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husbandohunter · 4 years ago

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Stardew Impact [Genshin+Stardew Valley/xReader]

Part 1/3 Kaeya, Diluc

Synopsis: “A mysterious phenomenon brought you and your s/o to an unfamiliar world: Pelican Town! Without the power of Visions, the two of you begin to learn the life of what it takes to be...a farmer?”

(DOMESTIC FARM LIFE YIP YIP)

Coming soon...

Albedo and Childe

Zhongli and Xiao

(A/N): So the brainrot was real in this one. I planned to add Albedo for a Mondstadt edition but kinda went overboard so I gotta split this one into parts too. Wordcount_almost 2k spspspsp

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Diluc

• Already has the whole year planned in his head. Literally if Diluc were to play this game, he'd have a booming farm within year ONE. Calm and collected through and through, though the new environment raises alot of questions, as long as you were still with him, Diluc ain't complaining

• The town welcomes you two with open arms. It was all thanks to the attire. Diluc wore his usual dark coat adorned with regal gold while you had a dress made of Liyue's finest silk, one that he bought for you. Needless to stay both of you reeked the aura of rich aristocrats (Mayor Lewis is pleased that greedy bastard)

• Once the farm was permitted to your owndership, Diluc began to think of ways to turn it into a vineyard. He was a businessman afterall. Although the staff back at the Dawn Winery were the ones who tended the field, Diluc still knew a few things about planting due to his childhood days Master Crepus would bring him out to their yard and demonstrated the process of gardening. He still remembers those days clearly, doing the very same this moment with you.

• Occasionally works at the Saloon bar. It was the perfect opportunity. As you took care of the farm side, Diluc continues to look for more ways to increase the income while gathering information from the folks around town. Gus LOVES to have him over, like he's just so efficient and reliable! They soon become good friends saying if Diluc were ever to own a wine stock, he would gladly buy from him.

• This is why Diluc would stay a little later due to just chatting with the people from the bar. One time you walked into the Saloon only to the front desk with Emily alone. Turns out the others were in the other room, too busy playing a game of pool. You decided to leave him be since it was rare to have Diluc so relaxed in leisure activities. Thus in the end, you spent your time chatting with Emily until a whole hour has passed before your lover notices and apologizes for losing track of time.

• Everything felt like a dream because it was his dream. To live a life undisturbed from chaos, his duties and the dangers that lurk in Teyvat, Diluc grew fond of the domesticity. There was nothing he loved more than to spend his hours by your side, day after day, returning home to your freshly handmade meals.

• Spring: Already up and early planting the parnersnips (I'm very soft for gardener Diluc you see). What do you expect from a workaholic? Even during his leisure time you would often find him near some plant as he does consider this hobby quite therapeutic. But when it rains, Diluc would be standing beside you with an arm around your shoulder, smiling contently as you lean into his touch. He gazes through the dripping window and silently admires the current progress you both made on the farm.

• Between the two annual spring festivities, I would say the flower dance. Diluc is a private man and would prefer to take things where no eyes were on sight. But with a little bit of nudging from Gus (your wingman), he gives in and leads you to the center stage. Elegant. Graceful. The way you two moved together became the talk of the event. Though, Diluc was already used to people staring by now, all he needed to do was to ignore them and keep his focus on you.

• Summer: No blankets in bed. Nope, its bloody hot in Pelican Town. He tends to stay indoors or anywhere with shade, in other words, his work hours in the Saloon increased.

• Diluc always has a nice cold drink prepared for you if by any chance you were to pay a visit after a whole day of labour. It's a habit he's made subconciously as if it would be a natural occurance for you to enter the door. His colleagues would ask him who did he make that drink for? Honestly so cute i cri

• Moments like these remind him of Mondstadt, where he quietly wipes the glasses while listening to you talk. Your voice is soothing. Sun rays peek from the side casting onto the umber tables, reflecting a rich golden light as the radio plays a soft song in the background. It's so peaceful, the town was small hence not many people visited the bar, Diluc came to appreciate this warm privacy (plus no Venti and Kaeya which is a huge pog realization).

• Autumn: Harvest time baby. The kegs are full and the sheds are full of kegs. This season was huge stonks and the house ended up getting an upgrade. Diluc is the type of man who wants to make sure that his spouse wouldn't have to work another day of her life. I reckon this is why he's so ambitious because he wants you to have the best and you deserve the best. (Husband material. Slap a ring on him ladies).

When there was no more work left to do, time would be spend peacefully exploring the woods. While you skipped a few steps ahead as the leaves crunched beneath your feets, Diluc follows slowly from behind. He sees your back but his eyes stares somewhere far beyond whats in front of him: His future.

It was such a stark contrast to the one he envisioned before. One filled with uncertaintly, blocked by darkness with no silver lining in sight, endlessly wandering as he drags the claymore against the ground. There was never a day in which the Darknight hero wouldn't think of Mondstadt. Leaving the city in the incompetent hands of Ordo Favonious while Abyss Mages continue to lurk fuels him to find a way to return as soon as possible and yet...

"Higher big sis!" Jas tightens her hold on the ropes as you pushed the swing with all your might. She laughs, like a child, it was full of innocence and joy. Later Vincent came in and nugdes you, asking when his turn will come.

"You wanna go too? Alright alright don't worry," waiting for Jas to come down, you lift the boy up so that he was seated safely on the chair, "3..2..1 go!"

He wonders if he could just be a little selfish for once.

• Winter: Best man to have in this season. Every morning Diluc would find himself restricted in movements due to a pair of arms around his waist and legs entangled with yours. Turns out you've been doing it subconciously because he's just so warm (Diluc keeps it lowkey and pretends to sleep longer cuz of it)

~~xx~~

Kaeya

• Haha looks like the portal is gone, guess we'll be stuck forever :)). No kidding Kaeya would be so down to stay here for the rest of his life and the best part is to spend it with you. He doesn't show a shred of concern regarding Teyvat, not like he's easily shaken by events that are abnormal, but you can see that Kaeya is truly and genuinely happy. (You're stunned).

• Oho we also have this marvelous landscape just for the two of us? And a cozy little cabin to go along with it as well? This should be fun~

• Of course Kaeya would also know a few things about planting, just the basics since he did grow up with Diluc. When they were kids, Crepus would give each of them their own pots so they can grow their own plants. It eventually became a competitive thing where whoever's plant grows the fastest gets to eat the other person's dessert for a year (no one wins. They end up sabotaging each other which Diluc started first, thinking it'll be funny as a joke).

• You are, and will be going on dates with him. In fact, the amount of dates you two went on increased since then. The townspeople would call you two "lovebirds" since he's practically by your side 24/7.

• I mean he doesn't have the responsibilities as a Cavalry Captain anymore so what else is there to do?

• Would attend all annual events no matter what season.

• Evelyn constantly gushes how much of a wonderful pair you and Kaeya make and often is the one who provides Kaeya a fresh bouqet of flowers for him to use as a gift. George on the otherhand just rolled his eyes mumbling something along the lines of "youngsters these days" and "crazy hormones."

• Befriends Pam. Love for beer plus somewhat cynical attitude? They get along real swell! She starts sending some recipes into the mailbox of course saying if yall ever need a hand, let her know.

• Spring: I can see Kaeya be switching back and forth between caring for the farm or taking quests posted on Pierre's bulletin board. He likes to keep things interesting, learning the ways of the new world while also getting to know the people around town.

• Would NOT return Mayor Lewis' shorts in which he found in Marnie's room. It's such high quality blackmail material. Kaeya is currently plotting what is the best way to use it to his advantage.

• He didn't tell you of course.

• Summer: There are no blankets because he is your blanket. Since your cabin was small so was the bed. That's why he has to hold you so that no one falls off when rolling over. Either he hugs you with your nose close to his neck, or your back against his chest while spooning you or holding hands if sleeping on your sides became too much. Yall need a serious house upgrade.

• For some reason Kaeya becomes more energetic in the summer. He lets you rest in the shade while handling the farm work for the time being. If you guys got a pet it would be a cat. Hes the first one to refill their bowl every morning outside.

Another day passes as summer comes to an end, the town’s Mayor invited you and your lover to see the annual Dance Of the Moonlight Jellies. Kaeya being the opportunist was delighted to come along. Locking the door of your house, you follow him down the path and made your way to the beach.

Everyone from town was already gathered by the docks when the sun had disappeared down the horizon. You stood by his side in a space far from the others, watching the candle boats set off to ride the waves, lighting up a small ray of light for creatures to find.

“Wow,” your tone almost above a whisper, “If only our friends back home could see this too.”

“Perhaps,” he says. Kaeya slips his fingers into yours and you shot him a curious glance, “But let us enjoy this moment shall we? Just the two of us.”

And there they were. A sea of luminescence radiating colours of brilliant blue with hints of green like a city of laterns floating in a world below. Their image reflects in the star of Kaeya's eyes as he wonders, where would they go? Where would the light lead them? They were so free with nothing to worry, so serene just like the sea and unknowningly, he squeezes your hand. It was a sense for confirmation. One to remind him that this moment was indeed a reality he wishes to keep.

Autumn: Finally a house upgrade and a kitchen!! Because it was harvest season, you guys end up making a set of delicious meals with all the recipes the townspeople gave you. Kaeya can cook since he lived by himself back in Mondstadt. Most of the stuff he learned to make were food that can be accompanied by alcohol though...

• Ahah remember Mayor Lewis' lucky shorts? He found a use for them. It was displayed on the stands during the Stardew Valley Fair (Oh my how did this get here? Must be the wind). Ends up buying a Rarecrow for the farm when Lewis bribes him not to tell this to anyone.

Winter: This was mostly an indoor season for the both of you. With the existence of television, nights would be spent until morning while watching movies at the couch. A blanket drapes around your shoulders as extends to his. Oh and don't forget the hot chocolate!

#genshin impact #stardew valley #genshin impact headcanons #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader #diluc #diluc ragnvindr #Kaeya #kaeya alberich #genshin x reader #genshin headcanons #genshin imagines #genshin scenarios #nya-writes #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagines

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tcsauaskblog · 4 years ago

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OH MAN I GUESS IT’S TIME NOW HUH???? THEN HERE WE GO KIDS

So Abner is one of the older cousins (about 7 years older than Fethry). He’s not much bigger or taller then other kids his age, but he’s built like a brick wall and stronger than he looks FOR SURE. He’s a rowdy kid, often getting into lighthearted trouble and roughhousing with other boys in the school yard, but all in all, he really is a good kid.

He helps his dad out with the chores on his gran’s ranch without complaint, does the nitty gritty jobs so that his gran doesn’t have to, and isn't afraid to give his mom a hug and a kiss in front of the other school boys (even if they’ll make fun of him later for it, which he’ll then get into a tussle about, but more for the sake of principle than actually denying that he’s a momma’s boy and is embarrassed by her affection.) He really is, truly, a good kid. Just a bit rough around the edges is all.

He’s not good around kids though. He never really payed much attention to his younger cousins till they were old enough to actually hang around with. Donald was always a little too feisty and eager to prove himself, which Abner could respect, and he was fun to wrestle with once he was actually able to hold his own. Della talked a lot, but momma said that was just a girl thing, despite her being just as eager to wrestle and get down and dirty with the boys. Gladstone showed off too much, but sometimes his luck would get them free ice cream down at the shops on Sunday afternoons, so he wasn’t too annoying to hang out with. And it helped that Gus was around his age, and able to help him round up the little gang of hooligans when it got a little too much for Abner to deal with sometimes.

And then Fethry came around.

And he was small. Smaller than the others had been, almost tiny in comparison, and Abner felt his heart flinch every time someone asked him to hold his baby brother. (Either for a family pic for granny or to help momma out sometimes when she was busy)

It wasn’t like Abner didn’t like Fethry. He was a relatively easy baby. Hardly ever cried, compared to what Abner remembered of his cousins as babies, and usually was content just to be held and giggle. Abner just didn’t know what to DO with the kid.

He was just. So. Little. little enough that one wrong move from Abner and his baby brother would break into a million pieces. Not to mention the kid was so adored by everyone around him and was the complete opposite of Abner in every way. Abner didn’t think he could stomach the idea of being the reason this little kid, who was all smiles and stars in his wide brown eyes, cried or got hurt.

So Abner did was any kid his age could do in his situation and just sort of,,, avoided Fethry. Not to be mean or difficult, but just to be safe. Just until Fethry was a little older, a little less breakable.

As the years went by though, it became harder and harder to break this avoiding game they were playing, despite Fethry’s BEST efforts. Because the kid LOVED his cool and distant older brother. He’d follow Abner everywhere he went, would try to copy some of Abner’s poorer choice habits (which horrified Abner to no end, thus furthering his efforts to keep away from Fethry so as not to taint the kid) And even though Fethry got older and wasn’t the baby he used to be, he somehow got even more fragile, even more precious before Abner’s eyes. The kid was as pure hearted as could be, while Abner, entering his early teen years, became more and more rambunctious with his shenanigans and got into a lot more trouble than he was probably worth. He became to hard to be near the kid, a shining beacon of everything good in the world, where Abner was bordering on the darker side of that shadow the beacon cast.

Abner didn’t really mean to get into as many arguments about his estrangement with his kid brother with his folks, mostly his dad. But it was hard to explain himself. Abner was a little too much like his father, where words were hard to come by and actions always did the job of conveying his thoughts anyway. His mother, a kind hearted and gentle spirit, was always able to see through his rough exterior and understand him perfectly, but even she was having difficultly understanding his hesitance to be around Fethry. Abner wished he could be a little bit more like Fethry, the spitting image of his mother’s kind soul, But alas, he was too much like Eider, and that made the two butt heads more often than not.

It was Gladstone’s 7th birthday when the incident occurred.

The party was being held at granny’s ranch, and it was a big family todo, (family events always were) and Abner was getting a little too smothered with all the constant chatter and loud music. He had only stepped away just to catch his breath, to be able to breathe a little easier without all the commotion. He had taken a walk down to the little pond at the bottom of the hill.

He didn’t really like water all that much. He wasn’t a very good swimmer, and after the summer he broke into the movie theatre with some friends to see an R-rated horror film about a sea monster when he was 9, he’d never really been able to look at a body of water the same again. But he had half an egg sandwich he swiped from the buffet table in his hoodie jacket, and feeding the bluegills was always something that calmed him down, so standing on the little dock didn’t seem too scary.

Abner didn’t realize Fethry had followed him down to the pond. He should have. Of course he should have known the kid would. Fethry followed him everywhere, like a little duckling would. Abner should have realized Fethry would have trailed along right behind him.

But he didn’t. He was too stuck in his own head, trying to calm himself down from getting too overstimulated from the party. He didn’t realize Fethry was right behind him.

He didn’t mean to jerk as hard as he did, when Fethry has reached out towards him, he really, honestly, didn’t. The kid had startled him, and Abner was acting on school yard protective reflexes faster than he could stop himself.

To this day he doesn’t really know if he actually pushed Fethry in or not. It hurts to think about. All he knows for sure is two things.

That Fethry fell into the water.

And that Abner didn’t jump in to save him.

Someone did though, Donald a few seconds later. Where he had come from, Abner couldn’t bother to ponder about. Donald had always been a little too protective over Fethry, acting on those big brother instincts far better than Abner ever did. He must have followed after Fethry when he noticed the little 4 year old duckling toddle away from any adult eyes. He had jumped in the water immediately to save Fethry.

Abner wasn’t even sure if the Donald could swim. It didn’t matter if he could though. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Abner didn’t jump in, regardless of whatever excuse he could come up with.

And he tried, for years. Abner spent countless hours trying to wrap his head around why he never jumped in. Why he couldn’t move. Why is heart felt like it broke the second Fethry’s signature, stupidly big hat, disappeared under the water. Why it didn’t feel better when both he and Donald broke the surface again, whole seconds later.

The coming days would be a blur after that. A hazy blur that Abner didn’t like thinking too hard about.

The adults had come to the rescue a few minutes later, Gladstone and Della must have ran to get them after Donald had jumped into the water after Fethry. Fethry ended up ok, if not a little water logged and shaken, understandably. They had demanded to know what had happened.

And Abner couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even make eye contact. Just stared at his own feet, his hands clenching in his hoodie pockets hard enough to leave bruising as he willed the pain in his chest to go away. Donald had no such reservations, and told the story as he saw it.

That Abner has pushed Fethry into the lake.

Abner couldn’t very well refute it, no matter how much he wanted to. He didn’t mean to push Fethry if he did, he didn’t mean to not jump in after him. He didn’t mean to hurt Fethry. He never did. Fethry was the last person on the earth that Abner wanted to hurt. But that didn’t change the fact that he did hurt Fethry, and that he didn’t do anything to change that.

He was sent away to a boarding school the following week. A school for lost and wayward boys. Boys who had caused so much havoc in their lives, that their parents didn’t know what to do with them or how to help them anymore. It was, for a lot of cases, a last ditch effort to save some reckless boys from causing any more damage to themselves and the people around them. Abner was one of those cases.

He didn’t want to go. Had begged and pleaded and fought tooth and nail not to go. Momma, the sweet soul that she was, didn’t seem like she wanted to send him away either. But Fethry had almost drowned, and neither of them could deny that Abner was the cause of it, and had said nothing to his defense against it. But Pa’s word was final, and Abner couldn’t do anything about it.

The school was strict, but it had never met a challenger quite like Abner Duck. Stubbornness was something tangible, flowing in his veins like the rest of the spitfire Duck traits he inherited, and Abner proved himself to be quite the problem child that everyone had always painted him out to be.

It was about a year later, that Abner got the letter from his gran that his mother had fallen ill. She died the following spring.

Abner felt out of sorts in his suit that didn’t fit him quite right as he stood in the spring rain at his mother’s grave spot. It was under the little oak tree on the hill overlooking gran’s ranch. The pond Fethry had almost drowned in was just a little bit away, in viewing distance at the bottom of the hill. Fethry was on the other side of his father. Abner felt bile creep up in his throat whenever Fethry would peek over at Abner with wide brown eyes that reminded Abner too much of their mother, and try to give him a smile. Abner tried not to hate him in that moment. It wasn’t Fethry’s fault. He was only 5. He didn’t understand what was going on. Didn’t realize the weight of momma’s death. Still didn’t really understand why Abner hadn’t been around the past few months, but still. There was a pit of anger burning itself into Abner’s stomach that he didn’t know what to do with.

He hadn’t seen his mother in almost a year, and now he’ll never get to see her. Never get to hold her hands or give her hugs or eat her brown sugar cookies that was the only thing she could bake without burning. The last memory he has of her alive is when she hugged him goodbye before the boarding school bus took him away. Abner was too upset and angry that he didn’t hug her back. If he had known that was going to be his last moments of her, he would have turned around in his bus seat, to at least see her wave him off, with little Fethry, not understanding the situation at all, waving good bye too.

Abner was incredibly heartbroken, but more than that, he was furious. Furious that his father had sent him away in the first place. Away from his mother, the only person who really saw him for his worth. They had gotten into another fight that night, screaming at each other so loudly that they neighbors dogs, a whole acre away, could hear them and started barking in turn. Abner doesn’t remember a whole lot of the fight. Just that they were both raw from grief and heartbreak, and that Abner knew, that without his mom, he couldn’t stay in that house. Not with a dad who was a little too much like him, and a baby brother who couldn’t have been more different. Abner left for the school again the next morning. He hated being in the school, but it was the only place that was familiar enough to return to, without feeling like it was a home.

Abner got the news that his father died half a year later. Abner didn’t bother going to the funeral, no matter how devastated he was about the news. The only person left from their broken little family, the only person who would, undoubtedly, be waiting for him, was Fethry. And Abner couldn’t see him. Not now. He didn’t know when, but certainly not now. Not after everything that had happened between them.

Abner decided it was best to keep the distance between himself and Fethry. Nothing good came from them being near each other, and this way, Abner knew that at the very least, Fethry would be safer without him around. Fethry had granny to take care of him, and Donald and Della and Gladstone to keep him company. He didn’t need Abner.

Fethry would be better off without him.

#tcs ask #TCS au #Teenage Cousin Shenanigans #abner duck #boy sorry this was long #had a lot of thoughts about the boy #but there you go #that's why abner wasn't in fethry's life growing up #the long awaited abner story #the abner fic would have started out after this all happened #with fethry trying to reconnect with abner because he doesn't remember why abner left and no one would tell him the truth

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svnflowervol666 · 5 years ago

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New Year (Harry Styles x fem!Reader)

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: mentions of pregnancy, mentions of smut, dad!harry (or dad-to-be!Harry I suppose), tons of fluff, skewed timeline (I wanted to make this work, so just pretend that Harry and Y/N have been together for quite some time and Camille has long been forgotten)

Author’s Note: Hi everyone! This is my first time writing for Harry, so please be kind! I’d been trying to muster the courage to write this when it was actually right around the new year, but I’ve not been able to stop toying with this cute little scenario in my head! I’d love to write more about dad!Harry or just Harry in general, so your feedback and/or other requests would be greatly appreciated! Take care and tpwk!

She worked her way from the bathroom through the small crowd of people gathered around the living room for what felt like the hundredth time that night. If you asked her what the most inconvenient part of her pregnancy was thus far, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell you that having to pee every half hour on the dot was by far the biggest inconvenience of them all. Far too many times in her now 7 months had she found herself having to locate the nearest restroom anywhere she went as soon as she arrived just to be prepared for when her baby inevitably decided to plant its weight on her bladder.

The space wasn’t overflowing with random bodies or sleazy folks wanting nothing more than a juicy story for their news station. It was just a healthy handful of closest friends and their loved ones. It was a celebration. Of an upcoming new year, a recently released new album, and two recently successful shows in Los Angeles and London. Despite this, she still struggled to spot him in the dimly lit space of the house.

After gently tapping shoulders and muttering a polite, “Excuse me,” to what felt like everyone at this damn party so that she and her perfectly rounded belly were able to pass through, she found him. He was propped up against the wall in the living room, his lanky, Gucci trouser-clad legs crossed over each other. She could tell by the way his eyes were glued to the floor and how his fingers anxiously drummed away to an invisible beat that he was waiting anxiously for her return.

Harry was never able to shake the nerves that overtook him when she went off on her own. After he’d found out she was pregnant (which was no doubt a result of the hot and heavy reunion the two of them shared after his extended trip to Japan that began around this time last year), he’d always found a way to convince himself that something bad would happen to her and the baby if he wasn’t with her at every possible moment. Sure, it felt somewhat smothering at times, but it beat having an unaffectionate husband who couldn’t care less about the impending arrival of his firstborn by a long shot. In his defense, his own safety had been compromised plenty of times throughout the years of his career, so it’s not to say that his worry was uncalled for. He simply felt more at ease with her by his side. With them by his side.

“What are you thinking about?” she prompted him, wrapping both arms around her husband’s torso and snuggling into his side the best she could with her bump in the way.

Harry seemed to withdraw himself from the hazy daydream he’d been lost in as he responded to his wife’s touch and wrapped his arm around the side of her waist so that his fingers rested softly on the swell of her stomach. She caught a glimmer of a cheeky grin tug at the corners of his lips before he spoke.

“Who ‘m gonna share my New Year’s kiss with after the countdown.”

Immediately, she rolled her eyes at the tall brunette that held her in his arms. Had she not been in such a doting mood, he would have likely earned a punch to the shoulder. Nevertheless, she decided to indulge Harry in his jokes.

“Yeah? Who’s the lucky gal?” she added a dramatic raise of her eyebrow up at him.

“Hmm,” Harry fake-pondered.

“Verrrrrrry pretty. She’s ‘bout this tall.”

He raised his hand to his wife’s height for reference.

“Her belly kinda sticks out like this,”

His hands motioned in a crescent shape, mimicking her pregnant belly and making them both snicker even more in the process.

“Only thing is, she’s married.”

He finished off his grand performance with a pout.

“Well,” his wife responded as seriously as she could, “You’re Harry bloody Styles. I’m sure her husband would allow just one kiss if it was from you.”

This made Harry blush. She could see the bashful pink even in the low light of the living room, how the heat crept up his cheeks from being complemented by his own wife and partner of several years.

“Wha’ about you? Who's gonna be the one you cozy up to when the clock strikes midnight?” Harry then focused his attention on her.

“Oh,” she shrugged her shoulders as if it was a no-brainer.

“I was thinking about going for Mitch," she gestured to the brunette who was sat on the sofa across the room with a beer in his hand.

Harry gave in and laughed loudly, unable to keep a straight face for the little game they had been playing.

“You might have to fight Sarah for that one, mate,” he was able to squeeze out in between giggles.

“Eh, I think I can take her.”

No further comment was needed as their laughter died down and they simply basked in each other’s company, listening to the buzzing of various conversations happening around them as the party continued on. Since the cycle began of press tours and rehearsals for the album release shows, the two of them felt like they hardly had any time to themselves, which was why they opted to celebrate the new year on a smaller scale as opposed to a grand party that dozens of other celebrities and brands had invited them to. Not only that, but seeing as their little one would be making their grand appearance in a little less than two months' time, any heavy partying was out of the question.

“’Ye want to go home, lovie?” Harry broke the comfortable silence between them when he heard her yawn against where her head had been resting against his chest.

“No, you goob. It’s not midnight yet.”

“If you’re tired, we can go. ‘Ye need t’ take care of yourself.”

“I think I can handle being a bit sleepy,” she reassured him.

“Yea, but you need all the rest ‘ye can get. Baby’ll be here soon.”

‘Harry, I promise you that staying up until midnight just one time is not going to hurt me or the baby. I’m good. Promise,” she finished with a loving pat on the part of his chest that was exposed from his unbuttoned blouse.

Harry reluctantly nodded in agreement, relaxing his tensed muscles as he made himself comfortable once more against the wall.

“Can’t believe we’re gonna be parents soon. Gonna have our own baby,” he muttered lowly so that only she could hear.

“I know. Hopefully, all of those years of taking care of Lux will pay off. I guarantee any child of yours will be a handful, to say the least,” she teased.

Harry faked a dramatic gasp, letting his mouth fall agape and putting his hand over his chest as if what his sweet wife has just said had given his heart a proper break.

“Can’t believe this. M’ own wife.”

There was no need to apologize, they were both used to countless nagging and teasing from each other over the years.

“You’re gonna be a good dad, Harry,” she sighed.

Harry presses a soft kiss to her hair, so featherlight that it was almost undetectable.

“‘N you’re gonna be the best mum. The hottest mum,” he said as his hand slipped south to grab a handful of his wife’s bum which caused her to shriek.

“Harry! We’re in public,” she hissed.

“So? It’s not a secret how much I love ye’. We’re married. Remember? ‘ve written plenty of songs about ya in case you’ve forgotten,” he toyed as he returned his hand back to its proper position around her waist.

The commotion between Harry pinching his lady’s bum had collected an audience, a handful of eyes focusing on the envious and jovial banter between the couple.

It was true, they were the couple everyone aspired to be like. They lasted the test of time. No number of long months apart from each other could dwindle the flame that was their love. It only strengthened the ravenous fire that coursed through their hearts for one another. They had done it right, in their minds at least. They’d gotten their lives together, made sure they were steady and stable before they settled down and decided to marry and have children.

Harry genuinely thought for the longest that he’d never have this. This perfect life and this perfect wife and, soon, a perfect little baby to call his own. He’d always thought that if he ever had children, it would be unplanned. That eventually one of his one night stands would fall pregnant, leaving his child to grow up under less than ideal circumstances. He never thought he’d be where he is today, where he’s always wanted to be.

Time slipped away from the couple and before they knew it, shouting from everyone else in the room signified that the new year was just seconds away. Reluctantly, Harry and his wife pulled themselves from their own bubble they had created away from the party and joined the rest of the group.

“FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE...HAPPY NEW YEAR!” was shouted in unison as a handmade balloon and confetti drop fell from the ceiling and covered the guests as they cheered and kissed their loved ones.

“Have your first kiss of the new year wi’ me? Please,” Harry turned to his wife, wrapping both arms around her sides.

“Only because you asked nicely,” she laughed.

As her fingers linked around Harry’s neck, he pulled her into him. The kiss was tender and sweet, just like his love for her. As they pulled away, Harry rubbed one hand over her swollen stomach and spoke again.

“Think we’re ready for this year?”

His wife brushed away a piece of the metallic star-shaped confetti from his forehead and tucked his stray hairs behind his ear just like she had done plenty of times in their years of being together. The smile on her face was soft and wise, his favorite type of smile, and Harry swears that he can see her glowing despite how dark it is in the room. She’s perfect. Her belly is perfect. Their baby is perfect. They’re perfect.

“I have a feeling we’ll be alright,” she whispered quietly before kissing him once more.

In this moment, just as every other moment, with his hand resting on top of his wife’s baby bump, Harry wishes he could stay like this forever.

#harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles x pregnant!reader #dad!harry #dad!harry x reader #dad!harry x pregnant!reader #one direction fanfiction #one direction one shot #one direction imagine #harry styles imagines #harry styles one shots

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silverskyy · 3 years ago

Note

some dnd questions for you!

10, 19, 21, 25, 28, 36

hope it's not too many haha

Oh there's no such thing as too many questions about D&D, thanks for all the opportunities to ramble!

10. What is your favorite class to play?

Clerics my absolute beloved ❤️ My first ever character was a cleric, and while looking back I know I didn't play her particularly optimally, I think it set the tone for what I enjoy in a PC since I'm now on my third long-game cleric PC and planning a fourth. I love the high wisdom skills (especially passive perception when paired with the Observant feat), their versatility is fantastic to the point that I feel constrained playing classes who "learn a spell list", and I'm a sucker for a good upcast Inflict Wounds to put the literal fear of God in an enemy. Plus the inbuilt depth of which deity you worship, why, and how is a great way to kickstart turning a character into a person—feel free to ask for more details about how that's gone for me if it sounds interesting!

19. How did you discover D&D?

So technically I discovered D&D via my older brother. He played years and years ago, which meant I was aware of it from a young age. I was never allowed to join in his D&D stuff though, so despite casual attempts to get into the ttrpg scene on my own over the years, I actually started learning about and playing the game through my partner. It was one of the things we talked about when we first met, since they were already playing, and when they started putting together a campaign they invited me to join. (Also they introduced me to Critical Role, which fanned a lot of the flames lol) And thus, an obsession was born!

21. Drop a picture of a mini you painted (if applicable)

[ID: two painted miniatures. The first is an armored woman with pointed ears, tan skin, and very shortly cropped red hair. She holds a small round shield in one hand and a golden mace in the other. The second is another armored woman, this one with long blond hair and fairly pale skin. She's raising a large shield in one hand and swinging double-bladed axe in the other. /end ID]

These aren't minis that I myself painted, but they're both minis my super talented partner painted of some of my PCs. The first is Felda (I'll talk about her later) and the second is Joanna, although she goes by her last name, Yfar, with most folks. I played Yfar from level 5 to 17, she's a human fighter who changed weapons literally the session after my partner finished this (sorry babe 😅), and I love her to bits!

25. What is your favorite snack for d&d?

For once I'm not going to ramble—I don't tend to eat during gaming. It's weirdly distracting and I don't have a strong hunger instinct that would force me to do so anyway.

28. What is the most memorable natural 1 you've experienced?

Let me set the scene: it was the climax of my first real dungeon crawl adventure. My two other party members and I were facing off against a strange woman who'd been performing some sort of magical ritual in a cave system that the DM had indicated unsettled my PC specifically, as well as her son and a couple mooks. In retrospect, we made some poor tactical decisions and the DM admitted they'd made her too overpowered, on top of truly crappy rolls, but regardless, we were getting wrecked. My being the only healer, it was thus pretty bad news when the woman's son got taken out and in her fury she struck me down too. It was time for my first ever death saving throw...

And I rolled a one.

Fucking pandemonium hit. The DM genuinely didn't want to kill any of us, but the woman was standing right over me and we'd literally just seemingly killed her son. The other players were frantically measuring distances and seeing if they could grab me and run without dying themselves. Eventually someone remembered that the woman had been particularly interested in me when we'd arrived, almost as if she knew and wanted something from me. After some very stressed table talk where I explicitly told them to go, one PC made a desperate shout at the woman about how she must want me alive, then they both booked it.

Spoilers, I lived! This resulted in a private session of what being kidnapped entailed and my playing a new character during the next two sessions as the other PCs gathered a rescue party from the nearby town and got me back. Here's a picture of my traumatic experience:

[ID: a picture of a D&D battle map. On the far right side is room with two prone minis, with another standing right above one. An arrow is drawn on the picture to the guarded mini from text reading: Me.

On the far left side, out of the room and down a few hallways are two further minis, being pursued by a third. An arrow is drawn to them from text reading: My "team". /end ID]

36. What was your first d&d character you made?

It was Felda, the aforementioned death save unlucky half-elf Light cleric! She worshipped Sune, the goddess of beauty, and was very kind and awkward, yet with a seed of something darker that came out once when she spammed Fireball at a shadow dragon until it fell from the sky to burn at her feet. The game is on a very long hiatus (the DM/my partner and I refuse to say it's abandoned) so I don't know a lot, but she was raised in a temple after her mother died there in childbirth and from what I gathered her mother had escaped from a cult right beforehand. Oh and that strange woman? Supposedly Felda's aunt working within said cult!! Who said there were plans for her and, now that she'd been found, she couldn't hide from them...

Moreover, while she was confined Felda started exhibiting strange abilities (I got Perception proficiency, officially spoiling me for it always) and was from then on in a constant state of being extremely freaked out. I actually recently rolled a so so very retroactive Perception check, to notice that a Detect Magic spell didn't pick up her magic items. Due to conversations we'd just been having, that was an obvious hint from my partner that Felda has an Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location—specifically the amulet her mother said was from Felda's father, that she wears as a reminder of her family. Ooooh there are no plans to start it up again any time soon, but that was such an exciting reveal and I miss my shy little half-elf so bad! 😭

Also tagging @strangeite if they want to give any further details on Felda stories (no pressure).

Thank you so much for asking! If there are other questions people want to ask, you can find them here.

#personal #ask #s-opal #rebecca talks to people #ask game #d&d #really thanks this was lots of fun #long post

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askaceattorney · 4 years ago

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Dear Anonymous,

I still have yet to play (or watch) DGS2, unfortunately, so we’ll have to save that part for another time, but I’d love to delve into the shared adventures of this adorable duo in the first game.

When Ryuunosuke first meets Susato, she’s nothing more to him than an ally in his defense in court.

He doesn’t see her again until he and Kazuma find themselves at the end of their rope.

It makes you wonder if she’s the one who founded whatever School of Interrupting at Just the Right Time so many Ace Attorney characters apparently went to, doesn’t it?

When she appears, “calm and dignified, in our desperate final moments,” to use Ryuunosuke’s words, she causes quite the stir. Luckily, the five minutes granted to her by the judge to present some crucial evidence is all she needs to help him and Kazuma pull off the first turnabout in Ace Attorney’s history.

The mysterious legal assistant’s wish for Ryuunosuke’s good fortune was granted, apparently.

Thus Ryuunosu-- Um... Is it okay if I call him “Ryu” for short? Thus Ryu’s life was saved by a humble young woman who had the courage and decency to collect, summarize, and present the evidence that turned the case around in the nick of time. After leaving to finish his acquittal procedures with a humble bow, she disappeared, never to be seen by him again.

Or so he thought.

Similar to Phoenix and Maya’s first encounter, Ryu and Susato's second meeting occurs under the most tragic of circumstances. His close friend and classmate has been found dead in his cabin on the ship he managed to smuggle himself onto. Unlike Phoenix and Maya’s situation, however, it’s the lawyer (or soon-to-be lawyer) who is initially blamed for his death. To make matters worse, the young woman who helped to save his life isn’t feeling quite so compassionate this time around.

Her anger and distrust are understandable, considering that the evidence seems to point to Ryu as the culprit, on top of the fact that Kazuma was her foster brother. Luckily, she’s polite and reasonable enough to hear Ryu’s side of things, and even claims that she wants to believe him, so the two of them are at least able to treat each other civilly.

That is...until he tries to start investigating.

There’s a bucket load of energy beneath that demure countenance of hers, it turns out. Her move even has a special name -- the “Susato Toss.” Who would’ve thought she came straight out of Street Fighter?

Thankfully, she still has a reasonable side.

By presenting evidence of his innocence, Ryu not only vindicates himself, but finally starts to gain Susato’s trust.

Sadly, her trust only lasts until a certain world-famous detective shows up to accuse Ryu of being a Russian revolutionary.

It’s hard to blame her, of course. Who wouldn’t trust THE Sherlock Holmes’s logic?

Nonetheless, her determination to find out more about Kazuma’s death is strong enough for her to begrudgingly continue the investigation with Ryu. One notable moment occurs here when he attempts to gain favor wither her by appealing to her love of mystery novels.

She’s no fool, of course, and only dislikes him even more for expecting her to fall for it.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was the “main characters don’t get along until they’re forced into a situation together” cliché. This situation may not fit that cliché perfectly, but it’s not too far off if you ask me.

When Ryu is finally allowed to investigate outside the cabin, Susato begins to show a bit more sympathy for him.

I have to give her some credit for that -- it takes a special kind of person to show compassion for a possible murderer. It also seems like she’s beginning to see Ryu as more of a human being than a heartless criminal. Baby steps, as they say.

From that point on, their dialogue begins taking on a more friendly tone. Thus Susato, whether on purpose or by fate, takes on the role of the first official assistant in Ace Attorney’s history. And boy, does she pull it off like a pro.

To make a long story short, their cooperative efforts combined with the ridiculous logic of a kooky detective (as well as the assistance of the less kooky Detective Hosonaga) bring them to the truth of Asougi’s death in the end. While this clears Ryu of the crime and offers some much-needed closure for both him and Susato, his death still affects them deeply.

Something wonderful stems from this tragedy, though -- a crucial moment, not only for the two of them, but also for the Japanese and British Empires.

With Asougi’s passing, the exchange program between Great Britain and Japan is forced into suspension, unless, somehow, a replacement attorney can be found before the ship reaches London.

It’s a shame it has to end this way after all they’ve been through together, but that’s just the way it goes someti--

...Oh. Well, then. Who would’ve seen that coming? (Besides us, I mean.)

And strangely enough, the young woman who once saw Ryu as a cold-blooded murderer has this to say about him becoming an attorney:

Thus a new attorney/assistant pair arises from the ashes of one attorney’s passing (pun fully intended), and the two of them step into a new journey in their lives together. And thankfully, it wasn’t exactly the cliché it appeared to be -- the two of them are now trusted friends, and Susato even offers to let Ryu toss her three times as punishment for not believing him. (It doesn’t quite end that way, but that’s beside the point.)

The first leg of said journey takes place in the “centre of the world” the incredible city of London. What a place to begin, am I right?

Thus their incredible legal adventure begins (or adventures begin, I should say) in beautiful Victorian Era Britain. To describe their encounters here briefly (and so I don’t spend a whole year on this essay), they learn together how the British court system works...

...about its imperfections...

...how it feels to pull off a turnabout in a British courtroom...

...and perhaps most importantly, about the value of trust.

To say nothing of their misadventures with Mr. Holmes, his young genius assistant, and several other unforgettable British folk.

And a fellow Japanese immigrant, too, of course. Who could forget him?

You know, I’m starting to wonder if he might be one of Larry’s ancestors.

The game throws one final curveball for the great legal duo before it ends. After telling Susato she’s the world’s best legal assistant, Ryu gets a very unexpected response from her:

When he attempts to confront her about it, all he gets is another Susato Toss.

What could someone like her, who’s already proven her worth as a legal assistant several times, be hiding? Unfortunately for Ryu, he’s unlikely to find out soon, since her father’s illness has called her back home, leaving him to pull off his next turnabout on his own. She doesn’t go without leaving behind as much helpful evidence as she can muster, of course.

But, as fate would have it, a storm prevents her ship from departing for at least half a day, giving Ryu and his new flatmates a chance to see her off. On top of that, it gives Ryu the chance to find out precisely what inspired Susato’s words of doubt.

He catches her preparing to throw a copy of the British Empire’s Code of Law into the sea. What would cause her to do such a thing?

It turns out she broke one of the rules by tampering with the scene of the crime, and another by concealing that fact. Her intentions may have been good, but her conscience became a little too heavy for her to let it go. She takes it a step further by claiming that, for one moment, she began to doubt the law.

She may not be wrong in stating this (she learned it firsthand in the British courts, after all), but it still caused her to see herself as a failure of a legal assistant. Luckily for her, though, Ryu had learned some things himself in the time they spent together.

While her methods were questionable at best, Ryu recognizes something in Susato that sets her and every just person apart from a criminal: a desire to protect the innocent. Whereas Chrogray used her tampering as a way to protect himself, her only desire was to protect Gina’s life and to ensure that Ryu would be able to prove her innocence in the end. In other words, her faith in the system may have been lacking, but her desire for justice, like Ryu’s, never faltered for even a moment. With that knowledge in mind, the two of them can part with a better knowledge of the law, a better understanding of each other, and smiles on their faces.

So, to sum it up, Ryu and Susato go from being friendly acquaintances, to a murder suspect and suspecter (for lack of a better word), to investigative partners, to full-fledged legal partners, and finally, to a legendary legal duo. Will their relationship ever go any further than that?

Also, full disclosure -- it’s been a long time since I watched Dai Gyakuten Saiban, so I had to do a hefty amount of re-watching in order to remember some of these details...hence why this essay took so long. Thanks for waiting!

And hey, how’s that for good timing?

Don’t know about you, but I’m eagerly looking forward to revisiting this unforgettable saga. And, y’know...doing it the proper way instead of depending on fan translations.

-The Co-Mod

#Anonymous #Susato Mikotoba #Ryuunosuke Naruhodou #Dai Gyakuten Saiban #Mod Post #Co Mod #Character Essay

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thetirisfaltheatretroupe · 3 years ago

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Big Troupe Announcements! Big Troupe Summer!

Hello, everyone! Lord Atos Sunhart here! For those of you who aren’t aware, Fehl had stepped down last year from Troupe related duties due to her own life becoming much more demanding, and so I returned to the director’s seat once again. I’ve been back for about a year, but we’ve kind of laid a little low since my return due to a lot of restructuring and our desire to try a few new ideas out that are coming along slowly but surely!

We have some awesome projects in the works, some of which won’t be ready for some time, and some that we’re excited to bring you much sooner! But we can’t QUITE open the curtains for a peek just yet. Before anything, I’d like to make a series of announcements about some of our projects this Summer, starting with the most important one of all:

The Troupe Is Casting!

Looking at some of the last posts made on this ye olde tumblr I guess it’s not a surprise that the troupe is indeed casting once more. In the past, it was due to not really having enough active people to pull off a large show with, but now, times have changed a bit, and we’re looking for people to make our shows even better and more frequent than ever!

What we’re looking for;

* Any race/gender/faction! Yes, we hire Alliance as well! In the era of Discord and cross faction RP, there’s no reason we have not to. Though, we are overloaded on elves at the moment and would kinda love a tauren or any Alliance character

* Obviously the character should be a good fit for the group! We’re not really looking for a serial murderer warlock who tries to sacrifice our members to the great Murloc Gods at the first chance they get. We’re not too picky here, but there are some characters that just don’t work terribly well with our concept.

* Available to take part in events during most of our performing days, which tend to be weekends, starting around 6:00 PM server. We base all our event times on server time.

* Someone who, behind the character, is friendly, patient, and above all else, mature. The clear rule of “don’t be an asshole” applies in this guild (and I’ll explain what that means below), and we have a zero drama tolerance policy. We are all adults who pay a monthly subscription to a greedy corporation to play with their toys, I think the last thing we want is to relive middle school in our 20s and 30s.

* Someone with a desire to help make memorable, exciting events for others to enjoy. While we play the part of celebrities, and being in the spotlight is a lot of fun, ultimately we want someone who, behind the character at least, does it for the enjoyment of others and not for personal gain or clout. We’re not clout chasers. We are proud of how long we’ve been performing and how hard we work, but ultimately we do this for our audience’s enjoyment.

* Communication is important! We aren’t a hardcore raiding guild, and thus we won’t be upset if you tell us you have to miss a rehearsal night or have a family emergency.. But if you know ahead of time, we really want someone who will let us know they can’t make it to an event so we can plan around it.

Furthermore, it should be said that while we normally do not require a person leave their guild to join us, this time around we’re looking for more to wear the guild tag above their heads, at least for this recruitment effort. Above all of these, the most important key point is the ‘don’t be an asshole’ policy. In the past I didn’t think it needed to be explained, but things we’ve been through in recent months compels me to explain what I mean by this; no homophobic behavior, racist behavior, transphobic behavior, harassment, pedophilia and other such illegal and morally vile behavior will be tolerated in our guild, period. But I’m sure you’re asking, what’s in it for me? Well, the benefits of working with the Tirisfal Theatre Troupe are, but not limited to;

* Being part of a near decade-old (8 years this October) guild that through thick and thin has stood the test of time!

* Working alongside some extremely talented, fun, humorous, and creative minds!

* Getting to make people smile and be a positive part of the community!

* Taco Tuesdays. This is a lie, don’t believe me.

* Helping an already fun concept become even better as we grow and adapt to the ever changing nature of this game and its community!

* Adding “Actor/Actress” to your long series of titles in your TRP Profile. Maybe somewhere between “Lord of the Dance” and “Wrecker of your Shit”! Don’t be bashful, we know you have it in there somewhere.

So if you’re interested in being a part of the stage and bringing the uniqueness that is YOU into our ranks, please send an in-game mail to Atos on Wyrmrest Accord server (Hordeside), or show up for the open auditions at the dates, times, and location listed below;

Thursday, June 3rd 6:00 - 8:30 PM Portrait Room - Legion Dalaran

Friday, June 4th 6:00 - 8:30 PM Portrait Room - Legion Dalaran

Saturday, June 5th 6:00 - 8:30 PM Portrait Room - Legion Dalaran

We hope to see you there! And remember, because we’ve had this happen a few times; if you think you aren’t good enough, you’re probably actually amazing and far more talented than you think!

Anniversary Bash 2021 Officially Planned! With a Twist

Those of you who have followed us for some time are likely aware of our annual celebration we hold on the anniversary of our first major public performance! This has traditionally been held on the third Friday of every October, so that it lines up perfectly with Hallow’s End starting. While we have had on-off years, and even said in the past we would never do it again (Insert I was crazy that time meme here), it’s pretty clear that at least every other year we seem to take to it again with new ideas. Honestly, we LOVE these yearly parties, despite how much stress they put us under, and we’re going to announce it earlier this year just so people know; yes, yes there WILL be a bash this year!

Things are going to be a little different this year, though. This October will actually have 5 Fridays in it due to...well...the calendar! It conspires against us, dammit! Because the third Friday falls in place before the Hallow’s End events are set to start, we will instead be bumping it up one week to the 22nd. So, there you have it! Our Big Bash will be on the 22nd of October! We’ll be making a full announcement about it later this Summer, and honestly, I think folks are going to really like the fun we have planned for it. So if this is something you’re looking forward to early, or you just like making sure your calendar events are always filled out, please make a mark for

October 22nd, 2021!

Hellsqueal Squeals Again, Plus Winter’s Veil In July?

This Summer we’ll be getting back to our roots and bringing Hellsqueal back for another round. The Trilogy will rise again, and you won’t want to miss it! This time we’ll be performing it for our audiences on both sides of the factional fence and making some revisions to the script, but long time fans needn’t worry! Hellscream is still the same boisterous buffoon he’s always been.

Also, we’re bringing you an interesting new concept no one has EVER thought of before! ...well, okay, that’s a lie, but Greatfather Winter needn’t send me a lump of coal in my in-game mailbox for that one! The TTT will be hosting a Winter’s Veil themed party IN JULY! Don your gaudy sweaters, get ready to meet Greatfather Winter, take part in a sled race, and get ready to watch a completely out of season showing of It’s A Wonderful Unlife! Some lucky attendees may even receive a gift! The date for this and for Hellsqueal’s trilogy are yet to be announced, but they will be unveiled very soon!

Even though we never left, it feels good to be back at full strength again and pushing hard to give everyone the quality entertainment we pride ourselves on! Keep an eye out for our announcements this Summer - we’ll be hitting not only Tumblr when an event is ready to go, but the Blizzard forums and various Discord community servers! So please, have a fantastic day, week, month, even a year!

#tttevents #Wyrmrest Accord #WRA RP #Wow Rp #Hordeside events #alliance rp

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alloftheimaginesblog · 4 years ago

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Be Both {John Murphy x Plus Size Reader}

Plot: Requested by anon: You get bullied for your weight when you’re sent down with the 100 to the ground and it’s John Murphy who steps in to defend you.

Characters: John Murphy x Plus Size Female Identifying Reader

Part of my Plus Size Reader x Character series!

Earth was everything you expected and more. It was so vibrant and freeing; so noisy and aromatic in the best way possible. You still couldn’t quite believe that you were all surviving thus far. Sure, you landed the previous day and had only been on Earth for twenty four hours but it was amazing. Falling asleep to the sounds of the wind was something you never expected before.

The camp buzzed around you, people falling into place with jobs easily. You had taken to cooking and preparing meals; it was hard considering there hadn’t been a lot of animals caught for meat but there was plenty of rice, beans and herbs to go around. Clarke Griffin had asked if you wanted to help hunt but you turned it down thinking it best if you stayed away from that sort of thing. You didn’t really know how and to be honest, you didn’t really want to learn.

You’d been gutting one of the fish that were caught when you heard someone mutter from behind you, “No wonder she wanted to cook, she’s eating all our rations.” You froze, completely stiffening up.

The other boy scoffed, “Yeah, by sending her down, the Ark is probably three tonnes lighter than it was.”

Tears burned at your eyes as you listened to them blatantly talk about you right behind your back, comparing you to animals and sea creatures, saying that you would make the Ark lighter by leaving, that you wanted to work with the food so that you could eat it all and they were just being completely horrible, disgusting and immature boys.

You hadn’t realised that you weren’t the only one who heard the two. John Murphy, who had been tipping the fish out the buckets onto your table, heard them too. He heard the vile comments they were making about you and it made his blood run hot. Now, you and Murphy were by no means close, you wouldn’t even say you were friends anymore. You had been friends long ago. Growing up next to each other and being neighbours practically forced the two of you to be friends. When you hit around fourteen, you drifted as Murphy slotted into a different crowd than you did. You’d had a massive crush on Murphy growing up until he had made friends with some idiots and made a comment about your weight when you were fourteen. Murphy had regretted it ever since. It was a comment made to impress two jerks who he learned to hate pretty soon afterwards but you never spoke to him again. You never acknowledged him.

You’d always been relatively heavy and on the plus size side of the scale. It wasn’t the end of the world that you had extra weight but to some people, it was the thing they’d use to taunt you. They’d mock you, call you names and that’s what John Murphy did that one time which ruined your friendship. People would make fun of your weight because it was easy to notice and realise ‘oh hey, she’s fat let’s bully her’. It wasn’t clever or funny and the insults they taunted you with were never very creative but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt; especially when it’s your best childhood friend pulling the figurative trigger.

You sniffed as you silently let the tears fall. You didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they’d upset you so you stayed with your back turned, gutting the fish through blurry eyes. Murphy glanced over at you, rage coursing through his veins as he saw that you were upset and he had had enough.

With a yell of ‘that’s enough!’, he slammed the bucket down, fish spilling onto the grass. You jumped, turning to see Murphy with his fists clenched by his sides. Of all of the people to step in and defend you, you truly had not been expecting it to be John Murphy. He towered over the two boys who just raised their eyebrows and held up their hands, “You sticking up for her, Murphy?” One mocked, “Never knew you were a sucker for whales-”

Murphy didn’t want to listen to that whiny, arrogant little bastard anymore and instead, he punched him on the nose. The boy yelled out, falling to the floor, causing a few people to rush over, “That’s what you deserve!” Murphy hissed, “You’re disgusting saying that about one of the only people here that deserve anything good.” You watched in shock as blood gushed from the boy’s nose. He stared at Murphy with wide, terrified eyes.

“Back off, Murphy!” The other said, holding his hands up.

“Apologise.” Murphy’s voice was a growl but the intimidation it caused was wild.

“We’re sorry!”

“Not to me, to (y/n)!”

The boys looked at you, “We’re sorry! We didn’t mean it!”

“Now, scram!” Murphy sneered as the boys scuttled away. A large crowd had formed around you all and Murphy rolled his eyes, “Nothing to see folks, move along!”

All you could do was stare at Murphy as he forced the bystanders to move away and leave you all alone. He turned to you, sniffing and wiping his face, before looking at you. Neither of you spoke as you maintained eye contact for a few seconds longer than you should have. Quickly, you turned away, too flustered to say anything. Murphy began to gather the fish back into the bucket. Why had Murphy stepped in? Murphy had been saying the same stuff nearly four years ago so... why was he putting his foot down now?

Curiosity got the better of you because you knew that Murphy wouldn’t say anything now so you had to ask, “Why?” You asked him, turning to him, “Why would you stand up for me when you said all that stuff when we were fourteen?”

Murphy knew the question was coming but he was still nervous when you eventually did ask it. He didn’t reply for a minute, he could feel you eyes burning a hole into the side of his head. You pressed him again, “John?”

He scoffed out a laugh, “No one calls me John.”

“I always have.”

“You’re the only one.”

“Why did you defend me when you said all that stuff to me years ago?” You asked again.

Murphy sighed, “You know I didn’t mean that stuff. I still feel bad about it.” Your eyebrows furrowed and he continued to explain, “I didn’t mean it. I was a stupid kid, c’mon, you know how stupid I was back then-” it was true, he was a pretty stupid kid growing up for he always managed to get into trouble, “-I thought that in order to make friends, I had to be cool and edgy and be like them. Turns out I was just being a jerk.”

You appreciated his honesty and that he knew he had done you wrong, “Thank you.”

“Every day since, I’ve felt bad about it. I carry this guilt with me and I know I act tough but I do hate myself for what I did to you. You were my best friend and I ruined it. I’m sorry.”

You looked down at the table, “It hurt, you know. I was fourteen and was going through a lot of changes and weight fluctuations and you knew how insecure I was about my weight; how insecure I’ve always been and yet you bullied me because of it. I remember exactly what you said and how you said it. You weren’t John anymore that day, that’s when you became Murphy.”

Murphy was taken back by the brutality of your words. He puffed out a breath but didn’t speak. You asked once more why he stepped in to stand up for you, “You don’t deserve any of that bullshit. You’re one the kindest people I’ve met. You’re beautiful and they were talking about you like shit.”

You shook your head, “I’m not beautiful. Look at me, I’m hideous. I’m fat.”

“What’s wrong with being fat?” Murphy asked you, “Being skinny, fat, average or whatever doesn’t determine a person’s beauty or a person’s worth. You could be skinny and be the shittiest person ever; you’d be ugly then. You could have red skin and spiders for eyes and have your personality and I’d still consider you beautiful.”

You rolled your eyes, “John-”

“No, I’m being serious, (y/n),” he said, “Who care what you’re body looks like? Those two were complete dicks and I’ll make sure they pay for upsetting you. Don’t give me that bullshit of ‘I can’t be beautiful because I’m fat’. You can be fat and beautiful; you can be plus size and beautiful. You don’t have to be just one, you can be both. Stop letting their opinions matter to you. I treated you like shit before, I’m a dick for doing that and trust me, I know, but please don’t let them affect you anymore. It’s your body, not theirs.”

“Be both beautiful and fat?” You asked him, “I don’t feel beautiful. I never have.”

Murphy sighed, “You remember when we snuck out of that English exam when we were twelve?”

“And we went to find the best view of Earth,” you nodded, “I remember.” It was one of your favourite memories actually.

“You were looking at Earth saying how beautiful it was. Your smile...” Murphy smiled slightly, “That’s the first time I really realised you were beautiful.” Your face softened as he spoke, “That’s when I realised I liked you.”

“Liked me?”

Murphy breathed a laugh, “Seems like a lifetime ago... Yeah... I thought you knew I had this massive crush on you and then I went and ruined everything. Hell, I still think I like you.” Your cheeks burned as he said that, he still liked you? After all this time?

“If it makes you feel any better, I had a massive crush on you too.”

“Actually, that makes me feel worse.” You laughed slightly at his statement and he cracked a smile. You found yourself smiling at him, enjoying a moment together. It was nice. It felt like you were kids again, running around the Ark playing games and looking for meteors. You missed it; you missed him. Yeah, he had hurt you badly but you could see the regret in his eyes, you saw the honesty he had when he was telling you that you were beautiful. You knew that he was sorry and he truly didn’t mean it.

“I forgive you,” you said after a pregnant pause, “for saying that stuff.” Murphy nodded, unsure of what to say, “So please, stop carrying that about with you. You’re different now. You stood up for me and defended me, that says a lot.”

Murphy nodded again, giving you a small smile, “You can be both, remember. You don’t have to just be one. You can be a lot of things. You have to remember that your beauty and self worth isn’t just about what’s on the outside.”

You thanked him before falling into silence. It was a few minutes later when you said, “If you’re not busy, I could use help with these fish...”

Murphy smiled but quickly hid it, “Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’ll help you.” He grabbed his knife from his pocket and began to help you. You glanced at him as you worked beside each other in silence.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re beautiful too, you know.”

#john murphy x reader #john murphy #john murphy the 100 #john murphy x plus size reader #john murphy x y/n #reader insert #the 100 #the 100 one shot #the 100 reader insert #100 #john murphy one shot #john murphy os #murphy the 100 #one shot #os #plus size series

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t-o-m-hollands · 4 years ago

Text

Summery: Tom is not entirely sure of how it happens. But one moment he’s the gardener of Locksley Hall, and the next he’s run off to marry the lords daughter. A girl he despises.

Well, sort of.

Warnings: Smoking.

A/N: this is (loosely) based on the Locksley Hall poem by Tennyson, but the relationship between them is pretty heavily inspired by Atonement by Ian McEwan (the first part of the book) and the story at large also slightly inspired by Downton Abbey. Also, I’ve changed the law in this. As I understand it (from watching Downton Abbey) girls could never inherit the estate, no matter if she was married or not. Here you will inherit, but only if you are married and it will then go to your husband. Also, I was listening to Old Money – lana del rey the entire time I was writing this.

Locksley Hall, England – 1920.

It’s June, and Tom finds himself praying for rain.

It’s one of those summer days when the air stands still. Not a whiff of wind, no breeze in the trees, not a cloud in the sky. Just an ever-pressing, inescapable heat that seems to paint the whole world a hazy golden shade.

He’s knee-deep in the earth, sweat running down his back, shovelling soil under the merciless sun. It’s midday and the warmth is intolerable. He can already feel the blisters he’ll have on his hands tomorrow. To top it all off his head is pounding and he reminds himself to give Harrison a good kick in the chin the next time he sees him; for convincing him that one more drink wouldn’t hurt.

And god, he desperately wants a cigarette.

“God, it’s hot today” Madeleine’s bored voice drifts out the open window. “One can hardly think straight”.

Tom lifts his head and observes her through the glass. The owner of the voice is in the conservatory. Wearing a lace dress and her dark curls perfectly pinned into place. She is primly drinking tea alongside her mother; safely hidden away from the beaming sun.

He swipes the sweat from his forehead before shovelling the spade further down in the dirt. A sudden urge to throw some of the earth through the conservatory window hits him, just enough to dirty up her white gown. But he resists it. Instead he sits down by the flowerbed and leans his pounding head against the wall. His sore muscles scream in relief. Lighting a cigarette, he then closes his eyes and inhales deeply. The whole world goes white as the sun shines through his closed eyelids and a soft sigh escapes him.

“Have you received any more letters from Sir Hatfield?” He hears lady Locksley inquire from inside.

“What, James?”

“Yes, of course James, has he written you again?”

“Thankfully not”.

“Oh, don’t be silly child, he’s the owner of Hatfield house! God knows you could do worse than him” Lady Locksley scolds her oldest daughter. Despite himself Tom’s interest is peaked, so he keeps smoking and listening to the conversation, ignoring his gardening duties.

“But he’s such a bore” Madeleine whines in response. “Honestly mother, all he ever talks about is hunting. And Hatfield house is a terrible building, you know I can’t stand Tudor architecture. Plus, James is ancient.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, he’s not ancient, he’s ten years younger than your father.”

“Exactly, and I’m two-and-twenty years old!”

“Oh, do be quiet, you’re very lucky he’s shown any interest in you at all. I have talked to your father about this. It’s high time for you to get married. Ever since Francis…” she trails off and Tom knows why. Francis had been her oldest child and only son, the one set to inherit the land and the title. Who had died in the war during the battle of the Somme. Tom had known Francis and had not been fond of him. Upon hearing about his death he’d wondered if the heir had been shot by one of his own, though he did not air this suspicion. Tall and handsome Francis may have had been, but he had also been entitled, rude and unkind to animals. He’d beaten his horses, screamed at the servants and taunted his sisters.

Lady Locksley continues with a new air of authority in her voice. “It’s more important than ever before that we find you a good match. You know what’s at stake if you don’t marry and marry soon”.

Silence for a second, and unease is setting like lead in Tom’s stomach. Maybe this isn’t a conversation he should listen in to.

“Yes, I know.” The words sound heavy and reluctant in Madeleine’s mouth.

He opens his eyes and discretely as he can he pops his head up to sneak a look through the window. The look on the young heir’s face strikes him. It’s not sad, nor angry or dismayed. It’s apathetic. Like she’s somewhere far, far away.

“Boy, I thought I told you to start digging!” Bertie Higgins voice booms over the grounds as he crosses the corner of the building and walk towards Tom, who quickly puts out his cigarette.

An elderly man, with bushy beard and eyebrows, a bit too fond of beer and with fingernails so dirty Tom wonders if they’ve ever been cleaned, walks towards him. Mr. Higgins has worked as the head gardener on the grounds of Locksley Hall for longer than anyone could remember.

“Sorry Mr. Higgins, I just took a breather” he says before putting out his cigarette and picking up his shovel again. Mr. Higgins observes him for a moment, then he leans in closer and whiffs of the beer the older man had for lunch hits Tom’s face. “Listen, boy” he says in a low voice “no good will come from spying on them gentle folks, hear me? No good will come of it”.

“Mr. Higgins I wasn’t -” Tom begins to defend himself but the gardener pats his shoulder and continuous in his stern voice. “Is no use lyin’ to me, boy, I’m too old, I’ve seen too much. You’ve been sniffin’ after that young heir since you came back. ’s no use lad. Them folks are not for the likes of us, above your station she is, well above your station.” Tom wants to protest. For he has most certainly not been sniffing after anyone, least of all Madeleine Locksley, but Mr. Higgins continues. “Now Alice,” he says and pats his shoulder again “she’s some good maid she is, why not ask her out?”

Alice was indeed a maid at Locksley Hall. Pretty and always ready for a laugh. She’d made it perfectly clear of her interest in him too. There was however a streak of pettiness to the girl that he wasn’t too fond of, and therefor he’d reclined her thus far. But he doesn’t particularly feel like sharing that with Mr. Higgins.

“Now boy” Mr. Higgins goes on. “You had your breather, go back to diggin’, if I told you once I told’ you a thousand times, you dig when the sun’s out and the dirt is dry an’ you water when the sun’s gone down”.

Tom goes back to digging, the sun burning his neck, and his joints already protesting.

He doesn’t notice Madeleine’s brown eyes observing him from within the conservatory.

***

The bathwater has gone cold. Still, she stays in the water. The prospect of putting down her book and getting up and ready for yet another family dinner seems dull at best. The rose-scented cold water feels refreshing against her skin. Today really had been unbearably hot.

Still the heat lingers in the air.

Outside the bathrooms leaded windows the last rays of daylight are lighting up the grounds. Though the light in the gardener’s cottage is already lit.

Dropping her copy of Pride & Prejudice to the floor she sinks further down into the water. Leaning her head back against the edge of the tub she closes her eyes and sighs.

She’d just gotten to the part in the book where Elizabeth refuses Mr. Darcy’s proposal and it had annoyed her. How Elizabeth could refuse Mr. Darcy and all his possessions, and it didn’t lead to despair and desolation for her entire family, instead, as if by the waving of a magic wand, everything worked out beautifully in the end. That wasn’t real life.

Everything was annoying her today. Her mother’s persistent nagging, her father’s detachment, granny’s constant complaining. Tom’s strong arms wielding a shovel. The cotton shirt sticking to his sweaty back, the suspenders holding up his muddy trousers.

She sinks further down into the cold water.

Tom had looked annoyed today as well. But then again, he’d seemed permanently aggravated ever since he got back from France, at least in her presence. She’d seen him laugh plenty of times with Harrison from the pub when she visited the village, and with Alice too. He’d even crack a smile from time to time with Mr. Higgins. But her presence always seemed to put a frown on his face.

It had not always been this way.

As children they had played. They had explored the woods like travellers discovering a new world. Had run over the poppy fields pretending they could fly. They’d made it down to the sea and Old Sailor Joe had told them stories of Odysseus, and his long journey home. They’d sneaked out and slept under the stars and he had told her all of what Mr. Higgins had taught him about botany. Of how the things we sow in the ground with time will grow. About which flowers could kill you, and which ones could heal.

They had shared secrets and kept them between themselves, solemnly sworn blood-oaths with all the seriousness of a promise between children. They’d sworn that whatever happened between them stayed that way. That his secrets were hers and she’d keep them to her grave, and likewise for him.

Then she’d been sent away to boarding school and he had gone to the village school and that had been the end of that. During the holidays so much time had seemed to have passed between them that it was hard to pick up the threads of childish games where they’d left them. Then, war had broken out and she’d been sent to live with relatives in Canada, and Tom, well, Tom had joined the army.

Once they’d seen each other again years had passed, and they were strangers to one another.

The last evening light shines over the grounds of Locksley Hall, but Madeleine doesn’t move out of her bath, instead she stares out the window, feeling no motivation to move.

Everything is fleeting, that was what she kept feeling. The hours, the days, the weeks, the months and years. Time passed her by so rapidly and yet all the days looked the same. She felt like a leaf landing in a river, being swept away with the stream with no control of where it was going or were it’d end up. Soon, she would be married, most likely to dreary James Hatfield, and then they would settle in Hatfield house and she would never spend her days roaming the grounds of Locksley Hall again.

Or maybe, she wouldn’t marry, and upon the death of her father and in the lack of a male heir, all their lands and possessions would go to the crown, and they’d all would be left with nothing.

A scream works itself larger in her throat. It had started earlier that day, with her mother in the conservatory. It would only grow larger, and larger until she wouldn’t be able to hold it in any longer. She knew this much from experience.

It felt like this,

In school they’d been taught about diamonds, about how with heat, pressure, and time diamonds are formed to something so unbreakable and everlasting that only another diamond can cut it. She’d imagined how all the screams she’d held inside, pressed between two lungs, over time created so much pressure that they’d turn her insides into diamonds.

As a child she and Tom had snuck into the library one night. In a book of medical terms they’d found the word autopsy with the description: “An examination of a body after death to determine the cause of death or the character and extent of changes produced by disease — called also necropsy”. Not understanding much of this they had searched the other medical books until they found a more thorough description of what the word meant.

She had been horrified upon finding the truth in all its bloody glory. How, upon one’s death, a pathologist would cut you open to see what they could find. Painted pictures of the procedure followed, and Madeleine is still certain that the image of a cut open human heart is imprinted on her retinas forever.

She imagined it like this,

When they cut her open they won’t find veins, or blood, or intestines. But instead a cloud of smoke as they’ll tear her up, and inside –

dust.

And a diamond heart; at the living core of which a handful of secrets shared between children years ago were kept. And the pathologists will look at one another and ask themselves, ‘why did she walk around with a diamond heart for all those years?’ Not realising, that her diamond heart was a perfect symbol of her.

Beautiful and valuable.

And essentially useless.

The door to the bathroom bursts open, and a very aggravated eleven-year-old girl stands on the threshold. Her cheeks are flushed red, not only from a day spent playing in the sun, but from barely held-back rage.

“That hag!” she bursts out. Her curly, brown hair a mess, wearing a grass-stained dress. A big hole at the sole her left sock.

Madeleine finally steps out of the cold water, pulls on her robe and turns to Beatrix.

“Beanie darling, you know you can’t call people that. Now, what has happened?”

“She told me I’d only be fit to marry a sailor the way I look! And then she had the nerve to say that I was lacking manners! Just because I told her I’d love to marry a sailor, at least he wouldn’t be such a bore!”

The older sister tries to hold back a smile, not wanting to encourage this kind of behaviour. “Would we perhaps be talking about granny?” she inquires.

“Do we know of anyone else that fit the description absolute hag?” her little sister answers, hand on her hip, clearly still annoyed. “Also, she says I have to change for supper in the nursery, god knows why; I’m hardly trying to impress nanny, and that they are waiting for you downstairs.”

And thus, it is time to face the unavoidable and join the lion’s den. Madeleine steps into her adjoining bedroom to get dressed and Beatrix follows closely behind.

“You’ll never guess who she suggested you should marry” Beatrix continues, amusement in her voice, as she sits down at her sisters dressing table, inspecting the bottles of scent and jars of powder with a bemused look on her young face.

“Was it by any chance James Hatfield?” Madeleine answers as she steps into the blue frock Alice had laid out for her earlier.

Beatrix stares at her sister in incredulity and in a heartbroken voice she wails with disbelief in every syllable,” OH, surely not! Leine, you can’t marry him! You simply can’t!”

Benie and Lenie were the affectionate nicknames the sister had for one another. As a child Beatrix had not been able to say Madeleine, but instead only pronounced the latter part of the name and dragged the vocals out into a ‘leeniee’ every time she called out for her.

“Well, he hasn’t proposed yet, so nothing is set” Madeleine answers while avoiding her sister’s questioning eyes, inspecting her hair in the mirror instead.

“So that’s why they’ll have a ball then, I was wondering what called for such an occasion”.

“A ball?”

“Yes” Beatrix states, inspecting her own freckled, sunburned face in the mirror. “Mommy told granny that they would have one as soon as possible”.

The scream works itself larger in Madeleine’s lungs.

“Oh, well. It can’t be helped” she says and leads her sister out of the bedroom. “Now, you really do need to change, or nanny will be furious with you, and I’ll have to join them downstairs”.

The bedroom door closes behind them as they leave.

***

The late evening air is loaded with the scent of rhododendrons. In the trees the nightingales sing, and the summer air feel cool against her bare arms as she steps out into the night.

Carefully, as to not be seen from any of the windows, she makes her way across the garden. It is dark, but on her childhood paths her feet still knows where to tread. She walks past the house, the gigantic rhododendron bush, and along the pathway lined with pink geraniums, down the trail past the summerhouse by the lake and further still until she arrives at the fountain by the labyrinth. The deep green hedges are lined with powder pink hydrangeas, blue hyacinths and cardinal red peonies. In the middle of it a square with a fountain. And if you look past that, the entrance to the labyrinth itself.

If she had walked further still, away from the labyrinth, she’d come to a wide field of poppies. Had she, instead of walking north from the house, walked west she would have ended up by the sea, and the cliffs and Locksley Bay. East of the house laid the road to the village, and then the road to town. South of the manor the forest grew.

She doesn’t go through the entrance of the labyrinth but sits down by the edge of the fountain. From her pocket she picks up a package of Woodbine cigarettes, but when she goes to light it, the lighter only flickers.

“Need a light?”

She nearly falls into the fountain, taken by surprise by the familiar voice. Tom laughs and walks out of the shadows. Hands in pockets and hair a wild mess.

“Wanker!” she burst out, heart beating painfully hard in her chest.

“Now, now, where did you learn a word like that?”

He’s so smug, and it’s making her skin crawl with anger. She ignores his question and ask, “did you follow me here?”

He moves closer still, until he’s right in front of her. Then he takes out his lighter. She puts the cigarette in her mouth and he lights it for her.

“No” he answers eventually. “Was just finishing up watering the peonies.”

“You water the peonies in the middle of the night?”

He lights a cigarette for himself and blows out pearl white smoke into the summer night before he answers. “Yeah, as Mr. Higgins keeps telling me. You dig when the soil is dry, otherwise you’ll shovel mud, and you water the plants when the sun’s gone down and the soil is cool, or you’ll just end up boiling the poor things”.

She looks at him, really looks at him; while he’s busy looking up at the moon. His white cotton shirt is filled with stains of earth and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, a worn linen jacket thrown over his shoulder. Worn suspender holds up his muddy pants. His brown locks frame his face perfectly and in the moonlight his skin, tanned from working out all day, seems to almost radiate. He looks positively angelical. A sudden urge to pull her fingers through his hair overwhelms her.

She looks away.

The nightingales sing louder than ever in the silence, as do the buzzing insects. Somewhere in the far distance a fox screech.

“You know” he says, sitting down on the bench opposite the fountain, leaning back he spreads out into a relaxed position. “Whenever I hear a vixen’s cry I think about Gideon’s ghost.”

“Well, you are the inhabitant of Gideon’s cottage”.

When, or indeed why, the gardener’s cottage on Locksley Hall had been baptised Gideon’s cottage no one seemed to know. Not even Old Sailor Joe, and rumour has it he’d been guarding the boats in Locksley Bay since the first wave crashed against its shore.

But the gardener of Locksley Hall had, for as long as anyone could remember, lived in Gideon’s cottage.

As a child her older brother had frightened her with tales of Gideon’s ghost, and how he still roamed the grounds of the manor, still volatile over long forgotten quarrels. When ever she’d hear a fox’s cry at night, as they laid tucked up in their shared nursery, he’d told her it was the ghost of Gideon, seeking out small girls to take out his revenge on. She had been terrified.

When she’d told this to Tom he had lost his temper with her brother, the two had never gotten along, and he’d taken the older boy to the ground, punching him with his small fists until a furious Bertie Higgins, who’d seen the quarrel from across the yard, had pulled him off him. Madeleine knew Tom had gotten a trashing from Mr. Higgins for the attack and a stern telling off from her father.

“I love that old cottage” he says with a found smile on his face, blowing out more smoke into the air between them. “But I’m yet to see his ghost. ’s a shame really, would have asked if the legend was true about gold being buried at the cliffs of Locksley Bay”.

She smiles, and the nightingales keeps on singing. The scent of peonies and hyacinths is heavy in the air, despite the smoke.

Tom observing her with an intensity that unnerves her, so she turns away from him to look down into the fountain. Slowly she lowers her hand into the cold water and she watches as the goldfish swim around her.

“Why are you out here smoking at night?” he asks, and she turns to back to look at him, pulling her hand out of the water. He’s still observing her, and she feels almost naked under his glance, despite the silk gown she’s still wearing from dinner. It makes her nervous when he looks at her like that, because underneath their easy tones of conversation, she’s not actually sure he likes her all that much. She shivers, goosebumps all over her naked arms.

“Here” he says and throws her his jacket. She utters a thank you and pulls it on. It smells of earth and smoke, and fresh cut grass. It smells like him and her diamond heart beat harder in her chest.

“Papa doesn’t like me smoking in the house.” She answers in the end.

In fact, her father was against her smoking at all. It was a habit that had begun at Talbot Heath boarding school. Smoking with the other girls behind the gymnasium. They’d practised smoking without coughing, feeling mighty smug when they succeeded.

But smoking was, as it had been pointed out to her by her father, ‘not a dignified habit for a woman of her class to partake in’. When she’d gotten back from Canada after the war they’d have words about the subject. In the end the general agreement was that she did not smoke in the house, or amongst other people. She didn’t always follow these rules. There were days when all she did was sit in her bathroom, smoke cigarette after cigarette and read books. A part of her wanted to walk around the house and leave a trace of smoke in every room. Like a ghost, reminding them that she is still there. But a deeply rooted respect, verging on fear, of her father has always kept her from doing such a thing.

Tom hums in reply, that smug smile on his face again. “And what’s dear papa to say about this then? Hmm?” He nods at her, sitting just a meter away from him, wearing his jacket. “Princess sneaking out at night to share a smoke with the gardener?”

“Oh, do shut up”.

“You know you really have improved your vocabulary since we last spoke” he replies dryly, “must be all that reading”.

“How do you know I read so much”.

And maybe it’s a trick of the moonlight, but she swears he blushes, his cheek the colour of peonies. “I can see the light in your window from my cottage at night”.

“Oh, and you’re keeping tabs on me? How sweet!” You reply in a mocking tone, grateful that you get the chance to be smug for once.

“Well, it’s hard not to notice it” the annoyance is clear in his voice. Then he changes the subject. “What are you reading so late at night anyway?”

“At the moment, Tennyson”.

He groans, “of course you like Tennyson” he scoffs, puts out his cigarette and lights a new one, offering her one as well, which she accepts.

“What’s wrong with Tennyson?” She asks, indignant.

“Nothing I guess” he responds, “unless you’d like to read about things other than knights and fair maidens”

“He did not only write about knights and fair maidens!” She defends fiercely. “He wrote about love and loss and death and privilege and -”

“Oh, he wrote about privilege, did he! Well, you know all about that, don’t you? Little miss ivory tower”.

“And what do you read then? What is so good it makes Tennyson look foolish to you?” She tries to keep her annoyance out of her voice, but its difficult, especially when he looks at her like that. Like he finds her laughable.

“Recently? Mostly Gorky.”

“You always did prefer your literature Russian. You’re politics too if Alice is to be believed.”

He smiles, a little less condescending this time, “and you always loved your poetry, and no, she isn’t”.

“You must like some of the poets, surely?”

“I’m rather fond of Shelley, actually”

“And the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what is all this sweet work worth, if thou kiss not me?” she quotes, not considering the implication of her words until they’ve already left her mouth. It had always been her favourite poem, and the words fell from her lips so effortlessly. But the intensity in his eyes as he observers her seem to change the very air around them. It is as though the whole world stills, if only for a moment. Like the nightingales and the foxes and the crickets all have heard her, and quieted down, in suspense over what’s to happen next.

He stands up and puts out his cigarette. Looking away from her he suggests, “we should head back, it’s late. I’ll walk you”. So, she puts out hers as well and follows him, and in silence they head back to the manor house, each avoiding the others eyes.

She pulls his jacket closer to her.

Then, he stops in his tracks. “Look,” he says and points up at the night sky “Andromeda burns bright tonight”.

Already as a child he’d been good at recognising the constellations. Many a night they had sneaked out and wandered off to the poppy fields where they’d laid down their heads, and he had pointed up to the sky, just as he was doing now, and taught her to read them.

“Andromeda, who was tied to the rocks, to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus?”

He nods, but doesn’t look away from the sky, “but Perseus rescued her”.

“And you criticised Tennyson for writing about knights and maidens” she teases.

He looks down at her then, a smile tugging the corners of his lips. They start walking again, his hands in his pockets, looking at the road ahead.

“So, what did your dear Tennyson write about privilege?”

“That opportunities are only given to those with riches already” she answers, and then she quotes, “every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.”

Tom is silence for a moment. They’re nearing the end of the road; they’re by the rhododendron bush, and they’ve reached the points were they have to walk their separate ways.

She removes his jacket and hands it to him.

“Keep it, for now. You can give it back later, you’ll freeze.”

“No” she argues. “No, Alice will see it and wonder”.

He doesn’t argue with her on that point but takes the jacket from her outstretched hand. “Well” he says, awkwardly. “See you around, Lady Madeleine”.

They part ways.

***

FEEDBACK IS GREATLY APPRECIATED

(A/N: I’m reposting this because the first time i posted it didn’t show up in the tags and it had like 3 notes)

Taglist: @londonmademedoit @isthataladybag @ceexreverse @daygiowvibe @averyfosterthoughts @applenter @viwihere @youcompletemess @marvelpeters @youngsenpaibaby @duskholland @vanillanestor @panicattheeverywherekid @starrycigarettes @primadonnasdream

#tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland imagine #tom holland headcanon #tom holland #tom holland x fem #tom holland x oc #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n

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arcticdementor · 3 years ago

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Other possible Holocausts: why pro-lifers are lying to us, and why thats a good thing

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Ive had a running argument over the past few years that the raw lack of anti-abortion terrorist action proves no one really thinks abortion is murder, ie. intentional 1st degree murder of a life equal to yours or mine.

Ive always gotten pushback to quote WillyWang:

The "revealed preference" of those that oppose abortion but don't firebomb clinics and kill doctors? It won't help, you'll be made an example of in the negative sense, and civilized norms are more important than a useless symbolic point. One clinic destroyed won't end abortion, after all.

From which this Effort-post got its Genesis:

Would you say the same about those who participated in the french resistance or Warsaw Ghetto rising to Nazi Germany?

Everyone of those claims applies there: they were likely to be made examples of, they were damaging civilized norms, and any given action had relatively little to no impact.

Yet the same people who insist abortion is murder, and thus that America is committing a holocaust, yet denounce any of the people who employed violence against abortion doctors or clinics, and can’t distance themselves fast enough from any call for violence... none of those people apply the same logic to the first holocaust. None of them say the frenchmen who bombed german police stations where dangerous terrorists who deserved their executions, none of them denounce the Warsaw ghetto rising as an attack on civilization.

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If anti-abortion advocated genuinely believed a fetus was a equivalent human life to yours or mine or the little kids they see walk to school, and that this was an ongoing holocaust of American Children at a scale possibly 10x or more what was done to the jews... they wouldn’t need to come up with ad hoc reasons why they don’t resort to violence, their mind would be screaming at them to take bloody vengeance 24/7 in righteous outrage, demanding that oceans of blood and fire be unleashed that it might wash clean the horror, that nuclear fire would be be an acceptable emergency shut off to end such wanton and cruel slaughter... and if thinking through all the logic they concluded that no violence wouldn’t help and they must pursue some peaceful negotiation to stop the slaughter, then their minds recoil and call themselves cowards and the moment of coming to that conclusion would be an ongoing trauma they’d carry with them for the rest of their life, even if they knew they were 100% right. They would meet the “pro-choice” and barely be able to conceal their desire to see them dead or imprisoned... they would meet women who had had abortions and scream bloody murder at them and tell them they deserve the death penalty, the way many of the same people react when presented with women who’d murdered their children, but after their children had left the womb.

The people who were jailed for assassinating abortionists, or fire-bombing clinics would be folk heroes lionized in songs and crowd funded hagiographic documentaries and folk traditions, like John Brown, or John Wilkes Booth, or Louis Reil, or Saco and Vancety, or Huey Newton, or Malcolm X, or David Koresh, or Levoy Finecolm... or hell even just Jesse James, or Killdozer.

Americans abort on average 1 million plus babies a year... that means if abortion is murder and those are human lives, then the 50 years since Roe vs.Wade has been a worse crime than the holocaust, slavery, or the crimes of Stalin, and we’d have to consult a historian to see if they were worse than Mao (on a per capita basis, certainly)...

This would be the worse crime ever commited, the greatest mass slaughter ever perpetrated in human history, and 50 years later our society would remain committed to repeating it in the next 50 years.

If that does not demand violence, then nothing in human history ever has, no even defensive war has ever been justified, and only Jainists and Jehovah’s witnesses are morally acceptable actors. An extreme unexceedable pascifism we know the vast majority of anti-abortion advocates do not endorse, since they overwhelming supported or at-least did not conspicuously oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (over a mere 3000 Americans dead, and a less than a years abortions worth of Iraqis killed by Saddam) and continue to conspicuously “Support our troops” troops that exist to carry out violence, despite their moral commitments saying they can apparently never in human history be justified.

When i say this proves “Pro-lifers” clearly do not believe a fetus is an equal human life, thats me being incredibly charitable. That is me extending a overwhelming large olive branch, that is me expressing a stupendous care and concern and sympathy and brotherly love to rival the best 19th century dinner host, the dearest of friends, a benevolent older sibling, a lover, a parent, a mother who on hearing the taped confession of her son to serial murder, doesn’t hesitate once before screaming “you monsters you’ve drugged and tortured him! What threats have you made to my grandchild! He would only say such things to save his daughter’s life!”

My claiming they are full of shit and lying to themselves, to you, and to me, is an expression of love and faith in my fellow man which until now I did not realized I possessed nor was capable of...

Because if I merely took them at their word? If I believed that they believed what they say they believe? They would be monsters.

Lets play a game called “Other Possible Holocausts”. Approximately 800,000 babies where aborted this year.

Lets imagine the US government has just announced that crime has gotten to cumbersome and that over the next 3 years it plans to execute every single one of the 2.4 million people in US prisons jails and Jeuvenile detention centres.

Lets imagine that to reform education, the US resolves to kill the bottom 1% of all 80 million students in the country based on an age adjusted standardized test every year.

Lets imagine hatred of the obese takes off, and a policy is passed to resolve America’s 30% obesity rate by the mass instituting of bounties on hunting and killing the obese... that every year 800,000 to 1.5 million tags will be issued for a fee to allow the hunting of the obese in return for monetary rewards on successful hunts and getting to keep the carcasses for meat base animal foods and the manufacture of fuel, or fat based household products. These bounty hunters become known a “whalers”.

Lets imagine the US announces its done with African Americans... if the problem hasn’t been solved since 1619, its not going to be... and so they’re going to genocide all 40 million African Americans at a rate of 2% a year, for the next 50 years.

Lets imagine opposing extremists get in charge and decide the racists rednecks have to go, and so they’ll be forming death squads to roam the South, Appalachia, and the rust belt, with the objective of killing 800,000 poor whites a year, “until the problem is solved”... with many happily stating 50 years of this would be acceptable, while others state it’d be perfectly fine to renew it another 50 years after that.

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These are all American lives, and according to pro-lifers of equal moral value to the babies aborted every day, no better, no worse.

By saying this and by saying violence is not and cannot be justified to resist it, they are saying that their reactions to any one of the above eventualities would be to continue to live their lives as they have lived the past 50 years.

I do not know how to respond to that. Even if Abortion is truly murder of an ensouled equal human life... The Pro-choicers committing the murders don’t think it is... hell the Nazis murdered 6 million jews and a further 5 million undesirables, but they didn’t think of them as human, they thought they were monstrous and “life unworthy of life”, like a burning man begging you to shoot him so he doesn’t suffer or hurt his fellows... a mercy in a way.

Pro-lifers on the other hand claim these are equal viable human lives of equal status to yours or mine or perhaps even greater.... They’re Children.

And their reaction to the greatest mass slaughter in human history, the reaction of almost half the electorate, who regularly talk about the need to resist tyrrany and defend the weak (as both left and right in the US do, in their way), their reaction is to vote every 4 years, and have it perhaps not even be the #1 issue if the economy seems bad, they have the opportunity to vote for the first black president, or the Orangeman says something crude about Mexicans... they won’t be single issue voters even when it comes to the greatest crime ever committed in human history?

I refuse to believe it. Even I, cynical as I am, have to believe we are not that far gone, and the age of men has not come crashing down... i would believe the US capable of such a crime, but to believe that a double digit percentage of Americans could look at that, recognize the victims as their fellow humans,recognize their state and society as committing mass murder of their neighbours, future friends, and relatives...to recognize that they have a moral imperative to act on this... and then just go “welp them’s the breaks, gotta be civilized” because 9 people in black robes said it wasn’t murder?

Holy fuck. No that is not how people work, that is not how humans behave, I cannot accept that, and leftists who spent the summer rioting in response to fewer than a thousand police killings of black men a year, who remember the civil rights and anti-war movements, who kinda vaguely recall that they’re supposed to remember Huey Newton, or Saco and Vanseti, or those Rossen...something people... who like to imagine they’d have been abolitionists in the 19th century. They’re right to call bullshit.

They’re right to call the pro-lifers liars who don’t believe their own messaging, and instead just want to control women’s bodies, after a lie like that to their face, they’re right to treat them with scorn.

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Pro-life is rescuable as a sentiment and an activist movement...

But not while it claims a Holocaust is going on and somehow magically no violence could ever be justified to resist it, thus lining up all the arguments that will allow the next holocaust to be committed without resistance.

There have been a double digit, perhaps even a triple digit number of mass murders and genocides in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people, since the 20th century. America is enabling its ally Saudi Arabia to commit one against the Yemenis right fucking now.

We need to be very fucking clear about what it is justified to do to members of a regime that commits such a crime, and what it is definitely justified to do to the immediate perpetrators of the murder. And That we will back violent resistance to such a horrible crime by the state even if it serves only to make the resister a martyr we’ll praise, or it degrades “civilization” (what civilization could remain in such a regime?), or it ultimately has no effect (it is on the survivor to try harder)... The major members of the House of Saud deserve the Gallows under international law for what they’re doing in Yemen , as do their American attaches and core enablers... and if that comes from a Judge in the Hauge or from a convoy of irregulars in pickup trucks, or from lone assassins who manage to get through to them, It is justice, and i will praise it.

What we cannot do is pretend that genocides and mass slaughter on unconscionable scales are occurring and then come up with excuses for why we should do nothing and anyone who does resist is a criminal. Or else those excuses will be the ones that allow the next real genocide in the west or on US soil to actually happen.

If there is a genocide or democide or whatever you want to call mass slaughter. You must recognize the justice the violent resistance to it, even if you personally do not participate, or you must admit you were lying about there being such a crime... to say otherwise, to say a state can commit such a crime and still retain its right to your loyalty, to say a people up to and including its victims must obey such a thing, a creature made of bureaucracy that has set its sights on massacring humans by the thousands if not millions... it is to side against the human race in a war of extermination.

And as someone whose pro-choice as they come, I’d much rather, if the pro-lifers really believe its murder, I’d much rather they start a bloody civil war, than for it to become the norm that that is ethically acceptable.

#kulakrevolt #reddit #the motte #food for thought

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thefakejeffreyazoff · 4 years ago

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‘He’s our Satan’: Mega music manager Irving Azoff, still feared, still fighting

(x)PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. —

This is not Irving Azoff’s house. Irving and his wife Shelli own houses all over, from Beverly Hills to Cabo San Lucas, but right now in the last week of October it’s too cold at the ranch in Idaho and too hot at the spread in La Quinta, so he’s renting this place — a modest midcentury six-bedroom that sold for $5 million back in 2016.

From the front door you can see all the way out, to where Arrowhead Point juts like the tail of a comma into the calm afternoon waters of Carmel Bay. More importantly, the house is literally across the street from the Pebble Beach Golf Links, where Azoff likes to play with his college buddy John Baruck, who started out in the music business around the same time Azoff did, in the late ’60s, and just retired after managing Journey through 20 years and two or three lead singers, depending how you count.

(Via LA Times)

Azoff is 72, and this weekend he’ll be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau. Beatles manager Brian Epstein and Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham are already in, but Azoff and Landau are the first living managers thus honored. Azoff is not only alive — he’s still managing. As a partner in Full Stop Management — alongside Jeffrey Azoff, his oldest son and the third of his four children — he steers the careers of clients like the Eagles, Steely Dan, Bon Jovi and comedian Chelsea Handler, and consults when needed on the business of Harry Styles, Lizzo, John Mayer, Roddy Ricch, Anderson .Paak and Maroon 5. Azoff has Zoom calls at 7, 8 and 9 tomorrow morning, and only after that will he squeeze in a round.

The work never stops when you view the job the way Azoff does, as falling somewhere between consigliere and concierge. “My calls can be everything from ‘My knee buckled, I need a doctor’ to ‘My kid’s in jail,’” Azoff says. “I mean, you have no idea. The ‘My kid’s in jail’ one was a funny one, because the artist then said to me, ‘Y’know, I’ve thought about this. Maybe we should leave him there for a while.’”

Golf entered Azoff’s life the way a lot of things have — via the Eagles, whom Azoff has managed since the early ’70s. Specifically, Azoff took up golf in the company of the late Glenn Frey, the jockiest Eagle, the one the other Eagles used to call “Sportacus.” By the time the Eagles returned to the road in the ’90s they’d left their debauched ’70s lifestyles largely behind, but Azoff and Frey got hooked on the little white ball.

“Frey would insist on booking the tour around where he wanted to play golf,” Azoff says. “We made Henley crazy. Henley would call me in my room and he’d go, ‘Why the f— are we in a hotel in Hilton Head North Carolina and starting a tour in Charlotte? Is this a f— golf tour?’”

Trailed by Larry Solters, the Eagles’ preternaturally dour minister of information, Azoff makes his way down the hill from the house for dinner at the golf club’s restaurant. He’s only 5 feet, 3 inches, a diminutive Sydney Pollack in jeans and a zip-up sweater. In photos from the ’70s — when he was considerably less professorial in comportment, a hipster exec with a spring-loaded middle finger — he sports a beard and a helmet of curly hair and mischievous eyes behind his shades, and looks a little like a Muppet who might scream at Kermit over Dr. Teeth’s appearance fee.

His father was a pharmacist and his mother was a bookkeeper. He grew up in Danville, Ill., booked his first shows in high school to pay for college, dropped out of college to run a small Midwestern concert-booking empire and manage local acts such as folk singer Dan Fogelberg and heartland rock band REO Speedwagon. Los Angeles soon beckoned. He met the Eagles while working for David Geffen and Elliot Roberts’ management company and followed the band out the door when they left the Geffen fold; they became the cornerstone of his empire. “I got my swagger from Glenn Frey and Don Henley,” he says. “No doubt about it.”

Azoff never took to pot or coke. The Eagles lived life in the fast lane; he was the designated driver. “Artists,” he once observed, “like knowing the guy flying the plane is sober.” This didn’t stop him from trashing his share of hotel rooms, frequently with guitarist Joe Walsh — whose solo career Azoff shepherded before Walsh joined the Eagles, and who was very much not sober at this time — as an accomplice.

“This was a different age,” Walsh says of his time as the band’s premier lodging-deconstructionist. “We could do anything we wanted, so we did. And Irving’s role was to keep us out of prison, basically.” He recalls a pleasant evening in Chicago in the company of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, which culminated in Walsh laying waste to a suite at the Astor Towers hotel that turned out to be the owner’s private apartment. “We had to check out with a lawyer and a construction foreman,” Walsh remembers. “But Irving took care of it. Without Irving, I’d still be in Chicago.”

Azoff became even more infamous for the pit bull brio he brought to business negotiations on behalf of the Eagles and others, including Stevie Nicks and Boz Scaggs. He didn’t seem to care if people liked him, and his artists loved him for that. Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker said they’d hired Azoff because he “impressed us with his taste for the jugular … and his bizarre spirit.” Jimmy Buffett’s wife grabbed him outside a show at Madison Square Garden, pushed him into the back of a limo and said, You have to manage Jimmy, although Buffett already had a manager at the time.

His outsized reputation as an advocate not just willing but eager to scorch earth on behalf of his clients became an advertisement for his services, a phenomenon that continues to this day. In August 2018, Azoff’s then-client Travis Scott released “Astroworld,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and occupied that slot again the following week, causing Nicki Minaj’s album “Queen” to debut at No. 2. On her Beats One show “Queen Radio,” Minaj accused Scott of gaming Billboard’s chart methodology to keep her out of the top slot and singled his manager out by name: “C—sucker of the Day award,” she said, “goes to Irving Azoff.” Azoff says he reacted as only Azoff would: “I said, ‘I’m really unhappy about that. I want to be c—sucker of the year.’” In 2019, Minaj hired Azoff as her new manager.

Most of the best things anyone’s ever said about Azoff are statements a man of less-bizarre spirit would take as an insult. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Eagles in 1998, Don Henley stood onstage and said of Azoff, “He may be Satan, but he’s our Satan.”

An N95-masked Azoff takes a seat on a patio with a view of hallowed ground — the first hole of the Pebble Beach course, a dogleg-right par 4 with a priceless view of the bay. He cheerfully admits that he and his partners at Full Stop are “obviously, as a management business, kind of losing our ass” this year due to COVID-19. In another reality, the Eagles would have played Wembley Stadium in August before heading off to Australia or the Far East. Styles would have just finished 34 dates in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. As it stands Azoff is hearing encouraging things about treatments and vaccines and new testing machines, and is reasonably confident that technology will soon make it possible for certified-COVID-free fans to again enjoy carefree evenings of live music together; he doesn’t expect much to happen in the meantime.

“What are you gonna do,” Azoff says, “take an act that used to sell 15,000 seats and tell them to play to 4,000 in the [same] arena? The vibe would be horrible, and production costs will stay the same.”

He knows of at least six companies trying to monetize new concert-esque experiences — pay-per-view shows from houses and soundstages, drive-in events and so on. But he’s not convinced anybody wants to sit in their parked car to watch a band play. More to the point, he’s not convinced it’s rock ’n’ roll.

“Fallon and Kimmel, all these virtual performances — people are sick of that,” he says. “Your production values from home aren’t that good. And they’re destroying the mystique. I mean, Justin Bieber jumping around on ‘Saturday Night Live’ the other night without a band, and then he had Chance the Rapper come out? It made him look to me, mortal. I didn’t feel any magic. So we’ve kinda been turning that stuff down to just wait it out.”

In the meantime, he says, Full Stop is picking up new clients during the pandemic. Artists with time on their hands, he believes, “have taken a hard look at their careers— so we’ve grown. No revenues,” he adds with a chuckle, “but people are saying, ‘We need you, we need to plan our lives.’”

“IN HIGH SCHOOL,” Jeffrey Azoff says, “I wanted to be a professional golfer, which has obviously eluded me.” He never expected to take up his father’s profession. “But my dad has always loved his job so much. There’s no way that doesn’t rub off on you.”

The younger Azoff got his first industry job at 21, as a “glorified intern” working for Maroon 5’s then-manager Jordan Feldstein. After a week of filing and fetching coffee, he called his father and complained that he was bored. According to Jeffrey, Irving responded, “Listen carefully, because I’m going to say this one time. You have a phone and you have my last name. If you can’t figure it out, you’re not my son.”

“Direct quote,” Jeffrey says. “It’s one of my favorite things he’s ever said to me. And it’s the spirit of the music business, by the way. There are no rules to this. Just figure it out.”

Over dinner I keep asking Irving how he got the temerity, as a kid barely out of college, to plunge into the shark-infested waters of the ‘70s record industry in Los Angeles. He just shrugs.

“I never felt the music business was that competitive,” he says. “It’s just not that f—ing hard. I don’t think there’s that many smart people in our business.”

It’s been written, I say, that once you landed in California and sized up the competition, you called John Baruck back in Illinois and said —

“We can take this town,” Azoff says, finishing the sentence. “Where’d you get that? John told that story to [Apple senior vice president] Eddy Cue on the golf course three days ago. It’s true. I called John up and said, ‘OK, get your ass out here. We can take this town.’”

In the ensuing years, Azoff has occupied nearly every high-level position the music industry has to offer, surfing waves of industry consolidation. He’s been the president of a major label, MCA; the CEO of Ticketmaster; and executive chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, the behemoth formed from Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation. In 2013 he and Cablevision Systems Corp. CEO and New York Knicks owner James Dolan formed a partnership, Azoff MSG Entertainment; Azoff ran the Forum in Inglewood for Dolan after MSG purchased it in 2012.

Earlier this year Dolan sold the Forum for $400 million to former Microsoft CEO and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who’s since announced plans to build a new stadium on a site just one mile away. Despite the apocalyptic parking scenario that looms for the area — two stadiums and a concert arena on a one-mile stretch of South Prairie Boulevard — Azoff is confident that the Forum will live on as a live-music venue. “People are going, ‘They’re going to tear it down’ — they’re not going to tear it down,” Azoff says. “It’s going to be in great hands. I have many of the artists we represent booked in the Forum, waiting for the restart based on COVID.”

The holdings of the Azoff Co. — formed when Dolan sold his interest in Azoff MSG back to Azoff two years ago — include Full Stop, the performance-rights organization Global Music Rights and the Oak View Group, which is developing arenas in Seattle and Belmont, N.Y., and a 15,000-seat venue on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Azoff describes himself as increasingly focused on “diversification, and building assets for the family that aren’t just dependent on commissions, shall we say.”

But as both a manager and a co-founder of a lobbying group, the Music Artists Coalition, he’s also devoting more time and energy to a broad range of artists’-rights issues, from health insurance to royalty rates to copyright reversion to this year’s Assembly Bill 5, which threatened musicians’ independent-contractor status until it was amended in September. (“That was us,” Azoff says, somewhat grandly. “I got to the governor, the governor signed it — Newsom was great on it.”) He describes his advocacy for artists — even those he doesn’t manage — as a “war on all fronts,” and estimates there are 21 major issues on which “we’ve sort of appointed ourselves as guardians.”

He does not continue to manage artists because he needs the money, he says. (As the singer-songwriter and Azoff client J.D. Souther famously put it, “Irving’s 15% of everybody turned out to be more than everyone’s 85% of themselves.”) Everything he’s doing now — building clout through the Azoff Co., even accepting the Hall of Fame honor — is ultimately about positioning himself to better fight these fights. “I’d rather work on [these things] than anything else,” he says. “But if I didn’t have the power base in the management business, I couldn’t be effective.”

The recorded music industry, having fully transitioned to a digital-first business, is once again making money hand over fist, he points out, but even less of that money is trickling down to artists. That imbalance long predates Big Tech’s involvement in the field, but the failure of music-driven tech companies to properly compensate musicians is clearly the largest burr under Azoff’s saddle.

“These people, when they start out — whether it’s Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever — they resist paying for music until you go beat the f— out of them. And then of course, none of them pay fair market value and they get away with it. Your company’s worth $30 billion and you can’t spend 20 grand for a song that becomes a phenomenon on your channel? Even when they pay, artists don’t get enough. Writers don’t get enough. Music, as a commodity, is more important than it’s ever been, and more unfairly monetized for the creators. And that’s what creates an opportunity for people like me.”

AZOFF’S FIRM NO longer handles Travis Scott, by the way. “Travis is unmanageable,” Azoff says, nonchalantly and without rancor. “We’re involved in his touring as an advisor to Live Nation, but he’s calling his own shots these days.”

I ask if, in the age of the viral hit and the bedroom producer, he finds himself running into more artists who assume they don’t need a manager. Ehh, Azoff says, like it’s always been that way. “There’s a lot of headstrong artists,” he says. “I haven’t seen one that’s better off without a manager than with,” he says, and laughs a little Dennis the Menace laugh.

We’re back at the house. Azoff takes a seat on the living-room couch; Larry Solters sits across from him, his back to the sea. Azoff recalls another big client. Declines to name him. Says he was never happy, even after Azoff and his people got him everything on his wish list. “He hit me with a couple bad emails. Just really disrespectful s—. I sent him an email back that said, ‘Lucky for me, you need me more than I need you. Goodbye.’”

He will confirm having resigned the accounts of noted divas Mariah Carey and Axl Rose. Reports that he once attempted to manage Kanye West have been greatly exaggerated, he says, although they’ve spoken about business. “Robert [Kardashian] was a good friend of mine. The kids all went to school together,” Azoff says. “What I always said to Kanye was, you’re unmanageable, but we can give you advice.

“A lot of people could have made a dynasty on the people we used to manage,” Azoff says, “let alone the ones we kept.”

But he still works with many artists who joined him in the ’70s — with Henley, with Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and with Joe Walsh. Walsh has been sober for more than 25 years; it was Azoff, along with Henley and Frey, who talked him into rehab before the Eagles’ 1994 reunion tour. “Irving never passed judgment on me,” Walsh says. “And from that meeting on, he made sure I had what I needed to stay sober.” If he hadn’t, Walsh says, there’s no chance we’d be having this conversation. “All the guys I ran with are dead. Keith Moon’s dead. John Entwistle’s dead. Everybody’s dead, and I’m here. That’s profound to me.”

The first client Azoff lost was Minnie Riperton — in 1979, to breast cancer when she was only 31. Then Warren Zevon, to cancer, in 2003. Fogelberg, to cancer, four years later.

“And then Glenn,” says Azoff, referring to the Eagles co-founder who died in 2016. “I miss Glenn a lot. And now Eddie.”

Van Halen, that is. I ask Azoff if he can tell me a story that sums up what kind of guy Eddie Van Halen was; he tells me a beautiful one, then says he’d prefer not to see it in print. It makes perfect Azoffian sense — profane trash talk on the record, tenderness on background.

I ask if he’s been moved to contemplate his own mortality, as his boomer-aged clients approach an actuarial event horizon. Of course the answer turns out to involve keeping pace with an Eagle.

“Henley and I are having a race,” he says. “Neither one of us has given in. Neither one of us is going to retire.”

Henley was born in July 1947; Azoff came along that December. Does Don plan to keep going, I ask, until the wheels fall off?

“I don’t know,” Azoff says.

Do you ever talk about it?

“Yeah! He’ll call me up and he’ll go, ‘I really feel s— today.’ And I say, ‘Well, you should, Grandpa. You’re an old man. You ready to throw in the towel? Nope? OK.’”

Azoff says, “I contend that what keeps us all young is staying in the business. I’ve had more people tell me, ‘My father, he quit working, and then his health started failing,’ and all that. Every single — I mean, every single rock star I know is basically doing it to try and stay young. And I think it works. I really think it works.

“I have this friend,” Azoff says. “Calls me once a week, he’s sending me tapes, it’s his next big record. Paul Anka! He’s 80 years old. OK? And my other friend, Frankie Valli …”

“Do you know how old Frankie Valli is?” Solters says. “Eighty-six. And he still performs.”

“Not during COVID,” Azoff says. “I told the motherf—, ‘You’re not going out.’”

#jeffrey azoff #la times #11.05.20

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thefools-journey · 5 years ago

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To the Developers of The Arcana Game:

Warning, this isn’t going to be very nice. I will keep the swearing and personal attacks off this post but this is not going to be nice. Sorry, not sorry. I am a Portia fan first, a Devorak fan second, and ‘good storytelling’ fan all around. And I am not happy.

It has come to my attention that the lead writer of Portia’s route has released a tweet begging people to play her route, saying that it isn’t breaking even and that its completion is being threaten due to low fan interest.

Good.

It pains me as a Portia fan to say that but it is exactly how I feel. Good. I hope it doesn’t get finished, if what we have gotten the last two books is indicative of the final product.

Also, how dare you.

How. Dare. You.

I don’t even know where to begin at this point. Let’s start with this letter. You, Arcana devs, you are the reason that Portia’s route is failing, not the fans. Before the secondaries started, Portia was just as popular and just as anticipated as the boys, if not more so. You were the ones who squandered that enthusiasm. It has been obvious for books now that her route is generating less attention. That’s months and months of real time feedback. Yes, not all routes are going to appeal to all people. But. You saw she was struggling and rather than put a tenth of the attention, effort, and advertising into her that you put into Lucio or Muriel, you let the situation continue. You had options for dealing with the situation. Remember how you ignored her recent birthday? Remember how you just delayed her book in favor of Lucio’s without explanation? Remember how many posts on your twitter and BtS stuff go to Muriel and Lucio, not her? Remember how her brother is one of the most popular characters period and how you didn’t use that to her route’s advantage, either in advertising or story line? Remember how you decided to create all these extra backgrounds and new sprites when you knew she was struggling to “bring in revenue” and that she “wasn’t breaking even”?

No, wait, I take that back.

Instead of letting the situation continue, you actively sabotaged her route for the few fans who were reading and enjoying it. Remember what you guys did with the Death book? Remember that big huge twist you spoiled in random newspaper clippings less than two days before you released the book? Remember that? Let me tell you, I still do. I remember being insulted that this route, alone of all the others, was spoiled so heavily in a bid for attention. The last two books in particular have been a mess.

No, seriously, let’s talk about them. It’s very, very clear from the decline in writing quality, which went from a very thoughtful, tightly focused story on Portia and the mundane, common folk of Vesuvia to an LSD trip less coherent than Alice in Wonderland, that major portions of her story were changed or just dropped in a bid for fan attention. Don’t believe me? I have an entire 3000 word meta-analysis on Portia’s route, character, and themes up through Book 13 over here. You’re welcome.

The most obvious and egregious example of changes forced into the route for attention is the masquerade dress introduced in Book 14. Why in the Star’s name would you add that dress in that manner in that context? Why would Portia, of all people, care about a pretty dress when the palace just got blown up and her brother was still missing? Why would Nadia care about said dress when her entire family has vanished? Why is Portia actively changing into a dress she acknowledges in text is beautiful and bulky and not made for running around in when she’s going to be running around the city? And to top it all off, if you had to have her in the dress, why in the High Priestess’ realm would you not give it to her after her bath scene where it makes sense? No, seriously, think about it. Portia wearing her new fancy dress to her aunt’s pre-masquerade party makes sense, not finding it on the cottage stoop. It’s a nice contrast and parallel to the outfit she was wearing for Tasya’s bribery dinner. Portia not changing out of the dress makes more sense than Portia changing into the dress.

That is only one example. I can pick out any number of out of character moments or pacing issues from this last book especially, and oh boy I will have a huge post on that, but here, have a few little things I noticed. Why was the cliffhanger from 14 not resolved at the beginning of 15? Why did we waste a quarter of the book finding Muriel for no reason? No, seriously, I love Muriel but he has no bearing on Portia’s story, much like Portia barely features in his or Lucio’s books. Why did Lucio reappear off screen? Why did Asra’s characterization and reactions flip flop from line to line? One moment he’s worried about Muriel, the next he wants to chase butterflies? What? Why was there no sense of urgency to anything the characters did or said since Temperance started?

Also, perhaps most importantly, Book 15 is The Devil. Where was the Devil? Where? Where was Tasya? This is the rising action to the climax, writers. You know better than this. Everyone knows you know better and are better than this. We know you know better than this because Muriel’s route has a very similar scenario with damage to the palace and caring for refugees and it does miles better than Portia’s. We know you know better because this decline in quality has only appeared here, in the least popular route’s desperate search for attention, and has largely remained out of the more popular routes.

Here’s the gist of the situation, Arcana devs.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, I defended Portia’s route and explained how wonderful it was. I was so invested in her and where her story was headed. I defended it against complaints that it was boring or too similar to the primary routes or that nothing was happening in it. I didn’t care about the other routes because I was getting everything I ever wanted out of the game from her route alone. I even held off writing about my disappointments with Book 14 just in case that was a one time bump in the road. It was not. So now I speak.

I am glad that your mad scramble changes failed to generate any new interest in her story line.

I’m glad because you stripped all the character arcs, themes, and meanings from the first half in exchange for fan service and attention in a last ditch gamble which thus far has failed.

I’m glad because now, maybe, you’ll look at this situation and realize exactly where you went wrong.

After all, the Star is a card of clarity and truth.

-Mod Telos

#the arcana game #portia #portia update #portia spoilers #the arcana update #dear devs #this is bull #how dare #The Wheel Turns #more like the wheel's gonna grind you up #portia devorak #arcana game #arcana meta #the arcana meta #portia meta

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bopinion · 4 years ago

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2021 / 07

Aperçu of the Week:

Why should we always be thinking over? Wouldn't thinking ahead be more important? (Marie von den Benken)

Bad News of the Week:

Last week, as every year, statistical figures came out about last year's agriculture. With shocking figures: in recent years, in Bavaria alone 15,000 farms have given up. Out of about 100,000. In Bavaria, farms have always been more than just agricultural production sites. They shaped village structures, maintained the cultural landscape and provided the pretty postcard motifs with happy cows in green pastures. There is so much culture in agriculture. But this seems more and more in danger.

Of the farms that defined our hamlet for centuries, just two remain. And one of the two still active farmers already needs a sideline, since agriculture no longer yields enough. The good old days still shine through: on Sunday, the three or four generations go to church together in traditional costume. In the morning we first hear cows mooing and chickens clucking, the ringing of the cowbells later mingles with that of the church towers. In the afternoon, grandpa plays the accordion in front of the house. But the main purpose of the farms - cattle breeding, dairy farming, vegetable cultivation and arable farming - are becoming increasingly rare, concentrated, as in any industry, more and more on a few large farms, which the now EU-wide competition forces to grow. With seasonal workers from Romania and harvest helpers from Bulgaria instead of their own children and grandchildren.

While the sector of the agricultural economy is suffering from structural change, another is only beginning to suffer with Corona: the breweries. Here, too, we are talking about rural businesses that have been producing local specialties for generations in small family-run operations. And which belong to Bavaria like its white-blue sky. But while wine usually gets better and more valuable over time, beer is a seasonal commodity that only lasts a few months. And now it has to be thrown away because the most important customers, from pubs to beer gardens to folk festivals, haven't been buying any for months because they can't receive any customers themselves. But at the same time, the breweries do not receive any public aid, since they themselves have not had to close due to government restrictions.

Thus Corona draws ever larger, hardly less cruel circles. And we learn that many things that we "normally" take for granted are not. Many things cannot simply be ordered from Amazon. And its ever-larger logistics warehouses are no good as postcard motifs either.

Good News of the Week:

Super Mario is back. If anyone can fix it, it's him. No, it's not about the revival of a video game classic, but about Italian politics. I've never quite understood why the French are so often derisively referred to as "ungovernable": in Italy, the 67th government has been in power for a few days now - in only the 18th legislative term. That must be a world record. There is no democratically governed country where advantage-taking is as present as in Bella Italia. I don't even mean corruption, although it is omnipresent. I mean the selfishness of the political caste, which has always been more concerned with its own power than with the good for the nation. And the electorate is happy to go along with it. After all, they have elected Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister four times.

At the beginning of this year, the time had come once again: in the parliament in Rome, which is characterized by temporary, fragile coalitions, the incumbent prime minister Giuseppe Conte first lost his majority and then also the vote of confidence. Fatal at a time when the country needs to find a way out of the Corona crisis. That is why President Sergio Mattarella has resisted the many calls for new elections. These would not only have been detrimental to containing infection and overcoming division in the country, but would also have taken far too long. After all, only with an active, legitimized government will Italy have access to the billions in reconstruction funding from the EU, which it needs yesterday rather than tomorrow. Mattarella remembered the theory of technocracy and called into being a government of experts last week. With Prof. Dr. Mario Draghi at its head.

Draghi, an economist and banker, is known to most from his time as president of the European Central Bank ECB in 2011-2019, with success: he overcame the euro crisis with aplomb ("Whatever is takes!"), was proclaimed by Fortune as the "second greatest political leader in the world" and the first Italian to be awarded an honorary doctorate by MIT. Since that time, calming financial markets has been called the "Draghi effect" - and he himself "Super Mario." Exactly what distinguished him as ECB president is what Italy needs right now: a proven expert in economic and financial policy, an administrative professional and, above all, a sovereign leader without any ambition for a political career. He will simply do his job. Undoubtedly a good one - as is his way.

Personal happy Moment of the Week:

The real boss of a television show is called a "showrunner." He is not the main actor, not the director, not the anchor. But he is the gray eminence who pulls all the strings. In art, this job is done by the "curator", who is responsible for the conception, the soul of each exhibition. Tomorrow, "Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America", the last exhibition of Okwui Enwezor, a superstar of the scene who died in Munich the year before last, will start in New York City. An exhibition that could not be more topical and important, since it finally addresses the latent racism in U.S. society. Typical of Enwezor, who always bridged the gap between art and society - because only between these two poles can this force field arise that we call culture.

I've missed a lot of cultural things in my life: I never saw Freddie Mercury or David Bowie live. And I wasn't in Berlin when the Wall fell, nor when Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag. But I did not miss Okwui Enwezor and his work. When he curated the two most important events in contemporary art - Documenta 2002 in Kassel and the 2015 Venice Biennale - I was there. And when he took the helm at the "Haus der Kunst" (House of Art) in Munich in 2011, I didn't even have to travel to enjoy his conceptions of art presentation. Even if with Enwezor the art scene lost one of the greats prematurely to cancer, in retrospect it still makes me happy to have experienced his work. Thank you!

As I write this...

...I am deliberately drinking a Bavarian beer that comes from one of the local mini-beerhouses in our neighborhood. In this case, from the Klosterbrauerei Reutberg - a pilgrimage site of barley juice, to which we also like to cycle in the summer. Support local businesses!

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blackberd · 4 years ago

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Always Trust a Madman with a Plan (Part 1 of 2)

It all started with a simple game, and Jervis Tetch never saw it coming.

Enjoy!

~~~

“Alright, Valeska,” the guard outside the secluded cell called out, clanking his nightstick against the metal door. “It’s your lucky day, you get to make a request.”

Leisurely laying in his cot, Jerome grinned as the door was unlocked and pulled open. The pudgy guard waited expectantly with a hand ready at his holster. Jerome, still lounging, lazily turned to him, a lock of ginger hair sweepingly fell onto his forehead.

“Don’t tell me it’s my birthday, Chubby,” he said, mockingly puzzled.

The guard, unimpressed, smiled dryly. “If you ain’t interested, there are plenty o’ other inmates dyin’ to be bumped up the wait-list.”

“Now, now, Chubby,” chastened Jerome, making a show of getting up and exaggerating a deep stretch. “Have a sense of humor. Forty hours per week in a place like this can really make ya forget how to take a joke, huh? Try living here!” He released a screeching cackle and patted the guard on the back once he reached him.

Not many Arkham inmates possessed the power of laying a single digit on any of the prison guards without being hurled to the floor for attempted assault. Jerome knew this, too, and was careful with the way he exploited his strengths. He knew how to get to people, how to make them talk; he couldn’t deny the seamless witty charm he’d perfected to a fault. It was all a matter of unveiling their motivations, what made them tick. One thing Jerome learned over the years was that there’s a bit of bad in every good, and the bad had a habit of always outweighing the good when given the right push.

Chubby, for instance, was a respectable long-time prison guard whose name was, in fact, not Chubby, but something Jerome had long replaced with a nickname more suitable to the man’s physical appearance. Through mere conversation over the weeks, Jerome came to find out about Chubby’s spiraling down debts and child support payments. With a few pretty words, he’d convinced Chubby to write his name at the top of the wait-list with the promise of being rewarded a hefty sum of green dollar bills. With charm came cleverness, and with cleverness came powerful friends, and Jerome sure as hell valued them. Guards were always payed, and their loyalty never ceased to grow. In short, Jerome got what he wanted in the end. Always.

Money, Jerome rolled his eyes at the word as Chubby ushered him down a miserable hallway. It’s always money with these folks. They’ll fight claw and fang for it and then gamble it all away in one night, and still they call me the crazy one. Hah!

Jerome worked it all out years ago, long before he started trading money for special favors. It was easy, laughably so. He started his very own not-so-under-the-table trust fund at Arkham Asylum, the first of its kind, and people would be heavily in the wrong to assume it held the traditional definition of the term. It was anything but.

‘Fund me if you trust me!’, was his comical campaign, a funny little play-on-words which actually meant: Fund me or else.

Fortunately, half the prison inmates were so brain dead that they mindlessly payed their dues from earned wages month after month in hopes to stay clear of Jerome’s radar. In a way, they were buying their safety, because Jerome was not the sort of man you wanted breathing down your neck. What’s worse was when he had one of his loyal cronies do it for him while he casually watched with a mouth full of buttered popcorn. Those who didn’t pay up were often made into spectacles to alert others of the dire consequences that came to those who ignored the fund. Jerome never gave second chances. He ruled with fear, never mercy.

‘You had it coming, Dietrich, you sly dog,’ Jerome thought to himself with a slimy grin.

Guards, of course, knew about the fund though they never interfered. Why should they? They each had the chance to earn a wad of extra money should Jerome ever wake up with a favor in mind. It was a dirty game in which Jerome was always winning, and he just loved to win.

Chubby led him to a confrontational room with nothing but a metal table and a single chair in the center. After being shackled to the table with handcuffs, Chubby left the room and Jerome sat in absolute silence. His grin never fell, and his fingers tapped in time to the catchy tune in his head.

“Jerome Valeska,” a voice came from the speakers.

“Present.”

“In front of you is an envelope. Inside, you will find a Request for Property. Do you understand?”

Annoyed, Jerome stared into the tinted black window where he knew people were observing him from.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to write it all down for me in plain, simple words.”

“Jerome,” says the voice, exasperated. “This is no time to be funny.”

“It never is,” Jerome grumbled to himself.

“Unseal the envelope, carefully read our conditions, and state your request. We urge you to take this seriously because requests that violate our conditions are immediately vetoed.”

Jerome stopped listening the second he grew bored. With a suppressed yawn, he ripped the envelope open and unfolded the form within. He didn’t bother reading it.

“Boring, boring, boring,” he sang under his breath as he scribbled down what he wanted by using two little words with a chained pen. Only after he finished signing his name at the bottom of the form did he mentally unmute the voice that had been calling to him.

“Jerome Valeska!” it bellowed angrily. “We told you to unseal, not rip! This leads to an automatic rejection!”

Jerome pushed the pen away and shrugged. “Rip, unseal, they’re both the same to me. You people know I have trouble understanding, don’t you? You said so yourselves. Should’ve drawn me a picture to follow or something.”

“Did you read the conditions?”

“Yes.”

A short pause.

“Are you telling the truth?”

“No.”

A faint ruckus came from the speakers and some frustrated man kept ordering: “Get him out of there. Just get him out of my face. Fucking wasting our time...”

Chubby was let back into the room with a key to unlock the cuffs from around Jerome’s wrists. Sorely rubbing at the tender skin, Jerome stood to flauntingly bow at the invisible audience behind the window.

“Always a pleasure doing business with you,” he said amiably and followed Chubby out into the hall.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” Chubby reprimanded. “Would’ve done ya good to listen to them. That form’s going straight to the trash. You messed up, Clown Boy.”

Jerome, unrestrained, walked alongside the guard without care, as though the two were close buddies. With a soft hum, he smiled to himself. It was small, and people who didn’t know him would mistake it for his scar, but this was the smile Jerome wore when he knew something others didn’t.

“On the contrary, my fat friend. I’d say this is all going according to plan.”

And it was, because Jerome had written more than just his request on that form. He’d initiated a simple offer to the head of Unit Staff, a man who gave the final say in whether or not a prisoner’s request was accepted. Jerome couldn’t remember his name and thus dubbed him ‘Curly’; a mocking nickname, given that the head of Unit Staff was a bald man with not a hair on his shiny, shiny head.

Jerome knew that the form would be dismissed, but he also knew that Curly wouldn’t refuse an offer from a man known for keeping his end of the bargain. Curly, thanks to his severe gambling addiction, would adhere to Jerome’s request without having it bonded to a set of nonsensical conditions. Hilariously, there was no need for Jerome to do any of this. He could’ve been civil and read the forty-something conditions, and he could’ve lied and said that he did, in fact, read them. His request might’ve been peculiar, but it was certainly a harmless one. It didn’t oppose a single health or safety violation, but he had a reputation to withhold, and he, of course, wanted powerful people to be his friends, such as Curly the Bald-Headed Chief.

A Request for Property was typically approved within a few weeks. The request itself wasn’t delivered to the requestee until much longer than that. When it came to Jerome Valeska, however, his request was delivered to his cell the very next morning before breakfast.

Upon unwrapping the newspaper packaging, his eyes lit up fervently just as the toothiest, wayward grin spread across his face from ear-to-ear.

“Well then, a very happy birthday to me!”

~~~

(To be continued )

#jerome valeska #jervis tetch #jonathan crane #joker #gotham #arkham asylum #fanfiction

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mamafishfound · 5 years ago

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Leon: The Rabid Lion and Astrology

Alright finally got to posting this I'm sorry it took so long a lot was going on with the Cornovirus stuff and my husband had issues with his green card and can't find it which we had no luck finding but alas thats a unrelated issue to the post. So here we are for the long awaited Star Crossed Myth and Astrology post

The Leo Archtype

Leo is ruled by the sun and rules the 5th house, the house of creative expression, arts, hobbies,children, and ect. Leo energy shines the brightest when it is in your sun sign and many famous Leos tend to pursue theater careers and are stereotyped as dramatic and attention-seeking. In a way when we first met Leon, he instantly was all like " you do what i say woman" and magically took her up in the sky to show her the stars. Logically speaking he was just trying to convince her he and the rest of the gods were for real not just trying to kidnap her XD, but the way he did all that was very dramatic and theatrical hahaha. So right off the bat, Leon was very Leo like ASSHOLE edition. In my experience, Leo placement folks are rather generous expressive and kind and although they appear to be self centered, they are kind to their friends and love to share the spotlight. Leon I guess is the kind of Leo who is sick of all this attention due to his powers (if you consider it a power hehe) and thus he wanted to withdraw himself from others and used his powers to appear dominate and in control. Leo energy is very much all about keeping up their reputation and the bad apples of the signs can come across arrogant and egoistic, which Leon shows right off the bat in his route and other routes. Leon's whole purpose is to erase his sin of rejecting true love. Leo archetype is all sharing and expressing love so Leon is basically an unevolved Leo that need to find love for himself once more. Leon was always hard on himself and due to his guilt of indirectly causing a goddess to fall from grace... I don't blame him.

Leon hides the very dark and sad feelings he has and its up to the MC to help him rediscover the true beauty and essence of love. Love does correlate with creative expression that the archetype is all about and I don't blame the king of the heavens casted him away. Leon shouldn't just waste away in self doubt and hide it in shield of aggressiveness and arrogance. Fixed signs in general can have a hard time being open to different perspectives in morale and values and when they are fixed in one way to view the world its a bit of a challenge for them to change it up. This isn’t the say all fixed signs are narrow-minded but when they do change its almost like they go through a metamorphosis and they are better then ever.

Leo is a fire sign and its also fixed, so passion and self expression is strong and upfront. I only met a few introverted Leos and even they have a certain type of stubbornness that is unmatched. Leon takes several chapters to admit his downfalls and give love one more shot. He didn’t believe in true love because all he saw was goddesses lust for his sex and power, so he came to one conclusion that love is not real and he wanted to change the heavens to see through his own image. He even attempted to overthrow the king and take his place. He was someone who thought highly himself and wanted his way only. Its no wonder he is the leader in his department due to his power and charisma that the Leo archetype is all about.

once Leon opened up his cold heart to MC then he is absolved of his sin and he can fully represent the Leo sign. He still is a bit controlling dominate and sadistic (which is why we all secretly love him for hehe) but after he reaches his revelation in love he is more caring generous and kind to the MC. He definitely did a 180 and was more daring and love struck which i can see in Leo placements in general. Leo energy is also known to be wildly sexual and hot and heavy in the bedroom. Leon in some side stories and sequels to his story he definitely is known as an amazing sex god.

The 5th House

This house in astrology is associated with our creative endeavors, hobbies, casual flings, self-expression, and artistic talents. This house is how we standout (or don't standout?) in this world compared to others or audience we are "performing" to. Leo energy is said to be the performers of all the signs so we can imagine that this energy desires to shine through. Leon is the main guy in this story and its no wonder, since he is the route who "outshines" the rest of the guys. Kidding of course LOL, but if you saw the interview of one of the writers of the story, she appeared a bit thirsty for Leon when discussing his storyline. He kept trying to paint the Heroine to be so into him when she got embarrassed over seeing him and Teo having an "orgy" ( like they were just messing around but basically it appeared to be like that LMAO) and even pointed out their bet on the Heroine to be curious and want to "watch their performance". Perhaps she did want to secretly see it but to be accused of such can be humiliating haha. I understand that since I'm a 12th house person ( I'll go over that on Ichthy's analysis if you are unfamiliar with the houses in astrology) I tend to hide my true colors and myself out of shame and insecurity and so seeing Leon being so arrogant and so full of himself rubs me the wrong way and it explains why hes one of my least favorite characters, because he represents everything i shame myself to feeling. Arrogance and cockiness can be seen in the 5th house but remember that is only shown if the said individual is enabled to do so.

Leon represents the side of this house with casual flings and self-expression. He is the head minister of the Wishes department, and even though he acts like he could care less, he is very passionate of his role. All the gods under his department respect him despite his blatant affairs. The fifth house is all about living life to the fullest and expressing ourselves in a way that makes us feel special and unique. The sun rules this house and its no wonder because the sun is the brightest star in our solar system. Leon knows this and it seems he is tired of this yet he still enjoys having the limelight still. This is very stereotypical of Leo energy in general but I feel Leon is just bored of simply getting attention just because he wants to gain attention being unexpected and challenges the King for it by attempting to take his power. I think side stories or his POV route goes over this more but Leon is tired of playing by the rules and he wants to go extreme in order to feel more "alive". From what i heard from others regarding his second season stuff and other side stories, his route is all about the DRAMA and its no wonder he's pushed to be the front man of the game....we all love a hot and dramatic story line for our daily otome hahaha (and if you don’t well....ajfklajlfjakljflajjaklajlGAJJJ lol jk do you boo).

Children also represent this house and normally its associated with your relation with children or how you are as a child. This house also might cue in about your own children if you chose to have any that is. There is a saying that says " Children brighten our world" which is fitting considering what makes us stand out and "bright" is what this house is all about. Leon is not necessarily a big fan of children (unless side stories of his reveal otherwise) but his dramatic and unfiltered comments to the Heroine can be deemed "childlike". Someone correct me but he and Partheno are the only routes that its confirmed the Heroine get preggers right? If not then what i am about to say is invalid but its no wonder Leon's route gets the married with a baby ending. I wonder how he would be as a father? I bet he will shower his child with love tender and care but would also push his child to be the best version of themselves. People in general with personal planets in the 5th house if they decide to have kids, are very good parents and would be the fun mom or dad that encouraged their kids to reach their dreams.

Planets in Leo

Okay so we talked about the archetype of Leo and the house placement and a bit of its ruling planet (the sun) of Leo as well. Now for planet placements. I will only be focusing on the 9 planets astrologers study just to keep things simpler. If anyone wants more of my take on other placements such as Chiron, North node, or even Lilith, let me know I will make a separate post for that. In a birth chart the moment you were born its made by the exact placement the planets are at the time. The sun sign is normally what horoscopes go over but did you know that Venus mars and other planets impact you even more? Since the gods rule their own sign, we can assume their birth chart is all in one sign haha. So I will be going over how Leo energy is played in each planet and how its shown in the entire main story for Leon's route.

Sun in Leo

The sun is considered our sole purpose in our life time. It also is the part of us that is our over all theme of our personality and life choices. It also is what we want to become in the future. The sun sign is normally what horoscopes focus us but the sun sign is only like a summary to our life long autobiography. Sun in Leo is Leo's true home planet and its easier to pick out Leo sun folks especially if their sun sign is positioned between the 1st and 5th houses. Leon is very much the staple of Leo with his arrogance, confidence and need to be dramatic. Though at times he tries to act like he could care less, its soooo obvious he does care about being the center of the Heroine's attention even in the begining of his route XD.

Moon in Leo

The moon sign is known as the "dark side" of your personality. The moon is the hidden sense of self that only your close loved ones or significant others experience. The moon is also associated with the mother or women in your life. The moon is how we react and how we internalize our emotions as well. Most astrologers will look at your moon sign and might come up with what kind of mother or mother figure that raised you, since the mother is the parent that teaches and nurtures us and our emotional well being. Since there was no talk about Leon's parents in the main story (maybe in side stories? ) we will talk about how Leon expresses himself emotionally and how his emotions change based on how the Heroine interacts with him as they get to know each other. I really saw his moon shine when he saw how the Heroine was passionate about helping Her best Friend Hyori's romance life. Normally Leon acts like he could care less but he was being inspired by the Heroine's persistence to make Hyori and her bf to get along again after a big fight. Another example was when Leon openly gives respect to the Heroine in teaching him love and its real meaning. Well go over that more in the Venus section. his emotions are volatile and responds when the heavens started to go against him. Leo moon folks normally are vibrant and warm folks and are good at sharing the lime light over Leo sun folks. Leon even thanks and acknowledges the Heroine for being so strong in the forbidden ending which is the epiphany of how Leo moons show their feelings.

Mercury in Leo

The mercury sign is associated with the conscious mind. This planet is all about how we communicate and retain information within. Mercury also is about our learning style and thinking pattern on a daily and mercury normally is closely aligned with our sun sign. Mercury in Leo are folks that can come across as theatrical and dramatic and are good at gassing themselves and others. The spotlight for this placement is vibrant and fun and Leon at the get go of the route is blunt with the Heroine. He is sadistic in his thinking and has fun being dominant an is very open in dialogue over that. Remeber when Leon would always call out the Heroine when she was distracted or doing something that is laughable? I do remeber her talking to Karno and he so calls out her out being a fickle goldfish. Throughtout his route he communicates with sass and always seems to want to start something. Its no wonder Zyglavis and Scorpio can't stand him, he just sooo full of himself but at least he can back it up being the strongest god in the heavens next to the king himself.

Venus in Leo

Venus is major component that Leon seems to lack connection with in the route. Venus is the planet of love, romance, and short term gains. Its also how we show are love to others and how we expect to be loved back as well in romantic relationships especially. Spolier alert, its love that Leon seems to underestimate love , causing the King of the heavens to kick him out to figure what is loveeeee baby dont hurt me (sorry i had too LOL). Leon doesnt realize this and thought since he did not pleasure the goddess that obsessed over him that was the reason he was cast away from the heavens. The 5th house has a tendency to be more about the fun and thrill regarding love and can get confused with lust. That is what Leon seem to have an issue with, he was so used to being the center of attention due to his power to give absolute pleasure but he always felt like he was being used by others. He wanted more when it comes to love and thats what the Heroine teaches him. Love can come in many different ways and I find Venus in Leo folks love to share the spotlight and help others find love within the best kind of trait in Venus in Leo.

Mars in Leo

Mars is considered the planet of action, agression and sex. Its very much the opposite of Venus. Mars is greatly shown in Leon's route, especially when he decided to fight the King of Heavens. Mars in Leo has a powerful force within any individual that has this placement. Leon's abiliies are known to be the most powerful and every god and goddess fear and respect him. Even Zyglavis the other department head fears him. going back to the concept of love, Leon confuses lust and love and he is apologetically thinks he knows better then what the heroine has to say about love and he gets aggressive if questioned or dissed. Leo placement folks tend to easily get offended and might lash out quickly if anyone questions their stance or actions. Leon is no exception and that plays in the role of fear and respect among all the gods in the heavens.

Jupiter in Leo

Jupiter is the planet of expansion and good fortune. Its the planet in our chart that gives us the most luck and talent wherever its positioned in the chart. I have this placement in my own birth chart (but in retrograde smh lol) and I think its shown in Leon's route with his natural charisma and excellent leadership skills. He might be feared and sought after the most but everyone relies on him the most when the going gets tough in the heavens. Even though he was cast out of the heavens for his sin, the gods still go to him for help as soon as they realize he can still use his powers. He basically is the ace and brings luck to the heavens when the going gets tough.

Saturn in Leo

Saturn is the planet of restrictions and discipline. Its considered the grandfather of all the planets. Leon is put on restriction for loosing interest in love and not doing his job to the fullest. He also is arrogant and looks down on those who don't have power like him. I see the king of heavens being like Saturn in these circumstances for he wants to teach Leon a lesson for getting too full of himself just becauae he has the most power. The entire route is basically synonymous to his Saturn in Leo that teaches him to not get cocky about himself and realize love's true meaning and to share love to all humans to be able to do his job correct. After all he is the head of the department of wishes and how could he grant wishes if he doesn’t even believe in the power of love?

Uranus in Leo

Uranus is considered one of the generational planets of change and humantarian pursuits. In the sign of Leo change is necessary on how you are viewed in the spotlight whether for a good or bad reasons. I think change occurred when Leon and 5 other gods where cut of their powers and had to figure out what their sin they needed to absolved from. Uranus is not comfortable in Leo since Uranus's original ruler is Aquarius, the opposing sign of Leo. So its no wonder Leon tried to fight the King and rallied up the other gods to go against him.

Neptune in Leo

Neptune is also a generational planet of modern day changes and the overall dreams society might strive for as a whole. Leon does have a wish to rule over the heavens and be the strongest god there ever is (spoiler alert he does in the ending of season 2 LOL) and he grows tired of the King of Heaven's sadistic ways so its no wonder he tries to go against him. I also associate Neptune in his job as head minister in department of wishes. Since dreams and wishes tend to intertwine, when it comes to granting wishes he seems to go for those of hidden desires in human's need to be center of attention. He did grant the boys need to get stronger to help his grandma as an example in his route. Wanting to be the center of attention is not inherently bad especially if its where you shine to help others in need and being the "hero".

Pluto in Leo

Now finally the planet of death is here haha that is not to say literal death but it does have association with the death and rebirth cycle. Pluto is the final generational planet that defines the exact generations itself ( such as boomers or generation z ect) each generation brings something new to the society and transformation on how things are change with changing times. Pluto is also represents what we need to change and evolve in our individual placements. Since the gods probably been around from many millions of years so Pluto's effects probably are more immediate then gradual. it took 12 chapters for Leon to learn about love and its true meaning so Pluto's transformation was more immediate for Leon then any human ever lol.

So How Accurate is the Game then?

So is the game accurate in representing Leo? Well that’s subjective they do got the negative stereotypes down of Leo's such as arrogance, over dramatic, and sadism but remember just because that is considered the bad traits doesnt mean all Leo's are like this. I have known a lot of great Leo's that are generous, entertaining and kind. In fact in my experience Leo's shine gives me hope for a better future in humanity itself. I think once Leon does realize the value in true love then that’s when more positive traits of Leo are shown. Leon is not overall horrible character he just has flaws that tend to get excused because he is the main guy and we as consumers that play this game are suppose to not care and want some of that shit he does to us because he is soooo hOt...Which is problematic but isn’t that the tea and Leo energy thrive in the drama in general even if they don't mean too. His route is the most dramatic and its only fitting that its because he's a Leo. Now a friend of mine (shouting out to u @bitch-pinnacle 😍) told me that the gods character design are similar to the Ascendant of each sign. The Ascendant is the sign that reflect your outward demeanor and how you are perceived to others. Finding your ascendant is by knowing your exact time of birth and it starts the entire house system in your birth chart. Leo rising are known to have hair like the mane of a lion and are expressive and lavish looking and tend to attract anyone to them. That definitely sounds like Leon. Even in his god form his hair is all big and long like a Leo rising are said to be like. So overall i think the game is pretty accurate its just that in the get go Leon embodies the negative side of Leo and I can see that rubbing you Leos the wrong way haha. After all if people say unpleasant things about you even if not meaning to can offend you. Leo folks in my experience get readily hurt fast if ridiculed or questioned. After all Leo is the performers of the zodiac and shine the most out in the open.

#leon #star crossed myth #astrology #leon scm #otome games #otome #zodiac #leo

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