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fruitcoops · 4 years ago

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hey! idk if you've seen that cut video about how couples sleep together but i just cant stop thinking about the team doing it. It would be SO cute with your amazing writing :))

Thank you! I absolutely adore this video and I’ve watched it probably twenty times--each couple is just so cute! Quick disclaimer: while this may seem a little odd, since the Lions are basically celebrities, I think the channel wanted to do it to show the diversity of the team and emphasize love above everything else. Hope you enjoy!

“Hey, Lions!” Marlene says cheerfully, waving to the camera. She stands alone in the studio for once. “We have something a little different for you today. Four of the couples on the team agreed to let us record them sleeping for a night, which we’ve combined with short interviews from each of them. Hope you enjoy!”

The video cuts and a title card appears, reading Couple Number One: James and Lily Potter.

Their bedroom is moderately sized, with a crib at the foot of the bed and a fluffy red comforter that accents their walls. James is partially visible as he brushes his teeth, but Lily is fully in frame in her oversized t-shirt and flannel pajama pants while she climbs into bed with Harry in her arms.

“How long have you been together?” Marlene asks in a voiceover.

“We’ve been married for just over six months,” James’ voice says; on the screen, he walks out of the bathroom and tucks his legs up to kiss the tops of Lily and Harry’s heads. “But we dated for several years before that.”

“What time do you normally go to bed?”

“Maybe eight? Eight-thirty?” Lily says. Sure enough, the clock on their nightstand reads 8:07. “We stay up after the baby’s gone to sleep, though.”

“What story are we doing tonight, kiddo?” James asks, pressing a raspberry kiss to Harry’s belly until baby giggles fill the bedroom. “How about…Make Way For Ducklings?”

“Ducky!” Harry squeals, reaching for his glasses.

“Alright, baby love.” Lily smiles as she takes a book of the nightstand and opens it up.

“Would you say you sleep well?” Marlene asks.

“Oh, that’s a tough question,” James says—in the bedroom, he and Lily take turns reading pages to Harry as he sits between them and points to the ducks. “It’s better now that he can sleep through the night. I’d say we get a solid seven hours each night, maybe more.”

“I wake up pretty often because I worry,” Lily adds.

“Do either of you talk in your sleep?”

She laughs. “No, thankfully. Once we’re out, we’re out until morning.”

“What’s your body language like?”

“I’m cuddly,” James says with a light laugh. In the video, he wraps an arm around Lily’s shoulders and traces the picture book with one finger, kissing Harry’s chubby baby hand. “She likes to starfish.”

“We’re both big cuddlers,” Lily agrees. The video skips forward in time, showing Lily lowering Harry into his crib while James grabs his phone off the nightstand and squints at it.

They curl up together while the clock continues to tick, and an hour or so later they put their phones away and snuggle under the covers. The night goes on and, slowly, Lily begins to splay out on the mattress, her hair in every direction as James keeps one arm securely around her waist. During a brief pause, their snoring harmonizes.

Harry wakes up just past four with a sniffle and babbles for a moment until James stands up, taking him out of his crib and humming softly as he bounces him; Lily barely flinches. “Baba,” Harry mumbles while he holds on to the edge of James’ shirt. “Baba, baba, baba.”

“Shh, buddy.” James touches their forehead together before setting him back down in the crib. “Sweet dreams. I love you.”

Marlene’s voiceover comes on again as the sun rises outside their window. “What time do you usually wake up?”

“James gets up earlier than I do for practice,” Lily says. A soft alarm jingles on the nightstand and James clumsily turns it off, scrubbing at his eyes for a second before digging his glasses out of the nightstand and sitting up—he leans over to kiss Lily’s forehead before getting up for real.

“Around seven, seven-thirty usually,” James confirms. “I don’t actually know what time you get up most weekdays.”

“Oh, probably eight-thirty or nine? Once Harry’s up, I’m up.”

Marlene hums. “How important is your bedroom to you? What about your bed?”

“Both are so important.” James doesn’t hesitate. “Evenings and nights are the longest period of time we spend together because of my job.”

“It’s a very safe space,” Lily says. “Life is so hectic, but once we’re in bed we don’t have to go anywhere else.”

The bedroom disappears—Lily and James sit in chairs in the Lion Pride studio with Marlene across from them. “Thanks so much for joining us today, you guys!” she says with a smile. “I’m really looking forward to filming this video.”

Couple Number Two: Kasey Winter and Natalie Darcy

Their bedroom is smaller than the Potters’ and painted light blue with large windows. Outside, night has fallen and the light of the city shines through their blinds as Kasey closes them; Natalie is already in bed, reading a paperback with her legs crossed on top of the blankets.

Kasey turns the light off and climbs in next to her, resting his head on her thigh as he dozes off and she continues to read by her bedside lamp. “Goodnight,” he murmurs. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Natalie smiles and runs her fingers through his hair.

“How long have you been together?” Marlene asks.

“We’ve been dating for four years now,” Kasey’s voice says. In their bedroom, the video speeds up until eleven thirty, when Natalie puts her book down and settles into Kasey’s arms.

“Do you go to bed early or late? It’s just the two of you, right?”

“Right. Kase likes going to bed before me because he has to get up earlier, but I’m a night owl.”

“Does that make it hard for you to sleep well?”

“Not at all,” Kasey says. “She sleeps like a log and I’m always careful not to wake her up on workdays. We like to sleep in on days off.”

Marlene hums in agreement. “Do either of you talk in your sleep?”

“Nope. I’m a light sleeper, so it’s nice that neither of us do it.”

The video continues through the night and sure enough, the only sound is their soft breathing; Natalie presses against Kasey’s chest with an arm over his shoulders. “What’s your body language like when you sleep? Are you cuddlers?”

“I love cuddles!” Kasey says with an almost-audible smile. Sure enough, he snuggles into Natalie with a soft sigh as the clock on their wall turns to 4 am.

“How many hours of sleep do you get every night?” Marlene asks.

They take a moment to think, and the sun begins to shine through their bedroom window. “Ten to six am is…about eight hours? I can get by on six, though.”

“I need a solid eight, eight and a half to function,” Natalie says. “Though sometimes I’ll get up and do something before going back to bed until nine.”

“How important is your bedroom to you?”

“That’s a good question.” Kasey hums in thought. “I value it a lot because it’s a place to be close to her, and that’s hard to get when we’re both so busy.”

“I agree.”

On screen, Kasey’s alarm begins to ring and he stretches, gently detaching Natalie’s hold and kissing her shoulder as he pulls the blankets up to her chin and slides out of bed. “Have a good day, baby,” she mumbles sleepily.

“Love you,” he whispers back as he brushes her hair out of her eyes.

The video cuts; Kasey and Natalie have taken James and Lily’s places. “Thanks for agreeing to do this, guys!” Marlene says.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Natalie says with a slight smile.

Couple Number 3: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin

The third bedroom is cluttered and neat at the same time. Knickknacks line the dresser and various items are scattered on the nightstand, but the floor is clean and the dark blue bedspread is tidy as Remus reads against the headboard. On the other side of the room, Sirius stops midway through brushing his teeth to change into a sleep shirt and Remus laughs at his muffled grumbling.

“How long have you been together?” Marlene asks again in her voiceover.

“We’ve been dating for over a year now,” Remus says.

“What time do you go to bed?”

“Oh, maybe ten pm? Eleven?” Sirius guesses. “Whenever we’re tired.”

The clock reads ten forty-five as Sirius gets under the covers and wraps his arms around Remus’ torso, cuddling against his waist and leg while Remus strokes his hair. Ten minutes pass until he puts the book down and turns off the light before scooting back against Sirius’ chest to be the little spoon. “Love you,” he says quietly.

Sirius kisses behind his ear. “Je t’aime.”

“What’s your body language like when you sleep?” Marlene asks. “Cap, everyone knows about your famous cuddles.”

He snorts. “Usually we spoon, but sometimes it changes up.”

“We kind of have to spoon,” Remus laughs. “You’d wake up on the floor otherwise.”

“I would not!” Sirius protests. In the video, an hour has passed, and he unconsciously tries to roll over Remus, who reaches up and pushes his shoulder back without opening his eyes. He shifts a few more times before settling down.

“Do you talk in your sleep as well?” Marlene continues.

Remus sighs. “No, that would be me.”

“It’s cute and awful at the same time,” Sirius says. “On one hand, it wakes me up, but on the other, we have the best conversations.”

At 2:12 am, Remus scrunches his nose up in his sleep. “Hey. Hey.”

Sirius huffs and cracks an eye open. “Quoi?”

“Go away.”

There’s a pause and Sirius sits up, clearly still half-asleep. “Huh?”

“The cat’s in the garden, dumbass. That cat—the cat is in the garden.”

With a heavy sigh, Sirius gets under the covers again and wraps his arms around Remus. “Okay, mon coeur.”

“Blueberry milkshake.”

“That doesn’t exist.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Shut up, Pots, nobody asked you.” Remus says playfully, then hums and pulls Sirius closer. “Bonjour, honey. Je t’aime.”

In the voiceover, Marlene laughs. “What do you two talk about?”

“Oh, everything,” Sirius replies.

An hour and a half passes in fast motion on screen; they move around a little bit, but overall stay cuddled up and comfortable. “The tea. Honey, the tea. Tea’s burning.”

Sirius reaches over and puts his hand over Remus’ mouth gently. “Shhh.”

“Tea’s burning,” Remus repeats, though his voice is muffled until he bats Sirius’ hand away. “Hugs and kisses, hugs and kisses.”

“Hey, sweetheart, what’s the meaning of life?”

Remus is quiet for a beat. “Pun’kin pie.”

“Why do you talk in your sleep?”

“I love you.”

“How could we have done better in our last game?” Sirius is grinning now and rubbing slow circles over Remus’ back. “I was a little worried about our defense.”

“Hmm. Apples.” Remus turns over and nuzzles against Sirius. “See you later, alligator.”

Sirius shakes with suppressed laughter for a moment until the voiceover starts again. “What time do you wake up in the morning?” Marlene asks. “Practice starts pretty early.”

“Sirius wakes up earlier than I do, but we don’t get out of bed until seven-ish,” Remus says, sounding far more awake than he did in the video. “We try to aim for eight hours of sleep, but that doesn’t always happen.”

“How important is your bedroom?”

Sunlight streams through the cracks in the blinds at six am, lighting up Remus’ face on one side as Sirius starts to wake up. He pauses with a smile and runs his thumb along Remus’ cheek before kissing his forehead and settling onto his back.

“Our bedroom is really important,” Sirius answers. “It’s a safe space where there’s no pressure to do anything and we can just be ourselves.”

Remus smacks his alarm at six-thirty and starts sitting up, only for Sirius to wrap all four limbs around him and drag him back down for more cuddles; Remus laughs, but happily obliges. The camera cuts out just as they start getting out of bed half an hour later.

“Thanks for answering my questions,” Marlene says with a grin. “I gotta say, I’m looking forward to the sleep talking.”

“It’s so funny,” Sirius snickers.

Remus rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Yeah, yeah, alright. Exploit me in my most vulnerable state, why don’t you?”

Couple Number 4: Pascal and Celeste Dumais

“We have been married for fifteen years,” Dumo says as the video begins.

Celeste is already out cold in the bed while he tiptoes around their bedroom, sliding in next to her as quietly as possible; she smiles in her sleep and scoots over to lay her head on his shoulder. It’s clearly a comfortable place for them—the walls are a warm beige and a colorful quilt lays heavy across the sheets.

“Do you sleep well?”

“Sometimes,” Celeste says. “We sleep better now that the kids are older, but I wake up a lot in the middle of the night because I still worry about them.”

“How many hours of sleep do you think you get?”

“Oh, probably seven? I go to bed early, though.”

“I get a steady six to eight,” Dumo says.

“Do you sleepwalk or talk?”

Celeste laughs as Dumo groans. “He used to sleepwalk, but after the kids were born there wasn’t enough consistent sleep to do it anymore.”

In the dark of their bedroom, Dumo moves around quite a lot—he rolls onto his back, then his side, then curls around Celeste, then lays a little bit sideways before she quietly shushes him just past 3 am and puts her hand on his chest. He sighs and leans his head against hers with a drowsy half-smile.

“Do you cuddle?” Marlene asks.

“Sometimes,” Dumo says. “Though we’ve been together for so long that we don’t really have to. I always know where she is.”

“That’s adorable,” Marlene says at the same time Celeste makes a soft sound of affection. “What time do you wake up?”

There is one window in their bedroom, high on the western wall, that shows the slowly-lightening sky. When the clock strikes six, both of them stretch and roll onto their backs, though they stay close enough to share body heat as Dumo combs his fingers through Celeste’s long hair.

“Around six. It’s easier to get up early now that we’re older,” Dumo says. “Besides, the kids don’t get up until later, so we finally get some time to ourselves.”

“Bonjour, mon amour,” Celeste murmurs in the video with a sleepy smile, pressing kisses to Dumo’s cheek. “Hmm, je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime, ma jolie chérie.”

The video returns to the studio after that; Dumo and Celeste hold hands while they talk, and Marlene puts away her notecards with a smile. “Thank you for agreeing to do this, it means a lot. We tried to get a variety of different couples for this and I’m sure the video will turn out great.”

“Ne rien. Good luck with filming!”

A final title card appears. Thanks for watching, Lions! Be sure to like and subscribe for more content.

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 8 years ago

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Episode 54*: Story for Steven

“What are you doing here?”

It was never guaranteed that we’d see any more of Rose Quartz than a videotape. This is Steven’s show, and our perspective has always been his; even alternate-protagonist adventure Garnet’s Universe is a Steven story (in this case literally). Rose by necessity doesn’t exist during his lifetime, so the only way to show her true self outside of recorded messages was an unprecedented flashback episode.

Fortunately, precedent takes a back seat to character and plot, and Story for Steven switches to Greg’s perspective for an episode to allow us a new look into an earlier world. Despite his past self’s eerie visual similarity with his son, Greg is a perennial outsider looking in when it comes to magic, which is bound to shape his worldview in a way we haven’t seen from his drenched-in-magic son. And for some of the episode, this works! Buuuuuuut…

I have this pet peeve. I’ve always had it, even as a kid. It all began with Batman: The Animated Series, a.k.a. the optimal Batman experience, and one of its all-time classics, Heart of Ice. In the middle of the episode, Batman discovers a video tape documenting the accident that transformed Victor Fries into Mr. Freeze:

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Okay, several questions.

How does the camera pan during this footage? Did Victor have an actual person filming instead of a tripod? If so, why didn’t they help out or say anything?

Why do we cut between Victor’s camera and what seems to be security footage? Who took the time to edit this thing from multiple sources?

How do we get the shot-reverse shot back-and-forth between Victor and the villainous Ferris Boyle? Has Victor’s camera operator shoved himself between the two? And if so, why doesn’t said operator appear on the security footage segments?

Why didn’t Ferris Boyle destroy the tape that proves he murdered somebody?

These, to me, aren’t nitpicky questions. We’ve been given a specific lens through which Batman sees events, and that lens requires certain limitations that the sequence ignores.

This issue is common in flashbacks, where the audience sees things that the character having the flashback can’t possibly perceive, and it drives me nuts. Steven Universe is unfortunately no exception. And to make matters worse, Story for Steven does this to the detriment of the storytelling! How great would it be if we saw Greg’s entire story as if he was telling it to Steven (which is the framing device in the first place) instead of this:

We shouldn’t know that the owl is Amethyst. Not only because Greg doesn’t know, and this is his perspective, but because it ruins the joke! This is our hero’s very first interaction with something explicitly supernatural, but we aren’t allowed to feel his shock because the camera decided to spoil the surprise.

Now, perhaps we see Amethyst because Steven has heard the story so many times that he knows it’s Amethyst, and Story for Steven is stealthily from his point of view after all. But how would he know about other events that Greg wasn’t privy to? What would Greg even tell him? “And then after I left, Pearl said she could sing and the others all laughed”?

It wouldn’t irk me half as much if the introduction to the flashback wasn’t so amazing. Comet does the impossible by making Greg Universe, one of the dadliest dads on television, actually kind of cool. Seeing his name in lights as he rules the stage in a song whose length is rivaled only by Stronger Than You at this point in the show is spectacular, and the song itself makes the most of Stemage’s fantastic guitar work with Tom Scharpling’s versatile singing voice: he manages to vividly portray modern Greg’s eternal earnestness, but with far more edge than the likes of Dear Old Dad or Wailing Stone, to actually sell Mr. Universe’s rock cred.

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And then we see the reality, where Greg’s on an empty stage with a (nearly) empty crowd, cementing the scene as something from Greg’s head. In his mind, at that moment, he was a rock star. I just wish the rest of the episode maintained this fun with perspective, because Greg’s mind is a wonderful new way to see Steven’s Universe.

For comparison, just look at The Answer, where we’re always following Ruby, Sapphire, or Garnet. The storyboarders have a blast with the style, using a new color palette and hyper-stylized backgrounds to make Garnet’s story feel like an actual story instead of a regular episode that happens to be in the past.

Story for Steven is one of the few times Steven knows way more than we do, which could’ve easily been used to add some real flavor to Greg’s tale, whether through Steven interjecting, Greg speeding through “boring stuff” to taunt the audience, or another idea that the show’s incredibly creative crew could drum up far better than I could. Missed opportunities like this are a real drag.

Okay, so does this make me dislike the episode? Of course not. It could’ve been great, but that hardly means it isn’t good.

Story for Steven is a surprisingly quiet marvel, given the volume of its introduction and the excitement of seeing Rose for an extended period of time. The only “villain” is easily vanquished, and the action overall is minimal. Important information is underplayed or left to implication: there’s something so sad about seeing the surviving Crystal Gems as childlike figures, back when they were allowed to be young followers instead of adult guardians, but these forms are never discussed. Amethyst’s fascination with the human world and Pearl’s discomfort with it are both seen through their reactions to Greg, and Garnet is a delight as always. And even though Greg crashing through their fence isn’t the subtlest symbolism in the cosmos, his role in bringing the outside world back to the Gems really is that important.

I’ve said a lot about Pink Diamond’s biggest flaw: her pathological secrecy. But this episode only comes about because of her greatest strength: her curiosity. We’ve seen time and again how the remaining Crystal Gems are set in their ways, but their leader, ever the rebel, is fascinated with change. Her specific interest in Greg’s space-themed set is a cute touch, allowing us a taste of the unintentional condescension that drives We Need To Talk as she stage whispers about him to her friends. Even though she’s still a mystery from Greg’s perspective (which this flashback does do right, despite other flaws) not a second is wasted in developing her as an individual and a leader.

Like Ruby, Lapis, and Jasper in Jailbreak, Rose’s gem is neatly emphasized in Story for Steven. Our first glimpse of her frames her gem instead of her face or entire body, and while her final scene in Greg’s shirt obviously showcases her affection towards him and references our previous sightings of said shirt, it also covers the gem as she builds a human connection.

Despite prompting the story, Marty mostly remains in the background, which is good and bad. For a while, I enjoyed his one-dimensional portrayal, complete with shark teeth, as I figured it was a peek into Greg’s view of his evil manager. But then Drop Beat Dad came along and it turns out that Marty is exactly what he seems like here, if not worse. (I also initially figured the child Gems were part of Greg’s perspective, but he has video footage of them in We Need to Talk.)

It’s a shame to see such a big part of Greg’s life so underdeveloped, but Marty scrapes by through his skeevy charisma and terrifically gross dialogue: his weird but lived-in chemistry with Greg should come as no surprise when you consider he’s performed by Tom Scharpling’s longtime comedy partner Jon Wurster. Even if the craziest part of Marty’s involvement is that we ostensibly find out that Sour Cream was conceived in Greg’s van (which, yikes, kid’s show), my favorite is his revelation that Greg clearly has a thing for giant women. Marty knowing stuff like this suggests a close relationship that’s also implied by Greg’s photo, and I do wish we got a little bit more of that instead of a straight-up villain.

While I felt that the framing device was underutilized, the actual transitions between past and present are marvelous on both ends. Both are eased in with Greg’s guitar, but while the former opts for some rockin’ juxtaposition, the latter quietly gives us a variant Rose’s Theme to take us home. (And considering Greg starts the story by playing the opening of Comet for Steven, we’re allowed to imagine he just sang the whole song in his van if we want.)

Despite its issues, Story For Steven is a pleasant surprise: we already learned the essentials of how Greg met Rose from all the way back in Laser Light Cannon, and Steven knows much more than we do on the subject, so we could’ve gone without a whole episode about it. Rose didn’t have to show up until much later, if at all, but glimpses into the past help round out his world as it grows more and more complicated in the present and future.

Future Vision!

I doubt anyone, in Beach City or real life, could’ve predicted that Comet would get a second life as a burger jingle that somehow turns Greg into a multimillionaire. Is that how jingles work? Write one and you’re set for life?

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

As I mentioned in So Many Birthdays, the sweet implication that Amethyst copped her modern hairstyle from Greg back in the day is marred by seeing that hair in colonial times.

I guess you could read it that way…

I’ve already written at length about why I prefer watching Story for Steven in Season 2 that covers all the stuff I’d usually say in this section.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I understand the appeal of Story for Steven and genuinely like it, but its execution bugs me in a way that I doubt is too common among fans. If this is one of your favorites, that’s great, but by my reckoning (which this is) it’s outdone by many of its peers.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

On the Run