#when i hit 50 followers or so i might do an event

[asleepinawell]

since i tempted a decent handful of my followers into fallen london i decided as recompense to make a guide/hints/tips thing to a few early on things that might not be as easy to pick up on. the first couple may be a little more obvious but some of the later ones are more obscure. enjoy, delicious friends!

1) Use Plans!!!! That little bookmark icon on the top right of an action will save it to your plans page so you can easily reference if you can't complete it now. great for remembering what you were doing and how many items you need. extremely good for ambitions

2) Use Your Opportunity Deck. It's easy to get caught up in the making your name stuff, but there's a lot of good and important things in your opportunity deck you can miss out on. Bronze cards often help open little stories even if it's not immediately obvious. You get a ten free actions card once a week in there too

3) Look Through the Social Activities. There's a lot of stuff buried in social activities, some of it not in the most logical places. You can resign from your current profession under send a message to a contact. If a friend sent you a letter to let you boost a skill you have to use it under epistolary matters -> sort through incoming mail. And more.

4) Training Professions. Enquirer, Minor Poet, Pickpocket, Tough. You don't have to do anything with these, they just give you a weekly boost in the associated stat when time the healer rolls around. Once you hit 70 on a stat the profession will no longer boost it and you can resign and pick up a new one for free. After you are a person of some importance you can look into getting a fancier job with more perks.

5) Favourable Circumstances. You may have noticed you get something called favourable circumstances every week with time the healer. This is an item in your inventory under curiosity. Its primary use is to force draw a specific opportunity card. When you're just starting out the best use may be to arrange a meeting with your contacts, which lets you draw a connected card of your choice (like urchins, hell, etc). This lets you get a favor right away so it's good to use it every week.

6) DON'T GO TO POLYTHREME. Look, I know the option is right there in the docks but it is a very confusing area and not that useful at low levels. I got stuck there once early on and may be slightly traumatized. Definitely go there later, maybe when you have your own ship and get the map for it.

7) Mrs Chapmans Boarding House. This is in Spite. The options there all give you a few of a resource that's often a pain in the ass to grind other ways. The amount scales with your base watchful. It is just a nice little free way to get some resources. The items available change every week on a four week rotation. See the season in soup guide on the wiki for more info.

8) Mr Chimes Grand Clearing Out Activities. This was an event that happened in the past but left behind a few activities that are unparalleled ways to gain some resources. These are: Descend to the Underclay Quarter in Spite, The Spider Symposium (head into the cellars) in the Singing Mandrake, Seeking Documents in the Sunken Embassy in Moloch Street, Hunt Bees in the University, Brawl with Dockers in the Blind Helmsman (not sure if the was part of mr chimes but the mechanics are similar), and LB Industries in the Blind Helmsman. They all work by gathering a certain amount of some item through the storylets and then handing it in for a resource reward. You generally get one nice reward and the rest is paid out in a low level resource, making it a decent grind for echoes as well (i use moloch st for that).

9) Expedition Supplies for your base camp. Descend to the Underclay Quarter mentioned in the point above is a fast way to get strong backed labor to cash in for supplies during your watchful making your name (and after). Go there, work with unfinished men, get 50 convincing falsehoods (the second option gives you 25 a pop) and send an unfinished man to spite for labor x3. This makes watchful myk so so much easier.

10) Buy Gear. All resources have a use so don't go spending them all like crazy, but it really is worth spending some to buy gear, yes, even +2 gear because if you have +2 in every slot that is a nice boost at a low level. Holiday events are also a great way to get a ton of very good free gear.

11) CP. Change points, basically XP. You need as much CP as the next level to reach that level. So you need 3CP to get to level 3, 4CP for level 4, etc (this caps at 70). You get more CP for succeeding in things that you have a lower chance of success for. 60-90% chances are a nice range to aim for. Also! You get CP for failing which also scales with your percentage chance of success. So if you have a 0% chance of success you may get way more CP than succeeding on something you had a high chance of success for (example: a 90% success gives you 2CP, a 0% failure gives you 4CP... this is why the weasel of woe is good).

12) What are the Bizarre/Dreaded/Respectable stats on gear used for? So you may have noticed that you sometimes get points of Making Waves. Once you become a person of some importance you have the ability to cash in making waves to get a stat called Notability. Notability can be used for getting advanced professions, upgraded lodgings, and more. BDR gear lowers the amount of making waves you need per level of notability. They're also used in checks later on much the way your base stats are and they have uses at the bone market when you get there. Basically, grab gear with them if you can but don't worry too much about how it all works now. It will make more sense when you get there.

13) Cross-Conversion Carousel. This is a slightly more advanced thing that you don't need to know about yet but can be very very useful even at low levels. You know how you can click on most resources in your inventory and combine a lot of low level ones into a few high level ones? There's a bunch you can also cross convert, meaning convert to a different category of item of the same level. These are: brilliant souls, tales of terror, compromising documents, memories of light, zee ztories, strangling willow absinthe, whisper-satin scrap, journal of infamy, correspondence plaques, mysteries of the elder continent, incendiary gossip, and memories of distant shores. You need 50 of one to convert it and you get 51 of the item you convert it to.

What this means is if you have 50 of ANY of these, you can turn it into 50 of any other by converting it around the loop until you get the one you need. This often saves you from having to grind items that can be annoying to get (mrs chapman gives several of these too to help you get the initial amount). ALSO if you notice some of the conversions give making waves which can be a decent way to grind them. See the wiki page here for more info.

14) Last but definitely not least: the wiki is your best friend. It has guides for everything. It tells you what every single action does. It tells you where to find resources. It has terrifying math graphs. Use it. Love it.

And there is also the fifth city wiki which has lore on it. It contains MASSIVE spoilers, but the lore of fallen london is obscure and spread out across multiple games now so sometimes you just wanna know wtf everyone is talking about.

15) Don't Look In Wells!!!!!!! Just. Do not. (Hunters Keep well is an exception. It is a very nice well).

#fallen london #flmp #mp #i feel like i forgot something important.... #there's just so much

[socpens]

hey scorpy! ive been following you for a while now and love your streams :) I'm in video production stuff and love hearing about set filming kinda stuff youve done! did you go to high school/college for it? did u do any tv production stuff in school? i know you mentioned youd go to local indie wrestling shows and just take pictures with your film camera, were/are you ever approached by local places for a paid position for that kinda stuff, or is it just something you really like to do?

i had 0 professional or academic experience with video stuff until i went to uni. all my video editing experience was from making dumb videos from my mid teens to early 20s in my free time

a lot of the video/photo work i still do is unpaid or underpaid, because it's something i do on the side for fun and not for money. i would just show up to concerts or wrestling shows with gear and film, or dm them before the show asking for access to the show in exchange for free work, or send like 40 emails to a bunch of different people asking to shoot lol. for me it's just a way to capture something cool for something i'm interested in and i don't really care about making money off of it. obviously if disney hit me up id be like show me the cash but i mostly work with small musicians or local promotions so its not that important. also it tends to give me free access to festivals & events so i just consider that the payment. sometimes i'll get contacted to do video promo/marketing work for a company and theyre willing to pay and i'll do it, but 90% of the time i'm doing stuff for cheap or free because i want to, so it makes sense that i be the one to reach out

i'd say anyone wanting to get into doing this stuff for fun, just bother people. whenever i get the chance to shoot a festival set it's because i've sent 50 emails to different artists and dmed a bunch of people (you dont need a platform either, i was doing this when i had 100 followers, your work will speak to the right people). just spam. out of the 50 you might get 1 maybe, a bunch of nos and mostly no responses, but of those maybes and nos if they took the time to reply that means they saw your stuff and considered it, which is better than nothing, and at the cost of sending a bunch of emails/dms thats a pretty good deal. costs u nothing

[xkotaro16w]

Congrats on 500+ followers! For the event, numbers 21, 28, 30 the NSFW section please? Oh, and the reader is gender neutral! Thanks! :)

—𝟻00+ 𝙵𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝—

Prompt: 21. Breeding, 28. Size, 30. Heat.

Pairing: Leona Kingscholar x GN!S/O.

CW: N/SFW, breeding, size kink, heat cycle, swearing, overstimulation (mentioned), begging (mentioned), grammatical error, OOC.

A/N: omg... OMG THIS COMBO KJWEBAMGWJBAGKJWBAKJGB ꒰ •⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝• ꒱ THIS IS 2 MUCH 4 ME MJHBASJEABGWBAIBAJGBA ꒰ᐢ⸝⸝•༝•⸝⸝ᐢ꒱⸒⸒ THX A LOT ANON & I HOPE U LIKE THIS KJEBAGBKJAGBAJWBGA ₍^⸝⸝> ·̫ <⸝⸝ ^₎

21. BREEDING

Gosh, Leona has breeding kink. That’s it. He wants to mark you inside and outside. Make you full with his seed. Fill you up like there’s no tomorrow. Look, this man will not cum inside you only once. ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH. Remember this very well!

He’ll make sure for you beg him to stop because you’re full with his cum. Of course, he’ll ask your permission first. If you want him to wear a condom, then he’ll respect your choice. If you want to take a pill or don’t want him to not wear any condoms, THAT’S IT, GOODBYE TO YOUR SANITY AND YOUR BACK. If you have breeding kink as well, oh, he’ll be crazy to fill you up.

Hold on, you want to try to breed him? Ask the lion boy NOW. Go on, don’t be shy.

Leona loves to breed you and with your permission, he’ll do it over and over again until he’s satisfied.

This lion loves to breed you with his cub, it’s no doubt. He’ll breed you over and over until he knows you’re already full or receive enough of his cum. Of course, he won’t let you go not until you carry his cub.

The tip of his manhood touches and hit the same sweet spot again and again, you could feel his hot breath on your neck. He releases all of his cum inside you. Once there’s a drop leaks out, he immediately pushes his manhood back into you.

“Nnhng- I won’t let it leak out, not even a drop…”

28. SIZE

Hm, Leona has a little size kink. A little or more. This man is crazy about the size differences between the two of you. He just... Wants to ruin you and your hole so bad. If you’re smaller compare to him, be prepared, he CAN ruin you, your mind, your hole. 

If you’re bigger than him, oh, you can ruin him, right? Ruin him and dominate him. He has pride but why don’t you try to spoil him and ruin him instead, hm? He becomes a cute little lion.

As you can see, Leona has a little bit of size kink. A little or more. He can destroy you or you destroy him. Now, choose.

You, you’re a small herbivore compare to a huge lion like him, he loves how tiny you are. His size and yours have a huge difference, which makes him has the urge to manhandle you in bed, it woken up his predator side.

You vision becomes blurry due to the tears, his huge firm body is towering your small figure, just like a predator catching a small prey. His huge manhood keeps torturing your small hole like it’s nothing. As he grins at you, he leans closer to whisper.

“Fuck… You’re so fucking tight, I might ruin this lil’ hole~”

30. HEAT

Even the beastmen have their own heat cycle, that means Leona has that time of the year as well. When Leona is in the heat cycle, he skips class more often than usually. His mood is also worse than before due to the heat. Also, fellow beastmen could smell his heat easily which is annoying for him.

He gives you 2 choices, lose your sanity or keep your sanity safe. If you choose to lose your sanity, that mean you’ll have a sexual intercourse with him in his heat cycle. Look, he’ll overstimulate you, this man could last very long. Lion’s heat last for 4-7 days, a lion could mate for 50 times every 24 hours. This lion will breed you. So? Good luck. 

If you choose to keep your sanity safe, he won’t see you at all. Your smell affected his heat because you’re his mate. So, he won’t come to see you around and respect your choice.

Leona in heat is scary for the Savannaclaw dorm, also dangerous for everyone and you. He loses his temper easier than usual. And you, well, to be honest, good luck.

It’s time for the heat cycle for him, ever since morning, he was in a really foul mood, that mood went away when you showed up to his room and ready to take care of him. The lion didn’t waste no time and pounce onto you right away.

He couldn’t stop thrusting into your hole, even if you cum, he immediately continues to thrust again afterwards. It feels like it’s not enough for him, his seed hasn’t fill you up properly. His mind is hazy due to the heat.

“My cum is filling you up~ But… It’s not enough, aight?~”

I DO NOT OWN TWISTED WONDERLAND & DO NOT REPOST MY WORKS.

#kotaro's work #kotaro's event #leona kingscholar #leona kingscholar x reader #leona #leona x reader #leona kingscholar smut #twst leona #twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland smut #twst x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #twst imagines #twst headcanons #twst smut #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst

[bearhugsandshrugs]

Bearhugsandshrugs Update – April '24: Discord, beta reader match ups, WIPs, book writing!

Hey all, it's been a while since I shared an update!

TL;DR: Updates on fics, community things, and my life!

Last time I told you about the book proposal I wrote for my agent, and I managed to complete that and submit it! Even better news was that she liked it. So I will refine parts of the story I wrote to incorporate her feedback, and then in a month or so it'll go out to publishing houses in the hopes that someone buys it! Keep your fingers crossed for me so your girl gets published :)

Admin: Discord Server, Community, Pinned Post

In case you missed it: I launched a discord server where we hangout to talk about Gort and writing. Last week we finished the first writing buddy match up, where I paired six writers with a buddy so they can beta each other's fics. It made me super happy that the community came together in that way!

There will also be a super cool event coming soon that @littleplasticrat came up with, I'll share more on that next week when I have more headspace to give this the hype post it deserves. Just teasing a bit: it does involve Gorty and fashion :3

I also published a new lore & theory masterlist for BG3 and I'm working on compiling the drabbles and headcanon lists, too.

WIPs

In March I already told you that I was moving all WIPs to May, maybe even June. Since I'll be traveling in May, I might or might not have time to work on the WIPs.

Worthy Chapter 3: Structure is drafted. ETA hopefully in May

Folie Chapter 7: I scrapped the entire structure. While I'm motivated to write Raph and Haarlep again, I'm not particularly fond of my original idea so I have to redo the last chapter, ETA probably June

Durgetash series (concept linked) and Raphael series (concept linked): on hold for now. Neither of them grabbed my attention long enough for me to do more with it.

There's one fic/art trade I'm going to write for @tatterings and it's likely either going to be Astarion or monster fucking. So keep an eye out for that.

Series

Both MAD and Gorsimp are continuing! I'm sketching out Act 3 for MAD which we're about to enter. Due to life stuff I changed to posting schedule to every two weeks for MAD, while Gorsimp continues to update 1-2x a week (mostly thanks to @bloodlessbhaalbabe's incredible discipline on keeping us on a schedule).

And in more MAD news, I made a playlist for that fic! Give it a listen if you want to cry.

Other stuff

I'm slowly coming back online after a few really bad months of physical and emotional health turmoil. I'm okay for now and I've been taking care of myself, creating some distance from the fandom to protect my peace of mind, and I'll probably continue to take it slow for a while.

Last time I said I'd do another giveaway when I hit 1k followers. Since I've barely been on I haven't made much progress – it's about 50 followers or so away, but this blog isn't really growing right now. Guess I'm getting a much needed break from taking on too many WIPs :D anyway, I just wanted to say it's still on my mind, but I don't particularly feel the need to promote it because it'll happen when it happens.

Something cool to celebrate in the meantime: Folie à Deux hit over 1,000 kudos on AO3! Crazy to me!!! Thank you all so much. I can't believe that many people pressed the kudos button on my unhinged monster fucking fantasies <3 And to give you a peak behind the curtain here are the non-public stats for that fic:

Last but not least: If you do want to show me some love consider tipping me on Ko-fi? I promise for every coffee you buy me I'll share a pic of that beverage on here or the discord!

Hope you all take care of yourselves!

– Em

#bearhugsandshrugs #pinned #bearhugsandshrugs update #m.a.d. #gorsimp #my writing #worthy #folie a deux #fic writing #bg3 fic

[nanowrimo]

5 Tips for Completing Your NaNoWriMo Novel Draft

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Freewrite, a 2022 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a dedicated drafting device designed just for writers, free of distractions. Today, comedian/writer Natalie Kim and Freewrite staff member Colin Butts share a few tips for helping you reach the end of your first draft this November:

Hello from Freewrite!  We’re thrilled to be taking part in the 2022 NaNoWriMo challenge. If you’re unfamiliar, we make dedicated drafting devices for writers without the distraction—or temptation—of browsers, email, apps, or notifications so you can get into and stay in writing flow. When it is time to edit, your drafts seamlessly sync with the cloud for export into Scrivener, Final Draft, Word, Google Docs, or your software of choice.

At the core of Freewrite’s design philosophy is an encouragement to move you forward. Intentionally lacking editing capabilities, Freewrite drafting devices help writers write more, not better. In this case, quantity trumps quality.

Ok, enough about Freewrite. How about insight from 2020 NaNoWriMo participant Natalie Kim about her experience drafting her project and what tips she has for you going in:

1. Make it a ritual

For NaNoWriMo in November 2020 I committed to writing after dinner, no matter what. Once my butt sank into our cat-scratched chair, my fingers immediately danced across my Freewrite keyboard and did not stop until I hit 1000 words. A car filled with clowns could have crashed into my living room and I would continue typing.

Also, there is no question that writing on the Freewrite helped me reach 50,000+ words. Had I used my laptop to write I would have 50+ browser tabs open, searching for “JUST ONE MORE THING”.

With the Freewrite it was just me and the words.

2. Always move forward

I remember the advice an instructor in a graduate film writing class said about the first draft. He said: “Never go back and edit your first draft while you are writing it. Always move forward”. I followed his advice and I did not read what I had written. I gave it the cold shoulder and moved on.

3. Guard your mind from the noise

Try an experiment during NaNoWriMo: Refrain from consuming media like podcasts, episodic shows or mindlessly scrolling social media on your phone. 

And before you throw your sneaker at me, hear me out.

Your mind is a valuable resource that must be protected from the mediocre din of every day society. You never know where your next precious idea will appear: walking back from the coffee shop, loading the dishwasher or driving back from the mechanic. Our greatest ideas emerge when we have a clear mind; free from other people’s ideas and voices. 

4. When you’ve reached 50,000 words

In Stephen King’s book, On Writing, King says that when you finish the first rough draft you need distance from it. King believes that if you read the first draft too soon you will be tempted to tinker with it. You might think it is harmless to tinker but it ultimately results in your work looking become a loaf of bread vivisected by a toddler: a doughy, crumbly mess.

Instead give the rough draft some breathing space. Then come back to it.

5. In conclusion

Please do feel free to use the helpful advice and throw out the rest. Go forth with confidence and be steadfast with your writing. 

50,000 words, here you come!

Warmly,

@NatalieKimNYC

Don’t forget to check out Freewrite’s special discount offer for NaNoWriMo writers! 

Natalie Kim is a comedian who likes to remind everyone that we are not as different as we think we are. This summer, she was a resident of St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency for Women and performed in clubs around New York City. She is currently working on a collection of humorous essays about being the tough-talking, loud mouth kid from Suffolk County, Long Island.

As Head of Marketing for Freewrite, Colin Butts loves hearing from creative writers about their ideas and stories in development. Helping to provide a product that removes barriers for drafting artists makes his work deeply purposeful. Colin loves to read, is starting his own first short story, and enjoys adventure travel, yoga, and video games when he’s not busy in the literary world.

#nanowrimo #writing #nanowrimo 2022 #writing advice #by nano sponsor #freewrite #natalie kim #colin butts

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Life Is a Cabaret! The Shimmering Kander and Ebb Classic Heads Back to Broadway Starring Eddie Redmayne

BY ADRIENNE MILLER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIEN MARTINEZ LECLERC

STYLED BY HARRY LAMBERT

March 5, 2024

When I was 15 years old, I saw Cabaret for the first time, at a community theater in northeast Ohio. Though I considered myself sophisticated in important ways (I recall that I was wearing a wide-leg Donna Karan bodysuit that evening), my experience as a theatergoer was then limited to The Sound of Music and Ice Capades: Let’s Celebrate. I wonder if my parents, who had season tickets to the theater, knew that the show wasn’t exactly “family” entertainment. Set in 1931 Berlin as it careens toward the abyss, Cabaret depicts alternating stories. There’s the doomed romance between a fledgling novelist named Clifford Bradshaw and a young singer of supreme charisma (and mediocre talent) named Sally Bowles. And then there’s the seedy nightclub, the Kit Kat Club, which is populated with a highly sexualized cast of misfits and overseen by a ghoulish Master of Ceremonies. The show’s ethos—the glamour and terror, the irreverence, the campiness, the unreality—shaped my taste forever, and I knew that I had just experienced one of the greatest works of art ever created. I would never look at theater, or life, in the same way again.

Over three decades later, I’ve seen more stage productions of Cabaret than any other show, including a revival starring the original Emcee, Joel Grey; I’ve seen the Bob Fosse film version over 50 times. I’ve pretty much always got one of Fred Ebb’s sardonic lyrics jangling around in my head. Today, it’s “You’ll never turn the vinegar to jam, mein Herr,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Youthful exposure to Cabaret also turned out to be a life-changing event for the star of the new production opening this month on Broadway, Eddie Redmayne. “Weirdly, when I was 15, it was the first thing that made me believe in this whole process,” he says. Redmayne was a student at Eton when he first played the Emcee; he had never seen Cabaret when he was cast. On this late-autumn evening, Redmayne is speaking to me from Budapest, where he is shooting a TV series. “It reaffirmed my love for the theater,” he says of his first experience. “It made me believe that this profession, were I ever to have the opportunity to pursue it, was something that I wanted to do.”

Now, as he prepares for the transfer of the smash-hit 2021 London production of Cabaret (in which he also starred), Redmayne is reflecting on the power and durability of the John Kander and Fred Ebb masterpiece. “The show was just so intriguing and intoxicating,” he says, adding that the character of the Emcee posed many questions when he portrayed him for the first time, but provided scant answers. A few years later, when he was an art-history student at Cambridge, he again tackled the part of the Emcee at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. At a dingy performance space called the Underbelly, he did two shows a night, the audiences getting rowdier and more intoxicated throughout the evening. He’d get up the following afternoon and stand along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile handing out flyers for the show, dressed in latex. “There was just a sort of general debauchery that lived in the experience,” he says. When his parents came one night, they were alarmed to find that their son had turned into a “pale, lacking-in-vitamin-D skeleton.”

Flash forward 15 years. The Underbelly cofounders and directors, Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, would approach Redmayne—now with an Academy Award for The Theory of Everything and a Tony for Red under his belt—with the idea of again playing the Emcee. Redmayne was eager to return to the role, but many questions remained—principally, who might direct it. In 2019 he happened to have been seated in front of the visionary young director Rebecca Frecknall at the last performance of her West End production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke. It was an emotional evening for Frecknall, who’d been working on the project on and off for a decade. She and Redmayne were introduced, but “I had mascara down my face and probably didn’t make a very coherent first impression,” she tells me from London, where her new show, The House of Bernarda Alba, has just opened at the National Theatre.

Redmayne was astonished by the depth and delicacy of understanding that Frecknall brought to Summer and Smoke, a romance with the classic Williams themes of loneliness, self-delusion, and unrequited love. A few months later, Redmayne asked Frecknall if she’d consider directing a revival of Cabaret. “I said, ‘Of course I’ll do it, but you’ll never get the rights,’ ” she recalls. Those rights were held up with another production but were shortly thereafter released, and Frecknall went to work assembling her creative team—among them musical supervisor Jennifer Whyte, choreographer Julia Cheng, and set and costume designer Tom Scutt. Frecknall’s transcendent production of Cabaret opened on the West End at the tail end of the pandemic and succeeded in reinventing the show anew, winning seven Olivier Awards, including one for Redmayne and one for Frecknall as best director.

When Cabaret begins its run in April at the August Wilson Theatre, starring Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth, and Ato Blankson-​Wood, it will be just the second major production of the show directed by a woman. (Gillian Lynne directed the 1986 London revival.) In Frecknall’s version, Sally emerges as the beating heart of the show. “I find that most of my work has a female protagonist,” says Frecknall, who has also directed radical new interpretations of A Street­car Named Desire, Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and Romeo and Juliet. “And I have a different connection to Sally,” she says. “I was really drawn to how young she was…and how she uses that sexuality and how other people prey on that as well.” The role of Sally Bowles, originated in this production by Jessie Buckley, who also won an Olivier for her performance, will be played this spring by the brilliant Scottish actor Gayle Rankin.

“When I first met with Gayle, I was blown away by her passion and fearlessness,” says Frecknall. “She’s a real stage animal and brings a rawness and wit to her work, which will shine through. She’s going to be a bold, brutal, and brilliant Bowles.” Redmayne also praises Rankin for the depth of emotion she brings to the part, and for the vulnerable and volcanic quality of her interpretation.

Rankin arrives at a candlelit West Village restaurant on a chilly winter evening in a sumptuous furry white coat that would put Sally Bowles to shame. Her platinum hair is pulled back from her face and her dark blue eyes project a wry intelligence. Rankin lives near the restaurant and mentions that she has recently joined a nearby gym—not that she’s going to have much time for workouts in the coming months. Over small seafood plates (of her shrimp cocktail, she shrugs and concedes, “It’s a weird order, but okay”), she shares her own rich history with Cabaret.

She grew up in a small Scottish village, watching Old Hollywood movies with her mother and grandmother. At 15, she left home to attend a musical theater school in Glasgow; on her 16th birthday, she visited New York for the first time with her family. “It sounds like a cheesy, made-up story,” she says, but when she and her parents took a tour of the city on a double-decker bus, they passed by the Juilliard School. “I thought,” she says, “ ‘I am going to go there.’ ” The following year, she and her father flew from Glasgow to New York for her audition. She would become the first Scottish drama student to attend the institution.

At Juilliard, there’s an annual cabaret night, in which all third-year drama students perform songs. Rankin sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, but she recalls her acute sense that she could have chosen a number from Cabaret. “I think I secretly always wanted to be that girl,” she says of the classmate who did perform those songs.

A couple of years after she graduated Juilliard in 2011, Rankin’s agents approached her with an opportunity to audition for Sam Mendes’s 2014 revival of his celebrated 1998 Broadway version (first staged in London in 1993), with Alan Cumming reprising his Emcee role. She was cast as Fräulein Kost—an accordionist sex worker who is revealed as a Nazi—playing opposite a revolving cast of Sallys, including Michelle Williams and Emma Stone.

Rankin has recently emerged as a fierce presence in films and in television (The Greatest Showman and two HBO series—Perry Mason and the upcoming season of House of the Dragon), but then “it kind of came across my desk this summer to throw my hat in the ring for Sally.” How does Rankin make sense of this fascinating, mystifying character? “Everything is so sort of up for grabs…. People feel as if they have a claim over her or know who she is. And the real truth is, only Sally gets to know who Sally is.” She has been rereading Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin—the inspiration for the show—in which the English writer sets the dying days of the Weimar Republic against his relationship with the young singer Sally Bowles. (In 1951, the playwright and director John Van Druten adapted the book for the stage with I Am a Camera; in 1963, Broadway director-producer extraordinaire Harold Prince saw that the play could be musicalized and hired Joe Masteroff for the libretto and the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.) Isherwood based Sally—somewhat—on Jean Ross, a British flapper and chanteuse who later became a well-regarded film critic, war correspondent, political thinker, and Communist. (He gave the character the last name of writer and composer Paul Bowles.) For the rest of her life, Ross maintained (correctly) that Isherwood’s portrayal of her diminished her reputation as an activist and as an intellectual.

“Ross wanted so badly to write to Isherwood,” says Rankin, “and to condemn him: ‘You slandered my name. You said all these things about me that weren’t true.’ And as far as she got in the letter was ‘Dear Christopher.’ ” As Rankin builds the character, it’s this notion of the real Sally—not the fictive version constructed by Isherwood—that she finds so captivating, and heartbreaking.

The upending of Sally as an “object” is another core conceit behind the production. “I felt that other productions I’d seen had this slightly stereotypical male-gaze idea,” Frecknall says. She views Sally’s musical numbers as describing different facets of female identity. “Don’t Tell Mama” deals with the fetishization of youth and virginity, and in Frecknall’s production, Sally, disturbingly, appears in a sexy Little Bo Peep costume; “Mein Herr,” a song about manipulation, control, and female sexual desire, is in conversation with the cliché of the strong, “dominant” woman. “I think Sally’s very clever at being able to play an identity, and also play it against you,” she adds. The character “has secrets to tell us,” Rankin says. “Important things to share with us. And I think that’s the umbilical cord between her and the Emcee.”

Although Sally and the Emcee share the stage for less than five minutes, the Emcee’s musical numbers can be seen as a kind of meta-commentary about Sally’s actions. “What interested me was the idea that the Emcee was a character created by Hal Prince and Joel Grey,” says Redmayne, referring to the actor who portrayed the Emcee in the original 1966 production. “He doesn’t exist in the book Goodbye to Berlin and was their conceit to connect the story of Sally Bowles.” Rankin believes that there is a kind of mystical bond between the two characters. “As to whether or not he’s a higher power, or higher being, he does have an access to a higher knowledge,” Rankin suggests. “I think Sally feels that too.”

And who is the Emcee? A supernatural being? Puppeteer or puppet? There are no clues in the text. Prince conceived of the character as a metaphor representing Berlin itself. “The idea of him as an abstraction,” Redmayne says, “and so purposely intangible, meant that I actually found a new way of working.” Redmayne built the character from the ground up, starting with big, broad gestures that would be gradually refined. The “very fierce, ferocious intensity” of Herbert von Karajan, the famously dictatorial Austrian conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and a Nazi party member, served as a particularly fertile inspiration.

Historically, the role of Emcee has been coded as gay, and embodied, in most prominent productions, by gay actors. Frecknall’s production had to address what it meant to cast Redmayne, a straight white male actor, in the role. “Tom [Scutt] and I felt very clearly that, well, it’s not going to be the Emcee’s tragedy,” Frecknall says. A person like Redmayne—given his class, ethnicity, and sexuality—would emerge from the catastrophe unscathed. Redmayne concurs: “As the walls of fascism begin to close in, he has the privilege to be able to shape-shift his way out of it.” The character’s journey is from Shakespearean fool to Shakespearean king.

In Hal Prince’s 1966 production, Grey’s delicate, meticulous performance as the cane-twirling Emcee is pure nihilism—as a representation of Germany’s conscience. In the later Mendes iteration, the Emcee emerges as the central victim: In that production’s chilling last scene, Alan Cumming’s louche Emcee removes a black trench coat to reveal a concentration camp uniform; a burst of bright white light follows, from, presumably, a firing squad. But in Frecknall’s version, the Emcee is exposed not as a victim of the system, but as the chief perpetrator. The show, she notes, “becomes the ensemble’s tragedy.”

“I was really intent that we cast it very queer and inclusive,” says Tom Scutt, Cabaret’s multitalented set and costume designer. We are sitting on a black banquette in the lobby of his hotel, across the street from Lincoln Center, where he’s working on Georges Bizet’s Carmen. To mount a revival of Cabaret in 2024, Scutt contends that “there’s no other way. That was really at the headline of our mission.”

There are two casts in the show: the main company and the prologue cast, which provides pre-curtain entertainment. In general, the members of the prologue cast don’t come from traditional musical-theater backgrounds, but from the worlds of street dance and hip-hop—“dancehall, voguing, and ballroom scene,” Scutt notes—and in the London production, some of the prologue performers have been promoted to the main cast. “There is something deeply, deeply moving about how we’ve managed to navigate the usual slipstream of employment.”

Part of Scutt’s intention with Cabaret has been to “smudge and diffuse’’ the audience’s preconceived notions. Inclusive casting is one mode for change; iconography is another. In this case, that has meant no bowler hats, no bentwood chairs, no fishnet stockings. The aesthetic is less Bob Fosse and more Stanley Kubrick. “We started off in a place of ritual,” he says. “I really wanted the place to feel as if you’ve come into some sort of Eyes Wide Shut temple.”

Scutt has reimagined the 1,250-seat August Wilson Theatre as an intimate club—warrens of labyrinthine new corridors and passageways, three new bars, and an auditorium reinvented as a theater-in-the-round. Boris Aronson, the set designer of the show’s iconic original 1966 production, suspended a mirror on the stage in which the audience members would see their own reflections—a metaphor that forced the audience to examine its own complicity; but in Scutt’s design, the audience members must look at one another. Access to the building is through a side entrance; as soon as you arrive, you’ve already lost your bearings.

In many ways, it’s remarkable that such a weird and complex work of art masquerading as a garishly entertaining variety show has had such longevity. Scutt has an explanation about why this piece—created by a group of brilliant Jewish men about the rise of antisemitism and hate, about the dangers of apathy—​continues to speak to us so profoundly almost 60 years after its Broadway debut.

“I can’t really think of anything else, truly, that has the same breadth of feeling in its bones,” Scutt suggests. “I honestly can’t think of another musical that does so much.” As grave, and as tragically relevant, as the messages of Cabaret are, he and the members of the company have found refuge in theater. Both Scutt and Frecknall grew up singing in their churches as children; theater is to them a secular church, a space where human beings can congregate and share healing. “It was made with such pain and such love,” Scutt says. “Which is absolutely the piece.” 

In this story: hair, Matt Mulhall; makeup, Niamh Quinn. Produced by Farago Projects. Set Design: Afra Zamara.

#eddie redmayne #gayle rankin #vogue magazine #the emcee #sally bowles #broadway #nyc #Julien Martinez Leclerc photographer #harry lambert #styling #best actor #oscar winner #olivier awards winner #obe #talent #new article #photoshoot

[hpowellsmith]

I bought the game today and feeling so excitedddd 🎉🎉🎉

I wasn't able to follow the development from beginning to end due to some academic piles but now that we'll have a week off soon, it was amazing timing 💐💐💐

Backread Tumblr too and myyyyyyy

The collages of the RA ROs really hype up the story and allows a glimpse of seeing what MC is compatible with who

Speaking of compatibility, if it isn't much time consuming or a bother, is it alright knowing what qualities turn off ROs from romance (or what they least like)? Both for RA and Cdlc???

Also is it just me or do Javi secretly likes rival/ enemy to lovers???

Ahh thank you so much! This ask has been in my inbox for a while but I want to say congratulations for your week off and I hope that you don't have too much work now!

In both Creme de la Creme and Royal Affairs (and Honor Bound), some characters will break up with you based on how you handle some events that happen in the game. So there are some dealbreakers for some characters. But in general… the characters will absolutely go for MCs who aren't necessarily their usual "type" depending on how the MC treats them.

That said! Here are some aspects that may make the characters not enjoy spending time with the MC so much.

Creme de la Creme:

-Hartmann: being really rebellious, flouting rules (though they can find that a bit exciting too)

-Max: being a stickler for rules, telling them off

-Freddie: lack of curiosity or shared interests

-Delacroix: being dismissive about their occult beliefs

-Karson: being cruel

-Blaise: what they see as lacking backbone

-Auguste: being very "unpolished" without intellectual interests (eg they will go for Freddie because of their academic enthusiasm but wouldn't go for Karson)

-Rosario: being an overt snob

-Florin: being (as they see it) too intensely emotional, wanting a serious commitment quickly, causing them drama or discomfort

Royal Affairs:

Related: here's an answer about the kinds of people the Royal Affairs characters find harder to talk to

-Asher: doesn't like meanness, but, crucially, this doesn't apply to the MC. They can and do make almost any excuse for things the MC might want to do to those around them

-Beaumont: clinginess, lack of ambition/direction

-Dominique: being told off, especially someone being snippy about their flightiness

-Hyacinthe: dismissiveness, breaking social rules to be very outspoken

-Javi: gold-digging, manipulativeness

-Trevelyan: lack of curiosity or thought about how the world works (they don't have to agree - they like arguing - but if someone just doesn't care, that's a turnoff to them)

You didn't ask for Honor Bound and I hadn't announced it when you sent the ask, but here is a bonus round for them, hehe!

There are some plot events that equal dealbreakers, but let's wait to draw the curtain and reveal them...

Honor Bound:

Fiore: lack of manners/social polish (though they may sometimes find it fun to be brought out of their shell); being mean to or about their daughter

Korzha: lack of backbone or rigor (though perhaps they would like to encourage someone to have more backbone... hmmm)

Matia: they don't reeeally have many turnoffs and are pretty adventurous with who they'll go for (but under some circumstances they might see a very hapless person as more of a younger-sibling relationship rather than romance) (which is where they're at with Raffi and Savarel - not just because of age, because they'll romance a younger MC, but more personality)

Raffi: they are so easygoing that someone would need to be, like, really mean to them to be a real turnoff. They would hypothetically Hit That for almost any MC or indeed most of the adult NPCs under 50

Savarel: disagreement about moral correctness

#asks #creme de la creme #royal affairs #honor bound

[dumbificat]

in preparation for hitting 50 followers, i will be doing a prompt event !

submissions: open

(posting now so i have time to think, and people have time to submit :))

prompts:

1. Carving pumpkins

2. Baking treats together

3. Scaring each other with silly costumes

4. Trick-or-Treating

5. Haunted House

6. Reader/character who is already preparing for Christmas

7. Decorating for halloween

8. Reader is hyper after eating a lot of candy

—————

10. sick fic (reader or character)

11. “will you just hold me? please?”

12. inside joke(s) between reader and character

+ any other prompt you want (13)

characters:

obey me! brothers and side characters (platonic luke)

genshin impact

honkai star rail

project sekai

possibly bsd

please note that i mainly write for male characters and gn reader but i’m willing to try for others

how to request:

leave an ask with the character you want and the prompt number. would appreciate non-anon asks more.

please also not that i won’t be writing every submission. i’m just one writer and might not be able to write for all prompts/characters but i wanted to give people options.

i plan to write between 5-10 prompts when i hit 50 followers (or a bit after)

please reblog this post and consider following me so i can reach 50! currently on: 46

thank you for reading, sorry about the formatting it’s 2am haha

#thanks to bell for some prompts !! #please reblog so people can see :’) #dumbi #dumbificat #road to 50 #reblog #like #comment #please #haha #prompt #writing prompts #submissions open #genshin impact #genshin #obey me #honkai star rail #dumbi’s 50 followers event #:d

[vendetta-if]

i dont know why but i love the fact that Ash follows you in every path SO MUCH, hes always there for MC :(((( !!

im romancing Rin on my main playthrough right now but im absolutely starting a second save just for Ash <333

by the way, will the (preset!) names we chose for the twin deagles come in again? i mean their meanings, other than grandpas flavour text even tho i loved that

sorry for asking so many questions but just a small concern of mine, what im doing with my stats is not focusing on a single thing but raising everything, both my powers are approximately at the same level and ive been trying to keep all of my stats up as well

will the stat checks later on in the story be impossible to pass if i do this? i need to know in case i want to focus on a single stat/superpower :))

Yes 😭 Ash is so loyal to MC 🥺 I’m glad you’re liking them too 🥰

As for the pre-set names, I’m not really sure whether they’ll be brought up again in another flavour texts for now 😅 Maybe not, but it’s hard to tell because I sometimes get inspiration while writing, especially regarding flavour texts.

And don’t worry about the number of questions 😁 For your last question about stats, I’ll keep them under the cut because I’ll try to explain a bit more about how they work.

As for the power stats, I think if you want to keep the superpower stats close to equal, it’ll be alright. But, if you want your MC to use more of one power over the other, you might want to focus on that power a bit more.

As for the three skills stats, I would strongly recommend to focus on two skills, one as the primary one which will be slightly higher than the secondary one, while no need to mind too much on the third one.

This is so you’ll still be able to get the flavour texts for the two skills you focus on, instead of not much at all because you try to get all three skills equal.

For example, some flavour texts and choices (like the hacking route in Chapter 3) are open when that skill’s stats is at least 50. And still, having 50 doesn’t always mean you’ll automatically succeed flawlessly too, but you’ll at least be able to go through the route, even tho you might hit a little snag on the way (not complete failure like in some other games).

But if you try to maybe get all three skills equal, you might only get to around 40-ish for each, and you won’t get those flavour texts or the choices will stay locked.

You don’t need to focus on all three because I’ll always try my best to make sure all skills will have their own way to be used to be able to pass through certain events where skill check will be used. You can already see this in Chapter 3, where I had to write 3 routes, one for each skill, and each route has 2 variations where you either go through it flawlessly, or you hit a minor snag where you’ll have to do something a bit extra.

I hope I’ve managed to explain them clearly and that they answer your questions about the stats 😅

#asks #anon ask #if: vendetta #abilities/powers #mc power #info #if game #if wip #dashingdon #choicescript

[shuttershocky]

Any tips for IW-9? Sui-Xiang is kicking my ass

Alright I just finished my speedrun comp for Sui-Xiang so here's what i've learned trying stuff out.

Take him head on - Sui-Xiang gains a massive damage reduction to enemies attacking him from above or below, 50% on his first phase and an even greater 80% during his last stand. You're never going to beat him unless you go head to head. Place your operators on the right side (the ranged units can stand on the melee tiles for this stage) and leave the top and bottom only for heals or debuffs/buffs.

Ethan is king - As you might have seen, damage over time and other poison effects are extremely good in this event, as the little spawn take damage per hit rather than have real HP bars. Ethan delivers them with his skill 1 with a large AOE attack, and Ambusher Specialists like him have a 60% evasion to both physical and arts damage, making him tougher than you'd think against Sui-Xiang's myriad of AOE attacks. Other operators to consider are Rosmontis with S2, Shirayuki with S2, Thorns, Bluepoison, if they have poison or multihit attacks, they'll be great in this stage.

Sui-Xiang mixes physical and arts damage - Although his attack stat is massive (1400), Sui-Xiang actually only unleashes his full might on his tail swipe, which always targets the operator closest to him. Bait this out with Gravel to save your other operators from getting oneshot, as this attack does a 1400 damage physical hit, then inflicts an arts poison debuff that ramps up in damage over time.

The lightning he calls down is annoying, but actually only deals 13% of his ATK as arts damage overtime, so it's nothing AOE healers can't shrug off.

As for his Phase 3 laser breath, the unit at the very front takes the brunt of the damage, a mix of both Physical and Arts damage equal to 35% of his ATK or 490 physical and arts damage per second, while those in the back get a greatly reduced 15% of his ATK. he'll use this 10 seconds into starting phase 3, so if you can't outDPS him in time, make sure you're prepared. Have units that mix both high DEF and RES at the very forefront to tank the laser (Arts Protectors, Guardians, and Phalanx Casters are great), use Gravel and other Fast Redeploys to block, or use summons such as Beeswax's totem. Once you survive the first barrage, Sui-Xiang has about 60 seconds before he can do it again, so you have one full minute to burst him down before you get roasted again. This also goes without saying, but you'll want to activate all medic skills at the same time as the laser.

Sui-Xiang has poor defensive stats - With 550 DEF and 30 RES, Sui-Xiang is vulnerable to simply getting DPS-raced, especially by operators with extremely high ATK speed that can kill him before he can fight back. Those with multihit attacks like Greythroat or Tachanka , when buffed by Bards + Warfarin can easily make short work of him, but the fastest Sui-Xiang slayer is Exusiai, whose S3 deals 5x hit per attack and who only needs only a couple buffs to raise her own ATK beyond 550. With the likes of Sora/Skadi the Corrupting Heart and Warfarin buffing her, Exusiai can speedrun this bossfight. Don't use Ash, as Sui-Xiang is immune to all crowd control effects.

If you do not have the right operators to cheese him, follow the other tips above to survive a longer battle. A strong DPS carry can beat him down before the second laser, given enough support.

[fatalezr]

NYC Takeover (continued)

Lilly looked at her second target across the street. Angelo Patrici wore a smart and expensive suit and had slicked back black hair. He had been going to businesses along the East side, Lilly following him for the last ten minutes, trying to plot her moment of attack. He was closely shadowed at all times by a large man in a bomber jacket and jeans.

She looked at her surroundings and saw a possibility. There was an alleyway coming up that the two men might choose to go down and she decided to take a calculated gamble, crossing the road and going down it whilst the men were in a grocery store. She found a place to hide down the alley and waited, keeping herself patient.

It was now mid-morning. After her positive start, Lucia had killed one target already and so the score between them was now 1-1. Lilly was determined to win, not just against her friend but if she could against all the other women in the gang. They had all been working quickly, trying to make their hits before Piacenza worked out what was going on.

Lilly calmed herself and listened carefully for any sign of the two men. It was difficult with the traffic and other noises in the background but she concentrated on isolating them and heard a man's voice as he approached. "I don't like we ain't heard from anyone yet" it said in an Italian-American accent, "gotta keep the head on a swivel. It's too fuckin' strange all this".

The voice got louder and Lilly knew her plan had worked. She eased her Beretta from her shoulder holster and listened to the sounds of footsteps. She tried to visualise and count as Patrici and his bodyguard approached. The former took one step in front of the alcove and Lilly made her move.

She stepped gracefully out of the alcove, the pistol already pointed at the back of Patrici's head. Pfft. She fired a shot into it before immediately turning her gun towards the bodyguard. The end of the suppressor almost touched his forehead before -pfft- she fired and opened him up. Lilly admired her skill. Within a second both men were dead. In falling to the ground Patrici had dropped his phone and Lilly picked it up, already walking away from the scene before it would be noticed by another passer-by and holstering her pistol.

'2-1' she thought to herself proudly as she walked, already thinking about how to reach her next victim.

------

Lisa was enjoying her cup of coffee in Central Park and watching the world go by when the message came through to her phone. "Time for second meeting" it read. She finished her drink and left some bills on the table before walking swiftly to where she had parked.

It had been almost two hours since she had dropped Harriet off at a luxurious hotel to either carry on the work the young woman was doing or take a nap as Lisa expected she might do. She had contented herself with being patient and awaiting instructions. Her conversations with Marina had told her that everything today must happen in the right order for the plan to work.

She drove a short distance to the upper west side and parked a few blocks from a seedy gentleman's club that was underground. From the intelligence that had been gathered, it would be where Tony Falcano's most feared assassins would meet in the event of a 'code red' situation such as the killing of a family member. Lisa parked and checked the gun in her shoulder holster over her blouse. It was still snug and secure. She picked up a briefcase from the back of her car and opened it to pull out an FN-P90 submachine gun. She loaded the compact weapon with a 50-round magazine of bullets and threaded on a suppressor before strapping it over her blouse and putting her jacket back on over the top.

Lisa added a pair of leather gloves and dark sunglasses before picking up the briefcase again. There was only one item in it that she needed. She buttoned her jacket so the FN-P90 would not be obvious to anyone at a distance and walked swiftly towards where the club was.

There were two black SUVs outside, both with their engines off, standing idly by and awaiting drivers. Lisa checked around before quickly crossing to them and kneeling down. She undid the briefcase and took out the C4 explosives inside. She worked quickly, attaching a packet to the underside of the first car and expertly putting in a remote detonator before running to the second car and doing the same. At times like this her training was invaluable. She stayed calm and assembled the explosives before finding a hiding place near some basement steps where she would be out of the immediate blast radius but still had a view of the gentleman's club.

Several minutes passed before the door to the club opened and out stepped eight men in a variety of jackets all shirts, all of them looking heavy set and thick. They divided between the two cars and the engines started.

Lisa took the remote detonator from her jacket pocket and waited until all the doors were shut on the cars. 'See you boys' she thought as she pressed the button. BOOOOM! BOOOOOM! The C4 under the cars ignited and they were thrown into the air with a deafening explosion, the fire racing into the sky. Lisa shielded her eyes from the initial blast but then unbuttoned her jacket and got to work.

She took the FN-P90 from inside and brought it up to her shoulder to brace, looking for any movement from the cars. A front door on the front one opened and a man began to stagger out. Brrrrrp-brrrrp. Two quick bursts from Lisa finished him. She looked inside the car at the other three men inside. They were bloodied and one man looked to be burning. Brrrp-brrrrrrp-brrrrrrrp. She fired quickly at all three before turning her attention to the rear car.

A man in a grey jacket stumbled out from the drivers seat and onto the floor. Brrrrrrrrrp. Lisa gave a slew of bullets into his back before turning to the man who had been next to him. She gave a burst into his head -brrrrrp- before looking at the burning back seats. The two men were writhing in pain. Brrrp-brrrrp. Lisa finished them with the remainder of her magazine before drawing her pistol.

The door to the gentleman's club opened and two men in white shirts appeared, stunned and looking around. Pfft-pfft, pfft-pfft. Lisa gunned them down whilst moving, her shots expertly guided home as she turned and headed back to her car, holstering her pistol along the way.

It was clean and professional work and she liked the way she had executed it, with another ten bodies added to her tally for the day. She drove off towards her next rendezvous point, pleased with how her exploits were going.

------

Lauren buttoned up the navy blue suit she had changed into before leaving one of the rooms in the Manhattan apartment that was one of Sandra's safe houses in the city. She found her friend chatting to Sally on one of the sofas, Sandra seemingly explaining in more detail about the plans for the day. The door to the other bedroom was still shut and Lauren could guess that behind it Yelena and Raoul were busy catching up after their night apart.

She smiled and walked to the kitchen area where she found the tall woman Bea pouring some water. "You want some?" Bea offered.

"Yes, thank you" Lauren said, taking the glass from Bea and having a sip. "Have you been a member of this group long?" Lauren asked her, making conversation with the woman.

"Been up here a few weeks" Bea said, "used to be down in Tampa but I met Sandra a few years ago. She helped me out of a tight jam".

Lauren smiled. "Ah yes, she does have a talent for that". She had relied on her friend herself on several occasions, including with helping her out with some security systems on a vault she and Sally had plundered back in England.

"How about you?" Bea asked. "You know each other from home I guess?"

"That's right" Lauren said, "she was my mentor when I first stepped into this line of work. Sandra was probably the top assassin for our boss, Mr. Raymond, but gosh that was probably about 20 years ago".

Bea nodded. "And what about now?"

"Now I'm freelance" Lauren said, "I work for myself, or for others on occasion, and do what I please". She looked lovingly towards Sally and remembered how contented and happy she was. "And you, you're a permanent member now?"

"I don't know," Bea frowned, "kind of having an extended trial. We'll see where it ends up going".

Lauren nodded. "Well if you ever find yourself in London...look me up".

"Thanks," Bea replied. The two drank for a few moments in silence until there was movement from the first bedroom door. Yelena and Raoul emerged, Yelena looking washed and well but back to wearing her leather jacket and trousers. She was looking satisfied and Lauren could tell the two lovers had evidently been having a pleasant time together.

"How are you feeling?" Lauren called over to her.

"Better" Yelena said, "much better". She walked over to where Sandra and Sally were sat on the sofa. "OK - who do we kill now?"

"I thought you'd never ask" Sandra said, "it's time to go after the bosses. You know the Italian restaurant Carina?" Lauren's ears perked up at that name - she had been there herself to meet Tony Falcano.

"Of course" Raoul said, "but there is no way Tony is there, not on a day like today, and it will be filled with some of his top men, very heavily guarded".

"Agreed" Sandra said, "but we do not need to kill Tony inside, we just need to force him to think the net is closing. And as for the guards, well...I think that problem has mostly been solved". She grinned as she looked at her phone. 

"We're still going to go and take everyone out inside and torch the place. The symbolism on its own will be enough".

Lauren thought about it for a few seconds. It made sense to her. For anyone, the sight of their beloved restaurant in flames would force them to re-evaluate their hold on the city. She saw the idea appealed to Sally too. "Why not?" Lauren said out loud, "I'm in".

"Me too," Bea added, "let's do this".

------

Lilly bit her lip in frustration. She had been tailing her final target, Gary Hunter, for half an hour but he had kept to crowded streets and there was no opportunity to take him out. She knew she was close to her goal and that patience was key but the lack of opportunity was making her nervous.

Hunter had two large bodyguards with him and had been exceptionally cautious in all the businesses he had visited so far, leaving a man on the street whilst taking one in with him. Lilly had been discreet with her kills so far and had no need to risk that just yet.

She looked up the road and saw an opportunity. After a couple of grocers, she saw the small and hidden entrance to an underground strip club. She kept her head down and crossed to it, taking a turn into an alleyway afterwards, looking for the rear door.

It was dark and unlocked. Lilly opened it and could immediately smell the body odour and hear the dull thud of music as it opened for the lunchtime slot. She slipped inside a corridor and peaked through a curtain. The bar was small, with a stripper pole in the middle of the room, some private rooms one side and a bar on the other. There were a couple of men by the stripper pole awaiting an act.

Lilly slipped in and headed to the private dance areas. She chose a booth and luckily found it to be empty. She decided to gamble on a plan and stripped off her navy suit jacket and skirt. She took off her shoulder holster and took the suppressed Beretta from it, hiding it under a cushion in the room. She took off her black shirt and adjusted her red bra and thong, along with the dark brown nylon hold up stockings on her legs. She hid her clothes out of sight along with the Ruger in her stockings and took a breath.

She stepped out of the private area and wandered across the club floor, trying to walk with confidence and sass. Gary Hunter was descending the stairs to the bar with one of his bodyguards, half the buttons on his shirt undone and taking off his sunglasses as he walked to the bar. Lilly made sure to walk just in front of his path and she could feel his eyes wander to her rear as she did so. She kept going but stayed within earshot of the bar whilst she pretended to adjust her stockings.

"Boss needs cash" Hunter was saying to the barman, "we're collecting early this month".

"What the fuck?" the barman retorted, "early? I...I can't give it all early".

"Yeah, yeah" Hunter said, "but give us what you got today". Lilly could tell that he was trying to go around as many businesses as possible but evidently had orders to get cash quick rather than ensuring the full tribute. "Come on". She heard the cash register open and the barman pull out some notes. "This it?" he asked.

"It's been slow trade, come on Gary, I only just opened today" the barman pleaded.

Hunter grumbled and Lilly took her chance. She sauntered to the bar and took his hand. "Don't you think it's time for a lunch break honey?" she offered seductively. "I got a nice way to take your mind off the day". She saw him look down at her body before over to the barman and then back to her.

"Sure" he said simply. Lilly giggled and took his hand, pulling him playfully towards the private rooms, stepping behind the first curtain and pushing him into the booth where she had hidden her gun. "Wait out here" he told his bodyguard and Lilly shut the curtain that divided the booth from his position.

"Mmm yeah, take that stress off babe" Lilly said to Hunter, easing his jacket off his shoulders, "I got something special for you". She straddled him and began to grind her crotch against his. "Mmm yeah". She spoke loudly to make sure the bodyguard would hear her over the loud sound of the music.

Lilly began to feel the rhythm and gyrated more, feeling more confident and sexy at every moment. "Mmm babe, touch me" she said, unhooking her bra and throwing it to the floor.

Hunter leaned forward and began to caress her breasts with his hands and then his tongue. "Mmm, oh yeah babe, more like that" Lilly said, continuing to gyrate over his hips. One hand reached over Hunter's neck while the other went to the cushion she had hidden her gun within. "Yeah, keep that up" Lilly said, gripping the pistol, "I'm going to blow your mind". She brought the gun to Hunter's temple and fired quickly. Pfft. His head exploded out the side but she covered the sound with more shouts of "Oh yeah, Oh yeah babe".

"Yeah, more babe, more" she continued saying loudly as she let his body slump to the side and Lilly picked herself from her lap. "I like that, I like that". She continued to moan a little as she aimed towards the curtain where the bodyguards silhouette was clearly visible. She aimed towards the man's head. 

"Mmm baby, blow my mind" she said before squeezing the trigger again. Pfft. She saw the neat hole she made in the curtain and then the bodyguard dropped to his knees and went forward. Lilly knew he was dead and smiled. She dressed quickly and holstered her gun. She grabbed Hunter's phone and the money and slipped out the private rooms and through the back corridor she had entered by, emerging on the street looking like a serious businesswoman and not a stripper or assassin. She hacked the phone as with the others and looked at her own device.

All her targets were off the board whilst the other women still showed at least one remaining. Lilly pumped her fist - she was a winner and she walked back onto the street feeling as proud as she could be of her achievement and already looking forward to making fun of Lucia when they met.

------

Yelena laid a gloved hand on the suppressor on her Mac-10. She looked over to Raoul, who sat stoically in the car next to her, a suppressed assault rifle in his hand. She could see the back door of Carina, the Italian restaurant that was Tony Falcano's pride and joy. She had dined with him on several occasions, including when she and Raoul had told him of their relationship. It seemed a million years ago from where they were today, ready to storm the building and bring about the end of his empire.

She felt a pang of regret that it had to come to this but his gang had made their bed when Enzo tried to kill her and Raoul. Tony ruled with an iron fist - but he could not control his son and now that he was dead there would be no reconciliation.

"What are we waiting for?" Yelena asked Sandra, who sat in the front seat. She was impatient to begin.

"For Lauren and Sally" Sandra replied, "when they give me the signal, we'll make our move. A coordinated attack always works best, you know that".

Yelena considered grumbling or delivering a snide remark but Raoul placed a hand on her leg and it calmed her. She continued to sit patiently in silence for a few more moments. Sandra's phone eventually buzzed. "Right, that's our signal" Sandra said. She started the car engine and drove up quickly to the rear door, Yelena putting the window down in the back of the car as she did.

There were two men in suits by the back, both standing and looking around nervously. Yelena could tell they were inexperienced. Their jackets were buttoned and their hands by their front. They would never be able to pull out a weapon in time. As they approached, she leaned from the window with her Mac-10 levelled. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Even from a moving vehicle she was still deadly, her bullets smashing into the men's chests and they doubled over with pain.

Sandra stopped the car and the group got out, Sandra having changed into a grey trouser suit and carrying a suppressed Glock-17 in her hand. Raoul was first to the back door, kicking it in and aiming his rifle down the corridor. Yelena noticed the steeled determination in his eyes as he aimed his weapon. Yelena stepped through the door that he was covering. She already knew where she would find herself.

The kitchen at Carina's had four chefs working away. They turned as the door opened and all four men in white uniforms looked her way. One immediately went to grab a kitchen knife. Yelena put her Mac-10 to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. She put all her bullets into his chest. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Next to her Raoul aimed at another chef and brought him down. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Yelena had already moved on to a man standing by a boiling pot and shot him. His body riddled with bullets and fell by the hot stove.

She looked to her final target, the head chef. He was an older man but loyal to Falcano. He was looking to his side for anything to try to throw at Yelena but could not find anything before her gun aimed in his direction. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. She brought him down too and grabbed a fresh magazine from her the back of her leather trousers, changing it quickly in her gun as she moved through the kitchen, the long barrels of hers, Raoul's and Sandra's guns pointing towards the door that led to the restaurant.

As she walked, she heard a couple of screams from and some gunfire, including the loud BAM-BAM-BAM of pistols. They were coming from the front of the restaurant. Yelena paused by the door and looked at Raoul. He looked at her and nodded. She kicked the door in herself this time, Sandra covering the entrance while Raoul raised his rifle and went inside the main restaurant. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Yelena could see the bullets ejecting from him gun as he fired as he did so.

She brought up her Mac-10 to her shoulder and entered last after Sandra. The restaurant had turned to chaos. There were already several bodies of mobsters and customers on the floor. Tables had been overturned and there were men in suits shooting pistols towards the front of the restaurant where Bea, Lauren and Sally were laying down fire of their own.

The men had their backs to Yelena and her group and were easy targets. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Yelena let out a long stream of bullets as she cut them down with Raoul and Sandra at her side. The men contorted and cried out in pain as she shot them up, and Yelena could feel herself smiling. Each bullet was like a release from a life she had formerly known into a new one.

Within a few seconds, it was over. She finished her magazine into some of the men on the floor pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft before changing it and turning her attentions towards the private room that Tony had often used. Behind her, she heard the soft pfft-pfft-pfft bursts from weapons as the wounded men and customers were finished off.

She stood by the door and was joined by Lauren. Yelena saw the English woman was holding a suppressed Mac-10 similar to her own. She was still in a crisp white skirt suit but the jacket was open, exposing her white lacy bra. Yelena looked at the submachine gun again. "Nice weapon" she said to Lauren.

"Yes" Lauren said, giving her a grin, "got inspired by someone to use it".

Yelena grinned back. She could begrudgingly admit that maybe the English woman was not too bad. Yelena opened the door to the private room. Two men inside had tipped over the long table and were hiding behind it, pistols in their hands. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. They shot wildly and Yelena pulled back from the doorway, letting their bullets whizz past and cause no harm.

When they paused, she and Lauren turned through the doorway, Mac-10s trained on the wooden tables. Yelena had a simple plan - pummel the tables until bullets found their way through. It was more ornate than protective. She aimed towards one man's location and pulled the trigger, Lauren doing the same with the other. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. The table splintered under their combined assault and Yelena heard the men cry out in pain as bullets found their bodies. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Neither woman let up until their magazines were dry.

They finally did so and there was a stillness in the air. Yelena and Lauren both changed their magazines and edged into the room, alert for any movement. All they heard were groans of pain from the men and they leaned over the table to see the two lieutenants bleeding and in pain. Yelena thought she recognised one, the man she had shot up. It did not matter. She curved a gloved finger around her Mac-10 again. Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-fft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft. Her gun shot up the man as Lauren did the same to hers, completing the massacre.

She looked out of the room. Bea, Raoul and Sally had just finished putting clean headshots into all of the remaining bodies in the room. "Good" Sandra said, "now let's clear out, rendezvous at the upper east house". The group sprang into action, Yelena running out of the back door with Raoul, conscious she would probably never step foot in the restaurant again.

#hitwoman #silencer hitwoman #silencerhitwoman #femme fatale #female assassin #lilly #yelena #lisa #lauren

[vickytokio]

Lúcia Já-Vou-Indo [Lúcia I-am-Coming]

I had this book when I was a kid and I read it many times. It's been on my mind a lot lately. It's funny how something theoretically so small can leave a mark and impact your life so much for so long.

I was a pretty slow kid. As far as I'm told, I developed all the expected skills very early, but I took my time performing activities.

I was slow to eat (apparently, it was common for my plate to need to be reheated in the middle of a meal). It took me too long to follow games with my cousins. It took me too long to copy things from the board at school. I took too much time to do my homework, to clean my room, to complete tasks… I never even necessarily realized it, I just did.

One thing that's important to say about my family is that everyone in it seems to be a damn powerhouse. No one can wait even a second for anything, ever. My mother can read 700 page books in two days, she and my aunts clean up an entire house in less than two hours, cook a full meal in 20 minutes, it's scary...

This week, I wanted to make a special dinner, I really wanted to eat a Mexican chilli with quesadillas. I found out a couple of years ago that I don't like to cook. This came as a shock to me as well, because most of my family has a passion for cooking and I love food, but cooking simply takes too much time and work to be worth it. But I wanted the damn dinner, so I started cooking at 4 pm so I could have dinner at 7 pm. That's probably not a reasonable amount of time for a regular person to spend making this meal. It's definitely not the time I would have available with my family.

When I worked at translation companies, we usually had goals to hit. If the goal was that a person could do 50 pages a day, my best, in general, was around 20 to 30.

The thing is, people always thought I was quite smart and capable. As I said, I even developed all my skills earlier than expected, so I don't know if in their minds they thought I was unwilling or what, but there were so many people my whole life disappointed that I was not “reaching my potential”, and so many people around me doing things so quickly and "easily" that I started to convince myself that I must be doing something wrong after all. 

Maybe, there really was some lost magical potential out there that I couldn't reach...

This book that I mentioned in the beginning, Lúcia Já-Vou-Indo, I think it could be a really cool book for children with ADHD, autism, learning difficulties, among many other things that make them, like me, a slow child.

The story is about Lucia, a slug who, as expected of her species, is quite slow in getting things done. Because of this, she always misses parties and important events with her other insect friends, because she is very late and cannot arrive on time.

The book's narrative, in my opinion, is a bit unkind, (but I might be biased and I'll explain why), but overall, the message is nice. Lucia is trying her best all the time, she's not negligent, she doesn't miss her friends' parties because she doesn't care, on the contrary. When she's invited to the dragonfly party, she starts getting ready a week before and even so, she only arrives at the place the day after the party, when everyone has already left.

In the book, the other insects "encourage" her to go faster along the way and feel sorry for her when she doesn't make it, but still, the ending is cute, because the solution they find is to have a party at Lucia's house so that she will definitely be there this time.

I think I liked this book the first time I read it. Maybe even a few more times after that, but it developed an increasingly bitter taste for me over the years, to the point where I wouldn't be able to see the cover or name of this book for decades without having an intensely emotional and, from an outside view, disproportionate reaction. And why, you would ask me?

The thing is, the book itself was already a little difficult for me to deal with because, despite having a "happy ending" it also has a lot of frustration and Lúcia suffers a lot with something that I also did (and do). She spends that entire book doing everything she can to get to her friend's party and it's not enough, she doesn't make it. 

And the fact that she got a party all to herself in the end isn't going to change that. That party that was "the greatest ever" will be forever lost, as will the wedding of a couple of her friends to which she arrived so late that they had already had a child. Those things are gone and won't come back. Why didn't anyone think of helping Lucia before? Why didn't she have the necessary accommodations?

And the other thing, and certainly what most impacted my relationship with this story, was the way the rest of my family "understood" it. I don't think any of them got the message because I spent the next several years of my life being called Lucia in a derogatory tone every time I was slow to do something. If I took too long to do something, I would hear my cousins, my aunts, my mother saying "I am cooooming".

With that, a story that could have been about acceptance, became a reinforcement for ridicule and I spent years hating Lucia and thanking God this book wasn't very well known and doing what I could to keep people from knowing it, lest I have more people using it to make fun of me. 

I've been thinking a lot about all this. Part of accepting the fact that I am a disabled person is accepting the fact that I. Am. Slow.

That's not a bad thing. I don't need anyone to tell me I'm not, I don't want anyone to tell me I'm not. It took me a long time to come to terms with that fact and I'm still trying.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but today I think I wanted to apologize to Lucia. You didn't deserve the contempt I had for you throughout the years, you deserve people who understand you, respect you, and want you around enough to make an effort.

#disabilities #adhd #actually autistic #vicky rants something silly #neurodivergence #personal stuff

[megatownac]

The queue is empty, and it's been a little over four years since that happened. The last time, it's because I was on a two-week trip to Japan. This time, it's because I've quit playing New Horizons.

I stopped playing on September 22, on Ankha's birthday, because I wanted to celebrate that one last time before I put the game down. Since then, I've regained half an hour each day by not playing, and another twenty minutes by not queueing up posts after I got through my backlog on October 1. So it's been about 23 days of having an extra 50 minutes.

I'd been playing for nearly a year for no reason other than to keep getting fuel for posts. It wasn't fun on its own anymore.

I started this blog in September 2013, 10 years and 1 month ago. Since then, I've written over 22,000 posts in just about 3700 days.

When I started this blog, the Animal Crossing world was a lot more active. I made friends with people like @toysleaf and @vivinzenz. I would visit people's towns, and they would visit mine. As years went on, that faded. The blog got a little bit bigger. Just barely, barely big enough that I had to get cautious about what I wrote. I cut out all swearing and off-color jokes. I stopped asking people for things. I made sure never to reveal my political leanings, or my thoughts on current events. It wasn't my place, I thought, and was grateful that nobody asked me to weigh in. I eventually became isolated in my little world, not reblogging anything from anybody, ever, and hoping that maybe eventually some silly joke I made would get viral enough to…

To what, exactly? It's not like I ever made money doing this, and I'd all but given up on making friends. I was just doing it out of habit, out of a drive to see if I could get my follower count to go up. It didn't. I hit the 1500-follower mark back in 2016 or 2017 and never got higher than 1595. My silly jokes, my constant barrage of snarky comments about my day-to-day life, simply weren't popular with some imaginary mainstream Animal Crossing tumblr fandom that stopped existing well before New Horizons came out.

There's still an Animal Crossing fandom out here, of course. Just not one that follows blogs like mine. Do something impressive: create some art, or crochet something, or even design a cool home. Things I was not doing. Things I did not want to do.

I'd like to get back to enjoying Animal Crossing. To playing the game for fun. To playing it with other people, and making friends. But that won't happen right now. It can't.

Remember, I've been doing this for over 10 years. I was in my late twenties when I STARTED this blog, and I knew very well that I was one of the oldest people on Tumblr posting Animal Crossing content. My forties are not far off. I'm old. I feel out of place and weird posting my silly little jokes here when I know that most of the people reading them, and there aren't many who do, are probably quite a bit younger than I am. It's a kid's game, and that's fine. But I'm not a kid, and I'm not posting anything truly creative. Just blogging. Just starting up my game each morning to run around and gather fossils and hit rocks and talk to any islanders I see and snapping dozens of screenshots so I can post them on Tumblr at a rate of 4 or more posts each day.

This isn't goodbye forever. I'm just going on break for now. When something changes, I'll be back.

In the meantime, my main blog, @ratralsis, was active before this one started and is still active. I'm going to try to write there a little more often now that I'm not posting here each day, but we'll see, I guess.

As for here, I don't know what I might be posting here in the next few months. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'll start reblogging things again for the first time in, what, six years? Seven years? I don't know. A long time.

I'm not saying I will. Just that I maybe will. Maybe I won't!

Either way, take care of yourself, and remember that I'm still around and, one way or another, will continue writing on the internet until I am physically unable. I've been doing so since 2001 or so and have never stopped. I've been Ratralsis since 2002 and I needed a name to write on a friend's website (the website is long gone now). As far as I know, I'm either the only Ratralsis out there or the other people with that name don't show up on Google, so, as of today, at least, if you see a Ratralsis out there complaining about Best Buy on Twitter or leaving comments on YouTube videos or posting in the forums on Flight Rising, that's me.

That's all for now.

#text post #long post #non ac #not ac #goodbye for here and for now

[nelapanela94]

EVENT'S MASTERLIST

⭐ You're safe with me - Only your eyes are made to read Levi's soul, only you can soothe the storm within him. TW: Fluff, a bit of angst. [WC: 1360]

⭐ Much better - While stargazing, ethanol clouds your judgment, and you and Levi end up saying things you might regret later. TW: Fuff. [WC: 1k]

⭐ You know where to find me - TW: Angst, Modern AU [WC: 2.5k]

⭐ Our names carved in the ring - TW: SMUT, MDNI. Soft, mawkish smut Oral(Fem!Receiving). Mentions of abusive relationship. [WC: 6K]

⭐It'd be a waste of good tea - TW: Fluff, depiction of injuries. [WC: 1500K]

⭐ Why do you keep pushing people away? - You had misunderstood him, or so you believed. But you can't no longer avoid him, Levi is impeled to face his own feelings and confess. - TW: Angst, hurt confort [ W.C: 1.2k]

⭐ A weak linger of chocolate - You can't see his face painted on the wall, but not because you hate him; you hate you can't drown the feelings you hold for him. But one day the wrangle is sealed in the tenderness of a kiss. TW: Enemies to lovers, fluff [W.C: 1.3k]

OMG you lovely apple pies!!! Thank you so much for this :') you guys spike the motivación I need to keep writing. This wouldn't be possible without you.

And...

in celebration of this blog reaching 1k followers, I'm holding a milestone event!!! (My very first event, indeed :3) So, from the list below, you'll pick and send me a prompt and I'll give them back in the form of drabbles.

Please, read the guidelines before sending a request.

I only write for Levi Ackerman since he's the only character I feel comfortable writing for;

You may choose maximum 2 prompts from the list, and they can either be from the same category or a mix. (e.g.: 1 + 10 or 42 + 50)

The drabbles will be up to 1000 words, though they could be longer if I'm riding an inspo wave;

You must be 18+ to send a prompt from the S.M.U.T list, and that being the case, I will not answer this kind of requests sent by anons or from ageless blogs.

The event is open until October 4th 2022

FLUFF

"Are you blushing? Disgusting"

"Is he really just a friend?" "Are you jealous?"

“I can't think straight with you!"

"Can I hug you?"

"Dance with me."

"You know I'm not like that."

“You shouldn’t hide that dimple.”

“Because of people like you shampoo bottles come with instructions.”

“Get your filthy hands off me!”

“Sometimes I wonder if you graduated kindergarten.”

“I don’t know whether to hit you or to kiss you.”

"Have you seen my hoodie?"

“I’d build you a palace.”

“I don’t bite. Not too much.”

“What I fear the most is to close my eyes and never see you again.”

“I can’t believe I’m in love with you.”

“Come here.”

“You’re safe with me.”

"Is it a date?" "If you want it to be a date."

“Tell me a story.”

“You’re like a bad case of lice. I can’t get you out of my head.”

“I don’t want us to be that mawkish couple.” “I think we are already.”

“The blankets aren’t just yours!”

“I’m cold.”

“Do you even know how to do laundry?”

“We could go together… I mean, only if you want to.”

“When you're with me you don’t have to pretend.”

"When will you shut up and kiss me?"

ANGST

29. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” 30. "I know you still love me." 31. "Not everyone is going to hurt you." 32. "You deserve more." 33. "What do you mean by that?" 34. “Why do you keep pushing people away?”. 35. “No one deserves to be that lonely.” 36. "Don’t go. Don’t you dare leave me.” 37. “You broke my heart and all you can say is ‘I’m sorry’?” 38. “Mom asked about you again.” 39. “There was never an us.” 40. “He/she is using you. You can’t be that blind.” 41. “Make up your mind.” 42. “I’m getting married.” 43. “I thought I could get over you. You just prove me wrong.” 44. "You are more than one night stand."

SMUT

45.“The only way you’re getting off tonight is on my thigh.” 46. “You make a sound and it’s all over.” 47. “You’re not wearing anything under that, are you?” 48. “Can he make you feel this good?” 49. “You deserve no less than this.” 50. “Leave before we wake up regretting this.” 51. “Don’t pull away.” 52. "I didn't know you were so sensitive?" 53. "Don't leave any marks."

Once again, thank you so much!!!!!!🥹

#Levi ackerman #Milestone event

[justcallmealt]

Second part of the analysis of my OCs, this time it's only about Fau. And long

First part: here

The last one I would like to end this analysis on is Fau.

Warning: it's very long, contains my cringe and different media (some spoilers might be)

Turning to his story, let's start from the beginning, as i like to say. The basis from which it all began lies not in the world of project Moon, but in the world of the Worm (a book by Wildbow, more than a million words and written in the first person view, but worth reading if anyone is interested in gray morality in the world of superheroes and supervillains Warning: reading may not be very interesting at first, but later it will become interesting again, and I recommend reading at least up to Leviathan to understand what's what).

Story

And finally getting to the point after an unnecessary introduction: to begin with, his family was dysfunctional, and taught him to always be on the lookout, to be sceptical, to hide well despite his appearance, and finally, to be quiet and attentive, not to mention learning how to run away (he's quite good at it. And fast).

I will note the Fau's so-called "trigger event", which occurred later: locked in a shelter with other people, but the Endbringer broke into this shelter, namely Leviathan (yes it's not Project Moon Leviathan, it's... Let's say monster for now. Almost abno). And knowing its nature, victims followed.

Fau (then still preferring his full name Fausto) survived by sheer luck, hidden behind broken glass, too close for comfort, forced to watch people die, unable to do anything at the age of seventeen. Without further ado, when Leviathan was driven off, Fausto noticed a strange part - the first manifestation of his powers. According to Worm's classification, his powers can be classified as Thinker.

After the city gradually began to recover from the ruins, Fausto was offered a deal that he could not refuse even if he wanted to, and ended up working for Coil out of fear. It is also worth mentioning that at that time Fausto did not treat parahumans very well, and the fact that he himself became one hit his pride hard.

The second highlight is when he lost an eye and got facial scars... Let's say without spoilers, in a mass attack.

In theory, he was supposed to die there due to the fact that his powers are made in order to see the connections between things and / or people through glass, and the attack took place with the help of glass. Traumatic shock is not very pleasant for the body, and this is one of the reasons when he was close to death for the first time. However, he survived thanks to outside help (ahem, I'm literally stole name of this my oc who helped Fau then. And later), but even with this help and further help from professional doctors, his eye was lost (he could not see a doctor for parahumans because: firstly, he still did not treat parahumans very well, and this includes himself Secondly, it wouldn't have worked out due to canon events.), and he was left with some pretty bad scars on his face.

The third particularly significant event was at the end, 2 years later, when after defeating (edited to avoid spoilers); barely seeing due to eye strain and a migraine as a side effect of his powers, Fausto (already changed for the better as a character), was close to death, but due to outside help (Alt, my main character and haunting Fau's story like Carmen haunting the Project Moon universe. Well, not that strong haunting, but kind of close), he escaped death, and was transported to the Project Moon universe, where, with a little help, he obtained the necessary documents and all needed for the first time. But it also became the fourth major event: the loneliness of losing everything familiar, even the universe.

Some time later, he was able to get a job at the Lobotomy Corporation, and was assigned as an agent somewhere in the middle of the journey to the day 50.

I will only note that Fau (he adopted this name because most of his colleagues could not say Fausto correctly) has really good Temperance, which allowed him to avoid most of the problems and come up with a story so as not to stand out too much. In the end, he was really close to the level of the captain: not completely, but knowing how to work with the team and documents. And also personally acquainted with some of the captains and trying to help those Juniors who were with him in the department. When the White Nights and Black Days came, he tried, along with other agents, to contain the anomalies, holding out until the onset of the Black Days, in the end trying to at least let some of his Junior Colleagues go to safety (which did not work out, but he did not know it then), after which his second trigger, under similar conditions to the first happened, allowing limited interaction with connections, albeit with pain. But as expected, he also died because of the abnos.

After Day 50, when the events of Library of Ruina had already begun, he was the last librarian to wake up on the Social Sciences floor. At the same time, until a certain point, everything went according to the plot of the Library of the Ruina, until receiving the Purple Tear, where she realized that this "little anomaly" was not so simple, no matter how quietly Fau tried to be with his abilities, trying to gain a small advantage (gain [i forgot how this things called, but let's pretend it's called gifts for now] glassesfrom receptions of the guests and lying that they are needed for sight, although it was worsened by excessive use of his powers).

After receiving her with some troubles, other librarians who had already noticed enough flaws in the Fau's story decided to get answers, but it didn't work out very well, due to not very good choice of words, causing the Fau to panic and try to hide. (Well it's not only team's fault, but also Fau's.)

Thus, his belief that he could find the slightest sign of the safety in this world was shattered, bringing Fau to the brink of Distortion. Which ended up happening and almost ended badly, but in the end he was accepted, undistorted, told his story, and got his ego resonating with ability (I'm not telling too much or this'll be a wall much more).

But because of this, everything went wrong as it could, and Roland's ending was obtained, where Fau once again died, but thanks to the help of Alt (who is not even a human and is capable of much, not to mention his reasons for helping Fau once again), was transferred to another universe, for the moment remaining at the crossroads.

Fears

Moving from history to fears, I note that the Fau has a lot of these fears, and one of the conditions for obtaining an ego, in addition to accepting the fact that safeth, like his lost things, cannot be achieved. The second condition was the Fau's acceptance of the fact that he still remained a coward.

Fau's first fear can be called the fear of his family, from his father who abandoned them, to his mother, who left a deep scar on his childhood, and taught him to be quiet.

The second fear is the most common human fear - the fear of pain, even more powerful due to the injuries that Fau was able to survive. Of course, he developed a certain tolerance for pain and the ability to go through such difficulties with clenched teeth and hissing, albeit on the verge of death. However, that doesn't make the fact that the pain is still quite unpleasant any less significant.

The third fear is the fear of being different from other, "normal" people, which eventually became a fear of standing out from the people of the City due to the fact that Fau appeared here against his will. This fear played a part in getting the e.g.o..

Another fear that will not be acknowledged out loud by him is that Fau is afraid of never finding a safe place where he can take a break and be himself even for the smallest amount of time. Even if this place is temporary, it greatly reduces his stress, so working in the main facility in lobcorp was also quite difficult for him because of this.

And the last, main fear is that Fau is afraid to be completely alone, even if he does not understand this on a conscious level. Fear of not being understood by anyone, losing everything more or less familiar again because of the carpet pulled out from under the feet by fate, the feeling of free fall and the trembling of the heart before the inevitable blow.

But that's not all, since another fear follows from this main fear, namely the fear of being caught in a lie, that his unconscious reservations will lead to terrible consequences for him, which can be described in simple words as the unknown. This fear causes Fau to doubt the future, leading to more fear of the possibilities, although he tries not to think too much about the possibilities himself.

Sins

And finally, moving on to the sins of Fau.

The sin around which one could build his personality is Gloom. This gloom came from becoming a cape and realizing that parahumans are much more difficult than what was written about them on the forums (it's 2011-2013 in that time), losing everything familiar in Fau's life, including people, and more than once. Understanding that he cannot change this due to lack of the required amount of power, and even if he reaches this kind of power, he will not be able to return back and redo things. Recurring nightmares of loss, from Leviathan's attack to the deaths of those he knew in Lobcorp. Or when he survived without his will (the destruction of the Library, he was unbooked with Alt's help after Roland killed everyone on the Social Science floor.)

The second aspect I can highlight is Sloth, the reaction of forced apathy in order not to feel emotional pain. Making a facade about not being hurt by other people's deaths (just because he's seen them before from a distance doesn't mean he can get used to it), even when he was beginning to fear that the clerks were merging into a gray mass every day, causing Fau to think about it, covering himself goosebumps from such realization. But also to keep this facade and in order to avoid suspicion as well.

The third aspect will be a little controversial, since two sins had the same power at creation: Envy and Wrath.

Envy suits Fau because of his feelings, the desire to be like other people and not stand out, the desire not to know those problems and keep his pride then, perhaps even preventing a worsening condition because of his past. Seen from the Fau's point of view, his envy is directed towards both ordinary people and people with enough power to be left alone (or the power to protect those on his team, since he was close to the rank of team captain for good reason). Also, I'll cut off his thoughts about Yin, "I know what it's like to be considered a villain, how it is to be just don't having a choice," which... Not exactly true, since anomalies are inexplicable, but are concepts from human feelings. And this concept isn't fully can be understanded by him, Fau can only see some similarities and don't see difference.

Wrath. From the outside, it looks like Fau's scathing comments to others, a tactic to piss off the opponent enough to take advantage; but this tactic can be used on allies under uncomfortable conditions, such as when trying to find out the Fau's past. And as he himself admits, Fau knows that he does not have the best character.

Seen from the outside, anger is expressed in resilience, when on the verge of death he survived out of spite, gritting his teeth and barely audibly hissing in pain, but rising. Either when trying to suppress an anomaly that had red damage in order to give the Juniors time, or if the suppression was done alone, then let the Manager know with this behavior that he is here, and will not leave so easily.

Potential abnormality

Starting to extract the abno. My assumptions are that this anomaly would most likely be associated with water in the form of tears from repressed emotions, and also that this anomaly would look like an inanimate object (when considering his Distortion, it looked like a statue with a cracked hexagon crystal instead of a head that oozes red salty water). Also, this anomaly most likely would be associated with Trauma or would be able to see connections between [things].

And if we consider the timeline when he worked in lobcorp, then the abnomality extracted from Fau could only see, but not interact with connections. But after the second trigger, this anomaly could interact, thereby leading to unpredictable results. Also, this anomaly would have black damage.

Otherwise, this anomaly would be related to defense, but to a much lesser extent, something related to the restoration of Sp, but not Hp, up to a point, but not like Thearesia. Or it could be an anomaly related to childhood trauma, as this is a very important theme in the Fau story.

Ending

On this, I ask you to consider the analysis completed.

But. If someone is interested, I will try to write an analysis of the distortion and e.g.o. Fau, touching in more detail on his superpowers and their interaction with the Light.

[thepennedcommandments]

Fuck you. Sincerely, a Millennial

Guys, it’s been a shitshow. Let’s get into it.

What’s your earliest childhood memory? What is the first major world or news event that you can remember?

Mine? I had to stop my VHS of The Sandlot to watch OJ Simpson being chased in his white Bronco per my parents demand. I mean, who could blame them? A former football player murder his wife and her lover and sent the police on a high speed chase only to be acquitted a year later. My childhood was AMAZING, don’t get me wrong, but there was a lot demanded of my generation.

•Adults demanded blind obedience. Don’t you question authority! It’s disrespectful.

•Rules were demanded to be followed.

•Children should be seen and not heard.

•Don’t you ever question an adult.

•You better speak when spoken to.

•Teachers demanded an inhumane amount of homework be completed nightly.

We were demanded to follow a dress code in high school that sounded like it came out before women could even wear pants in public. We were told that bare shoulders were too sexual for school. Ok, Perv. Do you know how long it took me to feel like I wasn’t doing something wrong when wearing a sleeveless shirt? Thanks, Marlboro Academy. 👍🏻

Demands, demands, demands. But no explanation other than “Because I said so.”

How about in 2001 when we watched actual human beings jump from the 50th floor of the World Trade Center, in real time on national television, at 14 years old in classroom with our peers.

What about those mature enough to pursue college degrees right out of high school only to be met with a recession upon completing that degree. There were no jobs, no money, and good luck buying a home.

The transition from a relatively private life to being filmed by cameras in every store, every highway, and every sidewalk. The transition from celebrating your life wins with your family to the pressure of needing to document it for your social media following. There is an electronic footprint of everything we do now.

We are a generation that were hit by our parents for making a mistake. It’s such an odd concept. I’m not talking about being popped on the rear for disobeying. I’m talking about adult strength behind the force of a leather belt. Seriously, y’all. What the actual fuck was that?

We are progressive. We are adaptable. We are resilient. We don’t believe our lives revolve around grinding 9-5. Maybe because it feels like the world has been crashing around us our whole lives so we want to make the most of what’s left. We want others to be heard and feel accepted. We want our children to ask questions and we use alternate forms of discipline. We are tolerant. But we don’t tolerate bullshit.

Our music is top tier. Our pop culture was addicting. Pearl Jam, Alanis, Lil Jon, Lil Wayne, Britney, Freddie Prince, Jr., and Monica Lewinsky. I mean, the diversity that the 90s and early 2000s served. 👏🏻We listened to everything from Tim McGraw to T-Pain. We watched everything from Will and Grace to Jenny Jones.

Hot Takes From an 80s Baby:

I don’t care. Literally. Do what you want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. The idea of caring so much about what other people are doing has been strongly perpetuated by this social media/influencer culture. We didn’t even have the internet growing up, or cell phones.

I don’t care that you and your dad and his dad all worked the same job for 35 years before retiring. If my current job isn’t serving me, I’m gonna find a new one.

I don’t care that you are my aunt or a childhood best friend. I don’t hang on to relationships that are mentally and physically draining. Family or not, if you are toxic then you gotta go.

I don’t care that your feelings might get hurt because our children didn’t want to hug you today and I didn’t force them to. Or force them to have a weird conversation with you. There’s like 50 years between the two of you, find someone your own age to talk to.

I don’t care that you think we are dumber than your generation.

I don’t care that you hate tattoos and piercings and brightly colored hair.

I don’t care that you don’t understand other communities outside of the one you belong to because you’ve never tried to.

I don’t care that you disagree with me. Two opposite opinions can coexist in the same space.

I don’t care that you think your generation is superior. I’m glad you do, someone needs to, I guess.

I just don’t care. Life is too fucked to care too much about any of it.

So, I stand by it. Fuck you. Fuck another war, fuck politics, fuck social media, fuck toxic family members and work environments, fuck recessions and pandemics, fuck blind obedience, fuck inflation, and lastly, fuck off.

Sincerely,

a Millennial ✌🏼

#millennials #holy fuck #spilled words #nostaliga #opinion #i said wtf i said #small town usa #written #delete later