#so if he does get publicity or fame from it then that's irrelevent to him hence why the only issue he has with dating drako
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Corrupted, Chapter Four: Watched - a Malevolent x TMA fic
Tim's been treading, head above water, for a while now. He had hoped to find help.
That’s not really what the Magnus Institute does.
AO3
——-
Tim leaves early.
Navigating empty streets at night is one thing. This is heading into west London right at the beginning of the work day, and he will take no chances. Beyond all the ones he can’t avoid, anyway.
John’s navigation, however, is flawless. Slow down a little. Good. The step is higher than that—good.
On the bus without incident. Amazing.
And then it’s very weird, because Tim is used to scrolling his phone on public transit, and he obviously can’t do that now—but it gives him an idea. He rummages in his backpack.
What are you doing? John sounds curious.
Tim finds what he’s searching for by feel. “Ah, ha!” he says, and uncoils a white cord with earbuds. “There,” he says, plugging into his phone. “Thank you, Past Tim, Pack-Rat Extraordinaire. Now I can talk without looking crazy. Just on the phone, ma’am, nothing to see here.”
Very smart, John says. I’m impressed.
“Modern technology, eh?” says Tim. “Modernish, anyway. Speaking of which, you don’t seem to be struggling very hard with things like cell phones and rideshares. You’d been here before. Recently.”
Have I? Tim, there are so many worlds, so many timelines, so many dimensions. I’ve seen technology you would never believe—and magic that made it all irrelevant.
What an answer. “And you’re humble about it, too,” Tim says. “Also, you’re deflecting. You know movie titles. Not that Tim Curry doesn’t deserve multiverse fame, but you knew who that was.”
Such a clever man, John purrs, and Tim shifts in his seat, unwillingly affected. I see I will have to watch what I say around you.
“Deflecting. Again. Anyway, I’ve been thinking,” he murmurs, facing the window. “You must be kind of rare, whatever you are. If the world were full of things like you, I’m pretty sure I’d know.”
Really.
Amused. That’s that tone. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t everybody?”
Because for most of us, it’s far more entertaining and useful when humans don’t know what’s watching them from the shadows.
“Okay, so that’s really ominous,” says Tim. “Worse than ‘a being.’ Positively malevolent. Still not gonna tell me what you are?”
No.
Tim sighs. “So. Anything interesting out the window?”
Quite a lot, actually. And John proceeds to describe what he sees.
Tim would absolutely have bought the audio with this guy narrating London for tourists.
John manages to make ordinary shops and red mailboxes interesting. He describes people Tim knows he would never have even noticed on his own. He manages to make London feel like a thriving, vividly energetic throng, a place of potential, not just a crowded, expensive place to work.
It almost feels like part of a life worth living. Maybe it’s time to face the fact that he has no plans. The house selling is great, but he is going to need another job—and yeah, Nigel is probably not going to give him a recommendation.
Tim should care about that more than he does.
You’re drifting, says John.
“Sorry. Just… trying to think about things. Future. Employment. All those boring human details.”
I see. What are you thinking?
“You actually want to know?”
I do, Tim.
Tim slouches comfortably, sliding low in his seat. “Sure. Well, I worked in publishing. I’m a really good editor. But… I don’t know anymore.”
Looking for a change?
“Needing one, honestly.” He swallows around the tightness in his throat. “I was thinking about when I quit, and nobody… nobody really cared. I haven’t been happy for a while, you know? And they say you’re not supposed to make any major changes like quitting your job or selling your house or getting married for a year after bereavement, but, uh. I’m two for three, and it hasn’t even been a month.”
I see. You feel the need to keep moving, John observes, low. The type of creature which, if it ceases swimming, will drown.
Tim shivers. “Wow. Never been called whatever that is before.”
A shark. This is our stop.
Tim laughs. “Shark? I am so not a shark.” Somehow, he manages to exit the bus without running into anyone or banging his head, and exhales in relief. “Right. Which way?”
I’m not sure. There are a lot of old buildings here, but not much signage. Walk forward. More to your left.
It’s like a trust game, Tim thinks. Like something to do with your brother one boring summer afternoon, one of you blindfolded and the other giving directions and accidentally-on-purpose steering you into things.
Sure. That makes it less scary. Right.
Ha! There we go. I see a small, brass sign that says, MAGNUS INSTITUTE 1818. Perfect. And—oh, Tim.
“What?”
This is a place of power. The way John says that… deeper, richer, absolutely eager.
Tim shivers. “Power? What kind of power? Is that good?”
Perhaps. I’ve never had trouble with this particular Power. I believe I am safe.
“You sure you’re as anonymous as you think?”
The moment you made that phone call, Tim, you bet both our lives. If I thought this were truly a danger, I would have said so.
“Sure, put it on me,” he mutters. “How far?”
Stairs starting… now.
There are more stairs than Tim expected. They’re wide and shallow, just a little awkward to climb. “Does it look spooky?”
It’s a temple, John breathes. Oh… I knew it was old, but I didn’t expect this. The one worshiped here has been worshiped here for a long time. Door.
Tim feels for the handle, tugs. Of course, it’s still locked. “Guess we’ll just have to loiter for a bit. You know, in front of the scary pagan temple in the middle of London. What time does my phone say?”
Seven. We’re an hour early. Heh. And pagan doesn’t cover it.
“Sure. Well, better early than—”
“Excuse me, can I help you?” comes a posh baritone.
Tim, there’s a… oh.
Tim wonders what that oh was for. “Hi. I, uh. I need to see someone inside. Kind of an emergency.”
The posh man huffs, like an irritated cat. “Well, we don’t… this is a place of research, so I’m not sure what you expect in an emergency.”
He’s a slight person, shorter than you, much narrower. Brown skin; I’d think mixed South Asian ancestry. He’s slightly overdressed for the weather; shirt, vest, sweater over that. He’s managing to look down his nose at you in spite of his height. But Tim… he’s been claimed, branded by the thing that calls this its base of power, in a messy, undisciplined way. I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s like he’s accidentally a priest.
So that’s the oh. Tim wonders how the hell one can accidentally be a priest. “Well, I need to, uh. What was it the website said? Give my statement?”
There is an irritated sigh. “Well, you might as well come in. I can at least give you a place to wait until Gertrude arrives—ah, Ms. Robinson, the head Archivist.” The voice is moving away, accompanied by the sound of keys. “I’m Jonathan Sims. In research.”
“Tim Stoker. In trouble.”
He hunched when you said that. I believe he feels more for our emergency than he wants to let on.
“Sorry to hear that,” researcher-Jon mutters. “But as I said, I’m not sure what we can do. Police?”
“Not for this, mate. But thanks, anyway.”
Correct to the left a bit. He’s holding the door for you. Ahead of us is an enormous, open lobby with old marble and dark wood. It’s beautiful, elegant. I see no furniture or anything else to trip you. To the left and right are the stacks going out of sight in the gloom. Clearly, at least part of this building is a library.
Their footsteps echo. It smells like books.
“What’s your statement regarding?” drawls researcher-Jon, audibly trying to be polite.
“A horrible book that ruined my life,” says Tim.
He’s stopped walking and is staring at you, abruptly pale, the arrogance dropped away like a mask. Oh, you’ve got his attention now.
“What?” says researcher-Jon. “What did you say? A book?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it have… a bookplate in front?” says researcher-Jon.
Tim can feel himself going pale, too. “Yeah. It said, ‘The Library of Jurgen Leitner.’”
“Oh, gods,” says researcher-Jon. “You… you’ve…”
He looks afraid, Tim, and—oh!
Those oh exclamations were, Tim was beginning to realize, far more important than any casual fuck or damn.
“Jon?” comes another voice, posh, somehow managerial. “Well, I’m used to you being here early, but who’s your…” The voice stops.
Oh!
Tim is about ready to strangle something over those oh’s.
“Elias, he’s touched a Leitner,” says researcher-Jon.
“I understand. I’ll handle this one,” says the man.
“I was going to make sure Gertrude—”
“Jon,” says the man, in a quiet, uncompromising tone. “I will handle this. Go on, now.”
“All right, all right. Good luck, Tim.” Researcher-Jon sounds like he means it, and he leaves, Oxfords clacking away.
“Thanks,” Tim calls after him.
Tim, this has to be the high priest of this place. Its power, its marking, is all over him.
“Elias Bouchard.” There’s a pause.
He’s holding out his hand. He’s a couple decades older than you. Expensive suit. Handsome in a boring sort of way. And he’s powerful. Oh, Tim, he’s powerful.
“The head honcho, eh?” says Tim, and reaches.
The handshake is firm and not spooky, so that much is good.
“Can you navigate?” says Bouchard.
“What?” says Tim.
And Bouchard’s voice is low. “I can clearly see that whatever… that is inside you has done something to your eyes—which is to say, you are blind. Do you wish for guidance to my office? I completely understand if you’re more comfortable making your own way.”
He… can see me? John sounds stunned.
“You see him?” says Tim in a small voice.
“I do. He’s… my, my, my.”
He’s not supposed to be able to see me, John says with a slight tremor.
Tim’s not feeling fear. Relief and shock and desperation rise up his throat like vomit, and he has to swallow emotions down before he can talk. He is not insane. External validation. His eyes leak, and he wipes them. “Can you help? This happened last night. You can see him. What’s—”
“Good morning, Mister Bouchard!” comes a cheerful tenor.
A tall, overweight man, surprisingly light on his toes, with bright red hair and a charming smile.
“Martin, good morning,” says Bouchard. “Mister Stoker, was it? Please come with me. We’d best deal with this in my office.”
Tim, you didn’t tell him your name.
True. And unnerving. “Okay,” Tim says, wary. “How’d you know my name?”
“Your passenger is not all I can see. Come along, please.”
Well. John had said they’d read his mind here.
I’m familiar with avatars of this particular Power, but this is an unusual level of skill. Be cautious.
Great! “Well, that simplifies things, right? At least I’ll be believed,” says Tim with cheer he does not feel.
“Refreshingly pragmatic,” says Bouchard.
Yeah, this was lovely.
Follow the sound of his shoes. We’re passing a secretary’s desk. His office is straight ahead. Tim, this man’s body isn’t as old as he is. He’s confusing to look at.
“What’s that mean?”
Bouchard ignores Tim’s mutters. “Here we are.”
The sound of a door closing behind Tim feels… weird. Very weird. He feels stared at. Ganged up on? Prickly, like he has to defend himself, or—
“Please, Mister Stoker, have a seat.”
Tim feels for the chair. “Do you think you can help us?”
There is a pause.
He’s seated at the desk. His hands are folded, and his gaze is… intense.
“Well, can you blame me?” says Bouchard. “You are truly magnificent.”
Tim is confused for the moment it takes him to realize who was just addressed.
John gasps. You can hear me?
“Yes. I simply had to… adjust a few details. Tilt the radar dish, play with the bunny-ears—ah, but you’re too young for those references, aren’t you, Mister Stoker?”
And Tim can feel two very distinct things.
One: John is afraid. Being seen and heard has shaken him; finding out why is definitely going to come up after this.
Two: Tim knows he’s being subtly mocked. The weird, watched sensation has grown, making him feel judged, and he really, really wants to make it stop. “I’m not a kid, for crying out loud. I know what a television antenna is.”
If you can hear me, then I highly suggest you stop siphoning him, John growls.
“What?” Tim blurts.
“My apologies,” Bouchard sounds positively silky. “My patron craves your fear. Can I get you some tea?”
Tim is frozen. “My fear?”
John growls. Full-on growls, and it is not remotely a human sound, and it is huge, and absolutely frightening. Back. Off.
“I’m afraid I have no such control over it,” says Bouchard, standing. “The Eye doesn’t have much in the way of personality—only hunger. However, if Mister Stoker does manage to calm down, the Eye will have no use for him. He’ll practically be invisible to it.”
“The Eye? What? Like a giant eyeball?” Tim stammers.
“Quite. I’ll be back with that tea. Take a moment, will you? Breathe deeply. You’ll be just fine.”
Bouchard leaves, and Tim resists the urge to wipe himself down as if the man’s words had been coated in oil. “It’s a big eyeball god?” he says.
Something like that. What we are dealing with is a Power—an Entity that lives on fear.
“What the fucking hell?”
You need to calm the fuck down.
“Oh, sure, I’ll just hit the calm the fuck down button,” says Tim. “Maybe I should’ve asked for something stronger than tea.”
John sighs. Then he flips that smooth, warm, absolutely devastating voice into action.You’re going to be all right. He told you what to do to avoid his Power’s hunger. Just take a minute, and breathe with me, all right? In. Out. Slower.
Fucking dom, Tim thinks, but does it. “This place is actually trying to making me feel watched, isn’t it?”
I believe so. But you’re handling it like a champ. In. Out. There, you see? That wasn’t so hard.
It does feel better. “No, I guess not.”
I told you—you can trust me, Tim.
Tim snorts. “Opportunist.”
Bouchard returns. “Hold out your hand.”
Tim finds himself with a cup of tea. He closes his eyes, sipping. “Thanks. That makes me feel human again.”
“Of course. Now. Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?”
His fingers are steepled. He’s watching us without blinking.
“Spooky,” says Tim before he can help himself.
Bouchard laughs lightly. “I serve a patron that feeds on fear. I’m afraid that whatever else I offer, comfort will not be on the menu.”
Tim’s heart sinks. “But… can you help?”
“Let’s find out. What happened?”
Tim takes out the book.
Careful, John warns. Open that, and it will again send out a— oh. He’s leaning away from it. Tim, he looks terrified.
“Well,” says Bouchard. “That is… ah..”
Tim already hates touching this thing. It may be psychosomatic, but now it feels terrible, greasy, like living skin. “What? What do you see?”
“I am going to make a guess,” says Bouchard slowly. “The passenger in your head was in this book first. Yes?”
“Yes,” says Tim.
“There is something else in that book. I would heavily advise you not to open it again.”
What? What? There is no other being in this book.
“I assure you, there is,” says Bouchard.
Impossible, John says as if offended.
“I assure you, it is not,” says Bouchard.
“So what do I do?” says Tim. “There’s got to be something I can do.”
And though he cannot see Bouchard looking at him, Tim suddenly feels pinned. Feels very distinctly like this man just reached into his brain and peeled it open, revealing everything he is.
John growls again.
“I will be frank,” says Bouchard. “I do not yet have an answer, but I believe I can find one. I have at my disposal quite a lot of knowledge, as well as some truly interesting contacts. I am willing to leverage all of that to help you in exchange for the freedom to watch how it all pans out.“
Tim’s not sure what that means. “What do you mean, watch how it all pans out?”
His eyes lidded just at the thought.
“I will give you much more than aid. I will give you answer. Any I find.”
Tempting. “You must really like to watch, eh?” Tim says, trying not to make it sound sexual.
“You have no idea,” Bouchard says, not trying to avoid that at all. “I’ve never seen the like. A new thing, to my patron, is the highest form of offering, and I am quite eager to help you. You rather have me over the proverbial barrel, Mister Stoker.”
He’s leaning back again, considering us. His fingers are still steepled. It’s a thoughtful look, pensive, as if he’s weighing something.
“You are in need of a job,” he says.
Spooky mind-reading confirmed! Tim thinks, slightly panicked. “I... will in time, sure.”
“I could employ you.”
Tim snorts. “No offense, but this place feels really weird.”
“It does, yes—but it’s also very safe.”
“Not according to every nerve in my body,” says Tim.
“The paranoia and fear are side effects of proximity to the Ceaseless Watcher. They are not representative of actual danger,” says Bouchard. “Working here would grant you some… protections, as well.”
“I don’t know quite how we got to offering my CV to a fear-god, but no thanks?” says Tim. “Got at least a few months before I’m that desperate, I think.”
“And do you plan to remain occupied that long?” says Bouchard.
Tim goes silent.
Can you help or not? I want something definitive. Your god is impressive, but this man is mine, and if you think I’m going to share—
“Hold the fuck on!” says Tim. “What?”
Bouchard laughs. “It’s all right. Mister Stoker. I’m fairly sure he’s just responding to the invasiveness of my patron—for which I do apologize. Do you have a safe place to stay?”
“Sure?” says Tim, still fighting against the absolute certainty of being watched, against the weirdness of his desire to rage in response.
“Would you be willing to leave that book with me?”
Absolutely not.
“But what if he can see inside it without opening it, or something?” says Tim.
No .
That growl is really something.
Tim takes a deep breath. “Hey. What does John look like?”
John has no body of his own to stiffen, but Tim feels him do it, anyway.
“Well,” says Bouchard, eyes lidding. “I see him in two ways. First is an impression—I suspect his own of himself. Whispers of the form he once had; catastrophically beautiful, like a terrible storm. Darker than mere absence of light, as if he might absorb it. There is gold throughout—I can’t quite make out the shape, but it is a very specific and almost harsh yellow. He seems to have… how shall I put this… the essence of a body that simply is not human. Multiple limbs, perhaps tentacles. Enormous horns or antlers, casting spined shadows. And I think he was quite large. All of that, however, is echo. What do I see when I look at him? The reverse of a flame. Dark, and hungry; fluttering and flickering like conflagration dancing in the wind, and significantly more dangerous than he seems. Given the right fuel, I daresay he could burn the world.”
Tim is silent.
John is silent.
“Wow,” says Tim.
There is a fabric rustle, and Tim suspects Bouchard has shrugged as if to say, Well, there it is.
“You really see all that?” said Tim.
“I do.”
“What the hell is he?”
“I have absolutely no idea. You’re very lucky. Whatever you're experiencing may have no precedent in this world.”
John is still silent.
Tim sighs. “So… what now?”
“Well, I suggest food that is not peanut butter? And keeping your head down. If you truly wish to keep the book, I think there may be a target on you. I can’t offer you protection outside my place of power.”
Tim snorts. “Well, unless you’ve secretly got an apartment complex in here, it wouldn’t do me much good, anyway.”
“Actually, we do, in a way.”
“What?”
“My employees are… hard-working. Part of the archive below has been converted. There is a small sleeping area, a washroom, a very minimal kitchenette. Should things grow desperate, you have my permission to kip there, as it were.”
“You really want to watch all this, don’t you?” says Tim.
“Indeed I do. And while I readily confess I will be watching anyway, doing so with your permission and awareness makes it all so much more delicious. Is there anything else?”
At least he’s honest about being creepy, Tim thinks, because that’s all he can think. “Not until you have a solution.”
“Not yet.”
“And my offer?”
This has to be a them, not a him. “John?”
I need to think.
“Fair enough.” There’s the sound of a chair rolling back.
He’s standing.
Tim stands, too. He doesn’t know what to do. This hadn’t gone at all how he’d hoped.
“I’m sure it’ll all work out,” says Bouchard with a sort of dark glee.
“Right,” says Tim. “Thanks, I… guess.”
“Here. I do hope you change your minds.”
He’s holding out a business card.
Tim takes it on automatic.
It sounds like Bouchard opens the door.
Tim walks out.
#
With every step, his heart feels heavier.
He’d been so sure solutions would be here. Immediate ones. Telling himself that had kept him going all morning. But now…
There wasn’t help. There was the possibility of help, with the cost of loss of privacy—which he might have lost anyway, just by coming here.
None of this feels good. Tim sighs, fishing for his earbuds.
Someone gasps.
Tim, there’s an old woman looking at us. She… something about her is very dangerous. Something about her… Tim, I think she can see me. Fuck this place.
“Good for her,” mutters Tim, who has decided merely seeing John does not qualify one for anything. “Am I still going right?”
Yes. The door is three steps ahead.
“Leave it,” says Bouchard behind them.
Tim doesn’t think that was for him, and he feels for the door handle.
“Elias, you can’t be serious,” says the old woman’s voice—old but strong, frustrated.
What, had she been about to do something to them?
Tim is sure of it. Sure of it, and doesn’t know why.
Hurry. Apparently, John is sure of it, too.
Tim hurries.
#
Stairs just ahead. Take your time.
Tim does, one step at a time, using the excuse of concentration to be silent. He wipes his leaky eyes.
Are you all right?
“No. Gonna have to be, though, apparently, because I don’t want to take his deal.”
I promise you, Bouchard will be watching us regardless of what we do; it’s the nature of the Power he serves. It only makes sense to benefit from it, given that we will pay either way.
“Well, fuck that guy, then,” says Tim. “I guess consent isn’t on some fear god’s radar.”
I don’t know why you ever thought it would be. You’ve reached the last step. Where now?
“I don’t know. I’m trying to think. Can I just walk somewhere? Get away from this place?”
Walk to your right. There isn’t much traffic. I may have an idea, but I need to… weigh the pros and cons.
“Right.” So Tim walks, and doesn’t speak again until he’s found a comfortable pace and position that seems to keep him from smashing into anyone.
It works better than Tim would have thought. John directs, corrects, and says nothing of substance.
Tim is deep in thought. A lot happened here.
He’s always thought of himself as deeply pragmatic. That means tackling this with an open mind, and organizing it in lists as quickly as possible, ready to absorb new rules. “So,” he says. “A few things.”
Hm? says John, sounding distracted.
“First, you were scared in there.”
Yes. At least John can admit that honestly. I know you’re new to this, so it may seem like nothing to you—but neither of those people should have been able to see me, much less hear me. I am deeply startled.
“Right,” said Tim. “And by saying that, you’re revealing you’ve done this so often that you have a ‘normal’ in your head, so that’s a whole thing.”
Not as often as you think. I’ve spent most of my time in this world in that book.
Tim’s not sure he believes that. “They didn’t recognize you, though.”
No. They did not, or I would have urged you to run like a cat on fire.
Tim smiles weakly. “Hell of an image. Look, what did you do that you have to hide from everyone? You said you’d tell me after.”
It isn’t so much what I’ve done, John says slowly. It is what I am. You were correct in that earlier assumption: I am… rare. Endangered, in fact.
Tim has a feeling John isn’t using that word casually. “So what are you?”
A being. Rare. Powerful, in my own right, though as you can tell by our current situation, I’ve been robbed of my body.
“Where is your body?”
In another plane of existence, friend. Quite out of reach, I’m afraid.
“Are you dead?” He has to ask.
No.
“Are you… what, a prisoner?”
Tim… I really don’t feel like answering these right now.
“Promise broken. I‘m keeping track,” says Tim, but only half means it. “So there’s you, antlered-tentacled-whatever-the-fuck. There’s fear-gods.There’s accidental priests. So… are there good fairies, or something? Wishing wells? Forest spirits of mercy, or kindness, or whatever?”
No. The lack of hesitation is upsetting. There are no beneficent fairies. No good and kind spirits waiting to freely give of themselves to mortals in need. Everything that exists only does so because it has not been eaten or used by something else, including yourself—from your immune system to your choices, you also fight to survive.
This is different from John’s usual calming tone. It’s not crazy-smooth; it’s just quiet, and Tim suddenly feels like this is the first time John has been genuinely gentle with him.
Tim’s throat feels tight. “Bit of a downer, there,” he manages after a minute. “So what do we do?”
You truly don’t feel what he offered was worth what he asked?
“Just being in that building made me feel like hitting something, and that isn’t like me. I started to get angry, over, just… nothing. No. Whatever price I have to pay to get out of this, I’m not losing myself for it. That guy didn’t even have a solution, anyway. Just a what-if. Not worth it.”
Yes… yes. John sounds thoughtful . That’s a good way of looking at it. The cost cannot be one’s self.
Tim isn’t done. “And just so you know, John? Maybe I am surviving , like everybody else here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make choices and be a good person and help other mortals in need.”
Seeing yourself as the hero, are you?
Tim snorts. ”No. I’d be a cheerfully bisexual bard, at best. I just mean… I don’t know. You make every living thing sound like an asshole, and I don’t think all of us are.”
John chuckles. A slutty bard? Really?
“It’s a DND ref- wait. You understood that?”
Yes. I’m familiar with the trope. I’m merely amused you used it.
“That has some implications, holy shit. How the hell are you familiar with an internet meme? How much time have you spent here?”
Not everyone who kept this book was only a cultist. Some of them were nerds.
Tim is flabbergasted. “What, did they just keep you on the table while scrolling through The Adventure Zone?”
Sometimes.
This doesn’t feel like the full truth. There’s something else John is not saying here, but Tim doesn’t know how to get at it. “I can talk to you in memes,” he says instead. “I’m going to be insufferable.”
John chuckles. Ah… I do like you, Tim.
That sounded regretful? Odd. Why would he…
Or maybe Tim just feels paranoid thanks to whatever the hell that place was. “How does anyone even manage to work there without all becoming axe murderers?” he mutters.
I believe if you are inclined toward the type of fear and information-gathering that god prefers, it grants some sanity so you can keep feeding it. I’ve seen the like.
“A whole fear-god economy. Fuck me, that’s wild.”
Indeed.
“And by the way—what was all that ‘mine’ stuff about?”
John sighs. I apologize. I could feel the Power feeding on you, and I thought perhaps it would respect some kind of… prior claim. Obviously, that didn’t work.
“So you’re not a lot familiar with that thing.”
No. Enough to know that one isn’t much of a danger to me—but others like it must be avoided.
“Did one of those fear-gods send the monsters to my parents’ house?”
Yes.
Tim laughs weakly. “Wow. So they’re actively after you. Fuck. John, you’ve got to have a better idea what to do.”
I have an idea, if you’re willing to try it—but first, you need to eat. Your physical form has needs; Bouchard was right about that. Man shall not live by peanut butter alone.
It is deeply unnerving to hear all these deeply human references used with such familiarity. “I don’t want to try dealing with a restaurant. Find me a take-out place.”
Keep going. I’ll get you there.
He couldn’t believe himself anymore. A tiny part of him is beginning to wonder if, somehow, his family might be cursed.
It’s going to be okay, Tim tells himself on repeat. It’s going to be okay.
———-
NOTES:
Do I hear that description of the King in Ben Meredith’s voice? Yes. Yes, I do.
#tma#malevolent#tma fic#malevolent fic#tim stoker#kiy malevolent#Jonathan sims#elias bouchard#corrupted fic
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He's also not relying on talent and hit music, he's building his albums around pr stunts and beards and relying on fake relationship narratives to sell his music and image. He's also branching out to acting, and again, is using pr relationships to sell the movies and his straight image.
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As It Was and Watermelon Sugar are in the top twenty most streamed songs on Spotify of all time. Both are seven times platinum and heading for diamond. These are enormous hits.
Holivia was his most unpopular relationship but his fandom ballooned during this time. Taylor is actually popular and accepted by everyone except Larries who are a tiny fraction of his overall fandom. If all Larries abandoned him he wouldn't even notice. Unlike Louis, he's not dependent on them for a career.
Harry's career isn't rooted in "stunting". The general public doesn't care about Harry's relationships. They just like his music. He makes hit after hit and won AOTY. If Harry was never seen in the public eye again aside from performing, he would still be just as famous.
Hello, harries!
First of all, we are talking about career longevity and about how he's going to find ways to promote his albums and keep a loyal fanbase in the future. We're talking the next 10 to 20 years and even further. What i'm saying is that the strategies they've chosen to sell his current music and build a fanbase on aren’t sustainable in the long run. You (and other anons) pointing out his past and current success is irrelevant in this conversation. It's a house of cards and it will all change when the fake relationships aren’t working to achieve wanted results anymore, when his good looks fade and he isn't doing it for people anymore (starting with a shaved head) and if he doesn’t manage to write more hit songs. The gp does care about his relationships, anon number two. I refer to anon number one about his fandom ballooning during holi*ia.
He will also come out as gay at some point in the future and in a relationship with Louis. All his previous relationships and his womaniser image will be revealed as fake. He is a liar and has decieved his fandom for years. When your fandom is built on hardcore fans and casual fans who loves you for your looks and your heterosexuality, those fans need to make a choice if they want to still be a fan of him when everything comes to light.
I think he'll be fine in the future, despite not having a career built for longevity. And it's due to larries and the harries/gp who reads him as bi. It won't be such a shock to them. I do wonder though, how many fans will stick by him. His future career depends on so many things. The choices he makes and the direction he chooses mostly. What is clear is that they do need to change their strategy to keep his level of fame, get the numbers they want and keep the fans at some point in the future.
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Signe Wilkinson, Philadelphia Inquirer
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Ignoring this asshole isn't going to make him go away : Trump's latest desperate bid for dictatorship
Lucian K. Truscott IV
You have no doubt heard by now that yesterday, on his Truth Social network, Donald Trump called for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” because he lost the election for president. He wants to be declared the “RIGHTFUL WINNER,” or “have a NEW ELECTION.” The all-caps are his, and of course what Trump is calling for is a coup. To “terminate” the Constitution would be to overthrow the laws and the government of the United States and replace the whole thing with a dictator, namely, himself.
For all the things that he isn’t, Donald Trump is a politician, and he can not only read the polls, he has shown he’s pretty good at reading the electorate, a different thing entirely from polls, which are a stilted snapshot of opinion among voters at a single instant in time. Trump doesn’t want to run for president again, because he lost the last time, and he’s looking around, and he’s afraid he’ll lose again. That’s what the Saturday eruption on his social network was about: fear. He’s becoming increasingly irrelevant, and for Donald Trump, that is a fate worse than death. He realizes after two years out of office that you can still be famous and yet slip into a state where your fame and even your presence on earth begins to cease to matter.
Who does Trump matter to at this point? He matters to Republican voters, who political experts are beginning to slice and dice into MAGA, MAGA adjacent, old establishment, and never Trumpers. But his voters didn’t do so wonderfully in the midterms, a fact that has doubtlessly not gone unnoticed by the man who endorsed so many of the Republican Party’s losers. The headlines are about DeSantis and the street-fight over who will be the next Speaker of the House and the war in Ukraine and China’s continuing struggle with the disease that was spawned within its borders. Could Trump be feeling just a tad left out of the national conversation?
It’s interesting, isn’t it, to see what bothers the Prisoner of Mar a Lago as he finds himself in mid-fade from relevance. He is sufficiently bored down there in his gilded cage that he invited two Nazi sympathizers to dinner recently, apparently figuring that would get himself some attention. It did, of course, and it was exactly the kind he wanted, because it lit a tiny fire under the collective ass of the Washington press corps, sending them to their phones and even into the halls of the Congress to ask every elected official they could find what they thought of Trump dining with Nazis. Trump is ever in the mode that he began in 50 years ago in New York City, that any publicity is good publicity. If the question on everybody’s mind is Trump and his favorite Nazis, well, at least they’re spelling your name right.
Lately, Trump has found himself mattering a whole lot to some powerful judges who he appointed to their seats but who have ruled against him repeatedly in his flailing lawsuits trying to stop the DOJ investigation of the various crimes he has been accused of committing – trying to overthrow the last election, inciting the assault on the Capitol, and his theft and mishandling of classified documents after he left office. Trump has lost one appeal after another, and now “his” special master, appointed by “his” Judge Aileen Cannon, is being dismissed, and everything seized at Mar a Lago by the FBI has been returned to the man who now oversees the prosecution, Jack Smith, a name that’s got to be keeping him up at night.
And Trump seems to matter a whole lot to Elon Musk, who has been doing everything he can think of to get him back on Twitter, including hiring a prominent contrarian journalist to exhume the Hunter Biden laptop story from the vaults of Twitter and splash it across the platform in a long series of tweets that had to have caught Trump’s attention.
In fact, most stories about Trump’s demand that the Constitution be terminated say the Hunter Biden laptop story was what was behind his explosion on Truth Social yesterday. I think that’s less likely than Trump’s panic as the jaws of law enforcement close on him. After all, he sees getting back into the White House as the only way he could avoid jail: he could pardon himself.
My first thought when I decided to write this column was to title it, “There ought to be a law,” you know, against this kind of shit. But there shouldn’t be. There can’t be, because it would violate the very Constitution we’re trying to protect from the likes of Trump. Besides, the anti-war movement back in the 60’s and 70’s was guilty, if that’s the right word, of calling for the downfall of the government because of the crimes the United States was committing in Southeast Asia. I recall a lot of “there ought to be a law” talk back then about the calls of the Left for the overthrow of the government, and it was all from the Right, from Nixon’s people, the apologists for the war.
As outrageous as Trump’s anti-democratic talk is, it’s legal. Calling for a violent overthrow of the government is, however sedition, the crime two leaders of the Oath Keepers were convicted of this week. Trump may be a seditionist in his heart, but he’s carefully not one in his public words.
I think maybe the way to react to Trump’s latest attack on our democracy is to recognize how desperate and afraid he is. That someone would be calling for the destruction of something, a constitutional government in this case, at the same time he is calling for himself to be installed as its leader, is absurd on its face. He’s yelling into the void at this point, but if there is a lesson to be learned from the last six years, we ignore the unhinged cries of this monster at our peril. He sounds weak and pathetic, which he is, but he’s still a danger to the Republic. The Oath Keepers haven’t gone away, the Proud Boys haven’t gone away, and his MAGA hordes are always listening.
[Lucian Truscott Newsletter]
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Boobiegate masterpost
We know what they did this summer - and oh boy, was a it a wild summer that - unfortunately for us - stretched into autumn and beyond any reason.
I will first go over everything as it happened and then - because when you look back at everything you realise some timelines overlap - I’ll try to clarify some stuff and put it into perspective.
NOTE: I’m writing the dates from a GMT time zone point of view (aka. UK time)
So let’s start from the beginning.
Briana breaks up with Brody Jenner after dating him for some random attention seeking period. (June-September roughly)
Here’s an article talking about that irrelevant relationship.
https://www.yourtango.com/2020334835/who-brody-jenner-girlfriend-briana-jungwirth-louis-tomlinson-baby-mama
Now let’s fast forward a bit to September.
September 23rd
So on September 23rd we’re flooded with articles about Brody and Bri breaking up and Bri getting back together with her “on-again off-again (boy)friend Nick” and the biggest surprise “BRI IS ENGAGED”
So the story is:
Bri ended her relationship with Brody because “they were moving too fast” and he had “already met Freddie”
She then gets back together with her on-again, off-again bf Nick Gordon
She, her family, and Nick go on a “whirlwind” trip to Las Vegas (MIND YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC)
Bri and Nick get engaged during those Covid inviting few days in Vegas (September 21st- September 23rd)
Articles drop about how they’re engaged and she’s broken up with Brody (Sept 23rd)
Bri, family and Nick all share a huge amount of Vegas pictures of them in love, Bri’s ring, Bri and Nick being a couple (pictures obviously taken before Vegas to hopefully make someone believe that this in no way is a whirlwind engagement after just knowing each other a few weeks. Did they convince anyone? Well if you are convinced - I’m worried for you)
Here’s the tmz article:https://www.tmz.com/2020/09/23/brody-jenner-split-briana-jungwirth-engaged/
Here’s some pics of them we were all subjected to while they were in Vegas. And Nick’s new public profile when it just got made.
Was he trying to start an influencer career and say goodbye to being a firefighter?
Was he trying to get a night job taking off that all firefighter gear for money? Magic mike was a big movie after all….Who knows.
September 28th
At first the engagement pictures on Nick’s IG were just him and Briana and he used the #/shesaidyes. After a few days and probably after they realised it would be a smart move to acknowledge her kid she claims to have too (👀) he deleted those and on September 28th posted new pictures with a new caption and new # of course. This time “theysaidyes”.
The pictures are below.
But, moving on.
As soon as the engagement news drops, we have Nick - our “good-guy firefighter” making a new and public IG account, flooding it with pictures where he professes his love for Bri and soaking up the d-list association fame.
So in the coming weeks we get a lot of Nick, Bri and their families on IG. They post a lot about being constantly together.
What was the most interesting they really pushed the “dad” image on Nick. He was constantly posting about Freddie and even in Bs or Tammi’s stories he was always seen interacting with F the most.
Then after it seemed like the new fiancees had settle into their soon-to-be married life and everything seemed rosy for them - we get hit with the whammy BOOBIEGATE.
Because hell hath no fury like a sugar daddy scorned.
October 15th
On the 15th of October celebtm a gossip site, posts the next picture and caption on IG:
Basically, they’re saying a guy - his name unknown yet - contacted them to tell them how Briana scammed him out of money she borrowed to get a boob job. Specifically 5k USD. He claims he filed the case in court and it’s dated January.
They ask if anyone else has similar receipts or anything about her and that they’re investigating and will be writing a story. And the comments have a lot to say about Bri.
October 19th
4 days later on October 19th celebtm posts another IG update about how they have the court filing and how their article is in progress.
October 21st
2 days after the last IG post celebtm finally posts their article - on the 21st of October
https://celebmagazine.com/louis-tomlinson-briana-jungwirth-sued-over-boob-job/
(It’s on the web still - if it ever gets deleted let me know I have screen recordings of it)
The article is accompanied by this (below) IG post:
Also on this day we get Briana and Nick deactivating their IG profiles. Nick still kept his personal private IG and the only person who stayed public is Tammi.
October 22nd
A day after the article dropped there’s another IG post with the following picture and caption. Apparently, Sugar Daddy shared his receipts - specifically AmEx - with celebtm.
October 26th
On October 26th celebtm posts the second part of the article. It’s messier, with a more confusing timeline than the first, but tries to “spill” more details on Sugar Daddies relationship with Briana and her life in general.
Also by now we know his name - Michael Strauss. An investor in Warwick club in LA.
https://celebmagazine.com/louis-tomlinson-baby-mama-briana-jungwirth-double-life/
(Again this is the link - if the article gets taken down and you want to see it - DM me)
October 27th
Then a day later we get another IG post - no new article - just more excerpts from what the Sugar Daddy told celebtm.
Then it’s quiet for a few days and when you think this can’t get even more trashy - low and behold the circus that is called October 29th.
October 29th
So after a few days of silence celebtm strikes again, but this time they bring in TV’s most loved judge - Judge Judy.
Apparently the TV show was willing to take this litigation and air it as an episode.
As always, they post an IG post and a caption, and the article mentioned in the IG caption below is basically an article written for clicks about Louis and Harry because they saw the larrie part of the fandom was getting them clicks.
I’ll leave the link to the article here for documentation purposes, but honestly there’s nothing in there worth giving them clicks for. Not a thing.
The title of the article is “A Complete Guide to 1D Members Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles’ Rumoured Relationship”
Article: https://celebmagazine.com/louis-tomlinson-harry-styles-relationship/
November 6th
We see the sudden return from social media exile of Bri to IG. She’s back - with a post and the description ironically saying “I’m back”. I refuse to post it because does anyone really want to look at her face-tuned selfies?
November 9th
Then after weeks of radio silence, the return of Bri to IG, we get what is apparently the - very underwhelming - like Bri’s boobs to Sugar Daddy who never got to see them - conclusion to this Sugar Daddy drama. This following article which is basically a letter from Michael to Briana telling her how he’s giving up on the lawsuit, taking this as a life lesson and how he hopes no one else falls for her scams.
Article below:
https://celebmagazine.com/michael-straus-briana-jungwirth-open-letter-to-one-direction-louis-tomlinson-alleged-baby-mama/
(Again this is the link - if the article gets taken down and you want to see it - DM me)
And of course - the article is accompanied by an IG post by celebtm.
So, here we currently are. After watching that circus show no one wanted not paid for (well except the Sugar Daddy, and he didn’t even get to see the thing he paid for - so sad.) we’re in November and the Jungwirths and company are back to their carefree posting on IG.
Current status:
The lawsuit seems to have been dropped.
Everything seems to be in process of being swept under the rug.
Nick - the loving fiancee - is back to IG too. All of his happy, loving pictures with Bri still up (some deleted) - so we must assume their love survived Boobiegate.
As for overlapping timelines:
The timelines overlap mostly during the months March-October with it being said Bri dated Brody, but was also taking money from Boobie Daddy who was helping her during the pandemic, and was later also apparently starting a serious relationship with Nick.
What actually went on - I don’t know.
And I’m honestly not interested to find out.
This is being mentioned just so anyone coming across this post knows that yes - you didn’t read it wrong - the timelines do overlap with different people saying different things and Bri being tied to all three men at those times without any real clear timeline for the relationships.
So far this is all there is to this mess. If there’s more - I’ll do a part two or addition.
I’d like to end this with saying - these masterposts are 95% just me making them for myself because I forget stuff, and so much goes on in the fandom that if I want to keep up with it all, I need a nice timeline for things.
I’m posting this for anyone wanting to make sense of this circus too or just to put it into a timeline.
I did fact check all the dates, posts, IG pics, links and so on - but mistakes can happen - if there is one feel free to let me know.
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Let’s talk: Grievances and Cuteness - BTS on You Quiz on the Block
by Admin 1
Today BTS were guests on You Quiz on the Block, a very popular Korean variety show on tvN, and it was a wonderful mix of fun and hilarious, but also serious, vulnerable and honest. Seeing as we don’t have subtitles yet, merely the things our marvelous translator ARMYs managed to translate for us—the episode was 100 minutes long so there was a lot going on and being said—I don’t want to get into detail in this post and instead will wait with that until we have subs and I’ll be able to sit down and watch it properly again, focus on things that stick out to me and I would want to talk about. So that I can do their words justice.
Instead I want to use this post to air some of my grievances, directed at fellow ARMY, “ARMY” and shippers, as well as just gush a little about a few cute moments. The more serious things will be in a different post sometime soon. I hope that’s okay.
Grievances
What is the point of Bangtan going on a show like this, especially one that is broadcast on national TV and very popular with the general public? It’s to share not only their funny side but also their honest and genuine one, share stories that, though some we’ve heard before as ARMY, they’re things the general public doesn’t necessarily know. The point of them sharing vulnerable moments and memories with us is to simply be honest and transparent, something they’ve always highlighted as important to them.
What is the part we play in this, what is it that we should do? We are simply supposed to listen, understand the things they are telling us, put things into perspective so we know what they felt in certain moments and periods of their lives, understand that they’re human too with struggles, fears and sadness, and we should cherish the fact that they tell us any of it at all. They could just as well only show up whenever there’s a new album and comeback and then disappear again, share nothing personal at all and put on entirely fake personas. But they don’t. And we should be grateful for that and happy because of it.
Now, the reason why I even wanted to write this in the first place is this:
Many, and I mean many have decided that instead of doing what I’ve highlighted a moment ago, a far better course of action would be to twist their words, manipulate them, use them to victimize the members (and especially Seokjin), and try to overanalyze them in favor of their desired narratives and especially their ships, even if whatever was being said had absolutely nothing to do with any ship at all.
Before the episode even finished airing, solos/mantis were already up in arms “crying” about mistreatment and victimizing Seokjin because *insert demands they have no right to make at all* and when Seokjin, bless him, was on weverse, he actually replied to a post where he basically said that parts of what he said were too sad/depressing, so he simply asked the You Quiz staff to cut them out, which would explain why he seemed to have “less to say” during his interview section with Yoongi. Did that help? Of course not. Even though it showed not only that he did say more, that he likely said more vulnerable things, but also that he made the decision for himself that he did not want to share that yet, because he’s not ready for it or because he came to the conclusion that he simply doesn’t want to period, and that his wish for them to cut it out was met. Even though it wasn’t BH controlled content, but You Quiz.
More below the cut:
What does this tell us? The members have control over what is aired and what is not. If they feel something is too personal or would come across wrong, they can voice objection and chances are their words will be met and followed. They aren’t victims in need of saving, aren’t helpless boys with no idea what they’re doing. They are serious musicians, respected and treated well. This is a good thing and I’m glad he told us that, even if many don’t want to hear it and immediately claimed that “oh yeah BH told him to shut us up”. The mental gymnastics some are willing to do to make things fit their agenda truly baffles me sometimes.
On the other hand, I’ve seen shippers try to twist words or put others into the members mouths to push their agenda, and we’ve even had one or two asks being sent to us basically sadly wondering if maybe Tae isn’t who we thought he is for Jimin, and neither is Hobi, because of something Jimin said. Even though the thing Jimin said had quite literally nothing to do with either Tae or Hobi. In a way, I get where such vminnies are coming from, as vminnies we would love to just hear vmin talk about each other all day because it’s cute and we love their bond and stories, but it’s not like we didn’t get that. Because we did. Unprompted. Jimin mentioned Tae during their trio interview and told a story, even if we’ve heard it before to a certain degree. And yet it still wasn’t enough? Like come on, please don’t do this. Don’t reduce everything the members do and say to just ship related and non-ship related (thus uninteresting) statements and actions, as though the latter is worth less.
Here is the moment in question:
The way I see it, the only thing we should take away from this is that despite these very human fears and struggles, wonderings if people only care about Jimin because he is BTS Jimin and not Park Jimin, he still had and has good people in his life that’ll remind him that he is appreciated and loved for who he is, and not just for his celebrity status. Friends even outside of Bangtan. Why do we have to take something so incredibly personal, this moment of vulnerability from Jimin, and try to overanalyze it? To twist it to fit a ship? Regardless which one. Or to twist it to fit some kind of narrative, whatever one it may be? Please don’t do that.
Sure, Admin 2 noticed his use of ‘chingu’ when talking about this friend that told him that, and sure it reminded me of what Jimin said to Tae in the FESTA 2020 Rolling Paper, but neither Admin 2 nor I will go and claim that oh he must’ve been talking about Tae but didn’t want to use his name to avoid XYZ because we are not in his head and, at the end of the day, it’s irrelevant who exactly said that to him. That wasn’t the point of that story. Like at all. So why are some people disregarding the point in favor of speculations? Why are some completely ignoring his words, downplaying them as just potential ship material instead of appreciating the fact that he told us that at all?
It’s unfair toward Jimin, and the other members as well when they tell similar stories. Their lives aren’t fictional stories that revolve around romance. They are real people with real lives and more friends than just their fellow members and that’s a good thing since it surely gives them the opportunity to feel less isolated, cut off from the world by nature of their occupation and status. Besides, in the past Tae said something similar as well, how he used to be a social butterfly and make friends easily wherever they went but eventually he understood that people didn’t really care about Kim Taehyung and instead just wanted to know BTS V and be able to use that to brag, so he stopped being so outgoing. And we’ve also seen Jimin talk about cutting out friends in the past if they said something negative about Bangtan, then, a few years later, saying that he’s grown more as a person and learned to not allow these things to affect him as much, to surround himself with genuine people.
So, in light of what he said in that segment, we should be happy for him. And that’s it.
We also saw people use what Tae said about his dad to push the he must be 100% heterosexual because he said he wants to be a dad narrative which, where do I even start. Perhaps with the fact that this statement relies on a mistranslation? Because he didn’t say he wants to be a dad but that he wants to be a person like his dad, that’s his dream. Perhaps with the blatant homophobia this statement is laced in? The disregard for how queer people can also want to have kids, be parents, just like anyone else? Perhaps with how these things oddly seem to just be done to Tae and Namjoon, and especially Tae to use it for ship purposes?
Instead of jumping to conclusions, overanalyzing stories we are not supposed to analyze but instead to simply appreciate, please wait until we’ll have the full episode with subtitles (even though from the past we know that some of it may be simplified so reading what our translators wrote is also a good thing to get the whole picture) and even then, just enjoy their silliness and listen to their words of honesty. Listen to the fact that their fame was and continues to be a heavy weight on their shoulders, how instead of becoming cocky assholes they remained humble and genuine because that’s the kind of people they are and want to be, listen to what they want you to hear and now what you want to hear.
Also, to shippers—this isn’t the place to look for ship content of any kind, for some romantic confessions or whatever, because this was about Bangtan as seven members and their stories of the last ten and a half years since Namjoon joined BH and the idea for BTS was started.
Cute and silly things
Now that that's done, let’s talk about some fun and cute things to lighten the mood, shall we?
One of my favorite moments was when the MIC DROP ARMY came in as a surprise for the members, her confidence was off the charts and the guys looked so genuinely happy. After all it’s been so many months since they’ve last seen ARMY! And I’m so glad she was such a wonderful representative for us all, how she didn’t react with fear or shyness, didn’t scream or cry, but instead did her thing like a Queen. And the way the members reacted when she sent them a finger heart during one of the dances? Absolutely adorable!
Also, she truly must’ve saved some kind of nation, or maybe two, in her past life since she also was gifted a chicken leg pillow by Tae. He’s just so kind and lovely.
Then we had the members play a game of trying to guess a song merely by the first second (I think) and then having to sing it, though who sang which part didn’t follow the actual order in the song but was chosen by someone off screen which meant that, for example, Tae was doing one of the rap line verses as well as singing Jimin’s part in another, Hobi showed off his vocal skills, and of course, the highlight, Namjoon singing a part from Spring Day. Even though we know Namjoon’s skills when it comes to singing are not the greatest, which I mean in a very loving way, no tea no shade, and yet he still went for it. It was hilarious and cute and showed that he is willing to be silly even if others might laugh at his expense.
Sometime after the episode aired Namjoon actually came onto Weverse to talk about the episode and, among other things, apologized for not singing Seokjin’s guide all that well. One thing I’d like to point out is how, originally, he wrote Jinhyung but then changed it to Seokjinie hyung, which is just a small and precious little detail:
Another cute moment was during ‘dance mafia’ when Tae turned to Jimin to ask him if they did well and Jimin replied that yes, he did well (both using this adorably soft tone with each other), they also hugged for a moment while smiling brightly. See, I said not to look for ship moments, but this is just cute regardless if you ship vmin or not. Admin 2 though would like to comment on how they could’ve given us that hug from a camera that’s a little further away so we could have a more proper look, or a longer shot of it, please?
Honestly that game was hilarious and the members who were mafia did a wonderful job tricking the others, particularly JK was fantastic at it since the second time around no one suspected him at all. Also, the fluffy ear muffs with cat (?) ears on them were adorable. At the end of the segment they were all supposed to strike a pose but Tae didn’t manage to put his ear muffs back on, so they fell to the ground and so Jimin lightly hit/caressed his chest and turned toward the MCs to ask if they could try again so that Tae could look good in it as well.
Actually, speaking of adorable in regard to Jimin, when they were introduced at the beginning of the show as RM-jagi-nim, jagi-nim being the name used for all the guests on the show and also the name on the necklace (given to guests who are fans of the show by the producers) Jimin showed off on weverse in his selcas, Jimin corrected the MC that it’s not Jimin-jagi-nim but Mini-jagi-nim which just…my heart. Too cute.
Lastly, I want to mention how all of them were asked what the first sentence would be if their lives were a book and their answers were just so very…them.
Namjoon: Predictions in life often turn out to be wrong
Tae: I’m a chameleon
Hobi: Dear, people who’ve helped to lead me here
Yoongi: You lived life to the fullest/hard/well
Seokjin: Dope, worldwide class!
Jimin: What kind of life do you want to live?
Jungkook: Hello?
Overall it was an amazing episode that was so fun to watch even without really being able to understand any of what was being said. Still the members genuine personalities shone through brightly and I’m glad they had fun and felt comfortable, especially since it’s been a while since they were last on Korean variety shows and some of their past experiences were…not great. I can’t wait to watch it again once we have subs and to write a more proper post about it then. I hope you didn’t mind this more…serious and “angry” post and understand where I’m coming from with my complaints, but also that you enjoyed the cute moments I highlighted.
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The Queen fandom, Freddie Mercury and Characterisation
Or: Why are those anons like this? Why are those writers like this? Why don't we understand each other?
In this essay, I will-
No, I’m serious, I will. And this is an essay. It’s roughly 2500 words.
The friction, concerns and hurt in fandom around Freddie’s characterisation - most recently centred around a fic the author tagged as ‘Bisexual Freddie Mercury’, stating in the notes that they have chosen to write Freddie as bisexual - have given me a lot to think about. And if you have been asking yourself the questions above, this here might be of interest to you.
First off, why do I feel like I need to talk about this?
The answer is not: Because I’m so very influential in fandom.
I think my influence in this fandom has been vastly overstated by some people. If I were so influential, everybody would rush to read anything I rec or write. And trust me, they really don’t. My relevance is confined to a very specific part of the fandom. That part is made up of: Freddie fans, Froger shippers, some Roger fans, a handful of writers who like to support each other and like each other’s work, and people who are really into research.
There are many parts of fandom where my opinions are entirely irrelevant. Looking at the big picture, by which I mean only the Queen RPF fandom, I simply am not that important. Looking at the even bigger picture: the Queen fandom as a whole, the majority of which doesn't read or care about RPF - I am literally nobody.
Furthermore, everything I will be talking about here is in relation to the RPF-centred part of Queen fandom.
So why this public essay?
Because I have been deeply involved for two years in a divide of opinions concerning how Freddie ought to be written and how people think of RPF. I think this is in large part because I - like several other authors currently writing for the fandom - absolutely love research. It's my idea or fun. I love to dig into these real people’s lives. Not everybody does that and not everybody is comfortable with that. It’s a personal choice depending on people's levels of comfort surrounding RPF. But this does put me firmly in the camp of Freddie fans who like to explore who this man really was, and track down every last fact about him.
Freddie Mercury vs. Fictional Freddie
I’ll admit that I am one of those people who have the urge to speak up when they see somebody claim that Freddie was bisexual, and sometimes I will say: “Well, actually, we do know that he didn’t see himself that way, because…” For me, these have often been positive exchanges.
I think there is overwhelming evidence that Freddie Mercury identified as gay from his split with Mary to the end of his life (wonderfully curated here by RushingHeadlong). In the niche of fandom I have frequented over the last two years, as far as Freddie the real man is concerned, I have barely ever seen anybody argue with this.
But fanfiction and talking about real Freddie are not one the same thing, and they shouldn't be, and as far as I am concerned they don't have to be. Some writers like to put every last fact and detail they can find into their fic, in an attempt to approach a characterisation that feels authentic to them (and perhaps others), and other writers are simply content to draw inspiration from the real people, writing versions vaguely based on them.
But writing historically and factually accurate RPF is more respectful.
Is it? I've thought about this for a long time, and I really can't agree that it is. This, to me, seems to presume that we know what kind of fiction these real people would prefer to have been written about them. That, in itself, is impossible to know.
However, if I imagine Freddie reading RPF about himself, I think that he might laugh himself silly at an AU with a character merely inspired by him and may be really quite disturbed by a gritty, realistic take full of intimate details of and speculations about his life and psyche. Such as I also tend to write, just by the by, so this is definitely not a criticism of anybody. Freddie is dead. Of all the people to whom the way he is written in fiction matters, Freddie himself is not one. There is no way to know what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, in this regard, and so it isn't relevant.
Personally, I can't get behind the idea that speculating and creatively exploring very intimate details of Freddie's life, things he never even spoke of to anybody, is in any way more respectful than writing versions of him which take a lot of creative liberties. As I've said so many times before, I think either all of RPF is disrespectful or none of it is.
So who cares about Freddie characterisation in fiction anyway?
Clearly, a lot of people do. Freddie Mercury was an incredibly inspiring figure and continues to be that to a multitude of very different people for different reasons. There are older fans who have maybe faced the same kind of discrimination because of their sexuality, who saw Freddie's life and persona distorted and attacked by other fans and the media for decades, who have a lot of hurt and resentment connected to such things as calling Freddie bisexual - because this has been used (and in the wider fandom still is used) to discredit his relationship with Jim, to argue that Mary was the love of his life and none of his same sex relationships mattered, to paint a picture where "the gay lifestyle" was the death of him. And that is homophobic. That is not right. I completely understand that upset.
But.
These are not the only people who care about Freddie and for whom Freddie is a source of inspiration and comfort. What about people who simply connect to his struggles with his sexuality from a different angle? What about, for example, somebody who identifies with the Freddie who seemed to be reluctant to label himself, because that, to them, implies a freedom and sexual fluidity that helps them cope with how they see their own sexuality? Is it relevant why Freddie was cagey about labelling himself? Does it matter that it likely had a lot to do with discrimination? Are his reasons important? To some degree, yes. But are other queer people not allowed to see that which helps them in him? Are they not allowed to take empowerment and inspiration from this? Can you imagine Freddie himself ever resenting somebody who, for whatever reason, admired him and whose life he made that little bit brighter through his mere existence, however they interpreted it? I honestly can't say that I can imagine Freddie himself objecting to that.
This is the thing about fame. Anyone who is famous creates a public persona, and this persona belongs to the fans. By choosing that path, this person gives a lot of themselves to their fans. To interpret, to draw inspiration from, to love the way it makes sense to the individual. Please remember, at this point, that we are talking about how people engage with Freddie as a fictional character creatively. This is not about anybody trying to lay down the law regarding who Freddie really was, unequivocally. This is all about writers using his inspiring persona and the imprint he left on this world to explore themes that resonate with them.
This is what we as writers do. We write about things which resonate with us and often touch us deeply.
But don't they care about the real Freddie?
Yes, actually, I would argue that a lot of people care about "the real Freddie". It seems to me that depicting Freddie as gay or with a strong preference for men is what the vast majority of the RPF-centered fandom on AO3 already does. You will find very, very few stories where Freddie is depicted having a good time with women sexually or romantically. That he was mostly all about men is already the majority opinion in this part of fandom.
But another question is, who was the real Freddie? If the last two years in fandom have taught me anything, it is that even things which seem like fact to one person can seem like speculation to another. I have personally had so many discussions with so many people on different sides of the debate about the exact circumstances of Freddie's life and his inner world, that I must say I don't think there is such a thing as one accurate, "real" portrayal of Freddie. Even those of us who are heavily invested in research sometimes disagree quite significantly about the interpretations of sources. So that narrows "You don't care about the real Freddie" down to "You don't care about Freddie because you don't interpret everything we know about his life the exact same way I do". Sure, by that definition, very few people care about Freddie the same way you do.
The bottom line is, there are so many writers and fans who love him, people who are obsessed with him, people who care about him deeply. They might care about who they believe he really was or who he chose to present himself as to the world, the way he wanted to be seen. But ultimately, in my personal opinion, if somebody is inspired to write Freddie as a fictional character they feel that Freddie means a lot to them. And it is hurtful to accuse them of not caring.
But what some people write hurts/triggers me.
Yes, that can happen. Because the nature of AO3 is that everything is permitted. Personally, I am very much in agreement with that. You will also find me in the camp of people who are against any sort of censorship on AO3, no matter how much some of the content goes against my own morals or how distasteful I find it. Some people disagree with that, which is fine. We must agree to disagree then. Here, I would like to quote QuirkySubject from the post she made regarding this whole situation because I cannot put it better myself: “The principle that all fic is valid (even RPF fic that subverts the lived experience of the person the fic is based on) is like the foundation of [AO3]. The suggestion that certain kinds of characterisations aren't allowed will provoke a knee-jerk reaction by many writers.”
No matter how much you may disagree with a story's plot or characterisation, it is allowed on AO3. "But wait," you might say, "the issue is not with it being on the site but with people like yourself - who should care about "the real Freddie" - supporting it."
This is some of what I have taken away from the upset I have seen. And it’s worth deconstructing.
I've already addressed "the real Freddie". Moving on to...
The author is dead.
This is something others might very well disagree on as well, but to me the story itself matters far more than authorial intent. And what may be one thing according to the author’s personal definition, may be another thing to the reader. Let’s use an example. This is an ask I received yesterday:
This author thinks they were writing Freddie as bisexual. However, going by the plot of their story, I would actually say that it is largely very similar to how I see the progression of Freddie’s young adulthood. To me, personally, Freddie would still be gay throughout the story because he arrives - eventually - at the conclusion that he is. The author and I disagree on terminology only. And I think simply disagreements about terminology, given that some terms are so loaded with history in Freddie’s case, trips a lot of people up.
It seems to me that many people still equate bisexuality with a 50/50 attraction to men and women, when in actual fact many - if not most - bi/pan people would say that it is nowhere near that distribution. Some people are of the opinion that anybody who experiences some attraction to the opposite sex, even if they have a strong same-sex preference, could be technically considered bisexual. (However, sexuality isn’t objective, it’s subjective. At least when it comes to real people. What about fictionalised real people? We will get to that.)
Let's briefly return to real Freddie.
What I'm seeing is that there are several ways of thinking here, with regard to his sexuality.
1. Freddie was gay because that seems to be (from everything we know) the conclusion he arrived at and the way he saw himself, once he had stopped dating women. Therefor, he was always gay, it just took him a while to come to terms with it.
2. Freddie can be referred to as bisexual during the time when he was with women because at that time, he may very well have thought of himself thusly - whether that was wishful thinking and he was aware of it or whether he really thought he might be bisexual is not something we can say definitively. He came out as gay to two friends in 1974 on separate occassions, and he talked to his girlfriends about being bisexual. (Personally, I think here it is interesting to look at who exactly he was saying what to, but let's put my own interpretations aside.)
3. Freddie can be seen as bisexual/pansexual because his life indicates that he was able to be in relationships with both men and women and because there is nothing to disprove he didn't experience any attraction to the women he was with. Had he lived in a different time, he may have defined himself differently.
Now, I'm of the first school of thought here, personally, although I understand the second and also, as a thought experiment, the third.
I think all of these approaches have validity, although the historical context of Freddie's life should be kept in mind and is very relevant whenever we speak about the man himself.
But when we return to writing fictionalised versions of Freddie, any of these approaches should absolutely be permissible. Yes, some of them or aspects of them can cause upset to some people.
And this is why AO3 has a tagging system. This is why authors write very clearly worded author's notes. This is the respect authors extend to their readers. This, in turn, has to be respected. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own experience on the archive.
Nobody has the right to dictate what is or isn't published under the Queen tag. As far as I am concerned, nobody should have that right. As far as I am concerned, everybody has a responsibility to avoid whatever may upset them. I understand where the upset comes from. I also maintain it is every writer's right to engage with Freddie's character creatively the way they choose to.
None of us can control how other people engage with Freddie or the fandom. None of us can control what other people enjoy or dislike about the fandom.
The best way to engage with the content creating part of fandom, in my opinion, has always been to create what brings you joy, to consume the content that brings you joy and to respectfully step away from everything that doesn't.
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it’s time...
for my list of thomas hcs. keep in mind i haven’t watched zexal in a very long time so most of this probably isn’t canon compliant. but that’s ok because i can just make stuff up. also these are all post canon and span to his early/mid 20s. might get long so i’ll be putting it under the cut. (warning for mentions of drug and alcohol usage)
ok as i’m writing this i’m realizing how depressing this list is and i’m not even including a lot of the darker stuff and such. i just wanna say he gets better lmao
(oh yeah @pridewhatpride here you go, know you said you were interested in these. thanks for encouraging me being insane)
Physical
He soft, mostly as a consequence of getting older
Lost vision in his right eye almost entirely. his vision was originally destroyed when he got his scar, but the damage was able to be reversed at least temporarily. however he was unable to afford further treatment when his sight started to degrade again.
Despite this, he’s adapted to it and is able to live mostly as he did with two eyes.
The affected eye appears milky
I’m not a doctor so sorry if this isn’t how this works lol
Developed patchy facial hair which he generally puts off shaving until it gets really bad
Susceptible to back pain
Picked up a smoking habit, smells like cigarettes
Sleep-deprived
Social
Lost his fame after receiving public backlash for several controversies, leading to a ban on his participation in tournaments
Was kicked out of the house after Christopher discovered he was stealing money to fuel his drug habit
Michael maintains contact with him, though does not know where he lives
However, Thomas will go through phases of not returning texts or calls for weeks at a time
Christopher is unaware that they correspond
Has not spoken to Christopher or his father for several years
Maintained contact with friends for a short period of time after being kicked out
Mostly keeps to himself, being irrelevant he’s usually not recognized
When drunk, he sometimes becomes much more like his old self in terms of charisma and confidence. Though this is usually to his detriment and his behavior is often seen as off-putting and obnoxious
Struggles to hold a job
Mental and Behavioral
Though he avoids harder drugs now, he filled the void with cigarettes and alcohol
Uses these to cope with stressors, untreated mental illness and trauma, and guilt
Suffers from bouts of depression that render him nearly nonfunctional
Consequently, his apartment is messy and cluttered due to him lacking the energy to clean it
Contributes to him not responding to Michael for extended periods of time
Often smokes on the roof of his apartment building
Though he was forced to sell many of his old belongings to make ends meet, he held on to some of his old cards as well as his uniform
These conjure negative feelings in him, yet he still can’t bring himself to get rid of them
Keeps a picture of himself and his family in the drawer of his nightstand
Enjoys walking with no particular destination in mind
Will still duel at times, though the practice is less enjoyable for him than it once was
Struggles to engage in hobbies
Manages to care for himself most of the time, at least enough to keep himself alive
Avoids talking about his past with others, prefers not to allow any relationship to become more than casual. Adverse to emotional attachment
Defense mechanism. But is genuinely lonely and craves intimacy
Uncategorized
Lives within the area surrounding Heartland City
Michael, on multiple occasions, has attempted to get him to reveal his address in order to check in on him
To add to this, no one he knows has actually seen him since he was kicked out
Michael sends him money when he can’t meet rent
This is done without Christopher’s knowledge
Will give leftover food to stray dogs
Can drive, but has no car
Still retains some of his sadistic urges, but feels intensely guilty about them
that’s about it for now. i might add more in the future. these are just the ones i could come up with off the top of my head cause i have too many
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i truly believe that harry has iced her since she left for london while he stayed in la for the grammys, especially after the pickle situation. i feel like she wouldn’t be posting all these cryptic reposts or “sneaky” pics on her stories if she was actually in contact with harry bc it wouldn’t be necessary when she could do it privately just with him through text or facetime, knowing that he doesn’t like his business public or talked about by strangers. his ghosting probably got more intense the more she tries to connect everything she does through him for her own promo and publicity with random articles or pap shoots with brand deals. also, someone noticed that as soon as that website that had the pictures of harrys house was going around twitter, the pictures are now gone, which wouldn’t have happened had olivia not posted in harrys house and had the crazy stalkers trying to prove it was indeed harrys house. literally she’s such a breach of his privacy and security from his la house which he was never papped at until she came around and called them there twice, and now his home in london which he’s lived at for almost 10 years and already was dealing with legal stalker issues to the point where he had to install panic buttons in rooms of his house. the fans were also shitty for posting the link and pictures of his house and making up fantasy stories of each room for their own entertainment knowing that harry would not like that at all. olivia has disrespected harry so much in these past few months and i wouldn’t be surprised if they have communication issues bc it seems like either harry hasn’t expressed his preferred boundaries in a relationship with her or she’s just blatantly doing only what she wants of her own free will (which wouldn’t be shocking considering she has that pattern with her exes who she’s publicly disrespected as well and had no problem with). idk why harry got involved with her tbh bc they both have such distinct and different outlooks when it comes to relationships, at least public and pda wise. she won’t get from harry what she was used to for the past twenty years that she got from both tao and jason as partners. idek a compromise for them would even be considering that she’s so public with her children as well as her sex life so idk how it’s gonna work, paired with his extremely busy schedule which is gonna pick up even more as time goes on and more and more ppl get vaccines while she has to stay with her kids.
this is long.
but yes, she shouldn’t be so cryptic on instagram. olivia wilde is irrelevant and looking for something to bring her back into the limelight. she’s taking advantage of harry and his fame and that’s another reason why i don’t like her. but i mean.... harrys dick must be GOOD LMAOOO
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Red & the meaning of it’s songs for Lottie. I just feel like doing this is going to help me build her narrative more, there might be some open spots in here but I doubt it. Also, as I said in the chat, it just helps everyone differentiate her from Holly because they both use Taylor’s albums for their character development! Hope that makes sense :)
1. State Of Grace - Moving to New York and a dedication to all of the friend’s she’s made there. It’s the first time she’s been settled properly in one place and I think it’s about the intense excitement and love she feels for her academy already. She’s met Yasmine, Salem, and so many others and it’s track number 1, because she sees it as the opening to a really exciting new chapter.
2. Red - Elijah! This was her first boyfriend and they drifted as they grew up and moved on to different things. She has no ideas he’s into guys and that doesn’t really matter, anyway. She’s accepted that they’re over but the relationship is always romanticised in her head and moving on fully will probably never be an option.
3. Treacherous - Her first crush at Liberty was Avery and it hit hard. She was intensely pissed off when she didn’t get the reciprocation she wanted but after ‘Better than Revenge’ on Speak Now, she knows better than to put people on blast TOO hard. So, she went down the lovesick route and created this beautiful song. She knows that nothing’s going to come of it, but she can’t fully leave him alone. It’s a little less intense now that all of the academies are together though, because she doesn’t see him as much.
4. I Knew You Were Trouble - This plot is still work in progress, but it’ll be dedicated to Ethan. The two of them have got closer through attending Liberty and he’s attracted to her on a physical level; but nothing more. He’s mainly hooking up with her to prove a point to Addy and it’s working. They’re never official but even still, when she realises/the truth comes out, I think she’ll put her “Stop putting people on blast” attitude out of the window and release this because she won’t be happy.
5. All Too Well - I think All Too Well is really easy to interpret as heartbreak, but Lottie’s meant to be more calculated than that. So, even though it’s very much a heartfelt song and really emotional...she’s crafted it to be that way. It’ll be about Ethan and the purpose of it will be to get the general public and fans on side. She knows it tugs at heart-strings and while I Knew You Were Trouble is a bop, All Too Well is designed to give her the vulnerability that everybody loves to see. In reality, she’s not as hurt about it as she’s pretending.
6. 22 - Every single album has a song about or inspired by Annabel because she’s hands down the most important person in Lottie’s world. I feel Lottie would have grown up hearing Annabel’s stories about St Judes, her adventures and the friends she made. Lottie wrote this song when she got accepted into Liberty, knowing that she’d be having the same thing, and in a weird way feels more connected to her Mum than ever. The line “Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you” kind of points to how much she still relies on Annabel and knows her Mum will guide her through anything that gets hard in the next few years. She basically feels as if she’s her Mum when she was 22.
7. I Almost Do - Elijah. This would be an older song and I think it’d be written when she first started feeling the distance between them. This is probably the least complicated meaning on the album, oop.
8. We Are Never Getting Back Together - NOBODY LOL She just knew it’d get people talking and was catchy and it’ll be one she always acts as if it’s a huge secret who it’s about.
9. Stay Stay Stay - Again, it needs a little bit more development but Flynn is the second guy she’s had a major crush on. He’s really good to her and they have a lovely friendship, but she’s also keeping him at arms length because she knows her career plan is going to end up screwing over a lot of people and their reputations and she doesn’t want him to be one of them. It’s also about how he seems to genuinely like her and not care as much about how successful she is/what she can or cant offer him.
10. The Last Time - All Too Well, part 2. Just to REALLY drive home the fact that Ethan’s hurt her feelings, it’s all his fault and people should feel bad for her. Forget the fact she also knew he was one of the star basketball players and dating him would help boost the attention for ‘Red.’ That’s irrelevant...Obviously.
11. Holy Ground - She wrote this during her visit to St Judes and again, with her parents in mind. For them, Violet Springs is where it all started and I think she would’ve done something really sentimental like visited Annabel’s old dorm room or asked her Mum to take her to the place where they first met. This one tells their story more than any of theirs.
12. Sad Beautiful Tragic - Another one about Elijah. I feel like this is probably the shadiest song she’s written about him and here’s why...’Sad beautiful tragic love affair’ almost implies that something happened or somebody was wrong - and, of course, Lottie’s RARELY going to put herself in the shoes of the villain in any of her stories, so it very subtly nudges people to feel like Elijah did something. He didn’t, though, but one of Lottie’s weaknesses is making things up in her head until she believes them to be fact. There was definitely a stage where she thought he’d found somebody else, so this was the result.
13. The Lucky One - For Violet! Lottie’s been in the music industry for a little longer than most, just because Drew and Annabel let her be home-schooled for a few years while she worked on her debut. I think she sees a lot of herself in Violet and it’s somebody she genuinely cares about. It’s written almost like a fable about fame and trying to warn her that she needs to keep her feet on the ground or she’ll get hurt.
14. Everything Has Changed - I REALLY DON’T LIKE THIS SONG, I FIND IT HARD TO CARE ABOUT. She does have a vague connection with Fae’s new character, Jace, though, so I’ll fill this in when we’ve got a better idea of what it’s all about.
15. Starlight - Her second song about being in New York and starting life at Liberty. Lottie’s version of ‘Red’ is about living life at maximum intensity, which is what she feels like at the moment. She feels like this is the most alive and new she’ll ever be and her passion for everything is burning, so Starlight is another song that expresses that.
16. Begin Again - Flynn and Elijah, ahh. Again, she deep down knows Flynn’s a good guy and the real deal; the only other person she’s had that intuition about is Elijah. She’s kind of comparing them in the sense that they’ve given her that hopeful, heads-in-the-clouds feeling...unlike Ethan who is the other side of the album. I think it’s from the perspective of Lottie looking at Flynn and seeing a lot of Elijah - hence something quite nice is beginning...again.
17. The Moment I Knew - This will again be for Jace. The vague idea of their connection is that they dated after she dated Elijah, while she was home schooling. She fell hard and looked to him for support and was convinced he’d be the same as Elijah was to her but he is and has always been more focused on his career. So, when she decided to go back to VS, he stayed out in LA trying to make his dreams come true. They tried long distance but he never called as much as she did and it felt very one way. He never did anything explicitly wrong...unless you hear Lottie’s slightly overdramatic version of the story via this song.
(For people struggling to keep up, it goes: Elijah, Jace, Liberty, Crush on Avery, vague fling with Ethan, Longterm crush on Flynn LOL)
18. Come Back, Be Here - Leaving LA (when she was being home schooled/working on her debut) and Jace, too. This was the beginning of their short lived long distance relationship when she thought they genuinely had a chance. I feel like she’s embarrassed to admit she fell for him now but she did lmao.
19. Girl At Home - If you didn’t get the clue in her post, Peter C LOL. It’s plotted that when they got to NYC, he flirted with her a few times even though Lottie knew he was with Bianca. Hence why she wrote this song. She could’ve just told him to fuck off and left it be, but why do that when you could have it on an album and cause rumours to spread like wildfire?
#lotties project: red#ITS NOT OUT YET#BUT THESE WILL BE THE MEANINGS#i also love how sneakily shady she is with these songs and the meanings :')
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Writings from Offline {Ep.3}
Advertisement Review
The Saravana Stores’ advertisement for the Diwali Season, was the most recent version of ads that followed the long tradition of hilarious ads from the store. It has come up with unoriginal but creative ideas to engage with the common folk. The advertisement makes the viewer subconsciously indulge in its proposition. From the actor, who is the owner himself, to the song and the setting used, everything is carefully constructed to please the audience; explicitly and implicitly making them buy into the idea that they are selling. Which is why it’s logic and knowledge that has gone into the making of the ad should be defended; its irrelevance, not so much.
The irrelevance would be the fact that the ad did very little, in my opinion, to actively endorse the product that it was selling. The tonal balance was off. The plot, that didn’t exactly exist, seemed to suggest the episode in the life of a glorious leader; the central character surrounded by people of all ages who rejoice him, much like Diwali, to which he almost becomes a metaphor to.
There are girls, a sign of validation in the patriarchal society, who are always cast in close proximity to the supposed hero. Towards the end the hero sports a moustache too, an obvious sign of success, masculinity and dominance, and the whole family comes together to celebrate him. This cliché de facto trope of Indian commercial cinema now becomes a familiar subject that the audience can latch on to.
Another familiar strand in woven into the narrative with the upbeat jingle which seems to be inspired by a millennial Tamil song. With easy diction and emphasis on “colour”, “family” and “home”, it even slightly hints on the glory of working hard and tries to moralize the viewers with the motivational message. The mixing of the Tamil and English serves the purpose of portraying modernity and humor eventually becoming pop culture themselves.
As Yamuna Kachri elucidates in her article, the mixing of the native and the foreign language exoticizes the language itself and adds light heartedness to the content.
“…the mixed lyrics that illustrate the playfulness accompanying the convergence of multilingual ingredients.”
She also says that this trend is popular among the middle class and upper-class families, a wide group to whom this ad in study is targeted to too.
“…amuse the audience and exploit for this purpose the meanings that the intersection of multiple languages of India make possible.”
” … portray upper-middleclass or upper-class families, the use of English in dialogs and songs has increased.”
The music, the happy drum beat, that accompanies the song sets the mood for celebration. The energy of the music is captured by the camera too. The events rapidly succeed each other and the cuts are quick; a technique used to render energy and excitement. This strategy keeps the audience engaged and focused, it doesn’t bore them out.
The engagement is strengthened with the excitement and the joy which are clearly observable in the choice of colour. The dresses are bright to the point of being gaudy and the background is a romantic French café. The advertisement now becomes more engaging to the audience, who closely associate the idea of foreign to progress and the idea of an alluring land that is painted in movie songs. The clothing of the models and dancers, in dresses resembling that of an airhostess and sailors and the frequent costume changes circuitously advocate the same idea, thus drawing on the banal framework of songs.
The foreign elements represented are countered by the inclusion of popular culture propagated by Kollywood films. The towel flipping scene is a characteristic feature of actor Rajinikanth, a pop culture phenomenon, that makes the ad relatable. The moustache is also used for a similar purpose because of its coupling with power, tradition and success. By doing this the ad rings intertextuality and according to the article titled, “What are television advertisements really trying to tell us? A postmodern perspective”, the postmodern age ads sell intertextuality to sell their products. By connecting the emotions of a viewer to the ad, the marketers are able to manipulate the consumers to change their needs to buying the product.
“When a text is read, consciously or unconsciously readers place it in wider frames of reference of language and knowledge, cross-fertilizing a particular reading with other discourses drawn from their own socially, culturally and historically situated experiences.”
The representations that connect with pop culture help the viewer make connections to their own experiences and thus makes the goal of the advertisement approachable to the reader.
“…meaning is activated by the participation of its audience, whose interpretations reflect their own experiences, social situation and concerns.”
By honoring the pop culture that the target audience relate with, the advertisement sells well among the people because it touches the same sentiments.
The advertisement, being pastiche, therefore tries to draw the audience towards it - the object clearly, the relationship that the company desires with the audience. Being well established for a long while now, the company has little responsibility to inform the customers. Its aim is to relate to the audience and the present generation. By combing intertextuality and humor, it elevates the best things about the culture that existed before it. It glorifies the pop culture prevalent and draws inspiration from it to support itself. The use of Rajini’s style would be welcome among the audience. The use of a Tanglish (Tamil and English) song would be relatable to the youth who know both the languages and able to appreciate the mixing.
This is where we get to the explanation for the bad casting, bad acting and bad lip syncing. While most ads strive to achieve perfection, this ad, contrarily, trades off quality for connection. The idea, as I understand is that, the owner has stepped down from his position of wealth and fame to interact with his customers. Though people laugh at the ad and make troll videos and memes on him, they are unconsciously buying into the idea of entertainment that he sells. Humor in advertisements serves a very important purpose according to the article “Impact of humorous advertisements on customers’ behavior”
“The reason why humor has been widely used in advertising is due to its power of create liking towards the advertisement by from the consumer.”
This directs us to the argument of why this ad is bad. An advertisement is expected to sell the product and give customers information on the products. These is a display of the variety of dresses and jewelry available but the ad doesn’t seem to draw attention to the product or it’s aspects. The variety of dresses worn by the dancers and the models can be considered to be the display of the merchandise but there is no mention of price or features of the products. No sales or discounts are intimated. The ad does almost nothing for its primary task at hand. It seems its sole purpose is to advertise the owner and to serve his recognition among the public.
This exclusive focus on the ‘hero’ diverts the audience from the product and leads it down another lane. The ad becomes a phenomenon and ‘trends’ in social media. It becomes popular using the novelty factor. If this is what the team worked on, then they seem to have done a good job. But as an ad it has not reached any mark. Yet in some way, by having an unusual mixture of humor, intertextuality, cast and music in a way that no one has ever attempted, the ad has now become a pop culture phenomenon and truly won’t be forgotten.
References:
1. Stella Proctor, Ioanna Papasolomou-Doukakis, Tony Proctor; What are television advertisements really trying to tell us? A postmodern perspective; Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 1, 3, 246-255; 16th July, 2001
2. Yamuna Kachru; Mixers lyricing in Hinglish: blending and fusion in Indian pop culture; World Englishes, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 223–233; 2006
3. Dharmesh Motwani, Khushbu Agarwal; Impact of humorous advertisements on customers’ behaviour; International Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences; October 2013
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He's just broken the nation’s hearts as the tragic anti-hero of BBC One’s Sunday-night sensation The Trial Of Christine Keeler – but James Norton’s next role has made the heartthrob actor “proud to become an honorary Welshman”.
In the title role of new film Mr Jones, Norton – already a favourite with bookmakers to be the next James Bond – takes on one of the most challenging projects of his career, playing a real-life yet forgotten hero from Wales who dared to combat and uncover one of history’s most shameful episodes of “fake news” from nearly a century ago.
James Norton at the Mr Jones screening at the London Film Festival
“Playing Gareth Jones was sometimes a tough call,” says 34-year-old Norton, known to millions from small-screen hits Grantchester and Happy Valley.
“In fact, when I first got the part and they told me it was going to be a Welshman who spoke both fluent Welsh and Russian, and all of it in a Welsh accent – that felt a bit scary!”
He needn’t have worried. As Gareth Jones, the mild-mannered young Western Mail reporter who travelled to Russia in 1933 and ended up blowing the whistle over the appalling truth about Stalin’s “Utopian” regime – and a hushed-up famine that killed untold millions – Norton presents us with a charming, softly-spoken hero with just a hint of a refined Welsh lilt.
It’s a million miles from those cliched, grating attempts at Welsh accents so often taken on by other English actors. ( Stephen Graham’s DCI “Taff” Jones in ITV’s White House Farm, anyone?).
Reports have emerged this week of Gareth’s great-nephew attacking the film for having “invented multiple fictions” – but as far as Norton is concerned, he feels the film stands as an honest and heartfelt reflection of Gareth’s character and incredible yet fatefully short life.
“We decided it was important to respect and honour Gareth’s journey – this Welshman from a small coastal town who ended up on this huge, bizarre and brave mission taking on one of the pillars of the 1930s political landscape in a very dangerous, pre-war Communist Russia,” says Norton, who worked with two Welsh dialect coaches to perfect his accent.
“So it made sense that Gareth would have maybe intentionally softened his Welsh accent, having been educated at Cambridge, in order to ingratiate himself in the community and then travelling the world. We wanted to keep it there without making it too distracting.”
Nevertheless, Norton – London-born but raised in North Yorkshire – was still required to speak Welsh in a few scenes, and Russian as well.
“I’ve never spoken either language before and I’m not a linguist – so I had my work cut out,” says Norton, who can also currently be seen on the big screen in the Oscar-nominated hit movie Little Women.
“But for those few months, I was very proud to become an honorary Welshman. My scenes with Julian Lewis Jones as my dad – when Gareth goes home to Barry – were challenging, but Julian was amazing helping me with my Welsh.
“Julian occasionally texts me in Welsh now, which is hilarious, as I think he’s forgotten I don’t actually speak a word!
“It’s pretty nerve-racking doing scenes where you’ve got to speak in a particular accent opposite someone who’s completely fluent in that language, so to have Julian put his hand on my shoulder and say, ‘You’re doing good, kid!’ was so reassuring.”
Learning dialogue for his Russian scenes was even harder.
“I had to learn all the Russian phonetically – it’s like learning music,” he explains. “I’d spend hours walking around wearing earphones and I’d look like a crazy person talking to myself, repeating phrases animatedly. But now I have Russian people coming up to me in the street, speaking Russian at me!
“Weirdly, I’ve done three jobs where I needed to speak Russian – War And Peace, McMafia and now this. I seem to have become the go-to guy for English-speaking Russian roles!”
The new film Mr Jones, directed by internationally-renowned Polish film-maker Agnieszka Holland, begins with Gareth Jones gaining fame in the early 1930s after his report on being the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler.
Gareth, who’d graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1929 with a first-class degree in French, German and Russian, has also landed the job of foreign affairs advisor to former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
With the Russian “utopia” all over the news, Gareth is intrigued as to how Stalin is financing the rapid modernisation of the Soviet Union and in March 1933 he decides to travel to Russia in an attempt to get an interview with Stalin himself.
However, on hearing murmurs of a government-induced famine – a secret carefully guarded by the Soviet censors – Gareth travels clandestinely to Ukraine, where he witnesses the atrocities of man-made starvation, as all grain is sold abroad to finance the Soviet empire’s industrialisation.
Deported back to the UK, it’s the Western Mail that publishes Gareth’s article revealing the horrors he has witnessed, but the starvation is denied by Western journalists based in Moscow, all under pressure from the Kremlin. As death threats mount, Gareth has to fight for the truth – and, meeting a young author called George Orwell, Gareth shares his findings... helping to inspire Orwell’s great allegorical novel Animal Farm.Gareth’s great-nephew Philip Colley made headlines recently, accusing the film’s scriptwriter of “inventing multiple fictions”, including wrongly suggesting he was an accidental cannibal.
Colley told the Sunday Times: “In the film, they have got [Gareth] up a tree eating bark, eating human flesh, tripping over dead bodies. They’ve made Gareth a victim of the famine, rather than a witness.”
Norton, however – interviewed prior to Colley’s remarks – says he received plentiful support from a number of Gareth’s surviving relatives, who came to early screenings of the film.
“They were all lovely in their support and they gave us their seal of approval, which was very touching,” recalls Norton.
“Our film’s screenwriter, Andrea Chalupa, was in touch with a lot of them early on. There’s so much literature and academia about Gareth’s work as a journalist, but Andrea found out some lovely titbits about his more private character.
“For example, when he went home to Barry he’d love being with his nieces and nephews and he became a big kid. His great-aunt told Andrea about one day when he came back home and he was rolling around with them like a labrador. That kind of story was invaluable to me.
“He wasn’t just this very earnest, principled man, there was a childlike, playful quality to him and he was almost a little bit gauche, a little bit awkward. You also want to honour his memory for his family.”
The main source of the film is a biography of Jones entitled More Than A Grain Of Truth, written by Gareth’s niece Dr Margaret Siriol Colley (Philip’s mother) and his great-nephew Nigel Colley (Philip’s brother), both of whom share a credit as the film’s historical advisors.
The book sparked Chalupa’s interest and she started corresponding with Margaret Colley soon after its publication. When Margaret died in 2011, aged 85, Chalupa remained in contact with her son Nigel, who became “heavily involved” in discussing ideas for the film. Nigel died in 2018.
Filmed predominantly in Poland, homeland of Warsaw-born director Agnieszka Holland, Mr Jones does contain some breathtaking snowbound scenes shot in Ukraine, where Gareth gets first-hand sight of the horrendous famine.
“We filmed in a tiny little place called Doch, which is three hours north of Kiev, in the middle of nowhere,” says Norton. “We’d drive for hours on these very unsafe roads, jangling your bones around. It was freezing cold in the snow.
“It was so remote that we had to put the word out to local farmers to come along as extras and we had a strict cut-off time – we had to wrap up at 5pm because they all had to go back and feed their animals!”
When it came to filming the scenes in Wales – notably Barry and the Western Mail’s offices in the film’s gripping finale when Gareth’s whistle-blowing scoop hits the presses – Norton reveals: “I’m really sorry to say they’re all filmed in Scotland! About an hour north-east of Edinburgh. A lot of those villages there have a quality of that small fishing town, for the Barry scenes.
“The other reason is that the film is partly funded by Creative Scotland and there’s that responsibility you feel to film there. But I think it worked well. It was a shame not to film in Wales, but we had a fantastic collection of Welsh players there, including Julian, so it felt home from home.”
Agnieszka Holland, of course, is not the first female director to work with Norton. He acted under the helm of Greta Gerwig on Little Women and with a largely female crew on the six-part TV drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler, which finished last Sunday, earning him rave reviews for his heartbreaking performance as Stephen Ward, the tragic scapegoat figure in the Profumo affair which brought down the UK government in the early 1960s.
“I’ve not gone out of my way to work with female directors, but I have great agents who always look for the best projects – but I really hope it’s a sign of the times,” he says. “The Christine Keeler story has never been properly told from a female perspective before, so that was the real attraction. Agnieszka, meanwhile, is the best of the best – the fact that she’s a woman is almost irrelevant.”
How does he feel about the fact that Greta Gerwig has been denied a Best Director Oscar nomination for her lauded version of Little Women, in which Norton plays eligible suitor John Brooke to Emma Watson’s Meg March?
“I can stand as witness to Greta’s brilliance and the fact that Little Women is up for Best Film and Screenplay is testament to her brilliance,” says Norton. “She singlehandedly redefined the story for a modern generation and it would have been wonderful to honour that in the nominations for direction – so it’s a horrible and unfortunate omission.”
It was while starring in McMafia, the gritty 2018 BBC1 thriller series with scenes of him bow-tied and gun-toting, that Norton’s name was first added to the list of contenders to play James Bond when Daniel Craig retires from the role after the next 007 movie No Time To Die. Remind him of that now and he laughs it off.
“It’s very humbling, it’s lovely and bizarre to be included in that conversation, but beyond that it’s all very speculative,” he says. “I think at the moment everyone’s concentrating on Daniel Craig in his final Bond film – for me, he’s a fantastic Bond and I’m sad he’s retiring.”
Right now, however, it’s Mr Jones and the legacy of that film’s largely unsung Welsh hero that are uppermost in Norton’s agenda. Tragically, Gareth Jones’ life was cut short on the eve of his 30th birthday in 1934, when he was allegedly shot by Mongolian bandits while travelling in Japanese-occupied China on a fact-finding tour.
“There’s much speculation about Gareth’s death at such a young age and there was a lot of evidence suggesting that it was orchestrated by the Soviet forces as revenge for his blowing the whistle on the hidden famine,” says Norton.
“His stories in the Western Mail were incredibly important. The more we can learn about Gareth Jones and recognise his extraordinary legacy, the better. And the fact is that right now, as politics becomes more polarised, we need more people like Gareth – investigative journalists to uncover the truth, with no ideological agenda attached.
“If this film encourages any future young Gareth Jones, then that’s fantastic. It’s a crime we don’t know more about these forgotten events and hopefully this film will remedy that.”
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Top Sales Outsourcing Company Suggests Best Sales Movies to Watch
All work and no movies make sales teams dull!
We have stepped into the 10th Month of the year. Most of the organizations are still working from home. In gleam situations like these days, we need to keep motivated. While you may pass most of the weekends sitting on your couch and browsing through Netflix and Prime, the sales outsourcing company, AOB India, continually motivates and engages the sales consultants and sales acquisition teams in the most creative ways. We have a list of movies that you need to add to your watchlist today!
Cinema has very few good content to offer in terms of sales. And when they do, most of them show sales agents as soulless predators who leech money off innocent people – and it’s true in some cases. However, a handful of them over the years have truly captured what it’s like to be a real salesperson. Regardless of the light in which sales people are shown, all these movies still offer a lot of takeaways: from persuasion tactics to attentive listening to building relationships to pep talks.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
ABC. “A”, always. “B”, be. “C”, closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. Always be closing.
-Blake
Glengarry Glen Ross is the story of four sales agents battling against each other to save their jobs. This movie portrays how toxic a competitive environment can be. They use all sorts of unethical practices and tactics to close deals; ranging from stealing leads to selling undesirable property to lying, cheating, threatening, bribery, and more.
Despite all these, the sales outsourcing company, AOB India suggests that it still has scenes that offer a lot of value to salespeople. For example, the famous Alec Baldwin scene, where he explains the ABC and AIDA technique to his peers to “motivate” them, is by far the best and most useful scene from the movie. Not only does it explain these two concepts, it also shows how a manager should go about motivating his team.
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
In order to not waste any time… I wasn’t hanging up the phone. I gained another eight minutes a day. I wasn’t drinking water… so I didn’t waste any time in the bathroom.
-Chris Gardner
Based on a true story, The Pursuit of Happyness follows the journey of a struggling salesman, Christopher Gardner. The trials and situations faced by Chris when he loses his job, his wife, and his house, and raises his son homeless, account for an absolutely heartbreaking but inspirational story. He never gives up; he relentlessly chases down high-value prospects; he gives his 100% whatever the circumstances may be, and most of all, respects his superiors. The sales strategists at AOB India believe that there are so many take-aways from the movie, for eg. Chrisexhibits many good sales practices; like using an energetic and positive tone to talk to his prospects or optimizing his cold calling process to save a few minutes, etc.
Door To Door (2002)
Patience and Persistence.
-Mrs. Porter
Isn’t this quote from the movie the motto of every sales agent ever? Another true story, Door To Door, is based on the life of Bill Porter, an inspiring and successful door-to-door salesman who suffers from cerebral palsy. Despite him being crippled with cerebral palsy, severely disabled, as well as having speech impediment problems, Bill Porter sold Watkins’ products for nearly 40 years, from door to door on a 7-mile route in Portland, Oregon. The sales outsourcing company highlights Patience and Persistence in every team meet. They believe that with these two qualities anyone can work his route with such diligence and perseverance to become the top-selling sales agents.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Jordan Belfort: Brad, show them how it’s done. Sell me that pen. Watch. Go on.
Brad: You want me to sell you this f****** pen?
Jordan Belfort: That’s my boy right there. Can f****** sell anything.
Brad: Why don’t you do me a favor? Write your name down on that napkin for me.
Jordan Belfort: I don’t have a pen.
Brad: Exactly. Supply and demand, my friend.
Does this movie need any introduction?
Filled with high-energy dialogues, lavish parties, and a bunch of unethical sales practices, this Martin Scorsese biopic about the infamous Jordan Belfort took the world by storm. It’s the story of how Belfort built an empire by pushing worthless penny stock to the public. Despite the tactics used by him, there are a few things a salesperson can learn from this film. Like the core concept of selling – sell the dream, sell the need, the product is irrelevant. Or the use of vocal tone to effectively engage prospects. Belfort illustrates the power of using a sales playbook and sales scripts which he teaches even today as a sales coach.
Wall Street (1987)
I’ve been in this business since ’69. Most of these Harvard MBA guys don’t add up to dogs**t. Give me guys that are poor, smart, hungry and no feelings. You win a few. You lose a few. But you keep on fighting – and if you need a friend, get a dog. It’s trench warfare out there, pal.
-Gordon Gekko
Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you would have certainly heard of Gordon Gekko. One of the most ruthless characters to be shown on the silver screen, Gordon Gekko, is a man driven by pure greed. Pure, Unadulterated Greed. Wall Street follows the story of an ambitious young stockbroker named Bud Fox who seeks fame and fortune. He exchanges insider trading information with Gekko who acts as his mentor. What ensues is a tale of absolute power, greed, and corruption that involves stock manipulation, taking down other firms, and destroying lives in the process without a second thought.
Moneyball (2011)
I hate losing more than I love winning.
-Billy Beane
Last in our list is anything but a sales movie. However, this movie is a must-watch for sales people. Here is why. Moneyball tells the story of how Billy Beane, the General Manager of Oakland Athletics, used Sabermetrics to help them win 20 games on the row. With the help of his assistant general manager, Billy Beane applied data analysis of baseball metrics to analyze and scout undervalued players to form a winning team. And how is this relevant to sales, you ask? At AOB India, we believe that this is the future of sales. Data-driven sales strategies – whether it is in prospecting or understanding user engagement or predictive analytics will be a game changer for fast-growing companies. The top sales outsourcing agency in India, AOB India, uses people, process and technology to get the sales numbers for their clients.
Mad Men (2007-2015)
Although this post is about movies, I’d be remiss if I don’t talk about Mad Men. Mad Men has changed the way marketing and sales professionals approach their clients. There are several brilliant sales pitches across the seven seasons that any sales rep can pick pointers from. Despite being set in the 60s, the characters and writing from this show were ahead of its time. Mad Men should be made mandatory viewing for anybody serious about getting into the marketing and sales industry.
At AOB India, it’s not all work. The top sales outsourcing company has some of the best talents in the industry who deliver top sales results. Keeping them motivated in new and creative ways sets this sales outsourcing agency apart from its competitors.
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h e r o e s always get remembered
but y’know legends never die
𝖖 𝖚 𝖔 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘
”Purity will always conquer.”
”The decay will feed the bloom.”
”These violent delights have violent ends.”
”He wore his hatred like a cruel second skin.”
"You can romanticize me all you wish, but the devil wrapped in silk is still the devil.”
𝖇 𝖆 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈
NAME: Lucius Abraxas Malfoy
NICKNAMES: Lucius Malfoy has never been given a pet name in his entire life, because he is not well-liked by, well, anyone. Occasionally, when he did something flawlessly and earned praise from his father in his youth, he would get called ‘son’ affectionately. It’s happened four times, and they’re part of his top five happiest memories.
AGE: 28
BIRTHDAY: December 20th
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: he / him
𝖋 𝖆 𝖒 𝖎 𝖑 𝖞
MOTHER: PRISCILLA ERIDANI MALFOY ( deceased )
FATHER: ABRAXAS CEPHEUS MALFOY ( deceased )
SIBLINGS: none
𝖕 𝖍 𝖞 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈 𝖆 𝖑 𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖇𝖚𝖙𝖊𝖘
FACE CLAIM: Hunter Parrish
BUILD: Broad shoulders but otherwise slim; takes care of his body only to the capacity as he has to.
HAIR: Short, as it should be; it is tradition for the patriarch of his family to cease cutting his hair as soon as they learn they have received a male heir to the name.
HAIR COLOR: Golden blond
EYE COLOR: Emerald green
SKIN COLOR: Pale white
DOMINANT HAND: Left
ANOMALIES: None; his skin is flawless, and he doesn’t bear a single scar aside from the garish black snake & skull tattoo on his left forearm. Lucius uses numerous illusion & glamour charms to hide the hideous thing at all times, and as a result, it always itches.
SCENT: Whatever cologne Narcissa has bought him for this season; usually trendy and... masculine? He would reek of clove & tobacco if he didn’t actively glamour charm away the smell each time he burned a cigarette.
ACCENT: British, no local inflection
ALLERGIES: None
DISORDERS: Lactose intolerant; he takes a draught from the family Healer to supplement the calcium, his family riddled with a history of brittle bones
FASHION: The most luxurious robes, all custom tailored fits to accent his shoulders; he prefers decadent silks & velvet, lace as an accent, all the buttons and snaps guilded with expensive precious metals. He has an expansive collection of rings and brooches, rare and ancient gemstones glistening from the box he keeps in his study, away from prying eyes.
NERVOUS TICS: None; Lucius is in perfect control of his mind & body at all times. Any physical nervous tic would’ve been beaten out of him in his youth, anyway... He may have light OCD tendencies if he’s losing his shit, but it’s incredibly rare for a Malfoy to risk their impeccable reputation for composure in such a way.
QUIRKS: He’s got an addiction to nicotine that no one saw coming. The second investment of his ludicrous inheritance was into a tobacco plantation across the sea, where Lucius gets all his cigarettes hand-rolled by some dusty old wizard farmers making a literal killing off him. It’s worth it though, to be free of the shame of a Muggle vice by ensuring it’s decidedly not Muggle. The tobacco is mixed with Jobberknoll feathers & Mandrake leaves, an old wives’ tale that allegedly counteracts the effects of truth serums. Lucius just likes the taste.
𝖑 𝖎 𝖋 𝖊 𝖘 𝖙 𝖞 𝖑 𝖊
RESIDES: Yorkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom
BORN: Yorkshire, again
RAISED: despite being “raised” in Yorkshire, Lucius never actually spent any time with the common people, and he rarely even resided in Malfoy Manor until a year after his father’s death. He had always been abroad or at boarding school until he turned of age, and was in Myokonos when he received the news. He hasn’t left the manor since, the patriarch of the name never abandoning his stronghold.
PETS: he doesn’t really consider the peacocks “pets,” as much as they are moving displays of his wealth. The closest thing to a pet he has are the house elves, although that’s too affectionate a term.
CAREER: Advisor to the Minister for Magic, Public Relations; the position was held by his father at the height of his power in the Ministry, before his retirement. Although the Rosier patriarch wasn’t ready to follow suit, Harold managed to convince him it was for the best before giving the coveted title to the burgeoning Malfoy heir, following his 25th birthday.
EXPERIENCE: None; a very powerful last name & a more powerful father who called in a few favors, the least he could do for his son during his dying hour... or whatever. Although honestly, Lucius’ entire life is experience enough; he’s been manipulating others since he was in diapers, such was the art of his illusion.
EMPLOYER: The Minister For Magic; he was personally appointed, as it were, and Lucius answers to nobody in the Ministry other than him, so he doesn’t really believe himself included in their workforce as much as Minchum’s.
POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Death Eaters
BELIEFS: Traditional, conservative pureblood values - what more needs to be said?
MISDEMEANORS: Nope.
FELONIES: Nope.
DRUGS: Don’t be a prude, but don’t get caught. It’s a fine line to tread.
SMOKES: Habitually, obsessively, constantly - use whatever adjective of choice, he feels no guilt for his only vice
ALCOHOL: Publicly, he limits himself to one or two at functions; after he turned of age, Lucius had a bit of a problem, and the only regrets he bears are those two years until he sobered up. If he is drunk, he becomes affectionate, giggly, rosy cheeked.... It’s a terrible look on him, and he avoids it all costs. His father, however, had a sizable investment into a extravagant, private winery tucked away in Bordeaux, and several shipments sit waiting in the basement of the manor. It is the only wine he allows on the estate.
DIET: A creature of habit, Lucius maintains the same diet seven days a week, the house elves on a strict schedule to adhere to unless alternative plans are made for parties or unexpected guests. It helps him remember
LANGUAGES: Ancient Runes, Latin, Greek, French, Italian - languages were an easy skill to pick up when he was always traveling or studying abroad
PHOBIAS: Irrelevancy, public shame or humiliation
HOBBIES: Lucius is well-versed in the classics, as expected of him by various boarding schools and his hard to impress father - painting, piano, & poetry were always his forte.
The only hobby he enjoys for himself is reading, reading, and more reading; he enjoys the history of wizarding kind and his father has a vast library, filled to the brim and largely untouched still. All of Lucius’ free time is spent locked in the patriarch’s study, having a glass of red and pouring into anything he can before bedtime. The problem is he doesn’t have a lot of free time.
TRAITS:
{ + }: composed, calculative, confident, dependable, observant
{ - }: vengeful, manipulative, haughty, disingenuous, self-serving
𝖋 𝖆 𝖛 𝖔 𝖗 𝖎 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘
LOCATION: France - the countryside, the cities, it doesn’t matter. He enjoys their flair for the dramatic.
SPORTS TEAM: Montrose Magpies - he cares about Quidditch as much as he has to just to get by in polite conversation, and they’re the local team of his youth.
GAME: Wizard chess
MUSIC: Abraxas was ever the elitist, and a near obsessive collector of all the finest things. The Malfoy Manor’s library has an entire vinyl section filled to the brim of ancient classical Wizard composers, musicians, and singers; his favorites were obviously inspired by the Baroquean era, but Lucius was always more swayed by the Romantics, and has contributed much time and effort into cultivating that part of the collection.
MOVIES: He does not know what those are.
FOOD: Confit de canard
BEVERAGE: A glass of Malfoy Merlot, if he must
COLOR: White
𝖒 𝖆 𝖌 𝖎 𝖈
ALUMNI HOUSE: Slytherin
WAND (length, flexibility, wood, & core): 11 inches, stiff, elm & dragon heartstring; the wand is passed down to the male heir the night after his father’s death, and the son’s previous wand is destroyed to represent his ascension as the patriarch. It is to be kept inside a fabricated black casing with a snake head handle that measures at 18 inches & is capable of being placed in a cane, but the Dark object has long been lost to history. It’s Lucius’ deepest desire to locate the relic of his heritage one day.
AMORTENTIA: The smell of burning firewood & an unknown array of spices, with a hint of coffee. He doesn’t go near the bloody shit because he’d recognize that scent anywhere, and it often induces a blush only Firewhiskey can achieve.
PATRONUS: Cannot and will never be able to produce a Patronus
BOGGART: Bellatrix, dead, corpse warped and reanimated as an Inferni
𝖈 𝖍 𝖆 𝖗 𝖆 𝖈 𝖙 𝖊 𝖗
MORAL ALIGNMENT: Neutral evil
MBTI: INTJ-A
MBTI ROLE: The Architect ( assertive )
ENNEAGRAM: Type Three
ENNEAGRAM ROLE: The Achiever
TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic
WESTERN ZODIAC: Sagittarius
CHINESE ZODIAC: Rabbit
PRIMAL SIGN: Sugar Glider
TAROT CARD: The Chariot
TV TROPES: Classic Evil Villain, Billionaire Boys Club, Enemy In Plain Sight
SONGS: Emperor’s New Groove - P!ATD, Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Lorde, Kings - Tribe Society
IDEOLOGIES:
History & time have both proven the validity of blood purity & its direct relevance to the power of a family’s bloodline.
Love is weakness. Nothing fancy, nothing poetic - it’s just another attempt of man’s to qualm the suffering of the human condition. A distraction that only makes one vulnerable.
No game worth playing is worth being exposed over. The best players exist in the shadows, without getting their fingerprints anywhere near the guilty party.
There has never been a loyalty to Lord Voldemort; Lucius’ loyalty is confined to the Malfoy name alone. Fame, fortune, power, honor - anything to ascend the Malfoy name to the highest standard it deserves. The Dark Lord exists as a stepping stone, a revolving door, a temporary fix. As all great men do, he will eventually fall victim to his own hubris.
If you plan to ask for a favor, you better be able to look him in the eyes; if you plan to ask for forgiveness, you better already be on your knees. Lucius does not take kindly to insubordination nor disrespect.
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Historical Inaccuracies
a/n: Inspired by a chat in the discord, this story was born out of Killian’s love for history and America’s hatred for the British while on historical tours. Up until last night, this fic was lovingly referred to as “the history nerd fic,” and it is dedicated to @welllpthisishappening @profdanglaisstuff @kmomof4 and @shireness-saysIt is, of course, Fourth of July themed, like all of Mary Margaret’s outfits on this trip.
Read it on AO3 if that’s more your jam
3k words // rated G
SUMMARY: When David and Mary Margaret's son wants to go on the Freedom Walk guided tour in Boston for his birthday, Emma and Killian tag along, still hiding their relatively-new relationship from their friends. But when the tour guide starts to berate a certain group of people from across the pond, both Killian's anger and their relationship come out.
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Killian would do anything for his godson. Of course, he would do anything for his nephew, Charlie, too, but the hour-long car trip from Boston to Northbridge is far easier than the flight across the Atlantic to his brother and his wife in England.
But this? This is a new level of Hell, right here in the middle of Boston.
Not all of it is terrible. He gets to share an apartment with his girlfriend, their fairly-new relationship still a secret to their best friends. They both took off work for Leo’s birthday celebration, so they get to spend a few days together, without either of them having to worry about their jobs, since she could manage a few days without going after someone who skipped bail, and his university was off for the summer. And their best friends are back in town, their seven-year-old in tow. It really was a “stay-cation” that he was looking forward to, especially since the thing Leo wanted the most was to spend days on historical tours of Killian's favorite city, some of them led by Killian himself, and others led by costumed tour guides in celebration of the Fourth of July week in Boston.
But it's one of these costumed tour guides that is putting Killian through hell. Ben. Ben, a twenty-something year old, probably a college student, with shaggy ginger hair and a freckle-covered face, wearing an American Revolutionary War uniform.
He got through the part of the tour where Ben referred to the British soldiers during the Revolutionary War as the “bloody Brits,” paired with a terrible fake accent. He got through the discussion of the Boston Tea Party where Ben instead referred to them only as the “Colonizers.”
But now?
“You know,” Ben says, turning around to look at their small group as he leads them down the last few blocks towards the Faneuil Market, the ending place for their tour. “We focus so much on the Brits of the past on this tour, but what about the Brits of the present?”
There’s a small smattering of laughter from the group, but Killian squeezes his hands into fists, tight enough for them to quickly start shaking. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Emma turn to him, making sure he is okay, and though he is decidedly not, there’s nothing they can do without calling attention to him.
This is one form of torture. Everyone around him learning he is one of these bloody Brits would be something more. Or, he fears it would. Hence why he hasn’t spoken since the tour started, simply happy to be spending time with the people closest to him.
“It’s one thing to colonize countries when it was all the rage. Everyone was colonizing when the British ruled the Americas, and the Brits colonized everyone — but to still have colonies? In the twenty-first century?”
There’s a mumble of approval through the group.
Killian just rolls his eyes.
“And who still has a queen, in this day and age?” he jokes, and this gets a few laughs in response. “Nowadays, the Royal Family seems more like the stars of a reality show then the people ruling a nation. I mean, why does it matter what the prince’s wife wears on a daily basis? That’s the status of a celebrity, not of a woman who might one day rule the whole country.” There are a few more laughs, the crowd now getting more into his new-found stand up comedy role.
Killian disagrees, pressing his teeth lightly into his tongue.
(Though he would never admit it, Killian kind of agrees with this point. The fame of the Royal Family has seemed a little irrelevant to him over the past few years — though it was never something that Killian would talk about in public.)
Emma hears Killian huff beside her, groaning under his breath. What she can’t see is the way his teeth are practically cutting into his tongue, the faint taste of blood taking over his mouth.
He’s surprised to feel Emma’s hand wrap around his, and the warmth of it, even in the bright city sun, calms the boiling of his blood.
She has been his best friend for years. Sure, they may not have gotten along that well when they first became neighbors her and David’s senior year of college, but that was almost twelve years ago. Since then, they have watched David and Mary Margaret fall in love, move out of the city, get married, and have Leo, with their second on the way. They have seen Killian go through two roomates: Jefferson and Robin, leaving him with Will currently.
They have seen Emma go through more. Ruby, Belle, Zelena, Regina, and Tink, all of whom tended not to stay too long, though only Regina and Tink left because of Emma: Regina because they were too different, their schedules opposites, Regina much more meticulous than Emma could ever be.
And Tink? Tink was insanely jealous of her friendship with Killian, even more jealous when their friendship became more. It was only a few weeks before that she heard Tink shouting Killian’s name through the thin bedroom walls in the middle of the night while she was staying in Killian’s apartment, which pushed Emma to ask her to move out.
Because after everything, they fell in love.
The only issue with that is they decided not to tell David and Mary Margaret yet. It’s not that they don’t think their friends would be happy for them — Mary Margaret would probably start screaming, and after David stopped leveling him with his gaze, he would crack a smile, as well.
But it’s only been five months. They decided to wait longer until they told their friends, and holding hands in the middle of Boston is not the way to keep their relationship secret.
It helps the angry pounding of his heart, though, which is almost enough for him to not care.
“Why is their flag so busy?” Ben asks, pulling an old-fashioned American flag out of his pocket, one with thirteen stars. “All those lines going every which way and all that — not to mention the colors. Red, white, and blue, so original.”
At this, Leo turns around to Emma and Killian, standing at the back of the group. Just the night before, Killian had gone through the history of the British flag with the lad, who sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, his bright eyes wide with interest.
But when he sees Killian and Emma standing behind him, old enough to know what their intertwined hands means, his eyes widen in a completely different way. Emma can swear that everything around her slows down as Leo opens his mouth to say something, and she presses her finger to her lips before he can make a sound. He looks worried for a moment, until Killian winks and smiles at him, and the smile returns to the seven year old’s face and he turns back to the tour guide.
This time, when Killian turns to Emma, she lets out a sigh of relief.
“And don’t even get me started on tea!” Ben says, pulling Killian’s attention back to him. “Why are they so high and mighty about their tea? We all know that coffee is the far superior hot beverage.”
To none of his friend’s surprise, this is when Killian cracks: if Killian Jones has strong opinions about anything, it's coffee. “Oi, really, mate?” he yells, and he couldn’t have sounded more British if he tried. When every eye in the group turns towards him, his face reddens even more, and Emma’s not sure if it’s from embarrassment or anger.
Probably both.
Though when she sees David’s gaze fall to their hands, his eyes widening in surprise, her cheeks redden in her own embarrassment.
“Not a single piece of information you just supplied is correct, do you know that? Or if it is, it’s completely biased.” He’s on a roll, not stopping now, and even as he runs his fingers through his hair, his grip on her hand tightens, as if it's the one thing stopping him from truly losing control. Emma fears it just might be. “Yes, okay, Great Britain still has colonies, but do you know who else does? America! Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, they all have colonies! It’s more than just us bloody Brits. And do you know that the queen doesn’t actually ‘rule the entire country’?" He definitely has not stopped to take a breath, which worries her. "There’s a whole system of people who work with her, who keep her in check, and it might be a system that’s a few hundred years old, but I’ll tell you this, our checks and balances work much better than whatever bullshit that happens here.”
A few of the younger people in the group all go “Oooh!”, some of them laughing, others outraged, but it’s all nothing compared to the surprised outrage written across Ben’s freckled features.
When he starts again, the words are tumbling madly from his lips, much angrier when he conveyed the same information to Leo the night before. “The British Flag is a culmination of the British, Scottish, and Irish from when King James I of Scotland inherited all three thrones, so it’s technically not just one flag, but three all out together. It represents the same kind of unity that your American flag is also supposed to represent, three countries coming together in unity, though of course that’s not the flag that we use anymore. It was redesigned when Great Britain and Ireland were united in 1801, and that is the flag that you all recognize as our Union Jack.”
He stops for a moment, looking around the group, his blue eyes wide with anger, with madness — pausing for a moment on David, whose eyes are not on his face, but on his hand, which he realizes in this moment is still wrapped around Emma’s.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
His free hand raises to scratch at the spot behind his ear that always seems to itch when he finds himself embarrassed. “I’m not even going to start on the tea comment, because that’s just plain bullshit,” he says after a silent second, his voice even again, and he even laughs lightly, which makes the tension that has filled the group lighten a bit.
Except for Ben.
Ben looks like he’s never been more embarrassed in his life. It’s a definite possibility that he actually hasn’t.
A beat passes. The group is silent.
And then Ben, still red in the face, claps his hands together, standing on the steps in front of the market before them.
“I would like to thank each of you for joining me on this Freedom Trail Walk during this year’s 38th annual Boston Harborfest. I hope you’ll all join us on Thursday for the Parade of Lights and Fireworks, which starts at 8:30. If anyone still needs to find a place to sit to enjoy them, let me know, I have a few suggestions. Enjoy the rest of the celebration!”
The group begins to dissipate, David leading their whole crew a few steps away from where the bulk of the group still stands. Killian moves to let go of Emma’s hand, to try and make the conversation he knows is going to happen a little less awkward, but Emma refuses to let go. Killian turns to her, David and Mary Margaret still leading them with Leo between them. He catches her eye, and when she turns her head and smiles at him, he pulls their hands up to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
Her smile widens.
He hears her unspoken words, a question she desperately wants to ask him: are you sure? He hopes that the smile that takes over his face is answer enough.
Because he's sure. He may never have been so sure about anything in his life as he is about Emma — as he is about loving her, about wanting to be with her badly enough to have to incur the wrath of their best friends — of her brother — finding out like this.
God, he loves her. It's not the first time he's had the thought, but it's the first time he's realized just how true it all is. He's not ready to tell her, to tell anyone, but he's ready enough to believe it in his own mind. To think it when he looks at her, when he wakes up curled around her in the morning, when he's buried deep inside her.
Sure, they've only been together for a few months, but he's been in love with her for years. He tried to bury it beneath bottles of rum, tried to hide from it by using other women, but every time when he woke up beside one of them, he would dream it was her, wake up hoping it wasn't just a dream, and regret when that was not the truth.
Needless to say, the first morning he finally woke up beside her, golden locks strewn all over his face and his chest, his arm asleep from refusing to move away from her during the night, was the greatest morning of his life.
"Alright," David says, turning back to the two of them to turn their group into a circle. But when his eyes go wide, they are not focused on Killian and Emma's joined hands, but instead just over Killian's shoulder.
Not a moment later, he feels a tap on it, paired with a soft-spoken, "Excuse me, sir."
He whips his head towards the sound, now releasing his grip on Emma's hand, and when he meets the eyes of the person standing behind him, he remembers why Emma reached over to grab his hand in the first place, which he's both happy and angry about.
Ben.
He still looks like he's never been more embarrassed in his life.
Good.
"I, uh, I just really wanted to apologise for what… happened," he says, his eyes falling to the pavement. "I really have no problems with the British, just to clear that up. I just — I never had anyone on my tour that's not American — not that you're not American, of course, that's not what — not what I'm saying, it's just — "
Finally, Killian stops him, raising his hands up between them. "Listen, lad," he says, and Emma can't help but think that his accent is stronger than it usually is. Or maybe she's just focusing on it more. "I appreciate your apology. I just hope this is a lesson to really know who's in your group before you go poking fun at other countries, especially ones whose residents are such hard-headed gits, aye? Not everyone will be as forgiving as I am."
It's not until he smiles at him that Ben realizes he's serious. "Th—thank you," he stutters, his voice soft, and after a moment passes (one Killian is pretty sure neither of them breathe through), he turns to walk away.
When Killian turns back towards his friends, the sigh he lets out is both audible and visible, the rise and fall of his shoulders obvious. "Well, that was exciting," he says after yet another silent moment passes between them, and then turns to David. "What's the plan, boss?"
But it's Mary Margaret who responds. "Oh, no, uh-uh, no way." She shakes her head, crossing her arms over the third different stars-and-stripes dress that has made an appearance this week.
When David mirrors her appearance, Leo looks back and forth between them a few times before he does the same. If they weren't teaming up against her, Emma would think they're adorable.
But since they are teaming up against her, that ruins it a bit.
"Yeah," David says, his bright eyes narrowing into slits. "It seems the two of you have to explaining to do."
"Yeah!" Leo adds, though his glare is not as piercing as his parents'.
"What's there to explain?" Killian asks, his voice much calmer than Emma's would have been, especially once he reaches out to wrap his arm around her shoulder, pulling himself closer to her. "We're dating. It's still relatively new to us, and we didn't want to get anyone's hopes up in case it doesn't work out."
At his words, David's face softens, but when Emma turns to Mary Margaret, hers has not. "How long has this been going on?"
Now it's Emma's turn to answer, the lump in her throat almost completely gone now, but her voice is still soft when she manages to speak. "Not very long. Just a few months, four? Maybe five?"
This does not make Mary Margaret any calmer, either. "Five months! You've been dating for five months and you haven't told anyone?!"
Emma feels her face growing hot. This is why they haven't told anyone.
"And why do you think that is, hm?" Killian asks, gesturing towards Mary Margaret with his free hand.
This silences the woman, enough for her to snap her mouth shut.
"I guess, uh, it makes sense now," David says, realizing exactly what Killian and Emma hoped he had: that Mary Margaret's response was exactly what they had expected.
But the best thing about David and Mary Margaret finding out happened two nights later, when Killian realized he didn't want to move back into his apartment when David asked if they could stay a few days longer than expected.
They even invited the rest of their friends over to help move his things into her apartment, sitting out on the balconies to watch the fireworks over the bay.
A year later, he stood in the exact same place to ask her to marry him, and was sure to tell everyone the very next day at the Nolan's first annual Fourth of July barbeque.
#cs fics#my writing#wordsbymeganmichael#cs ff#captain swan#snowing#killian as a godfather#and a history nerd#and a poor british man#secret dating#apartment sharing#literal fireworks#and boats#well ships#and i did a little research for this to make sure everything was accurate#so please dont come at me with that#history nerd fic
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Deep Water | 00.2 Caitlyn
August 10th, 2019
There were two months until Alice released her next album and even now times were hectic. There were people running around her Californian house trying to get ready. She was packing to go to New York. And there I stood in the middle of this whirlwind, not sure how I fitted into any of it. I’d given up summer in Oxford for one trailing behind my sisters, helping Bea at comic con and sneaking out onto the floor with her so we could geek out about all of our fictional heroes like everyone else, visiting her on set with Alice while her life was insane. Then, now rushing around packing my bags that I never even had time to unpack to go to New York for the release and then back California to enjoy the last of the summer before school started back.
Their lives were hectic and it was a break from the normal life I lived in Oxford.
What I didn’t know at the time is I too would be grabbed by the hand and pulled into the spotlight of Hollywood. I also didn’t know that my sisters had been planing that the whole summer. But now I do.
I had one day left in LA and me and Alice had a plan; we were going to Disney. Obviously, Alice couldn’t just waltz into Disney and not expect to draw a crowd but she could if she put on a disguise of her old clothes. Which to me was hilarious, seeing her as I remember her before the fame.
“You look like you just walked out of your year 10 photos,” I commented as she walked out of her room.
“And you look like your going to seduce Hercules, Ms. Megara,” she snarked back. It was good to spend time with her because I could tell she hadn’t changed at all.
“I wish Bea or the others could be here,” I stated looking at a photo of our whole family at Christmas.
“Well, they’re busy people. Anyway does that mean you don’t want to spend time with me?” She asked sarcastically.
“No anyway, Arya’s going to join us so I can spend time with her not you,” I snark back to her.
“Now girls play nice,” Arya says as we walk up to her car, ready to have some fun.
“Sansa, Lis,” I greet my cousins as I climb into the back with them.
“Hey, little kitten,” Sansa said to me.
September 2nd, 2019
The first day of school was always one of my favourites. The morning rush of breakfast on the go. The rush of three kids and their mother in the one bathroom that currently had running water. The ushering of my littlest sister onto her bus. Then doing the same for Dot. Before I got into mum’s car with her and we drove toward Oxford University and my posh school. I’d gotten a scholarship there after Alice and Bea had gotten their own. But instead of arts scholarships, I got an academic scholarship, which meant I had to keep up and be one of the top graduates each year or I’d lose it and have to go to normal school near my house. Luckily for me, yet another one of my sisters had gotten a scholarship to the same school this time for sport. Yet she insisted on going on public transport with her friends to their school and then to our school, which wasn’t that far away.
Though when my mum dropped me off at the gate I was greeted by the warm sign greeting of McKenna and the warm smiles of the rest of our group of friends. So I signed back to her as we walked toward our form classroom ready to start a new year.
When we arrived though we weren’t just greeted by the warm, welcoming face of Ms. McDonald, who we had met on Friday at a quick meet and greet of our teachers, we were instead welcomed by Mr. White, the schools self-proclaimed ‘best’(?) drama teacher. Who wanted to talk to me. The only reason I knew who he was was because he was Bea’s favourite teacher when she was at school here.
“Miss Watson, Caitlyn, Cat, I need you to come with me,” he stated.
“Never call me Cat or Caitlyn again and I’ll think about it,” I said pushing Kennzie’s hand down as she signed some things that even those who don’t know sign language know are bad.
“Caitlyn, he wants to talk to you about an opportunity for your future. Take it while it’s here,” Ms. McDonald told me, looking me right in the eye.
“Fine but if this has anything to do with what my sister’s do I will not do it. I don’t want fame and I never have. I want to change the world and be successful, not famous because fame is irrelevant and corrupting trust me I’ve seen it first hand,” I told him looking down at him.
“No can do, they requested you by name.”
“Well, then they can be disappointed. Mr. White, I’m sure you’d agree inflicting fame on someone my age wouldn’t be a good thing. You remember my sisters’ multiple mental breakdowns over their time here, probably better than I do.”
“Damn, your more like Sansa than Alice aren’t you?” He asked me.
“Yes. Yes, I am,” I responded.
October 22, 2019
The day had finally come when Alice would release her new album. And it was all anyone at school could talk about at school. Except for Kenzie. I always hung out with her on album release week. Even my other friends weren’t immune to album days and as she couldn’t hear the music she didn’t care any more than I did. While yes I was proud of my sisters, I couldn’t help but get annoyed with every premier or album release that happened because it would be all anyone who knew could ask me.
When I say ‘anyone who knew’ I mean Alice and Bea had stage names that everyone believed to be really, even they sometimes did. Alice had become Taylor Swift and Bea had become Florence Pugh. Both of them taking their middle names and turning them into names and then choosing an inside joke into a last name. For Alice, this joke was the fact she wouldn’t stop singing that song from Mulan where they say something about being as swift as the coursing river. For Bea, this was the fact she always used to yell ‘PEW! PEW! PEW!’ whenever our grandmother made us go to church, so she took up the name Pugh like the seats and the sound she made.
They were inside jokes that only the three of us and our mother knew, making it even more special whenever they got called their fake names in public because all of us would burst out laughing.
I thought I was out of the woods of teenage stupidness as me and Kenzie walked toward her mother’s bookstore and their house. That was until I saw Alice leaning against her car smiling at me. Well actually it was a bit after that when she dropped us off at the bookstore and a paparazzi got out of the car behind us and started asking Alice a lot of questions about the album, who we were and about her most recent relationship. And then Kenzie’s mother came out of the bookstore and scared him away.
“Thank You!” Kenzie signed to her mother as we walked into the store.
“It’s what mothers do! How was school?” her mother signed back at her.
“Good, we’re going to study upstairs!” Kenzie signed back just before her mother could ask any more questions. “Who is it? Do I know them? Tell me all your secrets, Caitlyn. What happened between you? How was filming? Is Brie nice?” she signed once we got into her room.
“Slow down Kenzie. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was good and she’s lovely she wants to help you get hearing aids to help you,” I signed back at her. While most people thought Kenzie was either thick or completely deaf I knew the truth. She had a disease that slowly ate away at her ability to hear, she was born with 60% and 40% hearing and by now only had 5% hearing in both ears and it was still going down. But there is surgery, the only thing is it’s experimental and only happens in Atlanta, and her insurance doesn’t cover Atlanta and they can’t afford it. Not without selling the bookstore and her mother going back to corporate law, which she loathes.
“Caitlyn Watson. I know that look and you are not letting your sisters and her pay for my treatment, I know I’m never going to hear my mother, you or anyone ever again and I’ve made peace with that,” she signed at me after a while having accepted my answers to her earlier questions.
“I wasn’t going to. The doctor who invented it is coming to Oxford next semester to teach the surgery to my mother’s students. I thought she could do it and if Brie wants to buy you hearing aids till then why not let her. You’re going to need them anyway, why not get them now so you can get used to them before you can hear mostly by yourself. Or I can let Bea and Alice pay for it all,” I signed back at her knowing she wouldn’t agree unless I lightly threatened her.
“OK. But are you sure it will work?” She responded.
“They get back to either the level they were born with or 80% if they were born with 100% so yes but you’ll still need hearing aids,” I told her as she started crying at the thought of getting her hearing back.
“If I do this, you have to take me to Billie Elish and Taylor Swift,” She told me in response.
“Deal, Kenna. It’s a deal,” I respond going to shake her hand.
#deep water#writing#My writing#MY OCs#olivia holt#taylor swift#florence pugh#celebrity au#pjo#10 Things I Hate About Queue
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Ok Everyone I’m On A Roll Today
I’m gonna give you a proper explanation as to why we’ll never get a Led Zeppelin movie.
Buckle up cause this is gonna get long.
We, as classic rock fans live in an age of reminiscence. We take out our records, cds, mp3s and sit back, relax, and think of the glory days that we’ve never experienced if we’re under the age of 50. Even though we’re decently mainstream, The Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody took interest in classic rock to new heights. It was critically acclaimed, Rami Malek won an oscar, and fans of other bands of the 60s-80s stirred with anticipation for the day they would get their band in the limelight. A fan, like myself, and many others, knowing that 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s (also referred here as LZ) creation (although they officially got together in 1968) perhaps are wondering if they are going to get a surprise biopic announcement in the near future.
However, I have come to crush everybody’s dreams. The answer is never as long as the remaining band members are still alive. Now before y’all get out your pitchforks, let’s focus our attention to the most important member of this debate: guitarist James Patrick Page, also known as Jimmy Page, Pagey, and Jimmurs back in the deviantart LZ community in 2010.
Although Led Zeppelin arose from the planning and careful selection of the higher ups at Atlantic Records (mostly manager Peter Grant although Jimmy was the one who went out to find members) Led Zeppelin, is Jimmy Page’s masterpiece, his opus magnum, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought of his band to be like one of his children, perhaps his favorite. Understandably, he was devastated when the band broke up after drummer John Bonham’s death from alcohol poisoning, and everybody knows he wants the band to be back together in some shape or form. This of course sparked a feud with singer Robert Plant, who also understandably was doing well in his solo career and wanted to move on. Depending on who you talk to, it’s never really been officially resolved despite the 2007 concert and Robert’s final declaration that he will never do anything Led Zeppelin related ever again, Jimmy has focused on other matters such as remixing LZ albums and releasing concert dvds. In addition to that, there are several other matters worth pointing out. In the past, and even to this day, it was extremely difficult to get ahold of LZ songs to use in tv and movie soundtracks because Jimmy, unofficially “in charge” of LZ music distribution is overprotective of how his music is used (probably stemming from LZ’s hatred of concert bootleggers but that’s a different story). We also have a long history of lawsuits that accuse LZ of plagiarism and ripoffs stemming from the 70s, that have taken a hit to LZ’s musical reputation. Looking at Jimmy’s defensive stance over the band’s music and public image, we segway to our next question.
Can a Led Zeppelin movie give an authentic and enjoyable experience for audiences?
We know from the nearly ten year saga to create a Queen movie that there was a lot of contention between the remaining band members and directors over portrayal of the members’ personal lives within Queen, and Queen pushing for a more family friendly image. In the end, the movie earned a PG 13 rating, an acceptable negotiation for both parties, and a good rating to draw in an audience. Assuming that using this model will bring in the most amount of money and recognition for future biopic movies, we shall apply it to the band Led Zeppelin.
A PG 13 rated Led Zeppelin movie would be impossible to do. No offense to Queen (they’re my second favorite band behind Zep so I’m allowed to say this) but they are tame compared to the antics that Led Zeppelin got up to back in their heyday. We’re talking about what you imagine when you think of the rock n roll lifestyle. Loud music, jet setting, partying all night, sex, drugs, trashing hotel rooms, groupies, more drugs, more sex, getting trashed at the club, pump it up baby a whole hecka lotta YOW times10! Led Zeppelin were a bunch of party animal freaks (Bassist John Paul Jones is debatable but there was New Orleans)and well you could attempt to focus directly on the music, but a lot of the music in the later years ties into that crazy rock n roll lifestyle (Sick Again from Physical Graffiti and For Your Life from Presence) and Jimmy Page’s descent into heroin addiction and John Bonham’s gradual and tragic deterioration from years of alcohol abuse had a profound affect on how the band members got along during the In Through The Outdoor sessions and is the reason why it still has a very mixed reception and is ranked low on favorite LZ albums.
A rated R movie could work, you may say. I mean look at the Doors movie. Yeah but even though The Doors got trippy and Jim Morrison was a character man, a Led Zeppelin rated R movie would be a very hard rated R. Again, this goes back to all the tour commotion, where especially in the early years, a lot of sordid stuff happened. And I know you’re thinking, I can live watching a couple of sex scenes. Oh sweet summer child who has not gone through the threshold of transitioning from a Led Zeppelin fan who strictly listens to their music to searching out their history, inspiration, stories from the countless biographies out there, we are talking about some fucked up stuff that I am not gonna even talk about in this post for fear of invoking the wrath of the tumblr flag gods, and that the more sensitive leaning people might consider to be NC17 stuff. And there is a difference between detailing this information in a niche book that only diehard fans will pick up, and putting it in a movie intended for everybody and no shit sherlock you will get controversy.
And you may ask, who are the subjects of such controversial tales? Basically everybody, although as we said JPJ falls into bassists are usually boring category, Robert Plant had a pretty good amount of moments because no shit he was hot back then and who wouldn’t go wild over him. And our main offenders of depravity and strife? John Bonham, Jimmy Page, and special mention to tour manager (and subject of much controversy within the Led Zeppelin fandom itself) Richard Cole. And if based on director’s tendencies to capture the authentic even if it involves shock content, the depictions of these three men will garner a lot of attention. While John Bonham is dead and cannot speak for himself, the other two can. Based on Richard Cole’s tell all contributions to the classic 1980s publication that detailed LZ’s rise and fall, Hammer of The Gods, he’ll probably just pop up out of the woodworks and bask in the next 15 minutes of fame. But Jimmy? James Patrick I will do anything to keep Led Zeppelin’s reputation in a good light Page? Oh he’ll have a field day alright. And it’s not just bracing ourselves for the inevitable telling directors what they can and cannot put in, it’s also opening the huge, sticky, labeled with a giant TRIGGER WARNING can of worms what exactly Jimmy was doing that would be so controversial both then and now. Now, I know that everyone in the Led Zeppelin fandom knows what I’m about to say, probably some in the classic rock fandom in general who knows things here and there, too, but this is for everybody who doesn’t know. Jimmy Page in the 1970s dated teenage girls. And to clarify, I’m not talking about that gray line that people debate about of 18 technically signaling adult years, yet is still a vulnerable age, I’m talking about girls, minors, who were14-16 when he was nearly or in his 30s. And the relationship that is the most documented (Lori Maddox for the LZ fans reading) oh my god, it is just messed up. Like basically stalked and kidnapped her so they could meet, and in the relationship locked her up in hotel rooms while he was in concerts messed up. You might say it was the 70s, they just turned a blind eye well honey it’s 2019, and a topic as dicey as a grown ass man going after children is not gonna be ignored in this day and age where people are starting to pay more attention to issues like these. I know that if a director decides to devote a segment of that movie to that part of Jimmy’s past (and present if you think about him going out with 20 something year old women when he’s in his 70s) it will basically destroy his own reputation. Which is very, very much intertwined with Led Zeppelin’s. So if he takes a hit, LZ does too, and he cannot afford to let that happen. And if this means having to decline an offer for a biopic in order to preserve a sliver of integrity that is just dangling by a thread as old news becomes common knowledge, so be it.
Oh yeah the christians will probably get wound up again about LZ being satanic or some shit due to Alestier Crowley and the whole playing Stairway to Heaven backwards thing but hey they’re irrelevant to this discussion
So the TLDR: We’re never getting a Led Zeppelin movie. Reputation is everything to Jimmy Page and a movie that goes into some hardcore detail about band “shenanigans” will serve us a whopping discourse for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that will get the movie, and the band slammed hard.
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