#it went really well in every regard except for my performance

[frailgun]

actually the most insane fit ive ever done

[doktorpeace]

The Great All Generation Nuzlocks Roundup

This is gonna be long and have multiple parts thanks to the image limit on posts. Each game will be headlined by their title in Bold Print so if you're only interested in certain games it'll be easy to filter through. These notes will also only be on the Successful Run of each game. I'll note how many times I wiped in each game, but largely won't mention those runs for sake of relative brevity.

All runs were performed with the following rules - Only One Encounter Per Route/Zone/Area/Cave [Unique Names Denote Separate Areas] No Duplicate Encounters No Using Items In Battle No In-Game Trades No Overleveling the next Gym Leader or Major Boss Purchased/Gift Pokemon Are Allowed (Though there is only one case where I use one) but count as your encounter for that Area. No Use Of 'Affection' Based Mechanics.

RED - Kanto is a genuine joy to Nuzlocke for a few reasons. It's quick to get going, most early game Pokemon are quite strong (Ratticate, Primeape, Nidoking/queen, and Fearow are all genuinely incredible encounters), and it has probably the most balanced set of starters overall with regards to choice. All three have viable reasonings to be picked in the context of a nuzlocke. I, personally, went with Bulbasaur because my primary goal was to Win The Game and not to flex.

Kanto's also great for developing basic skills for nuzlocking. Team building, knowing when to switch, resource/Power Point management, moveset scouting, etc. all go much farther than normal in Kanto thanks to the poor AI and generally weak enemy trainers.

My favorite thing about it, though, and what made it very fun and a great start is that unlike every other region you can 100% assure yourself VERY powerful encounters in the mid and late game, and I don't mean gift Pokemon. There's just so many routes where all the encounters are filler you're 100% going to have out of the way early (Ratata, pidgey, etc.) that it's a surefire thing that you WILL get a Doduo right outside Celadon, for instance. Extending this to the whole region, you can guarantee you get other extremely potent Pokemon like Slowbro, which I did.

My team in this one was a strong Water/Fire/Grass core and otherwise strong goodstufts that compliment one another well. The surprise of this run was definitely Arcanine. I remember as a kid really being underwhelmed with trying to raise a Growlithe and never really getting the hype behind Arcanine outside of a VGC setting. However, I realized as an adult that keeping it a Growlithe until level 50 for flamethrower is Stupid. I immediately evolved that sucker and taught it Dig, which has 100 base power in gen 1. Arcanine was able to coast off of Dig and Body Slam until we beat Blaine and got the Fire Blast TM. It can also learn Reflect in this gen! All in all a stellar team member whose absolutely massive stats right after obtaining at level 19 really let it shine!

I always forget just how absurd the level swing from even just Lorelei to Blue is though. Just an absolute cliff of increase. Thankfully, however, leveling up in Kanto is a non-issue, so I was able to keep pace even while abiding Hardcore Nuzlocke rules. Total Wipes - 0

CRYSTAL - My overall opinion on Johto really hasn't changed at all, lol. It's still suffers a lot from what I'll call 'Fake Nonlinearity'. Like, sure, you CAN go to a lot of places after beating Morty but like...why would you do anything but go Chuck->Jasmine->Pryce and their associated content? It's not like you can meaningfully get strong early since the entire region has a dearth of strong trainers and wild pokemon alike. It's simply not productive to do things outside of the obviously intended order, except perhaps in the context of a Nuzlocke and trying to get some encounters early.

What does give Nuzlocking this region a unique flavor is that the best pokemon in the game, Alakazam, is a 100% ensured encounter assuming you're willing to pass over the free Eevee from Bill, which you should be. For a mere 200 coins at the game corner, you can get an Abra which can immediately be taught all 3 elemental punches on the cheap and raised up. Johto Nuzlockes thus take the form more of building an ensemble cast to support your clear Main Character, rather than building a cohesive team. As a result, Steelix and Machamp greatly stood out for being so dramatically different from Alakazam that they could patch up his few deficiencies.

We faced a setback VERY late and lost our Tauros on Victory Road, leading to the emergency training of Golly the Politoed. He ended up doing almost nothing, but that's true for the entire team besides Pugilist, who swept the entire Elite 4 and Lance unassisted.

It was definitely a fun time and had a very unique flavor compared to other regions. What Johto offers it does offer uniquely, at least.

Total Wipes - 2 (Rival Fight in Azalea Town Gym Leader Morty)

EMERALD - I'm gonna be totally honest. I love Hoenn and I love Gen 3 but I had somehow never actually pushed all the way through Emerald before. I've beaten Sapphire and ORAS each several times, so there was some nice new stuff to me waiting. Emerald is the first game you can play that still feels 'Modern' even without the Phys/Special split. The gameplay design, routes, and everything else just feel much more well realized and iterated upon, which makes sense. Gen 2 was made to capitalize on the Pokemon Craze where Gen 3 was made with the idea of 'Oh, we have a long running thing on our hands.' They worked to impress!

That said, I don't have all that much to say! Emerald is a very Standard Pokemon game and I had a lot of fun with it. I did end up repeating a single pokemon on my endgame team, Gyarados, but most of the run was played without it. I simply blundered a good number of strong encounters away in the midgame and had to fall back on a Pokemon I knew would be strong and could help get me through the Elite 4 and Juan!

This team has a very funny Water/Fire/Grass/Water/Grass core and it's also the first game where I actually EV trained my team on purpose. Thanks to Gen 3's thoughtful encounter design, training up Sp. Attack, HP, Speed, and Defense are all trivial, which greatly helped out. Sunny Day on Ludicolo was specifically to counter Juan, and we NEEDED it too because we lost Gyarados to Drake and Juan got TWO FREEZES in that final battle, so I needed Ludicolo to put in extra work. All in all, this was definitely one of my weaker Final teams, but I partly blame that on my relative unfamiliarity with Emerald's mid and late game. I also simply was not using all the resources at my disposal, which would dramatically change starting with the next game. The big surprise was honestly Electrode, who was a pretty stellar and reliable teammate all through the late and endgame due to fast, strong thunderbolts and screens support.

This game had a nickname theme - Fruits.

Total Wipes - 1 (Gym Leader Brawly)

PLATINUM - If you've followed me long enough you know I've historically been very hard on Gen 4. I do not like Diamond/Pearl and have started and dropped Platinum many times. However, this run I had a genuine joy playing through. Really and truly, playing in this format with the momentum of three runs behind me energized me to see Sinnoh in a new light and I can truly appreciate the dramatic improvements Platinum makes to the region. Most importantly, I've made a new, lifelong friend.

Encountered as a Nosepass at level 14 in Mt.Coronet, Cao Cao was a true champion and help throughout the midgame and into the early late game. Stonewalling tons of trainers, enabling easy captures on lots of encounters, offering free and important switches at critical moments, and just generally being a reliable member of our core duo for most of the game with Rotom Fan...but we lost him at Iron Island in a completely optional double battle... (artist's rendition in the workbench room at my office)

To make matters worse, the teammate we went to Iron Island for, our Scyther so we could evolve her into Scizor, would also be lost shortly before the Elite 4, rendering his loss all the more painful! I knew, for him, we had to carry on and we had to win.

And win we did. My total unfamiliarity with Platinum past the first couple gyms had me doing much more planning and research out of game on upcoming trainers to help ensure a strong run. As a result we lost far less team members than in the past three runs. In particular I was really sweating the encounters with Barry, who is dramatically stronger than previous rivals. But really, we didn't have any noteworthy losses to him.

Platinum is certainly a challenging game in its back quarter but it also really squanders its otherwise quite excellent pacing in the first two thirds or so of the game. After the sixth gym the game gets really long in the tooth and I was just ready for it to be over by the end. Nonetheless, I did have quite a lot of fun and when I play Platinum again in the future I'll definitely do it as a more casual nuzlocke, for fun.

For the vast majority of this run I had a Rotom Fan, Probopass, and Scizor but they were all lost somewhat to VERY late and were replaced with the bottom row. While Whiscash and Porygon 2 stepped right up and were excellent performers, Bronzong was absolutely abysmal and did nothing but provide a single free switch against Cynthia. This run also came closest to dying, with only Crobat surviving the champion battle. (in my heart, however, any team that completes the game all get to go on and I have in fact transferred them into pokemon home, lol) Wuxuan the Crobat was basically my true starter. With me from before the first gym and all the way through to the end. A stellar pokemon. While this run endeared me to many Pokemon I hadn't used in game - or at all - before in Rapidash, Crobat, and Rotom Fan, above them all stands my new true friend, Probopass.

This run was downright cursed when it came to natures, too. Basically every single encounter had a nature that was negative on their most important stat. It was really frustrating, tbh!

This game has the second and final case of a team having a duplicate species of a previous team - Machamp This game has a nickname theme - Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Total Wipes - 0

Post will continue in a Part 2 because of the post image limit.

[windsofcourage]

BOTANICAL HEADCANONS / anonymous / ACCEPTING .

hibiscus : how does your muse view the gentler , daintier things in life ? as things worth preserving & caring for , or things only bound to wither & disappear ? .

||. Link wouldn't be a very good knight if he didn't highly value and appreciate the gentler things in life. He may not remember it currently , but Link grew up in a humble , stable countryside household. It wasn't always perfect, but Hateno (and especially Link's house) is on the quieter, more quaint side of things , and so to that regard : he very much values peace and quiet . This is especially reflective of his respect for nature .

There's a second , underlying question in the hibiscus headcanon , which is the matter of "is Link an optimist or a pessimist" . I do think it's worth addressing. Link is a REALIST. While he does defer to the more optimistic side of things on casual settings , he isn't blindly attached to viewing the world through an optimistic lens. He can see the bad for what it is, the good for what exists, and where things need improvement. (imo when pushed to his worst he can fall into heavy self-criticism just based on what a high standard he holds himself to according to Zelda's diary. And even then it's more a case of "I can do better, and that performance wasn't my best." cue introspecting pretty heavily on what went wrong and how to negate it in the future.)

lavender : how easy is it to gain your muse’s trust ? once their trust is broken , how might one go about mending it ?

||. Link is a pretty trusting individual all things considered. He doesn't have any reason to not be. Whether as a son, brother, knight, hero or traveller, he really only comes across good, well-meaning people. The only exceptions are Ganon and the Yiga Clan. That said , like I mentioned above, Link is a realist. He is not naive. And in his line of work, it's always good practice to be on guard. Betray him, and you will find that he is extraordinarily wary of you. Depending on what it is, that may just be the case for a long time. (And he'll most definitely be a blockade between the betrayer and any of Link's allies and friends.)

If someone did manage to break Link's trust, the only way to earn it back is to prove yourself trustworthy over actions and over time. Once will not be enough, and words most definitely won't be enough on their own. Apologies and accountability may beget forgiveness from him, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten the transgression. If it was an especially personal betrayal, then it takes a long time to build back that trust. He may be short-tempered and snarky with you all the meanwhile. At the same time, I do think Link believes in second chances when it comes to friends. Just ... not usually the third chance. Not every time.

[mosesdumpin]

hey btw I have two big questions about XG that prolly don't have an explicit answer but I don't really hear the fandom discussing: 1) like... how aware is the team/the members of what, to me and prolly most culturally western queers, comes off as queer dogwhistling? Are they intentionally courting that crowd or is some of it cultural ignorance? Is there enough of a distinction in korean/japanese culture from western culture to distinguish between queerbaiting and queer dogwhistling (the first being cowardly dodging committing to queer support, the second being intentionally dogwhistling to maintain a mainstream voice while supporting queerness when the mainstream otherwise wouldn't) (I know thats more than one question, but its just clarifications on what would otherwise be a quick yes or no) and 2) is this not talked about because its just a kpop thing I don't understand or are some of these symbols/actions just common in the kpop culture to the point where its cultural meaning is lost/different?

Like the TGIF MV has the very gender non-conforming but misguided bathroom sign that became a minor meme a while ago (m, f bathroom signs then a symbol mixing both, then an alien with related text) which fits the theme of "aliens" that they are going for but also feels like an escalation from their general vibe of "be free to be what you are, and be stronger for it" This just seems the most obvious to point out. One thing that initially worried me with the group is their constant reassertion of "womanhood" (Mascara, GRL GVNG, lit every song) which sorta yells TERF energy alongside Mascara's specifically heteronormativity. To me, because of my lack of previous kpop/jpop/c-pop exposure, I forgave this is different steps of queer cultural acceptance and tried to set more lax expectations. Except as time went on, I noticed that beyond a few "gendered" references to their attractiveness (I look so lavish, dont be fooled by pretty faces, etc, all only arguably gendered in english) they don't specifically work to define womanhood in the way I would expect. GRL GVNG is an easy to explain example. Despite the song constantly reaffirming that these are women, their crew are women, and "female empire" there isn't really some affirmation of what that is besides... just what they are calling themselves. To hammer in the point, exchange each gendered word for the male alternative and the song doesn't make any less sense. To me, this could still be an example of TERF energy, but it comes off as specifically intending to compare themselves to what is often viewed as a distinct genre - boy groups, and undermine the expectations of what a girl group is supposed to be. It FEELS less like "women can be strong too" and more like "we are strong, sucks you would assume differently" and I wonder how intentional that distinction is? Not to mention they've hosted clearly queer fans on their publicly released content, but this one I am less confident in pointing out since this could simply be the differences of cultural gender expressions making XG more ignorant and/or kpop at large doing the same thing without it being meaningful. Maybe I am imagining it as well, but the most tenuous evidence is that they sometimes put a LOT of distinct emphasis on phrases like "Be your truest self" and "celebrate diversity" among other (perhaps dated) queer catchphrases with some really coy interactions between the girls that sit in the blurred line of platonic social behavior. Ofc I WANT the performers I am invested in to be surprisingly queer friendly, and I am aware of confirmation bias. Worst case scenario is my instinct about TERF energy is correct but the middle ground would be that all of this is mostly accidental but not antithesis to what they want to convey. I know young kpop groups are very intentionally private about their personal lives, especially regarding sex and dating (for kinda gross reasons, but tbh everyone is better off despite what I say next) but I am dying to find out if Jurin or Harvey are queer or not because it seems to me like the other girls are being coy about those two in some way (either together or individually) and I just want to confirm its that or not that god damnit.

[tswaney17]

Love is a Bitch

This was something I was trying to write for Kinktober that really was a bitch. So here we are for Kinkmas! I've borrowed some themes from the movie Magic Mike, but this idea has been rolling around in my head for a while now. Also, the title and the story were heavily influenced by the song "Love is a Bitch" by Two Feet, thanks for the recommendation @123moiaussi​ 😘. I recommend listening to it while reading at least the dancing portion of the fic. It’s also just smut. Maybe about 2% plot at the end to set up for a potential second part, but yeah. Don’t judge me. I’m a simple woman with simple needs. 💙💚💜

My fanfic account: @tswaney17fics​​​

My ao3 account: tswaney17

Please let me know what you think about this update. I love getting your feedback. Constructive criticism is always welcome. 💕

Trigger warnings: language, NSFW - basically smut with no plot, you have been warned. 

Word Count: 11,691

Elain didn’t know how she let her sisters drag her here.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. When her younger sister suggested the idea at the last bar, Elain didn’t want to be the party-pooper and deny her request. So, she didn’t exactly say no—she just didn’t say anything at all.

With Feyre turning twenty-one, the three of them decided to celebrate by flying into Vegas for the weekend and spend it like every other newly turned, legal drinking age adult.

Except this place was different. Because this wasn’t just another bar they were visiting.

This was a male, exotic strip club.

They were sat at a table in the middle of the floor, thank God. She didn’t think she could handle being up close to the stage. Her cheeks were already heated from awkwardness.

Feyre, the little shit, looked like she was about to jump out of her seat with excitement.

Nesta appeared less enthused than her youngest sister but was obviously curious as she didn’t exactly put up a fight about coming here.

Servers came around in risqué little outfits and took their drink orders, flashing them flirty winks as they delivered bright liqueurs to their table. The lights dimmed, hushing the crowd as a spotlight appeared on center stage and a shirtless man in chaps stepped out.

His dark skin was clearly oiled. It shimmered in the bright light accentuating his extremely defined physique.

Elain would be lying if she said her mouth didn’t go a little bit dry at the sight of him. Maybe this would be more fun than she thought.

“Hello! Welcome to Club Velaris. My name is Helion, and I am the host of your pleasure barge this evening.” He flashed a large grin making the crowd of women, young and old erupt into applause and cheers. “Tonight, we’re going to take you on a tour of the seven courts of Prythian. Just to give you a quick overview of what to expect—there will be seven different acts. We will begin in Spring and move to Autumn and Summer, and then we’ll wrap up our seasonal courts with Winter. At that point, we’ll do a brief intermission while we set up for our solar court session. When we return, we’ll start at my court, Day,” a flirty wink to a group of women, who actually swooned. Elain rolled her eyes at the dramatics. “Then move to Dawn, and end our performance for the evening with the Night Court and our three Illyrian warriors.”

More cheers and giggles from the crowd around her, including her sisters.

Movement near the side of the stage caught her eye and she had the sudden feeling that she was being watched—no, regarded. Not in a creepy way; it didn’t send a wave of anxiety over her like having unwanted attention tended to give her. It was desirable. Elain shifted in her seat to cross her legs, picking up her drink to take a swig.

“Now, I’m going to stop rambling and get off the stage. So, please, enjoy the show.”

The crowd went crazy as the lights went out again and the music started.

Each performance seemed to be better than the one before it, and Elain felt herself growing more comfortable as the night wore on. She wasn’t sure if it was a combination of the alcohol she consumed—though she was nowhere near drunk—or the fact that though these males were wearing very little and dancing suggestively, it was very well executed. She still sometimes felt that presence behind the stage, but chose to ignore it, focusing instead on the dancers, the way they moved their bodies, their strength. The women they took up on stage clearly enjoyed themselves and she ended up having to cross her legs near the end of the last performance, her body becoming a bit too excited.

It’d had been a while since she had slept with anyone, her and Graysen having broken up nearly two years ago, and she wasn’t aching enough to use her hand. Though she may be nearing that point tonight.

She took a sip from her drink when the opening music began for the ending performance. Three silhouettes took form, beautiful large membranous wings that reminded her of bats were printed on the screen, giving them the illusion that they were attached.

And then they appeared, all wearing fighting-like leather pants and unlaced boots that could easily be slipped off. Bare from the waist up, their dark, tanned skin was covered in inky, swirling tattoos that Elain thought had to be correlated to their heritage. They all looked like they could be related from their skin color, to their jet-black hair, to some of their facial features.

Their bodies moved in mesmerizing ways that couldn’t help but suck you in. The roll of their hips on the ground had her biting down on her bottom lip.

Elain’s skin grew impeccably warm as she focused on one dancer in particular. His scarred hands flexed as he twisted his torso, thrusting his hips into the air and holding his weight on one arm.

He was so beautiful.

His hazel eyes caught hers even from across the room and held them. It was such an intense look that she released her bottom lip and felt her breath catch in her throat.

And then the three of them were moving through the crowd. Pausing to dance with women along the way, but it was clear their destination was purposeful. They had prepicked their table before the show had started.

He was even taller than she realized when they stopped in front of them and Elain had to crane her neck back to look up at his face, her cheeks turning an ungodly shade of red as this gorgeous, half-naked male stood in front of her.

The other two immediately latched onto her sisters, but this one seemed to notice the hesitation on her face, because he simply stood in front of her, offered her a beaming smile that she knew women melted over, and said, “Hello there. Care to join me on stage?” He nodded with a tilt of his head to the platform behind him.

Shit, even his voice was enticing. The deep, richness of it made something inside her purr in excitement. “Um…” she began, so far outside her normal comfort zone. “I wouldn’t know what to do,” she lamented rather lamely.

That swaggering smile morphed into something a bit softer. “I’ll guide you through anything you need to know,” he added and held out a scarred hand to her.

A squeal had her jumping in her chair and her eyes shot to her see Feyre being hauled up by one of the other dancers, her legs around his waist. Nesta, straight-backed, gripped by the back of her thighs, was also carried up to the stage. It looked like she was unamused, but Elain could she was fighting a losing battle with a smile on her lips.

“If you’re the one that denies me, I’ll never hear the end of it from them,” the dancer said regaining her attention, his hand still outstretched in front of him.

Elain cocked a brow, a teasing smile playing on her mouth. “The guilt trip? Is that really your last ditched attempt?”

“Depends on if it’s working,” he shot back.

Oh, he was very interesting indeed.

Steeling herself, she reached out and took his hand, letting him pull her out of her seat. She looked down at their clasped fingers, at how different his were in comparison to hers, and breathed, “Beautiful.”

Seemingly stunned, the dancer inclined his head in thanks, a lovely pink blush sporting his cheeks as he led her up to the stage and onto the chair that awaited her.

“Though I’ll get close to you,” he explained getting them both into position,” I won’t actually touch you anywhere inappropriate. It’ll mostly be our bodies coming and grinding together. You’re allowed to touch me wherever you like, aside from my actual dick.”

Elain’s face lit up like a living flame.

He chuckled, the sound slithering along her bones and doing nothing to help her reddening cheeks. “You’re very cute when you blush like that.”

“Well then I’m about to get really adorable,” she blurted as the music started. It was a sensual, slow piece—nothing like what the other performances used. The male voice that came through the speakers around the room made goosebumps erupt all over her body. It made her blood sing.

The dance was both erotic and intimate.

He moved his hips against her in the chair, hand braced on her shoulder and neck to slide closer. Every move he made was as graceful as it was powerful. The flex of his shoulders and biceps, the contraction of his abdominals, the strength of his thighs. He was a king and this was his element.

Her breathing became labored as he moved on her, slowly at first, then with a bit more urgency.

He hitched her legs around his waist and easily lifted her off the chair.

Elain yelped, clutching his strong shoulders.

The dancer chuckled at her expense, threading his fingers through her thick waves to cradle her head as he gently laid her on the stage. Bringing his head lower, his lips brushed over the shell of her ear. “Relax for me,” he whispered.

She was a bit stiff, but did as instructed, taking a breath and loosening her body. And then he moved, his mouth barely grazing over the exposed skin of her clavicle from the spaghetti strap camisole she wore as he worked his way down her body until he peeked up at her from between her thighs. 

Fuck.

Elain was so turned on right now, she was partially concerned he could smell it through her jeans.

He moved her body around the floor, thrusting into her clothed hips, changing their positions until the world around them faded. Until it was like they were the only two people in the room, on that stage.

The music, the movements, feeling his body, his breath against her skin, it was entirely sensual. It was nothing like the movies, nor the previous performances. Those were about the grinding of bodies together in vulgar-like movements.

This dancer—no, artist—moved in a way that was like he was making love to her. Slowly. Intimately. She forgot there was an audience watching them. She couldn’t hear their screams and shouts. The only thing Elain could focus on was the male who had made her feel more alive with the three minutes he had her on that stage than her ex had in the nearly two years they were together.

He had more than shown her how to just let go.

He had touched her soul in a way she had never thought possible.

Elain grew more confident as the performance progressed, her hands brazenly sliding from his hair to his back, across his shoulders, and down his biceps. Her eyes had glazed over when he stripped out of his leathers in that thong that did nothing to hide the sheer size of him. Or the delicious, firm mounds of his toned behind.

She was absolutely glutton for punishment when the act came to its end, and they were sitting nose to nose, her in his lap, panting heavily. Her eyes closed as she tried to regain some semblance of herself, but when she opened them to find his lust-filled gaze already piercing into hers, she knew she was a goner.

He moved his head so their cheeks pressed together and he whispered, “Stay after closing. Please.” It was a desperate request, a plead, but her heart swelled all the same.

Unable to formulate a coherent sentence, she nodded in agreement, and then she felt his lips, lightly press to her cheek. Just the barest of kisses that had her head spinning and made her want to beg for more.

Perhaps that’s exactly what she would be doing later.

~~~~~

Azriel wasn’t sure what he expected to find after the club closed, but it definitely wasn’t that gorgeous woman from the audience still sitting there, waiting for him. Sure, she had said she would stay, but honestly, he thought she’d come to her senses after the performance was over, think he was some sort of creep, and bolt at the first opportunity.

It looked like her two sisters stayed as well—he and his brothers picked them out of the audience easily before their performance. They usually preselected who they wanted to bring up onto the stage based on a few factors. The women had to be into it, actively participating in the other acts. They couldn’t be overly handsy, because nobody wanted to dance with a partner who crossed too many boundaries. And they needed to be willing. They didn’t want to push somebody into something they weren’t comfortable with, but even those that were hesitant usually ended up enjoying themselves on the stage.

Very rarely did all three of them pick from the same table, but tonight, they all saw something different, and yet the same from the trio of sisters.

Potential for something more.

Even though he could tell she was out of her element, he saw her warm-up throughout the other performances in the way she focused on them, how she continuously crossed her legs. And she seemed hyper-aware of him, immediately noticing when he and his brothers were scouring the crowd for potential partners. She looked right at him behind the meshing of the stage even though she couldn’t have seen him through it.

Azriel ran a quick hand through his hair, tousling it just right before making his way over to the table, his brothers already dropping in chairs beside the two women they danced with. He watched her back straighten slightly and then she looked over her shoulder at him.

Again, he was struck stupid by how incredibly beautiful she was. “Hey,” he murmured.

“Hi,” she breathed, crossing her legs.

His eyes tracked the movement. So, she was still just as affected by him as he was by her. He took a seat next to her, reaching out a hand. “Azriel,” he introduced himself.

Golden-brown eyes flicked over his face before she took his hand. “Elain. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I think we’re past that.”

Azriel tipped his head back and laughed. She had a point. “Touché.” Gorgeous and funny. He might’ve dropped dead right there.

The six of them sat for nearly an hour, sipping on drinks and talking. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed that hard. And while watching Cassian go toe-to-toe with Elain’s sister, Nesta, was amusing, Azriel’s skin had been thrumming since Elain had set her hand on his forearm. He leaned his head towards hers and whispered in her ear, “Do you want to get out of here?”

Bright, curious eyes blinked up at him. “Yes.”

He grinned, a slash of white against his tanned skin. “We’re heading out of here,” he announced to no one in particular. Taking her hand, he tugged her out of the club towards his car. Flipping her until her back pressed into the cool metal, Azriel’s hands went to her head and neck, tilting it the way he liked it. His breath fanned over her mouth, taunting her, pleading with her.

Elain’s hands were on his waist, thumbs sweeping over the soft texture of his t-shirt. “Yes, please.”

Offer and permission.

Az smiled at the manners, her eyes already fluttering shut. He leaned forward and brushed his lips on hers, just a taste to keep her wanting; aching for more. The kiss was soft, slow, and definitely not enough. Not for her, since she chased after him when he pulled away.

A hand left his waist and found its way to his nape, preventing him from leaving. “More,” she whined.

He smirked, all too happy to oblige. Stepping forward forced her back to arch just that much more. It pressed her breasts into his chest and fuck, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on them, his mouth. He devoured her, letting his tongue stroke hers that had her whimpering. When he finally broke off their kiss, they were both panting, breathing in each other’s oxygen.

“Take me home and show me what else that mouth can do,” she challenged.

Azriel had a feeling Elain wasn’t a very daring person, nor one to speak so openly like this, but he took it as a good sign. He dropped another searing kiss to her mouth, then opened her car door for her.

The drive to his flat was stifling. He kept his hand firmly on her thigh, his thumb brushing over her leg-clad jeans. Az might have been teasing her. Might have brushed his digit up high, close to her sex without giving her what she wanted.

And the low sounds she was making—and trying to smother—were absolutely killing him. “Don’t be quiet on my account,” he finally said when it looked like she was about to bite through her bottom lip. Fuck, he wanted to put his own teeth there. He grabbed her leg and propped it open against the center console. With her legs spread, it gave him access to really feel her, but before he did, he glanced at her, making sure she was okay.

“Please touch me.”

Gods he didn’t need to be told twice. Even through the jeans, he could feel the heat of her. Adding pressure with his fingers, Elain gripped the “oh shit” bar as he rubbed her, knowing it likely wouldn’t bring her to an orgasm with all the fabric between her, but it’d help her prep for later. Though, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to pop the button of her pants and try and wiggle his hand down the front of them here, just to get her off now.

When he pulled out front of his place and parked, he twisted, gripping her cheeks to bring their mouths together for another sloppy, heated kiss. They kissed their way from the car, in the elevator, down the hallway, and into his flat.

He broke it off to shut the door behind them, locking it, and tossed his keys on the small entry table. Azriel tugged Elain further in by her hand. “Can I get you something to drink?”

She flashed him a sultry smile. “I didn’t come here to drink, Azriel.” Gods, the way she said his name had him hardening in his pants. He wanted to hear her scream it, moan it.

Their mouths came crashing together as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom.

Her hands gripped the back of his shirt, lifting it over his head. Deft fingers traced over inked skin, sending shivers wracking through his body.

Azriel gently laid her on his king-sized bed—he liked the room. “Fuck, I wanted to worship you on that stage tonight,” he breathed, sucking on her throat. “I was tormented by your god's damned neck,” he nipped at the skin, flicking his tongue over the small hurt. “By your exposed collarbones,” he kissed at her prominent clavicles. “The swells of your breasts.” His teeth scraped over her clothed nipples, making them harden beneath his ministrations.

Elain let out a small sound, her fingers tangling in his hair, tugging. “I would’ve let you,” she admitted, and yet, there was something in her tone of voice that told him another thing.

He looked up at her. “Elain, when’s the last time you had sex.”

She stilled beneath him but met his gaze unflinching. “About two years.”

His brows raised. A woman as beautiful as her hadn’t had sex in two years? Meaning, she wasn’t the type that did one-night stands—not that that’s what he wanted—and didn’t frequent clubs like the one he worked at. So, that begged the question of why she was there. But that wasn’t something he needed to know right now. He asked instead, “And when’s the last time you had a proper orgasm?”

Her face flushed, but she didn’t balk at him or his question. “Probably even longer than that.”

The idea that she had been left unsatisfied by whoever she last slept with didn’t sit well with him. And clearly, she wasn’t one to touch herself either. “That is completely unacceptable. Do you feel comfortable spending the night here?”

The corner of her mouth curled up. “That seems like an odd question given what we were just discussing.”

He dropped a kiss to the center of her chest. “I’m asking because with the number of orgasms I plan on giving you, you’ll be too exhausted to leave. And if you’re uncomfortable staying here, I’ll limit it to three, so I can at least take you back to your place.”

“Three?” she spluttered. “You’ll limit to three if I don’t want to stay. How many do you plan to give me if I do stay?”

He smirked. “As many as you want. But I’m aiming for at least five.”

Elain’s mouth dropped open. “You think you can give me five orgasms?”

“Baby, I know I can give you five orgasms. I want you so sore tomorrow, that you think of me every time you move.”

Her hands slid to his shoulders, thumbs running up the column of his throat. Her eyes darted between his, but he saw the answer there before she even voiced it. The excitement. “I’ll stay here overnight.”

The smile that took over his face was blinding. “Excellent.” And then he captured her mouth in a bruising kiss, hands sliding up her torso and resting on her ribcage. Her skin was so soft beneath his scarred flesh. He wanted to explore it all. With his lips, his tongue.

After a nod from her, he pulled her blouse off and tossed it unceremoniously behind him. She was wearing one of those bralettes, a blush color that brought out the natural hues in her skin. His mouth latched onto a nipple through the fabric, sucking it deeply.

Elain moaned, back arching; her nails dug into the strength of his shoulders.

He switched to her other breast, letting one of his hands wander down to her jeans to pop the button. Az moved to kiss a path down the flat planes of her stomach, around her belly button. “Can I take these off?” he asked her, hands on the swell of her rounded hips. Fuck, the curves on this woman were killer.

“Yes,” she mewled, withering beneath him.

Azriel shimmied the skinny jeans down her smooth legs until she was lying on his bed in nothing but her bralette and lacy, black underwear. “Gods, you’re perfect,” he groaned. “So, fucking beautiful,” he kissed up one of her thighs until he reached her cunt. “And so, fucking wet.” He used his thumb to brush the tip through her covered pussy until she was bucking against his hand. “You’re responsive too, wonderful.”

He crawled up her body, kissing her thoroughly before he rid her of her bralette. With her breasts exposed, he focused his attention on them, sucking marks that had her moaning. His teeth gently bit down on her nipple, adding enough pressure to mix her pleasure with pain.

Elain cried out, her fingers gripping whatever they could find—a handful of his hair and the swell of his bicep.

Az let the flat of his tongue soothe the small hurt, before he switched to her other breast, showing it just as much attention as the first, then worked his way down her body until he was at the waistband of her panties. He let his breath ghost over her soaked sex, kissing her lightly to get a small taste. His eyes practically rolled into the back of his head at the sweet flavor. Fuck, he wanted to get his mouth on her so badly.

“Azriel,” she whined, hips chasing after his lips.

“Greedy little thing,” he grinned. “Do you want me to take these off,” he asked her, toying with the hem of her scrap of lace she called underwear.

“Gods, yes.”

“Look at me, Elain,” he commanded. He wanted her to watch him, wanted her to watch as he removed her last barrier.

Blown eyes found his and widened as they observed him take the lace between his teeth and pulled them over her hips, down her thighs, and past her ankles.

Elain’s entire body shuddered in anticipation, and she let out a sound that was a cross between a moan and a whine. “Jesus, fucking Christ,” she muttered, eyes rolling into the back of her head as he kissed his way up one leg until he settled between her thighs.

He tossed her legs over his shoulders, giving him better access to her dripping pussy. Fuck, she was so soaked already. Az kissed the inside of her thigh, then sucked a hickey into her skin, loving the way she moaned. “I can tell you’re close already and I’ve barely gotten started,” he teased, glancing up at her through his lashes.

Those gorgeous doe-eyes were already on him, waiting. Keeping their gazes locked, he leaned forward and brushed a light kiss to her lower lips, groaning at her honeyed taste. “So sweet,” he murmured. And then he devoured her, going right for her clit and sucking it into his mouth.

When Elain’s hips bucked up off the bed, he threw out his arm across her waist and pinned her down, holding her to his face as he dined on her.

He focused on her clit before he moved to lap at her entrance, swirling his tongue around her opening once, twice, three times then plunged it inside of her. He searched for the upper ridge of smooth skin, flicking at it a few times until she was a withering mess. When he knew she was close, felt her walls pulse against him, he pulled his tongue back and took her clit back into his mouth. A gentle graze of his teeth and a long drag had her shattering.

Elain cried out a slew of words, the best being his name. One of her hands found purchase in his hair, gripping it so tightly he swore he saw stars, the other latched onto the bedsheets like a tether needed to keep her firmly planted on earth.

He drew out her pleasure, kept his tongue working her clit in small, flat strokes as he gently inserted one, and then a second finger into her fluttering sex. Azriel knew he could pull a second orgasm from her easily like this. As he helped her ride out her high, he replaced his mouth with his thumb on her clit, circling it. “That’s one.”

With his fingers seated deep inside her, he curled them in a come-hither motion, dragging them along her upper wall.

Elain’s face was picture-perfect in pleasure. Her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, head thrown back, brows scrunched together. He took the opportunity to study her when he hit a particular spot, how her face would twitch or relax.

When he found the combo that had her gasping, he zeroed in on it providing it his full attention. “How’s that feel, baby?”

“Don’t stop,” she cried. Her body vibrated as she neared her climax again.

He raised himself on his knees so he could lean forward to kiss her stomach. “Never,” he whispered onto her skin.

Tightening the circles with his thumb, Elain exploded, back arching as she screamed his name in a very satisfying, yet agonizing way.

Fuck, his cock ached.

But he ignored it as he helped her ride out her high, stroking her through it, fingers curling until she became overstimulated and pushed his hands away. He pressed his lips to either hip then sucked his hand clean, savoring her taste.

Elain was panting as he kissed his way up her body and settled next to her, avoiding putting his weight on her. He brushed sweat-damp hair behind her ear, giving her time to collect herself.

He smirked down at her when she finally graced him with those gorgeous brown eyes. “That’s two.”

“I retract my statement earlier about when’s the last time I’ve had a proper orgasm.” At his furrowed brow, she said, “The correct answer was never. I have never had a proper one if that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

He blinked at her. Was she seriously telling him that nobody had ever made her feel good? “Elain, you’ve never been made to feel like that?”

Pink tinged her cheeks, but she shook her head. “No. I didn’t even think sex was supposed to be that good.”

“Well, let me just say your previous partners had to have been sorely lacking.”

“Partner,” she corrected. “It was just one.”

And from the tone of her voice, she didn’t want to talk about him. So, he cupped her face instead, letting his thumb sweep over her jaw as he kissed her.

Elain responded in kind, eager to get away from that conversation, and pressed her naked body up against his. “You’re wearing far too many clothes.”

“Why don’t you help me out with that.”

Hitching her leg over his hip, she pushed herself up onto his waist, dipping to kiss and suck at his neck. Her teeth grazed his pulse point, but she paused, pulling back to look at him. “Should I not leave marks? Since you perform practically nude?”

He blinked up at her, shocked that she had even thought about asking. “You’re fine. We’re closed for the next few days and any marks leftover I can cover-up.” He reached up to brush his thumb over her jaw. “But I appreciate you confirming first. I suppose I should’ve done the same.”

Guilt clouded his voice, but she just flashed him a sultry smile. “Don’t be sorry. I am extremely turned on by those marks.” She wiggled her hips against his clothed erection, making him groan in agony.

“Cruel, wicked, thing.”

Elain grinned, leaning down to suck at his neck again.

Azriel let his hands wander down her bare back, over the curve of her ass, squeezing her supple cheeks, then back up to tangle in the mass of golden-brown locks she called her hair. She really was fucking gorgeous. Even a few of his other co-workers had swooned after her when he had gone backstage, calling him a lucky male for spotting her in the crowd.

She made her way down his chest, pausing to finger his tattoos. “I really like your tattoos. They’re cultural, right?”

He raised a brow. How she could tell, was beyond him. “Yes, they’re Illyrian.”

She pressed her lips over his beating heart. “They’re beautiful,” she whispered onto his skin like a prayer, rolling down on him harder.

Fuck, nobody had ever worshiped him like this. Kissed him as she did. Had called his hands and his ink beautiful. It made him desperate for her. “Elain, I swear if you don’t actually get me naked now, I might come in my pants like a hormonal teenage boy.”

The wicked grin she shot him made him actually fear for his sanity. “Oh, is that so?” she asked, devilishly. Her hips circled his a bit more. “Because, wouldn’t that be a sight to behold?”

“Fucking minx,” he groaned, gripping her waist to stop her assault.

She laughed, a lovely, joyous sound that he wanted to bottle up and keep on his nightstand forever. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop teasing if you let me go.”

He shot her one last warning look but released his hold on her.

Elain scooted further down his body, kissing his abdominals, the defined v shape of his Adonis belt, popping the button of his jeans. Lifting his hips, she tugged them off, then ran her hands up his legs to his toned thighs, settling them there. “This is completely unfair,” she frowned.

“What is?” He didn’t like that frown on her face.

“This!” she waved a hand over his form. “You look like you were sculpted from marble and I look like…” she let the sentence trail off, poking herself in the stomach where an extremely small layer of her protective fat bubbled up, making it look slightly pudgy. It was definitely prominent from how she was sitting.

Azriel sat up, bringing their faces closer together. He knew he had to choose his words carefully—not because he still wanted to sleep with her, he couldn’t care less about that right now—but because he knew that society held women to this ridiculously high standard of “beauty.” It was completely toxic and he hated it. He hated seeing how those standards glossed over her eyes. “Elain, look at me,” he said more forcefully when she refused to meet his gaze. “Do not think for one fucking second that you are not beautiful. No matter your size or shape, you are beautiful, inside and out.” He cupped her cheek.

Carefully, he placed his hand over her abdomen, where she seemed to be the most sensitive about. “Everyone has this. No matter what society tells you. I have it. You just can’t see it right now because I worked out right before I performed and my performance aids in keeping the layer off. But tomorrow morning, it’ll be there. That thin layer of fat is to protect your internal organs. It is healthy. So, please, please do not let what society has deemed ‘perfect’ define you. Because from what I see, there is not a single thing I would change.”

His thumb wiped under her eye, catching the small tear before it could fall below her lash line.

Elain’s hands found his shoulders and she released a shaky breath. She took a few moments to collect herself. “Sorry, I got a little too far into my head. Did I ruin the moment?”

He wondered if perhaps this ex of hers also played some role in her wayward thoughts. But that wasn’t something he was going to bring up now, so he pushed those feelings aside and brought her mouth to his, kissing her slowly. “No, you didn’t ruin the moment. I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to voice your concerns with me. I want you to feel like you can talk to me.”

Her fingers threaded into his hair, pulling on the silky strands.

Fuck, he loved when she pulled his hair.

“How did I get so lucky to meet somebody who’s as gorgeous as you and is as sweet, and caring too?” Her smile softened as she tilted her head to the side.

“Gods, you’re radiant.”

She kissed him again, more hungrily, pushing him back down on the bed. Working her way down his body again, Elain peeked up through her lashes as she took in his boxer briefs. “No thong?” she teased.

“Work attire only, baby,” he shot back with a cheeky grin.

“Pity. Your ass looked fantastic in that.”

Azriel tipped his head back and laughed, exposing the strong column of his throat. “I can promise you that my ass still looks good in these. I can roll over if you’d like to see for yourself.”

She slid her hands underneath his backside, squeezing him firmly. “No need. I can tell just by touch.” Bringing her skilled fingers back out, she palmed his very hard erection through his boxer briefs.

“Fuck,” he swore, hips jerking.

“And so sensitive too,” she teased, kissing his clothed cock.

“Elain,” he whined, drawing out the ending syllable. “Stop playing.”

She hummed against his stomach, taking his boxers between her teeth like he did earlier, and tugged them, albeit a bit awkwardly down his legs, losing them only once. The elastic snapped against his thighs, making her face turn an adorable shade of red before she continued with her task, determined to remove his underwear with her teeth.

He watched her eyes widen when she took the sheer size of him. It definitely didn’t give him a burst to his ego.

Elain crawled her way up between his legs. “You’re larger than I anticipated.”

“Thank you,” he said rather boastfully. But then he saw a hint of nervousness in her brown eyes. Propping himself up on his elbows, he said, “Hey, Elain. We don’t have to continue if you don’t want to. You know that right?”

She took a deep breath, settling herself. Whatever doubts were running through her head seemed to vanish in those few seconds she took to collect herself. “I’m fine,” she answered him with a reassuring smile. To prove her point, she gripped his cock in her small hand, not quite being able to close her fingers around it completely, and stroked him.

Azriel tipped his head back, groaning. When he felt her hot breath over his tip, he moved with lightning speed, catching her chin, between his thumb and forefinger.

Elain blinked up at him through her dark lashes. “What?”

He was struggling not to combust at the sight of her hovering over his dick. He let out a strained breath. “If we’re aiming to get you to five orgasms tonight, you putting your mouth on me is going to ruin a lot of the fun.”

She smirked, pulling her chin from his grip, kissing him on the tip, then licked the precum that sat there.

Azriel hissed. “Devil minx of a woman.”

Crawling back up his body, she pushed him back down onto the mattress, kissing him thoroughly. He tasted the saltiness of his cum on her tongue. It was so erotic and sensual and something he wanted to taste from her forever.

The realization was jarring enough that his eyes flew open. Oblivious to where his mental state took a turn, Elain was too focused on kissing him, her body grinding against his.

When he felt her hips get too close to his, he shot his hand between them, cupping her soaked pussy. He broke their kiss, panting against her mouth. “We probably shouldn’t grind on each other until I have a condom on.”

Red dusted her sweaty cheeks and chest. She was so damn cute when she blushed. “Good point.”

He stretched, reaching into his nightstand feeling around until he found a foil packet. Sitting them up, he tore the package with his teeth, tossing the wrapper onto the floor to collect later, and expertly rolled the condom onto his length.

Elain kept her arms draped over his shoulders, fingers toying with the hair at his nape, but she watched him with mesmerized eyes.

Az really couldn’t help himself for dropping a kiss onto her pert nose, which she scrunched up adorably. “You’re sure you want to continue?” he asked her again.

“I’m sure.”

He fingered at her entrance, coating them in her arousal, then circled her clit a few times for good measure. “And you’re feeling okay down here now? Not too sensitive?”

She shook her head, golden-brown hair swishing. “I feel good,” she smiled, one that showed the tips of her teeth.

Fuck, she really was devastating when she smiled like that.

“Up on your knees,” he told her.

Elain obliged, rising up and scooting herself forward slightly.

Azriel wrapped the hand that was coated in her arousal around his cock, stroking it. He knew he’d have to take the first entry slowly, and given Elain’s lack of sexual partners and prowess, he wanted to make this more intimate for her. Placing his hand on her lower back, he guided her hips to rub his hardened length between her legs.

Elain moaned at the pressure he applied, head falling against his. “Please, Azriel. I need more. I need to feel you.”

He lined up the head of his cock with her entrance. Kissing her slowly, he breathed into her mouth, “Sink down, baby.”

And she did. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she took every single inch of him, her breaths coming out of her in gasps.

Once fully seated, he stilled her, lavishing attention to her neck, her collar bones, her breasts. His hands trailed over her ass, up her sweat-soaked spine, tangling in her soft hair. He knew when she was ready to move—could feel her arousal dripping onto his lap—had started to wiggle against him. His lips found her ear and he whispered the words he was sure would set her off. “Ride me, Elain.”

She made a whimpering sound but did as he said, rising on her knees until just the tip of him remained before slowly sinking back down. The position they were in allowed him to hit deep inside of her. It also kept them incredibly close, forcing her entire body to slide up and down his as she moved.

He watched her face as she fucked him—eyes screwed shut in both pleasure and concentration. Her hair fell like a curtain around him. Gripping her hips, he helped angle them into a roll on her strokes so it better brushed his cock against her clit.

“Oh gods,” she cried, eyes flying open. Her hands fisted his hair, crashing their mouths together in a filthy kiss. “Harder. Please, harder.”

Azriel didn’t need to be told twice. He maneuvered himself onto his knees to properly thrust up into her. Their bodies came together in restrained strokes. It was intimate, their gazes locked as if they couldn’t look away from each other. They were breathing each other in, lips mere inches apart. She was so close—he could feel how her slick heat fluttered around his dick.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he growled. “Taking my cock like a good girl. Are you going to come like one too?”

“Yes,” she moaned.

He gave her a particularly hard thrust, one that he knew would have her seeing stars. “Then come for me, Elain. Let go and come for me.”

She crashed like a tidal wave, screaming and clawing at his back until he had welts.

Her walls quaked around him and it took every ounce of his self-restraint to not go over that edge with her. No, he still needed to pull one more orgasm out of her with his cock before he’d give himself relief. He kept his thrusts slow and measured as she rode out her orgasm.

Only once she had started to slowly come down did he lie her on her back and pull out of her. He dropped a kiss to the center of her chest at her wince, then rolled her onto her stomach. Lifting her hips into the air, he paused before he sheathed himself back inside of her. “You good?”

She was still quaking around nothing, but Elain looked back at him over her shoulder and, fuck him if that wasn’t the sexiest thing he hadn’t ever seen in his entire life. “I’m good,” she panted.

He kissed her sweaty spine. “Good, because that was three.” And then he thrust into her in one hard stroke.

Elain’s back arched and she fisted the sheets, knuckles turning white as she groaned.

Azriel gave her a second to adjust to the new position before he started moving, one hand on her hip, the other finding her hair. He wasn’t sure if she liked her hair pulled, so he just wrapped it around his wrist and held it, not enough to tip her head back, but to show that he had some control. Using the leverage of her body, he snapped his hips into hers, setting a grueling pace.

He knew he wouldn’t last very much longer—he might’ve been a little presumptuous in his ability to last through two of her orgasms given how fucking tight she was. She felt like a dream. So fitted, and wet, and warm. Azriel had gone through his share of partners, but no one had ever come close to Elain.

She may have very well ruined him for anyone else.

Shoving those damning thoughts aside, he released her hair and leaned forward to pull her up against him. His hand settled against her throat, the other slid down between her legs. “Open your eyes,” he breathed onto the shell of her ear, taking her earlobe between his teeth.

Elain did, catching his gaze in the mirror that stood opposite his bed. She let out a whimpering sound, her one hand finding his hair, the other clutching his hip.

“Look at how well you take my cock, Elain. Like you were made for it.”

He matched his fingers circling her clit to his thrusts. Slow, deep, and measured.

Her legs were shaking as she tried to meet him thrust for thrust. “Please,” she begged. “Please, I’m so close.”

Az knew this already, could feel her tightening around him. He was so close to coming now. Had barely a few seconds before he would erupt. Brushing her hair aside with his nose, his lips pressed into her pulse point. “What are you waiting for? Let go, baby.” He sunk his teeth into her neck and sucked.

“Azriel!” Elain screamed out his name, legs finally giving out, but he kept her up, kept thrusting into her as her walls clamped down on him and his orgasm shook his entire body.

His movements became a bit sloppy and uncoordinated, and he called out her name, the sound like a symphony of instruments coming to their climatic ending. He finally lost his ability to hold them both up and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Azriel stuck his arm out, catching himself so he didn’t crush her beneath his weight. His breath stirred her hair cascading down her back, but when he tried to pull off her, she gripped his forearm.

“No, stay,” Elain panted.

He brushed a smiling kiss to her bare shoulder. “I’m heavy.”

“I like the weight,” she told him matter-of-factly, lacing their fingers together.

He huffed a laugh but didn’t argue. “That was four, by the way.”

Elain’s body shook from the force of her chuckle. “You’re really keeping track of that, aren’t you?”

“I’m a man of my word.” He didn’t need to see her face to know she rolled her eyes at him. Azriel seemed to pick up on her quirks easily.

They laid together for a bit, basking in the softness and afterglow of their lovemaking—and fucking. He had wrapped her hair up off her neck, giving him easy access to her skin to kiss. “I need to pull out of you to go dispose of this condom. Take a breath for me.”

She did as told, wincing on the exhale when he pulled out.

“Easy, baby.” He brushed a hand down her ribcage. “I’ll be right back.” Grabbing the wrapper from the floor, he walked to the bathroom, tossing it and the soiled condom in the garbage. He pulled a washcloth from his cabinet, wetting it with lukewarm water, and rang out the excess.

Dropping the towel on his nightstand, Az slipped on a pair of clean boxers, then climbed back on the bed over Elain. His hands roamed her body, moving up to her shoulders, massaging out the kinks.

Elain groaned into the pillow she tucked under her face. Rolling her head to look at him from the side of her eye. “Four orgasms and a massage. Who are you?”

He grinned, running his hands further down her back. “Well, if I’m going to try and pull one more from you, I need you to be relaxed. But if you don’t feel like you can handle another, we can stop too.”

The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Hmm. And how do you plan to pull the fifth one from me, exactly?”

Azriel leaned down, dropping a trail of kisses down her spine. “By my tongue again, of course.”

Her body shuddered. “You seem to like giving oral, don’t you?” She looked over her shoulder at him, flashing a playful grin.

He crawled up her body, bringing their mouths together for another dirty lip lock. “I love it. I want to satisfy you properly.” Gripping her hips, he rolled them over so she was on top of him.

Elain traced her fingers over the whirls of his tattoos on his chest. “You have more than satisfied me. But I might have one more round in me if it’s with your tongue.”

When she went to slide off him, he stopped her. “No, you’re staying on top this time. Sit up.”

With a raised brow, she scrambled into a sitting position onto his lap. Always eager. He loved that about her. That she was willing to hand over the reins of her pleasure to him and let him guide her to what she had clearly been missing out on. Slipping his hands under her thighs, he hauled her up in the air to set her directly over his face.

Elain let out a small yelp, lurching to catch her momentum on the headboard. She looked down at him between her thighs and he swore her eyes darkened at the sight of him beneath her.

“Tell me,” he purred, nuzzling his nose into the purple bruise he had left on her inner leg, “has anyone let you ride their face before?”

She swallowed hard but shook her head.

Azriel nipped her other thigh. “Don’t get shy on my now. Tell me.”

“No,” she rasped, breathing heavy.

“No, what?”

“No, I haven’t ever ridden somebody’s face before,” she admitted, face blushing.

Interesting. He’s already eaten her out, but putting her on top in this position is what made her feel a bit more vulnerable. That just wouldn’t do. He let his breath fan across her sex. “This position gives you control,” he explained, kneading her ass cheeks. “You take what you want.” His thumbs swooped over her skin in a soothing gesture. “Sink down on me.”

Using the headboard as leverage, Elain spread her legs, lowering herself towards his mouth, but at the last second, stopped. She peered down at his face, hesitating.

“What is it?” When she didn’t answer him, he twisted his neck to kiss the inside of her knee. “Elain, talk to me. What is it?”

She let out a shaky breath that sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “I feel like I’m going to suffocate you.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You won’t. I promise you won’t. And if I feel like I can’t breathe, I can easily lift you off me. Believe me when I say I’m fine down here like this.” He pressed his lips to her already dripping cunt. “Also, that wouldn’t be a bad way to die. Actually, I would fucking love to die like that.”

His words did exactly what they needed to. Elain laughed, relaxing even further. “Well, in that case,” she teased, lowering herself even further.

Azriel’s deft fingers gripped her hips, spreading her like a meal for him to devour. Slowly, he stroked his tongue over her pussy, lapping everything she gave him. He worked her entrance before sliding up to focus on her clit.

Elain’s head dipped forward, a moan tumbling from her lips as she gripped his headboard until her knuckles turned white. Gaining confidence in herself, she released one hand to slide it into his hair, using it as leverage to guide her hips into a rolling motion against his face.

He fucking loved how she ground herself against him—how she controlled her movements and used his hair. This beautiful, sexy woman, exuding confidence and taking control of her pleasure was the hottest thing he had ever experienced.

She was rocking against him in earnest now and he could tell she was close. Her breathing had quickened and she was spasming on his mouth.

Azriel kept his licking steady, then sucked her clit between his teeth, lightly nipping at it to mix her pleasure with plain.

It was enough to send her over the edge for the fifth and final time. When she cried out his name, it came out as a sob, tears of pleasure rolling down her cheeks.

He wasn’t sure if she was trying to pull herself closer to him or push him away, but he continued gently sucking on her clit, flicking it with the tip of his tongue to help her ride out her orgasm, before lapping at her entrance to catch every drop of her release.

Elain was a panting mess above him, stomach contracting as she tried to breathe her way through her high. “Stop,” she cried.

He immediately pulled his mouth away from her knowing she was likely hypersensitive and overly-stimulated. He watched her carefully—eyes screwed shut until finally she settled over him and met his gaze. Legs shaking, he helped her scoot down his body until she was lying on his chest, practically a deadweight.  

There were too many things wrong with how good it felt to hold her like this. How right it felt. They didn’t know each other—he didn’t even know her last name for fucks sake. But gods, if he could stay like this forever, he would. His fingers ran soothing lines up and down her back and he placed gentle, loving kisses on the top of her head.

Elain’s body melted against his. Cheek pressed to his pec; her ear sat over his heart so she could listen to its thunderous beat.

When her breathing had started to slow, he dipped his head down to kiss her forehead. “Don’t fall asleep just yet. We still need to get you cleaned up.”

“Hmm?” she murmured eyes closed.

Az chuckled, carefully rolling her off him to grab the damp cloth on his nightstand. He wiped her face clean of sweat, kissing her lips softly once and earning a dopey smile in return. Making quick work over her neck, chest, back, and legs, he gently mopped up the mess between her thighs.

She hissed at the contact, body flinching away from his hand.

“Easy, baby.” He brushed a soothing hand over her hip. “I’m almost finished.”

“I think your comment earlier about being sore tomorrow will be accurate,” she stated as he finished cleaning her up.

He chuckled, tossing the dirty washcloth into his hamper. “Rest will help, but yes, you’ll feel it tomorrow,” he said, cuddling up behind her.

Elain rested her palm on his cheek, bringing his face down to kiss his other cheek. “Let me just use your bathroom and then we can go to sleep.” She climbed out of his bed and nearly collapsed under her shaking legs.

Azriel lurched, but she caught herself on his nightstand. “Shit, are you okay?”

“Just don’t have my land legs yet. Gimmie a second.”

“I can carry you to the bathroom,” he offered.

Elain let out a humorless laugh, looking at him over her shoulder. “And they say chivalry is dead.” She snorted softly. “No, you’re not carrying me to the bathroom.”

“You do realize you were just sitting on my face. I think we’re a bit past modesty at this point,” he argued.

She glared at him. “And yet the answer is still no. I’ll get there myself.”

He watched, anxiously, as she hobbled her way towards his bathroom. “You’re like a newborn fawn right now.”

Elain whipped her head to look at him. “Are you making fun of me or gloating?”

He grinned, leaning back on his hands. “Definitely the latter.”

She muttered what sounded like “smug bastard” under her breath as she shut the door effectively blocking her from his line of sight.

Az chuckled, shaking his head. He took the time while she saw to her needs to pull his sheets and blankets down. Grabbing a clean shirt from his dresser, he met her at the door when she opened it, handing her the white tee. “Here. I didn’t know if you wanted to sleep nude or not.”

“Thank you.” She took the fabric from his outstretched hand, slipping it over her head.

When she no more than had it on, Azriel swooped down to lift her into his arms.

Elain squealed, hands clutching his shoulders. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“You said I couldn’t carry you to the bathroom. You didn’t say anything about carrying you back from it,” he answered her, a mirthful smile tugging on his lips.

A hand snaked into his hair and tugged in reprimand.

“Now baby, let me just tell you that that has the opposite effect on me.” He sat them down on his bed, sliding their legs under the covers.

“Good. Maybe that’s what I want to happen. Get you hard and horny again only to let you sit and suffer while I drift off to sleep satisfied.” She smiled sweetly at him, but there was a devilish hint in her brown eyes.

“Sassy, little minx,” he warned, kissing her cheek before he draped her across his body.

Elain curled up against him, taking a deep breath of his scent. Her leg slotted between his, arm thrown over his waist. “You’re very comfy,” she murmured, eyes already closed.

He ran his hands down her back, caressing her soft curves. “Sleep, my sweet girl.”

Her exhaustion had finally taken its toll on her because it took less than a minute for her breathing to even out—her gorgeous face relaxing as slumber took over her body.

He gave himself some time to just watch her sleep. To enjoy the comfort of her presence. But his nightly escapade was catching up with him and he let her jasmine and honey scent draw him into a restful sleep.

~~~~~

Elain’s eyes blinked open to morning light pouring in from the bedroom window. Yawning, the smell of night chilled mist and cedar enveloped her senses and layered her in comfort. She stretched, joints popping, reaching for her lover, only to find his side of the bed empty, the sheets cool.

Glancing at the clock, she saw she had a few hours before she had to get back to her hotel to shower, pack, and leave for the airport. The thought of leaving made her heart heavy. In the less than twelve hours that she had known Azriel, he had made her feel more alive than she had ever experienced with anyone before. She wasn’t lying when she thought he had touched her soul.

It made her sad to think that after she left, she would never see him again.

Pushing those depressing thoughts aside, Elain got out of bed—on sturdier legs than the night before—and went to freshen up.

She found him in the kitchen making breakfast, following her nose to the smell of bacon and coffee. Azriel was currently shirtless in front of a griddle full of pancakes. He had dawned on a pair of low-hanging grey sweatpants that did wonders for his glorious backside.

“It’s not polite to stare,” he said without even turning to look at her.

Elain padded forward. “How did you even know I was here?”

He shot her a crooked, boyish grin over his shoulder. “I saw your reflection in the microwave,” he admitted, pointing to the sleek black appliance next to his head with his spatula. Flipping the last pancake, he set down the utensil and made his way over to her, gathering her against his chest to kiss her deeply.

She went a little weak in the knees as his tongue tangled with hers, stroking that fire he had ignited the night before.

Azriel pulled back just until their lips brushed. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, voice velvet soft and husky.  

His words sent chills running down her spine. Goosebumps erupted along her skin and from his smile, he saw it too. “Good morning,” she answered breathlessly.

“Breakfast is almost ready. I set your purse on the counter there and plugged your phone in, in case you wanted to check in with your sisters. Do you want coffee?”

She blinked at him. That was…so thoughtful. “Thank you for doing that. And sure. Do you have anything sweet to put in it?”

“Other than you?” He grinned, kissing her nose when she rolled her eyes. He walked over to his fridge. “You’re one of those,” he said with mild disdain yet fondness too. “But luckily, so is my friend, Mor. She always makes me keep creamer in my fridge for when she drops by and drinks me dry.”

Elain plopped herself on one of his barstools, reaching for her phone to check her messages. “Let me guess, you drink yours black to match that dark soul of yours?”

A thick brow raised. “And how would you know the color of my soul?”

She shrugged, firing off a message to her sisters before giving him her full attention. “You give off that dark, mysterious, broody vibe.”

He chuckled, the sound rich and smokey. “Well, then, you’d be right.” He showed her the bottle of creamer. “This work?”

“Perfect.”

Azriel poured her coffee, then handed her the cup. The porcelain warmed her palms. “We’ll be at the table if you want to take a seat.”

Elain grabbed her mug, the platter of bacon, and made her way to the table, pausing to admire the craftsmanship of it. She bent over to get a closer look, running her hand over the smooth surface. The table itself wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, but it only added to the style and design.

“Elain are you not wearing anything under that shirt still?”

She twisted her head to look over her shoulder at him, finding him standing frozen in the kitchen staring at her. Flashing a wicked grin, she swiveled her hips from her precarious position. “Nope,” she said, popping the p sound.

Azriel groaned, trudging over with the plate of pancakes and his cup of coffee. “I’m trying really hard not to say ‘to fuck with breakfast’ and take you on this table right now.”

Giggling, she perched herself into a chair. “Don’t tempt me with a good time,” she winked. Running her fingers over the table again, she added, “I was, however, admiring your table. It’s gorgeous.”

“Thank you. I designed it,” he stated nonchalantly as he passed her the plate of pancakes.

Elain dropped the two flapjacks onto her dish as she stared at him. “You designed it?”

He grinned a little bashfully. “My brothers and I design and create furniture. We’re working at the club as a means to get our business up and running. Rhys has a business degree, so he focuses more on the business plan and operating, I design the pieces, and Cassian builds them—sometimes with my help. We have a small workshop downtown.”

Again, she ran her hands over the smooth curved edges. “That is incredible. And truly, the craftsmanship and style of this is stunning work. The wood, it’s teak, right?”

Surprise lit his face. He swallowed his bite of pancake. “You could tell it was teak?”

A half grin graced her features. “I have my own flower shop but I’ve studied many different types of plants and trees. And I design gardens, so I can usually tell grains apart.” She took a sip of her coffee. Shit, he made it perfectly. Was there anything this male couldn’t do?

“That sounds lovely. I’d like to see some of your work if you have any photos.”

“Really?” she asked. It was uncommon for guys to ask about her work. Nobody cared for what she did.

He seemed to sense that because he set his fork down to look at her more seriously. “Yes, I want to see your work, what you do for a living, and to get to know you better. Actually, I want to take you out for dinner too, if you’ll let me.”

Even though her heart was racing, a very real sense of disappointment washed over her. “Well, that might just prove to be a bit problematic.”

Azriel’s face fell slightly and she hated seeing it on him. “You don’t want to extend this more than one night.” He didn’t phrase it as a question and it gutted her at the sadness she heard in his tone of voice.

“No! No, it’s not that. I would love to go to dinner with you. It’s just that I have to be at the airport in four hours.” Elain watched as the realization hit him.

“You don’t live here.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“Where do you live, if I may ask?”

“Northern California. Sacramento area actually. My sisters live in the Bay Area, so I spend some time out there and I do work out there for some wealthier customers as well.”

He leaned back in his seat, swearing lowly. “Well, this just sucks.” Azriel ran a hand through his wayward midnight hair. “Fuck.”

“Am I really the first girl from the club that you’ve brought home that didn’t live here?” She’s not exactly sure why she asked, but her gut told her she needed to know.

Hazel eyes caught her gaze and held it. “I’m not like my brother’s. I don’t mix work and pleasure. You were the first and only person I asked to stay after a performance and brought back here.”

Elain’s breath caught in her throat at his words. And maybe it was stupid to dig herself deeper into this, knowing she had a flight to catch, but she found herself asking, “Why did you pick me?”

“Because I was entranced by you the moment I saw you. You sparked something within me that I didn’t know existed. And we connected during the performance. I felt it, and I think you did too.”

Their food was long forgotten at this point. She swallowed hard, her heart beating against her ribcage. “I did—I felt it.”

Azriel braced his forearms on the table. “Elain, call me a madman, but this, whatever it is, it’s not something I’ve ever experienced or felt with anyone else before. And I’d be a fool to just let you walk out my door today without trying anything. It may be completely idiotic to try and start any kind of relationship at long-distance, but I can’t seem to let you leave and never speak to you again. So, I’m wondering if perhaps you’re open to just that. Trying to make this work. And if it doesn’t, you can wash your hands of me and never look back.

“Or, if that’s not something you want to do, then we can finish up breakfast, and I can drive you back to your hotel and we will live with just the memories of this amazing night. The decision is yours.”

Elain was fairly certain she stopped breathing. Did he just—he had laid himself bare for her. Asking for not just more than a one-night stand, but to tie himself to a complicated relationship. A long-distant one.

Though she didn’t mean to, it was hard not to compare him to her last relationship. Graysen had never once shown any interest in her job or her passions. He never cared to see what she created. And he never fought for her when things got tough. It was one of the things they had continuously argued about when they were nearing their breakup.

He had called her a selfish, needy bitch. And that was the end of it.

But here was this other man, whom she had known for less than twenty-four hours, had given her five of the best orgasms of her life, cuddled her until she fell asleep, made her breakfast, asked to see her work and showed genuine interest in her job and her, and was telling her that he wanted to attempt a long-distance relationship with her because he felt a connection with her.

And now he was patiently waiting for her to decide what she wanted to do. Because it was “her decision.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear as she contemplated his words. Did she want this? What he offered her? Her heart screamed yes; that she wanted this, wanted him. Her mind, however, was a bit more logical. “You really want to try a distant relationship with me? Why?”

His mouth pursed in a way that told her he was carefully considering his words. “Why wouldn’t I want to try with you, Elain? Aside from how incredibly beautiful you are, you have a wicked sense of humor, you’re sweet, you’re passionate. And you make me feel happy just by being in your presence. I know it won’t be easy, but I’m committed to giving this a shot if you are.”

Needing something to do with her shaking hands, Elain picked up her cup of coffee and brought it towards her chest. She had to be going insane. She was absolutely out of her mind and knew her sisters, particularly Nesta, would be the first to tell her. But frankly, she didn’t care as she said, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, let’s give this a shot. I want to see where this goes too.” She let out an unsteady breath. “I’ve never been with anyone who saw me, who actually cared to look at who I was. I feel like you do. And even with the obstacles, you’re still trying to get to me. Nobody has ever done that before. It makes me feel good about you, about this,” she waved her hand between them. “So, yes, let’s try to make this work.”

An unrestrained smile lit his face, one she didn’t think many others saw. “How many hours till you need to be back at your hotel?”

She took a sip of her coffee, but the heat of his gaze made the flavor turn bland on her tongue. “Two hours, I’d say.”

He was out of his chair in a second and in front of her a moment later. “Then let’s make them count.”

~~~~~

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[jbk405]

I just watched The Woman King, which I have wanted to see for a few weeks now.

I’ve seen it applauded heavily for the action and performances, and I’m going to throw my applause in there as well because everybody did a phenomenal job.  Downright powerful (To use the term thrown around a lot in the advertising) delivery by every single actor on screen.  I can’t even point to one person and say “Except for that guy, who totally phoned it in".

Viola Davis was a powerhouse, and Lashana Lynch was fantastic, and John Boyega had real presence.  I went in knowing that they’d be fantastic.  Sheila Atim is the one who surprised me, because I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything before but she grabbed me.

The cinematography and choreography was also top-notch, everything on screen looked gorgeous.  The colors, the design, it really popped.

The story was...pretty good.  It hit a few of the standard beats in coming-of-age and Boot Camp stories, but handled them well.  I was initially vehemently opposed to the apparent love story that seemed to be introduced between Nawi and Malik, but I like how it ultimately didn’t lead to a romance between them.  It was two people “falling in like” before going their separate ways, instead of “falling in love”.

My biggest complaint about the story is the revealed relationship between Nawi and Nansica.  I’ll be honest, I wish they had completely excised that entire plotline.  But even though I find it ridiculous (And I also think that it undermines Nansica’s actions in the last act), this is only a problem, not any sort of overall ruination for the entire story.

I’ve seen that there’s a lot of controversy regarding the historical liberties they took with the real-life kingdom of Dahomey, and I find myself very much in two minds about them.  On the one hand, these criticism are completely accurate, but on the other hand how many Great Historical Epics made the exact same changes to American and European history?  Why do those Classics get a pass, but not this one?  On the other-other hand, "they started it” has never been a compelling argument and continuing the practice just encourages them to do it more.  On the other-other-other hand, neither the kingdom of Dahomey or the Agojie currently exist or wield any power, so their glorification does not actively support their current actions.

In the end, I’ll say that I wish they had stayed closer to the true history, but considering both the culture of the world in general and the culture of Hollywood specifically it is understandable why they didn’t.

[gerrydelano]

alright, yeah, enough. so, i’ve said something similar to this before in regards to the concept of jewishness in the delano-keay family, but something should probably be said about the seriously uncomfortable implications of depicting either mary or eric as anything but white.

this is primarily directed at white people who draw gerry or eric as POC because they want them to be Interesting or Cool, or whatever else goes into people’s heads when they make a character Ambiguously Brown for Clout without thinking about the can of really racist worms that it can open up.

i’m going to talk about why it’s different when artists of colour do this, but the fact is that most people in this fanbase are white, and it’s times like these where it really shows.

EDIT 1/26/2021: this post is 6 months old but now certain things seem to be getting a little bungled so let me state the conclusion right here quick. it's not saying no bad characters can be black or jewish it’s purely saying you should not perpetuate harmful stereotypes of a group you are not a part of, and just be careful about Why you’re doing it.

that’s really it, i swear. i reiterate this like four times throughout and the conclusion states it just as clearly.

---

no numbered sections, just dividers to make it easier to read. i got heated with this one, sorry! except that i’m not sorry, and i sure as hell am not the only person who feels this way.

let’s start with mary! someone worded it pretty nicely in my server when i brought this up (for the nth time, because we all see this enough to get upset every damn time), and it’s as good a place to kick off as any.

“given mary’s obsession with a legacy and the potential implications that like she got with eric bc he was obedient but also bc she wanted a kid and he was a good candidate are uhhhhh really really bad if she's white and he's a moc”

which. yeah. that’s not great.

she is a violent abuser and murderer with a particular motive and backstory that means making her a WOC is fucking disgusting. making her jewish would be awful. she literally performs blood rituals. please research “blood libel” to see why that’s a big red fucking flag.

there are things this woman cannot be. 

and so that leaves us with Erics Of Colour and what that means. that means that a white woman did all that to a MOC, brutally murdered him for the high crime of being “useless” (read: newly disabled, because mary’s canonly and consistently ableist as all unholy fuck, too), and then went on to do unspeakable things to their Child Of Colour after he was dead.

you know, to groom him into starting a dynasty with her, “without [his] understanding. Or consent.” 

yeah. that whole thing!

it is already canon that she isolated gerry from a lot of real world experience and opportunities for natural growth and development and peers and family. that she abused and conditioned him to the point where he was trauma bonded to her so severely that he could not leave even before she started haunting him.

why the HELL would you want to add the factor of her white ass completely stripping him of access to a culture he has a right to? because you know she wasn’t raising him the way eric would have, if he was actually a damn POC beyond just being drawn with darker skin in fanart.

what is his ethnicity? did you pick one? how connected to it was he before he died? what have you taken away from him by doing this? what are you taking away from gerry by doing this?

the “white parent abuses child of colour” narrative is not something a white person should be taking on. if a POC wants to do that, yes, go to it, but you should not touch that unless you’ve lived it. i’m respectfully asking you to consider this and how much it hurts to see it shoved under the rug, or fetishized.

@vastdweller​ said something pretty significant in my DM’s as well:

“😬 omggg like... as someone who is kaqchikel + biracial i do not like eric or mary being portrayed as poc. at all. there are awful implications for each--marys being obv but like. with eric??? a white woman literally manipulating a man of color and murdering him??? that is actually gross. and then by that logic gerry should not be portrayed as one Either bc that implies some kind of yikes stuff with either of his parents

and with mary being white, white women are Very notorious for using their privilege against black + brown men specifically to make them targets of hate crimes like lollll” 

yeah, they sure are. lol.

i’ve literally seen people actively acknowledge the connection of her behavior and motives to fascism, which i don’t even disagree with considering how close she edges to eugenics and raising her version of a child soldier and the antisemitic sentiments in her statement, and then still going out of their way to depict her husband as brown. her husband who she trapped, manipulated, used to bear a child (and then she couldn’t anymore after!), and then violently murdered when he became disabled and therefore “useless.” 

i was literally raised by a violently abusive neo-n*zi who severed my mother and therefore me from a culture we had a right to connect with, i know how this goes. i literally could write gerry this way if i wanted to and i could do it just fine.

but i fucking won’t because it’s just too g-ddamn much. i sure as fuck don’t want to see anyone else doing it if they don’t have a clue what that kind of hostile environment is like, what kind of lifelong damage that does to you. my hands are shaking lol.

see, a creator of colour might very well be thinking of that kind of storyline because they have their own experience with assimilation, might want to vent about generational trauma, maybe they’re a survivor of abuse and race played a part in it. and that is no one’s business, they don’t have to justify their stuff by sharing personal experience. 

but if it’s an artist of colour, i’d at least assume they’re actually coming at this from a place of understanding, and are treating it with due respect, and i’d move on because it’s no one’s call as to whether they “have a right to” or not.

but that’s not what i’m seeing. 99% of the time, that’s not what i’m seeing. 

once again, to be so clear, i’m addressing white people who Do Not Understand how deep this goes. (even if i wish that this specific one still wasn’t happening At All because the way it circulates and spreads can lead white people into uncritical regurgitation of that HC.)

even creators of colour can still end up putting something out into the world that was personal and well intended, and white people will take it and run in the wrong direction. does that mean Nothing should EVER be explored? no, not at all. just clarify your angle when you do something this loaded, so that it can’t be twisted or watered down or swept away. 

the fact is, in a largely white fanbase to start with, this kind of thing is only done BECAUSE the implications are already not being considered. and it’s not a white person’s story to tell in the first place.

i personally do not actually know any POC who would go out of their way to HC this, beyond being told in passing of one person who is evidently more casual about just liking gerry and wanting him to be like them, and nychtaa, who i only just met while writing this, that would like to see this angle explored specifically by POC.

which only means that doing this Right has specifications. it can be done, but it is not often done the way it needs to be done in order to be effective and not outright harmful.

it isn’t even that white people directly put the racism into a story! it’s that they IGNORE race and ethnicity COMPLETELY, slap a skin tone on someone, and then call it a day. this doesn’t even happen just here, it happens to all SORTS of other characters that are popularly depicted as POC.

but this specific storyline as it is presented to us is so brutal and ends so bloody and is so deeply saturated with seriously bad implications even just in mary’s statement alone about who she is, what she does to people, and how her family suffered for it until literally beyond their deaths. there is not a lot of room for resolution or recovery or reclamation here. 

it could be done! but that’s not what i’m seeing when i see it on my dash.

what i see is done in fanart that i scroll past that has no context given whatsoever, no story behind it, no explanation, no intention beyond just wanting to draw a Handsome Brown Eric. and that is a problem. 

actually, that’s seriously fetishistic, too, and i need y’all to realize! i need you to REALIZE what it means when you think that you have to make a character ambiguously brown to make them more attractive, while not considering what that all MEANS. people do this shit to tim, too, and it drives me up the WALL.

don’t exotify and fetishize POC! don’t water them down to just being nebulously more attractive! don’t do this lightly!!!! don’t do this at ALL. 

white people have the privilege of not really thinking about race. most any privileged class is usually going to have that in common: not needing to think about it. they don’t NEED to think about how the world treats them because the world is designed by now to cater to them, and they’re comfortable. 

white people are not made uncomfortable enough by their race alone to need to question the world without seeing someone else being treated like shit for theirs, and even then. even then, they don’t always go much deeper than just hoping they’re not like Those Other White People.

and then there’s gerry himself. the one who i know most people WANT to make a POC, because they think it’ll make him more Valid or something. that because he’s Good, that means “oh, people must want me to make sure i don’t think this good person HAS to be white!”

except... he sort of has to be! sadly! believe me, i say that with chagrin! i am not even white! and gerry means so much to me! you think i don’t LOVE to sit here and think of the ethnic backgrounds of characters and incorporate them into the stories i tell? that’s the POINT of making those headcanons, and i jump at the chance when there is an opportunity.

i would LOVE to consider gerry having all of those things but he was already canonly robbed of them. and intensely abused his literal entire life, mutilated post-mortem by another lady (who imo is also very much white) so that his spirit would be tethered to a fractured plane, and THEN kept captive (by people who are tied to the *entity that is also tied to police as an institution) until he was mercy-cremated.

*yeah, julia and trevor aren’t cops but the biggest canon association we have with that entity is Still the police and it’s Still loaded.

if you see those things happening to someone and your first image is of it happening to a person of colour, i’m asking you to step back and think.

gerry is honestly written as very white to begin with, in a white story written by white people for white consumption. that’s just how he reads, and the most respectful way to read him. you will not look More #Woke for drawing him or his father brown if you don’t think about what that means, you just look insensitive and you’re making a lot of people wicked uncomfortable.

yeah! this is a tragedy podcast. EVERY single character is going to suffer, that’s the nature of it, and that should NOT mean that there is No diversity whatsoever because “minority demographics can’t be written as going through anything.” the way people reacted to francis as if it was NBphobic because they were a statement giver going through something; no! that’s just the world, and at this point, it’s the apocalypse. everyone’s got something.

but in NO WAY is that plotline of widespread suffering actually supposed to be racially charged. even as the crew has done some terrible stereotypical shit, too, it stems more from ignorance than trying to tell a racially charged story. they’re not trying to tell a racially charged story, and that’s part of why there’s so much racism in TMA in general.

so, when you have a storyline as CLEARLY charged as this specific one, the literal specific instance of the way that mary keay traumatized her husband and son, you really need to leave it alone.

it is the kind of storyline that becomes racist if you add this element. it canonically carries elements that do not need to be made worse.

more things i think people don’t consider: gerry’s actual thought process and behaviour and the littler details of his backstory!

we know his general plot and the direction it goes, which should be reason enough to think critically about this, but there are actually so many other little details that, if you are white and peg him as a POC, start to perpetuate stereotypes that we in general NEED to be more mindful of.

gerry says in canon that ��there was a part of [him] that thought a life in prison was an alright price for freedom.” 

WHY do you want a MOC to say something like that. why would you be alright with a MOC being made to feel like that, given how prison life would treat him? the disproportionate rates of who actually fills prisons in the first place?

people are constantly suspicious of him in public, too! andrea nunis literally goes over to yell at him for staring at her and making her uncomfortable. the guys in old passages threaten to tie him up/call the police on him for trespassing. lesere saraki was terrified of his incredibly high pain threshold, and yeah, that’s pretty scary considering how doped up he was (after being set on fire! hm.) but now think about the ages old stereotype in the medical field that black people don’t feel pain, etc. 

if you’re hearing the accounts of how people regard gerry in public and immediately think “he’s a person of colour!” then you almost certainly have some stereotypes to unscrew from your subconscious.

these things do not make him Coded as a person of colour. if you are white (or honestly nonblack POC in particular, too) and you pick up on them and identify him that way, that’s on you.

i also get wanting rep for goths of colour because YEAH we need more of that! but oliver and annabelle are right there, jon georgie and melanie all have pretty alt poc fanon designs. you HAVE stuff to work with; gerry isn’t the only option for that.

@nychtaa​ made a great point, because i sure am talking to other fans of colour as i write this so that i can cover all of the bases:

“the fact that he likely received no education, perpetuating further more the image of illiterate poc. and at the hands of an abuser.”

and i physically shot up out of my chair to dance angrily, because it’s absolutely true. that is literally. there it is! that’s literally a big huge thing and i do not think a lot of you thought of it that way before.

you may not think that the nitty gritty stuff like this matters. that “oh, no one’s thinking about it, they just see a pretty art and hit reblog.”

that’s true! white people aren’t thinking about it, and they do just uncritically reblog, and then it circulates, and then it picks up traction, and then more people do it because they think it’s cool, and then it becomes well known and widely accepted, and then people are afraid not to do it, and then it’s just ambiguously brown jon all over again lol.

it matters, dude. it actually does matter.

@/nychtaa​​ also said:

“oh, and the white audience bit reminds me, that a white fan base has more chances to relate to white/racially ambiguous characters precisely because it's created for them. poc fans can only relate to said characters because there's not really more choices, and if there are, they're the chinese cannibal man or the manipulative black lady, and that directs more harm towards poc consumers”

and it’s true! there are limited options! that’s where diversifying headcanons comes in, and why people are so quick to make as many characters of colour as possible.

but there are some that you just Shouldn’t do that with. some people just need to fucking stay white. 

i’ve seen black emma harvey when LITERALLY the ONLY backstory we have for her is that she was a vile gaslighting abuser who tormented people over decades, and she’s tied to the web, which is also tied to annabelle cane, who is canonically a black woman (and people have expressed discomfort with how annabelle is one of the only characters with a confirmed race while she’s placed as a villain, despite the backstory that gets so ignored in order to make her a ~seductive sexy manipulator mastermind~ yadda yadda?) huh. wild. 

feels a little recycled and thoughtless actually. feels a little fetishistic (considering the response i saw to emma’s entire thing, as if she wasn’t. deeply abusive.)

jonah magnus is fucking white! and ambiguously brown elias has some pretty nasty fucking implications! you really want this privileged old white man to have stolen the body and life of a brown man, just so that you can draw a sexy brown elias? you don’t think it’s weird that OG elias’ only traits are stoner and life stolen and that you’re inclined to just go “yep, he’s brown.” 

you don’t think that jonah wouldn’t have purposefully kept bodyhopping between white people to maintain his privilege? as soon as he’s not white, people will look more into the things he’s doing at the institute. he’s trying so hard to fly under the radar, his whiteness is a TOOL that he USES.

there are some characters who need to stay white.

when white people take horrific villains and go out of their way to make them POC in a piece of media that already really Only highlights the race of villains, it’s a little funky to me! 

but then you have people who seem to think that because gerry is Good and we Love Him, then surely then he must have Every Notch On His Minority Belt in order to really drive home that he’s good or valid or whatever the fuck and that is just. completely ignoring the concept of intersectionality, for one, and also treats minority demographics as cosmetics. 

it makes race into an accessory. a shitload of other things, too, but i’m going to try to keep this narrowed down. 

the point is, you do not need to have All the trauma possible for the trauma you do have to matter. ADDING racial trauma to this specific backstory is unnecessary. i get that you think you’re not allowed to like white characters because you’re afraid of being seen as someone who only likes white characters, but sometimes a character is white! and they are also perhaps disabled, traumatized, clearly LGBT in some way, and sometimes you just like them. that’s it.

as soon as a white person goes from ignoring characters of colour in media to Performatively Hyperfixating On Them, congratulations! you’ve found a new problem. it’s called...

white guilt!

look, i get it. i seriously do. i understand wanting to give your faves (in this case, gerry and eric) a little more depth and backstory and perhaps culture but i and others have seen a lot of white artists draw them as POC without understanding the implications there in their canon history and treatment that they receive.

but it really does fall into a similar vein as people regurgitating the ~ambiguously brown jon~ designs that are geared towards white comfort and consumption because they think they’re not allowed to depict him any other way, except they have no idea how they’re even depicting him when they do that.

what MAKES a POC more interesting in the first place, to you? i can tell you right now that it goes a lot further than just colouring them in a few shades darker in your art to masquerade diversity.

and do NOT spin this as me just saying “white people are interesting, too! more white characters!” because that is absolutely not the point of this. the point is, “if you depict a character as nonwhite, you need to consider what that actually means.” 

this is not saying, “stop trying to diversify your headcanons!” i’m saying that when you diversify your headcanons — because you should — you cannot just slap things together without cause or care, because you can and will end up perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

when you’re doing this in a predominantly white fanbase, it’s VERY slim that you’ll be informed about it before it’s too late. i have literally never seen anyone publicly speak on why ambiguously brown eric is uncomfortable (beyond the fact that he’s ambiguously fucking brown in the first place), only had miserable conversations about it in private with people who hate seeing it and are hurt by it enough to fear saying something.

so, i’m saying something now. and i had plenty of POC in my DMs backing me up on this. this isn’t isolated. this issue is still small right now, too, but i’m starting to see more of it. i don’t want this to get out of hand the way some other things have. sometimes, things that are widely accepted fanon, are worse.

and once again, i just a reminder, that this is not directed at any POC who are projecting, who care about this HC because it feels personal to them, or even just who LIKE gerry and want him to be like them. that happens all the time, that’s fine, that’s not something i’m saying is Wrong — POC aren’t a monolith and i sure don’t speak for everyone.

and honestly, even when other POC do it. i get it. just keep in mind, though, that when your art is just floating around with no context and no one knows who you are or what your angle is, it can still hurt to see if there’s no clarification about where it’s coming from. the kneejerk panic is real. AND, worse, white people will see it and think they have a free pass to do the same thing. so, even though i know why and i support you wholeheartedly, i get it, i still want to implore you to consider coming at this differently (even if that just means clarifying somewhere, y’know?)

EDIT (8/2/2020), @ebonyphd​ had some nice input, also, that i feel should be put here!:

“I was also trying to say there was a story to be told about that dynamic bc of the toxicity. Whether how bad it is or even what recovery from it would look. That was what I was trying to get at. It sometimes rubs me the wrong way when it seems like stories that relate to the negative aspects of POCs existence are constantly being measured and corralled. If that makes sense”

could NOT agree more. this is pretty much exactly what i was already saying, yeah, like. it’s like what i said about francis way up there; it’s not that you can’t write characters going through things or having a struggle like this, these things DO happen. again, i’ve lived it. i know.

the reason i’m saying to be careful is Because i’ve lived it, and i when i see this specific HC (i need to keep repeating that i’m talking about this specific one), there is never any context, it’s never in writing, nothing.

i think of mary’s connection to fascist ideology and i just really do not think this one narrative is suited for casual exploration. the amount of time and nuance you’d need to dedicate to that kind of storyline is biting off a lot more than anyone even wants to chew. you literally CAN’T tackle that in just, random art pieces. it’s better suited for writing, but even then, i wouldn’t wanna fucking read that especially if OP half-assed it. 

i’m saying don’t half-ass it.

i’m still not saying do not explore this at all, ever. i’m still only saying that when you do, do it with care. these stories and experiences do need to be talked about and explored, but it has to be done deliberately and with consideration. 

overall, i just think white people need to fucking Think for Two Seconds about whether what they’re doing is for the Points, and whether they’re perpetuating something insidious because they’re operating under stereotypes or are simply ignorant to the implications of race.

that’s it, man.

i’m tired.

[plasticflowering]

ONEUS MMT fancall; 20211223

Notes under the Cut!

First off, I’m sorry again for the CURSOR in the middle of my screen. I forgot to move it because, as usual with MMT, things started with no warning whatsoever and I was nervous lmao. So I barely had time to start recording in OBS, much less move my cursor :(

Honestly, as I pointed out in the notes for my Seoho gifset, this call was chaotic. Badly managed, it seems. Which is surprising, considering how well the MMT call in March went. Anyway, this isn’t me flexing that I’ve been in more than one ONEUS fancall, I promise you. This is not the ideal way to meet them, it’s SO EXPENSIVE to get into one, and then it’s a crapshoot on whether the experience will be a well-managed one. This one wasn’t. 

They were seated so close to each other, which meant the audio bled over so I could barely hear the translator, who didn’t catch most things (translator on the March fancall was AMAZING). As a result, a lot got lost in translation.

I was also not sure what to ask this time around, because I noticed quickly that the translation and audio was lackluster. So I went with a couple of very simple questions and otherwise was mostly touching on three main things: 

1. Congrats on your first win 2. You’ve been working really hard and I hope you can rest soon 3. I promise I’ll wait until you can go on tour when it’s safe, and I hope that will be soon :(

Oh yeah I should point out now that I was FIRST IN THE CALL ORDER, so if they fixed some of the issues later on, I had no idea. I got the nice “well let’s try this out” round of things lmao. 

So anyway how were the boys???

Ravn was first in the order and he had to vamp a lot longer than I expected, possibly because things weren’t ready to pass the phone down the line. Which would have been incredible, but things literally started with us misunderstanding each other because we couldn’t hear, and it just went from there. At a certain point I think we both realized things weren’t going well in that regard, so we kind of laughed, he paused for a minute, and then in English asked me “do like video games?” I am not kidding he reverted to Gamer Conversation like it was an awkward date. Immediately, things quited down and we could suddenly hear each other just fine. I was like “YEAH” and then when he asked me what games I liked I blanked on EVERY GAME I’d ever played except World of Warcraft, which admittedly I played for about 11 years (upside down smiley face). So he was like “oh wow, I tried that but it was too hard. The map was too big.” Then, he said “I like team games” (moment pictured above) just before he obviously got the signal that he needed to move on, and we had to cut that short with another awkward laugh. Anyway oh my god gamers rise up.

Leedo was next, and I went in a lot more chill. I said this in my last fancall write-up, but I always kind of feel like the first member in a fancall is a wash in some ways, because you get used to the vibe, the translator’s competence, the audio quality, etc. Unfortunately that fell to Ravn this time. I told Leedo the three major points above, and also told him how much I absolutely love We’re In Love because I want to give him all the credit he deserves for branching out in his involvement with the group’s music. Then I asked him softball question 1: if he could have a concert tomorrow, what would he want to sing? And he answered, pretty quickly, I.P.U., because it says a lot about how he feels for ToMoon, and yeah that was a lovely answer. 

The phone passed to Hwanwoong, so it was high energy time. We could not understand each other AT ALL but it was a lot of fun. He definitely misunderstood me asking softball question 2: what do you want for Christmas? (Either that or the translator got it wrong) And he started talking about how he wanted to perform SUMMERIDE live, and sang a bit of it (pictured above). Which, admittedly, would be absolutely amazing. 

Time for Keonhee! I should point out here that these boys were all exhausted. I felt almost bad. They were so obviously tired, which stands to reason - it was been a long promotion cycle. So Keonhee was low energy, and I brought myself down to that level to tell him the usual stuff above, and also that he’s my favorite dancer in ONEUS and why (because he asked lmao). Then I asked him what song he would sing in a concert tomorrow, and he also answered I.P.U. (moment of adorable contemplation pictured above). 

Seoho time! Now, the only less-than-optimal experience during my last fancall was during Seoho time, so I was nervous for this because I didn’t want it to go the same way. But Seoho was absolutely ON, and really made the whole fancall exceptionally great. I guess I really got what the others have said about Seoho being the happiness vitamin for the group when they’re down. I forget what I was saying when he gave me the thumbs up pictured above - possibly the first win congrats. So then, he asked me how I was doing tonight, and I said tired because it was 3am. “Oh, wow!” “It’s okay, though, I’m on vacation.” “Oh!” “I’ve been working really hard so I finally took a vacation for Christmas.” “Good!” “What do you want for Christmas?” “Hmmm... a vacation.” (as pictured here) Best moment. Love that boy’s smile and laugh aaaahhhh.

Finally, it was Xion time. My bias, at the very end. He was lovely, as always, and I got to deliver my cheesy thanks for all his hard work, congrats for the first win, and I got to say again that I was looking forward to seeing them on tour eventually. Then I asked him the “what song would you want to sing in a concert?” question and he answered LUNA, which was unexpected but it gave me a chance to tell him how great he sounds in that song (ahhhhh my heart, he’s so special). 

So that was it! 

I didn’t even plan to enter this fansign, but this one was announced with a very limited sales period and I went “you know what, why not? That would be a good Christmas present to me.” and I got my Christmas present! 

[balillee]

why 'there's no lore going on' right now in the dream smp - The Misfits Analogy

Fans of television, especially British television, will probably be familiar with an early 2010's show called Misfits. The show ran for five seasons spanning 2009 to 2013 - while the first two seasons (the first moreso than the second) are regarded more as cult classics, the latter half of the show completely falls in writing and production quality due to one significant change - the cast.

Seasons one and two of Misfits was centred around the original misfits gang - Nathan Young (portrayed by Robert Sheehan), Kelly Bailey (portrayed by Lauren Socha), Simon Bellamy (portrayed by Iwan Rheon), Alisha Daniels (portrayed by Antonia Thomas) and Curtis Donovan (portrayed by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett).

The show was good for two different factors from my perspective -

The intersection of superpowered television and interpersonal conflicts that broke the norm for stereotypes.

How the cast reflected modern British society.

In summary, the show followed a group of five young offenders at a community service centre. Not too interesting - but give them relatability, realism and explore their character development and their existing stereotypes/tropes through the use of superpowers? Genius.

Nathan was most definitely the fan favourite character of the show - he was outgoing, annoying, larger than life in a lot of ways and in all senses, he was a skeevy asshole who would insult characters at every turn. He was very much the class clown of the show and any British viewer could probably see someone they remember from school in Nathan, except Nathan was lovable and you could sympathise with him because you could see him struggling primarily at home and with his family.

Spoilers for the show - Nathan's power was immortality and the ability to resurrect himself from death. This power wasn't explicit immediately either to Nathan or to the audience unlike all of the other young offenders, and it reflected his 'nothing can hurt me ' attitude. Nathan was a character who could take any comment and brush it off like it was nothing, and he in the physical sense could take being thrown off a roof, impaled and practically buried alive and be sitting in his own coffin with his iPod all fine and dandy.

Kelly was also another standout example - her character reflected the stereotype of a chavvy girl, 'council house and violent' - loudmouthed, not very smart, questionable fashion choices and a bit abrasive. The only difference is that the show knew they had to subvert that stereotype - instead, Kelly was smart in her own way and she was empathic -> her superpower was the ability to hear other people's thoughts, and later, she became superintelligent and when her character left the show she decided to move to Uganda use her newfound rocket-scientist level intelligence for good. She was still loudmouthed and definitely chavvy, but she was also a whole human person who cared about other people and who was definitely intelligent.

If I kept going, I'd be lamenting about how season one's cast well reflected and subverted stereotypes and expectations using their superpowers, but I'd be here all day and that's really not the point I'm trying to make.

By the end of season 2, Robert Sheehan, as the standout performance from the show, decides to move on to greener pastures (which,, I don't blame him, being stuck on E4 would have been a nightmare for his career and look where he is now? He's a fan favourite as Klaus in TUA now!) - thus, Nathan is written out of the show in a post- season 2 special in which he gets locked up in prison in America.

This was the first character to get written out of the show.

In season 3, we lose Kelly who moves to Uganda with Seth to defuse landmines, and Simon and Alisha are both killed, and the only remaining member of the original ASBO five is Curtis.

Season 4 rolls around, and we pretty much have an entirely new Misfits cast - Curtis, and then we have Rudy (who had been present since season 3), and then we have new additions Jess, Finn and Abbey.

Let me tell you that by this point in the show, all of the fans had lost interest.

Not only had the two biggest fan favourites, Nathan and Kelly, left the show, but you now have to replace four out of the five original cast members with new ones that don't function the same way the originals did. What type of person is someone with X-ray vision trying to represent? You could argue that maybe Jess is good at figuring people out, but I don't really remember this being explored that much in the show. And the difference between this reflecting a minor personality trait is that the original cast didn't do that - in dumbed down terms, Alisha was a 'sket' who had the power to make people horny for her, oftentimes against her wishes, through skin-to-skin contact. That's much more impactful and there's a lot more to explore there.

Episode 7 of Season 4 of Misfits is the clearest indicator of the departure of the original show's intentions and explains perfectly why it didn't work the way it used to.

For the entirety of the season, Jess had been crushing on a guy called Alex from a bar she frequented (who later went on to replace Curtis as the fifth Misfits member in season 5, go figures) who, as far as we had seen, not at all reciprocated those feelings nor was there any indication of him wanting to.

In episode 7, we figure out why.

Jess, using her x-ray vision, finds out that Alex's penis was stolen by a trans man.

I'll be honest, when I first heard it, I thought it was a joke.

The show went from having a diverse cast, not only in terms of having two black characters in it's main cast, but also in it's diversity of character tropes that they aimed to subvert - to then having a mainly white cast in a show that actively perpetuates harmful stereotypes about trans people being dangerous.

Now, and I want to preface this, I don't think that the Dream SMP is malicious in the same way that the writing of that episode of Misfits is. I don't think the SMP is malicious at all. What I want to highlight is how the change in cast directly mirrored when the audience dropoff was and when the show itself started to go south in terms of quality, production and what they wanted to achieve.

For the sake of my argument, there is currently three seasons of the dream smp. The start of the server up until the end of the initial disc war is the prologue, season one encompasses Wilbur's L'Manberg and the Pogtopia arc, ending on November 16th, season 2 starts November 17th and ends January 20th (the disc war finale) and season 3 spans from January 21st to the present day.

Most of the fans of the Dream SMP can tell you that the primary story of the server is centred around quite a few certain characters who viewers started watching to see more of. I'm guilty of this myself - I primarily watch the SMP for Tommy's story, and I also stick around for Wilbur, Tubbo, Ranboo and a little bit for Phil, Techno and Jack Manifold. Those were the people I was invested in and those are the stories I like to follow. Not to discredit or to downplay the work or the stories of other characters, but I can imagine that there are a few people who watch the SMP primarily for a close few perspectives/storylines, and following some storylines over others just because you're not interested in them is completely fine and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

In season one, there was always things going on with my favourite characters. Tommy was always getting himself into spots of trouble and making up different schemes to get people to come visit L'Manberg as a tourist attraction, or getting people to support the rebellion, and this was interspersed with the heavier, plot-driven moments such as Wilbur's mental breakdown, the festival, the pit fight and the season 1 finale. This got me invested in him as a character because he had been there for quite a while and we'd seen him develop and grow into the character we now see in season 3.

In the back half of season 1 came Techno, who really shook things up and threw a spanner in the works and provided a totally different perspective - unlike Dream he didn't hate L'Manberg because he couldn't control it, and unlike Wilbur he didn't have a personal connection to it and he didn't know it's history. Techno initially hated L'Manberg because it was a government he knew nothing about (and still knows nothing about even today), and because violence and destruction is kind of his thing.

We had a well balanced cast of characters - not too many - that we could follow and who all had varying perspectives, experiences and personalities. We had clearly defined groups of individuals with different morals: you had the people on the side of Manberg, the people in Pogtopia who wanted Manberg blown up, the people in Pogtopia who didn't want Manberg blown up, and on the side to compliment it all you also had the Badlands, comprised of three longstanding members of the server,,,, and then Antfrost who was kidnapped by Tommy that one time. It was all wrapped up nicely in a neat little bow and there was structure to it all. There was one plot that went in one direction, and despite the many perspectives, it all ended up in the same spot and the story ended. There was a conclusion.

In season 2, the two primary additions to the 'cast' were Phil and Ranboo, whose characters complimented the existing story well. Phil functioned mostly as a successor to Wilbur alongside Ghostbur by exploring well the departure of Wilbur as a character in that moment, and he also functioned well as a companion to Techno's character. Ranboo, on the other hand, had a pretty good complimentary solo story that could be followed alongside the main plot, however his story wasn't too distant from the main story to the point where he was completely removed from it - he had direct involvement in different events such as the exile conflict, his connection to Dream as the main antagonist of the season and his involvement in blowing up the community house.

Season 2 starts with a focus on two different spaces - it breaks up a longstanding duo and the storyline diverges into two halves: Logstedshire and New L'Manberg, and you have Techno's short 'retirement' arc working decently to compliment it and also to set the tone for his character going forward in that season. In Logstedshire we see the aftermath of Tommy being exiled from L'Manberg by Dream - we see him endure what is (in canon) at least a month of isolation and physical and psychological abuse and it culminates on December 15th when Tommy rescues himself, jumps from the tower and goes to hide in Techno's house (which acts as a good precursor to his involvement in Techno's storyline in that season). On the other side, we follow Tubbo in L'Manberg dealing with Presidency - he talks a lot and gets 'friendly' with Dream, he prepares to run against Ranboo in the coming election cycle (primarily because he doesn't want to be President) and we see his interactions with the power-hungrier Quackity who all too often takes the reigns and this culminates in the creation of the Butcher Army, and following the Butcher Army's attack on December 16th, once again, we have two clearly defined sides:

One one side, we have Tubbo, Quackity and Fundy who represent L'Manberg, and on the other we have Tommy (who is unaware of the Butcher Army's attack), Phil and Techno, and more in the middle we have Ghostbur and Ranboo.

Season 2's finale format is a clear departure for the format of November 16th, but it's not a poor choice - I think, especially considering the story that they were telling, it worked perfectly. On November 16th, pretty much everyone was streaming their perspective of the event; at the time, there were even compilations of everyone's reactions to Wilbur blowing up L'Manberg. On January 20th, however, we only had two perspectives - Tubbo and Tommy.

I'll say it now, while Season 2 was definitely Clingyduo's season, it didn't focus solely on them. There was also a big focus on Techno as a character, whose arc came to an end a little earlier on Doomsday, and there was also a focus on Ranboo a lot as a solo character, and he streamed a little later on January 20th with what I refer to as the 'epilogue', where there was also a shift in his character to expect moving forward.

Why season 2's finale worked is because it was centralised around only three characters, only two of which we ever see the perspectives of, and it was the finale of the longest running storyline of the entire narrative - the disc war. Two boys who were on their last life, making their last stand at the one man who pulled the strings to make their lives miserable - those two perspectives only, and it worked. We didn't have compilations of everyone reacting to the things happening around them which worked for season 1, instead, we focused on these two characters whose turn it was to get the focus, and we had iconic and moving moments. We had the two boys walking down the prime path saying what they could only assume might have been their last goodbyes to the people that still had a shred of care for them, we had the two sailing to where they would face off against Dream for their final stand and finally talking about their feelings a little and dreading the implication that if they were both to die, nobody would live to tell their stories, we had Tommy choosing his best friend over his discs time and time again, and we had Punz - Dream's last confidant - standing against Dream and bringing everyone with him and sending him to prison, now on his last life too.

Everything about it was perfect. The more focused ending worked for the ending of season 2 because it was their time to have their climax moment - and it wasn't some spectacular display of explosions or violence like in Wilbur's finale on November 16th, where the ramifications hit everyone and we got to see it, nor was it a show of violence and almost oppressive dominance like Techno's finale was on Doomsday, where we saw everyone's breakdown and how the people contributing to the destruction of L'Manberg, no matter how righteous they thought they were, did not care to understand how much they were hurting and destroying the lives of the country's citizens. On January 20th, Tommy and Tubbo went into it thinking they were going to die, they got their asses handed to them despite how hard they tried, and they had their behinds saved by Tommy's preparative thinking by people who weren't there to save them more than they were there to get rid of Dream.

Season 3 suffers a lot from a lack of focus, awful pacing and really poor timing.

Seasons 1 and 2 occurred during the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic, where everyone was stuck at home and had more time to stream because it was their primary form of content and because it was the best way to communicate with their friends. Thus, the pacing of those seasons was extremely steady and things were always happening.

Now, lockdown restrictions have eased quite a bit, and creators can branch out a lot more and can meet with each other in real life and can do vlog-style content. Therefore, they don't stream as much, and the focus of the Dream SMP story has shifted more towards newer or sideplot characters. If you enjoy those characters, that's fine, but when they take the focus away from the characters and the storylines the majority are expecting, a lot of people won't try to keep up with it and from their perspective there'll be a massive lull in narrative content.

What I'm saying, is that Tommy streaming for thirteen days in a row in July 2021 is a fucking pipe dream. It happened in December because the story was consistent and the pacing was steady and he had the time and the want to be there. Now, Tommy's off making his vlogs and hanging out with his friends and thus he can't stream as much as he used to. He's sort of suffering from the Robert Sheehan problem, isn't he? Tommy is still involved with the Dream SMP and his story is definitely continuing, and his narrative in season 3 is really starting to pick up with the newer developments, it's just that he doesn't have as much time to play the role anymore because he isn't streaming as much.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing - it's obviously making him happy that his content is changing and I'm fully supportive of that.

So when all of these meetups are happening and we don't have as much content from the main characters that we follow anymore, what happens?

Well, the fans get a little itchy. This fandom, especially. They might throw out a comment or a tweet asking when they're going to stream on the SMP, or if they really don't understand why the Dream SMP is good, they'll ask when the next 'lore stream' is, and they'll lament a little about how the content and the story has slowed, especially in contrast to the fast pacing of season 2 which only lasted a little over two months with much more story going on than in season 3 despite it having been going on for triple the time. What they'll get in response is that the Dream SMP is still going on and that lore is still happening.

On all accounts, these statements aren't incorrect. Lore still is happening.

But when you've been following lovable characters for two seasons, setting up their struggles and then switching the focus onto newer or 'sideplot' characters that you haven't really followed before, there's going to be a bit of moaning about it on twitter dot com.

The SMP now suffers from having too many characters, too many unfocused narratives, and poor pacing/ditched or unfinished storylines from the characters we used to follow and love while we're being told to love other characters instead.

I never really cared too much about the egg subplot, I'll be honest. I was a little interested in the involvement of Sam, Puffy and Ponk, but other than that, I wasn't really too invested. It very much tried to replicate the 'you should have paid me more' moment from January 20th at the Red Banquet, and it really didn't hit as hard because most of the characters there were either ones that didn't belong there at all (like Niki, Fundy, HBomb, and Purpled), weren't that involved with the plotline and felt out of place with the established characters in that storyline (Techno, Quackity and Ranboo), or were new characters that were difficult to get on board with because they hadn't really had too much of a story beforehand (Hannah and Foolish), or in the case of Antfrost, characters with no known motivation to be there other than that being the storyline they're currently in. Not to discredit those involved or their characters, but the Red Banquet really tried to replicate what the disc finale did with it's focused perspectives and it's Punz moment, and it failed.

Now, following the egg subplot's finale, I'm meant to focus on Las Nevadas, Snowchester and the Syndicate.

Las Nevadas is the most consistent storyline, however it's biggest problem is that it is filled with new characters or ones that are barely there. Despite how long he's been on the server, Purpled really is a new character if only because he's only really become a character recently - Foolish is still considered new, Slimecicle is new, Fundy rarely streams on the SMP. The only consistent longstanding and heavily involved characters that are a part of Las Nevadas are Quackity and Sam, and even their streams are infrequent, with a lot of Sam's perspective not even focusing on Las Nevadas but instead the prison.

Snowchester's plot is very much dying, dead and in the water. She's suffering. We haven't seen Michael in over a month, a nuke is still missing, Jack Manifold is dubiously a citizen and Tubbo doesn't even think he has a character on the SMP. It breaks my heart.

The Syndicate suffer from a lack of existence. The four characters really aren't a friend group in canon - all of the stuff about them hanging out all the time and them basically being a book club is all fanon. They've hung out as a four all of twice, the first time they ever got together they celebrated someone's death and then basically invaded Snowchester to give themselves a reason not to destroy it, terrifying Tubbo in the process. The second time was because it was Techno's birthday.

Now, Techno is in prison, and the only reason Phil hasn't read the will to progress the story is likely because of difficult scheduling with other server members, which is written off in canon as Phil not wanting to accept the possibility of Techno potentially dying.

Literally reading the will and having the Syndicate figure out that Techno's in prison with Dream will solve all of season 3's formatting issues and have the story back on track.

Currently, we don't really have two clearly defined sides the way we always had. We were meant to root for L'Manberg against the Dream Team, we were meant to root for Pogtopia against Manberg, and in season 2 we had a lot more moral ambiguity and room for side switching between the forces of Dream, Techno and Phil against L'Manberg, and then we rooted for Clingyduo against Dream.

I can predict that if the will is read, here's how a good conflict can arise.

Two clearly defined different sides - Las Nevadas on the side of Pandora's Vault, and the Syndicate (currently consisting of Phil, Ranboo and Niki), and you have compromises to make. If the side of the Prison wins, Techno and Dream stay in Pandora's Vault without a proper trial and being treated inhumanely, and there's also the threat of the rest of the Syndicate also being imprisoned. If the side of the Syndicate wins, the prison is taken out and Techno and Dream are no longer being treated inhumanely - problem is that Dream's out, and he's very much dangerous because despite what c!Dream apologists will tell you, he's not docile and he's not going to have a healing arc with Techno because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong and Techno can't tell him that he's done anything wrong (because Techno is the most wilfully ignorant character who gets to be political it's INSANE) - he'll go right back to the evil, abusive bastard he was, obsessed with Tommy, probably worse now that he can easily get Wilbur to do anything he wants and more vindictive against Quackity. Plus, if the Syndicate take down Las Nevadas they'll hold the most power on the server systematically and the so-called anarchists will ironically be the top dogs of the server.

Then towards the middle you'll probably end up having Wilbur, Benchtrio and Jack Manifold - Tubbo and Jack would prefer Techno and Dream staying in prison, except Tubbo's really not on the greatest terms with Q at the minute (because Q's paranoid and making conflict with parties that would have otherwise helped him out and thought they were friends), whereas Tommy would be stuck between wanting Techno out but needing to either keep Dream in or kill him, and Wilbur will be having to pick between aiding Dream's escape from prison or staying with Tommy, because he can't have both. Ranboo will probably be having the same problem as Tommy, except he's on the side of the Syndicate and will have to pick between the Syndicate or keeping Dream imprisoned.

Season 3 is salvageable, it really is. You can fix the poor pacing and you can fix the lack of focus with literally one revelation from fucking Philza M|necraft. But as it stands now, season 3 suffers from a similar situation as Misfits - almost replacing the cast of characters we've followed for the longest time with a new one in a format completely different to the original seasons.

[felassan]

DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

-----

For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey. 

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production. 

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size. 

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”. 

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better. 

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments. 

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic. 

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right). 

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t. 

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

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[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[my-ultimate-is-ready]

inde!! not to immediately ambush you but since this is on my mind recently, give me your thoughts for the blackwatch kids on a comrade/friend that sides with reyes through it all & follows them to talon (●˙▿˙●)

Exceptional circumstances had brought you together once more. You arranged the unlikely meeting to inform them, invite them, but either way, you’d leave with or without their support. Whatever the outcome was would force a definitive recalibration of the next step. But that was tomorrow’s problem.

Step one was getting them together and the poignantly exhausting digital acrobatics it took to achieve that. Yet, they showed up, so that meant you had a chance. They were interested enough in your unexpected appearance to carry the incalculable risk of meeting in person, even going so far as to comply with your demands and set their communication devices into a kill-cradle at the centre of the windowless room. Maybe it helped that you went first, that you also took the time to disarm yourself entirely, shedding all manner of weapons and devices as they watched, confused and unsure of what to make of you.

It was understandable if they expected a setup.

Step two was informing them that it wasn’t about Talon; it was about something of greater urgency. Because they had trusted you enough to follow your prescribed protocol, their initial resistance felt cheap and performative.

Genji sank into silence; you hoped that meant he was listening. It was impossible to gauge how present he was from the tense tilt of his body. On the other hand, despite his initial reluctance to say anything, McCree did all the talking. Bracing himself against your reasoning, he continually revised and pursued new angles. He wanted to challenge you, drive home that you don’t know who you’re up against, and you’re not too late to make the right choice.

Above everything, McCree had to establish that your judgement was broken. You were already aware of some variation of that and how your peaceful face disturbed them.

“I don’t want to be convinced,” McCree said with the slow drawl you expected. Verbally pushing back was the only non-violent intervention he had at his disposal. “Even if there mighta been a time we would, you can’t expect we’ll follow you now. This is non-negotiable.”

“Our shared history tells me I don't need to negotiate. We're talking about loyalty, after all.” You were comfortable with that. Your allegiances were established.

You had a vivid rerun of all the times you were close to the end. Bloody sutures, bullet casing, hauling yourself towards the escape. All the times those two had saved your life, and you theirs. Blackwatch meant flirting with annihilation, personally and collectively.

In that regard, little had changed.

McCree fell into a retelling of your mutual involvement—giving his interpretation of your moral code, implying too much. His petition to sentimentalism had to be chopped down, or else you were bound to ease up.

“This is my proposal to you,” you asserted, unwilling to allow him to feel as though he had some sway over you, “not your memoir.”

“All of this is because you miss him,” McCree rejoined. “Well, you’re not the only one. It’s not often I get through the day without crashin’ into the thought of him, like it or not.”

To an extent, McCree was right. He was precisely the reason why you were there, the interior of every word you spoke.

“You don’t have to miss him anymore. Not if you leave here with me.”

But that was too dark to comprehend, and McCree conveyed that through a physical recoil. “I don’t know who you’re really dealin’ with, but it ain’t Reyes. Are you so far gone that you can’t recall what happened in Switzerland?”

Genji, at last, spoke up with mild contempt: “You forget, we buried him.”

You would rather feel their disapproval than their disbelief outright. They saw your passion, inward and restrained, but understood it as a violent fixation.

You had to fight to be understood.

“How do you bury someone who refuses to die?”

[ginkgomoon]

Gavin and MC’s High School History- Detailed Timeline

Dedicated to my amazing and kind friend @cheri-cheri- one of the Queens of the MLQC fandom on Tumblr! I literally didn’t know how to use it before but I had learnt how in order to keep up with her posts. Without her work, I literally wouldn’t be on here making my own blog either. Thank you, Cheri!!

This is a timeline following the years of high school that MC and Gavin had together. Compiled of dates, rumours and secrets, calls, texts, and other from multiple servers. The source will be shown allocated to its corresponding sentence. I created this because I was really moved when I rewatched Gavin’s Old Days Date and suddenly thought of the many things other players could have missed out on regarding their high school years. If there is anything you need clarification on, or if you would like to add anything in, feel free to send a post/ask or just comment and I’ll try to incorporate and adjust accordingly! 

Based off of true correspondence of the Chinese education system in Shanghai, where the schools there are very strict, with specific responsibilities and events students must have and attend to. In addition, this is different from Western school systems where years 7-9 are in a seperate schools from years 10-12 before university. Dates and seasons mentioned will also be noted as accurately as possible to suit the Loveland storyline in which different events occurred. I felt like a detective trying to piece a fractured storyline together to solve a mystery, honestly...

Prepare your tissues, your milk tea and your soul because even I almost didn’t make it to publish this...

Timeline

2008

Gavin enters high school.

2009

MC and Minor enter high school. MC does her hair in a nice ponytail, one of the only hairstyles she ever had in school.

Gavin is a grade above her. He is in his last year of high school. [Spring Festival Date]

Late Autumn of October 2010

“I noticed who you were before you ever noticed me.” 

On a rainy first day of school, Gavin helps Mr Keller move the tables and chairs in the classroom. 

Without taking an umbrella, Gavin leaves. 

At the same time, MC saves a cat in the rain with her handkerchief, attempting to shield it from the incoming rain under a roof. She gives it snacks from her bag while sheltering it from the rain. 

Gavin thinks she was nerdy-looking, but couldn't take his eyes off her and watches her from a distance for a long time. He feels out of place standing.

She looks back at him in astonishment, not knowing how long he stood for. 

She smiles at Gavin.

Gavin notes that MC’s smile just like her eyes, were pure and comforting as they start filling his vision. 

The rain starts to get heavier and MC shivers. 

Something stirred in Gavin’s heart as he notices this, and kicks a can in frustration then shelters her with his jacket. 

He runs away as MC shouts, “thank you!” 

She didn’t know it was Gavin who gave her his jacket at the time.

MC goes back and is then told by her fellow classmates that the boy she encountered was the “tyrant school bully”,  and “the Underworld Senior Gavin”, and that she should stay away from him. [Tilted Time- Rumours and Secrets]

-

MC finds piano dull to play the same songs over and over again.

MC in her spare time practices and sings to Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 (Love Dream) for a talent show.

At the rooftop, Gavin is wounded by a gangster’s knife. A gradually intensifying melody is heard. 

Gavin kicks the gangster boss but then is pursued again. Outnumbered, wounded and losing consciousness due to major blood loss, the gangster boss kicks Gavin off the roof. 

Gavin reaches out, to something- anything. 

A heavy, surging melody sounded, transcending through time and allows Gavin to reflect on his past- to his father, to his late mother, and invokes deep reflection and epiphanies. 

Heavy notes seep into Gavin’s ears as he almost hits rock bottom. He feels his limbs emerging with the wind and awakens his wind evol. 

Gavin is now reborn.

The music continued to play. Gavin ends up humming with a bird. 

He then hears MC’s singing.

MC stops, mesmerised by the ginkgo leaves flying through the wind. The ginkgo leaves falling was her favourite time of the year in high school. This vivid sight is still engraved in her memory after many years.

Gavin vows to protect her for the rest of his life. [Campus Date]

-

Gavin saved Minor from bullies. 

Minor also happens to be MC’s outgoing, talkative desk mate who sometimes helped old ladies cross the street. How he managed to hang around Gavin and not get beaten up, nobody knew (except us). He would often copy MC’s homework but never dragged her down with him if he got caught. This was MC’s biggest impression of him. 

During science class, MC cooked noodles for Minor on the Bunsen burner when he was hungry. The recipe was Shrimp flavoured instant noodles, mix two eggs in well, then add a dab of sea salt and black pepper. [S1 Chapter 7-1]

-

Gavin is always at the school gates at 7:30am. Carrying his flat school bag, he orders fish balls at the snack kiosk on the north side of the school. It was the third day in a row that Minor notices this. [Minor’s Memory Book]

Gavin would occasionally travel around on his bicycle. (Pre-debut Sparky??) He says he was good at riding it. [Lost Love Date]

It was hard to find Gavin as he’s rarely at school, so she didn’t see him until 3 days later when MC went to the library at sunset. 

She tries to retrieve “Byron’s Poetry Collection” from the top of a 2-metre shelf, and since Gavin was a head taller, he was able to help her get it. 

He musters up the introduction that he recited many times- but MC quickly thanks him and leaves before he could speak.

Minor notices Gavin watching after MC and that he was SMIL-ING. 

He helps him locate MC and reports that every day after school she would go to the library for afternoon revision, always sitting in the same seat. 

Gavin sat at a corner not far, quietly flipping through textbooks he hated. People who were reading in the library would be driven away because they were scared of him LOL

MC would then leave at 5pm sharp to go back home. 

Gavin commits to walking back 10 metres behind her with Minor every day on forward. [CN Tilted Time Rumours and Secrets] 

-

Gavin saves Minor from bullies again. Minor dedicates himself to be his “bro”. 

He finds out that MC is an honours student, but doesn’t know that she’s the school orchestra leader. [Mystery Wings Event] and [Mark Date] However, he does know that she’s renowned as the “campus belle/ school flower”.

Minor idly mentions that more people were giving MC love letters.

Gavin tells Minor to collect all the people who were planning to confess their love to MC. Minor doesn’t want to be wingman anymore HAHA

Gavin stared those boys down as they trembled with fear. He tells them to take them back and if they scare her, he’ll make them regret it. 

Minor realises Gavin’s feelings for MC. [Minor’s Memory Book] 

-

MC eats from a small stall outside the school gate selling red bean puffs. ($3 for one, $5 for two. What a deal!) 

She also encounters the stall that sells sugar figurines [Gift of Life- Sugar Figurine Call]

MC ate chocolate sticks often at school. It's also a memory of student life for Gavin, as well. [CN 2021 March Sign-In Taste of Happiness]

Students would scramble for the small swing set in the school garden. MC never went at lunch breaks, but she watches the sunset on it after school. Gavin is sometimes nearby. MC never noticed him, but she does however notice the ginkgo leaves dancing in the wind. [Mini House Small Happening- Leisure Time]

-

Gavin isn’t his usual self anymore. He sees MC out in the library everyday and starts reading “5 Years of College Examinations and 3 Years of Sample Questions” (book for colleague entrance examinations).

MC watches a basketball match at school. She calls someone from an away team “dashing” because they won with a dunk. This has been engraved in Gavin’s memory ever since. [Dreamers Date]

Gavin found out that he was very fond of basketball success stories, rushing into the court to try hundreds of shots after. He writes “I will beat you” beside Sakuragi Hanamichi from a Slam Dunk poster alongside “not a step back”.

(Slam Dunk starts out with a boy wanting to play basketball to impress his crush.)

Gavin then injures his head badly :(

He realises that basketball couldn’t help him to protect anything he wanted. He determines that he will do whatever it takes (to “beat” himself”). [Mystery Wings Event]

-

Gavin leans against a tree as he watches MC hurry down the corridor as she clutches a textbook. [Boundary Rumours and Secrets]

MC would eat pocky. Gavin would eat them too. [2021 March Sign-In Moments]

- 

MC faints during a sports meet because she didn’t eat breakfast.

Gavin hurries to carry her to the infirmary. [CN Delightful Search Date]

He leaves bread and milk before she wakes up.

-

MC is on duty during PE class, which happens to be on basketball. 

Minor was careless about his aim and the ball almost hit her in the head. Gavin slams the ball away. [Minor’s Memory Book]

Gavin glares at Minor as MC thanks him.

Minor also “accidentally” pushes MC towards him.

Gavin glares again.

Gavin later is continuously shooting hoops. 

MC returns late at night to clean up the gym but all had been returned neatly in the basket. MC wanted to thank him but couldn’t. [CN Basketball Court Date]

-

There was a school sports competition that they attended. Gavin participated in the 10 lap race and came first by an impressive large measure. [Minor’s Memory Book]

MC participates in the sprint race, too. Gavin is worried about her performance, and if she would faint again. 

Gavin requests Minor to take a photo of her on his phone (which probably ended up as the photo that he carried with him in his early days at special training where the other men teased him about hiding a photo of a girl.) 

Approaching the End of October 

Gavin, Minor and MC are walking home. 

The weather is cold, and Gavin notices MC shivering in the distance. Gavin, conflicted by this, tells Minor to buy MC a hot drink without telling her that it was from him. [CN Tilted Time Rumours and Secrets] 

MC would occasionally spot a hot drink or a carton of strawberry milk in the piano room. [Chapter 31-12]

-

Gavin one day is conflicted by their early exchange, recalling how MC looks startled at the entrance of the library after seeing each other. His spirit depletes, kicking himself (metaphorically) in the corner of the classroom at how he might have scared her. 

Minor rushes in with a pink bandaid from MC for the wound at his mouth. 

He carefully took that bandaid, treating it as if it was his world’s most precious treasure.

This pink bandaid was always taped on his heart and whenever he stepped into the swamp-like darkness of the night, it gave off a faint warmth. [Mystery Wings Event]

-

MC starts to notice Gavin everywhere. At the corners of windows, she would see his figure. At the library, he would help her retrieve books from higher places. She would also see books laid out on his table, but most of the time he would be sleeping. Beneath his overlapping arms, he sees “Byron’s Poetry Collection”. Gavin doesn’t understand the poems, though. 

Lord Byron's "Don Juan" - Canto the Ninth, XVI 

"To be, or not to be?" — Ere I decide I should be glad to know that which is being? 'Tis true — we speculate both far and wide, And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing; For my part, I'll enlist on neither side Until I see both sides for once agreeing; For me, I sometimes think that Life is Death,

-

At the music rehearsal room on the fifth floor, she would see a corner of his shirt in the wind. 

MC thinks Gavin is friendly and slowly lets down her guard. 

At the canteen, he would offer her the last bottle of water. 

She begins smiling at him when they see each other, with the small arcs forming on her lips, soon becoming smiles that made her eyes squint.

-

MC would walk along the Senior hallways and subconsciously stop at a certain classroom- catching the sight of Gavin sleeping. On one particular day, she sees him standing by the window, staring at the sky. 

-

Minor asks Gavin if he could form a band with him. Gavin rejects him. He then asks Gavin if he wanted to join the school’s singing competition. Gavin rejects him again, saying that he didn’t perform for unimportant people or have others tell him how well he could play.

MC plays “Falling Slowly” on the piano. Gavin hearing this, learns to play the guitar. He doesn’t know the name of the song but familiarises himself with the melody. [CN Music and the Past Call]

-

Whenever school let students out early, she would go to Lynn’s Kitchen. MC gets her noodles with clear broth, chopped scallions and a half-boiled egg. Gavin usually gets his spicy noodles with garlic, cilantro, thinly sliced beef.

Gavin remembers her favourite order. 

MC leaves a post-it note at Lynn’s Kitchen, “I might never see you again and I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I miss you”, about a friend who transferred schools. 

Gavin knows she hates people who leave without saying goodbye the most.

Gavin, also in the vicinity near Lynn’s Kitchen, writes a post note.  “Until I met you.” [Mystery Box Game]

He saves Mr Noah’s son from an accident, immediately takes him to the hospital and pays for the medical fees. [Anime]

-

Gavin dismisses rumours of high school romance. 

“If you confessed on the 7th step of the stairway in the corner of the 3rd floor then it’ll succeed, or if you carved your name and another person’s name on the 6th tree in the courtyard at the back then your misunderstandings will be resolved, or if a guy gave the girl he liked the second button of his uniform on graduation day then the two of them will end up happy together.”

At lunch, he hears MC talking about the second button, and upon seeing her yearning face, he raises his head in thought, suddenly couldn’t wait for graduation. He tears off his second button. [Mystery Wings Event]

Gavin is just in love at this point.

-

Gavin sees one of the top students stealing money from a shop outside of school. The shopkeeper doesn’t believe him. 

He stops the student on his way home to hand him back the money. 

MC sees him at the alley then leaves.

Gavin spent all the money on a walkman he wanted for a very long time.

Mr Keller was the only one who believed in him. He said to him, “Since you can’t change what others think of you, you might as well just listen to your heart.” This had a great impact on Gavin. [Campus Date] 

Winter 

In the snowfall, the school allowed additional ten minutes of break time. The class next to MC’s stuffed Minor’s shirt with snowballs.

Gavin thought of helping him with a counterattack but MC had already returned a snowball to the male student who pulled the prank. 

Gavin looks at MC the whole time. [CN Recovery ASMR]

-

MC overheads girls in her class say that Gavin had bullied students for lunch money that morning. 

MC rides her bike back home after studying at the library for her finals. 

MC sees Gavin being handed an envelope full of money at Lynn’s Kitchen in an alleyway. 

She mistook it for him taking protection money. 

-

Summer of June 2011

On a humid afternoon, MC looks outside the window of the classroom in boredom. A boy in a loose-fitting school uniform ran by. She couldn’t make out his face. [S1 Chapter 7-23]

MC begins to distance herself from Gavin. She rushes out of class and goes straight home instead.

Gavin is sad. He broods by the piano room, goes to the library to brood, then stares at the place MC sits to brood some more. 

Minor wonders how he’s able to stare all afternoon at an empty space in the library but sleeps all day during class hours. [Minor’s Memory Book]

Before graduation, Gavin’s father expresses his thoughts for Gavin to join the organisation for special training. Gavin refuses, but his father uses MC to influence him to agree. 

Gavin remembers the panic and timidity in MC’s eyes when she first met him. He recalls that moment was probably the hardest to bear in his life.

Gavin in his short period of freedom writes a letter to MC. He ponders about what to say, thinking about their first encounter, and how she started to distance herself from him. But all he writes is-  

“Saturday 9am, I will be at the school library waiting for you.

-Gavin.”

-

MC attends the flag-raising ceremony and rehearses her speech. She then leaves to study for her exams. 

Meanwhile, Gavin finishes a fight with other boys from school in an alley after they talk inappropriately about MC. [Old Days Date]

Gavin, bloodied and bruised, asks Minor to make another copy of his letter. 

This is the only thing that Gavin had asked Minor to do so of course, he agreed. [Chapter 7-11]

Minor thinks the letter is a symbol of passion and fierce love due to the bloodstains and decides to keep the original. 

He writes “GAVIN” and places it on MC’s desk for her to see the next day. 

(In the Campus Date, the older MC is the one who finds him instead of Minor and treats him to his injuries. She ends up seeing the contents of the letter to find him later on.)

MC mistakes the letter as a threat and throws it away. 

That Weekend

Gavin sits for 14 hours in the library waiting for MC, scanning the library every now and then.

With a fingertip, he rubs “Byron’s Poetry Collection” and carefully sandwiches a dried and yellowed ginkgo leaf into the book. He suddenly felt a measure of self-deprecation.

He stands up, and leaves, his heart filled with regret that he didn’t give it to her personally. [CN Tilted Time Rumours and Secrets]

After Summer Break- July 

Minor never saw Gavin, and neither did MC. 

“We met often, but never passed by each other. I remember every moment I saw you in school. Time, location, weather, your expression, your clothes...

-I remember them all.”

[robininthelabyrinth]

Tedious Joys - Chapter 2 -

- Ao3 link -

“If you want A-Jue at this time of day, he’ll be at the training field,” Lao Nie said, standing up and immediately striding off in that direction. “Oh, and Qiren, I will warn you – he has his mother’s height.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes as he followed behind. “That’s helpful information,” he remarked. “Right up until you recall that I have never had the pleasure of meeting his mother –”

He stopped talking and stared.

“I didn’t think a further explanation was necessary,” Lao Nie said. He wasn’t quite at the level of sniggering into his sleeve, but he certainly had a shit-eating grin. Lao Nie was not a short man by any standard, although he was squatter, more muscular and more broad-shouldered than the tall and slender Lan sect  – and yet…

“He’s under ten,” Lan Qiren checked, and Lao Nie nodded. “You’re sure.”

“I was present at the birth myself, and have cared for him ever since. And before you ask, I may be busy with my duties as sect leader, but I still feel like I would have noticed someone swapping him out for a child several years older.”

Lan Qiren squinted out at the training field, where a child (and it was a child, given the amount of baby fat in his cheeks, even if the overall size was more what he’d expect of a teenager) was happily dismembering a training dummy with an especially fearsome-looking saber under the tolerant supervisory gaze of the training master.

“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren finally said. “About that first wife of yours…you would tell me if she were an actual giant – or a goddess –”

Lao Nie laughed and patted him on the back. He did not answer the question.

“A-Jue! Come here!” he shouted, and Nie Mingjue – demonstrating excellent discipline – completed his strike before turning around and trotting over to his father. “Say hello to Teacher Lan.”

“Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said obediently, saluting properly like every small child introduced to a stranger, and then looked up. A smile suddenly spread over his face. “Oh, Teacher Lan! Fighting without permission is prohibited!”

Lan Qiren choked and Lao Nie burst out laughing.

“That was seven years ago,” Lan Qiren protested, and Lao Nie only howled more. “You were an infant. How do you even remember that?”

“It was interesting!” Nie Mingjue beamed. “You said that every word in the rule is like a principle – even if you have the rule, you have to agree on what it means. What counts as fighting, what counts as permission, what counts as prohibited…I use it lots!”

“He has a good memory,” Lao Nie said, wiping his eyes. “You should hear how many profanities he’s learned.”

“I would rather not,” Lan Qiren said hastily, because Nie Mingjue looked on the verge of volunteering to recite them. “Nie Mingjue, can you show me around?”

“Of course, Teacher Lan! Let me just put Baxia away first; I’m not allowed to carry her outside the training field yet. Unless there’s an accident, of course.”

Lan Qiren did not ask. As a sect leader who did not share a border with Qishan Wen, he didn’t think he had the right.

“Take your time,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and watching as Nie Mingjue ran away.

“Would it help to have me there?” Lao Nie asked, and nodded when Lan Qiren shook his head. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

Lan Qiren did not put forward any requests, curious to see where Nie Mingjue would take him, and was reluctantly charmed by the fact that their first destination was the nursery, where several pudgy toddlers of indeterminable age were sleeping.

“My baby brother,” Nie Mingjue explained, very seriously, inadvertently driving home that the fact that he was as tall as Lan Qiren’s elbow didn’t make him any older than he was. “He’s little.”

Lan Qiren couldn’t even tell which one of the indiscriminate toddlers wrapped in blankets was meant to be Nie Huaisang, but he nodded, and Nie Mingjue led him onwards, initially mostly silent with belated shyness but eventually coaxed into chattering.

In the evening, he returned to Lao Nie’s study.

“Well?” Lao Nie asked, face creased into the scowl he had on more often than not, despite being widely considered one of the more even-tempered Nie. “What do you think?”

“I think your son is a bright and enthusiastic boy,” Lan Qiren said. “With a remarkable sense of justice and morality that will serve him well, although maybe not so much in terms of politics. He’s very…straightforward.”

“Yes, well, I’m still holding out hope on A-Sang for the tact,” Lao Nie said. “That wasn’t my question and you know it.”

Lan Qiren tried to collect his thoughts. “I don’t think you’ve damaged him for life,” he finally said, and Lao Nie’s shoulders relaxed in a sudden exhalation of what was probably months of increasing stress. “I do think he would benefit from understanding a little bit more about what’s happening to him.”

“But he’s so young.”

“I know. Normally, I wouldn’t introduce the subject of his own mortality at this level of complexity this early – although I assume it’s hard for him to miss the concept entirely, given the political situation –” Lao Nie winced in acknowledgment. “– but I don’t think you have much of a choice. You’re not the only one who noticed the saber spirit.”

Lao Nie frowned, then understood, and frowned even deeper. “He’s noticed it?”

“I got him talking on the subject of his saber,” Lan Qiren said. “He regards it in the same manner as other children his age would an imaginary friend. It’s female, apparently.”

Based on the description, Baxia also had what he would, in one of his students, term a personality. He supposed it was possible that Nie Mingjue was just projecting the parts of himself that weren’t quite fit for company, since surely no one could be that earnest, and yet, based on what Lao Nie had told him…

Lao Nie groaned and put his hand to his head. “Jiwei didn’t develop a sense of gender for years,” he grumbled, and Lan Qiren was moderately certain that he hadn’t intended to admit that out loud. “This is ridiculous. I want him to live a good life, Qiren. A long one, insofar as that’s possible for our sect.”

“I’ll try to do some research,” Lan Qiren said. “In the meantime, could he be convinced to cultivate something else in addition to a saber? Music, perhaps?”

“You’re welcome to try. He’s practically tone-deaf.”

“Perhaps arrays, then, or talismans,” Lan Qiren said. “It would do him some good to find another thing to pour all that energy of his into.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lao Nie allowed. “And I appreciate any research you’re able to do, though of course there are limitations on your time – and what we can allow to be taken out of the Unclean Realm.”

Lan Qiren waved a hand. “It’s nothing. I enjoy keeping busy, and the subject is fascinating. Have you considered that regular visits by me might draw attention?”

Attention from within their sects they could handle, but they were both sect leaders – or acting sect leader, in Lan Qiren’s case – and their actions could never truly be wholly their own.

“I have a plan for that,” Lao Nie said. “It’ll work better if you don’t know about it, though.”

Lan Qiren hated plans like that.

“Very well,” he said, aware that he sounded like he was sulking. “If you must.”

“Could I send him to you next year?” Lao Nie asked, and Lan Qiren forgot his grumpiness to gape at him. “I wouldn’t impose this year, naturally, since you must already have a curriculum planned. But next year…”

“If you send him, that will be making a statement,” Lan Qiren said.

A statement about what, exactly, he did not know, but there was a major difference between being the sort of teacher that was respected enough to teach the sect heirs of some small, out-of-the-way sects and being entrusted with the childhood education of the heir to a Great Sect. Even if Nie Mingjue learned nothing, which seemed unlikely given his earnest performance from earlier, the other small sects would immediately want to follow suit, as if to rub off some of the same luck for themselves – he would be flooded with applicants.

His sect elders were going to hate it.

Although it wasn’t exactly against any of the rules…

“That’s why I’m asking your permission.” Lao Nie grinned at him, his teeth flashing white under his nearly trimmed beard. “Also, while you’re our guest here – you did plan to stay at least a week or two, right? Good, good. I will insist upon you joining me for some night-hunts.”

“Lao Nie…”

“I’ve explained to you how my sect cultivates our sabers. Are you really saying that you can judge that without seeing it happening?”

“You know perfectly well that I’m a weak fighter,” Lan Qiren said, even though that was a very good point, and one he probably would have insisted on himself sooner or later. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“You never have,” Lao Nie said right to his face – the Nie sect did not discourage all lying, the scoundrels. “I’m serious! You’re not the fastest, no, but you’re perceptive, analytical, and creative. The insights I gain from hunting by your side are long-term gains, making me faster and more efficient in the future.”

“You’re flattering me,” Lan Qiren said suspiciously.

“I am not. The first time we went on a night-hunt together, you stopped by the river to rest and told me about how the flowers growing there were unique because they absorbed spiritual energy but not resentful energy on account of being too close to flowing water; three years later, I used that fact to find a gigantic nest of ghosts and demonic creatures that were using it as camouflage. They’d killed nearly a dozen villagers by that point and no one else could find them, but I did.”

Lan Qiren felt his ears heating up. “…that’s a coincidence.”

“Do you really want me to start naming other examples?”

“I would rather you showed me your library,” Lan Qiren said. He hoped he wasn’t blushing. He was probably blushing. No one else ever teased him the way Lao Nie did, except maybe Cangse Sanren. He was suddenly hit by a nostalgic desire to see her again. “At once, if you please. And also…”

He trailed off.

“Why the hesitation?” Lao Nie asked. “Do you really think there’s anything I would deny you, as long as you find a way to help my son?”

Lan Qiren cleared his throat. “It would be helpful if I could examine a more mature saber spirit that has already bonded to a human master. Your Jiwei, for instance.”

As he expected, Lao Nie scowled at the suggestion of someone else examining his spiritual weapon – and his saber spirit, no less – but after a few moments he collected himself and nodded, albeit begrudgingly. “I’ll leave her with you,” he said. “Be careful when you examine her – she doesn’t like to be touched by anyone but me.”

Lao Nie’s warning turned out to be both true, untrue, and an understatement of frankly shocking proportions.

During the course of Lan Qiren’s investigations into the subject of the Nie sect sabers over the next few months, and thereafter, he determined that the best, if not only, way to deal with Jiwei was to act as though he were handling a particularly vicious and single-minded dog.

Jiwei, it seemed, liked to bite.

If one treated her like a normal saber – an inert piece of metal – she would appear completely quiescent right up until there would be an abrupt and inexplicable accident, clattering off the table with the blade curving straight at clothing and flesh, and only very quick reflexes could prevent disaster. If one attempted to utilize spiritual energy with her, it would be even worse: she would pull as much as she could and feed back nothing, spiteful and ruthless.

A vicious creature, too quick to judge, loyal only to her master, who she loved.

A bit like Lao Nie, in fact. Lan Qiren did not delude himself into mistaking Lao Nie’s passion for righteousness – Nie Mingjue was righteous, a serious child that was always wondering what was right, while Lao Nie was more inclined towards brutal, even callous, practicality that focused on what benefited him and his sect. He would do good, of course, but he could not be forced into it; he had his pride, his temper, and sometimes he erred too much in favor of those over even common sense.

But despite all his rough edges, he did truly love his friends.

He dragged Lan Qiren all over Qinghe whenever he visited, on night-hunts and to resolve minor conflicts, the sort of thing any normal traveling cultivator might do; he showed him the small towns and the hidden cities that Lan Qiren would not have seen on any normal visit, and asked him to play songs for his little family. Nie Huaisang was enraptured by the music, Nie Mingjue largely indifferent – Lao Nie had not been wrong to call him practically tone-deaf – and Lao Nie beaming all the while, even if Lan Qiren suspected that his eldest son’s lack of musical appreciation had largely come from him.

He even, after a stray comment, managed to track down Cangse Sanren, who brought her husband and son to the Unclean Realm and left them in Nie Mingjue’s earnest care while she sat with the two of them, drinking liquor as if it were water to the point that even Lao Nie refused to compete with her – when his protests were eventually overridden, Lan Qiren (who drank tea, of course) was roped in to be their long-suffering judge.

It was a good night.

“Is that another thing I took from you?” He Kexin unexpectedly asked Lan Qiren a week after Lao Nie had publicly announced that he would be sending Nie Mingjue to the Cloud Recesses for Lan Qiren’s classes. The ensuing hubbub, as Lan Qiren expected, had been enormous, and he’d braced himself to discuss nothing else for months, although he hadn’t really expected her to mention it.

The Cloud Recesses separated men and women, and He Kexin had borne two sons; they were old enough by now to live primarily with the men rather than the women, and so they had entered Lan Qiren’s care. He brought them to visit her once a month, and came himself like clockwork every two weeks in between to update her as to their progress, his eyes fixed firmly above her head as he narrated the report as if he were a junior returning from a night-hunt. It was not her fault that his brother had fallen in love with her and ruined Lan Qiren’s life, but it had been her decision to murder a man that had served as the trigger for the situation; Lan Qiren was meticulous about his duty to her as his sister-in-law, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Or her.

By this point, she was moderately good at respecting that. In the beginning, she’d cursed him viciously every time he came to see her, especially after he’d provided her with definitive proof of her former friend’s lies and machinations. Later, she’d tried flirting with him out of what he could only assume was boredom or perhaps a willful misunderstanding as to why he still visited, assuming that he had perfidious motivations or shared his brother’s taste in women instead of suffering from an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for his brother’s misdeeds. It had taken him several months and, eventually, an explicit offer to even notice, and he’d nearly broken his neck fleeing from the scene.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, still looking above her head instead of at her face. He Kexin had A-Huan’s smile and A-Zhan’s eyes, he knew that, but if he could scrub all of her other features from his mind, he would.

“Sect Leader Nie,” she said, and it was so odd to hear someone refer to Lao Nie by his formal title outside of a political situation or deliberate insult – even Wen Ruohan habitually called him Lao Nie by now, and as far as Lan Qiren could tell, they despised each other – that Lan Qiren’s eyes actually dropped to meet hers. “If you weren’t sect leader, you could’ve married him.”

Lan Qiren choked on air. “Do you think of nothing but sex all day?” he spat out, his cheeks going red. “We are friends.”

“I don’t have much else to think of,” He Kexin said, and he glared as if to communicate whose fault is that and maybe in your next life you won’t solve your problems with murder. “I heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and now he’s sending his son to your care. It’s suggestive.”

“Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden,” Lan Qiren reminded her, and she shrugged. “Do I need to discipline your servants?”

“It’s news, not gossip,” she said. “And no, these ones are fine. No one’s playing any tricks.”

There had been an incident early on, where a few of the servants assigned to care for He Kexin had mistaken her confinement for abandonment; they had not expected Lan Qiren to grimly continue visiting as he would have done if she had been his sister-in-law in the normal course of things, nor to listen when she complained. He had of course taken all necessary measures to have the offenders harshly disciplined and expelled, replaced with servants of good character and sufficient intelligence to keep her company without seeking to take advantage, and there had been no new incidents since.

Her punishment was confinement, not torment. No matter what Lan Qiren felt about her, she would receive exactly that – neither more nor less.

“Is it Cangse Sanren, then?” she asked, propping her head up on her chin. “You fell in love with her, and then she married another man…”

“Sometimes people are just friends,” he said, irritated. “Why must I be in love with anyone?”

He Kexin shrugged. “Don’t you want to marry, one day? Have children of your own, rather than always reporting back to me on mine?”

“I’m acting sect leader,” Lan Qiren said tightly. “A marriage, much less children, would give rise to accusations that I was seeking to usurp my brother’s place or my nephews’ inheritance.”

“So it is another thing I’ve done,” she said, looking down at her hands. They were clenched tightly into fists, her knuckles white; sometimes Lan Qiren thought she wanted to punch him as a means of venting her feelings, and sometimes he didn’t even blame her for it. “I had only been thinking about it in the sense that you couldn’t leave, but you can’t even bring anyone back.”

“I don’t especially want to, anyway,” he said, because it was true. Even if she was right, that even his right to marry freely had been taken from him, it didn’t mean that she had the right to use it as a whip on her own back. If Lan Qiren couldn’t bring himself to obey the rule about not holding grudges, he could at least follow the ones about being generous and easy on others. “I haven’t found the right person.”

“And it’s really not Lao Nie?” He Kexin asked. “You go to visit him often, and for longer periods, than you go anywhere else, and A-Huan says you look happy whenever you’re going to go.”

Lan Qiren shrugged. He was happy to go. He enjoyed Lao Nie’s company, and the research, even when Lao Nie was too busy for him personally, and Lao Nie’s role as an allied sect leader meant that Lan Qiren had more latitude in arranging such visits than he did to other places.

“…A-Zhan says that your hands are white when you return.”

Lan Qiren’s eyes dropped to his arms, where there was in fact some white peeking out from beneath his sleeves – white bandages on his left wrist and the two smallest fingers on his right hand, this time, from the latest incident in which Jiwei had tried to slash him, but it was barely a nick in comparison with previous instances; he thought that it was a sign that they might be getting somewhere.

A moment later, he realized the implications of her statement and glared at her. “You’re not seriously asking if Lao Nie is abusing me? Weren’t you asking about my marriage prospects with him only a moment ago?”

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” she said dryly. “And the Nie temper is well known.”

“It’s from research,” Lan Qiren said. “I dropped a saber and I knocked over the table on to my other hand when trying to dodge.”

“I believe you,” she said, lips twitching. “If only because you would’ve come up with a more dignified excuse if it was a lie.”

“I don’t actually have to explain myself to you,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “Is there anything else you want to know about your sons?”

“No,” she said. “But I’d like my husband to visit me again, if you can arrange it.”

He nodded stiffly.

“You know,” she said, playing idly with her sleeves. “If you never marry, I’ll be the closest thing you ever have to a wife? You manage my house, you raise my children, and you even provide me with services in bed, albeit indirectly.”

Do not succumb to rage, Lan Qiren thought to himself, and left without another word.

(Later, when Cangse Sanren next visited the Cloud Recesses, her husband taking A-Huan on a ride on their donkey with A-Zhan and A-Ying tucked into the saddlebags, she listened to him stammer through the whole humiliating story and gnashed her teeth on his behalf. “Don’t listen to her,” she told him. “By that standard, the rabbits she likes to raise are her concubines.”)

His simmering anger made his next session with Jiwei flow more easily, almost as if the saber spirit empathized with his rage – or perhaps it was simply that she found it more familiar, more reminiscent of the temper of her true master, and therefore less objectionable. He was attempting to draw out some part of her anger through music and store it into a jade pendant: his theory was that the eventual qi deviations of the Nie sect leaders resulted from a lack of balance with the resentful energy utilized by the saber spirit – the negative emotions streaming in through the saber, strengthening it, but having no means of cleansing beyond outbursts of temper.

It had been the way Nie Mingjue spoke of his saber spirit as if she were his friend that had given him the idea. Many in the Nie sect treated their sabers with both reverence and fear, as if the spirits were vicious creatures they had only temporarily tamed and which would one day turn upon them, but Jiwei was passionately loyal to Lao Nie, and Baxia to Nie Mingjue. Perhaps it was his inheritance as a Lan showing, or merely his own experience with his brother, but Lan Qiren simply could not understand how anything that loved so unstintingly, so unreservedly, could ever bring themself to intentionally bring about their beloved one’s destruction.

Even a dog would refuse to bite a master it loved unless it had gone mad.

Therefore, he concluded, it was not merely the human wielder but the saber itself that deviated in their cultivation. Lao Nie had once said in an aside that it was unclear what came first, the Nie sect tempers or the saber spirit-incited outbursts, and although he had meant it as a joke, Lan Qiren thought there was some merit to the question. Rage served a valuable purpose for humans, acting as a warning sign that something was wrong, that something was unacceptable, rejection and protection all at once, but rage that could not be excised would turn rancid and sour, like a poisoned wound. Sabers were cultivated by their masters and resembled them – they were filled with human rage, intensified by their cultivation of resentful energy, but unlike a human they could not shout or hit something or vent in any way other than through hunting.

No wonder Jiwei was so content after a night-hunt; no wonder Nie sect cultivators got irritable when they hadn’t had time to cultivate their sabers or fight evil or just get out and do something. But with limited venting opportunities (humans could not fight evil all the time), the sabers would fall into obsession, infected by the very same resentful energy that they excised when they hunted – their bloodlust simultaneously sated and inflamed – and as their power grew, and their true opponents grew fewer, they would become insatiable and, eventually, unbalanced. Demonic cultivation was abhorred by the cultivation world because it opened the door to obsession and fixation, and the most common way that demonic cultivators died, if not executed by the world, was through a backlash of their own power. Obsession was by its nature rigid, and that was the sole weakness of the saber: they had to be rigid, but never too rigid, or else they would become brittle, would break.

Deviation.

It was a very interesting theory, even if Lao Nie’s eyes glazed over whenever Lan Qiren tried to explain. Lan Qiren didn’t take offense: Lao Nie had always been an exceptionally practical man, more interested in results than theories, actions rather than thoughts.

“Aren’t you disappointed?” Lan Qiren asked him at one point, abrupt as he always seemed to be about such things. “That I haven’t gotten anywhere?”

Lao Nie looked surprised. “What do you mean? You have a valid theory, you’ve tried all sorts of things.”

“I haven’t succeeded.”

Lao Nie laughed. “My friend, this is a problem that has stymied my sect for generations. Did you really think you’d be able to solve it in three weeks?”

Lan Qiren scowled. “It’s been closer to three years.”

“You’ve made progress,” Lao Nie said confidently. “A-Jue has as solid a foundation as I could hope for, and all those conversations you have with him about the nature of ethics and morality have had an excellent effect on his saber.”

“Has it?” Lan Qiren asked, skeptical. Even the Nie sect experts agreed that Baxia was unusually vicious for a saber, powerful enough to frighten wild yao simply with her presence – Nie Mingjue’s cultivation remained shockingly fast, and even Lan Qiren, who had only a few years understanding of the saber spirits, could recognize the effects of it.

“It has,” Lao Nie said firmly. “He doesn’t fear her, and she loves him all the more for it, backs him like none other; no other saber of his generation will so much as waver out of line with Baxia behind them. As for the rest…ah, Qiren, if you can figure out a way to stymie the saber spirit even a little – give him even another decade – I’ll be satisfied. Don’t worry about it.”

Lan Qiren huffed and returned to trying to transfer spiritual energy from Jiwei to the pendant.

“Besides, all this time spent on the project has had at least one good effect,” Lao Nie added, putting his hand on Lan Qiren’s shoulder as he played. “I get the pleasure of your company.”

Lan Qiren’s attention was fixed on his playing, but the hand was warm on his shoulder. “That hardly seems so much of a benefit,” he said absently.

“You underestimate yourself. Do you know, outside of my sect, I think you’re my best friend?”

Only years of training allowed Lan Qiren’s fingers to continue to move smoothly over the guqin strings when his heart seized in his chest, warm and hot and squished and painful and pleasurable at the same time.

He did not allow himself to ask “Really?” like a small child, insecure and uncertain, did not permit himself to say “even above my brother”, did not say anything at all.

“Thank you,” he finally said, stiff and wooden. “I…you as well.”

[beesmygod]

THE NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY’S 2020 ENTRIES

people who know me know i have a particular interest in the national film registry, the library of congress’ special collection of films they have deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant“. to be clear this is not an oscars or an award ceremony of any sort, though it is an honor in to be selected. it is a preservation program; the purpose of this is to make sure these films are passed down through time as examples of the american experience or as examples of american art/history by the "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” metric. for me, this is a far more interesting starting point of casually reviewing films and there is a morbid curiosity what the faceless entity that is “the library of congress” (to me, an ape) deems important, american style.

great news! the 2020 additions have arrived! and they’re weird! included are a mix of modern classics that everyone recognizes as well as a vast plethora of film created well before 1940. i recognize a few of them. as will you! here are some of them and why i think they are here:

the blues brothers: self explanatory to anyone who has seen it but to anyone who hasn’t, its a tour de force comedy whirlwind adventure starring SNL (back when it starred actual comedians who went on to do things) kings dan akroyd and john belushi and featuring performances by some of the most unbelievable and spectacular musical talent of all time. a love letter to the blues, comedy and fun.

a clockwork orange: a viscerally unpleasant film by one of the best filmmakers of the modern era, this isn’t a film that needs to be seen by everyone. like, this isn’t one of those “gotta see it” films because it’s highly upsetting and most people are going to find it terrible and vile for the sake of it because it is. this is a film that makes for a perfect example of the above definitions provided:  "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant“. i am withholding judgment calls on the content within the movie (ha ha! you will have to use context clues regarding what you know about me to determine how i feel like a normal person!!), kubrick was pressing his finger to the pulse of the american audience of the 1970s and i don’t think any picture outside of a slasher film reflected that more than this movie.

as much as i dont want to, given the state of the world. i wonder what it would be like to revisit this movie in 2020.

the dark knight: lol

grease: an idealized musical about the 1950s from 1978, but one of the most prominent cultural touchstones that has transcended generations. it’s campy, it’s artificial, and it’s another one that might strike a little too close to the ideals held close by the audiences of the 1970s. but there’s an undeniable charm brought to the table by travolta (who at this point was still bringing his signature swagger and charisma to each of his roles) and newton-john (who is really, truly a delight as the believably innocent sandy).  "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant“? yes.

the hurt locker:  i have no idea. my ass is a little chapped about this one. what the fuck.

lilies of the field: a beautiful and gentle film about a man, some german nuns and god. sidney potier became the first african american to win an academy award for best actor for his performance as homer smith, the kind samaritan who comes to understand the goodness of god is in the milk of human kindness. this is an easy to swallow film; there is no romance, no danger. there is only the steady upward gaze of a man turning heavenward. this all sounds very preachy and religious, and while there are dueling bible quotes and the catholic aspect of the movie is an important plot lynchpin, the thrust of the movie is cultivating love is labor, much like a garden or building a church.

shrek: yeah laugh it up, but besides being one of the earliest CGI movies to break a block, it was also one of the biggest animated movies to kick the rat in the dick and give disney a little run for their money. up until dreamworks came along, animated movies were either XXX ralph bakshi affairs (okay, “wizards” isnt that nasty but you know) or very, very safe disney properties (which were great...but...they were...all that we really had except for the one bad movie don bluth would cough up once every 2 years or so). shrek was finally something with a little bit of an edge that directly stuck a pin in between disney’s ribs. plus...can you deny the cultural significance it has even today? i dare, you bitch.

want to nominate something to the registry next year? click here and fill out the form!

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Chicago at Long Beach, LA, 1992: A Story of Bebe Neuwirth, Choreography, Riots, Revivals, and Relevance

Recently and rather excitingly, more footage made its way to YouTube of the 1992 version of Chicago staged at Long Beach in LA, featuring Bebe Neuwirth as Velma and Juliet Prowse as Roxie.

Given its increased accessibility and visibility, this foregrounds the chance to talk about the show, explore some of its details, and look at the part it might have played as a contribution to the main ‘revival’ of Chicago in 1996 – which has given the show one of the most resonant and highly enduring legacies seen within the theatre ever.

This Civic Light Opera production at Long Beach was staged in 1992, four years before the ‘main’ revival made its appearance at Encores! or had its subsequent Broadway transfer, and it marked the first time a major revival of Chicago had been seen since the original 1975 show disappeared nearly 15 years previously.

This event is of particular significance given its position as the first step in the chain of events that make up part of this ‘new Chicago’ narrative and the resultant entire multiple-decade spanning impact of the show hereafter.

But for all of its pivotal status, it’s seldom discussed or remembered anywhere near as much as it should be.

This may be in part because of how little video or photographic record has remained in easily accessible form to date, and also because it only played for around two weeks in the first place. As such, it is a real treat on these occasions to get to see such incredible and unique material that would otherwise have been lost forever after such a brief existence some 30 years ago.

This earlier revival of the show still feels like what we have come to identify “Chicago” as in modern comprehension of the musical, most principally because the choreography was also done by Ann Reinking. As with the 1996 production, this meant dance was done “very much in the master’s style” – or Mr Bob Fosse.

The link below is time-stamped to Bebe and Juliet performing ‘Hot Honey Rag’. As one of the most infamous numbers in Broadway history, it’s undoubtedly a dance that has been watched many times over. But never before have I seen it done quite like this.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=2647

‘Hot Honey Rag’ was in fact formerly called ‘Keep It Hot’, and was devised by Fosse as “a compendium of all the steps he learned as a young man working in vaudeville and burlesque—the Shim Sham, the Black Bottom, the Joe Frisco, ‘snake hips,’ and cooch dancing”, making it into the “ultimate vaudeville dance act” for the ultimate finale number.

Ann would say about her choreographical style in relation to Fosse, “The parts where I really deviate is in adding this fugue quality to the numbers. For better or worse, my style is more complicated.” The ‘complexity’ and distinctness she speaks of is certainly evident in some of the sections of this particular dance. There are seemingly about double the periodicity of taps in Bebe and Juliet’s Susie Q sequence alone. One simply has to watch in marvel not just at the impressive synchronicity and in-tandem forward motion, but now also at the impossibly fast feet. Other portions that notably differ from more familiar versions of the dance and thus catch the eye are the big-to-small motion contrast after the rising ‘snake hips’ section, and all of the successive goofy but impeccably precise snapshot sequence of arm movements and poses.

More focus is required on the differences and similarities of this 1992 production compared against the original or subsequent revival, given its status and importance as a bridging link between the two.

The costumes in 1975 were designed by Patricia Zipprodt (as referenced in my previous post on costume design), notably earning her a Tony Award nomination. In this 1992 production, some costumes were “duplications” of Zipprodt’s originals, and some new designs by Garland Riddle – who added a “saucy/sassy array” in the “typical Fosse dance lingerie” style. It is here we begin to see some of the more dark, slinkiness that has become so synonymous with “Chicago” as a concept in public perception.

The sets from the original were designed by Tony Walton – again, nominated for a Tony – and were reused with completeness here. This is important as it shows some of the original dance concepts in their original contexts, given that portions of the initial choreography were “inextricably linked to the original set designs.” This sentiment is evident in the final portion of ‘Cell Block Tango’, pictured and linked at the following time-stamp below, which employs the use of mobile frame-like, ladder structures as a scaffold for surrounding movements, and also a metaphor for the presence of jail cell bars.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=741

Defining exactly how much of the initial choreography was carried across is an ephemeral line. Numbers were deemed “virtually intact” in the main review published during the show’s run from the LA Times – or even further, “clones” of the originals. It is thought that the majority of numbers here exhibit greater similarity to the 1975 production than the 1996 revival, except for ‘Hot Honey Rag’ which is regarded as reasonably re-choreographed. But even so, comparing against remaining visible footage of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera from the original, or indeed alternatively against Bebe and Annie later in the revival, does not present an exact match to either.

This speaks to the adaptability and amorphousness of Fosse-dance within its broader lexicon. Fosse steps are part of a language that can be spoken with subtle variations in dialect. Even the same steps can appear slightly different when being used in differing contexts, by differing performers, in differing time periods.

It also speaks to some of the main conventions of musical theatre itself. Two main principles of the genre include its capacity for fluidity and its ability for the ‘same material’ to change and evolve over time; as well as the fact comparisons and comprehensions of shows across more permanent time spans are restricted by the availability of digital recordings of matter that is primarily intended to be singular and live.

Which versions of the same song do you want to look at when seeking comparisons?

Are you considering ‘Hot Honey Rag’ at a performance on the large stage at Radio City Music Hall at the Tony Awards in 1997? Or on a small stage for TV shows, like the Howard Cosell or Mike Douglas shows in 1975? Or on press reel footage from 1996 on the ‘normal’ stage context in a format that should be as close to a replica as possible of what was performed in person every night?

Bebe often remarks on and marvels at Ann’s capacity to travel across a stage. “If you want to know how to travel, follow Annie,” she says. This exhibits how one feature of a performance can be so salient and notable on its own, and yet so precariously dependent on the external features its constrained to – like scale.

Thus context can have a significant impact on how numbers are ultimately performed for these taped recordings and their subsequent impact on memory. Choreography must adjust accordingly – while still remaining within the same framework of the intention for the primary live performances.

This links to Ann’s own choreographical aptitude, in the amount of times it is referenced how she subtly adapted each new version of Chicago to tailor to individual performers’ specific merits and strengths as dancers.

Ann’s impact in shaping the indefinable definability of how Chicago is viewed, loved and remembered now is not to be understated.

An extensive 1998 profile – entitled “Chicago: Ann Reinking’s musical” – explores in part some of Ann’s approaches to creating and interacting with the material across a long time span more comprehensively. Speaking specifically to how she choreographed this 1992 production in isolation, Ann would say, “I knew that Bob’s point of view had to permeate the show, you couldn’t do it without honoring his style.” In an age without digital history at one’s fingertips, “I couldn’t remember the whole show. So I choreographed off the cuff and did my own thing. So you could say it was my take on his thoughts.” Using the same Fosse vocabulary, then – “it’s different. But it’s not different.”

One further facet that was directly carried across from the initial production were original cast members, like Barney Martin as returning as Amos, and Michael O'Haughey reprising his performance as Mary Sunshine. Kaye Ballard as Mama Morton and Gary Sandy as Billy Flynn joined Bebe and Juliet to make up the six principals in this new iteration of the show.

Bebe, Gary and Juliet can be seen below in a staged photo for the production at the theatre.

The venue responsible for staging this Civic Light Opera production was the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach in Los Angeles. Now defunct, this theatre and group in its 47 years of operation was credited as providing some of “the area’s most high profile classics”. Indeed, in roughly its final 10 years alone, it staged shows such as Hello Dolly!, Carousel, Wonderful Town (with Donna McKechnie), Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, La Cage aux Folles, Follies, 1776, Funny Girl, Bye Bye Birdie, Pal Joey, and Company. The production of Pal Joey saw a return appearance from Elaine Stritch, reprising her earlier performance as Melba Snyder with the memorable song ‘Zip’. This she had done notably some 40 years earlier in the original 1952 Broadway revival, while infamously and simultaneously signed as Ethel Merman’s understudy in Call Me Madam as she documented in Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

Juliet Prowse appeared as Phyllis in Follies in 1990, and Ann Reinking acted alongside Tommy Tune in Bye Bye Birdie in 1991, in successive preceding seasons before this Chicago was staged.

But for all of its commendable history, the theatre went out of business in 1996 just 4 years after this, citing bankruptcy. Competition provided in the local area by Andrew Lloyd Webber and his influx of staging’s of his British musicals was referenced as a contributing factor to the theatre group’s demise. This feat I suspect Bebe would have lamented or expressed remorse for, given some of her comments in previous years on Sir Lloyd Webber and the infiltration of shows from across the pond: “I had lost faith in Broadway because of what I call the scourge of the British musicals. They've dehumanized the stage [and] distanced the audience from the performers. I think 'Cats' is like Patient Zero of this dehumanization.”

That I recently learned that Cats itself can be rationalised in part as simply A Chorus Line with ears and tails I fear would not improve this assessment. In the late ‘70s when Mr Webber noticed an increase of dance ability across the general standard of British theatre performers, after elevated training and competition in response to A Chorus Line transferring to the West End, he wanted to find a way he could use this to an advantage in a format that was reliable to work. Thus another similarly individual, sequential and concept-not-plot driven dance musical was born. Albeit with slightly more drastic lycra leotards and makeup.

But back in America, the Terrace theatre could not be saved by even the higher incidence of stars and bigger Broadway names it was seeing in its final years, with these aforementioned examples such as Bebe, Annie, Tommy, Juliet, Donna, or Elaine. The possibility of these appearances in the first place were in part attributable to the man newly in charge as the company’s producer and artistic director – Barry Brown, Tony award-winning Broadway producer. 

Barry is linked to Bebe’s own involvement with this production of Chicago, through his relationship – in her words – as “a friend of mine”.

At the time, Bebe was in LA filming Cheers, when she called Barry from her dressing room. Having been working in TV for a number of years, she would cite her keenness to find a return to the theatre, “[wanting] to be on a stage so badly” again. The theatre is the place she has long felt the most sense of ease in and belonging for, frequently referring to herself jokingly as a “theatre-rat” or remarking that it is by far the stage that is the “medium in which I am most comfortable, most at home, and I think I'm the best at.”

Wanting to be back in that world so intensely, she initially proposed the notion of just coming along to the production to learn the parts and be an understudy. Her desire to simply learn the choreography alone was so strong she would say, “You don’t have to pay me or anything!”

She’d had the impetus to make the call to Barry in the first place only after visiting Chita Rivera at her show in LA with a friend, David Gibson. At the time, the two did not know each other that well. Bebe had by this point not even had the direct interaction of taking over in succession for Chita in Kiss of the Spider Woman in London. This she would do the following year, with Chita guiding her generously through the intricacies of the Shaftesbury Theatre and the small, but invaluable, details known only to Chita that would be essential help in meeting stage cues and playing Aurora.

Bebe had already, however, stepped into Chita’s shoes multiple times, as Anita in West Side Story as part of a European tour in the late ‘70s, or again in a Cleveland Opera Production in 1988; and additionally as Nickie in the 1986 Broadway revival of Sweet Charity – both of which were roles Chita had originated on stage or screen. In total, Velma would bring the tally of roles that Bebe and Chita have shared through the years to four, amongst many years also of shared performance memories and friendship.

They may not have had a long history of personal rather than situational connections yet when Bebe visited her backstage at the end of 1991, but Chita still managed to play a notable part in the start of the first of Bebe’s many engagements with Chicago.

After Bebe hesitantly relayed her idea, Chita told her, “You should call! Just call!”

So call Bebe did. One should listen to Chita Rivera, after all.

Barry Brown rang her back 10 minutes later after suggesting the idea to Ann Reinking, who was otherwise intended to be playing Velma. The response was affirmative. “Oh let her play the part!”, Annie had exclaimed. And so begun Bebe’s, rather long and very important, journey with Chicago.

In 1992, this first step along the road to the ‘new Chicago’ was well received.

Ann Reinking with her choreography was making her first return to the Fosse universe since her turn in the 1986 Sweet Charity revival. Diametrically, Rob Marshall was staring his first association with Fosse material in providing the show’s direction – many years before he would go on to direct the subsequent film adaptation also. Together, they created a “lively, snappy, smarmy” show that garnered more attention than had been seen since the original closed.

“Bob Fosse would love [this production],” it was commended at the time, “Especially the song-and-dance performance of Bebe Neuwirth who knocks everyone’s socks off.” High praise.

Bebe was also singled out for her “unending energy”, but Juliet too received praise in being “sultry and funny”. Together, the pair were called “separate but equal knockouts” and an “excellent combination”.

Juliet was 56 at the time, and sadly died just four years later. Just one year after the production though, Juliet was recorded as saying, “In fact, we’re thinking of doing it next year and taking it out on the road.”

Evidently that plan never materialised. But it is interesting to note the varied and many comments that were made as to the possibility of the show having a further life.

Bebe at the time had no recollection that the show might be taken further, saying “I didn’t know anything about that.” Ann Reinking years later would remark “no one seemed to think that the time was necessarily ripe for a full-blown Broadway revival.” While the aforementioned LA Times review stated in 1992 there were “unfortunately, no current plans” for movement, it also expressed desire and a call to action for such an event. “Someone out there with taste, money and shrewdness should grab it.”

The expression that a show SHOULD move to Broadway is by no means an indication that a show WILL move. But this review clearly was of enough significance for it to be remembered and referenced by name by someone who was there when it came out at the time, Caitlin Carter, nearly 30 years later. Caitlin was one of the six Merry Murderesses, principally playing Mona (or Lipschitz), at each of this run, Encores!, and on Broadway. She recalled, “Within two days, we got this rave review from the LA Times, saying ‘You need to take the show to Broadway now!’” The press and surrounding discussions clearly created an environment in which “there was a lot of good buzz”, enough for her to reason, “I feel like it planted seeds… People started to think ‘Oh we need to revive this show!’”

The seeds might have taken a few years to germinate, but they did indeed produce some very successful and beautiful flowers when they ultimately did.

In contrast with one of the main talking points of the ‘new Chicago’ being its long performance span, one of the first things I mentioned about this 1992 iteration was the rather short length of its run. It is stated that previews started on April 30th, for an opening on May 2nd, with the show disappearing in its final performance on May 17th. Less than a fleeting 3 weeks in total.

Caitlin Carter discussed the 1992 opening on Stars in the House recently. It’s a topic of note given that their opening night was pushed back from the intended date by two days, meaning Ann Reinking and Rob Marshall had already left and never even saw the production. “The night we were supposed to open in Long Beach was the Rodney King riots.”

Local newspapers at the time when covering the show referenced this large and significant event, by noting the additional two performances added in compensation “because of recent interruptions in area social life.”

It sounds rather quaint put like that. In comparison, the horror and violence of what was actually going on can be statistically summated as ultimately leaving 63 people dead, over 2300 injured, and more than 12,000 having been arrested, in light of the aftermath of the treatment faced by Rodney King. Or more explicitly, the use of excessive violence against a black man at police hands with videotaped footage.

A slightly later published review wrote of how this staging was thus “timely” – in reference to an observed state of “the nation’s moral collapse”.

‘Timeliness’ is a matter often referenced when discussing why the 1996 revival too was of such success. The connection is frequently made as to how this time, the revival resonated with public sentiment so strongly – far more than in 1975 when the original appeared – in part because of the “exploding headlines surrounding the OJ Simpson murder case”. The resulting legal and public furore around this trial directly correlates with the backbone and heart of the musical itself.

I'm writing this piece now at the time of the ongoing trial to determine the verdict of George Floyd’s murder, another black man suffering excessive and ultimately fatal violence at police hands with videotaped footage.

I think the point is that this is never untimely. And that the nation is seldom not in some form of ‘moral collapse’, or facing events that have ramifications to do with the legal system and are emotionally incendiary on a highly public level.

Which perhaps is why Chicago worked so well not just in 1996, but also right up to the present day.

Undoubtedly, we live in a climate where the impact of events is determined not just by the events themselves, but also the manner in which they are reported in the media. Events involving some turmoil and public outrage at the state and outcome of the legal system are not getting any fewer or further between. But the emphasis on the media in an increasingly and unceasingly digital age is certainty only growing.

[eagle-raider]

Directors are really riding the wave of lesbian Gothic drama, I see. Case in point with what is shaping up to be a crossing between Blue is the Warmest Color for the gracious nudity shots and The Handmaiden for the atmospheric ambience, but sadly, it holds none of its clever plot weaving and beautiful photography.

GAY NUNS ARE GAY, also known as Benedetta

Under the cut, because I’m ranting.

It’s been selected for the official competition (not exactly the best lineup of movies, Cannes’s most memorable films, save for a few exceptions, are usually found in the parallel competition: Un Certain Regard) and it’s coming out in July. 

Like three out of four lesbian movies that made it to the official competition of Cannes’s Film Festival in the past 8 years (Blue is the Warmest Color, Carol and the Handmaiden), this one is based on a book written by a woman: Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (oof) by Judith C. Brown. 

It tells the real life of Benedetta Carlini, an Italian woman who grew up in a convent and became an Abbess after she started having visions of religious (and sexual) nature. It is the earliest documented trace of female homosexuality in the Western world. 

Now, I saw a trailer. I usually avoid them like that plague when they’re more than two minutes long because then, they give everything away. This one was one minute fifty seconds, which entered within my self-imposed limit.

I shouldn’t have done that, because now I feel that I have seen everything: Virginie Efira having gay panic, lots of boob shots and an ‘o’ face under the candlelight. Oh, and there’s something nebulous about a prophecy? I think? I didn’t quite get it with since the editing was intent on shoving boobs and mysterious shots of naked women behind a see-through veil. Oh, and awesome Charlotte Rampling speaking French with her cute accent. 

Now, this could be a very interesting movie, it has the potential and the material to be. But when a director feels the need to have a falsely mysterious trailer that is so pretentious that it’s borderline cringe, when a director has so little faith in the quality of his work that he feels the need to grab your attention with the cheapest hook ever (female pleasure seen on camera, oh so very scandalous! Much subversive!) for his trailer to make an impression on you... yeah no. 

And you guys, I’m French. I’m not bothered by nudity, I’m that weirdo who went and watched Blue is the Warmest Color at the cinema with a bunch of (girl) friends. Yes, we sat through those seven minutes when other people were storming out. I have mixed feelings about that movie as well, but that’s for another time and a different matter altogether. I will say that though: it did capture the all-consuming and destructive passion of what first love (usually) is. Adèle Exarchopoulos’s performance is genuine, raw and painfully realistic from the beginning to the end. She deserved every accolade and even more. 

Nudity and sex in cinema don’t bother me. Violence and abuse do because it’s so engrained in mainstream media now, that nobody even bats an eyelid anymore, especially when it’s directed towards women. We’ve become so desensitized to it and it’s so very dangerous.

But this trailer? I’m just wondering... why? Why all of this? Why so many shallow sequences? We got it, she’s horny and they’re going to have steamy crazy sex in *gasp* a convent. Great. The director, Paul Verheoven, could have conveyed that in so many - and more impactful ways... You know what Park Chan-wook did to show all of this without actually showing any of it in the Handmaiden’s trailer?

He had the actress breathe at the beginning of the trailer. He used the music, the beat of percussion and electronic instruments go crescendo along his editing, like an orgasm. He had close-up shots on their ankles and the curve of their shoulders, and their hands. Hell, the music he used is called Red Sex (by Vessel). Now that’s suggestive, that’s explicit, that’s subversive.

It was so freaking well-executed that the MPAA (the prudes of America) gave it a green rating. A Park Chan-wook movie trailer. The same guy who made Old Boy. There’s only one trailer for the movie, and it’s this one. Foreign movies usually have at least two: the international trailer (usually made for the USA market) and one for the country of origin. This one doesn’t, because it doesn’t need to.

It’s everything that Benedetta’s trailer isn’t. Benedetta’s trailer is a freaking bulldozer that does absolutely nothing, a wet firecracker that tries too hard to be edgy. Why hide your movie under boobs and painfully fake moans?

Damn, I wanted to look forward to it. I so wanted to, but it feels like the director is hoping the nude shots and simulated scissoring will distract the jury long enough for them to give him a prize. Heh.