of that research in a more mainstream news outlet.

Studies are typically put through a rigorous vetting process known as peer review during which scientists who were not involved will double check the team’s results before the study is published in a reputable scientific journal. The peer-review process can take up to weeks or months, but in these unprecedented times, researchers around the world have turned away from their usual work to run a full-court press on COVID-19, expediting the pace of science. In February, a Reuters report showed that of 153 studies published on COVID-19 at the time, 92 had not yet been peer reviewed and 3 had been retracted.

Likewise, news about drug and vaccine trials should be approached with caution, since clinical trials involve multiple, time-consuming rounds of testing to ensure treatments are both safe and effective for humans.

Because science is so specialized, it’s unrealistic to expect yourself to vet a scientific study all on your own, Scheufele says. Instead, he suggests asking these questions: “Is the study peer-reviewed? Is it in a reputable journal? Do the authors work at a top-tier university? And if the study is covered by news media, what do other independent experts think of the results?”

If a study runs contrary to current scientific consensus, that warrants extra skepticism, he adds. Vraga suggests checking a study’s sample size (how many people or datapoints were involved) to know whether a study might be too small to be generalizable to the larger population. Finally, Scheufele says, “If a study makes absolute claims without any acknowledgment of uncertainties or caveats, it’s probably too good to be true.”

There are a lot of “my friend who is a healthcare provider at X hospital says,” posts circulating on social media lately. Should I trust these?

“The plural of anecdote is not data,” Scheufele says. In other words: Be wary of treating one person or one healthcare worker’s experience as broadly generalizable.

What should I know when looking at a chart, image or infographic circulating on social media?

For an image or video—such as the widely circulated video falsely claiming a dolphin had been spotted in Venetian canals when the video was actually from the southern Italian island of Sardinia—try running the photo or a video frame through a reverse image search tool like Google Images.

Both Bang Wong, who leads the Broad Institute’s data visualization group Pattern, and Alberto Cuadra, Science magazine’s lead graphics editor, encourage readers to seek out context for charts or infographics. Look for an explanation of the graphic from a reputable source, read the axis labels carefully, see where the data depicted came from and pay attention to the units of measurement. For example, cases per capita, overall cases and growth rate are three different metrics to understand which areas have severe outbreaks, but recognize that test availability—how many possibly sick people are able to get tested and counted—might skew those numbers.

How do I judge whether an information source is twisting the facts to suit a political narrative?

“Look at the content and see: Who is it benefitting?” Maktoufi says. “Is it benefiting a specific group or partisan group or company?” You can also compare statements you’re unsure about with the coverage at specialized journalistic sources (like Stat News, which focuses on health coverage) and information from career civil servants at the CDC and FDA.

What should I do if someone in my social circle shares information I know is false?

Don’t be condescending or cruel. Your friend, acquaintance or family member is likely well intentioned and anxious about the disease, just like you. Gently correct them and link to an unimpeachably credible source, Maktoufi says.

That last step is critical. A few years ago, Vraga showed hundreds of college students participating in her study simulated Facebook and Twitter feeds containing a misinformed post about the Zika virus. When the made-up commenters linked to a source (Snopes or the CDC) in their corrections, it made the students less likely to agree with the falsehood when asked about it later, whereas unsourced corrections didn’t persuade them.

You might phrase a polite correction like this, Vraga suggests: “I understand that this is scary and we’re all looking for solutions, but the best evidence is…” Go on to state exactly what that best evidence shows in case whoever reads that comment doesn’t click through on your link. Avoid restating the myth—you don’t want bad information circulating any further.

If there’s already another correcting comment, Vraga says, then back up that person, ideally by commenting yourself and linking to a distinct source. Research suggests that if you’re close to someone, your correction has a higher chance 0f sticking.

What should I do if I accidentally share inaccurate information?

If you realize you’ve already shared misinformation, Vraga says you should self-correct, ideally by deleting the original, inaccurate statement and create a new post, email or text—whichever platform you originally shared it on—with the accurate information. Alternatively, you can prominently update your original post with the correction, although people may not see the updated version on their feeds. Plus, thank the friend who tipped you off to the error.

Expert-recommended reliable sources:

Misinformation/Myth-busting pages:

The WHO maintains a “Myth Busters” page debunking COVID-19 misinformation

Researchers from the Ryerson Social Media Lab in Canada are tracking COVID-19 misinformation and matching false claims with fact-checks. As of April 8th, their tracker has 1,714 entries classified as false, misleading, unproven or manipulated.

NewsGuard lists websites that have propagated COVID-19 misinformation

Media Bias/Fact Check

Wikipedia has a fairly thorough list of “fake news” websites

Find trusted fact-checkers on this list of news organizations that part of the International Fact-Checking Network

#Nature

#Nature

[salttotasteblog]

“Great photography is a combination of beauty and intrigue.” William Steel.

I’ve filled my site with incredible images. Some stock, and some of them I technically hold rights to, despite never snapping a decent picture myself or having paid for the privilege of using them. There’s no fair use policy, I can do whatever I want with the beautiful shots, even if that means printing a poetry quote over the top and posting them to Instagram as my own creations. I’m afforded this freedom by an incredible photographer, my friend, William Steel.

View this post on Instagram

"Closed Eyes" Read the full piece on wordpress. #glennthomaspoetry #poetry #writersofinstagram #poetrycommunity #quotes #poem #love #writing #wordporn #poetsofinstagram #poet #writer #quote #writersofig #poems #quoteoftheday #words #art #poetryisnotdead #lovequotes #thoughts #quotestagram #inspirationalquotes #wordsofwisdom #writerscommunity #poets #qotd #instapoet #poetsofig #life @bymepoetryeurope @bymepoetry @bymepoetryamerica @oltmblog @cries_of_pen

A post shared by Glenn Thomas | Writer (@writtenbyglennthomas) on Jul 28, 2019 at 12:54pm PDT

  When William Met An Aspiring Rapper

I first met Will at University, and we both knew we’d never be friends. We were too different. Me, the rapper turned poet from East London, and Will, the son of a South African businessman. But we were thrown together by the struggles of freshers, in that all we did in our first year was drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol that cost more than we should’ve spent. We built a friendship on single malt scotch and Grey Goose vodka.

William’s passion for photography shone in those days, but he never expressed much of a desire to pursue his dream full-time. We spent most of our time drinking and messing around because our future careers seemed miles away, but the pub was down the road. The first time I experienced Will’s photography was in the student filled nightclubs while we all crammed onto a sticky dancefloor.

As we danced offbeat to the latest music without a care in the world, Will would crouch down and snap a selfie. He’d repeat the same shot until he managed to get a decent picture of our group. Later, he’d began jumping into a crouch and yelling, reverse angle selfie. Everyone huddled together and laughed at Will’s excitement. Back then, he experimented by having fun and still does.

One of his earliest shots came from a trip to Wales when we were both still at University. The contrast of colours makes this image one of his more visually striking, although he would argue that this isn’t one of his best pictures.

The Pursuit of Photography

Will was born in Johannesburg, but he grew up in Botswana, a country he credits with giving him the passion for the wildlife that forged his photography style. I have one of Will’s earliest practice shots of a cheetah devouring a recent kill, and to mine and Williams knowledge, it’s the only copy in existence. Which means I have a vested interest in his career. One day the original image may be worth millions.

In 2016, Will and I were joined by another friend from university on a road trip around the southern countries of Africa. On this trip, we witnessed Williams obsessive compulsion with snapping the right shot. As we drove through national parks, we’d stop for what felt like hours as Will tried to capture the perfect image of a bird, insect, giraffe, elephant or anything that appeared in a strange or unusual way.

It was during this trip that Will began to experiment more and more with different photography styles. At Khama Rhino Sanctuary we watched Will chase the stars for hours trying to capture rotating earth with a slow shutter speed to make the light appear as if shot across the night sky. Throughout Namibia, he’s focus was on the beautiful landscapes. And in the rain of Victoria Falls, the reverse angle selfie made a comeback.

I was sat next to Will in Chobe national park, and he managed to capture my version of this image, but Will deleted it to save professional face, either that or mine was so out of focus, he worried someone might have found it on his camera and think he’d taken it. The Daily Mail featured this image on their website.

Wildlife Photography

There’s a wealth of wildlife in African national parks, but most of it is under threat of extinction. Wills images help remind the world that these animals are worth our protection. Our abnormal human activities have destroyed habitats and disrupted the natural order, but the fightback begins with charities and wildlife photographers showing us the damage we’ve caused.

One of my favourite images involves two cheetahs exploring Will’s GoPro camera. The picture shows the inquisitive nature of growing animals, in which all humans can relate. All of us, growing up, search for new experiences, and we still do as we grow. After all, isn’t that why we dream about travelling?

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The "is this thing recording" face.

A post shared by Wildlife | Photography (@williamsteelphotography) on Feb 28, 2019 at 12:30am PST

Travel and Street Photography

Williams’ Photography branched out from wildlife into street photography as he began to explore abstract styles of photography. Will still loves wildlife and wants to spread a positive message about our world, but he can’t spend his life in natural parks, despite a despite yearning to live amongst animals. However, without the wildlife, Will stills feels a compulsion to use his camera.

From his exploration of streets around him, and the world, Will began recording his adventures around the world. It was an extension of a portfolio he first began exploring during our road trip around Southern Africa. Unfortunately, he lost the hard drive with most of the memories from our adventures which means his work doesn’t feature in our shared Travel Tales. Since then, Will has documented his travels around South East Asia on thepatienttravellers.com.

Accomplishments

Will devotes a lot of time to his photography. When he isn’t stalking wildlife, looking for a new shot, he’s scouring the internet and magazines looking for competitions to enter. He has regularly entered the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, and his work has earned him numerous awards. His most recent award was in the Best Portrait category of the Bird Photographer of the Year 2019 competition.

In addition to awards, William has seen his work published in numerous books and magazines. A comprehensive list of his publications can be found here, but his proudest publication is the Remembering Elephants and Remembering Rhinos series by Wildlife Photographers United. The group aim’s to spread awareness and protect wildlife from the destruction of their habitats and poaching.

Will took a break from publishing and promoting his own images to work for National Geographic Film Unit where he was a part of the team who put together the Savage Kingdom documentary series. This role earned him a listing on IMDb. However, despite the numerous accreditations and publications, Will’s proudest moment was becoming an ambassador for Sigma South Africa.

There’s a story behind this natural-looking image. Will left our group to photograph a street he’d seen earlier on and met this incredible man. He’d looked up and found William taking pictures. The man began posing for Will, but after a conversation with Will about Vietnam. the man agreed to return to his natural pose. Will and the Man were all smiles afterwards, happy with the incredible image.

What’s Next for The Professional Photographer and The Rapper Turned Poet From East London?

Both Will and I are dedicated to exploring the world and documenting our adventures through our respective arts. I have numerous travel tales that feature Will, and I’ve found myself the subject of many of his photographic experiments.

We’ve climbed sand dunes in Namibia, got lost in the Medinas of Morocco, and I almost drown in Vietnam. We’re currently looking at travelling around South America and I’ve even begun learning Spanish in preparation.  Whether these plans come to fruition or not, Will and I remain great friends who continue to push each other and look for interesting ways to work together.

Do you remember that time you jumped off a boat at Ha Long Bay, forgetting you can’t swim?

Thanks for reading, I hope you found it interesting. You can find more about William Steel on Instagram and Facebook. But if you want to learn more about him or buy a picture for your living room, you can find him at www.williamsteelphotography.com.

  William Steel Photography: Profiled by A Writer “Great photography is a combination of beauty and intrigue.” William Steel. I’ve filled my site with incredible images.

#africa #blog #blogger #blogging #explorer #literature #photography #sigma #travel #travel writing #wildlife #Writing

[rthemars]

My Multiverse-Inspired Animation

I have created a stop-motion animation inspired by the ‘multiverse’ topic, and to me this meant displaying weird imagery, bright colours and space elements. I think the outcome is really exciting and intriguing to watch, it captures the viewer so well it’s like an illusion/trance which could be recognised with the beginning especially. The zooming through the colours section could be an animation in itself, because with this alone you could create a never ending tunnel of colours. However I had other ideas of strange, merging objects and to let them shine I chose not to incorporate a bright, busy background at the same time, otherwise less concentration would be on this aspect of the animation. 

Before making the animation itself, I had to find and create the imagery that’s incorporated. I first drew with pencil for a rough shape and went over it with black pen, this made it more bold as did adding colour. I used sharpie to show bright, block colours which was perfect for lips, as for the eye I used colour pencils for softer, fading shades.

For the background I was originally going to use just bright colours or patterns, however as I was searching for patterns I realised I wanted something in the middle. I then thought photographs would be perfect because if I use one with lots of negative space, it will not be too plain and nor too busy. To find these images I searched through pexels.com as they’re all copyright free, and looked for things coloured orange, blue, yellow and pink. Once I chose these images I increased the colour vibrancy, using both hue/saturation and colour balance on photoshop, printing them off on A4 paper.

I also had planned a part of my animation to include a rotating world, and my initial idea was to draw lots of worlds turned bit by bit. However I thought of a more efficient and accurate way to display this, which was to screenshot the earth on GoogleEarth.com and turn it a little bit every time. Once I had the screenshots, I put them all into photoshop and cut them out with the elliptical marquee tool, and sized them with the same width as the lips.

Next I had to set up a space for photographing and putting together the frames,  for lighting I got three lamps and surrounded the area of where I’d photograph. This worked really well because not only did it stop any change of lighting, it also hit the paper from every side which spread the light evenly and minimised shadows. As for the phone I balanced the camera off the edge of a table, this is essential so your frames are taken in the same place each time, making it smoother.

When it came to the actual making of the animation, I had to try and think of a way that I could create what I’d envisioned. The process of putting it together and photographing each frame took me two hours alone, the including the time for making the imagery involved I would say 4 hours total. For the beginning I displayed the expanding colours by layering them, ripping a small hole in the middle that expands one frame and layer at a time. Every layer that begins to open shows through another, and by having your attention on the newer colours it gives the illusion of them spreading outwards.

Next I revealed an eye underneath the orange layer, which will then slowly close. First I stuck the eye onto the skin layer with blu-tack to make sure it stays in the same place, then for the closing eye I traced over the shape of the eye and cut it out with the same skin colour. This was then cut across the middle to represent top and bottom eye lids, with these I placed them over the eye and cut into them bit by bit, taking a photo each time as if it was opening. However I wanted to show an eye closing so to do this I simply reversed the order of the photographs, much easier than cutting out a new shape each time.

After the eye closing I wanted to merge it into big red lips, I did this by laying over the same skin colour paper and cutting it out from the middle bit by bit. I made sure to line it up where the eye was so it shifted smoothly, however I started revealing it in a straight line which made the transition less fluid. If I could improve on one thing it would be this, to do this I would cut along the line of the lips rather than just straight across as it would look more fitting for revealing.

Following, I showed the earth coming out of an opening mouth and to do this I repeated the same process for the closing eye, but instead I cut along the line of the lips and around the shape of the world. The world also had to be cut down for some frames, otherwise it would show through the outer side of the lips and ruin the effect of it coming out the mouth. 

My final section of the animation is of a UFO flying towards the rotating world and crashing into it, causing the world to explode. This explosion was another part that I photographed backwards, rather than cutting out a new shape every time small to big I went from the whole frame to a tiny spot in the middle. I chose to use the same image as the beginning frame for the explosion, because it created a loop so the video could go round and round.

[raendown]

Chapter 5 is up and ready to start some drama! As always, accompanied by the amazing art from the even more amazing @thetoxicstrawberry​!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 2361 Story summary: Accidents happen, right? But not usually for Tobirama. When an experiment goes awry, he is left taking care of Madara in a new furry form. As the small dog works his way into his heart, Tobirama finds himself reluctant to turn him back.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Tobirama stared at the page in front of him, his calligraphy brush hovering less than an inch away from leaving a large blot of ink on his desk top. No matter how much he stared, however, the scroll in front of him didn’t change. He blinked, wondering if he might be hallucinating, but it still stayed the same. It was perfect. It was ready. It was the solution to all his problems.

He didn’t want to use it.

Hashirama had sent a team of Inuzuka out to search for Madara only two days ago and Tobirama had since buried himself in his seal work out of guilt. Now here he sat with the finished product, the jutsu which should return Madara to his human self, and he found himself wishing he had never created it. Stupid though it might be, he wanted more time. He wished he could have dawdled, could have ignored the unhappy feeling that gnawed at his stomach whenever he thought of his brother’s sad expression. Instead he had achieved what he had set out to do – and in the process incidentally created the answer he had been looking for before this mess had even started. This wasn’t just a reversal for the problem he had created. It could also function as the infiltration jutsu he had originally been trying to create.

The problem had been solved by a particularly clever invention he wished he had thought of at a different time: double layered seals, one visible seal which activated another hidden seal underneath. It took quite a long time to inscribe and it was surely not something that would ever be used when speed was necessary. But if one had a proper amount of time even he had to admit that the uses for this new method of seal activation were nearly endless.

His eyes turned to the fluffy Pomeranian chasing his own tail as he thought about how sometimes his own genius came back to bite him in the ass. Madara stopped spinning circles when Tobirama stood from his chair. He barked a few times and came over to dance up on his paws, asking for attention. Tobirama bent down to pick him up, cradling the small body gently against his own chest.

“I suppose there’s little point in delaying the inevitable,” he murmured. Madara looked at him with his tongue lolled out, his doggy grin bright and happy. “You won’t remember any of this but I will. I’ll never forget a minute of it. Thank you – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – but thank you for making my days a little less lonely. It was nice, you being here.” He stopped for a moment when Madara squirmed around and licked him right up the center of his face. Instead of jerking away like he normally would he simply stood still with a wry expression and let the puppy shower him with affection. When it was over and Madara yipped at him he smiled. “I’ll miss you Dara-chan,” he whispered.

With those words he set the puppy down on the ground and lifted the scroll from his desk. He squatted down to lay it flat on the floor, hesitated one last time, and then called the escaping Madara back over to him. The last image he had of his little Dara-chan was a happy face rushing towards him, puffy fur flying out in all directions. He would have given absolutely anything to have possessed a Sharingan in that moment so he could immortalize it in his memory forever. Then tiny paws stepped down on his carefully prepared seal and a brilliant light flared.

Tobirama closed his eyes against the light, his heart clenching at the terrified bark that slowly turned in to a disoriented groan. When he dared to peek Uchiha Madara sat sprawled on his backside, his head hanging low and his eyes closed while he swayed from side to side. He looked just as he should and no worse the wear for his furred adventures. Just as the older man lifted a hand to the side of his head Tobirama stepped around him and pressed two fingers in to the base of his skull, sending a quick pulse of chakra behind them. With a soft sigh Madara slumped back to the floor, blissfully unconscious.

For a minute Tobirama simply stood there and stared, taking in all the features of the man at his feet. It had been almost two weeks since he had seen him in human form and he always seemed to forget how pouty his bottom lip was, the curve of his round chin, how long his hair had grown. His locks swirled around him like spiraling pools of ink that – were he standing – would nearly reach the back of his thighs. Tobirama could not honestly say he had missed this face but he could admit to himself that he didn’t see him quite the same way anymore. It was regrettable that he could think of no way for him to cultivate a friendship with Madara. It seemed impossible now after so many years of constantly being at each other’s throats.

Before he could stop himself Tobirama found his knees bending, his hand reaching down to stroke the hair from Madara’s eyes and softly pet his head one last time. When he realized what he had just done he forcibly shook himself from his reverie. Then he hefted the unconscious man in to his arms and left his work space.

Sneaking through the forest that surrounded Konoha was easy when Tobirama had been the one who created the patrol routes and schedules. He knew exactly who was on duty today and where their laziness would provide him with an opportunity. Perhaps he should bring it up to them but that would have to wait for another day when it would not call in to question just what he was doing out here at the time. He carried the unconscious man in his arms to a spot where he would be found soon and turned to leave. Then he stopped. He eyed the body and tilted his head. Something was off.

Kneeling down, Tobirama grabbed up a handful of leaves and ground them in to Madara’s hair, snarling the locks in to impossible tangles to give the effect of strenuous activity with no time for grooming. He darted a good distance away to gather a few handfuls of dirt and artfully smudged them in to the man’s armor and across his face. Surveying his work, he decided that it looked much more believable now. Obviously Madara had been wandering through the woods and passed out here, so close to home. As an afterthought he took a kunai from his thigh holster and made a few scratches in the dull red armor, giving Madara the appearance that he had seen battle. Partly because he knew it would make the deception more genuine. Partly because he knew it would drive Madara crazy not knowing what had happened despite the fact that something so obviously had.

Just as he started to rise back to his feet, Tobirama sensed the patrol coming his way. Knowing he could feel them long before they could feel him in return, he turned and hurried back the way he had come, slipping out of the patrol’s range and heading back home.

And he didn’t look back once, no matter how much he wanted to.

-

Hashirama was in the archives having a lively argument with the Hatake woman whose file system he kept messing up when the news reached him that Madara had been found unconscious only an hour from the east gate. He didn’t even hear the woman screeching about the papers he knocked over as he flew out the door, blood thundering in his ears. Fear and relief filled him in equal measure. Madara had been found; his friend had come home. But was he okay? The messenger knew little when he questioned them as they raced across the rooftops, only that Madara had been found unconscious and looked ‘a little banged up’.

He made his way to the hospital where Madara had been taken. His first order was to send out trackers with instructions to find out what direction he had been coming from and if there had been others present. His second order was for someone to tell him his friend’s medical status.

“He’s being examined as we speak, Hokage-sama,” one of the medic-nin told him. “He has no obvious physical wounds but he was found unconscious and has not awakened yet. We’re checking for poisons and other less obvious ailments.” She reassured him that the most likely scenario was a simple case of chakra exhaustion. Hashirama thanked her and settled himself in the waiting area until he was given the result of their examination.

They came less than an hour later. No wounds, no poisons, only a thoroughly ruffled and exhausted man who passed out when he was almost home. Hashirama was overwhelmed with relief that his friend appeared to be uninjured. Still, the situation struck him as strange. Madara was a stubborn man and a strong one as well; he was the kind to keep pushing forward until he reached his destination. It wasn’t like him to almost make it. It made little sense and he was impatient for the Uchiha to wake up and tell him where the hell he had been for the past two weeks.

After sending word for the Inuzuka search party who had been sent out two days ago to come back home, Hashirama settled himself at Madara’s beside. He looked peaceful in a way the Senju had never seen him, completely relaxed without a single stress line between his eyes. As if he had been on some secret vacation instead of missing who knows where doing who knows what. It was odd to look at considering his usual expression even in sleep was furrowed brows and a downturned mouth, anger shadowed behind every expression even in the rare moments when he found happiness or amusement. Hashirama loved his friend dearly but he did know that he was not a happy man. His life had no peace, no center. For Hashirama, he found peace in his wife and his family. After Izuna had moved out on his own Madara had seemed almost set adrift, wandering through each day as if searching for something to build his life around. He was a man who needed purpose – a personal one, more than just the village.

Shaking these thoughts from his head, Hashirama cheered himself up by chatting out loud to the unconscious man in the bed before him, telling him all the latest gossip that he would have no interest in when he awoke. He tried hard not to worry about what answers might come to him when his friend was finally able to tell him where he had been. Worry, he knew, would not change things and so Hashirama prattled on.

-

When night fell across them all, fingers of darkness closing over the sky and cooling the temperature of the air, the infamous Senju brothers were sitting at opposite ends of the village feeling very opposite things. Where Hashirama was trying hard to be hopeful and positive, Tobirama was instead striving to close himself in and forget that the past two weeks had happened. The infiltration seal had been only a pet project and not really meant to take precedence over his other duties. Now with it out of the way he had been trying to spend his time catching up with all of the things he‘d been falling woefully behind on. The trouble he was having was that he could not concentrate.

His work space and his home were both so distractingly quiet that he had actually dug out the radio Touka gave him years ago as an unwanted gift. Music wasn’t really what he wanted to listen to but it covered the sounds of silence where his ears strained for the skittering of tiny paws or the panting of a small wet tongue. He was frustrated with himself, angry that he couldn’t seem to get any work done.

He gave in only when midnight had passed and he was forced to admit that sitting there and staring at the paperwork before him would accomplish nothing. When he stumbled through his house and fell in to bed his limbs sprawled to take up as much space as possible. He wasn’t sharing his mattress with any tiny nuisances now and he didn’t have to worry about accidentally kicking any fluffy bodies. He almost defiantly claimed his own space again. Then he stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide open as he avoided thinking about the disturbingly empty sensation in his chest or the cold feeling of his hip.

Despite how late it was, sleep eluded him. Tobirama shifted and squirmed, tossed and turned, ending up on his side with a spare pillow clutched tightly to his chest. But no matter what he did he couldn’t seem to sink down in to restful oblivion. Something was missing and knowing what it was didn’t mean he was willing to think about it. Just because he had admitted to himself that he would miss his little Dara-chan didn’t mean he would also admit how it was already affecting him.

His sharp ears could pick up the ticking of the clock in the hallway, counting each horrible second until finally he sat up and glared through the open doorway, squinting in to the darkness and waiting for a beam of moonlight to fall across the clock face. It was three o’clock in the morning. He had been laying here for a little over two hours and yet he was no closer to sleep than if it were three o’clock in the afternoon.

With a snort of disgust, Tobirama threw the blankets off his legs and got out of the bed. Even the false illusion of productivity was better than staring aimlessly in to the shadows and letting the loneliness gnaw at his heart.

#speak softly and carry a pomeranian #rae writes #art by thetoxicstrawberry #madatobi #madara #tobirama #fanart #naruto shippuden