#Murray should get his own tag at this point...

[artsandstoriesandstuff]

Some asks for the Piper James series!

How old is Murray? For me he looks 30, but I can't really tell

Is T20 a pure evil soul who doesn't mind killing the SHC heroes if necessary, or does he care cause then who's gonna stop them from doing evil thingies and it wouldn't be fun?

I think Murray would be around 35 years old! Mostly because I can't tell if he's more "optimistic yet naive kid out of college" or "cheesy middle-aged man with not much to do in his life".

As for T20, he'd never admit it, but he does care about the heroes getting hurt. Especially Sandra.

Now, the Villain Elite, on the other hand...

[rouge-the-bat]

Please tell me more about Kurama (Shuichi Minamino) going to school with Yusuke and Kuwabara.

Personally I don't think he'd be close to either of them prior to Yusuke coming back to life, wherin he would call spirit world shenanigans. If we go with the idea that Hiei would follow Kurama around even prior to his arrest, I would not be shocked if local anime protag who hangs out on roof would find the little hellion once or twice.

Hiei would watch Yusuke beat up Kuwabara on a near daily bases, and when they meet he would give Yusuke a little "nice work, try explaining me to anyone and I will kill you" before blinking away. Or the classic Bill Murray of "no one will ever believe you". Kurama overhears Yusuke yelling to Keiko about some short black blur of a boy on the roof and local fox in disguise has to keep a straight face.

You know, if anything, Keiko and Kurama might know each other best out of all the group. They are both top ranking students, so they were probably teamed up for assignments or class activities.

Just some of my thoughts, love to hear more of yours.

HEHE YEAS U ACTUALLY ARE RIGHT ON THE MONEY OF SOME OF MY THOUGHTS ALREADY !!!

i already figured that Kurama wouldnt be close to Yusuke and Kuwabara prior to the actual events of normal canon, he avoids most people to keep a distance from them since hes a demon, aside from Maya who would tag along with him on her own accord (and he ends up making an exception for her since he was lonely prior to meeting Hiei, i also have a little Maya-related thought ill get into later).

and i think hed expressly avoid Kuwabara, not out of dislike for him or anything and hed be rather polite about it, but Kurama would hear the rumors of Kuwabaras spiritual awareness and figured itd be safer to stay away from him so he wouldnt detect his clearly non-human energy. and despite Kurama often being distant to many people, Kuwabara still picks up on how Shuichi seems to avoid him particularly- which ofc Yusuke has to make a joke that Shuichi probably thinks Kuwabara is a freak and that he should stay away, and says his assumption is right [cue another fight between Kuwabara and Yusuke lol].

AND YES YES Hiei absolutely follows Kurama around all the time, and i defintely think at some point when Yusuke goes up to the roof during lunch he ends up finding Kurama sitting with Hiei and sharing his lunch (packed by shiori of course) with him. and catches Kurama being Very Flirty with Hiei, who gets VERY blushy hehe. finally it clicks to Yusuke why Shuichi never goes out with any of the many girls that fawn over him lol (though he also wonders how the hell the kid that doesnt go to their school even got up onto the roof in the first place). i didnt think about Yusuke encountering Hiei up there alone at some point but thatd also be really fun, i love the thought of Hiei not giving a shit and just disappearing into thin air in front of him, which would put Kurama in a bit of a weird spot when Yusuke later sees them together and clearly are close. i definitely have to think more about the weird meetings Hiei can have with Yusuke and Kuwabara more lol. so many possible interactions to make them think "wow Shuichis secret punk boyfriend is weird as fuck" HGJDHFJ

I do think Hiei would find Yusuke and Kuwabaras antics amusing, gives something more interesting going on to witness at the school besides people just going about their usual business (though of course he also enjoys just watching Kurama because hes very pretty :'3 though he doesnt understand why he keeps to playing the part of perfect school boy). at some point Yusuke probably sees Hiei watching Shuichi from a tree or something and thinks hes his stalker until he finds them hanging out together jfksjjfd

and yeah i figured Kurama probably interacts with Keiko the most before the main story! since shes part of the student council, i think theyd sometimes work together for that even though Kurama isnt actually a part of it, since many clubs and stuff tend to ask him for various favors since hes the top student and great at problem solving of all kinds n stuff. and through that Kurama would sometimes interact a bit with Yusuke because hed totally come in to bother Keiko while shes working lmao. and sometimes during their spats one of them- usually Keiko- will try dragging Kurama into it to share his opinion, to which hed usually give a polite smile and laugh and say its not his place- if he DOES tell his stance though Yusuke knows Shuichi is probably gonna give advice that mostly sides with Keiko jgksjfjd

i also think that when Yusuke comes back from the dead, itd get Kuramas attention and hed try prodding Keiko about it, since he figured itd be more natural to find out the situation from her rather than Yusuke directly since he never really had much connection with him. because it wouldnt be likely for spirit world to just bring someone back to life for no reason and it makes him wonder whats up. but when Keiko doesnt really know the specifics of what happened (and fumbles and shyly avoids the part where she essentially kissed Yusuke back to life), Kurama doesnt really pry too much into it in the end though because he doesnt find it worth his time or energy since hes basically depressed around this time because of his mothers illness and is already planning to be sacrificing his life for her.

he quickly puts the pieces together during the artifacts of darkness arc when Yusuke calls himself a spirit detective, but Kurama ultimately doesnt act too much different here compared to the events of canon, because what would it matter if a classmate knows hes a demon criminal if (according to his plan) hes going to be dead soon? i also think that before this while Shiori has been sick, Yusuke and Kuwabara noticed that Shuichi still seems to be acting as he usually does, and still smiles, but his eyes look completely drained of life like a zombie.

i also see that before Kurama had a total personality overhaul because of his mother protecting him, when he was little he was quite a little shit. he wasnt overtly confrontational like Yusuke and Kuwabara were, but he always clearly held himself as above everyone in school- students and teachers alike. he never shared and wasnt so polite about avoiding people back then, especially since he found being surrounded by a bunch of little kids quite annoying, on top of being agitated back then about being stuck in such a tiny weak child body. Kurama also totally pulled pranks all the time, both to appease his boredom and to get revenge on anyone that pissed him off- particularly any teachers that tried to talk down to him. they tended to be of the ~supernatural~ variety, like mushrooms suddenly filling up a teachers desk files like theyd been growing there for a month, so he was never found out.

and Yusuke never personally clashed with Kurama, but he did have a bit of a grudge against him because whenever it seemed like Shuichi was gonna get in trouble for something, he got off the hook because of him being such a model student, while Yusuke never got off easy. He was especially salty about it because he always swore Shuichi was a thief but no one believed him. sure he never actually saw him steal anything, but the day the snack he brought went missing, Shuichi later had that same snack during lunch, and Yusuke swore it wasnt a coincidence (and it wasnt lmao, but he couldnt prove it). anytime some kids brought their gameboys or whatnot and their games went missing, Yusuke always suspected Shuichi (and he was right :p ). Yusuke knew if he confronted Shuichi hed probably get into way worse trouble for punching the lights out of the model student than he does for his roughhousing with Kuwabara. he also figured it probably wouldnt be satisfying to hit Shuichi anyways, because he thought he looked fragile like a doll and would crumple like tinfoil (oh how wrong he was about that though LOL).

then over one summer the situation of Shiori catching Kurama so he doesnt fall on broken glass happens, and he begins to change to how he is now. so when hes back at school, he suddenly seems TOTALLY different and is actually polite to others. he may still be rather quiet and reserved, but he smiles more, and actually helps people out often. he doesnt distance himself quite as much as he used to. the number of pranks and missing items dont stop completely, but they diminish quite a bit. his change was so drastic and sudden that Yusuke and Kuwabara would joke that Shuichi got abducted by aliens, had his brain wiped, and replaced with an alien trying to fit in and gain the humans trust LOL. i think Keiko would also sometimes nag Yusuke about how he should make a change in himself and be nicer to others like Shuichi has, which would make Yusuke a bit irritable around Kurama even though it wasnt really him that was the source of his annoyance

also once they get into junior high, Yusuke and Kuwabara are happy to see the number of pranks around the school have skyrocketed again. because even though Kurama is fake nice to Iwamoto and Akashi, he HATES them because theyre such assholes, even if they tend to be nice to him because of him being the top student. and Yusuke doesnt even particularly care that he tends to be blamed for the pranks by those two teachers, because seeing them being pranked is VERY fun, and theyll pin anything on him and Kuwabara anyways so theres no point hating whatever genius is actually pranking them. im unsure though on if Yusuke has ever found Kurama before in the process of setting up a prank, and thus figures all of the crazy pranks he has no clue how someone could even pull off is from Shuichi, or if he and Kuwabara are totally clueless on whos doing them.

after the events of two shots, i think even though he never really interacted with her before, Kuwabara would notice that Maya suddenly stopped following Shuichi around all the time, and Kuwabara assumes (rather accurately, though of course clueless of the supernatural happenings) that Maya asked him out and was turned down, and feels sympathy for her. Yusuke is like, 'oh what, youre gonna swoop in and be her knight in shining armor?' Kuwabars ofc denies that, saying shes very pretty and if she wanted to date he wouldnt turn her down, but he will not take advantage of her in her time of sorrow! so he tries being nice to her and they become sorta-friends (though Kuwabara is a bit freaked out from her interest in paranormal stuff lol). through this would also be a key moment where Yusuke and Kuwabars start noticing that theres something strange about Shuichi, as from Kurama using his flower of forgetfulness on her so she forgets her feelings for him, so too came a bit of alteration of her memories where she no longer has much memory about him in general, and thus doesnt recall spending much time with him. so when at some point Shuichi becomes a topic of conversation, its clear that she doesnt know him that well and is confused when people are surprised about that, and even more so when people insist that she used to hang around him a lot. her saying that thats not true and never happened puts the idea in Kuwabaras head that theres something Very weird about the situation.

also Yusuke totally does a "your mom" joke to Kurama at some point and is met with a COMPLETE DEATH GLARE and feels a weird threatening energy, while Kurama says with a very flat unemotive voice 'do not make those sorts of jokes about my mother.' Yusukes like 'jeez he looked like he was going to strangle me over a your mom joke' fkdbjgbdjf

THIS GOT REALLY LONG BUT. I JUST THINK THIS IDEA IS REALLY FUN N I WANNA DO SOMETHING WITH IT FKBDJ its fun to think about :'3

[veryace-ficrecs]

Steve and Robin Besties Fic Recs

stobin platonic besties supremacy ☆*: .｡.╰(*°▽°*)╯.｡.:*☆

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :) 

i'm feeling (like i never should) by fivecenturiesverse - Rated T

Eddie accidentally comes out to Robin and Steve without even thinking about it, he doesn't get the reaction he expected.

And apparently because he’s a fucking idiot he says, “I thought being gay was going to be the worst part of my life and then bam fucking aliens.”

Robin sits up so fast she almost bangs her head on Steve’s chin, who is still straddling her lap and like, what wouldn’t Eddie give to be Robin right now and shit now his brain is catching up with his mouth and why did he say that and why won’t Robin and Steve stop staring at him like that, oh shit. “You’re gay too?” says Robin and that sort of wipes Eddie’s brain clean and white and static.

Robin and Steve's Epic Platonic Soulmate Mixtape by findafight - Rated T

In late January, 1984, Robin saw Steve Harrington stand stock still in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at a house with twinkling Christmas lights. She thought it was weird, but wasn’t going to comment and was about to walk around him when she realized his hands were shaking and repeatedly clenching and unclenching. And, because Robin could never leave well enough alone, she placed a hand on his shoulder.

Or, Robin and Steve meet post season 1 and begin their friendship early, despite Robin's confusion at how exactly it happened.

(You Gotta) Cut Loose by sandypeaches - Rated G

Steve & Robin make use of their free Friday evening, watch "Footloose" & figure some stuff out. 

The Love Meister by agentM40 - Rated G

Murray has some confrontations about the nature of Steve and Robin's relationship. 

We've got each other by Kurahie - No Rating

Steve helping Robin through her first major post-Starcourt breakdown. They love each other in literally the most platonic way. 

With a Capital P by FallingUpTheStairz - Rated G

Steve's love language is physical touch and Robin learns to work with that.

Matching Bruises by jadeluvr - Rated G

Eddie gave one last tug, and pushed them both through the gate. A rush of air filled his lungs, but Robin was still gasping for air, leaving red marks from her nails on her throat as her face was turning purple. There was faint dots of red staining the bottom of her shirt, and Eddie felt immediate concern, but Robin was holding out her hand again, pointing at Steve who was struggling on the ground of the Upside Down.

OR: in a world where soulmates feel each other’s pain, robin and steve are platonic soulmates.

alone together by Sarcastic_Metaphor - Rated M

There’s only one person in Hawkins that Steve feels safe enough going to when his family is giving him hell. There’s only one person in the world that makes Robin feel safe enough to be herself. Neither of them are quite alright, but they’d do absolutely anything for each other.

(A character study fic on Steve and Robin’s friendship + my own HC’s on their codependency bc neither of these bitches should be even remotely emotionally sound. There’s also a good helping of solo Steve angst for dessert)

smoking guns (hot to the touch) by fivecenturiesverse - Rated T

Sure, they've saved the world, but the best part of that really is that it doesn't end there and in a town where everyone thinks he murdered a girl, he's at least got Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley. It's really not his fault he accidentally starts living at Steve's house, he was invited, after all. There's a mystery too, about Barbara Holland and Steve's pool.

“Your boner is digging into me,” says Robin, and Steve snorts a tired sort of laugh.

“I don’t have a —”

“You do, I can feel it. Gross.”

“Okay, but it’s only a little one,” he says in a small voice which sounds like he’s impersonating someone.

“Are you ever going to let that go? I peed a little bit when the Russians got the torture devices out, okay?” She sounds amused, though.

Eddie jolts. “Russian torture devices?”

Robin carries on like she didn’t hear him but Steve catches his eye and he’s grinning. “How do you even have a boner dude? You were definitely having a nightmare I know your twitching means a nightmare… Did you have a boner over Vecna?”

[panelshowsource]

sorry this is so long — i let my inbox back up a little but also some of these are so thoughtful and i hate not responding thoughtfully!

remember to block the tag 'long post' if you hate seeing long posts :')

first of all aww anon thank you so much and second of all you don't watch taskmaster? how can you stand following my blog if you don't? hahahahah especially during taskmaster season i feel so bad the blog ends up being like 70% tm even though if i could have it may way i'd never gif new content and just gif totally random old content like always hehehehehe but it's cute to me how many hog fans are in my inbox these days! i'll try and gif it more for you guys :)

and you should watch taskmaster!!! and come back and tell me what you think!! start with s1!!! it's on the masterpost linked in my bio!

idk anon you'd have to ask them that but generally they would consider themselves to be irish-american; i wasn't trying to make a statement about that when i said that i think new yorkers understand a person like ed, though i think it's far to say that even diasporic communities will retain (at least) a handful of characteristics and nuances from their homelands

yesssss we all love ed! i think a lot of us know him from mock the week and his bffship with dara (i have some of their travel buddy series on my non-panel show masterpost!), but of course he's also an accomplished standup!

actually, just last month in an exclusive with metro he said this:

It seems remarkable Ed hasn’t appeared yet in its 16 seasons. ‘They haven’t asked. If they had, I would,’ Ed said, with a dash of longing. ‘There’s really only one slot per series of someone answering my description,’ he mused. ‘We’re kind of the most overprescribed demographic in the industry. There’s no shortage of people who look and sound like me that are ahead of me in the queue for that slot.’ Even so, it would have been nice… Greg? Are you listening?

(ps. that article claiming 8 out of 10 cats is cancelled... 👀 don't get me wrong, i know it's been a couple years since it's been on, but afaik no cancellation was ever announced 👀)

i know a lot of people are very hung up on the fact david mitchell said he wouldn't do taskmaster — and i'm a sure there are a handful of others who either wouldn't or couldn't when they were asked (jack dee had a scheduling conflict back in the day, right? and alex still desperately wants him?) — but one thing that has been consistently reinforced for years, and especially since taskmaster moved to channel 4, is it is far and away the biggest, most in-demand opportunity amongst comedians and light entertainers (— on network television; of course, if you're standup, your own standup special on channel 4, netflix, whatever has gotta be number one, but i disgress). taskmaster is huge: everyone talks about how comedians play 100-seat rooms, go on taskmaster, and then BOOM sell out massive tours. the show can really change your life, so there is hardly a comedian who wouldn't go on if given the chance — especially someone like ed, who i had mentioned a couple months ago being of the jenny eclair variety (an opportunist; professional jealousy ain't no stranger). i know he's waiting for that damn phone to ring!

and i think he makes an incredible point that not many series are gunning for more than one straight white middle-aged man (though it's happened before, of course). actually, i was just thinking about how that role — the white, middle-aged, experienced senior comedian — is chosen; in almost every single case, it's a very famous comedian who will draw viewers and reinforce legitimacy (frank skinner, al murray, hugh dennis, bob mortimer, rhod gilbert, david baddiel, richard herring, lee mack, alan davies, dara, you get the point) or it's a comedian who alex, whether he's friends with them or not, really really likes (tim key, dave gorman, mark watson, tim vine, mike wozniak, i know they're well-known but even ardal o'hanlon and julian clary who alex personally loves). does ed fall into either of those categories? super famous ratings draw or one of alex's friends/comedy heroes? frankly...i'm not sure...and i think that may be what's keeping him mid-way down the list...

still, very cute of the journalist from this article to be gunning so hard for him to be on the show! i have to admit, i know it might seem like i'm biased because i like him, but i really really think he would be really really good on the show. imo — and it's just imo, people will disagree — the most important aspect of the best series of taskmaster is the banter. it's people who speak up, who fight, who tease, who want to win, who want laughs, who play off the audience, who make quick friends, who talk to greg, who talk to alex. ed TALKS. ed wants screen time. ed wants to fuck around. ed wants to win. so i think he would really take advantage of the format and i'd love to see it!

you are allowed to say i told you so! it was amazing! thanks for reading my bullshit, i tried to take it really seriously so i could just link to it any time someone asks me if i've seen it hahahah who was your fave contestant?

i could write a really long response to this because it's something i have — or could find lmfao — a lot to say about, but knowing this post is already gonna be long (hahah i hate myself) lemme try to boil my brain down

1) i covered my personal opinion of what makes the strongest series of taskmaster in my (very long) recent taskmaster nz s2 post; 2) recency bias — it's in the name! people are biased because it's recent [shrug]; 3) A LOT of people have not seen every series of taskmaster (gasp! i know...) so they won't have the full taskmaster uk canon in mind when they're making such claims; 4) there is a strong divergence between the comedy nerds who watch taskmaster for comedy and the light entertainment viewers who watch taskmaster for general pleasantness, and you gotta consider who you're talking to when you're listening to someone's opinion; 5) i think there's a very long convo you could have about the reticence of a huge faction of taskmaster fans to criticise the show/tasks/contestants/alex — which is why a lot of people like it and its community, because it's often an echo chamber of positivity — but maybe we won't have that convo now haha

^ me being concise!! wow never thought we'd see that day

yes totally anon! i'll make massive gifsets of all of them when the season ends, if that works? :)

wow interesting question! i know a few people who watch taskmaster on and off, and i definitely know people like you who enjoy the odd clip (why is it always bob mortimer on wilty lmfaooo), but otherwise i wouldn't say i spend too much time convincing people to watch stuff. wilty and taskmaster are pretty accessible, but a lot of panel shows are about the uk news, uk current events, have uk c-list celeb guests, etc, and i don't think people would be interested. plus, i have you guys!!! (i don't really have internet friends besides posting here and interacting with you guys :'))

not that long ago, i was at a dinner party and someone said, "have you seen that show taskmaster?" and ... do you know what it's like for me!!! ... i had to take a deep breath and say inside my head 'sarah be cool' and i finally went, "i have! fun show haha" and not start TWITCHING ... they were telling the people around us a little bit about it and getting some of the details wrong and i just sat there nodding like :) and didn't correct them bc being a know-it-all isn't cool and i didn't want to risk it 💀

it's too bad we don't have more of a light entertainment culture here, especially a comedian-driven one :(

(so random but speaking of light entertainment has anyone else been seeing michael barrymore all over tiktok? those kids say the funniest things clips are my wholeeeee fyp)

hahaha yesss we do know suzi around here!! though she's not been on many panel shows recently-ish so i probably haven't posted her in a while. if your fave taskmaster contestants are wide-eyed, smiley people who radiate optimism and go-get-em attitudes then suzi would definitely be the one!

did i mention rick edwards or is this just your sly way of bringing up a sexy man? ...i see you anon��� he has the face of someone who should have been working on that big wall in games of thrones you know the one where jon tory scum snow ended up? that's a specific compliment but just trust me it's complimentary

i'm sorry about your heartbreak :( it's like me with whites, we've all got that one show :(

yesss it so is! <3

is it weird to imagine joe and mike woz in the same room or is that just me...

—

WATCH LINKS MASTERPOST / FAQ / TAGS / ASK

[520shikikan]

In Search Of

Pair: Lee x Polaris (Alethea)

Category: Yume/self-ship, Alternate Universe

Current Chapter: Prelude

Content Warning: Mentions of abandonment

Language: English

The young boy's reveries came to a halt when his old friends brought over a new friend. Perhaps, he was struck by some force that he could see potential in his new companion.

Golden wheat fields, the shining sun, the cool breeze. Those were the things that Morian had in his mind lately. Morian had only known suffering from the start–His parents had abandoned him and his brother Murray, and he was forced to bear all the responsibilities of a parent despite being only nine years of age. Murray suffered from an illness that would take a long time of work should he want it to be cured.

Should Morian blame his parents for leaving their own children at a point of their childhood, or should Morian blame himself for being an incompetent older brother for Murray? He would never know the answer. But luckily since he and Murray met the two girls in the neighborhood, he had suffered less.

He remembered the first day he would meet them–one who had black hair and red streaks on her bangs, while the other had lustrous white hair. Lucia and Liv were their names, and they were Morian and Murray's first few friends. The two girls would visit his home often and help him with taking care of his younger brother, or arrange a playdate outside in the golden fields that surrounded the small town they lived in. They would play tag, read books, or have a picnic. The bitter memories of his childhood would dissipate the moment he was spending time with them.

Morian was lost in his reveries. The book about intermediate-level engineering was left untouched by him for what felt like an eternity, and his door was left open as if he had forgotten the main reason why he would walk inside his room. His gaze was locked to the view outside of the window, yet he saw nothing about the cities. The young boy was too deep in his thoughts, that the town view in front of him looked like it was the actual golden fields he visited with Lucia, Liv, and Murray.

On the other hand, Murray seemed to take notice of his brother's behavior. Even when he was lost in his reveries, Murray could sense that his brother was in high spirits. Never in his life he would see Morian be so deep in his thoughts, that he somehow had a dreamy, yet small smile plastered on his face. Murray was a bit determined to wake him up from his dreams, and he knew just the thing–He walked inside his room with a glass of water he was looking forward to drinking, and decided that Morian should drink it instead by putting it on his table.

The subtle knock on his table caused by the glass snapped Morian out of his reveries. Turning his head to the sound's direction, Morian saw Murray, and he was greeted with a serene smile. "Murray." He called, smiling back at him and ruffled his hair. "You know that your brother can pour his own water. You wanted to drink that, no?"

In response, Murray scratched his head and chuckled. His brother caught him, and should he make his brother drink his water, he would be met with a scold. "I know, Brother. I was only setting my glass down," Murray said, trying his best not to sound like he was lying. But then again, Morian was observant. He could sense that Murray was lying, but decided to leave his brother be.

"Good boy."

Morian ruffled Murray's hair again, and decided he should focus on learning again. He needed to have lots of knowledge so he could work outside of town and get money, after all. Morian swore that he was going into his focus mode, until the sound of knocking on his house's door snapped him out of his focus--again.

"Coming!" Morian called out as he got out of his chair and rushed to the main area of his house. Opening the door, he saw the faces of Lucia and Liv smiling at him, alongside an unfamiliar face behind the both of them. A girl with shoulder-length black hair, accompanied with a pair of spectacles on her face. By the looks of it, she was a little timid, but that intrigued Morian in some manner a young child could not explain.

And of course, Lucia and Liv took notice. This behavior was rarely ever present in Morian, after all.

The two girls at the front looked at each other for a moment with a meaningful gaze. They had a smile on their faces, with Lucia's own smile to show a hint of mischief while Liv had a calmer, more comforting one. Lucia and Liv kept their gaze at each other for a while before turning to the other girl and spoke in unison. "Hey, why don't you introduce yourself to Morian there?"

Morian could've sworn that he saw the girl flinch for a second. He was right–she was a bit timid. But when she finally spoke, the feeling of curiosity and intrigue seemed to grow stronger inside his chest.

"Hello, I'm Alethea... I was dragged here by Lucia and Liv--kinda. I hope you don't mind me joining in on your play date with them."

Morian certainly did not mind. Letting the three girls inside, Morian instructed them to take a seat and enjoy themselves as he brought them some snacks and water. But even as he was serving all his friends, his head was still locked on Alethea's earlier introduction.

Perhaps, his friendship circle was going to be a bit larger and more interesting with the addition of Alethea to his life.

[wheels-of-despair]

⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆ ⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆

TO SPREAD SOME HOLIDAY CHEER (AND AN EXCUSE TO ESCAPE YOUR IN-LAWS, OVERBEARING EXTENDED RELATIVES, SIBLINGS, and/or PARENTS)

LETS PLAY A LITTLE GAME

𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞, 𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠

thank you @corroded-hellfire for the tag!

𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭...

𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: Worth It was my very first series. It was so fun and easy to write, I thought, hey, I should keep doing this. And then Tom happened. 😂

𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜: I'm still amazed that The Nerd King Cops a Feel took off like like it did.

𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜: lol remember that one time I spite-wrote a Karen Wheeler fic 'cause give Mama Wheeler a fuckin' break, you dickbags.

𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: I wrote a trio of short but super sexy fics mocking things I can't stand reading. This one's my favorite.

𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: Enough - my Tom Grant series - took me almost six months.

𝚏𝚒𝚌 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚜𝚔: I tried emoji prompts one night and this one about eggplant that I wrote for @rehfan stands out. 😂

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: I don't have a whole lot of Koner, 'cause I don't really know what else to do with him.

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: My Bestest Trash Panda

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: Steve. Keery does nothing for me.

𝚂𝟻 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜?: That it's gonna piss me off and I'm gonna fling it into the abyss like I did The Piggyback and Icarus.

𝚔𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚠𝚑𝚢/ 𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝?: At this point, I don't even really care. He's mine now. I'll probably ignore S5 anyway.

𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚢 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚠𝚑𝚢/𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝?: Steve's too domestic, he's already a mom of 6. Nancy needs to go wild for a while before she settles down. If she ends up coming back to him, fine. But let her live a little first.

𝚊 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎: Same as CF. I hardly notice my own follower count, why would I keep up with you dorks?

𝚊 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚛𝚋𝚘 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎: @eddiemunsonsmum showed me just how vulnerable Eddie can be, and now He Is Baby. (And also Koala.)

𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖: During the Summer of ST4, I think I read every fic on AO3. Then I ran out and came here.

𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖: i <3 my wife @eddiemunsonsmum

𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚎: *shrug*

𝚐𝚘𝚊𝚕𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚟𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛: Started? I posted my first fic on Christmas Eve 2022. Now I have over 150k words published on AO3. And that's not everything.

𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛: The Koner Fic came in two parts of 4k and 5k. Try to keep the rest at about 2k.

𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚎: IDK, I just want a happy ending.

𝚜𝚖𝚞𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚕𝚞𝚏𝚏?: Depends on my mood.

f̾u̾c̾k̾ ̾m̾a̾r̾r̾y̾ ̾k̾i̾l̾l̾

𝚝𝚎𝚍, 𝚖𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚢 𝚘𝚛 𝚖𝚛. 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚔𝚎?: ORRRR I could get Murray and Mr. Clarke to help me kill Ted so I can marry and fuck Mrs. Wheeler.

𝚓𝚘𝚢𝚌𝚎, 𝚔𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚗, 𝚘𝚛 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚊? (𝚍𝚞𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚗’𝚜 𝚖𝚘𝚖): Fuck Karen, marry Joyce, bring Claudia a pan of brownies because she sweet and I'm not killing her and you can't make me.

𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛, 𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚞𝚗𝚜𝚘𝚗, 𝚍𝚛. 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚛? Fuck Wayne, Marry Hopper, feed Papa to demogorgons.

𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚢𝚕𝚎, 𝚓𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗, or 𝚔𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚑? Fuck Jonathan, marry Argyle, kill Keith.

𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚎, 𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚛 𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚢𝚕𝚎? Fuck Argyle, marry Eddie, kill Steve.

𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚋𝚊𝚝, 𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗, 𝚟𝚎𝚌𝚗𝚊? Ugh. Fuck a demogorgon, marry Vecna (and make his life a living hell), kill the demobats.

tagging: @eddiemunsonsmum, @oneforthemunny, @pollenallergie, @rehfan, @jo-harrington, @spookyscarydemonbabe

[rallamajoop]

Obsessed with you Dracula beauty and the beast au! Who are your top 5 favorite dracula characters?

Thank you very much, kind anon (and many apologies for all the months I've kept you waiting for a real answer). We still have stuff planned for that AU, but Em has been hella busy lately running conventions and recovering from covid and all that, and so things end up on the backburner longer than they really should.

Now, if you're asking me for my favourite characters in any version of Dracula, the top spot can only go to Peter Cushing's Van Helsing(s) from the Hammer Dracula films (a quick glance at my Peter Cushing tag will make this pretty hard to deny). But if we're talking Stoker's original Dracula novel, then VH is not even going to make the top 5.

So, without further ado:

1. Mina Murray/Harker Dracula is an ensemble novel, and Mina is neither the first nor the most vocal of our narrators, but there are ways in which it feels more like her story than any other single character's ‒ and I love Mina. Aggressively sensible and practical even in the face of horror, but still human enough to take the reader through a full roller coaster of emotional whammies, Mina is the kind of heroine you just don't get in gothic novels of the era ‒ or even most of the following century, sad to say. Even if the other characters' little Mina-appreciation-society thing gets a bit OTT towards the end of the book, it's not like they're wrong to appreciate her ‒ and I can only dream there might someday be a single adaptation of Dracula that really does her justice.

That said, there is a damn good Mina in the bizarre-by-excellent 2002 silent-film-ballet adaptation, Pages from a Virgin's Diary, played by CindyMarie Small. But my favourite 'Mina' from any adaptation would have to be Kate Nelligan from Universal's (WOEFULLY under-appreciated) 1979 Dracula, which is ironic for a number of reasons, not least of which that this is one of those adaptation which have swapped the names and spend the film calling her 'Lucy'. Getting back to the list, though, it probably won't surprise you to find that the two other characters who love Mina best take out spots 2 and 3.

2. Jonathan Harker Jonathan's the kind of character who could only have come out of the Victorian era, yet there's so much about his arc that feels subversive even today (and it's been so great to see tumblr take to him).

It's so easy to dismiss poor Jonathan as a coward, a weakling, a fool (plenty have) ‒ but then, people still just aren't comfortable seeing a male character so disempowered and traumatised by a predator like Dracula. It's all very well to do that sort of thing to Mina and Lucy, but to a man? Let alone a man who survives the experience, is "forgiven" by his pre-existing love-interest, recovers through the support and validation of friends and professionals, and goes on to get a happy ending. Nor does Jonathan get nearly enough credit for the way he evolves into a grim, knife-wielding badass towards the end of the novel, the first to throw himself into the fray with his old tormentor ‒ even the one to slice open Dracula's throat in the final moments of the book. He even manages to use his boring solicitor's-clerk skills to help bring Dracula down!

Now, I'm fully aware my opinion on Jonathan has been biased by seeing so many others express these same ideas (from Cleolinda's old posts to FFA's distinctive JONATHAN HARKER WOULD NEVER-anon, whose points I found so convincing I wound up kind of writing fic about it). But I don't just love Jonathan in spite of his detractors ‒ I love him because he's a heck of an endearing woobie-survivor all in his own right. Also, he and Mina are adorable, and goddamn do they earn that happy ending.

The only adaptation I've seen to come close to Getting Jonathan Harker Right would be Michael Pink's Dracula ballet (NOT to be confused with Pages from a Virgin's Diary, based on a completely different Dracula ballet ‒ seriously, there are so many), and even that refuses to give me any really good Jonathan-reference shots. So I'll just use this one again, which does at least tie into why so many mainstream audiences might find Jonathan's story (ahem) uncomfortable.

3. Lucy Westenra ‒ and she is so close behind Jonathan I could really just declare a tie. Here's the thing ‒ there's a 'Lucy' in every Victoran Gothic novel I've read* (because if the monster doesn't victimise some truly pure, sweet, innocent young soul, how will we know how monstrous he is?) She's always someone's love interest, and she usually dies tragically. It's the kind of role you could pretty much fill with a demure lamp ‒ so it says a lot that of all those Lucies, this is one one who feels like a real character to me.

Lucy may be sweet and fragile and sheltered, but she still gets to do things. She expresses herself as eloquently as any other narrator, she turns down two proposals because she knows her own heart too well to lead anyone else on ‒ and even in the wake of her weeks of illness and own mother's death, she has the presence of mind to take charge, calm the servants, and write down a record of events she knows she might not live to tell. In a book with three proposals, two engagements, and one wedding, I will still argue that easily the best-developed relationship is the one between Lucy and Mina ‒ some of the most memorable chapters of Dracula are just the two of them, exchanging correspondence and spending time together. In other words, I can buy Lucy as a person, not just an ideal ‒ and that only makes her death all the more tragic.

It's one thing to tell me how lovable a character is supposed to be ‒ it's another to actually make me love them, and Stoker actually pulls that off.

It seems to take a ballet to really get Lucy right, so have another pic from Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Michael Pink's Lucy is also great, as is Krzysztof Pastor's ‒ did I mention there are SO MANY?). And let's throw in that great Disney-Lucy concept from Joseph Szekeres again, while we're at it.

4. Quincey Morris Quincey's an odd one: a character who was obviously supposed to be much more important in Stoker's early concepts, but whose role in the finished book is mostly limited to bringing the tally of Lucy's suitors up to a round 3. But whenever he's actually on page, he's just such a breath of fresh air! In a novel packed with long-winded, very-British characters (and Van Helsing, who's only worse), Quincey will reliably cut to the heart of the matter in a handful of words. In a world where Jonathan takes a week to figure out he's dealing with a vampire, Van Helsing won't say a word without being allotted time to prepare the equivalent of a full powerpoint presentation, and Seward never even comes up with a theory as to where all Lucy's blood is even going, Quincey shows up in the morning and has figured out that this sure does look like a vampire problem before lunch. And while everyone else is busy having an extremely-long-winded strategy meeting, Quincey's the only one to notice a suspiciously-large bat hanging out over the window and go for his sidearm. Arthur really couldn't have had a better, er 'friend' to 'comfort' him after Lucy's death (if you know what I mean). Quincey's great.

I can't even really complain that Quincey's so ignored in most Dracula-adaptations ‒ it's a long book, and you've got to cut something. But he does at least appear in Michael Pink's ballet, so have a pick of him and Arthur having a threesome er, dancing with Lucy.

5. Dracula. Look, you can't do a top-X-Dracula-characters and not find space for Dracula himself. What do you think this book is about? For a figure who's been adapted, reinvented, and flanderised to the point of absurdity over the last century, there is something rather charming about going all the way to back in the Stoker's novel, and discovering that even the original Dracula was simultaneously utterly terrifying, and kind of ridiculous. He brings living babies home in sacks to feed his wives! (He meets Jonathan on the road in what has to be a fake beard.) He arrives in Britain aboard a ghost ship in the midst of a storm! (He prepares for the journey by amassing a teaboo-level 'research library', and tries to blend in by wearing a straw-boater hat.) He delivers an extended, gloating speech about the futility of his enemies' crusade against him, when he's already claimed both their women! (Then he turns tail and flees before they can catch up with him.) I will never know if Stoker meant all this stuff to be as funny as it is to me, but I love it all regardless. On some level, even the OG Count Dracula was as human as any of us.

Obviously, I had to include Christopher Lee's Dracula here, but I am also inordinately fond of Johnny Chang's Dracula from Pages from a Virgin's Diary,

* The others would be Elizabeth from Frankenstein, Flora from Varney the Vampire, and Sybil from Dorian Grey, if you want to know.

So, in conclusion... well, there's a lot to love about Stoker's characters and his novel that you won't find in any adaptation ‒ but some of the ballet versions come pretty close. What can I say, apparently some gothic novels just call for OTT musical adaptation.

...and on that note, I really should poke Em a bit about how that next Harker-and-the-Beast bit is coming along. *g*

[dawn-of-tomorrow]

shoutout to @punishing-gray-raven-ocs for this ask game!! (didin't expect to be tagged with one so soon lolol but i'm overjoyed~~ ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡❤️❤️)

1) What made you even think of trying Punishing Gray Raven? What made you stick with it?

Funny story actually-- I've long heard about PGR, way back when it was first released even, but I just didn't give it a chance back then mainly because it was in CN and I couldn't understand shit (rather ironic given how I am now lmao).

As for why I decided fairly recently, a couple of months give or take, to give PGR a shot? It's mainly due to the fact that I heard that the Global version would be out very soon, so I thought why not dive into what I've missed so far... not knowing that I'd become THIS obsessed with the game, aha~.

The most obvious thing that made me stick to this game are the interesting cast of characters, the "fun" story, the amazing yet simple game mechanics, and etc. etc.

2) What problems, if any, do you have with PGR?

Honestly speaking, the thing that most VEXES me at the moment about PGR, specifically PGR Global, is the wonky translations. It feels like a group of half-assed fan translators and one official translator who's not doing a good enough job with reigning everyone in instead of feeling like a group of professional translators who know what they're doing. Hell, I've seen better translations from some of my twitter mutuals!

3) Who is your favorite Construct, and why?

Lee. There's no question about it, Lee is my most favorite Construct at the moment (and forever perhaps ohoho~). As for why, god, hold that mic for a bit, I'm gonna go on a fucking rant. Ehem.

First of all, let's start with the most basic of things, like his appearances; As Palefire, he looks like this suave, very aloof, super serious, unapproachable, and "gets shit done efficiently" type of person, and while that description certainly isn't wrong, it's also hiding more layers of Lee's overall personality; as Entropy, he certainly looks and feels bit more casual than before, along with feeling somewhat more, even if a tiny bit, more honest with his feelings and easier to approach than before.

Despite being a serious, no-nonsense, grumpy guy, he's prone to occasionally quip and snark at anyone at their own expense especially if they get on his nerves (see his interactions with Kamui, not even the Commandant is spared from this!). He's also not as cold and distant as he may come across, given that, early on, he quite literally jumps in front of Liv to take a hit that was meant for her with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, he's almost always the first person to make comments on the Commandant's state as well as express his undiluted feelings (though not without hiding it on occasion behind anger/annoyance, thus making it a case of "anger born from worry").

You can also easily tell if you pay close enough attention to his dialogue and actions that he's not good with expressing his true feelings even to the people he cares about (thankfully Murray, Skk, Lucia, Liv, Kamui, etc. can usually pick up on what he really wants to say), is the type to often be misunderstood due to him being the kind of person who believes in "actions speak louder than words", that he's used to taking care of others instead of prioritizing himself even to his own detriment; while making it clear that he prefers to think and act in a logical and practical manner, he's not exempt to having emotions/feelings, as such, he can be pretty empathetic towards other people even if he doesn't look like it (he's even the first one in the Gray Raven squad to point out WHY EXACTLY the people they come across in Echo Aria refuse to leave their homes even with high risk of the Red Tide washing everything away, and fully understanding as well as getting it).

Alrighty I'm gonna cut that segment short now before this becomes too long for anyone to read through, ehe~!

4) What made you think of designing PGR OCs, instead of making yourself into a self-insert?

.... Actually, truth be told, both of my Skks are, in some way, self-inserts~. It's just that they start out as one before eventually developing into their own characters with only hints/traces of their self-insert origin. Though my Construct OCs are definitely not self-inserts, that much I can certainly say so!

I made them mainly because I really enjoyed the official cast so much I wanted to make characters that would get to interact with them somehow, though I take great care in making sure they aren't TOO out of character with how they're canonically portrayed.

5) What's your thought process behind creating your OCs?

Honestly, it usually starts of something like this--

"lol wouldn't it be funny if I made this type of character? Oooh, what if they interacted with this character? Or this character? Or that character? Let's see, what's missing... Backstory and profile, check. Appearance, I'll sketch one in a bit. Hmmm... I know! *drowns the OC in mountains load of angst*"

6) What's your favorite chapter from the main story?

If I'm limited to talking only about the main chapters currently released on Global then it would have to be Fallen Star, mainly because it's Watanabe's time to shine~. (*´∀｀*)

However, if we were to look at the overall chapters, then, I would have to say Imprisoned Sight.

7) What do you think of the new Liv shown in the latest stream? Where do you think the story is going with her? What do you think happened to Gray Raven?

With Liv, I have a really bad and somber feeling about what Kuro Game has in store for her, given how she looks almost complete different than what she's looked so far, as well as the vibe her new look gives off.

Fuck, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to thanos snap her memories away as well like they did with Lucia, or worse, infect her with the Punishing and turn her into an actual enemy (for a while before we get her back).

As for Gray Raven, considering what happened at the end of Evernight Beat, wherein the Skk is in a fucking coma with a chunk of the Mother Structure lodged in their abdomen, while Lee and Lucia are in repairs along with Liv, and, if I recall correctly, the Merciful One managed to reach Babylonia and is now onboard the space station as well-- I have a feeling that the despairing Liv will be approached by her and be given a new frame.

8) Have you seen the animated shorts? What do you think of them?

If you're talking about the Panini anime then yes, I've watched them already! Still ripping my insides open from laughter everytime I watch them lol. Favorite episode has got to be the toilet episode, next to that would be the episode where Chrome takes Kamui to Karenina and Liv for training.

9) So do Constructs eat or not? (I'm really confused, especially since I saw Karenina sipping a drink in one of the shorts)

Oh they most certainly can! Fuck, it's even explicitly stated that Camu likes to eat and sample foods whenever he can (revealed in his secrets, as well as his affection stories).

As Camu explains, while they don't get nutrients from human food, they most certainly can still enjoy them and use them as a type of fuel.

10) Do you think Kamui and/or Camu will be a really pivotal plot device at some point, considering how the information on Kamui is so top secret?

Hmmmm.... unless the story at that point is revolving around Kurono Ops and how shady they're being, then personally speaking, the chances are slim.

11) Do you think, at any point, any of the Gray Ravens will die off?

Naaaaaah. They won't do that. Sure, they TECHNICALLY killed off Lucia, but she's still "alive" in a sense, so it both counts and doesn't count.

Besides, sometimes death isn't the worse thing you can inflict on someone/a character~.

12) Who is your least favorite Construct, and why?

I don't really hate/dislike any of the Constructs if I'm being honest. Though I hate how shitty of a unit Sophia is, and that it's kinda pitiful that she's become even more useless now that the new S-Liv is here; but I am in no way saying you should stop using her, keep using Sophia if you really like her! It's your choice after all, and I'm not about to contest you on that part, after all, everyone's enjoyment is subjective.

13) What part of PGR's lore really holds your attention?

The part of the lore that really holds my attention are the characters, and seeing how they react and act to the situations happening to and around them, especially concerning the Punishing and forces out of their control~.

[freakygirlie]

J2 Fanfic Rec List <3

In honour of all the j2 content we have recieved, and the amount of fanfiction I have read, I decided to make a rec-list nobody asked me for but EVERYONE has to read k? Capiche? Make sure to heed the warnings, and read the tags. These are some beautiful gems by very talented authors and I’ve only scratched the surface of it.

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The Courtship Of Jensen’s Co-Star{Masterpost} by qblackheart-  

Summary:- Somewhere in the time between a handshake and a hug, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki went from being reel-life brothers to real-life best friends, and complete strangers to cosmic soul mates, no rhyme or reason to it that either of them could ever see. Jared was everything Jensen was not: friendly, funny, and full of life; one in six-point-whatever billion the Earth’s population currently stood at. Life was awesome. Work was amazing. Everything was fine until Jared kissed Jensen. Everything was peachy until Jensen fell in love. With desperate times unexpectedly calling for desperate measures, Jensen called Chad Michael Murray for relationship advice – because being in love led to temporary insanity obviously – so it really didn't surprise him that he couldn’t seem to win when it came to wooing Jared. Still, Pisces must’ve been in a really good place in the night sky or something because suddenly, right smack dab in the middle of the miserable courtship of his co-star, Jensen discovered that maybe loving Jared was all he needed to do to win his heart. And luckily for Jensen, loving Jared was also the one thing he did best. ~112k~

The Play Nice Proviso{Masterpost} by qblackheart-

Summary:- When Jensen Ackles first met Jared Padalecki, it was most definitely not love at first sight. It wasn’t even like at first sight. In fact, Jensen hated him, and he had a few good reasons as to why. So what if his new co-star was oblivious to his one-sided warfare? Jensen could deal. Apart from when he couldn’t. So when it came down to picking between Padalecki and his peace of mind, the choice seemed clear. Except for the fact that The Network had his balls in a vice, leaving him stuck with Supernatural, stuck with his idiot co-star, and worst of all, stuck with a ‘Play Nice’ Proviso added to his contract. Well, he could play nice. He would play so nice that the world was going to think that he and Jared Padalecki were the bestest friends in the history of best friends. It was unfortunate then that no one had ever told Jensen what happened when an immovable object met an irresistible force; no one had ever thought to mention that there was a thin line between hate and love; and nothing, absolutely nothing, could have possibly prepared him for Playing Nice with Jared Padalecki. ~70k~

And The Rest, As They Say Is History by Raina_at-

Summary:- Struggling actor Jensen takes a job as big-shot movie star Jared Padalecki’s dogsitter. And the rest, as they say, is history. ~17k~

reinventing love ‘verse{Masterpost} by _mournthewicked-

Summary:- With high school graduation less than two weeks away, best friends Jared and Jensen find themselves scrambling to tie up a few loose ends before they’re forced into adulthood. Jared ropes Jensen into helping him get the alcohol for Sandy's graduation party, and what should be a simple night of partying ends up turning into a series of mishaps and misunderstandings that all come to head when Jensen finally tells Jared the secret he wasn't ever planning on spilling. If high school has to end, they're going out with a bang. (A J2 spin on the movie Superbad)  ~200k+~

My Heart Don’t Beat The Way It Used To by Raina_at- 

Summary:- Jared and Jensen have been best friends forever, and nothing’s going to ever change that, not even senior slump, or college anxieties, or even Jared getting an annoying cheerleader girlfriend. Or so Jensen thought. ~26k~

Can’t Point The Way To Your Heart by Belyste-

Summary:- AU in the vein of movies like Hitch - Jensen's an unofficial advice guru, and Jared's his latest project. Except while Jensen's supposed to be helping Jared end up with the woman of his dreams, he falls for him instead. ~33k~

Something Borrowed, Something Blue by Belyste-

Summary:- When Jared desperately needs a date for his brother's wedding, he hires an escort. Jensen's the perfect fake boyfriend, except pretty soon things get a little too real. Based on The Wedding Date. ~38k~

True Colors by muni-playground-

Summary:- Jared is a mentally challenged young man with a very special gift. Jensen is an executive with nothing in his life but work. They meet by accident and discover a connection that defies explanation. ~32k~

The Billionaire’s Reluctant Husband by house_of_lantis-

Summary:- Billionaire Jensen is a playboy and he needs a husband pronto if he wants to keep his company and his inheritance. After a chance meeting with quiet and hardworking Jared, Jensen decides that he’s found the perfect candidate. The arrogant Jensen thinks he’s got Jared in the bag, but when his new husband refuses to sleep with him and doesn’t really even seem to like him, Jensen convinces himself that he’s happy with his open marriage lifestyle. But Jensen becomes increasingly obsessed with his new husband and discovers the truth behind Jared’s dark past. ~98k~

Project Get Jared Banged{Masterpost} by soulmatecest-

Summary:- Jared's had the best stepbrother in the world in Jensen since the age of five — growing up together and more attached than usual brothers would —, only realizing that he’s in love with Jensen by the time he hits thirteen. After five more years of Jared's impossible crush, he knows his life turns and spins around his brother. Luckily for Jared, he and Jensen have always been closer than other siblings, making his feelings seem a little less hopeless. Or that is until Jensen announces he’s moving to Austin to live with his girlfriend next year, leaving Jared's perfectly built Jensen-centric world crashing to the ground. That’s when Chad and Sandy decide to convince Jared that moving on and letting go of his feelings are the only way to get through his lost love for Jensen. Yet their plan to get Jared out of his shell and over his stepbrother doesn't sit well with one person: Jensen himself, who realizes that the more Jared tries to pull away, the more he wants to get him back closer. ~120k~

Burn The Land and Boil The Sea by nyxocity-

Summary:- Eight years ago, Jared spent his entire summer on a tropical island off the coast of Mexico with Jensen. He fell head over heels for Jensen, but their lives were going separate directions at the end of the summer, and they never quite got together. Jensen left for Greenpeace and Jared went off to college—but he never truly got over Jensen. Now, in present day, Jared is a marine biologist working on a project in the gorgeous panhandle of Alaska. He’s amazed to discover the captain of the ship he’s chartered is none other than Jensen Ackles himself. Jared’s overjoyed, but Jensen is less than thrilled—he’s a changed man since that summer so long ago; withdrawn, passionless and solitary. Still something of the bond between them remains, and neither of them seem to be able to escape its pull completely. When Jared’s project leads them into danger and leaves them running and fighting for their lives, Jensen’s secrets begin to come out, drawing them back together—but can they survive long enough to figure out this thing between them? ~53k~

As This Sunset Turns to Morning{Masterpost} by _mournthewicked-

Summary:- Jensen spends his life hiding who he is from the family that would never accept him if they knew. When he’s uprooted in the middle of his senior year and suddenly becomes the new kid, his carefully placed mask begins to slip. Especially when he meets Jared – a loud, outspoken spectacle of a boy that fights for everything Jensen was taught to stand against. Jared has no problem going after what he wants, and now it’s just a matter of Jensen letting himself do the same. ~86k~

Leave My Heart Out of This by elless18- (link to the timestamps)

Summary:- AU. Jensen needs to get married in order to get his grandfather’s inheritance and open his own law firm. Jared would do anything to help his best friend. The plan is simple- pretend to date, get married, get the inheritance, get divorced. But things grow complicated when one of them starts falling for his fake boyfriend. Can they find their happily-ever-after from all the lies they’ve built around them? ~35k+~

Who Watches Over Me? by nyoxicity-

Summary:- Jensen Ackles is an ex-Navy SEAL turned civilian bodyguard with a mysterious past. Jared Padalecki is a flamboyant Hollywood star known for his action movies who's been receiving death threats. The case sounds like Jensen's idea of a nightmare, and he takes it on against his better judgment. Jared drags him to clubs and parties and award ceremonies without any care for how difficult he's making Jensen's job, and to his complete lack of surprise, they hate each other. But when hate changes into passion, it begins to reveal something deeper between them, and Jensen realizes he's in over his head. Can he still do his job and keep Jared safe? Or will he fall prey to his greatest fear and fail someone... again? ~96k~

The Billionaire’s Bidding by Raina_at-

Summary:- When idle, slacking billionaire’s son Jensen Ackles lends a helping hand to his old childhood friend, he gets a lot more than he’s bargained for. ~31k~

Hold My Whipped Cream by dimpleforyourthoughts-

Summary:- International Best Selling Author Jensen Ackles is all kinds of specific with the details of his life. He likes privacy, writing, and coffee; black, no sugar, hold the cream. He’s become a fixture at the local coffee shop, writing from his table every day for the past two years. His vices include routine, neatness, and structure. Jensen doesn’t do messes. Then there is Jared, recent post-grad basket case, who’s been coming in every day for caffeine he doesn’t need and bringing the increasing disaster in his life with him. Jared is a mess in all the ways Jensen is not and so Jensen offers to help Jared in the only way he knows how: by buying Jared a cup of coffee. ~37k~

Operation: Mistletoe by dimpleforyourthoughts-

Summary:- FBI Agent Jensen Ackles is a damn good agent, but his devil-may-care attitude, gut instinct, and sheer dumb luck have finally run out. With his job and reputation on the line, Jensen is assigned to a new partner: the overzealous and overachieving Agent Jared Padalecki. Their mission: Infiltrate a ring of drug dealers hiding out in Suburbia in the midst of the Holiday season. The only catch? They have to pretend to be head-over-heels in love with each other. ~39k~

Regaining Sense{Masterpost} by astri13-

Summary:- A vengeful crime-boss cost Jensen not only his eyesight but also a promising career with the FBI. When the man resurfaces two years later, Jensen is not thrilled to find himself taken into protective custody, even less so when the Agent in charge turns out to be Jensen's former partner and boyfriend, Jared Padalecki. Will the two men be able to overcome their differences and work together to not only stop the bad guy but also uncover the mole in their own ranks before it is too late? ~27k~

Say You’re Mine by Belyste-

Summary:- It takes his two best friends getting engaged to make Jared realize what’s missing in his own life, but once he figures it out, he’s a man on a mission: find true love or die trying. He’s not asking for much – just the perfect soul mate to spend blissful eternity with – so when a chance meeting drops Jensen into his life (and his lap), it seems like fate. But either Jensen missed that memo or fate seems to have other ideas, because nothing works out the way Jared planned. Based loosely on S1 of How I Met Your Mother, but you don't need to have seen that to know what's going on. ~56k~

Absence From Those We Love by _mournthewicked-

Summary:- Jensen Ackles led a great life. It just wasn’t the one he planned on. Now he’s newly single, stuck at a job he hates, and sharing an apartment with his lovably psychotic best friend. When he’s given the chance to go back and do it all over again, he leaps at it. Only he soon comes to realize that no matter what’s in front of him, it’s impossible to leave the past behind. Considering what he’d be giving up, he might not even want to. (17 Again - J2 Style.) ~41k~

Change The Fate’s Design by _mournthewicked-

Summary:-  All Jensen has ever wanted to do is see the ocean. Unfortunately, that's kind of hard to do when your dad won't let you leave your house in the forest because of your magical powers. So, Jensen spends most of his days with no one but his pet hedgehog to keep him company. At least, until a guy named Jared stumbles along and offers to help him realize his dream. (A J2 spin on Disney's Tangled.) ~50k~

A Spotlight On These Desolate Dreams{Masterpost} by _mournthewicked-

Summary:- In high school, Jared Padalecki had it all. He was surrounded with rich, famous, beautiful friends and partied with young Hollywood's elite. As if all of that wasn't exciting enough, he used the tricks he learned from his grandfather to become an amateur sleuth with his billionaire best friend, Jensen Ackles, playing the role of trusty sidekick. But when he got in over his head and lost everything he once held dear, he knew that it was time to move on. That was ten years ago. Now he lives the lonely life of a hardboiled private investigator on the streets of Manhattan, and his fabulous past is nothing but a distant memory. That is, until a tragedy forces him to return to California and the world he left behind. Between juggling rabid paparazzi, sarcastic detectives, and a spurned ex-best friend, it's a wonder that he can possibly find the time to solve a murder that has left the city of angels reeling. ~50k~

Break Me, Shake Me, Hate Me, Take Me Over by orphan_account- (sorry, I can’t access the author’s account but the story’s link still works!)

Summary:- When recklessness, alcohol and a bullet to his hip sees his police career end in disgrace, alpha Jensen Ackles resigns himself to a life spent in the dregs of a bottle, aimless and filled with regrets, watching as the bills and eviction notices pile up. That is, until he's offered a job and lodging with beta lawyer Samantha Smith, as a pseudo bouncer/admin worker. It's a far cry from his previous life, but it might just be what Jensen needs to drag himself from the dark place he's in. Not only that, but little does Jensen realise that taking on the position will bring him face to face with his biggest regret; the person he walked away from three years ago in what was the worst mistake of his life... ~70k~

Whiskey River, You’re All I Got by whisperedstory-

Summary:-  Jensen's life revolves around The Whiskey Sour, the bar he inherited from his grandfather nine years ago. But with too few customers and not nearly enough profit, things are taking a turn for the worse. And then Jared Padalecki walks into Jensen's life and changes everything. ~19k~

Out Of The Silence by annie46-

Summary:-  When hardened, but lonely cop, Jensen Ackles meets Jared Padalecki in his family’s diner, he doesn’t realise that his life is about to change drastically. Jared is a complete innocent, deaf, mute and unable to communicate, he needs a friend. Can Jensen be that man? ~the word count wasn’t mentioned but if i had to take a guess, I’d say something between 20k and 30k~

The Execution Of The Last Steal by soulmatecest-

Summary:- Anyone who meets Jared Padalecki would think he has the perfect life: a college degree, a normal life and an apparently perfect fiancé, Stephen Amell, the son of a Senator with a bright future. Except for one thing: it’s all based on a lie. Five years ago, he created a new identity for himself to cut all ties to his criminal past and ex-boyfriend Jensen Ackles, a world-renowned thief. But Jared can’t run forever. A threat from his past comes back looking for him and the only person who can help him is the man he thought he left behind forever, the only person Jared’s never been able to forget. Incredibly charming and just as cocky, Jensen Ackles is a thief that is too good at his job for his own good, who would do anything to protect Jared now that his life is in danger. Years have gone by, but he has never been able to forget Jared either. And perhaps now that they are forced to escape together, Jensen might be able to do what he’s best at: steal Jared’s heart one last time and win back the only person Jensen has ever loved. ~97k~

Bring Me To Life by alienat-

Summary:-  Jared’s a shy young man, whose life has never been easy. His father hates him, his mother drinks her sorrows away and his husband Paul treats him like he is nothing more than a beautiful toy. When his husband has to go away on a business trip to Europe for two months, he sends Jared away to a ranch in the middle of nowhere to keep him under control. There, Jared meets people who show him what love, friendship and loyalty mean for the first time in his life. Can he escape his life and finally find some love and happiness for himself? ~81k~

Gunpoint{Series} by felisblanco-

Summary:-  Jensen got his childhood stolen away from him when he was ten years old. Along with his memory, his voice and every emotion that wasn’t fear, hatred or anger. Question is, can Jared help him get any of it back? And more importantly, does Jensen really want him to?

Election Day by morganaDW(morgana07)-

Summary:- Jensen's running for President with the deck already stacked against him. He's come out as gay while serving in Congress, his Vice President is a colorful Misha & his family has disowned him over his choice of partners. But that's not the worst of it...On Election Day when he should be focused on winning Jared ends up shot after stepping in front of a killer's gun to save some school children. Election Day is important but to Jensen nothing is more important than Jared and he doesn't care who knows it or if he loses so long as he can be with him. It's Jensen who winds up surprised in the end. ~8k~

A Boy At An Open Door by poor_choices-

Summary:- Jensen Ackles' life is all sorted out, until a blast from the past shows up and makes him realize he's not as happy as he thought. ~10k~

Beautiful Disaster by nyoxicity-

Summary:-  Rock Band AU. Jensen’s the lead guitarist in the number one rock band in the country. Justin’s the lead singer, and they’ve been doing this together since middle-school, been together since just after high school. As on top of the world as they are, Jensen’s starting to become disillusioned with the lifestyle and his crumbling relationship with Justin. And then he meets a new roadie on the crew named Jared who’s got a voice like an angel and a heart to match, and everything starts to change. ~96k~

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And that’s the end of it!!! These are absolutely beautiful, gorgeous and epic fanfictions and will keep you buys for days! Hope y’all enjoy these, I’m off to read more sksksksksk. Let me know if a link doesn’t work, if you like any of these in my inbox and if y’all want a part 2! Peace and J2 5 ever!!!

[imasimpforstevengrant]

Why do we like this clown so much?

Change the "we" for "I" and you get an usual tag I use whenever I post my content in Tumblr. And it sounds funny at first but whenever you start diving into that phrase, the deeper it becomes. So, I finally have decided to share my thoughts about this strange but wholesome attraction to this deeply flawed character. It's not something I usually do since I don't know how to write down my feelings properly and also in english so please forgive any typos (I'm from Chile so don't be surprised lol).

So...Why do we like this clown so much?

Why was it that a character precisely designed to scare and to disgust the fuck out of us ended up unchaining a series of feelings that shouldn't have taken place in a beginning?

Let's take a look at the background: Joaquin Phoenix was cast as Arthur Fleck/Joker in 2018. The first image of him as the aforementioned character revealed a deeply disturbed man. We knew the plot. A man driven to insanity after a brutal history of abuse, creating concern in people if the upcoming film would inspire real life violence. Incel violence and mass shootings, more specifically.

(the image in question)

As 2019 arrives, the two trailers generated so much hype that media needed to fuel its concern about it. Since it wasn't your typical comic book film, media basically bombed our minds making us believe this film was going to be a total disaster, an excuse to cause harm to others among other nonsense, as if the film would justify everything Arthur would do in the film, eventually. As the release date is closer, the film receives thunderous applause and unanimous praise from critics. At this, fans rejoiced and expressed impatience to watch the film.

October 5th.

People left the theaters amazed, shocked and genuinely moved by the inhuman treatment Arthur received in the film. The fear media tried so desperately to infuse in us with all the incel bullshit and such turned out to awake one of the most positive, best feelings in humans:

E M P A T H Y

The word that so gloriously cleared away any dark thoughts or actions not only proves media was wrong but it turned out to ridicule it in way nobody will forget: Hundreds of people advocating for mental illness, calling out to the kindness that could change a person's bad day and questioning how politicians and rich people are indifferent to social problems proved how much as a society we have changed in comparison with the one shown in the film.

However, since we are on Tumblr, I'll get straight to the point and try to explain why the fuck does this clown has us dying out of love and compassion (and lust).

I. Background.

As nurturing as we women are for a biological matter, we see a man deprived of a good job, is on seven different medications, working like a slave to sustain his ill mother, putting aside his own health and well-being to look for her, struggling to make his dream of being a comedian despite everyone stepping on him, underpaid and treated like a freak for a disorder he did not ask to suffer, which makes it impossible to be indifferent to all the horrible ordeal that eventually will reach the limit of what he can tolerate without going insane. It is impossible to not say or think, at least, that someone (even if it's just one person) should stand for him just as it is impossible not to feel the need to throw ourselves at him to shield him from people who hurt him or simply offer him our shoulder whenever he has had a bad day, specially when he learns he was sexually assaulted by his step father.

This horrid behaviour terrifies newer generations because they get a taste of what being a social outcast was like more than thirty years ago in comparison with today, where there's more acceptance and treatment for mentally ill people like Arthur. We see in him someone who could have been saved with a proper education and emotional support instead of descending into madness as a criminal. Others simply saw themselves being treated like him at some point in their lives and couldn't help but put themselves in his shoes.

II. Personality.

TRUTH BE TOLD:

There's something called "attraction by proximity". It is the explanation to the eventual love you feel whenever someone doesn't catch your eye at first terms of physical attraction but his/her personality does attract you. This happens to be the base of this situation. His shyness, introverted nature, tenderness and innocent desire to make people laugh and put on a happy face awake some kind of tenderness we cannot resist. This combined with the gloomy background increases our understanding (but not justifying) of the bad decisions he'll eventually take during the course of the film. This traces a line of harsh, almost hurtful contrast of the violence he shows later on the film. Once again, it is not justified in any way but it is certainly understandable.

III. Appearance.

Arthur Fleck is unconventionally attractive.

This happens to be a plus for most women. He is out of the male beauty standards (no abs, not too muscly or particularly tall), which makes him even more unique. It is precisely the fact that he's not a model one of the reasons women love him. He could easily be your man next door or your colleague or the guy you always see but never dare to talk for fear to bother him Because it's about proximity. Arthur looks like your common neighbour. He's not meant to be your typical desirable male protagonist at all.

... And yet.

Jesus Christ, he's so fucking hot I can't even---

It's not about how beautiful his green eyes are, his long slender fingers, his hair or his smile only. It's the charm behind it.

Another "magnet point" is the way he dresses. I know he's impoverished and his wardrobe tend to be repetitive but it is so unpretentious, so simple that is hard to not fall for. The modesty of the shirts, ironed trousers reminds us of a mature man deeply withdrawn into himself, love starved and longing to be seen and loved by others, like a war veteran who still fights the most important war: with himself. Is someone who needs to be listened and understood.

AND OF COURSE WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT IT?

He's also brought back the old gentleman outfit, white shirts, red/yellow vest, red suit and elegant dancing moves and the retro style of the film boosts this attractiveness.

People keep comparing him with the previous interpretation of Joker (Leto's) whose costume appealed to young women with a tattooed, gangster, mumble rapper crazy-guy wannabe which didn't connect with the audiences (young people in general). This supposedly was to match or even have a sexy, tormented and desirable villain like Marvel's Loki. We all know how that story ended but it's the link for the next point below.

IV. Transformation

This is a particularly strong point considering how much we loved to watch the process of this weak, powerless, forgotten caterpillar into a beautiful and visible butterfly that will gracefully stir its wings for everyone to see its colours.

When Arthur transitions to the Joker, it's so cathartic to see taking revenge on those who wronged him (even when we're not supposed to root for him) like seeing his shyness fading away into a vivid confidence when dancing half naked in the bathroom, or witnessing him making way to make his name known to people in Murray Franklin's Show:

Adding to this newly gained confidence, there's another turn on: the way he walks.

At the beginning, his pace is hunched and limping, displaying his submission to violence, which makes the viewer more satisfied to see his broken yet beautiful soul turning the past pain of his existence into art: he lets music guide his moves as a way to tell the world he's a new man by cutting most of the sick, evil roots that harmed him, that he's invincible, that no one can stop him. Watching this cathartic display of euphoria was the most iconic scene in the film, following his speech at the TV and the inevitable meltdown that caused Murray's death.

Going to further appreciation, even his clown make up is beautiful. Why? Simple. The combination of colours, shapes and the intimidating glare just embellishes even more the character.

The dark blue triangles in his expressive eyes makes the light green colour to highlight, specially in dark backgrounds, giving the impression he's piercing your soul whenever he stares directly at the camera. Same can be said about the red smile and emerald green hair. They boost an already intimidating look.

The cold and warm colours paint a picture of a man full of intense emotions, mirroring it in a simple yet masterful artistic way.

Another interesting point is the way Joker dresses. Usually we had almost every single live adaption of this character in purple coat, hat, etc. But this particular version is not following any comic, which gives more freedom to creativity and once again, out of the standards of what we could have expected.

Red is a colour related to passion, action, love, strength, motivation and excitement. As for yellow, it indicates freshness, happiness and enlightenment and finally, green. Green is renewal, growth and regeneration. Colours that represent a new stage in his life, a mirthful chapter at last. We finally get to see our battered, always humiliated protagonist (or hero) descending into madness, but finally free from his repressed man who held his soul captive like a bird to fly away, to never come back. An insanity that despite being his downfall, turned out to be his ticket to freedom as he walks to the light in Arkham Asylum dancing at the end.

Ladies and gentlemen: behold the film nobody asked... But the film we fucking deserved.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

❤️💚💛

[quixotic-writer]

The Impractical Gattosby: Chapter 1

~Oh???? My god???? This was fucking INCREDIBLE!!!! Thank you for this spectacular submission! I’m truly blown away! Please please PLEASE post this on AO3 or Wattpad because I want you properly credited with this work and I want so many others to read this!

In Murr’s younger and more vulnerable years his father gave him some advice that he’s been turning over in his mind ever since.

“James, whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told him, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more but they’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and he understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence he is inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to Murr and also made him the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that at college, Murr was unjustly accused of being a ferret, because he was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently he has feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when Murr realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. He is still a little afraid of missing something if he forgot that, as his father snobbishly suggested, and Murr would snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of his tolerance, Murr came to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point he didn’t care what it’s founded on. When he came back from Staten Island last autumn he felt that he wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; he wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gattosby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from Murr’s reaction—Joe Gattosby who represented everything for which Murr has an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “comedic genius"—it was an extraordinary gift for confidence, a type of shamelessness such as Murr has never found in any other person and which it is not likely he should ever find again. No—Gattosby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gattosby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out his interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Murr’s family were prominent, well-to-do people in the northeast for three generations. The Murrays are something of a clan and they have a tradition that they’ve descended from Italian and Irish nobility, but the actual founder of his line was his grandfather’s brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale business that Murr’s father carries on today.

He never saw this great-uncle but he’s supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father’s office, sporting a shiny bald head. Murr graduated from Georgetown University in 1915, and after he decided to go to New York and learn the motion picture industry. Everybody he knew was in the motion picture industry so he supposed it could support one more single man. All his aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for him and finally said, “Why—ye-es” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance him for a year, using the funds that would have otherwise gone towards purchasing for him an automobile, and after various delays he went to New York, permanently, he thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and he had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that they take an apartment together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the place, a weather beaten cardboard apartment at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Los Angeles and he went out to the country alone. Murr had a dog, Penny, at least he had her for a few days until she ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made his bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than Murr, stopped him on the road.

“How do you get to Staten Island?” he asked helplessly.

Murr told him. And as he walked on he was lonely no longer. Murr was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on him the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—he had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. Murr bought a dozen volumes on motion pictures and cameras and they stood on his shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and Rudolph Valentino knew. And he had the high intention of reading many other books besides. He was rather literary in college—not only was he an English major, but one year Murr wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the “Georgetown News"—and now he was going to bring back all such things into his life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that he rented an apartment in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous boroughs, identical in contour and separated only by water, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Upper New York Bay.

Murr lived at Staten Island, the—well, the less fashionable of the two boroughs, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. His apartment was at the very tip of the island, only fifty yards from the Bay, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on his right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gattosby’s mansion. Or rather, as he didn’t know Mr. Joe Gattosby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. His own apartment was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so he had a view of the water, a partial view of his neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable Brooklyn glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening he took the Staten Island Ferry there to have dinner with the  Vulcano-Quinns. Sal Vulcano was his former brother-in-law from when Murr had married Sal’s sister for three days, and he’d known Brian “Q” Quinn in his Monsignor Farrell High School days.

Sal’s husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever worked for the Fire Department of New York—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family was enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d come to Brooklyn in a fashion that rather took one’s breath away: for instance he’d bought three cats named Benjamin, Brooklyn, and Chessie. It was hard to realize that a man in Murr’s own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came to New York, Murr doesn’t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Sal over the telephone, but Murr didn’t believe it—he had no sight into Sal’s heart but he felt that Q would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable fire to fight.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening he rode the Staten Island Ferry over to Brooklyn to see two old friends whom he scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than Murr had expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Brian Quinn was at the front porch.

He had changed since his Monsignor Farrell High years. Now he was a sturdy, dark-haired man of thirty with a rather magnificent beard and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant hazel eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his newsboy cap and silk American-flag print scarf could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were guys at high school who had hated his guts.

“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” They were in the same Improv Club, and while they were never intimate Murr always had the impression that Q approved of him and wanted him to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

They talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

“It belonged to Mrs. Calabash, my neighbor.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”

They walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two men were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their clothes were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. Murr must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Q shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two men ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. He was extended full length at his end of the divan, completely motionless and with his chin raised a little as if he were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If he saw me out of the corner of his eyes he gave no hint of it—indeed, Murr was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed him by coming in.

The other man, Sal, made an attempt to rise—he leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then he laughed, a loud boisterous laugh that soon had him falling to the floor, and he laughed too and came forward into the room.

“Oh my gawd, I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.”

He got up to�� only laugh and almost fell to the floor once again, as if he said something very witty, and held his hand for a moment, looking up into Murr’s face, promising that there was no one in the world he so much wanted to see. That was a way he had. Sal hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing man was Jost. (Murr has heard it said that Sal’s murmur was only to make people lean toward him; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Casey Jost’s lips fluttered, he nodded at Murr almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped his head back again—the object he was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given him something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to Murr’s lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from him.

Murr looked back at his former brother-in-law who began to ask him questions in his low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. His face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright green eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in his voice that men who had cared for him found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that he had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

[comradeclown]

OK, so in honour of my top posts now being me saying at various degrees of length that Arthur is gay (hashtag mylegacy, lmao…), I thought I should just go for it and actually dive in a bit a lot into why I read the character as gay. Now, usually all the justification I need to read a character as gay is “wouldn’t it be cool if this character I like/relate to/etc were gay like me?” and “it’s OK, officer, I do what I want”, and I’m well aware that 99% of the time it’s me using my own creativity to do a resistant reading + the film/book/whatever bumbling into subtext entirely by accident. And while I definitely don’t think there’s ever any more justification needed for any kind of LGBT reading, lol, as it comes to Arthur, obviously feel free to disagree with me, but I honestly think my read of him as a gay man is entirely textually supported, however unwitting and accidental that might have been on the part of the filmmakers (mind you, I don’t think it was Todd Phillips’ conscious intent, but I’m like… 85% sure Joaquin Phoenix knew exactly what he was doing).

(ETA that this is extremely long, so I’ve put it all under a cut.)

First of all, there’s of course… pretty much the entirety of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (a very, very small sample can be found in my he gay son tag and just generally in my arthur fleck tag, ha), from his mannerisms to his physicality to the way he interacts with other characters. I know part of it is a function of wanting to go back to the character’s campy roots (which are themselves… you know…), and I know I’m relying on stereotypes to some extent, but first of all, you can’t divorce either camp or gender non-conformity from LGBT history and existence, and secondly this is literally how characters have been coded as gay throughout the entire history of cinema. What I’m saying here is that you can’t have a character who acts like Arthur does, literal limp wrist and all, or says “come on, Muuuurrrayyy, do I look like the kind of girl clown who could start a movement” the way he does, to pick one of many, many examples, and not evoke the long history of cinematic wink emojis at People Like Me.

That in itself would… honestly be plenty, lol, but it could be chalked up to, idk, Joaquin Phoenix doing his own thing, were it not for the fact that it’s completely reinforced at every turn by the filmmaking language, even down to his wardrobe choices, and it’s worth noting at this point that the framing is always one of empathy — albeit with nuance — and affording the character subjectivity, rather than being “ew, look at this gross [homophobic slur]”. Like, the very first time we see Arthur, literally our first impression of the character, he’s at a mirror, putting on make-up and then ruining it by crying, and while the make-up is of course part of his job, this is just not how the inner crises of straight male characters are expressed in the language of cinema. Of note too is the fact that he’s clearly visually separated from his co-workers in all the scenes at Ha-Ha’s, indicating his alienation from them, and while this could be chalked up purely to his disabilities, I don’t buy that that’s the only reason, given that Gary gets shit due to his dwarfism, sure, but at the end of the day he’s clearly “one of the boys” in a way Arthur (can’t be) isn’t.

There are honestly so many examples of the framing working to separate Arthur from conventional masculinity and heterosexuality that I’m just going to pick some highlights, such as: obviously, the way he expresses himself emotionally through dancing (to the point that one of his coworkers explicitly ribs him about it, “if your dancing doesn’t do the trick”), which again is not something that straight male characters do in the language of cinema. The fact that all the media we see him consume is musicals, classic comedies and a talk show he’s obsessively fannish about and watches with his mother — and we know he’s a fan of the show as a whole, not just Murray, hence him saying “I love Dr Sally” (and the way he says it…). Or, speaking of his media habits, when he’s dancing with the gun while watching Shall We Dance, this could have so, so easily been about him ~regaining his lost masculinity~ through, say, fantasies of revenge or badassery, but instead it’s about him being acknowledged as a great dancer and punishing bad dancers, and it all ends in slapstick anyway.

Also, while I’m on this topic, I want to address the nature of Arthur’s dissociative fantasies about Sophie. Honestly, I don’t read them as indicative of genuine romantic/sexual interest at all, because the film frames them as identical to Arthur’s more deliberate daydreams about Murray. I mean, not that I’m adverse to gay readings of that if that’s what you want to do, lmao, but to me they’re both very clearly post-traumatic fantasies of having another person look after you for once, of having someone value and cherish you and take care of you emotionally (which obviously has massive appeal if you’ve been dealing with the after-effects of catastrophic trauma all your life but nobody has given a shit about your suffering and you’ve had to be the one to look after other people to boot). Note that after the get-together with Sophie — which is clearly patterned after all those old comedies and musicals Arthur watches — the Sophie fantasies are incredibly platonic and involve things like having another person be there for you in a crisis, telling you something supportive, getting you a hot drink (in contrast with the reality of the hospital scene, in which Arthur is alone and he’s the one trying to comfort someone else, i.e., holding Penny’s hand), essentially no different from fantasy!Murray hugging Arthur and knowing exactly what to say to make him feel good about himself. Also note that both fantasies involve being the object of someone else’s affection, Murray picks Arthur out of the audience and Sophie comes to him, it’s a pillow princess Cinderella fantasy, more than someone loving you it’s about being loved. (And, once more, this could easily have all been v. v. different, the Murray fantasy could have been the much more conventionally masculine fantasy of being a famous comedian and being invited on Murray’s show, the Sophie fantasies could have had an undeniable sexual component, etc.)

Anyway, to get back to the general point of cinematic framing, again if the movie didn’t want me to read Artie as gay, it shouldn’t have had a pivotal moment in his character arc be him sitting at his mother’s vanity table, doing a new make-up look which involves using her lipstick, and then having a Moment while he’s literally holding a quasi-glamour shot of her.

And the thing is, all these reams of stuff aren’t even the key piece of the puzzle for me, which is the way in which the film as a whole can be read as a gay narrative. I’ve posted before about how part of the emotional catharsis of the film is about Arthur finally shamelessly embracing and even revelling in all his freakishness and socially-despised traits, a big one of which being what is arguably his effeminacy and… honestly I don’t need to explain how that’s a classic gay (and more generally LGBT) narrative, do I? Like, there’s a reason why a pivotal scene is Arthur having his hair-dyeing underwear rave in a flat that’s suddenly incredibly bright and sunny for the first time, it’s about reclaiming the pain and ugliness of your life and your circumstances into a space of potential liberation, which is honestly why this movie is always going to be incredibly personally meaningful to me for so many reasons, but definitely meaningful to me as a gay woman. (Again, this could so, so easily have been about him becoming some stone-cold badass or whatever, but instead the film has him dye his hair, put on a super garish new outfit and new make-up look, dance shamelessly in the street, and be incredibly campy on national television.)

More generally, there’s other aspects of the narrative arc that tie into this general theme and which also serve to continually distance Arthur from the conventional cinematic narratives of heterosexual manhood: for instance, once he starts fully embracing the Joker persona — which is… just Arthur, the crucial difference is in how others perceive him and how he perceives himself — any attraction to women, feigned or real, goes completely out the window and the only genuinely affectionate interaction he has with another human being is with Gary (I know we all love to joke about his first kiss being with Dr Sally, but it’s obviously Comedy Jokes and he doesn’t even kiss her for real, his make-up is completely intact; Arthur’s only real kiss in the movie is when he kisses Gary). Or, when Arthur’s personal narrative finally intersects completely with the larger social narrative — which is itself about upheaval, reclamation and potential liberation — the big triumphant moment is him once again dancing, this time for a cheering crowd, and using blood like lipstick to redraw his smile.

Or even, to a lesser extent, his whole sub-plot with his mother, before I watched the film I was worried that this was going to be the usual narrative about the henpecked guy who finally puts the bitch in her place as part of becoming a Real Man, and it’s not at all, quite the opposite, Arthur is not henpecked and is clearly in charge of the household, he genuinely loves Penny — and is confident she loves him back — and enjoys doing at least some things with her (them watching the Murray Franklin Show together), and up until the reveal any issues he has with her are largely the product of having to look after an ill person with zero social support and while working a physically and emotionally demanding job and dealing with his own disabilities. When he kills her, it’s a deeply sad and self-destructive scene and it’s the result of his profound anguish and sense of betrayal and he frames it as the bitter, trauma-haunted dark half of self-actualisation and self-acceptance (“that’s the real me”, “I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life”, “now I realise… it’s a fucking comedy”).

Or, at a more meta-textual level, the way the film is unabashedly both a pulpy thriller and a melodrama, just shamelessly embracing all its emotions, its pain and catharsis, without a trace of irony. Like, yeah, part of this is the immense sincerity and compassion Joaquin Phoenix brings to his performance, but it really is the movie’s approach as a whole, and when there is humour — and I do think there’s quite a lot of humour in the movie — it’s not the distancing, let’s-not-feel-anything-too-deeply-bro humour of your typical MCU movie, it’s the camp sensibility of laughing with and at your own tragedy. (Myriad examples down to the use of certain songs in the soundtrack.)

On a final note, you guys know how much I don’t care about authorial intent, but I feel compelled to point out that in his director’s commentary, Todd Phillips says, while discussing Arthur’s journey into becoming Joker, that he reads the larger pop-cultural character of the Joker as someone who doesn’t want women, and like… Again, it’s not like I think that he was deliberately making a gay narrative in any way, it’s just that if you’re creating this journey of a man who eventually becomes a character who’s not interested in women in that sense, you’ve also just ended up stumbling into a gay narrative accidentally on purpose, lmao, what’s the real difference between “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s ~da Joker now, baby, he doesn’t want anything~” and “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s gay and he’s no longer deeply repressed and closeted”?

Anyway, like I said, feel free to disagree, he’s a fictional character, lol, but this is where I’m coming from, and the reason why if everyone involved in the movie decided to make a statement tomorrow about how much Arthur Fleck wants to bone women I’d just say “shit, idc, I’m afraid you made a gay movie about Arthur Fleck, a gay man, it’s a little too late to retcon this bitch now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. Also this is over 2,000 words long what the fuck I am so sorry

[verecunda]

The ancient history tag

Tagged by @pythionice. Thankee, dear! :) This has been sitting half-done in my drafts for ages - sorry! x__x

1. The Stone Age: One of the first books you ever remember reading.

The first one that springs to mind is this huge book of nursery rhymes. I can’t remember the exact title or who collected them, but each one had really fantastic illustrations. Every page was so bright and colourful. And now I think about it, Bobby Shaftoe looked suspiciously Nelson-like. ;)

2. Ancient Greece: Your favourite myth inspired book.

Right now, I’m gonna have to say Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff. She does such a masterful job of paring away the later medieval trappings of the Arthur legend and setting him in the immediately post-Roman period. Despite going for a gritty, realistic take, without Merlin and the fantasy elements, she imbues the story with so much raw folkloric symbolism that it still feels like great myth all by itself. (Admittedly, a lot of this symbolism is drawn from older theories ie. Margaret Murray, which are largely discredited today, but in terms of the cosmology of the fictional universe, it’s so expertly woven in and coherent, and resonates so wonderfully through the story, that it works.)

3. Roman Empire: A book that features an impressive Empire or a Kingdom.

I'm not long after finishing Cinder by Marissa Meyer (a rec from my sister @fandom-butterfly). It’s a sci-fi retelling of Cinderella, set in the futuristic Eastern Commonwealth, a conglomerate of former Asian nations ruled by an emperor based at New Beijing. There’s also a kingdom on the moon, ruled by mysterious beings (evolved humans? I’m not quite sure yet) who have the power to manipulate human minds.

I enjoyed it a lot. The characters are cute, there’s some good banter, the anime influence is very present (the author’s notes at the end indicate that Meyer is/was in the Sailor Moon fandom, and it shows!), and the fairytale elements are woven in nicely to the sci-fi setting. There’s a good amount of intrigue too, which I imagine is only going to get thicker, since this book is the first in a series.

There’s also a major subplot about a deadly global pandemic, which... yeah. 

4. The Middle Ages: A book that is an absolute bummer (positive or negative).

I had to wrack my brains a bit for an answer to this, because I don’t generally read books that look set to be a bummer. Tragic, yes. Devastating, absolutely, but I’m not a fan of books that just make you go :| What’s the point of that?

That said, coming back to Rosemary Sutcliff, I’m going to say The Shining Company. You know what the end is going to be, but even when it comes, I felt the book lacked Sutcliff’s usual poignancy - that theme of hope and healing despite great loss and pain, of the lantern being carried forward into the dark, that usually makes her books so emotional. I think, too, the fact that I never got hugely attached to any of the characters meant that the final twist wasn’t as devastating as it should have been. So it was pretty much just a bummer.

(As you can probably tell, this is my least favourite Sutcliff novel.)

5. Renaissance: A book that you have learned a lot from OR a book that made you think a lot.

This is a strangely hard one to answer! I read and mine through lots of history books for research purposes, so I’m always learning some new fact or anecdote or other. But books that have rocked me to the core and made me re-evaluate fundamental truths... um... nothing recent springs to mind. (Which probably tells you everything you need to know about the sort of literature I consume, but... ehhhh.)

So - a history book rec it is! The Victorian House, by Judith Flanders. It’s a lovely big doorstopper absolutely crammed full of fascinating stuff. She takes you round a typical Victorian terraced house room by room, and by doing so explores how Victorian daily life, upstairs and downstairs, was acted out in these rooms. It’s a brilliant book, eminently readable, full of fascinating information about how domestic life was theorised and compartmentalised in the Victorian mind. It’s great stuff.

6. The Enlightenment: A book about knowledge, science, discovery, or exploration.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I delved into this particular corner of the Age of Sail, but as I recall, Richard Hough’s biography of James Cook was really good for this, setting his life and voyages in the context of the scientific history - advances in geographical and astronomical knowledge, development of accurate measures of timekeeping, cartography, navigation, etc., etc. (which in turn spirals out into the history of trade- and empire-building, etc.) Just... yeah, there was a lot going on in that book.

7. The Industrial Revolution: A book featuring an invention or a concept that you would love to have in your own life.

Gosh, I don’t know! I hardly read any sci-fi, so I can’t think of any books featuring technology or anything that I really wish existed in my own life.

8. World War I. and II.: Your favourite historical fiction book featuring either of the world wars.

I love Carrie’s War - I reread it last year and it was just as great as I remembered! - but even though I don’t think it technically counts as historical fiction, the WW book that has had the most enduring effect on me is definitely All Quiet on the Western Front. There are so many scenes and passages that I remember so clearly (often more clearly than I’d like).

9. Present day: A book you think everybody should read in present day.

I really don’t know what this means. I don’t think there’s such a thing as one book that everybody should read. Apart from like, Shakespeare. Everyone should try Shakespeare at some point. On your own, out of school. 

Not sure how many people I’m meant to tag, but here goes: @themalhambird, @drusilla-951, @vicivefallen, @bryndeavour, @ciceros-ghost, @seaglassandeelgrass.

[queenmylovely]

Day One

Summary: Joe mazzello x fem!reader. We shot Live Aid day one. 

Word Count: 1.3k

Warnings: little bit of awkwardness, but just a meet-cute really

A/N: A little oneshot/meet-cute for a request I got! I was a dresser for a Midsummer at my uni last spring, so here’s me projecting lol. I tried to channel a shy person, lol jk it’s just how my awkward self would be. I hope you like what I wrote, and any feedback including likes, replies, and reblog are greatly appreciated!

Request: Happy Sunday! Can I please get something where joe meets a shy reader?

Perfect Performance, Masterlist

gif by @ohaladdins

🎥🎥🎥

It’s assumed that everyone in the entertainment industry must be outgoing and very extroverted. But, as a seamstress and assistant to a costume designer, you luckily didn’t have to be as you were generally very shy.

When your boss, Julian, was chosen as the costume designer for the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, you were super excited. Growing up, you had loved Queen and working in any sort of proximity to them would be a dream. Not to mention that most of your fashion sense revolved around the ‘70s and ‘80s in general. It was a perfect fit.

Julian started working on drafts and sketches as soon as he was hired and instructed you to shop for fabrics at antique stores and hole in the wall sewing shops. You gladly went about your tasks, buying things for the movie and maybe picking up some stuff for clothes you would make yourself, on your own dime of course.

Production started soon after, and you were making and tweaking racks and racks of original pieces, replicas, and antique finds. One day, you and the rest of the costume crew moved everything from Julian’s shop to the movie studio, and you knew that you were going to start fittings soon.

First up was the Live Aid scene, and you started dressing and doing fittings of extras. You had a short break while the 50 or so extras that your team had dressed were being blocked. Next, each of your team would be doing the first fitting for one of the actors that played the band members. You had been assigned to the one that was playing the bass player, an actor named Joe Mazzello.

While you were part of the industry, and certainly watched a lot of movies, you had never heard of any of the actors except for Rami Malek. And you only knew him from his parts in the Night at the Museum movies. You actually considered this a perk, since it meant you probably wouldn’t get starstruck while dressing them.

As you were re-tagging and hanging up some pieces that hadn’t been used, you heard footsteps walking into your work area. You turned around and saw a guy standing somewhat hesitantly at the edge, looking in. He was medium height with brownish-red hair, and green eyes with a slight glint in them.

“Oh, are you an extra? Am I early?” the guy asked you as he took in your appearance. You were wearing high-waisted light wash jean shorts with a red and white ringer shirt tucked into them. Looking down as he did, you smiled slightly to yourself. You supposed you did look like a lot of the extras you had dressed.

“No, um, I’m Y/N, your costume fitter. You’re right on time,” you reassured him, and he sighed in relief and came the rest of the way into your space.

“That’s good. I’m always worried I’m going to be late, so I end up being really early to things and sometimes that causes a problem,” he explained to you. You nodded back.

Walking over to the rack, you read the signs until you found the one that was labeled “Mazzello, J.” Pushing the other clothes aside, you grabbed his first outfit. It was a pink button down shirt with a wild pattern on it and light wash blue jeans. To be honest, it was something you definitely would pick out for yourself to wear. You handed them to him and pointed to the little changing area that had a curtain.

“You can change in there. Do you have an undershirt on?” you asked since he was wearing a sweater and you couldn’t tell.

“Yeah,” he replied, lifting the hem of his sweater slightly so you could see. It lifted his shirt with it and you caught a small glimpse of his stomach. You turned quickly to find your binder with your notes, trying to hide the blush that had instantly heated your cheeks.

“Okay, um, you should take that off too. John Deacon wasn’t wearing one during the show,” you told him as you checked your notes. You heard the scrape of the rings of the curtain on the rail and turned back around to wait. After a minute, he came back out. He was wearing the shirt buttoned to the top and tucked in tightly. You walked over to the shoe rack and grabbed the correct pair, handing them to him. As he pulled them on, you scrutinized the outfit to make sure everything was correct.

“So, do I look like him?” Joe said with a smile and quirked eyebrow.

“Very close,” you responded, turning back to your binder. You flipped to another page that had a picture of John Deacon in the same outfit and looked at the differences between Joe and John. Noticing what you were doing, Joe moved so that both he and the picture would be in you line of sight easily.

After seeing the main differences, you stepped over to Joe and began fixing them. As a seamstress and someone that had dressed many actors of all genders, one thing you weren’t afraid of doing was fixing someone’s clothes. You always made sure that the actors were comfortable, though, so you said a quiet “May I?” and waited for Joe to nod before you started.

First, you undid the very top button of the shirt and pulled the collar to open the shirt more. Next, you grabbed onto either side of the shirt next to Joe’s ribs and pulled up slightly so it would be a more loose and baggy tuck. Next, you knelt down to fix his shoes.

Out of habit, you assumed, Joe had pulled the pant legs down so they covered the top couple inches of the high-topped shoes. To fix this, you pulled up the pant legs so they bunched around the top of the shoe instead.

You stepped back and looked between him and the photo again and realized what you had forgotten. You reached into his ditty bag and pulled out a white belt. Joe took it from your outstretched hand with a smile and pulled it on.

Although you were used to helping people get dressed, him pulling on a belt was a strangely intimate moment that made heat flush your cheeks yet again. Since you were avoiding looking at his face, you missed the same heat color his cheeks a bright pink.

Once he was done, you took another look and said, almost to yourself, “Perfect.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he said and you looked up, not thinking he would reply. You made eye contact timidly, but he was smiling at you and that glint in his eyes was brighter than ever.

“They did a very good job when they casted you,” you told him quietly while averting your eyes, and he had to lean forward slightly to catch your words.

“Well, that’s mostly yet to be seen. Starting with Live Aid is the real test,” he joked, but he also seemed genuinely kind of nervous.

“I bet you’ll do great. They wouldn’t have cast you if they didn’t think you were up to the job. Plus, you’re practically a spitting image of him. Just on looks alone, you’re already doing a great job,” you told him, meeting his eyes with more confidence and offering a small smile.

Joe grinned back at you, glad for your words of encouragement, but waited to see if you wanted to continue the conversation since he could tell you were a little shy.

Just as you were working up the nerve to ask him a question, a PA stuck their head into your workspace to let Joe know that he was needed on set.

“I’d better be going. I’ll see you later; you’re my costume fitter all shoot, right?” he asked as he headed towards the exit.

You nodded in reply. He stopped in the doorway, giving you an infectious smile that you returned after a second.

“Good, I’m looking forward to being dressed by your capable hands,” he said with a wink before heading to set, leaving you with wide eyes, but a smile still on your face and a burst of giggles rising in your throat. This was going to be a wild ride. 

🎥🎥🎥

Taglist: @somekindof-cheese @gwilyoubemine@deacytits @supersonicfreddie @siriuslovesmarlene @bowiequeen @acdeaky @deakysgirl @sunflower-borhap-boys @deakyfordays @queensilveryrog @happy-at-home @ceruleanrainblues @briarrose26 

I just kinda created this taglist so if you would like to be taken off or added, just send me a message or ask!

Reminder that my requests are open! If you would like something in a sort of one shot format/length or blurb, etc. send it in! I’ll write for any of the Borhap or Queen boys (Freddie only platonically), Lucy, Patrick Murray, Gardner Langway and adult!Tim Murphy or possibly any of the other characters these people have played if I know enough about them!

[shewhohonors]

Florida Water

Agua Florida/ Florida Water is an Eau de Cologne that was created in 1808 by a guy named Robert Murray. The current trademark holding company is Lanman & Kemp.* Anyway, Florida Water has its name because Murray was inspired to name the product after Juan Ponce de Leon’s “quest” to find the Fountain of Youth which turned into his discovery of what Ponce de Leon named La Florida *. Commercially it’s been used in skincare routines (placed in baths, used as aftershave), worn on the skin/clothing as a perfume and wayyy back people even drank it (Gone with the Wind reference*).  So, while its purpose wasn’t traditionally magical it became a staple item in Espirismo, Brujeria, Santeria, and Caribean practices due to its fragrances, and alcohol base. Many mediums or practitioners in these traditions would use waters made with rose petals and other flowers to cleanse and ground themselves after spirit work. When Florida Water came along, it was the perfect lil prepackaged item with that they found to have the same/similar purifying/cleansing and grounding purposes. Its purpose spread beyond just spirit work and practitioners started using it around their house, cleaning altars, purifying tools, and adding a few droplets in their spiritual baths. 

Now.. as I’m not the voice of all people of color - I asked a few people their opinions on whether non-poc should use it or not. And the consensus was genuinely and generally no. Why? Because there are alternatives, and you could make water that is specific to you and your needs for the water. If you are still finding yourself wanting to use Florida Water in the same way that ATR (African Traditional Religions) and Latin practitioners do - then ask yourselves this question :

- Am I doing this to seem more “exotic”, “trendy”, “eclectic vibes”? - you’re literally fetishizing the traditions of people of color and We ( every person of color) is going to need you to stop. mmkay?

I don’t really care about the excuses or the mental loops non-poc’s are going to jump through to argue that they should be able to use Florida Water. Eclectic doesn’t mean permission to pick from closed cultures.

If you want to be respectful to traditions of color, don’t use it. 

Here are some posts of cleansing waters that You could use; hopefully they inspire you to get into your witchy space and create your own magical water : 

- Nordic Water Magic by Faye (thewitchofthenorse): https://thewitchofthenorseispissed.tumblr.com/post/183430634497/nordic-water-magic

And the following were found by searching “charged water” and “cleansing water” in tumblr tags: 

- DIY Cleansing Spray: https://brujawentz.tumblr.com/post/178383446926/heya-fellas-yall-know-that-not-everybody-can-burn

- Another Spray: https://rosemarywaterwitch.tumblr.com/post/163213048042/quick-cleansing-spray

Anyway... I feel like the point has been made: 

Charged Water is for everyone. Florida Water is not. Leave Florida Water to practitioners of ATR’s and Latin Traditions. 

Sources: 

*-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Water

*-https://thehistorybandits.com/2015/01/22/the-fragrant-resolve-of-florida-water-how-myth-and-marketing-created-a-distinctly-american-scent/

*- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbgttQdXv8