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autistic-beshelar · 3 years

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'm loving everyone venting about Molly! Thanks! And I want to ask you how you imagined the finale was gonna be? I have this whole fanfic in my head about Molly realising he had a four leaf clover stuck in his hair and upon noticing it he would give it to Yasha. Then the M9 would deal with Trent and Molly would finally know how terrible of a person the dude was. And then the M9 would introduce Molly to everyone else they met and visit every place they left better than they found it.

that's so sweet!

it's weird, because while like every other molly fan, i've had thoughts on his resurrection and a fic series i'm working on, but i'd never really... thought about the end of the campaign, or what it might be like?

(ETA this ended up so long im so sorry i have a lot to say apparently and this isn't even all of it)

my biggest and most important thing: they are a family. they belong together. maybe they'll go off on their own for a while, or stay with their families, but the nein belong together.

for fjord... he spent so long trying to be someone else, and while he's learning how to be his own person now, he deserves closure on that part of himself. he deserves a last conversation with vandren, and then to move on, to explore new places, to find new goals for himself. there is so much for him now, the open sea with so much life and promise. he buys a ship, a new ship, all his own, not one borrowed or stolen from another, and jester paints its name, decorates its quarters, makes it a home. he wrangles the nein (yes, even veth, yes, even essek) into joining him, and they set sail, all nine of them, the way it couldn't be the first time. he shows molly the ropes, teaches essek how to navigate, and watches his crew, his friends, his family, learning from him, placing so much trust in him, letting him guide them, and sees how truly happy they are to be here with him. usually, the crew is him, jester, beau, and often molly and yasha, but sometimes he will leave for a time, entrusting the boat to orly. sailing isn't all he has now, there is more to see, to do, there are things for him on land now too, but the sea will always be home to him.

for jester... she deserves her happy fairytale ending. i think for a while she stays with her family, seeing her parents happily together, finally properly introducing her boyfriend, and just spending time with her mum in a way that she didn't get to so much when she was young. and then i think she travels, just for the sake of exploring, with no defined goal other than to sow the seeds of joy and chaos everywhere she walks. and as she travels, she begins to write. stories were homes to her as a child, and they're homes even now, for someone with such a powerful imagination. she writes of her adventures, of her friends, she writes of mystical and fantastical things, half of them real. she writes and writes, words and illustrations filling so many books, she gives them to beau, to yasha, passes them off as silly little things, as though they aren't brilliant works of art. all of the nein read her stories - yasha out loud to molly as she plays with his hair, caduceus and calliope in the quiet of their garden, caleb and essek by the light of their bedside table. and in time the stories reach others, scattered journals are copied and bound into books, and one day jester wanders a quiet, nameless town, and in the window of a bookshop she's never seen, embossed on the cover of a novel, there is a brilliant green door.

for caleb... oh man, he is a teacher. that is so perfect for him, and i've been thinking about it ever since his talk with luc. i think there's something so powerful about being the person he deserved when he was younger, about stepping into that position of power and authority and being so kind with it. he's so passionate about magic, and i think it's beautiful to see him come so far - from someone burned and traumatised and so convinced he was irredeemable, to someone who can take comfort in soft things, someone who some days, almost, almost believes he can be good. i think out of everyone, except perhaps veth, he stays home the most. he still adventures with the nein of course, and if there is ever a whisper of artefacts or hidden knowledge or some expedition or other, the nein are with him in an instant to investigate it. but more often than not he is home, making the empire a better place, keeping the fire warm for them.

for veth... i want her to learn that she is enough as she is. i want her to learn that she doesn't have to choose between wife, adventurer, mother. she is all of these things. i want her to accept that her transformation was not a return to her old self but becoming someone new. i think she goes home, as she promised, and i do think she stays there for a long while, a few years perhaps, making up for lost time. and she'll pretend that she's fine with that life, with staying home, with being a wife and a mother. but that isn't all she is, and eventually, with yeza's help, with the nein's help, she will accept that. she'll no longer see it as two lives, two identities. she'll be able to kill fearsome beasts and explore strange new lands with her friends without guilt or fear, and at the end of the day she'll go home and regale her husband and son with extraordinary tales of her and her friends' heroics (that may or may not be exaggerated).

for yasha... i want her to be happy and loved. she's come SO far, from someone running from her past, drowning in guilt and so unsure of herself, to someone strong and bold. i love that ashley said she would do little odd jobs - i think she would do that, go around helping people as they explore. like most of the others, i don't think she would truly settle down. i like to imagine she does have a house somewhere - maybe inspired by the clays, she has a home somewhere green, surrounded by flowers, somewhere quiet and calm and peaceful. a little cottage maybe, for her and beau, just somewhere to return to and feel safe, somewhere she can rest. but i think most of her time would be spent travelling, seeing all the wonderful beautiful things the world has to offer, being with her friends who love her for exactly who she is, who showed her that she was someone worthy of being loved, who taught her that it's possible for her to love herself.

for caduceus... i think, for a time, he rests. he's tired. not done, far from done, but tired. i think he stays with his family at the grove, tending to all the things that are now so vibrant and alive, feeling the walls he was so sure would crumble. but after a time, he would feel that he is supposed to leave. the grove is wonderful, and will always be his home, somewhere he will always return to, and i think throughout his life - throughout the nein's life, and of course they will come to rest there, after everything - he will come home, to tend to the garden, to watch over the temple while his siblings roam. i think he travels, too, but not so much to adventure. after everything he's been through i think he deserves some peace, and quiet. he travels all the lonely winding roads, all the quiet humming spaces, sees all the life in all the hidden corners. while several members of the nein travel with him, it's yasha that walks with him the most, happy to go at his pace, eager to share in that peace and wonder.

for molly... there is so much for him now. he is no longer covered in eyes, no longer has that weight on him, even if he does hold memories of it, in darker moments. he is him but brand new, able to forge himself into whoever he wants to be, and the nein give him so much space and so much time for that. i think he stays with the clays for a little while - while the others deal with trent, yasha, so so scared to lose him again, places all her trust in caduceus to take care of him. and when they return (to find him with freshly cut hair the same colours as his coat, and a particularly proud looking clarabelle), they just spend time with him, all the time they missed and more. fjord tells him of their journey, jester showing him her journal, giving him meaning for it all, and all the time yasha holds his hand, unwilling to ever let him go. it's hard, being gone for so long, and while he is so, so (embarrassingly) proud of his friends for all that they've gone through, and how much they've grown, it's also glaringly obvious that he can't keep up. he almost has it in mind to leave - he doesn't want to hold them back, and he can't help but wonder if he's really the molly they want - it's hard to live up to a memory, after all. and there is so much he's missed. they tell him he's a moron, obviously. he is their friend, and there is nothing they won't do for friends, and waiting, staying, is such a small thing to ask. beau trains him, at his insistence - she thinks it's a joke at first, tells him that she'd be a terrible teacher, just as she was a terrible student. she's wrong, of course, and molly grows stronger by the day. he has so many adventures with them, sailing the seas on fjord's ship, sowing chaos with jester, fighting side by side with beau. there is not a single day that he isn't with his friends, yasha most of all. they are with him through everything, though good days, so many good days, and through bad ones too. molly has so much time - time the nein have given him, as he once gave to them - to live, to love, to wander, to form new memories and experiences. to be everything he never had the chance to the first time, and so much more.

for beau... she is so, so scared at first. they saved the world. they stopped trent. they've done... everything they've set out to do. what's left? what's keeping them together? when molly tries to run it reminds her so much of how she felt before, how she thought to run, to leave them before they could leave her. he returns the favour, reminds her that they are family, reminds her that she has worth, and the nein want her to stay, that they keep her, just as they kept him. (she almost believes him, and definitely doesn't cry). she does so many things - she goes home with yasha once in a while, somewhere tranquil, somewhere to study and research, she travels with caduceus, learning to appreciate a slower pace and all the quiet contemplation and companionship it can offer, she travels with fjord, his first mate, his best mate, allowing someone she trusts to take the helm and lead her on adventures. and she studies - long gone are the days of pretending to turn her nose up at books - she is one of professor widogast's best (and most irritating) students, learning magic not to weave it herself but just to understand it, just learning for the sake of learning. when she confronts her father, fjord and caleb are there as they should be - fjord to talk, to use his words and his charm to help, caleb in quiet solidarity, a hand on her shoulder, just standing with her as she tears down her mentor, her abuser, and comes out stronger for it, just as she had been there for him. finally, she can put that behind her, and she stays with the soul, as their greatest expositor (though maybe one who never does their paperwork), rooting out corruption, seeking the truth, exploring new horizons.

for essek... he spends a long time waiting for the past to catch up to him. it doesn't. it already has, in a way, if only in his own mind, the once unfamiliar guilt that weighs heavily on his shoulders. it never goes away, not entirely, but time heals, and so does the presence of the rest of the nein, always in his life, for as long as they can be. though he and caleb have different goals, they overlap so neatly, and though essek has a place in his own homeland, he spends far, far more time living with caleb. he continues with his research, caleb and beau poring over his notes, sharing his excitement and passion. he doesn't go on adventures near as much as the others, preferring to stay home, but he visits them, in all their different homes scattered across the land - jester in nicodranas, the clays at the blooming grove, veth and her family on the outskirts of zadash, beau and yasha's cottage in a little forest near felderwin. he has homes scattered across the land, so many places he is always welcome, and while guilt never entirely leaves, nor does the knowledge that one day, of course, all this will end, he finds peace.

i guess the reason i've never thought about the campaign ending is because for me.. it doesn't, not really. the mighty nein are family, chosen family. they stay together, they find homes in each other, and they leave every place better than they found it.

#yes i did this by seat position bc otherwise every single time i forget someone #though in my mind it used to be fjord beau caleb nott jester molly/cad yasha #then they MOVED #i had tokyo sunrise in my head while writing this i think that is why there is so Much #idk where jester being a writer came from i was just trying to think about what she would do for herself and it just #snapped into place i guess #anyway writing this devastated me. thank you anon #critical role #mighty nein

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marquis-teren-kiden · 5 years

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Top 5 moments that really defined your time as an RPer.

[This is an incredibly long post. So, feel free to read it or not as you wish. Blessedly, there is no ‘NSFW’ alert associated with it. Brutal, visceral, and sometimes anguish or feelz inducing commentary, but nothing you can’t have up at work or around the (Grand)babies. So, have at!]

#1. - Beyond the terrible graphics of the games at the time, my first real experience RPing happened when i was nineteen. A friend of mine from school had invited me on leave with her (Yes, it was that kind of education) to her home to get away from the boredom and strictness of our vocational training. I said yes, and while we were off at her place (which, also, was in the woods in the middle of nowhere, but in a different state) she introduced me to her Aunt, who was an avid DM. The woman had accumulated just… man. Volumes in binders of faces and forms of men and women - models, actors, singers, you name it - which she had rated from 1 to 20 for the purposes of allowing players to choose their character’s ‘comeliness.’She had it all. The picture books. All of the (2E) D&D books and supplements. She asked how long I’d been roleplaying, and I said I hadn’t. So, she broke it all down for me. Let me choose from an extensive collection of dice and line-by-line explained the mechanics of the game for me.My first character? A dual-classed Drow Fighter/Ranger. She made an NPC Human Paladin and the story for the background to explain the two of them being a battle couple was easy for me to come up with. She loved it. I killed myself with my own bow, and my own arrow, my first time using it. (I rolled a 1.) and she used the NPC to heal/resurrect my dumb Elf. Best introduction to RP I could offer to anyone, and it was mine.#2. - A Co-Worker asked me if I’d ever RP’d before, and I told him about #1 on the list, which had been five? Six years before. He said he would love to have me for a ‘beefy’ Campaign he was putting together, and after negotiating on the terms and times, I agreed. The Campaign was ridiculous. (Not in a bad way.) Just uber powerful creatures all over the place. So, he required every player to be half-something from the Monster Manual.I made up a Half-Halfling/Half-Celestial and made him a Bard/Psion. While we were at work, I rolled his stats (which were INSANELY GOOD.) And he sat and watched. (The stats were so good that one of the other Players, sitting next to the DM, accused me of cheating, and the DM laughed and said I watched them roll *my* dice. Those are their scores. I laughed crazy hard.) That Campaign about three years, and was insanely good fun. I eventually retired my Half-Celesital as an Avatar of Fharlanghn, the God of Travelers. (My Muse was a Psionic Nomad.) And the GM still phones occasionally to ask me to RP him as an influence on current or on-going campaigns.

#3. - My (now ex-) Boyfriend found out that I was an avid RPer in Guild Wars, and asked me to come RP with him (I think he was jealous of my Muse’s in-game Husband) in World of Warcraft. We rolled up a pair of Druids. But, within a week, two things unexpectedly happened. He got bored of his level 5 Druid and ditched me to go back to his level 54 Warlock. AND I levelled up without him looking for herbs, and on my first trip to Darkshore (Like, level 11 or 12?) I witnessed a pitched PvP Battle between a level 56 Night Elf Hunter and a skull icon (later learned, level 60 Raider) Tauren Warrior. I was Resto and started healing the Hunter. At the time, I had no clue what ‘flagging’ was, or that my Muse could be harmed by doing it. I just wanted to help the guy who looked to be putting up a hell of a fight given the disparity between them. (I assumed the Tauren was just a very powerful mob.) The Hunter won the fight, and greeted me ICly. Introduced himself. Thanked me profusely, and since I’d cobbled together an identity for my Druid before my BF and I had stopped playing together, I just rolled with it. The Hunter eventually became the Druid’s Lifemate.#4 - The next two are more personal, and as you know (Nerd) Last year was absolutely devastating for me. I lost twenty-six writing partners during a significant IRL series of hardships involving losing my health, which cost me my job, which led to me losing my home, all while trying to take care of my kids and maintain a Guild with a massive storyline.

The vast majority of the Co-Writers i had at the time were just relentless about wanting and needing to be ‘important’ to the storyline, rather than working together with everyone to solve the puzzles that were laid out. And, I was DMing two or more events each month from my cellphone out of a motel my family was paying for for several months. During that time, I lost two important friends who were RRP Partners for Teren. One due to refusal to communicate at all why they had suddenly started getting angry every time I mentioned RP (even when it wasn’t for Teren) and another who literally just… disappeared. Not just from me. From everything. All without explanation. Of the twenty-six acquaintences/Co-Writers who dipped on me during that SL, those are the two that still haunt me the most, and they are the primary reasons I keep my Writing Circle so small.

Has their continuing influence on me been positive? No. I don’t think so. Not in the long run. But, has it been powerful? Has it shaped the future of my writing and my relationships with others in/out of character and IRL? Unequivocally.

#5 - Mister Rogers (Teren, wtf are you going with this?) Mister Rogers once said that when something bad would happen, he would get scared. An accident. A fire. Something worse on the news. His Mother would tell him to “look for the people trying to help. There are always people trying to help. Look for the Helpers.”

At the bottom of the abyss for me, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically - there were people, IRL, OOC and IC, who were genuinely trying to help me. Even when I told them I just wanted to wrap up all of our mutual storylines and walk away from writing - not just Roleplaying, but writing stories at all - they did everything they could to help me. Help me figure out what their Muses needed. Help me figure out what my Muses needed. Helped me connect with strangers to tie up story elements that had disappeared with the people who were abandoning the large-scale Campaign that had been running off of my phone for months on end.

There were at first a couple. Then a few. Then a handful. Now, there’s a little under a dozen people who have made writing possible for me again. Who stuck with me through all of the terrible shit that made even logging in to Teren’s old account an exhausting, heartbreaking slog. Who eventually helped me heal myself with self-care strategies I’d never needed before, and to give some solid foundation to Teren’s storyline so that - even if I couldn’t save all of my Muses - I could save this one.

At the beginning of the year, I kicked off this blog, still unsure if it would last a month, or if I would walk away from it after all. Two months, three months in, I still didn’t know the answer. What I did know, is that I was (albeit slowly) getting the desire to write again. I was (slowly) feeling the urge to create again. And I was striving to interact on a level that would allow me to leave if the old warning signs started cropping up, without devastating my Co-Writer’s storylines. (Which is a lot of why so much of what Teren does happens in Nishan; which is only a small pocket of Azeroth as a whole.)

To wit, the amazing legacy and continuing tales of Teren Kiden and his life after 01/01/2018 aren’t a product of “A” moment. But, of People. People who recognized that I am a person and not a collection of pixels. People who empathized with the catastrophe my life had become and - instead of disappearing - did what they could. No one had to solve my problems. Most didn’t have to do anything but RP. But they all helped me to recover from the single worst year - IC, OOC, and IRL - of my life with patience, poise, respect and - most extraordinarily - with hearts that were strong enough to let me go, even though they desparately wanted me to keep holding on to our friendships, because that was what I needed most at the time.

[To each of them: @daughterofkiden, @summerbloom-fae, @karrista, @olivia-lovecraft, @news-nerd, @huntsman-hawthorne, @maluraunderchild, @renlavaye, @scassira, @waroftwowolves, @stonestridernerd, @phamguero, @oh-yeah-no @kelladen - you are all such beautiful, understanding, and exceptional people, and I quite literally wouldn’t be here, writing, without you. Thank you so much for your extraordinary strength and exceptional qualities of character. You are more deeply cherished and appreciated than you will ever know.]

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celticnoise · 7 years

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“The horror. The horror.” – Walter E. Kurtz.

Whatever Colonel Walter E. Kurtz saw in the last moments of Apocalypse Now – that “pile of little arms” perhaps, in the middle of the village – it had very little on what most of us can see as we gaze into the next few weeks, following that Invincible campaign.

I refer, of course, to the close-season.

No more Celtic.

And this year, because we’re in that peculiar, awful, odd number year, there’s no international tournament to put a bandage on the wound and get us through to the first uninspiring friendly matches.

There is only the horror. Transfer rumours and a media raking over old coals.

This morning, there’s a story about Neil Lennon being involved in a tax scam. It’s not a new story; it’s a tired re-tread of an ancient one. “Asked, and answered,” as someone smarter than me once said with all the frustration of a person who’s pissed off having to repeat himself. The Dembele “wanted by every club in world football” tale has been resurrected. Sevco think they are world beaters again. It’s the usual. It’s the same old, same old.

And it’s bloody awful.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are people out there who are grateful for this. Wives and girlfriends, boyfriends and husbands, kids who’ve forgotten what their parents look like … people who don’t see their better half at weekends because of “that football obsession”; they will actually sit down with their significant other tonight to watch the official moment when the curtain comes down, the Champions League Final, the game which brings the show to a close for the 2016-17 campaign.

And they will whisper sentimental flim-flam which fills their other half with dread.

“Look on the bright side, it just means more time with me and the kids …”

Jesus. Way to cheer somebody up!

Because now it stretches out in front of you, undeniable in all of its awfulness, Saturday’s in crap beach-towns, peering out of café windows into the rain. Days traipsing around the assorted bowling complexes of the West of Scotland, trying to get excited cause your missus rolled a strike, but with one eye ever fixed on Sky Sports News on in the corner, hoping you get a signing. Then there are those long forgotten (put off) “jobs around the house” which you suddenly have a load of free time to be getting on with, and stuff like “Now we can go and visit my mum,” usually accompanied by a gruesome smile and the words “Won’t that be nice?”

Yeah, sounds lovely.

When the Hell does pre-season start?

Not for a while. Not for weeks. What the Hell are we going to do until then?

This stuff is never pleasant. The contemplation of so many Celtic-free weeks is never one that you meet with any enthusiasm, but as we all know a World Cup or a European Championships makes it halfway bearable especially if you have an interest in one of the teams. And failing that you can scour the websites and find out which of the players in the tournament is at a club that might not need him or is available on a free, and tantalise yourself with the possibility of seeing him come to Scotland when the competition ends.

This year we didn’t even get the benefit of the Under 20 World Cup, which some bright sparks decided to schedule whilst the season was still taking place. Instead we have the joys of all those summer leagues which no-one really cares about cause their teams are generally not those who would bother us in the Champions League qualifiers, and which, anyway, aren’t covered extensively on any of the satellite channels.

Instead there are DVD box sets. If you’re lucky you’ll have a chance to watch some good ones – this is not something you’ll get away with as a solitary pastime; with no football this is a “chance for some sharing, some quality time together”; hope for The Wire, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Better Call Saul, Designated Survivor, The Americans or something on that order of brilliance – rather than Downtown Abbey.

Instead there are long drives, with the kids shouting “Are we there yet?” from the back seat and spilling ice-cream on the upholstery. It’s going to the safari park and seeing lions lounging under the trees and feeling resentful at the swines for having it so easy.

Instead there are weekends spent gazing listlessly out of the window and trying to fight the urge to stick on the Lisbon Lions DVD’s for fear of what your partner might say; “This? Again? Aren’t you glad to have a break from the football for once?” The kind of thing that sounds, in your delicate condition, a lot like nails raked down a chalkboard.

Instead of football. There’s this.

And don’t believe for a second that those who’s partners and kids understand this addiction and share it are any better off. Multiply the frustration. Fill a house with it. With people who can’t sit still, who have their own ideas about how to fight the boredom – “Let’s play a game; how about Monopoly?”

Christ no, no, no, no, no.

Weeks of The Game of Life.

God, can you imagine it?

Of playing FIFA and wishing it was the real thing.

Weekends of sneaking to the toilet every hour to watch the extended highlights of the 5-1 game at Ibrox on YouTube, and someone knocking on the door and saying “I can hear that. Let me in. I want to watch it too …. But don‘t tell dad.”

In many ways, that’s worse. Much worse. A different kind of horror.

It ends of course, it always does. The pre-season starts, and all the days in the country, sightseeing and pretending to enjoy it, come to a close. Your other half is filled with regret as things revert to “normal” and there’s one last horror, where you actually have to pretend you’re as disappointed as they are and that you wish it could go on a little longer.

But they always see through it.

Because you make it so easy.

You can’t disguise your enthusiasm for too long. It all becomes so clear when you are planning the pre-season friendly schedule like a military operation; times, dates, logistics. If you’re going, how you’re getting there, it all precisely laid out in specific meeting points and schedules. If it’s on the telly, what time is kick-off? Whose house are you watching it in? Who’s bringing the beer and who’s ordering the pizza? All of it in contrast to that time you took everyone through to Fife for a day of learning about Andrew Carnegie, only to find out that you got the date of the exhibition wrong and it closed a week before.

They remember these things, you see.

In the end, they always forgive you.

They understand what this is, this addiction, this obsession, and as hard as it is for you to believe during the time of the horror, it’s a small thing they’re asking when they actually structure their lives around you all the rest of the time.

Nick Hornby said it best when he pointed out that football fans are the only people who base their calendar around seasons. We don’t think of the year 1997. We think of campaign 97-98. This, right now, today, we’re on the verge of the Dark Months, the ones that don’t quite count, but in which it would, for example, be perfectly acceptable to die, after the outcomes are known and before the next fixture list is published.

Go now and you check out as an Invincible, after all.

Tonight is the closer. The Champions League Final. Enjoy it whilst you can. No matter how dull and boring it might be – I am optimistic actually – savour every second. Because when the final whistle blows the long, slow waiting starts, the horror begins to unfold.

Six weeks without Celtic.

What the Hell are we going to do with our time?

http://ift.tt/2rCmSuL

#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #TheCelticBlog #News

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bibliophileiz · 6 years

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Meredith Glynn gets a mytharc episode!

It’s not “Regarding Dean” but last night’s Supernatural episode has some good stuff.

Funny or otherwise notable things: - Cas’ face in this first scene with Donatello is very “wtf” and vaguely suspicious and we really should have just seen the end coming - “If bacon’s what kills me then I win.” This is funny, but also ... so in-character and thematically relevant. - Dean is just ... so optimistic now compared to how he was in the beginning of the season when he thought he lost Cas and Mary, and now he’s like, “Family reunion, guys, we’re gonna get there!” - “Eureka! Eureka, eureka, eureka, eureka, eureka!!” “Are you stroking out?” - Cas looks REALLY suspicious when Sam says they have most of the ingredients Donatello’s list. - “I’ll go with you.” Date night. - MARY GETS LINES!! That’s like the first time this season. - Also props to Sam Smith’s acting when Jack says Sam and Dean aren’t there. - You can tell after Jack says he didn’t care how much Michael hurts him, that Mary’s like, “Oh this brave innocent sweetheart is making my heart hurt, also I should probably tell him how this is actually going to go.” - Dean wears a nice jacket for his date with Cas. - Old married couple alert: Cas snapping that he doesn’t get words wrong, Dean, and Dean rolling his eyes. - Very progressive ancient warriors. ‘It could be a ‘she’ who frees us,’ and ‘these are very pretty male warriors’ - Also Cas translating while fighting is hilarious to me. - ‘I hate doing this, you are very beautiful’ I feel you, large inappropriately blond dude. - “I thought you were a damn ghost. Turns out you’re just from another world, which is actually weirder.” - “Who’s the kid?” “I’m Jack! I’m happy all the time!” “Good enough.” - I am appropriately creeped out and saddened by Donatello’s crazycakes act - Bobby’s compound reminds me of a more post-modern, apocalyptic version of the camps in Robin Hood movies. In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin’s hideout works as a refugee camp as much as headquarters for his campaign against the sheriff of Nottingham. - “You want to take it from me!” Donatello channeling Bilbo Baggins. - Donatello should not have Darth Vadered Cas’ husband, Cas is already having a bad day. - Bobby’s giving Mary heart eyes, and I am ... not sure how I feel about that. - I love that it only took Sam and Dean five minutes to try to convince Bobby to go to their world with them. - Sam’s “We were so close,” just breaks Dean’s heart, you can tell. He’s been trying to keep Sam’s spirits up ever since Kaia died, and Sam’s just hopeless. - You know Cas means business when he takes his coat off.

More spoilery, involved, thematic things below.

‘We needed you’

There’s a lot to unpack in Dean and Cas’ conversation on the staircase, even leaving aside all the destiel subtext.

It’s clear from their discussion that each views resurrection differently. Cas sees it as something you do because you need someone physically -- he raised Dean “because God commanded it. Because we have work for you.” Dean, on the other hand, thinks of resurrection as something you do because you need someone emotionally -- there’s no reason for Dean to have sold his soul for Sam in the first place other than that he wanted his brother back.

Jack’s views align closer with Dean’s. He brings Castiel back in a moment of loneliness and fear, not because he needs Cas to physically do something for him. So when Cas asks, “What have I done to repay him?” I think the answer is ... You sat up with him all night letting him chatter about monsters and fantasy movies and told him about his mother. That’s literally all a child wants out of a stepparent.

As a side note, it’s pretty interesting that Cas keeps invoking Kelly. “I promised his mother.” For all there was never a time in their relationship that he wasn’t planning for her imminent death, I think Cas really cared about Kelly, and that’s a bond that Jack doesn’t share with anyone else right now, although that may change given Mary telling Jack she was there when he was born.

To deal or not to deal

It was bound to happen, but we finally got an in-show comparison of the consequences of each Mary’s decision.

Resurrected Mary Winchester spent the last season blaming herself for ruining her son’s lives by making a deal with Azazel to bring John back. Making the deal meant Azazel marked Sam as one of his chosen apocalypse-bringers, setting the entire Winchester family on a path that led to Sam and Dean making their living as hunting. Not side job-hunting like Jody or Donna. Not balancing hunting with a family (that she can see) like Wally or her father. All she sees is that Sam dropped out of Stanford and Dean never finished high school -- that’s if she DOESN’T know Dean left Lisa and Ben. This guilt makes her distant from her sons, especially Sam. All this adds up to a lot of regret on her part.

Also regretful was Apocalypse World Mary Campbell who saw John die and didn’t accept Azazel’s offer to bring him back. And it wasn’t a “sad that her boyfriend died but what can you do” regret. Bobby specifically says Mary regretted not taking that deal. He also called John the love of Mary’s life, which seems thematically relevant to the show’s big picture (”We save the world”), small picture (”All we have aside from this car is each other”) theme. I love that Mary’s regret as the world is ending is that she didn’t save John. It seems like Mary was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

You can go your own way

Jack’s decision to kill Michael and save Apocalypse World is particularly interesting to me for a few reasons.

One, Jack has never set out to kill anyone. The only times he’s (intentionally) killed people people have been when those people are immediately threatening someone he loves -- he makes the silver bullet hit Buddy the shifter when he sees Buddy about to shoot Sam; he kills the angel who is about to stab Dean; he kills Zachariah when Zachariah threatens Mary.

The rest of the time, not only is Jack not plotting people’s deaths -- which is pretty unusual for characters in this show -- but he’s actively pleasant and friendly. He greets everyone, including people he’s just walking past, and is enthusiastic and cheerful about everything. He is the exact opposite of a killer.

Which is ironic, because everyone thinks of him as a killer. Or at least as a weapon or a threat or some useful tool, and they frequently plot to have him kill someone. Lucifer assumes Jack will help him kill Michael. Asmodeus assumes he will kill Michael and Lucifer and raise the Shidim and send those killers running amok to boot. The angels want to use him to make more soldiers. Even Team Winchester falls into this trap. While they love him and consider him a member of the family, both Sam and Dean admit Jack is useful to have around because he can open the portal and get Mary back.

And then there’s Cas.

First of all, I want to say I love Cas. He’s my third, maybe fourth favorite character on this show. So please don’t interpret this as Cas hate.

But Cas does this too.

First of all, I think there’s still a small part of him that expects Jack to go off and effortlessly save the world. And second of all, while I still think Cas is one of about two examples of a good stepparent on TV, his custody dispute with Lucifer over Jack smacks of one-up-manship.

I’m specifically thinking of this line Cas delivers to Lucifer when they’re imprisoned by Asmodeus: “Jack would rather kill you than hug you.”

That’s not how I would characterize Jack to someone, nor even necessarily true. Jack’s response to everyone is more hug than kill, and while he’s repeatedly said Lucifer doesn’t mean anything to him, I have a hard time believing his first response would be murderous animosity rather than, say, suspicious curiosity. Cas’ whole conversation with Lucifer in fact seems like he’s using Jack to hurt Lucifer, and while I’m by no means saying Lucifer is a victim or has more right to raise Jack than Cas (because RAPISTS SHOULDN’T HAVE PARENTAL RIGHTS, FUCK you if you disagree), it’s alarming that Cas is using his own son who he cares about to emotionally manipulate the guy who killed him. And while I don’t really think Cas would ask Jack to kill Lucifer ... by throwing that line out there, he definitely opened that door. And that seems far more insidious to me than Sam telling Jack, “Hey it’d be great if you’d open that portal and get our mom back, but if you can’t we still love you.”

My point is, everyone, even well-meaning people, have an agenda when it comes to Jack, who up to this point has pretty much done what other people told him. He even nearly let the Shidim out before he realized he was being played. But he himself doesn’t have any grand plans -- he’s not plotting to rule heaven or kill someone he doesn’t like or even save the world. Everyone else has grand plans, Jack has none.

Until he sees Michael’s angels attack this camp of innocent people.

Neither Mary nor Bobby ask him to kill Michael. In fact, Mary and Bobby are the first people he’s ever met who know what he is and what he can do and DON’T immediately start hatching plans for how to use him. (Maybe Bobby and Mary should be his parents.) It’s a great direction of Jack to take, not the least because it will throw off everyone who does have plans for him. Lucifer would approve of the target, but not the motive and everyone else would be like, Just come back, dammit!

I hope Jack succeeds on his new venture because a, fuck Michael, and b, it will be good for Jack’s self-esteem. I wouldn’t be surprised if the season ends with Jack deciding to stay in Apocalypse World to help rebuild, which would be a nice end to his story and put Cas in the position of having to choose between Jack and Dean the Winchesters.

The moral gray area

After Cas zaps Donatello’s head, Dean asks him, “Who gave you that right?” and Cas says, “No one. I took it.” Cas frequently does the wrong things for the right reasons but he always (or at least since Season 8) owns it and is willing to pay the consequences, which is often more than can be said of the Winchesters. The moral grayness of what Cas did to Donatello is not any blacker than the moral grayness of what Sam and Dean do every single time they torture and/or kill a demon, which they frequently do without checking to see that the human is no longer inside.

The reason Sam and Dean are coming down so hard on Cas is a, I think they’re feeling some guilt about dragging Donatello into this in the first place and b, they know Donatello. Sam and Dean operate by a different set of rules when it comes to people they love or even just ... know. (I don’t think they love Donatello.) They kill demons that are inside meat suits all the time -- unless said demon is inside a hunter they’ve been drinking with at a wake all day or, God forbid, Jody!

And again, you’ve got a big picture, small picture dichotomy too. Cas will do “whatever it takes” -- including frying Donatello’s brain -- to save the world from Michael. Dean will do “whatever it takes” -- including threatening Kaia -- to save his mom. I think we’re supposed to see both of those as problematic, given Dean’s ‘oh shit’ look when Cas says that. Of course, at the end of the day, Cas also did it to save the ones he loved (the Winchesters and Jack) while Sam and Dean keep hunting to save people.

This has been a super long post, so I will end with this simple yet very important question (VIQ): IS SCOOBY DOO THE MOST HOLY MAN?

#supernatural spoilers #good intentions #cas meta #jack meta #mary meta #give meredith glynn more mytharc eps plz #is scooby doo the most holy man?#IS HE??

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promomagazine · 6 years

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How Donatella Versace Is Successfully Targeting Millennials With Versus

By: Rosanna Ryan

Versace, the iconic Italian luxury brand, and its sister line Versus, were on every fashionista’s Instagram feed during fashion month this year.

The image of Donatella walking down the runway with the 90’s supermodel quintet following hand-in-hand – Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen and the former French first lady Carla Bruni – for the Versace finale is one that will stay forever engraved in the memories of fashion lovers everywhere. Dressed in the iconic chain-mail Orton dress, the catwalk veterans looked just as glamorous and sexy as they did when Gianni Versace first sent them down the catwalk nearly two decades ago. This spectacle sparked incredible buzz on social channels around the world thanks to all of the fashion show attendees pulling out their phones and posting snaps of this historical fashion moment for everyone to see. This unforgettable event boosted engagement for the brand; Versace’s show was one of the most talked about during Milan Fashion Week. On Instagram alone, Versace generated 505,796 interactions with just four photos of the event under the hashtag #VersaceTribute.

It wasn’t just this eponymous label that ranked high on the list of most engaging brands during fashion month, its sister line, Versus, also had everyone talking. Versus has experienced a successful transformation over the last eight years, after it was resurrected in 2009. It was first launched in 1989, when Gianni Versace decided to gift this diffusion line to his sister and muse. “Versus was born with an innate creative approach, with a strong focus on innovation, flair and the unconventional”, as Gianni said, and this is something Donatella has certainly taken to heart.

“Versus was born with an innate creative approach, with a strong focus on innovation, flair and…

Donatella’s ultimate goal with this line is to “reach out to non-fashion people” and provide an offering to “everyone who dares to express themselves”.

This is how Donatella is capturing the millennial crowd and boosting revenue for the brand:

1. Defining the right social media tone

Simply scroll through Versus and Versace’s Instagram profiles and you’ll immediately see the difference. While Versace’s Insta photos are much more polished, edited, and fashion-focused, Versus feels much more raw and artistic. The aesthetic of the photos and videos plus the styling of the looks gives Versus the edge and carefree feel that a streetwear label should have.

2. Generating engaging content with micro-influencers

Versus does, of course, work with major influencers, but for their fall/winter 2017 campaign Donatella opted to tap eight young creatives whose names may not be as easily recognizable as Gigi or Bella’s. “I really admire the young creatives in the new Versus campaign,” said Dontella Versace. “I call them the Sub-Versus Generation, a community of subcultures taking a stand for their beliefs and for their individuality.” This is the group of micro-influencers photographed by Ben Toms:

Underground rap artist Tommy Genesis.

American transgender activist Hunter Schafer.

American-born English model Lily McMenamy.

Tokyo-born musician and model Rina Sawayama.

Irish hip-hop producer Rejjie Snow.

English singer-songwriter Cosmo Pyke.

London-born artist and model Wilson Oryema.

American actor and freestyle rapper Judah Lang.

3. Creating exclusive capsule collections

It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve heard of Gigi Hadid teaming up with a fashion label to take part in the artistic process, as she’s recently shown her third collection for Tommy Hilfiger. However, this time Gigi Hadid was behind the camera, shooting her boyfriend, Zayn, for the spring/summer 2017 collection he collaborated on with Donatella. The photos by Gigi have that uncensored feel the brand aims for, and, while her sister Bella appears in the Zayn collection campaign several times as well, Gigi is completely absent, except for her voice we hear when interviewing model Adwoa Aboah or the tips of her shoes in one of Zayn’s photos:

4. Showing in London

When Versus was first launched, New York was it’s home during Fashion Week. Yet, since 2016 London has been the capital of choice for the streetwear brand. Versus first showed in London in 2016 when Anthony Vaccarello was at the helm, but after his departure to take over Saint Laurent, Donatella has remained in the British capital. And according to the data, London is exactly where Versus should be: it ranked as the fourth most engaging brand on social media during #LFW, generating 3.2 million interactions.

5. Joining the sustainability movement

Sustainability is at the forefront of issues millennials are concerned with and Donatella knows that in order to stay relevant and keep younger generations interested in the brand, changes must be made. “What counts for me, for the company, for young people, is sustainability, maybe even more than creativity, and it will be an increasingly important theme. We are now working with Nativa [Corp.], which is teaching us about sustainability, which is not only about avoiding the use of certain materials, but also about company culture, how behavior must change. It’s very interesting,” she told WWD. Currently, Versace is working on optimizing their denim dyeing process to reduce wastewater pollution.

By working with the likes of Gigi Hadid and Zayn, delving into a world of artistic experimentation with young micro-influencers to create engaging social media campaigns and introducing the sustainability element in their manufacturing process, Donatella is ensuring an exciting future for Versus. What do you think of her latest initiatives? Let us know in the comments below!

For more information on the Versus show in London and the Versace show in Milan, check out our Data on the Runway SS//2018 report. We’ve also got the scoop on which influencers and other designer labels ranked highest at every Fashion Week.

#fashion week #fashion industry #fashiontech #Fashion #nyfw #New York #inspiration #modeling #Promo Magazine #public relations #press release

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queer-reporter-blog · 7 years

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Lavender Language and the legacy of William Leap

Bill Leap, perhaps the world’s most respected scholar in the field known as lavender linguistics, talks in a Southern drawl and cusses like a trucker’s wife.

“Let me tell you what it is, honey,” he says on a Monday afternoon from his home in Tampa, Fla. “Miss Piggy’s English is so queer.”

Leap, an emeritus professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C., is writing a book, Language Before Stonewall.

“Back in the ’20s and ’30s, there was this massive use in some social sets in gay America of French as the quintessential gay language, and that continues to the ’70s,” he says. “Honest to God, Miss Piggy spoke fluent gay English. The way she slips in these little French things, the use of ‘moi’ and the hand gesture to the bosom, this is so 1930s gay.”

In 1993, Leap created the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, now in its 24th season. The two-day event draws about 150 attendees from all over the world and is the longest-running LGBT-studies conference in the U.S., and the only one dedicated to language issues, according to Leap. In 1993, much like today, the community squabbled over language politics, starting with what to call the field of study — queer language? Gay and lesbian language? Leap went with lavender.

“I thought, Let’s use that ancient term ‘lavender’ and let’s offend everybody,” he says. Lavender, he points out, has been associated with the occult and mysticism, with women’s power in Africa, and with forms of power in the West in the Roman Imperial Court and the Catholic Church.

“It surfaces in the 20th century with a lesbian women’s movement in England, which was marked in public by women who wore lavender-colored rhinoceros pins on their lapel,” he says.

In his current research, Leap is looking at Harlemese, the language of the Harlem Renaissance, where he cites a rich and dynamic queer presence and a manner of speaking that, while being not exclusively queer, has influenced both gay and mainstream language to this day.

“Harlem was the site for internal colonialism. Its sexual value was there for the convenience of white folks. But it had its own identity and formation in spite of the fact that white folks were intruding,” he says.

Words like “hot” and “hunk,” when describing an attractive person, came from the clubs and after-hours parties of Harlem, he says.

Around the same time, in Britain, Polari, what scholars call an anti-language, was at its peak among gay men, but the jargon would be completely unrecognizable to most English speakers today.

“Nada to vada in the larda, what a sharda,” says Paul Baker, the world’s pre-eminent Polari scholar, when asked about his favorite phrase.

Translation: What a shame, he’s got a small penis.

“I like the rhyming,” he says.

In the early 1990s, Baker stumbled upon Polari while looking for a thesis topic and soon found himself in a gay-run hotel in Brighton where the innkeepers recalled some phraseology. He talked to several old-timers in the area who helped him amass a small dictionary of words, numbering around 500 today and available on a new app called Polari, and wrote transcripts of dialogue from two popular British radio characters in the 1960s named Julian and Sandy, who spoke Polari. (Not coincidentally, the two actors playing the roles — Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick — were gay themselves.)

Polari has roots in 1600s England and is a mixture of Molly slang (Regency England men who dressed in drag and coined words like “bitch” and “trade”), thieves cant (the Elizabethan rigmarole of criminals, circus travelers, and other undesirables), East London cockney slang, and Italian brought home by sailors in the Mediterranean.

Other colorful Polari terms include: “pastry cutter” (a man’s oral sex technique), “naff” (meaning either tasteless or heterosexual), “cleaning the cage out” (cunnilingus), “tipping the ivy” (tuchus lingus), “tipping the velvet” (oral sex), “he’s got nanti pots in the cupboard” (he’s got no teeth), your “mother’s a stretcher case” (I’m exhausted), “vogue us up ducky” (light me a cigarette), and Hilda Handcuffs, Betsy Badge, and the orderly daughters (terms for the police).

“It doesn’t always have to do with secrecy and protection,” Baker says. “I think it also has to do with forming an identity as an affected group, as marking yourself as different, or maybe a bit superior in some way, a mind-set of evaluating mainstream society as somehow inferior to the Polari speaker’s point of view.”

Unsurprisingly, Morrissey was versed. The title of his album Bona Drag means “nice outfit.” In his song “Piccadilly Palare,” he sang, “So bona to vada, oh you, your lovely eek and your lovely riah.” (So nice to see you, oh you, your lovely face and your lovely hair.) And in the song “Girl Loves Me,” on his 2016 album Blackstar, David Bowie sang,

Cheena so sound, so titty up this Malchick, say

Party up moodge, nanti vellocet round on Tuesday

Real bad dizzy snatch making all the omies mad, Thursday

Popo blind to the polly in the hole by Friday

Translation:

Women, I trust you, fix up this boy, say

Make your own fun, man, no drugs around on Tuesday

Really naughty airhead, making all the men mad [on] Thursday

Don’t care about the money spent by Friday

Polari was rife with “she-ing,” an academic term that refers to the linguistic practice of feminizing people and things. She-ing appears almost universally and across centuries in gay language, from Peru to the Philippines to South Africa (where gay slang is called Gayle), to Israel (called oxtchit, derived from an Arabic word meaning “my sister”), to Soviet-era Russia. It was initially practical, enabling gay men to talk about sex and lovers in public without fear of arrest or persecution.

“You can she anybody,” Baker says. “You can she your father or the police. It’s inverting mainstream society’s values so that everybody is potentially gay and everybody is potentially feminine.”

In the West, the gay lexicon dried up after Stonewall, relatively speaking. But in Putin’s Russia, where the environment remains extremely hostile for LGBT people, the website Gay.ru, according to a paper by researcher Stephan Nance, lists a course on how to speak present-day Russian gay, a slang called goluboy — from a word related to the bluish color of a dove — presumably to help gay Russians identify one another. The site addresses readers as devachki (“girls”), discusses misgendering, and provides instruction on gay tonal inflections when saying words like “sister” (“sestraaaa!”). Gays in Putin’s Russia have also Russo-fied Western terms such as queer (“kvir”) and coming out (“kaminaut”).

In 1880s St. Petersburg, men cruising for sex with men were called “tëtki,” or “aunties.” (In polite society, they might be said to be getting up to “barskie shalosti,” or “gentlemen’s mischief.”)

Denis Provencher, department head of French and Italian at the University of Arizona, has yet to identify a similar argot as Polari or research into gay-specific slang in French, where discourse, in typical French fashion, operates as more waltz than stride. Recently, however, many of Marcel Proust’s personal correspondences came to auction at Sotheby’s and revealed he used Latin as a secret code when writing to his lovers.

“The closet is really an American social construction based on a narrative of Judeo-Christian ideology — death and resurrection,” Provencher says. “Coming out of the closet is like being reborn. In French, we are talking about living in good faith and in bad faith, being authentic in society.”

The verb assumer is used, he says, and operates beyond talking of one’s sexuality.

“When you say, ‘je m’assume,’ it means, ‘I assume my social role.’ And in France you would never come home and say, ‘Mom and Dad, I’m gay and this is my boyfriend Frank.’ You’d say, ‘This is Frank and we love each other.’ ”

Provencher’s forthcoming book, Queer Maghrebi French, looks at LGBT North Africans living in France and their relationship to language.

In Arab societies, “the harem is this enclosed space that we think of as a feminine space. The harem is also the house of the father. So if you’ve ‘come out of the harem,’ you’ve come out of the patriarchy. Young North African men use the harem as an analogy of the closet. There’s also this analogy of dropping the veil. Women who drop the veil in Western society are seen as sexually progressive,” he says. “You also get these strange narratives where men talk about wandering through the city looking for sex, but they’re also wandering toward Mecca as well.”

While vocabulary might be the most fun part of lavender linguistics for the layperson, scholars are concerned with aspects such as tone, inflection, and gesturing, as well as the political and cultural implications of language — how the press write about LGBT issues, for example, or how queer people communicate with each other privately and at work, or how gay language is learned.

“All this talk about assimilation and acceptance still requires a certain kind of conformity, and, despite your group that’s all in favor of the heteronormative, many same-sex-identified persons are not comfortable with that mold,” Leap says. “And so you’ve got to let off some frustration. You’ve got to let off a certain amount of steam and anger. And talking gay is one way of doing that.”

That raucous gay tongue of yore perseveres most strongly in American drag culture, and, for word lovers today, it might be the only bright spot of innovation. The film Paris Is Burning centers entirely on the lexicon of 1980s drag balls, where terms like “realness,” “house,” “mother,” and “shade” flash on-screen and move the narrative. (Those terms are so mainstream now that, in May, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign accused the Democratic National Committee of “throwing shade.”)

“[The participants on RuPaul’s Drag Race] have quite a clever use and attitude toward slang. There’s a celebration of language and a joy and a humor which feels like a successor to Polari,” says Baker. “Even though it’s American.”

Online, where most evolution in the lavender lexicon occurs today, one might say there’s a bit less joy.

“It’s more utilitarian and based around hookup culture when you’re typing away on Grindr,” Baker says. “Shorter phrases that have more to do with sexual things. Gay people on the Internet don’t want to come off as funny or showing these rather creative uses of language. They want to show themselves as being as masculine as possible. There’s a sort of performance there.”

That performance, like she-ing before, crosses the East/West divide. On hookup apps in Russia, you’re bound to see users protesting “bez korony.” That means “without a crown,” or, in gayspeak, not a queen.

Interview and arcticle by Out Magazine via: https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2016/8/17/lavender-linguistics-queer-way-speak

#queer #out

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