#anyways fox is having a capital t Time

[carrion-art]

it's fine! he's doing great!

lyrics from Wolves of the Revolution by The Arcadian Wild

[vvanini]

whats your favorite obscure hc about each of the losers?

Fucking perfect thank you

1- Mike he reads books or articles like “how to understand woman”, “why women like jerks”, not because he wants to woo woman or is a nice guy or anything but just because he thinks it’s interesting

I don’t think he’d date anyone

Gives great dating advice tho

Reads manga Likes Junji Ito

“The manga/book was better” kind of guy

I don’t know why but I feel like he’d be this ENTP-ish dude who likes to gather information about a lot of useless things and likes to debate He likes film and game theories Watches MatPat for sure

Also he likes The Walking Dead and… zombies in general

Also I’m sorry but he likes Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson

He likes grindhouse movies and appreciates the gory details but is chill about it Likes cinematography in general

Watches video essays about movies

2- Richie

Unlike Mike, Richie isn’t chill about gory details and whenever someone gags while watching a movie he goes “You think that’s disgusting??? Lmaoooo that’s nothing.”

He’d be the type of guy who brags about being immune to disturbing shit

Google searches include “top ten disturbing movies of all time” “scariest movies ever” “movies worse than a serbian film”

Still likes pink guy and thinks Joji is a genius

Unironically loves the song “I Love Sex” by Pink Guy and listens to it at least once everyday

Uses Discord a lot

Always starts studying on the last day

I think he’d like history

Not like Mike tho, he just likes textbook history and world wars etc

Plays Hearts of Iron and League of Legends

Also :) he likes to code

he is a Linux >>>>>>>>>> Windows kinda guy

Likes breaking bad

And Rick and Morty

Understands politics really well

His music taste is… anime opening songs

Evangelion especially

Likes science fiction books

Pretends to be a flat-earther/conservative/anti-vax for the meme

3- Ben

LIKES BACKSTREET BOYS

and boy bands in general

he is old school and still carries an mp3 around

Doesn’t use spotify, he illegally downloads songs like a champ :D

Likes story rich games

Especially RPG’s. He really likes Planescape Torment and Baldur’s Gate

Kinda lame about women, like he hears Jordan Peterson say something like “the eternal image of the divine feminine” or some shit like that and he goes “wow poetic. agreed”

Doesn’t read “How to woo women” books like Mike but thinks about it a lot that’s for sure

Likes Audrey Hepburn

And Steinbeck

Saves different versions of the same song to his mp3. “The Less I Know The Better but you’re crying in a bathroom” “The Less I Know The Better Slowed & Reverb Listen With Headphones” “The Less I Know The Better Nightcore”

Shares playlists with Eddie

ALWAYS. ALWAYS waits for the person who’s tying their shoes

He notices if someone is walking behind the group alone and walks back to accompany them

If no one laughs at your joke, he does

Bleached his hair once and regretted it immediately Writes poetry in his free time and makes Stan proofread it

Into psychology

Hands always in pockets

Probably owned lots of lego sets as a kid

People go to him for dating advice because he is seen as this “romantic guy”, I mean he is but he gives terrible dating advice

4-Stan

He likes geography

Literally knows all the flags in the world and all the capitals

Blindfold him and give him a country name, he can show you exactly where it is on the map

Also he plays those google earth games where you get a random location and try to find out which country you’re in/ or try to find the nearest airport

Also I feel like he’d like planes a lot

Idk he just likes things that fly lol. Birds, planes etc.

Likes to read classics

LOVES H. P. Lovecraft

carries little poetry books with him everywhere and reads them he’s so cute

Dark academia is his aesthetic

Can play the piano

Likes to read Ben’s poetry :D

Dark humor

His ringtone is Le Festin :)

Has an instagram account but never posts, just watches people’s stories

Very photogenic tho.

He’s a man of culture. He likes visiting aquariums and museums

Hates zoos tho, thinks it’s evil to cage animals

Also I don’t know how to explain it but… He just likes to decorate his place? Like to the clubhouse he’ll bring stuff he likes and just quietly claims a corner as his own and make it as comfortable as he can

Has...beautiful hands

you know how some people cut the cothing labels because it irritates the back of their neck? Stan does that with everything he buys

5- Eddie

Likes Backstreet Boys because of Ben

Replies to texts immediately. Communication and social interaction gives him serotonin

I have no idea why but I feel like he’d have an obsession with Tekken and his favourite character is Ling Xiayou

Big fan of classic playstation games. Loves Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet and Clank

He likes wearing long sleeves under t shirts

Listens to emo music, stares out the window and imagines scenarios matching the song he’s listening to

He considers MCR to be emo btw. Loves G note memes

Likes astrology

Can’t watch horror movies, and gets teased by Richie about it

However he likes media that is presented as funky/funny/happy but is actually depressing/disturbing

He likes courtroom dramas

Wears sunglasses indoors for no reason

Probably likes fallout and metro games

Has a collection of finger skateboards

#weirdcore #oddcore #nostalgia #grunge

buys and wears random college sweatshirts

Hates and loves study groups, hates it in the sense that he can’t focus on anything and just wants to hang out and talk, loves it in the sense that he CAN hang out with his friends and talk

Romanticizes everything

6- Bill

Has lots of taurus energy and is sleepy all the time

Has major Leonardo DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries vibes

Dresses effortlessly

And likes basketball lol.

He just has… boy energy. If that makes sense. Boy next door

Likes to draw his friends

posts his drawings on Instagram

Has lots of OC’s but doesn’t know they’re called OC’s, just refers to them as “this character I created”

He likes being praised a lot ngl

His taste in memes is very similar to Richie’s

You know how they put a random word on top of a random image and it doesn’t make sense at all. He laughs at things like that. Like Richie sends him something like this:

ME WHEN I WHEN

[image of monkey]

BOTTOM TEXT

and he thinks it’s funny and loses his shit im sorry

Like someone sends a picture of Keanu Reeves to the groupchat and texts “g” and he thinks it’s funny???? He sees a picture of a cow in the backrooms and starts choking

He memorized every line in Boneless Pizza and can quote it wihtout stuttering. Like he would be sitting alone talking to himself saying shit like “ya pizza. Watchu want. 2 liter machine broke we got one liter tho. fuck you mean B.”

Never answers calls? Doesn’t like talking on the phone. He just has “Don’t fucking call me when you can text!!” energy

phone is always on silent mode

doesn’t do anything but attracts people anyway

7- Bev

Likes musicals

Theatre kid

Chews gum a lot

And swallows them :(

Likes cottagecore

Buys notebooks with cute covers but can never fill them so she just gives them to bill who turns them into sketchbooks

I think she’d give advice or reaussure people in a way that sounds kinda rude but isn’t really? Like she tells it like it is. Blunt

Likes Avatar The Last Airbender

Sense of humor is:

[Picutre of the fox from Zootopia]

why is he hot help 😭😭😭

wears baggy clothing + long skirts

[frankendykes-monster]

Space Jam: A New Legacy is content to be content.

The original Space Jam was a calculated marketing exercise. Michael Jordan was the biggest sports star of the nineties, and Space Jam capitalised on Jordan’s brand potential while also allowing the athlete to refashion his own narrative into a family-friendly mythology. Space Jam packaged Jordan for a generation, smoothing the wrinkles out of his story by presenting a wholesome family man making an earnest transition from basketball to baseball.

It also helped Warner Bros. to figure out what to do with their Looney Tunes characters, which had largely laid dormant within the company’s intellectual property vaults. There had been a conscious effort to revitalised the company’s animation with shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and even Animaniacs, but those classic and beloved cartoons were a merchandising opportunity waiting to happen. So the logic of the original Space Jam was clear, it was an excuse to tie together two potentially profitable strands of intellectual property.

Space Jam itself was something of an afterthought. The movie struggles to reach its ninety-minute runtime. It often feels like the production team have to utilise every scrap of film to reach that target, with extended riffs focusing on Bill Murray and Michael Jordan on the golf course and with a lot of the improvisation from the voice cast included in the finished film. The movie’s ending comes out of nowhere, and Space Jam struggles to hit many of the basic plot beats of a scrappy sports movie.

The movie itself was immaterial to the success of Space Jam as a concept. After all, the film only grossed $250m at the global box office, enough to scrape into the end of year top ten behind The Nutty Professor and Jerry Maguire. However, the film’s real success lay in merchandising, with the film generating between $4bn and $6bn in licensing and merchandising. Key to this was the success of the six-time platinum-certified soundtrack which remains the ninth highest-grossing soundtrack of all-time.

In some to trace a lot of modern Hollywood back to the original Space Jam. So much of how companies package and release modern media feels like an extension of that approach, the reduction of the actual film itself to nothing more than “content” that exists as a larger pool of marketable material. After all, the unspoken assumption underlying AT&T’s disastrous decision to send all of their blockbusters to HBO Max was the understanding that HBO Max itself was often packaged free with company’s internet. Movies would no longer be their own things, but just perks to be packaged and sold as part of larger deals.

In the decades since the release of Space Jam, the industry has become increasingly focused on the idea of packaging and repackaging intellectual property. It has become increasingly common for films to showcase multiple intellectual properties housed at the same studios. Simple crossovers like Alien vs. Predators or The Avengers now seem positively humble when compared to the smorgasbord of brand synergy on display in projects like The Emoji Movie or Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Interestingly, as Disney have steadily securing their intellectual property portfolio with additions like Pixar and Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. have becoming increasingly bullish about showcasing the depth and breadth of their bench. The LEGO Movie imagines a wide range of properties consolidated under one brand. Ready Player One depicted a pop culture user space lost in nostalgia for properties and trinkets. However, those movies also managed to tell their own stories, even as they grappled with the weight of brand synergy pushing down on top of them.

Space Jam: A New Legacy has no such delusions. It understands that it does not exist as a story or as a feature film. Instead, it has distilled cinema down to a content-delivery mechanism. The plot of the movie finds basketball star LeBron James sucked into the “Serververse” and forced to ally with the Looney Tunes in order to play a basketball game with the fate of the world in the balance. However, while the original Space Jam ran a brisk and unfocused ninety minutes, A New Legacy extends itself to almost two hours. There is always more content to repackage and sell, after all.

A New Legacy slathers its cynicism in nostalgia, directly appealing to a generation of audiences who have convinced themselves that Space Jam was a good movie and a beloved childhood classic. A New Legacy is built around the understanding that the original Space Jam walked so that it might run, counting on the audience’s nostalgia for the original film to excuse a lot of its indulgences. After all, it would be a betrayal of the franchise if A New Legacy wasn’t a crash and vulgar cash-in. In many ways, A New Legacy does what most sequels aspire to do, scaling the original film’s ambitions aggressively upwards.

As with the original Space Jam, there is layer of irony to distract from the film’s clear purpose. In the original Space Jam, the villainous Swackhammer planned to abduct the Looney Tunes and force them to play at his themeparks. The implication was that the characters did not want to be sold into corporate servitude, stripped of their own identity and rendered as crass tools of unchecked capitalism. The irony of Space Jam lay in the fact that the entire movie was a variant on Swackhammer’s themepark and the Looney Tunes were dancing to that theme anyway as Daffy puckers up and kisses the Warner Bros. stamp on his own ass.

In A New Legacy, a sentient algorithm – Al G. Rhythm – is cast as the movie’s primary antagonist. The film gestures broadly at a satirical criticism of the modern film industry, with Al G. Rhythm shaping and warping the future of movie-making by suggesting things like computer-generating movie stars and producing a constant array of recycled intellectual property. A New Legacy recognises the machinations of Al G. Rhythm as unsettling and horrifying, with throwaway jokes about the theft of ideas and the violation of privacy, but the villain largely serves as a smokescreen to let the movie have its cake and eat it.

After all, A New Legacy revels in Al G. Rhythm’s plans. LeBron James is turned into an animated figure and dumped into classic Looney Tunes shorts like Rabbit Season and The Rabbit of Seville. The film understands that while the audience might be afraid of the algorithm, they also yearn for it. After all, it isn’t Al G. Rhythm who structures A New Legacy so that the film spends an extended sequence touring the company’s beloved intellectual properties.

A New Legacy is really just an investors’ day presentation that celebrates the sheer amount of content that Warner Bros. own. It’s not too difficult to imagine the film screened investors before the Discovery deal, as proof of just how many viable franchising opportunities existed within the copyright of the company itself. It’s a weird and unsettling showcase, in large part because it feels like that warning from Jurassic Park. The studio were so obsessed with whether they could do a thing that they never stopped to consider whether they should.

The film’s middle section includes a whirlwind tour of the properties owned by Warner Bros. After Bugs “plays the hits” with James, the two set off on an adventure to recover the other Looney Tunes from other beloved Warner Bros. properties. Some of these advertisements make sense: Daffy and Porky are living in the world of Superman: The Animated Series, while Lola seems to have found the Wonder Woman from the Bloodlines animated films. Others make much less sense in a movie aimed at kids, like the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote hiding in Mad Max: Fury Road or Yosemite Sam living in Casablanca.

Of course, it’s debatable how much of A New Legacy is aimed at kids, as compared to the kids of the nineties. Its target market seems to be kids in the late nineties who never grew up, because they never had to. Elmer Fudd and Sylvester are hiding out in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Granny and Speedy have taken refuge in the opening scenes of The Matrix. While the original Space Jam featured odd pop cultural shoutouts to things like Pulp Fiction, at least that was somewhat contemporaneous.

To be fair, there is no art driving these choices. Many of these references serve to point the audience towards established properties. It is a sentient recommendation algorithm for HBO Max and a handy way of stoking audience interest in upcoming projects like The Matrix 4 (December 2021) or Furiosa (June 2023). It is a helpful reminder that Superman: The Animated Series has been remastered in high definition to stream on HBO Max. Foghorn Leghorn even rides a dragon from Game of Thrones to remind viewers that the show is streaming on HBO Max and that there are prequels coming.

It’s all very bizarre, but also strangely lifeless. The climax of the film finds the inevitable basketball game played in front of a crowd of familiar pop culture icons drawn from a wide range of sources: King Kong, The Iron Giant, Batman ’66, The Wizard of Oz, The Mask and many more. It feels very much like a surreal power play, a company showcasing the depth of its own vaults at a turbulent time in the industry. It leads to weird moments, like Al G. Rhythm even quoting Training Day, perhaps the film’s most unlikely draw from the “Warner Bros. Intellectual Property Vault.”

The most revealing aspect of the movie is its central conflict, with Al G. Rhythm cynically manipulating LeBron’s son Dom. Dom is convinced that his father doesn’t understand him, that his father is unable to see that his skill lies in video game coding rather than old-fashioned basketball. Rhythm is able to create a schism between father and son, using Dom’s code and his anger to attack and undermine LeBron James and the Looney Tunes. It’s a very broad and very archetypal story. There are no points for realising that Dom eventually comes around to his father and accepts that Rhythm is a villain.

However, it signals an interesting shift in these sorts of narratives. Traditionally, these sorts of generational conflicts played out between fathers and sons, with fathers presented as antagonistic and sons presented as heroic. The original Star Wars saga is built around Luke Skywalker trying to wrestle and grapple with his father Darth Vader. In Superman II, the eponymous superhero is forced to confront Zod, a representative of his father’s generation and the old world. Even in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is set against his surrogate father figure Ra’s Al Ghul.

The metaphor driving these sorts of stories was fairly simple and straightforward. Every generation needs to come into their own and take control of their own agency within the world. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi ends with Darth Vader dead and Luke staring out into the wider universe. Times change, and each generation has an obligation to try to create a better world than the one left to them by their parents. In the conflict between parents and children, it has generally been children who have prevailed.

However, in recent years, the trend has swung back sharply. It’s notable that the villain in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is an errant child who doesn’t properly respect his parents, and that Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker ends with order restored when the protagonist takes the name of the beloved heroes of the older films. Shows like Star Trek: Picard are built around the idea that kids need their older generation of parents to swoop in and tell them how to properly live their lives.

A New Legacy is an interesting illustration of this trend. The movie ends with a reconciliation between LeBron and Dom, but it is very clearly on LeBron’s terms. Dom is manipulated and misled by sinister forces, and his father has to save him while realigning his moral compass. Father knows best. It demonstrates how the underlying logic of these stories has shifted in recent years, perhaps reflecting the understanding that perhaps the older generation won’t surrender the floor gracefully.

As with Ready Player One, there’s a monstrous Peter Pan quality to A New Legacy. It is a film about how the culture doesn’t have to change. It can be recycled and repurposed forever and ever and ever. At the end of Space Jam, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny parted ways. There was an understanding that the two worlds existed apart from one another. However, A New Legacy ends with the collapse of these worlds into one another; the “Serververse” manifesting itself in the real world. As LeBron walks home, Bugs asks if he can move in.

Of course, with HBO Max subscription, the audience can take Bugs home anytime they want

[blossom-hwa]

the danceracha and 3racha working aus were so funny i wanted to request a vocalracha one but i have no idea where they could work 😭

God damn you guys really enjoy my lukewarm sense of humor??? Well I just pictured vocalracha working at a tutoring center and bitching about it so here we are! Hope you enjoy <3

3-year anniversary drabble game: send me an NCT/WAYV/Stray Kids/The Boyz member + a prompt (check out the post for ideas) and  I’ll write a drabble for you!

Half of this is based off of real experiences from when I used to tutor math god that was a TIME

~

Title: Tutoring Shenanigans

Pairing: no pairings, just vocalracha being dumb

Triggers: a lot of cursing

~

quick clarification:

seungman: seungmin

watch your foxing mouth: jeongin

~

watch your foxing mouth: seungmin

watch your foxing mouth: can you please take my shift this Saturday

seungman: no

seungman: the one time I get the weekend off in ages? I'm not going to bother teaching little gremlins math who the fuck do you think I am

watch your foxing mouth: I think you’re a little asshole who’s going to spend the entire weekend just working on homework like the nerd you are

seungman: see I'd say you were right

seungman: but I don’t have homework this weekend

seungman: I actually had other plans

watch your foxing mouth: like what

watch your foxing mouth: no one’s going to ask you on a date lmao

seungman: first of all fuck you

seungman: second of all I was going to drop by at work and maybe bring you a coffee because I'm nice

seungman: but not anymore

watch your foxing mouth: bullshit you never would’ve done that in the first place

seungman: you’re absolutely right but I'm also offended that you doubted me so quickly

watch your foxing mouth: when I asked you to get me water from chan’s cafe

watch your foxing mouth: you specifically asked changbin to fill the cup with ice

watch your foxing mouth: and then you brought the cup back

watch your foxing mouth: and told me to wait

watch your foxing mouth: what the fuck kind of impression do you think that makes?

seungman: that’s fair

seungman: but I'm still offended

watch your foxing mouth: feeling offended is part of your personality

seungman: you know me so well

watch your foxing mouth: which is how I know you’ll take my shift this weekend :)

seungman: you’re funny

watch your foxing mouth: SEUNGMIN PLEASE

watch your foxing mouth: I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH ASHLEY AND HER FUCKING BITCH ASS

watch your foxing mouth: SHE NEVER WORKS

seungman: suck it <3

watch your foxing mouth: I hate you

seungman: love you too <3

~

seungman: this small girl

seungman: walked into the center

seungman: and told me

seungman: tennis is not a fucking sport

watch your foxing mouth: I can’t believe I was getting drinks and missed that

watch your foxing mouth: what was her reasoning

seungman: ‘you don’t run in tennis’

seungman: huH?????????????????????

watch your foxing mouth: well we’ve established that these kids are rich little assholes

watch your foxing mouth: and have no brains 99% of the time

seungman: you’re right I should expect this

seungman: why do we work here again

watch your foxing mouth: rich kids = rich parents

watch your foxing mouth: rich parents = rich establishment

watch your foxing mouth: rich establishment = slightly higher than minimum wage pay

seungman: fuck you’re right

seungman: idk I feel like I'd be having more fun working at the cafe even if the pay’s worse

watch your foxing mouth: money or fun?

seungman: the ultimate question of life

watch your foxing mouth: fuck capitalism

seungman: you say that yet you’re slaving your ass off teaching basic math to kids who don’t want to learn for a salary that’s a third of what you could be earning as a private tutor

watch your foxing mouth: WELL IF I HAD A FUCKING CAR

seungman: you’d drive it into another tree

watch your foxing mouth: honestly fuck you I'm dumping your shitty americano into the storm drain

seungman: look you hit the tree not me

watch your foxing mouth: IT WASN’T EVEN THAT BAD THE BARK WAS SOFT AND THE CAR WAS FINE

seungman: allow me to repeat

seungman: you

seungman: hit

seungman: a

watch your foxing mouth: SHUT U P

seungman: fucking

watch your foxing mouth: QUIT 

seungman: t r e e 

seungman: IN A PARKING LOT

watch your foxing mouth: just dumped out your drink <3

seungman: you better be kidding me

seungman: you better be fucking kidding me

seungman: YANG JEONGIN

read by one at 4:49 pm

seungman: I'm transferring that bitch ashley to your table fuck you

~

watch your foxing mouth: why are you the one who always controls the music player

watch your foxing mouth: I want to play my tunes too asshole

seungman: no one can concentrate with your fucking trot shit playing in the background

watch your foxing mouth: and we can deal with your shitty ‘lo-fi comfortable beats’ or whatever the fuck is in your YouTube playlist?

seungman: if the parents are happy with it then we’re like. legally obligated to keep doing it

seungman: kevin would play strictly beyonce if he was in charge of the music

seungman: you would play shitty trot

watch your foxing mouth: my taste in music is not shitty thank you very very much

seungman: sangyeon would play like. classical music idk he’s an old man like that

seungman: and if we left it up to the kids wap would be playing all day every day

watch your foxing mouth: I hate it when you make sense

watch your foxing mouth: god damn just noticed all of the people working here are male

seungman: except yeji 

watch your foxing mouth: oh right except her

watch your foxing mouth: but also where is the female representation???????

seungman: they’re smarter than us

seungman: they’re either out of state for college

seungman: or they can actually drive

seungman: meaning they can afford to tutor privately

watch your foxing mouth: this is why men suck

watch your foxing mouth: we’re not smart enough to turn shit around

seungman: and we end up stuck catering to the whims of rich little assholes who aren’t going to learn jack shit anyway

watch your foxing mouth: sigh

seungman: sigh

watch your foxing mouth: ASHLEY IS HERE I’M NOT TAKING HER MY TABLE IS FULL

seungman: FUCK I HAVE A SPOT LEFT

seungman: OH FUCK YOU SANGYEON

watch your foxing mouth: suffer

seungman: my existence is pain

seungman: suddenly I have the burning desire to learn to drive

seungman: at least I wouldn’t hit trees in the parking lot 

watch your foxing mouth: see I know you’re trying to provoke me but I'm not going to give in because watching you deal with ashley is satisfying enough

~

watch your foxing mouth: my brain is fried

seungman: is this supposed to be news

watch your foxing mouth: honestly I'd be offended but I'm too tired to express it

watch your foxing mouth: I never knew teaching basic addition could be so tiring

seungman: why do tutors exist

seungman: why don’t teachers do their jobs

watch your foxing mouth: idk 

watch your foxing mouth: why do we have to do their jobs for them for far less pay

seungman: throwback to the time the owners kept forgetting to give us a raise even though we were the longest standing employees at this shitty center

watch your foxing mouth: don't fucking remind me

watch your foxing mouth: I'm just sitting in the cafe trying to erase all thoughts of ashley from my head

watch your foxing mouth: I wish sangyeon was here today

seungman: god yes that bitch ella is awful

seungman: why does she walk around like she owns the fucking place

watch your foxing mouth: bright ass lipstick and shit

watch your foxing mouth: like no bitch

watch your foxing mouth: I understand you do our schedules but I also understand you’re an asshole

seungman: sometimes I want to set this center on fire

watch your foxing mouth: afuckingmen

watch your foxing mouth: oh hey

watch your foxing mouth: oh fuck

seungman: ?

seungman: why do I hear sirens

seungman: and see smoke

seungman: jeongin

seungman: JEONGIN ANSWER ME YOU BETTER NOT FUCKING BE DEAD

watch your foxing mouth: calm your tits

watch your foxing mouth: didn’t know you cared that much about me

seungman: I don’t

seungman: who would I bitch about work to if you died

watch your foxing mouth: honestly fuck you

seungman: anyway what happened

watch your foxing mouth: jisung set the refrigerator on fire

watch your foxing mouth: it was glorious

seungman: you’re telling me jisung almost burnt this center down

seungman: b u t d i d n t ?

watch your foxing mouth: sadly

seungman: shame

seungman: would’ve loved to see that bitch ella burn

watch your foxing mouth: can’t all have what we want ig

seungman: wait give me a sec I'm clocking out I want to see this mess

watch your foxing mouth: come out quick chan looks like he’s going to cry

watch your foxing mouth: it’s hilarious

seungman: doesn’t he refer to you as his child?

watch your foxing mouth: what of it

seungman: idk

seungman: just if I talked about my parents like that I'd be six feet under by now

watch your foxing mouth: chan’s too soft for that

watch your foxing mouth: bet you he won’t even fire jisung after this

seungman: I know better than to take you up on that 

seungman: anyway where is he I want to take a picture

watch your foxing mouth: doesn’t he refer to you as one of his children too?

seungman: what of it?

watch your foxing mouth: you’re right you’re right let’s go watch him suffer

[fazbear-security]

Secret Tunnels & Surprise Visits

Mike hadn’t had a week off in nearly two years, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

He’d slept as late as he could, but that had only taken him to 1pm, and most of his siblings had extra curricular activities that would keep them out until at least 6pm. His mother was working until at least then, when she picked up the kids, and Sasha’s curfew wasn’t until 11pm (and boy, did she wring it for every minute she could get). He’d tried cleaning up around the house, but that had only taken up part of his Thursday, and as much as his mother had appreciated his hard work, it hadn’t been enough to satisfy the itch in his idle hands.

The pizzeria was being renovated that weekend, and was closed from Thursday to the following Wednesday, so Mike had a good full six or seven days all to himself. Already out of things to do around the house after day one, he’d decided to tackle the one task he (and everyone else in the house) had been putting off for years.

Organizing the basement.

“You have a lot of stuff down here.” Puppet commented as he climbed up on top of an old gear locker shoved against the stairs. A pair of old workout gloves and a rolled up mat were still stuffed in it, along with a set of resistance bands. Mike made a point not to look at it. “Like, a LOT a lot.” The slender animatronic that had taken up residence under his bed poked at the curling edge of an old sticker on the side of the locker. “Don’t you guys throw anything out?”

“Does it look like it?” Mike asked rhetorically as he surveyed the mess. Where was the best place to start? Christmas ‘91? His old college stuff? That box of yearbooks that stretched all the way back to Tara’s freshman year of high school? “That’s what we’re down here to do today - pare down all this junk and get rid of the stuff we really don’t need.”

“That’s easier said than done…” Puppet eyed the mess from his perch up on the locker before jumping down, and curiously opening the nearest box. “You’ve got more stuff down here than the old location had in storage….oh!” The little animatronic leaned over the edge of the large box - almost falling in - before scrambling back out with a little box clutched in his striped fingers, and a wide smile on his mask.

“Hey! I remember these!!” He popped open the lid and ran a cloth fingertip over the enamel pins on the board inside while Mike picked another box in a stack across the room, and started to dig through it. “These are the commemorative pins from 1987! They had me give these to employees as a gift at a big party!” Puppet tilted his head curiously. “How’d they get down here?”

“The night shift isn’t the first time I’ve worked for Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, you know.” Mike made a face at the musty books inside the box he’d chosen, and closed it back up. His mother still might want to donate these to the library - best to just set these aside, for now. “I spent a few months making pizzas for the other location across town before I went to college. I was out sick when that party happened, but management gave me those pins the next day.”

“You mean...we could’ve met sooner?” Puppet looked down at the old pins - at the cutesy, cartoony faces of Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and the pizzeria’s logo - and some of his smile faded. Mike looked up from the box of old clothes he was sorting through at the heavy silence, and frowned.

“Don’t...don’t think too much about it, Puppet.” He advised, folding an old shirt that had stopped fitting a decade ago and setting it aside. “You wouldn’t have liked me when I was eighteen, anyway. I was kind of an as-...uh...kind of a jerk.” He quickly amended. Puppet frowned, and put the lid back on the box before jumping up and sliding it on top of the locker. He was absolutely keeping that.

“So?” The animatronic moved to Mike’s side, and stood as high as he could to try and  see into the clothing box. “I’ve dealt with sulky teenagers before.”

“I was a lot more than just ‘sulky’...” Mike winced. He’d been a jerk with a capital ‘J’ before he’d gone to college and gotten knocked off his pedestal. It was a miracle his parents had been able to put up with him for an entire year, honestly. “Be glad we met after I got my head on straight. It was for the best for both of us.” Puppet’s mask twisted into a frown, but Mike was determined for that to be the end of the topic, and moved the clothing box to get at the yearbooks beneath it.

“...huh?” Mike paused in the middle of opening the last box in the stack, and closed the flaps again to tilt it back, and get a better look at what had caught his attention. Puppet quickly perked up as the young man shifted the box across the floor, and off of a mysterious, rectangular shape still half-buried by all the clutter.

“Oh, cool! A secret door!” Puppet grabbed another stack of boxes and tried to push it off the shape, while Mike scratched his head in confusion.

“I...don’t remember this.” The human frowned, even as he helped Puppet to move the stack that weighed more than him. “I wonder if Mom or Dad knew about this?” He frowned as he cleared the last of the boxes off of what was now obviously some kind of old trapdoor. “Kind of seems like they tried to bury it.”

“Maybe it leads to a secret tunnel!” Puppet suggested eagerly. “Just like in that cartoon with the dog Pippa likes!” He started to bounce on his heels, and started to reach for the seam in the floor. “Let’s open it and see where it goes!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down, Puppet!” Mike snatched the little animatronic up under one arm, and stepped back before he could get his striped fingers into the crack. “We can’t just open it!” He argued. “We have no idea what might be down there - there could be rats, or spiders, or-”

THUNK.

“......” Both Mike and Puppet froze at the sound, and looked down at the trapdoor. “.....that’s a big rat.” Puppet whispered. Mike slowly - quietly - stepped back from the trapdoor, and the sound came again, only louder. He dropped Puppet back to his feet, and the little animatronic quickly hid behind the human, and dug his striped fingers into Mike’s red jacket as they both nervously watched the trapdoor.

THUNK. THUNK.

Something pounded on the trapdoor from below - something big - and a small puff of dust was kicked up from the space. Mike looked around frantically for something he could use as a weapon, and snatched up a baseball bat from another pile of junk. Luis hadn’t used it since his high school days. Surely, he wouldn’t mind?

THUNK THUNK THUNK.

The trapdoor began to rattle, and Mike swung the bat up over his shoulder as the rusty lock creaked and bent. Finally, the old metal snapped, and the trapdoor was thrown open by-....by Chica?

Mike’s brain ground to a halt as the animatronic chicken mascot from his workplace popped up through his floor, looking around with a curious hum at the cluttered basement before she laid optics on him, and broke out into a wide, toothy smile.

“Hi, Mr. Schmidt!! How’d you get here?”

“.......” The baseball bat fell out of Mike’s limp hands, and clattered to the floor. Puppet flinched at the loud sound, but Chica didn’t seem to register the human’s obvious shock, and came up the rest of the stairs and into the basement.

“Guys!” She shouted back down the stairs. “Mike’s here!” Behind her, Bonnie’s ears appeared before the rest of him, and Foxy’s hook scratched at the edge of the trapdoor hole as he hauled himself up out of the tunnel that yawned beneath the basement floor. Mike sucked in a breath through his teeth as the pirate fox - and other figures that, in no way, should have ever been in his house - rose up from beneath the floor, and stretched his limbs.

“Aaarrr, ‘tis about time!” Foxy grumbled, leaning back as if to stretch out a kink in his spine. “We’ve been walkin’ fer hours! I thought we’d be ‘alfway t’ Tortuga by now!”

“We were only down there for twenty minutes, at best.” Bonnie argued as he climbed out. “Your internal clock must be broken!”

“Jus’ like th’ rest o’ me, ey?” Foxy turned an irritable glare upon the rabbit, but his expression immediately softened when he noticed the audience Bonnie had not. “Oh! Mike! How ye’ be, lad? Ain’t seen ye’ since Wednesday eve’!” Puppet looked up at the human he hid behind with wide eyes, and Mike found the presence of mind to lower his hands from their raised position.

“....you’re in my house.” He said eloquently. Bonnie and Foxy both tipped their ears forward, and looked around the basement.

“This be your house?” Foxy flipped up his eyepatch for a better look. “It be….uh….cozy?” Bonnie shook his head and smacked the fox on the arm.

“This isn’t the whole place, buckethead.” He scoffed. “There’s an upstairs, see?” He pointed to the basement stairs, and Mike looked over just in time to see Chica’s tailfeathers disappearing at the top. His heart skipped a beat or two.“This is just a basement!” The rabbit hopped over a box on the floor, and headed up the stairs himself. “Chica, wait for me!”

“I knew that!” Foxy huffed back with a lash of his tail. The basement started to feel a little small, and Mike pulled another breath in through his teeth. Oh, god. He’d had nightmares just like this, back when he’d first started on the night shift...except he wasn’t sleeping now. He was awake, and this was real-

“I, ah, don’t suppose I could get a hand?” Mike froze, and slowly looked back down at the trapdoor to see Freddy himself seemingly wedged in the stairway opening. Behind him, he could also see the glow from Sam’s LED hat band, somewhere back within the tunnel. “I’m not as slim as the rest of you, you know!” The bear admitted.

“Aye, let’s get’che out o’ there.” Foxy reached out with his good hand to grab Freddy’s and started to pull, with Sam - presumably - pushing from behind. After a few more seconds of staring, Puppet edged out from behind Mike to help. Mike, however, remained frozen in place, and a few shades paler than he probably should have been as he tried to comprehend how one of his darkest nightmares was becoming reality right before his eyes-

“Oh, wow!” Chica’s voice echoed from somewhere upstairs - somewhere on the second floor. “It looks like Parts & Services up here, only better lit! Bonnie, you have to come see this!”

“That’s my-! Oh no.” Mike’s eyes popped wide, and he finally broke out of his frozen stupor to bolt for the stairs, leaving Puppet, Foxy, and Sam alone to try and pry the pizzeria star out through the too-small trapdoor in the floor. “That’s my room! Don’t touch anything!”

He passed Bonnie in the living room, seemingly enamoured by the many framed photos hung up behind the couch, and nearly tripped running up the stairs before he caught himself on the banister. It wasn’t until he’d made it up to the landing and thrown open his bedroom door that Mike realized that he...had no real plan for confronting the animatronic inside. He froze again in the doorway, panting, and struggling for words as Chica ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed over the variety of drawings and unfinished projects strewn about his desk.

“Whoa!!!” Chica picked up a pipe-and-wire hand model that he’d given up on three months ago, and cradled it in her hands with the reverence of a child holding a coveted toy for the first time. “This is just like our endoskeletons! Mr. Schmidt, I didn’t know you could build things!”

“I-. Uh. Um.” The unexpected praise made it even harder for Mike to find his words, and he stumbled for an embarrassingly long time before he heard the creaking of the stairs, and felt a towering presence at his back.

“Oh, neat!” Bonnie pushed his way into the room, causing Mike to stumble forward, as well, and gleefully batted at the punching bag still hanging from the ceiling next to his bed. “Heheh, what’s this thing? Does it make noise?”

“No, it-. It doesn’t make noise.” Mike reached out a hand to stop the bag from swinging, and hoped the feeling of the synthetic leather against his hand would help snap him back to reality. It didn’t do much. “It’s for hitting.”

“Oh.” Bonnie seemed to lose interest at this answer, and turned to face Chica, who had moved on to looking at the posters and pictures hanging on the wall. “Oh!” Bonnie zeroed in on one in particular, and Mike winced internally. “Who’s this kid? I haven’t seen them at the pizzeria before.”

“Yeah, you have. That’s, uh.” Mike found himself wishing he’d never framed that dumb childhood photo. “That’s me.”

“That’s you?!” Bonnie and Chica both crowded around the frame, now, and Mike prayed to any deity listening that his floor would hold under them. “Aww! You used to be so cute!”

“Bonnie!” Chica gasped, and tweaked one of the rabbit’s ears. “That’s so rude! He’s still cute!”

“......” Mike pressed both hands over his face, and leaned back until he was sitting on his bed as the two animatronics began to squabble.

Maybe, if he just sat here for long enough, his brain would get tired of this nightmare, and he’d wake up?

[notebooknebula]

Dave Seymour - Unlocking the Code to Multi Family Investing

https://www.jayconner.com/dave-seymour-unlocking-the-code-to-multi-family-investing/

Dave Seymour - Unlocking the Code to Multifamily Investing. Commercial Real Estate has some of the best overall returns out of all asset classes. Yet the majority of investors are unable to participate due to a lack of information and options. Freedom Venture Investments is breaking down the barriers to entry, giving our clients clarity and confidence, while always being results-driven. Discover how Dave went from Fire Fighter to Real Estate Investor.

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Jay Conner (00:07): Well, hello there! And welcome to another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I’m Jay Conner. The Private Money Authority. And the host of our show. If you’re brand new to Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, whether you’re listening in on iTunes or Google play, or following us on one of our YouTube channels or Facebook live streaming, we’re glad you’re here. If this is your first time, we talk all about different kinds of real estate. Single family houses, commercial, land deals, self storage, anything to do with real estate investing. And again, if you’re brand new, I’m known as The Private Money Authority because from 2003 to 2009, I was relying on local banks and mortgage companies to fund my deals. And I got cut off like the rest of the world did in 2008, 2009. And I learned about this wonderful world of private money.

Jay Conner (01:07): So I haven’t missed out on a deal since 2009 for not having the funding. And so if you would like to get plugged in to funding for your single family houses, I’ve got a free online training waiting for you to go to, so check it out after the show is over. Go on over to www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast. That’s JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast. And there I’ll be teaching you the five easy and quick steps from having no funding for your deals to, into the millions of funding. Again, without relying on banks or mortgage companies. Well, also here on Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, since we launched in June of 2018, I’ve had some amazing guests here on the show, share their secrets and strategies as to what they’re doing.

Jay Conner (02:03): And today is no exception. So my guest today after 16 years as a firefighter and a paramedic, he launched his career rapidly becoming one of the nation’s top real estate investors. So within his first few years, he had transacted millions of dollars of real estate and have become one of the nation’s leading experts in both residential and commercial transactions. Well, his passion for business and real estate put him on the radar of A&E television network, as well as multiple news organizations like CBS, ABC, CNBC, Fox news, and CNN. In addition to that, the New York times reported that his series titled Flipping Boston posted the highest ratings ever for the A&E network at the time of its airing. His greatest joy comes from being a husband and a father to three boys. And so with that, I’m so excited to have your own the show with us today, Mr. Dave Seymour! So Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Seymour (03:09): Hey Jay! How are you, man? I tell you, it’s funny. I listened to the, I listened to that intro and I’m, man, I sound pretty cool.

Jay Conner (03:15): And Scott, I will need for you to do a little edit right here because my internet has stopped working. So I’ve got a sign out and sign back in. So if you would, Scott, come to the forefront and keep Dave alive and I will be right back,

Dave Seymour (03:30): Oh, Man! I miss him already. So I got to do the show without Jay. Is that what you’re telling me, Scott?

Scott Paton (03:36): That’s right! That’s right! It’s just you and me. So,

Dave Seymour (03:39): That’s all right. It’s all good, man. I can play this game. No worries.

Scott Paton (03:45): What part of the country are you in?

Dave Seymour (03:47): Oh yeah, we’re up in Boston. Boston, Massachusetts. It’s where they threw the tea in the Harbor. We’ve been going through a little bit of a heat wave up here right now. So it’s an interesting time, man. I mean the real estate game in Boston has always been incredibly fluid and it continues to be. And I gotta be honest, man. I’m questioning some of the common sense that people use in the real estate marketplace right now. So I’m a super conservative investor.

Scott Paton (04:14): So you think people are being too aggressive?

Dave Seymour (04:17): Yeah, man! I mean, look! People sometimes forget. I mean, I listened to Jay’s intro and he had his own challenges in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, which we all did. And you know, there were investors that folded up their tent and never came back out to play after that. And Hey man! Welcome back!

Jay Conner (04:39): I got kicked off the internet for some strange reason. And so, ever since you started talking, I haven’t heard a word, you said.

Dave Seymour (04:47): Don’t worry. Nobody listens to me, including my wife, Jay. So it’s all good, man. No worries.

Jay Conner (04:55): Scott can edit this for us anyway, but so let’s pretend like I just said welcome to the show and you picked it off from there.

Dave Seymour (05:03): All right, man. Well, I appreciate you having me on the show, Jay. Thank you for having me. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, even with all of the chaos and the craziness going on in the world, for sure.

Jay Conner (05:13): That’s for sure, Dave. Well now I’m really curious about how you got on the A&E network and got your show started. What was it called? Flipping Boston?

Dave Seymour (05:27): Flipping Boston. Yeah. So I was listening to your intro, Jay. It was kind of interesting that you developed a new source of capital for your deals because the market kind of went sideways and I went through that same experience myself. I got, I started investing. I was a firefighter, like you said on the intro there for 16 years. But unfortunately I had the financial intelligence of a donkey and I did not, I didn’t understand capital. I didn’t understand how it worked. And I’m just following the same plan that everybody else is. And I went to a seminar to learn real estate and I’m a product of that seminar world. And the funny thing is, man, is I invested the last couple of thousand dollars that I didn’t have. Well, my wife did. I didn’t, it was her credit cards.

Dave Seymour (06:14): I was maxed out with a credit score of two. So nobody was giving me credit. But it’s kind of interesting. I did what my mentors and coaches told me, like, you know, I listened to you again at your intro, talk about the newer investors, or maybe you got some seasoned investors listening to us today, or watching us. But I just followed what worked. And next thing you know, I’ve done one deal, two deals, three deals, four deals. I’m actually doing a little teaching myself and somebody in the marketing world reached out to me and said they were looking for teams to start another show. And I was still firefighting. So I was like, firefight in 42 hours a week. And real estate invest in every other hour I was awake. And I sent in an application to New York and no offense to anybody, but I loaded it with profanity cause I wanted to make sure they paid attention to what I wrote on my little application.

Dave Seymour (07:09): Yeah. They came, they picked up the phone and the guy was kind of laughing. And he said, you’re either a lunatic or a genius. I said, is there a difference? And we started filming a little sizzle reel and we did four episodes and like you said, in the intro, their ratings were the highest they ever had for that time slot. And they said, well, people like you. And I’m like, I was just doing it for fun. I didn’t think it would ever go anywhere. And you can actually see the episodes on Amazon right now, Amazon prime in the video section. Yeah. So me and Jeff Bezos struck a deal. No, we didn’t. You can find the episodes on there. And you know, I got that reputation as an expert in the marketplace and with that comes a, you know, some really good relationships and you have to find yourself sitting on Squawk Box and Fox News and all of that silliness. So it’s kinda, it’s kinda cool, man. It was a cool journey.

Jay Conner (08:04): That is really cool! So let me give you the 30,000 foot view question and that is, why did you choose real estate for yourself?

Dave Seymour (08:13): Yeah. Look man, it’s, like I said, I was good at working, you know, and trading time for money. I’m kind of like a blue collar guy in a white collar world when it comes to that stuff, you know? I was instilled with some good solid core values, you know, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, work hard, respect your fellow man, you know, have a little faith and do the right thing. And that’s great. Don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t give you any financial freedom because the income potential is capt. And you know, I was working construction on my days off from the firehouse and I was watching these investors like popping up. And I’m thinking to myself, hold on a second, I’m building a deck, digging a ditch. I’m sitting on a post hole Digger with a bunch of friends here and this guy’s coming in and you don’t look too sweaty and he don’t look too dirty.

Dave Seymour (09:07): He looks like he’s had himself a good old time. At his back bone aching. I think his wife is probably happy as well. Right? It was the investors. And I found myself in a position where I was losing my house, man, because I made some bad decisions. And I always knew there was money in real estate. I never understood the stock market investing in something that was imaginary. And I just went for it. I went to a seminar and my wife invested in me and I started doing what they said I should do. And the results followed afterwards. So real estate has been the biggest wealth builder in the history of animation period. And why should I reinvent the wheel? Why don’t I just learn the processes and get in the game? And that’s when I took her like a duck to water, man. I’m passionate about it. I love it. I dream about it all the time. So yeah.

Jay Conner (10:03): What year did you go to that first real estate investing seminar?

Dave Seymour (10:07): Yeah, I went in early 2000. And late 2007. Early 2008. I came out just as the crap hit the fan, man!

Jay Conner (10:21): No, I tell you, you know, here in the midst of COVID-19 reminds me somewhat of what was going on in 2008, 2009, as far as, you know, banks tightening up and et cetera. And it was a blessing in disguise for me back in 2008, 2009, because that’s when I learned about private money and when the banks cut me off within three months, I had more money at my disposal. When I went out to raise money. Than I had, when I had a line of credit at the bank And I’m experiencing somewhat the same thing going on right now. I mean, I just had a phone call last week from four guys that have a private equity fund that want to give me $5 million just to start doing business with them. Right? They called me, they called me, I didn’t call them. Right. I have someone listening to my podcast here, not too long ago. They were laid up in the hospital for three days, listening to the podcast, they call my office and they want to lend me money.

Dave Seymour (11:23): What a terrible problem to have, Jay.

Jay Conner (11:29): So, now, how quick were you able to move once you got your education and start enjoying some success?

Dave Seymour (11:34): Yeah, that’s a great question, man. You know, I’d love to tell you. You know, 30 days and it was all fixed. I mean, that would just be a flat out lie. You know wealth creation is a process. It’s not an event. For me it took me, it took me 12 months to 18 months to be what I call financially free. And what I meant by that was, was that I was able to sleep eight hours. You know, I wasn’t waking up at three o’clock in the morning, you know, riddled with fear, doubt, and insecurity. So it took some time it took a commitment and some traction. But to your point, about 2008, I mean, I was telling people, cause that’s what my mentors told me to do was to tell everybody what I was doing. And I was telling people, you know, I’m a real estate investor, I’m investing, I can buy distressed assets and you know, I can put them back on the market and I’m giving them the whole elevator pitch.

Dave Seymour (12:26): And back then a lot of people were like, Ooh, Oh, I’m so sorry that that’s what you have to do for work. Like, you know, it was like a disease that we had as real estate investors in 2008, 2009. But like you, sir, I created an opportunity out of it, I can’t, you know, I became proficient at short sales. I became profecient at loan modifications. I became proficient at private lenders. I became proficient in helping people. And I found in my career and I’m sure you’ll testify to it as well as the fact that the more time I spend helping somebody else, the better it ends up being for me, you know, that and that. I mean, you know, God is good all the time and it’s like a real good friend of mine is down in Florida right now.

Dave Seymour (13:13): And his faith is something to be admired. And he just says to me, he just says to me, David, just ask the right questions, man. Am I doing His work or my work? Right. Is it all about the almighty buck? He said, because if you find yourself just chasing the almighty buck and you’re not doing His work and taking good care of people, he said, you might find yourself facing a little bit of resistance. That’s how he puts it. And then there’d be a little bit of scripture to support it. But, you know, I love that about it. It’s like there’s nothing better than those families that we helped, you know, during the transference of wealth in this country, which is what we show in 2008, nine, 10, 11, 12, you know, to help families who were foreclosed on them and put them in a lease option. Where they could stay in the same neighborhoods, right? The kids could go to the same school. They couldn’t afford the crazy mortgages that reset, but they could afford a good decent lease option and a beautiful home to live in. And all we were doing was moving them from house to house in the same neighborhoods, you know? So you know, with some education, you can serve this stuff around pretty fast. And I’m no better than anybody else. I just did what I learned. Rather than finding excuses, I found answers. Does that make sense?

Jay Conner (14:24): It makes a lot of sense. You and I have got a lot in common, Dave, because my followers hear me say all the time, this, all the facets of the business is all about serving and helping other people, as you said, because if people didn’t have a problem, we wouldn’t have an opportunity to serve. From the buyers to the sellers, to the private lenders, you know, even when it comes to raising money. And we’re going to hear your story here shortly in the next minute or two, about how you’ve gotten into raising a lot of capitals, but, you know, I’ve never asked anybody for money. They say, Jay, how in the world are you raise all those millions of dollars without asking for money? It’s real simple. I put on my teacher cap, I teach people what private money is. I teach them what self directed IRAs are. Cause they never heard of that stuff. And, you know, the light bulbs go off. And if they’ve got investment capital or retirement funds, they’re not happy with what they’re doing. They’re going to, they’re going to want to do business with you, right?

Dave Seymour (15:24): Correct. Correct. It amazes me how many intelligent accredited investors I sit down with and communicate with. And I start giving them a breakdown of the tax advantages of using a solo, 401k as a retirement vehicle to invest in my fund, into a piece of sticks and bricks, a syndicated deal. And it’s like these light bulbs go off in their head. And I don’t know about you. You tell me this. I found that, you know, high finance on occasion, it kind of brings an air of you know, like it’s almost pretentious at times, like you’ve got this additional vocabulary than they tend to use in high finance. And I was talking to a local guy, a friend of mine, a neighbor in fact, and he’s an injury attorney, very successful. And I’m in the middle of my, you know, my conversations through teaching.

Dave Seymour (16:19): Obviously I’m raising capital with salesman. We’re good at what we do, but he’s, he stops me in the middle of it. And he says, David, David, you’ve got to stop. I go, what, he goes. I just figured out what you’re doing because I applied a logic commercial assets, you know, 60 to 150 unit apartment complexes, not just one of them, but 30, 40, 50 of them. And then I fixed them up. I get the rents up and I create a better asset. And I’m trying to give him the delivery, Jay. He says to me, David, stop it. I go, what, what what’s up? Did I offend you? He goes, no, no, no, no. He goes, I think I understand what you’re saying. He said, all you’re talking about is flipping Boston on steroids. Instead of just taking a little single family house and make it that pretty.

Dave Seymour (17:02): He said, you’re doing 5,000 units and making them pretty correct? I said, yeah, that’s right, Kevin. He said, okay, how do I subscribe? Let me see if I can get some capital into the fund, you know? And it’s amazing because it’s, you know, my trajectory, it’s interesting. We were in a marketing meeting a couple of weeks back and I had a young intern in our marketing meeting. And what we’re doing right now is we have a private equity fund and we raise capital. We invest in multifamily assets, primarily in the Gulf region of Florida, but other markets. I mean, you guys in the Carolinas in such a great position there, I mean, it’s fantastic the opportunities there. So maybe we should talk offline, Jay, but you know, these assets allow us to go in there with what’s called a core plus asset class.

Dave Seymour (17:52): What we do just like I said, we take these settings and we make them pretty, but it never was that way. I mean, the first deal I did was a $5,000 wholesale transaction on a single family home. And I felt to myself what I’d had to do in the past to make $5,000. And then when I stepped out of the attorney’s office, I’m waiting for the five votes to pull up and take me to jail. Cause I felt, it felt so bizarre to have a check for a house that I’d never owned, but I’ve learned along the way to your point to simplify it. You know, you, you lead by attraction, not by promotion. I turn away capital, Jay, because it’s not a good fit. And you know, again, the universe works in a wonderful way if it’s of service, which is, is for us because we help people with the longterm retirements. They get to invest in our fund, and they get a preferred rate of return, targeted rates of return in double digits.

Dave Seymour (18:46): And then for the life of the time that their capital was working with us, you know, then now that targeted 20% returns on their money. So it’s a, it’s a real, it’s a real good asset class. And unfortunately COVID has all, fortunately, depending on what side of the equation you choose to put yourself on. COVID has given us a massive opportunity because the buying is already there. The buying opportunities are right in front of us right now. We’re just hungry to take these assets down, help the sellers, help the tenants, help our investors. I get warmed up, man. I get on a roll. You don’t. You got to stop me and ask me questions. Otherwise I just keep going.

Jay Conner (19:23): You remind me of me when I’m on the other side of the microphone. Speaking of COVID, what’s your prediction and what’s your take on what’s the short term outlook from covid and what do you think is the longterm outlook and consequences on any front?

Dave Seymour (19:41): Yeah, it’s, you know, kind of like pull off the bandaid, man. I mean, here’s what I see. We’ve got a short term pain that we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to experience, we’re going to have to experience as a nation. We’re gonna have to experience it together. You know, depends on how you look at it. So we’ve got the full balances where the banks have, you know, allowed tenants to own us to not pay their mortgages. You’ve got a tenancy not paying their rent. We had the PPP, the protection program there for small business. You know, Mr. Trump wrote everybody a check. There’s more, you know, more capital coming out which in its essence sounds great. And it’s a difficult position, Jay. It really is because it’s like, there’s the one side of me that used to live paycheck to paycheck that understands how necessary that is.

Dave Seymour (20:44): But then there’s now the other side of me that the businessman, I look at it and I say, well, there’s no transference of services for that money. And if there isn’t a true transference of services for that capital, it’s almost like a house of cards. It’s, you know, it’s doomed to have a failure point and a stress point. And when we get there you know, we will see an increase in foreclosure. We’ll see these challenges going forward and we’ll get through. We’re America. You know, I’m an immigrant to this country. I came from England and back in 1986, I was born in London. But, you know, I, I came to the greatest country in the world for growth, for economy, for the ability to really be the best we can be. So we’re always going to overcome. So short term, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to feel the pain.

Dave Seymour (21:34): Longterm, there’ll be two kinds of people just like they were in 2008, 2009, 2010, there’ll be victims and there’ll be victors. And, you know, I sense that we will be the victors and that’s not a moral battle. It’s just an intellectual battle of finance and real estate and business. But to be on the other side of it, as a Victor, we have a greater opportunity to help the people who didn’t, who didn’t come along the journey with us on the financial side. That’s kinda my full process on it. And that’s why we’re so bullish on our buying right now, we would invest the capital because everybody else is fearful. We go in there and we just get the good buying opportunities,

Jay Conner (22:15): Take a couple of minutes and tell us in summary, your journey from, I suppose you started with single family houses, you mentioned you’re for real being a wholesale deal. And then you went into commercial and now you are in the capital raising business, and you have a fund that people can take advantage of and invest in. Tell us, give us an overview of that journey of when, what and why.

Dave Seymour (22:43): Yeah, well, we don’t have nearly enough time, Jay. I’ve always tried to say it in three words, but it always comes out in 300 for some reason. It’s like I said, man, I learned the fundamentals of real estate. First transaction was a wholesale transaction for a house I never owned and I made 5,000 bucks. And I thought to myself, if it’s legal, if it’s honest and it’s ethical, I’m not going to do this once. I’m going to do it as many times as I can. And, you know, you slowly get out of debt. And then I stopped doing a little bit of a single family. Then I’m doing a lot of single family. Then I pick up that first two family unit and then a triplex and a fourplex then I’m always like got my eye on the commercial arena.

Dave Seymour (23:26): So I was in a marketing meeting, as I was saying, and I had a young intern in there and they said, why should anybody listen to you as a fund manager with a hundred million dollars invested in commercial real estate throughout the country, primarily in the Gulf coast. Guys says you’re that flipping guy from TV. And I went, Oh, from the mouth of babes. Ok, now, man I’m 21 years old, fresh out of college came in as an internship, fresh out of the mouth of babes. And it’s interesting because I have always been involved in commercial real estate. Had a portfolio of about 110 doors at one time in Sanford, Maine, which is just North of here, you know, a C class property C class neighborhood. I learned very quickly that I just want to be the bank. I don’t want to be property manager.

Dave Seymour (24:10): So, you know, I’ve learned a lot along the way. I’ve coached people through large commercial transactions of rubbed elbows in the self storage space. I’ve always avoided office and retail. How sad is it right now for you know, leisure, office and retail investing right now? It’s a very hard time. So commercial has always been in my wheelhouse. It’s always been my excitement bottom and friend of mine by the name of Walton Evicky reached out to me, raised about 125 mil and syndicated commercial deals in multifamily assets throughout the Gulf coast. And he said, I want to bring your stop power is what he said. And I always giggle when somebody says that. He’s like, well, you’ve got a national reach. He said, why don’t we combine efforts, your team, my team let’s get together, put the fund together. So the fund is now up. We’re raising capital. We’ve got a couple of acquisitions that we’re about to take down, we’re raising a hundred million dollars, we pay, like I said, a preferred return, double digit target returns to our investors. And it’s an exciting time in the middle of all this chaos, Jay. You know, it really is.

Jay Conner (25:19): That is awesome. Thank you for giving us the overview. Now, you’ve got a free ebook for our audience and listeners. So what’s the ebook that you’re offering to everybody?

Dave Seymour (25:29): Yeah, you can see right on the screen there. FreedomVenture.com that’s our front door to our website spend a little time there. Learn a little while you’re there. Scroll down to the bottom of that page and you’ll be able to download a free ebook that I wrote with my property manager. Guy by the name of John Dessauer. He is out of Chi town, Chicago. John manages approximately 3 million square feet of multifamily real estate. He’s been an active investor himself for over 20, 25 years now. We wrote that book together. It’s called Unlocking The Code To Multifamily Investing. It’s an easy read. It’s not too heavy, but it will give you the high points and it will show why investors want to invest with us. It’s protected, you know, there’s a security there. They don’t take the the liability that most investors who were actually own the assets themselves, they own a piece of the company that owns the assets. So it’s a, it’s a smarter play big picture for a lot of investors who don’t have the time to get, to get their hands dirty like we have in their careers, Jay.

Jay Conner (26:38): That’s awesome! Well, it’s been a pleasure to have you here on the show, Dave. Final parting comments.

Dave Seymour (26:45): Yeah, just know that it’s gotta be okay. It’s gonna take us a little bit of time. And so always educate don’t speculate, right? Work on the education, understand what you’re investing in, but don’t be somebody who just analyzes all the time and doesn’t do anything. All right. Take a little action. Get off the couch and get in the game. Cause there’s the best game there is. I think.

Jay Conner (27:07): That’s great! Well, there you have it folks, Mr. Dave Seymour, again, you can follow him. Get the free ebook and also find out about investing opportunities at www.FreedomVenture.com. Thanks again, Dave. Good to have you on.

Dave Seymour (27:29): Appreciate you man. Thank you. God bless. Have a great day.

Jay Conner (27:32): All right, there, you have another show folks. I’m Jay Conner. The Private Money Authority. Wishing you all the best. Here’s to taking your real estate investing business to the next level. We’ll see you on the next show.

[darkblueboxs]

Any headcanons about Andrew and Jean getting to know eachother? Maybe they end up on the same professional team or something... But! I believe there gotta be some sort of understanding between the two, some sort of solidarity, due to similarities in their life experiences. Like how Andrew grew close to Renee.

Oh, these guys are a great combo. Very similar experiences, very different ways of dealing with them.

Here is how I imagine how their relationship would have unfolded if Jean had followed Kevin to Palmetto (I love Raven!Neil as much as the next person but we all sleeping on Fox!Jean...play in this space with me...)

· Depending on where we are on the tfc timeline, Jean’s arrival would have sent up a million red flags on Andrew’s radar. Riko’s little pet just happens to turn up on their doorstep after Kevin defects to the foxes? No, he isn’t buying it. Much like Neil, Jean would register as a capital-T Threat.

· And what does Andrew do with Threats? He takes them to Columbia.

· Now, Jean has spent years in the nest, watching Kevin run around at the heels of his brother owner and cowering in Riko’s shadow because at least there he was safe from Riko’s cruelty. Until he wasn’t.

· So Jean arrives at Palmetto, takes one look at the deal Kevin has made with Andrew, and thinks, no. Jean payed dearly for helping Kevin escape Riko, and all Kevin has done is run from the arms of one psychopath to the other. Andrew and Riko are both violent, unpredictable, dangerous, and have far too many knives upon their person at any given moment. Jean decides very quickly that there is no difference between the two. To see Kevin cowering in the shadow of another “protector” leaves a black, bitter taste in his mouth, but Jean does what he always has done when it comes to Kevin’s poor choices: nothing. He has no interest in becoming another plaything of one of Kevin’s “owners,” and he won’t rock the boat if it means putting himself in another psychopath’s line of fire.

· So, to start off with, there’s heavy misconceptions on both sides.

· When Andrew tells Jean he’s coming to Columbia, Jean does not object. He remembers Riko’s games, and assumes that Andrew’s work just the same: if Jean says no to this, he will undoubtedly face something far worse further down the line. In this case, he isn’t entirely wrong.

· Kevin may come with them to Eden’s, but Jean isn’t stupid enough to rely on his help or ask him what Andrew has planned for him. Jean is used to Kevin looking out for himself, and he knows that reaching out to Kevin will force him to choose between Jean and Andrew, which isn’t a choice at all. Instead, Jean enters Eden’s with only his assumptions about Andrew to guide him.

· He knows the drink Andrew brings him is spiked. Andrew knows he knows. Neither of them acknowledges it. Jean sends a silent prayer to anyone who may be listening and downs it in one without making eye-contact. He adds “involuntary drugging” to the list of Riko and Andrew’s common hobbies.

· It’s after the drugs hit that everything gets a little confusing. This is usually the part where the torture starts. Instead, Jean is dragged onto a dancefloor where an excitable latino with rainbow eyeshadow is insisting on teaching him the Macarena

· Jean is not good at the Macarena

· He isn’t sure how long he’s been stumbling around the dance floor when a hand clamps down on his shoulder and pulls him away, through a set of doors and into what looks like a staff room

· Jean doesn’t black out, per se, but everything does go quite shaky at that point. He thinks he knows what is coming – has a vague idea, anyway – and he isn’t sure if it’s the knowing or the not being sure that locks up his body. For a minute or so, it’s like he’s watching himself from the outside. He came to Palmetto to escape this. There is no escape. This is Jean’s life, and he is trapped in it no matter where he goes. He can’t survive this again. He can’t.

· Then there are fingers snapping in front of his face. “Do I need to pour water over your head?”

· Jean manages enough of a reaction to stop Andrew from making good on the threat. He still isn’t breathing right, still clearly in the throes of a major panic attack.

· And Andrew wishes he could find it suspicious – why be so afraid if Jean has nothing to hide? – but on the other hand, if this Raven is supposed to be some kind of sleeper agent, he has to be the worst choice in the world. He’s in pieces, and Andrew hasn’t even asked him anything, let alone made any kind of threat.

· And Jean has kept it together just enough to keep breathing in and out, but he’s still out of his mind on whatever Andrew gave him. He doesn’t even know what year it is at this stage. His mind is skipping to whatever straws he can grasp, and all he’s coming up with is the last time he felt like this, what Riko did to him, what Riko made others to do to him-

· And he doesn’t realise he’s been speaking out loud, pleading, begging, no, stop, don’t touch me, I don’t want to, please- until Andrew jerks away from him like he’s been burned.

· Andrew’s expression moves through several stages in quick succession. First, an awful, empty blankness, like Jean’s words have momentarily taken him somewhere else, another time, another life

· Then, searching. Calculating. Connecting.

· Understanding.

· And finally, less than a second but cutting through Jean than all the other expressions put together. The blackest, bone-deep rage, burning from deep within Andrew like an oil fire at the bottom of a well

· Not a spy, Andrew realises. A Runaway.

· And Andrew, curse his foolish soul, has always had a soft spot for runaways.

· “I’m not like them,” Andrew manages at last.

· Jean has no reason to believe him, but in that moment, he does.

· “So,” says Andrew, stupid, stupid Andrew. He doesn’t care what this broken, runaway Raven has to offer him, nor the threat he may still pose. Not now he knows what Jean was running from. Andrew has his rules, and there are some things he will never, ever allow. “Let’s make a deal.”

· That night, the monster’s newest recruit takes his first breath of air as a free man.

[miscellaneous-miraculous]

Miraculous Ladybug Fic Recs - AUs

(Sorry I’m a little late with this, I meant to post it yesterday but traveling kept me busy. Enjoy!)

The Carnelian Conspiracy by paris-mystere (spellthief)

Word Count: 62,909

Chapters: 13/13

Rating: T

Summary:

PARIS, 1899. At the height of French Imperialism, a golden age of peace and prosperity has led to a flourishing of art and technology in the empire's capital. But beneath the beautiful facade of the Belle Époque, the world is brimming with tension, as the rising tides of nationalism and industrialization threaten to open a dangerous new chapter of history. Navigating this brave new world is Adrien Agreste, a promising young detective with more heart than sense. He's never particularly cared for politics or plotting, but he finds himself drawn ever-deeper into a dangerous web of deceit and betrayal as he investigates his most puzzling case yet: that of the mysterious thief known only as Ladybug...

I’ve re-read this fic several times and love it just as much each read through. The world itself is built up very well and the character dynamics are really interesting.

Spotty Connections by agrestenoir

Word Count: 66,107

Chapters: 25/25

Rating: T

Summary:

(1:14 pm) So you never told me how you planned to make Gabriel Agreste cry.  (1:20 pm) Oh my god, how drunk was I last night?! (1:22 pm) They live. (1:23 pm) Barely. (1:24 pm) How do I know you again? (1:24 pm) I don’t think you do? I’m Wrong Number. You were texting me your New Year’s Resolution earlier. (1:25 pm) …I’m too hungover to deal with this right now. (1:26 pm) Well who’s fault is that? (1:40 pm) …Hello? (2:01 pm) Well this was fun.

(Marinette sends a text to the wrong number, and things progress from there until it becomes the right one.)

Liberte by damagectrl

Word Count:10,456

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: T

Summary:

After the Reign of Terror and just before Napoleon takes power, France is in chaos and Adrien Agreste is certain he is bound for the guillotine despite championing the rights of the people.  As he is tossed in a wagon, blindfolded and chained, his thoughts go back to a night in June of 1789.

On the cusp of the French Revolution, attending his childhood friend’s celebration wasn’t his ideal way to spend that night, especially when the extravagance and wealth of the family was on full display and clashing with his revolutionist sympathies, but as the son of wealthy merchant and the daughter of a noblesse d’épée family, Adrien attended anyway.  

He has a chance meeting with a masked baker’s daughter trying to free her friends and it is a moment, he’ll never forget.

The Pink Lady: Marichat May 2018 by seasonofthegeek

Word Count: 19,989

Chapters: 25/25

Rating: T

Summary: 

In this story, Chat Noir, Carapace, Rena Rouge, Queen B, and Paon are the heroes of Paris. The Ladybug Miraculous has been lost for almost a century and it takes all of their combined power to cleanse akumas sometimes but they’ve found something that works since they don’t have another option. Hawkmoth is one of their villains, but not the only one plaguing Paris.

Chat Noir happens upon an old hotel one night on patrol and discovers something and someone he didn't expect.

Lady Blanche by MiniMinou

Word Count: 7066

Chapters: 2/2

Rating: T

Summary:

Marinette is a girl with a heart full of hopes, dreams and ambitions. Becoming the avatar of Destruction to save the city of Paris from supervillains was not one of them. She's trying her best, but it'd be a lie to say it's going well.

At least her superhero partner is perfection incarnate kind of cute.

Lucky Fox Paradox by imthepunchlord

Word Count: 247,907

Chapters: 29/29

Rating: G

Summary:

After the failure with Stoneheart, Marinette had successfully given up the earrings and thought that was that. That she was done with the hero business. Done with anything miraculous. She was wrong. And her actions sparked off a great change of events.

A Musical Connection by quicksilversquared

Word Count: 40,195

Chapters: 12/12

Rating: G

Summary:

In a world where soulmate bonds can range from a simple matching mark to timers to shared dreams, of course Adrien would get saddled with an inconvenient bond that keeps him from going out and living life- because whenever his soulmate sings, Adrien has to as well.

But the singing, as inconvenient as it is, presents another opportunity. Can Adrien use it to track down his soulmate?

whose woods these are (I think I know) by Reiaji

Word Count: 57,258

Chapters: 16/24 (as of 3/7/2020)

Rating:T

Summary:

Four years after his future turns to cinders, Adrien is a servant in the house he was meant to inherit. Disowned by his father and abused by his stepmother, his days are filled with drudgery until he meets a masked huntress in the forest behind his father's chateau.

As his friendship with Ladybug turns to first love, he dreams of a future spent at her side.

Then, on the eve of the Princess's masquerade, he meets his guardian—and is granted a wish.

[Ladrien Cinderella AU]

The Kwami Club by SeaJay45

Word Count: 34,119

Chapters: 3/? (as of 3/7/2020)

Rating: M

Summary:

Chicago, 1927

The stock markets are soaring, women are voting, movies are talking, music is swinging, and prohibition has turned out to be wildly unsuccessful. In the midst of it all, the wonderfully dazzling and daring culture of the speakeasy has bloomed. But, in the dark corners of these secret smokey rooms another creature has come into its own - organized crime. Adrien Agreste, darling of the silent silver screen, finds himself thrust into this thriving underworld after meeting the mysterious Ladybug, owner of the illustrious Kwami Club.

When Duty and Desire Meet by EdenDaphne (edelet) and midnightstarlightwrites

Word Count: 74,772

Chapters: 16/? (as of 3/7/2020)

Rating: T

Summary:

Adrien was twenty years old when he first became Chat Noir and met Ladybug. Four years later, amidst the toughest time of his college career, he meets Marinette Dupain-Cheng. A College/Reverse Crush AU exploring what would happen if Marinette was four years younger than Adrien, how that would change the nature of their superhero partnership, and how one chance meeting can spark an affair that causes a long-dormant battle of duty vs desire to reignite.

Discordant Sonata by EdenDaphne (edelet)

Word Count:75,153

Chapters: 14/?

Rating: T

Summary:

“Ladybug… I… What choice do I have?  Hawkmoth, he’s ruthless and determined.  And he’s… he’s not just my boss.  He’s family.  If I defied him, what would I do? Where would I go?  He’d take my miraculous away if I even tried.  I don’t have a choice.”

Spellbound by Lilafly

Word Count: 302,358

Chapters: 60/? (as of 3/7/2020)

Rating: T

Summary:

Going out on Midsummer had been a very bad idea, Adrien was able to admit that much. He couldn’t regret running into a girl named Marinette though, who has helped him through the time where Faerie tried to call him with sweet songs. He really wanted to get to know her better, but there was a slight problem: he was a Cat Sidhe and if she found out about it, she could as well be proclaimed dead on the spot. But the loneliness he had seen in her eyes had been too familiar for him to just leave her alone. Keeping her ignorant of the presence of the fair folk, while he himself was one of them, proved to be a lot harder than he had expected it to be though.

[oyabun-draws]

yellow, aqua and pink for the ask game! ❤️

yellow: name of an artist you think is underappreciated (my response got long im sorry)

(can i say myself...fssjfsfjfs) um i am not sure if these artists are underappreciated or not but i will name some of my favorite artists from various fandoms pls give em a look i love them:

raven cycle: i HAVE to give a shoutout to @f0x-meets-w0lf they literally are the reason kavinsky is my favorite character in the series, and i am a big dream pack person, the dream thieves IS my favorite book in the series and this artist in my eyes is the BACKBONE of the dream pack fandom, we would have NOTHING without them i LOVE fox-meets-wolf and I WILL be purchasing every print of theirs mark my words. their art is perfect honestly i have no words. my proof is right here if u disagree look at that and then come talk to me anyways i could make a whole post on fanart of kavinsky also i found out just NOW that this queen is following me on one of my instas and like am i hallucinating i need confirmation bc they are literally one of my fav artists on planet earth anyways (i think u can tell i have adhd by how i respond to asks) also this post and these posts are certified iconic and i will be purchasing if they ever do prints

carry on: @i-am-weis literally gave me my rights their art of simon and baz is out of this world, they haven’t posted carry on stuff since back in the day but i am a carry on elder and I Remember. they’re talented incredible show-stopping never been done before and so so close to how i picture simon and baz. on that note @yofriesenburg ALSO has incredibly close to how i imagine them this post is EVERYTHING to me,  also this post STUN N I NG, and this artist’s stuff is fantastic, we love this one, and this one, @mara-miranda of course especially this one, this lovely post, this fantastic post, this post omg the ARTISTRY, this lovely post, lest not forget ms @vkelleyart of COURSE but specifically this one is my favorite of hers, and last but not least, THIS is my ALL TIME favorite carry on fanart and fun fact: this is the very first post i ever reblogged on this tumblr, please feast your eyes on this witchcraft and wizardry it is literally everything.

(also i have been working on this post for literally four hours trying to find all these links so if my enthusiasm is declining it is because i am pooped and not because i like any of these artists less than others. i love them ALL, all of these i have saved to my phone so i can Look at them)

aftg: @ziegenkind094 literally period all of their posts are excellent, @lnmei i- to have as much talent as lnmei.. one can only dream these  are some favs of mine  and @microolli esp this one, and this post is everything the bandages are so well done ppl never draw enough scars, @lazyleezard and @actuallyzeropercent are EXACTLY how i picture andrew and neil EXACTly their fem!andrew and neil are p e r f ec t, also this post, these posts, and lastly these posts are perfect, neil is perfect, the vibes are perfect, true artistry

yoi: everything. 

i am so tired im s o sorry u definitely did not ask i just hyperfocused and said I Will create a masterlist Right Now and spent 6 hours omg. anyways those are some of my fav artists and drawings thank u if anyone wants to know my fav non-fanartists let me know and i will make another masterlist. 

aqua: do you thrift?

yes! actually about 90% of my clothes are thrifted, I’m poor (my whole family is poor) so I have thrifted or received hand-me-downs for my whole life :) and I am not ashamed of admitting that I’m poor either, my family is very hardworking (even if you aren’t u are still valid, poor people are not at fault of the situations we are in.) I just live in the U.S. and capitalism is a desease. 

pink: what’s your natural hair color?

idk what is up, but my natural hair color has changed throughout my life, when i was born it was dark brown and then lightened to medium brown. then in late elementary to early middle school it changed to like golden brown/dirty blond whatever tf and then later in high school it became medium brown again and then now it is a grey-ish (?) mousy brown i think its called. but my hair is bleached blond almost all the time bc i like the way it contrasts with my dark bushy brows :)

okay thank u for the asks so much idk why this turned into a literal essay in length but like i love getting asks so much bc i get them quite sparingly and i like to ramble. i type almost exactly how i think/talk minus the stuttering #just speech impediment things

anyways thank u for the asks!! <3 <3 i love you

color asks

[citizenscreen]

Marjorie Main is one of my favorite character actors. It’s an impossibility to see her in a film and not find I am smiling broadly. With one of the most recognizable voices in movies, Main managed an abrupt, but lovable persona in many of her films. It is a joy to watch her and to honor her with this entry for the What a Character! Blogathon 2019.

Born Mary Tomlinson in Acton, Indiana the daughter of Reverend Samuel J. Tomlinson and the former Mary McGaughey, Marjorie Main changed her stage name to avoid embarrassing her minister father who disapproved of entertainment careers. She chose the name she did because “it is easy to remember.” Main was born with a thirst for entertaining even while growing up on a farm, quenching her thirst through stock companies from an early age. Her studies of the dramatic arts led her from Hamilton School of Dramatic Expression in Lexington, Kentucky onto Chicago and New York. In the meantime Ms. Main toured the vaudeville circuit meeting lecturer Dr. Stanley LeFevre Krebs whom she married in 1921. By that point, Marjorie Main was a Broadway veteran.

Marjorie’s physical look, her mannerisms, dry wit, and that voice! all made a package that was not easy to forget. Main had an impact on audiences immediately. Her stage work included a long stint opposite W. C. Fields in a skit titled “The Family Ford” that brought them all the way to New York’s Palace Theatre, the top vaudeville house in the country. Main’s Broadway shows ranged from “Cheating Cheaters” in 1916 in which she played opposite John Barrymore to playing Lucy the Reno Innkeeper in “The Women,” the role that led her to Hollywood and one she reprised in George Cukor’s 1939 big screen gem. Marjorie Main had taken a break from performing for a few years as her husband’s lecture demands grew, but she returned to the stage after his death in 1935 with a popular turn as Mrs. Martin in “Dead End,” again a role she reprised memorably on film, this time directed by William Wyler in 1937. That happens to be one of my favorite of her performances, by the way. It’s a small, but affecting turn as the mother of killer Humphrey Bogart.

Main and Bogart in the film version of DEAD END

Ms. Main made her screen debut in William Wyler’s A House Divided (1931) as a town gossip, an uncredited role in crowd scenes she’d repeat in several movies in the early 1930s. She was in her forties, unheard of in the youth-centric movie industry, but the roles Main would excel at called for a special brand of loud maturity. Anyway, it was when Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to “Dead End” and insisted that Marjorie reprise her stage role that her film career seemed destined for attention. That’s exactly what happened. The movie and her performance were instant hits.

Dead End (1937) proved an important movie in Marjorie Main’s career and for Hollywood in general as it introduced the Dead End Kids who, in one way or another, were subjects of about ninety movies in over two decades either as the Dead End Kids, the Eastside Kids, or the Bowery Boys. Marjorie Main made several Dead End Kids movies playing the impoverished mother of these kids from the slums. She was perfect in the part garnering great reviews along the way. Ms. Main never had children of her own so it was somewhat ironic that in the majority of her roles she played mothers to which she said, “That’s acting!”

The same year Marjorie made Dead End, she played another Mrs. Martin, this time as Barbara Stanwyck’s mother in King Vidor’s three-hanky classic, Stella Dallas. This film too was praised as was Main’s performance with the Hollywood Reporter referring to her as “an artist and her contribution to the picture is out of all proportion to the length of her part.” That was probably true for the entirety of Main’s career including her appearance as a nosy boarding house owner in W. S. Van Dyke’s Another Thin Man (1939), the third of six Thin Man movies starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. You may have heard of them.

Seven films were released in 1940 featuring Marjorie Main. That should give you a clue as to how much her gruff manner and loud, distinctive voice were sought in Hollywood. This included the beginning of a new screen partnership with Wallace Beery. Main replaced the great Marie Dressler as Beery’s female partner and was successful at it even though it was not an easy task to work with him, “Oh my, I should get two checks, one for the acting and the other for working with Wally Beery.” No matter though because the difficulties did not translate to the screen. The public loved Marjorie. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) noticed the audience’s admiration for Marjorie and had signed her to a seven-year contract on October 8, 1940. It was at MGM that Marjorie Main started on a comedic path to cinema history and she was happy to be given the chance.

Main and Beery in Norman Z. McLeod’s JACKASS MAIL (1942), the third of seven films they made together between 1940 and 1949.

It was the movies Marjorie Main appeared in during the MGM years in the 1940s (give or take a year) that made her a warm part of many a childhood, including mine. These include such memorable lavish films as Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait made at 20th Century Fox and such MGM gems as Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis, George Sidney’s The Harvey Girls (1946), and Cy Walters’ Summer Stock (1950). All are favorites and one recognizes the worth of Marjorie Main to the industry by noting the major Hollywood films she was appearing in at the time. Her brand of humor, her stout build and indelible voice were by this time cemented in audiences’ consciousness. An actor who had started her movie career playing upper class dramatic roles could now be counted on for comic relief as matronly maids or ornery, but funny hillbilly types. The latter portrayal was to be Main’s primary legacy at Universal International, rather than at her home studio, which loaned her out with regularity. It’s interesting to note that MGM had planned a series of films starring Marjorie featuring the character of Tish, which she portrayed in the enjoyable 1942 film of the same name co-starring ZaSu Pitts. That movie made a nice profit for MGM so it’s strange the studio decided not to capitalize on a series. By the way, Tish directed by S. Sylvan Simon is replete with legendary character actors.

Aline MacMahon and ZaSu Pitts restrain Marjorie Main in a scene from the film Tish

Marjorie Main made two movies released in 1947, much less than other character actors popular at the time, but the year proved an important one in her career nonetheless. Released in March of that year was Chester Erskine’s The Egg and I, which garnered Main the only Academy Award nomination of her career, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for a portrayal she would forever be associated with. Charles T. Barton’s The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap was released in October of 1947. Although Wistful Widow is not as memorable an outing as The Egg and I, it pitted Main against the legendary comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, which all but guaranteed the second hit of the year for the veteran character actor with a devoted following.

The plot of The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap was based on an old Montana law, which stated that a man who killed another man was responsible for the care and support of his victim’s family. Well, our story begins when traveling salesmen Chester Wooley (Costello) and Duke Egan (Abbott) stop in the town of Wagon Gap, Montana on their way to California. It takes no time for Chester to be accused of killing Fred Hawkins, a notorious criminal married to the equally infamous Mrs. Hawkins (Main). A trial and a conviction quickly follow and Chester is stuck with the Widow Hawkins and her brood of seven. The widow is immediately hell bent on making Chester Wooley her new husband and works him to the bone until he agrees to marry her. Meanwhile, as is the case in all Abbott and Costello movies, Bud Abbott’s character coasts along taking naps and eating well.

The Widow Hawkins-Chester Wooley situation turns out to be a blessing in disguise for Chester who eventually becomes Sheriff of Wagon Gap simply because every other man in town is afraid to be stuck taking care of the Widow. Let me tell you, the Widow is a doozy in Marjorie Main style. She is flirty, desperate for a husband, a raucous mother and an unapologetic farm lord. Widow Hawkins is such a character, in fact, that she alone keeps the peace at Wagon Gap, which was a notoriously lawless place prior to her falling into widowhood. Although there are many movie instances wherein Marjorie Main plays characters similar to Widow Hawkins, the resemblance is particularly noticeable in William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion (1956) wherein she plays the riotous Widow Hudspeth with similar bravado, but with better results. The latter is a better film and resulted in a Golden Globe nomination for Ms. Main as Best Supporting Actress.

With Abbott and Costello as the Widow Hawkins

With Gary Cooper as the Widow Hudspeth

In the end of The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, Chester and Duke find a way to leave Wagon Gap and continue their journey to California. Mrs. Hawkins gets a new marriage proposal after she is offered lots of money for her farm. It is utterly entertaining to see Abbott and Costello and Marjorie Main together and Universal International was thrilled. Universal had set the mold with legendary monsters in the early 1930s and they had saved the studio’s hide. Later, it was Show Boat (1936) directed by James Whale that had all but kept the studio’s doors open. Now Universal depended almost entirely on comedy, specifically the talents of Abbott and Costello throughout the 1940s and Marjorie Main by way of her most famous hillbilly, Phoebe “Ma” Kettle, a character introduced in Chester Erskine’s 1947 romantic comedy, The Egg and I based on the book of the same name by Betty MacDonald.

Erskine’s The Egg and I tells the story of a young married couple, Bob and Betty MacDonald, who give up city life in order to become chicken farmers. The main characters are played charmingly by Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. The movie is a pleasant one that shows the couple’s escapades, particularly Betty’s, as she tries to put up with the tribulations of an old farm house because it’s her husband’s dream. The disrepair abounds and the chicks, who need constant care, lend themselves to amusing anecdotes. The result was that 1947 audiences liked the film enough to propel it to one of the year’s big moneymakers. In fact, The Egg and I was Universal International’s biggest moneymaker of the decade. That was due in large part to the raw rural charms of Bob and Betty’s neighbors, Ma and Pa Kettle. While The Egg and I received mixed critical reviews, Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride as the Kettles were a hit across the board. Of them the New York Times film critic wrote, “… tops as character players, accounting, by their feeling and understanding of their roles, for high points in the film every time they’re on the screen.” That type of sentiment coupled with the box office success of The Egg and I prompted Universal International to produce nine more films starring Marjorie Main as Ma Kettle in all nine and Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle in seven of the outings. Kilbride retired after the seventh film in the series and was replaced by Parker Fennelly in the last. The eighth film, Charles Lamont’s The Kettles in the Ozarks, does not feature Pa Kettle.

Let honesty reign. I spent considerable effort watching all nine Ma and Pa Kettle movies in succession and could feel brain cells dropping out onto my shoulders. Before irreparable damage was done I gave up. The jokes grow old and the situations more absurd as the series advances. A highlight for me in the first three films is Richard Long who plays the Kettle’s eldest, Tom. Still, one cannot deny the appeal of the two main characters who propelled the series into one of the most popular in Hollywood history. Audiences simply could not get enough of the hillbilly couple with fifteen children – they picked up two from The Egg and I. Ma is a harsh, domineering, loud woman of considerable opinion and Pa, a slight, slow-moving, slow-thinking man with lazy as a middle name. For all their faults, however, you can’t help but love the Kettles.

Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main as Ma and Pa Kettle

Ma and Pa Kettle had many adventures in film. They went to town, came back to the farm, went to the fair, went on vacation, were just at home, went to Waikiki, were featured in the Ozarks, and finally went to Old MacDonald’s farm. All between 1949 and 1957. Considering they had no formal education (example of Kettle math) and could live comfortably on almost nothing, they were quite adept at living adventurous lives. The entire thing began in Ma and Pa Kettle also known as The Further Adventures of Ma and Pa Kettle, the 1949 sequel to The Egg and I directed by Charles Lamont. Here, Pa writes a slogan for the King Henry Tobacco Company and wins a house of the future. And just in time too because their farmhouse has been condemned as a garbage dump. Many hilarious moments later thanks to the modern gadgets none of the Kettles have ever seen, the lives of the Kettle clan are irrevocably changed and, for several reasons, so are ours. We have never met the likes of them before.

Critics were not thrilled with the low budget Ma and Pa Kettle movies, but who could argue with box office returns, which were over $3 million for the first movie in the series and every one after that hit Variety’s Top Grossers of the Year charts. Overall the Ma and Pa series made over $35 million and is credited with saving Universal International. Who did not reap the financial benefits of the Ma and Pa Kettle films? The actors. Marjorie Main considered breaking her contract at various points knowing full well both Universal and MGM were profiting nicely from her portrayals without extending additional perks to the actors.

The Kettle clan in the 1949 movie. One of my life-long crushes, Richard Long, is on the left.

As you’ve seen, Marjorie Main made most of her most famous movies on loan out to Universal. Well, her most famous if you are a casual film fan, but not necessarily her best. For my money her best films were at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which could afford more expensive productions, which translated into richer films. Marjorie’s contract with MGM ended in 1954 and she finished at that studio playing against type, as Lady Jane Dunstock in Mervyn LeRoy’s Rose Marie (1954). I should mention that the film released before Rose Marie was Vincente Minnelli’s The Long, Long Trailer (1954), which I love. In this one Marjorie stays true to popular expectation as a meddling neighbor of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz at a trailer park.

It is fitting that Marjorie Main’s last film appearance came in a Ma and Pa movie, Virgil W. Vogel’s The Kettle’s on Old MacDonald’s Farm in 1957. Ma Kettle gave Marjorie security and comfort while she was able to pursue varied roles elsewhere for many years. Later in life she praised the character for the joy she brought people. Ms. Main’s final acting jobs were in 1958 with appearances on two episodes of Wagon Train. Following that she retired to make an occasional appearance at a premiere or to answer interview questions. Marjorie Main appeared in 85 films over a 26-year movie career.

When one goes back through Marjorie Main’s career you realize she was adept at much more than that character you love to laugh with. However, she invokes an immediate smile like she did my mother who saw her in a movie on TCM recently, “Hey, it’s that old lady!” she said with a smile as big as the sun. That’s not a bad deal at all for a woman who intended to do just that, “I love making people laugh more than anything,” Marjorie Main said. She has been doing that now for about eight decades. I get that Ms. Main could not have known how much she meant to people, but she got an inkling in 1974 at the world premiere of That’s Entertainment celebrating MGM’s 50th anniversary. As the “more stars in the heavens” were being introduced, one of the largest ovations went to Marjorie Main. That was a year before her death of cancer at the age of 85 in April 1975.

What a character, she was. Loud and domineering, but always lovable.

◊

This is my entry to this year’s What a Character! Blogathon, an event I am hosting with Kellee of Outspoken & Freckled and Paula of Paula’s Cinema Club. Be sure to read the entries honoring character actors or all eras. The Day 1 entries are here, the Day 2 entries here, and Day 3 here.

Marjorie Main, a Domineering Lovable Character Marjorie Main is one of my favorite character actors. It's an impossibility to see her in a film and not find I am smiling broadly.

[ohsweetsweetie]

I decided to type up a detailed-ish analysis of every AH tarot card I made since some of them get pretty weird with symbolism that can be lost without context. It starts with The Fool going in order until The World.

Also I apologize to mobile users. This stuff is all under a read more, but Tumblr mobile doesn’t care. :(

Here’s a link to the tarot deck tag if you would like to see all the cards!

The Kings’ Tarot

The Fool: The Fool is Jester Gavin, Royal Jester and best friend of King Michael the Righteous. This card is simple in its imagery compared to other cards. Jester Gavin is in the center looking at a white rose (above the roses around him) with his hand over his heart at the edge of a cliff and surrounded by a field of yellow roses with the sun high in the sky above him.

Gavin looks at the white rose with adoration and his right hand is placed over his heart. On the middle of his collarbone is King Michael’s family symbol, a golden bear paw embedded in ruby surrounded with a rope of gold, which shows his affiliation with the royal family. He is represented by the yellow rose (joy, delight, platonic love). The white rose in his hand is King Michael’s symbol as is the sun above him (Michael being The Sun card and Justice). His golden greaves were a gift from King Michael.

I The Magician: The Magician is Mad King Ryan (not to be confused with King Ryan or Dark God Ryan). He’s in his laboratory high in a tower, looking at a glowing magenta potion in a bottle with a smirk on his face. On the table are coins with the AH star, a gold sword, a silver goblet, and a wooden wand. Behind him is a bookcase with many old books. A vine of some kind has taken over the walls and is even spilling out the window. In the background and foreground are rose bushes covered in pitch black roses (death, beginning anew, drastic change). His crown is simple being only gold with 8 spikes as decoration though one of the spikes has snapped in two.

This is a scene more than a representation of the card itself. It is the moment the Mad King discovers his knack for dark magic. This is the moment he spirals out of control and eventually sells his soul to darkness to become the Dark God.

II The High Priestess: The High Priestess is Queen Lindsay, the wife of King Michael. Like Jester Gavin, she too has the symbol of King Michael’s court on the middle of the neckline on her dress. Behind her is a crescent moon (femininity) and a calm sea which takes up the entire background. It’s the last few minutes of twilight, the horizon is still a few shades lighter than the upper portion of the sky. Beside her are two pillars: one black with a capital B (Boaz “in his strength”) and the other is white with a capital J (Jachin “he will establish”). They represent duality of light and dark. In her hand is a parchment with the word “Tora” symbolizing a sacred knowledge which she keeps hidden from the viewer as only she has the power to read it.

III The Empress: The Empress is Achievement City itself instead of being an actual person. Wheat that is ready for harvest is in the foreground. In the middle ground is a field of green grass and an empty chaise lounge draped with a red velvet throw and an orange satin pillow. It seems as if no one has ever sat on it. Behind the chair is a dense forest and beyond that is the Altar of Pimps, a snowy mountain range, and King Geoff’s fortress. The sky is clear save for twelve stars arched above like a crown.

IV The Emperor: The Emperor is King Geoff the Proud. He sits atop a barren, rocky cliff during sunset on a throne of stone which is gilded with gold. At the top of the throne is a stone ram’s head (masculinity). The throne itself is broken and cracked with age and wear. King Geoff is dressed in shiny, intricate armor. In his hand, he holds a globe which contains the map of the original Achievement City (you can see the Altar clearly near the center). He was the first king, someone who kept the throne long past anyone should, and thus is remembered as the original ruler.

V The Hierophant: The Hierophant is King Jeremy the Lively. He sits on an intricate golden throne with violet velvet cushions. In the back board of the throne are carved cutouts of two crowns, making the one he wears the third above his head (ruling the conscious, sub-conscious and super-conscious). His hand is held up in a blessing. There are two pillars either side of him: law and liberty. Transparent violet curtains frame his throne and sit between himself and those who are below him to show he is removed from the common people. Two keys representing the keys to heaven sit below him in his throne.

The Hierophant involves a shared group identity and rites of passage which I thought fit Jeremy’s integration into the group well.

VI The Lovers: The Lovers is a simple card. A single white rose and a single yellow rose circle around each other in the middle perfectly, never touching. Below them is a field of deep red roses (love, longing, devotion, admiration). The Lovers can represent any kind of relationship, not just romantic.

VII The Chariot: The Chariot is once again King Jeremy. He rides in a golden chariot pulled by a black horse and a white horse (duality). It seems as if he is the one driving the chariot, but a closer look reveals he holds no reigns, just a wand (wisdom). This suggests the chariot move and turns to his will seeing as his expression is serene despite the circumstances. Above him in the violet velvet canopy are six pointed stars representing his connection to divinity. This and the crown carved into his chariot are throwbacks to his other card The Hierophant. Also Jeremy is a monster truck so of course he gets the chariot.

VIII Justice: Justice is King Michael the Righteous. He sits on an elaborate golden throne with red velvet cushions with his family symbol sitting above him. In his right hand he holds a double edged diamond sword (justice by force has consequences) and in his left a golden scale (balance) containing a human heart on one side and a yellow rose on the other about where his own heart would be. He sits in a garden of white roses on a stone and mortar path. Also his sword is see-through, check it out.

IX The Hermit: The Hermit is King Ray the Admired. He walks alone atop a snowy mountain, not a person nor creature in sight. He’s wary, but not fearful as he travels. In his hand he holds a lantern with a six pointed star inside to light the way (wisdom). The lantern only lights the close surroundings and thus he must keep walking to find the path he insists on following. The aurora above helps light his way though as if the world itself wishes for his success.

X Wheel of Fortune: The Wheel of Fortune is Matt, an alchemist. He holds a cracked stone wheel in front of him though not with his hands as it first seems. On the wheel is the AH logo, letters, and alchemical symbols. Clockwise, the symbols are mercury, sulfur, water and salt. These are the four alchemical building blocks of life. Clockwise, the letters are T, A, R, and O. They can be read a few ways. Tarot (as in the cards), tora (wisdom like in the High Priestess), and rota (Latin for wheel). Each corner of the card is decorated with a wing for the four winged creatures of the fixed zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio).

XI Strength: Strength is a scene between Jester Gavin and Edgar the Minotaur. They are deep within Mad King Ryan’s stone maze. Gavin has the minotaur in his hands and although the minotaur is menacing, it is not attacking him as he’s using his inner strength to tame the beast (which he ends up killing anyway, but not yet). The infinity symbol chiseled into the wall above Gavin’s head shows his endless potential.

This scene is after the Mad King overthrows King Michael’s reign which leaves the king dead. Gavin, in a fit of vengeance, finds the strength within him to go after the Mad King by killing his guard minotaur and then by killing the Mad King himself. When Gavin thrusts his sword through Mad King Ryan’s chest, his blood is revealed to be pitch black having already pledged himself to the darkness and with his dying breath, he lays a curse upon Gavin knowing he will be next in line for the crown.

XII The Hanged Man: The Hanged Man is King Gavin the Foolish (not to be confused with Jester Gavin). He has been crowned as king though he remains unhappy having lost the person closest to him and as a result of the curse the Mad King had done. King Gavin is hanged by his own volition, his expression is somber as he punishes himself for what has happened. He still wears the golden greaves, but his crown is simple and silver, nothing like the extravagant crown the late King Michael wore. He sees himself as not being worthy of that crown.

He hangs from a birch tree (renewal, starting over) in the shape of a cross. On the tree hangs King Michael’s cape and family symbol. The cape blends in well with the tree itself making it seem like Gavin is hanging from the cape instead showing how “hung up” he is on Michael’s death (don’t kill me for my bad jokes). The surroundings are cloaked in twilight (his “sun” having set which parallels The Fool). There’s a single star twinkling in the sky which is the brightest star in the sky Sirius (part of Canis Major). The myth of the constellation Canis Major is about Laelaps, a hunting dog, who could catch anything who was tasked with catching a fox who could never be caught. The paradoxical nature caused Zeus to turn the two to stone and cast them to the sky.

XIII Death: Death is the Grim Reaper. This is a scene representing the death of the first king King Geoff. The reaper holds a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other. The hourglass is King Geoff’s life. All of the sand inside is black and in the bottom chamber to show his time has run out. In front of the reaper is Geoff’s crown which is upside down as another way of showing it’s the end.The background is gray and dull, the sky is cloudy and it’s raining which seems to not affect the Grim Reaper.

This card was originally going to have the crown of every king as a symbol of death being inevitable buuuuuttt….. That didn’t happen lmao

XIV Temperance: Temperance is King Jack the Humble. He pours water from one goblet into the another (the flow of life) with a square (the world, natural law) surrounding a triangle (humanity). He has one foot on land (staying grounded) and the other in the stream (to be in flow). It’s sunny and cheerful despite the human skull decorating his shawl. There’s a long path into mountains in the distance (journey of life) which ends at a glowing crown (staying true to your ambitions).

XV The Devil: The Devil is Mad King turning Dark God Ryan. He has given his life to the darkness for power and it’s starting to seep into his skin as ugly, tainted veins. His expression is unnaturally smug. Also every time I draw King Ryan, I make his pupil really small, have you noticed that?

In front of him is Edgar the Minotaur who has his arms around Edgar the cow and Ryan’s squire Kerry which represents the unholy transmutation of Kerry and Edgar into the Minotaur itself. The Minotaur is almost protective in it’s stance even though Kerry is so afraid. Behind them all writhes the dark magic that Ryan uses. It emanates off of him.

XVI The Tower: The Tower is the Tower of Pimps and is the most straightforward and symbol-less cards. The Tower of Pimps sits on a stone pedestal and is slightly dirtied though each block is intact. It sits in the middle of a forest and tells the world of the next to be crowned.

XVII The Star: The Star is the star from the AH logo. Underneath it are 7 eight pointed stars (the 7 chakras). It sits in a vast starry sky.

XVIII The Moon: The Moon is self explanatory. It’s the moon. Though the towers of trees are a nod to the tree towers created during the King Gavin let’s play.

XIX The Sun: The Sun is King Michael holding a diamond sword up. The sword glints brilliantly in the light and Michael is cast in a deep shadow.

XX Judgement: Judgement is knights Alfredo and Trevor. They are riding horses away from a mountain range and sun rise while looking up at the flag Trevor is holding. On the flag is a stylized Tower of Pimps, the flag of Achievement City. Above them is the silhouette of the late King Geoff with an intricate halo and far-reaching angel wings which shows that he still has an influence over the kingdom despite his death.

XXI The World: The World is a contrasting realistic space view of a planet and moon. The topography of the planet is the extended version of Achievement City (Xbox One version). Above the world is a loop in the shape of an infinity symbol representing the cyclical nature of the planet.

And that’s all I feel like typing! Everyone’s outfits are based on their Minecraft skins. Gavin is a creeper, Ryan is the man in a kilt, Lindsay is Kazooie, Geoff is Master Chief, Jeremy is the castaway skin with a Rimmy Tim influence, Michael is Banjo, Ray is a man in a tuxedo (or Tuxedo Mask), Matt is Jack of Blades, Jack is a Trials Fusion rider, Kerry is both the Minecraft cow and Juno, Alfredo is default Steve with a skeleton head, and Trevor is the iron golem.

There’s a lot left that I didn’t write though it’s mainly the card’s meaning itself for the most part. The meanings are the same in these cards as they are in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Tell me if I missed anything you want to know about so I can elaborate!

[lordmartiya]

Fox Rain chapter 2

@lilanette-week

@supermenteuse

@emblian

@starcrossed-stardust

Hi guys, I’m back. Today we have Lila’s debut as a superhero-dealing with her own mess in her own peculiar way. Plus, some worldbuilding and a few hints about my headcanon for our fox. by lord Martiya

Chapter 02: The Collector

“Let’s see if I’ve understood what’s happening.” Lila said. “You aren’t a figment of my imagination but the Quantic God of Illusions, for lack of a better term, and what makes the Fox Miraculous more than a jewel somehow older than civilization, your powers are fed by edible seeds(1) in general but you have a very convenient preference for my favorite snack, and you’re here because the Guardian of the Miraculous thinks I can make a good hero… And he took the decision after I went Volpina, WHY?”

“Because he knows that even under Papillon’s influence you were able to sacrifice a near-certain victory to avoid collateral damage(2), among other things.”

It made sense: taking Adrien hostage would have meant the certain capture of those earrings, and yet she didn’t even look out for him. Her grudge had been with Ladybug, and aside a few illusions to lead away interlopers she had gone after her only. Sure, it had allowed Chat Noir to expose the illusion for what it was, somehow (she had known he was smarter than some Ladybug fanboys depicted him, but she had still grossly underestimated him).

“So he thinks that now Ladybug and I will be best friends?” she still asked.

“No. But I know you can be a hero, if given the chance.” Trixx replied.

“I suppose… Well, then, let’s exercise. Trixx, strasfomame(3)!”

An instant later, Lila was replaced with a fox-themed superbeing. And then, she started playing.

“Why are you standing there, Antonia?” Lila’s father asked as he looked at his wife standing before their daughter’s door.

“Right now, she needs to calm down, and not binge on comfort food, then we’ll help her with this mess.” his wife replied.

“Like last time in Tokyo?”

“Do you think it could have gone any better?”

“No. Not really. But she’s been playing that flute since she arrived, and it’s midnight!”

Antonia Rossi sighed. It was still healthier than some things Lila had done to vent her anger.

“I suppose we should involve that friend of hers?” she proposed

“And make Lila sleep before she wakes up everyone.”

Marinette hadn’t slept too much. Between the surprise about her Miraculous, the nightmares about what Volpina could have done (her grandmother hadn’t skipped much about the tales of the two last known holders of the Fox Miraculous), and the very likely chance Papillon was Gabriel Agreste, of all people, she had trouble both falling and staying asleep. If she had some luck, maybe she could try and see what she could do for Adrien if his father was indeed Paris’ supervillain and establish a better relationship with Lila at least in her civilian identity.

“In culo alla balena lì a Pechino, Tigre!”

Speaking of which, she could see Lila standing before the school’s gate, still wearing her necklace and ending a phone call with someone in Beijing(4) who at the very least understood Italian and its colorful ways to wish someone good luck. And apparently she hadn’t slept much either, judging by the bags under her eyes. Eyes that were staring right at her.

“Hi. You’re Marinette Dupain-Cheng, right? I’m Lila Rossi, the new transfer student.” she said. “Sorry for not coming sooner, but yesterday was an “interesting” day even before being attacked by that purple bowtie.”

Marinette looked at the Italian girl, trying to register what she had just called Papillon-and she got exactly the pun right, thanks to her grandmother’s attempts at getting her to speak Italian-before bursting into laughter.

“You were supposed to ask me why did I call your terrorist like that… I guess the other name for the bowtie in French is “butterfly tie”(5)?” Lila asked.

“Yes!” she shouted once she got out of the hysteric laughter. She had needed that. “Sorry… Sorry, it’s just that nobody has ever called him that…”

“I suppose I should add Odysseus to my middle names, then.”

Suddenly, Marinette realized just why Lila had been able to become popular so fast: she didn’t know her well, but she could already tell she was much better with people than Chloe.

“Still, I think I’ll need your help.” Lila admitted. “I realized yesterday I know even less of Paris than I thought when-”

“DID YOU THINK YOU COULD FOOL ME?!” shouted Chloe as she stomped their way.

“Parli der diavolo…” Lila whispered. “I think I know what you’re talking about, but I may be wrong…”

“I’m talking of your supposed friendship with Jagged Stone. Didn’t expect me to verify it, did you?”

And here it was, one of Lila’s lies being exposed. And by Chloe, of all people. Still, Lila was unfazed.

“Didn’t expect you to take me at face value.” the Italian girl replied. “Ask everyone how I reacted after you stomped away, you’ll find I was quite surprised by you taking my sarcasm at face value. Seriously, until recently we never were in the same country at the same time, how did you buy it?”

Marinette’s hand met her face. Apparently, one of Lila’s lies hadn’t been intended to be a lie at all… And she was responsible for making it believable. Well, she and Chloe. That at least meant she should give her the benefit of doubt for the other non-Ladybug related claims, she decided as they walked in, Lila still wondering why Chloe had walked away uttering her catchphrase.

As they walked, Marinette asked Lila a few things about her travels, carefully avoiding her claimed friendships with famous people. Something Lila seemed pleased, even if she was quite reticent about London and the United Kingdom-or “Perfidiously Nosy Albion and its excessively proud capital”, as she had called them, and was startled by the presence of a British transfer student.

“Let’s just say I had a few bad experiences there.” Lila said. “Enough it’s since six AM that Tigre and Silvie’ have been pestering me to make sure I don’t shut myself in again. But let’s talk about something nicer. Any idea why Chloe reacted that way when I explained I had been sarcastic about Jagged Stone?” Marinette had a nervous laugh, and decided to explain: “Well, it’s a funny story, that started with one of Chloe’s stunts. When we-”

Marinette was interrupted by Chloe’s shriek, and she and Lila ran to the class, Mari expecting she had caused another Akuma… But it wasn’t that, but something Marinette considered much worse. Gabriel Agreste was better not being Papillon, or she’d make him pay for this one too.

During the lunch break, Lila walked around the school’s courtyard wondered about the situation, and the mess she was partly responsible for. She remembered the book with information about the Miraculouses-pretty much all Italians would have recognized the Fox Miraculous holder everyone called Donna Volpe, the one that had become Italy’s national hero in 1943 and was still so loved that her hairstyle was still imitated(6), and with the others the deduction was easy-that she had taken with the intention to give Adrien a scare when she fished it out of the thrash, and while she was pretty sure it had been Ladybug to retrieve it before her it was still her who had taken it. And now, Adrien, who she had heard had been kept trapped in his home by his overprotective parents for most of his life, had been pulled out of school over it. She needed to fix that. And she was coming up with a plan, in case Gabriel Agreste ended up becoming someone else’ problem. She’d have to run it to Trixx, but she was confident enough. She went to a closet to talk with her kwami-but before she could, she was pulled inside by Ladybug.

“Have you heard of your boyfriend and are going to give me the full blame for it too?” Lila asked her.

“No.” Ladybug replied with a sigh. “Well, I’ve heard, but I just hoped to find out why you’re so furious.”

“With you? You know exactly what you’ve done. But that I suppose could be secondary, compared to the fact I may have found out who the evil bowtie is.” Ladybug snorted at the joke. “Namely, Gabriel Agreste.”

“I know, it was the book.”

“You see, it’s been a while since I, and my mother and a few others, have suspected a connection between him and Papillon.”

“Good to know, but I know where the book is from.”

“Specifically, since when Gabriel Agreste publicly proclaimed he’d not change the butterfly logo of the sports-dedicated offshoot of his brand(7) and proclaimed he’d not be intimidated by a butterfly-themed terrorist and the next four Akuma villains Le Signeour des Poches, Le Bulleur(8), Pocketless, and Mr. Pocket were people angry at him, a few mistrustful minds have wondered if he set up the whole thing to throw off suspicions, something reinforced by Pappy’s designs often being so tacky you’d swear he’s a designer doing bad on purpose to throw off suspicions.”

“You’re right, but I know where the book is from.”

“And then, suddenly, Adrien Agreste has a book with a portrait of Donna Volpe and other Miraculous Holders alongside nonsense words written in Nyctographic(9) and ROT13(9). Didn’t realize right away, what with having already a bad day before the idiot took an antique book to school, was planning to terrify him with the appearance it had been stolen before fishing it out of the thrash, but I dare say that’s quite the big hint. Don’t you think?”

“I’ve been telling you for a while, I recognized the book and know where it comes from.”

“Oh. Monologuing again… Anyway, considering past patterns, I expect that if Gabriel is indeed Papillon he’ll akumatize himself to throw off suspicions before the end of the day.”

Ladybug looked at her, seemingly put out by Lila’s mistrusting and apparently paranoid mind, but then admitted it made far too much sense.

“Still, I don’t like it.” she admitted.

“Neither do I.” Lila replied. “And I may have a plan to fix it, if Gabriel is innocent.”

“And how do you t-”

“LILA ROSSI, PREPARE TO DIE!”

That shout in a somewhat familiar voice left Ladybug frozen mid-phrase, her twitching eye being the only thing that moved. Then, her irritation easily surpassing the one she had shown when she had shouted at Lila, she pushed the Italian girl away from the door, put herself in position to jump anyone who entered, and cried out: “Lila, don’t talk, she’s after you!”

As Lila’s face started showing her outrage at the heroine revealing her position to her aggressor the door was busted away from its hinges, revealing an Akuma villain looking like a blonde girl in glasses and a red dress she was sure was out from some manga-and then Ladybug picked a picture of Adrien from her pocket and ripped it, revealing the Akuma that was promptly caught before dragging the now de-akumatized girl to two older students bearing a clear resemblance to Marinette and Adrien, summoning a stress ball with the Lucky Charm, and zipping away as the two students dragged the girl away, completely ignoring her screams that it was because she had tried to seduce “her Adrien” that the boy had been pulled from school.

“Cazz’è uscito dall’ovo de Pasqua?” Lila whispered as she tried to register what had just happened.

“I understand you’re trying to settle in, but don’t you think getting Akumatized and attacked by Rose Bride in the first two days of school is rushing things?” the mayor’s daughter quipped.

“Uh? You know what that thing was about?”

“I suppose Ladybug wouldn’t like to talk about it… Fine, I’ll explain. That was the Rose Bride. She’s actually named Zoe Chevalot, but with how often she gets Akumatized only the teachers call her that anymore.”

“Nobody sane, I meant. Anyway, she’s Adrikins’ most annoying fangirl, and gets Akumatized out of jealousy so often nobody could keep count.”

“I did.” Cesaire pointed out from distance.

“Nobody sane, I meant. Anyway, to anyone else the attacks tend to blur together after a while, and Ladybug gets so furious she leaves as soon she’s done and the Lucky Charm is always a stress ball. She’s also convinced that Adrien is Chat Noir because it would be cool.”

“E quanno la capano alla palazzina?” Lila asked, slipping into her native dialect out of surprise.

“I suppose you’re asking why they haven’t committed her yet?”

“More or less.”

“Easy: she’s the only daughter of the prefect of police, and while the ministry of the interior turned the police over to daddy’s control until Papillon is dealt with because he’s better at the job(10) he still holds enough power that Gabriel Agreste couldn’t even file a restraining order.”

“Ah. Uh… What about the Akumatizations and settling in?”

“Sweetie, the only ones in our class who haven’t been Akumatized at least once are Adrikins and Marinette. Speaking of which you’re better watch everything you do with her today, she’s been targeted by Rose Bride so often her attacks make her murderous for hours. Seriously, she should grow a thicker skin, to surpass the attacks Rose Bride made on me she’d need to combine them with Ladybug…”

Lila’s palm met her face, hoping things wouldn’t get any worse.

Not even five minutes later she managed to have a chat with Trixx, who revealed that a Miraculous Holder is immune to their own power-and thus Papillon couldn’t Akumatize himself. So much for that plan. Well, she could still have fun with it if Gabriel did end up Akumatized. Now, if only she could find out why Papillon Akumatized the prefect’s daughter so often…

“Sir, I don’t like to repeat myself, but Mlle Chevalot is too stubborn to get scared away from your son by repeated Akumatizations, and the prefect is surprisingly stupid when it comes to his daughter.” Natalie said to her supervillain boss.

“Doesn’t matter, Natalie, sooner or later the government will have her committed.” Papillon replied. “But I supposed you aren’t here for that.”

“No. I just wanted to inform you that Adrien has already ran away.”

Papillon smiled. Finally he could go on with his plan to throw off suspicions without endangering him-assuming he wasn’t Chat Noir, of course. And thinking about plans he decided to attack the Italian embassy: he needed Volpina for his greatest plan if everything else failed, and if Lila Rossi wasn’t festering in her room as he had expected she could calm down… And as he couldn’t afford that, he would have to make her collect more anger.

Papillon gave a brief laugh at his pun before preparing the Akuma-and change himself into The Collector.

“THIS IS RIDICULOUS! UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!” The Collector shouted as he dodged another burst of autocannons.

Thanks to his work travels in Italy, Gabriel Agreste had experimented that, as a reaction to the Years of Lead and other events Italian law enforcement had become frighteningly efficient when it came to terrorist threats, and he had been expecting their embassy to have tight security, especially as his actions as The Papillon were technically terrorist attacks. But the moment he entered the gardens of Hôtel de Boisgelin he had been attacked with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft autocannons. Those he could tank easily, but if they shredded the book he’d lose his transformation, and he couldn’t expect them to stop firing in time. The anti-tank rocket-firing cannons, on the other hand, were a bit more dangerous, but easier to Collect.

He noticed a glow on the side and moved, just in time to avoid an attack that could have not been Collected and would have destroyed the book, had it hit.

“Who’s still using flamethrowers(11)?!” a feminine voice shouted

“Exactly!” The Collector agreed, before recognizing the voice and turning to see the very surprised Ladybug and Chat Noir, with (of course) Alya Cesaire filming them-from outside, as one of the soldiers was keeping her out. “Finally! I am the Collector, an-OUFF!”

The Akumatized villain was hit in the gut and thrown back by an invisible projectile, that was revealed as a car engine when it became visible in a familiar orange glow. As he looked at the two heroes he saw someone else becoming visible-the actual new user of the Fox Miraculous. He could see she had a passing resemblance to both his Volpina and the previous user, especially the suit-that he had to admit he had copied entirely. There were also many differences: rather than a reddish-brown Marilyn hairstyle she had a full orange “pel di volpe”; then the tail wasn’t a belt but an actual fluffy tail-that for some reason had caught Ladybug’s attention; finally, she was wearing a bomber, an unlatched modern military helmet decorated with fox ears and goggles that covered the mask (assuming she had one), and her gloves had some kind of padding on the back.

A moment later, as the defending soldiers-and the female Carabiniere with tan skin and platinum blonde hair in long pigtails (of all hairstyles) directing them-ceased fire in surprise and apparent awe, Ladybug got her eyes away from the tail and asked the newcomer who she was.

“I am Vorpika!” she presented herself before pointing her flute at The Collector. “The only superhero this gargante dressed Armanicomio needs!”

“Hey! It’s The Papillon’s fault, not mine!” The Collector protested, a bit defensive over the horrible outfit he had given himself.

“I don’t care. What I care is to show Paris what the real Holder of the Fox Miraculous can do!”

At that, The Collector was curious. And worried. He knew the Fox Miraculous had the power to create incredibly realistic illusions, and an experienced user could create dozens of easily dispelled ones (like the ones used by Volpina) without triggering her timer, but what the 1943 user had done in Rome hinted that flute had other abilities, that or could be used for various spells.

And as she started playing, he could see strange creatures emerging from the ground around him. A horrifying monster that was best described as Sulley from Monsters, Inc. after having his character design revised by Lovecraft, an absurdly tall tree-like humanoid with a white nothing in place of the face, a… A Klingon warrior with an exaggerated forehead crest, white feathers covering his body and a duck bill?!

At that, The Collector realized Vorpika was using pre-set illusions to make it look like she was summoning monsters and turned to her-

“Yoink!”

Only to have the half-Klingon half-duck one grab the book and disappear in an orange glow to reveal the actual Vorpika inside, who promptly kicked him through a wall. As he felt the transformation dispel, Gabriel noted the presence of a woman with a certain resemblance to Lila and a rather large man that reminded him of someone, the former holding a gun on him and the latter cracking his knuckles. Then, as the three heroes and various soldiers-including the Carabiniere-came in and a white butterfly flew away, he asked if Adrien was well.

“That would depend on your provisions for your arrest, Cravattino di merda.” Vorpika addressed him.

Oh, crap.

Ladybug had been surprised, and positively impressed, by the new superhero from Italy-with a name like that, the origin was pretty obvious to her and pretty much everyone at the embassy(12). She was, on the other hand, a bit worried from her assumption that Gabriel was Papillon-apparently, her kwami hadn’t told her yet that they were immune to their own powers.

“Now, why I would think that? I mean, Papillon’s identity is protected by the magic of the Miraculous.” Vorpika continued. “The first incident was when, shortly after Papillon first appeared, you declared you wouldn’t rename the Gabriel Butterfly sub-brand or even change the color of its symbol because you wouldn’t be intimidated by a butterfly-themed terrorist, and the next four Akuma went after you. Could have been a result of the fact you and the terrorist share a horrible temper, or that you, as Papillon, decided to be clever and, to add another layer of protection to your identity by making it appear you were being targeted. I believe I’m not the only one here who came to suspect you for that.” The last phrase was underscored by her pointing at the woman who had been holding Mr Agreste at gunpoint even before Vorpika and her fluffy tail-Ladybug slapped her temples to regain focus-started talking. As Ladybug noticed Gabriel was starting to sweat, Vorpika continued. “So, when I arrived in Paris, I decided to keep you under control, and while I’ve not mastered all my spells yet I can already use a lesser version one of the Pied Piper’s tricks. Nothing much, and it’s easily blocked by the magic of even an inactive Miraculous, but enough I could put a hypnotic command into your son’s mind to have him look around for hints and report, and guess what? He discovers you have a coded book on the Miraculouses, book that is now in my hands.”

At that Ladybug frowned, Vorpika didn’t have the book, she had recovered it after Lila put it in th-That was the moment Ladybug realized that before her, clad in the magic costume of the Fox Miraculous Holder, stood Lila Rossi. Who was seeing her theory confirmed. After noting that Chat too seemed to have caught on that she decided to intervene before the unpredictable girl could decide to assault Gabriel, but Vorpika, who was enjoying Mr Agreste’s discomfort, signaled to let her finish.

“And not even twenty four hours after I retrieve the book, you are Akumatized.” Vorpika continued. “Clearly, you are Papillon who was spooked when his little handbook disappeared and thought Ladybug was onto him and decided to throw her off by Akumatizing himself… That would be what I’d think if I didn’t know for sure he cannot do just that.”

For a moment, everyone could just hear the surprise caused by Vorpika’s final declaration. Then Chat, the first one to recover, shouted what everyone was thinking:

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!”

“To see him squirm.” Vorpika explained with a smile. “I mean, he raised his son under such isolation he became naive enough it was believable he wouldn’t realize that bringing an antique book to a school was a horrible idea.” Ladybug caught herself nodding at that. “Speaking of which, why did you have it?”

“I… I found it in an excursion in Tibet with my wife.” Mr Agreste explained, still shocked by Vorpika’s stunt. “I used it for inspiration a few times… It’s a dear memory and-”

“Say no more. I need it for a while, but I suppose I can give it back to you in a few days. In the meantime you should upgrade your security, lest it ends in the hands of that Papillon der grillo coi fiori’n mano.”

Ladybug mentally completed the quote(13) thanks to some of the Italian movies her grandmother had shown her during the lessons of Italian, and found herself once bursting into laughter at Lila’s insults for Papillon.

“Everyone, sorry for the mess. Would fix it, but I cannot.” Vorpika said. “Ladybug, could you deal with this and meet me with your partner over Eiffel’s apartment?”

“Could you explain the book part?” Chat asked right away as soon as they were all three over Gustave Eiffel’s apartment at the Tower and Vorpika had admitted she had only just received the Miraculous-and spent the whole night perfecting the trick she had used.

“Adrien Agreste was that naive and brought the book at school, and, to give him a scare, I had decided to fish it out of the thrash before his eyes.” she said. “In hindsight it was an incredibly stupid idea, but in my defense the day hadn’t started out well and that kind of things just drives me mad, so I wasn’t thinking straight. Still, even with Ladybug taking it before I even got to that point I had to claim my responsibilities, possibly in a way that would cover for that adorable fool, and certainly before Ladybug came up with something that would get her in trouble.”

Ladybug had to admit to herself she had been planning to walk up to Mr Agreste as Marinette and claim full responsibility-and get in trouble with someone who could blacklist her from the fashion world.

“I was planning to do something that would have got me in trouble…” Ladybug admitted. “Still, thanks. And welcome to the team.”

As she said that she offered her hand to Vorpika, who slapped it away.

“Make no mistake, Ladybug, I’m not going to forgive you for what happened, right here.” she said. “Trixx, my kwami, said I could have been mistaken, but it’s now clear I was right. And that I cannot forgive, that and just how I admired you, and the fact you’ve been checking my butt for half the fight at the embassy.”

Ladybug opened her mouth in shock and embarrassment horror. She had no idea what Vorpika meant about what happened last time on the Eiffel Tower, but was all too aware of what else she was referring to, and the truth was possibly even more embarrassing.

“I-I-I wasn’t!” Ladybug said, blushing but not too willing to tell the truth.”

“Pretty sure you’ve been filmed.”

“But-I-I WAS LOOKING AT THE TAIL! I really wanted a pet fox as a child but my parents couldn’t let me have it.”

Vorpika and Chat looked at her, silent in the surprise.

“That’s so cute…” Chat whispered.

“Iiii-I have to agree.” Vorpika said. “At least you aren’t a pervert… But as I was saying, I will help you, I will even follow your lead in combat, you aren’t stupid enough to waste this power, but once we’ve dealt with Papillon, we’re making gloves. Alla prossima.”

With that Vorpika left, leaving the two other heroes behind.

“My Lady, what did she mean?” Chat Noir asked.

“She wants to beat me up when we’re done.” Ladybug explained.

“No, with the insult. Unless you met more time than I know?”

“Not transformed, and I have no idea for the insult.”

“Hope she comes around soon. And I could procure you a pet fox, if your parents have changed their mind.”

“CHATON!”

“So, it worked?” Natalie asked her boss.

“Yes. But it was a close call.” Gabriel admitted. Then, remembering his secretary was more versed than him in the various trivia of Italian culture, he asked her something that had been nagging at his mind: “At one point Vorpika called me, and I quote, “Papillon der grillo coi fiori’n mano”, and everyone at the embassy started laughing, do you have any idea why?”

After processing what her boss had just told her and completing the quote, Natalie proceeded to explain. Hearing the shout, Adrien decided that maybe he wouldn’t ask Lila about the “grillo” thing.

The following day Lila had found herself to what her best friend, that she had graced with dozens of Tiger-themed nicknames, had told her was the best bakery in Paris, and where she had pre-ordered a sunflower seed cake-if they had actually pulled that, the Tiger had actually understating their ability. The previous day had been a trip, and she needed her sweet.

As she was paying she saw an unexpected sight-Marinette running out from the back of the shop.

“Marinette? What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I live here, it’s my parents’ bakery.” she replied, just as surprised to see Lila. “What about you?”

“I’ve been told this is the best bakery in Paris, and I’ve decided to see if it’s true or the Tiger understated things as she sometimes does. Almost forgot, I have some interesting news: Adrien should be back at school today.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Lila confirmed, finding herself surprised at how she liked the happiness on Marinette’s face. “Heard from Ladybug that the new hero, Vorpika, was accidentally responsible, and she has admitted it. Fancy coming with me at school? You still have to tell me why did Chloe believed me when I made that joke about Jagged Stone.”

Lila wondered why Marinette’s face fell in embarrassment. Then Marinette’s father produced a copy of Rock Giant, and both Marinette’s sudden embarrassment and the whole situation with Chloe were explained. The Italian girl supposed she could like Paris, after all.

Notes

(1)Trixx’ recharge food is based on Inari, the Japanese fox god of fertility and rice plus many other things added in the later forms of their cult, and comes from rice’s valuable part being the seed. As for why they prefer sunflower seed… That’s for me to know and you to wonder about-and groan when you find out. :-D

(2)That’s one of the things that make me believe Lila, at least at her debut, is nowhere near as evil as some paint her: even during akuma-influenced madness she refused to cause collateral damage, even as it ultimately cost her the battle, and concentrated herself on Ladybug only.

(3)Headcanon warning: I see Lila as someone from Rome, and I have both an Italian-Romanesco dictionary and some basic knowledge to write her some phrases in that colorful dialect. Her particular transformation phrase is only the start.

(4)French still uses the first Western romanization “Pekin” for Beijing, and Italian still uses a name derived from it.

(5)As I said more than once, I call Hawk Moth by his original name specifically because “papillon” in Italy is the bowtie. Sadly for Lila’s (and my) plan for a longer joke, the main French name for that tie is indeed nœud papillon, literally “butterfly tie” (the same as in Italy)…

(6)How I explain Lila’s resemblance with that Miraculous holder: it’s on purpose out of admiration at the holder. So admired that the name Lila refers to her with means “Lady Fox” (or “Fox Woman”, but in the ‘40s it would have been definitely the former). The actual superhero name will be revealed at a later date.

(7)The secondary logo for Gabriel is indeed a purple butterfly. Considering it appears on Adrien’s sneakers and our favorite model has made sportswear pictures (such as the one where’s in boxing gear), I reserved it for the sportswear.

(8)In the US version, the Bubbler.

(9)The actual codes used for the writings on the Miraculous Spellbook in the series-that in-universe are obviously a different code not based on Latin alphabet and Indo-European languages.

(10)My personal fix for just why Andre Bourgeois has authority on Paris’ police when the French capital doesn’t have a local police but only a special detachment of the national one depending from the Prefect of Police: the prefect has screwed up enough that his superiors don’t trust him anymore but not enough to get removed, hence them passing the actual authority to the mayor.

(11)As of 2017, the Italian Army still had the Tirrena T-148/B flamethrower in active service. Demolition and anti-tank weapon, supposedly.

(12)Yes, Vorpika has a very specific meaning in Italy. What it means shall be explained in the story.

(13)On FF.Net and AO3 I did not provide a complete quote nor a translation to protect this fic’s rating, as outside of Rome it’s a very vulgar joke... But this is tumblr, so... The complete quote, a common (if vulgar) joke on the Italian movie “Il Marchese del Grillo”, is “Il Marchese del Grillo, coi fiori in mano e il cazzo a spillo”, and translates literally as “The Marquiss del Grillo, with flowers in the hand and a pin-shaped dick”.

[lokirupaul]

Lokiru Paul : Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

He got famous playing a certain kind of funny guy on SNL, but when Jason Sudeikis invented Ted Lasso, the sensitive soccer coach with the earnest mustache, the actor found a different gear—and a surprise hit. Now, ahead of the show’s second season, Sudeikis discusses his wild ride of a year and how he’s learning to pay closer attention to what the universe is telling him.

BY ZACH BARON, GQ

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HILL & AUBREY

July 13, 2021

Shirt, $188, and tie (worn at waist), $125, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

On the day that he wrapped shooting on the second season of Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis sat in his trailer in West London and drank a beer and exhaled a little, and then he went to the pitch they film on for the show—Nelson Road Stadium, the characters call it—for one last game of football with his cast and crew. There's this thing called the crossbar challenge, which figures briefly in a midseason Ted Lasso episode: You kick a ball and try to hit not the goal but the crossbar above the goal, which is only four or five inches from top to bottom. And so Sudeikis arrived and, because he can't help himself, started trying to hit the crossbar.



Jason Sudeikis covers the August 2021 issue of GQ. To get a copy, subscribe to GQ.

 Shirt, $228, by Todd Snyder. Shorts, $480, by Bode. Sneakers, his own. Socks, stylist’s own. Watch, $6,300, by Cartier.

Confidence is a funny thing. Sudeikis has been riffing on it, in one way or another, for his whole professional life—particularly the comedy of unearned confidence, which he is well suited, physically, to convey. Sudeikis is acutely aware of “the vessel that my soul is currently, you know, occupying”—six feet one, good hair, strong jaw. He's a former college point guard. On Saturday Night Live, where most of us saw him for the first time, he had a specialty in playing jocular blowhards and loud, self-impressed white men, a specialty he took to Hollywood, in films like Horrible Bosses and Sleeping With Other People. He became so adept at playing those types of characters, Sudeikis said, that at some point he realized he'd have to make an effort to do something different. “It's up to me to not just play an a-hole in every movie,” he said. In conversation he is digressive, occasionally melancholy, prone to long anecdotes and sometimes even actual parables—closer, in other words, to Ted Lasso, the gentle, philosophical football coach he co-created, than any of the preening jerks he used to be known for. But he can definitely kick a soccer ball pretty good.

So he's up there trying to hit the crossbar, and he's got a crowd of actors and crew members gathering around him now, betting on whether he can hit it. And he's getting the ball in the air, mostly, but not quite on the four-to-five-inch strip of metal he needs to hit, and the stakes are escalating (“I bet he can get it in three.” “I bet he can get it in five”), and after he misses the first five tries, Toheeb Jimoh, the actor who plays Sam Obisanya on the show, says, “I think he can get it in 10.” Then Sudeikis proceeds to miss the next four attempts. But, he told me later, “there was no part of me that was like, ‘I'm not gonna hit one of these. I'm not not gonna hit one of these.’ ”

Like I said, confidence is a funny thing. You have to somehow believe that the worst outcome simply won't happen. Sometimes you have to do that while knowing for a fact that the worst outcome is happening, all the time. “It's a very interesting space to live in, where you're living in the questions and the universe is slipping you answers,” Sudeikis said. “And are you—are any of us—open enough, able enough, curious enough to hear them when they arrive?” This sounds oblique, I guess, but I can attest, after spending some time talking to Sudeikis, that everything is a little oblique for him right now. He had the same pandemic year we all had, and in the middle of that, he had Ted Lasso turn into a massive, unexpected hit, and in the middle of that, his split from his partner and the mother of his two children, Olivia Wilde, became public in a way that from a great distance seemed not entirely dissimilar to something that happens to the character he plays on the show that everyone was suddenly watching. “Personal stuff, professional stuff, I mean, it's all…that Venn diagram for me is very”—here he held up two hands to form one circle—“you know?”

Shirt, $195, by Sid Mashburn. T-shirt, $195, by Ralph Lauren. Vintage pants from The Vintage Showroom. Belt, $2,500, by The Row. His own sneakers by Nike x Tom Sachs. Socks, $18 for three pairs, by Nike. Pendant necklaces, $2,100 (tag), and $3,000 (bar), by Tiffany & Co. Jacket (on bench), $498, by Todd Snyder.

Anyway, Sudeikis hit the crossbar on the 10th try. “It's a tremendous sound,” he said of that moment when the ball connects with the frame of the goal. He'd done what he knew he would do. Everyone on the pitch was cheering like they'd won something. It was, for lack of a better way of describing it, a very Ted Lasso moment—a small victory, a crooked poster in a locker room that says Believe. “There's a great Michael J. Fox quote,” Sudeikis told me later, trying to explain the particular brand of wary optimism that he carries around with him, and that he ended up making a show about: “ ‘Don't assume the worst thing's going to happen, because on the off chance it does, you'll have lived through it twice.’ So…why not do the inverse?”

Watch Now:

10 Things Jason Sudeikis Can’t Live Without

Ted Lasso. Man—what an unlikely story. The character was initially dreamed up to serve a very different purpose. Sudeikis first played him in 2013, in a promo for NBC, which had recently acquired the television rights to the Premier League and was trying to inspire American interest in English football. The promo was the length and shape of an SNL sketch and featured a straightforward conceit: A hayseed football (our football) coach is hired as the football (their football) coach of a beloved English club, to teach a game he neither knows nor understands in a place he neither knows nor understands. The joke was simple and boiled down to the central fact that Ted Lasso was an amiable buffoon in short shorts.

But Sudeikis tries to listen to the universe, even in unlikely circumstances, and for whatever reason the character stuck around in his head. So, in time, Sudeikis developed and pitched a series with the same setup—Ted, in England, far from his family, a stranger in a strange land learning a strange game—that Apple eventually bought. But when we next saw Ted Lasso, he had changed. He wasn't loud or obnoxious anymore; he was simply…human. He was a man in the midst of a divorce who missed his son in America. The new version of Ted Lasso was still funny, but now in an earned kind of way, where the jokes he told and the jokes made at his expense spoke to the quality of the man. He had become an encourager, someone who thrills to the talents and dreams of others. He was still ignorant at times, but now he was curious too.

In fact, this is close to something Ted says, by way of Walt Whitman, in one of the first season's most memorable episodes: Be curious, not judgmental. I will confess I get a little emotional every time I watch the scene in which he says this, which uses a game of darts in a pub as an excuse to both stage a philosophical discussion about how to treat other people and to re-create the climactic moment of every sports movie you've ever seen. It's a somewhat strange experience, being moved to tears by a guy with a bushy cartoon mustache and an arsenal of capital-J jokes (“You beating yourself up is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet: I don't want to hear it”), talking about humanity and how we all might get better at it. But that's kind of what the experience of watching the show is. It's about something that almost nothing is about, which is: decency.

In the pilot episode, someone asks Ted if he believes in ghosts, and he says he does, “But more importantly, I think they need to believe in themselves.” That folksy, relentless positivity defines the character and is perhaps one of the reasons Ted Lasso resonated with so many people over the past year. It was late summer, it was fall, it was in the teeth of widespread quarantine and stay-at-home orders. People were inside watching stuff. Here was a guy who confronted hardship, who suffered heartbreak, who couldn't go home. And who, somehow, found his way through all that. Someone not unlike Sudeikis himself.

“If you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Sudeikis likes to say, in homage to his background in competitive sports, that there's no defense in the arts. “The only things you're competing against, I believe, are apathy, cynicism, and ego,” he said. This is a philosophy of Sudeikis's that predates Ted Lasso by many years, though you wouldn't necessarily have known it until recently. He grew up outside Kansas City, in Overland Park, Kansas, a “full jock with thespian tendencies,” as he once described himself. His uncle is George Wendt, who played Norm on Cheers. “He made finding a career in the arts, in acting or whatever, seem plausible,” Sudeikis said. But mostly he was drawn to the camaraderie of athletics. When Sudeikis first tried his hand at professional improv, in the mid-'90s, it was through something called ComedySportz, a national chain with a fake competition angle, teams in sports uniforms, and a referee. Brendan Hunt, who co-created and costars on Ted Lasso, initially met Sudeikis in Chicago, he told me. Sudeikis had traveled the eight hours up from Kansas City to do a show: “Suddenly there's a beat-up Volvo station wagon, like an '83, and this is '97, I think, and these two guys get out, all bleary-eyed, and wearily change into their baseball pants. And one of them was Jason.”

Sudeikis had gone to community college on a basketball scholarship but failed to keep up his grades, and he eventually left school to pursue comedy. For a while, he said, his sincere aspiration was to become a member of the Blue Man Group. He got close. “They flew me out to New York,” he said. “That was August of 2001, right before 9/11. And I got to see myself bald and blue.” (In the end, he wasn't a good enough drummer.) By that time, he was living in Las Vegas with his then partner, Kay Cannon, doing sketch comedy at the newly formed Second City chapter there. “Ego,” Sudeikis told me about this time, “that gets beaten out of you, doing eight shows a week.”

Eventually he was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. “I didn't want to work on SNL,” Sudeikis said—he'd convinced himself that there were purer and less corporate paths to take. “At a certain point in your comedy journey, you have to look at it as like McDonald's,” he said. “You have to be like: ‘No. Never.’ ” Then he got the call. “It was like having a crush on the prettiest girl at school and being like, ‘She seems like a jerk.’ And it's like, ‘Oh, really? 'Cause she said she liked you.’ ‘She what?!’ ”

Suit, $4,860, by Tom Ford. Vintage t-shirt from The Vintage Showroom. Suspenders, stylist’s own. Shoes, $1,535, by John Lobb.

Sudeikis auditioned, of course, and was hired, in 2003—but as a writer: “It was like winning a gold medal in the thing you've never even trained for. You just happen to be good at the triple jump, and you really love the long jump.” He wrote for a couple of seasons, but he was unhappy—Cannon was still in Las Vegas, and Sudeikis missed performing. Finally he went to Lorne Michaels, to ask for a job as a member of the cast. “He had the best line. I go, ‘I had to give up two things I love the most to take this writing job: performing and living with my wife.’ And on a dime, he just goes, ‘Well, if you had to choose one…’ ”

At Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis often channeled the same level of cheerful optimism and forthright morality that he'd later bring to Ted Lasso, but audiences didn't necessarily notice it at the time. One of Sudeikis's most famous and beloved early sketches on SNL as a performer is 2005's “Two A-holes Buying a Christmas Tree”—Kristen Wiig and Sudeikis, chewing gum, oblivious to their surroundings, terrorizing Jack Black at a Christmas tree stand. It's a joke about a very familiar form of contemporary rudeness; it's also a riff on a certain kind of man who speaks for the woman next to him, whether she wants him to or not. And people laughed and moved on to the next bit, but to this day Sudeikis can tell you about all the ideas that were running through his head when he created the sketch with Wiig. “That scene was all about my belief that we were losing touch with manners,” he told me. “And yet it's also about love, because he loves her, and that's why he interprets everything for her—she never talks directly to the person.” But, he said, sighing, “once you start explaining a joke or something like that, it ceases to be funny.”

Sudeikis brought this type of attention and care to the movies he began acting in too, like the workplace comedy Horrible Bosses, even if it was lost on most of those who watched them. “That movie, Horrible Bosses, is riddled with optimism,” he said. “The rhythms of that movie, of what Jason Bateman and Charlie Day and I are doing, are deeply rooted in Ted Lasso too. But people don't want those answers. They want to hear the three of us cut up and joke around.”

So that's what Sudeikis did. He got used to a certain gap between his intention and how it was understood. During his time at SNL, his marriage fell apart. “You're going through something emotionally and personally, or even professionally if that's affecting you personally, and then you're dressed up like George Bush and you're live on television for eight minutes. You feel like a crazy person. You feel absolutely crazy. You're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're just like, ‘Who am I? What is this? Holy hell.’ ”

For a time he became a tabloid fixture. He remembers “navigating my first sort of public relationship, with January Jones, which was like learning by fire. What is the term? Trial by fire.” In a 2010 GQ article, when confronted with a question about rumors that he was dating Jennifer Aniston, he sarcastically responded that she should be so lucky. “And obviously I'm fucking joking, you know?” Sudeikis said. But back then, he treated interviews like improv—Yes, and—and that could create misunderstandings. Asked once on a podcast about what people tended to get wrong about him, Sudeikis responded, “That I was in a fraternity—or maybe that I would be.”

To that point, Hunt told me, “He's much less the assumed fraternity guy than you'd think.” But Hunt said he also understood where the impression came from: “I don't know where he learned it necessarily, whether it was from his parents, or his basketball coaches, but he exudes an easygoing confidence. And it's easy to hang with a guy like that. But some people are also like, ‘Fuck that guy,’ intrinsically.”

Shirt, $188, and ties (worn at waist), $125 each, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Shoes, $782, by Alden. Socks, $15, by Smart Turnout. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

When he won the Golden Globe, Sudeikis gave a dazed speech while wearing a hoodie, sparking glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” he said.

Shortly after Sudeikis and Wilde got together, near the end of his SNL run (he left the show in 2013), Wilde made a joke during a monologue that she read at a cabaret club about the two of them having sex “like Kenyan marathon runners,” and Sudeikis spent years answering questions about the joke. “The frustrating thing about that is that Olivia said that in a performance setting,” Sudeikis said. “It wasn't like she just was saying it glibly in an interview.” He described the experience of growing into celebrity, and confronting other people's misperceptions of him, as a disorienting one. “You're just being tossed into the situation and then trying to figure it out,” he said. The picture of him that was circulating wasn't exactly the one that he had of himself. But he didn't fight it, either. “You come to be thoughtful about it,” he said. “But also try to stay open to it. I don't ever want to be cynical.”

So he tried to stay open. But it wasn't until Ted Lasso that people really saw the side of him that comported with the way he saw himself. Last year, as it became clear that the show was a hit, he found himself answering, over and over, some version of the same question. The question would vary in its specifics, but the gist of it was always: How much do you and this character actually have in common? Sudeikis told me that over time, in response to people wondering about his exact relationship to Ted, he developed a few different evasive explanations. Ted, Sudeikis would say, was a little like Jason Sudeikis, but after two pints on an empty stomach. He was Sudeikis hanging on the side of a buddy's boat. He was Sudeikis, but on mushrooms. Sometimes, in more honest moments, he would say that Ted is the best version of himself. This, after all, is how art works: If it was just you, then it wouldn't really need to be art in the first place. And so Sudeikis learned to separate himself from Ted, to fudge the distance between art and artist.

Except, he said, after a while, every time he tried to wave off Ted, fellow castmates or old friends of his would correct him to say: “No.” They'd say: “No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.” It's not you on mushrooms, it's not you hanging off a boat, it's just…you. One of Sudeikis's friends, Marcus Mumford, who composed the music for the show, told me, “He is quite like Ted in lots of ways. He has a sort of burning optimism, but also a vulnerability, about him that I really admire.”

Hearing people say this, over and over again, Sudeikis said, “brought me to a very emotional space where, you know, a healthy dose of self-love was allowed to expand through my being and made me…” He trailed off for a moment. “When they're like, ‘No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.’ That's a very lovely thing to hear. I wish it on everybody who gets the opportunity to be or do anything in life and have someone have the chance to say, ‘Hey, that's you. That's you.’ ”

And if he's being honest, that's the way he feels about it too. “It's the closest thing I have to a tattoo,” Sudeikis said about Ted Lasso. “It's the most personal thing I've ever made.”

Sweater, $398, and shirt, $95, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore.

On the first Saturday in June, Sudeikis flew with his children, Otis and Daisy, from London to New York, where he owns a house in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn is home,” he told me simply. While filming the first season of Ted Lasso, he'd had the house renovated—there was black mold to get rid of and other changes to make. “So Olivia and the kids had to rent a lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights. But it's not home. It's someone else's home.” Saturday was the first time Sudeikis and his children had set foot in their own place in two years. “The kids darted in,” he said. “Last time Daisy was in that house, she slept in a crib. So now she has a new big bed. It was hilarious. I walked up there after like 15 minutes and both rooms were a mess.”

He and Wilde, he said, no longer share the house. They split up, according to Sudeikis, “in November 2020.” The end of their relationship was chronicled in a painful, public way in the tabloids after photos of Wilde holding hands with Harry Styles surfaced in January, setting off a flurry of conflicting timelines and explanations. Sudeikis said that even he didn't have total clarity about the end of the relationship just yet. “I'll have a better understanding of why in a year,” he said, “and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” Right now he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to take away, about himself, from what had happened. “That's an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”

In the first season of Ted Lasso, the comic premise of the show is revealed to be a tragic one: Ted is in England, far from home, doing something he doesn't know how to do and probably shouldn't be doing at all, in order to give his failing marriage space to survive. When the character's wife and son visit, in the show's fifth episode, his wife tells him, “Every day I wake up hoping that I'll feel the way I felt in the beginning. But maybe that's just what marriage is, right?” It's a wrenching moment that also gives new meaning to the show: Ted Lasso's heart is big, but it can also be broken as violently and as easily as anyone else's. By the end of the season, Lasso is divorced and renegotiating his relationships with his now ex-wife and son.

The first season of Ted Lasso had already been written—had already aired—by the time Sudeikis found himself living some aspects of it in real life. “And yet one has nothing to do with the other,” Sudeikis told me. “That's the crazy thing. Everything that happened in season one was based on everything that happened prior to season one. Like, a lot of it three years prior. You know what I mean? The story's bigger than that, I hope. And anything I've gone through, other people have gone through. That's one of the nice things, right? So it's humbling in that way.”

And in fact, the seeds of Ted's heartbreak, Sudeikis said, went all the way back to a dinner he had with Wilde around 2015, during which she first encouraged him to explore whether Ted Lasso could be more than just a bit on NBC. “It was there, the night at dinner, when Olivia was like, ‘You should do it as a show,’ ” he said. They got to talking about it. Sudeikis asked why Ted Lasso would move in the first place, to coach a team he had no real reason to coach: “ ‘Okay, but why would he take this job? Why would a guy at this age take this job to leave? Maybe he's having marital strife. Maybe things aren't good back home, so he needs space.’ And I just riffed it at dinner in 2015 or whenever, late 2014. But it had to be that way. That's what the show is about.”

I said to Sudeikis that I thought that while it was common for artists to put a lot of their lives into their art, it was less common that they end up living aspects of the art in their lives, after the fact.

“I wonder if that's true,” he replied. “I mean, isn't that just a little bit of what Oprah was telling us for years and years? You know, manifestation? Power of thought? That's The Secret in reverse, you know?”

But…if we're being honest, is that a thing you wanted to manifest?

“No. No. But, again, it isn't that. It wasn't that. And again, that's just me knowing the details of it. Like, that's just me knowing where it comes from, where any of it comes from.”

But he acknowledged it had been a hard year. Not necessarily a bad one, but a hard one. “I think it was really neat,” he said. “I think if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Is that easier said than done? To land like an Avenger?

“I don't know. It's just how I landed. It doesn't mean when you blast back up you're not going to run into a bunch of shit and have to, you know, fight things to get back to the heights that you were at, but I'd take that over 412 bones anytime.”

He paused, then continued: “But there is power in creating 412 bones! Because we all know that a bone, up to a certain age, when it heals, it heals stronger. So, I mean, it's not to knock anybody that doesn't land like an Avenger. Because there's strength in that too.”

Shirt, $228, by Todd Snyder. Shorts, $480, by Bode. Watch, $6,300, by Cartier.

In February, Sudeikis attended the Golden Globes, which were being held remotely on Zoom. He had his misgivings about the event—the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards, had been in the news for a series of unflattering revelations about its organization, and also the show was taking place in the middle of the night in London. Tom Ford had sent over a suit for Sudeikis to wear, and he tried it on, in his flat in Notting Hill, but he felt ridiculous, there in the middle of the night, and so changed out of it and into a tie-dyed hoodie made by his sister's clothing company. “I wore that hoodie because I didn't wanna fucking wear the fucking top half of a Tom Ford suit,” he said. “I love Tom Ford suits. But it felt weird as shit.”

“With kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’… All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it!”

The rest of this story you know: Sudeikis ended up winning best actor for Ted Lasso and gave a dazed acceptance speech while wearing the hoodie, and this in turn sparked glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. For the record, “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” Sudeikis said. It was just late at night and he didn't want to wear a suit. “So yeah, off it came and it was like, ‘This is how I feel. I believe in moving forward.’ ”

Lately, Sudeikis told me, he had been trying to pay more attention to how he actually felt about any given thing, to all the various signs and omens that present themselves to a person during the course of living their life. Even in his past, he said, there were moments that were obvious in retrospect, in terms of what the universe was trying to tell him, messages he missed entirely at the time. In Vegas, where he was living with Cannon before Saturday Night Live, he developed alopecia and his hair stopped growing, and he didn't know why. And then, at the end of his 30s, “during the nine months before Otis was born and the nine months after he was born,” Sudeikis developed extremely painful sciatica. “I went and got an MRI and was like, ‘Oh, yeah, the jelly doughnut in my L4, L5, is squirting out and touching a nerve.’ ” But why? When he had his second child, this didn't happen at all. So: why?

“I mean, since last November,” Sudeikis said, “the joke that feels more like a parable to me is a guy is sitting at home watching TV and the news breaks in to say flash flood warning. About an hour later he goes outside on his porch and he sees that the whole street is flooded.” You've probably heard the rest of this joke before: While the guy is praying to God for some kind of help, a truck, a boat, and a chopper come by, offering aid, which the guy turns down. God'll provide, he says. Sudeikis finished the joke: “Two hours after that, he's in heaven. He's dead. He says, ‘God, what's up, man? You didn't help me.’ God goes, ‘What do you mean, man? I sent you a pickup truck, I sent you a speedboat, I sent you a helicopter.’ ” So, Sudeikis said, “you can't tell me that hair falling out of my head wasn't—I don't know if it was the speedboat or the pickup truck or the helicopter, but yeah, man, it all comes home to roost. What you resist persists.”

He went on. “That's why I had sciatica,” he said. “That's the speedboat. That was like: ‘Hey, you gotta take a look at your stuff.’ ”

And this is another way that Sudeikis and Ted Lasso are alike, because both are always learning and relearning this lesson, which is: Be curious. Both are philosophical men whose philosophies basically boil down to trying to live as decent a life as is possible. Not just for the sake of it but because to be curious—to find out something new about yourself or someone else—is to be empowered. “I don't know if you remember G.I. Joe growing up,” Sudeikis said, “but they would always end it with a little saying: ‘Oh, now I know.’ ‘Don't put a fork in the outlet.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you could get hurt.’ ‘Oh, now I know.’ And then somebody would say, ‘And knowing is half the battle.’ And I agree with that—with kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. That's the other half. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’ Oh! Well, knowing is half the battle. All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it! Get better at names. Show up five minutes early, make it a point to do it. So, I'm still learning these things. But hopefully I've got plenty of time to do something about it.”

Sudeikis smiled a little wearily: “I mean, at the end of that joke, the guy still got to go to heaven, you know?”

Zach Baron is GQ's senior staff writer.

A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2021 issue with the title "Jason Sudeikis Paints His Masterpiece."

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Hill & Aubrey

Styled by Michael Darlington

Grooming by Nicky Austin

Tailoring by Nafisa Tosh

Set design by Hella Keck

Produced by Ragi Dholakia Productions

[whatdoyouthinkmyjobis]

Hunters on the Hellmouth

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AN: More gory than typical canon. Torture. Takes place a week after chapter 30 and GND 11.

Chapter 31: Christmas on the Hellmouth

Dean pushed the cracked door open and caught Sam lying in bed reading A History of Slayers, Volume I. How the Slayer came to be and what fueled her was his latest obsession ever since he learned she was a vessel.

Dean didn’t like this track at all. They’d argued about it weeks before. “God dammit, Sammy! Why won’t you let me be happy for once?”

“I’m just curious, Dean! This has nothing to do with you and Buffy.”

“And if something stinks, what then?”

But it was Christmas Eve, and Dean didn’t want to have that fight again. He pulled the bedroom door closed and knocked so Sam could pretend he was reading something else.

“Come in.” Now Sam held one of the battered Goodwill paperbacks he kept stacked on his dresser.

“Can I grab one of your extra blankets? Dawn’s cold.”

“Sure, go ahead.” Sam’s girlfriend, Jada, was always freezing, and had filled his bedroom with what Dean estimated to be a hundred different blankets, each for a very specific temperature.

Dawn, who had been livid when her sister said she was spending Christmas Eve at their apartment, was nested on the Winchester’s couch staring at the small Christmas tree on the coffee table. “I still can’t believe you decorated,” she said, adding the purple fuzzy blanket to her pile.

Dean leaned against the arm of the couch, shifting his weight off his broken ankle. The tree, small and squat with little red balls and enough light to speckle the walls with stars, was very pretty. “Jada decorated before she headed north. She thought it would cheer us up.”

“I’m glad. I didn’t think I’d get a tree this year.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Santa ain’t leavin’ any goodies under there.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. Buffy, an expert-level eye-roller herself, found this annoying and disrespectful, but he delighted in getting a rise out of the girl. “Dean, I’m sixteen. I don’t believe in Santa.”

“Got everything you need?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Dean hobbled back to his room, already fantasizing about finding a naughty Mrs. Claus in his bed. Not that he was in any condition for sex. Moving from his bed to the bathroom meant the agonizing choice of putting pressure on his foot or his ribs. Moving his arms hurt. Laying flat hurt. Broken bones on top of Buffy’s busyness with the Potentials meant their sizzling sex life had started to fizzle.

Dawn called after him, “Hey, thanks for letting me come! Buffy was just a big wall of no.”

“You’re family, kid. Why wouldn’t you be here for Christmas?”

A flush rose to her cheeks, and she pulled the blankets up to her shocked eyes.

Waiting on his bed was something better than a vixen in red lingerie. Buffy, with a smile on her lips and sleep creeping into her eyes, had made herself comfortable in his red plaid shirt and nothing else. By her side, was a green box topped with a white bow.

“That took longer than I thought,” she said.

“Your sister wanted another blanket.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “You have a broken ankle! I could have gotten it for her.”

Crawling into bed beside her, he planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “You said no presents.” The phrase boyfriend test flashed in his mind, but she didn’t look at him like he’d failed.

“No presents. Not really. This isn’t for you to keep. I just thought bows were festive, and I sort of need the distraction.”

His lingerie dream revived, he unwrapped his not-present. “A book?” It was burgundy with a stamped gold trim.

Buffy removed it from the box as he leaned against his pillow pile. “I ask you to tell me stories all the time, so I thought I’d tell you some of mine.”

It was a photo album. On the first page, an orange-tinged Polaroid of a young woman with large, deep set eyes and blonde, deflated Farrah hair in a hospital holding a baby. Beneath it Baby Girl Jan 19, ‘81. “My parents fought over what to name me, but the hospital wouldn’t let them leave until they decided. Dad wanted Jennifer, but mom said I was too special to have the same name as every girl on the block. Mom got Buffy on my birth certificate while Dad was out celebrating.”

“Smart woman.”

“She was.” Buffy grinned. “She would have liked you.”

Dean had been caught off guard when Buffy said she loved him, but the idea that her mother would have liked him was shocking. With his heavy drinking, gambling, scars and tattoos, he didn’t think of himself as the take-home-to-mom type; but then, he’d never been a there-in-the-morning guy before Buffy either.

The next few pages were a blur of a blonde baby, usually smiling, often in ruffle-butted tights. Dean secretly loved babies. They were innocent and joyful. The end of the world meant being hungry or needing a change. Suit their needs, and they’re laughing again. He tried to suppress the now familiar blonde-haired, green-eyed girl who met him in his dreams.

The baby gave way to a toddler. In every picture, she gazed at her father with complete adoration. Soon, little Buffy was ice skating and dancing. Blowing out birthday candles, heading off to school, and holding a baby sister. The Summers family went to Disneyland, had barbeques, and stuffed presents under the Christmas tree until it overflowed. Once the round-cheeked, homecoming queen version of the Buffy he knew appeared, the album ended.

“We, uh, moved to Sunnydale a little after that.” That’s when monsters became real.

“What do you think Buffy Anne Summers would be doing if she hadn’t moved to Sunnydale?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She’d be entering her last semester of college. Probably would have spent too much time partying. Sorority for sure. She’d probably be dating some popular guy because he was popular and everyone said they were cute together.”

“Doesn’t sound like you,” he said, knowing how much brushes with the supernatural changed a person.

“Popularity is a strong drug,” she said.

Burning down her high school’s gym had no doubt ousted her from her typical social circles. Much as Dean hated Buffy being tied to the Slayer until it killed her, he was grateful it had put her in his path.

“And what would Dean Winchester be doing out of Sunnydale?”

He rubbed her leg, not wanting to confess that had Cas never brought him here, he’d be drunk and scared in a no-tell motel trying to plan a Hail Mary against Heaven and Hell. “You know me, darlin’. I’m gonna be hunting evil sons a bitches wherever I am.”

“I guess you didn’t have a lot of time before...” Her voice trailed off.

“I remember a few things,” Dean said. “I played t-ball. Dad coached. We lost every game. I was pretty obsessed with rocket ships and war games. Dad always made me the general and he was a sergeant.”

“Sounds tough,” she said through a smile.

“Tough as nails. I mean, I fell down, didn’t even cry until I got home.”

He opened his nightstand and pulled out a brown, leather book. Tucked under the journal’s jacket was Dean’s entire collection of family photos, creased and foxed from being touched so often.

“This is before the fire. I think Sammy was only a month old,” he said, holding up a small picture of four happy Winchesters in front of their blue house in Lawrence.

Buffy stared at the picture, hovering her fingers over Mary. “Your mom was very pretty.”

“Yeah, she was. Sweet woman. Total badass.”

“That’s your dad?” John smiled in the picture, his arms encircling Mary and Dean, nothing on his mind but family. “I think you take after your mom.”

He only had a few pictures from his childhood. Some with his mother. Some with his father. A couple with Bobby. All of them with Sam.

“Whatever happened to those pictures we took in San Francisco?” Buffy asked.

“They’re still on my phone.”

She blushed. “Not the sexy pictures. The other ones.”

The disposable camera was in his dresser, images of the two of them enjoying themselves still trapped inside. “I haven’t gotten them developed yet. It’s been a few years since that was a thing.”

“You should. We need more happy pictures.”

Christmas evening, most of the Potentials were piled among their pillows and blankets, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on a small television while self-appointed snack-fetcher Andrew popped a third batch of popcorn.

Dani leaned against the kitchen counter and tapped Willow’s foot with hers. “Wanna join us? It’s a Christmas tradition, and what’s more traditional than a couple of lesbians heckling Jimmy Stewart?”

“Rain check,” Willow said, taking another wet cup from Buffy. “We officially have more people in the house than dishes.”

“Your loss,” she said, biting her lip and walking away.

“She’s friendly,” Buffy teased.

“Yeah, she is. But this has already been my most Christmasy Christmas. Don’t feel like topping it off with more festive,” said Willow as she refilled the cabinet with cups.    

“Sorry!” Buffy cringed. The madness from The First had started in the middle of Hanukkah.

“It’s okay. My parents went out of town to visit old college buddies anyway, and Xander even lit the candles for me while my eyes were covered. I just tell myself everything’s closed because it’s Anti-Capitalism Day, not the celebration of Santa’s birth.”

“That’s festive?”

But the look on Willow’s face as she stared at water droplets on the tumblers was anything but celebratory. Last year for Winter Solstice, she and Tara had celebrated by holding hands in the pitch black house and willing the hundreds of tealights they’d spread around to spring into dancing flames. It was beautiful, like the floor was covered in stars. This December, she’d been in and out of the hospital with her own injuries and those of friends, close to losing her best friend less than a year after losing her girlfriend.

“How are you doing, non-holiday wise?” Buffy asked.

Willow rested her head on Buffy’s shoulder. “The other day, I caught myself longing for a simple vampire patrol, like how we used to with just you, me and Xander. It seemed downright quaint, and vampire patrol quaint? I’ve gotten so nostalgic for not-now that you could sprinkle a little snow on a fresh corpse and I’d find it all Norman Rockwell.”

“Picturesque. Why aren’t you making the decisions about holiday stamps?”

“I know!”

Squabbling rose in the living room.

“They can’t stay here forever,” sighed Buffy. “Either we all die horribly, or we save the day and have a dance party at The Bronze, the three of us, like old times, less the high school drama.”

“I’ll take high school drama. Getting shoved in locker is majorly preferable to nearly being blinded by an ancient evil.”

Buffy dried her hands and drew her friend in for an embrace. Willow wasn’t alone in wishing for simpler days, and time with friends -- the close friends a person could be quiet with for hours -- was sorely needed.

They released each other as a clamor of footsteps filled the house. Molly, Andrew, and Vi, a spacey redhead in a perpetual beanie who’d arrived the prior morning, searched the kitchen for snacks. “Why are all the good Christmas movies so depressing?” Vi asked. “Jimmy Stewart’s trying to kill himself. Then there’s the one with the mountain goblin invading everyone’s homes and robbing them blind. Don’t get me started on Rudolph--”

Buffy’s cell phone rang. Since everyone but the Winchesters was at her house, she headed toward her room, hoping to hear Dean’s deep voice on the other end asking what she was wearing.

Instead Dean screamed, “Buffy! Sam! They took Sam!”

Giles sped toward the Winchesters’ apartment, as Buffy called out directions. “Turn left!” she cried, causing him to squeal around a corner.

They took Sam. Dean had said nothing else before disappearing from the phone. She had no idea who took Sam or if they’d taken Dean too. He’d just stopped talking. Buffy’s heart was trying to climb out her throat.

“Stop!” she screamed, opening the door before Giles could slam on the breaks a few blocks from the apartment. On the sidewalk, a bloody, nearly naked Dean stumbled away from them.

“Dean, I’m here!”

Not seeming to see or hear her, he pressed on.

Buffy stood in front of him and shook him by his blood-slick arms. He was sweating yet cold to the touch. The gashes on his arms looked painful, but survivable. The gushing stab wounds on his shoulder and stomach made her dizzy with worry. “Dean, stop!”

He kept walking. Staring at something on the ground, he muttered, “Took him. They took him. Gotta get him back.”

“Leave that to me, okay? You’re going to freeze to death!”

He kept walking, his gait uneven with his cast foot. Losing Sam was Dean’s biggest nightmare. As with other times when he couldn’t shake his nightmares, Buffy drew back and slapped him.

Dean looked at her with tear-filled, frightened eyes. “They took him, Buffy. The Bringers broke in and took Sammy.”

He didn’t resist as Giles placed his jacket over his shoulders and directed Dean to the idling car.

“I was in my room, and I heard this big bang. Before I could even get up, Bringers were crashing through my door and window. I could hear Sam screaming. Oh God, Buffy, he was screaming and fighting, and I couldn’t get to him. I could-I couldn’t--”

“Shh! I will get Sam back. Let’s get you stitched up first.”

They retraced Dean’s bloody footsteps to find his apartment door in splinters. A dead Bringer lay nearby, a broken bookcase on top of him. By Sam’s bedroom door, another Bringer, pieces of its head blasted against the wall. As she escorted Dean to the bathroom to sew up his wounds, she glimpsed two more bodies in his bedroom.

“How many of them were there?” she asked as she wiped the blood off his chest.

“Seven? Eight? I think Sam was sleeping. Hard to stay awake on all those drugs.”

“What would they want with him?”

Dean shook his head.

“Babe, I think we need to take you to the hospital. These stab woun--”

“No! Fuck! We have to get Sam!”

Buffy had seen people in the throes of loss, but this was the first time she’d seen someone out of his mind with grief.

“One of them is alive!” Giles called.

Dean bolted from the bathroom. The Bringer under the bookcase was still twitching. Dean yanked him from under the rubble and slammed him against the wall. “Listen up you filthy fuck, you’re gonna tell me where my brother is, or I’m gonna cut it out of you.”

The Bringer coughed, spraying Dean with blood. It smiled a twisted red grin.

Scooping a dagger off the floor, Dean dug it into the Bringer’s shoulder, letting its weight hang on the blade. As it opened its mouth to scream, they saw its tongue had been cut out.

The wound in Dean’s own shoulder gushed. His eyes were dark with hate, a snarl on his lips. He looked like a stranger.

Buffy tugged on Dean’s arm. “We’re not going to get anything out of him,” she said softly.    

With one swipe across the neck, Dean finished the Bringer. He stumbled back, slipped in a smear of blood, and crashed to the floor with a cry. Pale and sweaty, he began to shiver.

“Call 911,” Buffy barked at Giles.

“God dammit, Cas! Where the fuck are you?” Dean muttered.

“He’s stuck at the wrong airport. Travel’s a bitch.” A handsome middle aged man with black hair just starting to grey stood by the kitchen, a know-it-all smirk on his face. “Hell, I don’t think I could have snuck over to this fun new playground if it wasn’t for you two, always leading the blind, doomed charge.”

“Who--?” Giles didn’t need to finish his question.

Though she knew it was pointless, Buffy scanned the room for weapons. The man in front of her was dead, memorialized in Dean’s tattoos, which meant the man was The First, who they still didn’t know how to hurt.

Dean’s breathing turned short and sharp. “Dad?”

The apparition scowled. “Don’t blame me for your existence. I wanted all you muck-monkeys wiped out.”

Dean’s eyes went wide with fear. “You!” 

“Finally!” The First said with a clap as Dean tried to crawl away. “You know, I’m surprised little Sammy hadn’t figured it out yet. You? Well, everyone knows you’re an idiot skating by on good looks and charm.”

Dean’s eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out. She couldn’t do anything about The First, but Buffy wasn’t going to lose the man she loved. Wrapping Dean in a purple blanket from the couch, she picked him up and started to head downstairs.

“This is adorable, by the way,” said The First. “Never thought I’d see Dean Winchester in puppy love. So cute. I’d root for you two kids if I wasn’t planning on torturing and killing you. For his sake, it would be kinder to let him die now.”

“No one’s dying today, asshole.”

“Dirty mouth! I see why he likes you. Well, I have go try on my new suit. You keep vainly trying to save everyone,” He raised his hands in a mock gun and fired at her with a smile, “and I’ll keep knocking them down.”

 After finishing his interview with the police, Giles rubbed his temples and joined Willow, Xander, and Dawn in the hospital waiting room. He opened his eyes at a rattling sound. Willow handed him a bottle of aspirin. “Can I use the entire bottle?”

“Save some for the rest of us,” said Xander.

They looked about the room blankly, needing to focus on something other than the reality of being in the hospital again, of nearly losing Dean again, of being attacked again.

The faint sounds of Buffy arguing with a nurse drifted down the hall. Despite her insistence, the doctor wasn’t going to let anyone see Dean for a few more hours. He had a collapsed lung, and had nearly bled to death. As soon as those pressing concerns were attended to, the doctors wanted more x-rays to determine if they would need to put pins in his ankle.

“Merry Christmas,” said Dawn.

Pouring himself a cup of spoon-eroding tar from the waiting room coffee stand, Giles downed four aspirin and mulled over the situation. First Spike, now Sam. The former had been The First’s pawn. Abducting him may have been a simple matter of keeping him quiet, though he didn’t doubt Spike was being used for more nefarious purposes. But Sam? Other than their fight over a week ago, he should have been unknown to The First. And why would the Bringers take only one brother, when It had left a bloody message about both? Judging from his desire to flee, Dean recognized The First as something beyond the image of his father. How did It know their father?

“What does The First want with Sam Winchester?” Giles asked.

They turned their tired stares to him.

“I’ve not been around them enough to earn their confidence, but there is something about the Winchesters they aren’t telling us. Have they disclosed anything about their more bizarre interactions with the supernatural?”

Xander, his unsure eyes darting to the girls, started, “One time there was this cursed rabbit’s foot--”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Okay, another time a ghost just wanted someone to come to his birthday party-- ”

“Dear God, what have they been filling your head with?” Giles asked.

“In defense of all the guy-folk, we were usually pretty tipsy when these stories came out, so I may be hazy on the details.”

Buffy, her coat still smeared with blood, stormed into the waiting room. “Give someone a medical degree, and they think they know everything.”

The pounding of her pacing punished Giles’ throbbing head. “Please, sit down.”

“I can’t! I hate waiting like this! I need to either be with Dean or out saving Sam, but I don’t even know where to start!”

They didn’t know how to save Sam either, so they surrounded their friend with hugs. The edge in Buffy’s countenance softened as she drew strength from her friends.

Unfortunately, Giles could not spare her the moment of relaxation. “Would you like some coffee?”

She shook her head and slumped into a chair beside Willow.

“We were just sharing stories about the Winchesters,” Xander explained.

“Like how they’re wonderful and have made my life a thousand times easier?” Buffy pouted.

“Heaven sent, you could say,” Giles encouraged.

“Well, yeah, an angel brought them here,” said Dawn.

“And an angel brought Dean back from the brink of death.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Does no one find it odd that angels are so interested in them, and yet offered no protection against this attack?”

“Mysterious ways sure are gosh darn mysterious,” Xander said, clueless as to what Giles was driving at.

“It’s not just angels.” Willow’s eyes darted between Buffy and Giles. “I, um, I had a spell go wrong a few months back. It let me see in people, and there was something weird in Sam. Inside, he looked almost like Spike, a soul wrestling a demon. When I confronted him about it, he said the demon that killed their mom was, uh, it was feeding Sam demon blood.”

This was news. This was progress. Giles leaned forward. “Feeding demon blood to a baby. That could only be for a ritual of some kind.”

“That’s what I said, but he didn’t know anything else.”

“He doesn’t have voices tell him to do bad things, does he?” Xander asked. All three of the girls glared at him.

A chess board formed in Giles’ mind. On opposite sides, Sam and Dean, one moved by the forces of Hell, the other the forces of Heaven. Whatever the game was, it was still in play. “Buffy, I need to know the circumstances surrounding Dean and Sam’s deaths.”

“I told you: it’s private.”

“Dammit, Buffy! This isn’t about betraying privacy. It’s about saving Sam,” Giles snapped.

“How could anything that happened over there matter over here?”

“Because I think whatever was after them, followed them.”

Buffy fixated on Giles, her loyalties wrestling inside her. Finally, she whispered, “Sam was murdered right in front of Dean. Stabbed. He died in his arms...”

 Dean kept his eyes closed and took stock of his body. A dull throbbing in his ankle. A stronger pain in his side. It didn’t feel like his body. It was distant, like it was floating slightly to his left. Someone was rubbing small circles on the back of his hand with their thumb. He squeezed the hand and tried to open his eyes, only catching a flash of blonde before closing them again.

Sam. Sam surrounded by men in robes. Sam screaming, the bandage on his stomach blooming red.

A far away voice. “Hey Dean, your Girly’s here.”

The Bringers. A flurry of knives. He still slept with his .45. Shot the one who broke through the window.

The voice again. It was sweet, familiar. “I’m going to fix everything.”

Another one burst through the door. Took two bullets to the chest before going down. Sam was screaming. A crash. Sam was fighting back.

“Baby, I need your help. What’s after you?”

In the living room, he saw them carrying his brother out. Couldn’t shoot or he’d hit Sammy. White hot pain. He threw a Bringer off his back. More pain ripping through his body. Head shot. Quiet. Sam was gone.

Dean could barely keep his eyes open, but he knew he was in a bed. He couldn’t save Sam from bed. He tried to get up, but something pulled at his chest. Two hands pushed his shoulders back into the mattress.

“Dean, you can’t get up, okay? You need to rest.”

“Gotta get Sammy.”

“I know.”

He tried to get up again. Buffy shoved him back into the bed. He glared at her.

“Saving Sam is my number one priority right now, or don’t you think I can do it?” Buffy asked.

He knew she couldn’t. She could kill any beast Hell threw at her, but this wasn’t a hellbeast.

“You recognized The First, didn’t you? I need you to tell me how to kill it.”

They’d broken up, in part, because of lying. Since getting back together, they’d tried to be as upfront as two monster hunters could, but there were parts of his world too crazy to share. Rather than lie, he avoided them. Steered her away whenever she got close. The questions now sat under a glaring spotlight, and he couldn’t get away. “You think I’m keeping secrets.”

She looked away, biting her lip until it turned white. “It’s what you do.”

Buffy’s eyes usually sparkled with curiosity and fire when asking him questions. Not now.

“Go get Giles,” Dean said. “I only want to say this once.”

As Dean sipped his water, Giles examined him, looking as annoyed as Buffy did concerned. “Just say it,” Dean said.

“Who are you, and how do you know The First?” Giles demanded.

All of Dean’s anti-authority snark rose up. Were Giles a cop, he’d delight in giving him the run around. But he wasn’t. He was someone who also cared about Buffy, and they were both in harm’s way because of him. “Back home, we’re going through the Apocalypse. Not one of your generic baddies trying to end the world apocalypses, a bonafide four horsemen, seal-breaking war against Heaven and Hell.”

“Revelation?” said Giles in shock.

“Bingo. It’s just skirmishes now. But when the players are big enough, skirmishes wipe out cities. The angels ain’t doin’ so hot. I think they bit off more than they could chew when they triggered the whole thing.”

“The angels started the Apocalypse? I thought they were supposed to be on our side.” Buffy so wanted allies. After his miraculous healing, she’d asked Dean daily questions about Castiel.

“With a few exceptions, angels only care about angels. Right now, Heaven’s biggest concern is bringing God back.”

Everyone’s eyes went wide. “God?”

“Story is, he went awol after Lucifer tricked Eve. Left the archangel Michael in charge.”

Giles removed his glasses and slipped into a nearby chair, his face buried in his hands.

“Thing is, they can’t really settle the fight until Michael and his brother Lucifer have a brawl.”

“Lucifer, like, the devil?” Buffy asked. “We’re talking about a red, horned guy with bad facial hair?”

“Lucifer, as in the fallen archangel with a grudge against humanity,” Dean grumbled.

Giles took a deep breath. Part of Dean thrilled at seeing the Watcher so spun by the news. “What happens if this ‘brawl,’ as you call it, takes place?”

“If Michael wins, the angels are guessing half the planet dies. If Lucifer wins…” Dean shrugged, confident they could imagine that outcome.

“What’s stopping them? They’re archangels. Can’t they do whatever they want?”

Dean set his cup back on the side table and tapped his fingers before continuing. “Remember what I told you about demon possession where we’re from? To carry out any work on Earth, angels need to possess someone, but angels are different than demons. I mean, these are beings you can’t even see without losing your eyes, and that’s just the bottom rung. They can’t possess just anyone or they’ll blow their vessel.”

“Vessel?”

“The person they’re possessing. So only a few people fit, and those people have to give the angel permission.

“Archangels have an even rougher time finding someone who’ll fit. Essentially, they have to use the Cupids--”

“Cu-cupids?” sputtered Giles. “You mean with the,” he mimed a bow and arrow.

“I mean fat naked guys who trick people into falling in love, yeah. See, they get two people who can be possessed by angels to have a baby, then make their kid fall in love with other possible angel vessels until they breed an ultra strong, dishwasher-safe, microwavable kid to keep on standby in case they want to sully their holy feet with Earth muck.

“Heaven was patting itself on the back, ‘cause they got two vessels for Michael.”

Buffy, her eyes unfocused, silently dropped into the other chair.

“Dear God,” muttered Giles.

“Only Hell wanted a vessel for Lucifer.” Unable to bear Buffy’s response, Dean stared at his hands. “They snuck into Sam’s nursery. Fed him demon blood. Claimed him and several dozen other kids for Hell. But they took a special interest in Sam. Couldn't resist the whole brother versus brother angle.

“Whatever Cas did to get us here left enough room for the Devil to squeeze through. So I gotta save Sam as soon as possible. Who knows what hell they’ll put him through to get him to say yes.”

 “Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP, SAMMY!” Cold and stiff, Sam opened his eyes to see Dean standing over him. Sam was lying on the stone floor of a fire-lit chapel, his feet and hands in shackles.

“Dean, where are we?” he whispered as he tugged at his bonds.

Unbound, Dean crouched beside him, a satisfied grin on his face. “We’re in my playroom, little brother.” Then Dean shoved his hand into Sam’s chest, setting of a small, painful series of shocks to his heart.    

Trembling, Sam pushed himself away, but his irons prevented him from a comfortable distance.

Dean’s warm, familiar face -- the face that had calmed Sam’s fears his entire life -- morphed into a man with deep set eyes and blistered skin.

“Lucifer!”

“I would say, ‘In the flesh,’ but I’m having a teensy problem there, Sammy. See, this world, whatever it is, is short of even inadequate vessels. All I can do is appear as the dead, which ironically includes you and your brother. I’ve had to recruit minions.”

Lucifer whistled, and two Bringers dragged in a barely conscious Spike leaving a trail of dark blood from the stump at his knee. Following close behind, was a Turok-Han. The Bringers dropped Spike at his feet and bowed before leaving.

“It’s nice to find people who share your vision for ending the world. This one,” he said as the Turok-Han kicked Spike in the ribs, “was the first creature I found here. He was stumbling through the street whining about his soul. I offered him purpose. I offered him his heart’s desires, and he didn’t deliver. He is the only creature I’ve found here that I could use, and he refused to be my vessel. Couldn’t kill your brother or the little souped-up whore he’s fucking. Spike’s still useful though.” One by one, the Turok-Han bit off Spike’s fingers while his screams filled the cave.

“Either of you say ‘yes’ and it stops.” Lucifer grinned.

Spike laughed, spending a spray of blood from his lips. “My exes are better at torture.”

“Isn’t it hilarious?” Lucifer said. “As long as we keep his head attached, the parts just grow back. He’s like an etch-a-sketch of pain. Get comfy and soak in the show, Sammy, because when my pet is finished learning the vampire’s limits, it’s your turn.”

Yes, Amends. Addressed in a future chapter.

Read Giles’ dossiers on: Dani    Molly    Vi

next chapter

[allisonswrittenwords]

Continuing on with this month’s theme, we’re looking at another production company you may remember (I briefly mentioned their association with last week’s production company, Coca-Cola Telecommunications).  And if you do remember it, it might be because of the name, and the giggles it garnered from little kids who couldn’t believe what this company was called.

You were super immature, weren’t you?

It’s Pronounced “DEEK!”

Stop giggling, grown up child!

Anyway, DIC Entertainment (formerly known as DIC Audiovisuel, DIC Enterprises, DIC Animation City, and DIC Productions) is a former television and film production company, established in 1971 in France as DIC Audiovisuel by Jean Chalopin.  It was the production division of media company Radio Television Luxembourg (which in itself was established in Luxembourg, is called RTL Group, and still exists today, 99 years young).

The American extension of DIC Audiovisuel was established in April 1982 by Andy Heyward, and was headquartered in Burbank, California.  Their purpose was to translate DIC’s productions into English, but also produced television animation for both broadcast and syndication.  Its non-creative work was outsourced overseas, and the company established anti-union policies, while hiring staff on a per-program basis to cut costs.

So, what’s in a name?

DIC stood for Diffusion Information Communications, though within the industry, it was often referred to as “Do It Cheap.”

DIC’s programming was pretty well-known if you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and the only thing that could easily equal (or even rival) the company’s programs were their production company logos.  The cartoons were great, but their logos…were always a little on the creepy side (more on that later).

Go, Go Flagship Show!

Soon after establishing DIC Entertainment’s American brand, Andy Heyward developed Inspector Gadget, a series about a bumbling detective who is the $100 version of The Six Million Dollar Man.  Whereas Lee Majors’ character was made better, stronger, and faster, Gadget was, well, bumbling, catastrophic, and silly (but still bionic).  But, he was pretty lovable, and always managed to save the day, if not for the help of his niece, her computer book (who didn’t want one of those?!), and their dog, appropriately named Brain.

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I loved Inspector Gadget in the 1980s (probably not in its earliest run, because it premiered when I was about a year old).  Back then, I had no idea it was inspired by bumbling 1960s detective Maxwell “Agent 86” Smart from the 1960s sitcom/spy spoof series Get Smart (and hey, they even had the same voice, who knew?).  Now, I love the idea that Maxwell Smart, every bit as bumbling, catastrophic, and silly, could have an animated counterpart.

Amazing, right?

The series ran in first-run syndication beginning in 1983, until 1986, for a total of two seasons and 86 episodes.  It was pretty funny and successful, which gave it the staying power to run in syndication through the late 1990s (last I saw, it was on Nickelodeon when I was in my teens, which was about 1996).

Around the same time Inspector Gadget was picking up steam, DIC co-produced (with ABC) another animated series, The Littles, which aired on that station during the same time frame Inspector Gadget did (September 1983 until November 1985), for three seasons and 29 total episodes, and two post-series movies (the theatrical film/prequel Here Come the Littles in 1985, and the made-for-television movie Liberty and the Littles, which aired in late 1986 on the ABC Weekend Special).

Like the Inspector Gadget theme, you’ll never get the theme for The Littles out of your head.

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I mean, you can stop a Little.  I’m pretty sure brooms and vacuum cleaners do the trick.

Kideo TV

By 1986, DIC (at that time profitable due to successes with Inspector Gadget and The Littles), along with toy company Mattel and Lexington Broadcasting Services Company (by then LBS Communications, established a syndicated block of programming called Kideo TV.  The programs in the block were Rainbow Brite, Popples, and Ulysses 31, as well as Get Along Gang reruns.  Metromedia stations agreed to carrying the block in January 1986, with the programming officially launching in April of that same year.

The Full Circle Buyout

In 1987, Radio Television Luxembourg and Jean Chalopin’s 52% stake in DIC was bought out by Andy Heyward, making the United States office the main base of operations.  After the buyout, Chalopin left the company and formed C&D (Creativity and Development).

The buyout, however, left DIC Entertainment in debt, and foreign rights to DIC programs were sold to Saban Productions, who in turn sold them to C&D (you know, full circle and all that jazz).  At the time, Heyward thought of Chalopin as the enemy, and the sale permanently damaged DIC’s relationship with Saban, leading to DIC suing Saban Productions for damages.  That was settled in 1991.

Animation City and Funtown

In 1987, DIC Entertainment changed its name to DIC Animation City, Inc., and entered the toy business with development of the Old MacDonald talking toyline.  However, debt was still a huge problem for DIC, and this resulted in DIC moving production of Dennis the Menace to Canada, which allowed to tax breaks and grants the Canadian government had in place, and work on other series moved to Taiwan and Korea.  By this point, DIC had shows on all three major networks – six half-hours of shows, and 50 hours per week in syndicated programming.

In 1989, a 26 hours per week programming block, Funtown, premiered on CBN Family Channel (later The Family Channel, then Fox Family, ABC Family, and now Freeform).

Upload via VideoGoodiesWA (there’s more to this commercial block, but this has the Funtown introduction on it)

More Buyouts, Independence, and the Final Buyout

As the 1990s moved in, DIC Animation City went through several forms: a joint venture with Capital Cities/ABC (DIC Animation City was folded into DIC Entertainment LP, despite plans to stay independent of DIC Entertainment LP, and became part of the Walt Disney Company in January 1996 following Walt Disney Company’s 1995 acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC.  another full circle moment: Saban was acquired by Disney in 2001, but DIC had gone independent by then.  They’d remain this way (beginning in 2000) until 2008, when they agreed to merge with Cookie Jar Entertainment.

As of 2012, Cookie Jar Entertainment was acquired by Canadian production company DHX Media, which holds all rights to DIC programming to this day.

The name DIC, synonymous with children’s programming for a generation of kids beginning in the early 1980s, was no more with its 2008 disestablishment.

Those Logos

        It is one thing to know about DIC’s programming, but a whole other thing to know about DIC’s other biggest memory draw…its name and accompanying logo.

Beginning with its flagship program in 1983, DIC employed a custom logo that accompanied Inspector Gadget and The Littles during its premiere seasons in 1983.  However, beginning in 1984, the logo changed to a standard logo that would accompany all of its programming.

There was the “Vortex,” and all its variations:

Nothing pleasant ever seemed to come out of this logo.  The synth music (and the even more ominous alternative music), the animation style, the darkness of it…it wasn’t pretty or colorful.  You’d think a bright, cheerful series of programs would have something a little less…dark.  I think the only time this logo didn’t make me cringe a little on the inside was when it followed Rainbow Brite, since the music from that show’s outro played under the logo.

And there was the rather infamous “Kid in Bed” logo, which surprisingly had a long shelf life for a production company logo – 12 years and several variants, all of which had one thing in common: Kids of the 1980s wanting to know who that kid was, and another group feeling depressed that the dog has long crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

Because admit it, you’ve never seen this logo and not wondered about how someone came to creating this.

Unlike the Vortex logo, this one was more tame – it had several different songs and several voices saying the company’s name, which as we came to find out was pronounced “DEEK.”  You probably know the joke with this, so I won’t bore you with those details.

Then came “The Incredible World of DIC,” which was the company’s final logo as a production company…

This was the logo that was featured on then-current DIC programs, beginning in the early 2000s (the actual logo design got its start on the final “Kid in Bed” variant) and featured a very bouncy song, a total contrast to its predecessors.

And of course, I would never leave well enough alone without a little compilation of the logos.

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A History Overshadowed by Its Logo

The DIC Entertainment catalog of shows is actually quite impressive, and if you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, you definitely grew up on their cartoons, the same way we grew up on Marvel Sunbow/Marvel Entertainment Group.

Unfortunately, any legacy of decent cartoons is overshadowed by the internet and its immaturity.  There are logo preservationists, who want nothing more than to show off their amazing archive collection, and then there are the people who feel the need to relive that time when they were six years old and felt like they were saying a dirty word everytime they saw this logo.  For me, it was never something funny, I just always thought it was a strange logo.  Even today, it still seems like “some strange logo,” and nothing more.

Which is really a shame, considering the impressive catalog of shows.  This is a long playlist of the intros of their shows, but it is worth looking at in dribs and drabs.

And Now, You!

Do you remember DIC Entertainment’s cartoons (and films, because they made a few of those too!)?  What were your favorite shows, and which logo do you like?  For me, it is hard to pick a favorite, though I loved Rainbow Brite, The Real Ghostbusters, C.O.P.S., Care Bears, and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin.  That’s not even an exhaustive list!

Oh, and favorite logo? The Kid in Bed, because it was only weird and not scary.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Next week, another animation/children’s programming production company.  This time, we’re going north to Canada for a company that produced shows that were known here and there.  Remember, we’re talking defunct companies, so no, it isn’t Nelvana.

That’s it.  That’s your only hint.

Have a great day!

    This week, we're looking at another production company you may remember.  And if you do remember it, it might be because of the name, and the giggles it garnered from little kids who couldn't believe what this company was called. Continuing on with this month's theme, we're looking at another production company you may remember (I briefly mentioned their association with last week's production company, …

[carajay1317]

DJ, Turn It Up! 50 Song Shuffle Meme

(This challenge originally belongs to FiretoIce on DeviantArt)

Tagged by @szeherezadaa​ -- thank you!

I’m challenging @gilrael​ @yallmight​ @negare-boshi​ @kevinkevinson​ @katsukiisyuurii​ @the---cc​ @ohprcr​ @rynezion​ and/or anyone else interested!

50 Song Shuffle Meme

[ I’m pulling all these songs from my “unsorted” playlist so they’ll be pretty random! ]

1. I have a fear of…

Be My Baby by Bea Miller

To be fair, I’d probably be a little weirded out if someone randomly told me that

2. I hate…

Du courage by Louane

Bravery...? If you go by the lyrics, though, I definitely do want to change the world. If I didn’t make any difference at all I’d probably hate that

3. I hate you because…

Australian Summer by Govs

the government I whisper (I’m imagining that meme where they pull off the paper and the guy goes “A CHILD”)

4. I love…

Drummer Boy by MisterWives

MisterWives’ latest album is awesome! Very summery ☀

Ironically I used to tell people I liked “invisible drummer boy” when they asked if I had a crush

5. I love you because…

Capsize by FRENSHIP and Emily Warren

too many feels? haha

6. She said…

Lo Que Quieras by Denver

"What you want” I can’t tell if this is more of a “whaddaya want” or “anything you want” vibe, hmm

7. He said…

Insecure by Shane

Well that’s as good of a response as anything 😂

8. We said…

Malibu 1992

A good time and place to be if we went time-travelling, I think!

9. I caught a disease from…

Parallel Lines (Live Acoustic) by Robby Hecht and Caroline Spence

my approximate feelings toward math

10. I would sing … as a love song.

IOU by Annabel Jones

The first lyric is “I make you so sad, I know that I do” so I don’t think that’d go over too well ahahaha

11. I found … in my room.

Hello by Allie X

A hello! Makes me think of that time I cleaned out my closet and I found 3 bags worth of handwritten letters from my first friend :’)

12. I would kill someone if they…

In The Wild by ROMES

This is literally the most chill song ever I would not kill someone to this tune and I don’t know if I’d be killing anyone anyway, haha. I guess in the wild is a good place to get away with a murder though? #strangerthings

13. I would marry someone if they…

Wild One by Lucky Rose, Tep No

If this song was our relationship dynamic I could definitely see why! 

14. I would kill for a…

Sheep In Wolves Clothes by little hurricane

... no comment?

15. Air is really made of…

See You Again, Love Me Like You Do, Sugar (Acoustic Mashup)

"mashup” is pretty accurate

16. I think about…

Move Together by James Bay

uhhhhhh good song, not usually on my mind?

17. I am…

No Average Angel by Tiffany Giardina

my dream future haha

18. The secret ingredient is…

Wake Up by AWOLNATION

productivity only happens in the wakeful hours! 💪

19. I will dance with my love to…

Cry Baby by The Neighbourhood

I’m not sure what kind of dance it is but clearly it’s quality 😂

20. I have a crush on…

Aeroplane by Holly Throsby

Plane flights are the best 💕

21. I got hurt because…

Vibe by JoJo

someone killed my vibe? true

22. My last words will be…

24K Magic by Bruno Mars

Oh my god, hahaha YES (esp about the intro)

23. The song at my funeral will be…

If This is Love by Ruth B.

Aww :’)

24. I died because…

Beautiful Mess by Kristian Kostov

If you ask @the-wayward-weeaboo​ what my reaction was during Eurovision this year that’s pretty accurate. Very accurate. Really accurate.

25. The story of your life is…

For You by Lucy Rose

💕

26. I like to eat…

The Wave by Colouring

This reminds me of that saying “EAT DIRT” pffft but like 10x more chill?

27. I live because…

Chewing Gum by Nina Nesbitt

Literally in the last tag game I did I think I mentioned that I’m not a fan of gum hahahaha

28. I’m immortal because…

Someone To Stay by Vancouver Sleep Clinic

refer to #25 here for proof of this truth

29. My superpower is…

LÉON’s Lullaby by LÉON

The power of singing? Yesss

30. Tonight I will…

FALLING IN LOVE by RossyPP

I was planning to watch a new TV show so that’s good news :D

31. They insulted my mother by…

Feel Good Inc. by filous, LissA

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN THO

CAPITALISM AT WORK??

32. I will dream of…

I Can Only. (feat. Alessia Cara) by JoJo and Alessia Cara

33. I licked…

Hearts on Fire by Molehill

See this is why I never get a S.O. hahaha

34. My nickname is…

Clash (Slash Remix by Shiny Mob) by Caravan Palace

Oooooh a sICK nickname! I’m taking it

35. My best friend is…

Arrullo De Estrellas by Zoé

A lullaby of stars

36. I would remove … from the world.

Invincible by Two Door Cinema Club

e q u a l i t y GO

37. I wanted to be … as a kid.

Flashlight by Kasia Mos

I’m fairly certain it was ballerina/author/equestrian tho... 😂

38. I wish I could juggle…

Venus by Sleeping At Last

That would be a cool hobby

39. I would bring … with me to a desert island.

La Revolución Sexual by La Casa Azul

Typing this out was difficult because of my laughter OohMYgOsH

on a side note I actually have no idea what this song is about I just liked that it was catchy hahaha

40. In my underwear you will find…

Chambre 12 by Louane

Apparently it’s very roomy down there I’m so sorry

41. Your children are like…

Sweet Madness by Sons of maria, Angelika Vee

That’s a pretty accurate description of kids tho

42. I would trade my soul for…

Just A Little Bit by Kids of 88

Desperate times call for desperate means

43. I think the moon is made of…

Scar by Foxes

Man in the moon’s got it rough

44. I will bask in…

Into The Sunset by Mako

👌

45. I lost THE GAME because…

Bigger Than Me by Katy Perry

a legitimate reason

46. I would lose a fight because…

Rewind by The Undercover Dream Lovers

Let’s not replay my mistakes hahaha it’s like a bad viral video

47. My deep dark secret is…

Move Me by Wet

hm.

48. My friends would describe me (as)…

Lost Boys Life by Computer Games and Darren Criss

49. My favorite song is…

Sophisticated Bad Girl by Colby O’Donis

Not my actual fave but a good jam haha

50. This meme was…

Purple Yellow Red and Blue by Portugal. The Man

Definitely pretty interesting! Haha

This was fun! Not the best songs tbh since it’s from my random-maybe-I-like-it playlist, so I’ll definitely have to do it again with a different playlist! Thanks @szeherezadaa for the tag! also Disco Pogo omg haha