#anyway mad scottish girl you save me every day

[justsomeguycore]

does the mad scottish girl know what a mark she made on my heart and also vocabulary

[themidnight-ghost]

I should tell you

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey, are you dating Joanne Davidson?”

“Boss, I honestly don’t see an issue...” Kate trailed off as Ted massaged his temples.

“You don’t see an issue? She swears at her superiors, has affairs with her staff, shot an officer twice in the chest, set up a plot to kill you and replied with ‘no comment’ to almost every bloody question.”

The euphoria Kate Fleming felt around Joanne Davidson was extravagant. Even now, when they lie in bed together trying to come down from their high, Kate still felt energised. The DI rolled over to face her girlfriend, with the bedsheets pulled up to her neck and subtly smiled.

Kate ran her left hand through Jo’s hair and cupped her cheek with the other, “Morning, boss.”

Jo opened her eyes and grinned when she met Kate’s, “You don’t have to keep calling me that.”

“I want to,” Kate replied honestly.

“You look beautiful, by the way.” Jo simply said as she moved forward to kiss her girlfriend tenderly. No one would have expected that Kate Fleming and Jo Davidson would become a thing. Especially after Jo’s arrest. Heck, they didn’t even know if Jo would survive prison! Jo paused their kiss, and Kate looked unexpectedly at the DI, “You should probably tell Steve and Ted.”

The moment was ruined.

Kate tensed as she sat up, pulling the duvet with her and laughing when she pulled too hard, so Jo was left bare, “What?”

“I said-'' Davidson smirked as she deliberately rolled onto Kate’s chest, making her blush, “You should tell Steve and Ted. You may not be related, but they’re your friends.”

“What if I don’t want to tell Steve?” Kate challenged with a whisper, not looking away from Jo's eyes.

“You can look at my tits, Kate. I don't mind.”

“JO!” Kate profusely blushed and shoved her ex-boss to the side,

Jo snickered and leant back into the DI for a cuddle, “It isn’t like you haven’t seen them before.”

“But seriously,” Kate hummed when she went back to being serious, “Steve will support it; I know he will. But Ted? I don’t want to tell. He might not like it.”

“But he threw confetti at that proposing gay couple?”

“That’s different. Not only am I his colleague, but I’m also dating a woman who committed multiple offences to the law and it’ll be awkward, especially in a work setting.”

“Yeah, I still feel a little guilty for that,” Jo confessed.

“You shouldn’t. It was shitty, but you did it because Pilkinton had a gun to your head and somehow made things right, but,” Kate hesitated and wrapped an arm around Jo’s torso, “that still doesn’t change what happened.”

“Steve’s your best friend, and from what I can tell, you’ve known Ted for a good while.” Jo gently kissed Kate’s jaw before shuffling away, allowing the DI to go downstairs.

“I might.” Kate smiled as she grabbed her underwear and a towel from the floor, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Kate.”

Both women had been dating for a significant amount of time. Their story started when Jo broke up with Farida, and the two started getting close. After that, there had been a series of unofficial dates, secret glances, handholding, confessions and a memorable car getaway. Kate was embarrassed that it took her so long to come to terms with her feelings.

The night when Kate shot Pilkinton was definitely memorable but for all the wrong reasons. Kate couldn’t care less that she’d shot an officer; the only thing she cared about was saving Jo and getting them far away from town. She was looking forward to a life of peace without bent coppers lurking around corners and getting married to the woman she loved. That being said, Kate didn’t confess her love until Jo was in prison.

Finally arriving at work, Kate scanned her ID and headed straight for Ted’s office.

“Morning, Kate.” Hastings didn’t look up from his computer.

Tapping her on the shoulder, Steve approached with two cups of coffee from behind, “The Gaffer thinks he’s found something worth looking at.”

Kate raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah? What’s it relating to?”

“Our friend, Jo Davidson.”

Kate’s heart dropped to the floor. Was it bad? Who was she kidding? Of course, it was going to be bad.

“I don’t want to make any sudden moves,” Ted admired his coffee, “Let’s just wait it out.”

Steve knew that Kate had some sort of soft spot for Jo. He didn’t know the details of their relationship but was aware they were close,

“Has she mentioned anything to you since she was released?”

Kate shook her head.

“Strange.” Hastings began, “I was quite hoping we’d seen the last of her. The poor girl’s been through enough as it is.”

Kate picked her fingernails, and her stomach churned over, “Can I confess something?”

“Of course…” Hastings folded his arms and leaned across the desk, gesturing for Kate to take a seat.

“Do you want me out?” DI Arnott hesitated.

“It’s alright, Steve. I need to tell both of you anyway.”

“I’ve been seeing someone,” A beat, “romantically.”

The confession slipped out, and jumping the first hurdle was surprisingly easy, but unfortunately, it wasn’t as straightforward as that.

The Gaffer corrected his posture, and Steve cocked his head, “Oh? For how long?”

“About 4 months.”

Steve looked slightly hurt, “And you never told me?”

“I didn’t think it was necessary,” Kate replied sheepishly.

Steve and Ted weren’t blood-related, but Kate still viewed them as her family. One of Kate’s strongest memories was when Steve slept on her sofa bed every night after her husband left.

“What’s his name?”

Another hurdle appeared that Kate had to somehow jump over - the gay hurdle. Until she met Jo, Kate never imagined herself to be bisexual. The haircut had always been misleading until now.

“He’s a she.” Kate wouldn’t say she was scared of her boss, but she certainly valued his approval and Catholic beliefs.

Ted paused to think this over before leaning back in his chair, closing his eyes, and smiling. The smile grew, and a flower of hope blossomed in the DI’s chest. Steve was grinning at both reactions and patted Kate reassuringly on the shoulder.

“I’m happy you felt comfortable enough to tell us,” Steve spoke for them.

“Does this mean you’re okay with this?” Kate didn’t know why she needed an answer, but she would feel even better with confirmation.

“It’s your life, of course, we are! Now, who is she?”

“Okay, okay”, Kate could burst with excitement! Even though they didn’t know it was Jo, Kate could still describe her lover in perfect detail. “She has short, dark brown hair, which has a subtle wave at the end. She is pretty pale, so in the sun, her freckles come out, but you won’t see them unless you’re super close! Her cheeks are always red because she is somehow always blushing!” Kate continued to gush, “Her eyes are brown, and her favourite colour is blue! She was also a police officer-”

“You told them yet?” Jo Davidson leaned in the doorway with a giant grin plastered on her face, “or are you just going to keep describing my facial features?”

Silence.

Jo stopped as she realised what she’d said.

Kate looked between Jo, Steve and Ted. She loved her ex-boss, but she really needs to learn to read a situation.

Steve and Ted simultaneously looked between Kate and Jo. Their brains slowly put the puzzle together in an organised fashion. The hair, the skin, the blush, the eyes and finally, the favourite colour.

The history hurdle.

The grinding of Ted’s chair against the floor wasn’t enough to pierce the tension between the group. Kate ushered her girlfriend into the office, closing the door, taking her hand and cautiously walking over to Steve and Ted.

“Jo, this is Steve. Steve, this is Jo.” Kate introduced them, and Jo waved shily. “Jo, this is Ted, Ted this is-”

“I know who Jo Davidson is.” Ted’s voice was a deadly monotone. “How did you even get in?”

“I walked through the door.” The awkwardness had obviously got to the former SIO, who proceeded to bite her lip as she glanced around the room, eyeing the wall with great curiosity.

“Davidson.” Jo’s head snapped back to the situation as Hastings addressed her. “Are you dating one of my officers?”

“Well-” Jo didn’t know what to say, and thankfully, Ted didn’t want to hear it.

“Katherine Laura Fleming.” Kate flinched at the use of her full name.

“Your middle name is Laura?” Jo tentatively asked before Ted shut her off. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey, are you dating Joanne Davidson?”

“Boss, I honestly don’t see an issue...” Kate trailed off as the Gaffer rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You don’t see an issue?” Ted tried hard to keep his composure, “She swears at her superiors, has affairs with her staff, shot an officer twice in the chest, set up a plot to kill you and replied with ‘no comment’ to almost every bloody question.”

“She also commanded multiple armed officers, is super observant, tactically agile, Scottish and be honest: we all know I was the one who shot Ryan Pilkinton.”

Steve sniggered. “I just can’t believe you both.”

“After everything, she's done? I don’t know if I should be impressed or appalled.” Ted corrected.

“You’re not mad?” Kate pushed,

“I'm not mad, but I’m seriously debating whether I should fire you for stupidity. You said it’s been going on for 2 or 3 months, but when did it even start?”

“Jo and I have been shagging on the sly for months.” Jo snickered at Kate’s comment, “But for me, it started in the getaway car and when Jo went to prison. I always felt different about her, but it only hit me when I thought I’d lose her for good.”

Kate’s sentence pulled on Jo’s heartstrings as she remembered the recent events. Throughout her short time in prison and working on Operation Lighthouse, Kate had been her friend and colleague. She cared for Jo more than anyone else in her life and Kate was the only person to make an effort and ask about her day. Overwhelmed, the smaller woman buried her head in Kate’s shoulder, forgetting all about the angry Ted Hastings. Kate kissed Jo’s forehead and smiled fondly down at her.

Both Steve and Ted thought they knew exactly how Jo Davidson worked, especially after interviewing Farida they pictured her as a manipulative, self-centred psychopath. The recent interview didn’t exactly change their opinions either. But this was different. It wasn’t normal for anyone to see Jo vulnerable, but it looked easy when she was with Kate. Jo relaxed, her shoulders dropped, breathing steady, eyes shut with a gentle smile. And in the years Steve had known Kate, he had never seen her blush as much as she did now or look at someone with so much compassion and… love?

“Just so you know, we don’t care that you’re gay, mate. And we shouldn’t care who you date either. I think it was just a shock for Hastings here.” Steve patted his boss on the back.

“It was a shock to me too.” Jo finally addressed the room, “I thought I was done. Mentally, physically and romantically.”

“I should apologise for my words,” Ted replied sheepishly, “I have nothing against anyone, but as you can tell, I’m still a little prickly.”

Jo awkwardly picked down the skin on her fingers, “I don’t blame you, sir.” It was still a little awkward between the trio, and Ted was determined to settle things, “I didn’t get a chance to mention it, but I’m impressed with your knowledge of the law, especially in that interview.”

Kate proudly squeezed Jo’s arm, “Thank you.”

“Unfortunately,” Ted continued, “I can’t let you back on the force-”

“Oh, don’t worry about that: I’m done with police work altogether.” Jo looked fondly at Kate, “I just want to focus on my life and what I have left.”

“Wise words.” Steve nodded, “Can I get anyone another coffee?”

“Tea, please.”

“Same here.”

Steve headed towards the door, gesturing Kate to follow.

“Is it wise to leave them there alone?” Kate jogged after her colleague.

Steve grinned, “Let them talk about rules for a while; I’d rather know all about this new development!” he playfully nudged Kate’s arm and jumped for joy when they were at the coffee machine and out of sight.

“You gonna calm down now?” Kate chucked before looking serious, “By the way, what did you find out about Jo? Should I be worried?”

“Go no! There was a small break in around your apartment. We checked the security cameras and noticed Jo Davidson walking past and holding hands with…” Steve dragged out the answer before pointing to DI Fleming, “you.” Kate turned pale as Steve continued, “I had my suspicions, and we intended to mention it today, see if we could get a reaction. Guess I didn’t even have to try, mate.”

☁️ First ever Flemson fic, fist time watching Line of Duty - that ending was NOT IT (expect a 4000 word alternate ending fic soon) if you read this, thank you x ☁️

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 7

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 7 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 7/? SUMMARY: With the Doctor newly regenerated, he and Elise must now navigate their new relationship. The Doctor is an old man and Elise is a headstrong young woman. She is no longer the scared little girl the Doctor saved all those years ago. Will Clara be able to keep them from killing each other?

[A/N - Been a while, huh! Not sure who’s still here, but I’m trying to not pressure myself to work on this, because I do have other interests and ideas.]

“The Daleks will be victorious. The rebels will be exterminated.”

“Colonel? What's happening out there?” Journey asked, but they got no answer, only Rusty yelling, “Exterminate.”

“Dalek fleet. Communications open.”

“Doctor, what happened?” Clara asked.

“Do you see?” the Doctor said.

“Do I see what?”

“Daleks don't turn good. It was just radiation affecting its brain chemistry, nothing more than that. No miracle.”

“Let me get this straight. We had a good Dalek, and we made it bad again? That's all we've done?” Journey asked.

“There was never a good Dalek. There was a broken Dalek and we repaired it.” “You were supposed to be helping us.”

“I gave it a shot. It didn't work out. It was a Dalek, what did you expect?”

“No more talking. You are done! Okay, new objective. We are taking this Dalek down.”

“With us inside? Are you insane!” Elise yelled.

“Exterminate. Exterminate.”

The Doctor turned to look at Clara. “What's that look for?”

“It's the look you get when I'm about to slap you.” She slapped him hard, surprising both the Doctor and Elise.

“Ow. Clara!”

“Are we going to die in here? I mean, there's a little bit of you that's pleased. The Daleks are evil after all. Everything makes sense. The Doctor is right!”

“Daleks are evil. Irreversibly so. That's what we just learned.”

“No, Doctor, that is not what we just learned!”

“Exterminate. Exterminate.”

Clara looked at Elise, who nodded, encouraging the small brunette to go on. If anyone could calm down this situation, it was Clara, not two hotheaded Scottish Timelords.

“We need to place these charges for maximum effect. I'm going to scan the rest of the architecture for weaknesses,” Journey told her fellow soldier.

“One question,” Clara said.

“No time.”

“Why did we come here today? What was the point?” Clara turned to the Doctor. “You. You thought there was a good Dalek. What difference would one good Dalek make?”

“All the difference in the universe, but it's impossible,” the Doctor said.

“Is that a fact? Is that really what we've learned today? Think about it. Is that what we learned?”

“Journey, what the hell's happening? That thing's set the Daleks on us. And it's locked us out of our defenses. Journey, you're the Aristotle's only hope. I need you to destroy that Dalek,” Journey’s uncle said.

“The rebels will be exterminated.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“Understood, Uncle,” Journey told him.

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Clara Oswald, do I really not pay you?” the Doctor asked.

Clara smiled. “You couldn't afford me.”

The Doctor ran over to Journey. “Whatever you're going to do, don't do it. This Dalek must not be destroyed. We can do better.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, I'm inside a Dalek. I'm standing where I've never been. We cannot waste this chance. It won't come again.”

“What chance? I have my orders.”

“Soldiers take orders.”

“And I'm a soldier.”

“A Dalek is a better soldier than you will ever be. You can't win this way.”

Journey held up a grenade, ready to pull the pin, but then put it down. “Argh! So what do we do?”

“Something better.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“The Dalek isn't just some angry blob in a Dalekanium tank,” the Doctor said as he pulled the women over the ledge, “If it was, the radiation would have turned it into a raging lunatic.”

“It is a raging lunatic, it's a Dalek,” Journey commented.

Elise had to admit she had a point.

“But for a moment, it wasn't. The radiation allowed it to expand its consciousness, to consider things beyond its natural terms of reference. It became good. That means a good Dalek is possible. That's what we learned today. Am I right, teach?”

“Top of the class!”

“But now it's back to how it was,” Journey said.

“But what it saw, what it felt, is still there.”

“Yeah, I'm not really seeing that.”

“Not here. There.” He pointed up.

A lightbulb went off in Elise’s mind. “Oh my god.” She locked eyes with the Doctor and he nodded. “That’s brilliant! If it works that is…”

“Someone explain to me what’s going on. You want us to go to the cortex vault?” Journey asked, not following the father and daughter’s silent conversation.

“The evil engineering?” Clara asked.

“Every memory recorded. Some suppressed, but all still intact. We need to show the Dalek that star being born again. Recreate that moment. You need to get up there, find that moment and reawaken it.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Good idea.”

“How?”

“Haven't the foggiest. Do a clever thing. And then once you've done it, the Dalek will be suggestible to new ideas. It will be open again. And I will show it something that will change its mind forever.”

“What?” Journey asked him.

“Not a clue.”

“This is crazy. There is no way that we can get back up there in time.”

“Yes, there is,” the female soldier said. She cocked her harpoon rifle.

“No, Gretchen. It'll bring the antibodies back down on us.”

Gretchen turned to Clara. “Tell me the truth. Is he mad, or is he right? I've come this far. Probably going to die anyway. Wouldn't mind something to do for the rest of my life. Is he mad, or is he right?”

“Hand on my heart? Most days he's both,” Clara told her.

Gretchen turned to the Doctor. “One question, then. Is this worth it?”

“If I can turn one Dalek, I can turn them all. I can save the future.”

“Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.”

“I will do something amazing, I promise.”

“Damn well better.” Gretchen primed her harpoon.

“No, Gretchen,” Journey cried.

Gretchen fired two wires up to the cranial ledge. “Go.”

Antibodies started to approach.

“They're coming. They're coming,” Clara said.

Journey fastened a pulley onto the wire. “Grab hold of the rope. Don't look down,” she told Clara.

“Good luck,” Gretchen said.

Journey and Clara flew upward.

Gretchen started shooting the antibodies as the Doctor grabbed Elise by the arm, pulling her away.

“You shouldn’t have to watch that,” he said softly.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

They wandered through the Dalek until they came to the compartment that held the Dalek itself.

“Well, Rusty, here we are. Eye to eye,” the Doctor said.

“You cannot save the humans. They will be exterminated. I shall join the Dalek units in the final attack.”

“I saved your life, Rusty. Now I'm going to go one better. I'm going to save your soul.”

“Daleks do not have souls.”

“Oh, no? Imagine if you did. What then, Rusty? What would happen then?”

There were flashes and images of dying soldier appeared on the screens around them.

“Your memories. I'm about to give some back to you.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and start to cut through the tubing covering the Dalek’s neurons. “See, all those years ago, when I began…I was just running. I called myself the Doctor, but it was just a name. And then I went to Skaro. And then I met you lot and I understood who I was. The Doctor was not the Daleks.”

Elise had never heard this story before, even after traveling with him for over a thousand years at this point.

The Doctor pulled out some of the neurons.

More memories flashed on the screen. Daleks flying in space and attacking a ship.

“Oh, look. It's your memories again. It's like somebody's mucking about up there. Memories, all those memories. Do you remember the star you saw being born?”

“I…I remember.”

The memory of the star being born appeared on the screen.

“You saw the truth, Rusty. Remember how you felt. You saw a star being born. The endless rebirth of the universe.”

“No.”

“And you realized the truth about the Daleks…”

“Truth? What is the truth?”

“Let me show you the truth. I've opened your mind and now I'm coming in.” The Doctor spliced two pieces of a neuron together. He cried out in pain.

“Doctor!” Elise yelled. She wanted to grab him and stop him, but they’d been traveling together for so long that she had to have faith that he knew what he was doing.

“I'm part of you. My mind is in your mind,” the Doctor told him.

“I see your mind, Doctor. I see your universe.”

“And isn't the universe beautiful?”

“I see beauty.”

“Yes, that's good. That is good. Hold on to that.”

“I see endless, divine perfection.”

“Make it a part of you. Remember how you feel right now. Put it inside you and live by it.”

“I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see hatred.”

“Hatred?”

“I see your hatred of the Daleks and it is good.”

“No, no, no. You must see more than that, there must be more than that.”

“Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks.”

“No, there must be more than that. There must be more than that. Please.”

“Daleks are evil. Daleks must be exterminated. Daleks are evil. Daleks must be exterminated. Exterminate. The Daleks are exterminated.”

“Of course they are. That's what you do, isn't it?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“What about you, Rusty?” Clara asked after they returned to being normal-sized.

“I must go with them,” Rusty said.

“Of course you must. You've unfinished work, haven't you?” the Doctor asked.

“Victory is yours, but it does not please you.”

“You looked inside me and you saw hatred. That's not victory. Victory would have been a good Dalek.”

“I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.” Rusty turned to leave, then looked back at the Doctor.

“Till the next time,” the Doctor said. He turned away and made his way back to the TARDIS.

“Is he leaving? Isn't he going to say goodbye?” Journey asked.

“I think that was it. Yep, that was it. Sorry, got to run,” Clara said. She grabbed Elise’s hand and they followed after him.

As they reached the TARDIS, Journey came up behind them. “Doctor. Take me with you.”

“I think you're probably nice. Underneath it all, I think you're kind and you're definitely brave. I just wish you hadn't been a soldier,” the Doctor told her.

They went inside the TARDIS and took off.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Clara came back into the control room in a new set of clothes. “How do I look?”

“Sort of short and round-ish, but with a good personality, which is the main thing,” the Doctor told her.

“I meant my clothes. I just changed.”

“Oh, good for you, still making an effort.”

The TARDIS landed.

“Okay, right, you're back in your cupboard, thirty seconds after you left.”

“When will I see you again?”

“Oh. Soon, I expect. Or later. One of those.”

Clara walked over to the door and opened it. “I don't know.”

“I'm sorry?”

“You asked me if you're a good man and the answer is, I don't know. But I think you try to be and I think that's probably the point.”

“I think you're probably an amazing teacher.”

“I think I'd better be.” Before she left, Elise walked over to her.

“Hey Clara?”

“Yeah, Elise?”

“…have fun on your date. He must be pretty special.”

Clara smiled. “He is.” Clara left and the Doctor put the TARDIS in flight.

“I’m sorry,” Elise said.

“For what?”

“That things didn’t turn out the way you planned.”

The Doctor shrugged. “What’s new?”

Elise looked at him.

“What is it?”

“I guess…part of me thought it might have worked. That there was a good Dalek. I thought that…that maybe the Time War would finally be over.”

The Doctor flipped a few switches. “What about the 70’s? You always loved that decade.”

Elise frowned. “I…I used to. Not anymore.”

“Okay, well where do you want to go?”

“I think I’ll just go read something the library.”

The Doctor tried not to let the disappoint show. Maybe she wasn’t comfortable going somewhere with him alone yet. He could respect that. Maybe she needed more time to adjust to the change. “Oh, of course. We’ve had quite day.”

Elise turned to go to her room, a tear escaping her eye. She could appreciate that he was trying, but it was like this body forgot everything his previous body knew about her.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 13 – Everything’s awful but lesbians are in fact REAL

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

Turns out a preserved corpse of a Soulless person that the Kingair pack stole from Egypt is causing the humanization problem.  However somebody is after that coprse, and knocked LeFoux and Lord Maccon unconscious.  Alexia gonna have to fix everything herself HURMPH!

Chapter 13 – Everything’s awful but lesbians are in fact REAL

Wowzers! Here’s the climax chapter.  It won’t be the height of tension, but it will be the height of my irritated confusion.  My apologies for length, it was a long chapter, and full of a lot of bullshit. LET’S GO!

              We get a rare good moment where Alexia looks at the passed out Maccon and worries about him.  She makes a cute note about how his eyelashes are super long and once when she commented that she was jealous of his long eyelashes he tickled her neck with them.  This will be the last genuinely good thing in this chapter.

Alexia goes to a recently woken up LeFoux.  LeFoux is all distraught, and there’s a bullshit line about how being upset made her look slightly more feminine and Alexia, “Didn’t know if she liked that.”

              CAUSE SADNESS IS A WOMAN DISEASE AND ALEXIA ONLY CARES WHAT LEVEL OF CURRENT FUCKIBLITY YOU ARE! THE LEVEL OF EGOMANIA ON THIS BITCH!

              LeFoux is like, “Hey don’t be mad at the woman who shot me and your husband. She didn’t ~mean~ it.”

YES TURNS OUT THE BIG BAD OF THIS BOOK SERIES I FUCKING CALLED BACK IN CHAPTER 4 OF THE LAST BOOK!  It was Angelique! GOSH WHAT A FUCKING TWIST! YOU KNOW THE CHARACTER WHO, AT THE END OF THE LAST BOOK WAS DESCRIBED IN TEXT AS A BLATANT SPY! Yet the entirety of this book Alexia thinks its LeFoux and goes so far as to think she’s faking being shot? She turns out of the room and all the werewolves are sleeping and instead of…I DON’T KNOW letting them know she’s identified the attacker?  She just huffs that she must do everything herself.

GOD STUPIDITY AND A POINTLESS MARTYR COMPLEX IS REALLY FUCKING HOT! ALSO I’M GLAD THAT EVERY SINGLE WEREWOLF FELT COMFORTABLE FALLING ASLEEP WITH AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THEIR CASTLE THAT WAS EVEN ABLE TO PUT DOWN THEIR FORMER ALPHA!

So Alexia goes to the room where the mummy is, but Angelique is not there. So instead of disposing of the body that Angelique is clearly after, she’s runs up to the Aethongrapher room. Angelique is there and shoves her aside to escape the room. So they go back to the mummy room, and Angelique is trying to drag the body out of there.  Alexia goes to shoot some of her sleepy darts at Angelique but just as she’s about to Ivy shows up to stand in front of Alexia and whine that Alexia is being callous to her.  But as I have described before, this is not Ivy’s fault. Ivy’s kink is inconvenient timing. Blithering obtusely in front of a weapon while the bad guy gets away makes her CUM.  The TV hasn’t been invented yet so she can’t stand in front of it during a crucial part of a show/game.  SHE HAS TO FIND SOME WAY TO GET OFF!

DO YOU WANT THIS WOMAN TO NEVER ORGASM!?

Despite that Alexia is able to catch up to Angelique and knocks her unconscious with a hefty umbrella swing.  She takes the mummy outside, and dissolves it using the acid function on her umbrella.  I mean, I was hoping she’d go whole hog and it would come to life and fight them but WELP guess that would be stupid fun and we’re only allowed one of those things in this book and it ain’t fun.  When the corpse is just about pudding, Alexia goes back in and hears Ivy scream.

OH NO!

We take a break from this regularly scheduled programming to swap over to Biffy, Channing, and Lyall at the Westminster Hive.  Biffy apparently snuck in and broke their Aethonographer.  This is just to let us all know that the message Angelique tried to send before didn’t get through.  I mean targeting the Aethongrapher only, doesn’t make any sense AT ALL from their perspective and honestly you could have written the entire thing out to tighten up the story.  But like I guess it was real important to have that bit where Alexia has to try 2 rooms to find Angelique.

FUCK ME RUNNING!

So Ivy screamed because a woken up Angelique puts a knife to Ivy’s throat and is leading her up the stairs.  All the werewolves are there as well as Tunstell.  Tunstell gets out the magic gun, which by the way they start calling the ‘tun tun’ which makes a lot of sense and is totes keeping it tense. Shouldn’t it be the tun gun? WHATEVER!

They go up to a room and Angelique makes Ivy open a window.  Meanwhile Tunstell tries to sneak around the side while Alexia tries to distract her.  By the way this is the first time we hear that Tunstell is apparently a big dude. I had totally assumed that since he was described as a meek servant/actor coated in freckles that he was a 5’5” adorable waif boy who weighs 110 lbs on a good day.  I’m glad you waited till now to tell us that. After a bit of a scuffle Tunstell wrestles the knife away, saves Ivy, and Angelique tumbles to her death out the window.  The gun is never shot and Chekov leaps out to die on the cold hard Scottish earth like Angelique.

Apparently there was a rope ladder leading down that window that Angelique was really hoping she’d be able to escape down, with the knife to the throat of a hostage? OKAY THEN!  When Angelique woke up, why didn’t she just try to make a break for it, to avoid being persecuted by the supernatural police?  What was the point of the hostage thing? Why did she have this rope ladder prepared?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST BOOK! IT’S NOT GOOD ACTION IF THE ENTIRETY OF IT FALLS APART LIKE A BISCUIT IN TEA WHEN YOU ASK LITERALLY ANY QUESTION REGARDING IT!

You know what would have been a thousand times better?  If Alexia goes to question a recently recovered Angelique, and Angelique in a panic puts a knife to a dipshit Ivy’s throat by a window. Angelique demands to be given the body. Alexia explains that she destroyed it.  Angelique at first doesn’t want to believe it but eventually concedes. Saying something along the lines of, “…If I can’t deliver the body…then…then they’ll kill me…”  The people there try to reassure her that they can protect her.  However in Angelique’s stunned grief she slips from the window, Tunstell is able to grab Ivy but not Angelique.  Was it an accident?  Did she want to die on her own terms?  WE’LL NEVER KNOW?  The chapter ends where the crowd goes to check on her and Angelique is FOR SURE dead. LeFoux seeing the shattered body of her former lover, clutches Alexia and wails.

BUT NOPE IN FACT THIS HAPPENS NEXT!

So Alexia is the only one to go check the body.  Angelique is in fact dead, but turns into a ghost. Angelique tells Alexia to perform the exorcism, which means kill her for real real. Alexia wants questions answered first. Angelique says she’ll answer 10, Alexia agrees to this.  

So like…why are you going to respect her wishes now? Doesn’t she need to be persecuted under the law, or have proof of the Hive’s wrongdoing?  You maybe want to give LeFoux a chance to talk to her, since she was obviously really upset and protective of her before? GUESS NOT!

Angelique, before the questioning is revealed to have done this whole task for the immortality, since she previously and is still working with the Westminster hive. She is GIVEN immortality in the form of being a ghost and is immediately like NOPE I’D RATHER DIE. HUHHHH? MAYBE IT’S NOT IDEAL VAMPIRE THING BUT REALLY?

GOD WHATEVER IT JUST GETS WORSE ANYWAY!

Angelique says that it wasn’t her who tried to break into her bag or poison her. Alexia asks if LeFoux is trying to kill her, Angelique says probably not cause you’d already be dead.  AND LIKE WE ESTABLISHED THIS EXACT ANSWER TO THIS SAME QUESTION BEFORE. WHY ARE YOU WASTING YOUR QUESTIONS YOU COMPLETE IMBECILE!

It’s revealed that Quensel, the kid LeFoux was taking poor care of before, is Angelique’s son.  Angelique was trying to hide the fact she had a son from the vampires cause the vampires won’t turn her if she has any family. Apparently LeFoux, was trying to get Angelique to take care of her son and to stop the vampire biz by threatening to tell the Vampires about her son.  That didn’t work apparently.  We also confirm that yes, SHOCK OF SHOCK, Angelique and LeFoux used to be an item for many years.  So we have this OH SO DELIGHTFUL paragraph:

“Alexia had seen something of the kind in her father’s collection, but she had never imagined it might be based on anything more than masculine wistfulness or performances put on to titillate a John’s palate.  That two women might do such things voluntarily with one another and do so with some degree of romantic love. Was that possible?”

(Irritated Stare with the phrase [stares in gay judgement])

You’re 26 years fucking old, you’re well aware that gay men exist, LeFoux has been hitting on her blatantly this entire book and has been pretty much screaming how much of a lesbian she is.  Like you can have Alexia in bi-denial, sure, but for her not to even realize two girls can have sex and romance at one another outside of men JACKING IT!? FUCKING WOW!   I want to be clear and say that there is a myth that Queen Victoria didn’t think lesbians were real when she was enforcing the no homosexuality laws. TO BE CLEAR THAT IS A MYTH! PEOPLE IN VICTORIAN TIMES KNEW LESBIANS WEREN’T JUST A MALE CREATED HORNY MYTH LIKE HOW WOMEN LOVE THE TASTE OF JIZZ, YOU THICK-HEADED TWIT!

The last questions that Alexia asks basically are, “Is it possible for women to love each other?” and “You’re a cold bitch aren’t you?”  QUEEN PICKED TOP INVESTIGATOR HERE!  She then FOR REAL kills Angelique.  Also I’m glad she didn’t ask Angelique what they were planning on doing with the humanization corpse, because that mystery is probably what the entirety of the 3rd book is about.

So we head back in the castle to try to wrap this all up, and boy is it pointlessly messy.  I’m going to recount the items in order, so you TOO can realize what a clusterfuck this is.

Alexia tells LeFoux that Angelique is dead which makes LeFoux cry.  Alexia has a normal human response to seeing a woman she likes grieving.

“Lady Maccon envied her skill of crying with aplomb.  She herself went all over splotchy, but Madame Lefoux seemed to be able to execute the emotional state with minimal fuss.”

By performing some pretty sweet mental gymnastics to make it about herself. CONGRATULATIONS!  She does later say that the scene was painfully sad…but…your first thought, and the one you dedicate more than a sentence to is… “I wish I could cry as hot as she could?” MOTHER OF FUCK LADY!

Maccon takes Alexia aside and explains that LeFoux and he are besties despite not interacting with her at all this entire book.  He told his BFF4EVAH to keep an eye on Alexia.  Don’t know why he would have lied about this?  Maybe Alexia would have felt patronized? Alexia was attacked 5 times last book and needed to be saved 3 of those times.  There’s nothing wrong with that ratio, but there’s also nothing wrong with wanting to have back up if you’re in a dangerous profession. Besides that the two both love science and gadgets, and if he couldn’t predict that LeFoux would awaken his wife’s bisexuality too, it seems silly to lie to her about it.  

But my pity for Alexia runs dry again when, upon hearing Maccon and LeFoux are buds…she accuses Maccon of sleeping with LeFoux. And it’s like…

(Honestly, you people, and by that I mean straight people…are ridiculous.)

If Alexia is bi, it don’t matter she’s still in denial and acting like a straight up straighty.

You just found out that lesbians are real and that LeFoux is one of them, and YOU were the one to almost cheat on him with her, and you ACCUSE HIM? Are you FOR REAL!?  I mean this is just a set up for Alexia to realize SOME MORE that lesbians are real. I’m glad I’m reading one of those books where everything needs to be explained 5 times.

Alexia brings up the fact that Angelique turned into a ghost but exorcised her right away without considering if literally anybody else wanted to talk to her INCLUDING THE LONG-TERM –EX-GIRLFRIEND WHO WAS RAISING HER KID.  LeFoux is rightly upset at this and Alexia retorts with

“There’s no need to wallow.”

Now even Lord Maccon steps in like, “THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, SHE’S RIGHTLY UPSET!”  To which Aleixa points out OH SO RIGHTLY that LeFoux didn’t want to be girlfriends with Angelique again, so like…it makes no sense why she’d want to have some parting words or care about her living or dying.

THEN THIS TRANSITION SHEESH VERBATIM:

Lord Maccon looked at his wife appreciatively. “Good Lord, woman, how could you have possibly known that?”

“Well” – Lady Maccon grinned – “Madame Lefoux here did play a bit of the coquette with me while we were traveling. I do not think she was entirely shamming.”

I’m sorry what?  We already established that LeFoux is a vagatrian and had a relationship with Angelique.  Is she saying the fact she was flirted with PROOF that LeFoux is not in a relationship? Alexia, you were flirting back and you’re married. This is not a brilliant deduction.  We only have this transition so that Alexia can brag about almost BUT NOT ACTUALLY cheating on her husband.  And like…it’s one thing to take the piss out of him because he’s irrationally jealous.  However Alexia herself was like REALLY, REALLY irrationally jealous a second ago and it’s not really irrational since Alexia might have had sex with her if she came to the conclusion earlier that girls can like other girls.  SoOOoOOoOOoo great!

We continue to have pissing contests.  Maccon is mad that Alexia never told him she was almost poisoned, even though you’d THINK Tunstell would have brought that up to him since he’s his servant and he was the one actually poisoned.  LeFoux admits she was looking around for Alexia’s bag and that she wanted the humanization weapon too.  However she wants it NOT because she’s in the Hypocras club, but in the Organization of the Brass Octopus (OBO.)  The Organization of the Brass Octopus is a secret group of Scientists that is working to curb the power of Supernaturals and that the Hypocras Club was a ~militant branch~ of the OBO.  Alexia is bothered that Maccon didn’t tell her about OBO, since YANNO Alexia spent half the book thinking that her crush LeFoux wanted to genocide people like her husband.  Which yanno REALLY STOPPED HER FROM A LOT THERE!  Alexia tries to ask more questions about OBO and Maccon just answers them all with, “But it’s a secret!”

Really love that Maccon gets super mad when Alexia doesn’t talk to him, but when she asks questions he huffs and won’t tell her.  You could maybe argue that since it’s a secret society thing that Maccon shouldn’t tell her. He was sworn to secrecy or some shit.  But like also…a branch of this club nearly killed them both… and she’s in charge of the entire English government’s Supernatural balance system….Maybe it’s okay for her to know a little about a powerful organization in that country that’s supposed to do the same thing?

WHATEVER!

We end with LeFoux admitting she was LOOKING FOR Alexia’s bag but never went through it or messed up her room to find it.  Alexia for once has a normal reaction which boils down to, “FUCK THIS SHIT!” and storms out.  CAUSE WHY BRING UP SHE WAS LOOKING FOR IT AT ALL? That is pointlessly confusing.

So below I made a little chart with how easily it could have been to make this conversation flow better. Even if you want to keep in jealousy pissing contest which is also an EVEN WOMEN WOULD SEX ME STUPID HUSBAND!

I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about editing books…but I feel as if either the editors gave this a soft touch.  It seems like a simple fix that could have tightened it up and made it an easier read.

Say something nice Faps:

It was technically a climax

They technically tried to wrap things up

It has been acknowledged that yes LESBIANS ARE REAL

I did genuinely like Alexia having a vulnerable moment looking upon her knocked out husband and feeling protective of him.

[beardcore-blog]

A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

[nyangibun]

Little Wolf: Part V

@jonsa-countdown

PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV - AO3 LINK

PART V: SONGS

January 10, 2016

“I feel like a frozen watermelon,” Margaery complained. She had a protective hand over her engorged belly and another one pressed over her eyes.

It was a typical frosty winter, no different than the last. Snow blanketed the rolling hills and mountaintops, driving most of Winterfell and its neighbouring towns indoors. The temperature had dropped into the negatives late last night. Sansa had come over to watch over Margaery, while Robb, Jon and their team traveled further north to help search for missing hikers. Every year, there was always a couple who thought they could brave the Scottish weather, and every year, the Fire and Rescue team would have to go out and save them. Sansa didn’t want to think badly of people she didn’t know and who were probably already scared beyond their wits, but every time it happened, it was her brother and her friends’ lives on the line and it angered her that there were people that foolish.

“I can heat up a hot water bottle for you.”

Margaery removed her hand, blinking at Sansa, and smiled. “It’s okay. I’m not that uncomfortable yet. Give me a few months though and you might just have to move in. God knows your brother is useless.”

Sansa chuckled. “Robb tries, but…”

“He’s easily distracted?” Margaery snorted and shifted so she could lean against the sofa. “I know. Trust me.”

It had taken awhile for Sansa to warm up to Margaery when they first started dating three years ago. The brunette was kind and sweet, but Sansa always had the underlying sense that she never said what she meant. This proved to be true the more Sansa got to know her, but Margaery was an ambitious woman in a male-dominated world. She learned a long time ago that in order to succeed in life she had to keep her cards close to her chest; otherwise men will try to undermine her at every given opportunity. Sansa could understand that. In fact, learning to steel oneself away from the world was a lesson she had learned all too well, and that had been the defining moment in their friendship. Knowing that about Margaery made Sansa like her infinitely more, and knowing Sansa understood made Margaery more open to her as well.

But being close to Margaery Tyrell-Stark also meant the woman was as shrewd as ever in reading her.

“What’s going on with you and Jon?”

No holding punches; just blunt interrogation.

Sansa resolutely kept her eyes glued to the tv. “We’re friends.”

“Don’t. You can fool Robb, but c’mon. Friends don’t eyefuck each other from across the room.” At Sansa’s groan, Margaery made a triumphant little noise. “Indulge a pregnant woman.”

“Jon is Jon, Marg. I don’t know what you want me to say,” she sighed, already feeling exhausted with this conversation. It was one Jeyne brought up quite frequently, and even Theon at one point, but that was a drunken awkward conversation she’d rather forget. “He’s…”

“Your perfect soulmate?” Margaery supplied. She squealed with laughter when Sansa kicked her foot. “Okay, fine. You’re friends. Do you want something more?”

“No,” she answered a little too quickly. “After Petyr, I just…” She hesitated. This was something she hadn’t ever told anyone before, not even Jeyne, but maybe it was time to confess. “The thought of anyone touching me makes me feel dirty and I don’t want to feel that way about Jon.”

Margaery’s hand slipped into Sansa’s. She squeezed lightly. “You know it’ll pass, don’t you, Sans? That feeling will go away.”

“When?” she demanded. “When will I stop looking over my shoulder and imagining his face there? Because it hasn’t stopped and I just – Jon means too much to me, Marg. I can’t let this taint him the way it has everything else in my life.”

“So, he’ll wait.” Her friend looked at her with such sincerity in her words it made Sansa’s heart ache because it simply wasn’t true.

“And I’d be a bitch to ask him to,” Sansa pointed out. “Jon deserves better.”

“Better than you?” Margaery snorted. “There’s no such thing, babe.”

Thankfully, Sansa was saved from replying when the door burst open. A swirl of snow swept into the house, as Robb and Theon carried a limping Jon over to the adjacent sofa. Sansa immediately stood up, panicked and worried. Jon’s face was contorted in pain.

“What happened?” Margaery asked. She wiggled, but then decided standing up was too much of an effort for her. “Are you alright?”

Jon sighed. “Slipped. It’s nothing.” When Sansa moved towards him, he put up a hand, his smile fond but tired. “Sans, I’m okay I promise.”

She rolled her eyes as she settled on her knees to take a look at his leg. “Where does it hurt?”

“We already checked. Nothing’s broken, but he probably twisted his knee, the prick.” Her brother had his arms crossed over his chest. The Robb Stark sign of abject displeasure. “We told him not to be a hero, but he just had to go and do it anyway.”

“What did he do?” She glanced towards her brother, whose eyes betrayed his anger. He was just as concerned as her.

“Their knapsack got stuck on the side of a cliff with their cameras inside. Apparently, it had a year’s worth of photos.” Robb didn’t sound impressed, and neither was Sansa.

“So you decided it was your job to save it?” she demanded of the man before her. Jon had the good sense to look regretful. Sansa still stood up and smacked his shoulder. “You numpty.”

He caught her hand before she could pull back and circled his fingers around her wrist. “I’m sorry, Sansa.” Jon’s eyes looked earnest, but he also looked like he was more sorry for worrying her than getting injured. “Hey, forgive me?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No.” Sansa turned back to her brother and friends. “I assume you brought him here so I could drive him home?”

Theon looked sheepish. “His flat is on the opposite side of town. We just figured you’d want to since you two are –”

Margaery kicked him harshly in the shin, causing Theon to yelp loudly. She smiled sweetly back. “Since you two are such good friends.” She turned her smile onto her husband. “Robb, honey, can you help me up the stairs? All this drama is making me sleepy.”

It wasn’t the most subtle save, but Robb was all too eager to please his pregnant wife, so he nodded and quickly went over to help Margaery up.

“Let yourselves out. Night!” she called as the two disappeared up the stairs.

Theon rubbed his leg and sighed. “My cue to leave too. Call me tomorrow, Snow. And uh, sorry, Sans. Bye.”

As the door clicked shut and the voices of Margaery and Robb disappeared behind their bedroom, Sansa sighed, running her free hand through her hair. Jon laughed and tugged her towards him. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m still mad at you.”

“I’m fine,” he emphasised. He still had his hand wrapped around her wrist, soothing the worry that he was in any danger tonight. “There was a moment when I thought that this might be it,” he admitted quietly. He watched her carefully as he spoke. “It was a split second truthfully, barely worth mentioning, but in that second I thought, ‘god, I can’t die. I still have to take Sansa to the Chelsea Flower Show.’”

Sansa laughed. “Really? That was what you were thinking about?”

“Yeah,” Jon smirked, as he dropped her hand and leaned back against the sofa, a picture of ease. “I can’t disappoint my favourite girl.”

Warmth bloomed in her chest, the kind of unbidden hope and affection she didn’t want. Sansa stepped away. “We should get you home. It’s getting late.” If Jon noticed the abrupt change, he didn’t comment on it. He merely nodded and stood up shakily on one leg. Sansa immediately went to shoulder his weight. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to A&E?”

“If it doesn’t get better in a couple days, I’ll go. Will that make you feel better?”

“Make it twenty-four hours.”

“You got it, Princess Sansa.” He bowed his head and tugged on the end of her hair like he always did when he thought he was being cute. Sansa snorted. Together, they half stumbled their way to her car.

Once they were on the road, Jon began to fiddle restlessly with the car radio. He changed channels so many times Sansa was two seconds away from hitting the brakes and throwing him out into the cold. Finally, he stopped, a bright smile pulling on his lips.

“I love this song.” He turned his whole body so he could look at her. “My mum used to sing it to me, but she’d replace ‘girl’ with ‘boy’.”

“With your curls, Snow, you could easily have passed for a girl,” Sansa told him, winking.

He laughed and shook his head. “Actually, people used to think I was a girl. Mum said I had such a full head of hair as a baby that people just assumed. I guess it didn’t help she dressed me in pinks and yellows all the time.”

“I bet you were a cute chubby baby.” And she bet he had the rosiest cheeks and the sweetest eyes. Oh, how she would have loved to see baby pictures of Jon. Unfortunately, the fire that took Lyanna’s life had also taken a good chunk of Jon’s childhood. So many memories lost in the ashes.

Jon shrugged, adorable little spots of pink on his cheeks. He didn’t say anything for awhile, but then suddenly in an incredibly off-key pitch, he started to sing. “Well I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way?” He leaned forward. “My girl. Ooh, talking about my girl. My girl!”

“Jon Snow, you are absurd.” But even so, Sansa couldn’t help the laughter bubbling through, as he continued to sing loudly and very badly. He even made hand gestures. And she was embarrassed to admit that every time he pointed at her when he sang, ‘my girl’, hundreds of little butterflies flapped their wings excitedly in her stomach.

For the first time in months, as she sat here driving in the middle of the night with Jon singing beside her, Sansa felt free and unburdened by life’s realities. In this very moment, nothing could touch her. Not her past; not her insecurities; not even the knowledge that this was likely all there would ever be between them, because it didn’t matter. Jon was her best friend, the one person she counted on to always be there for her, and that was enough. She didn’t want or need any more.

May 14, 2017 - Present Day

It was getting warmer. The weather report said there would be a heat wave soon sometime at the end of May, which worried Sansa. She didn’t want Chloe to overheat. From all of the books she’d read about parenting, that was dangerous for a child as young as her. At the earliest opportunity, Sansa headed out to buy Chloe a fan for her room. It wasn’t hot enough yet for there to be a fan, but she wanted to be prepared in case the heat wave hit a week or so early. Weather reports weren’t always accurate after all.

Only half of the shops were opened this early on a Sunday. The first two stores she went to didn’t even sell fans yet, and by the fourth, Sansa’s irritability was at an all-time high, so of course that was the exact moment her arch nemesis at work decided to call after her from down the street.

“Sansa, dear, it’s so nice to see you!”

She grit her teeth and forced a smile onto her face. “Melissa, hi. It’s lovely to see you too.”

“We’ve missed you terribly at work,” the dark-haired woman said in her false dulcet tone. Sansa loathed her. Melissa Ferretti had been eyeing her job for the past year. It was one of the reasons why Sansa had such a hard time going on maternity leave at first, but in the end, Chloe always came before anything else. Still, she hated Melissa.

“I miss everyone there too,” Sansa said politely, hoping she sounded more sincere than she felt.

Melissa smiled broadly. “When do you think you’ll be back? I hope it’s soon.”

She very well knew that Sansa was taking close to a year off. She wasn’t going to half-arse raising Chloe. If she needed to, Sansa would rather quit her job than neglect her little wolf. “I can’t say yet. Chloe is still adjusting, so we’ll have to see.”

“We?”

It had been second nature to her for the past four months to refer to Jon and her as a ‘we’. She forgot most people still knew her as Single Sansa. She should tell Melissa that Jon was simply her co-parent and platonic housemate, but the surprise in her eyes made Sansa feel a little smug.

“Jon and I,” she said casually. “Actually, he’s with her right now and I promised I’d be home as soon as I’m done with my errands, so I’m afraid I have to run now. We should catch up sometime, Melissa.”

Sansa gave the other woman a perfunctory hug and quickly sped away before Melissa could start asking questions about who Jon was. “Okay, um… I’ll see you around!” Sansa heard from behind her. The smile now on her face was anything but insincere; it was perfectly self-satisfied.

After another ten minutes of wandering through town, Sansa finally found a sizeable fan and began her journey back home. The storm from a month ago appeared to have cleared Scotland for summer. The grass looked brighter and the sun more prominent even on cloudy days. She had lived in London for four years, but being down there had only cemented her love for the north. People up here were kinder, more generous with their feelings and there was a sense of community here that London lacked. Most importantly, this was home. Growing up, that had never meant much to her, not in the way it did for the other Starks. Sansa had always felt different, a runt in a pack of wild wolves. She left for London in the hopes that the dreams she harboured as a child would come true – glittering lights, new adventures and all the culture and art she could digest. In the end, Sansa found only heartbreak and an aching desire for home. Winterfell would always be where she belonged. Small as it was in comparison, it was the best place she knew, and driving through the hillside now towards her small little house, Sansa had never been more sure she made the best possible decision. If she hadn’t come home, she never would’ve had those last precious years with Robb and Margaery.

Pulling up into her driveway, Sansa noticed the window was open in Chloe’s nursery. Jon must be up. She hadn’t expected him to be awake yet. He got home at nearly three in the morning last night after what she presumed was a very late shift. She heard him stumbling about in the dark for a few minutes before his door shut and then silence. Late night shifts for them usually meant harrowing rescues and a part of her longed to speak to him about it, just to make sure he was doing okay, but they hadn’t really spoken much since that incident in town. She knew she didn’t have a right to be angry with him. Jon hadn’t done a single thing wrong except greet an old friend. It was Sansa with the problem, but confronting it seemed too complicated. It would only bring up things neither wanted to talk about right now.

Sansa left the fan on the floor in the lounge as she made her way up to Chloe’s nursery. The door was ajar, his voice drifting to where she stood frozen at the top of the stairs.

“I've got so much honey the bees envy me. I've got a sweeter song than the birds in the trees. Well I guess you'd say, what can make me feel this way?” Chloe giggled loudly, clapping her hands together, and she heard Jon’s responding chuckle. “That’s right, lil’ wolf. It’s you. You’re my girl. My favourite girl.”

Tears welled in her eyes. A part of her still thought of Chloe as her niece and resisted the idea of calling her Sansa’s daughter, but not for Jon. The moment he found out in the will what Robb and Margaery wanted, Chloe was his. And that became so crystal clear to her now. She was his daughter. It wasn’t Chloe Tyrell-Stark any longer. It was Chloe Snow-Stark. She was as much apart of Sansa’s family as she was apart of Jon’s.

And whatever happened in their past, they owed it to Chloe to figure out, as complicated as it may be. Sansa needed to move forward.

[ladysageflysagain]

Dear Lover,

To me you looked like Heaven but to everybody else you seemed like Hell. I spent our relationship trying to fight my intuition, trying to find a way to make things work. You were selfish at every turn. You didn’t want to compromise the way that you should in a relationship, though you took my past better than most men.  The panick attacks were an annoyance but you promised you wouldn’t leave me for them. My abuse record spilled out to you, like it does with all men I plan to sleep with because there are some things I just cannot do in the bedroom. You were gentle, almost too gentle, like you were afraid  I would unravel underneath your touch, but I have my grandfather’s Scottish blood in me and my grandmother’s Cherokee blood. I am so much stronger then I used to be. You told me that if I ever tried to hurt myself that you would likely leave, because you could only handle one crazy person in your family and that was your daughter. I occasionally get the urge nowadays but never follow through I told you which is true, but that isn’t the way to treat a girl who will be in recovery for the rest of her life. You told me that you would knock my walls down slowly. You only had to knock down a few bricks before I bulldozed the whole thing myself. That’s how much I  wanted you. You made alot of promises about fixing your life so that we could actually have time together. You could go and play at the casino or go and play pool with the boys but you couldn’t figure out a way to see me in at least an entire month outside of work a few times a week for never any more then 40 minutes at a time. I would have stayed awake to see you. You couldn’t take me to your house to hang out in your day off? You think I hate your kids but I actually really am fond of your kids, I just don’t like their friends that continually put you in debt.  All of those songs we shared. You said that “You’re The Inspiration” by Chicago was your song for me, but clearly I wasn’t. I wanted to be more then anything. You said the song “Glory of Love” by Peter Cetera made you think of me. Sure you defended my honor to your friends, got mad when my mom or anybody else was mean to me, but you won’t be my Hero. I thought you were. I even called you Superman. I am not Lois Lane maybe I don’t need to be saved. I am Wonder Woman. As for my song to you. There is no magic compass that will bring us together. My names not Zella Day.We arent Damon and Elena from Vampire Diaries. You calmed me like a rainbow that shimmered after a thunderstorm and true love does always find its way  but clearly you aren’t my true love. You are a good man. You certainly aren’t bad, you have the same morals that I do. My biggest flaw both inside and outside of this relationship is that I’m a blabber mouth. You did help me in alot of ways. You built my confidence. Showed me how not to act on a first date, not to expose my raw nerves, not to let a man see my tender bleeding heart so soon. You taught me what love can be and what it shouldn’t be. You helped me get past alot of my anxiety. Showed me to let go of needless worry.  Gave me new ways to cope with my depression and admired that I was attempting to properly live my life and that I happened to have interests besides just you. You despite what it seems you actually wanted showed me how to not just be obedient to the man I love. You never hit me.You never were cruel. You never cheated on me. You asked me to marry you like a month in. I told you to slow down and you did. That scared me. Part of me wishes I had said yes. I did want to marry you someday. Still another part of me was so worried that if I had somehow gotten pregnant that I wouldn’t know how to escape this awful city with a child. The laws here say I would have to ask your permission to leave if I had a child with you. I could go but the kid couldn’t and you were very straight forward about not going anywhere. I had promised before I knew that never to do that to you and I meant to keep that promise. Alot of people think it was our age difference that made things hard.

It wasn’t. I have lived a thousand broken lives. If anything it seemed like you were immature about alot of things. Although I can still be naive about things.  If our last breakup(before this one) was any indication then you didn’t love me like you said In any way. I didn’t eat the whole time(3 days) and you knew about it but didnt in anyway try to help me. I was hysterical and you said you would try to fix things but I caved and got back with you because I loved you so disparingly , needed you so desperately, wanted you so  deeply. Then you dumped me later because of my pets. Of all things. Work is going to be different for both of us and a bit difficult at least for me. I adore the ground you walk on. I had an outburst right after you dumped me, where I was crying and that raised a few alarms. I’m trying not to tell people about our breakup now. A few I did though or they guessed. People are either ecstatic or sorry, some are even pissed at you. I think maybe you were a lesson. The kind of lesson that I needed. Love is patient, I was being patient and when I gave  up I tried again. I lost friends over you. I continually kept choosing you. Love is kind. I was kind to you. Love means never saying sorry like the cliche movie says. I learned not to apologize for who I am. Everyone still sees the devil in you. I still see and will always see the angel.

Forever and always, Me

[stevecoleridge-posts]

SPANISH LOCKDOWN …DAY14

Saturday night s all right for fighting.. on Facebook of course,

i was just casting my mind back to a Ninurta  Night , as there called their Saturdays Night in Uruk, capital of Sunny Sumeria, and  imagining what a great time they were probably having 5000 years ago , getting pissed on the local beer, because they invented that ,as well as the seven day week. Of course they did nt have Netflix, but they got to go out more..i don’t have Netflix either , yet , but have axs to lots of stuff including Music documentaries , which we are watching in order , chronological order that is..starting with The Birth of Country music .. and Mr Ralph Peers,from new York, who looked a little like Brian Epstein by the way , who set up a temporary recording studio above  furniture shop, there you go agin , NEMs , well no, it was nt , but anyway I digress, and into this temporary Studio  walked The Carter Family..3 of them .. and Jimmie Rogers.. yes.. that Jimmie Rogers , the Singing brakeman..i mean ,Okay , i can hear you mumbling about Sam Phillips, and the Chess brothers etc.. but this was Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia..a place no-one who doesn’t live round there has heard of..its like discovering the Beatles and the Rolling Stones..or rather signing them..   After that we watched a newish doc about the King , E.V. Presley..and it was mad by some guys driving round America in his Rolls royce..great stuff   That led to the Fab Four , Eight days a Week.. which was about their touring years and the whole world has seen it except me… its absolutely.. the F word , second letter A..anyway this time 55 years ago they were filming Help. inSt Margarets..Twickenham..and taking photos for the infamous Butcher cover , in the Vale , Chelsea, where my first nursery school was located..ah well.. don’t want to get too carried away on Beatles Lore..or i ll bore you to death , because i don’t mind admitting i am well versed in that subject…   The Beatles represented the 60s in the same way Elvis represented the 50 s…and someone told a story about how the disgusting Colonel Parker, in inverted commas,used to put a cover over Elvis Cadillac so the girls could nt see him when he drove on to the Movie lot in hollywood… well once the Beatles arrived the Colonel still put the cover on , so Elvis could nt see there were no longer any girls..A sad figure..but  his mantle of  loneliness was later to be worn by Michael jackson and especially Prince..Do these Royal titles always end with a solitary death on the loo or in a Lift

From there we moved too the Seventies… and surely the quintessential Seventies hero is Bowie..well now it so alluringly sunny outside ill have to go and play guitar on the terrace .. and leave David for another time..

No i don’t want to see the News..

DAY 15..Sunday…

The clocks have gone on to sensible time..even in lockdown this is cheerful news.. I was wondering how long it will take for people with imaginary ailments to return to their plastic chairs in Hospital waiting rooms throughout the Western world.. these people presumably will be the ones most frightened of Covid 19..there s nothing imaginary about that..but if you have ME and you re lying on the sofa all day, and you feel depressed , and your bones are aching etc.. well how do feel different from everyone else..and as for food intolerance .. that should be interesting when the statistics come in about consumption in Supermarkets..i know there are allergies and allergies.. but the possibility of imminently drowning in ones own mucus does concentrate the mind wonderfully, and a lot of people will find themselves in the second category once shortages begin of certain previously essential items..suddenly one has to be tolerant of a whole raft of things one had previously considered unacceptable ..two weeks ago i could not have imagined four days without bread.. but its no big deal.. onions likewise..thats what happens when you shop with no list.. bit like going on stage without a playlist.. its a gamble … it can produce unexpected benefits in that you try stuff you had nt tried before.. but you often forget the best songs..

We watched the film about the Kursk, the Submarine which was on the seabed and owing to bureaucracy and politics the Crew were allowed to die..even though t5here was a foreign Ship with equipment nearby that could have saved them.. reminds me of something..are we the mariners or are we the mariners wives?

Does the Chinese government have a cure? are they just waiting for the US economy to completely collapse?..Will we ever know?

Day 16

Each day just goes so fast , i turn around , it s past..

One of my fave tracks from Revolver..anyway playing in E7 , as usual , in fact I’ve been stuck in E 7 since Lockdown started..Catfish , Smokestack lighting ,Good Morning Blues , Take Out Some Insurance..however now the time has come to expand ..and try Freight train..the classic finger picking song..so ,if i observe radio silence for a while you ll know why..

Saw the news…The government had adopted some economic measures which seemed very well thought out , in the sense they were are determined not to let the mistakes of the last crisis , where the poorest people got the rawest deal. I won’t go into details , its all online if you re interested..it was more a sensation than anything  logical , but it made me feel a bit less pessimistic for the first time in a few weeks,i found i was nt thinking about Death quite as much , even in the abstract. that may sound overdramatic , but i think everybody is thinking about it subconsciously a great deal more than they were, say, last Christmas..well actually in our particular situation , where we had been frequenting cancer wards and the like , maybe i should go back to 2018…but  the awarerness of death affects every facet of how you think about everything else..i don’t just mean concentrating the mind wonderfully..anyway its half past two, and tomorrow ill probably delete all this..The gist was that for some reason things don’t feel quite so bleak..

Day 17

Yesterday was a 3 own a scale of  ten as far as ding anything worthwhile was concerned. After watching a film i unreservedly recommend..The vanishing.. about  3 men who disappeared from a Scottish island where they were repairing th elighthouse , i watched Tolkien , the movie about one of my heroes , but not one of Auroras heroes apparently as she fell asleep during the first reel, so to speak, anyway she s not huge Tolkien fan , having been made to sit through the fellowship of the ring seven times..be that as it may , the sofa is not designed for sleeping comfortably so she had a severely cricked neck the next morning and stayed in bed, leaving Tina and i to our own devices..this meant i ate a packet of chocolate biscuits for brunch and did nt eat again till midnight , which goes to show how lucky I am not to be on my own.

  to entertain myself between bouts of fingerpicking i decided to9 look up on google what English people disliked the most.. while i did nt find the answer to this question i did get seriously sidetracked and found out the answers to several more pressing questions about Europe,and i m proud to say the british isles scored very highly

The Dirtriest City..Yay .. London The Ugliest people..The British and the irish  and the Germans ..okay , so we cant beat the Germans but at least we drew The Rudest people..That was easy..The French win every time, when i lived in  Paris  i prided myself on becoming Parisian, and adopting local customs , but one day , in a moment of absent mindedness , and for a subconscious second imagining myself in Spain , i said Good Morning to my next door neighbour, a short fellow with a mop of dark hair and glasses, who i passed on my way to the metro in Boulevard St . Germain… i am not a Physiognomist.. he replied…i made a not e of that , hoping i could use the phrase Je ne suit pas Phisionome, myself on some future occasion..but sadly , said opportunity has not arisen. Most boring City..Brussels .. for the third year running…Hasve nt these people been to Oslo? Most Friendly Country..wait for it… Scotland..most friendly capital .. Dublin Worst Cuisine..Malta , tied with Kosovo Best ..Italy Most Beautiful Women ..Norway ..and Bulgaria..i would have voted for Madrid..but you cant argue with Norway Most ignorant Country in Europe ..italy. Most Rapes..Sweden..well that was no surprise..however i won’t analyse those statistics or Ill be done for Isamolophobia Most ignorant country in the World ..Indonesia Most depressed ..World..China , India, Brazil,..what??..USA.. and Bangladesh Most mental Illness..Estonia,Belarus , Russia Most Obese Europe..Yes We won agin .. Britain

And so on .. there was more , i could nt stop , but i did check the criteria..and obviously ruled out anything from the Daily Mail or the Independent.. which are not really newspapers at , but sheets of opinions conforming to the prejudices of their readers.

When i got tired of this i got the Scythe out of the tree and  cut the grass for half an hour .. feeling like a peasant woman in Quiet Flows The Don..its quite restful when you get in rhythm. Aurora was still ill so i made her some chicken soup.. well , packet chicken soup with some noodles and chicken added.. anyway , she did nt eat it .. so i had it saved for my supper.. I did nt watch TV..i could nt be bothered to work out how turn it on to be honest , thats how lazy i felt, and i just sat by the fire and went through all the fingerpicking songs again.

Spanish lockdown..Day 18

Aurora s feeling a wee bit better, but cant eat anything , so cannot take Iboprufen, or whatever it is in English ..but says she could probably handle bread.. so..that means a trip to the heart of Fukushima, err..well ...on with the masks , gloves etc  and to the shop in El Llano.. small village near here , a lot more isolated than Carboneras..I was feeling fairly confident as i trundled along the track  , that the town hall had tarmacked before some election or other..anyway , rounding a corner there was a woman of un certain age in the road waving me down,.,.

What to do?…You re are not allowed passengers , plus she was not wearing gloves or a mask..

Should i observe the Law, or basic good manners? i d vaguely recognised her.. and had she she been a total stranger i would have passed on by , but , hell , she was Local, so i had to pick her up..

She did nt recognise me.. obviously , as i was wearing a cap , two masks with a scarf on top, and polo neck unrolled over the bottom half of my face , like a character in the Bash Street Kids..an way i had the window down , and was almost sticking my head out as i drove..

@ Chilly out @.. she observed…

i pretended not to understand this hint that i should close the window..

@ Do you think it s going to rain ? @

@ I  think probably not @

@All these people with masks @  she observed ,as a car squeezes by us, going in the opposite direction . I began to wonder if she knew there was  such a thing as Covid 19,and  saw the driver  studying us..I was hoping he  would nt recognise me either.. and was weighing up whether what i was doing would meet with his approval. i.e. helping a distressed local, or would be considered a breach of community sprit. On coming into the village we received more enigmatic looks..and i  felt uneasy as i got out in front of the shop and followed her to the door … pausing  to read the safety notices outside.and thus give her a head start . i won’t reproduce them ..wherever you are you ve probably seen the equivalent..anyway ,no sooner did i enter the shop than she was next to me selecting suit and veg..and ignoring safe distancing, which i agree was academic , as we d just been in much too close proximity,..thus forcing me to leave the fruit and go and study the options in frozen fish..while she was having a conversation wi the owner

  @ Do you think it will rain?@   @ Its chilly out @ etc..

As we went about our purchasing i saw more and more foodstuffs i would nt normally consider..and soon had over a weeks supply..which , considering how much we already had at home made me hope this lockdown was going to go on for  a while ..or otherwise id feel a fool .. no , i did nt really think that.. Much as i wanted to prolong my shopping experience there was queue forming outside , so felt obliged to go more quickly that i would have liked..especially as i hoped to delay long enough not to have to take the woman back to her house..vainly as it turned out as she was a quarter of a mile along the track when i was obliged to pick her up again..

We passed the garbage truck.in a lay-by. @ My nephew..@ she explained..I began to feel id made the right decision..as i doubted she d been more than a mile from her house in the past few months… nonetheless i observed full protocol on arriving home..even disinfecting the car having a shower and putting all my clothes in the machine.

[readersforum]

13 Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire and Get You Started With Your Own

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/13-influencer-marketing-campaigns-to-inspire-and-get-you-started-with-your-own/

13 Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire and Get You Started With Your Own

You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about the elusive, purportedly mystical powers of influencer marketing.

But is this buzzword-laden tactic actually worth your time and energy?

According to a recent study comprised of marketers from a variety of industries, 94% said influencer marketing was an effective campaign strategy. That’s great news for marketers — right?

Not so fast. Even though a majority of marketers believe influencer marketing is a viable tactic, it’s still incredibly challenging to report accurately on influencer campaign ROI. In fact,

So even though the tangible benefits of influencer marketing — follower engagement, driving traffic, and creating more authentic content — seem clear-cut, there’s still a lot of progress to be made in making this form of campaign measurable for agencies and marketers.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is designed to tap into an existing community of engaged followers on social media. Influencers are specialists in their niches. These individuals have influence over an audience you might be trying to reach, and can be helpful marketing to those buyers.

Let’s back up for a minute. How exactly do you perform influencer marketing, and how does it differ from the traditional celebrity spokesperson advertising model?

There is some overlap between celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing campaigns. But fans of influencers trust that their endorsement of a product or brand comes from a well-researched, more holistic place, rather than something as simple as a signed contract between a brand and a person of influence.

And while there is often a formal agreement in place between both parties, influencers tend to be more selective about their affiliations, choosing to partner with brands that reflect their unique personal brands and won’t alienate their followers.

With that in mind, here are four things you need to keep in mind when launching an influencer marketing campaign:

Expertise: Would the content of your campaign be appropriate coming from this influencer, given what he or she is famous for?

Reach: Can this influencer engage your audience? Does she specifically have reach on the social media channels where your audience spends its time?

Demographic: Is this person’s following similar to your company’s buyer persona? Does he or she affect the same people?

Notoriety: Is this influencer well liked? Is his/her fame split between admiration and condemnation, or are they a person of mass appeal? (The latter is what you want, so as to not alienate potential customers.)

In other words, celebrity product endorsements are less about engagement and more about attaching a person’s fame and name recognition to a particular brand — regardless of who specifically follows their career. For brands, this type of campaign is much more about grabbing the attention of a wide audience than tapping into a very specific niche.

To give you an idea of how brands — both big and small — are leveraging the power of influencers in their marketing efforts, we’ve put together a list of ten influencer-driven campaigns. Check them out below and decide for yourself: Is influencer marketing worth the hype?

Influencer Marketing Examples

Sprint: #LiveUnlimited

Old Navy: Boys & Girls Club of America

Fiji Water: “Bodyworewhat”

Kaikatsu Club: NETCafe VR

H&M: Fall Studio Collection

Sperry: Boat Shoes on Instagram

Samsung: Note 7 Launch

Diageo: My Tales of Whiskey

GAP: Styld.by

Stride Gum: Mad Intense Gum

Naked Juice: Sponsored Instagram Posts

Loeffler Randall: LR Ambassadors

Glossier: Regular Women

1. Sprint: #LiveUnlimited

Influencers: Lele Pons, Gerard Adams, Prince Royce, Bradley Martyn, Rachel Cook

Not only did Sprint cause Verizon’s famous “can you hear me now?” guy to switch to Sprint, but the company has collaborated with musicians, entrepreneurs, and actors to gain the attention of a massive young audience.

Its latest influencer campaign uses the hashtag #LiveUnlimited, and features people who have massive social media presences. The best part is these people naturally embody the appearance and lifestyle of #LiveUnlimited. Elite Daily founder Gerard Adams and internet personality Lele Pons are just two of them.

Sprint introduces all five influencers (listed above) in this video ad:

2. Old Navy: Boys & Girls Club of America

Influencer: Alex Rodriguez

Old Navy is a veteran of influencer marketing, having partnered with fashion and lifestyle bloggers all over Instagram to promote various lines of Old Navy clothing. For Black Friday, the company doubled down on this strategy by partnering with New York Yankee retiree Alex Rodriguez to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of America (BGCA). Being an alumnus of the BGCA, Rodriguez’s promotion helped Old Navy raise $1 million as part of sales during Black Friday alone.

      View this post on Instagram

    how stinkin cute is @arod — yes, that alex rodriguez — reading to kids in the @bgca_clubs about our cozy socks?! amazing fact: the sports legend is a proud club alum and says it “saved my life.” . this friday only, for every $1 pair of cozy socks you buy in-store, we’ll be donating $1 to @bgca_clubs — up to a million! 🧦 ✨ . cozy #your❤️out #oldnavystyle . (limit 10 per customer)

A post shared by oldnavy (@oldnavy) on Nov 19, 2018 at 9:02am PST

3. Fiji Water: Bodyworewhat

Influencer: Danielle Bernstein

You know the water brand, Fiji, but you might know its campaign partner better by the Instagram name, weworewhat.

Danielle Bernstein’s fashion blog, We Wore What, recently joined Fiji Water to create Bodyworewhat, an influencer marketing campaign offering eight-minute workout videos with Bernstein and personal trainer Eric Johnson.

This campaign was meant to demonstrate Fiji’s commitment to hydrating those who want to look and feel as fit as Bernstein, while helping her fans get there with all the right motivators.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FIJI Water (@fijiwater)

4. Kaikatsu Club: NETCafe VR

Influencer: Enakorin

Not all influencers are based in sports, fashion, or entertainment — not in Asia, anyway. The cafe chain, Kaikatsu Club, recently launched a virtual reality feature across its Japan locations, where customers can play various VR video games while enjoying a drink or a meal. And who better to help spread the word than Japan’s popular TV personality and cosplayer, Enakorin.

Enakorin is well known by fans of anime, a Japanese artform responsible for many comics and TV shows across the country. Enakorin is also known for her love of video games, making her a perfect choice to represent Kaikatsu’s new VR entertainment platform. Both of them teamed up with TimeLine Japan on YouTube to talk about it.

5. H&M: Fall Studio Collection

Influencers: Julie Sariñana, Ela Velden

H&M has one of the largest Instagram followings of any fashion brand on social media today, due in large part to its influencer campaign with women who reflect H&M’s style all by themselves.

Fashion blogger Julie Sariñana and model Ela Velden are two influencers with whom H&M partnered for its fall 2017 catalogue. Sariñana loved the clothing so much, she promoted it from her own Instagram account:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JULIE SARIÑANA (@sincerelyjules)

6. Sperry: Boat Shoes on Instagram

Influencers: Sperry Enthusiasts

Toward the end of 2016, the boat shoe brand, Sperry, began working with more than 100 micro-influencers on Instagram to create engaging content for its followers. Sperry identified fans of the brand on Instagram who were already sharing high-quality photos of its products, and started inviting these users to develop visual content for its official Instagram account.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sperry (@sperry)

7. Samsung: Note 7 Launch

Influencer: CyreneQ

New smartphones are unveiled everyday. So, when Samsung released its Note 7 in 2016, it set out to make sure people knew about it. The company partnered with CyreneQ, a professional Snapchat artist and designer with a huge subscriber base, to broadcast its launch to a mobile audience that it wanted buying its new product.

Cyrene used her Snapchat account to document her journey to the event and ultimately give her audience a sneak peak of the new device. Using Snapchat’s 10-second video format, she posted clips showing her followers some of the device’s new features. See how CyreneQ’s Snapchat designs look for the brands she’s worked with here.

8. Diageo: My Tales of Whisky

Influencer: Nick Offerman

Diageo, the parent company of Scottish whiskey brands Lagavulin and Oban, was awarded a Shorty Award for Best Influencer Marketing Campaign for this yule log video starring Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman.

The 44-minute video shows Offerman sitting by a crackling fireplace, staring broodingly into the camera, and occasionally savoring a sip of his drink. Thanks to the simple seasonal premise and Offerman’s unique brand, the video was a viral hit.

9. GAP: Styld.by

Influencers: Refinery29, Celebrity Blogs

GAP’s successful Styld.by campaign featured a number of influential social media personalities from blogging giants like Refinery29 and WhoWhatWhere, showing how they incorporate GAP clothing into their personal wardrobes. Users viewing the influencers’ posts on social media were given options to “Shop this Look” conveniently in the caption of photos.

Thanks to the involvement of multiple influencers from different niches, GAP’s campaign had enormous reach.

10. Stride Gum: Mad Intense Gum

Influencer: DJ Khaled

If anyone has figured out how to gain a loyal following on Snapchat, it’s hip-hop artist and producer DJ Khaled. Once a minor figure in the music world, Khaled has enjoyed an unprecedented level of success on the ephemeral photo-sharing app, with each of his snaps garnering over 3 million views on average.

“DJ Khaled has completely cracked the platform,” said Emmanuel Seuge, senior vice president for content at Coca-Cola, one of Snapchat’s major advertisers. “He’s the king of Snapchat.”

His “King of Snapchat” status means Khaled is in high-demand for influencer campaigns with brands. He regularly takes part in “Snapchat takeovers,” where a brand hands over the reigns of their corporate Snapchat to Khaled for a brief period of largely unfiltered antics.

Working with W+K London, Stride Gum launched a Snapchat takeover campaign with Khaled last year to promote its “Mad Intense Gum” campaign. The brand called the takeover “an unpredictable, fun day for all his followers.”

Source: W+K London

11. Naked Juice: Sponsored Instagram Posts

Influencer: Kate La Vie

This bottled smoothie brand is edging its way into the beauty, fashion, and health scene on Instagram with help from key influencers in the space. Lifestyle bloggers like Kate La Vie (below) share sponsored posts featuring snapshots of their daily outfits and beauty essentials — including a strategically placed Naked Juice in the mix.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kate Spiers (@katespiers)

12. Loeffler Randall: LR Ambassadors

Influencers: Creative Businesswomen

High-end accessory and footwear brand Loeffler Randall has become a favorite among artists, bloggers, and fashion insiders, thanks in big part to the company’s commitment to involving social media influencers in its marketing campaigns.

The brand’s “LR Ambassadors” include a diverse group of writers, painters, florists and other creative businesswomen “leading dynamic lives.” In the brand’s own words, their LR Ambassadors are “cool girls doing cool things.”

In addition to profiling its LR Ambassadors on the company blog, Loeffler Randall shares pictures of its ambassadors wearing LR shoes and accessories on Instagram, using the hashtag #LRambassador.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Loeffler Randall (@loefflerrandall)

13. Glossier: Regular Women

Influencers: All Women

This Manhattan-based beauty startup (which was recently named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2017) owes much of their seemingly overnight cult status to their ever-expanding network of super fans and micro-influencers — those people who may have high influence, but low individual reach.

Instead of paying a few big names to promote their minimal skincare and cosmetics, the brand relies on “regular women” to spread the word.

“What’s very motivating to us is this idea of every single woman being an influencer,” Glossier CEO Emily Weiss told Quartz. Glossier recently introduced a referral program to enable its more influential followers to offer product discounts and other incentives to their unique networks.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 9 -  Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  They are at her husband’s old pack castle about it.  Are they hiding something?????

Chapter 9 – Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.

So off to dinner we go!  They talk about what a FRIGHTFUL sight it was that Alexia didn’t style and unfrizz her hair before going down to dinner with such dramatic terms that make me wanna gag. But I went from that to barfing myself inside out when I read the following line about Alexia’s frizzy hair:

“Lord Maccon adored it.  He thought she looked like some exotic gypsy and wondered if she might be amendable to donning gold earrings and dancing topless about their room in a loose red skirt…”

GOD DAMN AUTHOR!  We went from some poor choices but plausible deniability to straight up…

Like a lot of my racism complaints are subjective and nit-picky I will give you that.  But the author done goofed good and fucking proper with that line jesus fucking Christ.

GY*SIES IS A SLUR, AND ROMANI WOMEN ARE NOT ~EXOTIC~ SEXUAL OBJECTS! GOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YOURSELF!

I could fume about that fucking egregious shit the rest of the day but let’s try to distract myself with the parts of this story that aren’t openly racist.

At dinner, LeFoux is talking to some nerd about nerd shit.  Ivy is trying to talk about fish to some dude even though both of them don’t know anything about fish.  There’s a bit of drama when Lady Kingair (aka Sidheag) allows Maccon to sit in the Alpha seat, which TO BE FAIR is kinda bullshit, but the drama dissipates with a harmless distraction.  There is a brief interaction between Alexia and Maccon on the subject of the Tunstell/Ivy drama.  Maccon says they’re a bad match and Alexia agrees DESPITE THE FACT SHE LEGIT TRIED TO HOOK UP THE TWO AT THE END OF THE LAST BOOK BUT THAT’S FINE! Maccon ends the conversation about this slipshod ship-fest by sighing out a perplexed…

“Women”

Maccon you’re literally agreeing with a woman right now!  Boy howdy am I getting increasingly sick of how Maccon uses that word. If a male partner of mine used that word (woman) the way Maccon uses it (as this bullshit signifier that #yesallwomen are so hard to understand and difficult to deal with) I would uppercut him in the fucking taint.

CAN YOU BE ANGRY ABOUT THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE STORY FAPS INSTEAD OF THESE THROW-AWAY LINES THAT YOU’RE OVERANALYZING!

BLATANT RACISM AND SEXISM AREN’T THROW-AWAY LINES, BUT YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN BE MAD AT MORE STUFF! I AM ALWAYS HUNKERING TO ANGRY IT UP!

There’s a point where they call Alexia curse-breaker multiple times (cause she’s a soulless that can negate the powers of the supernatural.)  Ivy and Felicity have no idea what that means and don’t know Alexia is a soulless but nobody bothers to inform them.  I don’t know if this is going to be a conflict at some point or not.

Alexia then has to ~make a fuss~ by asking them about the humanization problem. They act like she is breaking some taboo, but honestly I don’t understand why.  They’re having a problem; it’s her and Maccon’s job to solve the problem, so they should ask about it so they can solve it right? Also these Scottish folks seem much more down to earth and don’t subscribe to the stuffy social mores of British society. So it’s dumb that they act as if Alexia is rudely asking why cousin Larry has two weeping pussies where his ears should be, while jabbing at them with a pencil, and making sexist jokes about it.

But she doesn’t ask questions that are going to be useful until a few pages into this conversation which means just in time for the author to avoid it with a distraction.  I have a feeling the author is going to do the same thing in this book that she did last book.  Started with a mystery, dances around it for the vast majority of the book without adding much to it, and just ¾ the way in the book SUDDENLY SHIT HITS THE FAN ALL AT ONCE AND IT’S REAL DUMB!

So it’s now after dinner and the men and women are separated to chit-chat. Alexia starts quizzing Lady Kingair. Lady Kingair says she wishes she could be a full blooded werewolf.  The only werewolf within a zillion miles who is powerful enough to turn someone into a werewolf is Lord Maccon, cause of course it is.    But Maccon doesn’t want to try to turn her because she’s his last heir and women very rarely survive the transformation.  

Which like, there’s no reason so far why the werewolf club has to be vast majority male.  No ALL MEN orgies, and no SINCE YOU’RE THE ONLY GIRL WE’VE SEEN IN 80 YEARS ALL OUR ERECTIONS POINT TO YOU FEMALE PROTAG!  Perhaps there is some plot point later on.  But honestly? I suspect it comes down to the bias that simply werewolfism is considered a male phenomenon. You can read all sorts of analyses of this but basically it comes down to that men are supposed to have a violent, animalistic nature that they try to suppress.  But women aren’t supposed to be angry, powerful, uncontrollable, or like worst of all HAIRY!  So I don’t want them even as no-name background characters yuck!

Also, oddly enough, last book they said that werewolves sought out actors, and arty types cause they seemed more likely to survive the transformation. Creativity is tied to ~extra soul~ or whatever.  So I want to know why all these werewolves are dim-witted, gruff, military philistines instead of sweet, sensitive, arty twinks, smooching each other?  Is it cause her type is gruff meathead and like an idiot she outright contradicted her own story for no particular reason?

SEEMS SO! GOD I WANT A CASTLE FULL OF HAIRY BESTIAL WOMEN AND/OR CUTE SENSITIVE TWINKS! IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR?

Nothing else really comes out of the conversation with Lady Sidhaeg Kingair and thankfully we’re saved from that conversation by the sounds of the men folk fighting.

Maccon is fighting with the current beta.  Maccon wins, cause of course he does.  They both grumble bitterly at each other for BETRAYAL and nothing is revealed. Like I am glad there was action, but this was so limp and tepid.  It could have easily been dramatic and they should have revealed something, especially considering they dump the whole story at the end of this chapter.

So Alexia takes him upstairs for fade to black SEX, cause of course she does. Like I won’t kink-shame much, but getting all hot that your husband beat up another dude who is clearly weaker than him for no real reason is bogus yo. A thousand kink-shames upon you.

Afterwards Maccon FINALLY fucking explains something.  He says the reason why he left the Kingair pack is because everybody in the pack was planning to kill the queen of England and didn’t tell him about it.  They’re Scottish and Supernaturals and APPARENTLY the crown hates both of those things.  She appoints Scottish and Supernatural people to the highest places on her court and we have not seen any oppression but just trust us okay.  They kept it from Maccon, because Maccon is a ~progressive~ and thought killing the queen would be a bad idea.  He believes this because the Queen is giving Supernaturals more rights and that if they kill her that it would make Supernaturals look real bad and innocent Supernaturals would be targeted.

That’s a reasonable fear, and honestly since we’re supposed to be on Maccon’s side she doesn’t really try to explain the other side.  Like was it supposed to be a military Coup so that werewolves would be in charge of Britain, since the military is made up of werewolves? Cause that’s honestly pretty fucking interesting.  I know the author says there are a lot more humans than werewolves…but I don’t know why they would fear much of a backlash if they all have superpowers, lots of the money, and are the ENTIRE military.  The fucking Spartans quelled every slave uprising even though slaves vastly outnumbered their military cause their military was trained as hell. Those masc 4 macs thug bros weren’t even able to turn their faces into dog faces.

Also Maccon’s feelings were really hurt when they were going to kill the queen with poison.

“Poison is for bitches amirite?” Maccon laughs misogynistically.  Alexia chuckled in kind and sprinkled something in Maccon’s 5th glass of Scotch.  As he dies in agony Alexia licks her fingertips in triumph. Oops they still had poison on them and she dies.  LeFoux travels to reality and she has the good sex with me. The End!

Okay that exchange didn’t happen, I just wish it did.

So anyway due to the ~betrayal~ Maccon left his pack and it really fucked his pack a big one because nobody was powerful enough to turn other people into werewolves so their pack couldn’t grow and outsiders were disinterested in serving them.  (BTW humans who serve werewolf packs in exchange for being turned into werewolves are called Clavigers in this book.) But this was their punishment for betraying him.  Not punishment for the high treason of attempting to murder a queen and thus throwing the entire country into violent chaos which could have resulted in millions of deaths. The focus for the punishment is highlighted as Maccon’s feelings were hurt.

I have a million questions about this situation but I can forgive the author for not going into more detail. This is a fluff story and doesn’t need to be bogged down with politics.  I can’t help but be  frustrated because the author doesn’t give anything of substance, so when something mildly interesting happens I want to latch onto it but it’s just plywood stuck to a cliff with bubblegum, it ain’t gonna hold my weight.

Thus I plummet back into the pit of frivolousness, hoping futilely there maybe something enjoyable I can grab in order to save my sanity from this stack of bullshit.

PS – I’m way into the fact that the thing they did reveal is not relevant to the actual conflict at the center of this book.

LOVE THAT!

PPS – The fight should have had the Beta forcefully removed from the fight. That he thrashes against another werewolf about how ineffectual Maccon is.  That he has all sorts of strength, power, and money but he’s just a complacent lapdog.  Since he has been dubbed ‘one of the good ones’ he’ll let the less fortunate ones of his race rot while he nibbles pheasant in his castle.  Maccon fires back how hypocritical it is to say you want what’s best for werewolves/Scottish folks while picking fights and putting the less fortunate on the line.  That he’s proving to the kingdom that werewolves are valuable by being a good example and working within the power structure to help his own kind. Afterwards Maccon goes back to his room physically and emotionally exhausted, and cuddles with his wife while he explains the backstory. He cries over his guilt of hurting his pack, and wonders if what he is doing is the right thing.

Problem with that is it doesn’t make the conflict easy to understand and cut and dry.  It also makes Maccon emotionally vulnerable…which like I’M INTO but seems as if it’s not the author or this set of reader’s fetish.

Say something nice Faps:

After pulling teeth for a book and a half we learn something about Maccon.  And it’s actually potentially interesting.

Ivy’s back and forth about her lack of knowledge about fish was genuinely cute and funny.