#Vanity Fair Game Show

[brian-in-finance]

Eleanor and Caitríona: De Beers Flagship Store Opening Event, 24 November 2021, London (Photo: Getty Images)

Tony, Caitríona, and Eleanor: Wimbledon, Day 7, Centre Court, 8 July 2019, London (Photo: Getty Images)

Filming has commenced in Leeds and Belgium on the six-parter from Professor T producer Eagle Eye Drama, which follows Tomlinson’s Evie and Pete (Harry Potter star Alfred Enoch), who move into an upscale neighborhood and find themselves in a world of curtain twitching and status anxiety. They find friendship in the shape of the couple next door, alpha traffic cop Danny (Heughan) and his wife, glamorous yoga instructor Becka (Jessica De Gouw), but after Danny and Evie share a passionate night together, there is trouble ahead.

The U.S. streamer and UK network, who never have co-produced together, described The Couple Next Door as a “psychological drama, exploring the stultifying claustrophobia of suburbia and the fallout of chasing your darkest desires.”

Tomlinson is best known for playing Demelza Poldark opposite Aidan Turner across five seasons of hit BBC drama Poldark. Other credits include Stephen Merchant comedy-drama The Outlaws and Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of David Nicholls’ One Day.

Scottish actor Heughan is gearing up for a seventh season of Starz hit Outlander, in which he plays Jamie Fraser, while he is also starring in Priyanka Chopra Jonas rom-com Love Again with Celine Dion – set for May release. He generated headlines recently when his memoir revealed how a brutal rape scene in Outlander Season 1 had impacted him negatively.

Marcella writer David Allison is penning The Couple Next Door, Professor T‘s Dries Vos is directing, and EPs are Jo McGrath, Walter Iuzzolino and Alison Kee.

The thriller is based on Dutch series New Neighbours and feeds into Eagle Eye’s strategy of turning European hits into shows for the major English-language markets, following Channel 4’s Suspect, which is based on a Danish series, and ITV’s Professor T, which is based on a show from Belgium.

The show was commissioned by Channel 4’s Caroline Hollick and Rebecca Holdsworth. EVP Programming Karen Bailey is overseeing The Couple Next Door for Starz, and it will be distributed by Beta Film.

Instagram Deadline

Jamie & Claire Fraser: S04E03 The False Bride, 18 November 2018

Photo

How Well Do Outlander's Caitríona Balfe & Sam Heughan Know Each Other? | Vanity Fair Game Show, Season 6 Promo, 14 April 2022, YouTube

Remember… when you’re working with your friends, it doesn’t feel like it’s work. — Ken Jeong

[cressida-jayoungr]

Coeli's Picks: Purple, part 2

(Multiple movies listed left to right.)

One Dress a Day Challenge

May: Purple Redux

Donkey Skin (Peau d'âne) (1970) / Delphine Seyrig as the Lilac Fairy

The Wrecking Crew (1968) / Elke Sommer as Linda Karensky

Vanity Fair (2004) / Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp

Doctor Who (season 16, "The Androids of Tara") / Mary Tamm as Romanadvoratrelundar (Romana)

Hello, Dolly! (1969) / costume for Barbra Streisand as Dolly Levi

Hum Aapke Hain Koun! (1994) / Madhuri Dixit-Nene as Nisha Choudhury

The Muppet Show (episode 424) / Diana Ross as Herself

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) / Zoë Kravtiz as Leta Lestrange

The Hunger Games (2012) / Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket

Scooby Doo (2002) / Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne

Casino Royale (2006) / Eva Green as Vesper Lynd

Star Trek: The Original Series (s3e1, "Spock's Brain") / Marj Dusay as Kara

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s2e16, "Q Who?") / Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) / Lina Headey as Lady Catherine de Bourgh

[crushpunky]

drew and actress!reader play the vanity fair game show

masterlist | actress!reader masterlist

based off the OBX3 interview + suggested by this ask <3

“I am Madelyn Cline and we are here to test how well we know each other.” Madelyn said into the camera, sitting in the “hot seat”. The rest of her OBX costars sat opposite her in two rows, shoulder to shoulder and grinning ear to ear. Drew sat in the back, along with Rudy, JD, and Austin, where y/n sat in the front with Madison, Carlacia, and Chase. Drew wore a light purple blazer, a color the boys had made sure to tease him for all day, but he didn’t mind. Y/n liked the color on him, so of course he was going to wear it.

“... and we’re the cast of Outer Banks!” Madison and Carlacia said, the rest of the cast joining them and waving at the camera. Madison put her head down with a giggle before composing herself and straightening up once more. Y/n could feel Drew’s fingers combing lightly through her hair, playing with the ends as they waited for the game to begin. She looked back at him, grinning at his long, tousled hair. He smiled back, his fingers continuing to run through her hair as they focused back on the game.

“Ok, first question: which astrological sign do I like the most other than mine?” Madelyn said, the end of her marker resting on her lip as she thought. Quickly, the room burst into shouts and guesses, everyone clamoring to win the very first point of the game. Drew stood from his chair, craning his neck to see what Madelyn’s card read.

“Hey, no cheating!” Y/n pointed at him, a mischievous smirk spreading across his face before he sat back down.

“I’m gonna say Gemini.” Drew said, raising his eyebrows as he glanced into the camera.

“Gemini women. Yes.” Madelyn replied, giving Drew the first point. The rest of the cast booed playfully, Drew patting himself on the back as Madelyn’s turn continued. Once she asked her last question, it was Drew’s turn in the hot seat.

“Y/n has to wait to answer.” JD said, the cast turning to y/n, her mouth falling open.

“That is definitely not in the rules!” Y/n laughed, rolling her eyes.

“Now they are.” Rudy said with a shrug.

“Ok, what is my secret talent? Bonus, where did I learn my talent?” Drew read, looking over the question card at his co-stars until his eyes met y/n’s. She narrowed her eyes, trying to read into what Drew was going to write on the card, after all, he was a man of many talents.

“Sleeping.” Carlacia said.

“You play piano?” Austin guessed.

“See what’s happening is you're just giving me a lot of ideas.” Drew said, taking the cap off of his marker as he prepared to finalize his answer.

“Oh, write it down, I know it.” Y/n said waving her hand for him to write faster. Once he finished, Drew looked at her to answer.

“Juggling.” She answered, Drew flipping the card around to reveal his answer: juggling/insomnia.

“Question two: what’s my favorite food?” Drew grinned, writing his answer down quickly.

“Mama Jodi’s casserole!” The cast said in unison, Drew nodding as he flipped the card around.

“Almost burned down the apartment complex cooking that one time.” Chase pointed out, causing Drew to gasp.

“That was actually y/n’s fault.” Drew said, pointing a finger at y/n who scoffed.

“You were the one that was distracting me!” Y/n shot back, raising her hands in surrender as she thought of the memory. It had been Drew’s birthday and y/n had decided to surprise him with his favorite casserole. However, the two of them had gotten so entranced in an intense game of Mario Kart that she completely forgot about the food in the oven… until the smoke alarm went off.

“Fine, I will take some blame��� only a little bit.” Drew cracked a smile as he shuffled onto the next card.

“Last question: who is my celebrity crush?” Drew scowled, biting his lip as he thought.

“Y/n y/ln.” Rudy said quickly. A small smirk spread across Drew’s lips as he hurriedly wrote his answer down, the rest of the cast hooting and hollering as y/n covered her face with her hands and a flush spread to her cheeks.

“Yeah, that’s correct…” Drew said bashfully, scratching his jaw. “I don’t think she likes me though, if I’m being honest.”

“Definitely not.” Madelyn teased, nudging y/n’s arm playfully.

The game continued, each member of the cast having their turn into their hot seat until it was finally y/n’s turn.

“Drew has to wait to answer.” Y/n said, pointing at Drew. His mouth fell open, his competitive nature kicking in as he groaned.

“The rules, Starkey.” Austin said, shaking his shoulder lightly as y/n picked up her first card.

“What is my favorite movie?” Y/n asked, pausing to think of her answer before writing it down.

“La La Land? The Lego Movie? Moulin Rouge?” Chase guessed, attempting to rattle off as many guesses as possible.

“Pitch Perfect!” Madison said with a giggle, to which y/n nodded.

“Yes, very big Pitch Perfect fan.” Y/n responded. The cast had many memories of watching (and performing) the movie during quarantine when all of them were confined to their shared apartment complex.

“Next question: what is my go-to karaoke song?” Y/n raised her eyebrows as she wrote her answer down on the card.

“Something Taylor Swift, yeah?” Madelyn asked.

“Surprisingly, no.” Y/n laughed. Drew and y/n had hosted many karaoke nights in their shared apartment, the entire cast fitting onto their sofa to sing and dance the night away. The two of them had even gone as far as buying a karaoke machine, complete with mics and lights. It was quite a hit.

“Oh my god, I know it—” Rudy said, snapping his fingers as he searched for the right answer.

“Alanis Morisette...” Drew whispered, to which y/n scowled at him.

“You Oughta Know!” Madelyn cheered, stealing Rudy’s answer with a giggle.

“Yep, that’s right… thank you, Drew.” Y/n said, quirking an eyebrow at Drew who just smiled back. Y/n shuffled her cards for a moment, drawing out the final question.

“Oh boy, last one...” Y/n said dramatically, the cast letting out a string of “ooohs” as y/n cleared her throat.

“What’s my on set snack?” Y/n read, quickly scribbling down her answer as her co-stars looked between each other. Drew sat there, a smug grin on his face as he watched their castmates struggle to answer the very simple question.

“I literally had the same snack every single day.” Y/n said, hoping to direct her co-stars in the right direction.

“I never had the same break time as you two, that’s not fair!” Carlacia said, turning to face Drew who simply shrugged.

“The answer was pickles.” Y/n said, turning the card around to reveal her answer.

“What kind? We need specifics.” JD asked, quirking his brow.

“Dill. The ones in the bag.” Drew answered for y/n, who simply nodded.

“And with that, we are the cast of Outer Banks…” Y/n led, gesturing to her friends opposite her.

“Thanks for watching!” The cast said in unison, waving to the camera.

[unholybacon355]

Kinktober Day 22 - Han Sohee x M! Reader

Kinktober Masterlist

Your wife is so perfect, she’s alway the prettiest of any place where she’s, and also is so damn hot. You really love her and the many ways she can drive you crazy, but not only drive you crazy because she’s always attracting attention. But you don’t care about that because after all she’s your wife. She’s yours and you’re hers. 

“You know isn't fair for the rest of us mortals that you can even look prettier with makeup.” You hug her by the waist while she’s doing her makeup in front of the mirror.  

“I have to look good tonight, and you know it.”

“But you always look good, and you know it.” You softly kiss her shoulder.

“Yeah, I know it. But with a little bit more blush I look prettier.” 

“Oh, if that is the case I could do a thing or two that could make you really blush.” You whisper to her ear. 

“You wish, but we don’t have enough time.” Your wife says before putting more blush on her cheeks. “And even if we had, I'm not taking off my dress.”

“What if I do things without undressing you?” You whisper again in her ear but this time you're also groping her small but.

“You can try, but I still have to do my makeup.”

“I bet you're gonna get distracted from that very soon.”  You slowly lift her dress till the point you can get your hands under her clothes and start caressing her thighs. A shiver ran through Sohee’s body, but beside that she was still and continued doing her makeup totally unbothered. 

Your hands finally get to her ass and squeeze her cheeks cheeks with delicacy, again she does nothing so you decide go further on this little game. Your fingers trace the crack of her ass and find her pussy, so you start rubbing over her panties. 

“Is that all you can do?” She giggles. “I thought you said I was going to blush.”

“Don’t act cool, I know you like it.” Now your fingers are putting more pressure over her clothed pussy, and even when Sohee is trying to hide it you feel her moisture staining the panties. You can feel her pussy getting wet with your fingertips, you feel how that thin layer is forming. 

She’s a really good actress but you can see how under the make up her face is gaining that natural red color. You know you're doing good, but also know you can do it better. So you pull aside her panties gaining access to her wet folds, letting her pussy take air in the process. Maybe that's what makes her open her mouth, but In the last moment your wife manages to control herself and suppress what you’re sure was going to be a moan.

The only sign of pleasure she shows to you is opening her legs to give you better access to her private part, and of course you take that as a win. With that small battle finished you think it is time to make your next move, so you gently slide a finger inside her pussy. Her warm and wet walls welcome you so well, making your finger feel very comfortable inside her. That’s why you put a second finger inside Sohee’s cunt. 

When you slowly start pumping your finger inside her pussy, Sohee’s breath is already faster than normal. She can try all she wants but in the end she can’t hide the fact that she’s enjoying this.  But she still keeps doing her makeup, in fact she’s about to finish soon. You for your part are trying to make her finish in another way. 

Your finger goes fast inside her as your other hand holds one of her cheeks spreading her ass. Her panties are already so wet that it is obvious that they are ruined. Your only concern is that not even a single drop of her juices can reach the dress or you're gonna be a dead man, and in order to achieve that you need to make her cum soon.

Your hand let go her ass and hugging her, your finger finds her clit still covered by the thin fabric of the ruined panties. Now you're fingering her pussy from behind with one hand, and using the other to stimulate the delicate pleasure button that is her clit. 

Sohee can’t fake it anymore and drops the lipstick to grab the sides of the makeup vanity that is between her and the mirror. She’s holding her weight with both hands while you attack her pussy from two fronts. Now she lets go her moans and her breath is fogging up the mirror, you just smile admiring the result of what you’re doing while increasing the pace of your fingers. 

You pout your digits as deep as you can inside her pussy and then you take them almost completely out, just letting the fingertips inside. You do this countless times while more and more of her fluid is coating your hand. On a bold movement you put your thumb in her anus and press a little, using that finger as a pivotal point to gain more speed on the others. 

Sohee’s pussy is making wet noises that mix with her moans. Now she’s mouth open and closed eyes, heavily breathing while you finger fuck her. Her pussy feels so good, so welcoming that you wish your dick were inside her instead of your fingers, but you have to work with what you have. 

Remembering that you don’t have much time you pinch her clit and that sends Sohee to her climax. Her cunt throbs and squeezes your fingers, almost as if threatening to break them while the orgasm is sending jolts to her entire body. You feel how your hand is coated for more of her juices as she is still riding the orgasm.

Once she calms down you take out your fingers and the absence of your digits inside her pussy almost make her cum again, but she can hold it pressing her forehead on the mirror and regaining control of herself. 

“I told you you were going to blush” You say looking at her red cheeks. Sohee just start laughing at your words, still trying to breathe normally. 

[controld3vil]

invisible strings

pairing(s): dune 2 cast x actor!reader (platonic)

synopsis: requested/inspired by this ask!

⤷ alt: coincidences are strange. however, what's more strange was not knowing you were in previous works with your costars.

notes: this one is pretty short. reader is gender neutral. set in the same verse as popcorn bucket (♡´౪`♡)

Ding!

"Ah I don't think you guys are going to get this one," you puffed, eyes trailing down to the question on the Vanity Fair card. The cast and you were playing the Vanity Fair Game Show for a fun video. You all eventually filmed with one another at some time during production. Though your schedules were all over the place/locations, everyone got along with each other. That is to say, some like yourself had been in the first film and kept in contact for the sequel. "What was my first show audition?"

Mumbles in unison scurried. Some hums and thought-provoking nods were seen as you hurriedly scribbled down your answer in black ink.

"Oo Shake It Up!" Zendaya points out, eyes wide with her quick response.

Austin Butler who sat beside Florence Pugh raised his head, almost surprised. "Wait, really?" While the blonde actress knowingly glances back to you for confirmation. The rest of the cast was all too eager to know because clearly they had no idea.

"Yes, correct!" You raised your arms, doing jazz hands. In a burst of energy, the mixed actress scores a bright grin, raising her fist in the air in victory. Only for you to pump her fist back, smiling back.

"How were we supposed to know that?" Timothee Chalamet says, snickering accusatively at the camera as if they had an answer. His gaze moves towards you, "You never told us that!"

You shrugged your shoulders, looking half guilty. "You're lost, pal!"

"At least I got the point!" Zendaya puffs up her chest, swiping the invisible dust off her shoulders while Florence giggles. However Timothee looked almost offended even.

"Wait you were in Shake It Up?" Austin shakes his head in pure astonishment. You gave him a slow nod, as his expression grew wider, eyes staring at you in awe. "That's crazy! I didn't know that!"

"Was it a show?" Josh Brolin's comment seemingly pops in and all four of the younger cast including yourself snickered shortly. His cluelessness only substituted for better curiosity to you. As really, you never really told them about your previous works.

"It was a Disney show," Flipping the Vanity Fair card over, only to reveal your messy handwriting, you stated fondly. Timothee then hastily pointed at the small drawing you drew next to your answer. It breaks your concentration for a second as he only stares at it in confusion while Zendaya covers her mouth from giggling. "Like a sitcom really. And I played one of the background dancers." Even you couldn't stop yourself from giggling further, taking a look at your draw.

Truly it was one of those topics that are never mentioned around you. The only reason Zendaya had known was that you had told her once about it when discussing your dance careers. The both of you were young actors and did not expect to know each other back then and even now. Though it was a cute recollection to look back upon.

"Is that a stick figure waving his arms?" Florence cocks her head sideways, having a concentrated face.

"He's supposed to be dancing!" You plead, pointing at the way you drew his arms in the air.

"That is not dancing!" Timothee's smile only grew wider from laughing too much, having to lean forward to look at the little drawing closer. "He just looks- like he's discombobulated!"

"PFFTT!"

"I mean it's a cute drawing!"

"You know what- you don't appreciate my art," You gently placed the card on the floor, giving your costar the stink eye. "I thought this was a fun game, you guys! People are being bullied for no reason!"

"No- I'm not saying your drawings are bad!" The French actor stumbles, in beats of laughter, clenching his cards to his chest. You only swat his presence away before grabbing another question.

In another instance, Austin takes his turn. For a few rounds, he asked about his hobbies, such as what instruments he knew to play. It was quick flashed answers, one by one you managed to pass through flying colors.

"Guitar and piano," Austin bobs his head, as the rest of cast suddenly became enamored at his musical skills.

"Hey!"

"Alright!"

"But also violin," He says sheerly, scratching the back of his neck.

"Oh okay!" Florence drags out an amused hum, in a teasing manner.

"Is that true?" Timothee quirks his brow, having one leg over another, looking all composed.

"Yeah."

"Okay, let's go Disney Channel kids!" You chanted, with the mixed actress a seat away from you joined with as well. You both raised your hands in victory while Austin looked away and blushed.

"We got all the talent!"

At the CCXP Panel in Brazil, fans from all over came to attend to fantastic event. Hosted by Collider Interview, it was a massive event with an enormous stadium, fit for a band performance. There were arrays of lights, standing from the alleyways and above the ceiling. You felt extremely fortunate to have attended and made it to Brazil, for being such a joyful experience.

This time you alongside your young cast members and director, Denise Villeneuve, posed happily with all of you. The panel followed with many turns and twists, with questions coming from the crowd and host alike. One moment fans caught on was your reaction to something that Florence at said.

The Collider host mentioned Florence's history of working with Timothee on Little Women which made both of them cackle, reminiscing those dotting moments.

"Oh you know what," the British actress starts, holding her hand up. The audience was silenced, wondering what she going to mention next. She slowly turns in your direction and points. "I just remembered this, but you were in Midsommar yes?"

"Yes..." You mumbled, ending your answer on a high note, unsure really what she meant. Until it came flashing back to you, much prevalent to your shocked expression. "Oh yes yes!" And seemingly the rest of the cast and fans were roaring in surprise and in cheer.

Though you weren't present in most of the film's production, Florence had fond memories of Midsommar. You were one of the minor characters doomed to death in the first half. Both of your characters had a brief meeting together and that was all. However, it surprised you how Florence was able to recall it all. You had only filmed for a few days and vaguely met her casually.

"This is so weird but I don't know- I just kept forgetting to bring it up," She scrambles to find the right words, throwing gestures back and forth. "But for some reason, I just remembered you being there and then I was like- huh! We were in Midsommar together!"

"Right!" You lowered your tone, the weight on your heels slowly shifting to one side. As you licked your lips at the revelation. "I can't believe we just realized this now!" And you could discern the pure chaos the rest of your costars were feeling. Timothee was wheezing, desperately holding his mic for support. While Zendaya crossed her arms in a mixture of sarcasm and odd mischievousness. As if saying, Really? You guys never realized?! Austin on the other hand, solely was observing from the sidelines, with an amused smile. And all for Denny to be panned to the right with a funny disapproving look on his face.

"This is what I have to deal with," Your director somberly states and the crowd cries out in cackles.

"I don't think we were in anything together before."

No interview or video was being shot. Surprisingly it was lunchtime and a grace period for cast and production alike to go back to their trailers to rest. You did not want to go back to your own trailer so instead followed your costar to his. Knowing he had a better air conditioner and wanted to catch up on anything new you guys enjoyed talking about.

But more importantly, his air conditioner.

"Yeah, I don't think we did," Arms securely behind your head as you leaned back on the couch. You still were in full costume, in Fremen wear however it did not stop you from lounging around in every corner of the set sites. "Does Dune count?"

A light-hearted scoff escapes from Timothee, who is on his phone on the other side of the couch, in costume as well. The air conditioner was blasting heavily on all sides of the trailer yet you two did not mind the loud background noise. "No, it doesn't!"

"That's crazy right?" Lifting yourself up to look at him. His eyes don't leave his phone screen yet you know he is focused on your words. "I'm genuinely surprised we haven't played siblings,"

"We look nothing alike!" He shouts, finally lifting his gaze to your playful one. Suddenly you see his phone flash turned on as it faces you. "So, what do you think of Dune Part Two so far?"

You get up swiftly, stretching out of your tired limbs in the process. "Like a walk on the sand!"

"Aye!" He fist-bumps you as he turns the camera on him, face not covered in any gear. The audience can notice his messy locks and smudged face.

"Directors, sign us up to play something!" You waved before adjusting to put on your mask. The camera swerves to find you clipping on the clasps. A couple clicks can be heard as you move the gear up and down from your face. "Literally anything! I could play his serial killer and I would be happy."

"What-" Timothee almost choked on air, prominent to how shaky the camera view became. Though he quickly recovered, "Why do you always want to kill me in these scenarios?"

"Because it's much more fun!" You whine, shoulders deflating, as you can feel him zooming in on your expression.

[genericpuff]

i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?

Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.

But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL

I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.

But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.

I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.

But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"

She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.

30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.

At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".

At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.

And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.

The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.

That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.

[mxcottonsocks]

Reading Like A Victorian

A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.

Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...

Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':

RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 

When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]

More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:

[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately

I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.

The timeline:

Here's what the timeline looks like:

It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.

In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:

ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;

works which began serialisation during 1852;

works published in three-volume format during 1852;

other works published during 1852

Details about each work:

You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.

Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:

On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.

On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.

[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]

The links

You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:

When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:

a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);

the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);

audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).

So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.

To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)

[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]

[velarisdusk]

The Crown's Command

Day 14: Boot Worship | Eris x Reader word count: 1.5k author's note: LISTEN. evil high lord eris is.... whew ! im not saying i LIKE it. however i am also not saying i HATE it. what i AM saying is that i love it and i would let him do whatever i am not ashamed ✦ . Kinktober Masterlist . ✦

He was every bit the tyrant his father had been — perhaps worse.

You had known this when you approached the Autumn Court’s throne with your grievances, but knowing and experiencing it were two different things. Eris Vanserra lounged on his throne, his posture deceptively casual, though his eyes burned with all the fury and cruelty of the High Lord he now was. The court was teeming today, filled with nobles, advisors, and petitioners, all eyes heavy with judgment as they watched the exchange unfold.

“I’m not asking for your approval, High Lord,” you spat, your heart hammering in your chest. “I’m asking for fairness.”

Eris’s lips curled into a smile, though there was no warmth in it, only sharp edges. “Fairness?” His voice was a slow, dangerous drawl. “You dare speak to me of fairness. What is unfair is having ungrateful citizens unable to grasp their rightful place.” His amber eyes narrowed as he surveyed you, the weight of his disdain pressing down like a physical force.

You opened your mouth to argue again, but a single flick of his wrist silenced you. The guards stationed at either side of the room moved before you even had time to process the order, their hands clamping around your arms with brutal strength. 

“Bring her up here,” Eris commanded, his voice calm and unhurried as if this were all some game. “Let her make her case from her knees.”

The guards dragged you up the dais toward him, the strength of their grip biting into your skin as you were forced down in front of him, right at the base of the throne. You could feel the eyes of the court on you — dozens of them, silently watching, waiting to see what Eris would do next. Your cheeks burned with a mixture of rage and humiliation as you were shoved onto your knees, the cool stone beneath you a stark contrast to the fire that lit Eris’s gaze.

He stretched out one leg, his polished boot catching the light as he planted it firmly in front of you. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate your… respect for your High Lord. Right here. In front of everyone.”

Your blood ran cold as his words echoed through the chamber. “What?” you breathed your voice barely above a whisper. 

Eris leaned forward slightly, the smugness radiating off of him. “Worship. My boots.” His words were quiet but sharp enough to cut through the murmur of the crowd. “Or you will have no place in this court — my court.”

You stared at him, your heart pounding. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” he said smoothly, his lips curling into a smirk that made your skin crawl. “I won’t repeat myself. Kneel lower, and show me the respect I’m due.”

A ripple of quiet laughter spread through those assembled, their amusement clear as they watched you hesitate, their eyes filled with cruel delight. Eris’s boot gleamed before you, the leather polished to perfection, a reflection of his vanity and power. You glanced up at him, your stomach churning with the weight of the humiliation he was forcing upon you, but the look in his eyes was clear: defy him, and there would be consequences far worse than public shame. 

Your throat tightened, rage boiling just beneath your skin. But you were not foolish enough to cross him here, not with the entire court watching. Slowly, painfully, you lowered your head until your lips were just inches from the dark leather of his boot.

“There’s a good girl,” Eris murmured, just loud enough for only you to hear. “Go on, you can kiss it.”

You hesitated, your breath coming in shallow gasps as you fought to keep your pride intact. But pride was a luxury you could not afford right now, not when his gaze was so predatory, so eager to see you break. Slowly, you leaned forward, your lips brushing against the cool leather, and a wave of shame crashed through you. 

Eris hummed in approval, his hand resting casually on the arm of his throne as he watched you. “I said worship, not just kiss,” he corrected you, his tone deceptively soft. “Get on your hands and knees. I want to see you work for it.”

The laughter in the room grew louder, though Eris never took his eyes off you. You felt the weight of the crowd’s judgment, their sneering amusement, but none of it compared to the dark satisfaction that shone in Eris’s gaze as he waited for you to comply. 

Your hands trembled as you lowered yourself further, pressing your palms to the marble floor, your body now fully prostrate before him. Every fiber of your being screamed in protest, but you pressed your lips against the toe of his boot once more, this time lingering longer, kissing up the length of it. 

“That’s it,” he purred, leaning back on his throne as if settling in to enjoy a performance crafted just for him. “Let everyone see how eager you are to please your High Lord.”

You gritted your teeth but obeyed, pressing more kisses along the edge of his boot, feeling the leather beneath your lips as if it were a brand marking you with his authority. Every kiss was a reminder of the power he held over you, a reminder that in this court, Eris was absolute. 

“Look at you,” Eris mused, his tone rich with smug satisfaction. “All that defiance, all that fire… and yet, here you are, on your knees, kissing my boots like the obedient little subject you are.”

Your lips hovered near the heel, each breath shallow. You couldn’t bring yourself to look up at him, not with the way your pride had been shattered into a thousand pieces. But then his voice came again, sharp and commanding: “Say it.”

You swallowed hard, barely managing to speak. “Say what?”

“Say you’re grateful for the honor I’ve given you,” Eris drawled, his voice laced with amusement. “Say it loud enough for my court to hear.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to push the humiliation away as you forced the words from your lips. “I… I’m grateful, my lord.”

“Grateful for what?” His boot pressed lightly against your shoulder, urging you down even further, though it was hardly possible. 

Your breath trembled, the heat of his gaze suffocating as you tried to steady yourself. “I’m grateful for the honor of worshiping your boots, my lord.”

Eris smirked, but his boot didn’t move. “Mmm, not quite convincing enough. I don’t think you’re really grateful yet.” He nudged his boot forward, the gleaming leather catching the light. “Perhaps you should lick that spot clean, it’s a bit…” His voice was casual, as though it was a simple request, but the edge of cruelty was unmistakable. 

You blinked, your eyes darting to the boot. It was spotless, the leather shining from a recent polish. There wasn’t a single blemish on it, but that didn’t matter. Your mouth went dry as you stared at it, heart pounding as the weight of the command settled over you.

Eris’s boot nudged you again, his tone growing sharper. “Don’t make me ask again.” From where his arm rested lazily on the armrest of his throne, a flame flickered to life in his open palm, the heat radiating toward you. The fire curled and danced over his skin, a casual display of power that served as a clear threat. 

With a shaky breath, you hesitated only for a moment before your tongue darted out, gliding over the boot’s surface. The taste of leather and polish filled your mouth, bitter and foreign, as your tongue traced a slow line across the gleaming surface.

“There it is,” Eris murmured, a pleased hum rumbling from deep in his chest. “Lick it clean, darling. I want it to shine from your devotion.”

You did as he commanded, dragging your tongue over the same spotless patch, knowing full well it was already as clean as it could be. The court was silent, save for the soft murmurs that rose with each touch of your lips to his boot. Your cheeks burned with humiliation. All this, simply for deigning to ask for better food rations for the people in your town. You had pleaded for basic decency, for fairness, and now here you were, on your knees for even suggesting such a thing. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Eris withdrew his boot slightly, but the smug smile never left his face. “Good. Now let’s hear it again. Tell me how grateful you are for the privilege of licking my boots.”

Your throat tightened as you struggled to form the words. “I’m… I’m grateful, my lord,” you whispered, your eyes glued to the glistening marble floor. 

“Louder,” Eris commanded, his voice cold and unyielding. “Let them all hear how much you adore being on your knees for me.”

Your heart pounded, the shame threatening to swallow you whole as you forced the words from your lips. “I’m grateful, my lord,” you said, a bit too loudly. You cleared your throat. “I’m grateful for the chance to serve you, to worship your boots.”

A pleased hum escaped Eris, and he withdrew his foot, sitting back on his throne like a king; the very image of arrogance. “Good girl,” he said softly, his voice dripping with condescension. “Now remember, darling — this is your place.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Taglist <3

@starlightazriel @nvdax @halo-hanging @paleidiot @kismet27

@mellowmusings @gracielacie @d3ad-ins1de @loviseamms @inkedinshadows

@natasha153 @deathdoordoctor @spacebananabud @secretsicanthideanymore @edance2000

@lorosette @alykatv @honethatty12 @hellabizzy @serena-capella

@acoazlove @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @scorpioriesling @hannzoaks @confusedsezure

@elenapri0502 @anneas11 @mrsjna @lilah-asteria @randomgurl2326

@scarsandallaz @julesvanslutta @fourthwing4ever

[yeonjune]

yeonjun ✙ vanity fair - game show

[big-tiddy-bi]

Without ao3 I became inspired. Ok so being tired of the justice league not helping/believing brakes into the tower while a meeting is taking place to show one of the heroes what is happening I.E. you failed and don’t come here we don’t want you, we don’t need you. You come here and you will be treated as a super villain and dealt with as such.

—————

Danny was sick, tired and powerful. A dangerous combination for most peoples. Myths and legends written throughout every religion every people every and every world based on gods feeling those exact things, and that is the thing Danny closest too, not ghost, not human, but a god. Even if he does not himself as such.

Today was the justice league’s last chance, Walker had decided to change up his tactics. Instead of going after Danny directly he was going to play dirty. Imprisoning 300 living for ”harboring a fugitive”. The justice league was called, one last chance before thing got out of hand. 300 people held captive in another dimension should be a priority for a group called the justice league.

Their response “the justice league contact system should only be used for emergencies, pranks will not be tolerated”. a simple response. directed and to the point. A metaphorical death sentence for the justice league and the people of amity’s faith in them.

No one died, thank the ancients, but blood was spilled. Red and green fell to the floor like water from the large cuts on Danny’s arms and the side of his torso, he was mostly fine, a couple stitches, about a gallon of filtered ectoplasm and a trip to the nasty burger had fixed him up. Meaning that every time he tried to move his arms he felt like he was being stabbed and he could not breathe without pain, which in all fairness was kind of normal for him, it sucked but it was normal.

The real problem was the 300 people I’m the hospital, ecto contamination, not to the extent of being fatal but extremely painful. That could have been avoided if Danny had more help than just his team of 4 other teenage vigilantes and his adult sister.

So after that fiasco Danny did something, else, something more political, he mad deals. With permission from the most important people in town the ones who keeps everything running, IE Mr lancer and Jazz. He also got permission from the mayor, bribed with Danny going to a Green Bay packers game with him.

Johnny 13 and kitty could joy ride before 12 am and after 9am as long as property damage stays at a minimum, a couple smashed mailboxes, broken windows and spray painted cars/buildings paid for by the mayors office was better than bad luck to the entire town and people disappearing.

Skulked got to hunt Danny in a building made for that purpose, Spector-cameras installed in it so people could stream it live to “witness the greatest hunter of the ghost zone”.

Ember got to play her music and travel on tour as she pleased as long as she didn’t mind control people.

Some wouldn’t take the deals but most of the heavy hitters did, it calmed down a lot, but as they say it the calm before the storm.

With the viewers of the “ghost battles” (it was basically a game of extreme tag) and embers fans talking, the ghost situation became a known thing

And again the justice league responded. “we will be there in a month”

No apologies for not believing them no apologies for not helping, just a we are on our way 8 months after the incident and they were going to be there 9 months after. All the people where health again, Walker was punished, locked in his haunt for the next 100 years. The justice league has nothing to do. They have no point in coming to amity. Where they just going to show up, say “sorry for not helping you, welp peace” and then just leave.

Maybe that was the point, that though crossed Danny’s mind as he read the message out loud to his team. They didn’t have any to do, a vanity project, help the small community that they abandoned so that the people don’t go blabbing to the papers, a pr move.

Sam and Valerie had voiced the same opinions on what the justice league was doing. The rest of the team agreed after a short conversation.

This led to Tucker hacking the league computer system to find the next meeting date and we’re it would be held. “Unhackabal my ass” and a plan was made.

So here he is, invisible, intangible and floating above the justice league. Batman walked up to the podium and began to present.

“8 and a half months ago the league got a report of 300 people being kidnapped and sent to the ghost dimension, this was believed to be a prank and filled as such, we were wrong” he said while clicking through slides, some of medical reports of the victims, some of the photos taken of him helping people out of the portal next to the hospital he mad to help the victims faster. Then he said “ this is the city’s resident hero team” the next slide showing the picture of Danny, Sam , Wes, Valerie, tucker and jazz receiving the key to the city. 

“We one know of this misstep because of videos posted online of phantom pictured here” he pointed an Danny receiving the key, another picture of him helping a man to the hospital appeared “and here”

“Do we know who trained them they don’t look older than sixteen” Wonder Woman asked. Before batman could answer Danny revealed himself, though he made his skin slightly translucent to show his bones, it was all part of the plan.

He floated down to the floor and looked directly at her “we trained ourselves”

He turned to face the whole room. “ I am not here to fight you” he said as a couple of hero quickly moved from their seats. “ I came to warn you”

He took in a breath “ I came to warn you, stay out of amity and stay in your lane.” He put a small amount of his ghostly wale into his voice, just enough to shake up their hearts. “ we don’t need you. We don’t WANT you” he cold the room slowly a couple degrees a word. “ do not ask around for us ghosts, do not look for us, if you find one of us. RUN.” He dropped his voice louder as emphasis. “ if you find one of us causing trouble, send us a message, but otherwise don’t acknowledge us or amity, the dead have nothing to give to you” his eyes became fussy staring at nothing green tears fell out of his eyes,and his Lichtenberg scars began to glow Ice blue, but his voice did not waver,.“ you may not have killed us yourself but you signed our death warrant long ago, you have ignored us far to long” is voice soften at the last word.

Then his eyes turns red, as fast as he could he pulled Superman out of his chair and pushed him to the wall. Danny’s hand went intangible as he pushed in into Superman’s chest. His hand wrapped around Superman’s heart, Danny soften the intangibility so Superman could fell the hand but not get hurt. “I can rip your heart out without a single fight” his skin became entirely invisible to show his skeleton. “To all of amity” Superman’s breathing quickened “to me” he move close to Superman’s ear “you are villains, and will be treated as such” he dropped Superman to the floor.

“Stay in your domain and I’ll stay in mine” ice began to form at his feet, looking mor like crystals than ice. “Come to us with please of forgiveness is as pointless as asking of it from your god” ectoplasm dripped from his mouth onto the floor. “Do not come to amity” and with that he went invisible again and watched the room in amusement. He was kinda freaking out at how awesome he sounded.

A couple minutes of silence followed. As John Constantine entered the room, “what did I miss?”

———————-

Hope y’all like it <3 Sorry for spelling mistakes. I don’t think this need trigger warnings but if you think so please comment so I can add them. I started writing this and I couldn’t stop. If only I had that energy for the original story’s I want to write lol Have a nice day/night and drink some liquids that aren’t caffeinated and/or poisonous <3

[folk-ivy]

can you pleaseee do a matt x reader where the reader is a singer (like olivia rodrigo level famous) and she admits to being fans of the sturniolo triplets, so they invite her on their youtube channel, but matt is really nervous and stuttering and his brothers make fun of him for it. sorry if that made no sense haha 😍

Worth it.

Matt Sturniolo x singer! reader

Matt seems a little nervous in a video with one of the greatest singers of the generation.

just fluff!

author’s notes: thank you so much for you request! I'm so, so sorry if this was not what you wanted, but I think I like this one! once again, english is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes❤️‍🩹

The heater in the place was on full blast, and yet the cold December air was still present inside the white, intimidating room. Even though I'm passionate about the cold, I confess that in certain situations all I wanted most was to be on the beach with the torrential heat and the high thermal sensation.

I was currently in a situation I never thought I would find myself in: with some red and blue wires stuck to my body, plugged into a machine, and with Matt, Nick, and Chris, in that order, sitting next to me, and a middle-aged man in front of the computer that showed my heartbeat. We were going to record a lie detector video, and I couldn't be more excited—but somehow worried, too.

I had watched their videos with this same device before and thought it was hilarious, but somehow, when I was the person sitting there, it was not that hilarious. But that was exactly what I wanted when I said I liked the triplets in an interview with Vanity Fair.

"Is everything alright? Can we get started?" Nick asks, clearly excited.

The man with white hair and stubble responds with a quick "yes" and the video finally begins.

The first questions were quick and easy, ranging from my first name to why I decided to become a singer. I was able to relax a little, it was easy to feel at home with the triplets making me feel like part of the family.

And that's when the real fun begins.

"Y/N, you said that you liked our content. My question is: do you have a favorite triplet?" Chris asks with a playful smile on his face, and I can catch a glimpse of Matt's cheeks turning a little pink.

"Of course not! I adore you all equally!" I say after a while, and I laugh awkwardly at the end of my sentence.

"Lie" says the gentleman with my heartbeat.

"This machine is wrong!" I say and laugh a little loudly, while the triplets follow me.

"Oh yeah, the machine is wrong”Nick says with a smile. "So, Matt, aren't you going to ask anything?"

"Um, I d-don't know what to ask," he says and sinks a little in his chair, avoiding my gaze.

“Own, is our dear Matt B. nervous?" says Chris, in a clear attempt to provoke him. I can't help but feel like they know something I don't.

"Okay, next question!" I say loudly, trying to save Matt from his panic.

“Y/N, do you think one of us is pretty?” Nick asks, looking directly at Matt.

"What a stupid question! If I think one of you is pretty I automatically think of all of you, right?" I respond, looking at Nick.

"Fair enough" he says and so the video continues.

“Would you go out on a romantic dinner with one of us?" asks Chris, again looking at Matt. I watch as he gives Chris a cold look.

"What the fuck are those questions?" I say "Of course not! You're all my friends!"

"Lie" says the man.

"I hate this game” I reply, rolling my eyes playfully.

The video continues, but I can't help but notice Matt's fleeting little glances at me and the way he is even more silent in this video. It's almost like he's nervous.

The other two brothers didn't help him, teasing him, and making him even more shy.

"Okay, last question!" Nick says and I give a silent "Amen."

“Are you attracted to anyone in this room?"

I hate you, Nick.

"No!" I say, trying to sound convincing.

"Lie" says the man at the machine.

Dear Mr. Lie Detector, from today onwards you are my number one enemy.

The video finally ends, after a lot of teasing and a red-as-pepper Matt. We're on the way to the triplets' house, and again, I can't help but notice the way Matt was much quieter than usual. We arrived at their house, got out of the car, and waited patiently for Matt to unlock the front door. I can see his hands shaking a little.

“Come on, damn it” says Nick.

Matt finally manages to open the door and Chris flies to the kitchen while Nick goes towards his room, leaving Matt and I alone in the entrance hall of the house.

"Hey, are you okay? I couldn't help but notice that you were quieter than usual" I say and turn towards the boy.

“I-I'm fine! Really!" he says not so convincingly.

"Speak out, Matt! What's going on?"

"Doyouwannagoonadatewithme?" he says, too quickly for me to even process what he was saying.

"WHAT?"

"Do you wanna go on a date with me?" he asks

“I thought you would never ask" I reply and give him a little kiss on his right cheek, going to meet Chris in the kitchen, leaving an agitated Matt behind.

Maybe saying I like the triplets in that interview was worth it.

[kathlare]

unfinished business

Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman

Summary: Amelie finds herself confiding in Gracie Abrams backstage about an unexpected encounter with Lando Norris at a recent party. Their conversation unravels Amelie's unresolved emotions and the complicated history between her and Lando.

Wordcount: 1.2 k

Warnings: just fluff

request over here!

August 7th, 2024 - Los Angeles, CA

Amelie sat on the leather couch in Gracie Abrams’ dressing room, the lights from the vanity mirror casting a soft glow on her features. She looked exhausted but content, having just finished a grueling leg of her Emails I Can't Send tour in Asia. It felt surreal to be back in Los Angeles, where the bustling energy of the city mixed with the excitement of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Amelie was opening for Taylor later this month in Mexico, but for now, she had a bit of time to herself before the madness started again.

Gracie sat beside her, adjusting her stage outfit in front of the mirror. Gracie had been kind enough to let Amelie hang out in her dressing room before her own set, and it was a relief for Amelie to finally have someone to talk to.

—So, I ran into Lando again,— Amelie muttered, her voice laced with frustration.

Gracie’s head snapped up from the mirror, her eyes twinkling with curiosity. She already knew about Lando—the history between them was no secret. From their days playing video games in 2020, to their short but intense relationship in 2021, Gracie had heard it all. She knew how much Amelie tried to move on, but no matter how hard she tried, Lando’s presence lingered in the back of her mind.

—No way, where?!— Gracie leaned in, her eyes wide with excitement. —Spill, I need details.—

Amelie took a deep breath, trying to keep her emotions in check. —It was at Penelope's birthday party in Monaco, just a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, I didn’t even know if I was ready to see him again, but there he was.— She paused, her frustration bubbling to the surface. —And he looked... he looked so damn good. Like, it’s not even fair. How does he do it?—

Gracie smirked, her lips curving into a mischievous smile as she turned fully to face Amelie. —Okay, but did he say anything? Or was it one of those 'awkward glance across the room while the sexual tension suffocates everyone else' kind of moments?—

Amelie let out a dry laugh, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them. —Oh, he said something, all right. He came over to say hi like nothing had ever happened between us, all casual and charming. He even asked how I’ve been, like he genuinely gave a shit.— She groaned, covering her face with her hands for a moment before looking at Gracie again. —And then, as if the universe wanted to mess with me even more, he was just... nice. He didn’t try to flirt or make things weird. He was just... Lando.—

Gracie leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. —And that’s what gets to you, isn’t it? That he can just be so fucking effortless while you’re sitting here overthinking everything. Classic guy move.—

—Exactly!— Amelie exclaimed, throwing her hands up. —It’s like, how dare you show up looking like that and being all calm and composed when we have so much... history. I was ready to ignore him all night, you know? I had a plan. But then he had to go and smile at me, and suddenly I couldn’t even remember why I was mad in the first place.—

Gracie gave her a sympathetic smile, scooting closer to Amelie on the couch. —It’s because you’re not really over him. And before you start with the 'I don’t love him anymore' speech, I get it. You don’t have to be in love with someone to still feel... something. Especially when things ended the way they did.—

Amelie sighed, leaning her head back against the couch. —I don’t even know if it’s him I miss, or just... what we had. It was so easy with him at first. He made me laugh when I thought I’d never feel happy again. And for a while, it felt like he was the only person who really saw me, you know? Not Amelie the actress or the singer. Just me.—

Gracie reached out and squeezed Amelie’s hand. —I get that. But if he made you feel that way, why did it go so wrong? What’s stopping you from... trying again?—

Amelie hesitated, biting her lip as she considered the question. —Because he hurt me, Gracie. He made me feel like I wasn’t enough, like my career and my life were too much for him to handle. And I know I wasn’t perfect either—I was busy, distracted, and maybe not as present as I should’ve been. But he started talking to someone else while we were still figuring things out, and that broke me. I don’t think I’ve forgiven him for that.—

Gracie’s face softened, her usual playful demeanor replaced with genuine concern. —That’s valid, Am. What he did was shitty, and you’re allowed to still be angry about it. But... do you think he regrets it? Do you think he’s changed?—

Amelie shrugged, picking at the hem of her oversized sweatshirt. —I don’t know. Maybe. He seemed different at the party, like he’s grown up a bit. But I’m scared, Gracie. What if I let him back in, and he does it again? Or worse, what if I’m just some lingering crush he can’t let go of, and it doesn’t mean as much to him as it does to me?—

Gracie leaned back, crossing her arms as she thought. —You’re overthinking it. But honestly, if you still feel this strongly about him—even after everything—you owe it to yourself to figure out what that means. Whether that’s telling him how you feel or deciding to truly let it go, you can’t keep living in this limbo. It’s not fair to you, and it’s definitely not fair to whoever comes next in your life.—

Amelie nodded slowly, her fingers drumming against her knee. —I just... I don’t want to look weak, you know? Like, if I even hint at wanting him back, he’ll think he has all the power. And I can’t be that girl, Gracie. Not again.—

Gracie gave her a firm look. —Wanting someone back doesn’t make you weak, Ames. It makes you human. But if you’re going to do it, you have to do it on your terms. You set the boundaries, you call the shots. And if he’s serious about you, he’ll respect that. If not, then fuck him. You’ll know you tried.—

Amelie let out a humorless laugh, shaking her head. —I hate that you’re making sense right now. It’s so annoying.—

Gracie grinned, leaning over to bump her shoulder against Amelie’s. —That’s what I’m here for. To annoy you with good advice and remind you that you’re a badass who deserves someone who’s all in. Whether that’s Lando or not, only you can decide.—

The room fell silent for a moment, the distant hum of the concert venue filling the space. Amelie stared at the floor, her mind racing with memories and emotions she thought she’d buried long ago.

—Do you think he still cares?— she asked softly, almost afraid of the answer.

Gracie hesitated before answering, her voice gentle. —I think... if he looked at you the way you’re describing, then yeah. He cares. But the real question is, does he care enough to make it right?—

Amelie didn’t respond, her thoughts too tangled to put into words. All she knew was that seeing Lando again had stirred something in her, something she wasn’t sure she was ready to confront.

But maybe, just maybe, it was time to stop running from it.

[mariacallous]

“Did Israel Avert a Hamas Massacre?” That was the question posed by the headline of a Vanity Fair exposé published in October 2014. The investigative report laid out a sophisticated plot by the Islamist terror group to kill and kidnap Israelis on the Gaza border. The plan: to use underground tunnels to infiltrate nearby civilian enclaves on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, when the communities would be at their most vulnerable. As one intelligence source put it, the operation had two goals: “First, get in and massacre people in a village. Pull off something they could show on television. Second, the ability to kidnap soldiers and civilians using the tunnels would give them a great bargaining chip.” The Israel Defense Forces subsequently confirmed this reporting to other media outlets, but not the specific date.

The tunnels were real. But at the time the massacre-that-wasn’t received little additional media coverage. It seemed too cinematic and convenient. Maybe it was a Hamas pipe dream that was never operational. Or maybe it was a worst-case scenario concocted by the Israeli security services and leaked to the media to justify their own ever-expanding countermeasures. Years passed without a mass border incursion, the tunnels were gradually detected and blocked, and I came to the conclusion that the skeptics were right about the plot being too lurid even for Hamas.

I was wrong. Last week, Hamas executed something quite like the attack on the Gaza border that it had planned all those years ago. Instead of tunneling underground on Rosh Hashanah, it invaded aboveground on another Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah. Some 1,500 terrorists stormed nearby civilian communities by land, air, and sea. They murdered babies in their cribs, parents in front of their children, and children in front of their parents. They burned entire families alive. They decapitated and mutilated their victims. They wore body cameras and documented their destruction as though it were a video game. They executed a grandmother in her home and uploaded the snuff film to her Facebook page. They deliberately targeted elementary schools. They kidnapped toddlers and a Holocaust survivor. They paraded a battered, naked woman through the streets of Gaza like a trophy. All told, they murdered more than 1,300 Israelis, almost all civilians, and abducted some 150 others, including babies and the elderly. The death toll continues to rise as rescue workers recover more remains and reassemble mangled corpses for identification.

Somehow, few saw this eruption of inhumanity coming. Several months ago, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, then the European Union ambassador to the Palestinians, performed what he called Gaza’s first paragliding flight to advocate for a future where “anything is possible in Gaza.” Hamas terrorists would later use paragliders to massacre more than 250 civilians at an Israeli music festival, which is presumably not what the envoy had in mind. And he wasn’t the only one naive about the Hamas regime’s intentions.

The consensus was that Hamas was a mostly rational actor that could be reasoned with. To hawks, although the group was an anti-Semitic Iran proxy, it could be deterred through political and economic incentives, because it felt responsible for the welfare of the Gazan people. To doves, Hamas was a quasi-legitimate national resistance movement whose occasional bouts of violence were simply intended to draw attention to that struggle.

Successive Netanyahu governments and security officials, far less sympathetic to the Gazan plight, nonetheless spent recent years lifting economic restrictions on the enclave, granting thousands of work permits for Gazans, and transferring hundreds of millions of Qatari dollars to Hamas in exchange—they thought—for relative quiet.

But it turned out that Hamas wasn’t being pacified; it was preparing. The group was less committed to national liberation than to Jewish elimination. Its violence was rooted not in strategy, but in sadism. And in retrospect, well before the Rosh Hashanah plot, the signs of Hamas’s atrocious ambitions were all there—many observers just did not want to believe them. What Hamas did was not out of character, but rather the explicit fulfillment of its long-stated objectives. The shocking thing was not just the atrocity itself, but that so many people were shocked by it, because they’d failed to reckon with the reality that had been staring them in the face.

First, there is Hamas’s notorious charter, a Frankensteinian amalgam of the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the modern era—the very same that have motivated numerous white-supremacist attacks in the United States. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” the document opens. “It needs all sincere efforts … until the enemy is vanquished.” The charter goes on to claim that the Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” According to Hamas, the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about,” as well as World War I and World War II. The charter accuses Israel of seeking to take over the entire world, and cites as proof the most influential modern anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fabrication that purports to expose a global Jewish cabal.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” Hamas declares in its credo. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” In case anyone missed the point, the document adds that “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In 2017, Hamas published a new charter, but pointedly refused to disavow the original one, in a transparent ruse that some respectable observers nonetheless took at face value.

In any case, Hamas communicated its genocidal intentions not just in words, but in deeds. Before it took control of Gaza, the group deliberately targeted Jewish civilians for mass murder, executing scores of suicide bombings against shopping malls, night clubs, restaurants, buses, Passover seders, and many other nonmilitary targets. Today, this killing spree is widely blamed for destroying the credibility of the Israeli peace movement and helping derail the Oslo Accords, precisely as Hamas intended. And it did not stop there. Since the group took power in Gaza, it has launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately at nearby civilian towns—attacks that continue at this very moment and that have boosted the Israeli right in election after election.

Hamas’s anti-Jewish aspirations were evident not only from its treatment of Israelis, but from its treatment of fellow Palestinians. Despite being the putative sovereign in Gaza and responsible for the well-being of its people, Hamas repeatedly cannibalized Gaza’s infrastructure and appropriated international aid to fuel its messianic war machine. The group boasted publicly about digging up Gaza’s pipes and turning them into rockets. It stored weapons in United Nations schools and dug attack tunnels underneath them. (Contrary to what you might have read on social media, Gaza does have underground shelters—they are just used for housing Hamas fighters, smuggling operations, and weapons caches, not protecting civilians.)

When dissenting Gazans attempted to protest this state of affairs and demanded a better future, they were brutally repressed. Hamas has not held elections since 2006. In 2020, when the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman held a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists, Hamas threw him in prison for six months, tortured him, and forced him to divorce his wife. Why? Because his vision of a shared society for Arabs and Jews, however remote, was a threat to the group’s entire worldview. Jews were not to share the land; they were to be cleansed from it.

Simply put, what Hamas did two weekends ago was not a departure from its past, but the natural culmination of its commitments. The question is not why Hamas did what it did, but why so many people were surprised. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, quick to discern anti-Semitism in any effort to merely label Israeli products from West Bank settlements, somehow overlooked the severity of the genocidal threat growing next door. Journalists like me who cover anti-Semitism somehow failed to take Hamas’s overt anti-Jewish ethos as seriously as we should have. Many international leftists, ostensibly committed to equality and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis alike, somehow missed that Hamas did not share that vision, and in fact was actively working to obliterate it.

Today, in the ashes of the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, some analysts have admitted their error of sanitizing Hamas. “It’s a huge mistake that I did, believing that a terror organization can change its DNA,” the former Netanyahu national-security adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. Others on the left have clung to their tortured conception of Hamas as a rational resistance group, despite it having been falsified by events. Perhaps some fear that acknowledging the true nature of Hamas would undermine the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. But in actuality, it is the refusal to disentangle Hamas’s anti-Jewish sadism from the legitimate cause of Palestinian nationalism that threatens the project and saps its support.

In 1922, The New York Times published its first article about Adolf Hitler. The reporter, Cyril Brown, was aware of his subject’s anti-Jewish animus, but he wasn’t buying it. “Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded,” Brown wrote, “and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers.” Two years later, the Times published another news item on the future architect of the Holocaust: “Hitler Tamed by Prison.” The Austrian activist, the piece said, “looked a much sadder and wiser man,” and “his behavior during his imprisonment convinced the authorities that [he] was no longer to be feared.”

Many got Hamas wrong. But they shouldn’t have. Again and again, people say they intend to murder Jews. And yet, century after century, the world produces new, tortuous justifications for why anti-Jewish bigots don’t really mean what they say—even though they do.

[crushpunky]

drew starkey x actress!reader masterlist

blurbs

drew starkey x actress!reader thoughts !!! drew starkey x actress!reader timeline actress!reader background

drew and actress!reader being the best couple for 10 minutes drew and actress!reader do the “we listen and we don’t judge” challenge drew and actress!reader do the suspects challenge

full fics

drew and actress!reader’s first premiere as a couple drew and actress!reader in their new house drew and actress!reader at the venice film festival drew and actress!reader talk about the future drew and actress!reader attend a fashion show drew and actress!reader feel the distance drew tells actress!reader how he feels actress!reader and “big, bad boyfriend” drew actress!reader visits drew on the obx set actress!reader and drew go public actress!reader is worried about drew drew and actress!reader shoot an intense scene actress!reader supports drew at his premiere drew’s lockscreen of actress!reader drew saves actress!reader from the paparazzi drew’s live gets interrupted by actress!reader drew and actress!reader argue about their next steps

interview fics

drew and actress!reader read thirst tweets drew and actress!readers on hot ones drew and actress!reader on the kitten interview drew and actress!reader test how well they know each other drew and actress!reader play the vanity fair game show drew tells a story about actress!reader actress!reader calls drew on phoning it in drew and actress!reader take the “rizz quiz”

moodboards + social media aus

[drew starkey x actress!reader tag] [actress!reader tag]

[justenjoythegossip]

A LOT OF CHRIS’ RECENT PR ISSUES ACTUALLY FALLS ON HIM…

I won’t go as far as some plants from Team Middle/Real who have defended the unfamous talent agency as CAA has proved to be as shady as it gets and that’s putting it mildly but a lot of Chris’ current issues PR wise can be attributed to his own doing and likely input. And I am not even talking about the fact that Chris has signed off on all of this PR rebranding and the tactics used to achieve it since he is the client and actually pays for their expertise and services.

The cringe and alienating content they shoved down our throats…

Some people have drawn the parallel between Chris and Alba’s shitshow with Seb’s former shitshow with Ale, and rightfully so. As clearly, CAA’s stamp is all over some of the content they shoved down our throats. Here are a few examples of pictures that show all the similarities.

However I would argue that the scare videos were very probably Chris and Scott’s idea. And it sure was a good idea originally. During Covid, so many celebrities were desperate to stay in the public eye and their scare videos were a cute way to get some good attention as this banter between two siblings living together during hard times was quite entertaining. At least it was for a while until it felt quite forced. It is still puzzling to me that anyone (Chris?) thought it would be a good idea to have him do the same thing with Alba. As if the dynamic between 2 romantic partners resembled the dynamic existing between two siblings? How didn’t anyone say that the optics of an immature middle aged man play silly games with his teenage looking girlfriend were not only atrocious but humiliating for both participants? And the general public deserved a lot better than this horrifying & badly acted spectacle that turned a lot of people against them right from the start.

The duplicity of playing the victim card to feed the discourse/save face with his fans

I have already talked about this aspect profusely in several posts including these:

Chris has been more than complicit in the little games that has been played at the expense of his fans. He might genuinely dislike her or be depressed but obviously he is an actor and he CAN act. And he did manage to do a much better job at selling their relationship at the Vanity Fair party for their debut when he wanted to for example. So of course, it’s safe to assume he has not only tried to feed the discourse but also tried to gain sympathy from his fans as he has looked purposefully miserable to the point where it was over the top. Do people remember the first pap pictures that were released when he was on the set of The Materialists? He looked so down, sour and miserable but it was short-lived as he then looked ridiculously happy and was smiling from ear to ear and laughing on the barrage of onset pictures we got afterwards. Ad nauseum I should add, which also shows how curated and manufactured it all was.

Side note: I believe that the backlash would not have been this extensive if Chris and Alba had both tried to sell the puppy love better but I suspect the relationship between them was always designed and meant to be controversial to give Chris some much needed edge. I might develop this aspect in another post. 

The crisis of the signing of the inert object and the disastrous PR response

The crisis that resulted from John Cusack posting the picture of Chris signing an inert object was poorly handled to say the least and I suspect it falls exclusively on Chris, for the sole reason that a PR firm would have never handled that crisis in the way that it was done. 

PR 101 tells us the steps you need to take when it comes to handling a PR crisis: acknowledge the issue, own it, apologize for it and then promise a better future. There was none of that here and I suspect it was because Chris didn’t want to apologize as he felt he had done nothing wrong. I won’t discuss his merits as it’s totally irrelevant but I will say that he should have kept quiet if he truly felt that way. 

Because in the PR world, lame-ass apologies are worse than no apology. When the wife of a senate candidate rebuffs antisemitic claims by saying that one of their attorneys is a Jew… well, how can I put it? Not helpful! Drew Barrymore’s crying video after crossing the picket line? Not helpful and deleted! Ashton and Mila Kunis’ apology after defending convicted rapist and scientologist Masterson? Not helpful! However she is about to make a comeback in Knives Out 3 because this is Hollywood and nobody cares if you are a monster or a monster apologist.

To go back to Chris, he should have kept quiet about this issue because he not only drew more attention to the controversy but he also put even more emphasis on what he didn’t apologize for: his silence after being so vocal politically speaking and the backlash he received for associating with Nazis. Not a smart move.

And I suspect CAA did their best to help him by creating a much needed distraction as they basically sacrificed the movie The Materialists for good PR for Chris and Dakota, by releasing an unheard and unseen amount of onset pictures. 

[weclassybouquetfun]

With the series two finale of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE here, there are a number of new interview with the cast and Rollin Jones. So far Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair (paywalled), the L.A. Times, TV Insider, ScreenRant and Decider have posted interviews. Surely, E.W. will hit soon.

NY Times has a new interview with Ben Daniels. Other than one or two interviews ahead of the premiere, Daniels has not done press due to the loss of his husband Ian Gelder (Game of Thrones). In the NYT interview he talks of not being able to watch this season due to the memories it brings back of filming while dealing with his husband's diagnosis.

In one of the interviews Sam Reid doubles down on Jacob Anderson's statement that only he and Sam will ever know what Louis and Lestat say to each other during their reunion.

Some of my favourite twitter reactions over the last few episodes.