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magnorious · 5 months

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Review: ‘We Take a Zebra to Vegas’, Percy Jackson Episode 6

***Spoilers Ahead for all books and show. TL;DR at the bottom***

After episode 5 I was starting to wonder if episode 3 was a fluke. Here we have the potential for the only non-book reference I wanted in the entire show: Would Nico cameo in the Lotus Casino?

Small, I know, but book fans were robbed of ever seeing him on screen once already when Titan’s Curse was never adapted and with his massive popularity, I was almost certain he’d be here. The closer we got to the Lotus Casino, however, the more I wanted to be wrong. Almost none of the characters look like they’re supposed to, many of them with inconsistent personalities to match. I went from hoping for a blink-and-you’ll miss it reference with a little scruffy 10-year-old that book fans would be able to tell is Nico by his appearance alone to hoping they’d not touch the matter with a 10-foot pole.

After the absurdly dramatic and angsty episode 5 that was supposed to be semi-dangerous and funny, there was a chance to have both the whimsy and wonder of the Lotus Casino, and the rather chilling escape. Before that, the conversation about conservation in the back of the zoo trafficking truck. There was a lot of opportunity for more quiet character moments as well as the adventure and absolutely no need for more nonsense filler.

Onto the episode and given that Hermes is in the thumbnail, are we all in agreement that he only exists here because he’s played by Lin Manuel Miranda? That’s the reason, right? He barely exists in the first book otherwise.

We start right off the bat with more interesting changes. Instead of IM-ing Luke in some random car wash, they do so in the zoo truck. The scene in the book was funnier, because it existed in the place that it did to be funny and the pay-to-pump water gave a clear time limit. But more importantly – they decided to scapegoat Clarisse… for reasons.

Why? Just why? In the book they spend 99% of their quest accusing the wrong person, Hades, and don’t realize they’re wrong until it’s too late. Everyone in the book was like “it’s Hades, it’s gotta be, his kids were Nazis” (a detail I still can’t believe exists, wow). Chiron said it was Hades, everyone said it was Hades, based on ancient biases that Hades spends the entire series proving wrong. He is the best godly parent by a country mile by the end of Book 5 and all of that groundwork started here, when Hades was just as much a victim of the Master Bolt nonsense as everyone else.

Clarisse is neither here nor there, because the writers didn’t have the foresight to script or film any scenes at camp of this random arrest that’s supposed to be important now. The jump cut from ‘the animals have a plan’ to them stopping traffic on the Vegas strip was funny, but it robbed the scene of the seriousness it should have had. More powers Percy doesn’t get: His ability to talk to horses and horse-adjacent animals.

Once they make it to the Lotus Casino, the script does this incredibly irritating thing where it removes the tension of the unknown from every hurdle they meet. Percy’s trapped alone against a mysterious monster in the book and has no idea how to beat it? Nope, Annabeth exposits all over it. They enter a seemingly-abandoned, mortal waterpark and only get suspicious once it’s too late? Nope, Annabeth figures out immediately that it’s a godly amusement park and they must be careful. Two twelve year olds and a satyr are immediately charmed by the glitz and glam of the lotus casino and get trapped for almost the rest of their time limit for the quest? Nope, Grover exposits all over that, too, ruining the mystery and any danger or threat.

Why?

The show also does the irritating thing where it creates problems just to solve them later and before you go “that’s the point of conflict” I mean it creates meaningless problems through meaningless contrivances, like every horror movie cliche that forces its characters to make illogical choices so they don’t just run away from the horror.

And another irritating thing! Spoiling bigger mysteries before their time: We didn’t learn about May Castellan until book 5. Why is this here? What purpose does this serve? Percy realizing he didn’t even know Luke’s last name for five whole years meant something to him. Seeing Luke’s tragic, mortal mother, after hating him for five years *means something* to Percy and to the readers. The gods damned Lotus Casino was absolutely not the place to discover any of this. Why did they do this?

Also, who tf is Augustus? He’s fine. Grover’s random side quest is fine. Every consecutive episode leaves me more and more annoyed with him, but it’s *fine*.

They do actually forget their purpose in the casino, thank the gods. Or, Grover does. Annabeth continues to give away May Castellan exposition like Halloween candy, smack-talking Hermes in a way that she’d never dare at 12 years old. Hermes is still only here because he’s played by Mr. Miranda. He’s fine, he’s just not Hermes. His “woe is me, loving mortals is so damn hard” speech exists. The sentiment is four books early, but it exists.

I understand why it’s here. They’re trying desperately to capture Percy’s internal conflict over whether or not the gods and his dad care about him, if he should let himself be disappointed presuming that they don’t. Problem is– in the book, Poseidon didn’t send a naiad to give him false promises of a clandestine meeting. In the book, the naiad told Percy there’d be a vague “gift” in Santa Monica, and Percy was never naive enough to think that gift would be his dad.

The entire season so far has tried to give nuance to both sides of the “do the gods care and should they be expected to” argument and it’s just not a very well written attempt. Why? Because it had five entire books to give both sides, and they’re shoving as much of it as they can here like they’re afraid they won’t get renewed for season 2. In doing so, they’ve made a tonal mess.

Once Hermes is gone and done randomly and spitefully sabotaging their quest, Percy, unseen, figures out that they’ve lost time and lost Grover. Also, Annabeth pick-pocketed the God of Thieves? Funny, but no. The script has its weird Mitichlorian moment sciencing lore by adding in the detail that lotus nectar or whatever is pumped in through the air, a question no one had and a plot hole that didn’t exist.

They do manage to keep the fear and unsettling realization that they’ve lost time, but their amnesia is inconsistent and confusing, considering that they overexplained how the casino works. Then they’re gone using a God of Thieves’ Car gimmick.

No Nico, thank the gods, unless he was one of the VR kids in the background. It would have been wonderful to see him in a better script.

In the book, they get instantly dazzled by the food, the video games, the nice clothes, nice suite, all things Percy could never dream about growing up poor. There is no Hermes and he only figures out something’s wrong when he meets other kids displaced from time and has to shake Annabeth and Grover from the illusion. They use their casino cash cards with infinite money to hail a cab all the way to LA and it’s funny.

They create more problems that didn’t need to exist by forcing Percy to drive a taxi and okay, that was genuinely funny. I am shocked, though, that Annabeth’s pride let him drive.

The episode comes to an end with them supposedly by the Santa Monica Pier… in a thunderstorm. In southern California. Odd choice, but okay. I'd say the storm exists because Poseidon's pissed but I really think it's there beacuse "dark and stormy night" fit their new vibe better than bright sunlight.

Maybe in live action it was tricky trying to make him both dry underwater and still plausibly underwater and not just rotoscoped in with a hazy green filter. For all their love of exposition, they never actually told non-book watchers about that, or that he can breathe underwater and control some currents. It’s also supposed to be night time, and yet he’s lit as if it’s high noon far above on the surface – they could have just written the beach scene at noon.

Then the naiad he was supposed to talk to in St Louis drops the bomb that the Summer Solstice deadline already passed, Poseidon got too impatient to wait for Percy after the casino delay, and the gods are now at war.

What the fu…..?

Percy resolves to keep going despite armageddon already happening apparently. She gives him exactly the right amount of pearls that he needs, not three, which would force him to choose, and then cut to black.

—

How is the best part of this episode Annabeth’s completely deadpan and exasperated Dude when Percy asks her not to make fun of him? That, and Percy driving the taxi.

Once again, to all the set designers and VFX artists and costumes and makeup and foley and music and score and everyone in between – you’re amazing, keep up the great work. To the actors, you were given a bad script and bad direction and you did the best you could.

Having just come off watching Game of Thrones for the first time and seeing little Arya, Bran, and Rickon Stark’s actors doing donuts around these three just goes to show that it’s not that child actors’ lack of experience that’s the problem. Heck even Baby Percy is better than these three. It’s how much or how little help they get in conveying what they’re supposed to. These kids were thrown to the wolves.

I don’t watch the teasers and I stay away from all marketing for the show. I don’t know who’s been cast to play any characters we haven’t already seen so what Hades and Poseidon look like are a complete mystery that I do hope pays off.

With two episodes to go they have the following left from the book to adapt: Crusty’s water beds, the DOA studios, the entire trip to the underworld and Cerberus and Hades that took two hefty chapters, the Ares fight, Percy’s trip to Olympus, Luke's betrayal and reveal, and the return home to find Hades had paid his debt.

Suddenly the mini series with an episode to burn in St Louis has to sprint to the finish line.

Maybe if they hadn’t spent ten minutes expositing with Hermes they could have at least crammed in Crusty and the DOA, but it looks like armageddon is already upon us so who knows? They might’ve just tossed out the rest of the book to write their own ending.

TL;DR This show is a mess and this episode actually has me nostalgic for the brevity of the horrible movie because they didn’t even try and it’s fun to make fun of. This is just disappointment stretched out across seven hours instead of speedrun in 90 minutes. The skeleton of the book (mostly) remains intact and to all those who keep saying “at least it’s not the movie,” you’re right. Enjoy.

#pjo series #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #review #pjo

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wack-ashimself · 1 year

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The closest I ever came to going vegan...

Okja (the super pig. Spoilers)

<Backstory: 'Poker Face' has an episode where a known BBQ guy goes vegan after watching Okja. So I had to see what it was about. Turns out, I like the director's work (All of it) and didn't realize he had such a wide variety of movies.>

Plot is after being paid to raise a super big GMO pig (sold as magic/miracle pig) for 10 years, it's supposed to go back to the company to be made into meat. Young girl doesn't want to give it up. Goes on an adventure to save it. And for a mostly light hearted romp, there is some graphic and violent scenes. Forced breeding, cops beating the FUCK out of people, and probably the most real to life walk thru of a meat processing plant in a movie I ever saw (non documentary).

In the end, at the processing plant, the evil CEO won't give up the pig cuz it's bad business. The girl gives up her solid golden pig statue (what her grandpa basically sold the pig for) in order to save it. And this is all after you saw, step by step, how they would go from killing to chopping up the meat*. So you already sat thru a lot...

but then, something I felt like you would see at a concentration camp. It rocked me...

As the girl is being escorted out with her pig, going by all the locked up and being systematically killed THOUSANDS of other pigs, some of the other pigs are curious and follow them. You don't understand why, until one starts to attack the electric fence, hurting itself. Then you see them push something thru...

THEIR FUCKING BABY!!!! They KNEW they were going to be killed, including their baby, so they took the only chance they had, and threw it to the people escaping. Okja hides the baby in her mouth. As they're walking away, all the other pigs (who have been raised separately) cry in unison as another gunshot to the head can be heard in the background....

GEEZ. I ....wow...you don't come out feeling great if you are a meat eater watching that movie. Cuz you know ALLLLLLL of that is true:

-rich people & businesses (and governments, since the FDA approved it in this movie) only care about the bottom line and will happily shove garbage, toxic garbage, down your throat. And lie every single time they can. <Also, marketing can make you believe anything if it's said loud and happy enough>

-our meat industry is SOULLESS. And we (honestly, self included) genuinely need to eat significantly less. For our health and the planet's health. I mean, do you really think making something live a terrible unhealthy caged life and then murdering it, that its' remains will be SUPER healthy for you? We are gross.

-Every living creature has a soul, can feel, can love, and can suffer.

-again, this is me reading into a foreign movie but FUCK traditions. This all happened cuz her grandpa hated her pet, and wanted her to get married? She was 14 in the movie; Let her live her fucking life.

Either way, great movie (GREAT), but....I would genuinely say this borders on at least a HARD PG rating. If kids have never thought of or heard about this (rich corporations, the meat industry, marketing lies, etc), and find out what they see is MOSTLY true....it may fuck them up.

This is exactly why I like foreign movies too. There were so many times I went 'x happened, so now y happens' and I was pleasantly surprised. It still has some tropes, but nothing completely stolen.

Okja: Solid 8.2/10. My only complaint was tilda swtinon playing herself (AGAIN. How many times can she play 2 characters?), and the CGI kinda sucked. It wasn't horrible, but ain't winning fucking awards. And if it did...holy shit, low standards much?

ps-fav part? I have 2. The beginning, when Okja basically throws itself off a cliff to save the girl and the girl finds her just...farting around, fine, wanting attention. It was so like a pet. 2nd part? STEVEN YUEN! His WHOLE character arc. Also, him playing an asshat. Summary: he's part of a PETA like group, trying to free the super pig. But he lies to get the main girl to be forced to go along with them (and gets the SHIT beaten outta him for lying to the leader.) Then, in the end, he saves the main girl and the leader, outta no where, and shows that he got TATTOOED what his boss beat the shit out of him for doing on his arm. THAT is dedication. Get the shit beat out of you (your fault), kicked out of a group you gave your everything for, come back, AND get a tat to show your dedication? Geez...

*Meat. Why not dead animals? Name specific CUTS of meat instead of the body part... then go by animal. Beef, not dead cow. Pork, not dead pig. Poultry, not dead chicken.....we change the name so you feel less remorse for eating dead things we killed for our own ease (and we don't even do it. We pay others to do it, paying someone to take the guilt. How many if the only way we could eat meat was to kill the animal ourselves could do it ? WAY WAY less than you would think.)

#Okja #movie #spoiler #spoilers #steven yeun #tilda swinton #meat #meats #poultry #beef #pork #pig #cow #chicken #peta

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the-dream-beyond · 1 year

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Episode 12: Gratitude, Preparation and Accepting Help with Grant Korgan

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Nik Tarascio

I want to start off with a question today. Which is how much do we actually have to lose to realize how much we have? And that's what today's guest really brought out for me is, so many of us, float through life unfulfilled, unhappy. And it's not until things are taken away from us, whether it's people, our abilities, our physicality, whatever that thing is, and we look back on our life and go, What a dumb shit I had so much, and I just didn't understand it. And so I hope you hear today's story.

And it's just a reminder of how much we do have how much we start from. Again, I hope this story is as meaningful to you as it was, for me, it was completely unexpected for me. And, again, I hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome to the dream beyond. I'm your host, Nik Tarascio. I'm a CEO, musician and overall seeker of Truth, inspiration, and simply put, how to live the most fulfilling life possible. Growing up surrounded by extremely wealthy and successful people gave me unique and unfiltered perspectives of those who have seemingly made it through on the dream beyond, we're letting you in on what it really takes to achieve your dreams. What happens when it turns out your destination isn't the promised land, you are expecting how to process the lessons from your past while mapping of course to true fulfillment. Let's get started.

My next guest, he went through some things that most of us hoped to never go through and after sustaining a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He refused to be limited by this new condition. As the emerging face of spinal cord recovery, he heralds his message of choosing positivity through adversity. He's an author adventurer, a pilot, which is near and dear to my heart, and a highly requested speaker. And he's also the director of the moment Foundation, which is an aviation based nonprofit. Please welcome Greg cord into the show. Thank you for being here. Grab.

Grant Korgan

I'm so honored to be here, Nick. It's great to see you. And I'm just I'm just real privileged and blessed to be on the podcast. Thank you.

Nik Tarascio

Fantastic. Well, again, I I have to start with the big question of you do so many cool things. Like you again, the pilot thing, obviously, there's always that real like brotherhood, or sisterhood between people that fly airplanes, right. It's a special thing.

Grant Korgan

Amen. Amen.

Nik Tarascio

What was your earliest dream as you were growing up, and you were thinking about what you wanted to pursue in life? What, what was that for you?

Grant Korgan

Wow, you know, I had the dream, as many of us do, as many of us aviators, there's, I don't know it's something we're born with. It's in our DNA to look to the sky and just wonder the fact that we're among what the fourth maybe fifth generation of, of human beings on the planet that have the gift, the ability to leave the ground to step off the ground, get in these amazing contraptions and go places literally looked down on the surface that gravity is held our kind to for, you know, 1000s of years. It's a mind blower and for me as a kid, I always had this mindset this this eye toward the sky, but it really clicked when I was about 15. I was on a trip with my dad. We had built a Jeep that Jeep CJ seven and I grew up in Lake Tahoe and amazing spot, incredible part of the world and like, the mountains in the Sierras. Amazing.

And so my dad and I this was our goal from the time I was a young teen was to build this Jeep so we could go do this trail together called the Rubicon Trail, and it's a multi day, sort of an overnight three day Jeep trail that you get to basically go from Sacramento in the foothills all the way into Lake Tahoe. And you arrive on the west shore and about halfway through and one of the nights. This guy rolls in and a bell jet Ranger, you know, he's got this cowboy hat and the perfect aviation mustache and he lands and of course, I'm all out as the dust is blowing everywhere.

And I'm just kind of wide eyed and he jumps out of his burden. He announces, hey, I'm giving helicopter rides, if anybody wants to go for a ride, and I don't know how it all worked out, but you know, 15 and a half year old me my dad put me in the front seat, I had the chance to go, this thing took off. And in seconds, we saw all of the backyard area that I had had ventured as a kid and played and it just it was rapid fire, you know, this montage of the amount of excellence I could see an experience. And when that thing landed, I was a different human being like it landed and I knew without question that was my path I was supposed to fly. And I remember my parents amazing, you know, very encouraging said you can do anything you want after you graduate college.

And so I carried on and I went on to college and it was amazing. I got my mechanical engineering degree. And I went on to work for Stanford at Stanford in a lab where we basically got spun out of academia by the Technology Transfer offices, because I had done an internship with Stanford's youngest nanotechnology professor and solve the standing problem basically, that led us myself and my business partners towards starting a company and we stepped out of academia and so we could serve the needs of academia from the private sector. After I graduated on a Saturday, and I was the president of nanotechnology company on a Monday, and life was just railing forward until I met my wife. I mean, I was I walked in this room. And there she was across the room.

And I knew without question, it was like, not a doubt in my mind that this was the person I was going to marry. And I'm kind of walking across the room, and I'm moving people out of the way. And I get to her, and I'd like to think that he and I could put a couple cool words together, but I got to her. And all that came out of my mouth was this, I took in a breath, and I'm about to deliver and I delivered this very awkward life. Like I was wet and weird and queasy. And like, oh, like, it didn't come out to me. But I just I just knew I knew. And it was amazing. Within a couple of weeks, we were on that path. And it was very obvious that the two of us I mean, soulmates colliding, found each other in life again, I mean, it's the greatest thing that's ever happened me period, bar none.

And in one of our first conversations, one of our very first conversations, she says to me, she goes grant. And she, I mean, this early on, pushes me back, says, Grant, if you could do anything in this life, I mean, anything, anything at all, and all your needs would be met, all the finances in the world would be in your bank account holdings, fulfillment, every box you needed checked to be to feel like you were the most successful you could possibly be. What do you do with your time? When I say, Well, I'm gonna be the president, no technology company is going very well. I know, that's what you do right now. But if you can do anything in life, all your needs are met. What are you doing with your time? And as foundational truth does, it just came out? I said, I'd be careful, I'd helicopter pilot, because that's what I wanted to be. That was me at 15 and a half, looking at my life, saying, I want to help people in their greatest time of need, when the only difference between life and death is the magic of aviation, these incredible machines that do these unbelievable things. And so it slipped out.

And she stood up out of the conversation. She said, Great. Tomorrow, you start working on your pilot's license, and she walked out of the room. And I was going, we worry because you know, when you throw something out, like, like a massive goal, like your body, protects you with excuses. It says, well, there's all these reasons you shouldn't What if you fail, what you know, all these elements that your body sort of throws these walls when she walked out of the room, and she's very strategic and very, I mean, she's, you know, this world traveling executive coach, so I'm very I was under gunned in this circumstance. But what she did very tactically, was make me realize that none of my excuses were valid. There was nobody to tell them to and so I realized as I went through them on my own, she's right. And within a week I bought into a Beechcraft C 23. I found an amazing instructor, a guy named Matt peak that just blew my absolute mind.

And I started, I bought my books, and I was on my way, and I made it all the way to that checkride where I had it scheduled DPE and I ended up in the ICU, I ended up with a spinal cord injury where I couldn't feel or move anything below my belly button. And this was March 1 2010. We were I mean, I was very blessed and that I lived a dual lifestyle. I was a scientist on one hand, and I was a professional athlete on the other we were out filming a movie snowmobile movie in the back country, and I overshot a jump. It was about 140 foot jump, and I just went two feet past the point of safety. And in my book, I wrote a book called two feet back because we hit the triple entendre had I landed two feet back, I'd be safe. I can't feel my two feet because of my back and I'm working on getting my two feet back.

Yes, triple entendre winning, nailed it. So that happened. And here I was in the ICU. And believe me, brother, here I was in the back country getting rescued by a helicopter by a Careflight pilot. And I'm strapped into the back of this helicopter, which is an entire story which I recommend you go watch we we have a movie out called the push and the push is I became the first spinal cord injured athlete in history to ski to the South Pole in Antarctica. And in that film, it goes on it 121 out of 29 International Film Fest, it's available on iTunes, Amazon anywhere you can rent a film.

But in that film, we go through the story and we have the actual footage of my spinal cord injury filmed in three different you know, camera angles and the whole element. But here I am, picture me strapped to the floor of a helicopter with the dream of being a helicopter pilot. And I can through my see color in my head strapped down corner of my eye, I can see that collective and cyclic movement. And I can see that gentleman up there living my dream, helping people. And I just ended up in the wrong seat in that helicopter. And it was soul crushing. I mean, absolutely soul crushing.

Nik Tarascio

That is. Yeah, that's a pretty dark moment of having you talked about these triple entendres and, you know, again, these moments in life where the parallels are so strong, to literally have your dream staring at you from a couple feet away. I mean, your must have been a really painful moment.

Grant Korgan

So painful. And what was crazy was, you know, the universe has a way of forcing you to stare down On the things you asked for, you know, I'm asking the universe for I want to live a life of aviation and I want to help people in that way. So wouldn't you know when I make it out of the ICU I was nine days in the ICU I was another couple days in the neuro floor. And then they put me in the inpatient rehab hospital for I was in the hospital for another month. And that month, my room had a giant window.

And sorry, man, no TV, none of that it was they were remodeling. It was a nice room, but the whole window faced the helipad now. So every single Careflight that came in and out, that's all I watched as I couldn't feel remove anything from my belly button down. And I woke up one morning in that hospital room, and it was probably, you know, 20 days into the hospital. And I could see my wife Shauna, and she's on the phone in the corner, and she's talking to somebody and I quickly put it together. She's talking to Matt, my flight instructor. And she's canceling my my test with the DPE. She's canceling my private pilot checkride.

And I heard her say, he's not going to make it yet. She threw the word yet in there and my eyebrows went up. I thought, girl, you are crazy out of your mind. I feel nothing. I moved nothing below my belly button. You know how planes work, man. We gotta push rudders and brakes and the whole thing and like, you gotta have your feet. And she saw me see her and hung up the phone. She walked over to me, I kid you not thumped me on the chest. And she said, You can borrow my confidence until you have your own. Damn.

But if she said you can borrow my competence until you have your own but you're taking that test. I was. I was, I mean, not just floored or aghast or whatever. explicative you want to throw in I just wasn't straight up disbelief. I thought, all right, cool. We'll put that little placeholder over here. And then you'll see kind of a thing but she was firm. And man, it took five years of her pushing me 10 hours a day, just seven days a week in the therapy room to get my legs to the point that I could push rudders. It took three years working with the FAA and they were amazing, by the way, and I got a class one medical and it was all done very systematically by the book through the work with the Fisto and everything and it was really well I mean, shout out to the FAA. They they have very specific rules regs and we just step by step checked each of these boxes, and then it took two years flying a Cirrus SR 20 out of Tahoe, getting that proficiency back and in 2019, I passed that private pilot checkride and it was everything to me.

I mean, it literally it was I shook the DPS hand, hugged him, the doors came open. I got yanked out of the plane like he's a jolly good fellow type thing by all the friends and family that were there. And then my instructor Chris Barbera, mountain lion aviation, unbelievable hero in my life. He grabbed me, he says, How do you feel? Do you feel like going flying? And I said, yeah, yeah, of course. I feel like going flying. He said, Shawna, you get in the passenger seat, threw me back in the pilot's seat and lay literally like shove me off. And here I am. I took up and I'm circling over Tahoe holding my wife's hand flying the plane tears and both of our eyes not even talking. Just soak in the moment in and aviation has been such a gift for me to pass on to others since that moment.

Nik Tarascio

Incredible. Well, I mean, there's so many things I hear what you just said, you know, I'm in my line of questioning, I usually like to follow my curiosity. And so I hear a lot of stuff that sounds like you like most are meaning making machines, right? Like, that's one of the beautiful things about our life is we get to create whatever meaning out of it that we want it to. And I can't help but hear this meaning of this woman who shows up in your life like this soulmate who from like, jumped Street is just like, Hey, dude, no excuses. Yeah, then you have a life play out. Such that excuses would actually be excusable by most people. Like, again, 99.999% of people would have been like you have every excuse not to pursue this. Tell them? How do you process that? How do you process that? You have this woman in your life who was like, I don't care what happens in your life, there will be no excuses.

Grant Korgan

You know, the answer is one word. It's gratitude. I mean, it is ultimate gratitude. Like, when I hit rock bottom, you can't talk about the top without talking about the bottom. And the top is we get to do these amazing things. And to your point, I have this accountability, a soulmate in my life that says you said this is what you're gonna go do you're gonna go do it and there's no matter what the excuse is, doesn't doesn't matter. The bottom happened not long after that call, you know, where I was in the hospital. And I was getting to the point I mean, I would cry. I mean, hours of crying and not crying like Oh, I think I messed up things were going bad. I mean, it was like Soul breaking crying where I just as an athlete, and a pilot, maybe in all all is a person who's so physical.

I mean, I was in body jail where nothing's moving or feeling below my belly button and I was all the realities were hitting me so hard, and it was fracturing my brain. In my soul, and in one of those massive cries were upside crushed so deep into it. And Shawna was there like, I'm here, I'm with you, we're going through this together. And she would just say to me, don't change a single one of your goals, not a single one, no matter what this is, we'll get through it. And she said in one of those moments where she just wanted to fix it and take the pain away, where she was kind of out of, oh, my, like, out of things to say, what do I how do I fix this?

And she said, You tell me three things you're grateful for right now. And I remember like, I like the tears wiped, and what and I was so confused. There's nothing to be grateful for. What are you talking about? She said, three things right now? Wouldn't let me off the hook. And I was like, no, no, no. And she said, there's zero getting out of this, I need three things from you right now that you're grateful for. And I, I mean, I just sort of said, You, you and you. And she said, Great. I can take that that's good enough for today. Next day, three things you're grateful for you you and you the day after that three things you're grateful for you you knew the date next day, three things you're grateful for I said, you you and the fact that I got to eat solid food. Okay, the next day, you solid food and the fact that I got to start PT, and then it was us all add food, pt.

And then I got to get into a reclinable wheelchair and get out of there and on and on and on. And you couldn't tell me that I wasn't that dude. 39 Days Later rolling out of the hospital, with a smile on my face in a wheelchair because I was so aware of all the little things I had to be grateful for. It's the little things that although our mind the things that we forget about all the time set, the big stuff, it's not the amazing rat, you know, super flight, it's the air we breed the friends, we have the connections, we make these incredible feelings of like when the hair stands up on your arm that goosebumps and you know, that little hit a coffee where it's just a little sweeter than it might have been yesterday, or the fact that you see a friend rising or going through a thing that they're just overcoming, there's so many little things in life that we can lock onto.

And when you put 1000 Little Things of gratitude in place, that's a foundation you can grow from rather than saying, I need this one giant thing with no foundation. And she put that in my life. And you're asking, you know, how do you move through that? How do you go and achieve the unachievable when everyone would let you off the hook including yourself, you'd let yourself off the hook. And in my case, I was so conscious to all the things I had to be grateful for that anything I needed to do between where I was and where I wanted to get to, for each of these goals, ski to the South Pole, become a pilot, etc, etc. was meaningless. I just had to lock into it and do the work and take myself out of the Oh, this isn't normal. This isn't right, it hurts all all the things you can say none of that's valid if you're just on that path. And, you know, as we're talking about path, I didn't stop at the private pilot. I mean, I shook that he and and I started my instrument the next day.

And it took me some time it took time to to be able to do it. But I went on to start the instrument I finished my instrument I finished my commercial, I got my tailwheel I went on to get my seaplane rating, I got my high performance my complex, all these been endorsements, and I just finished my CFI and the reason I've done all these red ratings is because now I get to gift that experience to others. Through the work of the moment Foundation, we begin an aviation based 501 C three nonprofit to extend experiential positivity to our first responders, our military vets, anybody who's had a life altering injury like myself, anybody that's been hit hard by like so I can throw them in the plane we can take off together and then I can hand them the thing that they lost when they had their struggle, which is control and freedom. Like you don't get to decide who comes in your room and puts their hands in your body. When you've had a spinal cord injury.

Every day people are coming in and touching you and doing things. You're going to appointments and meetings you don't want to go to and you start to numb out you you let go of that. That agency. And for me where I recognized that I was letting go of that agency was the very first time that my man Galen Gifford and Chris Barbera put me in that Cirrus put me in the left seat. We rolled down the runway, and I heard the word rotate. I pulled back the second that plane left the ground. It was like my eyes dilated. And I remembered that I'm in control. I can choose if I want to go left, right down up and it sounds super anecdotal.

But it was profound for me. Like I recognized all the places in my life. I was kind of going Ah, you can touch me here. Put your hands there TSA doing this. Yeah, we'll go to that appointment. What I just wasn't, I wasn't steering the ship. And the second I got aviation back into my vision. It was I mean, it was crystallizing how much freedom that I was going to expect of myself moving forward and that's the good If the foundation gives to others, we do it in three ways. We've got our our hero flight missions, which I just described, we've got our animal rescue. And then of course, we help with all Angel mission flights and Angel flights that we can and and it's it's just, it is such a privilege to do this work.

Nik Tarascio

That's again, absolutely beautiful to hear. And I obviously personally resonate with so much of what you're saying it's a I got to fly a super decathlon and do some flying in my 20s. People said, like, was that different, I said, it was full three dimensional freedom to not have to, you can only turn this much you can only pitch up and pitch down that much be able to hang upside down from the seat belts are very much resonate with, with what you're saying.

And, man, there's again, there's just so much to unpack, and what you're saying, in my mind goes to almost this idea of like, it's unfortunate that so many of us have to lose, lose so much, to realize how much we have. And also this idea of, you know, like a lot in my life, it's been practicing surrender, and realizing that in so many ways, I'm not in control of my life. But it is really cool. When I hear you speak that I'm like, actually, being in the cockpit is the one place that I'm mostly in control. Again, we're always at the mercy of Mother Nature and those kinds of things. And she's pretty powerful. But it's really kind of getting to do that dance. And so I I'm curious to know more about what do you have to say to people that haven't had this major setback in their life, potentially, that they're actually kind of unconscious to? How unhappy or how ungrateful they mean, maybe in the moment, they're saying, I just don't know why, but this, isn't it. This, isn't it.

And before someone has to go through a setback like that, to get that perspective of what they lost, and maybe find the gratitude on the other side of the pain, what advice do you have for someone like that?

Grant Korgan

You know, you said the right thing when you said, it's, it's unfortunate that we often have to lose so much to appreciate so much. And I think, I think aviation is kind of the great teacher. You know, my background before aviation was whitewater kayaking, and snowmobiling and climbing and mountain biking, you know, all these independent action sports that I was very, in love with and very proficient in.

And I learned so much about life from them how to approach a challenge, how to move through a struggle, how to be uncomfortable, how to thrive in spite of being uncomfortable. And then I got to put all of that into the great teacher, sort of the master class, your, your, your, you know, your PhD of learning to fly. And I think flying is the great parallel in what you're asking about, do you have to lose so much to appreciate so much what we do as pilots, as we train, we train for everything, every inevitability of, you know, wingtip fire engine loss, okay, we got smoke in the cab, and we've got, you know, all these things that we go through door pops open, like, and you practice them and you're ready. And then what it is, is, you're moving through life.

And you also said these words, you're most in control in the cockpit. But what it really is, is, you're most prepared in the cockpit for whatever life throws at you. So whether all of a sudden gives you a hit, okay, here's some wind shear, here's a little bit of wake turbulence that you you know, maybe we're off a bit or Well, unforeseen layer, you know, here's the deal, I was on this approach. And now, it should be at minimums, but it isn't. And like, it isn't that you're in control of the environment, it's that you're so prepared to deal with what the environment gives you. And I think that is the answer and how to live life efficiently, well, achieving goals without having to be stressed, strained, or face great loss to get there. I think there's this scenario of, you know, certainly as as a motivational speaker, at any minute, you can get a call, like, can you be here tomorrow, and this is the audience, this is what you're doing. There's no time to get ready. It's just be ready. And the same thing is true about piloting. Nobody's gonna call you and say tomorrow, that engine is gonna go out at 800 AGL. On you know, up wind, it's, you're never gonna get that call, but you're prepared.

And so I think there's this sense of, of being a moral prepared. Hyung, hungry, curious, conscious human being is certainly in the piloting world that leads you toward being so relaxed about what is happening in the world because you're so prepared to deal with it, whatever, whatever come and I think, just like, just like turbulence, you know, you've got an answer for everything as you're coming in on crosswind. Whatever the plane needs, you give it to land correctly. And I think we don't need to specifically answering your question. I don't think we need to lose big to gain big I think we need to prepare big or be ready through our preparation to avoid loss and me obviously, there's extemporaneous scenarios, spinal cord injury. There's sort of some hand to God stuff going on. But if we're Looking back on that, right? This is a really good point. If we're looking back on, say just my spinal cord injury for instance, one could say that's a tragic accident. Tragic scenario. I mean, yeah, an insane amount of pain, a total nightmare.

But if we look back from where we are today, and look back on that scenario, what did I tell Shauna I wanted to do when I was explaining my truth, when I said, Hey, my absolute truth is I want to help people in their greatest time of need, with the magic of aviation. And of course, it was Shana that brought this realization to me about a year ago. She said, What are you doing right now? Through the moment foundation, I'm helping people and paws through their greatest time of need, with the magic of aviation. So was that an accident? Was it a tragedy? Was it something that was unforeseen or unplanned? Or was this something that was just another training day, leading me toward the thing I asked the world for the universe, the, you know, this is what I want to achieve.

And this is what I want to experience but bigger than that, this is my offering my gift to the world. And it's been profound getting to realize that nothing really happens accidentally, as painful as it might be, or as much as it feels like a loss. Ultimately, it isn't if you just carry on your path and continue to achieve the things that you say, in your heart. Not No, not the, you know, the I'm kind of interested in this but your core fundamental foundational goals, you stay on your truth, your path. There's no wrong answers.

Nik Tarascio

So there's two ways to go from that perspective is I really liked that I was actually going to ask you the question of what if you played the clock back from the moment of the injury, what were you not ready for in that moment? But in many ways, you've you've you've kind of like made the meaning of it. But if you if you had to look from that perspective, like you're in the air, in this moment of being on the snowmobile, what are you not prepared for?

Grant Korgan

Okay. Your timing is kind of biblical right now. I was on a flight on Friday, so four days ago, and I was flying back from Monterey into Truckee, so back into Tahoe. And I'm flying along and I've got all these high feelings and I'm all alone in the plane. And you know, I'm just in cruise. I'm on autopilot. And I'm just appreciating the experience the sweetness of the smooth Eric's we just got through a week of like, read crosswind stuff. I mean, it was 30 knots everywhere. We were having a blast, like tons of stuff, but this was smooth and good. And I just happened to look over right at me at the right moment.

And I looked over at the mountains, the mountains to the east, and I looked up this canyon, that's a river that I had the privilege of running before my injury back when I was a professional whitewater kayaker called fantasy falls, the North Fork of the McCollum e river. And it just I mean it happenstance, I look to the right and I stared right up the canyon of this three day class five, you know, 30 ish foot waterfalls after 30 foot waterfalls experience, I mean that one of the highest achieving kayaking elements that you can do in the California foothills. And I lived up there no joke, I burst into tears all by myself, cruising at 11,000 feet IFR plan in full on sobbing tears. And at first I didn't understand why I was just letting it out. I'm just crying like, well, I'm full on release.

And then as I started to kind of chill out it, you know, I got a radio call, like five minutes or whiskey, contact Oakland center on 121, whatever. And I'm like, whatever, you know, like, I didn't even stop I kind of cleared myself out. And then I processed what was going on. And it was I had had such a shatter from the life I was living to walk this whole different program. And then I had built through belief through support of others. I mean, man, the people that have surrounded me and been my cheerleaders and been my support structure, and helped me be able to achieve my goals. It's one thing if you're willing to do the work, it's another thing to have people come behind you and say let's keep the tailwind going. I mean, I just did all hit me. So huge. And the thing to answer your question I wasn't ready for in a scenario like this with a spinal cord injury was the amount of help and support and love that was going to become open to me. I wasn't the dude that needed help wanted help. I was the guy you call when you're moving and I'm like, I'm showing up with my truck and I'll move everything for you.

And I'm giving you a hug out the door. I gotta run like that was my life I want to help you out. I don't I don't need help. And all of a sudden here I am. No feeling removed below my belly button strapped to a bed in Casten cement and people are like let me lift you let me take care of you. Let me and unlike beat it. I do didn't know how to accept help, I didn't know how to receive that and the art of, of recognizing that by saying no, I was robbing everyone around me of the joy that they were getting by helping me like the same joy I used to get by helping everybody loved it. Like it that was such an understanding of it was a part of how I understood the world. And now it was gone to me. So I started pushing back and I didn't allow in the beginning. And I, it took me a long time, you know, to take ego out, set it over here, take out self and all your understanding of your identity and who you are in Word.

None of that even matters. And what as I looked up that canyon, and I realized, you know, all the stories and the moments that I remember from being in there and helping others and helping myself over these amazing moments and just being at the top of my physical prowess, to then racking it down to where I had zero ability to help others to now being back where I'm at 11,000 feet on a red IFR plan, as I'm sending. You know, on the ground, I just finished sending emails about you know, three more pet rescues that we were going to go get these dogs that were on kill list, and they're all I mean, just all the greatness and awesomeness of everything that's going on right now. And the gratitude circling back to that hit me to the point that it broke me into tears. And I just, oh man, a good cry, especially like solo in the plane was some great music bump. And like, what's the one?

Nik Tarascio

Well, your answer is biblical timing for me, because I literally just flew back from a breathwork retreat down in northern Georgia. And really the retreat, what came up with the breath work was just up ending how much armoring I have around my heart and my ability to receive people's love. And as you're talking, it just like slams me of like, wow, to think how many times I run away from people's love and to talk to someone who was made incapable of doing so. That's leveling for me, that's like leveling to feel that of like, what more needs to happen in my own life, to be able to receive it, to be able to receive it. So while...

Grant Korgan

It's definitely what you just said is so self deprecating and vulnerable and red, let me just honor you, bro, I'm gonna put my arms through the screen and like, Hold you right now. Because, look, we're all bred in this life as we come through childhood to sort of wheat, you know, some things are really loving and amazing. Some things sort of break your heart, you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, so you're trying to figure out how much distance do I need around what and then to all of a sudden kind of hit adulthood. And recognize that all there is in this world is love. Like, that's all there is.

And of course, there's, there's all the subsets of it. There's there's hate and violence and people being awful and all those things. But it's all I mean, in terms of how close are those two emotions, it's passion. People are passionate, whether they're passionately yelling, or they're passionately loving, like, it's, it's just, it's 31 flavors, it's which ice cream are you taking. And if you can help people that are, you know, maybe have the wrong flavor ice cream, switch it, you're still eating ice cream, it's great, you know, and that's something that you and ideally, I humbly submit myself to this process, and others who are awaken, wanting of that process, man. The experience of being alive and being open to the straight up heart that people can pour into each of us.

That is that that success? You know, like all the the trappings and monitors and you know, metrics of success that the world would have us view as this is are you moving forward in your path? I mean, they exist, they're there, we can opt in or out, but like really, for talking about happiness and fulfillment, and an experience when we're 108 on our deathbed, and we're just like, you know, a peace signs in the air. Like what an epic life. Thank you, you know, when we just transcend to the universe, like, I think that comes from our ability to both give sure but also receive and receiving is the way harder one way harder. And I honor you for being on that path. And I'm just I'm humbly on that path as well, brother.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah. And, you know, I guess because again, I see you as this adventure, you're this guy who's pretty dare devilish with the things that you've chosen to do in your life. Would you say for you, it's more courage of bravery. And I'll make a quick, you know, distinguishing between the two. This came up this weekend from you in the breathwork is they say people that are brave, don't have the fear. That's why they do things people that are courageous. Do it anyway. They are terrified and they do it anyway. Which one do you identify with?

Grant Korgan

Wow, great question. I'm going to answer it with a dream that I I used to have this reoccurring dream that was the nightmare. It was honestly a nightmare. I was I was Working toward my pilot's license. And I was my dream and I every minute I got to be in that Beechcraft seat one three, I felt like I was following my path. And I'm in my truth. And it was, frankly, amazing. Like, it was just the air was sweet, and it was gold. And then whack life just shattered that you know, and I broke that. I did that I own that I took myself through an adventure and came back with half of me dead and strapped to me like that.

That was something I did. And I would in the very fleeting times, I get sleep in the years that followed. While I was working on getting my legs back, I would have this recurring nightmare that I was in the plane. And it was amazing. I'm like, oh my god, I'm back in the plane and I'm on the runway and I put the power in and powers in power set airspeeds alive in both places. Check us out, we're all in the green like, I'm going through all the stuff fuel flow is good, manifold pressures, good and then rotate. And the second I rotate the dream goes from this blissful dream to the straight up nightmare of Oh, my God, my legs don't work. I, I can't land this plane. How am I going to use rudders and brakes and all these things to get it on the ground?

And it was panic, panic, panic, panic to the point that I'd wake up sweaty, you know, totally bothered. And so you ask is, is was there fear, like, I mean, it went past, just a rational, hey, I'm awake. And I'm aware. And I know I'm about to do these things in the plane. And then this is the plains one a great example of many things in life. I mean, gosh, go into the South Pole, it's 50. below zero, there's no medical, anything out there. I mean, I have specific needs just in the bathroom category that are daily and very, very succinct and precision.

And so, you know, to go to a place like that, where there's no help your days from a helicopter rescue at best. And you're going to be in an environment where I can't feel my feet at all. And skin, if it gets below, you know, 32 will go black and frostbite, and you have to have your legs amputated, and I'm going to be a negative 50.

And then add wind to that negative 60, maybe lower, you know, ambience, in terms of was there fear, there was certainly awareness. And that dream that I kept having that was this reoccurring pilot dream. It happened until that day when I rotated the plane out of I mean, I just, and then all of a sudden, I told you my eyes dilate. I mean, it was like a whole it was it was a shift in life. I mean, it was a paradigm shift. For me, it's like a week and a half or it was on.

And then aviation said, boom, let's remember how great and how stress free and how freedom filled and how fulfilling the life you've chosen is is going to be let's remember that. And I just, I locked into that. And not only have I never looked back, but I've wanted so badly with all of my soul. To extend that to others. Anybody that I see that's going through a moment, I'm like, Oh my gosh, if you just jump in the plane with me, and you're gonna be flying, and the music's gonna be pumping, and you're gonna be so sagging. And it's it's not me but and you know, this, you you host people on the plane all the time. Like, I'm a mechanical engineer, by trade. I'm not a psychologist, I don't do any of the, you know, it's not me at all.

It's just, I curate the environment and the plane and the experience and the physics does the rest. And it always happens that when we land, it's laughing and tears and hugs and happiness and celebration. And I, I think there's just something so real about how blessed we are to live in a time where we can leave the ground. And we can do these things and to share them and to let other people receive that, as we've talked about. Wow, that is a special vibe.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, well, that is a that's a beautiful answer. I mean, it's, I think of the times when I was flying away from intimacy, connection, relationship receiving love. And then I think of that same transition I went through, which is I was pretty bored. By my mid 20s, I had done just about everything in an airplane, I was a mechanic, jet pilot, stunt pilot, all those things. But when I started taking friends up in the airplane, and you look to the right, and you see the jaw in their eyes, and your mirror neurons fire, and you're like it's like the first time all over for me, I get to relive that real awakening moment that you were talking about the eyes dilate, right? And I'm like, That's it. I want to give that awakening to other people too. And I want to experience that again and again and again. So touching to see the same tool that I use to fly away from people to escape situations became the tool that actually allowed me to build connection and deepen deepen intimacy with people. So I love that you're saying I mean, it's what a beautiful journey.

Grant Korgan

That is. So ying and yang right there think about like every wave rolls up the beach, and then it rolls back to see and as much as you're like in the begin You get rolled up the beach where you're getting away. And now you're just rolling. You're bringing everybody with you back to your heart.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, this is such a incredibly perfect time to conversation for me because I'm processing so much of my own shit. As you're kind of talking about your journey and what you've been through. And like I you know, I hear a lot of this. Just going back to that, like, if we choose it, let's just pretend we choose it. Right. I know, some people believe that some people don't. But let's say we choose our path. What an amazing story to say. You won't really know fulfillment until you are able to receive the love of others, you'll think you could do all the things you could do those crazy waterfall jumps. And I could do those crazy stunt flights on my own in a single seat airplane. But it's not until I actually am carried by someone else. Will they ever truly understand what real fulfillment is? That's, I mean, that's what I walk away from what you're sharing. I mean, my God, what a beautiful story that you tell, and a beautiful story that you live no less.

Grant Korgan

Thank you. Well, we, we man, I'm putting that I'm putting your your we're walking lockstep shoulder to shoulder in that. And I think I think maybe you just worded the secret of life into that last three sentences you said, which is, you know, it's a whole nother experience in life who I don't know whose quote, this is something like, the first half of your life is the world's gift to you. And the second half of your life is your gift to the world. You know, whether that's you're raising children, and you're bringing amazing people into the world or you have charitable ideas, or it's just, it's not even tied to your actions. It's simply your understanding of the joy that comes from allowing others to help and connect and be a part of your heartstrings. You know, rather than it's a one way deal, like I'm gonna love on you, I'm gonna take care of you, I'm gonna make sure everything like is dialed but don't you go? Don't you go to turn it on me.

And it's a really beautiful thing to receive compliments and receive help and receive love and receive support and receive people's truth. Like, how are you going to know him? How are you going to know people if if you don't let them all the way in. And of course, I should put the caveat, you know, these are these are qualified, specific vetted people that you're letting all the way in. Right, and then you're holding space for the whole rest of the world to join that party when they're ready.

Nik Tarascio

All I gotta say, I'm grateful to know you and watch your journey from a much closer position. And I have to ask being in a place of, I mean, I just feel your positivity I feel how fulfilled you are and where you are now. What is your dream beyond? What do you dream about now?

Grant Korgan

Wow, my dream beyond i i just finished my CFI, which was a really, really, that was tied to a specific aviation dream. The reason I did the CFI was because as I'm doing these hero flights, which are so real for me to get to, as we've talked about, put people in those experiences, the beginning, it was they're in the right seat, I'm in the left seat. And then I start up by taxi, I take off, I climb to a safe spot and clear airspace, and I'm like, here's the plane, and they, you know, hold altitude, and you know, a heading. And it's been, it's amazing. It's amazing. I'm not trying to minimize that at all. But since achieving the CFI, the dream, the goal there was now they sit in the left seat, and I sit in the right seat, and they start the plane, they taxi it, they take off, they climb, they do the whole thing all the way down to the landing, and no matter what they do, to your point about your time in the Super decathlon. We're super decathlon brothers, I've been very blessed to get to do aerobatics.

And my spin training with a dear brother of mine named Kay Bolgar, in his super decathlon. And what he's taught me with that is, no matter what you do to the plane, no matter what goes on, and this has been so good for me in my CFI world, I'll undo and to the point that you can make a wonderful landing, and I'm over there just tweaking little things. And the change in that is profound. So in terms of us, what's your life dream, and what's what's far ahead, I kind of want to punt and say, what's right here, because I've worked so hard to get to this spot where I'm experiencing this right now. And I'm so proud of it. I'm really, really proud of, of watching people get to sit in the left seat, and just look over at me with wide eyes, like I did it and you're like, you did it.

And, you know, then it's amazing whether they they go on to fill out their eye, Accra you know or not, you're a student pilot, so I can say congratulations, you're a pilot and I know what it meant to me. I know what it meant to me to finish I'm getting a little misty eyed thinking about it. I know what it meant to me to finish my my pilot cert to get my private pilot's license. It was a it was a game change. And to think that I can put that word and other people's ethos and their landscape and their mindset, you know, whether they finish or not for that, that that hour and a half that whatever that time is there. There. pilot and it's profound.

Nik Tarascio

Yeah, and for anybody who's wondering, the CFI means certified flight instructor. So grant has the privilege of being able to train other people to fly to let them actually work the controls. So, yeah, that's, again, beautiful to, you know, really take yourself through the process and not stop there and say now it's about letting other people experience and probably one of the better answers I've ever gotten to the dream beyond is just to be in the present. Alright, it's like very rom das be here now. So I really appreciate your perspective on that as well.

Grant Korgan

It's crazy. You said rom Das, I was I was blessed and privileged when, when I first gone through the injury, my wife and I, we were, we had an opportunity to go work with an incredible team on the island of Maui. And we went there and I was training alongside of ROM Das was there going through some of his processing before we lost and moved on, but I had the privilege of while I'm trying to recover bodily function with this team and this facility in this experience, he was he was working to maintain his physicality with that beautiful, glorious brain and soul of his and I just I feel yet again, I mean, I never would have met a gentleman like rom das without the challenge without the scenario.

So I think, in addition to if the takeaways are, you know, be willing to receive that's actualization in this life, the other is, you know, lean into the hard lean into the struggles and the challenges because it universities balance, if it's really, really hard, you know, when it goes down, it's gonna go up the same height, it's a, it's the, it's the same principle in surfing, you cannot hit the lip of a wave without going to the bottom and bottom turning, you can only go as high as you go down. And so if you've got a struggle, if you've got a challenge, if you've got something that's feels unfair, difficult, I mean, the answer is, go there, don't fight it, minimize it, lean into it, go all the way to the bottom, so you can come hard off the bottom and then rail to the lip and do something amazing, the top of that wave.

Nik Tarascio

Beautiful, thank you for succinctly stating, I think some of the biggest nuggets that we took out of this, and I hope everyone finds additional meaning for themselves and what grant shared. So in the meantime, if you're moved by what you heard, and I'd be amazed if you weren't, I don't imagine anybody could not be moved by by by by what you shared grant. You could go visit the moment foundation, it's moment foundation.org. Or if you want to go check out his film, which I certainly will, it's called the push. You can search the push grant Corgan online, you can find it on any digital platform. Again, they won 21 out of 29 International Film Fest that they were in. And you could also check out the American program Bureau if you want to come in and speak to you or a group where you could message them at info at core movement.com. Grant, thank you so much for being here. And again, I really hope we get a chance to fly together at some point soon.

Grant Korgan

Nick, count on that brother. I can't wait man. I'll sit right next to you anytime.

Nik Tarascio

Vice versa. Alright, thanks again for your time. Thanks, Nick blast. Thank you for listening to the dream beyond. I hope that you receive whatever message or inspiration you're meant to get from today's episode. I had a great time recording it for you. If you love the show, please take 30 seconds to subscribe rate and review it. That really helps get the word out. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me at:

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mimiri22-6 · 3 years

Text

Let's do this. One last time.

Ducktales 2017. I didn't think I was ready for the end, but the finale was too perfect to be sad nor angry.

There's so much to say-too much to say...and I'm going to try my best to say all of it.

EVERYONE IS HERE!! ENDGAME WHO?! DUCKTALES!!!!!

Seeing Webby and Scrooge interactions now, after watching this once, is just-They're So Soft! AND everything is just-AH I love it. It's so weird, but when is the family tree not screwy(also, Webby=Scrooge's clone? Webby=female? Trans Scrooge=Cannon?! I think Fucking So!)

Aaaaaaannd that's all we get from Gladstone and Fethry. If there's one thing I wish was in this episode more it would be more cousin interactions and Daisy. Though, Daisy not being too into it makes sense. Loved what we got of her tho. At least we got a little bit of them this episode, it was already pretty character packed

Well...Launchpad is only half wrong.

Oh wow. Oh Wow, I love this dynamic between LP, Drake, and Fenton...ot4? because I refuse to leave Gandra out. I love how Drake doesn't know about Fenton and Gizmo while it seems like everyone else in the world does. Still, LP/Drake and Gandra/Fenton some of my faves. So good

OH YEAH! Even the other 2 Caballeros are here!!

And the last adventure STARTS

I find it Fantastic how Dewey and Launchpad will probably die thinking F.O.W.L used the last level of a videogame as their secret layer layout

*sigh* This is why I avoid previews and wish I was better at avoiding theories from after those previews. I would have been more surprised and probably would have enjoyed this ep even more if I had Nothing to expect. But the theories were right. Tho, I did not expect how (or should I say Who) Webby was cloned from...though also I was spoiled by that when I was looking for the ep. Some ass used "Scrooge is Webby's dad" as a video title. I didn't think it was real, but I was wrong.

Awwww. Don has such a soft spot for kids

I love Lena and her development.

...*sigh* ok. "you've already got sisters" with this line, I am obligated to drop the Webby/Lena ship. I'm sorry, but it's one of my many rules for being ok with a ship. If the characters Ever say, even just once as an afterthought, they see each other as siblings or something similar, I will see them as that. It's why I've never been ok and have been uncomfortable with Shiro/Keith since Keith saved Shiro from...his clones...huh. So, from now on, I'm going to be Very uncomfortable with anything Weblena...even though the thought of them in the future was cute

HOW does a show about building ottomans have plot???

I wasn't sure how to feel about the clones All throughout this

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO HUEY JUST FIRST NAMED BEAKLEY!!!!!

GOLDIE AND DAISY ARE ON THE BOARD!!! SCORE!!

Oooooh. That picture of Webby's parents...is fake. It's like some picture Beakley took off the internet.

I saw a post saying how Della had to convince Donald to go on one last adventure and how she had to watch him almost die, but she really Didn't. She helped him pack and she was ready to let Donald go on his adventure("but Daisy's my adventure" They are too damn cute for their own damn good. I love them. donsy for the win), but an actual Crisis came up and he had to stay. Donald nearly dying by void was not Della's fault and if I see any more posts about how she roped Donald into a death mission, I will go up a wall and break a neck on my way down

Man, it's weird hearing this and knowing that Webby's parents don't exist

Wow! Beakley just knocked out Scrooge! Damn!

Oooh! The girls are fighting

...Woah. I just realized, the blood and brain of Scrooge McDuck and the training of Bentina Beakley. Webby is even more of a beast than we knew.

IS THAT DEVELOPMENT I HEAR!!! YOU KEEP THOSE KIDS BEHIND? YOU LOSE!!! GOOD DAY SIR!

Pepper. Just Pepper. She seems like one of your parent's nice coworkers that brings you brownies and pinches your cheeks

"Look after your brother." YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I JUST WANNA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DADRO YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS OFICIALLY BOYD GEARLOSE NOW!! YEEEEE!!!!

I also really like that you can't tell which Gyro is telling that to

God, I Fucking Love the concept that is Manny. He's one of those things that if someone asked you about him outside of the fandom, you wouldn't even know where to start. It's absolutely FanFuckingTastic. He's the most magical thing in the universe? Fuck Yes, give that to me Now!

HE SPEAKS!!!!!!(I couldn't place his voice actor, but I when I looked him up I realized recognized him for Glossaryck from SVTFOE)

(Edit: Just found out that the scene with Manny was a Gargoyles ref. Nice!)

Once again, I love everything about LP, Drake, and Fenton

And then Lena Died

Aww, they both have such soft spots for children

LUDWIG VON DRAKE?!?!!!?! WHAT THE FUCK?!

(that had to be a different font because really, what the fuck)

He really did just say he was too busy to die. This duck is too powerful

(I really just don't have too much to say between all of this. I just love all of it)

Woo! Louie with the motivation!

Pft-how both of them are singing? Love to see it...wait, we don't see Don Karnage after this...DID HE DIE IN THAT CRASH?! DID DEWEY COMMIT HIS FIRST MURDER?!

"Welcome home, April." I hate you.

Of course he dabs

"he was like this when we found him." Nice to know Gos knows what to do in the event that she kills someone

Oh that's horrendous. I hate that

"Now, let's get down to business." TO DEF[get's shot]

Why is Manny like actually the best?

God, Drake and LP really are two halves of a whole idiot huh? They're soulmates, your honor

"I. Am." "Not alone in this." That was so sweet, but also JUST TELL HIM!!

And now Glom is dead

Oh, that's a lot of mind control

"Even by our standards, this is a weird day." Couldn't say it better, Lena

"How do you think Della found out about the Spear of Selene?" OH, YOU MOTHERFU

"Oh, Bradford, how villainous." DAMN! HE REALLY DID JUST DO THAT, HUH?!

"MOOOM!" "NOOO!" OH NO, MY HEART! IT FUNCTIONS!

"Do you know how replaceable clones are?" Oh yeah, that's right. You're probably not the og Gyro

Man, we don't ever have Von Drake for long but I always love him

Those lights are really only there for dramatic effect, aren't they?

...Close enough.

Launchpad moment! Yeah!!!

HEY! I just noticed. While wearing the suit, Launchpad didn't crash...idk what to do with this info

The fine print is usually good to read...we people just don't do it apparently

"...your most trusted ally?" *picks Donald* Wow. That's right there with the feels ain't it

"it's not worth the risk." Fuck, I love them

Oh that sounds so weird. Scrooge has never been a dad, always Uncle. So Weird

And Gandra, Gyro, and Von Drake are dead. There is a Body Count this episode

"Donald Duck." "Uncle Scrooge." I SEE YOU! I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE! AND I LOVE IT!

Hehe. From Bitchford to bird brain.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ENDING SCENE IS THE BEST!

Beakley thinking she's no longer accepted? Nah, she was granny first and foremost

ANOTHER FENRA KISS?! DON'T MIND IF I DO!

DADRO AND GOSALYN AND DRAKE?! LOVING IT!

MORE FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS?! WOO!

DONALD IMMEDIATELY ADOPTING JUNE AND MAY?! ONLY THE BEST FROM HIM!!!!

PROTECTIVE SCROOGE?! YOU DON'T SEE ME COMPLAINING!

"We're smarter" "We're tougher" "We're sharper" And we'll earn our way square." AH-I'M GOING DOWN LIKE THE SUNCHASER, GUYS

AND THE END CREDITS WILL NEVER BE MATCHED!!!!!

I don't know what else to say.

This show was amazing from beginning to end. I may not have cried, but I didn't need to cry. It wasn't sad and there was nothing bittersweet about it. Just pure perfection, just like the rest of the show.

Perfectly Preen, not a fether out of place.

Goodnight Ducktales, you were perfect

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blue-bird-kny · 3 years

Text

How You Spend Days Off

I stuck to only the three main peeps, but I’m looking forward to writing for more JJK characters. It was actually really nice to write for them, so I hope you enjoy~Amanda

P.S: Be safe out after dark!

Warning: N/A

( 2.1K+ words)

↳{shenanigans you and your S/O get up to on days off}

Yuji:

Days off with Yuji are unpredictable and always either involve something thrilling and very energy consuming or it can be some of the simplest things a person can do- no in between.

Yuji usually is the one who makes plans during your spare time (though he always gets your opinion, of course), he just really values time with you and wants to experience so much together while he can

It was common knowledge that this coming Friday, all the students would have the time off to rest as a reward for all their hard work with the recent influx of curse activity. Yuji wasted no time in planning the perfect day together, from the moment you woke up next to him to when you both fell asleep, he had something ready.

“Ah that was delicious Yuji, thank you” you cheered, arms stretched high above your head in an attempt to work away the sleepiness the food had made you feel. “No problem! Only the best for you, princess” Yuji’s smile reached past his shining eyes, thrilled you enjoyed the assortment of plates and bowls filled with your breakfast favorites he’d surprised you with. “Well then, my prince, to what honor do I owe your company today?” you asked leaning against your balled fist and bent elbow on the table, amusement and adoration laced on all your features. “For one day only, yours truly scored us tickets to…! Drum roll please!” Yuji posed dramatically, eyes cast down while crouched and pointing in a funny manner.

You proceeded to bang your fist against the table, laughing lightly, “We’re going to spend all day at Monster Con!” he pulled out two floppy pieces of paper from his back pocket as you gasped, “Oh I’m not finished yet, princess, we’ll also be wearing matching costumes I hand selected” You stood quickly, clapping at his theatrical performance as he bowed, repeating, “Thank you, thank you”. You made your way to infront of the boy, your arms wrapping around his broad shoulders while he enveloped your waist tightly, pressing you against him. “Not going dressed as your pesky alter ego, huh?” you joked staring up at the taller kid, earning you a slight pout, “No, he’s not invited” he grumbled. “Sorry, that joke was in poor taste” you apologized, shifting to run your thumb along his juted bottom lip to smooth out the lines.

“No worries, I know ya didn’t mean anything by it” your hand stayed cupping his cheek, both star-filled eyes trained on each other as you both wore the cheesiest grins. Just as you stood on your tip-toes to close the space between each other, a warm gust of breath blew against the palm holding Yuji still, “I was wondering why you hadn’t spoiled the moment” you sighed, lowering yourself to lean your forehead against Yuji’s chest instead. A small mouth carved into its host cheek frowned, now free to speak without your hand suffocating it, “I can handle the women’s teasing, however what have I done in my many lifetimes to have to suffer through this painful love-sick puppies act” Sukuna complained. “Many things actually” you responded, muffled by Yuji’s shirt that smelled of a citrusy-warm blend you couldn’t get enough of. “Why do you always kill the mood?” Yuji groaned up towards the ceiling, earning himself a scoff from the demon king. “Oh? You mean like that I wouldn’t let y-” “SHUT UP!” Yuji slammed his hand against his own face to silence the man, his cheeks inflamed.

Now clad in matching costumes, you as frankenstein's wife and Yuji as Frankenstein, from the hair to the clothes to the make-up, you both spent the day without any further hiccups; how Yuji kept Sukuna at bay, you didn’t know, but I didn’t really matter. The stares from passengers on the train to the convention center was obvious to everyone but you two, lost in your own little love-sick world of old-fashion horror movies, delicious food, and pure, unfiltered content.

Megumi:

Megumi is a simple guy who likes simple things; he’s overworked and more exhausted than he even realizes, however he doesn’t acknowledge that...ever. In fact, you could run a mile ‘too quickly’ by his standards and he will have you take a break and drink his bottle of water (though you had your own and he knew that).

On your rare days off together, Megumi would silently stick to you like glue; he wants to do something for you in the creative way Yuji does and definitely wants to spend the time with you, but he can never come up with a complete idea of how to ‘wow’ you.

Except you didn’t need to be wowed, in fact you really were burnt out, so when the day came when you had nothing to do but be together, you planned a whole day of nothing with a side of Netflix and take-out.

You knocked on the door to Megumi’s dorm that was just a few paces away from your own. It was almost noon and you still wore your pj’s from last night, cookie monster shorts and an old shirt of Megumi’s you took last week, having made no attempt to fix your hair. “Umi~!” you whined, banging on the door a little harder, the plastic bag from the convenience store rustling at your side. “Coming” Megumi opened the door in a similar state; pj’s still on and hair sticking in even weirder directions than normal.

“Mornin” you greeted with the faintest grin, “sorry to wake you” “ I was just getting up” he yawned while he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sure I can tell by the bed head” you teased, earning a playful eye roll from the boy. You waved the bag of goodies in front of his face, “Let me in, I’ll make it worth your while~” he chuckled, “I doubt it” despite his words he stood to the side, letting you past and closing the door behind you.

His dorm was dark and a little stuffy, clearly Megumi hadn’t had time to do the in depth cleaning the little neat-freak was so fond of. The continents of the bag clacked together and scattered around as you tossed it onto the small table in the corner, making your way over to his comfortable futon that smelled of his signature eucalyptus soaps. You flopped about for a moment, stretching, snuggling into the sheets still warm from Megumi, who was watching the small scene from the door, “C’mon Umi’ I wanna get through at least two episodes of SVU before we inevitably fall asleep wrapped in each others arms” you called dreamily with lidded eyes, already tired again as you buried beneath his sheets and pillows.

Megumi could feel his chest ache and stomach flutter at the image of the one who he cared for so much that it physically hurt laying there in his bed with soft, kind eyes just for him- it was almost too much. “Umi, I will eat all the sour snakes if you don’t come over here, your sheets are getting cold” Megumi was cut off by his own thoughts of admiration by your voice. He chuckled at the cute way your face cringed a bit at the sour-sweet taste of the candy before sliding into bed too, your head laying on his chest as he held you close. A small, genuine grin spread across his lips as the sound of Netflix starting rang from the TV, holding you even tighter, ‘this is perfect’

Nobara

Be ready to put on your best dressed because you and your girlfriend are hitting the town! Of course Nobara would find her way into the city whenever she could, foreign to the endless wonders the busy streets had to offer and luckily for her, you happened to be far more native with the many sights to see.

She’d let you sleep in, holding you tender as she traced her nails across your skin to form intricate patterns until you woke. You both would totally be the couple that wears matching outfits, the same colors and patterns tailored to your personal styles- of course this would also lead to thousands of pictures for Nobara’s instagram.

You two would laughed, eat delicious foods, and would spend way more than either of you cared to admit nor did you want to because the price of absurd, unfiltered laughter and the feel of just a good time, was one both of you could pay a thousand times (and a new pair of shoes too)

The sun hung lower in the sky than it did when you started this little adventure before noon, having been sold on the idea by Nobara that she “only needed a few things” this morning. Now, exhausted perched on a steel chair outside some cafe you’d never heard of with your sore feet elevated on the other empty one you waited for your girlfriend who was inside somewhere.

“Jeez even my fingers are cramped” you groaned flexing your numb digits; shopping was a grueling vice because no matter how much you’ve already bought, more cute sweaters, tops, and matching accessories called to you by name and the art of saying ‘no’ wasn’t exactly in Ms.Kugisaki’s vocabulary. “Here ya’ go babe” Nobara emerged from the shop with two cups, handing one to you before sipping gingerly from her own. You brought the plastic straw to your lips, sighing in relief as the contents quelled a thirst you didn’t even know had been building up. “I don’t think we did too much damage” your face fell and eyes bulged, flailing your arms out around at the brightly colored parcels that littered the table and surrounding floor, “Nobara there are at least fifteen bags here”

She laughed, her hand falling on top of your thigh, giving a gentle squeeze, “Still no that bad”. She scooched her chair closer to yours, her thumb rubbing nonsense circles into the denim of your jeans, “What next?” she asked leaning into her seat, her brown irises watching yours fondly, “Food? We haven’t eaten since a lot earlier and I could turn into a wolf any second and eat you” you teased, though food sounded better and better the more you thought about it. “Eat me? You promise, baby?” Nobara’s smirk earned herself a not-so-graceful, but light kick from you.

“An impromptu picnic sounds great” Nobara decided, tapping against you in finality. It became a game: You both had 30 minutes to run around the delicious food district to pick out each other's favorites, as many as you liked (which would be more food than two can eat), then you’d reconvene at the same cafe. Nobara offered to pick up a blanket at the convenience store because she ‘knew you so well she wouldn’t need the whole half hour.’ The game was on and time was ticking as you both rushed in opposite directions with several bags and a hunger to please the other.

You scurred around each vendor, selecting different meat dishes and veggies, cakes and watermelon, and even splurged on some fancy sushi from the place she'd wanted to try. Your arms quivered under the weight of the many shopping bags and take-out boxes, but you were determined to get back first. “Just around the corner- Are you kidding me?!” you yelled. In the exact steel seat she sat in earlier, was Nobara with an array of bags around her, boxes and the blanket stacked neatly on the table with dark sunglasses adorning her face and her legs crossed cockily as she spoke smoothly, “Beat ya”

Both of you grossly overestimated the amount of food you could eat in one sitting as practically unopened boxes lay stacked on top one another on the blankets while watermelon rinds and used plates were thrown into a garbage bag. The sun was low, almost at the horizon, painting the sky in pastel oranges and pinks with hints of purple and blue; the spring chill had blown a little heavier now that the sun was setting and it was getting harder to stop the shivers. Nobara laid against the trunk of a tree with you between her legs, holding you as her manicured fingers idly massaged your scalp quietly- you would have fallen asleep at the small gesture had you not been actively keeping your eyes open. “The boys will be grateful for the food, I’d hate wasting it” she yawned to which you only hummed.

“Hey” you turned your head up slightly, only enough to meet her gaze, “today was really fun” she smiled, slithering across your arm to grab your cheeks gently in her fingers, forcing your lips to pucker, “yeah it was.” Your wobbly smile made Nobara feel things, too many things at once, and a lump began to form in her throat, “I love you” you mumbled, Nobara’s breath caught for only a moment, whispering a thick “me too.”

Masterlist

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x y/n #megumi x reader #nobara x y/n #nobara x reader #yuji x y/n #yuji x reader #megumi x y/n #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen fluff

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ad1thi · 3 years

Text

2020 fic recs!! [Part 2]

part 2 of my 2020 fic recs!! as before, ive limited this to five fics per month; and fics are ordered by the month they were published. This spans fandoms and ships, and hopefully you find something you like!! credit for the idea goes to @iam93percentstardust

***

July

this is the start: @capnwinghead

Clark and Bruce continue raising the Wayne children and encounter a number of challenges along the way.

great minds (love alike): @starklysteve

Steve’s eyes flicks down to Tony’s knees on the floor.

“Are you – are you proposing to me with my ring for you?” Steve asks incredulously, eyes wide and confused.

---

Or, Steve finds Tony’s ring for him, Tony finds Steve’s ring for him. Panic happens.

Marvels Unsolved: @iam93percentstardust

Marvels Unsolved was never supposed to be this popular. It started off as a novelty web-series about Tony trying to convince Bucky about the existence of the supernatural—he firmly believed that if science could turn Uncle Steve from an actual shrimp to the god of muscles, then magic had to be out there—and then they’d started talking about an unsolved crime from the early 20th century after filming an episode one day, forgetting that the camera was still rolling, and had ended up with enough footage to make a second episode about real crimes. They had stayed pretty unknown throughout that first season but then true crime podcasts had exploded in popularity and Unsolved along with them.

it’s a small world after all: @maguna-stxrk

“Great speech.”

Smiling at the compliment, Tony turns around. “Thank y—”

And nearly drops his champagne flute.

His world comes to a stop.

They had only spent a night together, but Tony would recognize those baby blues anywhere.

It’s Steve.

Steve from Tony’s London business trip. Or, as Rhodey has become accustomed to calling him—The Soulmate That Got Away.

you’re in my blood, you’re in my veins: @nethandrake

Tony always figured that if they ever were to break up, it would be like a blaze. Scorching and hot and all-too blinding. Intense like the two of them have always been.

Instead, they break up on a Tuesday, with the rain pelting the windowpane and the midnight silence stifling.

August

Five Times Danny said he’d marry Steve (plus one): @five-wow

Danny humphs. “Look, all I’m saying is, I think I’d probably have married you by now.”

“I’d marry you, too,” Steve says.

Or: An experiment in how many times you can say something before you have to put your money where your mouth is.

Family (You’ve Always Had It): @/SunnyQueen

A black Camaro and a scowling blond was not what Junior had been expecting.

“Hi, sir. You didn’t have to pick me up.”

The blond looked up from the screen on his phone and groaned, completely ignoring Junior's statement. “You are right, I didn't have to."

Ode To Yoga Pants: @riotfalling

OR the continued terrible mating dance of Bucky and Tony, AKA when betting on your friends stops being fun

Through The Years: @hawkbucks

Tony brings home Natasha one day, proclaiming her to be his new sister.

Natasha takes this all in stride.

The broken road that led me home to you: @just-fandomthings

A documented list of conversations between Steve and Danny via text and phone call following the events of 10x22 "Aloha." (Where, even thousands of miles apart, Steve and Danny can't go without talking to each other.)

September

someday, we’ll pass it on to you: @starklysteve

Steve smiles.

Reaching up, he flattens his hand against his son’s far smaller one, curling gently around it. “You wanna be like him?”

“Da!” Peter agrees again.

One year old, and you already know who’s the best of us, Steve pauses to reflect, all his fears chased away by a fierce pride. “Your Dad’s coming home real soon,” he promises, “you should tell him that.”

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

Or, five times Peter did the repulsor pose as a toddler

+ one time he used the repulsors as an adult

Classic Sci Fi: @notdoingsohot

Bucky wakes up to Steve telling him he's lost his memory, but not to panic, it'll only last a few days. Easier said than done when the last thing Bucky remembers is fighting Hydra with the Howlies in WWII.

He tries to make the most of it however, and there's this guy... Tony Stark. It's pretty clear the guy hates Bucky's guts, which is unfortunate because god damn is he a sight.

He tries to figure out what he did to wrong Stark, but everyone just tells him he doesn't want to know.

They were right.

Blooms in Frost: @/Diomedes

Tony coughs up his first petal on the sixth of July. He has been married to the love of his life for two years.

Bury a Hanahaki corpse in earth and it will beget the most beautiful garden. All that love, it is said, must go somewhere.

Hanahaki AU: Established relationship

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

A Single Thread of Gold: @lovelyirony

Rhodey doesn't believe in love at first sight or any of that cheesy shit. He just wants someone who is nice, dependable, and safe.

Tony Stark is Housing Service's little problem for the school year, and now he's stuck in Rhodey's room because he's exploded the last two dorm rooms he's been in and won't live off-campus.

high roller, place your bet: @machi-kun

“Would you kiss Stark for a hundred bucks?”

“I would pay a hundred bucks to kiss him.”

October

press my luck: @omg-just-peachy

But... Steve is almost ten years his junior, and he could be with just about anyone, looking and acting like he does. And then there’s the not so small fact of Tony’s name and net worth and the fact that, okay, Tony had paid for Steve’s grad school tuition, and now he’s worried Steve feels obligated to stay. Or something.

Or, Tony is a billionaire, Steve is a grad student, and they learn to let themselves be taken care of.

see it with the lights out: @starklysteve

Tony goes on a business trip, and he does not - not at all - get jealous of Dodger hogging his husband's chest, a territory otherwise known as Tony's pillow.

(or, Steve goes on an Instagram spree and Tony misses home)

adulthood is looking both ways before you cross the street and getting hit by an airplane: @starkslovemail

It was a perfect plan, if Peter did say so himself.

The Buy In: @dracusfyre

For the ImagineTonyandBucky prompt: Mafia AU with Tony as the Boss (except he's a really good one, making the streets safe, keeping drugs away from kids etc) and Bucky as the detective sent to go undercover to catch him out but ends up realizing he's actually doing more good than harm and they end up falling in love

trinkets of your affection: @starklysteve

Kissed him once for every year I loved him, Steve had written.

By that count, Steve owes him five more kisses now.

Tony traces the words, hands trembling, and tips back a shot of Howard's ancient whiskey. None of it burns anymore.

One day, he'll have lived more days without Steve than there are words in the diary.

For the first time since he'd woken with shrapnel in his chest, Tony fears the future.

----------

Or, five things Tony keeps to remember Steve by, and one thing Steve gives him to remember.

November

“Hey Tony”: @riotfalling

Steve points out that Bucky never calls Tony by his actual name. Bucky doesn’t believe him, until he does.

Remembering You is Hard to Do: @lovelyirony

“The future’s crazy, honey-bear.”

Jim looks up.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Call you what?”

“Honey-bear. It’s weird.”

“Inside joke we have,” Tony says, chest tightening. “We thought those couples that have the lovey-dovey nicknames were ridiculous.”

overheard your heartbeat (calling me yours): @starklysteve

"Tony - "

"I wish I could promise to come home this time," he feels the armor crawl back down his arm, continuing unnoticed over Steve's red gloves, then up the blue uniform as Tony fights to keep Steve's gaze firmly fixed on him.

The last eyes Tony might get to see, and he wants to be lost in them.

In the end, his entire life boils down a few simple things: "JARVIS, take care of him for me."

----------

Or, Tony overhears a phonecall where Steve proposes, a battle happens, and a paper ring settles some misunderstandings.

i (really, really, really, really, really, really) like you.: @nethandrake

For as long as Steve can remember, he's been crushing on Tony Stark. The thing is, he's pretty sure Tony doesn't know Steve exists. And how could he? Steve's scrawny and little. He's a nobody compared to Tony who's Mr Popular and the son of a billionaire.

Or at least he thought so until Tony swings by the bakery Steve's mother happens to own to enlist Steve's help in finding the perfect Valentine's Day card.

The perfect Valentine's Day card for someone who isn't Steve.

One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing): @iam93percentstardust

When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. He listens as she tells him about the first soulmates who couldn't understand their Heartsong until the day they meet, excited by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One.

He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to.

December

Swiping Right: @s-horne

“Ouch. Definitely a hard pass for that one?”

Steve startled at the sudden comment from the row of chairs behind him and turned around. He’d been passing the time in the airport lounge by swiping through Tinder and had gotten lost in his own world. It was almost jarring to be pulled away from the screen of hot men and back into reality where the PA was screeching and there was noise everywhere.

Adjusting to the difference, Steve frowned. Wait, he knew that face. Oh, shit… he knew that face.

“No, no, it’s fine,” the man said before Steve could get out anything other than an embarrassed sort of yelp. Waving his hand through the air, the stranger smiled ruefully. “I get it. It’s the beard, isn’t it? True be told, it was a weird winter choice that year and I knew it would come back to hurt me.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He knew it must have shown on his face and could feel himself flushing, panicked and embarrassed all at once. What were the odds of swiping left on someone literally sat behind him?

set your flight path home (to me): @starklysteve

Tony puts down his welding torch. “I’m building you a plane.”

Stepping carefully over the gears and tools scattered about, Rhodey slowly makes his way to him.

“And when did you become an expert on how to build a plane?”

“Last night,” Tony grins.

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

Tony builds a plane, and Rhodey teaches Tony how to fly it. Or he would be teaching Tony, if Tony didn't distract him so much.

I Want A Man With A Slow Hand: @thefourofswords

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked on their way to a crime scene, because no time like the present, and Danny believed in ripping off band-aids.

“Why not?” Steve replied, eyes on the road. “You’re gonna even if I say no.”

“What do you like in bed?”

Danny undertakes a very important mission to get Steve laid. For his health. Ahem.

same time next year: @omg-just-peachy

“I forgot to ask. When’s your flight home?” Steve asks, draping his arm over Tony’s shoulder and settling in against him.

Tony ignores the knot that forms in his chest at the idea of it, leaving Steve again for his own impersonal apartment, his piles of books and projects and the nights without sleep.

“Day after tomorrow.”

Steve huffs a little sigh, then brings his lips to Tony’s neck. “Well, we’ll have to make the most of it, won’t we?”

Or, four (4) Christmases with two (2) idiots who can't admit they're in love.

rearrange my heart (to fit your smile): @starklysteve

"You dare," Howard's chair makes an ugly noise as it scrapes against the stone floors, the chatter of the room shifting into hushed whispers and stolen glances. "I am your father and your King!"

"My King is my husband," Tony tips his chin up, defiant. "And I refuse to hear you suggest that my husband has been anything other than good to me."

Next to him, he feels Steve's shoulders stiffen in surprise.

Howard's fist slams loud on the table. "Your husband does not even love you!"

Tony jerks back, burned. He knows that. Knows that Steve did not marry him for love – does not need any reminder of the cold truth, of what he desperately yearns for and can't even hope to have – but the harshness of Howard's words was scalding, and Tony can't afford for this to go any further.

----------

Or, King Steven marries Prince Tony, Tony is pretty sure he shouldn't panic when he falls in love with his own husband, and Steve tries his very best not to cause diplomatic crises.

Keyword: try

#adi's rec list #superbat #superhusbands #winterironfalcon #mcdanno #buckytony #peppernat #superfamily #rhodeytony #ironfamily #and that's a wrap!!!

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gunterfan1992 · 4 years

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Interview with Half Shy (the songwriter of “Monster”)

For the last few months, I’ve been collecting information for a second edition of Exploring the Land of Ooo that will also cover the production of Distant Lands. This means that I’ve started to look into the new songs that we have been graced with this year, and this of course includes “Monster,” the beautiful track from the masterpiece that is “Obsidian”. And so I reached out to the song’s writer, Half Shy, who was kind enough to chat with me via email about the songwriting process!

(Photo courtesy of Half Shy)

In many ways, Half Shy is living the creative Adventure Time fan’s dream: She got asked by Adam Muto himself to write a song for “Obsidian” after he heard her music through Bandcamp! (I’ve dabbled in fan music before, and the fact that someone from the show might listen to it just blows my mind.) What an opportunity; I am so excited for her!

Since a second edition of my book won’t be coming out until after all the Distant Lands episodes air, I thought it would be best to share my Half Shy interview now. Read on for the fascinating behind the scenes story of how Half Shy and “Monster” came to be..

GunterFan: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in music, and how did the Half Shy project come to be?

Half Shy: I’ve been making music pretty quietly since I was in high school with a keyboard and guitar. I played one or two shows a year after college when I could find a friend or my brother to get up on stage with me, but I don’t really have that performer gene in me naturally. I get too much in my head and forget what the lyrics are to the song I wrote, or what the next chord is. Total brain freeze. So that whole experience is a bit of a mental drain. It’s something I think I’d like to dig into and figure out, but right now I’m really enjoying the time writing.

Even playing a song for my friends I still get pretty nervous. That’s where the name Half Shy comes from. I’ve always been interested in making things that by their nature draw a bit of a spotlight, but at the same time, I am just really quite nervous about the attention.

I recorded my first songs under my old name Hey V Kay in my bedroom and started putting them up online one at a time. When I got enough I thought about packaging it up into an album, but then got really distracted by learning how to fix up motorcycles and going to automotive tech school. When I eventually got back around to it I named the album Gut Wrenching.

After a few years I realized that I didn’t want the day-in-day-out life of a mechanic, I just wanted to know how to fix cars for myself and to have that knowledge in my back pocket. I got back into making music but grew frustrated at the process of writing and recording songs. I felt like I wasn’t able to capture the ideas I had in my head. Like trying to draw on your computer with a mouse. Doable, but it’s not going to come out like you’d hoped.

So these last couple of years I’ve focused more on learning the technical aspect of it, from the initial ideas and lyrics, to the recording and mixing. During that process I put out Bedroom Visionaries, and while writing I happened upon the name Half Shy in an old Thesaurus which felt instantly right. Learning all of that has been fun, I even went as far as to create my own book to solidify a daily writing routine (lyricworkbook.com). All that has been a bit of a tangent from actually making much music though. I should be getting my books in December from the press so I’m really looking forward to getting back into making more music instead of dealing with printing presses, setting up websites, and sourcing ribbon suppliers.

GF: What is the story behind "Monster"? How did the show get in contact with you?

HS: I keep a log of “Song Starters” with neat things I’ve heard in the world, and I would look through it every now and then and notice just how many came from Adventure Time. Eventually I thought well, I have to make a song about this show that just keeps breaking my heart. It was around the time I was nearly done with the first [Adventure Time-inspired] song “In My Element” that I got an email from Bandcamp saying “someone bought your album (Bedroom Visionaries).”

I get maybe one or two of these a month at most so I love to go in and say hi to the person and say thanks, be curious about who they are, [and] what they’re all about. Turns out it was Adam Muto, the executive producer of the show. (I asked and he has no idea how he happened upon my stuff. He guessed that I must have tagged something #adventuretime and he just happened to see it.) So I sent him an email saying, “Hey wow thanks for checking out my tunes. Also... holy crap you’ve made the best show I have ever seen in my life.” [I] played it real cool like. After finishing up writing my second [Adventure Time-inspired] song “Betty” I couldn’t help but fangirl real hard [and I sent him another message saying], “I’m sorry this is probably awkward, but I really love your show and I wrote these songs about it.” He was incredibly kind and shared them with his Twitter Universe, and a while after that I got a random email from him saying basically, “Hey, I’m working on this thing I can’t talk about, would you be interested?” I was like… well you know I’m pretty busy working at a sign shop so I’m gonna have to pass on this once in a lifetime opportunity (J/K. Obviously I fan-girl squealed and said yes immediately).

We chatted a bit about what the project was going to be and the direction. He mentioned there [would be] two Marceline songs in the special, [and he asked if I] would I be interested in giving the love song a try? Trying real hard to suppress my instant imposter syndrome I was like, “Yea, totally I’d be into giving that a shot!” So I read through the story and loved the idea of the dragon mirrored in Marceline, thinking through how they’ve both built up a protective shell, how she grew tough for a reason, but now she can open up and be vulnerable with PB.

From there I wrote the initial demo with the first two verses mostly intact and we went back and forth a few times editing it down into the final version. I recorded the final parts for the show in my little home studio in Seattle.

GS: When you were writing the song, what emotions, thoughts, or ideas were you channeling? Was there any sort of memory of event that you were trying to artistically "catch" or "recreate" with the lyrics or music?

HS: As far as channeling an emotion, generally I’d say just the experience of existing as a human. It can be so hard to open up and be vulnerable. I can remember that feeling even as a young kid—getting really excited about something and having someone completely trash it or look at you like, “Why are you so interested in that? It’s dumb.” [It causes us to grow] a little more weary to share ourselves because we know that hurt and embarrassment. The pain of being misunderstood is something I think a lot of us can relate to. Then having to decide whether to keep sharing those vulnerable parts of yourself or think, “They’re just not going to get it, I’m going to get hurt, so why bother?” and then stop putting yourself out there. You lose a lot with that thick armor though. You might feel protected, but you’re not feeling a whole lot of anything else other than the weight and chafing of it (I had a whole lot of armor-related metaphors that I didn't end up using.).

I struggle with this in songwriting too. I’m not the bolt-of-lightning type. There are pages and pages of cliches, total garbage, bad jokes, and cheesy lines that I have to get through in order to get to something that I am excited to put out there into the world: “Here I did this thing, I know it’s a little (this or that), but I made it... What do you think?” It’s hard to open yourself up to hearing the other end of that question.

I filled about 5 little pocket notebooks just thinking through the story, ideas, and trying to get this song right. I wanted it to feel familiar and honor the past songs of the show ([e.g.,] using the ukulele and referencing a few of the familiar chords from “I’m Just Your Problem”) but also be pretty open and vulnerable and different for [Marceline]. [I wanted to] show that she’s going through some tough emotions but also figuring herself out and growing.

GF: I feel like “Monster” is, at its core, an ode to the “Bubbline” ship. How do you feel about your song being intimately connected to one of the most famous LGBTQ+ relationships in animation? Do you have any general thoughts on Marcy and PB, Bubbline, etc.?

HS: Oh, I’m a total fan girl of Bubbline. The whole story of how Rebecca Sugar and Muto slowly morphed it into this deeper relationship is just great. As a part of the LGBTQ community myself it really means so much to see the representation of characters like yourself portrayed in an intelligent way. Growing up I was too young to fully understand what was going on but I saw Ellen getting cancelled, and [I] heard people around me saying they’d never watch her show again after she came out. That stuff sinks in as a kid and so to have these characters who are not only intelligent, but funny, complex, and unapologetically strong who also happen to be queer is really great. I love that the story here isn’t about their orientation, but that they’re people struggling with how to be open and vulnerable in a relationship.

It feels like something sci-fi and animated shows do so well—to show that ridiculousness of limiting who a person should and shouldn’t love. Marceline is a 1000+ year old half-demon/vampire and PB was born from the Mothergum of an apocalyptic radioactive world, but you’re going to get hung up on them loving each other? It sort of brings it into perspective in a really interesting way.

GF: Do you have any other thoughts about the experience that you'd like to share?

HS: Just how lucky, thankful, and honored I feel to be a part of my favorite show, writing a song for one of my favorite characters. It’s also incredibly cool how the people on the show are so willing to connect and collaborate with their fandom. Everyone [on the production crew] was very open and a real joy to work with.

I’d like to give a huge “Thank you!” to Half Shy for agreeing to participate in this interview; she really was quite amiable! If you’d like to hear more of her music, check out her website and her Bandcamp. You can also follow her on Instragram here and on Twitter here. And of course, here is Half Shy’s awesome video of “Monster”.

#adventure time #atimers #adventure time distant lands #atdl #half shy #monster #bubbline #marceline #marceline the vampire queen #bubblegum #princess bubblegum #pb #adam muto #interview

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beenjen · 3 years

Text

We meet again…

This episode of ‘Time Marches On’ 🎼 brought to you by a bourbon mule 🥃 a few muinutes of solitude, and you guessed it - A FACE MASK!

Brief catch up, Lilith spiked that hella high temp, no respiratory symptoms, just lethargic and fever. Took her in to the pediatrician, we really had to rule out flu or covid with Jamis heading back to school, she was negative for everything, and it was a UTI? I did not see that coming, and I’m a chick in health care. At least it was something simple some meds would fix and we were back on the road again 🎶

With the all clear on that front, Jamis started first grade, then celebrated his 7th birthday. The theme was Godzilla!!!!! Naturally.

My mom is really decompensating - and side note, I’m getting spellchecked on that word, but I assure you it’s a medical term - it’s excruciating to watch. I’m bitter. My dad is struggling, my sister-in-law is gently trying to get my brother to see the dire straights (( 🎵 )) we are all really looking towards. It’s hard. I hate it. I’m needing a new word for struggling - grappling? Wrestling? Fighting? - in how to really express the deep, sadness, and mourning, and heartbreak. It’s absolute swill. I can’t stay in that moment and keep up with the day-to-day, I’m not able. I have to visit it briefly, then move on.

I’m still running. I’m running more than anything else. It seems that when I am focused so clearly on my next breath, and putting one foot in front of the other, my mind spaces, and I’m free. It’s one of those things that’s a time suck, and I fit it in completely random. I wake in the middle of the night and can’t sleep? Run. I get home and have 30 minutes to kill? Run. Just run. I’ve thought to train again for a marathon, the last I did was prior to Jamis, and it’s a goal outside of anything else to latch onto.

@lizloveslifexo asked me if I’m keeping up with yoga, and I’ll say I missed last week because Lilith was ill and we didn’t want to take any chances on spreading something we were unsure of, this week was all about Jamis and his birthday. I am back on my mat next week for a class, I’ve done some mellow home stretches and work break sessions, not the extent of what I typically do, and it is something I need, so I never stray too far, it just gives me too much think time if I can’t get in my pranayama (breath) space. I still need it and will make it happen, it is hard to really immerse mentally right now without a distraction, I think that’s the goal to master though? When you can’t? You should more. When you flail, you push harder. I’m up tomorrow and for sure Tuesday. We’ll see after that.

Someone asked me what I was reading, listening too, watching, I believe @angesaurus and @theunstuffedpepper? I’m reading any and everything by Kristen Ashley. She writes smut. You know how I do. I’ve been listening to Astonishing Legends, it’s a podcast about paranormal and unexplained events. The latest is the Patterson-Gimlin Film - or the Bigfoot video from the sixties. I love that podcast, I love those dudes, and they cover all sorts of events, worldwide, I am working my way from first episode, and this stretch is 2019. Too, you know I’m all about that primate.

Watching? An interesting documentary over the Inca settlement in Peru, atop the Andes, and it was fascinating. There is a lake at very high altitude, but with the proximity to the equator, so much life cohabits there, and they’ve found untouched archeological treasures as there have been few who have made it to the peaks, or wanted too. It shows how they deeply respected the beliefs and culture of the area by meeting with tribal elders, performing blessings and rituals prior to traversing the lands, it was moving. That they showed the regard due the land and it’s people by considering and including their cultural beliefs, and the cohabitation of so many with cohesiveness. I wish we could adopt the mentality present day in mankind. I’m a dreamer 🎶

Hubs and I continue to redefine the solidness and acceptance that is our relationship. It’s deeper, purer, more supportive… we communicate better, give better, and it just, despite better words, is gelled. Or more gelled? Maybe I’m letting go something I didn’t realize I had held back and am opening myself more? Depending on him more? Trusting and knowing he’s got me? Whatever it is, It’s powerful. It’s my grounding point in this life, and wow, made a good choice there friends.

The 40th yoga retreat is still on. The timing could be better, it’s important though to still celebrate, experience, live, in all times, all the time. I want to pass on a passion for life and learning and feeling to my babes and nieces and nephews. To everyone. That we get a finite amount of time, that our days are in-fact numbered, and none of us knows what comes next along the adventure. So love true, and live it well.

Until next time xx

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vagrantblvrd · 3 years

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Late-night and also half-assed AU idea times?

The one where Luke gets sent back in time (Because Reasons) to Clone Wars era shenanigans.

Also Because Reasons Obi-Wan is put in charge of keeping an eye on this kid, idk, Biggs Antilles because everyone is so hapless in the Star Wars universe when under pressure, like seriously.

Anyway.

Obi-Wan is suspicious like a suspicious person and so is Anakin and Luke is kind of losing his mind because he never knew (suspected, but never had proof) that old Ben was a goddamned menace and all his lectures to Luke about same are like, wow, dude, wow.

Oh, and also his dad.

And Ahsoka?

And all the clones and everyone else and he’s like, ;____________________; at what could have been, you know?

But also not sure if he’ll ever get back to his time - he really hopes so because there’s this Mandalorian with an adorable kid - and oh, God, he needs to check on Grogu in this time stat, but yes.

Shenanigans in which Luke desperately tries to hide his real identity because everyone’s iike “He feels like Anakin,how strange, and Luke in the corner like “Hahaha, yes, STRANGE. :DDDDDD

And then adventures in which he ends up having to save Obi-Wan more than he ever expected to when he woke up twenty-something years in the past, and oh dear God is that his mom? (Leia looks so much like her. Mostly the angry part right now, because Anakin and recklessly endangering his life and uh, oops, he didn’t mean to eavesdrop???

But like. Luke is kind of bleeding again (he,too, recklessly endangered his life alongside his father and Obi-Wan) and thought medbay was this way and -

Wait, why are you looking at him like that?

Anaking and Padme worried Luke’s going to at them out to, idk, the Jedi council or whatever about their ~forbidden love, and Luke is just.

“What.”

So then the thing about attachments and how they’re bad because emotions is explained to him and Luke looks at his father who clearly loves his mother so much. Thinks about the nonsense about attachment and how scared it would make someone like Anakin, and Obi-Wan -

Luke loves him, but the man’s made mistakes. (And, like. Luke gets it, he does. Some adventure with Obi-Wan and sharing of past loves because they weren’t sure they’d make it out alive and why not share this thing with someone kind of friend-shaped, and anyway,)

Luke is like, okay, wow.

Because one, the thing about attachments is bullshit - show him one Jedi master who isn’t attached to their padawan for starters - and anyway.

Not his business who they love, an then he scurries off to medbay before he bleeds out in hallway or wherever, which is where Obi-Wan finds him and is like >:((((( at the bleeding thing and :| about the attachment thing but also *SIGH* because Luke reminds him of this padawan he had once, what was his name???

Anyway.

Yes

Also, though, also.

Them taking Luke to Coruscant to meet with the Jedi council because they have no idea where he came from - Luke floated the possibility of time travel being real to Obi-Wan once, but as a hypothetical and really, never mind him - and anyway.

Luke being like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as they ~question (interrogate) him because he has read up on the Jedi Order and their rules and whatnot. And where he might have been in awe of getting to meet all these Jedi masters once, now he just feels. Pity. He feels pity for them.

It shows, a little, and they call it arrogance for someone so young to think they know better than the entirety of the Jedi council and yet?

Luke doesn’t care.

Which kind of makes him a threat in their eyes, this incredibly powerful Jedi who appeared out of nowhere and shows so little - if any, really - respect for their Order.

And, they realize, who both Obi-Wan and Anakin like.

Ahsoka too, but she’s a padawan, young and such, doesn’t know better.

But also, also, after all the fun-times had with the Jedi council Luke walks out to find Palpatine talking to his father and his mother while Obi-Wan stands by and chips in with a comment or observation every so often and he is like !!! because he never expected this???

Somehow after hearing stories from people, he just. Didn’t expect the fall of the old Jedi Order to take place in a tastefully appointed waiting area, potted plants and chairs and such Maybe one of those little fountains you see in an office sometime for the soothing sound of moving water and whatnot.

Anyway.

Maybe it’s his own personal experience with the man in the throne room on the second Death Star with the dramatic lighting and so on, but it’s a wee bit jarring.

He has one of those “episodes” as the others call them, and gets hustled out of there posthaste while Palpatine is all, “Oh, dear, I do hope he feels better,” and Luke does all the meditating exercises so as not to blurt out that hey, so, that sith lord everyone’s trying to find? RIGHT THERE.

Because lack of evidence and such.

And it’s like.

After seeing what things were like, he’s just. He’s stuck here, probably, right? So. Maybe he can fix things, even a little.

(Right the wrongs that Palpatine wrought and so on.)

And while he’s doing that it occurs to him that Din, okay, Din is alive in this time. And he told Luke about the attack that killed his parents, about being rescued by Mandalorians, and is like.

Can he change that too? Should he? Searches everything he can only to realize he’s too late to do anything about it. That the attack happened before Luke arrived in this time and he has this.

This little breakdown in a library or some such somewhere, because all that fretting and whatnot he did about whether or not he should intervene was for nothing, a moot point because he was too late, and it’s like.

Existential crisis time because if he changes things more than he has, will he even exists in the future? Will Leia?

Will any of their friends exist, and on his way back to the quarters he’s been given he runs into Padme - perhaps sneaking out from visiting Anakin - and she’s surprised to see him, maybe a little worried too.

(She knows his views on the whole attachment thing, yes, but her and Anakin have kept their relationship a secret for a long time now and old habits)

Still, she notices he’s obviously not doing well and they talk for a bit, Luke asking her a hypothetical, like if she could go back in time to change something to save someone she loved from suffering, would she?

And of course she is like. No, because doing so negates their choices and how would it affect others and so on?

Luke is just, right, of course.

But then she goes on and says, as a person, not a politician, a leader, she absolutely would.

Luke is like, oh, because of course that makes sense, doesn’t it.

Good of the many and so on and anyway.

He goes to his quarters and thinks on it for a bit and realizes, yes okay, the thing with Din was mostly selfish - he wants to say he wouldn’t have done it, but he still doesn’t know - but Palpatine, okay, Palpatine.

How many million, billions, maybe more, lives was he responsible for? (Luke has his own count for the dead, and monstrously high it may be, but Palpatine is at the heart of all of it.)

So.

He he starts laying the groundwork to expose Palpatine, or maybe just build up, idk, say a Rebel Alliance to oppose him - and discovers that oh, would you look at that.

Because Padme and Bail and their closet conspirators who know something is coming, that Palpatine is surely part of it, but they don’t know the full scope of things.

And honestly, even Luke doesn’t, but.

They think he’s a spy or whatever, and there are all these shenanigans in the meantime, and Luke doing what he can to prove that he’s really on their side, and anyway, anyway.

He plants seeds here and there, everything Leia taight him, everything he picked up, and goes to Obi-Wan for help because his former master and watchdog, and anyway.

Before Luke gets to see if anything he’s done in the past pays off he gets booted back to his time.

Or a version of it.

Ripped back to his time and this moment where he’s sure he’s dead - in the middle of a space battle or collapsing temple somewhere and glowy doohickey, something like that, or, okay, Palpatine trying to kill hi again for the first time - and anyway.

Super disorienting.

Especially when he opens his eyes and Obi-Wan is there along with his father and is that Ahsoka?

But, like.

Older.

Also, though, Din.

And Grogu and Luke is very confused?

But there’s no time for that, as Padme and Leia run in and tell them the Imperials found them, did you get him? Yes, oh, good, and now with the running???

In which they do the running to a familiar ship Luke knows well, and also a few others he likewise knows, and anyway.

They escape just in time because an Imperial fleet was looking for them, and anyway.

Luke is super confused, but that’s okay because exposition time in which he finds out all those seeds he planted worked.

Palpatine was exposed, but didn’t matter because he had contingency plans, you know?

Order 66 never went into effect because someone - Obi-wan was prompted to go back to Kamino and ask after the clones, any...special features that may have been added and anyway.

Palpatine never got his clone army, but he made up for it with battle droids and conscripts and the Empire didn’t win? But neither did the Alliance.

Not yet, anyway, and they’ve been fighting for years at that point. No Death Star - at least not a completed one - and anyway, yes.

Alderaan’s still there, Leia doesn’t have to pretend she can see it in the night sky, and anyway.

A lot has changed but so much is still the same, and everyone, okay, everyone thinks Luke an idiot.

(They’re also not surprised by that, because Skywalker, but yes.)

This whole thing of Luke’s original memories clashing with this new timeline - he keeps his old ones, but it makes for a confusing time, you know? Some point where Luke gets this faraway look and turns to someone - maybe they were dead in that original timeline - and tells them how different everything is.

If they’re feeling brave enough, and honestly most people in Luke’s life are that brave, they ask what he was thinking about to get that look on his face and he’ll tell them about terrible future that didn’t come to pass.

One he feels a little guilty for missing sometimes because those other versions of the people he knew, loved, are gone and he’s the only one who remembers them? But then he’ll see one of them, or someone who was dead in that other timeline and realizes it’s not as simple as that.

Looks at the life he knew before and the one he’s learning now and can’t decide if what he did was the right thing?

But then he’ll catch his parents on a balcony somewhere lost in on another’s eyes and these soft smiles and the love between them that’s grown over the years. Or see Obi-Wan walking about with Cody, and soft smiles and quiet laughter and hundred dozen little moments like that and thinks, selfishly, he doesn’t truly regret it if these people he’s come to love get something like that, you know?

And, then, of course, then Din finds him, or maybe Luke goes back to their quarters on whatever ship or base they’re at then, and he’ll be waiting for him.

They were on the cusp of something when Luke got thrown back in time, but things changed once he got back.

Slow, awkward, because different timelines and experiences, but something new and good, and anyway, anyway.

Din’s there and Luke is being a little (lot) selfish in wanting to keep whatever the two of them are building between them, and Din seems to want the same, and anyway.

Yes????

#star wars nonsense #dinluke #time travel shenanigans au v2 #i have ~feelings regarding time travel okay #sorry #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #long post

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incorrectlumityquotes · 3 years

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FULL REVIEWS: “Sense and Insensitivity”

I know you guys remember that last year, Adventures in the Elements aired in some other country first and these episodes didn’t come out until later. BUT I want to go in order and don’t want to be confused.

I really did think that Adventures in the Elements was going to be the next episode, but this actually came out first. I had no idea what to expect so let’s check it out.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I love The Owl House cold opens. They’re always so funny.

Business is a bit slower than usual at Eda’s Human Collectibles stand and she’s not okay with that.

“Smells more nerd than money.”

Luz pops in to tell them that it’s because of a book fair. Wow. I remember those when I was a kid. I was always really excited about them because they were bright, colorful and always had at least one cool thing. Problem is I grew up super poor and my family couldn’t afford to give me anything to buy anything. They probably wouldn’t even if they could but that’s a different conversation. The only thing I ever bought was a photobook about wolves for fifty cents when I was like in the first grade. I was supposed to buy a map of the US to learn the states. My teacher was so mad. But I loved wolves so...yeah wolves.

Eda decides that this is too much dork for her and bounces. A bunch of funny visual gags in the background later and Luz and King decide to enter a writing competition.

After the cold open we set up the B-plot. Lilith buys a map from SOME GUY AT A BOOK FAIR that suppose to lead to the bloom of eternal youth, and in true Darth Vader fashion wants that power to serve The Emperor. Eda wants it for herself because she’s Eda.

Luz and King get started on their submission with more meta jokes about writing. Everyone’s favorite line about shipping later and Eda tells Luz that she’s going away for a few days to tend to the B-plot. Luz is a smart girl. As long as there’s food in the fridge she can watch herself (and King) for a few days.

And in true cartoon fashion being offscreen for a few seconds was more than enough time for King to trash all of Luz’s ideas and replace them with is own. King has a couple of innocently insensitive lines and Luz decides to opt out of the writing competition.

King does the IRL version of spamming social media to read the thing you wrote and King gets the IRL version of the usual response.

I really hope that’s mud he fell into.

Then a lizard guy picks up King’s manuscript and makes a deal with him to publish it. Obviously this guy is the villain and so is the dude who sold the maps to Eda and Lilith. They’re both voiced by all around good guy Steve Blum (I’ve met him. He’s super nice.). That’s why in my Incorrect Recap I called this episode “Oops All Steve Blum.”

King adopts the tagline of every content creator who has a Patreon page.

And oddly quickly King is suddenly the most popular writer in The Boiling Isles. Damn. Even JK took a few years before people went Potter crazy.

Back in the B-plot, Eda meets up with Lilith and they race to the bloom of eternal youth. And I just realized that Steve Blum’s last name is pronounced like bloom so maybe it’s a joke on him? I’m sure he’d get a chuckle out of it.

Also I remember seeing a YouTube video questioning why Lilith was covered in leaves before Eda jumped her and I was just like really? Is it really that big of a mystery that you dedicate an entire YouTube video to it? I just figured that “prissy fussy Lilly” isn’t very good at roughing it. It’s not that big of a deal, guys. Especially since season one is over and they never called back to it.

There’s also the big mystery on what happen to Steve (the character). He’s dead. Steve’s dead, guys.

Wait.

Steve is a character in the episode. They’re chasing the Bloom of eternal youth. Steve Blum voices both villains in the episode. Is this entire episode a reference to Steve Blum? How did I not catch that? This really is “Oops, All Steve Blum: The Episode.”

Back in the A-plot, Luz is really bummed over King constantly putting her down this whole episode. She decides she doesn’t want to be mad at him the entire time and agrees to go to his book signing thing.

Shit proceeds to go very down very quickly.

That Steve Blum lizard guys has been forcing writers to write bestsellers or he’ll squish them into little cube in an image I’m glad I don’t have because my god that shit was creepy as all hell. Every time I forget this show is a horror-comedy it reminds me in the creepiest way. Luz and King almost escape and the plot gets resolved by a running gag.

Works for me.

In a less creepy twist, turns out the bloom of eternal youth was a trap set up by the other Steve Blum character. Eda and Lilith remind him (and us) who’s boss offscreen.

The episode ends by reminding us that all of this happened in the span of a few days.

FINAL SCORE: 4 - Liked it.

Damn I forgot how funny this episode is. So many background gags and a lot more Skara sightings than usual. I know some people didn’t like this episode because it was a King episode or it was “filler” but I think it’s perfectly okay for a horror-comedy show to have an episode where it’s just mostly jokes. That’s the point of a comedy! To be funny.

And it’s not “filler.” Both plots help strength the relationships of the respective characters so it makes a bigger emotional impact in future episodes. Sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination.

#the owl house #my works #full review #full reviews

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waystobuild-blog · 4 years

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Top 7 CN Shows That Would Work Better in Live Action than PPG

So I think everybody’s talked about why CW Powerpuff Girls doesn’t work, whether or not it’s a real thing or not? Who even knows. But while thinking about how this:

is kinda awful for Powerpuff Girls, I got thinking what shows that this style of a reboot would work for. In which it’s live action, the character is depressed and has sort of resentment towards their childhood now and that sort of thing.

So what are the top 7 shows that I think this

Number 7:

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends

At Number 7 we have Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Seems fitting that we’d start the list with another one of Craig McCracken’s biggest hits. Why do I think the premise of “Oh, life sucks now and I kinda wasted my childhood” would work for Foster’s? For the plain and simple fact that for a few episodes of the show, there was a focus on Mac growing up and whether or not he should leave his friends at Foster’s behind him. You could play a lot with that concept combined with the live action reboot thing. Maybe an older version of the character is dealing with whether or not to let go of both Bloo and the past and move on with his life. Frankie being a young adult during the time of the original show could also be a pretty instrumental character since it was a matter of living there, caring for the friends, having that job and balancing this life with the life that she had outside of the house.

Not quite a coming of age story but a sort of “Hey, my life has gone nowhere and where could I go with this now? Do I keep the friends I loved and cherished as a child or move onto other things? Is there a way to do both?”

Only thing I wouldn’t want though is CGI monstrosity friends. Those would be kinda the worst…

Number 6:

Okay, let’s actually talk about a real superhero show this time around. Or would this count as a superhero show? Well, they certainly do a lot of cool time travelling so I’m gonna say it’s a superhero show. Of course, I mean Time Squad.

Now if you haven’t guessed, I don’t have the most experience with this show but I know enough to think that this is something that could actually work well. I mean, Otto was a kid who was basically running around all over history protecting the balance of time with a stuck up robot and a dude who is a little too into all of this. Imagine if he just sorta did this for all of his childhood and realizing as a young adult that “Crap, I didn’t really have a childhood.” With the dynamic of the squad, the potential to expand the greater organization as a whole and just all the time travel shenanigans that could happen, I don’t see a reason not to do it.

Plus, CW already has Legends of Tomorrow and that’s awesome so even less likely to screw it up if they’ve already got a model to do it off of right?

Number 5:

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Yo ho ho, it is a sailor’s life for me. And in this sailor’s life we’re coming in with Number 5: The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Now this is a bit of an odd choice, right? But hear me out.

Flapjack as a child kinda had only Bubbie and K’nuckles as guides for his life. While they mostly spent their lives at Stormalong Harbor, they also constantly spent their lives looking for Candied Island. What if they never stopped looking and eventually, little kid Flapjack is a grown up now and he’s like “Oh wow. I wanted adventure but I was kinda manipulated to follow this creepy old man’s dreams of candy.” I think going heavy and hard on this sort of found family between them would be kinda fun. How K’nuckles wasn’t the best role model and how they’ve still only got each other in this world, that sort of thing.

Plus, a live action Stormalong would be sooooooo cool.

Number 4:

Ben 10

As the old saying goes, it started when an alien device did what it did, stuck itself upon his wrist with secrets that it hid, now he’s got superpowers he’s no ordinary kid, it’s Ben 10.

And unfortunately in CW’s Ben 10, he’s not a kid who just wants to have fun. Nah, he’s got a lot of emotional stuff to deal with and all of that depressing stuff. Isn’t it great? Now I do think that this could work especially if you work it in where maybe Ben enlisted into the plumbers after his summer vacation and it just kinda escalated from there to the point where here he is now.

Say what you will, but at least with Ben 10, we’ve seen it hit a more grounded and emotional place with Ben 10 Alien Force and Ultimate Alien so I don’t believe that this would be too far of a stretch with how that show worked and a lot of people happened to really like those iterations of the show.

Granted, I actually do want a CW styled Ben 10, but less edgy Arrow style and more along the lines of The Flash, but I’d still take this too.

And now before we get into the top 3, let’s get into a few honorable mentions.

First up, we’ve got Steven Universe. Now honestly, this could work really well, the only issue with that is that we’ve kinda already seen this story told and that was with Steven Universe Future. Good stuff and a lot of potential, but we’ve seen it and I don’t think we need to see it again with a live action coat of paint.

Next up there’s Codename Kids Next Door. Honestly, I think the only real spinoff we need for Kids Next Door is Galactic. That’s it. Anything else is unnecessary. Still, with this sort of concept an older KND who has been decommissioned and feels like there’s something missing in their lives that they just don’t understand would be really cool. Although maybe that would work as like a movie or special or somethin’ I don’t know.

And finally for the last of the honorable mentions we’ve got Teen Titans. While I am trying to keep this list to CN Originals, I couldn’t help but bring this one up. How Long is Forever is one of my all-time favorite episodes of the 2003 series so I think seeing a series taking place in that timeline or something similar would be a lot of fun maybe for like a miniseries or something. And honestly, anything’s better than Titans.

With those three out of the way, back to the list.

Number 3:

The Life and Times of Juniper Lee

In a world full of monsters and demons, June is the only one who sees them. This is the Life and Times of Juniper Lee and it makes number three on my list.

Now, like Time Squad, I didn’t watch much of this show. But what I do know about this show is that June is cool and she’s got this whole legacy and destiny by being the newest Te Xaun Ze, which are basically the magical protectors of her town. Only problem, and why I think that this direction for this show would actually be kinda cool, is the whole thing that the Te Xaun Ze is never allowed to leave the town at any point in their lives and oh boy, you could actually go really hard on that with this format since it’s literally built into the show.

Juniper Lee all grown up and just straight up depressed because she’s got the cool powers and grabs all the monsters but everyone around her has moved on in their lives. Friends have gone off to college and started all their lives and she’s got nothing but her family in Orchid Bay. You’d have a story of someone who once was big on their destiny who has accepted it but wishes that it wasn’t theirs anymore. I do know the show dealt with this a bit but with a new continuity and an older version of the character you really could just go in and deep on this.

I stand by that this would actually be pretty cool and kinda want it. Honestly, I like this idea so much that I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the number three or the number two spot, but y’know what? The next show told me a little secret that gave it the edge.

Number 2:

The Secret Saturdays

That’s right, it’s the Secret Saturdays.

Zak Saturday went all around the world with his parents discovering ancient cryptids, protecting the world and everything. He got some cool siblings in Fiskerton, Komodo and Zon. And then to add on top of that that he’s also the reincarnation of an ancient cryptid set to rule and control all the cryptids in the world? Yeah, that’ll do it. Definitely not the type of life he asked for and kid went through a lot because of it especially after losing those powers and apparently getting them back if we’re to count the Omniverse crossover TGIS to be canon.

But having parents like Zak’s, everything with the community of Secret Scientists and not really having many friends his own age or well, his own species will do that.

Exploring Zak and maybe Argost coming back for powers he might not want anymore and learning to embrace his destiny while also trying to patch up the Saturday family would be awesome.

Number 1:

Dexter’s Laboratory

Now while I know we already have a live action Dexter and it was an incredible hit, I- Wait, not the same show.

Ahem, Dexter’s Laboratory makes the top of this list. Partially because of it being PPG’s sister series but also partially because of the whole thing of there’s a lot you could do with Dexter’s character in terms of depression. If someone with such a high intellect were to somehow lose it all or just in some way, never really got forward in life, that would do it. Dexter could be a type of character that’s too stuck inside his own head in order to move forward. Alternatively, maybe Dexter is highly successful but has found there’s something missing in life or something. I dunno.

But whichever way you decide to go with Dexter’s character, you could have Dee Dee be pretty much the opposite of that. Maybe she’s found herself a place in life that she’s content with and Dex doesn’t understand why but wants it. I think going deep on this sort of emotional aspect of his life while also having all sorts of fun crazy science stuff would be a good watch.

All in all, gimme a Dexter’s lab show but we gotta make sure he keeps some form of an accent. No accent is a dealbreaker.

Although, I think that at the end of the day, animation should really just stay animated and that we don’t need to go live action for anything. All of these ideas I’ve presented, I’d of course rather prefer as cartoons with a more balanced tone more than anything but I figured with the announcement of a PPG show, this would be a silly but fun idea to talk about rather than ranting about it like most have. Granted, I’ve got some rants of my own since I still think it’s a bad idea. Haha. But you know how it goes.

At any rate those are all the shows I think would make better CW PPG style reboots than CW PPG. When it comes to the edginess and potential for drama, I feel these shows fit the bill better than the innocent, buttkicking action that was the Powerpuff Girls.

But what do you all think? Do you have any shows in mind that I haven’t mentioned? Do you think I’ve opened Pandora’s Box and given The CW more awful ideas?

Now, this was originally a YouTube video so you can probably see that in the way that this post, especially the ending was written, but I just still don’t really have the energy to edit stuff so have this post instead. It’s something I really wanted to discuss and just decided, hey, why not make it a Tumblr post?

#Cartoon network #PowerPuff Girls #live action remake #cw powerpuff girls #Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends #time squad #The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack #ben 10 #steven universe #steven universe future #kids next door #codename kids next door #codename knd #knd #galactic kids next door #Teen Titans #The Life and Times of Juniper Lee #secret saturdays #dexter's laboratory

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multimetaverse · 3 years

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Riverdale 5x03 Recap

Jellybean was born and raised in Riverdale though?? She only moved to Ohio after her mom left FP

Good on FP for doing what’s best for his daughter but probably should have told Alice beforehand that you’re skipping town

We’re ending this era of Riverdale as it began with Tom Keller as Sheriff. Hope he has a scene with his son tonight!

Jughead saying those kids almost looked innocent asleep was pretty messed up of him. 1) those are clearly homeless kids having to sleep in a fucking gym and 2) as bad as the voyeur vids were they still pale in comparison to the crimes that high school kids have been involved in over the years

Oooh man that Luke Perry is just brutal

It’s crazy to think of how far the show has come since that first scene of Cheryl and Jason Blossom in all white heading down to the river

Alice might be the most tragic living character on Riverdale, her life has just been wrecked over and over and over

It’s awful how realistic the army recruitment booth inside the school is. The Saved by the Bell reboot had a great joke about military recruitment of teens (it’s a much better show than Riverdale and I highly recommend it and it’s already been renewed for S2)

It’s nice that they brought Weatherbee back for the final high school eps

LOL at the Red Circle shade

The yearbook as a device to look back at some of the show’s history is clever. Also reveals how clearly chapter 79 which was supposed to be the S4 finale was also being written as a possible series finale

It’s very odd that Archie’s poor grades of all things are what the writers just to be realistic about. Nice of Weatherbee to let Archie walk with his friends though

Ladies and Gentlemen that could possibly be the last Varchie sex scene we ever see

Considering the US only abolished conscription after the Vietnam war, I don’t think those 4 students back in 1945 had much of a choice in joining the army. Although they lucked out with the timing since the war with Japan would end within months while they were still in basic training

Not Archie lying to both Jughead and Veronica about his post high school plans

FP telling Jughead he’s old enough to be on his own is rich considering Jughead was basically homeless and on his own in S1

Good on Cheryl for getting her red robe

Finally Tom Keller gets a scene with his son!

Omfg I can’t handle this Archie cover of Green Day

Yaas Penelope lurking in the bushes. I’m gonna miss that Queen, hope she gets out of jail soon enough

RIP Falice. It will never cease to amaze me that right when the obstacles that should have stopped Bughead such as their parents being in a relationship and their shared half-brother are swept away that Bughead is being broken up

Well good bye for now and maybe forever FP Jones. You were the best of the surviving fathers which is admittedly a hell of a low bar

Pop’s is rightfully restored to Pop Tate

Kevin mentioning Josie and the Pussycats threw me

I guess from now on we’ll always see Jughead without that stupid hat, that’s weird

These grad scenes have been surprisingly poignant but they fall flat when they include the wider group. How many lines have Kevin, Fangs, Reggie, and Sweetpea even had lately? Has Kevin done anything of note since Hedwig? We’re a long way from when he was Betty’s best friend. And what has Reggie been up to? I noticed his dad wasn’t at grad, is that because he’s dead? Is there ever gonna be a follow up on Reggie smashing his dad’s car?

Don’t have a great feeling about this vow

Archie sure knows how to kill the mood. The worst thing about Archie’s speech is its accuracy. The US military really does offer a path to a middle class existence especially for kids with no other options. The life outcomes for people without high school degrees are grim and Archie really is grasping the last, best way to try and turn around his life

This Choni breakup is so sad

The CW is wildin out letting Betty take off her bra for sex. What a bizarre transition from tearful confession to sex. Perhaps the last Bughead sex scene we’ll ever see

Just realized that Vegas will very likely be dead by the time we pick back up in 7 years

These scenes would have more impact if the show had focused on the Archie/Jughead and Veronica/Betty friendship

Wow bringing the old car out for one last drive

These flashbacks are sad, especially the Luke Perry one

God I hope Nana Rose survives the 7 year gap

Jesus Christ, so Jughead had a home he could have stayed in but decided to squat at Archie’s instead??

Poor Jughead being the only one to keep the vow

Well this really is the end of an era. Riverdale will never be the same after this episode. From the promos we know that Veronica is married to a controlling wall street douche, Archie is wounded overseas, Betty is an FBI agent, and Jughead a writer. The crisis that brings them all back is Hiram dissolving the town of Riverdale for his nefarious ends

Veronica marrying a man who shares some traits with Hiram is not surprising though the fact that she’s married is interesting, both in that there’s no way that marriage will last and in how her husband is jealous of her past with Archie, it’s an easy way to start heading towards Varchie again if the writers choose. There’s no way that Betty would be get in to the FBI with a serial killer father and half brother but we’ll see what new killer the writers can come up with. It looks like Jughead is a tortured artist. I appreciate the costume designers for making Archie’s military uniform so retro that it looks like he’s being shipped off to Korea to stop it going the way of Red China

Looking back it’s extremely bizarre that they did what they did with Barchie. It really served no purpose since they all would have gone their separate ways anyways

Well looks like Cheryl hasn’t been successful in thwarting Hiram. I would imagine that much of Veronica’s story after the time gap is her wrestling with whether to take on her father and to claim the Lodge legacy for herself once and for all. Archie had always been her guiding light in that regard and we’ll see if can play that role in the future

This 7 year gap brings the characters ages up to 25 which is much closer to the actor’s actual ages which will help in that regard. But time jumps are tricky and 7 years is quite a gap, double the length of time that these first 79 eps have lasted. Sadly, Riverdale was renewed for a 6th season but realistically the bulk of the series has now passed and whatever adventures the gang gets up to as adults will get far less time dedicated to them. Some sort of time jump was probably always necessary if the show lasted as long as it had but I’m skeptical that Riverdale can pull it off. Until next week Riverdalers

#Riverdale #Varchie #Bughead #Barchie #Archie Andrews #Veronica Lodge #Jughead Jones #Betty Cooper #FP Jones #Riverdale Recaps

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seasidewriter1-writes · 3 years

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Answering Asks from @fadingclamalmondrascal : “Hi! I hope you're still doing asks, but I understand if you're not, it sounds like you've got a lot going on. I've got 3 questions for you:

1: What made you want to adopt this story and write an "Anakin's big sister who falls in love with obi" au? What about it appealed to you initially, and what about it keeps you coming back?

2: I love Elara's Sith name! Carus is so cool. What kind of thought did you put into that name and her sith design?

3: What does your writing process for each chapter look like?”

Hi!! My asks are always open, and even if my life his completely hectic, I’ll always get around to answering them! But, thankfully, my life has started to calm down in the last week. I’ve gotten a lot of writing done in the last day, so I’m in a very “Balance” mood, so I’m super stoked to answer these!! (I also wrote a lot again, so buckle up!!)

1. So fun backstory on my finding the story: I was living in England for my first year at University, and I was on a big ol’ Star Wars kick because The Force Awakens had just come out in December. It was January. It was cold, the evenings were getting rainy, so one night after dinner and scrolled through FFN to find something fun to read. And when I first found and read the original story, pre-adoption (which I believe is still up and called “Another Skywalker”), I remember being like ‘wow, this is an interesting concept.’ And as I read it, in my head, all of these ideas were coming to my head; and I remember being kinda sad about that. I didn’t want to write my own story, then have it seem like I’d ripped off the concept from the author. Because this was the first fic with the “Anakin’s older sister falling for Obi” concept that I’d ever seen. I didn’t know if it was something of a trope for an Obi x OC pairing, or if this one was an odd one out. So I finished reading the 11 chapters, and the author had posted a note saying that the story was, effectively, up for adoption. I have never jumped on something so fast. I drafted out two scenes (a now obsolete scene where Elara sees Obi-Wan off to Kamino, and a chunk of the final battle RotS) and sent it to the author. When she told me that the story and concept were all mine to do with as I pleased, I was so excited. Because I realized that all the ideas that had been tentatively brewing in my head, I could now fully bring to fruition.

What initially drew me to the concept was the idea of being able to explore a story and a romance that is, in a way, a foil to Anakin’s. Almost a way to show that maybe, if things had gone differently, Anakin and Padmé’s romance didn’t have to be doomed. Because I have always believed that there had to be some way that it didn’t have to end in disaster. Presenting a Jedi OC x Obi-Wan can explore similar issues (and there’s a lot of fun to be had with that concept, too). But then you have two people who were raised with/to follow the same ideals. Though they are both unique individuals, they will come up to very similar blockages––struggling with breaking the Code, with sloughing off ideals and a way of life they’ve followed all their lives. But with a Skywalker OC… that changes. You get someone who wasn’t raised to keep her emotions in ultra-check. Someone who, like Anakin, is family oriented, passionate about protecting those they love, and innately wishes to express their emotions in a more open manner. Those characteristics present unique conflict (particularly in conjunction with Obi-Wan’s characteristics), and I just… I wanted to, and continue to want to, play with that. Because Elara is dedicated to the Jedi Code. She’s a good Jedi. But put her want to be a good Jedi (for herself, for her brother, for the good of the galaxy) right up against an undeniable, innate need and want to love (because, at her core, Elara is just a purely loving person)––you get whole other obstacles to overcome. It’s a lot of fun to figure out how her overcoming her obstacles helps Obi-Wan overcomes his, and vice-versa. How we can see, in recent chapters, that Obi-Wan realizing he can’t hold Elara at arm’s length anymore affects her; how she starts being more gentle towards him again, tentatively letting him back in. I just love playing with stuff like that!!

And there are a whole lot of things that keep me coming back to this story. One of the biggest things, I think, has to be the idea that ‘love prevails.’ I love myself a complex romance. Maybe that’s why I love Regency/Period Dramas so much; because there are so many ups and downs––and that’s what makes it feel so good! Because while there’s hope and love and happiness, there’s also drama and frustration and confrontation. But through all of that, at the end… love prevails. I’m a hopeless romantic, I’ll own up to that any time of the day. So seeing a couple, so hopelessly in love, go through trials and tribulations and come out on the other end completely alright? That’s my jam! And when you’ve got someone who stands so steadfastly by their ideals as Obi-Wan, but who very clearly is… so passionate and loving… That just feels like the way a love story with him would go. And ‘love prevails’ doesn’t just apply to the Obi-Lara stuff either. It’s about the familial love between Anakin and Elara, and how that love for each other may thrive or suffer in events to come… it’s the platonic love of Elara and the men of the 442nd. Star Wars is a story of many things––family, adventure, coming into your own… but it’s also about love. And getting to add to that aspect of the story in any given way, for people who enjoy reading it, to have fun conceptualizing and writing everything… it keeps bringing me back for more.

2. I had so much fun thinking up all the Darth Carus stuff!! It was prompted by a question in a review, asking what I thought Elara would be like as a Sith/what her name would be. So I started looking at all the other Sith names, and realized a lot of them were words that stood for descriptors of the Sith Lord. “Maul” for (the literal usage of) “maul,” “Tyrannus” for “tyrant” (derived, likely, from Latin tyrannia or tyrannos), “Vader” for “invader” (or “father”). So I decided I would use a Latin word for her Sith name, and decided I needed to think of what she would be like as a Sith. Tyrannical? Violent? Rampaging? And none of those seemed… right. It felt, to me, that if she were to become a Sith, it would be out of heartbreak. And it wouldn’t be a denial of love kind of heartbreak; it would be losing someone she truly loved (Anakin or Obi-Wan) forever. Their death, perhaps by a mistake that she made. So I went, ‘okay, the birth of her being a Sith is related to love.’ I searched up some Latin words and found “Carus” which means heart. And because Elara, Jedi or Sith, is so involved with her emotions and with love, with her heart… it just seemed to fit.

Now, the outfit––ohh, I had so much fun with the outfit. I’ve got a BFA in Theatrical Arts, so I’m big on costumes and costume details, so creating Elara’s Sith outfit was absolutely delightful. Again, I started with what I thought Darth Carus would be like. There’s a mournful aspect to her, so black as part of her color palette works, but I didn’t want her to be dressed in all black. I thought that, in the wake of her heartbreak, there would be a dangerous passion about her. An angry passion. So ‘anger’ and ‘passion’ are typically associated with burning colors like red, so I through red (and orange) into the mix. And I wanted them to be bright––Darth Carus is no longer hiding in the neutrals of Tatooine or the Jedi Order. She’s letting the galaxy know her pain. I did, however, want to stick with clothing articles that were more robe-like. It’s what Elara’s known her whole life. But instead of multiple layers, I stripped it down to singular, more form fitting articles. In a way, the fewer layers is displaying the vulnerability that turned her towards the Darkness. Red is the predominant color (the tunic) because it draws attention. You have to look at her, you have to see her pain. It’s almost like staring into a fire, or gaping at an open wound. And because all good Sith Lords need a dramatic cape, I thought I’d do a fun take on it and do one of the ones that attaches at the shoulders instead of drapes over them. Maximum drama for sweeping down staircases or jumping off of tall platforms. Now, like I said, I’m a sucker for small details… hence why I added the embroidery on the tunic collar. It’s floral. It denotes her love of life. Now, if this were all real life, real costume design in an actual movie… the embroidered flowers would be Gleannish Snow Blossoms. And, of course, amidst all the bright reds, vivid oranges, and swaths of black… against all this intensity… you have the delicate, cool softness of the real Snow Blossom pinned to the spot over her heart. The very same Snow Blossom that Obi-Wan gave her on Gleann. A gentle reminder of better days… of the reason she became the ways she is… of the man she loved so wholly and deeply that, in losing him… she’d much have rather killed her own heart instead. (Also, a friend of mine and I had a wonderful conversation discussing how much of a terrifying, badass power couple Sith!Elara and Sith!Obi-Wan would be. It’s delightful.)

3. So, if I’m writing a chapter that deals with a chunk of movie or episode, what I’ll do first is sit down and watch what I perceive I’ll be writing. I’ll take down notes on things that I’ll want to add in/describe. I’ve also got a whole document of ideas I’ve already written down, and a document of bullet-pointed ideas, so I’ll give that I skim/edit, too. I always have to pick what scenes to leave in or take out, decide if they can be summarized or should be left in. Sometimes this’ll happen the same day I start writing, but sometimes I take a day to really think things over, sleep on it, then start the next. Then I’ll start to write, and I’ll have the movie/episode open for reference. When I write canon dialogue, it’s a lot of: watch, listen, pause, transcribe; rewind, read subtitles, listen, pause, transcribe. I also usually have, like… five safari tabs open with different research pages open––one for the movie/episode, probably one for a character of some kind, a google image search of a costume or something, and another one that’s got, like, different kinds of starships or droids (because there are so, so many). A lot of the time I’ll just transcribe/describe a chunk of canon stuff, then go back and add in extra details, weave Elara into it, or change up the dialogue to fit. An example being Obi-Wan and Sugi’s conversation in the barn. I beefed that up a little bit, added in references, and used it to benefit the overall storyline.

With chapters that are more original content based, those take a little longer to plan. Even if I have an idea of what’s going to happen, it takes a bit of time to figure out how to order it all, how to get a proper lead in, how to make transitions. And I also contemplate whether or not what I want to write is really going to be beneficial to the story, or if it’s going to end up being meaningless filling. There are a lot of ideas that I have had or do have that would be fun to write, but don’t really… work into the story well enough (like, god, do I want a girls’ day chapter 😂). And it’s in writing these chapters in particular that I do a lot of my music listening. Star Wars soundtracks, the story playlists I’ve made… the right music can help me find the mood or setting of a scene, inspire a moment. Like, I cannot tell you how much of the bunker scene on Ryloth was inspired by Sebastian Böhm’s rendition of “Blue Monday.” Music plays a huge role in writing for me. I’ll have music playing when I’m driving or doing dishes or cooking, and I’ll start to formulate ideas while listening. There are times, too, when I feel stuck when writing that I’ll swap on over to YouTube and I’ll watch some Star Wars edits. There’s an amazing edit of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath over battle sequences from the films, and it’s just… it feeds my soul when I get stuck writing battle sequences. I’ve got, like… a go-to list of edits I watch when I feel a little stuck, and they’re all phenomenal. And when all is said and done and I’ve finished the chapter, I usually take a break and sit on it for a bit. Then go back, read over it, do grammar edits, change things if I see fit too. Then it’s on to review replies and I get it uploaded and posted!!

#mary answers #Mary answers asks #balance asks #I’m alive!#And I’m writing again!#HUZZAH!

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slapshot-to-the-heart · 4 years

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Breakable Heaven (pt. III) - p.l. dubois

Part I II

Here’s part III! One more part after this, then we’re going to be finishing up our time with Laurel and Pierre-Luc. It’s seriously been so so much fun writing this over the past few weeks, and I’m excited to get to keep the story going. Many many thanks to @hockeyboysiguess for being a great sounding board for Breakable Heaven so far, my favorite response of hers to anything I’ve sent has got to be “that’s rude.” So, enjoy! Reblog if you enjoy it, come scream into my inbox, and I still read every tag!

Part III

July 10 (sat)

Laurel was exhausted. Two hours after the wedding, her and her meager bridal party had shown up to her house, piling everything she hadn’t yet brought over to Pierre’s apartment into her SUV and Madeline’s white sedan. She left her old apartment with the keys at the front office and one last wistful look into the place that had once been her own. She’d miss it, she thought, as she and Pierre drove down the Ville-Marie Expressway towards his apartment, her fingers still trying to get used to the feeling of having rings on it. She’d only lived in the space for a year, but it was in that building that she started her dream job, that space that she adopted her dog, that apartment where she met one of her best friends and that place where she got married.

They had spent a few hours half-heartedly unpacking her boxes; Laurel was excited to get settled in, but she was also the world’s worst procrastinator and even at 6 PM, all that she had managed to get done was folding some clothes and adding her book collection to the shelves in the living room. Pierre poked his head into the spare room — her room? — rolling his eyes when he saw her “progress.” “I was going to order in, what do you feel like?”

Laurel hung up a blazer in the closet. “Pizza?” she asked hopefully. “Though I’m really going to have to teach you to cook one of these days. We can’t survive off of take-out and pasta alone.”

“If that’s how you want to be,” he responded good-naturedly. “I’ll have you know that I can cook more than pasta, though.”

“Really?” Laurel asked, raising her eyebrows. “What’s the Chef Dubois specialty?”

“I make a mean salmon,” he replied, before returning to the living room. That was another thing she had to get used to quickly as soon as they started going through the marriage process: Québec didn’t allow for women to take their husbands’ names at marriage. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought too deeply about, but Laurel supposed she’d always assumed that she’d take her husband’s name when she got married. But then again, she always assumed she’d get married under normal circumstances. Her parents aside, Cloquet wasn’t an absurdly conservative town, but it was still certainly something of an anomaly for a married woman to still have her maiden name. Which is what she was now. A married woman. Oh God.

Pizza with white wine may not have been the most conventional choice, but it got the job done, Laurel thought as she lay in bed at half past midnight, the birds outside her door insisting on making her efforts to fall asleep as futile as her efforts to ignore them. She’d already been in bed for an hour; after dinner, her and Pierre watched a few episodes of Black Mirror — also probably not the best choice to do before bed, but oh well — before he wished her a good night’s sleep. She had taken a melatonin and drank a cup of tea before bed, put on a playlist full of rain noises, but nothing seemed to be working. Maybe it was because it was the first night in a new place, or the birds outside, or just the craziness and excitement of the day catching up to her.

Laurel felt like a child again as she padded over to Pierre’s room, like she was five and back in Minnesota, crawling into her parents’ bed after hearing a wolf howl somewhere on the property. But really, she didn’t really care what she had to do if it meant she could get a good night’s rest. She knocked lightly on his door, careful not to wake up the dogs, who had long since fallen asleep in a corner of the living room. “Mmm?” he answered. She turned the doorknob. God, I hope I didn’t wake him up. She didn’t, as it would turn out; Pierre was propped up on his headboard, scrolling through his phone as he moved his eyes from his screen to her figure in the doorway. “You good? Everything okay?”

Laurel shrugged, wiggling her hand. “I don’t know what it is, I tried everything but I’m just not able to get to sleep. I’d try and wait it out, but my sleep cycle will be thrown off for a week if I’m not able to get to bed tonight.”

He moved over from the middle, reaching over to the side of his bed and getting another pillow before throwing back the covers and patting the spot next to him. “C’mere.”

“Are you sure?” Laurel said, furrowing her brow, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was wearing an old t-shirt and panties, leaving very little to the imagination.

He nodded, putting his phone down on the nightstand, smiling softly at her. “Of course. What’s mine is yours, eh?” That was all it took for Laurel to climb into the right side, claiming it as her own, and throw the duvet over her body. She fell asleep almost instantly.

---

Laurel woke up to the unmistakable smell of bacon frying and the other side of the bed devoid of Pierre’s sleeping form. She straightened the bed before walking out, where she was greeted by two plates on the breakfast bar, a pot of coffee brewing, and her husband at the stove.

“I thought you said you couldn’t cook?” Laurel teased, leaning up against the granite countertop.

“Good morning to you too.” Pierre shrugged. “I hardly think being able to fry an egg and not burn toast qualifies as cooking, but I’ll take what I can get.”

Laurel stepped further into the kitchen, lightly dragging her fingers over his back in a silent thank you as she opened the cupboard. “Let me get the coffee, at least,” she said, grabbing two mugs off the shelf and the creamer out of the fridge. “How do you take yours?” Laurel asked, glancing at Pierre from the side as he buttered the toast.

“A little bit of cream, more sugar,” he replied, sliding the plates onto the bar as she handed him his mug. “Perfect,” he said, smiling. A few minutes into breakfast, with Laurel just about to crunch into her second piece of toast, he spoke again. “So, I was thinking…”

She nodded. “I should hope so?”

Pierre laughed, ducking his head. “I was going to post something about the wedding today, online and stuff, but wanted to check with you first.” They had spoken about it once or twice before the wedding, both of them knew that it wasn’t practical nor honest to think that they’d be able to keep the news from everyone over the entire duration of their temporary marriage. And part of the “sell,” part of what she needed to prove, was that their relationship was real. And real would mean posting about each other online, real would mean flying down a few times a month — thank God her schedule gave her a long weekend, and thank God the flight wasn’t too long — for games and galas and real would mean meeting his friends and him meeting her family and Laurel had to stop thinking about it all before her head exploded.

“Go for it,” she said. “I don’t like having to hide from it any more than you do, so it’ll be a relief to let everyone know, give a heads-up to the four people on my Instagram page who actually care about my life.

Pierre poked her arm. “Five, now.” He opened his phone, scrolling through the pictures Madeline had sent from yesterday. She had run a small side business doing photography in university, and insisted on taking their photos as a wedding present. “You deserve something beautiful to look back on,” she had said. The final book wouldn’t be done for a few weeks, but she had sent over the raw shots the night before. “What about this one?” He leaned over to show her. Their foreheads were touching, his arms wrapped around her waist as they stood in the middle of one of Vieux Port’s cobblestone side streets. Laurel’s fingers brushed the back of his neck, her other hand loosely holding her bouquet. If you didn’t know, they looked like a real couple. They looked like they were in love.

“It’s gorgeous,” Laurel murmured softly. “I knew Madeline was talented, but wow. She outdid herself.”

Pierre nodded in agreement. “She did. I know I already told you, but you really did look incredible.” Laurel’s cheeks burned; she raised her mug to her lips, hopeful the oversized ceramic would cover enough of her face that he couldn’t see the effect his words had had on her. Laurel opened her own phone, scrolling through to find the matching photo. A few minutes later, he handed her his phone and she passed hers, giving their captions one last once-over before giving up their secret. Her eyes flitted across the screen.

Yesterday, I had the incredible fortune of marrying @laurel.klerken, the best person I’ve ever had the fortune of loving. I know it might come as a shock, and that we’ve kept our relationship under wraps since realizing after years of being friends that friendship just wasn’t enough any more, but this wasn’t a decision that either of us made lightly. Laurel, you’re an amazing woman, and even though it’s only been a day, an amazing wife. Whether it’s for your patients, your friends, or me, you make everyone around you feel warm, safe, and cared for beyond measure. You have a sharp wit and an even sharper mind, and I have endless admiration for how committed you are for standing up for what’s right, even when it’s not popular and even if it’s gotten you in trouble once or twice. Marriage is a partnership and a journey, and I’ve never been so excited to start a new adventure.

Laurel sniffed, not even noticing the tears pricking her eyes until Pierre handed her a tissue. “Thanks,” she murmured. “You don’t think you’re laying it on a little thick, though?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Not at all.” One tap later, and it was posted. Three minutes later, his phone rang as they were doing the breakfast dishes. Cap ❤️ flashed across the screen. Pierre grimaced. “It’s the captain. I should probably answer this one,” he said, pressing the speaker button as he dried his hands on a spare towel.

“You’re married,” Nick Foligno said, wasting no time. “Is this a fucking joke?” Laurel more than understood his apprehension, but the words still stung.

“Yes I am,” Pierre said slowly, “and no, it’s not a joke. Laurel and I are legally married in the province of Québec.”

She could hear a labored breath from the other line, followed by an airy laugh. “What the hell, man?”

Nick was ultimately happy for them, and after being introduced to Laurel after they switched the call over to FaceTime he apologized for his reaction, but Laurel waved him off. “You’re just looking out for your boy is all. I’d do the same.”

Nick nodded. “Take care of him for us, Laurel. Your address still the same?” He looked over towards Pierre, who hummed his assent. “Janelle and I will send you something. Something useful.”

---

July 28 (wed)

“Something useful” turned out to be a gorgeous set of Wüsthof knives and a stand mixer, the latter of which Laurel was nearly jumping out of her socks with excitement to try. Baking had long since been one of her favorite hobbies and her go-to method of stress relief; while she was grateful for the arm muscles her years of having to hand mix everything had given her, she wasn’t going to miss the extra effort. So Laurel Klerken was taking full advantage of her new toy. She had gone down to the Jean-Talon market in the morning, which was quickly becoming one of her favorite weekly activities. Especially with Pierre around to help her, she was learning to shift her speaking into the Québecois dialect, and her French was good enough to order from the vendors in their language and be understood. In her book, that was a win. The peak of summer meant it was berry season in Montréal, which meant it was time for Laurel to break out her nana’s blueberry oatmeal muffin recipe. And chocolate chip walnut cookies. And a French apple tart. Okay, so maybe she went a little bit overboard, but they had their desserts for the week and it made the kitchen smell so good.

Pierre opened the door just as Laurel was pulling out the last pan of cookies, walking around the corner into the kitchen and raising his eyebrows at the view. She looked over at him. “You going to complain about your wife’s baking when you’re the primary beneficiary?” she asked, challenging him with a playful smile on his face.

Pierre held his hands up in surrender, holding the mail between two fingers. “No.” He picked one of the cookies off of the cooling rack, taking a bite. “Definitely not.”

Laurel nodded towards the mail, walking over to the sink to wash her hands. “What came in the mail?”

“Nothing much,” he said, shrugging. “Just a little letter from IRCC.”

Her eyes lit up. “Immigration finally got back? Did they send my card?”

Pierre nodded, handing her the envelope. It barely took five seconds for her to rip it open. “You, Laurel Elizabeth Klerken, are now officially a permanent resident of Canada. Congrats, babe.”

Laurel squeaked in excitement, dancing around in the kitchen , the holographic detailing on the card catching the glow of the late-afternoon light. She threw her arms around Pierre, giving him a kiss on the cheek that was just barely off to the side of his lips. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said breathlessly.

“Don’t mention it.”

She pulled back, still smiling. “No, ‘don’t mention it’ is for when you bring home dinner without being asked, or take a drunk friend home from the bar. Not for things like this,” she said, wiggling her card. “This is everything to me, P. I get to stay in the city that I love, I get to stay at the job that I love. I get to —” She looked down, eyes widening. “I can finally get a health card!”

Pierre let out a laugh. “Out of everything, you’re most excited about that?” Being a dual citizen who lived in the U.S. for the better part of the year, Pierre understood the absolute chasm of accessibility that separated the American and Canadian health insurance systems better than most, but he still looked at his wife’s choice with incredulity.

“Of course it is,” Laurel said, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. She still had insurance purchased through her work, but the fact that now it was so much easier and official and came out of her taxes instead of having to try and navigate the bureaucratic system of forms and checks and private insurance companies made it so much easier. “It’s just nice to finally be a part of a system that acknowledges healthcare as the human right it is. That’s another thing about how it works in the U.S., it’s tied to employment a lot of the time so it’s not always a guarantee.”

She gave a tense smile, leaning back against the counter. “I might seem a little worked up about it, but that’s because I am. Uh,” she paused, eyes flickering up towards the chrome-plated track lighting, “my dad lost his job when I was a kid. He was a foreman at a construction company, but then the recession hit in ‘08 and he was laid off. We lost our insurance. Maggie and I were able to get on MinnesotaCare, which is the state insurance for low-income families, but our parents didn’t get approved. Not enough money to go around, I guess,” she scoffed. “Unemployment wasn’t paying enough and mom’s job isn’t full-time, so she doesn’t get benefits. Apparently they think healthcare is a benefit.” Laurel took another pause. “And then Dad had a stroke. It wasn’t serious, thank God, but the bills...Maggie was almost graduating high school and headed off to college, and money was tight even before the layoffs. We were able to come up with the money, but only because the community really came together, in a way I had never seen before. I still haven’t seen anything like it since. Bake sales, church fundraisers, garage sales.” The tiniest of smiles played on Laurel’s lips as she looked back up at her husband. “Do you know how much pasta Minnesotans can eat at a spaghetti dinner?”

“A lot?”

“A whole hell of a lot,” Laurel confirmed. “But anyways. That’s when it became personal to me, and I think it’s why healthcare and access to quality care is still something that I’m still so passionate about and invested in. It’s why I became a nurse.”

Pierre walked over to her carefully, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. “It makes absolute sense, Laurel. I know that probably wasn’t easy for you, so thank you for sharing. It means a lot to me that you’re willing to let me in like that.” Laurel wasn’t a cold person by any means; she was one of the kindest and most giving people Pierre had ever met, even in the few months that they’d known each other. But she was someone that could be guarded at times — for very good reason — and it meant the world to him that she was willing to let him chip away her hardened exterior little by little to see the brilliance that lay within.

She pressed against his side, her head resting on his arm. “You’re my husband. Why wouldn’t I?”

---

Laurel was in the ensuite of her and Pierre’s room, washing her face before going to bed, when she heard her phone vibrate with a text. After that first night, Laurel had made it a habit of sharing a bed; she’d never slept better in her life than the past two and a half weeks, and even though she may have been loath to admit it, waking up to an incredibly attractive man — who was shirtless half of the time — wasn’t something she was about to complain about. “Can you get that for me?” She was expecting a text from her mom, something about confirming her and her dad’s flight times for their visit next week.

“Laurel?” Pierre called cautiously.

She turned towards him, patting her face dry. “What? Did their gate get changed or something?”

He shook his head, walking towards her and holding the phone out like it was a bomb. “It’s Maggie.”

Laurel’s mouth immediately went dry. “M-Maggie?” She took the phone, staring at the screen, open to the text.

“Do you want to talk to her? You don’t have to if you’re not feeling up to it,” Pierre said, searching her face for any semblance of apprehension. As far as he knew, she hadn’t talked to her sister in years, and he didn’t know why that was suddenly about to change.

She shook her head. “No, it’s fine. I just...I have no idea what she wants. Why, after three years, is she finally deciding that she wants to be a part of my life again?” She looked down at her phone.

So, I had to hear it through the Cloquet grapevine that you got married?? What’s that about, L? Maggie wrote. Laurel pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. The gossip train in her hometown was second to none; to be honest, she was a little bit surprised it even took her older sister this long to hear about it. She was already enough of an anomaly. Less than a quarter of her city had a college degree, even fewer left the state to do it, so her going to Toronto for university was practically unfathomable — even if it was closer than Texas, where her second-choice school was. So, needless to say, she was a frequent headline in the Cloquet rumor mill. She had heard it all. That she had run off to Canada to escape a high school sweetheart turned sour, that she had cut off all ties with her family, that she had shaved half of her head and dyed her eyebrows bright pink. The last one actually had some truth to it, but it was just the eyebrows and she was a drunk 20-year-old, and at least she didn’t get a tattoo of the Maple Leafs logo on her thigh like her friend Ethan.

But this one wasn’t a rumor, and if nothing else, Maggie deserved to know that much. Not much to say. It’s true, if that’s what you were wondering.

Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out third-hand?

Laurel rolled her eyes, sitting down with a huff on the edge of their bed. Not to be harsh, Maggie, but it’s not like you’ve wanted to be that invested in my life since you left home. How was I supposed to know if this was even your number any more? I don’t even know what country you’re in right now.

Her response was almost immediate. I’m working at a hostel in Tokyo. But seriously? I know we haven’t been super close the past few years, but I’m still your sister, and I would have thought you’d tell me about something like this. Getting married is big. You don’t think you’re still a little young? Have you even finished school yet?

I graduated last year, I’ve been working at a hospital in Montréal for over a year, Maggie. And I know it’s a little early, but Pierre-Luc and I are happy. I love him, and he’s a good man and respects the hell out of me. I don’t really need anything else.

It was a few minutes before her next text came through, this time in all caps. YOU MARRIED A FUCKING NHLER? Laurel grew up knowing hockey, obviously; you couldn’t really live in Minnesota and not, and she wasn’t even a half-bad skater herself, but Maggie had always been the more dedicated of the sisters. She’d been the one who was always begging their dad to make the two-hour drive to St. Paul for a Wild game. Even when money was tight, Doug always found a way to scrape up enough for the tickets as her birthday present in January.

Denise from church didn’t tell you?

All she said was that it was some hot French-Canadian guy, and mom said you moved to Quebec, so I thought it could be any number. Fair enough.

Denise seriously called him hot?

Laurel could imagine her sister rolling her eyes all the way in Japan. Okay, fine, she didn’t say hot. But like...am I wrong?

For the first time in a long time, her sister made her laugh. Yeah, okay. He’s hot. I’m very aware that my husband is a class-A babe.

“You think I’m hot?” Pierre said, peeking over her shoulder and wiggling his eyebrows.

Laurel’s cheeks heated. “Yes, okay. I think you’re very attractive. Happy?”

“Very,” he responded. “I’m glad my wife thinks I’m hot. The feeling’s mutual,” he said before walking into the bathroom to brush his teeth, leaving her even more flustered than before. She turned back to her conversation with Maggie. My shift is about to start, so I’ve got to go. But I’m happy for you, L. I really am. You’ve done exactly what you want with your life, and I couldn’t be more proud.

Laurel’s finger traced the words on the screen, a small smile on her face as Pierre came back into the room, throwing back the sheets. She plugged her phone into its charger, turning it face-down onto the nightstand. Things weren’t perfect between her and Maggie; far from it. One conversation over text wasn’t going to change that. But maybe, just maybe, there was still something there that was worth saving. After flicking off the lights, the last thing she remembered before falling asleep was the feeling of Pierre snaking his arm around her waist, pulling her to rest her back up against his chest. And Laurel let him.

August 17 (tues

It had been one of the worst days of Laurel’s life, and she wasn’t one for dramatics. Certainly the worst shift of her career. She knew when she chose to work in a pediatric intensive care unit, that it wasn’t going to be all sunshine and rainbows. If she wanted sunshine and rainbows, she would have gone with something less taxing. Something like dermatology, or working in a pediatrician’s office, or being a school nurse. God knows she could hand out ice packs and tampons. But no, she had to pick critical care, and critical care with children, one of the most emotionally and mentally taxing areas in the entire healthcare field. She saw the highest highs, the incredible moments when a three-year-old girl with a brain hemorrhage was able to get home, or a twelve-year-old boy finally got a kidney transplant after having been waiting for years. She saw the highest highs, but on days like today, she also saw the lowest lows.

Laurel carried her scrub top in one hand, her backpack slung over one shoulder, and tried desperately to regulate her breathing as she turned her key in the lock, pushing the door open. No matter how many times she had helped her patients breathe, she never seemed to be able to take her own advice.

Pierre stood in the kitchen, making a smoothie, but immediately turned off the blender when he saw her face. “What happened?” he asked, gently taking her bag from her and placing it on the floor.

Laurel collapsed into his arms almost instantly. “T-there was a little girl who c-came in yesterday from a car crash, and it was pretty b-bad, but she made it through the night and everyone thought she’d b-be fine,” she hiccuped, “but then right at the end of m-my shift she started coughing up b-blood and she was crashing, so I tried to do CPR until the t-team got there, but it didn’t work and we…” Laurel trailed off, sobbing, gripping the back of Pierre’s shirt like a lifeline. “We lost her, P. And the doctor on call was tied up with another patient, so I had to notify the family, and God, it was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. She was only seven.” She looked down at her scrub top. “I have to go throw this in the washing machine before the stain sets.”

Pierre pulled back slightly, gently taking the navy shirt from her, giving a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll do it. You need to rest. Take a shower, or a bath, get into some comfortable clothes. I’ll take care of dinner.”

It was almost forty-five minutes later when Laurel finally emerged from the bathroom, clad in high school sweats and a faded Blue Jackets t-shirt. “I hope you didn’t mind that I took this one,” she said, picking at a loose thread on the bottom hem, “I hadn’t gotten to laundry yet this week.”

“It’s fine, Laur,” Pierre said, plating chicken stir-fry and rice. Cooking together had become one of their things; Pierre certainly wasn’t as hopeless as some people she had met, and he was right that he made an excellent salmon. But they couldn’t eat fish every day of the week, so Laurel broke out one of her few cookbooks and they had been making their way through the recipes together. They had finished breakfast and were making their way through poultry. Hence, chicken stir-fry. “You look better in it anyways.”

They ate in silence, her half-heartedly picking up forkfuls of rice only to put them down again. She smiled weakly at Pierre. “The food’s good, I swear. I just don’t have much of an appetite tonight.”

“I get that,” he said. “How about I put this in away in the fridge and you can get a yogurt or something? You don’t have to have a full meal, but you should eat something. We can watch something after, or you can go to bed if you’re not feeling up to it. Your call.”

“TV sounds nice, do you still have the old Parks & Rec recorded?” Laurel needed something she didn’t need to pay attention to, something that could just be background noise as she tried to sift through the emotions of her day and try to make sense of it all.

He nodded. “Wouldn’t get rid of it before asking, I know how much you love it.”

They were curled up on the couch together a few minutes later, a striped blanket thrown over Laurel’s lap despite the weather outside still lingering in the mid 70s. It wasn’t for warmth, not really; it was for comfort. Pierre’s arm was slung over her back, his thumb absentmindedly moving across her upper arm. She leaned into his touch, hardly paying attention to the show. “Do you want to talk about it?” Pierre murmured, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “You don’t have to, but it might help.” He wasn’t an expert by any means, but Pierre obviously knew that people died in hospitals, in intensive care units even more so. Which meant that there was an almost surefire chance that she had had people die on her watch, die on her shift. Had children die on her watch. And that didn’t mean she was a bad nurse or a bad person, but just that sometimes there were illnesses and injuries so severe that even the best medical care in the province couldn’t save them. So why was this one impacting her so intensely? Had she reacted this way before, with Madeline or her coworkers, and he just hadn’t seen it before? Or was there something different about this case, about that girl that made it hit closer to home for some reason?

Laurel took a shaky breath. “I know you’re right, that it’s not healthy to keep it all bottled up inside. But that’s what I’m used to, you know? I love my job, I do, but you have to compartmentalize sometimes. With this one, it’s just…” She searched for the right words. “It was so immediate, so in front of me, that I didn’t have any time to reach beyond trying to save her life. I didn’t think, I just went based on instinct and training. And she still died.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Laurel,” Pierre said firmly. “You did everything you could, you did everything right.”

“I know that,” she sniffed, “but it’s so hard to believe sometimes. That if I had gotten there a few seconds sooner, or if the crash team had been a little earlier, she might have survived. And I wouldn’t have had to tell a mother and father that their daughter was dead.” Pierre felt terrible, like there was nothing he could do, because there was nothing he could do, not apart from sit and listen. “I think it was different this time because I finally saw myself in their shoes, I obviously don’t have kids, not yet, but I imagined what it was like to have to be on the receiving end of that news, and it tore me apart, P.” Her voice cracked, and his heart broke. “Being the mom to a beautiful child and then all of the sudden having them all of the sudden stripped away? No longer living? I know that life’s not fair, but fuck, I thought I thought it would be a little better than this.”

Her voice went silent, and Pierre took the opportunity to speak. “It’s not fair, and I think part of what makes you so good at what you do is the fact that you recognize that. You’re so dedicated to giving everyone that comes through those doors the best care, because you genuinely believe that they deserve it. And that’s incredible. You don’t get complacent, you’re never satisfied with just doing things adequately and just enough to get by. You give everything 110%, and that’s how I know the kind of incredible person you are.” He paused. “And I think every parent worries about their kid getting sick, or getting hurt. I know mine did, and I’d be willing to bet yours were the same way. Worrying means you care. And you care the most deeply, the most genuinely, out of anyone I’ve ever met. And I know, when the time comes, that you’ll make an amazing mother. Whoever gets to do that with you will be a lucky man.”

“You really think so?”

Pierre slipped his hand into hers. “Positive.”

September 10 (fri)

Laurel’s fingers tapped nervously on the counter as she waited for Pierre to bring the last of his bags from the bedroom. He didn’t usually schlep a ton of things back-and-forth from Montréal to Columbus every time he needed to travel, but his ticket came with two free checked bags and if there was one thing Pierre-Luc Dubois was, it was efficient. It was the middle of September, and that meant training camps. That meant leaving Québec. That meant Ohio. That meant not seeing Pierre for weeks at a time, when the longest they had been apart since July was a two-day trip to Québec City Laurel took with her parents when they visited in August. Over the past two months, they had settled into a routine, and that routine was about to be broken. Grocery shopping, him washing the dishes while she dried, falling asleep together and waking up with legs tangled in the middle of the bed. She knew that he liked his coffee with a little bit of cream and more sugar, that Georgia got fussy if she wasn’t let out in the morning but Paul was more of a night owl, that dessert wasn’t supposed to be on his meal plan every day but that she could always get him to break for a slice of peach pie. He knew that she needed two Advil on the first day of her period because one just wouldn’t cut it, that her favorite Disney princess was Jasmine because of her independence, and that she liked to light lavender candles when she was stressed.

Pierre wheeled a bag out of the doorway. “That the last one?” Laurel asked, passing Phil’s leash to him as she held Georgia’s. He nodded. She spun her keys around on her finger. “Got both of your passports?”

Pierre patted his jacket pocket. “Right here.” It was easier for him; he could skip the wait in both countries. Exit Canada with the Canadian, enter the U.S. with the American.

It was 2 and his flight wasn’t until 4:15, but Laurel didn’t trust the traffic and she didn’t trust the wait times at the airport. “Guess we should get going then.”

“Guess we should.” Laurel grabbed one bag and he got the other, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and wheeling it out the door. It only took twenty minutes to get to the airport. Laurel pulled up next to the curb, double-checking the signs to make sure she wasn’t about to get fined for stopping, and put the car into park. Pierre was the first to open his door, grabbing both the dogs; Laurel followed suit a moment later.

“You’ve got to pop the trunk, babe,” Pierre murmured. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Oh, right,” she said, pressing the button on her key. It popped open with a telltale click; Pierre hefted out the black bag, she got the silver one. “Do you know how many people are going to have this exact bag? It’s going to be a nightmare at baggage claim, P” Laurel tried to joke. She always coped with humor.

Pierre laughed, this time a real one. “Fair enough. Guess I’ve got a lot riding on my luggage tags,” he said, flicking one of the offending objects around the handle of the bag, the black one. Laurel handed him the other handle, their fingers brushing as he gripped the metal. He put a finger under her chin, tilting her head to look up at him. He could see the apprehension in her eyes. There were a lot of things that Laurel Klerken did well, really well, but lying was never one of them. She was always an open book. “Hey, don’t look so down, Laur,” he said softly. “I know you’ll be missing your personal space heater and Piper will miss her siblings, but you’re coming to visit in two weeks and it’s going to be amazing. I’ll introduce you to the boys and the other wives, you’ll get to catch one of the preseason games, finally see my place in Columbus. It might be weird being alone for a while, but —” He cut himself off. “Scratch that, it will be weird for a while, for both of us, but we’ll get through it. You’re a great person, and not a terrible wife either. People have done long-distance relationships that were longer distances for more time, and they made it through just fine. You’ll be okay, Laur. We’ll be okay.”

Laurel took an unsteady breath, trying her best to put on a brave face. “Not a terrible wife, huh? Well, you’re not half a bad husband either.” As she spoke, she was thinking over his words. How normal they sounded, but how abnormal that was for them. They weren’t a normal couple, all they really were were friends who got married — right? So why was he saying those things, things that made him seem like a real husband talking to his real wife, things that were making her feel that maybe, just maybe, this marriage wasn’t as much of a hoax as the thought it was? And it was only because of that, only because she was either reading way too much into a situation that wasn’t even there or was the premier of reading people’s body language and being able to parse out their unsaid words, that she did what she did next. She threw her arms around her husband, and she kissed him.

#hockey imagine #hockey writing #pierre-luc dubois #hockey #hockey smut #hockey imagines #nhl imagine #nhl writing #nhl smut #nhl #nhl imagines #pierre luc dubois

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bettsfic · 3 years

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march pinned: ending the sex project

in the march edition of my lowkey writing-related newsletter, in addition to my writing-related post roundup and upcoming consultation availability, i have personal essay recommendations and a segment on the definition of a project!

for more information on my creative coaching services, check out my carrd.

if you want to receive my lowkey writing-related newsletter directly, you can subscribe here.

full newsletter below the cut, or you can read it here.

fuck february, amiright?

i thought january was bad. but february. february was the stuff of nightmares. my cousin passed away from covid (you can read about her here; she was really an amazing person and i feel so lucky to have known her). i was finally formally diagnosed with PCOS (bittersweet, i guess). my car broke down. i took two (2) days off and it took me two and a half weeks to get caught up again. i can only hope march treats us all a little more gently.

the good news is, i finished revisions on my short story collection to send to my agent, finished workshop submissions for the semester, and now i can return to my first love, fanfiction. that i am constantly working through original fiction to return to fanfiction has been making me think a lot about the nature of a creative, capital-p Project. so, this month’s BTALA (been thinkin a lot about) is going to inspect the concept of a “project.”

new resource

last month i unveiled a folder of my favorite short stories which i’m pleased to hear several of you have perused and gotten some inspiration from. this month i’ve compiled my favorite personal essays. there are fewer essays than there are short stories because i’ve broken them into two groups: personal and craft. next month i hope to have the craft essays compiled.

i’m always looking for more things to love, so if you have recommendations for your favorite short stories and essays, i’d be happy to hear them!

writing-related posts

how to physically maneuver the revision process

the difference between M and E ratings of fic

resources for worldbuilding (check out the reblogs for more!)

a couple syntax/prose book recs

how to break a long work into chapters

march availability

unfortunately i have to cut my coaching hours down a bit, so i don’t have any openings left in march, but i have some availability in april. if you’re interested in a writing consultation, please fill out this google form!

you can learn more about my services on my carrd.

what i’m into rn

for the past year, i’ve basically been trapped in a 10x10 room, and my health is definitely reflecting that, both mentally (does anyone else feel like they’re living in groundhog day? just, every day being exactly the same except fractionally worse than the day before??) and physically (i reorganized the kitchen and could barely move for two days).

reader, i have discovered something called “walking,” in which i put on real human shoes and go outside. it feels strange, bestial. neighbors wave hello to me. a harrowing experience.

while doing this, this walking, i’ve been listening to the lolita podcast which a friend recommended to me, a ten-episode series that dives into everything lolita: the novel itself, its context, adaptations, greater cultural responses, and — as a sticker on my laptop says — vladimir “russian dreamboat” nabokov. as far as i can tell it seems well-researched and presents the many perspectives of lolita in a fair way. i’m only a few eps in, but i’m entranced so far. highly recommended if you, like me, have a complicated relationship with lolita.

i’ve also found myself mildly addicted to a mobile otome game called obey me, which. look i know it’s like the definition of cringe but it’s also mind-numbingly fun and if i want to spend my minimal free time pretending 7 demon brothers are all vying for my affection then that’s between me and god. it’s a lot of what i loved about WoW: frequent events, bright colors, a daily to do list of simple but satisfying tasks, many many rewards, and it doesn’t take itself very seriously. and if i have 4k fic written of mammon/reader that’s nobody’s business but mine and my longsuffering ao3 subscribers.

i’m telling you this because i don’t know anyone else who plays it and am desperate to trade headcanons. so if you play, or start playing, hit me up!! i will give u mad tips and daily AP.

been thinkin a lot about

the project. the project. even the word “project.” PROject (noun). proJECT (verb). what is the project? “project” comes from the latin pro and jacare which means “to throw forward,” or projectum which means “something prominent.” a projector throws forward an image. to project onto something means to throw your perspective onto something else. to embark on a project is to make something prominent in your life. the concept of “the projects” comes from public housing projects, the government throwing forward affordable housing.

what is the project? in joseph harris’ essay “coming to terms” he says that “to define the project of a writer is…to push beyond his text, to hazard a view about not only what someone has said but also what he was trying to accomplish by saying it.” harris’ perspective is that of an english teacher encouraging his students to read critically, not just to summarize a text but to find its project, its greater purpose. and while i first read this essay in a seminar on composition pedagogy, it stuck with me as a writer. it made me reconsider the greater nature of the creative project.

how many of us, if asked to describe our writing project, would begin with a plot or character premise, the nuts and bolts of a specific story? maybe even the working title? but i wonder, is breaking out the plot really the project? is the discipline of sitting down and typing really the project? and when the story is finished, is the project over? what is the project?

in 2019, i wrote 86k words of a novel. i began revising that novel last fall, and i’m finding that i’ll probably keep maybe less than 10k of that initial draft. i’m not bothered by that. the novel i wrote before that started at 125k, then i rewrote the entire thing to 200k, then i whittled it back down to 160k, and next i’ll be tasked with paring it back down to 80k. i’m not bothered by that either. in the past five years or so i’ve written about 2 million words, and i’ve only published 20k of them. only 1% of what i’ve written, i’ve published. in the words of lauren cooper (catherine tate), i’m not bothered.

i used to see publication as the birth of the project, and writing it akin to a long gestation period. then i saw publication as the death of the project, and its life was lived in its drafting. now, publication seems irrelevant to the project. the confines of a story and its many revisions are also irrelevant to the project. the beginning of a story is not the start of the project and the end of the story is not the end of the project. the project is larger than the story, its revisions, its publication, and its eventual readership.

i think it took me so long to see this because for so many years i was still in my first project, the sex project, an exploration of trauma and sexual identity, which began in 2014 with destiel fanfiction, endured through many fandom shifts, my MFA, years adrift as an adjunct, all the way through 2020 with the completion of my short story collection. i used to wonder how anyone could write about anything other than sex. to me it was the only topic worth my attention. i was certain that i would spend my entire life being a sex writer and i’d never find fulfillment writing a young adult sci fi adventure or a highly literary novel about complicated family dynamics. i was baffled by people who were interested in other things, who could write entire novels without using the word “cock” even once.

then my sex project ended. i don’t know when exactly it happened or why, but suddenly i realized i never wanted to write another artful description of an orgasm or find a tactful euphemism for a vagina ever again (personally i prefer “wet cunt” because not only is it blunt, i find it phonetically pleasing). obviously i’m still writing explicit fanfic but it doesn’t feel the same as it used to. sex feels more sidelined to me, even if it’s still the center and drive of a fic. i no longer get any personal satisfaction from writing it, although i do get satisfaction in sharing the work for readers to enjoy.

it’s like i’ve somehow solved the biggest puzzle of my life. or i guess made peace with my meanest monster, that extremely complicated double-mind of desire that some non-sex-repulsed asexuals feel: you want to feel desire you can’t actually feel so you write it into fiction, to try to understand this thing you can’t have and which society tells you you’re missing, and you don’t even know if you don’t have it, because you still feel desire for affection and intimacy, and maybe even a desire to be desired. and for those of us who are asexual and have c-ptsd, sex you don’t actually want (but don’t know you don’t want, because maybe you’re ambivalent and mildly curious and touch-starved) and an unrelenting drive toward people-pleasing can be a dangerous combination. how can you ever know what consent is if you always put other people’s desires above your own?

maybe i’m alone in this. maybe i’m not. maybe for most people, wanting sex is a light switch: yes i want it, or no i don’t. but for me, i had to write a whole lot of words to figure out things like desire, consent, intimacy, forgiveness, the shape that good love takes. the lengthy theoretical flowchart of “i might be interested in having sex if this and this and this and this and this happens in this exact order and under these exact circumstances.”

it was hard to write something into reality that i have never seen except in pieces, in subtext i clung to with no lexicon to give it shape and meaning. te lawrence in lawrence of arabia. some of tarantino’s early work. the film benny and joon. and weirdly, the star wars prequels (that one’s hard to explain; i’ll spare you). i don’t think the sex project was about coming to terms with my asexuality as much as it was trying to organize my thoughts and feelings by continuously rendering my own experiences within a greater, shinier ideal — like how you sometimes have to unravel the entire skein of yarn to find the loose end, and only then can you get started.

i guess i’m in the infancy of the power project now. i’m moving toward themes of control, infamy, greatness. the exact circumstances in which atrocity occurs. how people rise into leadership and fall from grace. the consequences of success. i don’t know why this project has come to me, or what, if anything, it has to do with me. i’m not famous and have no intention of becoming famous; i don’t have social power or influence, at least not beyond my little corner of fandom, and i’m not interested in having it. and yet, here we are, already hundreds of thousands of words in.

my fics digging for orchids (tgcf) and a standing engagement (the hunger games) deal with the detriments of fame. and even float (breaking bad) to a degree is about the aftermath of being so close to power. my novel cherry pop, loosely based on macbeth, is about an ongoing power exchange between two teenage girls. my other novel, vandal, is about a girl who believes she has magic powers and casts a spell on her neighbor to fall in love with her. and i’m in the very early stages of a novel called groundswell, a cult story i’ve been wanting to write for years. i had no idea why i couldn’t write it until i realized it wasn’t yet my project. i’m not even to the stage of developing characters, let alone a premise or plot. i’m still just building my aesthetic pile (i discuss the aesthetic pile here, as well as vandal in more detail), watching documentaries on cults, reading books, finding inspiration, marking down ideas as they come. it may be years before i’m ready to sit down and write it.

now that i know what the project is, i have more patience with myself. it doesn’t bother me to rewrite a novel from the beginning, or to scrap novels altogether, because the story isn’t the project. the project cannot be diminished by cutting words, sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters. the project does not have a product. the project cannot be published. the project is in the practice, in dragging the impossibly large into clear, acute existence, so you can see it. so you can see the very center of what you thought was an unknowable thing.

#pinned #lkwrnl

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