Well would ya look at that. I’m actually sticking to my word and actually posting a chapter a week! Anyways I don’t have much to say this time except of course thank you to everyone who is reading and supporting this story. Your love is the thing driving my motivation. Again, thanks to @kyotowinds aka @heichie aka Chi for being my beta (Get used to being tagged in every chapter because I will always be thankful for you for being one of my betas) and also thank you to the lovely @jackieeleanor for being the inspiration of this AU in the first place. This wouldn’t have come to life without that one reblog/post. Much love to all of you!
P.S. There’s a surprise at the end of this chapter since my friend thought it would it be funny to draw a scene for me. Honestly, it gave me a good laugh so I couldn’t not include it and share it with you all.
Sorry these first couple chapters are so short, but I’m actually having so much fun writing this AU. I’ve never really had the motivation to actually finish any of my AUs but seeing that some of you like it and are actually looking forward to it gives me the motivation to keep going. So to all those people, you know who you are. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Again thank you to the wonderful Chi aka @kyotowinds for helping me beta read! Thanks dude! So here it is!
Lmao this American girl walked up to a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) register with her drink and really, really loudly (I was at the other side of the place) proclaimed:
“I asked for Lemonade, you gave me Sprite” in a really bitchy, entitled voice.
The cashier (and everyone within earshot) just looked at her like “the fuck is wrong with you”
In Australia, Sprite IS lemonade as far as we’re concerned.
Yeah this is correct. Lemonade is sprite. Clear fizzy liquid type thing. Solo is closer to what American lemonade is but we don’t actually have what you guys consider lemonade anyway so she was never going to get what she wanted lmao.
I’m pretty sure the same is true in the UK at least was in 2010 except Sprite didn’t seem to be a common brand so I’d ask for Sprite get blank looks eventually figured out to ask for lemonade
Sprite, the lemon-lime flavored
carbonated beverage, is made on Earth.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System’s four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor Sprite.
The people of Earth are known as “Earthlings” or “Spriteloids” interchangeably (although not to each other).
philsandifer
At least in the UK, if you order lemonade you’ll sometimes get Sprite, but if it’s proper it’s a lemon soda akin to the Italian gassosa - less sweet than Sprite.
You guys have orange juice at least, right? Grapefruit juice? In the US, Lemonade is a juice, like orange juice, but made with lemons instead of oranges. You can buy “fresh squeezed lemonade” at many restaurants and fast food venues. Typically it’s diluted a bit with sugar water, so the sour flavor of the raw lemon juice isn’t so overpowering.
In the south, it’s very common for people buy whole lemons and make their own lemonade at home using a citrus juicer.
In Germany, you’d ask for “Limonade” and yeah, you may get a Sprite or a Fanta; it’ll always be a fizzy nonalcoholic drink and usually come in lemon, lime, orange flavor. Only in healthfood or hipster establishments would it ever be an actual juice drink.
As a fan of homemade rosewater lemonade, I am twitching at the thought of sickly sweet carbonated beverages that taste like they were invented by someone who may have been in the same room as a citrus fruit once but can’t remember what it actually tastes like being called lemonade.
oh wow I hadn’t even considered that. Like millions of people worldwide hearing the album title but not understanding what lemonade means even on the most superficial level.
This is so epically disturbing. Lemonade is such an integral part of spring and summertime. I just … this breaks my brain and my heart. The cultural references too. Just, all the American shows that reference lemonade and people in other countries are thinking Sprite? There’s a reason kids do freshly squeezed lemonade stands. You can’t buy it like that from a store. And there’s nothing quite like screwing it up and getting the sugar ratio wrong. And parents grinning through the too sour or too sweet mess and praising your efforts. Lemonade Is a Thing.
Yes, Australians make Shandies with our carbonated soft drink lemonade, though if you’re using it as a mixer, you’re less likely to be using Sprite and more likely to be using Schweppes, which looks like this:
Like. We absolutely have a concept of flat, juice-based lemonade, but as an earlier commenter said, it’s a niche hipster speciality rather than the default, and even then, it’s still going to be premade rather than fresh.
Here it is! I’d like to thank the lovely Chi aka @kyotowinds for helping me beta read this. So, I’d like to present…
What if nothing had to happen the way it had? What if there was something to change their fate? What if…
Everything was a blur as a dark haired woman sprinted past burning trees and deeper into the dark forest to escape the massacre behind them. The wound she had received on her side while trying to escape was excruciating, but that was nothing compared to the pain she felt in her heart. Everyone and everything was gone. All except her dear little sister that she carried tightly in her arms as she ran away from the burning village. The adrenaline that coursed through her veins allowed her to get far into the depths of the dark forest, but she didn’t stop until she knew for sure that the humans had given up on chasing them.
Her chest heaved as she finally stopped running, her lungs burning for air, but this was no time to stop moving. She clutched the sobbing girl while limping through the forest and forced herself to push on despite the gaping wound on her side. She had to keep her only remaining family safe from harm. She couldn’t protect her little brother, but she would be damned if she didn’t give everything she had left to protect her little sister. But she knew it couldn’t be that easy. She couldn’t die and leave her poor sister on her own in a world filled with humans. She had to live for her sister’s sake.
“It’ll be okay, Chizuru. We’re going to be okay.” She knew what she said was a complete and utter lie. She had no idea what to do or where to go. All she could do was hold her little sister closer to her neck, hoping her scent would be enough to calm the girl down, but even that was a shot in the dark. After everything that had happened that night, something as simple as her scent wasn’t going to be enough. But that was better than nothing. Her scent would remind her that she wasn’t alone. That she still had someone there for her. That there was someone who would take care of her and stay with her no matter what life threw at them.
After what felt like hours of aimless wandering, her body finally began to give in to its wounds. With the amount of blood that she lost and the agony of losing practically her entire family, the woman barely managed to brace herself against a nearby tree before slumping to the forest ground, unconscious. Chizuru, who had fallen into a fitful sleep, was jolted awake from the fall and the feeling of her sister’s arms loosening around her body.
“Nee-san?” Her hesitant voice was the only sound in the early dawn making her feel all the much smaller and alone. The rays from the emerging sun shining through the trees brought her no comfort at all as they reminded her too much of the burning flames that engulfed her home. Tears once again began to stream down her face as she begged and cried for her sister to wake up, but no matter how loud she was or hard she shook her, the woman wouldn’t move.
Chizuru was terrified. She didn’t want to be left alone.
But there wasn’t anything she could do. She wasn’t anything like her sister, mother, or any of the females in her village who could help heal wounds just by being near an injured oni. She was too young and too inexperienced to be any help at all. All she could do was crawl under her sister’s limp arm and curl up next to her, hoping that maybe just maybe she could be able to help.
Suddenly, the rustling of leaves caused the tiny girl to look toward the noise in fear and she hastily scrambled back around in an attempt to hide from whatever was coming. She could hear the noises getting louder and clenched her eyes shut, gripping the fabric of her sister’s kimono.
“Oi, why are you being so noisy?” An annoyed boy’s voice sounded above her small frame and she hesitantly cracked one eye open to see a messy haired brunet glaring down at her. Chizuru let out a panicked squeak and turned back to try and hide from the stranger.
“You woke me up with your screaming and now you won’t say anything? Why- woah. Hey, she doesn’t look okay.” The boy noticed the bloodstained material of the woman the kid was hiding under and by the looks of how much of the fabric was stained red, he could tell she wouldn’t be okay if he let them be. Even though he had just met them and already despised the fact that his sleep was interrupted, the woman in a way reminded him of his own sister.
Chizuru could hear footsteps quickly leaving their location, but she refused to make a single move until the only sounds left were the sounds of the forest. The young girl quickly crawled out from under her sister’s arm and desperately tried to wake her, but to no avail.
“Nee-san, please wake up! We have to go before he comes back! Nee-san!” However, her quiet pleas were only met with her sister’s shallow ragged breathing. The smell of blood overwhelmed all her senses and she didn’t notice the sound of voices nearing until it was too late.
“Kondo-san, I think they were over there.” Chizuru heard the voice from before coming back and it sounded like he had brought someone else with him too. She frantically looked around for something that could be used to defend herself and the two swords that hung on her sister’s hip caught her eye. Scrambling toward them, she tried to pull one out of its sheath, but they were pinned and much too heavy for her to even attempt lifting.
“Are you alright, little one?” Suddenly, Chizuru heard a kind voice and she turned around to see the same boy from before and another older man kneeling next to him. They were humans! Had they followed them all the way from their village to finally finish the two of them off while her sister was injured and couldn’t defend herself?
“Don’t be scared. We’re not here to hurt you, we’re only here to help.” The man could see the poor girl was terrified and trembling as soon as they made their presence known. He could tell the two had been through something awful from the blood and dirt smeared on their clothing, and he wanted to calm the girl down the best he could so he could help them.
“My name is Kondo Isami. What’s your name?” He tried for a simple enough question that wouldn’t panic the scared girl and would be easy enough for her to answer.
“Chi-chizuru…” She tried not to sound scared, but that was hard enough seeing that he was a stranger, but it was even harder knowing that he was a human that could hurt them. The man seemed to be pleased with her answer and stood up, slowly walking over then kneeling down near her.
“Well Chizuru-chan, I think your friend needs some help. We’re going to help her, okay?” The little girl was still nervous about the two people and especially because they were humans too. She really didn’t want to trust them, but she didn’t know what else she would be able to do alone to help her sister. Chizuru nervously nodded and allowed Kondo to gently pick her sister off the forest floor, mindful not to agitate her wound any more than necessary.
“Hey, come on. You don’t want to leave her, right?” The brunet had walked over to her and held his hand out, waiting for her to take it. His expression was slightly annoyed, but she nervously reached out to hold it regardless as the older man gently carried her sister out of the forest. All she could do was follow the two humans and hope they would be okay in the end.
“Cats don’t comfort you when you’re feeling down.”
What a load of crap !!! One thing for certain… cats don’t give a rat’s ass what B.S. you tell about them. They refuse to care less, either about what you think of them, or about the people they love.
“Cats don’t miss you when you’re gone” is a ton of bs. Whenever I leave to go anywhere, I can hear my cats meowing at the door within moments trying to find me. They sit in the window watching for me to come home and they are at the door to greet me almost every single time.
keelime-pies
Cats also grieve. This cat watches a video of their owner who had passed away and he tries to cuddle up with the phone. The look on his face when they zoom in on him brings me to tears every time.
One of our cats comes and sleeps next to me when he sees that I’m not feeling well. If he’s in the kitchen when I come down for food with cramps or with a cold, he’ll follow me back upstairs and lay down on me and purr.
Cats are aloof animals who don’t put up with nonsense, will defend their boundaries with claws, and sometimes like to push things down to see what happens, but they aren’t jerks.
Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.
I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.
“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.””
And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.
adios-toreadork
Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.
His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny.
In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.
His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.
At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”
Also fun fact we learned in class today: Michelangelo carved a sculpture of a Roman god, broke off the arm, and then buried it. The sculpture was dug up and was considered to be an authentic Roman artefact, until Michelangelo came along with the missing arm and called shenanigans on himself, just to prove he was as skilled a sculptor as the ancient Romans.
