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snowbellewells · 3 years

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Self-Promo Sunday: “A Litter More Than They Bargained For”

Hey there friends and shipmates! I’ve taken a couple of weeks off on the Self-Promo Sunday posts, but I was looking back through some of my older pieces and found this fluffy one shot offering from a couple years ago. (It was part of the amazing @cspupstravaganza event in 2019.) I didn’t make it any cover art before, so I’ve added that to it as well. Taking place sometime post- season six; Hope is present and a toddler, but Henry is still there as well. That makes it canon divergent future fluff, I guess? Apologies if you’ve read this one before, but maybe you’ll get a little smile from revisiting it.

Also available on both AO3 HERE and on ff.net HERE

“A Litter More Than They Bargained For”

One pet she could have handled. One pet would have been perfectly manageable. A single, sweet-natured, reasonably well-behaved small pet - maybe a cat or a rabbit or even a hamster - wouldn’t have really changed anything about their lives in the seaside house or their daily routine that much. In fact, she and Killian had already been discussing a surprise for Hope in the form of a kitten from the litter her mom and dad’s barn cat had recently birthed, completely charming their pre-schooler upon her first visit to them at her grandparents’ farm.

Somehow, instead, all of Emma’s best-laid plans had been inverted and overturned, as so often seemed to happen in their chaotic magical town. When they had gone into the station that particular morning, they had found a large, mud-caked, burr-riddled dog tied to the bike rack and whining pitifully upon first sight of them. Emma was too disgruntled at the culprit for figuring out that their whole three person department were soft touches for strays as she charged foward to untie the poor beast, to even realize that the critter was already rooting into her affection. Needless to say, rather than their intended adoption, they had managed to take in a shaggy, slobbery mixed breed almost as large as a Shetland pony, with at least some Irish Wolfhound in its ancestry, according to the shelter attendant.

Gleefully mimicking that last declaration in her toddler voice, Hope had leaned over out of Killian’s arms to reach for where the huge hound lounged panting on the exam table, tongue lolling and tail thumping happily as she babbled, “Wolfie! Wolfie!” and patted along the dog’s back and shoulders as well as she could.

The thick, scruffy grey fur covering the animal’s lanky form did indeed resemble a wolf to some degree, and Kililan chuckled good naturedly at the easy moniker their daughter had seemingly bestowed. “Well, it would seem our little love has already christened her, Swan,” he commented lightly.

Emma wasn’t fooled by the casual demeanor covering her True Love’s words. She felt her last chance of finding a more suitable home for a dog of that size outside the town limits (preferably with acres for it to run) fade as she realized that her husband, as well as her little girl, was already attached. Killian wanted this dog more than he would admit.

Reaching out to stroke the gentle giant’s head resignedly, Emma reluctantly admitted to herself that the poor stray really was a sweet dog, despite her astonishing proportions and the amount of extra responsibility she herself would no doubt be taking on. “Hear that, Wolfie?” she questioned, looking the dog in the eyes rather than either member of her family, whom she could feel nearly vibrating with excitement beside her, “I guess you’re as good as ours.”

Henry only confirmed the permanence of the decision when he got home from the high school after his editors’ meeting for the school paper. Though a dog had never been something he had particularly asked for - they had spent so many of his growing up years being flung from one realm to another, either trying to rescue some member of their family, or seeking the needed magic item to fight some new villain, that it hadn’t left a lot of time for house training puppies or taking one for leisurely evening strolls. Still, as Henry came up the walk and saw Wolfie stretched out on the porch, Hope cuddled against her side and Emma and Killian curled together on the porch swing, the way her nearly adult son’s face had lit up and he’d rushed forward in excitement had shown Emma that kids didn’t really grow out of loving dogs, no matter their age.

Ruby, or perhaps the irrepressible brunette’s inner wild animal, seemed to find their new addition, and the rather obvious name Hope had latched onto, especially entertaining. Due to Wolfie’s size, the Jones clan now ate outside at the patio tables when they stopped for breakfast on the way to drop Hope off at Ashley Hermann’s Pumpkin Seeds Daycare, and before Henry took off for class and they headed on for the station. Her mother��s best friend didn’t even try to hide the fact that she saved back either bacon, sausage, or ham especially for Emma’s pet each day, laughing when after about a week Wolfie came to her the moment she exited the diner’s front entrance, before she could even reach their table, and began nosing at her pockets for the expected bounty.

However, it was Granny herself who startled them with a matter of fact question about a month after Wolfie had joined their family. The diner’s proprietress had come out to wait on them herself that morning, a real nip in the air as November neared, and explaining that Ruby was lying in for a while after the full moon the night before. Her half-spectacles perched on the very end of her nose, eyes sparkling with every bit as much pep and mischief as her exuberant granddaughter when she neared their table, sleeves rolled up to her elbows despite the chill and a pencil tucked behind one ear.

“The usual, Captain?” Widow Lucas asked with a playful nod to Killian, “or are you and your crew feeling adventurous this morning?” While awaiting their answer, she reached into her apron for her order pad, also pulling out a juicy ham bone for Wolfie.

“Here you are, darlin’ girl,” she continued, bending to offer it to their canine companion, much to Wolfie’s approving delight as she barked a ‘thank you’ and took the treat into her drooling jowls with an almost humorous care, then immediately dropped to hold it between her massive paws and began gnawing away.

When Granny stood to face them again however, a knowing smirk was painted across her face, taking their breakfast order seemingly long forgotten. “You don’t have a clue that dog is carrying a litter of pups, do you?” she asked, shaking her head at what she seemed to think was their dense naivete.

Crossing her arms, Granny watched a variety of reactions cross the four faces before her. Henry looked awed and curious, while Hope practically bounced on Killian’s knee asking, “Puppy? Puppy! We having a puppy?”

Killian’s brows rose in surprise, and Emma was already shaking her head in disgruntled exasperation. “Really?” she sputtered, narrowly eying the diner owner as if she might be playing some sort of elaborate joke at her expense.

Then, plunking her head down to rest on her arms crossed on the table, she sighed as her daughter contiuned to chortle in delight and Henry and Hook laughed heartily, in spite of their manful efforts to hold back for her sake. “Why am I even surprised?” Emma muttered. “Of course, she is.”

***

From there, they learned that apparently the shelter owner did not have it out for them, but that it can be genuinely hard to tell when a dog is expecting until they are quite close to their due date. It also turned out that Granny’s lupine sixth sense had been right on the money. Within another couple weeks, they could see for themselves that Wolfie’s stomach was rounding and she was nesting in corners throughout the house, particularly favoring the warmth of the laundry room between the dryer and the wall. Seeing as how canine gestation was only eight or nine weeks from start to finish, and their mother-to-be was already showing, it was a bit of a scramble to prepare, knowing the litter of pups would soon be on its way.

As had become typical since Wolfie’s arrival, this too went well beyond what they had expected. On the night they returned from Hope’s Thanksgiving Play at the preschool to tiny yips and whimpers greeting them the second the door opened, the entire Jones family was stunned to discover eight small wriggling bodies jostling for place against Wolfie’s exhausted form where she lay curled into the mound of old blankets and towels they had created for her once her fixation on her laundry room nest become plain. Various rather wetly bedraggled and squirming balls of grey, black, white and mottled mixes of those three colors in coat greeted their eyes, prompting Killian to comment rather drily, “Well, now there are nearly enough of us to crew a pirate ship.” He chuckled, shaking his head, as he added, “Mayhap we can give them proper nautical names this time, rather than letting Hope call them the first word that pops from her mouth.”

“Paaa-pa!” their daughter protested indignantly, stomping her little foot on the linoleum tile and placing chubby fists on her hips. “I did not!” In her two braids, beaded headband, and fringed brown “Indian” dress from the play, she made more an adorable than a threatening sight as she intended, but Killian nodded to their daughter dutifully all the same. “My apologies, little lass. Of course you didn’t. I must have been mistaken.”

Emma rolled her eyes and shook her head at his mannered playfulness with Hope, though her heart warmed inside her as well, loving that their little girl had never known anything but a devoted, adoring, present father, who might have to be pulled back from spoiling Hope at times, but would never let her down or abandon her. The two of them could melt her every defense, just as Henry had always done. Even if it did sometimes leave her trying to be the voice of reason, Emma didn’t truly mind.

Henry, for his part, snorted inelegantly at their nonsense, crouching to pet a nervous-looking Wolfie on the head and scritch under her chin the way she liked. “Don’t worry, girl,” he mumured soothingly. “We won’t hurt them. You’re all safe here.”

Her son grew thoughtful for a moment, mulling something over, then looked up when he asked excitedly. “What if we did pick nautical names for them all? Like Jack and Jib and Scurvy?” He was grinning from ear-to-ear now, as his Author’s love of wordplay awakened - an expression Killian quickly mirrored.

“Aye, lad, those are great! And perhaps Scoundrel and Buccaneer as well?”

“Hey, hey, guys,” Emma broke in, trying to stop their now-steaming train before they got any more carried away. “Let’s not get too into naming them. The families who adopt them may not be looking for pirate dogs.”

But her husband and son were already on a roll, adding Barrie (in a nod to the Englishman who had created Killian’s literary counterpart) and Doubloon to the list of potential puppy monikers, and not paying her words the slightest bit of attention.

***

Finding homes for their doggie brood proved more difficult than Emma had hoped. If nothing else, it had worked out that they were being weaned just in time to join a family for the perfect child’s Christmas present. And, much as she had intended for them to have a quiet little tabby kitten padding after her through the house rather than a train of panting, yipping, running and tumbling balls of shedding fluff, the pups were sweet and incredibly cute. So she couldn’t understand how every time she thought she had someone poised to take one home, it fell through at the last moment.

With a sigh, she turned away from the sidewalk where old lady Hubbard was walking away. Still cradling Cutlass and Matey to her chest, one in each arm, Emma crossed the porch to sink onto the porch swing with a dejected air. She bent to press a kiss into each of their soft, fuzzy foreheads, murmuring what good babies they were and that it wasn’t their fault. Intellectually, Emma knew it was rather ridiculous to be trying to comfort two puppies who were now playfully rolling and tumbling in her lap, not the least bit concerned at the interview’s outcome. They really had been particularly good as their potential new owner had arrived to meet them; sitting calmly without barking or jumping up, sweetly licking the elderly woman’s fingers affectionately when she offered them, and looking even more adorable than usual with their coats freshly bathed and brushed, so black and silky that their fur nearly shone. All their neighbor had seemed able to focus on though was that they might get under her feet and cause her to fall. When Emma had spoken to her before, the older lady had seemed so anxious for some company now that the last of her many children had left the house, but once she had arrived to see the puppies, all she kept saying was, “I’m all alone out there. If I fell, I might lie for days, unable to get up, and no one would know.”

Emma shrugged her shoulders and ruffled the pups’ fur once again; annoyed, but not sure what to make of the situation. Standing, she was about to take the two little rascals back inside when Killian arrived home for the evening.

“They’re both still here?” he asked curiously, one eyebrow arched in question.

Something niggled at the back of Emma’s mind with his question, whispering that he didn’t seem especially suprised. Shaking her head in silent answer, Emma ushered man and dogs back into the house and headed toward the kitchen, where she still had all of the dog dishes to fill.

“Ah well, Love,” Killian replied, something about his voice just a shade too nonchalant. “Perhaps it’s for the best. As energetic as these scalliwags sometimes get,” he laughed and scratched Matey’s belly when she rolled over to bare it in supplication, “they might have proven a walking hazard to one of advanced years.”

Emma was about to question him further, shocked that Killian had hit on exactly what had stopped the potential adoption, but at that moment Wolfie and the other six of her offspring burst into the kitchen and set up a chorus of barks and howls for their dinner, toenails clicking on the floor and tails thunking against the cabinets. So it wasn’t until later that night, as she was speaking to her mother on the phone, bemoaning yet one more failed attempt at finding the pups permanent homes, that the niggling puzzle piece at last slid into place.

“Well,” Snow offered hesitantly, “I’m sorry it fell through, Sweetie, but you know Mrs. Hubbard isn’t all that steady on her feet these days…”

Suddenly, it all added up: Mrs. Hubbard’s unexpected concern with puppies tripping her up around the house, how Ashley had at first thought they might take one of the puppies, only to be convinced by someone that mice would be much more fitting for class pets at Cinderella’s daycare, and how Aurora and Philip’s second child, Hope’s little friend Rory, had suddenly decided she wanted a white Persian kitten whose hair she could put a pink bow in, “like ‘Rie from ‘Ristocats” Aurora had explained in her daughter’s own words when she’d called to tell Emma.

“Oh my word!” Emma shouted, startling her husband, kids, and the pile of dogs sprawled over them in the living room where they were watching tv. “It was you all, wasn’t it? My whole family has been working against me this entire time!”

Looking sheepishly guilty, Killian and Henry both wordlessly shook their heads in denial. Her mother floundered for a defense for a few seconds and then simply fled by ending the call. But when Emma’s eyes came to rest on her daughter, Hope merely grinned widely, a shameless glint of mischief in her green eyes, and nodded her head in confirmation.

“Why?” Emma sputtered.

“Then the puppies are all ours!” her toddler chirped happily, falling back against Wolfie’s shoulder with a giggle, to which Wolfie merely huffed at the impact, then nosed Hope a bit further from the edge of the couch, as if she had one extra pup to watch out for and was making sure the child didn’t fall.

“We’ll see about that,” Emma grumbled, staring each of them down in turn. But, when she flopped down on the armchair in the corner, trying to hold onto her righteous indignation, and Scoundrel came over to check on her, pawing at her leg until she picked him up, and then nudging his grey snout flecked with white patches into her armpit as he stretched out across her chest and promptly fell asleep, Emma was smart enough to know when she had lost the fight.

They were the family with nine dogs now - an entire seaworthy crew.

Tagging a few who may enjoy (or enjoy again!): @searchingwardrobes @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @thisonesatellite @artistic-writer @hollyethecurious @whimsicallyenchantedrose @laschatzi @thislassishooked @therooksshiningknight @spartanguard @shireness-says @ohmightydevviepuu @ohmakemeahercules @scientificapricot @gingerchangeling @teamhook @revanmeetra87@resident-of-storybrooke @elizabeethan @tiganasummertree @optomisticgirl @stahlop @lfh1226-linda @xsajx @donteattheappleshook @darkcolinodonorgasm @winterbaby89

#self promo sunday #cs oneshot #ouat canon divergence #future fluff ff #a litter more than they bargained for

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weekinethereum · 6 years

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May 23, 2018

News and Links

Protocol

Latest core devs call. Lane’s notes.

Latest Casper standup

Jaynti Kanani: getting block times down in Plasma through propose and commit periodic checkpoints

Kelvin Fichter: Proving UTXO Sum Validity for Mass Exits

Vitalik Buterin: Network latency based “clocks” and their limits

blob serialization code

Github issue for using libp2p in the future, eg sharding

Pisa: 3rd party agent to solve the monitoring problem for state channels. Academic paper from Patrick McCorry, Surya Bakshi, Iddo Bentov, Sarah Meiklejohn, and Andrew Miller

Stuff for developers

Nick Johnson announces the first Solidity Gas Golfing Contest to write gas optimized code

Loom’s ZombieChain: An EOS-Like DPoS sidechain

Solidity-cli: compile Solidity faster and easier

uPort’s code to pay gas for users

React starter kit integrated with Drizzle

What it’s like to go from decentralized dev back to centralized development work

Superblocks online IDE

Truffle v4.1.11: upgrade to solc v0.4.24

Connext v0.2 implements Perun’s virtual channel code

the Aragon developer portal (and tutorial)

Learning Solidity from a Java dev’s perspective

Ecosystem

Dan Finlay: why build a new society on blockchain?

Glen Weyl and Vitalik Buterin: Liberation Through Radical Decentralization

uPort to rewrite some of its JavaScript libraries as php for a Wordpress plugin

Latest “Open Source Block Explorers” call

Etherscan has a bunch of new tools: dex order book, dex tracker, gas tracker, Swarm search

A beginner’s explanation of gas

Ideo on designing for blockchain

ECF: mapping out all the grants available in the greater Ethereum ecosystem

EthPrize on the learnings from their developer interviews: better documentation, better debugger, getting data off the chain, error codes, tooling, etc. Great work by Robbie Bent, Sina Habibian, Andy Tudhope and Josh Stark.

An EthMemphis writeup. FedEx is getting into our space.

ENS dispute resolution: Forced bribes

Live on mainnet

Dharma protocol is now live on mainnet. Borrow and lend ERC20 tokens, write a debt relayer, be an underwriter, build your own debt agreement, etc. Dharma launch promo vid.

FunFair’s first fate channel on mainnet

Governance and Standards

ERC721 is in “last call” so there’s a decent amount of discussion.

EIP1108: “proposes a 10x reduction in the gas cost for the ECADD precompile, 20x for ECMUL, and a 14x reduction in the per-pairing cost of the pairing check precompile” due to faster implementation

EIP1109: Remove call costs for precompiled contracts

ERC1081: standard bounties (updated)

ERC1115: decentralized user authentication standard

ERC1111: introspective metadata definition disclosure

ERC1102: opt-in web3 access

EIP1098: Cross-client encrypt/decrypt

Discussion on ERC712 using eth_signTypedData as a human readable standard

Project Updates

Akasha update with their Colored Essence token model

Mysterium updated roadmap

Following a tuni from Fiji to Brooklyn with Viant’s supply chain tracker

What’s next for Livepeer

The crazy things people are building on Decentraland

Pangea fractional tokenized real estate rebrands to Meridio

Coinbase acquires Paradex. GDAX rebrands as CoinbasePro

Neufund’s registration is open

Why and how Gnosis is addressing key management with Gnosis Safe

Get your github login as a subdomain on <githubname>.gitcoin.eth. Also, the bounties going up from the Ethereum Foundation’s grant.

TheNextWeb Q&A with Golem’s Julian Zawistowski

Kauri update on its documentation competition

Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks

Lane Rettig and Alex Beregszaszi talk eWasm on Zero Knowledge

Rob Habermeier presents Parity Substrate

Kraken’s Jesse Powell with Laura Shin

Jacob Eberhardt talk on his zkstark tooling ZoKrates

Jarrad Hope on how Status is implementing a decentralized org

Etherisc at NYC Ethereum

NYC Blockchain week Ethereum panel with Joseph Poon, Kelvin Fichter, Jae Kwon, Vitalik Buterin and Karl Floersch

Joseph Lubin on Crypto101

Deconomy: Vitalik Buterin and Vlad Zamfir talks

Video interview of Decentraland founders

Tokens

An overview of TCR design patterns

Venture bonding: funding network effects on donations and bounties

Jacob Horne on the playful future of NFTs

Decentralizing the minting of NFTs

New decentralized business models from Etherisc

DaoX - an implementation of DAICO

CFTC advisory for exchanges trading “virtual currency” derivatives. This takes me back to the days of holding a series 3 license.

NAASA announces “Operation Cryptosweep” of 32 enforcement actions against fraud plus the recent inquiries from the NY AG’s office (though he has now resigned in scandal). I’ve never heard of any of those 32, but the WSJ reports they’re saying it is the “tip of the iceberg.” SEC Chairman Clayton’s statement applauding them.

There’s also the WSJ report categorizing many ICOs as having red flags.

General

Polkadot POC1. Still aiming for q3 2019 launch

Parity discontinues its Parity ICO Passport Service (PICOPS) due to GDPR

Seasteading floating islands and crypto is a libertarian fantasy

Jump Trading’s crypto desk is their largest trading desk

Steve Wozniak compares Ethereum to apple

WSJ profiles crypto-friendly banks. The WSJ also says Coinbase and IvyKoin met with regulators about bank licenses. Just writing that gave me flashbacks to my days filling out banking regulatory applications to dozens of regulatory agencies.

HTC building a blockchain phone called Exodus. [Reminder, media sites need the Brave browser. Here’s my referral code]

Comparing enterprise blockchains: Ethereum v R3 v Hyperledger

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note:

May 25 - 27 -- EthBuenosAires hackathon

May 28 -- Zeppelin’s zepcon0 conference (Buenos Aires)

June 1 -- Blockchain for Social Impact Conference (Washington, DC)

June 28 -- BuildEth (San Francisco)

June 30 -- Solidity Gas Golfing challenge deadline

July 14-15 -- FEM governance meetings in Berlin

September 7-9 -- EthBerlin hackathon

Oct 5-7 -- TruffleCon in Portland

Oct 30 - Nov 2 -- Devcon4 (Prague)

If you appreciate this newsletter, thank ConsenSys

I'm thankful that ConsenSys has brought me on and given me time to do this newsletter.

Editorial control is 100% me. If you're unhappy with editorial decisions, blame me first and last.

Shameless self-promotion

Here’s the link to share: http://www.weekinethereum.com/post/174197272063/may-23-2018 Most of what I link to I tweet first: @evan_van_ness

I also have an Ethereum podcast on the Bitcoin Podcast network.

This newsletter is supported by ConsenSys, which is perpetually hiring if you’re interested.

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#ethereum #buidl

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its-love-u-asshole · 6 years

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Fic Writers Week Day 3: Small But Mighty

Shine a spotlight on the new/underrated fics you’ve read or written.

Yeeessss it’s rec time! I know there’s also the last day to rec fics in general, but I love the idea behind this day a lot too! There’s so many beautiful fics that I’ve read which don’t receive the amount of recognition/kudos that they deserve! I can’t wait to spread the word about them! Since this might be a longer post, I’m putting it under a read more! Enjoy <3

Also, I want to encourage people to try reading new fics as much as possible! While fic rec lists are a good source to start and get ideas about what to read, often times people rely on them too much, and then overlook newer fics which are just as amazing! So every once in a while, remember to check the ship tags on ao3 for newly posted works, that way you don’t miss any hidden gems!

Alright, let’s get into it!

in a flash (ao3) -- Kurotsuki, G

He sees a red beanie covering messy black hair, a soft and boyish smile lit up by the sunlight, and a gray cat.

Click.

Okay so this kurotsuki fic definitely needs twice as many kudos/comments, because the writing was downright phenomenal! It was so beautiful and made me feel warm inside all throughout reading it, I couldn’t get enough! The characterizations are excellent, and the whole mood of the fic is so cozy and wonderful. Please check it out if you love kurotsuki! Also make sure to follow @cawnvictofmurder on tumblr!

a haunting in tokyo (ao3) -- Daisuga, G

This wasn’t the first time Suga had claimed their apartment had been haunted. However, it was the first time he tried to do something about it. Daichi, as always, is nothing but supportive.

This fic was short, but unbelievably sweet! I loved the mix of domestic daisuga fluff with paranormal shenanigans lmao, it was just a super enjoyable fic which had me giggling constantly. I don’t read much daisuga, but it was definitely a treat, and I’d recommend the fic to all! Please also make sure to follow @bishounen-curious <3

Starved (ao3) -- Kurotsuki, T

Kei can’t make it this week. Next week, maybe, he’ll be here but Tetsurou is all out of patience.

Prompt: “I’m tired of being your secret.”

@ivyfics has too many amazing fics which deserve more attention, but this one I feel especially needs to be read. The writing and emotions are just...incredible, I reread this fic so much because I’m in awe of how well it’s written. It’s the perfect mix of angst and relationship development, and I super appreciate that it’s from Kuroo’s POV! Please check it out if you love kurotsuki! It’s worth the read (and reread lol) ^^

Where to Start (ao3) -- TeruShira, G

It's the second date Kenjirou has been on and he can feel Yuuji already figuring him out. He wants to be the boyfriend he wants Yuuji to have, but he doesn't know where to start.

Alright so this author in general just needs more love, yeah TeruShira (or any Shirabu ship really lol) is a rarepair, but gah trust me, after you read this fic you’ll be hopping onto the shipping train so damn fast. The characterizations are so realistic and interesting, and the interactions between the pair are so fun and touching. Please check this fic out, as well as all of SilverAmoebasquid‘s other works!

A God for Every Season (ao3) -- Matsuhana, T

Mortals have all kinds of foolish tales, like how Hades and Persephone's annual reunion causes the seasons. Matsukawa knows better.

Alright, I don’t have time to get into this because for this fic, I can honestly write a 10 page essay about how much I love it. So lemme just say, the writing and the romance is top notch, like...wow, words cannot describe how beautiful the writing is. You seriously need to read it in order to understand. I also love mythology aus, and this delivered! The retelling of Hades/Persephone reuniting was so creative and enjoyable, I want to reread it all again just from typing this lol. @90stimkon did an incredible job with this fic and all their fics, so please check them all out! <3

Waiting for Spring (ao3) -- Kurotsuki, NR

Kuroo had only ever been enamored with a person in his lifetime once. And then "The Dream" happened. Everyday, he dreamt of the neighborhood where he lived, and he always saw a stranger with short blond hair, a tall stature, and black-framed glasses in his dreams. He didn't know who he was, but he was determined to find out.

Kuroo had only ever been enamored with a person in his lifetime once. And then "The Dream" happened. That was the second time.

This fic isn’t exactly recent but I’ll never stop reccing it until it’s been read by everyone lmao I swear! It’s a bit on the angstier side, and there’s a warning for mental illness mentions, but it’s a gorgeous fic. It explores Tsukishima’s emotions and character so well, Kuroo’s too! The details about mental health and Kuroo’s feelings/situation are great, it’s definitely a dream fic which flows into reality so well! I loved the ending, I loved the whole fic, so please give it a shot!

24 Hours (ao3) -- Iwaoi, E

Iwaizumi, a special investigations agent, finds himself falling in love with someone who may already be dead.

@serviceace is an amazing writer, and this crime au has got me so hooked! If you like crime mysteries and detective!Iwaizumi, this is the fic for you! It’s ongoing, but each chapter is so interesting and fun to read, and the questions keep me on the edge of my seat! Please go read this fic if you’re a sucker for iwaoi and police aus, as I am ;)

To The Skies (ao3) -- Kacchako, M

It was supposed to be a typical evening for Bakugou Katsuki. A masquerade ball, a night of serving the royal family as he always did. But when the party goes horribly wrong it's up to servant boy Bakugou to rescue the princess, Uraraka Ochako. His rescue mission is about to change both of their lives completely, and eventually Uraraka will want to reclaim her throne.

Now, older, the two reunite, realizing their lives have gone in very different directions. Ochako, part of the Resistance against the horrible Academy, and Bakugou, a famed sky pirate, traveling the island clusters to find various bounties. Together, they fight to take back the home they once knew and loved.

Okay y’all, lemme tell you, if you love Kacchako, you need to read this! The idea is so damn original, and Rache’s writing is A++ as always. The world she builds and the character relationships that she crafts are so well done. This fic seriously deserves more attention, so please go read! <3 Also follow her writing blog on tumblr @emeraldwaves ! You won’t be disappointed!

Tacky Shoes and Movie Tickets (ao3) -- Bokuaka, T

Akaashi deals with a lot of stupid people.

He isn't yet certain if Bokuto falls into that category.

In which Akaashi is the manager of a movie theater, Bokuto is the new hire at the shoe store downstairs, and the two of them get along much better than Akaashi could have anticipated.

Okay so I was super surprised that this fic didn’t have more kudos! It’s so light hearted and funny, not to mention perfectly sweet! It’s ongoing, but I can’t wait for more. @worthlesspride writes some of the best bokuaka out there, it’s so fluffy and heartwarming, not to mention the writing flows so well! Please read and support it!

Alright, so I’m going to do some self promo because why not? This day is for fic writers too after all lmao.

Perfectly Aligned (ao3) -- Kurotsuki, T

Kuroo didn’t know how he’d made it back here, standing beneath the glistening war machines known as Jaegers. He was the definite outsider, not just at the Shatterdome, but in this world. The world of Jaeger pilots had long since closed its door on him, and now here he was, knocking once again. However, maybe this time, he wouldn’t be alone.

Just a good ol’ Pacific Rim AU. I really loved playing with this universe, and tbh it’s probably some of my best writing?? It didn’t get much attention because I posted it during a busy exchange week, but I’m definitely proud of it and hope more people can read it!

Ceaseless (ao3) -- Kiyoyachi, E

The life of an assassin isn't an easy one. Devoid of morals and full of the criminal underworld's grime , it's a job Kiyoko has always been weirdly perfect at. She's long stopped thinking about why, but just because she kills without remorse, doesn't mean she doesn't have her own attachments.

I’m including this one because f/f ships do not get nearly enough attention as they should. I live for f/f content, and I hope I can read a lot more in the future and introduce ppl to it through fics like this! This fic did not get many kudos, but I think it was actually pretty good writing/smut, so please give it a try if you like kiyoyachi!

Let My Love (ao3) -- Kurotsuki, T

For Kuroo, finding love was all about patience. He had no problem with waiting for the right person to come along, no matter how many awkward dinners or weddings he had to endure as a single man until they did. Regardless, meeting Tsukishima was something he’d never been prepared for. The feelings were overwhelming and intoxicating, ones he was sure he’d do anything for. However, it seemed his endless waiting wasn’t over.

While this fic isn’t short on kudos, I feel like it gets overlooked when compared to my siren au for kurotsuki. While this fic is a bit angstier than Slipping Underneath, it’s one of my most favorite that I’ve ever written. Writing slow burn is a challenge, but I think so far I’m doing well lol?? I love writing this fic, so if you want, I hope you can also enjoy reading it! <3

I Search Through the Crowd (ao3) -- Iwaoi, T

It wasn't uncommon to believe in reincarnation, most people did, but it wasn't some flippant thing. Only people with the strongest of bonds were reincarnated, or so legend put it. Hajime could be dense sometimes, but he didn't miss the meaning Tooru was trying to convey.

"I'll find you."

Lastly, this was my first iwaoi fic, and I was really proud of it even though it didn’t get much attention. It was a struggle to write, but overall, I’m super happy with the result, so I hope you guys can get the chance to read it! I hope I get to write even more iwaoi in the future too!

#ficwritersweek #haikyuu!!#reccing stuff is so fun lol #fic recs #kurotsuki #kacchako

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emarasmoak · 7 years

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SUPERGIRL SPECULATIONS MADE AFTER EPISODE 3X06 AIRED

Keeping up with the speculations about Mon-El / Karamel / the Legion of Superheroes was a reasonable task until 3x06, but once the first promo for 3x07 was released, the fandom exploded and it is being difficult to keep up with all the storylines that have been proposed.

I was not sure that there was a most popular theory (I didn’t have a preferred one), so I made a list of all of the speculations that were posted or sent to me. Most of them would be amazing Karamel fanfiction prompts.

It was crazy and exciting and I loved it. We missed Mon-El that much.

Karamel Fam predictions masterpost here.

Trolls and haters will be blocked.

Predictions after the break.

MON-EL’S ABSENCE

• The dreams that Kara mentioned in episode 1 were shared with Mon-El. Clue = the beard is real.

• During his absence, Mon-El has been in a very dark dystopian world. Suggested options include being a slave, slave liberator, gladiator (War World), Wold Killer, prisoner/ tortured (by the Daxamite Army or someone else), criminal, assassin, sentenced to endless floating into space, being transported somewhere else, bounty hunter, clon, alien refugees, mind controlled or a dark version of the Legion of Superheroes.

•Mon-El was imprisoned and abused and has Stockholm Syndrome, so he thinks that he has to helps his captors. He may not be aware that he was abused because of his self-loath, guilt and the way that he was treated by his family.

•If Mon-El has been a slave/ gladiator he was sold by the Daxamites because they considered him a traitor. They may return to punish him.

•If he was a gladiator, his fight name was Valor.

•Someone tried to brainwash Mon-El into a gladiator/ assassin/ World Killer and he’s held this mind control at bay with the help of Saturn Girl.

•Someone cured Mon-El for him to become a gladiator/ assassin/ World Killer.

• Mon-El has PTSD and has changed significantly because of his experiences during his absence.

•In his timeline, Mon-El saw Kara being killed by Reign and is now desperate to save her. And he cannot tell her if he wants to save her/ the world.

• Mon-El has got more training/ experience in fighting. Clue = him knocking out the DEO agent efficiently.

• Mon-El has been with the Legion of Superheroes. He may be wearing a Flight Ring because according to some comics canon it could be invisible.

• Mon-El has not been with the Legion of Superheroes but they have been chasing him, either because they need him to become a hero or because he is a criminal.

• Mon-El has been cured from his lead allergy but he doesn’t know how. A potential reason may be the orange pod that he was in as some substance was there to keep him in hibernation.

• Mon-El’s DNA has been altered and that is why the lead is not affecting him anymore. Clue = Winn mentioning in 3x05 that the lead was linked to Daxamite DNA so it would be harmless for humans. Kara looking at a microscope slide and promo suggesting that she is not sure that the Mon-El they find in 3x07 is really him.

• Mon-El woke up because of the explosion in 3x04 and he has been alone in the spaceship but didn’t know how to wake up the others or he didn’t want to.

•Mon-El was starving when he was found as there was no need for food while they were hybernated. He survived because he could still absorb some radiation from the yellow sun.

LEGION OF SUPERHEROES

•There are at least 6 pods: Mon-El, Saturn Girl and 4 other people. One of them might be Brainiac 5. Some of them could have died.

•All of the other people in the pods wear the same clothes as he does, so they could be wearing uniforms. Suggested explanations are them being legionnaires, slaves, prisoners, army, crew members, assassins, World Killers.

• There are other Legionnaires in the pods. The symbols may indicate Saturn Girl, Brainiac and Element Lad. They could be wearing invisible Flight Rings.

•Saturn Girl was the person moving in the stasis pod in the 3x07 trailer and that is why she woke or was awaken.

•Brainiac is in one of the stasis pods in 3x07 but they cannot or won’t wake him up until 3x10. Potential reasons are that Mon-El doesn’t trust him because of his obsession with Kara, it is part of the Legion’s plan, the DEO doesn’t trust them and doesn’t want another superpowered person, or they cannot do it.

• They are in pods because they have been travelling through vast distances at extreme speeds, so they need to be put in pods so they don’t age and/ or don’t get damaged by the gravity distortions of extreme hyperspace.

• They are in pods because they need it to travel through time with this technology.

• They are in pods because they are prisoners and this is a way to control them.

•The Legion of Superheroes are not from the future or another timeline. They are up from another galaxy or universe and they are part of a Galactic Council.

•The people travelling in the spaceship, including Mon-El, have been freeing slaves and they need to leave the Earth before the bad guys get to them. Clue = Comics (Seeding World storyline).

• Mon-El and the Legion of Superheroes have travelled to the past (2017 or years before that) to help with something (probably defeat Reign, which may be achieved saving Kara or ensuring that she sacrifices her life).

• Some of the Legionnaires (such as Saturn Girl) have been with Mon-El in a same dystopian world. They may have been imprisoned by a villain or even have been fighting in War World.

• The Legion of Superheroes does not exist yet and we will see how it starts during season 3. One potential origin stories is all of them being alien refugees that want to help others.

• Mon-El and a few Legionnaires including Saturn Girl have gone rogue to kill Reign without the approval of the rest of the Legion. Maybe Saturn Girl and Mon-El are teaming up to save both of their loved ones (Lighting Lad and Kara). Clue: In the comics the Legion had a strict code against killing.

•Reign changed the timeline and the Legion travelled back to the past to stop her.

•The Legion comes from a future where Reign killed Kara and Clark, and then other Worldkillers joined her and took over the Earth.

• Reign wasn’t supposed to exist, but a being has manipulated time to allow her to have escaped Krypton to come to Earth and kill Superman and Supergirl. The Time Trapper is a hidden enemy that would turn Mon-El into a killer. Clue: In comics one exception about the Legion no-killing rule was Mon-El killing the Time Trapper. He (along with other Legionaires) attempts to kill him as revenge for killing Superboy. TT survives, but Mon-El finally kills him, which resulted in massive disturbances to the time-stream, and the first “Legion Reboot”.

•The Legion members were planning to live undercover so that they could ensure that Mon-El would be able to fulfill his destiny. If they have been undercover for some time he may not know that they are Legion. Clue = During the New Krypton arc, the Legion Members were living undercover in and around Metropolis to ensure that Mon-El would be able to fulfill his destiny.

• Saturn Girl got herself captured with Mon-El to protect him and has been keeping him connected to Kara because Karamel love is important to save the world/ Kara. Clue = In the current canon, Saturn Girl is in Arkham Asylum waiting for Superman to drop in.

• The spaceship crash landed and they couldn’t wake up until the explosion in 3x04.

•The scary lady that has been visiting Samantha’s dreams was in the spaceship and escaped in 3x01 or when the spaceship landed.

•The scary lady was keeping Mon-El and the others in the post captives.

MON-EL IS FOUND

•Mon-El thinks that he is in a red sun planet and that is why he was carrying a gun. A possible reason for that is that in an apocalyptic future, Reign has made the Earth more like Krypton and now has a red sun.

• The only other person that the DEO is able to wake up in 3x07 is Saturn Girl (that at this point may or may not be a Legionnaire). There are at least 3 other people but they might be dead/ harmed.

• Mon-El didn’t know that he was on Earth and he was not expecting to see Kara.

• Mon-El thinks that the shouldn’t have seen Kara again because it will be a disaster for her/ the timeline/ the world or because Kara would try to stop the Legion. They planned to stay undercoveruntil they stopped the threat (defeat Reign or ensure that Kara dies at her hands). That is why Mon-El panicked when he saw her. When he wakes up in the DEO he tries to run away to find the others and stop the threat.

• Mon-El ends up in a bed in the DEO because he is weak (maybe hungry or thirsty) and passess out of the exhaustion and emotions. Clue = they put him in a bed with what looks like a yellow sun lamp. Chris’ arms are bigger but he looks like thinner (just muscles and bones).

• Kara worries that Mon-El has been harmed by the lead in the atmosphere and he will not be able to wake up again.

MON-EL SNEAKS OUT

• The DEO trusts Mon-El initially, but they won’t when they find him knocking out agents and sneaking out. There is something strange in the microscope slide that Kara is holding in one of the photos. They also may find that the spaceship have been there for years.

• One of the DEO agents that Mon-El knocks out in the promo is Winn.

• Kara and the DEO are not sure that the Mon-El that is found in season 7 is the one they lost in 2x22.

• Winn finds out Mon-El when he is sneaking out in the DEO and gets him to surrender.

• We will get an angsty MonWinn moment, specially if Mon-El knocked him out. Winn still feels guilty because of the lead device.

• Mon-El is sneaking out in the DEO because he wants to help the other people in the spaceship. Potential reasons is that they are his allies (slaves, prisoners, bounty hunters, Legionnaires, alien refugees), he wants to rescue Saturn Girl, because if the Legion’s existence is discovered it would hurt the timeline, because he has Stockholm’s syndrome, has been mind controlled, is a clon or is being mind controlled by Saturn Girl.

• Mon-El is not sneaking out in the DEO because he wants to help the other people in the spaceship. He wants to escape from them or ensure that he or his captors/ allies will not harm the Earth/ Kara. Potential reasons are that he is a slave/ prisoner/ criminal/ assassin/ tortured.

• Mon-El is sneaking out in the DEO because he needs something that they have. Possibly kryptonite, either to kill/ defeat Reign of for his superserum. Clue = i some comics, the antiserum that “cures” his as allergy has to be taken regularly and kryptonite is the main ingredient.

• Mon-El is crying in his cell because he cannot be 100% honest with her to save her/ the world and because it kills him that they cannot be together.

KARAMEL LOVE

•Mon-El cannot tell Kara what is he up to because someone his controlling him, he has partial amnesia or he believes he needs to keep it secret to protect her/ the world. Clue = he promised her that he would not lie again but will do whatever is necessary to keep her safe and to help her protect citizens above all else.

•Mon-El knows that he or she are going to die in the future and he is not telling it to her because he doesn’t want her to be attached to him again but he doesn’t want to lie to her.

•Mon-El doesn’t know that she is destined to sacrifice her life to defeat Reign in the future and the Legion has either lied to him or altered his memories.

•Mon-El knows that he has been mind controlled/ an assassin in the past and is scared to be controlled/ a mindless killer again, and that is why he is trying to leave. And he thinks that he cannot be with her to protect her/ because he is damaged.

•Mon-El is heartbroken when he is found because Kara doesn’t believe/ trust him, because he feels guilty because of what he has done or because he believes that he cannot be with her.

• Kara will not take Mon-El to the wedding because she is not yet sure that they can trust him or even believe that this is her Mon-El.

• Kara will believe that this is her Mon-El and her dreams of being with him again will come true during the season.

• At some point Kara will believe that this is her Mon-El because of her necklace. But not immediately because she thinks that she cannot help others if she is vulnerable.

• Mon-El and Kara are still very much in love with each other when he is found in 3x07. Clues = the way they look at each other, the way Kara can hardly say his name, the necklace, the dreams.

• Mon-El is not married or has a girlfriend when he is found in 3x07. Clues = no rings and he is wearing Kara’s necklace.

• If Mon-El has a girlfriend/ wife (Saturn Girl) when he is found she will break up with him because she is a psychic and will sense his love for Kara.

• Mon-El will mention that Kara was at his bedside in 2x08, or that he is again locked as an enemy as in 2x03.

•Kara and Mon-El will back away from each other when they reunite, for different reasons.

•Kara will be scared to make herself vulnerable and also will not be sure of how much he has changed. He might return with another (temporary) love interest. Clue = Melissa’s mention of the “Castaway” movie.

•Saturn Girl and Mon-El have been held somewhere and they are together out of pain, friendship and loneliness as they both have lost the loves of their lives (Saturn Girl’s is Lighting Lad). When Mon-El finds Kara he realises that his heart will always be Kara’s but has a sense of duty with Saturn Girl because she is in pain. She is a psychic and realises that Mon-El loves Kara, so she breaks up with him and urges Mon-El to follow his heart and his true love before it’s too late.

• Saturn Girl believes her love/ husband Lighting Lad is dead when she is found (for example, because she can’t sense his psychic bond) and he is hopeless to be able to be with Kara again or because he thinks that something bad happens if they get together. When Brainiac appears in episode 10 he brings news that Lighting Lad is alive and he may need to be saved or in a coma. She leaves Mon-El (maybe she breaks up with him) to be with him and save him and urges Mon-El to get back with Kara because she knows he loves her.

• Kara has closed herself off to protect her heart for so long that thinks that superheroes cannot have it all and that she shouldn’t have a relationship. So when Mon-El appears in her life she will be more reluctant to believe that she could be happy. She will realise at some point that she deserves to be happy.

• Mon-El knows Kara’s future and thinks that him being with Kara will mess with the kind of superhero that she will become.

• Mon-El knows Kara’s future and thinks that him being with Kara will kill her or destroy the world/ the timeline.

• Brainiac will be a romantic suitor for Kara. She will try to move on with him at some point because she will be hopeless that she can be with Mon-El but it will not work out.

• Mon-El will be jealous of Brainiac 5 and this will help Karamel to get back together.

•Mon-El (and maybe Kara) will think that they cannot be together but there will be an angsty moment when they will need to kiss each other.

•On Earth-X, Black Arrow and Overgirl are together, Felicity is dead and Mon-El is dead, married to Saturn Girl or somewhere else. Knowing about this will make Oliver and Felicity go ahead with their marriage plans and Kara rethink about her relationship with Mon-El. She will return wanting to get back with him, but there will be problems when she returns.

• Karamel will get back together during season 3.

• The Karamel separation may not be long (midseason finale or February sweeps). Clues = Dark Kara and Karamel break up in season 2 were much shorter arcs than expected.

• Kara and the Legion will have different objectives. Mon-El will side with the Legion on this issue and he will be right. Clue = Melissa saying that they will cause problems for her. He was right in the past like with Rhea or Jeremiah.

• Kara will be killed by Reign at the end of the season, despite the Legion / Mon-El’s efforts to save her. This will be the cliffhanger for season 3 and she will be back in season 4.

MON-EL DURING SEASON 3

• Mon-El’s Hero’s Journey is still progressing and there will be a lot of character development during season 3.

• Mon-El is not a full Legion of Superheroes member yet. He will become one and will get his flight ring.

• Mon-El’s supersuit has not been made yet. He will get that and his superhero name from Winn.

• Mon-El will have a full beard from now on, including his superhero looks.

LEGION/ OTHERS DURING SEASON 3

• The DEO will not be able to wake up the other people in the pods in 3x07.

•The DEO will not try to wake up the other people in the pods until they feel that they can trust Mon-El/ Saturn Girl. And that is why Brainiac will not be introduced until episode 10.

•Alex doesn’t trust Mon-El because she suspects that he has a hidden agenda.

• Several Legionnaires will be seen during season three, including but not limited to Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl. Clue = number of pods.

• The Legion will fight Reign.

• Saturn Girl will mention ‘Livewire’ at me point. This will make the DEO try to find her after the midseason finale. Clues = bts photos of someone with white hair. Livewire is another code name for Lighting Lad.

• The Legion will create Reign indirectly.

• Whatever happens in season 3 will change significantly the timeline, and as a consequence of that the Legion may be destroyed or changed.

• The 3 founding members of the Legion of Superheroes will be seen during the season, including Cosmic Boy and Lighting Lad (and of course Saturn Girl). Saturn Girl is married to Lighting Lad.

• Brainiac 5 is in one of the pods, wakes up in 3x10 and calls other members of the team.

• Brainiac 5 is not in one of the pods and has been looking for them. He finds them in 3x10.

• The Legion will leave a satellite team in Kara’s Earth at the end of season 3. Both Kara and Mon-El will be co-leaders and equal partners. Clue = Throughout the New 52’s run of the Legion, Mon-El was seen as field leader. Melissa mentioning that at the end of season 2 they see each other as equals and true partners. Chris saying that he wants Mon-El to be a true feminist superhero at the end of the season.

• Supergirl will probably travel to the 30th century for one episode and possibly help the Legion fight the Fatal Five, popular villains for the Legion.

•Alura is alive and her DNA was used by Zor-El to engineer Reign.

#supergirl speculation #mon-el #karamel #supergirl spoilers #legion of super heroes #supergirl #legion of superheroes #kara danvers #brainiac #winn schott #saturn girl #reign #karamel fanfiction #prompts

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avanneman · 5 years

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Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: not entirely the all-out misogynistic gore-fest I had been expecting!

youtube

When Quentin Tarantino was a young man, he had dreams, as young men do. These are among the things that Quentin Tarantino dreamed:

That he would kick Bruce Lee’s ass;

That he would save Sharon Tate’s ass;

That he would have a pitbull that would bite people on the ass (also the nuts);

That he would share a “moment”—an extended one, actually—with an insanely precocious eight-year-old girl, like that Eloise of the Plaza girl or maybe that Esmé girl in that Salinger story;1

That he would have maybe murdered someone (like his wife, just for example);

That he would beat the crap out of some dames; and

That he would be a bottom.

Tarantino reveals his dreams in a meticulously tricked out mélange of fake reality, real reality, fake dreams and reals ones, all basking in the warm California sun that shines over the capital of dreams, fake and real, Hollywood, California, the place that makes Oz seem normal. Tarantino subjects us to an elaborate collage of fake and real film clips, fake ads for fake tv shows, fake promos for fake tv shows, fake versions of real tv shows, fake movies, real movies, even fantasy versions of real films, in the service of four separate story lines, all set, naturally, to a carefully honed and seriously swinging sixties soundtrack, much of it heard on car radios, complete with “period’ DJs, jingles, and ads.2 But despite all the artifice, once the narrative gets going, the whole story is very simple, despite all the detours, which generally come off as self-indulgent and sentimental, since Tarantino is self-indulgent and sentimental—except when it comes to dames.

I’m sure that the idea for Once Upon A Time must have been kicking around in Tarantino’s head for years, if not decades, but the film’s basic vibe still seems heavily influenced by James Franco’s recent semi-classic The Disaster Artist, the now-legendary tale of Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero,3 two star-struck shaggy-dog scooby-doo dudes adrift and a-dreamin’ in the LA LA Land shark tank who escape eating only because they aren’t worth the consumption. Tarantino’s leads, Leonardo DiCaprio as “Rick Dalton” and Brad Pitt as “Cliff Booth”, are a little bit further up the food chain. Once upon a time, Rick was a star, with a big house and the whole schmear, the star of the TV western Bounty Law that finished its run in 1963. Six years later, he’s still got the big house, but the career is flagging. In fact, he’s so down on his luck his posse consists exclusively of his main man/stunt man Cliff, who chauffeurs Rick around (because, of course, Rick lost his license), listens to his frequent tales of woe, and tries, ever so gently, to keep him on the straight and narrow, while always assuring him that he’s still the Man, and always will be.

We first pick up on Rick and Cliff, the first two strands of our story, via what strikes me as an, well, insanely unnecessary device—a black and white TV “featurette” on Bounty Law when the show was still running, featuring both men, in which Rick explains to the folks at home just what a stunt man is and why they’re so necessary—as if audiences in 2019 need to know this. The Bounty Law stuff is intercut with the third thread—a Pan Am jet arriving in LAX bearing a pair of obvious big shots, a short dude and a tall blonde who stride through the place surrounded by a crowd of paparazzi before transferring to a cute little vintage MG TF, whose 1250 cc engine bellows like a Ferrari 12 cylinder sans muffler4 when they hit the freeway.

After the black and white clip ends we catch up with Rick and Cliff in real life as Cliff drives Rick to a lunch meeting with agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino, actin’ all Jewish on our ass and clearly having a ball), both Rick and Cliff enjoying lushly photographed mixed drinks in the grand tradition of Hollywood eye-openers while they wait for Marvin to show. When Marvin does, Rick introduces him to Cliff, “explaining” that his car is in the shop, so Cliff is filling in as his wheel man. “A good friend!” exclaims Marvin. “I try,” says Cliff.

Marvin and Rick have a sitdown and Marvin does a lot of talking, his spiel giving us more backstory on Rick, and it ain’t pretty. After Bounty Law died, Rick made a few movies (Tarantino naturally shows us some clips, including one of Rick incinerating some Nazis with a flamethrower) that died at the box office, and we even see a “kinescope” of Rick singing a fifties oldie, “The Green Door”, on Hullabaloo.5 Now he’s reduced to appearing as a “guest star” on other TV westerns, the villain du jour whose job is to be plugged by the real leading man. “Face it, Rick,” Schwarz tells him. “You’re in the rear-view mirror in this town, fading to black. Italy’s the place, and spaghetti westerns are the future! Give me the word and I’ll make it happen! But give me your decision soon, ‘cause I ain’t getting’ any younger, and, more to the point, neither are you!”5

Rick staggers out into a California sun that ain’t so much warm as scalding, throwing himself bodily into Cliff’s arms. I’m fucked, motherfucker! Fucked! I’m a fucked-up fucking former cowboy star who ain’t worth a damn! Italy, for Christ’s sake! Italy! Fuckin’ Italy! That’s all I’m goddamn good for any more! Goddamn fucking Italy!

Gently, Cliff talks him down, as he clearly does once or twice a week. Take it easy, big guy. You’re still the man. You’re still the man! And so they head out in Rick’s Caddy, Cliff at the wheel, a classic case of LA co-dependency, a West Coast version of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, two guys chasin’ that dream, that dream that don’t seem to be getting all that closer, but, well, when you’re headin’ down La Cienega6 in a sweet Caddy, rockin’ those sweet sixties tunes, it still seems like it could come true.

As they pass down La Cienega, or wherever they are, they pass a bunch of dumpster-divin’ hippie chicks, setting up what will be the fourth strand of the story. After that, well, it seems that time passes, because all of a sudden it’s gettin’ dark, and Cliff takes the Caddy up a winding private drive, dropping Rick off at his big house, giving Rick a chance to fill us in on some more exposition. You know the secret of LA? Real estate, my man, real estate! Own, don’t rent! Then you belong here. Right on cue, the MG we saw earlier rumbles up the drive. It’s Rick’s neighbor, who, unlike Rick, has a gated entrance. See what I mean! You know who that is? Roman fucking Polanski, that’s all! Hottest director in Hollywood! What did I just say? What did I just say? In this town, you’re just one pool party away from the big time!. Cliff nods, as if he hasn’t heard all this a dozen times before, and then lectures Rick on the need for punctuality, for like tomorrow— “7:15! 7:15 out the door! 7:15 in the car”—before taking off in his sweet ride, a Karmann Ghia, which, by the sound, also seems to have had a Ferrari implant, replacing its stock four-cylinder VW mill with a V-12.7

Cliff blasts down the mountain-side in total LA bad boy mode, top down, hair ripplin’ in the wind, and heavy tunes blastin’ on the radio. Fuckin’ LA, man, fuckin’ LA! This is how we roll!

Well, this is how Cliff rolls until he gets out of the car, because LA is all about the wheels. Cliff doesn’t live in the canyon. He lives in the serious low-rent district (that is to say, Van Nuys), in a trailer, with both a pumping oil well and a drive-in movie theater to create a little noise pollution, which he combats, once he’s inside, with a black and white tv featuring Bob Goulet belting out “MacArthur Park”! The horror, man, the goddamn horror!

But he does have some company, in the form of “Brandy”, perhaps the world’s best-trained pitbull.8 To let us know that we’re watching a Quentin Tarantino movie—we were starting to wonder—Quentin ups the grossisity level considerably by having Cliff feed Brandy “Wolf Tooth” dog food (“raccoon” and “rat flavor”, no less), which looks exactly like shit, letting the slop drop plop in the bowl from about waist level. Two cans of the slop, plus a pound or two of kibble, make quite a mess, but real men ain’t neat. Cliff makes himself a saucepan of mac and cheese, pops open a beer, and plops in front of the tv. Life is good!

Life is good because Cliff is really happy that Rick is a loser. If Rick were a star, a real star, he wouldn’t need Rick. He’d use him, because that’s what stars do, but he wouldn’t need him. And Cliff needs to be needed.

Rick, meanwhile, is slurpin’ whiskey sours and learning his lines for the morrow’s shoot, the pilot for a new show called Lancer, while floating in his elegant, kidney-shaped pool, which, remarkably enough, has a killer view,9 as Tarantino’s elegant camera work will elegantly reveal.

Next door, things are a bit more lively. Roman and Sharon (she isn’t named, but of course we figure it out) slip on their glad rags and head for just the hippest place in town, the Playboy Mansion! Which didn’t actually exist yet in 1969, but whatever. One could wish—a little—that poor old Hugh Hefner were still alive (alive and, well, sentient) to see his old haunt pictured as the place where all the cool kids hung out back in the day.10 For whatever reason, Tarantino actually labels some of the big shots present so we’ll know who’s who, including Steve McQueen and Michelle Phillips and “Mama Cass” Elliot,11 the female singers of the sixties group The Mamas and the Papas.12

The shindig at the Mansion turns out to be the most carefully choreographed shindig I’ve ever seen. Everyone can dance—even the folks in the pool—and everyone’s in perfect time! It’s also the most chaste Playboy Mansion shindig I’ve ever seen—not a nipple in sight. But, even more strangely, we get a sour disquisition from wallflower Steve McQueen, no less, staring at Sharon’s sweet, swingin bod and moaning strangely about her strange taste in men, that leaves him shit out of luck. Hey, lighten up, Steve, and join the party! Why Tarantino thought we needed to know all this is beyond me. (Whether Steve really did have the hots for Sharon is also beyond me.)

The next morning, Roman is up, bright and early—at around 7:15, as a matter of fact—enjoying an outdoor French press while Sharon still slumbers—slumbers and snores, actually, because when you get up close, all chicks are just a little gross.13

Rick actually is up at 7:15 as well and heads off to the shoot with Cliff, though he clearly feels, if he does not exactly look, like shit, bent over double with one coughing fit after another and hacking up so much phlegm we figure he doesn’t have to worry about lung cancer because he won’t live long enough to get it. He tells Cliff that, no, he won’t be needed on the set—and he knows damn well why—so he might as well go back to Rick’s place and fix Rick’s tv antenna, because it needs fixin’. Cliff nods and takes off.

Rick stumbles through the set of Lancer looking for wardrobe. When he finds it he soaks his face in ice water—gotta tighten the damn pores, after all. Any star knows that. Plus it might help him remember his name, or even his lines. While Rick is still no more than half conscious, director Sam Wanamaker (Nicholas Hammond) bursts in, maybe not gay, but seriously exquisite. “Rick Dalton! Have I got plans for you! This is going to be amazing!”

Sam rattles and prattles on in a fit of aesthetic ecstasy, while Rick stares in semi-conscious horror. He doesn’t need this much enthusiasm. He’s here for a paycheck and this dude is talkin’ about “zeitgeists”, whatever the fuck they are. Seriously! Zeitgeists! And it’s waaayyyy too early for fuckin’ zeitgeists!

While Rick suffers, Cliff heads back to the canyon, running into the hippie chicks once more before reaching Rick’s place. It what seems like a parody of gay porno, he straps on a tool belt, and then leaps to the top of first one wall and then another until he’s up on the roof, much like a cat and not at all like the 40-year-old man he’s supposed to be. Then he pulls off his shirt, lights a cigarette and dons a pair of work gloves. Ready for action? Hell, yeah!

But before he starts to work Cliff has time for an extended reverie on just why he isn’t welcome on the Lancer set. Earlier, he had a job as Rick’s stunt man in an (imaginary) tv series starring Bruce Lee. Bruce, played by Mike Moh, comes off as a pretentious asshole, prompting Cliff to give him some serious sass. In real life, one suspects, sassing a star would get you not merely booted off the set but out of Hollywood forever, but instead Bruce and Rick agree to a genteel face-off, no punches to the head, just knock the other fellow down, best two out of three. Cliff goes down the first time, but then throws Bruce bodily against the side of a Lincoln Continental, causing a dent that looks like it was made by a 500-pound wrecking ball rather than a 130-pound Asian. That’s what you get for stealing our jobs, hot shot!14

But that isn’t the only reason why Cliff isn’t welcome on the set: there’s this crazy rumor that he killed his wife, which Tarantino encourages us to believe is true by showing us a flashback—whether Cliff “remembering” or Tarantino showing us “the truth” isn’t clear—of Cliff in skin diver gear on a boat listening to his bikini-clad wife bitching her head off about what a loser he is and Cliff maybe pointing his spear gun at her. Uh, so what is the point of all this? It has no payoff in the rest of the movie, leaving us to feel that Tarantino sort of wishes that people, especially women, would be afraid of him. You know that guy, Quentin Tarantino? Oh, yeah, he looks harmless, but I hear he killed his wife! Seriously!

Once Cliff finishes his reverie, he has a glimpse of the future instead of the past: a weird, hippie-lookin’ dude at the Polanski place asking about the previous tenant. We aren’t clued in, but if you know your back story you know this is Charles Manson.

While all this is going on in and out of Cliff’s head, Rick is having multiple adventures on the Lancer set. The whole Lancer episode is a curious mish-mash of fact and fancy. The “real” Sam Wanamaker did direct the pilot of Lancer. Whether Sam was as exquisite as portrayed seems a pretty open question. The actual Lancer series was a short-lived rip-off of Bonanza, which Tarantino sort of follows and sort of not, and sometimes it seems that Rick’s character “Caleb” is the good guy and the Lancers are the bad guys, and sometimes the other way around. We see several large chunks of the show, presented to us as the audience would see them—no crew or equipment visible—and in fact what we see is not at all what a sixties tv series would look like but rather a sort of ideal spaghetti western that Tarantino probably dreamed of making back in the day.

Before we even get there, however, Rick, dressed in character as “Caleb” has several “pregnant” conversations, the first with the stunningly precocious (and precociously PC) “actor” “Trudi Fraser” (Julia Butters), already in character as “Maribella”. Rick can’t eat lunch because of his makeup and “Maribella” likes to stay lean and hungry before a shoot. “We aim for 100% efficiency. We never achieve it, of course. But it’s the pursuit that counts.”

Rick, conveniently hocking up another loogie, looks like there’s nothing he’d like to pursue other than a whiskey sour or two and maybe a nap, but he takes a seat next to her to read his paperback western—a little surprising since I never saw him as having much appetite for print. Maribella, after correcting Rick’s pronunciation of his character’s last name (it’s not “Dakota”) and generally playing the eight-year-old dominatrix to a tee (though, as an “actor”, she would object to the feminine suffix), asks him what his book is about, and Rick launches into an extended précis: see, there’s this guy, he used to be just the coolest, toughest bronco buster around, but now, well, he’s getting’ old, his back ain’t so good no more, and every day he gets up knowin’ that, every day, he’s less of a man.

Rick tears up/chokes up as he’s delivering this thumbnail—because it’s his fucking story, get it? Maribella, as conveniently obtuse now as she was prescient before, misses the subtext. “It sounds like a really good story!” she exclaims, thinking he’s moved purely by the power of art. “In 15 years you’ll be livin’ it!” Rick gasps, and fortunately she doesn’t get this one either. And so she comforts him, not knowing just how very much he needs her solace. It’s sort of ironic when you think about it. But, you know, touching!

Somewhere about this time we cut to Sharon, who’s finally in motion in a spiffy new Porsche, heading to, where else, a book store! To get a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a gift for Roman!15 Which may be true, or may be the biggest whopper in the movie. Anyway, who would figure Tarantino for a “reader”? Not me!

Once Sharon gets her book, she spots a movie theater showing The Wrecking Crew, one of the “Matt Helms” sixties flicks ripping off James Bond, starring the very tongue in cheek, and semi-over-the-hill Dean Martin, but co-starring, yes, Sharon Tate!16 When she’s inside we see clips of the real film featuring Sharon, first a meet cute with Matt/Dean that features clumsy Sharon falling on her ass and showing us her panties, and later a fight scene between good Sharon and evil Nancy Kwan, with Nancy falling on her ass and showing us her panties! Take that, Asian bitch!

Well, it’s always good to see chicks’ panties, but Sharon’s repeated piano key smiles as the audience conveniently laughs and cheers her on get a little self-congratulatory for my ass. Sharon is clearly depicted as the “new Marilyn,” speaking in the same breathy, little girl voice, utterly stunning and cool, yet innocent and sweet, a combination not often found in the real world.

Rick, meanwhile, is having his second serious sitdown, this time with the budding star of Lancer, Timothy Olyphant as “James Stacy” as gunfighter “Johnny Madrid”, Since James Stacy is supposed to be the new kid on the way up, he might be expected to look younger than Rick, and thus intimidating. In fact, Olyphant is six years older than Leo and pretty much looks it, and Stacy treats Rick with surprising respect. (Surprising to me, at least. Aren’t young actors supposed to be assholes?) But the real point of this is for Jim to ask Rick if it’s true that he was once up for Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape, the film that made Steve a star?17

Rick modestly denies the story, or at least strongly soft-pedals it. Me in Steve’s big part? No, not really. Brief possibility, that’s all. Very brief. But then we see, more or less, “Rick’s dream”—clips from the real Great Escape with Leo/Rick visually dubbed in to replace Steve. It could have been him. He could have had Steve’s career. Bullitt? The Thomas Crown Affair? It could have been him. It could have been him. He coulda had class. He coulda been a contendah.18

The thing is, Rick has never been presented to us this way. He’s been the big, strong, good-looking boy with the big, strong shoulders, who could get on and off a horse without falling on his ass, and that’s it. Rick is the kind of pretty boy who cruises through life as long as everything comes easy and then crashes in middle age, like Erik Estrada, not the relentless egomaniacal striver who never takes no for an answer no matter how many times he gets it, like William Shatner.

In the meantime, finally, Cliff makes actual contact with one of the hippie chicks, the cute ‘n wanton Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), swinging her tight little butt around like she owns the world. The thing is, she probably does.19 He agrees to give her a lift, but won’t let her give him a blowjob, “explaining” that he doesn’t want to go to jail, although we can tell that the real reason is that he’s a gentlemen. Cliff has the definite vibe of the old-fashioned B-movie cowboy hero that I grew up watching on tv, utterly chaste and emotionally devoted only to his horse (Cliff has Brandy, of course), too complete in himself to even consider sharing his essence with anything as, well, as common, as a woman.

Cliff gets a jolt when he learns that Pussycat is living at the “Spahn movie ranch”, where Cliff and Rick used to film Bounty Law. He explains to her that he used to be a stunt man there, allowing her to explain to us that stunt men are the real heroes, because what they do is real, they aren’t phonies like actors. Just in case we couldn’t figure that part out for ourselves.

Well, back to Rick now, I think, and get to see an actual chunk of Lancer, filmed far more extravagantly, and elegantly, than any tv western would have been, yet with a pretty much standard script, though with some pretty spectacular behind the back shooting from Johnny Madrid, putting an uppity “businessman” in his place. Better stick to your ledgers, pencilneck!

The bit rumbles on, with plenty of moody, “intense” attitude from Rick, a seen it all, done it all, existential cowpoke who might remind some us of another Rick, the one who ran Rick's Café Américain down Casablanca way. But midway through the scene he starts blowing his lines and ends up stalking back to his trailer (but would he really have one?) to explode at himself in a predicable yet enjoyable scene. You goddamned asshole! You’re going to quit drinking, you hear me, you goddamned alcoholic! God damn it!

Well, back to Cliff, I think, in what is easily the most impressive section of the film, the visit to the Spahn ranch to see Charlie’s angels. The girls are beautifully creepy, staring at the intruder like so many marmosets, Dakota Fanning particularly memorable as ruthless boss lady Squeaky Fromme, who in real life was not involved directly in any of the murders but became notorious as the “spokeswoman” for the Manson family during his trial, and more notorious several years later when she tried to assassinate President Ford.

Squeaky sends a girl to fetch “Tex”, Charles Watson, played by Austin Butler, who played the lead role in the Sharon Tate murders, to check out the new guy. Tex arrives on horseback, suitably enough, and, in some serious dick measuring, Cliff reminisces about his visit to Houston, where he spent two weeks on a chain gang. “That was the last time I broke a policeman’s jaw, I can tell you that!” Although I expect that if you broke a policeman’s jaw in Houston, Texas back in the fifties you probably wouldn’t live to talk about it.

Pussycat really digs guys who break cops’ jaws, and it must sound good to Tex as well, so he rides off, getting back to his job as guide for dudes who want to visit the mountains. But once he’s gone, Cliff starts to get a little pushy. Is old George Spahn still around? Sure would like to visit old George and see how he’s doing. The girls all tell him no, clearly infuriated by his decision to penetrate beneath the surface of their groupthink. Word gets back to Squeaky, holed up in what Cliff knows is George’s old house, so she sends all the girls away and tries to face down Cliff, but he faces her down instead and finally has a thoroughly creepy conversation with old George (Bruce Dern), blind and helpless and utterly dependent on the girls.

Cliff, utterly frustrated by George’s utter dependence—he can’t be “saved” because he doesn’t want to be—strides out to meet the glaring, feral eyes of the assembled family. As he passes, Pussycat leaps onto the hood of a car and screams “George isn’t blind! You’re the one who’s blind!”

Cliff keeps on walking, only to find out that Rick’s Caddy has a flat, thanks to a giggly, half-naked Jesus clone with hillbilly teeth. Definitely time to kick some goddamn hippie ass! Something Tarantino clearly digs almost as much as smelling chick’s feet.

Cliff grabs the punk by the hair and pummels him half to death. That’ll teach you! Now fix the goddamn flat! “Gypsy” (Lena Dunham) sends one of the girls off on a horse to get Tex—something she might have thought of earlier—and Tex comes riding up in an excellent display of horsemanship, that is as gratuitous as the beatdown Cliff gives the Jesus dude,20 because by the time he gets back Cliff is gone.

Finally (I guess), we cut back to Rick, headed back on the set for one last shot at redemption. Spaghetti western “bullfighter/showdown” music blares operatically on the soundtrack, as Rick walks through the soundstage for the final showdown, the one between Rick Dalton and ... Rick Dalton! Can he cut it, or is he history?

In Rick’s big scene, he’s kidnapped Maribella, holding her on his lap with his six-shooter pointed at her head while he holds forth in a swaggering conversation with “Scott Lancer” (Luke Perry in his last role, as the actor Wayne Maunder). Since Rick/Caleb clearly has the upper hand, fancy-pants Scott (he apparently went to Harvard) can do nothing other than listen to Caleb’s trash talk, which Caleb concludes by throwing Maribella violently to the floor in a display of his ruthlessness. Cut! Cut! Rick made it all the way through the scene! In flying colors!

“I didn’t hurt you, did I, darlin’?” Rick asks.

“I’m fine,” Maribella reassures him, popping up to show him her arm. “See, I have padding!”

Sam Wanamaker (Sam the director) rushes up.

“Rick, you were fabulous! Exactly what I wanted! Evil, sexy Hamlet!”

Rick sits there, a little stunned by the outpouring of passion he’s achieved.

“Rick, Rick, your adlibs were amazing! ‘Beaner bronco-buster’?21 Why, that’s triple alliteration! And throwing the little girl on the floor! Beautiful!”

Yeah, but, uh, if the toss was an adlib, why was Maribella wearing padding?22 Anyway, tossing an eight-year-old around like a ping-pong ball as an adlib sounds a little dubious to me. Good thing her parents weren’t around!

But Tarantino isn’t done gilding the lily. Trudi/Maribella, whose dedication to her craft makes Stanislavski look like a slacker, tells him “that’s the best acting I’ve ever seen!”

Which is all a little silly, because no one, but no one has ever suggested that he had any real talent as an actor, and he’s never expressed any interest in his “craft”, other than not looking like an asshole and not losing his paycheck. But Tarantino somehow can’t resist violating Rick’s real character in order to make him look heroic, a goddamn Laurence Olivier in chaps!

After all this, we have a grotesquely awkward “transition”, narrated by Kurt Russell, about Rick and Cliff’s excellent Italian adventure, which one can very easily believe was originally intended to take up a good chunk of the film, probably extending its running time to something close to three and half hours, but, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen. Instead, we get a few cutesy movie posters, and a few little anti-PC snickers directed at American Indians, who seem to rub Quentin the wrong way for whatever reason, and also Rick gets married to this Italian broad, who snores a lot, just like Sharon. As for “acting”—evil, sexy Hamlet and all that—well, Quentin seems to have forgotten all about it, and Rick is back in character as the self-indulgent bad boy who loafs through life, traveling first class thanks to his broad shoulders and pretty face, while devoted Cliff sits in coach and chugs Bloody Marys, because, it seems, Rick’s cutting him loose. Can’t afford a wife and a bottom at the same time!

Once Rick and “Francesca” (Lorenza Izzo) are installed in Rick’s old place, Russell continues his tiresome narration, setting up that fateful night when all four story lines will coincide. Rick and Cliff head out for one last celebratory drunk and then head back, Russell constantly stressing to us, for some reason, that Rick and Cliff are like totally blind, stinking drunk, even though they don’t really act that way. Francesca’s already in bed (she stayed home, naturally), Rick’s mixing margheritas, and Cliff’s taking Brandy for a walk. S/He’s there, for some reason (really, of course, for plot reasons). Cliff decides he’ll smoke this LSD-soaked cigarette that Pussycat sold him, even though, the web informs me, “smoking” LSD destroys its hallucinogenic power (because the heat causes it to break down chemically).

While Cliff’s gone, Tex and three of the Manson girls—Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison), Patricia Krenwinkle (Madisen Beaty), and Linda Kasabian (Maya Hawke)—arrive to do the Polanski household in, pulling up in a noisy, busted muffler car. Rick stumbles out with his carafe full of margheritas to tell those goddamn hippies to get off his goddamn private drive and smoke their goddamn pot someplace else. Tex, apparently not wanting to have to kill this guy, backs the car down the drive, while Rick takes his margheritas out to one of his favorite retreats, the chair floating in his kidney-shaped pool.

The hippies reconnoiter. “You know who that was? Rick Dalton!” “Rick Dalton? Rick fucking Dalton?” “Rick Fucking Dalton!” “Fuck! You know what? Guys like that, they taught us to murder. I say, let’s murder the murderers!”

As it turns out, Kasabian bails, driving away in the car,23 but Tex, with a six-shooter shoved in his pants, and Patricia and Susan, armed with knives, head up the drive.

Cliff, by this time, is back inside the house, fixing Brandy dinner when the kids show up. After some cutesy, high on LSD antics, the action finally starts, Tex pointing his six-shooter at Cliff’s head. Brandy, flying through the air, disarms him and then fixes her teeth in his balls while Cliff brains Atkins with a can of Wolf’s Tooth. Krenwinkle stabs Cliff in the thigh, causing him to grab her by the hair and smash her face into a variety of unyielding surfaces, which starts to look a little sadistic on Tarantino’s part after the third or fourth smash. Somewhere along the line Brandy switches from Tex to Atkins, dragging her around the room like the shark in the beginning of Jaws. Tex stumbles to his feet and tries to stab Cliff, but gets stabbed instead, then gets knocked down and then (I think) Cliff breaks his neck. But then Atkins gets hold of Tex’s gun and shoots Cliff, causing him to fall over as though he were dead. The girl staggers to her feet, her face covered in blood and screaming like a maniac, and stumbles out to the pool, waving Tex’s gun and firing off a round or two, finally catching Rick’s attention. Guess what, headphones!

Atkins crashes into the pool, still firing the gun. Rick sobers up quickly and, finding his trusty flamethrower—you didn’t see that coming? Amateur!—roasts the bitch.

The police arrive to figure things out. Guess what? Cliff ain’t dead! Sounding awfully coherent for a guy who’s drunk, high on LSD, stabbed in the thigh, and shot, he tells Rick not to come to the hospital with him but tend to his lady. Because greater love hath no bottom than to give up his life, not for his top, but for his top’s lady!

“You’re a good friend, Cliff,” Rick tells him.

“I try,” says Cliff.

Hey! Didn’t we hear that line before?

But the good news isn’t over yet! Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), one of Sharon’s houseguests, hears the commotion and asks Rick what’s happening. Rick fills him in and, one way or another, Sharon hears their conversation and calls down on the intercom to invite Rick up for a drink. And so the gates to the magic kingdom—the magic kingdom of A-listers and Playboy Mansion attenders—open for Rick. Let the pool parties begin!

Afterwords I Movie Violence

When I first heard that Tarantino was making a movie about “old” Hollywood starring Leo and Brad I was intrigued. When I learned that Leo would be living next door to Sharon Tate, not so much. I hated Tarantino’s chef d'œuvre Pulp Fiction, and I detested Kill Bill Volume I, and one thing I did not want to see was Tarantino’s take on the Tate/Manson murders. When I learned that Quentin was rewriting history—in tune, really, with my own squeamish predilections—I thought I would take a chance. In any event, there are lots of violent films that I do like, including Bonnie & Clyde and Terminator 2. What’s the difference between “good violence” and “bad violence” other than the eye of the beholder?

Well, not much, obviously. The “sword blade through the milk carton and the mouth and out the back of the head” shot from Terminator 2 is “classic”,24 but you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you, would you?

Much of the violence in Once Upon A Time is gratuitous in that it’s clearly wish fulfillment on Tarantino’s part, but there’s little that I found outright sadistic, which is what I really object to. It’s notably less sadistic than the coming features that I saw advertised with the film—It Chapter 2, Hide and Seek, and Joker. Obviously, audiences like sadistic.

Afterwords II Helter Skelter Despite the “massive” sixties soundtrack, in one sense the silence is deafening, because there is, unsurprisingly, nothing from the “White Album”. Like several million other people, Charles Manson thought the Beatles recorded this famous double album just for him, and that every song had a particular meaning. “Helter Skelter” (in Great Britain, an amusement park ride) was for Manson the signal for the start of a race war in America, which would some how allow him to seize power, in some manner. The Tate murders were intended, more or less, to provoke that war because the police were intended to believe that black revolutionaries had committed them. Vincent Bugliosi, the district attorney who prosecuted Manson and the others, wrote a book, with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter, about the case, which was later turned into a television mini-series.

Esmé was thirteen. Making “Trudi Fraser” eight seems really a stretch to me. ↩︎

Did Tarantino invent “fake” sixties tunes as well? Not impossible, but it seems unlikely. ↩︎

Word can spell “Sestero” but not “Wiseau”? Tommy won’t like that! Greg’s book, The Disaster Artist, which he co-wrote with Tom Bissell, revealed to the world the bizarre backstory behind Wiseau’s cult classic di tutti cult classics, The Room, and is definitely superior to Franco’s film, which derives half its considerable charm by simply recreating classic scenes from Wiseau’s ineffable creation. ↩︎

Dunno if Tarantino just wanted the car to sound cool or if he was parodying this frequent device as used by other directors. Anyone who knows anything about cars knows that tiny, underpowered English sports cars do not sound like this. As dubious car enthusiast Mort Sahl put it, “MGs are great if you don’t mind being blown off by housewives in Plymouth station wagons.” Jews are into cars? ↩︎

Marvin says “kinescope” rather than “tape” because consumer videotape machines didn’t exist in 1969. The networks used tape, but Marvin would have needed a film version, a “kinescope”, which is what the networks used before the development of videotape, to view using a projector. *Once Upon A Time” is filled with anachronisms, but film buff Tarantino gets this one right. However, the “Hullabaloo” clip is filmed in wide-screen, which of course is totally inaccurate. Leo’s performance looks as though it were based on the persona of fifties super-square Pat Boone. ↩︎ ↩︎

I have no grasp of LA geography, so I have no idea of where Rick and Cliff are. ↩︎

The Karmann Ghia was simply an Italian-bodied Volkswagen bug. If Cliff had the “big” engine (presumably, he did), he could hit 90. If not, 75 was probably the top. ↩︎

Brad addresses Brandy as “man” in this scene even though the actual dog, "Sayuri", is a female and is referred to as such in the final scenes. ↩︎

A place like Rick’s would of course require constant upkeep to avoid turning into a mess, but, as is so often the case in film, the place somehow cleans itself. ↩︎

Jay Leno described his one Mansion visit as “a lot of middle-aged men hitting on a lot of young women.” ↩︎

Cass Elliot grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, which is next to Falls Church, where I grew up. On the M&Ps’ cover of the Martha and the Vandellas hit “Dancin’ in the Street”, the M&Ps fade out the song with the list of the cities where they’re, you know, dancing in the street—“Baltimore and DC now”—with the following barely audible dialogue: “Alexandria?” “In Virginia, Virginia.” “Falls Church?” “Never heard of it.” Both are suburbs of Washington, DC. Falls Church is supposedly the setting for at least two tv shows, JAG and The Americans. ↩︎

Three of their songs are heard on the soundtrack, though they only sing one of them—“Twelve Thirty”. Both “Twelve Thirty” and “Straight Shooter” are explicitly about heroin addiction, while the third and most famous, “California Dreamin’”, strongly hints at it. The sheet music for “Straight Shooter” was found on a piano at the scene of the actual Manson/Tate murders. ↩︎

“Stella shits!” exclaimed Jonathan Swift regarding Esther Johnson, his life-long obsessive love, whom he first met when she was eight. Quentin seems to hate women yet want to smell their feet. ↩︎

In an interview, Tarantino has “explained” that in “real life” Cliff would kick Bruce Lee’s ass because war hero Cliff was a Green Beret. Since Cliff, like Rick, is supposed to be pushing 40, he would have to have been a “war hero” in Korea. Combat operations in Korea ended with the 1954 armistice. Special forces troops never wore the green beret until 1955, and it was almost immediately discontinued until revived in 1961. They received enormous publicity in the sixties. I don’t know why they’ve been supplanted by the Seals as the ultimate bad asses. ↩︎

Anyone who likes books likes first editions, but I very much dislike the use of first editions as a way to make books expensive status symbols. Go Kindle! (And, in any event, if I had a copy of a 90-year-old first edition, I wouldn’t carry it unprotected in my sweaty little hand, as Sharon does.) ↩︎

I rented one of Matt’s/Dean’s films for some purpose—I can’t remember why—and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t The Wrecking Crew, but it was so slow-paced and boring that I couldn’t watch it, il Dino wandering around like he’d had more whiskey sours than Rick Dalton. ↩︎

McQueen started out in tv as the star of Wanted Dead or Alive, the very obvious “inspiration” for Bounty Law. McQueen, a very big star in 1969, thanks to Bullit and Crown Affair, which were in fact his only two films to be remembered, was supposedly “targeted” by Manson as part of his plan to cause the U.S. to erupt in a race war. Which may be why he’s such a presence in this film. Or not. ↩︎

“Instead of a bum, which is what I am”—Marlon Brando’s lines from On the Waterfront, once among the most quoted in American film, bitterly complaining to his brother, played by Rod Steiger, that his career as a boxer was ruined when he was forced, by his brother, to throw a fight. ↩︎

Qualley, who has had extensive ballet training, is probably the best dancer in the whole film. ↩︎

It would also likely leave the horse exhausted for the rest of the day. Horse races only last a mile or so because horses can’t gallop for much longer than that. ↩︎

Not exactly that, probably, anyway, three “b’s”. ↩︎

Also, the camera backs up to keep Maribella in the shot, which it wouldn’t have done if Cliff’s action had been an adlib. ↩︎

In “real life”, Kasabian did not drive away but remained behind as a lookout. Kasabian was involved—always as a bystander, she claimed—in many of the murders committed by Manson and his followers, but was able to avoid prison time by serving as the key witness against the others. ↩︎

“God damn it! How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t drink out of the carton?” It’s “nice” that the T-1000 stays in character as the past her limit housewife as “she” pulls her blade/hand from the dumb shit’s head. ↩︎

#quentin tarantino #Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #Leo DiCaprio #Brad Pitt #movies

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TAGS : BLOG / CHARA .

#i. BLOG / ( eyes to the sky boy / IMAGES .#i. BLOG / ( ears to the river boy / MUSIC .#i. STUDY / ( a single thought made that man hate again / musing .#ii. STUDY / ( bite for bite . blood spilt down dirty mouth / ch. study .#i. INBOX / ( do stop not stop reply / telegrams received .#i. INBOX / ( dont recall your face from the morgue / mystery man .#i. INBOX / ( ASKBOX MEMES .#i. WRITING / ( posts / MINI .#i. WRITING / ( posts / SHORT .#i. WRITING / ( posts / LONG .#i. CHARA / ( war rode on a horse with flaming eyes and mane / HORSE .#i. CHARA / ( threads spun from mountain bone / WARDROBE .#i. BLOG / ( wanted posters / PROMOS .#i. BLOG / ( clear your bounty ? / SELF PROMOS .

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shadowedsilence-a-blog · 6 years

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TAG DUMP !

#TAG DUMP #* ╰ VISAGE . / FACE OF LIES #* ╰ AESTHETIC . / SPY’S BEST FRIEND #* ╰ OPEN POST . / FREE FOR ALL #* ╰ MEME . / MORSE CODE #* ╰ PSA . / WRITTEN IN A GODDAMN MEMO #* ╰ SAVED . / AND TO THINK I HAVE FRIENDS #* ╰ STARTER CALL . / HANGING UP THE BOUNTY #* ╰ DASH COMMENTARY . / ZORRA’S ON CRACK #* ╰ HEADCANON . / REDACTED FILES #* ╰ OOC . / SLAYER OF WORDS AND WORLDS #* ╰ SELF PROMO . / RECKLESS BLUE EYES #* ╰ PROMO . / THE A TEAM #* ╰ STATUS . / MUTUALS ONLY

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celebritylive · 4 years

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Our shelter-in-place days just keep coming, and so do the livestream shows.

Once again, PEOPLE has a brand new batch of archived ones for you to pick from (all previewed from the comfort and safety of social distancing). More shows are being announced every day, so keep watch over your favorite artists’ social media accounts — or check out the Opry’s helpful calendar of livestreaming music and entertainment.

RELATED: Luke Bryan, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley and More: PEOPLE’s First Guide to Which Livestream Country Concerts to Watch

KEITH URBAN, 31 minutes:

The second edition of “Urban Underground” comes to you from his private Skye Studios, and he performs another six-song set, this time on ganjo, electric and acoustic guitar. Once again, his audience of one, wife Nicole Kidman, is there to dance to the music, which includes new single “God Whispered Your Name.” Memorable moment: Urban offers a tribute to hero Kenny Rogers, who died March 20, with a reverent reading of “The Gambler.”

Bonus: Barefoot and clad in all black, Kidman offers a charming performance as Urban’s roadie, changing out his instruments between songs.

DIERKS BENTLEY, 50 minutes:

Bentley delivers his cheerful charms and a setlist of six songs, including the apropos “Riser” and “I Hold On,” from a stool in the kitchen of his Colorado home. His alter-ego, Hot Country Knights lead singer Doug Douglason, also makes a cameo appearance to perform a saucy song (“It ain’t my fault / It’s that asphalt”) from his ’90s band’s new album, The K Is Silent.

Memorable moment: You’ll either laugh at or totally identify with Bentley’s heroic efforts trying to figure out a live Instagram video chat with Thomas Rhett. Success at last: TR remotely performs new single ” Beer Can’t Fix” (duet partner Jon Pardi is in absentia, of course).

CHRIS LANE, 34 minutes:

This show is short on music — Lane performs only two songs — but the adorable banter between him and his reality-TV show alum wife, Lauren, could qualify this for a series pilot. Memorable moment: Lane gives viewers a tour of the newlywed couple’s new home, complete with comic color commentary (in the master bedroom: “This here, ladies and gentlemen, is where all the magic happens!”)

Bonuses: The Lanes’ sweet mutt, Cooper, makes several well-behaved appearances. Also, Lauren Lane answers a viewer question about the possibility of a “corona-baby.” “I’d rather not refer to it as that, if it was in existence,” she mischievously answers. “Maybe … I’m not opposed to that!”

THE GRAND OLE OPRY, 90 minutes:

After Vince Gill’s memorable show last week with Marty Stuart and Brad Paisley, he returns to the hallowed stage with talented family members in tow: his wife, Christian artist Amy Grant, and two daughters, Jenny Gill, 37, and Corrina Grant Gill, 19. Each takes a turn performing an original song and a cover.

Memorable moments: Gill and Grant always earn superlatives, but the next generation’s gifts are also exceptional. Jenny Gill has forged a modest music career in Nashville, and here she shows she deserves more with “Mama Needs a Lullaby” and a John Mayer cover. Corrina Grant Gill, a college music student, is a revelation as a singer, songwriter and musician (on piano). Another Gill triple threat! (The first 30 minutes, by the way, are Opry promos and previews.)

ASHLEY MCBRYDE, 23 minutes:

McBryde’s second livestream, featuring all covers, continues to mine her eclectic memory bank of songs, no doubt assembled from her years of working bars and clubs. Among the surprising selections are beat-the-blues novelty songs, one dedicated to potatoes, to the tune of “The Mexican Hat Dance,” and another with sea creatures figuring prominently in the lyrics (“I lobster and never floundered”).

Memorable moment: Who would expect to tune in to a country artist and hear The Supremes’ “Can’t Hurry Love”? Bonus: McBryde wears a dinosaur onesie for most of the show.

MORGAN WALLEN, 34 minutes:

The great Mulleted One brings his bountiful charisma to the livestream, putting the “social” in social distancing with at least five other people (two band members, a band member’s girlfriend, a photographer and a cousin) present in his Nashville quarters.

Memorable moment: Of course he plays his hits, “Chasin’ You” and “Whiskey Glasses,” but he also delivers a moving a cappella performance of “How Great Thou Art.” Bonus: Boots, Wallen’s excitable new German Shepherd, who looks less than a year old, gets introduced. Mayhem ensues.

JIMMIE ALLEN, 64 minutes:

Shunning a home setting, Allen sets up in a large practice space with two guitarists and a drummer to essentially perform an entire 16-song concert, complete with live tracks. Alas, it’s not exactly a visual feast: The dim lighting and the remote stationery camera mean you’re never able to make out Allen’s face.

Memorable moments: Allen creatively reimagines his first No. 1, “Best Shot,” with a lengthy bluesy intro, accompanying himself on keyboard. He also introduces a new song, “Those Days Were Made for These,” that’s ready-made for these perilous times (“Remember to tell yourself forever isn’t right now”). To note: the show starts at 14:19.

SCOTTY MCCREERY, 24 minutes:

From his Raleigh, North Carolina, home, McCreery offers a four-song set with down-home introductions and storytelling in between. Memorable moment: McCreery soldiering through his emotions when he hits the “Five More Minutes” verse about his late grandfather.

Bonus: Dressed in a New England Patriots sweatshirt, he announces he’s definitely sticking with his Tom Brady-less team — even if they play Tampa Bay, Brady’s new team.

CAYLEE HAMMACK, 62 minutes:

Setting the mood by lighting a faux religious candle to “St. Dolly,” Hammack proves her larger-than-life stage presence translates well at home in front of a cellphone camera. Drawing on her years playing Nashville honky-tonks, she entertains with covers ranging from “I Will Survive” to “Stand By Your Man.” And don’t deprive yourself of your biggest laugh of the day, which is certain to arrive when she performs her own self-written song, “Knocked Up.”

Memorable moment: Hammack’s guitarist texts with an offer to chug a beer for every verse of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” she’ll sing. Hammack calls him up, sings two verses and is heading toward a third when you can hear him beg for mercy: “You’re killing me!”

AVENUE BEAT, 47 minutes:

Hankering for some hang time with your best girlfriends? This newbie threesome, who share an apartment, offer the perfect virtual substitute. Sami Bearden, Savana Santos and Sam Backoff’s music — and sublime harmonies — mostly come in snippets during this show, but their banter, teasing and easy camaraderie are just plain fun to watch. Memorable moment: When label head Scott Borchetta calls in and, right on the spot, promises to release one of their newest songs as a single on April 10. Entitled “Anxiety,” it couldn’t be more fitting for a global pandemic (“Thank you, anxiety, for making me scared of everything”).

Bonus: A friend — keeping her distance — arrives at their doorstep with a care package that includes Doritos, Double-Stuf Oreos and White Claws, and Bearden, Santos and Backoff dissolve into paroxysms of delight. “I’m so happy!” Backoff exclaims. “My soul has ignited!”

GRATITUNES, 3 to 5 minutes:

Nashville’s Music Row and its at-large creative community have launched this initiative, which gives artists a chance to musically celebrate the staff at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Brad Paisley kicks off the project with a lively acoustic “Southern Comfort Zone.” Other artists already queued up include Dustin Lynch, Lauren Alaina, Amy Grant and Sara Evans. All performances are archived at www.gratitunes.com, and keep checking back for new music. You can also show your support by posting a message on social media using hashtags #Gratitunes and #VUMCHeroes; all posts are populated in real-time on the Gratitunes website.

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments. To help provide doctors and nurses on the front lines with life-saving medical resources, donate to Direct Relief here.

from PEOPLE.com https://ift.tt/2JwCHed

#Celebrity

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topicprinter · 6 years

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Hey everyone!My last post about my PR pitching process had a lot of really awesome comments so I thought I would do a follow up to let you know the three elements that made my client’s ICO promo so successful.Killer PRBounty Program and Community ManagementPaid Advertising and Sponsored ContentTo kick things off, I want to be clear, although we did generate a ton investment in a short time, it was all the result of months of hard work from many dedicated individuals to develop a company that was worthy of investing in. If you’re new to ICOs, basically, they are like IPOs - a new company looking for investors to believe in them. The goal is to get in front of audiences that are likely to support the ICO through investments.Let’s get started!_______________________________________________________1) Killer PRIt all starts with developing a killer PR strategy. In my experience, there is no magic involved here. Lots of testing went into coming up with our strategy, plenty of grunt work, and a little bit of luck.At the beginning, we quickly noticed that our pitch wasn’t getting any traction because it was heavily focused on the client’s platform.Moving away from “selling” the ICO and the platform, and toward creating a narrative around users and their experience got the attention of journalists.The first line sets the tone. So make sure it grabs their attention and let’s them know you reached out to them specifically or this story.For example:Hey [Name],Big fan of your work, especially where it comes to empowering women financially! So I thought you’d be interested in hearing about...Do you want to connect with [Name] to hear more about her research for a future story?Best regards,LamaWith each round of outreach, our pitch got shorter and more personal - targeted individually to the journalists interest and experience.Journalists are looking for awesome stories to share with their readers. They are not in it to help you make money, so it is very important that your pitch NOT be entirely centered around your ICO ---> There are 1000s of ICOs, so no one is going to care about the next one.My advice for a great pitch is…**Get personal*\*Understand who you are pitching and the topics they cover. Make it clear that what you are pitching ties into their interests.For example:I’ve been a long time reader and I’ve noticed you’ve been covering [insert topic] a lot recently.**Keep it short*\*Get to the point as quickly as you can. Journalists get hundreds of pitches every day, so the faster you can tell them what’s in it for them, the better. Give them enough information to wet their whistle.For example:Hey, [Name],I’m working on an article entitled [Headline]. Would you accept it as a guest post?Here are examples of articles I’ve recently had published: [insert links].**Be authentic*\*Don’t try to sell them on anything. Instead, offer them genuinely valuable information or data. Putyourself in an editor’s shoes, not that of a publicist. A journalist is not interested in your company.They are interested in a newsworthy story.For example:We’ve recently conducted an experiment testing [insert topic] that would really resonate with your readers. We found...Are you interested in connecting to hear more?Keeping those golden tips in mind really helped us get closer to the perfect pitch. Our biggest hit was when we caught the attention of a journalist at Venture Beat who ended up writing an article about my client. It all just snowballed from there!In terms of the guest posting, it is imperative that you have an incredibly talented writer on your team to be able to tell your story really well without getting self-promotional. Luckily, this client had a team of writers ready to church out content regularly. That made my job of getting their articles published a cinch.______________________________________________________________2) Bounty Program and Community ManagementIt’s no surprise to any of you that ICOs are a really competitive world, especially now. One way to get a leg up is through a bounty program.This means that a blockchain startup incentivizes their token by having users complete specific tasks - often as simple as spreading the word about the ICO through social media.Here was the process of my client’s bounty program and community management:Step 1: My client set aside a small portion of their tokensStep 2: Through smart contracts they used the tokens as rewards for usersStep 3: The rewards are paid out in tokens that can be invested in the new cryptocurrencyStep 4: Eventually the tokens are turned into fiat currency once the ICO is overI could go on and on about different types of bounty program tasks, but here I want to briefly explain a few of the tasks my client involved in their bounty program:Signature campaign and avatar campaignThis involved posting a signature or avatar on select forums based on a code that was provided.Blog posts campaignHere, if you have a blog or Youtube channel, you earned big time by promoting the ICO.Social media campaignThis one is really straight forward. My client asked users to promote them on their Facebook and Twitter pages.The rewards for these tasks are often relative to the users ranking or number of followers.In general, ICO bounty programs are a great way to use your new platform to maximize your marketing efforts. They’re awesome because they’re a relatively inexpensive way to move your ICO forward, build investor and user loyalty and increase hype in the crypto community.My client reserved 40% of the total supply of their coin to incentivize developers/publishers on their platform by allowing them to sell these tokens to their community and keep up to 100% of the proceeds.Without writing an essay on proper community management, I will say that it is super important for a successful ICO to have a consistent team brand as well as to host online discussions and answer any questions posed about their coin or project. My client had their own forum and was actively present on social media, Slack and Telegram.In the end, we knew our PR efforts were working through the bounty program and the efforts of the active community managers because they were able to raise over 115% of their preICO goal.__________________________________________________________________________3) Paid Advertising and Sponsored ContentThis is my least favorite way to do PR. There’s nothing organic or revolutionary about it. However, if your ICO is coming up and you are in a time crunch, sometimes throwing money into advertising or sponsored content is the way to go.PR is most effective when there is a sustained strategy that is repeated as a part of your overall marketing effort. It is not a one-off because you’re looking to get as many investors as possible. However, if that’s the short term goal, sometimes you need to spend money to make money - and this is an exact case that paid in dividends based on the sponsored posts that were purchased by the client.That being said - whenever you pay for a sponsored post you need to make an educated choice. Think about the publication and its reach - Is the post worth the cost?With each sponsored post we paid for, we made sure to note the domain authority, traffic, and reader niche. We created profiles of the typical reader of each publication and we used this information to craft content that would resonate most with them.BEWARE: As a warning to present and future ICOs, and with the current bans of ICO-related ads on Facebook, Twitter and the like, it is now more important than ever to stay on the SEC’s good side.___________________________________________________________________________The Results!The client spent $1440 for 2 months of outreach, plus the additional costs of sponsored posts and banner advertising ---> And raised over $18M in their ICO.You may be thinking, “this is BS!” or “huge PR scam!”.But, I pinky-swear you, it’s not! The amount they paid is the cost of outreach. Sponsored posts were out of the client’s pocket. They had a really awesome team that was on top of everything, from crafting excellent content, to staying abreast of questions/issues that came from their community. But I had their backs on their PR efforts and it totally paid off!In two months, 539 pitches were sent. Out of those, 265 were opened, 54 received replies. And there were 34 successful placements - from guest posts, to article mentions, to sponsored content.All of this PR work is easily repeatable. Like I said, no magic here, no bells and whistles. Just hard word and a lot of testing to get it right. Luckily, I’m a patient girl :)$18 million seems like a pretty sweet ROI for 2 months of outreach, don’t you think?Let me know if you have any questions. Happy to elaborate on my process!Thanks for reading!-Lama

#/r/startups #reddit

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fishermariawo · 6 years

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Announcing Two New Comprehensive Online Multimedia Courses! (And a Giveaway)

As you know from the popularity of the Primal Health Coach program and the 2017 launch of the Primal Endurance Online Mastery Course, we have made a sincere commitment to extend our educational offerings into online, self-study content that you can enjoy at your own pace from the comfort of your home. Today I’m announcing two fabulous new courses that will take your healthy living goals to the next level in 2018:

The Keto Reset Mastery Course: We bring the New York Times bestselling book to life with over 100 videos, along with extensive audio and print programming—the most comprehensive online course on all aspects of ketogenic diet and lifestyle ever developed.

Paleo Cooking Bootcamp: A step-by-step meal preparation course that allows you to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner options for an entire week in a single, highly focused two-hour power cooking session. Four sessions make for a month-long bootcamp.

Following are some details about the courses, including fabulous promo videos, comprehensive websites, offers for free sneak previews, and a one-time bonus offer for Primal Kitchen products with incredible savings. When you enroll in these courses, you receive immediate login instructions to your student portal, filled with downloadable or streaming videos, audio programming, and pdf books and written resources. You can proceed through these courses at your own pace on desktop, pad, or mobile device.

The Keto Reset Mastery Course

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The Mastery Course is filled with the most comprehensive keto-related educational material you can get anywhere: 100+ videos, many hours of audio programming, and several eBooks—including The Keto Reset Diet Glyph Notes (like Clif Notes, an executive summary of the book content). You’ll also receive individualized support from our expert staff via email, and group support with our thriving Keto Reset Facebook Group.

The enrollment fee is a very reasonable $147, as the curriculum has been compared to a year-long upper division course in the health sciences. The Keto Reset Mastery Course gives you all the support you need to attain the ultimate goal of metabolic flexibility—the ability to burn a variety of fuel sources at any particular time to meet your body’s needs, with the emphasis on efficiently burning stored body fat and ketones.

As detailed in the book and in other posts, The Keto Reset Mastery Course takes a measured, methodical approach to go keto the right way, as opposed to the increasingly common shortcut approach that brings a high risk of failure and backsliding. The fad status of keto has confused people into thinking that it’s all about a sudden and severe restriction of carbs for quick weight loss, or stuffing your face with fat in order to generate high values on blood or breath testing. This is a distortion of the big picture goal of metabolic flexibility—becoming expert at burning a variety of fuels, especially stored body fat and ketones as needed.

The Keto Reset Mastery Course emphasizes a sensible, intuitive approach where you never struggle or suffer in the name of keto, and one where you still get to enjoy your life along the way. Yes, the first part of your journey entails a disciplined elimination of the big-three most offensive modern foods—grains, sugars, and refined vegetable oils, and a 100 percent commitment is necessary. Later, when fully-prepared, you will engage in a focused, six-week period of nutritional ketosis. This can take some extra effort and attention even for the most hard core Primal eaters. However, when you complete the entire Keto Reset journey as presented, you will enjoy metabolic flexibility benefits that will last for years to come—even if you decide over the long run to eat more carbs than is warranted for keto.

If you’re interested in keto and want to do things the right way, with maximum support and guidance, or if you aren’t quite sure about keto and want to get full exposure before proceeding, enrolling in the Mastery Course will give you everything you need to succeed. The book is great, but the Mastery Course offers the most impactful educational experience imaginable.

Paleo Cooking Bootcamp

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This innovative online course is inspired by creator Katie French’s live class that she presented in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it won the prestigious “Best of SF” designation by San Francisco Magazine.

At the original Paleo Cooking Bootcamp, Katie’s students would gather at cooking stations in a commercial kitchen, follow Katie’s tightly organized prep and cooking sequences for two hours, and then drive away each weekend with tupperwares filled with delicious entrees, snacks and treats to eat in style during another hectic week.

Katie has now brought her intentional cooking method into digital format so you can join her and the featured students in the course—real-life busy moms and career folks trying to up their game in the kitchen—every step of the way.

First, you’ll get a precise grocery list for each week’s Bootcamp session, along with extensive written supporting materials to help you better navigate the videos. Then, you’ll follow along in real time through the recipe preparation videos. Even if you’re a cooking novice, you can jump right in and build the skills and efficiency to quickly increase your confidence and enjoyment with meal preparation.

The complete Bootcamp program consists of four weekend cooking sessions (each lasting two hours), that enable you to eat delicious, paleo-approved meals for an entire month. This is a fantastic way to build momentum for a major dietary transition, or enjoy delicious meals without having to worry about shopping and preparing from scratch every time. Anyone will admit that a two-hour time investment on the weekend is worth the bounty it delivers to ease your everyday meal preparation stress and improve your adherence to healthy eating goals, but making it happen requires a precise, intentional approach where no time is wasted. Paleo Cooking Bootcamp takes the guesswork out of the equation and let’s you go straight the fun stuff in the kitchen!

Bonus Offers For Primal Kitchen Products

Just choose from two awesome bonus offers when you enroll in one or both courses.

OFFER ONE: Enroll in the Keto Reset Mastery Course or the Paleo Cooking Bootcamp course and receive the accompanying course book for FREE (The Keto Reset Diet or the Paleo Cooking Bootcamp) as well as a complimentary bottle of Primal Kitchen Extra Virgin Avocado Oil.

Just use code NEWCOURSE at checkout. This offer includes free shipping for domestic orders.

OFFER TWO: Since intentional, efficient cooking and going keto complement each other, enroll in BOTH courses and get $50 OFF your total order as well as a complimentary bottle of Primal Kitchen Extra Virgin Avocado Oil.

To redeem this offer, you must manually add both courses into your cart and use code DOUBLE at checkout. This offer includes free shipping for domestic orders.

ADDITIONAL UPGRADE OFFER: When you enroll in either or both of these courses, you’ll see an optional one-time upgrade offer in the shopping cart for a Primal Kitchen® product kit, saving you a ton on a varied collection of dressings, mayos, and avocado oil to support your Keto and/or Bootcamp efforts.

You’ll access the digital items immediately when you enroll, and we’ll ship the accompanying kitchen products and books to your door.

Thank you for your interest, and be sure to check out the websites for each course to get a good overview of how comprehensive the educational each experience is—and to sign up with just your email address for the free bonus items: an exclusive one-hour talk show interview for the Keto Reset, and a few free recipe videos for the Paleo Cooking Bootcamp.

Today’s Giveaway

Today I’m giving away a $100 gift certificate to PrimalBlueprint.com to a random commenter on today’s post. (I think a $100 would be handy to apply to one of the new courses, but you can use it on anything in our commerce store.)

Just share what Primal Blueprint course you’ve taken/plan to take or what course you’d like to see us offer next! What element of Primal living do you think we should take up in future course programming?

Be sure to comment before midnight tonight (1/11/18 PST) to be eligible.

Thanks for being here today, everybody, and I’ll look forward to reading your thoughts and questions on these awesome new course offerings and your ideas for upcoming programs.

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polizwrites · 2 years

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WIP Update - 12 Jan 2022

Had a good writing week - I touched 7 fics (4 WIPs & 3 new works) for a total of 2584 words. I posted the second & final chapter of my TonyPepperRhodey threesome smutfic and a future excerpt for my WinterIron supernatural Regency AU here on Tumblr.

I have 13 active WIPs with the first deadline of the new year being the IronHusbands Bingo, which wraps up at the end of January.

On the crafting side, I am re-opening my Stuffed With Character commissions - expect some self-promo posts to pop up.

See below cut for the specific bingos/challenges/etc I am working on - Feel free to send me prompts or asks regarding any of these projects (or any other WIPs I’ve got out there) – they really help feed the Muse and keep me motivated!

Imagineer!Tony x Artist!Steve

Continued working on a collaboration with @deehellcat where Tony (born about 2 decades earlier) goes to work for Walt Disney as an imagineer to spite his father and is paired up on a project with Steve, one of the animation artists. Added 100-ish words to Chapter 4 which will fill my Workshop Troubles for the TSB - Chapter 2 will fill my Los Angeles square for the STB.

IronHusbands/RhFe Bingo (Runs thru 31 Jan 2022)

7 squares filled - 1 WIP. Looks like I'll be getting a Row 3 Bingo, as I have 4 squares filled and a first draft for the fifth. Anything else I finish for this is a bonus!

* B4: Secret Relationship: I have an extremely geeky title/intro for this, but no additional plot ideas – would love to get some brainstorming help.

* I3 - Masks - finished a first draft of a 663-word ficlet for this last night - mid 90's Tony & Rhodey mixing business and pleasure in a visit to Key West to demo some SI tech and attend Fantasy Fest.

* N3 - FREE - Posted Chapter 2 of the PepperonyRhodey threesome smutfic The Invitation, which came in at 1386 words.

* O2 - Reunions - Tony & Rhodey reminiscing about Spring Break 1987 the night before the time heist. Linked to/based on my Besties moodboard for the TSB June flash. Still working it out in my head; no words on paper yet.

Tony Stark Mark V Bingo [TSB_MkV] (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

Fifteen fills and two WIPs with several potential crossfills. Also happily accepting plot bunnies and prompts for these!

* S1 - Star Wars AU: crossing over with the TSB WinterIron Is Coming Server Bingo - On Opposing Sides square. Aria threw out the idea of a Stuckony pairing with a Jedi, a bounty hunter and the bounty early last month & Ru brainstormed/collabed with me. Chapter 1 looks to be coming in at 832 words and Chapter 2 is sitting at 70 with a couple of plot points/ideas brewing. Looking at probably 3 short chapters with one from each character POV. Current last line: He was well aware of the legend that a Mandalorian must never be seen without his helmet, but Djems’ foster family had belonged to one of the more pragmatic sects, where it was a badge of belonging, not a prison. .

* S2 - AU: Regency - Combined this with my StarkBucks Shifter square for the first chapter of To Tame a Werewolf , which posted last Friday. Chapter 2 is pretty much done at 970 words and will cross over with the BIB Tony+Supernatural Elements square. I wrote a 413 word scene that will slot into Chapter 3, and I think a final Chapter 4 will wrap this up.

* T1 - KINK: A/B/O Society - this will be used in the continuation of Flawed Hypothesis that I’m planning for the new year. The second chapter is currently sitting at 878 words. Current Last Line: The offer to build a containment chamber for the Hulk was just the beginning; he could improve Hawkeye’s weaponry, upgrade the Widow’s and Cap’s uniforms and put together something for the Sergeant as well.

* T3 - Pairing: Tony/Loki - This is kinda-sorta a NoTP for me, but if I can make it platonic - I had the following phrase pop into my head as I woke up one morning and it could make for a great crackfic/moodboard: “You mean to tell me you put the Chitauri on the payroll?”

* R1 - AU: Alice in Wonderland - I’ll probably podfic Go Ask Friday , since it 100% fits the prompt and I think it needs more love!

* R2 - Secret Admirer - Possible WinterIron remix/spinoff of @hddnone‘s hanahaki fic Seeds of Love

* R3 - Pepper Potts/Rescue - Got inspired by a re-read of @sabrecmc‘s fabulous Stony No Powers AU fic Indecent Proposal and got permission to write a partial remix from Pepper’s POV! I have two lines of dialog and a couple of notes so far…

* K1 - Workshop Troubles - Chapter 4 of the Imagineer!Tony collab with @deehellcat (see above)

TSB_MkV -WinterIron Server Bingo (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

As part of the Tony Stark Bingo Mark V round, a group of WinterIron fans are working on a single card as a group effort. I’ve joined the Discord server and am working on the following squares:

* S5 - Carnival - If I have time, I could make a moodboard for or record a podfic of In My Sights

* T1 - On Opposing Sides - see TSB MkV - Star Wars AU above.

Buckuary Intersectional Bingo [BIB] (Runs thru 28 Feb 2022)

This event is being run as a part of the @buckybarnesbingo community and is a twist on a regular bingo, in that each column represents someone for Bucky to interact or be paired up with, and each row is a trope. Column C and Row 3 are free spaces to be used as the creator pleases. I thought it was a fun idea and am pleased at the response so far! Need to start planning out more fills for this.

* I1 - Tony + Supernatural Elements - see TSB AU: Regency above.

* I2 - Tony + No Powers AU: This and “A Mind at Work” from my STBB will go toward Chapter 3 of Lady Natasha’s Consort and Lord Steve’s Companion - my Stucky & IronWidow –> poly WinterIron Royalty AU WIP. I am 339 words into the chapter at the moment with Vague Ideas of where to take it next in the New Year. If any of you have an interest in cheer-reading, I will gratefully accept the help! Current Last Line: “Of course,” Bucky replied, a little nonplussed.

WinterHawk Bingo - Round 3 [WHB_R3] (Runs thru 30 Apr 2022)

Three fills posted - no active WIPs at the moment - shooting for a Row 1 bingo at minimum.

* B1 - Red Room!Clint - Winter Soldier training Red Room recruits with prospective title Love in a Dangerous Time?

* B2 - Stuck in Elevator - probably will podfic Livin’ It Up (While We’re Goin’ Down) – if I can manage to read steamy stuff aloud!

I1 - Harry Potter AU - looking for ideas/collaborator for this, since am not a huge HP fan.

Stucky Bingo - Round 3 [SB_R3] (Runs thru 31 May 2022)

Nine fills with 3 WIPs and a couple of Vague Ideas. Shooting for a Column O bingo to start.

* G3 - “I thought you were smaller” – going to try to fit this into my Star Wars AU (see TSB MkV above)

* O2 - AU: A/B/O - see TSB KINK: A/B/O Society square above

* O5 - Natasha Romanov - after reading the lovely gift I received, a little plot bunny hopped into my head: amputee!Bucky reluctantly cosplaying as video game character that Steve & Tony designed/programmed - Natasha is Bucky’s roommate who loves the game and just might have played a bit of a matchmaker. I have about 200 words in notes/bits of dialogue and 224 words of fic at the moment: Current Last Line: “The last time I tried, I destroyed three controllers in less than an hour.”

Steve | Tony | Bucky Bingo Round 2 [STBB R2] (Runs thru 30 Jun 2022)

Got my shiny new card for the @stb-bingo this week and already made one fill!

* B3 - Michelle Jones - filling this with a couple of haikus that she wrote for a class - should post next Wednesday, if not sooner.

* N1 - Los Angeles - see Imagineer!Tony/Animator!Steve collab above.

* O2 - “A Mind at Work" - see BIB Tony + No Powers AU: above.

Started something to combining the following squares for the One Fill, One Bingo badge: B5 - "Aliens, again?” , I5 - Lifeguard, N5 - Barbeque, G5 - River Rafting, O5 - Wakanda. Avengers + Guardians in a partying mood = a huge headache for T’Challa. It’s currently sitting at 339 words. Current Last Line: I’m Sam, Sam Wilson -- another friend of Steve’s.

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On other creative fronts: I finished my last MTH auction fill item! After that, am moving on to a multi-figure Star Trek commission (Dr. McCoy, Scotty and 7 of 9) and a Morris figure from Shang-Chi.

if you’re looking for one of a kind gifts (for a friend or something for yourself!) you can plan ahead for the next holiday season and check out Stuffed With Character over on Facebook for a full list of my designs (now over 80!). They’re mostly Marvel and monsters, but I have some Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Disney figures as well. Plus I love to take custom design requests for any fandom!

#writing stuff #wip wednesday #WIP Update #shameless self promo

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