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bnhablessings · 4 years

Note

Can I request a oneshot/headcanon for Hawks x pregnant fem!reader? I was thinking of Hawks being super cute taking care of her and showing her off proudly to other hero's. this is my first time making a request, so feel free to do with this as you please lolz! also I really want the end to have reader going into labor and giving birth at the end with a very proud Hawks at her side (you get to choose the gender!)💖

It took me so long to get to this omg but I did and I hope you like it, Hon! It is past midnight and I have a weird obsession with tomatoes right now.

Warnings: Pregnancy, just a fluff overload, Profanity, All Might is retired, Dabi and Hawks are good friends AU (we ignore the manga, only happy feelings here lmao)

*I have fixed grammar issues. My brain power was not activated when writing this lol.

Words: 2438

Takami Keigo (Hawks) x Female Reader

“Isn’t she just amazing?” Hawks questions not really speaking to anyone else as he just admires the woman waddling down the hallway.

The other Pro Heroes around him stare at him with confusion. Aizawa, Yamada, Yagi, and Todoroki Enji all take a glance at each other before they wait for the woman to make her way to them. All of them but Hawks are profoundly confused.

“Uh… This was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference so may I ask why Hawks is here as well?” All Might asks.

Hawks ignores them as he watches the woman stopping for a moment to speak to a student. She looks genuinely concerned and it makes his foolish heart swell from how caring she is. Endeavor wants to slap the foolish look off Hawks face but ignores it to answer All Might.

“I apologize. We had lunch together before this meeting. He decided to follow me but I have no idea why.” The tone to Endeavor’s voice shows that he is irritated but curious as to why the number 2 hero seems to be enamored with a simple U.A teacher.

She hasn’t noticed him yet thankfully and he has proudly gotten a video of her waddling. The closer to she gets the more the expression on her face slowly turns into one of realization. The students at U.A respect and care for her so they always make room for her.

“Hey, Honey, what are you doing here?” You ask softly as you place a hand on your very large bump.

He goes to respond when your colleague Present Mic starts to let out an inhuman sound that turns into a surprised scream. “What?! Honey?! (NAME) YOU’RE MARRIED TO THE HAWKS?!” Present Mic screeches.

You ignore the change in volume and laugh as you nod your head. Aizawa seems to nod as he pieces it together. “Ah… You did mention Tokoyami’s internship being close with your husband.”

“BUT WAIT! You’re married? All my attempts on wooing you have been in vain,” Present Mic mumbles.

Everyone seems to freeze at this but you just laugh more. “Yamada, have you not noticed my ring? I’ve been wearing it every day since working here!” You manage to say after laughing.

He has absolutely no reply but to slowly put his hands up to show surrender from Hawks’ glare on him. Without a care, Hawks pulls you to him so he can hug you with your baby bump blocking it fully. His hands go to rest upon it and he smiles widely.

“See! I told you I have a beautiful family too, Endeavor.”

Endeavor for once has to hide the smile on his face as he looks away. He replies, “Yeah. I thought you were speaking nonsense or showing me pictures of random pregnant women.”

“Nope! I can guess why you would be confused… Since I never showed her face. We have a little chickadee coming on the way!” The excitement is clear in his voice and on his face from the happy lazy grin plastered on it.

He looks at the others and bids them goodbye. “Well, I am going to steal her so she can have her lunch with me. See ya.”

~*~

“Baby, I promise, it is okay! I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later when you get home! I’m just happy you visited for lunch,” You say into the phone. Your other hand goes to your purse to look for your keys.

You hear Hawks mumble and whine on the other side of the phone but you ignore it until you find the keys successfully. “Alright, babe. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you when I reach the house. I love you!”

After hearing his ‘I love you more’ he hangs up and you smile feeling great. This is unusual since the pregnancy hormones have made you feel like shit lately. It’s all going to be worth it though.

“Hey, do you need me to walk you home?” Aizawa questions as he enters the hall.

You think for a few seconds before you ask, “Would you be willing to walk me to the station? I’ll be fine from there since I’m planning on stopping by a store! I don’t want to waste too much of your time!”

He nods and the two of you begin the walk to the station. It starts as a comfortable silence before Aizawa speaks up with a smile on his face. “You know, I had no idea you were married to the Number 2 Pro Hero. It surprised me but at the same, it didn’t. What surprised me though was seeing the way he stared at you. You have a good thing going,” Aizawa states.

It was odd for him to give his input like that but it made you feel happy to know that Hawks’ love for you was just that noticeable. Once at the station, Aizawa gives you a look, something an older brother would a younger sibling or parent would their child before giving a demand.

“Call me if anything happens. I’m on patrol for a while so I’ll be near this area. Be safe going home, (Name).”

Today has been such a heartwarming day and Aizawa’s words only bring you more joy as you bid him a farewell.

It doesn’t take long to reach the store close to your home. You salivate at the thought of getting what you crave most. An odd combination that most people would puke from but what you need to satisfy you and your baby right now, tomatoes and frosting.

You can just imagine Hawks’ disgusted look but it wasn’t the worst thing you’ve had yet. You go to turn when your baby bump hits something off the shelf. Thankfully, it was just another plastic can full of icing so it didn’t break. Now the new problem was picking up the jar.

You know it was a near-impossible feat but you try anyway. You probably look very silly trying to reach and barely scraping the can with your fingernails but you don’t care. You are determined to do it. That is until you hear an obvious cough trying to get your attention.

You give up for now and look at the owner only to smile upon seeing the man you saw earlier. “Hello, Mr. Endeavor! We’ve met officially earlier but not formally. I am Takami (Name). It’s a pleasure to meet you and I apologize if my husband gets a bit too much to handle. He can be very chillaxed but he does take his job seriously,” You ramble.

“Pleasure.”

He merely observes you with serious eyes before he bends down and picks up the icing jar. He hands it to you. “Thank you! I would’ve been in a pickle there if I couldn’t reach it,” You murmur placing it back on the shelf where it belongs.

One of his eyebrows betray his lack of expression to show his slight confusion and you laugh. “I already have my icing in this arm! The baby bump knocked over that one.”

He doesn’t say anything in reply to that. Instead, he seems to contemplate saying something. He just needs a few seconds before he decides to say it against his better judgment.

“Hawks... He’s the Number 2 Pro Hero and extremely famous. How is it I never even heard or seen you? I thought he was fibbing about having a wife since he only produced photos of your bump and not of your actual face,” He didn’t want to ask it but the curiosity got the best of him and it was unusual to him.

The question made you smile but this time with a bit of sadness. You’ve received this question just a few times before but the answer remains the same. “We try to hide our relationship and it is easy when his fans like to think he is single. It doesn’t matter but we have private social medias for our friends. We like to keep my face hidden and such.”

The atmosphere turned a bit tense and for once (actually probably like the fifth time since Hawks had been determined in making him a better Number 1 Hero) he feels guilty. Something strange feels like it’s churning in his chest and he quickly fixes it.

“He does talk an awful lot about you though. It’s clear as day how much he loves you and your baby.” It was a simple two-sentences but it brought comfort to you.

He leaves without any more words and you are brought back to your cheerful self and go to pay for the items. By the time you get home, it is already showing signs of getting dark. You are quick to send a text to Hawks and it distracts you from realizing something odd is wrong with your door. The fact that it is unlocked.

You lock your front door once inside and go straight to the kitchen to slice the tomatoes and spread icing on them. You waste absolutely no time as you have it all ready on a plate and leave the room to go change into something more comfortable.

Of course, only Hawks’ shirts have been fitting you lately and you prefer them much more than your maternity clothing. So you wear that and a pair of shorts before coming to get your treat and hopefully take a nap. That was the plan before you have a fucking heart attack from seeing a burnt toast eating your food.

“How the fuck do you eat this?” Dabi questions spitting a tomato slice out of his mouth.

Your heart is absolutely broken at the scene. You ignore the bully of a man and stare at the red and white mess on the ground. How dare he do this to you?

“Oh fuck… (Name), please don’t do this. I’m sorry. I’ll go buy you a new fucking tomato if you want. With the fucking confetti icing and shit. Just don’t cry… Or tell Hawks,” Dabi says.

It is too late though. The damage has been done as your hormones go berserk from seeing what you craved on the ground (yes your mind is ignoring the perfectly good slices still on the plate). Tears prick at your eyes and before you can rub them away or cry, Dabi brings you into a hug.

As you cry into his chest he is already on the phone with Hawks but with your uncontrollable sobs, you don’t hear the conversation. After a few painful minutes (for Dabi) he finally pulls away only for your face to be smothered by your loving husband’s chest.

He hushes you gently and rubs soothing circles on your back all while glaring at his best friend.

Dabi raises his hand in defense. “Hey man, I just came here to visit the princess with good intentions. Thanks for bringing the tomato. I owe you one.”

Another minute later Dabi presents to you a brand new plate with a tomato covered in icing. You sniffle lightly and take it before mumbling, “Thanks. Sorry for the way I acted. That was pathetic.”

“Hey no, it wasn’t Doll. I take full blame for eating your weird food. That and it is 100% Hawks’ fault for knocking you up Beautiful. Anyway, I got to bounce but are we good?” Dabi asks opening his arms for another hug.

You smile and give in. “We’re always good. Now get out of here. We’ll invite you over for a chicken wing dinner,” You offer.

He leaves with a stupid smile on his face and Hawks smiles as he can finally full-on cuddle you without interruptions. Of course, after you are done eating. He pulls you to cuddle on the couch with him, his wings stretched out and resting against the couch.

“You good, Babe?”

You nod the exhaustion pouring in on your face, “Yeah. Sorry I ended up making you come home early. I didn’t mean to get like that.”

“It’s all good. I would do anything for you and the baby. No tomato is safe from being devoured by you if that is what you desire.”

You are too tired to even give a response to that. Instead, you try and curl up into him as you make sure your bump is comfortable at the same time. His hands rest on your belly as he hums into your ear.

“What only two months left now?”

Yeah, and they are going to fly right by.

~*~

“You had to come in through the window?” Hawks asks in a hushed voice.

Dabi only smirks before his eyes fall on your resting figure. Hawks is sitting right beside you on the bed. The sweet bundle of joy he came to meet is resting in Hawks’ arms right beside you.

“Can’t impress anyone if I didn’t. All the Heroes come by already?” Dabi asks as he takes slow and steady steps to the three of you.

You smile weakly as you recall your three colleagues coming in to check on you and meet the baby (that Hawks may or may not have shoved in their face from how proud he was). Endeavor came by as well to congratulate you and Hawks.

“Yeah. All there is left now is to meet you,” You murmur as Hawks stands up.

Dabi gets a close look at the baby’s squishy face. He wants to say it’s hideous as a joke (he was planning on how to do joke about it though) but he couldn’t. The baby was actually cute. However, to his absolute horror, Hawks starts to proceed to give the baby to him.

“What the fuck. What if I drop it?”

You answer in a sleepy voice. “Drop her and I will personally send you to hell.”

“Her… What name did you guys come up with?”

Hawks answers without hesitation. “Tomato.”

Dabi physically freezes and looks up before seeing the stupid grin on Hawks’ face. He turns to you and you smile a gentle smile and give up the true answer. “Takara, it means treasure. Takami Takara.”

“I’ll take the chair. I’ll hold her while you guys rest up for a bit.”

You thank him and Hawks silently thanks him before showing off his severely bruised hand that you no doubt, destroyed when pushing during labor.

It is a pain Hawks would gladly go over again and endure for you because you are everything to him. You and your beautiful daughter mean the world to him and he would go through this life a million times if it meant having the two of you again.

#boko no hero academia #my hero academia #hawks #hawks x reader #takami keigo #keigo takami x reader #request #fluff #bnha fanfiction #bnha oneshot #fanfiction #oneshot #Dabi #dabi eats a tomato and reader cries that is the summary #cute #bnha hawks #bnha dabi

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calwrites · 4 years

Text

The Masked Singer (Spencer Reid x Reader)

Summary: The team has become obsessed with The Masked Singer, an extremely silly singing competition about trying to guess what celebrity is singing behind a mask. Imagine Spencer’s surprise when he hears a familiar voice.

Warnings: none (unless you count bad writing lol)

Word Count: 6.2k

----------------

Spencer wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but it had. The team was obsessed with The Masked Singer. One morning, JJ, Prentiss, and Garcia had been talking about it before they had to brief a new case. Apparently they had found the first season online after they had too many glasses of wine and had made it through half the episodes in one night.

“It’s just trying to guess what famous person is singing while wearing a mask?” Morgan had asked. “That doesn’t sound very hard.”

“Yeah it should be obvious, but it’s not and that’s what makes it so addicting. They disguise their voices when they talk and they give you these cryptic clues about who they are.”

Emily nodded along to Penelope’s point. “Plus the judges’ guesses are everywhere, which doesn’t help.”

“Maybe you should watch, Morgan. Put those profiling skills to use,” JJ teased.

Derek was opening his mouth to respond when Hotch walked into the room. “Unfortunately, we have a case that needs our profiling skills.”

Spencer thought that would be the last of it. They spent the next few days tracking down another serial killer, and he was looking forward to relaxing on the jet on the way home. Maybe he’d read for a bit if no one wanted to play chess with him. What he wanted more than anything, though, was to be able to go home to Y/N. But he couldn’t.

His thoughts of you were interrupted by Penelope popping up on a screen. “I have a wonderful surprise for my favorite crime fighters.”

“Well don’t just tease us, baby girl,” Derek prompted when Garcia paused for dramatic effect. Instead of answering, Garcia started playing something on another screen.

“Oh there was a new episode on last night,” Emily said excitedly. “No one looked up who was unmasked, right?” After getting verbal confirmation that no one had looked up who was unmasked the previous night, Emily and JJ gave the rest of the team a short rundown of who had already been sent home.

“And people actually agree to do this?” Rossi asked in disbelief when they were done. The girls ignored him, focusing instead on the show. Rossi and Morgan shrugged at each other, but Spencer could tell that they were both a little curious about the show.

“I know Donny Osmond, and that is definitely Donny Osmond,” Rossi yelled approximately twenty minutes later. “Just look at how he walks.”

“I think it should be cheating for Rossi to guess when he might actually know some of these people,” Derek complained. Emily and JJ both nodded in agreement, so Derek turned to Hotch. “Hotch?”

“It’s cheating.” Hotch was trying to seem like he wasn’t also paying too much attention to the show, but he wasn’t doing a very good job. Rossi threw his hands up and started arguing his case, but JJ shushed him as the clues for the next performer started.

And just like that, the team had a new tradition. Garcia would play any episodes they missed when they were on the jet on the way home from a case. If they were without a case when there was a new episode, they would get together at someone’s house, usually Rossi’s, to watch it as it aired.

Emily and Derek were probably the best at guessing correctly, but Rossi sometimes had the advantage of actually knowing the celebrity behind the mask. Hotch and JJ blamed their incorrect guesses on not having time to stay up to date on celebrities because of their kids. Most of the time, Spencer didn’t even bother guessing. He had no idea who most of the celebrities were, but he enjoyed watching as the rest of the team got into trying to figure it out. Garcia had been banned from guessing after the team found out she was doing her own research. She had tried to argue that if they could use their super profiling powers, she could use her internet sleuthing powers, but the others weren’t having it.

Spencer had mentioned the show to you when you two were on the phone chatting before he went over to Rossi’s for the season 2 premiere. Curious about the show that managed to captivate and puzzle actual FBI profilers, you had decided to start watching on your own. Now, you and Spencer discussed the show whenever you had both watched the new episodes. It was nice having something new besides work to talk about. Of course, you, like Rossi, had the advantage of actually knowing some of the celebrities.

“How did you know it was Sherri Shepherd?” Spencer asked you after he got back from Rossi’s one night. “You said you knew it was her from the first time you heard her sing.”

You laughed at the frustration in your boyfriend’s voice. More than anything, you wanted to be cuddled up with him on the couch. But you were on opposite coasts, so imagining his furrowed brow would have to do. “I’ve met Sherri Shepherd. I’ve been on The View. Or did you not watch that interview?”

You were just teasing him. You knew that Spencer watched every interview you did. He was the most supportive boyfriend ever, even though you knew that some of the answers you had to give in interviews hurt him. Every time you were asked about dating, you had to give an answer like ‘No one special,’ ‘Not looking for anything right now,’ ‘Too busy to start anything.’ Truthfully, you were too busy to start a new relationship. You were constantly filming a new movie, doing press for a new movie, or getting ready for a new movie. Plus, you already had a boyfriend. Why would you want another one?

It was hard being away from Spencer so much, but you both knew that it was what was best for your career right now. You had met Spencer when you were a struggling actor who had just finished filming your first major movie. Now, you were an Oscar winner who was constantly getting offers. Spencer had told you that you needed to take advantage of those offers to really cement your place in Hollywood. You had both decided that the best way to keep each other safe, from both the media and psychopaths with grudges, was not to go public with your relationship.

----------------

It was over three years ago. You had just finished filming in DC. Most of the cast and crew had already gone back to LA or wherever they called home, but you had decided to stay in DC for a few more days to unwind before going back to your empty apartment in New York. It was probably about time to accept the fact that you should move out to LA, but you preferred the East Coast to the West.

You wandered through a park, when a cluster of chess tables caught your eye. More specifically, one man sitting at the chess tables. He looked to be about your age, but what made you watch him was the way he was playing three games at once. And winning them all. When the games were over, his opponents all grumbled as they walked away, leaving the man looking at the boards almost sadly.

You knew how to play chess, but you wouldn’t say that you were great. Still, you had to talk to this guy. So you sat down across from him, startling him as he replaced all of the pieces to their starting positions. He blinked at you in surprise instead of saying anything, so you took the lead, moving a pawn out first.

The two of you played in silence for a few turns. You smiled every time you caught him looking at you, and he blushed every time he was caught. He was cute. You quickly realized that you had no chance of winning, so you abandoned any sort of strategy and began moving pieces at random. You watched as he became more and more confused at your moves.

“It’s going to be a tie,” he said finally. His voice was lovely. “I mean, I could still win, but looking at our moves throughout the game, it seems most likely that it’s going to be a tie.”

“Is there any way I could win?” Truthfully, you hadn’t even been expecting a tie, but you wanted him to keep talking.

He shook his head. “No. You actually had a decent chance of winning until I took your rook four turns ago. If you had moved your queen instead, then I would have had to move my knight, leaving my king open to check.”

You blinked at the man for a moment. “Do you remember every move we made?”

He nodded shyly. “I have an eidetic memory.” You had no idea what that was, but it sounded impressive. At your blank look, he launched into an explanation of an eidetic memory and how it was different from a photographic memory. You weren’t really sure what he was saying, but you liked listening to him.

“So, it’s probably going to be a draw,” he finished shyly, painfully aware that he had just spent way too long explaining something to you that he hadn’t asked him to explain. To his surprise, you grinned at him, taking his breath away.

“Well, I was going to say that if I win you have to tell me your name, and if you win I have to tell you my name. Since it’s a draw, I guess we’ll both have to tell each other our names. I’m Y/N.” You stuck out your hand, but he looked at it awkwardly.

“Considering how many pathogens are passed during a handshake, it’s actually safer to kiss. I’m Spencer,” he continued quickly as a blush spread across your cheeks.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Spencer. Honestly, I feel a little bit like I cheated. I started moving pieces randomly after about three turns.” Spencer looked shocked at your admission before he started laughing. “To make it up to you, can I buy you dinner tonight?” You were a little shocked at your own confidence, but thankfully Spencer seemed to like it.

“Only if I can buy you a coffee now.” You had agreed, obviously. The two of you spent the rest of the day together, getting to know each other. By dinner, it was like you had known each other forever. You had stayed in touch when you had to go back to New York. Spencer didn’t have a lot of free time, but you didn’t have any jobs at the moment, so you went down to DC whenever possible.

You and Spencer had only been officially dating for two weeks when your movie premiered. You weren’t ready for the media to scrutinize you two, and Spencer wasn’t ready for his coworkers to profile you, so you had agreed to keep your relationship on the down low.

Then you name blew up. The reviews for your movie, and your performance in particular, were glowing. People started suggesting an Oscar nomination for you. You started getting offers for roles your couldn’t refuse. So you packed up your life in New York and moved out to LA. You and Spencer talked all the time. He had even started texting you. Plus, you flew to DC whenever possible to be with him, even if it was just for a few hours. But it was still hard for you two to be apart for so long.

----------------

The season premiere of Masked Singer is tonight. Maybe you guys can watch it on the plane.

Spencer read your message and smiled. You knew it had been a tough case without him even having to say it. Sometimes he thought you could read his mind. You had a way of always knowing what he needed, even when he didn’t know.

A new season of their favorite show was just what the team needed. Spencer sent a quick text to Penelope to ask if it was possible for them to watch the show on the jet as it aired. She had responded not to underestimate her, which worried Spencer slightly.

The team sat in silence for a few minutes, the engine the only sound, until the screens came to life and the opening for The Masked Singer appeared. “I forgot this was coming back tonight,” JJ sighed in relief as the rest of the team smiled at the show. They settled in, ready to start trying to profile the celebrities in wacky costumes.

“And now, our very own royal contestant: The Queen,” the host said as a new clue package began to play. Spencer stiffened as The Queen began to talk. Despite the voice modification, Spencer could recognize the way you spoke. Your word choice. Your cadence. Even the way you walked onto the stage. Everything screamed Y/N. Spencer couldn’t help but smile at the mask you had chosen. It was like the top of the queen chess piece. Not the mention the tight white costume looked great on you. What would really confirm Spencer’s theory was your singing, so he waited with baited breath and hoped no one on the plane would notice his sudden heightened interest.

“If I should stay, I would only be in your way.” Spencer’s breath caught.

“Aww. Whitney,” Derek exclaimed. The rest of the team joined in with similar comments of surprise and joy as the music joined your voice on screen, but Spencer was too focused on you to notice them.

As he watched, it was like the cape on your shoulders turned into the blanket he kept on his couch that you had wrapped around yourself. The microphone became a spatula that you held to you mouth instead of using it to flip the pancakes, belting this very song much to his neighbors’ annoyance. It was a scene he was used to, having seen it many times.

“That was amazing. There’s no way you’re not winning this season. But I have no idea who you are,” one judge said when you were done. The other judges echoed similar thoughts before they all started throwing around some possible names. Spencer smiled to himself as his teammates were similarly confused. No one mentioned your name. And they probably never would.

You were very insecure about your singing voice, though Spencer often told you that you shouldn’t be. However, you never even mentioned singing in any interviews, and you didn’t sing in front of anyone that wasn’t Spencer.

“So what brought you onto The Masked Singer?” one judge asked.

“I’m actually a big fan of the show, but the real reason was because it’s my boyfriend’s favorite show. I wanted to surprise him.” Your voice shook nervously as you spoke. Spencer couldn’t tell if it was because you had stage fright or because you had publicly announced that you had a boyfriend for the first time. Not that anyone knew it was you. You and Spencer had been talking about going public with your relationship for a few months now, but you had both always found reasons to keep putting it off. Spencer knew what you were doing. Once you were unmasked, you would have to acknowledge that you had a boyfriend.

Of course, some part of Spencer’s mind reminded him that all of this was filmed in advance. There were people somewhere who knew that you were The Queen and that you had a boyfriend. Spencer just hoped that the NDAs that they had signed were enough to keep that from getting out before the episode aired. Not that he had time to worry about that. You were still talking to the judges.

“Do you think he’s going to be surprised when you’re unmasked eventually? Not that that’s going to happen any time soon.”

“Definitely not. He probably knew it was me the minute I walked on the stage. Plus, he has to hear me sing all the time when I’m home.” It made Spencer’s heart soar hearing you refer to his little apartment as home. You spent more time in your Beverly Hills house than his apartment, but whenever you talked about going home, Spencer knew you were talking about getting back to DC. Getting back to him.

As the rest of the team continued to discuss guesses about your identity, Spencer pulled out his phone to text you.

The Queen sounded amazing.

Spencer knew that, wherever you were, you would smile when you read that text.

----------------

Pretty soon, the new episodes of The Masked Singer were the highlight of Spencer’s week. He was always antsy when they couldn’t watch an episode when it aired, desperate to make sure that you hadn’t been eliminated yet. He loved watching as your confidence in your voice and you stage presence grew.

Surprisingly, it was after you did a cover of Heart of Glass by Blondie that the switch flipped. Spencer could pinpoint the moment it happened. Your performance became electric and there seemed to be a pull, even in the jet, that drew everyone to you.

Spencer had seen it happen before. About a year after you had started dating, you and Spencer had met up in New York for a weekend. Spencer was in awe of the way you managed to seem completely normal, allowing the eyes of all the tourists to slide right over you, despite the fact that your face was on a billboard in Times Square.

The two of you were eating lunch in a pizza restaurant. Spencer had wanted to do research to find the best place to eat, but you had pulled him into a random place. Although he hated to admit it, the pizza was really good.

It was easy to hear the conversation of the two girls, high school students if Spencer had to guess, in the nearly empty restaurant. Spencer saw the look of joy on your face when you realized that the girls were talking about your movie. You both had to smile that they were now talking about how obsessed they were with you when they had walked past you a minute ago without even realizing it.

You looked at your boyfriend with an unspoken question in your eye. Spencer nodded his head at the girls, letting you know that he didn’t mind if you went over to talk to them. As you stood up, it was like the air around you changed. There was no difference in the way you held yourself. If Spencer believed in things like vibes, he would have said that you just started giving off a different vibe. Suddenly, everyone’s eyes were on you.

You spoke to the girls for a few minutes before taking some pictures with them and returning to your table. You seemed unaware of the effect you had on everyone, but Spencer couldn’t shake a strange feeling. It was like for the first time he had seen Y/N Y/L/N instead of his girlfriend Y/N. When you finally got Spencer to tell you what was bothering him later that night, you had confided in him that you often felt intimidated when he talked about his job.

The two of you had grown past that as your relationship went on, but it was strange seeing the effect that you had on his friends.

The closest he got to spilling your secret was the next week. As you got closer to the finale, the competition began heating up. In an effort to prove that you were more than just a good voice, you had chosen 1,2 Step, complete with your own twist on the iconic, according to you since Spencer didn’t really know, choreography from the music video.

“She has some serious stamina,” Emily commented as you got through the rap flawlessly despite all of the dancing you were doing. Spencer knew all about your stamina.

“And look at how her body moves. She can dance.” Spencer’s fist clenched at Derek’s comment. He knew that Derek didn’t mean anything by it. Your body moved fluidly through the dance. It was easy to see in the tight costume you wore. But something seemed to burn inside Spencer as he watched Derek watch you. He wanted nothing more than to tell Derek that last weekend he had used his stamina to keep you up until the early hours of the morning.

But Spencer stopped himself. You had said that you had a plan for telling people about your relationship. He just had to wait for you to put that plan into motion.

The judges were still clueless about your true identity, though Spencer still thought that all of the clues should have made it extremely obvious. Still, it was amusing listening to their guesses.

“I think-no, I know who this is.” Spencer settled in, ready to hear Ken Jeong’s latest wild guess. Last week he had been sure that you were Leona Lewis and the week before it was Mariah Carey. “This is Y/N Y/L/N.”

Spencer tried not to react as everyone in the jet, and on the screen, shook their heads at Ken’s guess.

“Y/N doesn’t sing,” one judge told Ken as another said, “Y/N’s not a singer. No way.”

“But Y/N won an Oscar for her role as a queen. Plus, and stay with me here, in the clue package we’ve seen things about agents. She has an agent, who gets her roles and probably got her on this show, so welcome to the show Y/N Y/L/N.”

“The Queen is in a long term relationship, and Y/N isn’t dating anyone,” one judge pointed out. The other two judges nodded along, so Ken gave up his fight. Spencer realized that, if anything, Ken guessing it was you would convince people that it couldn’t possibly be you.

“Hey, Spence, didn’t you have a little celebrity crush on Y/N Y/L/N?” JJ asked as the commercials started. The rest of the team turned to look at him. Spencer tried to hide his blush, but the smirk on Derek’s face told him it wasn’t working.

“Yeah,” Emily continued, “You go to see all of her movies. Multiple times.”

Spencer tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I just think Y/N is a good actor.” Luckily, the team soon lost interest in teasing Spencer, so he could focus on texting you about your performance.

----------------

“Thank goodness we finished in time to catch it.” Everyone nodded in agreement to Emily’s statement. They had just finished another case earlier that day and had made it to the jet in time to watch the finale as it aired. The team settled into their seats and quickly began sorting out their bets about who was who and who would win.

“Reid, you want in?” Rossi asked. So far, Spencer had abstained from all of the betting about the show they did. But now he wanted to have a little fun with his team.

“I think The Queen will win.” Most people nodded. That was a popular opinion. “And I think The Queen is Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Oh c’mon, kid. You’re just as bad as Ken,” Derek complained, but he was smiling. Spencer felt slightly guilty. He knew that he was at least partially right. He had been tempted to ask you whether you win, but held himself back. There was no doubt that you signed some NDAs, so you really weren’t supposed to tell him.

Spencer had a hard time caring about the other performances. He was looking forward to hearing you again and to seeing the faces of his friends when he was right about your identity. Finally, the other two finalists had gone and it was your turn. Unsurprisingly, your performance was amazing. The best of the night in Spencer’s slightly biased opinion.

Spencer was so relieved when third place was announced and it wasn’t you. Some celebrity he didn’t know took their mask off. There was some exchanging of money among his friends. But then it was time to announce the winner.

“And so, the winner of this season of The Masked Singer, who will go home today with The Golden Mask trophy is,” the host paused for dramatic effect. Spencer had to remind himself to breathe. “The Queen!”

Spencer breathed a sigh of relief as he watched you jump up and down onstage before being ushered to a throne where you would watch the runner up take off their mask. It was another celebrity Spencer didn’t know and didn’t care about.

“I guessed Miley Cyrus when you sang Jolene a few episodes ago. I don’t think that’s right, but it’s the best guess I have, so I’ll go with Miley,” one judge said when it was time for their final guesses. This was it. You were about to be unmasked. Spencer wasn’t quite sure why he was so nervous. You had won! And he already knew that it was you under the mask.

The other three judges threw out their final guesses, but no one was very sure of themselves. Except Ken, who confidently said, “It’s gotta be Michelle Obama,” earning lots of laughs from everyone watching.

“Well, let’s see who it is. Take it off. Take it off.” The host started the chant, which the audience and judges quickly took off as you pretended to struggle to take off your mask. Spencer found himself joining in with the rest of the team as they chanted too.

And finally, you removed your mask and Spencer could see your beautiful face. As great as you looked standing on the stage with your hair and makeup perfectly done, Spencer couldn’t wait until you were back home in a week and he could see you huddled on the couch wearing pajamas.

Chaos erupted, both on the screen and on the plane. It seemed like no one could believe that it was you. The rest of the team was too busy yelling in shock that they didn’t notice the look of absolute adoration Spencer was giving you.

“This might have been the most shocking reveal in Masked Singer history,” the host said into his microphone as the judges and audience began to calm down. “I mean, no one even knew you sing, Y/N. Why did you decide to come on The Masked Singer?”

You laughed uneasily into the microphone. Spencer could tell that you were feeling equal amounts of joy and nervousness. It was understandable, he thought. You had just won a singing competition despite having never sang in public before.

“I’ve always loved to sing, but I’ve never had much confidence in my voice. I’d love more than anything to be in a big movie musical. I guess I was hoping that this would be a good place to build my confidence.”

“You have an absolutely amazing voice,” one judge said. You ducked your head shyly, smiling slightly at the ground before looking back up at the judges. “I think after people see your performances you’ll have no problem doing a musical. I mean, you tackled so many different genres, and you sounded amazing doing all of them.”

You thanked the judge before turning to the others. A smile remained on your lips as they all congratulated you, but Spencer could tell from the way you kept shifting your weight that you were uncomfortable with all of the attention.

“Wait so you said that one reason you did this show was that it’s your boyfriend’s favorite show?” Spencer’s heart fluttered as he watched your smile grow at the mention of him. “That really threw me. I didn’t know you were dating anyone.” The other judges agreed.

“Yeah my boyfriend and I have been together for over two years. We’ve just kept it a secret.”

“Well the secret is out now.”

“You still don’t know who he is though,” you pointed out. The judges laughed and agreed.

“Whoever is dating her is a lucky man,” Rossi commented as the show wrapped up. Spencer tried not to let his heart skip a beat. What would his team think when they found out about you two?

----------------

“I still can’t believe that The Queen was Y/N Y/L/N,” JJ sighed. The team was in the elevator on the way up to their floor. They all needed to drop some stuff off, but Hotch had told them that no one was allowed to stay late tonight. They needed to get home and relax.

“I can’t believe she managed to have a secret boyfriend for over two years without the media finding out,” Emily added. “You know Garcia is probably already trying to uncover the mystery man.”

The team laughed as the elevator doors opened. Spencer made a mental note to warn you about Garcia. He had already texted you to congratulate you, but he missed you. You were supposed to finish filming in a few days and then you’d be back home in about a week. Still, Spencer was a little bummed that you would miss your third anniversary, which was actually tomorrow.

“Hey, Pretty Boy, who’s at your desk?” Derek asked.

It took Spencer a moment to really understand what he was seeing. It didn’t quite make sense in his brain. Every time you got home, you would immediately shower (to wash off the airplane germs), throw on one of Spencer’s old sweaters and some leggings, and curl up on the couch with whatever book Spencer had left laying around until he got home. And now here you were, wet hair and all, sitting at his desk. He barely had time to admire the look of concentration on your face as you tapped at your phone, probably texting your agent.

“Wait, is that-” But Spencer didn’t let Emily finish.

“Y/N!” he called as he pushed through the doors into the bullpen.

Your head shot up at the sound of your boyfriend’s voice, a huge smile growing on your face. You dropped your phone onto the desk (your agent could wait) and rushed over to him. Completely ignoring the fact that his team was a few steps behind him, you threw your arms around Spencer, wrapping your legs around him too when he picked you up. He began to spin you around, causing you to shriek in glee.

Finally, he put you down. You started to move away, but he surprised you by putting his hands on either side of your face and connecting your lips. You smiled into the kiss, so happy to finally be back with your boyfriend.

“Does anyone else feel like they’re missing something?” You two broke apart at the sound his coworker’s voice. You smiled shyly at the man who had just spoke, Rossi you assumed, based on Spencer’s stories about his team.

“Everyone, I’d like you meet Y/N. My girlfriend.” The team looked between Spencer, who was looking at you like you were the only thing that mattered, and you. You could feel the blush on your face, but that didn’t stop your own goofy love-struck grin.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you guys,” you finally said. “I’ve heard so much about you all.”

“We can’t say the same,” the blonde, JJ, slowly replied. You could feel Spencer shift uncomfortably beside you, before he pulled you even closer to his side.

“That’s my fault,” you said before Spencer could say anything. “I wanted to keep our relationship a secret so it didn’t get out to the media.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Spencer corrected you quickly. “I wanted to make sure that Y/N didn’t get targeted by anyone because of my job. She didn’t want anyone targeting me because of her job. It was a mutual decision.”

“And you couldn’t even tell us?” JJ asked. You could tell, even without knowing her, that she was hurt. You knew that she was Spencer’s best friend, so it was understandable. In fact, every face was looking at the two of you with some mixture of confusion, surprise, and hurt.

“I didn’t want to risk it,” Spencer said uncomfortably. “I figured that the more people who knew, the more likely it would be to get out. Y/N already had to tell some people, so I didn’t want to add to the list.”

“I only told my agent, my assistant, and my security team. And I only told my security team because they thought they caught Spencer trying to break into my house one day.”

Spencer’s face went bright red as he remembered that failed surprise. “I think we need to hear that story sometime.” The rest of the team quickly agreed with Prentiss. It seemed, for now at least, they would let the whole secret thing go.

“What are you doing here?” Spencer asked suddenly. “Not that I’m not happy to see you. I am. You’re supposed to be in LA filming.”

You grinned mischievously at him. “I managed to get the filming schedule rearranged a bit, so I could finish early. I shot my last scene this morning, then went straight to the airport. I wanted to surprise you, so we could finally spend an anniversary together.”

“When do you leave again?” The softness of Spencer’s voice broke your heart. He was preparing himself for you usual answer. You’d be here for a week or two and then have to leave again. But not this time.

“Not for months.” A smile of disbelief spread across Spencer’s face. “I’ll have to go to LA and New York for a few days here and there, but nothing long term. I want to be here with you.”

The two of you had, once again, forgotten that Spencer’s team was standing in front of you. It was so easy to get wrapped up in one another when you were both used to being alone together.

“Did I hear something about an anniversary?” Rossi asked, shaking the two of you out of your little bubble.

“It’ll be three years tomorrow.” You grinned up at your boyfriend. It was the first anniversary you would get to spend together.

“Let me host a dinner for you,” Rossi offered. “I’ll make one of my famous meals. We can break out some nice wine that I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”

Spencer began to shake his head, but you grabbed his arm and gasped. “Spencer please,” you begged. “You know I’ve always wanted to go to a dinner at Rossi’s place. You only talk about them all the time. Please. Please. Please.” Spencer finally gave in to your pleading, nodding reluctantly.

You hugged him in excitement before moving to properly introduce yourself to his friends. As you chatted with them, you could hear the clicking of approaching heels.

“My favorite crime fighters will be unhappy to know that I haven’t been able to find anything about Y/N Y/L/N’s secret boyfriend.” You looked up at the brightly dressed woman, definitely Garcia, who had just walked into the bullpen.

“Actually, baby girl, I think we figured that one out ourselves.” Garcia looked up from her phone at Derek’s words. Her eyes widened as she saw you standing among her coworkers.

“Wha-? Who? How? What?” she stammered. In response, you grabbed Spencer’s hand, pulling him closer to you. He wrapped an arm around you, grinning apologetically at Garcia. “Spencer Reid, I would be so mad at you if I wasn’t so happy about meeting Y/N.” Without wasting another second, she rushed over and hugged you. You laughed at the look of jealously on Spencer’s face as you were taken from his arms. This would take some getting used to.

----------------

You smiled happily, watching Spencer’s friends laugh at a story you had just finished. “I think this was a much better anniversary than burning dinner and then ordering takeout would have been,” you whispered to your boyfriend. Rossi’s food had not disappointed. Nor had his wine. You were feeling comfortably warm as you cuddled up with your boyfriend.

“It’s what we would have done after dinner that I was looking forward to.” You tried not to shiver at Spencer’s words.

“There will be plenty of time for that,” you reminded him. “I’m glad I’m getting to know your friends. They’re so important to you.”

“I’m glad they’re getting to know you. I think you all will be friends. That might not be good for me though.” You laughed at the embarrassed look on your boyfriend’s face. His friends had plenty of embarrassing stories about him, so you had been swapping stories all night.

It was easy for the team to see how absolutely in love the two of you were. Even if they hadn’t been profilers, the looks you two shared were so obvious. What had surprised them was how open Spencer was to your touch. In fact, he was the one initiating most your contact. You had been prepared to control yourself for the sake of Spencer’s professionalism, but he didn’t seem to have the same thought. Any time he could, he would grab your hand or wrap his arms around you.

That was how you had gotten to be cuddled up next to him. After dinner, the party had moved outside. You had been heading for a seat in between Emily and Penelope when Spencer’s hand had reached out and grabbed yours, pulling you onto the outdoor sofa beside him. Not that you were complaining. So you had stayed like that the rest of the night, leaning comfortably into your boyfriend’s side.

A couple weeks later, you posted a picture that Penelope had taken of the two of like that onto your social medias. It was time to introduce the world to your boyfriend.

#spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fic #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #matthew gray gubler #mgg #mgg fic #spencer reid x you #calwrites #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds fanfiction

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scarytheory · 4 years

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James Bond conquers Czechoslovakia (or not?)

In the sixties, James Bond was everywhere. But even though it was a big worldwide phenomenon, it was hardly accessible to everyone. Czechoslovakia was a socialist country with a strict regulation system for film industry, so it is not surprising that James Bond films were not screened until the end of communist regime in the early nineties. But somehow James Bond had a notable presence in Czechoslovakia. It was a name known to average film fans. They heard about Sean Connery, Bond girls, and some of them could describe a detailed plot of the movies. How is it possible? This article discusses media discourse about James Bond, and how it created a basis for a familiarization with the James Bond film franchise.

The Czechoslovak film industry was centralized in the state-controlled institution between 1945 and 1990. Every imported film was approved by the state. Very broadly speaking, genre cinema from the Western countries wasn't ideologically desirable. Only around 5–10 British films were screened every year in Czechoslovakia in the '60s and '70s . Mostly they were kitchen sink dramas (A Taste of Honey or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) or literary adaptations (Tom Jones, Far from The Madding Crowd). The action adventure genre was presented by French comedies (super popular Fan-Fan the Tulip and similar films) and by French art films (Breathless, Pierrot le fou). Important were leftist qualities of these movies. Approved were also some James Bond knock-offs, for example West German movies about FBI agent Jerry Cotton. Some people would say that James Bond and similar films could not be shown because of censorship, but that is not true. These films were not screened, because they just were not bought into the Czechoslovak distribution. There were, of course, reasons for that.

So what exactly was problematic in James Bond films? First, it was simply a country of origin. It was not just that Bond was British (= Western country). In Czech press were Bond movies often described as American, which is at least partly true: distribution rights were owned by the American company United Artist. Also values presented by the films were values that were in Czechoslovakia identified with capitalist countries, especially with the United States. But mostly, Bond wasn't a preferred type of a hero for a socialist audience. He was rich, obsessed with expensive cars and clothes, violent and sexual. He was not nice. He was not a socialist hero. A Polish film historian Jerzy Toeplitz wrote about a bad influence of James Bond books and films, and the article was translated for Panoráma zahraničního filmového tisku in 1966. He wrote that James Bond books are meant for a Western reader who is “succumbed to the amuck of accumulating consumer goods.” That is related to the fact that the film series itself was perceived as existing just with a goal of gaining money. A lot of articles were stating (and mocking) the way the films were used for merchandise.

James Bond was a perfect picture of a capitalist country: cruel, brutal, too erotic, sadistic and racist. Which are all fair points, but they weren't said with an aim to open any kind of discussion. The goal was purely ideological. “We must build a hero – either a man or a woman of our time who upholds our humane socialist morale – and pose him or her against this mythical hero who can do anything, nothing is a nuisance to him, who overcomes everything smoothly and – like James Bond, for example – has the right to commit senseless murders. This represents an ideological conflict with the bourgeoisie, one that is essential and without compromise.” (Film a doba, 5, p. 243).

Perhaps the most interesting aspects were constant mentions about racism. However a language that was used to describe racism in James Bond films was very racist itself. That is actually not surprising because Czechoslovak people had – and still have – lots of racist issues. Lubomír Oliva, one of prominent Czechoslovak film critics, described James Bond this way: “James Bond embodies a new type of Superman. He is coldy cruel and dismissive of the weak. He kills without remorse, because that is his job. Multiple scenes from the trilogy show racism, which is subconscious, automatic, and therefore more insidious. Is he the Tarzan among nuclear weapons? Or perhaps he is a different but more dangerous type of a primitive: a close relative of the Nazi Übermensch.” (Kino, 1965/11, p. 13). It is also very telling to look closely at the photos used in that article – Bond shoots, Bond fights, Bond smiles like a crazy lunatic while he kills people. The writing itself is very suggestive, evocative and even vulgar. Oliva loves to mention every specific and cruel thing Bond does in the films in details. One has to ask – what if the effect of listing all the bad things was quite opposite? Was not public more curious to watch it?

Maybe the screenwriter of many amazing Czech genre films (Adela Has Not Had Her Supper Yet, Lemonade Joe) Jiří Brdečka was a little bit fond of Bond, right? Well – not really. The most problematic part of Bond films, according to Brdečka, was their anti-communist aspect. A majority of the villains were communists and often from USSR, which was not acceptable. In Brdečka's article in Divadelní a filmové noviny he compared people of color to communists. James Bond films are full of prejudice against both, and that is simply bad. He also wrote: “This hero is deeply engaged and his engagement compels him to eat communists and colored people for breakfast – both at the same time if possible. This tells us that James Bond may not find fertile soil around these parts.” But Brdečka at least acknowledged that the films were really well made. And concluded with: “[The films] are excellent crap, with an emphasis on crap.” (Divadelní a filmové noviny, 1965/9-10, p. 10). Galina Kopaněva (another a very prominent and very popular film critic) took one step further. Not only the films themself are bad and stupid, the loving audience from Western countries is stupid as well: “[young people] devour the elegant Bond and his precise punches to the stomach. They loosen their ties a la Bond when they see the closeups of of Bond girls’ super-breasts, they bray with enthusiasm when there is an especially well done murder, they clench their fists as they watch crazy car chases on serpentine mountain roads, and they succumb to the pleasant shivers caused by torture scenes.” (Film a doba 1965/6, p. 323). The infantilization of audience was sometimes used while describing popular culture but was not broadly used for describing James Bond.

So, now we know that James Bond was bad for Czechoslovak people. Or at least according to the prominent film critics and state-run film industry. But how is possible that James Bond became a well known phenomenon in communist Czechoslovakia? It was not allowed to show James Bond in the cinemas but somehow people knew who James Bond is. There were also special namings for James Bond films – bondovky (that is used still today) and bondiády. People were obsessed with them, even though they did not have an option to watch them.

The most obvious answer for James Bond popularity is that he was a constant presence in the Czechoslovak film press. He was – in his invisibility – totally visible. Bond films were often mentioned (and sometimes analyzed) in the press targeted towards film professionals (Interpressfilm) or “smart” film fans (Film a doba, Divadelní a filmové noviny) and in popular film magazines (Kino). Almost every Czechoslovak film critic had an opportunity to see a James Bond movie at some international film festival or in a cinema abroad. That means that they wrote reviews for Czechoslovak magazines. But the reviews were not only about qualities of the films. More often the critics retold the plot with every possible detail (including the ending of the film). The magazines also published spreads about James Bond phenomenon in general (including lots of photos), interviews with actors or directors, short notes about upcoming films or about changing of the actors. The articles were a weird mixture of positive and negative. For example, you would have a long text about Sean Connery, and in this article author would write about how wonderful actor Connery is. But they would also mention that Connery deserves better than Bond. Or you would have a big spread about a James Bond movie premiere, and author would mention that film is spectacular and fun to watch, but also that it is still a low and decadent film.

Another way to get familiar with James Bond were the books by Ian Fleming. Three of them were published in Czechoslovakia: Dr No (Doktor NO, 1968; both Czech and Slovak version), View to a Kill (collections of short stories Ve jménu zákona, 1969) and Goldfinger (Zlatý fantóm, 1970, with a film cover and a lot of photos inside the book). The rest of the stories was published after 1990.

Of course in Czechoslovakia were some people that managed to see a James Bond film in other countries (travelling was complicated but not absolutely impossible). Ivan Soeldner said that people used to visit strip clubs while abroad, but suddenly it was a necessity to go see a James Bond film instead. He also stated that Bond (and strip clubs) are highly overrated (Kulturní tvorba, 1965/33, p. 14). But Bond films became word of mouth sensation – not just because they were entertainment films but because what they meant. Bond films were in a way similar to popular American music or Coca-cola. People heard so much about it that it became its own animal. The efforts to minimize and ridicule Bond in press actually created by mistake an unique mythos of James Bond – almost a symbol of anti-sovietism and anti-communism, something like a forbidden fruit.

James Bond obsession calmed down a little bit with a departure of Sean Connery. Some articles were still occasionally written but not with so much passion as it used to be in the '60s. But a new opportunity to see James Bond films arrived to a Czechoslovak audience in the '80s. Videorecorders became more affordable and in 1985 there were around 80 000 of them. For Czechoslovakia was a very important phenomenon an unofficial “pirate” dubbing. So suddenly, for some people was a possibility to borrow VHS with some movies that were unavailable before (including Bond films).

The communist regime ended in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and Czechoslovak film industry started to transform. The process was slow and messy. But finally, a first James Bond film was shown in Czech and Slovak cinemas: The Living Daylights in 1992 (in English original with Czech or Slovak subtitles). This film also had a special bonus for the viewers – it took place in Bratislava, Slovakia (but it was actually filmed in Austria). A lot of older Bond films also appeared in official VHS market, and the “black pirate market” was still quite proficient during the nineties.

The aim of this short overview was to show the ways James Bond appeared in the Czechoslovakia for the first time. It was probably very similar in other socialist countries (Poland, USSR,…). I think that it is important to ask questions about what Bond actually meant for a different types of audiences, and how it changed over time. The answers are still relatively vague (and maybe even banal), more answers could bring complex research in daily press or oral history.

My sources: I did a quick research using a lot of articles from the '60s till early '90s. Big thanks to National Film Archive that has everything scanned in the digital library.

Periodicals: Divadelní a filmové noviny, Film a doba, Filmové aktuality, Filmové informace, Filmový přehled, Interpressfilm, Kino, Kinorevue, Kulturní tvorba, Panoráma, Panoráma zahraničního filmového tisku, Záběr

I also used my own knowledge of Czechoslovak film industry (so you need to trust me that it is all true). I tried to put all this together, and the conclusions are my own. Hopefully, it all makes sense (I didn’t went too much into details because well, this is not some kind of complex research, it is just something I did for fun)

And thank you to amazing @slippingintostockings who helped me with the translation of Czech reviews from the sixties.

#007 fest #007 fest 2020 #teamcivilian #meta #james bond #classic bond #sean connery #czechoslovakia #čumblr #I's not so boring how it sounds I promise!#maaaybe just a little bit #it's niche #but I really wanted to write this #mine

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comradekatara · 4 years

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I asked this question to another blog but never got an answer. I asked google but I couldn't find anything. How in God's name does me being a zutara shipper (and no I'm not sensoring the name bc why the fuck) make me a racist?

i appreciate the active hostility with which this question was asked. you seem to be really steaming right now, which makes me super inclined to answer your question with patience and respect!

by the way you phrased this, you seem to have made shipping a part of your identity. the phrasing of “a ___ shipper” vs “someone who ships ___” really speaks volumes. i’ve noticed this is the case with a lot of insular fan communities that become heavily attached to a specific romance within the show. especially when said relationship is not canon. i know it’s easy to get riled up over nothing, but i promise you this: you are not under attack. bryke did not slight you by not making your ship canon. no fan of atla is under attack for their opinions on atla. it’s a show. these are not real problems. it is perfectly valid to feel upset over the writing of a show (i, too, for example, think the mai/zuko and katara/aang resolutions in the finale were slapdash, poorly-written, and borderline-misogynistic) but at the end of the day, it’s just a show.

on the other hand, when fans of a piece of media say “hey, this phenomenon (either within the text itself, paratext, or fan engagement) with regards to this thing i like is racist, actually,” they are not just saying “i feel hurt by this fictional narrative,” but they are also saying “this is actively harmful, because even the smallest form of racism is microcosmic of a larger issue that actively gets people killed every day.” (listen. i know this is very obvious to anyone who has ever experienced racism, but i’ve encountered a lot of white people who don’t seem to grasp that racism has explicitly harmful effects, so i thought i would elucidate this matter nonetheless.)

the pairing of zuko and katara, from what i’ve witnessed of fan communities over the past decade, seems to be founded on “the inherent sexiness of antagonism.” i’ve seen people say it’s about the parallels, the yin/yang, the thematic importance of forgiveness, and sure, i’ll give you that. they do parallel each other in resonant, deliberate ways. they are fire and water. katara coming to forgive zuko represents significant growth, and their friendship is poignant and meaningful. but i fail to see how any of this is inherently romantic. it is actually possible to love someone without having sexual chemistry. i know people ship zuko with literally everyone, including twelve year olds, but for a moment let’s put our common sense hats on and assume that it would be absurd to ship him with either aang or toph. shipping him with katara seems just as absurd to me. he certainly comes to respect her a great deal, but at the end of the day, he still regards her as a child. a child whom he loves and respects, but, just like aang and toph, a child nonetheless. katara is fourteen. a grizzled war veteran, yes, but an eighth grader nonetheless. if a junior in high school started dating a fourteen year old, they would be considered a creep. you know why? because it’s creepy!

so back to what you zoot shippers seem to consider the crux of their chemistry: the antagonism. i could easily pull together eight scenes of them getting along, and yet every single gifset i’ve ever seen compiling moments of the two of them includes at least two or three in which katara still wants zuko dead. doesn’t seem very romantique to me! but what i regard as justifiable rage, a lot of you seem to think denotes sexual tension. the thing is, it’s not sexual; it’s just tension. katara has absolutely no reason to like or trust zuko, as to her, he has done absolutely nothing to prove himself distinct from the people responsible for the destruction of her home, the genocide of people like her, the murder of her mother, the spreading of an imperialist colonialist project. she trusted him to side with good in ba sing se, and nearly cost aang his life, so she knows she can’t afford to make that mistake again and risk aang dying. from her perspective, her rage is one hundred percent reasonable, and she has no plans of trusting him ever again, until he actively works to earn her forgiveness. from zuko’s perspective, he was just staring up at the sky, and now this incessant little five year old won’t stop bullying him, which is really annoying, sokka please get your irritating little sister to cut that out, why’s she being so meannnnn :(

when zuko uses katara’s necklace as leverage, that is not sexy; that is him threatening katara with a family heirloom, and all that she has left of her mother. when zuko rolls on top of her to protect her from falling rubble, that is not sexy; that is him not trusting katara is capable enough to protect herself. by the end of the episode, he realizes that she is far more powerful and capable than he ever gave her credit for, and he is awed by her power. him treating her like a child (which, frankly, is fair, because she is) is decidedly not sexy. when zuko jumps in front of lightning for katara, that is not inherently romantic; he would have jumped in front of lightning for momo, and you know it. for one thing, he wasn’t risking a single thing; he was confident that he would be able to redirect it, then azula pointed it at the wrong person, but because he is impulsive, he dove in front of it anyway because he thought he still could redirect it, even though his stance was all wrong. but when actually given a moment to think, he chose katara to fight azula with him because she was the obvious person for the job on every tactical level. she is the most powerful bender he knows. period. water extinguishes fire. and fire is at its greatest and most powerful on this day. he’s not going to let toph into the line of fire; even if suki could fight azula, it would be deeply insensitive to make her considering azula tortured her in the past; and sokka has places to be, he doesn’t have time for your sidequest! katara is obviously the person you take. and there is nothing inherently romantic about zuko’s friendship with her.

ah, but what about that time she touched his scar? was that not an unparalleled act of tenderness? a beautiful moment of gentle caress? i mean, yeah, sure, but i don’t see why that needs to be romantic. i mean, you can read romance into it, if you want to, because, like, i said, sure, but if anything, i think acting like that moment is romantic lessens its impact. this is an important moment for katara; she is humanizing the enemy! this is an important moment for zuko; he is allowing himself to be helped. i could analyze this moment for a writing standpoint endlessly, because it’s beautiful, but i won’t, because that is pointless analysis when i am, instead, trying to explain to you why i think the act of shipping this pairing is more often than not rooted in racism.

i will say this: i don’t think shipping them is inherently racist. i think if you think their friendship has potential for something more, and you think they should have gotten together, you’re not necessarily racist to think so. i think you’re wrong, but racist? well, that’s a different matter. no, i think this ship is rooted in racism for the simple fact that so much fan-generated content i’ve stumbled across over the years has been deeply, horrifically racist. i think this ship also lends itself to that kind of racism because it is so reminiscent of racist tropes that the majority white fans of the ship, either unaware of the harmful connotations of these tropes, or active fans of these tropes, love to employ uncritically. i’ve seen pocahontas aus. i’ve seen beauty and the beast aus (wherein, mind you, katara is the beast...........yes, you read that right). i’ve seen wildly popular fanart that sexualizes katara––who, may i repeat, IS FOURTEEN––in disgusting ways. and most of all, i’ve seen the delegitimization of katara’s anger towards zuko, as if she is simply supposed to “get over” the harm the fire nation has caused her. she is clearly deeply affected by the death of her mother, and zuko used her love for her mother as leverage: first, with her necklace, and second, when he used his empathy over their shared loss as a means of gaining katara’s trust. it’s clear that fans (not all, but many i’ve seen, at least those passionate enough to send me an ask with this phrasing) of this ship don’t actually give a shit about katara’s role as an indigenous woman, or why she would have no desire in dating a colonizer. sometimes it’s clear that people are actually cognizant of this, and even get off on it. they think it’s sexy. they think the racism is hot.

katara and zuko have a fascinating dynamic. they are clear foils, and their relationship is poignant and has great depth. of the little we do see of their friendship, it’s clear that they care about each other a lot. but to imply that their relationship is in any way sexual veers into racist territory really, really quickly. now, i have no idea whether you, yourself are racist. i can guess, based on your phrasing of this ask, and knowing that anyone who thinks that “being accused of racism is worse than racism” is definitely racist, but i’m not going to make any assumptions one way or another. i hope you appreciate my taking the time to answer this, because much like that other blog you sent this ask to, i have absolutely no obligation to. it shouldn’t be my role to educate people on why [x thing] is/can be harmful, especially when they are clearly asking me in bad faith and are likely to disregard everything i just wrote. so all that being said, you’re welcome.

#asks #anon #hot takes #oooh boy #zvtara

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes!: You’re Everybody’s Sidekick Review

OK KO was easily one of the best animated series of the 2010′s and i’ll stand by those words. The brainchild of Ian Jones Quartlery, voice of Wallow in Bravest Warriors and more importantly former head writer for Steven Universe, and current longtime romantic partner of that series creator Rebecca Sugar. That part isn’t AS important, but I still find it sweet. Anyways OK KO was the story of K.O., a 6-11, not my own laziness for once but the show’s own way of doing age, year old boy who wants to be the best like no one ever was. In this case i’ts being a hero in a world that’s basically like if someone took the marvel universe and smashed a retro game collection and a pile of manga on top of it and then blended up the result and shot it full of gamma rays. Full of heroes of all kinds ranging from those fighitng crime to those who just want to loiter outside strip malls or cut hair. To achieve this goal KO gets a job at Gar’s Bodega, the combination of your average bodega (for those unfamiliar with the term, i’ts a convience store) and a video game item shop, so the slurpee machine is right next to the power ups and ninja stars, and everything from skateboard polish to Spread Guns is avaliable. The bodega is owned by Mr.Gar, a mustachiosed muscle man whose basically a shoutier mexican version of MIke Haggar but with shades and a mustache. So a somehow better version of him, though with him being busy watching over the plaza itself, doing secret hero missions and what not the day to day operations are left to two teens: Rad, a muscle bound dude bro alien with telekenisis and a secret heart of gold and Enid, a cynical, slacker ninja whose also bilogically a witch because her parents are a vampire and a werewolf. So the series follows these three as they run the boedega, grow as people and fight the robots that frequently attack the plaza sent by the evil Lord Boxman who hates the place literally because it’s there and it’s existance annoys him. This is the canon explination and it is utterly hilarious. The series was funny, had great character work, decent ongoing stories, great jokes and a fun tone that could go from meaningful and well thorught ot utterly batshit from episode to episode and was sadly canceled after 3 seasons because Cartoon Network is kinda stupid right now and dosen’t know how to handle a superhero show that still makes action a priority, but it did get a solid ending, a slew of great crossovers and a decent amount of representation under i’ts belt. WHich brings us to today and the start of RED ACTION WEEK: A week dedicated to the series most prominent gay character and the bisexual ninja witch who loves her. I’m covering all 5 of Red’s more prominent apperances... I was just going to do the red/enid episodes but decided this was a better introduction to the series itself, as well as the fact it allows her character arc to better tie together by her final episode, which directly uses this one as a major plot point. I also threw Plaza Prom in there since, even if she’s only a supporting character, it’s still one of her few major apperances, is part of her final major episode, is one of my faviorites, and the climactic dance fights is one of the most intentionally homoerotic fight scenes i’ve seen in some time. With all that out of the way, let’s do this after the cut.

We start at Gar’s Bodega, just after the opening two parter, with KO starting his first day of work, part of the reason this episode is a fairly smooth introduction into the show. Not even in the door he accidently shoryukyn’s joe cuppa, a stand up comedian with a cup of coffee in the big time for a head... I told you anything goes and I meants it. After that accident, we find Enid at the counter, ignoring the customers before shooing them away and when KO asks for work, plays along with his enthusasim and tells him to clean the store.. which he does in minutes, before being told to sort the penny dish, and while he does the two discuss KO’s love of helping people: KO just genuinely thinks that’s part of his job, the right thing to do and feels good while Enid.. dosen’t feel it’s worth the effort and people are just generally ungreatful and not worth it. I really like this scene for showing off their character dynamic beautifully: It starts showing that while at this stage Enid is largely an asshole, she does care about K.O. and while he’s cleaning, despite usually turning customers away, still let’s Ginger, an elderly patron and one of KO’s mom’s dojo customers, not only check out but pay in freaking pennies. It shows that try as she might, Enid really isn’t a cyncial or heartlesss as she claims. It’s also nice setup for later in the season as, and as i’m sure Ian Jones Quartlery and crew were preparing for, we later DO see why Enid hates people so much: her best friend, possibly more, Elodie, who i’ll certainly be covering eventually, betrayed her for a spot at Point Prep, basically UHA or Xavier’s for this world and claimed their friendship was just a ploy (It wasn’t, but again, story for another time), while her one date with Rad went terribly due to him acting like a huge jackass at the advice of his even bigger jackasses of friends. It’s easy to see why she stopped carring: When she opened up in the past it only lead to her being hurt and alone. K.O.... is the opposite. He genuinely belivies in everyone and tries to help them because, as said above, it’s just what he does and what he belivies a hero should be... he hasn’t been hurt or influenced by assholes like his friends, and thus is able to get them to open up. It’s a wonderful dynamic and I love it. And naturally, KO is determined to help Enid see the light, with Enid responding with the wonderful line “You’ll never melt my icy heart”... give him a few more episodes Enid, give him a few more episodes. So K.O. Decides to set out helping people, shouting about it to enid back at the store as he does because he’s 6-11 and kids in that age range are many things, but subtle is not one of them. He starts with Geoff and Nick Army, a monk and gay duke nukem reflectivity who despite having polar oppositie personalities, are both a couple, as confirmed by the creative team and then the finale, and a crime fighting duo who are having a dispute over opening a pickle jar with the good old ultra violence or non violence, which KO solves by letting both do it once, which results in a pickle jar explosion, both men in their underwear and everyone happy, especially the shippers. KO continues his quest, going to Logical Cuts where we meet Mr.Logic, a robot who has a rather moving and well done backstory we’ll certainly get to, and is voice by James Urabanik, aka the voice of Rusty Venture on the venture bros, to my utter delight. And yes i’ll be covering the venture bros eventually, and might be this month. His customer, another one of KO’s mom’s regulars, is upset because her haircut isn’t right while Mr.Logic is upset, well as upset as a monotone robot can convey, that his usually 100% mathmatically perfect haircuts are off. KO pitches in and the new result is perfect, with both being greatful.

KO’s next stop on his good will help people crying for help tour, after the above bit of wonderful art shift as that version of ko moveds like a south park character for some reason. Anyways, it turns out best friends, co workers and the dante and randal of this show, i.e.two best friends working a dead end job who despite arguing a lot need each other, A Real Magical Skeleton, self explaintory and Greg, a bear, are having an argument because RMS is trying to do their job and frame a baseball for a guy while Greg is being a dickhead and playing the drums constantly. As you can probably wager, I do not like Greg, probably more than rusty, partly because a future episode has him making KO doubt his macaroni art gift for his mom so he can eat it, yes really,and partly because he’s less intresting than his buddy and yet the two are shipped frequently despite my honest assumption they’d kill each other.. much like if dante and randall finally banged. However if you do ship them, I have no hostility with you. Unlike say loudcest or shipping sam with lincoln over at the loud hosue, there's nothing wrong with RMS X Brandon, it’s just not for me. Anywho KO solves it in the hilarious and awesome manner of just putting Brandon inside one of those baseball cube things... it’s a shame he apparently gave him air holes but whatever. Proud of himself, K.O. plans to head back when he runs into the Ally Teens: Red Action, rude teen warrior from the future who just had a bad haircut, Drupe, a sentient strawberry because of course, and Greg, Drupe’s nonbinary best friend and combination of one of the bone cousins and Woodstock. K.O. offers to help and , with the trio being huge steaming bowls of elephant piss at this point, they instead trick him into waiting in a lava flow and then have drupe whip him every time the lava causes him to cartoonishily jump in the air. Yeah despite both Red Action and Drupe going on to having supporting roles, like our good pal tom, who I will get back to this month, there isn’t nearly as much wiggle room in their first apperance. With Tom Lucitor, he was a dick.. but you could make the case, even just off that ep that he genuinely dosen’t know HOW to be a good person or that what he’s doing is sketchy at best. Here, it’s fairly obvious the ally teens know setting a child on fire and using vine whip on him super effectively is wrong, that’s why their doing it. Red, being that special brand of asshole, posts it on social media. I mean posting a video of yourself hurting a child, that’s Tucker Carlson level’s of dickery right there. Stone cold. Enid sees it and is understandably concerned, and goes over to see if KO’s allright when he returns and is forced to explain to him that no they weren’t laughing with him, they were laughing at him and were just being dicks. Also he wasn’t in lava, it was magma. It was above ground.

K.O. glumly wonders why and Enid reitrates this kind of shit is why she dosen’t help people. K.O. also wonders how she saw it and we find out Enid is basically facebook stalking red action on her social media, as you do, and that Red’s been on a bit of a tear lately, smashing up shit and farting in Geoff’s face all because she got a bad haircut, with K.O. , likely going thorugh more of her posts, realizing theirs a pattern: When bad things happen to her she lashes out at others.. just like Enid. I do like the parallel there: Enid likely has a crush on her because the two are fairly similar.. but Enid runs cold and tens to be standoffish as a result of her past, while Red tens to take out her anger and frustration on everyone else and runs red hot. But they come together because opposities attract... it’s what noble laurite MC Scat Kat taaught us after all. K.O. however, having Steven Universe level’s of empahty and an equal sense of wanting to help, and just as few boundries as he had as a tween, decides that it’s clear the ally teens have underlying issues to adress and gets Enid help to look at their social media. Returning to the ally,and seemingly unphased by earlier, K.O. sets out helping them, starting by helping red get her haircut fixed by Mr. Logic. Red is adorably delighted. Moving on K.O. notes that Drupe basically just follows Red’s lead but has a fashion blog and clearly an identiy of her own and we soon learn she believes no one reads it. K.O. showed it to the not at all ambigiously gay duo and Geoff and Nick thank her> That’s two blushes and two wins in K.O.’s court. Finishing up, K.O. realizes Gregg stays quiet because they have low self esteem and feel they have nothing to be proud of. K.O. however found lots to be proud of and framed Gregg’s valdectorian certificate for him, again with some help from earlier. Instead of graditude red just calls him weird and leaves and KO slumps back depressed. I’ts a good lesson though: people DON’T change just because you did one weirdly kind thing for them. That takes time.. as we’ll see with Red and as we see with Drupe, who has less of an ons creen journey but is far nicer after her next apperance. While Enid is grossed out over having helped someone, Gregg comes in.. and after some great deranged animation thanks K.O. and Enid admits after some prodding that it does feel good to help, and K.O. is happy to have helped her int he process. The two playfully mess around as the episode ends. Final Thoughts: This was a really good one. Reaching back this far into the series, I didn’t think it’d would be nearly as good as it ended up: It serves both as a good proper introduction for a lot of the plaza regulars, a good setup for Enid’s character arc, and was also really funny with great animation. LIke Tom, I don’t think the creators knew exactly what they were going to do with the Alley Teens and thus take the two they end up focusing on in opposite directon: Red keeps her assholishness for her next apperance and grows from it, while Drupe’s drops off by the end of this season, likely due to her fashion blog taking off, but we’ll get into Red more in a review or so and Drupe more later this month.For now this episode was good and next up we have their next apperance in Plaza Prom. Until then, follow this blog for more reviews and nonsense, like and reblog it if you enjoyed this, hit me up with asks for review suggestions or comssions and until next time, later days!

#ok ko let's be heroes #you're everybody's sidekick #enid #red action #rednid #drupe #gregg #ko #geoff #nick army #mr.logic #ginger #lbgtq+#pride month #happy pride

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nyfacurrent · 4 years

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Business of Art | Literary Submissions 101

Top tips for getting your work seen by editors and publishers.

When it comes to getting your work published, writing is only half of the job. Submitting your work to publications is also a big part of being a writer, and it requires some strategizing. Not sure where to begin? We compiled a series of tips from previous NYFA Current articles, plus updated best practices, and some very helpful advice from former #ArtistHotline guest chat participants Elisa Gabbert and Lincoln Michel. So take a deep breath, gather your courage, and take note of the tips below before starting to submit your work!

Step 1 - Doing the Research

It might sound obvious, but we will say it one more time for the people in the back: you must read and familiarize yourself with the publications you’re considering sending your work to. What kind of work do they typically publish? Do any of their published works stand out to you? Who is their audience? When do they usually have open calls?

If you’re not sure how to begin this research, a good place to start is by following the steps of your main inspirations. Where have they published before? Have they written about their process anywhere? Do they talk about it in interviews? Interact with them on social media, but don’t expect them to take you by the hand and answer all of your questions, especially if unsolicited. Every now and then writers will feel like engaging on Instagram or Twitter, either creating threads or soliciting questions. Take advantage of these moments, but don’t be invasive. You can also follow hashtags like #pubtip and #querytip, used by writers, agents, and editors to share snippets of advice for aspiring writers. Another great way to understand where your heroes currently are and how they got there, is by reading the “Thank Yous” and “Acknowledgments” in their publications.

Step 2 - Getting Organized

Step number one means you’ll collect a lot of information, which can quickly become unparsable. Before that happens, we suggest preparing a spreadsheet where you can organize all the publications you believe are a good match. Here’s a sample spreadsheet with some basic information you should have on hand for tracking your submissions. You might have to submit several times before getting a yes (and that’s totally normal), so make sure to track your “yes” and “no” responses and feedback received (if any) for future applications.

Feeling overwhelmed? Prioritize your submissions. What is your dream venue? If it’s a super-selective place, they’ll probably require a more extensive publication history. Focus on building this history first, perhaps applying to smaller names in the industry, and then aiming for the powerhouses. The most important thing here is to make sure this process doesn’t compromise your writing time. Here are a few tips on how to balance your time between submitting work and making it.

Step 3 - Selecting Materials

Your “favorite-ever-thing-you-have-ever-written” is probably great, but it still might not be the best fit for a particular open call. When choosing what materials to send out, ask yourself the following question: does this work fit seamlessly with the other stories, essays, or poems this platform typically publishes? Choose objectively.

Along with your writing, open calls may ask for other supporting materials. The main one, and arguably, the most feared, is the cover letter. According to Lincoln Michel, writers don’t need to worry so much about them, focusing on keeping them short, direct, and simple. It's still important to know who you’re writing to, though. Show you did your research by matching the style of the publishing venue, Elisa Gabbert advises. CVs, references, and bios are other common files requested. Learn how to prepare them with these older, but golden tips from BinderCon. In terms of design, err on the side of cleanliness. Stick to the basics unless formatting is a big part of your text (for example, if you’re writing concrete poetry).

Last but not least, follow the guidelines! Remember, one very important thing must happen before an editor even gets to read your submission: you must make it out of the slush pile. Due to competitiveness or likely lack of time on the side of jurors, you might receive a rejection simply because you did not follow simple rules like sticking to the word count or labeling your files correctly.

Step 4 - Dealing with the Nos

Rejection is normal and does not necessarily mean your work is not good enough. Maybe your manuscript got lost in the slush pile—it happens to the best of us—or maybe it was not a good fit for the platform at that particular moment.

Use rejections as a teachable moment. Ask for feedback if possible, but don’t be offended if editors are not able to answer. If you do get a response, don’t feel pressured to internalize all critiques or to revamp your work completely. Know your writing and your value as a writer so you can process useful commentary and disregard the rest. Follow the advice of Gabbert and develop a network of trusted peers (folks in the industry, friends) that can be your beta-readers and be ready to accept and learn from honest criticism.

- Luiza Teixeira-Vesey, Designer/Marketing Officer

This article draws inspiration from #ArtistHotline, an initiative dedicated to creating an ongoing online conversation around the professional side of artistic practice. Our goal is to help artists discover the resources needed, online and off, to develop sustainable careers. You can follow NYFA at @nyfacurrent on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Find Elisa Gabbert and Lincoln Michel tweeting at @egabbert and @TheLincoln.

Have an arts career question? You can contact NYFA staff directly by emailing [email protected].

Image: Gil Avineri (Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts Fellow ’14); Ghastly Spread Between; 2009; color pencil, ink, acrylic, photo,collage on paper

#business of art #businessofart #artisthotline #artist professional development #artistprofessionaldevelopment #nyfa source #nyfasource #writers #literary arts #literaryarts #bindercon #elisa gabbert #elisagabbert #lincoln michel #lincolnmichel #luiza vesey #luizavesey #instagram #publishing

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #sup #friends #people #founder #funding #idea #li #Plans #executives

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a-certain-academy-city · 4 years

Text

Toaru Kagaku no Academy City: Operation Handcuffs - Retrospection

In the end, things had always been this way, weren’t they?

From the moment Accelerator took the position of Board Chairman, he made declaration of war to the Dark Side of Academy City. And it was from that point on that he used the resources he had at his disposal to ensure that the city’s darkness was completely purged.

He had even went as far as reassembling GROUP with a few new faces to help with the clean up operation. He used Espers like Musujime Awaki, Mugino Shizuri, and even level 0s like Hamazura Shiage. If they were still here, he probably would have ended up using Kamijou Touma and Misaka Mikoto as well in some way.

But then the Cosmic Side came knocking in the doors of the City he was trying to reform, interrupting his effort he could name a number of events that would give him reason to start a war with the Cosmic Side; it could have been when Zayane of the Right was tampering around with Academy City’s espers, particularly level 5s like himself. It could have been when Gaelion started his campaign which actually destroyed Academy City. It could have been when that Vacosian refugee group had decided to turn the planet into a super weapon and had manipulated the Aura users into causing havoc. Or it could have been way back when the Machine Empress and other beings invaded from Lawain, before Accelerator was even the Board chairman.

Anyone of these incidents would have made the perfect trigger, but he believed it all hit him during the Gaelion warpath,

He became aware of just how chaotic and unpredictable the Cosmic Side was and had decided to make preparations for a possible conflict with them, on top of dealing with the remnants of the Dark side who weren’t intent on going quietly.

He figured that all of these threats would be better off gone, which was why he used everything, from his positions as the leader of the science side and Academy City’s #1 to dispose of his opposition.

But when he thought about it, Accelerator had not changed a single bit. He still used bloody methods to solve problems, made espers and others be his underlings in his plans, and had even gone out and dealt with several issues himself.

Even at some point, he had became obsessed with crushing the Cosmic side, up to the point where he almost lost himself.

In the end, he was no different than he was a year ago, and now, he was becoming no better than Aleister himself when he was still around.

He had came to this realization when he had gone out and took out a certain depraved wizard.

Accelerator knew that guy would not be missed. No one would shed a tear for him, and many would praise his end. Even his own subordinates resented him which said enough. That guy needed to disappear for good.

But the fact remained that Accelerator still chose a brutal method to resolve the incident.

And he used people, even his own girlfriend to assure his end. Thinking about it more made Accelerator sick at how much he was becoming Aleister. He used people like pieces in a chess game and when he deemed that said chess pieces would be unable to handle it, Accelerator went out and crushed the problem himself.

Like a monster.

“You must have known what this meant from the beginning, Yomikawa. Idealism is powerless against reality, so if you try to force your ideals onto reality, there is bound to be a fierce backlash.”

Accelerator spoke to someone on his smartphone.

It was a person whom he had little time to visit since his ascendancy to his current position, but still kept in contact with for official matters.

In a way, this matter was both official and private at the same time. Accelerator was alone in the dark windowless room that was his office, with only the dim light of his holographic monitor lighting the room. It was late at night too, so not many people were around.

“The people who are more comfortable in the corrupt darkness were bound to attack there first. If they can’t make any headway through official channels or backchannels, they only have one option left: take someone I care about hostage and use that to negotiate.”

Accelerator wanted to end the cycle of violence and darkness perpetuated in this city. there was no other reason why the white monster had called Anti-Skill Officer Yomikawa Aiho in the first place.

Yes.

“Send me to the prosecutors and have me indicted.”

“Kh.”

“Why do you think I’m doing this? This is your job, Yomikawa. You’re the only one I know who can handle the rest of this.”

He spoke as if declaring a matter of fact. It was obvious what Accelerator was trying to do, but the Anti-Skill officer was still having trouble believing it.

The stage was not yet set.

No one was in agreement, so there was bound to be backlash once the confusion set in.

“I will rid Academy City of its dark side and I can’t leave any exceptions. I asked you to write up a charge sheet, didn’t I? I’ve killed more than 10,000 living humans, even if they were clones. And after that, I irresponsibly stayed in the dark side and fired guns all throughout this peaceful city while claiming to be helping. Someone like that can never be allowed out on the streets again. I must be placed behind bars no matter who tries to stop it.”

“The Board Chairman has complete control over Academy City. The 12 Directors below you are only for show. And whatever we might like to think, the rules never say the Chairman has to be a good person. I’ve never heard of someone that powerful just turning themselves in.”

“So what? That just means the system has always been broken. …Don’t make me laugh. If the rules differ from what everyone wants, then you’ve clearly found yourself a problem in the rules needing fixing.”

Who had been at fault? The answer was obviously Accelerator.

A Kihara had developed his powers and old Board Chairman Aleister had guided that monster down the path of murder for his own purposes, but it was still Accelerator who had actually done it.

But the #1 had been involved in far too much of the darkness.

How many people’s hands would be cuffed from this one boy’s testimony?

Of course people would be coming out of the woodwork to prevent this from happening.

Not because they were his good friends; because they had to protect their own future.

“You will never again leave prison.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Even if your sentence is reduced for cooperation with our investigations!! It just isn’t enough. The computer has already run some preliminary calculations. At this rate, your sentence will be for 11,000 years!!”

“Way too short. Around a year per murder? What kind of joke is that?”

“Why?” Yomikawa muttered under her breath.

The #1 did not look away.

“Didn’t I tell you? I can’t leave any exceptions. I’m the #1 and the Board Chairman, so I have to lead by example.”

Yomikawa Aiho was supposed to be a protector of the law.

But when she handcuffed an esper run amok, it was so they could be rehabilitated and have a second chance. That was why she would never aim a gun at a child. No matter how dangerous an esper they were, she had to create a situation where she could hear them out.

However, Accelerator would have no future.

This might be the right thing to do, but then who would save him?

“What about the clones?” she asked. “Once this is all investigated, their existence will come to light. That’s around 10,000 people who violate international treaties. Society might not accept them.”

Did clones have human rights or not?

Academy City had once answered no and repeated cruel experiments using them. And Accelerator was the one who had dirtied his hands there at the insistence of the researchers. They were undoubtedly the victims there, but the people in the outside world might not see it the same way.

If they too answered no and even saw the clones as a threat, they could be “disposed of”.

However…

“That’s why I have to make sure they’re safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think they’re safe now? If they’re discovered, then that’s the end for them. How is that safe? I need to correct that unnatural balance and make sure they have solid footing to stand on. They were victims in all this, so why do they have to continue keeping their heads down and hiding? Unlike me, they deserve a free life out in the open.”

Accelerator had only one hope of accomplishing that.

The white monster pointed his thumb back at his own chest.

“I’ll be the villain.”

That was the natural result.

In fact, it was unnatural for it to have not happened yet.

“I’ll gather all the attention of the media and the scientific society and accept all of the criticism myself. I’m the ridiculous genius, I’ve got all the political power now, and I’ve even got money too. That’s exactly the kind of asshole people will just love to see go down in flames. All the news will be focused on me and they’ve only got so much space for info in their articles. They’ll aim for impact and focus on the guy who went around murdering clones instead of the clones themselves. And who cares about the people spreading rumors? A lot of time will have passed before the media is sick of attacking me. And then it’ll be like a flat soda. Focusing on the clones after that won’t move the masses to action. People jump on these bandwagons because they’re bored with their own lives. These are the people who find themselves bored even with all the excitement out there to find, so they’re experts at living boring lives. Once they grow tired of a topic, their interest in it is forever dead.”

“...She won’t be happy when she hears this. Both of them.”

“I know.“

That was why he could not cheat the system.

He could not use his special authority as Board Chairman to pardon himself after being found guilty and he could not live behind bars but emerge as a heroic Board Chairman whenever there was a problem needing solving.

There could be no exceptions.

The person most deserving of punishment had to be appropriately punished and that had to be shown off to both Academy City and the rest of the world.

They had to show that true justice existed here.

They had to show that they had moved past the absurd age where the evil laughed and the good were left in tears.

Otherwise, nothing would change.

So he made a definitive statement that rang throughout the walls of that dark office.

“It all starts here,”

whispered Accelerator. It may not have been obvious without paying close attention, but the #1 and new Board Chairman was clenching his back teeth.

“This is also an issue of how much I can trust Academy City. If I get worried, can’t bear it anymore, and break through that wall to go save that brat, then it’s all over. That would create an exception and those shitheads from the dark side could have their way. So I have to trust that the giant system of Academy City will save that brat without me creating an exception.”

He was indeed a monster, so there was a violent part of him that would wild inside him. It told him the rules did not matter and he should break loose right this instant. Villains would always betray you in the end. Some eloquent speech about being reformed was not even worth listening to. He needed to pin them down, crush them, tear them apart, and grasp safety for himself. Even the greatest villain could not betray you if they were a corpse. And what other choice did he have if he was going to protect that young life? What could make a more beautiful story than dirtying his hands to allow someone he cared for to live their life out in the open?

But.

Even so.

“I will trust it.”

said Academy City’s #1 and new Board Chairman. That incarnation of slaughter turned fearsome dictator spoke the words like he was suppressing bubbling magma within himself.

“I will trust this city. I will trust that it is worth throwing out the rest of my life to protect. If I can’t trust the city I rule, then I don’t deserve to rule it in the first place.”

Someone had once told him that he had changed.

But it was this monster who had said they were one of the ones who had changed him.

Which was why this monster had retaken a human form and could continue to fight like this.

Even if it meant clenching his teeth and bearing with it all alone.

#Toaru Kagaku no Academy City (Main Verse)#First Ranked Level 5 & general Superintendent of Academy City ; Accelerator #The Story As It Is Told ; (Drabble)

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aquietchild · 4 years

Text

Credit to @tenarthoe on Twitter.

All right, rant time because I feel that this is important.

This is coming from someone who enjoys reading Kpop fanfiction and even writes it, and posts it online. Kpop fanfiction is fine. I think it’s alright. Except for underage smut, which is super gross, I’m okay with Kpop fanfiction.

But it’s Kpop FAN. FICTION. Meaning that the majority of fic readers understand that this is FICTION, and I’m sure most of us don’t let it go to our heads.

See fanfics are fine when they stay as fanfiction. When they stay on sites like Wattpad, Archieve of our own, and Tumblr etc. When FAN fiction gets released to the public, it becomes a whole different story. Figuratively Listen, I can’t speak for all fanfic readers, but I know I don’t go to fanfiction for a quality story. No, I go mainly because I want some fluff like having a snowball fight with Jackson or something. Not to say that fanfiction writers are bad. That’s not the point. The point is that fanfiction is made for a select group of people who choose to read this. Fanfiction is not for everyone. That’s why people try not to make feature films for it. Have y’all seen After? Perfect example of why fanfiction should stay fanfiction, in my opinion.

But you know what really pisses me off? What made me start this rant in the first place?

This isn’t a movie with completely different actors with wattpad fics as the plot. No, SM ENTERTAINMENT, decided that it was a GOOD IDEA. For WAY FREAKING V THEMSELVES. To ACT in a DRAMA! A FUCKING SHOW! (At least that’s what it seems from the tweets. Either way, it’s obvious that the fanfic is about WayV)

I’m sorry. WHAT? THE EVER? LOVING. FUCK?!

Geez I gotta calm down.

I feel the tweets explained it really well, but I have to reiterate this.

Fanfiction can get a little out of control, and we the fan writers, do sometimes puts these people in boxes, because we don’t know them personally. I think we try our best to make them as 3 dimensional as possible, but cliches do slip through.

One of the reasons fanfiction should STAY fanfiction.

I know not every movie and book (that isn’t fanfic that wanna be popular) is perfect, and it can’t appeal to everyone. But can we all agree that we like knowing that the creators put heart and time and effort into it? And that we like interesting characters? Sure writers will pull inspiration from real people, but we, an audience, don’t need to KNOW that. Seeing fanfiction get published into mainstream media makes me uncomfortable mainly because to me, it feels half assed. I keep thinking, “why not just make a new story?” But that’s just me.

When I see news like this, I get upset. I’m not sure if that’s even beginning to describe how I feel, but I hate it so much. Why the fuck would SM allow someone to write fanfic for them. And even have the members act it out?? (I’m not sure about the acting thing but either way, I’m pissed.) You mean to tell me that they KNOW this, and that they’re OKAY with this?

I think I might be sick, I really do, my stomach doesn’t feel good.

Op is right, this will be harmful for the members. And they don’t deserve to go through this. And this will also be harmful for SM this doesn’t mean I care about him, I don’t Be honest you guys. Would you take a company seriously if they willingly let someone write fanfiction about their artists? Probably not. You would most likely cringe and I will not blame you for that.

Putting famous people, such as WayV, into stereotypical boxes, is extremely harmful. Hell, it’s harmful to keep anyone in a stereotypical box. I thinks it’s called being…open minded? And acknowledging that all humans are complex? And knowing that even celebrities like WayV are human? Despite what society likes to tell us.

It’s awful. It’s extremely awful. I hope this drama thing doesn’t come to fruition. My hope is that if we make a big storm about this not only on Tumblr, but Twitter and other platforms where SM will see, they might get a braincell and stop it. Because fanfiction should stay fanfiction. And we as the writers and readers, and fandom should remember that that is what it is.

Gosh this is gross. Seriously.

If you have read this far, thank you. Just take this away while you scroll on down. (Cuz I have rambled a lot.)

This is extremely hurtful to WayV. People should not release fanfiction, especially fanfiction that trivializes real struggles, our into mainstream media. And to be quite frank, they should probably focus on original work like at least a fraction of creators do. I think that letting this happen will hurt SM entertainment and they will not be in a good spot. It will hurt WayV the most, and that’s what I’m mainly concerned about.

Last, Last statement. Spread this please. It takes a second to do so, and you have read this far. Like I said, make a big enough storm, SM will have to do or at least say something. We need to protect WayV. They deserve to be seen as the artists they have worked so hard for.

P.S This isn’t to bash people who like to read and/or write fanfiction. It’s to tell SM to stop being an idiot, do their job, and treat their artists like artists.

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a-damson-in-distress · 5 years

Text

The Protégé 4

Pairing: MadaSaku

Plot: In search of a new cellist for his prestigious orchestra, an infamously feared maestro stumbles upon a young rising star.

The Protégé 1

The Protégé 2

The Protégé 3

Edit: I almost forgot to add this super important note: A thousand thank yous to my regulars who have followed this story from the get-go. There are a few of you who never fail to show their appreciation and never forget to leave an encouraging comment. Don’t think I don’t notice you, you stalkers ;). I am immensly thankful for your feedback and your comments, they keep me so motivated and give me a sense of validation, like this isn’t just some sort of private thing that I only create for myself and nobody else gives a shit about it. If five hundred people read my story without leaving a comment or anything and I’ve only got the few reviews from you guys, it’s still enough to show me that my work is appreciated. So thank you!

Note: For those of you who are as confused about orchestral stage etiquette as I am and have no idea what’s going on with the whole handshake thing in this chapter, here’s what I found out about it while doing research for chapter four: The first violinist in an orchestra is also called the concert master, he represents the entire orchestra and functions as a sort of “team captain” if you will. So whenever the maestro invites a soloist, the soloist is supposed to shake hands with the maestro (thanking him for the invitation basically) as well as the concert master (though there are variations to this, some only shake hands before the performance, some before and after, etc.). By shaking the CM’s hand, the soloist essentially thanks all of the other musicians for their collaboration as solo concertos are usually a group effort, and you know the soloist can’t go around shaking the hands of a hundred people so they usually only shake hands with the CM *gasp* wow that was a long explanation. Aaaaaaanyway, here’s a video of the concerto Sakura is performing in this chapter: Camille Saint-Saën’s Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor.

Enjoy, have fun reading, let me know if you liked it, leave a comment, send a carrier pigeon, send a smoke signal, you know whatever floats your boat. You know the drill.

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“A little to the left. Chin up. Perfect, stay that way.”

Sakura had trouble not squinting her eyes when the photographer unleashed another onslaught of camera flashes upon her. She was currently in his studio doing a photo shoot for the orchestra’s and the theatre’s official websites. Her probation period was over, and they were only a week away from kicking off their tour after their first performance at home, so now the New National Theatre was going to officially announce her as the principal cellist of Maestro Uchiha’s ensemble complete with interviews, articles, videos of her rehearsals, and ridiculously over-the-top photographs.

The nickname the press had given her after her solo in Sapporo spread like wildfire, and the orchestra’s publicist decided to capitalise on her image as the Imperatrix Furiosa. So they put her in a majestic velvet evening gown dyed in a scandalous scarlet with a skirt wide enough to allow her to spread her legs to accommodate her cello on the throne-like chair she was currently sitting in. Her hair was tied up into an overly dramatic and intricate updo and fastened with fancy kanzashi hair pins that were sticking out in such a manner they made it look like she was wearing a crown.

The dress and accessories paired with the red lipstick and dramatic eye make-up made her look every bit the Furious Empress and the enticing femme fatale of Japan’s classical music scene the publicist wanted her to portray.

And Sakura hated every second of it.

“Do you think you have enough pictures now?” the young cellist asked tentatively while trying to hold her unnatural pose.

Deidara, the orchestra’s publicist, looked up from the laptop where her photographs appeared right after being snapped. “Just a few more, sweety. You’re doing great, though.” He gave her an encouraging thumbs-up and shot her an apologetic smile. Great, Sakura mused silently, she must have looked more uncomfortable than she thought. And here she was thinking she was good at hiding it.

“Seriously, though, we need to wrap this up. She’s got rehearsal in an hour, and Madara will chop off my head if his MVP is late,” Sakura heard the blonde publicist explain to the photographer. She sincerely hoped the heavy make-up was covering the deep blush she could feel spreading across her cheeks at his remark. Did her Maestro really tell the publicist she was his most valuable musician?

“No grinning, please,” came the photographer’s command from behind his lens.

Right. Stop daydreaming, Sakura reminded herself.

Straightening her back and schooling her features, the pink-haired cellist remained motionless on her make-shift throne. After a few more minutes of clicking, snapping, repositioning, and flashing, Sakura was finally free to get out of her dress and wash off all that make-up. She undid her complicated updo and gathered her hair into a high puffy ponytail. Putting on her pastel green boat neck dress with box pleats and slipping into her simple white ballerinas, she immediately felt more comfortable, like her young and goofy self and not the mature and seductive diva the photographer wanted her to be.

“Chop-chop, darling. Maestro Menacing is waiting for you.” Sakura was torn from her thoughts at the sound of Deidara calling out from the other side of the closed door. The young musician had to supress a smirk at the sound of the nickname she knew the publicist secretly used for her Maestro. He wasn’t entirely wrong, Mr Uchiha really could come across as menacing and unapproachable. But Sakura had gotten to know another side of him over the last weeks as well. There was a gentleness to him he only rarely showed, tiny little smiles of satisfaction and subtle gestures of encouragement. As much as she appreciated his constructive criticism, she loved his nods of approval and his well done, Ms Haruno’s even more.

And she couldn’t wait to prove herself to her Maestro during the upcoming tour and hope for a bit more of his praise she so selfishly craved.

After Deidara and Sakura left the photographer’s studio, they immediately headed back to the theatre where the rest of Maestro Uchiha’s ensemble was already preparing themselves for one of their last rehearsals before kicking off their tour. Sakura took her usual seat to the right of the conductor’s music stand. She was so busy tuning her cello, she didn’t even notice her Maestro approach his podium.

“Ms Haruno.” A deep voice made her look up in surprise and she was met with the sight of the raven-haired conductor casually leaning on the rail of his podium with his strong arms crossed in front of his broad chest, clad in a meticulous three-piece suit sans the jacket.

The young cellist prayed to God her blush wasn’t as visible as she thought it was.

“Yes, Maestro?” she answered in a small voice.

“How was the photoshoot?”

Sakura gave him a weak smile and chuckled softly. “Honestly? It was horrible. They dressed me up in this heavy, floor-length gown and backcombed my hair so much it looked like I had a bird’s nest on my head in the end. And I had so much make-up on I could literally feel my pores dying a horrible death by asphyxiation. Please don’t look at the photos once they upload them.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. But if it makes you feel any better, I will not go actively looking for your pictures. Though I have to admit, I would love to see a pink bird’s nest.” Her Maestro’s teasing grin made her giggle, and Sakura looked up at the raven-haired conductor with a huge smile on her face.

Just in that moment, she could hear the sound of a camera shutter from her left. Both her Maestro and Sakura turned around in surprise and spotted Deidara standing in the middle of the countless rows of seats with a camera in his hand.

“Finally. Do you know how difficult it is to get a photo of two people together who both hate to pose for pictures? You two are a publicist’s nightmare, but you’re lucky you’re so goddamn photogenic.”

Sakura turned to Maestro Uchiha and looked at him questioningly. With an annoyed eye roll, he explained, “Deidara said he needed a picture of the two of us together for our countless social media profiles. He wants to make a post about me welcoming you to the ensemble or whatever, and apparently, I cannot officially welcome you without a picture.”

His obvious annoyance with the blonde publicist elicited another laugh from the young cellist. Sakura watched her conductor narrow his eyes at her before his own lips spread into a tiny amused grin.

“Alright, that’s enough giggling now, Ms Haruno. If you keep enjoying my jokes like that, the other members of my orchestra might start to think I actually have a heart.”

Biting on her bottom lip to keep herself from chuckling at his quip and again hoping that her blush wouldn’t betray her, the young cellist focused her gaze on her sheet music and readied her instrument for the rehearsal. The other musicians took their seats as well, filling up the vacant space around Sakura, and fixed their eyes on the conductor.

Maestro Uchiha gave his final orders, raised his baton, and the musicians started playing.

---------

“I finally got Naruto to accept my karaoke challenge. He’s going to do Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love at the bar tonight, you gotta come with us!”

The pink-haired cellist looked up from her sheet music and was met with the face of her new roommate Ino, the principal clarinet of their ensemble. After her first rehearsal with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Temari had introduced her to some people she claimed were the only tolerable ones, and Sakura immediately hit it off with the blonde musician. Not long after getting to know each other, Ino offered her to move in with her after her previous roommate accepted another job in a different city. Though some of her newly found friends in the orchestra, who had all known Ino for a long time now, jokingly advised her against it with the explanation that she’s bi and you’re annoyingly adorable and totally her type, she’ll eat you up and spit you out, Sakura hadn’t regretted a single second of being the roommate of the exuberant and feisty clarinet player.

“Sure, I’ll be there. I just need a minute to talk to the Maestro,” Sakura answered with an amused grin.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ino bounce up and down with excitement. “Yay, it’s gonna be so great. We always go out the night before our first performance, without any alcohol of course,” the blonde musician added in a loud voice, pointedly looking in Maestro Uchiha’s direction before continuing, “but still, you’re gonna have so much fun with us. I’ll see you at home. And don’t be late, missy, I still need to do your makeup.”

Sakura was met with the end of Ino’s perfectly manicured index finger pointed accusingly at her face before the blonde turned on her heel and strutted off the stage as if it were her own personal catwalk.

Gathering her things, the pink-haired cellist made her way to the Maestro, who was currently busy berating his principal percussionist Naruto for goofing around with his timpani sticks during a break and pretending to have a swordfight with his fellow players. She decided to wait for them to finish and came to a halt in the middle of the string section when she realised that their orchestra’s concert master Kabuto was seemingly also waiting for a word with their conductor.

The grey-haired violinist was one of the musicians who hadn’t even spared her a glance on her first day. But while most of them seemed to have come around in the meantime or have at least started greeting their newest member, Kabuto was still adamantly giving her the cold shoulder. Whenever she tried talking to him, Sakura was met with nothing but haughty looks and condescending remarks. Though she had to admit, the moments of interaction between them were few and far between, because Sakura tried to keep them to a minimum. Their concert master was clearly of the highly competitive sort, and Sakura had no intention of letting him drag her into a musical pissing contest.

And still, manners were manners, so the cellist forced a tight smile and greeted him.

“Hey, Kabuto. Excited for our first concert tomorrow?”

The grey-haired violinist slowly turned his head and looked down his nose at her. He studied her for a second with narrowed eyes, as if trying to discern whether or not she was worthy of an answer, before opening his mouth, “I’m sure you are.”

Supressing the urge to roll her eyes at his usual cryptic answer, Sakura instead ignored his remark and cleared her throat. “So um, every CM seems to be handling stage etiquette a bit differently, so I wanted to ask you how you want to do the handshake tomorrow? Before and after, or just after or do you –“

“Honestly, Haruno, I couldn’t care less about the handshake or your solo. But if this really is so confusing to you, why don’t you go ask Daddy for help? It’s not like our Maestro has anything better to do than take his new little girl by the hand and show her how things work around here.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Sakura could feel her cheeks heating up at his embarrassing remark, and she stared at him open-mouthed, stunned into silence. Luckily, she didn’t have to come up with an answer, since Kabuto was approached by another violinist in that moment, asking him whether he wanted to go out tonight.

“No thanks, I’ll be staying at the theatre for a while longer. I’ve got other plans for later,” the concert master explained with a devious grin.

After the violinist left, Kabuto made no attempt to address Sakura again, and Maestro Uchiha was still not done chewing out Naruto. Since she felt so incredibly uncomfortable in Kabuto’s presence, the young musician decided to grab her cello case and leave. Not even the prospect of talking to Maestro Uchiha for a few minutes was worth it, if it meant she had to spend another second in awkward silence with the concert master who seemed to hate her guts.

---------

There was a ritual Madara had long formed a habit of going through before every concert he was going to conduct. It consisted of him mumbling every single articulation in chronological order of every piece of that night’s programme while he re-arranged the seats of his musicians on stage. Even though the stage crew of every theatre he ever worked at never failed to position everything correctly, the conductor still felt more at east when he could move every chair and every music stand to just the perfect spot.

Madara was currently contemplating whether to push a sax player’s seat half a centimetre to the left or to the right when he heard a commotion from backstage. He followed the noise to the labyrinth of dressing rooms where his eyes caught sight of three blonde musicians rushing from one room to the next, frantically looking for something.

“What do you mean, she can’t find it. It must be there!” Temari came rushing past him with a handbag before she promptly dumped its content on a table and started digging through it.

“I don’t know. When we got home last night, I asked her if all of her stuff was ready in the dressing room. She told me she checked everything three times, even tried on the shoes just to be safe, because she was afraid they gave her the wrong size.”

Madara watched his principal clarinet go through the countless makeup bags before she turned to another person in the hall. “Naruto, did you check the clothing racks in all the dressing rooms?” Madara’s gaze landed on the blonde percussionist who just entered the room with an apologetic shake of his head.

Clearing his throat to get their attention, the raven-haired conductor leaned against the door frame and let his gaze wander around the dressing room in which the three musicians were currently bustling about.

“Our concert starts in half an hour. I sincerely hope you’ll find whatever you’re so desperately looking for.”

Madara’s accusatory gaze met the desperate look of the blonde clarinet player before she approached him, grabbing his arm and tugging him down the hall.

“Maestro, you need to help us. It’s an emergency.”

Ino came to a halt in front of the closed door of another dressing room and knocked twice before letting herself in. Madara stayed behind, still unsure of what was really going on.

“Oh God, Ino, please tell me you have it, please! I need to be ready before anyone finds out, or before he finds out. Please, we need to hurry, Maestro Uchiha absolutely can’t know about this, or I’m screwed!”

Madara’s heart suddenly lurched in his chest at the sound of Sakura’s distraught voice so close to tears. He took a step forward and entered the room where he was met with the sight of his principal cellist dressed up in her concert outfit, a dark-green fitted pant suit, black patent leather Oxford’s, and a white blouse fully buttoned up – and missing a bow tie.

“Ms Haruno, what’s going on?”

She fixed her scared, wide eyes on him, and Madara was immediately hit with the urge to envelop her in his arms and assure her he’ll make everything right for her again.

The conductor couldn’t help but let his gaze be drawn to her beautiful mouth, invited by the sight of her teeth chewing on her bottom lip before releasing it to speak.

“Maestro, I’m so so sorry, but I … I can’t seem to find my bow tie. But I swear to God it was here. After the rehearsal and before I left the theatre yesterday, I checked if all of my stuff was ready like you told us and I swear to God my outfit was complete, I know I saw the bow tie with the rest of my clothes. But now it’s gone and we looked everywhere and I don’t know what to do. God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry to disappoint you.” Her voice was shaky and on the verge of tears and Madara had to consciously restrain the urge in his feet to run to her.

He was just about to say something to comfort the distraught young cellist when he heard more voices approaching the dressing room. The maestro turned around to see a small crowd gathered outside the door, all asking and wondering what was going on with their youngest member.

“Nothing to see here, alright? Just looking for a lost bow tie. We’ll be ready any second now, so scram, got it?” The blonde clarinet player fixed the crowd with a stern gaze and waved her hands in front of her to signal the other musicians to disperse.

“Maybe we should help look? I’m sure we’ll find it faster that way. Then we can all get back to our preparations in peace.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Madara could see Sakura’s head shoot up and her eyes widen in surprise at the sound of his concert master’s suggestion. But before anybody could say anything, Kabuto had already turned around and left.

“I’m sorry for troubling you with this, Maestro. We actually promised Sakura not to tell you anything, but we really couldn’t find it anywhere after looking for so long, and now we’re kind of lost.” Ino’s apologetic gaze was shooting back and forth between the conductor and his principal cellist.

“It’s quite alright, Ms Yamanaka. I’m glad you told me. Now I can get to the bottom of this myself.”

When he saw Sakura’s worried expression turn even more desperate, Madara felt like slapping himself. That came out way more threatening than he intended it to. He was just about to clarify his statement when he heard a knock on the open door which made all their heads turn around.

Kabuto was standing in the doorway with his right hand raised, a bow tie dangling from the edge of his middle finger. “You’ll never guess where I found this,” he said in a casual tone, a barely visible smirk gracing his features.

Madara watched his principal clarinet cross her arms in front of her chest. “Oh I’m sure I will.”

Kabuto ignored her, instead stepping into the dressing room and approaching Sakura. “Somehow, it landed in a drawer of one of the dressing tables.” He slipped the bow tie off his middle finger, and Sakura barely had enough time to catch it. “Lucky for you I’m so thorough at everything I do.” He gave her what was probably meant to be a half-baked attempt at a sincere smile and then turned to face Madara, his fake grin widening, before he left the room.

The maestro’s eyes landed on the young cellist in front of him again, who was still staring after the concert master with a look of confusion. He glanced at his watch and cleared his throat.

“Everybody out. I need a minute with Ms Haruno.”

After her friends hesitantly left the room and closed the door behind them, Madara let his gaze rest on Sakura’s downcast head. It was then the maestro realised she was playing with the bow tie in her hand, tugging at it and turning it around between her fingers. She was nervous.

“Ms Haruno, look at me.”

At the sound of his soft command, Sakura slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. Madara had to supress a groan at the sight of her teeth chewing on her bottom lip again.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” her whispering voice pleaded with him.

“I’m not mad, Ms Haruno. I know none of this was your fault, trust me.” He closed his hands over her fidgeting ones and took the bow tie.

“Chin up.”

The young cellist just stared at him for a second, jade-green eyes wide with confusion.

Madara took a step closer to her, put a finger beneath her chin and forced her head up. He then proceeded to turn up her collar and fasten the bow tie around her neck.

“You’re not going to allow this incident to rattle you, you’re better than this and we both know it. Once I call you up on stage, you’re going to walk up there like you own the place, play your solo to perfection, and blow everyone away.” He gave her bow tie a final tug.

“Have I made myself understood, Ms Haruno?” Madara looked down at her with a strict gaze and a tiny amused smirk gracing his lips.

“Yes, Maestro,” Sakura nodded enthusiastically while smiling up at him with a look of pure determination.

“Good.” Madara grabbed her chin between his fingers and leaned closer to her face before murmuring, “I wouldn’t expect anything less form my protégé.”

He watched with satisfaction as a deep blush spread across her cheeks and her jade-green eyes widened in surprise, staring up at him with that look of wonder, reverence, and gratification she only seemed to have reserved for him, as if his praise was the only thing in the world giving her life meaning.

Unable to resist, Madara allowed his gaze to rest on her inviting lips for a split second before letting go off her chin and forcing himself to leave her dressing room.

His thoughts kept swirling around the young cellist even as he stepped onto the stage amidst tumultuous applause. The conductor had to admit that it was a good decision not to have Sakura join the ensemble for the entire programme but only for her solo in the last half hour; he probably wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes from her. Though that wasn’t the original reason for not having her on stage for the entire performance. What Madara was really hoping to achieve with the late entrance of his principal cellist was to give her the grand introduction deserving of a musician of her calibre. After all, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra was one of the most prestigious ensembles in the world of classical music, and Sakura Haruno wasn’t just anybody. And a good maestro knows to save the best for last.

Despite his mind being distracted with the image of her inviting lips only centimetres away from his own, Madara was still able to focus on the musicians in front of him as he led his orchestra through the concert’s programme. After they finished their second to last piece and when it was time for Sakura’s solo, he signalled his ensemble to quiet down, turned around on his podium to face the audience and grabbed a microphone.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as you may have heard the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra has signed on a new member. As of this April, our vacant spot of principal cellist was filled with an immensely talented young musician from Kyoto. Though she doesn’t need an introduction, she’s going to get one anyway. She is an award-winning cello prodigy who was the youngest ever recipient of the first Grand Prize at the Rostropovitch Cello Competition at the age of sixteen. She studied under Takanori Nakano, Stjepan Hauser, and Steven Isserlis, to mention but a few. After establishing herself as a world-renowned cellist in her previous orchestras, she will now join us for our tour as the newest and youngest member of my ensemble. Ladies and Gentlemen, you will now hear Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto number 1 in A minor with our new principal cellist Sakura Haruno as the soloist.”

Madara put down the microphone, stepped off his podium, and walked off the stage to where Sakura was waiting for him.

“Ready?” he asked with an encouraging smile.

She answered with a determined nod as her lips spread into an excited grin. “As I’ll ever be.”

The maestro signalled her to lead the way. As the cellist stepped onto the stage with her instrument in hand, the audience erupted into thunderous applause. Madara followed after her, clapping his hands like the rest of the guests and the musicians of his ensemble. He watched her bow deeply to the audience before turning to Kabuto and shaking his hand with a smug grin plastered on her face. She waited for Madara to step onto his podium before shaking his hand as well.

“Give ‘em hell, Ms Haruno.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see another one of her blushes he liked so much taint her cheeks as she took a seat and readied herself with a subtle, sincere smile gracing her lips.

Madara raised his baton while Sakura steadied her bow above the strings of her cello. They shared one last look, the cellist looking up at her maestro for guidance and the maestro giving her a tiny smile of approval. He nodded to his entire ensemble.

As the music enveloped the large concert hall, Madara could see Sakura sway in her seat, eyes closed and completely surrendering herself to her instrument. He knew in that moment that she was gone now, transporting her mind into whatever utopia she conjured up whenever she let go and allowed her music to simply take her away.

As easy as it was for him to get and hold her attention, the maestro had to begrudgingly admit that music still seemed to be the only thing able to ensnare her in a way he could not. He was going to have to change that soon enough, he decided.

But for the time being, Madara let her be. His protégé was lost to the world now, anyway.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #naruto fanfic #madasaku #madasaku fanfic #sakumada #madara uchiha #madara uchiha fanfic #Sakura Haruno #sakura haruno fanfic

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thesarcasticramen · 5 years

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PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART: IRONDAD EDITION

*inhales deeply* i don’t even know why i need to discuss this but here we go.

here are the basics that most of us are probably well-aware of now. the irondad and spiderson thing originated when tony stark recruits peter parker in captain america: civil war which also marks the second appearance of the latter since iron man 2.

setting aside the obvious liking i’ve taken to this relationship, i admit, tony’s recruitment with a (possibly then) fourteen-year old kid in a fight with highly-trained super-powered individuals in berlin without the knowledge of his legal guardian about the real matter—yes, we know she wouldn’t have let him because she’s an incredible mother to peter—because he blackmailed him into doing so is problematic. tony threatened the boy of disclosing his part-time vigilantism if he doesn’t reconsider his rejection of fighting alongside him. moreover, peter, as he had told steve during their duel and in the opening vlog of homecoming, wasn’t even in the know about the accords. it was a lapse of judgment on tony’s side that he didn’t shed some light on the conflict before dragging him into it. sure, peter has had his spidey powers then and tony wouldn’t have let something harmful befall on the teen on his watch and he knew that the other team isn’t really out for blood, but frankly, that wasn’t really one of tony’s best moments.

one detail we’ve all taken into account, aside from the fact that he already knows spider-man’s identity, is the suit tony had prepared for peter. tony stark is a genius, that is a universally-acknowledged truth, but even he took way more than several hours to create his own suit, design its features and run tests. this proves that tony stark had already been monitoring spider-man before civil war even took place, going out of his way to study the workings of the vigilante and upgrading his armor for more convenience, efficiency, and safety. after the fight, he relinquishes millions-worth of property to peter’s hands not just because it barely even scraped tony’s fortune, but to keep him safe and under his watch. the mentorship was bound to happen right from the start, tony has just been waiting for the right moment.

on spiderman: homecoming, peter receives radio silence from tony for the months that followed the events of civil war. peter is seen to be struggling to contain the excitement of participating in bigger things like the walmart parking lot fight instead of his usual fix of small crimes in queens and the disappointment of still not hearing a word from tony. people viewed this as another issue as tony left peter to fend for himself after using him to do his bidding. as a mentor should, it would’ve been better if tony did become more of a recurring presence in peter’s life and gave him actual lessons and training rather than just swooping in when the boy is on the brink of danger.

however, we see all kinds of features tony has put in the suit for the kid, as a fruit of all his past mistakes that he learned from. a parachute, a tracker, a heater—all of these things make peter extra protected. don’t even get me started on the training wheels protocol, the baby monitor protocol, and karen. of course, spider-man can do without all of those things (which i will be explaining later on, stay with me) but tony is doing his best to let peter spread his wings but not fly too close to the sun. “stay close to the ground” and “be a friendly-neighborhood spider-man” weren’t restrictions on peter, they were encouragement that looking out for the little guy matter as much as what the avengers do and those are going to help him work his way up and grow into a much wiser superhero.

“it’s not too early to start thinking about college”is also an important part of the aftermath of getting dunked in a lake. tony stressed on the significance of education, as any parent would, and even offered to pull on some strings and give a good word out for him. he knows peter is a genius and had so much potential so he wanted to make it flourish and not let it go to waste for the benefit of the boy and possibly of the world he’s going to change someday.

tidbits that are equally essential: tony makes sure peter is also under happy’s surveillance. tony knows about the churro lady and that he quit the band, he either reviews the reports that happy forwards to him or listens to happy rant about peter. either way, he cares enough to pay attention and remember that sort of information.

howard stark wasn’t “father of the year”. despite growing up with such a detached dad, tony didn’t want to end up treating peter, who wasn’t biologically his, by the way—i get that blood of the covenant is thicker than the water in the womb but it’s to give emphasis that tony cared for peter by choice—the same way howard treated him. he was “breaking the cycle of shame” by validating and praising peter’s achievements because he knew how it felt but just crave for that from the one person you want to hear it from.

in an excerpt from destiny arrives by liza palmer, the official paperback version of infinity war, peter had wanted tony’s approval since day one and that explains his reckless attempts of proving himself by going against tony’s warnings. what he fails to notice is, tony had been validating him since iron man 2. “nice work kid.” “you did a good job, stay down.” “great work in dc.”

now let’s get to the big yikes scene. first of all, tony stark was offended to think that peter thought he didn’t care. if stepping out of that suit (being actually there) looking pissed doesn’t already show that, then i don’t know what else would. see, he didn’t take the suit just because peter screwed the pooch and he thinks he is not capable of using it intelligently, he took the suit to teach him a lesson about responsibility. tony was once reliant on his iron man suits that he lost sight of how to stand up on his own two feet and he didn’t want peter to end up being the same. “if you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it.” tony wanted peter to learn that being a superhero is more than having a suit, it’s about the choices, the path, the actions, and the person, himself.

the “i was just trying to be like you.” “and i wanted you to be better.” dialogue made me draw a conclusion (this is just my personal opinion), the possible story behind the radio silence was because tony was scared peter would end up following his footsteps. he wanted peter to navigate super heroism on his own, with only the slightest guidance, to be able to figure out who he really was and to learn on how to build his own character and not replicate iron man and his failures. tony wanted peter to be peter, spider-man to be spider-man, because that’s what he needs to be and what he believes to be what the world and peter deserved to be, better. it’s why he set the parameters to the gray area: avoiding the things he would and wouldn’t do.

if people thought tony stopped peter from being spider-man by taking the suit away, wrong. peter chose that because he needed the time to rethink. in the end, he managed to push himself back up and be the bigger person, the hero. remember that scene wherein he can’t get out from under all those rubble and he almost gave up because he believed that he would never? recalling tony’s words made him reach an epiphany that his strength indeed does not come from his suit, but from himself. he was spider-man even before, with, our without the suit. and that, by the end of the day, is what all he needed to realize in order to triumph.

another issue i frown at is tony’s recruitment of peter to be one of the avengers at the end of homecoming. peter is still a kid after all and letting him be exposed to the media and to more accountability and bigger threats is just a no-no for me. thank goodness, peter turned that down, thinking it was a test. test or not, tony is proud of peter’s decision because it shows how much the kid has matured and actually listened to his concerns.

TOUGH LOVE, these words were uttered by tony stark, himself so need i really say more?

in the beginning of infinity war, tony was initiating the talk of having kids with pepper, a huge development that could possibly be influenced by the amount of peter parker he had become accustomed to. tony and peter’s relationship is seen to have evolved more. their dynamic and coordination is like that of a well-oiled machine. in the scene where peter was getting beamed up, we were introduced to the ironspider suit but he was sent home by tony. peter, however, still managed to hitch the ride to space.

“speaking of loyalty.” - peter parker to tony stark in avengers infinity war (2018). you mean, loyalty and worry? to say that tony was terrified to see peter aboard is the understatement of the century. tony pretty much lost his mind, not wanting to be the reason or the one responsible for peter not coming home to his aunt, just as he was scared when peter went down in the airport and in the ferry incident. tony didn’t have a single good memory in outer space and he certainly can’t put peter through the same thing. he didn’t want another loved one to be at risk all because of him and his conscience and heart absolutely cannot take that. but as much as it’s hard for him to accept it, tony didn’t have much of a choice but to knight peter as an avenger.

“what’s your plan?” tony put so much faith in peter’s wit, skills, and capabilities even back in civil war when they took down ant man and when he enlisted his help albeit everybody saying he was crazy to and he continues to do so when he entrusted the plan of freeing strange to peter and when he called for him during the removal of thanos’ gauntlet. again, belief and validation means a lot to a protege.

“what is he, your ward?” even stephen points out the obvious bond between the two.

“you shoot my guy and i’ll blast him. let’s go!”one of tony’s major priorities in the movie is protecting peter. according to accounts that have purchased destiny arrives, tony was depicted to have been going through an existential crisis throughout the whole endeavor over the possibility of losing peter, gnawing at his gut, coming into terms with how pepper always felt when he did something wherein he would only have a fifty-fifty chance of survival. he was also coming into terms with how much he cares for the boy.

i’m not going to delve deeper into THAT scene, and instead, present to you another excerpt from destiny arrives:

there is a reason why marvel repeatedly accentuates that the irondad and spiderson arc is a vital aspect of the emotional core of infinity war and endgame. in the new and latest teaser for endgame, tony is shown to be mournfully looking at a framed photo he had with peter, meaning that the two have spent time together beyond the scenes that we see them in and in the gap between movies. having kept that picture already speaks volumes about how much peter meant to tony. it was serving to be his reminder of what he was fighting for, not just to avenge the world, but for peter. that face is a face of a man who lost family.

and when i say “repeatedly”…

jeremy conrad’s tweet:

in a panel with the russo’s, a fan asked about what was going through tony’s mind when peter disintegrated before him, they answered, “like losing a child.”

robert downey jr.’s interview wherein his take on his character’s relationship with tom holland’s is “an attempt at modern parenting.”

…i mean, repeatedly. IRONDAD IS CANON.

before you all clamor about the lack of may parker in this post, i’d like to clarify that i absolutely adore that woman. there is no competition when it comes to being the most incredible parent and mother to peter. the love she has for her nephew cannot be measured and she raised him with all she had despite losing all who can support her in doing so. she deserves as much recognition and admiration as tony does. nonetheless, that doesn’t mean she can’t accept a little help from time to time especially in the spider-man department. richard and ben parker will always be peter’s dads, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have another father figure to look up to.

tony is not a perfect father figure. he has had his fair share of messing up trying to be and he probably thinks peter deserves someone better to fill in the role. but one thing is for sure, he loves peter and he’s doing everything in his power to be the best one he can be and the one that peter needs.

so to all those who put on a blind eye and deny that this relationship doesn’t exist,

let it sink in that tony stark had become more of a hero to peter parker

than he was in the suit.

iron man wasn't the one who believed in him

it was the man with the heart.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#marvel #marvel cinematic universe #marvel movies #captain america: civil war #spider man: homecoming #avengers #infinity war #endgame #tony stark #iron man #irondad #peter parker #spiderman #spiderson #spideyson #ironfam #robert downey jr.#tom holland #meta

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pinelife3 · 5 years

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The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker’s newish (August 2018) book The Silence of the Girls (TSOTG) recounts the final months of the Trojan War, as told by a slave woman. The obvious companion piece to TSOTG, and the key text Barker is responding to, is The Iliad, but Barker doesn’t pull out the way Homer did:

The Iliad only covers a few weeks in the last year of the war and does not include the famous Trojan horse or the actual defeat of Troy: at a high level, The Iliad covers Agamemnon’s lady troubles, the plague, Achilles’ sulking and decision not to fight, the death of Patroclus, Achilles’ return to battle, the death of Hector, the abuse of Hector’s body and Priam’s visit to Achilles.

TSOTG covers these events (also starting in media res - more on that later) from the perspective of Briseis. Our protagonist, formerly the wife of a king, was taken during the sacking of a city neighbouring Troy and was given to Achilles as a prize - like all of the women in the Greek camp, she is a slave. Barker and Briseis continue on after the burial of Hector to include the fall of Troy (no mention of the horse though...) and the rape and destruction which followed including the fate of Astyanax, the Trojan women being handed out as prizes, and the Greeks eventually setting off to return home.

I mention the famous events from the Trojan War above, but in TSOTG most of these happen off screen (out of our protagonist’s line of sight) and are reported to us as gossip spreading around the Greek camp. The reader is stuck in the camp with the women and doesn’t see any of the excitement and action on the battlefield (except for when Briseis climbs on the Myrmidon ships to see the battlefield in the distance). The reader is also privy to a lot of ‘girl talk’ amongst the women as they discus their experiences with the Greek soldiers: who’s pregnant, who’s beloved, who’s in favour. So despite hitting the same broad plot points, we are kept away from the iconic set pieces of the war, and instead get a tour through the backrooms where women do laundry, pray, and heal the injured soldiers.

When we studied Wide Sargasso Sea in high school, it became part of an interesting conversation on high-lit fan fiction: Jeans Rhys reveals the mysterious mad woman in Rochester’s attic, and she shows us how he drove her mad. More than a hundred years after Jane Eyre was published, Rhys, a Dominican author, chose to get into it with one of the stodgiest pieces of English literature out there. She introduced new themes of colonialism and undermined Rochester as the Byronic hero. I don’t think anyone will read Barker’s text that way - Homer’s works and the Bible are so canonical that referencing or interacting with them feels like it doesn’t count as fan fiction (has anyone ever argued that Paradise Lost was fan fic?). Because Barker is a serious author with a Booker Prize on her shelf, they call TSOTG a ‘retelling’ rather than fan fic, but what is more fan fic than recounting a famous story from another character’s perspective?

For reference: Stephanie Meyer has done this twice to her own novels. She retold Twilight from Edward’s POV in Midnight Sun and wrote a gender flipped version of Twilight called Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. From Wikipedia, it seems like a pretty straight-forward find and replace job: Life and Death tells the story of 16 year old Beaufort Swan who moves from Arizona to Washington to live with his dad - on his first day at school, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Edythe Cullen...

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^^ It’s fun to laugh at Twilight but remember this: Bon Iver recorded a song for the soundtrack. The New Moon soundtrack also featured Death Cab for Cutie, Thom Yorke, Grizzly Bear and a bunch of other bands with legitimate indie credibility (Pitchfork still gave it a 5.4) - why did they agree to be on this soundtrack? They must be getting approached for this kind of work all the time and New Moon’s budget was not huge - only $50 million so it’s not like they would have been offering obscene cash. Probably a mystery for another time...

Most of Barker’s works deal with war in some capacity. The only other book of hers which I’ve read is Regeneration. In that book, Barker riffs on historical figures, places, events, and literary works as she explores the impacts of WWI on returning English soldiers suffering PTSD. There are a lot of complicated ideas moving around and bumping up against each other - it’s like she’s playing a 20 string guitar or jamming out on a 40 piece drum kit or something: she’s just super masterful and it’s a good read but also interesting to look at how she achieved it technically. It’s a super satisfying book to explore and think about and probably my favourite war book (maybe tied with Slaughterhouse 5).

In TSOTG, she’s still interested in war, but now she’s looking more closely at the impacts of war on women. In a way, TSOTG seems kind of blunt and stupid in its handling of war compared to Regeneration. Barker is so focused on proving that women had it bad during the war and trying to deromanticise the Greek warriors, that she depicts all the men (except Patroclus and Achilles) as childish brutes: they’re capricious and proud, they’re rough and inconsiderate, they take offence easily, they eat messily and they drink too much. We never see them in action on the battlefield, so the one thing they’re good at is hidden from us: we don’t get to admire their magnificence but when they die, the women make fun of their shriveled cocks. Of course, we see this through Briseis’ biased eyes (fair enough given her situation), but what she reports of their behaviour is pretty bleak. No one has a rich interiority: they just fuck, shit and fight. It seems like Barker’s argument is that the men must be assholes because they rape their slaves. But we know that’s not how it works: the men raped their slave women because that was the cultural norm but beyond the raping they were average guys. In fact, the raping and slaving made them average. Not heroes, not assholes. Just 1100BC guys.*

(*This isn’t ‘boys will be boys’ - if anything it’s historical relativism. I’m not saying it’s average because they were guys, I’m saying it’s average because it was a long time ago. Remember, Jesus was a radical thinker with all his wacky ideas about compassion and love - and he was still more than a 1000 years away. The Greeks were very advanced in some ways, but their culture relied on slavery - at a point you need to accept that that was their normal (bad by our standards, yes) and engage with them on their own terms otherwise you’ll never get anywhere in a conversation about their values.)

Barker retells this astonishing passage from The Iliad about three quarters of the way through TSOTG - just to set it up, Achilles killed Prince Hector and has been desecrating his corpse (dragging it behind his chariot) as vengeance for the death of Patroclus (Achilles’ closest friend). In ancient Greece, it was believed that you couldn’t pass on to the underworld until you’d had a proper burial. Beyond being disrespectful, the abuse of Hector’s body torments his family because it means Hector cannot pass peacefully to the afterlife. Growing desperate, Hector’s father King Priam has snuck out of Troy and come to the Greek camp to beg Achilles to return Hector’s body:

Priam found the warrior there inside ... many captains sitting some way off, but two, veteran Automedon and the fine fighter Alcimus were busy serving him. He had just finished dinner, eating, drinking, and the table still stood near. The majestic king of Troy slipped past the rest and kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees and kissed his hands, those terrible, man-killing hands that had slaughtered Priam's many sons in battle. Awesome - as when the grip of madness seizes one who murders a man in his own fatherland and flees abroad to foreign shores, to a wealthy, noble host, and a sense of marvel runs through all who see him so Achilles marveled, beholding majestic Priam. His men marveled too, trading startled glances. But Priam prayed his heart out to Achilles: "Remember your own father, great godlike Achilles - as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age! No doubt the countrymen round about him plague him now, with no one there to defend him, beat away disaster. No one - but at least he hears you're still alive and his old heart rejoices, hopes rising, day by day, to see his beloved son come sailing home from Troy. But l - dear god, my life so cursed by fate ... I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of Troy and now not a single one is left, I tell you. Fifty sons I had when the sons of Achaea came, nineteen born to me from a single mother's womb and the rest by other women in the palace. Many, most of them violent Ares cut the knees from under. But one, one was left me, to guard my walls, my people the one you killed the other day, defending his fatherland, my Hector! It's all for him I've come to the ships now, to win him back from you - I bring a priceless ransom. Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right, remember your own father! I deserve more pity ... I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before - I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son." Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself, now for his father, now for Patroclus once again, and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

(Not sure about this translation but it’s the best I could find online)

So this scene plays out beat for beat in TSOTG, and it’s very moving and well done (well done by Homer originally - and Barker renders it well too), but Barker wants to make it about the women so in response to Priam’s famous line ‘I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son’, Briseis thinks: "And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.” Is she an asshole for thinking about herself in this moment? I understand what Barker is trying to do: elevate the suffering of the women to the same platform that the men have always had. But this is graceless. It’s not a competition.

Another element I found frustrating was the suggestion in TSOTG that the Greeks regarded Achilles’ close bond with Patroclus as unusual - characters are scornful of Achilles’ relationship with Patroclus and make snickering jokes about them being gay. This is disappointing because I am sure Barker did her research and therefore she must know that ancient Greece was probably more accepting of homosexuality (at least between men) than society is today. The only whisper of controversy around their relationship was the ancient equivalent of the ‘who’s the bottom?’ question: the Greeks would have been curious about who was dominant and who was passive, but wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at Patroclus and Achilles being together.

Frank Miller also choose to make his ancient Greeks homophobic in 300 and Alan Moore, always happy to play the expert, was quick to point out the mistake:

There was just one particular line in it where one of the Spartan soldiers—I'll remind you, this is Spartans that we're talking about—one of them was talking disparagingly about the Athenians, and said, ‘Those boy-lovers.' You know, I mean, read a book, Frank. The Spartans were famous for something other than holding the bridge at Thermopylae, they were quite famous for actually enforcing man-boy love amongst the ranks as a way of military bonding. That specific example probably says more about Frank's grasp of history than it does about his grasp of homosexuality, so I'm not impugning his moral situation there. I'm not saying it was homophobic; just wasn't very well researched.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of ancient Greece would be familiar with their permissive attitudes toward homosexuality. Why did she choose to do this? I know she’s not homophobic because Regeneration sensitively observed the suffering of gay men, for example that minor speech impediments (lisps, stutters) manifested in men who were repressing their homosexuality. I don’t understand this choice from a woman who wrote maybe the best war book of all time.

TSOTG wraps up with a reflection on memory and the stories people want to hear:

I thought: Suppose, suppose just once, once, in all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory in return for his early death under the walls of Troy...? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were. His story. His, not mine. It ends at his grave... Once, not so long ago, I tried to walk out of Achilles’ story - and failed. Now, my own story can begin.

Through the sickening dramatic irony, I can pick out three points Barker is trying to make:

Achilles looms large, but Briseis is her own person and deserves her own story

This is the untold true story of what really went down during the Trojan War - the people aren’t ready for this heat but I, Pat Barker, will bring it to them regardless

This isn’t a love story, but if it were, it would be the authoritative and definitive Trojan War love story

Point 1: Briseis deserves her own story

As I mentioned earlier, TSOTG begins in media res - meaning unlike in Troy, we don’t see what the gang was doing before the fighting kicked off, the catalysts of the war, the journey from Greece, etc. The action begins mid-way through the war, mid-way through a day, mid-way through a battle as our protagonist, mid-way through her life, peers over the parapets watching the Greeks disembowel her countrymen. So TSOTG begins as Achilles enters Briseis’ life and ends just as he leaves it - it begins in media res because no one would want to hear about her boring ass life before incandescent Achilles walked into it. Briseis is most interesting when she’s talking about Achilles, watching him from afar, describing their awkward encounters, analysing his behaviour - sure, the story is from Briseis’ perspective, but she’s always looking at Achilles. Is Barker arguing that we should care about Briseis outside of Achilles? She can’t have it both ways! She can’t complain that no one cares about anything but Achilles and then tell a story centered around Achilles, make Achilles the most interesting character and - in a particularly weird move - allow him to narrate some chapters in the second half of the book.

Point 2: This is the grittiest telling of the Trojan War that readers have ever had to grit their teeth through

The suggestion that this is ‘the untold true story of the women of Troy’ is totally bogus - exploring what the Trojan War cost women has been done. Euripides wrote the The Trojan Women in ~415BC, some 600+ years after when the Trojan War is estimated to have taken place (if it took place at all). It’s a tragedy which focuses on the Trojan women (Hecuba, Andromache and co.) as they process the death of their husbands, and learn what their fate will be (i.e. which Greek they will be gifted to). As with TSOTG, the action happens off-stage, out of the women’s line of sight and is reported to them by men as they come and go from the stage. It is a relentlessly horrible play: the centerpiece is the murder of Hector’s baby son Astyanax (Odysseus throws him from the walls of Troy) and the women’s response to this terrible news.

It seems like Barker also takes issue with modern narratives glossing over the rape, slaughter and slavery that occurred during the war - but even Troy (by no means an unromantic movie) makes these elements pretty explicit:

youtube

In the clip above, the Myrmidons have brought Achilles the newly enslaved Briseis in case he would like to rape her. The slavery and rape threat elements are there. Is Barker saying that she wants to see the rape? Does this scene somehow read as romantic because he chooses not to rape her? Rape is being used more and more, especially in TV, as a way of creating realism in fantasy shows - and people do seem to have an appetite for it (see: Game of Thrones, Outlander). So her suggestion that modern audiences want a sanitised version of the war doesn’t work for me.

Point 3: This isn’t a love story. It’s about rape. But also... don’t you just love Achilles?

Quoting from Briseis’ final words again:

No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.

Sounds pointed. Barker is implying someone out there got the lovers wrong. It can’t be Troy because they went with the Achilles/Briseis angle too, so is she referring to Madeline Miller? Miller’s 2011 novel The Song of Achilles is a love story focused on Patroclus and Achilles (disclosure: I haven’t read it). As I mentioned earlier, Barker, going against all evidence we have about ancient Greece, chose to make her Greeks homophobic. She does touch on Achilles and Patroclus’ famous intimacy, but frames it more as some kind of preternatural closeness which goes beyond brothers or lovers. In Barker’s defence, Homer never explicitly said that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, but the suggestion of it is certainly part of the canon. I had a high school Classics teacher who scoffed at Troy because she thought Achilles should have been banging Patroclus instead of Briseis.

Also: since we’re talking about a ‘rape camp’, were there really many lovers?

For a feminist take on The Iliad, this book has some weird gender politics. Achilles rapes our protagonist - a lot. He’s childish, he has mummy issues, he’s abrasive and fussy - but we want Briseis to win him over! We want Achilles to notice her. He’s so magnetic, even if you write him as a spoiled pig, he’s still Achilles. He’s the coolest guy in school. He’s the rower with big shoulders. He wears his hat backwards. He comes to school on Monday with a black eye. He doesn’t know anything about computers. He says he likes Hemingway. He smells good without deodorant. His socks never stay up. If you walk beside him in a hallway, you can feel heat radiating from his body. His pouting and brattiness play into his magnetism somehow. I honestly think Barker might have fallen into the same trap as high school girls throughout history: we just love a bad boy. Want a glimpse into the terrifying mind of teenage girl? When I was 17, I dumped my high school boyfriend because he wasn’t enough like Achilles or Hector. People are romantic about the Trojan War, but that doesn’t mean they want a love story.

#Homer #Troy #Trojan War #Pat Barker #The Silence of the Girls #Regeneration #Achilles #Briseis #Wide Sargasso Sea #Jean Rhys #Jane Eyre #Twilight #300 #Frank Miller #alan moore

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figuretealeavely · 5 years

Text

IN THE LOOP - check yourselves

I recently had the chance to go to Skate Canada International in Montreal. It was a really wonderful experience and I feel grateful to have been able to enjoy it. The event was well-organized, the volunteers were incredibly nice, and the audience was supportive and friendly. It was therefore extremely dismaying to find that one of the newest and most popular journalism sources for figure skating had such a, frankly, inaccurate, skewed, and alarming perception of the event.

Let’s look at what In the Loop’s goals are:

When I first saw this I was really encouraged because I agree that this is what the sport needs. And I listened to a few early podcast episodes, which I thought were pretty enjoyable. However, last week, I tuned in again and found something rather uninformed in their tone about Russian skaters.

In re: Tarasova/Morozov:

Red: Yeah. They always look like there’s skating to the formula and they don’t really care [about] anything else as long as they’re getting what they need to get the high score that..I don’t know, it’s just very formulaic there’s not a whole lot of emotion like all were saying.

Yogeeta: Hashtag skating while Russian.

...

Red: That’s how it is with most of the Russian pairs, I’ve noticed. And sometimes even Russian Ice Dance, it’s just formulaic. It’s just there. It happens. They did really well technically, but you never really feel anything from it.

About Russians in general:

Yogeeta: Yeah. I think in general Romeo and Juliet programs - their music cut isn’t really good. I never want to hear a Romeo and Juliet voiceover that isn’t “Juliet” [Referring to Junhwan Cha’s voiceover] ever again.

Sam: Skaters out there, voiceover is for camp and very Russian programs. It’s not for you when you’re trying to be serious. It doesn’t work as well.

...

Red: I definitely liked her skating a lot more than some of the other Russian skaters I’ve seen in the past. You can tell that she really does enjoy what she does. She ended both of her performances with a huge smile, so that was really nice to see. But I still think there’s some of that in there, like what you usually see from a lot of these Russian skaters is just “We go out, we do our job, we get it done.” You know? It doesn’t feel as passionate. But I still think she did a really good job.

I was extremely shocked to read this blatantly UNEDUCATED take on pairs. Now, if someone decides that they don’t like “Russians” (whatever that means), I cannot stop you. But it is quite another thing to say that all Russians don’t show emotion, that you don't feel anything from it, and don’t enjoy what they do. Or that Russian pairs are “formulaic.” Perhaps they are not aware of the extensive, epic, and game-changing legacy of Russian pairs skaters. Or even worse, perhaps they are aware and choose to ignore it to write off the current pairs AND the entire history of the discipline in one go. Listen, if you don't know much about pairs, that’s totally fine. Not everyone likes every event. But don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about and spread this as the truth when it is clearly not steeped in any deep knowledge of the sport. Where is the “international perspective” or “in-depth historical data”?

I wish I could say things improved from there, but they did not. Again, the audience was VERY respectful at Skate Canada, did not boo anyone, cheered for all, and especially the home team skaters. By the way, for anyone who has ever attended a sporting event, this is normal behavior. I noticed I was sitting within viewing distance of the In the Loop crowd, but didn’t think much of it. But I want to emphasize this because I heard exactly what they heard in the same area of the rink. So when I read this:

Kite: I want to say I was not super impressed with some of the audience not really cheering for the non-Canadian skaters. It was something I noticed. I mean, it is an event in Canada, it’s called Skate Canada, of course you’re gonna be going all out for your home skaters.

...

Kat: Yeah, Vanessa and Morgan got a huge standing ovation and they got a lot of cheer, and obviously, they deserved it. And also Evgenia got a lot of cheering as well, but I guess she’s been adopted into the Canadians, kind of?

Kite: Well she’s also just so well known and I think she has become a pretty beloved figure for a lot of fans post-Olympics.

Kat: Yeah, I guess so.

Kite: So yeah, it was either if you were a very well known skater, or if you were a Canadian/French skater.

Nina: I wish the well-known points would have counted towards some of the Men’s skaters.

Gina: Yeah, it was really obvious when streaming that the crowd was just so half-hearted who wasn’t either really well known or Canadian.

I was a bit irked because the audience cheered for EVERYONE. Perhaps they were more enthusiastic about the Canadians but guess what? You are in Canada. It’s not exactly shocking behavior, and I’m glad to see the home skaters got attention. A truly rude crowd is one that is salty to their own - what we should encourage is more casual fans becoming serious fans, and that starts with them cheering for a home team. It’s true that for others it may start with the fact that the skater is another nationality, but the majority of people are not this way. Just a reality check.

By the way, it is really stretch to tie everyone who got super loud cheers back to Canada, or to assume that ALL CANADIANS LOVE FRENCH PEOPLE. Excuse me, what kind of generalization is this? Certainly NOT a primer “on cross-disciplinary areas such as sociology, medicine, media, gender studies, and politics.” I was at the event with many people and none of them found the crowd half-hearted. And guess what, only one of us was Canadian (no, it is not me) (no, I am not a middle-aged Canadian white person, in fact I am none of the above).

And then this:

Gina: I am going to get banned from Canada, I’m never allowed to enter, I find Canadians so boring.

Kite: Go off!

Gina: I’m sorry! I found the performance-

Nina: I was trying to be diplomatic.

Gina: Really one-note and really dull. I think they rely, especially in their Free Program, they rely a bit too much on the music to provoke a response in the audience rather than working with the music to create something themselves.

Kat: I agree.

Gina: I just find them so dull.

Kat: A note on the music: So they skated to Pink Floyd in their Free Skate, and that is such… A lot of the Canadians, I’ve noticed, pick oldies to skate to-

Nina: So Canadian…

Kat: Yeah, they pick oldies to skate to. That elicits a response from a certain demographic.

Gina: I think I’m about 30 years too young for Canada.

On Keegan:

Nina: Oh, I’m very curious to see what his scores will look like at other locations.

Kat: Yeah because our crowd obviously got really, really into his programs.

Gina: I don’t understand Canadians. I will say that I was correct last time that his Short Program is much more enjoyable when I mute the music.

Nina: This just in, Gina doesn’t like oldies.

It is extremely unprofessional and rude to write off an ENTIRE COUNTRY based off a few figure skating performances you found uninspiring. By the way, if Pink Floyd is an “oldie” that you dislike, then what exactly is Shoma Uno’s Led Zeppelin cover SP? The bias is rather jarring and way worse than anything I hear on live tv. Which by the way, is already pretty bad, so if your goal is to encourage “critical, educated fans” with “sociology” and “politics” I’d say you are doing pretty much the exact opposite of that.

In fact, they seem to have a very poor understanding of why Canada is a country that produces a lot of skaters, whether for themselves or others. During the ice dance event they say:

Kat: The most enthusiastic crowds for sure, like most of the front row seats were pretty filled for ice dance considering it was - they were both like early evening events as well, like they started at around six or seven. It's not super late either, so a lot more people were able to attend their, you know, it's like off work hours. I guess Canadians come watch Ice Dance when that happens.

Actually, rather than Canadians all collectively deciding to watch ice dance after work, In the Loop might want to consider that Montreal is currently the global hub of Ice Dance with Gadbois, and many of their teams were at this event. And I believe there was a large contingent of affiliated skaters, families, and friends in the stands. Do your diligence.

And then, back to the Russians:

Nina: The Free Dance seemed like it was supposed to be clean, and glassy, and very elegant, but they didn't really have the tech to back it up-

Kite: No, they do, they have good tech, like their tech is fine. It was just boring, like it didn't connect to the audience.

Nina: I feel like this will make no sense but it felt like their program wanted to be very lyrical- not lyrical, but like balletic, almost? Like the vibe-

Kat: That’s very Russian.

Very Russian, is it?

Let’s remind ourselves again:

Don’t overextend yourself before you educate yourself on what you’re actually trying to do. Please, In the Loop, moderate your tone and biases. It is very clear to me that you guys have your favorites - we all do. But there is absolutely no need to sacrifice education, information, professionalism, and your raison d’être above in order to talk about other countries’ figure skating traditions, fans, and history.

By the way, the last thing I want to do is censor anyone. If you want to say these things, by all means go ahead. But please do not try to come across as serious, objective journalists who encourage varied discussion because new fans will be influenced to follow your reasoning. It is not hard to lay out the facts and THEN present your biases as your own. There is no need to conflate the latter with the former.

As a final note, for fans who were so disappointed with the event and the people who attended, it seems they had no qualms about taking seats that they did not pay for and openly bragging about it on social media:

I am extremely disappointed in what was once a promising new journalism outlet losing credibility rather quickly via what appears to be unprofessional generalizations about culture, fandoms, and everything they purport to encourage discourse about. Do better, In the Loop.

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