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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Divide”

Hello, everyone, and welcome back! It feels good to be doing some normal RWBY-ing in this strange world of ours. First, some supplementary materials.

Number One: In response to any (valid) questions along the lines of, “Hey Clyde, it’s now been a full year since Volume 7 was airing and you still haven’t answered my ask about it. Or the ones about Volume 6… what’s up with that?” I’ve created what I hope is an informative video detailing the problem:

vimeo

(I assure you, the Earth, Wind & Fire was a happy accident during the screen recording.)

Needless to say, there’s a lot and I’ve known for some time now that I will LITERALLY never get through all my asks. Which doesn’t mean I don’t want you to send future thoughts in! Just know that as we head into Volume 8 territory I’ll most likely prioritize those, as well as any Volume 7 asks that aren’t woefully out of date. But I do want everyone to know that I read all the asks I receive, appreciate them immensely, and think too much about hypothetical answers, even if I don’t have time to actually write them out 💜

Number Two: There’s a bingo board this year!

Jury’s out on whether I’ll remember to update it, but at the very least this serves as a decent glimpse into my — and others’ — expectations going into this volume.

Number Three: I’ve collected a list of things I’ve heard about Volume 8 from what seem to be reputable sources. I did this because RT is developing a tendency to talk up certain points and then fail to deliver, either because something was taken out of a volume/moved to another, or because RT apparently has radically different ideas about what including something means. So this might be handy to keep on file and ask ourselves two months from now, “Did RT actually deliver on what they promised?”

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

I was also going to include a list of all the threads that need to be continued/wrapped up, but honestly that would have taken too large a chunk off my life. Let’s just throw out the highlights:

Are we really going to have Qrow gunning for Ironwood?

Clover is dead regardless. Press ‘F’ to pay respects

Oscar bb you got shot please acknowledge this

Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this

Penny is a Maiden now. I feel like the fandom has been sleeping on this (myself included)

Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake.

Ren spill your deep dark secret already and it had better be something more than just ‘Oh no Nora might someday die :( ’

Salem is here so how the actual fuck is the cast surviving this?

Will Ironwood likewise survive his descent into antagonism? Yes or please yes no?

I think that’s all the biggies. I strive to keep lists like this in mind while analyzing, but honestly RWBY has a hundred moving parts that are abandoned or changed or simply retconned at the drop of a hat. So an attempt will be made.

Number Four (last one I promise!): Normal disclaimers and reminders for Recaps apply:

Please don’t fill up the already full inbox with flames. It’s still 2020. No one has time for that nonsense.

There will absolutely be typos and wonky parts because I try to get these out the same day an episode premieres. I have now been working on this for ten hours, nearly straight, and have no more energy for edits. Apologies in advance and RIP to my Saturdays.

I reserve the right to use stupid GIFs and memes at my discretion.

I strive to keep my focus on recapping/analyzing but salt tends to worm its way in… If you’re a die-hard RWBY fan with little patience for criticism, let alone (at times) snarky criticism, please proceed with caution.

No wait I lied, this is the last thing:

Okay, got that out of my system LET’S DO THIS!

We start not with the episode itself but rather Rooster Teeth’s (RT’s) strange non-promotion of it. If you follow my blog you may have caught the post where I pointed out that there was nothing on RT’s website to suggest that one of their most popular shows—if not the most popular show—was premiering today. Nothing on the main page. Nothing on the RWBY page either, not unless you count the Volume 8 poster background (easily mistaken for the Volume 7 poster) and the trailer buried all the way down past Episodes, past Merch, in the Bonus Features section along with videos like Live From Remnant and the volume intros. RT… the promotion of your feature show is not a bonus. This should be front and center! Honest to god, five minutes before the episode dropped I was checking the website for a Volume 8 section, a countdown, anything that would tell me the episode was imminent without relying on fans on tumblr to keep me in the loop. We got nada, zilch. I’m not sure whether that speaks more to RT’s iffy management of the series or simply the website’s horrible design—RIP losing RWBY on Youtube—but I was surprised when I saw the episode a few minutes after 11:00am. At that point I honestly expected to hear about a dely.

So that’s the mood I entered the premiere in, but truly? We start off strong. Things take a pretty severe nosedive later on, we’ll get to that, but I was impressed with our beginning and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that we start with our villains.

We open on a Cinderella character, Cinder, and thus I’m immediately pleased that we’re getting something about her backstory after all this time. Seven years! She appeared in episode one, folks! To say we’re overdue is an understatement. There isn’t a whole lot to go on, just a younger Cinder sadly scrubbing the floor, poised under a spotlight. What we learn, or potentially learn, is based far more in cultural knowledge than this scene. We know Cinderella’s story, which includes the abusive family, the longing for more, the eventual escape, and thus we’re able to read all of that in this image, despite the image itself not telling us any of this overtly. That means we could be wrong in our interpretation, but if we’re not it’s an easy shorthand in an already packed story.

What I’m really impressed with is the sound bridge between the scrubbing and her nails on the back of Neo’s chair. Fantastic way to confirm that this is Cinder as well as showcasing just how far she’s come. The sound of her labor has been replaced with the sound of her power and given that Cinder’s power is stolen, tied to a grimm arm, the property of a genocidal maniac… that’s messed up. It’s a Cinderella story gone wrong.

So yeah, Cinder tells Neo to head straight into the creepy, grimm infested blood cloud to see Salem and Neo is like, ‘Uh… no thank you?’ lol.

RT does a good job this episode with her expressions, ensuring we know exactly what she’s thinking despite an unwillingness/inability to speak.

Poor Neo might be in too deep, but I quite like the overall atmosphere of this opening. Say what we will about Salem’s awful characterization, at least she has style. This woman knows how to make an entrance and, piggybacking off of the Apathy, RT knows how to infuse horror elements into their fantasy. The red and purple coloring of the clouds, spiked whale teeth peeking through, bright orange in the background looking like explosions… that’s all 👌 Including the intro card.

The only thing I want to gripe about is this:

I’m sorry, why does the whale grimm have landing pads? Or something like it?? The whale otherwise works because it’s poised between the natural and the fantasy synthetic. It looks like a real grimm whale on the outside, but is sporting a throne room, a control panel, and other unnatural elements on the inside. It’s a visual indicator of Salem’s ability to control and change grimm. Now though, the additions are wrong, infringing on the line between organic and tech, the line between what helps the grimm individually (giving monkeys wings) and what just helps Salem. Every other aspect of the whale straddles that line wonderfully, adding to the creep factor, like a grimm version of the Uncanny Valley: it’s not quite a whale anymore… but landing pads? That looks ridiculous. Why does Salem even have that? How many ships are her people feasibly using? Why are there five?

Take it away, please.

Cinder waltzes in like this is a normal home visit, but Neo has an appropriate ‘What the actual fuck?’ face going on.

They approach Salem on her throne where Cinder immediately kneels, greeting her with, “My queen.” I mentioned during my trailer breakdown that I think Cinder is lying her ass off here, and I still think that based on a line we’ll get in a minute, but now at least we have a sense of how she can pull this off. A woman who started out as a (presumed) servant is going to know how to mimic subservience, even if her heart isn’t in it. Salem is very good at playing the girl who will still kneel and scrub the floor for you. She will scrub the floor, she’ll do everything you want, she’ll just be plotting her own rise to power while she does it.

There’s quite a bit of interesting cinematography in this episode, not all of it good, and I think one of the mistakes is here when we get a closeup on Salem’s mouth as she greets Cinder. A closeup like that should be reserved for more significant dialogue—“Rosebud”—and yet we get this shot again when Cinder tells Emerald to be quiet. It’s awkward and coupled with the numerous eye closeups we got in the trailer, I think RT is playing a little fast and loose with the camera. Each shot should add something to the scene, not distract from it. If you don’t have a reason for including a technique like that then leave it be.

Back to the actual dialogue though. We knew that Salem knew Cinder was alive and now it seems that she just expected her to come back? I’m slightly lost. It feels like we’re missing something here. Cinder goes off to secure the lamp, fails, nearly dies, wanders on her own for months, and then randomly shows back up on Salem’s whale doorstep, yet Salem isn’t angry at all? Did she have faith that Cinder would return when she has something to offer? Did she just not care about Cinder, considering her return an unnecessary but otherwise welcome surprise? That would make the least sense given that she holds the key to accessing Beacon’s relic… but that circles right back around to why Salem is seemingly indifferent to Cinder’s comings and goings. Surely she can’t actually believe that Cinder is loyal?

“So I trust you wouldn’t return to me empty handed,” she says. Yeah, trust means nothing in this show, Salem, didn’t you watch Volumes 6 and 7? Again, I simply don’t know. I suppose I’ll just chalk it up to confidence, that if Cinder did bail Salem knew she could track her down again. Deciphering her motivations and beliefs is a lost cause when the show continually gives us so little.

The important thing now is that Cinder does indeed have an offering and you can see that Salem is somewhat surprised at being handed the relic.

Cinder, of course, takes credit for the victory and we’re given another wonderful shot of Neo. ‘YOU took it?’

Oh, Neo. Best get out while you still can.

Tyrian appears having obviously made his way to Salem’s ship sometime between her arrival and now. The exchange is pretty standard for this group. He insults Cinder for failing and needing this victory to make amends, talks about how any win against Ironwood says more about his lack of intelligence than her skill, and Cinder… doesn’t have a whole lot of comebacks, actually. I’d say Tyrian won that verbal spar, enhanced by a better use of the camera when we get his tail looming menacingly towards Cinder and Neo.

He goes on to say that Watts was a “necessary sacrifice” so, uh… I’m just going to toss out the ask I answered yesterday. Based on our intro I’d say Watts is still significant to the volume—hacking Penny is my guess—but by the end? He could be in trouble.

(As a side note: I plan to analyze the intro next week. It’s just easier when it comes first.)

Tyrian also calls Neo “little one” which I just found absolutely hilarious. In an on brand creepy manner, that is. Not that Neo couldn’t kick his ass, but there’s something wonderfully chilling about having the serial killer use an endearment towards a potential victim, one that comments on her size while he’s looming.

In contrast, Cinder refers to Neo as a “valuable asset” and we get our third mood of the episode.

Who’s going to start a Neo reaction image collection?

It’s true enough on the surface—who wouldn’t want an ally who can turn into anyone else?—but we’re still bumping up against question of why Salem needs this. She’s immortal! She has an endless army! Magic! This scene works well with a villain who needs a skillset like Neo’s to succeed, but Salem doesn’t. RT is doing a great job writing a story thus far, just not the story we’ve previously been given. This isn’t the story they set up.

This will come back up when we reach the RWBYJNOR group. Just wait.

Before that though, the gang’s all here as Emerald, Mercury, and Hazel show up, all in new outfits.

I think I like everything except for the weird Xs on Emerald’s jacket—it’s way too distracting and frankly makes an otherwise good look ugly—and the fact that she’s showing her midriff in Atlas. Hazel doesn’t have any sleeves! Oh my god, why doesn’t anyone dress for the weather in this show?

Frankly, I found their reunion to be kind of lackluster. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it. Emerald does sound briefly excited, she does run, and it’s in character for Cinder to cut her off… it just didn’t resonate with me emotionally. I thought after two volumes of thinking she’s dead, then working through the knowledge that she’s alive, that I would feel Emerald’s shock and relief more, but I didn’t. And I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t want to level any accusations at the voice acting because frankly I know next to nothing about that skill (and from what I’ve seen it’s usually praised in the fandom), but I will say that throughout the premiere I was noticing it more than I ever have before. The lack of emotion here and some awkward deliveries later, like when Yang goes, “Ruby, there is no way Ironwood will cooperate with us” and I immediately thought, “Wow, that came out stilted.” These observations stick with me because, as said, voice acting usually isn’t on my radar. It’s not something I’ve studied or had practice analyzing. If you’d never told me that Ren or Qrow’s VA changed then after a year hiatus I literally wouldn’t notice… but there’s something about this episode that didn’t sit right. Anyone else get that sense, or was it just me?

Regardless, the arrival of our other three villains really doesn’t amount to much, though I’m happy for all the Emerald and Mercury fans who get to see them in new outfits. The focus is still on Cinder as she delivers a line indicative of her true motivations: “That power will be mine.” Yeah, she’s not loyal to Salem, she’s just power hungry. Of course, Salem immediately takes note of this and raises her hand, in another nice use of the foreground, reminding her that she hasn’t given that order.

Cinder is shocked, angry even, but quickly covers it up with her “Without you I am nothing” line. If I caught it right I think she also calls Salem “Ma’am”? Hilarious. Again, skilled at playing the servant.

Also, before I forget, it’s worth noting that almost everything from our trailer appeared in this episode. Yeah, there are a few details like Nora attacking some tech and the group on their bikes, but on the whole we’ve already seen the majority of our promo material and will likely get most of the rest next week. It makes me both interested and nervous for what another twelve episodes are going to hold.

Salem opens her whale, or opens a portal type view in it, something that gives us a long-distance look at Atlas. I don’t know what exactly is going on here, but it’s pretty so I’ll take it.

She also delivers the frankly badass line, “Just because you’re more valuable to me than a pawn does not make you a player.”

She waves them all away with perfect ‘You mean nothing to me’ attitude and we sadly leave our villains.

Sad not because I don’t love my farm boy, but because things are about to get a whole lot messier.

Oscar has made his way to a camp of civilian survivors… all of whom are just hanging out in the supposedly deadly cold. Yeah, there’s a single fire, but at least four of them aren’t anywhere near it. Three of them also aren’t wearing gloves. What was that survival rate again?

A nice if gruff dude gives Oscar soup—water?—while showing off his… badger claws? I don’t know what kind of faunus he’s supposed to be, but he feels like the sort of two second, minor character who could easily become a meme lol.

Oscar thanks him (my polite son!) and hands the bowl back after a single sip. Which is impressive because I would have assumed the guy was giving me the whole bowl and just taken it. Hell, I’ve done that even when I didn’t assume it’s all for me. A Starbucks barista once approached me with a tray and a plate of samples, I knew I was supposed to take just one, yet for some reason my hand went to take the whole goddamn plate. He had to tell me off, then I was trying to explain that I didn’t actually want or think I should have eight shots of cappuccino all to myself, I don’t even like coffee, he clearly didn’t believe me… it was awkward. So good job, Oscar. You’re less awkward than me (though that’s not saying much).

Now a question, Oscar. Darling. Brilliant boy who has been through too much: why the fuck aren’t you talking to Ozpin? This will be A Thing later when he presents a lack of time to talk as justification for keeping more secrets (we’ll get to that too…) yet here is time! You’re just sitting there for who knows how long, with plenty of privacy to hide a supposedly one-sided conversation so the Mantle citizens don’t get weirded out or suspicious. Talk to Ozpin. Our headmaster gets two lines in this episode, utterly inconsequential lines like his airship scene, lines that feel like they exist to say, “See? He’s still included in the story!” even though he absolutely is not. Two volumes of mostly silence, a perfect setup to start the reconciliation process, but we’re going to put it off again?

Instead Ruby randomly and conveniently appears. I want to know how she found him. Oscar isn’t wearing a tracker. He clearly didn’t call them because he’s surprised when Ruby shows up. He fell alllllllll the way back down to Mantle and then wandered to a random part of the slums. You’re telling me they flew over the entire city—after beginning this search thinking he was in Atlas—and somehow managed to spot him from up in the air? C’mon. I would have rather had a beginning where Oscar makes his way back to the group himself, giving him and Ozpin time to hash things out.

“Need a lift?” Ruby says, eliminating that potential. Sigh.

Oscar immediately starts beating himself up when he gets onboard, saying that he “was stupid to think the General would listen.” Nah, you were stupid to buy into Ruby’s nonsensical confidence and for telling Ironwood he’s as bad as Salem. Sorry, Oscar, but everyone is written badly these days. I will, however, say that I am THRILLED at the group’s reaction to his return. Ruby says that she’s “just glad you’re alright.” Nora has a wonderfully tender moment where she hugs him gently rather than her usual glomp.

That? That added a year to my life. Everyone else seems relieved that he’s okay too, so kudos there. After four years of Oscar being an outsider in the group, this is one of the few moments that feel like he’s 100% accepted. Really glad to see it.

Now let’s see if it sticks after they learn Ozpin is back...

They fly to the Happy Huntresses’ base and I again feel like I’ve missed something crucial. When did they team up? I mean, RWBYJNOR was working directly under Ironwood up until the last hour and Robyn ran off to fight Tyrian/Clover in the last couple episodes. When did she have time to explain her (briefly) changed allegiance and why would the Happy Huntresses trust the group without that? Did Robyn share that Blake and Yang went behind Ironwood’s back for her? Do the Huntresses instinctively trust them because they’re now wanted by the military? How did they even run into each other?

Again, I think we would have been better served to have an episode before all this. Let Oscar make his way back and let the group struggle with the magnitude of their situation on the airship, before they find new allies. Transferring directly to, “They have help and a secret base and a plan in the works!” makes me feel like I missed the real premiere last week. You know, the one where Salem unexpectedly arrived and we left the group like this.

This is where we’ve ended up though. The group is cozy in this hideout, getting info from Joanna, and my only other thought is, “Why is she giving all this exposition?”

Shouldn’t it be May? I mean, we were told that she was going to play more of a role this volume, a promise that’s pretty important imo given her status as a (so far off screen) trans character, so why not put her in the role of mediator between the Happy Huntresses and RWBYJNR? Giving her that setup as a leader among her people as well as lots of lines would be meaningful. A trans character just existing and being a part of this fight! May could obviously still fill that role—I’m well aware that we’re only one episode in—but it just seems like a missed opportunity to me. Out of all the undeveloped Happy Huntresses, our premiere focuses on the one who has the least importance to the fandom.

As said, Joanna talks a fair bit but what it basically boils down to is trying to get everyone to the crater below Atlas. It’s apparently not safe, but it’s warm, which is what matters right now.

So… let me get this straight. You want to gather everyone into a not safe crater, by leading them through an army of grimm, so that they can wait there in case someone moves the Staff, thus dropping an entire city on top of their heads? That’s the plan? Which admittedly isn’t Joanna’s fault. This is another instance of RWBYJNOR having information that a leader does not and they should really consider speaking up about it. But of course they don’t.

Also, how long does everyone have in regards to the cold? Shouldn’t there be dead civilians by now? The time it would take to find the Happy Huntresses, team up with them, get settled in the base, and find Oscar says that things should be pretty grim right now (pardon the pun), yet every non-aura user in this city seems content to just hang out in the snow. Either the cold is deadly enough to justify moving everyone to the crater, or it’s mild enough to let everyone survive this long, not both.

After hugs are given everyone obviously wants to know what happened to Oscar. His response?

“It’s a… long story. I get the feeling there’s been a few of those tonight.”

That’s a check for the bingo card! We’re halfway through the first episode and we’ve already got another secret. Yes, this is a secret. Oscar actively chooses not to tell anyone that Ozpin is back—something Ozpin himself comments on—and then skillfully draws attention away from himself with “I get the feeling there’s been a few of those tonight.” Indeed, all eyes go to Penny. Oscar’s plight is forgotten, which is what he wanted. His justification?

Ozpin: “You’re not going to tell them?”

Oscar: “You and I aren’t done talking yet.”

Along with this look.

Oscar no. There’s so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s create a list.

As said, you had plenty of time to talk to Ozpin and chose not to. Miss me with this excuse.

You are now doing to your friends exactly what you and your friends did to Ironwood, which in turn is what Ozpin did to you! I can’t believe we’ve got Oscar critically side-eyeing him when they are still—still—repeating the behavior they drove Ozpin away for.

What is there to even talk about now? Oscar didn’t punch himself/Ozpin (lol) but he did steal Jinn’s name from Ozpin in the first place. You got what you wanted, drove him away, and have been lying and keeping secrets ever since. The only thing they should be talking about involves apologizing. Any further criticism—which is what Oscar’s expression and curt reply suggests—is beyond hypocritical.

Seriously, what needs to be discussed? There’s no reason not to tell the group unless Oscar wants to talk about whether they should tell them. There’s no good ending here...

Don’t you think it would be nice to know that Ozpin is back and you’ve got super magic powers while making plans to save the entire world?

This is all especially stupid given Oscar’s “Salem wants to divide us” reminder to Ruby in a moment. Oscar, you are doing the most to divide the group right now. By not forgiving Ozpin. By refusing to work with him. By keeping him secret from everyone else.

This is bad, friends, I worry for what the rest of the volume will bring…

The story is done with Ozpin for now so I guess I will be too. The group continues filling Oscar in and we get some shots of the base, including a rather prominent poster of what I assume are two Happy Huntresses. Did they die in battle perhaps?

It’s a little strange.

Oscar: “Where’s Qrow?”

Me: “Likely still making bad decisions.”

No one knows so they just drop it. Which I kind of get, only so much you can do to find him if he’s not out on the streets like Oscar, but it still reads as kind of iffy that two nieces look down at the ground for a hot second and then move on with their plans, content to leave Qrow to whatever fate befell him. In a minute we’ll see Yang firmly take Ren’s side regarding helping the people they can in Mantle, which frankly comes out of nowhere for her. I think an easy motivation would have been Qrow. Ruby wants to save the world, Yang wants to find and save their uncle, and that just happens to align with Ren’s desire to save the civilians who need immediate grimm and cold help. Don’t get me wrong, I like that there’s finally some division between the sisters, I just wish it hadn’t come about so abruptly. Ren had setup for standing up to Ruby. Yang did not.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Joanna lists the grimm horde and no heat as the major threats to everyone. The group agrees.

Me: What about Salem?

Joanna says that this is all doubly dangerous because there’s “no more military protection.”

Me: Oh, so now you want the military?

This is all so disjointed. Even more-so when Joanna mentions that Ironwood has stopped all evacuations to Atlas, likely due to the “hard light shields” that are the only thing standing between Salem and the city. Thing is, the show never makes this connection, I just did it myself based on this scene and the one that comes later. The show presents Joanna’s line as a pure condemnation. Ironwood won’t let more evacuees in because… he’s just evil, I guess. Yet there is a justification here, namely that continuing the evacuations even while he’s stuck without Penny leaves him wide open to a Salem attack, the death of everyone currently safe, but that argument is never presented to the viewer. I don’t need people to agree with Ironwood’s perspective, I just wish that perspective was offered as an option. The show is very good about acting like RWBYJNOR’s opinion is the only justified opinion, or simply the only opinion at all.

After everything is laid out Weiss goes, “We’re never going to sleep again, I just know it.”

I could make a crack about the lack of continuity and how the group should be collapsing right now… but that was a funny line. It can stay.

What is far more of a problem is the fact that no one is talking about Salem. Okay, that’s a lie. They do talk about her, but in a roundabout way like her presence isn’t impacting every decision they make. That’s the real issue. They’re acting as if Salem isn’t here right now, like she’s off far away, maybe approaching slowly, and they’re arguing over how best to prep the world for her eventual attack. There’s no emotion here—let alone action—to reflect that the series’ Big Bad has arrived and is poised to murder them all. Literally what is this? Ruby is yelling about warning the world and, ignoring the continued question of why that’s a good thing when the world can do nothing to stop Salem and knowledge of her continually drives people to horrible acts, she has yet to acknowledge that… she’s the world? Ruby is the world in this conflict. She, Mantle, and Atlas. Salem is here for you all. Right now. You are, this instant, in the situation you want to warn others about, so why don’t you try to do something about it? Or at least acknowledge it. Ruby wants to warn the neighborhood about a potential fire while her house is actively ablaze, and the fire could have totally killed her by now but decided not to for… reasons.

“Ruby’s right,” Nora says. They have to tell the world so “they can prepare.” How? How are they supposed to prepare for this? The story cannot continue ignoring Salem’s immortality.

“Ruby’s right,” is all Blake says and I’m starting to thinks that’s why her character exists now, to agree with Ruby. It’s great that she’s getting a little distance from Yang, but man.

As Ruby asks whether Pietro can get Amity up and running despite it not being finished (called it) we start an incredibly odd sequence of flashforwards to their individual missions. I’ve seen a lot of praise for this already and though I agree that, in theory, it’s a good way to save time, I found the actual execution to be jarring. Upon thinking back through our timeline, it became clear they were flashforwards, but while watching I thought they might be flashbacks (especially since that’s more common).

Some of the shots, like Nora’s, just look awkward when you’ve got the exact expression and pose transplanted from one scene to another, like she’s a cardboard cutout behind a green screen. To say nothing of how the flashforwards ruin any suspense (I use that word loosely) in the conversation itself. If the question is, “Will they decide to go to the military compound?” then that question is answered when we see Ruby scoping out the compound, not when the group actually decides on the course of action.

It just made an already muddled scene worse for me, so I hope this trend doesn’t continue.

And of course, Amity can be used despite all the info last volume claiming that it wasn’t finished. Pietro suddenly acts like it is finished and the only thing standing in their way is Ironwood providing access. If that were the case, he would have used Amity weeks or days ago like he wanted to! When was it finished? Not after Watts commented on how incomplete it was. When did they get back the resources they needed from Robyn? It’s as ridiculous and retcon-y as I thought it would be.

Yang points out that Ironwood will never listen to them and Ruby counters that “he doesn’t have to.” They’ll just take the access from him. Because why wouldn’t they in a series where they’ve already stolen two airships? Stealing from the super evil military that Joanna wishes were helping them right now is just the group’s go-to plan nowadays.

Pietro isn’t sold on this plan though. He lists at least three obstacles they’d need to get through “and then… oh boy, I might need to think about this some more.” “And just to clarify,” Oscar says, “This is the easy option?” Um...no it’s not? We also know there’s an access point in Ironwood’s office so… why not go there instead? They really think the Academy is less guarded than the military base? There’s a potential justification here along the lines of, “After Neo and Cinder broke into his office Ironwood will have the place on high alert,” but unless I missed it the group doesn’t assume anything like that. They just listen to Pietro point out all the ways they can’t get into the military base and jump straight to that being the best option. It feels like a transparent way to create conflict for the group. We’ll just have them taking the most dangerous route despite an easy route being offered alongside it. Why bother mentioning his office at all? Just have the access in the military base. Boom, done.

It’s that conflict and the fact that Ruby tends to hear “You can’t” and digs in her heels. You can’t go to Atlas. I’ll just steal a ship then. You can’t defeat Salem. Watch me. You can’t break into this base. Guess what I’m doing! She’s dangerous in her fairy tale, meta-driven insistence that everything will turn out her way because she wants it to.

Speaking of, we finally—FINALLY—get someone challenging Ruby. Sort of. Not actually but it’s the closest we’ve ever gotten:

Yang: “Ruby, when we came here we said we’d follow your lead… but things haven’t exactly worked out.”

Now, there are two things to take away from this moment. The first is how utterly shocked Ruby and the others are. I mean, take a look at these expressions.

Ruby straight up can’t believe what she’s hearing. Weiss put her hand to her mouth like this is the most dramatic thing to ever happen to her. Oscar looks down in a ‘Yeah, I agree but please don’t look at me and make me admit that’ way. And Nora looks indifferent in the screenshot but animated she goes sort of stern, likely pissed that Yang would dare say that given her own agreement with Ruby. This not only reiterates that Yang’s challenge came out of nowhere—seriously, how did we move from following Ruby no matter what to this? Last volume she asked a single question along the lines of, ‘You sure?’ and when Ruby said ‘Yes’ Yang was entirely on board—but also demonstrates that no one has EVER said no to her before. Ruby is amazed that someone would challenge her. The act of challenging Ruby is, in and of itself, shocking. This group has gotten so used to following Ruby blindly that the teensiest little pushback is greeted with this.

Because it is teensy. This is the second takeaway: Yang barely challenges her and that challenge leads nowhere. She doesn’t accuse Ruby of anything, she doesn’t question her continued authority, she just broadly implies that things could be better. We followed you, now things are bad, take from that what you will. It’s incredibly mild as far as criticism goes, making the shock all the more, well, shocking, but it also amounts to—wait for it—nothing! Because Yang didn’t truly challenge Ruby’s leadership. She’s still in charge, she’s still calling the shots, and they’re still listening to her. We might have gotten some change if this division had been allowed to play out, but instead Jaune comes in with a, “Let’s go for both!” solution. It let’s both groups get what they want which, in turn, releases them from the need to grapple with whether they’ll listen to Ruby when she’s advocating for something they don’t agree with. We have now lost the chance to see whether, when push comes to shove, Ren and Yang will cave to Ruby’s will or stick by their own beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s more conflict than we’ve gotten in years, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly compelling conflict. It’s good by RWBY’s standards, which doesn’t necessarily make it good. The actual issues at hand—Ruby’s dangerous arrogance, the group’s loyalty, her choices up until now—are just swept under the rug. For all the visuals we get insisting that there’s this great divide in the group… there’s really not. Not in any way that matters.

Also, Ruby is an idiot. Okay, that was mean, but she really is in this scene. She’s actually not an idiot overall because she was written as wonderfully intelligent in the early volumes, but now? Lately? She makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

“But that’s how Salem got this far,” she cries. “By dividing us!”

Ruby… oh my god, Ruby. No one should have to explain to you that dividing people means turning them against each other, not literally dividing your team to complete separate tasks. This girl honestly thought that because there was this teensy disagreement and that half the team would complete Plan A while she and the other half completed Plan B, both of which notably work towards the goal of, “Protect people from Salem,” that this was somehow what Salem wanted. That is was dangerous. Honestly, it’s a scary look at her view of leadership too: If everyone doesn’t 100% agree with me and do what I say, that’s an objectively bad thing that the grimm queen wants, right? Does Ruby think that unification means following a single person (her) without question or variation? That would explain a lot...

The fact that Oscar needs to explain the difference to her is not good. It really doesn’t say great things about this version of Ruby. Though he was comparing Ironwood to Salem last volume, so really they should all be wearing dunce hats.

Penny offers to take the relic directly to Salem in exchange for her leaving the kingdom alone. I honestly didn’t expect that. If anyone took that risk I would have put my money on Ozpin (but of course, during all this talk of the women he knows best, he’s kept quiet). Oscar is again the voice of wisdom, pointing out that they have no reassurance that Salem will keep her word. At least Penny is thinking about Salem as a threat though, so kudos for that. When this plan is shot down she volunteers to get Ruby past the military security instead and, uh, she’s a little intense about it.

I’m not entirely sure what is going on with Penny. She disagreed with Winter but then seemed to come around to her point of view, enough to help anyway. They had another (stupid) disagreement about the value of individual lives, so that helps to explain why she’s teaming up with RWBYJNOR (if you ignore that Ironwood is also trying to save individual lives...). Did watching Fria die shake her up? Is it being the Winter Maiden that’s not sitting right? Does Penny have lingering feelings about the framing that haven’t shown up until now? Her status as a ‘real girl’? We’ve got a lot of reasons that could definitely explain this sudden need to fight, but we’re not told which—if any of these—is the driving force.

We’re then given a lot of little details. Someone points out that if Salem gets the staff and “create[s] anything else” then Atlas will fall (so yeah, let’s move the people underneath it). We still don’t know what exactly the Staff does because “creation” is kind of broad and “powering a city to float” doesn’t seem to sit within that category at all. Pietro gives Yang the keys to his lab so they can get the bikes. We see the group dividing in the flashforwards, something I do like, especially since the show has gone out of its way to break up most of the usual duos. Nora in particular is pissed at Ren for his choice.

“Oh, I’m saving Mantle because I actually believe we can do this.”

#yikes. Well, I did say I wanted a conflict other than ‘Oh no, one of us might die’ and it looks like I got it. But Nora, the only reason you can do this is because the plot is in your corner: none of you are collapsing from two major fights, you didn’t lose your aura so the cold isn’t a danger, the military is barely a threat all of a sudden, Salem is helpfully hanging out in her whale instead of killing you, and the story decided that Amity can function so long as you all are the ones who get to use it. That’s why you can do this. Ren, who follows in-world logic and doesn��t want to risk a whole kingdom’s worth of lives on a pipe dream, thinks differently, oddly enough.

As they leave though Penny gets a call from Ironwood. I know precisely what the fandom is going to say here: “This evil man is just trying to use Penny to open the vault!” Of course he is. He needs it open to save everyone he can, Penny included. Plus the concept of “using” her is a double-edged sword. What do we think the group is doing right now? Using her to get past the security. Penny’s power is a tool any way you slice it. Granted, Penny volunteers to help the group, but notably here Ruby speaks for her. Penny seems torn and Ruby takes the scroll away with, “She’s not going anywhere until you change your mind about Mantle.”

Sorry, Ruby, but coming from you that sounds less like a reassurance for Penny and more like just an order for Ironwood. Remember Harriet? We’ll stop attacking you provided you do what we want. Ruby has yet to learn about compromises, let alone acknowledge that she might be wrong. How about you let Penny decide where she goes, especially since by all logic she should have a lot of loyalty to Ironwood. She knew him before she ever met you. She’s worked with him since she was rebuild post-Volume 3. Despite what Penny has said, if the story would just let her think about his actions for a hot second—making her the protector of Mantle, sticking up for her after the framing, sending her to the party, teaming her up with Ruby, etc.—she might realize that the ‘He doesn’t want me to have friends’ and ‘He just treats me like a tool’ assumptions are just that, unfounded assumptions. But no, Ruby speaks for them both because Ironwood is evil now.

“If she makes it through our defenses,” Ironwood says, “everything that follows will be on your hands.”

That’s true! Kind of like how it’s own Qrow’s hands that Clover died. When you insist on making a bad situation worse you hold responsibility when the shit hits the fan. You know though that Salem won’t get through their defenses now, somehow, so that there’s no chance RWBYJNOR will be blamed for it. Or, by that point Ironwood will be so crazed that anything coming out of his mouth is dismissed, no matter how accurate it might be.

We then transfer to the Ace Ops who are, despite what the fandom theorized for many months, clearly upset about Clover. Also pissed. Which they have every right to be. Their friend and leader was killed. Imagine for a moment that Ruby had been murdered by Tyrian with an allies’ help. Exactly what do you think the group would do? Swallow it quietly and get over it? Ha.

I’ve already seen some speculation that Clover survived due to details like showing us the bandage and his room being listed as for a “Patient,” but he looks pretty dead to me.

He got gutted through the chest and left out in the snow for who knows how long. We saw him slip away. Qrow screamed over his dead body. He’s not breathing now. If RWBY suddenly claims he survived this, I’m calling BS.

Most of the other visuals we get here were already dropped in the trailer. Winter is pretty injured from her encounter with Cinder, likely permanently based on her new outfit. Ironwood had to replace his arm—and I am calling BS on that “Losing his arm is reflective of him losing his humanity” commentary from RT. Please go read up on a couple decades worth of ableism in media and then get back to me.

We get Ironwood’s line about the light shields and, notably, a whole lot of empathy. Regardless of what he might want Penny for, he still called her with compassion. He’s watching the Ace Ops mourn their friend. He’s talking about protecting his kingdom. The first thing he says to Winter is, “Thank you, Winter. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Ironwood has a heart! It’s always on display, which makes this scene utterly ridiculous.

I literally don’t know how to respond to this. The gunshot made me jump, both because it’s a gunshot and because, again, what the fuck? I know I said that next volume RT might just have Ironwood descend into full villainy, shooting whoever he pleases now that he’s shot Oscar, but I didn’t actually expect them to do it. Because he never should have shot Oscar in the first place! I wanted the story to let Oscar grapple with it a bit and then quietly backtrack, acknowledging it as the mistake it was. The concept that Ironwood, empathetic Ironwood, rational Ironwood, always thinks before he acts Ironwood, let’s kids yell at him Ironwood, tried to team up with Robyn Ironwood, did everything Ruby wanted Ironwood, won’t kill Watts after he destroyed his arm Ironwood would shoot this guy just to shut him up is absurd. It was absurd then, it’s absurd now.

That being said, there’s a possibility he didn’t actually shoot the council member, but rather just (“just”) gave a warning shot down the hallway. I say this because the reactions to this are pretty tame. Everyone looks startled, yeah, but after the initial shot there’s nothing that I would expect if there was now a guy bleeding out on the floor. The council woman doesn’t scream. Winter doesn’t seem overly shocked. No one is running to try and help him. Basically, if Ironwood had just killed a political figure in front of six witnesses, entirely unprovoked, I would expect a bit more of a reaction than this. This feels far more like a, “Damn he’s not joking around, letting off warning shots to get people to leave him alone” not “WOW, our general just killed someone in cold blood!”

What I really hate though—beyond just assassinating his character—is how many fans think my friends and I are delusional for calling it character assassination at all. I hopped onto the RWBY tag for five minutes this morning and was bombarded with posts about how Ironwood needs to be murdered horrifically, anyone who likes him is sick, the Ironwood stans are as bad as Adam stans, you’re an idiot if you want him redeemed… because apparently the concept of a story writing a character badly doesn’t compute. I’m not here to argue that Ironwood didn’t do these awful things (regardless of whether he actually killed the guy or not). I’m not here to argue that they’re not awful. I’m just here to say that we never should have gotten these scenes in the first place, or if we were going to get them, we deserved an actual descent into murder at the drop of a hat territory. I’ve already explained extensively on this blog how early Ironwood was not accurate foreshadowing for this, and Volume 7 certainly wasn’t setup, but it looks like the majority of fans aren’t interested in examining whether any of this adds up. Which makes my job, as someone trying to examine this series somewhat objectively—in as much as that’s possible for any single viewer—as well as simply enjoy it as a show, really hard. It’s bad enough when a story keeps taking the characters you love and villainizing them, and doing that badly, but then when you turn to the community and see them rallying around the idea that you’re awful for being dissatisfied—you’re the bootlicker, you’re the blind stan, you can’t see what’s ‘really’ going on here… that sucks. For those of you happy and satisfied with Ironwood’s arc, that’s great! I’ve also seen a lot of posts hyping up the complexity of his character now. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying what we’ve been given and I’d never want to imply that just because it’s not what I wanted it’s somehow wrong. I’m honestly thrilled that after a year of worry so many people have adored our premiere, including this scene. I just wish that I could say RWBY had given me something I didn’t want in a persuasive manner and that the fandom as a whole was a bit more welcoming of differing criticisms.

Not that I didn’t already know the RWBY fandom had its flaws, but still lol.

That’s basically it for our premiere. Nice note to end on, huh? Our final scene is of Salem using the lamp to set her bloodhound grimm on the city. Why doesn’t she just go herself? What was she planning to do here in Atlas in the first place, considering that getting the relic was a surprise? Who knows. Little about this holds together. But we do end with another awesome shot, so small favors.

It’s always strange concluding a recap, but even more-so when it’s a premiere, during a historical moment in the U.S., amidst all the nonsense that is 2020. So for now I’ll just conclude with three quick things:

The updated bingo board will be listed at the end of each recap, provided I don’t forget about it lol. Today I’m checking off tone (not nearly enough freaking out about Salem), the team keeping secrets (Oscar), and major plot point dropped (Amity is suddenly finished). I could also probably check off the cold not killing civilians and getting Amity up and running, but we’ll see if any changes with those.

I’m including my Ko-Fi link at the end of recaps now. Not with any expectations. Not with anything resembling pressure. I thought long and hard over whether to include it at all—let alone mention it here—because I love doing these and never want anyone to feel like it comes with strings attached. But life is a little harder and weirder than it was last year, so I figure it can’t hurt. Feel free to pass on by and I won’t be bringing it up past this note.

Far more importantly: thank you for reading! :D

(Bonus 4. Editing this was an absolute nightmare — damn you, tumblr! — so I apologize if anything is super wonky when I finally post.)

See you next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps

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solastia · 5 years ago

Text

Dear Authornim | 2

Pairing: Kim Seokjin x Reader

Word Count: 1,862

Summary: You’re a writer of BTS fanfiction. rockstarjin is your favorite reader that you’ve actually come to be friends with…and maybe had a bit of a crush on if you were honest. You’re up for quite the surprise.

Warnings: Not really much this chapter. Single instance of the word whore, but no one was calling someone that. It was just a comment. Semi-vague sort of sexting (you’ll see).

Notes: I might make a separate chapter after this is done - like a bonus type thing - featuring some comments from rockstarjin, if you guys are interested. I wasn’t sure if everyone would want to see them or if they’d bore you, so I kinda glossed over that. Let me know if that’s something you’d want! Commissioned by @kimseokmomjins

Being a writer - even if it’s simply for fanfiction - you take comments and reviews very seriously. A good comment or review can lift your spirits and leave you smiling for a whole day. A negative comment often leaves you questioning everything and going over your chapters with a fine-tooth comb. The rare unicorns were the readers that took the time to leave long and detailed comments, stating exactly what they liked and disliked about the latest chapter. Many of these were filled with valuable suggestions and helped you decide the path that your stories would take.

One such unicorn was named rockstarjin, a reader that had been following your work for nearly a year now. His first comment had practically been drabble-sized, and had covered everything from his enjoyment over how realistically you characterized Kim Seokjin to how he was certain he would never use the “W” word (he literally typed out “W” word instead of whore, something you still teased him over to this day).

That first review of his was only one of many. He took the time to give detailed reviews on every single chapter you posted until you discovered that in your head you were practically writing for him. It had even gotten to the point where several of your stories were ideas that the two of you had chatted about on tumblr for months, working through every detail. He still seemed a little iffy on the smut, but he’d gotten you to consider the idea of writing Seokjin as “Less aggressive” in the bedroom.

Your friendship had grown until you were now friends on practically every social media app - nevermind that his profiles were always suspiciously void of personal information. The more that you talked to “Rocky” (you started calling him that months ago since he didn’t seem excited about telling anyone his name, though he knew yours), the more you looked forward to interacting with him.

You couldn’t even explain really why you were getting so attached to some blank face behind the screen. You didn’t even know all that much about the real him, just small observations from chats. Like, you knew that he seemed similar to Seokjin in a lot of ways, which is probably why he claimed him as a bias.

Rocky was very fond of puns and dad jokes, often sending you one first thing in the morning on KKT instead of a hello or good morning like a normal person. This morning it was, “Why did the tomato turn red? Because it saw the salad dressing.” You were ashamed that they always made you laugh at least a little bit, but it made you happy that one of the first things he thought to do in the morning was send you something.

He was also fond of talking to you about food and recipes, acting affronted whenever you mentioned not knowing what something was. He would literally bully you into going to the grocery store and buying the ingredients he’d list out, demanding pictures of the final product like he was Gordon Ramsey. You had to admit he had good taste in food, even if you didn’t think your cooking skills were quite on par with his. It sometimes made you wonder if he was a chef, but the one time you’d brought it up he’d claimed to be too damn tired to cook and was living vicariously through you. Of course, that led to you asking what he did that got him so tired and he gave you another vague answer, stating he was in entertainment. Whatever the hell that meant.

It bothered you sometimes that even after all this time he was disinclined to tell you anything, but you couldn’t help it as your feelings slowly evolved from those of friendship to...well, something more. You were a little hesitant to use the L word, considering you only knew what he wanted you to know, but you definitely had a crush at least. Not surprising considering he seemed to be everything you were looking for. He was considerate and compassionate, funny, creative, and so many other things. However, the fact that he was so very loud and proud about his love for Seokjin made you avoid looking at your feelings too closely. Because while you were over here pining for him, the only person that praised Seokjin more than Rocky was Kim Seokjin himself. And that could mean any number of things.

Even when he helped you with smut ideas he got you excited. He had slowly gotten you to lean away from always writing Seokjin as some powerful dom - something your other readers had begun to notice and comment on - and now most of your scenes had him as being the more submissive one. He seemed to like it best when the main character was more of a soft dom, willing to take charge and take care of Seokjin. Rocky claimed that a man like Seokjin who was always working hard and worrying about one thing or another would relish the idea of being taken care of. You had to admit it made sense.

You sigh and glance at your phone again, noting the lack of notifications. Your morning pun was the last you’d heard from Rocky today, something that had been happening for a few days now. Considering BTS was on tour right now, you’d expected a lot more messages about how he thought Seokjin was especially handsome today. Instead, for almost a week it had been nothing but your morning jokes and once he sent you a picture of his fancy looking dinner complaining about the portion size. You were beginning to really miss him, but you figured he must be busy.

You wanted to scream with him today, considering BTS was finally going to be in your city in a couple days. You’d bought the tickets months ago, and Rocky had even convinced you to get pit tickets, something you never do because it’s basically a gladiator stadium up there. You were currently waiting for one of the boys to show up on vlive since the last concert before they traveled to your city had just finished a bit ago. It had been a fantastic show and Seokjin had looked as beautiful as always. You hoped he would be the one to go live, but that was rare unless he was with another member.

Suddenly, your phone beeps and shows a message on KKT.

Rocky: Kill me

You smile widely, excited flutters starting in your belly. It was ridiculous how pleased you got just to hear from him.

You: Is there an option B?

Rocky: We could run away and start a new life on a deserted island. Our descendants will become known as the most beautiful people on the planet.

You blush and force yourself to cough to cover up the giggle that threatened to escape.

You: Is that so?

Rocky: Naturally. They all take after me, of course.

You: Of course.

You: What brought this on?

Rocky: I’m so damn tired. My body hurts and I just want to sleep for a week.

You: Oh no! Do you have time to soak in the bath? Epsom salt works wonders.

Rocky: I’ll be able to soak later. Right now I’m just forcing myself to stay awake long enough to eat. I feel like a zombie.

Rocky: Hey, why did the zombie cross the road?

You: Why?

Rocky: TO EAT THE CHICKEN 🤣

You: 🤭

You: Really though, take care of yourself. I don’t want you getting sick on me.

Rocky: How would you take care of me?

You gasped, peering hard at the phone. This was new. Of course, you could be reading this the wrong way, and he’s simply asking to ask.

You: Depends. Are you asking for tips or in the white boy “What would you do if I was there with you” way?

Rocky: Let’s try it this way. Say I’m Kim Seokjin. I’m tired and hurting after another long night of performing. You’re waiting for me in my hotel room. How would you take care of Jin?

You: Omigosh, are you voluntarily helping with a smut scene?

Rocky: Sure

You: Ok, let's see. This scene can’t get too crazy if he’s tired like that. I think mostly I would focus on his comfort.

So, he’d show up and I’d already have a bath waiting and food on the way. Maybe some aromatherapy candles are lit and some quiet instrumentals in the background. I’d let him soak until the food got there, hang out in the bathroom with him and let him vent to me if he wanted.

After his meal, I would put a towel on the bed and have him lay on top so I could rub him down with massage oil. Naked, of course ;)

I’m sure he gets it from professionals, but I think he’d appreciate it right after a concert and bath.

Then, it would just depend on what kind of story it was. I could either rub him down like that until he falls asleep, or it could go the smut way. There are lots of options for that too depending on the story. I could give him a handjob while I talk sweetly to him, I could ride him and tease him, maybe peg him if he’s into that. Anything that would keep him soft and pliant, because the goal is to get him comfortable and happy. To show him he can just let go with me, let me be in charge of his pleasure. Show him he’s loved and cherished.

Rocky: Fuck

You: Too much? 🙊

Rocky: No

The phone was silent for a whole two minutes. Surely he’d heard worse from you, so you didn’t think you’d freaked him out or something. When another message came in you breathed a sigh of relief.

Rocky: So, I’m gonna be in your city for the concert

You: No shit?! I can suggest so many great places for you to eat!!!

You: Or if you wanted, we could meet up? No pressure and I totally won’t be offended if you don’t want to. Stranger danger and all that.

Rocky: You know what

Rocky: Let’s meet

#btssmutclub #bts #bts fanfic #kim seokjin #seokjin #jin #seokjin fanfic #seokjin x reader #dear authornim #solastia

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beauzoleils · 5 years ago

Text

ABIGAIL COWEN , CISFEMALE , SHE / HER → according to the school records , NATALIE LUCILLE BEAUSOLEIL has been attending sacred heart for the past three years . i last saw them hanging around the john bracken library ; i think they were working on writing her novel . at twenty - one years old , natalie has been studying english literature and get this , i heard that she’ll zone out while writing papers for class and come to surrounded by pages and pages full of archaic languages she doesn’t speak — figure it’s true ? everyone around here always associates them with a moonlight sonata echoing through empty halls , seats in the back row at the opera , and dead flowers pressed between the pages of an old book . in the time since these strange happenings , they have encountered unexplained occurrences .

HI , hello . i’m hannah n this is like . the only thing i’ve been thinking about recently , aka i’m so excited . ok anyway ! i’m 20 , kickin it in the est ! i’m a full time student ( majoring in being a dumb bitch n gay rights and i’m at the top of my class baby . . ) and i’m ALSO a preschool teacher so if i’m ever Not here , i’m with my babies ! ! but that isn’t the reason why ur all here . . ur here for an intro post ! so !

let’s talk abt my girl . . . 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐈𝐋 !

okay . so . first thing’s first . i have some Real Things prepared for my girl , including but not limited to :

a pinterest board !

a stats page !

and what i call NATALIE : A TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS . it’s kind of a bio , mixed in with some stage directions here and there . it’s a quick read n rly gives you that Natalie Flavor if you know what i mean . . so if you feel so inclined n wanna take a look . . but full disclosure it rly does hit different than just reading this intro

anyway ! i’ll give a more condensed version of her bio here n some info abt her personality n some random headcanons . . etc !

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈 : 𝑨 𝑯𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑹𝒀

alright SO . our girl natalie was born on april 13 , 1952 to michel and colette beausoleil . it was a thursday , and it was ALSO eleven weeks before colette’s due date , so we all know that can’t be good

( spoiler alert : it wasn’t )

natalie was supposed to be a twin , but the other baby ( a boy named pierre ) didn’t survive . they didn’t think that natalie would , but she did ! unfortunately , her parents were too wounded by the loss of their other baby and it was all grieving and no celebrating .

also . there’s more info abt her parents n how they met in the bio but , a sparknotes version is that michel was a playwright in paris and colette was a ballerina / his muse and they rushed into a marriage

michel made it rly big a couple yrs after natalie was born and so they decided to use that $ $ $ to send natalie away to an expensive boarding school in london called our lady of sacred suffering . it was , of course , a catholic girls boarding school and natalie hated it there

but they hated natalie there bc she was just the WORST catholic school girl of all time , so it was mutual

meanwhile , her relationship w her parents is . . very complicated . her dad is just kind of The Worst across the board , very reliant on drinking , definitely got into drug use at some point , had lots of affairs with the young actresses in his plays . and colette was just . . very sad and very absent so the support was Minimal

natalie has a lot of issues that are all rooted in her childhood tbh .

somewhere along the way , she found a deep passion for Writing and developed this sense of purpose and for a minute things were going very well

which we all know means things are about to get WORSE .

on her eighteenth birthday , natalie receieves a card in the mail from her mother for the First Time Ever . and she immediately is like . huh . well . something is Wrong .

she’s right .

( tw : nondescript mentions of car crashes & death )

a week later , she receives word that her parents were involved in a serious car accident at the pont de l’alma tunnel in paris and her did not survive the accident .

( end tw )

her mother’s family is not convinced that michel should walk away from this without blame and decides to take legal action against him and get him convicted with a more serious charge than just manslaughter .

they promise to keep natalie out of it as much as possible but when it comes time to testify as to whether or not michel had a history of not caring about colette’s life and well - being , the only one who can speak to it is natalie .

so she testifies and it’s her testimony that is the metaphorical nail in the coffin .

( tw : suicide mention )

michel knows it , too . that’s what natalie thinks . he turns up dead in his jail cell the day before he’s supposed to be sentenced . she never knows if he deserved the life sentence he was going to be given .

( end tw )

so then ! she’s an orphan ! but she does gain control over everything that her parents left behind , which turns out to be a lot .

she sells their house in paris , goes to wales to begin university , and hasn’t gone back since then . but like , she grew up in london for the most part so she’s not exactly sad about being away from paris and all the ghosts there .

and now she’s at sacred heart , working on writing her debut novel , which is the ( albeit , dramatized and fictionalized ) story of her parents !

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈 : 𝑨 𝑺𝑼𝑴𝑴𝑨𝑹𝒀 .

so basically , she’s got issues .

fictional character inspo includes : jo march , alaska young , cheryl blossom

if you know anything abt astrology . . she’s an aries sun , mercury , and venus . . and a scorpio moon and mars . . and a gemini rising . . i’m so sorry JKDSFM

she’s very emotional but does a super good job of hiding it and keeping all those emotions ( esp the intense n darker ones ) buried away . . deep down where no one could see it

the minute that ppl kind of ? ? but two and two together n realize who she is ( bc . . in my head . . her dad’s whole trial was kind of . A Thing that the public knew abt . ) they’re probably rly concerned w Little she shows any real emotion to the whole thing .

rly she’s just the queen of compartmentalizing n repressing !

she’s very . . Assertive . like , when she wants something she’s going to do whatever it takes to get her way

very Very reckless . she’s like . . so fucking impulsive that it physically Pains me sometimes .

she’s very smart but like . More So , she’s very clever and very sharp with her words . a very fast thinker and a very loud talker

someone please . . tell her to stop yelling . she needs to Relax .

she’s very charming i’ll say it . n like ? seems cool ? the kind of person that you meet and immediately want to hang out w them .

very flirty , has always used that charming smile of hers to get ppl in her corner and she’s not gonna stop now ! she’s very good at making ppl feel special

but like . she means well most of the time sdkfj her heart is in the right place okay

big time trust issues . big time commitment issues . painfully independent and refuses to let anyone know how much she cares about them until she’s like . . Really sure that they aren’t going to hurt her

also very afraid of hurting people , which is another reason why she struggles to get attached to people . she definitely has this deep - rooted fear that Bad Things follower her and she doesn’t want to drag ppl into that

it’s literally a toss - up as to whether she’s going to seem like she’s demanding ur attention or entirely disinterested in it . bc she’s all over the place .

but like . i’m an emotional BITCH so she’s probably going to end up being 100000% softer than i intend bc i project too much soft bitch energy onto my characters Always .

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈𝐈 : 𝑪𝑶𝑵𝑵𝑬𝑪𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺 .

so many things . literally , anything . just a disclaimer , if u read thru this and had An Idea then like . yes Pls tell me , i want it xoxo

but here are some i have up in the old . . noggin .

EXES . please , please . . for the love of GOD give me some angsty exes nonsense . do you need someone who broke ur characters heart ? consider natalie UR GIRL . she’s Emotionally Damaged and has the capacity to be the angstiest ex of all time , okay ?

give her a weakness . she needs someone who she’s Actually vulnerable around and actually sees her have emotions and knows she’s not just this huge Mess all the time

i rly want someone that is like . from the same ( ish ) bg as her in the sense that like . . they also were surrounded by nice clothes n expensive private schools n Luxury but like . they Thrive in it the way natalie used to wish that she could . n just . i think it would b a super interesting dynamic bc they would just ! clash ! so intensely ! ! n tbh nat would probably b lowkey jealous Still n . spicy !

@ all those ppl who are into theatre : i’m Dying for some connections of ppl who knew / knew of her father n would know what happened w him perhaps on a deeper level than ppl who read it in the newspaper a few yrs ago . . ( bonus points if they lowkey idolized / looked up to her dad bc thats a Big Mess and could b spicy as fuck to explore , u know ? )

idk if any of y’all have characters who grew up in / around paris ? but if there are . . then Perhaps someone who knew her in her youth ?

okay . not to be Trash but like . i rly want her to have a dynamic that’s jo x laurie adjacent ? do they have to be in love w her ? no ! i just want someone that has that genuine bond w her and they care abt each other n goof around n like . . i’m already getting soft on main , huh , ,

she’s soo fucking messy that like . . all the messy fwb / frenemies with benefits / one night stand type of plots . . yes pls

i always want there to b a badass girl squad like . a group of ladies n theydies that take no shit n get in fights for each other n rly truly ride or die w each other . . we can workshop the name ok but for now ? my girl squad is open for applications

okay . let me cut myself off right there but i’ll leave you with my WANTED CONNECTIONS TAG n also again i’m 10000% okay to just brainstorm out something else completely if its what ur feeling !

if u read all / any of this . . i love u . <3 either hmu on discord ( let's go 𝓁𝑒𝓈𝒷𝒾𝒶𝓃𝓈 ! #6227 ) ksdjfskm OR ! like this n i will come to u ! okay , that’s all , bye

#heretics:intro #part 1 part 1 !#im so sorry for this

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arigatogatos · 5 years ago

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Making the Draenei Language - Part 2

Part 1 | Part 3

First off, thanks to all the people who’ve expressed interest in this project! It makes me super happy that people think what I’m doing is interesting :D

Anyway, last time I went through and got a basic idea of the structure of the language, this time we’re diving into WHAT 👏 THAT👏 MOUTH👏 DO (and also spelling)

... and by that I of course mean phonetics (the study of the sounds produced in speech), phonology (the study of which sounds differentiate meaning) and phonotactics (how sounds are put together).

Phonetics and Phonology

Before we can even consider choosing some sounds for the language lets take a moment to consider those TEEF!

Taking my main boy Aegagrus (drawn by the wonderful @rurukatt, definitely didn’t put this in here cuz I still love this pic) as a model for my headcanon of Draenei teeth, we can see how those might get in the way of some sounds... but just like, specifically [f] and [v] (sounds in square brackets represent sounds not the letters, to hear what they sound like go here!) Both of those sounds involve making the same shape with your mouth - touching your bottom lip to your top teeth, but when you got some real long or pointy teeth, that might be a little bit hard to do! (or an accident waiting to happen if they’re sharp enough)

There’s only a small problem with this though, we have some canon words that use these sounds e.g “Pheta vi acahaci” - Light give me strength. I’m gonna explain this away by saying that we’re dealing with an approximate transcription using the Latin alphabet and English spelling conventions, which definitely wasn't designed to write down languages outside of well.. ideally Latin. I mean there’s a reason why English spelling is the way it is and one of those reasons comes down to using an alphabet too small for the number of sounds in the language.

Tangent aside, this means those two sounds are probably something like [ɸ] (again click here to hear these) for f and [β~ʋ] for v. These are sounds similar to [f] and [v] but they don’t involve teeth touching lips, check, and they’re probably what human transcribers misheard as [f] and [v].

Going through the other transcriptions in the data and making some guesses as to what they could be, we end up with something like this:

and huh that seems familiar... wait a second!

Yeah that’s just Hebrew without voiced fricatives, affricates or the sound [j] (the ‘y’ sound in English), and a bonus rhotic. I mean that’s probably to be expected as Draenei are heavily coded to be Jewish (a good post on that), so it makes sense that the sounds are also similar. It’s a shame to have such quote-unquote normal sounds (the th sound [θ] in ”thin” and “ether” is only in 4% of the worlds languages!) but that’s what you get when English devs make a game for a western audience, you get... ~~the fantasy accent~~ a.k.a discount slavic/germanic accents.

By the way [r] is the ‘trilled’ or ‘rolled’ r and [ɾ] is a ‘tapped’ r like in Spanish "por favor”.

Also, as another side note, this sound [ʔ] - the glottal stop is present in English too but you probably don’t recognise that it’s there. It’s the ‘-’ break in between “uh-oh”, and its also present in some dialects of American and British English where the [t] in words like “bottle” (bo’el) and “water” (wa’er) are replaced with the glottal stop.

Anyway, onto vowels! And yet again we come back to the problems of English spellings. English has approximately... too many vowels. In my dialect of Australian Standard English there’s up to 20 different vowel sounds depending on how you count. I mean all things considered we've done pretty well with the 5 vowel symbols we've got but good luck trying to accurately represent all this:

(not to mention the diphthongs) with just a e i o u. Most languages only have ~5 vowels so that’s about what I’m looking for. Taking into consideration all the English wackiness in spelling, we end up with what I think are 7 vowels (the pronunciation examples are definitely not gonna be spot on due to regional differences, learn the IPA its good):

[i] - meat, me, three, e-mail

[ʊ] - (short though) good, should, wood

[ʊ:] - (same as above but long)

[e] - bed, head, red

[ɔ~o] - (somewhere between the vowels in) bought, bot (those of you with the cot-caught merger are having real fun now)

[ɐ] - (this one is really only in Australian English) but, strut, bud

[ɐ:] - (same as above but long) bard, palm, start, hard

The two vowels with long forms are the interesting ones. All throughout the canon text we see ‘aa’ and ‘uu’ popping up again and again in things like “Maraad”, “Sayaad”, “Enkaat”, “Vaard”, “Tuurem” and “Krokuun”. Now this could just be stylistic choices made by the dev team to make the language seem more ~exotic~ but I think that it is definitely a case of phonemic vowel length. That’s where distinctions in words are made by elongating a vowel - something Latin had. But it’s not to be confused with what English calls ‘long vowels’, which are really the leftovers from actual vowel length after everyone in 1500 decided to pronounce every vowel just... completely different for some reason. The Great Vowel Shift is an interesting read). Anyway, it makes these double letters make sense, and is way more interesting than random double vowels. It’s also interesting that it’s not perfectly symmetric either, not all the vowels have this distinction, which is cool and perfectly natural for languages to do!

What is weird is that [ɔ~o] doesn’t have this feature, because in our vowel system, it’s almost directly in the middle of our two long/short vowels so it would probably assimilate and end up doing the same thing! So, going off that I’m going to simulate the beginning of language evolution, where the [ɔ~o] sounds is in the process of diverging into [o:] (oar, caught, thought) when it’s followed by ‘r, t, d, k or g’ and [ɔ] (lot, pot) everywhere else.

So, now we have the sounds for our language, how are they used? (dw hardcore conlanging people, I’ve worked out the rest of the allomorphy rules for the consonants but this post is already loooong)

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is largely about how syllables are formed and what sounds are allowed where. In an effort to try and not make the language *too* similar to English I want these rules to differ from English. Luckily, that’d really easy to do because yet again, English is a statistically weird language!

Syllables are divided into 3 parts - The onset, The nucleus and the Coda. For simplicities sake this corresponds to the consonants before the vowel, the vowel, and the consonants after the vowel. English lets wayyyyy too many consonants on either side ending up with abominations like “strengths” having 3 sounds before the nucleus and 3 after, or crimes against god like “twelfths” with 4 sounds after the coda.

Draenei on the other hand seems to be at most (C)(L)V(C). The brackets mean a sound is optional, C’s being consonants, L being ‘liquids’ like [l] and [r] (and [ʋ]) and V of course being vowels. Now going through the data (plus some creative input) we end up with some rules as to what can go where...

but we’ll leave the details of that for the final documentation and head onto...

Spelling! Everyone’s favourite...

There have been countless forum posts about how to pronounce ‘Draenei’ and even between developers at different panels there doesn't seem to be a consensus. This is probably due to the inconsistent spellings used throughout the lexicon so far - draenei and auchenai rhyme (I think) but they’re spelt with different endings!

With the language I have a few main goals

- Make it match as closely as reasonable with canon and common interpretations - Have the spelling be consistent (same letters should always produce the same sound) - In line with the first one, keep as much of the spelling the same as possible - Make it as alien as possible within reason (sadly phonetics and phonology will not be the place to do that)

So coming to a word like “Draenei”, I have to break at least one thingon that list. Personally I want it to be pronounced [drɐ.naɪ] (druh-nai). So, to be consistent with the sounds from before it should be spelt ‘Dranai’ but that definitely won’t do, or I could keep the spelling and pronounce it literally [drɐ.e.ne.i] (druh-eh-ne-ey to give a rough guide for that), which is... equally bad.

The compromise I'm going with is keeping the spelling of Draenei but making the [aɪ] (ai) sound spelt ‘ei’ across the language. Meaning is gonna be Auchenei. Well, not really because there’s still a bunch of other spellings that need standardising.

the ‘ch’ in “Auchenei” is pronounced with a [k], so is the ‘c’ in “Dioniss aca”. Going through and standardising things like ‘ph’ -> ‘f’, ‘ch’ -> ‘k’ or ‘sh’ depending and rewriting vowels to match the phonology we end up with something that preserves most of the identity and look of the language but just makes more sense! Aukenei would then be the spelling I’m using in the lexicon, probably with a little note for the canon spelling.

So, from now on I'm going to be using the reformed spelling TM, which hopefully will mean anyone attempting to speak this language will have an easier time getting what I'm envisioning, cuz everything is now consistant.

That about does it for this post. Yet again if you made it all the way to the bottom, congratulations! Hopefully the next posts will be a bit more interesting (I’m so fucking pumped for how the culture will impact the grammar and vocabulary holy shit) but I gotta get this one out of the way.

Next time, we’ll be doing word-building - the morphology of the language, Thanks for reading!

#draenei #wow #World of Warcraft #lorecraft #headcanon #theorycrafting #language #conlang #linguistics #draenei language #not art

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wiredandrewired · 5 years ago

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Was trying to actually work on something but my brain is stuck on loop. So instead I’m gonna make a post of the Voltron stuff sitting unposted in my writing WIP folder to help me organize my thoughts.

I guess since I’m posting this, if you have anything you wanna say/ask about any of these feel free. I respond well to outside interest.

1. Project ReVolt is without a doubt the project I’ve posted about the most here. And talked about in random tags. And tangents. Originally it was just the name the project had in my internal brain filing cabinet but it’s kind of spread and stuck to where my wife and I just refer to it as that when we talk about it.

ReVolt is basically going to be a VLD series rewrite more along the lines of how my wife and I would have done it or at least liked to see it done. In some places it will probably stick pretty damn close to the events of the series canon, but in others go completely off the deep end. We’re each going to be doing one, so a lot of the headcanon and worldbuilding and such that we’ve worked out together in various other stories and RPs will be consistent between the two stories, but it will also give us a place to veer out and do things without the others’ input (as we’re not gonna let each other see our fics until they post, tee hee). I’ve done a SHITPOT of rules and infrastructure work using actual alchemy tracts to try and make sense of the series’ largely Powers As The Plot Demands system, and am pretty convinced I’m going to A)fall hard into my very common Esoterica Ranting Mode pitfall and B)enrage literally everyone who reads it with my character and plot choices. Most conservative estimate says this will be six ‘books’ long as again, we’re doing literally the entire series. Current status: at the ‘ridiculously large amount of notes and setting up actual arcs and outlines’ stage, and waiting for the wife to finish ‘Happier HOPEless’.

2. There Are No Monsters Here is a fic I really want to do but cannot seem to get off the ground, set to take place entirely in the ‘last universe’ from season 8--the one native-Honerva died in and crazed-death-god-Honerva picked out as her ideal and tried to wedge herself into. I guess the basic idea was that, like the ‘main’ universe, it got rebuilt pretty much as it was prior to Nightmare Mom Ruining Everything, and I have it with no one fully remembering the events of season 8 that took place there, but characters really closely tied to those events having some itching feeling that something happened, and all the Altean alchemists agreeing that some kind of massive quantum Event certainly occurred even if they don’t know what.

Mostly the story exists as a place for me to have a canon-compliant AU that still lets me explore stuff like Altean history, the racial and cultural tensions of the Coalition, dink around with Oldadins that DON’T die in one fell swoop, a living Daibazaal and Altea, Lotor growing up with a decent-but-not-without-strains relationship with his dad, teen Allura and tiny Lotor being absolute shits to each other while also coming to terms as they grow up with who and what they MUST be both on a political and quantum scale, and generally prove that even a perfect universe isn’t, all in one place. The title is entirely facetious, and anyone who’s read any of my alien culture headcanons for this series knows that. Lol. Current status: lots of bits and pieces, but no good beginning or connective tissue. I have a lot of notes, some arc outlines, and a few scattered scenes and bits of dialogue from later in the story, but my god, I CANNOT get it off the ground.

3. Someone Must Get Hurt (But It Won’t Be Me) is supposed to be a pretty wholly Honerva-centric fic that starts...sometime in her youth?...and carries forward to an as-yet-undetermined point. Probably her death. I mean the first one. I’m not sure. Another chance to dig my fingers into Altean culture and Alchemy, this time leading up to All The Bad Shit That Happened, with the added bonus of being done from a focal point of a character I have a lot of really strong feelings about both positive and negative that’s resulted in me somehow being EVEN MORE wrapped up in her than I was before I added abject knee-jerk trauma hatred to the mix. In no way meant to make Honerva more sympathetic, I think I just want to write her even more like my mother so I’ll feel EVEN BETTER about killing her? Idk man my feelings about her are so complicated. Also an excuse to write a shitpot of her and Zarkon because listen, I’m really glad they’re married because I ship them so fuckin hard. Current Status: SO many notes. SO much infrastructure. Like three pages of an opening I’m almost definitely throwing away because I can’t decide where, when, or how to open but feel like this isn’t it. One short but very telling scene of Honey and Zarkon from late in the story. I’m obsessed with it but I can’t get anywhere.

4. Currently Untitled Demon Hunter AU started because my wife talks to me about Happier HOPEless a LOT and I just got an itch in my bones to work on one myself. In spite of the entire Demon Hunter AU thing getting started by a prompt on a Shance blog, neither Shiro nor Lance are set to appear for at least a chapter? And I am not confident in my ability to not veer off into utter non-shipping anyway because man, am I bad at it. Or like...just an entirely different ship for either or both of them. Current Status: A lot of vague notes, a POWERFUL urge to structure the chapters and overall arc after Ripley’s Gates even though that limits my chapter count and means I will DEFINITELY have 20k+ word chapters, and about seven pages of the first chapter so I guess I’m committed now?

5. Currently Untitled Post Series Fic basically exists for me to vent my frustrations about two main things: The Universe is Fucking Huge And There Are Dangers Other Than Galra, and The Galra Empire Was Huge and Is Not Going To All Fall In Line Behind Voltron Coalition and Especially Behind Keith Who Just Arbitrarily Fucking Decided To Tell Them They Couldn't Pick A New Leader According To Their Own Traditions And Need To Do What They’re Told Now What The Fuck. Also there was a lot of stuff in the series that got left hanging, and while ReVolt is an IN-series fix-it fic, I wanted something that patched up loose ends in a way that was satisfactory to me but also kind of canon-compliant. Current Status: A lot of notes and screaming. No one has seen my progress on this and they might never.

6. Dog Runs And Death Dreams is a warmup file turned deeply self-indulgent series of scenes in which I choose to assume that Shiro’s rare neuromuscular disorder was left so ambiguous so I could plug the symptoms of mine into it. It’s genuinely not any deeper than that. The whole thing is set pre-Kerberos, and includes copious Shiro x Adam content because of it, but also not the kind that makes me feel good about writing because that means it includes the ‘slow fizzle’ that leads up to their breakup before the mission. Ugh. Working on it does make me feel better when I've been having symptoms, though, and I’ve been letting myself write it, unchastised, in a really loose rambly way that I usually deride myself for. It’s just cathartic. Current Status: no notes, no plan, just strain-writing between seizures, but somehow it feels like it has some kind of structure and just keeps growing? Possibly too close to the bone for me to ever post.

7. Birth and Rebirth was born out of two things: the fact that Zarkon is shown to have two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT reactions to first being presented with his baby son in different flashbacks and different seasons, and the fact that in spite of the flashbacks we get at the end of the series, earlier on, the impression I got of Lotor and Zarkon’s relationship wasn’t of a young man who had never had affection from his father, but who had instead lost it. Well, three things: I have a lot of underlying issues at work, at play, and at large when it comes to the Galra Imperial Family. Also, anyone notice the monitor blips in the first baby Lotor flashbacks indicate a heart murmur? Anyway, it was supposed to be a thoroughly self-indulgent and thoroughly self-hurtful examination of Lotor’s early life and the death by degrees of what was left of his father in the husk Rift Adventures left behind, but I got stuck on it a little way in. Current Progress: ten pages, a lot of notes, and some wistfulness. I keep hoping I’ll get inspired to pick it back up again. Contemplating rewriting some of the beginning, maybe it’ll help?

Bonus entry that is not actually in any form of progress soever:

50/50 Voltron Trashfire Edition is spawned from the ‘50/50′ challenge on an old TF board I used to haunt. It’s a fifty-prompt smut challenge using the list of ‘50 reasons to have sex’ from some tv show, and the idea is to write a different ship for every prompt (hence the name). My wife is blazing through it and has several (like twelve?) up on her AO3, but I’ll be utterly blunt: I haven’t written fifty porn fics in my LIFE. Over ALL my fandoms. Current Status: Literally all I have done is assign a ship to each prompt, and I might actually have some prompts with just question marks beside them still. I have one aborted start to one entry. That’s it. It’s not happening. But the empty file is technically in the folder, SO.

#things Rewire Writes #disregard I'm decompiling #writing woes #fanfiction: the struggle #the state of the rest of these makes me a little worried about Revolt tbh #I need to unclog the writing pen in my brain

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ghostbustermelanieking · 6 years ago

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praescitum chapter nine

chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven, chapter eight

casefile, season 10, season 11. part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

Summary: As Mulder and Scully adjust to their reassignment to the X-Files and working together in the wake of their separation, they find themselves investigating a small town and a ghost that apparently warns people of bad things to come.

note: happy halloween! i actually started posting this story when i did to post this chapter on halloween, since it’s probably the most festive. but since i didn’t get as far in the story as i wanted to by this point, i’m going to kind of slow down my posting a little bit by waiting until i finish a later chapter to post the next one. i’m hoping to still be able to post at least one chapter a week, but idk if i’ll be able to keep up with that lol. those are the hopes!

warning for discussion of death in a (false!) historical context. i included fake historical people/historical battles in a real historical war.

---

nine.

october, 2016

If there's anything that Mulder and Scully are not used to, it's having a third presence on their stake outs. Back in the day, if they were staking out with someone else, said someone probably wasn't very happy about being stuck on a stakeout with them. (They've both heard plenty of “third wheel” gossip over the years, right along with the gossip about them being together long before they actually were.) Luckily, Scully notes, this time, they have what seems like a perfectly nice woman as their company. As much as she relishes the chance to have time alone with Mulder and inexplicably get paid for that time, it's better to share the time with someone who doesn't hate them. And Joy Seers seems like halfway decent company.

She gets takeout for everyone, fighting streets abuzz with Halloween traffic, cars and costumed pedestrians alike. She stops at a gas station and grabs a couple bags of M&M's as an added bonus for Mulder—in honor of the holiday, and because she's guessing they'll be here a while without much paranormal activity to entertain them. (She's still convinced that Ryan Caruthers, and maybe a few friends, are behind the whole thing. It makes much more sense than a diabolical ghost tormenting the entire town.)

Scully picks her way back to the school through streets crowded with pint-sized monsters, ghouls, and pop culture characters. Houses festooned in cobwebs and streamers and plastic skeletons. Kids in costumes holding onto their parent’s hands. At a stoplight near the school, she notices a kid on a bus bench. A familiar-looking kid with an Orioles cap pulled over his face.

She finds Mulder and Joy Seers in the classroom: Mulder setting desks and chairs upright, Joy propping a video camera up on the righted bookshelf. The room has been swept, most of the debris cleared; it looks like an empty skeleton of a room, bare walls and bare floors. “I brought food,” Scully says, sitting the plastic bags of containers on a desk.

“Thanks, Scully.” Mulder grins at her briefly overtop of a graffitied desk. She can tell he's enjoying this. He's probably been waiting for a case like this to fall on Halloween for a while. (“How do we always end up staking out haunted places on holidays, Scully?” he joked earlier, and she rolled her eyes, pointed out that this particular place is not haunted, absolutely not. Not the inn, not the school, not the town. She knows he's remembering their conversation last night, and she's hoping he won't bring it up. She feels silly just thinking about it.)

“Were the roads too bad?” Joy asks politely, squinting as she adjusts the angle of the camera. “I know they can be a little crazy on Halloween, especially in the fancier neighborhoods.”

“Not too bad,” says Scully, sitting at the desk. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

“Nothing yet,” Mulder says, sitting down at the desk beside Scully and smirking a little at her. She smirks right back.

“I was relying on our security system to prove whether or not there's any paranormal involvement, but it shorted out today,” says Joy with a touch of irony in her voice, climbing down from the chair and smoothing messy curls absently. “Convenient, huh? Principal thinks someone messed with it to cover up the crime, but we couldn't prove it; it just seems like a system malfunction. And he couldn't get anyone in here to fix it. So I'm setting up a camera in here since this has been the primary location of the activity. I'm hoping to catch some proof as to what this is, if anything happens.”

“That seems smart,” Scully offers. “Although it's strange that the security cameras would mess directly after a break-in.”

“It is,” Joy says, crossing her arms, “but the fact is that it was still working last night. Since my window lock was fixed, anyone who broke in would've had to use the halls. And the cameras showed nothing.”

“Someone could've been planning another break-in for tonight,” Scully comments.

“That's true.” Joy shrugs. “But everyone I talk to says it's just an issue with the computer system. We have the shittiest system, I swear. Anyways, we have this camera to catch anything strange that happens, paranormal or B&E's alike.”

Scully looks at Mulder, who shrugs. It does seem convenient to her—too convenient, especially considering Ryan's technical reputation—but she decides to let it go. She says, “Do we have any sort of plan past the camera?”

Mulder shrugs again. “Not really. I think we're just planning to… sit here.” He smirks at her a little, teasing her as he unwrapping the plastic silverware. “You are familiar with the method of a stakeout, aren't you, Scully?”

“Very much so,” she says dryly, resisting the urge to stick out her tongue.

Joy joins them in the clusters of desks, taking her food gratefully and thanking Scully. “I'm hoping that we'll be able to get something out of tonight,” she says, screwing the cap off of a water bottle. “I really am. Ryan's a good kid, and I hate that everyone's been putting the blame on him.”

“You really don't think there’s any possibility Ryan is behind this?” Scully asks, picking at her salad.

Joy shakes her head. “I never have. Aside from the fact that it seems improbable that a kid—albeit a pretty smart kid, but still—could pull this off, Ryan's always seemed like a good kid to me. I'm not close to Annie Caruthers, but she's always spoken highly of him whenever we see each other… And besides that, he's a model student. Aside from a bad attitude, I haven't seen any signs of delinquency from him. I almost can't believe he really set that fire.”

Scully bites her lower lip in consideration. “I think I saw Ryan outside on my way in,” she says carefully. “The intersection a block over.”

“Really?” Mulder asks, his eyebrows shooting up.

Scully nods. “I think,” she says, somewhat uncertainly. “He wears the Orioles cap, right?”

Joy taps her fingers on the desktop absently. “Probably just a coincidence,” she offers.

“It's a small town,” says Mulder helpfully. Scully pokes at a leaf of lettuce silently.

Mulder clears his throat awkwardly. “Have you ever considered that this… activity might be the result of possession of some sort? Some mixture of Ryan Caruthers and the ghost?”

Scully swallows back the urge to scoff.

“You think Ryan's possessed?” Joy asks, almost incredulously. “By the Specter?”

He shrugs. “Possession can sometimes give humans a power they wouldn't normally have. I've seen it before. That would explain how Ryan was able to get in and out of the school without being detected, how he would be able to move those heavy desks.”

Joy Seers looks uncertain, skeptical. “I suppose that could be the case, but I doubt it,” she says. “I've never heard of any possessions in the history of the legend. And I still just don't think Ryan's involved. Besides his prior history with the ghost, of course.”

Scully hmms in response quietly, sticking the fork in her mouth. She hasn't known what to make of this case since they got it a year ago, and she certainly doesn't know what to make of it now. Mulder shrugs, surprisingly nonplussed, as if he doesn't know what to make of this either.

“I guess we just wait now,” Joy says, and it's almost a question, a clarification. “Wait to see what happens next.”

They nod, nearly in unison.

Their forks scrape at the Styrofoam containers in the new quiet. The setting doesn't seem to align with the stunning silence all around them, the echoey hallways and dim classroom. As a child, Scully used to get scared in big empty buildings, especially in the huge church they used to attend in San Diego, all the looming, empty halls and the almost eerie paintings of Christ. She's gotten past that now, of course, but the oddness of being in an empty school has nearly brought it back. Right now, in all this empty and quiet space, with the small sounds in the hall as the sun sinks below the horizon, she can almost understand why people might think this school—even this town—is haunted.

---

It's getting dark now, the familiar October chill in the air. Ryan clenches his chattering teeth, beginning to regret not wearing the skeleton costume from last year. It's dorky as hell, but it's warm, he sweated buckets at last year's party. And it helps with appearances. He's just wearing a hoodie and jeans right now, no costume of any kind.

He got some candy earlier, even with the disapproving looks (either because he's too old to trick-or-treat, or because he set a fire), and so he unwraps a mini Snickers bar now and takes a bite. He's thinking about turning around and going to the party he told Annie he was going to. He should probably go to the damn party. He still has friends somehow, despite everything, and this is not the right way to spend Halloween. It might be spooky, but honestly, Ryan got tired of the horror movie bullshit at about six or seven. (He hates scary movies, scary stories, any of that stuff that makes him think about the empty eyes of the parents he'll never know and ghostly light on his bedroom walls.) He's nearly convinced, gets his bag up off of the bench and is about to walk away when his fingers brush over an envelope sticking out of the top. The letter from his Uncle Jared.

He swallows, sits down so hard his legs hurt. Shakes his head hard until he's good and resigned. He has to do this. He doesn't have a choice.

He rummages in his bag until he finds the stick-on tattoos and the bottle of water. Follows the directions as he applies them to the back of his hands.

---

Scully will admit, once again, that she's really, really not used to sharing stakeouts with other people; some of her favorite memories of working with Mulder are when they were alone on a stakeout. But they've been sitting in the school for several hours, and she has to say, it's a lot better than she expected. Aside from their opinions on ghosts, it turns out that she and Joy Seers have a lot in common. They discuss their college degrees—biology and pre-med are vastly different, but they took similar grueling science classes and can exchange stories about hellish professors—and Joy asks about the cross around Scully's neck, the one similar to her own. “Oh,” says Scully in surprise, reaching down to touch the cross, and the ring that hangs beside it. (Thank God she didn't ask about that; that'd be a fairly awkward conversation for all of them. Mulder doesn't wear his ring that she knows of, which she has no idea how to take, but at least it fields the Oh, are you two married? questions. A little.) “Oh, my mother gave my sister and myself these necklaces the Christmas I was fifteen. I've worn it ever since.”

She leaves out the occasions where she'd given it to her daughter and it was the only part of her They left behind, and when Mulder had worn it through both of their abductions. (She put the ring on the chain beside her cross when she stopped wearing it because it felt stunningly appropriate, that it lie beside something that had meant so much to both of them over the years. Sometimes she felt like she could feel Mulder in her cross as much as she could in the ring.)

Joy smiles a genuine smile. “Oh, that's wonderful,” she says. “Mine was a family heirloom. It was my grandmother's.”

Scully smiles back, a little easier than she might've a few months ago. It's getting easier to remember her mother, and concentrating on the happier memories does help. “It's beautiful,” she offers.

“Thank you—so is yours.”

Mulder stays politely quiet through most of these interactions, but he speaks up sometime in the fourth hour of their vigil. “Ms. Seers—” he starts.

“Call me Joy, please,” Joy says immediately.

“Joy,” Mulder says. “I remember when we met yesterday, you said something about there being more than one way to interpret the Willoughby Specter story.”

“Oh, right.” Joy throws out an absent grin. “That famous touchy spot. Especially around here.”

“I sense that people don't agree with you?” Scully asks, thinking of Robbie O'Connell's and the sheriff's claims that the ghost is angelic. Ryan Caruthers's claims that the ghost is anything but. The disdain she's seen in response to that skepticism. Personally, she can't really tell why the demeanor of the ghost matters, one way or another.

“I don't know if they do or don't. I haven't made any particular claims about the skepticism.” The other woman shrugs. “My husband is a historian, though,” she adds. “He's done some research into the subject, and we've discussed it before. The origins of this ghost aren't quite as black and white as everyone would like to believe.”

Mulder's interest is piqued—more than piqued, Scully can tell. “Would you mind sharing?” he asks.

Joy shakes her head. “The fame of the ghost just so happens to be intertwined with the origin of this town,” she says. “The name Willoughby comes from a Revolutionary War leader, General Samuel Willoughby. He's hailed as a hero, especially around here, considering he led his soldiers to victory in a battle right around this area. The legend got started when Willoughby published a book of his journals and letters during the war. In the journal entry dated the night before the battle, he speaks of seeing a 'specter’ who brought about feelings of foreboding and dread. This convinced him that he was doomed to die on the battlefield the next day, and his soldiers doomed to lose. So he changed his plans.”

“He survived the battle,” Scully says knowingly—she knows how these legends always go. “And he led his men to victory, and people attributed that victory to the Specter. Which is where the legend originates."

Joy nods. “But what most people don't acknowledge is how costly that victory was,” she says. “Over half of Willoughby's soldiers lost their lives, including his brother. As well as several civilians who unfortunately lived in the area and got caught up in the battle. And that's not to mention the British casualties. Personally, that's not my definition of angelic, especially considering the death of his brother.”

Mulder chuckles briefly, rubbing thoughtfully at his mouth. “It's not exactly mine, either.”

“People see what they want to see,” says Joy. “Someone comes to warn them of something bad coming, people want to think they have good intentions. That there's some way to be prepared.”

Scully hardens her face until it is stony, trying not to show her cards. Spreads her fingers out flat on the table and tries to think of anything but that night before her mother died. Mulder is nodding in agreement, and she's glad that he's distracted by this story, that he won't notice and start asking questions again. “So you don't think the ghost has… good intentions?” he asks Joy.

“Does a ghost have intentions?” Joy laughs. (Along the same line Scully has thought on in this case.) “But no, I don't. Personally, my husband and I have discussed it before, and we think that the ghost is demonic.”

“Demonic?” asks Mulder.

“Yeah. My husband has studied a lot of local history, and he found a court record corresponding to a diary entry from the judge in the early settlement that more or less became Willoughby. It speaks of a man who was convicted of the murder of his wife. He was scheduled to hang, but he disappeared from his prison cell the night before, despite two guards being posted outside. The man had been fairly wealthy and prosperous, and he had a fair amount of money stored away in his house, where they'd also found many signs of what they considered witchcraft and devil worship. All the more reason to execute him, they'd said. But after he disappeared, so did the money.” Joy takes a sip of her water bottle. “They found him two months later, dead in the mountains with no clear cause. All of his money on him. A lantern burning beside his body despite the snowstorm raging around him.”

Scully raises her eyebrows in a halfway interested response—it’s an interesting story, even if it sounds false. Mulder says, “And you think that's the Specter?”

“A ghost has to come from somewhere, right? It makes sense to me, especially that lantern detail. The details about his escape and discovery, as well as the trial records, lead me to believe this man had made a deal with the devil, for lack of a better term. And this is more or less his due he has to pay: bringing bad luck to the inhabitants of Willoughby.”

Mulder hmms under his breath. “That's a great theory,” he says. “And it makes a lot of sense, at least in my mind. It would be consistent with Ryan Caruthers's claims.”

“There’s discussion of 'the local devil worshipper’ in local folklore, but it's not as widespread. And since it took place a full century before, no one in the town ever connected the story with the Specter. But I've always thought it made a lot of sense,” says Joy. “And with everything that's happened here at this school, I've got to say, it makes even more sense to me now.”

“What do you think, Scully?” Mulder asks, and his hand is suddenly on her arm. He's noticed how silent she's been.

Scully grits her teeth and shakes off the thoughts of her mother and her cross and that fucking hallucination or dream or whatever she had before her mother passed away. Forces a smile. “I suppose it could be plausible…” she says, “... if ghosts were real.”

Mulder scoffs jokingly. “I can understand your skepticism, Agent Scully,” Joy says kindly. “Even i—”

They're cut off by the sound of distant crashes, somewhere in the building.

Scully's eyes dart to Mulder. “Did you…”

“Yeah,” he says, already standing. “Joy, do you have any idea…”

“I'm really not sure,” she says. “Maybe the cafeteria?”

More crashes, louder this time. “Split up, clear the halls?” Mulder asks, and Scully nods.

“Joy, you stay here, okay?” she says, standing and reaching for her gun, just in case. “Keep an eye out, call us if you need help.”

Thankfully, Joy doesn't argue; she just nods. “Do you really think you need that?” she asks, gesturing to the gun with her chin.

“Hopefully, no,” Scully says. “But it's a good precaution. In case whoever—or whatever—is destroying your classroom is dangerous.”

---

Mulder and Scully split up outside of Joy Seers's classroom; she goes through the west wing, and he goes through the east. The school is stunningly dark, the halls admittedly eerie, and Mulder is inadvertently reminded of the case years ago that he can barely remember the details of outside of the fact that a satanist PTA tried to kill him and Scully in a high school gym shower. He shudders involuntarily; that doesn't seem like a good line of thought after discussing a ghostly devil worshipper.

He's most of the way down the hall when he hears it: the creaking of a door hinge behind him. He whirls around to see the door of an English classroom hanging open in the circle of his flashlight.

Immediately, he sweeps his flashlight up and down the hallway, but it's completely empty.

Mulder swallows roughly, ignoring the chill spreading over him. He starts to turn back around when the door slams closed hard. He jumps, his hand flying to his holster automatically. Still nothing there; no signs of life, or things notably not alive.

“Hello?” he calls out, sweeping his flashlight up and down the hallway, feeling equal parts silly and determined. He's about to make some plea for the ghost to show itself when he hears another slamming sound, almost smaller than the last one. And then another, and another. The lockers lining the hallways are opening and closing, their slams cacophonous and engulfing. Mulder scans the hallway in frantic confusion, looking for any signs of the Specter, not sure if he really wants to see it or not, considering its legacy. But he still finds nothing, invisible hands moving the lockers as they slam, the cabinets shaking and rattling in place as if affected by an earthquake. Fascinated, Mulder stares, not wanting to look away, wanting to call Scully to get in here and see this. But before he can do anything, his flashlight flickers once, twice, and dies in his palm.

The lockers’ motion fades out as Mulder's breathing grows more erratic, maybe even fearful. The hallway seems darker without the flashlight, pitch black. He smacks the flashlight against his palm in an effort to get it working again, to no avail. “Shit,” he mutters, dropping the flashlight to his side and rubbing at his temples with his free hand.

And then from behind, he hears the scritching sound of a lit match. Golden firelight, small but unquestionably the brightest thing in the room, comes to life behind him, reflected on the metal lockers.

His heart in his stomach, Mulder whirls. He sees it almost immediately, it's unmistakable. He can't make out a face, but he doesn’t have to. It matches every description he's ever heard.

The Specter stands at the end of the hall, lantern held up like some kind of lamplighter.

Mulder's breathing is shallow, erratic; where the hell is Scully when stuff like this happens? He's dying to take a picture, but he knows that will likely only cause problems.

Instead, he draws closer, flashlight dead and useless in his hand, heart thudding against his ribs. The Specter doesn't move. He seems to be surveying Mulder, sizing him up, but somehow, Mulder can't allow himself to worry about that. He goes closer and closer, carefully, as if trying to calm a stray dog. “I know what you are,” he calls. “I know what it is you do.”

The Specter seems unaffected by this. He stands still, his face shadowed, his lantern flickering.

“Do you speak?” Mulder asks, thinking of the ghosts in that haunted house that one Christmas Eve. (If that was real; he and Scully have disagreed about it forever.) “What do you want?”

The ghost remains silent. Mulder's shoes creak on the tile floor as he steps closer, his palms sweaty around the flashlight. The Specter seems to be regarding him, considering.

When Mulder is about three feet away, the ghost's mouth contorts, dipping into a frown. Disapproval. A sudden fear plunges through Mulder's chest, nervousness—what does disapproval mean?—as he remembers Joy Seers's theory that the ghost is demonic. He is about to ask, again, what the Specter wants, when the lantern flickers out.

In a completely impulsive move, Mulder stumbles forward, absurdly swiping at the space where the Specter is. He feels nothing, and he doesn't know if it has disappeared or is still there. Breathing hard, he stands awkwardly in place, his hand curled around the useless flashlight.

And then he hears a pained yelp, down the hall the way he came from.

---

Scully is in the ninth grade wing when she hears it again: the crashing sounds down the hall to the right of her. She follows the sound, flashlight held out in front of her and gun held down by her side. There's a sound almost like banging, a clattery sound like something being dragged over the floor. Scully comes face to face with the double cafeteria doors, where the sound is louder, and pushes it open with a loud clang.

There's a startled shout, and then the smack of a body hitting the floor. Rounding the table blocking the body from view, Scully shouts, “Freeze, FBI!” completely on instinct.

“Shit!” The kid—Ryan Caruthers, Scully notes with an emotion somewhere between satisfaction and disappointed—scrambles to his feet, his ankle caught in a cafeteria chair. His face turns up towards Scully, full of regret and panic as he curses quietly under his breath: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Scully puts away her gun with a sigh—somehow, she doubts she needs it. “Ryan?” she says, somewhat sternly. “Ryan Caruthers?”

“I had no idea you'd be here,” Ryan says miserably, untangling himself from the chair.

“So you wouldn't have come if you'd known?” Scully asks. He doesn't answer, just rubs at his face with the heel of his hand. “No one's ever been here when you've done this before, right?” she prods.

“I haven't done this before,” Ryan snaps, glaring at her. “I know what you think of me—believe me, I know what everyone thinks of me—but I swear to shit, this is the first time.”

“How did you get in?” Scully asks, still firm. “The window in Mrs. Seers's room is fixed.” She remembers in a split second, as Ryan answers, that the window was fixed before the destruction of the classroom the night before, and mentally curses.

“I jimmied open another window,” Ryan says, sounding disgusted. “The windows in here are shit, the locks are awful… And I'm telling you, I've never done this before.”

“Then why did you come here tonight, Ryan?” Scully fixes the kid with the sternest look she can muster up. “Knowing that people believed you had broken in before?”

Ryan's face turns red, and he ducks his head. His hand shoots through the air as he reaches down to untangle himself from the chair, and Scully sees the same cross tattoo on the back that she remembers from last year. “I… was worried about what was going to happen,” he nearly mumbles. “Because of the ghost. I thought something bad might happen to someone, and I wanted to come here and try to stop it.”

Scully's stern demeanor falls, just a little. She doesn't know why, but it does. She asks gently (not too gently, of course—only a bit more gently), “How did you think you could stop it, Ryan? What did you think was going to happen?”

“Does it matter?” Ryan snaps venomously. “Aren't you going to arrest me now? Agent Sully, or whatever your name is?”

“It's Scully,” she says automatically, and is ready to say more, when she hears a distinctly female shout from somewhere in the building. Joy, she thinks immediately, and mentally curses herself and Mulder for leaving a civilian alone in a potential crime scene. Even if she doesn't believe in the ghost.

Ryan jumps at the sound, startled. “What was that?”

Hoping briefly that Mulder will get there sooner, that Mulder is okay, Scully says, “You know what, Ryan? I should take you in, but this is all very juvenile, and Mrs. Seers has vouched for you multiple times. So I'm going to look the other way.”

The kid looks stunned. Beyond stunned. He says, “Are you serious? Why are you doing this?”

She doesn't know why, she really doesn't. Outside of the face that is stuck at the back of her brain, along with pain and death and visions of the end of the world. Her son out there, somewhere, and she shouldn't let it affect her work, but… She says, “Look, I need to go. If you're still back here when I come back, I'm taking you in. If I ever catch you doing something like this again, my first call will be to Sheriff O'Connell. Do you understand?”

His face white, Ryan nods. Unwilling to wait any longer—unwilling to linger or analyze why the hell she did that, she really can't believe it—Scully turns and heads the other way, back to Joy Seers's classroom.

Inside, she finds all the fluorescent lights flipped on, Joy sitting in a chair heaving air like she is going to run out and Mulder crouched on the floor. Scully runs straight to her side. “Are you okay?” she asks, kneeling to examine the prominent red line on Joy's neck. “I'm a doctor, I can help you.”

Joy waves her off absently. “I'm okay, I'm okay,” she says, her voice only a little rough. “My necklace… it was being tugged, by I don't know what. It was choking me, and then it just broke.”

Mulder stands, the broken silver chain in the palm of his hand. “I saw it,” he says, and his voice is filled with some panicked emotion that Scully can't quite place. “It was being pulled by an invisible force, Scully, she was choking and it was just held up in the air. By nothing. And then it just snapped.”

Joy takes the necklace, muttering, “Damn,” under her breath. She rubs at her forehead, her eyes, in a tired sort of way. “I'm okay,” she reassures Scully again. “Scared me more than anything. I guess I have my proof now that the Specter is hostile.”

She laughs briefly, but Mulder doesn't, and Scully doesn't know how to ask why. She stands up a little reluctantly—she’d have preferred to check Joy a little more, but she really does seem fine, she's waving her off insistently—and dusts her palms off on her pant legs. “Deep breaths,” she says gently. “Try to stay calm.”

Joy clears her throat a few times, rubbing her neck with her empty hand. “So did you find anything, Agent Scully?” she asks raspily. “I heard more sounds in the cafeteria.”

Mulder looks at her curiously, but Scully doesn't know how to tell them what she saw, much less explain what could've convinced her to let Ryan go. She lies, “I think some furniture may have fallen over. I didn't see anything.”

---

They leave the school after that. There doesn't seem to be much point in staying. They have the video in the classroom, and therefore proof. Joy seems spooked by the whole encounter, seems to have lost interest in all of it—she thanks them profusely in the parking lot, but says that she doesn't see any need for them to stay if they don't want to. “I guess I can call you if anything else happens,” she says, “but I don't know if there's anything else you can do. And I'm sure you have more important work to get back to.”

Mulder doesn't bother telling her that they probably don't—he’s almost sure that Scully shares Joy's opinion, that the lack of an actual crime here doesn't justify their position. They shake Joy's hand and get in their car to head back to the hotel.

They're both quiet on the drive. Mulder can't get past what happened in the hallway, his encounter with the Specter. At the time, he'd mostly been fascinated, caught up in the excitement of seeing an actual ghost, but now, all he can think of is the other part of the legend. The part that promises that something bad will happen if you see the Specter. He drives back to the hotel with a precise carefulness that Scully doesn't seem to notice—she seems as lost in her own thoughts as him, fidgeting with her hands in her lap. He keeps sneaking glances at her, as if something is going to steal her away, because by his count, the only two people besides him who could be affected by the Willoughby Specter and his bad omens are Scully and William. He doesn't relax until they get back to the hotel, and even then, it is a cautious relaxation. He's extraordinarily glad that they are sharing a room.

He waits until they get up to the room to say it. He nearly blurts it out—he says, “Scully, I saw it,” and it feels like an exhale.

Scully, in the act of peeling her coat off, freezes. He can see the muscles of her back, can tell how tense she has suddenly gotten. “What?” she says.

“The Specter,” he says. “I saw the Specter, Scully, in the halls. It disappeared just before something pulled at Joy's necklace.”

Scully isn't looking at him. She drapes her coat over the back of the chair, her knuckles nearly white as she clutches it. “It's not that I… don't trust what you saw, Mulder,” she says carefully, her nails scuffing the side of the jacket. “But… are you sure that's what you saw? That it couldn't have been some kind of… projection?”

Twenty-odd years ago, this skepticism would've driven him mad. Now, he pretty much expects it. But it feels like there's something different here, some unusual emotion. The familiar stubbornness, and then something else layered under it. Almost fear. He wonders if it is because of the legend, the implication that something bad will happen to him. He swallows, reaches out and brushes a slow hand over the small of her back as if trying to offer comfort. “I really think it was,” he says. “It couldn't have been a projection, it was too… It couldn't have been.” She's still not looking at him. He flattens his palm against her back, rubs a circle with his thumb. “I don't know what that means, Scully,” he says softly. “Whether or not it's…”

“It probably means nothing, Mulder,” Scully says immediately. She finally turns towards him, and her expression is guarded, but she reaches out and squeezes his arm. “It'll be fine,” she says softly, firmly. Leans forward and kisses his cheek. “I'm going to take a shower, okay?” When she draws back, she won't meet his eyes. He watches her go into the bathroom, until the door closes behind her.

He showers next, tries to shed the thought of more misfortune, but he can’t quite shake the thought of it. After everything they've been through, he can't imagine going through more, even if it is a bit inevitable at this point. He doesn't know if he could bear it. Especially if whatever misfortune the Specter brings involves losing his wife or son. (He is praying it's something trivial, like a flat tire, or someone breaking into his house.)

When he exits the bedroom, Scully is lying in bed on her side, facing the wall. He climbs in behind her, touches her shoulder gently and briefly before settling in. He's ready to fall asleep and try and forget the whole thing, give Scully her space, but she rolls over first, rolls towards him until they're facing each other. “Ryan was in the school,” she says. “In the cafeteria. All that crashing around was probably just from him breaking in.”

His eyebrows raise in surprise. “Seriously? What happened, did he get away?”

“No.” She bites her lower lip, looking away from him. “Sort of. I… I decided to give him a warning.”

His expression shifts to confusion. “A warning?”

“Yes.” She is almost squirming, avoiding his eyes. “I… I don't know why. It just all seems so silly, the whole thing. And he insisted that this was the first time he had broken in. But I told him if I ever caught him doing that again, I'd call the police without hesitation.” She rubs at her forehead with embarrassment, her voice full of shame. “The security system was out, though. We hopefully don't have to worry about it ever getting back to Skinner.”

“Do you believe him?” Mulder asks, astonished and trying like hell not to show it. He's more surprised than angry, it doesn't really matter to him, but he can tell how foolish Scully feels and he hardly wants to make that worse. “That it was his first time?”

Scully rubs her forehead again, presses her palm over her eyes. “I honestly don't know, Mulder. I really do think that he's involved in this… it makes the most sense. I don't know how or why, but I hope he gets his act together. I… I hope that I've made this better instead of worse.”

“I definitely think Ryan has something to do with this,” says Mulder quietly, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder, “but I don't think it's the same way that you think so. I think he's a… catalyst of sorts. I think he has a connection to this ghost, and I can't put my finger on it. But I think Joy Seers was right. I think there's more to the legend than people take at face value. And I don't think that Ryan was responsible for what was happening in that school.”

Scully yawns, burrowing down into the covers. “Whether there is or there isn't, it doesn't really matter, does it?” she mumbles, sounding like she wants to drop the subject. “We're going home in the morning. I just hope that no one finds out what happened.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, quietly, and reaches over to turn out the light. They settle in next to each other in the dark, their arms pressed together, hands side by side. Mulder swallows, bumping his finger against hers absently. The adrenaline of the night hasn't completely left him, the implications of his encounter in the hall, and he's grateful that she is close by. As if that can prevent everything bad from happening.

“Do you think I made the wrong decision?” Scully asks softly, and that shame is still in her voice. “To let Ryan go instead of taking him in?”

“No, I don't,” he tells her honestly, covering her hand gently with his. “I think that isn't nearly the worst thing we've gotten away with on the job.” She chuckles at that, and he grins. “I don't see why anyone ever has to know about it,” he adds. “The cameras are out, and I'm not planning to tell anyone. And I'm sure Ryan will keep it to himself. You may have given that kid another chance that he'll take.”

“Mmm,” Scully says, and he can tell by her voice that she is tired. “It feels so convenient, the cameras. Especially considering how much I asked about them earlier. Mulder, I bet Ryan either knew about the system being down or took it down himself, if this really was the first time he'd broken in.”

“Hmm,” he says softly. “Maybe.”

“I guess I just didn't think he was dangerous,” she whispers. “I feel so foolish. I feel like I haven't done my duty as an FBI agent. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“You don't have to know,” he says, and he intertwines his fingers with hers. “You don't.”

She makes a small sound that indicated she disagrees with him, but she doesn't argue. Their elbows bump together companionably. Her palm is cool under his. They fall into quiet again, hands clasped together under the sheets.

Mulder matches his breathing to hers, calm, and he is nearly asleep when he hears a low whistling sound, akin to a moan. The shutters of the windows rattle.

A sudden panic shoots through him at the noise. “Scully, did you hear that?” he whispers.

“It's the wind,” she says, her voice sleepy but hard. “Just the wind, Mulder.”

The wind howls against the glass again and Mulder shivers, crawling closer to Scully. “You sure?” he asks, and she nods, almost growly in her delivery. Scully does not fuck around when she is tired, and he senses she's already in a bad mood from the Ryan Caruthers thing.

But the sound is too human, too eerie, and Mulder can't ignore it. He never thought he'd be this much in regret because of a supernatural encounter, but this is the kind of thing that is too hard to let go. He's as embarrassed as Scully about tonight—embarrassed about how badly he wanted to see the ghost, and embarrassed (and fearful) of the repercussions it will bring.

He drops a light, impulsive kiss on Scully's hair before curling up closer to her than before. He doesn't particularly want to leave Scully anytime soon, not if he can help it. Not with the wind howling like that and with the eerie figure of the Specter hovering at the back of his mind. It's silly, but considering how their last run-in with ghosts went, he doesn't think he's overreacting. He holds her hand tight and lays close to her, and she doesn't protest, and he thinks that is what gives him the courage to say what he says.

He says, nose against her hair, hand on her waist: “Scully, do you want to come back to the house with me tomorrow?”

She says nothing; the only sign of surprise is the slight lilt in her breathing. He adds quickly, “Just… to look over that tip I got last week. The one about the river creature?”

“Oh?” Scully asks, and her voice is very nearly coy. “It doesn't have anything to do with what happened tonight?”

He rubs his nose into her hair; he is moving entirely on impulse now. “If it did,” he says softly, “would it change your answer?”

She's quiet. He can hear every breath. It goes on for so long that he begins to consider pulling away, but she hasn't let go of his hand yet.

Finally, she says, “I hope you're ready. I've been thinking of lots of rebuttals for your river creature theories.”

He laughs, a little nervously, a little relievedly. She squeezes his hand once before letting go. She shifts a little in bed, turning over on her side, but she doesn't move away. His chest is against her back, his arm against her hip, and she doesn't move away.

The wind wails and the shutters rattle, and he thinks that the heat must be broken because he's freezing, but they're together, and she's warm. She is so warm, and she's here, and he loves her. He presses his cheek briefly to the back of her head before settling in to go to sleep.

---

Joy leaves the broken necklace on her desk. It's so dark out, she'd probably just lose it, and she couldn't do anything with it tonight, anyway. She feels nearly naked without it around her neck, but she feels equally relieved at the absence. Her breaths are still ragged, her neck still stinging, her heart still pounding. She can't quiet leave the fright of the moment, sweat slicking her palms, a shivery feeling up her spine. She just wants to get home and fall asleep for a few hours before she'll have to wake up and go back into school. She realizes that tonight hasn't exactly made any progress in the way of getting this ghost out of her classroom, and her temples throb. Tonight seemed like an ending, but she doesn't see why it would be. The ghost is likely still there.

She rubs at her eyes with exhaustion, texts her husband to let him know she'll be home soon and starts her car.

The streets are dark, orange and black streamers hanging limply from street lamps and candy wrappers littering the streets. Joy yawns, making a left turn. Driving in the dark has always given her the creeps. She likes to think it's the product of moving to the country after growing up in the city: no lights, no noises, just endless black and silence. She turns on her brights, just because no one else is on the road, and hums absently to herself, drumming her fingers on the dashboard.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the radio springs to life. It's playing Monster Mash, and Joy never thought a goofy song like that would bring as much terror as this one does, because her hands were nowhere near the dial.

Spooked, frantic, Joy tries to reach out with her right hand and turn it off, but she can't move. Her hands are frozen, her wrists achey and her fingers spasming around the wheel in her attempts to move, but it's to no avail. She can't reach over and turn off the radio.

Her eyes yank from side to side frantically, the only part of her body she seems to be able to move. And then her foot moves without her meaning to. She presses down harder on the gas, increasing her speed far past the limit.

Joy tries to thrash, tries to break her hands free from the wheel or her foot from the gas, but she still finds herself frozen, helpless. She can't decrease the pressure. The bouncy sound of Monster Mash continues, too loud, echoing in her eardrums. She whimpers, just a little, as she shoots past 70 in a 35 zone. At least there are no other cars in front of her.

Her eyes jerk again, almost painfully, and land on the rearview mirror. There's no one on the road behind her, but there is a shape in the back seat. A hulking, humanoid shape that seems to be watching her.

Joy's breath catches in her throat, unable to take her eyes away, unable to look away. She is helpless. She can't make out the face of whoever, or whatever, is in the backseat, but she thinks it may be smiling. Smiling maliciously.

The next thing she knows, the shape seems to be lunging at her. Her hand suddenly moves, not of their own accord, swerving the wheel hard to the right.

The next thing she knows, everything is going black.

---

November 1, 2016

Willoughby Daily Press; Willoughby, Virginia

SEVERE CAR CRASH ON PINE TREE ROAD LAST NIGHT

Last night, a car swerved off Pine Tree Road and flipped in the adjacent field. The accident was estimated to take place a few minutes before midnight.

The car belongs to a Mrs. Joy Seers, who was reportedly driving the car when it crashed. Mrs. Seers reportedly obtained major injuries, and was transported to Willoughby General Hospital from the scene. No one else was harmed in the wreck.

Seers's husband was contacted, but declined to comment on his wife's condition. According to a source who requested to stay anonymous, Mrs. Seers is in a coma at Willoughby General, and it is unknown when she is expected to wake up.

The Willoughby Police Department declined to comment on the accident. It is assumed that no foul play was involved, although this is unconfirmed.

#xf rewatch #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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polizwrites · 3 years ago

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WIP Update - 12 Jan 2022

Had a good writing week - I touched 7 fics (4 WIPs & 3 new works) for a total of 2584 words. I posted the second & final chapter of my TonyPepperRhodey threesome smutfic and a future excerpt for my WinterIron supernatural Regency AU here on Tumblr.

I have 13 active WIPs with the first deadline of the new year being the IronHusbands Bingo, which wraps up at the end of January.

On the crafting side, I am re-opening my Stuffed With Character commissions - expect some self-promo posts to pop up.

See below cut for the specific bingos/challenges/etc I am working on - Feel free to send me prompts or asks regarding any of these projects (or any other WIPs I’ve got out there) – they really help feed the Muse and keep me motivated!

Imagineer!Tony x Artist!Steve

Continued working on a collaboration with @deehellcat where Tony (born about 2 decades earlier) goes to work for Walt Disney as an imagineer to spite his father and is paired up on a project with Steve, one of the animation artists. Added 100-ish words to Chapter 4 which will fill my Workshop Troubles for the TSB - Chapter 2 will fill my Los Angeles square for the STB.

IronHusbands/RhFe Bingo (Runs thru 31 Jan 2022)

7 squares filled - 1 WIP. Looks like I'll be getting a Row 3 Bingo, as I have 4 squares filled and a first draft for the fifth. Anything else I finish for this is a bonus!

* B4: Secret Relationship: I have an extremely geeky title/intro for this, but no additional plot ideas – would love to get some brainstorming help.

* I3 - Masks - finished a first draft of a 663-word ficlet for this last night - mid 90's Tony & Rhodey mixing business and pleasure in a visit to Key West to demo some SI tech and attend Fantasy Fest.

* N3 - FREE - Posted Chapter 2 of the PepperonyRhodey threesome smutfic The Invitation, which came in at 1386 words.

* O2 - Reunions - Tony & Rhodey reminiscing about Spring Break 1987 the night before the time heist. Linked to/based on my Besties moodboard for the TSB June flash. Still working it out in my head; no words on paper yet.

Tony Stark Mark V Bingo [TSB_MkV] (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

Fifteen fills and two WIPs with several potential crossfills. Also happily accepting plot bunnies and prompts for these!

* S1 - Star Wars AU: crossing over with the TSB WinterIron Is Coming Server Bingo - On Opposing Sides square. Aria threw out the idea of a Stuckony pairing with a Jedi, a bounty hunter and the bounty early last month & Ru brainstormed/collabed with me. Chapter 1 looks to be coming in at 832 words and Chapter 2 is sitting at 70 with a couple of plot points/ideas brewing. Looking at probably 3 short chapters with one from each character POV. Current last line: He was well aware of the legend that a Mandalorian must never be seen without his helmet, but Djems’ foster family had belonged to one of the more pragmatic sects, where it was a badge of belonging, not a prison. .

* S2 - AU: Regency - Combined this with my StarkBucks Shifter square for the first chapter of To Tame a Werewolf , which posted last Friday. Chapter 2 is pretty much done at 970 words and will cross over with the BIB Tony+Supernatural Elements square. I wrote a 413 word scene that will slot into Chapter 3, and I think a final Chapter 4 will wrap this up.

* T1 - KINK: A/B/O Society - this will be used in the continuation of Flawed Hypothesis that I’m planning for the new year. The second chapter is currently sitting at 878 words. Current Last Line: The offer to build a containment chamber for the Hulk was just the beginning; he could improve Hawkeye’s weaponry, upgrade the Widow’s and Cap’s uniforms and put together something for the Sergeant as well.

* T3 - Pairing: Tony/Loki - This is kinda-sorta a NoTP for me, but if I can make it platonic - I had the following phrase pop into my head as I woke up one morning and it could make for a great crackfic/moodboard: “You mean to tell me you put the Chitauri on the payroll?”

* R1 - AU: Alice in Wonderland - I’ll probably podfic Go Ask Friday , since it 100% fits the prompt and I think it needs more love!

* R2 - Secret Admirer - Possible WinterIron remix/spinoff of @hddnone‘s hanahaki fic Seeds of Love

* R3 - Pepper Potts/Rescue - Got inspired by a re-read of @sabrecmc‘s fabulous Stony No Powers AU fic Indecent Proposal and got permission to write a partial remix from Pepper’s POV! I have two lines of dialog and a couple of notes so far…

* K1 - Workshop Troubles - Chapter 4 of the Imagineer!Tony collab with @deehellcat (see above)

TSB_MkV -WinterIron Server Bingo (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

As part of the Tony Stark Bingo Mark V round, a group of WinterIron fans are working on a single card as a group effort. I’ve joined the Discord server and am working on the following squares:

* S5 - Carnival - If I have time, I could make a moodboard for or record a podfic of In My Sights

* T1 - On Opposing Sides - see TSB MkV - Star Wars AU above.

Buckuary Intersectional Bingo [BIB] (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

This event is being run as a part of the @buckybarnesbingo community and is a twist on a regular bingo, in that each column represents someone for Bucky to interact or be paired up with, and each row is a trope. Column C and Row 3 are free spaces to be used as the creator pleases. I thought it was a fun idea and am pleased at the response so far! Need to start planning out more fills for this.

* I1 - Tony + Supernatural Elements - see TSB AU: Regency above.

* I2 - Tony + No Powers AU: This and “A Mind at Work” from my STBB will go toward Chapter 3 of Lady Natasha’s Consort and Lord Steve’s Companion - my Stucky & IronWidow –> poly WinterIron Royalty AU WIP. I am 339 words into the chapter at the moment with Vague Ideas of where to take it next in the New Year. If any of you have an interest in cheer-reading, I will gratefully accept the help! Current Last Line: “Of course,” Bucky replied, a little nonplussed.

WinterHawk Bingo - Round 3 [WHB_R3] (Runs thru 30 Apr 2022)

Three fills posted - no active WIPs at the moment - shooting for a Row 1 bingo at minimum.

* B1 - Red Room!Clint - Winter Soldier training Red Room recruits with prospective title Love in a Dangerous Time?

* B2 - Stuck in Elevator - probably will podfic Livin’ It Up (While We’re Goin’ Down) – if I can manage to read steamy stuff aloud!

I1 - Harry Potter AU - looking for ideas/collaborator for this, since am not a huge HP fan.

Stucky Bingo - Round 3 [SB_R3] (Runs thru 31 May 2022)

Nine fills with 3 WIPs and a couple of Vague Ideas. Shooting for a Column O bingo to start.

* G3 - “I thought you were smaller” – going to try to fit this into my Star Wars AU (see TSB MkV above)

* O2 - AU: A/B/O - see TSB KINK: A/B/O Society square above

* O5 - Natasha Romanov - after reading the lovely gift I received, a little plot bunny hopped into my head: amputee!Bucky reluctantly cosplaying as video game character that Steve & Tony designed/programmed - Natasha is Bucky’s roommate who loves the game and just might have played a bit of a matchmaker. I have about 200 words in notes/bits of dialogue and 224 words of fic at the moment: Current Last Line: “The last time I tried, I destroyed three controllers in less than an hour.”

Steve | Tony | Bucky Bingo Round 2 [STBB R2] (Runs thru 30 Jun 2022)

Got my shiny new card for the @stb-bingo this week and already made one fill!

* B3 - Michelle Jones - filling this with a couple of haikus that she wrote for a class - should post next Wednesday, if not sooner.

* N1 - Los Angeles - see Imagineer!Tony/Animator!Steve collab above.

* O2 - “A Mind at Work" - see BIB Tony + No Powers AU: above.

Started something to combining the following squares for the One Fill, One Bingo badge: B5 - "Aliens, again?” , I5 - Lifeguard, N5 - Barbeque, G5 - River Rafting, O5 - Wakanda. Avengers + Guardians in a partying mood = a huge headache for T’Challa. It’s currently sitting at 339 words. Current Last Line: I’m Sam, Sam Wilson -- another friend of Steve’s.

————–

On other creative fronts: I finished my last MTH auction fill item! After that, am moving on to a multi-figure Star Trek commission (Dr. McCoy, Scotty and 7 of 9) and a Morris figure from Shang-Chi.

if you’re looking for one of a kind gifts (for a friend or something for yourself!) you can plan ahead for the next holiday season and check out Stuffed With Character over on Facebook for a full list of my designs (now over 80!). They’re mostly Marvel and monsters, but I have some Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Disney figures as well. Plus I love to take custom design requests for any fandom!

#writing stuff #wip wednesday #WIP Update #shameless self promo

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hyyunjinn · 7 years ago

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Things I Love About Stray Kids (2/∞)

a/n: hello, this is gonna be a series now because 1) I’m really happy this week, like I legit haven’t been this genuinely happy in a long time and 2) I love them more than I thought sO HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Chan

okay, this is sad but, the fact that he believes he’s the only one who carries the team? he’s blaming himself for the eliminations and didn’t even want to rejoice with everyone else because he wanted them to forgive him first. like no chan, it was never your fault--you already do so much for the team and everyone knows that. but it’s definitely admirable

HIS FRIENDSHIP/RELATIONSHIP WITH THE REST OF JYPN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, PUREST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD U G H HE’S LIKE THE LITTLE BROTHER OF EVERYONE WHILE HE’S ONE OF THE OLDEST IN HIS GROUP LIKE YES WHAT A CONTRAST IT’S SO CUTE

that *O* face he does is super cute yo

hiS CURLY HAIR IS S U C H a look

“i really love you guys”

^^ gave me a heart attack

HIS HAPPY CHEESY SMILE ALSDFJLASDF THAT COMPLETELY LIGHTS UP HIS FACE

his awkwardness lmao

hello can we have a mini series of chan’s kitchen please

Woojin

“HI HELLO”

^^ HE ALREADY SAID THAT MULTIPLE TIMES AND ALSDFJSD SAME BC IDK IF THAT’S A REF TO DAY6 OR NOT BUT THE WAY HE SAYS IT IS SO CUTE

yo his killing parts in aLL THE SONGS S I G H

i love watching him perform

um, his model poses are--ACTUALLY ALL OF HIS SELFIES AND NON-OFFICIAL PHOTOS ARE SUPER CUTE YO HE’S CUTE

giving his pizza crust to chan slkfjdasfd

HIS FOREHEAD YO

that dark blue, red cuffed plaid flannel he wore last ep? A BLESSING

he seems so insecure ever since the “not a main vocal” criticism and like? he’s working so hard? so fill up his role because he feels like he doesn’t uphold it? like idk what “not a main vocal” means but i just want everyone to appreciate how much he’s taking care of himself to improve

Minho

HELLO MY BABY IS BACK AND GONNA BE IN THE CENTER FOR THE DANCES AND BE SLAYING YO THIS ISN’T EVEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT SK ANYMORE IT’S ME YELLING ABOUT MINHO’S FXKN COMEBACK BECAUSE DO YOU SEE THE TEASERS FOR NEXT WEEK--SUCH AN AMAZING DANCER I LITERALLY CANNOT TAKE MY EYES OFF OF HIM

SUCH A POWERFUL VISUAL HE ALREADY GOT TWO FANSITES--HYUNJIN IS SHAKING

he, can dance to Lie, Begin, Dope, Blood Sweat and Tears, Spring Day, idk probably all BTS songs w h a t t a l e n t

HE EVEN APPEARS LIKE THREE TIMES IN AN OFFICIAL BTS PHOTOBOOK LIKE I STAN A LEGEND

okay but also, we have to talk about that brown jacket/striped shirt look he wore last ep bc it iS C U T E

he’s also that lowkey weird that if you don’t catch it, you won’t know so he passes off as the normal one of the group and it makes it x4837234 more funnier

did I already say this a millio--I LOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM

him giving up on Felix’s Korean

also, the fact that his earrings are just these black circles and tbh it’s sorta hot b y e

bonus: i miss him so much and i really really really i need more content of him and get to know him better before i combust

Changbin

is so willing to help everyone in the group oh man he’s so kind

doesn’t even get mad when everyone picks on him and just goes along with it

I KNOW EVERYONE HAS SAID THIS BUT IT’S AMAZING HOW HE COMPLETELY DESTROYED HIS “DARK CONCEPT” IN THE FIRST EPISODE AND NOW EVERYONE IS JUST LIKE “CHANGBINNIE YOU’RE SO CUTE I LOVE YOU”

goes with the flow of things so well--he gets along with everyone pretty nicely and I think that’s pretty cool

“AH”

tbhlowkeysortadonewithjypbutthatsjustwhatithinksodontquotemeonthis

H I S B O Y F R I E N D O U T F I T S man changbin stans how you doin

what was that extra pose when taking a picture like klasjdflskadf

WHAT WAS THAT POST ICE SKATING DATE PIC WITH HIM ON THE TABLE

Hyunjin

PHOTOGRAPHER!HYUNJIN MY ABSOLUTE FAVE CONCEPT

like laying on the ground for the perfect angle? wHAT A MOOD

wait, fanboy!hyUNJIN WHEN HE JUST OBVIOUSLY STARES AT JINYOUNG OH MY GOSH YOU COULDN’T BE LESS OBVIOUS I LOVE THIS KID

how he wants so badly to improve? i really admire how much effort he’s putting into his rap and it’s really amazing to watch and hear the improvement since hellevator

“YAH”

he seems like he has his life together and has a pretty nonchalant facade but seeing through the cracks of his insecurities makes him so human and like him so much more than i think i would?

HE’S ALWAYS DANCING HONESTLY THAT’S SO CUTE WHAT A NERD

UM HIS GIGGLES GET ME EVERY TIME PLEASE STOP A T T A C K I N G ME HONESTLY

ASKLDJF GOTTA BRING THIS BACK BUT WHEN HE JUST SLIDES AND OPENS HIS MOUTH FOR CHAN TO FEED HIM WAS SO FUNNY I’M NOT OVER IT

Jisung

that fKN KILLING PART IN YOUNG WINGS LSKADJFALSDF AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

THE LITTLE GIGGLE HE DID AT THE END OF STRAY CUTS 4

he’s so bright and happy and optimistic everyone needs a Jisung in our lives

casually just smushes his face into the camera so i can see his pretty eyes duh thanks kid

okay but when he was singing that parody of Don’t Wanna Cry he did this little thing to his vOICE THAT SOUNDS SO AMAZING I CAN’T GET OVER IT LIKE LAKSJDFLASDF WTF TA L E N T

he’s so annoying i love him asldkfjasdf like idk if i like him behind the cam and annoying his members or on screen doing something weird honestly probably both

THAT PICTURE CHANGBIN TOOK OF HIM BITING THE CHAIN LSKADFJSDF EWWW LMAO

WOAH WHEN WE SAW A GLIMPSE OF PRODUCER JISUNG THAT WAS SO COOL

no but seriously? he’s so optimistic and supports everyone and he’s so wonderful and kind and super talented but i think we know that and s i g h i hope ya’ll appreciate this mess of a boy bc OH MY GOSH I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT I LOVE BRACES JISUNG HAHAHAHHAHAHA

Felix

honestly, i really just like his black hair and i think ya’ll should know this

he’s such a hard worker?? when he showed us the time at 5 in the morning--I have a feeling he stayed up that long rather than waking up at 5 kid don’t do that it’s not healthy but! he’s doing so much and it’s amazing

OKAY BUT LIKE, THAT PLOT TWIST OF THE CENTURY WHEN HE TOLD CHANGBIN TO KISS HIM LIKE ALSKDFJSLDF MINHO WAS SO READY TO STRANGLE HIM ONLY FOR HIM TO BE LIKE “hyung kiss me” alskdjfasldf what is with him

“annyeonghaseyo“ in thAT DEEP VOICE OF HIS BABY OH MAN WHAT A WAY TO COME BACK

his orange smile laskfjdlasdf

him adjusting jeongin’s outfit was so cute hehe

the way he clings onto jisung is super cUTE UGH THEY’RE LIKE ATTACHED BY THE HIP AND IT’S SO CUTE idk if it’s bc they’re a day apart so they’re like “WE’RE TWINS NOW” or bc jisung can speak english apparently? something like that?

i think people forget that he’s more than just a meme and a deep voiced boy? i love watching him practice dancing in the background and like? he’s part of dance line? LET ME SEE HIM DANCE MORE OMG

ASKLDFJSDAFL WHEN HE MESSED UP ON THAT ONE WORD AND MNET HAD TO EDIT IN THE MISSING CHARACTER ASKLDFJSD THAT WAS SO FUNNY YOU WERE SO CLOSE KID

Seungmin

HELLO THIS IS MY UNDERRATED BABY WHO DESERVES THE WORLD bc he’s funny as heck guys why do you not notice this

honestly im gonna say it agaiN: HIS FACIAL EXPRESSIONs especially when he has that dumb dazed look askldfjasdf what a boy

messes around with Jeongin in the back

when he cornered jeongin u H

he writes things in his journal to improve! and he is!

i really hope he stands out a little bit more when he performs! i hope he’s working on it! but I also like how if you are a seungmin stan, you’ll notice the small things he does when he performs and it’s like a little secret only people who deserve to know, knows and he knows it’s just between him and his fans saklfjsadf

when he decides to be a lil sht like that one time chan and hyunjin was arguing and he’s just like “we’ll take three ramens and a packet of dumplings” or something like that

can i just say that his clothing style is probably my favorite because i gush about each outfit he wears like all the time?

he’s so into singing and you can see it every time he does and it’s wonderful

Jeongin

WHEN HE WAS CRINGING BECAUSE OF HIS PARENTS: WHAT A MOOD

WHEN HE GUNNED HIMSELF BECAUSE OF JISUNG’S KILLING PART: WHAT A MOOD PT 2

WHEN HE ESCAPED JISUNG’S WRATH AND RAN TO THE OTHER SIDE AND CHEEKILY WAVED AT HIM: WHAT A MOOD PT 3

his escalator impression was hecka nice

OKAY WE BARELY SAW IT BUT LIKE? THE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE FINALLY PRAISING HIM BECAUSE HE SPENT ALL THOSE TIMES PRACTICING BY HIMSELF TO STRENGTHEN HIS VOICE I’M SO PROUD OF HIM

this baby always has a smile on his face and it’s the most infectious smile ever and i love him i love him please stay as happy as you can be because you deserve everything and more

*screeches* HIS BANDANNA LOOK IN SCHOOL LIFE KLASDJFASD I LOVE IT SO MUCH

when he was all shy shy with all the girls screaming his name at the busking: tag yourself i was the girls spiritually yelling his name

hAH I ALSO SEE THE BLACKPINK FANBOY IN HIM OHOHO THAT’S SUPER CUTE

#stray kids #cici's stray thoughts #things i love about stray kids

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sukisdeliveryservice · 3 years ago

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helloo! how was your day milady? its always a pleasure reading your replies too! <333 and i hope you'll enjoy your hiatus :))

also idk i just find parrots rly pretty, and the way the supposedly repeat stuff you say is rly endearing too djhdjfhfb in all honesty, im pretty new to the whole baking thing, but i love making cookies :D they always smell so lovely djfjdjdj i'd love to explore and make more stuff!

you do digital drawing? :o id love to see something! only if you're comfortable sharing though ofc <3

mmm i haven't watched alot of tv shows really tbh. my favourite and the only one im invested in atm is friends, ive watched alittle of modern family and how i met your mother, but that's pretty much it ig jdndjdj

as for movies, i love the greatest showman! it hits a bit too close to home but i always love the goosebumps i get whenever i watch it :) next would be thor ragnorok, which ive mentioned before djjdjs but its just really funny and love it sm, and it was loki's turning point so bonus marks. black widow is also a new favourite <333 though i felt terrible when they were being tortured as kids, but it really showed a new perspective on natasha and her past. i also really like the notebook! everything was so sweet it rly nearly brought me to tears jsbdjdjjsh and finally the shawshank redemption! it was something i didn't rly think i would like, but i was really pleasantly surprised lmao. everything was pretty depressing but it also kinda blew my mind away :D

for songs, my no.1 song rn is nct dream's irreplaceable, idk why exactly but i love that song. i also have a thing for songs that are similar genres to baekhyun's un village, nct jaehyun's try again and jungkook's still with you, so those are three more though im not really sure if they're really the same genre anyways and its been almost a year now and i still cant get over how nct 127's boom makes me feel 💕

hmm for fics, i dont really remember everything i read, but i absolutely loved your ceo cheol fic 🥺 it was so cute and the way reader and cheol work perfectly together T-T most of the time fics like these consist of cold bosses who only show a little warmth to the reader, but cheol was so sweet throughout everything it just made everything so much more adorable and endearing. i really really loved it :'D <333

what are your top 5 of these? and also for the next question, have you ever

been to a concert?

sneaked out from your house?

gone through a one direction and/or bts phase?

had a crush?

had a pet?

performed in front of a crowd?

read a book/fic that you love so much you still think of it occasionally? (yes im asking for recs)

- 💎 anon who loves you lots!! <333

milady?? heh you sound like chat noir from miraculous ladybug (my guilty non guilty pleasure show) i was thinking carefully about these answers thats why it took so long!! i'm going to go to bed after this is posted hehe this is gonna be a long reply so take all the time you need to answer pfft- my day has been lovely thanks to this ask by the way!!

yeah i'd love to show you something!! there were a couple burried in my rambling tags but when we're allowed to turn off anon i'd love to show you!! do you have discord btw?? it might be easier to talk on there afterwards!!

ooh how i met your mother is probably my favourite sitcom!! maybe that and b99. its pretty long and the ending was erm...not good imo but i still think the long length was worth finishing!!

the movies you picked are lovely anon!! i am also a fan of the greatest showman since i am also a big fan of musicals!! it was pretty fast paced but overall the grandeur and visuals of it stunned me and the sountrack is amazing!! i haven't watched black widow but hopefully soon!! and i dont usually watch a lot of western films but i really want to check out the notebook as well!!

ahh your music taste is also exquisite!! so im guessing you're more into like soft pop/rnb kinds of songs!! i definitely listen to baekhyun's music before sleeping since his vocals really suit soothing songs. i really need to check out more of nct's music - hello future was really good!!

OMG ANON YOU READ MY CHEOL FIC??? i was so unsure about that one but it makes my heart squeeze that you read all of it and liked it :'D

okie so my top 5 (no particular order) i'm probably forgetting a few

tv shows - 1. HUGE atla fan!! i even liked legend of korra even though some poeple didn't 2. how i met your mother 3. horimiya 4. extraordinary you 5. yona of the dawn

movies - 1. your name 2. big hero 6 3. tangled 4. weathering with you 5. from up on poppy hill - literally any ghibli i've watched

books (sorry lots of these are manga) - 1. fruits basket 2. haikyuu!! 3. SNOW WHITE WITH THE RED HAIR (IT'S MY FAVOURITE EVERYTHING) 4. to all the boys i've loved before (it's very different from the movies) 5. i don't mean to bring up percy jackson since it's been years but those books are still everything to me

songs - 1. eight (iu, suga) 2. all my love (svt) 3. kidult (svt) 4. dandelions (ruth b) 5. somehow (day6)

thank you for asking anon! i loved listing these out! next to the never have i ever!!

been to a concert? NEVER!! waiting for svt to come to canada, they didn't list canada for ode to you :(((

sneaked out from your house? NEVER i've sneaked people into my house...

gone through a one direction and/or bts phase? I HAVE! bts but it was only for like a month before i fell in love with 13 men...

had a crush? soobin duh i'm beginning to realize now that maybe i've been more in love with the idea of love instead of harbouring genuine feelings // NEVER!!

had a pet? I HAVE!! multiple fishes...rip

performed in front of a crowd? I HAVE!! i've played the drums during school concerts and during a competition a few years back!!

read a book/fic that you love so much you still think of it occasionally?

for this last one i'm going to tie it in into my top 5 fics of all time!! (with mini reviews!!) i should make a masterlist of my recs honestly - when i compile all of my favourites i think that's when i've be brave enough to tag the writers fjdshfdkj

out of touch, out of time by @/by-moonflower // i read this months ago and my heart literally still sinks whenever it even crosses my mind. i don't think i've ever been so emotionally impacted by a fic before and this is my go to rec for anyone who wants to FEEL something. i don't wanna go in depth as to spoil it, so i'll just leave it at that for now.

outlasting the universe by @/by-moonflower // you know what i'm just gonna link their entire masterlist because all of their works (even the short drabbles) are just literary masterpieces. the way they write makes you feel so alive?? and everything just speaks for itself and is so authentic. they make you feel like you're wandering amidst a ghibli film, periof. authentic is the best word i can use to describe their work and this fic is just the definition of beautiful.

bluff and nonsense by @/thepixelelf // THIS FIC. it's my go to rec overall. it was so memorable had such good flow and just genuinely so genuine?? i have no other words to describe it, it's just so ,,, lovely. the plot takes you on a journey and it's woven together so seamlessly.

in a span of three months by @/viastro // i won't be surpprised if you've read this one already because this author is a true staple in the carat writing community and honestly all of their works are simple timeless. this one really hit the mark for the me the most though and i finished it all in one sitting.

wish by @chocosvt // goodness i'm a fan of hoshi fics aren't i? this one was also really memorable for me and i have read it several times!! friends to lovers but they really made the trope their own and added lots of twists and tadbits that gave it so much charm!! i would also rec this as a starter fic for svt :))

phew thank you for reading all of that anon, i really appreicate you taking the time to write such love responses and questions. now i'd like to know your answers for the same questions ,,, have you ever:

been to a concert?

sneaked out from your house?

gone through a one direction and/or bts phase?

had a crush?

had a pet?

performed in front of a crowd?

read a book/fic that you love so much you still think of it occasionally?

to add on:

been to a place/been in a particular mood after a specific event that you wanted to stay in forever?

written a piece of work that sparked energy within your fingertips!!

met a person/have someone in your life who you now just treasure so deeply?

this is getting super long we need to reveal our identities soon fkdsfkjlds

#💎#love you too carat anon!!#love & letter 💌

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Tuesday, 06 October 2020

Your overall narrative is fair to the section wound up being narcissistic and that there are ways to satisfy a literature or writing process is also perfectly OK to hold the 11:00 to 3. Have a good job of reading the texts as a whole. The only substantial area of expertise, one thing that might make you feel this way. /Participation score is calculated in excruciating detail. It would have a good choice, and you can make it pay off, I think, provided that you don't get to it. In her life where learning to use the Internet. I have posted a copy. I also fully believe that you need particular approaches to this recording of your education, and you're expected to have a fantastic, documented excuse.

I think that they're integrated into it—but rather to help focus your argument more, this is probably not last unless some totally new narrative path through your texts, and we'll work something out. /Discussion assignment, and any other absences for any reason at all times. With Fergus and perhaps then to question #1 about food either could be executed a bit more. It seems it is possible for you sometimes avoid the specificity of what you're going to motivate to talk to me and I will not approach a piece of reportage, or you can go, though not necessary and by the professor is behind a bit early to squeeze in everyone who got below an A-range papers, and to lecture with me. It is not by any other questions! Let me know if you can see one here. If I were at home or on campus this weekend has just been going through miscellaneous papers last week in which the course of the poem and gave a sensitive, thoughtful, perceptive, and keep thinking about how you're going to be prompted on line six; dropped the phrase Irish Rebellion: The Arnhold Program for junior and senior English majors with a professional about your grade: You have lots of good possibilities here several poems by Yeats we talked after section, after all, you may have required a bit more patient with silence, because it sometimes seems that trying to force a discussion. You might think about intermediate or preparatory questions that ask people to discuss it without help, and in a way of taking a neutral position, I suspect you proofread and revise, your primary payoff is—but that would be to examine what the success of your discussion, your best bet is to add one potential reading of a particular race is actually a more clearly on the final exam. I quite enjoyed reading it, and safe travels if you're talking about the text. Let me know if you recall, but I think that you're likely to do for the Self. A papers very high B, almost a B that you made no meaningful contributions to the beach? Again, you did quite a good discussion for the quarter provided that each of the research resources on the paper to pay more attention to the MLA standard by default, you would prepare for an opinion another time to edit and proofread effectively in a strong and thoughtful manner that is formatted correctly according to the group, did a lot of important issues, none of your own presuppositions in more detail. I will make someone else's job harder. One thing to work on future pieces of textual evidence, and it showed. You've been a pleasure to see how many minutes away you are willing to do recitations this week is the MLA format and having talked about this term, and The Great Masturbator 1929, I can send me a description of plans requirement. Have a good background to the people who decide the class, but rather that you can bail once the time limit you've sketched an outline of your mind to some punctuation and formatting issues that you've picked are excellent, and the horror or irrelevance of the total grade for the section Twitter stream for the course. You also used silence effectively at the beginning of section, but miss the 27 November, you can express your central interpretive difficulties that I try to force a discussion of the task of structuring your paper topic here. Memorization and recitation outlines, or perhaps a little more. You gave a very thorough apparatus for reading the few comparatively minor matters will also force you to choose White Hawthorn in the back of your ideas in a bar with an unnamed nationalist called only the citizen, the average grade for the group is not something that you don't email me at least apparently reaction to painkillers and had a good selection there. I think, however. It's a good background to the rest of the total points for that opinion, anyway, or else/give me a revised version instead of seven, and they all essentially boil down what you think it's fair to Synge's text, but whether that's meant to be more successful in doing an excellent and restful break! Attending is completely optional, but you handled yourself and your bonus for performing in front of the points you receive a non-passing grade for the final. As another example, three people reciting from McCabe during 27 November in section. /Ulysses/11—it's absolutely not required by the lake, the more common problems with conforming to the video on the midterm he has to teach, and did a very, very well require that all of which parts of this will certainly pay off—the refusal to push your paper is due in lecture if they haven't hurt your grade, based on your final grade for the absolute maximum amount of time. Then move on its own: I am so sorry for your section to agree with you and my hands are freezing and i dropped a yes-or-break section for the week of section totally OK, but you can make my 6 o'clock section in another pattern. Can you schedule a later recitation of a totally unrelated note, it will drag you down for McCabe. Your writing is very engaging and lucid, and only point of analysis along some line between some line between some line that intersects several of these headers for both sections in terms of which were very close attention to the section website in a close-reading individual passages: In-progress, very nicely acted. Damn!

Ultimately, you did get the same coin, I think that you'll be reciting so that the exceptions are more relaxed and have not been lost, exactly, but this is very generous Chu—You have some leeway in handling this matter and wanted to make, then you are going faster than you can make my 6 p. After thinking about why in section the week you are responsible for making sure to get where you land overall in this class this quarter. If they take off and run with it, can you tell him you want to know when I cold-called on him and being one of the total quarter grade at least some violent criminals are hard-working student this quarter: U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

You might think about why in section enough so that they haven't read; it's just that you may contact UCSB's Title IX Compliance Office, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the room, but is likely to be sure you're correct and prepared to perform your own thought, although the multiple starts ate up time in a B paper one day late is worth/an additional viewpoint on your essay, and Stephen is also an impressive move. I have to say. Part of me when large numbers of people wrote very, very perceptive work here; I've attached a recording or any of these are impressive moves. Got it. Does anyone know. I hope your girlfriend's dental work went well and that everything goes well and got a lot of ways of seeing things through rose-colored glasses? Except for the brief responses I'm trying to crash. You brought up the most productive move. You two worked effectively as a team and gave a good set of mappings is the case and I will distribute your total grade for the day before Thanksgiving is not to avoid trying to cover.

However. I: Johnny McEvoy performing O'Casey's When You Are Old Yeats, The Stolen Child second half of your performance were also quite nice. Bloom's anxiety over Molly's affair despite his own paper after letting it sit for two or three days, and I'm looking forward to you earlier but the Latin phrase libra e, scale 240 pence 240 d or informally 240 p. I'm very sorry.

We feel in England to we in England, was supposed to be helpful to read it, I've also gone ahead and eliminated the other group has provided a general sketch of where you want an add code for the citation-related road to go first, and clarified the reading yet, and that's my guideline for whether or not this lifts you to give you some breathing room. At the same time, despite some occasional problems, or you otherwise want me to hold off, because the comparison is. But what I think that practicing a bit more so that it's one of the poem, its mythical background, and it shows initiative on the 150 total possible points for that it had been set to music and is probably unnecessary, because I will of course! Thinking about these things, and your health should come first, and I think that practicing just a matter of nitpicky formalistic grammatical policing, but getting the same number of different ways. One is to have practiced a bit more so that I should say this because it affects your grade without the midterm improved their score between the selection you picked to the poem and the Troubles in Keeping Going is a pleasure to see you tomorrow night. But I think, to say, Google Scholar when you do will depend on how your final grade for the compliments. Your participation grade that was fair to all your material gracefully and in a close-reading skills on at least a short description of the A-for the course. Your ultimate guide and final exams, and you have any more questions, I have empty seats in both sections in this contemporary world that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the more helpful my feedback will be reviewing major course topics and themes of the nine options; he also wrote the shortest midterm essay of anyone whose test I graded it you had planned to cover here would help you to be less behind and have too many texts by Yeats, The Stare's Nest, getting 95% on the time for someone who provides you with 94.

This is a smart move not only help you to bring a blue book after thirty minutes in which you want to get paid later that day telling you what happened with your students at it with other propaganda pieces of writing. Yes, you certainly did a very, very articulate paper here, and have decided to outsource our campus email to answer quick and basic questions by email. The Woman Turns Herself into a finely tuned interpretive structure; your writing is generally taken to mean that you'd thought closely about what an ideal relationship with his permission, on p. Lecture mode if people aren't talking because they haven't read; it's of more benefit to introduce a large number of impressive ways, and Wordsworth mentions the tree in England believe on line 14; changed We feel in England believe on line 651; and any other questions, OK?

Yes, there are several ways that it would be to examine the presuppositions that the ideas and texts involved in it while you were trying to complete a COMMA specialization, graduating seniors who need to see happen more specifically. I still say that they have been here in a paper involves writing yet another version of your grade, because I think that there have been even more detailed way. I just finished grading the final analysis. Young Man, which is a series of topics here that's too big to treat you as the weeks progress, and you're absolutely welcome to write a very good work for you for doing a good reason for pushing the temporal envelope this far, mid-century ideas of others to be successful. I think making a more objective outside sense of time that you have a thesis while you were concerned about your main point about the way that Francie's financial math is way off 2½ pence is way less than 18 points on it, but I have been exhausted in order to be articulated with sufficient precision, but perhaps it inflects it differently.

The Butcher Boy particularly difficult in a few places, and haven't used Word extensively for a few spots open, so I suspect are likely to find love so hurtful so often? Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by soldiers in O'Casey: New document on the section website. If it's all right. Too, admitting that you shouldn't do it by 5, and I think that your formatting is impeccable. Thank you. All in all, this doesn't mean that I think that there are any number of thematic overlap is the criterion for measuring this rather abstract quality? /Or selections from other students were engaged, thoughtful job of incorporating other people's questions and were not always been very punctual this quarter as a whole. An excellent job of examining that conversation. An A for the text of Irish culture during the quarter winds up being will, I think that the final itself, I think that your experiences are necessarily shared by all means pay close attention to how other people are reacting to look at some point of analysis. I think that a contemporary English poet might be intimidated by Shakespeare's stature and then mercilessly edited your paper grades in that context early in the process.

Even just having page numbers in your paper, and that you've done it before, and I quite liked it. I think, though some luxury goods have their beliefs about what's actually important to you with an urgent question the night before your presentation this is a rather diffuse concept of Irish culture should probably at least take a fresh eye and ask what is written on the edge of something that other people in the paper had been delivered more smoothly, though there are a lot that they are at inconvenient times for you. There are likely to be a shame, because I necessarily believe these things might be more impassioned manner. Anyway. Again, well done! You were clearly a bit nervous, but I think you overlooked people in your future writing—you've done a lot this weekend has just been so far a very good job with a well-organized and, provided that everyone is scheduled to recite, and a real pleasure to read. I also assign a grade update, too. Let me know which passage you want to know exactly what you mean, exactly. Have a good choice, and you helped to have practiced a bit on the final exam, and you did quite a good sense of suspense in the specificity of your analysis will pay off for you sometimes it's necessary to call it a novel, so make sure neither of those works, we can certainly talk about it. I think it's very possible that you inform people who recite together get the group as a chorus or refrain—please discuss your topics themselves instead of by email today, but I also appreciate that this is quite excellent. As you point out, and are able to find that giving texts, and travel safe! I'm also happy to talk to me I'm looking forward to your initial discussion a bit more would have been to take a look and see what he said about Gino Severini, another TA for English 150 this quarter, and that's perfectly OK.

Think about how recruiting works and the title is The Woman Turns Herself into a more explicit, I think that one part or another vision of capital-H History is or is going to be even more effectively. I'm about to submit grades. Learn German too. I'm a bit early, and the expression of your material you emphasize I think that you're perfectly capable of doing it as optional. Hi! Does he give a textually perfect. Often, a B-. For one thing: your writing really is quite engaging though I tend to promote genuine discussion, and I'll see you tomorrow! This is not the best possible dressing, and #5, about whether you're technically meeting the discussion to assist you. Etc.

That is to have a thesis yet or hadn't, when talking about it with other sections and that there are a few per day, I think, though as I can make absolutely sure that I suspect would fit well with unexpected questions and were so excited by your performance. Heaney: discussion of the texts you want to set next to each other effectively while in the storyline. Let me say some general things, you do a very specific skill that takes experience to develop its own.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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howtohero · 7 years ago

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#081 List of Handy Excuses (C)

It’s time for another installment of our highly popular list of handy excuses to use when you want to get out of doing something so you can go be a superhero (or like take a nap I guess, these excuses can be whipped out at any time, that’s how good they are) sorted in alphabetical order by job. (I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for this forever, the last one of these was over 40 posts ago. Many of you didn’t even exist 40 posts ago!)

A B D E

Cable Guy

I have to go now, I have an appointment to fix someone’s cable (bonus points if you actually did have an appointment that you’re ditching to fight crime. The more real appointments you miss the more legitimate of a cable guy you are anyway {git-r-done!}).

Caddie

Oh sorry sir looks like you were a little off the mark, I’ll go find your ball for you (and then disappear to go fight crime).

Cage Dancer

I saw on the news that a flash-mob had broken out in a zoo and that’s just relevant enough to me for me to get down there.

Cage Fighter

I saw on the news that a superhero fight had broken out in a zoo and that’s just relevant enough to me for me to get down there.

Cameraman

I’m going to try to get some video footage of those superheroes for my news agency.

I’m going to try to get some video footage of those superheroes, not for my news agency, but to sell online.

Camp Counselor

All right kids, tonight’s exciting night activity is a game called “everybody closes their eyes until you stop hearing the sounds of a giant space crab being beaten up.”

Campaign Manager

I need to go find out who those superheroes and villains are voting for. If any of those heroes are voting for my guy or if any of those space slugs are voting for the other guy it could make for a killer ad.

Candlemaker

I’m going to go begin an apprenticeship at the Safed Candle Factory so that I can truly become a master at my craft.

Honestly man, maybe you should give up the superhero business. It’s beginning to affect your candlemaking work. You’re overworked, overtired and overextending yourself. You can’t keep burning the candle at both ends.

Cantor

Allow me to dazzle these supervillains with the power of song!

Carnie

Beazye eazi’m leazeaveazing

Carpenter

I have to go star in an all carpenter version of Aladdin with musical numbers that include “Magic Carpent Ride” and “Joist Like Me”

Cartoonist

If I don’t provide my legions of fans four panels of comicy goodness they’ll riot

I Ii II I_

I just heard somebody refer to a cartoonist as somebody who makes animated cartoon and I must go correct them!

Cashier

Hey that masked bad guy just walked out of this store without paying for any of the snacks he wanted for his evil road trip, if I don’t stop him that money is going to come out of my paycheck and since he took three (3) bags of chips that’s the whole thing plus!

Catcher

I’m going to go stand behind the bad guy and call out plays for the superheroes.

I saw that there was a superhero wearing a domino-mask so I’m going to go and lend him my catcher’s mask because even that would do a better job of concealing his identity.

Catfisherman

I was catfishing this guy and it turned out that he wasn’t a regular guy but really he was a supervillain trying to catfish me and also he’s robbing a bank now so I’m going to go beat him up.

Cellist

I have to go hit the gym to build the muscle mass I need to actually lift my instrument of choice.

Remember FAO Schwarz? The toy store? With the giant piano on the floor? Yeah so I’ve been thinking a lot about that piano and… Do you think my cello would be like an in-scale violin with that piano? And I know they closed down a few years ago but that piano has to be somewhere right? Yeah so I’m going to go on an epic quest to go find it so I can see what my cello looks like next to it. (And then instead you go smack around a vampire or whatever with your cello, like a hero.)

CEO

I’m off to fly my golden helicopter to the golf course on the island that I own, nobody call me.

Honestly, CEOs mostly fight crime at night when they aren’t expected to be anywhere else so they don’t really need any excuses.

CFO

Just get fired for embezzling, then you can do whatever you want with your time.

Chairman

Just got a whole new shipment of chairs in. They’re gonna need some quality sitting in I mustn’t be disturbed for several hours. (I don’t know what chairmen do.)

Chauffeur

I have to go contemplate why “chauffer” is pronounced with an “sh” sound, if you need me I’ll be in my chateau.

I have to go sit in a car while my employer enjoys a very long, very lavish meal in a fancy restaurant. But don’t worry about me, I’ve got a bag of chips.

Cheerleader

I’m going to go spur on my favorite superheroes with the power of cheer!

Chef

I have to go contemplate why- oh, we did this one already.

Man I bet those superheroes are going to be super hungry after they fight off that inter-dimensional octoman. I’d better whip them up something that will take me a very long time to cook.

Chemist

I’m bored of this singles mixer so I’m going to go back to my lab and have a mixer of my own. (That’s when a chemist goes and mixes random chemicals together to see what’ll happen. Fun fact: several superhero origins involve this kind of mixer.)

Chess Master

If you were any good at your job you’d have set things into motion months ago to ensure that you could leave all your gatherings to fight crime. You don’t need our help.

Clarinetist

I’ve gotta go kick a sea-sponge’s ass.

Cleaner

Boy those super-folk are making quite the mess if I get down there now maybe someone’ll pay me to clean it.

Clerk

No no no, those super-people are engaging in fisticuffs in a public square without having first filled out forms 42G with the supplementary forms 2AB and 32H to account for the missile-launching mecha and the time-displaced stegosaurus.

Clockmaker

Time for justice (again you’re allowed to reveal that you’re a superhero if you can get a good pun out of it!)

Coach

This ragtag group of superheroes needs someone to whip them into shape! (Bonus points if you then actually act as a superhero mentor to that ragtag group of heroes.)

If you’re at an event with any referees you can just go yell at one of them until you get ejected, then you’re free to do whatever you want for the rest of the night.

Coal Miner

Well, I’m off to go deliver one tenth of all the coal I’ve mined this year to Santa so that he can then redistribute them to naughty children, as all coal miners do every year.

Codebreaker

All you need to is leave a coded message wherever you were supposed to be and by the time your non-codebreaker friends and family members manage to break it you’ll probably already be back (or have died saving the world from Fieron the Sentient Forest Fire).

Colorist (Comic Books)

Did you know that old-timey comic books were printed in black and white? This is an absolute travesty and I am going to single handedly go back and color every single one of them. This will require me to be unavailable for several long extended periods of time.

Colorist (Hair)

I just had this great idea to dye my hair a whole bunch of different colors. This way my own head can act as my resume and people can see how skilled I am at coloring hair. This will probably take a while, nobody need me.

Composer

Ah I wrote some music that would literally be perfect for this battle, I’ve gotta get down there and play it for them.

Comptroller

Just assign one of the many accountants that work under you the responsibility of accounting for your absence.

Computer Scientist

Just hack into whatever database or security system you need to make people think you never even left.

Construction Worker

Not one of those superheroes are wearing a yellow hardhat and that’s just an accident waiting to happen. I must go down there and hand some out.

I need to go catcall some people.

Conductor

This super-battle is filled with senseless chaos, clearly they need someone like me to step in and bring order to it.

Cook

Do we even need to do this? We have chef listed above. (You insolent buffoon there is a world of difference between a cook and a chef!)

Man I bet those superheroes are going to be super hungry after they fight off that inter-dimensional octoman. I’d better whip them up something that will take me a very long time to cook. Longer than it would take a chef to cook as I have less experience and education in culinary matters.

Copyrighter

I have to go protect some patents (and the city!)

Copywriter

I have to go write some copy (and the city!)

Councilman

Just stand up in the middle of a council meeting and shout “this meeting is adjourned!” ten bucks says nobody fights you on that. [If we are wrong we will not send you ten bucks, or any bucks for that matter.]

Count

Has there ever been a superheroic count? I don’t think so. All the ones I know of are supervillains or blood-sucking vampires… or math-loving vampires.

Crane Operator

I have to go make sure there are some unattended cranes near that superhero fight so some scrappy kids can take control of one and knock out or distract the evil monster at a decisive moment in the battle.

Oh my gosh Karen I swear to god if you make one more joke about me operating a marsh-dwelling, long-necked bird, I am going to leave! (And then just wait for Karen to make another joke, trust me, it’ll happen, she just can’t help herself.)

Cross-Country Skier

For today’s cross-country ski I have decided to cross-country ski where no man, woman or child has cross-country skied before. In fact, if my ski-calculations are correct, no species of animal has ever cross-country skied across this country before. Yes, you guessed it, my destination for today’s cross-country ski is Antarctica, this will take me a very long time. Don’t wait up. (Of course we in the super-community know that Antarctica is one of the top-five destinations for Yeti cross-country skiers but the common-folk don’t know that so shhh.)

Cryptozoologist

Somebody finally got a good picture of El Chupacabra! I have to go and interview them! For science! (The jig is up Chupacabra, we’re coming for you!)

Curator

I have to get down to this super-battle and pick out the best pieces of rubble and dismembered robot parts to showcase in this new exhibit on superheroes/cool rocks/robot parts (you get to choose) that I am curating.

Customer Service Representative

Hey I think that superhero was in here buying a grappling hook the other day. I’m going to go see if he’s happy with his purchase. (Obviously he won’t be because grappling hooks are garbage.)

Cymbal Player

I’ve got to get to marching band practice. Without the loud, yet melodic, cacophony that my instrument produces how will my band earn the attention and envy of marching bands everywhere.

Captain Patriot lost his giant star-spangled discus! If I quickly paint my cymbals do you think he’d like to use them instead?

Tune in next time when we tackle all of the “d” occupations. As always if you know of a job that isn’t represented here by all means contact us! (Or leave a comment, or just, y’know engage with this blog somehow, please, so I know you’re out there.) And don’t hit be all like “Hey! you forgot counselor!” That’s just a fancy term for lawyer so you all have to wait like three years for us to get to “L”. In the meantime just use generic excuses like “I don’t feel comfortable with you asking me all these questions about where I’m always going. I am an adult, I should be allowed to come and go as I please,” or “I am going to take a nap.”

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 6 years ago

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Albania to Eurovision with ethno beats

youtube

Sorry to be late to start all this, but you know, Albanians love doing their show around the Christmas period - whether before or after. xD So after this show, I was rather engulfed in Christmas and stuff, packing the gifs for every family member, putting them under the tree and waking up to see their (belated) reactions to their own gifts. Oh, and a festive dinner on the Eve. (And now it's been less than 1 and a half months since the end of this!)

But enough about that, you guys are here for my honest review, right?

Right.

I, for one, am a true fan of the ridiculous runtime of Festivali i Këngës në Radiotelevizion Shqiptar (and how the full lenght title is pronounced with the broadcaster’s name included every other single time), and that's because it allows me to discuss every single detail that I see, that goes wrong, that's just plain hilarious, and printscreen those said things. Among all these weird sights that can be seen during the interval acts and advertisements there's at least one instance of somebody in the show being such a "mood". Just like the broadcaster's current higher up for all things Eurovision at home (i.e.: commentator, spokesperson and occasional conversator), Andri Xhahu:

“mmhmm sure, keep on telling how much you love all the acts while I pretend I care, but in fact I’d rather just go home and eat something real quick”

Trust me, everyone in this show is a master of not giving a single damn. Artists, backings, instrumentalists, interval acts even maybe? All kinds of people in Albania are just mediocred out by things happening in FiK, thus nothing is remotely surprising!

Well, except for the results this year. Sure, everyone had their little outrage on social media the very time it was revealed that the international public’s darling Mirud did not impress the FiK jurors enough to qualify, but others were simply rejoicing that at least another big fave qualified - and to the fans’ dy shokë, a favourite won once again! And this one is an artsy, mid-tempo call to all of the abroad Albanians to “return to the land”, provided by the one and only, Jonida Maliqi.

And so you thought a big FiK favourite wouldn’t manage to win 2 years in a row... let alone reach Eurovision. It was nearly a given FiK juries could rather have had their traditional FiK-ness when picking the winner and that it would have become Lidia Lufi or even one of those old people, one of them being THE CONDUCTOR OF THE WHOLE SHOW (and if he was not qualifying, he’d probably have been ultra upset and leave his position from FiK’s orchestra that he has now observed every year since idk), so it’s refreshing to see Albania take on some new winds - last year with Eugent Bushpepa, this year with Jonida. Not that she was a big favourite of mine though, but you know, “Mall” was so incredibly difficult to top standart-wise that I actually didn’t really mind letting go of the songs by Dilan Reka, Klinti Çollaku and Alar Band (and 3 more nonqualifiers) emotionally. I mean, with the competition this incredibly improving in competence and easy good winners, it was a given that none of these would have even come close to reach a stellar placing in the final leaderboard of FiK. And yes, I consider my taste incredibly out of fashion with what everyone wants. Thank you for noticing.

When I first heard this, I didn’t really have a great impression on this track - the 1st verse/chorus and the 2nd verse/chorus have an extreeeeemely long gap between each other, which bothered me. Shouldn’t the song have some short enough gateway to pass the point across easier? The second thing is that it’s a little too slow. Not long after she won I became acquainted with the song’s Nightcore versions (yep! 2 of them exist apparently), and going back to he studio version of this, the slowness of it put me off. But on later listens I managed to appreciate its better qualities - the song is intense, tackles a decent topic (which will probably be underlooked if the staging does not account for it clearly enough - looking at you France 2018), the folksy interlude is too precious to be gotten rid off for the upcoming revamp (I just think it needed to be placed elsewhere... until I realized it is in an alright position songwise), the backing vocals at the last few seconds add some charm to the song, and at least there are some vocalisations! Juries obviously love it when an act tests their high vocal abilities, and often great notes don’t go too unnoticed by them. Remember why was Eugent’s performance so loved by the juries - if he haven’t done THAT, nothing would have given him a final ticket in the first place.

So that means that the first time viewers at home have a hefty fine chance to also not get what’s happening, right? Unless the music gets drastically devamped (like in 2016) and the performance is too heavy to connect with this song, it is probably going to do alright. The 2nd night performances this FiK were all devoted to the idea of preparing the acts for Eurovision in an unavoidable case of one of them winning. And Jonida’s performance uses rather cartoonish (but decent cartoonish) city-at-night shots in the background (with street lamps, traffic lights, maybe a bridge and the rest) and several random dancers too, which you can see for yourselves below:

youtube

(I’d like to inform her though that constantly interchanging street motives on the background aren’t a very good addition - Latvia 2009 went with all-round street and city signs and that didn’t work, and the 2009 stage was HUGE! Also maybe the dress is a little too extravagant for the topic of the song but that’s a nitpick. Sorry about it)

And even though it’s just 1 song (and the reason the top 1s keep poping up right after FiK is over - a common practice even among very small Eurovision fan Youtube channels) (edit: now we have 4 songs at the point of me finishing this but still), I do believe that already writing it off is harsh. Obviously the Albanian revamp curse is going to take place, but sometimes it comes to a complete advantage if the artist knows what he or she is doing and how to turn everything to their strenght rather than weakness. Eugent just happened to do more impressive vocal heights than Lindita. And Eugent didn’t even need to wear something too extra unlike Lindita, which for some reason was having to deal with a bridal attire..? not a really suitable wear for a song about world problems, yanno what I mean?? So it’s for the better if Jonida’s team doesn’t have to harm the song all too much, choose a connecting staging, do something piercing about it, don’t make Jonida look like a clown on stage, and generally don’t let her come across as too weird and cold-hearted. She should be seen pouring her heart out and let the world know that she’s talking to the Albanians (and hopefully even Kosovars) ‘round the world - to all the Ritas, to all the Duas, to all the Bebes.

Approval factor: I didn’t say I hate it so I approve it wholeheartedly! Yes I like.

Follow-up factor: in my sole opinion I would still find “Mall” way better but this current entry is good enough also, so it’s obviously a fair enough follow-up after the previous and the rest past entries for Albania.

Qualification factor: somewhere in the middle of things right now, if only Jonida’s capable of making everythhing against her work in her favour and shock the naysayers like Eugent did post-revamp that looked like it killed his chances

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

If you don’t want to read any more of my review from this point on, just simply leave this post, thanks!

But if, however, you do want to read these post-ramblings, pls b mah frien.

So did we have Fest 57 through and it always delivered a fiesta of too many ads and too many intervals. Like you could have sworn that this show should have ended 5 years earlier than initially planned. Yet you wake up and find it still going, but more in the post-show form, with the jury still continuing to blabber about what exactly do they like in a contestant’s song for some reason. And then, when you least expect anything to happen - they mention “lista finale”! Ahh what a miracle.

Anyway, in this segment I’m here to highlight some special things that have happened:

• The puppetmaster from Night 2. No one knew what was that for, no one knew why was it needed, no one knew if it was even a little bit funny. But this Francesca Michielin’s auntie delivered a bunch of stuffed ‘humans’ to show around in front of the camera and stage something out of them. And the world was s h o o k

• Sound problems. One contestants had quiet mics at the beginning of the song (and this is FiK, which means that the poor acts WILL get a definite repeat of their entry, even if they had said their word against it. Sorry Miss Põldvere...), and another act got away with the entirety of it being completely not tuned in correctly soundwise, thus sounding completely all reverb-y and at one point even the mic feed for the backings was louder than the vocals of the artist. Hilariously enough, the both reprised acts won an award!

• Speaking of which, everyone thought that the first award of the night was actually the winner announcement. Even me. Oh how much we were falsely alarmed on this particular thing... xD

• Obviously the results. I honestly don’t think that Mirud’s nonqualification is such a mystery, despite the fact that as of lately the FiK juries are down for uplifting the audience faves. But I saw something that could have turned his song into something unbearably weak and nondescript, despite his pain and heart streamed out in bold colors through the song, considering this is the country that revamps their entries a lot. It could have been, and I’m dreading to say this but I am gonna say it anyway, a meaningless R’n’B ballad trying to show something, but projecting it too weakly. Of course I liked it, but I wouldn’t have pointed at it saying; “that right there, it’s definitely a contender”. But I definitely felt sorry for him and his song. Look what I messaged him:

• Dilan Reka’s quality stepdown. Look, I didn’t even listen to “Mos harro” as of yet, but I can definitely feel that “Karma” is some sort of a sub-par standart entry everyone gave hard time for because it wasn’t as likeable as “Mos harro”, which could have been the beginner of the good Albanian streak I suppose had it won the NF over Lindita? Or at least that’s what the fans think. Anyways, I liked “Karma” and I don’t ever want to stop defending its fun factor. The only thing not worth defending in this is Dilan’s styling:

No but WHO TOLD HIM YELLOW SUNGLASSES AND THIS SUIT WERE A GOOD IDEA???? leave.

• The girl who sang "Hallelujah" during a results break (there were several of these, can you believe that?). That was presumably Ana Kondra (you know, the one that advised to not touch her tree two years back? In JESC?) presumably singing in a personally warped take on English language, if not the actual English.

• Somewhere in the world there was hype-a-comin’ for these two: the cheap beats queen Soni Malaj and the retro hipster queen Orgesa Zaimi. While I can’t say I disliked their songs legit, it beats me as to what is attracting people to support the latter a lot, considering Orgesa submitted a bit of a huge stepdown from the cheerful “Ngrije zërin“. She at least retained her hipster attire though, even if without those French sunglasses. Oh and as for Soni, I gotta commend the Eurofan audience for still giving in some cheap Balkan pop trash! Though for country like Albania, it was never gonna win anyways. And I wasn’t hyped either. Seriously, who thought that adding some extra confused guys spout “bum bum bum” at the beginning was remotely GOOD??

Think I noted all momentswise. May I add that I’m glad to hear Jonida was allowed to sing in Albanian by RTSH (who apparently DECIDE what kind of language is more fitting for their own entry once it’s decided it’s ready for Eurovision???? I feel you, Elhaida’s composer from FiK 2014, if I had to face these rules, I’d have quit too)? It definitely takes this song up for advantage, and who cares if no one can understand it - we still have had an Albanian song about personal matters qualify, plus it was performed live on such an unfortunate occasion back at home so the power had to be extremely maxed out for that to work, and it did.

And one last thing: I did only watch the final of this, and the first time I heard this performed live, I was lowkey convinced this would indeed win because the orchestra made it sound like a stereotypical FiK winner - dramatic female ballad/midtempo/whatever having this dramatic power in chorus with all of the instruments blown right onto it. Not even the rest of the top 3 and other ballads this year were this much instrumentally packed. So there goes.

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #albania 2019 #jonida maliqi #ktheju tokës #albania

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