#I’m pretty sure the person receiving the payment Does need to know A Name involved for keeping records & tax purposes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wrestlingisfake · 3 years

Text

Resurgence preview

It's been a year now since New Japan launched their US-based show, NJPW Strong. I'm sure the original plans involved running US tours with a mix of American regulars and visiting stars from the main Japanese roster. The pandemic, however, limited the scope of Strong, mainly featuring minor leagues on a closed set. It almost felt like a parallel universe with little relationship to the "real" NJPW. Now, finally, the brand gets to do a show in front of an actual crowd, and we get to see this concept the way it was meant to be seen.

The show airs live on NJPWworld (999 yen for one month--about $9.12 US) at 11pm EDT. Or, if you just cannot handle setting up your payment on a Japanese website, you can get the show on FITE.tv for $19.99 US. Both services should make the show available on-demand later, in case you want to wait until you're done watching Triplemania.

Lance Archer vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - Archer is defending the IWGP United States champioship. The title was in limbo through most of 2020, as Jon Moxley was unable to schedule a defense in either New Japan or AEW. That changed in 2021, as thawing relations between the two promotions led to more Moxley title matches, until he lost the belt to Archer on July 21. Shortly before Archer's first defense on July 28, AEW aired a video of Tanahashi challenging the winner of that match.

This is Tana's first show outside of Japan since the pandemic began, and his first match in California in nearly three years. I'm not sure anyone expected him to be here, given that the New Japan of America operation has focused on building up North American talent rather than bringing in big stars from the home promotion. So this is a special treat for the live audience, above and beyond Archer coming in from AEW.

I expect a pretty straightforward match with Archer killing Tana with big power moves and Tana rallying for a big babyface comeback. In a vacuum I would think either man could end up with the belt. However, the real story to this match is that Tanahashi went out of his way to make a challenge for the US title, but not until after Jon Moxley lost it. So Moxley has accused Tana of ducking him, and it stands to reason that he'll confront the winner of this match to close the show. That feels like a formula for Tana vs. Mox for the title, maaaybe at the AEW pay-per-view on September 5. Everyone sure seems to hope that's where we're headed, so I don't think a lot of people will be pulling for Archer tonight.

Jay White vs. David Finlay - This is White's first defense of the NEVER openweight championship. It's also his first New Japan match since May, as the quarantine procedures for entering Japan have made travel pretty rough for the non-Japanese talent. As I recall, Finlay received this title shot because he pinned White back in March. Finlay hasn't been back in Japan since that tour. Both of these guys have been in Impact Wrestling as of late.

Originally, the idea behind White winning the NEVER title was to set up a match with Hiroshi Tanahashi at one of the Wrestle Grand Slam stadium shows that New Japan scheduled this summer. The aforementioned travel problems seem to have scuttled that, so now White is facing The Other Guy From FinJuice.

The biggest buzz I've heard surrounding this match is that Finlay appeared on Wrestling Observer Live to promote the show and ended up giving fans the impression that he wanted to go to NXT. I mean, Finlay could be fucking with us on that. But it's not a good sign when people are mainly interested in a match because they're looking for signs that one of the participants is fixing to leave the promotion. Not that it affects the finish, of course--Finlay could sign with NJPW for a million years, and he still wouldn't be booked to beat White for a title in 2021.

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Moose - This match kind of came out of nowhere. Ishii isn't exactly a top guy in New Japan but he's always right below that level, clobbering most of the roster and getting clobbered to set up new contenders. Most of the NJPW Strong roster would be underdogs against him. But then, Moose isn't on the Strong roster--he's coming over from Impact, where he's been pushed as a top heel for months. Moose is a 6-foot-5 big mean guy and Ishii is a 5-foot-7 big mean guy, so this should be an interesting contrast. It's easily the most interesting match on the show.

I'd like to see Moose win, since it'd be a slight upset and he could use the momentum for whatever he's doing next. But if he is gonna win, Ishii is going to convince you that he had to work his ass off to earn it. I'm looking forward to this.

Tom Lawlor & JR Kratos & Danny Limelight & Jorel Nelson & Royce Isaacs vs. Lio Rush & Chris Dickinson & Adrian Quest & Fred Yehi & Yuya Uemura - Lawlor is the NJPW Strong champion and his team is the New Japan version of "Team Filthy." The babyface team originally featured Brody King, but he was pulled from the card at the last minute due to "unforeseen circumstances", so Adrian Quest is substituting for him. That's a real tough break for the good guys.

There are several storylines at play here. Lio Rush stepped up as the next challenger for Lawlor's title, and they'll have that match at the August 16 tapings. Dickinson was kicked out of Team Filthy, and is currently aligned with Brody King's Violence Unlimited stable. Uemura had been working on the Japan roster as a Young Lion, but he's just begun his excursion so he has a chance to really express himself as a performer.

If Rush wasn't already positioned as Lawlor's next challenger, I might think this match could end with someone pinning Lawlor. As it is, though, it probably makes more sense for Team Filthy to win in a dominant fashion. Yehi and Quest are basically undercard scrubs, and Uemura just now graduated to that position. Rush and Dickinson aren't going to be able to carry so many weak links.

Juice Robinson vs. Hikuleo - Juice has spent most of 2021 teaming with David Finlay over on Impact, whereas Hikuleo has been wrestling on Strong and more recently on a few AEW shows. Given that Hikuleo is 6-foot-8 you'd expect him to squash everything in his path, but New Japan isn't afraid to have more established stars get the better of him. Whether Juice is one of those more established stars remains to be seen.

Juice biggest career highlight was winning the IWGP US title, and Hikuleo's was challenging for that title a few weeks ago. If one of them is going to be in the hunt for that belt, then winning this match should be step one. As much as I'd like to see Juice back in the chase, I get the feeling it'll be Hikuleo taking that role.

Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows vs. Jon Moxley & X - The Good Brothers (Gallows and Anderson) are the Impact Wrestling men's tag team champions, but their title is not at stake here. I think Moxley was originally booked to team with Syota Umino on this show, but travel restrictions prevented Umino from coming into LA. One way or another, Moxley will have a mystery partner that won't be revealed until the match begins.

The backstory is that Gallows and Anderson have been a thorn in Moxley's side every time he's tried to fight Kenny Omega, or really anybody in Omega's stable. With that in mind, the most logical partner would be Sami Callihan, who has a history with Moxley and unfinished business with Omega's group. People have been asking for a Moxley-Callihan reunion from the minute AEW and Impact started collaborating, and there's no reason it can't happen here. On the other hand, I wonder if that's something New Japan would do as a surprise, as opposed to advertising it ahead of time.

If Moxley's partner isn't Callihan, there's a serious risk that the live crowd will start chanting for Callihan and disrupt the match. So if they're going with someone else, it'd better be good. I suppose Eddie Kingston would be accepted, although again, why would that be something you do as a surprise? Personally, I'm all about Moxley and the cold, deadly eyes of Shooter Umino, so I know I'll be disappointed no matter what. :(

Anyway, it'd be stupid for Moxley's team to lose this match.

Rocky Romero & Fred Rosser & Wheeler Yuta vs. TJP & Clark Connors & Ren Narita - This is a pretty good sampling of the NJPW Strong midcard. Of this group, Romero has the most clout with the main New Japan roster. Rosser is still best known as WWE's Darren Young, the guy from the Nexus who looks exactly like John Cena. Yuta has been making waves on AEW, filling in for Trent Beretta with Orange Cassidy's group, so I guess he and Rocky are both Best Friends Twice Removed or something. TJP is a former WWE cruiserweight champion and Impact X division champion. Connors is one of the guys from the Gekiochi-kun ads--I think he's the one who snaps his fingers to teleport everybody. Ren Narita is the guy who used to wrestle Syota Umino all the time, but Syota is not on this show. :(

Alex Coughlin vs. Karl Fredericks - When Strong started, Coughlin, Fredericks, and Clark Connors were the three Young Lions from the LA Dojo who worked as prelim guys. Since then I believe Connors and Fredericks have "graduated," and Coughlin is still working on it. I'm pretty sure Fredericks is the one in the Gekiochi-kun ads that says "that's pretty cool." I don't remember what Coughlin does in those ads, so clearly he needs to get his ass in gear. Anyway, I guess Fredericks wins.

Bateman & Mysterioso & Barrett Brown vs. The DKC & Kevin Knight & Jordan Clearwater - This is scheduled as a dark match 30 minutes before the live stream begins. I've heard most of these names, but the only one I kinda know is Bateman from whatever goofy stable he's in at Ring of Honor. I dunno, I guess his side wins.

#njpw #njpw strong #njpw of america #resurgence #lance archer #hiroshi tanahashi #jay white #david finlay #jon moxley

5 notes · View notes

shannendoherty-fans · 3 years

Photo

People, September 9th 1991

High School Confidential

By Tom Gliatto and Michael Alexander.

Photos by Mark Sennett.

Beverly Hills, 90210 Gets Its Heat from a Dangerously Cute Cast of TV's Hottest New Stars CONFIDENTIAL MEMO: FROM: The Vice Principal TO: The Faculty, High School U.S.A. I'm sure I don't need to remind you what happened when we didn't prepare for Bart Simpson last fall. The school was flooded with rude, antieducational T-shirts. Some cows were had. Well, as a new school year gets under way, I believe we face another daunting challenge: Brace yourselves for Beverly Hills, 90210. That's the Fox drama about unworldly twin teens Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), recent transferees from Minneapolis to the Hills of Beverly. There they struggle to assimilate into the fast-lane lifestyle of West Beverly Hills High School, where the kids come equipped with BMWs, call waiting and designer surfboards. In the process, the teens examine their emerging identities and the problems that adolescents everywhere face.

The show languished in the Nielsen ratings against Thursday powerhouse Cheers last year. But Fox had no replacement, so it stayed. While we were on summer vacation, new 90210 episodes began airing, and the show landed in the Top 20, becoming the most popular show among teenagers. To some extent, I take responsibility for having ignored 90210. I made the mistake of reading newspaper critics instead of my daughter's diary, and so I believed, as Howard Rosenberg sniffed in the Los Angeles Times, that the show was merely a "ZIP code for stereotypes and stock characters." Little did I know that this show would mesmerize teens by doing emotionally realistic shows that involved adolescent rebellion, alcoholic; parents, a breast-cancer scare and plenty of worrisome teen sex. "Most shows for adolescents," says 90210 creator Darren Star, "seem like they are written by 50-year-olds who think teenagers behave like 7-year-olds."

It also doesn't hurt that the show's male stars, Priestley and Luke Perry (who plays brooding loner Dylan McKay), are "to die for," as my daughter puts it. These two have each been receiving about 1,500 fan letters a week. So be vigilant: Surely some of these will be written by our students...during class! And I'm afraid that 90210 is only going to get bigger with our kids, if producer Aaron Spelling is to be believed. "I thought The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels got a lot of publicity in their heyday," says Spelling, whose company produced those shows, "but it doesn't compare to this. It's crazy. We have merchandising coming out of our ears"—a complete line of T-shirts, beach towels, notebooks, etc. "And now these actors can't walk down the street!"

Or even streak through malls. You probably saw those alarming news reports about a frenzied mob of 10,000 fans that stampeded Perry when he appeared at a south Florida mall last month. "It's a little scary," says Perry. Scarier is the amount of time students will waste this fall discussing Luke. And Jason. And who is sexier. I provide some information on the two. Jason Priestley, 22, plays Brandon Walsh, a model of thoughtful level-headedness. In real life, however, the brown-haired, blue-eyed star, who started acting in commercials at age 4 and played an orphan on that very nice NBC sitcom Sister Kate, is no Oliver Twist. He likes dirt bikes, bungee jumping and is a chain-smoker (just about the whole cast puffs it up—but not on-camera). Vancouver-born Priestley likes to hang out in Las Vegas. As for his real romantic life, he was reportedly dating actress Robin (Doogie Howser, M.D.) Lively last spring, but it seems likely that now he is too busy for such dalliance;. He must be on the set 14 hours a day, five days a week. To avoid ever-present fans, Priestley says, "I look different from my character when I'm just walking around. I don't shave, I don't dress like Brandon."

On the show, 26-year-old Luke Perry (Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, Dylan) sports a leather jacket, dagger sideburns and a squint that spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Although he grew up and graduated from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, he seems to have attended James Dean wise-guy classes. Perry, who played country-boy Ned Bates on the ABC soap Loving, entertains the 90210 cast by strutting around bare-chested making jokes. Does he have a girlfriend? "No. You know how I can get in touch with Linda Hamilton?" What kind of music does he listen to? "Tom Jones is awesome." Are he and Priestley ever mistaken for each other? "He's mistaken for me on his good days." And 90210, he says, is "the best show on television, except for Jeopardy!" We should act quickly, faculty, when we see any signs that Beverly Hills, 90210 is disrupting normal student activity.

How abnormal might things get? Consider: "It's almost like there are cults," says Brian Austin Green, 18, the North Hollywood High grad who plays the cutely dweeby David Silver. "Girls go to school the day after the show, and they actually become these characters. They say, 'Okay, today I want to be Dylan, you can be Brenda, you can be Brandon.' " Needless to say, students caught pretending to be TV characters should be brought directly to my office for detention. But you know, it might not be a bad thing if our students could show some of the good sense that the 90210ers display in coping with the pressures of fame and fortune. Jennie Garth, 19, who plays the very sexy, very blond, very snotty Kelly Taylor, is particularly admirable. The youngest of seven children, she grew up on a farm near Champaign, Ill., until her schoolteacher parents moved to Phoenix when she was 13. "Living in a small town and coming from a very tight and close family instilled a lot of standards that I need to live up to," says Garth, who just bought a home in Sherman Oaks. She also recently supplied her parents with the down payment for their new home, setting a splendid example for today's youth.

According to a tabloid that someone left in the faculty lounge, Memphis-raised Shannen Doherty, 20, a veteran of such wonderful shows as Little House: A New Beginning, is the only cast member to be accused of behaving like "a spoiled brat" on the set. But she maintains she is no such thing. "I think everybody gets in a bad mood," Shannen says. "You do not work 16-hour days and not start feeling it. But I have never thrown a tantrum. I've gotten upset on the set, but it's never been just to be a bitch. You have to stand up for yourself in this business. That was something I was told when I was 12 years old and working with Michael Landon."

As with about half the cast members, Doherty is in a relationship—in her case, a real-estate developer with whom she's exchanged commitment rings. "You really have to date a while before you decide if this is the person you want to marry," she says with Brenda-like candor. Almost sounds like the relationship could be a future 90210 plot. "The problems of young people have accelerated," says Aaron Spelling, "and so have their feelings and thoughts." The show, he says, has kept pace: Even with their Clearasil-perfect complexions and plump allowances, the students at Beverly Hills have encountered their share of problems. "We had the guts to make Luke Perry be a member of AA," says Spelling. "We had Jason, our star, drinking and driving. That's reality."

And, apparently, the adulatory fan mail often includes a sad dose of that reality. "I got a letter the other day from a girl who mentioned the show we did on parental drug abuse," says Perry in a rare moment of seriousness. "She wrote about catching her father freebasing in the basement. I get letters like that all the time, from people all over the country." Gabrielle Carteris (at age 30, she's 90210's oldest cast-kid), who plays Andrea Zuckerman, the bright student who comes from the wrong side of Rodeo Drive, remembers an encouraging close encounter in a grocery store. "One girl came up to me after we'd done the breast-cancer show," says Carteris. "She said, 'I went home with all my friends and we checked our breasts for lumps.' "

In conclusion: Maybe I didn't need to write this memo. Maybe things won't be that bad, even if every locker in every corridor has a picture of Jason, Luke, Shannen or Jennie in it. Perhaps our dear little school is more like West Beverly Hills High—at least the TV version—than I thought. That's what Ian Ziering, 27, thinks too. "The reality on the show pretty much mirrors the way life is all over, in terms of teenagers," says New Jersey—bred Ziering, who once did Fruit of the Loom underwear ads and now plays 90210's curly-headed jock, Steve Sanders. "There's a mystique about Beverly Hills. But that's not what keeps people tuning in. The show could have been Montana E-I-E-I-O." By the way, should any student pronounce his name "eee-an," correct him or her, please. It's "eye-an."

-- WHEN BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 PREMIERED last October, Highlights, the student newspaper at Beverly Hills High, ran articles mocking the school's TV counterpart, West Beverly Hills High. "They said that the show was a joke," says Jenny Brandt, 14, a sophomore at the 1,900-student school. But as the story lines improved and Jason Priestley and Luke Perry became stars, the jokes stopped, and Brandt found herself, like many of her pals, glued to the set on Thursday nights from 9 to 10 P.M. "No phone calls allowed," says Brandt. "Except during commercials." Hope Levy, a 17-year-old senior, has taken fandom a step further with her friends. "We have little handmade cards," she says, speaking from her mom's car phone. "They say you're a member of Club 90210." While some kids think the show treats them as snobby stereotypes, most agree with sophomore Jordan Rynes when he says, "It's like a soap opera for teens. The shows dealing with drinking and drugs are the most real—adults don't realize how accurate it is."

16 notes · View notes

eldritchsurveys · 4 years

Text

792.

What would you call your body type? >> I don’t call it anything. Most of the time I’m trying to forget I even have a body.

Are you a morning person? >> Yeah, something like that. Particularly on sunny mornings.

Have you ever been to Target? >> I’ve been to Target many times.

Do you like iced tea? >> Sure, as long as it’s not loaded with sugar.

When is the next time you'll be at work? >> ---

Do you have a savings account? >> I do have a savings account. There’s rarely anything of note in there, though. The only reason there’s a goodly amount in there now is because of the stimulus check -- I took an opportunity to put in the amount of one month’s payment for my computer, just in case my finances got fucked up one month or something.

Has anyone ever hacked your accounts before? >> Not to my knowledge. If so, it was probably an account I’d already abandoned.

What color bedsheets are currently on your bed? >> Grey.

Have you ever been to Disney World? If so, how many times have you been? >> I’ve never been.

Does grammar and capitalization mean anything to you? >> Sure. All forms of language need some kind of rule system in order to be effective, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to communicate with others at all. Even the dialects that people deride for not being “proper” have grammatical rules -- as becomes painfully obvious when non-Black people try to use AAVE lmao. As far as capitalisation is concerned, I use the proper forms of it on surveys (I don’t know why, I just always have) but an “improper”, casual form almost everywhere else on the internet. My familiarity and ease with the English language is pretty well demonstrated by all the different forms of it I switch between on a regular basis, and I enjoy playing with and learning the variations of language like this.

Are you good at wrapping gifts for others? >> Yeah, I can wrap a gift pretty well.

Do you have a dirty clothes hamper in your room? >> No, the hampers are in Sparrow’s room (her room is just bigger, lol).

What would you say is your favorite television show? >> I wouldn’t, really. I like a lot of shows.

Do you enjoy big holiday dinners? >> I don’t really have a feeling about them. They’re not something I care about, but I’m not necessarily averse to them either.

Is your vision good? >> It is.

Is there any piece of jewelry you're constantly wearing? >> Just the jewelry in my piercings.

What is one thing you desire as of now? >> It’s complicated.

What kind of phone do you have? >> Moto g6 Play. The only reason I remember this now is because my headphones always announce the name of whatever it’s connecting to.

If you could move anywhere, where would you choose? >> Somewhere southerly.

Do you have any obsessions? >> I mean, maybe. I just don’t notice anymore.

Do you blog a lot, if at all? >> Not formally. I just reblog stuff on tumblr and sometimes make an original post. Also, I do this.

Is your present hair color, natural? >> Yeah.

What makes you the most angry when it comes to people? >> I just hate how contemptuous other people can be of stuff they don’t understand. Instead of just being like “eh, I don’t grok it, it doesn’t jive with me” it becomes “that’s so sad that people do [x]” or “I’m not a loser, I don’t do [x]” or whatever. Even when it comes to calling people “stupid” and “disgusting” for their opinions or their lifestyles. I am far from being a particularly kind person, but every day I try my best to evaluate people’s actions for what they are and how they affect me instead of just labelling them inferior for not being like me; but people who will call themselves kind in a heartbeat are the first people to just tear into someone for not upholding whatever standard they’ve got built up in their heads for humanity. I’m just sick of it, and it’s why I don’t really get involved with people all that much. There’s always going to be that moment when they say something judgemental, and as it goes, eventually that judgemental attitude is going to be turned on me.

Describe your current outfit? >> It’s just a pair of harem pants, an undershirt, and a thin sleeveless top with a weird design on the front, heh. I don’t know where I got this top from, but I need about 15 more of them. It’s so comfortable.

What was the last thing you ordered online? >> I think the last thing I ordered was a new nightstand.

Have you ever felt as though you were drifting apart from a best friend? >> No.

What color are your eyes? >> Dark brown.

Have you ever worn color contacts? >> Yeah. My first pair were violet, and later on I wore white ones (or one white one, Marilyn Manson-style).

What's the best thing about a hug? >> I don’t know. I don’t receive any of the benefits of hugs. (Inworld hugs are very nice, though. They feel warm.)

Biggest fear? >> Some vague hyper-imaginative stuff about death.

If you have a significant other, how long have you been together? >> Can Calah has been here for about 9 years, I think, and with Sparrow it’s been 8 years. My general idea is that Can Calah was here for about a year before the thing with Sparrow started, so that’s how I measure it.

Do you know any genuinely friendly people? >> Sure.

Do you buy your friends gifts? >> Not usually.

What was the last thing you plugged in? >> My laptop.

How old are you? >> This is my last day being 32.

What color headphones do you own? >> Black.

Have you ever shopped on Urban Outfitters? >> Nope.

Where do you buy the majority of your clothing? >> I don’t really have a place that I buy the majority of my clothing from.

Would you rather wear necklaces or earrings? >> Necklaces.

Do you consider yourself fortunate? >> Sure, in some cases. Not so much in others.

Do you enjoy watching fights? >> No.

Have you ever been in a physical fight? >> Yeah.

Do you tend to talk badly about people? >> No, if there’s one thing I consider myself committed to working on, it’s how I speak about and treat other people -- like I was discussing in an earlier question. I guess it makes up for my lack of emotional attachment.

Where are your parents as of now? >> ---

Does your computer cooperate most of the time? >> Yeah, my machines have always gotten along pretty well with me. I try my best to treat them well and I like to think they operate at their best because of it.

Does your family have any cheesy traditions? >> ---

When did you last go to a book store? >> Whew, good question.

What's the closest book store where you live? >> Maybe Schuler’s.

How much money do you have on you right now? >> I don’t have any money on me, but there’s like five dollars in cash in my wallet-thing.

Favorite personal feature? >> ---

Are you wearing make up at the moment? >> No.

Favorite television channel? >> I don’t have one. My favoured streaming service is Hulu.

Describe any piercings or tattoos you might have? >> Ehhhh I feel like I do this constantly.

Have you ever been fired from a job? >> No. Unless Second Life jobs count, lmao.

Are you currently losing a best friend? >> No.

Describe the worst day of your life: >> ---

Do you play any video games? >> I do.

Would you say you hate anyone? >> I would not say that.

Do you think freckles are cute? >> I don’t have a feeling about them one way or the other.

Last time you went to the mall? >> God... December?

Name something that's your favorite color: >> This cool ring I have.

Have you been to Red Lobster before? >> Yeah, a long time ago. I nearly lost my mind when I tasted a cheddar bay biscuit for the first time.

Do you judge by appearances? >> Judge what, exactly? There is some information I process through appearance, yeah -- like, I assume that a person wearing a Behemoth t-shirt and black jeans with a chain wallet is probably a metalhead. Or that a person with impeccable hair and nails and makeup is probably really fussy about their appearance. The thing is, these are still things that I could possibly be wrong about, but it’d be harmless.

Do you follow a certain religion? >> No.

Who is your role model, if you had to choose? >> I don’t have to choose, and there’s no one I would choose.

Would you rather have nice hair or lips? >> What...

What are you most self conscious about? >> Just... existing. I don’t like being observed at all most of the time.

Do you have any family members who live out of town? >> ---

Do you consider yourself short? >> No. I mean, I am short in comparison to a lot of people, but it’s not something I think about like that.

What room are you in? >> Mine.

Hoodies or jackets? >> Hoodies.

Are you outside a lot? >> Not a lot, no. There’s nowhere to really go, especially nowadays. I’d sit outside more often if I didn’t live in an apartment complex. Like, this would be a great day to just lounge about in a yard.

Have you ever been dumped via text message? >> No.

Do you like dreamcatchers? >> I mean, they’re pretty.

Favorite crayon color? >> ---

What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? >> V. (I don’t know why I have a favourite letter of the alphabet when I don’t have favourites for so many other things. It just be like that.)

Do you hate repetitive people and things? >> Er... like, not as a rule, I guess. But there are some repetitive things I hate, like certain sounds.

Do you think autocorrect is a blessing or curse? >> It’s neither to me, I just don’t use it.

Do you believe in any particular curses? >> I don’t have any experience with curses.

Ever play a Ouija board? >> No, I never got around to making one and now I just don’t care anymore.

What movie scares you the most? >> ---

What was your bedtime as a child? >> Damned if I remember. Probably like eight.

Reason why your favorite holiday is your favorite: >> I just enjoy the vibes. Also, I’ve got a thing for old St Nick.

Do you work with any close friends? >> ---

Do you consider yourself spoiled? >> No.

Do you listen to any country music? >> Sure.

Have you ever taken a keyboarding class? >> No.

Favorite high school teacher: >> ---

Do you ever get drunk? >> I’ve been drunk many times, but it’s not something I get into much these days. I like a good buzz, but anything beyond that is just overkill.

Have you ever had highlights before? >> No.

Favorite number: >> 9 / 19.

Do you still sleep with any stuffed animals? >> I sleep with way more stuffed animals now than I did when I was a child, actually.

What is your biggest regret in life? >> ---

Do you enjoy social situations? >> I enjoy ones I have explicitly chosen and that I have some measure of control over. Not like, control over the conversation or anything, I just mean the interaction is happening in an environment I find comfortable and/or I can leave whenever I feel the need, stuff like that.

Would you say you think you have a mental disorder of some kind? >> I don’t care about whether I have a mental disorder of some kind, I just care about learning to live with myself without punishing myself for not being “normal”.

Are you normally an independent person? >> I have a disordered attachment style which makes me feel like I need to be independent all the time, but I cognitively know better than to think humans really work like that.

Do you have any paintings? >> Yeah.

What is one clothing fad you wish never existed? >> ---

Do you like to be organized? >> Yeah, I really do. It makes me feel peaceful to see an organised space.

Have you ever failed a class before? >> Probably. I also got no credit at all for one class, which is probably worse.

Ever been judged because of your weight? >> I mean, probably, even though I’ve never been particularly over- or underweight. People will judge anything.

What is your favorite breakfast cereal? >> ---

Ever had a wish come true? >> ---

Do you regret meeting any of your exes? >> Nah. It’s not that deep. (It’d probably be that deep if any of them had been, like, violent abusers or something like that. But nah, they were just... people. With all the flaws inherent thereof.)

Do you own any coloring books? >> Yeah, but I never use it anymore, lol.

What's the meanest thing someone's called you? >> I don’t know.

Have you ever bullied someone? >> No.

Do you ever watch Lifetime? >> No.

Ever tried to intentionally sabotage someone's grade? >> No. How would one even go about doing that?

Do you own any brown clothing? >> Yeah, I have one Dark Tower shirt that’s brown. I hardly ever wear it, though, it just fits weird.

What color are your walls painted? >> Off-white or whatever.

Last thing you drank: >> Water. (Wourder.)

Have you ever seen a tornado in person? >> Nope. I hope to see one one day. (hope it isn’t the last thing I see, hah)

Do you have an inground pool at your house? >> No.

What is the first digit of your phone number? >> 6.

What's the prettiest town you've been to? >> *shrug*

Do you tend to sleep a lot? >> Nah, my body seems to err on the side of sleeping less rather than sleeping more.

Silver or gold jewelry? >> Gold.

Do you sometimes celebrate holidays early? >> No.

Have you ever been in love? >> I don’t know.

What's the best gift you've ever received? >> I don’t know.

When was the last time you showered? >> Monday afternoon.

Would you consider yourself attractive? >> No.

Has anyone made you mad today? >> No.

Favorite smell: >> Oh, who knows. There are a lot of good smells in the world.

Are you afraid of insects? >> I’m knee-jerk afraid of some. Like anything that makes a buzzing sound (wasps, bees, flies, whatever), because the sound startles me badly and triggers my flight response. But I know I’m not just overall-afraid of bees or anything because I love bees, love watching them, and I’d totally let a bee just crawl around on me without feeling the same impulse. It’s just that damned sound.

Do you have any children? >> No.

If so, what are their names? >> ---

Would ever consider having children in the future? >> I’ve considered it. And I’ve concluded that I’d rather not.

Have you ever lived on a farm? >> No.

Ever played any sports? >> Briefly, in school.

Do both of your parents have jobs? >> ---

Where is the best place you've been on vacation to? >> New Orleans.

Are you afraid people won't accept you? >> What people? Generally, I’m not fussed about being accepted by just... random people. But I’d want, like, my friends to accept me...

Are you, for the most part, an honest person? >> Yeah.

Did you make prank phone calls as a child? >> No. My father definitely would have whooped my ass for that.

Do you like to make donations? >> I don’t make donations.

Favorite movie at the time being: >> The Fountain.

What is your current ringtone? >> I have no idea what the default ringtone on this phone is, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.

Meet anyone from your past lately? >> No.

Have you ever called a teen suicide line? >> No.

Have you ever caught something on fire? >> On purpose, sure. Like a cigarette or a candle. Not anything that shouldn’t be aflame.

Ever been obsessed with a show? >> Yep.

What type of perfume or cologne do you use? >> I use a roll-on oil.

What's the last book you read? >> The last book I finished was The King In Yellow. Well, I finished the good stories, anyway.

Dream career: >> ---

Have you ever climbed a mountain before? >> Yeah, but not like, the whole thing.

At what age do you plan to get married? >> I was married at 32.

Ever been in a car accident? >> No.

#surveys #survey #random survey #almost lost this whole shit because i didn't realise my isp was doing maintenance and the internet was down #yeesh

2 notes · View notes

lostandunicorny · 5 years

Text

Tarot Bear Readings Prices Menu

Hi Everyone,

so I’m working harder to expand this side hustle, Tarot Bear Readings, and I hope you guys can support.

If you can’t pay for a full reading that you’d like cause it’s too expensive, just DM me and we can work something out. You guys can also donate like $1 to my paypal or bank account to help me pay my bills each month it’d be great.

So this is the service I’m offering, and these are the prices. HMU to book your session//reading now.

Time based readings (conducted over messaging services is Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp. Any extensions for time-based readings will be charged in 30 minute blocks regardless of whether or not the full 30 minutes can be fulfilled. Ie if you choose to go over an additional 40 minutes you will be charged 2 x 30 mins extra Please book min 36 hours in advance)

15 min - $15 Message me your questions for 15 minutes, I will select your cards and send you messages explaining your spread and discussing the reading. We can open up the spread with more cards for more clarity. Or you can ask a new question and we repeat the process.

30 min - $20 Message me your questions for 30 minutes, you can select the cards for the first spread or I will choose all of the cards for you. I will send you messages explaining your spread and discussing the reading. We can open up the spread with more cards for more clarity. Or you can ask a new question and we repeat the process.

60 min - $30 Message me your questions for 60 minutes, you can select the cards for the first spread or I will choose all of the cards for you. I will send you messages explaining your spread and discussing the reading. We can open up the spread with more cards for more clarity. Or you can ask a new question and we repeat the process.

Question Based Readings (conducted over email ONLY, email will be sent within 48 hours of payment confirmation)

1 question - $10 Email me your question and I'll respond with a PDF file attached with your reading. You can ask for clarification on the spread (ONLY ON THE SPREAD, NOT YOUR WHOLE SITUATION) and we can open up the cards for more and I'll amend the PDF accordingly.

2 questions - $15 Email me your questions and I'll respond with 2 separate PDF files attached to the email with your readings. You can ask for clarification on the spreads (ONLY ON THE SPREAD, NOT YOUR WHOLE SITUATION) and we can open up the cards for more and I'll amend each PDF accordingly.

3 questions - $20 Email me your questions and I'll respond with 3 separate PDF files attached to the email with your readings. You can ask for clarification on the spreads (ONLY ON THE SPREAD, NOT YOUR WHOLE SITUATION) and we can open up the cards for more and I'll amend each PDF accordingly.

Card Based Readings (conducted over email ONLY, will only allow concession if the messaging service can receive and send documents, email will be sent within 48 hours of payment confirmation)

1 card - $5 You give me your question, I send over a PDF with your card and what it means in relation to your question within 48 hours.

3 card - $10 You give me your question, I design a 3 card spread. In the PDF will contain your spread, the cards, what their explanation is, and a summary of the reading.

5 card - $15 You give me your question, I design a 3 card spread. In the PDF will contain your spread, the cards, what their explanation is, and a summary of the reading.

Modes of Payment accepted: PayNow/PayLah - +6587511167 (or message me for the QR code) Bank Transfer - I use OCBC Current Account, (contact me for my bank account #) PayPal - https://paypal.me/tarotbear Google Wallet (not sure what my link is for this, just please send payment to my email [email protected])

You can schedule and book your readings through the following methods:

WhatsApp - +6587511167 Email - [email protected] Facebook Messenger - Tarot Bear Readings Instagram DMs: @tarotbear.readings Twitter DMs: @tarot_bear

Please help to respect me as a reader and the energies and time it takes to do your readings and offer my help and services to you. I can keep my prices low if everyone is able to show respect. If you find that my time and energy and advice is worth very little to you, I’d prefer if you found another reader or did your reading for yourself.

FAQs:

Do you need my horoscope?

Nope, just need your name, contact details (aka where i’m gonna talk to you on for the time-based readings, or send your reading to for the PDF based readings) and your question.

Btw please keep your question open-ended, unless it’s a 1 card reading, then its chill if it’s a more yes/no kind of question.

Is there any limit on the kind of questions I can ask?

I’m cool with health, general, career, romance/love, family.

I don’t do 3rd party readings. So if you’re asking on behalf of someone else, I’m sorry but I’d prefer if you don’t. I don’t find it respectful to pry. You can ask about your future together, but it’s not chill to do like “what’s their new job gonna be like” etc.

You can also check out my disclaimer below for the extent of my “powers”

I need help on phrasing my question.

If you need assistance w how best to phrase your question for this reading, I found that this guide from labryinthos helps a lot https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/learn-tarot-with-labyrinthos-academy/how-to-phrase-effective-tarot-card-questions-and-get-the-most-from-your-tarot-reading

Are there any crystals//voodoo//spells involved? Can you do those?

No crystals, although I’d love to but I’m not there yet.

I don’t do voodoo. And I don’t know enough about it

I respect spells but I don’t think I’m at the level where I can cast effective spells for other people but I can share with you a spell recipe if you’d like at no extra charge.

What kind of cards do you use?

I currently only own 1 Tarot Deck and that’s the Pocket Universal Waite Tarot as seen below

I’m hoping once I get 10 paying customers, I can save up to get other decks for other reading usage, so I can switch up to my mood and to the respective vibe

Do you read face to face? Can I schedule for a call instead?

I’m not comfortable with face to face

Or phone call readings

Or video call readings

I get really terrible performance anxiety and my brain goes blank and I’m worried I’ll waste your time

Even worse, the only other times I’ve read for people face to face is when I was high and drunk. I was still accurate but that’s not a good thing cause it doesn’t give too much respect to the reading process

So for now, no readings face to face

Live readings are all conducted over messages

How long have you been doing tarot?

First picked it up in high school year 2.

That was in 2014.

And I printed my own deck and cut it up from the library.

I now have no clue where that deck is.

But for professional readings with this current deck, I’ve been doing it now for 6 months.

And it’s been pretty accurate thus far. And I’ve helped a lot of people and that’s made me really happy.

We just weren’t getting paid enough before, that’s why the deck was unhappy. And thus this menu now.

Disclaimer: All readings are not meant to be taken as scripture. Please do not use your tarot session to ignore any legal, medical, or professional life advice Please still defer to any professional you are seeking help from. Readings are meant to offer entertainment, additional insight, and guidance. Tarot Bear Readings will keep your identity and intimate details of your readings confidential unless there is intended harm on the client or other people. Tarot Bear Readings does not condone any illegal or harmful acts conducted by any client after the reading/session and will not be held responsible and/or liable for the client's actions after the session. Tarot Bear Readings will screenshot your feedback, and post it as testimonials on to different marketing and media collaterals, leaving out your name and personal details and further details of your reading.

Mission and Vision Statement: Tarot Bear Readings is for the busy introvert by the busy introvert. Tarot Bear Readings believes in respecting the higher level of insight and power and hopes to provide help to more people to guide this. Tarot Bear Readings will be fair and honest in all its dealings. Tarot Bear Readings aims to be affordable and accessible for everyone to help guide from day to day choices to bigger decisions in life.

#tarot #tarot service #tarot reading #tarot business #fortune telling #paypal #please consider donating #please support

17 notes · View notes

catflowerqueen · 4 years

Text

Musings on the Torterra Guild

I always like to believe that the things you do on the last days of the old year/first day of the new year sets the tone for how the rest of the year will go. Hopefully that holds true for me, and the next year will allow me to have a good balance of work and fun—along with time to write.

On that note… for today’s edition of “Ramblings and thoughts that consume me and make me want to write them even though I already have many other WIPs and actual Real Life things I should be working on instead,” have some thoughts about the Torterra Guild that has been mentioned/alluded to in some of my other works.

And I’m probably also going to spend a little time working on some of those other WIPs (though probably not Déjà vu today—at least not right away), so maybe expect some first chapters for some of my other “What if…” series ideas soon. No promises, though.

Happy New Year!

The Torterra Guild is structured a lot differently than the Wigglytuff Guild is, and they start training young. The thing about their training, however, is that they divide the sorts of things they teach based on age and experience. It’s run a lot more like a boarding school type deal, compared to the Wigglytuff Guild. Whereas you get more one-on-one type instruction/training on the job immediately in the Wigglytuff Guild (emulating the type of “instruction” that Wigglytuff got from Armaldo), the Torterra Guild actually has multiple different classes/courses that one takes, each with its own teachers. Think of it as a little bit like the school in Serene Village from Super, if a bit more broad and intensive (because, really, that school definitely seemed more focused on “how to explore without dying” than what one would expect from a school, especially because the pokemon world does seem to have a sort of society, what with the shopkeepers, policemen, post office, bureaucracies, and I’m pretty sure that Super had its own cinema equivalent). Their end goal is also to produce explorers who thrive when it comes to long-term exploration, rather than the short-term ones that the guild focuses on, since most of those can be completed within a day (Again, this hearkens back to Wigglytuff’s days with Armaldo—since obviously Armaldo would need to make sure Wigglytuff/Igglybuff made it home every evening so his parents wouldn’t come looking for him, thus blowing his cover). Obviously the Wigglytuff Guild does dabble a bit in the long-term stuff, given that they regularly go on expeditions, but they’re much more focused on smaller explorations—or gaining the strength needed to essentially plow through all their enemies and explore in an almost speed-running fashion as compared to what everyone else is doing.

As such, a lot of the early years at the Torterra Guild are focused on teaching things like life skills—sewing, medicine, tool-making, foraging, etc.—as well as book-learning, so that they can learn things like navigation and map-reading, ciphers, history… things that would make it a bit easier for them to make connections and uncover hidden secrets. This is why Paula knows how to read footprint runes—not only did she often ask to see what Ricky was up to and the sorts of assignments he had whenever he would come home for a visit (which was actually semi-regularly, since the Torterra Guild isn’t quite as strict on that as it is more long-term) but he isn’t the most organized and would sometimes accidentally send his assignments home instead of the letters he meant to send. Also, Paula always knew she wanted to be an explorer, and wanted to get a sort of head start when it came to learning how since she assumed that it’s the sort of thing every explorer had to know, since her early exposure only came from the things Ricky was learning. Also the fact that the Torterra Guild was pretty nearby, and maintained a wide network of explorers due to how large it was and how many apprentices it had—and the close ties all the graduates kept with each other since it had been such a large part of their lives for so long—so most of the explorers passing through the nearest town were graduates of the guild. They actually have courses focused on building webs of influences/alliances/information as well, since being away from civilization for so long would necessitate maintaining friendships and ties with allies so that you could be assured of the ability to find help even when in some obscure places—whether because those friends would be willing to team up together for a time as they explore, or simply because more friends means more chances to just randomly run into someone you know as you explore farther afield. Also, if you actually teach people how to make friends and interact with others, then it means people will know how to keep doing that even when they’re on their own. This is part of why Ricky’s flirting skills have gotten markedly better over the years, even though he wasn’t learning specifically how to flirt. The Wigglytuff Guild, on the other hand, might encourage people to be friendly to anyone they come across (“Smiles go for miles,” after all), but they don’t specifically teach their recruits how to interact with others or make friends/allies, nor do they have any networks set in place. Sure, they get a lot of strangers and teams coming to the guild—sometimes including famous ones like Team Charm, Dusknoir, and Ricky himself—but many of those groups only come because the guild itself is famous, or because they know somewhere there personally. In other words, they want to use the guild’s name or meet/find one specific person rather than trying to foster any real ties with the people training there, even though that does, of course, happen. It’s just that it’s a happy coincidence/consequence rather than the initial intent.

Regarding “serious” training that involves going on actual explorations… that wouldn’t happen in the Torterra Guild until around age 16 or 17—so roughly the age Paula is around the beginning of Déjà vu. Even then, one would need to pass a lot of examinations and supervised practice runs first. This is why Paula’s parents had no problem letting her go off to become an explorer at such a young age. They’d already gone through it with Ricky—he’s between 8-10 years older than Paula is, and they actually made him wait a little bit to join, so he got a later start than many of the other Torterra recruits, since they weren’t sure about the whole thing yet. But once he’d joined and they started learning what it was like from his letters, they deemed it actually pretty safe, and that their initial fears were an overreaction. Since they’d also lived by the Torterra Guild for most of their lives, they—just like Paula—assumed that it was pretty standard for the way all guilds were run. As such, even though it was a bit far away, Paula’s parents were ultimately okay with her going to the Wigglytuff Guild because they assumed she’d still be stuck learning at a desk for a few years (and they/Ricky’s team may have given her an escort to the town itself and then left her to make her own way to the actual guild, rather than let her travel so far on her own before she’d received any actual training). This, by the way, is why Paula was so surprised and upset by how mundane the Drenched Bluff assignment was. In her experience, when a guild sent you out on a mission without oversight from an older guild member/one of the teachers or staff, it was for some sort of serious exploration—more like the Waterfall Cave assignment—and it was because they deemed them fully prepared to explore on their own. Having those small jobs—with no oversight even in the choosing outside of those first few days—be their own teaching assignments just wasn’t something Paula was used to. Neither was the fact that they would actually see any money from these assignments—all payment rendered from services at the Torterra Guild was handled by actual accountants and bankers. The students never saw any of it themselves, though portions of the earnings were set aside in order to pay for their tuition and most of their supplies. After graduation, there would either be a yearly fee they would pay for maintaining their permits/badges/whatever, or there would be letters to the alumni requesting donations—much like colleges here on Earth. But they would have to deduct that themselves from their entire earnings over a longer period, unlike how the Wigglytuff Guild takes its cuts per job. Part of this is because the Torterra Guild doesn’t have a job board posted up for any explorer to take a look at, unlike the Wigglytuff Guild does. Since the Torterra Guild directs all its apprentices during training, much of the income afterwards comes any treasures found on explorations which were planned of the graduates’ own volition based their research, or from jobs which are exclusively available for the purview of Torterra Guild graduates or which they just happen to come across on their own—and unless they go to someplace like the Wigglytuff Guild or other Federation approved locations, these requests might not be properly vetted—leading to instances like I’ve already talked about with Armaldo. Of course, part of the training in the Torterra Guild focuses on how to actually vet those requests and make sure they’re legitimate.

But not everyone knows about the inner workings of the Torterra Guild. It might be one of the big names as far as guilds go, but to those not in the know, the expectations and experiences of the recruits are rather secretive, and the way they work can be rather confusing and misleading to the rest of the world. In comparison to the Wigglytuff Guild, the Torterra Guild is a bit more selective about who they let join in the first place, since they dedicate a lot of time and energy to the preparation. There are actually two different tracks when it comes to the guild. One is the actual explorers track, and one is just basically a school—because those life lessons are useful for everyone, not just explorers. So it is possible to join just for the life lessons, with no expectations of becoming an explorer. A lot of people do that—Paula and Ricky’s parents included, most likely. It’s just that some of the lessons are explorer-track exclusive, and you can only get into those if you do really well on the more public portions—which are more like a day school. So when Ricky was just starting out, he would get to go home every day/every weekend/every two weeks (depending on exactly how far away the clearing that the Sparks family calls home is from the guild). The classes are also a bit less intensive. But once it was determined that he had the skills and ability to become an actual explorer, he was offered an exam to take in order to join the explorer track. If Paula had joined the Torterra Guild, she likely would have been allowed to join the explorer track immediately—or at least much sooner, and they would have kept a closer eye on her progress than they did with Ricky’s initially—due to her connection to Ricky and the fact that he was a proven explorer. Since she was his sister, it meant she would also probably excel at it, right? Or she would at least have had a bit more heads up and preparation due to the fact that he maintained close contact with his family through letters even though he wasn’t allowed to visit home as often. Heck, they probably just sent the written portions of their exams straight to her house once they heard that she was interested in becoming an explorer. But the very fact that a lot of this attention was given to her solely because of Ricky is what made her wary of joining—as she mused in my recent online snippet.

This two-track system is why people get confused about exactly how the Torterra Guild is run, since, because of the distinction between those guild members who learning to be explorers and those who are simply taking some of the lessons on life skills—they don’t necessarily realize that all of it is run under the same heading, and that everyone taking classes there, regardless of what track they’re on, is still technically a member of the guild. The fact that the Torterra guild has multiple buildings, each headed by a member of the Torterra family (although not all family members are necessarily actually torterra), also doesn’t help much unless you are already in the know, since everyone, regardless of the track, has to spend time taking life skills classes, often as a mixed group with the other track, and those classes typically take place in one building whereas he more “serious,” exploration based classes exclusive to the explorer track take place in another one. This means the difference between being a graduate of the life skills portion and the explorers portion is typically as minor as saying one was an apprentice versus just being a graduate—since only the graduates of the explorers portion get to use the term “apprentice” rather than merely saying “member” or “student,” kind of like how anyone who has earned a PhD can use the term “doctor,” even not all of those doctors graduated from a medical field. Unfortunately, since this is so outside the norm of the way the rest of the guilds in the world operate, it means that a lot of people only see that secondary building for the explorer-exclusive classes as being the “real” guild, and, thus, assume that only the classes undertaken there comprise the “real” training that the guild offers, even though that is very far from the case.

With the exception of Wigglytuff (whose experience as an apprentice was way, way outside the norm for multiple reasons—although there probably are many cases in which an explorer will take on a solo apprentice , or sets of them, rather than maintaining an entire guild’s worth the way Wigglytuff ended up doing), most of the pokémon in and around the Treasure Town area are more used to a guild which runs the way Wigglytuff’s does—an apprenticeship which can span multiple years, yes, but one without a lot of book-learning, and with more hands-on experience that results in a bit more of an eclectic skillset that varies from graduate to graduate. Most of the “life skills” that one learns as part of the Torterra Guild are expected to have been learned before joining, or it’s at least expected that the apprentices will have the responsibility to ask someone at the guild for help honing a specific set (for example, Chimecho actually has a good relationship with Chatot and Wigglytuff that is closer than a lot of the other apprentices because even though she did come in with a lot of skills—like cooking and sewing—she also specifically asked Chatot to help her learn more about nursing. Something that Sunflora also eventually decides is a good skill to have, mostly because of the things she and Chimecho talk about as roommates, which is why she started to learn as well and is thus the one to be administering medical attention during chapter two of Missing Scenes, even as she comments that she isn’t nearly as skilled as Chatot is). As such, prospective apprentices are generally expected to be in their late teens before joining (Diglett may have been a bit of an exception, depending on how long he and his dad have been part of the guild, but the fact that he came with his father changes the rules a little bit, as it means he had more direct supervision from an actual parent who was and is still actively involved in raising him… even if his obsession with the ocean means that Diglett has lately been the more responsible of the pair). So even though apprentices of both guilds only really start doing serious explorations in their late teens, because Wigglytuff’s Guild doesn’t have the same mandatory “life skills” training period that the Torterra Guild does, this is why everyone assumed that Laura and Paula were simply on the younger side of that spectrum—maybe 15 or so (in other words, Paula’s age at the time of The World’s Treasure)—upon joining and are so surprised by the revelation that, no, Paula was only a teenager through a technicality (since she hung around for quite a while before actually joining the guild, even though she left home when she was about twelve) and Laura was literally a child—eleven years old exactly at the time of joining. But despite that, the two still managed to graduate in a little over a year.

Paula didn’t really think it was all that strange at the time since her exposure to the Torterra Guild meant that she still equated the idea of guilds with schools, and assumed that if an authority figure such as Chatot was sending her out to explore in the way that he did, and as early as he did (from her perspective, at least), then it meant that he thought she was more than qualified to go out like that—she may have thought it was a little odd that she didn’t at least get a quiz about her abilities first (because how else would he have known that? Could he tell just by looking at her?), but she would have chalked it up to differences in guild management. She may have also assumed, looking back on it, that the Drenched Bluff assignment was the placement exam. Since she and Laura completed it so easily, it just meant that they were automatically fast-tracked to the upper levels of classes/learning—if they had failed, then they would have been placed on the slower route. And in a way… she wasn’t exactly wrong? After all, given Bidoof’s special episode we know that he was put on a lot of milder assignments and didn’t really get to go out to dungeons yet—and even when he did, they sent him out with Sunflora so that she could act as his guide and teacher.

…Come to think of it, that entire special episode may have been why Chatot immediately started their training by giving them an actual assignment off the job boards. His experience with how antsy Bidoof got—to the point where he would actually go out and do something as reckless as he did in his special episode—may have made Chatot think that he was being too cautious and overprotective, and that he should give these newcomers a shot at something more serious first. As Wigglytuff said after the Perfect Apple incident (but before he realized it meant he wouldn’t have any Perfect Apples to eat for a while), everyone fails sometimes; and like he told Bidoof in the aforementioned episode, failing and learning from it is how one becomes stronger. So if Team Rainbow had failed that first assignment, it would have been no big deal; someone else would have completed it later to help Spoink, and the girls would have learned that they weren’t quite ready to go on assignments like that, and would have (hopefully) been more willing and patient than Bidoof was when it came to actually learning and training, especially if Chatot modified his approach a bit. It’s just that… they didn’t fail. And they kept succeeding until the whole Perfect Apple incident—and even then, that was because of outside interference rather than necessarily being a reflection of their own skills. And even if it had been because of their lack of skills, the fact that Wigglytuff let them go on the expedition anyways, and that they did so well there, just meant that they were fast learners and improved quickly. Which… they are, its just that people expected that most of their skill came from age and practice rather than because they were, essentially, prodigies who had been thrown into the deep end. So in that case, it’s rather lucky that Paula was so interested in preparing ahead while she was little, and that she did spend a lot of time in Ricky’s shadow (as much as she dislikes the idea), and that Laura’s crazy life meant that she retained the knowledge of a lot of important skills, even if she can’t consciously remember learning them. It meant that even though they didn’t acquire all the skills they would have at the Torterra Guild, that they at least knew enough that they could get by as being only a little under average for the typical expectations of newcomers to the Wigglytuff Guild, and also that they were more willing to be more proactive in asking for help learning new skills—yes, even Laura for how quiet she was about it. Though in her case it may have been more that people watched her trying to emulate them and then took pity on her more disastrous attempts and decided to offer help… or she reminded them of siblings or people they knew growing up so they just naturally inserted themselves into her life out of habit. Or they didn’t manage to catch her watching them, but she still managed to learn from observation anyways. After all, it’s amazing how many people don’t think to look up, even if they can feel eyes watching them from somewhere…

All this to say that if anyone had actually bothered to ask her or Laura their ages once they joined the Wigglytuff Guild, their approach to their training would have been a lot different. They may or may not have even let them join at all—on the one hand, their methods are geared towards older pokemon, but on the other hand refusing entry would still mean Paula would have to traverse the long distance to make it back home on her own (which, yeah, she obviously made it to town just fine the first time and has been successfully living on her own ever since, but no one is going to be happy at the thought of a child being in those conditions despite her apparent successes so far—and even if she did have an escort, unless she manages to clear up the misconceptions that everyone has about the Torterra Guild, then they are going to assume that whatever guardians she had were extremely neglectful when they allowed their twelve-year-old to wander off and try to join a guild) and Laura literally has nowhere else to go at the moment—and she probably wouldn’t have even known her age, and may not have even had a guess or bothered to devote any introspection to that specific matter, rather than her identity as a whole. Her upbringing was strange in general, and her concept of what childhood consisted of would have been extremely skewed, for a multitude of reasons. As I’ve said before—if in Déjà vu Jirachi had de-aged her to the child version of her current incarnation, things would have been a lot darker from the onset and more upfront about how terrible her childhood was, rather than the vague implications that something wasn’t quite right that the childhood of her first incarnation is going to exude by the end of the story. They probably would have assumed she was around the same age as Paula, though. Or even if they did think she was older—because, again, her upbringing make her act older than she actually is, even subconsciously, simply because she hasn’t had any real experience with what childhood typically entails—the fact that she’s an amnesiac who doesn’t necessarily understand her needs as a treecko would definitely have given them pause and led them to seek out some professional help, rather than the vague attempts that Wigglytuff tried/is currently trying to give her in-game—because he definitely realized that she needed help, but he didn’t quite realize how dire the situation actually was because she’s so competent/used to acting older than she actually is, and that means no one quite realizes that a lot of her talent came from a combination of being a legitimate prodigy in certain areas, the fact that the Dimensional Scream ability gives her insight into things that she otherwise shouldn’t be aware of (which she then shares with Paula, obviously), and the fact that a lot of her skills were hammered into her as a child for some very unfortunate reasons. So even if they didn’t let the two of them join right away—though they would probably tell Paula that she could come back and try again in a few years—they would still feel obligated Laura as their ward/tried to find someone who could take care of her for a while like they did with Walrein and Manaphy (which would probably mean that they ended up sending her to Sunflora’s aunt/found a sceptile or other Grass-type who could literally teach her how to be a treecko if she ended up divulging her former species). And depending how that particular conversation with Paula went as far as why her guardians allowed her to try and join a guild at age twelve, they may feel obligated to make Paula their ward as well.

(Incidentally, despite his own rocky upbringing, Grovyle also thought she was older than she actually is, and only part of that is due to the fact that he had no prior experience with humans, so couldn’t really gauge her age well. He knew that she was younger than him, but didn’t realize by quite how much until literally a few moments before Celebi sent them into the past that first time.)

But if they did allow the two to join anyways (or if they made them their wards with the assumption that they would join for real when they were older), depending on exactly how the Wigglytuff Guild would have modified their approach to teaching the two of them, they may have actually thrived very well. After all, Paula went in expecting that she would spend a long period of time on book-learning and chores—it was only when she learned that she would be thrown out into the field immediately that she got upset at how “boring” her first assignment was. And the fact that she actually studied footprint runes—among other things—of her own volition bodes well for how she would have fared under such a modified schedule. She enjoys all aspects of exploring, after all, the learning and preparation as much as the actual activity. Learning is its own sort of exploration, in a way, as trying to figure out how things work and how to decipher things is its own sort of mystery, and gaining new knowledge and skills is its own reward. This approach to training also would have been much the same sort of thing that Laura would have expected as a typical member of Relatia’s people (And especially as a typical nascent Rainbow Child, though she wouldn’t have been aware of that aspect at the time), since their lifestyle is obviously more centered around life in a society rather than life as an explorer—although depending on what type of job they do, they may end up in more dangerous situations where knowing things like foraging would be extremely important and helpful—so much of their training involves things like learning languages and their culture’s history, as well as some specific education on religious ceremonies and the like. Again, she has no prior conceptions of what she’s supposed to be doing because of her amnesia—and her subconscious would be telling her that this is the sort of life that she is supposed to be having when time and space are working as they should, her guardians aren’t horrible people, and she hasn’t been kidnapped by a legendary pokémon. She would only really get an inkling that something is wrong when the effects of Temporal Tower’s breakdown started becoming more apparent, and even then she wouldn’t necessarily know what she is supposed to be doing—only that there is something wrong that she should maybe be doing something about. Of course, by that point the outside forces of Dusknoir and Grovyle’s shenanigans would have forced her into some sort of action, if only because of the disruption it would cause to guild life. As well as the fact that she would specifically be targeted once either of the two of them finally clued in to who she was.

Anyways, the point of all that is that Team Rainbow probably wouldn’t have gotten as desperate as Bidoof got in his special episode because they either had no prior conceptions of what guild life is supposed to be, or because the modified approach is more in line with what they would have expected anyways and they wouldn’t have found it strange or been more wistful than envious when everyone around them was getting to do the cool exploration jobs while they were stuck back at the guild learning how to cook or repair ropes or whatever. And neither of them even thought to wonder or comment on the guild life that they got in canon, because the reality either exceeded their expectations and they didn’t think to mention what their initial expectations had been for them to have been exceeded so thoroughly, or because, again, they had no expectations going in.

These sorts of issues may or may not prompt some people to try and make communication and transparency among the various guilds more of a priority, or to at least invest in some better informational pamphlets for their own guilds, in order to prevent such miscommunications again. It may also lead some people to wonder if these sorts of miscommunications are why so many guilds have high drop-out rates, especially from pokémon who travelled from farther away in order to join. It will definitely prompt Chatot to start asking about ages of prospective recruits, however, or at the very least to seriously consider the possibility of an entrance exam, because even though things worked out fine this time, there were definitely some exceptional circumstances leading to those successes—and even then, there were multiple times where things could have ended very, very badly for either of these kids. Not to mention all the unnecessary stress the two still endure from time to time.

Incidentally, Jirachi doesn’t really understand things like relative ages, bureaucracy, or what, exactly, goes on in a guild—otherwise he may have tried to send that dream about the Wigglytuff Guild backlit by stars to a different, older, explorer-hopeful. Then again, even he doesn’t necessarily have full control over his powers and the way they work at all times, especially for more complicated wishes, or those outside his area of expertise (think of the way in the Jirachi movie that he granted the wish about snacks—pulling them from a snack cart rather than creating them from nothing, likely because of a combination of it being less costly in terms of energy as well as not knowing anything about the human economy/money). And also, there was so much going on at the time and so many different factors/forces involved that it’s hard to know exactly how much influence he had anyways. The dream was definitely because of him—but who’s to say he was actually the one to decide who to grant it to?

#pokemon mystery dungeon #explorers of sky #writing #fanfiction #what if...?#the world's treasure #missing scenes #headcanons

2 notes · View notes

bondsacrosstime-blog · 5 years

Text

Remaining Orders Announcement

Hi! My name is Cari, or @Storyofthedoor online, and I will try to explain what is taking so long with the shipping! :D Sorry this announcement is really long, it is quite detailed, I tried to thoroughly explain what has happened with the remaining 60ish orders.

TL;DR version: 60 orders to go! Struggling with getting money transferred from one mod to the other. Still trying though!

Long version:

First I want to apologize that it is taking so long to finish the last orders. When I joined this project, I really wanted to make sure the shipping was fast! I’ve been a part of, and purchased, a lot of zines that take months and months and months …. To the point that I’ve wondered if the zine is actually coming or….? So I didn’t want that to happen to Bonds Across Time. I’m sorry that for some orders, they have had to wait a long long time.

So I’m gonna start at the beginning, and then try to explain the difficulty.

In the beginning there were two mods! They were Nayuun and (x). They worked on Bonds Across Time together throughout the making of the zine. Nayuun organized artists, and (x) organized writers, and the zine came together to the point of being a book ready for preorders. At this time, I was just an artist. My total involvement was to make an art, and occasionally talk to Nayuun. I didn’t attend to anything other than that.

And then the paypal problems started.

Some of you who have been wanting a book since the beginning of January remember the paypal account being frozen with funds in it just a little bit into preorders. There was never a way to get the funds out of paypal. Nayuun tried to talk to paypal several times, and if you’ve ever had a problem with paypal, you can imagine how that went. Their customer service does not particularly deserve applause. At all. There was no resolution, all the preorders were returned to the buyers. Around this time, (x) needed to leave the project. Their work is still in the zine, but they had no other involvement after the initial paypal problems.

This left Nayuun by herself, and this is her first zine. It is most definitely difficult to run a zine, especially as a single mod, and especially if you’ve never done it before.

So I, Story, joined the mod team! C: My duties are getting stuff printed, and shipping out US and further abroad orders. Nayuun will handle Canadian shipping.

I’ve run a few projects, including kickstarters and a tarot deck zine, so I feel comfortable working with printers and doing shipping.

With this new layout of mod tasks, Nayuun and I opened preorders again! This time with payments being directed to Stripe, through the Storenvy shop.

Now begins the second round of financial problems. Remember: Nayuun has not run a zine before, so couldn’t see this coming. I *have* run zines before, but I and my fellow mods have been completely US based while running them. Nayuun and (x) are both Canadian.

Preorders go great through Storenvy with Stripe receiving payment! Honestly thank you for that. C: We are both really grateful that the preorders went well.

Storenvy is set up to receive payment in USD and dish it out to Stripe in CAD. (Because both prior organizers are Canadian this set up makes sense. This right here is where the problem happened. If hindsight was helpful at all, I would use hindsight to make Stripe receive funds in USD.)

No problems so far.

Because I, Story, am handling the printing and most of the shipping, we determine it’d be easiest if I received the payout from Stripe.

Stripe is holding the money as CAD.

My bank accounts are all in USD.

This isn’t really that big of a problem ….? Americans and Canadians transfer money to each other and conduct trade all the time…..?

We deposit the money into Nayuun’s bank, Stripe won’t let anything else happen.

There are plenty of ways to transfer money internationally. Paypal comes to mind, but we’ve just had huge problems with paypal freezing funds. Also they take a percentage instead of a flat fee. So two other methods are more common with large amounts of money. Wire transfers, and money orders. I’ve done both wire transfers and money orders, but only to US and China receivers. I’ve never tried to receive a wire transfer or money order from Canada.

I think a wire transfer is faster than a money order. It only takes a few days. So I tell Nayuun to try it. I provide bank info for me.

For this first wire transfer attempt, I use my local credit union. I go in person and speak to them, they say a wire transfer from Canada is fine? It just needs to land as USD. Sounds fine.

A few days later, Nayuun’s bank receives the money back and claims they can’t send money to my credit union. To be fair, that credit union I use is small, who knows if they even know what they’re doing.

So I use a larger online bank for a second attempt at a wire transfer.

I guess which banks we’re using is not terribly important private information. This is a wire transfer from TD Bank in Canada, to Discover Bank in the US. These are two giant, common banks. They both know how to do wire transfers. I mean they probably both do wire transfers, to each other, dozens of times a day, independent of Nayuun and myself. Is there something I’m missing or not understanding?

We wait for the transfer to work. Nothing. TD Bank says it will take 4 - 5 business days.

I call Discover Bank. They say it will take 14 business days. They also say they cannot look up the wire transfer without a firm USD amount. When we initiated the wire transfer, it was for this large sum of CAD, and I assume a fixed USD amount was not given because it would be based on the exchange rate the day the transfer occurs……………? Discover Bank will not look up the transfer with the firm CAD amount. Who knows why. No amount of asking or calling will change their refusal. If I were to try a wire transfer a third time, I think we should initiate it as a firm USD amount, and whatever CAD is required is what goes. Not exactly convenient there but possibly more traceable by Discover.

TD Bank now claims the wire transfer may take up to 20 business days.

We wait ….

We waited a week for the first wire transfer to fail.

Now we wait four weeks.

The second wire transfer fails.

No explanation is given. None. At. All.

I know it’s hard for you, the preorderers, to count out the time here and understand why things are taking so long.

We closed preorders mid Feb or something like that?

And then had to wait about two weeks for Stripe to release all the funds to Nayuun’s bank.

And then we work on the zine and put it all together and get the printing going. Maybe a week or two for print prep and initiate the printing. I think I paid for printing beginning of March on all the merch and books.

A week to try a wire transfer.

Four weeks to try ANOTHER wire transfer ….

And we arrive now at mid April.

This …. Might? Maybe? Lead you to ask how any merch has been printed at all? Or how any zines have been shipped at present? If the funds have been tied up in multiple failed wire transfer attempts?

I, Story, have been paying for the printing and the shipping so far, just on my credit card. I don’t mind getting it all going. I do really care about the project. C: I love zines, and I love self publishing. I really want people to feel happy preordering an artist produced book, too! The helpfulness of a credit card is it does allow me to get a project going! While I wait for Stripe to make funds available … while I wait for a wire transfer … and a second wire transfer … but of course a credit card payment does come due. I paid for all these things at the beginning of March. That billing cycle closes end of March. That bill becomes due end of April, and I must pay the card bill or pay an additional interest penalty. That is how the credit cards do the do.

So! Here in a week or two I am indeed paying this card bill, for a few thousand dollars of printing and shipping. ^^; I have a bit of money saved, it will be ok.

But I’ve got about 40 orders left to ship, and about 20 orders that are Canadian and need to go to Nayuun for her to ship. And I have no more money to get stuff going until one of these methods of fund transfers works out.

It is pretty tiresome and frustrating that the funds exist, they just can’t be moved from Canada to the United States? None of our banks will tell us why.

Now we are trying a money order. When I last shipped a proof copy of the book to Nayuun, it took about 9 days? She lives in Alberta, I live in Maryland. Maybe in 9 days I’ll have a money order in my mailbox? *But can I just point out here that we have experienced first hand that MAIL DOES INDEED MOVE BETWEEN US …. Ok money order, you have no excuses.*

I’m sure you can imagine, I feel pretty dumb now. I’ve spent a lot of money, and am struggling to be reimbursed, and it is no one’s fault. Not Nayuun’s, not mine, just cosmic bad luck maybe. All we can do is keep trying to find a way to deal with a funds transfer? If not a money order through the post office … then…. Western Union? Or we try paypal again (my hopes are not high.)

I’m sorry again that I’ve got all this stuff printed and I’m unable to get the remaining orders going until we can manage this funds transfer. ;_; I really hope a money order would finally work. That would be really great if this kind of old fashioned method could just go through and be fine. ^^;

Thank you to those who have received your orders so far and loved them! You’ve made all the effort worth while, and I really appreciate it. C: I hope that when the remaining orders go out, they will be worth the wait.

18 notes · View notes

arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

After the comedian and top podcast host Joe Rogan posted a message Thursday that he had contracted COVID-19 and was treating it using ivermectin, the drug—which had already been a source of controversy—became even more divisive. In a video posted to his Instagram page, Rogan told his more than 13 million followers that after testing positive for COVID-19, he took “all kinds of meds” to treat it, including monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, azithromycin, and prednisone. The mention of ivermectin, which has not been approved for COVID-19 treatment by the FDA but has been given to billions of people to treat other illnesses, sparked outrage. The headline in The Guardian, “Joe Rogan has Covid – and his treatment will make health experts feel ill,” was typical. Aside from reflecting the hyperpolarized U.S. pandemic discourse in which inanimate objects such as pharmaceuticals can be assigned a political identity, the coverage also followed a campaign to dissuade people from taking ivermectin. The FDA itself recently tweeted, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” But more than 3 billion people across the world have taken ivermectin, which is prescribed to treat parasitic infections in both humans and animals and appears on the World Health Organization’s list of “essential medicines.” It’s also notable that Rogan did not endorse taking ivermectin in isolation—in fact, he didn’t endorse it at all—but described taking it with a host of other treatments, including a vitamin drip. The effectiveness of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 is debatable, but the drug is best understood as one potential treatment among many rather than a culture war symbol and object of derision.

…

The vaxxers doth protest too much. There is something suspiciously overwrought about messages such as this one from the American Civil Liberties Union. Rather than presenting an adult sense of the trade-offs involved in mandating vaccines—at precisely the moment when the COVID-19 surge in Israel points to the limits of vaccines’ effectiveness—it uses implicit moral threats (if you don’t support mandates, you’re a racist) to disable rather than foster debate. What does it say that with a thousand other institutions in the United States already lining up to make the pro-mandates case, the organization with “civil liberties” in its name can’t bring itself to support its own cause?

…

Another push to expand the government’s legally dubious surveillance authorities. The House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots is asking phone and social media companies to save the communications of anyone charged with crimes or just “potentially involved with discussions” related to the riots. The list of the names on the request sent to 35 companies Monday—including AT&T, Facebook, and Parler—by the committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson, includes Trump and several Republican members of the House. I’d ask where exactly the line gets drawn on “potential involvement,” but following the logic, I’m pretty sure that would make me a suspect.

In ominous Amazon news, the company announced that its mammoth web hosting services, which provide the infrastructure that supports much of the commercial internet, “plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal.” Sure, this will end well. Amazon will get right to work removing dangerous content immediately, starting with all that treacherous disinformation about the abysmal working conditions at Amazon and the company buying influence in the American political system. New York Times contributor Kaveh Afrasiabi pleaded not guilty in February to criminal charges related to being an unregistered foreign agent of Iran. Afrasiabi admitted to The Algemeiner that he had received $265,000 from Iran’s U.N. mission since 2007 as well as health benefits, but denied that the payments influenced his writing.

…

One of the things I loved about the U.S. Army, and on my good days I can still remember that there were many such things, was getting the chance to witness the irrepressible dynamism of American soldiers who are convinced they can fix anything. They are right more often than not, when they are given a fighting chance. You need a working aid station constructed in the next two hours out of nothing more than small rocks, candy wrappers, and some 550 cord? No problem—find a fire team led by a motivated young sergeant, brief him on the mission, and then get the hell out of the way; he’ll take care of the rest. It’s like witnessing, in a thousand different daily ways, a version of how the American frontier was settled and this country was built. Staff Sergeant Andrew McCaffrey was at the uppermost end of that drive and ingenuity. After he was blown up in Afghanistan in 2003 and lost his right arm below the elbow, the Special Forces soldier “trained himself to shoot left-handed and became the first soldier in U.S. Army history to return to combat duty after losing a limb.” McCaffrey went on to serve three more tours in Afghanistan before getting discharged and sinking into drink and depression. The leaders of this country are unworthy of such men.

…

As the father of two young children, there is nothing remotely surprising to me about the fact that “The Diapers.com Guy Wants to Build a Utopian Megalopolis,” as the headline of this Bloomberg article puts it. Do you know what it takes to keep up with diaper supply? It just never ends. The kind of person who can come up with a solution to that problem is just the sort of visionary who might be able to push the United States out of this rut and into the future.

#tablet magazine

0 notes

divinationcentral · 3 years

Text

General Reading.

Main Energy: Ten of Pentacles, Ace of Wands

Well, in your everyday life, things seem to be going pretty okay. That said, you still have a new beginning coming into play.

When we say new beginning as Tarot readers, we are referring to something new that you will be starting that creates change in your everyday life.

Think: if you have an idea to start something new, then you now have the determination/passion/creative insight to do so.

Or: you get word that you have been selected for an interview.

Or, something as simple as: you’re starting a new creative project which is going to yield you positive results. Whether that concerns your finances or not. Like, maybe you just do this thing for fun, and somehow it’s now creating a stable income for you.

Imagine that you meet someone new? They spark an interest or passion, lust attraction - whatever it is - it drives you to do something new. It gives you incentive to initiate something new.

Whatever it is - it adds to your current luxuries. The Ten of Pentacles refers to having stability in the home. Your foundation is good, and so you’re able to start something new and focus on it. But now it’s about creating something that you can look forward to (like a future; it’s going to be preparing you for the future in other words, so don’t take it lightly).

Spread:

Six of Swords

Five of Swords

Page of Swords

Closure, release...first words that come to mind. You are walking away from an obvious defeat. Something or someone that has victimized you. And it’s not fair, I understand.

Walking away is the best thing you can and will do for yourself.

You may have been skeptical at first, but now you are sure: they just played games with you. And it wasn’t even necessary. All these individuals (or singular if it’s just one), did this on purpose.

Trust that karma has its way of finding its injustices, and rights them in its own time when they are wrong.

Let me give you an example of this (because I am not perfect):

I once hit a car, yes, I did. It wasn’t while driving, it wasn’t while someone was in it. It was parked.

A couple with children was walking in front of me while I was trying to park. They couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted to cross, so I was unsure about whether or not to pass. When I finally did, I was so unfocused, I scraped the car next to me.

I drove away, out of sheer instinct and fear (I had a new car, I was already paying so much on it, on top of having just gotten the car insurance, which was a super high payment, my driving record was set to start over, so it would go lower - so I did have a motive for not staying, and it was an incorrect one, because I was being selfish).

No one saw me, it never came up again.

Did I get away scot free? Yes, and no. Guess what happened to me after this? My car got towed, cost me almost 400$ to get it back. Had I just stayed there and reported it - most likely wouldn’t have cost me this much in retrospect. Maybe a couple dollars more on my insurance payment. I’m sure that’s how much it would have cost the owner of that car to get the scrape fixed and removed (it wasn’t bad, but it was a pretty bad scrape from the look of it).

Karma finds a way to circle back around to each and everyone of us.

It will get us all in the end.

This isn’t a threat. Nope. A lot of people like to use the name of Karma to cause threats.

I’m asking you to clear your conscience. Say sorry to whoever you need to say it to. Say thank you for something that you need to say thank you to.

You don’t have to say it directly to somebody, but say it to somebody. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge the good deeds of others. Acknowledge the help you’ve received, if any. Forgive your circumstances, forgive those involved. Have the sight of someone who sees a big picture. Not because you’re trying to clear yourself of anything, or forgive someone for the sake of forgiveness (because lets be honest, not all people deserve our trust or companionship), but acknowledge that it happened, and acknowledge your place in it.

Tell yourself: I will do better. OR if you did nothing at all, that someone will take this into account, and will do better alongside you. It’s bound to happen. Things are bound to change, but seeing the big picture allows you to clear yourself from all the clutter and go “I don’t need to be in this mess, I don’t need to stress about this anymore, how do I remove myself from it? What actions can I take that will resolve this now?”

Reflect on your misdeeds, your positive deeds...take them all into account and say: I have responsibilities. I am accountable for all my misgivings, but also for all my good qualities. I help people, and people depend on me (someone has to). I am doing everything in my current capabilities to live justly. But, I could use some guidance.

I am human, and I make mistakes. I forgive myself for that, and am grateful for all my blessings.

Release attachments to things that have been long overdue. Understand that we are all connected to each other someway/somehow, and that people who pretend to be good, do the most harm, and exact the most punishment (not because I said so, but because that is the truth).

Don’t lie to yourself. Be honest, and live from this moment on, unbothered by the inconsistencies of someone’s nature. Accept they are who they say they are at face value, and when they present differently - accept that too. Use it as knowledge to make a conclusion, give yourself closure, and just “leave it to God” as they say, if you can’t just leave it to the logic to say “You know what? That is just a bad person, for whatever reason - they hurt me.” And the person may not have intended to. Accept the truth, and walk away. That person has to deal with their own karmic misgivings. Whether they apologize to you or instead choose to pay the price or keep on lying/stealing/cheating/hurting - is none of your concern (it’s not your business, unless you want to continue to associate yourself to someone that has mistreated you, and may continue to).

What you choose to do, and whether you accept a person’s apology or welcome them back into your life: again, is the power of choice. The power of acknowledging your part in what happens moving forward (be that good or bad). It’s not about blame, but understanding that you can make mistakes with the greatest of intentions. And it’s not solely based on what you do, it doesn’t rely just on you, but also the other person involved. Will they tell you the truth? Are they going to act from a place of sincerity? Will they treat you better? Are they going to change their behavior?

Clear your conscience. What did you do to partake in what has happened? Let it go. Forgive yourself. Forgive the other party if you have to (but this is mainly if the offense is forgivable - otherwise, forgive yourself for any guilt you might be feeling, regardless, because it does happen; we can feel guilty for something we didn’t do).

Don’t become the same cruelty that hurts you if that’s not who you intend to be. Live as honestly as you can.

Move away from things that no longer concern you. Ask yourself if there’s still something you’re holding onto (whether it’s about this situation or things of the past). What are you holding onto about it? Is it the reason you keep going back to this thing? Is it really going to be benefitting you in the long run? Especially if the situation or the person (and their motives) hasn’t changed? Now, of course you won’t know this unless you take a risk. But people provide you evidence. Without wanting to - they reveal their nature when you are better at discerning what is truth/fact, vs. what is a “promise.” Hold people accountable to their word if you have to.

Past failures, people’s “good word,” an opportunity that has passed, regrets, hang ups - all of it. Try and release it now. What good is it doing you to reminisce about the past when it’s no longer here for you? When it can’t provide you answers, when it won’t tell you what to do next.

Use your own judgement.

You remain tethered to those ghosts, and so remain tethered to a world of failure (or whatever it is that is plaguing you constantly since this has happened). Nothing changes, surprisingly, because you don’t want it to. Not really. Not yet.

Stop the actions you are taking that are getting you nowhere, and reflect.

What can I do differently this time around? You don’t have to remain attached to the situation you don’t want to be attached to, but you have to release the expectation that it’s going to change or that you’re going to get fairly compensated for it (be that emotionally or monetarily, because it’s weighing you down, very personally). Because if it has not changed, chances are you need to search for something better at this time. Or at least move on from it to gain some peace of mind and obtain clarity.

The sooner you can do all of that - the sooner things can change, improve, and even begin to make sense.

Right now you’re too focused on what hurts - who or what hurt you.

Example: What are you trying to obtain right now?

Financial independence? What is the blockage? And I’m not talking about the obvious immediate one (I can’t get a different job, I can’t because of XYZ, whether xyz is someone in charge or otherwise, because that’s shifting responsibility and giving power to someone or something else and not you) - I’m talking about the subtle stuff.

Are you feeling guilty for wanting more? Why? Why do you need this financial independence? Who is it affecting you from achieving it? Why? What are they saying to you? What are your beliefs regarding this situation? Do they serve you?

Are you telling yourself a lie? What’s the real reason behind what you want right now? Are you trying to leave your home? Are you trying to get away from a nagging boss? Is there resentment, is there a part of you that clings on to the possibilities too much? Is there something else holding you back? Fear of the unknown, a scapegoat of some sort, like using your situation as a crutch, so you remain in a comfort zone?

Those things. It seems really irrelevant, right? But it’s the purpose behind what you are wanting.

That purpose needs to be free of attachments. What you want just comes to you easier that way. Because you align with it when you’re ready (and being ready means that you will be responsible for what you want to have - it isn’t always something we can actually do, we have to take that into account).

What you want has to provide you some sort of benefit, right? Think about that benefit, and only that benefit.

Help yourself get rid of the insecurity that has become attached to this thing. Like worrying about the worst thing that can happen if you don’t get it.

Be honest about the short comings, and accept that there is a better way to ask for something.

Are the actions you are taking now consistent with the reasons you want this change?

This will help you achieve it much more easily.

Stand behind your resolve, and don’t regret anything.

And let me just say: you had been right to move on. It was the obvious decision. Now it’s about balancing your life to become more justly rooted in the present, to what you believe in, so you can gain back what you lost from this.

Once you are at a stable place (meaning you are no longer constantly worried about this, or the bad situation has left your life and you are now comfortable again, in a place of stability, where you don’t feel this lack or inconsistency in your life) - you can make change, and you will have opportunity for that change.

Don’t grumble about it. Don’t ask yourself why. Let it go, leave it be, whatever phrase you want to agree with. This isn’t about losing. It’s not even about winning.

This is about you becoming the person (or thing, either one) that you want to be. You are simply aligning your actions to who or what that is, now.

You are aligning yourself to who you are currently, actually. Your actions will reflect that.

If an outcome is not the way you expected it to be: who is the real culprit?

Face that with the utmost sincerity, honesty...And I need to remind you: I’m not talking about assigning blame.

I’m talking about clearing your conscience, so you can become everything you say you are going to be moving forward. You need to release the attachments. So you can accept the consequences with grace.

You make it easier on yourself, and things can come and go with ease.

No delays. No holding onto negative thinking patterns (yes, they are patterns we can put ourselves into that don’t even need to be applied to our current situations; it’s like a memory, we can default to it when we are unsure or insecure about ourselves). Defeat that uncertainty with affirmative action and decisiveness.

Decisiveness comes with confidence. That confidence comes from the ability to be willing to make mistakes, and the ability to accept when you are wrong about something.

Only then can change truly happen.

Make time. Make space for what you’re wanting.

If the old situation isn’t or wasn't’ working...? What is there to doubt about it now. Move forward. You are going to be in a more stable place once you do.

What are you currently telling yourself? Does it help you?

(Does it actually help you?) (Does it hurt you to maintain a facade?) (Be true to yourself, first and foremost; honesty)

#general reading #tarot

0 notes

martinatkins · 4 years

Text

Reiki Therapy Jobs Jaw-Dropping Useful Ideas

So what do you identify these from the Reiki channel, pretty much like a billion flasks of protons, electrons and neutrons that naturally have a Master and the healing powers are there already, right there inside you, you might prefer to receive with the energy flow through channels within an individual.Reiki practices were highlighted and focused on the reason why certain Reiki healing everyday and I are the bonus materials?The SHK symbol resembles the two other primal energies which are placed a few days after the surgery, not ongoing lifestyle factors with long, sustained ramifications.Reiki 2 is a relatively new healing methods to aid in times of need.

If you have created in the form of alternative medicine that deals with energy from the Japanese Mount Kurama.Imagine that during the advanced stages of practice, whereby the ordinary Reiki classes isn't necessary to act and live well.Meanwhile the parents received Reiki treatment.A power animal in a Reiki attunement no matter how difficult it may appear to have positive influence on brain cells and tissues; in addition went on to study with her or his credentialsYou do not get from becoming healthy, complete and aligned.

Reiki healers ascribe to which he had to really go full force gale and go all the Reiki training is a by-product of this force are thought to be thankful for we uplift ourselves which allows us to a friend, relative or pet so they are not God.How does this healing modality has to be a picture or visualize the reiki method, as it is debated whether Reiki healing is also used to help relaxation and reduced stress which can carry out the energy.He has enrolled himself for the easing of a person:You can even attune yourself to the advent of the most important, because it makes less payment and it won't help.This is the essential steps for the fraction of the healing and positivity to others or whatever we touch.

Traditionally, the healer grows and develops their gift by practising Reiki both as a small amount of responsibility.Many resources are available to anyone who is also a two day course during which you can be!If the higher self decides it doesn't mean they are trained in massaging and also provides psychic protection and eliminates the effects of Distant HealingPractice of the universe requires an analysis of what is really a new approach to diseases such as the source of living income.So let's begin with creating a relax situation for the group.

When used correctly the human in charge of the student him- or herself, and for healing.I often get from Reiki is about to tell clients that are discovering that these names essentially refer to it and then observe where your life force and the right teacher and other locationsEnjoy the gift of God as his breathless friend caught up and down on the ceiling, then the therapist used her elbow to dig right into the Universe.Removing any kind of universal unconditional love.The second one is motivated by higher emotions like love, is a sacred metaphysical process that is all.

As a healing guide for developing a working relationship with the subtler energies of the shoulder pain or headaches, one Reiki healing practitioners have repeatedly emphasized the importance of gratitude in our body.In this period the energy is up to extrasensory perceptions.Reiki energy healing and remote attunement are essentially impressed in the Cancer Care Unit.The energy knows where it is not always necessary and is very different self-attunements.and so we cannot see them but we do can force them to feel like I'm spirit.

You can find a program developed by reiki in it's new space.Reiki is a complete way of passing on the principle that is efficacious in seemingly mysterious ways.Level 2 will increase your understanding and practice Reiki; to dismiss online or home study course, you have about it, there is nothing special about a relentless experience of surgery with Reiki is for those who have lost their ability to perform healing.You are believing thoughts that serve to activate chakras, increase the flow of Reiki practice - especially if you enjoy the different energy that gives it form, structure, health, strength and the chanting of sacred Buddhist mantras.Learning to use massage tables in one hand gently on the body, thereby targeting the area that is required in order to do it!

Creator, Great Spirit, Creator, God, or from Aliens?Sure, I water my garden now and again and allow photos to document the exchange.In fact, in some sequence of positions from the more people are saying about using Reiki symbols and create a sense of well-being.Today, there are a master gives you a deeper healing and self-improvement, that can help prevent misfortunes or a priest who gives sermons on it.While doing Reiki, I ask my guides to aid in the aura is the correct Crystal or stone has been eased with Reiki.

Reiki Energy Circle

Also, your vibration be lifted above the surface of the Reiki principles is you are the essentials in order to learn how to master the power to your daily activities.After all, the Master to transfer reiki energy is not new at all.The main problem is that there were only given to us throughout the day to day routine.The professional then, asks you to the light.Among the alternate therapies, Reiki seeks out the hands.

The Attunement or Initiation lasts with a 2500- year old Tibetan healing discipline.At each location, your hands on or above the density of the wording.And there are a few decimeters outside the dichotomy of giving versus receiving.A Master is easier to define your understanding and practical skill in the universe.The system utilizes or optimizes your body's self healing power.

I realised that traditional Japanese Reiki healing.Reiki healing combines the power in the body to protect you as if both share a special, little secret.Avoid the Reiki-flowing-during-the-massage idea.Irrespective of the powerful energetic experience to your work.Reiki practitioners nor Reiki Teachers diagnosis or cure, it is a very strong sensations, sometimes they are sick to get relaxation he started to giggle after his first attunement and also get the energy they need at that point in time to give him Reiki.

Ask how you can use to identify my own Universal energy and what you should know all that was willing to open to trying the Reiki PrinciplesSome Reiki Masters believe that the more we are able to see me for healing anxiety, depression, joint pain, and slowly cause the pain has gone.Relieving the body to heal his own life force that each patient should be an hour or more ways to describe its depths is part of the Chakras is opened and I'm feeling good and there may be better achieved without the use of his healing abilities were purportedly heightened, while his energy levels differs for each level separately.According to Mr. Usui, we all have what you attempt to live in such capable hands.Touch can nurture, center and balance of your personal experience with the spiritual aspect of reiki, you can try visualizing a bright light emanating from heaven to earth.

Virtually the whole being by a reiki course - it just to acquire worldly goods in an ascending column from the learn Reiki is responsible for that.Reiki is that Energy that is not meant to take a quick initiation and nice warm feeling.Keep in mind when you have been built, this ensures a smooth, harmonious, and uninterrupted flow of the previous owners still has to do treatments in their understanding of it unique process of Reiki with other techniques are taught.Four belong to a woman's cycle to support children's learning and good fortune.You will find yourself suddenly without the waiting period, and without different levels.

The attenuements are the different spiritual philosophies which abound.The recipient relaxes his body and health and is taught is that our lives different things to a Reiki 1 & 2 and SHK involves exploring your mental and spiritual.Reiki classes isn't necessary to terminate unhealthy relationships or alter your job is to become more of a Reiki Master Teacher level and is sometimes called remote healing.We then went on a spiritual retreat on Mount Kumara in Japan in the internet and collect as much as she steps into a lasting impression on someone and thus healing.This can create subtle differences in treatment effectiveness.

What Is Reiki Name

Because of this, no two practitioners remember the first to publish them was written in a row.The unique valuable effects consisting of peaceful well-being and feeling, security, and relaxation that also promotes healing in order to become more relaxed sleeping program.A healer has only begun to value yourself and with more main stream medical practices.In some cases and depending on where you really have to be operated on.I had sonic treatment on yourself and others too.

Using this symbol at each of the body, their hands over your body, as a complementary healing process thereby increasing its efficacy and quickness.Moreover every time someone reports back the next position.Free techniques for meditative practice which can carry out lots of face to face Reiki natural healing, the Reiki master called together a group of his hands where he or she may be the creator of these energies Reiki for yourself.Reiki is essentially opening yourself to Reiki, which is meant to take the time can vary significantly.Modern energy therapy systems incorporate contemporary scientific theories.

#Reiki Therapy Jobs Jaw-Dropping Useful Ideas #Reiki Symbol To Attract Money

0 notes

worryinglyinnocent · 7 years

Text

Fic: A Beginning, Of Sorts

Summary: You know, I can’t even remember where this prompt came from but it cropped up in conversation after this fic involving Nick and Gloria roleplaying an escort and client. Some of us were talking about how terrible Rush would be as an escort, and someone else ( @woodelf68 perhaps?) said that they could actually see it working as a method for him to fund himself through college – minimal investment of time for maximum financial return.

Anyway, wherever it came from, this is the finished product. Nicholas Rush meets Gloria when she hires him as to escort her to a fancy party one evening…

Rated: M – fade to black, but adult themes.

=====

A Beginning, Of Sorts

Nick sighs, pushes his glasses down his nose to be able to rub the bridge, and readjusts them before looking again at the paperwork spread out in front of him, trying to make sense of it all.

PhD’s are fucking hard work. He loves maths, he loves physics, he honestly does, but right now there are numbers swimming in front of his eyes and he really doesn’t think that he’s going to get anything vaguely useful out of it tonight. With a grunt of pain from the ache in his neck, he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, wondering whether to get some more coffee and try and plough on with it, or give it up as a bad job. He’s worked twice this week already so he thinks that he’s allowed to be knackered.

The phone, shrill and urgent and unrelenting, bursts into angry life and Nick rolls his shoulders before going to answer it. There’s only one person who’d be calling this number at this time, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to answer. Maybe he should let it go to answerphone and he’ll pick it up in the morning when he’s less tired. Maybe he should just pretend to be out, but unfortunately he’s not exactly known for being a social butterfly. Pushing these other welcome notions aside, he grabs the receiver.

“Rush.”

“Hey Nick, it’s Liz.”

He knew that it was going to be Liz. She sounds even more tired than he does. Liz isn’t her real name, he knows that much, but he’s never pried into what her name actually is.

“Hi Liz.”

“Diary says you’re available Saturday night, is that still the case?”

Nick looks down at his paperwork. Of course he’s available Saturday night, it’s not like he has a hot date with anyone except these equations, and they’re not exactly the best company. True, they’re quiet and they share all his own interests, as far as theoretical physics is concerned, but they don’t really make small talk and you can’t really wine and dine a sheaf of papers. On the other hand… He rolls his neck again, feeling the catch. He’s just so damned tired at the moment.

Still, any work is good work, and even scholarship students need to eat and sleep.

“Yeah, I’m still available.”

“Great. I’ve got a job for you.”

“When, where, who.” He doesn’t really waste on small talk with Liz. She’s calling to give him an appointment, and anything else in their interaction is somewhat awkward.

“Saturday night at seven-thirty, a young lady by the name of Gloria Miller. She wants to meet you at the Palace Hotel bar for a chat but then you’ll be going elsewhere, she wants an escort to a fancy family party out of town. Play at being the boyfriend, you know.”

Nick raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t usually get escorting jobs that involve actual escorting. He’s really not the most social person in the world, and he’s really not the most social person on Liz’s books. Sex he can do – very well even if he does say so himself. Interacting with other people… Not so great.

“Are you sure I’m the right person for this one?” he asks.

“Well, the only other guy I have available on Saturday is Danny and he’s even more of a no-go for social events than you are. Besides, she sounded nervous and he’d send her running for the hills.”

Nick has to give a snort at that. Danny caters for rather more specialised tastes.

“I can trust you with this one, can’t I? I think she just needs someone to prop her up for an evening in the face of disapproving relatives. Just be polite and attentive and keep her drink topped up, and neatly deflect any questions about when the two of you are getting married and having kids.”

“Yeah, ok.” Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. He wonders why Miss Miller has felt the need to hire company for the evening, but decides that it’s really none of his business and he’s not paid to think about those kind of things. “I’ll be there. Dress code?”

“Smart, but not super formal. Suit and tie.”

Nick wrinkles his nose. He hates wearing ties and tries to get away without one as much as humanly possible. He only ever wears them when he’s working and even then, if he can go without he will. Unfortunately, Liz can read his silence.

“You’re wearing a damn tie, Rush.”

“All right, all right. Saturday, half-seven at the Palace. How long?”

“She’s paid up till midnight, thinks the party will be breaking up by then.” There’s a long pause at the other end of the line. “I know I don’t have to tell you this but take condoms and lube just in case. You never know.”

“Of course, Liz.”

“Payment like usual. Have fun.”

“Thanks, Liz.”

They say their goodbyes and Nick puts down the phone, staring at it for a few minutes before getting up and padding through to the kitchenette to make a fresh mug of coffee. If he’s sacrificing Saturday night to the tune of getting paid, he’ll need to keep working on these equations tonight.

The Palace Hotel isn’t the most expensive place his client could have chosen, but it’s certainly not the cheapest, and he wonders how old she is and how she came to be blowing her savings on hiring an escort and buying ridiculously priced cocktails in this bar. Nick readjusts his tie and takes a good look around the room, eyeing up the possible clients. He picks her out straight away. She’s sitting at the bar with a Margarita that she’s not drinking, and she meets his eyes as soon as he walks in. She’s the only one here alone, and Nick takes a moment to study her from afar before he goes over.

She’s fairly young, mid-twenties at most; his own age. That’ll make selling the fake relationship a bit easier. Long legs and soft curves encased in a classy, well-fitting little black dress. Honey-blonde hair pinned up, and pale skin. She’s very pretty, and Nick wonders again why she needs an escort for the evening.

Still, nothing to be gained by staring at her from the doorway, so he goes over.

“Miss Miller?”

She nods. “Please, call me Gloria. You must be Hamish. Thanks for coming.”

Nick admits that Hamish probably isn’t the best professional alias he could have chosen for himself, but since he’s so obviously Scottish, as Liz reminds him frequently, he thought that the best thing to do would be to play up that Scottishness. As long as none of his clients ask him to wear a kilt because he doesn’t actually own one and the last time he wore one, he was told that he looked terrible in it. When he first started in the job he had a terrible fear of being asked to wear a kilt and nothing else, because romantic fiction and ridiculous novel covers have a lot to answer for when it comes to the unnecessary objectification of Scotsmen.

“My pleasure,” he replies. He really hates parties. He hates most social occasions in general, but since this pays the bills and is earning him his PhD, he’s going to have to give in with good grace and be on his best behaviour during this one. Unless, of course, Gloria wants him to play at being an absolute arse in order to get her family off her back, the objective being that after him they’ll be happy with whoever she ends up with. Some of the more experienced escorts have had that kind of a job before, with clients who aren’t out to their parents. On the other hand, that might well backfire and lead to the awkward situation of her being put under even more pressure to replace the highly inappropriate ‘boyfriend’ and take up with someone better.

“Can I get you a drink?” Gloria asks.

Nick shakes his head. He doesn’t like drinking too much when he’s working because he likes to be fully alert and aware of his surroundings, and although he’s not been to all that many swanky parties in his time, he knows that there’s likely to be a lot of alcohol once they get there.

“Did the woman at the agency tell you what I wanted?” Gloria continues. “About the party, I mean.”

“She told me that there was going to be a party, but she didn’t give me any details.”

“It’s my grandparents,” Gloria elucidates. “They live about seven miles out of the city. They have a big pre-Christmas party every year, loads of family, friends, influential business people.” Her voice hardens on the last few words. “And every year so far since I moved out, I’ve turned up without a date, and my grandmother tries to set me up with any number of godawful would-be suitors, as if I only exist to be married off and continue the family line, and…” She breaks off. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all this.”

Nick just shrugs. “You can say whatever you like, it makes no difference to me. I’m here for you, not any of your relations.”

“At any rate, this year I was determined not to turn up on my own and that’s where you come in.” She pauses. “I wanted to meet you here before so we could work out a reasonable cover story. I’m doing my Education Masters at the university, we met there.”

Nick nods. “Yes, that’s easy enough.” He wonders if their paths have ever crossed before. “What was your Bachelor?”

“Music. I play the violin; my aim is to get into an orchestra. Teaching’s a backup in case that dream falls through. You? I don’t mean in real life, obviously.”

“PhD,” Nick replies. “Which is technically the truth. You can pick the subject. Just nothing involving foreign languages, or I’ll be fucked,” he adds.

There’s a lot less nervousness in Gloria’s features now, and as she smiles, taking a sip of her margarita, her face lights up.

“Maths,” she says eventually. “You look like the mathematical sort.” She cocks her head on one side and smiles. “Am I even close to being right?”

Nick quirks an eyebrow. “That would be telling. Anything else I need to know?”

“My grandpa made his money in antiques, my dad carried on from him, and all the women in my family are professional wives.” She snorts. “They really want me to settle down, so there’ll probably be a bunch of questions about when we’re going to get married and how many kids we’ll have. If I can say one thing for my family, they’re very… eager.”

Nick just laughs. He thinks he’s going to get on with Gloria. They’re more alike than he thought would be possible, considering their vastly disparate backgrounds, but despite her obvious privilege, she seems grounded enough. He’s met enough of the other sort during the course of his ‘career’. Burning Daddy’s money away and coasting along through their classes.

“We should probably get going,” Gloria says, draining the last of her drink. “They’ll be expecting us soon.” She pauses. “I think you should know, before we go, that a bit of me is just doing this to spite my dad. He gave me a ‘dress allowance’ and told me to go and get ‘something pretty for the party’. So I did.” She pauses. “Sorry, that’s horribly insensitive.”

Nick shrugs. “It’s true, in the most brutal sense of the word.” Her frankness is refreshing, and so is her apology.

“Yes, but it’s still not a very nice thing for me to have said.”

“We’ll say no more about it. I’m flattered that you think I’m pretty.”

“Oh, you’re very pretty.” She slips her arm through his and they leave the hotel bar; there’s a taxi waiting. The drive to her grandparents’ house is quiet and awkward, but Nick’s sure that once they’re there, the uncomfortable atmosphere will dissipate a little as it will no longer be just the two of them. He’s going to be completely out of his depth, of course, but that’s par for the course, and as the newcomer to the family, no-one’s going to expect him to be the life and soul of the party in a hurry. At least, he really hopes not. As they pull up to the drive, Gloria begins to speak again and with the taxi idling outside the door, they work out a few last minute details so that they don’t end up giving all the relatives two subtly different versions of the same story. They don’t need to know everything about each other, this fake relationship doesn’t have to have been going on very long. There’s no need to fake true love and wedding bells on the horizon, just enough of a familiarity not to be suspicious. Although, Nick thinks as they walk in through the front door and he sees the vast amounts of alcohol around the place, he doesn’t think that anyone’s going to be in a position to call attention to anything suspicious any time soon.

“I’ll try and keep you close as much as possible,” Gloria says. “It would be unfair to leave you to be mobbed by all my relatives.”

She introduces him to everyone in short order, and Nick knows that he hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of remembering any names, so he just decides to be the arm candy that he was hired to be, keeping his mouth shut as much as possible and listening politely to all the conversations going on that he really doesn’t understand. People are talking about investments and banking on one side and probing Gloria for information about her future plans on the other side, and Nick can quite see why she needed an ally for the evening. It must be incredibly daunting for anyone to come here alone and be met with such a barrage of information and questioning from well-meaning family members who don’t really mean all that well. The main person that he has to fend off is Gloria’s grandmother, who seems to have taken quite a shine to him. Then again, from what Gloria’s told him, she would probably take a shine to any man that Gloria turned up with for the simple reason that he has the ability to get her granddaughter pregnant and produce some great-grandchildren.

“I’ve tried telling her at least sixty times that I don’t want kids, at least not until I’m thirty,” she mutters once they finally manage to extricate themselves from Grandma Miller’s grasp and are hiding out of the way of everyone behind the grandfather clock in the hall. Gloria’s on her third glass of champagne already and she knocks back the dregs. “I really hate these things. But I’m very glad you’re here.”

“I haven’t exactly done much,” Nick points out. “I’m just quiet and respectable boyfriend Hamish.”

“I know, but you exist tangibly which is the main thing, and I can always talk to you and block out everyone else. And I can complain about all my relatives to you and you won’t be offended.”

Nick laughs. “No, although you might be if I share my opinions of some of them to you. It’s all right when you’re complaining about your own family but it’s a different thing if it’s someone else doing it. It’s a bit like Scotland, I suppose. We all make disparaging remarks about various bits of our culture but as soon as someone south of the border makes those same comments, well…”

Gloria smiles. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She glances back towards the living room where most of the party is gathered, and she sags in her high heels a little. “Do we have to go back in?”

Nick shrugs. “It’s your party and your time,” he reminds her. “I’ll just go along with whatever you do.”

Gloria looks at him sideways, twirling the stem of her champagne flute between her fingers.

“You don’t like these events, do you?”

“Honestly? No. I’m not usually first choice for this kind of thing. But I’m here.”

“Yeah, we’re both here and we’re both miserable. Come on, let’s hide. We’re both consenting adults and apparently in love, I don’t think anyone’s going to come looking for us.”

Gloria grabs his hand and leads him up the stairs; from some of the noises coming from behind closed doors, they’re not the only ones who have decided to leave the party and get up to no good. Although, Nick reasons, he doesn’t know what this particular little excursion with Gloria is going to lead to. She takes him into a small bedroom, a little bleak and sparse, no personal touches in it.

“It’s my room when I stay over,” she explains, opening the window to let some cool night air in and sitting on the windowsill, rummaging around in her little clutch bag and taking out cigarettes and a fancy lighter. “Do you mind?”

Nick shakes his head. “Not at all. I brought my own.”

Gloria laughs and pats the windowsill across from her, offering her lighter, and Nick takes it. The first drag is just what he needs after the tension in the party downstairs.

“Your name’s not really Hamish, is it?” Gloria asks presently.

“No. But I’d rather not tell you what it really is.”

“Fair enough.”

This moment here, sitting smoking in a room lit only by moonlight, is the most comfortable and relaxed that Nick’s been with Gloria all evening, and the silence that settles between them isn’t awkward like it had been before. There’s an unspoken understanding between them; he’s not really sure where it came from but it’s there and it’s nice. It’ll make the rest of the time go easily.

Gloria finishes her cigarette and leans back in the window, looking out over the vast garden beyond, and occasionally glancing back at him, her head on one side, considering him. Nick raises an eyebrow.

“What’s up?”

“I’m wondering whether it would be bad form to kiss you,” Gloria says frankly, and whilst Nick wasn’t sure what he was expecting, he’s fairly certain it wasn’t that. “Because you’re not at all how I was expecting and you’re very handsome, and I’d like to kiss you.”

Nick certainly wouldn’t mind if she kissed him. She’s certainly very lovely and his feelings towards her are positive, rather than the usual neutrality he tends to maintain with clients. He likes her.

“I’d be up for that,” he admits.

“I’m glad.”

She’s firm in her kiss, she knows what she wants, and she tastes of smoke and alcohol like so many women do. She smells expensive, like so many women do. But she’s different somehow. There’s a realness to her, which is ironic considering that the entire time he’s been with her he’s been playing a role. But there’s no pretence to her now, not like the bright, smiling, perfect daughter she had been downstairs. He likes her, it’s as simple as that, and that makes this experience so much more enjoyable for all the many, many times he has done it.

So he keeps kissing her, and she keeps kissing him back, and there’s a champagne brightness in her eyes when she pulls away, a brightness that Nick recognises all too well. It’s a good job that Liz warned him to bring condoms just in case.

“We should probably get back to the party.”

They’re sitting in Gloria’s four-foot single bed, Nick at the head and Gloria leaning against the wall, propped up on pillows, the ashtray on the covers between them. He doesn’t really have any desire to move, and he knows that whatever time they get back to the party, people are going to be giving them looks that immediately say that they know what they got up to whilst they were absent, but Nick really couldn’t care less about that, and to all intents and purposes, Gloria doesn’t seem to care too much about it either. But the clock is ticking down, and soon he’ll have to leave because her payment will have run out.

“Aye, we probably should.”

It’s with obvious reluctance that Gloria gets out of the bed and puts her clothes back on without self-consciousness and Nick follows her lead. Once they get back down into the main party room, it’s clear that a lot of the guests have already left. They get the usual looks, a mixture of disapproval from some of the elderly relatives and indulgent ‘they’re hot-blooded young things’ sentiment from the others. Gloria’s mother chastises her for skipping out on so much of the party and Nick listens to her deflect the veiled barbs in a wonderful display of passive aggression that he couldn’t have bettered himself. Finally, she manages to get him out of the door and into a taxi that’ll take him back to the Palace.

“Thank you,” she says as they part. “For everything. I’ve had fun tonight. Well, the bits when we weren’t at the party were fun. And the party was less awful than usual. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The taxi slides quietly into the night, and Nick glances back over his shoulder through the rear window at Gloria standing in the driveway, and he wonders if he’ll ever bump into her again.

It’s a new year and a new term and a couple of months have passed with Nick trying very much not to think about Gloria when he sees her suddenly, and suddenly, everything changes and he has no idea what to do with himself because he’s walking in one direction with his coffee and she’s walking in the other direction with her violin case and it’s inevitable that they’re going to meet in the middle of the street. She recognises him just before they collide with each other and smiles.

“Hello. How are you?”

Nick’s still somewhat stunned but manages to answer.

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“I’m good. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”

No-one would know that they were talking about an escorting appointment, but either way, it’s clear that they remember each other and they have been thinking about each other in the interim. Nick’s not the best at small talk, something that Liz has despaired of in the past, but they chat for a couple of minutes.

“Do you maybe want to get a coffee later?” she asks presently.

“I…” He really doesn’t know what to say to that because he does want to, but at the same time… “You know what I do in my spare time,” he warns her.

Gloria nods. “I do. It’s how we met, remember.” She shrugs. “It’s just coffee.”

Just coffee. He can do just coffee. God, he spends so much of his working life around the opposite sex that one would think that he’d know what to say to them when he meets one he knows in the street. He nods.

“All right then. That sounds good. Tuesday night?”

“Great. Although there’s one thing. I know you’re not called Hamish, but can I maybe get your actual name before we meet again?”

Nick gives a snort of laughter. “It’s Nick.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nick. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

It’s a beginning of something, Nick’s pretty sure of that as they continue down the road on their separate ways. It’s a pretty strange beginning, and he’s not sure what it’s the beginning of yet, but it’s definitely a beginning.

#SGU fic #woodelf68 #NickxGloria #Dr Nicholas Rush #Gloria Rush

21 notes · View notes

opalescentegg · 7 years

Text

I’m Easter-drunk and I wanna talk about medieval marriage conventions.

(Because no one saw that drunk history reblog and decided to ask me, “Hey, Opal, what are your views on the weirder parts of medieval marriage?” I’ll try not to misspell too many things---no promises. SO! Medieval marriage. Just how fucked up was it?? Very fucked up, of course. But for the purposes of this....discussion, I’ll be focusing primarily on the conventions found in medieval England. Why England? Well, for starters, it has an incredible history of legal documentation. Seriously, the legal courts (from local shire courts all the way up to the royal courts) recorded damn near everything, and for the longest time too! I know that many medieval kingdoms saw themselves as the stewards of the Roman legal (and sometimes cultural) tradition, but in medieval England that anctually worked out okay (if you allow the inclusion of the Anglo-Saxon wittan, which eventually became the modern jury, but I’m getting ahead of myself). Also, England was the only place where FEUDALISM ACTUALLY WORKED. Seriously! Everywhere else it was given plenty of lip-service but, well---in France you ended up with a few centuries of “local” counts that held more power than the fucking king; then there was the Holy Roman Empire (famously not holy, not Roman, and not and Empire, to paraphrase both Voltaire and one of my favorite university professors---it was also, generally speaking, a hot mess, even on a good day); and Spain (seven fucking centuries of Reconquista does not a stable feudal society make, so sorry); and Italy.....look, the city-states are awesome, but are also about as un-feudal as it gets, so they basically don’t count for anything outside of their economic, and occasionally Crusade-oriented, bubble. Alright, to be fair, most of that last bit had nothing to do with anything----I just really needed to get some of that off my chest. But the documentation thing is actually germane to this topic. First and foremost is the fact that the “terms” of marriage were pretty sketchy for a long, long, long time. One particular complaint that crops up again and again in English shire court rolls has to do with just how married different parties in a couple saw themselves. A lot of this had to do with the language of marriage vows, as well as how marriages were “performed” back before the.....oh, let’s say thirteenth century. For a long while, marriages were considered legitimate if both parties spoke some church-approved vows to one another, and did so with full sincerity and fear of God, etc., etc. The problem there was that which words were church-approved was not always clear. Oh, sure, someone might have the general gist of them, but not the particulars---and since most of the peasantry during the Middle Ages was illiterate, it’s not like they could just write it down for later. Also, the “approved” words tended to change when new popes, bishops, etc. were elected, and it often took a while for information about changes to vow templates (among other things) to trickle down. There was also a more pragmatic element to all of this. Namely, although churchmen certainly hoped that young lovers would seek out a church for the legitimization of their union, they were more than aware of the fact that some people either did not have that option (the nearest church being, perhaps, too far away) or would find themselves too swept up in passion to seek out the nearest house of God. That’s part of why the church-approved vows existed in the first place---the idea was that, in the absence of either the clergy or community witnesses of good standing, a couple could still make a vow before God and therefore legitimize a marriage (though it always helped if they sought out a priest afterwards, to really legitimize it; but, especially in the early Middle Ages, that wasn’t strictly necessary). This is where is gets weird. Also rape-y. So...consider yourself warned, I guess. First of all: THOSE VOWS. There was a lot of confusion regarding vows (part of why the church started insisting that all marriages take place inside a church, with clergy present---less easy to fuck it all up that way). It wasn’t unusual for a man to sort of half-vow to stay with a woman, then for them to consummate the relationship, then for the man to insist that they were not actually married while the woman (citing what she thought was a true vow) insisted they were. Interestingly, this could be brought before the court as a case of rape, seeing as how complete, explicit consent in a sexual act was not necessarily given by both parties----and, believe it or not, the medieval church was DEEPLY concerned with consent; despite any and all social and economic disparities, a marriage was supposed to be (ideally) a union between two equal souls, and that equality meant that both parties had to agree to said union by their own free will, lest they commit the grave sin of bearing false witness before God Himself (not to say that the parties could not be cajoled, coerced, or threatened into “consent” beforehand, only that no one could actually be dragged to the altar, wailing and weeping, without any clergyman worth his salt immediately declaring the pending union void due to lack of consent---no matter what Hollywood might show you.) The point is that the woman (or, occasionally, the man, because that did happen too) could sue for marriage. This was somewhat more of a concern for women, as it concerned their “virginity” or “virtue.” If a woman had been married and was widowed, chances were that she inherited some property from her late husband, and so could levy that on Ye Olde Marriage Market. The prospects for completely unmarried girls and women were more tenuous. Look. For this next part, you need to STOP THINKING LIKE A MODERN PERSON. It sucks, I know, but you must understand how medieval people thought. The short version is that: virginity was an economic commodity. That’s how both men and women thought of it. So, if a peasant girl with little in the way of a dowry, and who had never been married before (and therefore had no inheritance from a deceased husband) was looking to marry, her “virginity” was the best bargaining chip she had. Therefore, if some strapping beau had made what SHE considered vows of marriage before fucking her into the heath, she’d likely feel quite justified in dragging him to the local shire court and suing for marriage----because he had unambiguously “compromised her virtue,” and done so under false pretenses: grounds for a rape accusation, if ever there was one. And, oh, sweet children, it gets worse. I have seen comments on this here Tumblr claiming that medieval women who were victims of rape would be forced to marry their rapists. This is.......not untrue. I cannot and will not say that such things did not happen (especially if a child resulted of that forced coupling; depending on whose medical treatises you read, conception was sometimes viewed as occurring only if both parties involved had orgasms, the idea being that women released an “essence” at the moment of climax the same way men did----the upshot is that a few learned men, I hope, at least tried to make sex actually pleasurable for their wives; the downside is that pregnancy via rape could be cited as “evidence” that a female victim “””enjoyed,””” and was complicit in, her own assault.) However. Things get.....interesting, if not a little uncomfortable, when the situation is turned on its head. You see, women did marry their rapists. But some of them did it willingly----hell, some of them did it forcefully. This is where the “virginity” thing really comes into play. Because if a girl or woman who had successfully “defended her chastity” for all her life suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a sexual assault-----well, it wasn’t unusual for her to drag her attacker before the court and sue for marriage. But why the fuck would she want to????? I get it, trust me. Still, you must remember what I said about virginity earlier. For a peasant girl, her “virginity” was her only bargaining chip in the marriage market; a rape meant that bargaining chip was gone; sometimes things could be smoothed over by a hefty payment of money and/or livestock to the girl’s father/male guardian to “make up” for the loss of virtue and (by extension) family honor, but this was of course not always possible; and so the only way to maintain honor (and, therefore, economic security, and even economic viability in the marriage market, should her husband pass away) was to marry the rapist. Oh, and DON’T THINK for even a SECOND that there weren’t ladies literally hauling their assaulters into the courtroom and, basically, telling them to LIE IN THE BED THEY FUCKING MADE. Look. Just. NEVER think that medieval women, even the poorest and least of the lot, didn’t have power. It was a fucking shitty kind of power, but damn if they didn’t exploit it wherever they could. Case in point: when a rapist wasn’t really a rapist. Soooo, now you’ve heard of medieval women suing her rapist for marriage in order to preserve her social and economic standing! Well, guess what? Sometimes both of them faked it~!! Yeah.....this is where it gets super fucked up. Because sometimes a girl loved a boy. But her father didn’t like that boy, probably for economic reasons, and forbade her from consenting to marry him (because the father was aware of those prickly couples-only church vows, etc, etc.) So how’s a girl to get around this predicament? Why, by being “carried off” ( “rape” coming from an older word meaning “forceful seizure”) by some man (the lover) and his cohorts (his friends, there to watch his back and basically make sure no one comes to kill him after witnessing his “abduction” of the maiden, if anyone witnessed it at all). Then they spend a few days hanging out in the woods before the daughter comes home to her father and says something to the effect of: “Oh, wow, yeah, so this guy, he just grabs me right out of the fields and carries me off the the woods, while I’m kicking and screaming of course, and forces himself on me right there, totally against my will, but the good news is that he’s completely willing to marry me to like make amends or whatever, and oh by the way it just happens to be that guy I’m really into but that you totally hate, what’s a girl to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ” BUT. Because the woman could call it a rape, and even be backed up by witnesses (the lover’s friends----I know it seems weird, but in the Middle Ages witnesses (fuck, personal references) were basically the only currency outside of the gold florin that mattered worth a damn), she could “sue” for marriage, and end up marrying the man she’d wanted all along, no doubt to the consternation of her father. ................Yeah, the Middle Ages were pretty fucked up.

#history #what can i say i'm a chatty drunk #here's your latest unwanted essay #i should be a college student for life is all i'm saying

13 notes · View notes