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paramedictk-archive · 5 years ago

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it’s hard to put into words how much skam france has disappointed me this year but s6 is finally over and i felt like i needed to kind of... say goodbye to this shitshow and get a few things off my chest.

s3 will always hold a special place in my heart, it came into my life when i really needed it and honestly, it was their only genuinely good season from start to finish. i will always be grateful for s3 and for eliott and lucas and for all those little moments we got to see with the grew in that season as well as in s4 and s5, when they actually acted like teenagers, when they were there for each other, when actions had consequences, when subplots weren’t abandoned just after 2 clips and when they used this show to educate teenagers and give them hope... those very few moments that actually made me feel like i was watching a skam remake.

it’s hard to make peace with the fact that this remake gave us so many good moments but also managed to completely ruin this entire experience for most of us this year. i think if skam france was genuinely, consistently trash from s1 to s6 i wouldn’t be half as angry as i am right now. but truth is, it wasn’t all bad. that’s the worst thing. we’ve seen they can do better, they just chose to be lazy and use the popularity s3 gave them to churn out mediocre and half assed plots time and time again because they knew they had devoted fans who would defend them no matter what.

when s3 was airing i actually felt like they listened to us sometimes and cared about us but something changed after s4. it no longer mattered what we wanted to see or what we thought about a scene, we were simply told what we should be feeling. and that’s a huge red flag. i don’t have to be a scriptwriter or a director to know that good storytelling isn’t about throwing excuses and explanations (and then damage control pictures) at your audience. it’s about them engaging with the content you put out and bringing their own perspective to it. otherwise, what’s the point?

and you know, this isn’t even about what’s ooc and what isn’t. it’s about the people who were supposed to finally get their representation but instead ended up being too triggered by the show to continue watching it. it’s about muslim, deaf/hoh people, people dealing with addictions or self harm or eating disorders speaking out only to be silenced by david and his fans just because their opinions weren’t always supportive and positive. it’s about us saying that they should have never used sexual or domestic abuse for shock value and then being told to shut up because a few pacifists in this fandom seem to think we’re ruining the show for them this way. it’s about david and niels flat out lying to us and promising so many things in order to get us to watch s6. it’s about being disrespected by the creators of your favourite tv show so badly that you end up having to distance yourself from it and the fandom. you obviously can’t please everyone, but the least you can do is listen to the people whose stories you’re trying to tell.

i obviously can’t tell any of this to david even though i wish i could. not because i want to rub it in or prove that i’m right, i just simply want him to know how much his childishness hurt the very people who once fought so hard to get his show renewed for him. i can’t tell him any of this because he would never read my messages since i’m not one of his certified bootlickers singing his praises all the time. because he blocked one of my insta accounts last week for a comment i posted under one of his pictures during s5. because that’s the kind of person he is. someone who would rather hide and ignore constructive criticism and let his little fans fight his battles for him. someone who stayed quiet for weeks while said fans kept sending death threats to people. and yes, you could say he’s not responsible for other people’s actions and that’s true in a way. but when you create such an unhealthy and hostile environment within your own fandom by playing favourites and silencing anyone who has a different opinion than what is considered acceptable, you do encourage that kind of behaviour.

despite all this, i still stayed and tried to put up with all the bad writing because i cared about the grew that much, maybe even more than niels himself, it seems. i don’t have a reason to stay now. the concept of having female showrunners sounds good, sure, but i know francestvslash and i know skam france. it’s the good old bait-and-switch. during the last two seasons, they kept baiting marginalized communities to earn woke points but a season that was supposed to be about arthur’s deafness entirely got turned into some cheating fest and lola’s season was pure misery porn with wlw rep thrown in there as bait.

david and niels leaving won’t solve this problem. francetvslash needs a reality check too. they used us to renew the show and then turned around and called us obsessive. they blocked my comments under the live because i asked them why wasn’t the sexual assault plot mentioned again. they joked about addictions. they don’t care, okay? not about us, not about giving people representation. the only thing they care about is money. so them suddenly hiring female directors and writers after they saw us complaining about the way this show treats women? bait. the same kind of bait niels and david used when they tried to throw all kinds of rep in s6 because they knew lgbt people want to see themselves represented so badly that they would watch it no matter what. i would love to be proven wrong, obviously. i want to believe the new showrunners have nothing but good intentions but their hands will obviously be tied by francetvslash to some extent. and i’m done being used by them and then being forced to settle for the bare minimum.

all in all, both s5 and s6 fell flat and were extremely disappointing. skamfr under david and niels will always remain a one hit wonder, nothing else. it’s a good thing they are leaving now because at least characters like max or sekou have the chance to be treated with respect by the new writers and directors. and i’m happy for all of you who decided to stay... i wish you guys the best. i honestly hope you guys will get the stories and the representation you’re looking for. i really do. i want to be proven wrong about francetvslash and the showrunners... but i don’t have the energy to dedicate so much of my life to this show again, not after them breaking my heart so many times.

and i guess i’m a petty person. the grew deserved great stories too, not just lamif. arthur deserved a great season, deaf/hoh people deserved to see themselves represented, instead they were forced to watch niels disrespect noée and camille and then act like they never existed in s6. and after everything wlw have done for this show, we deserved a great season too, not to be baited like this. maya was in 18 clips out of 83 (!!!!). if niels and david didn’t want to give the grew a chance to have a good send-off, then i’m not giving this show a chance again. why would i?

anyway. i’ll stick to rewatching s3 every now and again. and i will miss the way the grew made me feel. thanks for all the good memories and let’s hope we’ll forget the bad ones soon. this is what we’ve come to.

alt er love and all that crap i guess.

#skam france

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years ago

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Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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alexiaugustin · 5 years ago

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Since I seem to be in a really positive mood today and even though this show clearly doesn't deserve this post here's my list of favorite skam france s6 clips:

Samedi 07:52 The day after ep1: I really really loved the first clip of the season a lot more than the trailer and I think that it was such a great introduction to Lola's pov. We really saw the world through her eyes in such a special way in that moment n I loved all the hints to the plot (same sex couple walking down the street and being viewed as completely normal> w|w storyline with no internalized homophobia; the raccon tag > foreshadowing for otteli and urbex plot; lola photographing broken things > insight into lola's feelings) The cinematography and use of pov was a masterpiece in this one.

Lundi 7:43 Tiff ep1: This one is just here for the grew being the most supportive and loving friend group, skipping classes together to take care of Daphné and that group hug <33 need I say more?? No. Every clip with the grew is gonna be on this list because the little screen time they had this season needs to be honoured. I'm sorry that they did you so dirty babes:((

Mercredi 13:03 Fuck the planet ep1: my absolute favorite mayla clip this season!! one of my absolute favorite clips in general!! I still remember the day when they dropped that clip and I got so excited for this season again. Maya being a climate activist and such a warm and lovely person I immediately fell in love with her. Maya looking at Lola as if she's a princess walking down the stairs to a ball in some fairy tale. Maya not letting Lola's cold remarks throw her off n replying with equal sass instead, Maya's iconic coming out line and Lola smiling for the first time all season!! That clip was really off the charts

Vendredi 16:43 Someone exceptional ep1: This is my absolute favorite clip of the whole season and the amount of times I've rewatched this is actually unhealthy. Something just clicked and for the first time I felt really connected with Lola and felt and understood her pain (probs to Flavie she was amazing here) I loved the lil details abt this clip: Lucas playing the piano, le grew all hugging Daphné, Daphné's speech and break down (lula was amazing here too I really really felt connected to Daphné in that moment), Eliott and Lola meeting for the first time (their best clip this season, gosh the potential they had to actually develop such a cool and beautiful sibling relationship with them and then they did.... whatever the rest of their storyline was), Lola trying so hard to read Daphné's speech and then holding her own instead because she so desperately needs to get this off her chest and make ppl understand her and last but not least the cinematic shots of her running out of the church and breaking down. Truly my favorite clip.

Mercredi 12:56 You don't know me ep2: my second favorite mayla clip and hell did I love their dynamic and chemistry in this one. The community service clips were so so special and gave them such unique vibes I'm so sad that the rest of their storyline really couldn't live up to that because the beginning really was breathtaking and I was so here for their storyline and really believed that I would get the w|w rep I deserve this season. Rip

Jeudi 19:33 Sorry ep2: Daphné and Lola finally warming up to eachother, both of them apologizing, Lola saying that she can make dinner and they can watch one of Daphné's favorite tv shows together. Baby steps. Also Daphné grieving and smelling her mother's shirt to find comfort. Such an important clip!!

Vendredi 22:22 Otteli ep2: Again the opening shots and cinematography of this clip!! Lola meeting la mif for the first time and I was completely buying their found family dynamic from the start, maya and lola being 👀 the entire time and last but not least Eliott being introduced as urbex legend n royalty,, the wasted potential of that storyline tho...

Samedi 6:43 An awesome party ep3: again maya's and lola's chemistry in this one and their first real and deep conversation, maya opening up about her parents and how she found a home and family in la mif, their smiles and laughs and lola replying to Daphné's text messages because that's growth baby!

Lundi 7:53 The slap ep3: again just here for le grew, the way they all pulled daphné in for a group hug I'm cryinnn. Also Lucas telling the people who were gossiping abt Lola to turn around and mind their own business, dare I say iconic. the way we could have had it all this season and then skamfr decided to make them enemies. Hate it here

Samedi 13:18 Hangover ep4: this clip being a parallel to the beginning of ep2, we all believed that Lola went out and slept with another stranger and would feel lost and overwhelmed again and then! we and she found out that she's at maya's n instead of being lost again she completely openes up to Maya abt her life and Maya just holds her and Lola clings onto her as if her life depends on it and finds comfort in Maya. Still crying about this one

Mardi 21:43 You want to talk about it? ep4: I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I've rewatched this clip countless of times simply because seeing Eliott so happy and excited at his workplace has me feeling some type of way. I liked his and Lola's general dynamic in this one my main problem is just that it was so damn underdeveloped and came out of nowhere. Skam france you're a transmedia show text messages would have really helped you bby!!

Samedi 14:23 Luquette ep5: ohh out of all the clips with Eliott in it this one's definitely my favorite (and also one of the only ones I liked) both Eliott and Lola getting to speak for themself abt their mental health, seeing Eliott's development going from being ashamed and hiding his mental illness to now being so open about it and giving others advice, them talking about Eliott's Lucas and Lola's Luquette (🥺) Eliott being ready to run from Daphné with Lola and Lola saying that she's gonna take responsibility and Eliott looking like a proud big brother > the only clip with sibling vibes of them this season

Samedi 17:36 Just a girl ep5: Daphné and Lola reconciling, Daphné wanting to buy Lola picture frames and not letting that go even tho they have so little money and she sorts other stuff out instead. Please their sister bond this season has my heart. And also Maya and Lola at that supermarket gay panic energy at its finest. I loved that clip and that even after what happened last Friday Maya is still such a warm and loving person in that clip. Ugh why did they had to ruin her character later that season??☹

Mercredi 18:49 I miss you ep5: in case y'all are wondering if I'm just gonna put every single mayla clip on that list- don't worry this one is gonna be the last in a while. Anyway back to the good old days lamifex hanging all out together and being literal children together <33 mayla finally getting to talk and Maya explaining herself, showing Lola her scars and telling her that she misses her when she's not around. My heart combusted watching that clip

Lundi 12:35 We are even ep6: le grew studying together!! especially lucas and imane!!!! screaming. the only time we ever got to see them preparing for the bac but at least we have this one clip. Basile and Lola sibling dynamic and also the clip confirming that Daphné indeed has an eating disorder and Lola beginning to be really worried about her

Mercredi 18:27 I don't know what you're looking for ep6: Lola finding out about Daphné's eating disorder and finding proof in her room, Daphné freaking out and the last shots of her trying so hard not to fall apart, lula's acting in this scene!! It was all so realistic it truly is one of the top ten clips too

Jeudi 21:53 It won't always work ep6: Daphné and Lola talking and Lola opening up abt her addiction problems and telling Daphné that she can really really understand her and that both of them can get better again, Lola and Daphné being completely at peace and cuddling on the couch and watching tv together. One of my favorite clips of them this season I just love their sister bond so much

Mercredi 16:52 The break up ep7: both Lula's and Paul's acting was incredibly I was 100% buying that break up, Basile desperately wanting to help Daphné but not really knowing how, Daphné throwing him out and immediately having a break down, feeling so helpless and lost :'(( also Lola seeing her sister breaking down and not knowing how to help her either broke my heart. Protect the Lecomte sisters at all costs

Dimanche 18:32 Freesias ep8: for me this one was the true full cycle moment this season. The Lecomte family visiting their mum on mother's day, Lola revealing that she does know her favorite flowers and that her mum used to sent them to her along with letters she never read, Lola saying that if she could she might read them now but it's too late for that and in some kind of way she was making peace with her mum and everything that happened between them. Daphné taking the umbrella so Thierry can pull Lola close and them just standing in the rain and healing n growing as a family!! This clip was so emotional and important and skamfr had the audacity to destroy all that development with Thierry for useless drama. I'm endlessly bitter

Mardi 18:03 Vital prognosis ep8: just daphné, basile, lola and maya being a happy lil family together. This clip was so peaceful and beautiful to watch every time ep9 ruined my mood I went back to this clip to cheer myself up again. Really wish we could have seen more of them together and maya and lola as a couple

Vendredi 23:04 Emergency ep10: okay so I really didn't like that skamfr switched povs to build up suspense and was actually just triggering for many of us. But I just wanna say Lula's acting!!! The way she said "But how do you know we're going to find her, Lucas? Putain! She has never left a note before this is the first time for all we know" truly her acting!! I rewatched that clip so many times for that line alone (until I realized that the storyline was actually really triggering for me so I haven't watched the clip ever since but still)

Samedi 01:06 Sisters ep10: still hate the storyline and that it was done in episode 10 but I'm sooo glad that Daphné went to talk to Lola alone, that Daphné tells her that she's always loved her and basically everything they said in that clip!! Really moving and emotional one of the only clips that really made me cry this season. Again I live for Flavie's and Lula's acting

Mercredi 16:38 Beep beep beep ep10: even tho the mayla storyline was in context of the season really lacking depth at this point, watching this clip ignoring the context really was a cultural reset. One thing I love abt skam france is just that they let lgbt people live their lives without having homophobia being thrown at them left and right so kissing your gf in the middle of the supermarket like that might not be realistic but I don't care!!!!! let the gays live their life and kiss in the supermarket!!! thanks!! also that song especially the lyrics "darling I won't let you go" thoughts are being thunk💌

And yeah basically that's it. As yall may notice I loved the first half of the season way more than the second half and I feel like there was so much wasted potential and important storylines left unaddressed because they wanted to throw in more drama....

#skam france

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vickielou · 4 years ago

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Home isn’t a place, It’s a feeling (Tom Holland Fanfiction)

Chapter One

The cameras flashed everywhere around me, I tried to pretend I wasn’t anxious at the thought of being seen at this thing. Premier Nights weren’t my favourite part of being friends with actor. They filled me with a sense of anxiety that before Tom got famous I’d never felt before. I felt a hand at my elbow. “You look worse than Tom and he’s the one everyone came to see” Harry laughed. Harry Holland. Little shit. Twin #2.

“I hate these things” I muttered, his hand tapped at my elbow in reassurance. I tried to find it reassuring. I failed. “You can hide behind me if you want” he offered, I think he noticed my unease. The uneven pattern of my breathing and most obvious, I was biting my nails like crazy, my mother was going to have a fit when she saw them. I smiled at Harry, I tried to smile like I wasn’t panicking but I think Harry saw straight through me. A side effect of spending so much time around the Holland Boys. “Thanks for the offer, but Sam is still my favourite twin” I replied, a joke seemed the right way to go. Harry sent me a dirty look. “He got you the guitar for Christmas three years ago, let it go,” He said shaking his head in disapproval. I snorted.

He was right. Three years ago on Christmas day Sam Holland, other little shit and Twin #1 had gifted me a Fender FSR CC-60s Mahogany Concert Acoustic Guitar and it was still the light in my life. You would think that my best friend would have been the one that had bought me the greatest present I’d ever received but Tom didn’t understand guitars and we had a deal that meant that Tom wouldn’t buy me anything to do with music and I wouldn’t buy him anything to do with golf because I couldn’t understand golf to save my life.

I’d been spending part of my Christmas holiday with the Hollands since I was 10 years old. My mother and Nikki had been neighbours (-and best friends!) as long as either of them could remember. My mother worked as a care assistant and more often than not she had to work 12-hour shifts around the Christmas period so I learned from a very young age that the Hollands were like a second family to me. Every time my mum had to work overtime to make ends meet or couldn’t come and get me from school because she just couldn’t get her half an hour break yet, I would go to the Hollands and looking back now that time I spent at their house became some of the best memories of my childhood.

The cameras flashed again and the sound of the crowd outside the cinema got infinitely louder bringing me kicking and screaming back to the present. “Guess Tom’s here” I muttered. I heard the sound of tyres squealing outside and the sound of chanting got louder. Damn those fangirls and their seemingly infinite lung capacity. “Tom! Tom!” They shouted I leaned on the door frame and watched the scene unfold. At some point during Tom’s grand entrance, Harry went to find Sam and I was left alone. I wasn’t fond of being left alone but Sam was doing photographs for the premier and he needed help. The cinema seemed bigger than it had been all the times I’d been there before. Somehow leaning against the door waiting for my best friend to come waltzing through it, when he was done sighing autographs, the place seemed to be the size of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. The dress that I’d squeezed myself in to for the occasion felt tighter than ever, my chest painfully constricted.

I had been thinking about leaving when the door in front of me opened and a familiar face was hurried through by security men that were three times his size, that was saying a lot recently. Tom had been working his arse off in the gym and was around twice the size he used to be.

I took my time to take in his appearance before he noticed me, his face was flushed. His navy suit was dishevelled, the grey shirt underneath was flecked with sweat and his hair was sticking to his forehead with the same sweat from running around signing autographs and taking pictures with the aforementioned fangirls.

“Tommy” I called, he jumped a mile and looked over to where I was standing by the door. I saw the relief cross over his face that I wasn’t someone he didn’t know watching him at what could be considered a vulnerable moment. I was the only person who could call him that.

“Jules, thank god.” He smiled walking over, I watched his eyes take me in as he came closer. He reached out his hand for mine and I happily let him pull me towards where the crowd of people were heading towards the cinema room for the first showing of Toms new movie ‘ONWARD’. I’d heard most of the movie in the clips that Tom had messaged me whilst he was on set, I hadn’t actually seen the animation though and I was excited to see what he’d been making the months he’d been away.

We sat in the seats towards the back, two seats on Tom’s left side were reserved for Sam and Harry when they finally got around to joining us. Tom’s arm immediately went around my shoulder, allowing me to lean back into his embrace. I’d missed this. Yeah, I’d seen him since he came back from New York but I hadn’t seen him for a while it was nice to have him close to me again.

“I’m so glad you came” he was whispering, leaning closer to my ear, I felt his breath tickling the shell and I sighed happily. His breath smelt minty fresh like he’d brushed his teeth minutes ago but I hadn’t missed the gentle pop of his gum. Smart boy, no tuna breath on premiere night. “Wouldn’t be anywhere else” I replied. Tom’s gentle smile was the last thing I remember seeing before the lights went off and the opening credits to the film started.

Before anyone can say it, I know what you’re thinking. You lucky bitch. You’re best friends with Tom Holland. I understand that because Tom is one of the greatest guys that you’ll ever meet. But not for the reasons that most of the fangirls think. Yeah, the man was fucking gorgeous, I’m his best friend but I have eyes. Buffer than a Norse god and more swag that a billionaire playboy philanthropist but that wasn’t the reason that I was so lucky. I saw a side to him that most people didn’t, I saw sleepy Tom falling asleep in front of the TV watching reruns of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I saw Tom shitting himself watching the remake of IT. I saw him crying over a puppy video on his Facebook and I saw him proudly smiling at his phone when he finally did something right on Instagram. He was and always had been a great guy.

But enough about Tom, let’s get back to where we were.

The premiere went better than expected and I loved the new film, Tom had the gall to laugh at me when I was sobbing towards the end of the movie. That earned him a punch to the stomach that Nikki would have been proud of. Stupid boy, I can’t get through a damn one of his movies without tearing up. Damn almost had a crying fit when I watched The Impossible. Now, remember I was around 13 when the premiere of that film happened and the thought of anything happening to Tom back then was more than my pimpley hormone fuelled heart could take. Tom had to come out of the premiere and hold me for twenty minutes whilst I sobbed, repeatedly reminding me it was a film and he wasn’t going to leave me anytime soon. Yeah, It wasn’t my proudest moment. It was one of my favourite Tom memories though.

“So, What did you think?” Tom asked as the lights came back on. I looked up at him through my panda eyes where my mascara had run and gave him the dirtiest look I could manage. “You said it wasn’t sad” I accused, rubbing at my eyes profusely “You lied to me”

“You cry at every one of my premieres, when are you going to learn to wear waterproof mascara?” Toma asked, pulling his sleeve down over his hand and taking a swipe at the mascara running down my cheeks. “What’s life without a little risk?” I smirked, he shook his head at me, his hand gripping my chin tighter as he gently wiped my face, in the back of a movie theatre with the sleeve of his suit. Oh the class

“You have got to stop rewatching Harry Potter” He sighed

“Says the person who bought me the boxset” I returned. “Not to watch everyday” He laughed, seeming happy enough with his handiwork. He let go of my face. Part of me instantly missed his touch. “And I suppose a great muggle like yourself is going to stop me?” I laughed. Tom looked at me with great disapproval. Tom had never understood my obsession with Harry Potter. A diehard Marvel fan instead, there was no room in his head for anything except Spiderman. The more I think about it, the more I realise that him not being Spiderman for the MCU was utterly preposterous. The man had spiderman bedding, granted Paddy currently slept on those but still, the man lived and breathed Marvel.

“You’re lucky I put up with your arse. Now, what did you actually think?” He asked standing up and holding his hand out to help me up and out of the mostly empty theatre.

“I love it” I smiled. “You really pulled at my heartstrings. Are you going to introduce me to Chris Pratt now?” I asked, fluttering my wet eyelashes at Tom in faux flirtation

“And have to bail you out of prison after you flash at him? No chance” He laughed, gripping my hand tighter and scoffing at my flirtation persuasion attempt. “Indecent exposure is a misdemeanour, I’ll skip prison” I replied. “I’m still not introducing you, in fact. I’m skipping the afterparty all together” He smiled. We’d reached the door to the cinema. Everyone was pretty much gone. There were a few stragglers that were walking around talking on the phone or waiting for taxis home I imagined. There was a teenaged girl that looked up when she saw Tom and let out the most adorable squeak. I pulled on his hand and made him stop to take a picture with her, not that Tom needed forcing to be nice to his fans but Tom could be oblivious and she struck me as the type of girl that wouldn’t have the balls to come over and ask for a picture.

“So, want me to drop you off?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat. I heard the leather screech and he settled himself comfortably and reached for his seatbelt.

“To the house exactly three doors down from yours?” I laughed, sliding into the passenger’s seat and instantly reaching for the radio, turning on signal one on low.

“Well actually,” He said pausing and waiting for me to fasten my seatbelt before starting the car “I was wondering if I could stay at your house tonight?” He asked. “My house? With my mother?” I asked, knowing that my mother wasn’t at the house but playing hard to get all the same.

“Isn’t she working at the care home tonight?” He pointed out. The beams from the traffic lights bounced across his face as he drove and I found myself watching the patterns with interest. “I’m not sure if I should find it creepy that you know her rota or not, why are you planning on getting me alone?” I asked, regarding him with a fake expression of fear and distrust.

“I want to spend time with my best friend, and also not be surrounded by my parents right now” He replied, his shoulders tensed at the mention of his parents and I instantly understood. “I see where this is going, Nikki still hasn’t come around to the idea of you moving out, has she?” I asked laughing, “She would come around to it a lot easier if you’d come live with me,” He said turning on to our street. The sight of the familiar street made my heart happy in a weird way. “And add fuel to our families attempts at marrying us off?” I asked. I watched the smirk stretch across his face, Tom found our parents inability to accept our friendship as what it was utterly hilarious, I, however, found every single attempt that they made to push us closer together completely humiliating. “Why ruin the habit of a lifetime?” He said as he parked perfectly in front of my house. I got out of the car in lieu of answering the question. I turned to head up the path my front garden, slowing my pace only slightly in order for Tom to catch up to me, and also because my feet were killing me in these heels.

As I suspected, Tom appeared at my side within seconds and I sent him a bemused smile. I opened the door and headed inside. I kicked my heels off and turned around to hang my coat up, to find Tom still outside the door. I cocked my head at him in question.

“What are you a vampire? Need an invite?” I asked. He didn’t laugh

“You never actually said I could stay over,” He said in explanation, digging his feet in the dirt as if he actually expected me to deny him access to what I suspected has become like a second home to him too. He really was a perfect gentleman.

“Come in, you fucking idiot”. I laughed. “You better not hog the blanket this time”

#Tom Holland #TomHolland #Fanfiction #Bestfriends #FLuff #Cute #Tom #Holland #TomHollandFanfiction

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romancing-lady-whistledown · 6 years ago

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Favorite acting - Second roles

in which I somehow manage to make the longest appreciation-post so far for the character who was known for only showing up on Fridays.

I swear the only episodes of season 3 that doesn’t have a scene on this list is episode 1 and episode 6 - oopsies!

The trailer

I recently shared all the trailers for the remakes of Isak’s season with my friend who is an actress and who is not watching the Skam-remakes. The Skam France trailer stood out to her, and the first thing she said was “I like the acting of the guy who plays French Isak”. Just like alot of people when they watched the trailer for the first time, she thought Eliott was Isak/Lucas, but unlike those who knew what Lucas looked like, she didn’t realize that he was Even/Eliott when he turned around. She said Skam France was one she’d check out if she ever decided to watch a remake. The point of this little story was that Maxence’s acting stood out to her from the trailer alone enough to make her interested in watching the season, and the exact same thing happened to me when I first watched it. Maxences performance in this trailer was what captured my attention and made me intrigued enough to watch the season live. I am eternally greatful for that.

The Piano-scene

I don’t think I need to go too much into depth about this one, we all know why this scene is amazing, but I need to say something. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but if someone put me in front of a camera and basically told me to fall in love right then and there, I would not know wtf to do. But Maxence clearly did, because there’s no other way to describe what is going on in this scene. In the trailer Eliott definitely had his “love at first sight”-moment just like Lucas did when he saw him for the first time in the common room, but this clip took the whole thing one step further. It was like Eliott in the trailer saw Lucas and immediately knew that he was gonna be someone important to him. I'm sure that if we had been following Eliott’s pov instead of Lucas’s we’d see something very similar to what we saw from Lucas in episode 2. Eliott trying to learn more about Lucas, Eliott looking for him at school. I think from the moment he saw him in the hallway Lucas was always on his mind, just like Eliott was always on Lucas’s mind. But during the piano-scene, there is no denying things reached another level. We moved past the curiosity point. During this scene Eliott fell deeply in love, and by the end of the scene he was so far gone that he was past the point of no return, which is why by the time he tried to distance himself from Lucas in episode 5, it was far too late. The whole time we were watching Lucas in Season 3 we saw that he was hopelessly in love with Eliott, but Maxence’s performance in this scene makes me feel like, had we been following Eliott instead of Lucas, we would’ve seen that he was even a little further gone than Lucas. Maxence manages to show the change that has happened in Eliott in the way he looks at Lucas as he’s about to leave. Before the piano scene he was acting very flirty and smooth, but after? Lucas looks like he can at least pretend to be somewhat casual until Eliott shuts the door, meanwhile Eliott looks absolutely mesmerized. We know that Eliott was holding back from kissing Lucas for the first time in this moment and looking at Eliott’s face in this screenshot, had I not known how the scene plays out, I could’ve totally pictured him jumping at Lucas here.

Oh look, I went too much in depth about this scene after all. Should I say I’m sorry or you’re welcome?? Either way this clip was definitely one of Maxence’s best acting moments in Skam France, and the fact that we basically switched pov to Eliott for a moment just added to how Maxence totally stole this scene. Anyways let me shut up.

The eyef*cking in episode 3

Idk if it’s the mannequin elite in him or what, but Maxence sure knows how to secude the camera. If you once again put me in front of a camera and told me to look like I wanted to completely devour the person I’m looking at, Idk how I would do that in a way that didn’t look either ridiculously over the top or so subtle the camera wouldn’t pick it up. But Maxence, once again, nailed it. As far as the scenes leading up to the first kiss in episode 4 are concerned, I would say the piano-scene in episode 2 is overflowing with romantic tension, while the scenes at the end of episode 3 are overflowing with sexual tension. First you have the dancing-scene and then you have the scene where Eliott casually comes out to Lucas and then proceeds to not so subtly eyef*ck him right in the middle of the street. And I think we all felt like we were in Lucas’s shoes practically begging Eliott to kiss us as we were watching Eliott's expression in this scene.

That time Eliott asked Lucas on a date right in front of his girlfriend’s face

Let’s get this out of the way, this scene as a whole is actually pretty hilarious when you think about what’s actually going on in it, namely that Eliott asks Lucas out on a date and they proceed to pick up the eyef*cking from last time while Chloe instead of picking up on what’s going on starts planning a double date for them. But what I’m actually here to talk about today is Maxence’s performance.

The way Maxence walks up to Lucas in this clip really communicates so much about how Eliott is feeling in this moment. He looks so nervous and vulnerable. We know he’s had a bad couple of days, and as a result of that he had to stand up Lucas and hurt his feelings in the process which took them a big step back. From the way Eliott looks it seems like the only reason why he went to school was to apologize. He’s putting himself completely out there, leaving himself open for rejection, a risk he is willing to take to at least have a shot at making things right and spending some time alone with Lucas. Maxence portrays this vulnerability so well. Another thing he plays so well in this scene is how Eliott only has eyes for Lucas. It’s a miracle that Chloe didn’t at least suspect that something was up just from the way Eliott was looking at him.

The dreaded scene

Time to step into the more painful scenes shall we? Starting off with the first Eliott-scene I had a really hard time watching all the way through (except for the dubstep-scene but that’s a whole other story). The way Maxence took Eliott from incredibly happy to see Lucas again for the first time since their special morning together and excited to be with him, to completely heartbroken by Lucas’s words. Just taking a screeåshot of this scene hurt tbh. But the acting? A++

That time Eliott was a hopeless romantic and both I and Lucas fell for his sweet ass words

This one is maybe a bit random and oddly specific, but I just love the way Eliott says “No” when Lucas asks if the kiss with Lucille really didn’t mean anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much feeling in a “no”.

That scene

I’m not gonna write an essay on this scene simply because it’s not one I’ve rewatched as much as some of the others. But that's not because I didn’t absolutely love Maxence’s performance. Maxence killed it and that’s why it’s so difficult to watch.

Remember me

Maxence was literally just in this scene for a few seconds but those few seconds are hella memorable. The way he’s sitting alone in the dark, making himself as small as possible, the haunting image of Eliott crying after seeing his big ol’ sunshine smile in the majority of his scenes of the season...it’s short, but it’s very, very effective.

The time Eliott got to speak for himself

We all desperately wanted a scene like this and boy did they deliver. And this was another scene in which Maxence totally stole the show. He portrays the absolute vulnerability of Eliott in this scene perfectly. Eliott is sitting down, lowering his head, once again making himself look smaller. He’s on the verge of tears, voice breaking. He’s opening up completely, leaving himself completely bare, no more secrets to protect him. And he’s bracing himself for the most painful rejection that he has been expecting ever since Lucas said “I don’t need crazy people in my life”. The way Skam France handled Eliott’s mental illness in Season 3 episode 10, and Maxence’s performance in said episode, is the biggest reason why I so desperately want a full season for Eliott, and I know I’m not alone in that.

In conclusion: GIVE HIM A SEASON YOU COWARDS!

#skamfr #skam france #eliott demaury #renewskamfrance #elu

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randomk-imagines · 6 years ago

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Still Into You

words: 1.9k

summary: it’s your anniversary with johnny so you decide to make a video collage of him

a/n: i sobbed while writing this bc i thought about how perfect johnny would be as a boyfriend and i just really love him ok? he’s not even my bias, but i just love him a lot. he deserves the world. ok bye. enjoy (: also this is based off of this video so go watch it and enjoy sobbing like i did

You sat on top of your bed with the covers pulled over your head and your laptop in your lap. It was unhealthily close to your face as the light illuminated off your glasses into your dark room.

You glanced at the clock in the corner of your laptop.

3:27am.

You sighed but focused back on the task at hand. Editing this video.

To an outsider, you probably looked like a YouTuber editing their lengthy vlog, but that was far from the truth. You were actually editing something special for someone special.

You and Johnny’s anniversary was just a few days away. The two of you had been dating for three years. The best three years of your life, might you add. Of course, the two of you had gotten into some arguments, but you never failed to settle them within a day or two and it only made your relationship stronger.

Throughout the three years you’d been dating and the many years before from just being his friend, you had accumulated a plethora of videos and pictures of him on your phone. Sometimes when you were feeling down, you’d go back into your gallery and watch the videos of him goofing off in a store or laughing along to something your friends said. They never failed to lift your mood. You were actually rewatching some of them when you had gotten this idea of creating a collage of them.

You picked your favourite ones of him from your phone and got to work uploading them to your laptop and editing them down to a relatively suitable video. You were not an expert in video editing, in fact, you barely were able to figure out your laptop’s regular functions on a daily basis. You were not technologically advanced even though you really should be. However, you were determined to create a video to express how you felt towards your boyfriend and you weren’t about to back out now. Although, you could feel the sleep deprivation get to you and the harsh light from your laptop was not helping your already poor eyesight.

Truthfully, you were basically done trimming down the videos and putting them together in a relatively cohesive collage. You just needed to pick out the background music.

You scrolled through multiple playlists you had made on Spotify, but none of the songs seemed to compliment the tone of the video. It wasn’t until you had randomly clicked on a throwback playlist that you found the perfect song. You quickly downloaded it to your computer, excited at how well it fits the video.

It wasn’t until an hour later that you were finally satisfied with how the video turned out. You saved it to your computer and proceeded to pass out until the weekend was over.

You and Johnny were actually quite busy on the day of your anniversary so you both decided to wait until Friday to celebrate it. You were excited to show him the video, yet nervous at the same time.

He was a Film and Digital Media major after all. He even had his own YouTube channel (which you had taken some videos off of as well) which was new, yet gaining popularity quickly. His channel consisted of his daily life at university as a film major as well as videos of him and your friends hanging out, goofing around, and just being a mess in general. He had some videos dedicated to you, but he didn’t want his channel to become solely focused on his relationship, so it was more like an add on, rather than the overall theme of his channel.

You, on the other hand, were majoring in the sciences, specifically chemistry. You could solve the odd thermochemistry problems and strange-looking stoichiometry questions, yet you could hardly handle your laptop. You could barely create cool-looking excel spreadsheets without needing help from your friends. It was honestly embarrassing.

You hoped your video was at least okay...

Friday came quick and your classes flew by even quicker. You ended later than Johnny did, so as soon as you stepped out of your last class, you saw Johnny leaning against the opposite wall waiting for you. You immediately perked up when you saw him, bidding your friend goodbye as you bounded over to your boyfriend.

“Hey,” he smiled and pecked your lips. “Want to drop your stuff off at my apartment then we can go?” he asks. You nod and the two of you set off to his apartment hand in hand.

Even after dating for three years, you were still giddy whenever the two of you held hands. It may be lame to other people, but you love it. It’s not aggressive PDA, yet you were still able to be close to him, and that’s all you needed.

“What’s on your mind?” you hear Johnny ask. The two of you were currently cuddled up against each other on his couch as the TV played. It was a rerun of a popular drama, but you weren’t paying attention to it. Instead, you and Johnny were talking and just catching up on what happened throughout the week. You, however, were anxious about showing Johnny the video.

You were laying on top of his chest, your cheek resting on the back of your forearm as your other hand was fiddling with a loose string on his shirt. Your legs were entangled together messily, having been shifting every once in a while. He had one arm tucked behind his head while his other was rubbing random patterns on your back as the two of you talked.

“Nothing,” you say, it being a little muffled by your forearm. You feel the hand stop rubbing circles on your back and instead coming up to tilt your head a bit so you look at him.

“Nothing means something,” he quirks an eyebrow. You pout, knowing that he can practically read you like a book while he just smiles.

“I just made something for you, but it kind of came out like shit even though it took forever to make,” you laugh, trying to hide your nervousness.

“I told you that you didn’t need to do anything for me,” he tsks.

“You got something for me!” you lightly smack his chest. He just cracks a smile. He did get you something, and it was rather nice, to be honest.

He knows you like wearing a necklace every day, but not just any necklace. It has to mean something to you. You’re not a big jewellery girl, but necklaces aren’t high maintenance and they don’t get in the way of your daily life like bracelets do. He knows that you only wear certain jewellery so he went out and bought a necklace for you.

It was a simple, little star necklace, but he had his initials engraved on the back. You, however, knew how much he liked to spoil you so you knew it wasn’t cheap. In fact, it was sterling silver. When he told you that, you immediately wanted him to return it. You couldn’t let him spend that much money on you, especially when he said he didn’t need anything in return!

However, he said that he wouldn’t be able to return it since he got an engraving on it, so suck it up and accept it because you’re keeping it. You reluctantly accepted it, and it was currently hanging from your neck as you propped yourself up on your forearms to pout at your boyfriend. He just laughed at you and playfully pinched your cheeks.

You sat up all the way and reached for your backpack to take out your laptop. It was leaning right against the side of the couch so you didn’t have to get up, but you did have to turn around. You heard Johnny protest as you turned away from him. He sat up as well and as soon as you fished out your backpack, he snaked his arms around your waist to your front and pulled you back against him. Your back collided with his chest as he hooked his chin over your shoulder and sighed after settling down, content with you being so close once again.

“What’s this?” he asks when he sees you open up a file from your laptop. It loads a video and you click for it to go full screen.

“It’s just something I made...” you nervously reply. You feel him nod as he looks back to the screen. The preview picture shows him mid-laugh with the ocean behind him and the sun high in the sky.

You angle the screen towards him so he can see it better and hit play.

The video audio starts out soft, but it’s not long until the song starts playing. The chorus to Still Into You by Paramore blasts from your laptop speaker as a video clip of Johnny smiling and running around the beach flashes on the screen.

A series of videos of Johnny smiling and laughing, playing around, shopping, eating, working, and more, roll through as the music plays on. The entire video itself is only about a minute long, but it captures all your favourite things about him and all the memories you’ve shared with him. The video ends soon after and you realize he hadn’t spoken a word throughout the entire thing.

It makes you extremely nervous and you immediately think the worst. Does he not like it? Was this a stupid idea? Were your editing skills that bad?? You internally panic. You don’t even process he said anything until after a few moments.

“I loved it,” Johnny says softly. He was so entranced by the video that he wasn’t able to speak. Everything about it was perfect and the concept itself was so wholesome and he just loved it. The fact that you made it yourself, just for him, made the entire thing 1000x better in his opinion.

“Really?” you ask, surprised. You turn your head to look at him and catch the tender gaze in his eyes. He sees you turn out of the corner of his eye and physically has to tear his sight away from the screen to look at you. “I wasn’t sure what to do because you’re really amazing and editing and taking videos and it’s your major and your videos always look so professional and put together and I just made this at 3am one night because I was looking back at our old videos and we’ve just been together for so long, yet I still feel the same way as I did in the beginning and like that’s crazy and weird and I don’t know. Honestly, it’s not that good and it’s really sloppy and-”

He shuts you up by pressing his lips against yours. The angle is honestly pretty awkward. He’s right behind you so you both have to stretch your necks to even look at each other and on top of that, he has to bend down to even be at your eye level, but it’s still perfect in your opinion. Everything he does is perfect.

“It’s amazing and I love it and I love you,” he smiles as he pulls away. You feel his arms tighten just the slightest as he leans down to kiss your neck. It’s really only a press of his lips on skin since he can’t wipe off the smile from his face.

“I love you too,” you giggle.

He gently leans forward to grab your laptop and sets it on the ground before turning you around in his lap so you face him again. He doesn’t waste time in kissing you fully on the lips and wrapping his arms back around your waist.

You make a surprised squeak as you feel him lean back down to lay on the couch, bringing you down with him.

#nct imagines #nct scenarios #johnny x reader #boyfriend nct #boyfriend johnny #johnny scenarios #nct fanfics #johnny blurbs #johnny imagines #nct blurbs #nct 127 #nct johnny #johnny seo #seo youngho #soft johnny #nct #johnny fanfics #nct fics

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what-the-fuck-is-anime · 6 years ago

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So, I want to talk a little more about episode 23.

The fact that Midoriya’s half-assed public intervention for Todoroki went well-ish thus far or otherwise resulted in a really cool battle does not make it any less cruel. His actions, in my eyes, were harmful and maybe even malicious.

I went over my reasoning many times in prior posts regarding this episode. Midoriya was being, in short, a dick to someone who asked him for help in confidence and secrecy. That trust was betrayed in making his plight known to everyone instead of reaching out privately to people who could help, and it was made public in the context of telling a traumatized kid how inconvenient his trauma and coping mechanisms are to others. On TV. I know I mention the TV part a lot, but, these are kids. They are young. They live in a social media world, where people like you and me have access to watch and analyze videos over and over and over. We already know that people in the crowd can hear people from the field, at least to some extent, because we have had several examples of that already. There was that fetch game where they needed to talk to the crowd, there was someone who addressed the commentary box and was heard, the crowd was responding to Midoriya’s words in real time, the commentary box could clearly hear Todoroki’s father from the stand closest to the field meaning they could probably hear the field itself.

And even beyond that, the cameras were probably closer with microphones, and lip reading exists. So even if people in the stands might not be able to hear them now, which at least some of them clearly were, or even could not see their lips move consistently enough to make out what they were saying, a huge majority of the viewers were watching from home. Millions of them. And even in terms of being able to see faces, Todoroki mentioned being able to see his father’s face from the stands, and there are also giant screens showing close-ups of the field that may give the live audience an opportunity to read lips. Bags were allowed in, meaning that individual cameras may have been allowed in, giving an opportunity for people to combine super-zoom videos from multiple angles to decipher the conversations. Plus, this is a world of superpowers, there may very well be a culture surrounding lip reading or otherwise transcribing events by people who have Quirks that allow them to do so. This is one of the worst possible settings to discuss Todoroki’s left side, because not only is he very publicly having flashbacks, but however he responds will be forever recorded for the world to see. He did not ask to be grilled about his home life and coping mechanisms in the middle of this fight.

And once that information gets out to the public, there is no taking it back. Ever.

Todoroki had almost no power in his life, no power to stop the abuse, and he was hardly comfortable talking about it in the first place. He was hardly comfortable talking to other people at all. All Might drilled into Midoriya that media actions have consequence, and even accidentally bringing something up can harm someone forever. He made sure that was understood when they first met and began training. Midoriya has lived the past year or so knowing that some degree of paranoia and alertness is essential to protecting himself and everyone else’s secrets, which is especially important in a world with so many secret identities. Yet when it came to facing Todoroki on the battlefield, an event with an emphasis on how unprecedentedly large and internationally viewed it is, Midoriya gave himself permission to take control of Todoroki’s situation. He chose to confront him on a field that he could not escape, and humiliated him for the “selfishness” of his trauma and coping skills. Midoriya went on and on about how hard everyone else was trying and put international pressure on Todoroki to just abandon what he viewed as a way to keep himself safe from his father.

Todoroki had very few options in how to respond in this setting. He could not physically just walk away. He could disregard what Midoriya said and keep fighting, leaving people to speculate about what those words meant, and then give the crowd an opportunity to hate him even more for not giving in his all like everyone else. Midoriya made Todoroki into the crowd’s enemy with accusations of not taking it seriously, and the crowd already hated him to the point they refused to celebrate his last victory. This option sucks because Todoroki already struggles to make connections with others and already struggles with how much he is hated at home. He wanted to be a beloved hero, too, and being hated by the public is an awful start to that, especially when he has no supportive home to return to. This option results in everyone hating him. Midoriya said that Todoroki was being selfish by not using his full power, so whose words would more likely be considered? Those of the remarkable first place race kid who has had many miraculous stunts so far, or the words of the awkward overpowered and already hated kid who puts others in danger with his power? If Todoroki ignored Midoriya, it would have ended up with everyone siding with Midoriya, because not being able to respond to such a passionate accusation of being a selfish asshole is not a great look.

He could talk back, and explain how Midoriya knew nothing of his situation or otherwise defended trying to reject his father, but that would give everyone even MORE information about his home life. His father was watching, his mother was probably watching, his whole family was probably watching, and his dad could have gotten even angrier and more violent. Todoroki would have to acknowledge Midoriya’s words as truth, give more context to the crowd, and lay bare struggles that they have no business even knowing until Midoriya decided it should be everyone’s business. Todoroki is very clearly not appreciating the situation, and kept this a secret for one reason for another, as neither his teachers nor his classmates seemed to be aware of the situation. Even when he finally uses his left side, he weeps.

He could change the subject, but his mind was too occupied with the whole traumatic flashback bit to probably think of anything else to talk about, and he never was good at engaging in conversation with others to begin with, largely as a result from this trauma.

He could comment about how he knows Midoriya is somehow involved with All Might if he wanted to take a vengeful route, since Midoriya was betraying his trust, but evidently he has the sense to actually keep someone else’s secret.

The path he actually took was not necessarily entirely of his own will. He embraced his fire, he encouraged his ecstatic father, and it even resulted in people thinking his father was a good dad. Todoroki gave everyone an epic fight, and gave the viewers something cool to watch. But it sucked. Choosing his fire may have even been an act of self-defense against his father, because the other options would draw more attention to what Midoriya said. Giving everyone such a cool fight may have been in his mind a distraction from a predicament he was entirely forced into. He was crying when he did it, who knows the specifics of those tears?

There were no safe responses, and even the conversation was unsafe. They caused a string of traumatic flashbacks that he had to powerlessly experience in front of the world. He was already tired, he had just trusted this guy, he was having flashbacks non-stop, and he could not walk away or change the subject. Midoriya never should have said anything in this setting. The entire world gets to watch Todoroki experience this trauma as much as they want, Todoroki may become traumatized by the whole event, especially depending on his father’s actions when they get home. When everyone else in class probably is going to be analyzing the event for how to improve, Todoroki is going to have to sit there and suffer silently and rewatch himself be forcibly traumatized on TV and wonder if he did the right thing in a situation he never should have had to even consider. He may even be asked to explain what was going on as an example for the rest of the class, since he was the one who won that round. DVDs and Blu-Rays are probably going to be sold of the events. Merchandise of epic moments and prints of facial expressions and professional photos. Clips taken out of context and replayed on the news. Television might not be safe for Todoroki to just casually watch now. I have no idea how many Olympic commercials there are in Japan, but in America we have Olympic clips played in commercials, on the news, and at absolutely any time they become relevant. A lot of people bullied and abused offline try to seek out others online, so if Todoroki had an online life to try to escape, it will also probably be saturated with photos and analyses of him. Hell, assuming he used a fake name in such a situation, he may even encounter online friends speculating about him or posting pictures and videos of him. Comment sections are notoriously toxic, and people online can be very cruel. He is a teenager with virtually no support struggles to cope with his extreme abuse, and probably does not have the resources to cope with being mocked for his abuse either.

Regardless of whether or not everyone reacting to the battle realized that the conversation was about extreme abuse, Todoroki was clearly zoning out during the flashbacks. While the rest of his classmates might love to read about the first impressions they made on the world through with own performances, Todoroki’s most profound memories of the fight are largely the flashbacks from Midoriya’s words. Their fight had the biggest explosion in the event up until that point, so it would have been an especially iconic, shared, and analyzed segment compared to the other battles. Coming across criticisms regarding the flashbacks or even the abuse itself can cause massive lasting damage. Although any event and any battle is prone to being on the receiving end of cruelty, having traumatic experiences invalidated is extremely distressing, especially for a kid without a support system. Especially since he likely has a much smaller frame of reference for how others should treat him due to how isolated he is in terms of supportive and healthy relationships. And especially because he was not prepared to confront his abuse in the middle of the match. He was zoning out because he was having flashbacks, and criticism of that zoning out is indirect criticism of his trauma whether the people commenting realize it or not. Through the battle it was established that the son of the second most powerful hero in the world rejected his own father. That will probably not go over well considering how massive of an international fanbase he must have, which may lead to people hating and doubting Todoroki, calling him dramatic, or otherwise further invalidating his experiences. A lot of the crowd already disliked him. Reading into the internet’s reaction might make him more afraid and paranoid of his father if the majority opinion of Todoroki is negative, since it affects his father’s image and his ideals for his son becoming the perfect hero and an extension of himself. If the majority of the internet began to talk about the abuse, his father may become enraged from damage done to his own reputation. Online or offline, there is nowhere safe for him.

If Midoriya actually primarily cared about Todoroki insulting everyone else’s efforts, he would have confronted Todoroki immediately when the abuse was revealed to him and the challenge was given. If Midoriya really cared whether people were insulted in the first place, he would have actually asked whether they were. If he actually primarily cared about the abuse, he would have told All Might when they met in the hallway. If he actually cared the most about Todoroki, he would have waited until they were off of TV and helped him through it as a secret like it was supposed to be. If Todoroki did not want intend for it to be a secret, he probably would not have had the conversation with Midoriya in as remote a location as possible.

Midoriya claims to be arguing entirely for the sake of his wonderful supportive friends, but how of that is really true? His entire argument is that his classmates would be insulted by the situation even if they had the full story, because of how hard they are working, and how much not using a Quirk to the fullest extent is a disrespect to the event. The full situation being that Todoroki uses only half of his power to try to convince the second most powerful person in the world to stop hurting him. Saying that his entire class would be offended knowing that is making some pretty harsh judgments about their character. He says that they would care more about the sanctity of the event than physically protecting their friend from cruel abuse. Midoriya takes advantage of social power dynamics here, trying to place pressure on him that does not actually exist. Telling anyone that they do something because everyone else wants them to is usually not a great idea, especially with regards to how to handle trauma. It makes the traumatized person feel even more like an outsider, and with regards to abuse, feeling like everyone else has the power while he has none.

He goes on and on about how supportive his friends are and how much he loves his wonderful supportive friends, so why is it that he thinks they would be offended by their classmate trying to avoid being physically beaten on a regular basis by one of the strongest people in the world? Regardless of what they might think of the abuse, nobody has been upset so far about Todoroki. Nobody! And that is even without knowing why he only uses half of his power. Nobody cares. Nobody has ever said anything about it, even when some acknowledged that Todoroki was purposely only using his right side. Midoriya is projecting. He is saying, oh no, I am not the one upset here, but everyone else is. Trying to imply that he was not the one insulted, but everyone else is, so he has to put words in their mouths and protect their honor. There are, at the moment, only two people who both know the entirety of the situation and are insulted by it: Midoriya and Todoroki’s dad. Even fucking Bakugo, who knows the deal because he was secretly listening in, did not seem to be offended at fucking all. He also did not do anything about it, and that is pretty much expected of him at this point, but he very rarely tries to hide any anger, ever. Even though neither of them realized he was listening, it still goes to demonstrate that even the angriest person in the class was not bothered. Not to mention the fact that now that Midoriya went on and on about how Todoroki is insulting his classmates and their efforts, they have no idea what is going on. They have no idea why Midoriya is saying this. They can only assume that Todoroki is in one way or another doing this as a direct insult to them.

Todoroki does not know a lot about his classmates. He prefers to be alone and struggles with relationships and communication, probably partly because of the abuse he experiences at home. So when Midoriya says that his classmates would be angry with him, he is inclined to believe it, because Midoriya has spent so much more time around his classmates and is so much more liked by them. He knows them better. But he is lying through his teeth. And now Todoroki might hesitate to engage with them because Midoriya claimed they would be angry about his situation, and now they might even think Todoroki hates them because of how hard Midoriya insisted they were being insulted. Midoriya used his friends as weapons to convince Todoroki to do what he wanted, and turning them against him in the process while discouraging Todoroki from ever reaching out to them.

When it comes to people caring at all about the sanctity of the event or being respectful about it or whatever, Midoriya is making absolutely everything up. He is so full of shit to the brim. Nobody thus far really cares about the sanctity of the event or forcing people to use their Quirks to the full. Bakugo purposely mangled the pledge right at the start, embarrassed the entire school, disrespected his teammates and tried to fight on his own during the cavalry battle, and his classmates still sit near him and talk to him like a friend. The girls were tricked into wearing cheerleader uniforms and embarrassing themselves and nobody said anything. Mineta attached himself to someone else to make it to the finish line. The inventor girl tied up her opponent and used her battle to advertise her inventions and then forfeit and the only one upset was her opponent who got tied up.

In terms of not using a Quirk entirely being disrespectful somehow, that is horseshit too, because more people were upset about Shinso using his Quirk at all than Todoroki not using all of his. Shoji used his body to protect Mineta during the cavalry battle, and people were mad about it. People were angry with Bakugo for fighting too hard. The crowd refused to support Todoroki’s win because he was too strong. Nobody cares about what Midoriya claims everyone is offended about, because he is projecting. Midoriya insists that Todoroki’s actions are unfair to others even though those were his words and thoughts, exclusively.

And these are bold claims coming from the kid who is actively supported and personally tutored by the strongest man in the world, and also everyone else’s teacher. Is Midoriya’s own deal not more insulting to everyone else? He only started exercising when All Might told him to, and he only has a Quirk because of luck. He wanted to get in to UA through sheer force of will and almost nothing else. It was not even entirely his own power that won the fight with Shinso, it was everyone else’s power who had that Quirk before him. No matter how far Midoriya falls, All Might is absolutely dedicated to making him into a hero, so he never even has to worry about failing in school. The teacher is personally dedicated to ensuring his success. He basically has a guaranteed future. Plus, those aside, he has all the support in the world. He can go home and feel safe. His friends love him. He is individually encouraged by his idol.

Meanwhile, Todoroki is actively abused at home. He feels safe nowhere, nobody is protecting him. The entire world has failed him. His attempt to protect himself was to reject his left side in order to hopefully discourage his father from hurting him more. His father insists that this is a phase and that Todoroki has no will on his own, and the ongoing rejection of his left side is an attempt to prove to his father that he will not be controlled and that his will is stronger.

Even this character development, even this alleged progress on Todoroki’s part is not solely his. His father got to celebrate. He was overjoyed! His father was proven right, that this was a phase, and now he takes that as being told he successfully can overpower and manipulate his son. This may have been exactly the wrong decision, and Todoroki is probably going to regret it. His reward for “overcoming” his trauma is to go home and get hit harder. Todoroki failing to maintain his willpower regarding the rejection of his father encourages his father to disregard any future objections or rebellion, because evidently his resolve to not use his left side was a failure. That means Todoroki is not as stubborn as he claimed to be, and that his father has in his mind a better chance of manipulating him now. It would have been much safer to make the progress in using his left side in secret until he was strong enough to confidently protect himself from his father. Plus, Todoroki did not even need to use his left side. Midoriya had one, maybe two shots left before the battle was going to become a very slow fist fight with one person being almost entirely immobile. Todoroki could have just stalled a little bit, defrosted somewhat, then charged in on his completely battered and nearly immobile opponent and decked him in the face. As we saw, Todoroki is potentially even more ripped than Midoriya. Or, hell, just cover the field with ice and just slide him out of bounds. Midoriya had two legs left, and almost no use of his fingers. He could hardly fight back beyond that last hit, and Todoroki managed to avoid being impaled by his own ice being thrown back at him. At most, Todoroki would have to survive two more hits before an almost guaranteed win. Eventually the adrenaline would wear off too, making Midoriya succumb to his own injuries and extremely prone to a fist to the face. There was no reason to use his left side.

So who actually benefits from Todoroki using his left side? Easy. Midoriya and Todoroki’s dad. Midoriya gets to have a cool epic battle and prove himself to others. He gets to look like a big strong hero, and everyone thinks him encouraging Todoroki was an act of sportsmanship. Everyone is going to love that stunt, because nobody knows what he was actually talking about, and nobody may ever know because Midoriya insisted everyone would still be offended by it. Todoroki might now be afraid to reach out, because he was told how much he offended his classmates. Of course he would believe it, because people get upset no matter what he does. He was too strong in his last match, according to the crowd. Midoriya gets to show off to everyone how willing he is to fight the son of the #2 hero, and prove to himself just how far he has come. There is not even a huge reason for him to need to win beyond his own pride, because again, he is personally tutored by the #1 hero on the planet and has a job and a legacy secured for him no matter what he does anymore. Midoriya manipulated Todoroki using his friends as weapons to improve his own image, at the expense of Todoroki having to endure more abuse. It was worth it to him.

Midoriya went too far. I already went over his perceived importance of this event. Going up against Todoroki at his full power was mostly his own selfish desire, maybe just to show how far he had come from being Quirkless and to prove to the world that he can handle himself against a natural born powerhouse. It was not at all about anyone else’s feelings, not even the person he allegedly wanted to help, and entirely about what he wanted, and how he felt entitled to an epic battle. Midoriya was in complete control over someone’s secret, abused that control, exploited someone’s vulnerabilities with social pressure, and did irreparable damage to someone he claimed to want to help. He accused others of being offended when he was the only one offended, he accused Todoroki of being selfish, but in reality, Midoriya was the selfish one. Even though Todoroki used his left side, using his left side was not the root of his problems in the minds of anyone other than his father and Midoriya. Todoroki’s rejection of his left side was a defense mechanism to try and establish his own resolve and independence and to discourage his father from abusing and manipulating him more. The “progress” towards reclaiming his own power was forced upon him by someone who manipulated him with self-centered intentions after being trusted to keep his abuse a secret, in an extremely public setting that put him in even more danger of the abuse that made him reject it in the first place.

For Midoriya’s sake, I really hope the pain was clouding his judgment, because this is a real bad fucking look.

#mha #bnha #liveblog #ep23 #reflection #wtfia

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starcoanonymous · 6 years ago

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My Story with Starco and my Letter of Goodbye

Hi, not sure if anyone reading this will know me but I’m Starcoanonymous. I’m a giant fan of Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Starco and have been in the fandom since I discovered it since the first four episodes were released. I grew this blog and wrote a ton on fanfiction.net as FanfictionForDayz in the hopes that one day, this ship would become canon. Looking at myself right now, it’s really strange how this is the only shipping pair I would truly care for and how obsessed I was by it. I don’t care though. It changed my life for the better. Today, I have finished watching all the episodes of Season 4 that I have missed due to college. Now that Starco is canon, it is time for me to say goodbye. This is more for me to remember the good times in the show but if you would like, feel free to tag along for the awesome ride.

Backstory:

Where to start? To begin with, I’m not much of a fandom guy. I did love to watch cartoons but I would never be a real ‘fan’ of the show. That’s as true now as it was then. The only show I was really ever going to be a fan of is this one.

However, the shows that I did like always had unfinished ships. For example, in Pokemon, everytime I wanted Ash and the girl to be together, they wouldn’t. In Yu-Gi-Oh, the main protagonist would never get with the girl. I hated it when that happened. I wasn’t fully aware at the time what ships were and how much I really hated to see that type of thing. Also to mention, I did not like those drama filled, complicated love stories like seen in Twilight and other media back then.

Around 2015 is when I found SVTFOE. I was a sophomore in high school and things were just tough. I wasn’t being bullied or anything, I just was not enjoying high school very much. Now I know I said I’m not much of a fandom guy, but around that time I was also reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and reading a TON of fanfiction about it. I loved Percy and Annabeth being together but there really was no visual representation to latch on to (the movie did not do that series justice). It was really around then I discovered that I loved to see the characters I loved get together.

Season 1:

The TV in the living room was on and by happenstance, it was turned to Disney Channel. I think it was turned to “School Spirit” and something about the show, irked me. The art style, the personalities, I have no idea but as SOON as I saw Star and Macro on the same screen, I absolutely needed to know who they were and what this show was. So, I decided to give this show a try. Dear lord, you cannot imagine what happens next.

At this point in time, the first four episodes were out and the fifth was about to be released in the upcoming week. I watched the first four episodes and I have never been the same since.

There was something refreshing about this show. Something dare I say, magical, about how they structured the first few episodes. I really for the life of me cannot tell you what that meant, but I can tell you that every single night I rewatched those four episodes OVER and OVER again. I am not joking when I tell you that I probably have watched those four episodes combined at least 50 times. After doing research, I came across two very, specific pictures/gifs created by tumblr user @skleero which sealed my fate.

I still have no idea what about this made me go absolutely insane for this show but I do know what made me fall in love with it. The first is the art style. This show’s art style is FANTASTIC. I absolutely love the art style and I praise Nefcy for that in my mind every day. Second, there were no real hints about shipping given out at all. Taking a look at the first four episodes, I didn’t know where this show would take it. I found out however, that I loved not knowing. I hated the idea of not seeing this ship come to life but I loved the possibility that that was the case. I consider this, “shipping masochism.” After all, the goal is worth more if it is hard to achieve.

I was obsessed. Maybe you don’t realize yet how obsessed I was. I literally paused and played each of those four episodes until I examined every single scene where Star and Marco was nearly in contact with each other. Yes, it sounds like an unhealthy obsession but looking at myself today, it truly did me good. It brought me so much joy to watch this show I only have good memories of that time.

Episode 5 comes around and I enjoy it as much as the previous episodes. However, I find out that there is a two month long hiatus until the next episode, “Mewberty/Pixtopia.” To cope with this, I look for other ways to satisfy my needs. I research everything I can about Starco, I scrolled through google images to look for more fan art of it, I even played the game that Disney came out with on their website to promote it. I don’t exactly remember what it was called but I got a tip off saying that Ludo called Marco Star’s boyfriend and that was all it took to get me to play through the whole game and screen shot that exact moment (they later removed that line, sneaky people).

Around then is when I started to read fanfiction for the show. I loved the endless possibilities. I loved not knowing where this ship would go. So, I read every fanfction. Yes, EVERY fanfiction. I first went through fanfiction.net and read EVERY. SINGLE. AVAILABLE. FAN FICTION (about Starco). I became upset that there wasn’t anymore as there were only about 20ish pages of fanfiction stories at the time. So, I went on Archive of Our Own and read every single one there (about Starco). Then, since I still was not satisfied, I read every single fanfiction in the most obscure websites, and saved the text on my Notes app on my IPhone (which I still have. I love these stories).

At this point, I still did not have enough content. I needed more. I found out about tumblr and looked through the Starco tag, but I needed more. So, I got the idea that, instead of looking for content, why don’t I just make it? So, I started up a blog here where I would repost a ton of things and make a few funny edits a long the way and created an account of fanfiction.net where I would write a ton of my own fanfictions on my account FanfictionForDayz.

And so I went, spending all my time enjoying writing fanfiction, watching SVTFOE, watching every scene for every single touch between Star and Marco, trying to find out who Toffee was, banging my face into my pillow as I witnessed Bloodmoon Ball all up till the end of season 1.

Season 2:

At the end of season 1, I couldn’t imagine not being as obsessed with this show, but well, as time flew and there was no episodes for a whole school year, I started to write less and less fanfiction and read less about SVTFOE. I was growing up a little and didn’t have enough time to wait for that Season 2 to come out.

But when it did come out, I was so pumped. It had been nearly a whole year since season 1 ended and there was nothing about to stop me from watching my favorite show. And so I went, absolutely enjoying the show and enjoying the little hints they were pumping out about Starco, even acknowledging the name of the ship in one of the episodes which made me cry honestly.

Then came the dreaded episode. ‘Bon Bon the Birthday Clown.’ All my worst fears were realized. Starco was not cannon and my headcanon of Star and Marco being each others first kissed went out the window. I truly did enjoy the episode but man did it sting. The first realized ship of this show and it was not the main one. I vented my frustrations with funny clips and simply believed Starco would be end game.

Two videos I uploaded during season 2 &3:

youtube

At this point, I truly could not bear to write anymore fanfiction. I really only liked writing headcanons, things that were still possible in the show. I did not want to write anymore headcanons with Jarco still being a thing. So I trudged on cursing (not really) Daron for torturing me.

Near the finale, I went crazy. I could not believe Star was revealed to liking Marco. To me, this was the most forbidden thing that anyone could ever do in this show. Why? My previous experience with non-canon ships made me believe that ships were supposed to be on the down low, not mentioned too much as part of the story. This was different however, and out came my excitement as one step towards Starco finally had been accomplished.

Season 3:

I’m not going to lie, Season 3 was probably my least favorite. I’m sure you can see why. Right as Jackie and Marco broke up, Tom and Star get together. It was like cruelest fate as a Starco shipper. So close, yet so far.

Not only that, I did not enjoy it as much as season 1 & 2 because it put too much emphasis on the drama and love in my opinion. I liked the scarcity of it because it made it all the more sweeter. I also did not like the drama being the main focus of the story. I preferred it in the way that there was a main plot and the drama was just a side plot. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching every single episode.

Season 4:

Here I am in college, and for the first time, I told Starco to wait. I love the ship but I needed to get good grades this quarter. So when time came for the final season to come out, I decided to wait. I decided for the first time in a long time to get serious with studies. Starco didn’t take away my time for studying at all, I just decided to hold it off until time came where I could enjoy season 4 to the fullest, by myself just like when I first started watching this show. No fanfictions, no tumblr, no news, just me and the episodes.

I achieved the highest grades I’ve gotten in a long time with a 3.8 GPA this quarter. After that, I was ready to watch season 4.

At first, I paced myself. Two episodes a day. So I could fully enjoy them. Eventually, around episode 14 came around and I gave in to my love of the show and spent the whole day watching the rest of season 4.

Watching the show, seeing all the previous characters come back, and realizing how different the show was from the first episode made me realize, the adventure is coming to a close. I knew it was coming and I knew that there probably wasn’t any chance of season 5 happening because the story was wrapping up so nicely. I just hoped. Hoped for the perfect ending.

Finally, 4 years of patiently waiting. 4 years of driving myself so that I could see Starco become a thing. 4 years. And I finally see it. Not only are they simply smiling at each other, they even kissed; a real kiss unlike the one at the photo booth. They are both single, both are ready, both like each other, and both kissed.

Now, as a mature, college sophomore, who has moved away from the cringe of their teen years, I’m sure you understand that I handled it like a mature, responsible- Who am I kidding, I screamed so loud I’m sure I’ll get noise complaints for my neighbors. I praised the world as I saw my ship become real.

Only, there was one more problem to settle.

I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was Marco going to be sent away? This would be the cruelest fate. The universe itself trying to rip your ship apart. I had to hold my breath. Then came the portal at the end of the final episode. I screamed at Star and Marco to run like their lives DEPENDED on it (mine did).

Then came a most beautiful ending. Hey. It made me want to cry. My ship was canon. That’s all I needed. There are infinite possibilities from what could’ve happened from that point on but to me, I couldn’t ask for better. I would want to see an epilogue of some sort but I’m fine with even this. The deed is done. Starco is canon. And my job is finished.

Goodbye:

Dear SVTFOE,

Thank you. I am obsessed with you because you portray something I believe in. Tom said it perfectly: “I need someone I can be best friends with.” My teacher once said that your spouse is your best friend. I believe everyone’s fateful other will be their best friend. I wanted to believe in something that didn’t seem too likely. I wanted to believe that anything is possible, and it did. Even if it wasn’t that unlikely, it happened.

You gave me the strength and energy I needed when I felt down. You gave me a reason to grow. You gave me a reason to grow up. Even though at times I didn’t like where you were going, I found that in the end, I enjoyed you through and through. I wouldn’t change a single thing, because I would not have done better. It is about time to say goodbye. One day I will return the favor. I don’t know how or who to, but watch me. I will definitely do it. I will treasure you forever, and once again, THANK YOU.

Sincerely, Starcoanonymous

#svtfoe #starco #star butterfly #marco diaz

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flying-elliska · 5 years ago

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S3 Rewatch - Episode 4 - Vendredi 19:45 “Double Date”

tl;dr : a clip about showing how bad the boys’ current partners fit them and to build the tension before the big one, ft Eliott character analysis (whenever not)

This clip is just hilarious in its own way, and it feels a lot like a specific type of French comedy of “friends” eating with each other who don’t really like each other and the drama surfaces below the hypocritical niceties. The music that opens the clip is exactly the type of music I heard at my parent’s friends houses during dinner parties that went on foreeeeeeever as a kid, so it immediately signals a very specific type of boredom to me. It’s supposed to be chill, a little flirty, warm but still classy, a ‘look at what grownups we are’ type of music you’d sooner picture at a 30-something dinner party - pretty sure Lucille picked the music... She seems like the type that really wants to be a grown up early (I mean part of that must be the actress is a lot older than the character but Lucille in general has that grounded, responsible but also a little...judgmental and stick in the mud sort of vibe, which is probably one of the reasons why her and Eliott’s relationship petered out, with him being much more of a dreamer. Lucas ends up being pretty responsible in the end, enough to support Eliott and be complementary, but he’s got enough of a wild side too. In the same way Chloé lacks the depth and sense of perception that Lucas clearly finds fascinating in Eliott (beyond the fact that she’s a girl lol) ) - she’s constantly missing the signs that Eliott picks up on. She’s talking about binge consuming media while Eliott makes his own ; they’re not even playing at the same category (not that there’s anything wrong with watching a series lmao i mean...but the narrative opposition is interesting.) They’re each other’s sweet spot ahhhhhh. And the purpose of this clip, before they take the plunge, is to highlight that by showing how ill suited their current partners are for them. he lighting too is very different to that in the piano scene even though it happens in the same place ; it makes their faces washed out instead of artfully sculpted, it looks badly lit and dreary instead of intimate. It’s such a sharp contrast to their moment of mutual discovery.

Chloe is being super overenthusiastic over the concept of binge-ing a series...which is like, so 2005, and Lucille is like ‘who has the time to do that’ which makes her sound like a 60-yr old...lol. Meanwhile Eliott and Lucas’ faces...priceless. They look SO DONE. Eliott looks at Lucille and then in Lucas’ direction like he is supremely bored by the discussion and a little bit like ‘this is your fault you got us into this’, Lucas is chewing while looking at Lucille like maybe he would like to be chewing on her face instead....Lucille tells Chloé she is super mature for her age...not really credible lmao. Her voice is soooo grating in this clip. (Lucille is not great either but sidenote i am SO GAY for her actress she’s really hearteyes emoji). Chloé wraps her arm around Lucas, he’s so not into it. I love the way the camera works here - it cuts Chloé out, she’s just a disembodied arm, just Lucas looking to Eliott then pans to Eliott who looks like he wants to murder Chloé. This happens so much in the beginning of the season - that particular way of framing that makes it look like they’re alone even in a crowd, they’re the only one each other sees.

Then Lucille brings up, one after the other, Eliott’s Bac failure and drinking, it’s like a one-two punch of awkwardness like she’s some sort of overbearing parent figure instead of his girlfriend. Yikes. The way he answers her is really not nice either, definitely agressive. I have a universal dislike of male characters telling female characters to shut up so this scene is ughhhhhhh but also...i get why he gets like that, it’s really a sore point and the way she brings it up is so mean spirited, like it’s trivial but also in a way that publically shames him. Making jokes about your intelligence to cover your academic failure ? Oh yeah I’ve been there. They sound like an old couple that has had the same fight over and over again and are definitely on the way to getting a divorce. The frustration and awkwardness in this clip serves its function perfectly, that of providing a sharp contrast to the relief of what will happen later, sharpens the tension and has them make a clear choice between the past - their gfs - and the future, each other.

The girls disappear and the tone immediately shifts. Eliott apologizes because he doesn’t want Lucas to see the side of him that surfaces with Lucille ; he wants a fresh start. The situation is anything but ideal and yet it doesn’t take long for the flirty bedroom eyes and little smiles to reappear ; it’s like they can’t help themselves, no matter how angry or awkward they are. ..the way Eliott says ‘not like we had planned’ had me in stitches though - because they never really got to plan this, it was more like he planned it really hard in his own head and then Chloé intervened before Lucas had time to say yes. Eliott has this tendency to take as truth things that aren’t entirely because he wants them so badly to be real or, conversely, doesn’t assign them any meaning (it’s the same as when he wants Lucas to overlook him kissing Lucille in the paint scene) ; it’s one of his more complex flaws, linked to the OG character’s need to direct his own life and Eliott’s efforts to make his Polaris vision real and ...illuminate/orient the meaning of what happens through drawings and metaphors. Edit his life, keep the bits he likes and jettison those he doesn’t. It’s why he hides so much too. It’s a way to regain control too, a reaction to his MI wresting control away, the stigma making it difficult to control how he is seen as well. It can lead him to be kind of shitty to Lucas but as a character trait it’s so juicy and interesting and coherent. And wow, it’s kind of painfully relatable.

The way Eliott looks at Lucas there as he says ‘I wanted us to be alone together’ though, daaaaamn. He’s pretty much eating him up with his eyes. This is as straightforward as he’s ever been ; but this time Lucas can respond and his ‘me, too’ is pretty much the confirmation he wants Eliott too, which seem to give Eliott wings as he suggests they run away. Lucas is like ‘wtf’ but to judge by his little smile, he is so into it. And the rest is history !

Previous clip

#skam france #s3 rewatch #elu #eliott x lucas #eliott demaury

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wings-of-a-storm · 6 years ago

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Phew, I am half way through unraveling my thoughts on Lucas’ and Eliott’s big afternoon together. As the flirting gets more blatant, my posts get longer -- I don’t make the rules.

I’m saving your dashes with a cut though! :)

ELIOTT’S APARTMENT

So already one obvious question comes to mind: does Eliott live alone instead of with family? Because that room they were in screams bachelor pad. Plus there was no bed there, so no way is that tiny, cluttered room shared with anyone else as an actual living room. Not with Eliott’s drawings and belongings scattered everywhere. So if Eliott is living alone, I wonder how this will or won’t affect the setting of later plot.

BEER FOR TWO

Eliott saying he has some beer to lend Lucas and then coming out with a ‘suitcase’ of the stuff is pretty funny. I’m not sure if it is supposed to show us that Eliott likes to socialise a lot with friends, or that he might use it as a coping mechanism when his you-know-what gets overwhelming, or whether it is just to show us the difference in age/experience between them – that Eliott can afford loads of beer and is independent already to have such a cache of it stored up (he must surely live away from his parents!), or that he generally lives the life of a university student more than a highschooler (but I’m not French so what do I know?).

What I love though is that Elliot came into the room with two extra beers to visually lure Lucas into staying longer. He could have just asked Lucas if he wanted a beer and then gone off to get a bottle upon hearing his answer, but our sneaky Racoon wanted to make sure Lucas would really stay. How can you say no to someone already holding up beer (especially when they are already doing you a favour)? Plus having the item right in front of you is so hard to resist and so, I dunno, action-oriented (I’m sure there are studies on it). Smooth work there, Eliott. True lit student?

ELIOTT’S SPIRIT ANIMAL: THE RACOON

I love how open Eliott is with Lucas about his drawings; that he actually told Lucas that the racoon was meant to be a portrayal of himself. That is very personal information, right there.

BUT THE RACOON LOOKS SO SAD. DON’T DO THIS TO US, ELIOTT!

From the get-go, Eliott has been so open with Lucas and keeps offering bits of himself up even though Lucas doesn’t often reciprocate. Is this to make his secrets all the more painful? Because you get fooled into thinking Eliott is just this warm, open person who is upfront about everything? (Am I being too coy, Skam France? What I meant to ask was: is Eliott’s consistent openness a way to make the end of the episode that much more painful for Lucas? Because he was not expecting that sort of omission from Eliott? Ouch France. Very ouch.)

Anyway back to Eliott’s love of raccoons. How cute is it when Eliott got a little defensive when Lucas shortened ‘racoon’ to ‘rat’ and Eliott was like: IT IS A RACCOON! SHOW SOME RESPECT, BOY! Okay maybe it wasn’t so cute -- Lucas insulting the raccoon is like insulting Eliott and a representation he holds dear in his heart, and for a second, he seemed to take it to heart.

In Skam Italia, we had a deceptively brilliant spirit animal chosen for Niccolò and his state of mind (the giraffe whose heart fell in love before its head caught up), and now we have Eliott’s raccoon.

The most obvious connection Eliott has with racoons is from his own words: they wear a mask. Eliott points out this characteristic to Lucas in typical youthful exuberance, as if it is Zorro or something. But in reality, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt pretty sad hearing him say it despite his adorable smile – it feels like he is already masking (pun definitely intended) why he is drawn to the idea hiding your full identity.

It is pretty interesting how Eliott’s internal turmoil is already being foreshadowed, actually. In previous versions, we’ve seen the pictures his counterparts have drawn and stuck on their walls. We’ve tried to study them to figure out what our Evens were trying to creatively express about themselves as they drew them. But the drawings have never been overtly explained to us by their actual owner before! The mask reference is unmistakable and a real little gem of an insight into how Eliott views himself in the world.

Aside from feeling like he has to wear a mask, I wonder what other elements of the Racoon will come into the storyline later…

‘HOW WOULD YOU DRAW ME?’

Oh my god, Lucas. Just oh my god. No matter how many times I rewatch this clip, my jaw drops at how bold Lucas is. Like have you no shame, child?!

A) Asking Eliott how he would draw him is basically Lucas saying: LOOK AT ME. STUDY ME. TURN ALL YOUR ATTENTION ONTO ME. LET THERE BE A MOMENT IN THE WORLD WHERE ALL YOU DO IS THINK ABOUT ME.

B) I know we’ve all been joking about ‘Draw me like one of your French girls’ but it does feel that intimate. Drawing a portrait, whether it is a spirit animal or not, is an intimate affair. Not necessarily Jack Dawson’s naked ladies-of-the-night kind of intimate, but still exposing on some level. Lucas was basically all: I want to get intimate with you. Challenge accepted or not?

B) The context of their conversation was about spirit animals, about Eliott knowing himself so well, he can see his own characteristics in a specific animal. But how the hell is Eliott supposed to know Lucas well enough to nominate an animal or even have a basic concept of Lucas so early in their acquaintance? They have spoken twice. Lucas asking Eliott how he’d draw him assumes that he is important enough in Eliott’s sphere for Eliott to actually know him the way he’d know a close friend. And since Eliott doesn’t know him that way, it is almost like a challenge to get to know him that way.

C) It is such a huge assumption that Eliott would have the time to even verbally craft a drawing of Lucas. That, my friends, is a transaction. Lucas just robbed Eliott of a suitcase of beer and now he’s demanding something else from him? I know he didn’t ask for an actual drawing, but even just coming up with a theoretical one takes time and thought. The boldness, Lucas, the boldness.

It was all such shameless flirting. Can you imagine Isak or Martino being bold enough to be all: draw a picture of me, babe, and add me to your collection. It was like Lucas skipped testing the waters and just went straight for it.

But somewhere along the way, Lucas must have felt confident enough to go there. Was it because he had seen how open-minded Eliott was in Polaris? Or because he was picking up on their own vibe together? Whatever it was, he was comfortable enough around Eliott to truly flirt. Our baby gay is actually flirting with another boy! But it makes the betrayal at the end of their afternoon so painfullll. I am sensing a pattern here, Skam France: ouch!

And the flirting worked. Because Eliott saw what Lucas was doing and fought fire with fire: damn right he took the opportunity to study Lucas’ face, to openly gaze at him for as long as he wanted and really take him in. (And Lucas ‘bold gay’ Lallemant didn’t even drop his gaze!) I love how Eliott even tilts his head back and steps back for a proper look, like challenge accepted, Lucas Lallemant.

But, incredibly, the quality of his gaze seems to shift, as if we can actually see his artist mindset clicking into place while he appreciates the angles of Lucas’ features and enjoys them.

It felt like such an intimate moment.

Of course what happens next, my friends, is the moment when Eliott drops one of the biggest lies of his life: “I don’t know how I’d draw you.”

L.I.A.R. My mind legit screams that every time I see him take that swig of beer.

Seriously, did you notice Eliott’s foot trying to push the folder full of Lucas’ drawings under the couch? Okay I am joking but those sketches of him must surely exist somewhere. If just glimpsing Lucas on his first day of school inspired Eliott to take another look at Polaris (as seen by the dates on his instagram account), he surely would have doodled Lucas and some of the things he had seen him do with his friends. That sip of beer seemed so much like guilt and thinking fast to cover himself. He lowered his head and everything. Guilllllllty. (Either guilt because he had already drawn Lucas, or guilt because he just got a flash in his mind of the perfect sketch and it was too personal for sharing.)

What I love though is how serious Eliott suddenly sounded when he said: “I’ll have to think about it.” Like even though they had both been half-joking about the whole drawing thing, Eliott really does want to try drawing a portrait of Lucas in whatever form and he is so flustered about that desire when confronted with Lucas’ seemingly omniscient gaze.

And then Lucas does that eyebrow wiggle and Eliott goes from barely-holding-on flustered to send-help flustered. He not only broke the super charged eye contact with Lucas, but had to physically turn his head away to hide his face from him!

Not only that but he suddenly brings up smoking weed out of nowhere -- it had absolutely nothing to do with anything they had been talking about! I imagine it is because smoking weed is Eliott’s go-to method to calm down and he really needed to in that moment so it just came out of his mouth.

And, well, luckily for Eliott, Lucas is a snake that has no qualms about offering up his friends’ weed for further bonding time. ;)

As other people have already mentioned though, it is such a fascinating change that there is such mutual woo-ing going on; that Eliott is charming and Lucas sees it and raises it and ends up knocking Eliott out. It happened with the piano obviously, but this clip is where it really begins.

#Skam France #3x02 thoughts #elu #lucas lallemant #eliott demaury #skamfr thoughts #Clip 2 of 4 #Was this clip even real #I am still as shook as Eliott

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classicalsongbirdknits · 3 years ago

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Knitflixing suggestion for May: Shadow and Bone

I read the Shadow and Bone series (a long time ago), and by what I remember the show is fairly faithful to the books, with the notably addition of the characters from Six of Crows. Still, I found the blending of the two stories to be enjoyable, and they fit well together. If you're looking for an exact adaptation, melding the two stories together will probably irritate you, but I liked watching it nevertheless, and I still recommend it for knitflixing. I haven't actually read Six of Crows yet, but I'm considering it now (as soon as I make through the other books in my to-be-read pile. I think the latest Outlander book I started but haven't finished yet is feeling a bit abandoned recently).

I have to say, I appreciate this new trend of turning books into shows instead of into movies. I find the adaptations can be truer to the story, and the character development and events don't feel as rushed. I'm hoping the practice will continue so I no longer have to watch the movie of a book I liked only to discover my favourite scene has been cut due to time constraints. But that's beyond the point here.

The point is, I really enjoyed watching Shadow and Bone for knitflixing. I watched the whole season in pretty much one go. The storyline is enjoyable, as any reader of the books can attest, and the characters feel three dimensional. The world building is exceptional, and the clothing and scenery are even more amazing than what I pictured while reading the books. The plot moves at a pretty good clip. I rarely, if ever, felt bored. My only warning is you may need to stop knitting a couple times because what's happening on the screen is so absorbing, but I don't think that's really a bad thing (plus, it'll give your hands a break).

It looks like the plan is to do one book per season. I'm not sure what will happen with the added plots, but there are three books so if everything goes well, there should be three seasons. So far only one season is out, but season two is currently being filmed, so rest assured that there will be more. (And this way, you can rewatch before season 2 comes out, and then rewatch it again when season 2 actually comes out, and then repeat the process for season three. Everyone does that, right? No? Just me?)

You might like this show if: you like fantasy, magic, and well thought out world building; you enjoyed books like City of Brass or A Darker Shade of Magic; you prefer stories that hook you fast and move at a fast pace.

You might not like this show if: you're not a fan of most YA books and some of their tropes, including the "young and slightly shy woman has power beyond belief as well as the attention of two different but very hot men" trope (but if you do like that, then you're in the right place); you don't like fantasy, magic, or goats.

#knitflixing #classical songbird designs #knitflixing for canadians #shadow and bone #canadian netflix #knitting #knitters of tumblr

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prince-simon · 7 years ago

Note

”i’m sorry but no” from the prompt list thingy (also hello i love and miss u 💗💗💗)

Anriiiii 💕 I love you and I miss you 💕 I hope you like what I did with this prompt - I made it Evak, I guess you have nothing against that :D Even is very smiley so I thought this was perfect for you 💕 also my sister was rewatching Gossip Girl so this has some influence of that haha - and it got longer than expected, which actually isn’t that surprising because I just can’t write short stuff haha

“I’m sorry but no,” Sana shook her head, a hint of pity on her features before she looked back down on her notes.

Isak groaned, bringing his hands to his face. “Sanaaaaa,” He whined, inclined to get out of his seat just so he could stomp his feet petulantly. “Please, it’s your duty as my best bud.”

Sana sighed and put her pencil down to glare at Isak. If they didn’t know each other as long as they did, Isak would be fucking terrified by that look. “We’re not best buds,” Was all she said.

Isak leaned back, balancing his weight on the hind legs of his chair. “Sana Bakkoush, we are best buds. Don’t try to fight it, you won’t get rid of me. So please don’t let me go through the Annual Valtersen Easter Soiree on my own. I won’t survive it!” Isak ranted dramatically.

Sana rolled her eyes at his antics and clipped, “Oh look at that. You don’t survive, I get rid of you. I win.” And promptly laughed at Isak’s scandalised expression.

Gnawing on his bottom lip, Isak tried to think of another solution. Because if he knew one thing it was that Sana didn’t easily change her mind once she had decided on something. “Who’s gonna be my partner for that stupid dinner party then?” He groaned, his mind drawing a blank.

“I’ll come with you.”

That was definitely not Sana having suddenly decided to do Isak a favour after all. Isak’s gaze travelled up a long torso until his eyes reached smirking lips and then blue blue blue. Isak crashed forward, back on all four legs of his chair, his stomach swooping uncomfortably when he thought he’d crash to the ground and break his neck. “Hi?” He said rather breathlessly, blinking owlishly at the stranger.

Confidence in person, he stretched out his hand, waiting for Isak to take it. “Even. Nice to meet you.”

“Uh, okay,” Isak sent Sana a quick, confused glance but she just shrugged, just as stumped as him, “I’m Isak?”

Even shot him a blinding smile, rocking back and forth on his heels for a moment, the awkward silence stretching between them. “So you need a date for that… soiree you said?” He eventually prompted.

Isak furrowed his brow, trying to sort his thoughts before coming up with a reply. “I do, uh— but. I don’t know you? Why would you offer yourself?”

He shrugged. “I’m bored and you’re cute. So…” He spread his arms, “Here I am. What do you say?”

What Isak would like to say is that this is crazy and quite frankly, he felt like he was missing the joke. But instead, he just gaped at him and the ever (un)helpful Sana piped up, “It’s a deal.” Isak whipped his head around so fast to stare at her that something in his neck cracked.

“Great,” There was that smile again, so warm that Isak was melting, “Here…” He leaned down and grabbed a napkin, fishing a pen out of his pocket, “That’s my number, send me the details. I gotta run, but I’m looking forward to this!”

When he was gone, Isak’s mind was running a million miles an hour. “What the fuck just happened?”

Sana smirked. “I got you a date to your parents’ soiree.”

—

“This is bullshit,” Isak groaned, pulling on his untied bowtie, undoing it completely again, “I’ll just text him that the party was postponed or something.”

Sana shook her head vehemently and pushed his fingers away as she started tying his bowtie. “You’re not gonna do that. I’m not letting you complain to me anymore how you want a boy to like you when you have one right there.”

Isak threw his hands in the air in frustration. “We don’t know him! He could be a crazy stalker!”

“He’s fine,” She assured him, “I did a background check. Followed him on instagram and everything. He has not liked any of your pictures from four years ago — I mean, why would he, you’re lame.”

Isak pouted, “Excuse you, my meme game is on point.”

“And that’s why you’re lame,” Sana smirked smugly. “Also,” She added as an afterthought, “He liked some of my pictures.” She patted his shoulders when she was done with his bowtie and Isak immediately darted for his phone, opening his instagram app.

Isak asked as casually as possible, “What’s his username?” But Sana laughed at him anyway.

“even.bn,” She told him and Isak immediately went through his recent notifications to see if he found that name anywhere. But no such luck.

In that moment, there was a knock on the door and Sana went to get it, grabbing her jacket on the way. “Hi Even, bye Even. Isak,” She said, pushing past Even before either of them could say anything.

Isak couldn’t do much more than stare at Even in his smoking and perfect hair and even more perfect smile. He was fucking breathtaking.

“You’re stunning,” Even complimented, stepping farther into the room.

And Isak was reeling. He was stunning? When Even came in here looking like that? “T-thank you,” He croaked.

Even grinned like he had just won the jackpot, crinkly eyes and everything. “Ready to go?”

They took the tram to the Valtersen residence — a place Isak nowadays only saw for events like the one tonight — not quite caring about the funny looks their attire got them as they couldn’t really look away from each other.

The ride wasn’t that long but as they exited the tram, Isak already felt like he knew Even so much better. The initial shyness was gone so Isak didn’t hesitate to loop his arm around Even’s offered one.

As per usual, the house was lavishly decorated for the soiree and already bursting with people, stalking around in their posh dresses and smokings, putting on fake smiles and posing for the camera.

When Isak spotted his mother, he tugged Even in that direction despite Even’s insistence of getting drinks first. “Hi mamma,” Isak greeted her with a smile, leaning in to hug her. “Pappa,” His tone dropped a little bit as he looked at the man next to Marianne and the hug he gave him was only for show. Isak cleared his throat, turning to Even, “These are my parents, Marianne and Terje. Uh, and this is Even…”

Only then did he notice the pinched expressions on his parents’ faces and Even didn’t seem quite as comfortable anymore either. “Mr and Mrs Valtersen, nice to meet you,” Even said politely, stretching out his hand for them to shake but dropping it when it hung between them awkwardly.

Isak’s brow furrowed even more when his father simply cleared his throat and turned away from their small circle demonstratively. Marianne’s lips left a soft spoken, “Mr Bech Næsheim,” that echoed between them.

As the name registered, Isak’s wide eyes turned to Even. The awkwardness suddenly made sense. He had brought the offspring of his family’s company’s biggest opponent to their soiree. “Excuse us,” Isak rushed out, pulling Even away unceremoniously.

A large vase hid them from curious eyes as Isak glared at Even. “What are you trying to do?” He hissed, feeling humiliated and stupid.

“Okay, I can explain this,” Even stepped closer to him, grabbing Isak’s hands, there was a pleading look in his eyes, “You being a Valtersen has nothing to do with me being here.”

“Doesn’t it?” Isak challenged because when it came down to it, Isak didn’t know Even and he definitely didn’t want to get hurt.

“No!” Even exclaimed, crossing the last bit of space between them. “I saw you the first time you came to KB to study with your friend. Sana, right? I kept seeing you and you were the most beautiful person I have ever seen and I was trying to find ways to talk to you so when you talked about this soiree, I grabbed my chance. It only dawned on me who you were when I got back home. But I was interested in you before I knew you were a Valtersen.”

Isak hated how insecure he sounded when he whispered, “Promise?”

Even nudged his nose against Isak’s, smiling softly. “Promise. Once you’ll get to know me, you’ll realise that I won’t pass up on the chance of a good old star-crossed lovers story.”

Isak’s lips parted slightly, his breath hitching. It felt a little overwhelming how fast this was going but what Even made him feel, he had never felt before. “Like Romeo and Juliet without the dying part?” He mumbled distractedly, running his nose along Even’s, their lips hovering so close to each other’s.

“Tell me you’ve seen Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and I’ll tell you I’m already in love with you.”

Instead of replying to that peculiar request, Isak smushed their lips together, unable to stop smiling while they kissed. It was a little messy but oh so perfect.

Send me a pairing and a prompt

#i hope you like this anri <3333 #evenskindness #ask #answered #even x isak #skam drabble #evak drabble #isak valtersen #even bech næsheim #am i a writer yet

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lightsandlostbells · 7 years ago

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Skam France episode 8 reaction

everybody’s favorite gross-out scene, made even grosser

Clip 1 - Emma going for blood

I didn’t think that anything could live up to Woodkid’s “Run Boy Run”, which is one of my favorite songs even before it was on Skam, but surprisingly they managed to pick one of my other favorite songs, “Hard Times” by Seinabo Sey. I have both of these songs on a writing playlist titled “revenge.” And I actually like the sequence of her walking over there and yelling for him outside his door.

I do like Yann. I’ve been critical of him but I don’t actually loathe him as a character or anything. I’m just really have not rooting for him and Emma to get back together in the same way that I had feelings for Eva and Jonas, like that relationship had plenty of problems but part of me still wanted those wacky kids to work it out. I really don’t feel Emma and Yann are good together, like I think being with Emma makes Yann less tolerable for me and a lot of his beef with her feels less like disappointment or betrayal, but a growing problem with who she is as a person, who her friends are and what she’s interested in, and that’s a way bigger red flag. It’s a big surprise because I had a good feeling from them at the start.

Clip 2 - Daphne “back” with Ingrid

The girl squad dynamic is certainly one of this remake’s strengths and I enjoyed this conversation. Imane’s comments about Obama are a good point and an interesting perspective. Actually I think it fits with the message of Druck’s opening monologue pretty well.

I am here for Alex’s version of the Hunger Games.

Daphne is so deeply awkward. Even more awkward than Vilde, because Vilde managed to put on this cheerful smile and say some positive (wistful) things about the girl squad’s bus, and when Pepsi Max walked in she managed to keep it together a bit more and come up with “I’ll go get my jacket” which is not a terrible excuse in the moment, but Daphne got so flustered and like WHOOPS GOTTA BLAST.

Clip 3 - Boy fight

I like Yann so much more when he’s not with Emma. Like it feels like he shows his not-so-great qualities in this relationship, which is not actually her fault, but it makes me want them to be apart.

Even compared to Jonas, Jonas suggested that Eva contact Isak and when she’s like oh yeah, forgot, he just has a little confused look. But when Yann tells Emma to contact Lucas and she’s like, oh yeah, I didn’t have time, he questions it and pushes her to do it. Now I get it, he’s looking out for his friend in a hard time and “I forgot” (mistake) =/= “I didn’t have time” (excuse), but it’s just a subtle difference in their relationship dynamic.

Raptor Alex is even more a dick than P-Chris, man. Alex actually seems like he’s entertained by the situation while P-Chris seemed over it and well, awkwaaaaaaard.

This fight feels so forced, lol. Charles just stepping in and getting hailed as a hero … bruh, whatevs.

Literally my favorite thing William ever did on this show was slowly descend the stairs without any hurry or change in his expression and casually intervene in the fight. Charles seemed more on top of it.

Yann for fuck’s sake, Emma did not actually make Alex be a dick to you and she didn’t make you shove him. That’s your own fault. I get it, he’s still mad that she kissed Alex and this is just a reminder, but also, chill. Again: I really am not rooting for Emma and Yann to be together at all.

Eva seemed like she was trying to calm Jonas down and he stomped off, but with Emma apologizing and Yann glaring and walking off it straight up seems like Yann is blaming her for what just happened.

Clip 4 - Camille invites Emma

This scene doesn’t quite have that tone of “girls gotta support girls” but there is at least the message that girls should start paying attention to stuff other than boys who cause drama.

Yeah that food looks nasty, I wouldn’t touch it either, Camille.

Clip 5 - Girl squad love fest

I am all about that Eva/Noora in OG Skam but I think I kinda ship Emma/Ingrid here. And I’d be kinda down for a French Ingrid season, unlikely as that is. Loved her sitting with the squad.

Also good: Alex telling Manon how sexy she is in a random (made-up?) language. As well as hoping girls will “fight” over her at the party. Missed opportunity to see some of that in action!

Oh thank god they moved the Lucas confrontation to a bedroom. Can you imagine how awkward it would be in that open kitchen area within earshot of everybody?

I loved how Emma is like Lucas 😊😊 I have to tell you something! Making it seem pleasant.

Man, okay. I don’t want to rag on these actors, but my initial reaction to this scene was like “if Lucas’ big secret were that he has a bunch of bodies buried somewhere, I would believe it.”

I just don’t get much ambiguity, vulnerability, or subtlety from him? I know they can’t all be Tarjeis but he was so damn good in this scene, even better on a rewatch, when you knew what was really going down, you could feel all the conflicted emotions underneath. Lucas just feels super blank. I think some of it is his eyes? They don’t feel very expressive.

His body language and facial expressions are so weirrrrd and stiff. I know Isak/Lucas is supposed to be fake fake fake prior to S3 but this doesn’t feel like there’s anything below that surface, and I need something to go on to have some sort of attachment to him, especially when he’s done something very shitty and hurtful. Like the way he segues between these mood shifts/ personalities is robotic.

Even the way he asks Emma not to tell Yann is creepier! It’s less like he’s worried or vulnerable and more just like ominous, though some of that is the lighting. I don’t think it’s intentional, it’s just the acting, sorry. I can see that he’s trying? It’s just not coming across well.

Was some dude taking pictures of Daphne after she collapsed? How helpful.

The way all the girls carried Daphne together was lovely.

This scene had a lot to live up to and for the most part it did a good job. The girls were sweet and had some good reactions. Though I think some of the irony/humor was lost from the fact that the song choice was pretty damn serious. The contrast of Vilde vomiting to this angelic Christian song is a funny part of a serious scene, here Daphne vomiting here and the girls laughing did feel more out of place, tonally.

Also the vomit effects were so gross. Grooooosssssss.

Imane’s facial expressions after Daphne barfed in her lap were great, though.

How much do I love that shot of Imane curling up around Daphne? How muuuuuuch ❤️❤️

The ending overhead shot of all five girls was great.

Clip 6 - morning after

It’s really odd that this scene was placed at the end of the episode instead of leaving it on the girls in bed? Especially since it’s not a Friday clip. IDK what the logic or reasoning was except juggling time limits for each episode.

We didn’t get Eva’s iconic line about blackouts but there was a nice line from Imane about God having better things to do than erase drunk people’s memories. And Manon cuts more to the chase and is more directly comforting and huggy than Noora, who brought up Vilde’s pregnancy in an awkward, roundabout way and lightly tried to play it off as just a trip to the school doctor. Manon has more of a nurturing personality.

Yo, not to take away from this touching moment and all, but am I the only one who’s concerned about the proximity of those pastries to a stick that’s been peed on? My priorities.

General Comments:

I don’t know how I feel about some of these text messages where the girls recap whatever just happened in the last clip. It happened in the original sometimes but IDK, I prefer to read random conversations about silly stuff, or stuff we can’t get in the clips.

Emma being like “Charles was great” about the fight in the chat … girl … Daphne is still in the chat. And Daphne was massively hurt by that asshole like a week or two ago. Him stepping into a fight isn’t a call to glorify his ass.

I’ve been kinda ehhh on a lot of the social media, mostly from overkill, but my favorite IG post so far is Yann and Lucas reenacting the bike scene from ET to the theme music.

The music felt a bit downplayed in this episode and used most in scenes where it was relevant, so good job.

The girl squad group dynamic is definitely one of the strongest parts of the show.

#skamfr reactions

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