#most of these were taken straight from the connections page.

[bludsfm]

hi! can i get some more mw fcs?

uhm,    how    about    all    of    them    ?    but    seriously,    tom    blythe,    charles    melton,    yara    shahidi,    wolfgang    novogratz,    oscar    isaac,    eva    longria,    jessica    alba,    gug    mbatha    raw,    viola    davis,    elizabeth    gillies, kate        winslet,    reese    witherspoon,    drew    barrymore,    ewan    mcgreggor,        bradley    cooper,    ryan    reynolds,    tom    hiddleston,    dylan    o’brien,    nicholas    galitzine,    chase    stokes,    aaron    taylor    johnson,    bill    skarsgard,    nick    robinson,    tom    holland,    cameron    gellman,    logan    shroyer,    evan    mock,    herman    tommeraas,    jacob    elordi,    wolfgang    novogratz,    angela        sarfyan,    jamie    chung,    hande    ercel,    tessa    thompson,        alexandra    daddario,    antonia    thomas,    demet    ozdemir,    emily    van    camp,    merve    bolgur,        nicola    coughlan,    sarah    gadon,    shay    mitchell,    chloe    hayden,    ayesha    madon,    emma    watson,    florence    pugh,    alisha    boe,    thomas    weatherall,    mason    gooding,    dylan    minette,    jonathan    bailey    !

#answered. #appless rp #town rp #oc rp #dark rp #horror rp #mw. #mwf. #mwm. #most of these were taken straight from the connections page.

[youunravelme]

murphy's law sneak peek

author's note: this is just a look into what i've been working on the past few months (again, my b for being the most inconsistent writer ever). please let me know your thoughts! i'm hoping to finish this up VERY soon!! so here are the first two and a half pages of this fic! :))))))

mat barzal x beau's step-sister!reader (bc i'm not white and wanted to leave the reader racially neutral.)

summary:nothing good could come from sleeping with your (step) brother's best friend.

when anthony was traded to vancouver, you felt like the rug had been pulled out from under you. he was your rock since you were twelve when your mom and his dad got married. he was there when you finished your undergrad, and offered up the spare room in his apartment when you started your master's degree at columbia.

but with his new job back in your home country, you knew there was no way you could afford to stay in his apartment. after all, you were nowhere close to making the millions of dollars he did.

"don't worry about it," he said. "i have it taken care of."

what he didn't say was that the solution was staying in mat's extra room.

it wouldn't be that big of a deal, you knew mat just from the sheer amount of time he and anthony spent together. if it wasn't seeing him at games, it was out at bars, or in your shared apartment when you got home from class.

but despite all the interactions you had, almost none of them were meaningful. everything you knew about him started and ended with your connection to tito. and neither of you cared to remedy that.

it didn't mean you two were hostile, didn't even mean that you didn't like each other. it just meant that when tito wasn't around, you two didn't talk.

until you started living together.

the t-shirt incident

it wasn't intentional, you'd swear up and down that it wasn't. you recalled mat's text that he would be out that night and not to wait up for him (not that you ever did, but the sentiment was clearly communicated: stay out of the common areas).

you weren't even doing anything special that night, your boyfriend was out of town on a work trip and you hadn't met friends outside of the islander wags just yet (all of whom were busy that night). so you treated yourself to a shower and a face mask. you'd just finished washing it off when you heard the front door close.

truthfully, you almost stayed in your room until you realized your water cup was empty, and you might've let it go if it wasn't for the past few nights where you woke up craving a sip of water. but you'd like to think you were a considerate roommate, so you waited five minutes for mat to go to his room before you planned on going into the kitchen.

you didn't realize your mistake until you walked into the living room and caught mat and a girl, both shirtless.

to be honest, you weren't sure who screamed first, if it was you or the other girl. you managed to see her lunge for her shirt right as you covered your eyes with one hand and dropped your cup on the floor.

"oh my god," was all you could say.

but the other girl clearly wasn't rendered speechless like you were because she yelled "you didn't say you had a girlfriend, asshole!" before slamming the front door behind her.

you didn't move, couldn't move, too mortified to even acknowledge what you'd just interrupted. very slowly, like he couldn't see you, you bent down and fumbled around with one hand, blindly searching for the cup.

the couch creaked, followed by a heavy sigh from mat. "you can look, you know? nothing you probably haven't seen before."

you peeked between your fingers and saw mat pulling his shirt back on. you dropped your hand and stood up straight almost as soon as he was fully clothed.

cue the apology tour.

"oh my god, mat, i am so sorry! i totally wasn't thinking, i thought you were in your room by this point and i needed water. i didn't even think about what it would look like to your lady friend, if you'd like i can try to catch her before she gets in a cab and explain the situation?"

mat blinked at you. "lady friend?" he asked.

you shrugged. "well, she's a lady, and a friend."

he let out a dry laugh, though his lips didn't curl up in a smile. maybe it was more of a scoff? "friend is a bit of an overstatement. i don't even remember her name."

the room went silent before you caught mat staring at your chest. you glanced down and the urge to dig a hole and die in it crossed your mind.

the seattle thunderbirds logo was staring you in the face.

"oh god, our laundry must've gotten mixed up i'm sorry--"

"i was wondering where that shirt went."

you grabbed the bottom of the shirt before you remembered stripping in front of your new roommate was probably not the best thing to do.

"i can rewash it for you."

he nodded, but otherwise didn't offer anymore commentary.

so you scooped up the cup from the floor and sheepishly sidestepped your way into the kitchen.

and even though it took approximately four seconds to pour yourself a glass of water, you hid in the kitchen until you heard the telltale click of mat's bedroom door.

part of you thought it was best to stay out of his way the next morning, to let mat meander throughout the apartment before he went to his morning skate.

but then you thought about your childhood, and how you pissed anthony and francis off when you were fourteen so you baked them cookies after school and magically, everything was okay between the three of you by the end of the day.

so you woke up earlier than you normally would've to make mat breakfast. you'd made anthony breakfast before, surely mat's diet was about the same?

the eggs were nearly done when you heard his door open. it was only a matter of time before he joined you in the kitchen. you had his protein shaker bottle sitting on the island next to the plate of bacon you'd made. the toast had just popped out of the toaster.

"morning," mat said when he walked into the kitchen.

you whipped your head around to smile at him before focusing on the eggs in front of you. "hope you're hungry," you said. "i made breakfast."

you pulled the pan off the burner and placed them on a potholder. "wasn't sure how you liked your eggs, anthony likes his scrambled, so i just made them scrambled, hope that's okay."

he shrugged and mumbled a quiet thank you before helping himself to the meal you made and fixing his protein shake. you waited until he'd helped himself to the food and took a seat at the island before you said anything, just staring at his profile until he took a bite of the toast.

"i really am sorry about last night," you started. "it wasn't on purpose, i promise." you cleared your throat and made yourself busy by fixing your plate. "next time, i'll just go stay at someone else's place."

mat snorted into his protein shake. a sly smirk was on his lips when he pulled the drink away.

"what?" you asked, looking straight at him.

mat shook his head. "if you left every time i brought a girl over, you'd never be home."

you flushed and directed your eyes back to your plate. "oh."

you couldn't see mat run a hand down his face, but you could hear him sigh. "look," he said and you picked your head up to look into his eyes. "it's just going to be an adjustment. i'll make sure to text you when i'm coming home with a girl and i'll take her to my room as quickly as possible."

"and i'll make myself scarce until the morning."

mat shrugged. "i mean, you live here too, i'm not asking you to be holed up in your room, just maybe don't make an appearance in my shirt until i've at least told the girl about you?"

you nodded almost immediately. "i can do that. i swear, after today, i won't be a problem anymore! you can have literally all the girls over and you won't even know i'm here!"

if only that were true.

#mat barzal #mathew barzal #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal imagine #mathew barzal imagine #nhl blurb #nhl imagines #nhl imagine

[one-flower-one-sword]

"Feng Xin, however, cut straight to the point. "You don't need to pretend anymore! We know this is your old lair. We've already seen what those divine statues are, and the murals too - we've seen everything!" Hua Cheng wasn't directly facing them; he stood at an angle. The hands tugged behind his back seemed to jerk at Feng Xin's words, and two of the fingers curled stiffly inward.

"His Highness... saw it too?" he asked softly, inclining his head. His voice was very, very quiet. While he still sounded unfazed, his voice was slightly cracked and obviously strange."

TGCF Volume 6, page 62

This, to me, is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the entire series, because of how violating it is what both Hua Cheng and Xie Lian go through. But there have already been many posts about how Mu Qing and Feng Xin take away Xie Lian's agency and autonomy and belittle his intelligence by kidnapping him away from Hua Cheng, trying to take the red string from him, and slapping the command talisman on him that rendered him mute and paralyzed. So what I want to focus on is Hua Cheng's side of it because what he goes through is also violating, just in different ways.

Given that this is Mount Tonglu, it makes absolute sense that Hua Cheng assumed that Xie Lian would never see any of the statues or murals, nor would anyone else connected to him, since gods and heavenly officials usually never go there. It also needs to be kept in mind that the statues were covered by veils and the murals covered by butterfly silk - whether this was done to hide them or to protect them from decay is beside the point, which is that they were covered and that Feng Xin and Mu Qing tear all of those covers down and then get offended by what they find under them - which are Hua Cheng's most private and intimate thoughts and feelings and memories. They might as well have torn open Hua Cheng's heart and soul and dissected the contents only to spit on them in disgust.

So now, not only have two of the people Hua Cheng hates the most uncovered Hua Cheng's most private feelings regarding Xie Lian, they also revealed them to Xie Lian without Hua Cheng's consent. And judging by the above description, Hua Cheng is terrified of Xie Lian's reaction. Usually, he has to be pushed pretty far to ever lose his composure - he evidently has very strong emotions, but most of the time he's suppressing them beneath his laid-back, unshakable attitude. Xie Lian himself remarks at some point on how Hua Cheng smiling doesn't necessarily relate to what he's actually feeling at all since it's just this condescending fake smile he aims at others (well, anyone other than Xie Lian). But here, now, Hua Cheng's hands jerk in shock. His usually confident voice is quiet and actually cracks with how afraid and distressed he is.

Also, though this is more in the realm of speculation because the text isn't clear on it - it's mentioned that he's not facing them directly but standing at an angle, and the look in his eye is actually not described at all - this could be taken to mean that he's deliberately standing in a way that has his blind side facing them more than his seeing side, since very often it's the look in his eye that's giving his emotions away the most. It would make sense that he's deliberately standing like this to try and conceal how hard he's struggling to keep it together.

Aside from losing Xie Lian again or not being able to protect him from harm, this has to be one of Hua Cheng's worst fears - for Xie Lian to be scared of and disgusted by him, to reject Hua Cheng's devotion. Back when Guoshi divined his fate and called him toxic and dangerous and demanded Xie Lian to send him away and not even touch him at all, when everyone was treating him like "poisonous vermin" (volume 2, page 380) and trying to separate him from Xie Lian by force, Xie Lian was the only one to not be scared of and disgusted by him, the one who instead held him and soothed him, who kept insisting that it wasn't his fault, that he wasn't misfortune and disaster. But now with the command talisman making it look like Xie Lian "was afraid to face Hua Cheng and refused to speak to him", this one of Hua Cheng's worst fears seems to have become reality, and it's breaking him apart to a point where he seems to actually be close to tears.

#tgcf #rereading tgcf #hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #actually teared up reading this scene again because my god the poor guy he really goes through the wringer here

[magicstar16]

Okay Okay Okay I just had a thought and I legally CANNOT sleep until I share it

Sooo Gooseworx has confirmed the ages of the humans in The Amazing Digital circus

Brace yourself, this is gonna be long.

And she has also confirmed that Jax and Zooble were the youngest (With Zooble being half a year older)

Now I read a theory on the WMG page of Tv tropes that theorized that Jax might have been a teenager or young adult (I believe this was written before the age confirmation but stay with me here) when he got trapped in the digital circus (They didn't say anything about Zooble but the same could be applied for them) But here's my thought:

What if Jax and Zooble got trapped in TADC as kids. Not teenagers, but ACTUAL CHILDREN.

Think about it, The Amazing Digital Circus has a lot of it's aesthetic and general inspiration taken from 90s/2000s kid's edutainment games, and signs are pointing it to TADC having even been that kind of game In-universe.

So here's my theory:

Jax and Zooble were the age of the TADC's target demographic when they played it (probably early to mid elementary school age). My guess on what lead to them to getting trapped is:

A: When in playtesting/test audience phase, Jax and Zooble were two children chosen by C&A to playtest the game and act as a test audience of sorts, when it turned out they were straight up trapped in there, C&A said "Oh shit, our test players are trapped" And tried to do as much damage control as possible until the game was finished They filled Jax and Zooble's heads with false promises of escape, but eventually they both realized that the company was lying through their teeth and they were never going to get out, whether or not the game was completed.

Or B (AKA the simpler answer) : The game was already released and Jax and Zooble played it as kids (Whether they played it on school computers or home computers IDK) and they got trapped.

If you want to connect some more red strings to this theory, it could provide a potential explanation as to why C&A is in the run-down state it is now. When finding Kid!Jax and Kid!Zooble's bodies collapsed and unresponsive, Their parents/teachers/guardians reported it, and the news spread like wildfire. (Excluding Queener, the other crossed out portraits could have been other children who played the game during it's heyday and got trapped). The incidents of children going comatose while playing TADC lead to lawsuit after lawsuit being thrown at C&A, until they eventually went bankrupt.

As for explaining their behavior, the theory is MUCH MUCH more loose, but you can see what I'm talking about if you squint. Jax is a snarker and a prankster, and Zooble is just moody in general, most people would associate that kind of behavior with misbehaving or "troubled" children. Gooseworx DID say that TADC would be "Like Toy Story but everyone is a jerk".

How Jax and Zooble currently act, while not exact, could be VERY close to how they acted as kids. Because they practically grew up in the digital circus, considering the kind of game The Amazing Digital Circus is, they didn't really grow up at all, they arguably didn't HAVE to.

So yeah basically Zooble and Jax are emotionally stunted, since Jax says the whole cast has been there for years, Zooble and Jax (or at least just Jax) are like That because as kids they were trapped in a world that wouldn't let them grow up.

I'm not saying this theory is correct, I mean, this theory is built on a little information and heavy speculation, if this theory were a building it would be sloppily held together by Duct tape and glitter glue. But I feel like I'm onto SOMETHING here.

#zooble and Jax didn't have to necessarily be the same age when they got trapped but you get my jist #the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc jax #tadc zooble #tadc theory #the amazing digital circus theory

[lokidokieokie]

Beyond the Pages | Chapter #1 - Into the Unknown

Series Summary: It was just your weekly trip to the comic-book store. While looking for a comic for your collection, you stumble upon an old-looking book, with an odd combination of symbols on the cover. You, being drawn to the weirdness of it, pick it up and open the cover. A strange force surrounded your person; and the next thing you knew, you were waking up on the steps of what looked to be 177A Bleecker Street. What had you gotten yourself into?

Pairing: Stephen Strange x Fem!Reader

Warning(s): none that I can think of, lemme know if I've forgotten something

You blinked in confusion as you looked at the world around you. The last thing you remember was holding that old comic book. And now you're lying on the steps of a building that you'd pretty much memorised. A building straight from the scene of your favourite movie.

You sat up slowly, trying to rub the ache in your head away as you tried to make sense of what was happening. Your mind was reeling. This couldn't be real. Something must've happened and you passed out. You were dreaming; you had to be.

The sound of the Sanctum door opening, and someone clearing their throat brought you out of your thoughts. There in all his 1.83m glory, stood Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme; your hero.

He took one look at you and sighed, "I suppose you're the reason for the cosmic shift?"

You gulped, a lump forming in your throat. This was the Stephen Strange. The most notorious neurosurgeon the Marvel Universe had even seen; probably the greatest Sorcerer Supreme in the multiverse...and you were sitting at his doorstep like some drugged out weirdo.

With your eyes wide with embarrassment, you quickly stood up and squeaked. You swore you saw a flash of amusement in his eyes at the sound.

"Now I'm only going to ask this once, because, quite frankly, I have other problems I need to attend to. What master do you serve?"

You giggled at that. That line was ten times better said in person than any movie could ever portray.

"Does that line work on anybody?"

His eyebrows raised, "All answers so far lead to no."

You smiled, "I didn't think so."

You swear his lips almost quirked up in a smirk, and that made you feel a rush of relief. Maybe now he wasn't going to banish you or cast some sort of spell on you. But the situation itself was still bewildering.

"I'm sorry for my lack of manners," you said, fidgeting with the comic book in your hands. "I didn't mean to intrude in the Sanctum."

Stephen seemed to study you intently, his gaze seemingly piercing through your soul. "You possess an otherworldly energy," he said, his voice calm yet laced with curiosity. "It's unlike anything I've encountered before. How did you come to possess it?"

You blinked, taken aback by his astute observation. Maybe he's a sort of Sherlock in every universe...

"I- I don't know how I got here," you stammered, struggling to find the right words. "One minute I was holding this comic book in a store, then everything went...strange--no pun intended. Next thing I knew, I was here on your doorstep."

His expression softened as he listened to your words. "An enchantment," he murmured to himself, "Multiversal travel?"

A look of clarity flashed across his face, "The Nexus of All Realities."

You tilted your head, confusion written across your face, "The nexus of what now?"

"It's sort of a cosmic crossroads," Stephen began to explain, his voice laced with a bit of fascination and caution. "A convergence of different dimensions and realms. If you were holding an artefact connected to the Nexus, it's possible that it transported you here."

You glanced down at the comic book in your hands, suddenly seeing it in a new light. "So, this comic book...it's more than just a collectors item?"

Stephen nodded, his eyes never leaving yours. "In this reality, it seems to hold a deeper power. And by some twist of fate, it brought you to our world."

A mix of excitement and trepidation coursed through your veins. You, like many other Marvel fans, had read countless fanfics about the possibility of shifting or travelling to the Marvel Universe; but now that it's come to fruition, it was both thrilling and overwhelming.

"Are you alright?"

You let out a shocked laugh, "It's just, I-I'm just a huge fan," you admitted, a sheepish grin spreading across your face. "I never expected to end up in the Marvel Universe. It's like a dream come true! But, I don't know what to do about it."

Stephen's eyes softened, a glimmer of understanding shining within them. "Rest assured, I will do everything in my power to help you, uh..."

"Oh! Y/n, my name is Y/n."

He smiled, "I will do everything in my power to help you, Y/n."

You nodded, feeling a mix of gratitude and nervousness. "Thank you, Doctor Strange."

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Trust, Y/n, is not something that I hand out freely, so we'll start somewhere simple. Call me Stephen."

With a wink, Stephen led you into the Sanctum, where a whole new world of possibilities was awaiting for you...you just didn't seem to know it yet.

A/N I'm so sorry for this taking so long...I've been so caught up with life. Here is my little going away present.

🏷 @thewaithfuckingannoyme @evelyn-kingsley @moonlight-ee @fall-myriad @ironstrange1991 @night-spectrum 

#doctor strange #beyond the pages fanfic #beyond the fanfic #dr strange #dr stephen strange #stephen strange #stephen strange x reader #doctor strange x reader #dr strange x reader #doctor stephen strange x reader #dr strange x fem!reader #doctor stephen strange x fem!reader #stephen strange x fem!reader #reality shifting #universe traveller #multiversal travel #multiverse traveller #doctor strange fanfic #doctor strange fanfiction #benedict cumberbatch #benedict cumberbatch character

[notyour-valentine]

Don't forget to smile :-) ~ modern!Tommy Shelby & Reader (platonic fluff/angst)

[Masterlist] [Taglist]

Summary: Tommy can't think of anything more ridiculous than the cheery messages the Barista keeps scribbling down on his to go coffee cups

Note: Written for @mrsalwayswrite auparty - I know I am super late, but life was busy and I was more representative of this Tommy than this reader. Despite the delay, I still hope you still enjoy it. At least, by now, I have the element of surprise on my side!

I do not consent to my work being translated, copied or posted elsewhere on this platform or any other. This hasn't been beta'd so I apologise for typos or mistakes

Warning: anger? car crash, violence, mention of blood, a tiny bit of politics? Depression, mention of suicide. Also Crypto Bros. Expect canon confirming tone and mention of violence.

Wordcount: 2282 words

Don’t forget to smile :-) 

The letters were mocking him. 

The four words added in sharpie to the to-go cup, in such a haste that the drawing had been smudged slightly. 

Don’t forget to smile :-) 

There was very little to smile about in the life of Thomas Shelby, especially these days and so it felt like a personal attack. 

He turned the cup so that he wouldn’t have to look at them. 

The most annoying thing about it was that stupid smiley. It made him want to punch a hole through the to-go cup with his pen just to be rid of it. 

It was as if she was trying to insult him, not just with that idiotic drawing and those empty words she always scribbled down on his cup, but with her whole demeanour. 

She was always smiling. 

She was always wishing everyone a “fantastic day!”

Tommy always knew some people were born with less than half a brain but very few had decided to be as blatantly obvious about it. 

Always smiling, always cheery, always adding messages like these that sounded like they had been taken straight from the pages of some overpriced self help book - or from one of these idiotic motivational instagram pages that would put cheesy phrases over the backdrop of some UFC fighter who would probably subcome to CTE before he turned fifty but he looked tough so what did it matter when you could turn it into an ‘inspirational image’ with ‘good energy’

That entire generation was nothing but a collection of fools living in an echo chamber and throwing phrases like “vibes” and “energy” about, although if he told them that, they’d probably “call him out” for his “toxic masculinity” and “bad vibes”. 

The fact that he knew all these things made him want to curse Ada even more, who had written her second dissertation about said ‘toxic masculinity’, or maybe third - he didn't remember, and to Finn, who only last week offered to ‘connect’ him with one inspirational speaker he really liked who was doing a podcast and really wanted Tommy to be a guest on it. 

He’d rather eat broken glass. 

But like most awful things in his life, that barista was unrelenting.

Apparently she was always the one doing the graveyard shifts, because it was always her handing out his coffee at the drive through in the earliest morning hours, always smiling, always with those stupid useless sayings.

The whole business would work better if their employees didn’t waste time with meaningless scribbles no one would ever bother to read. 

You’re doing great!

As if Tommy Shelby needed a little barista to tell him that.

He knew he was doing great. He knew how far he had come, straight out of the social estate housing in Birmingham to the penthouses of London and New York, with businesses on every continent and a company on the stock market (and several that would never be connected to his or his family’s name). 

Be proud of yourself!

Especially on a day like this with the Chinese business close to blowing up, it made him want to crumple up the cup in his hand, and preferably her idiotic smile with it. 

It was just so unnecessary - a waste of time and energy, even of ink itself. 

But no matter what, he could always count on those few words of writing to ruin his morning. 

Today again. 

You are loved!

He didn’t feel loved, if that even was a thing, not after Polly had been screaming at him for an hour straight, making his ears ring. 

Then again - 

Today’s a great day to have a great day!

What did that even fucking mean?

And what if some other car crashed into his on the way to work and squashed his skull to mush? That would be a sight for the firefighters that would be called to scrape his brains off of the asphalt. 

The next time he’d have to teach one of his rivals a lesson, he should send them something with that saying on first, before blowing up their car or setting fire to their restaurant.

It was funny in a way. 

You’ve totally got this!

He had stared at the writing for longer than he should have, having been up for nearly twenty hours now, running only on stubbornness, caffeine and desperation. 

You’ve totally got this!

Tommy stared at it and thought of the little barista with her silly apron covered in coloured buttons on the side, filled with meaningless slogans and symbols. 

As if putting some logo on a badge would fix things. 

She was only pretending to care about these causes, about him, about all the other customers she smiled at. 

But at least she’s pretending, a voice in his head reminded it. No one else is fucking doing it.

Least of all himself.

These days, Tommy was too tired to pretend, but it didn’t matter, did it?

Not really. After all, everyone was busy, everyone was desperate. 

Ada was up and about changing the world, writing books and fighting causes, trying to pass laws in at least six different countries at once, while Polly was somehow at the Met Gala, the Biennale and Cannes at the same time, hardly spending half as much time in England as she was spending in Monaco or St. Tropez or the Maldives. 

Arthur was already stretched to his limits, in and out of the clinical rehabs Polly and Ada put him in and the church retreats in Iowa that Linda recommended, and talking to his wife was tricky these days, after it came out that she had donated to some politician Ada hated. 

At first she and his sister had been throwing insults, then food, and in the end even fists had flown. 

There was no talking to any of them now. 

Just him, always him. 

“You’re earlier than usual!”, she remarked when he pulled up to the drive way.

Tommy only huffed. 

“Have a great day!”, she told him as she handed him his coffee and a sandwich he probably wouldn’t eat. 

Some days he even wondered if they would notice if he would disappear. 

They would, of course, at least when the money dried up. 

She was doing it for the same reason. He might not like her but he was a fair tipper.

Still, she’d notice before they would. 

Which was - something? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have the energy to think about it. 

London inner city traffic allowed him to glance at what she had written today

You are blessed!

Rolling his eyes, Tommy took a sip. 

So meaningless. So childish. So useless. 

Every single day, like an endless stream of blind idiocy. 

Don’t forget to smile =)

People look up to you!

You WILL achieve your goals!

Today is EXTRA good!

You matter!

I believe in you!

Don’t forget to do what you love 🤍

You do a great job being you!

Meaningless at the best of times, mockery at the worst. 

Countless times he had thought of changing the coffee place just to be rid of her needless pestering positivity, but it was the most convenient spot, besides, doing that would mean he had to concede a reaction to it and to him it was a sign of defeat to indulge fools. 

Still, it was nagging at him. 

This rainy Thursday she had written something particularly irritating on it. 

Not only had she greeted him with a smile “You’re back!” on the first day he had returned from a work trip to Paris.

“Yeah.”, he muttered as he waited for his coffee impatiently. 

As she handed him the cup, he glanced at it. 

People are grateful to know you 

This was reaching new depth. No one in the history of his life had ever been grateful for that. 

Not a single person. 

Even those people who were cursed to love him weren’t. They were grateful for his work and money, but not knowing him. 

Unless - 

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or simply because he couldn’t be bothered to go back to the bank to exchange his change. 

Fuck it, he thought. In a way, he was only doing himself a favor as it would be useless to send someone. 

So Tommy circled around the drive through and ordered some cinnamon roll from her colleague at the first window.

“You again, did you forget something?”, she asked with her beaming smile. 

No. 

“Ever been to Europe - “

Tommy had to squint to read her nametag. 

The name suited her, in a way, even if he hadn’t suspected it. 

“No, but I’d love to go to Rome!”, she said as she handed him the brown paper bag.

Tommy noticed the black writing from her pen, but didn’t read. 

“Cash this time.”, he said, handing her a pound bill, and then whatever had remained in his wallet from his trip to Paris. 

It wouldn’t change the world, but there was enough green and purple in there to finance a little trip for a barista. 

He shoved them into her hand unceremoniously and drove off before she had the chance to react. 

If she was smart, she’d hide it in her pocket, but if she chose to put it in the tip jar and share it with her colleagues, that was her business. 

People are grateful to know you. 

She was a fool, and Tommy couldn’t change that, but at least today he had made sure her words didn’t make her a liar. 

~

It kept raining all through the day, and into the late afternoon, through phone calls and meetings, through Michael throwing a fit and Polly being unreachable, through everything. 

“Tommy,”, Lizzie said, popping her head in through the tinted glass doors, “there’s a woman at the front desk to see you.”

“What woman?”, he asked, taking off his glasses.

“Some girl. She has something for you, something you lost and she refuses to give it to the security.”

Fucking really? 

Lizzie only shrugged. 

“She says its important. They’ve checked her. No weapons. She says she’s fine waiting downstairs until you come down.”

He had half a mind to test that theory, but then he shook his head. 

“Send her up then.”, he muttered. The only thing less appealing to him than having to deal with some stranger was having to deal with some stranger after a long day’s work. 

Five minutes later Lizzie came in again. 

“I can’t send her in here, Tommy - she’s soaking. It’ll ruin the floors.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his strength before getting up to Lizzie’s office.

It took him a moment to notice her without her hat and apron, but her smile gave her away. 

“Hi, so sorry for disturbing-”, she began. “I’ll be right off, I promise, but ah - you made a little mistake earlier.”

She really was soaking, from head to toe drenched and dripping, her clothes clinging to her skin. Still, she smiled. 

“What?”, he asked in utter disbelief. 

Reaching into her back pocket she took out the folded Euro bills he had passed her hours earlier. 

“You always give my five quid - so maybe you got the colours mixed up cause this one’s green too.”

She bit her lip in embarrassment as she handed out the bills to him. Each and every one, green, yellow and purple. 

“So yeah - this is yours.”

He only stared at her in disbelief. 

“Are you for real?”, he demanded to know.

“Yeah.”, she said immediately. “I mean, I’d like to think I’m good at my job, but I’m not - three thousand six hundred and seventy five Euros good at my job.”

When he didn’t take the money, she put it on Lizzie’s desk who was watching the interaction with wide eyes from the window. 

“Nothing we got is that good, not even the blueberry muffins.”

Tommy only stared at her. 

“Anyway, that’s all.”

She was already halfway out of Lizzie’s office, her worn Converse making squelching sounds on the floor, when Tommy called her back.

“That money was for you.”, he insisted. 

She stared at him with wide eyes.

“Oh but that’s a bit much.”

“So?”

She shook her head. 

“Well, it's too much.”

If he thought her a fool before, he considered her little more than an idiot now. 

When his disbelief kept rendering him speechless she spoke up again.

“Why don’t you put it into your charity? They’ve got a lot of flyers in the lobby and the kids probably really need it. I’ll be alright.”

Lizzie gave him a look which he tried painfully to ignore. 

“I really need to go now.”, she said with an apologetic smile, “sorry for interrupting and sorry about getting the floor all wet.”

“Can I ask you something?”, Tommy asked.

“Sure.”

“Why do you always have to smile?”

She tilted her head and frowned, but then - oh wonder - she smiled. 

“I read somewhere once about a man who wanted to kill himself - wanted to jump off of the Golden Gate bridge or something and was already on the way up but he didn’t do it ‘cause someone walked by him and wished him a good day and smiled at him. Made his day and saved his life.”

She shrugged.

“Don’t know if it’s true, but you never know I guess. Anyway, I really have to go or else you’ll have a proper puddle to remember me by.”

With that, she turned and opened the door.

“Have a great day!”, she chirped, the way she always did when he drove off, only this time it was her who was leaving. 

The End

~

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Taglist

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@lilyrachelcassidy @jyessaminereads @chlorrox @watercolorskyy @books-livre @quarterpastmidnight  @lilyevanswhore  @polishcrazyone  @zablife  @just-a-harmless-patato  @stevie75 @flyingjosephine-blog @runnning-outof-time @cillmequick

Tommy

@knowledgefulbutterfly @babayaga67 @signorellisantichrist @lespendy @geeksareunique @look-at-the-soul

#mzauparty #valentineswritings #don't forget to smile :-) #peaky blinders #tommy shelby #thomas shelby #modern thomas shelby #modern! thomas shelby #modern! tommy shelby #modern!tommy shelby #modern!tommy #thomas shelby x reader #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby imagine #tommy shelby imagine

[ingek73]

India archive reveals extent of ‘colonial loot’ in royal jewellery collection

File from India Office archive details how priceless items were extracted from colony as trophies of conquest

by David Pegg and Manisha Ganguly

Published: 14:00 Thursday, 06 April 2023

Five years ago, Buckingham Palace marked its summer opening with an exhibition celebrating the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday with a display of his favourite pieces from the royal collection, Britain’s official trove of items connected to the monarchy. “The prince had a very, very strong hand in the selection,” the senior curator said.

Among the sculptures, paintings and other exhibits was a long gold girdle inlaid with 19 large emeralds once used by an Indian maharajah to decorate his horses. It was a curious choice to put into the exhibition in light of the violent means by which it had come into the hands of the royal family.

Emerald girdle of Maharaja Sher Singh, c 1840. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

As part of its Cost of the crown series, the Guardian has uncovered a remarkable 46-page file in the archives of the India Office, the government department that was responsible for Britain’s rule over the Indian subcontinent. It details an investigation, apparently commissioned by Queen Mary, the grandmother of Elizabeth II, into the imperial origins of her jewels.

The report, from 1912, explains how priceless pieces, including Charles’s emerald belt, were extracted from India as trophies of conquest and later given to Queen Victoria. The items described are now owned by the monarch as property of the British crown.

Plundered stones

To fully understand the context behind the jewels, and their place in India’s history, it was necessary to visit the archives.

A journal records a tour in 1837 of the Punjab area in north India by the society diarist Fanny Eden and her brother George, the governor general of the British Raj at the time. They visited Ranjit Singh, the maharajah in Lahore, who had signed a “treaty of friendship” with the British six years earlier.

The half-blind Singh wore few if any precious stones, Eden wrote in her journal, but his entourage was positively drowning in them. So plentiful were the maharajah’s gems that “he puts his very finest jewels on his horses, and the splendour of their harness and housings surpasses anything you can imagine,” she wrote. Eden later confided in her journal: “If ever we are allowed to plunder this kingdom, I shall go straight to their stables.”

Twelve years later, Singh’s youngest son and heir, Duleep, was forced to sign over the Punjab to the conquering forces of the British East India Company. As part of the conquest, the company did indeed plunder the horses’ emeralds, as well as Singh’s most precious stone, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond.

The queen mother’s crown sits on top of the coffin during her funeral in 2002. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

Today, the Koh-i-noor sits in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on display at the Tower of London, and it has become an emblem of Britain’s tortured relationship with its imperial history.

Anita Anand, a journalist and historian who co-wrote a book titled Koh-i-noor on the diamond, said it was “a beautiful and cold reminder of British supremacy during the Raj”, the period between 1858 and 1947 when India was ruled by the crown.

“Its facets reflect the fate of a boy king who was separated from his mother,” Anand said. The stone too was “taken far away from his home, recut and diminished”. Anand said: “That is not how India sees itself today.”

Buckingham Palace is plainly aware of the sensitivities surrounding looted artefacts. After the Indian government let it be known that for Camilla, the Queen Consort, to wear the Koh-i-noor at Charles’s coronation would elicit “painful memories of the colonial past”, the palace announced she would swap it for a less contentious diamond.

But, as was discovered by Queen Mary, the Koh-i-noor was not the only gem taken from Singh’s treasury to have found its way to the British monarchy.

Royal with a pearl necklace

Among the jewels identified in the document found by the Guardian is a “short necklace of four very large spinel rubies”, the largest of which is a 325.5-carat spinel that later came to be identified as the Timur ruby.

Its famous name is erroneous: research by the academic Susan Stronge in 1996 concluded it was probably never owned by Timur, a Mongol conquerer. And it is a spinel, a red stone similar to, but chemically distinct from, a ruby.

Elizabeth II was shown handling it in the 1969 BBC documentary Royal Family, and was clearly acquainted with the myths surrounding it. “The history, of course, is very fascinating. It belonged to so many kings of Persia and Mughal emperors, until Queen Victoria was sent it from India,” she observed.

The Timur ruby necklace, 1853. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

The queen was never pictured wearing the item. However, she may have worn another of the Lahore treasures, identified in the India Office report as “a pearl necklace consisting of 224 large pearls”.

In her 1987 study of royal jewellery, Leslie Field described “one of the Queen Mother’s most impressive two-row pearl necklaces … made from 222 pearls with a clasp of two magnificent rubies surrounded by diamonds that had originally belonged to the ruler of the Punjab” – almost certainly a reference to the same necklace.

The queen wearing pearls at the Royal Opera House in 2012. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

In 2012, Elizabeth II attended a gala festival at the Royal Opera House in London to celebrate her diamond jubilee. Photographs showed her wearing a multi-string pearl necklace with a ruby clasp.

Were these Ranjit Singh’s pearls? There was speculation they may have been, though Buckingham Palace was unable to confirm either way.

Queen Mary’s interest appears to have been prompted by curiosity about the origin of some of her pearls rather than any moral concern about the manner in which they were obtained. But a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said slavery and colonialism were matters that “his Majesty takes profoundly seriously”.

Shashi Tharoor, formerly an undersecretary at the United Nations, and currently an MP in India, said: “We have finally entered an era where colonial loot and pillage is being recognised for what it really was, rather than being dressed up as the incidental spoils of some noble ‘civilising mission’.

“As we are seeing increasingly, the return of stolen property is always a good thing. Generations to come will wonder why it took civilised nations so long to do the right thing.”

#abolish the monarchy #queen elizabeth ll #king charles the cruel #brf #colonialism #koh i noor #cost of the crown #the guardian #british royal family #imperialism

[ask-icancraft-it]

Simmer

(( A short fic based on this fun test animation of Tamora cooking by Shawn Lee! Hope you enjoy! ))

--

Everything was going wrong.

She was trying to pull her weight by cooking a warm meal but faced adversity at every turn. Water boiled over on the stove, and uncooked pasta covered the floor. The instructions made it seem simple, so why did this feel like the most grueling battle she’d faced today? Why couldn’t she just do it? 

With a shout, she reached for her firearm, targeting the recipe book with a barrage of plasma bullets. As she just about unloaded her clip, the kitchen door swung open.

“Tammy Jean, cease fire!” a voice commanded, cutting through her rage and ending the bombardment. The sergeant lowered her weapon, tucking it back into her inventory as she turned towards the person she’d effectively been “fighting” for.

His small frame stood in the doorway, breathing heavily as he surveyed the room, the distress deepening on his face as he observed the smoking bullet holes peppering his cabinetry. 

“Fix-It…” Tamora whispered as the weight of her actions settled in. As it turned out, adjusting to domestic life was more difficult than any boot camp, and she’d just failed miserably.  

And like any other humbled private, she stood awaiting her reprimands.

“Tamora,” the handyman said after quietly drinking in the scene. “Were you…trying to make dinner?” 

Eyes cast downward, she gave him a sullen nod in response. 

The 8-bit removed his cap to scratch his head, recontextualizing her baffling behavior. 

“Well, I can understand how that can be stressful…But Tammy, you can’t just shoot up the place when things don’t go your way.”

Somehow, the calmness of Felix’s reaction stung worse than the anger she’d expect from anyone else in his shoes. Was this that “killing with kindness” business she’d heard about? If so, she had to admit it was an effective tactic.

“Did you take a calming breath?”

“I did…” Tamora swallowed. “Right before pumping the recipe book full of holes.”

Felix looked down, picking up the Swiss-cheese-like silhouette of his cookbook off the floor.

“You probably should have taken a second breath then, honeybadger,” he chuckled. 

The boiling pot of water caught his attention, and he stepped over to the burner to shut it off. His boot connected with the pot lid on the floor, and he felt its toasty temperature through his gloves as he picked it up. 

“Did you burn yourself?” the handyman looked up at her with concern. 

“It’s fine,” Tamora wrote it off, keeping her arms behind her back. 

“Tam,” Felix replied with a measure of annoyance. He held out his hand, and she reluctantly offered hers. 

His eyes went wide as he inspected her palm and fingers. 

“Well it’s no wonder you got so upset,” he said, gesturing to the red blisters on her delicate skin. “This is not fine.”

With a flick of his wrist, he wielded his hammer and lightly tapped it against her wound. A warm glow washed over her, and the stinging ceased. 

“Thank you…” this was the first time she’d experienced his reparative magic first-hand. She moved her fingers as a soft tingling sensation lingered; so that’s what it felt like. “But that doesn’t excuse what I did. I’m sorry.”

Wincing at the bits of pasta that crunched under her, Tamora knelt to match the handyman’s height. 

“You do so much, and I wanted to contribute. But it all blew up in my face.”

Felix smiled, and stepping over to the far pantry cabinet, pulled out the dustpan and broom.

“Then let's pick up the pieces together,” he said. 

While Tamora worked to sweep up the floor, Felix used his hammer to fix the cabinets and erase every bullet hole he could find. Last, but not least, he tapped the cookbook and flipped through its pages.

“Okay; spaghetti…” he hummed, placing the book on its stand atop the kitchen island. He did a double take at the frayed edges of a page still missing. “Honey? Where is the—” 

“Hmm?” Tamora moved quickly, standing straight as an arrow in front of the corner by the stove. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tammy…” Felix moved his hands to his hips with an incredulous look. 

The sergeant sighed, stepping aside to reveal the book's missing page pinned to the wall with a chef’s knife.

For a moment, the handyman’s mouth hung open, and he closed it in a flat line across his face as he looked up at her. Unfortunately, there was no way around this one. She had very deliberately ripped out a page from his book and stabbed it.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. 

The handyman’s brows furrowed a bit, and he bubbled over with laughter. After a few moments, he gathered himself back up, shaking his head. Goodness, he loved her.

“We’re going to need that knife, sweetheart,” he tittered, gesturing for her to hand it over.

With one last guilty look, Tamora grabbed the handle and pulled back roughly. The knife came loose, and she handed it and the page over.

Felix set the knife down and repaired the torn page. Putting his hammer away, he smoothed his fingers over the book’s surface with a contented sigh.

“Alright, let's get started…” 

#Maybe someday I'll do a follow up with Felix teaching her #couldn't get myself to do it this round haha #hero's cuties #fix it felix #sergeant calhoun #crafty writes

[zahri-melitor]

Okay, Babspoll thoughts.

John Ostrander & Kim Yale: it’s all about Oracle Year One. Their combined rehab job of Barbara as an effective hero on the pages of Suicide Squad, then writing her reasoning? It’s beautiful, I know why they’re popular.

Alan Moore: I did say everyone significant. Unfortunately Moore simultaneously wrote the most significant thing that ever happened to Barbara as a character, while failing to centre HER in the narrative of her injury.

Chuck Dixon: as much as I respect Ostrander and Yale’s work, we wouldn’t have the Oracle we know and remember today if Dixon hadn’t given us Birds of Prey and Dick/Barbara (and Barbara & Dinah what do you mean this is completely straight). He made her an essential part of the nascent Batfam. He gave her so many community connections and made her a central figure among the heroes. He made her a team leader. Plus he wrote Batgirl Year One, which is the main reimagining of Babs’ Batgirl period post-Crisis and well beloved.

Gail Simone gave Barbara what nobody else had ever bothered to do - more women friends. She also altered the feel of Birds of Prey to be less “single agent sent in on a mission” James Bond style and to be a more complex juggle of experts with different skillsets for larger missions. She gave Barbara more scope. Simone also ups the ‘Barbara as a mentor’ stakes and has her training more teenagers, and I love Babs as a mentor figure.

Tony Bedard managed two particular stand out moves in his run, in my opinion. The first was the fight scene with the Joker, where Barbara got to tell him in person “you have taken nothing from me”. The second is the way Babs moves everyone to Platinum Flats and openly denies this is partly due to proximity to where Ollie and Dinah are living, I don’t know what you’re talking about, also agent please keep spying on the Arrows and reporting everything they’re doing to me.

Kelley Puckett as much made this list for his two Babsgirl issues as for Batgirl 2000. He’s one of the few writers who writes her both as Batgirl and as Oracle in this period, so he’s thought about the difference. Also he created the Barbara as mentor dynamic, which I love and which has provided so much over the years.

Bryan Q. Miller is probably my least favourite Babs writer who isn’t Alan Moore. His best stuff with her is with Wendy/Proxy - I feel he missed the mark with her otherwise.

Grant Morrison gave us the main Oracle on the JLA run. And respect for putting her in that weight class and respecting how important her skills were to the whole community. She’s helped save the planet a time or two.

John Francis Moore I popped in as he actually has an interesting overlooked duology of issues with Barbara and Selina: one while Babs is Batgirl and one while she is Oracle. He also wrote Batman: Family which has one of the broadest scale Batfam team ups of post-Crisis (I think the only event with more core and peripheral members involved is Battle for the Cowl). And I’m always interested in more pre-Oracle content.

Devin Grayson uses Barbara a lot but has the usual issue that she’s SO dramatic. Her best stuff with Babs is probably the Dick/Babs breakup phone calls in Nightwing #100, and how she counsels Dick and Tim in Gotham Knights #26. Unfortunately Grayson also wrote GK #6 which turned the already-complicated ‘how is Barbara biologically related to Jim’ into an even more painful snarl. Jim’s her dad no question but didn’t need to be her bio dad, you know?

Overlooked (ran out of slots): Barbara Randall Kesel. Kesel wrote both Flawed Gems and the Last Batgirl Story, and established the immediate post-Crisis state of Barbara. A lot of this was later overlaid/retconned by Batgirl Year One, but Kesel’s important as she’s the writer who brought Babs over to post-Crisis.

#barbara gordon #writer comparisons

[thedummysdummy]

I'll Always Find You

Part 1 can be found here: One Small Decision

All the responses had been the same. “Nope, haven’t seen or heard from her.” Victor slammed a fist on his desk in desperation-fueled frustration. He could go to the police, he supposed, but doubted they’d take him seriously. It had been less than 24 hours and she was an adult. They’d had a fight. He’d just be eye-rolled out of their office…

So he went back to the stack of evolvers. Every minute ticking by was a drip of water torture serving to drive him insane. He called her after each page and despite the calls going straight to voicemail each time, Victor found himself holding his breath through that single ring. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Everything paused as he flipped the page and found himself face-to-page with Ernest Elm, evol: tracking. It was almost too perfect to be true. Victor picked up his phone and dialed the number, hand holding the phone shaking and the other tapping the desk while his knee bounced. Two, three, four times it rang before a voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Ernest Elm? This is Victor Li. I need your evol’s assistance.” 

~~~

An hour later, the redheaded and freckled Ernest stood in Victor’s office at LFG. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, with nervous eyes and twitchy hands. “Sit, sit,” Victor invited, gesturing to the chair where the girl usually parked herself. The young man did so, and Victor skipped the small talk. “Thank you for coming. Tell me about your evol. What do you need for it to work?”

“I, uh. Just need something that belongs to the person, and then I can see a thread that leads back to the owner. I usually just use it to return lost items, sir. I don’t know that it’s super helpful…” 

Victor rifled around in his desk and emerged with a small, well-loved shiba inu plushie. “If you don’t think it’s very helpful, Mr. Elm, then you have not spent enough time thinking of applications. You would be the most efficient search and rescue officer Loveland has ever seen. You could track down criminals, trafficked women and children, or missing persons. I would say that is a most noble evol.” He lifted his dark eyes and connected them to Ernest’s. “What are the limitations?” 

The young man seemed slightly taken aback by Victor’s statements. Could he really be that important? A smile settled onto his face and Ernest visibly relaxed. “I haven’t really found a distance limit, but the person does have to be alive. Sir, before we do this…would this person want to be found? I mean, I’m not helping you be a creepy stalker or anything, right?” 

“She would want to be found, yes. It’s possible that she might be in danger, so shall we get started?” Victor’s voice had regained its sharp edge and Ernest straightened in his seat. He accepted the doll with some amount of apprehension while Victor looked on with concentration. 

“Do you have a map? It would be easiest for me to tell you where she is if I have a map to draw you a path.”

Victor pulled a map of Loveland out of his desk drawer and scooted it over along with a pen. He folded his hands over his knee and swallowed the feelings of concern at the phrase ‘does have to be alive.’ But his dark eyes remained focused on Ernest’s face as the man held the toy and scrunched up his face. 

There was a long pause as tension hung heavy in the air before Ernest reached for the pen. He seemed to be following roads with one eye closed and the tip of the pen hovering over the map until it lingered over the industrial side of Loveland. The pen lowered until it kissed the map, leaving a small dot. “That’s the spot, sir.” 

Victor scooped up the map and examined the place where the marking lay. “Thank you. I must be going now. Goldman will give you your pay and escort you out.” Without further discourse, Victor disappeared down the hallway with his phone in one hand and map in the other. 

Speed limits were for people who didn’t have anywhere important to be. At least, that seemed to be Victor’s attitude as he flew down the side streets which led to the sketchier parts of Loveland. It was all but confirmed in his mind that she had been kidnapped at this point; there was no reason why she would have willingly ended up in the dilapidated industrial sector. 

The further out he went, the fewer cars he passed until he turned onto the final road and found himself completely alone. Whoever these people were, they had obviously gotten all of their training from bad films and crime novels. Victor pulled into the marked parking lot and stopped the car at the far end, not wanting to alert anyone inside to his presence earlier than was necessary. 

Victor slipped through the first strains of darkness to flatten himself against the wall of the building. So far he hadn’t seen or heard anyone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes on him. Practically a wraith, he slipped around the outside until he found a door whose lock had been smashed. It opened easily and Victor entered without a sound. 

Unfortunately, the building was quite large and there was no telling where the girl was being kept. Victor listened carefully for any sound, but was only struck by the vast silence of the building’s hollow carapace. His keen eyes swirled as they scanned the floor for any sign of passage; however, it appeared he would not be so lucky. So he pushed forward into the depths of the building, the dim light providing only little guidance as he walked the halls. 

Door after door Victor paused outside and listened, pushing open those he could when he heard nothing behind them. Honestly, he’d expected to find guards by now, but obviously this was a small  or inexperienced bunch. How they’d managed to catch someone as capable as his dummy made no sense if they were that inept, but the ‘how’ could wait. 

When faced with the realization that he’d scoured the entire first floor, Victor paused at the stairwell. It went both up into higher floors and down beneath ground, and there still was no real sign which way he should check. He chose downstairs for multiple reasons; firstly, it was easier to drag an unwilling captive down than up. Secondly, underground would allow them to use lights without drawing attention to their abandoned abode. 

It seemed his reasoning was sound. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, a slight glow called from the far end of the hallway. Victor felt his heart rate increase as he knew he was on the correct path. Every cell in his body screamed for him to throw caution to the wind and race to the girl’s side, but thankfully the ones in charge of action still managed to maintain some semblance of order. 

At least enough order for him to only run to the end of the hallway as silently as he could manage and stop outside the door to listen. Two male voices conversed in hushed tones, low enough that Victor couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He pressed his ear against the door in an attempt to hear better, only to wish he hadn’t. 

“We should just finish the job. We’ve had our fun and at this point, she’s a liability. She’s seen our faces and we can’t let that go.” 

“I suppose you’re right. But I want to have a little more fun, first. Where’d that knife go?” 

A soft rustling accompanied a muffled groan and squeak of fear. The sound of skin slapping skin and a pained squeal brought the fury which had been building in Victor’s stomach into his extremities. He burst through the door, taking in the scene in one swoop. It wasn’t a large room; in fact, it barely held three chairs and a small table. The girl was tied to the chair in the center of the room, her head resting on her chest and blood splattered here and there on the floor. She looked up at the sudden noise and revealed a bloody gag tied around her mouth, the crimson stain originating just above her right eyebrow and flowing its way down to the dirty cloth. 

Her eyes were dull and cloudy as her mind seemed to struggle to understand what she was seeing. However, it really only took a few moments for it to register that Victor had arrived, savior of the day. Tears welled up in those eyes and she seemed to be reaching for him with as much vigor as she could manage while being actually unable to move. 

Victor didn’t have time to release her, however, before her pair of captors were upon him. One held a knife while the other leveled a revolver at Victor’s head. Victor wasted no time in flinging a round-house kick at the gunman’s hand, sending the gun flying. The disarmed man was stunned by the sudden movement and froze, making it easy to strike him directly in the face. He crumpled like wet tissue paper and Victor turned to the other man, a larger specimen with a decidedly more frightening demeanor. 

“Where the hell did you come from?!” the kidnapper growled, circling Victor. “And who are you? How did you find this place?” 

“So many questions,” Victor retorted, his lip curled up slightly. “Who I am is none of your business. Neither is how I found you. But I will always find her, no matter where she is. She is mine and you would do well to put down your weapon before I have to take it away.” 

The man chuckled and lunged, knife aimed for Victor’s stomach. Victor nimbly stepped out of the way and elbowed the man in the back as he went by, causing him to stumble. However, the kidnapper recovered quickly and lunged again, this time grazing Victor’s hand as Victor grabbed for the man’s wrist. 

Victor didn’t so much as flinch at his wound. He simply wrapped his long fingers around the captor’s arm and flung him to the ground, smashing the man’s face into the concrete floor. There was a sickening crunch as the man’s nose broke on impact and a pool of blood began to immediately form beneath him. Victor was just about to turn back to the girl and untie her when she let out a muffled scream, which caused him to spin around and kick the first man again just as he began to reach for the gun. The man howled in agony as Victor’s sharp shoe connected solidly with his ribs and knocked the wind out of him. 

It seemed for a moment that both of his opponents were down, at least long enough for Victor to grab the abandoned knife and cut the girl free. He removed the gag first, followed quickly by her hands and then her feet. Tears streamed down her face despite her best efforts to keep them contained and she collapsed into Victor’s arms. “Can you walk?” he asked, holding her tightly against his chest. 

“I…I think so,” she whispered, voice hoarse from screaming. 

“Then I want you to run outside. The authorities shouldn’t be too far behind me, if Goldman did as he was instructed. Which he always has. I’ll keep these two busy while you make your escape.” 

The girl opened her mouth to argue, but Victor instead covered it with his own. By the time he pulled away from the kiss, the girl was feeling even dizzier than her wounds had caused. “Go. I will be perfectly fine. These two idiots are obviously no more than I can handle.” He pushed her toward the door and despite her intense desire to stay by his side, she gave Victor one last look and darted out of the room as fast as she could. 

Each time one of the captors would attempt to get up from the floor, Victor would mercilessly return them to their position. Every ounce of fear and anger was channeled directly into ensuring that neither of the men escaped before the police arrived to take them away. His hand still bled freely but he paid it no mind, seemingly not even realizing he’d been injured. 

Probably fifteen minutes passed before the thunder of police boots could be heard on the stairs. Victor exited the room and waved them down, pointing into the room. “The kidnappers are in here. I managed to subdue them for the time being, but there’s a loose gun.” 

The police pushed right past Victor and handcuffed the kidnappers, hauling them away before also cuffing Victor. He didn’t protest; it was just standard procedure, after all. They had no way to know what the truth of the situation was until they had time to interview all parties. 

Full darkness had fallen by the time Victor emerged with the police. The girl was being attended to by ambulance staff, but no amount of shouting could convince her to stay put when she saw Victor’s face. She rushed to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. “I can’t believe you found me,” she sobbed, her tears staining the collar of his shirt red. “I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have run off like that! I thought for sure I was going to die alone and that you’d blame yourself for me making one bad decision!” 

Victor chuckled and kissed her on the cheek. “I will always find you, dummy. Even if I have to do it ten thousand times, I will always find you.”

#complete #a little angsty #but not too bad #mr love queen's choice #mr love mobile #mr love victor #mr love victor fanfic #mlqc victor fanfic #mlqc li zeyan #mlqc victor #mlqc #love and producer fanfic #love and producer victor fanfic #love and producer #love and producer victor #love and producer li zeyan #evol x love li zeyan #evol x love victor fanfic #evol x love victor #evol x love fanfic #evol x love

[teecupangel]

Desmond but a megalodon

Do what you must

Ngl, nonny, when I read this, my mind went immediately to Jason Statham’s movie The Meg so my brain went “Desmond versus Jason Statham???” before I remembered that Desmond wouldn’t be a dick like the megalodon in The Meg.

For those unfamiliar with megalodons, here are some approximation of its supposed scale from its wiki page:

So, let’s talk about how this would work.

Now, the easiest way to kick him into being a megalodon is around the games with naval combat so AC3, Black Flag, and Rogue specifically.

Odyssey is also a viable setting since the Adrestia did sail all around Ancient Greece.

We can make an argument for Origin but that might limit him to Aya’s naval combat section unless we set this after the main storyline and Bayek travels further to start building the foundations of a Brotherhood in other places.

Valhalla’s section would be enclosed during the travels between Norway and England although I like the idea that Eivor saw him when she was traveling to Vinland, like Desmond was staying close by to Ratonhnhaké:ton’s people (and the Grand Temple).

Now, for the main naval combat AC games, Desmond could be like a great shadow they would sometimes see during their travels with Ratonhnhaké:ton seeing him the most while Shay sees him the least.

Ratonhnhaké:ton could even hear from Haytham how there is a legend about the great shadows of the sea. How it supposedly follows Assassins to guide them. From the soft almost pained way Haytham spoke, Ratonhnhaké:ton realized that he had heard of the tale from his father.

And Edward liked to tell Haytham about it when he was a boy, about how the legends of a great large shark were one of the most sought-after bounty during his time, how he had been cocky enough to think he could hunt it down, only for it to appear during the times when the Jackdaw was in dire situations, almost as if it was assisting him even after Edward had tried to take it down more than once before.

Ratonhnhaké:ton doesn’t say anything but something inside him knew that the sea guardian was there for him. That he was there to help and he certainly did during the more dangerous missions he took with his ships, always there to ram or straight up headbutt an enemy ship from underneath them.

Mister Faulkner cautioned him to be careful for it was a beast.

But Ratonhnhaké:ton knew…

It was more than a beast.

No.

He was more than a beast.

Other possible ‘sightings’:

Altaïr: While it would be funny if Desmond straight up just gobbled Sibrand during the whole mission in the Acre docks (giving a big fuck you to one of the most annoying Assassination missions in the game in my experience because water), his current size would make that a bit hard to do. He would have a better chance ‘interacting’ with Altaïr during his travels to Cyprus in Bloodlines or when he was trying to find Adha in Chronicles. Also… Altaïr did travel a lot and we didn’t get a full confirmation where he had traveled to (one of his destination had been Constantinople though) so Desmond could have made contact with him during one of those times he was traveling by ship.

Ezio: He did use a ship to travel from Forli to Venice so it’s possible he’d had a chance encounter then but it might be better if it was during the times Ezio traveled to Spain (for Discovery and the final memories of Brotherhood) since he would have probably taken a ship to get to Spain but it would be dramatic if his first sighting of Desmond was during the heavy wave sequence of Revelation’s intro movie while he was traveling to Masyaf. Also sorta symbolic since he’s going to a place that held a connection to Desmond as well (and he meets Desmond during the time when his parts in the calculations were coming to an end)

Arno and the Frye twins: Look, Desmond’s size as a megalodon would make it hard for him to swim in the Thames (which is full of ships in Syndicate) or in Seine but if we’re going by Sharnado rules, go for it XD

#does this count as part of the #desmond as an animal series #??? #that’s not a real tag that would show you other desmond as animal asks btw #it should probably be #but i’m currently too lazy to check all the other posts and add it #maybe some other time XD #desmond as a megalodon #ask and answer #assassin's creed #desmond miles #altaïr ibn la'ahad #ezio auditore #ratonhnhaké:ton #connor kenway #edward kenway #haytham kenway #teecup writes/has a plot #fic idea: assassin's creed

[gamesception]

Sception Reads Cass Cain #19

Batgirl (2000) Annual #1 Writer: Scott Peterson Pencils: Mike Deodato

The Main Batgirl solo is again left at a cliffhanger mid-arc while we look at a side issue. Maybe I should have done episodes 4-6 back to back, out of chronological order? But I've had a lot to say about issues 4 and 5, so the little breaks looking at side issues I don't have as much to say about has been a nice change of pace to buy breathing room. This time we're meeting a character named Aruna? I don't think I remember her at all. These sorts of annuals are sometimes used to have a popular established character help launch a new IP that will continue in another book. If that's what was happening here, then it's a nice show of confidence in Cass from editorial. And we've got Scott Peterson writing, so that's good, but we've seen Deodato draw Cass once before, and it, uh...

Oh.

Oh, no.

...

Honestly, it's not all that bad. Most of it's fine. Much better than the last time he was drawing Cass. There are even some panels of Cass that I really like, like this one:

But man, those first couple pages are rough.

Anyway, yeah, while this is a 'Batgirl Annual', it exists to introduce Aruna Shende, as part of a 'DC World' thing going on at the time introducing some new international heroes and I guess seeing who sticks. Aruna is a shapeshifter with a stunt person/special effects artist alter-ego working in the Bollywood film industry while investigating the disappearance of her parents when she was a child. Bruce & Cass bump into Aruna while looking into the kidnapping of the lead actor in a film she was working on and they have a little adventure together. Aftter that there's an extended character backstory segment just for Aruna with no bats at all.

It's pretty solid. I like how Cass is able to identify Aruna when she's using her abilities to disguise herself. This is still silent Cass, but she's fairly active and expressive in the part of the issue where she's present.

As for Aruna, she's an interesting character, with a solid backstory, and its honestly a shame DC never really did anything with her after that.

There is one bit that stuck out to me though relating Aruna's story to Cass...

After her parents were taken by mysterious suited agents, Aruna was left as an orphan, living on her own on the street, forced basically to grow up that way while also growing into her powers and using them to take care of herself.

Which is very similar to how Cass lived on her own after running away from David at age 8, basically until she met Barbara during No Mans Land when she was like 16 or 17. During that entire time Cass survived on the streets, on her own, without even the ability to speak, relying on her abilities to survive.

That's a part of her life that, as far as I can remember, the old continuity never really explored outside of this one flashback with Mr. Merc from issue 1. What was life like for her? Did she form connections with anyone? She's seen the world from this abject state of poverty, seen people around her desperate to survive, presumably saw people supporting each other and tearing each other down... she was living on the streets at least as long as she was living with David Cain, it should be a big part of her world view, so much formative stuff should have happened during that period. Really meeting and spending time with people other than her father for the first time. her first crush, probably. realizing how different she was, and what her father's training had really cost her in terms of the ability to communicate and connect with other people. How does growing up in abject poverty color what she thinks about her fabulously wealthy life when she is eventually invited into the Wayne household?

And not something modern writers can really go back and fill in, since, from my limited understanding, in the reboot continuity she goes pretty much straight from assassin life to bat life without this in between period.

#Cassandra Cain #sception reads cassandra cain #batgirl #aruna shende

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Jeff Buckley “was creating something bigger than the song”

Buckley's friends and collaborators tell the full story of his rise

ByTom Pinnock

13th November 2015

In 1993, Jeff Buckley released his first EP: four songs, played live and alone, that introduced an extraordinary new talent to the musical world. Soon, he would create a debut album, Grace, that suggested he could do anything. Buckley, however, wasn’t so sure: “Jeff,” says his best friend, “was incredibly insecure about everything.” From tribute shows for his father, through the clubs, record labels and studios of New York and London, to the salons of his heroes, Jimmy Page and the Cocteau Twins, Uncut charts the tempestuous first moves of a lost legend. Eternal life guaranteed… Story: David Cavanagh. Originally published in Uncut’s June 2013 issue (Take 193).

Jeff Buckley’s Grace tour lasted 21 months, visited Europe four times, racked up almost 150 North American dates and finally ended on March 1, 1996 in Sydney. The venue was a picturesque spot for the last goodbye: a club in a seaside hotel overlooking Coogee Beach. Among those there was Belinda Barrett, a 26-year-old producer for a Sydney film company, who’d become a Buckley fan the year before.

“Jeff’s two tours of Australia were a life-defining time for me and many others,” Barrett says today. “Jeff was someone you wanted to become a devotee of, and I did. He had incredibly loyal followers who really connected with his essence and spirit.” She remembers looking around at gigs and seeing people gaping in astonishment at the stage. Two years on the road had honed Buckley’s setlist into a hypnotic, invocatory, near-holy performance. “There were moments of coalescence in Australia,” recalls his drummer Matt Johnson, “when new worlds in music felt like they were being glimpsed. Moments I’ll remember until my dying breath.”

Buckley was in good humour at the Coogee Bay Hotel’s aftershow party. Belinda Barrett asked him for his autograph. “Steely balance,” he wrote, adding: “Patti Smith”. But behind the smiles, the long tour had taken its toll. Johnson, suffering from exhaustion and depression, was leaving the group; he’d complained bitterly about the ravages of the “rock machine”. Under contract to Columbia, a Sony label, Buckley had committed to one of the most gruelling itineraries of the MTV-dominated ’90s. The promotional conveyor belt stretched from Paris to Perth, and Buckley had had to learn when to acquiesce and when to resist. It may be one explanation why “steely balance” – a phrase more befitting a wine list – popped into his head as he was approached for an autograph.

“We always said to him, ‘If it gets overwhelming, let’s take a breath,’” says Paul Rappaport, Sony’s former vice-president of artist development. “But you have to understand, people at the company were constantly fighting over him. ‘He’s got to go to France next.’ ‘No, he’s got to go to Australia!’”  The conveyor belt paused; a Sydney hiatus in a New York story that had begun five years earlier.

It was a tale straight out of Dick Whittington. Buckley’s first visit to New York, in 1990, had ended with the 23-year-old Southern Californian fleeing Manhattan in despair after being accused of shoplifting. But in the spring of ’91, the bells coaxed him back. A phone call from Brooklyn invited him to sing at a tribute concert for his father, a man he’d hardly known. This time his arrival in the city would have an impact. Soon everyone from Marianne Faithfull to Allen Ginsberg would hear about him.

Held in a Brooklyn Episcopal church, “Greetings From Tim Buckley” was Jeff’s equivalent of a debutante’s coming-out party. He sang four of his father’s songs in the familiar Buckley vocal tone and range, dumbfounding anyone who’d presumed Tim’s multi-octave voice to be unique. The key moment came in “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain” when the lighting designer projected Jeff’s head onto a stained glass wall at the rear of the church. It was, says the show’s producer Hal Willner, something akin to a visitation from Jesus. After that, there seemed little to keep Jeff in Los Angeles.

“He became a sponge of New York culture,” says Willner, who took him under his wing. “He jumped into the arty circle initially. I took him to see the Mingus Big Band at the Vanguard, and another night he went to see Sun Ra.” Buckley based himself in the Lower East Side, where he found “a village of freaks like himself” (in the words of actor-musician Michael Tighe, who would later join his band) and lived a monastic existence, burning incense and contemplating a small Bodhisattva on his windowsill. “People who were attracted to New York were not of the norm,” Willner adds. “They came here because of what they could do, which they couldn’t do anywhere else.”

Buckley cut his hair short and sang in Gods And Monsters, a virtuoso raga-rock outfit led by former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas. At first, the collaboration was fruitful. Buckley wrote lyrics for a pair of Lucas instrumentals (“And You Will”, “Rise Up To Be”), turning them into “Mojo Pin” and “Grace”. Lucas, angling to sign Gods And Monsters to the BMG-financed Imago Records, envisaged success on a grand scale. Buckley – 14 years his junior – was his final jigsaw piece, his Robert Plant, his Jim Morrison. Gods And Monsters organised a March ’92 showcase gig at the same Brooklyn church where Buckley had honoured his father a year before.

“I was so pissed off at Gary,” remembers Kate Hyman, an Imago Records A&R executive. “Jeff was amazing – you could tell he was a star. But every time he came to the front of the stage, Gary would jump in front of him and play all over him.” Buckley began to feel mismatched with Lucas but was unwilling to confront him, a typical trait according to friends. The band’s bassist, Tony Maimone, proved easier to confide in. “He says, ‘Y’know, Tony, I’m not sure if I’m gonna continue with this,’” Maimone recalls. “It was a little bittersweet. He was kind and gentle, but I got the impression we weren’t going to be playing with him for much longer. He had his own vision to pursue.”

Steve Abbott, a New York-based Englishman who owned a London indie label (Big Cat), saw Gods And Monsters play in a club. Abbott immediately identified Buckley as their most interesting member. “He looked quite sulky and moody, whereas Gary was very in-your-face. Jeff came back on at the end and did a song by himself. It was one of those moments where you haven’t quite heard anything like it. It didn’t fit into any musical format. I spoke to him later and he told me he had some gigs at a place called Sin-é.”

Anyone who attended Buckley’s concert at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on March 4, 1995 will remember the dreadlocked black man who walked onstage to duet with him on “What Will You Say”. His name is Chris Dowd and he’d like to delete that night from his memory (not to mention from YouTube) – he admits that he was horribly drunk. Dowd, a founder member of LA ska band Fishbone, was one of Buckley’s closest friends. After Dowd left Fishbone, he and Jeff lived together for a time in New York, Dowd fielding phone calls for Jeff while he was out. “It would be Chrissie Hynde or Elvis Costello. ‘Hello, is Jeff there? Tell him Elvis called.’ ‘Er, OK.’”

Buckley had become the darling of Sin-é. Sin-é was a café in the East Village run by an Irishman (its name, pronounced “shin-ay”, is Irish for “that’s it”). It had a small bar and no stage. Buckley appeared at Sin-é almost every week in 1992, leaning against a wall and singing, accompanying himself on a Telecaster plugged into a little Fender amp. It was casual and informal (nobody paid to get in), but the customers agreed that something extraordinary happened when he sang. His voice, which he was modifying all the time, was sensual and gender-ambiguous. It could make people cry. It could make them feel elated. It could – and he would insist on this – eliminate conversation from the room. He alluded to his Sin-é period in a 1995 interview with Melbourne’s RRR radio station: “What I’m trying to do is just sing what comes to my body in the context of the song. And if you go by the emotion of the song, it’s almost like stepping into a city. Cities have certain customs and rules and laws you can break, and that’s what I was doing.”

“He would do mostly covers,” Michael Tighe told Uncut in 2007. “Nina Simone. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I was very impressed with his knowledge. I thought he had really good taste. What really sent me was when I heard him do ‘Hallelujah’. That’s when I felt I was in the presence of genius. That made me see white flashes.” Buckley had heard Leonard Cohen’s hymn-like “Hallelujah” in a version performed by John Cale on a Cohen tribute album. It had become a feature of Jeff’s floating Sin-é repertoire – “Strange Fruit”, The Smiths’ “I Know It’s Over”, Bob Dylan, Edith Piaf – which grew by the week.

“I remember him opening once with ‘Sweet Thing’ from Astral Weeks and closing with ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’ from the same album,” remarks Nicholas Hill, a radio DJ for New Jersey’s WFMU. “To have the gall even to attempt something from Astral Weeks – usually that doesn’t go over great. But this guy could reinterpret songs, sing them completely differently every time. He was investigating where they could take him. He was creating something bigger than the song. For the first three minutes, you wouldn’t even know what the song was.”

Transported but relaxed, Buckley would talk, do impersonations, comment on what the clientele was wearing (“Nice sandals”) and sing adverts and jingles that he remembered from his childhood. “The motherfucker was so funny,” says Chris Dowd. “He was like… if somebody took Lenny Bruce and Jim Carrey and mixed them into one person. A really dark sense of humour combined with an incredible ability to mimic everything. He had a photographic memory for music.” Nicholas Hill concurs: “Everyone was drawn to Jeff’s personality. He was extremely magnetic and charismatic. Men fell in love with him. Women felt he was their future husband. It was just like, ‘Holy shit, this is a major dude.’ There was just no denying it.”

“Sin-é was this teeny little place with a couple of tables and chairs,” says Kate Hyman, “but it was a magical, fun time because there was no pressure. I was an A&R person, but I was enjoying listening to Jeff and not having to think about the business.” Steve Abbott of Big Cat, who lived a two-minute walk from Sin-é, chatted to Buckley one night and was intrigued to find they shared a love of The Groundhogs – as well as a taste for Guinness. Abbott said he’d like to do a record deal. Hyman, too, wanted to sign Jeff to Imago at some point. But things were moving quickly. One night Hal Willner showed up at Sin-é with a friend named Steve Berkowitz, an A&R man for the major label Columbia.

Abbott: “I left New York to go touring with Pavement, who were on my label. Within the week and a half that I was away, the record industry discovered Jeff Buckley. He now had a lawyer. There was one ridiculous night where I saw three limos outside Sin-é. You didn’t see limos in the East Village. This was when we still had muggings and killings, before the area was gentrified. I couldn’t even get in the door of Sin-é. I kept getting pushed back out again.”

Hyman: “When the limos started showing up, it was funny and silly and none of us took it seriously. But suddenly there was a bidding war. I was in there for a minute, but I was at a small label and there was no way we were going to beat out the majors.” There was another stumbling block for Imago that Hyman is slightly reluctant to reveal. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now,” she says. “My boss, Terry Ellis – I took him to see Jeff and his comment was, ‘He’s really good, but he has no charisma.’ He actually said that. Really.”

Buckley’s Sin-é apprenticeship didn’t end in formal goodbyes – he appeared there many more times, including a gig with his band shortly before recording Grace – but the innocence had been lost. “His initial crowd were disappointed because they couldn’t see him in a club with eight other people,” says Willner wryly. It was too late. The cat was out of the bag.

Buckley signed with Columbia Records on October 29, 1992. The lure was a promise of artistic freedom, but their historic catalogue (Dylan, Springsteen, Cohen, Cash) inevitably influenced his decision. It took Sony’s Paul Rappaport all of five minutes at Sin-é – Buckley was singing a Van Morrison song at the time – to be convinced that Jeff was potentially a figure of equal stature.

Rappaport: “Donny Ienner [Columbia president] said to him, ‘I know you’re getting offered more money by Clive Davis [Arista] but I’m not going to give it to you, because it’ll mess your head up. I’ll give you half of that, and I’ll make a deal that we won’t pressure you.’” Sure enough, the first thing Columbia did after signing Buckley was… absolutely nothing. They left him alone for months. A hands-off policy was regarded as essential to his development.

“He still hadn’t written many songs,” Rappaport points out. “We had no idea, really, whether he could write or not.”

Brenda Kahn, a ‘punk-folk’ singer-songwriter on a Sony label called Chaos, was introduced to Buckley by her A&R man. She and Jeff giggled at the multi-million-dollar Manhattan world they’d accidentally infiltrated. “We both felt like, ‘What are we doing here? We belong on the Lower East Side.’ We were both in a giddy sort of realm.” They became friends (and briefly lovers), Kahn finding Buckley surprisingly precise – she uses the word ‘intentional’ – about all aspects of his creativity. He already knew the importance of leaving a legacy. He talked of needing to improve his lyrics. Kahn: “I was in awe of his abilities. Have you heard his recording of ‘Satisfied Mind’? The way his voice and guitar work together? I was like, ‘God! I can turn a phrase, but look what you can do.’ And he was like, ‘Sure, I can sing the crap out of anything, but how do I say it?’”

It was in Buckley’s nature to fluctuate between resolve and hesitation. On top of his ongoing worries about being sold to the public as Tim Buckley’s son, he was anxious to be perceived as a fan-based, credible artist, not some major-label hype. It was entirely characteristic of him to phone Nicholas Hill, who ran a 7” label, and tell him he wanted to record six indie singles immediately. It was also characteristic of him to change his mind and forget the conversation had ever happened.

Chris Dowd: “Jeff was the kind of person who was incredibly insecure about everything. His ability to play his instrument. His voice. When I first met him, he didn’t think he was good-looking. It was, ‘Women don’t like me,’ all this stuff. Later on, he was embarrassed to be voted one of People magazine’s ‘30 Most Beautiful People’. I think one part of him secretly dug it, but the other part – the artist, the musician – was like, ‘What a fucking goofy fag you are.’”

“He was a bit dorky,” says photographer Merri Cyr, who shot the covers of Live At Sin-é and Grace. “That’s what made him charming. I think he was initially unaware of the effect he had on other people. Later, though, he became much more savvy about how he behaved and presented himself. I remember he acquired a stalker or two. He was scrutinised and was in the public eye. His demeanour changed over time. Perhaps he became a bit suspicious of people.”

Live At Sin-é was recorded in July ’93. Buckley and Columbia agreed that a four-song live EP was a smart, subtle way to introduce him to the public and the media. Following several planning meetings at Columbia, he was about to spend six weeks at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock recording his first album. Chris Dowd: “Steve Berkowitz was being very protective of him. The pressure was probably more on Steve than Jeff. But the other thing is, Jeff could walk into a meeting with Donny Ienner and all the Sony people would be mesmerised by him. There’s no other word for it. They knew they’d signed a guy who was going to have a prolific, 30-year career. Fishbone were on the same damn label and we couldn’t get them to do anything. But Donny Ienner would have tattooed Jeff’s name on his penis if Jeff had told him to.”

With studio time at Bearsville booked, Buckley told producer Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Rollins Band) that he wanted to make a ‘band’ album. Wallace: “I thought that was a good idea. Over the course of a career, you want to reach out to more complex musical presentation, and he felt he wanted to do it right away.” Mick Grondahl (bass) and Matt Johnson (drums) were hand-picked because Jeff felt an affinity with them on both personal and musical levels. “He was very particular about who he was looking for,” says Nicholas Hill. “He wanted guys his own age who didn’t have baggage, who weren’t hot session guys. He’d done all that with Gary Lucas.”

Buckley, a brilliant guitarist, recorded most of the album’s guitar parts but invited Lucas – in a conciliatory gesture – to play on “Mojo Pin” and “Grace”. Buckley-written material rubbed shoulders with covers of “Hallelujah”, “Lilac Wine” and Benjamin Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol”. It was rock meets Sin-é.

Chris Dowd was one of the first to hear it. “He had a cassette. He put on ‘Lilac Wine’. He was like, ‘I’m going to play you something… OK?’ I could see in his eyes he was insecure about what I was going to say. I started crying when I heard it. There I am, his fucking best friend, and he’s made this album and he doesn’t even believe how good it is. I was like, ‘What are you worried about, man?’ Either a song showed his depth of understanding as a musician, or it showed his sensitivity as a human being. There wasn’t a song out of place. That album became a sonnet for the tortured.”

Live At Sin-é was released in America in November ’93. But Columbia’s counterparts at Sony in London declined to follow suit, feeling the EP had no commercial potential. Instead it was given a UK release by Big Cat, which had signed a licensing deal with Columbia. The next step was to bring Buckley over to promote it. “We knew he was very good live – that’s how he was sold to us by the American company,” says Luc Vergier, a Frenchman who ran Columbia’s marketing in London. “We decided to put him on the road, on his own, for a short tour.”

Buckley arrived in the second week of March ’94 with his Telecaster and Fender amp. He played in Sheffield, flew to Dublin and then hit London for a series of gigs that are still spoken of in hallowed terms 19 years later. On one particular Friday night, he gave a three-hour performance in two different venues, beginning at Bunjies, the folk café, where he handed everyone a flower with mock solemnity as they took their seats. When Bunjies closed, Buckley led the audience (still with their flowers) to the nearby 12 Bar Club where he played for a further 90 minutes. He took requests, accepted a joint and sang until he almost collapsed off the stage. “Live At Sin-é came out on the Monday,” recalls Abbott, “and sold nearly 6,000 on the first day. The word of mouth from those two gigs was crazy.”

Buckley returned to the UK in August with his band. Five days after Grace was released, they played the Reading Festival in a mid-afternoon slot beneath Cud and Echobelly. In hindsight, their lowly billing symbolises the size of the mountain Buckley still had to climb, and the extent to which Grace would struggle to assert its identity – let alone its audacity – in the year of Parklife, Alice In Chains and Hootie & The Blowfish. There was a unspoken subtext to the ensuing 21-month tour: Columbia’s abiding disappointment with Grace’s sales in America.

“It never broke in an immediate way, the way other bands’ records did,” Mick Grondahl told Uncut. “It grew. To us, that was the point. We didn’t want to do something fashionable. We wanted to do something that had a nice feel to it. Feel was the key word. Never mind that it was this style or that style. It was more about, how does it feel? How does it touch you?”

One man who loved Grace was Jimmy Page. There was arguably no-one whose opinion Buckley valued more. He’d sung Zeppelin songs at Sin-é. He’d amused Tony Maimone at Gods And Monsters rehearsals by thumping out “When The Levee Breaks” on the drums. Buckley’s music on Grace, and in his band’s live shows, embraced androgynous vocals, ’70s rock, power chords and heroic drumming. One might even say there was a transference of Zeppelin energy taking place, a blessing or endorsement from afar, from the older men to the young. When Page and Buckley met, it was clear they understood each other on a profound level.

“Jeff told me they cried,” says Chris Dowd. “They actually cried when they met each other. Jimmy heard himself in Jeff, and Jeff was meeting his idol. Jimmy Page was the godfather of Jeff’s music. A lot of people thought Tim was the influence on Jeff, but it was really Zeppelin. He could play all the parts on all the songs. John Paul Jones’ basslines. Page’s guitar parts. The synthesiser intro on ‘In The Light’ – he could play it on guitar and it would sound just like it. And then he would get on the fucking drums and exactly mimic John Bonham.”

Perhaps Page also recognised in Buckley – whom he considered the greatest singer to have emerged in 20 years – a rare courage, an elemental intrepid streak, a fearlessness and a gung-ho spirit that allowed him to reach heights of expression that many of his ’90s contemporaries were too self-conscious to risk or too uninspired to imagine. In that sense, Buckley was a true son of Zeppelin. Matt Johnson, in a comment that is all the more poignant given the circumstances of Buckley’s death, remembers him as an adventurer in music and in life – a man “well suited to jumping into raw experience – unprotected, raw experience. He seemed to have a quicksilver flexibility and an ability to adjust.”

Since the day his body was found in the Mississippi River in June 1997, appreciation of Buckley has soared (“Grace was way more successful posthumously,” Johnson notes) and in many people’s eyes he’s become the timeless heritage artist that Columbia believed they’d signed in 1992. Others feel he was only just finding his feet. “It would have been amazing to hear his fourth or fifth album,” says Brenda Kahn. “I don’t think his music had been totally fleshed out yet.” Hal Willner thinks about that fifth album, too. What conceivable directions would Buckley’s voice and guitar have taken?

“I have to say he’s still hard for a lot of people to listen to,” Willner continues. “His mom, Mary, got me to edit together some tapes that he made in his early New York days. The stuff with Gary. And what was interesting about those tapes – what was really heartbreaking – was hearing him sing the way he sang when he came to New York. He changed it later… became less studied. But it’s hard to listen to it. It’s too sad.”

Buckley left his New York home on June 1, 1994 to tour Grace in America. “Keep the next year free,” the band were advised by George Stein, Buckley’s lawyer-manager, a comment they would later laugh about. First France became enchanted with them (two tours in ’95) and then Britain wanted them back. And even when they’d toured America twice, three times, and been to Japan, there was always Australia waiting in the distance.

#jeff buckley #creating something bigger than the song #tom pinnock #uncut magazine #2015

[sunsrefuge]

Music ask game!! :D How about 2, 6 and the fancam song for Liifa?

AND THE FANCAM... <- i find this so so funny because he is SO demisexual. it would so not be his thing !! but by god he's pretty so you're damn right it'd happen to him !!

(hey! funny story! I got so excited about this ask that i'd filled out most of it by the time i remembered you sent. specific numbers. so uh,, woe !! bonus content be upon ye !! also im so sorry that this turned into a LITERAL ESSAY !! do not worry about reading all of it if you don't want to / feel up to it !!)

As per usual, all spotify links! ♥

[Readmore because - well. I said it was an essay for a reason. :'D Sorry !! feel free to only read the ones you requested if you'd like !!]

Backstory: Top of the World by Greek Fire

I remember the days, New beginnings on an open page. With something to prove, And nothing to lose, Not a soul to betray.

Ohh how we look back on the past with rose-colored glasses :') This song both describes his backstory in a fun way, and describes his perspective on his own past! He's born underground like the vast majority of asura during his time, and ends up having to surface after Primordus wakes up. He ends up in the Crystal Desert with his older half-sister Rylii, and they're taken in by the Sunspears once they're deemed not a threat and such. They have a good couple of years until;

I remember the lies, Caught up in building paradise. The angels were slaves, and demons behaved, And everything was alright.

boy got TRICKED into tying himself to the Binding - (in my hc, a book of Abaddon's that contains his worst-behaved demons! like, he dropped all these kids off at preschool and just never came back for them lol) - under the idea that he could somehow purify the book itself, therefore turning an artifact of Abaddon's into a powerful one of Kormir's. Needless to say, maybe not ever gonna happen!! (... maybe.)

I hear the crowds beneath me, I'm wishing they could reach me. But I'm on top of the world, Up here I'm dying alone.

it leads PERFECTLY into the majority of his backstory!! Lonely, aimless wandering!! It also highlights the little facade he picks up over the years:

Inside the walls of gold, Outside of happiness, (It's all been a show, Too late to confess!) No room for heart and soul, No room for innocence, Innocence!

He gets so lonely that he starts to get really jaded and closed-off from anyone and everyone that he meets. There's a sense of when you live so long, what use is it to connect? <- Words spoken seconds (decades) before disaster. (meeting Eliana)

Personality: Liar by The Arcadian Wild

I sense there's trouble ahead, It's clear by the signs and warnings, That should tell where all blame is due. So why are they pointing at my head?

There's a long stretch of time where he's very flippant about what he's doing and who it's affecting. Typically, if a situation turns against him, he'd just... remove himself from the area and wait it out.

Oh, I need you to see through my act, To tell me I'm wrong, To take off the mask. Or else I'll be left in the lie, And I'll deceive my way straight to demise.

That said, he knows that he's just lying his ass off most of the time - playing a part, setting the pieces, whatever he needs to do that'll get him in the door for whatever he's attempting now. He gets bored, living so long and being on his own so much, he's not above playing little scams and such to give himself some kind of stimulation as the years drag on for him.

I am the host of this hostility, I'm the master magician that makes you believe. I'm real, I'm not fake, but in reality, I'm a lying man. My life's become this grand game of deception, My mind's ignored all my heart's good intentions. We all feel this tension, We all have our own illusions.

And even as he realizes that what he's done is wrong, he still keeps that degree of separation - that denial that he's wrong - how could he be, when others have done worse? He's determined to be good, so much so that he's justified his own boredom-induced heists by simply internalizing that someone's always done something way worse. Which... isn't how it works! But he'll get there, eventually.

'Cause I'm not in a right state of mind, I just wish I had strength to admit it. My stubbornness will put up a fight, But I don't deserve to win it. I'm left in the dark pondering my mistakes, But in the light, I swear I will, Deny it all.

The chorus in here hits though, because it offers that self-awareness of "yes, this is wrong, and I know it's wrong! But even if you force me to face it, and I know that you're right, I'm going to deny it. It can't be true, that isn't who I am at heart." It's okay, Eliana can fix him later kahsdsuh

Angst: Suffocate by Nathan Wagner

The problem ain't "they're never good," The problem is power, It taints the mind.

hi !! Liifa thoughts hour !! After picking up the Binding, and being stuck with it for the last two centuries, this thought process for him is constant !! ♥ As time goes on, he starts to recognize the ways that the Binding (and primarily Ipos within it) has been influencing his thoughts and perceptions, and he Does Not Like It !! He's so so determined to be good despite all of his bad decisions and numerous setbacks and it's such a reoccurring theme throughout his entire playlist !! his determination to be good is integral to his character !!

Hold on to me, Don't give up on me. If I start to sink, Would you reach for me? I get so afraid, break down, Suffocate. Would you help me breathe? Help me breathe.

This hits harder later on in the timeline; when he has Eliana to travel with! If there's one thing that would immediately entice him over the 'edge' and into corruption, it would be someone he loves being in possibly-fatal danger. Dude is liable to literally lose his entire mind and moral compass in those scenarios!

Don't wanna hurt the ones I love, Don't wanna let everyone down. I try so hard but I slip up, Lose my grip, fall on the ground. The problem ain't "they're never good," The problem's power taints the mind. Don't let this heart turn into stone, Don't let these lights burn me alive.

this part makes me FERAL because !! During the GW2 timeline is when he starts to recognize just how jaded and cold he's become over the decades, and he hates it once he sees it. I also like to believe that - since he's been tied to the Binding - anything of Kormir's (such as the fire in the Sunspear Sanctuary) has the potential it 'burn' him if he gets too close! And I don't mean "you're obviously too close to the campfire" kind of close. More like he's fifteen feet away and still feels like he's standing directly in the fire.

Don't let me suffocate in luxury.

I just think that it's so so fun how... traditionally, demons tempt you by giving you unimaginable power, wealth, anything that you could ever want. And Liifa doesn't want any of that, he just desperately wants a calm life spent with the people he loves.

Comfort: I'll Be Good by Jaymes Young

I thought I saw the devil, this morning. Looking in the mirror, Drop of rum on my tongue, With the warning to help me see myself clearer.

This has !! entirely to do !! with him realizing how jaded and cold he's become, and actively making the decision to move away from that !! He wants to be softer. He wants to have friends. He deeply misses having people that he can rely on and feel safe with; he's so tired of feeling like it's himself against the world.

My past has tasted bitter, For years now, So I wield an iron fist. "Grace is just weakness," Or so I've been told. I've been cold, I've been merciless. But the blood on my hands, Scares me to death. Maybe I'm waking up, today.

I've always debated if there's a specific moment that makes him realize what he's turned into - and now I'm actually thinking !! The Genetics Facility Massacre could be it !! It's perfectly in between two of the times that he meets Eliana before they become properly acquainted, so there's already the thought floating around in his head of this sweet little sylvari he's met, and how kind she seems in a world so cruel - and it hits him. He's part of that cruelty. He's done assassinations, he's killed indiscriminately, he commits crimes so regularly that he doesn't even think about it anymore.

For all of the light that I shut out, For all of the innocent things that I doubt, For all of the bruises I've caused, and the tears, For all of the things that I've done, All these years. For all of the sparks that I stomped out, For all of the perfect things that I doubt,

I'll be good, I'll be good. And I'll love the world, like I should. Yeah, I'll be good, I'll be good, For all of the times, I never could.

and the REPITITION of "I'll be good, I'll be good," just continues to hammer home his determination !! to be good !! Despite his habits, despite his past, despite the things that he's done and said - he wants to be good. If not for himself, then for his half-sister. For the memory of his mothers, and his twin. For the kind people that he's met during his troubles. For everything that he so passionately stood for when he was younger; For the Sunspears.

I'll Be Good has been so so integral to his playlist ever since I started writing him and put it on there. you REALLY cannot know Liifa if you haven't listened to this song while rotating him in ur brain at least once.

Love Life: The Fall by half•alive

Oh, I'm just tryna introduce you, To this idea that I've grown used to. It's like sharing a dream with someone, Once you say it out loud it can't be undone.

he is AFRAID !! He's lived for god-damn-ever and yet he's still so anxious and hesitant any time he develops romantic feelings for someone!!

It's like waking up in surgery, I can't seem to see right past the lights, And I'm, so scared to take a knife to my chest, Let you see the heart that's inside.

He just wants to hide! Every time! He wants to hide but he's also so so glued to their side at the same time. The Fall holds a special place in my heart in relation to Liifa's love life because it always makes me think of how he, Ambrose, and Eliana all get together in my AU's with @forbiddenredjollyrancher ♥ !!

I'd jump off and into your arms, But I can't trust the fall. Take my voice, I'm giving it though I don't feel safe at all.

^ I wanna point out this part too! It's not that he's afraid of them, but more specifically how things could 'turn' in the future. He's already had one relationship (with Bjiattu) that turned sour once he felt content, and he's very much the type of person who gets nervous that things could turn sour again once he's comfortable and feels safely at home.

Luckily for him though, this little polycule is very, very cozy, comfortable, and permanent !! ♥ They also eventually add more to their lil polycule: Prism, Zayvis, Liott, and Haskell! Liott & Haskell both belong to Tres as well! There's also some 'branches,' but that's the central polycule at least! ^^ And yes, Liifa has this same fearful and anxious reaction to every new polycule member. Dude needs to be diagnosed with anxiety, ngl.

Fight Scene: Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace

Liifa typically avoids physical confrontations if he can help it. But, when the need does arise, he tends to go... a little overboard. Courtesy of Ipos inhibiting his impulse control! :) They adore carnage and would like for Liifa to murder more kajhdsk

So what if you can see, The darkest side of me? No one will ever change this animal I have become.

^ this part of the chorus is perfect for his jaded years !! Just the "so what" says so much already!

Help me believe, It's not the real me. Somebody help me tame this animal.

^ and THIS part is great for more recent years! He's sick of it, he's tired, he wants to be soft and cozy and not have to deal with Ipos encouraging his worse impulses and pushing him to blindly murder people (again). There it is! Again! His determination to be good despite his setbacks!!

FanCam: Cherry Hill by Russ

It honestly took me a while to find a good song for this for him !! idk, it's got a vibe and the chorus hits for him in relation to ... well, literally anyone he's ever been in love with, lmao

Maybe I'm a fool, Maybe I'm a fool for you. You know what I'd do for you, I know what you'd do for me. You will see, The truth in me.

hopeless romantic of the CENTURY /positive

also, this isn't important but every time that I've tried to picture a fancam for him to figure what vibes I wanted the song for it to have,, without fail there'd be a part of him readjusting his hair, I'm certain of it. He's so vain and prideful in his appearance, his hair has GOT to be hella soft and it shows.

#SORRY ABOUT. THE FUCKING ESSAY LENGTH. I HOPE YOU ENJOY WHATEVER PARTS OF THIS YOU DO READ <3 <3 <3 #thank you so much for the ask !! <3 #c:Liifa #song stuff #<3*

[karisworldofwords]

Alright, incoming rant about ESC, you've been warned. See this as a continuation of the reblog I posted earlier by the way.

I feel like ever since 2018, ESC has just really taken a nose dive. This might be personal bias since 2018 was the last year Germany made it into the top ten with Michael Schulte on fourth place and ever since, we've consistently scored only last place at best, negative last at worst like it sometimes felt but I digress - my point still stands. Of course, I absolutely loved last year's ESC, especially the entries from Finland, Norway, Germany, Australia, Czechia and Slovenia, but it doesn't change the fact that Eurovision quite recently just lost its usual flair and charme to me that it had all these other years. Might be because it's getting too political, might be because songs make it into the competition that most people don't want to have there aka rigging and such, might just be a mix of both - choose whatever fits you most.

And quite honestly, I may have lied a bit when I said in the hashtags that, due to my lack of connection to this year's ESC already, I don't have as much of a hard time boycotting it because truthfully, my heart does break in various places when I know I want to watch, eat or do something that I usually enjoy, but I can't because otherwise, I'd just show my silent support and approval for something that's happening or just generally going on that I don't agree with because, well, my personal morals would like to have a word there. Think of it as me being a queer American eating at Chick-fil-A - I'd actively go against my own community by supporting this company, as it's known that they regularly donate rather large sums of money to openly homophobic and transphobic organizations. It's something along those lines.

Key words here: The Russia-Ukraine war and the Palestinian genocide. Especially the latter however.

And I wanna use this opportunity and say: If you support Isr*hell and you follow my page, please unfollow me. Block me if you must, but at least unfollow me - because I do not support genocide in any way, shape or form. And you cannot argue with me that what Isr*hell is doing isn't genocide, because going from the word's definition, it quite literally is.

Just today, I learned through that post I reposted onto my feed here that Isr*hell is still allowed to participate in ESC, despite its atrocious deeds against Palestine. Just today, I also learned through a trusted friend that the Palestinian flag isn't allowed in the venue in Malmö during the contest, whereas the Isr*helli flag is still allowed. All while Russia is still banned from said contest for reasons quite similar to what Isr*hell is currently committing. It's called ethnic cleansing, by the way, there's no use in dancing around the topic and trying to talk it prettier - "schön reden", as we Germans say.

Once I heard of these things, my decision was clear as day - and I openly admit that I didn't have a broken heart at first. That only set in later, once the realization of the actual gravity of this whole situation completely hit me, as if I just got smacked by a brick straight in the face and my glasses shattered into my opened eyes. That's what it felt like to me once everything finally set in - once I knew "Yeah, a country has fucked up again yet is still allowed to do its thing so I'll have to boycott it because I have a conscience, unlike those people".

Now think about what the EBU decided to do. When Russia first started attacking Ukraine so mercilessly, Russia was kicked from Eurovision. Unrelated to the Slavic war but when Belarus pretty much abolished freedom of speech, they were kicked as well. But now that Isr*hell is actively lynching thousands of people day by day, it's suddenly alright and they're still allowed to participate? Where does the hypocrisy stem from? The absolutely blatant double-standard? The utter definition of "Rules for thee, not for me"? My guess lies in what happened during the 40's - which might also very well be the reason why my country's government vehemently defends this straight-up murderous country whilst claiming the country these individuals (to stay at least somewhat respectful although I don't really believe they deserve it) are currently actively demolishing, pulverizing and erasing from the maps never existed in the first place and thus, it doesn't really matter. Because Isr*hell is the place where Jews were from, where they started spreading from - not like a disease of course, just generally speaking - and where their roots have always lied. Because of what happened to them back then, they're now all scared to openly say "Ayo, guys, that ain't exactly right, don'tcha think?" since it's pretty clear - at least to me - that then, these people would pull the N*zi card almost immediately and scream discrimination based on just that.

A religion's basis being somewhere specific and having had to watch that religion be almost wiped out completely due to absolute lunatics back then isn't a reason to abuse that power though and play victim whenever it feels right to them. If anything, one would think that it'd be more of a reason to look back at what happened during those times and teach the future generations "This is what happened, let's all work together and make sure we never become like them back then". But instead, they abuse their victim status of back then into today's day and age, making many Jews around the world look absolutely horrendous in the process and throwing their own people under the bus by openly doing what had once been done to them. Makes me question if it's a weird form of Stockholm Syndrome, to be honest.

And the EBU allows it. When just a year or two before, they went all strict parent on another aggressor who did quite a similar thing. Make it make sense.

Thanks for coming to my Tumblr TED talk, and sorry for the length of it - I also have no idea if all of this makes sense, I'm just really pissed about this situation at the moment and needed to vent. Feel free to add your own thoughts as well, if you'd like, I'm always open for discussions as long as they're respectful and in a dignified manner.

#esc #eurovision 2024 #eurovision song contest #eurovision #free palestine #🍉 #ebu #and again just so y'all get it #those of you who follow me who support these murderers can fuck right off #unfollow me block me what have you #just don't fucking interact with me #and don't even *try* to start an argument with me as you *will* be blocked instantly #thanks y'all

[squishablesunbeam]

For the ask game!

🤯 and 🔪 would be lovely <3 Wishing you the best in getting over writer's block, it's the worst!

For this ask game!

Thank you for the wishes!! Fingers crossed that it works!

"Is there a plotline that you feel is too complex or overwhelming and you'll likely never write it but you think about it longingly from time to time?"

Ok so Levi has this massive network of people that are important to his story and I just don't know how to incorporate it! He has a big extended family and at least one sister with a little niece and a community that would support him if he asked for any help at all. I am just so terribly unfamiliar with that sort of connected world and I find it really overwhelming to attempt to tackle. I've found myself trying to read stories that have more of a community because it's just not my world at all and I really desperately want to understand and portray it correctly!

It's definitely not that I'll never write about this on some level because his family is important to him but I think I'll stick with just including his sister and referencing the others. I went down a rabbit hole with the people in his world and it honestly feels like it should be an entire book and I just do not have the capacity for that! I think about them a lot though and have little stories in my head that never make it to the page. You'll meet his sister and his little niece at some point though I hope!

"Are there any other writer's whumper/whumpee OCs you think would be particularly interesting for your OC to engage with?"

I'm not sure what so many of the whumpers would think about Jesse straight of the box, so to speak. There's got to be one that would be into the aesthetic of having a pretty little object around to use and abuse that doesn't move unless told but I can't think of one!

I'd like to see Levi with @ashintheairlikesnow's Robert for sure! That man has taken two of my most favorite whumpee's (Jameson and Finn) and just torn them to pieces! 😭 He's just too good at choosing the most intelligent and compelling ocs and stuffing them into a small cage next to his couch as if they were nothing at all! He puts his boot right over their hearts and grinds them into that sticky, nasty floor until there's almost nothing left. But they somehow hold onto the most unique and integral pieces of themselves and manage to start new lives and I'd really like to see what pieces Levi would hold onto if he survived that awful man!

#bless you!!! #thank you for the ask! #I really miss thinking about my lil ocs #whump ask game #jesse asks #levi asks #whumpee as an object #writereleaserepeat