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sweetbans29 · 7 months ago

Text

Now's Not the Time - CC

Pairing: Caitlin Clark x Reader

Summary: 4 times you rile her up

Warnings: Mature - minors please do not engage!

Word Count: 5.1k

Sweetbans Masterlist

AN: well, well, well...we meet again 😘

one. the club.

The team was out celebrating the beginning of spring break (and the two days you all had before hitting practice hard for the elite eight). The plan was to start at a local bar then head to a nightclub to go dancing then end the night off at Caitlin and your apartment. Your place was already set up to house 15 girls because you knew none of you would want to make beds when you got back at who knows what ungodly hour.

Your bar time was about coming to an end and you were incredibly close to your drink limit. Considering you decided to pregame before you left your place, the two drinks you had at the bar are making you feel pretty good. You are sitting in between Caitlin and Hannah as you watch a group of girls go up to sing karaoke. You cross your legs and tuck your foot behind Caitlin's calf as you talk with Hannah and Jada.

Caitlin was taking it slow tonight with the drinks, knowing that you went hard with the pregaming. You both have learned that it isn't the best idea to be drunk at the same time (we don't talk about the summer of 2020). She also knows that you get a little handsy when you are buzzed.

Caitlin's first hint was when your foot came to the back of her calf, your foot was rubbing up and down her calf, and spent some extra time rubbing around her ankle. She takes a deep inhale and brings her hand to your thigh, giving it a little tap.

You uncross your legs, remove your foot from her calf, and turn to face her. She is still in conversation with Kate and Syd, keeping her hand on your thigh. You shrug and turn back.

Everyone finishes their drinks and you all make your way to your next destination. On your walk over, you take hold of Caitlin's hand. Your other hand comes and graces her forearm. Your hand goes from gripping her arm to gently running your fingertips up and down her arm, hitting all the sensitive spots with the most delicate touch. Such a simple motion but it drives Caitlin crazy.

As you approach the club, both of your hands are removed from Caitlin's arm. She lets out a little pout and immediately wants your touch back. You give her a lazy smile.

You all enter the club and head straight to the bar. You grab a rum and coke and make your way to the dance floor.

Your stunning, still-sober girlfriend watches as you raise your hands in the air and sway your hips in a manner that would make anyone mesmerized by your body. After a few minutes, you catch Caitlin watching you with wanting eyes and point a finger at her, signaling you want her to join you. When she doesn't, you take matters into your own hands.

Making your way to your girlfriend, you set your drink down and grab her hand bringing her to the dance floor.

The night is spent dancing and laughing. Everyone was having a great time and you were too busy enjoying yourself to think about how much this is going to suck in the morning.

Your group is winding down as you are all sitting in a booth, doing your own karaoke and milking your last round of drinks when you begin to get a little handsy again. Up to this point, Caitlin has been hanging on by a thread. She has had to walk away when your hand slips somewhere it shouldn't in such a public place. Other times she has had to give you a little reprimand, reminding you that you two weren't going home alone.

Legs draped over Caitlin's lap and arms wrapped around her neck, you watch as Jada and Hannah try to do a TikTok dance. They typically have these dances on lock but due to the alcohol, they were a total disaster. This causes you to lean your head back and laugh, then bring your head back into Caitlin's neck. Her hands are wrapped around your waist to keep you from falling, occasionally giving your hips a little squeeze.

As your head makes its way into her neck you take a deep inhale, intoxicating yourself with her scent (as if you needed to be more intoxicated than you already were). When you exhale, your hot breath fans across your girlfriend's neck causing her to shudder. You feel her slightly adjust the two of you and take the opportunity to let your lips skim against her neck. Caitlin lets out a sigh as she gives your hips a little warning pinch.

A smile makes its way to your lips as you decide to be a little more bold with your movements. Your lips come and brush against her ear and you hear her breathing become uneven. This encourages you more and you bring the tip of your tongue to trace the shell of her earlobe. She lets out a moan and you know you got her.

After teasing her neck with your lips, you give in and plant them firmly on her sweet spot. The way her fingers dig into your hips and her head leans back to give you more access encourages you to keep going. Your hand cups the back of her head to keep her from moving any further as you make a feast of her neck.

Her hand comes to cup your face as she tries to remove you from assaulting her neck. Caitlin's neck is one of your weak spots alongside her fingers.

"Babe, you need to settle down," she says with a shakier voice than she was hoping for. "But I don't want to," you whisper in her ear. She takes the opportunity to move your face away from her neck and leans her forehead against yours. You let out a little pout and lean in to give her a kiss.

Caitlin knew that if you succeeded, there would be no turning back. She also knew that she was probably one of two people still sober enough to get the whole team back to your place so she opted to dodge the kiss. She placed a finger on your lips, which might not have been the smartest move. You move your head up and open your lips as you take the tip of her finger into your mouth.

Her eyes are locked on your lips as you take her whole finger into your mouth, tongue swirling around it as you take hold of her wrist to pull it out. You feel her thighs squeeze together under your own legs right before she practically throws you off her lap and onto the booth. She stands and takes her turned-on ass to the bar to get water.

She looks back over to where the team is and you are now up singing karaoke with Kate.

two. practice.

Practice today consists mostly of defense drills. It was a lot of refining technical skills that was necessary for your game but wasn't the most fun in practice. Your coaches would have you run the same plays over and over again to work through where everyone should be and how you should move as one team, one defense.

We were split into teams, switching from working on defense to playing offense. You were on the opposite team as Caitlin and were often her counterpart when it came to these drills. It was frustrating. Infuriating really. Guarding Cait often felt impossible as she didn't really have a weakness - reading the floor perfectly, passing seamlessly, hitting logo threes, and everything in between. As much as you hate it, it still helps your defense game.

It was halfway through practice and you were majorly annoyed. More so annoyed with yourself than your girlfriend, but annoyed nonetheless. It was your turn again to run the defensive side of the play and your one goal was to block Caitlin so well that she wouldn't get the ball. She can't shoot if she doesn't have the ball...right?

When your coach yells to go, you follow Caitlin vigorously. She works hard to get around you and become available for her team. As she swings around towards the right side, you plant yourself in front of her with your back facing her. You reach a hand back and it finds her waist. It doesn't remain there long but just long enough to feel her next move of trying to break out in front of you. As she moves, you move to block her from going in the direction she wants by stepping out in front of her. She takes a step and the front of her body meets the back of yours. You both side step the same way unintentionally causing your hips to slightly grind against hers.

Anyone looking wouldn't think much of it but to Cait, it reminded her of her coming up behind you in the kitchen and placing her hands all over your body. It starts a fire in her. You hear the whistle blow and you stand up from your defensive stance - Caitlin still directly behind you. You feel her lean into you and inhale your scent. She lets out a little moan next to your left ear, unintentionally signaling that she is getting worked up. Then an idea pops into your head.

The coaches have you run this round again. Once everyone is set, you approach this round a little differently. You follow Caitlin like a shadow, keeping a hand on her waist to make sure she is within arm's reach throughout the whole drill. Also to make your presence known to her, it worked in your favor that we were all in penny jerseys and Cait decided not to wear an undershirt today. Every chance you got, you would do your best to get your hand to skim the skin just above her waistline with the slightest touch.

She gets the ball and goes up for a three. One of your hands goes up to attempt to block it and fails. Once the ball leaves her hand and makes its way to the hoop, you turn, placing a hand behind you on her hip again. This time with a little squeeze which sends a current all throughout her body. You both stand looking to see if her shot goes in and it is just short, hitting the rim and bouncing back to someone working on defense.

The whistle is blown and you feel Caitlin grab your arm. She turns you around and looks down at you with heavy eyes.

"Babe, I know what you're doing and it needs to stop." She says using all of her strength to not pull you into the locker room right this second, letting everyone hear you scream her name. Her skin has been on fire since your skin first met hers. Now half of her body is buzzing, ready for more.

You look up at her with innocent eyes, "I don't know what you are talking about." Holding her gaze you take a baby step forward and lean closer into her so only she can hear, "Or maybe I want to get you all riled up in front of everyone and watch you squirm every time my fingers make contact with your skin. Just lightly enough for your body to feel my presence but not enough to release any tension building in you. Touching you in all of your favorite places and all the places I plan on putting not-so-little love bites on you when it is just you and me."

Caitlin's breath becomes dangerously uneven, pupils dilating as her eyes go from yours down to your lips. You run your tongue across your bottom lip, then bite it ever so slightly. All while your hand runs up her arm and gives her a nice little pat on her shoulder.

You step back and leave her standing there, dripping. Goosebumps across the skin on her arm your hand had just graced. Her breath uneven and eyes hungry for more of you. She looks up at the clock and realizes that there are another 20 minutes of practice left. She mentally curses as her body longs to be touched. As they set up for another drill, Caitlin begins to plot all the things she is going to do to you when you get back to the apartment.

She looks over at you right before you go again and you send her a little wink. Tonight was going to be fun.

three. pancakes.

You wake up to an empty bed.

Caitlin had a team meeting first thing this morning as they were playing their last home game tonight. It is senior night and they need to rehearse what that looks like for the players and the staff.

You roll out of bed and grab the nearest piece of clothing you can find which just so happens to be your girlfriend's jersey. You bring it over your head and pull it down your body. The bottom of the jersey hits a few inches below your hips so you decide to forgo pants.

Heading out to the kitchen, you have some time before you have to head to the library to finish a group project before Caitlin's game tonight. You look in the fridge and then the cabinets, deciding on making pancakes for breakfast. Looking at the clock, you decide to double the amount knowing your girl will be home soon.

You put music on and get to cooking, stopping frequently for a little dance break.

You are in the middle of your mid-morning party when Caitlin arrives home to the smell of blueberry pancakes. She drops her stuff by the door and heads to where the delicious smell is coming from. As she rounds the corner, she is met with the most beautiful sight, you dancing in nothing but her jersey.

She takes a deep inhale as your back is facing her with your hips swaying side to side. She walks up to you placing her hands on your hips and bringing your dancing body to meet hers. You jump a little at the sudden touch but instantly relax when you feel your girlfriend’s hands give your hips a little squeeze. You lean back into her and sway your hips alongside hers. She lets out a little chuckle, wrapping her arms around your torso.

“Hi babe,” she says into your ear. You are humming the song as you turn your head back to her to give her a kiss - humming the song into her lips. You break away from her to pour the pancake mix into the pan. Caitlin’s arms do not leave you, she rests her head on your shoulder.

One of her hands begins to wander from its original post and makes its way to the bottom of the jersey lifting it just enough for her to peak at what’s underneath. You instantly slap her hand with the spatula you are holding and give her a warning look.

“Don’t even think about it,” you say as you break away from her gaze and go back to your pancakes. “My priority is pancakes and you will not distract me. You also need to finish that paper for your class because I know you aren’t going to want to do it tomorrow.”

“So you are telling me you put on my jersey, and only my jersey…to just make pancakes?” She says in disbelief, swearing you did it for a fun time when she got home.

“Yes,” is all you say as you flip your first round of pancakes. She lets out a frustrated groan.

You finish up the first batch of pancakes and plate them up. You grab one from the plate and make a little blueberry and whipped cream roll up. You take a bite and walk over to Caitlin to give her a bite. When she takes the bite from your hand, whipped cream comes out and lands on the side of her lip. You let out a little laugh as you whip it off her face with your finger. Deciding to have a little fun you lick the whipped cream off your finger a little slower than you typically would, making direct eye contact with your girl.

Her eyes darken slightly as she watches your every move. You give her a little smile as you head back to make one more batch of pancakes.

Once you place the last of the batter in the pan, you grab the whipped cream and head over to Caitlin. You may not have time to do everything either of you want but you do have time to tease her a little more. You nod at her to open her mouth for you to put some whipped cream in. She’s opens without any hesitation and right as you about to squirt some, you shift a little to the left and miss her mouth getting it on her face. She just looks at you with shock and a little laugh. You then come in and use your tongue to clean up the mess you just made.

“Sorry babe,” you say as you nod at her to open again. She obliges and opens her mouth only to hear the whipped cream can but does not taste any sweetness. The second she leans down to see what happened, she is met with your sweet lips that open instantly as they touch hers. The whipped cream enters her mouth and her tongue dances with yours. As you kiss her, you begin to lift her shirt and signal you want it off. Her lips separate from yours only to rid her shift from her body, leaving her in a sports bra and shorts. She goes to connect your lips again but stops when you spray whipped cream on her stomach.

Before she can question you, you get down on your knees in front of her. Giving her one look up before you grab her hips and bring your lips to clean up the mess you just made. The second your lips meet her skin, she inhales sharply, head leaning back and hands gripping the countertop. You take your time cleaning up the whipped cream, using your tongue to dance across her stomach, and placing kisses every now and again.

Her hand comes down to your head and guides it back up to where her lips can capture yours. Having something a little different in mind, you bring your hand up to her head pulling her head to the side. Your lips to her neck as you start working your way to her sweet spot. As you are working on her neck, you work one of your legs in between hers. Your free hand comes to her hip and guides her center to rest on your upper thigh. As suck and nip at her neck, she lets out uneven breathes. She’s lost in your movements. You begin to slowly rock her hip, just enough to provide the slightest pressure where she wants it the most. The exhale she releases when she receives the slightest relief is enough to have you cancel all plans for the rest of the weekend.

Unfortunately for both of you, there were places you needed to be, so canceling your project meeting was not an option. You bring your lips to hers and give her a quick kiss before whispering ‘I’m sorry babe’ and removing yourself from her.

The sounds that escaped your girlfriend's lips were a cross between a whine and a growl - causing you to cross your legs to relieve a little pressure for yourself.

“There is no way you're about to leave me here in this state,” she says with a needy tone of voice.

You genuinely felt bad about this one, you’ve teased her many times before but she has been so good and if you were honest, you could also use the release.

“Cait, when we get back from your game tonight, I promise we will do whatever you want,” you say knowing that will do nothing for your girl right now.

“Just two minutes,” she tries to plead with you. You give her a look.

“There is no way you are finishing in 2 minutes,” you say, knowing she will come back with a rebuttal. As you walk around the backside of the counter she is standing by you saying, “Plus, it’s so much more fun when I get to take my time on you.”

Caitlin yells and groans all at once as she mutters something about needing to find the charger for her toy, as you run to get ready for the library.

four. massage. (mature)

You are at home reading when you hear the door to your apartment open and then close again a few seconds later. You know exactly who is walking through your front door. After the door closes, you hear her shoes fumble off and hit the mat. It takes a second for her to wander in from the front hallway but once she does, she drags herself to where you are, drops her bag, and flops next to you on the bed. She lets out a big sigh as her eyes close. She looks absolutely beat.

You transfer your book into your other hand so that your free hand can come up and rub Caitlin's back. Your hand begins to rub circles around her shoulder blades as you feel her shoulders begin to loosen.

"Cait, you are really tight love," you say as you start feeling around her shoulders. She mumbles something incoherent, too relaxed by the way your hands are working her sore muscles.

Looking back at your book and continuing where you left off, you keep rubbing your girlfriend's shoulder. Soft sighs fall from her mouth. After a few minutes, your hand begins to find its way under her shirt. It is a little bit of a tight squeeze as you don't want to stretch the neckline of her shirt too much. Once it becomes a little too difficult for you to reach, you put your book down.

"Will you give me a massage?" Caitlin asks in the sweetest tone, the exhaustion seeping through her voice.

"Of course my love," you reply. "Do you think you can sit up to take your shirt off for me?"

She does what you ask without hesitation. When she sits up, you grab the bottom of her shirt and bring it over the top of her head. She also removes her sports bra and discards it off the bed. You pat the bed for her to lay back down on her stomach. You get up from the bed and rummage through your bedside draws to find the oil. This isn't an uncommon occurrence for the two of you. It was about every other week that you were giving your girlfriend a massage.

Once you find what you are looking for, you head back to where Caitlin is laying on the bed.

You begin by moving her hair off her back. Once it is all out of the way, you give her head a kiss. You see a smile appear on her face, which yours mirrors. You then straddle her backside.

"Just relax babe, I will take good care of you," you say as you squirt some oil into your hands and warm it up before placing your hands on her back.

The second your hands press into her back, the groan that escapes Caitlin's lips vibrates all over her body. You let out a little laugh, beginning to work the knots in her shoulders out. It seems like every other move has her moaning and groaning.

"Feels amazing babe," she breathes out as you work down her whole spine. Another moan makes its way out of her. Between the position you are in and the heavenly sounds falling from your girl's lips, you begin to get an itch in your core.

Like always, an idea begins to form in your head as you continue massaging Caitlin's back. You slowly move down so you are no longer sitting on her butt, but rather are resting on the backside of her thighs. You begin to bring down her shorts just slightly, working on her lower back as your fingers continue to lower themselves underneath her shorts.

"Babe, what are you doing?" She asks but you just shush her and continue. She doesn't question you any more.

As your hands make work of her lower back, Caitlin starts getting slightly worked up. It is not like she intends to, but the way your hands keep working lower and lower has her wanting them somewhere else.

Good thing for her, you were on the same page.

You continue to work on the lower back of your girlfriend when you want to massage something a little softer. Your hands begin to work back up her back scooping down towards her front. First coming around to touch her abs, then making another pass, giving her boobs a nice little squeeze.

No protest comes from Cait, just a low moan which encourages you even more. You do it again, spending a little more time on their most sensitive spots. This causes Caitlin's hips to grind down on the bed a little to try and release any of the pressure that continues to build.

You remove your hands from her breasts and decide to tease her a little more. Moving further down her body, you decide to pay a little attention to the back of her thighs. But instead of starting with your hands, you lean down and press a kiss on the back of her left thigh.

You look up to see Caitlin burying her face into the pillow while her hands grip the sheet of your bed. You decide to keep going, pressing gentle kisses to the backs of both thighs, beginning to massage them as well. Your fingers coming dangerously close to her center. She tries to shift to get them where she so desperately wants them at this point but you want to take your time. You want to see her squirm under your touch, so much that when you finally pay attention to her most sensitive spots, she is coming undone in a matter of moments.

You get tired of her being able to hide in the pillows of your bed so you place your hands on her hips and guide her to flip over. When she does, you take a moment to take in the sight of her. Her eyes are tired and are slightly glazed, pupils dilated. You then take in the sight of her lower lip and see it is slightly swollen from where she has been biting it. Before you can take a look, her hands come up to her chest, massaging her breasts to get even the slightest release. You give her a disapproving look and come up to grab her hands, placing them back down at her sides. Your eyes make their way to her perfectly perked nipples and a smile forms on your lips. She is completely vulnerable under your gaze. Her hands grip the sheets again, trying to occupy themselves so she doesn't get scolded again.

"Good girl," you say, as you see her eyes slightly roll back in her head. If there is one thing that your girlfriend loves, it is being praised in the bedroom. Everywhere else - the classroom or on the court - she is humble and doesn't let it affect her or go to her head. But for some reason, when you praise her - she can never get enough.

You lean down to take one of her nipples into your mouth while your hand works on the other. Her breath becomes rigid and you look up to see her biting her lip as her head presses back further into the pillow.

"I need more babe, please touch me more," she practically begs as you continue to use your tongue. You hum in response and begin to kiss down her torso, taking all the time in the world to get to where she wants your lips. She can't take it anymore as her hand comes up to your head, gripping you hair, trying to guide you further down.

Your tongue swipes a strip from the base of her torso up to just under her boobs as you take her hand in yours and give it a little kiss. Then you place it under her bottom, doing the same to the other.

"No moving sweet pea," you say.

You then kiss down her torso, moving a little faster than before. Skipping over where her shorts are, you kiss her thighs. Working all around them, ending with slightly sucking her inner thigh. This earns you a whimper from your girl. You look up again to see her itching to be touched.

You decide she has had enough. Lifting her hips up, you remove her shorts. She now lays bare in your bed, one of your favorite sights.

The second her shorts find their way to the floor, you spread her legs and continue kissing her inner thighs, slowly working your way to her center. You see her chest rise and fall at a faster pace the closer you get. You bring your hand up to give one of her nipples a little more love while kissing her throbbing middle. Her hips immediately buck up into your face. You press them back down into the bed as your tongue begins to work on her.

Her moans become more frequent - one of her hands coming up to her mouth to try and hide them. You just started but you know she is about to come undone.

Within a matter of seconds, you have her at her climax. Squirming underneath you as you continue to feast on her. Your name falling out of her mouth with a string of curses following.

Once she comes down from her high, you begin to kiss up her torso to meet her lips with yours.

"You are incredibly hot babe," you say as her lips are swollen, her hair a mess and her chest rising and falling. She just looks up at you with a smile.

You remove your shirt and pass it over to her. She puts it on as you go to grab her some water.

When you come back you pass her the cup and settle back in bed next to her. Once she is done drinking, she curls up into your side. You pick up your book again and begin reading.

Just as you are about to turn the page, you hear soft snores escaping her. You put your book down and decide that a nap with your girl sounds pretty good.

AN - That last one was not what I intended at the beginning but it is what you got. Please let me know what you think! And as always, thank you for your love and support 🤍

#caitlin clark #caitlin clark x reader #caitlin clark imagine #22 #iowa hawkeyes #iowa wbb

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aroaceleovaldez · 2 months ago

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What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

#pjo #riordanverse #fandom history #rick riordan #rr crit #ask #boywithskull #anonymous #long post //#fun times fun times #im always amused by the bit where i come in. like oh yeah i played a major part in the middle of all of this #i didnt mean to but i was the beginning of the end #maybe thats why this book is my personal hell. its in direct retribution #its really weird though because Rick did not usually reply to people on twitter but he responded to my open letter WITHIN HALF AN HOUR #within half an hour of me posting it he replied and then rapid-fire replied to like two or three other random tweet questions #at which point he confirmed he wrote Reyna with her being alloromantic ace-coded in mind (''but you dont have to agree'')#(i should note also - rick's reply plus the ensuing tweets HEAVILY implies he did NOT actually read my open letter. lmao.)#dipped off twitter for a couple of weeks. came back to post his blog posts responding to criticism about Piper and Sam #and then left social media completely. people kept talking. oh look new book pspspsp. look show pspspsp.#but so. yknow. i did that. it was ME!!!!!! and i will never let him forget. i know what he did.#i will never let him live down shitty PR move to try and sweep those bad blog posts under the rug

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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lol philadelphia inquirer bodying nyt

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?

To build himself up, Trump constantly tears the country down. There is no shining city on the hill. It’s just mourning in America.

Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a “failing” country. He called the United States a “third world nation.” He said, “we’re living in hell” and “very close to World War III.”

“People are dying all over the place,” Trump said, later adding “we’re literally an uncivilized country now.”

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

After scheming to overturn the 2020 election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.

Trump attacks the military. He denigrates the Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.

Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.

Trump spent chunks of time watching TV, tweeting, and hanging out at his country clubs. Over his four-year term, Trump played roughly 261 rounds of golf.

As president, Trump didn’t read the daily intelligence briefs. He continued to use his personal cell phone, allowing Chinese spies to listen to his calls. During one Oval Office meeting, Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador.

Trump’s term did plenty of damage and had few accomplishments. The much-hyped wall didn’t get built. Infrastructure week was a recurring joke. Giant tax cuts made the rich richer, while fueling massive deficits for others to pay for years. His support for coal, oil drilling and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement worsened the growing impact of climate change.

Trump stacked the judiciary with extreme judges consisting mainly of white males, including a number who the American Bar Association rated as not qualified. A record number of cabinet officials were fired or left the office. The West Wing was in constant chaos and infighting.

Many Trump appointees exited under a cloud of corruption, grifting and ethical scandals. Trump’s children made millions off the White House. His dilettante son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudi government for his fledgling investment firm even though he never managed money before.

Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths. He boasts about stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right-wingers who are stripping away individual rights, upending legal precedents, and making the country less safe. If elected, Trump may add to the court’s conservative majority.

Of course, there were the unprecedented two impeachments. Now, Trump is a convicted felon who is staring at three more criminal indictments. He is running for president to stay out of prison.

If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?

Trump allegedly stole classified information and tried to overturn an election. His plans for a second term are worse than the last one. We cannot be serious about letting such a crooked clown back in the White House.

Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best.

Biden must show that he is up to the job. This much is clear: He has a substantive record of real accomplishments, fighting the pandemic, combating climate change, investing in infrastructure, and supporting working families and the most vulnerable.

Biden has surrounded himself with experienced people who take public service seriously. He has passed major bipartisan legislation despite a dysfunctional Republican House majority.

Biden believes in the best of America. He has rebuilt relationships with allies around the world and stood up to foes like Russia and China.

There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be.

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gumjrop · 1 year ago

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You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline “Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”

Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks, a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.

Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about Covid-19 since January 2020, when New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about this.”

This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).

As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the sinking of the Titanic.

But at a deeper level, this emphasis on public sentiment has contributed to confusion about the meaning of the term “pandemic.” A pandemic is an epidemiological term, and the meaning is quite specific—pandemics are global and unpredictable in their trajectory; endemic diseases are local and predictable. Despite the end of the Public Health Emergency in May, Covid-19 remains a pandemic, by definition. Yet some experts and public figures have uncritically advanced the idea that if the public appears to be tired, bored, or noncompliant with public health measures, then the pandemic must be over.

But pandemics are impervious to ratings; they cannot be canceled or publicly shamed. History is replete with examples of pandemics that blazed for decades, sometimes smoldering for years before flaring up again into catastrophe. The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic. A pandemic cannot tell when the news cycle has moved on.

Yet this misperception—that pandemics can be ended by human fiat—has had remarkable staying power during the current crisis. In November 2021, the former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem claimed that the pandemic response needed to be ended politically, with Americans getting “nudged into the recovery phase” by officials. It is fortunate that Kayyem’s words were not heeded—the Omicron wave arrived in the US just weeks after her article ran—but her basic premise has informed Biden’s pandemic policy ever since.

Perhaps even less responsibly, the physician Steven Phillips has called for “new courageous ‘accept exposure’ policies”—asserting that incautious behavior by Americans would be the true signal of the end of the pandemic. In an essay for Time this January, Phillips wrote: “Here’s my proposed definition: the country will not fully emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic until most people in our diverse nation accept the risk and consequences of exposure to a ubiquitous SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”

This claim—that more disease risk and contagion means the end of a disease event—runs contrary to the science. Many have claimed that widespread SARS-CoV-2 infections will lead to increasingly mild disease that poses fewer concerns for an increasingly vaccinated (or previously infected) population. In fact, more disease spread means faster evolution for SARS-CoV-2, and greater risks for public health. As we (A.C. and collaborators) and others have pointed out, rapid evolution creates the risk of novel variants with unpredictable severity. It also threatens the means that we have to prevent and treat Covid-19: monoclonal antibody treatments no longer work, Paxlovid is showing signs of viral resistance, and booster strategy is complicated by viral evolution of resistance to vaccines.

But these efforts to manage and direct public feelings are not just more magical thinking; they are specifically intended to promote a return to pre-pandemic patterns of work and consumption. This motive was articulated explicitly in a McKinsey white paper from March 2022, which put forward the invented concept of “economic endemicity”—defined as occurring when “epidemiology substantially decouples from economic activity.” The “Urgency of Normal” movement similarly used an emotional message (that an “urgent return to fully normal life and schooling” is needed to “protect” children) to advocate for the near-total abandonment of disease containment measures. But in the absence of disease control measures, a rebound of economic activity can only lead to a rebound of disease. (This outcome was predicted by a team that was led by one of the authors [A.C.] in the spring of 2021.)

A pandemic is a public health crisis, not a public relations crisis. Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical—yet a great deal of the Biden administration’s management of Covid-19 has rested on this confusion. Joe Biden amplified this mistaken perspective last September when he noted that the pandemic was “over”—and then backed that claim by stating, “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” The presence or absence of health behaviors reveals little about a threat to health itself, of course—and a decline in mask use has been shaped, in part, by the Biden administration’s waning support for masking.

Separately, long Covid poses an ongoing threat both at an individual and a public health level. If our increasingly relaxed attitude toward public health measures and the relatively unchecked spread of the virus continue, most people will get Covid at least once a year; one in five infections leads to long Covid. Although it’s not talked about a lot, anyone can get long Covid; vaccines reduce this risk, but only modestly. This math gets really ugly.

The situation we are in today was predictable. It was predictable that the virus would rapidly evolve to evade the immune system, that natural immunity would wane quickly and unevenly in the population, that a vaccine-only strategy would not be sufficient to control widespread Covid-19 transmission through herd immunity, and that reopening too quickly would lead to a variant-driven rebound. All of these unfortunate outcomes were predicted in peer-reviewed literature in 2020–21 by a team led by one of the authors (A.C.), even though the soothing public messaging at the time called it very differently.

As should now be very clear, we cannot manifest our way to a good outcome. Concrete interventions are required—including improvements in air quality and other measures aimed at limiting spread in public buildings, more research into vaccine boosting strategy, and investments in next-generation prophylactics and treatments. Rather than damping down panic, public health messaging needs to discuss risks honestly and focus on reducing spread. Despite messages to the contrary, our situation remains unstable, because the virus continues to evolve rapidly, and vaccines alone cannot slow this evolution.

In the early months of the pandemic, many in the media drew parallels between the public’s response to Covid-19 and the well-known “stages of grief”: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. The current situation with Covid-19 calls for solutions, not a grieving process that should be hustled along to the final stage of acceptance.

#op #covid #covid19 #covid 19 #covid-19 #covid isn't over #coronavirus #pandemic #public health #wear a mask

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thelifeofchuckmovie · 3 months ago

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When it comes to ending the world, Stephen King is a repeat offender. He has brought life as we know it to a brutal conclusion several times over the decades, usually highlighting the cruelty and desperation that erupts among the last to go. But his 2020 story “The Life of Chuck” uses doomsday to evoke some unlikely sentiments: Wistfulness. Gratitude. Even joy.

The idea of creating an apocalyptic version of It’s a Wonderful Life is what led filmmaker Mike Flanagan to call dibs on the rights to the novella more than four years ago. The breakdown of society, extinction-level natural disasters, and the disintegration of reality itself is explored through the lens of one relatively meek and mild accountant, played by Tom Hiddleston, whose memories and choices are mysteriously connected to these tribulations. Retirement posters congratulating him on “39 great years” pop up everywhere. But who is this guy? What job does he do (or did he used to do)? And why does it matter so much to the fate of the world? This apparent nobody named Chuck Krantz has lived larger than anyone thought possible.

Having explored King country before in 2017’s Gerald’s Game and 2019’s The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, Flanagan got involved after reading an early copy of “Chuck” before it was published in the collection If It Bleeds. The Haunting of Hill House and Fall of the House of Usher creator produced the film independently, believing it might be too offbeat for risk-averse studios to greenlight. He even secured a waiver from the striking Hollywood guilds last year to move forward with the shoot while the rest of the industry was stuck in the work stoppage. Now he and Hiddleston are ready to reveal the finished version of The Life of Chuck as it heads to the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, where it will screen for potential distributors.

Among the skeptics about this adaptation was King himself, according to Flanagan. “His initial responses to me were a little like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah. If you think that’s a movie…,’” he says. “He did say several times that he thought it would be a challenge to get it supported through traditional means.”

King has now seen the finished movie and no longer has doubts. He described it to Vanity Fair as “a happiness machine.”

“Well, he’s written something very tender and very wise,” Hiddleston says. “I think there is a great wisdom in the soul of the story, which is that it takes courage to hold on to what is good in a world that feels like it’s falling apart.”

Flanagan hopes others see it that way too, although the overpowering dread that begins the story may be more immediately relatable. “I’ve heard it said that every generation feels a little like the world is ending at some point, [but] I still feel like it’s different for us,” the 46-year-old filmmaker says with a mordant laugh. “Institutions we took for granted as propping up our society are failing left and right. Our politics have degraded spectacularly. The sense that it’s breaking down, that the world is moving on, has been increasingly palpable. When I talk to my parents or members of older generations who have been through their own turbulent times, the thing that strikes me is that they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this is really bad.’”

But…it’s not entirely bad. And that’s the underlying message of The Life of Chuck as its various mysteries play out. “There’s no sense of terror in the way that King drew it,” Flanagan says. “Even as the world feels as though it’s ending, people become introspective, they reach into their past for loves that have left their lives for one reason or another. Strangers engage in open and fearless communication.”

It’s an indie-film variation on the big-budget cataclysm story. “A disaster movie has people meeting the end while running from tidal waves, and this story has people sitting quietly holding hands looking at the stars,” Flanagan says.

The key to it all is Chuck himself, although he doesn’t turn up onscreen until the second segment of the three-act story, which plays out in reverse chronological order.

The beginning is actually the end, as the whole world circles the drain. Caught in this spiral is Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), a school teacher trying to apply logic to the planet’s troubles; Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) is his ex, a hospital worker determined to save everyone she can; Matthew Lillard (Scream) is a construction worker neighbor who finds zen amid the chaos; and Carl Lumbly (Alias), plays a funeral director who has dedicated his life to easing people through death.

The end of the movie is actually the beginning, showing young Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) when he was a boy being raised by his grandparents (Mia Sara of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Mark Hamill). The insight of these two—coupled with the otherworldly revelations he finds in an eerie room tucked into the peak of their Victorian home—help him learn to seek out bright spots when life is marred by sorrow and darkness.

In elementary school, young Chuck discovers some important things about himself thanks to guidance from a brusque dance instructor (Samantha Sloyan), and a kindhearted English teacher, played by Kate Siegel, who gives the boy (not to mention the audience) some important information that serves as a code breaker for the story's more cosmic puzzles.

As for the middle of the film: It’s a dance number. That’s when Hiddleston steps in.

Compounding the peculiarity of The Life of Chuck is the question: Why is this song and dance sequence so important? The answer is for the movie to reveal, but it matters a lot. “The life of every human being is a constellation, as expressed in this film,” Hiddleston says. “There are certain moments which will burn most brightly as individual stars. Sometimes it feels like the world is going to hell in a handcart, and it’s full of pain and suffering, and it is—but there are moments of deep joy and deep connection.”

Hiddleston shows the audience this single moment in the life of a buttoned-up fellow who somehow controls the destiny of the world. It’s not necessarily the most important day in his life, but it’s a memorable one involving a street drummer (Taylor Gordon), a lovely stranger (played by Annalise Basso), and a fateful decision to cast aside caution and cut a rug. “It’s a reminder to do whatever it is that expresses whatever gives you that feeling of being alive,” Hiddleston says. “Whether it’s music or dancing or math or writing or creativity—do it. Do it now. Those moments are what you’ll remember.”

Flanagan considered casting a relative unknown as Chuck to “give the audience the experience of ‘Who the hell is this person?’” as the peculiar retirement signs begin to appear in the midst of the apocalypse. But he felt the promise of the Loki star would build more curiosity as the world falls apart. “You grow an enormous amount of anticipation to finally spend time with an actor like Tom, who can be a literal god in one story, and then an everyman in another,” Flanagan says.

A TikTok video of Hiddleston getting his groove on sealed the deal. “He had a completely unfiltered joy on his face,” Flanagan says. “He was a good dancer, but that wasn’t what struck me. I wasn’t amazed by the technique so much as the degree of happiness that was radiating off of him. The look on his face made me smile the same way I smiled reading that particular portion of the book.”

The resulting scene was created in a month-long collaboration between Flanagan, Hiddleston, Basso, choreographer Mandy Moore (So You Think You Can Dance, and La La Land), and Gordon, a real-life percussionist who performs under the name the Pocket Queen. “Taylor was there for all of the dance choreography. She wrote that piece of music for that performance. They built it together,” Flanagan says.

Hiddleston rattles off the lists of influences: “I had to learn in six weeks the full regime of any dance training. We did jazz, swing, salsa, cha-cha, the Charleston, bossa nova, polka, quickstep, samba. We were trying to tip our hat to anything that might have influenced Chuck. It might’ve had a bit of Gene Kelly or Fred and Ginger. Certainly moonwalking—Stephen King is very specific about the moonwalk.”

Precision was not the goal, exuberance was what they sought. “We need to always bear in mind that this man is an accountant. We needed this to be an earnest, escalating explosion of joy, and a remembrance of who he was,” Flanagan says. “It’s a chance to step back into the skin of his younger self, not caring that his feet are going to kill him the next day, not caring that he’s going to wake up with a horribly stiff neck.”

A surprising thing happened while shooting the scene over the course of several sweltering afternoons in the deep South. “I burned holes in my shoes,” Hiddleston says. “I was dancing out on the asphalt in Alabama, and by the time we’d finished, you could see my socks through the soles.”

The sequence begins awkwardly: Chuck is self-conscious as he first hears the busker’s rhythm while walking back from a banking conference. That feeling quickly gets shaken off. “Tom was very committed,” Flanagan says. “He was like, ‘If I look silly, that’s fine. As long as I look happy.’”

Flanagan remembers being in a bad place when he first discovered “The Life of Chuck.” Then again, everybody was.

His copy of the manuscript arrived in March 2020. “That was just as the world shut down for COVID,” he says. “We had been a week away from starting principal photography on Midnight Mass in Vancouver and had fled across the border before it closed to make it back to the States. We were hunkered down in our homes and had no idea if this was going to last for two weeks or if this was going to last forever.”

With everything halted as the lockdown set in, Flanagan had plenty of time to do nothing but read. The new King book seemed like the perfect escape. Except…

“The first third of ‘The Life of Chuck’ just rattled me,” he recalls. “There’s no way he wrote this before the world ground to this bizarre halt—but he did. And the feeling of anxiety, and uncertainty, and that everything was falling apart came roaring out at me. I wasn’t sure I could finish it. It just felt too close to the anxiety I was feeling.” But he kept turning the pages. “By the end of it, I was in tears, and incredibly uplifted, and convinced I’d read maybe the best thing that he’d written in a decade. I just was floored by the thing,” Flanagan says. “So I fired off an email to him right away saying how much I loved the story, how incredible I thought it was, how meaningful, and important, and how it had really tattooed itself on my heart and said, ‘It’s the movie I want to make so that it’ll exist in the world for my kids.’”

King’s response: Not so fast. Flanagan and his producing partner, Trevor Macy, had at that point secured the rights to King’s fantasy saga The Dark Tower through their company, Intrepid Pictures. The eight-book series is threaded throughout King’s other works, and adapting it was a massive undertaking that Flanagan is still working to make happen. Other filmmakers had either abandoned the project, were canceled midway through, or bombed miserably. The author didn’t want him to be distracted. “He doesn’t like to give the same filmmaker more than one thing, because it typically means one thing is not advancing at all,” Flanagan says. “He said, ‘Well, let’s focus on The Tower and I’ll try to keep this one available for you for later.’”

The quest to The Dark Tower remains a priority for Flanagan, but a number of disruptions to that epic undertaking led him to reapproach King last year about Chuck. Intrepid’s deal with Netflix, where they had created Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and other shows, had come to a close, and Intrepid signed a new development agreement with Amazon. That meant starting over on The Dark Tower. Meanwhile, the threat of a double-barreled strike by writers and actors was on the horizon, stalling nearly every major new project. The industry plunged into another production-halting lockdown, this time over contract impasses rather than a virus.

Since The Dark Tower was suddenly further off on the horizon, Flanagan saw a chance to make The Life of Chuck happen in the short term. “It’s so rare that I get to approach any project that just has not an ounce of cynicism to it. I just really believed in this thing,” he says. “But it was also clear that we would have an incredibly uphill battle bringing the story to any major studio. They would try to make it as familiar as possible, instead of leaning into what makes it so different.”

King gave Flanagan his blessing to proceed. “I was off like a shot,” the filmmaker says. “I think I turned in the draft to him before he got around to sending the formal agreement.”

For everyone involved, The Life of Chuck became a bright spot in an otherwise dismal time, which matches the theme of the film. “There is a profound optimism in this story,” Hiddleston says. “As the world is spinning off its axis, there are moments of magic.”

#the life of chuck #tom hiddleston #mark hamill #karen gillan #chiwetel ejiofor #jacob tremblay #kate siegel #mike flanagan #carl lumbly

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quack-quack-snacks · 11 months ago

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Cat Mug (A Reason to Live)

My Navigation and Masterlist

My Sweet Home Masterlist

My Cha Hyun-su Masterlist

Pairing(s): Cha Hyun-su x GN!Reader Summary: When Hyun-su first arrived at Green Home, the only plan he had for life was to end his. He never would have thought his plan to end his life caused by the lack of any reason to continue living would lead to him finding one. Warnings: Slight season 1 spoilers, self-harm (both the reader and Hyun-su), suicide ideation, smoking (weed), illegal smuggling of contraband (weed), and comfort. Word Count: 2,728 Extra Notes: Cannabis is highly illegal in Korea. This is set in an AU with no apocalypse/monsterization.

When Hyun-su first arrived at Green Home, the only plan he had for life was to end his.

It was a few weeks into living there that he came to the terrifying realization when the blade of the weed chopper flew inches from his face. He didn’t actually want to die, he had just lost all of his reasons to live.

Most of his days were spent inside his apartment, testing different video games for companies until his eyes dried up to the point of tears and his head throbbed in pain. The pain was a welcome distraction that helped keep his thoughts averted away from the disaster that was his life. He didn’t even have a cover or bed stand for his twin-sized mattress. It lay on the floor of his small living space, placed directly under the windows so he could watch the stars right before he fell asleep.

The stars were his only solace in this wretched world that took everything from him. Everything was gone because he offered a few quarters to a boy in high school that he tried to make friends with. At first, he blamed all the unfair treatment that he was subjected to on anything and everything around him, but after a while, he started to think it was his fault.

Maybe he was being cocky when he offered Do-hun those coins.

Maybe he was worthy of the bullying he put him through.

Maybe he deserved the way his parents blamed him for being bullied.

Maybe he earned the way his sister was embarrassed to be related to him.

The more those thoughts circled in his mind, the more he started to actually believe them. The more he started to believe them, the more he started to hate himself for everything.

His life was on a steep slope leading to a pit of despair until he met you.

It was around 6 p.m. on Friday, August 21 of 2020.

For you, that meant you were heading back from the grocery store after stacking up on your food for the next week.

For Hyun-su, at least on this specific Friday, it meant he was heading back from testing a game for the video game production company Syx Arus. He wasn’t in the best mood. The game was a total bust; glitches around every corner, the gun wouldn’t shoot for the majority of the time he tested it, and he ended up getting paid half of what he was promised because of his feedback being ‘too blunt and disrespectful.’

He was walking through the hallway toward his apartment with his earbuds in and his head down. His hands were stuck in his pockets as he tried to focus on how the loud music hurt his ears and not the frustration building inside him. Because his attention was directed elsewhere, he completely missed seeing you as you stood in front of your apartment door. You had been shifting the grocery bags in your hands around so you could have a free hand to unlock and open the door but let out a gasp as you felt a tall figure bump into you, sending the bag full of a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread onto the floor. You let out a wince as you heard a crunch, positive that at least a few eggs were broken.

“Holy shit, I’m so sorry!” You heard from behind you, turning around to see a boy. He was tall, and his hair was a dark brown, almost black, unkempt mess on his head. He yanked the earbuds once residing in his ears out and you could hear the loud music blasting out of them before he paused it on his phone.

“Don’t worry about it,” you reassured him before your lips curved into a slightly teasing smirk. “You just cleared a hand up for me. I should be thanking you,” you let out a little laugh as you finally had a free hand to slip your key into the lock of your apartment door before turning it until you heard that familiar, satisfying click, signaling the door being unlocked.

Just as you pushed the door open, he spoke again. “Do you need any help?”

You smiled at him over your shoulder. “Sure, could you just grab that bag?” You gestured with your head to the bag on the floor holding your broken eggs and dented bread and he gave an enthusiastic and adorably determined nod as he used one hand to hold the door open for you and the other to pick up the bag. You walked in, quickly setting your groceries down on the small dining table you had just outside of your cramped kitchen. You turned to the boy and took the bag from his hand, walking to the sink as you took the carton apart to inspect the damage. To your surprise, there wasn’t much. Only a few eggs were broken, and although you would need to put them into a different carton because the broken eggs had spilled onto this one, you still wouldn’t need to make a second trip to get more eggs.

You turned to peek over your shoulder and saw the boy standing awkwardly outside the door to your kitchen, rocking back and forth on his heels as he looked at the miscellaneous decorations you had hanging on the walls. You breathed out a small laugh before walking to your pantry. Without turning back to look at him, you asked, “Do you like tea?”

“What?” He asked, not expecting the change from silence to a soft-spoken conversation.

“Do you like tea?” You repeated, finally turning back to look at him, two boxes of different tea flavors in your hands. “Or are you more of a coffee drinker?”

“Oh,” he replied, looking kind of stunned by your question. “Tea is fine.”

You gave him a smile at his soft-spoken words. Although this was the first time you had ever seen, let alone spoken to, the boy, you could tell he was not much of a talker or an expressive person. Setting the boxes of tea on the counter, you took out your kettle and started filling it with water before setting it on the stove with the fire turned on high. As it started to boil, you took out two mugs and placed them down on your kitchen’s bar counter where two bar stools were stationed on the other side. You gestured to one of them after setting the mugs down in their respective places and he hesitantly sat down.

“So,” you asked as you walked back over to where you set down the tea boxes, picking them up and bringing them back over to him, hiding them behind your back for dramatic effect. “Lemon and ginger,” you pulled one box out from behind your back before quickly realizing it was the wrong box and frantically trying to switch the boxes before he could see the other flavor, an action that caused his lips to twitch in a slight smile for a moment before disappearing again. “Or spiced chai?”

“I’ll do the chai,” he decided and you nodded with a smile.

“Good choice.”

You placed a spicy chai tea bag into his cup - a mug with a cheesy meme of a cat wearing a ski mask sitting on top of a burger on the front saying “cat burger-lar” - and placed your choice of tea in your mug - a plain white mug that said “World’s Best Grandpa” on the front.

Waiting for the water to boil, you reached your hand across the counter to him in greeting. After introducing yourself, you asked, “I haven’t seen you around before, are you the kid who just moved into 1410?”

He nodded his head as he took your hand. “Yeah, I moved in a few weeks ago. I’m Cha Hyun-su.”

“Well I apologize for not bringing some cookies over sooner, Hyun-su,” you told him with a teasing lilt in your voice. Your eyes fluttered down to where his hand sat in yours and you did an almost imperceptible double take when you saw the scars littering his forearm beneath his black hoodie sleeve. When he noticed you saw them, he gently took his hand out of yours and tugged his sleeve down before standing up.

“Thank you for the tea, but I should be going now,” he told you abruptly but politely and turned towards your door, intending on leaving as fast as he could, not wanting your pity or anything of the like.

“Wait!” You called out after him and he turned just to see you quickly pouring some of the, now boiling, water into what was going to be his cup, running over to him, and giving it to him. When he looked shocked and confused, you gave him a lopsided smile. “You thanked me for the tea but you never even got to drink any.”

He looked back and forth between the mug in his hand, warming his palm through the ceramic wall, and your eyes, warming his heart with your soft gaze. He didn’t see any pity, just understanding. It was strange and he couldn’t possibly understand how you could feel his pain.

“This is your mug,” he stated bluntly and held the mug back out to you but you just gently pushed it back towards him.

“Take it. You can give it to me next time,” you promised.

Next time.

Your words bounced around in his mind, banging off the walls of his brain until they settled and he gave you a slight nod. You walked him out the door, waving him off as he walked down the hall towards his door.

Next time.

It was now Tuesday, August 25 of 2020, and you hadn’t seen Hyun-su since your first meeting. You were a little worried you had scared him off with your possibly too forward advances and how you’d seen his scars but decided to focus on the positive and just thought that he probably had a life of his own so he wouldn’t be roaming through the halls every day, waiting to bump into you and break your eggs again just to talk to you.

Although you kind of wish he would.

It was 7:06 p.m. when you walked up the stairs of Green Home, sunset. You intended on heading to the roof and smoking for a bit so you would have less of a chance of being caught by anyone. As you used your shoulder to push open the doors leading to the roof, you saw the boy you’d been waiting to see for the past week standing on the edge. You let out a sigh and leaned against the wall.

“Kind of a lame way to die, is it not?” You called out to him and he flinched at your voice. Your eyes widened as he leaned farther toward the edge for a moment before regaining his balance and looking back at you. You sighed once again before giving him a sad smile. Popping yourself off the wall, you gestured for him to follow you as you walked around the entrance of the door to the stack of boxes leading to the roof of it. Hopping up, you turned around to hold a hand out for Hyun-su to grab as he followed you up. You turned back around to settle yourself down on the edge of the small box housing the exit to the stairs and dug around in your bag as Hyun-su settled down next to you. Letting out a little cry of success as you found what you were looking for, you pulled out the small mint box you used for storing your blunts. It was relatively safe and if anyone ever asked for a mint you could always just pretend to be really protective over them. That way you were just an asshole, not a criminal.

As you pulled out your lighter and held the blunt up to your lips, you noticed Hyun-su staring at you. You tilted your head to look at him and held the blunt out for him to take. “Want some?”

He shook his head, looking down at his lap. “I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

You gave a small laugh at his ignorance as you lifted it back to your lips. “It’s weed actually.”

His head snapped towards you comically and you laughed more, interrupting yourself again as you tried to light the spliff. “Wait, but… isn’t that illegal?”

You gave a small shrug as you finally lit the edge of the blunt and took a hit before replying. “It is. Why, are you gonna tell on me?” You leaned over slightly to bump him with your shoulder as you teased him and he vehemently shook his head no.

“No, I just… I never would’ve thought you’d be the type of person to smoke marijuana. Kind of surprised me.”

You let out a hum of acknowledgment. “Well, I wasn’t originally from Korea, I lived in the States for most of my life until I moved here when I first turned 18. This is the last I have of the stuff I bought with me. Took a hell of a lot of work to sneak it past border control.”

He looked at you in a type of awe that made your lips tilt up in amusement. You would’ve never thought someone would look at you like that after you told them about how you illegally smuggled marijuana into a country that made it highly illegal. The slight movement of him tugging his hoodie sleeves over his hands caused you to release a breath of air before you directed your attention to where you were given a beautiful view of the sunset right from your spot on top of the building.

He watched you as you took a hit from the blunt and released the smoke from between your lips. At that moment, he couldn’t think of anyone more beautiful than how you looked with the sun reflecting its last golden rays on your face. And to think, he would’ve missed this if he had taken that step forward just a second before you arrived behind him. “I was in a plane crash when I was 12,” you told him and his eyes widened in surprise. “It was… bad. There was a lot of fire and chaos just everywhere,” you glanced at him nervously and looked away when you saw him watching you intensely. You focused your attention on stubbing out your blunt on the rough concrete you sat on, no longer in the mood for a quick high. “Both my parents were on the flight with me, and yet - by some miracle doctors still haven’t found an explanation for,” you rolled your eyes in frustration at the thought. “I was the only one to live out of us. Most people on the plane ended up passing away with only a few coming out alive.”

Hyun-su wanted so desperately to grab your hand and comfort you but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his hand off his thigh.

“For the longest time,” you said as you fiddled with your sleeve, rolling it up for him to see. “I hated myself for being alive when they weren’t.”

When you finally had your sleeve rolled up, he could clearly see the physical evidence of your guilt and pain. When he looked back up at you, he was met with your eyes looking back at him with that same look of understanding hiding within the lines of your pupils.

Maybe you did understand.

“I know what it’s like to hate yourself and to want to take the pain away, but I promise you,” you reached out to grab his hand and squeezed it reassuringly, doing what he couldn’t all those moments ago. “It does get better.”

When you smiled at him, he couldn’t help but give a smile back, his lips tilting up to show his appreciation for you and your words. “Thank you.”

You shook your head, not letting go as you returned your gaze to the setting sun, the stars taking its place in the palace of the deep abyss in the sky. “Don’t thank me, just live.”

Maybe he did have a reason to live after all.

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