#going to the blockbuster to rent a movie..... the wonder of being a little kid and staring at all those hundreds of cds

[electricpurrs]

i feel like shit i just want her back (blockbuster)

[dornish-queen]

Pedro Pascal: “I already took all my drugs very early. In middle age, a hangover is not an option ”

When he was approaching 40, he resigned himself to having sporadic papers that would allow him to pay the rent. But playing Oberyn Martell in 'Game of Thrones' changed his life and opened the doors of 'Narcos'. Since then it has not stopped. Now he's the villain from the blockbuster 'Wonder Woman 1984'

JUAN SANGUINO

THE ANGELS OCT 2, 2020 - 3:19 PM EDT

The first big opportunity of his career was presented in 2011, when he participated in the pilot episode of Wonder Woman for NBC, but the network discarded the series and Pedro Pascal returned to his main occupation: casting castings to play the criminal of the week in the Law and order of duty. “That cancellation was a disappointment, of course, I wanted to work. I did not care if it was something good or bad, I just wanted to work, "he recalls today from his home in Los Angeles during a virtual conversation with ICON. Now Pascal plays the villain of Wonder Woman 1984 , one of the blockbusters destined to return audiences to movie theaters .

How can you not believe in fate? The boy who broke his arm twice playing Indiana Jones has ended up becoming the favorite hero of the kids (the bounty hunter in The Mandalorian ), his parents (Agent Peña in Narcos ) and, well, everyone's. world (Oberyn Martell, The Red Viper, in Game of Thrones ). When Pedro was little, the good guys were always white and the bad guys were Russian, Arab or Latino. The Wonder Woman 1984 villain , however, is a white billionaire played by a Chilean.

“The film is set in the United States of the eighties, which were marked by capitalist greed. It was a tainted concept of evil. Stripped of humanity, but still absolutely attractive and alluring. People who dreamed of being rich and successful had to be salivated. It is true that at that time villains in the cinema projected a xenophobic image. Now the white man can finally be the bad guy, ”explains Pascal.

 Some already compare his character, Maxwell Lord, to Donald Trump because of that muck in this mud: Reagan's glorification of rogue moguls in America turned guys like Trump into aspirational role models and glamorous stars. “Trump was not the core of inspiration for my character, on our costume designer's board were Gordon Gekko [Michael Douglas on Wall Street ], American Psycho's Patrick Bateman and other suckers in expensive eighties suits. All those millionaires who hid despair, unbridled ambition and terrified masculinity ”, he clarifies. If Pedro Pascal sounds like a socialist infiltrated in Hollywood it is because that is exactly what he is.

“When Reagan was elected, many people around me were frustrated that the worst forms of capitalism were winning. In my home, with refugee and socialist parents, conservatism was not demonized but it did go against what was important to my family, ”he says. Pascal's father, José Balmaceda, was an Allende supporter doctor who saved the life of a priest wounded by Pinochet's militia .

The priest was later tortured and ended up confessing the name of his savior. When the police went to look for Balmaceda at the hospital where he worked, he took his wife and the newborn Pedro and jumped over the wall of the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago de Chile to request political asylum. That's why Pedro ended up growing up in San Antonio (Texas), in a socialist home but in Reagan's land. A Chilean with no memories of Chile who was called Peter in high school.

At the age of 20, Pascal was in Madrid working as a go-go and keeps good memories. Here she is wearing a Prada sweater. Photo: Danielle DeGrasse-Alston / Realization: Warren Alfie Baker

The Chilean-born but US-raised actor wears a Paul Smith sweater and suit. Photo: Danielle DeGrasse-Alston / Realization: Warren Alfie Baker

Pascal has never left the immigrant mentality behind. Even his father, who came to open a practice in California, always lived in terror that at any moment everything could vanish. “It doesn't matter who you are, how much you are working or how much you get paid. Deep down you always think that each job is the last one ”, confesses the actor. Maybe that's why he didn't dare move from his Red Hook, Brooklyn, hovel to a house more suitable for a Hollywood star until filming for Kingsman 2 and Narcos was over . Nor is it that he had spent more than an entire week at his house since, in 2014, Game of Thrones made him the guy most people would want to party with.

Pascal knew right away that Oberyn Martell, the Westerosi rockstar who always seemed willing to fight or fornicate with the same bravado, was going to change his life. “I had done a lot of castings for friends' plays, for copier factory ads or for very serious independent films that no one was going to see, while I watched how many characters that I had been about to play changed the lives of others. actors. And thanks to my experience and maturity, I recognized the potential of Oberyn. I understood who he was and who he could be ”, he presumes.

The actor found out about the audition when one of his acting students told him that he had taken the test but had been discarded because of his youth. Pedro snapped up and must have thought, “What would Oberyn do?” So he recorded a video on his phone and sent it to his good friend, actress��Sarah Paulson . She passed it on to her good friend actress Amanda Peet and this one to her husband, David Benioff, one of the creators of Game of Thrones . The rest is the history of television and headaches: when he informed the Narcos producer that he was available to play Pablo Escobar's pursuing policeman, he accused him of making a spoiler for Game of Thrones: If Pascal had a free agenda, it is because Oberyn was going to lose his fight against La Montaña . He couldn't imagine, of course, in what way.

  Part of that electric, lively and hedonistic energy of Oberyn comes to Pascal from the summer (that of 1996) that he spent in Madrid, where in addition to studying he worked as a go-go in a disco. That stay was transformative because the actor realized that he had had to adapt his identity all his life with each new move, but in Madrid he felt effortlessly at home. “I was 20 years old and I liked it so much that I almost moved. My main language is English, I have an American accent and I can pass for white. But in my house there were many cultural differences with respect to the outside world and I remember that when I was 20 years old, when I came to Madrid, I felt very comfortable in my own skin in a way that I had never felt anywhere else. I guess I was not aware that I had spent my childhood and adolescence learning new ways of adapting, connecting, learning, and pulling. On the contrary, living in Madrid was organic and easy for me. I made friends right away and I felt supported, ”he recalls.

By the time he was 40 Pascal was resigned to being an actor with enough odd jobs to pay the rent. According to him, his aquiline nose was a bad nose by Hollywood standards. Far from being offended or frustrated by this typecasting, he was looking forward to it, if it translated into a new check. “It is very strange to develop a fantasy as a child, to have the opportunity to turn it into a hobby, then some studies and finally transform all that into a career. That is the bet. But my dream of becoming Leonardo DiCapriodied. He died dozens and dozens of times. So to move on he had to accept that, at best, he was going to be an actor with a job. That was already a triumph, "he says. "Also, I accepted that I was not qualified for anything else, I had no more skills: I had put all my time, my energy and my concentration in being an actor and the rest in living life and having fun."

That absence of vanity lives on today, even when he's been involved in large-scale projects for five years without stopping. After Game of ThronesHe has made eight films, of which seven are action blockbusters. The wave of fame came to him when he was no longer expecting it but when he was well prepared to ride it. Still, every workday is a surprise and she acknowledges that what amazes her most about Hollywood is the sheer physical stamina that people have. “Sometimes a project can look like building a city, with all the hours, all the work and all the energy it requires. Some people have better stamina and can get by with little sleep. That is an interesting contradiction: all the people creatively involved in a film have a special sensitivity and at the same time have developed a very tough skin and energy to go through the physical experience of shooting it, ”he admires.

 Then Pascal switches to Spanish (the language he uses to confess intimacies) and explains, in a few words, that he is old for this shit. “I thought I had all the energy in the world and now, in my 40s, I see that ... wow! There are times when I don't know if I will be able to reach the goal, because my energy is not at the necessary level. But I always take it forward ”, he guarantees. Maybe that's why people get so high in Hollywood. Pascal responds between laughter and again in Spanish.

“I already took all my drugs very early. It is something that is already too much in the past, and in middle age a hangover is not an option. No, no, no ”, she assures. What if the other hangover, that of the wave of fame, runs over you? “I was a good waiter. Not at first, because they fired me many times, but I ended up getting the hang of it, ”he jokes. If the Hollywood thing doesn't go well, you can always put drinks again. But for now Pedro Pascal is the personification that the American dream , although sometimes it takes a little longer to materialize, really exists. Even Ronald Reagan would be proud.

source

[kri-babe]

A Bad Experience ᅳ Word Count: 2143 Summary: TAKE THE TRASH OUT. Warning: Implied Sexual Assault. Murder.

I was a pretty average kid. I wasn’t excessively popular, but I wasn’t an outcast either. I liked my silence and my own company, but I didn’t mind the company of my friends either. I had my own little pack of misfits that I ran with but we were average kids. We hung out where we could, but it wasn’t all that often between our classes or after school. My best friend in school was… sort of unorthodox, and a lot of people would have probably questioned it, and had my mom been any better, she would’ve told me to stay the fuck away from him.

And with good reason…

Mr. Rhodes was the school janitor; dressed persistently in a dark blue jumpsuit, and jingling whenever he walked because of the keys he carried on his belt. He was a fairly recluse guy, and the other kids thought he was pretty creepy. I think that was because of the fact that he had this weird tendency to turn up in random places, or… maybe it was the scars that mangled the side of his face. Hell, now that I think back on it, it could’ve even just been the vibe he put off. The smile that was just a little too friendly… the dark eyes that were just a little… too happy.

I guess I was a bad read of people…

But for whatever unfortunate reason, I liked Mr. Rhodes… I spoke to him regularly whenever I saw him, treated the guy like he was just another friend of mine. He was friendly enough, and he didn’t treat me like I was just some dumb fuckin’ kid in his way, wasting his time.

I never told him about it, but I think he put it together anyway - the problems back at home. He’d told me one day that I could hide out in the janitor’s closet if I ever needed a place away from everyone else. I hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a friendly gesture from a decent guy everyone overlooked because he had an unsavory job, and scars on his face.

I never once stopped to wonder why he was working at that school, why he was a janitor, and why the other kids avoided him… why the teachers avoided him. I never really thought beyond the idea that they were just mean. That maybe it was pack instinct that kept the flock together, safe in their numbers where the wolf couldn’t easily get to them.

No, I had to be the black sheep - the one that sticks out like a sore thumb, all the easier to snatch.

Too bad I didn’t see his fangs until he found me in the janitor’s closet one day. It’d been a shit day, mom was off her meds, had thrown away some of my stuff because it was ‘Satanic’. I didn’t want to put up with the teachers, nor the other kids, so I hunkered down in that little, cramped closet to just ride the day out. Where the fuck else was I going to go? Home? As if. If only I’d thought of some place else. If only I’d refused to trust him too.

He asked how long I’d been there, and I told him since school started. Guess that meant no one would notice one missing kid. The minute he closed the door, I felt something. A sinking brick in my gut and it only got worse when Mr. Rhodes knelt beside me, rubbed my back and told me that it’d all be okay. He could make it better. … I must’ve been twelve.

I stayed in the closet for the rest of the day. I was too scared to come out until well after school had ended….

I told her anyway. I knew she wouldn’t hear it, I knew she wouldn’t believe me. I knew she wouldn’t be on my side. But sometimes… just… sometimes. She was mom. I told her anyway. I felt the strike far before I had seen it coming.

“No son of mine will be an incubus, not in this house. God will excise this evil from you, you pustulant seductor.”

I still have scars from the whipping.

So… what now…

What do you do when your childhood fucking rapist comes into your place of work… and recognizes you…?

“Well, well,” Chimed a familiar, snake-like voice from just a few steps behind.

Alby blinked tiredly a few times, staring at the bleary image of the DVD cases in the cart and in his hands. As per the norm, the night had been slow - Blockbusters wasn’t really what it used to be, and the few customers he did get were often high as hell, and just looking for cheap movies to rent. He’d had maybe one other customer earlier that evening, before he’d set to putting back the returns.

Another blink, Alby slowly frowned as it pushed its way back to the surface - that rotten, fetid trauma he’d buried years ago. The boy straightened, blinking, and turned his head to peer over his shoulder as Rhodes stepped nearer, grinning just like the wolf he’d always been. Alby’s frown hardened as his good eye slowly cleared from the haze of the pot that clouded his head.

“If it isn’t little Alby… and you’ve grown up to be so handsome too… I’m honestly surprised to still see you around, kiddo… I was so sure your mother would be the end of you…” He reached closer, tilting Alby’s chin in his direction with a finger to better see the patch that was taped over the young man’s right eye. “Looks like she might still be,” He smirked, releasing him then, and instead, placed his hand over Alby’s back.

Broad, slender - he’d shot up like a beanstalk since they had last seen each other. Rhodes looked no different somehow, and Alby wasn’t sure how to take that. But the hand over his back summoned something from the depths of his being. A cold sweat broke out over his porcelain skin and Alby could feel a tremble push its way into his arms and fingers.

“So, how’s life been, kiddo…?” Alby frowned again, staring silently at Rhodes. Was this a joke? Was this guy just… playing fucking stupid? Like they’d always been buddy buddy? Like he fucking hadn’t raped him all those years ago? What was this? Was he trying to get cozy with him so he could do it again?

“What’s the matter, Alby~? Cat got your tongue?”

Rhodes’ hand slid lower, and whether that was to withdraw or not didn’t matter anymore when Alby suddenly exploded into motion with a left hook that connected directly with Rhodes’ jaw. He fell like a sack of bricks and Alby stood there in total silence once more - naught but the sound of his own shaky breathing to accompany him as he glared down at Rhodes’ body. He must have hit him just right… and certainly just hard enough, his knuckles protested about it.

Fuck…

What the fuck was he going to do with this fucker… call the police? But for what… a crime he’d committed twelve years ago? This was assault… and he was positive that his boss wasn’t going to be happy about his one fucking employee assaulting a customer…

The walkie-talkie on the back of Alby’s hip crackled and popped, and there it came: his boss’s chipper voice.

“Hey, Al, you there, bud~?”

He’d never seen the guy’s face, but his manager was always so weirdly happy… it was unsettling at best.

“Fuck…” Alby breathed, still shaking as he pulled the walkie-talkie off his belt and brought it to his lips, “Y-yeah, what’s up?” Just… be calm. Act normal. Everything was fine. He never even came into the store, and it was late. They were just between the shelves. No one would know.

“Hey, Al, there ya are! Listen, bud!” Popped the walkie.

“Remember what I told you about the trash? Those no-good lay-about trash guys don’t come by anymore, so there’s an incinerator in the basement of the building you can use to take out the trash! It’s pretty big, too, remember? So don’t fall in!”

Alby shook harder, blinking widely.

He was so sure he could hear something else just under his boss’s peppy voice. Something unnatural, just under the static, like worms in the dirt, whispering the earth’s secrets into his ears.

‘T̴̨̥̥̮̖̮̠̰̗͖̘̺͒̂̿̅͠Ā̴̫̖̬̜̝̟̠̥̿͌̃͐ͅK̶̟̻̤̼͇̭̻̗̖̖̮̤̺̺̅̐̐̊̀̅̔̈́͑̔̄̀̕̚͝ͅE̶͔̥̺̩̖͓̗̱͉̤̮̭̲͎̺̫̋͛̋̒̊̄̕ ̶̧̬̙͉̮̦̮̭̘͙͌̈́̈Ţ̶̨̛̛̫͖̙̫̺̘̰̘̳̮̘̞̊̏̅͊͋̍͂̄̅́̌͜͠͠͝ͅH̸̨̟͕͍̝̠̫̔̏̓͘͜͝Ě̶̡̨̨͖̫͚͇͍̰̻̪̭̰̃̈́́̈́̌̇̔̒̂̑́̉̿̓̑͘ͅ ̴̭̮͍̟̩̯̍̉͂̂̒͗̀̈́̐̒͘T̷͓̱͎͔̦̫̲̹̰̠̬̤̹͂R̸̡̹͔͓̳͎̣̗͙̥͙̱̯̂͊̌̽͗̈́̎̅̇͘͝A̴̳̳̤̣͐̑̄͘ͅS̷̩̲͖͒̏́̆̋Ḩ̶͔̥͉̪͓͉͇̠̭̓͋̀͒͘͜ ̸͇͎̘̮̀̊͐̈͋̽̑̇̔̄̋̈́͜͝͠Ơ̷̡̳̰̳͈͙̙̞͔̹̦͍͋̋̑̿̿͂̾̊̀̓͑̎̕̕͘̚U̶͔̩̘͖͖̗͚̞̲͓̬̟̥̺̅̓̂͑̏́͝͠͝T̸̺̹̤̮̆̓̽̈́̀̒̉͒̄̓̀̒͒͠,̶̪̤̯̖̩̯̘̾̒͊̇̂͂͗̑̂͋͋̈́̏͐̏͜͝ͅ ̶̡̡̣͓̠̭̫̟̫͕̔͆͋̈́̈́̌̊̓̈́̍͌̈́̔̐́̾͜͝A̵̲͓̝͚͚̖͖͙͉̹͍̗̦͙͔̭̞͑͊̃̓̿̑̓̑̾̃͊L̵̨͖̣̜̬̜̮̲̦̞̥̑̓͑̄͌̎̿͛̈́̈̂͝Ḇ̷̯͎̝̮̯͖͈̰͔̦͕̫̭̬̙̉̉̅ͅY̵̡̪̹̲͚̭͈̞͚̆̓͒̍̚͘͝͝͠.̷͚̳̘̜͙̺̝̳̌̀̔̑͒͗̐̌̈̃͌͝͠͝’

Alby swallowed, and looked back down at the body that lay sprawled across the carpeted flooring, lips working to form words he couldn’t find the ability to add noise to.

“Still there, Al!?” He jolted.

“Y-yeah, yeah, sorry, I’m here. I-I -- I’m on it, boss.” The walkie was hooked back onto his belt and Alby slowly exhaled.

Did he… know…? There was no fucking way this was coincidence. Trash day was usually at the end of the week… it was fucking Tuesday.

Could he do this…?

The basement door swung open, and Alby panted softly, grunting as he readjusted the man draped over his shoulder and slowly began down the steps into the blackness of the basement. There were lights, but the incinerator was often just bright enough that its orange glow was more than enough to light his way. That… beast of a machine. Steel and fire - the belly of a dragon, and the teeth to match.

When he first came to work here, there was no basement. There was no incinerator. There were large trash bins outside that the garbage men would occasionally come get, because the Blockbuster didn’t produce enough trash. Alby was the only employee. But after a time, he’d gotten word from his boss that the garbage men wouldn’t be stopping by anymore. They’d decided the place wasn’t worth the stop anymore, due to how infrequently they had to pick up from it.

The next day, there was a note about the basement. The incinerator. The shop never shut down. There were no construction workers. There was no equipment. No signs that the building had been added onto. It was just… there.

Every step thunked down the stairs as Alby disappeared down into that blackness, and squinted the moment he came around the corner to face the incinerator. It didn’t often make much noise… but it was growling now. Like a ravenous beast, it’s teeth clanking against its jaw in anticipation. Alby hesitated. He often wondered if this fucking thing was alive… the way it acted. But it was so easy for him to chalk it up to the fact that it was probably just funky machinery. He swallowed, and drew nearer, pulling the lever to open the jaws of this hellbeast which roared hungrily, releasing a burning belch of hot air into the basement. Alby squinted against the blast, and stared into those roaring flames.

The weight on his shoulder never felt heavier… and he wasn’t sure he could do this…

The guy… raped him but… this was murder, and no one would ever know…

But they never knew about his rape, either, did they…?

The walkie talkie crackled and popped, fuzzing loudly against the rumbling of the incinerator. There were no words that spilled through the static, and yet… he could hear that distant sound once again. As if there was just… too much interference, or the frequency wasn’t

quite right.

‘T̴̨̥̥̮̖̮̠̰̗͖̘̺͒̂̿̅͠Ā̴̫̖̬̜̝̟̠̥̿͌̃͐ͅK̶̟̻̤̼͇̭̻̗̖̖̮̤̺̺̅̐̐̊̀̅̔̈́͑̔̄̀̕̚͝ͅE̶͔̥̺̩̖͓̗̱͉̤̮̭̲͎̺̫̋͛̋̒̊̄̕ ̶̧̬̙͉̮̦̮̭̘͙͌̈́̈Ţ̶̨̛̛̫͖̙̫̺̘̰̘̳̮̘̞̊̏̅͊͋̍͂̄̅́̌͜͠͠͝ͅH̸̨̟͕͍̝̠̫̔̏̓͘͜͝Ě̶̡̨̨͖̫͚͇͍̰̻̪̭̰̃̈́́̈́̌̇̔̒̂̑́̉̿̓̑͘ͅ ̴̭̮͍̟̩̯̍̉͂̂̒͗̀̈́̐̒͘T̷͓̱͎͔̦̫̲̹̰̠̬̤̹͂R̸̡̹͔͓̳͎̣̗͙̥͙̱̯̂͊̌̽͗̈́̎̅̇͘͝A̴̳̳̤̣͐̑̄͘ͅS̷̩̲͖͒̏́̆̋Ḩ̶͔̥͉̪͓͉͇̠̭̓͋̀͒͘͜ ̸͇͎̘̮̀̊͐̈͋̽̑̇̔̄̋̈́͜͝͠Ơ̷̡̳̰̳͈͙̙̞͔̹̦͍͋̋̑̿̿͂̾̊̀̓͑̎̕̕͘̚U̶͔̩̘͖͖̗͚̞̲͓̬̟̥̺̅̓̂͑̏́͝͠͝T̸̺̹̤̮̆̓̽̈́̀̒̉͒̄̓̀̒͒͠,̶̪̤̯̖̩̯̘̾̒͊̇̂͂͗̑̂͋͋̈́̏͐̏͜͝ͅ ̶̡̡̣͓̠̭̫̟̫͕̔͆͋̈́̈́̌̊̓̈́̍͌̈́̔̐́̾͜͝A̵̲͓̝͚͚̖͖͙͉̹͍̗̦͙͔̭̞͑͊̃̓̿̑̓̑̾̃͊L̵̨͖̣̜̬̜̮̲̦̞̥̑̓͑̄͌̎̿͛̈́̈̂͝Ḇ̷̯͎̝̮̯͖͈̰͔̦͕̫̭̬̙̉̉̅ͅY̵̡̪̹̲͚̭͈̞͚̆̓͒̍̚͘͝͝͠.̷͚̳̘̜͙̺̝̳̌̀̔̑͒͗̐̌̈̃͌͝͠͝’

There it was again - that compulsion. This subtle… feeling. Like someone or something was just… gently pushing on his mind. On his thoughts. Compelling him, his wants. With a deep breath, and another soft grunt, Alby bounced the man from his shoulder, and into the blazing fires of the furnace, tossing in his legs to follow the body as embers shot out in every direction. He hadn’t even fully straightened when those steel jaws banged shut, and Alby threw a widened brown eye over the lever. Was it faulty…? Holy shit.

The blow to his jaw wasn’t enough to keep Rhodes down now… the screaming started shortly after, and Alby couldn’t take his eyes off the furnace as that blackening silhouette within thrashed and struggled frantically for an escape that would not be found.

It couldn’t have lasted for more than a few minutes… but those minutes felt like an eon, and Alby knew Rhodes suffered… too bad it was over so soon.

He stared quietly at the furnace as the roaring dulled to a soft, content rumble, fingers shaking by his thighs as he searched in vain for signs that Rhodes yet remained within that beast’s blazing belly.

The walkie talkie popped and fuzzed.

There were no clear words again… but he could have sworn that he heard the faintest sound of a voice… just… just out of range.

'̶̡͙̗͔̒̄͒͛̆̈́͐̏̐̃̈́̎͝Ṋ̷̋́͐̑̀̋̐̽̽̐͂̆͐͝��̙̝Ơ̵͔̒̀͋̋̌̂B̸̖̞̘̬̥̺͓̜̘̟͙̥̑̍͑́̍̈́̿̉̈́̽͑̏̀͘ͅO̸̡̬͉̞̱̪͚̭̼̬͉͊̉̆͛̍̒̊D̷̥̩̮̈̃̊̈́͂͊̔͑̈́̽̇͘̚ͅẎ̵̦̺̯̣̦̲̣̐̽̀͆̽̊̏̃ ̷̨͖̖̪̥̹̣̠͕͔̤͎͍̹̽̈̕͝L̵͔̜͇͖̮̰͙̤̰̠̂́̄̓̌̑̄̐̈̚͝Ǐ̸̗̭̬͍̬͙̗̘͔̃͝͠ͅK̸̙̼͙̳̹̫͚̩͎͍̈́ͅȄ̵͙̏̉̏͛̈̎̒̐̆̿Ş̴̧͙̤̳̤̅̿̈̉́̌͂̐̿͠͝͠͠ ̵̢͙͍̮̳̐̅͐̀͐̅͗͂̈́́̈́A̸̧͉̟̯͔̠̮͚̻̭͑̿͒̈̿̅͒͛͛̽͠ ̶̡̢̹̭͉̳̙̣̺̘̍͂́̏͝K̵̻͉̳̘͍̩̦͎̱̙̩̝͍͌͒̈́̐̃͘͜I̵̺̝̣̩͕̱̱͇͔̊̅͒D̴̨͔̘͎̝̫͕͙͚̥̦̘̙̳̀̔͑͘D̵͔̤͓̗͈͍͕̱͎̭̀Ī̴̱̲́̇͂̐͠Ē̶̡̪̅́̑̃͊̎̐́͐̂̊̓ ̵̨̱͎͚̣͖̘͓̻̬̗͖͊̊̉̇̽͑̓̋͊̾̾F̶̡̡͈̭̼͇͇͎̙̂̽͛͐͒̈́̅̉̎Ḭ̷̧̛̮̤̣͓̖͈̐̏̀̅͗́͘͝D̸̛̦͊D̸̡̢͈̞͙͔̜͖̖̮̻͖̒͆̆̒̆̿͋̌̒́̅̚͘͠Ļ̵̻̼͚̝́̿͋̚E̸̝͎͍͂̇̽̃͋͊̐͌͝͠ͅR̶̡̞͉̞̩̱̝͚̗͙̦̐́̉̑̈́̆̀͌̀̾̅͘ͅ'̷̨̧͔̣̜̺̪̰̜̦̮̖̺͑̂̃̊̔͂̈̀͐̃͜

[celmation-gibson]

The First Drawing to post for this New Decade, and it's the Best of the Movies that I've seen in the Cinemas, and one I've heard of for a while. So here are some Favorite Characters of mine that were fun to Draw, along with the Reviews for the Films.

Missing Link - My First movie to see in the Cinemas of this Year, and it's another Laika Classic, and despite being a Box Office flop, It did receive some very Good Reviews from Critics, and even my Foodtown Boss' Grandchildren saw the Film on a Thursday(?) and they Loved it, so I figured I give this film a watch, and I was amazed at the Final result, An Amazing sight to see that some Folks out there don't know what their Missing. It was directed by Chris Butler, who was co-Director of Laika's other projects 'ParaNorman', and it had an Amazing cast such as Mr. Zach Galifianakis (Felix of 'Bob's Burgers' & Lego Joker of 'the Lego Batman Movie'), Zoe Saldana(Avatar, Gaurdians of the Galaxy), & Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing & Wolverine of the live-Action 'X-Men' films). And once again, the Folks of Laika really did some good Work & Commitment in Making this Film, especially when I loved the Film's settings & Landscaping, and the Action Sequences are Phenomenal, especially in those Action sequences when the Ship rotates with the People in it when it was Struck with the Storm's Big Wave, and How Suspenseful it was when the Characters are dangled into Ice blocks or big icicles, and how shocking on how the Villains' defeat of Lord Piggot-Dunceby, his neurotic right-hand man Mr. Collick, and Bounty Hunter Willard Stenk were killed in Cold Blood, cuz I knew that that Ice Bridge in the Film was gonna Break in a Sequence. Plus there were some Cute Humor in the Film as well, especially after when Mr. Link/Susan Roared at a Dog during a Bar Fight, and after a Moment of Silence, the Dog just attacked on of his Men and the Bar Fight continues (that's when most kids in the Auditorium laughed at that part), and how Susan literally thrown some Objects over the Wall. And I'm always fascinated with Cryptozoology creatures such as Bigfoot, Abominable Snowmen, & the Loch Ness Monster, even when they make me think about that 1970's film entitled 'the Mysterious Monsters'. And even if the film was Distributed by United Artists (a Subsidiary of MGM I suppose), it's kinda Weird now now that it was released on DVD and Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox, even after Disney's Conquest, but can we still call ML a Non-Disney film, even if some MGM films are being released by FOX under a Contract?

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - Well me and my dad certainly love Giant Monster movies when we were Young, and I certainly remember renting every Godzilla movie on VHS back when Blockbuster was still around, and we certainly enjoyed that one 2014 'Godzilla' movie, unlike the 1998 Matthew Broderick one, so we decided to give this new kaiju movie 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' a viewing pleasure, not to be confused with the 1956 Americanized 'Gojira' movie starring Raymond Burr. And i gotta say that it was an Epic Thrill-ride of our Lives, even the monsters we were familiar with were Amazing, Godzilla being all greatly Huge and Buffed-up as always in the USA, Rodan looking a-little Sinister lookin', Mothra playing out like the original 'Mothra' movie, starting off as a larva hatching from her Egg, then Evolving into a beautiful Butterfly-like Moth, then King Ghidorah was so Menacing in this one, and being like Lizzie in 'Rampage', he was such a "Pain-in-the-Ass" character, even once being Nicknamed 'Monster Zero', either that Nickname was also used in Japan, or used for one of Ghidorah's old film appearances in the US, that was double-billed with 'War of the Gargantuas'. I even like how they referenced some stuff from Warner Bros. & Legendary Films' 'Kong: Skull Island', as that films along with the 2014 Godzilla, and this Film are all in the same Universe, Monsterverse that is. And how surprising that there are other Kaijus in this Movie that I'm not even certainly familiar about, like that one Arachnid-like featured titan, or the Giant Ape Body/Mammoth Trunk beast, or another Muto(?), and I am wondering if the Demolished Boston at the end of the movie is gonna be the new 'Monster Island'. The human characters were good, I mostly like every member on the character Dr. Mark Russell's team, they seem likable, and the Cast was great, even after looking at the film's Poster befor we went inside the theater, I saw the familiar name of Thomas Middleditch, the same man who did voices in 'Captain Underpants' & 'Bob's Burgers', doing a Live-action role, and while writing this review, I've discovered some other actress who starred in this film include Sally Hawkins, who starred in the previous 2014 Godzilla movie, and also in Guillermo del Toro's 'the Shape of Water, and the woman playing the daughter in this film, also played in 'Stranger Things' as Eleven. And also I love on how the film as a Newer Version of Godzilla's approach-like film that was used in the old films, and even the end Credits have Cover version of Blue Oyester Cult's classic hit 'Godzilla'. And one of the Film's story plot is Fascinating, like how this Earth was once ruled by Giant Titans, until us small Humans have taken over while most of those Titans went Extinct and hiding in the Earth's Spirit.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 - Well, Illumination has done it again, as it Amuses me once before with 'the Grinch', 'Despicable Me 2', 'the Secret Life of Pets', & 'Sing', they have released a Sequel to my Favorite Secret Life of Pets movie that I saw in theaters back in 2016, and now have it on DVD. And when I heard that the Original voice for Max got replaced with a Guy I know of who has a Great Career in Animation, I was like "Whuuut?", but even after reading what Happened to that one Guy, i figured I'd give this Movie a Watch, since I'll like Patton even more. And I gotta say, this Sequel does have some Cute and Lovable moments in the Film, and those Subplots in the Film are Wonderful, leading up to a Story on how to save a White Tiger cub from a Wicked Ringmaster (voiced by Funny voice man, Mr. Nick Kroll(Sausage Party, Sing, Captain Underpants). And Snowball is more luvable in this one as he is in the first Film (Kevin Hart is so Wonderful!), even teaming up with a Cute/Funny character such as Daisy, a Shih Tzu voiced by Tiffany Haddish (who just did a guest voice role in 'Bob's Burgers'). Also with a Cute story on how Max & Duke's owner fall in Love with a Fun Gentleman and have a Kid together, and I love how the Dogs raised the Boy up, by helping him to Crawl & walk, and have Good Animal Instincts, which makes me think that what if my Sister & her Husband had a Pet Puppy that could be a good a Good Companion to my Little Layla niece. And some of the Parts in the Film have Good humor in it, like did I just heard a Cow say "Rat Turd" in front of an auditorium full of Young children? Plus Mr. Harrison Ford(Han Solo in 'Star Wars' & Indiana Jones) was great as a character named Rooster, who tries to Man/Brave up Max and a few characters, after Max has devoted his Life to Little Liam, which led to the Funny Collar on his head. And I'd figured there was something Familiar about that Young Lamb Cotton's voice in the Movie, as he is voiced by Mr. Sean Giambrone, the voice of Jeff in 'Clarence' & Shermy in the 'Adventure Time' series Finale.

Abominable - Well, Dreamworks has done it again, a new film from a Creative Team was made and about to be released soon, and when I saw the Previews of it for the First time, I thought I wasn't too interested in it, especially with the humorous Blueberry gag parts. But after a while, and see that if it looked cuter as Dreamworks' previous film 'Home(2015)', I thought I give it a go, and hopefully it look way better than that one Weird-Looking film in 1995 called 'to catch a Yeti' starring Meatloaf. But for the 'Abominable' film, since the Movie was getting Good Feedback from Reviewers and Viewers, I was Lucky to watch the Film for myself. The Characters were Cute and Funny, almost like the ones from 'Home', especially with Ethnic Protagonists. And the settings and Designs of Asia in the Open Fields, Forests, and Cities are really nice, wishing I could visit and/or live there. And the Great story is like an E.T. Extra Terrestrial thing, expect that the Heroes goes with the Creatures on an Adventure of a lifetime to bring back the Creature to his Beloved Family that they Tried to protect from any threats what's-so-ever. And there are some Amazing plot Twist among the Villainous Characters, like just when you thought the villain was actually an elderly Man who has been hunting Mythical creatures for rewards, but it turns out that the True Villain was actually a Nerdy Woman who thought was a seemingly-gentle Scientist just doing what's right for the World, who almost Barely looks like a geeky version of Kari McKeen of Disney/Pixar's 'the Incredibles', and when she let down her Hair, she may look like a Devious version of Merida of Disney/Pixar's 'Brave'. The Effects in the Movie is Super Nice & Super Awesome, especially in the Yeti's Humming effects, some Action Sequences, and that one moment when the Heroine's Father's Violin broke, the Yeti fixes it by using his own Hair for the String replacements, and I know from that Moment, with Yi's Musical skills and the Yeti's Powers combined, and when the Hearts are Full, and the Heavens are listening, Magic is bound to happen. And for the one other part when the Heroes are Gazing into the Stars, they say that the Stars could be our Ancestors watching over us, and that if we don't see any Stars in the Sky, there will be always there for us, almost like even if for some Folks lost their Love ones, they will always be there, even if we can't see them. But I'm glad i enjoyed the Movie, and I know that some Tween kid group enjoyed it as well, laughing at some Funny Parts in which i enjoyed, sometimes with the Woofing Snakes, "WOOF, there it is, WOOF, there it is".

the Addams Family - Well, a another Fantastic new Animated feature has been made, and it's based off of what I remember from my Childhood, cuz I do remember watching the early 1990's Live-Action movies of the Creepy Family starrring Christopher Lloyd and Christina Ricci, before I knew who some of the Actors were, and I remember the Animated Hanna-Barbera Kooky series on Cartoon Network a while back, even making a Spooky Guest appearance in 'the New Scooby-Doo Movies', but I haven't watched much of their old Ookie Live-action series, and the Family I'm talking about is 'the Addams Family'. And I've read a while back that an Animated CGI feature is gonna be released soon, and I knew back there that that would be interesting for me to see, so I've waited several months for the to be released in Cinemas, and I finally got a chance to do so. It was a Fun and Entertaining movie, and surprising it was made Directed and made by the same team who did the 2016 R-rated Animated film 'Sausage Party' starring Seth Rogan & Kristen Wiig, and the Character designs for the Film were to be based off the old design from the Original Addams Family comics in the old days, and with modern help from Mr. Craig Kellman(Hotel Transylvania, Madagascar). And the voice cast is amazing, we got Mr. Nick Kroll(Captain Underpants) voicing Uncle Fester, Chloe Grace Moretz(Kick-Ass) as Wednesday Addams, Finn Wilfhard(IT, "Beep, Beep, Richie") as Pugsley Addams, Charlize Theron(Kubo and the Two Strings) as Morticia Addams, Bette Midler(Hocus Pocus) as Grandmama, Snoop Dogg as Cousin Itt, Elsie Fisher(Despicable Me) as Parker Needler, even the film's co-director Mr. Conrad Vernon as Lurch ("YYYOOOOOOUUUUUUU RRRAAAAANNNGGGG?!", LOL!!!), a priest that presides over Gomez and Mortica's wedding, the spirit that haunted the abandoned asylum that Gomez and Morticia move into (who often threatened them to get out, much to the family's delight, which i find those Parts to be entirely Hilarious, even in the Theater's Booming Stereo), and Dr. Flambe, a Devil-like relative of the Addams family with fire-like abilities. And the Film's Story is very cute, even with the Film's Opening Scenes on the Origin story of the Addams Family and their "Creative Differences" with other Societies, and it gives me some Good comparisons with Sony's 'Hotel Transylvania' as Creepy Creatures who have lived through the Centuries and Years soon get into Modern times and how other people dealt with Beings like the Monsters of HT and the Addams Family and their Clan. And it would be nice if my Parents were watching the Film with me in the Theaters, cuz during the Film's Ending, me and the people in the Auditorium got a chance to sing-along with the Film's Theme Song, and everyone was Snapping their Fingers to the tune. So If you wanna celebrate Halloween in a Great and Wonderful way, I think that this film is for you, and for all you Goth, Emo, and Young-at-Heart Artists out their who would love a Creepy Treat, and just can't wait to get it on DVD. Klaus - To come clear, I've heard about this movie, and I've even seen some Pencil Tests of it way back then, but I've actually never seen the whole thing, or catch it in a Selected Theater, but I really did see the Film's Trailer. And I would say for a 2D, Hand-Drawn, Frame-by-Frame, Animated feature, these people tried to Improve something for the Classic Animation with their Coloring and Shading type Technique, and even though It's a wonderful Improvement, I wouldn't expect some folks to use this kind of thing more often for Future Celmated Features. As for the Voice cast, I already know who Mr. J.K. Simmons is, but I was surprised to read that the voice man for Mr. Jesper Johansson, is also the guy who played the Villianous Gideon Graves of 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' movie.

And sorry if I didn't catch 'IT: Chapter 2' like I did with the first one, But I'm hoping o see some more clips of it online. And I Never had interest in seeing the 2019 'Child's Play', though I still like Ms. Aubrey Plaza & Mr. Mark Hamill. And I had no interest in seeing 'the Angry Birds Movie 2' since I'm never a Big Fan of Thurop Van Orman's creativity. And lastly, I didn't felt like seeing the 'Spies in Disguise' movie ever since Disney's Horrible Conquest of the whole 20th Century Fox media.

[professorsaber]

1, 5, and 8 for the ask game :)

1: Talk about the first time you watched your favorite movie.

Okay, so it was probably 1997. I was in the third grade, I think, and my friend Stephen was getting me into Back to the Future. He told me the basics of the plot, but not in extreme detail, and I hadn’t seen the movies themselves. (In retrospect, I’m wondering if he was more familiar with the animated series, which might have been in reruns.) Well, at some point my mom’s friend Wendy came up from Los Angeles to visit us (we were in Northern California then), and decided to rent the first movie. Remember, this was 1997, so we’re talking a VHS from Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, or perhaps a mom-and-pop rental store. (The town had at least four stores total, and maybe more.)

I don’t know if a movie made in 1985 still has spoilers, but spoiler alert:

I remember being shocked as hell when Doc got shot at the beginning. Stephen definitely left that part out! And it was very late and I actually had to go to bed most of the way through—I’m fairly certain it was near the end, when Doc was on the ledge of the clock tower. IIRC, we finished in the morning (it must have been a weekend).

Well, it changed my life. Those movies are still very, very dear to me. Afterwards, Stephen and I would play BTTF—what people evidently call LARPing now, at least when you’re an adult! I was always Doc and he was always Marty. I distinctly remember acting out three scenes: the beginning test sequence of the DeLorean in Part I, and the train robbery in Part III. I seem to recall that we came up with a bunch of sequels, too, perhaps all the way to Part XIV, when the DeLorean got a space conversion! I kinda wish I remembered what they were, as I do BTTF fanfics. Though they were probably terrible… Also, we cut Clara and Jennifer out, for the most part—I was in a “girls are icky” phase, and he was/is gay. (I didn’t know that at the time, though.)

Side note: when I was a little kid, Part II was my favorite, especially the 2015 sequence. I wrote a story for class featuring older me and my grandmother in that version of the future—kinda sad, considering she died in 1999. When I was in college, my favorite was Part III, for whatever reason—maybe the romance aspect; I don’t really know. Now, I’d have to say my favorite is Part I.

Also, I can probably recite all the dialog, line-by-line, from beginning to end, from memory!

5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.

Gosh, I’m having trouble with this. Possibly the one I had in the first grade (so my 7th, 1995), which was pirate-themed and had a treasure hunt around our apartment. It was really fun, but I don’t remember it that well. There was another hunt one when I was a child—a scavenger hunt at a small park near the community college. I don’t remember that one that well, either.

Honestly, I’m having trouble remembering the others. I’m probably mixing them up with Christmases—my birthday is in late December, too.

I don’t know if it’s the best, per se, but my most recent one (30th, 2018) is worth mentioning. My mom and I took a drive out to the mall where they shot the first time travel sequence in Back to the Future. We took some pictures, and ate at the Olive Garden there. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was very nice.

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

Another hard one, but the answer I have right now has to be one of the conlangs I’ve done for background in my sci-fi universe. I’ve dreamt of making my own languages since I was in high school (mid-2000s), but I’ve never really been able to do it. (I only speak English, which can’t help.) Well, earlier this year, I think it was, I decided to do a background language—an ancient language on my planet, spoken by a minor people (so they wouldn’t be the main characters), and largely displaced by later languages I haven’t made yet. It’s pretty bare bones—you can’t really make sentences in it—but you can name things, which is what I had in mind for it. I also created three daughter languages, a la French and Spanish to Latin. So it’s basically complete for my purposes, and it’s helping make the planet seem more real—something I’ve been striving for for a long time.

FWIW, they’re called Shigansic languages—Shigansa meaning “Central Planet,” the planet the speakers originally came from—and my favorite city name I came up with is “Yab Cābăb,” which means “Mountain House.” The “C” is sort of, but not quite, pronounced like “ch” as in “church.”

(For you conlangers out there—no, I am not piling on diacritics to make it look interesting. There are three degrees of vowel length distinguished in the language.)

Thank you @memoriesbecomestories for asking!!!

Talk About Asks.

[robertdowneyjjr]

Oh my gosh Tony Stark making fashion choices based on young RDJ movies, I love it 😂😂

sometimes tony’s just so tired of having to put on the Tony Stark Persona. it’s already shitty enough that he’s the youngest person at MIT with no one to relate to. he feels alone most of the time and the feeling doesn’t go away even when he’s surrounded by people.

he doesn’t want to go out, he doesn’t want to have to put on a show.

so on the weekends when he doesn’t have to go to the lab to work on his thesis project, tony and rhodey would stay in their dorm and binge-watch movies. they go to blockbuster and rent a bunch of movies. tony keeps the vhs tapes close to his chest and rhodey carries the bags full of popcorn and soft drinks. they get back to their dorm, tony wheels out the tv they shouldn’t have in their room and sets the first movie up while rhodey goes to microwave the popcorn in the common room.

tony’s still young, he’s still experimenting and discovering who he really is when he’s not Tony Stark™. he doesn’t really have his own sense of style yet and kind of just randomly pairs together the clothes that jarvis and ana buy for him the summers before he goes off to school.

the characters from the movies he and rhodey watches start to become sort of role models for tony. they’re all unafraid of being themselves, of expressing who they are fearlessly, whatever the consequences may be.

like so many boys growing up in that era, tony develops a bit of a crush on molly ringwald. he starts watching whatever movie she’s in, and that’s when he first comes across this actor called robert downey. they’re watching the pick-up artist one night when suddenly rhodey says to tony, “hey, you know you could be doppelgangers.”

“what?! no way,” tony replies. “my face is one of a kind, honeybear.” but he grabs the vhs box and runs to the mirror and holds it up. he looks at his reflection then back at the cover and he thinks, oh. kind of.

he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, but tony’s style starts to evolve. he sees the outfits that rdj wears in his movies and he fleetingly wonders, how would those pants look on me? next thing he knows, he’s browsing through macy’s and buying clothes for himself that he’s certain he’ll carry well. he doesn’t know how he’s so sure of it, but it’s just a gut feeling.

a couple years later, tony’s sitting alone in his apartment, missing rhodey who’s just gone off for his first deployment. tony’s feeling nostalgic, so he goes to the nearest blockbuster and rents some of his and rhodey’s favorite movies. he’s a quarter of the way through weird science and ian and max are being jackasses at the mall when tony squints a bit at the screen and thinks, i have that exact same outfit.

it happens again when he moves on to watching tuff turf. jimmy parker gets out of his car and tony gapes at the shirt he’s wearing. a shirt that’s almost identical to one that tony has hanging in his closet.

tony hops off the couch and runs to his bedroom and flings open the closet door. he paws through his drawers and the racks and every few items of clothing he comes across, he suddenly has vivid flashbacks of watching robert downey in a movie or that god awful season of snl wearing something incredibly similar. 

he hadn’t even known he’d been making his fashion choices based on what his doppelganger wore for his roles, but to be honest, tony can’t complain. he’s grown more comfortable into his skin in the last few years, and the clothes on his back had helped him hone in his confidence immensely.

tony goes back into the living room and starts the movie back where he had left off. the next time the downey kid comes on screen, tony smiles a little and says a mental thank you.

[ryanmeft]

Ranking the Marvel Cinematic Universe, part 3

Part 1: https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/183962601514/ranking-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-part-1 Part 2: https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/184208179827/ranking-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-part-2

10. Avengers: Age of Ultron

Yes, the third act goes on way too long, and is uninspired and even a bit dull. It deserves the criticism it gets. Thing is, that’s pretty much all this one deserves criticism for. Right up until that final showdown, everything in the movie clicked. It starts right off with the Avengers already a team, in a semi-cold open where every member just works. Throughout the movie, Joss Whedon proves he deserves his reputation for snappy dialogue, as nearly every exchange between every character zings. The additions of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver may not feel like the most vital parts of the formula, but they work every bit as well as they need to, and the defeated Avengers retreating to an off-the-grid hideout to hash out their issues is still among the franchises’ best sequences, more than worth the silly Ragnarok tie-in Whedon had to trade for it.

It also has a great, underrated villain. While it does seem that no one really planned in advance to have Ultron in the MCU, he works perfectly, backed up by the voice and personality of James Spader. He never comes across as a robot, but rather as artificial life, dropped into a supremely messed up world and taking---well, can we really say the wrong interpretation? Skewed, perhaps, but driven by the very true reality of mankind’s brutal nature. It seems obvious Whedon got tired by the end of the film, but everything prior to that is gold. Unless you’re one of those people who watches the original on repeat, it’s now hard to deny that the sequel tops it.

9. Iron Man 3

Fanboy cries of “they didn’t do the Mandarin right” have unfairly dogged this one since release. I don’t read the comics regularly anymore, and I find that after more than a decade outside of regular readership I have the glorious freedom of judging a movie apart from whether it matches the comics’ often-contradictory and confusing continuity. So, with that out of the way: Iron Man 3 is genuinely good. Recovering from the train wreck that was Iron Man 2 with new director Shane Black and co-writer Drew Pearce, this one decided to de-glamorize the hard-party aspect of the character and let his frat-boy nature lead him to near-ruin, getting his home destroyed and his suit crippled by a mad terrorist. That led to an excellent middle act in which Tony has to make a go of things without his vaunted suits to help him, against a mysterious villain. When the nature of that villain is revealed, it’s actually quite clever (while also being a way to avoid massively ticking off the all-important Asian box office). The new supporting cast, especially Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce, add a lot, while returning favorites get actual development. The third act goes on a little too long, but the device of having Tony manipulate multiple suits of armor at once is a clever twist on the usual Marvel shtick of an army of bad guys vs. one hero. As Marvel’s first post-Avengers movie, this one needed to prove the MCU concept still had gas in it even though the big event it had been building to was come and gone. It succeeded.

8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

Which Guardians is better? They’re both some of the more pure fun movies in the MCU, kind of like Suicide Squad, but not shitty, and in space. Some people prefer the first one for sheer irreverence and comedic chemistry, while others appreciate the more personal story and stakes in the sequel. I had a raging debate with myself on this (there were injuries) but ultimately, more personal won out. The first movie has a bunch of misfits who get together to stop a generic cosmic evil baddie bad guy seemingly for no other reason than the heck of it. The second gives them actual reasons to be together, with a truly interesting threat to fight. Peter Quill’s dad Ego, played with just the right amount of swagger and just the right gleam in his eye by Kurt Russell, is the lightning this team needed to really live. There’s a lot of “Oh, come on, stop pretending he’s not the bad guy” in movies, but in this case you really don’t want him to be; he’s the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with, and you get the sense he really cares for his son in his own twisted way. That’s villain gold.

The family themes don’t end there, with Gamora and Nebula working out their differences and Rocket learning to be (slightly less of) a little shit and appreciating his adoptive family more. And, of course, there’s Yondu’s emotional death. In fact, one of the more interesting takes I read casts the movie in the light of overcoming abusive relationships. That may seem a little grand for a superhero popcorn flick, but tilt your head a bit and you can see it. The greater amount of heart on display in this entry makes up for some occasionally ramshackle plotting, and provides a worthy sequel.

7. Black Panther

One of the few superhero movies that genuinely created a believable world, the land of Wakanda comes to vivid and incredible life, a more visually varied, colorful and detailed setting than anything in the MCU or even the Marvel catalogue; there’s nothing else like it in the genre. Ritual battles for the throne are fought amid towering waterfalls, while light speed trains blast by beneath the rural African facade. The action in this amazing setting is driven by two great characters. Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa is a doubtful king, unsure of his country’s place in the world or even his own necessity to his country. Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is a radical with a reason; his motivations feel genuine and his rage earned.

Ultimately, the supporting cast decided this one’s ranking. Other than fan favorite Shuri, the secondary players in this one are…well, dull. Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett and Danai Gurira are given minimal-if-any character development, and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that in the age of MeToo, all of the women here are subservient to a man. The third act devolves into an obligatory battle scene, when it could have been so much more given what it had to work with. By any measure, it’s an excellent tights flick, but we’re going to have to wait for the sequel to see what the setting is really capable of.

6. Captain America: The First Avenger

Just in case you were wondering if this list were biased, here’s my personal favorite MCU movie, down here at #6. One of the few films in the studio’s catalog that feels it was made entirely by humans with visions and not a marketing committee, Joe Johnston lends this one a feel that is a distinct mix of genuine World War II and the boys magazine vibe that originally birthed Cap. The result is a superhero film that stands as unique in the genre. Actual scenes of warfare are mostly avoided due to that PG-13 rating, but the costs of war are seen in relatively realistic depictions of refugee soldiers returning from a doomed mission, or the jaded responses of hardened troops to Cap’s USO-style shows. Light elements of camp come in with the deliciously over-the-top performance of Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull and that wonderfully hammy montage of Cap selling war bonds. The whole thing is tied together by Chris Evans playing the MCU’s most naturally likable protagonist, who gets a last line that, for my money, easily tops “I am Iron Man”.

5. Thor: Ragnarok

It may not be the weightiest film in the MCU, and the apocalyptic, full-stakes tone of the Asgardian story occasionally clashes strangely with the full-comedic tone of the Planet Hulk-inspired material, but Ragnarok was nonetheless the tonic we all needed in a world where blockbusters often don’t know how to relax. Sure, there’s plenty of humor in other MCU films, but it can occasionally feel as though a committee of people is sitting around with a page of one-liners and a stamp. Taika Waititi’s material does not feel like that. From the banter between Loki and everyone else to the fact that Hemsworth is finally allowed to tap into his comedic abilities, it feels like kids having fun, which we need more of. Cate Blanchett completely devours her role as Hela, while Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster is a preening drunk who gets some of the best lines. It pretty much erases the previous Thor continuity---including the only clever bit of plotting from Dark World---but what we lose is more than made up for by the fun we gain in the process. Oh, and visually, it may be the only MCU film other than Doctor Strange which fully taps into that wonderfully bizarre 60’s Marvel vibe.

4. Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man’s long-awaited starring debut in the MCU may not have been quite as earth-shattering as some hoped, but then, it wasn’t supposed to be. Of all the heroes in Marvel’s vast catalog, Spidey is the most like us. He has girl troubles, he can’t pay the rent, his boss is a jerk, and there’s always someone in the bathroom when he really needs to go (probably). Many of the hallmarks of the classic character didn’t make the transition, but the spirit is alive. Peter comes across as a hyperactive, overconfident millennial, which is what he’d be these days, and his classmates are updated from a rotating roster of stock characters straight out of 1950’s pamphlets on The Modern Teenager to a varied group of personalities that connect with today’s kids. Most crucial of all, though, is the Vulture, widely regarded at the time as the best MCU villain to date (and still this writer’s favorite). He doesn’t want to rule the world, he just wants to make a living, and that makes him the perfect opponent for Peter. Michael Keaton was the ideal choice for his casting. This is a case where a pretty darn good movie is bumped several slots simply because of how great the villain is. Sure, Downey seems to be phoning in his support role at times, and some great comedic actors are relegated to tiny roles, but these are flyspecks on the movie that redeemed the Spider-Man name after a decade of cinematic missteps. 

3. Iron Man

The original and…still the best? Not quite, but it’s up there. At the time Iron Man released, it seemed flawless in part because of the odds against it. It’s hard to imagine a time now when Shellhead wasn’t a household name, but when Marvel decided to launch their new line of films with him, he was second-tier at best. The success of the movie and, crucially, Robert Downey Jr.’s casting elevated him to essential. The impact was so great that if you go and read a modern Marvel comic, you’ll find them pretending he was always front and center. It all started here, and it started because the movie was so good. It not only rehabilitated Downey’s image, it cast the great Jeff Bridges as a villain who seems to plausibly believe his version of events, and a pre-Goop Gwyneth Paltrow as an effective romantic foil for Tony. The humor, the action, the pathos all clicked. Looking back now, the decision to have Stane go completely evil by the end of the film cheapens it a bit, especially compared to truly complex villains like The Vulture and Loki, and the character himself has evolved beyond these beginnings---despite his moral conflicts, he still revels in being an irresponsible playboy here. These are incredibly minor quibbles, but ten years later, they stand out just enough to cost it a couple rungs on the ladder.

2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The popular favorite for the best MCU movie slides in at #2, and before you hit me, it’s all because of Marvel’s need to insert cookie cutter, blockbuster endings in their movies, regardless of what kind of movie it is. They’ve gotten better as time goes on, but the giant ships over the city, flaming and falling from the sky while superpeople jump on, in, over and around them was incongruous with the slower, more measured spy stuff of the rest of the movie, and felt obligatory, causing this to lose the top spot. Still, it had to have ranked second for a reason. The plot up until the third act may be the tightest and most tense of any MCU film, with genuine mysteries unfolding and an unexpected payoff when we get to the what’s-really-going-on-here moment. New additions Anthony Mackie and Robert Redford fit well, while Black Widow is such a perfect compliment to Cap that it’s a crime they didn’t team up more often without all those other hangers-on (and there’s an unexplored romantic chemistry that seems much more apt than that between Cap and Sharon Carter). The first two acts of this one define what the MCU is capable of.

1. Captain America: Civil War

Civil War plays like one of those old Marvel Annuals, with the double-sized page count and the promises of things you wouldn’t normally see. Unlike those annuals, the movie isn’t padded out with recycled material, either. It gives audiences exactly what they’re expecting: the answer to what would happen if the good guys turned on each other.

That answer, of course, is: one hell of a fight. The airport battle in particular shows off the powers of every available hero, including the newly introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man, and the Russos (with their small army of effects people) come up with every trick and use of the hero’s powers they can for this lengthy sequence. In many ways, it’s the best of the Avengers movies.

Yet despite some wags who say it isn’t really a Captain America movie, it is. The story heavily involves both him and Winter Soldier, and Rogers ends up being the one whose decisions shape the outcome. The stakes may involve everyone at first, but they eventually come down to a very personal battle between Iron Man and Cap, after a highly clever fake-out by Daniel Bruhl’s Zemo. The ads may have promised fireworks, but just like the other Cap movies, it’s the personal stuff that makes this one work so well.

[simmonskrog74-blog]

Video clip Recreation Pointers That Will Bump Up Your Skills

There are many benefits to video clip video games, such as supporting with schooling, taking pleasure in your favourite sport or just aiding you to unwind. In this report you will find suggestions about getting wonderful game titles, growing your abilities and having a lot more enjoyable overall. Maintain off on buying Computer online games until you know far more about your buy. Computer video games entail the use of serial quantities. These serial numbers can only be employed as soon as, rendering employed Personal computer online games worthless in several circumstances. Simply because of this, Computer games are notoriously difficult to return if you do not enjoy them. Before you are prepared to buy a video clip game for a little one, get the time to investigation distinct game alternatives. There are many diverse varieties of games and a lot of different passions. Make confident you established the on-line manage options on your gaming console. This will allow you some control more than what your kid is exposed to. In addition, you can established limits on chat to restrict their speak to with other men and women. Consume drinking water as an alternative of soda during movie recreation taking part in sessions. As well a lot soda will lead to you to crash and burn bodily (let by itself the substantial calories). H2o retains you hydrated and will actually force you to consider a lot more bathroom breaks - which of program aids you consider these essential breaks in the course of recreation perform. Video video games are pricey, so fairly than obtain a single that you are uncertain if you will like, rent them. A lot of providers offer video video games for rent for a particular cost each thirty day period. By renting the movie recreation very first, you can examination it out to see if you like it and the get it if you do. Search for cheat codes by carrying out a straightforward research on the Web. Occasionally this is the very best place to discover cheats and other benefits for video game titles, without having spending for a cheat e-book. You can find out which codes perform and which kinds do not by performing a small analysis. As interesting as a video match may appear to you, study its reviews prior to acquiring it. Match businesses do their greatest to make their game titles appear enticing when, in truth, it is boring it downright horrible. Use the Web to search for testimonials or question your buddies who have played the match. If your child performs online video online games, it is critical that you consider these online games oneself or at minimum observe what your little one is doing. Devote some time playing the match and watching your kid play. Inquire questions to demonstrate that you are interested. Which is the very best way to encounter it. Play video clip games to help you find out. Video video games are not only a whole lot of entertaining, but they can be fairly academic, too. If you or an individual you know is possessing a difficult time learning some principle, appear for a sport that will help train it. You will be amazed at just how much a video clip recreation can instruct you. When getting games for your youngsters, take into account their passions. There are sufficient movie games out there now that your daughter, who likes ponies, can get a enjoyable game just as effectively as your son, who enjoys army video games. Browse the gaming retailer and request the clerk for gaming suggestions for all interests. Maintain a company funds throughout the course of the calendar year on video online games. Video games can be a quite expensive good to obtain, which can set you back again countless numbers of bucks if factors get out of handle. Attempt to choose a couple of video games and stick with people, to decrease your total expenses. When buying games for your youngsters, look into the characteristics of each assortment. Numerous new games permit for conversation with other gamers, most of whom will be comprehensive strangers. Some video games characteristic on the internet chatting, for instance. Get your kids' ages into thought, but also consider of their maturity ranges. Consider about marketing your game system before purchasing a new one particular. There is always a new gaming method coming out, and if you're like most folks you have much more than one system. Nonetheless, take into account that newer types are very likely to appear out shortly. It may possibly be really worth it to market the old ones and wait around. When you decide to allow your child to have a video gaming method, don't just established it up in his space and give him totally free reign. Place it someplace where you can monitor his enjoy time, and enforce time boundaries. Established the policies early on, and stick to them. Are you the variety of person who could play a recreation for several hours with out realizing it? If so, then have oneself a timer that is established to go off every 30 minutes or 1 hour. Playing continuously can cause your eyes and fingers to be fatigued, which may trigger wellness issues later on on. A timer is a reminder to place the match on pause and take some time off. These times, heaps of video games are transmitted on the internet. You can obtain video games when you want for your desktop, console or mobile device. Despite the fact that these online games are hassle-free to get, it can also turn out to be an high-priced routine. Will not make impulse buys, specifically of new blockbuster game titles. Do your analysis ahead of you make a choice about no matter whether or not you want to purchase a match. Play against your pals, family and even strangers. Online games perform in the identical way more than and in excess of again, no make a difference how "random" they claim to be. Really enjoying against the greatest indicates beating other human beings, as if you can beat other people like oneself, you'll be the best in the recreation. Pondering of obtaining a new match? You ought to watch some online video of the real game play prior to you purchase it. Make sure the graphics and sport enjoy will be a very good match for you. Do not go to the official YouTube release video clip by the vendor. Research for independent videos that are produced by consumers. Regardless of why you engage in, gaming on the web or on the personal computer can be really rewarding. They can educate you, increase your motor abilities enable enable you escape from each day life. The guidelines shared listed here can help your gaming encounter.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #478

Top Ten 1990s Films I’ve Still Never Got Round to Watching

I came of age in the nineties. I was born in 1981, and by the time 1990 rolled round I was already eight years old; you consume a lot in those eight years, as my lifelong devotion to Transformers (which started in 1984, when I was all of two) will attest. But really it was the nineties that shaped me, I think, more than anything. There’s a weird kind of Ground Zero in 1993 which I feel defines so much about different aspects of my psyche, from The X-Files to Jurassic Park; I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s also when Batman was dealing with a broken back and Superman was dealing with being dead. If we stretch it a little either side of ‘93, you get Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, two hugely seminal films from a director whose rise kinda defined the decade in film. And 1993 is the year I started reading Empire magazine, a publication which really cultivated my love of film, turning it from being “I like watching movies” to being a true hobby, probably the biggest and most abiding one of my life. And it’s through the pages of Empire that I was introduced to dozens of films that piqued my interest in lots of ways; quirky American indies, prestige historical dramas, wacky-looking arthouse fair, and loads more besides. Truth be told, as a regular visitor to Ye Olde Video Shoppe, my head was often turned by the exotica on display. Sometimes it was the cover art, delightfully lurid in the eighties; sometimes it was the title; sometimes it was just me wondering what on Earth this film could be about.

So through scenic trips round the HMV video isle and flicking through Empire and listening to the sage wisdom of Sir Barry of Norman, I was exposed to loads of films that just looked interesting; films I wanted to see. Sometimes I was too young, of course, but these films – unseen – expanded my interest in the artform because I knew that they were there. I knew that I’d be able to see them eventually. I dreamed as a young teen of being older and independent, of taking myself to see earnest and adult films; the latest Tarantino or Scorsese, a Naked or a Wild at Heart. I wanted to be a smart-arse cinephile university student, probably with a goatee and a ponytail, the kind of character that I was too young to realise was already a comedy cliché by the mid-nineties.

I got older, and I saw a lot of movies, but I read about a lot more, and quite frankly even back then there just weren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week. I had friends, schoolwork, Red Alert, Red Dwarf, and loads of writing to do. And, even back then, I have to say I’d have chosen Judge Dredd over Before Sunrise, or Godzilla over Pi.

So these films go on your backburner. I read the articles in Empire, I watched the trailers (remember when Empire would stick a VHS full of movie trailers to the front cover? Good times), I scanned the posters in foyers, the boxes in Blockbuster, and the nascent and ever-growing racks of DVDs as the decade wound on. My time became scanter, the blockbusters bigger and more encompassing (Star Wars fever lasted at least three years), and still those quirky-looking indies, those intelligent-looking dramas, those intense-looking B-pictures all went unseen.

No worries; I’ll see them eventually.

And then a funny thing happens. You turn around and you realise that twenty-odd years have passed. That film starring young up-and-comer who was in Schindler’s List? The one with the unknown, good-looking actor who it turns out has a new paranormal sci-fi series starting on BBC2? That was a long time ago, entire series, entire movie franchises have come and gone. And I’ve still not seen these films.

So here we are then; a list of films I’ve not seen, but have wanted to, in some cases for nigh-on three decades. It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, and it makes me wonder what recent films I’ll end up skipping on till I’m sixty or seventy. And, also, I’m going to take this list as a challenge; I’m going to try, within the next year, to watch all of these films.

Or at least I’ll try to do it before 2051.

There’s actually an added level of relevance this week. My Nanna turned 90 on Saturday. 90! So I was kinda primed to do something to do with the number 90, and as it happened this was a half-written list that I’d not got round to finishing yet. I was actually going to do a revisit of my 90th Top Ten, but as that was actually “Favourite Movies of the 1990s”, this feels like a fitting tribute, both to my grandmother (90!) and to my 90th list.

Oh, one last thing: this week I’ve just decided to do them in chronological order, rather than a “proper” ranking, because I couldn’t really decide which I wanted to see more. I’ve lived with these things for thirty years!

Malcom X (1992): there was no way I knew who Malcolm X was when this came out, but I remember seeing the posters and being curious. As I grew older, the stereotypical narrative of “militant Malcom versus peaceful Dr. King” emerged, and I was even more curious about this film. And then I began to see more films by Spike Lee, or starring Denzel Washington, and I realised just how huge a deal this must have been in the nineties. So here we are, 29 years later, and I still really want to see it.

My Cousin Vinny (1992): I knew Joe Pesci back in 1992 because of Home Alone, and also – if I’m honest – because of Goodfellas, which I’d have watched on video around the same time (shocking, I know). But all the same, I probably wasn’t that interested in a relatively-straight-looking courtroom drama starring the Karate Kid. However, I do remember people talking about it; I think my older cousins may even have rented it. And as I got a bit older, and wondered why people made jokes about Marisa Tomei winning an Oscar, I became really curious. So, by the time I was in my mid-teens, it became an early-90s film I really wanted to see. And I still haven’t. Ahem.

In the Line of Fire (1993): not everything here is going to be some earnest drama or forgotten indie movie; there’s a very good chance I would have seen Fire back in the day. I mean, my dad loves Eastwood, so it could have been something my parents rented. In ’93, I wouldn’t really have known about the political aspect of the film (I remember watching The Bodyguard and being really confused when one character talked about Reagan being shot, something I was utterly clueless about), but all the same, an Eastwood action-thriller is actually something I probably would have enjoyed. As time’s gone on, that feeling has increased.

Kalifornia (1993): weird to think that nowadays, the biggest draw for me with this film is seeing a pre-X-Files David Duchovny. Back then, I kinda had a thing for Juliette Lewis, and Brad Pitt was the epitome of cool. It probably hit me just as I was getting into Tarantino (not that I’d have seen any of his films in ’93 or ’94), and – in my head – it felt like one of those cool adult films that explored themes of violence in America. I’m not sure it reviewed all that well at the time, but all the same, I’ve always wanted to see it.

Quiz Show (1994): I think that, by 1994, I’d fixed Ralph Fiennes in my head as this young up-and-coming English actor who was going to conquer Hollywood. I’m sure by then I’d seen Schindler’s List; too young to go to the pictures, obviously, but it was an immediate rental. And ’94 was when I was really taking movies seriously for the first time; devouring Empire magazine, religiously tuning into The Film Programme. I’d probably never seen a Robert Redford film, but I knew who he was because he was so famous he permeated popular culture; so I knew it was a big deal whenever he directed. I knew nothing (still know hardly anything!) about the scandal the film depicts. But I was phenomenally intrigued. It’s on Disney+ now, I think. I’ve still not got round to it.

Reality Bites (1994): I don’t really know anything about this. It’s, like, Gen-X youngsters getting all angsty, right? And it’s Winona Ryder. If I “kinda” had a thing for Juliette Lewis, I definitely had a thing for Winona Ryder. But I remember seeing the poster in my local Video Emporium. And learning, years later, that it was an early (debut?) Ben Stiller film makes it all the more interesting. I think watching it now would be like opening a time capsule to the early nineties, and it’d be phenomenally interesting; but I know as the decade drew on, I felt this slight disconnect, like I should have watched these young-centric films that critics said “defined” the decade (see also Before Sunrise and Dazed and Confused). Still haven’t!

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995): if I was just getting “into” Tarantino in ’93, by ’95 I was fully in the tank. And this is when the first wave of “inspired by Tarantino” films crested; see also the phenomenal (but, for me, phenomenally tainted) The Usual Suspects. Denver was one of the first ones I remember being talked about. Truth is, I don’t remember much about it; but it had one of those impossible-to-forget titles which, post-Reservoir Dogs, were very popular in nineties indie crime flicks (see also Killing Zoe, Albino Alligator, and Man Bites Dog). It had a very mid-nineties cast of interesting actors that I liked (Andy Garcia, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd); I think this was the film where someone told me that a character is shot up the arsehole to slowly bleed to death. That was probably why I wanted to see it, but also the whole post-Pulp American indie vibe played a huge part; these sorts of films just seemed so cool to me.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995): mid-nineties I was very much into Patrick Swayze (Ghost! Point Break!) and Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man! Passenger 57!). Despite having seen Super Mario Bros, I’m afraid I did not at all recognise John Leguizamo, for which I can only apologise; by the time Spawn came round, he was a huge draw for me, if that helps (I imagine it don’t). anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent. Seeing these three big macho dudes play drag queens was a big deal for me; even back then, I felt that it was good for them to do something that seemed progressive, or ran counter to outdated notions of masculinity. Was it really that progressive? I’m not sure; obviously I’ve not seen the film, but it seemed that way to me as a kid. It probably helped normalise the idea of non-heteronormative performance, in the same way The Birdcage or Philadelphia did. I’m not saying these are ideal interpretations of diverse sexuality, but when all you know is utter straightness, they were a window into a wider world. Also it’s got a hell of a title.

The People Versus Larry Flynt (1996): we’re now getting very deep into reading-Empire-religiously territory, and also David-is-old-enough-to-see-a-15 territory (the first 18 I saw was Face/Off the following year). We’re also – and I want to put this delicately – in an era where the discussion or depiction of pornography in a film was, shall we say, intriguing. Sue me; I was 14. The thought of taking a porn publisher and making him a good guy in a freedom of speech battle meant that, not only might it feature a bit of filth, but I could also root for him against the forces of censorship. I loved Woody Harrelson, too; and the insanely controversial (and banned!) poster is hilarious, if a bit much nowadays. Anyway, I wanted to see what I hoped was an intelligent and funny biopic that might also be a little bit rude; it made me feel grown-up and sophisticated. I wonder if I’d still feel the same if I watched in 2021.

Gods and Monsters (1999): jumping to the end of the decade and whilst I know full well why I’d be so excited to see Brendan Fraser in a more serious role, I’m not sure why I’d have know Ian McKellen; maybe The Keep? Or just reading about Richard III (I’d not seen it at that point)? Certainly I was very excited for his casting both in X-Men and Lord of the Rings, so I must have known who he was. Anyway, this film sounded great; a biopic of the director of Frankenstein, and also what appeared to be a rather tragic romance. I loved stories about old Hollywood, and – paging Wong Foo – stories about LGBTQ+ characters, even then. And I wanted to see what one of my favourite Hollywood action stars was up to, as well as support a British actor who I knew was in consideration for an Oscar. Knowing more about the situation, the movies, and the actors, I’d really love to see it now.

Well, there we are: ten films I can’t believe I’ve still not got round to seeing. I’m a bit rubbish, really. And these of course are just the tip of the iceberg (don’t worry, I did see Titanic). Throw a stick at an episode of The Film Programme in the nineties, and you’ll hit a film I was really interested in but still haven’t seen.

Mind you, I’m not dead yet. There’s still time… and I know Quiz Show is on Disney+…

[mytherapistthinksiamfunny]

Remember The Titans and Black Lives Matter

I learned American History from Hollywood films and pop culture during the Bush Administration. 

My 6th grade teacher was horrified to see my potential wasting away on the frivolity of Based on True Event sport blockbusters and Remakes of Dystopian Nightmares, Sarcastic Teeny Bop Melodramas. 

Or, worse, the Hippy Dippy Nonsense genres that encouraged the youth to remain ignorant Sheeple With A Death Wish like Jackass or Gossip Girl

Despite how that sounds, he wasn’t a condescending prick. He was a good man with very high standards for media that he came off as a snob. Because he was. A snob. With so much nerd rage. That’s what made us bond.

You see, I’m a snob too. I had to be. I am the daughter of immigrants. And I grew up during the Bush Administration. 

I grew up during a time of Prop 187, El Nino, El Morro, Thalia Y Tomy Motola y el secuestro, Pasale Paisano, anti-Cuba sentiment, Fake News, Columbine, Hanging Chads, 9/11/01, Pseudo-Fascism, WMDs, Jingoism, Patriot Acts, They’re Gonna Follow Us Home, Shakira, Katrina, George W Bush Hates White People Kanye Scandal, Militia, NRA Guantanamo, Dixie Chicks, A Day Without A Mexican, Selena the Movie, El CHupacabra, End of the American Dream, Once In A Lifetime Breaking News TRL Britney Once In A Lifetime Civil Unrest Breaking News Breaking News Narco Corridos Breaking News Miramax Breaking News Anthrax Breaking News Marylin Manson, Las Hijas De Juarez, Eugenio Derbez, La Escuelita,  Los Tigeres Del Norte, Los Tucanes De Tijuana, Napster, Metallica Some Kind of Monster, Bono, Apple, Pixar, MySpace, AIM, new tech every 6 months, cell phones, Reggeaton, Walter Mercado Primer Impacto, American Idol,

To boot, I am the daughter of immigrants. Who were hyper-Catholic. And narcissists. And abusive. And alcoholics. Who were allergic to stability, progress, open-mindedness, or anything conducive to raising children in a global crisis. 

So I had to be selective about the media that I consumed. Because my mother was a Batman Villain, my paternal-figure was a reluctant father unwilling to abandon his fuckboi ways for his family, and my brother and I were left to our own devices to figure out how to raise ourselves and our parents. We sucked at it. And years later we are paying for trying.

So, while navigating the highs and lows of our own puberty-induced hormonal roller coaster, we had to think quick and raise our 2nd-adolescence shit show of a parental unit.

We were parentalized. I didn’t know it at the time, but that is what happened to us.

What I did know at the time is that I needed to figure out how to live. Come up with a division of labor within the family unit and ensure that everyone played their role. You know, like the mother typically does.

And in order to play my role, I had to be studious of this different culture. Not just American culture. Not just teen culture. Not just Mexican culture. But all of them. Somehow, I had to find a way to navigate life. Since the age of 9 years old.

It’s exhausting having to be the adult of the house. I did not have a chance to be a child. Or matter to anyone. So I learned to matter to myself.

I learned not to trust anyone to be part of my support system because the people who were supposed to show me what that looked like were emotionally unavailable. And they stubbornly refused to divorce because that would mean they had failed their culture and religion and would be ostracized from the communities made of individuals they hated but stubbornly worked to impress and fit into.

And that meant that I befriended a strange array of really awesome people who made me feel seen and heard and understood. Like this Santa Clause-looking white dude with a motorcycle fetish and a kind touch with prepubescent girls with culture shock and daddy issues. Best of all, he was genuine. And sweet. And not at all inappropriate with children. That’s not sarcasm. He was not inappropriate with me or anyone else that I knew of. He truly was a great teacher.

Which is why I tried to keep in touch with him long after 6th grade. He was a computer nerd and introduced me to the wonder of the internet. And internet humor. And being opinionated. He was my Big Guy Bow Tie.

His opinion meant so much to me and I wanted to please him so badly.

And not once did he cross a line that would make it harder for me to thrive and move past the other trauma I was being exposed to. 

How sad that I feel compelled to reiterated that he never diddled me. Sad for his reputation and sad that I have come to terms with how vulnerable I was to predators. 

He was a real one.

I knew that my feelings were not normal in the broader sense of the word. But I understood that it was all I had to work with  and make magic with it. So I figured out that I would have to be very guarded and selective with my time, effort, and social circle. Which often meant I was the smart young adult in a group of what I thought were sophisticated adults but were really ghost of my future if I did not get past my daddy issues in a healthy way.

By the time I got to high school, I was the weird kid

I had no idea how I got there. But I had to figure out how to follow my passion without wasting my potential.

My passion is art. Specifically, music. But in general? Art. Books, Poetry. Knowledge.

And because that wasn’t complicated enough: I was discovering my own sexuality. 

And the first born first generation Mexican American with hyper Catholic parents.

I may as well have come out as a supporter of the Axis of Evil

They would never understand that I was ACTUALLY part of the Axis of Awesome

They would not understand. It would be lost in translation

So I had to learn to be silent with my truth. Forever hiding in the shadows and wondering when my life might begin

It began when I learned that the library was my escape. That I could learn about anything I wanted with very basic tools and that my ingenuity would get me far

But what does any of this have to do with Remember The Titans? Or Black Lives Matter?

Well... everything.

Because in addition to my parents being old fashioned and abusive, they were also closet racists. I had to teach myself not to ingrain their prejudices as I trusted them to keep me alive. I had to walk a very fine line between Daddy’s Girl and Daddy Issues. A fine line between Mommy’s Little Princess and Mother Knows Best and No The Fuck You Don’t.

And I managed to do that with the renaissance of black content creators in the early 2000s. Remember the Titans was a favorite of mine. 

Little did I know

I was teaching myself to experience different cultures without appropriating them. I found what I was into and I immersed myself in it.

But I hid it. I silenced my opinions and tried to keep the peace. For the sake of my family.

That did not work. Shocking.

But I was left with the realization that even though my effort was wasted with my nuclear war of a family, I learned valuable lessons that I taught myself. Including that Black Lives Matter, anyone who has trouble acknowledging that needs to grow the fuck up and learn something cause we’re running out of time and ain’t nobody got time for ignorance an fear with a mad man in the white house.

And I don’t want to miss out on my life simply because I come from dysfunction and am constantly playing catch-up to understand what normal is and how to achieve it

I am not alone in this. I come from a generation of American children who learned to cope with complex issues of race, politics, satire, drugs, over-medication. self-medication, financial irresponsibility, weaponized faith and ignorance. It was the dawn of the age of the Basket of Deplorables. And Millenials were caught in the crossfire. I was caught. And I learned. Black. Lives. Matter. Women have voices and opinions that matter and a feminine point of view is crucial to the success of any business endeavor. I taught myself feminism and  committed to its intersectionality before I knew it may be a word the dictionary I owned was missing. I learned that words matter because language has power. I tasted the crispness of that juicy apple from the tree of knowledge. And I wanted to marinate in its juices until i was good and goddamn ready to be tasted and known myself.

Oh yeah, I learned my Daddy Issues manifest themselves in a need to sexually please emotionally unavailable men.

So I chose as wisely as I could. You know, what with the inmates running the asylum 

But my god am I into drummers! And linebackers! And Cheating Ass Marine  Motherfuckers With Secret Families in Portland who Ghost a Bitch Just When She’s About to Fall!!!

My picker is off. I learned that phrase from Loveline. Another resource in my quest to exist in my natural state

Having to twist myself into a pretzel to please the un-pleasable was unsuccessful. 

So I stopped and focused on my real family. My chosen family. Those who care if I live, die, have food and rent money, and ask me to text them when I get home so they know I am safe. Those people. My people. I go hard for them. And they are various heights, weight-classes, political affiliations, complexions. because I learned that black lives matter. As well as Asian American Lives. And Migrant Lives. And Femme Lives. And LGBTQIA+ Lives. In essence, ALL LIVES MATTER INCLUDING BLACK LIVES. Because life is too hard in it’s natural state to be excluding people from We The People. Because the America I Still Believe in does not allow for any of this maga shit to stand

Because we need to be allies for each other against the real danger to this country. 

Internalized Systemic Racism and how it has been exploited to separate the working classes in a strict divide down socio-economic boundaries that are not easily crossable. This phenomenon is often called a glass ceiling. Minorities are particularly affected. But that doesn’t mean that all white people are to blame or responsible or immune. You see, I’ve read the Handmaid’s Tale. 

And while everyone is looking at the Scarlet Robe of the Handmaids and the Serene Teal of the Wives, no one looks at the EconoWives. Wife Trash, I suppose.

Much like the Titans’ football season. High school seniors in a recently-desegregated town. Sounds like the plot of a Disney movie or a Based On True Events TV movie

Gee... I can’t imagine why I related to this...

But I did and I learned from it. I learned that it takes effort to make a champion. And it is not accomplished alone. And while the odds may be ever against you

You have to decide what matters to you. And if that is football, you listen to your brothers on the team and keep your circle small.

And if that is closet-cases that fear for their safety when outed

And if that is a mother at 9 years old because that is how old you were when you realized you were more emotionally intelligent than your own pathetic excuse for a mother who is really a batman villain who you will later turn into if you don’t watch out for the stalker tendencies now and your fuckboi father who still cheats on your mother because this is a pity marriage that neither of them are ready to end even though everyone would be better off, especially your brother who is a precious little squish but being psychologically handicapped by the Stephen King Novel raising him and who is so much like you but you won’t know that for several years because you’re just a child and what do you know what normal is or is not supposed to feel like...

Then that’s just what the fuck it means.

My therapist asked me how I’m doing in 2020 with my depression and the isolation and what I think about the protests.

Like if the logic behind the protests was up for debate. Or if it was a political statement rather than a statement of human compassion and empathy to say that 

Black

Lives

Matter.

I guess she hasn’t seen Remember the Titans

[carrionkid]

hey i've noticed you're doing movie nights and post a lot about movie that seem really damn cool and i was wondering if you have like a list of favorites or any recommendations for someone whos looking for some cool 80s/90s movies? thanks + i really love your blog

i’m glad you like my blog!! ok so here’s a list of some of my faves (i’m also a fake bc i haven’t seen a lot of movies that you typically think of when you think 80′s movies)

the alien franchise - just all of it, i love ripley and i love the xenomorphs

the thing - horror movie with some quality practical effects, body horror extravaganza and paranoia out in the arctic

tremors - i haven’t watched it in forever but i loved it as a kid and me and my little brother used to play “the floor is full of graboids” instead of “the floor is lava” because of this movie

scream - this is kind of meta of the slasher genre, it’s a good movie with some good twists

the lost boys - horror comedy about some rowdy vampire boys

stand by me - coming of age story written by stephen king so of course there’s murder, i haven’t watched it in a while tho

carrie - this is a bit earlier than you wanted but i love my psychic daughter

evil dead 2 - you don’t need to know anything about the first evil dead to enjoy it, it’s a horror comedy about a guy fighting demons in the woods

back to the future - duh, time travel shenanigans featuring michael j fox

poltergeist - one of the first horror movies i ever saw and i still can freak people out by going ‘they’re heeeEEEEeeere!’

an american werewolf in london - practical effects, werewolves, being haunted by the ghost of your dead friend, this movie has it all!

so i married an axe murderer - i watched this with my mom as a kid and enjoyed it. a poet marries a woman who may or may not be a murderer

labyrinth - david bowie is a goblin king who steals children. lots of singing and puppets.

an american tail - FIEVEL!!! an animated movie about a mouse immigrating from russia to the us, my mom made a bootleg vhs tape of it from the blockbuster rental copy so we would stop making her rent it all the time

flight of the navigator - a boy gets abducted by a sentient space ship named max. time travel shenanigans. i loved this movie as a kid but idk how well it held up.

hook - adult peter pan has to go back to neverland to throw down with captain hook for the final time

uhhh there’s probably more but this is already a super long list and a lot of it is movies i watched as a kid

[sarangjjokjis]

these days, i adore you (more and more)

actor au // 20638 // seungkwan isn't the best at remembering names, but he'll try to make an exception for his new favorite customer.

seungkwan doesn’t really care about keeping up with the latest celebrity gossip. it’s dumb and unnecessary, and he prefers to keep up with things that matter, like who currently calls the blue house their home and exactly just what types of endangered canaries have been recently brought into the seoul grand park. celebrity gossip just doesn’t interest him in the least— after all, why would he care about the lives of people he doesn’t even know when there’s enough drama happening in his own circle of friends?

it’s why, when he’s halfway through a shift at starbucks, he doesn’t understand why there’s a sudden tittering in the tables around the windows. it’s nearly noon, which means that nearly every single humanities major from kyunghee university down the street is seated at a table with a macbook and a sketchbook in front of them.

hiding his phone back behind the counter, seungkwan narrows his eyes at all of the girls suddenly craning their necks to stare at someone or something walking down the sidewalk.

the door opens, and a guy walks in. he’s very nearly /mobbed/ from the get go, with nearly every person in the coffee shop, girls and guys alike, rising from their seats, presumably to launch themselves at the guy. seungkwan doesn’t get it. that guy looks like any regular guy, except most regular guys don’t have baseball caps pulled low over their foreheads and face masks covering their noses and mouths.

maybe the reason people are following the guy around is just because he seems to have nice eyes. maybe.

then, like magic, the sea of people parts when two men, both tall while one is thin and lanky and the other is built and obviously muscled, appear on both sides of the guy with the cap and the face mask and escort him to the counter where seungkwan is waiting. he hopes his jaw isn’t dropping too widely. that would be bad. those must be some really good friends that the guy has, though, to offer to part the sea of starbucks patrons just so their friend can get a drink.

“hello, welcome to starbucks, what can i get for you today?” seungkwan says, already punching in what he thinks the guy is going to ring up. it’s happened at least a few times before, so it wouldn’t hurt to be right again. he looks to be about seungkwan’s age, give or take one or two years, and if he’s going to order anything like what seungkwan usually gets, it’ll be a—

“hmm, can i get a venti vanilla bean frap with two shots of espresso with whip and caramel drizzle on top?” the guy shoots him a what must be a winning smile, except seungkwan can’t tell, not really, because of that face mask covering his lips.

seungkwan looks down at where he’d punched in a grande iced americano with no ice and less sugar, then back up again at the guy’s face, and wonders if he’s misheard. but he knows that in his nearly three years of working at the starbucks nearest his college campus, he’s had ample time and more to perfect his listening skills, and he /knows/ that he hasn’t misheard. okay. a venti vanilla bean frap with two shots and whip and caramel on top. got it.

he clears the order that he’d already made and reaches for a cup to write down the order onto, and when he’s done writing down all the abbreviations on the side, he looks back up again at the guy.

“and your name is?” seungkwan asks, his sharpie poised and ready.

“ver—” the guy starts, and then he stops. seungkwan blinks at him, already having written down the first part of his name. “hansol.”

“okay, verhansol,” seungkwan says, just a little bit confused, but he writes down the name anyway. parents these days are getting more and more creative with their names, and, well, it’s not really his place to judge if someone’s name is what it is. he takes the guy’s card and runs it through before handing it back. “your drink will be ready in just a sec. we’ll call your name when it’s ready.”

seungkwan smiles at verhansol, one of those nice and placid smiles that his mom’s friends always like to coo at, which then leads to them pinching his cheeks until he can almost feel them starting to get flattened out. then he motions for the next customer in line to come forward.

“wait,” verhansol says, but seungkwan doesn’t hear him— he’s already taking the next guy’s order. oh well, seungkwan thinks, as he writes down the order for a tall caramel macchiato with five shots. if verhansol has any problems with his name, it’s not seungkwan he should be taking it up with— it’s his own parents.

-

when seungkwan gets home, lugging his bags of groceries up two flights of stairs and tromping all the way down the long hallway, he pulls out his keys to unlock the door when he realizes that it’s already wide open. he groans, a long-suffering groan that he hopes will induce the earth to swallow him up.

“what the /fuck/, soonyoung-hyung?” he shouts, pushing the door open with his hip and dropping his bags in the entryway. it’s a small apartment, one that’s situated a few blocks away from campus, but a short distance is what he’d had to sacrifice for cheaper rent.

“sorry!” he hears from the general direction of the bedroom that’s not his, so he follows the direction of the noise.

“you guys decent?” seungkwan asks before nudging the door open with his elbow, and he hears an indignant squawk in return. seungkwan leans against the door and folds his arms over his chest. ah, there they are. the usual culprits.

seokmin, his roommate of five— nearly six, then they’ll have been roommates for longer than seungkwan’s old hamster bongie had been alive— years is sprawled out on top of the bed in the middle of the room. he’s flipping idly through some brochures that he’d picked up at the law office he interns at, and he looks up and waves when seungkwan narrows his eyes at them.

soonyoung, seokmin’s friend from one of seokmin’s classes, is sprawled out on top of /seokmin/ on his back, scrolling through his phone. he’s a part-time bartender and a full-time couchsurfer, and he’s also the proud owner of the annoying squawk from before that had apparently come out of a human mouth.

“why did you guys leave the door open again?” seungkwan grouses. “this is, like, the fifth time this has happened in the last two months, can you guys not? what’s so important that you can’t just, i don’t know, /lock the door behind you/?”

seokmin, at least, has the decency to look ashamed. soonyoung doesn’t.

“important things,” soonyoung declares, with a grin that’s entirely more suited for a bar than the sacred and holy ground of seungkwan’s apartment.

“we’ll remember in the future, it’s just that /this guy/ was so into something he was reading on his phone that he forgot to lock it behind him.” seokmin reaches behind him to slap soonyoung on the arm. “get your bony ass off of me, kwon soonyoung, jeez.”

“fine,” seungkwan huffs. “what was so interesting that you nearly sacrificed the safety of our beloved home territory for?”

soonyoung perks up. “oh! do you guys remember wonwoo, that one friend of mine? the one from elementary school?”

seungkwan doesn’t remember the specifics, just very general details, and he can tell that seokmin doesn’t, either. they both nod, though; otherwise, soonyoung’s going to launch into an hour-long spiel about how much he loves to hate jeon wonwoo and how much fun they’re going to have at their next paintball session.

“so he got hired to be a manager for this one actor from overseas, it’s so cool, he was telling me /all/ about it, like how that actor dude gets the total v.i.p treatment and stuff. man, i wish i were rich. and talented. and hot,” soonyoung sighs wistfully, before he perks up again. “wonwoo mentioned that he’s filming for some movie right now, though, so he might be able to score us tickets when it finally comes out?”

“nah, i’m good,” seungkwan says, already inching back towards the hallway so he can rescue his groceries and put them back into the fridge.

“are you sure? it’s some guy who used to be a child actor but now that he’s all grown up and hot or whatever, they want him to be in this blockbuster movie. vernon choi? i think?” soonyoung practically jumps up, entirely too animated for the current topic of conversation. “come /on/, it’ll be fun! i promise!”

“i’m good, seriously,” seungkwan says. the name does ring a bit of a bell, but the bel isn’t ringing quite enough that he bothers to pay attention.

“jeju island bumpkin,” soonyoung mutters, flopping back down onto the bed, and seokmin lets out a loud “ow, fuck /dammit/” when soonyoung puts too much weight onto seokmin’s arm.

“seoul city stuckup,” seungkwan sneers, without any real malice behind it at all. it’s all fun and games between them, the casual jabbing and playfulness that only comes with years of being friends.

he’s trying to remember where he might’ve heard that name before, but then he realizes that he doesn’t have time for this. he has so many other things to worry about, anyway, like— “wait, did you remember to tell me if son dambi was on that music show earlier today?”

“you asked me that?” soonyoung’s eyes are too wide for him to be completely innocent. seungkwan wasn’t born yesterday, he knows how kwon soonyoung operates.

“i wrote it on the /whiteboard/!” seungkwan screeches, and he can practically feel his blood pressure rising. his doctor told him during his last visit to keep his blood pressure down, but honestly, it’s just /so difficult/ when he lives with people like seokmin and soonyoung.

“just kidding,” soonyoung says, rolling over to grab a pillow and toss it up to the ceiling. “yeah, she was on it. it started at half past four, just check the timestamps i left on the notepad on the table if you wanna just watch her cuts.”

“the timestamps that /i/ wrote down and the notepad that /i/ left on the table, thank you very much,” seokmin pipes up. “you were just eating the mozarella cheese sticks that i got earlier today.”

“true,” soonyoung agrees, but seungkwan doesn’t care. his heart is swelling up with an unidentifiable emotion, and it isn’t long before he can feel himself starting to burst.

“i /love/ you guys,” seungkwan chokes out, and it’s the only warning that seokmin and soonyoung get before seungkwan launches himself at them, landing squarely on top of soonyoung’s legs and seokmin’s back. “i /love/ you guys so so much.”

“okay,” soonyoung gurgles out, but seungkwan just hugs his head even harder. “can you get off now— please— can’t— breathe—”

-

seungkwan’s a year out from school. he’d gone to school for musical theater, but now he thinks he wants to be a variety star or a singer. or something. he’ll figure it out. it’s definitely not what his parents had planned for him, but he’s happy to keep working to save up money so he can put it towards what he’ll do later on.

he started out as a barista for starbucks after he finished his second year of university, and while it’s not the greatest job, it pays the bills and lets him have a good amount of time off if he ever wants to go back to jeju to visit his parents, provided, of course, he can find someone to take his shifts for him.

he’s been at the local branch for long enough that he’s become an assistant manager, and while it pays more than just being a barista, the hours are definitely worse since he doesn’t have it in him to force the already overworked university students to help him open before dawn even breaks and then close up at the end of the day. it’s why he’s usually at the shop until late, dusting off the tables and cleaning up any errant spills on the ground.

it’s why, when someone pushes open the door at nearly five minutes before closing, seungkwan starts at the sudden sound, nearly toppling over an open carton of half and half milk. it’s really empty, with just one other girl packing up her laptop into her messenger bag and getting ready to leave. it’s why seungkwan nearly /stares/ at the guy who walks in before remembering that he’s supposed to be doing his job.

“hello, welcome to starbucks, what can i get for you today?” seungkwan asks, practiced and easy. when he blinks, he realizes that this guy is the same guy who’d come in a few days ago— the guy with the baseball cap and the face mask.

“um,” the guy says, and he sneaks a look around the shop before he tugs the face mask down. seungkwan barely represses a snort. it’s like the guy thinks he’s searching for /danger/ or something like that— who does he even think he is? the only other person who’d been there, the girl with the laptop and the bag, has already left, the bells above the door tinkling in her wake.

“what happened to your friends from last time?” seungkwan asks, idly drumming his fingernails on the table. if he has a few minutes before closing left, he might as well make it worth his time and have it be fun.

“friends?” the guy echoes, a blank expression coming over his face, and seungkwan squints at him.

now that seungkwan has the chance to actually look at his face without the shadow of the cap and the face mask covering it all, he can admit that it’s a pretty nice face. his nose is high and his cheekbones are sharp and well-defined and his eyes are framed with long lashes. dirty blond hair sweeps across his forehead, and there’s the beginnings of a dusty pink flush starting to creep across his cheeks due to the blustery chill of the night air outside.

he shakes himself mentally. snap out of it, seungkwan.

“yeah, the two guys? one was tall and kinda tan? and the other was a bit shorter? they helped make way for you when you came in last time?” seungkwan asks, and he sees recognition start to dawn in the guy’s eyes. he resists the urge to snort. seriously, exactly what kind of friend is this guy, if he doesn’t even know who seungkwan’s talking about?

“ah, yeah,” the guy mumbles. he shifts, fidgeting with his own fingers. “well, they’re just… off doing their own things right now. you know? i just like being alone sometimes, i guess.”

seungkwan hums. “what are you, famous?”

“um,” the guy starts, his eyes suddenly wide. “er—”

“just kidding,” seungkwan laughs. like this guy is famous. he’s too awkward to be a celebrity, all gangly limbs and uncoordinated movements. the commotion that started up the first time he came around was probably just because of his looks. “of course i know the answer. anyway, what’ll it be for you today? you have, like, a minute to decide.”

seungkwan squints at the guy even more. he thinks he might need some new glasses, what with all of the squinting he’s been doing, but no matter. what was his order again? he usually doesn’t remember the orders, not when he goes through hundreds, even thousands, a week, but sometimes, there are the unusual cases, where the owner has an unusual name and an unusual order.

it hits him.

“ah! you were the vanilla bean frap with the whip and caramel and the shots!” seungkwan squints a little bit harder. a name’s just on the tip of his tongue, something that sounds /different/. “verhansol?”

the guy winces. “yeah, uh—”

“so, verhansol, what’ll it be for you today?” seungkwan asks, cheerily now that he’s remembered a name. “the same thing?”

“actually, my name isn’t verhansol—” verhansol says, and seungkwan pauses.

“it’s not?” he’s a little disappointed, if he’s going to be honest here.

“yeah, it’s just— hansol. just hansol here.” the guy says, and there’s a strange sort of relief in his voice when he says that.

“just hansol?” seungkwan asks, and the guy nods. “alright, hansol, what would you like? we’re technically kind of already closed, but i guess it doesn’t hurt to whip something up for you real fast.”

“oh, i didn’t realize, i’m sorry, i’ll just—” hansol says, his eyes wide. he’s halfway to lifting his mask back over his mouth so he can, presumably, run away, but seungkwan reaches over the counter to place a hand on hansol’s wrist.

“hey, it’s fine. what’s one more cup to clean, right?” seungkwan offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and he feels a warm rush of /something/ when he sees hansol hesitantly smile back.

“er, alright, then. what would you recommend? uh, my voice has been kinda scratchy lately, so i think it might be something wrong with my throat? anything that could help with this which would be easy to clean up?” hansol asks, and seungkwan takes a moment to consider it.

“wait here,” he says to hansol before bustling behind the counter to brew his tea. he’d normally recommend a warmer drink when it’s so cold out, and hearing that hansol’s throat hurts makes him lean toward getting him a hot herbal tea. hansol looks like a peach tranquility kind of guy, anyway.

hansol is still there when seungkwan comes back with the drink, popping a lid onto the cup and sliding a thin sleeve up over it. he places the cup between them, looking down just briefly to make sure the lid is on tight, and when he looks up, there’s a card in his face.

“here,” hansol says as seungkwan takes it. “i can pay for however much that was.”

seungkwan almost considers giving it to him on the house, but— well. money doesn’t grow on trees. he does reach down to the pastry display to pull out a cake pop, and with one hand still holding the card, seungkwan holds the cake pop out to hansol with the other hand.

“cake pop? i promise they’re good. kinda sugary, but you ordered a vanilla bean frap the last time around, so i don’t think you have any problems with sugar.” seungkwan grins as hansol takes the cake pop, leaving him free to run the card through. “it’s on the house, by the way.”

“oh, are you sure? i can cover it, it’s no big deal.” hansol says. “i’m sorry, i feel shitty for making you stay behind so long after closing.”

seungkwan shakes his head. “it’s fine, really. at least you didn’t make me whip up something super complicated.”

hansol doesn’t look convinced. “are you sure? i can help you if you need it— like, anything?”

seungkwan /does/ end up laughing then. “oh my god, are you serious? nah, it’s seriously okay. besides, i’d have such an issue with the higher-ups if word ever got out that i let a customer wash dishes. we do have cameras up in here.”

“oh. well. thanks a lot for this drink,” hansol says, tucking his card back in his wallet before shoving it all unceremoniously into his pocket. he lifts up the cake pop with one hand and the drink in the other. “thanks a lot— oh, wait. what’s your name again?”

hansol leans forward to read the name on seungkwan’s tag, and the drink very nearly tips over, except he rights it in time. “seungkwan. it’s been great meeting you, seungkwan. thanks for waiting so long for me.”

“no problem,” seungkwan says, feeling the beginnings of a smile tug at his lips again. “come back whenever.”

hansol grins at him, lifting up the cake pop again in some kind of a salute, before he turns on his heel and walks back out into the night. seungkwan watches him go.

he cleans up in almost record time that day, and even though he gets home later than he usually does because he’d left later, his mood doesn’t drop at all. even when he flips on the lights in the hallway to see soonyoung with his legs stretched up over the other end of the couch, watching some old running man reruns and stuffing cheese puffs into his mouth and getting crumbs everywhere.

it’s annoying, but it’s always been the kind of annoying that’s the familiar and welcoming type of annoying. he thinks that if soonyoung /hadn’t/ been there doing that, he’d be even more weirded out. so seungkwan just grins slightly and makes his way down the hallway to go shower and then collapse into bed for as long as he can.

“hey, shorty, why so late tonight,” soonyoung calls out from the couch, and seungkwan doesn’t even bother flipping him off, which makes soonyoung nearly tumble to the ground in shock. he manages to catch himself on the edge of the couch in time, hanging off of it for a few seconds before giving in to gravity and falling anyway. “wait, what the fuck, i called you short and you’re not even responding? hey, boo seungkwan, who are you? what’s wrong with you? hey!”

seungkwan trudges down the hallway, beelining for his bed instead, and he collapses face first onto his sheets. he breathes in, and even over soonyoung’s shrieks telling seokmin to /get up, someone’s abducted seungkwan and replaced him with a super nice lookalike!/, seungkwan can still hear the beating of his own heart.

he wonders just why he remembers so, so clearly the fact that hansol hadn’t pulled his face mask up before he left, leaving his entire smile, wide and beaming, open for the entire world to see.

he wonders just why he cares.

-

hansol comes again. it’s very nearly the same thing as what happened the last time, except for two things: the first, it’s ten minutes before closing this time around, and the second, he brings his friends with him.

“hey, hansol,” seungkwan says, resting his elbows on the counter. he hadn’t had to open up today, which is probably the only reason he’s as unusually awake as he is right now. his foot starts tapping out an insistent rhythm against the linoleum floor, /tap tap tap/, and he hopes that no one notices. “oh, hi, your friends are here today. hi!”

one of the guys, the one who’s a bit shorter than the other, nudges hansol in the side, and hansol winces. “uh, yeah. they wanted to meet you.”

the guy nudges hansol again, and it seems to be harder than before, since hansol winces more widely than the last time. “this is seungcheol,” hansol says, smacking the guy’s wrist away. he gestures to the other guy, the taller and tanner one. “this is mingyu. they’re both annoying.”

“you must be seungkwan,” seungcheol says, and as he comes a little bit closer, seungkwan can’t help but feel that it’s a bit like a predator honing in on its prey. he gulps. “hansol couldn’t stop /talking/ about you, god, so annoying.”

from behind seungcheol’s shoulder, seungkwan can see hansol roll his eyes nearly all the way to the ceiling. “i have /not/, stop spreading lies, seriously—”

“anyway,” seungcheol starts, smoothly cutting hansol off in the middle of his sentence. “we wanted to see where he’s been spending all of his time. he even ran away from us last night, can you believe it?”

“seungcheol-hyung, please—” hansol says, his eyes suddenly bigger than usual, taking a step forward and grabbing at seungcheol’s sleeve. “wait, hang on, seriously, this isn’t what we agreed to—”

“/anyway/,” seungcheol says, easily shrugging hansol off and sidestepping him. “it’s good to meet you. we’ve heard a lot.” he smiles. “if this kid ever gives you any trouble, just let me know, yeah?”

“er, yeah, of course, but hansol hasn’t really done anything wrong,” seungkwan says, and he hesitates for just a split second before he continues in a tone that he hopes makes clear that it’s all a joke. “i mean, aside from coming here five minutes before closing last time.”

hansol, at least, has the decency to look a little mortified, and mingyu, behind him, stifles a laugh.

“i’m sorry,” hansol says quickly, and when he shoves seungcheol to the side so that he can stand in front of the counter, that’s when seungkwan realizes that he’d come in without a face mask entirely. he looks down, and he sees that it’s dangling by its strings from hansol’s hand. “i just wanted to catch you when—”

he cuts himself off, and seungkwan doesn’t know why his throat is suddenly too tight, or why his mouth is suddenly too dry, or why he can’t form words that had come so easily to him before.  

“when what?” seungkwan asks, and he thinks that his voice is much, much calmer than how he feels. there’s no /real/ rational explanation for why he can hear his blood thundering in his ears, but his palms are sweaty and all he can hear is the beating of his heart.

“when you were alone,” hansol says, so quietly that it’s almost a whisper. he inches forward slowly until the only thing separating them is the counter between them— small mercies, seungkwan thinks. small mercies.

“and why would you want to do that?” seungkwan clenches his fists, his nails digging into his palms the way he knows will leave white crescent moons in his skin later on.

it’s so quiet, so still, that seungkwan swears that he could hear a pin drop. somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice reminds him that they’re not alone, that hansol’s two friends are still there, but it’s hard to register their presence when he’s having enough trouble remembering that he has to stay standing, has to stay upright, has to stay /breathing/.

“because,” hansol says, his eyes fixed on seungkwan’s. “i wanted to talk to you.”

-

“i’m ruined,” seungkwan says empathically, throwing open the door of seokmin’s room. soonyoung’s currently camped out in the middle of seokmin’s bed, reviewing some of his dance videos on a tablet, while seokmin’s sitting on the ground, his back against the side of the bed. seungkwan beelines for the bed, toppling as dramatically as he can onto the bed, and soonyoung included, as he can.

“what the /fuck/,” soonyoung says, even more emphatically. he swats at seungkwan’s arm, which seungkwan dodges neatly only to flop over onto soonyoung’s chest.“why are you ruined. get off, i’m trying to review some of my choreo.”

“soonyoungie-hyung,” seungkwan whines, rubbing his cheek against soonyoung’s t-shirt. “my life is /over/.”

soonyoung sighs and puts his tablet aside. “what’s wrong?”

seungkwan sighs louder than soonyoung had, reaching upwards so he can scratch at soonyoung’s shirt as soonyoung reaches down to tangle his fingers into seungkwan’s hair. “i think i caught something,” seungkwan sniffs, and he feels the bed dip as seokmin gets up onto the bed as well, laying his head against soonyoung's.

“are you sick?” soonyoung sounds far too concerned for seungkwan’s comfort, and seungkwan stifles a giggle.

“/nooo/,” seungkwan draws out for as long as he can. he sighs again, even longer and more drawn out. “i’ve caught the /feelings/.”

there’s a still, still silence in the room, one that’s punctuated only by seokmin’s shrill giggle, before soonyoung, in a quick movement, pushes seungkwan off of him and onto the ground.

-

“hyung,” seungkwan moans through the door, clawing at the handle that is, unfortunately, very stoutly refusing to budge.

“no,” soonyoung calls out.

“/hyung/,” seungkwan says again. “let me in.”

“no,” soonyoung replies again. “deal with your feelings yourself, you giant blond marshmallow.”

“/hyung/,” seungkwan whines. “i really need help. please, hyung.” he says, more quietly, “i don’t know what to do.”

the door opens, and soonyoung stands there, his arms folded over his chest. his mouth is pressed into a thin line, one that’s clearly borne out of his annoyance with seungkwan’s persistent antics, but it softens as soon as he sees how large and clearly pleading seungkwan’s eyes are. or maybe that’s just seungkwan projecting, but whatever, he’s gotten his foot in the door, and he’s not budging.

“okay, kiddo. let’s talk about your feelings,” soonyoung sighs, and drags seungkwan over to the bed. “who’s this about?”

“well, there’s this one customer,” seungkwan starts, before soonyoung stops him with two fingers expertly placed over seungkwan’s lips.

“a /customer/? i thought you said most of them are annoying.”

“well, yeah, i did, but i said /most/, not all. hyung, stop interrupting, i’m trying to tell you about my feelings, okay? these are really weird feelings, so i’m gonna need you two to listen hard so you can figure out what’s wrong with this dude,” seungkwan huffs, his voice slightly muffled until soonyoung removes his hand.

“anyway. he came in one day, right? and i thought he was some kinda crazy dude because he had this hat pulled down over his face and a mask, too, like he was trying to be a celebrity or something.”

“that’s it?” soonyoung asks, his eyebrows arched. seungkwan hates that about him, by the way. his eyebrows are always so nicely done, whereas seungkwan’s grow into untamed messes after a few weeks of not maintaining them. but that’s beside the point right now.

“no, of /course/ that’s not it,” seungkwan snaps. “hyung, aren’t you even listening? he came in with some stupid dumb really long order the first time around, but then when he came back, he asked me if /i/ had any recommendations for what he wanted to drink. who even /does that/?”

“uh, a lot of people do?” soonyoung says, his eyebrows arching even further into his hairline. seungkwan thinks that if they go up any higher, they might disappear.

seungkwan shakes his head. “no, you don’t understand. he wants something, hyung. tonight, when he came in for the third time, i asked him why he came so late, and guess what he said!”

“what,” soonyoung says flatly.

“he said,” and seungkwan looks around the room even though there’s nothing else in the room besides seokmin, who’s sitting on the edge of the bed, apparently transfixed by seungkwan’s story. he continues, in his most dramatic stage whisper, “that he wanted to talk to me.”

“so?” soonyoung asks. “i want to talk to you sometimes, too. how is that any different from what he said to you.”

“it’s /totally/ different,” seungkwan argues. “first off, you’re just my roommate. housemate. doesn’t pay rent but still sleeps over here all the time guy. whatever. you’re not /him/.”

“what makes me so different, then?” soonyoung asks, and then seungkwan realizes that there are so many ways that they’re different. hansol and soonyoung are like two sides of a coin, completely polar opposites, and he needs to make soonyoung understand.

“well, he’s really good looking, and he has a nice voice, and he looks at me in a kind of funny way,” seungkwan says, pleased with his answer.

“by that kind of funny way, what do you mean?” soonyoung’s eyes are piercing, his gaze steady, and seungkwan fidgets. it’s strange seeing soonyoung like this, so immensely focused, when the soonyoung he’s used to cracks jokes nearly every hour of the day and makes jokes at seungkwan’s expense whenever he can.

“like… it feels like he’s just staring at me and me only? and it makes me feel super weird, too. my heart starts beating really fast, and my hands get sweaty,” seungkwan lists out, and then he bolts upright. his jaw slackens, and he grabs at soonyoung’s upper arms. oh, hey, he’s been working out. “hyung, am i— am i /sick/? am i going to /die/?”

soonyoung rolls his eyes. “i think i figured out what’s wrong with you, seungkwannie. just one more question, though. or maybe two, depending on just how dense you are.”

“what is it?” seungkwan asks, nearly biting his nails in anticipation.

“it happened today, right? what did you do after he said he wanted to see you?”

seungkwan’s mind goes blank. it had just happened that day, but for some reason, he’s drawing a blank about what had happened after hansol had leaned over the counter and said, in that deep voice of his, “because i wanted to talk to you.”

he remembers the blood rushing through his ears, so loud that seungkwan couldn’t hear his own thoughts. he remembers his palms loosening, falling slack at his sides. he remembers suddenly feeling so, so dizzy, and he remembers slumping over the counter, and— oh. he remembers hansol reaching over the counter to steady him, his hands warm on seungkwan’s arms. they’d been so firm, holding seungkwan in place so that he couldn’t fall anymore.

he remembers hansol’s voice asking him, “seungkwan? seungkwan! are you okay? seungkwan!” the shock and the near desperation in his voice were both unmistakable, both unforgettable. he remembers telling hansol that “i’m fine, hansol, really. um, i'm just a bit lightheaded. yeah. i’m okay. thanks,” and it had been a complete and total lie, since seungkwan had felt anything but fine at the moment.

he remembers the way hansol had offered to make one of his friends drive him home that night after he’d finished cleaning up for the night. “there’s no way i’m letting you walk home alone this late at night, especially when that just happened,” hansol had said, a deep furrow between his brows.

he remembers saying “oh,” in a /totally/ intelligent and well-spoken manner, and who was he to argue, when hansol was right there next to him, so kind and so nice to someone he’d only met three times before.

he remembers giving the tall one— was it seungcheol or was it mingyu?— his address, stammering over the familiar numbers and characters like it was his first time saying them out loud. he remembers sitting there in the back seat with hansol, their thighs pressed together, the warmth of hansol’s body next to his permeating the limited space between them.

he remembers hansol walking him to his door, and he remembers hansol asking him, “do you have your keys?” and he remembers nodding his head yes in return, and he remembers—

he remembers hansol staring at him in the dim light of the overhead lights, his eyes reflecting the stars and the moon in the sky, so luminous and so incredibly bright. he remembers hansol’s breath hitching so noticeably anyone could’ve seen it from a kilometer away, his throat bobbing and his adam’s apple moving up and down.

he remembers hansol saying, “see you again, seungkwan,” so fondly and so warmly that he had felt the same way he always felt when he wrapped a warm towel around himself.

he’d walked nearly robotically to his door, trying every single key in his keyring before getting to the one that finally worked, before stumbling through the hallway and trying to gather his thoughts. he’d ended up there, in front of seokmin’s door, declaring, “i’m ruined,” before opening the door and throwing himself down on soonyoung.

but what had come before? what had come before all of that— that was soonyoung’s question, after all, and he thinks he knows the answer. there’s only one real logical explanation for how he’d slumped over the counter and made hansol have to shake him, for how he’d suddenly just lost all control over his limbs and thoughts, for how he still doesn’t quite remember exactly what had happened in the moment itself.

“oh,” seungkwan says, horror creeping into his voice. “i think i fainted on him. just a little bit. oh god.”

“oh,” soonyoung says, delight evident in every word he says “seungkwannie, i think i most definitely know what’s wrong with you.”

“i don’t want to know,” seungkwan says as quickly as he can. “i don’t wanna know, i don’t wanna know, i don’t wanna—”

“you /like/ him, seungkwannie,” soonyoung and seokmin chorus, altogether too happy for seungkwan’s liking. “you really, really, really like him. you /like/ him.”

“fuck,” seungkwan says, staring blankly into nothing at all, and then he says, once more, with added emphasis, “/fuck./”  

-

the next time hansol comes by, seungkwan is ready, and by ready, he means that he’s in the back of the store, huddling morosely next to the freezer in the kitchen and picking at his nails. he’s not hiding, of course; hiding would imply that he has something to hide, which he doesn’t. of course.

so when the manager on duty, jeonghan, pushes open the door of the ktichen to lean against it and raises his eyebrow— a talent that seungkwan wishes he had, to be quite honest with himself— seungkwan turns in the stool that he’s appropriated as his chair and faces away from him.

“what are you doing?” jeonghan asks, and by the tone of his voice, seungkwan can tell that it’s his “i’m pretending to be a responsible parent” voice. seungkwan hates it because jeonghan is almost always right. “why are you hiding?”

“i’m not hiding,” seungkwan says, reading the sheet of paper stuck on the freezer. “hey, this is interesting. did you know that we’re low on frozen strawberries and blueberries? someone should make the order to refill them.”

he hears the sound of footsteps, then before he knows it, his chair is being spun around and jeonghan is leaning over him, his eyes searching for /something/ in seungkwan’s face.

“don’t pretend you don’t know what i’m talking about,” jeonghan says sweetly, his voice like melted sugar. “boo seungkwan, you’re going to tell me why you’re in the kitchen talking about strawberries and blueberries and hiding on a stool like a little kid when there’s a customer at the counter asking where you are.”

seungkwan nearly falls backward off of his stool in shock, and he just barely manages to catch himself on the side of the table next to him. “/what/?”

“oh, now /that’s/ suspicious,” jeonghan says, leaning down even more, his body nearly folded in half at this point. “who’s this? an ex?”

seungkwan gulps. he’s always felt that there is nothing scarier in the world than yoon jeonghan when he’s on the war path, and now he knows for sure that he’d rather swim the distance from seoul to jeju than have to spend twenty-four hours with jeonghan when he’s like this.

“or,” jeonghan continues, righting himself again and pushing stray locks of dyed blond hair behind his ear. “maybe he’s— a new beau coming to woo you? do you like him?”

several things happen in quick succession.

first, seungkwan shrieks, absurdly high-pitched, and he bats his hands at jeonghan to try to get him away because he /just can’t deal with this right now/.

second, jeonghan stumbles backwards, bumping into the table behind him— the table that has their drink ingredients and other food items laid out on top of it.

third— and both seungkwan and jeonghan watch this happen in slow motion, their hearts leaping into their chests— an open carton of half and half teeters over the side of the table and falls with a completely anticlimactic splat onto the ground, its contents spilling everywhere.

they stare at the mess that’s slowly growing outwards, the white puddle expanding until it touches the soles of jeonghan’s shoes and the legs of the stool that seungkwan’s perched on and continuing even further like it’s looking for more things to make milky and disgusting.

seungkwan stares up at jeonghan, his hands shaking and his mouth working, but no words are coming out of his throat. he says, higher than he’s ever heard his voice before, “jeonghan-hyung, i—”

jeonghan takes a slow and measured breath. “boo seungkwan,” he says, finally, eerily still. “i’m going to go outside. i’m going to tell your lover boy out there that you’re busy and you can’t see him today. i’ll be back in five minutes. and by the time i get back, this mess is going to be gone and you’re going to be done acting like a lovesick baby.”

jeonghan picks a napkin off of the table, and with something akin to disgust, wipes the milk off of his shoes and tosses it into the garbage can before he turns on his heel to go back out front. seungkwan remembers, with an additional pang of guilt, that those are the shoes that jeonghan had just bought last week. oops.

it’s only when he’s wiping up the mess and tossing the empty carton, along with all of the paper towels he’d used, into the garbage that he really starts to process what jeonghan had said.

“lover boy, my ass,” seungkwan mutters under his breath as he cleans his hands off so he can go back out front. “he’s not my lover boy, that’s for sure.”

-

the next day, when he has his next closing shift, seungkwan waits at the counter with a cake pop saved in the display for hansol as an apology. he waits until ten minutes after he’s supposed to close to actually lock the doors and begin cleaning up, since it’s clear that hansol isn’t coming by that day. seungkwan takes the cake pop home with him, stuffing it into soonyoung’s mouth as soon as he opens it widely.

the day after that, seungkwan waits until five minutes after closing before he sighs, taking the cake pop and putting it into a paper sleeve. he stuffs this one into seokmin’s mouth, wrinkling his nose as seokmin licks the frosting off of his lips after.

“thanks, seungkwannie,” seokmin crows, reaching over to pinch seungkwan’s cheeks. “you’re the best roommate.”

seungkwan wrinkles his nose again. “i didn’t bring this home for you, okay. don’t get too used to it.”

by the third day, seungkwan stops waiting. it’s clear that hansol isn’t coming by anymore, and even though he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t have any means of finding out— no phone number, no address, nothing.

so seungkwan puts all of his thoughts of hansol out of his brain and focuses, instead, on how annoying it is that soonyoung leaves his toothbrush in seungkwan’s cup every morning, or on trying to get seokmin to use the proper sponges to clean the dishes, or on persuading jeonghan to let him have more afternoon or morning shifts when he’d wanted closing shifts for so long. anything to avoid thinking about hansol.

-

seungkwan is in the middle of watching a video clip of son dambi’s acceptance speech for her latest award when he realizes that he needs more eggs for the dinner that he wants to make tonight.

“soonyoung-hyung!” he calls out, pausing the button and staring at the closed door of his own bedroom. no response. soonyoung’s job at the bar doesn’t start until a bit later, and seokmin’s out right now, so— “soonyoung-hyung? are you there?”

“what!” he hears, slightly muffled and extremely irate.

“can you run out and get us some more eggs? i think seokmin ate all of them last night?”

“oh right, his omelet,” seungkwan hears soonyoung grumble under his breath, as it’s even more muffled than before. “told him not to use so many damn eggs.”

“so can you go? i’m watching son dambi’s stuff right now.” seungkwan waits expectantly for an answer.

“uh.” he hears. “uhm. i’m kinda busy right now.”

“busy with /what/?” seungkwan closes his laptop and rolls out of bed to go open his bedroom door, and then he realizes that the bathroom door’s closed.

“um. the toilet’s kinda clogged right now,” soonyoung says through the door. “i gotta fix this shit. unless you want to. please?”

oh, there’s no way in hell seungkwan’s cleaning soonyoung’s mess up for him.

“ahh,” seungkwan hums. he heads back into his room to grab his keys and wallet before stomping as loudly as he can down the hallway. “well, i’m going now! bye!”

the last thing seungkwan hears before he shuts the door is a long and drawn out “/nooooo/.” poor soonyoung. seungkwan told him that the beans last night when they went out to grab some tacos were a bad idea, but he didn’t listen. this is why he needs to listen to seungkwan more.

it’s a nice day out today. he hums as he walks the short distance to the grocery store— just three blocks away from his apartment. that’s one of the perks of living so far from the school and closer to a more downtown type of area. he grabs a basket once he goes through the door, and he begins looking around for what he might want to eat.

he grabs some cartons of strawberries and blueberries that he’ll force soonyoung to wash for him later, as well as tangerines and bananas. he heads to the frozen section to pick up some ready-made meals for when he gets off work late and can’t muster up the effort to make himself something good to eat before circling back and snatching a pint— or maybe two— of gelato.

he’s halfway to the cashier when he remembers that he’d come to the grocery store for eggs in the first place, and he ambles back to the dairy section. yogurt’s on sale today, so seungkwan tosses a few of those into the cart as well. the eggs come in dozens and cartons of eighteen, and he stands there in front of the display for longer than he really should before he reaches for the carton of eighteen.

as he does, though, someone else’s hand lands abruptly on his, and he pulls his hand back like he’s been burned, an apology already quick on his lips. the apology evaporates off of his tongue when he turns his head to see who he’s accidentally competed with for eggs.

that hand belongs to a tall guy, tanned and handsome, and seungkwan /knows/ him.

“you’re hansol’s friend,” seungkwan says.

“you’re the guy from the starbucks,” mingyu says at the same time.  

they stand there like that for a bit, neither one of them really sure who gets the carton before mingyu motions for seungkwan to take it.

“your hand was on the bottom, so you were first,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, and seungkwan does. mingyu takes the carton below that one, placing it into his cart, which seungkwan notices is laden with all sorts of vegetables and meats.

“i didn’t expect you to be the type to cook a lot,” seungkwan says lightly, trying to make some sort of casual conversation to distract himself from the question that’s on his lips— where’s hansol and why haven’t i seen him for the past few days?

“oh yeah,” mingyu says. he laughs, a low sort of rumbling sound that seungkwan thinks that he likes. “i’m kind of like a personal chef now. i mean, it’s not really my job, but,” and he sighs, “when you live with a bunch of lazy asses who’ll just eat takeout, sometimes you have to take things into your own hands.”

“i totally feel you,” seungkwan agrees. there’s no way he can count the number of times that soonyoung and seokmin have texted him to ask him if he wants to make food, or “otherwise we’ll grab something on the way home. you want anything?”

another silence ensues, and when mingyu looks like he’s about to turn to leave and go pay, seungkwan blurts out, “is something wrong with hansol?”

mingyu turns, surprise clearly written all over his face. “what?”

seungkwan clears his throat, trying desperately to ignore how much like a lovesick teenager he sounds like. “well, hansol hasn’t been around for a bit, so, um. i was wondering if he’s okay?”

“oh, yeah, he’s fine.” mingyu still looks perplexed, and seungkwan wonders just why when he opens his mouth again. “he’s been kind of busy these past days, though. he heard you were busy, too, so he didn’t want to come by and be a bother.”

seungkwan could faint out of happiness. or joy. or the sheer relief that floods his entire body, settling in the tips of his fingers and his toes. he’s come to terms with his maybe-crush on hansol, but he’s just glad that the other man doesn’t hate him.

“that was only because i accidentally spilled milk on the ground, so i had to clean it up,” seungkwan complains, huffing. “i’m not really all that busy, though. the next time you guys come by at night, i’ll be there!”

“that’s good to hear, i’ll let hansol know.” the expression on mingyu’s face relaxes a bit, his features settling back into an easy grin, but he looks at his watch before his eyes widen in alarm. “uh, i’m kind of late for something, so— i gotta go! don’t be a stranger, okay, seungkwan?”

seungkwan waves mingyu off, promising to see him again, and he takes his time going through the rest of the grocery store before going to check out and pay. when he walks home this time with his arms laden with bags of groceries, there’s a song on the tip of his tongue and a spring in his step, and it takes him a couple of seconds before he realizes that it’s the song that hansol had played in the car the time he’d driven seungkwan home.

-

“you’re back,” are the first words out of seungkwan’s mouth when he sees a familiar figure open the door.

hansol smiles back at him— the shadows under his eyes are noticeably darker than they were, and his face is just a bit more wan than it was before, but the smile is the same. “hey, seungkwan,” he offers.

“hansol,” seungkwan says, leaning on the counter since it’s just the two of them. “are you okay? mingyu said that you’ve been really busy, so you really don’t have to come by if there are other things you have to do.”

hansol shakes his head. “nah, i’m not that busy anymore. my schedule’s usually pretty manageable, but some days, i just have insane hours, like you seriously wouldn’t even believe how long they keep me there for.”

“what do you do?”

hansol blinks. “sorry, what?”

“your job,” seungkwan explains. “i just realized that we never really talked about that. i’m here, obviously. what’s got you working such long hours?”

hansol freezes for a split second before he reaches behind himself to scratch at his neck. “ah, i work for a— it’s a start up. i work with a lot of people, lots of super important people on it, so i can’t really afford to disappoint any of them.” he laughs, a bit sheepishly. “that’s why i’m always working such long hours. there’s kind of a lot riding on whether this goes well or not.”

“you must have a lot on your mind, then,” seungkwan says, humming underneath his breath. “you shouldn’t let it get to you so much, though. if work ever gets to be too much, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with, just, you know. taking some time off for yourself. you have to take care of yourself before you can look after other people, hansol.”

hansol’s eyebrows are furrowed in the middle of his forehead, like he’s thinking deeply about something, and seungkwan feels a stab of pity for him. he reaches into the pastry display and takes out a cake pop.

“cake pop for your thoughts?” seungkwan jokes, and hansol takes the stick with a tight smile before he lifts it up to his mouth.

“it’s good,” hansol says, his eyes wide. “huh.”

“that’s what the sugar does to you.” seungkwan grins. “hopefully it helped you a little?”

“yeah, it helped a lot,” hansol agrees. he reaches down, below where seungkwan can see, and he pulls out his wallet and puts it on the counter.

“no,” seungkwan says immediately, pushing the wallet back to hansol. “it’s on me.”

hansol frowns. “let me pay for it.”

“no,” seungkwan says again, slapping hansol’s hand and grinning in triumph as the other man pulls his hand back, affront clearly written all over his expression.

“seriously, let me pay, it’s just a couple thousand won—” hansol starts, and seungkwan slaps his hand away again.

“and that’s exactly why you should let me pay for it,” seungkwan bites back. “besides, i get an employee discount, it’s fine. it’s no big deal.”

hansol stares at seungkwan, who stares right back at him for a while until hansol laughs, a small huff of air that has the edges of seungkwan’s lips curving upwards. “fine,” hansol says. “you win this time.”

“you’re damn right i do,” seungkwan scoffs, folding his arms over his chest and watching as hansol puts his wallet back in his pocket.

“but,” hansol says, and his eyes are twinkling with something that seungkwan can’t place. “you’ll let me buy you lunch someday. how does next week sound?”

seungkwan feels like he’s swimming. he feels like he’s five feet under the surface of the ocean, where his hearing is muffled and his vision is obscured and he can’t be sure whether or not what he’s is reality. but he’s not underwater, he’s standing on dry land, and everything that’s happening right now is happening in real life.

“um,” hansol says. “you there?”

seungkwan blinks at him before firmly closing his jaws with a solid snap. oh, right, he has to answer.

“hmm, okay. i guess i did get you too much coffee and way too many cake pops already. i’ll eat you out of house and home, hansol,” seungkwan says, and then he promptly mentally kicks himself. what is with his phrasing today? what is with his terrible choice of words? boo seungkwan, get it together.

thankfully, hansol seems to think it’s cute, or something, and he laughs again, showing off his rows of perfectly straight and perfectly white teeth when he tells seungkwan to put his number into his phone. seungkwan’s jealous.

“you have a nice smile,” seungkwan mutters under his breath, taking hansol’s phone and putting in his name and number, before writing down /guy from starbucks! you’re buying him lunch! don’t forget!/ in the notes section.

“really?” hansol asks, and seungkwan nods as he passes hansol back his phone. hansol looks at the screen before he beams again. “thanks, seungkwan. i’ll text you later, yeah?”

“see you, hansol.” seungkwan waves to hansol as he pauses in the doorway to wave back.

“by the way,” hansol calls out. “you have a pretty smile, too. it suits you.”

then, with a final wave and a wink, hansol disappears into the night. seungkwan watches as the headlights of his car move off into the distance, and when he’s certain that he’s well and truly alone, he collapses onto the counter, burying his face into his arms.

“fuck,” he mutters, and he knows that his face is warm and that his ears are even warmer. “what am i even /doing/?”

-

getting lunch with hansol is, apparently, the right answer. the address that hansol texts him later that night is for a restaurant whose name seungkwan doesn’t recognize. it’s just three train stations down from where seungkwan lives, but he’s never been to that specific neighborhood.

/tomorrow okay with you? this is hansol, by the way :)/, seungkwan gets a half second later, and there’s no one there to watch him doing it, so he rolls his eyes even though there’s a grin quirking at his lips. of course it’s hansol, who else would be texting him?

/ofc it’s you u_u well it’s already past midnight, so technically it’s later today, but don’t expect me to bring you coffee in the morning!/ seungkwan texts back. he pauses for just a bit before he sends a sticker of a pink peach folding its arms across its chest.

/are you sure?/ hansol sends with a sticker of a brown dog with a wide and shit-eating grin, and seungkwan narrows his eyes, shifting his position in his chair so he can more easily text back /yeah i’m pretty sure, what do i look like, your personal coffee machine?/

seungkwan’s too busy sending hansol a string of mock angry stickers that he doesn’t even notice someone creeping up behind him until it’s too late.

“damn,” soonyoung says right into seungkwan’s ear. “is this the customer you’re in love with? his name’s hansol?”

seungkwan screams, high-pitched and shrill, flinging his arms outward before curling in to protect his phone. unfortunately, soonyoung has the reflexes to duck from seungkwan’s swinging arms, dancing just out of reach. damn him and his dancer skills.

“his name’s hansol,” soonyoung repeats, his eyes gleaming with mirth. “we finally have a name to the hot mystery customer that seungkwan’s given his darling heart to. so, are you guys going on a date?”

“go away,” seungkwan grouses, making sure his phone’s completely off before turning back around.

“never.”

“go /away/,” seungkwan repeats, getting up and shoving soonyoung bodily out the door, slamming and locking it behind him. he ignores all of soonyoung’s “let me in! i want to know! boo seungkwan, let me the fuck in!” and settles into bed.

he has eighteen unread messages to get back to, and he cracks his fingers before he opens the app back up to continue their sticker fight.

somewhere in between figuring out how to get to the restaurant and telling hansol to go the fuck to sleep already, seungkwan realizes that he might be falling a bit faster than he’d thought.

/tmrw at 11 then?/

/ya sounds good! go to sleep already kiddo/

/>:( you’re not even that much older than i am/

/whatever, see you later hansolie the smallest kiddo/

/ughghhhhhh goodnight see ya/

/see yaaa/

-

hansol is dressed impeccably, in a black blazer with a white button-down and dark wash denim jeans, a pair of what must be designer sunglasses perched on his nose. seungkwan looks down at his own outfit, a pink and grey sweatshirt with ripped jeans underneath, and immediately feels underdressed. hansol seems to take notice of it, because he laughs and grabs seungkwan’s elbow to take him over to a table. it’s a small place, but seungkwan can tell that it’s well-loved and well-travelled.

“how did you find this place?” seungkwan asks after they get their menus set in front of them, pages upon pages of bibimbap and japchae and tteokbokki. seungkwan’s mouth is already watering.

“oh, my dad’s sister— my auntie— owns this place.” hansol says. “just order whatever you want.”

“isn’t it a little bit too early to be meeting the family?” slips out of seungkwan’s mouth, his brain to mouth filter clearly malfunctioning today, and when he realizes what he’s just said, his gaze jerks up towards hansol. he doesn’t look /angry/, just a little pink, and seungkwan decides: disaster averted.

“i guess so?” hansol replies, the same tiny smile on his face and his cheeks still tinged with pink.

“so, um.” seungkwan clears his throat, trying to clear the air between them. “what’s good here?”

“hmm.” hansol doesn’t even bother looking at the menu. “the jjolmyeon here is pretty good. the naengmyeon too, since it’s kinda warm out. but anything here, really, is pretty good.”

“hmm,” seungkwan imitates him, affecting a deep baritone before he switches back to his normal voice. “are you sure you’re not just saying that because it’s your auntie’s food?”

hansol snorts. “you’ll see. i bet you her food’s gonna knock your—” and hansol ducks his head underneath the table, which seungkwan doesn’t quite understand until— “yellow and white striped socks off.”

“yeah? you wanna bet, kiddo?” seungkwan challenges. he can’t help it— he’s almost unreasonably competitive, and he loves dares and bets more than anything else. arguing with hansol like this is starting to really make him feel something he hasn’t felt in a while.

the waitress comes by with her notepad and a pen then, and they put their bet aside to order. hansol orders a jjajangmyun for himself, and when seungkwan orders just a bibimbap, hansol orders a plate of tteokbokki. the waitress leaves, but not before patting hansol on the head. judging by the way hansol just /takes it/, seungkwan guesses that she must be a cousin or some other type of relative.

“the tteokbokki’s to share,” hansol clarifies to seungkwan before he grabs a napkin. he pulls out a pen from his bag and starts to write.

“what are you doing?”

“writing down the terms of our bet.” hansol looks back up at seungkwan. “what should we bet on?”

“i dunno. there’s not really anything i can think off.” seungkwan shrugs, then an idea pops up in his brain. “oh, wait. i know.”

“what is it?”

“i’ve been thinking about dyeing my hair for a bit now. how about if you win, you get to choose what color i’ll dye my hair next. deal?” seungkwan offers.

hansol seems to consider that before nodding and tapping his pen on his chin. “what’s in it for you if you win, though?”

seungkwan thinks. “i get to choose what color to dye your hair?” hansol would look good with blue. with a face like that, he could probably pull off any color. some things in life are just so unfair.

hansol blanches. “w— uh. my manager would murder me. he’d murder me and then bring me back to life just so he could murder me again.”

“what about like, tips? or highlights?” seungkwan suggests, but it’s quickly shot down.

“how about this, i’ll get a temp tattoo of whatever you want me to.”

“temp tattoos are /temporary/! that’s not fair!”

“yeah, well so is hair dye!”

seungkwan considers his options. hansol’s right— he could just change his hair back to something he actually likes if hansol ends up having really shitty taste. “fine,” he agrees. “but just so you know, the food has to be absolutely amazing, like the best thing i’ve ever had.”

“yeah, of course,” hansol says, scoffing as he writes the terms of their agreement down on the napkin and slides it over to seungkwan to sign. “it’s gonna knock your fucking socks off, boo. hope you brought another pair.”

seungkwan’s about to retort when he reads what hansol’s written down on the napkin, and he stifles a laugh. “god, choi, you are so extra. why are you like this.”

“just sign the damn thing already. it’s a legal contract, if you must know.”

“yeah, sure,” seungkwan signs the napkin with a flourish before he slides it back over to hansol. “get ready to get a tattoo of my face tattooed all over your chest, choi.”

hansol narrows his eyes at him. “get ready to have bright neon green hair, boo.”

the food comes, and they keep eye contact with each other as they take the first bites of their meals. hansol grins, too wide for seungkwan’s comfort, once he sees seungkwan take his first spoonful of bibimbap, and that’s when seungkwan knows that he’s well and truly fucked.

“i lost,” seungkwan says after a span of just ten minutes. he stares down at the empty bowl of bibimbap, at what had once held a heaping serving of rice and meat and vegetables. “but holy /shit/, that was good.”

“told you,” hansol says, his voice ten times more cheery now that he doesn’t have to get seungkwan’s face tattooed on his chest. “shouldn’t have made the bet with me. told you it was good.”

“ugh,” seungkwan moans, putting his head into his hands. “choose a pretty color for me, will you?”

hansol smiles, honey-sweet. “of course, seungkwan. of course.”

-

26 may

we, the undersigned, agree to the following binding terms and conditions, which shall be broken down by each individual involved.

if i, choi hansol, am the loser of this bet, i do agree to get a temporary tattoo of boo seungkwan’s choosing on anywhere on my body of boo seungkwan’s choosing if my auntie’s cooking is not, and i quote, “knock my socks off material.”

x choi hansol

if i, boo seungkwan, am the loser of this bet, do agree to dye my hair any color of choi hansol’s choosing for at least one month if choi hansol’s cooking is “knock my socks off material.”

x boo seungkwan

results: winner: choi hansol loser: boo seungkwan

-

“how about this?” hansol says, and when seungkwan turns to see what color he’s chosen, he wishes that he’d never turned at all. they’re in a convenience store, browsing the different colors of hair dye they have, and of course hansol has the worst taste in the world. he should’ve known right from the start with that vanilla bean frap.

“no,” seungkwan says, hoping that if he just says no, hansol will stop bothering him and just let him /live/ for five seconds.

“why not? it’s nice. i think it’ll suit you.”

seungkwan stares at the packaging, at the neon pink letters that proudly proclaim “make yourself a flower fairy in just two hours!” there’s a part of him that recoils at just how /bright/ everything is, but there’s another part of him that hasn’t tried pink yet.

“please,” he says as a last resort, one that he knows with ninety-nine percent certainty won’t work, and it doesn’t.

“seungkwan,” hansol definitely doesn’t croon, because seungkwan refuses to associate a face like that with a verb like /crooning/, and will his heart please stop beating so fast already? “we signed a contract. your soul is bound to it now. you have to do this.”

then his face softens. “if you don’t like this color, we can choose another one together— i just thought this color would look kinda good on you.” he bites his lip, shifts his weight from one leg to the other, and seungkwan knows that he’s doomed.

hansol lifts his eyes up from where he’s been reading the packaging. his eyes are bright and luminous, and seungkwan feels like he’s falling into them the longer they hold their gazes. hansol says, in barely a whisper, “it reminds me of spring, like you do.”

hook, line, and sinker.

-

hansol insists on helping seungkwan dye his hair. he holds the small plastic bag with the container of hair dye the entire way back to seungkwan’s apartment, swinging it the way a kid would. it’s kind of cute, if seungkwan can put aside how he’s been conned into becoming a giant ball of cotton candy for at least a month.

(he’d paid for it, too, sliding his card across the counter to the cashier before seungkwan could pretend to protest. “it’s all my fault you’re going pink, anyway. i might as well pay for getting to see this, right?” hansol had said with a grin that had stretched across his face.)

“i think that’s a bad idea,” seungkwan says immediately, looking over to hansol. “you probably shouldn’t.”

“why not?” hansol frowns, resting his elbow on the window next to him so he can rest his chin on his hand.

seungkwan doesn’t want to say /because my roommates might be home and i really, really, really, really do not want them to meet you because then i’ll be teased to hell and back for the rest of my entire life/. so he settles for the next best option. “have you ever dyed hair before?”

even though he has his sunglasses back on again— who wears sunglasses in a train? apparently hansol does— seungkwan can tell that hansol rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, in what seungkwan also knows is a silent gesture to his dirty blond hair with the roots starting to grow in. “what do you think?”

seungkwan narrows his eyes. “no, i mean your own hair. have you ever done it?”

“nope. never.”

“exactly! then why do you want to watch?” seungkwan asks, exasperated. “it’s super boring, and it smells like crap.”

“i just want to watch! i think it’ll be cool. wow. maybe if i watch you do it, i’ll get good at it, and then i can dye my hair all sorts of crazy colors and piss /everyone/ off. it’ll be great.” hansol sounds /way/ too excited for something as mundane as dyeing hair, but—

seungkwan sighs. he’ll never turn down an opportunity to help someone else wreak as much havoc as they can, and he knows that hansol’s found his weak spot, accidentally or not. “fine,” he bites out. “but it’s going to be cramped and stuffy and stinky as /fuck/, so don’t say i never warned you.”

“okay.” hansol grins, and that’s that. they sit there in silence until the subway pulls into the station closest to seungkwan’s apartment, and he taps hansol’s knee to get him to get up when it’s time.

after they leave the station, the way home is like second nature to seungkwan, and he’s fairly certain that he could navigate it at night with a blindfold on. not that he’s going to try it anytime soon, but it’s funny to him that hansol keeps looking around at the buildings.

“see something you like?” seungkwan quips, light, and hansol snorts at him.

“it’s just interesting, okay? i haven’t... i haven’t really seen too much of this side of seoul. it’s been a while since i’ve been back.”

seungkwan’s limited attention span perks up, and he knows that they’re still walking, but he can’t miss the opportunity. “came back? from where?”

“ah, i live in new york mostly. i was born there, moved back here to hongdae whne i was five, and i moved back there for work.” hansol sighs. “it’s a lot of traveling.”

“i’d bet,” seungkwan hums, and he stops in front of his apartment complex. he turns to hansol, making a grand and sweeping gesture with his arms. “we’re here.”

there are only two flights of stairs in between where they are right now on the ground floor and seungkwan’s apartment on the third floor, which means seungkwan only has the amount of time that it’ll take him and hansol to ascent just two sets of stairs to figure out whether or not soonyoung and seokmin are home.

he knows that if they’re home, it’ll be the end of him as he knows it, and he knows that if they’re not home, they’ll find out one way or another and grill him about hansol until he starts wishing for a portal to open up beneath his feet to swallow him.

the entire way there, seungkwan mumbles /please don’t be home please don’t be home please don’t be home/ under his breath so many times that hansol stops on the landing in between flights and looks over at him.

“you okay?” he asks, the bag still in his hands.

“yeah,” seungkwan replies. “just wondering if my roommates are home.”

“oh. are they?”

hansol’s a bit skittish suddenly, and seungkwan wonders why. come to think of it,  “i don’t know. maybe? if you’re not up for meeting them today, there’s always next time.”

seungkwan watches as hansol visibly relaxes, the lines of his face disappearing. “yeah, i’d like that,” he says, and seungkwan files this away in his brain for future reference. interesting.

neither soonyoung nor seokmin ends up being home, which seungkwan considers karmic retribution for having to dye his hair pink, of all possible colors in the world, today. if he’s going to do this, he better have no audiences other than the one person who’s directly responsible for this.

they end up squishing into the small bathroom, seungkwan apologizing for how cramped it is and hansol apologizing for not thinking it out. he listens carefully, though, as seungkwan describes to him how he’s going to make his hair pink today. his hair’s already a light blond, so he won’t need to bleach it more today, which must be another point in his favor.

boo seungkwan: two; universe: still a lot more than two, but at least seungkwan has two points now, compared to the negatives he’d been in before.

“you’ve really never done this before? seriously?” seungkwan asks.

“please, not everyone has the time to do it themselves. i’ve always watched other people in salons do it for me, but never at home. this is pretty cool.” hansol shrugs. “and i like the color. it’s better than all the honey goldens they keep putting me through.”

seungkwan hums in response. he can’t talk much— he has to concentrate. he’s halfway through combing the dye through his hair when he hears the telltale jingling of soonyoung’s keys in the lock, and they both freeze. hansol’s eyes go almost comically wide before seungkwan is shoving at him with his free hand, pushing him towards the back of their apartment.

“there’s a fire escape outside of this door,” seungkwan hisses, opening the door to reveal a set of stairs leading outside. “you can get out through here if you need to go, and it’s pretty easy to reach the main street from there. any questions?”

hansol pauses. “seungkwan, i—” he stops, then shakes himself. “never mind. i’ll text you later, yeah? remember to show me what it looks like!”

“i will,” seungkwan says, and once hansol leaves, he closes the door behind him. he trudges back to the bathroom to finish dyeing his hair, but somehow, it’s just not as fun as it was before when hansol was there making dumb jokes about cotton candy. seungkwan sighs. it’s going to be a very long and a very boring next two hours.

-

in retrospect, it could’ve been a lot worse. seungkwan stares at his reflection in the mirror, after he’s done rinsing all of the dye out and blow drying his hair. it had been a sort of nasty bubblegum pink shade when he’d first brushed the dye through, something similar to what was advertised on the tacky packaging. but now, after it’s all said and done, it’s faded to a lighter shade of pink, and in the right lighting, it looks like a very nice shade of rose gold.

not bad for a dare he’d expected to end in nothing short of disaster.

seungkwan takes a few mirror selcas just to show off his new hair color, and a few from above as well. he decides to send them to hansol ninety percent as proof and just ten percent because he’s proud of the way that it’s ended up looking. there’s a mirror selca, one from above, and one where his cheeks are puffed up at the camera. he doesn’t look half bad, if he says so himself.

/i did it/, he types out. /are you proud of me yet?/

he sends the message through after checking it over— is it too casual? too formal? should he use a sticker? any emojis?— and attaches the photos to it. he stares at the screen, feeling a very strange sort of finality, like this is the end of it all now that he’s finished with the dare. he shakes himself. there’s no way.

“oi!” soonyoung yells from outside, knocking on the door. “hey, boo seungkwan, are you done yet, or was your shit really that big? i really /really/ need to pee!”

ugh. seungkwan closes the app and opens the door, and soonyoung very nearly falls through the doorway and onto him.

“it’s all yours,” seungkwan chirps, and he ignores the questions that soonyoung, now more wide-eyed than he’s ever seen, throws at his back.

“wait, why are you pink? boo seungkwan! why are you /pink/? oh, shit, i really need to pee, but just you wait! i’ll get the answers out of you in no time!”

seungkwan meanders back to his room, and he only has a few minutes of pure happiness as he scrolls through his feed before soonyoung slams the door open. his grin widens, making him look something like a cheshire cat, when he spies seungkwan sitting up against the headboard.

“so,” soonyoung says, plopping down on the foot of seungkwan’s bed.

“so,” seungkwan repeats, barely resisting the urge to sink into the pillows with the way that soonyoung’s /staring/ at him, his gaze unwavering.

“why are you pink?”

“i lost a bet,” seungkwan mutters. there’s really no point in trying to keep secrets from someone like soonyoung— he pounces on any sign of weakness in order to tease out the truth. their first year of living together, seokmin had learned that the hard way when soonyoung had put a leftover slice of cake in the fridge and discovered it missing the next morning. the manhunt had been pretty brutal, and it’s an experience that seungkwan doesn’t want to repeat again. getting interrogated isn’t really all that fun.

“ooh.” soonyoung leans forward and he opens his mouth, and seungkwan really should’ve expected what was about to happen next, but he doesn’t. “seokmin! come here, seungkwan’s gonna tell us about his crush! remember hansol? his crush!”

“/what/?” seungkwan shrieks. “no!”

“you /are/?” seokmin barrels through the doorway and does a flying leap onto the other side of seungkwan’s bed, and seungkwan squirms. there are way too many people on his tiny bed right now. “tell us, we’ve been waiting so long for updates.”

“no,” seungkwan says, feeling his face start to flush. “there’s nothing, like i mean we only got lunch but then that’s it, we’re not like, going out or anything— oh shit.”

“ooh, you guys got lunch?” seokmin says, leaning forward as well. “isn’t that a date?”

“no!”

“but you dyed your hair pink for him,” soonyoung follows up for seokmin. “wow, is it the season of love now? is your entire world pink now?”

“oh my god,” seungkwan moans, slapping his hands over his face. “what did i ever do to deserve this.”

then there are fingers peeling away the hands that cover his face, and seungkwan blinks when he sees both seokmin and soonyoung smiling at him, soft and gentle.

“hey,” seokmin says, patting seungkwan’s hand. “it’s okay. we just want you to be happy, okay?”

“oh,” seungkwan replies, extremely touched. they don’t usually get all serious like this, just because their friendship is one that relies mostly on gags and jokes, and that’s what makes moments like these all the more unexpected and memorable.

“i hope you and your definitely-not-a-boyfriend hansol are happy together,” soonyoung says solemnly, and seungkwan is about to pat soonyoung’s hand when he says, “seokmin and i want to be godparents to whatever marshmallow of a baby you guys end up having! i call best man!”

“you ruined it,” seokmin says, slapping soonyoung on the arm.

“maybe,” soonyoung admits, but he looks over to seungkwan. “but at least you’re smiling now, right?”

soonyoung’s right. his ears are burning and the back of his neck feels too warm, but it’s hard to concentrate on any of it when his cheeks feel like they’re about to split from how widely he’s grinning. “yeah,” seungkwan chokes out.

“ew,” soonyoung groans as seungkwan launches himself at them, his arms wrapping around both of their shoulders, but his arms come up to hug seungkwan back.

“aw,” seokmin sighs happily. “young love. to be young again.”

“shut up, hyung,” seungkwan says, but it’s hard to keep the smile from showing through in his voice. “i love you guys.”

-

seungkwan doesn’t get a reply that night.

he waits, but he doesn’t get one in the next few days, either. he stops checking for messages after a week’s passed, and before he knows it, an entire month has gone by. he doesn’t know what’s wrong, or if anything bad has happened, but all he knows is that hansol’s definitely seen and read the messages and photos and hasn’t even bothered to dignify them with a response.

he doesn’t know if it’s something that he said that made hansol decide to stop talking to him, or if he saw the pictures that seungkwan sent over and decided, all of a sudden, that seungkwan was too ugly for him, or any other excuse out of the plethora of reasons that seungkwan’s spent the past month conjuring up. it’s not that difficult to say that he doesn’t want to talk to seungkwan anymore, or to say /haha, nice :)/ even if he doesn’t mean it at all and then leave it at that, but for some reason, the complete radio silence is absolutely /killing/ seungkwan inside.

he doesn’t mean to, but it must end up seeping into his personality and the wya he acts around people, since soonyoung and seokmin pick up on it, and jeonghan does, too, and he can’t quite deal with how prying they all are. they ask him questions for the longest time at first, asking him /seungkwan, are you okay/ or /seungkwan, what/s wrong? you can talk to me, just let it all out if you ever need to./

he knows they’re well-meaning and that they really only want the best for him, but he can’t put up with the way they look at him with something akin to pity in their eyes. it’s too much.

so seungkwan decides to stop waiting.

-

seungkwan is halfway through a shift when soonyoung texts him. he’s asked jeonghan for more shifts, fully intending on making enough money so that he can take a vacation and go home soon. plane tickets back home to jeju aren’t cheap, and neither is taking two weeks off of work. but it’s something he’s determined to do his best to make happen, since he hasn’t gone home in what feels like an eternity. he tries his best not to think about how he works so much to forget something that could have been.

/hey,/ the message from soonyoung reads when seungkwan excuses himself to the back room. it’s fairly empty, so jeonghan should be able to hold down the fort on his own. /u wanna get dinner w me and wonwoo?? its just gonna be a group of us and friends do u wanna come with??/

seungkwan wrinkles his nose. /are u drunk alr? i thought ur friend was doing his hotshot manager thing 2/

/nah./ the reply comes almost instantaneously. /the actor he was working for went back to america or smth idk hes back now tho since he was just the guys krn manager/

/oh/

/so do u wanna come????????? say yes pls say yes u would make it soooooo fun come my lil bubblegum fairy/

seungkwan considers his options. he could go out with soonyoung and his friends tonight and just have fun without worrying about anything at all, or he could stay at home and wallow in his own emotions and watch reruns of sad indie films until he ends up crying on the couch.

/im good hyung,/ seungkwan texts back. /thx tho/

even though his phone starts vibrating like crazy with the sheer amount of messages that he’s getting, he doesn’t have the chance to see what it is that soonyoung replies back to him, since jeonghan calls for him from out front. apparently, one of the other baristas had called in sick, and now seungkwan’s needed to help close up at the end of the night. it’s no problem at all— taking on more hours means having more money in his pocket, and having more money means he’s just that much closer to his goal of becoming an emcee or a singer one day.

it’s half past nine when seungkwan finally gets to take off his apron and hang it up on the wall. jeonghan’s still bustling around, making sure that all of the perishables are in the freezer and everything that can be thrown away has been put into the appropriate waste bins.

“goodnight, hyung,” seungkwan calls out, a hand on the door.

“wait, seungkwan!” jeonghan shouts, which makes seungkwan turn around, the door nearly slamming into him when he stops holding it open. “oh, be careful.”

“what’s up, jeonghan-hyung?”

“seungkwan, i know you’ve been taking a lot of shifts since you just want to go home,” jeonghan starts. his eyes soften around the edges. “don’t overwork yourself, though, okay? remember to take care of yourself.”

seungkwan blinks, feeling a lump of something that he can’t swallow blocking his words. “thanks— yeah, i will, hyung. thanks. have a good night.”

jeonghan waves to him before he goes back to sorting the coffee beans, and seungkwan steps out of the shop. he realizes, a split second too late, that it’s /raining/, and only the flimsy canopy covering the entrance is preventing seungkwan from being drenched in the downpour.

he reaches into his bag for the umbrella he’d packed just this morning and mentally thanks his mom for texting him the day’s weather since she knows he won’t check it himself. even though it’s cold and wet outside, seungkwan stays dry the entire way home underneath the shadow of his tangerine-print umbrella.

-

the apartment is dark and empty when seungkwan opens the door, and he flicks on the lights and shakes his umbrella off before leaving it in the doorway to dry. soonyoung must’ve taken seokmin to that thing with his friends, seungkwan figures. he has the entire place to himself tonight, which is never not a good thing.

except there’s a sudden knock on the door, and seungkwan freezes in place. a multitude of scenarios start running through his mind at breakneck speed, a majority of them inspired by the horror movies soonyoung had forced him to watch with him and seokmin. it’s dark and raining outside, and seungkwan knows that if he were in a horror movie, these two things combined probably wouldn’t bode well at all for him.

for what’s probably the first time ever, seungkwan wishes, as his mind is flooded with images of masked men breaking in through the window and grabbing him and tossing him into a burlap sack, that seokmin and soonyoung were there to help him out— or at least to look through the peephole to see who it is.

he stands there in the doorway just wondering if whoever had knocked is gone since he isn’t expecting anyone, and just when seungkwan is about to turn and go wash up, he hears another knock.

seungkwan stiffens. it definitely isn’t just someone who’s gotten the wrong address, then. he knows that he should just open the door, since the chances of this actually being a horror movie are slim to none, and it’s probably a neighbor or a concerned citizen telling him that he’s left something outside again. but it’s dark and rainy and—

“seungkwan, it’s me. can you open the door? i have so much to tell you. please.”

seungkwan freezes, his arms coming to rest limply at his sides. he knows this voice. then, just as suddenly as it had started raining earlier, he feels the beginnings of anger start to bubble up within him. what right does /he/ have to come back after a month like nothing’s happened at all? what right does /he/ have to try to come back into seungkwan’s life again?

his fists ball up against his will, and he decides /fuck it/ before he storms forward and unlocks the door and throws it open.

“what,” seungkwan snaps as shortly as he can, crossing his arms over his chest— he tells himself it’s so he can look tough in front of hansol, but the cold is starting to seep in.

“seungkwan,” hansol says so softly that seungkwan would’ve missed it if his ears weren’t searching for any sound, any at all.

seungkwan looks up. hansol is soaked from head to toe, his hoodie and his jeans clinging to his body. his hair is plastered to his face, and rivulets of water run down his neck. seungkwan almost reaches out to wipe hansol’s face off before he freezes, his hand hanging outstretched in the space between them.

“hansol,” seungkwan replies, his hand coming back down. he has so many things that he wants to ask and even more things he wants to say, but his mouth feels like there are tons of cotton balls inside of it. he doesn’t trust himself to voice the thoughts that have been running through his mind the entire past month.

/where did you go? why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? why did you come back? i thought we were friends?/

instead, he stares up at hansol, searching for something in hansol’s eyes that’ll convince him that he’s still the same person.

“i’m sorry,” hansol says, and seungkwan can tell by the emotions swimming there in hansol’s gaze when he looks down, that he really is the same hansol.

“you left,” seungkwan chokes out, making a movement to reach for hansol again. he watches the way hansol’s eyes track his gestures, the way hansol’s eyes dim in disappointment when seungkwan pulls his hands back to himself.

“i know. i’m sorry, seungkwan. will you let me explain to you?” hansol asks before his face scrunches up, and seungkwan has only a split second to wonder why before hansol sneezes all over seungkwan’s face.

“let’s— let’s get you cleaned up first,” seungkwan says, grabbing hansol’s wrist and leading him inside before he closes the door. once he leads hansol into the doorway, he turns so that he doesn’t have to look at hansol’s face anymore. “i’m going to the bathroom, just gotta grab a towel.”

when he makes it to the bathroom, he locks the door behind him and leans against the door, breathing out heavily. he stares up at the ceiling light, willing his heart to calm down, before he grabs the spare towel in the linen cabinet.

hansol is still standing there in the middle of the doorway when seungkwan comes back out, and he raises his head at the sound of the door unlocking. seungkwan swallows. the expression on his face is unlike anything seungkwan’s ever seen on anyone, let alone on hansol, before— it’s a mixture of something akin to desperation and guilt and sadness, and seungkwan has never felt worse.

seungkwan steps closer, feeling his heart leap into his throat when he gets closer to hansol. he loops the towel as gently as he can around hansol’s shoulders, saying as lightly as he can, “don’t go dying on me now, you hear me?”

hansol doesn’t smile back, and seungkwan frowns. all of the emotions he’d felt before are starting to disappear and are slowly being replaced with worry.

“hey, hansol, are you okay? i’m not really that mad, i just want to know why you just suddenly left without telling me.” seungkwan reaches upwards to start drying hansol’s hair off, taking both ends and pulling the towel back and forth. “are you okay? you can tell me.”

seungkwan watches hansol’s adam’s apple bob in his throat, and hansol wipes his hands on his already wet jeans before he starts talking. “seungkwan, i’m sorry. i haven’t been telling you the truth.”

“what do you mean?” seungkwan’s eyebrows furrow.

“i—” and hansol cuts himself off here, like the words are stuck in his mouth. he clears his throat and starts again. “i think it’ll be easier to show you instead of telling you. i have a work function tomorrow. if you come with me, you’ll figure everything out. and after that, i’ll tell you everything. i’ll tell you why i had to leave and why i couldn’t come back until now. i promise. i’ll tell you all the answers you want and all the answers you don’t want. i swear to you, seungkwan, i’m not lying. please believe me.”

seungkwan doesn’t know what’s compelling him to listen and to believe, but he feels like this time, hansol has nothing to hide. he wants to figure out everything— why hansol had come here in the first place, why he’d been so skittish at the possibility of meeting soonyoung and seokmin, why hansol had left him.

“okay,” seungkwan says, soft. “i trust you.” then, on an impulse that seungkwan has absolutely no idea where it’s from, he adds, “don’t even think about keeping any more secrets from me, though, punk. three strikes and you’re out.”

hansol smiles then, and even though it’s small and hesitant, it’s still the first time that seungkwan’s seen his toothy grin in over a month, and he could cry of relief. he could burst into tears with how full and happy he feels right now, and it feels like something in his chest is threatening to explode.

hansol must’ve noticed a shift in the expression in seungkwan’s face, because /his/ face changes as well. “seungkwan? are you okay?”

seungkwan stares up at him, taking in how wide and large hansol’s eyes are, how ruddy and pink his cheeks are now that they’ve warmed up, how fluffy his hair looks now that it’s mostly been dried, and he feels the echoes of that same emotion from all the way before when hansol had dropped him off at his apartment. except now he knows exactly what that emotion is, and he knows that this is something that he can’t let go again. he has to act on this, has to let hansol know how he feels before it’s all too late, has to make hansol /his/.

and so, before seungkwan can convince himself that this is a no good, very bad, extremely terrible idea, he pitches forward, grabs both ends of the towel around hansol’s shoulders, and pulls the other man down to his level. seungkwan pauses for just a nanosecond while he has hansol’s face startlingly close to his, his eyes bright and shining and his mouth open in a wide o, before he decides /fuck it/ once more, and pulls hansol to him.

hansol’s lips are, despite the cold of outside, warm and soft, and if seungkwan had thought that hansol’s eyes were already big enough before, they’re nothing compared to how big they are after he pulls away.

“sorry,” seungkwan mumbles, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. he feels his face begin to heat up, and it’s only now that he realizes just what a colossal mistake he’s made. now that he’s ruined one of his most treasured friendships by pulling his feelings where they’re not supposed to be, hansol is /never/ going to talk to him again.

“hey,” hansol says, his voice just barely above a whisper. he sounds amused, but seungkwan still refuses to look up. “hey, seungkwan.”

then hansol’s fingers are under seungkwan’s chin, tipping his face upward, and seungkwan finally sees just how bright and full of mirth hansol’s eyes are.

“seungkwan, i think i know what you want to say, and i want to say it to you, too,” hansol says, leaning down, and when seungkwan closes his eyes, he feels a hansol’s lips press butterfly-soft against his forehead. he opens his eyes again, and hansol is still too close to his face. “but i’ll explain more after tomorrow, okay?”

seungkwan nods, so frozen that he can’t really process just what is happening. hansol grins at him again. “i’ll pick you up tomorrow. do you have anything nice to wear?”

“um. kind of?” seungkwan has his high school uniform and the suit he’d worn to his job interview at starbucks, but he feels like if he mentions these to hansol, he’ll have his options get vetoed. seungkwan definitely doesn’t have time to go shop for clothes right now.

“great.” hansol’s smile makes his eyes crinkle. he takes the towel off of his shoulders, folds it up into a small square, and gives it back to seungkwan before inching towards the door. “i’ll see you tomorrow then, seungkwan.”

“wait,” seungkwan says, reaching for his umbrella on the ground. “it’s raining outside, take this.”

“oh.” hansol blinks, his face smoothing out into surprise before the grin reappears. he takes the umbrella from seungkwan, and seungkwan tries not to shiver at the electric shock that passes between them when hansol’s fingers brush against his. hansol’s eyes flicker up to seungkwan’s hair.

“you kept the hair color we bet on,” he breathes out. “it looks really good on you. i’m sorry i couldn’t tell you earlier, my internet connection was really shitty up until now, and i couldn’t send any of my messages. but i wanted to tell you that the pink really suits you. i told you it would look nice.”

seungkwan tries not to let his heart stop right then and there. he’s surprised that hansol noticed at all, let alone realized that the dye would havae already faded. but seungkwan just redyed it last week, so it’s more vibrant than it had been before. “thanks,” seungkwan mumbles. “you have a good eye.”

hansol’s expression softens, and he reaches forward to pat seungkwan on the cheek. “thanks, seungkwan. i owe you. see you tomorrow at five. i’ll text you later about it,” he says, and then he’s unlocking the door and stepping out into the darkness and seungkwan’s alone again.

he stays there in the living room for so long that when seokmin and soonyoung stumble in, clearly too drunk for their own goods, they try to cuddle up next to him on the couch, which results in seungkwan having to cart them off to bed. when he gets back into his own bed, though, he checks his messages.

there are messages from hansol dating back to when seungkwan had first sent the photos of his newly dyed hair, and seungkwan realizes that they’d only just sent.

/told u it would look good!!!! hahahahahha i knew it/ /calm down tho at this rate ur probably gonna become more handsome than me ;)/

seungkwan buries his face into his pillow and screams. he holds the scream for as long as he can without having to come up for air, and when he does have to surface for air, he takes a deep breath before screaming again. there’s no other way to deal with what he’s feeling, and when he’s all spent, he collapses back onto his bed, staring up at his feeling.

seungkwan only hopes that tomorrow is going to be even better— he can’t wait to know just what hansol’s been hiding this entire time. he also can’t wait for the free food that’s probably going to be there at a work function, and when he falls asleep, his dreams are filled with the very confusing image of finger food sized carrots dancing around with hansol’s face plastered on them.

-

seungkwan spends more time than is probably necessary staring at himself in the mirror, adjusting his tie. he’s probably overdressed for the occasion, but seungkwan figures that if hansol’s asking him to come to a work function with him, he might as well dress for the part, even if it’s a bit much.

he purses his lips at his messy hair, and he decides against letting it be artfully messy. seokmin’s hair wax is just on the shelf, so seungkwan takes some and smooths it through his hair into a style he’s comfortable with. he looks alright. he’s lucky he remembered to keep his suit jacket here in his apartment instead of bringing it back home, and his hair, now styled so just a bit of his forehead shows through, looks nice. good.

“ugh,” he hears from outside the bathroom door, along with some taps on the door. it’s soonyoung, who’s probably just woken up and who’s probably hungover as hell. “god, i’m never drinking again, who the fuck let me do so many shots? wait, let me in, i gotta puke—”

the light taps from before turn to rapid knocks, and seungkwan moves quickly to the door and unlocks it so soonyoung can do what he has to do. he waits outside the door, smoothing his shirt down. “you okay in there, hyung?”

“yeah, just give me a sec— you look so cute right now, seungkwanie, what’s the date?”

seungkwan tries to stop the flush from rising to his cheeks, but it does anyway. “it’s not a date. just going with hansol to a work thing.” there’s a knock at the door, one that doesn’t come from inside the bathroom, but from outside the apartment, and seungkwan knows who’s here. “i’ll see you later, okay, hyung? feel better.”

“okay,” soonyoung yells through the door. “have fun! be safe! don’t— urgh— don’t do anything i wouldn’t do!”

“doesn’t that mean i can do pretty much anything i want, though?” seungkwan muses as he makes his way through the apartment to the door. he opens the door, and whatever witty opening line he’d had evaporates in his throat. “whoa.”

hansol reddens, a flush creeping across his cheekbones. “thanks, seungkwan. you’re not too shabby yourself.”

seungkwan would argue that hansol looks a /lot/ better than he does. the first thing he notices is that he’s not overdressed— hansol is clad in a three-piece suit. it’s just that while seungkwan’s suit is one that his mom had picked out from a department store in jeju, hansol’s suit is clearly tailored, hugging all of his curves and all of his angles in the right places. his hair is swept up, giving him a sort of roguishly handsome vibe. there’s just a light covering of foundation on his face, enough to cover up the imperfections that aren’t there.

seungkwan thinks he looks amazing, and apparently his brain to mouth filter isn’t working correctly, because the flush on hansol’s cheeks only deepens in color, and he mutters a, “stop flattering me, seungkwan, you look good, too.”

“anyway,” hansol coughs, straightening up and taking seungkwan’s elbow. “let’s go.”

when hansol leads seungkwan down to the parking lot, what seungkwan is expecting is the car that his friends had driven home that one night seungkwan had most definitely not fainted onto hansol (and it seems so long ago, so long ago that it feels almost like a dream). what seungkwan is not expecting is a long black limousine that probably takes up two entire parking spaces.

“um,” seungkwan starts as hansol pulls him to the limo. “are you sure this is the right one?”

hansol turns and gives seungkwan a curious smile, one that seungkwan can’t quite decipher the meaning of. “yep. now hop in. they’re not going to be waiting for us forever.”

the seats inside the limo are plush and velvety, and when seungkwan sits down gingerly, he sinks in almost immediately. he starts, nearly jumping out of his skin, and hansol pats his knee. “it’s okay, that happened to me the first time, too. you’ll get used to it.”

get used to /what/? seungkwan’s mind is spinning with the reality that hansol is apparently a rich kid who takes limousines to work functions. but if hansol is a rich kid who takes limousines to work functions, then why is /seungkwan/ going to have to get used to it?

he’s still puzzling over it when the limo pulls into a smooth stop. the windows are tinted, so even when seungkwan tries to look outside, it’s hard to tell exactly where he is. hansol must sense his unease, because he smiles and reaches over to take seungkwan’s hand in his and he says, “we’re here. let’s go.”

there’s a split second of silence between them, and seungkwan swallows before he says, “let’s.”

the door opens, and as he steps out of the limo, seungkwan’s world explodes in light and sound. there are cameras, large and heavy, pointed straight at seungkwan and hansol— no, they’re not pointed at seungkwan, they’re pointed at hansol, at only hansol. when seungkwan looks up at hansol, he looks like a completely different person, his back straight and his head held high and his gaze strong and steely and only facing forward.

hansol leads them onto the red carpet, where more cameras are waiting, and all that’s keeping seungkwan from freaking out is hansol’s hand in his.

a reporter runs up to them, jamming microphones into hansol’s face, and more follow, yelling question upon question upon question.

“how are you today— who is this person— is he your significant other— would you like to introduce him— how do you feel about your role in— are you excited for the premiere of it tonight— do you have anything else to say—”

seungkwan loses track of how many questions hansol answers with the same placid smile on his face, and he doesn’t miss the way that hansol expertly answers all of the questions that the reporters direct to seungkwan. good thing, too, since seungkwan doesn’t trust himself to speak right now.

out of the corner of his eye, seungkwan spots another limousine pull up by the curb, and the cameras and microphones all flock to the next person that steps out of the car, someone who’s tall and handsome and striding with long legs onto the carpet. they’re ushered into a large theater, and seungkwan doesn’t have it in him to speak to hansol until the lights have dimmed.

“what is this?” seungkwan hisses. “what is this— what is all of this?”

“i’ll explain.” hansol grins, his smile clearly visible in the dark. he squeezes seungkwan’s hand. “but after, okay? i don’t want you to miss this.”  

seungkwan doesn’t miss a thing. it’s hard not to, when the movie is so loud and bright and everywhere around him, and even though the sensations that he’s getting from all the noise and pictures are overwhelming, the warmth of hansol’s hand in his is in the forefront of his mind. he tries to focus anyway.

it’s just a movie at first, one that opens on the countryside, all green grass and brown fields. seungkwan wrinkles his nose. did hansol bring him here just to watch a /movie/? they could’ve gone to the theater close to seungkwan’s apartment, the one that’s in the complex with the rest of all of the local businesses.

then— oh. it’s not just any regular movie, it’s a spy movie, the kind where all the agents have impeccably tailored suits and impeccably styled hair, and surprise surprise, the face that stares back at him from the screen is hansol’s. it’s a good movie, if seungkwan can ignore the way that a face that’s so familiar to him is being projected onto a screen the size of seungkwan’s apartment building, which he can’t.

buildings explode, secrets are exposed, friendships are broken, and the briefcase that everyone had been fighting over is revealed to have a dossier of potentially world-ending information inside of it. and, of course, hansol is the one to take a lighter to the dossier, and the film cuts to black on a shot of hansol with the lighter in his hand and looking into the sunset.

all in all, it’s not a bad film. seungkwan knows, by the way that hansol is practically /vibrating/ next to him, that hansol wants to know what seungkwan thinks of it. he knows that hansol wants to know what seungkwan thinks of /him/, of the hansol that isn’t hansol with the overly long coffee order, of the hansol that isn’t the one who comes five minutes before closing, of the hansol who laughs with and talks to seungkwan like he’s a regular friend.

except when the credits roll, the name that shares the line with the name of hansol’s character in the movie isn’t just hansol but hansol vernon choi, and just like that, all the pieces start to fall into place. all of the pieces that seungkwan realizes have been in his face in the entire time, all of the pieces that he hasn’t bothered to put into one concrete picture are coming together now.

he knows now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that hansol isn’t a normal guy like seungkwan is— that he’s never /been/ normal, that he’s been this celebrity all along. and as hansol tightens his fingers on seungkwan’s, seungkwan knows that he’s going to have a /great/ time getting all the answers out of hansol later.

-

after the movie— and seungkwan realizes now that it’s not just any movie, it’s the korean premiere of what must’ve been the reason hansol came to korea— hansol ushers seungkwan out of the theater, expertly dodging all of the reporters on his way back to the limo. except this time, the car that pulls up on the curb isn’t a long black limousine, but the same small buggy that hansol’s friend had driven them in before.

hansol opens the rear door for seungkwan, and now that it’s just the two of them, hansol seems less sure of himself, a bit more hesitant when they’re far away from the watchful eyes of the cameras.

“so,” hansol starts, but seungkwan isn’t paying attention. instead, he’s craning his head this way and that, and after he’s certain that no cameras are around, he takes a step closer to hansol and reaches up to flick him in the exposed part of his forehead. “what— ow!”

“serves you right for keeping so much shit from me,” seungkwan scoffs before he clambers into the back seat. he’s immediately greeted by familiar faces.

“hey, seungkwan!” mingyu chirps from the driver’s seat, and seungcheol waves to him from the passenger seat. “long time no see!”

“oh hey, guys! did you know hansol’s real name is vernon?” seungkwan asks brightly as hansol slides into the seat next to him, looking properly chastised. seungcheol and mingyu exchange a /look/, and realization dawns on seungkwan for what must be the fiftieth time today.

“you guys were /in on this/! i trusted you! you even let me take the carton of eggs!”

“seungkwan,” hansol says, and seungkwan turns his attention back to him. “let me introduce you to my bodyguards, seungcheol and mingyu.”

“and what about you?” seungkwan asks, fixing his eyes on hansol’s.

“what?”

“who are you?”

hansol keeps his gaze steady as he replies, every word carefully enunciated. “my name is hansol vernon choi, and i’m an actor from new york. i came to seoul to film certain parts of my movie and to help promote the movie overseas.”

a lightbulb flickers on in seungkwan’s brain. he remembers the very first time that he’d met hansol, when a man with a baseball cap and a face mask came in to order a vanilla bean frap and said that his name was— “verhansol.”

“verhansol wha— oh, right. yeah. that. i was about to say the name i went by in america, but i didn’t want to be recognized, so i switched halfway. i guess i should’ve known that i’d have no problem with that with you.” hansol rubs the back of his neck. “i was kinda surprised, actually. i thought you might’ve recognized me, so i kinda panicked.”

“pfft, /no/.” seungkwan snorts. “i was just wondering why all the girls started taking out their phones to take pictures of you. guess it’s because you’re a hotshot?”

“i’m not really a hotshot, i’m kinda just so-so,” hansol replies, waving his hands in front of him frantically, as if he’s trying to dispel any notion that he’s famous at all.

“he’s lying,” seungcheol calls out, and the sound of his voice jerks seungkwan back to the reality that he and hansol aren’t alone in the car. “he won best supporting actor last year, don’t believe a /single/ word this liar says!”

“ugh, why are you like this. i hate you, can we just go back to seungkwan’s place to drop him off already so you can stop being mean to me like this,” hansol groans, and mingyu laughs, the sound reverberating throughout the car.

“no one’s being mean to you! you started it!” mingyu singsongs, but he starts the car anyway.

hansol leans over to the side and presses a button, which makes a divider appear between the front and the back of the car. he takes a deep breath before he turns to seungkwan again. “okay, this is soundproof, so we don’t have to worry about them being nosy and listening. but i have things i gotta tell you—”

“wow, cool car,” seungkwan says, staring out of the window. the scenery of the most affluent part of seoul, where he doesn’t usually have the chance to visit, passes by in a blur all around him. “does it always do that?”

“seungkwan,” hansol says. “you were the first person i met who didn’t judge me because of how i looked.”

seungkwan looks over.

“you were the first person i met ever since i started acting who didn’t try to use me for money or connections. you called me /verhansol/, and i swear that was so funny i really had to stop myself from laughing right then and there. you even gave me coffee when i came right before closing, and you let me talk to you like i was your friend.”

“but i /am/ your friend,” seungkwan says, his heart beating in a staccato rhythm so loud he can barely hear his own words. “i’m your friend, hansol.”

“i don’t just want to be your friend, though.” hansol pauses, and he reaches over the seat to take one of seungkwan’s hands in his. seungkwan watches as hansol presses his hand to seungkwan’s, their palms flat against each other, and hansol slowly intertwines their fingers together, keeping his eyes downward on their linked hands.

“i had to leave for a long time since we had to finish up post-production editing and stuff. all things considered, i think it was a miracle i was back in a month. was supposed to stay in new york, actually. my mom wanted me to stay, but i wanted to go back to korea, to come back to seoul.” hansol looks up at seungkwan again, and his eyes are shining with emotion. “i wanted to come back to find you.”

“that’s what you keep saying, though,” seungkwan laughs shakily, praying that his words won’t betray him and how nervous he is. his voice comes out higher than he’d expected, and he winces.

“i know i said that probably the second time we met or something, and i’m sorry that you keep hearing it. but i mean it every single time. i only ever really want to come back because of you. like, i didn’t even notice that my messages didn’t send until i got back here and noticed that my internet connection at the time was just /so shitty/.” it’s hansol’s turn to let out a shuddering laugh. “the entire time, i thought you were ignoring me, so i tried to forget about you, but then they made me come back here to do the premiere shit, and i thought that i should at least say hi to you one last time.”

“i thought /you/ were ignoring me. i was about ready to bust your door down and demand that you respond to my selcas of the hair that i only got, by the way, because of that stupid bet!” seungkwan looks down at their hands, and he murmurs, “but i didn’t know where you lived, anyway, so i basically had no other way of contacting you. it was like you were completely gone.”

“yeah, that’s what my manager said, too. well, basically, i had a manager here for my korean activities and stuff, like going on interviews and stuff. it was kind of wild, and a lot of it was super stressful. so whenever it got to be too much, i’d kinda just grab my phone and my cap and my mask and i’d walk out of the hotel that they set me up at. then i’d start walking, and my feet would always just find themselves on the intersection of these two streets, and it was the corner where you were.” hansol stops. “i think, in a way, you saved me. it’s so hard being somewhere without your parents, you know? and all of your friends?”

seungkwan thinks back to the family and the friends he’d left behind in jeju, and he swallows the lump in his throat. “yeah,” he says thickly. “yeah, i know what you mean.”

“i think finding someone as— someone as genuine as you are really kept me from getting super stressed about my job and filming and everything. i was up all day and all night, and sometimes, i just got so tired of listening to everyone telling me ‘vernon, stand here,’ or ‘vernon, come back here,’ or ‘vernon, stop falling asleep in your chair.’ all true stories, by the way.” hansol sighs. “i guess i should’ve told you who i really was in the beginning, but i didn’t want you to treat me any differently. that’s why i got so weird when your roommates came home that one time. i didn’t want them to recognize me and then tell you, because then i was scared that you would start acting like, i guess, everyone else. now i know you’re not the kind of person to do that.”

“hey, hang on. i think you saved me, too,” seungkwan says abruptly. “i really think you did. don’t sell yourself short, you’re really funny, and your face isn’t half bad, either. you totally saved me from having to come home to my roommates fighting over who forgot to take out the moldy bread, too. so thanks.”

“moldy bread?” hansol’s eyebrows quirk upwards. “they sound like really interesting guys, can i meet them someday? now that the cat’s out of the bag?”

“yeah, sure, if you’re fine with them asking you to help them peel potatoes or something. they love free labor.”

“hey, if it means i get to eat whatever happens to the potatoes after that, i’d say that’s a pretty damn good investment of my time.”

“are you even good at peeling potatoes? last i heard, the only thing you’re good at doing is being a spy and throwing briefcases around.” seungkwan teases, hoping that it’ll get a rise out of hansol, and he sees a spark light up in hansol’s eyes when the comment hits home.

“well, whatever, i can just be a spytato. verhansol the spytato,” hansol quips.

they grin at each other, small and tentative at first, before they start laughing. seungkwan has to let go of hansol’s hand, which is starting to get a bit clammy and warm anyway, so he can hold his own stomach. seungkwan doesn’t even notice when the car slows to a stop, and he realizes, with no small amount of disappointment, that he’s back at his own place again.

“i’ll walk you back up,” hansol offers, and seungkwan climbs out of the car when hansol opens the door for him.

seungkwan’s about to go back upstairs when he realizes there’s something else he has to do first. he turns back to the car, leans down, and waves to mingyu and seungcheol in the front seats. “bye! see you guys sometime soon!”

they wave back to him, grinning wildly, and they mouth something that seungkwan doesn’t manage to catch but has hansol reddening again. “come on, let’s go,” hansol mutters, walking at a faster pace that seungkwan has to walk with longer strides to keep up with.

they make their way back up to seungkwan’s apartment in relative silence, and it’s only when they’re standing outside seungkwan’s door that they turn to face each other. seungkwan exhales, and when he looks just slightly upward to meet hansol’s gaze, the feeling that passes through his entire body is electric.

“well, i guess this is it,” seungkwan starts, reaching into his pocket for the keys he’d stashed in there so many hours ago. “i’ll be going now. thanks for the ride and the premiere and telling me the truth. i really appreciate it.”

seungkwan is about to turn to unlock his door when hansol lurches forward and grabs his wrist. “wait, seungkwan. i have something to ask you.”

“what is it?”

hansol leans in, and when seungkwan thinks he’s about to speak, he wets his lips and swallows. “seungkwan, i wanted to know if— if you wanted to go on a date with me sometime. a real one.”

this isn’t happening. this isn’t real life. seungkwan feels like he’s living in a world of his own imagination, but hansol is right there in front of him, and he’s /real/. there’s just one detail, though, that keeps poking around at the back of seungkwan’s brain, and he needs to voice it.

“i thought we already had one, though?” seungkwan wonders, and hansol’s eyebrows furrow. “we even made a bet during that one, don’t you remember?”

seungkwan tries not to let the bubble of hope blossoming in his chest get the better of him, but he holds his breath as he watches hansol’s expression go slack before his face splits in the brightest smile seungkwan’s seen on him.

“yeah,” hansol exhales nearly breathlessly. his smile is apparently contagious, because now seungkwan can’t stop smiling, and /ow/ his cheeks are starting to hurt. “yeah, this can be our second one. i’ll text you, yeah?”

“i’ll be waiting,” seungkwan says. “no backing out this time, okay? no getting up and disappearing for a month again?”

“i swear to you, seungkwan, i’ll be here. i found a position on a show here, and i think they said some of their variety shows are looking for guest emcees? if you want, we could end up at the same place, and then we’ll be so close that you’ll get sick and tired of me.”

seungkwan snorts, but that damn grin on his face still won’t go away. “i’d never get tired of you, hansol. unless you make me dye my hair again. you’re damn lucky the pink ended up kinda nice, but if you made me have bright neon blue for half a month, you wouldn’t even be here right now.”

hansol pretends to contemplate it. “hmm, now there’s a thought,” he says, letting his sentence trail off as seungkwan gapes at him.

“seriously!” seungkwan definitely doesn’t whine. he doesn’t. “blue will /not/ look good on me! anyway, just watch, you’re gonna end up with a tattoo that says my name on it before you know it.”

“i can’t wait,” hansol says solemnly, and his smile turns into something fond. he takes half a step forward, and seungkwan has just enough time to close his eyes before hansol’s lips are on his again, warm and pliant. it’s longer than the first one, and it leaves seungkwan’s legs feeling even more shaky when they pull apart. “i’ll see you, seungkwan.”

seungkwan leans back in for another quick kiss, tugging hansol closer and down by his tie. “get ready to lose the bet next time, choi,” he declares, and the crooked grin that hansol gives him in return is worth it.

he doesn’t stop thinking about that smile of hansol’s the entire night, not even when he’s getting cleaned up and ready for bed, not even when soonyoung bursts into his room and asks him where he’s been, not even when seokmin lays on seungkwan’s legs and pesters him for information. he shoos them out of his room and settles into bed and pulls out his phone, typing /hansol vernon choi/ into the search bar.

seungkwan doesn’t really care about keeping up with the latest celebrity gossip, but he figures that he can make an exception for hansol.

[threads-of-gold]

FFN | Ao3

.

Chapter 8

“So, Riley’s gone just like that,” Maya said as she squirted a zigzag line of mustard on her hot dog.

“She left yesterday,” Josh confirmed, scooping some relish up with a spoon and putting it on his hamburger. “Ketchup?”

“Ew, no!” Maya answered. “It’s a hot dog, Josh!”

“Okay,” Josh replied, squirting a dollop of mayo on his burger and squishing the bun down. He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully while Maya liberally salted her fries. “She didn’t even say goodbye to Lucas. I think she thinks he’ll go after her like some sort of romantic comedy.”

Maya shrugged. “She’ll realize that it isn’t when he doesn’t show up in Paris to get her.”

“You’ve never thought life was a romantic comedy, have you?”

Maya shook her head. “I’ve always known better. If life was like the movies, my mother would have met somebody and gotten remarried after my dad left her.”

“That sounds more like a Hallmark movie,” Josh said.

Maya sipped her Pepsi through a straw and raised an eyebrow. “It’s still a movie though!” she insisted.

“You have a thing for Hallmark movies, don’t you Hart?”

“And Lifetime too, Uncle Boing!” Maya replied, smirking at him.

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Lifetime!?”

“I’m multi-faceted,” Maya answered, smirking at him. “Don’t judge me.”

“You continue to fascinate me, Miss Hart. I think I know you but I’m constantly learning something new about you.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

“It is,” Josh assured her. “It makes me like you more.”

“So, tell me, do you have any guilty pleasures? Any that you care to admit to? Or can admit to in polite company?”

“I don’t think you count as polite company,” Josh said, grinning at her. “But I will tell you one of my guilty pleasures, since you asked so nicely.”

“It has to be something you wouldn’t even admit to that person you’ve been talking to online,” Maya said. “And it has to be something good!”

Josh paused to think of something he hadn’t told Maya about during one of their online conversations. “Okay, I’ve seen every episode of Gossip Girl. . . more than once and I was upset when Serena didn’t end up with Nate.”

“That is a good guilty pleasure!” Maya glanced at her watch. “As much as I’d love to have a long conversation about it, I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for class. I’ll see you at the bookstore later this afternoon.”

“Okay, ‘bye!” Josh answered, waving her off as she ran up the street, still chewing her lunch.

He knew he had to tell her that he and World_Loser were connected at some point. But he was having trouble finding the right way to tell her.

And he had to make sure she liked him and would be receptive to him and his online alter ego being the same person. He knew it was almost a done deal but it still needed some tweaking. He smiled to himself and started to walk back to work, whistling cheerfully as he did.

.

“How was Maya?” Joe asked as Josh came into the store. “Did you tell her yet?”

“Still working on it,” Josh answered. “I am going to tell her soon though, I promise!”

“You better,” Joe told him. “And how’s Riley? Have you heard from her?”

“She called her parents to tell them she was there safely,” Josh replied. “I think she’s just hanging out and waiting for Lucas to come and get her now.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t disappoint her.”

“Me too,” Josh agreed, thinking about how Maya didn’t think Lucas would go to Paris because life wasn’t a romantic comedy. “But maybe she’ll come to her senses and come home. Wiser than she was before.”

“True,” Joe said. “But at least she’s getting this out of her system before she did anything else like marrying Lucas.”

Josh nodded. The last thing he wanted for either Riley or Lucas was either of them settling for a life they thought they were supposed to have. He thought about Maya and their situation, the last thing he wanted was for her to settle for him because he was World_Loser and they were supposed to get together because they were perfect on the interconnected web.

He sighed.

“You seem to have a lot on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t have that much on my mind!” Josh protested. “Just. . . oh, hey Hallee, Jeffery! What can I do for you two today?” he asked, relieved by the arrival of two of his favorite customers.

“We’re just looking,” Hallee answered. “Mom says we can’t spend any money on books today. But maybe you could read to us like you do sometimes?”

“Sure,” Josh agreed. “Sorry Joe, I have to take care of Hallee and Jeffery.”

.

When Maya got into the bookstore, she found Josh sitting on the floor with two kids cozied up to him while he read to them from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Her heart melted just a little bit, it melted even more when he looked up at her and smiled.

Stop it! She instructed herself. It’s just Josh, up until a few weeks ago, he made your life COMPLETELY miserable!

But you weren’t a saint either. . . she reminded herself

“He’s so good with all the kids who come in here,” Joe said, interrupting her train of thought. “He knows all their names and their favorite books and just everything about them.”

“You’re trying to convince me of him, aren’t you?” Maya asked.

“Maybe just a little,” Joe answered, smiling at her.

“I’m growing more and more convinced every day,” Maya told him. “I was wrong about him. I should have gotten to know him before I made any judgements.”

Joe just smiled and didn’t say anything at all. “I think you two would be good together.”

Maya smiled too. “Are you trying to play matchmaker, Joe?”

“I just want everyone to be as happy as me and Kathleen are,” Joe answered.

“Are you two happy?” Maya asked, thinking about her dad and mom again.

“We are,” Joe assured her. “But everything isn’t always perfect, you know. Sometimes you fight about more than what movie to rent on Saturday night.”

“All the Blockbusters closed down,” Maya reminded him teasingly, her eyes still on Josh. “Now you’d argue over Netflix and chill.”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t even want to know! But if you like Josh, you should tell him. You might be surprised at what happens or at what comes up, even.”

“But first I need to see where I stand with World Loser,” Maya said. “If there’s no chance with him, if everything between us has only been online, I’d like the very real possibility that is Josh Matthews.”

“Or you could just go for the very real possibility that is Josh Matthews right now, drop the fantasy. Forget all about World Loser and start chasing something real. Something tangible.”

“I guess he’s my Paris because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what I could be missing out if I don’t find out who he was,” Maya explained. “What and if, they’re scary words.”

“Well, what if. . . what if Josh is the One and you’re wasting your daydreams on something that’s a fantasy? I’d hate to see you miss out on something real because of that.”

“I hear what you’re saying, Joe. I really do and I’ll take it into consideration but right now, I’m still kind of stuck on at least finding out who the other person is. Just to settle it in my mind.”

Joe nodded. “If it’s something you have to do then do it. But you know there’s a real chance he could be married with kids or 40. Or he could be 40 and married with kids. You didn’t think about that, did you?”

Maya finally looked at Joe. “You just had to go and ruin it, didn’t you?”

.

I know this is a little late to be asking you this but are you married with 40 kids? Or something like that. My boss mentioned it to me this afternoon after I got to work after class and it’s almost all I’ve been able to think about since then. It’s okay if you are, I won’t be upset at you. But if you are, I think we better just cut it off now. I need to be able to move on. . . I’m here waiting.

.

Josh shook his head when he read Maya’s tumblr message. Leave it to Joe to get involved. He wondered how the conversation had actually went as he clicked on the instant messenger icon.

World_Loser: Are people actually telling you that I’m married and that’s why we haven’t met!? Don’t you know me at all? I am not married with 40 kids, I’m not even 40-years-old. THAT birthday is a long ways away, actually. So, stop worrying your pretty little mind about it. We’ll meet when the time is right.

World_Loser: In the meantime, I’m still here.

World_Loser: I’m waiting too.

TBC. . .

[iamnathannah]

A Personal Essay to Liza Weil on her 40th Birthday

I still kind of remember the first night I was introduced to who would become my favorite actress in a matter of years. It was a night in July or August 2000 when my mom and sister went to the local video store (remember those?) and rented a VHS tape (oh, remember those?) after a day of shopping for a vacuum cleaner at a long-dead mall in Milwaukee.

I was already becoming very TV-centric in my viewing habits and only months before took over the cable bill paying responsibilities, but I still was a couple months from finally buying a VCR for my bedroom. So I let them choose a Kevin Bacon movie, Stir of Echoes, even though as with all of my family's horror movie choices I was apt not to watch because my horror movie experiences go like this;

·Overwhelming MST3K'ing of the entire thing because their plots are awful and the special effects are crap. ·Hiding behind furniture because every bad horror director also wants to emulate a Faces of Death film.

Thankfully, this film was much different. I actually enjoyed it because it was a 'thinking person's type of film. Nothing about it was contrived, I enjoyed Illeana Douglas and her acting, and hey, I think I knew Kathryn Erbe from something on TV, though I couldn't place it. There was a young Jennifer Morrison, well before she was on House and Once Upon a Time. This was actually a pretty good film.

Then we got to a scene where this small young brunette woman was babysitting the child of Bacon's character. She immediately caught my eye as having these deep brown eyes, a nervous and small voice with tons of emotion behind it, a small form and a raw natural acting instinct. In the range of about twenty minutes in this role as Debbie the babysitter, I saw this actress go from kind of bored about babysitting some kid, to paging through a book bored, then surprised as she hears the child through the baby monitor about her missing sister, to in a full-on panic as she realizes this child has actually had paranormal conversations with her sister. She then takes him in a panic to a rapid transit station where her mother works, where a pivotal scene between the babysitter, her mother, the child and his parents takes place and she just cries like this material she's been given is second nature to her. She's living the script and on par with Kevin in acting talent. And I was interested in finding out more about her...

But back then, I still had dial-up internet. Unlike my family, I always watched closing credits, but they usually didn't after, so I never got this actress's name. But like Calista Flockhart three years before on Ally McBeal, she had magnetized my interest in her. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to search for information because IMDb was a chore to access on 56k. I put her performance in the back of my mind, wondering if I'd ever see her again. I went on with my life, moving from a KFC cashier job into my current position as a dispatcher, and banked it in the back of my mind.

Move on to about five months later. I occasionally glanced at the WB because of my sister's love of Buffy, Roswell, and Angel, but outside of Popular it was basically a network I didn't take seriously. I was more of a Fox person myself (again, Ally McBeal, along with Boston Public, and their Sunday night). I usually watched Friends by default until that season on Thursday evenings. But it was getting to be a bit tiresome (and God, I hated Ross and how he strung along Rachel). I had read in the fall preview about Gilmore Girls, but really thought nothing about it at the time. I had my own VCR now and was choosing to watch Whose Line in that timeslot. I was more into trying to discover what was on cable at the time (hint; not much). So I put that aside.

Then on one of the Buffy Tuesdays in December, I saw a promo for what they called A Gilmore Girls Christmas, which was two new episodes airing on Wednesday and Thursday of that week. At the time though I was still trying to establish myself at work though, and both nights I worked until 11pm. I thought, 'hey, this show looks kind of interesting' and set up the two nights of recording on my VCR. Hey, if it didn't mesh with me, I could always just stop watching, right? On the weekend, I watched and at first was a bit lost (being nine episodes into a 21-episode season will do that). What is this town? What is the relationship between Lorelai and Rory? Why are they so frosty around her grandparents. Who is this 'Leeza Wheel' person who's a guest star in this episode? Oh hey, it's that guy who voices the Dodge commercials! Yes, I was lost and in the weeds in a show I knew nothing about outside the EW and TV Guide fall preview write-ups which described a 'quirky' and 'funny' dramedy which basically sounded like Providence but even more syrupy than that show (a show whose theme I mocked at the time and later would learn was sung by Chantal Kreviazuk, to my chagrin). I was always an odd duck; I should have been into wrestling and Baywatch like any other man, but a long line of issues in my teens (including three years away from home because of an abusive boyfriend of my mother's) warped my media consumption considerably. I missed a whole lot of action movies in my teens, never really felt comfortable embracing macho types, and found a kindred spirit in Ally McBeal, who was just trying to get by and be herself in a frustrating world who didn't like her type of woman. And I just found violence to be an abhorrent thing to be entertained by.

I recognized Lauren Graham at least; she had been on a summer show called M.Y.O.B which was hilariously non-promoted by NBC and if it would have been picked up for a second season, we would have never had Gilmore Girls. I had seen her on a few guest roles though too, including an episode of Caroline in the City, so at least she was familiar. So I dove in, trying to make my way through the show.

We get to my first Chilton scene, and I see this young blonde woman being quippy as heck to the main character, engaging in pretty heated banter. At first I don't connect at all with her; she just seems like the average 'school bully' type mocking our heroine for her mere existence. Oh look, there's our Required WB Beefcake in Tristan, flirting with Rory. This show's different...it had pretty great references to pop culture and other things. The writing is actually on par with David E. Kelley. They're talking a little bit fast for me but hey, I've got closed captioning, so I'm good.

Later, we move to more drama at the Winter Formal. I still have no idea why I'm feeling like I want to know this bully character more. Man, Lauren Graham is a great actress, why didn't NBC ever make her a regular in a Must See TV series? Hey, that other woman looks like the mom from Dirty Dancing...hmm.

And then we get to a point where this bully has taken her cousin to the dance. In most shows, you think we'd mine two minutes out of her misery and never see her again because screw her, this Rory is the hero (and why is she named that? I knew a Rory, but he was a gruff old bus driver). She'll mock her and...

Oh my gosh, instead, this girl is revealing that she took her cousin to the dance because her mom made her, all while thinking Rory is about to reveal her plan. And she's just getting into her face, furious, speaking fast and...

...hey, I know that voice. I pour over my mind. I go over it...

Wait, I think I remember now. Brown eyes, timid yet strong voice, small stature and just a way of getting all eyes on her in a scene...

THIS IS DEBBIE FROM THAT MOVIE! And she's on a TV show I'm really liking! Wow, she's doing really great in this scene, while this other actress is holding her own.

I now had a name. I also had by then learned more about fan culture; I was never comfortable before in the newsgroups dominated by men and my quirky TV taste that I'd get mocked for (I was ashamed when an Ally post got derision). Soon, I was able to connect that the girl in Stir of Echoes was the same one in Gilmore Girls, and beyond that I was really enjoying the show completely, in the same way I did Ally. I had a name for her, and eventually her character name, Paris Gellar. But...I had to wait a month until the next episode because of Christmas. But thankfully I had time to figure out what she was in, along with Lauren Graham.

Soon I was watching the back catalog of both actors. I found Liza Weil's woman's first film, Whatever at Blockbuster and rented it. Her vulnerability as a lost teenager trying to negotiate her senior year in high school as Anna Stockard, a young woman in New Jersey wanting a New York City existence, really was brought forward. Her acting in that was top-notch. Not being into ER I didn't know about her guest role on that until a TNT rerun came along, and I missed her West Wing guest star role until it came to Bravo for a short while in 2005. I was hyped to watch her on SVU, and she did not fail to bring it in her role there. She is beyond a chameleon in her acting and I enjoyed each and ever role I could find.

I seeked out a radio play she did, American Appetites, and even in that small role her voice and mannerisms were very apparent even in audio form. An indie film she did, Lullaby (which I had to buy with a personal check from the director himself and came on a burned DVD) showed her playing a newly single mother trying to get out from an abusive situation I had known only years before myself. There was so much to this actress, even more so when I realize she did two episodes of the late, great The Adventures of Pete & Pete in two different roles, playing off her zeal for witty comedy. If not for that short while of The N actually being Nick Classic and showing older Nickelodeon shows, I would have never seen them.

But meanwhile, I fell in love with the world of Stars Hollow, along with the characters that populated it and Hartford in the world of Amy Sherman-Palladino. Every week was a peek into this world where Rory and Lorelai navigated life, and slowly began to welcome in this unsure young academic girl who felt life without Harvard was a failure, unsure of who she was. Who could have been a one-note WB bully in the hands of anyone else, was played completely different by Liza Weil. She brought a vulnerability, a passion and character into Paris Eustace Gellar, a strongly feminist young woman who rarely took any crap from anyone and who was secure in herself. Even when she was fretting over the most 'network noted' boy trouble, Paris wasn't going to compromise herself to meet the views of any man or woman, young or old. She was herself. She opened herself up to Rory, letting others into her world slowly as her parents melted away their distant, but iron grip upon how she lived her life.

I had grown to love this character even deeper than I did Ally McBeal, and as I went deeper into fandom (along with the thankful world that is broadband Internet), I felt creative. I wrote stories about her, and Rory, and how they interacted. I began friendships with other people over our mutual respect for this character unlike any we had seen before, played by a shy but open blonde from Passaic whose real home was the Philadelphia suburbs, and traveled the world, knowing her life would be on the set for time immaterial. Soon this ended up in my writing basic M/F fanfiction, some of it...well, not too good (and thankfully off the web). But most of it realizing that I found more of a spark with her and Rory than I ever did any of the love interests the WB passed over. I soon realized that others shared this view as I wrote long, long stories about the adventures of a young woman who was realizing that unlike in the show, constrained by the network and probably by affiliates, she was in love with her rival. My world widened through the eyes of Paris Gellar.

My deepest friendships have come from the love of this actress and my sharing them. A sophomore at a small college east of Battle Creek figuring out her own way in life, knowing that she too loved woman and had a deep affinity with the chemistry between Paris and Rory. She was from a small town in western Massachusetts, and never in my life could I have ever thought I would be able to share in her deepest moments, and cheer her on as she found love, married a wonderful woman she found through her own deep affinity for, of all things, two women in a crime show, with one of them played by Kevin Bacon's wife. Ultimately like Liza Weil, we are all much closer than six degrees from Kevin, and this one woman through her acting has brought me a wealth of friends that I would never give up in my entire life.

I wrote a letter to Liza just before 9/11, sending it just before then and the end of free reign of fan letters. My first fan letter, where I told her how much I enjoyed her acting and how she played Paris. How I had started a Yahoo Group in her honor where others could talk about her acting. Not really knowing how autograph etiquette worked, I sent her a $5 check. After about a few months, I gave up that she would write me back.

Eventually however, she did. I heard my sister say 'you got something from Leesa Wheel?' in the mail one day, and shrugging off the terrible pronunciation, raced for it. A small note thanking me for my note and that she enjoyed the Yahoo Group, along with a signed 8x10 glossy thanking me for all I do. I was on cloud nine for weeks, excited that she had done that. And she didn't even cash the check! Although if she still has it and really needs some quick cash, honestly, I'm good for the money!

Liza has always been a quiet person, content in acting and enjoying learning more about it every day. Her interviews are few and far between, but she always keeps a way about herself that suggests she knows she could just lose it one day and be back to a regular person just like that. I love that about her, how she appreciates what she does have and revels in the little things. After Gilmore Girls finished up (and her only time speaking badly of executives when she called them out for not doing a proper finale), she rested, settled down, doing a few guest spots on CSI and Eleventh Hour, and also did a web series, Anyone But Me, proving her worth in those small roles. She married, started a family with a great daughter who she has successfully kept grounded in the craziness that is Hollywood. I would have been content to see her popping in and out in film and television at this point in occasional roles.

Thankfully, Shonda Rhimes has thought otherwise and saw the same thing we all did. First, a cancer patient in Grey's, then a patient on Private Practice. And after that Liza helped kick-start ABC's comeback to prominence as Amanda Tanner in a very emotional role in the first season of Scandal, then moved on to be the devastatingly and complex lawyer Bonnie Winterbottom in How to Get Away With Murder, where she's the luckiest actress in Hollywood to regularly share scenes with the legendary Viola Davis, and they leave everything out there for the world to see as they work through these incredibly deep scenes between Bonnie and Annaliese.

Liza Weil is beyond a doubt, the most prolific crying actress in the world. You believe her tears and how they're mustered. Her heart is out there for all to see with every performance she's done, even in the most rudimentary of roles. She can bring life to an audio play, as she did with Opus. And her decades-long friendship with fellow actress Emily Bergl shows she knows where she's come from. She's acted with every member of her immediate family, allowing them to share her spotlight. She is always there for Noah Buschel, a filmmaker whom she has deeply supported over the years. She supports Katie Lowes and her IAMA black-box theater, ready to lend a hand to a role when needed. She is a wonderful mother to her daughter, has not let the ugliness of divorce and how garbage tabloids and bitter others tried to cover it affect her at all. Liza is a supportive woman who has an open heart, accepts anyone for who they are, even to the point of playing roles where she loved a woman, including a lesbian devil in a play once.

But most of all, to me, she has helped to open the world to a guy who felt a little odd in the world liking 'feminine' things and feeling alone, but through my love for her acting, Paris Gellar, Bonnie Winterbottom, Amanda Tanner, Lara Todd, and countless other characters, she helped me meet my friends. She helped me figure out that who I am is okay. I have never met her in person, but I know the first thing I would do now if I could was say...

Thank you. Thank you, Liza Rebecca Weil for being who you are, and helping me to meet a lot of great people through my fandom of you and your shows. Thank you for those winter Thursday nights of liking, responding and re-tweeting the silly thoughts of a guy from Wisconsin watching shows well out of his demographic. Thank you for all the friendships I've formed because of you, of being able to witness the wedding of my best friend to her wonderful wife. Thank you for helping me find my way, to know that you, someone muddling their way through the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 90's, is still a humble and caring woman who appreciates everything others do for her, and returns it all in kind. And most of all, thank you for forming complex, daring, deeply-flawed, yet fully human, completely sarcastic, and yet at their core, incredible characters through all of your work.

On this, your fortieth birthday, I wish you all the best in your life, all of the blessings from those who know you from your work or personally, and most of all, a deep happiness, knowing that your fans are among a select few, enjoying you for who you are, and hopefully a career that will go into further decades without fail, with plenty of accolades, and the hope that future generations will study your work and base their own acting choices on yours.

Happy Birthday, Liza. Thank you, for being who you are, and know you are loved and appreciated in so many ways. In response to what you wrote fifteen years ago on that glossy...thank you for all you do.

 Nathan Schimpf June 5, 2017.

[conversationswithhank]

Hank: I was watching TV…

Me: (gasp)

Pai: Like real TV and not YouTube.

Me: (gasp again, clutching my non-existent pearls)

Hank: What?

Me: I thought kids your age didn’t watch TV anymore.

Hank: Anyway. I was watching TV, The Simpsons, and  then this show came on called The Goldbergs and it was about what it was like growing up between 1980 and 1990.

Pai: Where? I assume America.

Hank: Yah.

Me: Oh so, my life, basically.

Hank: And the show was about how it was just like really important that like everyone have a telephone. Not a cellphone because those didn’t exist yet, but like a telephone with a cord in their room.

Pai: Hank, there were three unnecessary “likes” in that one statemet.

Hank: Sorry.

Me: We had one phone growing up and it was in the kitchen conveniently attached to A WALL.

Hank: (wide eyed in disbelief) Was that a thing with you do you remember?

Me: My main concerns growing up were getting a dog, a VCR and cable. Only one of which happened before moving out on my own.

Hank: Which?

Me: The VCR. A total game changer, but we only rented movies from the library, no Blockbuster card for my parents.

Pai: (snickering) Blockbuster (sigh).

Me: Music was more the competitive thing I remember. Your favorite band, knowing all the lyrics to every song, etc, that was what I remember most. Music was a part of your identity. Your friend group was often based on your musical tastes. I remember spending hours waiting for a certain song to be played on the radio and even more radical was when you would actually call into the radio station and request they play your favorite song and then you would sit riveted in front of the speakers not moving for fear they would actually play it and you would miss it. If you were very lucky the DJ would record your request and actually play the recording before playing the song and then you would scream because you were on the radio, hyperventilate, and pass out before the song would even come on. (sigh) Kids at school would have heard it because they were home doing the same thing and the next day either judge you for requesting the song or congratulate you for being on the radio.

Pai: And then there were mixed tapes.

Hank: What were mixed tapes?

Me: You would choose songs that best represented your soul or romanitc intentions and compile them into a mix

Pai: What you would call a playlist.

Me: Exactly and then you would record those songs on a cassette tape and give them to your friends and if you were brave to someone you had a crush on BUT what you have to remember is there was no internet, no downloading so you had to go out and buy all the music that made up your mixed tape or record the songs off the radio. I spent all my paper route and baby sitting money at the record shop, buying albums, cassette singles, sheet music to learn how to actually PLAY the song because my family was musical and blank tapes.

Pai: Your mother made a lot of mixed tapes.

Me: Guilty. I am a passionate person. I used to stay up real late, light a single candle and play records all night long and really feeeeeeeeel the music while staring into the solitary candlelight. Nowadays, hipsters call this meditating.

Pai: (snickering)

Me: Music was such a big thing your Uncle Jesse saved up all his money and bought a Boombox.

Pai: Oh, that was a big deal.

Me: This thing was as big as your sister, but not as heavy, and it ran on batteries which meant you no longer had to sit in the house with your music you could – wait for it- take your music with you…outside. Uncle Jesse used to throw this up on his shoulder and march around Sunset Boulevard with our neighbor and his best friend, Dennis Hicks, listening to Thriller, Run-D.M.C. and The Fat Boys, those were his cassettes I remember, and this machine ran on eight DD batteries. (gesturing the size of a single DD battery) Uncle Jesse bought eight rechargeable batteries from Radio Shack that probably cost just as much as the Boombox and I think they only had about two hours of playtime before they had to plug into a wall. Man, good times.

Hank: So where did you go?

Me: Oh, I wasn’t invited to parade around the neighborhood with my brother and his friends unless Dennis Hick’s cousin BB was visiting. My brother wanted nothing to do with his baby sister. Made that very clear when he declared he wouldn’t walk me to my first day of kindergarten and left me in the middle of the road not knowing where to go.

Hank: I still can’t believe he did that.

Me: Not every brother and sister get along. You and Molly are a rare and wonderful exception. We made up for it of course when I was a freshman and he was a senior in high school. Then we became friends, but not before.

Pai: Not all big brothers are like you. You are Charlie and Amália is Lola.

Hank: Awe, really?

Me: Totally! Oh, I didn’t see it before. You two are just like Charlie and Lola! Loving that cartoon really paid off.

Hank: That is such a nice compliment, thank you. I love my sister. I know she frustrates me so much, but every morning when we wake up I am so happy to see her I don’t remember why she was frustrating.

Me: You have summed up the parenting paradox in a single sentence.

Hank: I have a little sister, Molly, and she is small and very funny.

Me: Remember that when you’re a teenager and she is your age now.

Hank: I imagine I will be focused more on my studies, but I will always have time to play video games or pick her up from school! OH! I want pick her up from school and take her to a café and then we could talk over cakes like I do with mom, just her and me.

Pai: Your sister is very lucky.

Me: All I got from my brother when I was in elementary school was a pitchfork to the skull.

Hank: WHAT!

Me: That made it sound really dire doesn’t it?

Pai: Completely sinister.

Me: Not my intention. It was a total accident. My brother was extremely apologetic. I was fine. We were having a hay fight while bailing to my grandpa’s horses and my brother misjudged where my head was. To be fair my hair was the color of straw. My cranium was camouflaged, well it was until I started bleeding.

Pai: Okay, let’s go back to music, shall we? What were these Fat Boys?

[leiflikesdisney-blog]

The Little Mermaid Liveblog

Hello, hello, welcome to another installment of “Leif watches a Disney movie and overreacts to mundane events.”

So, going in, I liked The Little Mermaid as a kid. However, for whatever reason, I preferred the sequel. Whenever my family rented VCRs from the local Blockbuster-esque store, I would alternate weekly between Disney’s Three Musketeers and The Little Mermaid 2. I don’t know why the sequel stood out to me so much, but it did. So, since I always watched the sequel instead of the original, it’s been years since I’ve watched The Little Mermaid. Hopefully, the movie has stood the test of time, and I can still enjoy it.

Let’s do this.

Disney has successfully mastered opening with beautiful scenery. I like how soft and pastel it is.

So, already, I have to say it, we all have to say it. Prince Eric is pretty attractive. Also, I love a man with a dog.

Hmm. Conveniently discussing mermaids and namedropping King Triton.

I hate jellyfish. I got stung once, and I hate that they’re being shoved down my throat just to get across the ocean imagery. Jellyfish are jerks.

I find it interesting how the movie is named The Little Mermaid, and the protagonist is a mermaid, yet the first glance we get of the merpeople is a guy. Just a thought.

Aww, it’s a family.

Why are there so many?? I mean, for all intensive purposes, mermaids are just people but with fins and gills, but this makes it seem like they travel in herds.

Food for thought: What is a group of mermaids called? Would it be a crowd (like humans), or a school (like fish)? According to the internet, it’s called a “gossip.”

Capitalism at work.

Y’all, I’m gonna be a little honest, I wanted to be Sebastian when I was a kid. Look at that swagger and smile.

“Especially my little Ariel.” That is…such favoritism it isn’t even funny. King Triton is kind of a problematic father.

Are they singing about how great their father is?

DUDE. Why do I already hate him?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Okay, look. I understand being free-spirited, but just show up to the goddamn show. Does she think her sisters are going to get off scot free? No, they’ll get punished for your irresponsibility too, Ariel.

This is stressing me out.

I don’t know how great of an introduction to a protagonist this is. Our first impression of her is that she’s flighty and irresponsible, which makes the viewer dislike and distrust her, but…she’s supposed to be a likable protagonist, right?

Flounder is how I sound every time I email my teachers to let them know I’m sick.

And I thought Belle was skinny.

THAT ISN’T A NORMAL-SIZED WAIST, DISNEY.

Something is telling me there might be sharks around here.

Okay.

This is poor representation of sharks. Give them a break, they’re just stupid and have bad eyesight.

This movie is the reason I have stress issues.

Is Scuttle supposed to be a seagull? I thought the deal with seagulls was they always stayed close to land, and they only went out to sea to die.

How old is Ariel supposed to be? She feels very baby-faced.

Oh, Scuttle. No.

Scuttle reminds me of my high school history teachers.

I found the “Give that bitch a dinglehopper” meme face.

Spooky.

OHH, Ursula sees through their eyes.

“When I lived in the palace.” This raises a BUNCH of questions about Ursula’s backstory that are never answered. Also, I just want to say, whoever Ursula’s voice actor is, does a wonderful job.

Ugh, I love the animation they did for Ursula. I could watch her tentacles for hours they’re so mesmerizing.

The fact that they can go to the surface and survive raises many questions. How do they survive the pressure of the ocean, and how does their body adapt to the decrease in pressure?

They refer to humans as fish eaters?? What do THEY eat? Do they survive entirely on kelp and seaweed. I can’t believe King Triton is the annoying vegetarian guy that goes around insulting “meat eaters.”

“I’m sixteen years old!” OH HONEY

I feel so sorry for Sebastian. Ariel seems like such a frustrating child to deal with, and he’s basically ordered to watch her 24/7. Also, he can’t swim that fast? What did Triton expect?

Drama princess

Is King Triton…xenophobic?

The art direction in this scene is so gorgeous, and the song is great, but the reverb is so confusing?? Like, yeah she’s in a cave, but it makes the vocals sound so garbled and distorted.

She has just so much hair.

“Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters.” But she’s not like petty or bitter or anything…God, just call Triton out why don’t you Ariel

THAT BOOK WOULD NOT SURVIVE THE WATER

Again, this movie IS really pretty.

YOU’RE GONNA DIE

Ah, yes. That classic “love at first sight” gaze.

How’d she fall for Eric when this absolute dreamboat was on board?

Ingrate.

This was my exact expression when I realized they left the dog on board in the fire.

NO

Man, they’re out here trying to make Beanpole look like a bad guy, but funny how he’s the one saving the dog while Eric’s lazy ass is busy dying.

The end. Roll credits.

“Oh no! The statue was on that ship!”

WHAT?? This guy doesn’t even have burns?? No lost limbs?? He’s JUST FINE floating on this little two by four like “oh no!! I got some smoke in my eyes!” BOY YOU JUST GOT BLOWN UP

That’s not like…a stupid or dangerous decision in the slightest.

He isn’t even surprised Eric is alive?? You watched him get BLOWN UP

This is such an iconic shot, but I just cannot get over her tiny, tiny waist.

She has a very expressive face, and I am living for it.

It’s scenes like these that just remind me how young she is and make me uncomfortable with the plot of the movie, especially since Eric seems MUCH older than 16. Also, it’s very evident that the artists did not know how bras work, especially underwater.

YES, I am so ready for this bopper of a song.

I feel like newts don’t live on the seabed, but I’ll allow it.

She gone.

You could have gotten off scot-free but NOOO, you just had to confess.

Exactly how I felt when she said she loved a guy she doesn’t even know.

I don’t know if the people who made this movie realize how scary and unlikable they made Triton.

Please stop calling her “child.” I hate remembering that she is very much a kid.

Yesss, such a good song.

Wow, it’s almost like villains are allowed to be more expressive and animated than protagonists, cause they don’t have to be “attractive.”

Was it necessary to animate that boob jiggle?

Ah yes, the golden days of animation smears.

I love this color palette.

Disney is really killing it with these color palettes.

I find it interesting that Ariel’s mannerisms became much more animated and expressive once she lost her voice. It’s almost like they realized that people express themselves through ways besides tone and inflection?

She is really cute here. Again, though, that’s not how waists work.

Sebastian is the father Ariel deserves.

Well, at least she isn’t naked anymore.

I can tell by that noise that she’s wearing heels, and honestly? I’m a little upset. It’s the girls first day with legs and she’s somehow walking just fine in heels? I’ve had legs for 18 years, and heels are still a struggle for me.

HER WAIST IS SO SMALL PLEASE HELP HER THAT’S NOT HOW BODIES WORK

Disney movies tend to either have effeminate male villains, or overweight villains. This guy manages to fit both those categories. I guess the writers decided that villainizing just one fat character wasn’t enough.

…I am a sucker for well-choreographed dance scenes, though, and this scene is oddly cute to me.

Me too.

Look, I can’t help the fact that he’s cute.

“My kingdom.” Well, well, well, little mister “I’m not vain, and I’m going to be standoffish towards Grimby’s statue of me to prove it.” How the tables have turned.

Please just let Sebastian replace King Triton.

Oh, boo-hoo, woe is me, it’s time for a ham fisted attempt at making the audience feel sympathetic towards Ariel’s scumbag father. NO, guess what, I know it’s coming entirely because of this scene. They’re going to “””redeem””” him, and try to have some touching reuniting scene, BUT I’M NOT BUYING IT. King Triton is a scumbag. #NotMySeaKing

His hair looks so fluffy.

Please get her out of those heels, I am concerned for her safety.

That’s kind of a, uh…dark joke.

I forgot how many great songs this movie has.

OKAY AS MUCH AS I LOVE THIS SONG, THIS SCENE IS HILARIOUS. HE JUST…DOESN’T NOTICE THE SUDDEN MUSIC AND SINGING?

I will say, they do a wonderful job at capturing that feeling of awkward, uncomfortable first-time teenage romance.

More pretty scenery.

“That’s kind of pretty!” KIND OF??? Please, somebody help this boy, he is so bad at this.

I hate that weird “come hither” look on her baby doll face.

Cock blocked.

OH NO

They really would not get away with her calling an Ariel a tramp in modern movies.

I very strongly relate to Ursula’s hatred of Triton.

STOP, GOD…HE’S TOO MUCH FOR ME.  Eric is that kid in high school that thinks he’s deep and thoughtful for not doing his homework, and he constantly talks about playing the flute in class, but he never actually plays during band because they don’t play anything that he likes. He wears a cape to school and pretends to smoke under the bleachers, because he wants to be cool but he isn’t about to mess with the possibility of upsetting his acute asthma.

Beanpole looks so tired of Eric’s shit. His face just screams, “Not this again.”

So pensive…So thoughtful…You’re not deep or edgy for reading Poe, Eric. Everyone reads Poe.

Actually, Eric is that one jerk who judges your music taste too harshly. “I mean, I GUESS Bruno Mars is okay, but he’s really sold out. I listen to more obscure artists…Recently, I’ve been really digging this nameless, faceless chick that pulled me out of the ocean.”

Stop encouraging him to marry a girl that he’s known for a day. “Warm and caring” WHERE? YOU DON’T KNOW HER. SHE BLEW YOUR PIPE IN YOUR FACE, BEANPOLE.

I hate this internal conflict. Do I marry a girl I barely know, or a girl that I don’t know at all. HOW ABOUT NEITHER.

WHAT?? I MEAN, I APPRECIATE THE SYMBOLISM BUT WHY??

…Sure. You know what. Sure. I don’t have the energy to be upset with this right now.

UH

They’re friends.

Remember the olden days when people got engaged and married in the span of literal hours? I know people who have been engaged for two years and are still planning their wedding.

Aw, she wasn’t even invited to the wedding.

This is how I look getting ready for my 8:30 classes.

ARIEL, NO

I…don’t think….this is the best plan.

I mean, come on. What did you expect?

Okay, end. Roll credits. Don’t drag this out.

Oh, darnit.

I LOVE THEIR EXPRESSIONS HERE? THEY JUST LOOK SO NONCHALANT ABOUT THIS.

One day, I want to be as dramatic as Ursula.

You can’t fight the law, Triton.

The law always wins.

Alright, cool. Steal his life force, kill him off, roll credits, we’re done! Happy ending for all!

Well, that’s definitely not how this works. Ariel has like 20 older sisters you gotta kill off first.

WHAT

Me running away from my problems

Well, duh, that’s gonna happen.

Still 100 times more sympathetic than Triton.

They just didn’t even bother to animate his dialogue here they were so done with this movie.

Cock blocked again.

She’s so cool, I love her.

I love these colors.

HE’S JUST LAUNCHED INTO THE AIR? OKAY, BYE ERIC.

I know I’m supposed to be doing some deep thinking, like, why do I think Ursula is so cool in these scenes where she’s literally trying to kill people, but…I don’t have an answer. She’s just so COOL. Look at her.

How does he magically have his crown back?

Oh, come on, we’ve been here before.

I hate you. I hate your weird old man buff body. I hate your beard. I hate your nonsensical eyebrows. Leave this movie.

BOO! BOO! BAD REDEMPTION ARC!

I’m confused about the dress but hey, at least she isn’t naked this time.

So…This is the second movie I’ve liveblogged where the prince wears capris, and I can only hope this trend continues with Cinderella.

YOU’RE KILLING HIM

A good surrogate father.

Aaand Ariel snaps his neck and the credits roll. The end.

That’s a nice “Part of your World” reprise tie in.

I’m like 90% sure they just reused the animation of them kissing from 30 seconds ago.

And now, officially, for real this time, roll the credits.

A nice movie! I love the scenery and soundtrack, and Sebastian and Ursula are two of my favorite Disney characters. Unfortunately, my disdain for Triton, Ariel, and Eric make this a kind of difficult movie to watch. Still, I’d probably watch it again.