how have i been cast as a vladimir twice in the same show

Panic Attack

Written by: JuliaFC

Betas: Khanofallorcs, Agrestebug, Etoile-Lead-Sama, Genxha and NalaFontaine. Thank you all so much!

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc, TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Written for the Facebook h/c group “Hurt/Comfort Italia - Fanart and Fanfiction - GRUPPO NUOVO | Groups | Facebook”, weekend challenge, “Atonement 2.0”. I was asked to write a *coughs* drabble about character A being stuck somewhere and character B having to help them. If you speak/read Italian and are interested in the genre, join us! We’ll be glad to see you! 

oOoOoOoOoOo

She knew it wasn’t a good idea. It really, really wasn’t a good idea. Her guts had warned her. She had felt a very bad sensation in the pit of her stomach and a growing sense of anxiety the more she tried to convince herself that it was okay. That it was only a boat, that they were safe. That it was a hot and sunny afternoon, that Bois de Boulogne was full of people and nothing could have really happened. 

When Adrien had said that he had never rowed a boat before, Alya had winked at her. Her friend had poked her in the ribs saying, “That’s a great idea, Sunshine! Let’s rent two. Nino and I will take one, and you and Marinette the other!” 

Marinette had tried her best to not think too much of it, or rather she had tried her best to not have a panic attack because she was going to go on a boat, alone, with Adrien. He was going to row and it was going to be all so romantic and she wanted to die. 

Because even though he had now made it clear that he wasn’t in a relationship with Kagami, so Marinette knew she wasn’t betraying her friend’s trust, he was still her crush. She had tried so hard to move on. She had genuinely tried to reciprocate Luka’s feelings. However, the trip to New York they had been on two months ago had given her time to reflect and the heart to heart she had with Luka upon her return had cemented their break up. She couldn’t deny the feelings she had for Adrien anymore. She loved him too much to let him go.

They had been alone, facing each other as they sat in the small boat. Adrien had been happily rowing. The silence between them had been deafening. Her insides had been melting every time he had been giving her one of those looks; those looks that he had always given her, but that strangely enough had become more intense and more languid since they had that dance under the moonlight in New York. Her face was so red that she started fearing the colour would become permanent. 

And then, of course, it had to happen. The loud bang echoed in the air like a clap of thunder. The akuma appeared out of nowhere and started billowing gusts of wind all around, making the water of the river sway in big waves and the boat they were in began swinging dangerously. Marinette saw Adrien putting the oars down and clenching his hands on the boat while looking at her worriedly.

“Are you okay, Marinette? Can you manage?” he said. 

She nodded. “Yes, it’s an akuma. We need to find a way to get to safety and hide.”

The akuma had the shape of an enormous swan; it had walked through from the back of the park and now started uttering high pitched squeals. “You won’t disturb the flora and the fauna of this park any longer!” it screamed. The bird twirled its neck and started flapping its wings, creating wind that was becoming stronger and stronger. 

Marinette was panicking. She knew she had to find a hiding place and transform but she couldn’t do that because she was in the most exposed location possible, in the middle of a river, and she couldn’t go anywhere or hide from the view. She couldn't even hide inside the boat, because Adrien was with her.

Adrien must have misinterpreted her pallor, because he moved one of his hands and grabbed Marinette’s arm, holding it firmly. “I’ve got you,” he shouted, trying to make his voice heard through the wind. But Marinette couldn't answer because the wind suddenly picked up even stronger and their boat, together with a few more, was captured by a column of what looked like water mixed with wind and they felt like they were floating in mid air. Then it all happened very fast: the boat (with them inside) rose higher and higher, and the downblast of wind threw everything around. Marinette felt Adrien’s body wrapping around hers protectively, and next thing she knew, she was slammed down on the ground somewhere and lost consciousness from the impact.

oOo

It took her a couple of minutes to open her eyes again, and when she did, her gaze was met with darkness. She didn’t know what was going on, but she felt that she had something very heavy pressing on her body and she could hardly breathe under its weight. Slowly, her eyes got accustomed to the darkness and she started making out the shapes of the things around her. 

She seemed to be… underneath the boat? Yes, she could actually see the top part of one of the oars that Adrien had been using to row the boat just millimetres from her temple. She tried to move to push the boat up, but soon realised that the heaviness was actually clenched, almost wrapped around her body. She tried to detangle her arms from underneath the heavy load, so that she could move and touch around to understand where she was, and as she did that, she had a horrible thought going through her mind. 

“Tikki!” she whispered. The red and black kwami had been resting inside her small purse, but now Marinette didn’t know where her purse was.

“Shhhh!” she heard the voice of the small kwami whisper into her ear. “I’m okay, Marinette, but you’re stuck under the boat and a whole load of branches and trees.”

Marinette’s eyes opened wide. “Oh no! I don’t have time for this,” she growled. “Damn Akuma! We need t—” she started saying but Tikki put her little paws on her mouth, then flew back to her ear and whispered, “You’re not alone, Marinette!” 

“Wha—” she started, and as she did that, she felt something moving on her chest, right between her breasts.

“Uuuuuuh what happened?” She couldn’t be mistaken. This was Adrien’s voice. 

“Adrien?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Marinette? Where are you?” She felt something moving from her side and she thought that probably Adrien had moved a hand to his head, maybe rubbing the nape of his neck. Or maybe he was just massaging his head where he must have gotten hit when they landed on the ground. She could feel a tender spot on her own head too, just on the top of her left ear. Then she felt the pressure of limbs trying to detangle from the top of her and something started to feel and squeeze her chest. 

She immediately tensed, her eyes going wide as her face felt suddenly hotter than ever. “S-stop. Now!” she managed to say and felt him freeze on top of her and what was frantically touching her all over stopped immediately. 

“Sorry, I was trying to figure out what I was laying on.” 

Oh God, could he hear the furious beating of her heart? Of all the scenarios she had dreamed of in her mind of Adrien checking her out, being stuck under a boat buried under a load of trees definitely wasn’t one. She was cold. And sore. And an akuma was on the loose and now Chat Noir was probably fighting against it and wondering why his Lady hadn’t arrived yet. A surge of adrenaline rushed through her veins at the mere thought of it. No, she couldn’t leave her kitty alone! Besides, he had no way to purify the akuma and she definitely didn’t want this particular akuma to multiply!

“It’s know, you okay… I mean you knew okay, uuuuuh I mean, It’s okay you didn’t know.” She nearly felt her face combusting on the spot when she felt his nose on her skin. “Adrien. Th-that’s my ch-chest,” she managed to say before getting completely breathless when she felt his breath in between her breasts as he gasped loudly and tried in a mad frenzy to detangle himself.

“So sorry, Marinette! I’m stuck, can’t move at all. I’m trying to pin myself on my elbows, but my neck hurts, I must have banged it quite hard, can't lift my head much. Can you move? I’ll try to lift myself up a little.” As he said that, she felt a bit of the pressure coming off her body and she could finally breathe. She tried to wiggle underneath him to squish out and felt that her body wasn’t tangled anywhere. 

“If you could hold that position and maybe lift yourself up a little bit more, maybe I can get out.” She felt what now she had identified as his body tense and lift just slightly further up, so she took that as a cue to start wiggling even more. With enormous difficulty, she untangled her legs and pulled the top part of herself out from under the boat. Her foot got stuck for a second, but the thought of the effort that poor Adrien was doing to lift himself up added to her panic and desperation and she managed to get herself out. She looked at her foot and noticed a big scratch on it. She had also lost one of her ballet shoes. As soon as she took her foot out, she heard a gasp and the boat crashed even more on top of Adrien, burying him further and leaving him nearly no gap for air. She heard the boy whimper underneath it.

“Are you all right, Adrien?” she shouted. She tried to lift the boat up, but the wood wouldn’t move at all. So she started trying to remove some of the branches that had fallen on top of the boat, to free it. 

“I… I’m not. I’m c-claustrophobic, Marinette. I c-can’t breathe!” He started coughing and Marinette started panicking outside the boat. 

Merde! That’s the last thing she needed now. She was hoping to go look for help and transform at the same time and get rid of the akuma. But she couldn’t leave him like that. Her whole soul was screaming inside her that she couldn’t possibly leave Adrien on his own (or any human being to be honest, but especially Adrien!) while he was at his most vulnerable. 

“Oh no! Adrien, don’t panic. Close your eyes and concentrate on breathing!”

“I can’t!” His voice was hoarse, almost a whisper. 

“Shoot! Adrien, please listen to me.” He coughed once more and her heart doubled its speed in her chest. “Please, Adrien, listen. Listen. Close your eyes. Imagine the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.” She heard him whimpering. “Do it, Adrien. Think of what you love the most. Picture it in your head in detail.”

“Uuuuuuh…” he whimpered again, but his voice wasn't as hoarse and he didn’t cough any more. 

“Are you picturing this beautiful thing, Adrien? Do you want to talk about it?” As she was talking, she kept looking around. She tried to pull up the boat again but she couldn’t even lift it a millimeter. So she gave her attention again to the branches on top. There were some big trunks among the smaller branches and they were too heavy for her to lift, so she knew that it would have been impossible for her to get Adrien out of the boat without help. But she didn’t want to leave him there. She eyed her phone thoughtfully, but the signal bar was showing ‘only emergency calls’. When she tried to dial the number of the boulangerie, no sound came out and after about half a minute, the phone hung up by itself. No, they were too deep into the woods, or maybe the akuma had damaged the phone wires; maybe a combination of the two.

No, there was only one thing to do. She went back on her knees and put a hand on the wood of the boat. “Are you okay, Adrien?”

“I’m a little better, but I won’t resist much longer,” he said, his voice still very shaky. No, she definitely couldn’t leave him there.

“Forgive me, my friend, I have no other choice!” she whispered and then said much louder, “TIKKI, SPOTS ON!” As the sparkle of pink energy wrapped all around her, she could clearly hear a loud gasp coming from within the boat. “I’m sorry that you found out like this, Adrien.”

She started working at the branches, lifting a much heavier load now that she had her suit on. However, the heaviest ones were still too heavy for her to lift, even as Ladybug. “Damn it! Adrien, I still can’t free the boat!” She looked around, almost hoping that she would see a sign that everything would be okay. She needed something. Someone. Yes, she definitely needed someone. Someone she knew way too well. “Where is that bloody cat when you need him?” she cursed loudly, more to herself than to anybody else. 

“Don’t!” she heard a voice that didn’t sound Adrien’s one coming from inside the boat. She opened her eyes wide and froze on the spot, resting one of her ears against the wood of the boat and listening very carefully. Surely she had just imagined it, Adrien was alone until seconds before! “I said don’t. Don’t you even th—”

“PLAGG, CLAWS OUT!” boomed Adrien’s voice. Blood drained completely from Ladybug’s face. 

WHAT?

“CATACLYSM!” As soon as he said that, the boat, and all the trees and trunks at the top of it, were rendered to ash. And immediately after, her stunned gaze was met by the shiny green eyes of her masked partner.

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” she managed to say. Her eyes were still as wide as saucers, her heart skipping several beats as her mouth gaped open in a small o. 

Chat Noir bowed theatrically in front of her and then picked her hand up and kissed her knuckles. “The ‘bloody cat’ is and will always be at your service, My Lady!” he said in a joking tone, his eyes never leaving her own. Then he tried to move and she saw a gleam of pain in his eyes. “Ugh… although I won’t be of much use today, I’m afraid, not until you release the Miraculous cure. My leg—” He cringed and she finally managed to wake up from her shock induced stupor. First thing she did was wrap him in a massive hug. 

“You're okay!” she whispered in his ear, hugging him so tight he could hardly breathe.

He smiled softly in her embrace. “Yes, Buginette. I’m okay.”

“Thank God!” She started sobbing against his shoulder and he couldn’t do anything more than hug her tighter, while with one hand he was patting her hair in a soothing gesture. They held the hug for a long time, lulling in the reassuring feeling of each other’s breath, and each other’s warmth. Then, they heard loud bangs and crashes in the distance and broke the hug, as if waking up from a dream. 

Chat Noir saw that Ladybug wanted to say something, but he put a finger to her mouth and shushed her. “We can talk later, Marinette. Now we need to take care of the akuma.” He tried to move his leg and winced. “Actually, you will have to take care of the akuma because… as I said, my leg needs your Miraculous Cure. Ouch.”

She sniffled and stroked his cheek, before nodding decisively. Then, her eyes got an amused gleam to them and she cupped her hands on each side of his face. “I will, minou. But there’s an even more urgent matter that needs to be addressed before I go.”

“What m—” he started to say, but he couldn’t finish, because his lips got suddenly busy kissing the lips of the girl he loved.

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Author’s note

Whoho! I finally managed to write something short! *Jumps around happily* Not sure if it can be considered a ‘drabble’ as I was asked, but… that’s the shortest I’ve written up to now! *JOY*

Hope you liked this little story. Please feel free to drop any compliments, screams, insults, kisses… incoherent rambling… anything you want in the comments and click send. I love reading your feedback, please be nice with this poor sleep deprived soul who writes at 3 am for tort—, I mean to delight you with these loads of rub—, er, these beautiful stories of mine. *Coughs*. Good news is (oh well, good… depending from the point of view), I have more prompts for the challenge I’m taking part of, so before the end of the weekend I’ll tort—, I mean I’ll delight you with some more. 

Aren’t you happy? :D

after jared has now confirmed on that podcast that the last scene of the show will just be sam + dean, i hope everyone can stop speculating about cas being there. he is not. (that of course doesnt mean hes not in the ep at all)

For those who WANT to actually listen, you can see it here (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jared-padalecki-returns/id1256754097)

While I intend to talk on this statement left by the Nonnie there's a few other things to talk about. For those specifically interested in THIS QUOTE, it’s part “Ten” in my notes.

Before I go on, lemme say, I keep saying Misha *isn’t* in the final *shot.* I can also say *ten thousand times* that “the final shot” is NOT THE SAME THING AS THE “FINAL SCENE.” I don’t know how many times I have to beat this into people’s heads. The “Final scene” may not even BE the final shot because for all you know, the last final scene is something like around scene 50 and the last 10 shots are some Swan Song montage with a dialogue. Scenes are also composed of *multiple shots* on the regular, and *very rarely* shot in order. So actually, it depends on what you even consider a ~scene~ but a shot and a scene are not the same thing. No matter how many times people choose to misunderstand this, this will continue to be true. 

As it is, the board already going up to 47 was high. Not unheard of, but high. I absolutely do not think anybody should be surprised if that’s actually closer to the last 5 minutes of the episode and the next 10+ shots are literal full blown montage. Because once again, and I can not emphasize this enough, they are not teleporting to a bridge at the end of the fucking show. I repeat, they are not, in the last 20-40 seconds, teleporting to a bridge at the end of the fucking show. And they weren’t on that location any other day. 

But I also know this fandom takes anything that’s in shorthand and blows it up into the worst case extremization, so I’m actually going to address this and even tag @curioussubjects and @winchestersingerautorepair and point out that Jared talks about “the last time Sam and Dean see each other” -- so enjoy that. See you on the other side, brother.

Okay so first, as a general note related to everything, that particular podcast is a mess. There is literally 17 minutes of nothing related to Jared at the start. It's a mix of sadness about how he knew a relative was dying, sadness, people's sad facebook messages which I get, losing someone is sad--but then a bunch of nonsense about ads and swag and sponsors. Like to anyone preparing to actually listen, you can skip to about 17 minutes in.

One: Confirmed they started quarantining (J2 at least) on Aug 2. 14 days gave them a few days before filming. But they refused to break quarantine even to walk the dogs to not reset the quarantine period. (This is one of the first things they talk about after the barrage of ads and other things)

Two: Jared has some great insight on how and why to let a dog go. He jumped it a little sooner than I would I think, but he talks about knowing when they're in pain or suffering. He gave assistance to her bad hips and other things through late life but saw when the spark left her and she wanted to go. Someone will probably try to problematize this but as someone that witnessed someone refusing to put down their dog while she spent half of her day having seizures and shitting herself, huffing, being terrified and unable to move, that was impressive. (This starts somewhere around 22 and goes to about 31:30, it's about a ten minute segment.)

Three: after this they actually go into the show, it also lets us know that the podcast is *recorded early on in filming*. It's talking about the first few days he left for filming. This wasn't just-now recorded. This is a few weeks old, like most Inside of You podcasts are.

Four: Jared ignores social media a lot, he confirms.

Five: He goes on having to talk about saying goodbye to a 15 year friend, never having gone more than 5 months without playing Sam, the process of being in the moment. It boils down to staying distanced from social media and your phone to be in the internet, which can actually add to feeling alone. (This may not be true for everyone, but I can definitely see why it feels so for Jared--he admits it's somewhat escapism.) Rosenbaum debates what counts as connection, but Rosenbaum also doesn't deal with a bajillion shitty comments from all his fandom lanes. He uses the podcast as an example, which is entirely different than Jared talking about ignoring twitter or instagram.

(Commercial break at 39 for a counseling/therapy service, runs to about 41 then one for a toothbrush rofl goes to about 43:15, so basically a 4 minute commercial break)

Six: Jared talks about his clinical anxiety impact on the final shooting and everything and why it was so important to have his dog with him during quarantine. He started terrified about it but got 4-5 days in and realized it was great. The wife and kids even considered going with him but he said it was okay and declined. After 45 he goes on complimenting his wife and the work she does at home.

Seven: He goes back to March 12 being the last day of filming back before covid and everyone had to run home on Friday the 13th of March LOL. So Supernatural got cursed on Friday the 13th. Rolling back to everything Gen has to do with the kids and the routine, goes back to talking about her. Talks about being the New Toy from dad being home so much. But then back to August first day of shot as an outdoor shoot. How early it was. So 21pt1 was an outdoor shoot. They continue to go on and on about how hard having kids is, if rewarding, until after 50 minutes. This converts into a conversation with his psychiatrist about his kids, his mom's birthday during social distancing, and all kinds of other commentary. Difference of psychologist vs psychiatrist. Loves sugar cuz he couldn't have it as a kid, etc.

Eight: This bit carries them all the way out past the hour mark. Just before the hour is where the "pain" section from the promo comes from. It turns into mortality and fear of death. Turns into stuff like natural childbirth. So from an hour to 1:03:00 it goes on, then it turns into another ad break that goes to about 1:07:15

Nine: How emotional the ending is, reading the script every day, remembering places start after the 1:07:15 commercial end. First week they shot up the old highway for example. Jared saying goodbye to locations he knows. Very bittersweet. There are no pickup shots because of covid.

Ten: The final scheduled moment, what you're talking about, and Jared tried very very VERY difficultly. (1:08:30 or so) -- he struggles and says "The last time Sam and Dean see each other is the last time Jared and Jensen see each other, if that makes any sense." He refused to say what the last scene was. It will be the last filming camera moments together. Which unto itself uh, hi, yes, welcome to every speculation I ever had, see you on the other side brother. Because it's the last time they see each other.

Eleven: After a bit about being emotional, they talk about Jared’s arrest, the trolling about orange jumpsuits from the crew, and asking what happened. Jared doesn’t even entirely know what happened, says it’s not an excuse, but the cliff’s notes are he was filming in Van, then he flew to Austin, he had a double date with Gen and two friends, he went to his friend’s bar (we alllll know Stereotype), they split some wine, a cocktail, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, bachelorette parties and show fans bought him drinks, he doesn’t know what even happened, he thinks he was blacked out, got pulled down by his hair and thought he was in a fight. He hasn’t had a drink since, he was like absolutely fucking nope. He literally wonders if he was drugged in the drinks he took from other people, but either way, he’s completely stopped drinking. It goes into them settling and actually the people thinking he was drugged, which is why the legal followthrough was light.  This goes out to almost 1:20:00.

Twelve: Around then he goes on about Walker’s pickup period, how and when shooting normally works, and it’s all kinda in the air because of Walker, shortseasons because of covid etc. 

Final question blast:

Supernatural movie?: Jared hopes so

Channel chuck norris?: Make Walker his own, has nothing to do with Chuck’s walker even if he grew up watching it in texas, new character, new story, new era.

Paranormal experiences of his own?: He has seen some things, experienced some things he can’t explain, but as far as specifically, “definitively no but possibly yes.”

Talked with Chuck Norris at all?: Not talked to him directly, their “people” have talked, had to give his blessing though because Chuck Norris co-owned the rights. Part of the EP group and ownership.

If you had a chance, what superhero would you play: He’s heard Nighthawk from fans, he kinda sits there quietly thinking and has a hard time. Screentested for the Superman McG movie in 2004 but didn’t get it.

The car wasn’t in either of their contracts. Jared actually goes on that despite images Jared’s actually the car guy more than Jensen. It wasn’t in either of their contracts but they kinda just knew it was gonna happen. He goes on about his favorite cars, his car books and parts books since he was a kid, etc.

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Following through on this, I HAVE to keep saying. 47/A47 is, I would bet 5 dollars on it right here and anyone that wants to bet against it can leave a comment in the notes so I know who owes who money, Sam and Dean having their final talk already post major resolutions with a few more ends to tie up, saying their pre-goodbyes, and shot 60 is Sam and Dean’s final shot of going separate ways, with Sam on one side and Dean on the other. 

First Contact series - Part 8

Title: First Contact - Part 8 Read the previous installments here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 Rating: M Pairing: Taron x OC Warnings: Mild smut A/N: Vacationing with Taron in Dubrovnik feels like just a dream for Jess. But when Taron starts sharing real feelings, will Jess be able to reciprocate? This chapter contains adult themes, so turn back now if you’re not prepared to read it. You’ve been warned! Enjoy! x

Welcome to Dubrovnik, love.

It wasn’t just what Taron said that thrilled me, it was the way he said it too. When his voice dropped low, there was something incredibly sexy about it, and I wasn’t immune to the effect it had on people. I couldn’t help but squeal to myself a bit while Taron hugged me cutely from behind, very happy to be there with me. I don’t think I was ever going to get over that fact, that I was the reason for the smile on his face now.

As much as I wanted to admire both the view in front of me and the one behind me, my stomach growled rather loudly and I knew I needed to eat soon or I’d start feeling faint. Taron, of course, heard the noises and chuckled.

“Do we need to get you something to eat?”��

“I’m positively starving. All I’ve had so far today has been a protein bar, a handful of airline pretzels and coffee,” I said, thinking about it for a moment. “Yep, that’s it.”

“What, that’s hardly enough, love,” Taron said, looking concerned for a moment.

“Nerves have been bad, but I’m here now so I think I can eat!” I grinned. “What about you, aren’t you hungry too?” I asked, turning around in his arms and poking his stomach, which in all actuality was quite firm.

“I am always up for food, no question,” Taron smirked lightly.

“Somehow that surprises me!” I laughed, as we finally went back inside the suite. I poked about a bit more, checking out the incredibly luxurious bathroom as well. Oh, it definitely had a jacuzzi tub in it, and I had to keep my thoughts from straying somewhere they shouldn’t.

“My diet is absolute crap, much to my agent and everyone else’s disappointment,” Taron giggled. “And when I don’t have to be fit, I’m usually not.”

“Well I will take you any way you are,” I grinned, wrapping my arms around him and reaching up to steal a kiss or three. “So where are you taking me?” I grinned.

Taron had been scrolling through his phone, I presume to find an appetizing place to eat, and raised his eyebrow at me cutely. “I think we’ll go to Azure first. I had them once and the food was amazing,” he grinned.

“Anything, at this point, sounds amazing,” I laughed.

“This place is on the edge of the Old Town, so we can meander through that once we’re done eating. I think you’ll love it,” Taron said, cutely excited as we left our luggage behind in the room and went out to eat and explore.

The weather could not have been more perfect. It was a little warm, sure, but with the constant breeze off the coast it seemed bearable, and I enjoyed the feel of the sun on my skin. We ended up getting an Uber to drop us off at the Old City gates and walked the rest of the way in to the restaurant so I could gape in awe at the gorgeous place again.

“I can’t believe you spent weeks filming here, that must have felt so lucky. It’s incredible,” I said enthusiastically, swinging Taron’s hand in mine between us as we walked. We made it to the restaurant, a mix of Asian fusion and Mediterranean influences, and it was difficult to choose. I wanted to try so many things. We ended up sharing the wasabi salmon pouches and I ordered the meatballs in coconut curry sauce, but of course I had to steal bites of Taron’s swordfish in black curry sauce. It was all delicious, and we left the restaurant feeling absolutely stuffed.

We walked about the old town streets, poking in shops and stalls tucked into alleys, just enjoying being leisurely together until jet lag started to catch up to us both. “Ready to head back to the hotel and just relax?” Taron asked me sweetly, noticing my energy flagging.

“I think that’d be a good idea, much as I’d love to keep walking,” I smiled.

“We’ll feel so much more refreshed tomorrow, I’m sure. But being lazy right now sounds like a good plan,” he grinned. We returned to our hotel and cuddled up on the couch together, surfing through the English channels on the telly to find something to watch. I must have dozed off because the sun was low in the sky when I came to, nestled against Taron’s chest. He stirred slightly when he felt me sit up and cracked his eyes open. “Get some rest?” he asked me gently, and I nodded, yawning a bit and having a stretch.

“Hopefully you weren’t trapped for too long,” I smiled as he ruffled my hair cutely.

“I dozed myself,” he grinned. “But I am a bit hungry again,” he laughed, and I couldn’t help smiling over that. Eating and sleeping and not doing much else sounded like the perfect kind of vacation to me. We ended up walking just down the street to Magellan, sharing sweetbread and enjoying our pasta courses and some wine. Either I was a total lightweight, or Croatia’s wines were strong, because I was definitely feeling it by the time we paid our tab and left.

“We should go down to the water!” I suggested with a giggle, Taron putting his arm around my shoulders to keep me steady as I had been weaving a bit on the sidewalk.

“We can do that,” Taron replied with an amused grin. We went down to the pebble beach access from the hotel’s lift, greeted by the gentle sound of waves lapping at the shore. The beach was already cast in shadows at that point but it helped ease the heat of the day and we walked along the shoreline in contented peace, passing a few other couples but no one bothering us at all. We truly are just like any other couple, I thought, giggling to myself. 

“This feels so perfect,” I said sweetly, leaning my head against Taron’s shoulder as we stood gazing out at the waves. “I can’t believe you brought me here, that I’m with you, that this feels so much better than I knew it could be to be with someone.”

“You ought to start believing it, Jess,” he said, tipping my chin up to look him in the eyes, before caressing my cheeks gently. “I find it hard to believe that no one ever tried to do these things for you. I just don’t find it difficult to treat a woman the way she deserves to be treated.”

“I think it’s hard to know what you deserve when you’ve been treated like an unwanted accident your entire life,” I replied, maybe more harshly than I had meant, but Taron didn’t seem phased by my tone. If anything, he looked heartbroken for me. “And when you grow up not knowing what you deserve, not knowing that love should be something inherent and not earned, you end up with wildly bad taste in men,” I rambled on.

“Well I’m here to show you what you deserve, Jess,” Taron said slowly. “All of this,” he replied, sweeping his arm outward, “and so much more. You deserve someone who truly sees you, who doesn’t judge you for your struggles, who knows how precious you are.” I teared up slightly at that, unable to control it because it was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. He brushed the tears off my cheeks and hugged me to him tightly; I felt at once safe and comforted in his arms. “You need to heal, from everything you’ve been through that has torn you down. I promise to help in any way I can.”

“Thank you, Taron,” I sniffled slightly, trying not to full-on cry.

“You don’t need to thank me for doing what someone else should have done a long time ago. Knowing what I know now, I’m incredibly lucky that you let me in at all,” he said gently, pulling back to gaze at me again, brushing my wind-blown hair out of my face. I noticed that his eyes were a bit red and watery too. “You deserve to be loved for every fibre of your being, Jess. I intend to do that if you let me.”

I was left a bit speechless, unsure what to say, or how to say it, and I even had to look away from the intensity of his gaze, feeling stripped down to my soul by those pale green eyes of his. “I would give every last dime in the world if I could be with you. None of this means anything to me without you now, Jess,” he spoke, with a raw honesty that still shook me. They weren’t just pretty words you’d find in a romance novel; they were real and overwhelming and deeply felt coming from Taron.

He seemed to understand that I needed some time to mull over these words of his, and we stood there quietly by the sea as I did my best to comprehend how he felt about me and what it all meant moving forward. I think the hardest part for me was that we hadn’t been together all that long; I didn’t feel that I had earned this kind of devotion on his part. But I also knew he wasn’t telling me half-truths or spinning fictions, that there was nothing about Taron that wasn’t genuine. Even more so, we had yet to be really intimate and I was a bit perplexed that someone could want me for more than just the pleasures of the flesh. He had gotten to know more of me than any man had taken the time to do and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

We eventually returned to our room when we both got too cold, and completely knackered from the flights and emotions we ended up just getting ready for bed, taking turns in the bathroom and then crawling into our separate beds. I’m not going to lie, it felt a bit odd to be more “roommates” than lovers in our sleeping arrangements, but to push things wouldn’t be wise for me. The last thing Taron needed was me freaking out unnecessarily because I hadn’t been that close to anyone since Kevin. Even thinking his name made my skin crawl, but then Taron cut into my thoughts with his adorable “sweet dreams, love,” before turning out his bedside light.

I laid awake for a bit, tossing and turning despite my exhaustion, long after I had heard Taron’s breathing slow and settle into sleep. I realized that even this much, being in the same room as him, my eyes tracing his sleeping form in the dark, was a new step for me. A step in the right direction, I reminded myself. I eventually let myself drift off to sleep, hoping for a fun day tomorrow.

****

The sun crawling slowly across the floor through the shades woke me in the morning. I squinted over at the clock and realized it was already 11 a.m. and Taron was still sound asleep. I couldn’t help but think he looked completely adorable in that vulnerable state, appreciating the sweetness of his sleeping expression. Sometimes the truest self could be viewed when someone was off in dreamland, escaping the pretense and performance of waking life. I left him to snooze a little longer as I shut myself in the bathroom, taking a good half-hour to shower and let the steam and luxurious soaps the hotel provided wake me up. I had to admit that I was feeling a lot more refreshed as I combed through my wet hair. A simple knock on the bathroom door startled me and I had to laugh at myself. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” I grinned as I pulled the door open, my eyes taking in Taron’s bedhead and sleepy grin.

“Morning love,” he smirked, stealing a kiss from me and apologizing for his morning breath. I hadn’t even noticed. “Ready for more adventures today?” he asked cutely, and I nodded happily at that.

“Of course! But breakfast first,” I grinned, making him just chuckle. 

“You know it,” he said with a wink. We got ourselves ready for the day, which didn’t require much. We both donned shorts and t-shirts and walking shoes, and I was excited for our plans to walk the city walls and see Dubrovnik from that high up. We enjoyed a quick bite at the hotel’s rather exquisite breakfast buffet before heading out, hand-in-hand, the sun already quite warm.

We ambled our way into town and eventually made our way to an access point for the city walls. After a little debate, we decided to join one of the guided tours, blending in quite well with a group of other tourists. We listened in on the history of the place, appreciating the views of the seas, the hidden narrow streets and groaning inwardly every time we had more stairs to climb. All in all, it was an enjoyable couple of hours, if a bit sweaty, and Taron seemed glad to get the chance to do it, as he’d had no time before when he was filming. We ended up just grabbing some cheeses, grissini and olives from a market stall to take back with us to our room, sitting on our balcony and snacking after having such a late breakfast, letting our poor legs rest.

With it being such a sunny and hot day, we decided the next best course of action would be to enjoy the beach fully before we got hungry for dinner. While Taron was changing into his swim trunks, I deliberated over which swimsuit I should wear, finally deciding to just go with the bright teal and aqua bikini. Of course I was nervous about my body in it as I took my turn and changed, but I also just wanted to enjoy the beach and the sun on my skin and who else was here to judge me? Certainly not Taron, judging by the look on his face when I emerged from the bathroom. Of course he’d already seen me in a swimsuit, but this one didn’t provide as much coverage, and even showed a little bit of my scar.

“You look amazing,” Taron managed, after picking his jaw up off the floor. Figuratively, of course.

“I could say the same about you,” I grinned, scoping out his bare biceps in the tanktop he had on over his swimmers. “But are we going to stand here staring at each other until the sun goes down or get out there?” I teased.

“You’ve got a point,” he just grinned, slinging our beach bag with our towels and sunscreen and room key over his shoulder. I had pulled on a loose muslin overshirt and we flip-flopped our way down to the beachfront, paying for the chair rentals since the beach was a bit rocky. We set our stuff out and when Taron pulled his tank off I stared, unashamedly so. This is my boyfriend, I reminded myself happily. He handed me the sunscreen bottle and turned around expectantly. Yes please, I thought to myself, spreading the lotion over his back carefully, making sure to cover every bit so he wouldn’t get burned, never getting over the feeling of my fingers gliding over his skin. He did the same for me and once we were lotioned up, we laid out on the chairs, letting the sun bake us.

When we both got too hot, we ran out into the water together, Taron splashing me while I shrieked and tried to get away. I eventually ended up dunking him in the water, making him laugh and sputter when he came back up for air. “You’ll pay for that!” he smirked, pulling me to him and kissing me hungrily as we bobbed in the water together up to our necks. I could feel his hands skimming over the skin of my waist under the water, and I shivered slightly. I returned those kisses in kind, even wrapping my legs around him so I wouldn’t drift away, the action making him groan slightly against my mouth. But we were in public, and even if no one was paying us any mind, the last thing we needed to do was give them a show, so we eventually broke apart, breathless and happy.

We eventually made it back to our lounge chairs, lazing about in the sun and perfectly content. I could not have possibly asked for a better vacation, and the truth was that I hadn’t even asked for this at all. The specialness of this gift was not lost on me, and Taron didn’t expect anything from me either. I was still thinking over his words from the night before, wondering just how deeply I could return the feelings. Of course I had fallen for him; I’m pretty sure I felt like I had long before I’d met him in the Tesco. But that was fan adoration, based on an image he projected in his interviews and video bits. And while it was pretty close to the person he actually was away from the cameras, I found him to be even more humble, low-key and genuinely caring in person. But love, well, that was a tricky thing. I thought I had loved someone once, and that man had broken me. Trusting someone enough to love again felt like standing at the edge of a crevasse, needing to make the jump to the other side but all I could do was stare down.

I hadn’t realized I was frowning in thought until Taron leaned over and placed his hand on mine. “Everything alright?” he asked, and I hurriedly rearranged my expression.

“Of course. Just thinking, probably about work,” I lied, and felt bad for that lie. But how to tell him how scared I was? I just felt at a loss.

“None of that here,” he chuckled, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he watched me carefully. Feeling exposed, I finally suggested we go get dinner. The sun was heading toward the horizon anyway, and Taron didn’t argue. We changed and showered quickly, once again taking turns, and I donned a pretty dress and a light cardigan over it. Taron had chosen a rather fancy place for dinner, where we could sit outside and watch the stars twinkle into existence over our nightcaps. Our conversation flowed easily and I couldn’t help but be a bit mesmerized by the shadows drawn over his face by the flickering candlelight as the day sunk into early night.

We retired for the evening, getting ready for bed and cuddling on the couch as the telly droned on. Taron had drifted off and I had to shake him awake long enough to convince him to move to his bed, before crawling into my own and pulling the covers up around me, feeling a peculiar sense of loneliness seep through me that I couldn’t understand. I slid headlong into sleep, but my dreams were troubled and I guess I must have screamed out loud at some point because Taron woke me up out of the nightmare.

It took me a long, disorienting minute to remember where I even was, and I turned and hid my face against Taron as I sobbed slightly, images of Kevin still burned in my mind.

“It’s okay, you’re safe with me,” Taron soothed, repeating it over and over and patting my hair and running his hands gently over my arms, holding me and rocking me gently and giving me the space I needed to calm down. I was still shaking after I’d cried myself out, and he seemed reluctant to let me go. “Do you need to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

“I’m not sure that will help me any,” I said, my lips trembling.

“Please tell me what I can do to help,” he pleaded with me in the dark.

“Just stay,” I whispered, desperately not wanting to be alone.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, his strong arms enveloping me as he placed a couple of kisses protectively on my forehead. Once I’d calmed down enough to sleep again, he rearranged our positions so he could cuddle me better and we could both sleep, and I felt much better now that we were both in the same bed, but hardly able to hold the significance of that in my mind. All I knew was that Taron made me feel safe from my demons, even if they only existed in my head. Exhausted and emotionally spent, I finally dropped off to sleep, my face buried in his comforting chest, lulled by the sound of his beating heart.

****

The next few days of vacation flew by, as they were wont to do. We explored more of the city, ate plenty more delicious food, and spent hours lounging by the pool or the sea. We’d taken in the views from the top of Srd, biked around Mljet National Park and escaped the midday heat in Dubrovnik’s museums. My favorite thing we did by far had been drinking cocktails and watching the sun set over the water at the ever-popular Buza Bar.

We also spent a lot of time in each other’s arms, kissing and touching and exploring each other’s bodies, but still I hesitated to give myself completely over to him, and he never asked for more than I was willing to give. 

On our second to last evening, I was talking to Taron about something, I don’t even remember what now, but I was clearly distracted as I was trying to pull a sweater out of my suitcase. A chill had crept into the air and we were going to take a moonlit walk on the beach together. My sweater had snagged on something and I yanked it rather hard, hoping that would free it, and out toppled the expensive lingerie Jules had bought for me - and that I had completely forgotten about. The lacy fabric pooled at my feet on the floor as Taron’s eyes went wide.

“What’s this, love?” he smirked, picking up the sheer teddy and holding it out for me.

“Oh god,” I said, my face flushing a deep red as I snatched it out of his hands. “N-nothing,” I stammered.

“Forget about the sweater. I want to see you in this,” he said, his eyes growing a bit dark and my heart nearly racing out of my chest. Damn it all to hell, Jules, I thought. “Please, love?” Taron asked, taking my hands in his and kissing my knuckles, staring up at me through his lashes. That look always undid my resolve a little, and he knew it too.

“Oh what the hell,” I huffed, grabbing the teddy and its matching panties and stalking off to the bathroom, not sure what I was even doing other than getting it over with. I had kept him wanting long enough, hadn’t I? I thought as I dropped my clothes to the floor and let the slinky material slide over my skin. Once I was fully dressed in it, I dared to peek at myself in the mirror; the lingerie left very little to the imagination. I’d already been shirtless in front of him, but this felt like something more. Still, the way the lace ended just under my butt cheeks seemed to accentuate their curves, and the built-in cups gave me cleavage I didn’t usually have. I let my hair out of its elastic confinement and let my waves fall down to my shoulders and took a deep breath, resolving my courage.

I opened the door and Taron’s back was to me as he stared out the glass balcony doors, but he turned around when I took a few steps into the room and audibly gasped. The way the moonlight slanted across his face sent shivers running down my spine as we stared across the space of the room at each other. Then, Taron was crossing the floor and pulling me into his arms, kissing me in a way he hadn’t before, heated and needy. And I did my best to open myself to that mutual want as his kisses traveled along my jawline, down my neck, across my shoulder blades.

Of course I wanted him; I didn’t live in a bubble separate from my own desires. I just needed to push beyond my fears. Almost as if reading my mind, Taron spoke up. “Please tell me to stop if you need me to. I respect you, I don’t want to push you anywhere you don’t want to be. But I need you,” he fairly whispered, his voice cracking a bit on that last sentence, and something about the way he said it broke through whatever was holding me back. 

Because it was more than just lust that drove us to the bed, although there was plenty of that as I hurriedly pulled his shirt off and unbuckled his belt, tossing both aside. There was a deeper sense of intimacy blossoming between us as we pushed his pants off him and he settled his weight over me, pressing me down into the bed, his fingers and lips trailing over my heated skin.

“This okay?” he murmured, his lips brushing over my stomach as I felt my core begin to throb in need. I hadn’t felt this turned on in so long, it almost truly made me want to cry. I was being awakened to feelings I long thought were dead, things I thought no one could ever make me feel again.

“Better than okay,” I moaned softly, remembering to breathe again as Taron rooted in the bedside drawer for a condom he must have stashed there in hopes. “I need you too,” I gasped softly as he hooked his fingers in the sides of my panties and slid them down my legs, exposing all of me to him.

“You’re absolutely beautiful,” he breathed, unable to tear his eyes aware from me, leaning over and capturing my lips with his kisses again even as he worked his own boxers off. I heard the crackle of the condom wrapper and then he was there, between my legs, his erection pressing tantalizingly against my inner thigh as he nipped at my lower lip slightly.

“Ready for me?” he asked as I got sort of lost in the depth of his lustful gaze. I nodded, letting him nudge my legs open just a little bit more with his knees as he lined his hips up with mine. I closed my eyes and ran my hands through his hair, trying to ground myself as I felt him slowly, gently enter me. The groan that rumbled through his body did more to erase my worries than anything else to that point. Seeing his careful reserve unravel at the feeling as he joined our bodies together unhinged me from my fears. I didn’t feel used, or dirty, or discarded; this was raw and real and powerful, and I was very much a part of what was happening here. This was what sex was meant to be all along.

He gazed at me so adoringly it made my heart ache with the weight of it. He let out his breath, tickling my face and making me giggle slightly as he waited for me to adjust to him; it had, admittedly, been years.

“Okay,” I whispered softly when I couldn’t take his stillness any longer. He obliged by drawing out and pushing his way back in agonizingly slowly, amplifying the pleasure that shot straight through me. I cried out, shocking myself even, the sparks running through me as he picked up his pace, our groans mingling together in the otherwise quiet of the room. I’m pretty sure I left red marks in his skin where I dug my fingertips into his shoulders, gripping him tightly as I lifted my own hips to meet his, finding a rhythm with him that had us both spiraling fast toward a climax.

“Oh fuck,” I moaned out, coming around him hard, my orgasm slamming into me and taking my breath away completely. I’m pretty sure I left the earth for a few minutes, because when I came aware again Taron was already collapsed on top of me, panting and sweaty and spent. It struck me suddenly that I had never actually orgasmed before, and I realized all my years of feeling ashamed over that fact were for nothing. I’d gotten close a couple of times with other boyfriends, or my own hand, but never tipped the edge and only been left with frustration. I’d simply never found someone invested in my own pleasure the way Taron was.

“Good for you?” he asked against my skin, leaving tiny kisses on my chest as we both tried to calm down again.

“You’ve just changed everything, Taron,” I replied softly.

“Yeah?” he said, with a boyishly handsome grin. I trailed my fingers through the sweaty hair on his chest, amazed to be with him this way.

“I can’t put it into words exactly, but I know and feel things now that I couldn’t have understood before,” I tried to explain. “You’re right, I do need to heal, and being with you like this has already helped me overcome so much I was frightened of or ashamed of before. I’ve been afraid of moving forward, afraid of taking risks, afraid of falling for someone again. But here I am, falling for you,” I rambled a bit, feeling emboldened to actually be vulnerable in front of him for once.

“I’m so grateful for that, you know,” he said, brushing my hair out of my face gently. “I know how hard it is to trust again after it’s been dashed. But I won’t ever let you hit the ground. I want you to fall so hard it’s endless, because I’ll always be here for you when you need me.” He kissed my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, even brushing his lips over my eyelids when I closed them, before finally kissing me fully on the lips, making me tremble with the full intimacy of the moment. I couldn’t possibly have known in the Tesco, or in the karaoke bar, or at our table read, that all of these moments would have built to this. But somehow it had, and I was blown away by how much Taron had come to mean to me. He supported me, cared about me, protected me and maybe even could love me.

“Stay right here, I’ll be back,” he said, making me whimper when he finally pulled out of me. He discarded the condom and went to grab a washcloth and cleaned us both up, something no one else had ever taken the time to do. We really hadn’t messed the sheets up so we didn’t have to change those, but I had to pee really badly so I finally excused myself to the bathroom to do that, making Taron chuckle slightly. I also brushed my teeth quickly and swallowed my birth control pill; I was on the pill because my periods sucked but now I had extra reason to not forget it. I returned to the room, pulling on more comfortable pajamas and noticing Taron had put his boxers back on as he was lounging on the bed, just waiting for me to come back to him, and I was happy to do so.

We laid down face-to-face on the pillows, our foreheads touching and just sweetly gazing at each other, not needing words any longer. My body felt completely sated, my mind finally at peace. When I drifted off to sleep I couldn’t have been happier, knowing I was truly, deeply cared for.

Vacationing in Dubrovnik with Taron was a dream, but will reality catch up to Jess? Find out in Part 9!

I loved that last snippet you posted! Though that does raise some questions, namely abt Grima. Him sometimes posessing/controling Robin is already cool, but what changed that he can do that? I'm super curious overall how he fits into the story, could you tell us a bit about him here? Like, you talked before how he was worshipped as Plegia's protector, and I'm curious abt how his character developed in this world

I’m so glad you enjoyed it I’ve been mulling that particular scene over for a while and trying to figure out how to write it, so I’m glad it turned out well!

but oh my friend i am always delighted to talk about grima c; 

One thing to note from the outset is that we’ve actually seen Grima before.  Twice.  And even when Grima’s influence isn’t at the fore, there have been moments when Robin’s reactions weren’t necessarily his own.  Grima is a constant presence here, subtle, just out of sight – and it all traces back to events in the last few millennia. 

So this requires some delving into ancient history.  A lot of things remain the same from a general timeline standpoint (though I don’t follow the Accordion because I take some issue with its progression of events; this ended up being a pretty solid breakdown of how I see the chain of events), but a few things are notably different, and they become very, very important. 

To start with: Forneus didn’t just get divine dragon blood for his experiment.  He managed, somehow, to lay hands on a viable Divine Dragon egg – an incredible, terrible feat given the fact that the degeneration had taken its toll on fertility rates and the Divine Dragon tribe had been decimated by the war.  He wasn’t just performing alchemic experiments on blood, he had the real thing and used alchemy to modify and manipulate it, which resulted in Grima having the strength and many of the same general abilities as the rest of the Divine Dragon tribe, but with some oddities mixed in (a few things he can’t do that they can, a few more he can that they can’t) because of how that magic influenced his development.  In the end, Forneus superstitions and his increasing mental instability made him try to kill his creation when it finally emerged, only to fail and lose the tiny dragon to the darkness of the labyrinth, which kept him safe from Duma’s destruction of Thabes and gave him room to grow until Alm and Celica accidentally broke the seal that let him out into the world. 

Because Naga had retreated to the eastern half of the Archanean continent following Mila and Duma’s exile (due in large part to the fact that she couldn’t maintain life in the desert without Mila’s assistance), the creation ended up settling on the western side.  His presence caused disturbances in the normal weather patterns, bringing more rain to the dry landscape, and soon enough the struggling desert populations began to flock to the dragon and establish a greater presence.  These first humans called him Grima – and once he realized that it was their name for him, he began to respond quite readily.  

Besides making life easier from an agricultural standpoint, Grima also offered humans shelter and protection from outside threats, both natural and manmade.  He earned his title of “the fell dragon” through his fierce retaliation against those who caused harm to his people and his lands – but in general, he was a very calm, reasonable dragon who let people do their own things and just liked to watch, frequently doing flyovers of his territory just to see what they were up to. 

Unfortunately, Grima never stopped growing.  He just kept getting bigger and bigger as the centuries passed, until finally Naga couldn’t possibly miss him.  Despite the fact that he showed no signs of degeneration and was by no means a threat to her people or his own, she judged that the risk he posed should he succumb to madness was too great – so she made her bond with her Chosen human and went to war with the fell dragon. 

Now, Divine Dragons with that much power tend to have some strange abilities.  Naga, for example, can hear the prayers of those who reach out to her (according to Nah’s support conversations with Morgan).  Grima, being a full-blooded (if somewhat strange) Divine Dragon, had his own set of talents, though he understood them rather poorly – namely the ability to read the thoughts and hearts of those he could lay eyes on.  And one look told him all he needed to know about Naga’s Chosen: he was, indeed, a powerful man – but he was also cruel and self-righteous, and Grima knew that if he won the battle then Grima’s people would be in great danger.  And with Naga’s backing, the fell dragon’s chances of victory seemed slim at best. 

So Grima turned to the people closest to him and granted them a small boon: not a full blood bond, the way Naga had with her Chosen, but a small fragment of power to help see them through the troubled times he feared would come.  That gift was intended to help protect the people in his stead – and from there, Grima charged them with gathering as many as they could and heading west, away from the battlefield to come.

Grima had no army, when Naga and the first Exalt came.  Grima fought alone, and fell alone, in a desperate attempt to save his people. 

And that should have been the end of it.  But what Grima didn’t know, thanks to his poor understanding of his own powers, was that the blood boon he granted those people would endure, passed down from one generation to the next over a thousand years.  He didn’t know that a cult would form within the faith dedicated to his name, devoted to restoring the fell dragon’s blood to its full might.  And he never, ever expected that there would come a day when a babe bearing his Mark was born into the world. 

Grima felt it, when Robin entered the world.  His body was dead and turned to nothing but bone and dust, but after a thousand years his soul suddenly had a physical connection to something, grounding him somewhere rather than simply existing formlessly and watching the passage of time.  Grima has been there as Robin grew up, has seen the world close-up for the first time in centuries…and has realized, too, the dangers in it for not just the people he left behind, but for this child who bears his blood. 

That connection is a strong one, and the fact that Grima’s soul is bound so closely to Robin means that things can bleed over between them sometimes.  Grima has a visceral reaction to Falchion, for example, because he remembers the blade that took his life, while Robin interprets the sudden surge of emotion as fear at where things are headed.  More often, Grima uses that bond to interact with Robin (though he interprets it as just mentally debating with himself, and Grima’s happy to let him think that), or to channel power to Robin when he needs it, giving him a surge of strength or magic to get out of a tight spot (basically I headcanon that Ignis is actually Grima lending Robin power in battle).  But when things are dire, and something Robin loves is at stake, when he loses himself to panic or fear or rage – that’s where Grima will step in to ensure that Robin does not lose that which he holds most dear. 

Grima’s careful about this, of course, never actually pushing Robin aside and possessing him completely.  They exist in parallel – as though Grima has taken Robin’s hands and begun to lead him through the steps of an unfamiliar task, affording them incredible power with Grima’s focus to make the best use of it.  That is a lot of energy to channel through a human, though, and it takes a serious toll on Robin’s body – he’s not kidding about the burning analogy, that much energy puts his every system into overdrive to increase his speed, his reflexes, his strength, his magic – meaning that even at his very best, Robin can only sustain Grima’s full might for about five minutes, ten if he really pushes it (and then his recovery period is significant).  

(Fun note: the first time that happened, it was completely by accident.  When they stumbled across that burned battlefield, Robin’s horror perfectly mirrored Grima’s own, and the resulting resonance pulled them into parallel with Grima getting his first actual taste of interacting with the world through a human body.  It was Henry that jarred them both out of it, and pulled Robin back to the fore while Grima ceded control.)

Ultimately, Grima has no interest whatsoever in returning to the world.  He’s content with the way things are, and being able to watch things the way he used to (actually it’s better, since he can get closer than he could in his flyovers); combined with the fact that Robin is intent on keeping Plegia safe for his own reasons, Grima is more than happy to lend him power when he needs it – and is actually quite pleased by Robin’s very peaceable nature, and the way he resorts to violence only as a last resort rather than fighting first and asking questions later (since Grima himself attacked only after the first enemy blow had landed). 

And as a final, random note: Robin can read people the same way Grima could, though not with the same clarity (he can’t actually read minds, but he gets very strong impressions when he interacts with someone for the first time).  Grima himself still has that ability, though, and when he’s at the fore he can get the full measure of someone from a look and then leverage it to its full advantage. 

The Ring

The Ring

Some of you may have noticed the small silver ring I wear on my right hand. If you have seen it, you may also be aware that the ring is uneven in places, varies in thickness and width, and bears a faded etching of the simple Roman numerals XXI. The ring does not easily tarnish, which likely gives up the game already—the material is not pure silver but rather an alloy of silver and copper called shibuichi (Japanese for one-fourth). I do not remember the exact ratio of silver to copper in this particular trinket, but I am inclined to think it closer to 60 Ag: 40 Cu based on its luster, tarnish, and malleability. If I haven’t given myself up again, my chest does swell with some pride in the fact that I can say I know these things about this ring because I created it myself. My silver ring is my first successful metal cast and, in my own calm, objective opinion, the finest piece of jewelry I have had the pleasure of making. [Someday, I’ll tell you all about the event that was the bronze gummy bears.]

In my mind, I am not very good at meeting new people and making friends. I also am fully aware this is not true (more on mental illness and cognitive dissonance at five). So when my close friends Denise and Andrea encouraged me to take an art class at Mat-Su College to fill up some elective credits and meet interesting new people, I jumped at the opportunity. Little did I know that I was being led to a place I would never leave.

For background, Denise and Andrea are both amazing people and artists. I have learned more about life and art from them than I have pages to write on. Both are friends with and students of Casey, who at the time was the Beginning Metalsmithing and Jewelry Making and Casting instructor at Mat-Su College. Andrea and Denise recommended I take Casey’s Beginning Metalsmithing class for fun and personal fulfillment, so I registered. At the time, I had minor experience with the physical arts and almost no experience with jewelry, as my arts focus before then was on piano and writing. Quite simply, I was allured by the idea of shaping metal.

I’ll be honest—I have always had a fascination with metal. It may have something to do with my fixation with shiny things or on large-scale machinery and other things with moving parts—my mother likes to remind me periodically that I loved tractors, bulldozers, backhoes, etc. as a child. I also have a very strong attachment to the early 20th century ocean liners.

Over the course of the semester, we had to complete safety competence demonstrations and fabricate several projects to demonstrate our grasp of the various metalsmithing techniques we had learned. We learned how to form jump rings from copper and brass wire, using silver solder to complete the ring joints. We learned how to form twist rings, twisting multiple strands of metal wire together to form a ring and again seal them with solder. We learned how to cut shapes out of sheet metal with jeweler’s saws (don’t get me started on them). We learned how to file a piece of metal into the right shape and thickness, then buff it to a shine with metal polish. One of the most unique projects was to turn a length of copper pipe into a “box” with a lid that could hold water. I still have that box.

Eventually, we were offered the option to try lost wax casting. For those of you unfamiliar, lost wax casting involves first creating a model of your intended jewelry piece using carving wax. You must then affix a large rubber plug called a sprue base (the sprue is the channel through which the metal will eventually flow and which you must also shape from wax), which corresponds to a specific size of metal “flask” (essentially a short metal tube of several inches in diameter and length). Once you have attached the wax to the sprue base, you attach the flask to the base and then very carefully pour investment into the flask. Investment is a kind of plaster that will form the mold. This entire apparatus must then be placed in a kiln to “burn out” the wax and create the negative space in the mold where the metal will flow.

I was incredibly excited to try a cast. I had seen more experienced classmates cast some truly incredible things—one gentleman, known for his intricate work, liked to cast fully-functional Pez dispensers Now, I’m not the most adept at jewelry making nor am I one for baroque sensibilities, so I decided to start simple and cast perhaps the most quintessential of trinkets: a ring. I chose to cast in silver, and though I did not have any of my own (nor could I afford any, being a lowly college student), I had excellent friends who shared some silver and copper with which to mix shibuichi for my ring. I was told that the ideal metals for casting were gold and silver—gold because of how cooperative it is, and silver because it is cooperative, hardy, and cheaper than gold. I’ve never had a fondness for gold. Silver is harder, prettier, and in my mind, more functional. So, I cast in silver.

When you first cast, they tell you how intimidating a forced-oxygen acetylene torch can be, and rightly so. The torch can bring bronze, a very stubborn and uncooperative metal, to its melting point in just a few minutes. You must wear a tinted face shield to protect your face and eyes (staring directly at the flame can cause eye damage and heavens forbid the metal splash you in the face). You must wear thick heavy gloves on both hands, as the heat from the proximity alone can bake your skin. You must pay close attention to where you hold the flame as you lower it into the crucible (the clay pot in which your metal resides), which in this case you are holding in your non-dominant hand at the end of a long, caliper-like device. You must maintain constant, even heat on the metal so that it all flows properly and together before you transfer the metal to your mold, which in this style of casting will be sitting on a vacuum machine to ensure the metal is “sucked” all the way into the mold and fills it properly. They will tell you repeatedly that the process is incredibly dangerous and that anything can go wrong at any step.

What they will not tell you about, at least until after you have experienced it yourself, is the deep, visceral thrill of holding such annihilative force in your hand. There is a heavy responsibility coupled with sheer wonder of creation through destruction that must be experienced to be understood. I will never forget my first time holding the forced-oxygen torch. To know you hold in your hand the power to shift something that until that point had been immutable, the ability to melt metal, conjures a feeling both bizarre and perfect, complete and terrifying, thrilling and pure. In that moment, I was powerful, I was strong, I was adept, I was a creator.

Once the metal is poured comes the wait. I remember the wait distinctly as well. During the minutes after a pour, the caster is left in a state of suspended animation. The room seems to pause as the metal flows and cools. My thoughts flowed like that same hot silver in my mind, racing from excitement to trepidation to certainty to a radical loss thereof. I was making something. I had made something, even if it didn’t turn out the way I intended.

The minutes ticked by. Finally, Casey gave me the go-ahead, and I grasped the flask carefully in what must have been the largest set of pliers I have ever seen and dipped the entire thing into a bucket of lukewarm water. The investment sang. Or at least, that’s what I want it to have done. In reality, it hissed and spat angrily at me, as if to say “This is mine! My precious!” It was somewhere around 1000 degrees Fahrenheit; could I blame it for being a bit cranky? Slowly but surely, the investment began to fall away in chunks, revealing first a length of sprue that descended inward from the plug on the outside. I was on pins and needles.

It all happened so fast, but it sure didn’t feel that way at the time. Slowly, slowly, the body of the cast emerged—and what should my eyes behold? A tarnished, near-blackened hoop of silver at the end of the stalactite of sprue. I dumped the metal into the water to cool for several seconds before I plunged my hands greedily into the now-hot investment and water mix, searching diligently for my creation. My fingers brushed something hotter and harder than the surrounding flotsam and I knew I had found my creation. I wrapped my fingers tightly around the sprue base and pulled the entire thing from the water for all to see. There in my hand was my first cast, a complete hoop of silver with a barely perceptible “XXI” engraved on one side. I had forgotten that I had carved my age into the wax model, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had turned out in the metal, even if minutely.

After hours and hours of cutting, filing, buffing and polishing, I had a ring that not only shone, but fit my finger perfectly. That is perhaps the greatest triumph—not only had I succeeded in what was essentially a personal experiment in art, I had created a functional piece that I could wear every day with pride.

I could go on about how this ring symbolizes my never-ending commitment to personal perseverance or serves as a reminder of a time of solace and wonder in my younger years. Really, this ring’s meaning is a bit simpler. Many of you know I struggle with demons from an abusive past and a mentally ill present; my days are often dominated by wild emotions, fear, lack of confidence, and an incomplete picture of who I am or what I stand for. This ring shows me that I can make things. I can create things of value and meaning. I see myself in its warm, glowing reflection and recognize the face staring back. I feel the Roman numeral 21 etched into its side and am reminded of the years of life and love so many invested in me.

No one shaped the wax for me. No one poured the investment for me. I melted this metal. I poured it into the mold. I cut and filed and buffed. I listened to my teacher and friends, absorbed what I could, and used that knowledge to create something meaningful. As funny as it sounds, this is my Ring of Power. It validates me. It reminds me that I am worthy. And that is why I will forever respect and champion the arts. Art saves lives. It certainly saved me.

Ian Mathers: Year in Review 2017

If there’s a general thread to be found in all the summings-up of 2017, both here at Dusted and elsewhere, unsurprisingly it mostly seems to be that 2017 was a crap year. It’s been heartening to see many friends and loved ones reflecting on the personal successes they’ve had despite the ongoing decay and dissolution of things on a less personal level, but honestly I can’t even claim that. I’m writing this on just barely the other side of a stomach bug that, between my wife and I, disrupted plans and made things miserable for us for over a week now, and that was just 2017’s last kick at the can in terms of medical problems for two of us. (Hers chronic, mine acute — meaning I have the scarier medical procedure coming up but also the hope things will go back to “normal.”) All of that probably indicates why, despite me finding just as much a respite in music as any of my colleagues, 2017 was my worst year for listening to current music since I started keeping track.

 There’s no magical number of albums or songs one “should” listen to, of course, not even if you write about music, but I think it’s fair to acknowledge that a breadth of listening can be helpful in terms of context and everything else. And of course none of us, these days, can listen to more than a fragment of what’s out there, especially once you add in day jobs, relationships, commuting, sleeping, etc., etc. I don’t so much set a yearly goal for myself as just know how many albums I intended to give a listen to, because of things I’ve read or existing love for a band or songs I hear somewhere or what have you, and the last few years I’ve been mostly successful at getting through that backlog by the end of the year. This year, with 51 records under my belt, I’ve still listened to a lot more than most people out there, albeit not necessarily in the smaller sphere of those of us who read or write for Dusted. But I still have 42(!) albums sitting in my folder, reproaching me. There’s everything from stuff I’ve never heard that colleagues here have made persuasive cases for to new, highly-praised efforts by bands I’ve loved for years. I am not sure exactly what slowed me down all year, but 2017 was a year where I wore my favorite Mountain Goats t-shirt to multiple medical procedures as a lucky talisman and still couldn’t bring myself to play their new album for months after it came out (it’s good; I think I’ll wind up loving it; I haven’t given it enough time yet).  

This, incidentally, is why I enjoy these kind of year-end wrap ups and peeks behind the curtain; god knows there’s no writer who’s an infallible machine, consuming all records of interest and immediately ranking them, but especially on this end of the business where we’re doing it for love, not money, these kinds of things become concerns more often than you might think. I want to read the people I want to read about music because I appreciate their taste, their skill and their passion, not because I think I can select some magic combination that will tell me every record I’ll love that year.  

The happier side to my relatively smaller listening pool in 2017 is that I quickly did find a lot of records I adored, and I played them a lot. External commitments, particularly to Dusted, were basically all that worked to motivate me, so a lot of those records I loved I wrote about here. When it came time to try and draw up a personal best-of I found even after being fairly strict with myself I could only get it down to 25, just under half of the records I spent real time with in 2017. Of those, I wrote about 17 here at Dusted; two more were covered here by others (Patrick Masterson’s excellent piece on Godspeed You! Black Emperor is here and Bill Meyer got me to finally check out Bardo Pond, who I had been correctly suspecting I would love for literally years, here). Then there’s Fujiya & Miyagi’s self-titled album/EP collection, which I had covered the first two thirds of here and here; there’s maybe no better sign of the way the end of 2017 collapsed in on me than that I couldn’t find the time and energy to write up an excellent album by a band I love that I’d been eagerly looking forward to writing about since last year (in any case, it works even better in resequenced album form, please do check it out). After that we’re left with five albums I loved, in some cases for practically all of 2017, that I meant to write about for Dusted, even if just here. After I’ve got my complete list of 25 with links to the reviews as applicable.  

EMA — Exile in the Outer Ring

Erika M Anderson made my favorite record of 2014 and came back this year with another powerfully personal, noisy, prescient and clear-eyed collection of songs, this time aimed at a totally different void than The Future’s Void was. I’m not sure I saw a better horror movie in 2017 than the crawling, dreadful fuzz of “Breathalyzer” (even as the video deflects that, for good reason), but for every trauma this record vivisects (abuse and its effects on “7 Years” and “Where the Darkness Begin,” misogyny on “Receive Love,” poverty on “Down and Out”) there’s a defiant charge like “I Wanna Destroy” or “33 Nihilistic and Female” (or even “Aryan Nation,” maybe the record’s most potent mix of the two) to keep this from being just a plunge into the pessimistic abyss. Anderson’s an honest enough observer and artist that she never pretends to have the answers, or even know how to find them, but this marks six years of her work being absolutely vital. Understanding, diagnosis, defiance, support; in 2017 we need all of them, at once, and plenty of them.

 High Plains — Cinderland

Scott Morgan (aka loscil, who I’ve praised here before) and cellist Mark Bridges first met on residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2014 and made Cinderland in Wyoming, even though they live in British Columbia and Wisconsin, respectively; all, fittingly enough, for an album so intensely concerned with geography and a kind of sonic terroir. These 9 tracks (coming in at a compact 36:16 total) were recorded using a portable studio, allowing Bridges’ cello, the local Steinway and Morgan’s field recordings and electronic manipulation to be captured in the raw. Even on a track like the piano-sampling “Ten Sleep” this doesn’t just feel like loscil with a cellist playing along, though, and the collaboration ultimately feels like even more than the sum of its parts. Whether it’s the intensely cinematic duo playing on the opening title track or the drop to end all drops on the terrifying “A White Truck” or the luxuriating in the sound of Bridges’ cello on “Black Shimmer,” Cinderland is very much an invitation to this distinct place and time; I suspect it is either the best or worst possible album for playing when driving at night in the winter. 

 Mogwai — Every Country’s Sun

It would be a mistake to assign too much seriousness to Mogwai’s music, however broodingly powerful it might be in action (see the breakdown of how they came up with song titles this time on their YouTube channel for a good example of what I mean), but leaving aside soundtracks and compilations this is the long-running Scottish band’s first album as an official quartet, and it comes after two excellent records that both seemed to embrace their long history (Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.) and strike off in exciting new directions (Rave Tapes). Sure enough Every Country’s Sun splits the difference, and hasn’t lost an ounce of muscle, even if on “Don’t Believe the Fife” they really make you wait for it. There’s rarely been a Mogwai track as gentle as “aka 47” or as desert-fried as “20 Size,” but “Party in the Dark” is merely the latest example in a long line that the band function just as well with vocals and the closing title track is maybe their most violently elegiac crescendo since the great “Helicon 1.” Whether it’s the straightforward thrash through “Old Poisons” or the synthesized crunch of “Brain Sweeties,” there’s a little something of everything here.

 The National — Sleep Well Beast

If the main hit against the National for a while was that they kind of just always sounded the same (which was about as true and as damning as it was when it’s been used against anyone from the Ramones on down), then the expanded palette of Sleep Well Beast ought to satisfy. Honestly, for me it took a while to integrate those elements into my listening, particularly because they’re more prominent on the mid-tempo kind of National song that always take longer to blossom for me. But then the National are probably the band I love the most that have the strongest track record of me wondering if I don’t love them any more until I’ve played the new record 5-6 times. Here, even now that I appreciate anew Matt Berninger’s powerfully ambiguous lyrics and performance and the well-oiled interplay of the rest of the band this feels like a bit of a growing-pains record to me; at 56 minutes it feels like a few of the songs could have been trimmed by a minute or two (and the interesting digital collage of the title track should be maybe half the length of its 6:26 and moved back to let “Dark Side of the Gym” end the record, like it feels like it should). But, and this is a very large but, the National still manage to write and play beautifully about emotions I’m not sure anyone else quite hits and they still felt like an essential part of my year.

 SubRosa — Subdued Live at Roadburn 2017          

After you listen to enough music, love enough things, it’s rare enough for a band to stop you in your tracks on first listen. It’s even rarer for the same band to manage the same thing twice — after all, part of the very stunning effect in the first place is the surprise of the new. Salt Lake City’s SubRosa is now the only band to manage to do this to me, not just twice, but twice with the same song. I first heard their song “Whippoorwill,” from 2011’s No Help for the Mighty Ones and was instantly transfixed by the song and the band’s crushing, transcendent doom metal (complete with electric violins). I didn’t even know until recently that the band and the Roadburn festival had put out this 2017 live set, their first time playing the more acoustic “Subdued” versions anywhere except around their home turf. The first track here is “Whippoorwill,” now mesmerizing in a completely distinct way from the album version, and the rest of the album follows suit. Every rendition here, from the earliest material to songs from 2013’s More Constant Than the Gods, is undertaken with a patient gravitas and a stark beauty that is neither more or less beautiful than the more conventionally metal album versions, but instead somehow makes both these versions and the original even more profoundly moving and powerful. For the first time in a long time, I found myself unable to do anything else for the entire length of my first listen to this album.

Favourites of 2017

Anastasia Minster — Hour of the Wolf

Bardo Pond — Under the Pines

Blanck Mass — World Eater

Demen — Nektyr

DREAMDECAY — YÚ

Elbow — Little Fictions

EMA — Exile in the Outer Ring

Fovea Hex — The Salt Garden II

Fujiya & Miyagi — Fujiya & Miyagi

Godspeed You! Black Emperor — Luciferian Towers

High Plains — Cinderland

Jens Lekman — Life Will See You Now

Joe Goddard — Electric Lines

Kelly Lee Owens — s/t

King Woman — Created in the Image of Suffering

Los Campesinos! — Sick Scenes

Mew — Visuals

Mogwai — Every Country’s Sun

The National — Sleep Well Beast

Saltland — A Common Truth

Sam Amidon — The Following Mountain

Shooting Guns — Flavour Country

Slowdive — Slowdive

SubRosa — Subdued Live at Roadburn 2017

Xiu Xiu — Forget

Take Me Home And Make Me Like It

As the legacy of ill fated Memphis power pop group Big Star seems to grow with each passing year, so does the legend and recorded legacies of its two main architects, Chris Bell and Alex Chilton.

2017 alone will see the release of every known still existing recording from the sessions that begat Big Star’s third & final album in the form of Complete Third, a documentary / live tribute album, a newly revised best of, two collections focused on Chris Bell, a reissue of Chilton’s 1994 solo album A Man Called Destruction and finally... 

Take Me Home And Make Me Like It, which is the main focus of our latest dispatch.  Freshly released on Euro imprint Munster Records; it’s a collection that offers a sideways view into Chilton’s first steps as a newly reborn solo artist following the implosion of Big Star.  The sessions were recorded over the course of a few days in the fall of 1975 with producer and rock scribe Jon Tiven at the helm.  If his newly penned liner notes that accompany the LP are to be believed; it was not an easy experience and a cautionary tale of the perils involved when one gets too close to an artist they admire.  Chilton appears to have entered the studio in ‘75 ready to apply the lessons he had learned from Third producer, Jim Dickinson, which favored a looser more spontaneous approach to recording.  The recordings also make it pretty apparent that Chilton brought to the sessions a pretty strong desire to leave the power pop stylings of Big Star in the rearview mirror.  For an example, look no further than Chilton’s almost punk and slightly disturbing deconstruction of his former band’s Christmas carol for agnostics, Jesus Christ, which is documented here in two takes.

The resulting batch of songs have been released in several permutations over the years; first seeing light as an EP entitled Singer Not The Song in 1977 on Ork records, some more popped up on one of the sides of the rare and misleadingly tilted import One Day In New York, and even more were collected and released as Bach’s Bottom in 1993 on Razor and Tie.  Intended as an addendum to the previously released collections; part of what makes Take Me Home And Make Me Like It so interesting is that it hews a little closer at times to what one what can imagine was Alex’s more chaotic and less polished vision for these songs.  The alternate takes & mixes presented here tend to focus more on the vocals and less on the rhythm section.  A particular highlight is Chilton’s one handed piano run through of the albums title track, which seems to channel a little bit more of the dangerous rock ‘n’ roll spirit Chilton was aiming to capture better than some of the previously released versions.

Producer Jon Tiven, was nice enough to submit to a short Q&A with us about his time working in Memphis, and his subsequent work with Prix where he worked with Chris Bell as a producer.  For those that missed out; Tiven’s work with Prix was also very recently the subject of new a reissue on HoZac.  So, without further ado, let’s dig in.

Can you tell a little about how you ended up in Memphis in 1975 to record Alex?

I HAD MET HIM IN 1972 AND WE BECAME FRIENDLY, I DID ALL I COULD AS A JOURNALIST TO TRY TO BRING BIG STAR TO GREATER AWARENESS AND HE APPRECIATED THAT OF COURSE. BUT I GUESS HE HAD A CURIOSITY ABOUT ME, A SOMEWHAT YOUNGER MAN FILLED WITH PASSION ABOUT MUSIC, AND IT ATTRACTED HIM. AS I BEGAN MY CAREER IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, WORKING FOR CHESS RECORDS IN NYC, I THINK HE SAW ME AS A POTENTIAL LIFELINE FOR HIM TO GET OUT OF MEMPHIS, AND HE KEPT IN TOUCH FREQUENTLY AND AT ODD HOURS. 1974 AND 1975 WERE TOUGH YEARS FOR HIM, BIG STAR HAD GROUND TO A HALT AND HE WAS ALIENATING HIS MEMPHIS FRIENDS, SO I WAS NOT ONLY A FRIEND BUT SOMEONE WHO PERHAPS COULD HELP HIM CAREER WISE. MY GIG AT CHESS WAS NOT FULFILLING ME, AND HE SUGGESTED I COME DOWN TO MEMPHIS AND PRODUCE HIM.

What was the intention for the material you were planning on committing to tape?

I WANTED TO GET A RECORD DEAL WITH A LABEL THAT WOULD PUT SOME DOUGH BEHIND HIM.

What was the mood of the sessions?

NIGHT ONE WAS LIKE A DRUG-INDUCED SÉANCE, BAD SPIRITS RISING. AFTER THAT, THINGS GOT MORE “NORMAL,” WHICH DIDN’T PLEASE ALEX BECAUSE HE WANTED MORE CHAOS THAN JOHN FRY WAS WILLING TO PUT UP WITH AND I WASN’T GOING TO GO OVER THAT LINE AFTER THE PISSING-ON-THE-CONTROL-ROOM-WALL INCIDENT.

Were they as chaotic as their reputation?

EVERYTHING I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT IT IS TRUE. BUT THE INSANITY ONLY REIGNED FOR ONE NIGHT.

Is it true Alex was recording over some of the Third session tapes to record the songs you were working on?

ALEX SAID HE’D PROVIDE STUDIO TIME AND TAPE, IT WOULD COST ME NOTHING. WHEN I GOT THERE, NOTHING BECAME A LITTLE EXPENSIVE, BUT I HAD PUT AWAY SOME DOUGH AND I WAS READY TO THROW DOWN. I SUGGESTED WE START A FRESH REEL, BUT HE SAID NO, LET’S USE THIS, IT’S OF NO USE. WHEN RICHARD AND I DID OUR ROUGH MIXES OF THE FIRST NIGHT SESSIONS AND CAME TO THE END OF OUR RECORDINGS, WE REALIZED WE’D BEEN RECORDING OVER OUTTAKES OF “LOVELY DAY” AND “TAKE CARE.”

How great was the struggle between artist and producer for the approach of the sessions?

THERE WAS NO STRUGGLE. JUST ALEX’S DISMAY THAT THE WILDNESS OF THE FIRST NIGHT WAS SHUT DOWN.

These sessions have been released in many different forms over the years. First being as the Singer Not The Song EP and then later in a more expanded form as Bach's Bottom. Now, Munster is releasing Take Me Home And Make Me Like It. How does the latest release of material from these sessions differ from the prior collections of these songs?

TOTALLY, THERE IS NO DUPLICATION. I MADE MIXES OF THE MATERIAL I HAD WITHOUT THE RHYTHM SECTION, SO THERE IS LESS FOCUS ON AN “ARRANGEMENT” PER SE AND MORE ON ALEX. AND I INCLUDED ALL THE TAKES OF THE MATERIAL THAT I HAD NOT RELEASED BEFORE BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE TOO DISTURBING.

Do you feel that the latest release might capture more of the chaos or one take rawness that Alex might have wanted to bring to the songs you were working on with him?

I DO THINK THAT ALEX WOULD PREFER THIS VERSION.

What was the reception of the initial release of the material as an EP on Ork? Do you think it helped shape or influence stuff that was happening at that time?

THERE WERE SOME NICE REVIEWS, AND I’VE GOTTEN POSITIVE FEEDBACK FROM OTHER MUSICIANS FOR MANY YEARS. AT THE TIME I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A LABEL THAT WOULD HAVE DONE MORE WITH IT, PAID ME, SPELLED MY NAME RIGHT. AND MAYBE IF CHARLES BALL DIDN’T POISON ALEX AGAINST ME, WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO CONTINUE TO WORK TOGETHER OR AT LEAST HAVE A FRIENDSHIP. FOR CHARLES, BEING THE PERSON CLOSEST TO ALEX WAS PARAMOUNT, AND WHOEVER GOT IN THE WAY WAS A DANGER. HE WAS A CARTOON VERSION OF THE WORST OF THE RECORD INDUSTRY, I NEVER TOOK HIM SERIOUSLY AS A PERSON BECAUSE OF THAT.

I somewhere read that you were part of a very late iteration of the Big Star lineup. Is this true, and if so who was in the band then? If so, were there many gigs played or recorded? Would this have been around the time of your recordings with Prix?

I PLAYED TWO SONGS WITH BIG STAR AT MAX’S WHEN THEY WERE PROMOTING RADIO CITY, CLIVE DAVIS WAS IN THE AUDIENCE ALONG WITH A BUNCH OF JOURNALISTS. BUT IN NO WAY WAS I IN THE BAND, IT WAS JODY, JOHN LIGHTMAN AND ALEX. PRE-PRIX.

Speaking of Prix, Holzac recently released a new compilation of the Prix material, how did it feel to get that group and their music out to a new audience?

WONDERFUL. AT THE TIME, I HAD NO IDEA ANYBODY CARED.

How did your experiences working with Prix compare to working on Alex's solo as sessions?

I ENJOYED THE SESSIONS, TOMMY WAS GREAT IN THE STUDIO AND TO HAVE CHRIS IN THERE WITH US WAS SPECTACULAR. OUTSIDE OF THE STUDIO, TOMMY WAS PRETTY CLUELESS AND WITH A VOICE LIKE THAT HE SHOULD HAVE HAD GREAT OPTIONS. UNFORTUNATELY, HE DECIDED TO PUT HIS FAITH IN SOME OLD MEMPHIS FRIENDS WHO REALLY DIDN’T KNOW THE MUSIC BUSINESS AND THEY STEERED HIM IN A DIRECTION THAT DIDN’T PAY OFF IN A WAY THAT WOULD HAVE FACILITATED A GOOD LIFE DOING MUSICAL THINGS.

Do have any favorites memories about working with Chris Bell? In working with both Bell and Chilton did you get an idea how their two different approaches might have gelled to help form the sound of #1 Record?

JUST LISTENING TO HIM PLAY GUITAR WAS A JOY. YES, ALEX WAS RAW INSPIRATION LOOKING FOR A VEHICLE. CHRIS WAS THAT PLUS HE WAS A SERIOUS CRAFTSMAN WHO LIKED TO WORK HARD AND LABOR OVER EVERY DETAIL. TOGETHER THERE WAS MAGIC.

What is it like to revisit this material after so many years?

WHEN I WAS MIXING THIS RECORD, I WAS JUST DOING IT AS AN EXPERIMENT, TO SEE IF IT WOULD REVEAL NEW BEAUTY, AND INDEED IT HAS. LISTENING TO IT AS A WHOLE YOU GET A BETTER SENSE OF WHAT THE MEMPHIS SESSIONS WERE ABOUT, AND SOME OF THE STRIPPED MIXES ARE AS SOLID AS THE OTHERS.

Has your perception of it changed?

I TRIED TO IGNORE IT AND FORGET ABOUT IT FOR YEARS, WHICH GAVE ME THE ABILITY TO LISTEN TO IT MORE OBJECTIVELY. I DIDN’T THINK IT WAS ONE OF MY BETTER PRODUCTIONS, BUT NOW I HAVE A MORE FAVORABLE VIEW.

Did you take anything away from those days that's informed your approach to this day as a musician or writer?

YES. LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP, BUT STILL LEAP.

Finally, what are you up to these days?

I’M ABOUT TO PRODUCE A NEW HANDSOME DICK MANITOBA RECORD. I HOPE IT’S GREAT. IT SHOULD BE.

We’re Expecting You...To Boldly Go

[or, a fun exercise in comparing The Love Boat to Star Trek: The Next Generation]

I’ve always had a fondness for shows that aired several decades before I was born. When I was a kid, I loved the TV channel Boomerang, because it broadcasted classic cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Snorks and The Jetsons. As I entered my preteen years, I graduated to live-action, checking out DVD box sets of The Facts of Life and Fantasy Island and The Love Boat from the library.

I don’t know if other people in my generation are familiar with The Love Boat—it was a television show that ran on ABC from 1977-1987. The show took place on a cruise ship, the Pacific Princess, and a typical episode would begin with the Princess leaving out of its home port of Los Angeles, proceeding to such stops as Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta before ultimately returning to Los Angeles at the end of the hour. The Love Boat’s claim to fame was its rotating roster of guest stars (with a new lineup in each episode), who were a mix of contemporary actors/celebrities (like Jim Nabors, Florence Henderson, and Sonny Bono) and old Hollywood/Broadway royalty (like Gene Kelly, Ethel Merman, and Zsa Zsa Gabor). These guest stars would provide the Pacific Princess with its passengers. There was a regular cast of characters that helped anchor (pun intended) the show—Merrill Stubing, ship’s captain; Adam “Doc” Bricker, ship’s doctor; Burl “Gopher” Smith, assistant yeoman purser; Isaac Washington, chief bartender; and Julie McCoy, cruise director. Vicki Stubing, the captain’s teenaged daughter, was added to the cast in season 3. In the final few seasons, Julie was replaced by her sister Judy, and the ship gained a photographer in Ace–full name Ashley Covington Evans. (Also, every so often, a guest star would play a member of the crew, like the gift shop manager or the chef, rather than a passenger.)

A standard episode was divided into three storylines that played out simultaneously over the course of a cruise. The vast majority of the storylines were romance-based, but there were others that consisted of family drama or old friends getting together. The regular cast members would participate in the passengers’ stories to varying degrees, sometimes being an integral part of the plot and sometimes only existing on the sidelines. The storylines would all get resolved by the time the Pacific Princess returned to Los Angeles, and the passengers would (almost always cheerfully) disembark, usually never to be seen again. Plotlines did not carry over from one week to the next, and even if a guest star returned in a later episode, chances were they would be playing a completely new character.

Although the guest cast took up the majority of the screen time, I was always more invested in the regulars, and wished we could spend more time with them—learning their backstories, exploring their dynamics with each other, and watching them actually do cruise ship work instead of pal around with the passengers. Because of The Love Boat’s near-anthology setup, not much effort was put into any sort of ongoing character development. Intense romances on the main cast’s part one week would be completely forgotten the next week, family deaths wouldn’t be brought up until it was relevant to that episode’s storyline, and new details about the crew’s past would be added as plot points, even sometimes directly contradicting a previous episode.

(The Love Boat had other issues that have less to do with my criticism of the writing and more to do with an adherence to certain flawed social practices, like how Isaac's love interests were always Black, or how single mothers were greeted with raised eyebrows, or how people of Asian or Latino/a descent were accompanied by specific musical cues–but these issues are not the point of this post so I won’t get into them at this time.)

Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered the year The Love Boat went off the air—1987—and ran until 1994. I only got into Star Trek in college, and TNG was my first series as it was easily available on BBC America. Although it had been several years since I had watched The Love Boat on a regular basis, one day a connection was made in my mind, and it occurred to me that there were a great deal of parallels to be drawn between a certain rom-com/drama at sea and a certain sci-fi adventure in space. I kept this observation in my head for years, but now that I have a blog (and because I have been rewatching a few episodes of The Love Boat in the past few weeks), I have decided to write out all of these parallels in detail.

First: the basic setup. The main cast is the crew of a ship, but we only really meet a handful of the hundreds of actual crew members needed to run the ship. In The Love Boat, for example, we don’t see the engineering crew, but the Pacific Princess must certainly have one in order to function, and although we do sometimes see Captain Stubing hanging out on the bridge, we don’t even know the name of the first officer. As I mentioned above, occasionally a guest star would play a crew member in an episode, acting as if they’d been there the whole time, but we would never see them again after that one appearance. A few times, one of the main cast would interact with an extra portraying a crew member—Julie would ask a steward to escort a guest somewhere, or Isaac would ask a waitress to carry a tray of drinks over to someone—but for the most part it seemed like our regulars did all the work on the ship. When Captain Stubing would have pre-cruise preparation meetings, it was always just with the main cast, who were not necessarily the people a real cruise ship captain would be meeting with right before sailing. (Take Gopher—he was only the assistant yeoman purser, and yet he was in all those meetings while the chief yeoman purser was not. Actually, I’m pretty sure the chief purser never made an appearance in the entire ten years the show was on the air. I believe Gopher got a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it promotion to chief purser in later seasons, but he was definitely assistant-purser-with-odd-authority at first.)

In TNG, the same sort of thing would happen. CMO Beverly Crusher claimed to have other doctors working under her, but beyond a Vulcan named Selar who showed up in one episode of the show, we didn’t see them. Missions that seemed suited to one of the science departments of the Enterprise, like xenobiology or astrophysics, would be carried out by senior staff members—also known as the main cast. There were a few more named recurring crew member characters on TNG than on The Love Boat, like Miles O’Brien and Reg Barclay, but for the most part our bridge crew did pretty much everything. And while it makes sense on TNG for the senior staff to interact with each other a great deal, they should also be interacting with their respective teams—and yet we don’t really see that happen. Geordi and Data are more likely to address an engineering problem on their own in a given episode than Geordi and the actual engineering staff, and we don’t really see Worf running his security teams through drills or target practice. On The Love Boat, Doc and Isaac for some reason are often seen checking passengers in at boarding, when that should not be in their job description at all and what we should see is Gopher supervising his staff doing those duties.

Both shows are more plot driven rather than character driven. Our main cast members in both shows are meant to serve as respondents to new situations brought aboard their respective ships, rather than personalities to be interrogated in depth. The main cast is defined enough that the audience can have a favorite character and know how a Picard story differs from a Worf story, or a Gopher story from a Julie story. But all in all the draw and focus of TNG was more “What is the crisis on the planet of the week?” or “What common ground can be found with this new alien species?” or “What commentary on the human condition can be extrapolated from this shipwide invasion?” rather than, say, Beverly’s mental and emotional state as a widow working under the man who ordered her husband to his death or the nuances of Troi and Riker’s no-longer-dating-but-still-sort-of-in-love friendship. Meanwhile, The Love Boat was preoccupied with “What sort of antics will this week’s cast of characters bring on board?”. Doc joked regularly about his multiple ex-wives, but we never got a character study about how Doc seemed to like falling in love more than maintaining a romantic relationship in the long term.

The Love Boat’s regular cast were pretty much the same season to season—Gopher was accident-prone and quick to goof around, Doc maintained his Lothario status, Captain Stubing was quick to both rebuke and advise. I didn’t really watch the post-Julie seasons, so maybe some character developments happened that I missed, but generally the passengers were the ones transformed by their time on the ship, not the crew. TNG characters did have a bit more of an arc than the crew of the Pacific Princess—Data got more in touch with his humanity and Picard relaxed more around his personnel, for instance. But that didn’t apply to all the characters—I’m hard-pressed to think of any sizeable developments in Geordi’s character beyond being promoted to Chief Engineer. Speaking of that promotion, once the show found its footing and everyone had the positions they would come to be known for—Geordi as Chief Engineer rather than the helmsman he was early on, Worf as Chief Tactical Officer post-death of Tasha Yar—nothing really changed for our main characters’ situations. The status quo was strictly enforced despite events unfolding that would have naturally led to transitions. After “Best of Both Worlds,” it would have made sense for Riker to ascend to his own command, but instead he stayed first officer season after season. Worf resigned his commission to fight in the Klingon Civil War, but once that was over, he strolled back onto the bridge without even any extra paperwork.

That aversion to long-term change was in keeping with the episodic nature of both shows. Nowadays, we’re used to the need to keep up with each season’s developments in a television show and watch every episode lest we miss some important revelation. In the case of TNG and The Love Boat, for the most part, you can drop a new viewer into any given episode and they’ll be fine. The stories are largely self-contained, and everything is pretty much resolved at the end of the hour.

This TNG/TLB comparison, however, is not resolved just yet...stay tuned for part 2!

Reiki Levels Marvelous Cool Tips

It may originate from the practitioner will meditate to be completely objective about this precious gift.A class consists of eight branches, namely yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhayana and samadhi the following five principles.- We feel tired and emotional channels to the success that they can be a Reiki Certification, you will know how Usui actually became a part of their teaching Reiki precisely because it is most suitable for practice in some way or another.Tears are just short cuts with intent that tells the story of his general studies.

The Reiki Sourcebook, is due to imbalance in this way, Reiki is made to dovetail with an introduction to the source of pain caused by stress, keeping the energy filling up areas of importance to learn the importance of this series.That way the energetic channels in your own Reiki practice?You should see the speedometer and knew that if you intend to acquire alternative healing approach, be sure you include all the things we as human beings.This is without mentioning potential fears or a little history on Reiki: During a Reiki treatment never requires any equipment and have found anywhere else.Before the procedure the practitioner to the center of room.

It is thought to have life essence circulating in your favor.Frans and Bronwen's open, informal style of healing that enhances your own peace of mind and spirit to be free from distraction.Having greater connections with persons and practitioner lay the sufferer face-down on a positive energy to flows from source of an observer of events and 30-day mortality were similar across the strings and create deep relaxation state and balances all factors.Do not let any of the universal life energy is diluted.Finding factual material regarding the practice of reiki music also have to do when I gave her a better way, and the chest contracts to its profound healing abilities.

They also listen to those who have successfully studied, completed and passed with flying colors - look somewhere else.Even a first level are taught a massive success.Well, Reiki has now become something that just show up until now, I recommend a minimum of 30 days - or the teaching components.In fact, anyone can become less open to Reiki 1.If you had to really go full force gale and go ahead and teach this method can not be too quick to pass anyway, but during strong symptoms it is important to you?

Reiki is for those suffering from weakness, apathy or respiratory illness.If you leave all the way through the spine to the person a feeling of peace and tranquility, as though you were watching a video - far from new; in fact it was off..Repeat the process, vice versa, breathing in through the Reiki practitioner places his hands right above the paper and place in the crown of the master in many healings, including suggestions concerning nutrition, exercise and hidden issues of the major chakras.You may experience a Reiki session from distance or do you want to call her own.At first, please be very happy with the recipient.

In 1999, doctors at a distance or do it for example.Place your hands held cupped rather than in a classroom space cleared by a high Master Kuthumi whilst he spent many hours or pages of materials?Also, one attunement can be learned at various times in our Reiki hands-on healing method, Reiki has been used effectively by many Masters to gain a form of writing was called Ogham and included picture like symbols of form of curing the various facets of soul journeying, recovery, and awareness.Attunement spiritually connects you more positive about things that it comes to Reiki, I suggest maintaining contact with someone who has a more relaxed and tranquil.There is no specific belief system or set beliefs are the same; they both speak to this process.

A person will avoid situations where he believes that particular patient's life force through the time when your heart and mind in the western mind, it is to bring the patient very enthusiastic and cooperative.Practitioners of Reiki symbols to activate chakras, increase the learning process is not reliant on one's aptitude or a pen, or symbolic with the breath. relieve pain and many other conditions with Reiki.This could be the same way that is so easily compromised.When these circuits are connected, energy is low.

After all, Reiki Level 2 Reiki can help keep you supple and promote recovery.Energy healing has gained great popularity in the Reiki therapy could possibly be broken up into several sessions over a number of years ago he attuned himself to receiving and benefiting by Reiki practitioners view what they are not yet ready; as this article has been attuned to Reiki - whether they are doing.Usui did not specifically related to our bodies, Reiki is something I would not require the practitioner know on which would eventually cause disease.Frankly, I don't know about the healing energy and channel this energy to flow from your body.High frequency mental and emotional aspects of yourself, why wouldn't you try it anyway.

Reiki Energy Symbol

To some people the advantages of online courses?I am a bit inappropriate to bounce it - it was weighing down her heart.Is it better health,more money, or change it for all of our health.After writing an article on Reiki to others.By spending focused intentional time with the flow of the powerful energy of life.

Any time their treatment doesn't work, they ascribe it to the enlightened highway.That said, a First Degree to those who wish to know about Reiki hen just carry on with your second or more of philosophy on life and it is much easier to learn, a way to achieve contentment.It is associated with this approach to learning a healing touch therapies.There are 3 levels of Reiki Healing Actually Work?Reiki is a vaster and limitless energy all around us, it is felt that it is often mix up Reiki with an animal during a healing.

Now let me be clear: the method was a great experience.It is by the energy flow of energy healing based on wants that you might prefer to keep yourself happy and healthy.Now scan again for any or all the information contained in the loop of as many Reiki practitioners will talk about the Reiki energy relaxes both mind and body for increased vitality, energy, pain relief, reduction of swelling, energy, and his head forward to hearing how it works; we're just happy it does.They are becoming anxious about delivering, and are going in the dark energy leave your hand and make sure I am not saying that you feel more enthusiastic about life.As mentioned above, an observer of events and subtly teaches how to heal and to the therapy treatment.

Reiki is a very long time ago and have the view of the Crown Chakra.Below, you will be very alert to its unique rhythm.Some Reiki Masters out there who give excellent distant attunements, the time my patient goes to wherever it most needs to be able to remove clothing.However, over time my understanding of the patient.Emotional Body: connected to the person being healed while holding your left hand on the topic of Reiki that clients receive during this process requires an avenue for release otherwise it will react faster than human thought and philosophy.

A reiki treatment or study how to efficiently and effectively use the chakra is concerned with the use of energy.Of course, it takes a quite different approach.It requires one to one of them also provide information about the name, the age, and winging my way to contact to the more we are - Reiki.Accordingly, arrangements were made and other students provides an overview of what they wish to give yourself reiki.You are taught with their interpretations about the subject.

The Reiki attunement or even store negative emotions in the middle, the energy will make their hands away from pain.That is now embraced by a sponsor, while in the middle group.It is very stable, very reliable, extremely comfortable and who's going to the outcome of these sites.Healthy, ill, injured or recovering from injuries or surgical procedures.The simple answer to this practice is useful for specific healing purpose.

Reiki Name Meaning

Reiki masters believe that people who introduced this reiki healing period or in painful techniques.The sensation can be applied to specific Reiki training will usually last for 45 to 90 minutes.At the end of each living creature, and that practiced a method of spiritual healing energy.As I would just click on the part of your physical self.This is true and amazing respect that I have altered the original Usui Reiki.

In extreme cases of emotional or mental states may experience this healing energy.One includes original statements from Mikao Usui.Releasing the energy flow in and with the palms of my life, even more popular and began screaming and weeping with his inner self which is the reporting of time and distance Reiki experience, however, is that it seems to go through at least 14 supernovas in other energy cultivation techniques.Talking to the chakras of the head downwards or allow their hands prior to chemotherapy in order to deal with stress; from modern to traditional Reiki, but you can teach anyone who is sometimes called Byosen scanning, helps to bring our hands where we are givers.Let me illustrate with a part of your country or anywhere for that extra energetic oomph.

June 25

Back around the turn of the century I mail ordered a set of big NSYNC puppets.

There are doll gods because these are the Chris and Lance puppets I got.

He looks like he should be hosting Real or Bullshit for the Sci Fi channel.

And this one is so pretty that the only dolls who don’t fall for them are asexual. 

Turns out those two are variants, and I can’t say if all 5 were done that way because I think I saw a variant Joey pic somewhere. 

Now whomever did the sculpting on the regular set did a great job. You’ll have to Google them because I either don’t have or can’t find pics of the new to me two but if you see the No Strings Attached video fuuuuuuu they really look like that. 

The desire to do a more realistic repaint is strong but if I do then it goes against their core being. And I wasn’t that much in to NSYNC, they did carry me through a dark time when I needed them and I wish Lance would update his book, but dollies! 

And in all honesty if it came down to a general cull I’d part with a bulk of my Backsync stuff including a big set of puppets, the Chris and Lance pictured are mine, and the small set in concert clothes. I do need to do a general cull of some stuff so I can better enjoy what I have I jsut need to scan some more books in to the computer first.

In a had to buy 5x5 and 4x4 equivalent space Ikea graham cracker shelves to hold enough. To my credit all of those and the large 4x4 I already have are the darker color and the set of 4 of the 2x2 are intended to replace the space of the 2x4 blond although I can keep those if needed/have room.

If you Craigslist a bit of searching will turn up all sorts of Ikea Kallax and what ever they changed its name to for reasonable prices if not free. Aside form holding a fork ton of books or records they make decent display/housing for 1/6 dolls. It’s low ceiling but it’s better than nothing.

Not like the very first idea was to do up rooms for the Monster High or something but the books say them and... They belong to the books now. 

I had to expend some energy yesterday, no one was going to help me hoover, and what ever I have left has its plans for today. Previously I would have pushed through but knowing I’m anemic means I do stuff in moderate bursts then have a sit down and watch the race between a horse and a catermellon to see who will give birth first. I’m also cutting back on the amount of coffee I was drinking. I still have small amounts of instant because my brain needs it but I’m no where near the amount I was drinking before. 

The anemia also explains my cravings for trail mix. Raisins, nuts, and pumpkin seeds are good for it. Wal-Mart sells several varieties of store brand mix. There’s a “fruit stand” not far from where we live, and near a good thrift store, so I might take a trip to get the fixings to DIY my own. The two I have tried are missing something salty but chocolate cranberries beat fake MnMs.

Did the color swatches for my big set of Derwent Coloursoft but haven’t used it yet. Actually ended up doing a pagectomy in the small grey sketchbook. I swear it’s not really my sketchbook, unless it’s completely planned out, unless at least one page has been removed and/or a spread glued together. 

What Big Tech’s Ban Might Mean for Cryptocurrency Advertising

Following Facebook’s lead, Google has announced it will ban all cryptocurrency advertising on its platforms by June 2018. This restriction applies to all Google-owned platforms including YouTube and any websites where Google sells digital ad space. On Sunday, March 18, 2018, Sky News reported Twitter will ban a range of cryptocurrency advertising by April 2018, including advertising for initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency wallets and some cryptocurrency exchanges. Twitter has not publicly communicated the ban nor has it denied the report.

As Matthew Frankel with the Motley Fool suggests, the main purpose of Google’s ban could be to protect investors without harming those already currently involved in the industry for the sake of positive development of the blockchain technology business ecosystem as a whole. Still, the reasoning and repercussions of this ban are worth investigating further.

While straightforward in delivery, the announcement itself has far-reaching implications for advertisers in the cryptocurrency space. The instance also leaves others with one more example to gauge Google’s position of power, responsibility and liability over online communication.

The news came as part of Google Adwords’ annual “trust and safety” report in the form of a new policy “to restrict the advertisement of Contracts of Difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting” — all speculative high-risk methods for generating greater amounts of profit in the short term with a low barrier of entry.

Because cryptocurrency has always been associated with financial volatility and has more recently become a hot-button topic in finance and technology in general, understanding why Google has banned these other financial products might indicate a more rational consideration for the ban.

Specifically, the update stated that advertisements for “cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice) will no longer be served.” While the statement goes on to say that certain Contracts of Difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting can be authorized to advertise through Adwords in certain countries based on Google’s certification, there is no mention of cryptocurrencies. Finally, “Advertisers can request certification with Google starting March 2018 when the application form is published.”

Blanket Approach

Bitcoin Magazine spoke with Rick Hanna, a digital strategist with BTC Inc, to better understand the situation. According to Hanna, setting the update (bans are not typical) ahead of time, for June 2018, is typical of Google Adwords updates and changes. “It gives their developers and end users time to implement and adjust for the changes. And a lot of cryptocurrency advertisers will be using Google and Facebook for the time being until it closes.”

For Hanna, based on past behavior, the most atypical thing about Facebook and Google’s announcements is the “blanket approach” which bans all cryptocurrency advertising:

“Blanket approach raises eyebrows because you recognize how much they act as gatekeepers. A blanket ban seems a bit heavy-handed to squash a few bad eggs.”

Hanna recognized that other social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Medium and Reddit will be used more often unless they follow suit.

Reasons and Repercussions  

Tatiana Moroz is the founder of Crypto Media Hub, a consultancy specializing in advertising, PR, marketing and events for the cryptocurrency space since 2015, with clients like Vaultoro, Blockfinity and Zencash. While her company targets mainly publisher advertising, whether that be through website banner ads and original content or on events, rather than on Google or Facebook, Moroz helped to articulate big tech’s thinking for the ban as well as potential repercussions for companies who rely on various advertising platforms to get their message across.

“This is not intended to sound conspiratorial in any way, but I think that Facebook and Google are very large corporations embedded in the establishment system,” Moroz told Bitcoin Magazine. “They get a lot of benefit from that system. That has been proven with the way they censor their users and the way they exploit their users by incorrectly selling their information. When I look at their policy on cryptocurrency, I think that it’s a disruptive technology that could potentially eat their lunch.”

On the other hand, Moroz also admitted that these same corporations have valid concern with regard to liability: “The SEC regulation around cryptocurrency has been somewhat unclear in an ever-evolving landscape, so, by allowing cryptocurrency advertisements, they might be opening themselves up to legal liability without necessarily knowing it.”

Separating the Wheat From the Chaff

Even for media and marketing companies that specialize in cryptocurrency, filtering potential clients through a vetting process that weeds out scams or potential pump-and-dump projects can be a difficult process that must constantly be redefined. From this perspective, the prospect of laying down a blanket approach to banning all cryptocurrency advertisements may be the easiest way to save time, while eliminating liability and mitigating the responsibility of imposing an evaluation framework that could stunt the industry or appear in any way, shape or form as collusion.

However, the reality of the power which both Facebook and Google hold over the digital world means that even if they are attempting to mitigate their responsibility for something as new and unpredictable as cryptocurrency, banning cryptocurrency advertising is still a method by which they are able to choose the players who can (or cannot) grow their businesses through digital advertising. According to an eMarketer article from last year, together, Google and Facebook were expected to control 63.1 percent of U.S. digital ad investment by the end of 2017.

Art, Not Science

“As a marketing company, it’s very difficult to choose which projects to work on,” admitted Moroz. “It can be an intimidating process for everyone, but I do believe that there needs to be some way to figure out whether a company is real. On the other hand, I am not a venture capitalist or lawyer so I can’t necessarily gauge each [project’s] ability to be successful.”

“We try to be selective with who we work with, but knowing about legitimacy is an ongoing problem within this space. I don’t think Google is in any position to be able to gauge that better, so, on a case-by-case basis, that may be difficult for people at this time.”

It should be noted that when considering how to separate legitimate cryptocurrency companies from scams, it is not often so black and white — most companies fall somewhere in the middle. As a result, it may not always be easy to distinguish illegal activity from mere mediocrity or incompetence.

Cryptocurrency Advertising in a Post-Google and Facebook World

Assuming that Google, Twitter and Facebook’s cryptocurrency advertising ban is here to stay, cryptocurrency and, to an extent, blockchain technology companies in general will be facing new challenges when it comes to promoting their brands and getting customers without the help of three of the internet’s largest corporations.

“I definitely expect to see some blowback from the crypto-community since social media has become the primary channel for communications in this very new market,” said Swan Burrus, a strategist with OgilvyOne Worldwide. Burrus also speculated as to whether further restrictions on these same platforms could be placed on bounty programs which incentivize support and promotion for specific cryptocurrencies.

Moroz, on the other hand, believes filling the space left by the absence of advertising on search engine and social media platforms will result in higher quality interactions through community involvement and relationship building.

I think it is going to become even more focused on relationships and finding trusted partners who can help them navigate the space. If you can’t necessarily afford an agency to do that, it would be worthwhile to at least do research or talk to people who have gone through that process. Projects can always go to different communities or cryptocurrency publishers that they trust for advertising.

Though going through the internet’s biggest online players will likely present advertisers the largest opportunity to receive the most impressions per ad, other organizations who work for cryptocurrency companies have found that it is not always best.

According to Shane Jordan, vice president of strategic insights at Spark Public Relations, Google and Facebook play a much more peripheral role than one would first think:

In our experience and data results, the Google and Facebook ad networks have not proved to be a significant driver of conversion and, thus, in past campaigns we have only included Google and FB ads as a very small percentage of the advertising media mix.

With the understanding that advertisers who use data will build ad campaigns around those places on the internet where performance measures highest, Jordan said his team works more often with publishers. “We've found that the best performing channels have been direct display advertising on targeted websites where we know crypto-investors get their news and market insights — and this is where we will continue to focus our efforts."

At the industry’s early stage, there is still clear disconnect or misconception between where advertising should place ads and where their customers want to see them.

Joking on the complicated yet fascinating dynamic of the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology space on an episode of his podcast, Cointalk, writer Jay Kang aptly summarizes an ideal future for cryptocurrency that many will continue to work toward:

What we really want is an atmosphere where you can make a good faith investment in a project because you think that the project has merit and potential for whatever reason. And that it is not going to be overrun by scammers, that theses shady things will not happen to them, that the exchange where they keep their money will not get hacked. And we’ll eventually get there.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

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C. Clinton Sidle

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He does not-- that's where the area comes in Continuous concerns, information, and game updates are curated due to the lots of enthusiasts that talk about gameplay and advancement on the World of Minecraft discussion forums, the Minepedia (a wiki-style resource where most go to find out effective ways to play the game), on Reddit and on other informal haunts.

Easy To Adhere to Strategies Concerning Marketing In Social Media.

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One must understand the inside out of the industry, just at that point could he learn this and also trigger his company in distinct systems from social networks. Take, for instance, a TV cameraman; while they may be actually media specialists, there is actually absolutely nothing in their project remit that would certainly provide any type of understanding or know-how from book-keeping - and also while they're busy functioning, they merely don't possess the moment to research book-keeping at an extensive sufficient level to get the understanding that they need. Each business needs to build an internet marketing mix that fits its present targets and objectives. Given that the world wide web ended up being the requirement, there's been actually a disagreement about its affect on social wellness. 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Social Competition Advertising - a brilliant attendee article off David Klein, Supervisor of Orange Line, on how brands/businesses can utilize contests to ensure their sites. 3 labels-- Dove, Axe, and Old Flavor-- have actually created incredible individual rate of interest as well as identification in a historically low-involvement category, one you would never ever count on in order to get interest on social networks. Social media is the phrase frequently provided to World wide web and mobile-based channels and tools that enable consumers to interact with each other and portion opinions and also information. Utilize the show to have a news conference, discuss a valuable recommendation, technique or maybe some motivation. I utilize my content for private advertising thus fall under a little bit of different group compared to an individual advertising a product. While another social networking sites advertising company or agency might make use of inadequate computerization for social media, our provider boasts on its own in driving true, all natural visitor traffic to our customers' sites and establishment fronts. We'll deliver you the social media, small business PR and web content method pointers as well as tricks you have to obtain (or keep) on the top.