#stakes are always raised when there's a lot of clothing detail to keep track of

[canisalbus]

#own art #own characters #CanisAlbus #art #artists on tumblr #Vasco #Machete #anthro #sighthound #dogs #canine #animals #sketches #wip #wanted to share the sketch stage of this #I'm worried I'll muck up the inking somehow #stakes are always raised when there's a lot of clothing detail to keep track of

[hopelikethemoon]

Snowfall || Moonbeam III || (Ezra x Reader) {Werewolf AU}

Title: Snowfall Rating: PG-13 Length: 7,100 Warnings: Angst: short conversation of past suicidal ideation, healthy dose of self hatred, discussions of sex with other people and mild jealousy, references to drug use, and mild violence.  Reader Details: To the best of my knowledge, there are no references to Reader’s physical details, beyond being a bisexual woman. I tried my best to keep it as vague as possible. Notes: Oops, I wrote 7,100 words of angst. I’m really nervous about some of the stuff in this chapter, but let’s see! Part three of the Moonbeams series (Moonbeams & Bright Star)

Taglist: @thedaysarenotfull​ @princessbatears​ @djarin-junk​ @absurdthirst​ @hdlynn​ @legally-a-bastard​ @opheliaelysia​ @heather-lynn​ @sabinemorans​ @crazinessgraveyardsandcartoons​ @pedrospunk​ @maybege​ @chews-erotically​ @katlikeme​ @lose-eels​ @youmeanmybrain​ @theindiealto​​ @irishleesh93​ @seawhisperer​ @hdlynn​ @demigod-dragonrider-schoolidol​​ @theindiealto​​ @grapemama​​ @roxypeanut​​ @kochamcie​​ @kiwi-the-first​

“You’re what?” Shiva’s eyes widened as they stared back at you. “You’re going to have to repeat yourself because I hope I heard you wrong.”

“I’m going back to Lykaois and I need those pamphlets you showed me before.” You said, shuffling through the stack of detritus on the floor of their room. “Where are they?”

Shiva’s hands went to their hips, “Why are you going back?”

You let out a frustrated sound, relocating a pile of clothing. “Shiva, please. Where are those pamphlets?”

“I gave them back to the contract counter. I nabbed them after I thought you weren’t coming back from my mission.” 

“Kriff. I needed them.” You gritted out, pushing yourself back onto your feet. “Alright, I’ll just go down in the morning and see if I can get them scanned into my datapad before I leave.”

Shiva grabbed your arm as you started to breeze past them, “What’s up with you? You dropped out of the program, you skipped a harvest, and now you’re obsessing vover a godsforsaken deathtrap moon. What happened to you?”

“I met someone.” You admitted, shaking out of their grip as you lowered your gaze. 

“And they’re forcing you to mine lunaxium? What’s going on here? I’ll kill them.” 

“It’s not like that,” You held up your hands. “Please don’t judge me.”

“I already am.”

“I could tell.” You countered dryly, folding your arms across your chest. “Before I tell you this, just understand that I understand the risks associated with this. I met someone on Lykaois.”

“Have you lost your Grioskii mind?” 

“There is no reason to bring Grioskii into this.” You tried, though Shiva wasn’t laughing. “Look, I know it might sound crazy—“

“Is it one of those monsters?”

“Yes, but—“

“You’ve lost your mind.” Shiva laughed bitterly, “I’ve seen you get yourself into a lot of foolish situations, but this tops all of them. It’s a monster. You know, there’s a reason you’re armed with silverline ammo when you take that mission.”

“You told me it was a myth!” 

“I thought it was bullshit until I thought you were going to die on that hellscape of a moon. That planet is dangerous. You’re not going back.”

You took a step back, “Can I just explain the situation to you? Like two rational people.” 

Shiva narrowed their eyes at you, “You have three sentences.” 

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Two.”

“Shiva.”

“One.”

“I think I could really care for him.”

“Are you kidding me?” They shook their head slowly, “I always knew you had bad taste in lovers, but this…” Shiva took a step towards you, “Do you remember what you told me after Mars?”

“Ezra is not Mars.” 

“No, you’re right. Mars was just a jackass, this Ezra character is an actual monster.” Shiva encroached further on your space. “I’m sorry.” 

You blinked back at Shiva, “What?”

Instead of answering you they drove their stun shaft into your thigh — and stars burst behind your eyes. 

Your head was throbbing as consciousness started to return to you. Slowly, at first, and then all at once the light shining on you from above was too much. You rolled onto your left side and puked over the side of the cot. 

“Shiva!” You yelled, wiping your mouth off with the back of your hand. “You stunned me!”

“For your own good,” Shiva said as they strolled into the cabin, hands tucked behind their back. “Do you want a drink?” 

“Come closer, I need to puke again and your shoes look like the perfect place.” You seethed, grabbing at your head. There was nothing worse than getting stunned — nausea, headache, tingling through all of your extremities. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Shiva questioned as you started to get up. 

“To Lykaois.” 

“I don’t think so.”

Your heart sank when you realized the familiar hum of a hyperspace drive, the rattling of the durasteel grates beneath your feet. “What did you do?”

“You’ve been tied down on the Block for too long. We’re going to take a little trip to your favorite hospitable planet.”

“Shiva, I promised Ezra I would be back.” You grimaced as you felt another rush of bile rising up your throat. 

Shiva handed you a trash bin, waiting until you were done retching before responding to you, “Well, you’re going to break that promise. A couple days on Ay-7 and you’ll forget all about your monster-boyfriend.” 

You groaned and you weren’t certain the new wave of nausea was because of the stun shaft.

What would Ezra think if you didn’t turn up? He’d tried to convince you not to come back. Maybe he’d just assume that you had finally listened to him. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Because you hadn’t listened to him yet.

“Shiva, I don’t think you understand.” You rubbed at your aching head. “This isn’t like Mars or even Alia. This isn’t me falling too hard for someone who is going to hurt me.”

They gave you a skeptical look, “And after Mars, you told me if you ever acted that stupid again, I needed to take you to Ay-7.”

“I would love to have this conversation when my stomach wasn’t roiling.” You complained, closing your eyes as you prayed for your stomach to settle. “Look, Shiva… I know I’ve had a really bad track record with my dalliances. Alia used me, Mars used me… but Ezra isn’t.” 

“No?” 

You shook your head, “No, if anyone is using someone, I’m using him.” You admitted as you rubbed at your forehead. “He can’t even leave Lykaois. Ever.”

“Then you should shake off whatever this is.” Shiva wagged a finger at you. “It’s a deadend situation. Mostly dead for you if you keep playing with a monster.” 

“You don’t understand.” 

“No, I probably don’t.” Shiva narrowed their eyes at you. “But I don’t think you do either.”

“Just take me back, Shiva. I don’t need you trying to keep me from doing something stupid.” You managed to rise to your feet. “Come on, I promised that I would bring him back new clothes. That’s how insidious this arrangement is. Clothes.” You laughed bitterly, “And I practically forced him into accepting that I was bringing him new clothes.”

“He’s a monster. What does he need clothing for?” 

“Because he’s not a monster.” You snapped. “We sit around and we read poetry and talk about the places we’ve been. He was just like you and me before he was attacked. He’s a good man.” 

“You’re not going this month.” Shiva didn’t budge — they were as stubborn as you were. “We’re going to Ay-7.” 

“Fine.” 

You wished there was some way to tell Ezra to hold on another month. You’d come back to him — you weren’t breaking your promise. 

Ay-7 was a den of iniquities that had been turned into a city. Anything you could possibly want you could find it there: black market goods, illicit affairs, high stakes gambling, and the finest dusts an addict could find. 

Shiva had dragged you there more than once to get you to forget whatever situation you had gotten yourself into. But Ezra wasn’t a situation and he wasn’t someone you could just forget. 

“I’m visiting the B,” Shiva told you, raising their voice over the pulsing beat of the music. “Don’t try hotwire my ship while I’m gone.” 

You rolled your eyes, taking a drink of your polish, “Wouldn’t think of it.” 

“Try to have fun.” They patted your back, before vanishing into the fold of moving bodies as patrons danced and drank and enjoyed their night. 

Ezra probably wouldn’t miss you for a couple of days. He’d still be dealing with the effects of the change today and tomorrow. But then he’d notice. 

You had let a lot of people down in your life. That was the nature of the beast — you fucked people over and you moved on. But you hadn’t wanted Ezra to be one of those people. It wasn’t like you had any choice in the matter.

Shiva was lucky you weren’t feeling murderous. 

“Well look who it is.”

Kevva preserve me. 

You downed your polish and rotated in your seat, “Quinn. Lovely to see you.” You put on a blustery tone as you eyed the man. 

“It’s been quite some time since I last caught you here.” Quinn leaned heavily on the bar beside you, ordering a drink for himself. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?” 

“None of your business, Quinn.” You rolled your eyes, ordering yourself another drink. 

Quinn chuckled, nudging you in the ribs. “Is that how it’s gonna be this time?” He arched a brow. “I can play.”

“Quinn, I would rather gouge out my—“ You stopped yourself mid-sentence. “Do you have any plans tomorrow?”

“Might be presumptuous, but I was hoping I might be waking up beside you.” 

You groaned, but you couldn’t exactly be picky right now. “Play your cards right and maybe you will be.” You quipped, resting your hand on his arm. “Can you take me back to the Block?”

Quinn narrowed his eyes, “Why?” 

“Because I need to catch a ride and Shiva’s being an ass.” You told him bluntly. “I have somewhere I need to be and you might be my only hope.” 

“What’s in it for me?” Quinn drummed his fingers against the top of the bar. 

You bit down on the inside of your bottom lip, staring back at him. This wasn’t what you wanted, but you didn’t really have a choice. Did you? Shiva had taken that away. 

You could wait another cycle. But you didn’t want to. 

“Well,” Quinn leaned towards. “What’s in it for me, pretty girl?” 

“Take me to the Block tonight and we can do whatever you want to, Quinn.” You told him. “Just get me out of here.”

Quinn downed his drink before dramatically offering you his hand, “Step aboard. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” 

“Just the Block.” You told him, downing your own drink and tipping the bartender before taking his hand. 

“I don’t remember datapad privileges as part of our arrangement.” Quinn remarked as he strolled into his quarters with his arms folded across his chest. 

You glanced up at him, readjusting the blankets you had wrapped around your chest. “You should know me better than that.” 

“Fair point.” Quinn chuckled as he approached the bunk. “What are you reading?” He questioned, sitting down on the bed beside you. 

“You’re cracked into the net and I wanted to look up something.” You explained, glancing back down at the datapad you had propped up on your lap. 

Quinn leaned towards you to look at the screen, “Who is he?” 

You smiled sadly at the little ID photo of Ezra on the screen. It had been taken a little over five years ago, before Lykaois. He wore the same crooked smirk you’d come to know, but he lacked that uneasy darkness you’d also become familiar with. 

“Ezra.” You told him.

“Is that who you’re trying to get to?” Quinn questioned. 

“Yeah.” You nodded, sliding your thumb over the screen, scrolling through all of the voyages Ezra had taken. He’d lost a lot of partners on his missions — a lot. “Shiva doesn’t approve.” 

“When’s that ever stopped you?” Quinn chuckled, sucking his teeth before tilting his head to look at you. “You in love with him?”

“I haven’t known him very long,” You rubbed at the back of your neck awkwardly. “It’s complicated.”

“Must be if you’re going on the net to find out about him.” 

“I actually promised myself that I wouldn’t.” You shrugged. “But I just wanted to know.” 

Quinn snatched the datapad out of your lap, “Let’s see what he’s been up to—“

“Wait.”

He squinted at the screen, before looking towards you slowly. “He’s got a D file.”

“I know.”

“For five years.”

You swallowed thickly, “He’s not dead.”

“Who’d he piss off to go into hiding?”

You grimaced, “Like I said, it’s complicated.” 

Quinn tossed the datapad back on the bed beside you as he stood back up, “Get dressed, we’re almost to the Block.”

“Tell Shiva I’m sorry.” 

“I’m not getting in the middle of that.” 

You glared at him, “I think you owe me that much.” 

Quinn shot you a look, “Pretty sure I was just supposed to get you to the Block.” You fixed him with a look right back and he wilted, “I’ll send Shiva your message.”

It wasn’t the first time you had slept with Quinn, but this time there was no amount of hot steam in your fresher that could burn off the time you spent with him. Sometimes, you had to do things you didn’t want to do — just to get by. 

And if Shiva hadn’t dragged you to Ay-7, you wouldn’t have had to. Three months ago, it wouldn’t have mattered to you either. At all. But you hadn’t been able to stop thinking of Ezra. 

What would he think if you didn’t make it to him in time? What would he think when you told him how you’d managed to get yourself back to him? 

You weren’t going to let it get under your skin. Shit happens all the time and you couldn’t always have control over it. This — you had control over. It was a means to an end. 

You hadn’t expected there to be snow on the ground when you landed on Lykaois. It wasn’t much, but it was more than you’d ever seen all in one place before. Maybe an inch. Just enough to leave footprints. 

And there were footprints. Giant footprints, all around the clearing where you always landed your transport. 

One set of prints, emerging from forest and heading into the clearing, before vanishing back into the treeline. Like something had come looking for you. 

Like Ezra had come looking for you. 

Rationally, you knew there were other werewolves on the moon, but you wanted it to be him. 

If Ezra came looking for you as the beast, it somehow made up for the fact that you’d had to get creative to make it back to him in time. 

But it didn’t explain why he was changing outside of the full moon. Was he starting to lose control of his humanity? Would every trip grow shorter and shorter until you showed up to find him—

“You came back.” 

Your heart skipped a beat as you turned around and found him standing there. His expression was almost unreadable as his eyes flickered over your face. 

“I tried to come sooner.” You admitted, taking a step towards him. “Life got in the way.” 

Ezra nodded slowly, his shoulders finally relaxing as you stopped in front of him. “I didn’t think you’d make it this time.” 

You only had a handful of days of before Ezra would be pressuring you to leave — just in case the window of opportunity was narrowing. And given the footprints in the freshly fallen snow… 

“You’re cold.” Ezra pointed out as you shivered, reaching out to run his hand down the length of your arm. “Let’s get you back inside, little lamb.”

He followed you into your transport, trailing close enough behind you that you could feel his body head radiating from him. 

“If I had known that I would be returning during the winter, I would’ve brought you warmer clothes,” You explained as you tinkered with the ship’s heating system, setting it to a comfortable temperature.

“I’m thankful for whatever you’ve brought me,” Ezra told you, “You could’ve just brought yourself and that would’ve been enough.”

You glanced over your shoulder at him with a smile, “I’ll remember that for next time.” You teased lightly, adjusting the ship’s engine exhaust into the central air system for processing. “How was the full moon?”

“I found the others,” Ezra told you, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I ran with them for the first time in years.” 

“That’s good. Right?” You smiled at him, shifting your weight from foot to foot. 

He nodded, “I was able to talk with them about what to expect.” 

Your smile faded, “What to expect?”

“It will get more difficult for me to control my transformations,” Ezra explained to you, rubbing his lips together. “Which we already know.”

“I saw the footprints.” 

Ezra swallowed thickly, “I didn’t think you were coming.” 

“I almost didn’t,” You admitted, pinching at the bridge of your nose as you tried to figure out how you were going to tell him everything. “It’s quite the story.” You told him, holding out your hand, “Let’s go sit.” 

Ezra reached out and took your hand, his thumb rubbing the center of your palm as his fingers curled around yours. 

Instead of guiding him back into your quarters, you led him into the small commons area where you had first brought him inside your world. You still couldn’t look at your little makeshift sofa without thinking of Ezra. 

“I had every intention of being here on the first day,” You sighed as you sank down onto the sofa beside him. Ezra wrapped his arm around your shoulders, his fingers fanning out over your arm, heating your skin through the fabric of your reg shirt. “The night before I was set to leave my friend — you remember, Shiva — decided to kidnap me.”

“Kidnap you?” Ezra chuckled, sliding his fingers down the length of your arm as he listened to you.

“I was trying to track down the information they had about Lykaois. I would’ve done it sooner, but Shiva had been off the Block. I tried to explain the situation to them, but…”

Ezra pressed his lips to the top of your head as you sank into his side. It was so natural to just be with him. It was nice. 

“I’ve made enough stupid choices in my life that Shiva just assumed this was another one,” You tilted your head to look at him. “It’s not.”

He chuckled, “It might be.”

“It’s not.” You assured him, lifting your hand to cup his cheek, rubbing your thumb over his scruff. “But Shiva didn’t know any better. They stunned me and flew me halfway across the system.” 

Ezra’s eyes widened, “What?”

You laughed, “I do not recommend getting stunned.” 

“No, I wouldn’t either.” He gave you a look. “Are you alright?”

“We’re getting to that,” You brushed your thumb over his bottom lip. 

Ezra’s lips tugged upwards at the corners as he looked at you, “Moonbeam, what’s wrong?”

“Shiva took me to Ay-7 which is typically my favorite place to go to just… get lost.”

He squeezed your shoulder, “I remember Ay-7.” Ezra chuckled quietly. “I was rather partial to the scene there.” 

“Me too.” You lowered your gaze. “Shiva dragged me around the city for two days before I finally found a way back to the Block.” You chewed on your bottom lip. “I just wanted to get back to you.” 

“You don’t have to come every month, little lamb.” Ezra assured you, running his hand down your arm. 

“I know, but…” You shook your head. “I enjoy this, Ezra.” You drew a line between the two of you. “I’m not just going to vanish. If something happens, if I change my mind I’m going to tell you.” 

Ezra’s gaze flickered between your eyes and your lips, before he started to lean in to kiss you. 

You stopped him before he could, pressing your hand over his mouth. “Wait.” 

His brows drew together. 

“I ran into an old… friend,” You weren’t entirely certain that you’d call Quinn a friend, but that wasn’t the point. “I knew I could get him to take me back to the Block, but not without a price.” 

Ezra’s voice was muffled against your palm, but you could easily make out. “I know.” 

“What?”

“I could smell someone on you. All over you.” Ezra worked his jaw as he held your gaze. “I told you before, it’s not my place to take issue with that, little lamb. You aren’t bound to this moon or me.”

“I know I’m not.” You sighed heavily. “I just wanted you to know. I nearly burned my skin off in the fresher, I didn’t think you’d be able to smell him still.”

Ezra shrugged his shoulders, “The scent thing is a blessing and a curse.” 

“I can imagine.” You reached out and ran your thumb down the bridge of your nose. “I just used him to get back to my transport.” 

He shook his head, “Even if it meant something—“

“It didn’t.” 

Ezra sighed heavily, rubbing at your side. “I can never leave Lykaois.” He reminded you. “You can’t stop living your life because of me.”

“I’m not missing out on much,” You said dryly, sinking into his side and resting your cheek against his shoulder. “I can’t help that I care about you, Ezra. I can’t explain it.”

Ezra sighed heavily, “Neither can I. In the past five years other people have turned up here, but it was never like this. None of them were you.”

“When I was on Quinn’s ship, I pulled up your old program file on the net.” 

“What?” He squeezed your hip. “Is it still active?”

“No, you were marked deceased.” You gestured around you vaguely. “There was a note that you hadn’t made contact after a week on Lykaois and then a few months later they marked you dead.”

“Charming.” He grumbled. “Anything interesting?”

“We narrowly crossed paths, you know. We had signed up for nearly every single harvest, but just a season off.” 

Ezra chuckled, tilting his head to look at you. “You would have loathed me, little lamb.” 

You rolled your eyes, “You don’t know my taste.” 

He arched a brow, “I think I do.” 

“Maybe you do.” You pursed your lips at him. “It made me think about what could have been if we had ended up on a harvest together. You are just my brand of trouble.”

“And no less dangerous.”

“I saw the number of partners who didn’t make it off-world.”

“I have trust issues.” He offered with a smirk. 

“Me too.” You chewed on the inside of your bottom lip. “I’ve been screwed over too many times on dicey harvests.” 

“Haven’t we all.” Ezra slid his arm out from behind you. He stared straight ahead, chewing at a hangnail on his thumb. “For what it’s worth, I care about you too.”

You reached out and played with the hair at the nape of his neck. It reminded you of that first time — the pull you felt towards him. You couldn’t really explain it, but it was like you were pulled towards him by an invisible string. 

“But this can never be anything more than it is,” Ezra reminded you, his brows furrowed together as he turned towards you. “And it will end before we’re ready for it to.”

“I know this, Ezra.” You traced your thumb over the rough skin of the scar on his neck. “But just because something has an end date, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let it start.”

“It’s already started,” He drawled out. “Even the beast knows this.” Ezra held your gaze.

“What does the beast want from me?” You questioned, feeling your heart beat faster. 

Ezra my eyes raked over you, “More than I’m willing to give it.”

Your lips parted and you exhaled slowly, “I want to meet the beast.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Ezra snapped. 

“Probably.” You rubbed at your forehead. “I think that’s the general consensus.” 

“No. I’m not risking it.” He gritted out. “I can’t control that part of me. I don’t even remember coming out here to the clearing. I could hurt you and I wouldn’t even know.”

You nodded slowly, drawing your knees up to your chest and resting your chin on your folded arms. “How long do we have?”

Ezra dragged his fingers through his hair, sinking back against the cushion. “Five days, at the most. The prints were fresh, the snow started last night.”

“And you don’t remember?”

He shook his head, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek. “I came out here last night, just to see if I had missed your landing. I went back home and then… this morning I saw the tracks outside. I followed them back and here we are.”

“Someone has to have done research. All these years — all the missions here.” You drummed your fingers against your leg, turning to look at him. “I’ll try to figure something out when I go back. If we had a better understanding of when this started — what researchers have found.” 

Ezra pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, sighing heavily. “There’s not going to be a cure, if that’s what you think.”

You stared at him, “But what if there was?”

He didn’t answer you. 

Because that would be false hope and you knew, as much as he did, that if there were the potential for a cure it would come at far too steep a cost. Those greedy prospector programs leached from everyone to line their own pockets.

He’d survived for five years. That was more than the others, apparently. 

“I couldn’t find a copy of Poe,” You told him, picking lint off your pants. “How do you feel about Dickinson?”

“Emily?” Ezra questioned, stretching his legs out in front of him, propping his heels up on the floor. “I’m regretfully not as familiar as perhaps I should be. Is she to be my new companion?”

“She’s with your new clothes in my room.” You told him, “Come on.” You reached over and gave his leg a pat before rising to your feet. 

Ezra followed you down the corridor into your quarters. You hadn’t bothered making up your bed when you climbed out in the morning — too focused on getting back to Lykaois and him. 

“Pardon the mess.” You explained, kicking a pair of boots out of your way as you wandered over to the table where you’d neatly stacked his new clothes. “I hope everything fits.” 

“I’ll make it work if it doesn’t.” Ezra shrugged his shoulders, fixing you with a warm smile. “Thank you for this.” 

“Two new pairs of pants, three shirts, and new boots.” You held your arms out to present him with the garments you’d picked up at the exchange. 

“What do I owe you?” He questioned. 

“Nothing.”

He arched a brow, “I had credits when I came to Lykaois, you know. It’s not like I’m planning to use them.” 

“They didn’t cost that much.” You assured him, but he didn’t look convinced. “Considering them a gift.”

“You’re a gift.” Ezra quipped, begrudgingly taking the clothes from you. “They smell clean.” He inhaled deeply, walking over to your rumpled bed and making himself at home. “You never know how much you appreciate good clothes.” 

You leaned back against your desk, watching as Ezra toed off his ratty boots and peeled away his worn clothes. “What happened?” You questioned with a frown as you spotted a fading bruise at the curve of his ribs. 

“They were not welcoming at first.” He told you, grimacing a little as he pulled the new shirt on over his head and it pulled at that band of muscles along his ribs. “They came around. Eventually.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, “Ezra—“

“I’m fine.” 

“What happened?”

“These fit nicely.” He ignored you, fastening his new trousers shut, before tucking his shirt into them. “Like a glove.”

“Ezra.”

Ezra continued to ignore you, sitting back down on your bed to pull the shoes on. “A little snug, but I’ll break them in.” He said, before kicking them back off as he sank back onto your bed and reclined back. “They smelt you on me.”

“Oh.” 

“It’s fine.” 

“So, they rejected you because of me?”

He rubbed his hands together, “I’m not looking to be accepted by them.” Ezra met your eyes, “You should see the other guy. I’m scrappy when I need to be.” 

“Don’t get yourself killed.” You told him firmly, before turning away from him to grab the book of poems off your desk. 

Ezra chuckled, “I’m not trying to. Trust me, it’s not my preferred way out of this infernal place.” 

“What is your preferred way?” 

He stretched out on your bed, laying lengthwise across it. “That’s a good question, moonbeam.” He told you as he tucked an arm beneath his head. “If you’d asked me a year ago, I might’ve said something different.”

You climbed into bed with him, laying on your side to face him. “What changed?” You questioned, sliding your foot down his calf. 

Ezra clicked his tongue against his teeth, “I think you know.” He reached in between you, curling his fingers around your hand. He rubbed his thumb over the back of your hand, before bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to your palm. 

“In the past five years, have there ever been any other humans who stayed here?” You questioned, drawing your pointer finger over the bow of his lips. 

He shook his head. 

“And none of them have ever cared for someone who wasn’t like them?”

“I don’t know.” Ezra admitted, interlacing his fingers with yours. “You want me to ask them?”

You squeezed his hand, “I’m curious. The rumors here date back for decades. We can’t be the first to…” You tilted your face to look at him. 

“I’ll ask.” Ezra murmured as his eyes flickered to your lips, leaning in to kiss you gently. “Will you read for me?” He questioned, “I believe we’re neglecting our dear Emily.”

“Of course.” You stole one more kiss, before propping yourself up a little more upright as you flipped through the small book of poems. 

You could feel Ezra’s keen eyes fixed on you as you read, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

He hummed his agreement with that line. 

“And sweetest in the gale is heard and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea. Yet never in extremity, it asked a crumb of me.” You finished, rubbing your thumb over the lines on the page. 

“I know I said it once before,” Ezra started, winding his fingers through his hair. “But I miss this sea. There are a few brooks and streams here, but none of them are the same.” 

You closed the book and sat it down on the bed beside you, “I don’t think I can bring the sea back with me. I could try.”

He chuckled quietly, “I have no doubt that you would try.” Ezra’s brows furrowed as he turned to look at you, his expression sobering. “I don’t want you wasting your life on me, moonbeam.” 

You ran your thumb over the crease between his brows, “I’m not wasting my life. That’s not how I see it.” 

“The night we met,” Ezra started, his breath warm against your palm as you ran your thumb down the length of his nose. “I was contemplating my preferred way out. Five years… it’s a long time to be alone. I’m never getting off this rock and my mind… I bristle at the thought of losing it. It’s the one thing that’s always been mine.”

“Ezra—“

“No.” He shook his head, “I was talking one last walk, exploring an area I hadn’t gone in a long time and then….” He sank back into the pillows and stared up at the durasteel ceiling above. “I caught scent of you.”

“Look, I don’t believe in fate or any of that bullshit, but that has to mean something. Doesn’t it? I won that assignment — it was supposed to be Shiva.” 

Ezra worked his jaw slowly, “I know. I have had plenty of time to think about this. To think about you and what this means.” He clenched his teeth as he turned to look at you once more and you could see a pain there that was palpable.

“I’m not going to abandon you,” You told him, dragging fingers over the ruff scruff-covered cheek. “I know it may seem unlikely, but I do keep my promises.” 

“There is a deeply selfish part of me that doesn’t want you to leave,” He confessed, curling his arm around your waist as he turned towards you. “A part of me that wants to lay claim to you.” 

Your brows rose upwards, “You are jealous!” You shoved at him playfully. 

Ezra caught your arms and held your gaze, “Maddeningly jealous.” 

“I knew it.” You hooked your leg over his, wrestling your way out of his grasp so you could straddle his hips. “I did what I had to do, with what I had to work with.”

He huffed, sliding his hands up your thighs. “I know this.”

“It wasn’t terrible,” You told him — if Quinn was terrible, he wouldn’t have been a mistake you’d made a dozen times over throughout it the years. “But it wasn’t you.”

“I’m flattered.” He drawled out, staring up at you. “But you are not stuck here, little lamb. You are free to roam where I cannot.” 

“Oh, you know me. I’m just raring to get back to Ay-7.” You said with a roll of your eyes, planting your palms on either side of his head as you leaned over him. “You’re allowed to be jealous, Ezra. That means you care.”

He smirked up at you, “I do care.” Ezra ran his hand up your back, curling his fingers around the back of your head as he drew you down for a kiss. 

Maybe it was crazy to care for someone you’d only spent a handful of days with, across two months, but you had done crazier things. If you overlooked the werewolf part of this equation. 

He spoke to a part of you that hadn’t been spoken to by anyone else. 

Ezra’s fingers slid beneath the hem of your shirt, sliding over bare skin as his lips slanted against yours. A low growl rumbled in his throat and you broke away from the kiss to catch your breath. “Little lamb?”

“Yes?”

“I need to leave.”

“What?” You frowned as you stared down at him, “If you need to leave, you’re going to have to let go of me.” He had a vice-like grip on your hips. 

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, “Something doesn’t feel right.” Ezra’s brows knit together, his lips drawn into a thin line. “Something—“

“You have to let go.” You urged, trying to pry his fingers off of you. “Ezra, please.” 

He didn’t look right either. He hadn’t looked right since you saw him standing outside your transport, but you had chalked it up to the cold weather and the exhaustion of everything. 

“Let go.” You leaned forward and slapped at his cheek, “Ezra you have to let me go.” 

His lips parted as he inhaled deeply, his eyes snapping open and his unfocused gaze fixed on you. “I don’t understand.” Ezra mumbled, his grip loosening just enough for you to scramble off of his lap. “I need you to go. I need you to—“ His words were cut off by a weak groan, his brows furrowing together in pain. “You wanted to meet the beast and I think it heard you.”

“Oh gods.” You clambered off the bed, tripping over his shoes and hitting the floor with a resounding thud. “Shit!” You had seen that holovid before. 

Morbid curiosity had you desperate to see the beast, but you knew better. There just wasn’t anywhere werewolf-proof to go. 

You swore under your breath as you caught sight of crimson blood on your skin where you’d landed hard on the grated texture. 

Ezra noticed too. 

You scooted backwards on your ass, locking eyes with him as he peered at you from an unnatural position on the bed. 

He had told you before — bones break, muscles tear. He hadn’t been lying. 

“Go.” He growled out, a sound far more vicious than you were familiar with. 

You grabbed onto the side of your wardrobe trunk, dragging yourself up off the floor. If you weren’t going to be bruised from his rough touch, the floor had made up the difference. 

There was only one place to hide. 

The fresher. 

You snatched up your datapad and ran barefoot down the corridor, locking yourself into your fresher under the guise of safety. But you had seen the beast — if it wanted in, it would get in. 

 Watching Ezra transform through the video on your datapad was an unnerving sight that you weren’t ever going to forget. He stripped off his clothes and collapsed onto the ground where you had fallen. 

He writhed on the floor, moaning in agony as his body contorted. There was no part of him that looked the same once the transformation began. 

But why? You were days removed from the full moon, he had taken the lunaxium, and nothing was different from any other time you had engaged in a little fun together. 

Why had it chosen now to break loose again?

The beast you had seen in the clearing was Ezra. It’s fur was the same shade of chestnut as his own, with a fleck of blonde that you hadn’t seen before. But it didn’t seem as fearsome as it had that morning — not as it laid on the floor of your bedroom whimpering like a lost dog. 

You almost felt bad for him, if it weren’t for the whole part where he could easily rip you in two with his bare bestial hands. 

When you used to picture your death, it typically ended staring down the barrel of a colleague turning on you. Never in your wildest dreams had you pictured yourself locked in your fresher, watching the transformation of the werewolf that might rip the fresher door off and eat you alive.

Why now? 

He hadn’t seemed entirely right since you brought him inside, but you had been off too. You almost wished you’d just stayed on Ay-7 and waited until next month. But you didn’t want to abandon him. 

You glanced back down at the screen, your heart stopping as you found the view into your quarters empty. You cycled through the camera views, trying to find the rogue beast, but you didn’t need the camera to find him. 

Ezra — the beast — growled outside the fresher door, claws scraping loudly over the durasteel. Of course he’d found you. 

He had heightened senses as a human, with a canine nose there was no doubt he could smell you. Fresh blood, halted arousal, and evidently Quinn. 

You sat your datapad down on your sink, staring at your reflection in the mirror as you contemplated your way out of this. There was one air duct, but there was no way you could climb through it. Your weapons were all laying by your bed, on the other side of the door and the dangerous monster. 

“Never been one to believe in a higher power, but… Kevva, Yrica, Ruke — whichever one of you exists.” You laughed awkwardly as you glanced upwards. “Help?”

 Ezra growled again, before slamming some of his body weight against the door — enough to make you jump backwards and the door groan under the pressure. 

Maybe you were still dreaming. Stun shafts always gave you nightmares. The last few days had been a nightmare. 

You glanced down at the database, staring at the scene taking place on the other side of the door. The camera was mounted further down the corridor, but you could see enough of the hulking monster to know you weren’t getting out of this alive. 

The only weapons you had was a toothbrush, a nail file, a toilet, and a steam shower. 

You could hide in the shower — it would delay your inevitable death by a few seconds. 

If you survived, Ezra was going to disappear. You knew that much. This was over, whatever it was. So maybe you should just open the door and let the monster in.

He growled again as he scratched at the door, his nails grinding over the durasteel and making your ears ring. 

Those would be the same flaws ripping you open. 

Shiva was right — you had lost your mind. 

You weren’t going to go down, cowering in the corner of your shower in fear as your clandestine lover ripped you to shreds. That wasn’t how you rolled. 

This was happening and you just had to accept it. 

You caught your reflection in the mirror again, before turning on your heels to face the door. Your fingers shook as you reached out and hit the button that slid open the door. 

Your heart beat was pounding in your ears as you came face-to-face with the beast on the other side of the door. He was a hulking, massive creature that had to crouch down to avoid hitting the ceiling. 

Ezra growled, a sound that rattled your bones. 

You clenched your eyes closed, anticipating the first blow — but it never came. You opened one eye hesitantly, nearly swallowing your tongue as you realized the beast was just staring at you. 

“Hi?” You tried, not quite trusting your own voice as you stared up into familiar eyes. 

The beast hunched down, sniffing at the air around you inquisitively. It leaned down, planting one fearsome paw onto the ground near your foot as its muzzle hovered a few inches from your face. 

Ezra — the beast — sniffed at your injured hand, before nudging at your arm with a little more force than you anticipated. You jumped back, causing him to growl fiercely at your sudden movement like a feral dog. 

You held up both hands, back up a step. “I’m not going to hurt you.” You told him, staring at his eyes and hoping he understood you. 

The werewolf lowered its head once more, sniffing around you curiously before nudging at your arm again. 

“Do you know who I am?” You questioned as you hesitantly reached out and touched the top of his massive head. 

He growled again, but it wasn’t like the other growls. It was a quiet, almost content sound. 

You gently stroked your fingers through the soft fur by his ear, “Do you like that?” 

Ezra huffed.

“You’re not just playing with your food, are you?” You chewed on your bottom lip as you caught sight of just how massive the teeth in his mouth were. His ears twitched and he growled quietly. 

You had a feeling there was no research into this. 

#pedro pascal x reader #ezra (prospect) #ezra x reader #pedro pascal ezra

[turtle-paced]

A:tLA Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Warning for a heavy episode. This brightly-coloured family show full of optimists and strange critters has a setting built on a genocide.

Book 1, Chapter 3 - The Southern Air Temple

(0:55) Previously on Avatar, Katara and Sokka found Aang in an iceberg. They realised he was there for a hundred years, making him the last known airbender. Katara and Aang decide to go to the North Pole to learn waterbending, Zuko in pursuit.

(1:43) The establishing shot here tells us that we’ve come a decent distance from the South Pole already. There’s no ice in sight.

(1:50) However, Katara is still in a thick winter coat. Partly this has got to be because she doesn’t have other clothing. This is still worth keeping track of, as the recurring cast often change their outfits (according to the weather and cultural demands), usually while keeping the same general ‘look’. There are, however, exceptions.

(1:59) Katara gently tries to manage Aang’s expectations. She still has more information than Aang does about recent history, but what she says here in the face of Aang’s excitement is, “A lot can change in all that time.” This episode will get into showing us the double-edged nature of Katara’s greatest virtue and deepest flaw. Which, in the tradition of many excellent characters (and definitely in keeping with the main cast of the entire series), is the same character trait.

Meanwhile, poor Aang. What an optimist he is - his reaction to learning that he woke up a hundred years in the future is to race home and see how everything’s changed, because it might be really cool and he wants to show his home off to his new friends! In some ways it’s really easy to look past how well Aang handles waking up a hundred years in the future. He’s not openly preoccupied by the fact that it’s likely that everyone he knew and loved is dead, but concentrating on the good stuff he has right this minute.

Like Katara, Aang’s greatest flaw is an extension of his greatest virtue. Aang is fantastic at focusing on the here and now, on the positives of his situation, on keeping his spirits up. Though as we’ll see, this is vitally important in how he stands up under incredible pressures, we’ll also see him ignore real and potential problems coming down the track. Like right here, when despite knowing how shocked everyone was to see an airbender, he ignores Katara’s hint that he’s not going to like what he finds here.

(2:17) Sokka is definitely a teenage boy. Lots of sleep and lots of food required.

(2:27) “There’s a prickle snake in your sleeping bag!” What I’m taking from this is that the fauna of Avatar world was still a work in progress at this point, because they’re not talking about echidna-snakes or porcu-snakes or hedgehog-snakes.

(2:36) We pan over a shipyard full of clearly Fire Navy ships. Even before the details of the flag come in view, there’s the industrialisation, there’s that harsh colour palette, there are those spiky, spiky ships. Plus there’s the horn. The production team is training us to associate these things with Fire Nation.

(2:39) Then the pan across hits Zuko’s ship. This is some brilliant recontextualising of the threat Zuko posed in the previous two episodes. The ships in dock at this timestamp are to Zuko’s ship what Zuko’s ship was to Katara, Sokka, and Aang last episide. It’s also visibly more battered than the others. Yet Zuko is a prince! Three seconds, not a word spoken, and the show’s visually raised some questions about Zuko’s relationship to his nation’s war effort.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that in this episode, Zuko’s ship is a noticeably lighter shade than Zhao’s black metal fleet. Still the bad guys, but that one’s a solid tip that Zuko is the less bad guy. Combined with the aforementioned beat-up ship, this recontextualises Zuko himself. Katara later says that when she thought of the face of the enemy, it’s Zuko she thought of - but the viewer’s got more information than she does, and can see he’s not the operator of the war machine.

(2:48) Zuko orders Iroh not to discuss the Avatar in Fire Nation territory, thus indicating for us that the Fire Nation characters are not all working together for the same goals.

(3:00) “Captain Zhao.” “It’s Commander now.” Another quality introduction! Zuko’s address of Zhao by the incorrect rank shows he’s out of the loop. Zhao’s correction shows us the upwards movement and the importance of his own power to him, the pleasure he takes in this emphasised by the acting. Five words!

The show follows this up by giving some context on Iroh. Zhao greets Iroh as a general and “great hero” of the nation, but where pretty much the first thing out of Zhao’s mouth was “Commander Zhao,” Iroh says that he’s retired, deflecting the praise of his previous career. Zhao also helpfully exposits that Iroh is the Fire Lord’s brother, so we’re clear that Iroh is Zuko’s paternal relation. We haven’t had the same signalling that the Fire Nation is patriarchal that we’ve had with the Water Tribes thus far (we haven’t actually seen a female Fire Nation character yet, and won’t for a while), so it’s still a little hard to know where Iroh stands vis-a-vis inheritance.

(3:10) Zhao refers to the harbour as his harbour. While it saves the writers having to come up with a disposable place name, it again goes to indicate Zhao’s possessiveness of authority.

(3:21) In something that will eventually provide an excellent contrast with Azula, Zuko shows himself to be a terrible liar. Iroh’s not much better. Not in this situation. Man can keep his secrets, but I suspect the real secret is never being asked difficult questions.

(3:47) A rare instance of Iroh hauling Zuko up short and flat up telling him what to do. Show respect. A bigger deal once you know Zuko got a fireball to the face for being disrespectful/‘disrespectful’ in a meeting with military figures. However, given that Zhao controls the harbour, probably necessary for Iroh to step in.

(4:10) Sokka complains about a lack of food supplies. We don’t always need to know where the gAang is getting food, because the show reliably brings up supplies when they’re an issue. We’ll also see this as an issue more in season one, when Katara and Sokka are still getting used to travelling. By the time we hit season three, the group is much more confident in their ability to secure supplies even in areas they don’t know well.

On top of this, Aang’s use of Sokka’s jerky as kindling is the first part of the understated running gag that Aang just does not like Southern Water Tribe cuisine. Vegetarianism aside.

(4:40) Katara gets a bit more blunt about what’s likely at the Southern Air Temple. This is the first mention of the fact that Katara and Sokka’s as-yet-unnamed mother was killed in a Fire Nation raid. Remarkably for a kids’ show, they actually say that Kya was killed and discuss the fact that the Fire Nation might have killed all the airbenders.

For Aang’s part, this is a bit repetitive, but the new info about Katara’s family situation keeps the plot and character development moving along.

(4:58) At the same time, for all the flack he gets about being naive, Aang’s rebuttal isn’t “people wouldn’t be so cruel!”, he’s arguing that the Air Temples are literally inaccessible without airbending in some form and that therefore death on the scale Katara thinks might have taken place is logistically impossible.

(5:20) The setting design in this series is amazing, and the Southern Air Temple is actually kind of meh by the series’ later standards (Western Air Temple is where it’s at, IMO). That said, you wonder how much pre-war architecture outside the North and South Poles was a joint effort between different types of benders. In a really nice detail, you can see the airball field from this shot.

(5:36) “And by year’s end, the Earth Kingdom capital will be under our rule.” Zhao implicitly puts the series on a timetable here, even before we get the details. 

Tellingly, when we pan out, Zuko is not engaged in this assessment. He’s literally got his back turned. He’s doing bad things for bad reasons, but it’s not naked imperialism fuelling his determination. We’ll get into what Zuko thinks about the war effort a bit more in season two, when he starts actually thinking about the Fire Nation’s war, more critically and carefully than he expresses in his next line.

In the meantime, a) it’s the height of privilege that Zuko can turn his back on this and b) I do wonder if Zuko’s criticism of his father here wasn’t some early instalment weirdness, with the writers not having quite nailed down the dynamics between Zuko and his parental figures.

(5:48) “Two years at sea have done little to temper your tongue.” So! First, more timeline for us. Second, the implication here is that Zuko was known to be outspoken. Imprudently outspoken.

(6:03)  Once again Zuko can’t lie very well, but unlike that moment when he was just getting off the ship, this isn’t played for laughs. Zuko can’t lie very well, and that’s serious. Also, Zhao confirms the Air Nomad genocide over here in the B-plot, while over in the A-plot we’re still waiting for that painful shoe to drop. Builds tension - it’s not just Katara’s suspicions anymore, but straight from the mouth of a Fire Nation commander.

(6:19) Can’t help but notice that Zhao is a firm believer in the Avatar’s power. The man has done his spirit research.

(6:23) “If you have an ounce of loyalty left, you’ll tell me what you found.” More implications that Zuko is not perceived to be totally on board with broader Fire Nation goals. If he was, why would his loyalty be in question?

(6:38) Zhao halts Zuko here as his men report that they interrogated Zuko’s own soldiers offscreen. So this entire thing was never about how well Zuko could lie, but Zhao giving Zuko enough rope to hang himself. Zhao ends up being lower stakes and lower competence compared to the endgame villains, but man, even now, the villains of this show do not mess around.

(7:06) Speaking of early-instalment weirdness, not sure the writers worked out quite what to do with Sokka this episode. He’s basically a running gag in this episode, almost entirely lacking in depth and nuance. Almost entirely - I’ll point out those moments when we get to them.

(7:22) For all Aang believed his people might be alive, he can’t deny the emptiness of the temple.

(7:33) There we go! There’s the depth from Sokka that repeated “I’m hungry” gags don’t get through. Sokka sees that Aang is depressed, and asks a question about something Aang genuinely enjoys. Followed by the cut to Aang thoroughly kicking Sokka’s ass at a sport designed for airbenders.

(7:53) Sokka let Aang kick his ass at an airbending sport for seven rounds.

(8:06) More nuance from Sokka as he and Katara find evidence of Fire Nation soldiers on temple grounds. He says that he and Katara should tell Aang, but when Katara decides otherwise, he doesn’t overrule her and force the confrontation. He respects that Katara’s got the better relationship with Aang. At the same time, his call-out of her failure to tell Aang is a pretty gentle one that recognises why she doesn’t want to tell him.

This is what I mean by Katara’s greatest strength also being one of her most severe character flaws. She’s so driven to help and protect the people she cares about - but this occasionally veers into being overprotective.

(8:49) Sokka continues to argue that Katara should tell Aang after the cut. Goes to show some of the differences between the siblings. Katara puts her friend’s feelings first, Sokka prioritises truth and facts. Handled badly, I’m sure we can all see how this could be extremely sexist storytelling. 

Here, though, the story appreciates that the harsh truth of what happened to the Air Nomads is unimaginably harsh, and should be broken appropriately. Aang needs to know the truth, and Aang deserves emotional consideration for the impact of that truth. Katara’s not wrong to be sensitive about a sensitive subject; she’s just wrong in taking that last step in lying by omission.

(8:57) Aang introduces Monk Gyatso via statue, so we have some idea of Aang’s family situation. Note the outfit.

(9:06) Cut from the solemn and wise statue to Gyatso imparting important cake-baking airbending techniques to Aang. These are some priorities I can get behind. And frankly you can see the similarity between the teacher who uses airbending to help with baking, to Aang who uses airbending to get bison snot out of clothes. Practical, everyday use.

(9:22) “The only mistake [the monks] made was telling you before you turned sixteen.” More implications! Aang was told about being the Avatar very young. Reasoning left obscure. It’s also giving some texture to the Air Nomads; they’re not idealised, but capable of making ordinary human mistakes right off the bat.

(9:29) “We must act on what is,” Monk Gyatso says, which is also clearly something else Aang took to heart. The pan over the Southern Air Temple as it was a hundred years ago is also pretty heartbreaking, with all the greenery, and the bison, and the people.

(9:47) Next plot flag, guide for Aang in the inner sanctuary.

(10:08) I strongly disapprove of wasted cake. Though as we see, Gyatso was trying to maintain Aang’s sense of fun and improve his aim, both of which are legitimate goals.

(10:54) Aaaaand Sokka’s back to being a food joke.

(11:58) More hints at Zuko’s status given that Commander Zhao feels pretty safe calling the Fire Lord’s son pathetic.

(12:10) This gives us another layer of complexity in Zuko’s plot this season. He’s now competing with Zhao to find the Avatar. More than that, he’s the underdog here, compared to the much better resourced Zhao.

This is some vital positioning to maintain audience engagement in the heel part of Zuko’s slow heel-face-turn, where the risk is people turning off Zuko as he does bad things for bad reasons. We don’t meet Zhao from Aang, Katara, and Sokka’s point of view, where he’d be pretty similar to Zuko in some important ways. We meet Zhao from Zuko’s PoV, so we’re clear on how Zuko is better by comparison, and so we barrack for Zuko to continue to show those better qualities.

(12:30) In a rare background detail failure, not many of these Avatar statues appear to depict female Avatars.

(13:07) A characterisation detail for Aang I like. Upon realising that every statue here depicts one of his past lives, he doesn’t appear to feel it as an oppressive weight - no, he treats it as a Cool Thing. 

Meanwhile, Sokka doesn’t believe in reincarnation. While hanging out with the Avatar.

(13:21) Our first look at Roku. (Next to him, it’s Very Definitely Not Kyoshi. Early instalments!)

(13:31) And the exposition! Now we know who it was vanished from that spire in the intro.

(13:45) The show frames Aang’s knowledge of Roku’s name as a sign of their connection, past life to reincarnation. Personally, I would have thought that especially in Aang’s time, people would have been quite likely to know the name of the previous Avatar. Given that Katara and Sokka were both born a hundred odd years after Roku died, and grew up in a very isolated place, I can believe that they wouldn’t have known Roku’s name.

(14:00) Even in the middle of the Southern Air Temple, the kids immediately hide when they hear footsteps and see a shadow, assuming it’s a firebender approaching. That’s how cautious they are already.

(14:17) Introducing Momo!

(15:23) What starts riling Zuko up here is Zhao treating him as inconsequential. Kid covers up his deep-seated self-worth issues by insisting on the external validation.

(15:33) Aside from Zhao emphasising the disparity in his and Zuko’s respective resources, Zhao also tells us that Zuko is formally banished.

(15:38) But then Zhao gets to the heart of Zuko’s issues. “Your own father doesn’t even want you.” We’ve seen this episode that Zuko’s got the one battered little ship. We know from the previous episodes that Zuko needs to capture the Avatar, and heard his desire to return home. Now we get the concrete info that Zuko’s dad kicked him out.

Again, this is all important in setting up Zuko’s long arc. This kid is being treated horribly by a representative of his own nation. The viewers are already being given reasons not to want to see Zuko defeated, but to want him to get out.

(15:47) When Zuko maintains that his father will welcome him home with honour if he just captures the Avatar, Zhao immediately undermines that idea by telling Zuko that if his father really wanted him, he’d’ve just rescinded the banishment without conditions. He’s Fire Lord, he can do that. This is another case of both sides being right here! Ozai does eventually welcome Zuko home with honour for ‘killing the Avatar’ - but by then Zuko’s got an inkling that Ozai’s acceptance is 100% conditional, and his father does not truly want Zuko back or care for him as a person. Because if he did care about Zuko as a person, he’d never have done any of the things he did in Zuko’s backstory.

(16:01) Zhao says that Zuko’s scar proves he’s a failure and a disgrace. Details left out. It’s enough to connect Zuko’s scar with his banishment, though.

(16:07) The introduction of Agni Kai, which is clearly a duel.

(16:17) Iroh asks Zuko if he remembers the last time he challenged a master. Zuko replies in the affirmative as we pan from the unscarred side of his face to the scarred side. Again, implications. Combined with Zhao’s earlier comments about Zuko’s time at sea not tempering his tongue, we actually have a decent picture of the events leading up to Zuko’s banishing, here in episode three. We definitely have the implications that Zuko said something, fought a duel against a master, lost (or he wouldn’t be a failure), and was scarred.

The show won’t confirm this for another ten episodes. But the backstory’s there.

(16:32) Meanwhile, back in the A plot, Aang chases Momo around the ruins of the Southern Air Temple.

(16:41) And comes across a rather grisly sight for a kids’ show. There are a lot of bodies in the room Aang walks into, arranged so it’s clear this was no accident.

(16:49) Gets worse as Aang spots Gyatso’s distinctive necklace (which was in focus on the statue earlier). There’s no good way to find this out, but Aang stumbled into the scene of his parental figure’s violent demise. Again, with the context of ‘The Storm’, this is way, way worse. It was already bad.

(17:07) Aang is understandably distraught, and unfortunately distraught untrained Avatar = Avatar state.

(17:22) As Katara wanders through the sanctuary and its depictions of past Avatars, she sees the eyes of the statues light up and knows that something’s up with Aang.

(17:26) Cut to elsewhere (definitely Earth Kingdom), followed by what must be the Northern Water Tribe, and the Fire Nation, where their depictions of Avatars are also lit up. Note that the Earth Kingdom’s mural definitely looks more like Kyoshi.

(17:35) The sages at the Fire Nation temple spell it out - this is inarguable proof that the Avatar’s back. Again ups some tension for us. The Avatar’s return is now public knowledge, and we know more people than Zuko and Zhao will be after our protagonists.

(18:03) When not reduced to a running gag, Sokka is already super quick on the uptake - he put together that Aang discovered his mentor’s corpse from the outfit, too, it seems.

(18:35) Iroh instructs Zuko to remember his firebending basics. We’ve already heard one - the breath.

(18:50) This fight scene helps us do some assessment of how dangerous Zuko and Zhao are in straight fights. Initial threat scaling - we’ll get more information over the course of the season. In the meantime, enjoy the choreography! One of the reasons the fight scenes are great is because the writers and animators did their research into the martial arts styles that bending is based on; another is because they don’t lose sight of the fact that characters are involved, with differing temperaments, goals, and skill sets. Avatar fight scenes convey character as well as progress plot.

Over the brief course of this fight we see Zuko start very aggressively, lose breath control, and get reminded to break Zhao’s footwork. That is, he’s not paying attention to Iroh’s basics. When Zhao counterattacks, Zuko’s defensive work is noticeably weaker than Zhao’s, basically tanking the fireballs on his forearms and torso while he gets pushed backwards (Zhao manages to break fireballs apart or split them well in front of him and away from his core, without losing ground).

(19:40) We can see Zuko’s fear as someone aims a fireball at his face. But with that, he turns the tables, gets up, and starts a counter-counterattack. Aimed at Zhao’s feet, as Iroh said to do. Zuko does not win this fight on skill alone - he wins because when he gets knocked down, he gets back up and tries again, applying the lesson of his previous mistakes. Could this be Zuko’s arc in miniature? I think it might be!

(20:15) Given a free shot at Zhao, Zuko declines to so much as scorch one of his earlobes. A gesture Zhao was not willing to make bare seconds ago, and going by the scar, also not a mercy extended by Zuko’s previous opponent. This is why he’s the less bad guy right now - Zuko’s not hurting people, not even his enemies, just because he can.

(20:29) Cheap shot from Zhao there, so we know he’s not one to accept when he’s lost.

(20:32) Completely cancelled by Iroh, out of fucking nowhere, who effortlessly knocks Zhao on his ass. Like I said, initial threat scaling. Early season one, the extent of Iroh’s abilities are hinted at rather than showcased.

(20:52) “Even in exile, my nephew is more honourable than you,” Iroh says. He also thanks Zhao for the tea.

(21:03) “Did you really mean that, Uncle?” Zuko asks, once they’re out of Zhao’s earshot. There speaks a young man who does not often get positive feedback from anyone, and who can’t believe someone was sincere about their public praise.

(21:08) Iroh implies that he meant it, without explicitly saying so. It’s graceful - gives Zuko that confirmation, but doesn’t put Zuko in a place where he has to accept a compliment he’s not ready for or equipped to handle.

(21:15) Meanwhile, back at the A-plot, we’re seeing Katara at her best. It’s true that her desire to protect Aang didn’t work and didn’t help. We don’t leave off on the ‘greatest weakness’ part, but on the ‘greatest strength’ part. She empathises with Aang’s pain and offers of herself to help Aang. “Sokka and I - we’re your family now.” Without hesitation.

(21:38) The Water Tribe siblings step closer to each other for reassurance once the threat of being blown off the mountain has receded. Little things like that show you how close Katara and Sokka are.

(21:46) Again, Sokka’s got Katara’s back in her decision that Aang is now family. He doesn’t initiate like Katara does, but he’s on board.

(21:53) The first thing Aang says is “I’m sorry.” I can’t help but think that the uncontrolled Avatar State must really, really suck for Aang. It’s not gone into in any detail, but how bad must he feel that he endangered his new friends and further damaged the temple? His first words here are to apologise to others, rather than continuing to manage his own grief.

Aang is a very thoughtful person in many ways.

(22:03) Not stupid, though, as he can see that if the Fire Nation targeted the Southern Air Temple, chances are good they got to the others as well. Katara hugs him as he tries to deal with the fact that he is the last airbender.

(22:17) Aang emphasises the fact that he’s going to need some help from Roku. Just throwing that out there for future plot.

(22:44) “You, me, and Appa are all that’s left of this place,” Aang says with what seems rather likely to be a faked smile. He and Katara laugh at the newly-named Momo’s theft of Sokka’s fruit.

(23:04) But the fact that this doesn’t erase Aang’s grief is emphasised by the end of episode, where he silently watches the ruined and empty Southern Air Temple recede into the distance.  Even though he’s good at putting up a front and focusing on the good things that are, the loss of his home and people will underpin Aang’s character for the rest of the series.

This episode is a damned important one, and the importance comes out more when looked at holistically rather than my running commentary above. For Katara and Sokka, this episode gives the key detail of their mother’s death, and gives them that solid and explicit emotional commitment to Aang that will provide them with motivation for sticking with him all series, but this isn’t their episode.

This episode kicks Aang out of his past and locks Aang into the hero’s journey in the A-plot. Meanwhile, in the B-plot, it sets Zuko up not as a primary villain, but as a deuteragonist, catching us up on how he too has been kicked out of home and left to quest. This episode shows us why neither protagonist nor deuteragonist can go home again.

#a:tla #cw: violence #cw: abuse #fine toothed comb edition

[bestintheparsec]

Just You - (Din Djarin x reader)

Summary: @elisemb123​ suggested (a long time ago i’m so sorry) a Din x reader fic about “spicy awkward situations” -- I went off my own interpretation of that and I hope you like it! 

A/N: This is my first (actual) oneshot (please go easy on me)! The first of my “tropes” oneshots (without saying too much, this was based on the “zipper” trope)😏 This was more challenging to write because I’m so attached to ‘Healer’ but I hope that you enjoy it❤️ As always I appreciate any and all feedback! 

Words: 2.4k

Rating: T

~

“No,” Din snapped.

Greef had only looked towards you for one second before Din caught on, rejecting the idea. 

"But you can't go in there. At least, not without being conspicuous," Greef countered.

You and Din were a team. You'd never done any hunts without him, not in the last year since you'd joined him aboard the Razor Crest. Your quick minds were alike, which greatly helped on the job every time. But the pay hadn't been enough lately. You needed a higher stakes bounty, one that could provide for a while without either of you having to worry. 

This was currently the only job Greef could offer. The bounty was a shady, very rich, very powerful higher-up who was heavily guarded and rarely made public appearances. You would have one shot at him -- at a formal event on the planet Perinnion. You had looked at Greef with confusion when he'd told you. Perinnion was notorious for being one of the finest and richest planets in the outer rim. But a lot of it was all for show, a cover for the malicious businesses that frequently went on under the table there. It was definitely not the usual type of hunt.

They weren't accepting of anyone who didn't meet their shallow standards, so there was no way Din would get into some gala in his armor. Greef mentioned that disguises would have to be involved, and had looked over at you.

"She's not going alone," Din said firmly. He was sitting right next to you in the tight booth, and you could feel his shoulders tense up as he said it. You turned and looked into his visor at the same time he tilted his head to look at you. Despite everything, you felt your cheeks heat up. You broke eye contact before Greef could sense anything was off.

Din was your partner, in all ways but one. When you joined him, you simply needed a job and he needed the help. But in the time that you’d worked together, you started to feel something change in how you felt about him. You cared about him. That was completely normal, you'd told yourself time and again. But you couldn't help how sometimes you felt your heart flutter at the gentle way he spoke to you, on the rare occasions that he spoke at all. He was kind, though it was all kept hidden beneath the armor. He had a softness to him that you’d never known before. You would never tell him any of this, of course. He was strict to his code, and you would never do anything to jeopardize your present relationship with him. The fleeting thoughts of him were enough to keep you warm, and it would have to be enough.

“Yeah, I don’t know, Greef --” you said. 

“Perhaps their ideals are different, but this is probably one of the least dangerous situations you could put yourself in for a hunt,” Greef continued. “Surely you can handle a bit of arrogance.”

“It’s not that -- I’ve heard stories of how these events are always swarming with undercover New Republic guards, on the lookout for trouble. I doubt they’ll take well to people like us being around,” you added.

“To get that man, she’s going to have to raise hell in there. As soon as she causes any alarm, the bodyguards and the Imps will be on her. You really want to let her go in there alone?” Din criticized.

Greef was getting impatient. “Then you’ll have to prepare well, Y/N. And you don’t have to be alone. You can lure him out -- talk intriguing business schemes with him. Then you and Mando capture him once he’s out and vulnerable.”

You both seemed to ease up just a bit, mentally running through the plan as you looked at each other.

“What do you think?” Din asked you, quietly. “We don’t have to take the job. Not if you don’t feel safe.”

You looked away, thinking of all the times Din had thrown himself headfirst into danger on behalf of you or the child, completely disregarding his own safety despite your protests. It was hardly a big deal for you to socialize with some conceited 'royals’ for a job that would keep all of you worry-free for months.

“You mentioned a disguise,” you said after a moment. “Where exactly am I supposed to find one that remotely parallels the Perinnion formal wear?”

Greef smiled, as if he’d known you would agree all along. “I have connections with someone there. I’ll give you instructions to find her. Her name is Kas, and you can trust her with the details of the mission. She’ll be more than willing to help.”

You nodded and both stood up to leave. Din took the puck and tracking fob, exhaling quietly as he walked behind you toward the door.

From his constant composure you would’ve never been able to tell -- he didn’t even realize it himself, but lately something about you made him start to soften, and he had no idea what it was or what to do about it. He’d never worried for any of his past workmates like this -- it was work, that was it. He rarely even liked his team members, let alone care about them. The kid had been on his watch for a long time, but he’d never known the feeling of being protective of anyone the way he was with you -- as if keeping you out of harm’s way meant he was protecting himself from what he would feel if anything happened to you. He often shook his head at himself, trying to find something else to occupy his thoughts, trying to ignore the way the curious look in your eyes made him feel something he was unfamiliar with.

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

Kas was an older, maybe middle-aged woman. She had lines around her eyes, which were hardened yet still kind. You could tell she had plenty of experience in dealing with all the sketchy transactions that went on. She quickly showed you that she not only distrusted the people Greef had bounty pucks on, but that she would also willingly help you take them down.

She had been ready for you at her home as soon as you landed on Perinnion, providing helpful details regarding the night’s event --  exit plans, topics that would be of interest, and of course, your disguise. Din stayed on the Crest for a while, preparing the weapons while you went inside with Kas.

You looked down at yourself as she helped you step into the sturdy dress. She wouldn't tell you where it came from, but somehow it fit you well enough. There wasn’t a way to describe the ensemble as anything but beautiful. The dress’s skirt was made of a thick, emerald-colored satin fabric that fell in full waves smoothly to the floor. The bodice stopped just above the waist and was daintily adorned with small but intricate, understated golden jewel embellishments that completely covered the black lining underneath. It was sleeveless, save for two thick bands of black ribbon that wrapped over your shoulders to hold the whole thing up. To finish it off, she tied a matching black ribbon around the waist, letting the long ends drape softly in front of you.

“Is the slit necessary?” you muttered, wondering how practical all of this was for the mission. The skirt completely encircled you, but on one side there was a slit that went up a little past your knees. It was subtle, your leg only revealed if you wanted it to be. 

“In every way, my dear,” she grinned at you, holding out a thigh holster and your blaster, gesturing to your leg as she moved part of the skirt aside to show you. “It provides easy access to your weapons. And, should you need to run, it allows you to do so without restriction.” 

You nodded and sighed, taking them from her hands and securing them to your leg.

“Thank you,” you said. 

Kas patted your shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she left you to yourself. She gave you a wink, making you wrinkle your brows in confusion.

You looked at yourself in the tall mirror. You had insisted on leaving your hair plain, down and held in place with a few pins, allowing just a few loose strands to fall around your face.

It was quite a bit different than what you usually wore -- black tight-fitted pants and maybe some sort of dark-colored jacket overtop whatever shirt you could find. Needless to say, anything this luxurious was not what you were used to. The fact that you were essentially going into combat mode like this made you feel even more disoriented.

Din's voice appeared before he did. “We should go over the plan again --” he said casually as he entered the room, abruptly stopping in his tracks when he saw you. 

“Oh, I --” you instinctively moved to cover yourself, though you were fully dressed and ready to go in public like this.

“Sorry,” he said immediately, looking down and turning to leave. “I -- I didn’t know you were --” he stammered.

“No, wait. It’s okay, Din,” you said reassuringly, calling him back. “I’m...done. I don’t know where Kas went off to.” Your hands awkwardly smoothed out the fullness of the dress skirt. You glanced at the floor before looking back up at him.

Even in his mind, Din couldn't find any words to say. The few seconds of uncomfortable silence may as well have been hours. He thought of how you both tended to look -- skin and clothes covered in dirt and dust, sometimes even blood. For most of his life, all he’d ever seen was damage and destruction. It was a stark contrast to how you looked standing in front of him right now. He felt like he wasn’t meant to see anything so intimate and....breathtaking. Din glanced away, trying to avert his eyes under the helmet and quell the reddening of his cheeks even though you couldn’t see him. But he couldn’t resist, eventually tilting his head back up as you met his gaze through the visor. You were looking at him with that soft expression again, leaving him completely flustered.

You held your arms firmly against your side. The dress was snug and it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but you suddenly felt fidgety. You caught a glimpse of the back of the dress in the mirror and saw that Kas had left before finishing the look. That sneaky woman, you thought, shaking your head.

"She didn’t -- Can you... help me with the back?" You asked in a softer voice, awkwardly moving towards him. You were suddenly very aware of how much air your leg was getting. The strings lacing up the back of the bodice were more for decoration than fit, but you weren't able to tie up the elaborate backing yourself. He nodded just slightly and you turned your back to him.

Din felt uneasy, hesitating for a few moments before reaching down to the ribbon around your waist. He carefully tied it as best as he could, gloved fingers occasionally brushing lightly against your covered back. He could hardly concentrate on the immediate task at hand. You looked down at the floor, wondering if he could sense your nerves -- though your quickened pulse had nothing to do with the job tonight.

"Thanks," you said quietly when he moved his hands away, turning to face him. You tried to keep your heart rate steady. When was the last time physical contact made you feel like that? You thought. You really needed to get it together.

He fixed his gaze on you, and neither of you said a word. Din felt his heart go soft as he looked into your eyes, which now held an expression he couldn't quite figure out. There was a lot at stake tonight, but you appeared ready. The tension in your composure was opposite to how you looked; elegant, like the calm before the storm. He was relieved you couldn’t see his face right now; he kept glancing around elsewhere in the room, a nervous tic you were unaware of. Out of nowhere, Din felt overcome by the need to gently wrap his arms around your waist as he imagined the feel of the smooth fabric of your dress against his hands. He didn’t say anything, not wanting a tremor in his voice to reveal him. What had gotten into him? He thought to himself. He felt his heart constrict as he felt himself realize what he couldn’t possibly say aloud.

You suddenly cleared your throat, breaking his train of thought. “Well, we better get going. I think Kas had some last minute plans to share,” you said.

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

You stood hidden in the trees in the stakeout spot. You were both checking your weapons one more time before leaving to get inside the event, alone.

“This should be fun,” you grinned up at him. “For once the bounty won’t immediately try to kill me. We’re probably going to have to take out the guards, though.”

He didn't respond for a few moments. “I don’t care what happens to them,” he said. “Just you.”

Was it just you, or did he seem extra on-edge about this mission?  “Just me?” you let out a nervous laugh before noticing how he seemed more serious than usual.

Din said nothing, only responding with a nod.

“I’ll be alright,” you said softly. “We’ll be in and out.”

He was still looking at you, not answering. Your hands were down at your side -- you tried to occupy them by patting your dress, rechecking for your weapons as if you hadn't just checked a minute ago. 

Another moment passed before he slowly reached down and gently took your hand in his.  You looked up at him, the gesture unexpected but not unwelcome. The rough leather of his gloves traced your skin with light pressure, ever-so-briefly before he let go.

You smoothed out your dress again before you gave him a reassuring smile. You turned and started walking towards the venue, cheeks flushing as you hoped your knees wouldn’t give out beneath you.

~

Tags (separate from Healer): @aeryntheofficial​ @immundusspiritu​ @i-like-those-odds​ @heyy-honeyy​ @hiscyarika​ @taman-a​ @electricprincess888​ @jensfolly​ @spacegayofficial​ @myrin1234​ @aloneontheoutside​ 

#the mandalorian #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #the mandalorian oneshot #my ff

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hiya! I'm a new writer, aside from an odd bit of fanfiction here and there. I'd like to finally begin an original story. What are your initial actions when beginning a new work? Aside from that, do you have any more tips for me to adhere to? I'm not looking to publish or anything, this is purely for fun.

Guide: Starting a New (Long Fiction) Story

Whether you’re writing for practice, publication, or fun, the process for writing a new original story is different for everyone and often depends on the project itself. Here are some things to consider as you start to prepare and get started on your new story.

1. To plot or not to plot?

The first thing you’ll want to do is decide how much you want to plot out the story before you start writing. Some writers are avid plotters, planning out every detail of their story before they begin. Other writers prefer to take an idea and wing it, and some people plot as they go. At the very least, it’s a good idea to make sure you know the following before you start writing:

Who is your protagonist? What do they want, why do they want it, and how are they going to get it?

When and where is the story set? What parts of this setting will play the biggest role in the story and how?

Who or what is the antagonistic force? Every protagonist needs an antagonist to work against them, creating obstacles they must overcome as they try to reach their goal. An antagonistic force is anyone or anything that creates those obstacles, whether a super villain, overbearing but well-meaning parents, a disease, a natural disaster, or a plague of zombies.

Know your beginning, middle, and end. Before you start writing, it’s a good idea to have a mental picture of how the story starts (your character’s normal life before everything turns upside down), what’s happening at the midpoint (what happens to raise the stakes and give the protagonist a big push toward the “final showdown” with the antagonist), and how the story ends (does your character defeat/survive the antagonistic force? Do they reach their goal? How does your character or their world change as a result?) 

2. Research and Inspiration...

Whether or not you decide to plot, you will probably want to spend a little time doing some research and looking for information. If you are choosing to plot, you may want to do this afterward or during your plotting phase. Ultimately, you’ll want to consider whether there are any elements in your story that you need to know more about before writing them. This might include things like learning what it’s like to be deaf, how castles are laid out, or what kinds of plants and flowers typically grow in forests. If you’re setting your story in a real place, or are using a real place as inspiration, you may want to learn more about that place. If your story takes place in a particular era or involves a particular event or type of event, you will want to research those. For inspiration, you may want to look for pictures of everything from characters and clothing to buildings and places. Some writers enjoy putting together pinterest or tumblr galleries to house inspiring pictures. You may also want to put together character, setting, and story aesthetics (collages), put together a writing playlist that has the right feel for your story, or even travel to places or do activities that are related to your story.

3. Planning, preparation, and organization.

If you’re going to wing it, you’re pretty much ready to get started with writing now. However, if you’re going to plot your story, this is the point where you might want to do a little more planning and preparation before you start writing, and depending on how much stuff you accumulate through these early stages, you’ll probably want to do a little organization, too.

When I start a new story, I always do three things:

-- purchase a three-ring binder and dividers for keeping track of my story plans-- set up a story specific folder on my desktop with necessary subfolders-- set up a story specific folder in my browser with necessary subfolders

I like to decorate my binder with a printed out aesthetic picture and a pretty title on the side. The divider tabs for my binders usually contain sections like: characters, setting, outline/scene list, notes, rough draft, etc. If there is more than one major setting, sometimes I’ll give each setting their own divider. It really just depends on the needs of my story, and sometimes I re-organize my dividers as the story progresses and my needs evolve.

My desktop folder usually contains the following subfolders: drafts, storage, notes-ideas, character stuff, setting stuff, inspiration, and then sometimes I do additional subfolders... like my “character stuff” subfolder might have subfolders for each character or characters in each specific setting.

My browser folder is usually kind of a mess. I will sometimes do subject-specfic subfolders, but usually I just bookmark whatever I need to and make sure the bookmarks I access the most are at the top of the list.

Again, you will probably add to all of this as you actually get into the plotting phase. I consider this phase and the plotting phase to go hand-in-hand. This is really just about getting everything set up and ready to go.

This is also a good time to figure out things like a writing schedule (if you need to set one), daily or weekly word count goals, and get your writing space organized if you have one.

4. Plotting...

There are many different ways you can plot your story, all depending on what works best for you and the needs of your story. Some writers simply like to come up with an exhaustive summary of events from beginning to end. Others like to do some sort of outline. You may want to do a timeline and a scene list as well. My post how to outline a plot will walk you through some of the different options, and my plot and structure master list has lots of other posts that may be useful to you during this time.

5. Start writing!

Once you’ve gotten your story plotted out (or not, if you’re choosing not to plot), it’s time to sit down and start writing. Here are some things to keep in mind:

-- This is the very first draft of your story and it’s going to be ROUGH, which is why it’s often referred to as the “rough draft” or “zero draft.” This draft isn’t going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy, ugly, meandering, and kind of awful, and THAT’S FINE!!! This is just the rough sketch or mockup. You’re going to improve upon it later.

-- Because this is the first draft, now is not the time to worry about word choice, sentence structure, word play, grammar and punctuation, flawless story structure, etc. Just get the story down to the best of your ability. You’re going to make it pretty in the later drafts.

-- Also, because this is the first draft, don’t be afraid to go a little hog wild. You don’t have to worry about word count and having a tight story now. Feel free to go off on tangents, delve into fluffy scenes, and follow weird threads. Dive in and explore your world and its characters. This exploratory process allows you to kind of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. A lot of the time you’ll end up discovering gems you hadn’t considered initially. Again, you can figure out what to cut out later on.

-- AGAIN... DO NOT EDIT AS YOU GO. I mean, look... sometimes, more experienced writers develop a process where they do edit as they go, and that’s fine. But until you’ve written enough stories from beginning to end to know what works for you, don’t trouble yourself with editing as you go. The most important thing right now is to write this story from beginning to end. Once you get to the end, you can go back and make it pretty.

-- It’s okay to feel frustrated and have days where you need to take a break. You may have days where you just want to delete the story and move on, but don’t do that. If you need to, walk away from it for a few days or a week and come back to it later. If the story still isn’t working for you, save everything and start on a new project, but never delete what you have no matter how much you feel like you hate it now. You never know when inspiration will strike and you’ll decide to go back to an old project.

Good luck with your story!

#writing tips #writing advice #wqaadvice #wqaguide

[zhongart]

Craft Fair Necessities

All Fairs

Tables- Lightweight but sturdy.  Plastic folding tables are the easiest for transport while still being durable, and come in a number of different sizes.  Adjustable height is recommended, or you can get furniture lift things, to raise them up for easier viewing of product. Quite a few indoor shows will provide tables and chairs, so make sure you know if they are beforehand. No need to carry the extra weight or take up extra space. And tray/TV tables!  You don’t want to be eating over just your lap, or the tables you are using for display.  They are also great for just setting things and organizing what you are setting up.

Tablecloths- Fabric is best for this, as it’s easy to care for and will last a long time.  Going with a matte fabric, like a sturdy woven cotton or polyester, will let the shine of glazed pieces catch the eye, as will having it be black or another dark color.  Polyester will not fade in sunlight as easily, but cotton is easy to just dye dark again. They will also cover the state the table itself is in, especially if it’s used or rented- those tend to be a bit beaten up.

Displays- Things to put your pieces in easy line of sight, and to make the ones that are more detailed or higher priced set ‘above’ the others, either figuratively or literally.  It’s as easy as boxes or blocks of wood with fabric wrapped around them, or you can go with professional ones that are available online.  These shouldn’t be eye-catching on their own- you want them to make your things look good.

Chairs- Folding is easy to get a hold of, and great for transport.  There are also some pretty comfortable ones out there, they’ve come a long way from vinyl slats on an aluminum frame.  Fabric or plastic will work great, depending on how you are comfortable sitting.  Seat cushions are also a nice addition to this.  You have to stay comfortable!

Food/Drink- A cooler of whatever size you need, and ice or cooler packs for cold things.  Water and some sort of sports drink is an absolute must, because the number one cause of headaches and irritability is dehydration.  Even if you don’t feel particularly thirsty, you have to drink.  Especially in hot or sunny weather.  As for food, things that are high-energy and easy or quick to eat, especially if you are running your booth alone.  Fairs don’t close for lunch, and you need to be able to pause your eating to talk to a customer. Coffee or other caffeine sources are fine, especially if you are used to drinking that, but it’s not a substitute for water.

Napkins/Paper Towel- You never know when you need to clean up a spill, and you would be surprised at how many events forget the little things like this.  Wet wipes, like for babies, is also a good idea, as they can clean sticky things like soda off of nearly every surface, including you.  These even have sensitive skin varieties, which are a bonus for obvious reasons.

Your Crafts!  In the rush or activity of packing, it can be easy to forget a small box of something you meant to sell.  Put these boxes in prominent areas when you are planning what to take, and double or even triple check that you have everything.  Also, some places might want or offer for you to be able to craft things on-site.  If you have a way to do so, I highly recommend it.  Seeing someone making something brings a lot of attention, and if you offer custom-made items, you have a higher chance of actually selling more!

A Helper!  Having a second person is very important.  Bathroom breaks, fetching food or something from a car, and helping talk to people who are interested when things get hectic.  In all honesty, a group of at least three, but no more than five, running a booth is the best idea, as there can always be two actually there at all times.

Cash Container- A lock-box or money pouch works.  You need some cash to start the day with, as well.  Most people are just going to be carrying larger bills, like $20s, at the beginning, so you need to be able to break that for change.  Keeping you prices as even intervals helps a lot with this, going by fives means you don’t need singles.  Start out with more than fifty, if at all possible, although smaller events you can probably get away with thirty.  And break that up into smaller bills, fives and tens are the best, and do a mix of them.

Inventory Book and Price Tags- Keep track of your sales!  If you have a small enough stock, or lots of very individual/unique pieces, take the time in the days before to catalog and price everything.  This also helps if you have to leave the table and your helpers need to find a price, like if something lost its tag.  For the tags themselves, the best kind depends on what you sell.  There are tags with little strings on them, and there are stickers.  Stickers often come in different colors, so if you do go with a price system that’s in even increments, you can just make a handy little note card or other notice with the color and price on that.  The stringed ones will need prices written on all of them.  And don’t forget to bring a pen!  Multiple, actually- they like to disappear.

Credit Card Reader-  A lot of people run out of cash, or don’t even bring any.  If you are getting seriously invested, this is a major point to work with.  Square accepts all major cards, and has a handy inventory keeper in it.  It just needs to be linked to a device like a smartphone or tablet, and access to the web- a data hotspot is easy to get a hold of for this.

Containers- You need things to carry all this stuff in.  Plastic bins of varying sizes are great, and will be able to keep everything pretty well protected.  They are also easy to carry, stack, and store.

First Aid- All fairs will have a place to get medical help, but having adhesive bandages and ointments at your table will prevent having to track down someone to get a minor cut taken care of. Also bring allergy meds, pain medications, anti-inflammatories, and tissues. Think you don’t need pain meds? Think again- your feet will hurt after every show, sometimes more of you, too.

Outdoor Events

Tent/Pavilion- Cover is one of the most important things, or you will be burnt to a crisp on sunny days and soaked to the bone on rainy.  If you are doing outdoor shows often, invest in one of the better ones, and treat it with a coat of spray Flex-seal (or something like it) on both sides of the fabric.  It will help waterproof it and make it last longer.  If you get tiny holes in it, as will eventually happen, you can just spray that area again, at least before it’s a big hole.

Pavilion Sides- Rain has a tendency to drift in any amount of wind, and it will get inside your shelter.  Again, spraying these with sealant will make them last longer and work better.  There is a downside- on extremely windy days, they may try to turn the pavilion into a kite.  To help reduce this, cut slits in the lower half of the walls, running vertically.  This cuts down on the resistance it gives the wind, without allowing too much of the possible rain in.  BONUS- they help block out early morning or late evening light! 

Extra Tent Stakes and Paracord- Use these to tie down anything and everything you might need to!  It is literally invaluable to crafters with outdoor events.  Buy lots of both, and look up different knots.  Practice these, too, you never know when a speedy tie-down will be needed.

Buckets with Sand/Gravel/Rocks/Cement- Pavement doesn’t allow for tent stakes.  Five gallon buckets are easy to fill and carry, as they usually have handles.  Those make it easy to tie lines to as well.  If going with cement, you will want to get heavy duty eye screws.  While the cement is still soft, screw them into the center of the surface, up to the eye itself, leaving room for acord or rope.  When it is set, these will be heavy, but some of the best weights for the case.

Blankets- A sudden chill is terrible.  There are good outdoor/lawn blankets for sale out there.  They can also be put down on the ground if it gets really soggy for any reason.  Muddy ground in front of your booth is a huge deterrent for most people.  Rugs would work well for this too, as long as you have access to some way to clean them.

Extra clothing! Dress for the weather, and expect the unexpected.  If it’s supposed to be warm, have lightweight clothing, but still keep a jacket or something for any sudden drop in temp.  If the weather is cold, bring more than you think you’ll need.  Craft fairs are a lot of being in one place, and it’s much easier to feel cold faster.

Extra Info

Contact- Keep in touch with whoever is running the event.  This makes it easy to know when dates are changed, if certain things are provided, and if you will need extras of your own.  You can also offer ideas, find out where in the place you might be, and in general be helpful.  Try not to overwhelm them with questions or advice, though, as these people will be working nonstop in the weeks or days before it takes place.  If they are not answering something important, though, keep at it until they do.

Power Options- Some places will have electricity available.  Some of these will charge extra for it.  Know when the event is starting and ending, and if outdoors, how much light will be available in the general area.  If after dark, bring some form of light.  Battery powered lamps are readily available at camping stores.  Buy several, as one might not be enough to shed light on both your tables and behind them. If you can, try to find ones with a warmer tone, as white LEDs can wash out colors.

Wagon/Dolly- Because you now have all this stuff to move around, you need an easy way to do it.  Collapsible wagons are some of the best things out there, and come with heavy duty wheels, to go over rough terrain.  Or, you know, slave labor friends work too.

Something Else To Do- Sometimes, fairs are just slow. Talking with people is the easiest way to pass time, but having another small something can help a lot. Just make sure it is not too engrossing, as you need to be aware of your booth still.

A Sign!  Something to draw the eye is important, especially if what you are selling is small.  It also gives you a Name, which is invaluable if you want return customers.

~~~

Feel free to add to this post anything I missed.  A lot of this is from my own personal experience running booths with my friends and partners, and it is by no means a complete list of things.  And, please, please, reblog this!  I met far too many fellow crafters who came woefully unprepared.  I want to see people go into this kind of thing knowing what they need, not just having some vague idea that they want to sell things.

#craft fair #information #selling #art #event

[internetandnetwork]

How to Deal With the Rising Online Fake Reviews Problem?

Whether buyers or sellers, reviews matter a big deal for both. That stands true even more so with the holiday season approaching. Shoppers will now be turning to online reviews to make more informed purchase decisions regarding which clothes, electronic items, home furniture, or toys they should buy and from which brands.

But with the new rising online problem, many buyers are likely going to come across bogus and invalid reviews unknowingly. Fake Reviews are becoming an increasing problem in the digital world, and they literally exist across all notable platforms, so now it’s really just the question of their extent.

This blog addresses this emerging problem, what it puts at stake, different types of fake reviews, how you can identify and get them removed from your profile. Let’s dive in!

THE EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM

Popular review sites, including Google, Amazon, Yelp, and Facebook, implement different methods for content moderation and review fraud. Among all these influential platforms, probably Yelp has been the most aggressive one when it comes to oppressing review fraud. However, other sites such as Google and Amazon often say that they are, too, focusing on solving this problem, just with varying success intensity.

Review fraud is increasingly becoming a much greater problem on Amazon in particular. According to several studies performed by trustworthy sources, it has been determined that most reviews in specific product categories are fraudulent and bogus on Amazon. For instance, as per one of the studies, most of the reviews on Amazon for Bluetooth devices in the Electronics category and products in the Beauty category are fake.

However, the company disapproves of this data and argues that it is actively tackling the problem. Meanwhile, review fraud is also a significant problem on Google, where heaps of Local Guide profiles are in reality managed by “review farms.”

Review fraud has somewhat become a cat and rat game, in which dubious but more highly advanced fraudsters try to be a step ahead of platform algorithms. The reasons why review fraud is multiplying is pretty self-evident. Reviews influence the rankings on sites like Google and Amazon, and a vast majority of buyers turn to them in order to make more informed buying decisions.

Nevertheless, more and more shoppers are beginning to catch fake reviews online. According to a survey conducted last year, most of the participants admitted reading at least one fake review (it was “one” because most buyers don’t identify fake reviews usually). And this is the primary reason why buyers have started looking through various review websites before they make a buying decision, as a sort of a shield against review fraud.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF ONLINE FAKE REVIEWS

Most often, we talk about review fraud as a static phenomenon even though there are an array and different categories of illegitimate reviews:

A business owner who produces fake reviews directly or indirectly for their own business

Employees who give positive reviews for their company or bosses, and ex-employees who leave vengeful reviews for their former organization

Buyers who lie or falsify a poor customer experience in order to receive a refund or some other sort of reimbursement

Family, friends, or rivals who give good or bad reviews on behalf of a company

Companies that simply buy reviews or provide some kind of trade-off in exchange for the positive reviews

Global dealers who sell positive as well as negative reviews to businesses worldwide

A lot of fake review merchants function offshore in different countries around the world. However, according to research, the most common type of review fraud is committed by the business owners themselves who use a fake account to write good reviews about their own company or bad reviews of their competitors.

Dealing with fake reviews is undoubtedly a disastrous idea for plenty of reasons, including getting your business listing suspended or blacklisted by the platforms. However, among the plethora of reasons, consumer trust perhaps continues to be the most prominent reason why you must steer clear of trying to play the system. We think this goes without saying, but fake reviews can result in a loss of consumer trust in the company or seller, which is the last thing you’d want for your business. Most buyers will choose not to purchase from a seller or brand if they suspect fake reviews.

In addition to this, platforms calling your business out, especially Yelp, can be bitter as well. Yelp’s consumer alerts (warning messages popping up in the reviews section) can stay the business’s profile for several months based on the infringement. Now that can be a coup de grace for a local business.

IDENTIFYING AND REMOVING FAKE REVIEWS

Having discussed all the harsh repercussions a business can face if they get involved in review fraud, this also raises another primary concern. Let’s assume a business isn’t creating fake reviews for themselves; instead, their competitors are doing it to ruin their reputation and credibility; then what? They will still face the consequences of something they didn’t do! This is why it is extremely crucial to continually monitor your reviews and look out for the fake ones. But easier said than done – identifying and removing fake reviews can be tricky.

However, several advanced reputation management tools can help recognize fake reviews or even help track incoming fake reviews in real-time for quicker detection.

But when it comes to recognizing fake reviews manually, that’s where the real challenge kicks in. Still, if you choose to go with manual detection, there are several things that you can watch out for, such as reviewers not existing in the current customer database, profiles or names that appear bogus, geographically dispersed reviews, citations that suggest that the review is directed at the wrong company, reviews that seem generic or does not include much details, rating stars without any comment (on Google in particular), and so on. There are a lot of other indications too.

Every platform, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yelp, etc., has a slightly different policy for addressing suspicious reviews and requesting their removal.

However, keep in mind that following their process might not always work too. Like especially on Google, the review or reviews at issue must infringe one of its content guidelines, including “spam and fake content.” Moreover, Google will also remove reviews in the following cases:

It is written by a non-customer.

It is aimed at the wrong business.

It is not based on a real customer experience, such as political opposition to the business.

Therefore, the best thing to do in such cases is to publicly reply to the review and specify the misunderstanding or error (like the wrong business address indicating the review is directed at the wrong company) without sentiments. Likewise, if you notice a competitor writing you a bad review, politely specify that you don’t remember them as your customer. After that, find and flag that review as wrong in the GMB dashboard. Local SEO professionals advise businesses to notify Google on Twitter @GoogleMyBiz.

In the best-case scenario, Google will take a few days to remove the review(s) if they agree that it was wrong. However, in some cases, it may take a bit longer, like 15-20 days.

WRAP UP

Online reputation is not built in a day, and it takes years to establish your business as a credible entity. Reviews are not about rankings only. They are helpful to companies in terms of enhancing their products, services, or business operations. Moreover, brands that genuinely listen to their consumers and care about their opinions will eventually have better customer loyalty, and more referrals in the long run. Trying to play the system by purchasing or creating fake reviews won’t do you any good.

If a business has an established active review management system and constant incoming reviews, any unusual review fraud won’t have any significant impact on the business. And any evidently fraudulent reviews should be quickly recognized and consequently removed.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and web development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : How to Deal With the Rising Online Fake Reviews Problem?

#Tireless IT Services #Fake Reviews #reviews #digital world #digital marketing #Amazon #Facebook #Yelp

[the-half-ghost-kid-hero-rp]

Dapper ^,~

“I swear, the only thing I ever seen you in are those same sweaters and jeans,” Tazaki sighed, shaking her head. Her luggage toppled to the floor behind her, discarded.

Danny looked up at her from where he was perched on the couch, elbows and knees amid a scattering of papers, notes, and charts. He watched her curiously.

“That’s because this is the only thing I wear,” he replied, giving his outfit a brief glance. He was wearing the same thing he always wore - a blue sweater and light blue jeans (his leather jacket had been tossed somewhere a while ago) - and wondered what they had done to warrant such a protest.

The huntress took her usual seat across from him, reclining in his dad’s old chair. She was still eyeing him.

“Do you even own anything else?”

“Do you?” came Danny’s smart reply, nodding to her ensemble. “You’re wearing that jacket every time I see you.”

She shrugged. 

“So?” 

Danny gaped at her.

“So you can wear the same outfit and I can’t?”

A long finger pointed at him and she shook her head.

“See, I don’t wear the same outfit. Just the same jacket. At least I have more than one different style of shirts.”

“I have other shirts,” he replied, trying and failing to reoccupy himself with his papers. At her level glance, he shrugged, quietly adding that, “I just don’t really wear them…”

“And why not?”

“Why does it matter?” Her hidden agenda behind the questioning made continuing his research nearly impossible. He had half a mind to abandon it altogether, or at least until he could stuff her face with some food. That always shut her up for a while.

“Because it’s boring. I wear this jacket because it’s leather and has pockets for things like bullets and rosaries,” the redhead explained, pinching the zipper of her jacket.

Danny rolled his eyes. “And I wear mine because my ghost core acts like a chunk of liquid nitrogen inside of me and I’m always freezing.”

She gestured to him. “And the shirt and jeans?”

“And the sweater and jeans.”

There was a moment of silence as she contemplated what he had said and for a blissful minute he thought she would drop the whole ridiculous thing altogether so he could get back to work. He was studying up on his parents’ research on the radioactive energy ectoplasm emitted, hoping that if he could isolate a sample of the unstable cells he could use it to track portals before they opened.

His train of thought was almost full steam ahead when the huntress spoke again: “What ever happened to that white shirt you used to wear?”

He sighed, the likes of which he had never sighed before, and hung his head in desperation.

“Do you just want to rummage through my closet for yourself? Because if you–”

“Okay,” she said and was already on her feet, halfway up the stairs before he even realized what had just happened.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he called suddenly, scrambling after her and trying not to trip on his dad’s Styrofoam ball model of a radiated cell. “Hold on! You can’t just–”

A disembodied cackle came from upstairs. “You just said I could!”

“That was a rhetorical question! Rhetorical!” he shouted, climbing the stairs himself. He rounded the corner just in time to see a flash of crimson hair disappear into his room and something in his gut twisted sharply. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like he was in trouble or anything. He was an adult - or somewhere thereabouts…. probably - and could very well decide for himself what he wanted to wear. And he had been wearing the most practical, comfiest outfit he owned. At least he was fully dressed and not lounging around in his underwear like a two year old.

He skidded into his room and, sure enough, the red huntress was already up to her elbows in his wardrobe, his pile of dirty clothes shoved to the side. Well too late to stop her now, he decided, crossing his arms and leaning against his desk. This was a fight he would just have to grin and bear.

“Sweaters… sweaters… sweaters… ooh, that one’s cute,” she commented, a striped button down joined the steadily growing pile of clothes on the bed.

He hummed at it.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “Just forgot I had that one.”

With an eye roll she went back to work.

“I’m gonna be hearing that a lot, aren’t I?” she wondered, face and words muffled by the forest of cotton.

He shrugged again, watching a black turtle neck flop onto the bed.

“Probably.”

She rummaged in silence for a couple more minutes, and he took a moment to survey his room. It was weird seeing it from this angle. His normal path didn’t usually deviate from the bed to the door and back again. In fact, he hadn’t used his desk much at all in years. Which was obvious by the level of dust that had collected on its surface.

Grimacing, he wiped off his dirty finger onto his pants. He really should dust again, which sucked because it felt like he just did last week.

Suddenly a low whistle sounded from inside the closet and he leaned forward, curious as to what he could possibly still own that she could possibly find that would possibly elicit a reaction like that.

“Well well well, what is this?” she asked teasingly, pulling out none other than his old gray suit.

Danny’s eyes widened at it. The jacket, the white shirt, the blue tie - they were all still there, exactly as he had left them after escaping Wisconsin.

Noticing his expression, Taz frowned softly. “Everything okay?” she asked. 

Quietly, Danny nodded, taking the suit from her and sitting on the bed. He stared at the fabric, played with the four buttons on the front, remembered when Jazz had taught him how to tie a tie.

“Yeah…” he breathed quietly. Then, coming back to himself: “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… a lot of memories in this thing.” He had met Vlad Masters in this. He had been captured by Vlad Plasmius in this. He had overshadowed his dad and fought for his life in this stupid suit. And that didn’t even get into the debacle that had been the freshman year school dance.

“Good?” Taz prodded quietly, and Danny shook his head at her.

“Not really.” Slipping it off his lap, he held it by the hanger, inspecting it at arm’s length “A few that could’ve been. Eh, they were for the most part. It was just the rest of the times…”

The redhead sighed, looking away. She took inventory of what she had dispensed to the bed as she tried to figure out what to say. Staring one of his old white T-shirts, she smirked.

“Think it still fits?”

Danny scoffed at her. “Are you kidding? That was years ago. And it barely fit then.”

“But how will you know for sure unless…”

He looked at her sideways.

“Tazaki. This thing will not fit. I can promise you that.”

“Oh come on! You couldn’t have grown up that much since then!”

“Geez, thanks!” he gasped, a laugh in his words.

Rolling her eyes, she regarded him with a raised eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

He nodded. “I do. And the answer is still no.” With a few certain steps he approached the closet and deposited the suit into the furthest, darkest corner.

Eyes narrowed, she watched him.

“One day,” she swore, wagging a finger at him.

“Never gonna happen,” he replied coolly, brushing his hands free of the whole ridiculous matter as his footsteps carried him out of the room.

Undeterred, she shouted after him again: “One day!”

“Not on your life, princess!”

With a huff, she crossed her arms. It will happen. One day she’ll get to see him in a suit. Definitely not that one, and probably not anytime soon, but she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her.

“And put the rest of my clothes away too!” he demanded from somewhere downstairs and the huntress winced, looking at the scattering of discarded shirts and sweaters surrounding her.

When she had said she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her, she didn’t mean like this. She had meant out for a nice dinner - something not cooked, or broiled, or fried, or that had definitely spent most of its life in the back of a frozen truck - or maybe just in the confides of Fenton Works, where only she would be privy to his dashing….

Dashing….

Dashing-ness, Tazaki decided with a lot more of struggle than it should have taken. She was usually so eloquent, able to speak a dozen languages and had a real knack for stringing words together until they sounded just right.

But, that’s what a bullet wound will do. Screw up the mental word processing unit real good. And also cause internal bleeding, sure - and external, definitely - but having the word thing not working was a real inconvenience.

In a bleary-eyed haze, she realized just how well Danny’s tie matched his eyes. It was astonishing, really, how someone somewhere had managed to find the perfect blue, and how that blue had found its way onto a tie, which, in turn, had found its way to Maddie Fenton’s shopping cart. Sometimes the world was just awesome.

“Taz! Taz, can you hear me?” Danny asked and it took a couple slow blinks for his face to come into focus. There were those blue eyes again, looking down at her with horrible concern. “Stay with me! Don’t close your eyes, okay? Just keep them open! Keep looking at me.”

But, despite her best efforts, her gaze wandered past him, to the sparkling chandelier overhead. Moments ago, she had been complaining about that chandelier, how it glittered and shone and… she was convinced. The confounded things were cursed. 

After all, this evening had been going just fine until, suddenly, it wasn’t. It had started as a simple detail mission. Trigger had thought he smelled a werewolf in City Hall, so she and a couple other hunters, experts, and the like had staked out the place, slipping into the mayor’s annual charity dinner. They were just about to get to the third course when suddenly bullets. 

Apparently they weren’t the only ones who wanted the chief adviser’s head on a platter - she just would have very much appreciated it if the angry guns with guns had at least asked permission before they started shooting up their target, shouting some anti-establishment, save the gorillas dribble she didn’t give two hoots about.

She had counted four dead - two officials and two civilians - and many more injured before suddenly breathing was a considerable chore and the shoulder strap of her dress turned a different shade of red. Then Danny had finally found the decency to show up.

“Y’re l’te,” she slurred sleepily, head rolling side to side as noises and pain wow she didn’t have that much to drink! “N’ce suit though…”

“Uh, thanks,” Danny replied, flinching as another wave of bullets sounded from somewhere in the war zone of the giant dinner hall. “Crap…” he muttered quietly and even in her barely conscious, definitely delirious state she could see the terror in his eyes. 

It broke her heart. She wanted nothing more than the reach out to him and shield him from this violent life - to take a gun and fire back at the people who dare terrorize the boy who’s parents had daily threatened to dissect him but had looked them in the eye every day at breakfast anyway. 

She wanted to, but her arms were unresponsive. They were still there, somewhere, but unreachable past the agony under her skin and muscles on fire just under her neck. 

Suddenly, another body slammed down next to theirs, bringing a second overturned table in his wake, covering them on two sides. 

“Taz–oh no,” he gasped and she recognized him as Trigger, the jerk who’s idea this whole thing was from the beginning. Just as soon as she was finished with dispatching the goons who were horrifying her ghost boy, she was going to give that crazy coot a good one-two bam! Right in the kisser. 

“Back off!” Danny snarled instinctively, eyes aflame with hostile green energy. From her position, and general incoherence, the red huntress couldn’t tell if those were fangs in his mouth or just the lighting. 

“Whoa whoa! Hold up, kid!” Trigger exclaimed, hands raised and backing away slightly. 

Tazaki would’ve laughed if she could take at least one breath without nearly drowning in her own blood. 

“I’m a friend! I work with Tazaki,” Trigger continued, and Danny flinched again as someone started screaming in agony somewhere behind him. His eyes lit up an entirely different green, shoulders rigid and spine bent like a feral cat. 

Trigger frowned at him. “Are… are you a civilian?” 

“Somebody’s…” Danny winced as the screaming turned to pained wails. His pulse quickened, head spinning in horror. 

“Hey, hey, kid, listen to me, okay? Not them!” 

“They need–they’re…” The cries turned to a throaty gurgling sound and Taz closed her eyes reverently. It was too late. 

“Don’t think about them!” Trigger was insisting, grabbing Danny’s shoulders hard between his hands. “Think about me! Listen to what I’m saying to you!” 

Suddenly, Danny looked up, eyes alit with crystal blue clarity. 

“They’re dying aren’t they?” 

Trigger took a moment to mourn, and Tazaki could only lay there, fuming over what was happening and that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Yes,” the other hunter answered quietly, and Danny broke. His body started to slump with gravity, heavier than even a normal human body should ever be. And Taz wanted to scream or cry or break something because he was too young to feel the things he was. He was a boy - not a soldier like they were - still just a young child, innocent to the ways of the world. 

“Come on, kid. There was nothing you could’ve done,” Trigger said and immediately Tazaki wished for nothing else than a single bullet and the ability to aim long enough to shoot him in the face because that was no ordinary civilian he was talking to. That was a genuine, bonafide hero. The real deal. A young genius. A prodigy. A good friend. That was a boy who had done more in his lifetime than stupid Trigger had done in twice as long. 

That was Danny Phantom. 

“Dun… Dunny Pha…” she slurred, and Danny was immediately by her side, blue eyes put back together long enough to focus on her. 

Trigger blinked. “Huh? What?” he asked, scooting close, dragging his supply bag with him. It scraped against the broken glass on the floor as someone somewhere started sobbing. “Speak up, Tazaki.” 

Feebly, she slapped Danny with one hand, finger pointed to his chest. 

“…Dunny Phans…” 

Danny clasped her too cold hand in his own. 

“I’m right here, Tazzy. You… I’m right here.” 

Miraculously, something switched on in Trigger’s stupid brain and he looked at Danny, curious and stupefied. 

“What did you just call her?” 

The ghost boy blinked at him. 

“Tazzy?” 

Excitement growing, Trigger shifted so he was facing the boy, hands out as if he was about to explain ABCs. 

“And what’d you say your name was?”

Danny regarded him with a look of suspicion, which Taz could understand. She would even have encouraged it another day, but from what she remembered before everything went wrong, Trigger was the only one on the ground with her so he was likely their only option of getting out of this place alive. 

Which meant they were all as good as dead. 

“I didn’t,” Danny tested. He really wasn’t sure how he should feel about where this conversation was going. 

The red huntress at his knees tried to squeeze his hand reassuringly. 

“I…eh, I know that. But what it is?” 

“…Danny?” 

Trigger gestured for him to continue. “Danny what?” 

Taz rolled her eyes - or at least tried to. 

“Phun…” 

“Phantom?” Trigger guessed and wow remind her to be on his team next time they played charades. “You’re Danny Phantom?!” Trigger exclaimed. “Oh my– that’s Danny Phantom! He’s Danny Phantom!” 

Danny slowly inched away. 

“This… this is great! This is… fantastic!” 

Tazaki suddenly coughed, too much blood splashing out of her mouth and onto Danny’s black pants. 

“Sh’t uph,” she wheezed, and Trigger very nearly slapped himself. Too bad he didn’t. 

“Oh crap! Oh crap! Right! Right! Uh…” he looked at Danny. “Where was she hit?” 

“The neck. Around the sterno muscle, above the clavicle. Think it missed the jugular, though,” the boy replied before he could even stop and consider what a stupid question that was. 

“Missed the juggler? Guess we’ll have to go for his balls then,” Trigger tried and Taz wished she could drop dead right then and there. Whatever was waiting for her on the other side had to be an improvement of Trigger’s stupid attempts at lightening the mood. 

“No?” he asked, then cleared his throat. “Okay. Um, next order of business, uh, did the bullet come out?” 

Danny froze and tried very, very hard not to panic. It proved difficult, however, to focus on more than one thing at a time as people around him were falling and his best friend was bleeding out before him. He thought back and remembered a noise - the first gunshot - followed by an eerily long moment of silence as people comprehended what was happening. Most didn’t even hear it, and it took a few more to get everyone’s attention. Danny could see it all from above, where he had just phased through the ceiling. The maniac with the gun shouted something - his speech took a long time, which Danny had thought was weird and had stuck out to him for some reason - but amid the shock he had seen movement. Red on red, and he had known it was Tazaki and suddenly everything went crazy. He had seen chaos and bodies, and he raced to her as quickly as he could have, but the bullet had gotten to her before he could have. 

Oh no. There was a bullet. A real, metal bullet, lodged in the neck of his friend. She could die from this. She was dying. 

“No, I don’t think so,” he finally replied because he didn’t panic when he woke up after the accident and sank into the floor and he wasn’t about to start panicking now. 

“Which means…” Trigger prompted.

“The bullet is still… in her.” 

“Right. So, that leads us to can you–” 

Danny didn’t even wait for the other hunter to finish, because whatever he was going to say, wasn’t happening. Not on his watch. Instead, he planted his hands firmly on Tazaki’s body - tried not to be distracted by how cold it was - and thought metal.

Taz had zoned out as some point. Not that she could blame herself. Trigger was being his stupid self, someone somewhere else was dying, and she was so tired. But she was not going to pass out. She knew better than that. But, even in her delirious state where the world seemed to move backwards and voices sounded off pitch, she still had the presence of mind to rest her eyes for a minute. 

Or, so she thought. 

Next thing she knew, she was falling. Except she was wasn’t moving, except she was completely weightless, except she wasn’t touching anything and oh no is this what dying felt like? Being stuck in a void - unable to interact with anything, even the air? For the briefest moments she didn’t exist and it was so surreal and wrong - everything screamed at her how wrong it was - that she flailed in blind panic. This couldn’t be happening! Not to her! Not like this! She did exist, she knew it! She had memories and emotions and a life - something beyond this underwater weightlessness. 

Wait. 

Underwater. 

That rung loudly in her head and her hysterical mind clung to it, because even water - even the memory of water - existed. It had weight and form and it touched every part of her body, every pore, even when she was floating on its surface. It drenched clothes and ruined hair and somehow seemed stupidly familiar to her. But she couldn’t place it. And she was tired again. 

In the corner of her mind, the corner exactly opposite the hysteric and contemplative ones, she felt something stir. A little knock, barely distinguishable from the blood pounding in her ears, but it was there. And it brought company. 

She turned and the sight that met her eyes undid a lifetime of pain in a single instance. She screamed.

A single bullet clinked to the tile floor and Danny immediately lifted the intangibility he had placed on Taz, slowly and gently laying her back down. Hopefully she would forgive him for that one day, but the bullet was out and she would live. So that was something he could live with, even if she never spoke to him again. 

Grimacing, he flicked the thing away, not even giving it a second thought as it skittered off to who-knows-where. 

He leaned forward, staring and the red huntress’ pale face. 

“She looks really bad,” he said, and turned his eyes to Trigger, demanding he come up with the next step of keeping her alive. 

“Yeah, but she’ll be okay now that that’s out,” the hunter sighed and Danny half wanted to blast him for relaxing on the job and cry because she would be okay. “Still gotta stop the bleeding though. Doubt you’ve got a handy little trick for that, huh?” 

Like the bullet, Danny didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he ripped his jacket off and balled it together. She moaned and grimaced when he pressed it to her shoulder, and he had to remind himself he couldn’t ask for forgiveness if she was dead. 

“It’s alright. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But I gotta, okay? You’re gonna… I have to, okay? I’m sorry,” he said and didn’t even realize he was sobbing until the third tear ran down his face. 

“I’m sorry,” he continued, pleading with her to hang in there, please, just for him. Just a little bit longer. 

“I’m sorry!” 

Behind him, Trigger looked up, hunter senses alert, and whooped loudly as backup burst through the doors, making efficient work of the crazed gunmen. 

“Oh, finally!” he shouted, climbing out of their little safe area. “What took you all?”

“What happened?” the leader asked, lowering his gun. As Trigger started explaining why he wasn’t crazy and the chief adviser totally was a werewolf, the largest man in the group recognized the sounds of a particular thorn in his side sobbing and holstered his rifle, breaking from the group. 

“Danny?” he asked, yanking the heavy mahogany table away. 

The ghost boy snarled at the noise, scrambling away in an hysterical panic, eyes burning in green flames. In the half instant it took him to realize he had left his charge unattended, Asha recognized that red hair and about collapsed on the spot. 

“Tazaki…! Injured over here! Hunter down!” he shouted to the rest of the group, who rushed toward him. 

Danny scrambled back to Taz’s body, hands shaking and suit stained in red as he pressed his palms into his ruined jacket. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he was choking, arms pulsing as if he was giving the huntress’ shoulder CPR.

Slowly, Asha lowered himself down, waving the other hunters off for a moment. 

“Danny! Danny, it’s me. It’s Asha. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Danny, I’m going to take over, okay? You have to get off Tazaki, alright?” 

“I’m sorry!” 

“Danny, you have to stop. You’re hurting her.” 

The ghost boy reared back as if he had been burned. Instantly, Asha took over the hold, squeezing his palm into the huntress’ shoulder hard enough for her to groan in displeasure. 

“There you go, Red. It’s okay now,” he cooed. Looking up, he whistled the other hunters over, who got to work bandaging her up and checking her vitals. 

Letting go, Asha turned to Danny. The boy had backed himself against the other overturned table, staring somewhere between Taz’s lifeless body and another dimension altogether. 

He stared quietly, as the other hunters looked her over, and stared as they lifted her onto a portable stretcher. 

“Danny?” Asha prompted quietly, lowering himself in front of the comatose child. He knew they both wanted to go with her, but the ghost boy was in no state to get there on his own. 

“She wanted to see me in a suit,” Danny said. “Said she’d do it, one day.” 

Silently, Asha reached for the boy, who leaned into him like a lifeline. Any other day, the large man would’ve laughed at the very idea of carrying the ghost boy around. The child had peeved him off more times than Asha could count and was a long way from any sort of comradery from the older hunter. 

Of course, any other day Tazaki wouldn’t be flat lining and being carried out of city hall on a stretcher. 

Any other day, but not today. 

So he carried Danny, supporting him just the way he needed. Today, they had both almost lost their best friend. Today, he could be there to comfort and coddle a scared boy as they left behind a puddle of blood and one ruined perfect blue tie. 

//

Asked by @tazaki-theredknight-blog​ for the send “dapper” for a starter where my muse is wearing a suit or tux meme. 

Got a question or prompt for the mun or muse? Ask away! 

#@ tazaki-theredknight-blog #@ prompts #Danny Phantom #@ answered prompts

[dubsism]

Today’s Movie: Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Year of Release: 1949

Stars: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly

Director: Busby Berkeley

This movie is not on my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called the Esther Williams Blog-A-Thon being hosted by Love Letters To Old Hollywood. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been included in several of her events…frankly, she had me at Van Johnson.  Speaking of which, there’s another event coming for him soon as well.

The Story:

“Take Me Out To The Ball Game” takes place in 1908 and centers on a baseball team known as the Chicago Wolves (not to be confused with the current non-fictional minor-league hockey team of the same name). Ostensibly, this is supposed to be the actual Chicago White Sox because they play all American League opponents, but the producers don’t want to say that as there’s a not-so-subtle reference to gambling and the whole 1919 “Black Sox” scandal later in the film.

Right off the bat, most will notice this movie is a bit thin on plot.  That’s why it works as a musical; a genre where the story-line really only serves to stitch the “song-and-dance” numbers together. To that end, two of the Wolves are also part-time Vaudevillians; Eddie O’Brien (played by Gene Kelly) and Dennis Ryan (played by Frank Sinatra). Obviously, those two are the engine for the “song-and-dance” part of this film (along with Betty Garrett and Jules Munshin).

The plot comes when the team finds out they are getting a new owner.  In and of itself, that would upset the club house of any team, but matters intensify when it is discovered the new owner is a woman who intended to take an active interest in running the team. The team envisions the new owner to be some frumpy dowager, but the reality proves to be the exact opposite.

If I were an umpire, Esther Williams could kick dirt on me anytime.

K.C. Higgins (played by Esther Williams) is not only improbably gorgeous, she just so happens to know baseball.  After the expected period of adjustment beginning in spring training and stretching into the season, the novelty of having a woman as the owner wears off and the “love interest” complications set in.

First, Dennis has eyes for K.C., but all the while he’s the target of the affections of a “Baseball Annie” Shirley Delwyn (played by Betty Garrett). Eddie eventually falls for K.C. as well, and this “J. Geils-esque ‘Love Stinks'” motif teams with the musical numbers carrying the movie until we get to the real “hook” in the plot.

As far as the songs go, they are standard fare for an MGM musical; light and meant to drive the pace of the movie.  Highlights include the require d title track performed by Kelly and Sinatra when they meet the other players in Florida.  They also pair for an “All The Girls We’ve Loved Before“-type number called, “Yes, Indeedy.”  There’s no way you’re getting an MGM musical starring Frank Sinatra without “Ol’ Blue Eyes” doing what he does best, crooning a love song titled “The Right Girl for Me.” Betty Garrett provides a major dose of comic relief with “It’s Fate Baby, It’s Fate;” sung while she seems to be seriously considering jumping Sinatra’s bones.

Interwoven through the messiness of the love interests is the fact that there’s a lot gangsters around this story, the head thug being Joe Lorgan (played by Edward Arnold).  This brings us to the aforementioned allusion of the Wolves as the Chicago White Sox as Lorgan is a thinly-disguised Arnold Rothstein, the man who was indicted but never convicted of conspiring to “fix” the 1919 World Series.  Vaudevillian Eddie gets tangled up with Lorgan when he performs in a show bank-rolled by Lorgan and his cohorts who are betting on the Wolves to lose the World Series. Eventually, this leads to a series of events which result in Eddie being kicked off the team.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Much like the Wolves had a incorrect assumption about what K.C. Williams was going to be, if you think the hidden sports analogy here is about baseball, you would be mistaken. Today’s episode is a tale of a real-life K.C. Williams three-quarters of a century after the setting of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.” It’s also a story as interwoven as the love interests in that film…come along on a journey which will take us through Hollywood, the National Football League (NFL), and straight-up sexism.

ACT I – Bob & Carroll & Ted & Alice & Baltimore & Los Angeles

The story starts in 1972 when a businessman named Robert Irsay purchased the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. At the same time, another business giant named Carroll Rosenbloom owned the Baltimore Colts.  Rosenbloom amassed his fortune with the Blue Ridge Clothing Company; by 1959, Blue Ridge had grown to include almost a dozen shirt and overall companies and had over 7,000 employees.  This led to Rosenbloom being known “America’s Overalls King.”

While Rosenbloom was born and raised in Baltimore, he fancied himself being part of the glamour of Hollywood…and he fit the part as well. An athletic, dashing figure, Rosenbloom cut a larger-than-life presence…he always reminded me of Lorne Greene, and I think Rosenbloom would have been right at home as the patriarch of a TV western family.  To that end, he was was one of the largest share holders in Seven Arts Productions Limited, which backed the Broadway musical “Funny Girl,” and the films “Lolita,” “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” and “The Night of the Iguana.”

Rosenbloom also had the pedigree for a perfect NFL owner. He had an “Ivy League” education having studied at the University of Pennsylvania and playing halfback on the football team.  This is also where his connections to the NFL began; his backfield coach for the Penn Quakers was future NFL Commissioner Bert Bell.

Carroll Rosenbloom and Robert Irsay

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Robert Irsay was bombastic and a heavy drinker who cared little for the glitz of Hollywood. So, in 1972, he and Rosenbloom swapped franchises. Irsay got the Colts and Baltimore, at the time a tough, blue-collar seaport city much more befitting Irsay’s persona…and Rosenbloom got “the team of the stars.”

Carroll Rosenbloom quickly became entrenched in the milieu of Hollywood, and the Rams enjoyed tremendous success during his ownership.  The Rams won their division (NFC West) for a then-NFL record seven straight seasons between 1973 and 1979.  They even earned the franchise’s first trip to the Super Bowl after the 1979 season.  However, the relationship between Rosenbloom and the city of Los Angeles was less than rosy.

The home of the Rams, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was 50 years old at the time Rosenbloom bought the team.  The aging venue not only lacked modern amenities like luxury boxes, but it cavernous capacity of over 90,000 seats created problems with the NFL’s “black-out” policy of the era. In order to protect ticket sales,  games in which all the tickets were not sold 72 hours prior to kick-off were not broadcast in the local market. The reality was it proved difficult to sell that many ticket when even the closest seats were close to 30 yards from the playing field.

The inability to sell-out and the resultant lack of the Rams on Los Angeles television proved to be a vicious cycle with one feeding the other.  Without TV, the Rams struggled to keep drawing fan interest, which drove down ticket sales, et cetera…The continual sag in attendance drove Rosenbloom to cut a deal with the city of Anaheim in burgeoning suburban Orange County. The deal involved Rosenbloom agreeing to hold Rams’ home games in the city-owned Anaheim Stadium once it was expanded to approximately 65,000. “The Big A” was located right off a major freeway, was literally in the shadow of Disneyland, and was already home to baseball’s California Angels.

The future looked bright for both sides. Rosenbloom got a newly-remodeled venue for his football team and the more reasonable capacity likely meant the end of television black-outs. For Anaheim, it meant adding another major attraction to it’s growing list to compete with its gargantuan neighbor 30 miles up the Golden State Freeway.

But Rosenbloom would never see his Rams play football in Orange County.  In April of 1979 while the deal was still being brought to fruition, Rosenbloom suffered a heart attack and drowned while swimming in the ocean off Golden Beach, Florida.

Act II – Georgia On My Mind

Rosenbloom’s memorial at his mansion in Bel-Air was attended by nearly 1,000 wishing to pay their respects. The group was an eclectic hodge-podge of NFL owners and dignitaries, the entire Los Angeles Rams organization, and a solid representative sample of Rosenbloom Hollywood connections.  Comedian Jonathan Winters was the Master of Ceremonies.  Howard Cosell, Ricardo Montalbán, and Ross Martin were among those who delivered eulogies.  In a salute to Rosenbloom’s legendary “raucous” sense of humor, Don Rickles did what Don Rickles does.  Warren Beatty made an appearance, having just played a Ram in the previous year’s “Heaven Can Wait.” Other attendees included Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Rod Steiger, and Henry Mancini.

But it didn’t take long for the details of Rosenbloom’s will to emerge. His son Steve had been left with the “managerial and operational” duties for the Rams, and Steve his two siblings, Daniel and Suzanne, and half-siblings, Chip and Lucia each received equal shares in ownership of the franchise, totaling 30%.  But it was Rosenbloom’s widow Georgia who inherited a controlling 70% stake in the team. Another clause in the will stipulated that the ultimate decision as to who ran the day-to-day operations of the team was entirely a matter of “as long as the successor trustee, in his discretion shall determine.”

In other words, the ultimate control of the Los Angeles Rams was now in the hands of Georgia Frontiere.  Would she flex her new organizational muscle, or would she let Steve Rosenbloom run the Rams?

It took less than three months for Frontiere to assume control of the Los Angeles Rams. Frontiere was not the first female owner in the history of the NFL.  When Charlie Bidwell, the owner of the then-Chicago Cardinals, died in 1947, the team was left to his widow Violet.  In the 1950s, the controlling interest of the San Francisco 49ers was held by two brothers, Tony and Vic Morabito. When they died in 1957 and 1964 respectively, control of the team passed to their widows Jo and Jane Morabito.  But none of them ever took over the day-to-day operations of their teams.  In other words, Frontiere took the NFL into new territory.

But the main-stream sports media didn’t wait that long to create a demonstrably false narrative about her. Born Violet Frances Irwin to a beauty queen mother and businessman father in 1927 in St. Louis,  Frontiere grew up to be a voluptuous blond who aspired to be an actress and singer. Her career started performing alongside her mother in various dinner theaters.  She worked her way up through small theater productions, eventually landing on television.  She became a local celebrity in Miami in the 1950s as the host of her own interview show, a gig which landed her several appearances on NBC’s “Today” show.  It was through television that she met her future husband Carroll Rosenbloom.

In other words, Frontiere was “tailor-made” to have the narrative hung on her about being little more than being the rich, old guy’s younger “trophy wife.” Nothing says part of that couldn’t be true, but the hypocritical ass-loafs in the media never even bothered to discover the reality.

That became clear from the first time Georgia stepped onto the field at the Rams training camp as majority owner and team president.  From that moment, it was clear she didn’t give a frog’s fat ass what people thought of her.  She gave the tobacco-chewing head coach Ray Malavasi an “air-kiss” greeting and played catch with starting quarterback Pat Haden.  The New York Times treated this spectacle with it’s usual pseudo-intellectual hypocrisy, quipping that Frontiere “took Haden’s spirals on the edge of her fingertips in a way indicating that she happened to be a woman who’d been catching passes all her life.” The Baltimore Sun referred to Frontiere as “a rather shapely blonde.” But it was the Orlando Sentinel who cut right to the chase by calling her “a bosomy blonde who jiggles.”

Forget about her gender for a minute. There was hardly a mention of the fact that here was an NFL owner despite being well into their 50s could still throw a football and hang with the players on some calisthenics.  While it shouldn’t shock anybody the American media would do a trash-job on somebody; be it 1979 or today, it’s what they do.

To understand why, you need to remember two things about the American media, sports or otherwise. The first is that any semblance of journalistic integrity died with Walter Cronkite, and the second is that no major story in America in the last 50 years has been reported without being shackled to a political agenda of one sort or another.

In Frontiere’s case, this is critical to understanding why the media savaged her as they did.  She ascended to the presidency of NFL franchise precisely at the time the deadline had passed for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Upon the failure of that amendment, the American media immediately began beating a drum decrying the “oppression and second-class status” of American women.  The problem was that by her very existence, Frontiere was illustrating that much of the media narrative was at the very least conflated.

She made matters worse by not trumpeting herself as some sort of feminist icon; she just wanted to run a football team; the idea being that she wanted to stay busy during her period of grief and believed that is what her late husband would have wanted.  That’s also why her successes were downplayed, if not straight-up ignored.

While the media portrayed her as a meddling dowager of questionable competence and limited intellect, Frontiere in fact proved early on to be a decisive and gutsy leader. In the first instance of Frontiere being treated unfairly by the media, there was a portrayal of her as some sort wallet-driver power monger. The headlines were splashed about with a tale of Frontiere storming into the Rams’ offices in July of 1979 and summarily firing Steve Rosenbloom from his inherited duties running the team.

What was overlooked in that narrative was that Rosenbloom had stripped power from his father’s “right-hand man,” Don Klosterman, who Carroll Rosenbloom and many others in the NFL believed to one of the best general managers in football.  Rosenbloom did this without telling Klosterman, instead he sent a message to the rest of the league stating that all business dealings with the Rams should be addressed to Dick Steinberg, the Rams’ new director of player personnel.

Naturally, this created a bit of consternation within the Rams’ organization and confusion outside.  Frontiere was surprised by the move and when she came to the to the Rams’ training camp to deal with the discord it caused, the media came in sporting dorsal fins. Doing what she normally did, she spent time with the players during which she kicked some footballs off a tee.  This was characterized by The Baltimore Sun as “posing for publicity shots with her well-shaped legs.” This ignored the fact Frontiere tried extending the proverbial olive branch to all parties by offering to create a position of “chief advisor,” thus freeing him from many managerial duties to focus on executive-level decisions.  But a month later, Rosenbloom fired Klosterman and Frontiere fired Rosenbloom that same day.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t take guts to fire your own step-son…especially knowing what the media is going to say about you..

A week later, Frontiere held a press conference which was attended by more than 20 reporters along with camera crews from ABC, CBS, and NBC. Unfortunately, Frontiere arrived late causing  a reporter to state “she must have been out shopping.”

Act III – Meet Me In St. Louis

Another shaft-job Frontiere got from the media was her being blamed for the Rams move to Anaheim starting with the 1980 season.  Everybody conveniently forgot that move was set in place by Carroll Rosenbloom. But the move was terribly unpopular with the Rams fan base, and it was easier to blame “the woman” than the beloved late owner.

It didn’t help matters that Anaheim Stadium proved to be a horrible venue for football. It was originally built to host baseball, and as we’ve learned time and time again, baseball and football do not fit well into the same stadium.  In the case of the Big A,” the sight-lines were awful and many of the seats forced fans to sit at awkward angles to view the field.  But the worst part (and I can tell you this first-hand as a California Angels fan) was the stadium being further inland meant the late summer and early fall heat caused by the Santa Ana winds coming off the desert made the “Big A” a 60,000-seat blast furnace.

The “Big A” got an “F” for football.

The awful stadium, the less-than-ideal conditions, and the 30-mile commute from Los Angeles meant the fan base didn’t follow the Rams to Anaheim. The Rams’ years in Orange County were nearly a decade-and-a-half of declining attendance, running gun battles with both the Angels and the city of Anaheim…and Frontiere taking sniper-fire from the media.

Part of the deal between Carroll Rosenbloom and the City of Anaheim was a partnership in land development around the stadium, which in the late 1970s was surrounded by orange groves and other underdeveloped properties. But the California Angels’ owner Gene “The Singing Cowboy” Autry wasn’t about to let that happen. While to this day Autry is the only person to have a star on the Hollywood in all five disciplines (Motion Pictures, Television, Radio, Recording, and Live Performance/Theater), he became a billionaire by investing in real estate. As such, he became one of the most powerful people in Southern California, which meant there was no way he was letting somebody else get rich building hotels next to “his” ballpark. In other words, Autry and the California Angels successfully sued the city of Anaheim and the Rams to kill those development deals.

Eventually, things got so bad in Orange County that Frontiere entered discussions in 1989 to move the Rams back to the Los Angeles Coliseum.  That died a quick death because of the 1983 move of the Oakland Raiders into that venue, and they weren’t keen to have “roommates.”  That refusal by Raiders’ owner Al Davis, plus his demands for a new taxpayer-funded stadium would lead to both the Rams and the Raiders leaving Southern California within five years.

Naturally, the media blamed Georgia Frontiere for all this.

Maybe that played a role in the next move she made…maybe it didn’t. But what surely did was she couldn’t take the Rams back to the Coliseum, and life in Orange County wasn’t the cornucopia it was supposed to be.

During the transition of moving the team to Anaheim, Frontiere gave herself an insurance policy by acquiring the 30% of the team she didn’t own which was held by Carroll Rosenbloom’s children. With 100% ownership, she was free to do whatever she wished with the Rams, and once it was clear she wanted out of Orange County, the suitors for a NFL franchise beat a path to Frontiere’s door. Cities like Oakland, Las Vegas, Nashville, and San Antonio all showed some level of interest, but in the in the end, it was Frontiere’s home town which became the new home of the Rams.

The city of St. Louis was building a brand new domed-stadium perfectly suited for football.  The city sweetened the deal with incentives like $20 million in annual profits from guaranteed season-ticket sales, personal seat licenses, and a favorable lease. However, the NFL tried to stop the move, noting that St. Louis had been abandoned by another NFL franchise just a few years earlier when the Cardinals left for Arizona. As a result, Frontiere filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, and she won.

That meant 1995 saw the birth of the St. Louis Rams.

Act IV – The Sweet Smell of Success

Under the ownership of Carroll Rosenbloom, the Los Angeles Rams were perennial play-off contenders, but to be honest they were consistently winning a weak division. Throughout the 1970’s,  the Atlanta Falcons, the New Orleans Saints, and the San Francisco 49ers were never much of a threat to the talent-laden Rams. While they made the play-offs every year from 1973 to 1979, they just couldn’t over the hump that was beating either the Minnesota Vikings or Dallas Cowboys.  When Carroll Rosenbloom died before the 1979 season, many thought the Rams would drift off to mediocrity from losing the organizational direction he provided.

During the pre-season of 1979, Frontiere firmly established herself as the organization’s leader.  She penned a doctrine in which she made it clear she was the boss…there were literally no “ifs, ands, or buts” about it.  To clear up the mess left by Steve Rosenbloom, Frontiere believed that strong leadership would get the Rams over that hump, and in the short-term, she was right. After she posted her paper to the team, she told Sports Illustrated “Right now, we don’t have much leadership. Oh, they played well—they’re trying to earn their positions—and I’m not talking about the coaching. We have good coaching. I’m talking about the top. There are some things that have to be ironed out.”

Whatever she told the team must have worked, because the Rams finally reached Super Bowl XIV after the 1979 season. The Rams lost to the juggernaut Pittsburgh Steelers 31-19.  There was no shame in that loss; nobody else could beat the Steelers of that era.  But the Rams franchise took the next step, and Frontiere became a bit of celebrity when she appeared in an American Express commercial with the Rams players. and graced the cover Sports Illustrated.

The 1980s saw a series of ups and downs for Frontiere and the Los Angeles Rams. On the field, The Rams of the 1980s remained a perennial play-off team, reached the playoffs eight times between 1980 and 1989, although they did not return to the Super Bowl as long as they remained in Southern California. Frontiere became less “hands-on” with the organization by passing much of the daily financial and football management responsibilities on to key executives.

Things started going downhill in 1986.  Frontiere had remarried after Carroll Rosenbloom’s passing to composer Dominic Frontiere.  That year Dominic was arrested for for lying to a government agent as part of a federal investigation that came from allegedly scalping 1,000 Super Bowl tickets. While he ended up being incarcerated for nearly a year, Georgia was not implicated in any wrongdoing, but this didn’t stop the media from trashing her once again.

By the 1990s, matters were getting bleak. Attendance had fallen to 45,000 fans per game; off from a peak of 62,000. Again, this most of the Rams’ home games were blacked out, and the team had been replaced by the new “team of the stars,” the newly-arrived Los Angeles Raiders.

Naturally, the Rams’ financial health was suffering as well. Frontiere’s attempts at having stadium built in Los Angeles garnered no support from local leaders. By the 1990s, the end of the “Cold War” resulted in massive-scale layoffs by defense contractors in Southern California. As a result, by 1994, the Los Angeles Rams claimed to have lost $6 million, and made only $7.6 million during the previous four seasons. Hence the 1995 move to St. Louis.

Naturally, the media fanned the flames in Southern California, making Frontiere out to be public enemy #1 for moving the team.  But after having lost the Cardinals to Arizona, the city of St. Louis welcomed with open arms Frontiere and her football team.  The city even hosted a rally downtown and thousands of fans chanted “Georgia, Georgia!” Frontiere responded to the cheering crowd with “St. Louis is my home, and I brought my team here to start a new dynasty.”

That’s exactly what she did.  The Rams took a few years to recover from 15 years of being the “red-headed step-child” of the Southern California sports world, but once they did, the Rams emerged as one of the best teams in football in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Frontiere had an odd formula for building a winner in St. Louis, but there’s no doubting it worked.

It began with the 1997 hiring of head coach Dick Vermeil, who had been out of football for 15 years (and who has a Dubsy Award named for him). Vermeil’s first player personnel move was to trade up in the draft to pick offensive tackle Orlando Pace…who would become a consistent All-Pro and ended up in the Hall of Fame. The Rams then traded Jerome Bettis (another future Hall of Fame player)  to the Pittsburgh Steelers for draft picks.

By 1999, there seemed to be cause for optimism for the Rams. They had acquired quarterback Trent Green and future Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk in separate trades, and it looked like offensive coordinator Mike Martz finally had the makings of a winner.  That optimism disappeared when Green shredded the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee; an injury which would sideline him for the entire season.  A tearful Vermeil (hence the category of his Dubsy award) made a solemn vow the Rams would “play good football” behind Green’s backup, a 28-year-old guy named Kurt Warner.

Not only had nobody ever heard of Warner, and his pedigree for professional football seemed rather suspect. No NFL team drafted him out of the University of Northern Iowa.  His only professional experience came from stints with the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe and the Iowa Barnstormers of that now-defunct sideshow known as the Arena Football League. In fact, Warner was making ends meet by bagging groceries and stocking shelves in a supermarket before joining the Rams. Most saw the Rams having yet another losing season, some even going so far as to say they would be the worst team in the league.

But the beauty of sports is that it rivals Hollywood for the ability to produce “fairy tale” stories. Something magic happened, and within weeks Warner and the Rams were the toast of the NFL.  Sportscasters dubbed them “the Greatest Show on Turf” because of their high-speed, quick-strike offense which seemed as though it could score at will. The Rams finished the 1999 season with a 13-3 record, and they cruised through the play-offs on the way to a 23-16 victory over the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

Frontiere and Vermeil with the Lombardi Trophy

Frontiere, Vermeil, and Kurt Warner after winning the Super Bowl

Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in Atlanta that night in January 2000 was the vindication of Georgia Frontiere.  This was the pinnacle of her 28-year ownership; an era which began with sanctimonious hypocrite New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica writing bilge like “The board of directors of women’s liberation ought to keep an eye on sweet Georgia… If she continues to run the Rams, pretty soon it is going to be back into the kitchen for every woman.”

How did that Lombardi Trophy feel when she shoved it up your ass, Mike?

ACT V – Epilogue

Georgia Frontiere was the pioneer for women taking an active role heading professional football franchise. In an era of women’s liberation, Frontiere never saw herself as a feminist icon, which is why the “liberal” media trashed her at every opportunity.  In fact, one of the only times she ever spoke on the subject her words were taken by some as a “shot” at the feminist movement.

“There are some who feel there are two different kinds of people — human beings and women. As soon as a woman tries to be a human being, people think she’s trying to be a man.”

Taken out of context, you can interpret that statement several ways. What is certain is Frontiere didn’t want be a man; she wanted to run a football team the best way she could.  That’s exactly what she did. She may not have been the greatest owner in the history of the game, but she wasn’t the worst either. Her team won a championship, and there’s a lot of owners who can’t say that.

You can say whatever you want about Georgia Frontiere. After her death in 2008, minority owner Stan Kroenke acquired a controlling interest in the St. Louis Rams and moved them back to Los Angeles in 2015. In 1995, Frontiere may have been the most hated woman in Los Angeles, but a quarter-century later her name is headed for the ash-heap of history. But what can’t be argued is her commitment to her team.  Throughout her time as the owner of the Rams, it simply was not possible to attend to a Rams game and not see Georgia Frontiere somewhere in the stadium.

But that doesn’t mean she was perched in a luxury suite lording over her subjects fans separated by so much plate glass.  Georgia Frontiere preferred to mingle with the players, the fans…the people who she knew made it all possible.  On the night of the Rams Super Bowl victory, Frontiere succinctly stated the source of her desire to succeed, “From the time my late husband died, it has been a constant effort to do what he expected me to be able to do. He said ‘If anybody can, you can. You always stick to your ideas, and nobody pushes you around.’”

And nobody did.

The Moral of the Story:

If you’re going to be “the first” at something, you had better be tough.

Check out Dubsism’s Movies and Blog-A-Thons page for a full schedule of projects past, present, and future!

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Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies – Volume 87: “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” Today's Movie: Take Me Out To The Ball Game Year of Release: 1949 Stars: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly…

#Carroll Rosenbloom #Classic Movies #Georgia Frontiere #Los Angeles Rams #Movies #NFL #Robert Irsay #Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies

[kevinclerk11-blog]

Cuomo’s L-Train Bombshell: All (OK, Not ALL) Your Questions Answered!

No need for a long, windy intro. We all know that Gov. Cuomo torpedoed the MTA’s longstanding plans to completely shut the L-train tunnel between Manhattan and Williamsburg in favor of a less-intensive proposal that raises a million questions. So here goes…

Wait, so what’s the plan?

Even though the MTA has been working on fixing the Hurricane Sandy-damaged tunnel for three years, Cuomo has jettisoned the full 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week shutdown in favor of a partial plan that would close only one of the two tunnels on nights and weekends and merely patch damaged portions of the tunnel, and mount new cables on the walls rather than painstakingly replace them inside the walls.

For years, the MTA said it needed to replace 302,000 feet of cable, 14,000 feet of rail, plus 15,000 feet of third rail, reconstruct 30,000 feet of concrete ducts, install new tunnel lights, replace pumping equipment, build a substation, replace circuit breakers, repair a fire-protection system, and repair 7,100 feet of concrete that lines the tunnel [PDF]. It is unclear what, if any, of that work will be done.

Cuomo’s engineering consultant, Mary Boyce, dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, told reporters that an easier plan is possible here because it had been tried in London and Riyadh.

Forgive us if we don’t think much of the Riyadh subway system, which hasn’t even opened yet.

Why did he do it?

There’s lots of speculation, including some that Cuomo wanted to impress 2020 or 2024 presidential voters (which is complete hogwash, given that no Democratic primary voter in Iowa or New Hampshire would ever have said the words, “I was leaning towards Cuomo until I heard that some commuters in Canarsie had been inconvenienced by his decision to repair vital infrastructure”).

Obviously, this is all about Cuomo, as the Times far-from-subtly pointed out: “Mr. Cuomo appeared pleased to have stepped in to save the day,” reporter Emma Fitzsimmons wrote.

Indeed, Cuomo said he believes that straphangers favor a partial shutdown rather than a full one, though polls indicate just the opposite, as the Post mentioned in its editorial.

And Cuomo will definitely see an “L train bump,” judging by the Post’s gushing front page.

Tomorrow’s cover: Brooklyn residents thrilled after L-train shutdown nixed https://t.co/CE6DPkkZWz pic.twitter.com/EvlNQqEoGW

— New York Post (@nypost) January 3, 2019

Who is credible — Cuomo or the MTA?

Cuomo says the Canarsie Tunnel does not need to be shut because all that’s needed is fiber-reinforced polymer to patch it. (Hmm, patching it doesn’t sound very comprehensive.) This decision comes just a few days after Cuomo toured the tunnel with a hand-picked engineering team — and three years after the MTA said the repairs were absolutely essential. Indeed, the agency issued this dire statement two months ago:

The L tunnel – also known as the Canarsie Tunnel – was one of nine underwater tunnels that flooded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. … The tunnel was flooded with enough water to fill 11 Olympic-sized swimming pools and suffered extensive damage to tracks, signals, switches, power cables, signal cables, communication cables, lighting, cable ducts and bench walls throughout a 7,100-foot-long flooded section of both tubes. Bench walls throughout those sections must be rehabilitated to protect the structural integrity of the tubes.

The MTA and city DOT said the L train tunnel looks really bad. But Gov. Cuomo doesn’t think so. Photo: MTA/DOT

Protect the structural integrity — sounds important, right?

And the MTA’s plan was very detailed because, it said, the repairs were so urgent (see one page of the agency’s handout left).

Independent analysts seemed to side with the MTA. “The repairs are necessary because saltwater inundation in 2012 caused by hurricane Sandy accelerated deterioration within the tunnel,” Crain’s reported. “Temporary work allowed the tunnel to reopen soon after the storm, but conditions continued to worsen.” (Continued to worsen sounds bad, right?)

Meanwhile, Dan Rivoli of the Daily News pointed out that the very part of the tunnel that Cuomo will patch rather than replace caused a subway derailment when it collapsed one time.

A crumbling bench wall in the G train tunnel once caused a derailment.https://t.co/MtwQiZ08EN

Those are the stakes facing L train commuters now that the repairs are a patch job instead of a full renovation.

Here's the exchange with me and the governor on this today: pic.twitter.com/zzzL92ew8Y

— Dan Rivoli (@danrivoli) January 3, 2019

And MTA board member Veronica Vanterpool was stunned to find out about Cuomo’s announcement shortly before it was made, given the supposedly dire condition of the tunnel.

“What are the long-term implications of this decision? Are we just essentially putting a Band-Aid on a problem that has been well documented?” she said, according to amNY.

Riders Alliance Executive Director John Raskin pointed out that the emperor is the one with no clothes in this debate.

“At the end of the day, what riders care about is whether the L train is repaired for the long term, and how much disruption it will take to get there,” he said. “The governor’s plan may or may not work, but you’ll pardon transit riders for being skeptical that a last-minute Hail Mary idea cooked up over Christmas is better than what the MTA came up with over three years of extensive public input.”

And interim MTA board chairman Freddy Ferrer didn’t help Cuomo sound very credible when he told reporters, “You might ask, ‘Well why wasn’t this approach considered earlier?’ The answer is that the integration of these approaches — there are several — and the technology had not previously been applied in the context of a rehabilitation project. It’s innovative, creative and we deem it a sound plan.” (A sound plan? Cooked up in a couple of weeks?)

Who does this help?

Cuomo wants us to believe it helps all commuters.

“You would have roughly 250,000 people who would need a different way to get to work,” he said of the shutdown. Closing the tunnels only on nights and weekends will “be a phenomenal benefit to the people of New York City,” he added.

Judging by the coverage — from NY1’s report of blissful residents of 14th Street to New York Times Metro Editor Clifford Levy’s horrendous tweet — NIMBYs along 14th Street are pleased, as are selfish inter-borough subway riders.

But aren’t we forgetting something…

Who does it hurt?

Almost everyone:

One of the government’s basic tasks is to maintain infrastructure. If, indeed, the Canarsie Tunnel is damaged as badly as the MTA said, failing to fix it now will bring much more pain (and expense) later.

The biggest losers, of course, are the L-train riders who use the train on nights and weekends — which may not sound like a lot of people to daytime commuters, but the L train is one of the busiest lines on nights and weekends. There’s also a class issue, as nighttime riders tend to be working people, as Erwin Figueroa of TransAlt and others pointed out.

As always, poor and POC New Yorkers will bear the brunt of this new "plan" for the L train, as shutdowns during nights and weekends will impact them the most. The bike lanes, busways and longer G trains need to remain as planned. #CuomosL

— Erwin Figueroa (@TransitErwin) January 3, 2019

People who were already using the new protected and on-street bike lanes — and were looking forward to HOV3 lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge — all which may soon be erased because of the “sea change” of Cuomo’s announcement, Mayor de Blasio said. “We’re going to evaluate what [the announcement] means and if we’re going to look at these things in another light.”

People who wanted to reclaim our roadways from car commuters, who will likely again be able to drive over the Williamsburg Bridge in their single-occupancy vehicles and Ubers.

Most important, the MTA’s credibility has now been completely undermined by Cuomo, which is a problem because…

Wait, doesn’t Cuomo need the MTA to look good right now?

The timing of the announcement is a horrendous public relations disaster for Cuomo, who is about to head back to Albany to push congestion pricing to a less-than-enthusiastic legislature. In many interviews with Assembly and Senate lawmakers, Streetsblog has found intense ambivalence among outer-borough legislators, who wrongly believe that many of their constituents regularly drive into the city (very few do, statistics show) and that congestion pricing would hurt working-class people (car commuters tend to be wealthier overall).

So just as he’s about to counter that hemming and hawing with a bold plan to raise $1 billion per year for the MTA, Cuomo basically undermines the MTA’s credibility as a steward of the transit system. Even the spokesman for Mayor de Blasio — who has also waivered on congestion pricing — pointed that out.

“Like everyone else, the mayor thinks the MTA has some real explaining to do about how it has handled this for the last few years,” spokesman Eric Phillips said in a statement that also questioned the MTA’s abilities.

Aaron Gordon of Signal Problems also raised these questions on Friday morning:

I don’t know how the MTA, as an agency, recovers whatever credibility it had left. What happens the next time the MTA determines a major public works project must be undertaken? Who is going to take them seriously? Who is going to defer to their expertise? What does this mean for Byford’s upcoming appeals to the state legislature to give him some $60 billion? Are elected officials going to say “we believed you about the L shutdown being necessary, why should we believe you now?” I suspect Byford will try to spin it as a sign of the agency’s nimbleness and willing to accept best ideas, but I don’t know how that will play.

Will Mayor de Blasio keep the good parts of the L shutdown?

As noted above, the mayor is skeptical that he needs to keep the good stuff like the sort-of protected bike lanes on 12th and 13th streets — which NIMBY groups oppose because they removed on-street car storage — and dedicated bus lanes. Advocates are demanding that the street safety and transit improvements remain, but NYC Transit President Andy Byford said new ferry service would certainly be eliminated.

“Smart transportation plans have been laid in concert with community and elected leaders that should still go into effect, including the transit way on 14th Street, which would serve as a model for improving bus travel throughout the city; experimentation with HOV restrictions on East River crossings; and accessibility and station circulation upgrades at First Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Union Square, and Bedford Avenue,” the Regional Plan Association said in a statement. “Changes like these would improve the commutes of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors to our city and help our city address pressing transportation challenges.”

Should Andy Byford resign in protest?

Of course he should. Byford was informed of Cuomo’s decision shortly before it was announced publicly, putting him in the position of having to answer for a governor who had just bigfooted him worse than a raging Sasquatch. If Cuomo’s plan succeeds, Cuomo gets the credit. If it fails, Byford will have to clean up the mess.

Poor guy sounds sick and tired. https://t.co/GeCdok9NyE

— Interim MTA Chair David 'Amazon Cuomo' Meyer (@dahvnyc) January 3, 2019

Meanwhile, Byford looks like an ineffective leader just when he’s trying to restore faith in the system he oversees.

He should consider resigning in protest, as Travis Eby, a member of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign pointed out in a tweet.

Everybody working for Cuomo should resign in protest, starting with Andy Byford https://t.co/D6bsv7fsPV

— Travis R. Eby (@travis_robert) January 3, 2019

Oh, and what’s with Clifford Levy’s New York Times Metro section lately?

Before anyone could digest the ramifications of Cuomo announcement, Levy, the editor of the Metro section of the supposedly sober Gray Lady, tweeted, “Brooklynites, rejoice! Cuomo plans to cancel the full shutdown of the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan.”

It was a weird take from an important opinion-maker — and transit advocates let him have it all day.

You are the head of the metro section and you don’t know this is a Cuomo ham job?

— Cameron O'Leary (@CamtrakAcela) January 3, 2019

“Metro Editor at New York Times” clueless. Makes you wonder how a person gets that job title while not comprehending the issues related to it.

— Thomas (@thomstern) January 3, 2019

Worse, Levy’s Twittergate comes just one day after his Metro section published a story questioning why the Port Authority should continue running the PATH train — which serves 82 million rides a year — because it loses money. The implication that Levy allowed into print is that transit and other infrastructure exists to raise money rather than fulfill its actual purpose: to foster the regional economy. Levy’s Metro section also recently reported on the need for adult crossing guards in Tribeca without even mentioning congestion pricing or holding any politician accountable for allowing suburban commuters to terrorize city pedestrians.

Source: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/01/03/cuomos-l-train-bombshell-all-your-questions-answered/