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nikki-is-a-nerd · 5 months

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Of Portals, Travels and Blossoming Romance

Synopsis:

As Rey's newest apprentice, you managed to stumble across the Jedi temple in Ahch-to when she leaves you to meditate and to guide the other younglings.

Apparently touching murals in a temple is not the brightest idea, seeing how you're now faced with an unknown.

Note: this is honestly just the third rewrite of this one XD after this I'm going on star wars break to write more jjk, but I'll write Ezra stuffs, if ya'll have requests. Gimme a week or two to write some of my jjk ideas and then it's back to Ezra <3

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You were stuck in a temple in Ahch-to, not because your master left you there, but because you decided that you wanted to explore this planet that had the remnants of the very first Jedi temple. Your master told you to meditate, feel the force as she said. But being left all alone in your room, hearing all the new younglings that were brought here by Poe Dameron and parents who believed that their children needed guidance, training basic saber skills using bo staffs, made you feel antsy.

There weren't many padawans your age, nor were there many Masters, in fact your master was still the only known master. Though you've heard that Ezra Bridger lives, his location is unknown and with what he went through, your master decided to not involve him in her plans. Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren are also unknown. Whether Ahsoka is still alive is quite debatable. Togruta's who were force sensitive were rumored to live til two hundred years old but you digress.

You wanted to see the temple that crumbled down due to what Kylo-no, what Ben Solo did. Now here you were, foot stuck in a crack on the ground. You held onto the wall for stability, in the picture of a woman with an owl beside her. You felt dizzy, then nothing. You opened your eyes to a fascinating sight. It was like a path filled with endless gateways, with the stars as its background. You had no clue where you were, so you decided to walk around. This place was strange to say the least. You could feel your lightsaber with you still and the small pack you carried but you nearly dropped both when you heard the sound of birds' squawk. The owl's white feathers tinged with green with light green eyes, stared at you. As if sensing your fear it flies away. It turns around and beckons for you to follow. You ran after it and saw that as it landed on one of the gateways, it opened up. The sight before you was a blur but you decided to fall through, perhaps the owl had an idea. You wished to learn about the force or what the history was but, there were barely any salvageable items in any of the temples thanks to the empire. So without any hesitation you leaped in.

"Move kid!" A voice shouted.

"Sorry!" I said as I moved out of the way.

You were confused. This was a rebel base, but you don't know where this was. Try as you might but you got nothing.

"You lost?" A voice asked.

"Yeah I am. Excuse me but where are we..." You trailed off as you came face to face with a tall, young man.

"Wow...hi." you said shyly.

"Hi. Who are you? I'm sure I've never seen you around before." He said quite sternly.

You got nervous, how can you tell them that you basically are from a different time and that you're basically here because a bird led you here.

"Um it's a long story." You said.

He looked at you and noticed you small pack and the lightsaber clipped onto it and he looked back at you curiously.

"Come with me for a bit. I need you to talk to Hera." He spoke.

"Hera? As in General Hera Syndulla?" You said excitedly.

"General? Okay...sure whatever you say." He said shrugging.

As you two walked in silence, you kept looking at him. Something about him felt awfully familiar, it's like you had the answer at the tip of your tongue and you just couldn't figure it out.

"If you stare any harder I might turn to goo." He said teasingly.

"Sorry! It's just that, I don't know your name. I mean you don't know mine either which makes sense, but I'm (Y/N). Not that you were asking but you know, formalities." You said as you felt your face heat up.

"I'm Ezra. You're a jedi." Ezra said with a small smile.

You looked at him starstruck as you just now realized who he was. Ezra Frickin Bridger. Savior of Lothal, king of fake names, hoarder of helmets. The only other Jedi who's alive but his location is a complete mystery. You shook your head and acted normal. You spoke once more trying to hide your sudden excitement.

"A padawan. A very bad one, since I managed to not only ignore my master's order but also managed to lose my way." You muttered to yourself.

"Oh so that's what that little rat tail is for." Ezra said.

"Hey! This rat tail shows I'm an official padawan. My master was just following what the stupid temple said." You defended.

"It looks cute on you though." He added as he opened the door that showed Hera Syndulla herself, sitting down while surrounded by a few others.

"Ezra, I'm in a meeting, what's this about?" Hera said as suddenly all eyes were on you both, all except Hera herself.

"I found a wandering girl in the base and she's a jedi, sorry, she's a padawan." Ezra said.

"A padawan?" Hera said confusedly. She finally turns around and looks at the two of you and out of sheer awkwardness, you raise your arm to wave at everyone. Hera looked at the rest of the people in the room to signal them to exit.

When everyone has left, all except Ezra and Hera, she calls for Zeb and Sabine to join her. You were led to sit in one of the many empty chairs. You looked around fascinated with what you could see. This was the now destroyed Chopper Base or home base of the ghost. Grand Admiral Thrawn follows one of the ships that dock here, then rains fire on this base. This is what intertwines the fates of both Thrawn and Ezra Bridger.

"What did you call us here for Hera?" Sabine's voice rang out.

You have only seen holograms of her in the Lothal museum before the empire ransacked them and destroyed everything. Only bits and pieces of the mural were left behind but she looks exactly like the holograms, perhaps years younger, behind her was Zeb and Chopper, and to say I was fascinated and in awe was an understatement.

"Ezra found a wandering girl in our base who just so happens to be a padawan." Hera said.

"A padawan? Where's your master?" Zeb asked.

"It's a long story." You said quietly.

"We've got time." Sabine said crossing her arms.

I took a deep breath and hoped to the force that they find it in themselves to believe you. You understand it's gonna be a lot to process but it's better to do it sooner rather than later.

"Well, I'm truly a padawan, my master's name is Rey Skywalker. I'm also not from this time. I'm from the far future. Well not that far into the future seeing how in my time Ezra's still alive, around his early fifties and Sabine is still probably alive...I think." You said.

"Okay, you could be making it up though." Ezra said.

"I know that you're in need of more pilots, and Ezra's joining them because he has a bigger role now in the rebellion. I know he's way stronger than he was six months ago, and that there's trouble brewing in Mandalore and Sabine needs to return there." You said confidently.

"That could have been heard by you." Hera rationalized.

"The problem with Mandalore, is nothing new. It was bound to happen." Sabine answered.

"I can't just say something about the future! There are rules to time travel that one mustn't break. There are time paradoxes that could be born just because I exist here." You said.

"So, you could also just say that to avoid us questioning you further." Zeb said, arms crossed.

"There is a spy within the empire, planted by the resistance. The unexpected ally would be an important part of your lives. This base is also bound to be found by a bigger threat." You said.

You walked towards Ezra, keeping eye contact. You whispered your next words to him.

"You're learning to be stronger from the Sith Holocron that you've gotten from Malachor." You looked at him pleadingly.

"She isn't lying. She just told me something that only I knew." Ezra said.

Hera looked at Ezra before she nodded her head. Sabine looked confused but couldn't care less and Zeb felt confused but let it slide.

"Well, the kid's lost. She should probably get some time to get used to this time period." Zeb spoke.

"Ezra, you should train with her. She said she's a padawan, so she's probably used to training the same way Kanan was training you." Sabine added.

"It'll also help you not be a little shit anymore to others." Sabine added jokingly.

"You're also much closer in age it seems so you have the honor of leading her around these places. If you don't mind as well, would you be willing to help out our cause while you're here?" Hera asked kindly.

"Oh sure. I'm fine with that." You said.

"Great, well welcome to the rebellion, um. What's your name again?" Hera inquired.

"My name's (Y/N) (Y/L/N), nice to meet all of you." You answered.

"Well for formalities sake, I'm Hera, That's Zeb and Sabine." She said as she gestured to them who were standing by the door.

"And of course you've met Ezra. Kanan is busy as of right now, but you might bump into him from time to time." She added.

You nodded your head as she gestured for all of you to leave. Zeb and Sabine parted ways, Sabine going off to do her own thing, while Zeb went to train new recruits. Ezra gestured for you to follow him and so you did.

"So you know about the holocron." He said.

"I do. Don't worry I won't tell anyone, not because I agree with you using it but because you have to learn your lesson first hand." You reasoned.

"Oh and what lesson would I learn?" Ezra asked teasingly.

"To not mess with forces unknown to you." You whispered.

"You seem to know what it's like to use a sith Holocron though." Ezra pointed out.

"It's a long story. A painful one as well." You said stiffly.

Ezra grabbed your hand and brought you to a secluded area and patted the spot beside him as he sat down.

"I've got time. It's not like Kanan is training me anytime soon again." He said with his eyes closed.

You took a deep breath, clearing your mind. It's not like the memory was a distant one. After all, the fall of the empire, of Palpatine, was only a year ago. Your escape from the empire was only seven months ago.

"When I was a child living in Naboo, my parents were part of the few remaining empire loyalists. I never shared their views as a child. Often getting into fights with them. When my force sensitivity manifested, I didn't know it then that they called for General Hux. They told him about my abilities in the force and when he arrived, he took me with him. I begged and cried for my parents to save me but all they said was that the knights of Ren would be a suitable place for me. To show me the beauty of the dark side of the force. I was only ten years old." You retold your painful memories. You felt your nails dig into your palm to ground you as you continued.

"By the time I was fifteen, I was one of the strongest among the other force sensitive children they took. Kylo Ren would watch as we train, he would pick and choose who would fight him for the day, to test our limits. When we weren't training they'd make us touch the sith Holocron, a lot of the others succumbed to their desires to be stronger, to know everything and they were given the title Knight of Ren. I didn't so, I got a bunch of the others like me to run away when my now master arrived to escape the starkiller base. I was the only one who successfully escaped as the others were killed by the loyalists. I only escaped because I had to kill them too." You said, voice filled with regret.

"I'm sorry." Ezra said as he reached for your tightly closed fist.

"I surrendered to the resistance, I expected to be imprisoned but Poe took a different path. He told me that I was just a child, that it wasn't my fault. I followed Rey, my master when she found the person Kylo Ren was searching for. The rest was history. I can't fully tell you the details as it would cause problems...probably." you finished.

"Yeah that's alright. I hope you know that even with that, I still need to use the Holocron. I need answers and-" Ezra spoke but you cut him off.

"As I said. I'm not here to change what happened. But if you really want to continue, test out your skills on me. I still have years of training from the sith on me. I'm still learning how to do defense more than offense, so maybe you could teach me that." You offered.

"Plus, this is part of your journey. Taking it away from you might fully change who you are." You added.

"That makes sense. So, you ended up here because you were clumsy enough to get your feet stuck in a hole?" Ezra said trying to light up the mood.

"Really, that's your ice breaker? I'm quite sad with that. You could do better." You said smiling softly.

"Hey it's better than, your rat tail looks so long, can I pull it? Would you rather I say that then?" He joked.

"This rat tail is a staple for padawans. Wait, if you're a padawan, why don't you have one?" You asked

"Because I don't need it." Ezra answered smugly.

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Weeks passed with you stuck in this time. Hera and the rest of the ghost crew tried fitting, finding the location of ahch-to to perhaps lead you home but have come up with nothing. Ezra has trained with you, though you see that the Holocron affects him, somehow you can also see that he is not one to be easily swayed to the dark side.

"You're distracted." Ezra said as he pushed you back using the force.

"Sorry, I just, miss home." You said as you dodged another of his attacks, dropping yourself lower and using your saber to attack him from below, to which he dodges gracefully.

"Focus on your surroundings and use it to your advantage Ezra." You critiqued

As you two trained, your sabers clashing against each other. Yellow and green clash, sending sparks to fly. Ezra proved to be stronger as he managed to disarm you, his saber pointing close to your face.

"I win. We still need to work on how you defend yourself. You have way too many openings, your stance when defending yourself is weak. Here grab your saber." He said handing it to you.

He stood behind you, kicking your leg to tell you to widen them. He then checked your stance before kicking your right leg again to tell you to widen it a bit more.

"You have to widen your stance, to have balance, it makes sending you falling when you deflect another saber difficult. And raise your arms a bit higher to protect your face more." Ezra said guiding you from behind.

He was kind to you, though he had moments where the dark side seemed to call out to him, he never lashed out on you. His kindness and willingness to protect his friends, his family, was something that you wished someone had for you. It was no wonder why you easily fell for his charms. He was also funny. Though your master told you that she believed that love wasn't the problem in being a Jedi, but the selfish kind of love. You learned not to shy away from your feelings. You knew that you were meant to return to your time sooner or later, so you chose to keep your feelings locked up. Ezra has his life here.

"what's it like in the future anyways, after the whole schtick with the second coming of the empire?" He asked one night.

"It's peaceful. The people don't feel worried about fighting to survive anymore. Most of the people in the resistance can finally go home. The remaining empire loyalists were put to trial and sent to prison. They can choose to join a rehabilitation program, or they stay where they deserve." You said.

"I have a question." Ezra said.

"I might have an answer." You joked.

"What if you stay here? With us, with me." Ezra said, his gaze stuck on you.

"You know I can't. This isn't my time." You said softly.

"But it can be. We fit well together. I won't be alone as a Jedi, Kanan's back with us, so he can train us better." Ezra tried to rationalize with you.

"We can be something more than this!" He exclaimed.

"And what is this? We're friends aren't we?" You asked.

"Friends don't look at each other the way we do, and they don't sleep in each other's beds." He said.

"I like you and I know you do too. So stay here." Ezra pleaded.

"I can't. I'm sorry." You said.

"You didn't deny your feelings." He pointed out.

"I don't want to. But it's selfish of me to be with you when I have no intentions of staying here." You said.

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Ezra avoided you after that, going on mission after mission. While you joined Zeb to find clues to where Ahch-to was, and though it took a while, you finally found it. The cantina that would one day belong to Maz Kanata was where you found its location. Supplied to you by a pirate that Zeb was in contact with. You related this news to the rest of the ghost upon your arrival and though the rest were happy, Ezra could only stare sadly.

You packed what you originally had, leaving behind the clothes given to you, but took small mementos that they had given you. You were busy packing your things that you didn't notice Ezra enter your room.

"You're leaving soon." Ezra said monotonously.

"Yeah, I am." You said avoiding his eyes.

"I'm sorry about the argument before. It's just that, why would you be led here? Why this time?" Ezra said frustratedly.

"Because I had to learn from you and you needed someone to understand." You said still not looking at him.

"Please look at me (Y/N). I don't want my last memory of you to be this. This distance, it hurts." Ezra said softly.

You faced him, arms still crossed. Your eyes avoiding his. He walked closer to where you stood and held you close. He knew that this was where it ended for you two. Funny how he was shown someone he would have wanted to be with only for them to belong somewhere else.

"I'll miss you." He said, voice muffled by your clothes.

"I'll miss you too. Thanks for being my sparring partner and my friend." You said, eyes closed.

"Thanks for being my friend too. For reasoning with me when I needed it. Thank you for letting me learn on my own terms." He said.

As he let you go, a part of him felt pained. This would be the last time. Seeing you in the future would be much too painful, because he'd be reminded of this moment. So he took a chance, and left a chaste kiss on your lips. It was gone before you fully understood what happened.

Ezra didn't see you off anymore, nor was he part of the crew that dropped you off into the temple. You followed the writings on the wall, when you finally reopened the portal. You don't remember what happened next but as you woke up, you were back in your cabin. You heard the voices of the younglings once more. Then your door opened.

"Rey! She's awake!" Finn called.

Rey alongside Rose, Poe and Chewie, entered your room. Rey smiled softly at you and you couldn't help but burst into tears.

"Hey, hey, you're okay." She said rushing to your side.

"I went to another time. The temple opened a portal and I went in. I met someone and it hurt to leave." You said.

Rey held you close as she looked at the others. Somehow that sudden letter from Ezra felt like a clue but she waited for you to calm down. Once you were she explained what happened, where they saw you and the sudden arrival of a letter addressed to you, from Ezra Bridger himself. She gave you privacy once the letter was in your hands.

You ripped the envelope open once you saw that it really was addressed to you.

Dear (Y/N),

How long has it been? For you perhaps a few minutes? A few days maybe? For me it's been too long. I bet you knew of what I did for Lothal, or my exile, my return, what happened when I returned. I still can't believe you were right about the Chopper base getting destroyed. I missed you all those years. I missed you when I was in Peridea. I missed you during those nights where all I had were my own thoughts. I'm old now, like you said. Why did I hide myself during the war again? Because I knew that if I saw you, even by chance, I wouldn't be able to take it. I already saw you, in the world between worlds. I now know that in that time, I saw what would've happened to you, and if it weren't for Ahsoka's logical reasoning, I would have done something stupid, like jump in to save you.

Life went on even though we were apart but I believed that what you taught me the most, was selfless love. I was selfishly asking you to stay and leave it all behind when your life has barely begun. Mine was already preordained. Though I know that at this point I'm older than you now by many many years. I hope you know that the feelings I felt for you, were my source of light. Thank you for those few weeks. Live your life.

P.S. for the love of the force, don't disobey your master alright.

Farewell and live a good life,

Ezra.

It truly was bittersweet. To meet the right person in the wrong time. But everything, every moment was one you will cherish and Ezra's right. Life goes on and so will you. Perhaps one day, time will be right for you two.

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Note: holy kamote! I finished it! Though I apologize for accidentally posting he unfinished work earlier, Tumblr glitched and even though I put it as save to draft, when I clicked save it got posted. So here's the finished work. It's longer than my usual ones, heheheheh. Enjoy!

#ezra bridger x reader #fanfiction writer #ezra bridger #starwars fanfics #fanfic #fanfic writing #fanfiction #star wars imagine #bring ezra home #eman esfandi

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im-no-jedi · 1 year

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Would you rather go on an adventure with the Bad Batch or with the Mighty Nein?

Morgan this is SUCH a hard question, why would you do this to me 😫

you know what, as much as I love the Nein, I think their level of chaos would be just a tad too much for me. both the Nein and TBB are avoidant of stuff, but ngl... I trust TBB more. the Nein will always look out for each other above others, but TBB are more willing to help strangers in need.

also... no offense to Wildemount, it's a beautiful place, but man, getting to explore the galaxy beats pretty much everything, whether it's with TBB or not. I'll take the stinky Marauder over traveling on foot (although teleporting with Essek would be fun hehe) 😝

and! I think there might be some members of the Nein that would be harder to befriend than TBB. although, the person I'd want to romancebefriend the most in the Nein might be easier than the one I'd most want to romancebefriend in TBB, but I digress 😂

is it weird that I think it'd be easier to get along with Bell's Hells than the Nein? ROFL

so yeah, even though having to live during the time of the Galactic Empire would suck, it would suck just as much in the Dwendalian Empire, but with all the other stuff I mentioned on top of it. sorry Caleb. you know I love you with my entire heart... but Hunter technically came first 😜

#and NO I am not just saying this because of Hunter THANK YOU #I'm more of a space girl than a fantasy girl in general #that's my main reasoning I SWEAR #ROFL #star warz #critrolez #photogirl894 #ask

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beneaththetangles · 2 years

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Review: Dr. Stone Special Episode – Ryusui

The mission to restore the whole of humanity from their stone stockades continues in the Kingdom of Science led by high school whiz kid Senku Ishigami and the citizens of Ishigami Villiage. In order to proceed across the high seas, our group of spunky scientists decides to build a giant vessel capable of surviving the trip. However, it is quickly realized that none of the current crew have sailing experience, and Monkey D. Luffy isn’t available.

After a quick recon and a splash of revival fluid, Ryusui Nanami, the pretentious, boisterous heir to the illustrious Nanami Corporation and an accomplished sailor in his own right, is revived in all his naked ambitious glory. Ryusui goes over the plans for the new sailing ship and states that the current coal-powered system they’ve been using will not be efficient enough for the voyage. What they need is a more modern-day energy source: oil.

However, exploring the land by foot for some of those black gold reserves to tap is not feasible. So, our crew decides that they need to fly before they can sail and they decide to construct a hot air balloon made with a Snoop Dogg-approved material: hemp. With their hemp balloon done (thanks in no small part to Crafts Club Member Yuzuriha), Senku, Ryusui and Chrome take to the skies.

While their voyage is marred by a flock of dirty birds popping a hole in their balloon (just like another group of Dirty Birds popped a hole in their chances to win a Super Bowl), and a strong storm in their path that looks oddly like the Ruined Kingdom boss in “Super Mario Odyssey”, our intrepid group of travelers turns a two-day trip to Ishigami Villiage into a trip that takes only a few hours. With renewed confidence, Senku declares that he will learn all there is to know about the origins of the petrification beam and, with the aid of Ryusui’s unbridled desire, Chrome’s never-ending thirst for learning, and the entire might of the Kingdom of Science, he will get the petroleum needed to sail their craft across the seas. Get excited.

Hey guys, Josh here! And no, this isn’t a “First Impression” post as this is TECHNICALLY an ongoing series, but this is more like a review of an episode of a series that will be coming back later on! Thankfully our boss gave the green light for me to write a REVIEW, and I am so very glad he did! Any chance to talk about Dr. Stone is a great day indeed…even if it takes me a little while to finish due to my job not wanting me to be great and write about anime and putting me on the late shift. I’m quite literally finishing this review up at just past 2am. But for Dr. Stone, and in particular, this amazing primer for the new season, I’m willing to suffer through a bit of sleep deprivation! Brother, the things I do for Beneath the Tangles.

Actually, full disclosure, this probably won’t be my last late-night writing marathon as I’m working with my fellow writers on a special project that’ll go live in a couple of days, so please be on the lookout

But I digress. Dr. Stone Special Episode: Ryusui is a nearly hour-long fast-forward through several chapters of the manga, covering from the point where Ryusei is revived to the time when the group discovers oil. Honestly, I can see why they put all this in a one-hour special instead of including it in the actual show to come along in the Spring 2023 season, assuming, of course, everything stays on schedule. Not only does this give fans something to tide them over until the show properly starts, but it also helps get some of the background stuff out the way that would just take up precious episodes in a series.

I would imagine that stuff like reviving Ryusei, the initial survey mission to find oil, introducing the economic Draco system, outfitting Ishigami Villiage in prodigious amounts of drip and the hot air balloon adventure would take at least 4 episodes, and, while those would’ve been GOOD episodes, it probably would’ve taken up precious time that should’ve been devoted for the next big story arc to come, which, having read ahead in the manga, will require all 12-13 episodes in a season. This episode does a great job giving us all this material while not making it feel like filler or giving the entire focus to Ryusui. This is very much an episode just like any other in the series, with the exception of being just a little longer.

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about our title character. No, not Dr. Stone. That’s a bar of soap. I’m talking about the OTHER title character—Ryusui. From the moment we meet him, we get the feeling that this guy is a real piece of work. He comes off as being very braggadocious, spoiled, and self-assured. In a way, he’s pretty much the kind of guy Tsukasa, the absurdly strong high school student from the “Stone Wars” arc, was trying to PREVENT coming back into power. Heck, the man wants the rights to the oil fields that they find, IF they find any, and he goes so far as to institute a financial system in the form of the Draco based on the backing of that oil. Who does that?!

However, experienced Dr. Stone viewers and readers will know better than to write off ANY character just based on first episode impressions. If there’s one thing that this show does well it’s letting a character reveal themselves to us over time. We get that initial impression, and then, over the course of a few episodes, we learn what drives them. Yes, it’s easy to dislike Ryusui, but as this episode goes on, and as the series goes on, we’ll soon see what drives him and what kind of guy he is. And it also helps that we see him actually fall victim to some of his own little schemes, such as having Gen and Senku manipulate the use of the Draco currency to their own advantage.

Also, can we please talk about that OP?! Just when I thought Call of the Night was a lock for best OP of the year, “Good Morning [New] World!” by Burnout Syndromes is an absolute, 100% BOP! While some might say that it’s just the second verse of the same song, plus or minus a few changes, and while that is true, the whole thing just feels like a brand new song! This song is kinda like a Tootsie Roll lollipop; the same piece of candy but two different tastes! And the visuals that accompany it…wowzers. It’s just downright beautiful! Y’all, if you need a new desktop wallpaper, just expand the player to full screen and hold down the “Print Screen” button on your keyboard. EVERY SINGLE FRAME of this opening sequence is downright beautiful to look at. Fans of the earlier show will no doubt recognize certain shots and moments from the previous OPs. It’s frankly amusing watching the new OP and seeing what scenes you recognize from what OP. It combines all the best parts of the first three OPs and remixes them in such a way that it both feels familiar and brand new!

So where does that leave us? Simple. Dr. Stone Special Episode Ryusui is a MUST WATCH. This isn’t just a glorified clip show episode where our crew just sits around and talks about “Hey, remember when we did XYZ? That was so cool!” No, my dear friends, this is a full-on episode just like the others that you must watch to understand the story. With the introduction of Ryusui and all the setup work completed, we now await the Spring 2023 anime season to see what will become of our group of adorable science-loving dorks.

Get Excited?

We’re already there.

=====

Dr. Stone is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

#Anime #Reviews #Anime Reviews #DR STONE #Articles #Author: Josh #Author: The Cajun Samurai

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jsbsam · 6 months

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No room at the inn

Despite receiving an email from BA just as we arrived at Heathrow that our flight to Madrid might be cancelled or delayed due to the weather and, therefore, we might miss our connecting flight to Lima everything went fine. We arrived in Madrid in plenty of time for MM to have a coffee and things were much more relaxed than usual as she wasn't banging on about finding somewhere to have a fag.

She's decided that she's going to give up smoking while she's on this trip. I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not. It's good that she won't be constantly holding us up while she tops up her nicotine levels but the downside is that she'll be even more aggressive than usual and I won't be able to find her by following the smoke signals or the little orange glow in the dark about 4 foot 6 inches from the the floor in the dark!

Anyway, I digress, a bad habit I've picked up from MM who has a well developed tendency to start a story, move into several others, not necessarily connected, and then completely forget the punchline.

Back to our travels. The flight from Madrid to Lima with Iberia was supposed to take just under 12 hours. Not the greatest food, or friendliest crew but a smooth flight that arrived nearly an hour early. We were quite near the front of the plane so got off quickly and headed for immigration control. The queue moved quickly, we'll it did until we got to the front. The official wouldn't allow us to both go to the same passport control desk so I went to one and MM went to another. I got a pleasant chap. He asked a few questions which I answered and I was through. However, while I was being grilled I could hear a lady at another desk asking MM

"how long are you staying in Peru? “.

Answer - *after Peru we're going to Bolivia".

So the lady said "OK, very nice, but how long in Peru?".

MM *then we're crossing the salt flats into Chile".

This went on for some time, I think she'd covered Christmas and our trip to India to watch the cricket next February before I managed to get there and say "about 10 days".

You wouldn't believe the look of relief on the the officials face when she heard that, handed MM's passport back and said "enjoy your holiday". Was that sympathy I saw in her eyes as she looked at me, or gratitude - we'll never know, probably both!

The taxi I'd organised to pick us up and take us to our hotel, the Santa Cruz, was waiting as promised and we were on our way. After a circuitous route to the hotel we arrived, tired, relieved and ready for a quick beer and bed. It was 8pm local time, 1am UK time.

We signed in and then the receptionist started looking a bit awkward. She made a couple of calls and my Spanish wasn't good enough to understand what was said but my body language skills were good enough to know that things weren't going as planned. Sure enough, when she got off the phone she explained to me that they didn't have a room for us. All the rooms were too damp and they'd got the builders in! This is despite me booking the room several weeks ago and not hearing anything from them since! Fortunately, MM was too tired to get into full battle mode and just wanted a bed. The hotel arranged for us to stay somewhere else a couple of blocks away and I'm sitting on the patio there now having a beer and typing out this message while MM calms down in the room.

Not the ideal start to the trip, but we're here now. Let the games begin!

0 notes

rviden · 3 years

Note

Hello! I would like to request a fic (Or headcanon if you want) So basically Reader (she/her pronouns) is dating Diluc but she lives in Qingce village, so Diluc goes to visit her and doesn't realizes that Aether and Paimon are following him questioning why he's in Liyue. Hopes its not to difficult to write, so feel free to skip this request if you are busy! (I really love your writing!!)

track title — the darknight hero spotted in liyue

featuring — diluc, ft. aether, paimon

pronouns — she/her

cw/tw — n/a

note — ahh this idea is adorable - ty for requesting anon :)

when the darknight hero, or otherwise known as diluc, started leaving mondstadt for periods of time without any word or where he was off to — it was easy to grow suspicious of the red haired males reasons.

but despite it being known to all about the mans absence, no one seemed to bat an eye — that was until the small floating companion of aether observed the basket he tend to carry along with him.

"he's up to something! i can just feel it-"

"paimon, shush!" aether hissed to the girl beside him, desperately trying to quiet her down as to not alert the calm man who walked several paces in front of them — how he wasn't aware of their presences was beyond them.

for the most part of the journey, diluc had been calm and collected, wearing his normally stoic face that he was rarely seen without. but the closer the got to where mondstadt connected and merged with liyue, the male had begun to wear a smile — it was small compared to others, but nonetheless a smile.

"oh you shush! isn't the curiosity practically killing you?"

aether found it hard to deny her question — he was nothing short of curious, wondering what just might be the reason for the long journeys that diluc had been making, what laid at the end of his path, and just what exactly they had gotten themselves into when they decided to follow him.

the red haired male, disappeared around the bend in the path in front of them, leaving their sights in an instant.

paimon gripped onto aether's shirt and began to tug him forward, in a hurry to both catch up, and to see where the man had went.

in an instant, aether had yanked her down, hiding out of sight from the now duo who stand a foot or two in front of a small cottage — it was cosy, hidden under the large trees, and casting a war glow upon the two figures in front.

"who- huh?" paimon's arms and shoulders drooped in confusion, not quite sure what she was looking at. "now who in the heck is with mister pyro?"

"maybe if you kept your voice down we'd be able to figure that out."

diluc's hand that held the basket in it, lifted up to bring it to his front — his other hand flipping the small square of material up and going into the basket.

paimon practically gasped as she saw the flowers in his hand, mind finally connecting the pieces just as aether's was.

"he's seeing someone!"

—

"you know, i could always come to you — i feel bad whenever you travel to far, and am constantly worried about what you may encounter on your way," your hands grasped onto the neatly cut stems of the flowers, lifting them to your face to take in the sweet and fresh smell of them.

diluc smiled seeing the way you smiled afterwards, knowing that his journey was worth while. "i'd travel across teyvat and back just to see you smile like that again — and as for my safety..." he lowered his hand to the red crystal that hung from his hip. "i'm pretty sure that you can cease your worries."

smiles spread across both of your faces, happy to finally be in each others presences once again despite seeing each other only a few days prior.

"i had put tea on just moments before you arrived, would you and your friends like some?"

the smile had faded slightly at the word, not fully understanding your words. "friends? i wasn't being accompanied by anyone-" diluc cut himself short as he turned, catching the white and yellow hair peaking out from a bush — no doubt trying to poorly hide from their eyes.

"give me a moment darling, but yes, my... friends will be joining us," diluc grumbled as he slowly walked towards the duo, listening to the sound of your quiet giggles as you went into your home to prepare the cups and tea.

aether and paimon knew the male was approaching, but didn't have the courage to greet him — too ashamed and disappointed as to how they we caught.

"its rude to tail someone, especially when you have no reason to," diluc sighed. "but i digress — my girlfriend has invited you in for tea, it would only be proper of you to accept," he watched as the duo looked at each other in shock, unsure of how they had seemingly escaped the mans wrath. "we can... chat about this another time, but as for right now, follow me."

they didn't escape the mans wrath in the end — but they did get to witness the stone cold and stoic man, flush, smile, and laugh.

it truly was a sight to see.

#📎 — one shot #🖇 — diluc #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagine #genshin x reader #genshin imagine #diluc x reader #diluc imagine

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botwstoriesandsuch · 3 years

Text

OK SHUT UP SHUSH SHUT THE FUCK UP IT’S 1AM BUT SHUSH LISTEN! HEY, LISTEN!

I AM GIVING YOU THE TOOLS TO FIND THE EXACT DISTANCE OF ANYTHING ANYWHERE IN HYRULE, CUSTOM MAKE YOUR FIC JOURNEYS TO THE METER, FIND THE AREA OF ANY TOWN OR LANDMARK, OR JUST FIND OUT HOW BIG (or small) HYRULE KINDGOM TRULY IS ONCE AND FOR ALL SO GO AHEAD AND SAVE THIS POST TO YOUR DRAFTS CAUSE YOU MIGHT WANNA SEE IT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

Ok so this all starts with THIS

FEAST YOUR EYES LADIES, LADS, AND GENTLEFOLK ON THE ONLY PIECE OF INFORMATION IN ALL OF HYRULE CONCERNING DISTANCE AND TIME.

[Image ID: A screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, depicting a picture of Ash Swamp hanging in Impa’s house. The dialogue box from Impa reads, “Does it look familiar? From this village, you should be able to get there in a half day’s time.” End ID]

Impa states that it would take you half a day, about 12 hours, to travel from Kakariko Village to the depicted 13th memory, which is at Ash Swamp by Fort Hateno.

Now here is where I took this information. I took it to

objmap.zeldamods.org

A fantastic online Botw map resource with tons of features like finding specific objects, and highlighting areas, and placing pins, and the basics of showing the locations of everything like shrines and korok seeds and all that.

BUT the thing that we care about today is this ability, here:

DRAW!

With those widgets on the right, I can specifically mark lines and shapes and the website will give me the distance of it in meters!

“But Kip, if the map already gives you the distance of anything you want then isn’t this entire post pointless?” Ashshshshshhshh no, shut the fuck up, shush shut, no, stop, silence, I am high on caffeine and I haven’t slept for two days. No.

As great as the map is, the exact ratio isn’t the best. Like, it tells me that the length of Hyrule is only 10km, or 6.2 miles.

I wager that realistically, Hyrule would be a bit bigger than that. And THAT, is where I come in. Or, more specifically, Impa.

Impa states that it takes 12 hours to travel from Kakariko to Fort Hateno. (I am saying Fort Hateno and not Ash Swamp because I am going of the nearest prominent landmark location near the 13th memory, and I highly doubt that Impa knew the exactly square foot patch of dirt that Link needed to stand on to activate his memory)

According to Google, it takes around 10 to 12 minutes to walk a kilometer. (I am assuming Impa was referring to walking and not riding, because I feel like she would have said, “You should be able to get there in half a day’s ride” or something of the sort. So, walking it is)

So:

12 hours divided by 12 minutes

(Which is 720 minutes / 12 minutes)

gives us

The distance between Fort Hateno and Kakariko village is 60 kilometers.

Badabing badaboom, great job! We did it. BUT NOW this is where our handy dandy online object map comes in.

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Breath of the Wild map showing the area of Kakariko Village and the plains in front of Fort Hateno. A blue line highlghts the path from the village to a marker on Fort Hateno. The line reads “1.89km.” End ID]

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Breath of the Wild map showing the area of Kakariko Village and the plains in front of Fort Hateno. The blue line from the previous image is still there, however, there is now a more prominent yellow line. The yellow line runs from Kakariko village, but ends at a marker point at the location of the 13th memory at Ash Swamp. The yellow line reads “1.55km.” End ID]

So while this map doesn’t give me distances that are exactly to my liking, it DOES give me a measuring means that will stay consistent. SO! As you can see, the map says Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 1.89km. (And just to be safe, I also did the distance exactly to the point of the 13th memory as shown in Impa’s picture, which came out to 1.55km. But! It’s doesn’t matter anyhow, because) We’re going to round this to 2km for the sake of my sanity because surprise surprise! I actually suck at, and hate, math.

So the map says Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 2 kilometers, but we know that in real life, the distance is actually 60 kilometers. So, if you want to use this object map effectively, you have to make a means of converting the “false” measurements, (which I will be refering to as “zelda” (kilo)meters, or zm/zkm) from the actual ones.

So THIS is what I fucking did oh my god help me it took me way too long even though it was really simple in hindsight I was just stupid and spent two hours trying to get the ratio equations right when really all I had to do was divide, it was a whole thing, anyhow, read away.

[Image ID: A screenshot of MATH oh my god it’s fucking math...BUT it’s kinda color coded so that’s nice. The top left of the page depicts text. In red text reads “zkm (Zelda km) = per the measurement on the objmap.zeldamods.org” and below that, in black text, reads, “Kakariko to Fort Hateno = 1.89 zkm ~ 2zkm,” which is underlines in yellow. Another line of black text reads, “Impa says it takes half a day’s time to travel from Kakariko to the 13th memory location AKA 12 hours.” Another line of black text reads, “It takes about 10-12min to walk a kilometer,” which is underlines in green.

Handwritten in blue ink is the equation,

“12 hours = 720 min

720/12 = 60″

The 12 is highlighted in green, and the 60 is underlined. In green text, below it, reads, “It takes 12 hours to walk 60 kilometers.” In black text under this, it reads “So Kakariko to Fort Hateno is 60 kilometers.” Another line of black text under this reads, “So based on that, we can find the actual values of a zkm (Zelda kilometer).”

Handwritten in yellow ink is the equation,

“2zkm = 60km

1km = 30km” [typo, I meant 1zkm = 30km]

The 60km is in blue, and the equation 1zkm = 30km is circled.

To the right of everything, in bigger, yellow text, reads “So: 1zkm = 30km 1zm = 30 meters

The map of Hyrule measures roughly 10zkm (length) by 8zkm (height) [typo, I meant width] giving it an area of 80 square zkm.

Therefore, the “true” size of Hyrule Kingdom os 2400 square kilometers.” End ID]

SO ARMED WITH THIS NEW KNOWLEDGE, you can now use this map to measure whatever you want, and by converting 1zm to 30 meters, you can get accurate result as to what that distance is.

Chart the roads, measure the rivers, the map even gives area tools for polygons, squares, and circles! This entire post was born out of a desire to see how long the characters in my fic should rest for when travel between different stables.

Now before anyone asks, yes! 2400 square kilometers is fairly small. That’s around 930 square miles. I believe even Wales is more than three times bigger than that. BUT! Considering Hyrule is a medieval kingdom that’s actually pretty sizable considering the average size of a Kingdom was 100 to 900 square kilometers.

And juuuust to double check, I ran the size though a Medievil Demographics generator, and 2400 (under the conditions of Fertile Land with 64% of the land being arable since I figured roughly 46% for lakes, the ocean, plus unusable land was more than enough to cover the Hebra, Death Mountain, and the Gerudo Desert. Which honestly is even MORE generous considering there are races that occupy these areas, but I digress) This still gives Hyrule Kingdom a good population of 108,000 people! Before the Calamity when all of its villages were up and occupied, of course. So the area is definitely more than enough, and can still give Link a more realistic amount of time to travel between areas (when you add eating and rest of course. Don’t make my guy walk for 10 hours straight from the Great Plateau to Hebra D: plz)

TL;DR: Hyrule is 2400 square kilometers; use the map, plus the conversion 1 zelda meter to 30 meters to measure anything you want; I am tired

Quick Edit: Please note that this conversion is for the purposes of people out there who need more realistic means of measuring distances for larger scale travel and such, like for writing fic journeys, or dnd campaigns. This conversion isn’t the best for smaller scale measure like buildings and such (EX: I’ve checked with buildings in Castle Town and the Coliseum, and they come out much too big, just a symptom of game design ratios not being perfect since it’s hard to balance consistent measurements and the immersion and plan a creator has for their game world!) So if you are measuring those smaller entities using the linked map, just stick with the given zelda meters! (EX: The Coliseum radius in zelda meters matches up nicely with the real world Roman Colosseum, beating it out by a few dozen meters!)

Also if you are a true believer in the interpretation of Impa’s dialogue as “half the amount of daylight hours,” see the reblogs!

#botw theory #cause it's technically a theory i guess #botw reference #botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #if my math is wrong just shoot me on the spot ok #loz #legend of zelda #hyrule

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i-did-not-mean-to · 2 years

Text

A reading 📓

for @laurfilijames (I love you, darling) ❤（っ＾▿＾）

Fandom: Hobbit

Words: 2k

Characters: OC x Ori, Fíli x @laurfilijames

What would it look like if THEY wrote smut about us?

(Short under the cut, because SMUT, NSFW)

This day could go stub its toe against Mahal’s stone boot!

There was still fun to be had, I told myself resolutely and turned to the library where – I was sure – I’d find darling Ori with whom I had been in love for…Mahal knew how long.

Only, being in love with Ori was like loving books and hoping they’d read you back while you hold them in your sweaty paws; in a word: hopeless.

Either way, I did find him pretty quickly, hunched over a table and flinching as if shot as I tapped my foot against the leg of a chair noisily.

“What are you reading?” I asked at the same time as he inquired about my day.

The blind, expressionless eyes of a book that would never read me in return didn’t faze me anymore and I told him about the fight with the master under whose tutelage I did my apprenticeship as a scribe.

“Yeah, you didn’t want me, so…” he muttered with a sad half-smile.

As if I was enough of a fool to want to spend all my waking hours staring at his beautiful hands…I was digressing and making myself miserable again.

“So, what are you up to?” I repeated my question as I let myself fall into the small nook in the window behind him, seeing his shoulders tense again.

“I was working on a speech for Fí – the heir to the throne after all – and I can read some to you, if you want,” he offered without turning around to look at me.

“The speech or your research? Come on, you were doing something naughty! I saw you flinch!” I cried – just a tad too loudly for the quiet library – and witnessed another tensing of his shoulders that made me want to sink my teeth into the warm flesh under all that wool.

“I am working through ‘The History of the line of Durin the Deathless’”, he started, “but I might have found some sort of diary between Fí’s notes, and I took it…as inspiration…for the speech.”

“Go on,” I encouraged.

“Yes, well, there is – unfortunately – not much in these erm…musings that would be of any help to me,” Ori supplied in a slightly flustered tone.

“Enlighten me, what kind of notes are they?” My curiosity was now definitely piqued, and I got up to peek over his shoulder onto the yellowed pages filled with tight writing.

He read me a long passage analysing the plaids and beads of a lady’s hairdo in painstaking detail, likening said locks to the fur of mystical animals and an enchanted river Fí had seen during his travels.

“Boring,” I cried, because I knew exactly what lady he was describing and my innate sense of loyalty as much as my boundless inquisitiveness pushed me to investigate the crown-prince’s writings and contemplations further, “I do not care a fig about someone’s hair. Are there any spicier parts?”

“Erm yes,” Ori muttered sheepishly, “but I do not think that it would be proper to read them.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport! You offered to read to me, now read to me,” I demanded; I would never get any closer than this to having a book interact with me.

Clearing his throat and blushing a bright red, Ori started:

“Today, (exact date, doesn’t matter) I have seen herin the square, walking with that girl who hangs around Ori all the time,” Ori interrupted himself and nodded at me as if I had not understood that Fíli – that rotten carcass of a prince – had meant me, “and she was beautiful.”

Apparently, my – not so secret – crush was decided to turn this into a rather emphatic reading; Ori the scribe who revealed his secret talent as Ori the storyteller, interesting!

“She was wearing a green dress that was – in my opinion – much too light for the slight chill in the air, but it complimented the vibrant colour of her eyes so beautifully that I can only surmise that she had chosen to indulge her vanity over her common sense.

At some point, as I followed her along the rows of stalls, I saw her bend down to fasten the laces on her exquisite boots. I think they were new boots, for I had never seen her delicate ankles encased in that soft, brown leather before.”

Ori grimaced: “I feel really bad about this!”

“GO ON!” I demanded obstinately and sat down opposite him, my face cradled in my palms while the blood surged into his cheeks inexorably.

“The curve of her ass was more than enticing and I had to pretend to be inspecting a collection of – apparently – magical gems to keep from doing something reckless.

How often have I imagined running my hands along the fluid lines of that firm body? How many times has the sight of her closing those thighs around the wildest of ponies forced me to retreat into my rooms in an impromptu session of obsessive ‘cleanliness’?”

Ori huffed, his voice had been tremulous at those last words, which amused me greatly.

“I cannot go on reading this; it’s…oh my…it’s indecent…” he whispered as he turned the page and closed the notebook almost violently.

He was high in colour now and his fingers were vibrating around the leather cover he held so tightly that his knuckles were stark, white ridges screaming his discomfort.

“Why? Do you think me a stranger to indecent fantasies?” I mocked; was there any chance that he was unaware of my own predilection for his pale face and everything attached to it?

“You wanted it,” he murmured, casting suspicious glances around and clearing his throat again as if pushing against a natural plug that his inherent decency had conjured up in his windpipe.

“Today, (it’s literally the day after, Mahal have mercy), I met her in the stables while she was brushing a pony. Truth be told, I had no reason to find myself there other than knowing that I’d – most probably – find her there based on Kí’s report (which had probably been ‘she’s in the stables’). Her beautiful hair was tied back with a leather string, and I could admire the curve of her elegant neck as she bent over the back of the blessed animal that got to feel her silken hands run all over its flanks and legs. What I would have given to swap places with that dumb beast!”

Ori’s eyes flew down the page and he gulped. “This is going to be rather graphic,” he informed me in a breathless voice, “brace yourself…or stop me?”

He sounded so helplessly hopeful, but I merely waved my hand in an encouraging motion to keep him reading; the mix of his divine voice and the explicitly illicit content was setting my bones on fire.

It was the shadow, the echo, the rip-off of real, genuine pleasure, but it was the best I could get at this moment. Ori, the implacably pure, was reading smut to me and that – in and of itself – was a victory.

“In my mind, I could see myself whisking her around and pinning her to the wall of the small enclosure, making the pony snort in indignation. I would have loved to kiss that slender curve of her throat as it vibrated in low-pitched moans while my hands skimmed along the swelling of her heaving chest. In my fantasy, her moss-green eyes would cloud over like the swirls of smoke frozen forevermore in the jade stones of the Far East.”

“Please,” Ori whimpered, “don’t make me go on.”

“Please,” I replied placidly, heat pooling in my cheeks and between my legs, “do!”

With a resigned sigh, he took up the small notebook again that now seemed to shake ever so slightly in his hands.

“Just seeing her like that and imagining her hands slipping under my tunic made my body tense and the pleasant hill in my trousers harden into an unyielding mountain. One day, I swear, I shall be unable to hold back my ardent desire and devotion for her.

Indeed, I shall stride up to her and seal her silken lips with a kiss as crushing and devastating as a rockslide, my hands tightening around those sweet buttocks of hers while her legs are slung around my waist like velveteen vines.

For her, I shall forsake the stonesense of my people and turn into a fish so I can breathe in the wet waves of her pleasure without drowning.”

“Mahal smite me,” Ori cursed, shuffling uncomfortably on the rigid chair he was sat upon.

“This is getting really good,” I praised, “who would have thought that our prince was such a poet? Go on, by all means!”

Shaking his head and taking a deep breath, he did:

“She was blissfully unaware of my presence, just as she cannot fathom the darkness of my thoughts every time I see her sweep aside that heavy mane of hers when she is particularly focused on a task.

I dream about that sweet mouth, that speaks such tender words to skittish ponies, curled around me; I want to look into those crystals holding the very image of a green and fertile paradise while she kneels before me…and I want to repay her in kind.

Mahal knows, I want to lay her down and cover her body with kisses, I long to map every curve and every hollow of it with my lips and brand the memory into my mind for decades to come!

More than anything though, I want to be inside of her. I imagine feeling her heart, her soul, her whole body clench around me in the most intimate and significant of embraces imaginable. I want to touch her like an artifact, I want to venerate her like Thorin holds and fondles that shiny stone of his, I want to bury myself in her in the way only a dwarrow can delve and burrow.”

Ori was positively panting at this point, his eyes pleading as he begged to be allowed to stop once again and was denied adamantly.

“Even now, while writing this – in the privacy of my chambers – my blood boils and my body tingles with a fire that would put a dragon to shame. This lady will be the death of me; I cannot even have polite conversation with her without wondering what her mouth tastes like or what sounds she would make if I touched her where those strong thighs meet in the delta of a luscious oasis.

Would her back arch when I confess my love against that warm, wet flesh? Would she scream my name as I play her like Thorin plays his harp? Would she beg for more if I hovered – motionless – over her, the ever-pulsating spear of my raging desire for her just a breath away from where she needed me most?

Questions over questions. I shall have an answer. Tomorrow maybe…”

“He shall indeed,” I said spontaneously, my voice trembling, “all he has to do is come to the small gathering we are having in celebration of my almost-finished apprenticeship tonight.”

“In your rooms?” Ori looked up as I stood, but he made no move to unseat himself.

“Yes, Ori, in my rooms,” I sighed, wondering if that was too indecent for him now.

“May I come?”

I grinned cheekily. “Hmmm, you’re very welcome! Our dear prince has given me a lot to think about.”

My spirits were definitely lifted after this – most interesting – lecture by my senior and better, and I felt reinvigorated for the small party that had been mentioned only a second prior.

“Do you? Think about…things like that?” Ori called after me as I made my way down the row to get to the exit. As I turned around, his face was burning red.

“We do…we think much the same things actually…Only, we are not that careful in our words, but then again we are not princes!” I called back and winked at him suggestively.

#short #ficlet #laurfilijames #Ori #Fíli #self-insert #the hobbit #fanfiction #writing exercise #why not?#2k exactly #ori the dwarf #friendo

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oh-atlas · 2 years

Text

RESEARCH NOTES OF AURORA D'CANNITH: REGARDING MISS TENEBRAE (1.1k, Ophelia & Aurora)

@argonnessen its uno reverse time </3 road trip through the dread domains DOES kill me and they are very good and i hope i captured aurora's voice well enough. enjoy, they make me crazy

Entry I.

I met someone else in the mists today. She told me her name was Ophelia Tenebrae and it seems like we have a common goal. She's lost someone too. I don't know much about her yet; I'd like to, but nonetheless, this is what I've observed:

She has light grey hair, brown (almost red) eyes, and wears a white mask covering the lower half of her face. She's taller than me and has a strong physique.

Apparently, she was a woodcutter.

She's quiet. I'm not sure if she likes jokes. Or me for that matter, but she agreed to come with me. She seems more familiar with the mists or at least the outdoors than I am.

She called me Luce (?) when she saw me from behind. I think she was troubled that I was not who she was looking for. She looked sad, there might have been tears in her eyes.

Entry II.

Ophelia does not like to talk about herself. She dodges most questions and manages to redirect the conversation back to me until I'm at least fifteen minutes into an explanation about how wheel chains connect and intersect before I realize what she's done. She claims she doesn't have a sense of humor but I am certain she feels at least slightly smug when she knows she's tricked me.

She takes off her mask to sleep and when she drinks from her flask. (On that note; I don't think I've seen her eat.) Her face is softer than I expected. I don't know why she wears the mask. She's striking without it.

Entry III.

She saved my life today. We were walking along the edge of a steep ravine. The path was narrow and broke under my foot. I was going to fall, and if that didn't kill me, I certainly would've been picked off by something in the woods.

Ophelia grabbed my arm, laid hers across it, and pulled me back into her. She's strong, I mean, I knew that already, but I could feel her hand and chest shaking.

I'm not sure that touch is something she's accustomed to.

Entry IV.

It's been two and a half weeks and I am now wholly convinced that Ophelia does not eat. Or if she does, I don't know what and when. I asked her what was in her flasks and she told me "Bug Juice". I am 34% sure she's lying, 33% sure it might be a protein shake, and 33% sure she could be an alcoholic.

Entry V.

A Study of Ophelia's Eyebrows. Since she wears that mask (I still don't get it, she's very pretty, she does not need to hide her face underneath a mask but I digress), the way I have come to understand her moods is by looking at her eyebrows.

I've discovered 5 (?) moods.

Annoyed - Slight Furrow

Angry - Major Furrow

Confused - Quirked

Sad - Upturned and/or Furrowed

Pleasant (?) - could be anything, or maybe this is just neutral.

In any case, anything and everything will cross over. If I've made her happy or amused, she reacts with confusion first because she has problems.

Entry VI.

I've known for a couple of weeks now that Ophelia sometimes leaves camp at night. She's usually quiet, but I've noticed. She does come back. I was worried the first time she was leaving for good. I know better than to ask her about it. I think she would tell me if she thought it was important to our travels. I don't want to scare her off, not when it feels like we've made progress in understanding and trusting each other. I don't want to travel alo

She's not as closed off as she was. She does have a sense of humor, it's dry, but it's there. I think she's growing to like my company. I like hers.

Entry VII.

She plays the cello.

I told her about Ripley.

Entry VIII.

It's been a long day. I don't know how to explain it but I feel like I need to write something just so I'm not up all night. We were ambushed by some sort of undead, a vampire spawn (? is there a difference?) and it seemed fixated on attacking Ophelia. I couldn't line up a clean shot without hitting her until it was on top of her and she was bleeding out. I hate how it felt, I hate how scared I was.

I killed it, but there was so much blood. Ophelia's glowing white blood. I don't know why it's like that. I thought it was some sort of magic but she wasn't holding her weapon. She wasn't fighting. She was barely conscious bleeding out, bleeding light.

I healed her, somewhat; I used my magic to stabilize her. She flinched and I heard her say, pained, the name Luce again. I don't think she was fully herself.

I don't know why I said it or did it, I am finding that I care a lot for her. I told her that I wasn't Luce, but that I was here. She let me hug her for a moment. She was trembling again.

She's resting now. We haven't really spoken since.

Entry IX.

It's been a day since my last entry. I didn't have a chance to write last night or during the day, we've been talking about what happened. It- A lot more about Ophelia Tenebrae makes sense to me now. I don't know why I didn't put the pieces together sooner.

She tried to sneak away last night. But she was so wounded and I didn't want her to go out and hurt herself so I got up and asked her to stay. If I could help.

Her head snapped to look at me. She didn't have her mask, there was something different about her eyes. They were brighter, redder, hungrier. When she opened her mouth to speak, it was half a snarl, I could see her fangs. She sounded terrified and begged me to stay back, stay where I was, and just let her go.

I did. But I wanted to help. I don't know how to help. She's obviously suffering. It's now easy for me to see how difficult it is for her, why she feels so closed off, why she's scared. I don't know if I can imagine what it would feel like.

I want to tell her that it doesn't matter to me. That she is wonderful regardless. I don't know if she would believe me.

Entry X.

Ophelia told me about Luce.

#ch: ophelia #aes: ophelia #mine: writing #r: ophelia x aurora #Hello Gaymers I am In Pain and this has been a wip for at least a few weeks now. I Love Them ur Honor.#it was originally going to be a little bit more comedic but then i also got possessed by like.#early on aurora/ophelia ??#like i think this is probably over the first 6 weeks of travelling together #and just going to slot in estel's fic right at entry 7 <3 #🩸

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unpopularwiththepopulace · 3 years

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Don’t I Get a Dream for Myself ? – Bernadette Peters and the 'Gypsy' Saga

Gypsy. It’s perhaps the most daunting of all of the projects related to Bernadette Peters to try to grapple with and discuss. It’s also perhaps the most significant.

For someone notoriously guarded of her privacy and personal life, careful with her words, and selective of the questions she answers, the narrative around this show provides some of the most meaningful insights it is possible to derive in relation to Bernadette herself. The show’s ability to do this is unique, through the way it eerily parallels her own life and spans a large range in time from both Bernadette Peters the Broadway Legend, right back to where it all began with Bernadette Lazzara, the young Italian girl put into showbusiness by her mother.

The most logical place to start is at the very beginning – it is a very good place to start, after all.

(Though no one tell Gypsy this, if the fierce two-way battle with The Sound of Music at the 1960 Tony Awards is anything to be remembered. Anyway, I digress…)

Gypsy: A Musical Fable with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents, burst into the world and onto the New York stage in May of 1959. After closing on Broadway in March 1961, Ethel Merman as the world’s original Mama Rose herself led the first national tour off almost immediately around the country. Just a few months later, a second national touring company was formed, starring Mitzi Green and then Mary McCarty as Rose, to cover more cities than the original. It is here that Bernadette comes in.

A 13-year-old Bernadette Peters found herself part of this show in her “first professional” on-the-road production, travelling across the country with her older sister, “Donna (who was also in the show), and their mother (who wasn’t)”.

The tour played through cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New Haven, Baltimore and Las Vegas before closing in Ohio in 1962. Somewhat uncannily, its September 1961 opening night in Detroit’s Schubert Theatre even returns matters full circle to the 2003 revival and New York’s own Schubert Theatre.

Indeed this bus-and-truck tour was somewhat of a turning point for Bernadette. She’d later remember, “I mostly thought of performing as a hobby until I went on the road with Gypsy”.

But while this production seminally marked a notable moment for the young actress as well as the point where her long and consequential involvement with Gypsy begins, it’s important to recognise she was very much not yet the star of the show and then only a small part of a larger whole.

Bernadette was with the troupe as a member of the ensemble. She took on different positions in the company through the period of nearly a year that the show ran for, including billing as ‘Thelma’ (one of the Hollywood Blondes), ‘Hawaiian Girl’, and additional understudy credits for Agnes and Dainty June.

The above photo shows Bernadette (left) with another member of the ensemble (Sharon McCartin) backstage at the Chicago Opera House as one of the stops along the tour. Her comment on the stage of the Chicago theatre – “I’d never seen anything so big in my life!” – undeniably conveys how her experiences were new and appreciably daunting.

Along the tour, she assumed centre-stage once or twice as the understudy for Dainty June, but playing the young star was not her main role. Unlike what more dominant memory of the story seems to purport.

Main credits of June went instead to Susie Martin – a name and a tale of truth-bending that’s now well-known from Bernadette’s concert anecdotes. While performing her solo shows as an adult and singing from Gypsy, Bernadette has often been known to take a moment to penitently atone for historical indiscretions of identity theft or erasure where her mother long ago conveniently left out the “understudy” descriptive when putting down Dainty June on her resumé, in an effort to add weight to the teenager’s list of credits.

Whatever happened to Susie Martin? – many have wondered. Well, she soon left the theatre. But not before appearing in two more regional productions of Gypsy and a 1963 Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken.

Bernadette too went on to other regional productions of Gypsy. She spent the summer of 1962 in various summer stock stagings with The Kenley Players, like in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and this time she did indeed get to play June.

Above shows photos from different programmes for these productions. While some may have featured odd forms of photo editing, they at least also bring to attention Rose here being played by none other than Betty Hutton.

The two women couldn’t have been in more different positions when they coalesced in these rough-around-the-edges, small-scale productions. A young Bernadette was broaching summer stock in starting to take on bigger roles in the ascendency to her bright and long career. Meanwhile, Betty found herself there while navigating the descent that followed her sharp but fickle rise to Hollywood fame in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. Top billing Monday, Tuesday you really are touring in stock after all.

While details aren’t plentiful for these productions, it was recounted Betty apparently struggled in performing the role. And understandably so. Following the recent traumatic death of her mother in a house fire, and the birth of her third child shortly before the shows began, it’s not hard to see why her mind might have been elsewhere. Still, she was apparently impressed enough by the younger actress who turned in one of the show’s “creditable performances” to make comment that she would’ve liked Bernadette to play her if a movie were made about her life.

Bernadette might not have done this exactly, but she did go on to revitalise Betty’s best-known movie role, when stepping into Annie Oakley’s shoes in the 1999 Annie Get Your Gun revival. With Bernadette’s first Ethel Merman show under her belt, the ball was soon rolling on her second.

The 2003 production of Gypsy was imminently beckoning as her next successive Broadway musical and it was Arthur Laurents who lit the match to spark Bernadette’s involvement. Laurents, as the show’s original librettist, drove the revival by saying he “didn’t want to see the same Rose” he’d seen before. Going back to June Havoc’s description of her mother as “small” and a “mankiller”, and Arthur’s take that Bernadette sung the part “with more nuance for the lyrics and the character than the others”, the choice of Bernadette was justified. Moreover, “Laurents – whose idea it was to hire her – [said] going against type is exactly the point,” and Sam Mendes, as director, qualified “the tradition of battle axes in that role has been explored”.

So Bernadette also had her own baseline of innate physical similarity to the original Rose Hovick, in addition to her own first-hand memories of the women she’d acted alongside as Rose in her youth to bring into her characterisation of the infamous stage mother.

But there was a third factor beyond those as well to be considered in the personal material she had access to draw from for her characterisation. Namely, her own real life stage mother.

Marguerite Lazzara did share traits with the character of Rose. She too helped herself to silverware from restaurants, and put her daughters in showbusiness for the vicarious thrill. Marguerite had “always wanted to become an actress herself”, but had long been denied her desire by her own mother, who likened actresses to being as “close to a whore as you could be without, you know, getting on your back”.

In that case, to “escape a housewife’s dreary fate in Ozone Park”, Marguerite channelled her latent dream through her pair of young daughters instead, shepherding them out along the road. Thus was produced a trio of the two children ushered around the theatre circuit by the driven mother, forming an undeniable parallelism and a mirror image of both Bernadette’s reality and Gypsy’s core itself. Bernadette didn’t see some of these familial parallels at the time when she was a child, considering “maybe I didn’t want to see” – “didn’t want to see a mother doing that to her daughter”.

It was coming back to the show as an adult that helped Bernadette resolve who her mother was and some of the motivations that had propelled her when Bernadette was still a child. She realised, “I think she thought she was going to die very young”, as her own father died young. So “she was rushing around to get as much of her life as she could in there”.

When she herself returned to the production in playing Rose, Bernadette conceded to sometimes bringing elements of her mother and her driven energy into her portrayal, and admitted too she looked “like her a lot in the role”. You can assess any familial resemblances for yourself, from the images below that show a young Marguerite next to Bernadette in costume as Rose, and then with the pair backstage in 1961 in a dressing room on the tour.

Marguerite was ambitious. From her own personal position and with the restrictions imposed upon her, it was ambition that materialised through her children. Irrevocably, she altered them. She placed Bernadette on TV as a very young child (“I was four when my mother put me in the business”); changed her daughter’s surname (“She told me my real name was too long for the marquees,” or really – “too Italian”); doctored her resumé (“Somehow the word ‘understudy’ vanished. ‘No one will know,’ said Marguerite”); and lightened her hair (“She’d say, ‘Oh, I’m just putting a little conditioner on it.’ But slowly my hair got blonder and blonder!”). All in the hope of giving her child a more favourable chance at the life she’d always wanted for herself.

On paper, a classic stage mother. “When I was a kid, she fulfilled herself through me,” Bernadette would say. “She put me into show business so she could get a taste of the life herself.”

But it’s important to consider Bernadette often qualifies that her mother wasn’t as brutal as Rose, nor was she herself as traumatised as June.

Bernadette didn’t begrudge her mother for her choices – at least by the time she was an adult, she’d rationalised them, explaining “naturally it was more exciting [for her] to go on the road with me than staying home and keeping house”.

As a child, Bernadette hadn’t necessarily wanted to be on stage, but there was a sense of ambivalence – not resentful belligerence – as she “didn’t care one way or the other” when she found herself there.

Like June, Bernadette may have been entered into and coaxed around a path she hadn’t voluntarily chosen. But unlike June, Bernadette had a deal with her mother that “she had only to say the word”, and she could leave.

Most crucially, she never did.

But that’s not to say Bernadette was enamoured with acting from the beginning.

She seemed to feel ‘outside’ of that world and those in it. And others saw it too.

It was in 1961 in Gypsy that Bernadette first met Marvin Laird – her long-time accompanist, conductor and arranger. The way he put it, he “noticed this one young girl, very close with her mother” who, during breaks, “didn’t mix much with the other girls”.

Beneath the effervescent stage persona, there’s a quieter and more reserved reality, and a sense of separation and solitary division.

When asked by Jesse Green in 2003 for the extensive profile in The New York Times if she thought her experiences on the road in Gypsy were good for her at that age, she gives a curious, somewhat abstract, predominantly dark, potentially macabre, response. He wrote:

She doesn’t answer at first but seems to scan an image bank just behind her eyes for something to lock onto. Eventually she comes out with a seeming non sequitur. “I didn’t know how to swim. I remember, in Las Vegas, I fell in, once, and they thought I was flailing, but I felt like: ‘It’s pretty down here!’ I might have been dying and I was thinking: ‘Look at the pretty color!’ And suddenly my fear of water was gone, and I could have stayed in forever.” After a while, I realize she’s answered my question. Then she dismisses the image: “But I had to get my hair dry for the show that day, so up I came.”

I’m still not entirely sure I know what she’s trying to convey here. My interpretation of this anecdote changes as I have re-visited and re-examined it on multiple occasions at different time points. It’s arguably multiply polysemic.

Was she simply swept up in a moment of childlike distraction, lost in the temporary respite alone away from the usual noise and clamour? Was she indicating comprehension that her feelings and perspectives came secondary to any practical necessities and inevitable responsibilities? Was she using the water to depict a muffling and fishbowl-like detachment from others her age who got to live more ‘ordinary’ lives in the ‘normal’ world above that she felt separate from? Was she referencing the pretty colours she saw as a metaphor for show business and how she became bewitched by them even despite potential dangers? Was she trying to legitimately drown herself, or at least exhibiting an ambivalence again as to whether she lived or died, because of what the highly pressurised demands on her felt like?

The underlying sentiment through her response in answer to Green’s primary question was that, in essence – no. Being a child actor was not “over all, a good experience for a youngster”.

Acting might have been something she fell in love with over time, but not all at once, not right from the beginning, and not without noting its perils.

It was a matter of accidental circumstance that landed Bernadette in the show business world to begin with at such a young age in the first place – “I just found myself here,” she would offer.

Her mother, who was “always crazy about the stage”, “insisted” that her sister, Donna take lessons in singing, dancing and acting.

A further point of interest to note is that, although it was Bernadette with her new surname who would grow up to be the famous actress, look to the cast lists from the 1961 touring production of Gypsy that featured both sisters in the company (see photo below) and you’ll find no ‘Lazzara’ in sight. Donna too, appearing under the novel moniker of “Donna Forbes”, had also already become stagified (nay, ethnically neutralised?) by her mother. As such it is clearly demonstrated that Marguerite’s intention at that point was to make stars of both her daughters. Correspondingly so, when her sister returned from her performance lessons some years before, “Donna would come home and teach me what she had learned,” Bernadette remembered. She may have gotten her “training second hand”, but the key element was that she got it.

For Bernadette, it was a short jump from emulating magpied tricks from her sister as well as routines from Golden Age Busby Berkeley musicals on the ‘Million Dollar Movie’ in front of the TV screen, to her mother getting her on the other side of the screen and actually performing on TV itself – belting out Sophie Tucker impressions aged five for all the nation to see.

The photos below show Bernadette in performative situations at a young age (look for criss-crossed laces in the second for identification).

“At first, as a toddler, Bernadette enjoyed performing; it came naturally, a form of play that people inexplicably liked to watch.” It was “just a hobby” and she “wanted to do it”.

But while she may not have detested it, she didn’t entirely comprehend what was going on either. “I didn’t even know I was on TV,” she said. “I didn’t know that those big gadgets pointed at me were cameras and that they had anything to do with what people saw on the television set.”

When she started gaining more of an awareness of how “such play [was being] co-opted for commercial purposes”, she grew less enthralled. “She didn’t care for the bizarre children, accompanied by desperate mothers, she began to see at auditions: ‘They spent their whole time smiling for no reason, you know?’”

Being a child who had become sentient of being a child performer began to grow wearisome and grating to the young girl who had her equity card, a professional (and strange, new) stage name, and an increasingly long list of expectations by the time she was nine. There’s a keen sense she did not enjoy being in such a position: “I wouldn’t want to be a child again. When you’re a child, you have thoughts, but nobody listens to you. Nobody has any respect for you”.

Gypsy did indeed mark a turning point for Bernadette as mentioned above – but not just in the way that seems obvious. Looking back at it now, it does appear the monumental turning point at which she started appearing in significant and reputable productions, beginning what would be the foundation to her ‘professional’ career. However it was also the turning point after which she nearly quit the business altogether.

When she returned from performing in Gypsy, Bernadette felt like she’d had enough. One way of putting it was that she “then retired from the business to attend high school”, wanting to have some semblance of a normal scholastic experience “without the interruptions”. But whatever dissatisfaction she was feeling as an early adolescent on stage, she didn’t resolve at school – going as far as saying that while at Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, “she was in pain”.

“When you’re a teenager you’re too aware of yourself,” she recalled. Being a teen and trying to come to terms with of the expectation of the ‘60s that “you are supposed to look like Twiggy, and you don’t, you feel everything is wrong about you”. Everything “was all about tall, skinny, no chest…[and] hair straight”. Little Bernadette with her “mass of [curly] hair and distracting bosom”, as Alex Witchel put it, was never going to fit that mould. “That was not me,” she stated. “At all.”

Her self-consciousness grew to the point that it became overwhelming and asphyxiating. “I was trying desperately to blend in and be normal, but that doesn’t allow creativity to come out,” Bernadette said. “I knew I was acting terrible. The words were sticking in my mouth and all I could think about was how I looked”. It was hard enough just to look at herself (“I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror”), let alone to have other people gawk at her on stage. So she stopped trying. She “didn’t work much from age 13 to 17” in the slightest. Bernadette would later reflect in 1981 in an atypically open and vulnerable interview, “I was very insecure. Insecurity is poison. It’s like wearing chains”.

It was a combination of factors that helped her overcome these feelings of such toxic and weighty burden to draw her back into the public world of performing and the stage. “The two people who helped her most, she says, were David LeGrant, her first acting teacher, and her vocal coach, Jim Gregory.” Jim helped with “[opening] a whole creative world for [her] with singing”; and it was David who’d give her the now infamous and often (mis)quoted line about individuality and being yourself.

Having these kinds of lessons, she reasoned, was “really a wonderful emotional outlet for a kid of 17”. The process of it all was beneficial for her therapeutically – “you have a lot of emotions at that time in your life, and it was great to go to an acting class and use them up”. And Bernadette felt freer on stage than she did out on her own in the ‘real world’, saying “[up there] I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing or saying because I’m doing and saying what I’m supposed to be doing and saying”.

Finally then and with considerable bolstering and support, she grew comfortable with the notion of being visible on stage and in public, and realised she was never going to blend in as part of the chorus so it was simply better to let go of such a futile pursuit.

David LeGrant’s guiding advice to Bernadette (“You’ve got to be original, because if you’re like everyone else, what do they need you for?”) wasn’t just a trite aphorism. For her, it was a life raft. It was the key mental framing device that allowed her to comprehend for the first time that she might actually have intrinsic value as herself. And that it was imperative she let herself use it.

She had always stuck out, yes, but she had to learn how to want to be seen – talking of it as a conscious “choice” she had to make when realising she did “have something to offer”.

Thus soon after Bernadette graduated, she stepped back into productions like in summer stock and then Off-Broadway as she made her debut at that next theatrical level at 18. It wasn’t long before she was discovered in what’s seen as her big break in the unexpected smash hit, Dames at Sea. And so Bernadette Peters, the actress, was back. And she was back with impact and force.

Besides, as she’s also said, she couldn’t do anything else – “if I ever had to do something else to earn a living, I’d be at a total loss”. An aptitude test as a teenager told her so apparently, when she “got minus zero in everything except Theater Arts”. So that was that. Her answer for what she would’ve done if she’d never found acting is both paradoxically exultant and macabre – “I don’t know, probably shot myself!”

Flippant? Maybe. Trivial? No.

Acting is thus undoubtedly related highly to Bernadette’s sense of purpose and self-worth. This is what makes it even more apparent that a show with such personal and historical connections for her, as in Gypsy, was going to be so consequential and impactful to be a part of again as an adult and perform on a public stage.

She’s called inhabiting the role of Rose in the 2003 revival many things: “deeply personal”, “life changing”, “like going through therapy” – to name a few.

In interviews regarding Gypsy and playing the main character, when asked what she had learnt, Bernadette would frequently say something like, “It taught me a lot”. Pressed further about specifics, her answers often hem close to vague platitudes as she maintains her normal tendency of endeavouring to keep her privacy close to her chest.

On one occasion, she actually elaborated somewhat on what she’d learnt, giving a fuller answer than the question is normally afforded anyhow. Beyond all it revealed to her about her mother, she extended to admitting “my capacity for love and my capacity for anger” as aspects in her that the show had permanently altered. Moreover, Rose to her was undoubtedly the “most rewarding and fulfilling acting experience” she had ever had.

But while such deep, personal and emotional depths and memories were being stirred up beneath the surface in private, she was getting vilified in public singularly and repeatedly by New York Post columnist, Michael Riedel.

Even before she’d set foot on stage, Riedel set forth in motion early in the 2003 season a campaign of vocal and opinionated defamation against Bernadette as Rose that she was miscast, insufficiently talented, and would be incapable of executing the role.

Too small, too delicate, too weak, too many curves (and too much knowledge of how to use them). Not bold enough, not loud enough – not Merman enough. Chatter and speculative dissent begun to grow in and around the Broadway theatres.

For such a prestigious and historic musical theatre role, it was always going to be hard to erase the large shadow of an original Merman mould. Ethel was woven into the very fabric of the show, with the rights to Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoirs being obtained at her behest in the first place, and the idiosyncrasies of her voice having been written into the songs themselves by their very authors.

To step out from such a domineering legacy would be a marked challenge at the best of times. Let alone when battling a respiratory infection.

Matters of public perception were certainly not helped when Bernadette then got ill as the show started its preview period and she started missing early performances.

Nor did it help with critical perception that the Tony voting period coincided so synchronously with Gypsy’s first opening months – giving Bernadette no time to recover, find her feet, and settle more healthily into the show for the rest of the run before the all important decisions were made by that omnipotent committee.

The tale of her illness is actually undercut by a more innocent and unsuspecting origin than you’d expect from all the drama and trouble it engendered. Bernadette decided nearing the show’s opening to treat herself to a manicure. In the salon, she was next to a woman very close to her with a frightful sounding cough. Who could’ve known then that this anonymous and inconspicuous lady through a fateful cause-and-event chain would go on to play such a part in what is among the biggest and most enduring Tony Awards “She was robbed!” discourses? Or even more broadly – in also arguably playing a hand in the closure and financial failure of an $8.5 million Broadway show after its disappointing performance at the Tony Awards that ominously “[spelled] trouble at the box office” and led to its premature demise?

Bernadette did not win the Best Actress in a Musical Tony that night on June 6th 2004. The award went instead (not un-controversially) to newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur for Hairspray.

She did however give one of the most indelibly resonant and frequently re-referenced solo performances at the awards show just before she lost – defying detractors to comprehend how she could be unworthy of the accolade with a rendition of ‘Rose’s Turn’ that has apocryphally earned one of the longest standing ovations seen after such a performance even to date.

Even further and even more apocryphally, she reportedly did so while still under the weather as legend as circulated by musical theatre fans goes – performing “against doctor’s orders” with stories that have her being “afflicted with anything from a 103-degree fever, to pneumonia, to a collapsed lung”.

Seeing then as unfortunately there is no Tony Award speech to draw on here, matter shall be retrieved fittingly from that which she gave just a few years earlier in 1999 for her first win and previous Ethel Merman role in Annie Get Your Gun to wrap all of this together.

As has been illustrated, there are many arguably scary or alarming aspects in Bernadette’s Gypsy narrative. There’s undeniably much darkness and an ardent clamouring for meaning and self-realisation along the road that tracks her journey parallel to the show. But unlike Rose’s hopeless decries of “Why did I do it?” and “What did it get me?”, there was a point for Bernadette.

As her emotional tribute in 1999 went: “I want to thank my mother, who 48 years ago put me in showbusiness. And I want to finally, officially, say to her – thank you. For giving me this wonderful experience and this journey.”

Whatever all of this was, maybe it was worth it after all.

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keeping-up-with-the-morningstars · 3 years

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if u finish watching lucifer season 6, please let me know, will one detail (or rather one certain person) have an impact and later contribute to your lucifer and sabrina fanfic

I'm embarrassed to say that I only finished Lucifer last week, so I'm pretty late in responding to this. But to answer your question, no. Definitely not.

There was a lot to love about the last season (AmenaGod, Dan's arc, Maze's happy ending, etc.), but a lot to hate, as well. And for me, it all boils down to the addition of Rory's character.

Time-traveling daughter from the future is the stuff of bad fanfiction, and that's saying a lot coming from me -- bad fanfic writer extraordinaire. Time loops are a deus ex machina of the worst kind, and a pretty good indicator that the showrunners have written themselves into a corner. Take Season 3 of CAOS for example. Why else would they shoe-horn that timey wimey mumbo jumbo into the plot if they hadn't realized that their only way out was to "erase" Sabrina's questionable decisions from the timeline? And even then, the rest of the season (and the rest of the show, for that matter) still managed to devolve into a confusing salad of botched character development and glaring plot holes.

But I digress. Bottom line is, unless you can handle time travel as well as Doc Brown and Marty McFly, it's a plot device best left untouched unless you're really, really desparate. And I don't think Lucifer's last season was desperate at all. They probably just fell off the wagon trying to top the season 5 finale which, in my opinion, was already a pretty good way to end the show. If they didn't kill Dan for shock value, or Amenadiel just took the throne from the get-go, there wouldn't even need to be a season 6. But hey, that's just me.

(Besides, Rory as a character is one I wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Despite being raised by super mom Chloe Decker and having angel-acclaimed celestial therapist Dr. Linda Martin for an aunt, she still managed to turn into an extremely unlikeable, entitled 40+ year old woman who never grew out of her teenage angst. Which, yeah, was necessary for "plot reasons" and all, but dear lord. Lucifer's daddy issues were born out of getting thrown out of his own home, having his whole family ostracize him, and being forced to rule over hell for centuries. Not to invalidate Rory's own trauma, but jeez. You never saw Lucifer plot to murder his own father even after all of that, did you? Get a grip, kid.)

I realize that this is a pretty long and unrelated answer to a relatively simple question, but a lot of season 6 really ticked me off. I had to get some of it off my chest, or else, I might just internally combust one of these days and never be seen again lol. Suffice to say, Lucifer's last season is not part of my personal canon, and will not be part of any of this AU's fanon going forward.

#ask #this rage is the one thing i get from my father #lucifer season 6 #chilling adventures of sabrina #rory morningstar #lucifer finale

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redrosesartcabin · 3 years

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The cave incident: Kenji x first perspective reader pt. 1 of 2

(This is happening between season 2 and season 3. So, basically whatever is to happen in season 3 hasn’t happened yet but the entirety of season 2 has)

(I hope you like this little intro and tell me if you like this kinda story and writing style. You can also give me requests for one shots if you like. That being said: I hope you like the story!)

Relieved yet kind of saddened, that yet another rescue had failed, we stood there, looking out at the sea. I still couldn’t believe Ben was alive. Or that the only people that had the capacity to safe us had been evil. It was all so overwhelming.

After a while of contemplating our fates, we had decided to drive back for now to the treehouse we had built to think about our next step and get some rest. Because as Darius had put it: We were done waiting for the rescue.

Since we were a big group we had to travel back in two groups. One riding on Bumpy and one on the motorcycle. Since the motorcycle was harder to ride we argued back and forth who would ride on it until all eyes were stuck on Kenji.

“Can’t anyone else ride a motorcycle here?”, Kenji asked with a long groan but received no positive feedback, which led him to let out another typical groan.

I had to hold back an amused laugh as he did. He was adorable when he would lay down his rich, cool, unimpressed guy act…

Yeah… I have a crush on him.

I know: A bad timing to be falling for someone. We barely have time to sit down! But maybe it was exactly that environment and these circumstances that had made it possible for me to fall for him.

It had made it possible for him to grow as person, or rather ‘ungrow’ the person he had become because of how he was raised. Because though he had always looked good to me, he had appeared rather… not that nice. But now: Gosh now I could swoon all day…

Anyhow, I digress: What I was able convince him to ride the motorcycle again. With me of course. I wouldn’t pass that opportunity.

“Hey”, I said, “I know you are exhausted, but you are the only one who can ride it, plus: It’s too heavy for Bumpy to carry us all and we’d be too crowded. One of us would fall off her for sure! Come on: I’ll even forego riding on Bumpy and accompany you”

He let out a sigh, but quickly gave in and agreed with a light smile. My heart fluttered at that and I could feel my cheeks grow bright red. I hoped he didn’t notice, but he seemed to be oblivious to it as he had to all other instances where it could’ve been obvious that I was crushing hard.

Unlike Brooklyn who gave me a cheeky grin and mouthed something that I was sure meant ‘you are so into him’. Typical Brooklyn: She notices everything.

She had been doing that for at least two weeks now and every time I gave her a death glare, that she however would just laugh at. She knew she was right, and I did too. It was just a matter of me being too chicken and fearing the friendship I had miraculously been able to build with him, would be destroyed if I confessed I had these kinda feelings for him.

Surprisingly, over our time together I had to recognize that we had more in common than I thought. Besides being the same age, we also both hated math and liked bowling. Though Kenji and I had to admit that we probably weren’t very good at it. In my case it was because I didn’t get to do it often, in Kenji’s case it was because his father’s staff would always let him win and thusly, he hadn’t gotten proper practice. He had told me that with a laugh, as if though it was supposed to be amusing, but really, I could see the pain in his eyes.

One could say his life of wealthiness gave him a lot of incredible privileges and made his life in many aspects easier for him than for others. But in truth, being treated that differently, like a little child, a being from out of space, or like some kinda god even, when you are neither of these things, messes with you after a while. You are treated that way, but when you act it, you are hated. Why? You don’t understand. How could you understand? Aren’t you the most important person in the world? Deep down you know you aren’t, and you feel it most when you don’t receive the affection a human being craves for. He has a father, but he didn’t grow up with one. He grew up with servants. Wealthiness was his parent.

And suddenly I had understood where he was coming from, why he acted the way he did.

I never directly told him, that I understand it, because there was still too much pride in him to admit it. I had decided, it was better to just listen and engage in conversation with him, even if he acts immature in certain situations.

And I had been right.

And so, we connected. As friends. Though to me it quickly became more than that.

It felt wrong though, in this situation. Was it just the drill of it all? The hormones going crazy? A savior complex?

He wasn’t a bad person though. He wasn’t inherently abusive, so he didn’t need a savior, someone to make him ‘right’. He needed someone who understood that beautiful person he was hiding. Also: What kind of drill we lived through could make you fall in love? Seeing the other person screaming and seething in the dirt, on the run from a dinosaur? Yeah: Very attractive (that was sarcasm if that wasn’t obvious).

‘This is all stupid’, I thought as I was leaning against his back, my arms wrapped around his stomach and chest as we were riding in a comfortable silence along the jungle, ‘this entire thought process is just a way to tell myself that these feelings aren’t real, so that I can run away from it forever’. I sighed, trying to forget my overthinking for once.

I loved this moment. The warmth I felt as I was cuddled against him. Riding with him was a good excuse for proximity I’d otherwise would never get-

But it was rudely interrupted by a shove that came from the right.

We didn’t see the dinosaur coming, or at least not soon enough. It was just too fast.

The motorcycle went flying down a steep hill we had been driving by. I heard our screams as we came crashing down in what seemed to be slow motion moment.

With all his might, Kenji tried turning the bike around to get some footing again, but only managed to find stability enough so that we wouldn’t fall to our death by being crushed by the vehicle and twisting our bodies, but instead fall, with the tires on the downside, into a big hole in the ground. It reminded me of a cave with an open ceiling.

The motorcycle finally came to a hold. We were breathing heavily, still in shock.

At the same time, we turned our heads up.

The hole wasn’t that deep, but just deep enough we couldn’t get out so easily.

“Oh no”, we said at the same time.

“Looks like we are stuck here”

#kenji camp cretaceous #camp cretaceous #camp cretaceous fanfiction #cc ff #fanfiction #ff #kenji x reader #kenji camp cretaceous x reader #self indulgent af #I hope the few of you who wanted this will like it #kenji kon

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for-i-am-dying-of-such-love · 4 years

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that time I watched Antony + Cleopatra

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Please don’t mistake my criticism of the episode with my hating it, because I actually think there’s a lot going on here with Xena (and Gabrielle too, but I am less focused on her arc) that’s quite nuanced and compelling. I love that Xena’s role in orchestrating Marc Antony’s downfall contributes to her moral and emotional conflict. What I abhor (and refuse to accept) is the suggestion that it’s born out of her falling in *love* with him, especially when there are far more consequential things in Xena’s life, past and present, fueling her angst in this moment. I have my own reading of what’s causing Xena’s uneasiness here, but more on that in a bit.

First: I think my greatest frustration is with the show itself. Like, THE FUCKING AUDACITY to foist a Boyfriend of the Week on us with just a handful of episodes left in season five. After everything, *everything*, that Xena & Gabrielle have suffered through (actual, literal HELL), and the continued devotion they show for one another, it’s just not believable that Xena would fall in love with someone else, let alone a ROMAN GENERAL. The emphasis here is important, but patience grasshopper, I’ll get to that.

Now, here’s where we start to get into the weeds with this notion of ‘Xena falling in love’ and there’s a lot to unpack around it, but before I do, let me just finish unspooling the threads of frustration I have with the show and it’s AUDACITY. Because it’s important to note that the show’s intention *was* to frame Xena’s attraction for Marc Antony as romantic - on top of whatever else she may have initially felt (indifference, intrigue, lust) - and not just sexual. And while I’ll concede that a story where Xena is forced to sacrifice her heart for the greater good by killing the man she loves is intriguing, it’s one we’ve already seen (Immortal Beloved). More than that, it’s a story that doesn’t fit with the Xena we know now, and the show, better than anyone, should have recognized this.

I know I’m being hard on the show runners here, so allow me this small tangent to give a little contextual understanding before furthering my arguments. As much fun as it is wrestling with the internal logic of this show (a surprisingly uphill battle all the time), I understand the unfortunate truth is that character motivations don’t always drive the story in the ways you would expect. Sometimes external factors complicate the stories XWP wants to tell and the ways it’s *allowed* to tell them. I get that.

I also get that Xena: Warrior Princess - both the show and the character - was expected to be sexy (hello, an easy win because Xena & Gabrielle). And that means, from time to time, it had to tease the audience with sex and seduction and romance (I guess fighting demons in Hell for the soul of your SOULMATE is not romantic enough, but I DIGRESS). What that often translated as on screen was a parade of Boyfriends of the Week for our two favourite Gal Pals, and by this point in the show, well, frankly it had been a while since Xena had had her a boyfriend (the Ares arc in season 5 doesn’t count). Simply put: a Marc Antony type was past due.

In this case, he wasn’t just past due, he served a dual purpose - fulfilling their Boyfriend of the Week quota, but also helping to re-establish Xena’s sexuality after she’d had her baby. I happen to think the latter take is overly simplistic and misguided (because, what, pregnant women are not also capable of being sexual creatures?), but it’s something Rob Tapert has commented on. So, ok, sure, fine whatever.

To be fair, I’m not sure if the show was deliberately signalling the return of Sexualized!Xena, or if it was simply a byproduct of the chemistry between the characters, and the inherent sensuality of the story’s setting. Regardless, the end result was certainly titillating. And I get it. I get why they want Boyfriends of the Week sometimes. Sex sells, and this episode was a blockbuster.

And before I return again to being hard on the show runners about dumb boyfriends, I just want to point out that my specific problem isn’t that Xena has been given a *boy*friend. Xena is bisexual, so men are always going to be an option when she’s considering a romantic or sexual partner. My issue is that she’s considering *any* romantic partner at all! By the gods, she’s essentially married to Gabrielle at this point.

Ay, but there’s the rub. Because the same expectation that dictated XWP should be sexy, also dictated that it should be heteronormative. The show can repeatedly double down on Xena’s & Gabrielle’s emotional and spiritual fidelity but it can never be seen explicitly to be sexual too (just a reminder, I haven’t seen S6 yet). That’s the unfortunate and uncomfortable reality of television in the late 90s and early 00s.

But this is where I take umbrage: XWP may’ve been limited (by studio notes) to giving us a chalk outline of what Xena’s & Gabrielle’s relationship really looked like, but they most definitely had the ability to control how they coloured the relationships Xena & Gabrielle had with their Boyfriends of the Week. And again, in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ the show chose to frame it as a love story, a romance, when simply playing it off as Xena’s libido run amok would have satisfied the episode’s need for sex appeal, while also honouring the fact that her heart has long been spoken for (don’t worry: taking Xena’s heart out of the equation won’t lessen her moral or emotional conflict any - I’m getting there!).

Because here’s the thing: Xena getting caught up in the heady thrill of a seduction play, especially with a man as attractive and powerful as Marc Antony is totally believable. And really, Xena taken in by *lust* makes sense, especially at this point in her life. I mean, it’s been a while since she’s had to play this seductive cat-and-mouse game (Ares doesn’t count) and maybe she’s forgotten how easy it is to slip into this character, how much fun it can be. Maybe it’s even a little liberating - this return to form from when she was wild and free - because a lot has changed since she last had to do this; she’s changed and in ways she never anticipated. She’s settled down, even if she’s still travelling the known world. Made a commitment to Gabrielle to share a life together, had a baby, and now the three of them are carving out their own little domestic sphere. And all of this is happening while she’s still reconciling the person she was before with the person she is now. Maybe she’s a little itchy.

Because this… this tension, the cadence of a feint and parry charm offensive, it’s familiar. Comfortable in a way she didn’t know she missed until she felt it again. It would be easy to see her drunk with dark delight, to momentarily lose sight of her head. It would be believable. What’s not believable is that she - a pragmatist - would ever lose sight of her heart. Because the stakes of the game are so high, for Egypt but also for her. (And for you in the back who’s clearly read ahead on the syllabus and is about to point out Xena’s checkered romantic history and her self-proclaimed soft spot for Bad Boys Who Love Like Fools - don’t worry, we’ll get there too.)

What I’m taking a generous amount of time to say is this: if they simply wanted to give us a lush and sexy episode, they could have delivered on the sexiness without attaching it to a love story! We are long past believing Xena only kisses people she’s in love with, or that she’s in love with all the people she kisses. There’s no need to pretend her sexual agency is only relevant or operational within the confines of a romantic plot line. But more than that, throwing an unbelievable romance into the mix really only serves to threaten the integrity of Xena’s motivations, because it risks reducing the entirety of her turmoil to: Xena loses another boyfriend, how le sad. And that is absolutely not the point.

Because the point is this: Rome fucking corrupts and perverts everything it touches. And Xena’s motivations are built from her (and now Gabrielle’s) tortured history with the empire and the men who run it. And if you’ll permit me, like 4,000 words, we can get into it and, hopefully, you’ll agree that shit is heavy enough on Xena’s mind without a ‘star-crossed lovers’ storyline. Remember, it was only a year ago that they both were nailed up by Romans and left to die under a cold, grey sky at the foot of Mount Amaro. That cross alone, and the long shadow it casts, is more than capable of supporting the dramatic weight of this episode, never mind the crosses that came before it.

So, I can’t overstate the importance of Xena’s past connection with Caesar and Rome. It informed so much of who Xena was to become, as a cruel and bloodthirsty warlord, and then later, as a warrior fighting for good. Even now, after Caesar’s death, that connection is still informing her. It will never stop. And, Rome will never be absolved of its sins against Xena & Gabrielle. There’s simply too much trauma in that shared past. Trauma that‘s telegraphed onto every interaction Xena has with Rome and its strongmen going forward.

And it’s exactly the reason Xena would never fall in love with Marc Antony. She might well lust after his body, but she will never pine for his devotion. Because, even in that moment under the stars when he is just a man with his chest cracked open, offering up to her his heart, beating strong and hungry in want of her affection, she can’t help but see the hardened, black veins where the love of Rome - like a creeping scourge - has left its vile mark. Of course she recognizes it, her own heart bore the same disease. A gift from Caesar. The pretty boy with his pretty words and his pretty promises, who so subtly disarmed Xena and then skillfully stripped away her defences until she had bared her heart to him. Who didn’t hesitate to flay it with a knife of her own making, it’s blade poisoned with his love for Rome.

He did not take her heart - sometimes she wished he had - but left it to rot in her chest, slow and angry. And it nearly destroyed her. Nearly drained her of every ounce of humanity she had left, as hatred and spite and cold brutality filled her up instead. He had weaponized Xena’s affection for him and used it against her and she was forever changed. In that singular moment she saw Caesar, and Rome - because Caesar was Rome and Rome was Caesar and they were one and the same - for what they truly were: insidious and unrepentant in their calculated villainy. And she hated - not just the man who betrayed her, but the monster who nursed him with poisoned milk, and all the other strongmen who nursed at the same teat. Because in that moment too, Xena learned that all the men who kneeled before Rome and lusted after her glory were the same.

But she didn’t let her hatred go unproductive. She had been careless and imprudent in her dealings with Caesar, and nearly paid for it with her life. Except she survived and then thrived, in her own insidious, unrepentant, calculated villainy. And she never forgot what Caesar had done to her, how he had done it. She turned it over and over and over again in her mind. Studied it from every angle. Studied *him*. Until she knew how he thought, how he moved, where he was weak and unsuspecting. Until she knew every single one of his plays, and how best to counter them. Where and when to lay siege. A secret weapon she cultivated, not just to destroy the man who destroyed her heart, but to lay waste to all the fools who followed in his footsteps. She wouldn’t be taken in by Rome again.

And, to be fair, the episode doesn’t try to run from this history. It just doesn’t linger in it any longer than is necessary to give a brief nod to Brutus and the crucifixion (which is a shame, because it informs so much of both Xena’s & Gabrielle’s psychology, but we’re getting there!!!). Even still, Gabrielle’s first words are loaded with its legacy, if not also quiet resignation: “Are we really going to do this?” Because: Fuck! Rome, again? They’re only willing to go another round with Rome because of Cleopatra, only willing to embrace the ghosts this will stir up because they feel they owe it to a friend.

So, of course they’re going to do this. Only, it’s no longer about vengeance, at least not the white fury that once burned hot in Xena’s veins. This is different. Xena’s ire still seethes, but she doesn’t plan to wield it like a mighty sword, rather she’ll channel it with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel poised to excise a tumour, deliberate and clinical. The plotting is easy - Xena has a library of schemes stored away in the vast reserves of her grey matter - but made easier by the fact that she knows Caesar’s playbook so intimately. The man may be dead but he lives on in Rome and the hearts of all the faithful men who love her - proud and predictable. Puppets whose strings she knows she can deftly manoeuvre. The problem is that Xena’s too comfortable in her self-assuredness. Her plan and her assumptions of how Roman strongmen operate and her ability to manage everything is founded on her understanding of Caesar. And none of these men are the next Caesar. And it’s a problem, because this was supposed to be a quick and straightforward trip up the Nile to Memphis to do a little housekeeping on behalf of a friend and it’s been complicated by the fact that her pawns are not being cooperative.

This entire endeavour is not what she was expecting, Antony is not at all what she was expecting. He’s disarmingly handsome and charming, like many of Rome’s great strongmen, and their chemistry is electric - a bonus when you’re really trying to sell your part in a seduction play - but she realizes a little too late that the game she plays with him is not the one she had planned on. It’s actually much more dangerous.

And, I get that many fans believe Xena’s sexual attraction to Marc Antony is meant to telegraph an underlying romantic attraction as well. That as their physical encounters become more intimate and intense, so too must Xena’s feelings for him. And it’s easy to read it this way because Gabrielle’s own jealousy seems to reinforce the very idea, and Xena, herself, looks increasingly unsettled after each interaction. But I think it’s too simplistic an answer. Xena’s unease about Antony is growing because her plan has been frustrated by unforeseen hurdles, none of which include her falling in love with him. And Xena is frustrated in return.

We totally see this play out in Xena’s treatment of Gabrielle. She is curt and cool and dismissive (at least until their balcony talk), especially after Gabrielle puts a spectacular halt to Xena’s picnic with Marc Antony. But Xena’s distance here is not because she’s being defensive (at Gabrielle’s continued suggestions that she’s lost the plot), or because she’s angry for the interruption (ok, I’m sure there’s a very base part of Xena that *was* disappointed), or because she’s hurt (how could Gabrielle not have faith in her?). It may come across that way, but, really, Xena’s just acting out her frustrations.

Because this whole situation with Marc Antony, if a little intriguing at first, is irritating. And Xena’s frustrated. On many levels. The most obvious, and least surprising, being that Antony’s attentions have left her itchy and it’s distracting. And not because the chemistry between them has set off a chain reaction of romantic feelings for him - Xena is not spending her free time daydreaming about the man behind the General. It’s simply because there’s a kind of fire in her veins now that she wasn’t expecting to deal with this time out and it has the tendency to keep her on edge. And it’s not that she can’t handle it - spontaneous combustion is sometimes an occupational hazard when she’s playing at desire - it’s just that this particular element was not part of her plan.

That’s the real frustration: Xena’s not used to her plans being stymied. Her opening move - rolling herself, naked and chained, out from a carpet - though, brazen, should have been the perfect lure, should have painted her Cleopatra as an easy, if not unwilling, target for Antony’s ambitions. Because all Roman strongmen are the same: pretty boys with pretty words and pretty promises and pretty predictable tastes for cunning and seduction that they weaponize for the glory of Rome; heartless but for their love of res publica.

And so, this exact play is one Xena is confident any ambitious Roman would pounce on - remember: she knows their playbook, was once herself on the near-losing end of such a gambit, back when she was still a little naive and the right words could soften her heart; before her legs and her psyche endured the full force of Rome’s wrath. Except Antony doesn’t take the bait, like she expects, and it catches Xena flat-footed, a position she rarely finds herself in and one she isn’t particularly fond of. And so now she finds herself having to regroup and change tactics on the fly, which is fine - she’s used to that too - it’s just that her forward momentum is frustrated by the fact that she can’t get a good read on Marc Antony, doesn’t quite know his angle. He’s an unknown and unpredictable variable in a plot that already has a lot of moving parts and it introduces just the tiniest element of doubt into the equation.

Which is why it doesn’t help that Gabrielle is dubious of Xena’s motivations surrounding Antony. Not that Xena blames her for her concerns. She knows they aren’t really meant to provoke - that they come from a place of genuine anxiety, born from Gabrielle’s intimate understanding of Xena’s unhappy past with both bad-boy types and the ravages of Rome. Knows that Gabrielle, whose heart has traced all the scars of that past and let her love be a salve, is steadfast in her belief in Xena, even when the wheels are falling off. But Gabrielle’s questions do provoke. They pique Xena’s frustrations. It leaves her feeling cagey - like her back is up - and she hates it because it means she’s dangerously close to being on the defensive.

And really, by the time Marc Antony invites her to meet him under the pyramids, Xena is running out of options. Her back isn’t just up, it feels dangerously close to being backed up against a wall. She’s only playing this game because she’s confident she’ll win - that’s why she led with such a shameless opening bid, presenting herself to Antony as she did - but with each round Antony’ coyishness has forced her to up the ante while she waits for him to play his hand. Once upon a time she might have enjoyed and encouraged this slow, deliberate back-and-forth - would have been willing to play it out until she was out of chips (and her clothes) - but she no longer has the patience. Not that she’s entirely immune now to the thrill of what they’re doing - Xena has always enjoyed the hunt and then playing with her food - it’s just that she needs him to reveal his hand before he can call her bluff because there aren’t anymore chips to spare and she has too much on the line to go all in.

But Xena’s emotional conflict isn’t just being driven by her frustrations with the way her plan is playing out - it’s priming the engine, to be sure - there are other feelings at work here too. And chief among them is a deep and growing unease with the roles she and Gabrielle have cast themselves in and the very real consequences that will come from their interference. It doesn’t sit well with Xena, the way they’re toying with the futures of Egypt and Rome - as if they are just prizes to be won and Brutus, Antony and Octavius are the game pieces that need to be maneuvered around the board until a winner appears. As if there aren’t millions of lives at stake. She hates it. Hates that she has been somehow cast above it all, to dabble, like some unworthy god, in the lives of so many, and yet also stuck in the thick of it, an unwitting pawn herself.

And the longer Xena’s game is in play, the murkier everything becomes. What seems like a straightforward plan on paper, is actually a mess of competing interests, each as cold and ruthless as the next. And right at the heart of it all: Xena (and Gabrielle too), judge, jury & executioner. Because despite her business-like approach when they arrived in Egypt, Xena’s ability to remain detached and objective is under pressure, especially as all the players in her game reveal themselves and their motivations resolve into finer focus.

And there’s something about Marc Antony. He’s truly unnerved Xena. Because he didn’t play by her rules, the rules she owed to Rome - and he, a Roman no less. Maybe there would have been a time in her past when this would have endeared him to her, but now it’s left her uneasy. He needles at her resolve, the confidence she has in her plan. There’s a part of her that starts to wonder if she’s mis-read him completely, and that’s the start of a slippery slope into thinking she has mis-read this entire situation. And she doesn’t have the time for back-sliding.

But the problem is this: no matter how she looks at it there’s no clear answer, only devastating consequences if she’s wrong. For herself, for the lives she’s playing with, and probably for most of the known world. Because Rome and her strongmen will stop at nothing to take it all. And that thought never leaves her. Rome is a constant drum beat in her mind: Rome Rome Rome. Xena knows what Rome is capable of, what these three men jockeying for her power are capable of, even if Xena doesn’t know *them*. It echoes in her mind every time one of them is before her - even as Marc Antony’s kisses leave behind a fever in her blood - Rome Rome Rome.

And while her mind whirls constantly, turning over strategy and tactics, she’s tried to keep her heart mostly out of this affair. Left it unburdened by the machinations of statecraft and violent political intrigue. Except for a dull ache - when she thinks about Eve downriver in Alexandria, or when her eye catches Gabrielle in an unguarded moment - Xena could almost believe the desert sun had turned her heart to dust. Almost. Except that ache is there and, like her frustration and unease, it’s been growing more persistent.

Because Xena has more than herself to consider now. Sure, she’s spent the last five years dedicated to preserving the greater good - whether fighting for her closest friends or the nameless, faceless masses - but it’s different now, she’s different, and not just because she has a daughter who needs her to come home. She has Gabrielle too. They have a little family. And even though Xena has loved Gabrielle for years, she feels fiercely protective of Gabrielle’s heart and love now, in a way she’s never felt before, with anyone. But then, maybe it’s not surprising: they did battle demons in hell for each other’s soul. That sort of thing changes everything.

And Xena can see how this is affecting Gabrielle, even if she doesn’t say it out loud. Remembers the pierce of iron through the flesh of Gabrielle’s hands as surely as she remembers it through her own. Rome has robbed them both and Xena sees the weight of it in Gabrielle’s gaze. Sees, too, the way Gabrielle traps her bottom lip in her teeth as Xena smiles seductively at Antony. Watches the flush creep across Gabrielle’s pale skin when Antony’s kisses become more emboldened. Catches the dangerous flash in Gabrielle’s green eyes. The one that hasn’t gone away since they arrived in Egypt. Xena sees and it makes her heart lurch. To watch her beloved watch her take delight in the charms of another. And to know the sight of it is a white hot grip on Gabrielle’s heart. Xena feels the burning clench around hers too.

And this is the Xena we see when she meets Marc Antony under the pyramids. Frustrated and uneasy, heart aching. Tired. Tired of this game and her role in it. Tired of Rome, but mostly tired of all the horrible things that happen by her hand because of Rome. And then there is Marc Antony waiting for her. Disarmingly handsome and charming, unnerving in his refusal to play into her hands, a Roman above all: a pretty boy with pretty words and pretty promises. And like all Romans, she expects the promises to be lies. Except, there’s something in the way he’s played his hand, the way he’s held back all this time, that tells her there might be truth in his words when he tells her he wants her love.

She can sense his confession even before the words are out. Maybe on some level she always knew, had seen the inevitability of this moment even as she refused to believe in the possibility. But his words pierce the haze that has kept her from seeing her own folly. And it’s like lightning in a bottle. The way every frayed nerve snaps and jumps and arcs all at once - the rain of sparks illuminating everything that had left her mind and heart unsettled - in an instant of sudden, total understanding. It steals her breath and slices at her heart, this clear and unbearable realization. What she’s done and what she still has to do to bring this absurd game to a close.

See, she’s made a terrible miscalculation. Because in her mind Roman brutes are heartless. Capable of loving only Rome. And her seduction of Marc Antony was only ever meant to be a power play. How could it be anything more? She had weaponized lust and sex in the past to get the things she wanted, this was to be no different. Except that it was. And her hubris - her prideful overconfidence in her infallible, little plan, coupled with her resolute belief that all Roman men are Caesar at their core - has led her to overplay her hand. Not that she won’t still find a way to win. It’s just the cost will be much higher than she could have anticipated.

Because she has unwittingly weaponized Marc Antony’s affection for her and now she is going to have to deliberately use it against him. It is devastating. To see his chest bared to her so willingly, and to know that she must flay his heart with a knife of his own making. It shakes her resolve. It brings tears to her eyes.

But of course it brings tears to her eyes. She has done the unthinkable: she herself has become Caesar. The thing she hated most. The man who won her trust and her love and then betrayed her. Cold and hard and heartless. Brutal and ruthless and willingly so. In this moment she is Caesar. And soon she will become Rome, sacrificing another man, who might yet have been good, in the name of her unrequited love.

This moment under the pyramids is so important. Everything hangs on this declaration from Marc Antony, on Xena’s tears. I know people see it as confirmation of Xena’s feelings for him - and she has feelings to be sure - but they’re not romantic. Xena’s emotional reaction, and the genuine unease she wears thereafter do not hinge on her being in love with him. Xena’s humanity is enough to soften both her heart and her regard for Antony in this moment. Her compassion and regret are not dependent on attraction or attachment. And so the story doesn’t need to frame her tears for Marc Antony as a lover’s heartbreak, because her heart was always going to break for him, as it breaks for herself and Gabrielle and the ruin left in their wake.

And there will be ruin. Xena is certain of it. Although, for a moment, she might have held a glimmer of hope for Antony. This Roman who’s willing to give up his army for love. For love. Not that she wants what he’s offering. She just wants to believe he could be different. Not for her. For Rome. But then his sword is hilt deep in the belly of one of Brutus’ men and then slicing through the throat of another. And Xena knows - even as she and Gabrielle dance around the subject hours later, bathed in moonlight and disquiet - that any hope for him is misplaced. Knows exactly what he will do with Brutus’ army and Octavius if he prevails. Is keenly aware of what awaits if he learns of her deception and is allowed to live.

Because once upon a time she was the one who trusted and loved and was betrayed and lived. And thousands paid the price at the end of her sword for Caesar’s treachery. Xena can’t even imagine what Marc Antony, favoured son of Rome, might do. Can’t risk the chance. So he must pay the price at the end of her sword too. Xena wishes it weren’t so, tries to avoid the fight that will take his life - because now that she’s seen the humanity in her enemy she wants no further part in this madness she’s helped to orchestrate - only she doesn’t have a choice now. Alea iacta est - the die is cast, and her blade and her betrayal find Antony’s heart all the same. And when the end comes, there’s Xena, soaked in blood and rain and tears, in the middle of this fucking mess, the dead and wounded scattered about her. She can’t escape the truth of it then: she did this.

And it’s this! All of this - the many layers of trauma in need of reckoning and Xena’s tangled heart, twisted further by the part she is forced to play in Egypt and the goddamn fucking senselessness of it all - that carries the emotional weight of the episode. Who needs a Boyfriend of the Week when there’s already all this angst?

And, ok, I hear you say: Pattie, you’ve made some valid points about Xena’s state of mind, but why can’t Xena’s emotional and moral conflict be born from this fraught personal history AND from the fact that she *was* falling in love with Antony? Wouldn’t that make it an EVEN MORE dramatic and powerful story? Because she was specifically falling in love with a ROMAN GENERAL, the very epitome of the thing she has spent most of her adult life hating?

I would like to agree with you, dear skeptical reader, but the simple truth is that there isn’t room for both in *this* story. The reality is this: a 44-minute-long, action-focused show like XWP just doesn’t always have a lot of extra time to linger on the emotional beats. And this episode, in particular, already so busy with all the palace and political intrigue, has even less. So much of what we’re able to read of Xena’s psychological state - and *why* it’s so deeply fraught - doesn’t even come from this episode. It relies on past emotional beats to inform our understanding of her behaviour. (And, I don’t know, perhaps this is why a casual viewer might pass off Xena’s and Marc Antony’s interplay as romantic - because most of the horrible things that have happened to Xena by Roman hands are left unsaid, and surely, if we’d been reminded of them we would never accept that Xena would fall in love with a golden boy of the empire.)

As it is, there’s barely space for any kind of meditation on how either Xena or Gabrielle are feeling about the roles they are being forced to play and the seemingly callous and ruthless tactics they increasingly use to do so, let alone a tenuous romance. And the former is what this episode should be actively engaging with: the moral ambiguity that has been driving season five and will continue on through the end of the series.

Further complicating things with a love story, doesn’t make the episode more dramatic, it just takes up emotional bandwidth that could be better served elsewhere. Because, yes, Marc Antony is the epitome of the thing Xena has spent more than a decade hating! Xena’s history with Caesar and Rome (and everything they both stand for) is richly layered and devastating. It cannot be erased or ignored. To suggest that she is capable of falling in love with Antony (and to ask us to then believe it) without also deliberately exploring the tension inherent in that act is obtuse.

Those kinds of emotional beats need room to fucking breathe. And the episode doesn’t do this because there’s just too much happening. It tries - in broad, moody strokes - to capture the tenor of Xena’s emotional landscape, and it succeeds in wrapping us up in the same angst that drapes Xena, but the source is nebulous. Her haunted looks and tears - under the sphinx and when her sword finds Antony’s belly - can only telegraph so much, especially when we have been given very little reason to feel invested in her supposed affection towards him.

And here’s where we finally touch on Xena’s checkered romantic history - and her self-proclaimed soft spot for Bad Boys Who Love Like Fools (10 points to Ravenclaw for your patience) - because I’m sure you’re about to suggest that Marc Antony’s air of a Bad Boy is itself cause enough to garner Xena’s affection. Powerful, disarmingly handsome, and charming? Check, check, check. Capable with his ‘sword’? Bonus: super check. But just because her past is littered with dysfunctional relationships and Bad Boys - though I’m sure not all were bad, and some were definitely women - doesn’t mean she’s interested in repeating her mistakes. The Xena of old is vastly different from the one we know by season five, even if there are parts of her that are very much the same.

The principal driving force in her early adult life and formative romantic relationships was lust. It ruled over every part of her. Lust for: power and for violence and for blood and for riches and for infamy, and, of course, for sexual gratification. And so, she sought out partners - themselves driven by the same hunger - who could satisfy all of her desires, not just her (very) carnal appetite. She fell hard and fast and burned white hot until something, or someone, else came along and made her feel even more incandescent. In those early days, Xena wasn’t looking for *love*, she was looking for a good time.

Now, that’s not to say Xena’s past romantic entanglements were frivolous or lacking in genuine sentiment. At the very least, I suspect many were sustained by the warm affection that comes naturally from the intimacy of sharing your life with someone, whether they’re riding into battle alongside you or just warming your bed over a long winter. Nor is it meant to be dismissive of whatever fondness she felt for her lovers. Because: not all love looks the same. There are different kinds of love and different ways to love.

For Xena, though, whose heart had been so thoroughly and devastatingly mangled by Caesar’s betrayal, love was immaterial. At best, it was the unintended, if pleasurable, byproduct of a mutually beneficial arrangement. At worst it was a weakness that her enemies could exploit. Mostly, it was just a silly notion to scoff at. And the feeling Xena would come to associate with love - whether she acknowledged it as such, or not - was informed by both the dynamics of her relationships with Bad Boys and her own dark, irrepressible designs. It was selfish, and often cruel. Grounded in hot blooded impulses and savage desire, rather than growing out of an honest and patient connection.

And it became so thoroughly ingrained in her psyche. It was her overriding view of love. Even after she came to recognize how different love could be - and look and feel - once it was no longer centred in selfishness, when it was open and giving and kind, it was a struggle for Xena to undo her conditioning, to rewrite her love language. Because: first, she had to accept that she was worthy of this new kind of love, and then she had to actually accept it once it was offered.

But, old habits die hard, even for Xena, and I’m sure there were times - when she was just beginning to reframe how she viewed love and was learning how to reopen her heart - that she slipped back into her outmoded ways of thinking. Conflating lust with something else; allowing herself to be tempted by dalliances with partners who stoked her selfish desires, instead of tempering them. And maybe if Xena had crossed paths with Marc Antony then - back at the beginning of the series when her history with Rome was still messy but not nearly as tortuous as it is by the end of season five (you know after Britannia and its fallout which was the beginning of The Rift, and the deaths of Crassus and Ephiny and Pompy and the countless others who were the collateral damage surrounding those events, and, of course, Xena’s & Gabrielle’s own death on the cross) - I’d be willing to believe that she could love him.

Because, at one time Xena might have been interested in a man like Antony, might have been able to look past the Roman tunic and pursued him, taken in by his magnetism and allure. But by this point in the series Xena just isn’t interested, and not because her duplicity has made it impossible for her to be, but because by now her entire understanding of love - of being loved and giving love and nurturing it and making room for it to grow - has fundamentally changed. It’s been re-centred in selflessness, and everything that Marc Antony represents is antithetical to this new appreciation.

And I get that there’s an argument in here somewhere, that suggests Xena’s new approach to love might have softened her heart in such a way that she’s both able and willing to see the man behind the General, and be open to loving him too. But I would argue that the very things, the very people, whose love has transformed Xena’s heart are also the very things that would stop her from ever letting her heart go there. It’s not just that her point of reference on love has changed, it’s that she’s had years now of lived experience to break that cognitive dissonance between her attitude - knowing the kind of love she wants, the kind of love that’s *good* for her - and her behaviour - choosing that reaffirming, selfless love instead of the tempestuous, selfish one. She’s not blind to her past weaknesses, she knows exactly the sort of temptation Marc Antony offers - as surely as Gabrielle does the moment she lays eyes on him - but recognizing it is not akin to considering it. Because: Xena’s already found the love she needs and wants (and knows she’s earned and deserves).

Ok, but what of Xena’s admission on the balcony, when she cops to having a soft spot for Bad Boys Who Love Like Fools? I think it’s less about admitting (to herself as much as Gabrielle) that she’s developed romantic feelings for Marc Antony, as it is about Xena acknowledging a certain sort of fondness she feels for these ‘Bad Boys’. A fondness that’s born from a mutual understanding. Because: I think Xena sees herself in these men - at least an earlier version of herself - when she was ‘bad’ and foolhardy at love, and her heart tugs at the memory of it. Some curious mix of nostalgia and empathy, that softens her regard for them.

And she certainly sees herself in Marc Antony. The parallels between her story with Caesar and the story she’s now playing out with Antony are unavoidable, and if she’s cast herself as Caesar in this shadow play then Marc Antony is her younger self. Of course she would have a soft spot for him, she knows how this story ends. Knows, specifically, what it’s like to be willing to give your trust and your love only to be betrayed in return. And, of course, it’s made only more complicated with the knowledge that she’s the one who will ultimately be his ruin.

So, finally, exhausted and exasperated and, like 7,000 words into this, I hear you ask: what does it really matter? Xena doesn’t choose Marc Antony in the end, so what does it matter if it was lust or love or guilt or a fucking mid-life crisis that was driving her in this episode? Well, dear, patient reader: it matters because Gabrielle deserves better (THIS IS A BOLD STATEMENT, I KNOW, AND IT’S NOT AN INDICTMENT ON XENA’S CHARACTER EITHER, IT’S JUST THAT I FEEL VERY PROTECTIVE OF GABRIELLE’S HEART, OK! AND THE ONE THING THIS EPISODE DOES IS GIVE GABRIELLE THOSE LITTLE BEATS WHERE WE LINGER ON HER VISIBLE REACTIONS TO XENA’S TETE A TETE WITH ANTONY AND SHE’S CLEARLY JEALOUS AND HURT AND WORRIED AND SO, LET’S NOT LOSE SIGHT OF THE FACT THAT HER EMOTIONAL STAKES ARE ALSO INCREDIBLY HIGH IN THIS EPISODE, NOT JUST BECAUSE HER LIFE PARTNER IS SEDUCING SOME DUDE, BUT ALSO BECAUSE THE LEVELS OF BRUTALITY SHE’S INCREASINGLY HAVING TO EMPLOY ARE ALARMING. AND SO, SOMEONE IN THE WRITER’S ROOM WAS THINKING ABOUT THIS WHEN THEY WERE OUTLINING THE STORY - UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE’S AN UNDERCURRENT IN XENA’S & GABRIELLE’S RELATIONSHIP THAT WOULD MAKE SEEING XENA WITH ANTONY UNCOMFORTABLE, BUT THEN NOT ALSO RECOGNIZING THAT THAT SAME UNDERCURRENT WOULD MAKE IT EQUALLY UNCOMFORTABLE FOR XENA. AND IT’S JUST LIKE: TEAM, WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THAT TO GABRIELLE? HER HEART MUST HAVE BEEN IN A TERRIBLE STATE. AND WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE XENA COMPLICIT IN THIS?)

But, seriously, I’ve spent all this time diving deep into this episode and the ways it comes up short and why, and while I’ve alluded to it, I’ve mostly avoided the elephant in the room.

We need to talk about Gabrielle.

Because: Gabrielle is at the heart of why a romance between Xena and Marc Antony feels contrived and unconvincing. At this point in the show, it’s clear Xena & Gabrielle are fully and completely committed to each other (and, yes, I know that doesn’t necessarily preclude either of them from also seeking romantic or sexual partners elsewhere... I just don’t think they’re the sharing types, but I DIGRESS) - I mean, we *just* had ‘Kindred Spirits’ where they were nesting and talking about domestic bliss and privately teasing each other about their sex life in the most blatant way possible and failing miserably at breaking up but winning at being cute and married and adoringly in love. And I think it’s important to acknowledge the weight of Xena’s decision to very clearly have Gabrielle as her *life* partner - because implicit in the act of choosing to commit yourself to another person is a vow of fidelity, a bond that would be near-holy to Xena, whose word means everything.

But more to the point: Xena loves Gabrielle and Gabrielle loves Xena, and their love has been the beating heart of this show from the beginning. Gabrielle’s care and tenderness has been transformative - everything that Xena has come to understand about love, everything that she does to honour and protect it, is because of Gabrielle and the heart she’s so selflessly given of. And it’s this love story - and how the show has framed its slow and beautiful unravelling - that becomes the bench mark, the gold standard, for how all other love stories in this universe should be viewed, for how Xena, herself, now views love.

So, I guess what I’ve been saying all along is this: Xena can’t possibly be falling in love with Marc Antony because she’s already in love. Deeply, profoundly, bound-for-all-eternity in love. And no one, in this life (or any other, let’s be real) will ever compare. Not pretty boys with pretty words and pretty promises. Not Bad Boys Who Love Like Fools. Not even a god himself. There is only Gabrielle.

#xena #xena warrior princess #xwp #otp: for i am dying of such love #xena and gabrielle #S05E18: Antony + Cleopatra #pattie has some thoughts #the fucking audacity #i still cannot even

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sevman49 · 3 years

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I promised myself to write about my pilgrimage south to meet the woman I believe I now belong to. The Woman I Believe I Belong To. Sounds like the title of a country song. I'll write it later. I'm inspired. I went to meet her and planned on spending the weekend if we hit it off. That was my hope. I ended up staying two and a half weeks.

I'd like to tell you more about her, how beautiful she is, how well off she is, how she became so well off, describe her elegance and the environment she inhabits. But I'm not allowed to. I can't tell you her name, not that you would recognize it if you aren't a local. She knows I will write about her, and will allow it only if my discretion is absolute. I understand why it's necessary, I just can't tell anyone else why. I'll just refer to her as She and Her. I can't even describe her house or it's location, that would give her identity away. She is known and she is important. And powerful. And secretive.

As I wrote earlier, she wanted a wife, she's not gay, she wanted a male wife. A companion who would handle all the so called wifely duties in the household. Keeping it clean, doing the laundry, do the cooking and serving, be her confidant and company, amuse and entertain her, obey her, be her sexual toy and tool, keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself, and most importantly, be prepared to be fucked, battered, trampled and physically and mentally womanhandled when she returned home every evening. I had no problem with that. And one last thing, be invisible to the outside world. I would never accompany her in public and when she had visitors, I would be locked away in a very private room built just for that purpose.

So, what's in it for me? In no particular order, these are my benefits. I would be fucked, battered, trampled and physically and mentally womanhandled by this exotically beautiful, lithe, flowery but firm gynarchistic minded female every day and night. I would be her very secret, forcefully confined, oft beaten, heavily disciplined wife who sucked her dick ( or the female version of that) any time she snapped her fingers. I would live well and be well taken care of by her and be monetarily rewarded on a monthly basis. All I had to do was whatever she said and keep it all to myself and her.

I would maintain my own residence back home and live my normal life there whenever she traveled for business purposes, which would intermittently add up to about to about 6 months out of the year. When she departed I would slip out in my new sports car in the morning darkness to drive home and slip back in the same way upon her return. We have it all worked out. It's doable and I'm excited about it. I'm to give her my final assent when she returns home in 3 weeks. I already know yes is my answer. But there are things I need to think about before I sign the contract regarding our nondisclosure agreement and the financial terms I would agree to.

Har! I would do it for nothing! But I won't tell her that. I DO need income of some sort after all! Might as well consider this my dream job. I should ask about insurance benefits also. I could get hurt doing some of the things she has in mind for me. Again, I'm ok with that!

What things, I imagine anyone asking? I shouldn't say, but, fuck it. Let's talk about the last two and a half weeks. During this part, I'm going to reveal how I came to be as submissive as I am. Why it's a part of me I couldn't change if I wanted to. And I don't want to. It's who I am, as long as I remember, and I'm most at home and comfortable in this state.

No one who knows me now knew me when I was growing up. My life before my college years was a thousand miles away from here. My father, before he passed away when I was 7 years old can best be described as a reclusive yet hugely successful financial genius. He saw trends others didn't and invested in what are now universal corporations with well known brands and worldwide recognition. With his blossoming fortune and his disdain for populated areas, he bought the land others considered wilderness and built an estate for his family where our nearest neighbors were 60 miles away. The everyday items people shop including food and substance were delivered to us on a weekly basis. There were people employed to take care of things so we had contact with these people but otherwise we lived by ourselves, like rich pioneers in uninhabited areas. There was him, my mother, then in a 6 year period 3 children. My older sister two years my senior, then me, and two years later my younger sister. We were all born into isolation and it's all we knew. We had all the amenities other kids grew up with except television, we just didn't know the other kids. We were diligently home schooled 3 days a week by Miss Kerr, a young teaching assistant who had a room of her own in our home who stayed with us Monday through Wednesday teaching us about scholarship and society in a variety of subjects.

Now for the facts of life about what made me who I am today. My mother was a beautiful woman even by today's standards, and she was an early day Female Supremist. My earliest memories are of her as the boss of our household, the absolute ruler of my father, who did whatever she told him to do and if he didn't, she was quick to punish him physically and mentally. Not behind closed doors but in the presence of my sisters and I. Father never complained, he just took his punishments and apologized for angering her. Mother was a slapper and a spanker. She never forgave a misstep by him and took no pushback nor excuses. Just instant correction we witnessed a thousand times. Mighty slaps that sent him staggering backwards apologizing while she advanced on him landing WHAP after WHAP like a well trained prize fighter. This was everyday life for us. My sister's and I couldn't even imagine a world where a male was even equal to his partner. We all knew my future role in this family. My sister's sure did and they would strive to be the woman my mother was. They just needed the go ahead from Mom. They got it when Father had a heart attack and was gone in the blink of an eye. After a week of mourning and services Mom called us into the parlor for a family meeting. I knew my life had changed by the seating arrangement she dictated to us. Her and my sisters on the couch on each side of her, and me on the floor sitting at their feet facing them. I wasn't shocked, what else did I expect? My life as a male was about to take shape. But there was, indeed, a surprise I never saw coming. And she led off with that. My sister's were equally caught flatfooted. But, it meant something different to them, and it made them smile when it was spelled out to them.

"Stephen", she began, " You are now the man of the house. You've always been like a son to me (well, of course, thought I) but the time has come to tell you this. You are my adopted son. We love you as if you were born to me but we adopted you at birth and raised you for this very situation, in case your father , your adopted father, passed on. When Kate was born, we decided to adopt a male to serve her and for her to train as she matured. We were certainly glad we did when Cindy was born two years later. She also needs a male to train. You are sitting at our feet for a reason, Stephen, do I have to spell it out any further?"

There I was, a seven year old boy, receiving the news of the world, that my whole existence was a lie, that I was brought into this family to become a servant for my sister's when the time came, and that they really weren't my sister's. Imagine the shock and trauma I should have felt. Here's what I felt instead. I'm sitting on the floor with 3 females sitting over me, each now putting their feet on me and none of them are related to me. I remember that as my first intentional sexual hard on in my life.

"No, maam, I get it" Ex-mom smiled and told me she was proud of me, that she always knew I was a good boy. My older now stepsister had her foot resting on my shoulder and I asked her if I could lick her feet. She nodded, pleased as punch, and covered my face with both feet. I did that to mess with my 5 year old stepsis. She was actually gonna be tougher than her elder sister. In time.

There's a lot to tell about the path my life took for the next 10 years.but, I digress. That's another story and I'm anxious to relive it as I look back on how it shaped me. And led me into the life of servitude with a remarkable very respected socialite that no one, not even you know about yet.

I could keep on and tell you what I expect, but I'm heading back to her tomorrow, so I'll just let the realty dictate from here. I hope I have a good story for you.

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