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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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'Loki' takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

Credit: Charlie Gray for EW

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Owen Wilson as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in 'Loki.'| Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."

#Tom Hiddleston #Loki #Disney+#interview

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wagner-fell · 3 years

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Spiders Are Ugly And Other Lies Capitalism Has Told Us (part one)

“Dad,” Astrid called out, shutting the coral coloured front door behind her. “Are you home?”

She dumped her cream tote bag spray painted with the words ‘Washing Machine Heart’ in big, rainbow letters onto one of the stools facing the granite countertop. The rest of the Merry Hoes followed suit. It was weird seeing a person as chaotic as Astrid in such a calm environment.

They were all spending the summer in LA with Astrid and her Dad. It had taken a while for Kevin to convince his family it was a good idea. Especially because he and Blessica had finally put years of pinning behind them. Making out on Kit’s bed at Mina’s third birthday party certainly wasn’t the way they had envisioned it but as the longing was over with, they were happy.

The Chu’s didn’t love the idea of their son living in a different country for three months with his girlfriend but we’re on board once Kevin assured them there was no possible way Blessica could get pregnant.

Kit wasn’t officially sleeping at the Yang’s but at the Institute with his boyfriend. Julian wasn’t so thrilled about the situation but Emma was. She was positively ecstatic about having a training partner as skilled as Kit was, courtesy of Jem and Tessa. Though staying a thirty minute drive away (on the wrong side of the road, Mari noted) wouldn’t keep Kit away for long. Even now he was with them instead of having his own reunion make out session.

Speaking of making out…

Mari rested their chin on the top of Astrid’s head and wrapped their arms around her middle. “Why don’t you show us your room while we wait for your dad to get home.”

It was kinda perfect, Mari often remarked, that she realized her feelings for their best friend weren’t so platonic as she previously led herself to believe at the same time they and Kit realized they were better off as just platonic.

Astrid hit her hand playfully. “That’s not fair!” she whined! ”How dare you take advantage of my constant hornyness when my God-fearing Presbyterian father could be in the next room? Shame! Shame on you, shame on your family, shame on your cow.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s ‘dishonor’”, said Kit, who didn’t even look up from his phone when he addressed her, “but go off I guess.”

Astrid looked like she was questioning all her life choices up to this point. “A white boy knows Mulan better than me.” She shook her head in disgust. Mari could feel the loose hairs of her girlfriend’s ponytail ticking her exposed collar bone. “Mulan.”

Mari laughed before softly brushing their lips against Astrid mop of bleached strands of pastel yellow, pink and blue mixed magnificently with her natural inky black.

“Is hornyness even a word?” Kevin wondered aloud as he observed the knickknacks placed at even intervals utop the kitchen cabinets. Blessica was with him. She was gazing at one of a crab steering a ship when she spotted a slim piece of paper taped below it.

“Ast,” she called. The both looked in her direction, despite Blessica needing the attention of one. “Your dad says he won’t be home till seven. Emergency at work.”

“Which leaves us more than enough time to pack and head over to meet Ty, Dru and Thaìs at the arcade,” said Kit. He finally turned his phone off and shoved it into the back pocket of his ripped jeans. “Marstrid can do the ol’ devil’s tango then catch up to us.”

‘Marstrid’ wrinkled their noses. “I thought we agreed on Astari, Christopher.”

“Astari sounds gayer,” confirmed Kevin, his eyes never leaving the miniature decorations.

“Not to be rude but why does Astari sound gayer?” asked a visibly confused Blessica.

“Because,” answered Mari, unraveling herself from Astrid to slide onto one of the bar stools and reaching into the Jolly Rancher jar, blindly searching for a green, “Astari has ‘star’ in it. Star equals astrology. An obsession with astrology is the price you pay for the gay agenda. Besides, Marstrid sounds like an old southern lady.” Then she furrowed her eyebrows and swiveled to face Astrid. “Southern is Texas, right?” Astrid nooded, a smile so big the Cheshire Cat would be jealous.

Without looking, she stuck her hand in the jar and pulled out a green apple flavoured hard candy on her first try. She held it out to Mari, who snatched it out of her hand with an angry huff.

“Hey, Ast, where do you guys keep the crisps?” asked Kevin when he finished inspecting all the knickknacks.

“Uh, under the barbecue sauce, I think.”

Kit’s eyes lit up. “So I’m sitting there”- Astrid understood what was happening in just enough time to quote- “barbecue sauce on my titties” in unison.

Mari put her head into their open palms, still sucking on the pity candy. “Why is this my type?”

“Are you sure this is the right place?” asked Blessica as Kit attempted to parallel park outside the location Ty had texted him to meet at. Key word, attempt. When Tessa had taught him to drive, he’d been such a disaster at parallel parking she had instructed him to ‘take the underground when tight spaces might be a possibility.’ Which he prided himself in doing. But this was America and the underground was called the subway, so, technically, no rules were being broken.

“Yes, Blessie, I’m certain.”

“Okay. Just checking cause a few turns back the GPS said-”

“Blessie!” He nearly crashed into the car in front of him.

“Right. Shutting up.”

When Kit managed to park with minimal damage and the three were about to exit, the voice of Nicki Minaj boomed from his pocket. Ty was calling him. He accepted the call, putting it on speaker.

“Hello Tiberius.” There was giggling from the other end of the line. A groan soon followed it.

“It’s been a year,” came the annoyed voice of Dru. “Get over your British kink already.” Kevin’s laughter echoed from the backseat.

“Hey Ty!

“Hi Kevin.”

”Hey Dru!”

“Fuck off.”

“Ouch. Why do you feel the need to hurt me so?” Blessica laughed.

“Hey…Thaìs?”

“Here,” replied Thaìs cheerfully.

“Are you here yet,” asked Ty.

“Uh, yeah! We were just getting out of the rental car when you called. You didn’t tell me it was going to be crowded. I had to parallel park!”

“What are you talking about?” interrupted Dru. ”There are only four cars in the parking lot.”

“But,” Ty countered, “there are lots of Billy’s Fun Zones’ around here. You guys must have got mixed up and taken a wrong turn. I could have sworn I sent you the correct location on GPS.” Maybe Ty said more on the subject but Kit could hear anything or see anything except the superior smirk Blessica was giving him.

He covered the speaker. “Not. A. Word.” And no word came out of her mouth the entire ride to the correct Billy’s Fun Zone but the ‘I told you so’ look on her face spoke loud enough.

Kit slid back into the booth next to Ty, handing him his pretzel. Ty kissed him on the check in gratitude.

Dru and Ty were right. About this one being empty. He told him he had heard about it from Alyssa. Her pack frequented it often. They were left alone because, well, there was no one else there to bother them.

“Where are Astrid and Mari?” he asked.

“Fucking. I think. Or maybe just making out. I’ll know which one when they finish.” When Ty gave him a puzzled look he continued, “Astrid describes it all to me in full detail. I honestly don’t know whether she doesn’t have a filter or she just needs someone to scream to about how amazing Mari is.”

“Why can’t it be both?”

“True, true.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Ty picked up the conversation again. “When Thaìs first met Astrid, she had a huge crush on her. They got along great. I always thought they would end up together. Or hook up at the very least.”

“Huh, that’s funny,” observed Kit.

“What is?”

“When me and Mari split, I was planning on trying to set them up with Thaìs. But then I caught her ans Astrid making out in a storage closet at school. Which, in hindsight, was pretty stupid cause they were in there so I wouldn’t be sad Mari moved on when I opened the door in the first place avoiding her to call you.”

“Hmmmm.”

The gears in Ty’s head were visibly turning. Kit loved watching this process. An idea was forming in his boyfriend’s genius mind, he could sense it.

“What is their stance on monogamy?” he asked finally.

“Um, fuck, hold on. Mari sent me this whole speech about it.” Kit scrolled through his phone at a rapid rate before he saw what he was looking for. He cleared his throat and began reading aloud.

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:52 AM: monogamy is just another lie capitalism has fed us

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:55 AM: like, for example, the notion that house spiders are ugly and to be feared

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:56 AM: it’s just to sell bug spray

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:56 AM: same with monogamy

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:56 AM: pointless!!!

Mari_da_bisexual_whore, sent 1:58 AM: in conclusion, if I want to join a polyam cult, who tf is the government to stop me?

Kev-Kev, sent 2:01 AM: mari please go to sleep

Bless-ing_to_the_world, sent 2:04 AM: ^^^^^^^^^^^

Mitski_my_love, sent 2:05 AM: preach!

Mitski_my_love, sent 2:05 AM: go off queen

By the time Kit was finished with his dramatic reading, Ty’s plan was fully formed.

“That settles it! We are going to play matchmakers!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alyssa, Ty’s friend mentioned is @thechangeling OC, not mine.

@the-blackdale @the-wckd-powers @adoravel-fenomeno @thomas-gaypanic-lightwood @illusions-give-reasons-to-live @ithurielkeepsgettingkidnapped @im-not-ruined-im-ruination @sofiatheskeleton @cncnbr @its-taff @noah-herondale-lightwood @maxboythedog @arangiajoan @shelvesofgold @book-dragon-not-worm sorry if I missed anyone LMK if you want to be added or removed from The tag List!!

#mari machado sotomayor #mari machado #mari the werewolf #tiberius blackthorn #dru blackthorn #ty blackthorn #drusilla blackthorn #blessica reyes #the merry hoes #kevin chu #astrid yang #kit rook #kit herondale #thais pedroso #the secrets of blackthorn hall #the wicked powers

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incarnateirony · 3 years

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Do you know if the CW feels any impact from the audience of their shows in countries where they're not a channel? For example in Brazil there's no CW, but some of their shows are on the Warner Channel as well as stuff from other networks.

This one is a little more complicated, I'll start at "nyes".

Here's the thing: at the end of the day, the CW is an empty vessel. It has less than 400 employees, and technically even qualifies as a "small business" resultingly. It is an LLC, meaning it has no stocks, and can not be held accountable on the stock market and the executives there have a series of protections designed to keep them from taking personal hits.

Boycotting the CW is a method to plink the armor of its much larger parents. At the end of the day, the CW--shitty as its ethics, choices and influences are--are mostly beholden to its parent companies.

Does anyone remember when I told people, the second that Wayward was cancelled, that CBS was responsible, despite Wayward being a WB IP? I explicitly mentioned Moonves, and quoted his methodology on properties, ratings, streaming and more? Then dipshits like You Know Who tried to claim they knew better, and that I was crazy/stupid, and then like a month later one of the wayward women said at a M&G that the contractual breakdown was from CBS, and This Guy Named Moonves, and then there was radio silence and the You Know Whos emitted crickets, buried the conversation, and pretended it never happened?

That's because these things are related. They all influence each other, as per my last ask (x).

At the end of the day, the things that happened on, say, Supernatural are you actually being pissed at the WB. You can see the WB's historically failing Studio Responsibility Index on things like LGBT representation here at the GLAAD website. (x)

Just like a lot of the supreme BS attempted-but-massively-failing woke content tends to spew out of CBS trying to appeal to The Young Gays while segregating The Gay Stuff off their prime network that is historically way behind the others. They have no idea how to actually make or handle that content, but slap pride flags and a few Hashtag Fact phrases on content and plug it up the CW's ass to market it to you with more rainbows and a big impressive tally list of gay characters, that the You Know Whos of fandom insist make it a great representation channel, and bury the conversation that most of those are one-off or very minor characters, dead, or worse. They're there to hit a target that's a good talking point. Nothing else. They put a gay in the background of a poster somewhere so That Counts(tm) and look how progressive they are, make sure to attend his funeral next episode.

This may all seem like a huge aside to the initial ask but it's necessary framework to present, in association with the above-linked previous ask, on why holding the CW accountable is important. Because at the end of the day, be it the Nadria Tucker issues with WB/DC and their firing her for racist/sexist reasons; or the erasure of gays on Supernatural to the point there's clearly an order to their related syndication networks where they won't even air 15.09 or 15.18 again much less the finale; or the bullshit attempts at being woke on Walker where they think making ICE prisoners a talking point to launch a white man cop's story as relatable to an ICE officer's struggles is good marketing; to things outside of it, like--as posted by POLOL member Rebarn in the server,

-- these are people actually being mad at choices made by the CBS and WB. The CW is just a vessel to deliver it with minimal accountability and a PR mask people eat up like the gay candy they're trying to sell you even if it's just sugar free beaver anus flavoring.

But because of the size of these giant merged companies, like--trying to tackle WB head on for example is a fools' errand unless everyone pulled their heads out of their asses and ended this "I DO WHAT I WANT" personality and started heavily networking with say, DC fandoms and adjacent to do substantial damage to their franchises far larger. But, again, deferring to the above linked previous ask, if you knock out the CW as a content vehicle, even if it's smaller, you suddenly dent 6, 7, 8, 9 zeroes out of WB/CBS profits because you CAN knock down the CW, and change how they have to peddle their product.

To round full circle to your ask: just because the CW isn't in your country doesn't mean it does no good to boycott the content. Because the profit still goes to the IP holders (CBS, WB), and it's still part of the joint statement, as well as lowers the digital franchiseability of the products they're trying to resell on the market, internationally.

For example you know how internationally Netflix shows a lot of "Netflix originals" that are very obviously not originals, but are instead shows from other sources? That's part of The Rights Game. Initially CW and Netflix had a brokered deal of bulk packaging for a very large, very pretty price to them that helped bankroll them for years. This is also why CBS started shoveling absolute fodder content down the CW's throat that could run on just about negative ratings -- again, I point to the Moonves interview I cited as implication to why Wayward was bumped off the line -- so CBS could run away with the digital profits 100% licensing things in dozens or hundreds of companies. But CBS threw a goddamn hissyfit about merchandising rights when Netflix was like hey if we're gonna source all these shitty shows can we get like 10% of the merch value and CBS threw themselves on the mcdonalds playplace floor kicking and screaming, and then CW lost its legendary netflix deal which made them have to start peddling their content individually.

So if you cut off viewership of this content internationally, its franchiseability tanks, and CW continues to lose a huge part of its bankrolling value both with digital and to its parent companies using it as a vehicle to deliver content to shove into digital venues. The lack of the Netflix deal is why CBS is also wandering around like a pauper to platforms trying to find a home for its content--like convincing WB to host Walker on HBO Max, where I promise it's not going to do well. Most of its audience is beyond streaming age, and I promise no young 20 something is gonna open HBO Max and be like YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT TO WATCH, THIS YEEHAW COP REBOOT WITH JARED PADALECKI SPITTING IN A POT AND PULLING UP HIS PANTS. They're gonna fuckin' turn on Game of Thrones or something. Netflix, hulu, amazon don't fuckin' want it because they see that on the horizon. They're not gonna pay the money CBS wants for it. CBS All Access is for old people and they're too noncommittally fake woke just enough to piss off the Trumpers (points back to point about CBS content/representation way up there). So CBS DOESN'T EVEN WANT IT ON ITS OWN STREAMING PLATFORM.

Walker's housing arrangement on HBO Max is actually an early symptom of CW death throes, and CBS trying to figure out what the hell it's going to do once the CW goes under. It burned its netflix bridge, and soon won't have CW to try to float/sell/farm its content. Streaming apps don't want their content anymore. Their content underperforms.

So yes, absolutely boycott these products internationally. It adds to the weight of what's going on and continues to make CW less and less valuable on the front, continues to damage the actual IP holder parent companies and take their products to their knees, and continues to expediate the decline of it all in one network of fuckery. The same way the CW was a strength for its parents by webbing between them is now a way to drag them into a collective undertow and force bad business results on them all around, essentially inverting its value, expediting the rate at which they decide the CW is a money sink, and making them watch the 0s fly out of their bank account in a way that--say--trying to tackle the WB directly wouldn't accomplish.

CW no longer owns the rights to SPN, hence deleting its YT content. WB does. But WB has been feeling the crunch enough that brand new unopened S14 complete season blurays with specials are being sold under 10 dollars at walmart with 2$ off other movie tickets on the front and still not going off the shelves. That's them even trying to recover costs on releasing them to begin with. The WB tried to put out a mega 15 season uber collectors set giveaway enter by RT and got like, 300 RTs total. They need traction, they're not getting sales, and we're seeing the active results.

Continue to put heat on products that came by way of the CW as a result of their communal meddling being bad for business in any way possible, even after CW is no longer airing it and once the money is going straight into the IP holder parent company pockets. Not only are you then making The Correct People(tm) hurt, you're further devaluing the CW itself and accelerating its heat death which STILL will end up massively dinging the WB/CBS for reasons explained above in ways that kicking the titans in the shins itself wouldn't accomplish.

Hopefully that clarifies.

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thesaltofcarthage · 3 years

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Loki takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

from Entertainment Weekly

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

By Chancellor Agard May 20, 2021

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

Additional reporting by Jessica Derschowitz

#loki #loki series #tom hiddleston #entertainment weekly

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thekillerssluts · 4 years

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The Story Behind Every Song On Will Butler’s New Album Generations

Will Butler has a lot on his mind. It has, after all, been five years since his solo debut, Policy. A lot can happen in half a decade, and a lot has happened in this past half-decade — much of it quite dire. Butler was in his early 30s when Policy came out, and now he’s closing in on 40. He’s a husband and father. And he’s shaken by the state of the world, the idea of being an artist and a soon-to-be middle-aged man striving to guide his family through the chaos.

At least, that’s how it comes across through much of Generations, his sophomore outing that arrives today. Generations is a big, sprawling title by nature, and the album in turn grapples with all kinds of big picture anxieties. Mass shootings, the overarching darkness and anxiety of our time, trying to reckon with our surroundings but the system overload that occurs all too easily in the wake of it. Then there are more intimate songs, too, tales drawn from personal lives as people plug along just trying to navigate a tumultuous era.

Butler is, of course, no stranger to crafting music that seeks to parse the cultural moment and how it impacts in our daily lives. Ever since Arcade Fire ascended to true arena-rock status on The Suburbs 10 years ago, they have embarked on projects that explicitly try to make sense of our surroundings. (Not that their earlier work was bereft of heavy concepts — far from it — but Reflektor and Everything Now turned more of a specific eye towards contemporary ills and trials.) But as one voice amongst many in Arcade Fire, there is a cinematic scope to whatever Butler’s playing into there.

On Generations, he engages with a lot of similar concerns but all in his own voice — often yelping, desperate, frustrated then just trying to catch a breath. Butler leans on his trusty Korg MS-20 throughout Generations, often giving the album a synth-y indie backdrop that allows him to try on a few different selves. There are a handful of surging choruses, “la-la” refrains batting back against the darkness, slinking grooves maybe allowing someone the idea of brief physical release amidst ongoing strife.

Ahead of Generations’ arrival, Butler sent us some thoughts on the album, running from inspiration between the individual tracks to little details about the arrangement and composition of different songs. Now that you can hear the album for yourself, check it out and read along with Butler’s comments below.

1. “Outta Here”

I think this is the simplest song on the record. Just, like, get me out of here. Get me fucking out of here. I’m so tired of being here. No, I don’t have another answer, and I don’t expect anything to be better anywhere else. But, please, I would like to leave here.

I can play plenty of instruments, and can make interesting sounds on them, but kinda the only instrument I’m good at is a synth called the Korg MS-20. That’s the first sound on the record. It makes most of the bass you hear on the record. It’s a very aggressive, loud, versatile machine, and I wanted to start the record with it cause I’m good at playing it and it makes me happy.

2. “Bethlehem”

This song partly springs from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Like a lot of folks, I woke up after the election in 2016 mad and sad and scared and exhausted. This song is born of that emotion.

My bandmates Jenny Shore, Julie Shore, and Sara Dobbs sing the bridge, and it’s a corrective to my (appropriate?) freaking out — this isn’t the apocalypse. You’re misquoting Yeats. Get your fucking head on straight. History has not ruptured — this shit we’re in is contiguous with the shit we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But still, we sometimes do need an apocalyptic vision to make change. Even if it’s technically wrong. I dunno. It’s an ongoing conversation.

There’s a lot of interplay with backing vocals on this record — sometimes the narrator is the asshole, sometimes the backing vocals are the asshole. Sometimes they’re just trying their best to figure out the world. This song starts that conversation.

3. “Close My Eyes”

I tried to make these lyrics a straightforward and honest description of an emotion I feel often: “I’m tired of waiting for a better day. But I’m scared and I’m lazy and nothing’s gonna change.” Kind of a sad song. Trying to tap into some Smokey Robinson/Motown feeling — “I’ve got to dance to keep from crying.”

There’s a lot of Mellotron on this record, and a lot of MS-20. This song has a bunch of Mellotron strings/choirs processed through the MS-20. It’s a trick I started doing on the Arcade Fire song “Sprawl II,” and I love how it sounds and I try to do it on every song if I can.

4. “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know”

This makes a pair with “Close My Eyes” — shit is obviously fucked, but “I don’t know what I don’t know what I don’t know what I can do.” I’m not a proponent of the attitude! Just trying to describe it, as I often feel it. In my head, I know some things that I can do — my wife Jenny, for instance, works really hard to get state legislatures out of Republican control. Cause it’s all these weirdo state legislative chambers that have enormous power over law enforcement, and civil rights, and Medicaid, and everything.

The image in the last verse was drawn from the protests in Ferguson in 2015: “Watch the bullets and the beaters as they move through the streets — grab your sister’s kids — hide next to the fire station…” It’s been horrifically disheartening to see the police riot across America as their power has been challenged. I’ve got a little seed of hope that we might change things, but, man, dark times.

More MS-20 bass on this one, chained to the drum machine. This one is supposed to be insanely bass heavy — if it comes on in a car, the windows should be rattling, and you should be asking, “What the heck is going on here?” Trying for a contemporary hip-hop bass sound but in a way less spare context. First song with woodwinds — rhythmic stuff and freaky squeals by Stuart Bogie and Matt Bauder.

5. “Surrender”

This song is masquerading as a love song, but it’s more about friendship. About the confusion that comes as people change: Didn’t you use to have a different ideal? Didn’t we have the same ideal at some point? Which of us changed? How did the world change? Relationships that we sometimes wish we could let go of, but that are stuck within us forever.

It’s also about trying to break from the first-person view of the world. “What can I do? What difference can I make?” It’s not about some singular effort — you have to give yourself over to another power. Give over to people who have gone before who’ve already built something — you don’t have to build something new! The world doesn’t always need a new idea, it doesn’t always need a new personality. What can you do with whatever power and money you’ve got? Surrender it over to something that’s already made. And then the song ends with an apology: I’m sorry I’ve been talking all night. Just talk talk talking, all night. Shut up, Will.

Going for “wall of sound” on this one — bass guitar and bass synth and double tracked piano bass plus another piano plus Mellotron piano. The “orchestra” is about a dozen different synth and Mellotron tracks individually detuned. And then run through additional processing.

6. “Hide It Away”

This song is about secrets. Both on an intimate, heartbreaking level — friends’ miscarriages, friends’ immigration status, shitty affairs coming to light — and on a grand, horrible level: New York lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse prosecutions, all the #MeToo reporting. There’s nothing you can do when your secret is revealed. Like, what can you do? You just have to let the response wash over you. If you’ve done something horrible, god-willing, you’ll have to pay for it in some way. If it’s something not horrible, but people will hate you anyway, goddammit, I wish there were some way to protect you.

This song has the least poetic line on the record, a real clunker: “It’s just money and power, money and power might set them free.” But it’s a clunky, shitty concept — the most surefire protection is being rich and knowing powerful people. But even then, shit just might come out. Even after you’re long dead.

Came from a 30-second guitar sample I recorded while messing around at the end of trying to track a different song. I liked the chords, looped them to make a demo. And the song was born from there. This is the one song I play drums on. Snare is chained to the MS-20, trying to play every frequency the ear can hear at the same time on some of those big hits.

7. “Hard Times”

[Laughs] I sat down and tried to write a Spotify charting electro-hit, and this is what came out: “Kill the rich, salt the earth.” Oh well. Written way before COVID-19, but my 8-year-old son turned to me this spring and asked, “Did you write the song ‘Hard Times’ about now, because we’re living through hard times?” No, I didn’t.

In Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the narrator is a real son-of-a-bitch—contrarian, useless. Mad at the strong confident people who think they’ve got it figured out. And they don’t! And neither does the narrator — but he knows he doesn’t, and he at times yearns for some higher answer, and he’s funny, and too clever, but still knows he’s a piece of shit. I read Notes From Underground in high school and kinda forgot how it shaped my worldview until I sat down with it a couple years ago. The bridge on this song is basically smushed up quotes from Notes From Underground.

I was asking Shiftee, who mixed the record, if there are any vocal plug-ins I should be playing around with. He pointed me toward Little AlterBoy, which is basically a digital recreation of the kind of pedal the Knife use, for instance, on their vocal sound. It can shift the timbre/character of a voice without changing the pitch. Or change pitch without changing character. Very fun! Very much all over this track. Tried to make the bridge sound like a Sylvester song.

8. “Promised”

Another friend song masquerading as a love song. I’ve met a handful of extraordinary people in my life, who stopped doing extraordinary work because life is hard and it sucks. People who — I mean, it’s a lottery and random and who cares — could be great writers or artists, who kind of just disappeared. And it’s heartbreaking and frustrating. I don’t blame them. Maybe they weren’t made for this world. Maybe it’s just random. Maybe they’ll do amazing work in their 60s!

We tracked this song before it was written. Julie and Miles came over and we made up a structure and did a bunch of takes, found a groove. Which I then hacked up into what it is now! The bed tracks are lovely and loose. Maybe I’ll put out a jammier version of this song at some point. The other big synth on this record is the Oberheim OB-8, and that’s the bass on this one (triple tracked along with some MS-20).

9. “Not Gonna Die”

This song is about terrorism, and the response to terrorism. I wrote it a couple weeks after the Bataclan shooting in Paris in 2015. For some reason, a couple weeks after the shooting, I was in midtown Manhattan. I must have been Christmas shopping. I had to pop into the Sephora on 5th Avenue to pick up something specific — I think for my wife or her sister. I don’t remember. But I remember walking in, and the store was really crowded, and for just a split second I got really scared about what would happen if someone brought out a gun and started shooting up the crowd. And then I got so fucking mad at the people that made me feel that emotion. Like, I’m not gonna fucking die in the midtown Sephora, you fucking pieces of shit. Thanks for putting that thought in my head.

BUT ALSO, fuck all the fucking pieces of shit who are like, “We can’t accept refugees — what if they’re terrorists?” FUCK OFF. Some fucking terrified family driven from their home by a war isn’t going to kill me. Or anyone. Fuck off. Some woman from Central America fleeing from her husband who threatened to kill her isn’t going to fucking bomb Times Square. You fucking pieces of shit.

In November/December 2015, the Republican primary had already started — Trump had announced in June. And every single one of those pieces of shit running for president were talking about securing our borders, and keeping poor people out, and trying to justify it by security talk. FUCK OFF. You pieces of shit. Fuck right off. Anyway. Sorry for cursing.

I kind of think of the outro of this song as an angry “Everyday People.” Everyday people aren’t going to kill me. Lots of great saxes on this track from Matt Bauder and Stuart Bogie.

The intro of the song we recorded loud, full band, which I then ran through the MS-20 and filtered down till it was just a bass heart-pulse, and re-recorded solo piano and voice over that.

10. “Fine”

I kind of think that “Outta Here” to “Not Gonna Die” comprise the record, and “Fine” operates as the afterword and the prologue rolled into one. An author’s note, maybe. It was kind of inspired by high-period Kanye: I wanted to talk about something important in a profane, sometimes horribly stupid way, but have it be honest and ultimately transcendent.

In the song, I talk semi-accurately about where I come from. My mom’s dad was a guitar player who led bands throughout the ’30s and ’40s. In post-war LA, he had a band with Charles Mingus as the bass player. Charles Mingus! One of the greatest geniuses in all of American history. But this was the ’40s, and in order to travel with the band, to go in the same entrances, to eat dinner at the same table, he had to wear a Hawaiian shirt and everybody had to pretend he was Hawaiian. Because nobody was sure how racist they were supposed to be against Hawaiians.

Part of the reason I’m a musician is that my great-grandfather was a musician, and his kids were musicians, and their kids were musicians, and their kids are musicians. Part of the reason is vast generations of people working to make their kids’ lives better, down to my life. Part of the reason is that neither government nor mob has decided to destroy my family’s lives, wealth, and property for the last couple hundred years. I tried to write a song about that?

Generations is out now via Merge. Purchase it here.

https://www.stereogum.com/2098946/will-butler-generations-song-meanings/franchises/interview/footnotes-interview/

#Arcade Fire #will butler #generations #interview #hq

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canyouhearthelight · 5 years

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The Miys, Ch. 68

One chapter, beta’d by both @satan-parisienne and @baelpenrose, so there should be a minimum of errors floating around in there.

As some have noticed, I did update the Master List over the weekend. A few other things I just want to touch on:

Ask box is literally always open, as is my inbox. Feel free to drop questions, comments, whatever in there. I love interacting with people, so it makes my day to see y’all reach out to me.

Also, I recently crossed the threshold for 500 followers. It’s crazy, and I’m just gobsmacked that you all follow me. I won’t be doing a character contest this time, but keep your peepers peeled for what I am doing instead...

Now, on with our chapter!

“To confirm Councilor Reid’s statement, the bacteria that was, until recently, potentially killing us, is instead killing itself?”

“Correct, Eino.”

“And this is a bad thing because it is sentient?”

“Partially why it is bad, yes.”

“Xiomara, if I may?” I couldn’t see them, but I could practically hear Grey lean forward and push their glasses further up the bridge of their nose. Just the tone of voice told me that this Grey was well-rested and firing on all cylinders.

Xiomara nodded, then dropped her head back to suppress a groan when she realized the rest of the Council couldn’t actually see her. “Please go ahead, Grey. You are probably better to explain this than I am.”

“Thank you.” A brief pause. “While I do confess that I argued stringently against the decision that Else is sentient, in the end, even I was satisfied with the decision. However, Terran studies of neural matrices do show that there is a threshold of connections, below which sentience does not exist except as a potential. It stands to reason that, for a hive minded species such as Else or even the Hujylsogox, loss of too many members would create a similar loss of sentience.”

Noah’s voice hummed in confirmation. “This is correct. Even if I were to lose too many of my avatars, and later come in proximity to others of my kind, I would no longer be myself but instead be absorbed into the sentient member, and they would gain any information I had learned.”

I felt my face contort into a horrified expression. “Noah, does that happen?”

“Only in very dire circumstances, Wisdom. It is considered a capital crime do so against a cluster’s will, and the height of rudeness to begin to do so accidentally.”

“Question: if a species can lose sentience due to low population, can it actually be considered sentient?” Eino’s tone was carefully inquisitive rather than argumentative.

“The problem cannot be framed in that way and make logical sense,” Grey advised, not unkindly. “According to the Galactic research database, each member of a hive-minded species serves as a neural connection for one single, larger mind. Just because the individual loses neural awareness or function, the species does not; believing so would be comparative to stating we are not sentient as a species simply because sufficient neural damage can render one of us brain-dead.”

“Thank you for the clarification,” he breathed, seemingly in relief.

Grey continued. “In this case, however, there are no others of Else’s species. It is such a young race, that despite so many bodies, it only has one mind for now. Should too many bodies die off from starvation out of Else’s attempt to do no further harm, sentience will be lost. At that point, there is a reasonable amount of certainty that it will begin to eat freely again, and become sentient again.”

“And there is no guarantee that the new version of Else will like us as much as the current version. We can’t take that chance,” Xiomara finished. “What if we end up with a homicidal bacterium instead of an apologetic one.”

The entire channel fell silent at the weight of her words. I couldn’t blame anyone – it was a lot to process. Hell, I was the one who brought the topic to her attention, and even I felt the need to vomit when she said it. It was too much to really contemplate for long.

“So, what are we supposed to do? Feed it?” The words may have sounded sarcastic coming from a different person, but I knew Pranav was considering this a genuine option. In the time I had known him, he had always worked with the facts, regardless of what anyone hoped to dreamt.

Looked like it was my turn. “We actually have a few options that Else mentioned on their own, when they were trying to convince me not to have them eradicated.”

After a brief pause, Giang Huynh spoke up. “Please elaborate, Sophia.” Not only the illness, but the destruction or degradation of several structures had led to his department being the one most effected by Else. Instead of his normal belligerence, he just sounded resigned.

Taking a deep breath, I laid out what Else and I discussed. “The first, probably easiest option, is to isolate all of Else and deposit the entire culture into the first nebula we reach.”

“Nebulas are very rich in iron,” Eino pointed out. “But does it need oxygen?”

“Else is largely anaerobic,” Grey responded. “Due to its diet of iron, open air is almost immediately fatal to it. This explains why it has been predominantly found in bone marrow and the spleen, as that is where the highest amount of iron can be found in the human body, before the blood is oxygenated.”

“Are there any downsides to this option?” Simon asked. Since I was technically still on medical leave, he was acting in my stead. The only reason I was allowed on this conference was as a witness, not a Councillor.

“Else doesn’t like it,” I admitted. “Because, and I quote, ‘there are no humans in a nebula’.”

“Miys, does Else have a say in this?” Eino asked, curious.

“As a sentient species, yes, they must agree to the relocation unless their current environment is untenable without drastic intervention. Technically, their current environment is viable for the foreseeable future.”

“Wait – what?” Simon sputtered. “We only recently stopped needing constant transfusions.”

“Not all of the ship needed them on a constant basis,” Grey pointed out. “And some who were impacted did not need them at all until very near the end of the crisis.”

She means others like Tyche, I realized. “Okay, so that’s an option, but only if we lack any others and can talk Else into it,” I forged ahead. “Which means any discussion of whether or not Else needs to be forcibly relocated is moot, because they did bring up other options.” I paused for response, and continued when there was none. “The second option was dropping them off on a barren, iron-rich planet with a late-sequence star.”

“How is that any different?” Huynh sputtered in confusion.

I watched Xiomara’s eyes get wide. “Tactics,” she breathed before repeating it, louder. “It’s a tactical preference. An iron-rich world, especially a barren one, is more likely to be mined, isn’t it?”

“Mining such planets requires significantly less effort and resources than are needed to mine a nebula,” Noah confirmed.

“And mining gives them the chance to be picked up by a new species,” Xiomara dropped like a bomb, triggering a rush of muttering.

“We should only base the value of an option on whether or not it will be a detriment to Else if it is certain to prevent the detriment, regardless of the impact to us.” I was initially surprised to hear such a venomous tone from Huynh, before considering his home nation’s history. Okay, he has every reason to be adamant here. After all, his country had suffered horribly at the hands of mine, not even a century prior. “Are there any other options?”

“Put them in stasis and bring them with us,” I confessed. “But, I also pointed this out to Else: And then what? It’s still a finite resource situation, in the long run. Not to mention the fact that we are working toward having the least possible impact to the new world – doesn’t bringing a sentient plague with us completely defeat the purpose?”

“We are already studying the impact our own gut bacteria will have on Kepler 442b,” Grey added. “And while we have no plans for large-scale mining of natural resources, the planet and its star already have poor metallicity.”

“I feel like those options really cover everything that is actually available to us,” Xiomara confessed.

“Agreed,” Pranav chimed in. “There is an option that Else does not like, but provides greatest opportunity for it to thrive. There is an option it likes, which also provides the chance for a species that shows every indication of being quite social to potentially interact with others. And there is an option that is really only a stopgap measure.”

“Ultimately, Else has to agree to whatever measure is to be taken,” Noah pointed out, attempting to be helpful.

“Else wants to stay with us,” I rebutted. “So much so that it is about to lobotomize itself in the attempt. We have to convince it to take an option that is better for its survival.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what I was saying. I didn’t even attempt to suppress the groan of regret that erupted.

“If you are done impersonating a cow,” Xiomara grinned wryly, “Yes, that means we need to negotiate with Else.”

“You mean I need to,” I grumbled.

Grey gave me a sliver of vain hope. “We are attempting to locate another individual who has been able to get in touch with it, Sophia. While their method of conveying it was quite crude, Mr. MacMaoilir and Mr. Okima did have a valid concern regarding how taxing it is for your body when you are speaking with Else.”

“Any luck?”

“Not as of yet, no.” Damn it. Even Grey sounded unhappy with the fact.

“So, unless something drastic changes, the plan is for me to try to talk Else into agreeing to either relocating to a nebula or a barren planet, either way, no people. Does that about sum it up?” Confirmations came from everyone. “Wonderful. And if anyone comes up with any other options, please make sure we know ahead of time. Even a brief conversation is going to be ten hours, if the last one is anything to go by.”

“About that,” Eino ventured hesitantly. “The case study for your previous interview with Else indicates that you recited scientific papers to provide a lexicon. Is this true?”

“I wish it wasn’t, but yes, it’s true.”

His tone almost immediately perked up. “Since you know going in what you will be discussing, would it be more beneficial if we instead played a targeted lexicon for you to recite? It may minimize the time you spend reciting unnecessary or repetitive words.” When I didn’t immediately respond, he clarified. “I understand that your previous interaction involved many open-ended questions, and therefore you needed as many words as conceivably necessary for an intelligible response, but this time, the questions are close-ended, are they not?”

“The questions are at least more close-ended, yes,” I admitted, realizing what he was getting at.

“Council, I would like to offer my department to support this situation by preparing a targeted lexicon for the upcoming negotiations with Else. Should another person be found to enter into negotiations, we will also create a script for the questions themselves, which should provide enough language for Else to respond coherently with their answers.”

I shrugged and nodded at Xiomara. Even if I was going to be the person doing this, a targeted lexicon would be easier – and less time consuming – to recite than scientific papers.

She nodded firmly before replying, “That is a value add, definitely. Council vote?”

Unsurprisingly, the decision was unanimous. “Any idea how long it will take to get everything ready?” I asked, admittedly impatient. “We don’t know how long we have until Else reaches that threshold Grey mentioned.”

Eino hummed for a moment. “Tentatively? Five days. Conservatively, I would put it at a week.”

Pinching my nose before swiping an entire down my entire face, I made some quick estimates. “I don’t think Else has that long, I’ll be honest. Grey, do you have any idea how fast it is reducing itself? Or better yet, how long before it reaches a critical density?”

“As to the second inquiry, there has been no study to even begin estimations, but I will task a group of researchers with finding an answer. However, we do have hard data in regard to the first question: Since you last spoke with Else, seventeen percent of its population has died off. It has also ceased replication of itself. By current estimates, we have less than thirteen days before Else is entirely extinct.”

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#the miys #science fiction #humans are weird #aliens #original fiction #humans are space orcs #plague #apocalypse #sci fi

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vernonfielding · 5 years

Text

Life Writes Its Own Stories

Chapter 5! (And AO3, of course.)

Amy had entertained the idea of becoming a cop for a while in high school. She’d been in her sophomore year, when all of the Real Life conversations were just starting at school: The AP kids were obsessed with the PSAT and everyone had to go to mandatory career fairs and Amy had even started getting a few college brochures at home. Amy’s plans – though thoroughly detailed and organized – only went as far as getting into a really good college, and then figuring out the rest from there. But she’d spent a lot of time imagining herself in different jobs, and her fantasies had carouseled around becoming an internationally renowned cancer researcher, the next Sonia Sotomayor, or the youngest captain in NYPD history.

(She’d occasionally daydreamed about life as a journalist, maybe working overseas somewhere. But an actual career had seemed profoundly unrealistic. Until, one day, it wasn’t.)

She’d eventually ruled out the first two careers – scientist and judge – because science kind of bored her, if she was honest, and she didn’t have the gravitas or the social intelligence to be a leader like Sotomayor. So by default she’d leaned into the captain fantasy.

At the same time, she started to notice how many late nights and weekends her father worked, and how some nights he came home with such a deep weariness in his shoulders that her mom just hugged him and held on. She saw, too, how cops were treated. Sure, there were the folks in their neighborhood who greeted Victor Santiago by name, who were proud to have a cop in their community. But she also heard the slurs shouted from passing cars and the hissed insults when she walked with him down the street. She knew what her friends in school said about cops. Some of their hate and distrust was earned – not by her father, but by other cops – but it still upset her. Victor Santiago was a kind, decent man, in a difficult, often thankless job.

Now, sitting at her desk at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, she felt angry on his behalf as she pored over the papers she’d been studying all week. Her father – and Jake, and other good cops – worked so hard for the people in this city, and these dumbasses in corrections were just blithely stomping all over people’s rights.

The irony of it, Amy knew, was that when her story ran most readers wouldn’t know, or care, that these jerks weren’t representative of all cops – they weren’t even part of the NYPD. Which meant that the good guys would get dumped on all over again. And there wasn’t anything she could do about it, other than write the truth.

Sometimes, Amy thought, this job sucked too.

The newsroom was quiet at this hour, the crackle of her police scanner unnaturally loud. Amy tipped the sound down a bit and stretched, lifting her arms over her head and looking around. Charles was the only other person in the newsroom, typing furiously. She assumed he was working on his personal food blog because the city desk deadline had passed an hour ago. Holt’s door was closed, the office dark beyond the blinds he’d left up. Amy sighed and flipped to the next page. There was another code she didn’t recognize so she added it to her growing list of numbers to look up later.

Beside the stack of papers, her phone suddenly vibrated, and Amy instantly smiled to herself. The screen lit up with a text from Pineapples: “OMG I have a killer story for you, literally killer. Call ASAP.”

Amy laughed out loud before she could stop herself, and slapped a hand over her mouth. She replied: “Stop it! You know I can’t write anything right now.”

“Oops sorry. Hold on, texting the Times.”

“Don’t you dare,” Amy wrote.

Jake replied with a shrug emoji, followed by a devil emoji and then a series of farm animal emojis.

Amy glanced at the time on her phone, and then the stack of papers in front of her.

She wrote: “What are you doing right now? I need dinner.”

“It’s 10 p.m.”

“I know,” Amy wrote. “Been a long day.”

She realized, belatedly, that she was acknowledging that she was working at 10 on a Friday night, and also that she had no friends to ask to dinner.

“Never mind,” she quickly typed. “I’ll grab something on the way home.”

“Meet me at Mario’s on Dekalb.”

Amy turned off her computer and stuffed her papers and her notebook into her purse and was out in three minutes. She called a goodbye to Charles over her shoulder but if he replied, she didn’t catch it.

Jake was leaning against the brick wall outside the pizza place when Amy walked up, slightly out of breath. He stood up straight when he spotted her.

“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for meeting me. You probably have way better things to do on a Friday night than talk to an annoying reporter.”

He grinned. “Usually, yes. But Rosa and I spent all day on a missing dog case for one of the Vulture’s gross frat bro friends so I haven’t eaten since- actually I don’t remember when.”

Amy gaped at him and said, “Is the Vulture a person?”

“Oh yeah, he’s our captain. Pembroke,” Jake said. “He’s the worst.”

“And Rosa is-”

“My partner.”

“The one who thinks talking to me is a terrible idea,” Amy said.

“That’s her,” Jake said, still beaming. “Shall we?”

He led Amy inside the pizza spot and up to the counter, where he tried to convince her to get the all-meat pizza that somehow had five different kinds of sausage on it. Amy opted for veggie instead. They took their slices the couple blocks down to Fort Greene, where they climbed a play structure, cold and empty this late at night, and ate with their feet dangling over the side of the slide tower.

It was an unseasonably chilly night, and Amy zipped up her jacket. Jake, she noticed, was wearing a leather jacket over his hoodie now, and for some reason the contrast made her grin – like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be cool and sexy or cozy and sweet.

“What’s so funny?” Jake said, when she ducked her head to hide her smile.

“Nothing.” Amy took a huge bite of pizza, and Jake watched in what could have been alarm or awe as she chewed – and kept chewing – and finally swallowed. “This is really good pizza.”

“That was kind of disgusting,” Jake said, “but also impressive.”

“Thank you.” Amy made a show of dabbing her lips daintily with a napkin and Jake laughed. “Did you really have a tip for me tonight, or were you just messing around?”

“Totally messing with you.”

“Thank god,” Amy said. “This story is killing me.”

She droned on for a bit then, filling him in on the reporting so far. Holt had just that day given her another two weeks to work on the story, which Amy desperately needed and was grateful for, but it also added even more pressure. When she told Jake she was compiling a list of penal codes she still needed to look up, he offered to go over it for her to save her some time. Amy hesitated, because she didn’t technically need his help for that kind of work. Eventually she told him she could handle it, and he shrugged and focused back on his pizza. She got the sense he was disappointed.

“Everyone’s been really supportive at work, at least,” Amy said. “I was worried that they’d all be mad at me, since the other reporters have to pick up my slack while I’m busy with this stuff. But even Gina’s been leaving me alone, mostly.”

“Linetti?” Jake said.

“Yeah. You read her column?”

“Sometimes.” Jake popped the last bite of crust in his mouth and balled up the wax paper the slice had come on, tossing it toward a trashcan at the edge of the play area. “We grew up together.”

Amy grinned as the paper neatly landed in the trash. Then she frowned and said, “Wait, what? You know Gina? Gina Linetti?”

“Oh yeah,” Jake said. “All the way back to kindergarten. I actually sublet her apartment now.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Subletting isn’t that weird,” Jake said.

“Shut up, loser,” Amy said, when Jake grinned at her. “How is it possible that you are friends with Gina and I had no idea?”

Jake shrugged dramatically. “I guess you’re just not that good of a reporter?”

“Jerk,” Amy said, but she actually couldn’t help but feel a little bit like an idiot.

Gina was nosy as hell, and she’d known for a long time that Amy had a source in the NYPD who was based in Brooklyn. That she hadn’t let it slip that an old friend of hers was a detective at the Nine-Nine seemed like a deliberate omission. There was no way Gina would have been able to resist not lording that kind of connection over Amy.

She was also a little annoyed that Jake hadn’t said anything, though she wasn’t going to let him know it.

“Hey,” Jake said, contrite. “I was kidding, obviously.”

“Right, I know.” Amy tried to sound casual.

“Look, I would have said something but it didn’t even occur to me.” Jake leaned back against the play structure and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Gina and I never talk about work – or my work, anyway. To be honest, I’m not sure she even remembers that I’m a cop.”

“That’s crazy,” Amy said, scooting back so she was sitting beside him.

Jake shot her a cynical look. “When she got her first reporting job, I told her that from now on everything I said about work was off the record. And she said, and I’m basically quoting here: ‘Fine, but you can’t talk about work anymore because it’s boring and I’m not going to be bored if I can’t even write about it.’ So I stopped talking about work. Like, ten years ago.”

Amy tried to process that but finally just shook her head. “Yeah, still crazy.”

“Well, that’s Gina.”

Amy didn’t get the sense that he was bothered by Gina’s lack of interest in his professional life – which was awful, because the line between personal and professional was incredibly blurred for most cops, to the point where it basically didn’t exist. In other words, if Jake was like almost every other cop she knew, his badge was his identity. It was everything.

But she supposed that indifference-bordering-on-negligence was a known hazard of a friendship with Gina. And Amy didn’t want to feel sorry for Jake.

Still, Amy wasn’t Gina – and she wasn’t bored.

“So, a missing dog case?” Amy said. “Really?”

“Oh yeah, it was such a waste of time. The Vulture’s always trying to give me and Rosa worthless cases but this one might have been the dumbest. The dog looked like a rat, Amy!”

Amy laughed, and Jake laughed with her, and then he launched into the Case of the Rat-Dog – capitalization noted – which had a surprising number of twists and turns, including a foray into a gelato shop that was really a mob front, and ended with the dog having simply run away to live with a better family than the Vulture’s frat-bro friend. Amy was in tears by the end and actually whooped in celebration when the dog found his forever-home.

“I can’t believe you spent your entire day tracking down a happy dog,” Amy said, wiping tears from her eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on the play structure, huddled into her jacket.

“I guess they can’t all be super cool undercover assignments,” Jake said with a sigh.

“You’ve gone undercover?”

“Sure, all the time. Once I spent six months with the mafia. But that story will wait for another night,” he said, and stood up, hissing and shaking his right leg as he got to his feet.

“Leg fell asleep?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He pulled out his phone and his eyebrows shot up. “Which is what happens when you sit on a playground for two hours. Good lord.”

“We’ve been here that long?” Amy pulled out her own phone to check.

Jake nodded and held out a hand to her, and she took it and let him haul her to her feet. His hand was warm from his pocket and the touch sent a spark up her arm, making her shiver in a way she wasn’t sure was from the cold. He didn’t let go right away, and when Amy turned toward the stairs to climb down from the play structure, he tugged her in the opposite direction.

“You know we gots to slide,” he said, jerking his head that way.

“Jake, we’re too big-”

But Jake was pulling her in front of him, and he manhandled her onto the top of the slide and said, “Ladies first!” and gave her a shove. Amy screamed as she slipped down, surprised by how fast she was moving. She hit the lip at the bottom and toppled off, just barely managing to stay on her feet.

A second later Jake yelled, “Yippee ki yay, mother fucker!” He raced down, and when he hit the bottom he flew right off and slammed into Amy, knocking them both back into the sand.

Amy grunted as she landed hard on her back, surprised more than hurt. She felt Jake on top of her, and looked up to find his face inches from hers. She stared into his wide eyes, her heart pounding, and then he rolled off and scrambled to his knees at her side.

“Oh my god, are you okay? I had no idea that was going to happen, usually the kids’ slides aren’t that fast.” Jake’s hands hovered over her, like he thought he should be checking her for injuries but wasn’t sure if he should touch her. “Oh god, you’re hurt, aren’t you. Should I call someone? I should call 911. No, I can take you there myself. Can you walk? I can carry you to my car, I’m only a couple blocks from here-”

Amy bit the inside of her cheek. “Jake-”

“No, don’t talk-”

“I’m fine,” Amy managed before she broke down, laughing so hard she was practically wheezing.

Jake went quiet, and Amy sat up and tried to say something encouraging but just ended up collapsing into more laughter.

“I hate you,” Jake said, obviously fighting a smile. “Sincerely.”

“If you have a car,” Amy said, breathless, “could you give me a lift home? Or would you rather carry me?”

Jake smirked at her, then stood and brushed the sand off his legs before offering her a hand again.

+++

Late night dinners became a regular thing.

Jake got the feeling that Amy had reservations about how much time they were spending together, though she never said anything directly. She came armed every time with a question or request for him: a penal code she didn’t understand, his thoughts on something another source had told her, where she might track down some key piece of information she was missing. He helped when he could, but they inevitably ended up chatting about personal stuff after a few minutes.

He didn’t mind. They were both surprised to learn how similar their jobs could be, once they looked beyond who carried a gun and had the power to arrest people, and who actually knew how to use a semicolon and had the power, in theory, to take down the president of the United States.

They both regularly got phone calls from people who swore that airplane contrails were really secret government vaccination programs. They both had at least old person who sent them literal letters – like in envelopes, with stamps and everything – offering unsolicited advice on their jobs. Amy had an old woman who called her once a week to correct her grammar (“It’s not my fault! The copy desk is supposed to catch that stuff!”) and Jake had an old man who called every Tuesday to complain about the trash cans blocking his driveway after the garbage trucks came through (“I don’t know why he doesn’t call sanitation. Am I supposed to arrest the garbage man? Or woman?”). And, it turned out, both of them always answered those calls and listened and agreed that yes, their grandchildren should call more often.

“She just seems kind of lonely,” Amy said one night, as they shared a basket of deep-fried pickles at a bar all the way out in Bushwick. They tried to avoid the neighborhoods around the newsroom and the precinct and either of their homes, and though Amy didn’t always love the commutes, she had to admit it was kind of nice to shake up her routine.

“Yeah, Fred too,” Jake said. “Sometimes I wonder if he isn’t putting his own trash cans in the driveway just so he has an excuse to call me.”

They also shared somewhat pathetic dating lives. When Jake asked one night if she had a boyfriend, Amy shook her head and said she was determined to focus on her job for the moment. “I get it,” Jake said. “The NYPD doesn’t play very well in most relationships.”

They texted every day, and met up two or three times a week. Every now and then one of them would turn down the other’s invitation – they did have friends, or he at least assumed Amy did – but they usually made up for it in a day or two.

Only once did Jake hesitate with his reply, when Amy texted him late one Thursday afternoon. He’d had a rough day and he wasn’t sure if he could be his usual charming, and admittedly silly, self. After an hour, though, he texted back a thumbs up.

Amy had picked some weird sausage-based restaurant for this meeting, and Jake was relieved he didn’t have much of an appetite. He smiled when he saw her and gamely ordered a beer.

“You have to at least split a sausage platter with me,” Amy said. “My coworker swore this place is amazing but he has very questionable taste and I am not going into this alone.”

“Yeah, a friend of mine actually recommended this to me once but I couldn’t go through with it,” Jake said.

Amy ordered the platter and while they waited for the food she filled him in on the progress she’d made on the detention center story. Jake listened and nodded along, quietly drinking his beer. When he ordered a second pint, Amy looked him in the eye and said, “What’s up, Jake?”

He frowned and thought about saying nothing, nothing was up, but he didn’t really feel like lying. Instead he just shrugged, which felt passive-aggressive and pathetic but he wasn’t sure what else to do.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me anything,” Amy said, voice dropping as she leaned forward. “But you’ve obviously got something on your mind, and if you want to talk, you can.”

Jake was dismayed to feel the prickle of tears in his eyes, not from any particular grief or sadness but from the gentle tone of her voice, from the kindness she was showing him. He took a deep breath and turned away from her, willing himself not to cry. The waiter arrived then, setting a truly horrifying pile of sausage between them, and Jake couldn’t help but laugh. He blinked a few times, and his eyes were dry as he faced Amy again.

She answered his grin with a small smile of her own that didn’t reach her eyes. But as she picked up a fork and stabbed at one of the sausages – the look on her face could only be described as equal parts terrified, disgusted, and stubborn – Jake blew out a breath and decided to go for it.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said, opening his napkin and spreading it carefully over his lap just to have something to do with his hands. “One of my CIs died today.”

“That’s awful, Jake.” Amy dropped the fork, the sausage landing halfway on her plate and the table. “I’m so sorry.”

Jake shrugged, feeling a little like an asshole for coming across so callous, but he really didn’t do well with emotions. “He hadn’t been an informant for all that long, like three months maybe.”

“Still, you get to know them and rely on them,” Amy said. “They’re like your sources. Oh my god, I’d be devastated if something happened to you.”

Jake looked up at her and stared, feeling a little gut-punched.

“It’s not like that,” Jake said, softy.

“Not like what?”

Jake held her gaze, trying to ignore the tension that seemed suddenly strung between them, like a physical thing. He could feel his breathing coming too fast, could feel the slow flip of his stomach.

“Not like us,” he said.

He quickly looked down at his plate, coughed and cleared his throat.

“I mean, informants have a pretty short life expectancy as it is,” he said, trying to shift the subject. “They’re usually criminals, more often than not they’re talking to the cops just to keep themselves out of trouble or get a competitor off the street.”

“Right, of course,” Amy said. He glanced back up to see she was focused on her sausage again, cutting it up into bite-sized pieces but not actually eating. “Still, I’m sorry. Do you know what happened to him?”

“You mean, did he get nailed for snitching?” Jake said. Amy snapped her head up in alarm, already protesting, but Jake held up a hand and smiled faintly. “It’s okay, it’s the first question we ask. In this case, no, I don’t think so. He was found dead of an overdose.”

“Oh, that’s- good?” Amy said, flustered.

“Better than being shot, but that’s also an occupational hazard,” Jake said. He realized he felt hungry, for the first time since learning about his CI that morning, so he stabbed a sausage too. “One interesting thing, it looks like he OD’d on that new drug, Jazzy Pants.”

“Whoa, wait, new drug?” Amy said. “What’s this?” She was already digging into her purse, presumably for her notebook and pen.

Jake laughed and waved her off. “I swear, I don’t know anything else about it. The Vulture won’t let us investigate it because the Seven-Eight has a task force.”

“The 78th,” Amy muttered to herself as she wrote it down.

“Um, one more thing,” Jake said. Amy put away her notebook and looked back at him expectantly. “You won’t write about any of this, right? Like the CI, or, whatever?”

“Of course not.” Amy looked truly surprised. “Jake, this was personal. I would never do that to you.”

Jake let out his breath and nodded once. “I know. I know you wouldn’t. I just-”

“I get it,” Amy said. “Reporters have a certain reputation. But we’re not all vultures.”

Jake actually laughed at that. “Trust me, I know you aren’t a vulture.”

Amy rolled her eyes at him, but she also gave him a fond smile. They were both quiet for a while, a comfortable silence falling between them as they finally got to work on the sausages.

Jake realized after a few minutes that – despite the sausage already heavy in his stomach and the emotionally charged conversation they’d just endured – there was a lightness in his chest and his head that he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t quite happiness or relief, but something close to peace. He looked across the sausage mountain at Amy, and he smiled.

CHAPTER 6

#b99 fic #jake and amy au #peraltiago #newspaper au #life writes its own stories

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rewrite-the-wrongs · 5 years

Text

introductions / howdy, pardner

My first short story was about a fishboy and his human best friend. They battled a mutant piranha (whose name I think may have been Mutant Piranha, such was the monumental daring of my creative endeavor) and his army, who were out to destroy a mountain that held a whole planet together. The boys won singlehandedly, because scale was apparently a bit of a mystery to me.

This was the second grade. My teacher--who held me every day as I cried for weeks, confused and miserable and stranded in the throes of my parents’ divorce--understood before I did that I create to a ploddingly slow and steady drumbeat. A sentence is always so much more in my head than I’m able to let out, at first; I have to pore over it again and again, fleshing and flourishing (and often correcting) it, the same way I often have to reread paragraphs or pages or whole books to truly capture their meaning. In a word processor, this back-and-forth is as easily said as it is done; on double-wide ruled paper with dashed-line handwriting guides, the task is magnitudes more time-consuming, especially for somebody as messy as I am. So, while nearly everybody else played at recess on the sandlot and the jungle gym around us, a select few stragglers laid our reading folders on our laps and finished our stories.

My villain, that dastardly Mutant Piranha, found himself in prison at the story’s close. Awaiting trial, I guess; I never ventured that far ahead, seeing the big fishy bastard for a coward. “When no one was looking, he stabbed himself.” That’s the last line, stuck in my memory, not for its own sake, but for my poor teacher’s horrified face as she read my final draft there on the playground.

A mom volunteered to type up the class’ stories and get them printed and bound. For years afterward I reread that collection, always proud to have written the second-longest piece therein. I felt the weight of the pages, inhaled the tiny but acrid breeze that came from rapidly leafing through them. Knew it was a whole smattering of worlds inside, that one of those worlds was wholly mine, and I had the power to show it to people however I wished. Yes, I thought, I want this.

I’ve been introduced to writing many times over, by many people. Don’t get me wrong--I nightowled the first several chapters to many half-baked novel concepts all through my youth. But teachers have a way of showing a thing to you from new angles.

The first person to impact me as such was a high school teacher who was essentially given carte-blanche to construct a creative writing workshop in the English curriculum. The first semester was structured--you practiced poems, short fiction, humor and essay writing, drama, the gamut. Every semester after, the carte-blanche was passed on: A single assignment due a week, each a single draft of a poem or a minimum of two pages’ worth of prose. Forty-five minutes a day to work, and of course free time at home. By the time I graduated, I’d finagled my schedule such that I was spending two periods a day in the computer lab, and several hours after school every day working the literary arts magazine before I went home to get the rest of my homework out of the way and write some more..

My next big influence came in the form of a pair of writers who taught fiction at my university, a married couple. One had me print stories and literally, physically cut them up section-by-section as a method of reworking chronologies. Told me stories happened like engines or clocks or programs--pieces that meshed differently depending on how they were put together, rules that held each other in place. The other showed boundless confidence in me, listened happily to some older students who recommended I be brought on board for a national arts mag. They both encouraged me toward grad school, but toward the end of my junior year I began to stumble, and by senior year I was, to be frank, a drunken asshole. Time I could be bothered to set aside for writing began to dwindle. I limped through the editorship with the help of my extremely talented, utterly more-than-worthy successor--and come to think of it, I’ve never truly thanked her. Maybe I’ll send her that message, now that I’m feeling more myself.

On feeling more myself:

That drunken rage was brought on by a myriad list of factors, the primary ones being 1) I am the child of recovering alcoholics, and our inherited family trauma runs deep, 2) An assault that will likely be mentioned no further from hereon in, as I have reached a solid level of catharsis about it, 3) Some toxic-ass relationship issues, and 4) I was a massive egg and had no idea (or, really, I had some idea, just not the language or understanding or even the proper empathy to eloquently and effectively explore it).

I had a recent relapse with drinking, technically--a mimosa at Christmas breakfast at my partner’s parents’ home--but I’m not honestly sure I can call it a legitimate relapse. I’m not in any official self-help group, I’ve never engaged in the twelve steps or a professional rehabilitation. I had a very wonderful therapist for a few years but reached a point at which I could not pay her any longer and we parted ways--I miss her dearly, as she truly became my friend and confidante; she was the first person I came out to, and very well-equipped to handle it, lucky for me--but I’m still on behavioral medication. That tiny smidgen of alcohol pushed my antidepressants right out of my brain, and I became terribly anxious and angry and sad all at once, and briefly lashed out during a conversation with my partner behind closed doors. Not nearly the lashing out I’ve released in the now-distant past--more on that maybe-never, but who knows, as I am obviously a chronic over-sharer.

Frankly, I don’t deserve my partner. She endured my past abuses, told me to my face I had to be better, and found it in herself to wait for me to grow. She’s endlessly and tirelessly supportive of me. She sat with me to help me maintain the nerve to start this blog tonight. I came out to her as a trans woman just under a year ago, now, and I’m happier than ever, and we communicate better than ever. Our relationship is, bar-none, the healthiest and stablest and happiest I’ve ever been in.

So, naturally, I apologized fairly quickly at Christmas, and continuing where I’d left off at two and a half years, decided I’m still solid without booze.

If we’re all being honest, though (and I’m doing my best to be one hundred percent honest, here, though I will absolutely be censoring names because no shit), I still smoke way too much fuckin’ weed. High as balls, right now. 420 blaze it, all day erryday, bruh. That self-medicated ADHD life. I should be on Adderall and not antidepressants, probably, but it’s been a while since an appointment and psychiatrists are expensive, so I’m at where I’m at for now. Sativas help a lot. It helps with the dysphoria, too.

I don’t have a legal diagnosis for gender dysphoria, but tell that to my extreme urge to both be in and have a vagina. I’m making little changes--my hair, an outfit at a time, no longer policing how I walk or run or how much emphasis I put on S sounds. If I manage to come out to my parents sometime soon--and it feels like that moment is closer every day--maybe I’ll tell y’all my real, full chosen name. For right now, call me Easy.

Anyhow. My goals here are pretty simple:

1) Share words, both those by people I like/admire/sometimes know! and occasionally words I’ve made that I like. See the above screenshot from my notes app. Steal some words if you want, but if you manage to make money off some of mine, holler at ya gurl’s Venmo, yeah?

2) Discuss words, how they work, and how we create them, use them, engage with them, and ultimately make art of them. I am not a professional linguist, but I went to undergrad for creative writing, so, hey, I’ll have opinions and do my best to back them up with ideas from people smarter than I am.

3) Books! Read them, revisit them, quote them, talk about them, sometimes maybe even review them, if I’m feeling particularly bold. No writer can exist in a vacuum, and any writer who insists they don’t like to read is either a) dyslexic and prefers audiobooks or b) in serious need of switching to a communications major (no shade, but also definitely a little shade @corporate journalism).

5) I added this last, but I feel it’s less important than 4 and does not deserve bookend status, and I am verbose but incredibly lazy, so here I am, fucking with the system. Anyway: Art! Music! Video games! I fucking love them. I’ll talk about them, sometimes, too. Maybe I’ll finally do some of the ekphrastic work I’ve felt rattling around in my brain for a while now. Jade Cocoon 2′s Water Wormhole Forest, looking right the fuck at you.

6) Ah, shit, I did it again. Oh well. Last-but-not-last: This is obviously, in some ways, a diary, or a massive personal essay. I will sometimes discuss people, places, or experiences that have informed my work just the same as other people’s art has.

4) Be an unabashed and open Trans woman. TERFs, transphobes, ill-informed biological essentialists not permitted. Come at me and my girldick and prepare to be dunked on and subsequently shown the door via a swift and painful steel-toed kick in the ass. Everybody who doesn’t suck, if I screw up on any matter of socio-ethics or respect for diversity, please feel free to correct me.

Punk’s dead, but we’re a generation of motherfucking necromancers. Be gay, do crime, fight the patriarchy, and fart when you gotta. May the Great Old Ones select you to ascend to a higher plane and learn the terrible truths of existence.

Much love--

Easy

#writers #writing #creative writing #trans #trans woman #fuck TERFs #writing about writing #writer #my writing #diary

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deliverydefresas · 7 years

Text

we know the start, we know the end, masters of the scene

here you have it my friends, part 3. shout out to my baked goods for helping me in this long and boring process xD

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AU: Matteo Balsano is a famous singer who has been crushing on this one girl he saw every day behind a window many years ago, back when he first started recording his debut album and inspired his first big hit, “Princesa”. Luna Valente, professional Olympic skater turned actress is at a local (and very popular) talk show to promote her breakout movie. This is where it all starts.

BENSON VS SMITH: LOVE RIVALS?

After a couple of weeks of the stars of SHATTERED WINGS being photographed together with Matteo Balsano in what appeared to be a heated discussion, sources to the off and on couple conformed by Smith and Balsano, confirm it was all caused by Smith’s jealousy.

The actress was apparently ‘incredibly upset’ when she learnt what had really happened in JA JAZMIN’s dressing room minutes prior to their cast interview in the show, more so after in said interview Mexico’s ‘Little Sun’ hinted the incident to its international audience.

However, as their promotional tour around the globe for their very acclaimed movie continues, the duo has done nothing but deny all rumors regarding their rivalry; with Smith going as far as calling Balsano ‘an idiot I wouldn’t fight over for’. Benson affirms it’s a matter taken out of context by the fans and media.

The SHATTERED WINGS stars are set to return to the city after two months on the road two days from now, bringing home numerous ticket records from all around the world, as well as the critic’s overruling acceptance.

For more scoop on these three, click here!

Had it really been two months?

They hadn’t even able to finish their conversation, much less his apology from coming off as a creep. Now it’d been two months, and probably wouldn’t have the chance to see her again. Ámbar had warned him she’d kick his balls if he even dared to ask about her when she came back, and his relationship with Simón was anything but close to ask such manner.

Basically, he’d be stuck in her mind as a creepy memory. He didn’t like it, but he might as well accept it until he found a way to clear the water; not only for her sake, but for his too.

“You keep track of the media, now? We have a PR team for that, y’know?” his manager asked from over his shoulder, not missing the open article on his phone.

“I’m not. It was just a suggested article, that’s all.”

“Suggested means you’ve read articles like that one more than once.” Delfi arched her brow, questioning him while she sat on the chair next to his. Maybe citing her in his apartment wasn’t a good idea, he had no way to evade her questions in his own home.

“Maybe Gastón has.”

“From your phone?” He didn’t have an answer for that. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not judging you. There’s nothing wrong with keeping personal tabs about what the world has to say about you. Just don’t get too fixated on with it, it’s not healthy.”

“It’s not even an article about myself.” He admitted. There were no secrets between them, and he’d learnt that the cleanest they were between each other, the less problematic it’d get when it came to talk about and planning his career moves. Plus, Delfina knew how to keep everything confidential, which was the reason he’d chosen to take Ámbar’s advice so many years ago when she suggested Delfi to work with.

“Let me guess, this is about the Sol girl?”

“Luna.” He corrected quickly, not even realizing he’d done it until Delfi gave him ‘the look’. She didn’t comment on it, though.

“Luna, right. What worries you in that matter? You were the one who told me not to release any statement.”

“I guess I just – I don’t know, she’s new to this world.”

“Are you worried she can’t handle it? I wouldn’t, I know her team, she’s in good hands. And from what Pedro has told me, Simón warned her about everything that’d come her way, so she wouldn’t walk in blind.”

He’d forgotten she was seeing Simón’s best friend. “Still, I haven’t apologized yet.”

“Is this the reason of your writing block?” she asked suspiciously, folding her arms. Her tone wasn’t accusative, nor was her face annoyed, but he still felt bad it was that noticeable.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’re not subtle, buddy, but don’t worry because no one else has noticed.” Yet. “You got time, the deadline isn’t for another year, there’s no pressure from the label.”

“But?” he knew better than to think there wasn’t one.

“But you know post-production is long AF, and your perfectionist ass will drag it as much as your brain can… if you don’t hurry with the base songs it’ll only make it longer.”

He groaned lowly, “I know.”

“I’m going now. I’ll call you tomorrow to schedule another time, okay?” She told him as she stood from her seat to grab her purse. Their meeting had gone nowhere, but then again, he had no progress in his songwriting and he was on a break until his next album released, so there wasn’t much to discuss to begin with. “I’d advise you to go and try to find yourself a muse, though.”

“Yeah, I’ll-” Wait. A muse. He needed to find his muse. Matteo called for her before she could get out of the apartment, startling the even more confused girl.

“I need you to help me find her.”

“Are you excited to be back?”

“Aren’t you excited to be back? This is huge for you Nina!” she told her friend excitedly, holding onto her arm while they walked through the airport to wait for Simón, who was picking them up. “A new book! That’s not an everyday thing!”

“It’s just a photography book, Luna. Not a big deal.”

“Just? What have I told you of selling yourself short? The book and the quotes are beautiful and it’s definitely a big deal!”

Nina beamed at her, “thank you. I’m nervous, what if people don’t like it as much as the others? I would die if it flops, or if they question why I’m even still coming out with these.”

“Nonsense! Felicity’s fans are loyal, and they’ll love your work no matter what, have more faith in them!” she bumped her shoulder against her lightly.

“You never answered me.”

“About what?”

It was Nina’s turn to bump her shoulder. “I asked you if you were excited.”

“I’m so happy I’ll finally be in my bed again. I hate sleeping in unfamiliar places.”

“You got to sleep on your house in México, though.”

“I almost didn’t leave.” She admitted with a giggle.

Both fell into a comfortable silence afterwards, in no hurry to keep the conversation flowing. Travelling together, living together, and knowing each other after so many years made it easy to stay in silence without it being awkward. Simón joked all the time that they were a married couple, and the only thing they needed now was a dog (mostly because he wanted one, too), and Luna could swear they’d have one already if it weren’t for Nina being strongly allergic to pets.

That, and that their time was mostly spent travelling between competitions and cool places for Nina to take photographs for her blog or her books.

She sighed silently when she remembered the competitions. Now that her ties with the movie were almost over, she needed to get her thoughts straight and decide what she was going to do next. Will she be able to compete again after the break? Did she even want to? Everyone had warned her already that everything in the skating community would change for her after this. More exposure usually meant double the pressure; and she wasn’t sure it’d sit well with her. She skated because she loved to, not because she wanted to be the best, or have everyone thinking she was. Juliana had told her that was why she fought so hard for her to play her in her movie, why she reminded her of herself.

But, did she want to change her career? She loved the experience of acting, loved how fun it was to pretend to be someone else for a while every day, but she didn’t love it the way she’d seen Ámbar do it. For the blonde, you could see, hear, feel how much she loved what she did. The girl poured everything into what she did, and she succeed marvelously. The thing all critics agreed on from all over the continents was exactly that: Luna glowed the most when she was skating, and when she spoke about how much the sport meant for her; yet, Ámbar shone in all of hers because she made you believe them, which made up for her lack of experience in the sport.

So, now she had to pick what exactly to do. If she wanted to go to the next Olympics she’d have to start her training as soon as possible, even if she was on a technical ‘break’.

“What are you thinking so hard about?”

“Huh?”

Nina smiled, “you seemed to be lost – even more than usual- in your thoughts. What’s up?”

“Nothing, just… the future, I guess.” She sighed again. Luckily, her friend knew her better than anyone and gave her a short, but strong, hug.

“You still have some time to think about it, don’t go crazy.”

“Time flies, though.”

“Aren’t you the first to say time isn’t real?” Nina joked, mocking her accent a little.

“I don’t speak like that!”

Both laughed, ignoring the annoyed looks some – probably jetlagged- people threw their way.

“But, for real, Luna, you don’t even have to choose between the two. You can always pick something else; some people will be disappointed, yes, but it’s your choice. Do what makes you happy.”

“What would I do without you, Watson?” she half joked, half seriously questioned. Nina beamed at her once more.

“The same thing I’d be without you – be my less great self.”

“True that.” Luna pretended to cheer with her imaginary cup, her friend being quick to follow her suit. “Now, call Simon. He’s late and Felicity can’t be late for her own book release.”

“Aye, aye, capt’n!”

He wasn’t going to lie, he was nervous. (He also could almost hear Gastón’s voice in his head correcting him to nervous-wreck – he kinda agreed).

Delfi, bless her, hadn’t even bait an eye when he asked her to ask Pedro about Luna’s possible whereabouts in the city. He felt like a total stalker, so he ruled out her house and the rink she skated at, as well as the gym and Simón’s apartment. Thankfully, Delfi was able to get him last-minute invitations to an event she was going to be at.

Originally, he’d thought about going solo, so the possible – or most likely, probable- embarrassments would be for him only to know. However, as soon as Gastón heard the event was Felicity For Now’s newest book launch he’d made him ask Delfi for a plus one pass (God forbid his friend asked his ex for a favor). And, since Pedro was apparently a close friend to Felicity herself, she tagged along too. She was a lot more considerate than Gastón, though, because she promised not to cross him while his ‘apology’ took place.

“I can’t believe we’re going to see Felicity’s real identity.” Gastón gushed beside him, now at the party, careful to keep his tone low. Not because he didn’t want to embarrass him, but himself.

“Calm down, fanboy. We still have the whole party to look forward to.”

Matteo, on his own, was more worried about making himself look like a fool. He knew he’d already stood out – his black suit was a lot more formal than everyone else’s semi-formal attire- but if that wasn’t enough, the way he kept glancing around like a lost puppy made more than person stare at him for a moment.

He was too concentrated on finding her on the crowd.

Not that the crowd was too big – it was rather small, actually- but still, he didn’t want to miss her; if she was there at all.

“Do you know how long I’ve wondered who she was or how she looked like? Years! I’ll finally put a face to the character!”

“Character? I thought her book was consisted only of pictures.”

“Well, yeah. They’re pictures but they’re ordered in a sequence that tells you about her life and short quotes to help you understand the concept. It’s like a photographic journal of herself.”

“Yet she never shows her face?”

“Nope, it’s always shadowed or blurred out.” Gastón sounded bummed out by this. He must’ve really been wondering about this mystery girl longer that he knew about. Matteo felt almost bad he wasn’t aware of this, even if his best friend never really told him about his fanboy life.

He palmed his back lightly, “cheer up, bud. Tonight’s your night.”

“Matteo, Gastón!” he knew that voice. When he turned to the direction of the call, he wasn’t surprised to see Simón. Matteo should’ve figured out that if not only Luna, but Pedro were here, then he would too.

“Hi, man.”

The guitarist threw him a smile. “What a surprise! I’ve never seen you two in events like these before.”

“Yeah, well, Gastón here is a big fan of hers.” He pointed to his friend, “and I was free from songwriting, so I came too.”

“How’s that coming along? Wrote another hit yet?”

Matteo grimaced slightly, “I’m blocked, so no. How’s your album?”

“Ouch, man, that sucks.” Simón patted his shoulder sympathetically, “we’re still editing ours out, gotta choose the right songs before we pass the final demo.”

That brought back memories. Hadn’t they been in the same exact situation six years ago, the same day he saw her for the first time? He, staring on a blank music sheet, desperately trying to find inspiration for his debut album, while Simón – and her- were on the room across listening and trying to choose which tracks to pass?

He mentally sighed. Everyone was right, he was a creep.

Simón must’ve not noticed his momentary train to his memories, because he continued talking, “- she’s not here yet, if she’s the one you’ve been looking for the past hour. Felicity is arriving with her.”

“Who?”

The guitarist was amused. “Luna. She’s arriving with Felicity in ten minutes.” His heart almost busted with this information. However, when he realized what Simón was probably thinking, he went into denying mode.

“Oh- no, no, no. I wasn’t- I didn’t- she’s not why-” Simón laughed.

“Don’t worry, man, Delfi explained to us you came to apologize to her for the headlines. It’s chill.”

He was so firing her for this (no, he wasn’t). “She did?”

“Getting last-minute invitations for this is hard, if not impossible. Especially since Ni- Felicity handpicks her guests for privacy reasons.”

“I didn’t know Delfi was that close with her.”

“She’s not, Pedro is. I gave my five cents in your favor, too.”

“Thank you.” He meant it. Simón just patted his shoulder once more and reminded him of the time, pointing to the entrance before leaving to mingle with other guests. A question popped in his head, “are they always late?”

Gastón, who’d remained quiet during his exchange with Simón, chuckled, “you really went to la la lunaland, didn’t you?” Matteo flipped him off, “Simón said he was late to pick them up at the airport, so they went behind schedule because of this.”

His friend went quiet after this, anxiously waiting for the main door to open. Matteo sipped on his forgotten drink, trying to calm his own nerves. Five minutes later, it happened.

The door opened, and in came Luna and her friend – Felicity, as his friend had mumbled beside him, smiling and hugging everyone that came to greet them. He noticed how Luna would fall a couple steps back from the photographer, letting her take all the attention.

He wanted to go there and say hi, he really did, but it was as if he was glued to his spot. Watching her laugh, smile, and talk to others from afar was the sight he was used to, and to get closer, on his own (Gastón had fled to Felicity as soon as she’d entered) was something he wasn’t sure he was ready for.

Just jail him already, really. His creepiness was scaring him too.

In the end, he waited until the whole book introduction was made, the food was eaten, drinks were drunk, to go ask her for a minute (or twenty). When she saw him, he could see she was taken aback; no one had told her he’d be there, however, she still smiled at him.

“Hi.” Gosh, was he lame.

“Hi!” she managed to sound somewhat excited to see him. Surprising, really.

“Do you think I could steal you for a couple minutes? I still haven’t apologized.” He got closer, being careful not to step into her personal bubble, and offered her his hand.

She didn’t even hesitate to take it, leading him to a quiet place to talk. They ended up in the terrace, sitting down on a bench near a lit – and warm- candle arrangement.

He wasn’t sure how to begin his apology. Should he just say sorry? Should he explain why he knew her? Why he knew she liked to be called Luna instead of Sol? Should he pretend he was star-struck that day?

“I’m sorry.”

That wasn’t his voice speaking for him.

“What?”

Luna sighed quietly, posing her bright green eyes on his own, “I know it’s my fault our names – and Ámbar’s- have been on the headlines lately. I’m sorry I put you in this situation, it must be very annoying, since you’re on your break from it.”

He shook his head, “no, no, no, no. It’s my fault. I was the one who dragged Ámbar with me and the only one who should be apologizing for my actions the night we met.” He didn’t add that his creepiness was an on-going thing, “you have nothing to apologize for. It’s all on me.”

Her face scrunched up. It was cute. “I was the one who answered wrongly with Jazmín. Had I not, the media would have no idea, or perhaps would write a different story.”

“That’s on Jazmín, not on you, Luna. She lives for making other people gossip about their lives.”

“Still, I feel bad and I apologize for it.”

Matteo sighed, “I told you, you have no reason to do so. I, on the other hand, am sorry I came off like I did. I just, well, you remind me of someone I met many years ago.”

She smiled, “do I?”

“Yeah. She was just as tiny and pocket-sized.”

“Okay, now you’re pulling my leg.” Luna laughed, her bright eyes shinning even more as the laughter reached them.

“Jokes aside, I’m sorry I made you feel uncomfortable.” Her smile remained.

“Apology accepted; but only if you accept mine.”

“Oh, but I can’t do that. Such a beautiful miss like yourself shouldn’t be apologizing for nothing.” He could see her compliment affected her in the light pink shade that now covered her cheeks, “besides, you seem to be forgetting I’ve been on the headlines longer than you. This is nothing, really.”

“But you’re on a break.”

He sighed, “yes, but like it or not it’s still publicity. It helps me stick around for a little longer.”

“So, you don’t mind being in the headlines even if they’re lies?”

“They have an image of me already; it’s not a lie, and it’s not a truth, but it’s still a part of who I am.” He had confused her now, he knew it. The small frown was proof of it. “If you choose to stick in this job you’ll understand.”

“I’m not sure I will.”

He guessed so. “Going for another gold, then?”

“Not sure of that, either.” That surprised him. Partly because he was sure she’d stick to skating, and partly because he couldn’t believe she was being this open. There was a reason he spoke in riddles sometimes, just like Ámbar, Simón, or literally any ‘famous’ person he knew. Privacy, and sometimes inner thoughts had to remain for close and trusty people only.

She’d just admitted something he knew she’d been avoiding in every interview he’d watched of her, and she’d done it freely. Was she this open always? Or did he give her the vibe that he could be trusted? Maybe she didn’t think it was as big of a deal as he did?

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I still have time, though. Not a lot, but there’s some.”

“There’s no bad in what makes you happy. I’d go for that.”

“Is that why you chose music? Because it makes you happy?” she questioned him, sincerely curious. He nodded.

“It’s the only constant thing that has made me happy since I was a kid. I fought hard for it, and I’m lucky it’s worked out this well.”

“Hmmm.”

“I’m glad I bore you.” He joked, when she seemed to be lost in her contemplating after a moment in silence. She laughed, shaking her head and making a couple ringlets fall around her neck.

“You don’t. You’re actually a quite good companion, I’d like to keep you as a friend.” She shot him a quick smile, “creepiness aside, you’re pretty cool.”

His heart did a flip. “Friends, huh?”

Luna offered her hand, beaming. “Friends.”

#lutteo #soy luna #matteo balsano #luna valente #my sl ff #mine #my lutteo ff #not proofread as usual lmao

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boatspeak · 4 years

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Some of my favourite dramas from the past half a year, ranked:

1. Because This is my First Life

k-drama, 16 episodes, each 1 hour long

So sensitively and personally written. I was sucked into the storytelling and felt as though I was seeing these scenes through the eyes of the characters. Bravo to the scriptwriter; as I was watching it I felt, ah, she must have drawn from some intensely personal and important place. It was not a story anyone could have written. Because This is My First Life follows the stories of three BFFs as they experience, and grapple with, love and marriage. It does not shy away from the complicated sides of these issues - the societal, monetary and financial pressures that love and marriage cannot be separated from, the difficulties of communicating with others honestly yet sensitively. There are some frustratingly incorrigible people in the drama (like sexually harassing superiors), but most of the time the conflicts play out between good people who care for and support each other, yet inevitably butt heads because they have different - and equally valid - views of life. Is it wrong to want to marry and start a family? Is it wrong not to? It was painful at times, I think I cried for some of the characters. Not because they were pitiable, but because sometimes in life there is no right or wrong; you have to make tough choices and it hurts but you have to keep your eyes open and keep watching; keep walking. For the literature lovers out there, especially those who might be sick of gratuitous (often cheesy) quotes inserted randomly into dramas, well, good for you! Characters in Because This is My First Life read and are impacted by (real life) books, and you can see how the books they’ve read influence the way they think, act, and communicate with each other. It’s very realistic and mirrors the way you might consume and digest books in your own life outside of the drama. Oh, the PPL is also wonderfully done and actually contributes to character building. 8-9/10.

2. Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu (I’ll be serious in my next life)

j-drama, 12 episodes, each 1/2 an hour long

One woman, five sex friends. I know. I know it sounds messy and melodramatic and angsty. I hesitated for the same reasons as well. But when I finally got over it and watched the damn thing (very bingeable, totalling at only 6 hours), I regretted not watching it sooner. Raise wa Chanto Shimasu is a breath of fresh air. Most of the characters, whether hypersexual or asexual, are pretty unabashed about it, and I love their self-love. Want to have sex? Go for it, gurl. Don’t want to have sex? Also no problem. The title is an apt one and showcases this message of acceptance. We might have bones to pick with our current lifestyles, but welp, we’ll just be serious in our next lives. As one of the characters said at the end, “we all became independent, working adults, I think we should be proud of ourselves”. Much needed affirmation in a world of moralising, slut-shaming, virgin-mocking, and expectations to get married and settle down.

Warning: one of the characters in a bi/gay relationship is pretty vocal in denying his sexuality even in front of his partner, and a trans woman was harrassed at one point. These were discomfiting for me.

3. The Fiery Priest

k-drama, 40 episodes, each 1/2 an hour long (or 20 hour-long episodes)

Action. Comedy. Kim Nam Gil, who won the Baeksang for this role. Honey Lee. Badass babe. Ahn Chang Hwan, who was so realistic at playing a Thai immigrant my friend who studied Korean for three years didn’t even realise he was Korean. Father Han. One reviewer said he was a literal angel, and I concur. Most dramas leave you with at most three or four characters you really like; this drama makes you fall in love with the whole gang. Everyone has a backstory, or some hidden side that you didn’t expect that just adds so much more dimension when revealed. Where some might find it hard to balance the weight of action and the levity of comedy, dipping too deeply into angst or farce at times, The Fiery Priest manages the tone really well even as the plot deepens and our characters have to deal with deep-seated traumas. I have nothing more to say to promote this drama except, how could you pass on Kim Nam Gil doing action plus comedy MINUS tragedy and the moustache?

A final note: Technically, The Fiery Priest is a stronger drama than Raise and should deserve the no. 2 spot. The former deals with bigger issues like corruption, morality and forgiveness, while the latter is more light-hearted and deals almost entirely with personal choices. However, some issues Raise touched on were really important to me and came at a time when I really needed affirmation to believe in my beliefs, so it edged out The Fiery Priest in my heart.

4. 传闻中的陈芊芊 (The Romance of Tiger and Rose)

c-drama, 22 episodes, each about 45 minutes long

甜。This drama is just Sweet with a capital S. What a refreshing watch, especially for women. I loved not having tugging battles between two men. I loved the respect given to consent. I loved having so many smart and capable women who have conversations with each other that do not revolve around men. I love how the male lead wasn’t hung up on Male Ego and gave his wife space to be herself and make her own decisions and mistakes. A rare gem. I’m sure I will revisit this when I’m tired of the usual ドキドキ tactics involving possession and pulling around

(If you can read Chinese, I suggest watching it on the 腾讯视频 app with 弹幕 on. I found it pretty hilarious, meaning I laugh-cried so hard in the middle of the night my neighbour knocked on my door to ask if I was ok.)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A quick rundown of the dramas and films I’ve watched so far in 2020 so you know the pool I picked these four from:

Penguin Highway

good watch. super cute. I cannot over-emphasise how cute the penguins were. It got me into a penguin phase and I’m not out of it even after 7 months...

ぼくは明日、昨日のきみとデートする (My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday)

good watch. bittersweet.

わたしに××しなさい！(Watashi ni XX Shinasai/Missions of Love) movie and drama special

would pass on the movie (which cherry-picked from the manga but unfortunately left out a lot of important character developing scenes so the relationship didn’t make as much sense as it did in the manga)

but the drama special. Whew. I watched the drama special twice. It’s trashy good. Because it’s basically a spin-off to build hype for the movie, it doesn’t have to follow the plot of the manga, instead taking on the format of a (very cheesy) otome game. So you have all these ikemen saying clichéd toe-curling lines like “I am also a man you know” and getting stuck half-naked bReAthInG HeAviLy in cabinets together but instead of playing it seriously (as the movie would do because it’s supposed to make you feel like they are falling in love), the main character goes huh??? wtf are you saying?? at her otome game screen, which is so realistic and just cracks me up. definitely would rec.

ごめんね青春！(Gomen ne Seishun/ Saving my Stupid Youth)

hmmm. so-so? Leading lady Hikari Mitsushima is pretty, cool, and fits the bill of gap moe. Ryo Nishikido is also pretty believable (once you suspend your disbelief that somehow all his students think he looks dorky and are not gushing over his ikemen-ness). Unfortunately, relationship development between the otp happened too late and too suddenly.

Он – драко́н (On Drakon/ He’s a Dragon/ I Am Dragon)

a pleasure to (re-)watch as always. Lovely visuals.

Tokyo Ghoul: S

decent! Great performance from Shota Matsuda as the Gourmet. He’s definitely a draw-point for this movie - you can see him being featured heavily in the trailers.

Strong Girl Do Bong Soon

great drama, would rec! 7-8/10. Points docked for all the digressing they did with monks and gangsters. I loved the otp’s dynamic, how healthy their relationship was. One line that struck me was, “Do you know how you’ve found the right person? When you see yourself in their eyes, you look happy”. It was a reminder that while these are obviously fictional characters, we can and should form relationships where our partners are as supportive of us (and us of them) as our dear otp, and not to settle for less. Also loved the fact that smol Bong Soon is so strong and no one can manhandle her >:-) 10/10 also to rookie actor Jang Mi Kwan, who was absolutely terrifying as the villain. How is he only a rookie??

Because This is my First Life

see above

The Fiery Priest

see above

선덕여왕 (Great Queen Seon Deok)

hehe I watched it (again). As great as ever. Somehow cried more than I did the previous two times I watched it? Took me a week to get over one of the characters (even though I already went through all that heartbreak the first two times I watched this..) Sayang... Definitely has a special place in my heart. Available in full on youtube with subs.

传闻中的陈芊芊 (Romance of Tiger and Rose)

see above

来世はちゃんとします (Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu)

see above

覆面系ノイズ (Fukumenkei Noise/Anonymous Noise)

pretty good! Adapted from a manga but very film-like with its color-corrected shots, many cut-scenes to birds and crashing waves. Shison Jun was great in his intense scene, Ayami Nakajo has the most manga-looking face I’ve seen and Koseki Yuta is my bb as always hahaha he’s appeared in, like, four dramas on this list.

博多弁の女の子はかわいいと思いませんか？(Don’t You Think Girls Who Talk in Hakata Dialect Are Cute?)

YES!! I DO!! Wholesome drama packed to the brim with hometown (Hakata) pride). I also loved Okada Kenshi going around looking for Ramen shops hahaha. Now I want to see him host a food discovery show. 8/10. Would rec!

帝一の國 (Teiichi no Kuni/Teiichi’s Country)

面白い。Interesting watch! In which a bunch of high school boys in an elite school take their student council elections very seriously and attempts at political hijinks ensue. Suda Masaki and his pals somehow make over-the-top super seem natural. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s pretty good. Peppered with interesting reveals and counter-reveals along the way.

男子高校生の日常 (Daily Lives of High School Boys)

I liked this! It delivers on what it’s supposed to. As a film, it is very film-like. The background is given a lot of weight in this film, and the director “shows, not tells”. The conversations of our characters are situated in the chatter of their schoolmates, you hear random snippets of conversations drift around, you see the school situated in the mountains, piles of decorations around the hall. This helps in conveying the “daily” nature of what happens in the film - not some life-changing adventure, but a warm high-school memory that is pretty like a paper star in a glass bottle. The boys are also very lovable and dorky in their high-school roles.

ピーチガール (Peach Girl)

not bad. Typical shoujo manga adaptation storyline, even if the leading quartet do well in their roles. Nagano Mei was especially memorable for me out of the typical shoujo heroine roles I had previously seen her in. Inoo Kei also really looks like a boy from a manga. He has a lot of exaggerated actions, but he pulls them off really well.

突然ですが明日結婚します (Totsuzen desu ga ashita kekkon shimasu/ It’s Sudden But Tomorrow We’re Getting Married/ Everyone’s Getting Married)

pretty decent. It’s not mind-blowing, but it’s definitely not bad. (Or you could flip it around and say it’s definitely not bad, but it’s not mind-blowing).

ヲタクに恋は難しい (Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku)

disappointing. I really wanted to like this film for Takahata Mitsuki and Yamazaki Kento, but there were too many useless musical scenes.

同期の桜 (Doki no Sakura / Our Dearest Sakura)

Hmmmmmm. About colleagues who become inspired in their work and lives because of their colleague Sakura. I wanted more love but that’s not the main point of the drama so it’s not their fault. It got a bit repetitive towards the end, and I felt there wasn’t enough character development. Another drama I really wanted to like more than I did, because I was looking forward to seeing Takahata Mitsuki, Ryusei Ryo and Mackenyu work together.

Tokyo Coin Laundry

A mishmash of lost souls meet at a coin laundry. A short drama about running away, making choices, and moving on. Katayose Ryota might have been cool in My Brother Loves Me Too Much, but this was where I first saw him and I prefer him in this. I enjoyed this a lot and even drew a postcard based on this. 7/10.

兄に愛されすぎて困ってます (My Brother Loves Me Too Much) drama and movie

ok don’t judge; I watched this because my friend said it was pretty good. Katayose Ryota IS pretty cool in this, and Tsuchiya Tao brings to life the quintessential image of the Japanese girl, but if you’re watching this for “so cheesy it’s actually good” I would point you to the Watashi ni XX Shinasai drama special instead. If you do want to watch this though, you should watch the drama before the movie, because they are not standalone.

Nodame Cantabile

What can I say? Classics are classics. 8/10, would rec. This is my first time seeing Ueno Juri acting, and she’s so believable as quirky Nodame I wondered if this was her actual personality. Straight out of a manga. There was potential for messy love-drama, but this drama took the high road and focused on proper character development instead. Thumbs up! They also did really well in “showing not telling” us the OTP’s relationship development. Rather than declarations of love, you can see it in the little caring gestures and almost subconscious smiles. I liked that too. Though maybe I’ll dock a point for how they treated gay expressions of love - “he’s a man you know” and icky faces - and how much casual manhandling there was against Nodame (exaggerated flying punches... maybe that’s how the manga wrote it?)

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accio-ambition · 7 years

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WORLDS COLLIDING FOR SOME CAPTAIN COBRA SWAN GOODNESS. Ugh, yes. I hope you guys enjoy it. I know I do.

As always, a humongous thank you to @sotheylived, @shipsxahoy, @queen-icicle-fandom, and @captainswanbigbang for supporting and getting this project through at some point in time in the past...god, seven months? Is that right? Math is not my strong suit.

Summary: Bouncing around with her son for the majority of her life, Emma Swan has told herself she’s happy in the city. It’s where the most camera operating jobs are, and that’s how she makes her money. But when an old friend calls her and asks for her help on a new project in small town Maine, Emma finds herself in a place she’s never been with people she doesn’t know filming a profession she knows nothing about. But when the captain of the ship she’s filming begins taking a keen interest in her and her life, she finds herself wondering whether she might just catch something other than fish. Deadliest Catch AU Rating: M Content warning: Character death, some violent situations

FFnet/Ao3/Cover/Snapshots/Gifset

Chapter Nine

Emma’s got her laptop out on the table, a plate of Granny’s finest onion rings at her side. Over the past couple of weeks, she’s accumulated approximately 67 hours of B roll, every minute of which she has to go through, edit, and send off to Jefferson, who has to approve it before filing it with HQ. So far, she’s made it through about an hour and a half.

(Thank god Ruby knows to keep the onion rings coming.)

She’s just cutting up a scene consisting of the boys playing cards down in the galley while waiting for Jones and Liam to figure out their plan of attack for the day when someone slides into the booth bench opposite her.

“So, tell me, Swan,” Jones startles her. “What is it that makes you tick?”

Exporting the clip and jotting its name down on the growing list of file names, Emma sighs. Of all the people she wanted to see right now, Jones was not one of them, especially on one of her rare days working away from the Jolly Roger. She sets her pen down and glares across the table in frustration. “My charming personality and sense of humbleness,” she says, her face unmoving and her voice monotone. She’s not in the mood for his shit.

“But of course,” he chuckles, nabbing a ring from her plate. Too late, she smacks his grabby fingers away. “I would’ve thought it was those sky high walls you’ve got me climbing, but the personality.” He munches on the onion ring thoughtfully. “No, that makes sense now.”

Emma rolls her eyes. “In case you can’t tell, Jones, I’m a little busy here.”

“Oh, no, I can see quite well.” Setting his clasped hands atop the table, Jones leans toward her, closing her laptop fractionally. “I can tell that you’re using whatever is around you to protect you from something.” He cocks his head to the side like a curious puppy, almost like he’s trying to read her. “Guard you from falling a little bit in love with this town. Or at all.”

“Really now?” Emma says, unbelieving.

(That is what she’s doing, technically speaking. Force of habit - distraction to keep herself safe. It’s worked so far, that’s for sure.)

“Indeed.” Jones nods and steals another onion ring. “Your work, your lad, your impending order of – what was it, pancakes?”

“Waffles,” she corrects himself. Emma pulls her plate closer to her, even though he has the arm length to reach across the table and take her food as he pleases. “If you had been up as late I was dealing with a sick 10-year-old, you would’ve been as grumpy as I was.”

“I’m sure that’s true.” He raises a brow and points at her. “But you did have a cup of coffee in front of you, so I assumed you’d be slightly more pleasant.”

Emma shrugs. “Assumed wrong.” And in her mind, that’s the end of the conversation. If she were in his shoes, she would bid him farewell and leave, get out of his face.

But when had Jones ever done a thing she would do? Instead, he continues to sit opposite her and appraises her. For a moment, Emma tries to return to editing her B roll, but she feels his gaze on her and it makes her nervous.

With a grunt, she slams her laptop down and glares at him. “What do you want, Jones?”

“I just want to get to know you, Swan,” he says quietly. “You’re the first civilian I’ve let on my ship, love, and from what I can tell, you’re going to be making yourself a frequent member of my crew.” Jones begins to trace his fingertip all over the tabletop, appearing to draw little nothings while he thinks over his next words. “I need to know who I’m working with. I need to know who is going to jump in the sea after a crewmate if they fall in and who’s going to stand back and watch.”

“Well, I can already tell you that I’ll be standing back and filming. That’s literally my job,” Emma quips back. Then she raises an accusatory brow of her own. “So, is that enough information?”

He sighs in frustration. “Something small,” he pleads. “That’s all I ask.” He searches their surroundings as if for inspiration. “Perhaps where you and Henry were before you came here.”

It seems like such irrelevant information. It’s something that he can find out by asking Jefferson or David or even Ruby. It’s safe. Still, she thinks about it, then decides to respond. “Phoenix,” she says. “Henry and I were in Phoenix before we came up here.”

“Quite a different landscape, isn’t it?” he asks, to which she makes some nonverbal sound of agreement. “How long were you there?”

“Less than a year.” Emma shakes her head and opens her laptop once more. “Look, Killian, I really do have to work on this stuff.”

Across the table, she sees his eyes light up despite her obvious dismissal and, idly, she wonders why he suddenly seems really happy to be rejected by her. “Perhaps we can talk later then,” he suggests.

“Sure, if you really want to,” she says with a shrug. It’s inevitable: they’re going to have to talk to each other in the future because they work together on a boat - ship - that she knows very little about. She doesn’t exactly want to die out at sea.

“Trust me, love, I really want to,” Jones murmurs eagerly. Finally, he slides from the bench and stands next to the booth. Emma watches him cautiously for his next move.

What he says next surprises her.

“When do you pick the lad up from camp?” he asks.

Emma’s thrown by the weird question, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Quarter after three. Why?”

“How about I meet you two when he’s free and I take you to my ship?”

If possible, her brows sink lower on her face. “Why?”

Jones shrugs. “Well, you may have seen the inner workings, but your boy hasn’t.”

And that’s got her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline.

(They’re getting quite the workout today.)

“You want him to give him a tour of your boat?”

“Ship, Swan, the Jolly Roger is a ship,” he groans, rubbing away at his forehead and the frustration her mistake causes him. “Yes. I think it’s good for a lad to know where his mother will be working, if not to meet some of the folks she’s working with as well.”

“Really?”

He nods, digging his hands into his pockets. “We’ll just pretend he’s come to your office for a little while. Meet your boss and such.”

“You’re not my boss,” Emma scoffs. “If anything, I’m your boss.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “I do love a woman in charge.”

Emma slaps his arm. “Fine. Meet me outside the schoolyard at ten after three.”

He leans forward in a slight bow. “As you wish, Swan,” he says, before walking away.

“Don’t think you’re going to charm me by quoting Princess Bride!” she yells after him, then scolds herself because she’s going to have a hell of a time editing her B roll now.

She whiles away the day doing busy work, trying not to think of what Killian had basically accused her of earlier. She knows she has walls. She knows she walks around with heavy armor around her heart. For good reason. Her life was on the right track until a man came along, got her pregnant, and then left her to take the fall for his crimes. Of course she’s going to have trouble trusting anyone after that. She thought she had loved Neal, gave him everything, only to receive nothing as thanks.

But for Jones – practically a stranger, someone she considers a coworker at most – to call her out on that. It’s unheard of.

Her past experiences are what make her eyebrows raise in confusion, but pleasant surprise when she strolls up to the elementary school to find Killian chatting with some of the other parents there. He’s laughing jollily at something a woman is saying, his arms crossed over his chest as he throws his head back. She walks up to them and clears her throat to get his attention.

“Swan!” Jones shouts in greeting. He gestures to the woman he was talking to by casually swinging an open hand toward her. “Have you met Aurora?”

“Not yet.” She leans forward with her best people smile and shakes hands with the woman. “How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Aurora says. She seems nice, much like the rest of the people in Storybrooke. Very domestic in her vintage dress and long hair, waiting for her children to get out of summer camp. “Killian here was just telling me about your son. I think my Phillip has been talking about him.”

“Oh, you’re Phillip’s mom,” Emma says in recognition. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Yeah, Henry was really excited telling me how Phillip had invited him to his birthday party.”

Aurora chuckles. “Yeah, he’s really excited about it. Turning double digits and all that.”

“Is the lad really turning 10?” Jones asks in disbelief.

Aurora hums and nods.

“My god, I remember when your husband burst into the Rabbit Hole and bought everyone a round in celebration of his birth,” he chuckles.

Aurora laughs. “Yes, I remember that as well. I wasn’t all too happy with him after that.” Her phone rings. As she takes it out of her pocket and finds who’s calling on the screen, she sighs. “Speaking of my darling husband. Sorry, I have to take this.”

They wave her off, Aurora heading off to the other end of the playground to speak with her husband. Emma, on the other hand, turns to Killian and says, “You’re here.”

“Of course I am.”

“You’re here early.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “Sometimes Mary Margaret lets the children out early for some extra time on the playground, especially on a nice day like today.”

Emma tilts her head toward her shoulder. “How’d you know that?”

“I hear things around town,” he reasons with another shrug. “Mary Margaret Nolan, bless her heart, made her and David’s presence known the minute they moved into town.” Killian chuckles and shifts his feet a little closer together. “She came knocking on our door with cookies to introduce herself a couple days after they’d come.”

“Huh,” she hums. “Sounds like her.”

His eyes widen a bit and his brow cocks up. “You know her?” he asks.

“I should hope.” Emma says, licking her bottom lip and shaking her head. “We moved in next door. And I knew her and David when I was in school.”

“Really? You’ll have to tell me all the embarrassing stories one day.”

“Hmm, don’t count on it, buddy,” she says with a smirk, satisfied that she’s managed to shut him down.

(For now.)

(He’s trying to get under her skin even more so than he already is. Trying to create excuses to spend more time with her in an effort to make her like him, she’s sure.)

(And now that she knows he lives down the street from them and he knows they live next door to the Nolans… well, it’s a small town. She wouldn’t be surprised if he came knocking on their door unannounced.

Emma doesn’t know if she could handle that.)

The bell rings and the kids start to stream out, slowly, then in a huge crowd. As a now-sixth-grader, Henry may be a little taller than the rest of the kids, but he’s told her before how his classroom is also the furthest from the doors. So when the crowd starts to thin, that’s when she starts really searching for her son.

He appears, wet brown hair in his eyes, his pack slung over one shoulder. Henry spots her and starts jogging toward her, but slows back to a walk when he sees who’s next to her.

“Hey, kid,” Emma says happily, avoiding the obvious question in his eyes. Henry tucks himself under her arm in a side hug, her arm resting on his shoulder. “How was camp?”

“Fine. We went to the pool and they taught us how to dive.”

“You know all about that, now, don’t you?”

He nods. “I practiced on my back stroke while they taught the other kids.”

She laughs. “And how’s it looking?”

Henry shakes his head, his nose crinkling up in disgust and dissatisfaction. “Not much better.”

“I’m so proud of you, kiddo.” She reaches both arms around him and hugs him tightly.

Henry leans into her side, his still-damp hair soaking through her shirt. He speaks so quietly she has to lean down when he repeats it. “Who’s this?”

The moment of truth: Emma glances up at the man, who’s remained silent so far, waiting until she gives him the go ahead. His expression, however, has opened up into something she’s never seen before. It’s kinder than anything she’s seen on the ship. Granted, she hasn’t known him that long, but it’s still a bit eye-opening.

After a moment of hesitation, Emma repositions the two of them so they’re facing Jones. “Um, Henry, this is Killian Jones,” she says. “He’s the captain of the bo-ship,” she quickly corrects herself. “Of the ship that I’m filming on.” With the smile of a mother who can’t help herself but be happy around her child, Emma introduces her two worlds. “Jones, this is my son Henry.”

Killian pushes out his hand for a shake. Henry obliges timidly. “Lovely to meet you, lad,” he says. “Your mother told me that you had really hoped she’d be hanging out with pirates.”

Emma reaches out to punch Jones in the shoulder, scoffing, “I did not!”

“Swan, please,” Killian playfully pleads, rubbing at the spot on his arm where she hit him. He crouches down in front of them until he’s squatting low enough to have to look up at Henry. He leans into her son. “Do you want to know my ship’s name?” he asks conspiratorially. Henry, of course, nods. “The Jolly Roger.”

His eyes go wide. “Like Captain Hook?”

“Exactly.” Killian’s pointer finger moves and bops Henry on the tip of the nose, surprising both of them. Henry giggles and Emma can’t help but smile at the noise. “Would you like to see it?”

“Yes!” Henry shouts enthusiastically. The shy kid from minutes ago is gone as he looks up at Emma with bright excited eyes. “Mom, can I?”

Shrugging, Emma glances over to Killian, who sends her a wink. “Why not?”

“Awesome!” Jones stands up and gestures toward the water. In all his youthful joy, Henry takes the lead, half walking, half jogging in front of them with his back to all opposing traffic. “Can I steer it?”

“Afraid not, m’boy.” For what it’s worth, Jones matches his steps to hers, a slow sort of trudge that isn’t exactly exuberant but isn’t exactly hesitant as well. “We’ll have to stay docked today. My crew is making sure she’s all ready for whatever happens this season.”

“But can I steer it some time?” Henry asks, coming to a halt in front of them.

Killian looks at Emma for the correct answer. She’s not quite sure what he sees there, but Jones turns back to her son. “We’ll see, lad. We’ll see.”

Emma hangs back as they walk to the harbor while Henry and Jones walk together in front of her. Henry’s regaling him with tales of their travels – how to tell a good New York street vendor from a bad one, how nice winter in Phoenix is – and Killian, surprising her yet again, reacts genuinely and accordingly. Unlike other people – specifically men who’ve wished to pursue her romantically – Jones is treating her son as anyone should: like her 10-year-old is a person.

She catches up to them once they reach the docks, only to hear Jones say, “What in heavens do you mean, you’ve never seen snow?”

Henry shrugs. “We were always somewhere warm in the winter time. I might have seen it when I was a baby, but I don’t remember seeing snow anywhere but on TV.”

Jones looks at Emma. “I am appalled, Swan. You’ve never let your son experience snow?”

She shrugs, internally chuckling at the apparent family trait. “There were never any jobs where it was snowy.”

“A likely excuse,” Jones scoffs. They come up to the bow of the ship, Henry basically hopping on the balls of his feet. “Well, here she is.” Emma comes up to his side and accidentally brushes against his hand with hers. “The Rolly Joger.” His voice cracks, causing both her and Henry to laugh at his slip in words. “I mean, the Jolly Roger.” He blushes and scratches behind his ear. “Shall we board?” Henry nods fervently. Killian gestures to Emma. “Ladies first.”

She rolls her eyes, but heads up the steps of the gangplank before Henry does. “Watch your step, kid, there are ropes everywhere.”

“How would you know?”

“I work on this ship, remember? It’s like my office,” she says, wrapping her arms across her body to keep the sea breeze from making her more uncomfortable than she already is.

Always happy to be the center of attention and talk about something he's obviously passionate about, Killian shows Henry the captain’s roost and the inner belly of the boat. Emma notices that her son seems to be enjoying this time with Jones – some boys’ time that he’s never really had much access to. It’s not like his father was around, or any of the men she sought company with were appropriate for her son to hang out with.

Emma realizes that, though she might not exactly like Jones, maybe her son knowing and liking him might not just be the worst thing ever.

When the tour is finished, Henry’s eyes bright and cheeks flushed, Jones ushers them off his ship, onto the gangplank, and back to the docks. Once again, Henry’s basically jumping up and down between the two of them, practically hanging off of Killian’s side and surely his every word.

“Did you enjoy yourself, lad?” Jones asks.

“Yeah!” Henry shouts. “Are you sure we can’t take her out today?”

“’fraid not.” Killian looks at her. “The day is late and I should think your mother wants to get some dinner in you and then get you to bed.”

Emma nods in agreement. “Jones is right, Henry, it’s getting late.”

She turns and faces the sun to start their walk home, her flip flops slapping against the wood of the docks and then the concrete of the sidewalk. But she stops when she realizes that her son isn’t following her, or he’s dragging his feet and she’s had the kind of day where she can’t deal with that. Looking over her shoulder, Emma finds he hasn’t moved, still on the wood of the docks, staring up at Killian.

“Go on, Henry,” Killian chides him with a small smile. “We’ll take the ship out soon. You can be my first mate.”

But that’s not what her son wants promised. Even from her position a couple yards away, Emma can spot the determined features on Henry’s face.

“You promise she’s gonna come home?” Her son is so serious when he asks that it nearly breaks Emma’s heart. It’s not like she doesn’t understand where he’s coming from: his father’s already left him, he doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. Just as Henry is all she has in her world, she is all he has in his.

But Killian, being the ever-confusing man that he is, crouches down so that he’s at Henry’s eye level. He sticks his hand out to her son.

“I promise.” His voice is surprisingly stern and serious.

Considering his proposal for a second, Henry finally takes Killian’s hand and shakes it. “And you, too?”

“Of course, lad,” Killian assures him, standing back up. “Liam and I have always come back to shore. If anything, we’ve only got more reason to make it home.” His eyes flicker over and catch Emma’s, as though to make sure that his words don’t go unnoticed.

And they don’t. Not by her. No, she hears every word, said and unsaid.

(It sounds like he’s coming back for them. For her. And the mere idea does not sit well with her at all.)

(Mostly because it settles nice and warmly somewhere in her middle.)

But the insinuations fly over Henry’s head. He nods solemnly and then smiles brightly, as he tends to do. “Thanks for showing me around the boat.”

“It’s a ship, lad,” he corrects him gently, “and it was my pleasure. I’ll take you out on it someday soon, aye?”

“Okay!” With that, Henry finally catches up to his mother, allowing Emma to wrap her arm around his shoulders. “Goodnight, Jones.”

“Goodnight, Henry,” Jones bids him. “Pleasant dreams, Swan,” he says with a wink.

She rolls her eyes and only allows herself to smile when she knows he can’t see it.

#csbb #captain swan big bang #captain swan #cs ff #ouat #GUYS #guyyyss #the trio is together for the FIRST TIME #AND PRINCESS BRIDE #AND HENRY BEING PROTECTIVE #AND ONION RINGS #AND HENRY HAS FRIENDS AND HES GOING TO A BIRTHDAY PARTY #were not going to see the birthday party #BUT STILL #ugh my heart #my words #storytime #ditlot

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yeomangamer · 6 years

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Dusty Skirmishes Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you for the support for the last chapter. Please check out the FFN or Ao3 version for full author’s notes.

“I had enjoyed reading before this,” Leia said flippantly, rubbing her eyes as she reread the same paragraph about the size of city roads.

Jyn chuckled. “I had as well.” She pushed a cup of hot tea towards Leia and sat back down.

“I didn’t even know we had tea,” Leia said as she took a sip of the hot beverage. She sighed inwardly, happily. She hadn’t had any decent tea since the train ride out of Coruscant, nearly five years earlier. She told Ackbar that she and Jyn would try to find what they could from the volumes, and wouldn’t be coming back to her secretarial work until after they were done. “Any progress?”

Jyn cleared her throat and quoted: “Telegraph lines may not exceed 5 parsecs unless in the case of near urban areas, then its 3.”

“Well, we each finished one, just these and the last one between us.”

As the afternoon wore on, Leia decided to stretch her legs and take a walk to the sheriff’s office to see how Luke was doing. The door was partly open when she arrived. She opened it all the way slowly and stepped in to hear the middle of a conversation.

“-You’ve got to understand, Luke. I may seem calm about this, but I’m in real trouble here. Jabba don’t take kindly to theft.”

“I’ll do what I can, Han, but I’m afraid I’ve got a lot on my plate.” Luke stood to pour himself more coffee as Leia stepped into the room.

“Doing what? Watching after run away wagons and that crazy sister of yours?”

Leia cleared her throat and the cowboy whipped around, taking his hat off when he saw her. “Miss Organa, I didn’t see you there.” She ignored him.

“How goes the hunt?” Luke asked, sitting back at his desk.

“It’s going, slow, but going. Just came to check on you.”

Luke gave her a wide smile and raised his coffee to her. “Thank you kindly, sister. I’m doing just fine.”

“You sure? It’d seem you got someone on the wrong side of the bars in here.” Leia looked pointedly at Mr. Solo. “What’d you steal from Jabba?”

“Hey, I didn’t steal nothing!” He pointed his hat at her, a serious look on his face. He’d left his chaps at home today it would seem, as well as his Indian shadow.

“Anything.” Leia corrected. “You didn’t steal anything.”

“Exactly!” He shrugged. “Jus’ let a few steers go is all.”

Leia’s eyebrows shot up. “Why? What good is a cowboy that can’t keep track of his cows?”

He scoffed at her. “You think I just felt like it, sweetheart? If you were there, you’d understand.”

“I doubt it. You know that Jabba won’t forget this.”

He looked as though he was about to explode as Luke slammed his empty tin cup on his desk. “Alright, I’m done with my coffee and also with the two of you. Get out, both of you. Han, I’ll let you know if I can help you somehow, and Leia, I’ll be home later, come see me if you find something.”

Leia stormed out before Mr. Solo could, holding her hand over her eyes as a particularly big patch of dust was kicked up by the wind. Normally the dust would settle down after a bit, but this was escalating to a full on storm.

An arm wrapped around her and she felt herself get tucked away from the wind. “Careful you don’t blow over.” Mr. Solo’s voice was right in her ear and sent chills down her spine.

“Let me go!” she demanded firmly. He didn’t seem to hear her, only pulling her closer as the wind picked up even harder. As the wind settled down she pushed against him and brushed off as best she could. She bid her heart to beat slower, it wasn’t as if the gesture was anything other than hiding from the dust.

“Easy, don’t get excited!” He shook the dust off of his hat and out of his hair, only messing the brown mop even further. She tried to catch his eye but he had them cast downwards. She told herself that it was just his windblown face, and not that he was blushing.

“I’m not one of your horses, Mr. Solo. And it doesn’t take shielding me from a dust storm to get me excited.”

He smirked and she was sure he was going to say something smart when the wind started to pick up again. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.” They linked arms to run towards her and Luke’s house, shutting the door behind them. They brushed off just inside the door, Leia careful to keep her eyes at the floor as Han hung his hat next to her own on Luke’s peg. She peeked out the curtain and cursed under her breath. The cowboy in her foyer wasn’t going anywhere for awhile.

“Care for some coffee, Mr. Solo?” she asked him.

“Love some, Miss Organa,” he said, following where she gestured into the kitchen.

“Leia, Leia, I think I’ve found-” Jyn burst in holding one of the volumes just as Leia finished pouring her and her guest a cup. She reached for another glass as Jyn took a step back and Han stood from his seat at their tiny dining table. “How do you do, I didn’t know that you’d be coming Mr…”

“Miss Jyn Erso, I’d like you to meet Mr. Han Solo,” Leia said, pouring Jyn a cup as well.

“Mr. Solo, it’s good to meet you.”

“Ma’am,” Mr. Solo said, nodding his head, grimacing as Jyn actually curtsied to him. Leia did her best not to laugh at the sight.

“Sit both of you,” Leia said, bringing the two of them their coffee and sitting with her own. “What did you find, Jyn?”

She looked up from the book to Leia to Mr. Solo, asking a silent question.

“If you’re wondering whether I trust him, the answer is no. But the circumstances require strange bedfellows, it would seem.” She heard Mr. Solo cough slightly into his coffee, but ignored hm.

Jyn opened to the page she had bookmarked with her finger and turned to face Leia, tapping an underlined bit of text. Leia leaned over to read, conscious of Han’s proximity as he too leaned over to get a closer look.

“Annexation of a village or town by a given city must require (A) a shared border between the two areas in question, and (B) a consensus of the peoples of both areas in the form of a representative’s signature on the proper Form #208.5,” Leia read aloud. She puzzled through the language for a second before speaking. “So, they couldn’t annex Tatooine without the town’s consent? That’s all we need?”

Jyn shook her head. “A ‘representative’ is not defined. Not even as a resident of the town, much less an elected one. They could have anyone sign it and it would be considered legally sound.”

“Those dam- er, those crafty sons of- uh…” Mr. Solo stumbled over his words, trying not to swear.

Leia rolled her eyes. “Kindly say what you mean plainly, Mr. Solo, without fear of offending us. Or else we will be here long after the dust settles.”

“Well excuse me for trying to maintain my manners, Miss Organa. Mrs. Solo didn’t raise a savage.” Leia scoffed but he ignored her. “What I mean to say is that those bastards up in Naboo have to make everything so complicated. Nothing they say means what they say and you’d have to look out for things you didn’t say.”

“You’re very right Mr. Solo, and in this case, it will help us,” Jyn said.

“How?” Leia asked.

Jyn quoted: “Annexation of a village or town by a given city.”

“Yes, we are a town. The town of Tatooine.” Leia was having a hard time following her, while Jyn was beaming with such pride.

“Yes, but what if we weren’t a town? Instead, we were a city?”

Han told himself he only followed the women to make sure they didn’t get swept up by the dust. After explaining the plan to Miss Organa, the two women decided to make a mad dash to the sheriff’s office to explain the plan to Luke. Han had insisted that it could wait until the wind settled, but the two women were determined not to waste a moment.

He’d heard tales while on the trail about dust storms that swallowed entire towns, burying families, livestock, and buildings overnight. The skies went black in the middle of the day and not even Jesus himself would face his father’s wrath that day. The storms were a plague sent to cleanse the west, some said. Of what it was was meant to cleansed of, Han could never get a straight answer. That was the problem with those religious types: all faith and no clarity. He could’ve used a god a time or two in his life. When he was scared for his life on the battlefields against the Yanks, when he was starving in his barracks, or when those raiders pointed their shotguns at him and barked: “Just keep herding them, there’s a clearing ahead. You’re coming with us.” Each time he’d made his own god, been his own salvation. He’d gotten out of that battle alive, skipped town when the army pay wasn’t good enough to justify starving, and he’d broken through that fence. The steers needed little encouragement to run free as he and Chewie galloped away. It was Greedo, a fellow steer driver who had broken the news to him in D’Qar, that Jabba had put a 1,000 credit price on his head. He’d left Greedo bleeding out under the stars behind the saloon, calling out for his relatives below the border.

As he lead the two women across the street to the sheriff’s office in Tatooine, Han wondered how he was going to get himself out of this one.

“Let me get this straight, you want to become a city because of a technicality?” Luke repeating, seemingly unconvinced.

“The law states requirements for a town or a village to be annexed by a city, but there is nothing that says that a city can annex another city,” Miss Organa said, triumphantly. She had brushed off some of the dust from her face and front, but didn’t seem to mind the other layers she had accumulated. Han had met only a handful of women from back east since crossing the Dagobah, and none ever like Miss Organa. The other women shut themselves away from the dust, covering themselves with shawls and veils and holding handkerchiefs to their mouths, scared of even one speck on their shoes. Miss Organa though, while she didn’t revel in the stuff like an animal might, she continued her life despite it.

“But there isn’t anything that says it can’t,” Ackbar clarified.

Miss Erso nodded. “It’s new ground, but it is unlikely to go through. Once Tatooine is considered a city, it will be on equal footing with Scarif in the eyes of the state. There is no precedent for one city to overtake another.”

Luke nodded. “What does it take for a town to become a city?”

Miss Organa produced another volume as Han stood to pour himself another cup of coffee. He looked out the window to see that the sun was setting, but the wind had settled. He should be finding Chewie and talking about their next move. He loathed it, but the most likely plan was to ride further west into Hoth territory, maybe join a wagon train through the mountains. The stories of the poor folks crossing the mountains kept him up at night, but there was little he could do this side of them while Jabba had a price on his head. He considered going to Jabba and begging for a second (although, more like a third or fourth) chance, but he knew that his most recent indiscretion along with his gambling debts wouldn’t be worth taking him back. Most likely what would happen is that they’d take him and Chewie out back, tie him to a post and shoot him like a dog. Then who knows what they’d do to Chewie, maybe set him free covered in Han’s blood, framing him as a cannibal. As if Wookies didn’t have it hard enough since the white settlers had pushed them all the way past the Dagobah River.

Han didn’t want to run. He was getting tired of running. And no matter how far west he went, he knew that the east would catch up with him eventually. Times were changing, and the west was dying. Maybe the dust was sent to cleanse the land of the West itself, and of men like him who profited off of it.

“Han, c’mon,” he heard Luke say, and he looked up. “Town meeting, right now.”

“Look kid, I ain’t a part of this-” Han took a drink of coffee as Luke took a menacing step towards him.

“You live in this town now, Han. This concerns you directly.”

Han shrugged. “What do I care if Scarif comes in and takes Tatooine over? They probably know more about being a city than you bunch of yahoos do anyway.”

“If we get taken over by Scarif, that means more people will move here, won’t they?”

Han nodded, shrugging. “‘Spose so.”

“More likely Jabba will come and find you then.”

Han just shrugged. “I’ll skip town before that happens.”

Luke seemed shocked for a second. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“There isn’t a lot I wouldn’t dare do to save my own skin, kid, you oughta know that by now.”

Luke sighed. “How much’s the bounty on your head?”

“1,000.”

Luke whistled. “Look, if you help us avoid annexation by Scarif, we can see about paying the bounty and then you’re free to go wherever you’d like.” Han thought a moment nodded. That didn’t seem like a bad trade, and Hoth Territory would still be there whether their hairbrained plan succeeded or not. “You could head west, you could go back to steer driving.” Luke cleared his throat. “Maybe stick around, get a piece of land and settle down. Start a family.”

Han gave him a side-eye, frowning. “You really think I’m the marrying type, Skywalker?”

Luke shrugged. “Well, I’d like to see that Miss Erso married to a good man, someone that’d keep her safe. But from what I seen, you prefer a different woman.”

Han didn’t move or look at Luke, only at his empty coffee cup. “I’m not sure who you mean, sheriff.”

Luke scoffed but turned away. “Don’t even think about doing something stupid ‘til this is over and that price is off your head. Then we can discuss your living and job situation.”

Now Han truly was lost. “Luke, I’m not sure what you mean, really. My living, my job-”

“I’m sure that you know exactly what I mean. And if you think I would let my sister marry anyone without a good job and a good home, I’m not sure you know me at all.” Han’s jaw dropped, but Luke only moved towards the door. “I expect to see you at the meeting, I’m glad we could have a chance to discuss.”

It had taken a while to rouse everyone from their late afternoon/evening routine and herded into the town meeting hall. Leia could’ve really used a cowboy at that moment. Unfortunately, it seemed the local one was only around when she would rather he was anywhere else. Luke was nowhere to be found either, and Ackbar refused to start until the sheriff was present.

Finally he arrived, with Mr. Han Solo just behind, surprisingly. She was sure it showed on her face as he caught her eye when he looked up before looking down and sitting near the back. Perhaps she had misjudged him, maybe he did care about the town.

Luke took his seat next to Leia where she sat, fountain pen at the ready to take the meeting down as a seminal moment in their small town’s history. Ackbar began by banging his gavel and thanking everyone for coming, apologizing for dragging them away from their dinner.

“Is this about Scarif? Are we being annexed?” a voice came up from the crowd, Kes Dameron. A murmur grew among the townsfolk as they all proclaimed their distaste at being taken over by the city nearby.

Ackbar banged his gavel again and demanded order. “Now, now, no need to panic. This is not about annexation. I have other news. I wish to bring our small town into the future. I have spoken to the elders, consulted the law, and prayed a great deal. And I would like to put the motion forth to make our little town into a proper city.”

A gasp went up as people talked once again. Wedge Antilles stood, hat in hand. “Why would we want to be a city, mayor?”

Ackbar nodded. “There are certain benefits to being a city over a town. Postal route, better schools, and representation in the capital. The state is new, the country is growing, and, like I said, our town deserves to join them in the future.”

Ezra Bridger stood, tipping his hat to the mayor. “What will it take to become a city?”

“A few minor adjustments. We will have to take a proper census for the population requirements, have a section of land for a school to be built, and fill out some paperwork.”

The crowd seemed to like this idea, and it was put to a vote. It passed with only a few naysayers. The town was dismissed, and Luke stood as Leia finished up the document and put the mayoral seal on the bottom.

“Let’s go home, Leia,” Luke said, holding out his hand.

“You don’t feel bad lying to the town?” Her voice was quiet.

Luke shrugged. “I don’t see it as lying, we told them what we have to do in order to become a city.”

“But we don’t have the population to be considered a city.”

“We will, there’re seven towns with borders that touch Tatooine county. We’ll get the people.”

“What makes you think they’ll want to join us?” She looked up at him. He had his hands on his belt and a placid look on his face as he surveyed the people leaving. The star pinned to his chest gleamed in the lowlight.

“What choice do they have? What choice do any of us have?”

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