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theladypirate · 5 years ago

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all the mannerisms questions for Murk. dew it. And the first 10 for Blessing. :3c

How boy here we go, Murk is my firbolg life cleric and I fucked them up real good in their backstory

1.Meeting someone for the first time

A little shy, polite, very worried about what kind of impression they're giving. Probably quiet.

2.Around someone they want to impress

Bashful, a little clumsy bc they're overthinking things, eager to please.

3.When they’re with someone they dislike

They withdraw a bit, they're nervous and jumpy, worried about physical altercation, ready to try to leave at a moments notice. Fake smile, doesn't reach their eyes.

4.In their workplace/occupation

Efficient, precise, even confident. They're a healer, they're good at healing, it's what they know how to do and really the only thing they think they're good for.

5.Spending time with family

They were an orphan and they never got adopted but the idea of family was always... soft. In their head. People who cared about them and would have their back like they have their family's. They're starting to realize that's what the crew of the Scarlet Ibis is... and they really hope that if they're useful enough they can stay.

6.With their closest friend/s

They're somewhat playful, when they let their shields down. They like to gently tease people and they are SO supportive.

7.Around someone they’re attracted to

Very attentive, and wanting to know all about them, delighted to know every new detail, a little shy, a little hopeful, and always very aware of how the person is feeling

8.With a lover

Murk has never had a "lover" but they have had sex. Its something of a right of passage in the Grand Wharf, and they def enjoyed it but they wouldnt seek it out on their own. I think they would probably be just ridiculously soft, and probably take up poetry.

9.When they want to be left alone

Tight, pinched smile, closed off body language, looking for an out but not able to just say they needed to be alone.

10.When they feel they are in danger

Anxious, white knuckle grip on their mace, hyper aware of their surroundings. It's an unfortunately familiar feeling.

11.Something makes them insecure

Will not make eye contact, almost ashamed, absolutely believes the insecurity is justifiably a flaw.

12.Experiencing loss

Curled in on themselves, making themselves as small as possible, somewhere nobody can see them, bc being vulnerable in front of someone is dangerous

13.Proud of an achievement

A shy smile, they tug at their braid a little and fiddle with their holy symbol and blush just a bit.

14.When something pisses them off

They have a slow temper and when it reaches a boiling point it's not explosive, it's cold. They go still and focused and can be very very vicious. They would never do that to someone they cared about tho, bc they know what that kind of thing can do to someone.

15.Looking forward to something

They hum and cant hold still, and they smile and fiddle with their hair.

16.Nervous about an uncertainty

Wringing their hands, anxiety and pacing and spiralling into worst case scenarios.

17.When they’re overwhelmingly bored

Theyll organize everything over and over again, or pray, or clean. They're not good at being still.

18.Just done something embarrassing

Burying their face in their hands and hiding, possibly tearing up, running away

19.Suppressing their emotions

"Everything is fine!" Smiling and forcing cheerfulness, even as they start shaking, clenched fists to keep the shaking from being very obvious

20.When they’re running late

Scatterbrained, forgetful, stressed, running in circles and talking to themselves

21.When they’re sick

They drag themselves out of bed and make themselves eat and take medicine and slog through the day and refuse to lay down unless someone else makes them

22.Training/working out

They're dedicated and methodical, focused. They want to get it right.

23.Trying to court/seduce someone

They've never tried, actually. I think probably they would wear something sexy, then lose their nerve and put on their robe and pretend they didn't try. They aren't really in the headspace to do anything like that rn.

24.When they’re lying

They do NOT want to be lying, they wince visibly when they lie, they babble and gesture and ramble, especially when it's to someone they care about. If they don't know or care about the person they're lying to then they might be able to lie better, but they still actively dislike doing it.

25.Trying something new

Cautiously optimistic

Blessing is a tiefling monk and every time I try to get into her head it's just *Wii menu music*

1.Meeting someone for the first time

She has absolutely no concept of stranger danger, possibly bc shes 8ft tall including horns and able to yeet most things away from her thanks to her impressive muscles and complete disregard for the laws of physics.

2.Around someone they want to impress

Idk if she ever actually cares to impress anyone ever, she Does Not Care about social status and if you dont like her thats your problem.

3.When they’re with someone they dislike

She would just leave. She doesn't care. She wont spend a single second doing something she doesn't wanna. If she had no choice but to stay near them, she would probably just pretend they dont exist. They speak to her? Suddenly she cant hear. If they try to get I to her personal space she will throw them and/or stunning strike them.

4.In their workplace/occupation

Singular focus and drive, absolutely no guiding morals or principles. She was *technically* a junior apprentice alchemist, and she likes to make potions, and is even good at it! But unless you ask for a specific one, chances are whatever she makes will be effective but... questionably useful.

5.Spending time with family

She loves her family so much, shes so relaxed around them, they climb her like shes part of the environment. It's not at all unusual to find 2-3 gnome cousins or siblings hanging off her at any given time.

6.With their closest friend/s

I'm... actually not sure shes ever had friends before? Like... family, absolutely, but friends? She was sort of sheltered growing up, so I think shes still learning what it's like to have those.

7.Around someone they’re attracted to

Probably asks to spar, tries to show off a bit and probably overdoes it, absolutely just tells them she likes them with no qualms.

8.With a lover

Shes never had one, but shes not opposed to the idea.

9.When they want to be left alone

I mean.... she will just go. Shes very good about telling people what she needs. She'll just say "I need to be alone rn" and then go... do that.

10.When they feel they are in danger

I'm not even sure Blessing understands what danger even is she probably has some kind of self preservation instinct but hell if I know what it is. She wants to punch things and make potions and everything else about her is a mystery

#blessing #murk #god these are both very fun charavyers to play #in very distinctly different ways

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yessoupy · 5 years ago

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annual writing self-evaluation (2019)

i. Optional if applicable: link to last year’s self evaluation:

here’s the 2018 eval!

1. List of works published this year (in the order that they were posted):

your skin makes me cry (the walking dead, daryl/jesus)

yellow (harry/reader)

and.... that’s it!!!! yeesh.

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

Not that I have a lot of works to choose from, but I’m genuinely proud of YSMMC, my very first longfic. I put so much into that fic and actually FINISHED it. And I’ve re-read it a few times top to bottom and STILL love it. It’s probably my favorite piece of my writing ever.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

I like them both, lol. But I guess I can say I wished I’d been able to write more.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

I re-read YSMMC on the plane so I could do this. This is my favorite passage, from Chapter 16 (warning: scene is explicit, and why I’m cutting the rest):

Daryl felt him, all over, from the tips of Paul’s hair slipping over his shoulder to brush against Daryl’s chest to Paul’s hand grazing up over his ribs and up his good arm to intertwine their fingers… “You feel fuckin’ amazing,” he groaned, clutching Paul’s hand.

“Shut up,” Paul hissed, hips stuttering and hand clenching tight.

Daryl swept his free hand down Paul’s side and on around to his ass, pulling him closer. “That an order?”

“That’s a ‘shut up or I’ll come before I get to fuck you like I want to.’”

“I make you feel that good?”

“Fuck. You have no idea, do you?” Paul panted, pulling out all slow and gentle, making Daryl’s toes curl and his eyes squeeze shut when he thrust back in. “Hottest thing I’ve ever seen, you lying here for me. You hear those sounds you’re making? Like you can’t help it, like what I’m doing is just what you need—”

“That’s right—” And it was, more than he’d thought it could be, a return to what he’d been denying himself, or maybe wasn’t ready to give himself, for all this time. He blinked open his eyes and Paul was right there. “You’re right,” he breathed.

“Shut up,” Paul repeated, eyes soft and full of something Daryl knew how to name.

“Shut me up,” he ordered, letting himself feel it instead of naming it, taking the moment for the rest of what it was—Paul inside him, finally, like the final piece in a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle he was afraid he’d lost pieces of. That’s right, he thought, eyes rolling back as Paul took him in hand. That’s right.

5. Share or describe a favorite comment you received:

@gaydaryl left my favorite comments on YSMMC over on AO3. I’m reposting all of them because it felt like everything i had consciously tried to do and put into daryl’s character was getting picked up and appreciated. 😍 v affirming [spoilers ahead.... lol]

on chapter 18:

this entire fic is like a warm hug and makes my entire body get the weak gay tremblies!!!! desus's dynamic is so good the entire way through and also daryl having had a husband before and it never being a point of contention and paul getting it and talking about jesse with him... god. it's so beautiful

also i've always been a sucker for "asshole but trying to be a good brother" merle characterization, and this Hit The Spot

i love this !! so much!! i can't wait to see the rest

chapter 19:

OH MY GODDDDD this was MORE than worth waiting for it's BEAUTIFUL i LOVE this fic their complete faith in each other is so good. and daryl's line about negan losin to TWO? SEXY OF HIM

chapter 20:

this fic the entire way through felt like such a breath of fresh air. having daryl be confident in his being gay, having had a long term relationship before, the absolute softness with which you wrote it all... it's so good. i loved it so much and it's one of my fave fics ever, i think, because the characterization is so utterly perfect and feels so real. thank you so much for writing it!

💜💜💜

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

That last chapter just did NOT want to get figured out. Didn’t help that I was heading into the worst mental health of my life. And then after I finished that fic in September, I ... stopped writing. I’m only just now getting to a place where I can imagine again.

7. A scene or character that you wrote that surprised you:

Reader, lol! Yellow came from a dream I had and the feel of it wouldn’t leave me so I had to translate it into words somehow. It only made sense to write it from that point of view, which was not one I ever thought I’d find a use for.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

From last year’s: “It’d be great to actually have the ability to write something long. I feel like the ideas I have are for short pieces.” I 100% accomplished that. I feel much more comfortable writing explicit scenes, although they still take so much more effort than basically any other isolated scene. 😩

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

I want to contribute to more fandoms. I have been nudging along at a timestamp for YSMMC, I’d like to write more in-universe TWD (not canon, because Fuck Canon is my refrain for like, everything), I want to venture back into Star Wars and positively contribute there, and of course baseball!Harry. Maybe even... Prodigal Son? Who knows! the Chappy/Olson from 2018 needs a sequel.

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

For the second year running, @chasm2018. My go-to beta is not as comfortable with helping to improve explicit scenes and Hannah volunteering to not only offer help with those but also the rest of the fic... invaluable! Couldn’t have done it without her. And I definitely owe her baseball!Harry.

11. Anything in your real life show up in your writing this year:

Anytime you see something about a character being insecure in some way about their queerness, that’s me. an example, from your skin makes me cry:

There was a rainbow flag tacked up over his desk. Daryl had known because of what Rick had said when they were out for drinks, that Paul never tried to hide and managed to avoid any bullshit about it because he was so good at his job, but it was another thing to see those bright colors just out there for everyone to see.

“Problem?” Paul asked, a hard edge to his voice.

Daryl had been caught staring at the flag. Fuck, now Paul probably thought he was some ignorant hick homophobe. “No, ‘course not.” He cleared his throat. “Me too. Nice to have some company, ‘s all.” He wanted to punch himself, wanted to slink away out of sheer embarrassment. He hated every time he had to do this. In his head he knew that Paul wouldn’t think less of him, but he couldn’t help but think he didn’t exactly look like he belonged with all the other people who could put rainbow flags up over their desks. Only places he ever felt like he really belonged was out on his bike or in the shop. Only places he felt like he belonged anymore, anyway.

Paul didn’t say any of the worst things he could have said. Daryl had heard them all from well-meaning people who didn’t realize how all of those phrases cut him in different ways. “Oh, I could tell,” was just as bad as, “Oh, I never would have guessed,” if for different reasons. Paul just smiled and said, “Thank you for telling me.” Then they walked together the short distance down the hall to Eugene’s office where Paul told him to let him doing the talking.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Same as always: write what you want to read. And don’t be intimidated by the writing of others. :)

13. Any new projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

I left Poe and Marek alone for ANOTHER year. I keep opening those docs and poking at them and now with the sequel trilogy done maybe I can shape them up.

#meme #writing eval #2019 writing eval #my fic #fic excerpts

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boogiewrites · 6 years ago

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Choking On Sapphires 67

Title & Song: More Than Words

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Genevieve (OFC)

Word Count: 5700+

Summary: Alfie shows Genevieve what good she's bringing forth in the community with her charity work when she feels overwhelmed with her Hebrew studies. He shows her the other side of being a gangster that he doesn’t flaunt. He shares about his upbringing and family with Passover on the horizon. He puts her through some of the final paces towards becoming his wife.

Warnings/Tags: FLUFF. Usual Alfie language. Talk of Alfie’s parents, sibling, upbringing. Hebrew studies.

**Chapter song is More than Words by Extreme.**

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.)

Alfie had been wondering about the next move to make in your relationship. Although it was easy to forget at times he wasn't actually married to you already. He mulled over the possibilities when he was alone. The when's, the where's, the how's and what he would do. He couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to use a ring or some other grand gesture of a gift. He wanted you to be his, he wasn't sure if he wanted to wait until after you became bat mitzvah, or if he should speak to a Rabbi about the whole thing. What a confusing process it was all turning out to be. He had plenty to consider and wanted to make the offering of his hand to be something he found worthy of you. Which was proving difficult.

You had been keeping your nose in books on Hebrew and Judaism, reading your new religious studies books, in your little glasses when he would come to your home late at night. He watched you learn the passages, the stack of books on your desk growing by the week. He'd come over for Shabbat and watched you light the candles, do the readings and break the Challah you'd baked yourself. He could see a change in you, and although you would behave as normal outside your home, your business dealings still having to be ruthless and cruel at times, you always left it outside your home. You were softer, kinder and watching you become something that was forbidden to you until now was a period of growth he was blessed to be able to witness.

Your growth and dedication had touched him. When he had read of your charitable doings over the span of your separation, he had taken the time to reflect on what he was currently giving. This led to a rise in his donations and allowing himself the time to be more personal with those that he knew needed his help. Friends, distant relatives, wives and children of good Jewish men he'd known, he gave more attention to. Anyone could sign a check for something, but your hands on nature with the children at the home and your teaching of art with the young women had shown him that the money wasn't enough. He should be better, he should remember where he came from.

Your commitment and hunger for knowledge had led him to sit and read with you, or to you some evenings. With Passover fast approaching he knew you were nervous. Such an important event and it being something you felt responsible for now was making you too over critical of yourself. Would you be ready for Seder? Would you have the have the right food, wine, and preparation for it all? Did you know the prayers, the blessings, the questions, and songs? You were a bundle of nerves and Alfie sat by and gruffed at you to not worry about it so much. After studying more you felt more prepared, but as it always did, you had deeper more complex worries arise as to were you doing enough? Were you kind enough? Giving enough? An onslaught of heavy questions would pour down upon you and you would try to drown them with wine and Alfie would be there to remind you that you were in fact good enough. He would remind you of Esther and how violence has its places when it protects your people. And that was what you were doing now, facing a cold modern world with all the tools you had to carve out a safe place for yourself and others. He took you to a festival for Purim and the revelry and readings helped to set our mind at ease. But soon after the calm from the festivities passed, Seder anxieties reared their heads again and Alfie had found the perfect solution.

You sit in bed together, both in your night clothes, tucked under his arm as he read to you in Hebrew, little gold glasses adorning both your faces as you tried to concentrate on the pronunciations. He was waiting for you to voice your worry about Seder, as he knew it would come. In these moments of new found intimacy between the two of you, he was reminded of his father, reading and teaching him and his siblings when they were young. He's reading mindlessly, wondering if he too would be reading and teaching children of his own one day when your mouth opens to give him his opportunity to soothe you.

"I would share the lamb with the house, but you aren't supposed to share with servants. But they aren't really servants, are they? They're paid and I know them and care for them, pay for their educations and manage their needs. They're more like friends. But I don't want to be inappropriate. It'd all have to be eaten that night and I can't waste it and-"

"Chanah." he says with a sigh, taking off his glasses. He'd taken to calling you that behind closed doors. There was something about it that warmed him when it would leave his mouth.

"Ari." you say back in the same tone. As your studies started to include him, he'd divulged to you his Hebrew name, Arioch. Which suitably meant like a lion. So naturally, you shortened it to Ari for times like these where you would appropriately be calling him a lion when he would be giving you an unhelpful tone. Although you thought the name Alfred Arioch Solomons sounded very regal and admittedly a bit sexy to you. The name suited him you thought, prideful and powerful, wild hair and a stare that would strike fear into any living thing if it wanted. He was your lion now and you wished his mum was around to tell her what foresight she'd had for her son.

"I got an answer to these worries of yours, eh?" he says with a rise of his brow, looking down to you.

"If you tell me to just calm down one more time I'll scream." you say with a flat delivery and a low brow.

"No, this is much more proactive." he grins. "How's about you spend Seder with me 'n my family?" he offers with a delicate tone.

Your eyes go a bit wide at first, darting around the room at the suggestion. "With...your family?" you ask.

"'Course." he says in a warm inflection. "It would ease ya worryin' and you could also finally meet the lot of the nutters." he grins. "I suppose it is time you met them, yeah? Seein' as I met Altar 'n all." his eyes move back down to yours.

"That would solve a good portion of my issues." you nod. "I would only have to worry about my studying then...and of course the seeking approval from your family." you mutter. "I'm not used to trying to make people like me when it's not business." you add with a lowered brow and thoughtful tone.

"No reason they won't like you." he says with a frown and a shake of his head. "At this point I could've brought anyone wif me and they'd be relieved." he adds in his course way.

"Thanks for the high praise." you huff out a laugh and smirk at him.

"You know 'at's not what I meant." he scolds and tops his glasses on the tip of your nose. "So do you accept?" he asks with a broad gesture of his hand, voice loud and demanding.

"Of course I do," you state obviously. "If we are to become more serious I believe it is a perfectly reasonable next step." you nod and settle back against his side. "And we are becoming more serious..." you say softly. "Aren't we?" you ask with a shy lilt.

"That's the daftest thing you've ever said." he grins and replaces his glasses and lets out a loud laugh. "We are deadly serious, my love." he kisses your head.

"A woman has the right to ask." you say defensively, pinching at a roll on his stomach.

"She does." he nods. "But do you think I've ever spent my evenings reading Hebrew to a woman before?" he asks looking over his glasses at you.

"That look tells me no."

"Intuitive as always, love." he says with a much kinder tone but the same smirk, putting his arm around your shoulder to hold you close. "If you need to hear of my dedication you only have to ask." he sighs out in a sweet way. "But be assured I do also speak with my actions, Chanah." he nods and pouts his lips, eyes looking over to find his place again. "I'll be sure to comfort your worries more actively if need be." he offers.

"Yes please." you say softly, snuggling up to him again.

"Then after this shall we spend our night as if we're married already? A little bit 'a practice for bein' fruitful?" he teases, his hand running down your chest to cup your breast, his thumb swiping over your nipple.

You let out a giggle, moving your hand lower on his stomach and resting it just above his pajama bottoms. "It certainly couldn't hurt." you laugh into his beard, stretching your neck to kiss his jaw, drawing a deep contented hum that is reflected in his expression with cheeks rising to hide his eyes as he continues to distract you through the rest of the reading with his thumb that seemed to have remarkable aim and ability. --------- He stood outside your classroom door. His layers of vests and jackets, your favorite sort of wide-brimmed hat atop his head as he leaned against the wall, waiting. He'd come in with the intention of interrupting you early, to give the girls a break and have you come out with him for the afternoon. But he stood and watched you through the open door to your classroom, standing out of your line of sight and he couldn't bring himself to do it. You spoke with attentiveness, your hands on your student's hands and brushes to guide and direct, you pacing and reading from books and telling of advice from great artists and how it applied to the practice and life outside the walls of the school. He could see you cared, that this wasn't only a vanity project for you. So with that same notion, he heads to the front office and sets up a donation to add to your scholarship fund anonymously.

"'Ello, love." you hears his deep voice call out as you exit your classroom, causing you to jump and whip your head around at his unexpected appearance.

"Alfie, darling, what are you doing here?" you say with a sincere question and fondness as you move the small space between you to meet with a kiss to the cheek.

"Came to see you with your girls," he says with a slow nod. "Never seen you teach before, so used to you bein' the student with me." he gives you a subtle smile.

"And am I as good of a teacher as you?" you ask with a charming smile and a tilt of your head.

"You'll get there, love." he chuckles, holding out his bent arm for you to wrap yours around. "I asked Claire about your afternoon and she says it's free, and I's wonderin' if you'd accompany me on some errands today?" he suggests as you walk down the hallway together to the door.

"You've never asked me to do such a thing before." you muse, your heels clicking slowly in pace with his shiny shoes across the tiled floor.

"I have not. But I am now innit I?" he says, nodding to people as they recognize him as they pass. "I've got some things I'd like you to see...some people I'd like ya to meet." he elaborates as he sees you through the doors.

"Then of course. I had no formal plans for this afternoon, why not?" you shrug as you move to his car.

"Wonderful, love, fanks." he says with a kiss to your head before you duck inside the car. "To the East End, Isaiah." he gives a nod to his driver. "I've been meanin' to do this for a little while now." he begins, holding his hand out to take yours. "You talkin' 'bout bein' more serious and 'n that I knew it was time for me to let you see all it is that I do." he nods and looks down to find your face attentive and intrigued. "You know me best for my violence, yeah? But 'at's not all I got goin' on, mate, no, I got a bit 'a good in the work I do too." he explains, nodding and eyes twitching at the corners as he looks out the windows. "I've been thinkin'... that if we are to be married that you need to be seein' me at all sides, love. Most people'll only talk about the so-called ill I perform but I want you to see how I try to help as much as I do hurt when it comes to my... our people." he brings his eyes back to you and adores the self-reflective nature of them. His face is in its usual creased thoughtfulness, his eyes half hidden under the shifting brow as he explains himself. "I did some soul searchin' when we's apart, right? Seein' you goin' out and bein' a public figure for charity 'n art 'n that I took it upon myself to do better by your example. After I knew we'd been seein' each other again... and in my hopefulness for a future together I arranged to set in motion some plans to be able to show ya that I would be worthy of bein' a good sort of husband for a good Jewish woman such as yourself." his words are calm and calculated and you were touched as you watched him reveal his inner workings to you. "I saw I needed to get back in touch with my roots, my people ya know." he nods. "I'd been too heavy in me business doin's and had been neglectin' the things that got me to where I am today. I wanted to show I wasn't above anyone else, as I'm not, and upon further reflection, as I wanted to be betta for you, I wanted to be betta for that little boy I once was." he moves to take your hand between both of his and you follow suit. "You learnin' and becomin' what you always shoulda been opened me up in a way I hadn't been willin' to do since I was a lad. And thinkin' about me past, the schoolin' and family I thought 'bout what I might want for myself one day... or if I wanted it 'at all. And I do. Now I do. But I see that to be what a child needs in a father, I myself, needed to be better than I's bein'. Hold myself to a higher standard than I used to, yeah?" his nose wrinkles as his eyes continue to move about, but your stay fixated on his face. "If I were to be with a Jewish woman, which wasn't sumfin' I was plannin' on doin' until I's wif you, right? Then our children would need a good Jewish father. Someone who knew what the fuck he was on about and as much of a fuckin' hypocrite as I am and 'spose I always will be, I knew I at least needed to try." he returns his eyes to you. "So... as fuckin' long-winded as I've gone and made myself here I wanted to share 'a bit of meself with you so you'd know what sorta man I came from... what sorta man I might be inclined to be if we were to have little ones, right?"

"I've wanted to know for some time, admittedly, but I wasn't going to push you to tell me."

"Well it's ya lucky day innit, love?" he gives you a charming smile, thumb rubbing across your hands. "We'll start with me father then. Bernard. Me mum did call 'im Bernie in private but he fuckin' hated it." he lets out a chuckle. "Bernard Dov, although he tried to get the name Berel to stick with mum, she tried to sound more English and preferred somethin' that sounded sweet and small as she said. But he was neither sweet nor small."

"Perhaps it was meant to be ironic? A cheeky little joke or something?"

"Mum was funny that way." he smiles warmly. "Father passed shortly after I became a man and I 'spose that was a big thing that fueled my studies, as he never let us forget the importance of knowledge and it's pursuit. He was a stern man. But fair, always fair." he nods. "He held me 'n my siblings to a high standard. Especially the boys. So I did well in me studies, both at home in school. I always had a knack for learnin' it seemed. Was told I was clever, if not a bit up me own arse about it at times." he laughs. "I got high marks and I was proud. Same as always heavy handed in my own way about fings. I'd try to set the other boys straight ya see. Tellin' 'em...what sort 'a man ya gonna be if ya don't try to be just that now? Ya can't live like ya do and be of any worth to anyone later. Ya stuntin' ya own potential." he grins, his eyes far away in the past. "I couldn't understand how they weren't more concerned about bein' good men. Men of faith and fortune built from workin' hard and usin' their minds to earn their gold. That was all me father talkin' that was." he sighs. "And me mum." his face softens. "Peninah." he smiles. "You'd think me father would've been inclined to give her a nickname, Pearl or Penny or such...but he wasn't much for informalness." he grins. "She was strong but always sweet with her children. Father was the law and she was the peacekeeper. She expected more out of us just like he did, she never coddled, but whereas father was cold in his approach, she was warm. She passed after goin' back to Russia, you see. When the fuckers were pushin' us all out she went back for her sisters. They all made it back... but she didn't live long after that. Told me stories of bein' chased by the Russians through the snow. Havin' to hide in that sort 'a climate and she got sick from it." he voice trails off slightly.

"I see where you get your bravery from." you give his hands a supportive squeeze, bring his glazed over eyes back to the present, the anger still simmering under the surface.

"She was very brave, yeah." he nods and sighs. "Always spoke of the importance of family. And speakin' of, you'll be meetin' me sisters soon won't ya?" he pats your hand. "Rachel, Matilda and Sarah. The bellends." he laughs. "Nah, they're good women. Been ridin' my arse since my bar mitzvah to get me a wife. But they are women and two older than me, so I suppose it was all to be expected, eh?" his laughs weakens to a chuckle. "You'll be meetin' me brother Jeremiah's wife, Pippa. He died in the war, though. But I believe I told you that."

"You did." you nod and give him a weak smile. He didn't seem distraught about it, but it made you sad.

"And my heard of nieces and nephews. Got what's left of me mum's brothers and sisters and me dad's brothers. Whole family a men they are."

"All of them?" you say with a huff of laughter.

"Yeah, there were so many of 'em, his mum, who died before I was before kept havin' children in hopes of havin' a girl. But it never came to pass." he shakes his head. "Seven boys instead." he chuckles.

"Poor woman." you share the same amused laugh with him.

"That so?" he tilts his head and looks back to you. "Do you want a little girl, love?" he asks and your stomach flutters at the ease that you both speak about marriage and children with now.

"Of course I would. I'm certainly not opposed to a boy by any means. It would just be nice to have the experience of raising both I think." you shrug. "Plus I am a girl and a feminine one at that so having a little doll of my own does sound appealing," you admit and lay your head on his shoulder. "What about you?"

"Either would be nice, yeah? Long as the poor things get their looks from you." he grins.

"I wouldn't be making babies with an ugly man, darling." you laugh and reach up to give him chin a scratch and kiss to his cheek.

------- You pull up to a block of housing. It reminds you of small heath in it's sad and drab exterior. Dark, dirty and desolate looking as Alfie takes your hands and leads you through the archway. You see numerous children playing, running around through lines of drying clothes, mothers in aprons shouting after them. You don't expect them to all greet Alfie with such fondness, but they do. They know him by name, a polite, Mr. Solomons at his arrival as he hands them sweets from his pockets and ruffles their hair. They look at you suspiciously, not having seen you before, and you don't blame them. He leads you up the tarnished metal stairs to an inconspicuous door.

He knocks and very quickly a woman opens the door. "Oh, shalom, Mr. Solomons." the worn looking woman smiles warmly and greets him with a smile.

"I've told you many times, Mable to call me Alfie. Now is Alice about?" he says loudly, a gentle command.

"She's in her room, let me go fetch her." she rushes out before shuffling off.

"Who is Alice?" you whisper.

"Someone I wanted you to meet," he says with a nod. "Ah! Hello love!" he says warmly, reaching out to take the young girls hand that is outstretched, her other is holding onto a harness that rests around a dog. It becomes apparent to you quickly she is one of the beneficiaries of the charity you were on the board with with Alfie.

"Hello, Mr. Solomons." her voice is sweet and delicate.

"You ladies and your politeness. I told ya mum to call me Alfie as well. But ya just won't listen." he says warmly, patting the back of her hand. "How is little diamond doing now? Bein' a good girl?"

"She's been such a relief." she says with downcast, milky eyes. "And she also keeps me very warm at night." she smiles.

"I had someone I wanted you to meet little one," he says, holding his hand out to you to beckon you closer. "This is Genevieve Durand. She's the one what helped you get Diamond there." he says, placing your hand in hers.

"Pleasure to meet you Alice." you say looking over the kind and pretty girls face.

"You work at the charity with Mister- with Alfie?"

"I do." you nod and her mother comes and places her hand on your arm.

"We'd like to thank you for your help Miss Durand. Alice here has been waiting for assistance for some time now. Alfie had told me there had been an influx in donations recently and because of that they were able to giver her Diamond, as they were primarily givin' dogs to the boys after the war who needed them." she explains and you try to keep your face warm and not shocked or sad as you felt. You hadn't known about this girl, or how long the wait on the list was and you were deeply touched by the thoughtfulness of Alfie to bring you to see your work for yourself.

"I'm just happy Alice here could get some assistance." you say sincerely.

"Diamond has been such a lifesaver for me. She suffers from seizures you see, and Diamond here can let someone know if she needs help by barking if she's alone. The neighbors help me out when I can't be here for work, keeping an eye out for her, but now everyone's much more at ease." she says reaching out to pat the dogs head.

"Mable here has been able to find work for the first time since Jack passed, isn't that right?" Alfie offers with a strong nod.

"Yes it's been such a help to get some money coming back in, believe me." she nods enthusiastically.

"Jack was a member of my company you see, in the war. He used to tell me about Mable and Alice. So when I saw the name on the list, I happened to reach out to them and I've been workin' for a long time to get them Diamond here." he explains.

"Alfie's been a lifesaver, truly. Couldn't have made it without him." she says patting his cheek. Such a soft gesture from a man who was known to be a criminal made your heart warm.

"Least I could do. Jack was a good man." he says more sternly. "Speakin' of, I've got something to show you. Would you love?" he asks, motioning his hand out to the other room.

They leave you and Alice and you pat Diamonds head. "I've heard your name in the paper." Alice breaks the silence.

"Oh have you? Nothing bad I hope." you softly laugh.

"You paint, right?"

"I do. Are you a fan of the arts? Music and the like?" you clarify, not wanting to sound daft.

"I do adore music. My mum took me to the theater once. I loved it." she smiles.

"Have you ever been to the opera Alice?" you ask, moving your head to look at Alfie in the other room with her mother. He hands her an envelope, and she refuses at first, but with his insistence she takes it. You're seeing he'd been helping support them while she had had to stay home with Alice.

"Oh, no. I wish." she chuckles. "Far too posh for me." she shakes her head and Alfie walks back into the room with her mother.

"Would you like to go? Or do you have a distaste for the style?"

"It'd be wonderful to go. It's just always been so expensive." she says sheepishly.

"Would you like to go with me?" you ask, watching her face go through a slew of emotions.

"Really?" she asks quietly.

"Of course! You can feel the music when you're by the pit. Your mum could come to. Alfie doesn't like the opera...I'd love to have some girls to go with." you say cheerfully.

Her mum walks up with a bowed head. "It sounds lovely and thank you Genevieve, but I'm afraid we'd be a bit under dressed." she gives you a sad smile.

You see the sinking in Alice's face and you won't stand for it. "Don't' be silly, I can get you something." you wave your hand dismissively. "How's about you two come to my house sometime soon and we can find you some gowns of mine? We're all three not too far off in size, certainly nothing a few alterations can't handle." you insist.

"Genevieve does have far too many dresses. Do me a service and take some off her hands would you?" Alfie laughs.

"Would you like to go Alice?" her mother asks her.

"Yes." she nods enthusiastically.

"Then it's settled," you say clasping your hands together. "I'll get back up with you through Alfie's people and we'll set something up soon."

"Thank you Miss Durand." Alice says with a shaky voice.

"Call me Genevieve... or Gen, whichever you'd prefer, really. If we're going to go out and have some fun, we can't be so formal can we?" reach out and hold her hand. "We'll have a lovely time, Alice." you say sincerely.

"Thank you, Miss-" you give a playful frown to her mum.

"Genevieve. I'm sure Alice is just a bit tongue-tied from surprise." she laughs and moves to hug her from the side. "First time she'll be going to such a grand thing."

"It won't be the last." you smile. "All girls deserve a good night out from time to time don't we?"

"Ya do, love, ya do." Alfie says, his hand sliding across your upper back. "I'm sorry to cut it short but we've got another appointment to keep so if you don't mind... Mable, Miss Alice. We'll be seein' ya." he gives a nod and you see yourselves out.

"Why didn't you tell me about her before we went in?" you ask him as you follow him down the stairs back to the car.

"I wanted to see your raw reaction." he states simply and honestly. Today was a bit of test of sorts, and he knew you'd pass, but your warm acceptance of the girl and her mother had made him all the more certain of you being fit to be his wife. He needed a woman who could charm people in such a way.

"I didn't know about the waiting list." you say a frown.

"Well, it's for the senior members. They deal with that sort of thing." he explains gruffly.

"Are there others like them Alfie?" you ask him once you get into the car.

"What you mean?"

"Other you take care of? I saw you give her money."

"There are a few yeah." he says looking out the window.

"Families of men you oversaw?" you inquire.

"Not all no. Most not." he shakes his head. "Just Jewish families that haven't been as lucky as me." he says with a sense of sadness to his tone. "Sick little ones... widows... families of men that worked for me that sacrificed for me in some form or 'nother I like to keep an eye on. Don't give 'em all money, y'know. Some just need a wee bit of food or medicine from time to time." he looks back over to you and you sigh heavily and take his hand into yours.

"All this time you spoke of my capacity for kindness and violence. What of you darling?"

"What of it?" he shrugs. "I'm only doin' what I should. You take care of your people, they take care 'a you. Like you and your girls at home. You 'n your kids at the home and the schoolgirls. Same sort of thing, love." he says cooly, looking down at your adoring eyes.

"You have a personal touch I do not. A connection to the community I've been cut off from that I envy."

"And now you know two women you didn't yesterday dunnit ya? See.. you'll get connected. Ya just used to connectin' with folk what don't require help."

"That is true." you nod. "I guess I do have connections. Just not in the same class as you do." you say thoughtfully. You see a chance here for the both of you. You can handle the upper classes, he can handle the lower. With connections made on every level of the community, when you two did marry, you would have a reach that most people couldn't dream of. Feet on the ground to do work for you, people in ivory towers to persuade to make decisions in your favor. You could have a foot in both worlds.

"Exactly love." he agrees with a slow blink. "But the point I wanted to make with little Alice, was to show you where your charity was goin'. I wanted you to see it in action." he clarifies.

"Thank you," you say, leaning your head onto his arm. "It's something I needed." you add softly. You could get so caught up in the high stakes world you both lived in that you could forget what good was possible out of the bad that you did. Charity was important to your faith and being able to see it work, beyond writing something down and having Claire donate it showed you the people behind what you were working on building with Alfie.

"You always say you aren't doin' enough. I figure it's 'cause you don't see it up close and personal. Thought it might help ya."

"It did, thank you, really, darling, it was very thoughtful of you."

"So was invitin' them out." he says with a smile, arms around your shoulders and kissing your head.

"Least I could do. All girls deserve a bit of fun now and again. Especially a woman that works so hard like Mable and a sweet young thing like Alice. It's nothing for me to show such kindness to them."

"I can only be thankful for such a woman to come into my life as you, Chanah." he says close to your ear, the gentle tone catching you off guard.

"What brings on this sweet tongue of yours?" you ask, giving his beard an affectionate tug.

"You love, it's always you that makes me this way innit?" he smiles and leans in to give you a chaste kiss. "You are such a compliment to my weaknesses I couldn't imagine goin' 'bout my life of dual nature without you now." he gently holds your chin up to him. "Only your soft heart could be the one to withstand wearing away at my hardened one." he says softly. "I didn't ever think I'd be able to regain the will to want or expect better from myself when it comes to things outside of business. Not until you came along."

"It is not good for man to be alone." you say sweetly, reciting from Genisis.

He sighs and kisses you again. "One who has found a wife has found goodness and has brought forth favor from God." he whispers.

"Solomon from Solomons." you giggle against his lips and a slow, deep chuck bubbles out of him. "And with all this talk you fluster me, Ari." you say more playfully. "It seems you forget we are not in fact married yet. When is it you intend to reunite our souls?" you gently bump your nose against his.

"I want the occasion to as perfect as you are, pet. And I humbly ask of you to give me time to orchestrate the impossible." he grins and kisses you again.

"If anyone could do the impossible, I believe it would be you." you coo at him.

"And that faith in me is why I can even entertain the thought of it at all."

@fangirlfreakingout @jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog @brianaisasongbird @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @iliveonchocolateandnetflix @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @negansdirtygirl22 @musingsby-night @wtf-is-wrong-with-this @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @lafayettes-baguettes-1 @sxlomons @aphnxrising @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @anrm1@ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco @arrowswithwifi @marvelgirl7 @they-are-not-just-stories @ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes

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realyoungdarius · 4 years ago

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2.1 Assignment: Something Different is Needed

Getting Started

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Revelation 7:9–10

Have you ever wondered what heaven will be like? There are a number of descriptions given to us in the Bible. One depiction specifically stands out among the several that exist. In the above passage of Scripture, the disciple named John describes a countless multitude of people who are immensely diverse according to their nationality, tribal affiliation, uniqueness of creation, and language spoken. In fact, the list of diverse characteristics in the Bible verse is thought to not be an exhaustive list but one that is infinite in nature.

Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:

Integrate the concepts of diversity with an understanding of those same or similar concepts of a Christian worldview.

Resources

Bible: Eastern Standard Version

File: The DeVoe Report Fall/Winter 2017

File: The DeVoe Report Spring/Summer 2017

Website: Bible Gateway

Reference

U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Prohibited employment policies/practices. Retrieved from https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm

Background Information

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (n.d.) states,

Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person's race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to retaliate against a person because he or she complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit.

The law forbids discrimination in every aspect of employment.

The issue of discrimination has been an issue that human resources management have wrestled with in the workplace for a very long time. The article reading selected for this workshop sheds light on the fact that there are differing views for how to address workplace discriminatory practices—especially those illegal or unethical practices among management and executive leaders of the organization. Read the article and consider your own workplace or one that you are familiar with. Has the organization attempted to use any one of the suggested solutions found in the article? None of them? Or a different solution altogether? And if a solution was attempted, has it been successful?

Instructions

Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.

Make sure you have carefully reviewed the Getting Started and Background Information sections of this page.

Review the following Scriptures from the Bible Gateway website:

How do these Scriptures inform your understanding in regards to the following questions and the complex realities of today’s workplaces:

Access The DeVoe Report Spring/Summer 2017 edition.

Access The DeVoe Report Fall/Winter 2017 edition.

Write a paragraph of 50-100 words for each of the following four questions based on the Workshop Two reading:

Prior to submitting your journal entry, review for correct spelling, word choice, punctuation, and grammar.

Submit your journal entry by using the Assignment submission page the final day of the workshop.

Review the following Scriptures from the Bible Gateway website:

Revelation 4:11

Revelation 4:11 Holman Christian Standard Bible

11 Our Lord and God,[a] You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power, because You have created all things, and because of Your will they exist and were created.

John 3:16

John 3:16 Holman Christian Standard Bible

16 “For God loved the world in this way:[a] He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Galatians 3:28

Galatians 3:28 Holman Christian Standard Bible

28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

1 Samuel 16:7b

1 Samuel 16:7 Holman Christian Standard Bible

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or his stature, because I have rejected him. Man does not see what the Lord sees,[a] for man sees what is visible,[b] but the Lord sees the heart.”

Matthew 6:10

Matthew 6:10 Holman Christian Standard Bible

10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Write a paragraph of 50-100 words for each of the following four questions based on the Workshop Two reading:

If heaven is a place of inclusion and diversity, shouldn’t our workplaces similarly be such a place of diverse peoples?

I believe, similarly to many Libertarians, that it can be Constitutional, as well as ethical, for many groups to exclude people of different Constitutionally protected groups, when it involves the thoughts and feelings that they want to have remain private, except among the group they trust. I am a part of a fraternity! Should we let women in, when we are supposed to protect people who are in our fraternity and our sex? I believe that women should have a place to consider their private thoughts and feelings, with people who are their sex and a part of their group! What’s wrong with a fraternity doing the same thing? We’d let in people with different genders...

Or, is our earthly domain to be so different from our heavenly domain?

I believe that there can be heaven and hell on Earth! People can even have their own personal hell and/or heaven; even if they are considered to not be a part of other people’s hell and/or heaven. For instance, everyone can be beautiful. However, someone who is hot to many people, may not be sexy to everyone!

Read the article “Something Different is Needed: Influencing Managers to Avoid Discriminatory Practices” beginning on page 24, which provides a holistic solution to address the problem of diversity.

Review the article “Growing a Literary Executive” beginning on page 68, which provides the encouragement for you to become a literary executive.

From “Growing a Literary Executive”:

“Read voraciously; this is not a place where moderation is a virtue, rather view it as a feast of ideas and you’ll profit significantly.”

“You will sharpen the perspectives that shape your engagement with the world; you will find yourself being more intentional in revealing and creating experiences that demonstrate the reality that His Kingdom has come, and finally; you will experience greater joy as you rest in the confidence of the coming consummation of all things.”

From “Something Different is Needed: Influencing Managers to Avoid Discriminatory Practices”:

“it is that inner disposition of the heart which influences our outer behavior, actions, reactions, choices, decisions and words” (Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 12:35; 15:19; Galations 5:22-23, Luke 6:45; “Gateway Biblical Counseling,” n.d., para. 4).

What did you learn?

What I have to recognize about my own issues and/or problems with the way my mind, and especially my mind, tends to work, is that I have to fight off the bad thoughts and feelings I have.

How did you discover that?

I found this out after making mistakes I shouldn’t mention. Those issues and/or problems are mostly in my past. Now, I just have to deal with my thoughts and feelings, when they become bad and/or something that is not ethical. I usually try to either let those thoughts and/or feelings roll off my sleeve or I fight them off with thoughts and feelings I’ve learned can counteract those bad and/or unethical thoughts and feelings.

Why is that important?

If I didn’t do that, I would be acting out in ways that would lead me to ending up dead or in jail. I have to keep myself from being investigative, like I tend to like doing, sometimes. I’m also, mostly, a conceptualizer and optimizer; instead of an implementer and generator.

And, so what? (That is, what are the implications of the learning for practical living?)

Everyone is different. So, I can’t assume that everyone will do things the same way. It’s especially true that people tend to focus on their strengths, while attempting to mitigate their short-comings are. Doing those things helps people to sharpen the saw.

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kittenfemme27 · 4 years ago

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The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

I don’t know about you, reader, but it’s been actual years since I was able to properly sit down and finish a book. My last one was Lovecraft Country in 2018, and many, many years before that. Reading used to be a big passion of mine, I loved to get lost in the worlds. I loved the movie that played out in my head as I read, as if it was projecting itself into my mind more-so than i was actually reading the words themselves. For a kid who didn’t always grow up with the internet or video games available, Books from my local library were a great escape.

So, having found myself getting more and more into horror around 2019 in all forms of media I consumed, I was more than happy to bookmark a tweet from a horror artist I follow on Twitter who had a list of all the horror books he’d read that year. This would be my chance to get back into reading, finally!

Cue.. 2 years later, and I’ve finally started on that list. The top of that list, “The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires“, was something I found immediately intriguing from the title and cover alone. I’m now regretting that decision so much that I’m not sure I’ll bother with the rest of the list.

(CW: R*pe, Gore, Racism)

“The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires” is an awful book. The only compliment I feel I could accurately give it is that it’s not written incompetently enough, from a purely technical standpoint, as to be unreadable.

The story stars Patricia Campbell, a housewife in the 1980′s-1990′s that is more apology than character, and her rag-tag group of similarly middle-aged, middle-income southern white wine sipping housewives who do, and I cannot stress this enough, almost nothing but test each other’s and the readers patience for nigh on 310 out of 357 pages. They bicker, they fight, they treat Patricia as crazy when she repeatedly shows them evidence that children around them are dying, and most of all they refuse to do absolutely anything, leaning more into pure disbelief until the problem has literally violated one of them. The book club women don’t lead interesting lives, either. They’ve got husbands who are not in love with them, children who hate them, and friendships with each other that can be broken by what feels tantamount to bringing the wrong wine to a meeting. Throughout the story, Patricia is accosted by the resident Vampire-like creature, more akin to a human mosquito than any sort of real “Vampire”, that moves in after his aunt dies. A man named James Harris. He smoothly worms his way into everyone’s lives in the charismatic way a vampire does and convinces everyone that Patricia is more or less insane for ever suspecting him of being a vampire after she watches him feed on a child. This leads to her attempting suicide after being pushed into a corner by her doctor husband who seems to have been ripped straight from the 1950′s and thinks women should be Seen and not Heard. She gives up and more or less goes comatose as a character for roughly 3 years until finally she snaps to her senses after seeing a ghost of her dead mother in law who knew the Vampire when she was a small child, who leads her to one of the bodies he’s got stored in his attic, and convinces everyone else in her book club, who has routine abandoned her at this point, to help her kill James. They do, chopping his body to bits while it taunts them and then throwing the bits into a fire. Patricia divorces her husband at the end and somehow that makes her children lover her, happy-ever-after ending.

That’s the rough synopsis, but it doesn’t really do the grossness of this book any justice. That first child James kills, is a black 9 year old named Destiny who later kills herself as it’s revealed that the Vampire-like creature’s bites feel so good and so sexually pleasurable, that if you are deprived of them after becoming addicted you’re likely to just commit suicide. This is AFTER she’s taken away from her mother by child services because they assume the bite marks are syringe injection marks and that her mother must be a druggie. She’s not the first black child to die this way either. In-fact, by the time Patricia becomes wise to James’ ways, she’s the third. They’re all from a poor black neighborhood that is literally described as shady, dangerous, and being full of “Super Predators” called Six-Mile, which is the de-facto feeding ground of the Vampire for a good 75% of the book, as well as the home of the literally only surviving named black character, Ursula Greene, who herself is nothing more than a “wise old negro” trope along with being a maid to these rich white people who think of her as trash. This is probably the biggest overarching problem in the book. It tries, in the authors words, to explore the relationships between the white, rich women who brag about how their cul-de-sac is so safe and pure that nobody even locks their door, and the poor black characters from Six-Mile. The book thinks its clever, because Mrs. Green constantly points out that the white characters let the black children die callously so that their white children would live, to which they can only reply about how guilty that makes them feel and how they’re sorry. I’m not sure what the author hoped to accomplish by pointing out the institutional racism of the 90′s, but whatever he hoped to accomplish, it fail flat on its face in the most racist way it could.

I wish that was where gross things ended for this book, but its not. At one point, the Vampire-like creature rapes one of the book club members and she is more or less outright stated to be pregnant with a monster from that rape and it is also revealed that the rape gave her an “Auto-Immune Disease” that the characters husband immediately likens to AIDS and that is very quickly killing her. This information causes her to choose to have her body cremated so nothing can spring forth from her corpse when she dies. The implications this has are frankly appalling. The books decision on whether or not a woman who gets pregnant from rape is worthy of life is to resolutely and proudly say no and treat that as if its a feminist answer. That if you’re raped, it’s akin to something like AIDS and life simply isn’t worth living. it’s one of the grossest things I’ve read in a long time.

It’s not even the only shock value the book uses to make it’s events feel real and scary, others include Patricia’s son “Blue” being obsessed with Nazi’s, for genuinely seemingly no reason. He just brings them up to make you, and everyone in the story, uncomfortable. There are constant overwrought descriptions of gore or simply gross scenarios, such as an indepth description of Patricia’s ear-lobe being ripped off, or rats gnawing the flesh off on a old woman, or a cockroach crawling inside someones ear. There is also the repeated child murder or child suicide, which doesn’t really serve a purpose other than to shock the middle-aged mothers this book was meant for, with multiple sentences in which Patricia thinks about how much it would hurt if that were her children, inviting the reader to do the same with their own.

And we couldn’t forget that this book is just unrepentant in its horniness. It’s outright stated that being fed on is the most sexually pleasurable thing one can feel, which makes it all the more awkward when you consider that the Vampire’s first set of victims are children, later Patricia’s teenage daughter who she walks in on in the middle of being fed and who she has to stop from literally masturbating in that moment while attempting to punch the Vampire off of that same teenage daughter. But, of course, it doesn’t end there. It’s a book about almost entirely women written by a Cis Male Author, which means there are constant depiction of female bodies in the nude or in violence. It’s no “She boobed boobily”, thankfully, but it’s not much better than that. Describing pubic hair, breast shape, and even making it so that the Vampire-like creature drinks from a penis-esque proboscis that extends from it’s throat and right into the upper thigh of it’s victim, which is mentioned twice to be right next to the vagina. It even goes so far as to try and sexualize its own rape, aswell as having Patricia tell the rape victim how good it feels with this section between the two. Something I’m including here in its entirety because no amount of words I can write describes how gross this passage is, in context.

“Grace already... told me,” Slick said, opening her eyes, pulling her mask away from her face to speak. “I made her... give me all the details.”

“Me too,” Patricia said. “I was out from what he did to me.”

“How did... it feel?” Slick asked.

Patricia would never have said this to anyone but Slick. She leaned forward.

“It felt so good,” she breathed, the immediately remembered what he’d done to Slick and felt selfish and insensitive.

“Most sin does,” Slick said.

I think the thing that angers me the most about this book is that it’s tricked a lot of people who read it into thinking its a fun, feminist read. All of the main characters are overworked mothers who struggle with being that overworked, and then come out on top anyway because of their motherly intuition and love for their kids. It’s the kind of book that a single struggling mother would read and think “Yeah, I’d do that, that’d be me! I’d save the day!” and it makes them feel good about themselves, and about being a mother, and about how hard it is to make the kids lunches and clean the husbands dirty underwear and make sure the house is clean and dinner is on the table by 6 PM all while looking hashtag fabulous and like a girlboss. A quick trawl through any review site will show roughly the exact type of single mothers this book is written for giving it 5 stars and calling it hilarious and empowering. And y’know, I don’t have a problem inherently with prose written for that demographic. But this book gets away with a ton of racism, sexism, and outright disgusting content by hiding itself under that veneer and I think that’s just awful. It should be held to scrutiny for what it is, for how bad it is, and it clearly never was.

Don’t read this book. It sucks. It sucks so fucking much. I want my night I spent reading it back.

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esselley · 7 years ago

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Kinktober #14: Role Reversal

Set early on in Kingdom of Crows verse! This is about 0.02% sexy, and idk what the rest is besides dramatic scene setting/Kageyama being extremely in love

They called it “The City”, sometimes.

It was in jest; because it was anything but. The underground maze of tunnels, sewers, and dungeon-like halls beneath Corvus had no infrastructure, no rhyme or reason to the wretchedness.

The Kingdom of Crows thrived upon madness, breathed life into chaos.

Amidst the rabble, Kageyama felt like he could finally make sense of things again. He pulled his hood further over his head, hiding his face in shadows. Suspicious, perhaps, but the more suspicious he appeared down below the surface, the less people would question him. Everyone minded their own business, as long as he minded his own. No one cared about a lanky boy in patched clothes wandering about, when there were so many others just like him at every turn. No one might guess who he truly was.

He wasn’t afraid, down there, despite the dank, unsavory nature of that world. He could more than handle himself in a fight, if anyone had disliked his look enough to start one. Sometimes fights were the fastest way to a friendship, depending on the opponent; and Kageyama, over the years, had made quite a few friends that way. Any of them just might happen to be passing by, to come to his aid if things got messy. The City was funny like that; so many eyes in so many places, and never a clear picture of who was watching who. Like circling scavenge birds, always waiting for an opportunistic moment.

And in dire circumstances, he had one singular friend on whom he could always rely. He liked to fight his own battles, but he knew that even a lion could be defeated by a million stinging ants. So around his neck, he wore a thick signet ring, dangling from the end of a cord. One glimpse of it would send anyone who valued their lives fleeing. They would all know the symbol engraved in the gold—a crown, with the sun carved behind it. It had been a symbol of rebellion, first, and then of hope. The crest of the newly crowned king of thieves.

It was nearly the same design as was stamped on the ring tucked safely away in a chest under Kageyama’s bed. This ring marked Kageyama himself as the crown prince of Corvus, future king—but his was devoid of the sun. That had been a new addition, made by the new thief king; a reminder.

He was as much a king as Kageyama would one day be. But he and his people longed for the light.

Deeper into the maze, Kageyama arrived at a door, wooden and unmarked. He rapped on it, and a small section near the top slid back. Inside was darkness. A guttural voice croaked out of it, “No room for beggars here.”

Kageyama pulled the ring from under his shirt, holding it up in front of the peephole. He knew the password would change every day, but he had his token for passage. Shortly thereafter, the door creaked open, and he slipped inside.

It was pitch black. He heard the sound of the door being deadbolted and shut behind him and waited, unsure of who the guardsman might be. Then someone spoke right in his ear, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“No need for princes, either.”

He knew that voice, now it was undisguised. He turned in the dark as arms embraced him, as hands were laid warm upon his face, and then, even more welcome, a most familiar mouth pressed to his own. The lips were rough on his, and already smiling.

“I can just leave, if you’d prefer,” Kageyama mumbled against them. He caught a glimpse of a golden glimmer in the darkness—eyes, lit from within, looking up at him.

Hinata slid a hand to grip the back of his neck tighter, possessively. Kageyama knew Hinata could see him quite clearly in the dark, a boon of his fae blood. It had made him a good thief and a better spy.

“You know perfectly well what I meant.”

“Mmm.” It meant that here was the one place, where Kageyama didn’t have to play the part of a prince.

“Thought you still might not be able to come,” Hinata said, fingers tracing the outline of his jaw.

He wasn’t normally this soft, and Kageyama held completely still out of habit, afraid to startle him—afraid it would stop. In actuality, it had been years since Hinata had bothered to hide the way he felt, but it was still rare for him to allow either of them such a long moment of vulnerability. Maybe it was the dark, or maybe it was going so long without seeing each other.

Two months ago, the long fight for control of the Kingdom of Crows had finally come to an end, and Hinata had been named its new king. Kageyama had been there that night, but the chaos caused by the upheaval would have ripple effects felt even in the royal city, and so, to be on the safe side, they had said goodbye. Neither of them knew how long he might have to stay away, how long security might be increased and the prince could not be found missing, for fear of raising the alarm.

But then, a fortnight ago, a crow had landed on Kageyama’s windowsill, and a glint of gold had caught his eye. Tied around its leg was the signet ring and a messily scrawled map with a golden X to mark where Hinata could be found.

As soon as he could, Kageyama had snuck out, to go underground, to reach the X, to come back to the pickpocket boy who had become a king.

“You missed me, did you?” Kageyama said, aware he was pushing his luck. “Sending an official summons.”

Instead of growing annoyed, Hinata suddenly kissed him fiercely. “You belong with me,” he said, so fervently it cut Kageyama’s breath short. “If I am king then I would have you by my side.”

Kageyama gulped at air. He had no idea how to respond to this brash honesty. Growing up, he had learned that it was a monarch’s right, to call upon those subjects who were dearest to them. And it was an honor to be called, as his father had impressed upon him so many times, when he’d forced Kageyama to stand with him, to show the people to whom they must bow. It hadn’t felt like an honor, then. But it did now.

“I—I’m here,” he finally said.

“You came when I called,” Hinata emphasized, sounding entirely too pleased. Kageyama knocked their foreheads together, a little harder than was necessary. “Come on—you’re just in time for dinner.”

Kageyama felt at first a slight reluctance, at leaving the dark behind, where all he had to focus on was Hinata’s touch. But the feeling was soon replaced by amazement, as Hinata led him from the long tunnel out into the light.

He blinked, adjusting to the change, as Hinata strode on before him—back straight, head held high. He was not tall, by any means, but he’d always taken up space. It had been too long since they’d seen one another, Kageyama thought, stalled for a moment as he looked fondly upon the flame-red hair, the still slightly narrow shoulders. Two children ran forward upon their entrance, and Hinata stopped, lowering himself to one knee. They put his gold crown on his head, and his cloak on his back—black and torn, like crow feathers.

Kageyama saw suddenly, like a vision, an impression of the man Hinata would grow into. It seemed right, that Hinata should wear a crown, now, and in the future.

They had emerged into a cavernous space, the high ceiling home to an uncountable number of mismatched chandeliers hanging from the rafters; iron, wood, glass—hundreds, maybe thousands of flickering lights between all of them. Some of the flames were mage fire, dancing in all different colors. It made the huge room warm and comfortable, which Kageyama thought might have been intentional, given the people gathered there.

“Hinata…” Kageyama murmured under his breath, “you realize the Tanaka siblings are sitting at your dinner table…”

Hinata flashed him an over the shoulder grin. “They showed up just last week, actually. She said she might like to see what the change in leadership might bring.”

The Tanakas were two of the most feared assassins in the lower kingdom. It was said that they never turned away a client, and anyone could afford them, rich or poor—but might not always like the price they would have to pay. Nonetheless, they’d been instrumental as a part of Hinata’s coup to take the crown, not as killers, but as information brokers. They had more dealings with the brother, who Kageyama had realized possessed a kinder heart than it might be wise to let others find out about. The sister was ruthless, and preferred to observe the outcome from afar, but was protective of her brother to a fault.

Not three seating places down from them, the fire mage Taketora had his feet kicked up onto the table. He seemed to be engaged in a staring match with the younger Tanaka, smoke curling off his shoulders and the top of his head in his agitation. Kageyama felt a slight sense of apprehension—none of them were sure, but there were rumors Taketora was part fire elemental. His temper was legendarily explosive, and paired with Ryuu’s, Kageyama couldn’t imagine it would be long before a fight erupted.

But Hinata only looked amused. “They’ve been doing that for days now, but I’ve never had to break anything up. I think part of that may be because of Saeko. But also, I think they’re just curious about each other.”

There were more people at the table that Kageyama would have never expected to see all sitting in one place, let alone (mostly) peacefully. But it would be a disservice to Hinata not to recognize the reason for it.

“You did this,” Kageyama said. “You… brought all these people together. In just two months?”

“It’s a fragile truce,” Hinata admitted, as he took his seat at the head of the long table. Kageyama sat at his right hand. “But it is a truce. And it will get better. It has to.”

Kageyama nodded. Hinata was always saying that people were stronger together. It was the opposite of what Kageyama had been taught growing up—that it was only his will, standing sure and alone, that mattered. He had been told depending on others would make him weak, but he knew now that wasn’t true.

“So,” Hinata said, as they helped clear plates away after the meal was finished. “You’re impressed, right?” This part was a little different, Kageyama knew; the king rolling up his sleeves to help scrub dishes clean. But Hinata wouldn’t have suddenly become too high and mighty to lift a finger for himself.

Kageyama, who had offered to help dry the dishes, snorted. “That’s what you’re concerned with? A couple months spent restructuring an entire kingdom and you want to know whether or not you’ve bowled me over?”

“Well, yeah, that’s the fun part,” Hinata said shamelessly.

In retaliation, Kageyama leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Come talk to me when you can beat me in a fight.”

Hinata squawked indignantly, pushing him away, before surreptitiously looking around to see if anyone had noticed. The earlier, mature image Kageyama had seen of him was instantly dashed, replaced by the boy he’d known who turned bright red whenever he held Kageyama’s hand.

“You’re trying to ruin my reputation,” Hinata accused him, poking at Kageyama’s belly.

“I ruined that ages ago,” Kageyama said with a grin. Hinata could act like no one knew about the two of them, but it didn’t change the fact that everyone knew. It was another of the reasons Kageyama liked staying down there. It was alright, that everyone knew.

Here, Hinata was king, and Kageyama was nobody (or he was the enemy, blood of the king above running through his veins), but it was alright. Here, it was alright that he let Hinata take him back to his room, to where they would share the same small bed, the same pillows, the same heat under the covers. Here, no one would take Hinata away from him.

“Oh-ho,” Hinata said, propped on his arms over Kageyama, looking down at him in the dim light of candle on the bedside table. “So you were impressed.” He trailed sneaky, practised fingers over the front of Kageyama’s pants and Kageyama arched his back into his touch, needy and irritated and in love, all at once.

“Maybe I care nothing for the crown,” Kageyama said petulantly, as Hinata coaxed his hips up, rid him of his clothes, tickled his throat with the tip of his nose. He couldn’t help but soften, the more Hinata kissed him. “Maybe I just care about the one wearing it.”

“Suit yourself,” Hinata whispered. Once he was inside Kageyama, once Kageyama had buried his fingers in his hair and held on tight enough that he could almost believe he’d never have to leave Hinata again, Hinata told him, triumphant: “Right now, it feels damn good being king.”

That’s because he’s already a great one, Kageyama thought, afterwards, lying facing Hinata, staring at the other boy’s elfin face. He was always so lively that seeing him asleep was slightly shocking.

Hinata had dreamed of this. He’d wanted to seize the crown, he’d wanted to pave the path for his people. For Kageyama, who was used to hating the inevitability of his future reign, this had seemed unthinkable. But the longer he’d known Hinata, the better he’d understood.

It wasn’t enough to want to be king for the crown alone. He had to want more—he had to want something for himself.

He brushed Hinata’s hair off his face and pressed a kiss to his forehead, careful not to wake him.

“If I am king,” he whispered, “then I want you by my side. Always.” He snuffed out the candle and curled up against the little ball of heat in the bed next to him.

Hinata had overturned an entire kingdom to achieve his dream. And Kageyama, if he must, would do the very same.

More Kinktober? If you’re not sure, maybe these will reverse your opinion...

#kagehina #hinata shouyou #kageyama tobio #kinktober #kinktober2017 #kagehina fanfiction #haikyuu!! fanfiction #haikyuu!!#esselle writes #tumblr fic #kingdom of crows #essie's hq fic

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tylerhoechlin · 7 years ago

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Back From the Brink

Dylan O’Brien was groomed to be Hollywood’s next young leading man. Then a tragic accident made him question everything.

Dylan O’Brien knows you want to know what happened to him.

Some people search his face for scars. Others ask the 26-year-old actor questions about the accident in 2016 that nearly cut short his career and could have ended his life. For more than a year, he was able to dodge that scrutiny and recover in private. Now, with a new movie coming out and a press tour required to promote it, things are different.

“I was anticipating this for a long time,” he says over lunch at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. “It used to really anger me, even just the thought of it. I just knew that eventually, I would have to be asked about this.”

He confesses these angry thoughts about as affably as any person could, as though he’s upset to even get upset. That doe-eyed decency has proved key to O’Brien’s screen appeal: In his breakthrough role as the lead of the Maze Runner franchise, he’s introduced in media res, thrust into a coliseum of YA terrors before we even learn who his character is. As he shakes and shivers and tries, alongside the audience, to make sense of his otherworldly predicament, you can’t help but root for him.

Not every actor can inspire that feeling in a viewer, but in O’Brien’s case, it’s so innate that the director of his new film, the action vehicle American Assassin, cast him simply after looking at his head shot. “I remember in that first discussion with my producers, names were being thrown around, and the one name I didn’t know yet was Dylan’s,” says Michael Cuesta. “I Googled him, I saw his picture, and I just said instinctively, ‘He’s right.’ There was an innocence and a vulnerability to him, and I hadn’t even seen his work yet. It’s an instinct you just have to trust.”

Cuesta wasn’t the only one besotted. At a time when Hollywood likes to import most of its young leading men from overseas — like Spider-Man’s Tom Holland, Star Wars breakout John Boyega, and an entire family of Hemsworths — The Maze Runner established O’Brien as a rare homegrown movie star. His profile grew ever larger while he shot the sequels to The Maze Runner and neared the end of his time on the MTV series Teen Wolf, and as work began on the third and final Maze Runner film, O’Brien started to look ahead to the future.

And then, just days into shooting that sequel, O’Brien was seriously injured in a stunt gone wrong. Pulled from one vehicle, he was reportedly struck by another, leaving him with a concussion, facial fracture, and brain trauma among his injuries. Production shut down for several weeks, then indefinitely. O’Brien withdrew from public view during his recovery as rumors flew that he might not return to the film. Half a year went by as O’Brien tried to heal and, at the lowest point in his life, mulled whether he wanted to continue his career at all. “I really was in a dark place there for a while and it wasn’t an easy journey back,” says O’Brien. “There was a time there where I didn’t know if I would ever do it again … and that thought scared me, too.”

Now, though, he is ready to talk about it.

“In a lot of ways, those six months went by like that,” he says, snapping his fingers. “And then, in a lot of ways, I can still remember that six months as if it was five years of my life.”

…………………………

Ask most young actresses when they wanted to become a movie star, and it won’t even be a question: They’ve been planning for it their whole lives. Kristen Stewart has been acting since she was a preteen, and at 14, Emma Stone put together a PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents to move to Los Angeles so she could go on auditions. But young American men seem come to acting differently — or indifferently. Channing Tatum was a model and dancer who happened into commercials before becoming a movie star. Chris Pratt happily toiled in obscurity as a Bubba Gump waiter in Hawaii when he was convinced by a customer to act in her film.

O’Brien’s foray into the industry was similarly unplanned. His parents had the expertise — O’Brien’s mother taught an acting class, while his father moved the family to California when O’Brien was 12 so he could pursue work as a camera operator — but in high school, he played drums in a jazz band instead of signing up for drama class. Like many of his classmates, though, O’Brien had a habit of posting videos to YouTube. They’re still there today: Check out his user page at “moviekidd826” and you can watch all 14 of his short comic sketches. Some of them are fairly simple, like his too-enthusiastic lip sync to the Spice Girls song “Wannabe,” and one of the uploaded clips is a teen staple, the video he made to ask a girl to prom.

Still, the shorts are clever and surprisingly narrative-driven, and O’Brien is a deft comic performer in all of them. He wouldn’t have thought of what he was doing as acting — he was just being himself, after all. But it’s exactly that unvarnished quality that made him so appealing, and as the videos began to circulate, he was signed by a woman who is still his manager today. Soon enough, he was being sent out to audition for projects like Valentine’s Day and Wizards of Waverly Place.

He hadn’t grown up knowing that he wanted to be an actor, but give O’Brien some credit: Once he figured that out, he committed hard. “My first semester of college, I’m going to sociology and English and psychology and all I cared about was getting home and preparing for whatever audition I had,” he says. “I’d be on IMDb looking at projects in development that I’d be right for and I’d send them to my manager and be like, ‘What’s going on with this?’” His ambition often outstripped his experience. “I was obsessed with having one of those auditions finally work out, and I was very impatient,” he recalls, laughing. “My manager would be like, ‘You have to understand, this could take years.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no, I’m going to get one of these.’”

Only a few months after his high-school graduation, that’s exactly what happened. O’Brien was cast on Teen Wolf, a fledgling MTV series based on the campy 1980s movie. This version skewed darker and filled its cast with hunks, with the howls meant to come from the audience each time a sexy werewolf stripped off his shirt. It was a notable hit for MTV, and though O’Brien was cast as the human best friend — not as the protagonist, Scott, or as any of the eye-candy beasts on the show — the role was a good fit for his boy-next-door charm. He wasn’t just Scott’s friend. He felt like yours, too.

“That show really became my school in a lot of ways,” says O’Brien. “I never took a second on set for granted. Even on my first day on the pilot, when my work finished for the day but then they were going to this other location to shoot another scene, I just went with them.” As a cable show, Teen Wolf filmed only five months out of the year, so O’Brien had plenty of time to hop on to other projects: He took Zooey Deschanel’s virginity in a New Girl flashback and popped up on the big screen in films like the teen romance The First Time and the Vince Vaughn–Owen Wilson comedy The Internship. “I would want to get on as many sets as I could,” he said. “And I was still very much ambitious about being in movies, too.”

In 2013, the year after The Hunger Games hit big, O’Brien was cast as the lead in another book-to-film YA franchise, The Maze Runner. The rare $100 million hit toplined by a young actor under 25, it propelled O’Brien onto studio short lists and led to more work in bigger movies, including Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon and a Maze Runner sequel, The Scorch Trials. 20th Century Fox picked up an action comedy with O’Brien attached, a sign of his growing clout, and as Cuesta looked for someone to play black-ops recruit Mitch Rapp in American Assassin, based on a popular book series by the late Vince Flynn, he alighted on O’Brien.

“He looks like a boy next door, like my son’s older friends,” says Cuesta. “Like a young man who has one foot in that postadolescent place and is about to cross over into adulthood and take that rite of passage.”

In March 2016, just as O’Brien headed to Vancouver to film Maze Runner: The Death Cure, he committed to star in American Assassin, which would represent his biggest break so far from youth-driven fare. He planned to film that after wrapping The Death Cure, squeeze in some time to shoot Teen Wolf’s farewell season, and move on to the movies that studios had been setting up for him.

“To see him blossom in his career and see what he was taking on, it was amazing to watch,” says O’Brien’s father, Patrick. “And then to see that broken … it was hard.”

…………………………

O’Brien would rather not relive the particulars of his accident. “There’s really been one or two people who have tried to dig and find out what happened and I cut it off,” he says. “And I’m comfortable with where I draw the line.”

What’s known is that after that stunt on the set of The Death Cure went awry and production shut down on March 18, 2016, the studio planned to resume filming May 9, hoping to still make the film’s set February 2017 release date. Weeks later, though, it was clear that O’Brien’s injuries were so serious that filming could not begin again.

“I had lost a lot of function, just in my daily routine,” says O’Brien. “I wasn’t even at a point where I felt like I could handle social situations, let alone showing up and being responsible for work every day. Long hours on set, delivering a performance and carrying a movie … it just makes your palms sweat.”

O’Brien calls his recovery process “overwhelming,” though the biggest toll the accident took on him was psychological. Even if he could find his way back to the sense of stability he had before the accident, and even if those scars could heal, would he still want to return to the high-flying movie career he’d worked so hard to set up? After it all went away, he couldn’t even be sure he was the same person anymore.

“And then there was a part of me, too, that was feeling pressured and stressed out by the mere fact that I had all of these people still emailing me, checking in,” he says. “I would get so fucking mad. Like if ever I heard from a producer [who was] seeing when I’d be able to get back on set, I’d fucking go nuts. It would really, really piss me off.”

But as O’Brien recovered in private, rumors flew that his injuries were much more extensive than was reported, and the people behind the projects O’Brien had set up were forced to weigh their options. Cuesta didn’t want to recast American Assassin, but he also didn’t know what state his star was in. During his recovery, O’Brien had not communicated with the production in four months.

“I didn’t want to let it go, and I also had this really interesting, deeper connection to this character over the course of those four months because of what I was going through,” says O’Brien. American Assassin begins with a freak tragedy, as Rapp’s fiancée is gunned down by terrorists during a beach vacation and dies in his arms. Lost in a rabbit hole of grief, Rapp spends the next few months weaponizing his anger and decides to hunt down her killers himself. “I felt like I could portray that and wanted to be the one to do that justice — it was almost like an honor for me at that point,” O’Brien says. “But at the same time, I was still in such a fragile personal state that I had this other force telling me, like, ‘No fucking way’ that I can do it. ‘This is too soon, too soon. Tell them to leave me alone, I need more time.’”

Unfortunately, the film didn’t have much time to spare. If American Assassin didn’t go into production before a certain date, the film rights would revert back to Flynn’s estate, and if O’Brien still wanted to play Rapp, he’d have to spend two months getting into physical shape for the role. It was a daunting regimen of learning fight choreography and adding muscle to his frame that would take a lot of work for any actor, let alone one who was still reeling from his physical nadir. “I knew it wouldn’t be getting back on the horse in a light way,” says O’Brien.

And so, at the end of July, he recommitted to American Assassin. It was a signal to the industry that he wanted to work again, even if, privately, he still wondered if he’d be able to make it through. On the one hand, the time O’Brien spent in the gym with action coordinator Roger Yuan gave him something that he could focus on during those long days. But even as he grew physically stronger, O’Brien was still struggling with heavy emotional and psychological episodes during his recovery.

“Sometimes I’d literally show up at the gym having a panic attack, and my trainer would be like, ‘All right, let’s just go get breakfast,’” says O’Brien, who came to treat Yuan almost like a therapist. “I can’t give enough credit to him … he was really there for me, and not just like a trainer where it’s like, ‘Well, come on, man, I gotta pump you up.’ He cared more about my mind and the state that I was in.”

Near the end of their training, O’Brien was in the best physical shape he’d ever been, an unlikely development given the events of the last few months. But despite all that training to become Mitch Rapp, O’Brien’s anxiety only grew as the start date drew near. The day he was supposed to fly to London to prepare to film the movie, O’Brien had what he describes as an emotional breakdown in the airport. With his father and girlfriend Britt Robertson by his side, he questioned whether he could continue.

“I didn’t even think they’d let me on the plane, to be honest,” he says. “I must have looked high or something.” O’Brien’s father, who had planned to spend the first few weeks in London getting his son acclimated, proved to be the rock he needed in that moment. “I don’t think I would have been able to step onto the plane without him,” says O’Brien.

“That was a tough year for us,” says his father Patrick. “It was hard to see him like that … he’s such a special kid.” Patrick had never set foot on one of Dylan’s sets before — “I thought it was important to let it be his life and not be mine” — but on the first day Dylan shot American Assassin, he knew he had to be there. “It was mind-blowing,” says Patrick. “I was watching him from the monitors, and he was busting out 50 push-ups in between takes.”

It was all for a wordless sequence where we catch up with Mitch months after his fiancée’s death, watching him train and harden himself in his dark apartment. As O’Brien walloped on a punching bag and bust out dozens of pull-ups, the intensity was like nothing Patrick had seen from his son before: “Obviously, I’m getting concerned. I’m watching the monitors and I’m seeing the stress he’s putting on his body and his face and all the places that have been of some concern of late.”

When Cuesta called “cut,” Patrick walked past the first assistant director and up to Dylan. “I was almost nose to nose with him, and I’m not sure he saw me right away. He was in it, as much as you can be in it. And I said, ‘Dylan?’ He looked at me and kind of focused. And I said, ‘Are you okay?’ And he said, ‘I’m good.’”

“If he didn’t have the accident,” says Cuesta, “would he have connected that well with Mitch? I don’t know, but it definitely brought truth to it.”

O’Brien acknowledges that, too. “I’d just been through a lot that summer and the fact that you spend all this time not even knowing if you can do that again …” He pauses, and swallows. “Even right now, it’s just kind of hard to talk about.”

It helps, he says, that Patrick came aboard for the rest of the shoot as a camera operator, staying by his side when he needed him most. With his father there, he could be fearless. “I would just think about where I was at psychologically in June and July, how insurmountable the task seemed to me,” says O’Brien. “And then just to be there on the last day knowing that I did it, with my dad there at my side, it was just a really, really great feeling.”

“He’s in a good place now,” says Patrick. “And nothing makes a parent happier.”

…………………………

O’Brien doesn’t sugarcoat his recovery. Sitting in front of me at lunch, he looks every inch the movie star he was before: hair tousled, eyes bright, his face covered only by stubble. He is candid about what it took to get to this point, though, and even after filming American Assassin, the question remained: Was he ready to finish Maze Runner: The Death Cure, putting to bed the series that had given him so much and taken plenty, too?

“Nothing inside of you wants to go back to that,” O’Brien admits. “It took a lot of deep searching past those gut instincts that I was having just because of the trauma that I experienced to realize that I did want to finish it.”

Did he consider asking the studio to move on without him? “I wouldn’t have been ultimately happy with that, I don’t think. In the moment, it would have been a temporary relief because I would have run from it, but it would have always stuck with me a little bit … I knew it was going to be really hard, harder than Assassin probably, but [I thought] if I got through that, I can get through this, and I think I’ll come out of the other side being really happy that I did it. And I did.”

He resumed filming The Death Cure in March, which is now set for release in January 2018. His father followed him to South Africa, where the movie was shot, and was made a co-producer on the film; O’Brien now counts it among his best experiences on a project. He even found time to return to the final season of Teen Wolf, which had written around his absence while he recovered. The series finale of that show will air on September 24, and soon enough, every obligation O’Brien had set before his accident will be behind him.

“Coming out of the other side of all this is basically a whole new chapter, and I think I will be going about it differently,” he says. “I’m excited to have more balance going forward. Like, I’m not somebody I don’t think who’s going to do three or four movies a year and feel like I have to constantly pump them out. I think there’s something to be said about pacing yourself.”

In the meantime, he’s bought his first house, which gives him a little stability in an uncertain industry. He recently threw a party there to celebrate his 26th birthday — “It turned into more of a rager than I intended it to be,” he laughs — and an hour into it, O’Brien and his friends were already jumping off the roof into his pool. It’s a future that he could not have imagined just a year and a half ago.

“I’m excited to see what comes my way, see what I’m interested in next, and just see what happens,” says O’Brien. After Teen Wolf and The Maze Runner conclude, it’s wide-open space. “It’s the first time that I’ll be operating in my career without those two roles, really.”

He thinks about it and smiles. “It’s good, though, to not have that safety net.”

[source: Vulture]

#wow #dylan o'brien #american assassin #this was really hard to read #article #vulture #accident #recovery #patrick o'brien #michael cuesta #scruffysterekposts

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barbecuedphoenix · 7 years ago

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In the last oneshot/drabble you posted (which was very interesting and fun to read) you mentioned "Nevra fighting his dark instinct", do you have any headcanons on how he fights it during a long mission where he doesn't really have a variety of choices and his everyday life

As a matter of fact, I’ve got plenty of headcanons on Nevra livinglife as a vampire. ;) He’s not just a gorgeous man with pointy teeth and Spock-worthyears. So thanks for bringing this to my inbox, Anon.

Though technically, that lastrequest is a scenario: a really unrefined draft of a one-shot without properdialogue, action sequence, or description. But your thoughts are well and truly appreciated.^_^

(For anyone interested in reading that particular request, check it outhere. Warning: it’s shamelessly NSFW. Don’t take a cue from the characters andtry reading it in public.)

Anyway. To answer your question, Anon, I like to imagine that Eldaryavampires still retain a few traits of traditional vampires from folklore… andthat there’s a valid reason for why they were feared by humans (and possibly more) back in the day.While Nevra has naturalized himself (very successfully) to El’s non-vampirecommunity, I won’t be surprised if it’s still an ongoing battle for him tooverride millions of years of evolution. And if so, he probably hopes in one corner of his psyche that his fans at HQ remain oblivious to some of hismost basic urges. Otherwise, where will he get his love?

…Because some of his most basic urges outside the bedroom aren’t very sexy by non-vampire standards.Thank you.

Warning: What you’re about toread is at least 99% pure headcanon. Sadly, we still know zilch about the pure vampirelifestyle in El. :(

The Lure of Blood

To the average vampire, fresh blood sparks a powerful visceral reactionacross several levels: it stokes their appetite as a food source, fires theirlibido as a medium for sexual communion, and magnifies their senses as abiological meter for their own health and those around them– either friend,foe, or prey. If willingly provided by a clan-member or a longtime donor, thetaste of blood also fosters deep comfort and a sense of ‘home’. But if spilledfrom an enemy, a quarry, or themselves when they’re wounded, then the smell ofblood alone can trigger a berserker-worthy adrenaline rush. All this is theresult of millions of years of highly-specialized evolution, where blood advancedbeyond simple ‘food source’ to also become a medium for social affirmation, anda complex physical, sensory, and chemical language shared between predator, prey, and kin.

Not surprisingly, vampires encounter friction from other species who a.)don’t share the same evolutionary toolkit with blood, b.) keep culturallynarrow views on blood, and c.) have even less tolerance for blood-feeding (whichsome of them, understandably, still associate with being preyed on). Thiscultural clash is why vampires outside their clans typically avoid the medical,culinary, and military/mercenary professions, where blood contact happensfrequently and nervous non-vampires panic at seeing their eyes dilate at thefirst flash of red.

None of this has discouraged Nevra though from joining the Shadow Guardof El, where spilled blood is an unfortunate but necessary feature of fieldwork. The main reason: he has a steely confidence in his own self-control, anarguably-stronger loyalty to El… and no small amount of pragmatism in adjustingor smoothing over his ancestral instincts whenever they flare to life. Afterall, he cares about winning his colleagues’ trust, even if– a few eons back–he would have called them his ‘dinner’ in a very literal sense. So he follows aset of strict personal protocols, starting with…

Rule #1: Stay Neat onthe Field

It’s not just because Nevra is vain about his appearance; reducing bloodcontact on the field helps minimize the risk of losing his focus.

Because if he smells a fatal or near-fatal volume of fresh blood concentrated in onearea, at close quarters, and in a hostile situation away from home, he’s hit by amassive adrenaline spike: his already-keen reaction times sharpen, his physicalstrength and speed double, and his immunity to pain stiffens into a veritablelayer of armor over his skin. The world– to him– suddenly becomes six timesmore vivid across all senses, with the passage of seconds seeming to stretchinto minutes. This might seem like a boon for a field agent– and Nevra infact has tapped into this adrenaline spike to close in on a frustrating target or escapelife-threatening situations– but it comes at the cost of abandoning allcaution to the wind: his ability to restrain himself and move tactically arereduced (if not temporarily suspended). And once his adrenaline spike ebbs, hemight physically collapse after spending all his bodily reserves. Worse still,receiving cuts and smelling his own blood actually increases his aggression and fighting resolve, instead of promotingthe instinct to escape. Thus, too much blood exposure in combat will actuallymake this vampire more bestial than cunning, more a berserker than anassassin… and more dead than a hero.

This is why Nevra avoids open battlefields: instead listening to thesounds of battle, and sniffing out blood at range to detect and circumvent thereal slaughter zones. (Then let someone much less reactive, like Valkyon, enterto clean up instead.) He also applies a healthy amount of stealth and guerillatactics to tip the scales in his favor, and thus end a confrontation quickly(or at least, leave himself openings to escape the fray if it becomes too messy).Especially for someone like him, there’s a time limit to how long he can remainin a skirmish. But if direct combat is inevitable, he resorts to daggers only if heneeds to attack at range and/or subdue a very dangerous foe, otherwise takingthem down with bloodless judo(style) kicks, joint locks (or snaps), and whisper-silentnerve strikes.

It’s no light matter for him to whip out the daggers. When he does, he knows he has tofollow…

Rule #2: Be a Gentlemanwith Your Knife

The easiest solution to avoid the vampire blood-frenzy is to not spill blood in a fray. Right?

Well in Nevra’s book, the answer isn’t quite so simple: a sharp knife ismore precise, more concealable, and more merciful than a heavy bludgeoninginstrument. Also, heavier fights can be averted by a little psychologicalmeddling… like smiling at them when holding a dagger at their throat. Few thingsunnerve non-vampires more than spilling blood in front of a piqued vampire onfull sensory alert. They don’t knowhis steely restraint over himself; they can only assume that there’s realpredatory intent in the gleam of his eye, the flaring of his nostrils, and theway he sometimes licks his lips at them, flashing the points of his fangs thatmight just be sharper than that blade.

But. On the occasions whenhe does have to use the knife, Nevra stillabides by a code of conduct bred into his bones by his own people, and temperedfurther by (many) years of training: respect your prey and don’t allow them tosuffer for long. Kill with as few strikes as possible, as cleanly as possible.And when it’s done, leave the body in peace as soon as you can. Beneath themoral rhetoric though, this practice helps to minimize the gore on thebattlefield that will trigger the infamous blood-frenzies, and automaticallydistances the executioner from what blood continues to flow from the fatalwound. As well as from vindictive enemy clan-members, who’ll come flying in atsmelling the death of their kin on the wind.

There is a very realevolutionary benefit with being able to scent blood from over a quarter mileaway: it’s to be able to track your quarry, or find your clan members who’re indire need of your help. And if Nevra does find a ‘clan’ member (i.e. any of hiscolleagues in El) who’s missing a few scraps of skin at least, he knows he hasto adhere to…

Rule #3: Be Discreet inTouching the Wounded

Contrary to popular belief, the sight of a fresh wound does not arouse vampires all the time; themethod of skin penetration makes all the difference to the vampire brain. So ifNevra spies telltale toothmarks– or needle-like marks, at least– on the skin,he instinctively grows both hungry and aroused. (After all, this is the vampireequivalent of watching someone walk out of the bedroom, sans underwear.) But if something else has broken the skin– leaving aninjury–, a sense of distress pulls him hard to port instead, all sexual and feedinginstincts automatically capped by an urge to help: in other words, he reactslike any other sentient species does when encountering the wounded.

To most vampires, the difference between a fresh wound from a bite and afresh wound from a knife is as stark as the difference between a naked andaroused person, and a naked and terrified person. And it’s just as lurid asight. Even under his dismay and his overriding drive to help, Nevra won’t beable to help feeling acutely conscious of the victim’s body, what with thesmell of fresh blood lying thick on his palate and already waking his salivaryglands, his senses automatically piqued and tingling on high alert.

Still, it’s a matter of honor not to even stare. So when treating a fresh wound, he wills himself to enter a detached,clinical state of mind, focusing on only the depth of the wound, its chances ofinfection or contamination by poison, the chances of recovery, and especiallywhat pain it’s currently causing the victim. And he’ll minimize direct skincontact with their blood out of respect, then wash his hands afterwards: bloodin this case can’t be treated as a sexual communion, no more than a surgeon canlust after a patient on their operating table. Doing otherwise would be a gross impropriety. If amongother vampires though, Nevra might do a clinical smell of the bloodsample to check for signs of poison, disease, and so forth; that’ll be the limitof his direct contact.

Notall blood that’s spilled by the body is harmful, per se. So when Nevra catchesthat telltale tang of iron in the air athome, he knows he has to follow…

Rule #4: Watch Your StepWhen Blood is Spilled at Home

Back in the clan, blood is spilled in small increments on a regularbasis: it’s equal parts social exchange, sexual exchange, health check, andsnack. The usual shenanigans of a sociable house. So it took Nevra a short, butsobering period of adjustment in his early days in El to realize that blood spilledin a non-vampire home might mean somethingmore serious. And then he realized a new level to his parental instincts:now every snatch of blood he smells at HQ carries at least a 50% chance of trouble,far higher than it ever was where he grew up.

Still, he can’t afford to knock down doors to investigate, not withoutseriously alarming– and potentially embarrassing– his colleagues (who have noidea how he knows they’re bleeding, from across HQ). Instead,he has to play the off-duty detective whenever his infamous nose is triggered,stepping carefully between inquiry and eavesdropping.

Nevra has already learnt to give the infirmary a wide berth whenever he scents blood coming from thatvicinity; blood is to be expected there, and it’s under Ewelein’s jurisdiction. The line isn’t quite so clear though whenever thatsmell emanates from the barracks or showers. Fortunately, this is where being aspymaster comes in handy: it’s never too hard to get the ‘unofficial’ healthrecords he needs. (Gossip, when enough is collected from many sources, saysplenty.) And in case he needs to confirm a few murky facts for himself, he’llmake a series of ‘casual’ strolls through the area to pinpoint the precisesource of the smell (which he won’t mention to anyone just yet). If he traces it to a female recruit’sdoor or shower stall, and listens in to find the occupant isn’t under any particulardistress– or might even be enjoying the company of a first-time partner–,then he keeps walking. Maybe with a ghost of a smile.

One of the consequences ofhaving a vampire’s sense of smell is that feminine biology has given up itssecrets to Nevra long ago. He’s fine with it.

None of the vampire folklore I’ve found mentions anything about why they need blood/qi/life-force/etc., beyond the catch-all explanation that it’s because the undead don’t quite like being dead. (And that biting the neck is a disturbing way to combine sex with death.)

So I jumped off in a different direction entirely: what evolutionary benefits might a taste for blood offer, for a live species that enjoys necking each other?

…All right, I might have gone overboard again with spinning vampire headcanons. That’s bio-anthropology for you. :/

(Though if you’re interested in reading aboutthe more romantic side to blood-drinking, check out the equally-overboard analysis/headcanon forNevra here.)

Regardless, please read, enjoy (hopefully), and review. Any and allfeedback is appreciated. :)

#Eldarya #request #headcanon #Nevra

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playlist-26 · 5 years ago

Text

September: What I’ve Been Writing

From Friendship Entrance Interview By Emma Aldrich Jordan

|this document is an ongoing exploration of friendship, connection, and relationships. It has been influenced by Feminine Law; Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire by Jill Gentile and Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant. In it I have been articulating my thoughts on social connection - what it is, how to get there, and also my particular social preferences and values. It is a working document - Here is a passage.|

Notes about Friendship.

What is Connection? • Who is worth the effort of maintaining connection? • What is the reason/intention/mountain of perusing friendship?

Relationships with people operate to ignite whatever part in us resonates with a part reiterated in the other person. The ideal is a web of people who encourage the good parts in you, allow them to flourish and grow as well as providing you with things that are essential to providing human connection.

When approaching friendship, therefore, to take note of what parts in me I like and value most, and what parts I struggle against. This will operate as a map for who it is you are looking for in friends and also how they will fit in your life - what good parts they explore and what bad parts at which you draw a boundary and do not want to explore with them.

It is also important to take note of the social energy I want to contribute to the world. Taking note of values in type of social bonds and social values - that which with I would like to take with me despite the environment I find myself in and to have relationships with people who encourage that kind of behavior.

Connection: I’ve been observing this summer ways in which I feel connected; to people, animals, environments, communities (https://www.instagram.com/p/B3Kh80bhRvx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link), content, nature. One this I have come to is that connection is a particular thing; I guess I have been operating partially on the idea that one should be able to feel connected in any environment, given that they put the right effort in. Effort is an element of connection, for sure, but where you direct that effort and finding the right fit is also an important element of connection. In order to connect, we must observe ourselves and find what brings us pleasure, towards what we are naturally inclined, understand what excites us and what feels forward moving. We must understand the parts of ourselves we wish to expand upon in order to direct ourselves towards external things.

There is a paint in my head, there is a pain in my head By Emma Aldrich Jordan

|this document is an experiment of emotional expression through writing. Language and writing has never been a medium I particularly connected with so I have been playing with the format in order to understand how it can feel natural for me. I enjoy playing with voice and pushing how vague and abstract I can be in this document. It has been a way for me to process my thoughts on connections and relationships - I’ll use quotes from people I’ve interacted with or reference an event in my life as a base to explore these ideas. I’ve enjoyed how the freedom I’ve given myself in this document has allowed me to create a personal style of interacting with prose/language/written arts.|

I was thinking this

After you said “and now with you, when I get sad I just want to call you, that is my inclination.”

I know I know I know this feeling

I felt it through my head and into my fingers and onto a phone and there I’m calling her. Asking desperately - please with all your love, please take this away. I love you you love me we’re bridged You See Me please bridge me please see me as how I want to be put me back please.

I felt it as the call came in and her desperate voice said (through that fucking annoying tiny handbrick we all carry around) please please take it away let us envelope ourselves in US.

I love her I love her I love her and I had to say no.

And I learned to say no to me too - because this is what it feels like (me me me maybe reaching the same for you, autonomy, remember)

It feels like this:

My cup of emotions is too full. It is too full for me to do anything with. Please take some of what is in my cup. Let me pour what is in my cup into your cup and please please hold it.

I want to evolve from this (this is what I don’t get about people not talking to each other, people not working things out - nothing is scary enough to be not worth the brain altering that it can give you. Life is fucking boring. DIVE IN.) I want to FIGURE OUT a NEW WAY TO DO THIS [isn’t this sooo exciting, like how many people have figured this out? How many people have needed to? Are we emotional pioneers? Perhaps just within the place we started- from where our parents left off] Its a PUZZLE OF LIFE I absolutely l o v e it.

This is what I learned. Its a never ending cup? If you pour it out, it will just refill. I guess I’m asking you - not that you are inclined to do this (I don’t want to be condescending, dismissive, etc, but I guess I want to ask you something) please don’t ask me to take from your cup. {Don’t get me wrong. Its a good feeling. And I like the feeling of your feeling inside me // thats quite sexy right? Like thats the point of sex? // But I know it will just be one of those endless cycles

We are afraid, are we not, of this endless cycle. I feel there is something you are afraid of.

The thing I Know. [the thing that pulled me through wanting to still work on it] was knowing that it is always possible for something to be Good. To feel Right. {and this didn’t feel right} I AM NOT AFRAID OF BEING PULLED IN - perhaps right now that just comes from a state of tiredness // ha.ha how many times in my life have I pulled myself out of a state because I was fucking sick of being in it - it got boring. Maybe I just don’t feel like feeling that urgency right now. But this was a cycle. And I got out of it. And I can get out of it again.

| It was Food. I couldn’t get out of it. I was S T U C K for SO long. And it was just like this cycle - right? I LISTENED TO MY BODY. I Experimented. I did the hard long work. I was compassionate. It would have worked for a much longer time if I wasn’t so pissed off from stress and the dinning hall didn’t have sweet potato fries. This is NOT the First Time I’ve pulled myself out of a cycle | and I have decided to Live [yes its a choice for all of us. Being Alive instead of Not Dead.] I’m not scared of the cycle. Because I know how to get out of it. I’ll do it the fuck again. I’m not afraid of the bottom. Because I don’t even have to go on when I get there. THe going on is going to happen anyways. It will wait until I’m ready to pull myself.

It Always Waits.

It Will Always Be Here.

Tis Buddhism- NO? No matter what I’m in, where I am, I can always look around. I can always appreciate the earth as my body and BE and its ok. Cool how all these things happen on this body. (I wonder how the hormones feel.)

My internal state is a constant riding of waves. This Too Shall Pass (its ok, be patient)

//I thought today, riding in a car with Anabel at 1:00 am through Bellefontaine, Ohio (https://www.instagram.com/p/B3Kh80bhRvx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link); looking at the Mary Rutan hospital // I thought // Going to different places its just like a new set, new costumes, new characters, and new Vibe;style. And I can interact with it. Play in this world. Interact with the characters (not just watching!!) I Love the different sets, the different chacters, the different vibes -- how the whole thing has a C O H I E S I O N to it.

I love the moments Of being with people of the earth

Especially

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ofthedivinekrp-blog · 7 years ago

Photo

Did you hear? MOON TAEIL, the twenty-three year old STUDENT/MODEL, was spotted in downtown Yeoshin. We heard they’re a descendant of BASTET is known for having the ability(s) of HELLCAT/FELINE PHYSIOLOGY and ENHANCED ALLURE. If you look closely, they have an uncanny resemblance to BTS’ Kim Taehyung.

* . ✧ ˙ ˖ — and deep down in the soul, something rises, knowing well that what made us is what could be our demise.

Bast was originally a fierce lioness warrior goddess of the sun throughout most of ancient Egyptian history, but later she was changed into the cat goddess that is familiar today, becoming Bastet. Even later, Greeks occupying ancient Egypt toward the end of its civilization changed her into a goddess of the moon.

As protector of Lower Egypt, Bast, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh, and consequently of the later chief male deity, Ra. Along with the other lioness goddesses, she would occasionally be depicted as the embodiment of the Eye of Ra. She has been depicted as fighting the evil snake named Apep, an enemy of Ra.[4]

Images of Bastet were often created from alabaster. The goddess was sometimes depicted holding a ceremonial sistrum in one hand and an aegis in the other—the aegis usually resembling a collar or gorget embellished with a lioness head.

Her name became associated with the lavish jars in which Egyptians stored their ointment used as perfume. Bastet thus gradually became regarded as the goddess of perfumes, earning the title of perfumed protector. In connection with this, when Anubis became the god of embalming, Bastet came to be regarded as his wife for a short period of time. Bastet was also depicted as the goddess of protection against contagious diseases and evil spirits.

* . ✧ ˙ ˖ — we are capable, pressured into valiant things, able to do what others can’t in this foreign land.

Hellcat/Feline Physiology: Taeil has the ability to transform and mimic the abilities of a cat, but that comes with a twist. Along with the physical attributes of a domestic or big cat, green eyes, who’s pupils are either normal or oval, long lashes, pointed canines and ears and a sly tongue. He has the physiology of a hellcat, meaning that his cat form is of the demonic type. His aura is feline, a firey blue that grants him the abilities to manipulate, configure and create, hell-fire. His ability varies, able to summon the depths of firey hell, but also normal fire, though that ability is limited. His power can cause excruciating pain or even instant death, and instead of a normal orange-y glow, his is a crisp, sinister blue.

Enhanced Allure: He also has he ability to enchant themselves to obtain powers of persuasion as well as seduction. Depending on the user, they may have a “trigger” that makes people around them obey their commands. Once under their spell, targets are at their command and willing to do whatever it is they want, even suicide. But Taeil personally uses the sexual aspect of his power. It allows him manipulation over lust and love, pleasure, and gives him the ability of sexual inducement, seduction intuition, subliminal seduction and his favorite, supernatural beauty.

* . ✧ ˙ ˖ — as stories told, legends passed, languages spread, we start to forget who were before.

triggers in the following passage: drug/sex addiction, emotional abuse, domestic abuse, parental abandonment, suicide, mental instability, trauma

People say that there’s a little good in everyone, that even the most terribly, evil and pitiful human being had a sliver of good in them, a small heart that could grow with just the right push. But those same people, who have met Moon Taeil, the heir to the Moon business empire, would say that he, is an exception to that rule. The man knows good yes, but his association with it is slim to none.

Moon Taeil has never known poverty. Born to an ex-idol and a fashion and make up designer who’s career was already on the come up in London, life had always nestled in the realm of fine wine and diamonds. He lived in lavish homes, and visited the most beautiful countries the earth could provide. He attended private schools over seas and was taught by the best educational instructors money could buy. Taeil walked on red carpets and roses everywhere he went, and as a boy, that didn’t keep him from being curious, loving, and artistic. His calling was art and academics, he painted extravagant pieces and drew extraordinary portraits all while leading his classes in academics. But even with that going for him, every year, every family picture was taken, and you can watch as the curious child like wonder is sucked from his soul.

Moon Jongguk and Moon Taeyeon weren’t the nurturing type. Taeil was raised by butlers and nannies, and then himself once he was old enough. The only child of money hungry entrepreneurs took a hearty toll on the growing adolescent. His parents were stone cold in their emotions, emotionally abusive, and made him feel as if he was bellow his worth. They were hardly home, always traveling, building their empire by stepping on the little people as well as their son, and when thy were Taeil to them was, subpar. And so, he buried himself, he still attended his private school in London though his family moved back to Korea and while their, he indulged. Sex, drugs and alcohol consumed him, and he spiraled. Weed, opiates, pills, cocaine, the latter being his drug of choice took hold of his life and he hadn’t had care in the world. You see, in middle school, Taeil noticed that there was something…different about him. His eyes were a pure emerald green,enchanting and alluring in contrast to his deeply tanned skin. His ears seemed to point and he grew into fangs that he was eventually able to retract. At first ‘a fluke’ he thought, his slew of mental illness’ were starting to take a toll on him, pushing forth hallucinations. But digging and questions lead to the discovery of his lineage, and well Taeil took that in stride.

By the time he made it to high school, he had spiraled out of control using his abilities to co-horse and control, and under the influence of an influx of drugs, Taeil was a monster. Junior year began the terror of what he was…what he is capable of. His first boyfriend, the love of his life. He indulged in Taeil’s sexual fantasies and drug issues. They had partners together, male and female alike. Indulged in drugged up parties and raves, he was Taeil’s night in shinning armor. But their medieval love story came with a twist, one that included deviated septums, black eyes and bruises. Cheating and name calling and the works. And Taeil, subject to the emotional disturbance at home, was to fragile to endure, the night in the strange city being his down fall. Gun shots fired, and sirens wailed, blood covered his entire body and his lover lay limp on the floor. But Taeil’s finger prints weren’t on the gun, no gloves were discarded, he hadn’t even pulled the trigger…his lover had, on himself at Taeil’s hand he lay slumped against a hotel window over looking the Dubai night life, cause of death? Suicide.

From then Taeil knew the full brunt of his powers, even his ability to bring forth fires of hell. And from then he became an unstoppable force in the industry, his looks got him his modeling gigs, but so did his ability to persuade, to allure, to in-capture and completely take over someones mind just by a few glossed kisses, and fluttering lashes. Just with the flick of the wrist of the click of his Louboutin heels. And he became dangerous, a male femme fatal if you will. A feline minx who had the industry in his palm. He bathed in diamonds, and pink glitter gloss, while commanding men at his feet and boy did he love it. He basked in the attention it granted him, in the lovers it brought him, men willing to give their last dime even though he had every penny he could ever wanted. Women pushing to be apart of whatever he was offering. He is and was the pinnacle of society, known for his posh, London poise paired with his sensual demeanor. But underneath the kittenish licks, and pearls he was still a curious child, battered and broken. He had seen things, been to the depths of Hell and back quite literally. He still loved art, and even collects it now, still graduated the top of his class, and entered West Celestial’s medical program a year early the only thing he can feel he’s accomplished with out his power. He moved out to Yeoshin for school though he continues his model career and helps with his families empire outside of it. Everyone knows him here, a different him, still the sexy, sly, cat from high school, still surrounded by white powder and wine, in the penthouse in the hills. But there’s a different side of him in Yeoshin…something much less Hellcat and a little more domestic the face of an ex lover with a bullet going through his temple a constant in his dreams.

#accepted #moon taeil #otdtae-il #krpg #new krpg

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wandering-bitch · 4 years ago

Text

Annotations on Falling in Love with Love (Again)

FiLwL(A) is my 3zun cinderella which is actually just about the importance of qin su and also reuniting with your exes. Here’s my behind the scenes/notes/lore for chapters 9-11.

ch 9: nie mingjue being hot

i wrote this before i’d even written the Murder in ch 6;;;;; i just love nie mingjue

i so deeply believe in nie mingjue being smart and able to see through meng yao because he’s straightforward and strategic.

“hmm” i said to myself. “how do i write the bois getting together??” after much thought i decided on “by stabbing one of them a bunch”

bits of this are still funny to me. rip meng yao sometimes you gotta be up close and personal with a hot dude’s bare sweaty chest

also my version of “romantic and sensual” is just “doing math and deciding yeah, against your better judgement, you’re gonna smooch” because i love an overthinking murder twink

“on the bright side, the late-night guest was not jin guangshan’s type. unfortunately he was exactly meng yao’s type: nie mingjue” i can’t believe i let myself write this, bc it feels way too modern, but also the tone of this fic is just sarcastic enough that modern grouchy shit works

ever since i discovered that camel was a delicacy in tang china i became OBSESSED with it. i nearly included it in ‘i have always loved the door’ and it makes an appearance in ‘blood in the cut’

the guan reappears!! or at least is mentioned.in case u forgot it from chapter 1 it is Definitely Not A Glass Slipper Or Anything

“i love ruining a twink’s life” i said in the author’s notes. i was not lying. my hobbies are making nie mingjue look cool and making jin guangyao suffer.

“xichen was disappointed when he didn’t see you there” “and you of course, weren’t” “on the contrary i was happy to see you” is one of the exchanges that was like. core to this fic. similar to “i met someone” “i don’t know what you want me to say to that” “neither do i”

when outlining fics i tend to include some key dialogue/exchanges that strike me as the Mood TM and half the time these exchanges go through incredible rewrites or just get deleted, but it’s always nice to see them survive

the xiangqi was so much fun to write, not bc i have played the game a bunch (i haven’t) but bc it gave me a fun way to talk about the conversation without talking about the conversation.

“a controlled leak qould have been very useful” makes me so happy it’s such a MOOD and nie mingjue immediately going heart-eyes over it is complete wish fulfillment. when will a hot sword lesbian be enamored over my ruthless scheming???? im taking sword lesbian gf applications over in my ask box

“But it hadn’t been easy” this paragraph originally included “Nie Mingjue had broadened his moral compass, and Meng Yao had learned to trust” or something but i couldn’t really figure out how meng yao would describe his own personal growth since he left qinghe. like he DID grow he DID learn that he can trust the people he loves to trust him and that it’s worth bringing people in on your schemes and plans.... but he’s too dumb to describe this.

the xiyao troll’s comment on this was “LMFAO that oocness from both meng yao and nmj where nmj is suddenly JGY levels of cunning and JGY is dumb enough to make mistakes XD”

this has stuck with me so hard

how do you read Falling in Love with Love and only discover after 16k words that i think meng yao makes mistakes?????

how do u consume any adaptation of mdzs and think that nmj isn’t smart enough to go “huh that cunning twink who is absolutely mooning over me and xichen and also plays weiqi like my old buddy seems REAL FUCKING FAMILIAR” nmj canonically sees thru jgy machinations all the time

anyway i love nmj and the xiyao troll

did you know there’s an exchange to celebrate the troll’s works??? i discovered it after signups closed but im going to enjoy reading all of them

ch 10: and with very little trouble

this took me like a month to write oops but that’s just because a lot has to happen

the opening where meng yao is being mean to qin su was so hard to write. meng yao getting overworked?? fine. meng yao getting abused??? cool. meng yao being slightly short with his sister, who is in no way hurt by this bc she can tell it’s not about her??? HORRIBLE!!!

the detective scene happened. there’s not a lot to say about it, i don’t think, except to note that han meilin did try to stand up for qin su

ch 11: impossible things are happening every day

cinderella time mother fuckers!!! this is another one that took time!!

ch 10 took time bc i wasn’t 100% sure how it would play out

this took time bc even though i knew exactly what would happen and how, it has to be Real Good, y’know? it’s tying up the entire fic. if these 2k words don’t work, then the rest of the fic will feel less good and ppl won’t come back to it

(please everyone come back to this over and over if only to laugh at my obvious qin su agenda)

qin su and meng yao fighting over who gets to take the fall for their joint murder. i love them.

i wasn’t planning for this fic to start the sunshot campaign but here we are. in the war.

How did this version of the sunshot campaign go? Well. not good. because someone has no reason to invent necromancy. But not as poorly as you’d think. Jiang Sect isn’t destroyed, and the Cloud Recesses are functional (although not at full capacity), so they have more strength on hand. Plus, Meng Yao encouraged Koi Tower to funnel money and resources into the Qin Sect, specifically so if the war started before he expected it to (whoops!!! it did!!!!), those resources would be somewhere he could encourage to fight.

on the one hand, the sunshot campaign’s territory is divided in half by the wens. on the other hand, that means the wens are fighting on both the northern and southern border (since, again, jiang sect is still alive)

anyway i’d say it’s a more steady war, as opposed to my recollection of canon where like. everyone’s fucking miserable until our sexy goth boi comes out with his corpses and wrecks shop.

then han meilin and qin su look at their families and say “if you do not let us marry right now in a way that combines our sects equally...... we will just do it anyway.”

(meng yao in the background, holding a thin knife: fucking try me. try me. i want you to be mean to my sister just so i can stab you with my knives.)

anyway it’s time for the epilogue where meng yao is vice general and there is no more wen sect

(have i thought about the dafan wens in this ‘verse? no. i probably should not, either, as wwx would be less ride-or-die for them and that means maybe wen qing and wen ning would die in a war camp)

never mind!!! happy thoughts only!!!! like how qin su and meng yao are getting ready to kill again bc they are the bi crime sibling club!!!!

jin zixuan is invited to family brunch but he’s never invited to bi crime sibling club because qin su and meng yao refuse to let him lose his innocence.

“ge, jie, i’m married with children, i don’t have any innocence to lose--” “oh didi, precious baby, our infant brother, shining beacon of our heart...”

mo xuanyu is also forbidden from joining bi crime club. he’s too baby.

they do discover other jin bastards and invite them to lunch and sure, there might eventually be another bi criminal.

3zun visits each other in 2 month chunks, with one to two month breaks as needed. so the epilogue is the beginning of 2 months hanging out in meng yao’s house, and then later in the year they’ll hang out in the cloud recesses or whatever

qin su and meng yao both have secret lists of places to acquire babies for each other. han meilin knows about both of these lists and laughs every time she sees the same orphanages on both lists.

the final comment from the xiyao troll on this was: “Interesting choice to write a bland ooc AU, but I guess this is all you can manage with your writing skill. ;) This way you don't have to worry about JGY lying to Xichen for years, murdering NMJ, attempting to murder Xichen's family in the second siege, stealing secrets from the Lan sect, corrupting a healing song Xichen trusted him with, and fully betraying LXC's and NMJ's trust.”

like. yeah. of course i sidestepped the bad things. that’s what a fix-it au is for. it’s where i say “here’s an alternate universe, where certain bad things do not happen.” it’s where i say “if meng yao had always had qin su around to counteract the messaging his mother gave him, he might not have gone so far in his quest for power”. duh.

also like kiddo, troll, friend. the pitch for this fic is “cinderella except with murder and qin su rights”. i’ve been clear from the top that this is an Indulgent Fic with No Pretenses of Quality. im proud of some sentences and passages, but this ain’t Blood In The Cut where im tryna Say something or either of my jiang cheng-centric fics where im focusing on good characterization.

it’s a cozy murder where qin su gets to live and have a cool wife

#behind the scenes #my fic #falling in love with love

0 notes

itsokaybigcat-blog · 6 years ago

Text

5 Secrets and techniques No one Tells You About Winning His Heart Permanently

Here is what guys are certainly wanting for (but won't - or can not inform you)!

Relating to obtaining a man to commit to a romantic relationship, quite a few females cannot seem to crack the code.

As many of us have noticed, there can be two kinds of men: Behind curtain #1 may be the type of man who's certainly smitten with his girlfriend - he puts her on a pedestal, treats her like a queen, and destinations her happiness above his very own. And behind curtain #2 is the variety who's labeled like a "commitment-phobe" - he isn't going to seem to like currently being within a romance, acting as though his dedication is within the involuntary type.

In truth, a research by Match.com located that 95 % of men openly admit to seeing marriage as one among their greatest lifestyle goals.

So if this is often what 95 % of them seem to want, how will you get a man to commit and actually fall in take pleasure in with you?

All of it comes right down to how a guy views dedication. To a man, it's like cracking a combination lock; should the numbers don't line up, he'll be emotionally distant and unavailable, as opposed to all in. He may perhaps even come up with numerous one-liner excuses that women undoubtedly unearth aggravating: "I should concentrate on my occupation," "I just want area," or, "I'm just not ready for any partnership proper now."

But these one-liners aren't lies. He extremely believes what he is saying for the reason that the "numbers" of his commitment code are not lining up.

In other words, when he says, "I'm just not prepared for any partnership appropriate now," what he actually suggests is, "I'm just not ready to get a romantic relationship with you."

When it hurts to hear this, knowing the right way to obtain a guy to commit - and why and just how he chooses to eventually consider the plunge - can conserve you heartache and help you recognize males.

The reality is, when he last but not least comes across that one lady who generates the right sequence of "numbers" to unlock his dedication blend, he'll feel compelled to hang onto her. He'll commit to a relationship as a result of he does not need to possibility shedding her.

So, now we know commitment is not some kind of guy allergy. What you should do is find out how you can crack his commitment code and get your man to commit - and sooner or later fall in love with you.

Less complicated stated than executed, certainly, considering the average guy is not great at communicating his emotional requirements. That is in which I are available in!

Here are five points guys (will not inform you they) want ahead of they'll commit to a romance and begin to fall in appreciate with you.

1. He demands you to wish him.

One among the keys to figuring out easy methods to make your man happy is essential, animalistic want. Inside the pit of his stomach, he needs to want you, lengthy to suit your needs, yearn for you personally. He has to miss you when you're not all around and he needs to really feel a pang of lust when he has not observed you for a while.

This want is designed by way of the play of opposites. He'll crave you after which he catches you; he'll miss you then falls into you; he'll lust for you after which you'll surrender to him. It truly is the generating and also the release of stress above and in excess of once more.

The way in which you make this tension is as a result of your sexuality - tease him and after that give in, playfully run from him then make it possible for him to capture you, include levity and spontaneity to his existence, give him lustful stares after which leave the space, send him sexy notes throughout the day, grab him and kiss him unexpectedly. In summation, use your powerful feminine characteristics to contrast his really serious and calculated masculine nature.

2. He requirements your respect.

Respect is definitely a cardinal virtue; it's the basis of any romantic relationship that endures and stands the check of time. Respect can assist re-ignite a romance prolonged after the flame of enjoy and lust has sputtered. Countless guys marry the lady who respects him, even more than the lady who loves him.

Guys can rest with, speak to, and care regarding the female they adore (and lust), but frequently really like only is not all they require.

A great deal of this must do with all the phrase "I adore you." To a man plus a female, this term can have several meanings. A man may possibly interpret it as "don't harm me" or even "you're trapped." Males see the really like from a woman as additional of the commodity than a thing novel.

In fact, the phrases make him feel really good when he hears them, however they never sing to his soul. Guys have crippling inadequacies they silently battle their complete lives.

So, figure out why you respect your man. What exactly are you proud of him for? What could you acknowledge him for? How will you make him feel great about himself? Then, tell him. Will not tell him simply that you like him, tell him why you really enjoy him.

An alternative option to express your respect will be to apologize when you've manufactured a error or said something incorrect. You (and he) should make the partnership extra essential than individual egos. When he knows you respect his character, he'll allow you in deeper, exposing other tender parts of his soul the place he requires healing and help.

3. He must feel emotionally secure.

The third point to keep in thoughts when studying the best way to preserve your man content is his emotional overall health. By surrendering your anger, bitterness, or any resentment you may have towards him, you give him secure passage for being vulnerable.

This takes place by you putting your believe in in him. Then, he can trust you. You each let by yourself to become vulnerable and that aids a romantic relationship get the job done. But for this vulnerability to take off, girls usually need to be the initiators. Men are looking for an individual to lead them in to the vulnerable abyss.

It's a woman's courage to open up and let down her guard that inspires guys to lay down their psychological shields and chill out.

So how can you do this? Effectively, it aids by learning how men believe. He must realize that you won't judge or criticize him. He has to feel supported, accepted, and encouraged that you are on his side. He has to realize that you won't tell your pals or (worse) your mom about any blunders he can make. He needs to understand that you will stand up for him when other folks say awful elements about him. He has to know that you may confront any injustices or challenges head-on.

4. He needs you to challenge him.

In the core of each man is challenge. Guys grow by way of challenge. Challenge speaks on the component of their masculinity that innately tends to make them like to conquer and win. Challenge could be the path guys get to attain results, which ultimately can make them come to feel respected.

Within a nutshell, it seriously comes down to possessing a powerful sense of the personal values - recognizing what exactly is crucial that you you and standing by it. This generates the challenge that strengthens the partnership. Another component of this challenge is being able to confront a guy after you feel like people values are compromised.

This might possibly demand you confronting him after you feel he owes you an apology, in lieu of letting it fall by the wayside. When you can confront him, he'll come across you amazingly enticing. Even though his initial response is anger, the fact that you could stand up to him will change the way in which he appears at you. It will eventually challenge him to become a much better guy.

five. He has to really feel awe and wonder.

The ultimate step in learning tips on how to retain your guy completely happy is good, old-fashioned excitement. Even acting somewhat crazy is really a beneficial point; crazy, not insane - skinny-dipping in the ocean is really good, but faking your own personal kidnapping considering that he's been operating too late is not really.

All as well normally, females are taught to truly feel lousy about being emotional, feeling 'crazy,' and acting unpredictably. But these feminine attributes are in reality desirable to males. Therefore, embrace your femininity and enable it to enliven your romantic relationship. This will support a man fall deeper and deeper in like with you.

As you embody your instinctual feminine nature, you produce the room for him to say matters like, "There is just anything about her that I appreciate."

Study far more about this right here - como deixar um homem louco na cama

0 notes

lostchemistry-blog1 · 6 years ago

Text

5 Secrets and techniques No person Tells You About Winning His Heart Forever

With regards to having a guy to commit to a romantic relationship, a lot of girls can not look to crack the code.

As most of us have observed, one can find two types of guys: Behind curtain #1 is the form of guy who is positively smitten with his girlfriend - he puts her on a pedestal, treats her like a queen, and areas her happiness above his personal. And behind curtain #2 is definitely the sort who's labeled as a "commitment-phobe" - he does not appear to appreciate remaining within a partnership, acting as though his commitment is with the involuntary form.

The reality is, a examine by Match.com identified that 95 % of males openly admit to seeing marriage as among their greatest daily life goals.

So if this really is what 95 % of them seem to be to want, how can you obtain a man to commit and in fact fall in take pleasure in with you?

All of it comes right down to how a man views commitment. To a man, it can be like cracking a mixture lock; in case the numbers do not line up, he'll be emotionally distant and unavailable, other than all in. He might possibly even come up with numerous one-liner excuses that women undoubtedly acquire aggravating: "I need to concentrate on my profession," "I just desire room," or, "I'm just not prepared for a relationship appropriate now."

But these one-liners aren't lies. He certainly believes what he's saying for the reason that the "numbers" of his dedication code are not lining up.

To put it differently, when he says, "I'm just not ready for any connection best now," what he seriously suggests is, "I'm just not ready for a romance with you."

Although it hurts to hear this, comprehending ways to get a man to commit - and why and the way he chooses to ultimately get the plunge - can save you heartache and assist you to recognize men.

The truth is, when he finally comes across that 1 girl who produces the appropriate sequence of "numbers" to unlock his commitment combination, he'll come to feel compelled to hang onto her. He'll commit to a partnership because he doesn't would like to threat losing her.

So, now we know dedication isn't some form of guy allergy. Everything you need to do is learn about how you can crack his dedication code and get your man to commit - and inevitably fall in enjoy with you.

Much easier said than accomplished, not surprisingly, considering the common man is not fantastic at communicating his emotional demands. That is where I are available in!

Right here are five issues guys (will not inform you they) demand prior to they will commit to a romantic relationship and begin to fall in really like with you.

one. He requires you to need him.

One among the keys to discovering the way to make your guy delighted is essential, animalistic wish. In the pit of his stomach, he has to want you, long to suit your needs, yearn for you personally. He needs to miss you when you are not around and he has to come to feel a pang of lust when he hasn't witnessed you for some time.

This want is made through the play of opposites. He'll crave you then he catches you; he'll miss you then falls into you; he'll lust for you then you'll surrender to him. It's the developing and also the release of tension in excess of and over yet again.

The way in which you generate this tension is through your sexuality - tease him after which give in, playfully run from him after which allow him to capture you, add levity and spontaneity to his existence, give him lustful stares then leave the room, send him sexy notes through the day, grab him and kiss him unexpectedly. In summation, use your highly effective feminine qualities to contrast his truly serious and calculated masculine nature.

two. He needs your respect.

Respect is known as a cardinal virtue; it is the basis of any connection that endures and stands the test of time. Respect can assist re-ignite a relationship extended following the flame of really enjoy and lust has sputtered. Countless men marry the woman who respects him, even over the girl who loves him.

Males might possibly rest with, talk to, and care in regards to the girl they love (and lust), but typically adore only isn't all they demand.

Loads of this must do using the phrase "I really enjoy you." To a guy as well as a lady, this term can have distinct meanings. A man might interpret it as "don't harm me" as well as "you're trapped." Males see the take pleasure in from a woman as more of the commodity than something novel.

Certainly, the words make him truly feel very good when he hears them, nevertheless they do not sing to his soul. Males have crippling inadequacies they silently battle their total lives.

So, determine why you respect your guy. What exactly are you proud of him for? What can you acknowledge him for? How will you make him feel superior about himself? Then, tell him. Never tell him merely which you enjoy him, tell him why you really enjoy him.

A further option to express your respect would be to apologize when you've produced a mistake or said anything wrong. You (and he) needs to make the relationship much more significant than individual egos. When he understands you respect his character, he'll let you in deeper, exposing other tender parts of his soul in which he demands healing and support.

three. He needs to truly feel emotionally safe.

The third factor to maintain in mind when knowing methods to always keep your guy pleased is his emotional health and fitness. By surrendering your anger, bitterness, or any resentment you may have toward him, you give him protected passage to be vulnerable.

This occurs by you placing your trust in him. Then, he can believe in you. You each allow yourself to be vulnerable and that helps a romance perform. But for this vulnerability to get off, ladies usually should be the initiators. Males are looking for another person to lead them in to the vulnerable abyss.

It truly is a woman's courage to open up and allow down her guard that inspires men to lay down their psychological shields and relax.

So how do you do this? Very well, it aids by figuring out how males consider. He has to realize that you will not judge or criticize him. He must really feel supported, accepted, and encouraged that you are on his side. He has to know that you won't tell your friends or (worse) your mother about any problems he makes. He needs to are aware that you will stand up for him when others say bad matters about him. He has to know that you will confront any injustices or challenges head-on.

4. He requirements you to challenge him.

In the core of each guy is challenge. Men grow as a result of challenge. Challenge speaks to your element of their masculinity that innately tends to make them would like to conquer and win. Challenge will be the path guys get to attain accomplishment, which in the long run makes them really feel respected.

In a nutshell, it definitely comes right down to having a strong sense of the personal values - understanding what is important to you and standing by it. This produces the challenge that strengthens the partnership. Yet another element of this challenge is being able to confront a man if you feel like people values are compromised.

This may well require you confronting him any time you imagine he owes you an apology, as opposed to letting it fall from the wayside. Once you can confront him, he'll discover you incredibly appealing. Even when his to start with reaction is anger, the truth that you'll be able to stand up to him will modify the way in which he appears at you. It'll challenge him to get a greater guy.

five. He needs to feel awe and wonder.

The ultimate step in knowing the way to hold your guy joyful is great, old-fashioned excitement. Even acting just a little crazy may be a good thing; crazy, not insane - skinny-dipping from the ocean is fantastic, but faking your own personal kidnapping given that he's been doing work too late isn't.

All as well typically, women are taught to come to feel bad about becoming emotional, feeling 'crazy,' and acting unpredictably. But these feminine qualities are in reality beautiful to men. So, embrace your femininity and make it possible for it to enliven your relationship. This could aid a guy fall deeper and deeper in like with you.

Once you embody your instinctual feminine nature, you develop the space for him to say items like, "There is just anything about her that I like."

Read even more about this here -

https://winchesterstbfh.tumblr.com/post/177022931287/5-techniques-no-one-tells-you-about-winning-his

0 notes

raceandspeculation · 8 years ago

Text

Race and Gender in Alien

Kayla Dalton

Professor Smalls

English 3690

22 February 2017

The beginning of noticeably substantial liberation began with the freeing of the white woman—the least oppressed faction of the “minority”. While the Alien series does a reasonable job at initiating the conversation surrounding freedom from oppression, the conversation that is created is mainly due to the incomplete picture of womanhood. In other words, the white men directing and writing the story most likely thought they were doing a service to women by writing a “strong” female lead, but ended up perpetuating every stereotype surrounding the female person, in addition to disregarding entirely the issues of every other minority presented throughout the series. This raises the question: if you “mean well” are you still racist, sexist and oppressive? While you may believe that their intentions of inclusion point to otherwise, the answer will still clearly be “yes”.

In understanding the problematic attempt at liberation in the Alien series, we must first understand what it means to be a “strong” female character. By definition, it is the opposite of the damsel in distress—one who can physically, mentally, emotionally take care of her own well-being. Ellen Ripley, the “strong” female at hand, shows an extreme character arc over the course of the series; that is, a huge growth in liberation. In the first installment of the franchise, Alien, Ripley ends up being the only character that has the ability to survive the alien attack. The men in charge disregard her suggestions, assuming they know better—how dare anyone, a woman at that, undermine their authority. And they all end up dead. Ripley 1, men 0. By Alien: Resurrection, while her knowledge is still greatly neglected, instead of sitting back and letting the men in charge take control, she has more of an ability to fight back and not take ‘no’ for an answer. So why is this picture of a “strong” woman who clearly outsmarted and outfought every man and alien still problematic? First, while Ripley is very clearly an able woman, it is also evident that she is unusual, an outlier of her kind, because of the juxtaposition of Ripley and Lambert. Lambert is regarded as the “normative”, a stereotypical woman, whereas Ripley is seen as a radical hero. On one end of the spectrum we have a woman that is emotionally unstable and is the epitome of “damsel in distress” in Lambert, and on the other we see a woman that can take care of herself, but also feels the need to go back for the cat time after time in Ripley. Despite her physical strength and levelheaded reactions, she was still depicted as sexy, inherently more sensitive and “maternal”. Of course, this maternal instinct is what sets her up to be the perfect alien mother in Alien: Resurrection, but this was clearly not the initial intention as the series was never meant to be made into a 4+ movie franchise. Therefore, the creators of her character failed immensely in the sense that it is easy to depict a leading woman physically and emotionally strong, but it is impossible to imagine a woman who can keep her clothes on and only takes care of herself, as the men tend to do.

The focus on maternal qualities throughout the series is what brings us deeper into the problematic nature of the attempt at inclusion. As discussed by Barbara Creed, in The Monstrous- Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, the female body and reproduction are represented in gruesome, undesirable ways. She states, “The Alien is not only a killing machine but also a relentless reproductive machine…Inevitably, then, an Alien narrative engages a wide range of female body narratives…bringing the Otherness of the otherwise repressed and denied female body to the fore…As males are [also] penetrated, impregnated, and give birth, the distinction between the male body and the female body, upon which our entire culture is based, begins to blur. This is the site of the Alien horror: faced with the Alien, we are all feminized” (Creed 7). The idea presented is that it is undesirable for a man to in any way accept any level of what is perceived to be “femininity”. This is also supported in Caroline Joan Picart’s Ripley as Interstitial Character: White Woman as Monster and Hero in Alien Resurrection when she says, “it is the body of the archaic mother, rather than the parthenogenetic father, that is the site of desire and revulsion. The films visually emphasize dark, slimy passages and teeth dripping blood, acid and saliva. They rivet our attention by focusing on exploding stomachs and devouring wombs”(Picart 1). This perpetuates the stereotype of men shuddering at the idea of reproduction in any way. From periods to birth it seems that this is a taboo concept and a representation of such in a particularly gory manner only preserves this mentality.

While Ripley grows in her liberation through the series, “the rebirth of the new Ripley—Clone Eight of Alien Resurrection—had Weaver, as always completely identified with this character, as proactive midwife” (Gibson 39). Weaver shared her own ideas on this new Ripley in an interview stating, “When you come back from the dead, you don’t take very much seriously—especially people trying to stay alive. She certainly wasn’t concerned with saving people. She has been set free from what I would call human obligations” (Nathan 1997: 124). If this new level of apathy is present, how is it that she is still imagined as motherly? Another idea is presented that the only way Ripley can become stronger is if she is no longer fully human, and therefore, no longer what our society knows and accepts as “woman”. While the now part-alien Ripley was no longer concerned with saving people, the maternal instincts were simply transferred from human life forms to the alien because it is utterly impossible to imagine a female character without such feminine qualities.

The final failure that the many creators, writers and directors of this series face is their incredible misrepresentations of other minorities throughout the films. From the token black character in Alien to Winona Ryder, a Jewish woman, portraying a stereotypical Latina woman, the supporting characters of the film and the groups of people they represented were done a huge disservice. It must have been quite revolutionary for the time that these characters were not the first to expire; however the fact that Parker sacrificed himself for white characters is an aspect of the series that is just slightly irksome. He died a somewhat “noble” death, but not before not being taken seriously the entirety of the film. Another questionable feature is of Call’s character: the fact that she is discovered to be an Auton after sacrificing herself to defeat the Xenomorphs—therefore, not human. Once again, like Ripley, the only way a female character can be as strong as she appears to be is if she is something other than human, but unlike Ripley, because she is also Latina, she is entirely not human.

From Alien to Alien: Resurrection the racism and sexism becomes slightly less apparent (something I personally attribute to the appearance of Joss Whedon as a writer because of the continuous examples of how cognizant he is of inequalities in our society), but is never completely absent. While I can appreciate the conversation that the series starts, the way in which it presents these issues leaves much to be desired. I am hoping for another installment in the series in the near future—one that addresses these issues I’ve presented and eliminates them entirely.

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London:

Routledge, 2015. Print.

Nathan, I. (1997) “Alien Reincarnation,” Empire (December) 102: 124-136

Picart, Caroline Joan. "Ripley as Interstitial Character: White Woman as Monster and Hero

in Alien Resurrection." Ripley as Interstitial Character: White Woman as Monster and

Hero in Alien Resurrection. N.p., Dec. 2003. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.

Tinkcom, Matthew, and Amy Villarejo. Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies.

London: Routledge, 2001. Print.

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