#that thus offers American breakfasts. we have one of those

[takaraphoenix]

Oh I am loathing this American-ification of everything.

I got an early appointment in the city tomorrow and I figured hey, why not treat myself to breakfast afterward. And since I hate walking into a place, seeing the menu and thinking "nope" and having to walk out again, I figured I'd look it up online first.

I've looked through the menus of ten cafés now and only found two that actually have... normal German breakfast.

Every other place has shit like avocado toast, "breakfast bowls" (stop putting all foods into one bowl I am biting you, meals belong on plates), American pancakes with maple syrup, bagels, porridge, hummus (for breakfast?!).

And look, I am not objecting to also including trendy American foods on your menu, but if these are the only options you offer and I can't find a single traditional German breakfast on your menu, then that is just... devastating, to me.

If you're a gimmick café that is specifically American cuisine, that would also be different, but a regular, German café needs to offer a regular, German breakfast.

It should absolutely include at the very-fucking-least the most basic German breakfast platter - bread rolls, hard-boiled egg, marmalade, butter, wurst and/or cheese, and the option to pay more for salmon or a croissant. That's the basic "I am going out to have breakfast at a café" menu. The one on every breakfast menu, for as long as I can remember going out for breakfast.

I can acknowledge that for reasons beyond my personal taste, people really love avocados. But if your menu includes three variations of avocado toast but not a single cheese or wurst option - and you are not an explicitly vegan place, like, there is bacon on this menu too - then something is just really, really fucked up here.

[kyndaris]

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Our first proper day in Seoul had us running through the city using my highly advanced map-reading skills because Google Maps could not show even simple routes in and around the city except via public transport. This was due to the censorship laws of South Korea preventing the storage of map data on foreign server devices. As a consequence, Google cannot legally provide any real time navigation. Or so Google and Reddit tell me. Instead, locals rely on Naver and Kakao, but which do not always have English translations and thus tourists such as bleachpanda and myself are left fending for ourselves.

Still, after enjoying a ham and cheese 'Dagel' for breakfast at a local cafe, bleachpanda and I set out to Namsam Seoul Tower (or N Seoul Tower for short). Along the way, we stopped at the Namdaemun Market. There, we inspected the stalls to see what was on offer. Although we were both tempted to purchase souvenirs at this very first stop on our journey, we both resisted the urge.

We had, after all, not even properly seen the city!

Instead, bleachpanda and I purchased some egg tarts and a warm drink to drive away the wintry chill. While bleachpanda guzzled down her mocha, I was left disappointed by my 'choco latte,' which turned out to essentially be chocolate milk.

From Namdaemun Markets, we hiked towards Namsan Mountain, visiting a local 7-Eleven along the way to see if they shared any similarities to their counterparts in Japan or Australia (spoiler alert: they shared much more with their Asian cousins in Taiwan and Japan than those found out in the West).

Once at the start of the hiking trail up to Namsan, bleachpanda blanched at the prospect of climbing up to the tower. But with some gentle coaxing from me, she acquiesced. And so, we clambered up the mountain.

Bleachpanda, being the less fit of the two of us, required numerous stops to catch her breath. But these rests were also opportunities for us to take pictures of the scenery - capturing the early moments of spring peaking through as the snow began to melt.

By the way, did I mention there were love locks all around N Seoul Tower? Because that was a thing. As well as at the base of the mountain having a statue dedicated to the Comfort Women from the Second World War.

Still, it was aggravating to wait for her but it was the cross I had to bear as her travelling companion. Especially as we were nearing the tower and she vanished for nigh on eighty-four years because she ducked into a store to buy a fridge magnet.

At the tower, I purchased our entry tickets up and away we soared to the observation deck with a group of American tourists. Once at the observation deck, the entirety of Seoul was spread out before us. I used this chance to take copious amounts of pictures from this bird's eye view of the city:

Bleachpanda and I even bought a few souvenirs, including postcards. While I sent mine to a good friend (here known as redoubt on the internet), as he has a penchant of posting postcards to me when travelling overseas, bleachpanda sent one to her sister and another to her future self.

Once we had drunk our fill at the tower, we took the cable car back down to civilisation (bleachpanda's request) before heading to Deoksugung Palace. As I navigated our party towards our destination we refuelled at a Dunkin' Donuts before continuing onward.

Unfortunately, once we arrived at Deoksugung Palace, it was closed (this was due to the fact this palace is closed on Mondays. Why? I'm not sure. We would revisit it later). Disappointed, bleachpanda and I trekked instead to Gyeongbokgung Palace where we managed to catch a changing of the royal guard. During the performance, an explanation was provided regarding the process and of the outfits worn by the performers, which were based on 15th century Joseon dynasty clothing.

Fun fact, Gyeongbokgung was the main royal palace of the Joseon palace and was built in 1395. Additionally, everywhere we looked, there were people dressed in hanboks because they allowed free entry!

Alas, bleachpanda and I were dressed in our thick entry gear. And so, we had to buy tickets to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace. I also grabbed an audio gudie to provide some commentary of the historic site we were visiting, although I had to trade in my driver licence.

As we made our way through the Palace, I learned how the Palace served as the heart of the Joseon dynasty before it was razed to the ground when Japan invaded Korea back in 1592. This was later rebuilt in 1867. Within were several precincts and the living quarters for concubines and the royal family. Of interest to me was how there were separate palaces for the King and the Queen.

I also learned how during the Japanese occupation in the early 20th century, Gyeongbokgung was used for their own headquarters, with the Government-General Building being built after the Palace was levelled. After the conclusion of the Second World War, however, much of Gyeongbokgung has been restored.

After we had wandered through to all the major sites, bleachpanda and I exited out near the National Folk Museum of Korea. Eager to have my driver licence returned, we headed back to the entrance and exchanged the audio guide for my Australian identity document.

From the palace, we then headed to Bukchon Hanok village and finally nabbed a late lunch of pork cutlet - elsewise I might have keeled over. After we were both full, we took a gander around Bukchon, stopping by Bukchon Yukgyeong to snap an iconic view of the city of the buildings there and the city of Seoul splayed out before us.

Once we had snagged the picture, bleachpanda and I headed back to our hotel after a long day out in the city of Seoul. We stopped briefly at Jogyesa Buddhist temple before purchasing a few souvenirs and snacks.

So ended our first proper day in Seoul! Join me for the next few weeks as I regale you, dear reader, of our further adventures! For tomorrow is when we head into the DMZ (the last letter pronounced as Zed for all you Americans out there).

Looking back on our journey though, I'm a little sad I couldn't snag myself a hot CEO boyfriend after he hit me with his car. Still, there's always next time!

[travelingtheusa]

MISSOURI

2024 Nov 15 (Fri) – Today is the last day of the caravan.  We had dinner at the Grand Country Buffet followed by a song and dance show in the Grand Jubilee.  The first part of the show was Christmas themed, and the second was Rock & Roll songs.  It was a great show.

2024 Nov 14 (Thu) – We did the laundry this morning.  At 11:00, the caravan met at the Showboat Branson Belle.  We had lunch and a very energetic music show with a magic act thrown in.  It was all very good.

      On the way back to the campground, we dropped a letter off the post office and picked up groceries at WalMart.  At 6 p.m. we met at Yakov Comedy Center.  It was a Russian comedian who came to the U.S. 30 years ago.  He had a different view of American culture and he descried those differences in a hilarious way.  We enjoyed the show very much.

2024 Nov 13 (Wed) – We had a burrito breakfast this morning.  After breakfast, I met with the board members who are here at the caravan.  At the board meeting back in September, it was voted upon to raise member dues for 2025.  I drafted a letter and wanted input from the board members on whether it was acceptable.  First, they all focused on my signature block.  I had included my rank.  Apparently, that is a VERY sore point within the club.  So, I agreed to strike the rank and just sign my name and position.  Then, discussion followed about the timing of the notice.  I wanted to send the letter out in January, after the holidays (who wants to get an increase at the same time people are trying to shop for Christmas).  It was finally agreed that I should forward the letter to Melissa to include in the December magazine.

      A couple of hours later, Melissa and David came to the RV and after much discussion (again), it was agreed that I will hold off notifying the membership about the dues increase until March or April.  Everyone is afraid people will quit the club because of the increase.

      Following breakfast, Paul and I drove back to the College of the Ozarks.  We toured the greenhouses, the stained glass studio, the weaving studio, the print studio, and the tractor museum.  We are so amazed with this college.  The students are all strong, self-confident individuals who will graduate with zero debt.  That is amazing!

      At 6:30, we met at the Branson Murder Mystery dinner and show.  The cast was so funny!  We spent two hours laughing so hard.  It was a great show.  The food was OK – salad, green beans, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, baked chicken, and meatloaf.

2024 Nov 12 (Tue) – We drove to College of the Ozarks.  When we arrived, we checked in at the desk for lunch and were told we had a one and a half hour wait to be seated.  Wow!  We gave our name then walked across the way to look at the Patriotic Garden.

      The College of the Ozarks is one of nine colleges across the U.S. that provide a tuition-free education.  In return, they require students to work 15 hours a week and two 40-hour weeks during the year.  The teacher-student ratio is 15 to 1.  They offer more than 30 majors in a bachelor's degree.  They have also begun offering academic programs for elementary and high school students.

      The campus is an amazing place.  We went in the Keeter Center to eat and see a play.  The large, open atrium had giant tree logs along the ceiling and a huge fireplace.  We ate in the restaurant.  Our waitress was Mac.  She is a speech major.  Her husband (who performed in the play we later watched) is a real estate investor.  She told us that any pork dish we ordered was made with pigs raised on the campus.  Much of the vegetables came from their farm as well.

       After lunch, we joined the group to watch “Breaking the Silence.”  It was a play based on the experiences of marines during the Vietnam War.  It was quite emotional and thorough.

2024 Nov 11 (Mon – Veterans Day) – We woke at 6 a.m. and joined our group as we drove downtown to line up for the parade.  We weren’t due to arrive until 8 a.m. but we showed up at 7:20 a.m.  The person checking in participants was really grumpy about our early arrival.  We were directed to an area where we parked and waited.  During the wait, we all decorated our trucks and cars (there were 8 vehicles).  At 11 a.m., the parade down main street started.  We were placed 31st in the parade.  There were so many interesting groups in the parade.  Parked right across from us were 5 Chevrolets, each wrapped in a bright, metallic color belonging to the performers of SIX.  We finally moved out around 20 minutes to 12.  It was a slow walk but we were all handing out booklets with information about SMART.  The loudest recruiters were the spouse of the veterans.  I thought that was very interesting.  Paul drove the truck (they needed red, white and blue trucks followed by the rest of the group) and I walked.  About 3/4rds of the way through the parade route, Leroy fell down.  The parade stopped for about 15 or 20 minutes while EMTs tended to him.  He got a cut on his forehead and on the bridge of his nose where his glasses broke.  They brought up a pickup truck and loaded him and his wife, Shelene, on then drove off to the hospital.  The parade continued.

      At 3:30 p.m. we played beanbag baseball with some of the group.  We had a good time.  Then Wulf put on his propane burner and we sat around the fire until it got dark and cold.  Leroy returned from the hospital with a large bandage across his forehead and nose.  The cut was too shallow to stitch.  They did a CT scan and found no damage.  Thank goodness.

2024 Nov 10 (Sun) – The caravan had donuts this morning.  We went to WalMart to buy a picture frame.  We suggested to Dave that the caravan give a certificate of appreciation to the campground owners.  I made one up to give them.  While out, we also got fuel and liquor.

      At 6:30 p.m. we drove to Top of the Rock and drove the Canyon Trail after dark.  All the lights were lit and it was beautiful to see.  Unfortunately, there were so many people there that there was an almost solid line of golf carts creeping along the 2-1/2 mile trail.  We enjoyed the experience any way.

2024 Nov 9 (Sat) – It was rainy and cold all day so we stayed in.  At 4:30 p.m., we all met at the Titanic Museum for a tour.  They split us into two groups, each with a tour guide.  The guide we had was great!  He was young and enthusiastic and told great stories about the lives of the passengers, before and after the sinking.  We enjoyed the tour very much.

      After the museum, we went to dinner at Local Flavor.  The place was packed.  They told us it would be a 50-55 minute wait but it turned out to be only 25.  The food was good, especially the hand cut fried onion rings. 

2024 Nov 8 (Fri) – The caravan cooked hamburgers and chips for lunch today.  I was going to speak with the group but the microphone was locked up.  I will look for another occasion to address the group. 

      We all went to the Sight & Sound Theater tonight for the Miracle of Christmas show.  It was magnificent.  The size of the stage and the number of actors and animals was jaw dropping.  It was such a great show.

2024 Nov 7 (Thu) – We went to Pizza Ranch for lunch.  There was a quick stop at WalMart and then we went to a natural foods store for supplements.  The group went to Dolly Parton Stampede tonight.  While the show was nice, it did not have the patriotic flare that we’ve seen in previous shows.  It was focused on Christmas, which is nice, but not as good as the other.

2024 Nov 6 (Wed – Paul’s birthday) – We went into town for lunch at the Cakes N Creams Diner – a fifties diner.  It was very period with red and white tiles and red chairs with a counter and booths as well as tables.  We both had a cheeseburger and fries.  I had a malt and Paul had a cola.  It was good.  Then we stopped at WalMart to pick up a new rug and cat bed.  Sheba has had accidents on her cat bed.  Most laundromats won’t let you wash pet bedding so we bought her a new one.  So far, she likes it very much.

      We picked up a bunch of packages at the office.  We ordered several things from Amazon and had them sent here.  It’s always like Christmas when you get these packages.

      At 5:30 p.m. we went to the community room.  There are 57 people here on this caravan.  Normally, we don’t take more than 40 people on a caravan but this is a stay-in-place so there is no tail gunner.  Dave & Jackie, wagon masters, decided to include everyone who signed up as well as everyone on the waitlist.  This is quite a big crowd.  We had tacos for dinner.  Then Jackie went over the itinerary for the next ten days.  We will be seeing a lot of shows.

2024 Nov 5 (Tue) – We packed up and left at 9:40 a.m.  It was raining lightly as we packed up and along the first part of the trip.  We arrived at America’s Best Campground in Branson at 1:00 p.m.  This is a nice campground.  Lots of trees yet spacious.  Our site has FHU with a concrete pad.  There is a pool on site although it is closed for the season. 

      After set-up, we headed out to Top of the Rock, Ozarks Heritage Preserve.  What a place!  It was very Disneyesque.  The buildings were constructed of rock.  The landscape was made up of table rock – layers of flat rock stacked one on top of another.  We took a golf cart drive along a 2-1/2 mile trail through the woods, through a cave and under the roadway.  There were Christmas decorations and lights all along the path.  Their nighttime show begins this weekend.  When we finished our delightful ride, we went back in and made a reservation for Sunday night.

      Next up was a tour of their museum.  It has the largest collection of Native American artifacts in the world.   The museum was huge!  We wandered through room after room for what seemed like hours.  It got to a point that we wanted to get out but couldn’t find the exit.  We finally did make our way out. 

      There was a beautiful chapel on the grounds that we went to look at as well.  It was made out of the rock that everything else has been built out of.  The wall overlooking the valley was made entirely out of glass, giving a spectacular view of the Ozarks.  We then went into the main building to the Big Cedar Lodge for dinner.   We enjoyed a meal as the sun set in the distance.  It was expensive but we enjoyed the day thoroughly. 

2024 Nov 4 (Mon) – It rained off and on all day, sometimes pretty heavily.  We went to the Katy Depot Railroad Heritage Site.  It was a former railroad depot turned museum.  There was a lot of reading.  Storyboards told the history of the town and the railroad.  The Kansas-Texas Railroad came through the town for seven years.  The line was dubbed the Katy trail.  Even though the railroad closed and the tracks have been removed, the Katy Trail remains and many people bike and hike on it.

      We stopped at Great Clips so I could get a haircut, had lunch at Fitters 5th Ave Pub, picked up groceries at WalMart, and got a prescription filled at CVS.  

2024 Nov 3 (Sun) – We drove out to meet our friend, Donny, in front of the county courthouse.  He took us on a ride all around the town, pointing out areas of interest.  The historic district was beautiful.  It was rich with many old and well-kept buildings.  We stopped by the railroad depot and the Bothwell Lodge but both were closed.  Donny dropped us off at our truck and we all drove to El Tapatio for lunch.  He had ice tea and we had a meal with margaritas. 

      After we said goodbye, we drove onto the fairgrounds to look around.  They have a large number of permanent buildings on site.  We happened to spot a gun and craft show so we went in.  There were SO many guns – pistols, rifles, shotguns, tazers, crossbows, even slingshots!  We bought some RV toys for Hudson and Noah for Christmas.

2024 Nov 2 (Sat) – We packed up and left Omaha, AR, at 10 a.m.  The drive was easy on state highway 65 all the way.  There weren’t any big towns so we had to pull on the side of the road in front of a closed business to have lunch. 

      We arrived at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia around 1:30 p.m.  The campground is completely empty.  We are all alone here.  There was no office to check in with.  We chose a spot and set up.  Later, a security guard arrived to collect our fee for three nights. 

      I contacted our friend, Donny.  We used to be friends in high school.  Then Paul & I got married and he joined the Navy.  We haven’t seen one another for more than 50 years.  It will be an interesting reunion tomorrow.

[man-reading]

Sublet (2020)

Drama LGBTQ 1h 29m

Directed by Eytan Fox

A New York Times travel writer comes to Tel Aviv after suffering a tragedy. The energy of the city and his relationship with a younger man brings him back to life. Sublet featuring John Benjamin Hickey and Niv Nissim

SUBLET BELONGS to a small genre of movies that chart a love affair whose arc rises and falls within a narrow window of time from first meeting to final farewell. It all happens in a period of days rather than months or years—or even in a single day, as in the 1995 film Before Sunrise and its two sequels directed by Richard Linklater. In the case of Sublet, the action takes place over a period of five days which are conveniently numbered, dividing the film into five acts.

       Day One finds a somber, middle-aged American man arriving in Tel Aviv and discovering that his Airbnb is still occupied by its primary tenant, a young indie filmmaker who was up all night filming and lost track of the days. It has the makings of a contentious situation, but the American visitor, Michael—a New York Timestravel writer who’s in Tel Aviv on assignment—is too polite to make a fuss and offers to find a hotel. Or perhaps he’s already captivated by his Israeli host, Tomer, who’s nothing if not easy on the eyes, not to mention charming and twenty-something hip. In addition to making films, Tomer sublets his flat to earn money while couch-surfing with friends. While he’s packing up to vacate the premises, Michael can’t resist asking him a few questions about where to find “the real Tel Aviv,” and before you know it he’s agreeing to show Michael around the city as the latter is offering to let him sleep on the couch.

       Thus their association begins as a business arrangement and retains a transactional element throughout, which serves as a kind of official cover for the feelings and stirrings that are brewing under the surface. At any rate, it provides a reason for them to spend nearly every waking hour together over the next several days, or so it seems, as we start each day with breakfast on the lanai or at a café and end it at a nighttime venue where alcohol is typically consumed. Much of the time in between is spent with the two men as they get to know each other, but we also meet Tomer’s friend, a star actress, and her boyfriend, whose tempestuous relationship could be on the rocks. And we meet his highly cultured mother, who still lives on the kibbutz where Tomer grew up. We encounter Michael’s husband David by Skype and learn that the couple is having problems related to a surrogacy attempt, which helps to explain Michael’s generally melancholy demeanor.

Closing the gap between two seemingly incompatible individuals is the stuff of romantic comedy, of course. The major “problem” in this pairing is the men’s age difference (thirty years?), which some people could overlook, but Tomer has made it clear that he’s attracted to hot young guys, and he’s in it for the sex. What’s more, he has a hard time understanding the impulse to pair off and settle down, which could make sense for straight couples, but why give up sexual adventurism if you’re gay? It’s a theme that has found its way into a number of recent movies and plays, most recently the Broadway epic

The Inheritance

: the generation gap between gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s and those in the “post-AIDS generation” who haven’t experienced the downside of sexual freedom.

       Given this disparity in both age and outlook, the challenge for director Eytan Fox is to conjure the attractive force that can bring these guys together, and in just a few days. Okay, Michael’s attraction to Tomer isn’t hard to explain, at least on a physical level, though he clearly has qualms about following that route. (At one point Tomer calls up a hottie on Grindr and invites Michael to join them in a three-way.) It is Tomer’s change of heart that needs to be explained, for he really falls for Michael and loses it when they have to bid farewell. What pierced the veil of Tomer’s cynical demeanor is not entirely clear, but something in Michael’s recent past—no doubt the source of his melancholy—contains a human experience that seems to jibe with Tomer’s own life history in an unexpected way, like the proverbial key to his heart.

       Sublet doesn’t break any new ground as cinema, but it succeeds on its own terms. The two actors (John Benjamin Hickey and Niv Nissim) are completely natural in their roles, even if their chemistry as lovers isn’t totally obvious. Director Eytan Fox also made a 2004 film titled Yossi & Jagger(reviewed here in May-June 2004), which focused on a love affair between two male soldiers conducted inside the cramped confines of an Israeli bunker over the course of a single day and night. In both films the dialog is surprisingly spare, and none of the four men spends an inordinate amount of time analyzing his feelings or justifying his life choices. Nor are these cases of “love at first sight,” as each relationship takes at least a few hours to develop. What Fox wants to explore is the possibility that two people can come together and discover some essential humanity in the other that’s beyond words or even sexual intimacy. Some might call it love.

(from: glreview.org)

[typinggently]

I have never watched that show. How much background info I should look up to enjoy your Sam x Dean fiction?

Dearest, that’s so sweet ahhh 🥺🥺 Honestly, I’m so honoured that you’re willing to dive into unknown waters for me 🌹🌹🌹 I wrote up a short introduction! ✨

The basics are as follows: Sam and Dean are the sons of John and Mary Winchester, with Dean being 4 years older. After Mary’s supernatural death when Dean is 5, John sweeps his children into his car and leaves the burning corpse of their normal life behind, with a sweltering pain inside of him. Driven by fear for his sons and the burning need for revenge, John raises his sons as hunters and in motel rooms. There is, and that is crucial, no resemblance of a normal life for any of them after Mary’s death.

If we’re speaking in very basic terms, Dean is the daredevil womanising Marlboro Man, complete with muscle car and leather jacket, and Sam is the more soft-spoken smart one who eats salad and has glossy-soft hair. (However, of course, Dean is fiercely family-oriented, protective, good with children. Sam started out with a rebellious streak and is still capable of great violence when he doesn’t keep himself in check. Also Dean’s the type to gaze dreamily into his girl’s eyes and hold her hand as she rides him and Sam’s one night stands are mostly of the ‘rip off your shirt and hit it from behind’ kind.)

~🖤~

Considering there are 15 seasons to choose from, people have (naturally) picked up certain elements that they find most enjoyable. There’s a good deal of people who watch it as a (romantic) comedy.

I personally enjoy the American gothic horror, the way those two are entangled beyond comprehension and, at times, indistinguishable from the monsters they hunt. Even if my fics have different topics or are lighthearted and honey-dripping, the base note is always this: their relationship, due to nature and nurture, is incredibly obsessive. Their world has been reduced to the two of them in the confines of the car or the ever-changing motel rooms, ever since they were little. Dean’s purpose in life was to protect and care for Sam, Sam’s purpose in life was to let that happen. There’s some resentment in that, sometimes you can feel them rebelling against this tangled, claustrophobic mess, but even if they fight and snarl and break up, they always return to one another and heal those cuts in their bond, which, in essence, only means that they settle back into their entangled, Janus-like double soul.

~🖤~

I’ll give you a brief summary of the first five seasons (the core of the show, at least to me), just to illustrate my point. Despite all else that happens, I think that is the foundation of the show, and thus, probably all you need to know to understand what I have in mind while I write.

🔥.1.🔥

The story begins with Sam at college, trying to establish a life away from the road and, in essence, Dean. That attempt of normality burns on the ceiling in the person of his girlfriend Jessica, repeat performance of when his mother’s body lit up his room 21 years ago. Dean picks him up and he goes back to the car, to the life he tried to leave behind, and, essentially, to Dean. They follow a trail of breadcrumbs and coordinates John leaves them to eventually get back to him. They find John, find the demon that killed Mary, and, as the turn of a new chapter is right at their fingertips, get bulldozed by a truck.

🪦.2.🪦

Season two has Dean dying. John can’t let that happen, so he finds the demon responsible for taking everything (his wife, his life, his son) from him to trade his own soul and the only thing that could kill said demon for Dean. John dies, Dean lives, and has to live with that guilt. Just like John, he turns to hunt down the demon responsible for taking everything (his mother, his life, his father). Sam starts having visions, a power grows inside of him that he can’t begin to understand and is incredibly frightened by. The demon sweeps in to steal him away, and Dean comes just in time to catch Sam, powerful and dying, in his arms. Just like John, Dean goes to trade his life. He’s promised one year on Earth, eternity in hell after. Reunited, revived, they find the demon responsible for taking everything and with the help of their father’s soul, kill him. John goes to heaven, Sam goes on living, Dean knows he’s going to hell.

⏳.3.⏳

In season three, Sam lives and has to live with what Dean did. He desperately tries to find a cure, a solution, anything. He finds Ruby, instead, a demon who promises him all three. It doesn’t work, the overly-powerful demon Lilith who was promised Dean after one year, comes and gets him. Sam watches helplessly as Dean is torn apart, then holds him, warm but cooling, in his arms.

🩸.4.🩸

Season four finds Dean finding himself breathing underground. He digs himself out of his own grave and finds Sam and has to find out that Ruby found him first. It’s now that we learn who found Dean and raised him out of hell: Castiel, unkillable, unfathomable, unbelievable. Dean, who never believed in God, now has to learn that there’s a biblical plan laid out for Sam and him. Meanwhile, Castiel, who always believed and is starting to doubt, tries to find God, who’s responsible for it all, but vanished. Meanwhile, Sam is drawn closer and closer to Ruby, by Ruby. While Castiel raised Dean out of hell, Ruby found Sam on Earth and wrapped herself around him, offering a shoulder to cry on and a wrist to drink from. Sam, who wasn’t strong enough to save Dean, quickly gets addicted to demon blood, which makes him stronger than humanely possible — and, in Dean’s eyes, less human. He falls for Ruby and falls for her scheme, which leads to him breaking the seal that kept Lucifer contained, starting what will lead to the end of everything. Ruby’s life ends with Sam’s arms wrapped around her, holding her still as Dean sinks her own knife into her.

⌛️.5.⌛️

Season five leads to the end of the world, with Heaven and Hell trying to convince Sam and Dean to follow the plan written for them: Sam is destined to be Lucifer’s vessel, give over his body to him, while Dean is meant to do the same for Michael. They are meant to fight and kill each other, and thus decide the fate of everything, heaven, hell and earth. They refuse. Dean refuses to let Michael enter and use him, forcing heaven to manipulate their half-brother Adam to step into his big brother’s shoes. Sam invites Lucifer in, but refuses to do as he’s told and breaks the Devil’s hold over him to sacrifice himself and Adam and save everything. It ends with Sam, Adam, Michael and Lucifer trapped for eternity in the cage Sam broke the seal of, and Dean, on Earth. Alone.

(Not quite, of course. Following Sam’s wish, he finds a life for himself, a woman and a child that isn’t his but close enough that Dean can pretend. Outside, in the dark, Sam watches.)

~🖤~

Voilà, that’s it. Sam and Dean kill and die for each other, sell their souls and humanity to save one another or repent for the fact that they couldn’t. There are many, many other stories interwoven there, for example the story of the amulet Sam was meant to gift their father when he was little, for protection. When John doesn’t show up to receive the gift, he gives it to Dean. For decades, the amulet is kept right against his heart, until it stops beating and Sam takes it off, to keep it warm and safe against his own chest. When Dean returns from hell, Sam, who was never able to believe that Dean was really gone, gives it back. Its journey ends where it began, in a motel room with Sam and Dean, when Dean, who finds his faith and hope to save them and the Earth crushed, takes it off and throws it away.

(And a quick look at s6: Dean has the orange juice for breakfast, scent of freshly cut grass life Sam wanted for him for one year, until Sam comes to collect him again. After spending an eternity in the cage with Lucifer (and Adam and Michael, who presumably sat in their corner and made out while Sam was being skinned like Marsyas), Sam was lifted out (by Castiel), but lost his soul and the memories of his torment in the process. What does it mean for one to lose one’s soul, what happens to that person? Sam stops sleeping, he stops caring what other people think, he stops caring for other people in general. He’s an incredibly efficient hunter and spends most of his (limitless, sleepless) time hunting, exercising, or having sex. Despite this empty, cold shell his brother has been reduced to, Dean drops his life of dinner at eight and slow morning sex to join Sam, and gets broken up with over the phone for being too attached to Sam.)

~🖤~

This got quite long after all, but I hope this got the idea across! Those two are very fascinating characters and I love them dearly. Twisted little clowns.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

[The British monarchy:] Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.

- Walter Bagehot

This was an exhortation made by one of the most venerated Victorians of his era and the founding editor of the Economist magazine, Walter Bagehot, to not drag Queen Victoria into the mudpits of political conflict. In his view, a politically-inactive monarchy served the best interests of the United Kingdom; by abstaining from direct rule, the monarch levitated above the political fray like a dignified David Copperfield, and remained a respected personage to whom all subjects could look to as a guiding light.

There has always been this odd nature of the relationship between hereditary monarchy and a society ambivalent about the institution. 

Bagehot’s idea is accurate and unsustainable because we suffer from a national inability to think clearly about monarchy. The Windsors have been turned into a soap opera by a celebrity-obsessed culture — think of the media frenzy surrounding Diana, Charles and Camilla, Prince Andrew and his Epstein-related scandal, the differing opinions over Megxit (Prince Harry and Meghan Markle)  etc. This is a culture determined to demand both daylight and magic.

The outcome is a contradictory belief that royalty are semi-sacred creatures who yet deserve censure when they manifest huffy or indecent behaviour. This inconsistency and lack of clarity is the source of the ad hominem arguments that frequently disfigure the republican case (and thank God for their ineptitude!)

At its best, royalty manifests the virtues of noblesse oblige. Elizabeth II embodies all that is greatest in a constitutional monarch. Her devotion to what she believes to be her duty has been unswerving — probably at considerable cost to her personal happiness — and she has refrained from interfering in the workings of our parliamentary democracy. It is open to question whether Charles III will display similar qualities of obligation and restraint.The public knows this, and is beginning to tinker with ideas that undermine the hereditary principle.

Ever alert to the possibilities of turning their readers’ prejudices to profit, the unscrupulous tabloids have played on the heir apparent’s unpopularity to make the case that the crown should skip a generation. (The Daily Mail commissioned a poll from ICM, and published the results on Monday. It said that 53 per cent of those questioned wanted the crown to pass directly to William.) William, good-looking and youthful, has hardly put a foot wrong and Kate Middleton even more so with the fashionistas gushing over every dress she wears daily and her down to earth manners typically bred of a Downe House girl.

A hereditary right to rule, and all the deference that goes with it, is either acceptable or it is not. If the nation decides in favour of monarchy, it must forgo its sentimental and selective attachment to those members and aspects of the institution that it likes. It should accept that the next in line — whatever his appeal to popular taste — is the rightful head of state.

If it believes that to be undesirable, then alternatives must be examined. The current trend is for a tawdry populism that offers a comfortable substitute for the more demanding pursuit of true egalitarianism. We cannot continue with the illusion that majesty can co-exist with a self-congratulatory exaltation of all that has the most facile appeal.

Nor does it make sense to fantasise about a Scandinavian-style bicycling monarchy: we must make up our minds about hereditary privilege and its attendant flummery. Bagehot explained it thus: “There are arguments for not having a Court, and there are arguments for having a splendid Court; but there are no arguments for having a mean Court.”

Aware of the growing aggression of facile populism, the Windsors have nodded to the idea of a leaner and meaner Court, in the hope of preserving their status. But paying income tax and reducing the number of flunkies on the payroll is meaningless: the protocol and elaborate costumes look the same as they did in the early years of the past century. It can be no other way: the tradition is designed to appeal to sentiment and to coerce consensual servility.

The present Queen, now 94 years old, has done a splendid job in her duties and in many ways far exceeded her own father, King George VI in our affections. Her values are very old fashioned rooted as she is in her humble and unassuming Christian faith and it shows. She is both modest, courteous, duitful and has the common touch. She scrupulously doesn’t rock the boat. She takes the institution seriously (but not herself as many can attest). In many ways her character and personality have defined the monarchy. We can’t separate the personal from the political: Elizabeth as a woman and Elizabeth as the HM The Queen. Despite a few mis-steps she is the model of how we think a monarch should behave.

What comes after is more uncertain. The monarchy will survive - regardless of Megxit, Prince Andrew’s scandals, or even if (heaven forbid) Scotland breaks away - in some shape or form. The monarchy represents, for better or for worse, the nation’s love affair with the past. Every time we see the Queen wearing a centuries-old crown, walk through the Houses of Parliament to celebrate the even older deal struck between Commons and Crown, we reach for another digestive biscuit to dunk in our mug of English Breakfast tea.

In recent years the theory has been modified, to acknowledge the changes that have come to the British monarchy. The strength of our royals – so this theory runs – is that they are prepared to change when necessary.

We love tradition, especially when it is softened by a little flexibility. But maybe the real secret to the long success of the British monarchy is its connection, not to the stodgy old ways of the stately home, but to the aggressive, thrusting, young nation that we used to be.

By this theory, the reason we’ve never had a lasting revolution [against the monarchy] is that we got there so early. We executed King Charles I at a time, 1649, when the major states of Europe hardly knew an alternative to monarchy. After that we were immunised against revolution, and the immunity has lasted until the present day.

For this touches another eternal truth about the British and how they cope with the competing pull between preserving tradition and incremental change. The British character tends towards compromise. That is both its strength and its weakness. The present attitude to monarchy displays only the weaknesses of ambiguity.

And perhaps that is the best that can be expected: preserve the mystery through ambiguity. Americans and other Europeans are used to kicking cans down the road but we British prefer to muddle through by smudging and fudging. Perhaps we all need to go back to Bagehot to preserve the mystique of the monarchy and not allowing itself to become the subject of celebrity tittle tattle and drama queens in a TV soap opera.

[grandpeanutchild]

cheese fries restaurant

In France, steak frites, which translates "steak and fries" in English, may be a prolific dish throughout the country's brasseries. cheese fries restaurant While the sort of steak and sauce utilized in the preparation has changed over time and between countries, the quintessential French fry is an everlasting factor.  

BUT WHY THE POPULARITY

So why are french-fried potatoes so popular? Certainly there are other side dishes that might pair well with a protein. While speculative, it's believed that french-fried potatoes first gained a following in Europe, popularized by dishes including the aforementioned steak frites and moules-frites. Subsequently, french-fried potatoes became fashionable American soldiers stationed overseas during war I. once they returned home, they sought their new favorite snack to no avail. At this point , however, America was witnessing the renaissance of the fashionable nutriment restaurant. Inexpensive to organize and with an already established clientele, White Castle began offering french-fried potatoes with their hamburgers. The rest, as they assert , is history.

The French fry's meteoric rise from a humble fish-substitute to the world's quintessential culinary accompaniment has been an extended time within the making. Thus, we encourage you to celebrate (and, of course, eat) the world's greatest and most venerated entremots .The Quora recipe took 3 days but mostly zero effort. The post was short on details, so I invented them as I went by . the primary thing I noticed was that they discolored while drying within the fridge. After frying, they recolored themselves but appeared to be the smallest amount crispy, and thus , most disappointing of the bunch. As I ate more and more of them however, it ended up that that they had the simplest , most potatoey flavor and satisfying crisp (as against the boom-in-your-face crunch of the opposite two). I felt like I could eat endless amounts of those guys, which made them the winner for meKenji’s fries take 2 days and are specified to be shoestring sized, so I followed his recipe to a tee. His came out more intact than Heston’s but still broken, I’m unsure how he managed to avoid the broken ones on a high heat boil, but i think that’s why his lead photo is merely of 12 intact french-fried potatoes . within the end, the recipe was about twice as involved as Heston’s, with vinegar and agitation needed, but looked and tasted better with more intact fries (marginally more intact).

The easiest thanks to make homemade french-fried potatoes - www.iamafoodblog.com Random Quora Dude’s Method

The Quora recipe took 3 days but mostly zero effort. The post was short on details, so I invented them as I went by . the primary thing I noticed was that they discolored while drying within the fridge. After frying, they recolored themselves but appeared to be the smallest amount crispy, and thus , most disappointing of the bunch. As I ate more and more of them however, it ended up that that they had the simplest , most potatoey flavor and satisfying crisp (as against the boom-in-your-face crunch of the opposite two). I felt like I could eat endless amounts of those guys, which made them the winner on behalf of me .

Thinking that I could optimize on this recipe, i attempted condensing the method into one long day. By 10pm that night, I ended up with soggy fries that couldn’t hold a candle to their 3 day brethren. Something magical seems to happen on the third day.

Was this easier than simply throwing some Ore-Ida or McCains fries within the oven? No, but it had been far, much more satisfying, and I’m guessing either (or both) Steph or i will be able to be improving this recipe as time goes by, until at some point we’ll just effortlessly be ready to throw together a simple batch of french-fried potatoes which will rival the simplest french restaurants, or McDonalds.

Do you guys have an honest french fry recipe? I’m all ears.

Potato love -Mike

The easiest thanks to make homemade french-fried potatoes - www.iamafoodblog.com

HOW TO MAKE french-fried potatoes reception 1 POTATO PER PERSONPREP TIME: 3 DAYSCOOK TIME: 3 MINUTESTOTAL TIME: 3 DAYS and three MINUTES Large russet potatoes, dig 1/4″ shoestrings Oil for frying Salt

Soak your potatoes for 30 mins to 1hr. Blot dry with a towel and arrange on rack. Dry in refrigerator overnight.

The next day, heat your oil to 375°F. Ensure your potatoes are completely dry (dry with paper towels if needed). Fry your potatoes for exactly 1 minute. Drain and place back on rack, and dry in fridge overnight.

On the ultimate day, heat your oil copy to 375°F. Blot dry any excess oil on your potatoes with a towel , then fry for exactly two minutes. Drain on a rack, salt immediately, and luxuriate in as soon as possible.

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5 COMMENTS Peppermint Dolly says: June 8, 2017 at 12:44 am I don’t know if it’d be a weekly occurrence with such a lot prep involved, but still, I’m intrigued to offer it a go!!

Rebecca xx http://www.peppermintdolly.com

Reply Rachael @Rachael's Foodie Life says: June 8, 2017 at 1:49 am It seems like you're making my dreams come true. I even have had numerous fakes attempts at french-fried potatoes reception that I had given up hope. But I can’t wait to undertake these!!

Reply irene says: June 8, 2017 at 6:49 am This is very informative. Are the potatoes soaked in warm or cold water for the 30 -1hr period? How are they dried overnight within the refridgerator, in an open plastic container or left open?

Reply Ruby says: June 10, 2017 at 8:30 pm oh no – the very easiest method (and delicious too) is that the America’s Test Kitchen way of putting shoestrings in room temp oil and bringing it up to boil on high heat. It never sputters or spits and you simply stir them once. Hey presto – perfect fries

Reply gary says: June 11, 2017 at 8:34 pm These make me insane they're so good (use peanut oil), we make them once every week probably: https://smittenkitchen.com/2017/03/easiest-french-fries/

In addition to being the simplest fries ever to return out of my kitchen, included triple fried,etc., they're far and away the simplest . I even have been telling everyone i do know to form these!

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Other posts you would possibly enjoy Friday Links: 9.19.2014 Friday Finds: 5.19.17 Baked Double Chocolate Panda Donuts Mini Burger Recipe Mini Twice Baked Potatoes Recipe How to Make Cheesy Potato Balls READ Sapporo Soup Curry Recipe READ Thanksgiving Poutine READ Recipe Roundups 60 BEST DINNER IDEAS We’re rounding up our 60 best dinner ideas. SEE THE LIST Sunday Brunch A BREAKDOWN OF the complete ENGLISH BREAKFAST Welcome to Weekend Brunch! Skip the lines and make brunch reception . The coffee’s truly bottomless and therefore the better part is PJs all the way! This week: a guide to the gloriousness that's referred to as A Full English Breakfast. BEST MEAL OF THE WEEK Basics & the way to A BREAKDOWN OF the complete ENGLISH BREAKFAST Welcome to Weekend Brunch! Skip the lines and make brunch reception . The coffee’s truly bottomless and therefore the better part is PJs all the way! This week: a guide to the gloriousness that's referred to as A Full English Breakfast. LET'S roll in the hay Bread BRIOCHE French toast Brioche makes the simplest French toast: soft and custard-y within the middle and crispy and golden brown on the sides . I KNEAD THIS Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss another post!

[leapfrogstrategyconsulting]

CULTURAL SEMIOTICS AND ARCHETYPES

What is Cultural Semiotics?

Cultural semiotics is a research field within the concept of semiotics that endeavours to characterize the culture from semiotic point of view and as a kind of human symbolic activity, presentation of signs and a method of giving meaning and importance to everything around. Therefore, culture is understood as a system of symbols or meaningful signs. Since the primary sign system is the linguistic system, the field is typically referred to as semiotics of culture and language. Under this field, the study of symbols are examined and classified in certain class within the hierarchal system. With postmodernity, metanarratives, at this point, are no longer pervasive and thus categorizing these symbols in this postmodern age is difficult and rather critical.

Archetypes and Brands

Practically every market is dominated by brands that plainly and reliably address the fundamental importance of their category and the specific value of their contribution in an original way whether by intent or an accident. The entirety of the brands portrayed on the original i.e., Archetype Frame, seemingly, work really hard of reliably supporting their archetypal inspirations and characterizations.

Cultural Archetypes and Brands

In addition to inspiration, cultural archetypes and semiotics also give reasonable advantages in the advanced, intricate and fast-moving marketing environment. Archetypes give a global establishment on which to establish brand character and personality while additionally giving a basic framework to help manage and control brand communication, evaluate partnerships and other marketing openings. Significantly, they recognize the characters and inspirations we wish to avoid in order to keep a constant personality in action to build and keep up the trust factor between the brand and its audience. The most amazing aspect of this is that it's now in the customer's brain. It's simply a part of being human so there need to be the understanding of cultural semiotics that will allow you to be intentional, reliable and offer honest action.

Example

Perhaps the most captivating archetypal brand competitions in the US market are that between the titanic espresso brands of Starbucks and Dunkin'.

The two brands take an interest in multiple categories (restaurant, cpg, and so forth) and both have very faithful, maybe even over the top audiences. Both are top tier advertisers and also, product and service trend-setters. Both contend straightforwardly against one another as restaurants, at grocery and retail but neither genuinely has any practicable competitive advantages against the other. Both keep up special situations in the market place and, in fact, culturally (specifically in the United States) both move and propel armies of fans.

When an individual is attracted to the Everyman archetype, the individual may apparently show fortitude with the normal working Joe by wearing work clothes, team jerseys, or urban street wear. They will regularly lean towards "plain speak" and reject any yet the most conversational methods of talking. This archetype rejects 'airs' that at put on by elitists, including brands. This is the persuasive fascination that Dunkin' goes to advertise with so well. Their slogan says a lot: America Runs on Dunkin', compares their product to fuel, a faraway thought from the espresso flavours, roots stories and refinement that is praised by Starbucks.

The Dunkin' brand takes advantage of this amazing supply of meaning in a category that is generally dominated by brands that are exceptionally individualistic or egocentric in nature; brands driving elitist messages about intricacy of flavour profiles and knowledge of preparation, worldwide understanding of beginning, environments, and so on. Dunkin' works on the cultural contexts and makes it advertisements relatable, easy, and easy going.

Here’s an advertisement shared from Dunkin'. This ad speaks directly focuses on the cultural codes and core values held by the Everyman - the people that go to work everyday.

The Everyman archetype is the basic archetype of democracy and by planning U.S. currency into the creative articulation the brand semiotically signals equity that is profoundly engrained in our public mind. The main American President, George Washington, pictured on the coin, inspires this centre importance which is composed into the Declaration of Independence - i.e., all men are made equivalent.

Here are a couple of the additional convincing highlights of this advertisement:

·       Everyman is the fundamental archetype of democracy and consequently of the USA. One individual, one vote.

·       Donuts are a typical kind of breakfast food; basically the working man's pastry.

·       Casual language like "see ya" claims to those spurred by this archetype.

·       Basic reason. The idea that "times are difficult" is an everyman idea that is a common strain of the working people.

·       The advertisement separates Dunkin' in a positive route from a more expensive or more elitist competitors.

·       A brand that shows compassion for this value framework is making an incredible emotional association, yet a brand that follows up on it, as shown in the advertisement, is directing unadulterated Everyman fascination.

This inspiration is so natural thus convincing that it has even been co-opted by traditionalist devotees of the Dunkin' brand to communicate their emotions about what they see to be one-sided liberal media.

Conclusion

Each brand lives in an extensive setting: it is encircled by other brands in the equivalent category, other categories in the market, communication discourse and local forms of expressions, and from a larger perspective by the worldwide communication discourse, its globalized forms of expression and qualities the worldwide culture promotes. This is the reason to genuinely comprehend the implications of your brand and its consumer perception. A cultural semiotic analysis interprets the cuesand archetypes that resonate with your audience. With that information, you can consolidate the decoded elements into your brand and marketing correspondences. Decoding culture with semioticsis an important for the agenda when building up an ad campaign or publishing a core content asset like Dunkin’.

[belladonnaandulriched]

artwork by badmotorartist on instagram; do not repost without her permission

the mirror never lies | chapter three: that night in sweden

Lars’ point of view

Cliff and I had been drifting apart from one another for some time now. I always made the effort to speak to him whenever I found the chance during this stint of the tour in particular because we were headed to my home. But he always vouched closer to James than towards me. In fact, there was a point in which we were headed into Scandinavia when I finally caught Cliff in a moment alone after he had climbed out of the shower one morning. I was ready to rekindle this flame, this flame that had been fanned by things I wish I could control.

He greeted me with that big infectious smile and joyous laugh and that was when I knew I had made the right decision. That smile and that laugh etched into my memory until the day I drop dead myself.

As part of bringing things back, I offered to do stuff for him. I mean, we relocated from the gutters of LA to San Francisco for him.

We started with the smorgasbord of breakfast together and I offered him a bit of princess cake—the last one, no less. Poor Anthrax barely had anything to eat for themselves: if there were more cakes, I'd give up to them as well. And Metal Church ran off to another smorgasbord for their brunch.

Cliff offered me a beer on the bus and I returned the favor with that well loved tape of Blazing Saddles. I was in an excellent mood that evening, and I was eager to show the northern lights and everything to them. I knew it would be the absolute best part of the tour and I was going to relish every second we proceeded to roam about the streets of Copenhagen. I was finally going to show off my city to my American friends, my home town, my history even with all the pained trimmings and old scars on my sky.

I was even willing to teach them some basic Danish phrases. I wanted them to feel home in a place I called home, even no matter how many caveats came with it.

I recall falling asleep at around midnight, about an hour after we drew cards as to who would sleep where in that bus. He drew the short one and thus he took the top bunk, the one with the tiny narrow window about the width of my hand. But he assured me it was going to be a good ride because he could look out to the darkness and see the northern lights.

In fact they did come in right around the time I fell asleep.

The last thing I recall was seeing those lacy veils of bright neon green juxtaposed against the black canopy outside of the window. That bright green cradling me with the bundle of warm blankets in my bunk as I drifted off.

It was weird. I thought it was a dream to feel the bus tipping sideways. Hearing the tires scream as if their throats were being slit. Feeling the whole cumbersome bus fall away with a dizzy sensation around me. I thought something hit me in the head but it turned out a piece of plexiglas missed slicing right through my temple by about an inch.

Seeing death herself standing right over me with her scythe.

I crawled out of that bus first. I helped James and Kirk out through that busted window.

I asked “where's Cliff?”

And when no one answered, the unforgiving northern darkness filled me up like bat venom.

If only we had a little more time together.

If only we had more.

And that time was all there was.

The snow is cold underneath my ass and my feet, but it's the least of my problems at the moment. I'm watching my best friends, my brothers James and Kirk, the guys who had been my pillars of strength in the past five years, completely lose their shit over all of this. James' face is twisted in rage over a stretch of black ice. Kirk is off to the side, off in the total darkness somewhere speaking to Anthrax to see if they're alright as well—I suppose their van went off the road right in front of us.

Even from here I can hear the tears in his voice. I can hear Scott and Charlie saying things, but I cannot discern what they are in fact saying.

The snow is leaving me numb, so numb in fact that it aches. Cold and silent, like the corpse of my brother before me.

I want to cry, but alas, I cannot. My eyes are as dry as bone. I just have my elbows rested upon my knees. All I have is the silence of death around me. Death does not make a sound, and neither does pain. I am silent along with Cliff here.

I cannot move my feet or my legs, but I don't really care if I am honest. I just want Cliff back. 

I want my brother back.

[artificialqueens]

Punny title about lesbians in love on an airplane (Branjie) - Mermelada

Hola! Did somebody ask for a Branjie lesbian flight attendant AU? Of course they didn’t, but it’s here anyway! Trigger warning for racism (third flight: Cancun section, skip if necessary as it’s not vital to the story). I hope you enjoy!

They first met on a flight to Tampa. They were both working in economy class, and were taking advantage of the turbulence to chitchat on their jumpseats at the back of the plane and get to know each other. Brooke Lynn learned that Vanessa had grown up in Tampa, had somehow acquired the nickname Vanjie at school, and was planning on spending that evening with her family. Vanessa learned that Brooke Lynn was Canadian, but had been living in the US for long enough to have almost completely lost her accent – except after a few tequilas, apparently – and used to be a pretty serious ballerina. Their personalities were polar opposites, and yet they hit it off immediately. They kept laughing with each other well after the plane’s wheels were on the ground and the passengers were nowhere to be seen. Although she didn’t want to admit it, Vanessa was somewhat disappointed when she saw her mother and aunt standing in the arrivals hall, and was thus forced to say goodbye to Brooke Lynn, who begrudgingly followed the rest of the crew out of the terminal to find their transport to the hotel. On the flight home the next day, both ladies picked up where they’d left off, their natural chemistry making their job feel easy and the flight seem quick. Far too quick. Before disembarking once they were safely parked back at base, Vanessa added Brooke Lynn on Facebook, delighted that their 56 mutual friends had made it easy. Their airline, however, was big, and they knew their chances of flying together again anytime soon was limited. Nonetheless, they exchanged goodbyes and thanked each other for such a nice flight.

-*-

They didn’t have to wait long for their next meeting, when Vanessa was called from reserve to go to Seattle the next week. All of her stress from speed-walking to the gate disappeared as soon as she stepped on board and saw the voluptuous blonde giant, who handed her a freshly brewed coffee. Airplane drinks had never tasted so good. Brooke Lynn was working in business class, so they didn’t get the chance to speak until the bus ride to their hotel in the city centre.

“I’ve never been to Seattle before, do you want to come sightseeing with me?”

Vanessa agreed perhaps too enthusiastically, her smile wide enough to park a bus, before she realised that in her frantic dash to the airport that morning, she hadn’t packed anything appropriate for the damp and chilly Seattle spring. A few awkward explanations and suggestive comments later, Vanessa found herself walking around Pike Place Market in her pyjama leggings, white jelly sandals, and Brooke’s red hoodie which drowned her tiny frame. It smelled like maple syrup – not in a stereotypical sort of way, but it was sweet, unique, and warmed Vanessa’s heart. They spent the day walking beside each other, neither woman flinching when their arms or hands bumped together. They chatted comfortably, and felt completely at ease in each other’s company. They’d spent as much time as possible exploring the city and eating more than either had thought possible, but the time change and early start was making staying awake increasingly difficult, and both made the decision to retire to their respective rooms before dinner time, promising to meet for breakfast when they inevitably woke up at the crack of dawn.

-*-

Their third flight together was the hardest. Brooke Lynn’s face had lit up the moment she saw Vanessa’s name beside a two-night trip to Cancun on her roster. They’d exchanged excited Whatsapp messages, having swapped phone numbers after breakfast in Seattle the previous two months prior, and planned a visit to a turtle sanctuary to find out “if those cute little fuckers really do try and swim to the moon”, a question Vanessa had been pondering since watching an Animal Planet documentary as a child. The reality, however, wasn’t quite as fun. An oil leak on their original plane meant a four hour wait in the terminal beside increasingly-agitated passengers while a new plane was found. Once they were finally on their way, a lady in the back row –  who had most likely spent the delay downing gin and tonics at the airport bar –  decided she didn’t like Vanessa’s bilingual English and Spanish announcements, unironically declaring loudly from her seat that “we want to keep America for Americans, we don’t want to be force-fed your taco-eating shit.”  

In shock, Brooke left her colleague in the aisle and went to the nearest phone to call the Captain, thinking ahead of the next steps from the ‘dealing with disruptive passengers’ chapter in her training notes.  Vanessa, surprisingly, kept her cool.

“Ma’am, I’m Puerto Rican. We eat sorullitos.”

The angry woman stared at Vanessa like she’d just killed a puppy. Her face turned red with rage, and she spat obscenities at Vanessa like they were on special offer. Not wanting to listen anymore, Vanessa just walked away to join Brooke Lynn in the back galley, leaving the passengers around the lady to deal with her themselves. Unfortunately, the captain had decided that the woman was a potential risk to the safety of the aircraft, which is how they found themselves diverting into Charleston and exceeding their maximum time limit for a day’s work. As the rest of the crew debriefed over miniature bottles of wine on the bus to their unplanned hotel for the night, Brooke and Vanessa sat close together in the back row. The taller woman had her arm wrapped around the shorter one’s shoulder, gently rubbing circles into her upper arm. Out of nowhere, the impact of what had happened hit Vanessa. She buried her face into Brooke’s chest, unable to stop the tears which were now falling incessantly from her eyes. Vanessa looked even smaller than normal, as fragile as a glass Christmas bauble. All Brooke could do was hold her closer, stroke her hair, and hope that Vanessa knew that she cared.

Back at the hotel, Vanessa wouldn’t let go of Brooke Lynn as they collected their keys from the bored-looking teenager at the front desk. Brooke had never experienced racism at work before – drunk football fans shouting ‘aboot’ across the aisle didn’t count – but she knew that the most important thing at that moment was to support her friend.

“Do you want to sleep in my room tonight? We can get pizza and watch The Notebook.”

In the short time they had known each other, Brooke Lynn had learned a lot about Vanessa’s favourite things, including her surprising love of all things romantic, despite a less-than-perfect love life about which she often dropped elusive snippets into conversation. Despite never having been one for soppy movies, Brooke wanted nothing more than to spend the evening doing whatever she could to make Vanessa happy.

The short Latina looked up through wet, brown eyes.

“Only if I can borrow your hoodie again, that shit was ugly but comfy as fuck.”

-*-

A month after their failed trip to Cancun, Brooke Lynn and Vanessa had been in contact every day, trying to figure out how to get another trip together. Finally, they were lucky, when Vanessa convinced her friend Silky to swap her night-stop in San Francisco with Brooke for two days in Pittsburgh.

“Think of the ketchup, girl, you’ll love Pittsburgh!”

“Bitch, you are pussy whipped, I better be your maid of honour.”

The words replayed on a loop in Vanessa’s head during her entire journey to the airport that morning. “Pussy whipped.” It sounded disgusting, but she couldn’t deny, there was something so attractive about Brooke Lynn that she couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t just that she was tall, athletic, curvaceous, and had the twinkliest eyes in the universe; she was intelligent, thoughtful, caring, and wickedly funny at the same time. She was never bored when they were together, and she felt entire swarms of butterflies flutter in her stomach every time her phone dinged with a new message from the Canadian. She also gave amazing cuddles. They’d gotten a lot closer over the last month, especially since Brooke had opened up about never having had a serious relationship at their Charleston sleepover. Brooke had also admitted that night to having had no idea that Vanessa was also a lesbian, which elicited even more flirtatious teasing.

“Is it because I don’t wear plaid? Brooky-poo, you can’t just pigeon-hole your sisters like that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Jesus Christ, I told you, my gaydar has been broken since the 90s! This is why I’m single!”

They spent the long flight to San Fran working together in economy again, their smiles never fading as their bantered with the passengers during the bar round. They were able to remove the frowns from even the grumpiest of businessmen’s faces, which left the colleagues feeling like they were on cloud 9. As they gathered their belongings at the end of the flight, the cabin manager Nina walked down the aisle to see them.

“Those were some of the happiest customers I have ever seen, what on earth did you give them?!” she beamed, her enthusiasm somehow even higher than usual.

“Oh, you know”, began Brooke, “A bit of the ol’ Branjie charm does wonders!”

Vanessa’s snort in response caused the three to burst into hysterical laughter, their good moods only getting better and better.

It wasn’t until they were sat together at a bar on Pier 39 that it was brought up again.

“So, Branjie, huh?” smirked Vanessa, stirring her cocktail with her straw and fluttering her eyelashes at Brooke.

“Yeah, it’s like a… what’s the word for it? A portmanteau. Brooke and Vanjie – Branjie!”

Vanessa couldn’t help but laugh at how comfortable Brooke was explaining it, “you’ve thought about this before, haven’t you?!”

Brooke’s cheeks turned the same colour as her strawberry daiquiri, and she couldn’t drink it quick enough to hide from the fact that she’d been caught. “Well, yeah… I was just brainstorming, y’know. Branjie is better than Broonessa or Vanooke.”

Vanessa successfully maintained serious eye contact with Brooke for four seconds before exploding into uncontrollable laughter, the Canadian joining in immediately. At some point during the raucousness, Vanessa’s hand found its way onto Brooke’s thigh, and Brooke’s foot wrapped itself around Vanessa’s shin. They inched closer until there was virtually no space between them, conversing as before, only this time with far more intimacy. A natural lull in the conversation led to a comfortable silence, where they stared into each other’s eyes, neither sure of how to proceed. Just as Brooke Lynn caught Vanessa’s eyes dart down to her lips, she jumped up from her seat and extended her hand, which Vanessa took graciously.

“Let’s go for a walk, you like sea lions?”

The pier was swarming with tourists, all trying to take photographs of every single square centimetre. Vanessa and Brooke Lynn aimlessly sauntered along, their hands connected and swinging at a gentle pace beside them. Despite not looking at each other, they knew that they were wearing matching smiles. They stopped at the end of the pier and took in the deafening racket from the giant creatures below, huddling together closely to counter the effects of the cool sea breeze.

“Sorry, I thought this was going to be romantic”, sighed Brooke, lightly removing her hand from Vanessa’s and looking down to inspect her nails, a nervous tick she’d developed as a teenager in dance class. “I wasn’t expecting it to smell quite so fishy.”

Vanessa couldn’t help but grin at her counterpart’s sudden shyness, taking it upon herself to make the first move by wrapping her arms around Brooke Lynn’s waist.

“I didn’t even notice.” With that, Vanessa stood as high on her tip-toes as possible and stretched her neck as far as she could, meeting Brooke’s lips halfway in a flurry of quick, chaste kisses. They held each other as they stared out to the sea, the cacophony of the sea lion choir filling the air. It was perfect.

-*-

They saw each other a lot more after San Francisco, meeting for coffee and drinks at home whenever their schedules aligned, or spending hours on Facetime when they didn’t. They were seeing each other, Brooke supposed. It wasn’t official or exclusive, nor had they spoken about what their exact status was, but whatever it was, it was good. It felt right. It had been 52 days since their first kiss, and the Canadian was ready to take their relationship to the next level. Unbeknownst to Brooke Lynn, Vanessa was had also been planning the perfect way to do so as soon as she’d laid eyes upon the 3-night trip to Maui appear on their rosters for next month. Sunshine, sea, and coconut bras… what could possibly be sexier?

The flight passed without a hitch, and all nine crew members chatted drowsily in the hotel lobby as they waited for their room keys to be ready. Vanessa and Brooke were sharing an armchair that was far too small to fit both of them, but they relished the closeness. Drawing gentle patterns onto Brooke Lynn’s lower back, Vanessa put the first part of her plan into action.

“So, I was wondering,” she began hesitantly, clearing her throat as a pair of sleepy green eyes met her brown ones, “since we’ve basically spent all of our last two trips together, do you want to maybe share a room?”

Vanessa knew it was a big step: despite having shared a bed for one night in Charleston, and enjoying an evening kissing during Food Network ad breaks in Brooke’s room in San Fran, they were yet to officially spend a night together together. And a room all to themselves would mean they could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, without having to run halfway across the hotel to brush their teeth or change clothes. Vanessa was also desperate to explore every inch of Brooke’s body and do whatever she could to make her feel good, but Brooke’s slight hesitation in that moment made her doubt herself.

“We don’t have to, don’t worry, I was just thinking it might be nice to spend some time alone together since it’s been so long since we’ve been together just the two of us, but I understand if you want your personal space, I know you probably don’t want all my bikinis and shit cluttering up your room and…”

Before Vanessa could finish ranting, Brooke stopped her by pressing their lips together, so soft in contrast to Vanessa’s erratic rambling.

“Yes”, was all she needed to say, before Vanessa grinned like the Cheshire Cat and pulled her in for a longer kiss, not even caring that the rest of their crewmates had already left.  

The atmosphere was unusually quiet in the girls’ room. Brooke had opened the door to the balcony, looking out onto the beach, meanwhile Vanessa rifled through her suitcase to find her phone charger. She really should start organising her luggage better one day, maybe Brooke could teach her. Neither had uttered a word to each other since walking through the door to their humble double room, and both seemed reluctant to be the first to break the tension. Eventually, having successfully plugged her phone in to charge, Vanessa decided to take a shower to wash the smell of Boeing off of her skin. Singing off-key to herself as she lathered up her fruity shampoo, she didn’t hear the bathroom door open and close again.

“Need some help?”

Vanessa jumped as she realised that standing in front of her was the most perfect, beautiful woman she has ever seen, completely naked, and looking at Vanessa with matching awe.

“If you want to”, was all Vanessa could muster before pushing herself onto the blonde goddess in front of her, pinning her against the wall of the shower cubicle and kissing her with a passion she’d never known she had. Brooke kissed back with a far greater intensity than any of their previous kisses, moving to nibble at Vanessa’s neck and clavicle.

Not content with not being in control, Brooke Lynn reached her hands down to grab Vanessa’s ass, and in one swift motion lifted her up and spun them around so that the shorter girl’s back was now against the tiled wall, with her legs wrapped as tightly as she could around Brooke’s hips. They continued kissing passionately, grabbing each other’s hair and softly moaning into each other’s mouth, when Brooke, who still had a hold on Vanessa as she inadvertently grinded against the Canadian’s pubic bone, lost her grip and could only watch as the brunette slid in slow-motion all the way down Brooke’s body like a firefighter’s pole, unable to land on her legs in time. She looked down at the shocked brown eyes staring up from the corner of the cubicle floor, not sure how it had happened, when the room was filled with the most glorious sound of Vanessa’s laughter. Once she’d started laughing, she couldn’t stop, which then infected Brooke to the point where neither could breathe. The situation only worsened with Brooke’s failed attempts to pull Vanessa back up again, the women’s hands slipping constantly in the stream of water.  

“This wasn’t what I had in mind when I wanted to get you wet tonight”, Brooke barely managed to wheeze out as her stomach muscles ached from their sudden exertion. Just about succeeding to regain composure as Vanessa still howled below her, she turned off the shower and extended her hand, finally managing to pull the brunette up to stand beside her. They shared several soft kisses, hands wandering across their torsos, holding on to each other as if they might suddenly be split apart. As their kisses once more began getting more heated, Vanessa snickered and looked up at Brooke.

“My ass really hurts, I think you should kiss it better.”

All Brooke could do was roll her eyes and continue kissing Vanessa’s face, her smile never faltering.

“You are absolutely unbelievable, I can’t believe I have four more days of this.”

“You love it, really.”

Neither woman could possibly disagree, as they practically sprinted across the 1970’s-patterned carpet and jumped on the bed, which they had no intention of leaving in a hurry.

The whole duration of the flight home was spent with knowing smirks being passed between the other flight attendants as Brooke Lynn and Vanessa tried to remain professional and not hold hands or smash lips at every opportunity.

“Sooooo”, drawled Yvie over a dinner of over-cooked macaroni cheese behind the galley curtain, “did you two enjoy the beach?”

Vanessa began blushing as she stabbed her fork into her foil tray, looking to Brooke to save their dignity, however she appeared to be trying to shrink as far down as possible into her uniform blouse. They weren’t getting out of this one.

“I spent a lot of time there. There were a couple in the room next door to me who kept hammering shit to the walls and screaming about God all day and all night. I hope they had a good time, because I’m fucking tired.”

And with that, Yvie put her meal tray away and walked back out into the cabin, leaving Vanessa and Brooke to stare at each other in silence, willing the bottom of the plane to open up and suck them out.

-*-

They had been an item for six months. It was Brooke’s longest relationship, and the happiest six months of Vanessa’s life. It hadn’t been without its challenges: despite trying to synchronise rosters to spend more time together, they often found themselves on opposite sides of the continent for half of each week. They were eternally grateful for FaceTime, but nothing compared to the feeling of leaping into bed for a nap together after their respective flights home. They had both looked endlessly for flights they could work on together, sending out begging requests to swap at every opportunity, but none had been successful.

That was until Brooke cornered Yvie in the crew room, bought her a coffee, and pouted until the tall, brown-eyed girl had no choice to but cave.

“You still owe me about 20 hours of sleep from Hawaii, I’ll add this to your tab.”

Brooke’s initial plan had been to keep it a secret until the day of the flight to surprise Vanessa, but in her excited state, she couldn’t hold it in for one night.

“I’M COMING TO TAMPA!”

Flight six had been the best flight of all, with a fully-functioning plane, happy passengers, and the woman of her dreams across from her, somehow even making pouring coffee look sexy. Brooke Lynn thought back to their very first meeting, not quite remembering at which point it had all fallen into place, but she wouldn’t have changed a thing. She was in love.

Vanessa, feeling exactly the same way, couldn’t help but ride the overwhelming wave of joy whenever she thought about the tall blonde in front of her, handing out pretzels whilst looking like such a snack herself. Without wanting to scare Brooke Lynn away, Vanessa knew she was in this for the long run.

Just a couple of hours later, they walked through arrivals, each with one hand on their suitcases and the others linked together.

“I hope you don’t mind, baby, but I’ve already sorted out our transport home.” Vanessa smiled and squeeze Brooke’s hand, leading her through the throngs of lost-looking people in the terminal, until they were both embraced by two pairs of warm, welcoming arms.

“Mamá, Tía Alexis, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Brooke Lynn.”

[seriouslyhooked]

The Same Soul (Part 2)

Available on FF Here and AO3 Here. Chapter 1 Here.

Our world AU where Emma and Killian knew each other as teenagers. Killian was sent to spend a summer with family in America. He met foster kid Emma while there. They fell in love but then he was forced back home and she couldn’t take the memories so she ran away, trying her best to move on from the dreams they’d always hoped for. A chance meeting brings them back together years later, and this time nothing and no one will keep them apart. Rated M.

A/N: Hey everyone! So thank you so much for your initial positivity and excitement about the fic. It’s inspired me to engage with this AU in a way I wasn’t planning originally, and I am so excited to keep writing and exploring this story. That being said, I’m delayed in posting because I had actually written a few more chapters of this fic and then my hard drive on my laptop decided to die. I lost the work, but not the commitment to this story or the idea of where things could go next. As such, this is take two of me trying to write this second chapter, and it actually takes place in the past. I want to explore not only the story of Emma and Killian finding each other again, but the story of how they first found each other too. This chapter is from Emma’s POV again, but rest assured we will be getting Killian’s eventually too. So, with that being said, I really hope you enjoy and I would LOVE to hear what you think. Thanks so much for reading!

Twelve Years Earlier

“And that, ladies, is how you make a personal, one-of-a-kind needlepoint pillow!”

The excitement that those words were said with was almost hard to fathom. In all her life, Emma had never met someone who would get so excited about crafting, never mind in a style that was so out dated, but she couldn’t help but smile at Mrs. Hubbard. Their activities director here in the arts and craft barn was a sweet older woman and she was the only person at this camp that Emma felt really cared about any of them. All of the other adults here either looked at camp as a job, or were alumni themselves and thus were convinced that a summer at Camp Pinewood was the most glorious and glamorous thing a girl of sixteen could partake in. It was an elite, invitation only camp, and only the best families in the area could even consider sending their girls here.

That mentality was understandably off-putting to Emma, since she was hardly glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. She was a foster kid, had been since infancy, and in the past sixteen years she’d been in nearly 20 different homes or facilities. When she was still little, it was mostly family placements, and a few had even been promising, allowing Emma to really believe she may someday find a real family to call her own. But they never worked out in the end, and for the past ten years Emma had been relegated to mostly group homes, all of which were noisy and cramped and stressful. The most recent one was the worst she’d been in yet, but it did have one benefit – an eccentric wealthy benefactress who provided a scholarship for any girl with good grades to come out here to Pinewood for the summer.

At first Emma had thought that offer was so stupid. Who would want a scholarship for camp? As a kid in the system there were about a thousand things she needed before she needed a summer trip to one of the richest neighborhoods in the country, but after a few weeks in her boisterous and bustling group home in the heart of the city, Emma was desperate for a summer away from the noise and the active dislike of her fellow lost girls. Emma didn’t fit in with the other foster kids she’d come in contact with, having been written off as uppity even though she wasn’t. At first, some of the girl’s who were staples at her group home had thought to pick on her, but everyone had largely stopped messing with her after Emma responded to a fight with a defensive skill none of them were expecting. She didn’t like to get physical, but Emma could hold her own, and she wasn’t about to let anyone mess with her when she’d done nothing to provoke it. But despite showing that she was strong and capable, the others still iced her out, making sure Emma knew that she was neither wanted nor accepted in any way.  She was a certified loner, and though that sad fact seemed to be transferring to this camp too, at least Emma had space and fresh air and some peace and quiet to go along with her loneliness.

Camp Pinewood was, according to everyone both running and attending the camp, the most exclusive summer commitment a girl could have. It ran only during the day, because it seemed that hanging too far in the woods overnight was a line a majority of these girls would never cross, but it boasted all kinds of famous alumni. There were politicians, judges, even a few actresses and other famous faces. But to Emma the exclusive club part felt more than a little out of reach. She highly doubted that her past was going to be completely washed away by rubbing shoulders with a bunch of American heiresses. No one had actually asked about her situation, and she didn’t think any of them realized she was here on scholarship from the woman whose family had originally gifted this town with the land the camp resided on, but they also knew she wasn’t one of them, and there was nothing worse to rich people than a lack of status. Most girls had come here with built in friends and enemies, and while they went about their business, Emma just observed, taking in how foreign a way of life this was before returning each night to her home for the summer – a small bedroom in the staff house at the estate of the woman who’d granted her the scholarship.

Emma still hadn’t met the unconventional old woman who made this summer away possible, and she doubted she would at any point this trip, especially since it seemed no other girl from her group home had ever actually qualified for this scholarship. Emma was the first ever to take them up on their generosity and it showed. There were surprisingly few rules for a sixteen-year-old ward of the state, and very little in the ways of entertainment for one. The housekeeper, Mrs. Dearly, had simply told Emma three things: breakfast was at eight each morning, dinner was at six thirty in the evening, and she was not to have any boys on the property. After that thirty second introduction, Emma had been shown her bedroom and pretty much left to her own devices. She saw Mrs. Dearly at meal times, but the woman was always so busy with running the estate along with her husband, that there was never much in the way of reciprocal conversation. Emma didn’t mind too much though. She’d rather have the distance between them all. It was a hopeless dream to think she could stay here when the summer was over, and if they were nicer it would be harder to keep her guard up from what would undoubtedly be substantial disappointment.

“Now I know what you’re all thinking,” Mrs. Hubbard continued, cutting through Emma’s unhappy thoughts and pulling her back to the activity at hand. “You are wondering who you should give such a thoughtful gift to.  Now sure, these pillows are great to keep, and there are any number of people you could gift them too, but a good choice might be a special someone in your life. I know a few of you have boys you’re sweet on, and any good beau would love a pillow like this!”

Emma bit back a wince at the thought of sharing this terrible pillow with anyone. She had absolutely no artistic ability, and while she’d been able to follow the structural instructions well, creating a strong and sturdy pillow, her needlework left a lot to be desired. She’d been trying to make a dog, but if she had to choose a mammal that it looked most like she’d say it was an elephant. Well, an elephant if elephants were kind of weirdly wobbly along the back and had some legs that were longer than the others. Okay, fine, she had, at best, created an amoeba like shape, but still she wouldn’t cut into Mrs. H’s enthusiasm. The woman was so nice that Emma didn’t have the heart to tell her that even if this was a fantastic pillow it would still be weird to give to a guy. Boys her age didn’t want handmade and carefully stitched decorative pieces, and honestly, Emma struggled to think that there had ever been a man in any time or place who would welcome such a gift as a sign of affection.

“Jesus is she crazy?” One of the ruder campers in the back asked in a harsh whisper. Emma made a point not to ruffle feathers, especially in a new place, but there had been a number of times where this girl in particular, Catherine Parker, had tested that strength. “I know she’s practically prehistoric, but she doesn’t really think we’d give these to anyone does she? Talk about delusional.”

“Yeah, totally nutso,” one girl responded.

“Seriously disturbed,” another agreed.

“I don’t even know why she still works here to be honest. I mean I know she’s been here forever, but at some point we’ve got to bury the fossils, you know?”

Emma couldn’t help the eye roll that escaped as she listened to this ridiculously ageist and asinine commentary, but she made sure to let it loose when Mrs. H was looking elsewhere. She didn’t want their instructor to think this was aimed at her or her ideas, because no matter how out there they were, Emma still appreciated them. All of Mrs. Hubbard’s suggestions came from a good place, and Emma would never disrespect that when she knew how rare it was for adults to really try their best to do right by kids their age. Luckily, before her peers could say anything else that Mrs. H might hear, the camp bell rang, alerting them all that this particular class was over and that the day at camp was now done with it. It being Friday, Emma knew that most of these girls were off to extravagant ‘barbecues’ (AKA what rich people called fancy parties as long as they were outside during the summer) or beach-side soirees until Monday came, but Emma would just be hanging around. Maybe she’d take a real walk around the town, or head to the public ocean access (which was still nice, but too pedestrian for the rich girls at this camp apparently), but whatever she ended up doing, Emma knew it would be a solo adventure, just as all of her outings tended to be.

The rest of the girls practically sprinted from the room and to the parking lot where their drivers awaited them. It was a mad scramble to get out of here each day, since no one ever seemed to carpool (honestly, even pitching the idea would probably make Emma a social pariah), but Emma wasn’t in the same rush as them. She’d be walking the back trail to the estate, which was directly adjacent to the camp property. She had no strict curfew and no place to be, and she planned to make her fifteen-minute walk back leisurely and relaxing. Emma wanted to enjoy the summer heat and the sun a little more. This wasn’t a forever place for her, and come the fall when she was headed back to school, she wanted to be sure she’d soaked as much of it in as she could.

“Thanks for the lesson, Mrs. H,” Emma said by way of goodbye, and she was taken aback again by the fact that this woman always appeared shocked when she said thank you. Sure, Emma hadn’t noticed anyone else doing the same when a class ended, despite their ‘good breeding’ and etiquette lessons, but still, it was basic politeness.

“You’re very welcome, my dear. Any fun weekend plans?” Emma shook her head at the question and Mrs. H only offered a smile instead of anything like pity, which Emma appreciated. “Well good things have a way of finding us in their time. I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself, Emma. See you next week, all right?”

Emma agreed and headed out, finding the path towards her summer quarters with ease, and setting out on the solitary journey. It was quiet out here, but also not at all. The ambient hum of the natural world was so different to anything Emma ever experienced back in the city. The birds, the bugs, and the breeze all played a musical part in their own way as the sun filtered in through the canopy above. This forest was bursting with life, and some smaller animals filtered in and out her path. If she pushed away reality for a little bit, Emma could almost pretend she had a completely different life. Out here, in the mostly untouched woods, she could be part of a totally separate world, one with knights and pirates, kings and queens, or whatever else she wished. This could be a journey through the past or a jaunt into the fairytales she’d secretly loved as a kid. It was the kind of place her imagination could go wild, and after spending so many years just trying to survive, it was amazing to have the space to just dream of new places and new adventures to embark on.

In the midst of these daydreams, however, a noise sounded out in the woods around her that startled Emma. It sounded like something was running in her direction, something big. She heard the crunching the earth below as feet pounded on the ground, and a foreboding rustling through bushes. Emma had very little time to prepare for what it could be, and her first thought was that maybe it was a bear or something. She didn’t think they were very common around these parts, but what did she know? Yet no sooner had she really begun to edge towards panic, than the culprit behind her worry came into the light. It was a dog in the end, granted a really big dog (she hadn’t been so far off with the bear guess in terms of size), but one that was friendly if the wagging tale and huge doggy smile were anything to go off of.

“Hey there, buddy. Aren’t you cute?” Emma asked and this seemed to make the dog even happier. It came lumbering towards her, pressing its head into her side and Emma laughed, crouching down to give the dog some love.

She’d always adored dogs ever since she was a little girl, and though she never spoke these wishes out loud, a dog was absolutely part of her dream for a family and a home. Kids in the system weren’t allowed pets, but Emma knew that they should be given them. Animals could go a long way in making life less lonely. But instead of dwelling on that, Emma just enjoyed this fleeting moment with… she looked at the collar on this big beautiful brown beast, but there was no tag and no name she could read.

“Are you lost, girl?” Emma asked and unwillingly her hope began to rise. Maybe this dog needed a home too, but just as she asked, she heard sharp whistle and a voice sounding out further in the woods.

“Missy! Here, girl!”

“So not lost, just hiding, huh Missy?” The dog barked happily and Emma couldn’t help smiling, even if she was a little sad at the fact that this dog would have to go soon. She was just so cute and affectionate, and Emma was so pulled in that she must have missed the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Oh thank God, you found her. She’s not usually a runner but she took off and…”

The stranger’s words faded away, and Emma turned to look at who had said them. When she did her heart clutched in her chest. Holy cow this guy was cute, and Emma had simply not been expecting it. Her brain hadn’t gone so far as to sketch out what she thought Missy’s owner would look like, but even if it had, she never could have made this. His hair was dark, and he was taller than her and maybe a year or two older. He looked strong and capable, carrying himself with a confidence that was quiet but pronounced, and Emma’s eyes moved across his chest to his arms which were muscled, tone, and tan from the start of summer. As Emma took him in, she couldn’t help thinking he was beautiful and far more handsome than any boy she’d ever met. Hell, maybe she was still dreaming, and this boy wasn’t real at all. He looked like something from the pages of a storybook, a tall, dark, and handsome hero just waiting to swoop in and save the day. But while Emma felt spellbound by this man on the whole, his eyes were the thing she kept coming back to. They were the most striking about him, all intense and blue and almost magical, and currently they were looking at her with this depth of emotion Emma couldn’t understand. For whatever reason he seemed just as taken aback by her as she was of him, but she didn’t get why. Emma knew she was just ordinary, but this guy… well, he made her feel like maybe she was more all along and simply didn’t realize it.

“Uh, hi,” Emma finally said after they’d both been staring for a little longer than they should. “You must be Missy’s owner.”

“Killian, Killian Jones,” he said immediately though she hadn’t intentionally asked him to introduce himself. Then he offered his hand and Emma was surprised. People their age didn’t usually greet one another this way, but she could tell he wasn’t from here. His voice was coated by a delicious sounding accent. British maybe? Emma didn’t know. All she knew was that she liked it. A lot.

“Emma Swan.”

“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman,” he said, and though Emma didn’t detect any malice or artifice when he said that, her walls automatically came up again. Sweet as the words were, it was a total line, and a pretty cheesy one at that. Never mind the fact that it made the butterflies in her stomach go all kinds of crazy to be called beautiful by a boy like him. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to get to know a player, and he was probably a big one based on this game he was throwing her way.

“Right. Well I’m gonna go. See ya, Missy,” she said before pivoting in the direction of the estate.

“Wait!” 

The word from Killian was desperate, and it halted Emma in her tracks. She looked back at him and she could see his regret all over his face, and she couldn’t explain why, but she found it really endearing. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t ashamed of how much he felt. He was completely open, and Emma found that comforting in ways she never expected. As someone who was so rarely candid with her feelings, Emma saw his bravery in being so and yearned for the courage to be that way too. 

“I’m sorry about that, I know that was bad. I mean I meant it, you are beautiful, but I know that’s a corny thing to say and, well, I just don’t usually do this. You know... this,” he said as he waved between them. He must have realized that his hand gesturing wasn’t actually an explanation of what he was thinking so he cursed and then he apologized for cursing before accidentally cursing again.

Emma watched as Killian ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up further while also signaling how flustered he was. At the sight of this nervous tic, Emma found herself smiling, and when he looked completely shocked at that, she couldn’t help but laugh. It was funny after all, because here was this guy who from one look seemed out of her league, but he was bumbling about and falling all over himself over her. Her, Emma Swan! That was just wild, but Emma found she really loved it despite her lingering hesitations.

“You’re not from here, are you Killian?”

“What gave me away?” He asked with a responding grin that made Emma’s pulse quicken.

“You mean aside from the accent and the handshake?” she joked and he nodded. “I can just tell. You’re not as put together as the people here.”

He looked stricken for a moment and Emma rushed to clarify. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not in a bad way, it’s just I spend all day at this camp with girls who are so concerned with how they look and how they act, and you’re different. It’s refreshing, I think.”

“You think?”

“Well the jury is still out after that line you laid on me.”

“God that was bad. I’ll never live that down, will I?” he asked, but Emma could sense the humor in his words as he groaned at his own badly coordinated introductions.

“Do you want to?” She asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes,” he replied seriously. “If given the chance, I would very much like to make it up to you, Emma.”

“Okay, then prove it.”

So he did. Over the next hour or so, Killian rose to the challenge as they walked together on different paths through the woods, and Emma couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so much in her life. It turned out Killian was really charming and witty, along with being distractingly handsome, and when he wasn’t so overwhelmed with first meeting someone, he was so naturally himself. It amazed Emma how comfortable they became with each other in such a short amount of time, just talking and playing with Missy when she demanded it, but Emma realized part of the wonder of all of this was because she’d been craving this kind of connection for so long. She’d never had a friend, at least not a really good one, and though she was certainly attracted to Killian, she had to admit that she also liked him for more than his looks. He had a great sense of humor, and they sparred verbally more than once, making Emma feel not only like someone understood her, but that they really saw who she was when so few people ever had.

“I hope you won’t think this is a line, Emma,” Killian said after they’d had a solid laugh at a story Killian told her about him and his brother getting in trouble when they were kids. “But I have to say that even though we’ve only just met, I feel like I’ve known you a long time.”

“It’s like we’re kindred spirits,” Emma said in agreement, quoting one of her favorite stories and then realizing Killian probably didn’t get the reference. “It’s from a book -,”

“Aye, Anne of Green Gables,” Killian filled in and Emma was surprised, and her shock only seemed to amuse Killian. “My Mum read it to us when we were kids. It was one of her favorites.”

A quiet moment fell between them, and though Killian didn’t say anything else, Emma could tell that conversation about his mother was in some ways painful to him. Emma would never pry, but she found that she really wanted to know what it was that Killian was going through. If she could help in any way she would, but she didn’t want to push him. Emma knew first-hand how hard it was to talk about the scars that she carried, and nothing hurt worse than being forced to revisit bad times because someone else demanded it.

They sat there quietly for a little bit, and though Emma kept expecting an awkwardness to descend upon them, it never came. It was nice to have someone there, even if they weren’t talking, and Emma hoped Killian felt the same way. He said as much a few minutes later, and Emma was thrilled to know that he agreed with her assessment, but unfortunately she couldn’t linger in this new found connection for much longer. The sun was starting to sink lower in the sky, and soon enough it would be dinner time at the estate. She didn’t really know what would happen if she missed the meal, but she thought it best not to find out, especially so early in the summer. 

When she broke the sad news that she should be heading back, Killian offered to walk her, and though she told him he didn’t have to, Emma didn’t fight him when he insisted. His determination to see her home safely made her feel special and important, and Emma knew that despite a bumpy first impression, Killian was a really remarkable person. No one had ever been this thoughtful towards her or had shown her this kind of attention, and instead of running like she normally would when someone tried to get close to her, she decided to give Killian a chance, no matter what hurt may come of it in the future. The only problem was that their walk back was over too soon, and Emma found herself wishing she had some way to make this moment last longer or to ensure that they could somehow see each other again.

By the time they arrived at the gate outside the staff house, Emma was still struggling to find something to say. From here she could see the window to her room and the many others in this large house. But ultimately her hands were tied. She couldn’t invite Killian in; that was like the one rule here, and it was one she couldn’t break and expect to stay. She also couldn’t ask him for his number because she didn’t have a phone and she was terrified he’d ask her why, prompting her to have to tell him about who she really was and what her life was really like. Damn it! Why did this have to be so hard?

“What’s your opinion on fairs?” Killian asked randomly, and Emma raised a brow even while the corners of her mouth began to curl upwards. 

“Fairs? Like with the games and fried food and Ferris wheels?” She asked and he nodded. “Well I don’t know, really. I’ve never actually been to one.”

“Never?” he asked, but before Emma could grow uncomfortable with her admission he pivoted, as if he could read her discomfort and wanted to ease it. “Well I haven’t been to one in a long time, and never in the States. But I was walking around town earlier, and I heard some people talking about one that will be here this weekend. I thought maybe you’d like to go.”

“With you?” Emma asked and Killian cleared his throat before nodding.

“Aye, with me,” he said and Emma nearly sighed at the way his words washed over her with that dreamy accent of his. Still, she took a moment to consider. 

This felt like a really big deal. Emma was so used to being alone and she’d built up defenses against other people so that she didn’t get attached. Seeing Killian again would put those boundaries up at risk, but even now Emma knew he’d made an impact. In fact, he’d created such a good memory in her life just from their meeting today that she didn’t think she’d ever forget him. And as for her instincts, which she had always trusted, they were screaming at her to say yes, because if she didn’t she’d always wonder what-if, and she didn’t want to wonder. For once, Emma wanted to know what it was like to invest in someone else, and to live a little instead of just surviving, and she felt like Killian was a person she could trust enough to try and do so.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

His responding smile was so bright and animated that Emma almost couldn’t take it. She tried shifting her stance a bit to try and cover up some of her own excitement, but Missy had crept up on her while Killian had been asking about the fair, and in order to avoid stepping on her paws, Emma jolted the other way. Unfortunately, Emma’s sense of coordination caught up with her actions too late, and she stumbled more than a little bit. It would have been mortifying, but Killian’s hands came to steady her, pulling her towards him as they did, and Emma felt warmth and electricity springing through her. Her eyes flew up to his and she saw the undeniable look of yearning in his cerulean gaze, and without any words said between them she knew that he felt this too. He was just as affected by this as she was, and it felt like magic. She swallowed harshly, barely breathing, but not daring to move at the risk of breaking the spell that swirled around them.

“Careful, love,” Killian whispered with a gentle sweetness and a hint of swagger that left his blue eyes sparkling. “We’ve a date tomorrow, and I need you in top shape. It would be a shame to miss anything when it’ll be your first time.”

“So it is a date?” Emma blurted out.

She felt her cheeks flush when she realized what she’d asked aloud, but Killian only smiled before he boldly brought his hand up to brush against the place where her blush colored her freckled skin. His fingertips lingered for only a few seconds before curling a lock of her hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. Emma shivered at the gentle caress, and her lips parted ever so slightly. Jesus, how was this possible? Sometimes he was flustered and a little clumsy in his manners, but Killian could also be this composed and seriously sexy figure. She felt like her heart would fly straight out of her chest it was hammering so harshly, but he was totally in control and confident almost to a cocky degree. It was maddening and dizzying, but also filled Emma with a thrill that she adored and wanted more of.

“Aye, love. It’s a date. Can I pick you up here, say seven o’clock?” 

Emma nodded, and though words failed her for a moment, she knew her smile must say it all to him so clearly. She was excited, more excited than she had ever been, and that outweighed all the nerves she had from this being an actual date. She’d never actually been on a date before and she was terrified in some ways. But for whatever reason, she knew that it was worth facing the fear. Whatever happened, Killian would see her through, and though it defied rationality and logic, Emma held close to that fact she just knew to be true. 

“I guess I should go in,” Emma hedged and though she could see the little flecks of regret in his eyes, Killian nodded. He stepped back, removing his hands from her body and leaving her missing the sensation of having his skin on hers. “See you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed, and Emma smiled, delighted at the promise at all that was to come.

As she walked back to her summer home, Emma appreciated that neither of them actually said the word “goodbye,” because she hated to think this was over. In her lifetime, Emma had experienced too many goodbyes. People always seemed to leave her, and though she’d largely hardened herself from the pain of those farewells, Emma didn’t think it would be so easy with someone like Killian. He sparked something in her, something that had been dormant for maybe all her life, and if he left she worried that spark would leave with him. Even as she headed through the wrought iron gate and towards the house, Emma wished they didn’t need to wait until tomorrow to be together again, and she couldn’t help pausing at the door and stealing another look at him. He was still there with Missy, as she knew he would be, waiting to see her safely inside, his gaze never having left her though he could have already headed home. In that moment, Emma knew he was choosing her, putting her first, and making her feel like she was the most precious thing to him. That was huge and heavy for having just met someone, but Killian was right before – it didn’t feel like they’d only just connected. To Emma it felt like this was always meant to be, and like she’d been unknowingly waiting for this all her short but lonely life.

Post-Note: So there we have it. As I mentioned, I had actually written a version of this chapter before and I am so bummed that I lost it when my computer glitched out. But that being said, I feel like this version still accomplishes what I wanted. I really wanted you all to see what Emma’s life has been like and what her situation is before meeting Killian, because it will certainly change now that fate has brought them together. That being said, next chapter will definitely be from Killian’s POV so we can get some of his story too. Not sure when that will be posted, but doing my best to keep my muse chatty and engaged. Anyway, thanks so much for reading and I hope you’ll all let me know what you think!!

[taiblogcomics]

Not Harpering on About Roy’s Death

Hey there, hardcore skyblock map. So, we've had a good run of Suicide Squad. Quite enjoyed that, really. So let's see what the other series that we weren't enjoying so much is up to, eh? Red Hood had been building in a stupid new direction, so let's drop in on that, shall we~?

Here's the very shiny cover:

Yep, DC's infatuation with '90s cover gimmicks continues, though this was always an actually cool one. Since it doesn't come across in the scan, here's the thing. All the red parts on this cover? They're holofoil. It's very metallic, and honestly looks quite striking. It's a gimmick, but unlike those lenticular 3D covers from a couple years ago, this is one that works. Also, despite what the wiki (and the issue number) indicates, the title has officially changed to Red Hood: Outlaw. I thought it was just a fun gimmick on the previous cover, but no. According to the copyinfo in the back of the issue, this is its actual title. There’s probably an irony in Jason of all people using a crowbar as a weapon, but he’d never pick up on it himself~

Once again, the comic starts by informing us that this is "'Merica", thus not filling us with any hope regarding the depiction of the individuals within. Indeed, we start at a small-town diner, where a large man in a beige jacket is harassing the youthful waitress for her phone number. To her credit, she is plainly telling him no forcefully. Jason Todd enters the diner, sits with the man, and orders a coffee, which the waitress is glad to take as an excuse to get away. The large man is grumpy that Jason is here, as is the reader, and asks if he can find somewhere else to sit. Jason retorts that he has a particular question for him--one regarding his involvement with Underlife (the shadowy cabal organisation that Jason's tracking).

Surprisingly, Jason turns out to be dead-on that this redneck is part of Underlife, because he immediately starts going for his gun. Jason decides this guy's not sweet enough, and so hits him in the face with the sugar dispenser. This is just as the waitress returns with his coffee, so Jason throws it in the face of his next assailant. For indeed, the entire diner has decided to attack him as well. And of course, someone goes out through the diner's front window. The brawl is largely in Jason's favour until an extremely large man comes out and hits him from behind. And of course this guy is wearing a trucker hat, a blue jacket over a pink button-down shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and blue boots with a red-and-white stars-and-stripes pattern across them. His jacket says "Tiny", but I'm going to call him Cap'n 'Murrica.

So Cap'n 'Murrica tells Jason that they ain't jus' backwoods hicks out here, son. (Yeah, if you're not down with phonetic rural American accents, this comic will drive you up the wall.) See, they're all united under Underlife here. And Underlife is bigger than anything he can imagine. Y'know, how do these shadowy cabal organisations recruit these hundreds of thousands of members without anyone ever finding out about them? He's about to squash Jason flat when suddenly his eyes roll back in his head and he collapses. Cap'n 'Murrica falls over to reveal Bruce Wayne standing behind him.

So with the rest of the diner deserted because of the fight, Bruce and Jason sit down to have a chat. Jason even passes Bruce what's left of his coffee. Bruce has two pieces of news for Jason. The first is that Penguin didn't actually die from the gunshot to the face. But it wasn't for lack of trying, so Bruce still forbids Jason from ever returning to Gotham. The second is the badness we all knew is coming. Bruce tells Jason that, due to the events of Heroes in Crisis, his best friend Roy Harper is dead. We've ranted about this before, but here is where Jason actually receives the news.

Surprisingly, both Bruce and Jason agree that Jason doesn't need to be there. There's a lot of people going to be looking for revenge (Roy wasn't the only death, you see), and they don't need him around screwing with that. Bruce offers him a supportive hand on his shoulder, and Jason replies that death is a revolving door in their business. He's died, Bruce has died, Damian's died. Everyone who puts on a mask is living on borrowed time. So of course he's going to miss Roy. He's even going to grieve for Roy. But he's not going to sit around moping, because that's not what Roy would want. Bruce offers to drop Jason off somewhere, and he says he's fine. He does, however, accept a hug from Bruce.

Jason thanks Bruce for telling him in person, which must be hard since he hates him and all. Bruce replies that even on the worst days, he's never hated Jason. Sure, he thinks he's an ass who needs kicking sometimes, but at the end of the day, the both of them have each other's backs and they know it. The pair of them part, and Jason walks off down the road. He stops and leans against a fence, and pulls out his phone. He calls up Roy and leaves him a message, presumably on his voicemail or something. The gist of it is some gentle ribbing at Roy's superhero credentials, but full credit for being his best friend. He then deletes the contact and moves on.

Well, tarnation. Jason's wanderin' seems to have led him to the little ol' town of Appleton. This place is downright the epitome of small-town America. The people always stop and say hi on the street, and even the local sherrif stops Jason on his way into town. Since Jason's just passing through, the cop points him to a local bed-and-breakfast to sleep at. Jason takes his advice, and soon he's checking in. He pointedly declines to let the owner take his bag for him, and excused himself to go have a bite at the diner. He thinks it seems like a nice place, and it'll be a shame when he has to dismantle it brick by brick. And as he heads out, the view switches to a noticably mechanical view that scans all his biometrics and even x-rays his bag, declaring that they have a problem...

You can refer to my previous reviews if you’d like more ranting on Heroes in Crisis (or if you send me the whole miniseries, I’ll rant about the whole thing~), but this being the moment Jason actually learns of Roy’s death... This is well-written. He’s not in denial about Roy’s death because of how superheroes come back (I can point you to an X-Factor story involving that concept, if you like), but he accepts both possibilities: his best friend is dead. But superheroes don’t always stay dead. If he sees his friend again someday, that’s great. If he doesn’t, he’ll keep kicking bad guy ass in his name, because that’s what he’d want.

And again: here’s a great Batman. He never once raises his voice or acts upset with Jason. Not even over the “you intended to murder the Penguin, and the fact that he survived doesn’t absolve your intent” thing. Bruce is sympathetic and almost downright friendly. He offers Jason the time he needs, and even mentions Alfred telling him not to bottle it up. And when Jason wants space instead, he gives him that too. I like this whole thing. The fact that Jason is kind of the screw-up and black sheep of the Bat family doesn’t mean Bruce hates him. It’s just really good. Shame it’s sandwiched between some goofy smalltown crime empire antics~

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - August 3rd, 2018

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them. 

Please Note: I’ve been struggling trying to avoid Season 7 spoilers, I’ve failed a few times - so I have to stay away from just glancing at what is new AO3. Sadly, this will prevent me from seeing stories that aren’t shared on Tumblr. I am also avoiding spec stories, that I haven’t already started. I sad. Stupid spoilers ruin all my fun.

My Arms, They Will Hold You by @olicityaddicted - Oliver is back home from prison, but something happens when he has a nightmare. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404745

If I Tremble by @smoaking-greenarrow - A collection of prompts and ficlets, with all the smut! Olicity sexy times are the best times. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409122/chapters/35762643

I'll Try to Behave by who_seeks_shall_find - William is excited to meet Ray and Sara. When William, Ray and Felicity start talking about science, Oliver feels a bit left out. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403056

Visit to Gotham by @cruzrogue - Olicity Hiatus Fic-a-thon - Prompt: Unfinished - Felicity and William move to outskirts of Gotham City. Before Felicity and William move back to Star City after their adventure in Gotham where William finds his step-mom is helping Batman and he thinks she could possibly cheat on his dad with Bruce Wayne. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421605

Hidden Talents: Work in Progress by @laureningall - Olicity Hiatus Fic-a-thon - Prompt: Unfinished - After a perfect evening with Felicity, Oliver is anxious to bring her breakfast in bed, starting with coffee. Fate has other plans. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038072/chapters/35818332

The Queen's Mage multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Words have power, and mages, those with the aptitude to draw on that power, are few in number. Thus, their services are highly sought after by anyone who has exhausted all mundane means of solving whatever problem is plaguing them. Felicity is reminded of this fact the hard way when she is hired by Moira Queen, the Lady Starling, to find and return to her son Oliver, who fled his family home five years ago following the death of his father. With a threat hanging over her should she return without Robert Queen's heir, Felicity begins her search. When she finds Oliver, and ends up joining his vigilante crusade while she waits for him to decide whether to return home, the last thing she expects to do is fall in love with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617068/chapters/33781269 | ONE | (Oliver the Footballer) multi-chapter WIP @someonesaidcake - Felicity Smoak had a plan; to save enough money to kick her monotonous job and start up the company of her dreams. She made good plans, solid plans, attainable plans. He was never part of her plan. His name was Oliver Queen, the reclusive Brazilian football star with a broken smile and a story to tell. He'd never planned on her either. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15005402/chapters/34779542 Deep Water multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A Season 7 Speculation fic. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15081917/chapters/34968092

The Ring by @spaztronautwriter - The 4th prompt for @olicityficchallenge is: A stuck elevator, a dead cell phone, and a ring. https://spaztronautwriter.tumblr.com/post/143048602908/olicity-fic-challenge-4-the-ring

Love and Little Cupcakes multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - Felicity loved sweets so much that she paid no attention to her lovelife. Until Thea Queen came into her store wanting fabulous cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. SO ADORABLE! http://archiveofourown.org/works/12400539/chapters/28216053 Falling For You multi-chapter complete by melicitysmoak - Both at significant crossroads in their lives, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak cross paths one weekend at Niagara Falls. They fall for each other as strongly and swiftly as the mighty waters that drew them there that late spring morning. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152363/chapters/35138201 The Eternal Love multi-chapter WIP by Mellowyellowdiamonds - Forced into a loveless marriage to Al Sah Him by her ageing and clearly looney adopted father Ra's Al Ghul, Felicity Smoak tries her best to plot her way out of this "terrible" marriage in a bid to regain her freedom. Her husband however has other ideas and is determined to foil her plans every step of the way. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328269/chapters/35564142 Something Inside This Heart Has Died (You're In Ruins) multi-chapter complete by @entersomethingcleverhere - After a life-changing, soul-crushing event that happened five years ago, Dr. Felicity Smoak exiles herself to an Army hospital in Germany. She spends her days stitching soldiers back together, but who's going to heal her? Enter Command Sergeant Major Oliver Jonas, an American soldier who gets injured during an IED attack with a beautiful smile and more than a few secrets of his own. https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472908/chapters/12647312

Please Call Me (Only if You're Coming Home) by @entersomethingcleverhere - It's Felicity's first stateside Thanksgiving in five years, and she's spending it with her fiance's family. What's Thanksgiving without some drama sprinkled in? https://archiveofourown.org/works/5761705

Time for a Story multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

Soulmates multi-chapter WIP by @bri206 - What happens when Oliver and Felicity wake up in the past with no idea how they got there? They will have to relive their past lives and maybe find an ally or two to get back to their present. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15466416/chapters/35903511

Hidden Talents: What are Friends For? multi-chapter WIP by @laureningall - True friends will help you out - even if you don’t realize you need their help. In other words how Thea and Curtis conspire to reunite our favorite couple. Will they succeed? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038072/chapters/35914386

One Night multi-chapter WIP by @suttons-brady - Felicity paces back and forth in her bathroom, fingers playing with each other in front of her stomach and her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. How the hell did she get here? She prides herself on being smart -- on being a genius, actually. Hell, she skipped eighth grade! So how in the hell had she ended up here, burning a hole in the floor of her bathroom, waiting for a flimsy plastic stick to tell her if her life is over? http://archiveofourown.org/works/11076792/chapters/24706029

Shatter multi-chapter WIP by @yespleasehawkeyee - Star City has fallen victim to a serial killer. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594097/chapters/33728688

The Paths We Take multi-chapter WIP by griever11 - Rival CEOs AU. Felicity Smoak, CEO and founder of her own company, is trying to prove herself in the cutthroat world of the technology industry among the other bigwigs in the game. Oliver Queen, recently back from the dead is trying to prove to the world that he's no longer the same man-child who went down on the Queen's Gambit and is finally worthy of his family's legacy. Both equally formidable names in the corporate world. And both with a long, complicated history with each other that no one but themselves are privy to. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314133/chapters/35530296 10 Rules of Rebounding multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - Oliver and Felicity start a sex relationship as rebounds for each other. What’s supposed to be just fun, soon gets complicated when it turns out that their work lives collide, Robert Queen fears their sexual relationship could threaten his company and an ex comes back into the play. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403404/chapters/35749620 Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356 Caged by @supersillyanddorky06 - Prison AU. She's the beautiful prison doctor. He's the most dangerous inmate. https://archiveofourown.org/works/4493247/chapters/35973042

The Reason multi-chapter WIP by flipflops - Oliver is an Alpha and Felicity is an Omega....circumstances lead Oliver to find this out and a very bad time or maybe very good time... https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012431

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Prompt: Could you write a fic about 6x22? When Oliver saves Felicity in the precinct, and he angrily and worriedly drags her back to the van, like a lecture or argument he gives her for doing such thing, him being worried sick and protective. http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/176461047934/could-you-write-a-fic-about-6x22-when-oliver

Unexpected Meeting or Fate? multi-chapter WIP by CaptainSammyAngel - Since she was a little girl, Felicity Smoak has been apart of the League of Assassins. While Oliver Queen for the past six months has been the CEO of Queen Consolidated and trying to keep it afloat. When the League decides to start the hunt of Malcolm Merlyn in the last place he was located, two people will meet but circumstances and pasts will make it difficult for them to be together. Will they find a way or will they be torn apart? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007139/chapters/34783916 Whiskey and Romance multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak gets the opportunity of a lifetime to compete for the hand of Prince Tommy Merlyn. She is taken from her normal mundane Vegas life and is soon swept up into a lifestyle full of nobles, drama, obligations and chaos. All the while trying to stay afloat, someone else begins to win her heart, Tommy’s best friend, Oliver Queen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14441952/chapters/33357156

The Omega Project! multi-chapter complete by @oliversmuse - Oliver Queen was enjoying being the strong Alpha on campus at Harvard when he met and fell in love with Felicity Smoak, a strong Omega who was going to school nearby at MIT. Their time together was amazing until one day she disappeared. There was no note and no trace that she had ever existed. Oliver is now the most powerful Alpha in Star City, and he will move heaven and earth to find out what happened to his Omega. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330348/chapters/35569281 Elizabeth Grace Smoak multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - What if Felicity and Oliver briefly had met before he got on the Gambit? Despite her best efforts, Felicity was unable to get in contact with the famous Oliver Queen after having a one night stand with him and getting pregnant with his child. After raising their child for five years after finding out that Oliver died on the Gambit, she finds out he is alive and knows that she needs to tell him about their daughter. But will he believe her? AMAZING STORY!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/13639371/chapters/31322715 Finding Felicity multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - After Lian Yu blew, Oliver searches for his friends and loved ones on the island. This is an AU versions of what happened when Oliver found everyone after the explosions. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15538641/chapters/36071301

Do You Believe in Soulmates? by who_seeks_shall_find - William asks a question that Felicity isn't prepared for. He asks: "Do you believe in soulmates?" https://archiveofourown.org/works/15297816

Can I Go? by who_seeks_shall_find - William wants to attend a party. First, he just needs to ask for Oliver and Felicity's permission. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15243012

Partying Can Suck by who_seeks_shall_find - William attends a party but everything doesn't go according to the plan and in the end, William is glad to see his dad and Felicity. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242856

It's Only Three Days by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity is leaving for Gotham City because she has a business meeting there. Oliver wants to say a proper goodbye before the take off. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450720

It Was a Great Speech by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity comes back from her business trip and she wants to spend some quality time with her husband. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450843

That's Insane by who_seeks_shall_find - There has been a break-in at Felicity's apartment and everything is smashed down and ruined. They wonder whether it's about Felicity and Curtis' start-up or Felicity being married to the Green Arrow. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15489318

My Favorite Grandson by who_seeks_shall_find - Donna comes to Star City for a visit and she is determined to get to know her grandchild better. Raisa may feel a bit jealous. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504066

Talk to Me by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity has no idea how she and her mom have ended up talking about a conception of a child. Oliver is still in prison after all. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505512

You Promised by who_seeks_shall_find - Diaz is caught and Felicity wants to get rid of her bodyguard. Nevertheless, Oliver struggles to keep his promise. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505992

Re-Airrow: Episode 2x01 by @lostolicityscenes  -This scene takes place after the clip above but before the clip I will attach at the end. It mainly functions as a way to fill in the emotional blanks between Oliver and Felicity leading up to the Russia episode. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/176561447621/re-airrow-episode-2x01-an-i-was-planning-on

P.S. Hong Kong: Was it Real?!? multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue for Olicity trope-tastic award: Fake Marriage - This is off season 3 Flashbacks. When Tommy goes to Hong Kong he doesn’t go alone he takes his friend Felicity as the best information system being to help him locate Oliver Queen. Tommy may leave empty handed but Felicity gets to be a bride… https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025697/chapters/34832747 Caught in the Rapture multi-chapter WIP by @bindy417 - AU. Being the daughter of a ruthless and notorious crime lord, Felicity Smoak didn't think her life could get any worse. When her father unexpectedly sells her in marriage as a peace offering to his enemy, she quickly learns it'll take more than just her sharp intellect to survive. But what starts out as a sentence worse than death may actually be her only shot at freedom. AWESOME STORY!!  http://archiveofourown.org/works/7931917/chapters/18128824

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 //

[ohgiulia-saved-blog]

intro❥giulia greco

.･:*:･ﾟ’ twenty one year old cis-female giulia greco was made in the upper east side and attended constance billiard. they not only reside in new york still, but are a socialite and columbia dropout. they are bright eyes, matte red lipstick, lavish parties, rosé, and chanel  n°5. onlookers say they resemble benedetta gargari porcaroli

Under the cut is Giulia’s working bio/intro↡

❥ 𝔹𝕒𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕤:

Full Name: Giulia Bianca Greco

First Name Meaning: “Youthful”

Nicknames: G/Gi, GG, piccola (by close family/friends), etc.

Birthday: August 3

Zodiac Sign: Leo

Place Of Birth: New York City

Sexuality: Bicurious

Nationality: American 

Occupation: Socialite (?)

Hobbies: Attending high profile events, throwing lavish parties, shopping, dining, & wine tasting. 

Positive Traits: Kindhearted, outgoing, fun loving, adaptable, creative, lively, & dedicated.

Negative Traits: Spoiled, sheltered, lonely, selfish, sensitive, vain, & fake (af).

Myers Briggs Personality Type: ESFJ (?)

Tv Trope: The Idle Rich (?)

Archetype: The Facade (?)

❥ 𝔽𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕤 𝔻𝕦𝕞𝕡:

Giulia’s the lively spoiled socialite.

She was born and raised in NYC to billionaire investment baker, Giorgio Greco, and his former beauty queen wife, Ilaria. Her ambitious workaholic parents essentially casted her aside her whole life in favor of their business and her praised older brother, Federico. Even so, she’s always tried her best to please them in hopes of finally being acknowledged by them. 

Her parents try to buy her love with material items, even setting her up with a more than generous trust fund.

Definite “mommy and daddy issues”

She’s been in her older brother’s shadow her entire life and resents him a bit for it.

Tried to compete with her brother for their parents acknowledgement to no avail. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, her brother was always favored.

She even attended Columbia for a while in order to make them happy up until it became too much for her (aka she couldn’t handle the stress).

Her taste for acknowledgement turned her into a bit of an attention seeker. Basically, the attention she lacked from her parents she sought out amongst her peers.

She’s been known for going above and beyond for attention and approval. 

Hates sharing the limelight, but subtly dismisses this.

A total “people pleaser,” she had a tendency to do things just to make others happy and get them to like her. This makes her very easy to take advantage of.

She values the opinions of those around her greatly, to the point where any negative opinions “haunt” her but she often just plays it off like she doesn’t care.

Hates being/feeling alone.

Even when she seems happy-go-lucky, she is actually quite unhappy due to feelings of loneliness and rejection. 

She excells at social events. Hence, she loves to attend and host them.

A total romantic, Giulia yearns for true love but doesn’t believe she’ll ever find it.

She’s the type to fall for anyone who gives her the right attention.

Hence, when her longtime crush finally looked her way she didn’t hesitate to have an affair with him even though he was her best friend’s boyfriend at the time. 

Tends to hide her pain behind a smile. 

Actually very self conscious.

A chameleon soul, she often feels the need to shape herself into what others want/need from her, to the point where she doesn’t really know who she truly is anymore.

While sweet and generous, she really has selfish intentions because she’s only fishing for attention. 

One of her biggest flaws is that she always wants what she can’t have.

Ultimately just wants to be loved.

❥𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℂ𝕦𝕣𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕋𝕖𝕒: 

Giulia’s been M. I. A. lately for reasons unknown to her peers. Long story short, Gi went home in order to try and mend the strained relationship she had with her parents. Hoping to get on their good side, she offered to help out with the business and was given the task of winning over potential businesses partners. Unlike the rest of her family, the youngest Greco isn’t very business savvy. She had no real business strategy and struggled to sell her plea, but with how much was ridding on it she was willing to do just about anything to get her way. Thus, when one potential business partner stated that he would only sign the contract if she slept with him, Giulia naively complied. It was an unorthodox bargaining tool, but seeing how pleased her parents were with her for sealing the first deal was enough to convince her to stick to her secret method. Essentially, she was so eager to stay in her parents’ good graces that she slept with any potential client/associate she felt necessary (which was probs a lot). Her secret escapades suited her well for a while. That is, until a vile rumor that the Grecos were pimping out their daughter hit their ears and all hell broke loose. As punishment, her parents have confined her to the estate to “reflect upon her actions” while they cover up what she did. Still, naive little Gi doesn’t quite understand why what she did was such a big deal. So as the Grecos continue to deliberate the rest of her punishment, Giulia’s taking the opportunity to go off the rails (because we all know she has to be dramatic first 🤷🏼‍♀️). In summary, she’s a hot mess right now. 

❥ 𝔽𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕤:

Favorite Color: Mauve

Favorite Drink: Rosé

Favorite Lipstick Shade: Red (Chanel Rouge)

Favorite Brand: Chanel

Favorite Film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s 

Favorite Book: Madame Bovary By Gustave Flaubert

Favorite Fictional Character: Holly Golightly 

Favorite Poem: Sonnet 40 By William Shakespeare 

Favorite Dish: Sun-Dried Tomato and Arugula Pizza

Favorite Dessert: Strawberry Topped Vanilla Panna Cotta

Favorite Flower: Red Rose

↠ CONNECTIONS ↞

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

One of the first articles that mentioned Moon’s pikareum sex rituals

A.D. magazine   May 1974   by Jane Day Mook   (pages 30-36)

New Growth on Burnt-Over Ground

Third in an A.D. series offering a critical look at new religions in America.

Hope and fear are almost always entwined in the impulses that cause a man or woman to seek a faith. Therefore it is not strange that religions contain promises both of divine intervention or mercy, and of judgment. Thus, Judaism speaks of a messiah and an apocalypse, the faithful of Islam expect a delivering mahdi and a terrible, bright-sworded angel, and some Christian Scriptures indicate that Christ will summon saints to glory and the wicked to perdition on a future Day of the Lord. Even among the new religions now sprouting on the burnt-over earth of American religious life, the notes of hopeful expectation and dread of doom are sounded. Religious leaders arise, and are examined by their followers: Are you he (or she) who will deliver us? And almost always a direct answer is avoided in replies that sound strangely like, “Who do men say that I am?”  Today, in many areas of America, people are asking a middle-aged Korean named Sun Myung Moon who he is. Writer Jane Day Mook, in six months of extensive research, has come up with some of the answers.

The Unification Church

There has been a rash of headlines:

Korean Preacher Urges U.S. Not to “Destroy President” Minneapolis Star, December 1, 1973

Watergate Day of Prayer Asked by Unification Church Washington Post, December 18, 1973

Unification Church Program Under Way in Houston Religious News Service, December 27, 1973

There have been other media reports:

█ On December 26, 1973, Congressman Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan read into the Congressional Record a statement by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of Korea, founder of the Unification Church International, urging Americans to forgive, love, unite.

█ Governor Wendell Anderson of Minnesota and Mayors Charles Stenvig and Larry Cohen of Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively, issued proclamations saluting Moon when he visited the Twin Cities in December last year.

█ Twelve hundred supporters of Moon turned out—with specially issued tickets (100 of them for the best seats up front) — to cheer President Nixon at the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House on December 13, 1973. They carried signs saying, “God loves Nixon,” “Support the President,” and quite simply, “God.” Afterward, when the President came to greet them in Lafayette Park, one writer reports, they knelt down as he drew near.

█ Six weeks later Moon was invited to the 22nd annual National Prayer Breakfast in the Washington Hilton Hotel. While it was going on, more than 1,000 of Moon’s followers gathered to sing patriotic songs and demonstrate their support of the President. Tricia Nixon Cox and her husband walked among the disciples and spoke with Neil Salonen, national head of the Unification Church.

█ The next day, Moon had an unscheduled meeting with President Nixon. He embraced the President and then, it is reported, “prayed fervently in his native tongue while the President listened in silence.” Before leaving, Moon exhorted the President not to knuckle under to pressure but to stand up for his convictions.

What is this all about? Who is this Korean religious leader, Sun Myung Moon, who reaches the eye of those in high office, including the President himself?

What is this Unification Church that has suddenly surfaced in the United States with so much noise and splash? Is it really a Christian church? Is its aim political or religious, or both?

The Unification Church (whose full name is The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity) found its way into the consciousness of a few Americans about 15 months ago. In Tarrytown, New York, a gracious estate of 22 acres overlooking the Hudson River quietly changed hands for $850,000. [Price confirmed by Michael Mickler in History of the UC in the US.] “Belvedere” became a center for the Unification Church.

---

Korean messiah? Christ of the second advent? Young Americans find new faith and new life in following him.

---

Joyous, disciplined, loving, Moon’s young followers express the confidence of the deeply committed.

---

Suddenly the residents of Tarrytown discovered that, because this is a “church” and therefore tax exempt, they had lost $8,000 in city taxes. They discovered, too, that by the summer of 1973 the estate was teeming with young people—Japanese, Korean, German, Austrian, and especially British.

The British—115 of them—came in response to ads posted on their college bulletin boards: New York and back for $25 and a summer of “leadership training” to boot. But the Belvedere mansion was not adequate. Crowding was dismal, regulations and restrictions irksome, morale bad, the program unfocused, the unabashed conversion tactics unpalatable. A good many of the students apparently went home to England disappointed and angry.

Meanwhile, the Unification Church had purchased a home for their leader, Sun Myung Moon, who has acquired permanent residency visas in the United States for himself and his family. Reported purchase price of the second estate was $620,000 with an additional $50,000 said to have been spent for furnishings.

By summer’s end attention shifted to New York City and the start of Moon’s 21-city Day of Hope Tour. Full-page ads appeared in the local papers:

CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS NEW HOPE

Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The ads carried, center-page, a picture of a pleasant-faced Korean man, sometimes in Korean dress, sometimes in Western, sometimes posed with the capitol dome in the background. They told of coming meetings in Carnegie Hall. The same pictures and message were in subways, drug stores, shop windows. They were on leaflets handed out by dozens of earnest young men and women, some American, some from abroad.

Invitations went out to city leaders, especially clergy: “Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon request the honor of your presence” at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. ...

Mayor John Lindsay and Senator Jacob Javits sent messages of regret, but approximately 250 others came. Catholic and Protestant clergy, armed services chaplains, foundation executives, university professors. Solid names all.

The pattern was to be repeated across the country as the much publicized Day of Hope Tour moved south and west through the last three months of last year, and again in the second tour of 33 cities that began in mid-February.

I went with my husband to the first presentation by Mr. Moon at Carnegie Hall on October 1. Outside, a few protesters milled about (Jehovah’s Witnesses mostly). Inside, the lobby was full of young people, most of them Oriental. “Welcome Mother. Welcome Father,” said a charming Korean girl taking our tickets as guards looked through our briefcases. “Welcome to our program. Thank you for coming, Mother. Enjoy it please.”

Mr. Moon was already sitting on stage. He was wearing Western dress, as was his translator, Lieutenant Colonel Pak Bo Hi, formerly a military attache stationed in Washington.

Moon spoke in Korean, flailing the air and pounding the lectern. It was not easy to follow his message, which was about Adam, Eve, Satan, and the Holy Spirit, linked in a mysterious theology we could not piece together.

Who is this man Moon, and what was the message he wanted us to hear?

Sun Myung Moon was born in what is now North Korea in the village of Kwangju Sangsa Ri [in North P'yŏngan province] on January 6, 1920. His parents were Christians, members of the Presbyterian Church, which is the largest Protestant denomination in Korea. After attending village primary school Moon was sent to high school in the southern city of Seoul.

On Easter Sunday 1936, when he was 16, Moon had a vision. As he prayed on a mountainside, he relates, Jesus himself appeared and told him “to carry out my unfinished task.” Then a voice from heaven said, “You will be the completer of man’s salvation by being the second coming of Christ.”

The local ground was ready for such ideas. Already there were among some Pentecostal Christians in the underground church in Pyongyang predictions of a new messiah who would be a Korean. As Moon went about his engineering studies at [a Technical High School affiliated with] Waseda University in Tokyo, he pondered, remembering his vision. In 1944 he returned to North Korea and set about to develop among these Pentecostals a following of his own. In 1946 he founded the “Broad Sea Church.” His followers, it is said, were fanatical people.

Meanwhile, in South Korea a man named Kim Paik-Moon [or Kim Baek-moon], knowing the prophecy of a Korean messiah, had already taken the obvious next step. Kim considered himself a savior and said so. In Paju, north of Seoul, he had established a community called “Israel Soodo Won” (Israel Monastery), and Moon spent six months there learning what was to become the basis of his own theology, the “Divine Principle,” before returning to Pyongyang.

It was about this time that he changed his original name of Yong Myung Moon to Sun Myung Moon. To many people “Yong” means dragon. “Myung” means shining, and Moon and Sun are understood as in English. Therefore, since 1946 his name has meant Shining Sun and Moon. It savors of divinity and of the whole universe. A name is essential to an Oriental, as revealing one’s character.

Now the facts become uncertain. Between 1946 and 1950 Sun Myung Moon spent time in prison in North Korea. The reason? His anti-Communist activities, Moon testifies, reminding us of the rabid Communism of North Korea. Bigamy and adultery, others claim, noting that his real anti-Communist campaign did not take shape until 1962.

In any case, late in 1950 Moon was released and he trekked to South Korea as a refugee with two or three [it was two] disciples. Settling in Busan, he began to propagate his principles. In 1954 he founded his new church [in Seoul], calling it “The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.”

Moon had gleaned his theological ideas from Kim [Baek-moon], and a follower, Yoo Hyo-won [Eu Hyo-won], wrote them down. By 1957 Divine Principle, which proclaims the theology of the Unification Church, was in print. It was first published in English in this country in 1966 and for a second time in 1973.

Divine Principle is concerned with the physical as well as the spiritual salvation of humankind, and the doctrine goes like this:

God intended that Adam and Eve should be perfect and that therefore their children also would be perfect. But Satan entered the Garden of Eden and seduced Eve. By this act she became impure, her blood forever tainted. This taint she passed on to Adam, through their union, and so he too—and their children and all humankind—became forever impure.

God wanted to redeem humanity from this impurity. Therefore, he sent to earth Jesus, the second Adam, and Jesus began the work of redemption. Spiritual salvation he achieved. But God’s will was once again thwarted by Satan. Jesus died on the cross before he could marry and father children. Thus, physical redemption was not accomplished. Our blood is still impure. Now it is time for the third Adam or “the Christ of the second advent.” It is time for the physical redemption of humanity and the reign of the New Israel, Korea.

How will all this come about? Quite simply: the third Adam sent by God to earth—to Korea—will marry a perfect woman, and their children will be the first of a new and perfect world. Eden will return to earth. Heaven will be here, not in some shadowy afterlife.

Does Moon consider himself the new messiah? In the early days of the movement, he admitted that he did. He no longer does so, and his followers are apt to smile when asked what they believe and say, “It is a personal matter.” In the national headquarters of the Unification Church in Washington, however, a votive candle burns beneath a portrait of Moon. Furthermore, in some materials of the Unification Church in Korea there are mythical tales relating that Moon was worshiped by Jesus. Jesus asked Moon to help him complete the saving of humankind and supposedly said, “I have done half, but you can do the other half.”

The half assigned to Moon, of course, involves his fourth and present wife. In the early 1940s Moon was married, but in 1954 this first wife left him because, he said, “she did not understand my mission.” He also is said to have had two other wives before marrying in 1960 an 18-year-old [she was 17] high school graduate named Hak Ja Han. At the time of their union (which is called “the Marriage of the Lamb”), he told his followers that she had not yet achieved his own spiritual perfection, but he was confident that she would in time. Together they are the new Adam and the new Eve, the parents of the universe, and their children herald the coming perfection of humanity.

Here reference must be made to “pikareum,” or “blood separation,” which is referred to in Japanese and Korean sources. In this secret initiation rite, it is said that the inner-core members must have intercourse. In the early days of the Unification Church, this was with Moon who, through the act, made pure the initiate.

In 1955 in Seoul Moon was imprisoned briefly and several students and professors were expelled from their universities because of engaging in what were called “the scandalous rites of the Unification Church.” However, in the 14 years since Moon’s marriage to Hak Ja Han, it is not known whether in the secrecy of the initiation ceremony, the rite has become purely a symbolic one.

When asked about this matter of purification, a leader of the Unification Church in the United States replied that purification takes place at the marriage ceremony and that, with special prayers, God’s spiritual blessing and purification are conferred through Moon.

---

To Moon, Communism is equivalent to Satan. Anti-Communism is the political backbone of his movement.

---

Both the theology and what were understood as the practices of the Unification Church have been anathema to main-line Christians in Korea. Moon himself was excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church in Korea as long ago as 1948.

His church has not been accepted as a member of either the National Council of Churches or the National Association of Evangelicals in Korea, both of whom state unequivocally that the Unification Church is not Christian.

But Korea is used to offbeat religious movements. There are dozens of splinter sects and “new religions” there. The Unification Church, or Tong-il Kyo, is one of the largest of these with its claimed membership of 300,000 Koreans.

The Unification Church claims a world membership of about a half million. In the United States the number of followers is estimated at about 10,000 so far with between 2,000 and 3,000 core members. 

[A more accurate assessment would be up to 20,000 in Korea and up to 200,000 as a worldwide total.]

The Unification Church may not be accepted by Korean Christians, but it is openly favored by the present government in Korea, and this sets it apart.

In November 1972 President Park Chung-hee promulgated a new constitution giving himself sweeping power. Christian leaders, among others, mounted effective opposition to it and called for a “democratic” constitution. On January 8, 1974, the president responded by decreeing anyone criticizing the constitution would be tried and, if guilty, imprisoned for up to 15 years.

On February 1, six ministers and evangelists (five Presbyterian and one Methodist) were sentenced to up to 15 years’ imprisonment for their criticism of the constitution. They were judged not by a jury of peers in a civil court, but by a special court-martial at the South Korean Defense Ministry. 

Compare Moon, in this context of South Korean politics. Moon started and directs near Seoul a school to which the Korean government annually sends thousands of civilian officials and military personnel for training in techniques of anti-Communism.

In Moon’s view Communism is ideologically equivalent to Satan. Anti-Communism is therefore the political backbone of his movement. Thus he wins the support (which may be in part financial) of the government. At the same time Moon, as a “religious” leader, lends the administration the aura of respectability that all autocracies find useful when, for both home and overseas consumption, it is most needed.

Moon exports to 40 countries the main components of his religious-political movement: the Divine Principle theology with its Korean messiah coupled with vigorous anti-Communism. Chameleonic, the group changes its coloration depending on locale and circumstances.

Sponsors of the International Federation for Victory over Communism, they take on in the United States a quiet title: the Freedom Leadership Foundation. In Japan, however, where they have the support of right-wing groups, they are openly part of the World Anti-Communist League. Here in the United States they sponsor prayer and fasting “for the Watergate Crisis.” In Japan, at the time of Red China’s seating in the United Nations, it was prayer and fasting “for Victory over Communism.”

Everywhere, political involvement is a high priority. The Freedom Leadership Foundation, a Unification Church subsidiary, openly avows its goal of “ideological victory over Communism in the United States.” Gary Jarmin, the 24-year-old secretary-general of the FLF says that they are already spending $50,000 to $60,000 per year trying to influence senators and congressmen on national security issues.

As a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, FLF is forbidden to lobby for specific legislation, but Jarmin and his seven colleagues in the work don’t hesitate to carry on “educational” programs for legislative aides. Furthermore, Jarmin says, there will soon be a totally separate, new organization that will engage in direct lobbying and openly support political candidates.*

* See John Marks, “From Korea with Love,” The Washington Monthly, February 1974, page 57

The World Freedom Institute is another branch of the FLF’s work, training young people in anti-Communist techniques from an ideological and “religious” point of view. Its International Leadership Seminars are rigorous.

Applicants must pass a preliminary interview. Alcohol and drugs are not permitted, smoking is allowed only at certain times and places, clothing must be clean and neat. All scheduled activities must be attended from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily, especially the lectures on Divine Principle, Communism, and Unification thought as a harmony of the Judeo-Christian image of God and the Eastern principle of yin-yang.

For all this, it must be said that political action within the Unification Church is probably limited to a few at center. Moon’s young converts may not be aware of the political side of their movement at all except in the most general terms.

If they wave banners and rally for Nixon, they feel it is because he is ordained by God and given power to be President at this time. Essentially they want to change the moral and spiritual order. They are committed to that, and for them it is enough.

Wherever they go, the Unification Church works to enlist the young. According to those who know the movement in Korea, Japan, and the United States, they are largely the disenchanted young—those whose activism in the ’60s and early ’70s has seemed to bring scant results, those who are turned off by the institutionalized establishment, who are looking for commitment and community, who want not just something but someone to believe in, who want unequivocal answers within a framework of discipline.

There are thousands of young Americans who, in our current retreat from involvement into privatism, fit this description. Moon’s followers are among them. Here in the Unification Church they find instantly a place among their own kind. The hierarchy itself is composed of young people.

The members live in communes that have been set up in most major cities of the country. “It’s like a family,” said one girl who helped establish a new church in Texas. “The whole purpose of the center is based upon God. There’s no premarital sex or drugs or smoking or drinking.” Indeed, Moon thunders against “sexual immorality” as the deadliest of sins.

These are young people who are earnest, sincere, committed, and of high moral character. They are also neat, pleasant, and polite. They are convinced. And they are innocent.

They probably know nothing whatever of Moon’s questionable background or of his strong right-wing political stance. And probably they do not know Christianity well enough (though they study the Bible fervently) to question the theology of Divine Principle. But they have a staunch belief in basic moral values and the possibility and power of spiritual redemption.

If you have not already seen the members of the Unification Church in your town, you will. They have centers in all 50 states and they are busy soliciting both converts and money.

In New York they have reportedly purchased a large old house a few blocks from the Columbia University campus and are offering rooms there for a low rent. They have established an office on the campus under the name of “Collegiate Association for Research of Principles” or CARP (appropriating the traditional Christian symbol of the fish) and at the time of this writing are busy recruiting students for a one-week International Leadership Seminar scheduled for the March recess at the former seminary of the Christian Brothers in Barrytown, New York, which the Unification Church recently purchased.

Some of the Columbia CARP group seem to have had experience in the movement elsewhere. For instance, one young man, a Japanese graduate student, asked a professor at nearby Union Theological Seminary to give him a private crash course in Christianity—something he had not needed for the work in Japan.

To raise money Moon’s followers have so far been selling flowers, home-made candles, bottled arrangements of dried flowers and grasses, and ginseng tea, a herbal tea with medicinal properties.

Everything they earn—everything—goes back to the Unification Church. They claim that when it was necessary to raise $280,000 for a down payment on the Belvedere estate in Tarrytown, the core members across the country dropped everything for eight weeks and did nothing but sell their wares.

Flowers and candles? Yes—and they raised the down payment and more.

In our town on a recent Saturday morning, a young Japanese girl came into a drugstore carrying a small bucket with “Drug Abuse” painted on it in white letters. In her other hand she held bouquets of pink and white carnations wrapped in green wax paper.

“I am Takako,” said the girl. “I am selling these flowers for the One World Crusade. Would you buy some, please?” The high school girl behind the counter looked doubtful but asked, “What is the One World Crusade?”

“Have you heard of the Unification Church?” asked Takako. “We are working against drug abuse.” She held out a paper encased in plastic. At the top in large letters it read: “Immorality/Drug/Abuse/Delinquency/Family Conduct.” Then it introduced Takako and again mentioned the program against drug abuse.

A bystander, a man, asked, “What is this program against drug abuse? I am interested in that myself.”

Takako struggled with English. “You know the Bible?” she asked. “We have meeting and religious education, and we study the secrets of the Bible.”

“But your program against drugs?” the man persisted.

“We work against drugs from the heart,” said Takako. “It is a heart thing, a heart change.”

The man smiled and shook his head. The drugstore owner and a woman customer each bought a bouquet.

This young Japanese girl has left her natural family back in Japan and has come halfway around the world to be part of another family, the Unification Family. This supplants her mother and father, her brothers and sisters. According to Unification doctrine they are impure and imperfect.

She herself, as she is initiated into the Unification Church, will be made pure, and her real family from now on is the group of purified and to-be-purified members like herself. The sadness she has caused (and this sadness is widespread in the homes these young people have left) is of no consequence.

---

Flowers, candles, tea—where does the real money come from that supports the projects of Moon’s church?

---

The idea of family is central to Moon’s teaching. The family gives blessing. At the top is the vast human family, then the national family, finally the marital family. One must be in a family to be saved, for the family provides the basic structure for the new Eden.

Most of the young people who join the Unification Church are single. After a period of membership—usually at least three years—they may be married if they have achieved an acceptable spiritual level. Marriages are arranged—a vast improvement, Moon’s followers say, over the chaotic system of personal choice that has destroyed the American family.

The arrangements used to be made by Moon himself, who knew most individual members in the early days and had, it is said, an uncanny gift for sizing up those he did not know. Now, with the growth of the movement, the arrangement of marriages will surely have to be delegated to senior members of the Family.

In 1970 Moon gathered a great group together in Seoul and performed a mass marriage of 777 couples. For those whom he joins, his blessing is a cherished benediction. It carries the notion that Moon himself is the giver of offspring to those he blesses and it makes pure the tainted blood of those who are wed.

Where does the money come from that supports the Unification Church? No one seems able to find out.

The Unification Church owns estates, a conference center, and many town houses (such as the handsome one on East 71st Street in New York).

It supports its core members in their work of evangelism, teaching, and preaching at a cost for food, clothing, and shelter conservatively estimated at $5 million per year. It brings hundreds of young Germans, Austrians, Japanese, and Koreans to this country at its expense, not theirs.

It pays for full-page ads in big newspapers. It publishes a tabloid newspaper, books, leaflets. It rents large meeting halls and lecture facilities for its leader to speak in. It invites the country’s leaders to banquets at the best hotels.

Where does the money come from? Not primarily from selling flowers, candles, and ginseng tea, though this effort should not be downgraded or underestimated. The member-businesses (in San Francisco, a printing press; in Denver, a cleaning establishment; in Washington, a new tea house) may swell the coffers but not substantially.

Moon himself is reputed to be a millionaire, the head of a sizeable conglomerate in Korea that product marble vases, machine parts, ginseng tea, pharmaceuticals, titanium, air rifles and other items. The value of the empire is estimated at $10 to $15 million. Some followers claim that Moon plows the profits back into the Unification Church, but others insist the industries belong to Moon, who has become a very wealthy man.

What outside backing does Moon have? Substantial sums may come from right wing Japanese industrialists and groups that are eager to reestablish the economic power Japan once held over Korea and who consider Moon “their man.” Former Japanese Prime Minister Kishi, leader of the violently anti-Peking faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, is actively associated with Moon’s International Federation for Victory over Communism.

The big question is: Does the Korean government back Moon? In the article in The Washington Monthly referred to above, John Marks, a student of the CIA in the U.S. and other countries, tackles this question. The Korean CIA, Marks points out, has on occasion secretly subsidized “private” organizations like the Unification Church if they will improve Korea’s image. It would certainly be interested, he says, in a “burgeoning religious-political movement run by a Korean who supports virtually all of the goals and who is in a position to work and lobby for its government’s position on the American political scene.”

Whatever the sources of its money, the Unification Church is in excellent shape financially, and that is very important to it. In Moon’s thinking, money is power and power indicates the blessing of God. God is on the side of power and wealth.

Moon and his followers have come a long way down the road from the mountainside where an earlier messiah, who had nowhere to lay his head, taught his disciples: “Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek. They shall inherit the earth.”                  A.D.

Jane Mook is a freelance writer and an occasional contributor to A.D. In addition to mission articles, she has compiled our portfolios of religious art at Christmas and Easter. Her home is in Tenafly, New Jersey.

A few of Sun Myung Moon’s Front Groups

The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity

The Unification Church

Project Unity

One World Crusade

International Cultural Foundation (ICF)

International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVOC)

Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP)

Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF)

World Freedom Institute

American Youth for a Just Peace

The Little Angels of Korea

Professors’ World Peace Academy (PWPA)

Committee for Responsible Dialogue

Tong-Il Industry Company

Il-Hwa Pharmaceutical Company

Il-Shin Stoneworks Company

Tong Wha Titanium Company

Tae Han Rutile Company [rutile = titanium dioxide]

Where Moon got his theology from

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

The FFWPU is unequivocally not Christian

Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

[blacklattecoffee-blog]

Black Latte Coffee

What is it?

The name of the product might suggest a light coffee, but, contrary to appearances, it has little in common with it. We are dealing here with an aromatic and flavorful beverage, which thanks to its properties can even replace a meal and thus contribute to a decrease in body weight. In addition, there are other effects, but we will discuss them in a moment.

The results guaranteed by the manufacturer, of course if the drink is consumed on a regular basis, primarily include the following:

effective conversion of fat into energy, which means accelerating the process of burning it;

cleansing the whole body of harmful toxins;

reducing appetite and providing an additional portion of vital energy;

normalization of the hydration level of the body;

ensuring good mood every day through increased dopamine production.

Interestingly, the manufacturer guarantees the effectiveness of his product not only regardless of gender but also of age. Therefore, Black Latte cansimply be used by all adults, helping to fight even very serious obesity.

According to the company’s assurances, the product was developed in American laboratories and underwent very strict tests that confirmed the safety of its use. In addition, we can also learn that the drink is used even bysuch world-famous movie stars as Charlize Theron or Sandra Bullock. With regular use, one can count on losing up to 15–20kg in one month.

How should it be used?

However, we must emphasize that the manufacturer not only recommends using his product every day, but also suggests a treatment that lasts no longer than one month. During this period one can count on:

feeling well-rested every morning already after the first day;

the first visible weight loss after about a week;

up to 6 kg less after 10 days of regular use;

6 to 7 cm less at the waist after 3 weeks;

ending the treatment after a month may mean even 20 kg less of body weight.

It is worth mentioning that the manufacturer gives a satisfaction guarantee by offering a refund if the product does not meet one’s expectations. The application itself is limited to the activities that each of us performs in the morning while preparing a cup of coffee.

One needs to place 2 teaspoons of the powder in a glass or a cup and pour boiling water over it. The drink prepared in this way is best taken in the morning with a light breakfast, and this activity should be repeated for 30 consecutive days.

Side effects — should we be concerned about anything?

You are probably wondering now if Black Latte is safe for health and if you can consume this drink without worrying about your own health? The manufacturer himself promises that the composition of ingredients is natural and therefore very safe. In addition, we get a guarantee of safety — provided, of course, that we make the purchase on the company’s official website, thus having in our hands the original product.

As always, the most important thing is ordinary common sense. You should use Black Latte according to the manufacturer’s instructions, prepare a drink from two tablespoons of powder, drink only once a day and for a period not longer than a month.

Composition of the product

It’s time to take a more serious look at the composition now, and luckily our task here is easier. In this case, the producer does not hide the ingredients, which unfortunately cannot often be said about other weight loss products. The potency of this drink is to be the result of the presence in its composition of such components as:

activated charcoal;

coconut milk;

L-carnitine;

omega-3 fatty acids.

It is the activated charcoal that gives the beverage its characteristic black color which, for this reason, can be compared to the coffee known to all of us. However, it is not just a dye.

This charcoal is known for its effective toxin removal as well as for limiting the absorption of fat. According to the manufacturer, this decrease can reach up to 80%. Coconut milk, in turn, supports the functioning of metabolism, thereby promoting faster fat burning. L-carnitine and omega-3 have a similar effect, but they do not so much accelerate the metabolism, but rather directly break down fat.

It is obvious that the composition looks very natural, and hence, the use of this supplement should be completely safe for health.

Opinions about the product

It did not take us too long to find reviews of this product, because there is simply an abundance of those on the internet. The opinions vary a lot, but we have not been able to find any reliable information about the Black Latte drink not being effective. Customers praise the visible burning of body fat. In addition, many women even claim that the supplement helps to get rid of cellulite. Most reviewers, however, confirm the pleasant taste of the drink.

Price of the supplement. Where to buy it safely?

If you are curious how much one would need to pay for Black Latte, the truth is that it is difficult to define it clearly.

This is due to the fact that the price changes a lot over time as the manufacturer often organizes promotions and therefore it is best to look directly at the official website (for people from India).

Even at this moment we have an opportunity to buy the product with a 50% discount.

At the same time, we warn you as to buying it elsewhere. If you decide to try this product, it is best to order it on the official website. Only there do we have the guarantee that the product is original and therefore it will work in a safe and effective manner.

                       >>>>Get Black Latte http://blacklatte.coffee/<<<<