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hiswitchcraft · 2 years ago

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i think the fight, flight or freeze response happens when it comes to finally practicing (newly or otherwise). *how do we start a spell?? so many options (freeze).* idk

My brain is being funky about the way this is worded but I believe what's happening here is you're saying that when you try to practice, like do a spell specifically for example, you get freaked out and often freeze and don't do it.

If I'm understanding correctly that sounds like you're mentally getting overwhelmed by all the options, which I can understand, and I think I can help!

How do I Finally Start Practicing? It's So Overwhelming.

So my number one tips going into this are going to be take it one step at a time, know yourself, and write it down. I think these are great tips for any witch but especially if you get overwhelmed mentally by practicing. These tips will guide you if you make them your default. I'll explain what I mean.

By take it one step at a time, I mean you don't need to figure out what you wanna do or all the answers to how to do it immediately or over one day. You can tackle the questions over and over again and maybe you only get a little farther each time until you do it. That's okay.

By know yourself, I mean understand who you are, what you like, and what you believe. I know that's a bit of a tall order but it kind of comes with the territory and there's just so many topics encompassed by witchcraft that you have to have preferences and figure out your beliefs to know what to do. To a large extent the beliefs part will come with time, and actually practicing things like magic and experimenting, which I'm gonna help you do!

And by write it down, I mean take notes. This doesn't have to be a fancy grimoire or book of shadows, it can be in a binder or a google doc or a tumblr blog or all of the above. But it needs to happen because then you'll have an overview of things like cleansing methods, and patterns that show your preferences will start to form. Very helpful when you wanna do divination but don't even know what method to use or wanna do a spell but oh, you need to cleanse your space first, how do you even do that? Hopefully you get the idea.

Now I am gonna go over how to tackle spell work. I think you can work up to that. But first I have a suggestion!

If finally practicing feels overwhelming it's probably because you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to do something meaningful and to do it right. With love, cut that shit out! All that matters is that you start and do your best. Cutting that shit out is easier said than done, I know, but there's no reason for all that stress. Start small. "Finally starting" doesn't need all the fuss. It could be going on a nature walk. You've got this.

For a bit bigger stuff, I'm gonna give some examples and also show how the tips I explained apply. I'm gonna use doing divination and spell work as examples because that's what I specialize in.

So for divination, there's a lot of what's and how's there. What method do I use? What do I ask? How many cards do I pull? That can be overwhelming for sure. Here's how I would answer those, whatever method you like! Do some research and start writing down the different methods you like or already know. Then you have a reference, and you can try a few methods over a long period of time if you like. What do you ask? Whatever is bugging you. Seriously, like you can just vibe check mundane things like a job interview. Say you go for cartomancy for example, because once again that's what I'm familiar with, think about something that's been bothering you and pull a card. It can just be one if you don't know or don't wanna find or make a spread! You can also always pull another card or two later as well.

See how we just tackled one issue at a time in steps, created a reference to help the overwhelm by writing it down, and made a decision based on you what you like? All the tips!

Hopefully that makes sense and I'm gonna show you how to do it with an even bigger thing like spell work.

First, you're gonna have to figure out your intention before you get to prepping the spell. You've got a few options here. You could pick an intention like protection or luck, especially if it's your first spell or if you just wanna do a spell like right now. You could also think about goals you have in your life or things you want to improve and find a simple spell for that. I'm thinking something like attracting prosperity, friends, a good partner, a good job, you get the idea. Which one of those you pick and how exactly you approach this is going to depend on if it's your first spell, where you're at in your practice, what you're comfortable with, etc. There's no shame in doing simple protection, luck, etc, sort of spells for your first 10 or 20 or 50 spells. You can always think it over for a good while and reach out to me if you're not sure if you're ready for a certain spell, if you need help finding a spell or deciding if it's good, what you're looking for, etc.

Now onto the prep. What exactly you need to do before a spell is gonna depend on the spell and the practitioner. You may not do some of these things (especially for the simple sort of spell I have in mind here) or there may be things a witch does to prep for a spell that I don't mention here. This is just a quick list of things to consider based on my practice and how I approach witchcraft and teaching you guys.

The things I have in mind are cleansing, charging, grounding, and warding. I usually recommend people know how to do these these things before diving into spell work, but you don't absolutely have to especially because we're likely talking about a small, simple spell here. Anyways I know what I just said is a lot but I'm gonna tell you the benefits of each thing and then we're gonna break it down like we did with the divination stuff.

Cleansing gets all the stagnant and or negative energy out of something so that it won't... be in your way or interfere with your spell work so to speak. There's some kinds of magic where you may not want to cleanse, but I think cleansing applies here.

Charging gives you an extra boost of energy through your ingredients, tools, etc, to help your spell work and keep you from accidentally exhausting yourself.

Grounding has always been hard for me to explain but it's like when you relax and focus and "ground" your body, mind and energy. It helps with focus and also keeps you from getting too tired.

Warding is creating layers of energy around a person or space to keep out things like negative energy, other's magic, etc.

I don't wanna get into how to do any of these things here because each could be its own post that's twice as long as this one but my new witch resources google doc has some links that may help you figure this stuff out. You're also welcome to message me for specific resources/explanations on this stuff.

Anyways, those are the benefits of those four practices. Ultimately you'll have to consider which ones you want to do, when, and why, but it's a start and a reference at least.

Now you've made some progress. Let's say some time has passed and you've approached it a few times and you've got an idea of what kind of spell you wanna do, and how you wanna prep, what method do you even use to do that prep? That's a pretty overwhelming decision.

I'll use cleansing as an example. You know I'm gonna tell you to write it down first and foremost! Write down some methods for cleansing. Do you have the supplies to do any of them? Do any of them sound easier or better to you? Narrow it down. And remember, take your time, you don't have to do all your homework and figure out all your preferences in one day! Eventually you'll have some methods for the kind(s) of spell prep you've decided to do already laid out and maybe you've picked your favorites. Feel free to write your favorite methods and ideas down too, in case you're forgetful.

There's one more thing, I know it's a lot but just hold on, that I want you to consider! And that is spell timing. You don't even have to think about this one but I wanna cover all my bases and I think this step might have some benefits for someone who gets overwhelmed. That mainly being if deciding when you wanna try to do a spell overwhelms you, you can narrow it down too! Then you've got it on the calendar and out of the way and don't just have to pick a day randomly. You've got the decisions done ahead of time which always helps me when I've overwhelmed.

Spell timing is basically timing a spell depending on things like the moon phase or other events to give it more power. People time spells based on times of day using numerology, the days of the week, moon phases, astrological events, days of religious or personal significance, and so on. I think moon phases are probably the easiest and most approachable for beginners so that's what I'd suggest and that's what I'm gonna use as my example.

Personally I like this chart by @orriculum for basic moon phase correspondences. This point is pretty simple. Will using timing make it less overwhelming for you to do a spell? And if so, you should already know what spell you wanna do, so pick a moon phase based on that intention. There you go!

Now you've figured out your intention and spell idea, favorite methods for preparation, and when you're gonna do the spell already decided! You've done it. Don't forget that you can tackle each one of these points one step at a time. It might take you a few weeks of thinking to decide what kind of spell you wanna do, then research, then what kind of prep work, then writing stuff down, you get the idea. Tackle it in steps! There's no shame in that. We all get tired and overwhelmed sometimes. Hopefully this makes that a lil easier!

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fiona-fififi · 5 months ago

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⭐️ for… I got nothing to believe (unless you're choosing me)

Thank you!! 💜

Okay, so this one is one of my favorites, actually, mostly because it has a much deeper meaning for me than it maybe should because of just how much I was projecting onto it.

I started writing this one just after 7x04, if I remember correctly, and I was absolutely riding a high of canon bi!buck, and that brought forward a lot of very personal, complicated feelings for someone that I was both desperate to reveal and terrified to actually admit. So while the story, obviously, is not ours, several of the lines were all about how I felt for her, and all about how afraid I was of saying something so big to someone I cared for so much, even while the desire to do so made me feel like I couldn't breathe. (I got lucky. She's braver than me, and I had nothing to be afraid of. 💚)

But all those feelings felt like they mapped well onto buddie—so this was my attempt at catharsis via writing.

So in this story, I kind of poured myself into both of them, and I think that was, in a lot of ways, accurate to their characters—Eddie the embodiment of all that fear, and Buck the embodiment of some misguided self-sacrifice, trying to cling to something good, even knowing it could never truly be enough.

So, while I was in the middle of this crisis, all I could think about was the image of Eddie, drunk and sad, sitting curled in on himself beside Buck's door. My first plan was that he showed up while Buck was with Tommy, and that Tommy would find him there. But then, I didn't like that, because I needed Tommy gone for Buck and Eddie to hash it out (well, kind of), and I didn't see him just up and leaving in that situation. So then, I thought, oh! Tommy misses him in the hall, but spots his truck and calls Buck all confused, and Buck finds him. But then, my brain was like "no, that implies he drove drunk, and Eddie would never do that." And that was when I finally landed on Eddie and Tommy out, and Eddie getting a little too drunk and accidentally revealing his feelings for Buck to Tommy. (Shoutout to @messyhairdiaz for letting me talk at her until I figured this one out, because it took me a minute. And several back-to-back messages. 😂)

In the end, I think I'm very happy with where that landed. It allowed me to essentially end Buck and Tommy’s relationship without extraneous drama to open the door for Buck accepting his feelings for Eddie. So, while it is implied, rather than explicit, I intended for the moment Tommy leaves to be read as Tommy ending their relationship, so that Buck can be with Eddie, but in a gentle way, even if there was some hurt there. Largely, I wanted to make sure that no one was the bad guy. I wanted the implication to be that what Buck had with Tommy, no matter how brief, was meaningful and important to him, but that in the end, it was always going to be Eddie, because so many parts of him already belonged to Eddie.

In terms of the writing, the empty space metaphor is one of my favorites I've ever done (even though I absolutely dropped the ball on it in the end by not bring it back around). But the lines "I have all this empty space inside me that belongs to you, but you gave away all the space that was mine" hit me very early in the process, and obviously, those lines evolved a bit, but I'm quite proud of that metaphor and the emotional impact of it in this instance, and I think it hit all the right notes for what I was trying to convey about just how much they mean to one another.

And the ending was my hope. Buck's, too, obviously. But that was me saying maybe I'd have the courage tomorrow. (I didn't. But, again, I'm lucky and she's braver than me.)

So, I'm not sure if this was exactly what you were looking for, but that's the story of this little fic that holds such a very special place in my heart for so very many reasons.

Fanfic Writers: Director's Cut

#tizniz #asks answered #fanfic writers: director's cut #ask games

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usernamesuggestionsarefunny · 2 years ago

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Finally on episode 3 of The Chosen we see a little more of Jesus' personality. I love this series but, like you said in your post, he's often too distant and too "perfect" here and i struggle to connect with his character. I'd love to see a show where Jesus is portrayed as a fully human (and also fully God of course) with some serious doubts, fears and flaws even without sin, but i know it would cause controversy and charges of blasphemy. However, i appreciated a lot this episode dedicated to Nazareth and totally adore Lazarus, he's wonderfully chaotic and didn't disappoint me.

I kinda disagree on the first part, I don't think the portrayal of Jesus has been too different in episode 3 of season 3. I actually think He has been consistently portrayed exactly as you say in The Chosen since episode 1 season 1: very, very human without taking away from His divinity and sinlessness, and it already HAS caused blasphemy accusations lol I don't have a problem with the characterization per say, so maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. It is what I (very personally) feel is missing I have a problem with.

When I said He comes across as distant sometimes I meant in comparison to His portrayal in “Risen” + relatively speaking, meaning He has these perfect, very close and deep emotional scenes with some disciples (aka Little James and Mary Magdalene, Nathaniel in some ways, at least in their first scene together), friendly bonds (Simon P, John) vs other disciples with which He seems to have a type of “cool guy, but still your boss” relationship with (Matthew, Simon Z, Ramah for that matter, etc).

I know there are time constraints and they can't develop each individual relationship and whatnot and I can leave stuff to the imagination but this frustrates me to no end with Matthew, there is no excuse with him (imo), because with this character there are sooo many opportunities for Mary-M-being-reedemed-again-type of scenes and yet there is none. Matthew’s scenes with Jesus are mostly there for comedic relief and theology lessons (I actually loved the planning-the-sermon scenes and how they explained the salt of the Earth metaphor, which I didn't understand before, that is not the issue). We never see Matthew opening up to Him like Mary and Little James do. Matthew gets waaay more meaningful scenes character-development-wise with other disciples such as Philip and Mary than with Jesus. Again, cool boss and improving work environment more than divine love incarnated. You could say Him making Matthew feel like he is helping and using his talents by having him give advice on His sermon (And even thank him) is meaningful in its own right and shows how much He knows each of His disciples, and I fully agree, and I DO notice these things in the writing, but I personally think there is space for something more.

Little James gets an answer as to why he hasn't been healed, and I think it would be nice to have a scene where Matthew gets an answer too as to why he feels different (Which, as his conversation with Philip shows, it is something he struggles with), and why being in some ways different the way he is isn't bad, that God loves him the way he is and not let anyone make him feel any different.

On the last part I fully agree, Lazarus is exactly how I imagined him to be. I don't know why but his character always screamed “comedic relief sidekick!” to me. He is the opposite of Jesus in many ways and yet they love each other. It is endearing.

#the chosen #the chosen series #the chosen tv show #the chosen tv series

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team7-headquarter · 2 years ago

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Number 1. UZUMAKI NARUTO!

I love this story so much.

A. The other day I was watching the first episode of the anime in the English sub. It can't compare.

This was my same opinion when I was what 9 years? old 8 years old? It was my same opinion when I was reading the end of the manga in real time. The manga simply better than the anime. Not even because of the feeler episodes, which by the way I think they are very nice on their own way, but it's the way the manga shares things the anime explicitly tries to communicate.

It'd never be the same when the manga format allows the readers the time to breath, the time to feel the pressure between one panel on the other in a way the anime can't emulate. The sense of space that you totally lost when you are watching the anime. It's not even about the story itself, the plot. It's about art, about what the medium is communicating, it's about the meanings in which the artist is reaching to you.

When I started reading the first chapter I didn't expect to go on rambling about how much I love the manga format, the comic form. I'm not an artist myself, I have no graphic abilities, nor the knowledge about it. Still, I can really appreciate the difference between one format and the other. It's almost like those are two different stories, what the manga and anime are saying.

B. That takes me to another topic, on the same lane. Of course I'm talking about the difference the animation made probably in order to facilitate the process. Changes like including the members of the Konoha 12 in the shots where they show Naruto's classroom. only student I could probably identify in the manga was Sasuke. Everyone else was totally absent.

I think this is an important point because many people take the anime as a faithful guide. I'm not saying you can't guide yourself using the anime. I'm saying it is a canon of it's own. When you are arguing about any character you need to be careful to specify if you are talking about the anime or the manga.

Not only characters, any topic really.

If I remember correctly, one of the kids making fun of Naruto in the anime for being terrible at the technique requested by Iruka in the classroom— it was Ino Yamanaka. And you have none of that in the manga. You will be easy to hate her since the beginning if you are only watching the anime, because she's making fun of the protagonist so early on. Even if you're only trying that character in there because it's easy to animate and since you're going to have to animate them much more later through the story, there are emotional implications you can't erase.

I truly think the anime ends up damaging some characters while taking choices that are actually understandable when you think about how much they have to work. However, damage is damage.

C. Let me talk about some of my favorite panels:

I think it's pretty cool how Naruto used to paint his own face to express his creativity, while also painting the faces of the other Hokages as a form of disrespect.

The other thing it's that he doesn't know why, but he's right about becoming Hokage in order to make the people of Konoha respect him. He's not aiming short, he's not aiming for just some people respecting him, he's aiming for everyone giving him their respect he deserves and he never got all those years. He's even aiming for international respect from every other hidden village / nation.

The reason he was so utterly hated was partially because Hiruzen allowed it to happen. The issue was the system, the shinobi institution as it was. Just being a good Shinobi wouldn't cut it.

Lateral, I'm going to properly refer to the hitai-ate tradition in Naruto and how much it speaks about violent setting of the story itself. For now, I'm just going to say that I'm very happy to see our first Sasuke sighting in the manga. I think it's very meaningful the fact he's sitting in the back of the class, on a higher position. It says a lot and there hasn't been a word about him yet, he hasn't even been properly introduced.

I still can't believe how easily Naruto stole that scroll from Hiruzen. I know it was convenient to the plot. Yet, c'mon man! I actually think that was a bad decision from Kishimoto. Narratively wise, it doesn't show me the loser kid the story trying to sell me. Clumsy? Sure. But dumb? No, absolutely not. A kid that's able to steal important intel from a Kage using a ninjutsu developed by him alone can't be considered a dead-last.

Not putting the panel, but he managed to master the shadow clones jutsu in half a day. No doubt, he is a prodigy. Sure, he does work hard. I'm not trying to erase that fact. It's just that Kishimoto is trying to tell you something, when the story is showing you something else entirely. Albeit the biggest problem of this manga, the inconsistency between what's shown vs what's told.

That's why I want to highlight what Iruka's saying. He stablishs, right at the beginning of the manga, that Naruto is excellent student. The dialogue is even in bold letters.

See how the flaws Iruka points out have nothing to do with Naruto's intelligence or actual abilities. He's awkward, which can be considered normal when you consider the fact no one raised him, he raised himself. He's clumsy, which can be adjudicated to his childhood conditions, but I prefer to consider it a a trait of his personality. He can be impulsive, enthusiastic, clumsy, reckless, etc. Finally, Iruka says he is a screw-up, but what can we expect from a boy who had to learn how to act through trial and error and the hardships of the shinobi life?

He's not a loser, he's just an orphan.

In the anime, the one saying the little speech in the right panels was Hiruzen. I don't know if I'm correct, but for me it looks like Iruka is the one thinking it in the manga. He first "talks" to Natuto, then thinks of himself and his own condition.

It really pains me to read Iruka saying the truth about Naruto's case. In the shinobi world, love can't be so freely given. You suffer for everyone you lose. Caring about a random child, one that has a great curse set on him, is no joke. Although I am not justifying what the village did, at least it was logical within the narrative.

No one wanted to love Naruto.

No one felt capable enough, if you ask me.

It reflectes the deficiencies of Konohagakure more than it reflectes Naruto's worth. They were ignorant cowards, hypocrites for proclaiming the Will of Fire while letting Naruto suffer. Traitors to Minato and his sacrifice, to the Uzumakis as one of the founding clans of Konoha, etc.

Naruto wanted any type of attention. He was desperate to be seen, noticed. Just like Iruka says, it was brilliant acting. One he recognized because he used to be like that himself.

Unlike Iruka, Naruto didn't know what love or respect felt like until that night.

Which takes me to the meaning of hitai-ate.

To keep the explanation short, the giving of the hitai-ate is a rite of passage. It marks the moment a child becomes a proper member of a system, with all the responsibilities and implications it holds. In this case, a hitai-ate is a mark put upon a shinobi by a hidden village to claim their loyalty and service. The genins are considered adults from then on. They are expected to participate on missions to bring money and pride to their hidden villages. They'll get the payment for their work and they can't betray the ideals of the institution they are bonded to.

The hitai-ate is mostly a symbol of identification. When Iruka proclaimed to Mizuki that's Naruto was a citizen of Konohagakure, he was doing almost the same as gifting him a hitai-ate.

The hitai-ate is one (if not) the biggest motifs of Naruto classic. From the moment Naruto asks Iruka for it (see me, notice me, respect me, tell me I belong) to the moment Sasuke scratches his (I don't belong here, because the person I want to see me, notice me, respect me, it's not here), the hitai-ate is talking about the world of the shinobis and Konoha in specific.

It dissapears in Shippuden, lost among myths and gods and other symbols.

That's one of my reasons to believe Naruto classic is more compelling in terms of storytelling than Naruto Shippuden.

🍥 MY NARUTO MANGA RE-READ : VOL 1

Started : 24/02/20223 — Finished : 00/00/0000

*Comments under the cut!!!!!

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theramseyloft · 3 years ago

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What to expect when you are expecting a new pigeon:

You’ve decided you want a pet pigeon.

You’ve selected the breed you want, chosen between a cock and hen, got your housing set up, purchased your feed, and found a vet.

You’ve found the rescue or breeder you want a bird from, picked the specific one you want, and your new pigeon is on their way!

If you are picking up your bird:

Pigeons travel best when covered. Being able to see the scenery pass can be overwhelming and disorienting to a bird unaccustomed to car rides (as nearly all are.)

An especially stressed individual may vomit.

If your bird is being shipped:

Your bird has (if packed and prepped correctly) been asleep for the last 2-4 days. The jetlag is real!

Your bird will be disoriented and thirsty, which will show in their poop.

Expect it to be very wet for a least the first three days, but it should firm back up over the first 5-7 days as the bird’s hydration returns to normal.

However they get there, it’s important that the bird go straight into their enclosure and given the opportunity to get their bearings for the first few days.

Pigeons can get overwhelmed in new environments and may not eat or drink until they have checked out every surface they can reach.

If the bird has just spent a few days in a dark box, being active for an extended period before they have had the opportunity to eat or drink can cause them to crash.

So it’s important not to let your new bird out to explore at least until you have witnessed them eat food and drink water.

If you will need your bird to stay in an enclosure at night, start acclimating them to Lights Out by allowing out time initially in the evening.

The length of time a pigeon is out can safely extend to pretty much any amount as they learn the house rules, but starting in the evening makes teaching/learning the Lights Out routine easier on all parties involved.

At any point after dark, you can address your pigeon and say “Lights out!” or “Bed time!” to signify that they will go back into their sleeping enclosure shortly.

Give the bird about 10 seconds to register (and yourself to make sure you know exactly where they are perched), and then repeat “Lights out.” or “Bed time.” as you flip the light switch.

It’s WAY less stressful for a bird to be gently lifted up in the dark and returned to their sleep enclosure than it would be to chase them around to try and herd them into it.

After a few repetitions, your bird should make the association between the verbal forewarning “Lights out!” or “Bed Time!” with the lights actually going out.

Birds that do not like being picked up in the dark will go back to their sleep cage on their own in that 10 seconds you give them before turning out the lights.

Birds that like to be carried will just assume the position and wait to be picked up. XD

As often as I refer to pigeons as the avian equivalent of stray dogs, there are some key social differences you need to keep in mind when bonding to your bird.

Dogs are intelligent, cooperative social predators.

The puppy template for humans is generally set to “friend, until proven otherwise.”

Meaning that a puppy who is well socialized will see every new person as a potential new friend, and is likely to be just as friendly and confident in their new home as they were at their breeder’s.

Pigeons are intelligent, cooperative social prey birds.

Their template for any large creature is “Predator, until proven safe.”

Meaning that a well socialized pigeon who is comfortably trusting of their breeder has come to see that specific human as a non-predator.

If you have not had opportunities to meet your pigeon before bringing them home, they will not have had any opportunity to get to know you well enough to come to the conclusion that you, specifically, are also safe.

So you will be building your relationship with your pigeon from the ground up, no matter how they acted for their breeder.

In those first days while your bird is getting their bearings, it’s important to talk them through everything you do.

This gets them used to your voice and starts priming them to make word associations.

Pigeons are defensive of what they consider to be nest spaces, but social away from them.

For a bird who free flies the house, nest space is the actual nest and about the bird’s body length away from it.

But for a bird with a sleeping enclosure, the entire enclosure is considered to be nest space.

Because only a predator or attacking rival will enter nest space uninvited, pigeons are severely intimidated by hands entering their enclosure.

Those word associations I mentioned earlier will help desensitize your bird to changing their food and water every day.

Make a point to tell the bird “Let me get your food/water dish!” and reach in only far enough to retrieve that specific thing, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

As you give them back, talk the bird through it with something along the lines of “Here’s fresh water.” or “Food time!”

Until you have bonded to your pigeon, do not reach for them in their enclosure to get them out for social time.

Open their enclosure to invite them out.

This feels, to the pigeon, like you respect the space that they feel an instinctive need to defend.

Talk to the bird while you chill in your shared space doing something innocuous like reading or surfing the internet on your phone.

This is a good time to start treat priming.

Most pigeons love safflower seeds, but not every bird does.

Pay attention to what your bird picks out of their seed blend first so you know what treats to keep on hand.

Start by greeting your bird by name and asking “Want a Treat?”

Once you have their attention, toss a few of their favorite seeds just in front of their feet.

Praise them when they peck at and eat them with a light, pleased tone.

Then just toss them a little less far away.

The first goal is for your bird to sit comfortably near you.

If you get that far in one day, great! But don��t push any faster than that.

From there, the next goal is getting them into your lap or onto your shoulder.

The next step is to get them to take treats from your open palm.

The end goal is getting them to take a single treat from between your thumb and forefinger, because a closed fist with the thumb and forefinger extended together resembles a bird’s head instead of the giant snake head a closed hand resembles or the giant, five-clawed talon an open one resembles to a bird.

This very firmly switches a pigeon’s perception of you from predator to flock mate.

In every flock of pigeons, there is at least one bird who will feed any peep who begs or any adult who asks.

I refer to these as Flock Aunties/Unkles, and this is the mantle you take on by training your birds to take treats from your fingertips this way.

By inviting them out and offering treats this way, rather than forcing them out of their comfort zone, you help your bird to expand it to include you and the socializing space they share with you.

Every pigeon is an individual, meaning they all have different temperaments and tolerances.

This is why our available birds are categorized by temperament.

It is important to me to match a client with the bird that they are most likely to develop the closest, most meaningful bond with.

It is possible to bond with even a very skittish pigeon, but it can take much longer than it would for a human-social bird bred for temperament.

Remember that stability is important to pigeons, and moving to a new home with new human flockmates is a LOT of change all at once.

So be patient with your new friend.

Communicate with them.

Invite them to expand their comfort zone rather than forcing them out of it.

And you will build a strong bond with your new flockmate. <3

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hogwartsmarvelmommy · 3 years ago

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Empty Mugs and Unexpected Hugs (H.O) 🔥

Word count: 3.3K

Enemies to lovers

(HarrisonOsterfeildxReader)

Warnings: Smut (fingering, unprotected sex *Wrap it up*) cussing, that’s probably it..

🌼🌸 MASTERLIST 🌸🌼

With Tom came Harrison, you knew that. What you didn't know was when you had agreed to a roommate situation with Tom, you were also agreeing to one with Haz. “Tom, you said ‘would you like to live with me.’ not ‘me and Haz’” you told him as you stared at the blonde boy who was carrying box after box. He opted to do this shirtless, despite the cold London breeze. A sheen layer of sweat glistened on his overly defined chest, and you hated the way you longed to reach out and touch him.

“I figured you just knew?” Tom said coyly rubbing the back of his neck as he saw the way you stared down his best friend. He wasn't blind, he knew the hatred you supposedly had towards Haz was something with much deeper roots, but anytime he tried to figure it out, you would deflect and change the subject.

“I'm not doing either of your dishes,” you said loudly enough to catch Harrison's attention.

“Wouldn't expect you to, princess,” he winked at you. With a loud groan, and a dramatic flip of your hair, you proceed to your empty room to unpack your things.

Living with Tom and Harrison was way more entertaining than you had ever thought possible. Most nights were spent at the dining room table with one to many empty beer bottles laid out in front of you, while you laughed and joked about things that were probably not funny. Of course there were also the quiet days when Tom was away filming with Haz in tow, and on those days you would usually have the company of one or both of the twins.

“You should just admit you love him,” Sam said suddenly while you were taking a sip of your beer, causing you to spit your drink all over the table.

“Sammy!” You cried out the sting of beer in your nostrils. “I do not,”

“Y/N, It's written all over your face,” Harry argued. They were supposed to be on your side, you had been friends with the twins for years, the only reason you even knew Tom, was because of Sam and Harry..

“I do not love Harrison,” You told them, but even you were unconvinced by your own words.

It was late when you heard the front door to the flat open. The twins had left a few hours prior, Tom was in the states, and Harrison was with him, so who was coming into the apartment?

You were in just a shirt, an old one of Harrison's you had taken a while back, and a pair of cheeky underwear. Tip toeing to your bedroom door and grabbing a golf club from your bag, you proceeded to sneak down the hallway to the large living area where the front door was. Your heart was pounding with the thought of having to defend the place against an intruder, in just your underwear nonetheless. You saw a shadow, next to the couch, and raised the club ready to attack. As soon as you went for it, the lamp flicked on and Harrison saw you charging towards him with a golf club. Luckily he had fast reflexes, catching the club in one hand and your quickly moving body in the other. “Christ Y/N. What are you doing?” he asked, holding your body close to his. You felt your muscles relax into him, thankful he was in fact not an intruder, and you wouldn't have to explain why there was an intruder beaten and bloody by your hand to the authorities.

“I thought you were a robber,” You admitted coyly, stepping back a bit to look at him. His piercing blue eyes looked deep into yours, a small smile on his lips as his eyes trailed down your overly exposed body.

“So you would charge at an intruder with a bright pink putter, in just your underwear?” he asked you. “Also is that my shirt?” you could feel your cheeks heat up. You pushed away from his body with a scoff and turned to go back to your room, already done with him, but his hand caught your wrist, pulling your body back into his arms. His grip was tight as he held your body close to his. Something was off. Something was wrong. This was abnormal, Haz without Tom, and showing you any sort of affection.

“Hazzy, why are you home?” You asked, finally wrapping your arms around his waist, accepting the unexpected hug that you usually would not share with Him.

“Family stuff, I've been back for a few days. Just been with my mom,” He said, still holding you. You instinctively hug him tighter, getting the feeling that something bad had happened.

“You okay?” You asked him quietly. To which he just hummed into your head, still holding you.

“Better now,” He whispers. You're so confused, and exposed. You hear the twins' voices in the back of your head. ‘Just admit it, you love him.’ Was that what you had been feeling for months on end? Is that the feeling you were feeling now, making your stomach turn? “I missed you,” He whispers and you swear you could feel him press a kiss against the top of your head. It's too much, so suddenly.

“I need to..” you push your body away, scrambling to find any words to get you away, your mind is clouded by thoughts and feelings. “Pants,” You finally let out, leaving Harrison in the living room, stunned at how flustered you had become in the matter of a millisecond.

As soon as you're back in your room, you let out a groan, you're so confused. He missed you? You? y/n? Why would he miss you? All the two of you did was bicker, bicker and flirt. Flirt. Because you did in fact have feelings for Harrison. Feelings that were not not supposed to be had towards him..

“Y/N? Can I come in?” you haven't even put on pants yet when his voice calls to you through the closed door.

“Sure,” You call out to him, desperately searching your floor for the discarded sweats you had had on a few hours before. Nowhere, great. He cleared his throat from behind you, while you were bent over, ass on full display. Fully aware now, of how exposed you are you decide to just crawl under your blanket on your bed.

“Did I do something?” He asked, concern plastered all over his face.

“What? No, why would you think-”

“You just ran from me, like literally ran, after trying to attack me with a golf club,” He points out, making you cringe.

“I- Uh, yeah. I'm sorry about nearly attacking you,” You mumble, a little more embarrassed than you'd like to admit.

“So why'd you run away?” he pondered, watching you closely as you struggled to find your words. Unbeknownst to you Harrison was also having an internal crisis. You were Y/N. Someone Tom considered a little sister, Harry and Sam's best friend, but he couldn't help the way that you made him smile every time you couldn't open a jar, and would defeatedly ask him for help after way too long of attempting it yourself. Or the way you would curse at the line of dirt that you could never seem to sweep into the dustpan. The way you would always make a cup of tea before finishing the last, leaving so many mugs with a single drink all over the place, something that would drive any other person crazy, but he just found it endearing, and was sure if it ever stopped, he would miss it.

“You said you missed me,” You finally managed to say, making a smile spread over Harrison's lips. He took a chance, stepping into your room, towards where you were sitting on the bed, and when you didn't object, he crossed the empty space sitting right next to you.

“I did miss you,” He said, grabbing your hand and squeezing it gently.

“We fight, and argue,” You started, obviously ready to explain all the reasons he shouldn't have missed you.

“And we flirt, and share memories, and glances. You drive me nuts y/n. But the second I step out that door, I miss it all. The obnoxious quirks, the way you can't pronounce some things correctly, no matter how often I correct you. I miss hearing you call out goodnight to me in the nighttime, and how you always wish me to have sweet dreams. I don't know when, or why it happened, but yeah. When I'm gone I miss you,” you feel a tear escape your eye at his confession, not sure exactly what to say or think for that matter. His finger caresses your cheek wiping the tear from your face.

“Haz?” You whisper.

“Yes?” He asks, full attention turned to you.

“I miss you when you're gone too,” You finally admit, a weight lifting from your chest. He's thankful to know his feelings aren't completely one sided. Your admission of missing him is at least enough to confirm that you don't actually hate him. “Can I be honest?” You ask, catching even yourself off guard.

“Please,” He says, waiting for you to say whatever you had to say.

“I- '' You take a deep breath, bracing yourself for rejection and embarrassment, but if you wait much longer, you'll never say what you have to. “I get so irritated with you, because everything you do just draws me in. I can't not stare, or listen. It drives me nuts, to be so flustered by everything that you do, and it's the simple things Haz, the way you insist on sitting on the left side of the couch, or how you always make sure I've eaten after a long day. The way you constantly clean up my mugs that I leave everywhere, and you have never once said a thing about them, even if you have had every right to,” you don't even want to look at him, afraid he will be appalled, but you have to say it. “I’m pretty sure I've managed to fall in love with you, while trying desperately to hate you,” you whisper.

That's enough of a confirmation for Harrison, that you're on the same page. With his hand gently on your face, pulling your chin up towards him, he leans in, pressing his lips ever so gently against yours. And the electricity that you both feel from the slightest touch? Fucking magic.

“I tried so hard not to love you,” He whispers. You look up at him through your lashes, his eyes gazing directly into yours, and it's like you're looking at the sky on a clear summer day. “And dear God did I fail,” he whispers, making you melt. He leans back down, this time kissing you with something so much more. It's meaningful, it's beautiful, it's everything you have wanted without realizing it. Your hands are against his chest, feeling each thud of his heart, while his are cupping your face. He kisses you like his life depends on it, and in that moment it surely feels like it does. He deepens the kiss, his tongue making its appearance in your mouth. It's everything and more. You wrap your arms around his neck, wanting to extend this moment forever, and his slip down to your waist, pulling you closer. He pulls away, and a soft whine escapes your lips.

“Tell me to stop,” He whispers, as he caresses your cheek. Eyes searching your face, making sure he's not crossing a line. You lean into his hand, closing your eyes and letting a soft humm leave your lips. With no objection from you, he reconnects your lips for a third time tonight. This time it's hot, so so hot. You can feel the ache forming in your stomach as his lips move from yours to your neck. You need him, you have to have him, just a little taste and you realize you have been starving. With a swift motion you're straddling him now, leaning down into him instead of leaning up, giving him so much more access to your neck and jaw, and then he remembers an unanswered question from before.

“This is my shirt,” He says, this time it's not a question, just a statement.

“Yeah,” You giggle. His eyebrows raise a bit as he remembers all the shirts that have seemingly disappeared over the last few months.

“Do you have others?” He asks. You feel like you have been caught red handed, nowhere to go or hide.

“I- Yes,” You admit. “I like to sleep in them,”

“In just your underwear?” He asks, to which you shyly nod. He throws his head back and lets out a dramatic sigh. He's done for, “That is so fucking hot,” he mutters before leaning back in taking your bottom lip between his and sucking it slightly. He feels his pants tighten as your hips grind into him instinctively, and you're so wet and warm he can practically feel it through his jeans.

“Hazzy,” you moan as he pushes you down onto him, providing a friction you desperately need, even though it's not what you want.

“What is it?” He asks you, as he does it a second time. Your head falls down onto his shoulder, and you don't know if you can even express what it is you want.

“Can you..” You trail off.

“Can i?” he asks, needing to hear you say it out loud.

“Touch me?” The words are like music to his ears, flipping you onto your back as he slips his hand between your bodies, running his fingers along the damp fabric of your ruined panties. The fact that you're this wet from just kissing is driving him crazy. He slips his hand into your panties, finally sliding his long digits along your slit. One thing about Harrison that drove you absolutely crazy was his hands, because dear god were they perfect, his long fingers and veiny tops, you'd be lying if you said you had never gotten off imagining his fingers in the place of yours, and now, actually having the real thing, you felt like you were flying.

As he slid his finger inside you, you let out a gasp, his being so much bigger than your own, and it being way too long since you had been with anyone.

“Say the word and I'll stop,” He says, as he looks at your face twisted in pleasure, but he can't tell that it's not pain, he's never seen you like this before. This is a whole new territory.

“Please.. Please don't,” You nearly beg as your hips buck against his hand. The smirk that replaces the concern on his face is unbelievably hot, his pupils are blown with lust and you're sure yours are as well. He thrusts his one finger in and out grazing against your spot each and every time, his palm rubbing your clit as he does so. You're going to lose it, this is so much better than you could have ever imagined. He pulls his finger out, causing a whine from you, which quickly turns to a gasp as he replaces it with two. If you're falling apart to his fingers you're not sure how you'll be able to handle his cock.

“Hazzy,” You moan out, right on the brink of losing it.

“Come on my fingers princess,” He coos, and that is precisely what you do, your whole body shakes in pleasure, and your toes curl, and he keeps going, as your walls squeeze tightly around his fingers.

Once your legs finally stop shaking he pulls his hand away, and although that was probably the most powerful orgasm you had ever had, it is not nearly enough. “Haz.” You say quietly as he peppers kisses on your neck.

“Hmm?” He hums.

“Need more, need you,” you say, and his head peaks up, a smile on his face, a bit in excitement, a bit in surprise.

“You sure?” he asks, to which you respond by kissing him, you nibble at his bottom lip, and he lets out a moan. You reach down unbuttoning his jeans and sliding his zipper down, and he assists you in pulling them down. You can clearly see his length through his boxers, his cock, rock hard and leaking on to his boxers, it's flattering. You let your fingers trail his length and you can feel his eyes on your hand, and you're not sure if he's worried, nervous, or excited. You slide his boxers down and his cock springs free, and you can see the violent red hue of the tip, he's begging to be touched and he hasn't even said a thing. You wrap your hand around him and he lets out a gasp at the sudden contact, you stroke your hand up and down a few times before, he pushes you back onto the bed and climbs over you. He slides his fingers in the hem of your panties and slowly drags them down your legs, before dropping them to the floor, and then takes his time lifting his shirt over his head, exposing his chest, you follow suit, and throw the shirt you had on to the ground. You're both completely naked now, no turning back, you've made it this far already.

"Y/n, baby we don't have to," he whispers against your ear.

"Hazzy, stop worrying and fuck me please," you nearly beg as you pull his lips to yours in a desperately hungry kiss.

"Christ," he mutters as he lines himself at your entrance, pushing into you at a slow, agonizing speed. Of course he's only doing this to make sure you're ok, his fingers seemed like so much to your tight pussy he's worried he's going to hurt you. But the way you moan out his name gives him full confidence that you in fact are fine. Once he's fully sure you're fine to take him, he speeds up his thrusts, finding a place that is perfect for the both of you. Your legs wrap around his waist as he pounds into you. You're not sure you're going to last long.

"Not gonna last," you moan into his lips.

"S'okay, me either," he says back. He slips his hand down, rubbing your clit strategically. You let out another loud moan before his name leaves your lips, repeatedly as you convulse around his cock, and it's only one more thrust before he completely empties himself into you.

It's a few quiet moments of your bodies laying flush against each other, enjoying the afterglow of sex. "I'm gonna clean you up," he whispers in your ear before pushing himself up and off of you. He disappears from the room for what feels like an eternity, but is back within a minute with a warm rag and a glass of water, and he then cleans you up, being gentle with how sensitive you now are.

Your eyes get heavy after everything is said and done, and you're worried he's going to disappear from your room, but he lays next to you instead. Pulling you into his arms.

"Hazzy?" You whisper after a few minutes.

"Hmm?"

"Is everything ok with your family?" You ask, getting worried this may have been a lapse in judgement on his part because of heightened emotions.

"Yes. Char decided to give us a scare and disappear for a weekend, so I came back to try and keep my mom from murdering her," he admitted with a chuckle.

"Oh," you giggled.

"Y/n?" He whispers.

"Yeah?"

"I meant it. I missed you," he says, pressing a kiss atop of your head. You smile before falling asleep in his arms. Maybe this was a mistake, maybe it would be forever. All you knew was it felt right.

#Harrison Osterfield #harrison osterfield smut #harrison osterfield imagine #hazzy #haz #haz osterfield #harrison osterfeild x reader #harrison osterfeild x reader smut #harrison osterfeild fluff

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wherestoriescomefrom · 3 years ago

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hey!! this is about anuja chauhan and i think you are spot on! i think she has very upper cast feminism tendencies and i once saw her post something terfy as well...and this shows in her books.

in the house the bj built there is a line where eshwari says that she wanted to take a working class man and bathe him and make love to him and it was SO GROSS...and i think that is the extent of her feminism.

those pricey thakur girls worked for me politically cos she didnt have to criticise people like herself and was criticising a vague Bid Bad.

i was extremely uncomfortable in battle for bittora especially with jini excusing her grandmothers bigotry and asking zain to simply get over everything the latter said....its also interesting that zain was as or even more elite than jini and is one of her two non-upper caste hindu heroes, same with dylan. i also side eye her for the whole 'zain running on the fake b*p ticket'

as for club you to death, i disliked everyone in that book except the cop. the hero was not great but i do think she caricaturised people like herself well.

i feel like she works if she stays in her lane but everytime she tries to do something seemingly radical it isnt great, but i havent come across any romcom authors like her in india so theres that...

you've basically hit the nail on the head, that when she's staying in her lane its not so bad - but every time she tries to do something radical, she messes up pretty strongly. i liked both those pricey thakur girls and the house that bj built because they were so funny, and of course, the politics was graspable and largely within her lane (i remember that line by eashwari. ew.). one thing i have noticed however, is that she is AWARE that the idiosyncracies she writes about are upper caste. when the five aunts are at the police station in the house that bj built, she says that the police didn't know how to deal with so many upper caste women. like yeah, there is a level of self awareness there. she tends to aestheticise the commentary she has on rich delhi, but she is AWARE of it.

in Club You to Death i think this is most obvious. that part where she talks about the school, TVVS? i s2g, that was a dig on TSRS, the shri ram moulsari school. GENUINELY, like the names of the girls being tia pia gia also??? ALSO SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK I GUESS but the way in which bambi todi did the murder???? yeah 100% i can see a girl from TSRS doing that. like the thoughtless way in which she kills the man, the number of murders she does to cover it up, failing her way upwards into accidentally almost getting away with it. hapless but cold murder. yeah checks out.

chauhan also mostly got the satirisation of the gymkhana club correctly. where she fails i think is thinking that these upper caste spaces provide any meaningful resistance to hindutva. i just DIDN'T buy that the members of her DTC club were called anti nationals in this universe?????? after being called anti national every single family gathering by vivek fufaji who is actual real life member of delhi gymkhana, i simply DO NOT BUY that these people are meant to provide a barrier to increasing saffronisation. especially because hindutva isn't always orange yogi adityanath's. its very often businessmen and vanguards of the old order wearing three piece suits.

but the biggest flaw of the book was how much it overstates the space taken up by upper caste people in the minds of those who are not as objects of envy. the victim of the case is supposed to be somewhat obsessed with the club members, extorting them but wanting to be part of them or whatever. he's framed as half a villain himself, and again - i just don't buy it. i DON'T think non upper caste people are that obsessed with being upper caste, i doubt they want to be a part of whatever we offer in a cultural sense, and its really disingenuous to make it out like that instead of pointing at the root of the problem, which is wealth inequality. someone WOULD murder if they had a single source of income and their boss cut their pay, they won't do it because they hate their boss for hosting garden parties and not inviting them. i think. i haven't been part of any murders as a victim or a perpetrator so thats the extent of my knowledge 😔😔😔

idk, maybe im completely off base. the police officer was wonderful tho, i really liked both him and his wife.

and like you said, there really isn't a romance writer like her in india. i think she generally means well, and for what its worth she comes for public demonstrations from time to time. she just gets things wrong pretty often, just the perils of being upper caste in some senses. god she's GOOD at writing romance, like she really is, she sells you on the couple.

anyway thank u for such a detailed ask!!!

#the people??? want me to answer???#hello void this is ridiculosity #i talk about books for the hundredth time like its a new thing #anuja chauhan #indian politics #south asian writing

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florrickandassociates · 3 years ago

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TGF Thoughts: 5x09-- And the end was violent...

It’s been a busy week, but I didn’t want to wait until after 5x10 aired to write this. This recap may be a bit rushed (read: I am going to make an effort to just skip over scenes I don’t care about; we’ll see how many of those there actually are). I didn’t love this episode overall, but I thought it was a huge improvement over 5x08’s parking ticket fiasco and wish it had immediately followed 5x07.

Bless these episodes for not being overly long

Oooh, the opening sequence is long and I have nothing to say about it! Thanks for making my life easier, writers!

The point of this opening is to show that there are lots of problems with the official court system—inefficiencies, inconveniences like broken elevators, overcrowding in prisons (though, uh, I don’t think the actual problem there is that there’s not room to incarcerate more people)-- that might make cops open to an alternative like Wackner’s court.

I know the cop thread kind of started with last week’s parking nonsense, but surely there was a way other than the parking nonsense to bridge the gap between 5x07’s prison system and 5x09’s focus on Wackner’s court suddenly being a replacement for criminal court, too.

(Y’all, I have SO MANY questions about how Wackner can POSSIBLY judge criminal cases, but they’re all just variations on... UH, GUYS, ISN’T THIS ILLEGAL? LIKE SUPER DUPER ILLEGAL?)

I see that there is a filming notice when the cops bring a dude into Wackner’s court, and that the notice says that by entering on the premises you consent to being on film. I do not think that this sign being displayed would hold up as evidence of anyone consenting to be sentenced to a private prison on criminal charges.

New question: How did Wackner Rules get on the air so fast? And are they just filming endless episodes in real time? They just film anyone who walks in?

I think there is supposed to be a subplot about Marissa liking fame and attention; it is almost a little too subtle to be meaningful. I see a through line from her sleeping with that editor dude last week to her smiling at the flowers in this scene to her scenes with Carmen later this episode. Unfortunately, I need a lot more for this to work.

I don’t need Marissa to be a hero who constantly does the right thing and calls out Wackner on crossing the line, but I’m really sad that this is what they’re using Marissa for when we were due for Marissa calling Wackner out (in a meaningful, lasting way) like two episodes ago. It’s felt odd to me that she just sticks around and assists Wackner and Del when they’re doing things like putting people in private prisons and comparing the show they’re making to The Apprentice. Any subtle shift in Wackner’s decisions that has signaled to me that he’s gone too far is something that I can say with certainty would signal the same to Marissa. Marissa’s outspoken and passionate, and we have seen enough reaction shots to know she knows things are going bad, fast. Am I really meant to believe that because she likes Wackner and she likes fame, she’s not going to do anything more substantial than look upset from time to time? Not only does that feel out of character, it’s also just boring.

And, it speaks to another problem I’m starting to have with the arc: they needed to get to the point faster. Once Wackner said “David Cord’s private prison,” this stopped being fun. It would’ve stopped being fun for Marissa and it stopped being fun for viewers (seriously though, the change in tone on Reddit between 5x07 and 5x08/5x09 is VERY noticeable). So why did we follow that up with some repetitive filler bullshit about parking spaces and then start getting back to the point in this episode? I’m sure they’re going somewhere big in 5x10, but you can’t follow an explosive reveal with more status quo.

(Also, lol, I think the parking space thing was meant to be a fun silly absurd little way of entering into themes about authority and Wackner trying to legitimize his court, but it was about an issue so relatable and illogical that I think it feels even harder to believe than the, like, whole concept of a secret court in a Copy Coop.)

Time for Marissa to look concerned again! She’s confused about if the case is real or not, and when Wackner says it’s real, she says it’s not for their court and it’s crossing a line. She is absolutely correct. Wackner’s like, let me know if you think I’m crossing a line after I rule, and then he makes a silly flailing gesture that Marissa can use as a signal.

I actually don’t hate that scene; it is a good scene. I am only snarking on it because it feels like familiar territory and it belonged in an earlier episode.

Am I correctly understanding that these cops wanted to be filmed bringing a man against his will to a fake court with a private prison? And that they wanted this to air on television? Okay.

I will say that I believe the motivations of everyone involved except Marissa. Wackner thinks he’s doing good for the world. Del is getting good TV (I mean, I still think that Wackner Rules title sequence is shit and the show Del seems to be making is terrible, but that’s besides the point). Cord has so much money he’s untouchable and this is fun for him. The cops just don’t want to deal with bureaucracy when it comes to someone who they basically caught in the act.

Court! Stuff! Happens!

Wackner sentences the guy to one year in “David Cord’s private prison.” Again, I know they have to say this for exposition/storytelling reasons, but I continue to find it hilarious that David Cord would want his name to be used in this way (because he like, absolutely would not want his name to be used this way).

The cops like Wackner’s verdict so they tell all their friends to also take their cases to Wackner. What could possibly go wrong!

Like, yeah, there are problems with the criminal justice system—and some of them are even the ones these cops are mad about—but this is ABSOLUTELY not the answer!!! You cannot just take people off the streets and place them in private prisons because they were forced to enter a filming zone for a TV show what the actual fuck

Love David Lee still having candy on his desk. Some things never change.

Allegra, who was welcomed by the partners of RL last week, is interviewing for a job with David Lee. I don’t understand. Doesn’t David Lee have to approve new partners at RL?

Please don’t mention real estate on Mars, Allegra. You’ve made me think of Jason and how bad season seven was.

Allegra is feeling a bit different from Elsbeth this episode, though she very much still has some Elsbeth energy. She is very strategic and blunt in a way Elsbeth isn’t, and she seems a little more focused and intense.

“I notice, in a partisan world, the person in the middle controls the agenda,” Allegra says of her alliances with both Liz and Diane. This is interesting. What are Allegra’s goals here? Just to have power? Does she have a vision for RL? Is it just a good paycheck?

(My guess is it’s about power and money for her. I don’t think she is going to be the ally Madeline wants. I don’t think anyone who voluntarily signs up to be a name partner at a firm owned by corporate overlords is a natural ally for Madeline though, tbh.)

(I really hoped this arc would explore that just a tiny bit more. The longer this conflict drags on the more convinced I become that the whole question of if it’s appropriate for Diane to lead a black firm is moot. It’s an interesting and complicated question, but with some distance from the plot, it becomes pretty clear that in this particular situation, RL isn’t a black firm. It’s a subsidiary of a large multinational corporation.)

(The show seems very aware of this and keeps having plot points like Diane using David Lee to keep her job and having Madeline call out all the awful clients they have... but it needs to go somewhere.)

(This also may be why I’m more down on the end of the season—in the middle of the season, nods at the things I’ve been thinking are appreciated references. At the end, they’re more like plotholes or reminders of the questions we should actually be spending time on.)

“Are you shitting me?” David Lee storms into the room as Liz and Diane are working. “David, we are shitting you about so many things, you’re gonna have to be more specific,” Liz responds. God, funny!Liz is maybe my favorite part of season 5?

Liz calls David out on his power, noting that he also reports to STR Laurie. So it seems like Liz and Diane can make decisions on their own, and STR Laurie can overrule them, but not stop them in advance?

This little ad about an ice cream chain is like, 15 seconds too long.

Carmen is back!!!! She’s helping Rivi sign a deal with an ice cream chain so that they’ll turn into a distributor of weed.

Why do we have to watch a SECOND commercial?

The farm wants Rivi to stop dealing other drugs if they’re going to enter into this deal.

Allegra, another character who seemingly has no qualms about representing drug kingpins, quickly impresses Rivi.

I understand why there is an interpreter for Rivi’s wife. I do not understand why the interpreter interprets conversations BETWEEN Rivi and his wife. And then he’s translating the sign language into Spanish? But also Rivi speaks fluent English in half of these scenes? WHAT is happening?

Allegra is also different from Elsbeth in that with clients, you’re NEVER going to underestimate her. You might not follow her at first, but she’ll get to the point clearly and concisely and without telling you how much she likes your lipstick.

But like at 13:44 Rivi signs something to his wife, and when she signs back the interpreter tells him what she’s saying. This is so so so clearly for the audience but I wish it had just been captions because it makes NO SENSE that the interpreter is in on this private conversation between two people who both know sign language!?

Rivi and Isabel now LOVE Allegra. Diane and Liz are like, okay!

Cop stuff happens.

Credits!!! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out indiewire’s piece on the making of the credits—it's fascinating.

Brooke directed 😀

Marissa the celebrity is signing autographs in Wackner’s court when the cops bring in some young men affiliated with Rivi.

NO, GOD NO, NOT THIS DEVIL’S ADVOCATE FUCKERY. The problem I have with the Devil’s Advocate, in addition to it being fucking annoying, is that it is also the exact opposite of what Wackner’s court is all about. Wackner is about facts and really hearing people out, and from what we’ve seen, Devil’s Advocate is about... stereotypes and pop sociology so bad it’s essentially just racism?

“These young men are the victims of a system that arbitrarily declares some drugs illegal, and others, like alcohol, not. They should be released. To hold them is to perpetuate an unfair system,” Devil’s Advocate says. Good lord, a 7th grader could write a more persuasive speech than this bullshit.

WHY IS DAVID CORD PROSECUTING THIS, WHY IS THE TRIAL ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT DRUGS HARM COMMUNITIES, WHY IS THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE SOUNDING LIKE A WHITE BOY IN AN INTRO TO SOCIOLOGY CLASS WITH HIS REFERENCES TO THE WIRE, WHY IS ANY OF THIS HAPPENING OMG MAKE IT STOP HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS BAD

Why is Marissa the court clerk being called upon to be defense, WHY IS THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE JUST SCREAMING “DEFUND THE POLICE” WHAT THE FUCK

I’m sorry, I am going to rant about this more, I truly cannot get over how fucking stupid the Devil’s Advocate is. He just starts screaming “defund the police”??? To what end?! Why does Wackner want this in his court?!

I revise what I said earlier. Devil’s Advocate isn’t just sounding a white boy in an intro to sociology class. He is sounding like a white boy who showed up to an intro to sociology class absolutely hammered.

Marissa, correctly, argues that the arrestees should be taken to Cook County. Then she hears that they work for Rivi and she knows this is bad.

Cord calling Marissa out for her firm representing Rivi: Another thing that would NEVER air on Wackner Rules.

David Lee seems surprised Liz and Diane did not get rid of Allegra. I don’t know why he is surprised, I think they made it very clear they don’t see him as an authority figure.

STR Laurie is now demanding (another) 10% in cuts to pay for Allegra. Liz says they’ll pay for her with the money that used to be for Adrian and Diane notes that Allegra has more stature than Adrian. Interesting.

David Lee then decides to be both sexist and racist for really no reason at all. Pleasant!

Showing Carmen as competent but not yet as strategic as Allegra is a really nice way to underline that Carmen is still a first year even if she is very very good.

Liz, Diane, and Allegra talk about cost cutting. Allegra is like, no, we need to spend more, which makes sense, both for the reasons she outlines and because when you bring on a powerful name partner, your need for lower level support does not DECREASE, it INCREASES.

I know this scene is meant to show Allegra thinking outside the box, but I am a bit surprised that (1) Neither Liz nor Diane push back on the 10% cut and (2) When Allegra suggests hiring back all the associates and then some, Diane seems to think Allegra doesn’t understand they’re talking about cuts? Like, obviously she knows the topic of conversation, Diane.

“We don’t run our own business. We work for a global conglomerate,” Liz notes. Yup. Right point, wrong context lol.

Diane and Liz are just too smart and strategic to have to be told ALL of this by Allegra... especially Diane, who is not only smart but also used to dealing with management.

And worse... Liz and Diane think they made a mistake with Allegra because of this? I mean, I guess if your goal is to permanently work for a big corporation that will slowly chip away at your budget because they can and to never make any waves because that might disrupt the status quo, sure, Allegra isn’t who you want! But do Diane and Liz REALLY want the status quo?

I hope they find a way out from under STR Laurie next year, as much as I hate the firm switching, because it’s just such a boring dead-end when Diane and Liz don’t actually have power or control.

OOOH I like Del asking Liz what SHE wants wrt the whole Diane situation. She says she wants to “stop fighting” and for Diane to “stop using her racist clients to keep her job” and for “the firm to be led in the right way by the right people.” So sounds like she wants to work with Diane, then? That last one is as vague as can be, but I think we can infer at this point that Liz is more concerned with stability and a work environment she likes than idealism.

God, Liz and Alicia would’ve gotten along so well as adults lmao.

Del tells Liz that “women at work always want to be thought of as nice. Women always want consensus. But you know what, baby, sometimes you just gotta say, ‘Fuck you, and you and you and you. Alright? This is my business and it’s my decision.’” I see where he’s coming from (even though this sounds like something my nemesis the Devil’s Advocate would say) but I am not sure I agree that’s Liz’s problem here.

Actually, maybe I do agree with Del. I think Del’s saying to say FU to Diane, but what Liz clearly actually wants to do is say FU to Madeline lol

Liz asks him to change the topic. Where ARE they? Is this a restaurant or an incredibly nice backyard?

Del changes the topic to how his boss wants him to come back to LA, but he wants to get Liz’s thoughts on their future. Liz asks him to start since men are better at saying what they mean (ha, love her giving him shit for that).

He basically tells her he wants to stay and she says he should stay. Aww.

Rivi’s house is... certainly something.

Isabel is concerned because three of their boys have disappeared. She, naturally, suspects they’re at police blacksites.

I’m sorry, did Marissa not elevate the Rivi case in Wackner’s court to the partners’ attention!? Rivi blames the dairy company, even though this does not... make that much sense?

This escalates into the murder of cows?? What... the fuck.

Now Marissa finds Carmen and loops her in! But only now that she knows Rivi’s looking for them and Rivi’s about to, like, kill Christian Borle’s character whose name I’ve forgotten.

Marissa’s position on this is that Wackner will just let the boys go so Rivi shouldn’t know about any of this. Rivi would just kill Wackner. And Carmen is like, Rivi will just kill Christian Borle if we don’t tell. Fair point.

Carmen, being an actual adult (sorry Marissa, I usually love you), is willing to admit when she’s in over her head, so she walks off to go get Liz for help. Yay!

Rivi is not impressed with Wackner’s court or Marissa. He and Isabel want either Carmen or Allegra. Liz says Carmen will do it, I think meaning Marissa will do it but Carmen will be client facing.

I love it when we get to see Liz just be super competent. It’s not a rare occurrence, but it’s just very, very clear in this scene how much better Liz is at handling this situation than Carmen or Marissa would’ve been and I like it when the show makes time to emphasize that even on a show full of hypercompetent people, some people are more skilled than others at handling some situations.

Liz, Diane, and David meet with STRL over Zoom. Allegra somehow pops up on the meeting but also joins as a cat because you know what the cat lawyer on Zoom needed? To be parodied on TGF. Ugh

OH MY GOD I DIDN’T PUT THIS TOGETHER SOONER BUT IT’S A CAT LAWYER YOU GUYS. This will mean NOTHING to any of you because it’s about an inside joke I have with the friend who got me into TGW, but indulge me in a little nostalgia here, ‘kay? So in like 2012, there was a trend on Tumblr where everyone would photoshop cat ears onto their favorite TV characters and my friend and I were like, why would I want to put cat ears on my favorite character, idgi. So then we started photoshopping cat ears on to the most unlikely characters and we landed on David Lee. We referred to David Lee as a cat for a really long time. Like, if we were to talk about David Lee today we would probably still call him Cat! David Lee.

Allegra starts trying to work her magic on STRL. Diane literally runs down the stairs to try to stop Allegra. I am not sure why Diane and Liz are so anti-Allegra during this conversation which is only happening so they can have the funds to keep her on board!

Allegra tries to share a burrito with Diane and Liz and says she stands by her strategy. Liz finally says she’s not sure this will work. Allegra is understanding.

I respect that. Allegra may as well go all out and see if she can make this workable.

(That said, this is pretty much the opposite of her whole staying neutral thing from earlier!)

No one is in the audience at Wackner’s court when Carmen shows up, yet the musician who I like only very slightly more than Devil’s Advocate is still on call. Just STOP.

Overall I’ve liked the Wackner arc and I’m excited to see it wrap up tomorrow, but lemme tell you: it had better wrap up tomorrow. I am NOT open to dealing with this for another season.

The musician takes orders from Cord? The cameras are rolling? Rivi is there? WHAT?

I know that NONE of this makes sense, but some things make exceptionally little sense and I just can’t.

Guys, remember the parking tickets?!

Oh, excuse me, the ice cream company is actually a yogurt company.

Rivi notes that there are three boys missing. Wackner only has two.

I am a little surprised Rivi has managed to be successful with that temper. Idk what skill set you need to be a top drug dealer, but he attacks people like three times an episode and that seems like a really good way to not build trust and to also get yourself killed?

Liz and Del talk about what happened in Wackner’s court. Liz asks how they deal with liability. I guess she isn’t Del’s lawyer, then. Del says they have releases and people want to be on TV. Liz says what I’ve been saying, which is that Rivi doesn’t want to be on TV. Del says there are ways around that and references the show Cops as though that’s enough to make this question go completely away.

Liz references The Apprentice, for those of us who didn’t catch the reference last week and/or for those of us (me!) who wanted to pretend that Wackner wasn’t somehow a commentary on Trump and star power. Ugh.

(I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad point, I just am not sure that I think it is the most interesting point about the Wackner plot.)

“Remember how we all watched and laughed and thought it was funny when they fired people?” Liz says. “We? No, no. Hmm, you... you never watched The Apprentice,” Del responds. She did not. Hahahahahaha I love this exchange. It feels very real.

Liz seems less concerned with Wackner and more concerned with Del’s eagerness to turn Wackner into a larger than life personality with a devoted following, which, yes, thank you, Liz, this is actually a much better and more interesting point!

“That came out of nowhere,” Del says. “No, it didn’t,” Liz responds, correctly.

Del talks about how Liz represents Wackner, along with murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and yet she wants to draw the line at reality show producer who makes people famous? He’s got a point, even if I’d argue that choosing a romantic partner is not the same as running a business.

“Would your firm turn down [the producer of The Apprentice] if he wanted to join the roster?” Del asks. “Good point,” Liz sighs, resigned. She’s not happy he’s right, but she knows he is.

Sigh. I already said some variation of this, but this season seems to have all the right ideas floating around, it’s just choosing the wrong ones to explore deeply and the wrong moments to mention other ones. Things like Liz worrying that someone she’s considering starting a serious relationship with might have some personality traits she doesn’t love can be done through throwaway lines that quickly come back to being about work/plot (that’s what happens in this scene, basically) and I love that. But the existence of STRL and the influence it has over whether or not RL is a black firm at some point can’t be dealt with through references. Wackner becoming increasingly off the rails can’t be turned down to a simmer after reaching boiling point. RL’s unsavory client’s can’t just come up in moments like this; they have to play into a central conflict.

Like, what good is it to constantly remind the audience that RL represents a ton of “bad guys” if you’re not going to go anywhere with that other than making Liz and Diane occasionally be like, “hmm, good point.” when called out on their client list? This could be a really, really good piece of a larger puzzle about the culture at RL, and instead it feels like it’s a card they play whenever they need some moral complexity. Just... go somewhere with it, please. Either stop pretending that RL are the good guys or have them seriously deal with their client list.

Anyway, then Liz and Del talk about his possible LA move. It’s kinda inconclusive; they talk about work just being work.

Outside of court, Carmen doesn’t believe that Wackner only has two of Rivi’s boys.

“I don’t know why you’ve been wasting so much time with this joke court, because it’s not gonna magically turn you into a real lawyer, Marissa,” Carmen lashes out. Oooo. Now this is interesting, can I have an extended version of this scene and also all the other Carmen/Marissa scenes that we should’ve gotten in the episodes Carmen was barely in?

I understand Carmen’s frustration, especially since I imagine she worked pretty damn hard to get into/get through law school. And, as fun and smart as Marissa can be, she does get bored easily, try to skip over the dull moments, and moves on and still always lands on her feet. I can see how that would rub Carmen the wrong way, especially during a stressful moment.

Carmen isn’t exactly a rule follower, but I’d say she is someone who is very conscious of the rules, and, I think someone who values structure more than she lets on (I especially see this in her decision to stay at RL instead of work independently/with Lester).

Marissa calls Jay for help!

Allegra talks to David Lee, with Liz and Diane in the background. Allegra makes her argument to David Lee again and it goes over well. I think the writers think there’s more suspense in this plot than there is; it’s pretty obvious from the start that Allegra is correct and Diane and Liz are only correct if the goal is to avoid all conflict.

What is David Lee’s role at STRL? Is there anything else in that office besides awful HR and RL? He talks like he is more RL than STRL and that doesn’t track with what we saw of STRL last year.

Marissa spots a flyer that leads her and Jay to where the missing boy is: another fake court. This was inevitable—I think one of the very first things I said was that Wackner himself seemed fine and decent, but what happens when someone else decides they, too, want to be a judge because they said so—and I’m glad to see the writers go this direction. I actually think this would’ve been an effective build after 5x07 and would’ve kept turning up the tension, so again, most of my issues with this arc lie in 5x08’s momentum killing bullshit. It’s hard to get back into this plot when they lost me last week.

Shocker: Wackner having a reality show inspired more copy cats who take cues from the show and think Marissa is a celebrity.

Vinetta, the judge of the second court, puts people in “time-out” (read: imprisons them in her basement) and... yeah, I don’t care how kind she is to them, this is not okay! The solution to the prison system is not for people to turn their basements into prisons!

I don’t know that the writers are TRYING to comment on this here, but there is definitely something to be said about communities that the legal system repeatedly fails finding alternative measures of justice.

Vinetta is nice and seems reasonable as a judge, but she also has a basement prison her judgments are influenced by her religious believes so, uh, yeah, not good!!!

Wackner, however, thinks Vinetta’s court is GREAT! He wants to go see it, because “it’s finally happening.” What’s happening? “Justice,” he says. Uhhhhhhh, no. This is just so dangerous, even if everyone involved so far seems to mean well.

I’m very curious to see how this little thought experiment wraps up (again: I say wraps up because I cannot deal with the thought of this being more than a one season arc).

One thing I love about the Wackner arc—my 5x08 issues aside—is its slow burn. The writers did a phenomenal job of getting me to take Wackner seriously at first, then slowly started to take all the things that seemed great and reasonable about Wackner’s court to their extremes (while still making his judgment on any individual topic* sound). It’s a very fun and entertaining thought experiment, and I think that’s why this arc has largely succeeded for me, even though it’s so far removed from reality.

* Exceptions to this include policing, prisons, cancel culture, and, of course, parking spaces.

#the good fight #tgf thoughts

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bettydice · 4 years ago

Text

I didn’t expect you to be lonely (too)

Xicheng, Modern AU, JC&WWX reconciliation, E-Rated

[Read on AO3]

Chapter 6

Jiang Cheng frowns at the sky, blinking furiously as the rain hits his face. Maybe if he scowls hard enough, the rain will retreat like everyone else that gets close to him.

Next to him, Lan Xichen politely clears his throat. “I have an umbrella. In my bag.”

That works, too.

Since Lan Xichen is taller than him, it’s a bit awkward to hold the umbrella over both of them while still holding on to his hand. But they manage to cross the road and enter the park without getting soaked. There’s a little pavillon not too far from the park entrance and they sit down on the bench.

Once they’re settled down, Lan Xichen closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths and he tightens his grip on Jiang Cheng’s hand, seemingly unconsciously. Jiang Cheng notices with relief the colour returning to his face.

“I’m sorry.” Lan Xichen eventually says.

Jiang Cheng’s heart painfully tightens, when he hears how miserable Lan Xichen sounds. “No apology needed. Do you feel better now?”

“I’m fine. Well… better.” Lan Xichen’s smile is still tense around the edges. He averts his eyes. Jiang Cheng waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.

“You should have told me,” Jiang Cheng blurts out, much more gruffly sounding than intended. Fuck. “I mean… Tell me, next time. It’s okay.”

“Mhm?”

“When you get overwhelmed. Tell me, when you need to leave or something. Better, tell me where you’d feel comfortable going. Only if you want to do this again, of course. I don’t want to assume…” Jiang Cheng looks down at their linked hands, then back at Lan Xichen, who finally meets his eyes again.

“Of course I want to.” Lan Xichen opens his mouth to say something,closes it again, then repeats the process until he finally sighs, incredibly frustrated. “I think… we should talk. About… what just happened.”

“Is it… uhm… ago-… some kind of phobia? Or social anxiety, something like that?” Jiang Cheng squeezes his hand, hoping it’ll assure Lan Xichen it’s fine to tell him these things. He’s worried his face and voice aren’t reassuring enough.

“Ah… well, the latter, I suppose. I’ve been doing much better recently. I thought… if I just wanted it enough, it would be fine.” Lan Xichen lowers his gaze again and adds quietly, a little embarrassed: “My therapist warned me this morning, about putting too much pressure on myself. But I really just wanted… a normal date with you. Without all of… all of this.” He holds out his free hand, which is still shaking a little, then balls it into a fist.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to say to that. He keeps holding Lan Xichen’s hand, even though it doesn’t feel like enough. He should say something. Or… or hug him. Or would that be too much?

“I’d hoped this kind of talk could wait… but I suppose there is no upside to waiting.” Lan Xichen sighs again, defeated, then turns his head so he can look at Jiang Cheng. “My last - only - relationship ended badly. Painfully. He was… He only showed me a carefully constructed version of himself and… I’ll spare us both the agony of going into details, but after it ended, I… well, I didn’t really leave my apartment anymore.” He studies Jiang Cheng’s face for a second and Jiang Cheng is terrified. What if he’s reacting wrong? What if he sees something hurtful? But Lan Xichen laughs. Weakly, but he laughs. “And I bought a lot of plants.”

“Well, they’re very pretty plants.” That’s what he says? After Lan Xichen has bared his heart, this is what Jiang Cheng has to say? He’s such a fucking idiot!

“Thank you.” Lan Xichen’s smile is genuine. He really is… too good. Then his face turns serious again, he levels Jiang Cheng with an intense look. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever be… interested in... I‘m not sure that’s the right word. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say: I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to risk getting hurt? I didn’t trust my ability to read people correctly. Which is why it took me by surprise, to have such feelings for you. I think a part of me thought I would not be able to…“

Fuck. He wants to hug him. Do anything that would chase away the sadness in his eyes. Beat up his ex-boyfriend, definitely. He needs to say something, though. Lan Xichen seems to be anxiously waiting for his reaction and…

Only one thought crystallizes itself in his brain and before he knows it, or can think better of it, it has left his mouth. “You shouldn’t do this with me.”

Lan Xichen looks hurt. But he catches himself instantly, and gives Jiang Cheng a weak smile. “Oh. Of course, it’s too much, it’s too… I’m sorry.”

Fuck! He’s such a fucking idiot! Lan Xichen lets go of Jiang Cheng’s hand, but before he can take it back, Jiang Cheng grasps it again, with both of his hands this time. “No! Fuck, that’s not what I meant! It’s not too much! You’re not… it’s that I’m not enough.”

Lan Xichen opens his mouth to say something and Jiang Cheng keeps talking, desperate to explain, to make Lan Xichen understand that Jiang Cheng is the fucked up one. The one who will inevitably fuck this up, if they were to keep doing this. “I always say the wrong thing, as you can clearly see. I say things I don’t actually mean, things that hurt other people. And I’m so bad at dating, I never even made it into a relationship. I… I had a breakdown on your massage table, because I realised I have no meaningful human interactions anymore other than with people who have to, because they’re related to me, and even then… You should do this with someone who is kind and who is not…” Not me.

“But I like you.”

The words are sweet and simple. But they have the same effect on Jiang Cheng as Lan Xichen’s gentle massage: He wants to cry. ”But.. It’s… it’s only a matter of time before I fuck it up! Before I say something to hurt you.”

“You’ve only been kind to me.”

"I… What?" Jiang Cheng is not kind. He’s not nice to people. Only in secret, only under four layers of anger and annoyance. Why would Lan Xichen… Jiang Cheng is not kind.

Lan Xichen simply laughs instead of trying to explain why he would say such things. “So, I would like to keep ‘doing’ this. With you.”

Jiang Cheng wants to protest again, feels like he should, but Lan Xichen quickly keeps talking before he can do so. "However, I don't think I'm good with the uncertainty and… Hm… casualness that comes with dating. Which is probably why it got to me so much today. Not so much the environment, it was a lovely cafe. But I put pressure on myself to not show certain parts. To keep them hidden until... some arbitrary later part of the relationship, I suppose. Dating, to me, involves projecting a very specific version of yourself that doesn’t feel truthful or like it won’t withstand further scrutiny. It’s very… exhausting.”

“Honestly… I fucking hate dating.” Jiang Cheng mentally kicks himself. What a fucking excellent thing to say while on a fucking date. But Lan Xichen only looks amused.

“That’s a relief.” “Is it?”

“As I said - I like you. I like spending time with you. I like sharing dinner with you.”

“I also like that.”

“Holding hands is also nice.”

Jiang Cheng looks down at their hands. He feels flushed and a little shaky - he’s really not used to being so vulnerable, but it’s been like this with Lan Xichen from the beginning, hasn’t it? He didn’t even get a chance to pretend otherwise after all those tears he shed. There’s no point in taking it all back now. Not when Lan Xichen is being so open in return. So he intertwines their fingers, then lifts his eyes again. “I like it, too.”

Lan Xichen’s smile is small, unassuming, but it lights up his eyes and warms Jiang Cheng’s heart. Jiang Cheng… would like to be able to make sure this man can keep smiling like this.

“So… can we just continue doing that?”

“Holding hands?”

“That, too. I meant… having dinner, spending time together… And…” A hint of nervousness flashes across Lan Xichen’s face again. It sparks nervousness in JC, too. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself and rushing into anything is the last thing I want to do… but I don’t do well with uncertainty. So… I’m sorry, this is probably too much, too soon, but… I want to do this slowly, but I don’t want to do it casually.”

“Oh. Okay.” Lan Xichen still looks worried, so Jiang Cheng rushes to clarify: “I’m okay with that. I’d also like that. To do this. Slowly. But… whatever the opposite of casual is.”

Jiang Cheng cringes slightly, but Lan Xichen laughs, relief softening his features. Then Lan Xichen lets out a deep breath, relaxes his shoulders and smiles brightly. “I feel much better now.” He pulls Jiang Cheng’s hand over, so it’s resting in his lap.

Lan Xichen turns his head slightly and their eyes meet. Jiang Cheng suddenly has trouble breathing. It’s not just because Lan Xichen is incredibly attractive. It’s not just because of Lan Xichen’s beautiful smile or because he’s holding his hand and Jiang Cheng’s hand is touching his thigh. It’s because of those things but… Lan Xichen looks at him. He sees him and still wants to… It’s overwhelming. A part of Jiang Cheng wants to get up and run away, which is clearly not an option, so he does the next best thing he can think of to disrupt the terrifying intimacy of the moment.

“Your muffin.” Jiang Cheng gets the muffin from Lan Xichen’s bag and offers it to him. Lan Xichen tilts his head, slightly confused, but takes it with an appreciative hum.

They sit like this for a while, even after Lan Xichen finished eating his muffin, just enjoying their little dry space while the rain still comes pouring down around them. Jiang Cheng has calmed down, too. Now, he’s just… content to be here. After a while, he begins feeling chilly - he really needs to get out his winter coat soon - but he doesn’t want to disturb the peacefulness. His hand is warm and safe with Lan Xichen, that’s enough.

But he can’t suppress a shiver, when a cold breeze hits his neck. Lan Xichen turns his head and, before Jiang Cheng can laugh it off or something, he lets go of Jiang Cheng’s hand, unwraps his scarf and, ignoring Jiang Cheng’s protesting noises, gently wraps it around his neck.

He wants to protest more, return the scarf, but Lan Xichen’s warm gaze lingers on his face and his hands linger on the scarf, knuckles resting on Jiang Cheng’s chest. He can’t think of anything to say. Lan Xichen doesn’t say anything either, but he strokes his cheek, the other hand still holding on to the scarf.

Jiang Cheng would like to… He’d really like to…

Lan Xichen runs his thumb over Jiang Cheng’s lower lip. Jiang Cheng opens his lips, leans a little closer, as if under a spell. He wants to…

With a soft gasp Lan Xichen widens his eyes, then pulls back his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t-”

“No, please…” Jiang Cheng - boldly, foolishly - wraps his fingers around Lan Xichen’s hand, draws him back towards him. He wants…

Lan Xichen follows his pull until their linked hands are trapped between their chests. He looks down at him, looks at his lips. He smiles. Jiang Cheng closes his eyes, leans even closer, yearns to be enveloped by this warmth.

Lan Xichen kisses him carefully and gently. His lips are as soft as his smile, and he lets go of the scarf to tenderly cradle the back of Jiang Cheng’s head.

Somehow, it’s the easiest thing in the world to just… Let go. To let himself be kissed. To return the kiss, return the gentleness.

When they part, Lan Xichen laughs softly, cheeks flushed. But before Jiang Cheng gets distracted by his beauty, Lan Xichen hugs him. Wraps his arms around him and holds him close. Hides his head in the crook of Jiang Cheng’s neck.

“Are you okay?” Jiang Cheng hesitantly strokes Lan Xichen’s back, worried that maybe the kiss was too much for him, or it made him sad or-

“Mhm. I’m just… grateful.” Lan Xichen lifts his head to press a kiss to Jiang Cheng’s cheek, tightens his arms around him, before letting go and sitting upright again.

Jiang Cheng slowly lowers his arms, a little stunned by those words. “Why? There’s no need... “

“Because kissing you was easy.” Lan Xichen’s mouth twists, as though he’s regretting his words. “I’m sorry, that probably sounds - “

“No, I understand exactly what you mean.” Jiang Cheng understands it too well and it pains him that Lan Xichen feels this way. But he’s also happy, because maybe he can now understand a little why Lan Xichen likes him, why he feels comfortable around him. “I understand it well. I’m also grateful.”

“Ah… I’m glad.” Lan Xichen takes his hand again and Jiang Cheng immediately intertwines their fingers. Lan Xichen’s warm gaze rests gently on his face and playful smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Can I kiss you again?”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t bother with words, he simply pulls him closer until their lips meet again.

This kiss, as well as the ones that follow, are just as easy.

#The Untamed #mdzs #Xicheng #cql #Jiang Cheng #Lan Xichen #jiang cheng/lan xichen #modern au #To Meet You verse #betty drabbles

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hunnybadgerv · 4 years ago

Note

Hello, dear! You've been visited by the random character question fairy! :D ~☆

Does your character's name have any meaning? Is there a reason why they were named this? How much significance does your character's name have to them?

Nyx Shepard: Nyx’s first name means night and her middle name means star. It’s meant to signify that she was born in space rather than on any planet or space station. In her father’s mind, it was a clear sign that she was meant for the stars. It’s meant to be prophetic in its own way. But honestly, when I saw the name Nyx I just really liked it.

Detective Bishop Ripley Vasquez: Bishop got that first name for two reasons, her father was called Rook, rather than his given name. And her father won a nigh impossible bet with his wife and named them after characters in his favorite film, Aliens--the android Bishop and Ellen Ripley.

Leah Rook: I cannot remember exactly why I named her Leah, but the name was chosen specifically for her in light of both her father’s and her brothers’ names. There was a theme happening that I cannot recall off the top of my head when I named them all, but they are all related (and I think they were all biblical names with certain sound qualities, if I recall correctly). Otherwise, I would not have named her Leah given that I already have a Shepard by the same name. I try to avoid repeating names for characters.

“Furia” Soledad Amaranta Guerrero: Both her nickname and her given name have significant meaning. Obviously, Furia refers to the idea of the Greek Furies who would avenge injustices. Even from a young age, she’d stand up for other people, which is how she ends up viewing her place in the Saints as kind of a Robin Hood move against the other gangs in the city to make her part of the city safe for the people there. Her given name means alone, which is something she actually fears. She fears losing ... everyone. And too often that particular fear comes true. She sees her given name as a marker of her fate; that no matter what she does, she’s destined to end up alone.

Aderyn Hawke: Aderyn means little bird. It might be a specific bird, but I cannot recall at that top of my head. But her dad calls her little bird, and he intentionally chose that name in like of their family name.

Feign Shepard: She gave herself this name. She knows her given first name (which is significant and specifically chosen to give a hint about her character), but when she joined the Alliance military, she kept the name that she gave herself on the streets. Feign--because she and everything about her is a construction mean to secure her basic survival. The name reminds her that that’s all she is. Her past is this curious nothing, and she is who she makes herself, and few people will see her the way she sees herself. So, she tends to only show people what she thinks they want to see ... if they are lucky. Or they just see her harsh and venomous side.

***

To be patently clear, almost all my characters names are purposefully chosen. Though not all of them have some deep meaning, they all have some kind of meaning. I’m usually aware, at the time of naming, of what a character’s name means. If I do not feel that it suits them, then I cannot use it. I will change it. Of course, as you can see above, some of them are far more intentional and meaningful than others.

#Naming #Character Names #Nyx Shepard #Detective Bishop Ripley Vasquez #Leah Rook #Soledad Amaranta Guerrero #Aderyn Hawke #Feign Shepard #Character Questions #Thanks for the ask #I really appreciate it #more than you know #I love having the chance to talk about my preciouses #random-oc-questions-fairy

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littlechisa · 4 years ago

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Mochizuki Jun signing session (Japan Expo 2017, Paris)

EDIT 2020.06 ......I wrote this post a few years ago and never posted it...... Mochizuki Jun was one of Japan Expo 2017′s guests. It was actually her 2nd time attending the convention! Through PH and VnC’s french publisher Ki-oon, she had a few first-come first-serve signing sessions (signature only), and also drew for a few people who got to meet her thanks to a lottery (shikishi).

I am incredibly grateful I was able to attend one of the signing sessions (signature), so I wanted to write down this short moment so that I can come back to it! It’s a very important and special memory to me, after all! What follows are only my personal feelings about the event.

After a few years of going to conventions, something that struck to me about her signing sessions was that it was fairly private. The meeting space was hidden behind a closed panel and a curtain. While people who were in the line were waiting (from 9am, the opening of the con, to noon, the actual signing), I remember we received from the staff a sheet of paper with advice and info on how the meeting would go (eg. no pictures, if you have a present, please hand it over with your two hands...).

I was shaking a lot during this time; I was really really happy I’d made it to the queue, but also really just as nervous. Pandora Hearts meant, and still does, so much to me, and I was hoping I would be able to convey this...! I was also really happy I got to chat with others fans during that time. There was a fan from abroad who didn’t understand french, yet came to Paris and bought the first VnC volumes (more than one set)...!

My decision to go to Japan Expo was on very short notice, but I had a small present prepared! It was a small fanbook that contained both traditional and digital drawings I did the days before the convention, as well as a short comic (my first!). I also had some candies and chocolate from my country.

The memories are a little fuzzy, but I think there were a few people sitting at the table when I got past the curtain. Mochizuki was wearing a very beautiful kimono and hairpin. There was also an interpreter next to her, and if I recall correctly, the other people were her assistants...!

I handed her my small book, and she asked me if it was okay to look through it!

About the desserts page, she laughed when she saw the tarte tatin and pointed it out to her interpreter/assistants. She said “It looks good!” Then she pointed another one on the page and asked in french “...Pain au chocolat?” I was so happy she recognized it LOL

They let out a little “aaah...” when they flipped to the sketches page. Then they got to the beginning of the comic and I apologized for writing the dialogues in French. I only had done 1-2 years of japanese studies then, so I was really afraid to mess it up. (I actually did make a small enveloppe with a letter in (poor) japanese that I glued behind the Oz & Echo double spread!)

Mochizuki pointed at the pages and told her interpreter: “訳して、訳して、後で訳して！” (“Please translate it later!”) She really did look very excited when looking at the pages, I was so happy...oh my god...;____; (When she first saw the pages, she also turned to the interpreter and asked something along the lines of “Does she draw comics?” and I was like “Uhhh...no?”)

(I might post this little comic someday laughs)

I was able to tell her a few words in Japanese at the end as well, how much PH meant to me and how I’d like to, someday, create a story that could be as meaningful as hers. She immediately replied with “ぜひ！！” (Please do!) ;v;

Finally, she offered a handshake and I left. I kind of turned back at the last minute and said “Thank you so much!” again, and she showed the book and said “大切にします！” (“I’ll treasure it!”)

I had the chance to chat with a few fans that were in the queue with me, so I waited a little for them at the exit, and meanwhile. I totally started sobbing right there LOL it was really tough to get a place to the signing (they were incredibly limited and got filled in less than 2min after the doors opened! I ran and missed it...), so the events kind of got to me and I was a little emotional for a while.

It couldn’t have happened without the kind friend who gave me that chance, and I thought again about how kind Mochijun’s interpreter and the staff was and how apologetic they really seemed when many people and me failed to get into the queue for the first sessions. I thought about how nice it was for Ki-oon to make it a first-come, first-serve system so that everyone could have a chance. The fact that it was real, that it happened and I got to express even, a little bit of my feelings in person...I was so grateful and happy, I couldn’t stop the tears---

It might only have been a few minutes, but this meeting still gives me a lot of courage to this day. I want to keep trying my best...!

Thank you so much for reading!

Bonus 1: Here is a picture of the fans’ presents from Gangan’s twitter account! (My book is on the very right next to the red box!)

Bonus 2: Some pictures from the Vanitas exhibition on Ki-oon’s booth!

Bonus 3: TT_TT)b (Mochijun’s chara is holding my little book!)

#mochizuki jun #Pandora Hearts #vanitas no carte #personal

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benlaksana · 5 years ago

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Coming Home

If there is one constant emotional response that my mind and body has conjured since coming back to Indonesia, it is anger. The reasons are plentiful. Chronic social and economic injustice, growing government oppression, sheer incompetency of many government officials, religious conservatism, as the proverbial saying goes, the list goes on.

And now with the coronavirus devastatingly consuming Indonesia and my government’s response has not only been weak and slow, lacking in coordination, but also simply at many times blatantly incompetent, anti-science and anti-expertise, resulting in the deaths of many including doctors and nurses, and with no full lockdowns initiated, no mass testing, just some half-baked government encouragement to physical distancing and good hygiene. I’ve observed that this time not only am I consumed with fervent anger but at many times deep sadness and crippling fear. An unholy trinity. In the name of anger, sadness and lingering fear.

Here’s some trivia and personal info for you folks. Did you know that Tuberculosis (TB) usually leaves scars on lungs it once infected and even though it’s been decades since my bout with TB, my lungs today, as you might expect, are not in tip-top shape. So that’s my pre-existing condition that at times, at many times, throws me into a panic and into a sudden cleaning spree. Wipe here, wipe there, disinfect door knobs, drowning recently handled money in warm soapy water. Irrational fear? On the contrary my beautiful friends. Indonesia has one of the highest Covid death rates in the world and with Covid patients on the rise but not at its peak, our already sparse healthcare system is already showing its cracks. Again, just to remind you, Indonesia is not even near the peak and we’re not even doing massive tests but everything is already hanging on a thread. Adding to this misery, the lack of some kind of social safety net has this climate of dread creeping up on me, this I acknowledge and I am trying as much as I can in keeping this at bay. Dread induced paralysis is not something I can to endure at the moment.

That’s some personal (slightly existential) rant right there.

But I understand that I’m lucky and painfully privileged to be able to work from home unlike so many others. So since at this moment my productivity rate is reaching zero and I’m basically pushing away work and other responsibilities as much as I can (which will probably come back and haunt me soon), let me just first reflect on life at the moment, updates on other things aside from this feeling of impending doom.

I’ve realized that I do not update this blog of mine as often as I would like to. Desires are kept as desires, and slowly wither away as desires. Yet as 2020 dawned on me and ages with uncertainty I spent my time re-reading old books that I have read many years ago and some of my old blog posts as well. Beginning with my first blog post which is now the ripe old age of 10 years old. One decade old. With the breakneck speed of change of today’s internet, 10 years is perhaps close to immortality in internet years. That being said, I still use Hotmail for my main email which I’ve had since 1998, the year I was introduced to the internet...and politics.

It was 13th of May 1998. I was at home with my dad as schools and offices were closed. The day before that soldiers opened fire at a student demonstration in front the University of Trisakti, Jakarta. Four students were killed, riots and demonstrations were happening everywhere the following day. So most people decided to stay home.

I remember my dad narrating the 1998 May protests as we attentively watched the event unravel through our old school CRT TV. My dad was thankfully percipient enough to refuse to go to his office during that week, but he did have friends in high places so it wasn’t much of a surprise if he received some kind of insiders info. I was about 12 years young at that time, on the cusp of teen hood. Puberty was on my mind, but that moment of watching a historical event unfold (which of course I did not understand it as something momentous) with my dad explaining with excitement of what was going on, even though I sure as hell did not understand the most of it, was illuminating. A father and son bonding session as result of reformasi. That sounded like a thesis topic: Family Relations and Social Change: Exploring Familial Relations through the 1998 Reformasi. (Hah!)

It did however shape my values and ideas that I still hold on to this day not only on politics per se but what I wanted or expected from this thing called the nation-state. I have to say that the May 1998 riots and demonstrations, the visualization of the riots on TV and my dad narrating in the background constantly interrupting the reporter, was the reason why I remember that day so clear. It made an indelible mark on me. I can’t even begin to imagine the impact to those who were physically effected by the riots, houses and stores burned down, people being raped and/or murdered..

About a week after the riots, on the 21st of May 1998 President Soeharto resigned after 32 years in power. I saw my dad cheering, again not fully grasping the reasons why, although he did try his best to explain. But it piqued my interest in politics, and being told that this this new thing (really new for me at that time) called the internet had much to offer about what was happening then, a few weeks after that, using my mom’s 36.6 kbps dial-up modem that I was awfully proud of, I registered for a shiny new Hotmail account. In hopes of joining mailing lists.

Wasantara-net, owned by Indonesia’s postal service, was my family’s choice for the internet service provider. I hated them as they were first-class in unreliability, but they were the only providers to be able to connect my house, on the edge of bogor, to the world wide web. My first few emails, if again I remember correctly, were chain mails about the May riots that I subscribed through questionable mIRC chats. Chats that start with A/S/L, age, sex, location, and either ends in hook ups, or being involved in something you’re too young or ignorant to fully understand.

Being young(er) and wanting to be part of something important is such a motivating factor in us actually doing and becoming something. With Carl Gustav Jung in mind, being young or old, we are but “modern man in search of meaning” and being part of something greater than ourselves does still give me meaning.

Fast forward a few decades, I’ve noticed that you get a raised eyebrow when you tell people that you’ve been using the same email for more than 20 years now, and you get double raised eyebrows and an instance of wincing, once they find out that said email is a Hotmail account. I am coming up with less and less excuses of why I haven’t migrated fully to other emails. But hey, you know what they say, habit brings comfort, repetition brings comfort, knowledge that arises from experience, from personal history, brings comfort. Although not always, the past brings comfort, while the future which is riddled with unpredictability is lamented and brings worry if not angst. Comfort though, I have come to understand, brings laziness and at many times dullness.

It is however always interesting looking at one’s own past and how it is intertwined with the past of others. I think I’ve written about this a number of times, and most of my writings are born from the act of retrospect. I often assume that I would not be able to talk about my future if I never look at my past, but what also happens is that I also end up talking more about my past or at the very most my present rather than talking/thinking about my future. Is that bad? Is that good? Am I shying away from discussions about my particular future? Maybe, I don’t have an answer to that now. But I know it’s there, tucked away in the back of my mind so I’ll probably talk more about that someday. And with Covid-19 destroying all of my plans in the near future that someday will probably come sooner.

Coming home to Indonesia, after a number of years abroad, I have also come to realize, sadly, that many of my social activities here in this space which I reluctantly call home, are more often than not, performative acts that I do not like performing for. I am basically faking it and I am doing this by fulfilling a cultural and social role that I necessarily do not have strong feelings for, or even just feelings for, but I have adapted myself into it. Somewhat. The reason why I do this is simply out of respect of others. Things that do not give meaning for me, has often been deeply meaningful for others and expressing it verbally does not bode well for maintaining relationships. I am happy to say that I have Rara to remind me when I have become too logical (I am happy to say that I have Rara to remind about many things in life) in understanding the meaning of culture for many. But it is, simply put, not without its personal struggles.

Being a son, being a son-in-law, being a younger and the youngest child in a family oriented, confuscianist-style, hierarchical, the-individual-is-constantly-attached-to-the-social kind of society. And then being a husband in a patriarchal society, where I am expected to fill a kind of leadership role that tires, bores and disinterests me.

(On a side note: for some reason, I have often come across this odd discussion of alpha/beta male/female amongst my peers here. Which I find interesting as it denotes a fixation to hierarchy and also the assumption of fixed temperaments/personalities of an individual across space and time. Are they basically saying that agency of one’s self perceived to be rarely possible? Is change and adapting to a situation impossible? )

Then without doubt as a citizen of a nation that I superficially identify with. How can I ever identify with a nation that happily and openly oppresses others for the sake of unity? And not only rarely admits it but even more rare tries to amend it. It is a simple rhetorical question.

In sum, I have to be honest with myself here, coming back home to Indonesia is not home for me and I don’t think it will ever be one. It is more of a burden than something that brings joy.

The food is great here and I have my family here which is also nice but life of course is much, much more than just culinary preferences or familial ties. I am losing my sense of self here, and it is destructive for me. I am losing myself.

Fully realizing this I was looking for a sense of direction when I reread some of my old already read books that once inspired and also my old blog posts these past few weeks. At the crux of it, this blog has always been for me. It is shared publicly in hopes of others sharing what they have learned through life and what I have done wrong in my life. And I have done many wrongs that have not been righted, some no longer even have the possibility of being righted.

Rereading my blog, I realize much like others, that our attempts in finding meaning, and our meanings when they are found are frail and delicate. It is constantly assailed and it is easily lost, and at times harder to find when lost. Life it seems always tries its best to rob you of meaning. Not because it is intent in doing so, but because the very nature of life is in its impermanence. Everything is impermanent including meaning itself.

Intellectually and experientially I understand this. But again like many, I’ve still tried to find meaning in others, and much like many I’ve lost these people in which I have found meaning in. This is the constant dillema as naturally social creatures.

It is perhaps in our nature to be contradictory, or to live in denial, to assume that meaning and the people or objects that give meaning is eternal.

Some of these people that I have acquired meaning from I have forever lost through death, much like so many people out there. I have also lost some rather unintentionally, such as due to spoken words that are not carefully thought out. Some by design, on purpose, with deep intent and thoroughly planned with precision execution, slowly letting go. At other times, a harsh break, a rude awakening on both ends, yet ending in a sigh of relief. As some relationships, although lush with wonderful memories, are never meant to last and can never be let to live in the future. Memories that remain as memories, stories of the past, that do not become worries of the present nor burdens of the future. Our understanding of meaning is often forced to change and to morph and at many times, to end. People and things that once provided meaning no longer do, as people and the things around us change. People including me.

I’ve changed, I know I’ve changed, I’m quieter yet more angry of the world, hopefully a bit more thoughtful of my words and actions. But one thing that hasn’t changed is how I am not done with grief, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be done with it. I’m not even sure if it’s actually grief. Because we all know that the tragedy of growing old, is the tragedy of unwillingly filling your life with regrets and maybe my grief is but a thin veil for my regrets.

One of my plants in my garden died today. A lush rosella bush that I was hoping to make some tea out of its beautiful red flowers. The days are drawing long, and hope is few and far in between.

Be well everyone.

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dwtsfun · 4 years ago

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Dancing with the Stars Season 29 Week 7: A Villainous Night

This was one of the better nights this season. I loved both of Tyra’s looks, the production value of the show went up and I actually enjoyed the costumes more than I thought I would. I still wish that they were given more freedom to come up with Halloween concepts, but it wasn’t the Halloween Movie night that I was thinking it would be. One of these scores made absolutely no sense and you all know that I’m gonna have to drag Derek for that elimination decision.

Jeannie and Brandon- Paso Doble (Score=25)- I thought this was a pretty cool dance. I don’t think it was as good as last week, but it was still pretty good. I actually agree with CAI about the energy. It’s not wild anymore and it is under control. But it isn’t channeled correctly and it causes her to throw her arms away. Other than that, it was a really competent performance.

Johnny and Britt- Viennese Waltz (Score=27)- Wow. This was gorgeous. It did look like there was one moment where Johnny was slightly hesitant. It happened right at the end. But otherwise, it was perfect. Britt choreographed a beautiful dance.

Chrishell and Gleb- Paso Doble (Score=26)- Umm. Okay. So Gleb has got to go. I’m just going to start with that. This dance was not really much of a dance. There was a lot of dead space (not it was not meaningful). And of the stuff that they actually did, very little of it was even paso content. And of that very little content, it was not done well. So the 9s are a HUGE question mark for me. I don’t get it. I really don’t. How can Monica and Chrishell gets 9s for mediocrity? I’m confused.

Monica and Val- Jazz (Score=22)- Wow. I’m actually shocked that they scored this dance properly. And the weird thing is that this was actually her best performance to date. But the way the judges have been scoring her, it would seem like she took a huge step backward. That is not the case. She seemed to have more fun this week than ever. She was “on” more than ever. She stayed on time. And her posture was pretty decent. She’s still got a lot of work, but I hate how they do these scores. This is what causes confusion and frustration among celebs and pros.

AJ and Cheryl- Tango (Score=26)- I enjoyed this dance more than any other dance that AJ has ever done. His footwork was so much improved. And his posture was way better too. It is still a bit of an issue though and he looked like he was losing balance toward the end of it. But wow, what a dance. And I am so glad that Cheryl is okay. That was a scary moment.

Nelly and Daniella- Argentine Tango (Score=27)- I actually enjoyed this dance a lot. It wasn’t my favorite by them, but it was really good. Let me get the bad out of the way first. Nelly’s footwork needs more work (though he’s not dancing flat footed like he used to). There just needs to be more precision. I also just wanted a bit more content. I get that the theme had a lot to do with it so it can’t really be helped. Now the positives. Those lifts were SEAMLESS. Nelly handled those with ease. His posture was also noticeably better. He got his shoulders under control. He also played the character extremely well. I enjoyed the swag he had too. Yeah, I liked it.

Justina and Sasha- Tango (Score=26)- This is my favorite piece that Sasha has choreographed this season and also my favorite dance from Justina. She really and truly committed to the dance. I agree that she got really hoppy/skippy during the dance. It is easy to do that in a tango. But other than that, I loved it. Her frame is gorgeous.

Nev and Jenna- Paso Doble (Score=30)- Nev finally made me care about one of his dances this season. This was good. No, not good. Great. He was smooth. He was in control. The balance was there. The choreography was really good. Everything that they claimed Chrishell’s dance was, was actually what this dance was. That’s all that I can say.

Skai and Alan- Argentine Tango (Score=27)- Skai is back! I think this was the most at ease that I’ve ever seen Skai. I usually see the nerves all in her face during the their performances, but not this week. She was poised. Her lines were gorgeous. That stiffness that I usually see was gone. I don’t know what happened, but something changed and I’m glad that it did. It was a truly gorgeous dance.

Kaitlyn and Artem- Paso Doble (Score=24)- Oof. Okay. So for me, it felt like Kaitlyn never got her feet quite underneath her and it caused her to feel like she was lagging. But with that, she was kinda rushing to get back. Idk, I just felt like the dance was weirdly chaotic. The times when it wasn’t chaotic reminded me of Melissa Rycroft’s first paso from season 8. That’s not a good thing. Again, it was pretty, but it lacked the attack that a dance like the paso needs.

So at the end of the night Monica and Jeannie ended up in the bottom 2. Though this was not as easy a pick as last week was, it was still clear that Jeannie was the one who should have stayed. So for Derek to save Monica like that lady was somehow, someway, better than Jeannie is almost despicable. What is his issue. What was his fascination with Monica? This is why I had to stop watching World of Dance. He was making a lot of bird brained decisions on there too. And here he goes on this show, making the same kinds of dumb decisions. I cannot stress enough how worried I got when CAI was given the deciding vote. I just have to thank God that she really likes Jeannie and clearly couldn’t care less about Monica’s dancing. That could have gone left so fast.

Anyway, next week is a double elimination. I want to talk about that briefly. Right now we only have two couples that have ended up in the bottom, still with us. With most of the low hanging fruit gone (still waiting on Chrishell to leave), this is where things get tricky. I’m going to say that we are going to see either Jeannie or Johnny in the bottom 3 next week. Not sure where, but I get the feeling at least one of them will end up there, maybe both. If Chrishell takes a tumble, similar to Monica this week, I think she’s toast. And beyond those three, I think AJ and possibly Nev need to worry. With that said let me know your thoughts and I will talk to you all soon.

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rekkingcrew · 4 years ago

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Campaign Debrief

So for nearly 2 years I ran an Edge of the Empire campaign with 3-4 players, mostly weekly. These last couple of months we’ve been using discord, which has gone great. I want to get down some of my thoughts about what worked and what didn’t.

This is gonna be a big wall of text and all but two bits are gonna be under the cut: system and play style.

Fantasy Flight Star Wars game system is legit my favorite system EVER. (Not to dick wave or anything, but that’s including D&Ds 2-5, Gurps, White Wolf, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World, Deadlands, and a few miscellaneous other short form ones). The system of advantages and disadvantages, and especially triumphs and despairs rather than just straight successes and failures really opens up complex narrative opportunities and gives a chance for wild story beats that just would not have happened otherwise. The fights go fast but feel meaty and there’s a lot of room to pitch advantages to your friends so you’re not just waiting your turn. Character creation is granular enough that your choices always feel meaningful, and points can be spent anywhere, so you can really specialize and shape your character.

We played very collaboratively and it made things AMAZING. Part of this is that we were all good friends and have played together for a while now. Our taste in what kind of story we want is similar- nuggets of drama scattered throughout, but mostly cutting up. A lot of the best NPCs and story suggestions came from my players rather than from me- our season one boss villain, Imperial spymaster “Uncle” Karston Severax, a pantoran ex-special forces black operative whose current public face was a Mr. Rogers-esque children’s TV presenter, for example, was someone my players started out and all of us collective “yes and” added to around the table, and he was JUST THE BEST. These kind of exchanges also gave us moments like the time our tech tried to blackmail the head of a security corporation with the fact that he was having an affair and he’d written just LOADS of incredibly cringey fanfiction; but the roll was such that the attempt ended with him finally getting the push he needed to quit a job he hated, get out of a marriage that just wasn’t working, and follow his dream of self-publishing. He even dedicated his first book to our slicer. Because it wasn’t a DM vs Players atmosphere, because we were all on the same page, I could ask my players “hey, what do you want for your triumph?” and “all right, so who is the NPC you know?” as well as just “that’s enough to finish this guy, what does this look like?” This campaign was 1000% better for sharing that world building load, and the players were all, I think, more invested.

more below the cut.

What Worked

One of the most useful things I ever did was start giving players morality pet NPCs that were their special hench people, and I’m embarrassed that I waited so long to assign one to our droid.

The zero session was absolutely invaluable in setting the tone of the game and the relationship between characters, and I will bang this drum until I’m fucking blue in the face. Don’t meet in the first session. Sit the players down and say “how do you know each other, why do you stay together, what are some of your past adventures?” It’s just so much better.

Cameos and ties to our other games, in what we’ve been calling “The Drax Kreiger Expanded Universe” have continued to be welcome pretty much every time. People were delighted to have a moment or two to slip back into old characters.

I was able to identify what each player wanted and give them that. Brick’s player wanted quiet scenes with big character emotion, like his one on one pit fight the character didn’t want to have, or the letter from his mother telling him how proud she was of him, or the time in training where he tapped into how angry he really was and it spooked the character and everyone on the ship. Nyla’s player wanted a big epic, but also difficult space journey of good vs. evil, and so Nyla got a padawan whose parents she had possibly killed when she fought for the empire, she dug up the grave of her clone teacher’s order 66′d jedi for the crystal for her lightsaber, she got to cleanse a temple that was trapped in a fruitless struggle between light and dark, and a climactic lightsaber battle that was about possibly sacrificing herself for the good of others. TK’s player was deep into star wars trivia and space stuff, so he practically squealed when Verpine shatter weapons showed up, and he seemed to get a kick out of the Evocii, and also that time they put on wing suits and dove the atmosphere of a gas giant. It’s worth noting nobody was actually all that interested in the thing that turns my gears: complex mysteries with a lot of clues and investigation, and once I let that shit drop, things ran a lot smoother.

Some of our best stuff was non-combat challenges, like climbing the cliffs of Naboo or navigating the deep undercity of Nar Shadaa. The guys reliably failed anything social, but environmental challenges were always appreciated.

I always tried to make sure there was more than one way to do things. For any given mission, especially early on, I’d try to brainstorm at least three ways something could be accomplished.

My party split up a LOT, but we found a sort of cinematic cutting back and forth to be really useful. When there was a big crit, or a goal accomplished, or something like that, we’d jump to the other party even if the fight wasn’t over. Sometimes that was only just, like, Brick and the guys doing drunk karaoke and saying to no one in particular “MAN, I hope Nyla’s having as fun a time as we are!” but it kept everyone involved and it wasn’t just people waiting their turn for 20 minutes at a time. Also people chimed in with fun advantages and disadvantages.

I had everybody write backstories and whenever I could, I incorporated in things from what they’d written. Our second season was basically TK tracking down the guy who’d made him, a Thackwash alien with the same sort of shifting personalities he had. TK’s player hadn’t written much about the guy except that he’d been a salvage mechanic who constructed TK for protection when he got in trouble with the local mafia. Giving that guy complementary personalities for each of TK’s really helped stick the landing on that one, and the player really enjoyed having actually completed his character’s goal.

It’s worth saying, we took some time at several points during the campaign, either individually or as a group, to talk about what we liked and didn’t, what we wanted more of, where we wanted things to go, possible directions for characters, mechanical issues, how to have a better game, group dynamics, all sorts of stuff. In a way it’s like sex: people have this fucked up expectation that you’ll just be good at it without communicating, and man, fuck that. Talking to my players was ALWAYS worthwhile.

I was always adamant, because it was a thing that bugged me when I was a player, that if a character had spent the points to be good at something, they got to be good at it. That made some things difficult, but I think it was the right decision. It took me a while to tailor fights right, and honestly a lot of times, splitting up the party was the best way to balance fights, but I never said to anyone hey that thing you spent all those points on, could you please not do that?

My players were excellent about encouraging each other to have serious dramatic moments. TK was completely ready to die in a fight, and when he lost a significant chunk of his programming, the way he chose to play it was really heartbreaking. Everyone came inside and had tea with Brick’s mom. No one stepped on anyone else’s fun when it was time to be serious, and everybody was great about cheering each other on, whether they were being funny or being dead serious.

I FUCKING FINISHED A CAMPAIGN. IT HAD AN END. So much stuff petered out over the years, I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that.

What Didn’t Work

Boy, my players had pretty much all the trouble trying to remember to use “they/them” pronouns for NPCs with neutral or alien genders.

No one is interested in falling damage. Sigh.

I did not keep good track of money or ship fuel or anything. The campaign didn’t end up relying on it too heavily (I was honestly expecting a much more Cowboy Bebop setup than where we drifted), but that was an area I kind of fell down.

We never really got obligation working correctly and in the end we just ended up abandoning it. We kept doing the force morality because the lone force player was very into it and it was a huge part of that character’s journey, but for the rest having people show up to collect on obligation was sometimes not possible in the story- or if it was possible it was pretty cumbersome. Campaign did obligation by arc, and I think that’s a pretty useful way to do it- roll at the end of the arc for what’s coming next.

Early on, I made way too many assumptions about what was an adventure hook for my players and what was an annoyance. Honestly, bits of this lasted pretty late. At one point I gave my players a spy for the larger rebellion they could totally talk to- he was even working with their resident bothan spy- but they looked at the senatorial assassination he was doing and literally said at the table “I think it’s best if we just walk away from all this.” And so they did. Which was frustrating, but, you know, it is what it is. They also never much cared about the hutt gang war.

I let a lot of things drop that I would have liked to bring back before the end, but in all honesty, I think we were all running a bit out of steam. I would have liked to put in Brick’s old mentor, or follow up with the imperial governor that was a falleen in a human skin suit, or see more of the bounty hunter’s guild, or have a nice end thing with our bothan spy, or any of that. But I do think it was time to end it. And we followed the threads people liked.

I had way too many NPCS.

What sort of worked

I had like 200 npcs and they were not all bangers. In particular, I let the party design their own ship, which I wish had played a bigger role (though it did really set the tone), and I let them design 2 npc crew who would fill in any party roles they didn’t want to play and guard the ship so they could go on adventures without worrying about it. The devaronian scoundrel was with the party to the end though I never really got him to be more than a joke, but the bothan spy kind of fell off, and while she made some appearances, she didn’t really have as big an impact as I would have hoped. She kind of got replaced by Nyla’s padawan, a hench mon calamari called Nezrene, who was a better fit with the party. But, you know, players will do what they like.

Factions. In the first bit of the campaign, my factions were a fucking life saver, because I could design scenarios with a sort of “what is each faction doing/ which faction hurts from this, which benefits?” By the second season we’d kind of abandoned them to go to the core, and by the third my group was solidly rebel, so the hutts and bounty hunters fell a lot by the wayside. I still think having a couple of broad poles of power, and having the players know them and their leaders, is a good call. But they do seem to kind of organically pare down on their own, and it’s easy to get caught up too much in them. Useful sorta?

There was definitely a point where my players just were not challenged by conventional challenges. We ended up doing most of the later fights that involved a lot of minions in montage. I’d have them roll their fight skills unopposed, just to see if they got any interesting advantage/triumph set ups. I still had boss fights that were mostly challenging, but there just was no point in throwing storm troopers or low level gangsters at them. Not when they have soak 8 and autofire, and that one talent that lets you kill every minion in a combat. Designings fight got a bit tricky, and in those big high level combats, despairs and triumphs come up a lot more and really sway the fight, which I like, but also it’s very hard to plan for.

Mass combat was tricky. I did a lot of it toward the end because my players were generals in a rebellion. I always had them do the rolls and some of the narration, but that wasn’t always enough to make them feel like things weren’t very arbitrary.

I personally love the rule that if you roll a despair shooting into an engaged combat you shoot your friend. Nyla, who got shot twice this way, does not.

We started the game with a tech character who dropped out. Toward the end, we picked up another tech character whose player couldn’t do their regular stuff because of covid lock down. Neither of these characters could fight at all, and both were very differently oriented than the rest of the party, and that was tricky to manage. Additionally, the dude coming in at the end had like a year and a half of in jokes he did not get and there were 200 goddamn npcs. I tried to give him the lowdown on what he might have heard about the party, but it was a combination of too much information and not that much player interest. He did get to break a star destroyer though, and I think he liked that.

I offered players XP to write backstory stuff, and later goodbye notes others could find if they kicked it. Not all of them did. In the end it made a negligible difference, and I still think offering the bounties on this is basically a good idea.

What I would do different next time.

Three ring binder that opens and closes so I could move fucking NPC stats around. I filled two goddamn school notebooks with notes for this campaign and there were so many goddamn times I was like “I KNOW I wrote this down, but where?!”

Players felt a bit aimless when they didn’t have a specific villain. I’d planted a few in, but they took finding, or they were too easy to avoid. Next time I would have a few more people who were actively on my player’s tails.

I would keep better campaign notes and/or ask one of the players to do so. I used to do recaps for the games when I played Rek. There’s stuff I KNOW I’ve forgotten, and more I’ll forget as time goes on, which is a shame. It’s a weird, ephemeral medium, but possibly I’m just spoiled by living in an age of easy reproduction and enormous storage where data is concerned.

Better book keeping in general, really.

When I did a mystery short, I wrote up a list of all the clues people could find but not where specifically they were, so that I could just jam them anywhere they seemed like they’d make sense whenever a roll called for a player to find something. I think I’d try to do that with player’s personal stories so they could be woven in a little better. I did a lot of flying by the seat of my pants.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, and I’m ready to get back to playing for a bit. I loved DMing, and I more or less DMed the game I would have liked to play, but man, doing this all the time, or being the only person who does it? After a while, that’d be a lot, and I’m looking forward to the break.

#star wars edge of the empire #Edge of the Empire #tabletop rp #i dmed

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five-wow · 5 years ago

Text

here are some thoughts from my (first, somewhat late) watch of 10.15!

we start off with adam intimidating a minion and threatening his life while they’re reburying three bodies. cool. this is totally something he can come back from.

joanna! danny’s mystery woman has a name! i very vaguely caught some annoyance/confusion about her name here on tumblr because apparently somewhere else (outside of the episodes, i assume?) she’d been called something else, if i understood correctly? but seeing as i missed most of that, i’m honestly just glad she has a name now.

also! joanna texting her sister/friend (i don’t really know who she is for sure?) that she met a guy at a bar - thank god, tbh, because last episode it looked like she just randomly had sex with a stranger (which is fine) and then got into his car to let him drive her home (which is not fine, because we may know danny is an okay guy, but she had no earthly way of knowing that).

“it wasn’t your fault. you did everything you could. it means a lot to me that you’re here.” kudos to sister/friend for not falling into the trap of blaming danny and piling onto his guilt subplot!

STEVE is WAITING OUTSIDE when danny leaves the morgue, oh god. that makes total sense and i’m glad for it, but i somehow didn’t expect them to show that.

steve: “you wanna talk about it?” nothing super clever to say here, but it just make me really, really happy every single time steve asks danny if he wants to talk about something (or just pushes him into it, ocassionally) because!! that’s good!! that’s healthy!! that’s a really good friendship, and i’m proud of steve. (on a slightly related note, i’ve been watching a lot of 9-1-1 and reading some fic and while a lot of that fic is really fun, i kind of feel like many of the writers in that fandom give eddie at least double the capability to deal with emotional turmoil in himself or others that he is shown to have in canon. eddie diaz is basically what danny sometimes accuses steve of being, only eddie is actually closed off and struggling with repressing everything he ever feels that much, and steve has by this point had years to learn healthier ways of coping and he is not that person anymore, at all. he knows how to talk about emotions and he does it, too, and the funny thing is that i’m pretty sure he learned a lot of that by making danny talk to him about danny’s emotions, which steve did all the time right from the very start because he cares about danny and wants him to be mentally happy and healthy, and tl;dr, steve and danny’s friendship makes them both happier, more emotionally stable people and that makes me emotional.)

tani teaching a class at the police academy and bonnie (grover’s niece) absolutely acing all her classes and tani and bonnie hanging out and getting lunch together and tani subtly mentoring bonnie IS ALL VERY GOOD.

fdjfkdjkfd oh god. i was so happy with this scene and then suddenly bonnie has a boyfriend and it’s the dude who buried bodies with adam a moment ago. so... is he a bad guy (i hope not, because i’m already a little tired at the idea of another cool female character getting in trouble all the time because she’s dating yakuza and that’s for some reason the most interesting thing the writers could think to do with her), or is he undercover? is adam undercover? are they BOTH undercover but they don’t know it about the other guy so they just keep committing crimes to look like badass criminals when really they’re just both trying to catch the other in a seriously bad crime?

oh god, there’s this whole scene with the academy recruits on the shooting range and tani keeps drilling them on shooting faster (which i have... thoughts about, too, but let’s not get into that) and they make it really explicit that bonnie is the fastest and definitely faster than her boyfriend and this, uh, really looks like foreshadowing for bonnie ending up having to draw her weapon on the boyfriend at some point.

adam to lou: “thanks for the coffee date.” i must say, very unexpected ship they’re pushing now. :p

adam: [starts saying things, possibly making up excuses] lou: “no, no, come on, you don’t have to explain anything to me.” let the man talk, lou!!! if you don’t want to hear it, i do.

ahhhh, lou is keeping adam occupied while steve searches adam’s apartment. things are making more sense now. (though lou does call steve to tell him to wrap things up like a minute after his coffee date with adam started, and also at most a dozen feet away from adam where chances are definitely above zero of adam being able to hear him, fjdkdf.)

steve had “a feeling” about adam. no need to be so jealous, danny.

wait, wait, adam is back on five-0? i... they probably showed or mentioned that in a recent episode, i think, but apparently i’ve really just been turning my brain off during this subplot because i do not remember that at all. (this is why i like bingewatching things, because at least then i have a clearer picture of what happened in the episodes right before, gosh.)

danny: “... but the point is that if i was a human being...” love it. love the subtle implication that danny is not a human being, but in fact an alien from new jersey, which as we all know is in outer space.

bonnie’s boyfriend is not officially bonnie’s boyfriend yet and she thinks he might be seeing someone on the side, and this is sad because as viewers we all know that that someone IS ADAM (and three dead guys). just not like that, though. probably.

bonnie: [tells tani her potential bf has two phones] tani: “hm, okay. this one’s easy: run.” YES. PLEASE DO.

quinn!!! i was starting to wonder if this was one of those mysteriously quinn-less episodes.

oh nooo, bonnie sneaks around potential bf’s house and then STEPS ON A TWIG. c’mon, girl.

fdjkfd the guys catch her and now i remember that this episode description said she was going to get kidnapped and adam would help get her back. this will be... interesting.

quinn’s awkward face while lou is yelling in surprise about bonnie having a boyfriend is absolute gold.

lou yells at tani for not telling him anything about the boyfriend yesterday but honestly, she does not deserve that.

also: all those dramatic shots on adam’s face, oh dear. is the rest of the team seeing that expression he has? are they seeing all these close-ups?

adam threatens his yakuza rival in an effort to help get bonnie back. is this supposed to be redemption for adam? i’m confused.

lou says it’s not tani’s fault and he apologizes! this is an episode of people realizing they shouldn’t put the blame on innocent bystanders (instead of one that attempts to heighten the drama by milking misplaced anger for all that it’s worth) and i like it.

siobhan has been tied up in some shed in the woods and endo (the potential boyfriend) is feeling bad about it but is unwilling to untie her, god. (quick detour, though: i’ve been wondering this since the beginning of the episode, but how is siobhan even at the hpd academy now? i was under the impression during her first appearance this season that she was in her last year of high school, so when did she even graduate?)

i do feel for endo (which i like! it’s cool to see a Bad Guy be not pure evil but believably conflicted), but leaving your almost-girlfriend in a cabin in the woods for your godfather to “take care of it” with a sad look and “i’m really sorry” is not the best of moves, my dude.

tani and quinn: we have good news! hpd intercepted endo and steve and lou are about to question him! adam: [sweats]

endo lies his ass off in interrogation which makes him interesting but also costs him a lot of sympathy points from my end.

lou pretty much assaults endo while he’s cuffed to a chair in the interrogation room. i get why these emotions make for good tv, but uh, hm, maybe five-0 should at some point consider a policy of not letting people who are personally involved in cases near suspects, because this does kind of seem to keep happening.

jfdkfd, adam confronts endo in lock-up, endo taunts him and says adam can’t tell anyone in five-0 what he knows because he’d have to tell them how he knows endo, the team finds out that endo has yakuza ties and go to confront endo about it and he’s gone. omfg, adam, how are you managing to fuck your own life up this effectively in such a short amount of time, after you fought all those years to get away from everything you’re doing now?

siobhan gets herself free!!! and then runs right into guys with guns outside the cabin, of course, because this is tv timing, but still, WELL DONE.

fdjkfdkjfd, adam’s brilliant plan to solve the situation is to call up the rival yakuza boss and threaten to kill his godson out of revenge. this is. this is maybe not a great idea.

adam: “in case you haven’t been paying attention, kenji, i’m not afraid of much these days.” oh adam, buddy, don’t brag about misplacing the entirety of your common sense.

the team is watching adam load endo into the back of a car on tape and it’s honestly kind of hilarious. steve asks danny how he would explain this and that’s hilarious, too, because they’re seeing their (ex-?)friend load a stolen suspect into a car to run off with him, thereby betraying all of them and everything they stand for, and steve is taking this opportunity to turn to danny and go “see, i was right”. fjdkfd.

steve’s gut says adam will come through for them in delivering siobhan, and we all know steve’s gut is secretly psychic, so that’s a spoiler. :p

and it does happen!!! i’m glad to see bonnie back in a safe place.

oh god. adam randomly appears from between the foilage to look serious and share a meaningful nod with steve. is he... is he officially on the other side now? they’re not still going to let him be part of five-0, are they?

domestic steve and danny in the(ir) kitchen!!! steve is giving eddie danny’s breakfast!!! and then there’s something about endo having hacked into hpd’s database, because of course they need to attach some ongoing threat to this, but honestly, who cares about plot when there’s “don’t shame my dog. i’m cooking you eggs, alright?” and danny saying steve doesn’t have to cook him eggs but steve already doing it anyway while danny is once again randomly sitting on the kitchen counter and steve cuts danny off before danny can request his eggs a little burned because steve already knows how danny likes his eggs, obviously, because steve is a stalker when it comes to danny. yes!! this is stuff i like a lot.

danny is saying he could probably get out of steve’s space soon and steve has the excuse of very intently (and yet somehow also very badly, it looks like) scrambling those eggs, but he’s also definitely, 100% avoiding looking at danny in that moment, and then he starts saying how there’s no paint yet and that’s bad and danny should stay. just. just move in together officially, you guys. just do it. nobody would be surprised. you know it would make both of you very happy. this is not even a ship thing, but just, oh my god, these two humans so clearly want to be in each other’s space and they keep coming up with excuses and getting this close to admitting that maybe neither of them wants danny to leave and then yelling at each other about eggs and how it’s not bacon day. it can be bacon day, steve. it could even be pancake day. it could be pancake day every day for the rest of your natural lives if you just told danny you wanted that.

overall, this was a very fun episode! i’m honestly just really happy with this season in general - quinn being added to the team does maybe not look like much progress on the subject of female characters, because she’s just one person, but there have been SO MANY scenes of her and tani together by now and genuinely, their friendship is healing my soul and watering my crops. i’m still not sure what to make of the adam subplot, but if they’re doing what it kind of looks like they’re doing - permanently putting him on the other side of the fence, back with the yakuza - that could actually be somewhat interesting. i’m just really, really scared that even after all of this they’re going to try to give him some kind of redemption arc that just has no chance of making sense anymore after everything that’s happened.

#h50 #10.15 #*#i've been even more absent from tumblr than usual and if you've been waiting for a reply i'm really sorry #and will try to get around to it asap!

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