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pkg4mumtown · 3 years ago

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Must Be The Whiskey (Ch. 2)

Rating: M

Summary: Stephen’s a stubborn asshole and you’re still hurt, so how is this going to get solved? Well, it might be the whiskey.

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Gender Neutral Reader, No Y/N, Friends to Lovers, First Person POV, Post-Blip

A/N: Thank you to everyone who liked, reblogged, and commented! It means the world to me!

Taglist: @mysticninetalis @calm-thy-breasts @s1xthirty

Wong POV

Wong knew something was up as Stephen passed him, more stoic and grumpy than usual and without the presence of his former disciple. That was far too short of a training session for things to have gone well, not even mentioning the fact that he’d heard the yelling just now. Granted, he did force Stephen into the training session because he was no fool and could see him pulling away; so it was partially Wong's own fault.

He pursed his lips and finished his tea in the dining area before venturing off to find the taller man. Stephen would do well to cool off before Wong showed up to interrogate him.

“Stephen…?” Wong knocked on his bedroom door.

“Not right now, Wong,” Came Stephen's sharp reply.

“If not now, when?” the shorter man rolled his eyes, opening the door anyway.

Stephen sat in the chair at his desk, one leg crossed over the other and a clear glass of amber liquid in a trembling hand. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table directly next to him with a wooden crate of other whiskey bottles sitting just next to it.

“Do I have a sound proofing spell on my room or something?” Stephen muttered sarcastically, taking a sip of whiskey and sighing as the liquid warmed his chest.

Wong’s nose scrunched up at seeing Stephen’s damp tunic and the smell of a workout that overpowered the lingering scent of incense, “You could at least shower before you drown your sorrows.” Wong was met with a blank stare and another sip, “What’s wrong with you this time?”

“What’s been wrong with me every other time you’ve asked me recently?”

“Your own cowardice,” Wong shrugged, answering easily.

“That’s—” Stephen cut himself off with a laugh, “How is it cowardly to be professional?”

“Because you’d rather sit in here, hide, and drink than speak to them about how you feel. I understood your reasoning before, but they’re no longer learning under you. You’re equals and there was never any rule against that.” Wong watched Stephen grip his glass tighter, clearly at war internally. “You’re both attracted to each other, so you can't use that as an excuse either. It’s quite painful to watch sometimes.”

“They deserve someone better,” Stephen mumbled. “Someone not so engrossed in work and standoffish, I—”

Stephen went silent again.

“You pulling away like this will only make them resent you later or it’ll make them think they did something wrong when we know damn well it’s all you. It will make them want to move to another Sanctum and I know you don’t want that.”

“They’d be better off that way.”

“Do you really believe that? Then I'd have two miserable Sanctum Masters to deal with and I can barely deal with the one.”

“What do you want me to say!? That I have feelings for them!?” Stephen raised his voice, knocking back the last of the whiskey in his glass. “They’re already mad at me, maybe it should stay that way,” he growled, his voice hoarse from the alcohol.

“Actually, yes, I’m glad you finally admitted it. It’s been like pulling teeth,” Wong sighed.

“Oh, bite me,” Stephen muttered over the rim of the glass before licking a drop clinging to the rim.

“I think you’ll find they’re a lot more forgiving than you think. Just tell them the truth, Stephen. Stop trying to drink your woes away.”

“Where the hell can I drink in peace around here? Damn...” Stephen sighed, reaching for the bottle of whiskey again. He was clearly done with the conversation and back to talking to himself.

Wong made a portal before Stephen could reach the bottle, causing it to fall—along with the wooden crate of bottles. Stephen cringed as the bottles landed who knows where, thudding and clanking together.

“Wong, I swear if any of those broke...”

“Go take a shower. I'll give you those back when you pull your head out of your ass,” Wong waved his hand dismissively and left with no room for arguments.

Stephen POV

Wong’s talk didn’t help Stephen whatsoever, in fact it only made him more defiant on the matter. He showered and combed his hair into a somewhat acceptable position, then changed into a ratty, old, gray t-shirt with jeans and a cardigan; not quite the clothes he used to go out in but he wasn’t trying to pick anyone up anyway. With a quick scolding to Levi to stay put, Stephen opened a portal to the nearest bar and stepped through.

“’Stop trying to drink your woes away’,” Stephen mocked, “Give me a break.” He walked out of the alley and toward the front door, “’Just tell them how you feel’,” he mocked again, “Yea, so I can make their life miserable and make them hate me even more. How about no.”

In his ranting to himself, Stephen missed the decorative chalkboard with “Country Night” written in cutesy, Western-themed writing. He sat heavily at the far corner of the bar with a sigh, hoping no one would fill in the seat to his left. Luckily, his other side was protected by a wall.

“Macallan, neat, please,” Stephen called out to the bartender.

I was startled awake by a sudden shaking and a heavy weight on my chest, but when I opened my eyes, I only saw the ceiling. It wasn’t until I saw Levi’s collars perk up and tap my face, that I relaxed.

“Dammit, you scared me,” I shook my head, running my hand over the fabric and trying to get my heart under control.

I barely had it steadied when I felt Levi wrap around my arms and tug me into a sitting position, then try to further tug me to standing. I was still wobbly from sleep and would have absolutely tripped if Levi hadn’t situated itself over my shoulders.

“Buddy, come on, I was sleeping,” I groaned, rubbing my face with both hands. “What’s wrong?” I finally sighed at the cloak's insistence.

I talked to the sentient cloak as if I expected a response but it just floated me down the hall, toward Stephen’s room, I soon realized.

“No, no, no, don’t you dare make me wake him up,” I tried to stop myself by pressing my palms against the hallway walls, but couldn’t hold the position very well and was yanked along by Levi again. “Levi!” I whispered harshly, stopping myself from slamming hard into Stephen’s door by pressing my hands into it and locking my arms out before my body caught up. The door creaked as Levi continued to press forward, while I pushed away. I didn’t notice Levi twisting the doorknob with the lower part of itself, until the door swung open under the force of my pushing. Levi released me, letting my body follow the door and flop to the floor as I hadn't been expecting to be dropped. The door slammed into the wall so loudly, I was surprised there was no damage but prepared myself for yelling from Stephen.

“I’m so sorry,” I panted as I scrambled to my feet.

But, when I looked over to where he should be sleeping, I only found a neatly made bed. I turned toward Levi, who fluttered its collar as if to say “I told you”.

“Is he in danger? What happened?” I questioned the cloak, immediately jumping to the worst-case scenario.

Levi flew over to Stephen’s nightstand instead of trying to play charades, fumbling with the drawers until it found what it was looking for. It delicately placed the broken watch—that I’d seen on Stephen many times—gently in my hand. I’d never really examined it this closely, so I looked it over, feeling a pang in my chest as I read the inscription on the back.

“Time will tell how much I love you –Christine"

I’d heard very brief mentions of Christine from Wong, but didn’t realize how serious it was or may have been. I was snapped out of my thoughts by Levi repeatedly slapping my wrist until I looked up at it, seeing it moving each of its sides wildly in circles.

“Yea, yea I’m getting on with the magic, relax.”

Levi hovered behind me as golden sparks flew from the spell until a portal started opening, letting in whatever sound was near it as a result. Loud country music filled Stephen’s room, which only got worse as I moved closer toward the portal. I set the watch down on the desk and peered through, nearly falling in as I realized the portal had opened up near one of the ceiling speakers. I was thankful for Levi being there to catch me before something worse happened.

I scanned the crowd, wondering if maybe I did something wrong before spotting Stephen stuffed in a corner of the bar, leaning comically away from the woman next to him who insisted on putting her hand on his shoulder. She sat next to him while he ran his palm across his forehead and down to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Seriously, Levi? He’s fine, look!” I pointed.

Levi didn’t think that was enough and tried to shove me through the portal, which I pushed away from me and then closed before the cloak could embarrass both of us. Levi detached from my shoulders almost angrily, pushing me back toward the watch and waving its flaps in circles again.

Stephen POV

It just had to be Country Night. Stephen couldn’t decide what was worse: Being reminded of his childhood while drinking or being lectured by Wong while drinking. He soon discovered that his not-so-impressive get up wasn’t acting like the deterrent he hoped it would be as he heard an overly cheery voice come up behind him.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” the tipsy woman leaned against the bar top and toward Stephen.

“Not interested,” was his dry reply as he leaned toward the wall as much as he could, his scotch sliding with him.

Her uncoordinated hands—clearly caused by alcohol—skimmed Stephen’s cardigan, making him shift uncomfortably as he was caged in. He used a trembling hand to brush her hand away, but she wasn’t really getting the hint.

“You’re strange, it’s cute,” she giggled.

“You have no idea,” Stephen rolled his eyes and downed his first glass of scotch, raising it toward the bartender for another. This bill was going to suck, he thought bitterly and rubbed at his brow.

“Levi, you need to chill. He’s just being hit on and drinking, it’s fine,” I tried to grab the cloak to calm it down. At the mention of “hit” Levi freaked out even more, “Hey, hey, okay, okay, calm down. Being ‘hit on’ doesn’t mean he’s in danger, it means that lady thought he was hot. You know…attractive, cute, whatever.”

Levi waved negatively at what I explained before poking me in the chest.

“No? Me, what?”

Levi caressed my cheek in explanation.

“I think he’s hot? I mean yea, but what does that have to do with this? He’s not in danger, he’s fine.”

Levi gave me an exasperated, deflated pose before swinging around back to my shoulders and taking off so fast that I couldn’t catch myself before it was flying me through the Sanctum. It released me, causing me to go stumbling in to my room while the feral cloak ransacked my clothes.

“You’re driving me absolutely crazy today,” I grumbled, finally getting my steadying myself and dodging a shoe aimed right for my head. “I’m not going to him,” I defiantly crossed my arms. This time, an item was flung faster and harder and I was not prepared for the slap of denim on my face. “You’re not going to stop, are you?” I asked, my voice still muffled by the jeans I was pulling off my face.

Levi finally drifted back over to me, picking up what it wanted and laying a v-neck, a pair of shoes, and a jacket on the bed. It spun around before locating the jeans in my hand and yanking them from my grip to lay on the bed, admiring its handiwork. Levi shoved me toward the bed, making me shake my head and groan.

“Fine, turn around. Face the wall,” I ordered as I started stripping off my tunics.

Levi happily obliged, turning into a corner and wiggling excitedly.

Once I was dressed, I shrugged on my jacket and slipped on my shoes, “Alright, stay here an—”

I didn’t get to finish because Levi dragged me to the bathroom, fussing over my messy hair until it was happy.

“Can I go now?” I sighed.

Levi draped itself over my shoulders, wiggling happily again and flapping its collars in confirmation.

“You’re not coming with, you’re a little out of place, buddy,” I laughed, petting the material.

Slowly, Levi reshaped itself, bringing up the length and draping itself around my neck. It hung loosely, having transformed into a scarf but keeping the same material and markings it already had.

“I forgot you could do that...” I murmured, still amazed at what this cloak could do and having forgotten entirely that it could change to fit the needs of the sorcerer.

I, unknowingly, portaled into the same alley Stephen had; knowing it was the only place to do so away from prying eyes. I had recognized the interior of the bar pretty quickly when we initially peered in from Stephen’s room, so I didn’t need to perform the location spell again.

As soon as I stepped in, I could understand why Stephen looked so miserable as I spotted cowboy hats, boots, and the decorative “Country Night” sign; as if the music hadn't already been a dead giveaway. I made my way around tables and people, feeling Levi tugging impatiently on the back of my neck and leading me with no one being the wiser. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the woman from earlier had left, so I wouldn’t have any awkward confrontations to deal with.

“Hey there, cowboy, can I buy you a drink?” I joked in a terrible drawl as I came up behind him.

“Why is peace so elusive to fin—oh,” Stephen cut his groaning short when he turned and saw me.

“Wow, don’t sound too excited now,” I rolled my eyes and plopped down on the stool next to him; waving to try and get the bartender’s attention.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, spinning his third glass of scotch that he hadn’t drank yet.

“Levi woke me up, it was worried about you,” I shrugged.

The bartender finally noticed my presence and came to take my order, “I’ll have what he's having.”

As if on cue, Levi slid from around my neck, across the space between us, and wound comfortably around Stephen’s neck but wiggling and making a fuss over Stephen at the same time.

“And throw his tab on mine,” I murmured, sliding the my card over discreetly. The bartender simply nodded and disappeared.

“Will you stop?” Stephen swatted Levi as the cloak kept touching his face.

Finally, we were both silent for a stretch, the only thing invading our silence being the clink of the glass the bartender set in front of me.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, not really looking at him so he might be more inclined to answer. I swirled my drink as I waited, bringing the glass to my lips and downing half of the liquid.

“Not really.”

“Did I do something wrong? Is that why you don’t want me invol—” I was cut off by Stephen grabbing my hand, making me freeze. In the last couple years, one thing was unspoken that I learned my first day, Stephen doesn’t like his hands touched, talked about, or stared at.

“No,” he turned toward me, his hand trembling around mine. “Look at me,” he requested and I did, “you didn’t do anything wrong, I’m just…I’m just being stupid.”

“Well, I never thought I’d see the day you call yourself stupid so…it must be bad,” I shrugged, trying not to think about the fact that his hands hadn’t left mine still.

Stephen was silent and mulling over his words, very clearly torn over something.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I get it. If it’s personal or—”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

I blinked, “You don’t want me to leave? I mean, Wong only mentioned London once or twice. Nothing definitive. I don’t get what that has to do with you not talking to me…”

“No, I—if I piss you off or something, I just don’t want you to have to run from me. It always happens, you know how I am. I’m an asshole, I push people away—I pushed Christine away…”

“You pushed me away because you thought I was going to move Sanctums if I got mad at you? I still don’t understand.”

“And…”

I raised my eyebrows at him in question.

How much liquid courage did he actually need, jeez. He was already barely making sense.

I raised my glass to him and tossed the rest back, watching as he did the same with his untouched pour. He was definitely going to feel that one soon. I caught the attention of the bartender again and asked for another round, but made mine a double so I could catch up to Stephen. I looked back at him, as he was slowly breathing out the warmth in his chest, and spied a drop of scotch on his lower lip threatening to fall.

“How dare you let this go to waste,” I scolded him, swiping the drop with my thumb and bringing it to my lips.

I imagined I could taste whatever taste of him the scotch absorbed, only to be ripped from my less than appropriate thoughts by Stephen grabbing my wrist and bringing it away from my face.

“…I like you. A lot.”

“Oh, like…?” I felt my face start to heat up from either the alcohol or his words, I couldn’t tell.

“Mhmm.”

“And you ignored me for a month because you thought if you told me, you’d eventually make me hate you and run away? Do I have that right, now?”

He didn’t respond, but dropped his head slightly.

“How old do you think I am?” I scoffed, shoving his shoulder.

“Christine left. I don’t blame her one bit for it either. I was a dick,” he mumbled, grabbing the glass with less scotch in it as they were set in front of us.

“That was also a long time ago, wasn’t it? Plus, I like to think it’s part of your charm,” I grabbed the double scotch and tapped the edge of my glass with his as a toast.

I drank about half of my double and watched as Stephen grimaced downing the entirety of his single, “I think this is the last one for me. Wong’s gonna kill me.”

“Chicken,” I goaded and tossed back the other half. I let out a big breath with a soft “whew”. Water would probably be wise, I thought to myself as I ordered another round of doubles.

We didn’t have to wait too long as some of the drinkers wandered off to go dance. The doubles were set in front of us, making Stephen groan in protest.

“You don’t have to drink it,” I shrugged, grasping one glass and taking a long swig. This was either going to end really badly or really well.

“Who's paying for all these, by the way?” Stephen croaked from the burn of the scotch as he swallowed just a bit too much at once. “You’ve ordered like eight total drinks since you got here, and I hope you don’t assume I’m paying for all of them,” Stephen cocked his head to the side with sly smile, bringing his face close to mine.

“You’ve got some nerve, Strange,” I smirked, reaching over to grasp his chin between my fingers. “But if you want to know that badly, I’m taking care of us, sweetheart,” I tilted his chin up slightly, running my thumb along his beard.

Stephen’s eyes were half lidded at the touch, making him look all the more drunk. His tongue swiped his bottom lip before the corners of his mouth turned up as his eyes lazily took in my features.

“So, uh, you have nothing to say about…?” Stephen pursed his lips. I couldn’t help but smile as his ‘s’ sounds slurred.

“Well, that depends,” I cleared my throat.

“On?”

“Whether you still remember how to line dance or not,” I nodded to the dance floor where bobbing cowboy hats moved in sync.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think I can forget,” Stephen rolled his eyes. He grabbed my hand and pressed it higher on his face so he could nuzzle it lazily and grabbed his drink with the other. After finishing his drink, he let the glass clatter back onto the bar—earning a not-so-pleased expression from the bartender—and pressed his nose further into my hand.

“Then, let’s go,” I tossed the last of my glass back. I raised my eyebrows and grabbed his wrist, mindful to not grab his fingers, to tug him to his feet.

“Oh, no, no, no…” he lolled his head, not having picked it up quick enough when I tore my hand from his face in excitement.

“Do you want my answer or not?” I tugged again. “Help me out here, Levi.”

“Don’t you da—”

Levi leapt into action, pushing and pulling Stephen by the neck until he gave up and followed me. We parted the sea of people until we got to the middle of the dancefloor where rows of people had been dancing all night. We stuck to the outside of the line dancers so we wouldn’t get yelled at if our uncoordinated, drunk asses messed up. The last song had just ended so the crowd chatted while waiting a few seconds for the next tune to start.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Stephen bumped into my shoulder, hiding a small smirk. His face was flushed from the alcohol which made him almost look nervous as the opening strums of the next song started.

Stephen furrowed his brows as the beginning of Toes by Zac Brown Band rang out, “This isn’t classic.”

“Chill out, classic, it’s still a good song,” I bumped him back. “You’re missing something, though,” I teased, waving my hand discreetly.

Stephen looked up at the black cowboy hat now adorning his head, with Levi playing along by adjusting to look more like a bandana.

“You’re both traitors,” Stephen murmured, falling into step as the dancers around us began as the lyrics started.

Stephen obviously remembered quite well, though it took him a moment to keep the rhythm with everyone else. Soon, we were grooving unsteadily to the song and Stephen even looked like he was enjoying himself. I could hear his laughter over the volume of the music and stomping boots at my attempts at some spinning as we stepped. I’d still say I did pretty well for how fast we had thrown back our drinks, though the spinning was not helping my descent into drunkenness whatsoever. I did catch him watching me over his shoulder as I animatedly sang the lyrics; and I hate to admit it, but that cowboy hat did nothing but compliment his profile.

As the song ended with a volley of rolling “r's”, my body had trouble stopping with the rest of the group because of the momentum from the steps, making me run shoulder-first into Stephen. He was in no better shape than me, but caught me as best as he could with my hands wrapping tightly around his waist like a vice. His body swayed precariously with mine as the momentum died out from our limbs, letting his hand rest on my lower back while my forehead pressed into his chest—and oh did his chest feel better than I’d imagined.

“You okay?” He asked, tapping my back a couple times.

“Mhmm, just got dizzy,” I snorted into his shirt, laughing at who knows what. I blinked a couple times and looked up at him, his gorgeous eyes hidden by the shadow cast by the hat. “You know, you really sell that hat but…” I snapped my fingers, watching it disappear and his hair flop forward a bit, “…I can’t stare all dreamy into your eyes with it on.”

“Oh, and do you do that often?” He offered me a cocky smirk.

“Mmm, no. God, no. I would never get anything done,” I shook my head before dropping it and laughing into his chest.

Stephen threw his head back in a full body laugh, which was rare and a privilege to see from him. Once he calmed down, he started to pull us away, walking us away from the line dancers a few feet; wanting to remove himself from the hell that was this dancefloor when I heard another familiar song starting.

“Wait! No, stay, Stephen,” I pleaded, grabbing his forearms tightly. “I love this song…” I pouted.

He didn’t look convinced, glancing up in the direction of the music as if it would help him identify it better.

“Please, Stephen, one more…” I wrapped my arms around his waist so he couldn’t leave, causing him to visibly gulp at the action. His hands rose up and trembled against my back.

Just before the lyrics started, there was a pause in the music that Stephen used to grab one of my hands and arrange his feet into a better stance for two-step. Once the lyrics chimed in, I had to concentrate as Stephen’s feet started guiding us—a little stiffly—on the outside of the line dancers, with the rest of the two-stepping couples.

No I'm not goin' crazy, but lately my head and my heart

Seem to be at least a million miles apart

My heart says to love ya, my head says to run

It's like my heart is too afraid to tell my head what it's done

I know that it can never be the way it was

Even though you'll be the death of me I can't give you up

Too much is not enough; it's not the love, it's not the lust that grips me

It must be the whiskey

“You couldn’t let me lead, huh?” I teased, taking a break from mouthing the lyrics while never taking my eyes off Stephen’s.

“Not a chance,” he gave me a lopsided grin and brought his head closer to mine until his cheek was pressed against my temple. I felt the vibrations of his voice as he resumed murmuring the lyrics.

I've been drinkin' to remember and drinkin' to forget

I got "I love you" on my mind, I got Jim Beam on my breath

And loneliness has got the rest, I've got nothin' left within me

It must be the whiskey

No I'm not goin' crazy, but lately these thoughts in my head

Are a whirlwind of a world of a million regrets

All the things I should've done, all the things I should've said

All the pain that comes with hatin' the mess you've made of yourself

I know I'm chasin' rainbows thinkin' I could make it work

But the fact is that my actions speak louder than my words

And it only makes it worse thinkin' of her, thinkin' she'll forgive me

It must be the whiskey

I felt Stephen start to loosen up, letting his hips swing out more with his steps. It made the dance all the more sexy and left very little to the imagination about how talented he was with his hips. I’d be the biggest liar if I said it never crossed my mind.

I've been drinkin' to remember and drinkin' to forget

I got "I love you" on my mind, I got Jim Beam on my breath

And loneliness has got the rest, I've got nothin' left within me

It must be the whiskey

[Instrumental]

I've been drinkin' to remember and drinkin' to forget

I got "I love you" on my mind, I got Jim Beam on my breath

And loneliness has got the rest, I've got nothin' left within me

Sometimes it hits me whenever I'm a little tipsy

Oh, it hits me whenever I'm a little tipsy

It must be the whiskey

It's that whiskey

It must be the whiskey

We were a little more in control of our steps this time, slowing down near the end of the song and only really stumbling with the abrupt end. This time, Stephen made no move to untangle himself, only pulling his head back so we were face to face again. His arms wound around me tighter, his hands only shaking a little as he trailed them up and down soothingly.

“Is it?” I asked him nervously.

“Hmm?” He hummed either half-lidded, glassy eyes.

“Is it just the whiskey?”

Stephen retracted one hand, bringing it to my cheek and trying his best to control the shaking, “No,” he let his thumb travel to my lower lip, “it’s because I love you.”

My breath caught in my throat as soon as the words left his lips. I hoped and plead to whoever was listening that this wasn’t a dream and that he’d remember this come morning. I couldn’t help myself any longer and reached up to grasp his jaw on either side. I surged to my toes and kissed him hard, with no care for the people around us. It took Stephen a second to catch up but when he did, his hands were holding me tight against him as if I was going to take off again. An annoyed grumble left his lips as I pulled my mouth away, only for him to quickly dive back in.

“Is that your final answer?” Stephen sighed against my mouth—cocky smirk in place—as he finally released my lips.

“No,” I smiled up at him “this is…” I wound my arms around his neck, feeling Stephen step back a bit as we teetered off balance.

“And what’s that?” His voice dropped, knowing just how to adjust the bass of his voice for maximum effect.

“I love you, too,” I pressed a kiss to his bearded chin, but shoving my index finger against his lips before he could attempt to kiss me again. “However, if you do something like this again, I’ll leave you tied up longer, tighter, and with more humiliation."

“Ooh, promise?” Stephen cooed.

“I’m serious, Stephen…”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I acted irrationally and impulsively and I need to—"

“—think first? Also, you forgot ‘arrogantly’.”

“I was getting there,” Stephen huffed. “And I thought it was ‘part of my charm’?”

“It is, bu—”

“S’cuse me, d'you assholes mind moving so folks who actually want to dance can?” A gruff voice sounded next to us.

Stephen wasn’t even fazed, still looking at me with a goofy smile and leaning closer to me as we had drifted centimeters apart while talking.

“Did you hear something, darling?” He murmured loud enough for the Saturday-night cowboy to hear. His trademark arrogant smirk plastered on his face as he asked the question, urging me to play along.

“You’re such a dick,” I couldn’t help but laugh and push his drunk ass off the dancefloor, counting on Levi to catch him should he stumble.

We made our way back to the bar—albeit quite wobbly even though we did our best to not look shit faced—flagging the bartender down so I could close out. Stephen pressed up against my back, trapping me with a hand on either side of me and a chin on my shoulder.

“Why are you closing the tab? We were just starting to have fun,” he whined in my ear.

“Because we have to go home,” I responded, reaching into my back pocket for my phone and feeling my face go red when Stephen let out a soft groan. Oops. “Is that the Wand of Watoomb or are you just happy to see me?”

“Be careful,” he murmured, nipping my ear and pushing his hips tighter against me.

I turned on my phone screen, showing twenty-five message notifications from Wong, “Wong has been texting me all night asking where you went and why neither of us told him we’d left him alone.”

Stephen groaned at the mention of Wong and dropped his forehead to my shoulder, “He's going to kill me, shit.”

“True,” I nodded, signing the receipt given to me and taking my card back.

——

“Did I get it this time?” I squinted at the portal in the darkened alley.

“Uhh, closer? I guess?” Stephen shouted into the portal, peeking in to look around. “I think these are your quarters in Kamar-Taj,” he yelled again.

“How is that closer?!” I shouted back.

“I mean there’s a gateway to the New York Sanctum here, at least. There’s no gateway from your childhood bedroom to the Sanctum!”

“Good point. My mom is going to call me tomorrow thinking she has ghosts,” I sighed.

I shut the portal and tried again. The alcohol was having worse effects on us than we thought. Stephen couldn’t even concentrate long enough to get us in to a safe room, nearly portaling us into streets and cafes all over the world.

“I’m drunk and I want tea, okay?” was his excuse.

Meanwhile, my brain couldn’t tell the difference between my past and present and had to cycle through all the places I’d lived in that came to mind.

“Now?” I asked, hoping it was the Sanctum because I was so close to just taking a nap on the cold concrete.

“Um…it’s a hallway? Wait, yes? I know this flooring,” Stephen murmured. Levi tugged Stephen through the portal, nearly slamming into a wall on his way through.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” I shrugged and followed them through the portal.

“Give me some warning next time, hello?” Stephen righted himself and chastised the cloak, who smacked the Sorcerer’s cheek.

Levi unwound from Stephen’s neck, giving itself a long stretch and a shake until it was back to its everyday form. Luckily, I had enough sense that I remembered to close the portal.

“Goodnight, Levi,” I cooed as it came closer to me, “And thank you.” I gave it a hug as it wrapped around my front before drifting off to whatever it did at night.

“My room?” Stephen teased scandalously, finally realizing we were just outside his bedroom.

“I’m drunk, I have no control,” I waved him off, feeling my face get hot as he reached out for my hands.

Predictably, Stephen was a very handsy drunk and pulled me against him, my hands finding purchase on his chest. His mouth sealed over mine and I had no objections whatsoever as his tongue lapped at my bottom lip. His hands trailed down my lower back, resting atop my ass and squeezing before heading back up my back. He turned us around, pressing me into the door and hiking my leg around his waist. I rolled my hips against his, feeling him open his mouth slightly as he groaned. I used the opportunity to flick my tongue passed his lips—still tasting the sting of scotch on him—earning me a content sigh and a tightening grip from him.

The world suddenly shifted and my support was gone as I stumbled out of Stephen’s arms, only to realize we were in his room at the foot of his bed. I grasped the post of his bed for support as I tried to get a grip on this plane of existence.

“Don’t do that…mm...again, please. You’ll be cleaning the mess if you do,” I blinked as I finally got my bearings.

“Sorry,” came his muffled reply as he struggled to get out of his t-shirt.

I couldn’t help but laugh at how put together this man usually was, but give him alcohol and he was a hot mess. I reached up to pull the shirt over the back of his head, hearing him sigh heavily in relief. I tossed the shirt on the floor next to his discarded cardigan.

Someone was eager.

“I got a little lost there,” Stephen chuckled, his voice heavy with tiredness, combing his fingers back through his hair.

My eyes were too busy trained on his chest to respond, tentatively raising my hands and tracing over his smooth skin littered with scars. My fingertips hovered over the cluster of dark purple bruises on his upper arm and chest from earlier. Oops, again.

“Something you like?” He smirked, raising a hand to tug my bottom lip out from between my teeth with his thumb.

“Just a little,” I smirked, keeping my eyes trained on his.

I dropped my bottom lip so his thumb was resting on top of it and moved slowly to give him an out. I took his thumb gently between my lips, moving more purposefully as I realized he wasn’t pulling away. A soft groan left his lips and soon enough he was actively pushing his thumb deeper. I pulled his hand away and pressed kisses to his fingers.

It took some more focus and combined coordination from us, but we eventually got down to our underwear—in between heated kisses and lingering touches. Stephen tugged the covers back using an invisible force and impatiently grabbed me, pulling me into a fierce kiss. The gravity around us shifted and I soon realized we were laying in his bed, luckily since we landed on something stable, I didn’t nearly get sick like a few moments ago. I dragged the covers over us, letting out a happy sigh as we were finally warm and off our feet. He propped himself on his forearms, letting his fingers thread though my hair. I let my hands travel in the expanse of his back, keeping him as close as possible.

Stephen broke the kiss long enough to tilt my head up and press his face into my neck. He littered the area with small kisses, small enough where he didn’t have to move his head much.

“You’re so perfect,” he murmured against my skin.

I felt his touch grow less hasty and more soothing. His kisses vanished, transitioning into nuzzling into my neck. My eyes drifted shut to the comforting weight, warmth, and breathing from the man on top, who I hadn’t even realized had stopped moving. We fell asleep tangled in one another, not even realizing or caring that we’d fallen asleep in the middle of a heated exchange. I didn’t care one bit, now that I knew he wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I.

#stephen strange x reader #doctor strange x reader #gender neutral reader #doctor strange #stephen strange #marvel fanfiction

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seddm · 3 years ago

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Would you please do a little something about Amphibia. I’ve always loved the way you put things in perspective :)

HUGE SPOILERS FOR AMPHIBIA'S FINALE BELOW ALSO MESSY POST I DIDN'T REALLY PROOFREAD KINDA WROTE IT AS A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I'm still in the middle of FEELING and THINKING and THINKING ABOUT HOW I FEEL, so my ideas might change in the following days; also, while I certainly have a lot of opinions, I didn't dedicate to this show the amount of time I dedicated to SVTFOE, so I don't feel as comfortable analyzing its themes and ideas inside out.

Anyway: the finale hurt. A lot. It's your classic "change happens" finale, which is something completely in line with the themes the show always had. Could they have gone for something different, keeping the dimensions connected, maybe in a partial way but still connected? Probably. By the end of the series, all notions of escapism surrounding the characters and their time in Amphibia had been solved and replaced by more mature and positive feelings, so I don't think keeping the possibility of Anne and Sprig being in contact would have undermined anything. It's just, evidently, not what Matt Braly wanted. What's wrong with this, beyond a more subjective and personal preference for perfectly happy endings goddamnit I wanted to smile fuck? The possibility, the risk of giving the idea that Amphibia, as a place, doesn't deserve its "agency", and that its role was over the moment Anne, Sasha and Marcy went back home. That it was little more than a dream, a fantasy that stops existing the moment the coming of age journey of the characters is over, and they can leave behind their fantasies.

-which clearly doesn't apply to this show. Amphibia is the main setting of the series, it's a second world to the characters, Sprig and Anne are the main characters and their separation was THE climax of the episode. Still, a possible interpretation given the decision to throw the "leaving behind some things" in the larger hat of "CHANGE AS A POSITIVE" of the show.

Earth and Amphibia being separated, probably forever (sure there's Terri with her portals, fans can dream and speculate, but the girls are OLD now compared to the target age for Disney products, their story as far as Amphibia goes is probably over even in the super unlikely possibility of any kind of spinoff or continuation or comic), hurts a lot. I'm livid. But there was also closure in it, a wonderful goodbye that can never be tainted. It'll forever hurt and I'll forever wish they went in the opposite direction, but that won't haunt me. I accept it.

What about the girls? Somehow, that's the part that hurt me the most, and many other viewers like me. And, in my opinion, that's harder to analyze. And to rationalize.

We get this scene giving us some exposition about what happened during the timeskip, and most of the problems stem from this. Did Marcy not physically visit the girls for almost a decade, or it's a "can't believe it's been ten years since our adventure in Amphibia ended!" kind of deal?

Does this line mean Marcy knew so little about the girls' lives for all this time, or it's just a way to allow Sasha to give the viewer some exposition?

If it's the former, then why does she know what Anne is doing? A rekindled and recent interest through social media? Or they did talk during all these years, maybe occasionally, the way a lot of real life friends do even when they're not as long distance as they are? I have no answers, I pray for some kind of Word of God Clarification™ from Matt Braly, but I wouldn't count on it since showrunners rarely like explaining stuff like that. But I can, maybe, analyze some of the issues that are currently hurting me, and possible "solutions".

The show takes place over less than a year, the timeskip lasts ten years. To us viewers, 99.9% of the life of the characters happened during that one year, but to the characters, if you were to imagine them as living people with their own agency, the years of the timeskip - highschool and college and beginning of adult life - clearly represented the majority of their lives. And this is the first layer of the issue, something that can affect every work of fiction, the irreconcilable difference between the viewers' perception of the events, and how the character in the work might reasonably act.

Second layer, the show gave us some incredibly tender moments between the three girls, especially in the last episodes, when they had fixed or come to terms with most of their personal issues, forgiving themselves and each other. This probably made their friendship look stronger than it was.

I use friendship with a very specific meaning in this context, because that's feels like what the show / writing was going for. By the end of their adventure their bond is incredibly strong, more than it has ever been, but as far as friendship goes, the ""problems"" they had before might still exist. Marcy certainly learned to pay more attention to how other are feelings, but that won't magically make Anne and Sasha interested into playing Dungeons & Dragons, and so on.

In a way, this scene told us what we saw in the timeskip.

This applies to Sprig, obviously, but also to the three girls.

Life lead them in different places, maybe different interests -they already had different interests to being with, but they still care about each other more than anything else, even if they might not have (it's an odd sentence I know but it's the best way I can put it) participated in a long time in any of the common rituals of friendship. This much is clear, this scene speaks volume (and that's why I uploaded it as a video, the voice acting and body language is important).

And Matt Braly tweets this

and says in multiple interviews things like

It really allowed me to think about how we grew apart, we grew back together, we grew apart again, and we found each other again. There’s this beauty in life of these relationships that ebb and flow. That’s what I wanted to bottle up. It’s tricky, though!

And at this point I, poor little viewer who was hoping for the three girls to be best friends forever always together often bought in bulk do not separate for the rest of their lives, am forced to let the two wolves inside me fight.

The one who's fucking sad and who can't believe these girls might have fallen out enough to barely talk for multiple years after everything they went through, after all the work and self improvement and shared experiences that forever changed them and who thinks this is all bullshit and that a five seconds long scene that could have easily been dialogue-less soured a whole show and three wonderful characters for me; And the one who tries to understand the intentions of the show. That friendships come in all form and shapes, that we have the perfection of Spranne, ending at an all times high with external circumstances separating them, and the imperfection of the Calamity Trio, three girls who would (did?) die for each other and drop anything and everything to help, but who still took different paths for a part of their lives. And that's normal, happens to a lot of people, friends can not see each other for years and still act like not even a day passed the next time they meet. But it's also jarring, because in the simple world of a cartoon one would have expected more. But that's also not permanent, the show ends with a promise of change to come, Anne's narration talks of things returning in your life, the very last image of the series is one of pure happiness. It's easy to imagine any number of scenarios leading to their relationship bringing once again on the table "the standard rituals of friendship", because the love and affection never left them for a single moment.

Which wolf is going to win? I have no idea. Likely the latter, in time, but it's painful. As anyone who followed me during SVTFOE times knows all too well, understanding the themes and intentions of the writers does very little to change the perception of execution, and the way something subjectively resonated with one's preferences and experiences. Also, an open ending is still open, no matter how positive the outlook might be, and that's fertile ground for the demon that is lack of closure and doubt.

I asked a friend who doesn't watch the show for a somewhat unbiased opinion, and they said

Yeah, I can definitely see how it seems uncontroversially positive from a detached point of view

I guess I'll latch onto that adverb as strongly as I can, at least while I eagerly wait for Matt to benevolently bestow on us, through tweets and interviews and AMAs, any minuscule crumble of Word of God that might bring some manner of comfort to our troubled souls. I don't know, something like "whoops my bad didn't realize Marcy and Sasha's lines would have came across as that bad haha it's not like they became strangers soon after coming back from Amphibia it was gradual they still have a group chat Marcy shares memes every day it's just been a while the avalanche of events from highschool to college to starting to work took them by surprise but now things can change, something new can always begin, they still have decades to be together who knows maybe they'll be roommates for the next five years haha".

A man can dream delude himself...

#amphibia #amphibia spoilers #seddm answers #seddm ramblings

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asterocky · 4 years ago

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Hi, I actually had some more questions, lol. Thank you for answering the last one about Eunwoo and his relationship with the boys.

What happened to Moonbin, he took some time off and it seems like people don’t think it was a shoulder injury, but rather that he needed some time off for his mental health?

I was also wondering what happened to their last management or team? I saw Eunwoo speaking out again about how they were treated? What did their last team do or not do? I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to do with their company.

hello there again!! ^^ it was my pleasure, feel free to shoot any other questions you might have. sorry i'm a bit late with this answer, i was thinking through what to say.

regarding moonbin's hiatus.

i believe that fantagio never said anything concrete - they just said moonbin went to a check up and the doctors advised him to rest and get treatment. so no particular health concern was mentioned, so i can't give you a concrete answer. the mental health narrative might have come from some vlives moonbin did, since he was very vulnerable and obviously not in a good place mentally before blue flame era (like this one or the general conversations they had during their gateway era win vlive). i wish i could give you a more concrete answer, but unfortunately i was not too active since i work full time, so there might have been something concrete said by moonbin about his mental health after blue flame era once he came back. since the fantagio issues happened, astro developed a habit of going to aroha whenever something is bothering them. hopefully someone else can give a more concrete answer.

fantagio issues.

there's a lot to discuss here. i will try to shorten the entire situation the best to my ability but i did follow the subject closely and if you want to read into it more, feel free to go into eliot's fantagio update tag (i suggest starting from this post if you want to get into details). meanwhile i roughly summarized the situation below.

so fantagio music is a subsidiary of fantagio entertainment. and fantagio entertainment a few years back was owned by this chinese corporation jc group (they were the majority shareholders, which means that they had the majority vote during shareholder meetings). one day allegations came out in news portals that:

the board of fantagio dismissed the co-ceo and founder of fantagio na byeongjun. wei jie, who was the ceo of jc group, was instated as the new ceo;

the corporation credit cards were taken away from the staffs, so most of the activities fantagio's actors and idols had were funded out of the pocket of the staffs and idols. rumors circulated that astro and weki meki ended up paying for their fans' meals during isac out of pocket, too;

jc group was pooling the money fantagio made to an unrelated hong kong company also owned by the group;

fantagio organized a crisis meeting and settled with 9 demands for jc group, which included reinstatement of the former ceo amongst other things, as most worried that since jc group is pooling whatever fantagio makes into a hong kong company, that jc group will start selling their artists for profit.

(this is why moonbin always says he's the oldest standing fantagio member, idols and staffs included - the ceo was not reinstated and many staff, including astro's manager, left the company)

so staffs were fired and replaced by jc group (they have nothing to de with entertainment btw) staff. it should be noted that wei jie became ceo of fantagio entertainment, but not fantagio music. at the time, fantagio music's ceo was woo youngseung, so aside from the company card limitations, the artists weren't affected that much. however, all hell broke loose when jc group fired woo youngseun and wei jie (i believe) became the ceo. that was the exact moment fantagio music started operating illegally, as based on south koren laws, the ceo of an operating entertainment company has to have a certain entertainment license and ceratin experience. the new ceo was not registered in the korean entertainment management association, which was also a problem. at this point there was no choice but to stop all idols' and actors' activities because everyone that was under contract with fantagio entertainment, which did not have the required licence, would also be considered to be operating illegally. basically everyone under fantagio was forced into a hiatus because of all of the shit jc group caused because of their incompetence.

then the korean entertainment management association reached out to an illegally operating fantagio and gave them 45 days to appoint a new ceo with the relative registration and experience or fantagio will be removed from the association entirely. with all that happening, actors started going through court to terminate their contracts with fantagio. in general there were many uncertainties with the artists under the company, some news portals going so far as to say that "fantagio has no future".

for a while, fantagio (jc group) threatened their actors who went against them (terminating contracts) with court and ignored any korean entertainment association complaints and lied to press that they WERE operating legally. however, many contradicting articles came our and entertainment associations publicly announced that memebers of the associations (which is basically most of the korean entertainment industry) are banning fantagio and basically no one within the association will be working with them.

but then karma came to bite in the ass and the main vilan wei jie who was the ceo was arrested for illegal funding activities (which probably includes the before-mentioned cash pool in an unrelated hong kong company situation). also, the former kbs ceo was appointed as a new fantagio music ceo. a bit later the second main vilan of this story - jc group - sold their ownership of fantagio back to this other shareholder l&a holdings (i believe, don't quote me on this)! which was highly celebrated because fantagio became it's own company again. later fantagio did have a dispute with l&a holdings, but it was nothing too major.

as of today the company is fairly stable and doing well, the largest sources of income being ong seongwoo, astro and cha eunwoo. recently, there has been a dismissal of the management once more and a new management for fantagio music was instated. everyone had war flashbacks for a moment got scared. but it turns out the new management seems eager to put their people out there, as right after the announcement of the new management, astro announced their astro x aroha festival, comeback and all members finally had their own schedules to attend to. and right now all of astro seem to be working on something as the management cleared their schedules, also we got astro zone - to put it simply, we had not seen so much activity from astro for a while so this new management brings hope. also, fantagio was said to be getting more funding and expanding more into acting industries (i think they released more shares, too, which usually means expansion of the company), the financials of fantagio for 2020 have been the best in comparison to the last three years. so as of right now, we can be happy it's in the past and look forward to what fantagio can bring in the future.

also, it's worth mentioning that astro stayed really strong throughout the period and whenever we expressed worry about them, they always tried to calm us down and say that everything is okay and they're doing well. however, once the whole thing was over astro came out with always you, lyrics of which express just how NOT OKAY astro were throughout the fantagio issues and how hard it was behind closed doors, the song dedicated to the fandom. they were very emotional and open about what happened, a lot of fans left throughout the period (as they were on hiatus for a year basically) and astro ended up thanking the ones that stayed with them. there's also this video from astro star light where each member shares a little bit about what went through their minds, from uncertanties, fright and feeling thrown out.

#fantagio #fantagio crisis #moonbin #astro

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carlyraejepstein · 4 years ago

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im assuming you have watched up to the end of season 5 of she-ra in this post!!

continuing on from:

one of the master strokes of she-ra & the princesses of power (2018) is that all of the villains bar one are not one-sided, callous evil husks but they have deeper emotions, motivations and importantly a capacity for redemption. humanity even, despite most of them not necessarily being human. that one exception, horde prime, seeks to strip himself, his clones and his subjects of that very humanity and through that he is distinguished as the biggest baddie in the series, without reproach.

ships may not be that important in the grand scheme of things but a lot of them became canon by the end of the series. they undergird a central theme of the show, that through love and trust for one another we can save ourselves and triumph through adversity. heck, it is worth repeating again that in the closing moments of the show it is catra’s desperate, in her mind unrequited, admission of love for adora, and adora’s in return, that ultimately saves the planet and the universe and gives the show its happy ending.

unsurprisingly the relationship between catra and adora is the most important one out of all of them. the writers have stated that their estrangement is the central tragedy of the show, all the more fitting that it circles all around from adora’s betrayal to their bitter opposition, round to adora saving catra and of course the events of the closing minutes of the show.

catra is motivated through a need to break out of adora’s shadow, not forgetting a harmful dynamic created by shadow weaver, to show her worth so that she is safe from being discarded, and out of spite for adora abandoning the one thing she thought of as permanent and positive for her. over the course of halfway through series 3 to the end of the show these crumble around her, as hordak sends her to the crimson waste, confronts her with his cannon, prime removes her personality and control over her body and adora defies her pleas to let her live in servitude or die at prime’s hands.

by heart 1 catra cares for her former, most fierce foes and calls upon herself a duty to save adora from prime’s virus. this couldn’t happen if catra was a simple villain, evil by definition, and it couldn’t happen if the show subscribed to the idea that once tarnished by evil someone can never be redeemed. and redeemed in adora’s eyes even beyond the point at which adora wrote her off after she opened the portal, something adora considered so severe it serves as a basis for why they barely interact in series 4. it’s important to note that catra is not who she was because she decided to be evil, but because of things done to her by others, especially shadow weaver.

scorpia is a different kind of she-ra villain, and perhaps the distinguishing feature of scorpia is that she doesn’t feel like she’s written as a villain at all! from her very first scene she is bubbly, warm, perhaps a bit too eager for physical touch with others, compassionate and dying to impress catra. even in her run-in with her then-enemies adora and sea hawk in white out she shows them compassion, rather than aggression. it turned out scorpia only serves under the horde because of hordak’s strong-arming of her grandfather, and once she realises this and comes to terms with catra’s coldness towards her, and what catra did to entrapta, it’s no surprise that she leaves the horde behind, despite the rebellion’s inital resistance to her due to her previous misdeeds, not least frosta (”you ruined princess prom!”) but at the very least perfuma takes an instant liking to her, and the rest of the rebellion follow.

it’s quite interesting to note that dividing line that exists from series 1 through 4 between the rebellion and the horde, clearly defined good, and patently bad. even after we learn that hordak’s imperialist machine hell-bent on controlling the entire planet is in service of the absentee horde prime, it is not until we learn the true nature of prime, and hordak is disposed of, that a much greater evil avails itself, and at that point the core of the horde up to and including kyle, lonnie and roghelio, have already defected. the etherian horde barely features in series 5.

perhaps the most important character in terms of bringing humanity from those we would not expect it from is of course entrapta. entrapta sees the humanity in everything, from robots and machines to, of course, hordak. she manages to create a connection to him, who in the image of prime seeks to strip himself and the horde of weakness of which he considers connection to another individual to be. even hordak, the principal baddie for the majority of the show, could be made to at least seem to cherish working with and spending time with someone else, and pining for her after catra betrays them both by sending entrapta to beast island. would this be possible if all hordak seeked was power, control and recognition from prime.

and yet again, this connection, in the midst of crisis, proves important, as when prime commands the reconditioned hordak to destroy entrapta, he cannot, and he defies prime on the basis that he captured his own humanity, his own name and identity, and made a friend, a connection to entrapta. it may only have saved her but its the symbolism of hordak, like catra, turning against his driving force in the face of its true nature, to save someone he cares about.

entrapta is important as well because she shows us a great example through which we learn that, in fact, the rebellion are not perfect after all! they did not think twice to leave her behind in the fright zone, and they are unreasonable to her while she attempts to decode prime’s communications. part of the humanity of all of the characters except, perhaps, emily, is that they are all flawed, some more than others, but none are perfect.

these two things, the inherent humanity and capacity for growth of the shows baddies, and the universal imperfection of the show’s goodies, are why i think the antis are wrong to castigate people for shipping “imperfect” characters like catra and hordak, because to do that is to miss a very important and frankly refreshing quality of the shows writing. and like i said in my tweet, it should remind us that we can give at least the worst people the space to change, unless, as i have found out recently, trust in them doing that cannot be found. as someone who is quick to admit they have been a bad person in the very recent past, i will always be grateful to those who give me that chance.

#spop #she-ra #catradora #entrapdak #1144 words wow

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brax-was-here · 5 years ago

Text

Scarlet Briar: The Redemption of Ceara Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Death Still Hunts You

Written by: Braxxus

Sometimes life gives us a new perspective

“Ok, you three are free to go. You will be escorted to the gate.” Sergeant Connery said to Amaranda and the two young wardens. “But Captain, you’ll need to stay here for now.”

“We’ve told you everything we know!" Failynne protested. “Tyria is in grave danger. There is an elder dragon out there growing stronger as we speak, and you are not helping the situation by keeping us here!”

“The pact can handle the dragon. We’re dealing with a situation here in the city!" He barked back at her.

Failynne turned to Amaranda. “Tell mother that I'll be back as soon as I can." Failynne glared at the sergeant.

“I will.” Amaranda nodded as she and the two sylvari gathered their things and were escorted from the office. They were quietly marched to the Asura gate on the palace grounds. Amaranda sighed as she entered the warp gate. They exited the other side of the gate into the Grove, a look of disgust about Amaranda’s face. “Ugh. I hate those things. They always make my innards turn.” She cursed. “Remind me to thank Failynne when she finally returns. Without her, I feel the Seraph would have kept us in that awful city forever.” she said to the two young wardens behind her.

She wasted no time rushing to the Omphalos chamber, where the Avatar of the Pale Tree was waiting for her.

“Mother! I have urgent news!”

“Amaranda. You have returned, my child. Tell me, what information have you found?”

“Mother, Ceara…she is alive. She lives. I saw her at the Crown Pavilion in Divinity’s Reach.”

“The Pale Tree breathed a sigh of relief. “This is excellent news, my child. Tell me, is she still in the thrall of madness?”

“No, mother. She’s...she's not Scarlet Briar anymore. Scarlet Briar is..." Amaranda was lost in thought for a moment. “She’s...something else. A ghost, a spirit of some sort. Full of so much hate and evil.

The Pale Tree pondered a moment. “Ceara and Scarlet Briar are now separate beings. This is troublesome. What is it now that this spirit craves?”

“The spirit was…acting very oddly. As if she was afflicted with Ceara’s madness."

“Or perhaps the spirit is Ceara's madness. And that has somehow manifested itself into a separate entity.” the Pale Tree said thoughtfully.

“But…how could that happen?” Amaranda asked.

“It is unknown what Ceara saw or experienced when she was attached to the Asuran device. Only that it shattered her mind. She fought to preserve her own sanity, but sadly she lost in the end.”

“And her madness took over?”

“Indeed, and it seems to somehow gain its own sentience.” The Pale Tree added.

“So it is this spirit that is corrupting the Dream. Not Ceara."

“It would appear so, my child. But the questions remain…what does it want? And why is it doing it?”

“Mother, it created a memory echo of the battle at the Pavilion. It somehow absorbed all the chaotic energy created by the echo. It captured Ceara and seemed to want to merge with her. But something happened. It was hurt somehow, something stopped it. That’s when it threw Ceara into some kind of rift.” Amaranda explained.

“A rift? Do you know where it led?"

“No mother. So much was happening. We tried to run.” Amaranda paused. "Mother, it talked of helping someone it called ‘father’” The Pale Tree fell silent and closed her eyes. “Mother, it said that we would all fall to Mordremoth. That it plans to help him become even more powerful. How do we stop this spirit?”

“This is grave news indeed, my child. Perhaps the way to stop her is to study the very thing that created her.”

“Mother, that could take years. Ceara is possibly the most intelligent of all Sylvari in such matters, but it took her months of studying if the stories are true.”

“Perhaps we aren’t meant to, but those that taught her may offer some insight.”

“You mean the professor that attached her to the machine? But he was slain by her own hands, was he not?”

“Yes, he was, but he was not the only teacher she had.”

Amaranda closed her eyes and sighed. “Very well, Mother. I shall leave for Rata Sum immediately.” She bowed to the Pale Tree and turned to leave.

“Be safe, my child. May you find the information we seek.”

“Thank you, Mother.” The Pale Tree watched as Amaranda entered the seed pod that took her back to the lower levels of the Grove.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“WHAAAAAA!!!” Ceara screamed as she fell out of the portal into a group of bushes, water pouring over her a few seconds more before the rift closed. She quickly got to her feet and looked around.

“The Pavilion…I’m back in DR…in the middle of the day…Thorns!” She quickly pulled the hood of her cloak up.

“It sounded like it came from over here.” A voice in the distance said.

“Oh no…” She looked around for a place to hide while trying to conceal her face. She darted behind another small set of bushes near a sculpture. Peeking through the leaves, she saw two Seraph approaching.

“I’ve got to get out of here. If I’m caught, I’m toast.” She thought. The Seraph stopped at the bushes where she had landed.

“Looks like water. A whole lot of it.” One of them noted. They both looked up at the next level of the city.

“You think old man Martin threw his laundry water over the edge again?”

“I don’t know. That looks like an awful lot of water for just laundry.”

“Yeah it does. Maybe a water line broke?”

“Possibly. But I don’t think there are any lines up there.”

“Excuse me sirs.” They heard nearby. They both turned to see a middle-aged man walking towards them carrying some gardening tools.

“Yes?” one of the Seraph asked.

“I live nearby and saw part of what happened here.”

“Oh? What did you see?”

“I was tending to the plants around my home when I heard what sounded like a large clap of thunder followed by what seemed to be the sound of a river and a high-pitched scream. When I turned, I saw water pouring from the sky, and I believe someone running from it. I thought maybe they got caught under it.”

“Were you able to see what the person looked like?”

“No sir. Only that they were wearing a dingy looking cloak.”

“Well, that describes half the people in the city. Thank you for your information.” One of the Seraph said to him, before turning to his partner.

“Go on up there and check see if any water mains busted. And check on Martin. Poor guy, his life hasn’t been the same since his wife was killed in Lion’s Arch.” Ceara felt as if someone plunged a knife in her chest. She covered her mouth and held her breath.

“I don’t have time for this. Not right now. I’ve got work to do.” She thought to herself. Taking a deep breath, she spied an elderly woman nearby walking towards one of the gates to the Pavilion. Ceara quickly darted for her, running up next to her and matching her gait. Ceara even bent over a little as she walked, mimicking the womans stride.

"Excuse me, Miss. Would it be ok to walk with you for a while?"

"Oh! I didn't see you come up. Of course! I could use the company. Tell me youngster, what is your name?”

Ceara thought for a moment. “It’s…Jin. My name is Jin.” She remembered the pirate woman in Bloodtide Coast.

“My that’s a pretty name. Tell me, Jin. How old are you?”

“I’m…I’m 23 cycles old.” Ceara replied nervously

“23? Oh, you’re so young. I remember when I was 23, there was a man that we called Sparky that was quite the prankster. He once blew the manhole covers out of the street with one of his pranks. Made such a gods awful racket you could hear for city blocks." Ceara was only partially listening as she was constantly on the lookout as they slowly made their way out of the pavilion and into the Ossan Quarters section of the city.

“That seems like a very explosive story.” She quipped.

“Oh, he was quite the fun one. And handsome too. If only I could have gotten my hands on him. Mmm…let me tell you.” The old woman replied. Ceara lightly smirked at the thought.

“Well, maybe one day you’ll get the chance.” Ceara commented before darting away down an alley. “Ok, out of the pavilion, now to get out of this city.” She cautiously made her way through the area, trying not to draw attention to herself, avoiding the Serpah at all costs. The Ossan Quarter was a section of Divinity’s Reach built to help refugees from Elona fleeing from the rule of the lich king Palawa Joko. It’s architecture greatly resembled the towns of the desert kingdom in its former glory. The time was midday and many people were out and about doing their daily chores or running errands. Guards were sparse in the area, which worked in her favor. Reaching the area of the Salma district, she realized sneaking through the area would be near impossible. The area was walled off with posted guards at each gate.

“Briars…” she whispered to herself. She sighed as she looked up the path to the next level of the city, an area that encircled the palace. “There will guards everywhere up there.”

“You look fairly well for someone who is supposed to be dead.” a solemn voice said from behind her. Ceara slightly turned her head while slowly starting to walk away. “I know who you are…Ceara.” The voice said. Ceara froze for a moment, then slowly turned. Not too far away stood a Sylvari with dark blue skin dressed in sylvari clothing

“Who might you be?” she asked in a commanding tone. The Sylvari stepped forward, causing her to place her hand on her pistol under her cloak. He stopped, raising his hand and lightly waving it.

“There’s no need for violence here, Ceara.” She glared at him. “I am Diarmad. I tend to the graveyard here in Divinity’s Reach. And you…you have somehow avoided death. A great feat indeed.”

“So it would seem, now unless you have something to say, I need to be on my way.”

“Death still hunts you, Ceara. She’s waiting for your return.”

“Death? You mean…?”

“Oh yes. It paid me a visit recently. It warned me that I should start preparing the grounds. That things will soon change for all of us.”

“I won’t let it. It wants to feed Tyria to that jungle dragon.” Ceara replied. “I have to stop it…even if…well…you might be getting a new tenant in your graveyard soon.”

“I hope for your sake, it’s not you.” He replied.

“We’ll see, grave tender.” She turned and made her way up the path, walking at a normal pace. Reaching the end of the path, she froze. Four Seraph guards in the immediately vicinity. She did notice one thing that could work in her favor. The area was busy with commerce. There were people of all creeds everywhere.

“Well, this works.” Pulling her hood down to conceal her face as much as possible, she cautiously stepped out into the street and mingled into a group of people.

“Do you think Lord Faren will be in when we arrive?” A voice caught Ceara’s attention. Slowly turning, she spied a small group of noble women standing near one of the gates to Salma District.

“I do hope so. He promised to take us on a magnificent journey into the Maguuma Jungle to watch the Pact defeat the dragon there.”

“You would do well to avoid the jungle.” Ceara thought to herself. “But still…I…I want to take a magnificent journey with Lord Faren too.” She lowered her head as she stood in silence for a moment, thinking about what happened at the Queens Jubilee when she attacked it. Lightly kicking a rock, she turned slowly and continued on her way. Passing by a bread cart, the smell of the food went right to her stomach.

“I have got to eat something.” She let out a sigh and approached the vendor.

“Yes, ma’am?” a tall dark skin human male asked. Ceara grabbed a large bread roll and held it up.

“Fifty copper.” He told her. She fidgeted around in the satchels of her armor until she found a small coin pouch.

“Thank you.” She responded quietly as she laid the coins out on the counter.

“Some strange things happening at the pavilion lately.” a voice spoke from behind her. She froze again, her heart in her throat.

“Yeah. Not sure what it’s all about.” another replied.

“I have got to get out of this city.” she thought to herself as she quietly pushed her way through the crowd. It wasn’t long before the main gate to the city came into view.

“Thank the pale tree, I’m almost there.” She veered out of the commerce area and down into the Rurikton district. “Better to stay out of that shopping area.” She thought to herself as she started tearing pieces of the loaf off to eat. Reaching the bottom of the walkway, the tavern known as the Maiden’s Whisper came into view. She paused momentarily as she slowly continued chewing on a piece of bread.

“I could use some tea right now…” she thought. “Thorns…” She also spied an asura gate that took travelers to the town of Ebonhawke in the distance. “and I could leave for good and not come back.” She thought. “Except the gate would be heavily guarded. There is no way I would get passed them.” Sighing heavily, she continued on. She passed through the Kormir Plaza and entered into the Eastern Commons. The gates to the city were just on the southern end of the district.

“Such a contrast from the rest of the city.” She thought to herself. The Eastern Commons was the poorest part of Divinity’s Reach. “Still, living in one of these simple houses would have been better than that cold damp cave under the Priory. At least I would have been warm.” She took in the surroundings as she walked cautiously through the streets. Citizens were out milling about, going about their daily lives. Every so often she would spot what seemed to be a shady exchange between individuals in the alleys between houses.

“I would think the Seraph would have a larger presence in this section of the city.” She muttered to herself, reading a sign above a doorway as she passed. “The Dead End? Heh, that’s what this whole part of the city seems like.” The sound of laughter inside could be heard with the sound of mugs clanging together. “At least someone is happy here.” As she approached an archway, she could see a small carnival set up in the open area beyond, with the walkway up to the gate area just passed a large tent.

“This has been almost too easy.” She thought to herself as she passed through the archway. She felt uneasy, then she noticed the Seraph guards at the far end of the carnival area. “There they are. I’ll have to find another way.” She turned and stopped, a name plaque on a nearby house caught her eye.

“Delaqua and Meade residence” she said to herself. “Delaqua…Delaqua…” She stood in thought for a moment, then it struck her. “That necromancer on the Breachmaker…and her lover princess. This is their home… I think.” Ceara had mixed emotions running through her head. She felt angry at the duo, but at the same time, she didn’t really blame them for fighting, for doing what they did. After all, she wasn’t in control of herself then. Grabbing a small stone from the ground, she walked up to the stoop in front of the house. She knelt down and scratched “I’m sorry. C.” into the step. Tossing the stone aside, she stood and turned to find a pistol pointed at her face.

“Oh! Well hello!” She yelped. She quickly glanced at the person on the other end, a young man who was somewhat disheveled. Some of his clothes bore a striking resemblance to an Aetherblade uniform, however now tarnished and in disrepair. “And who might you be?” she asked.

“Scarlet Briar…” he sneered.

“Um..no. That’s me. I asked who you are?” she quipped. She narrowed her eyes. “You do seem familiar.”

“I’m one of your followers. Someone who believed the lies you told us.” He hissed at her. “You spoke of great power and riches beyond our dreams. And then you left us to the mercy of the Lionguard. And you died…supposedly. And yet, here you are.”

“Well, you know the old cliché. ‘The rumors of my death have been highly exaggerated”. She quipped again. “Now, what is it you want?”

“I’m going to get what’s rightfully mine. I’m going to turn you over to the Seraph, and the reward they’ll pay out…why I’ll be set for life. Be able to buy my own airship and leave this pathetic hovel.”

“Is that so? Tell me, boy. How did you find me?”

“I’ve shadowed you ever since you fell out of that...hole. Waiting for the perfect time to strike.”

"You could have easily struck me down with my back turned. Why didn’t you?”

“I wanted you to see it was one of your former followers. That it was me.”

“Heh, what makes you so sure they’ll give you a reward?”

“Enough with the questions. Move!” he shouted.

“Boy, don’t you know nobody orders Scarlet Briar around?” she said defiantly. He struck her across the side of her face with the pistol.

“I said move!”

She felt her blood run down her cheek. She cut her eyes at him for an instant. Before he knew what was happening, he felt an electricity charge course through his body as she quickly knocked the gun away and struck him in the chest, knocking him back. He slumped on the ground in a heap, his body quivering as small arcs of electricity bounced over him. She picked up his pistol and grabbed him by his shirt and drug him out of sight.

“I don’t have time for your games, boy. And I don’t have time for you.” She pointed the pistol at his forehead. “You should have left well enough alone.” She growled before pulling the trigger. The discharge of the bullet echoed off the walls of the alley. She leisurely checked the chamber of the pistol.

“Two rounds. That’s it? Anyway, I’ll be taking this as you don’t need it anymore.” she said angrily. There was a commotion stirring nearby. “Seems more attention was attracted than I wanted.” She dashed out of the opposite end of the alley away from the carnival crowd.

“Time for a new plan.” She took a long path around the houses in the area and managed to get the street that would take her to the gates of the city. Known as the Dwayna Low Road, she could see the gate at the far end. “So close.” She thought to herself. “Just have to get passed those guard houses.” She took a deep breath and started walking. The road was filled with street vendors peddling their wares. Food, games, clothing, and entertainment. All there for the common civilians of the city. She weaved her way cautiously through the denizens of Divinity’s Reach until she neared the point where the road opened out into the Plaza of Dwayna before the city gates. She paused a moment, looking at the guard huts on both sides of the gate. She breathed deep and made sure her cloak concealed her as much as possible. She then hunched over and mimicked the old womans walk that she had met earlier and hobbled herself across the plaza.

“Miss, do you need some help passing through the gate to Shaemoor?” a voice called from one of the guard shacks. She froze for an instant.

“No, sir. No I do not. I’m quite fine but thank you for your kindness.” She said in the best elderly sounding tone she could muster.

“Very well then. If you ever need any help, just ask.”

“Thank you, sonny.” She replied as she passed through the first gate. “Mother, if I get out of here alive…I…well, I don’t know what I would do.” She thought to herself. It wasn’t long before she made it through the outer gates and into the village of Shaemoor. She breathed a great sigh of relief. Continuing her hobbled gait, she waited until she was out of site of the guards at the outer gate before running off into the hills of Queensdale.

#Guild Wars 2 #GW2 #Scarlet Briar #gw2 fanfiction #Sylvari #AU Ceara #Bring Back Ceara #tyrias-library

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noona-kisses · 4 years ago

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Search Query: WWW (Series Review)

Search Query: WWW popped onto my radar when it was announced last year because it was a Noona Romance -my favorite kind of K-drama. Sadly, I didn’t get to watch it then because I was busy with my job at a Korean hagwon, applying for jobs in Japan and preparing to move, and then later actually moving. I was able to watch it recently, though, and I really wanted to put my thoughts about it down, because I have many. Future reviews of dramas will probably follow a 2 episode per post format; basically following the weekly airing styles. This one, however, will be a basic overview of the series and my thoughts on the ups and downs of it. I’m ready and willing to have discussions, because I have A LOT of thoughts on this drama and I’m always interested to see how other people interpreted things.

So let’s get it started!

Synopsis:

Bae Ta Mi is a 38-year-old director at one of Korea’s two biggest web portal sites, UNICON. Due to UNICON’s corrupt Korean infrastructure, Ta Mi ends up fired from her position and beginning at new job at UNICON’s main competitor, BARRO, with only one goal: to destroy UNICON. Along the way she ends up meeting Park Mo Gun (often written in subtitles as “Morgan”), the 28-year-old CEO of the gaming music production company Millim Sound and begins a complicated relationship with him.

What I Liked:

Female Representation:

I didn’t want my synopsis to be too long, so I purposely said nothing about our other characters, but let me make this clear: I was LIVING for the relationships between our three female leads. Bae Ta Mi, Song Ga Gyeong, and Cha Hyeon are all women who, by society’s standards, are unlikable. Ta Mi appears cold to people who don’t know her and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, and she’s extremely confident in her own abilities. Ga Gyeong is clever and cunning, as well as ambitious, and she’ll do anything to achieve her goals. Hyeon is physically strong and opinionated, and she is definitely not afraid to make those opinions known. And these descriptions can’t even begin to really depict what the characters are like onscreen.

All three of them are completely different from the women we see in the typical K-drama. These women don’t need a man to save them, and they definitely won’t let a man distract them from what they want. They also refuse to bow down under pressure. Add to this that all of them are in positions of power in their companies (Ga Gyeong is second only to the CEO, and Ta Mi and Hyeon are both directors) and are the ones calling the shots, and you’ve got some incredibly powerful females. Even our female baddies (Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law and UNICON’s CEO) are women. The women in this show are powerful, diversely written (some side characters are very uncertain, or man-obsessed, or smart) and the impact this makes can’t be denied. As a 30-year-old woman, I was rooting for all three women and was so happy to see characters that I could really relate to.

Complicated Female Relationships:

Often in dramas I see the relationship between females falling into two categories: endlessly supportive and close besties, or bitter enemies. I absolutely love that this drama went beyond that. It was a clear depiction that friendship can be a maze, and one wrong turn can get you stuck. For example, a flashback and Ta Mi’s own words tell us that her and Ga Gyeong used to be very close and friendly, until Ga Gyeong got married and promoted at work. By the time we really meet them, they’re at each other’s throats. We know, as viewers, that it’s because of complicated reasons (Ga Gyeong is under A LOT of pressure from her mother-in-law and parents to do things Ta Mi doesn’t agree with), but the characters don’t know that, and that’s the point -in real life, you don’t know anything unless the other person tells you. Similarly, Hyeon hates Ta Mi because she thinks she’s sneaky, and basically the root of all of UNICON’s evil. It’s not until she begins to work closely with Ta Mi that she can really see what she’s like, and that she’s more complex than Hyeon originally thought.

Conversely, Hyeon adores Ga Gyeong and still thinks of her as the kind, helpful and honest girl she used to be in high school because that’s what Ga Gyeong shows her. Hyeon rarely sees the side that Ta Mi saw for so long, and it puts a small kink in the relationship when Hyeon realizes Ga Gyeong might not be as good as Hyeon thinks she is. Our trio fight, bicker, and threaten each other even as they protect and save one another at the same time. They aren’t all BFFs by the drama’s end, despite the awesome final scene -but they understand each other more, and I really appreciate that the writers kept that complexity until the end.

Modern Issues:

I really, really love some of the issues the drama talks about. The debate about deleting keywords from the ranking (celebrity vs. civilian, rumor vs. private life) was interesting to watch because I honestly never thought about that before. Western portals don’t use keywords the way the show does, but doesn’t Google still use a dropdown menu of the most searched words? Doesn’t Twitter show the top trending hashtags? Being placed on there could seriously negatively affect a person’s life, and I love that the show tried to create a discussion over whether it was ethical to delete keywords, and how the decision can affect those involved (i.e., actor Ha Min Kyu wanting to die because people are criticizing his former host bar job and Ta Mi almost crumbling under the weight of knowing she pushed for the decision that caused his attempt).

As a woman who is hesitant on marriage, I was also loudly cheering when Ta Mi called Mo Gun out on his assumption that her wanting to live together but not marry was weird. She tells him that society considers his view (getting married) normal, and that he will never have to explain why he wants to get married because no one questions it since it’s expected, while she is always going to have to explain why she doesn’t want to get married because society considers her the odd one. This is especially relevant to Korea, where women are still expected to get married and have kids in their twenties, and any woman who doesn’t want to get married is considered strange.

The drama also talks about the issue of familial obligations through Ga Gyeong and her husband, Jin Woo. Her parents basically expected her to marry well and obey her husband’s family to help their own company out, while Jin Woo’s mother expects him to help her keep Ga Gyeong on a leash and connected to her. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo both hate their parents, and by the end of the drama both of them are refusing to do what they’re told -which, again, goes against a piece of Korean culture that is still strong to this day. Children are expected to take care of their parents in their old age and to respect them and their decisions. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo together basically make the point that there is a limit to what children should be expected to do for their parents. Yes, it’s told through the chaebol lens, but the lesson is still important to working class families also.

The drama also has one big issue that’s discussed, beginning to end, through the interactions and relationships of our characters: communication. In today’s world, communication is becoming more and more difficult, even as more forms of communication are being created. And lack of communication causes problems. If Ga Gyeong had been open with Ta Mi about the reasons she was making certain decisions, Ta Mi never would have thought so ill of her. If Jin Woo had been more open about his own feelings and wants with Ga Gyeong, he might have been able to show her how much he cared before she left. Hell, they might even have been able to do something before divorce became a necessity. But there are scenes within the show that also stress how important communication is, most notably when Alex is head-hunted by UNICON. Ta Mi reservedly tells him she’ll support him no matter what, even though she knows they can’t afford to lose him, and it’s not until Brian (BARRO’s CEO) says she needs to tell Alex this, that she does -and realizes he didn’t want to leave, but he felt like he wasn’t needed anymore.

Ta Mi and Mo Gun’s argument about marriage is also an example. They never sat down and really TALKED about it. He just kept saying “It’s okay, I can wait” and Ta Mi never REALLY pushed him to discuss and think about the topic as hard as she needed to. It became a recurring issue in their relationship and was pretty much the main reason they had so many problems. It’s an issue that doesn’t have an easy ending, but if both parties FULLY understand it, then it’s easier to be in the relationship. Another example is Hyeon’s early judgement of Ta Mi. Hyeon never really talked to her. They would argue and debate during meetings at times, but they never really discussed their personal beliefs about their work and why they thought that way. If they had communicated more openly before, Hyeon probably wouldn’t have been as harsh to Ta Mi in the beginning. There are tons of examples throughout the example of why people need to communicate, and I’m thrilled a drama attempted to create a discussion about it.

Men Supporting Women:

In this drama, the women are in charge. Sure, Jin Woo’s family is the one Ga Gyeong is stuck doing the bidding of, and Brian is BARRO’s CEO and the Korean president and all those higher in power in government are male -but it’s the women who are the ones with the real power. It’s Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law who basically rules KU Group with an iron fist. Ta Mi and Hyeon are the ones who put BARRO on the track to beating UNICON. Ga Gyeong is the one who fights back against the dirty dealings in UNICON. And in the wake of these women are the men supporting them. Jin Woo gently offers shelter and aid as Ga Gyeong fights his mother, and even speaks up against his mom when she tries to have him bring Ga Gyeong back into the fold; Brian gives advice but otherwise lets Ta Mi and Hyeon do what they think is best for the company; Mo Gun acts as Ta Mi’s shield and comfort when things go wrong, but he cheers for her all the way.

I love seeing how much the good men in this show support the women in their lives, and how they show that support. One of the greatest scenes is when Ta Mi and Hyeon make to block the acting CEO of BARRO (Kevin) from walking into the building to sign a harmful regulation. Brian walks in to take his position back and help stop it, but after that the entire scene focuses on Ga Gyeong walking to take her place as UNICON’s new CEO and Ta Mi and Hyeon strutting through the building in pride at standing up for what they knew was right. Brian quickly becomes a background piece as the screen is filled with our three heroines. If more men in reality were like the supporting men in this drama, I know women would be better off.

Music:

This OST is BOMB. I loved every piece of music I heard, from the instrumentals to the voiced ones. Mamamoo’s “Wow” is a power pop song that makes me stand straight every time I hear it, and Elaine’s “Search” always gave me a thrill because I knew amazing things would happen when I heard it. The music can really make or break a drama (I’ve watched some dramas that made me roll my eyes HARD at the song choices), and this one chose its pieces well. The songs fit the scenes and I will most definitely buy the OST in the near future.

What I Didn’t Like:

Ta Mi & Mo Gun’s Relationship:

I’m going to say it: by the drama’s end, the lead romance was easily my least favorite part of the show. Don’t get me wrong, it started off okay and I loved it at first. Their first meeting, how quickly they connected, the small jokes they had -it was adorable, and I honestly squealed a little bit. And then they broke up. Then they got together. Then they broke up again. Then together again. When a couple has a dramatic breakup three or four times in 16 episodes, there is a SERIOUS problem that needs to be addressed, not to mention that final breakup loses its edge because a viewer is left going “I’ve already seen that before.” I understood why Ta Mi kept pushing him away, but I really, really disliked the fact that she was so wishy-washy about it. One push away before a big finale breakup and reunion, fine. But two or three? No, that’s when you know the relationship shouldn’t be happening in the first place.

I also disliked the relationship because of how Ta Mi acted/looked with him after the first few episodes. She always looked tired and withdrawn around him. A relationship isn’t supposed to make you feel or act that way. I don’t think it’s the actress’s fault (I put full blame on the director here), but as characters in a show I should see that the relationship does energize her -but even some of their more active scenes (like the piggyback vacuuming scene) shows her as lethargic and almost uninterested.

But, again, it was the constant breakups that annoyed me the most. As I mentioned above, one of their biggest issues was about marriage: Mo Gun wanting it, Ta Mi not wanting it. In real life, this is an issue that’s a deal breaker with two people. A GOOD writing of this problem is done one of two ways: either the couple agreeing to date and see what happens because they care about each other after talking about it, or the couple staying apart because they can’t deal with the uncertainty. Either way, the couple communicates their wants for the future, discuss possibilities, and then sticks to whatever decision they make. And like I said, one breakup over this is fine. But these two continued to break up over this over and over again and it drove me insane. I got SO tired of their relationship by the second breakup I was tempted to start skipping through their scenes together. That’s a pretty good indicator that the romance needs work.

Lack of Flow:

In any kind of writing, whether it be for a novel or a screenplay, there has to be a good flow. Each scene should glide effortlessly into the next one, and storylines should work together as a cohesive unit, not push the viewer out of the story. Honestly, I feel like this drama would have been pretty damn perfect if the romances for Hyeon and Ta Mi had been tossed out, and we had only focused on the women and their work the entire time. I feel this way not because I hate romance (I love it to death and Hyeon and Ji Hwan were adorable together) but because every time the show went from our heroines fighting in the business world to them giggling with their beaus, I felt like I was watching a different drama. The tone of the drama, and the women themselves, changed dramatically anytime the story shifted to focus on the romance.

In addition, I also felt that the romance was shoe-horned in. I told a friend of mine, “I’m convinced the writers wanted to make the women lesbians and kept forgetting the men even existed.” I still stand by that, because I swooned more during some of the women’s scenes together (Hyeon moving Ga Gyeong out of harm’s way, Hyeon drunk and sharing Ta Mi’s bed, Ta Mi giving Ah Ra her expensive purse) than I did during any of the scenes with Hyeon/Ji Hwan and Ta Mi/Mo Gun. The romantic scenes with them (especially with Hyeon and Ji Hwan) often felt like the writers went, “Oh, yeah, we have to do something with those men” and then wrote them in. This drama isn’t the worst case of incohesive writing I’ve seen (“Strong Woman Do Bong Soon” takes that prize with its identity crisis), but it was bad enough that I had to reorient my brain when we went from business to romance.

Final Episode:

Hear me out: I loved everything about the first part of the episode with the reading of the ethics guidelines, Ga Gyeong destroying KU Group, and the final scene with the car. My issue is definitely not with that. My issue is that over half of the episode is dedicated, yet again, to Mo Gun and Tami’s rocky relationship. I had to sit through almost forty minutes of a woman moping over the man she pushed away and their inevitable reunion. I wanted more of an emphasis on the OTHER side of the story. Where was Ga Gyeong those three months she was gone? What made In Kyung decide to actually help her? How was UNICON faring after Ga Gyeong stepped down? How did the politicians really deal with the revelation Ga Gyeong put out there?

I really wanted to see how our heroines’ actions up to that point affected their lives and the lives of those around them, as well as their relationships to each other. I wanted them to get their payoff for all their work and the fights they went through. Instead, I got a pretty rushed finish to that one and then sat through half an episode of Ta Mi running from her feelings. I feel cheated, almost, and that’s not a feeling I want to leave a drama with. Even though that final scene in the car was GLORIOUS, I wish the drama had done more for this women in the finale than just keep their romantic relationships alive. Or, if they were determined to have romance, focus on Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo, the ONLY couple I cared about in the entire show.

Overall:

Despite my heavy criticisms at the end there, I really did enjoy this drama. I cried, laughed, and cheered with these women. By the end, I felt I had made three new friends and found some awesome role models for myself. Ta Mi, Hyeon, and Ga Gyeong alone are enough to give this drama a high rating, but I’m giving it a 7/10 because despite its faults I did enjoy the ride and for once a drama made me care about the shady business side of its story -that’s extremely difficult to do.

So if you love strongly written female characters who are more like someone you’d find in real life than a make-believe fair princess and who will readily take their lives and their fates in their own hands, you definitely need to check this drama out. I adored it and will watch it again whenever I need a reminder that women are badass and shouldn’t hide it.

#kdrama #searchquerywww #www #searchwww #search www #k drama #k-drama #search query www #lim su jung #lee da hee #jeon hye jin #tvn #review #mythoughts #drama #koreandrama #korean drama

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/intuitive-astrology-forecast-july-2020/

Intuitive Astrology Forecast July 2020

By Tanaaz

As we start July, we wrap up the third and final Eclipse of the Season and of the Cancer/Capricorn cycle we have been working with since 2018.

As we move through the month, things may feel like they are settling down and the energy may shift to a calmer place. However, behind the scenes things are being planted for the next chapter of 2020, one that kickstarts come September.

As we enter September and navigate through the final months of the year, we have a very fiery and combative Mars Retrograde, and if you can believe it, more Eclipses as we enter November.

2020 was always destined to be a big and transformative year, so rather than fighting against all of this, learning to embrace it, going with the flow, and surrendering to the journey of your life will make things a little less stressful.

July is one of the months of the year, along with August, where we will get an opportunity to recharge.

It brings the incredible Sirius Gateway, that will beam high-frequency energy into our bodies and souls.

It also brings some detox energy, and while a bit of purging will be required, we will feel the benefits and lightness that comes when we let the toxic stuff go.

To help support you through the month, I have created a Heart Drumming Meditation. This meditation is designed to recharge your vitality and awaken and strengthen your life-force energy.

Here’s a wrap up of the July 2020 Astrology:

July 1st: Saturn Re-Enters Capricorn

Saturn left Capricorn for Aquarius back on March 21st, but seeing as Saturn is retrograde and traveling “backward” it has now re-entered Capricorn for one final time.

With Saturn revisiting the last few degrees of Capricorn, from now and until December, we may notice themes from March and earlier in the year resurfacing again.

When Saturn was last traveling through these final degrees of Capricorn, many countries around the world entered lockdown, so we may find ourselves revisiting that in some way.

On a personal level, Saturn moving back into Capricorn may stir some past themes for us, however, it is important to remember that we have been through it all before.

No new information or lessons are likely to surface, if anything, we may just be feeling a greater sense of understanding on the path we have been traveling.

If you want to dive into this deeper, read more on Saturn here.

July 2-7: Sirius Gateway

The Sirius Gateway is a magical time of year where our Spiritual Sun, Sirius aligns with our earthly Sun.

Our Sun that rises and sets each day, brings us life and sustenance and our Spiritual Sun does the same, but on a soul level.

It helps to supercharge our soul and inner vitality. We may feel our life-force energy getting stronger, or we may feel more connected to the Qi or Prana that flows all through our body.

Under the Sirius Gateway, we are more likely to receive intuitive or cosmic downloads, and it becomes easier for us to awaken our Kundalini energy and raise our vibration to higher levels.

The Sirius Gateway is like a power source that we can plug into in order to refuel our batteries.

You can read more on the energy of the Sirius Gateway here.

July 4-5th: Capricorn Full Moon Lunar Eclipse

The final Eclipse of the Season is here – a Capricorn Lunar Eclipse. This is not only the last Eclipse of the Season but it is also the last Eclipse in the Cancer/Capricorn Eclipse cycle that we have been working with since May 2018.

We won’t experience another Capricorn or Cancer Eclipse for another 8 years.

This Eclipse is like a culmination point and its energy feels detoxifying.

There will be some release or purge needed, but it will feel satisfying and we will have this sense that we have finally reached the end on a journey we have been walking.

After this Eclipse, we will have a few months break before resuming the third and final Eclipse Season of the year in November.

If you are wondering, 2020 does hold an unusually large number of Eclipses, we normally experience 4 a year, but this year we have 6 to work with.

More on the Capricorn Lunar Eclipse for you here.

July 11: Chiron Retrograde

The healing asteroid, Chiron will enter the underworld. We already have strong retrograde energy floating through the cosmos, so Chiron just feels like another name to add to the mix!

Chiron Retrograde will be guiding us to find the strength in any healing we have recently gone through.

Sometimes the healing process can make us feel tired and a little depleted, but Chiron Retrograde encourages us to use the healing we have undertaken to find a new strength and to tune into a new power.

Healing takes hard work, but that hard work also brings strength, resilience, and a new power. Chiron Retrograde will be helping you to tune in, connect, and find that for yourself.

July 13: Mars conjunct Chiron

Mars entered Aries at the end of June where it will stay for an incredible six months. Mars is spending such a long time in its ruling sign due to its retrograde that happens in September.

Mars really becomes a star player as we enter the second half of the year, and it slowly begins sowing its seeds in July.

As Mars aligns with the healing asteroid Chiron, there will be a greater emphasis on needing to find our strength and inner warrior.

Following this alignment, over the next few months, Mars will then move on to align with the two Goddesses, Black Moon Lilith and Eris.

This creates a strong, fiery, and combative energy and tensions are likely to turn from a simmer to a rapid boil.

Once Mars goes retrograde on September 9, we are likely to see and experience this with more clarity.

More to come on this as we journey through the months, but just keep in mind that now is a good time to use this energy to claim your power and to not give it away.

July 14: Sun Opposite Jupiter

When the Sun aligns opposite Jupiter it tends to bring abundance and expansion, however, Jupiter happens to be retrograde and is hovering at the exact same degree of the Saturn Pluto Conjunction that happened earlier this year which triggered a lot of what we are now seeing play out through 2020.

As Jupiter moves over this sensitive degree and aligns opposite the Sun, we may see themes from January resurface, or something that was hiding in the shadows from this time may be uncovered.

July 12: Mercury Direct

Mercury will turn direct after being retrograde since June 17th.

We may feel a greater sense of clarity starting to arrive, especially now that we no longer have any personal planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars) in retrograde.

We always feel the personal planets the most when they retrograde, so as Mercury returns to its former speed, the air should feel a little clearer.

July 20: Cancer New Moon

The Cancer New Moon is a sensitive one and brings a mix of energy. On one hand, this New Moon will bring a fresh new lunar cycle, helping to create some distance from the recent Eclipse energies.

Things should feel lighter and we may feel inspired to set some new goals or to think about how we want to wrap up the second half of the year.

Saturn however, is also very active on this New Moon and its presence can sometimes bring harsh energy and restrictions. We may feel a pressure building, or we may feel held back in some way.

The best way to use this energy is to think about how you can take responsibility for your own life rather than waiting for permission from outside sources.

Under this Dark Moon, ask yourself – How can I take what is in my control and turn it into the best possible outcome for myself?

July 22: Leo Season Begins

The Sun enters the sign of the lion and reaches its fullest power in the cosmic skies.

Leo is ruled by the Sun, so this is a time where all of us can step up and learn how to radiate and sparkle in our own unique way.

The midpoint of Leo Season in August also brings the magical 88 Lionsgate Portal, where we get to work with the energy of Sirius, our Spiritual Sun once again.

July 25: Mars Enters Shadow Period

Mars will begin slowing down from this point forward as it prepares to go retrograde later in September.

Whatever is unfolding now until this time holds a clue as to what themes the upcoming retrograde will bring. We may also begin feeling some tense energy bubbling in the undercurrents too.

Mars Retrograde is a time where we can feel a little sluggish and like we have lost our motivation, so if you have important projects you want to get done, it’s best to start making some good headway at this time.

July 28: Venus Leaves its Shadow Period

Venus went direct on June 24-25 but it will now return to its former strength.

In the coming days, it will also leave the sign of Gemini, where it has spent an unusually long period of time and will enter the sign of Cancer.

Venus won’t retrograde again for another 18 months so this represents that we are well and truly on track with a new Venus Cycle.

As we begin this new Venus Cycle, we may feel stronger in our hearts and more open to new waves of Love.

To help support you through the month, I have created a Heart Drumming Meditation which you can find here. This meditation is designed to recharge your vitality and awaken and strengthen your life-force energy.

Happy July!

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a-ratt · 6 years ago

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Into the Mari-verse (for real this time)

Alright. Alright. Alright.

I’m back. That’s not a good thing. Maybe it is. I don’t know.

Okay, so, like, a week ago, I made a post about a WIP fanfic I was writing, but, uh, that may or may not happen idk. Anyways, I thought I might as well throw out all the notes I took and ideas and concepts I came up with, so, here goes:

The Goal:

So, when I first brainstormed this I wanted to think about how this would have to differ from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. First things first, the main character, Marinette, is an established superhero who’s confident about herself, both in her personal and superhero life. Meanwhile, Miles Morales is a normal teenager who suddenly gets superpowers and has to learn how to be Spider-Man to save New York City.

Taking that into consideration, I had to write out a completely different arc for Marinette. From reading multiple fanfics and posts critiquing the show (credits to @zoe-oneesama @miraculouscontent and others.) I decided the best course of action would be for Marinette to work on her self-confidence. Now, here’s the thing, she’s already self-confident. At least, that’s how she’s portrayed. (Unless she’s in the same room as Adrien.) But, through reviewing the show’s canon and plotting out how characters should be growing, I decided that she’s probably got a lot of pent up emotions. Chief among them is probably anger at always being walked on and taken for granted, especially after Chameleon.

With the goal being more introspective, I was also able to validate the idea of the Mari-verse. (i.e. bringing multiple Marinettes into the same reality.) Each one has their own issue that they’re dealing with and each one helps the others with dealing with those issues.

The Marinettes:

Okay, so this is the real meat of the story. This is what everyone’s probably coming for. The base concept of Into the Mari-verse, is that multiple, alternate Marinettes converge on the same reality due to some phenomenon (I’ll explain that later.)

Anyways, the final total of Marinettes to show up in the story was five:

Ladybug!Marinette: The canon Marinette who received the Ladybug Earrings and became the Miraculous Ladybug. She has lived a rather successful life, saving Paris and getting A’s at school. Recently, she’s hit some rough terrain thanks to the return of Lila and her plot to turn her class against her. Thanks to her, Marinette has become tired and detached from her personal life; depressed, but not to an extreme.

This has led to a crisis of identity. Unlike most stories, however, she beholds her superhero alter ego, to the point that she questions her role as Marinette. Though Tikki argues that she shouldn’t neglect her personal life, Marinette cannot help but notice that people take her for granted, but they worship Ladybug.

Butterfly!Marinette: An alternate Marinette that succeeded in giving away the Ladybug Earrings to Alya in the Origins episodes. While Ladybird and Chat Noir continued to protect Paris, Marinette remained a side character. She stayed true to her values, standing up to bullies and helping others, but her she often feels guilt and experiences moments of self-loathing for pushing such a heavy burden as the duties of a superhero onto someone else; i.e. the new girl in class and her best-friend at that. Her closeness with Alya, however, has also translated into favoritism by Ladybird and Chat Noir, something Hawkmoth noticed.

During the events of Hero’s Day, Marinette was captured and used as bait, but after being freed, she helped distract Hawkmoth long enough for Team Miraculous to regroup and defeat the super villain themselves. She was taken to safety before the final fight and in the aftermath, crossed paths with an exhausted Gabriel Agreste who claimed to have been transformed into the Collector. Unbeknownst to either of them, Nuuru stole the Butterfly Brooch from Gabriel and stowed away inside of Marinette’s purse. Later that day, she discovered him. He convinced her to take up the superhero mantle once again and she became Le Monarque. Her inexperience has resulted in self-doubt and a fear of failure.

Bee!Marinette: (credited to @zoe-oneesama) An alternate Marinette that had the Ladybug Earrings stolen from her by Chloé without her ever realizing she had them. While Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir defended Paris (mostly Chat Noir), Marinette remained a resolute figure of confidence and courage among her peers. After receiving the Bee Comb, she became the Miraculous Marigold and clashed with Scarlet Lady over the role of team leader during akuma attacks. Her constant taking command of situations and pushing Scarlet Lady to the side has developed into a kind of controlling behavior, resulting in a minor issue of pride. Usually seen as the obvious leader among her peers, she rarely butts heads with anyone.

However, in Ladybug!Marinette’s reality, she butts heads with the other Marinettes over what course of actions should be taken.

Dragon!Marinette: An alternate Marinette who received the Dragon Miraculous. In a Paris that has long been protected by Ladybug and Chat Noir (in actuality, the married couple, Gabriel and Emilie Agreste), Marinette Dupain-Cheng was born with brown eyes. She adhered to her mother’s Chinese heritage, but was bullied for this. Due to this, she has developed an isolationist demeanor, veering away from social contact.

Later, in collège, Paris came under attack by the former Guardian of the Miraculous, Master Fu, who abused the powers of the Butterfly Miraculous in order to reclaim the Miraculous protected by the Agrestes. To fight him, both Ladybug and Chat Noir required aid, so they gifted Marinette, a notably resolute and resilient classmate of their son, the Dragon Miraculous, turning her into Chu Long.

Cat!Marinette: An alternate Marinette who received the Cat Ring instead of the Ladybug Earrings. Plagg’s influence developed her into a more mischievous and conniving character, often playing pranks, making jokes, and playing around. Though she retains her serious demeanor when it comes to situations demanding it, she is usually playful. (She’s basically a Meme!Marinette) However, she has an issue with self-sacrifice, believing that she must give up herself if it means she is helping others. While it is a tense issue in akuma fights, it is even worse in her personal life, with her classmates usually walking over her and bullies, such as Chloè and Lila taking advantage of her kindness.

Peacock!Marinette: An alternate Marinette that lost faith in herself. (Yeah, this is gonna take a dark turn.) Marinette has always proven to be a strong and confident character, incorruptible and resolute in her beliefs. However, she has had moments of doubt.

She holds Ladybug to an impossible standard. She must be the flawless symbol of heroism and nobility in order to be a superhero. However, is she truly worthy to be Ladybug is she’s been nearly akumatized twice? These seeds of doubt have haunted her for some time, and after the akumatization of her father because of her own emotional, irrational actions, she chooses to give up the Ladybug Earrings.

Her life took a downspiral from then on out. Her classmates abandoned her. Alya and Nino turned their backs on her. She was slowly breaking. Lila’s lies were destroying her life.

In the end, she managed to find comfort in Adrien, but when she managed to build up the courage to confess her feelings, he rebuffed them and told her about his devotion to Ladybug.

That was the last straw.

She once beheld Ladybug, but now she loathed her. While Paris praised their beloved hero, they forsook her.

Her festering negativity drew Hawkmoth’s attention, but instead of akumatizing her, he invited her to the Agreste Mansion under the guise of an internship. She was overjoyed at the prospect, but was quickly horrified to find the super villain in Gabriel Agreste’s place.

Hawkmoth manipulated her emotions, making her believe that the world had turned its back on her. He offered the damaged Peacock Miraculous to her, hoping she would claim it and work as his minion. Marinette, at the lowest point in her life, accepted.

Thus, Le Paon was born and began her reign of terror on Paris, hunting down her former friends and forcing Master Fu into hiding.

The Catalyst:

So, this is the event that actually causes the Marinettes to crossover into Ladybug!Marinette’s reality. It’s not so much of an event as it is an akuma, though.

Her name is Metadrama.

Prior to her akumatization, she lost her father to cancer. He often read her storybooks and she was fascinated with the fantastical tales. Heartbroken at this “bad ending”, she longed for a happy ending. Hawkmoth granted her the ability to search every reality for that happy ending.

In battle against Ladybug and Chat Noir, she proved a powerful opponent. Unlike most akumas, she manipulated the environment around her. Wielding paracausal and reality-warping abilities, she forced Paris to “glitch” and alternate between different versions of itself.

Her ultimate goal was to reach the Eiffel Tower and, from there, alter the entirety of Paris in search of the perfect universe where her father survived.

Ladybug and Chat Noir managed to restrain her with the former’s Lucky Charm, but realized to late that her akumatized object was not on her person, but was actually a storybook that she was using to conjure a portal.

Ladybug was able to destroy it, but was exposed to its paracausal and reality-warping energies, causing multiple Marinettes to converge on Ladybug!Marinette’s universe.

Extra Notes:

So, yeah, that’s Into the Mari-verse, or, at least the base concepts and ideas that I came up with. Thought I’d just throw this out there since I don’t know if I’m actually going to write the story. Pairings with the Marinettes are subjective until I finalize who I want with who. (Kinda gunning for a Chlonette/Kagaminette ending, though.)

Character development is based on how the Marinettes interact with each other, either clashing with or helping each other. For example, the Marinettes, looking for a way home, need Butterfly!Marinette to akumatize someone into Metadrama so they can create another portal. However, Butterfly!Marinette doesn’t know how to use her powers, or even how to be a superhero, so they spend their time teaching her. Another example is Ladybug!Marinette coming to terms with how she’s treated by her friends (i.e. Chat’s neglect of her personal space and feelings, her classmates invalidation of her feelings, and her own weariness of herself.) Over the course of the story, the other Marinettes support her and encourage her to believe in herself.

Characters outside of the Marinettes are still being worked on. I definitely want to include redemption arcs for certain characters, Chloè especially. I would like to put more spotlight on Kagami and Luka, both are characters with an incredible amount of potential. I’d like for Alya to have a moment when she comes down from her pedestal and actually apologize to Marinette for her behavior and confess her faults.

On the note of Gabriel Agreste/Hawmoth, I’m uncertain if I want to resolve the Agreste storyline. It’d be a good conclusion to have the Marinette expose his true identity, but it’d also deprive the show of its basis of Team Miraculous winning the day instead of a single character and her many selves. Also, it’d also leave out a future where Team Miraculous deals with Akumas rather than regular crime.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope you all enjoyed what I’ve got jotted down. If you’ve got some constructive criticism, please leave some notes. Share this around if you’d like, I’d love the promotion. It’d help me build this idea more.

Thanks again to @zoe-oneesama for letting me use Marigold in this story concept and thanks to @miraculouscontent for her amazing critique and “fixes” of ML canon.

#miraculous ladybug #tales of ladybug and cat noir #spider-man: into the spider-verse #into the spider verse #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug!marinette #butterflymarinette #bee!marinette #dragon!marinette #cat!marinette #peacock!marinette #kwamiswap #au #fanfic #my way of promoting community creations #you are all amazing and i love you

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themagiciansreccenter · 6 years ago

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Author Spotlight: @lesbianmxgicians

Every week we interview a writer from The Magicians fandom. If you would like to be interviewed or you want to nominate a writer, get in touch via our ask box.

First things first, tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a Canadian high school student and definitely a huge science fiction nerd. Reading and writing are both huge passions for me, and the former has influenced my life a lot.

How long have you been writing for?

I've been writing for almost a year now- I started off writing femslash and reader inserts for the Supernatural fandom last summer, and this January I discovered the show The Magicians (and the books) and joined the fandom here.

What inspired you to start writing for The Magicians?

Probably the characters. I love all of the women of this show, I think they're badass. Also maybe a need to have a wlw relationship on The Magicians, since I mainly write femslash. I really wish we had canon relationship between two of the women on the show.

Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? What it is about them that makes them your favourite?

Alice is definitely a favourite, because I feel like I can really get her voice; she reminds me a lot of myself in many ways. Also Penny and Dean Fogg, because they're my underrated favourites.

Do you have a preference for a particular season/point in time to write about?

Season one, definitely. There are less plot threads and I have the most memory of that season overall, so it's easier when I'm writing in canon to just slip my own stories between the episodes and have it feel organic to the season's plot; like that story could have easily actually happened onscreen.

Are you working on anything right now? Care to give us an idea about it?

I've got an ongoing serial fic called 'a colossal mistake'. It's set after Quentin cheats on Alice, and she runs off to a bar in Brooklyn and hooks up with Julia before disappearing. The gang is supposed to go to Fillory to defeat the Beast, but they can't without Alice, so they end up on a search to find her.

How long is your “to do list”?

I have a couple of prompts in my inbox that I feel bad about having not fulfilled yet, and a few ideas I eventually want to get done. Otherwise, I write whatever comes to mind at the time, if I have time. There are drafts of things I can't bring myself to delete because I know when/if I have the time and creative energy, I can make them publishable.

What is your favourite fic that you’ve written for The Magicians? Why?

This is a hard one, but probably 'what is and what shall never be'. I really like the dynamic that Julia and Marina!23 had in 3x11, and I feel like that could be expanded upon in season four, so that's exactly what I did. The idea of this other Marina who's proclaimed a second chance at a life of good with magic is really intriguing, especially with her shown curiosity to her other self's relationship with Julia. I kind of summed all of these really long thoughts up with the synopsis of, "Surprisingly, Marina wants to help for once." I think, at least.

Many writers have a fic that they are passionate about that doesn’t get the reception from the fandom that they hoped for. Do you have a fic you would like more people to read and appreciate?

'For The Rich and The Heartless' is a prompt fill that I actually ended up loving a lot. It's a boarding school, no magic alternate universe that for a time I was thinking about turning into a Veronica Mars-esque school murder mystery (but, as always, I didn't end up having enough time while the mood struck me to do so.) It's good and funny on it's own, though, and I would love for more folks who like Margo/Alice and those kinds of AUs to read it.

What is your writing process like? Do you have any traditions or superstitions that you like to stick to when you’re writing?

I've been trying recently not writing stories in linear order. So much of the time, I get ideas for fics where it's mid-story, so I just cast them aside; now I'm trying to get those scenes down and build the rest of the story as it comes, in whatever order I think of. It's made writing a lot more enjoyable.

Do you write while the seasons are airing or do you prefer to wait for hiatus? How does the ongoing development of the canon influence and inspire your writing process?

I write whenever I feel like it; I get a lot more inspiration while the seasons are airing, or at least that's how it's felt so far. I usually hold onto small details from episodes after they air that I love, and try to write a fic about them. They usually end up being pretty short, though.

What has been the most challenging fic for you to write?

Definitely 'a colossal mistake', by far. Not so long ago, I felt this constant pressure to post fan fiction constantly, to the point where I was posting about three times a week but I still didn't feel like it was enough. Now I've slowed down by a lot, but it's harder to come up with things to get the plot where I want it to go. I also feel bad for the people who really like that fic, because I'm now aware they exist and I don't want to let them down.

Are there any themes or tropes that you like particularly like to explore in your writing?

Pining and portals, the two Ps. The Great Lesbian Condition, for me at least, is the not dating/unrequited feelings thing in real life, so I definitely try to project those feelings and experiences in my fics. And portals, for some reason I'm just obsessed with them and the whole travelling to another world thing. It and this answer probably translate my frequent habit of escapism.

Are there any writers that inspire your work? Fanfiction or otherwise?

Fan fiction wise, @monstrous-femme definitely. Y'know, she was the first person to ever follow me (and since I didn't have any posts, I'm guessing by the username alone.) Her stories are really interesting and my favourites to read and read again. Otherwise, Ransom Riggs' 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' series and the obvious choice of 'The Magicians' series by Lev Grossman.

What are you currently reading? Fanfiction or otherwise?

The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, on and off Sleeping Beauties and Cujo by Stephen King, Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson and It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura. I have the attention span of a hummingbird.

What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Kill your darlings, probably. And since I think I'm absolutely hilarious, I have to do this a lot.

Are there any words or phrases you worry about over using in your work?

"Probably," "though," "perhaps," "maybe," and the characters' names.

What was the first fanfic that you wrote? Do you still have access to it?

The first fanfic I ever wrote is a Supernatural gen reader insert called 'Best For You.' It's at the very end of my AO3 catalog, and even thinking about it right now is making me giggle and cringe. I do, unfortunately, still have access to it, which also means so does anyone who's curious about it.

Rapidfire Round!

Self-edit or Beta?

Both. Usually self edit, though, because I get anxious about asking for betas or people don't respond in time.

Comments or Kudos/Reblogs or Likes?

Definitely comments. I love feedback on anything and everything I write.

Smut, Fluff or Angst?

Angst.

Quick & Dirty or Slow Burn?

Slow burn emotional pining, one hundred percent.

Favourite Season?

Season One

Favourite Episode?

3x04 and 1x09, tied.

Favourite Book?

The Magician King

Three favourite words?

Pretentious, love, misty.

Want to be interviewed for our author spotlight? Get in touch here.

#the magicians rec center #author spotlight #author spotlight: lesbianmxgicians

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traincat · 6 years ago

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Marvel denying Peter his kid... and Marvel not letting Johnny have a kid... makes me want to punt Marvel.

I think it’s a really interesting phenomenon that’s happened to both of them but in wildly different ways – which makes sense, they’re both former teen heroes who have aged into adulthood but who Marvel is reluctant to let truly grow up, like the similarly wildly different ways their respective marriages ended. (Which like, Johnny’s marriage had other problems besides editorial, but that’s a whole other eighteen thousand word post.) But both of Johnny’s “you’re going to be a father haha psyche” plots involve manipulation/abuse – the first time it comes up is right before/during the Lyja reveal when Lyja’s true identity is about to get blown, after she’s already threatened to have her and Johnny move out of the Baxter Building, then she admits she wasn’t pregnant as she’s “dying”, then she comes back, claims the baby is real, forces Johnny to burn down ESU to save his life, then there’s the egg she claims is their baby but was actually a monster that almost ate them all, like, that’s just a lot on its own.

(Fantastic Four #389) Then there’s Fantastic Four Annual 2010, where he and a civilian woman are drugged and she’s artificially inseminated with his child by Psycho Woman, who was living in Johnny’s brain. (For the record, I think Aimee, the potential mother, makes the best decision for herself at the end of the issue by jumping through a time portal to try and stop everything before it happens (comics), but it’s still a sad ending note for Johnny “Wants Kids More Than Anything” Storm.) So combined with the rest of Johnny’s history, there’s a lot to unpack there, whereas I think Peter’s cases of child loss are more typical stories, for the value of saying anything reality warping and supervillains is typical. (imho they’re also way more tragic, in part because they’re very real, in the way the egg baby never is.)

(Peter Parker #75) Peter and Mary Jane lose their baby daughter due to the machinations of Norman Osborn. (I do feel like there has been a push in recent years to kind of gloss over that this happened, especially with one throwaway line about children during One Moment in Time, but it happened, Marvel! If you’re going to kill Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s baby in main continuity, you stick to your guns and commit to the ramifications of your tragedy!) In House of M, Peter’s married to Gwen and they have a young son in the altered reality, and who Peter, as one of the few who maintained their memories of House of M, greatly mourned when the world was put back the way it was.

(House of M and Son of M)

Then there’s Sarah and Gabriel Stacy. I’ve spoken before about the dubious canonicity of Sins Past, a controversial storyline that establishes that Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn had two children together, and my thoughts on it remain the same (that I think it’s a well written bad comic that shouldn’t be in continuity but also that it doesn’t like, matter, when aside from two storylines most comics going forward ignore it), but I think it’s important to note that the originally Gabriel and Sarah Stacy were supposed to be Peter’s children, before Marvel decided that having adult children would age the character too much. (Never mind that they were actually like, 7. Never mind also that apparently having infant children would “age him too much” as well. He’s thirty, Marvel.) Gabriel and Sarah were also raised believing Peter was their father, and that within Sins Past Gwen states that she wants Peter to raise her children as their father. So that’s messy, to say the least, and a more metatextual way of denying Peter Parker fatherhood than either Mayday or Richie Parker, but I thought I’d remark on it anyway. Peter definitely tried to be Sarah’s father.

(Spectacular v2 Spider-Man #23. This is not a good comic, but still.)

Anyway, yeah! It’s depressing that fatherhood is something that clearly means a lot to both of these characters, and for largely editorial reasons it’s something that is repeatedly denied to them. I’d like to believe that, current status aside, since neither Spider-Man nor the Fantastic Four have traditionally been stagnant books in terms of character status, that we’ll get there eventually, but Peter’s history in that department to say the least is deeply tinged with tragedy, and Johnny’s fits into larger patterns of abuse he’s suffered. That there are famously well-performing comic titles (Spider-Girl and Renew Your Vows) featuring Peter’s daughters is a good indicator.

#traincat talks comics #*replies #child death cw/

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bangtan · 7 years ago

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Inside BTS-mania: A Day in the Life of the K-Pop Superstars

The screaming begins just beyond baggage claim, when the first bob of purple-gray hair peeks up over the security wall separating the biggest Korean pop band in the world, in history, from its fans. Amid shrill hysteria, the seven soft-faced men of BTS stride through Los Angeles International Airport flanked by human trains of burly people in yellow “Event Staff” shirts. The boys smile, wave and, with the efficiency of British royals, slip past a few hundred young women and teen girls into black Escalades, their portal to the heart of the American mainstream. It’s mid-November and BTS have flown here from South Korea, propelled by the fervor of their admirers, a diverse group that calls itself ARMY (short for “Adorable Representative M.C for Youth”). The band is here for a string of high-profile TV appearances: They go from the airport to James Corden; Jimmy Kimmel the next day; then they’ll meet Ellen Degeneres, who’ll compare their U.S. arrival to that of the Beatles in 1964. But BTS are mainly in town to perform their hit song “DNA” at the American Music Awards – a performance that will make them Google’s top trending topic and set a Guinness record for Twitter engagement. Group leader RM (short for “Rap Monster”), 23 and palpably ambitious, compares the whirlwind trip to being “like surfers on a big wave.” But at 9 a.m. the day after BTS land, the vibe is more like “showing up for work.” We’re at a rehearsal studio when AMA reps arrive to shoot promo photos in the parking lot. Bubbly ham J-Hope, 23, an MC and onetime street-dance champ, walks out with his arms up, shouting, “Hello! AMA! Whoa!” The others trickle out with less ado and take turns getting primped, on the asphalt, by a team of stylists also in from Seoul. There’s Jimin, 22, the prettiest yet most puckish, a former top modern-dance student who’s currently shaving his chin while a woman holds a mirror. The perpetually wide-eyed singer V, 21, another art-school kid, who made his screen debut in a Korean historical drama last year, gets his purple-gray bob brushed and parted. A man uses a pick to dislodge something from the teeth of Suga, who like RM started his career as an underground rapper. Lead singer Jungkook, 20, a devout Belieber who joined BTS at 15, gets a streak of eyeliner. Meanwhile, singer Jin, 25, an aspiring actor so handsome he was recruited by a boy-band casting agent while walking down the street, shuffles quietly through the flurry. Their entourage is massive; I lose count in the mid-thirties. There are managers, publicists, a choreographer, a masseur, the interpreter, groomers, folks with cameras, unsmiling guards and several drivers with earpieces. Back home, BTS are pretty much only breaking their own records at this point – for video views, album pre-sales and chart placement – and it’s spilling over to other countries. Their recent EP, Love Yourself: Her, which features a song written with Andrew Taggart of the Chainsmokers, topped iTunes’ album chart in 73 countries, and BTS have become the first Korean-pop group to crack the American mainstream, with a Steve Aoki remix of their “MIC Drop” recently crashing the Top 40. ‪"We are so lucky that we’re living in this time, in 2017,“ says RM, the only one who can carry on a conversation in English. “When we post a tweet, it becomes translated to more than 30 languages.” The group’s lyrics – which are almost entirely Korean but close-captioned on YouTube and translated for sites like Genius – are a big part of its international success. BTS songs tackle issues like depression and anxiety. They promote progressive social ideals like female empowerment and accepting people from different backgrounds. They even address the internal unease of ditching less commercial career paths to become “idols,” as K-pop stars are called. BTS fans appreciate the band’s empathy, honesty, and independence—themes that are particularly in-demand amongst Western pop audiences these days. Plus, BTS set their message to canny hyper-modern production (frequently done by the members themselves) that devours all manner of EDM- rap- and R&B-leaning pop – think Major Lazer, Justin Bieber, DNCE, Logic, the Chainsmokers, Nick Jonas – and spits out a deeply catchy, slightly askew pastiche. After the photoshoot, the guys go in to practice their AMAs routine. From the opening whistle of “DNA,” they are a single-minded, many-limbed organism. Jin, who normally seems like he’s brooding, deploys pouty looks and precise hand jives. They goof around a bit – Jimin grabs Jungkook’s ass after the latter executes a balletic twirl – but are in the zone. An hour later, at 10:40 a.m., they’re chugging water and getting cooled off by women who use their entire bodies to swing paper fans emblazoned with the boys’ own faces. Jin quickly nods off in a rolling chair but is soon awoken by the masseur, who wants to jam an elbow into his shoulder; Jin winces as he does. Minutes later, V is yowling in pain, mouth wide as a handler treats a canker sore inside his cheek. Later, RM will dance with a bloody tissue in his nose – the wages of jet lag and constant hustle add up. An early lunch of cold burgers and fries seems meager compensation, but they eat with abandon. BTS, an acronym for Bangtan Boys (“Bulletproof Boy Scouts” in Korean), was built around RM and finalized via auditions. The group was assembled by a small company – Big Hit, run by songwriter “Hitman” Bang Si Hyuk, who co-founded one of the so-called Big Three agencies, JYP, before leaving it behind – which gives them underdog appeal. And while BTS came through the famously rigorous K-pop system, living in dorms together and training constantly, RM says Big Hit offers relative artistic freedom. To wit, in a unique spin on K-pop fan service, BTS build mythologies around their albums, like last year's Wings, whose theme comes from Hermann Hesse’s 1919 bildungsroman Demian. The concept appears in the lyrics, art and videos. Exactly how these subplots take shape is unclear, but it’s feasible that RM, who reads heady authors like Haruki Murakami and Albert Camus, is involved. “We try to make our own BTS context,” he says. “Maybe it’s risky to bring some inspiration from novels from so long ago, but I think it paid off more. It comes through like a gift box for our fans. That’s something you can’t find easily from American artists.” Instead, he likens it to Star Wars. “The big thing about creating our universe is expandability,” adds Suga, the most contemplative of the group, via interpreter. “Because it draws from our personal lives and interests, we can expand it as much as we want and it’s not alien for us. Having that allows us more diversity in the stories we can tell and the music we can make.” Do they feel free enough to write about Korean politics? RM says they’re working on a song that does so subtly, but Suga cautions that the subject “is fraught with danger, not in a literal way, but because of the risk of being misunderstood by young people who may not have fully developed sensibilities.” He’d rather focus on fostering understanding than “inciting conflict.” The rest of the group stays silent for our midday interview except to shout out ARMY and admit they’re eager for more crossover opportunities. As J-Hope puts it, “It’d be an honor for us to work with anyone.” RM says that, instead of breaking more records, the band’s mission is to promote individuality, which isn’t always encouraged back home. “Especially in Korea, there are all these standards: Get married, go to a nice university.” How will they spread that message? He smiles. “Better music and doper performances.” After selling out arenas in California, Chicago and New Jersey, BTS are planning a bigger U.S. run in 2018. They’re in unprecedented territory. Unlike PSY, their success here didn’t spring from a novelty hit – their rise up American charts was gradual and shows no sign of slowing. While they’ve brushed off the idea of an English-language album in the past, RM dropped English verses on a Fall Out Boy remix and Wale collab this year. At 1:30 p.m., it’s time to get ready for Kimmel. I follow BTS from the dance studio into the hall near their dressing room. There’s a folding table covered with silver rings, flashy necklaces and dangly earrings for the choosing. On the floor is an outsize ziplock full of identical Puma slides. After hair is redone and outfits adjusted, they load into the four Escalades with no fuss at all. As our caravan passes Hollywood Boulevard and turns onto the small street leading to Kimmel’s backlot and outdoor stage, we see them: more than a thousand BTS zealots who explode when they see us. They’d been waiting for hours. Kimmel music producer Mac Burrus later tells me a group of five teens spent two nights out there, on the street, in sleeping bags. In the green room, there is finally downtime. Suga and RM eat bananas. Jin plays his Nintendo Switch. Jungkook and J-Hope sleepily lean into one another on the couch. V lays on the floor to get his neck adjusted by the masseur’s bone-crunching assassin-twist before settling into a sofa to stream “Carpool Karaoke.” Around 4 p.m., producers bring in a couple ARMY moms for a skit where they taunt their girls, who are still in the line, via FaceTime from BTS’ inner sanctum. The daughters eventually come back and I steal them for a chat. Both discovered BTS on YouTube. Adriana, 24, is teaching herself Korean “slowly but surely” so she can hear the boys in their own tongue. Rosa, 18, insists, “Language isn’t a barrier when it comes to music.” At 6:20 p.m., BTS head to the stage. From the back, it sounds like there’s a roller coaster full of shrieking riders on the other side. A grizzled staffer walks by with a kooky grin, muttering, “This is nuts.” From the wings I watch the band rip into a six-song set that inspires face-clutching and tears. For “Save Me,” a “Where Are Ü Now” soundalike, the crowd deploys a coordinated K-pop “fanchant,” roaring each member’s birth name in perfect rhythmic succession. I can barely hear the music, so it doesn’t occur to me until the end that BTS don’t seem to be using vocal backing tracks, as a U.S. or U.K. group might – they rap and sing every last part while doing constant choreography. When it ends just after 7 p.m., an exhausted J-Hope flops onto the asphalt out of view of the crowd and his team, chest heaving, eyes wide. After 30 seconds, he picks himself up and rushes to join the other members of BTS disappearing into the hall leading to the green room. As he turns the last corner, a voice squeals, “Oh, my God! J-Hope looked back at me!”

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#bangtan #bts #v #suga #rm #jhope #jin #jungkook #jimin #t:article #171220 #rolling stone

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shadlad24 · 3 years ago

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The Nature of Hope

So, I’ve been gone a while. A lot has happened and is still happening, but meh. ANYway…

During “A Family Affair,” we get a beautiful, wonderful example of joyous reunion that deserves all the adoration it gets. What I have not seen focus given to is the reunion prior to it. Most of that one’s prominence comes from contrast: An underwhelming, something’s-off, there’s-just-something-missing hug shared between Xena and “Gabrielle,” it primes viewers for the true reunion between soulmates who had found each other despite crazy odds once more.

Our heroines come together with all the expected fireworks and tears after a devastating season finale and summer (plus two-parter season-opener) of grief in which Xena seemingly said goodbye to Gabrielle forever. Think what else that moment is, though. Remember the darker version of my cracksubs post for the episode? In Renée O’Connor really playing Hope in that scene, Xena is wholeheartedly embracing… the portal for ultimate evil to enter the world, the infant she nearly reversed her redemption efforts to slaughter in cold blood, the manifestation of the Rift Arc between her and her best friend, …the killer of her young son. Not to mention, the cause of her beloved Gabrielle plunging to her death. Yikes!

But, of course, even more interesting to me is the effect that moment has on Hope, what it reveals about her character. Like with her mother, after being embraced by Xena, Hope cannot bring herself to hurt the warrior princess ever again. Previously, she threw all manners of weapons at Xena and then Xena herself across her father’s temple. Tossed her mother that way too. Then, then specifically waited until GXe were safely behind a giant shield to send more flying weapons at them, after trying to protect Gabrielle and before stopping Callisto from annihilating the bard.

Because Hope is the demigoddess (supposedly fathered by the ender of goodness) who declined to retaliate against, less stop, a mere mortal poisoning her. Remember? Xena came upon Gabrielle kneeling by Hope’s lifeless body in perfect physical condition, not a hair out of place, despite her daughter’s telekinetic abilities. Beyond that, the poor child further went to her mother after her rebirth to reconcile with the bard, only to be rejected. So, she merely left Gabrielle in peace rather than say, let alone do, anything hurtful to her in return.

*gif below*

Yes, her single act of aggression against Gabrielle ever is the last time Hope attacks anyone ever again: Joxer shows the duo the body up in the tree, prompting Hope to exposit that while animals had recently turned up dead in Potidaea, no human had ever fallen prey to the unknown assailant (her son). None of the surrounding villagers, nor her family later, contradict her. Having spent an entire summer with Gabrielle’s family and former neighbors, Hope did not do injury to any of them. The only reason she puts Lila in danger is to escape Xena so she can make sure her son is okay. And even then, Hope does not leave a single scratch on either brunette. Nor does she attack Gabrielle’s family after learning that Xena figured out her true identity. Instead, she first beats herself to get her family to send the warrior princess away (rather than fight Xena herself or make The Destroyer try again) and then urges the woman to go to Joxer’s aide, yet another person she’d had completely at her mercy but not harmed other than to rebuff his attack on her.

Even when Xena has no idea who or what The Destroyer is and so could easily mistake Hope’s telekinesis for his, Hope does not help her son defeat the fiend who had many times tried to kill her, was there to kill him. And yet again, facing off with the mother who already used Hope’s trust and desperation for her to murder her twice, the poor girl only talks to the bard. Expresses her pride in her child, asks why Gabrielle never loved her; allows her mother to abandon her yet again without consequence…

As touched upon in a related post, all Hope ever wanted was to be loved, to be held. When she could not get that from her ever-loving mother, despite her best efforts and incredible forgiveness (yet another trait that connects her to her mother over her father), she instead gave as much love as she could to her son. The monstrous child whom she could not cradle even during his infancy, in spite of their mutual longing for affection. And in their end, his huge wrist-spike plunged through her heart, Hope chooses not to, as also mentioned elsewhere, punish him or their killers but to welcome more of his sharp spines into her flesh, letting him pull her into yet another deadly embrace for her, while looking into her murderous mother’s eyes one final time. That is how Hope truly was.

Yup. This was meant to be just a short post. Yup, it has nearly double as many images as I used in my posts… all last month! Halp. heh Hope you enjoyed it, nevertheless! 🥲

#xwp #xena warrior princess #xena #gabrielle #xena and gabrielle #fan theory #fan observations #fan analysis #hope #dahak #a family affair #the rift arc

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your-dietician · 4 years ago

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Purgatory is a very real thing

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/purgatory-is-a-very-real-thing/

Purgatory is a very real thing

The days mostly looked the same for Jordan Anthony during the fall of 2020. He’d start around 6 a.m. at a Harris Teeter in Olney, Md., where he worked as a home shopper. He’d race around the store, fill customers’ online orders and bring their groceries to the parking lot for pickup. He’d work until 2 p.m., speed to the gym for an afternoon workout and then went to Dick’s Sporting Goods, where he’d stay until close.

Not too long ago, Anthony played linebacker and graduated from Michigan. He was an elite recruit – he ranked as the No. 106 overall player in the 247Sports Composite – and could’ve played college football anywhere he wanted.

He entered the transfer portal in December of 2019 expecting to have the same sort of options. His Michigan career had not gone the way he wanted but Anthony figured his recruiting pedigree would help him find home quickly as a graduate transfer with two remaining years of eligibility.

Yet after months of contacting coaches non-stop and waiting for any situation to manifest that’d allow him to continue playing FBS football, Anthony needed to start making money. That’s when fears of forced retirement manifested.

“I was definitely scared thinking about, you know, my time may be up,” Anthony told 247Sports.

Anthony said this in mid-June, a few weeks after he publicly announced his commitment to Troy. The former No. 106 overall player in the 2017 class, per the 247Sports Composite, Anthony waited 19 months in transfer portal purgatory before he found a home ahead of the 2021 season.

There’s an argument that he’s one of the lucky ones.

With the expectation the NCAA would pass a one-time transfer exception that would allow players to play immediately at their destination of choice, the 2020-21 cycle has seen a record number of transfers enter the portal. The debut portal cycle saw 1,720 players enter, per a source with direct knowledge of the portal. That number retracted to 1,695 in 2019-20. But for this offseason, that number has ballooned to 2,510 with more than one month remaining before the transfer portal annually resets August 1.

These mass exoduses across campuses nationwide – an average of 19.3 players have entered the portal per FBS team, including walk-ons – has led some coaches to sound the alarm bell. Nebraska head coach Scott Frost recently sparked controversy with his comments on the subject.

“There’s no question it’s going to be risky to put your name in the portal,” Frost said at a fan event.

The numbers support that suggestion. Using 247Sports’ internal portal database, 247Sports examined data from the 2019-20 portal cycle to gain a sense of where scholarship Power Five and FBS players (those who were announced as part of their team’s annual recruiting classes) land once they enter.

Of the 480 Power Five scholarship players 247Sports studied from the 2019-20 cycle, only 26.5% of them stayed as a scholarship player on a P-5 roster. Another 26.3% signed with a G-5 program. Overall, 47.2% of P-5 scholarship athletes went to the FCS, junior college ranks or did not find a landing spot. Among the 826 FBS scholarship players 247Sports examined, only 37.8% stayed on the FBS level.

“It’s a tough situation and kind of a tough taste of reality,” USC Director of Player Personnel Spencer Harris told 247Sports. “It’s just a changing world and gives these players a good sense of where they’re at.

“They need to make sure they have all their information before entering the portal.”

***

Anthony remembers feeling hopeful when entered the transfer portal on Dec. 4, 2019.

He redshirted as a true freshman and played in 16 games over the next two campaigns, combining for 15 tackles and a QB hurry between the 2018-19 seasons. Anthony never did feel comfortable playing at 245 pounds, the weight Michigan asked him to when manning their middle linebacker position.

So once Anthony entered the portal, he spent the next six months reshaping his body. By June, Anthony weighed 228 pounds and felt ready for a comeback at a Power Five program. That was the goal. He also figured many of the programs that recruited him in high school would come flocking back.

“Going in I had the idea this was going to be easy,” Anthony said.

Three years is a lifetime in coaching, however. Many of Anthony’s high school recruiters had retired or moved to other jobs. Combine those changes with Anthony’s relative lack of tape – he took 131 snaps in his Michigan career – and Anthony often got passed up for more proven options.

Things started slowly in the portal for Anthony but picked up once bowl games and the Early Signing Period ended. LSU, Louisville, Illinois and many G-5 programs reached out and stayed in steady contact. Often, Anthony thought an offer was just on the cusp. He remembers thinking LSU was close until he saw the Tigers go with Jabril Cox from North Dakota State. Yet no offers ever came.

Often, contact with schools would cease without warning after one or two seemingly positive messages. Anthony remembers getting Twitter DMs like, ‘Hey would you be interested in playing in the SEC?’ Anthony would respond right away but never hear from them again.

“I was like, ‘Did I say something wrong?’” Anthony said.

He reshaped his body and felt ready to play by the beginning of the summer. But as COVID-19 raged across the country, Anthony did not yet have a home.

This led to a Michigan graduate and former elite recruit sitting out the 2020 season and working a pair of part-time jobs; a football lifer not yet ready to move on from football but also without any better short-term options.

“It was just tough for me mentally,” Anthony said. “That’s the reason I kind of just had to sit out. Not because I didn’t want to (play), but I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Anthony worked and worked out waiting for another chance. Once set on landing in the Power Five, Anthony opened up his mind to playing on the G-5 level. This time, in Year 2 of his portal existence, Anthony spent most of his time reaching out to schools. He’d follow coaches on Twitter. He’d DM and text a school’s Director of Player Personnel. Sometimes, he reached out to players in an effort to get his name out there. He tried that at Cal to no avail. Once, Tennessee’s fans started a mini-Twitter campaign to get his name on the radar with Vols coaches. Dozens of Tennessee fans followed Anthony hoping the linebacker-needy Vols would reach out. They never did.

There were hopeful moments followed by disappointment. Texas was in some contact with Anthony but took two other inside linebackers (Ben Davis, Devin Richardson) instead. Anthony reached out to Liberty, a school that was really interested in him during the 2020 offseason, asking if the school thought he’d still be a fit. The Flames did and Anthony was ready to commit. But Liberty decided to use the scholarship elsewhere.

Finally, Troy’s linebacker coach Andrew Warwick reached out. The contact stuck this time.

Anthony went from talking with Warwick to communicating with most of the staff. He took a FaceTime tour of the campus with Warwick as the guide. It didn’t take long for Anthony to decide to commit.

After 18 months it didn’t matter if it was Power Five or not. He had a chance.

“I’m so excited,” Anthony said. “Every day when I was at work that was all I was thinking about. I just need somebody to take a chance on me because I’m willing to prove how bad I want this.”

***

Anthony suggests there are two different types of players who enter the transfer portal: Those with proven production and everyone else. Those in the first category will find a landing spot without much issue. Those in the latter – no matter their recruiting pedigree – are much more dependent on their previous relationships and teams taking a risk.

Kater Johnson, a four-star signee with TCU in the 2019 class, entered the portal after just one year in Fort Worth. He had a similar experience to Anthony before ultimately signing with Butler Community College.

“It’s humbling,” Johnson told 247Sports last year. “You realize within a few months, a year later, the whole process restarts. Once your class is through – I don’t want to say they don’t care about you – but it’s a business.”

With only 37.6% of FBS scholarship players staying on the FBS level, it’s clear most players fit into that limited category. Not that every player wants to continue playing FBS football. Some transfers happily drop down to a lower classification so they can play. There’s no justification in criticizing any player who wants to keep playing. If Jake Bentley wants to go for Year 6 at South Alabama – awesome.

Yet in a college football world where so much focus is placed upon FBS players and recruits are so hyped coming out of high school, those who enter the portal often do so with a lack of information.

“When college football players are debating whether or not to enter the draft or not, they get a grade,” Harris said. “They have some information on where they might land in the NFL Draft and then they can decide whether they go back to school or enter the draft.

“There’s really not that information available to college football players (entering the portal).”

Contact with players is illegal before they’re officially listed in the transfer portal, so it’s up to players to self-evaluate their careers and opportunities before deciding to enter. These self-evaluation situations will only arise more often in the future.

With more players occupying college football than ever thanks to super seniors and a looming scholarship crunch on the horizon, the perils of the transfer portal seem unlikely to change moving forward.

Already on campus at Troy and prepping for the 2021 season, Anthony remains hopeful about the transfer portal following his year-and-a-half journey from Michigan to Troy.

“There were a lot of times I started losing faith and thought I might not ever play again,” Anthony said. “But I’m telling you, what’s meant for you is meant for you.”

Others like Frost, who saw more than a dozen of his scholarship players enter the portal this offseason, are far less buoyant when discussing the revolving door that is often the portal.

“Every kid who leaves any program thinks they’re going straight to Nebraska or Alabama,” Frost said. “And the reality is most of them aren’t. We’ve had some leave that have wound up in places like that. But I guess the right way to say it is Nebraska is a way better place for them, and they end up, in my opinion, in lesser places. But every kid thinks they’re going to get the same interest or more than they got coming out of high school, and it just isn’t true.”

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years ago

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By @Beschizza: My RSS feeds from a decade ago, a snapshot of gadget blogging when that was a thing

I chanced upon an ancient backup of my RSS feed subscriptions, a cold hard stone of data from my time at Wired in the mid-2000s. The last-modified date on the file is December 2007. I wiped my feeds upon coming to Boing Boing thenabouts: a fresh start and a new perspective.

What I found, over 212 mostly-defunct sites, is a time capsule of web culture from a bygone age—albeit one tailored to the professional purpose of cranking out blog posts about consumer electronics a decade ago. It's not a picture of a wonderful time before all the horrors of Facebook and Twitter set in. This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. But perhaps some of you might like a quick tour, all the same.

The "Main" folder, which contains 30 feeds, was the stuff I actually wanted (or needed) to read. This set would morph over time. I reckon it's easy to spot 2007's passing obsessions from the enduring interests.

↬ Arts and Letters Daily: a minimalist blog of links about smartypants subjects, a Drudge for those days when I sensed a third digit dimly glowing in my IQ. But for the death of founder Denis Dutton, it's exactly the same as it was in 2007! New items daily, but the RSS feed's dead.

↬ Boing Boing. Still around, I hear.

↬ Brass Goggles. A dead feed for a defunct steampunk blog (the last post was in 2013) though the forums seem well-stocked with new postings.

↬ The Consumerist. Dead feed, dead site. Founded in 2005 by Joel Johnson at Gawker, it was sold to Consumer Reports a few years later, lost its edge there, and was finally shuttered (or summarily executed) just a few weeks ago.

↬ Bibliodyssey. Quiescent. Updated until 2015 with wonderful public-domain book art scans and commentary. A twitter account and tumblr rolled on until just last year. There is a book to remember it by should the bits rot.

↬ jwz. Jamie Zawinski's startling and often hilariously bleak reflections on culture, the internet and working at Netscape during the dotcom boom. This was probably the first blog that led me to visit twice, to see if there was more. And there still is, almost daily.

↬ Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. Curios and weirdness emerging from the dust and foul fog of old books, forbidden history and the more speculative reaches of science. So dead the domain is squatted. Creator Josh Foer moved on to Atlas Obscura.

↬ The Tweney Review. Personal blog of my last supervisor at Wired, Dylan Tweney, now a communications executive. It's still going strong!

↬ Strange Maps. Dead feed, dead site, though it's still going as a category at Big Think. Similar projects proliferate now on social media; this was the wonderful original. There was a book.

↬ BLDGBLOG. Architecture blog, posting since 2004 with recent if rarer updates. A fine example of tasteful web brutalism, but I'm no longer a big fan of cement boxes and minimalism with a price tag.

↬ Dethroner. A men's self-care and fashion blog, founded by Joel Johnson, of the tweedy kind that became wildly and effortlessly successful not long after he gave up on it.

↬ MocoLoco. This long-running design blog morphed visually into a magazine in 2015. I have no idea why I liked it then, but indie photoblogs' golden age ended long ago and it's good to see some are thriving.

↬ SciFi Scanner. Long-dead AMC channel blog, very likely the work of one or two editors and likely lost to tidal corporate forces rather than any specific failure or event.

↬ Cult of Mac. Apple news site from another Wired News colleague of mine, Leander Kahney, and surely one of the longest-running at this point. Charlie Sorrel, who I hired at Wired to help me write the Gadget blog, still pens articles there.

↬ Ectoplasmosis. After Wired canned its bizarre, brilliant and unacceptably weird Table of Malcontents blog, its editor John Brownlee (who later joined Joel and I in editing Boing Boing Gadgets) and contributor Eliza Gauger founded Ectoplasmosis: the same thing but with no hysterical calls from Conde Nast wondering what the fuck is going on. It was glorious, too: a high-point of baroque indie blogging in the age before Facebook (and I made the original site design). Both editors later moved onto other projects (Magenta, Problem Glyphs); Gauger maintains the site's archives at tumblr. It was last updated in 2014.

↬ Penny Arcade. Then a webcomic; now a webcomic and a media and events empire.

↬ Paul Boutin. While working at Wired News, I'd heard a rumor that he was my supervisor. But I never spoke to him and only ever received a couple of odd emails, so I just got on with the job until Tweney was hired. His site and its feed are long-dead.

↬ Yanko Design. Classic blockquote chum for gadget bloggers.

↬ City Home News. A offbeat Pittburgh News blog, still online but lying fallow since 2009.

↬ Watchismo. Once a key site for wristwatch fans, Watchismo was folded into watches.com a few years ago. A couple of things were posted to the feed in 2017, but its time has obviously passed.

↬ Gizmodo. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Engadget. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Boing Boing Gadgets. Site's dead, though the feed is technically live as it redirects to our "gadgets" tag. Thousands of URLs there succumbed to bit-rot at some point, but we have plans to merge its database into Boing Boing's and revive them.

↬ Gear Factor. This was the gadget review column at Wired Magazine, separate from the gadget blog I edited because of the longtime corporate divorce between Wired's print and online divisions. This separation had just been resolved at the time I began working there, and the two "sides" -- literally facing offices in the same building -- were slowly being integrated. The feed's dead, but with an obvious successor, Gear.

↬ The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Required reading at the time, and very much a thing of its time. Now vaguely repulsive.

↬ i09. This brilliant sci-fi and culture blog deserved more than to end up a tag at Gizmodo.

↬ Science Daily: bland but exhaustive torrent of research news, still cranking along.

The "Essentials" Folder was material I wanted to stay on top of, but with work clearly in mind: the background material for systematically belching out content at a particular point in 2007.

↬ Still alive are The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, UMPC Portal (the tiny laptop beat!), PC Watch, Techblog, TechCrunch, UberGizmo, Coolest Gadgets, EFF Breaking News, Retro Thing, CNET Reviews, New Scientist, CNET Crave, and MAKE Magazine.

↬ Dead or quiescent: GigaOm (at least for news), Digg/Apple, Akihabara News, Tokyomango, Inside Comcast, Linux Devices, and Uneasy Silence.

Of the 23 feeds in the "press releases" folder, 17 are dead. Most of the RSS no-shows are for companies like AMD and Intel, however, who surely still offer feeds at new addresses. Feeds for Palm, Nokia and pre-Dell Alienware are genuine dodos. These were interesting enough companies, 10 years ago.

PR Newswire functions as a veneering service so anyone can pretend to have a big PR department, but it is (was?) also legitimately used by the big players as a platform so I monitored the feeds there. They're still populated, but duplicate one another, and it's all complete garbage now. (It was mostly garbage then.)

My "Gadgets and Tech" folder contained the army of late-2000s blogs capitalizing on the success of Gizmodo, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, et al. Back in the day, these were mostly one (or two) young white men furiously extruding commentary on (or snarky rewrites of) press releases, with lots of duplication and an inchoate but seriously-honored unspoken language of mutual respect and first-mover credit. Those sites that survived oftentimes moved to listicles and such: notionally superior and more original content and certainly more sharable on Facebook, but unreadably boring. However, a few old-timey gadget bloggers are still cranking 'em out' in web 1.5 style. And a few were so specialized they actually had readers who loved them.

Still alive: DailyTech, technabob, CdrInfo.com, EverythingUSB, Extremetech, GearFuse, Gizmag, Gizmodiva, Hacked Gadgets, How to Spot A Psychopath/Dans' Data, MobileBurn, NewLaunches, OhGizmo!, ShinyShiny, Stuff.tv, TechDigest, TechDirt, Boy Genius Report, The Red Ferret Journal, Trusted Reviews, Xataca, DigiTimes, MedGadget, Geekologie, Tom's Hardware, Trendhunter, Japan Today, Digital Trends, All About Symbian (Yes, Symbian!), textually, cellular-news, TreeHugger, dezeen.

Dead: jkkmobile.com, Business Week Online, About PC (why), Afrigadget (unique blog about inventors in Africa, still active on FaceBook), DefenseTech, FosFor (died 2013), Gearlog, Mobile-Review.com (but apparently reborn as a Russian language tech blog!), Robot's Dreams, The Gadgets Weblog, Wireless Watch Japan, Accelerating Future, Techopolis, Mobile Magazine, eHome Upgrade, camcorderinfo.com, Digital Home Thoughts (farewell), WiFi Network News (farewell), Salon: Machinist, Near Future Lab, BotJunkie (twitter), and CNN Gizmos.

I followed 18 categories at Free Patents Online, and the site's still alive, though the RSS feeds haven't had any new items since 2016.

In the "news" folder, my picks were fairly standard stuff: BBC, CNET, digg/technology, PC World, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, and a bunch of Yahoo News feeds. The Digg feed's dead; they died and were reborn.

The "Wired" feed folder comprised all the Wired News blogs of the mid-2000s. All are dead. 27B Stroke 6, Autopia, Danger Room, Epicenter, Gadget Lab, Game|Life, Geekdad, Listening Post, Monkey Bites, Table of Malcontents, Underwire, Wired Science.

These were each basically one writer or two and were generally folded into the established mazagine-side arrangements as the Age of Everyone Emulating Gawker came to an end. The feed for former EIC Chris Anderson's personal blog survives, but hasn't been updated since his era. Still going strong is Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond, albeit rigged as a CMS tag rather than a bona fide site of its own.

Still alive from my 2007 "Science" folder are Bad Astronomy (Phil Plait), Bad Science (Ben Goldacre), Pharyngula (PZ Myers) New Urban Legends, NASA Breaking News, The Panda's Thumb, and James Randi's blog,

Finally, there's a dedicated "iPhone" folder. This was not just the hottest toy of 2007. It was all that was holy in consumer electronics for half a decade. Gadget blogging never really had a golden age, but the iPhone ended any pretense that there were numerous horses in a race of equal potential. Apple won.

Still alive are 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors, MacSlash, AppleInsider and Daring Fireball. Dead are TUAW, iPhoneCentral, and the iPhone Dev Wiki.

Of all the sites listed here, I couldn't now be paid but to read a few. So long, 2007.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/my-rss-feeds-from-a-decade-ago.html

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