#Huey be attracting both them genders

[paw-present]

Huey’s got that unforsaken rizz.

Based of this abomination I made:

[hexenmeisterer]

Comparing “The Ladies’ Man” to “A Likely Story”

Some collaborative due South meta 

Here’s what happens when two friends separated by lots of geography watch due South together over Skype, read ALL of truepenny’s meta, and then start jamming in a google doc about two episodes-- which differ drastically in tone but share a bunch of themes! (crossposted here on DW, which is a better place to comment if you wanna have an actual back-and-forth discussion.)

H is me and T is the inimitable @touchmycoat.

H: In “A Likely Story,” Ray is trapped in his ideas about his love interest (what’s her name again?). He cannot for the life of him tell when she’s lying, he can’t see her true motivations, he can’t know her. He’s just using her as a blank screen to project his internal conflicts onto. This is, as truepenny points out, a theme that due South returns to almost every single time it explores romance. How many episodes philosophize on the possibility of “love at first sight?” Off the top of my head, I’ve got “You Must Remember This,” “Victoria’s Secret,” “An Invitation To Romance,” and “Say Amen”…

As Huey and Dewey say in “Say Amen,”

“Well, you know the thing is, you can't really love someone until you know them.”  “Sure you can. The hard thing is to love them after you know them.”

T: The love interest’s name is Luann— Frannie’s actually the first person to name her, well into the episode. Luann’s not introduced to us, to Ray, to Fraser by name, relation, or even profession. We’re just left to assume she has a caretaking role for Mrs. Tucci based on her age and actions. The dialogue even (intentionally?) suffers from this unknowing; Ray says, “Look Fraser, I am very sorry for Mrs. Tucci’s loss, and I will make every effort to find the killer of her husband, but the fact remains she is a very beautiful woman.” The pronoun confusion just further highlights how much it doesn’t matter who Luann is, just that she is “a beautiful woman.” This issue goes from highlight to glaring headlights when the cut from EXT. CAR, EVENING to IN. STATION, DAY is done by their conversation just rolling over, and guess what they’re talking about? Well, Ray’s talking about sex, and how little of it they’re both getting.

H: The Lou Skagnetti story and Sword of Desire, which both show up multiple times throughout the episode, explore the (gendered) stories people build around romance. The ending scene specifically juxtaposes these two stories about love by putting their endings right next to each other. Ray and Luann have retreated from each other after a failed attempt at connection, and they both soothe their disappointment by turning to fantastical love stories.

This one, told between two men, out in the “wilderness” by a campfire:

“Lou Skagnetti looked at the princess who sat across the stone table in the stone cabin high atop Sulfur Mountain, and the princess smiled at him. And for a brief second, Lou Skagnetti could hear his own inner bell ring as though it were rung by a thousand angels. And he took his hand and he placed it over his heart, and Lou Skagnetti vowed that never again would he kill and eat another princess as long as he lived. . . unless, of course, she were covered in choke cherries and brown lichen and a sprinkling of dust -”

vs. this one, read in a comfortable bedroom (with the most floral bedspread ever invented), a story that one woman read aloud to another to help her sleep:

“Gabriella's chest heaved at the sight of him. His boldness made her feel like a true princess. As he came near her, she could feel the trembling of the deep inside her most secret place…”

Notice how they could almost be the same story told from different perspectives.

Fraser’s story, though, does not offer the same easy comfort Luann’s does. His story is a funny distraction, but it's also a dark mirror held up to romance. Fraser's status as an outsider means he knows different stories than Ray and Luann. This story shows the blood and guts of love. In the context of the episode, it gestures at how the theater of "love" often leads people to act in deeply un-loving ways towards each other; how it can get in the way of people even knowing each other. (“That's one dark story.” “Yes. It is.”)

Fraser has seen Ray use his position as a police officer to stalk his ex and now he’s seen him try to date a suspect. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s telling Ray a story where the protagonist has been “eating princesses.” The story’s not just an accusation, though; it’s a hopeful story, a humorous story; it’s told playfully and as an act of care, and it points to the possibility of true love in the future that is not based on violence.

T: I almost wish the show had the continuity to also let this moment comment explicitly on what Fraser couldn't get from Victoria. His love for her is so mired in guilt that he thinks himself deserving of all the violences she visits on his person. It's like, Ray is pre-Lou Skagnetti and Fraser is post-Lou Skagnetti; Ray needs to stop his violence and Fraser needs to pay for his violence. The same problem of failed recognition occurs on both sides of the story.

H: I love your point about Fraser being like Ray but somewhere further along in the accountability process.

In the "love-at-first-sight vs. true knowledge of a person" saga that is this show, there is one unexpected pair of people who know and love each other deeply after very little time spent together: Beth Botrelle and Ray Kowalski. They can see right through each other. They understand each other’s motivations— so not only can they tell when the other’s lying, but they can tell you exactly why. They are bound together through shared experience. And while their story is obviously not romantic, it is shockingly loving. Beth is willing to falsely confess to a murder she is unjustly accused of just to make Ray feel better, just to give him a real shot at moving on with his life after she dies. Ray is obviously willing to risk his job and his life to exonerate her, but he is also uniquely willing to admit his mistakes to her; he tells the truth exactly as it happened, and therefore sacrifices the easy self-justifications that have kept him functioning as a cop and as a person all these years.

(and, side note— how interesting is it that Beth of all people calls Ray “queer,” and his response is to laugh and nod?)

Beth does need to be saved from a death sentence, but she is emphatically not a damsel in distress (or a "princess"). She needs to save Ray as much as he needs to save her. Both of them know that their freedom is bound up in the other's.

T: So maybe in some ways this is Ray's post-Lou Skagnetti (I'm laughing as I write these words but bear with me). This is his Victoria, but antithetically; this is where he pays for the violence. Victoria was guilty and Fraser arrested her, Beth was innocent and Ray arrested her—but they both know, to some extent, that the arrests seemed immoral (Fraser in particular, where if they did actually sleep together, he’s fully abused his power as an officer of the law). Where Victoria wanted to destroy Fraser for it, Beth wanted to save Ray from it (she sought to alleviate his conscience by telling him she was guilty). But both Fraser and Ray had to be willing to destroy themselves and the roles they occupied for Victoria and Beth. The Fraser who is whole and the Victoria who seeks his destruction cannot coexist. And, to continue your reading of "Ladies' Man" as the keystone episode where Ray just really should not be a cop anymore, the Ray who is a cop and the Beth who is innocent/alive cannot coexist. There's something very interesting about these relationships between men and women that fail due to one or both of their placement in some kind of institution, because of one or both of their duties/supposed loyalties. Fraser's commitment to duty catalyzes the break between him and Victoria. Ray's abuse of his authority is no fucking good for Stella or Luann, and even when he succumbs to the ease of police authority he fucks over Beth.

Tying Ray and Fraser and Victoria back to “A Likely Story,” everybody, particularly Ray, speaks in projections; throughout the episode, Fraser is the mirror while Ray is the puppy, as in Ray doesn’t know the other puppy isn’t real, so he’s snarling and barking at the mirror, who is merely the medium through which the reflection is transposed.

H: “FRASER IS THE MIRROR AND RAY IS THE PUPPY” WHAT THE FUCK I LOVE THIS IMAGE. IT IS ABSURD AND TRUE. YOU ARE BRILLIANT. Please, expand upon this point.

T: This one particular projection:

Ray: “Let me see if I got this right, Fraser. Luann is a beautiful woman, therefore she must be bad. And since she's a really beautiful woman, that means she's got to be really bad. Is that how it goes inside your brain?”

Of all the projections, Fraser most clearly calls this one out for what it is: “Are you sure it is my brain we are talking about?” Funny, since this is the one projection that fully echoes Fraser’s hangups about Victoria. Vecchio’s line from “Letting Go” seems resonant: “Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.” But this is clearly about Ray: his low sense of self-worth makes him look for flaws in women he believes are “beautiful” and out of his league.

H: Yes!! They're both backed into these low-self-esteem corners with regards to romantic relationships: they’re both thinking, "there's something wrong with me." Ray projects that outwards (“what’s wrong with this woman?”), but Fraser does a slightly different thing with it: “if she's into me, she must be operating on an incomplete set of data.” Fraser knows that people think he's attractive, but also thinks that they can't see/know him enough to love him in a real way. I think that's why he was so INTO Victoria-- she knew he did bad things and wanted him anyways! And she, to his mind at the time, was clear-headed about what kind of punishment he deserved for his wrongdoing. There's something more comforting about that than waiting for the other shoe to drop.

T: Both “A Likely Story” and “Ladies’ Man” are about women that Ray Kowalski has wronged, and both end with Ray apologizing—very sincerely—to the women. Fundamentally, I love that as a narrative choice.

H: Yes. Apologize, man. (Apologize and quit your job. I think these two episodes lay out a really compelling case for exactly why Ray does not go back to being a cop post-COTW.)

To summarize:

Ray is a human-shaped projector. He can’t readily name his feelings, but they do warp his perceptions of reality and he does act them out. "I don't know what I want till I see what I do." -Ray Kowalski in The Teeth of the Hydra by Resonant.

This is terrible news for everyone involved when you're a cop!

These episodes both deal with the nature of love-- its relationship to truth and to police work. “A Likely Story” shows the burdensome trappings of heterosexual, romantic love, which in this case serve to obfuscate the truth; “The Ladies’ Man” shows an intense kind of "true love" between a man and a woman that has nothing to do with romance or sex and everything to do with solidarity and truth-telling.

T: And 4, we can absolutely implicate Fraser, at least thematically, in something every step of the way, el oh el.

[jennaschererwrites]

How TV Is Putting the ‘B’ in LGBTQ — And Why It Matters – Rolling Stone

“Mom. Dad. I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I do. I might get married to a man, like you so clearly want. And I might not. Because this is not a phase, and I need you to understand that. I’m bisexual.” That’s Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s resident no-nonsense detective, pouring out her heart to her parents in the show’s landmark 100th episode. To which her dad (Danny Trejo) stoically replies, “There’s no such thing as being bisexual.”

Beatriz, who is bisexual herself, wrote in GQ: “When does it end? When do you get to stop telling people you’re bi? When do people start to grasp that this is your truth? …When do you start seeing yourself reflected positively in all (hey, even any?) of the media you consume?”

There’s a real cognitive dissonance to identity erasure. You can be standing right in front of someone telling them exactly who you are, and they can just look right through you, and intone, like a Westworld robot, “That doesn’t look like anything to me.” Nevertheless, it’s a daily reality for LGBTQ folks, and bi- and pansexual people in particular. (The term pansexuality, which has come into wider use in recent years, intends to explicitly refer to attraction to all genders, not just cisgender people — or, as self-identified pansexual Janelle Monae put it in Rolling Stone last year: “I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” However, many in the queer community define bisexuality the same way. You can read more about that conversation here.) Until recently, sexual and gender identities that existed outside the binary have been anathema to mainstream culture — and often, even, to more traditionalist branches of gay culture.

For a long time, people who identify as bisexual or pansexual didn’t have a whole lot of visible role models — particularly on television. But as our understanding of the LGBTQ spectrum has become more diverse and nuanced over time, there’s been a blossoming of bi- and pansexual representation. In the past few years, characters such as Rosa on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, David Rose on Schitt’s Creek, Darryl Whitefeather on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Leila on The Bisexual — to name just a few — have been at the forefront of a bi- and pansexual renaissance on the small screen.

But it wasn’t always this way. Even after television began to centralize gay characters and their experiences — on shows like Ellen, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, and The L Word — the “B” in that alphabet soup fell to the wayside. Bisexuality was seldom mentioned at all, and if it was, it existed chiefly as a punch line — an easy ba-dum-CHING moment for savvy characters to nose out someone who wasn’t as in the know as they were. On Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw called bisexuality “a layover on the way to Gaytown”; and on 30 Rock, Liz Lemon dismissed it as “something they invented in the Nineties to sell hair products.”

Even some of the earliest shows to break ground for queer representation didn’t factor bisexuality or pansexuality into their worldviews. The designation basically didn’t exist in the gay-straight binary world of Queer as Folk, and was largely seen as a phase on The L Word. Buffy the Vampire Slayer gave many TV viewers their first-ever depiction of a same-sex relationship in 1999 with the Wicca-fueled romance between Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), but the show too neatly glossed over Willow’s years-long relationship with her boyfriend Oz (Seth Green) as a fleeting step on the way to full-time lesbianism. Or, as Willow succinctly put it in Season 5: “Hello! Gay now!”

Characters who labeled themselves as bisexual were considered to be confused at best and dangerously promiscuous at worst. On The O.C. in 2004, Olivia Wilde’s bi bartender character, Alex Kelly, appeared as a destabilizing force of chaos in the lives of the show’s otherwise straight characters. On a 2011 episode of Glee — a show which, at the time, was breaking ground for gay representation on TV — Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) savagely shot down his crush, Blaine (Darren Criss), when Blaine mentioned that he might be bi: “‘Bisexual’ is a term that gay guys in high school use when they want to hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person for a change.” By the end of the episode, Blaine assures Kurt that he is, don’t you worry, “100 percent gay.”

One of TV’s first enduring portrayals of nonbinary sexual attraction came with the entrance of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) into Russell T. Davies’ 2005 Doctor Who reboot. (Davies also created the original U.K. Queer as Folk.) The time traveler swashbuckled into the series to equal-opportunity flirt with the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his companion Rose (Billie Piper), because, as the Doctor explains, “He’s a 51st-century guy. He’s just a bit more flexible.” Captain Jack went on to feature in his own spinoff series, Torchwood.

Then came Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy. Portrayed by Sara Ramirez (who came out as bisexual herself in 2016), Callie had a seasons-long arc that spanned from her burgeoning realization of her bisexuality in 2008 to her complex relationships with both men and women over the years. Callie’s drunken rant from the 11th season would make a great T-shirt to wear to Pride if it weren’t quite so long: “So I’m bisexual! So what? It’s a thing, and it’s real. I mean, it’s called LGBTQ for a reason. There’s a B in there, and it doesn’t mean ‘badass.’ OK, it kind of does. But it also means bi!”

Once the 2010s rolled around, representation began to pick up steam. True Blood’s Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley), The Legend of Korra’s titular hero (Janet Varney), Game of Thrones’ Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal), The Good Wife’s Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), and Peep Show’s Jeremy Usborne (Robert Webb) all were portrayed in romantic relationships on both sides of the binary. But these characters’ sexual orientations were seldom given a name.

In some cases, this felt quietly revolutionary. On post-apocalyptic CW drama The 100, for example, set a century and change in the future, protagonist Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor) is romantically involved with both men and women with no mention of labels. Because on the show’s nuclear fallout-ravaged earth, humankind has presumably gotten over that particular prejudice. On other series, however, not putting a name to the thing seems like a calculated choice. Take Orange Is the New Black, a show that has broken a lot of barriers but steadfastly avoids using the B-word to describe its clearly bisexual central character, Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling).

A few years ago, though, tectonic plates began to shift. On Pop TV sitcom Schitt’s Creek, David Rose (co-creator Dan Levy) explained his pansexuality to his friend via a now-famous metaphor: “I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé. And a couple summers back, I tried a merlot that used to be a chardonnay.”

Bisexuality got its literal anthem on the CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend with “Gettin’ Bi,” a jubilant Huey Lewis & the News-style number sung by Darryl Whitefeather (Pete Gardner) about waking up to his latent bisexuality as a middle-aged man. “It’s not a phase, I’m not confused / Not indecisive, I don’t have the gotta-choose blues,” he croons, dancing in front of the bi pride flag. Darryl’s exuberant ode to his identity felt like someone levering a window open in a musty room — a celebration of something that, less than a decade before, TV was loathe to acknowledge.

For Hulu and the U.K.’s Channel 4, Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behavior, The Miseducation of Cameron Post) cowrote, directed, and starred in a series picking apart the subject, titled, aptly, The Bisexual. In it, Akhavan portrays Leila, a thirtysomething woman coming to a dawning awareness of her bisexuality after having identified as a lesbian for most of her life. The show navigates the tricky territory that bisexuals inhabit when they’re misunderstood — or sometimes outright rejected — by queer and straight communities alike. Akhavan, a bisexual Iranian-American woman, has said the idea for the show came to her after repeatedly hearing herself described as a “bisexual director.” She told Vanity Fair that “there was something about being called a bisexual publicly — even though it’s 100 percent true! — that felt totally humiliating and in bad taste, and I wanted to understand why.”

As Leila shuttles her way between sexual partners and fields tone-deaf comments from friends on both sides of the binary, The Bisexual offers no easy answers. But it also never flinches. “I’m pretty sure bisexuality is a myth. That it was created by ad executives to sell flavored vodka,” Leila remarks in the first episode, unconsciously echoing 30 Rock’s throwaway joke from a decade ago. Except this time, the stakes — and the bi person in question — are real.

The next generation — younger millennials and Gen Z kids in particular — tends to view sexualityas a spectrum rather than the distance between two poles. Akhavan neatly encompasses this evolution in an exchange between Leila and her male roommate’s twentysomething girlfriend, Francisca (Michèlle Guillot), who questions why Leila is so terrified to tell anyone that she’s started sleeping with men as well as women. When Leila tells her it’s complicated because it’s “a gay thing,” Francisca responds, “So? I’m queer.” “Everyone under 25 thinks they’re queer,” says Leila. “And you think they’re wrong?” Francisca counters. Leila considers this for a moment before answering, “No.”

Representation matters, and here’s why: Seeing who you are reflected in the entertainment you take in gives you not just validation for your identity, but also a potential road map for how you might navigate the world. For many years, bi- and pansexuals existed in a liminal place where we were often dismissed outright by not just the straight community — but the queer community as well. Onscreen representation is not just a matter of showing us something we’ve never seen before, but of making the invisible visible, of drawing a new picture over what was once erased.

[africareddie]

haha all the asks,,,,

i’m supposed to be studying- but fuck it i’ll do all of them

1) Put your iTunes on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.

i’m doing this on spotify lol

dancing in the sheets by shalamar

why try by ariana grande

rock and roll music by chuck berry

u can’t touch this by mc hammer

hip to be square by huey lewis & the news

no scrubs by tlc

2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

aha okay so either matt dillon or jules @burgundyrosez because they’re both amazing

3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

“..and heavy steps, and when frost looked up, prepared for anything...” 

4) What do you think about most?

my future 

5) Ever had a poem or song written about you?

yeah a little poem was written about me before and i mean there are songs with my name in it *coughs* sweet caroline *coughs*

6) Do you have any strange phobias?

no, mine aren’t really strange lol

7) What's your religion?

i’m a christian but like i’m not very religious

8) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

riding my bike (if i had one lmao) or walking

9) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

oh gee- i have noooo idea but i love the 1975

10) What was the last lie you told?

er- i can’t remember exactly what it was

11) Do you believe in karma?

eh, idk

12) What does your URL mean?

it’s all about the outsiders so like tuff,, and then outsiders,, boom

13) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

my greatest weakness is probably giving into people easily, like sharing pieces of me i shouldn’t. my greatest strength is,, idk

14) Who is your celebrity crush?

lol is this even a question??? matt dillon, duh

15) How do you vent your anger?

i don’t get angry that often, but when i do i just listen to music to calm myself down

16) Do you have a collection of anything?

i mean i have quite a few antiques, but i wouldn’t call it a collection

17) Are you happy with the person you've become?

yeah, i definitely feel much better about myself then i did like a few weeks ago, but there’s always room for improvement 

18) What's a sound you hate; sound you love?

wow,,, idek about the sound i hate. i love the sound of the waves and rain

19) What's your biggest "what if"?

what if someone actually had a crush on me like they really liked me for me,, that would be something

20) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

nah, not really. i don’t think about that stuff lol

21) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

i don’t get this question lol

22) Smell the air. What do you smell?

i smell air, idk i don’t smell anything

23) What's the worst place you have ever been to?

i don’t know about the w o r s t place, but the burger king bathroom isn’t pleasant (i never eat there anymore oops)

24) Most attractive singer/s of your opposite gender?

elvis presley was cute, also the weeknd is 

25) To you, what is the meaning of life?

it’s like, you were put on this earth, so you should make the most of the time you have. so the meaning of life is just to be able to have the opportunity to do whatever you want, whether that’s skydiving or binge watching a show inside, that’s for you to decide

26) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

nope i don’t drive

27) What was the last movie you saw?

halloween, and now i’m gonna have paranoia about that guy following me when i walk home so great 

28) What's the worst injury you've ever had?

i scraped up my knees pretty bad and i almost broke my nose twice so that was fun

29) Do you have any obsessions right now?

aha everything regarding the 40′s-90′s

30) Ever had a rumor spread about you?

yeah, it’s not fun boys and girls

31) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

i used to, but i learned that they aren’t worth it, so i just let it go

32) What is your astrological sign?

virgo

33) What's the last thing you purchased?

a vinyl record

34) Love or lust?

love, of course. i feel like with lust, that lust will end up turning into love, at least for me35) In a relationship?

nope, single as a pringle

36) How many relationships have you had?

lol not even one. i was sort of close once..-

37) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

baha what secret weapon idk how ppl like me

38) Where is your best friend?

at her house,,, d  u   h 

39) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?

sleeping 

40) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

yeah, i think i’m a decent person but there’s always someone better

41) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

fuck it i’m saving that dog idc if i was going to get married or something i will save that dog

42) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

yeah, i will tell people that actually care about me and stuff. idek, i’d probably tell everyone how i really feel about them and try to get as many things as i can done that i want to do. heck yeah i’d be afraid

43) What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

boys will be boys by maureen steele because it’s just amazing and it’s from one of my favorite movies and i just think back to the movie and i smile like an idiot

44) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

communication. always tell your partner what’s on your mind, it helps build trust for one another and it overalls makes you feel better about your relationship. 

45) How can I win your heart?

just like,, appreciate the things i like and just- idk be there for me and tell me how much you care about me

46) Can insanity bring on more creativity?

heck yeah

47) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

i have no clue

48) What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

i have no idea either

49) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "heart."

a beautiful thing that can be jumping with joy one moment, and shattering in pain the next

50) Basic question; what's your favorite color/colors?

blue and sunset colors

51) What is your current desktop picture?

it’s the gang like jumping off the little platform thing you guys know what i’m talking about,, it’s in b&w

52) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

lol donald trump 

53) What would be a question you'd be afraid to tell the truth on?

um,, like if someone asked how i really felt about them (like if i didn’t like them very much i’d be afraid)

54) You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

reading people’s minds

55) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

ummmm probably some point where i was in d.c in 8th grade

56) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

um,, this one thing but i can’t exactly say it so- yeah 

57) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

i have noooo idea tbh, i’m not really into music celebs like that

58) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

italy boi. or new york

59) Ever been on a plane?

nope

60) Give me your top 5 hottest celebrities.

matt dillon, rob lowe, diane lane, and other peeps my mind is just going blank though

[long-way-down-rp-archive]

Huey

TRUE NAME: Yes FACECLAIM: Ben Whishaw NICKNAMES AND ALIASES: Jules, Shadow, Midnight, Binx, Omen, Bruce, Ash, Pitch, Alfred, Inky, Noir, Louis DATE OF BIRTH: Some time in the 1300s, maybe, date unknown because he was too busy being a cat to take note APPARENT AGE: Mid thirties ACTUAL AGE: Six to seven hundred years old. Or six to seven thousand, math isn’t really a cat subject. GENDER: Male KIND: Lucky Cat - Matagot OCCUPATION: Unemployed DISTINGUISHING MARKS: As a cat, clean black fur that never ‘rusts,’ but stays black no matter how long he sits in the sun–as well as fifth digits on both forepaws giving the appearance of little thumbs. In any shape, he has a small scar along the inside of one thigh from the unfortunate veterinarian who thought they’d attempt to neuter him, and the ensuing struggle. PERSONALITY: Indulgent, picky, erratic, anxious, affectionate in bursts, melodramatic, unforgiving, lonely

HISTORY: 

It was raining the night the cat was born, because rain is very poetic and he loved to think of himself as an utterly singular feline, The Cat. It was raining the night The Cat was born, or perhaps snowing, or perhaps the weather was disagreeably still. In any case, he was born. There was a sticky, filthy, physical beginning to him, one that rooted the power of him firmly within this plane of existence. Not that he would stay there long. Growing up as a cat born on the streets of a small city in France meant that The Cat had very few career options, and survival requires an occupation. There were scavengers, thieves, and there were mousers. And, while mousing was a hideous and distasteful business, it was the only option that allowed for a warm pillow under a nice roof without being chased from the premises. And so he found himself a household with an unoccupied kitchen, and embarked on a year long stint of the only honest work he would ever admit to doing in all his years, and in that house, from humans, he learned the workings of a Deal.

From then on he was taken into homes with a different sort of arrangement. He would no longer be pampered in exchange for physical labor, but for pure gold–although it could be argued that the production of said gold was a physical labor all its own. If he was cared for, he would pay his way. But, if he wasn’t… Some arrangements were more successful than others. There were families with young children he could curl up beside and dote upon in the dead of night, and there were solitary masters with simple lives and simple needs. And there were the greedy, the possessive, those who could never truly provide him with a home but who would try never to let him go.

A move to the French territories of North America with one such owner ended with the man somehow lost overboard midway on the trip across the sea, and The Cat picking his own way bit by bit down from what is now Canada into warmer and warmer climates. House after house after house, he slowly drifted his way down, until a tickle at the back of his skull pulled him all the way to Nashville with the taste of his beloved old brand of magic tickling the back of his throat. But Nashville and the modern age weren’t as interested in him as he was in them. His personal brand of magic was losing favor, being replaced by community and cooperation in lieu of life and soul as willing collateral. And his deals dried up, and the exchange of magic that had sustained him for so long went with it, The Cat had to find new methods.

And so, in the height of Beatlemania, he stitched himself a human shape of non threateningly attractive features. A manageable height, the haircut, an accent learned from the radio, and Nashville was his oyster. Or, it was closer to being his oyster than it had been before–humans were still horribly unlikely to understand the requirements of his deals, the knowledge lost to them like so many things. But it was something to cling to, something to try.

FAMILY: Once had a cat mother and several cat siblings, but never really knew them, and cannot now clearly recall any of the short weeks he had with them.

SEXUALITY AND RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Being a cat, human sexuality is all a bit strange and technical. Although, he has found men to be much easier to attract in the ways he needs them. Truly romantic relationships are something he’s still trying to sort out, although he has a persistent fondness for one particular dog. OTHER TIES: 

Sol - a relatively young immortal who has not yet picked up some of the eccentricities that can make it difficult for Huey to relate.

WANTED CONNECTIONS: Former keepers. This could be the grown up versions of people he once lived with when they were children and he was in cat shape, or misguided former lovers. Also looking for a couple people who understand and have a healthy respect and fear of what he is. LIKES: Butter, warm spots, socks, attention, privacy DISLIKES: Nonconsensual surgery, being too hot, unseasoned food, feeling trapped, unpleasant Specters HOBBIES: Eating, drinking, couch and bed surfing, walking the plains of darkness between realities SKILLS: Sense of direction, highly accurate teleportation, pinpointing spiritual disturbances, mechanical bull riding. Oh, and producing pure gold from his mouth. MEDICAL CONDITIONS: Once had a hairball. It was terrible. Hasn’t shed a single hair since then. Currently experiencing a mild form of malnutrition. CURRENT FINANCIAL STATUS: Although he is capable of producing solid gold from within his mouth, Huey lives mostly off the generosity of others and remains destitute in the absence of that. PLACES: None in particular, but you might catch him around proper wine bars, bakeries, or warm car hoods. And anyplace Sol’s sleeping. PETS: Well, there is that dog… but he doesn’t count.

KNOWN MAGIC: As standard issue to Matagot and other Lucky Cats.  MAGICAL ITEMS: None

RUMORS: There is a cat on the streets of Nashville with enough magic in one claw to melt a fully grown man down to sludge with one scratch.

There is an overly affectionate man who tips his servers in pure gold.

A small black cat has been seen sneaking into toy stores and stealing socks from the doll clothing section.

WRITING SAMPLE: It was easier than he had anticipated, stitching together a suitable human form. He had taken one once or twice before, but only for short seconds, and never meant to be looked at too closely. But he needed one to stick, he needed one that would deliver in a way that his feline form no longer did. And his inspirations were perfect–the height of Beatlemania and the beatnik generation giving him a look to draw the attention he needed, and although the Liverpool accent quite escaped him, he’d spent more than enough hours sitting on the plush arm of that last kind old woman’s chair as she listened to radio show after radio show. Basil Rathbone was much easier to imitate.

Perhaps it was tasteless, standing in the mirror of a dead man’s home and appraising his newly constructed features. But the features themselves were in great taste, he decided, and so that must have made up for any faux pas. And besides, the fellow had been an absolute failure within their arrangement, and could only blame himself for incurring the wrath that The Cat had only so much real control over. So he stood in front of that mirror and he flexed his fingers and tugged on his cheeks, pulled back his lips and span around a few times. The legs did seem unnecessarily long, but that was the proportion–he’d just have to adjust. He was already getting cold, though, with only skin to keep his heat in instead of fur. His ribs scraped out at his flesh when he moved his arms. But that would change, he was certain.

In the meantime, clothing. There were so many fussy little bits and pieces to a human’s costume. The underthings, the upper things, the lower things. When he pushed his oddly long new feet into the dead man’s socks, he decided that they were lovely things, his favorite of all human trappings. He’d have to find a few more pairs and somewhere to stash them, they were delightful. With the use of his hands, The Cat helped himself to the contents of the kitchen, and he spoke aloud to himself the names of everything, breaking in his new, clumsily thick tongue. The voice was too deep, he decided, and after a few unseemly, hacking coughs, it was lighter and more inviting. Much better. He found, though, as he tried to rehearse just what he’d say when his guest would arrive, that his first language utterly escaped this indelicate mouth. Humiliating, really, that the pronunciations stumbled out of his mouth gracelessly when he had never had an issue with a cat’s mouth. And they weren’t even meant to speak without magical intervention.

So, English it would be. He practiced the words and poured himself a glass of wine–perhaps an overly generous glass of wine–then carefully positioned himself on the living room rug to lay in wait in front of the dead body on the couch. He’d thrown a blanket over it to keep it from smelling up the place as he waited, but he wasn’t kept waiting much longer. Pausing mid sip as the sound of rough paws and claws tapping down the length of the hallway, a smile curled the corners of his human mouth. “Right on time, you always come when called. So, what do you think?”