#a little iphone parody

[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan Tells All: Becoming Donald Trump, Gaining 15 Pounds and Starring in 2024’s Most Controversial Movie

By Daniel D'Addario

Sebastian Stan Variety Cover Story

It started with the most famous voice on the planet, the one that just won’t shut up.

Sebastian Stan, in real life, sounds very little like Donald Trump, whom he’s playing in the new film “The Apprentice.” Sure, they share a tristate accent — Stan has lived in the city for years and attended Rutgers University before launching his career — but he speaks with none of Trump’s emphasis on his own greatness. Trump dwells, Stan skitters. Trump attempts to draw topics together over lengthy stem-winders (what he recently called “the weave”), while Stan has a certain unwillingness to be pinned down, a desire to keep moving. It takes some coaxing to bring Stan, a man with the upright bearing and square jaw of a matinee idol, to speak about his own process — how hard he worked to conjure a sense Trump, and how he sought to bring out new insights about America’s most scrutinized politician.

“I think he’s a lot smarter than people want to say about him,” Stan says, “because he repeats things consistently, and he’s given you a brand.” Stan would know: He watched videos of Trump on a loop while preparing for “The Apprentice.” In the film, out on Oct. 11, Stan plays Trump as he moves from insecure, aspiring real estate developer to still insecure but established member of the New York celebrity firmament.

We���re sitting over coffee in Manhattan. Stan is dressed down in a black chore coat and black tee, yet he’s anything but a casual conversation partner. He rarely breaks eye contact, doing so only on the occasions when he has something he wants to show me on his iPhone (cracked screen, no case). In this instance, it’s folders of photos and videos labeled “DT” and “DT PHYSICALITY.”

“I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” Stan says. “And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him.” Stan, deep in character, would ad-lib entire scenes at director Ali Abbasi’s urging, drawing on the details he’d learned from watching Trump and reading interviews to understand precisely how to react in each moment.

“Ali could come in on the second take and say, ‘Why don’t you talk a little bit about the taxes and how you don’t want to pay?’ So I had to know what charities they were going to in 1983. Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take this.”

Looking at Stan’s phone, among the endless pictures of Trump, I glimpse thumbnails of Stan’s own face perched in a Trumpian pout and videos of the actor’s preparation just aching to be clicked — or to be stored in the Trump Presidential Library when this is all over in a few months, or in 2029, or beyond.

“I started to realize that I needed to start speaking with my lips in a different way,” Stan says. “A lot of that came from the consonants. If I’m talking, I’m moving forward.” On film, Stan shapes his mouth like he can’t wait to get the plosives out, puckering without quite tipping into parody. “The consonants naturally forced your lips forward.”

“If he did 10% more of what he did, it would become ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Abbasi says. “If he did 10% less, then he’s not conjuring that person. But here’s the thing about Sebastian: He’s very inspired by reality, by research. And that’s also the way I work; if you want to go to strange places, you need to get your baseline reality covered very well.”

A little later, Stan passes me the phone again to show me a selfie of him posing shirtless and revealing two sagging pecs and a bit of a gut. He’s pouting into a mirror. If his expression looks exaggerated, consider that he was in Marvel-movie shape before stepping into the role of the former president; the body transformation happened rapidly and jarringly. Trump’s size is a part of the film’s plot — as Trump’s sense of self inflates, so does he. In a rush to meet the shooting deadline for “The Apprentice,” Abbasi asked Stan, “How much weight can you gain?”

“You’d be surprised,” Stan tells me. “You can gain a lot of weight in two months.” (Fifteen pounds, to be exact.)

Now he’s back in fighting form, but the character has stayed with him. After years of playing second-fiddle agents of chaos — goofball husbands to Margot Robbie’s and Lily James’ characters in “I, Tonya” and Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy,” surly frenemy to Chris Evans’ Captain America in the Marvel franchise — Stan plunged into the id of the man whose appetites have reshaped our world. He had to have a polished enough sense of Trump that he could improvise in character, and enough respect for him to play him as a human being, not a monster.

It’s one of two transformations this year for Stan — and one that might give a talented actor that most elusive thing: a brand of his own. He’s long been adjacent enough to star power that he could feel its glow, but he hasn’t been the marquee performer. While his co-stars have found themselves defined by the projects he’s been in — from “Captain America” and “I, Tonya” back to his start on “Gossip Girl” — he’s spent more than a decade in the public eye while evading being defined at all.

This fall promises to be the season that changes all that: Stan is pulling double duty with “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” (in theaters Sept. 20), in which he plays a man afflicted with a disfiguring tumor disorder who — even when presented with a fantastical treatment that makes him look like, well, Sebastian Stan — can’t be cured of ailments of the soul. For “A Different Man,” Stan won the top acting prize at the Berlin Film Festival; for “The Apprentice,” the sky’s the limit, if it can manage to get seen. (More on that later.)

One reason Stan has largely evaded being defined is that he’s never the same twice, often willing to get loopy or go dark in pursuit of his characters’ truths. That’s all the more true this year: In “The Apprentice,” he’s under the carapace of Trumpiness; in “A Different Man,” his face is hidden behind extensive prosthetics.

“In my book, if you’re the good-looking, sensitive guy 20 movies in a row, that’s not a star for me,” says Abbasi, who compares Stan to Marlon Brando — an actor eager to play against his looks. “You’re just one of the many in the factory of the Ken dolls.”

This fall represents Stan’s chance to break out of the toy store once and for all. His Winter Soldier brought a jolt of evil into Captain America’s world, and his Jeff Gillooly was the devil sitting on Tonya Harding’s shoulder. Now Stan is at the center of the frame, playing one of the most divisive characters imaginable. So he’s showing us where he can go. The spotlight is his, and so is the risk that comes with it.

Why take such a risk?

The script for “The Apprentice,” which Stan first received in 2019, but which took years to come together, made him consider the American dream, the one that Trump achieved and is redefining.

Stan emigrated with his mother, a pianist, from communist Romania as a child. “I was raised always aware of the American dream: America being the land of opportunity, where dreams come true, where you can make something of yourself.” He pushes the wings of his hair back to frame his face, a gold signet ring glinting in the late-summer sunlight, and, briefly, I can hear a hint of Trump’s directness of approach. “You can become whoever you want, if you just have a good idea.” Stan’s good idea has been to play the lead in movies while dodging the formulaic identity of a leading man, and this year will prove just how far he can take it.

“The Apprentice” seemed like it would never come together before suddenly it did. This time last year, Stan was sure it was dead in the water, and he was OK with that. “If this movie is not happening, it’s because it’s not meant to happen,” he recalls thinking. “It will not be because I’m too scared and walk away.”

Called in on short notice and filming from November 2023 to January of this year (ahead of a May premiere in Cannes), Stan lent heft and attitude to a character arc that takes Trump from local real estate developer in the 1970s to national celebrity in the 1980s. He learns the rough-and-tumble game of power from the ruthless and hedonistic political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), eventually cutting the closeted Cohn loose as he dies of AIDS and alienating his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) in the process. (In a shocking scene, Donald sexually assaults Ivana in their Trump Tower apartment.) For all its edginess, the film is about Trump’s personality — and the way it calcified into a persona — rather than his present-day politics. (Despite its title, it’s set well before the 2004 launch of the reality show that finally made Trump the superstar he longed to be.)

And despite the fact that Trump has kept America rapt since he announced his run for president in 2015, Hollywood has been terrified of “The Apprentice.” The film didn’t sell for months after Cannes, an unusual result for a major English-language competition film, partly because Trump’s legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter attempting to block the film’s release in the U.S. while the fest was still ongoing. When it finally sold, it was to Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor so small that the production has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money so that it will be able to stay in theaters.

Yes, Hollywood may vote blue, but it’s not the same town that released “Fahrenheit 9/11” or even “W.,” let alone a film that depicts the once (and possibly future) president raping his wife. (The filmmakers stand behind that story. “The script is 100% backed by my own interviews and historical research,” says Gabriel Sherman, the screenwriter and a journalist who covers Trump and the American conservative movement. “And it’s important to note that it is not a documentary. It’s a work of fiction that’s inspired by history.”) Entertainment corporations from Netflix to Disney would be severely inconvenienced if the next president came into office with a grudge against them.

“I am quite shocked, to be honest,” Abbasi says. “This is not a political piece. It’s not a hit piece; it’s not a hatchet job; it’s not propaganda. The fact that it’s been so challenging is shocking.” Abbasi, born in Iran, was condemned by his government over his last film, “Holy Spider,” and cannot safely return. He sees a parallel in the response to “The Apprentice.” “OK, that’s Iran — that is unfortunately expected. But I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Everything with this film has been one day at a time,” Stan says. The actor chalks up the film’s divisiveness to a siloed online environment. “There are a lot of people who love reading the [film’s] Wikipedia page and throwing out their opinions,” he says, an edge entering his voice. “But they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. That’s a popular sport now online, apparently.”

Unprompted, Stan brings up the idea that Trump is so widely known that some might think a biographical film about him serves no purpose. “When someone says, ‘Why do we need this movie? We know all this,’ I’ll say, ‘Maybe you do, but you haven’t experienced it. The experience of those two hours is visceral. It’s something you can hopefully feel — if you still have feelings.’”

After graduating from Rutgers in 2005, Stan found his first substantial role on “Gossip Girl,” playing troubled rich kid Carter Baizen. Like teen soaps since time immemorial, “Gossip Girl” was a star-making machine. “It was the first time I was in serious love with somebody,” he says. (He dated the series’ star, Leighton Meester, from 2008 to 2010.) He feels nostalgic for that moment: “Walking around the city, seeing these same buildings and streets — life seemed simpler.”

Stan followed his “Gossip Girl” gig with roles on the 2009 NBC drama “Kings,” playing a devious gay prince in an alternate-reality modern world governed by a monarchy, and the 2012 USA miniseries “Political Animals,” playing a black-sheep prince (and once again a gay man) of a different sort — the son of a philandering former president and an ambitious former first lady.

When I ask him what lane he envisioned himself in as a young actor, he shrugs off the question. “I grew up with a single mom, and I didn’t have a lot of male role models. I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to be. And at some point, I was like, I could just be a bunch of things.”

Which might seem challenging when one is booked to play the same character, Bucky Barnes, in Marvel movie after Marvel movie. Bucky’s adventures have been wide-ranging — he’s been brainwashed and turned evil and then brought back to the home team again, all since his debut in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Next year, he’ll anchor the summer movie “Thunderbolts,” as the leader of a squad of quirky heroes played by, among others, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Florence Pugh. It’s easy to wonder if this has come to feel like a cage of sorts.

Not so, says Stan. His new Marvel film “was kind of like ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ — a guy coming into this group that was chaotic and degenerate, and somehow finding a way to unite them.”

Lately, knives have been out for Marvel movies as some have disappointed at the box office, and “Thunderbolts,” which endured strike delays and last-minute cast changes, has been under scrutiny.

“It’s become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films],” Stan says. “And that’s fine. Everyone’s got an opinion. But they’re a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well. This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery that’s Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge.” He adds, “Sometimes I get protective of it because the intention is really fucking good. It’s just fucking hard to make a good movie over and over again.”

Which may account for an eagerness to try something new. “In the last couple of years,” he says, “I’ve gotten much more aggressive about pursuing things that I want, and I’m constantly looking for different ways of challenging myself.”

The challenge continued throughout the shoot of “The Apprentice,” as Stan pushed the material. “One of the most creatively rewarding parts of the process was how open Sebastian was to giving notes on the script but also wanting to go beyond the script,” says Sherman, the screenwriter. “If he was interested in a certain aspect of a scene, he was like, Can you find me a quote?” he recalls.

Building a dynamic through improvised scenes, Stan and Strong stayed in character throughout the “Apprentice” shoot. “I was doing an Ibsen play on Broadway,” says Strong, who won a Tony in June for his performance in “An Enemy of the People,” “and he came backstage afterwards. And it was like — I’d never really met Sebastian, and I don’t think he’d ever met me. So it was nice to meet him.”

Before the pair began acting together, they didn’t rehearse much — “I’m not a fan of rehearsals,” Strong says. “I think actors are best left in their cocoon, doing their work, and then trusted to walk on set and be ready.” The two didn’t touch the script together until cameras went up — though they spent a preproduction day, Strong says, playing games in character as Donald and Roy.

After filming, both have kept memories of the hold their characters had on them. They shared a flight back from Telluride — a famously bumpy trip out of the mountains. “He’s a nervous flyer, and I’m a nervous flyer,” Stan says. Both marveled at the fact that they’d contained their nerves on the first day of shooting “The Apprentice,” when their characters traveled together via helicopter. “We both go, ‘Yeah — but there was a camera.’”

Stan’s aggressive approach to research came in handy on “A Different Man,” which shot before “The Apprentice.” His character’s disorder, neurofibromatosis, is caused by a genetic mutation and presents as benign tumors growing in the nervous system. After being healed, he feels a growing envy for a fellow sufferer who seems unbothered by his disability.

Stan’s co-star, Adam Pearson, was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis in early childhood. Stan found the experience challenging to render faithfully. “I said many times, I can do all the research in the world, but am I ever going to come close to this?” Stan says. “How am I going to ever do this justice?”

Plus, he had precious little time to prepare: “He was fully on board, and the film was being made weeks later,” director Aaron Schimberg says. “Zero to 60 in a matter of weeks.”

The actor grappled for something to hold on to, and Pearson sug gested he refer to his own experience of fame. “Adam said to me, ‘You know what it’s like to be public property,’” Stan says.

Pearson recalls describing the experience to Stan this way: “While you don’t understand the invasiveness and the staring and the pointing that I’ve grown up with, you do know what it’s like to have the world think you owe them something.”

That sense of alienation becomes universal through the film’s storytelling: “A Different Man” takes its premise as the jumping-off point for a deep and often mordant investigation of who we all are underneath the skin.

The film was shot in 22 days in a New York City heat wave, and there was, Schimberg says, “no room for error. I would get four or five takes, however many I could squeeze out, but there’s no coverage.”

Through it all, Stan’s performance is utterly poised — Schimberg and Stan discussed Buster Keaton as a reference for his ability to be “completely stone-faced” amid chaos, the director says. And the days were particularly long because Oscar-nominated prosthetics artist Michael Marino was only able to apply Stan’s makeup in the early morning, before going to his job on the set of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

“Even though I wasn’t shooting until 11 a.m., I would go at like 5 in the morning to his studio, or his apartment,” Stan recalls. The hidden advantage was that Stan had hours to kill while made up like his character, the kind of person the world looks past. “I wanted to walk around the city and see what happened,” Stan says. “On Broadway, one of the busiest streets in New York, no one’s looking at me. It’s as if I’m not even there.” The other reaction was worse: “Somebody would immediately stop and very blatantly hit their friend, point, take a picture.”

It was a study in empathy that flowed into the character. Stan had spoken to Pearson’s mother, who watched her son develop neurofibromatosis before growing into a disability advocate and, eventually, an actor. “She said to me, ‘All I ever wanted was for someone to walk in his shoes for a day,’” Stan recalls. “And I guess that was the closest I had ever come.”

“The Apprentice” forced Stan, and forces the viewer, to do the same with a figure that some 50% of the electorate would sooner forget entirely. And that lends the film its controversy. Those on the right, presupposing that the movie is an anti-Trump document, have railed against it. In a statement provided to Variety, a Trump campaign spokesman said, “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.” The campaign threatened a lawsuit, though none has materialized.

Asked about the assault scene, Stan notes that Ivana had made the claim in a deposition, but later walked it back. “Is it closer to the truth, what she had said directly in the deposition or something that she retracted?” he asks. “They went with the first part.”

The movie depicts, too, Ivana’s carrying on with her marriage after the violation, which may be still more devastating. “How do you overcome something like this?” asks Bakalova. “Do you have to put on a mask that everything is fine? In the next scene, she’s going to play the game and pretend that we’re the glamorous, perfect couple.” The Trumps, in “The Apprentice,” live in a world of paper-thin images, one that grows so encompassing that Donald no longer feels anything for the people to whom he was once loyal. They’re props in his stage show.

“The Apprentice” will drop in the midst of the most chaotic presidential election of our lifetime. “The way it lands in this extremely polarized situation, for me as an artist, is exciting. I won’t lie to you,” says Abbasi.

When asked if he was concerned about blowback from a Trump 47 presidency, Stan says, “You can’t do this movie and not be thinking about all those things, but I really have no idea. I’m still in shock from going from an assassination attempt to the next weekend having a president step down [from a reelection bid].”

Stan’s job, as he sees it, was to synthesize everything he’d absorbed — all those videos on his phone — into a person who made sense. This Trump had to be part of a coherent story, not just the flurry of news updates to which we’ve become accustomed.

“You can take a Bach or a Beethoven, and everyone’s going to play that differently on the piano, right?” Stan says. (His pianist mother named him for Johann Sebastian Bach.) “So this is my take on what I’ve learned. I have to strip myself of expectations of being applauded for this, if people are going to like it or people are going to hate it. People are going to say whatever they want. Hopefully they should think at least before they say it.”

It’s a reality that Stan is now used to — the work is the work, and the way people interpret him is none of his business. Perhaps that’s why he has run away from ever being the same thing twice. “I could sit with you today and tell you passionately what my truth is, but it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Because people are more interested in a version of you that they want to see, rather than who you are.”

“The Apprentice” has been the subject of extreme difference of opinion by many who have yet to see it. It’s been read — and will continue to be after its release — as anti-Trump agitprop. The truth is chewier and more complicated, and, perhaps, unsuited for these times.

“Are we going to live in a world where anyone knows what the truth is anymore? Or is it just a world that everyone wants to create for themselves?” Stan asks.

His voice — the one that shares a slight accent with Trump but that is, finally, Stan’s own — is calm and clear. “People create their own truth right now,” he says. “That’s the only thing that I’ve made peace with; I don’t need to twist your arm if that’s what you want to believe. But the way to deal with something is to actually confront it.”

[territorialufo]

i give in can you tell me about that little iphone binch

YESS YES I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT THE LITTLE IPHONE BINCH !!!!!!!!! this is literally just rambling im so sorry. There's a lot of text blocks in the beginning but the end has more pics and silly stuff 

Also ii spoilers but its hard to talk abt mephone without getting into the recent stuff so whatever 

Under cut cause this got. Really long. whoops

Context/background of II/mephone 

“Inanimate Insanity” (ii) is a web animation originally released in 2011, considered the second “major” object show after BFDI. btw an object show is a genre of web series that features anthropomorphized inanimate objects competing for some kind of prize. I am NOT the right person to ask about object shows cause the only one ive ever been invested in to this extent is ii and theres SOO many other ones out there LMAO. Ok sorry i sounded like a bot for a second there JUST PROVIDING CONTEXT!! Inanimate Insanity’s structure is kind of interesting because it starts out as a silly comedy in s1 and most of s2 before descending into a really drama heavy storyline, with tension caused both by mephone’s past haunting him and conflict between the contestants themselves. Then suddenly s2 goes on a four year hiatus and animationepic (main youtube channel) launches s3 with new characters and artstyle, seemingly completely ditching the plot they had in s2??? IM NOT GONNA GET TOO INTO ALL THAT but it all works out timeline wise so its chill the tone switch was just rly funny at the time 😭😭😭 

ANYWAYYYY mephone. Mephone4. Mister phone. Four. The one and only four. MeFon! MePhone4 (parodying the IPhone4) is the de facto host of the in-universe reality show “Inanimate Insanity”!! As the host, he has speaking lines in nearly every episode which is super awesome and epic for mephone4 enjoyers (me). His initial vibe was inspired by Chris McClean from TDI, and was even voiced by Christian Potenza in the first episode before being switched to Mark Katz, who is the father of the creator of II, Adam Katz, which is also pretty cool i think. Since Mark Katz is a grown ass dude, mephone just has. The same voice for like the entire series SHDHF everyone else’s voices are changing and stuff as the creators got older but mephone just sounds like a middle aged man for all of it 😭I love it tho this isn’t a criticism!!! As the years go by it gets more and more expressive :) s1 is. rough. considering it was made by a bunch of kids, its very much a product of its time lol

Lore/character 

Ok lore time cause the thing w mephone is most of his backstory was kind of just hinted at (or implied with the existence of Apple irl). Like in s1 there was the introduction of mephone4s and 5, but otherwise, not much (as far as I can remember. I watched s1 when i was a kid so its been a while lmao). Then there was s2e8 where the contestants go to headquarters and we meet steve cobs (yes, like steve jobs), who’s his creator and dad?? Again some hints are dropped but nothing concrete about their relationship. And then BOOM. SEASON 2 EPISODE 13. “Mine Your Own Business” was my fave II ep for sooo long (idk what my fave is now tbh) cause THE MEPHONE LORE DROP??????? IT WAS CRAZY and also the ending of the episode with fan’s monologue and the soundtrack “shell of a fan” is my fave in the show ANYWAY ANYWAY so begins the remembering of the Horrors. 

He was “born” in Meeple Headquarters, and PLEASE KNOW THAT HE WAS BORN AN ADULT OH MY GOD there are some clowns who think hes literally 14 years old bc thats how old the iphone4 is USE YOUR BRAIN USE YOUR BRAIN AAAAA right so he basically knows nothing about the world, confined to headquarters until his eventual escape. Cobs and mephone have a pretty interesting dynamic, where cobs has most of the power. The way Cobs praises mephone but later shoots him down is so AUHGHGHGH. It’s an oppressive environment he's living in, only expected to do assigned tasks and shamed for any genuine interests, while having the pressure to impress his creator on his shoulders at the threat of being discarded. Mephone grows to hate and fear cobs, but at the same time, cobs is the only person whos known him since the beginning.

The way literally every problem mephone has can be traced back to his origin/how he was raised is so crazy. Like even before the s2e16 twist, it was extremely prevalent??? There are a bunch of analysis posts that explain it way better than I could but MANNNN for a show that the crew started when they were literally 13, they were able to tie things together pretty well, i think! 

It’s been pretty obvious since s2e13 that hosting Inanimate Insanity is just one big escapist fantasy for mephone, one where he is free to do as he pleases while ignoring all the trauma he sustained in “childhood”. Cause it’s implied he escaped Meeple, deleted his bad memories, and then started s1 right after. I mean, it makes sense, since outside of the cold, mechanical nature of Meeple, the only warmth he got was from his enjoyment of reality tv shows. If s1 is an amnesia mephone, and s2 is a spiraling mephone, then I’d describe s3 as “escapism but worse” mephone. It doesn’t ever get as gloomy as s2, but s3 has steady background reminders of “hey guys remember mephone is running away from all his problems right now!!” until it all comes to head in the finale. Some ppl dislike how mephone-centric the show’s gotten, but honestly idgaf more for me

I do want to say that he is very flawed, though. Esp near the beginning, he is really fucking rude and does not respect his contestants at all and frequently belittles them and puts them in mortal danger. he tends to view them and everything that happens to them through the lens of “its just part of the show!!!!”. He tends to brush off everyone’s problems, no matter how serious, even when he’s the one that caused them.

His reality show host personality is all a very big facade to cover up how he feels about the past (thus further submerging him in the fantasy of Inanimate Insanity). Like previous users have mentioned, this is likely due to the fact that he had no one to learn HOW to be empathetic/kind from besides reality television (which is known to be exaggerated for drama) and cobs (who is his abuser) But I famously do enjoy characters who are kind of dickheads, the confidence being a mask is like a tasty bonus to me.

The dichotomy between his arrogant host exterior and paranoid/anxious interior is really interesting and fun to watch. Compared to his relatively sweet/naive beginning personality, it’s wild to see just how much he’s changed since then because of everything that’s happened.  His relationships with the rest of the characters is also interesting, cause despite being their host, he isn’t very close with a lot of them. Other than maybe Bot, who I believe he feels kinship with since they're both robots who freed themselves from the expectations of others. Same with Mepad, since they’re both from Meeple. 

He’s a robot, but in an emotional/psychological sense, is basically a normal person/object (person is synonymous with object in this case). He feels like a person despite being an AI. which makes cobs a lot worse imo, he mistreats all his creations, but at least the other newer mephones are barely “feeling” at all, unlike 4.

Basically, 

Cobs: i have engineered a machine that is functionally a person

Everyone: you fucked up a perfectly good phone is what you did. Look at him. He’s got ptsd. 

Not to get too into ii16/17, but they basically recontextualized the entire series and made what we initially thought about mephone’s escapist tendencies and origins a million times worse. Bro was so tormented he subconsciously made his OCs come to life 😭😭😭all while projecting all his issues onto them??? Psychologically sound individual activities. Additionally, the way he was created is also. Terrible. Cobs basically invaded an alien planet, kidnapped an alien kid, and then presumably used its energy to create mephone4. Outer space colonization? In MY object show? yes!

Ok now im just gonna talk about random stuff i like about him  

His powers are so cool.,.,,. Esp as a foil to cobs/mephonex, who could represent destruction, he represents creation with his generation ability. Also something abt using his powers for non violent reasons when his creation was built upon violence uhh idk. And I think the screen turning green and the sound effect is very satisfying dlsjkfg. Oh and the fact that he canonically had to practice to get better at it? In the flashbacks he’s shown having trouble generating even a simple tree, and now he can make pretty much anything with minimal effort. 

Also MeLife, which allows him to bring contestants back from the dead, is an ability unique to him, which is super cool!!

He can create portals as well and this is never explained. He can just suddenly do it KDLJFGH this kind of renders Mepad’s teleportation ability useless but it's still fun. 

I like when he uses his face as an actual screen :)

Something something robot related stuff

He is not waterproof and will malfunction or even die when wet

His speaking function can be disabled by other people

Glitches while talking sometimes!! Delightful 

Something that gets overlooked often I think is the s1 finale, where mephone4S (mephone4's brother) basically killed himself to save mephone4 by downgrading his own OS. Technically, mephone isn’t even in his original body anymore, he’s inhabiting his brother’s. Fun!

this is unrelated but he got shot in the face with a gun once. there havent been any guns since unfortunately

Get yoinked idiot 

In conclusion, 

I heart him and im sad ii is gonna be ending soon thx for reading

[gaykarstaagforever]

If you haven't been "blessed" yet with iPhone 16 ads...oh man. Are you in for some shit!

First of all, all of them are 3 minutes long, and are mostly some guy just saying things in front of a spa...? And the things he is saying are a parody of absolutely everything wrong with modern tech, and the shitty techbro demand that we all integrate their lying, incoherent chat-bot code into every aspect of our lives (and pay them for it, of course).

This ad blitz is unreal. I can't imagine how much they paid for this. ALL of my at-work, unsubscribed YouTube Music ads were this, for 3 hours. All of them, 3 minutes long. It put that inexplicable Donald Duck Hot Ones mini-movie to shame, in both length and sheer infuriating pointlessness.

"If you are replying to a Stack message from your boss, this fucking phone can rephrase it so it has a more professional tone!"

Yes, because the thing the world needs most right now is a robot that helps the most helplessly stupid people imaginable not say "buttfucker" in a work email.

Most of us already have human brains that can do this, with very little effort. How is "we will help unqualified dipshits keep high-paying jobs they suck at" a feature?

Grammerly has already been selling this "feature" for awhile now, and it begged the same question when they started this: why is tech specifically helping awful people keep jobs they clearly aren't qualified for, because they lack any basic interest in being professional to coworkers?

Why would techbros think THAT is a good idea? One wonders!

Serious, find these ads and watch them. No one will ever be able to parody this moment in tech as well as what Apple just seriously produced.

Also, think about this: you know how autocorrect is annoying, and you kind of want to turn it off most of the time? (And you should. It makes you a better writer. Try it.)

Now imagine that every time you write a thing on your phone, the phone stops you from sending / posting it, and a confused algorithm based on 200+ years of stolen books rewrites it for you. And you have to look over that nonsense before you tell it no, stupid, I'm not Mary Shelley writing a thesis paper to submit to General Electric's President in 1972. Because that is exactly what this shit is going to do to you. All the time.

And you paid for this. Because they told you they were smashing this garbage into your camera rectangle, and you paid $1300 or more for it. Because...you want to impress terrible people?

I'm an Android guy, so I don't ever understand why people buy Apple's overpriced equivalents (they ARE built better and DO last longer. But unless you plan to keep this phone for 10 years, and you do not, it doesn't matter.)

You buy an iPhone 16, with integrated Apple Intelligence, to impress other (white) people at the chain bars you go to in your pressed khakis and boat shoes. Because there needs to be more unwitting victims of your 45 seconds of sex. But outside of that very specific usage case, you will come to hate what this device does to your daily phone experience.

...Unless of course you are the type of person who routinely sends texts to the office cleaning lady, rife with racist sexual harassment. In that very specific situation, this WILL improve your life.

And we as a society should really stand up against these kinds of people ruining absolutely everything for their very peculiar benefit.

Because most of us know how to think, and at a professional level, know how to turn that into formal writing. Elementary schools teach that. Even the bad ones. No one needs tech to do this for us. Except the terrible people trying to flog these unnecessary phones to other sad fucking losers.

[fenmere]

Writing Questionaire (tag game)

thank you @the-letterbox-archives for tagging us! this is a writing questionnaire. It's a long one!

about us

when did you start writing?

we started writing poetry in 3rd grade we started trying to write novels in 6th grade and just couldn't we started writing vignettes in 9th grade we started writing massive amounts of poetry just after high school we started writing in social media posts in 1995 we started writing short stories in 1997 we started writing a webcomic in 2000 and then we started writing massive amounts of novels in 2019

are there genres/themes you enjoy reading different to the ones you write?

We write science fiction/fantasy and that's our favorite genre to read. But we also love just about anything else if it's good and recommended by someone we trust. Mysteries are wonderful, biographies and autobiographies are delightful, non-fiction books about all sorts of subjects, historical fiction, comedy, parody, etc. We haven't read a romance yet.

is there an author you want to emulate, or one to whom you're often compared?

We draw from Ursual K. LeGuinn, Octavia Butler, Rivers Solomon, Glen Cook, Akwaeki Emezi, C.J. Cherryh, and Jack L. Chalker, mostly.

can you tell me a little about your writing space?

We wrote our first and second book on an iPhone 5S using our right thumb, on bus rides. Now, we also frequently write at our desk with our computer, which is in the livingroom, with our own pieces of artwork surrounding us, as well as a couple of gundams, some models of the Sunspot and Spindrift from our stories, and a porcelain doll named Akailea.

what's your most effective way to muster up some muse?

Reading other books, watching movies, and listening to music. That can take months if we're between book ideas. Once we have a book idea, if it clicks, there's no effort. We just sit down and write. But, having a playlist for the book helps move it along, and helps us focus when everything else is being distracting.

did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and places you write about?

Absolutely. Utterly and entirely.

are there any recurring themes of your writing, and if so, do they surprise you at all?

Yes, and not at all. We write about what we care about. And we explore all the different angles of it that we can: plurality, autism, gender diversity, intersex bodies, therianthropy, alienation, consent and autonomy, bullying, fascism, resistance, activism, etc.

my characters

would you please tell me about your current favourite character?

We don't have a single favorite character. However, Phage appears in almost all of our stories for a reason. The way that we depict it in our stories is true to its real life identity. So, it can kind of be easy to see why we write about it a lot. It's sort of our spiritual hero. You can read it's blog here: @ohthatphage It is a monster and a law of nature and not a living thing but it lives while in our vessel, and it nearly killed us, but it is also our greatest protector and advocate.

which of your characters do you think you'd be friends with in real life?

They are us! We are friends (and family) of all of them. In real life. For real. Even the villains (because they play villains in our books, not in real life).

which of your characters would you dislike most if you met them?

We've met all of them. They are us. We each have different opinions of each other. We're not going to say which of us is the least popular.

tell me more about the process of coming up with your characters.

Well. Usually, we have a role in a story that needs to be filled, and then we give the character in that role and name, and that summons or creates a headmate to fill that role, and then they tell us who they are and start roleplaying out their part of the script, and it goes from there. It's all very stream of consciousness. Sometimes it works better than others. Some of our headmates aren't very enthusiastic about participating in the stories they've been called to. But most of the time it works out.

do you notice any recurring themes/traits among your characters?

Since they are all heatmates and we're all autistic, they're all autistic in different ways. Sometimes we try to have a character who is not autistic, canonically, but honestly they still really are. Similarly, we can't really write a character who isn't ace.

how do you picture your characters?

Vividly! They do sometimes have pretty vague appearances in the beginning, but as we write them and their headmate-actors embody the role more and more, their visages become quite detailed and animated. It gets to the point where we can sometimes draw them pretty well as if working from a model.

my writing

what's your reason for writing?

To live. We live most thoroughly through either reading or writing. And when we don't have stories that are good enough to read, we must write. We also reproduce through writing. In a variety of ways. It prompts us to create new headmates, which always feels good. But also, it puts these fictional versions of ourselves out there that can then become fictives in other systems. And in that way we'll have children that can outlive our own body.

is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating coming from your readers?

"well fuck I wish that was real" and the very simple "thank you for writing this" - both the best comments we've ever gotten.

how do you want to be thought of by those who read your work?

as people who can now live in your head and help you live a happier life

what do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

we outnumber Portland

what have you been frequently told by others is your greatest strength as a writer?

we haven't been told anything by anybody yet

how do you feel about your own writing?

we write it mostly for ourselves, we live it, we reread it frequently and regularly, and we relive it, and it makes us feel OK with existence when we otherwise would not

if you were the last person on earth and knew your writing would never be read by another human, would you still write?

absolutely, because it would be read by us. We're not human, but we are constant having more children, and they need good stories to read

when you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely what you enjoy? if it’s a mix of the two, which holds the most influence?

We know that what we enjoy and need is something that some few other people need and enjoy. And while we write primarily for ourselves, we share our work for the people who are like us who yearn for writing that is like ours, for the kinds of stories we write, that most of the rest of the world never writes. We write primarily about plurality, in all sorts of different forms and variations, and what it means to be plural, in heroic fiction. And none of our plural systems are villains so far. And you just don't really get that in any traditionally published books, comics, or movies.

Tag yourself and answer this please.

[wroteonedad]

Grace Lau's Portraits In a Chinese Studio

I walked into the gallery a couple of days ago. One singular painting caught my eye immediately. There were two dogs. They were sat on chairs. They were looking directly into the camera as if they were little divas who wanted to be seen. They were placed on these two seats with an entire traditional Chinese portrait background behind them. I couldn't look away.

During the Victorian times, western people would often include Chinese people in their portraits, presenting them as 'exotic beings' and unusual creatures. Lau's project Portraits In a Chinese Studio is something that portrays the narrative, but also reverses the roles for 21st Century subjects.

The project has been something of major interest to Lau for years. It all began in the turn of the 21st Century where Lau was studying archival images and documents of a variation of different cultures in East Asia as well as the West to figure out the way in which people communicated with each other through images during the 19th Century as well as the early 20th Century. Lau teamed up with art historian Lynn Pan to publish the book Picturing The Chinese: Early Western Photographs and Postcards of China.

Below are two images taken from Lau's website, highlighting some of the images she found in the archives.

In terms of times when the camera was first invented, many Westerners would travel to the East, places such as Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing where they would take photos of these people, displaying them as exotic creatures. These photographers did not capture someone from the East the same way that a painting of the Royal Family would portray. Instead they hyperfocused on elements such as bound feet, opium smokers, beggars' things that would make these people appear different and exotic.

The photographic project launched in the summer of 2005 when Lau arrived in Hastings, setting up a backdrop and inviting people to come along to have their portrait made. It blended all of the research created for the book and put everything on a practical scale. It brought in a huge selection of people. Families, friends, lovers, all who have walked the planet and created so many of their own stories. It was made like a celebration of culture, but asked so many questions simultaneously. What were we all doing in these images posing in front of very traditional Chinese backdrops? The whole project is essentially parodying how ethnic minorities were captured in historic paintings and wanted this to be shown the other way in these portraits. The way in which people don't really think about things unless the role is directly reversed and suddenly they are the people finding themselves in that particular place. The studio space is created as a 'mock' which features a selection of traditional Chinese furniture from its choice of chairs to the stuffed panda toy which is later replaced with a cow print rug on its rerun of the project. The original project was named '21st Century Types' in which it was focused mainly on the artists research into 19th Century and early 20th Century photographers.

In 2023 Lau once again set up a reboot of the project, this time basing it in Southampton. She once again had people book in to have their free portrait made and that everyone would have their image emailed to them. She encouraged people partaking in the project to bring their modern contemporary items with them into the space such as their iPhones or Prime fidget spinners. In one of the images, a bubble tea was perfectly placed in the centre of the table to add a layer of confusion over initial first look.

The project itself is also something that feels personal to her. Lau frequently speaks of her past and how people find it unbelievable that she speaks English and how many of these people will ask her where she learned the language. She studied at a girls grammar school in Highgate. It was these situations that also influenced Lau to create the mockup of a Chinese studio, in which she would be able to spin it the other way round, that it would be a concept which would make for conversation among others.

The project went live to the public for the Lunar New Year with a new collection on show at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. I think the project is fantastic and a deeper dive into the history of it is even better. It's something which is easy to understand, but can easily be enjoyed from every aspect. I really love this set of work, I love the rich colours of the studio used for the 2023 images. The second I saw them on what would otherwise be a dull gallery wall, I couldn't look away. I wanted to be stood there for hours viewing the images across that wall.

As an extra little footnote for this piece, I found a really interesting interview with Lau where she discusses that project, but also some of her background in more detail here

[mirrorwitcx]

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and many more, buy today and you get the headphones for it for half the price!

[tsitra360]

The Notch by Tsitra360

If you dont get it, Apple released iPhone x, large screen display with a notch at top for the cameras. Applejack has a notch in her hat. BAM, theres the joke. lol

[spagheddiesquash]

okay actually im gonna go on a little ramble about the later half of the 2010s (2016-2019, commonly referred to as just 2016 if I remember correctly because everybody lumps the years together. not saying im not guilty of doing that too sometimes though!) alr so I actually really liked it back then??? though thats probably because I hardly had anyone to talk about Undertale with irl and I was just super happy that somewhere out there in the world there were people who wouldn’t think I was weird for liking that stuff 💀💀💀

anyway back then I was unto Undertale, cuphead, BATIM, baldi’s basics, ddlc, hello neighbor, you get the idea, but mostly UT. I also was really into gravity falls!! I would make gacha life stories all the time and id listen to those stronger than you Undertale things, which by the way I honestly think we should just call what it is, that being an Undertale song because imo it got made a lot more popular from Undertale parodies, but thats just from my perspective because I could never really get into SU lmao

this is what my phone looked like in I think 2019?? the last year in the era but it still says something about me back then. I had a dinky lil iPhone 6S I believe?? I remember getting it for Christmas I think. I also had an iPad mini for pretty much this whole era, but i dont think I have any good screenshots of the Home Screen.

(the reason I even have these us because I screen recorded myself playing Minecraft and also was getting receipts that I was being picked on relentlessly via Snapchat)

as you may have noticed, I had framecast! (I was UTforever67 if any other former framecast users find this) and I was on it frequently back then! I continued using it until the shutdown last year but less frequently. anyway, another sorta interesting thing I guess?? I used to use ÚwÙ and OwO unironically. As well as aua, eue, qwq, ;-;, UnU, OnO, :3, :P and just about any other sort of those emoticons you can think of, and id say stuff like “im a smol kawaii potato :3 dont touch mah cookies ÒwÓ”

another sorta interesting detail! so I had this 2DS, which I still have, I just need to buy a charger for.

and now, on this 2DS I had YouTube. I would plug my headphones in and watch some Undertale videos, top 10 videos (not like watchmojo, think trendcrave and planet Dolan), and the one that I think of the most looking back on this time; gravity falls amvs to edgy music.

the one I remember watching the most was to a song called my demons by a band called starset. I loved the song so much that I would plug in my headphones, make my 2DS screen face down on my bed so no light peeked out, and I would go to sleep to the amv. if you were to travel back in time to then and find me sleeping, chances are you’d very faintly hear that song playing.

sometimes I would also look for 10 hour versions of Undertale songs on YouTube and put them on my tv in my room. I would always wake up to the video still playing obviously, since I sleep for like seven hours, not ten. man, that was always fun waking up to a song like Undertale, home or quiet water. I would always watch Undertale as vines on that tv too, since I liked vines and Undertale and I always thought it was funny to see what vines people thought the characters were most like.

I know animation memes were a super big thing back then, and I remember making three of them: higher, wonderland and close up. besides that I didn’t watch too many of them actually, apart from the occasional compilation.

another thing that I talked about before like a year ago, there was a short period of time where all I listened to was Undertale music and royalty free music. yknow, like the stuff they play in YouTube outros. and I used to save as many monstercat albums as I could to piece together the lore (for those who dont know, there were 30 monstercat albums that had pictures on the covers that told a story of sorts. I only made full sense of the lore just a few weeks ago actually! Id be happy to explain if anyone wants). I loved the Undertale fan songs and lyric covers and remixes a lot! I would always sing the tokyovania control lyric cover whenever I was outside in my backyard. so cool that tokyovania is apparently a mashup of megalovania and Tokyo teddy bear. had no idea sharax was a vocaloid fan!

ok so that was kind of a lot I think. ramble over lmao. if anyone has questions about anything I mentioned ask away! I know a lot about everything I mentioned heheh 😅

[entities-of-posts]

IN REGARDS TO THE EYE: i've always been one to take on other people's fears, courtesy of high empathy. the earliest example i can remember is watching toy story and a weird iPhone parody on youtube as a child and becoming convinced that if i did not treat my stuffed animals with care - or god forbid shelve them -, they would come alive in the night and smother me to death.

when i was unfortunately allowed on the internet at a much too tender age, i read a tumblr post in which the poster described being terrified of looking out their window at night and seeing something looking back. that combined with seeing an ad for annabelle, as well as a movie where a ghost came into the room of a young child and snatched her, made sure i never left the blinds or window open when i went to bed, for fear of seeing some ghoulish face watching me. even now, when i see the window behind the piano is exposed, i have to squeeze my eyes shut when i pull its blinds down before i sit. i supposed a more mundane incarnation of this is the learned fear of my parents seeing me playing games when i'm not supposed to, or even doing anything that isn't schoolwork because i'm convinced they'll punish me. but that's not supernatural they're just like that.

hope this feeds u well Archivist <3 a silly little Vast avatar just fell into my sinkhole. i've been dealing with them for the past few hours. xx MICAAAAAAA

Thanks Mica, I’m glad you took the time to shout this through the floorboards, and increasingly concerned about the structural integrity of the building! May I ask which one you’ve got down there? I’m trying to keep the scoreboard updated.

[maxwell-grant]

i have been watching old (and sometimes new) gmod animations and i grew up watching enough ytps to know the general idea behind them, and i recently gained a sort of fascination for them. there's something special about them that i couldn't quite put into words, but i think you got it down perfectly in your post about grand guignol. basically, thanks a bunch for that.

Well thank you! And, yeah, I pretty much grew up watching GMOD and YTP constantly and even today I still come back to those a lot when I'm restless and taking a break from work, and I think there's genuinely a lot that can be learned or discussed from them as uniquely 21st Century art forms.

I've been rewatching a lot of Raxxo's content lately and I think it was his content in particular that kind of convinced me that the "GMOD/SFM - Grand Guignol" analogy wasn't nearly as much of deranged word salad as I assumed it was, because in all honestly, if you had to try and condense his videos into a genre or definition or something of the sort, what the hell else can you possibly call this that in any way comes close to describing what you experience?

Like, all of his videos are described as "GMOD animated in SFM", because SFM is usually associated with more straightforward dramatic content while GMOD has been cartoon madness from the start (and it's fascinating to watch just how tame even the early Rubberfruit videos are compared to the kind of stuff Eltorro64 or Dr Lalve are putting out), and Raxxo is the latter in the style of the former.

And his videos are not just a non-stop barrage of brain-breaking, because they have weirdly dramatic pauses, and moments of straightforward action, or simple sentence mixing, and there's continuity between his videos, and incredibly smooth and natural gestures following by the characters stretching and deforming like jello monsters on the next second as their screams warble to drown the soundtrack and then everything's back to normal, and then they start doing things that kinda even make some sense as a narrative, but you cannot even begin explaining properly why, and I've watched these so many times that I even kinda start to see what makes sense and what doesn't, even though literally no one other than Raxxo is ever going to guess why he made the choices he did, and god these jokes must have taken hours if not days to render, why does the scretching Soldier head saying "Sputnik!" shows up in everything he does, and oh did I mention he also makes up the soundtracks he uses himself and they don't match in the slightest most people's perception of his content?

And for the finale of the Soldier Dispenser saga he created maybe the most batshit collaborative animation effort on Youtube, which is about an hour's worth of 200 animators all creating their own little batshit mini-stories in reference to his own and, seriously, who the hell could have possibly predicted something like this existing back when computer game Team Fortress 2 was announced in 2007? Or when Youtube was created?

Who could have possibly predicted something like this existing at any point in human history? Where else could anyone possibly experience this much audiovisual chaos anywhere? I can't even bring myself to watch the video in full again, but that this exists at all, and that it's far from the only one of it's kind, and that Team Fortress 2 fan content has spiraled so hard past anything the creators could have possibly predicted that it has self-sustaining meme ecosystems (Remember when smexuals were a thing? Or the Freaks?), that it's still fucking going 15 years past the game's debut, is, it's kind of a lot, is what I'm saying.

Like, I'm speaking as someone who studies a lot of pop culture and combs through it's most obscure and weirdest recesses to find stuff to write about, I'm still just as baffled by how far these things have gotten as I was when experiencing it for the first time. And you can find a lot of stories like these digging through Youtube Poop and the specific styles of certain creators or certain developing memes for franchises that grow and grow and permutate.

Think about what has to have happened to make a video like iteachvader's What'll It Be? happen.

Long John Baldry, blues musician extraordinaire, voiced cartoon villain Dr Robotnik in a Sonic cartoon. Said Sonic cartoon and performance was lucky enough to survive through Youtube clips. People noticed one of said clips of his performance has him saying a word that sounds like penis in a funny way, so they start making jokes about it, and parodies, and then literally hundreds of parodies popularizing the concept as a source of comedy, some of which take the form of music. Said music is done by cutting, remixing and splicing audio from said performance over music beats, which can be a PAINSTAKINGLY LONG PROCESS as someone who's tried doing that several times now, all this to make something with "Poop" in it's name (which I guess isn't that different from pulp writers spending weeks and months breaking their fingers to put out a novel's worth of content every month, for newspapers and magazines that were literally going to be used as toilet paper later)

These parodies catch on a bit and die out for a bit, until iteachvader comes along, and he proceeds to build a career not just by making funny parodies of said cartoon, but also knocking out genuinely really, really good musical parodies, editing voice clips of said performance to make it sound like the villain's singing (and additionally, he also creates his own tunes, and he's shown that literally every sound he uses is taken from the show, which is just, absolutely mind-boggling effort). He's also created over the years a running joke of Tails being Dr Robotnik's son that people liked enough to ask for more, and then we come to the video above, which is a song about Dr Robotnik spoiling his son Tails asking him what he'll want, which is not at all in line with how the two characters are canonically. And said remixes would eventually get remixed even further, even with crossovers with other characters or musicians, and so forth.

And that is the story of how dozens of creators working separately, and with little intent other than goofing around, single-handedly revived a dead man's music career, as the voice of the fan reinterpretation of a animated adaptation of a videogame villain, popular to the billions if not dozens of billions of views over a decade in the making, on a broadcasting platform said man didn't even live to see being created.

I think sometimes we like to think of ourselves as advanced and jaded enough that nothing surprises us anymore, and if we went back in time and showed an iphone to our great-grandparents they'd start screaming in sheer confusion. And, maybe they would, yeah, but imagine if you were Long John Baldry at any point in his life, even after he finished recording his lines as Robotnik, and someone showed up to you and explained that all of this was going to happen to you, to your voice, to your performance. Imagine if you were one of Valve's lead developers working on Team Fortress 2 during the nine years it spent in development, and someone showed you Raxxo's work and Soldier's Dispenser Quest and just, everything that had happened to characters you hadn't even fully created yet.

I imagine Long John Baldry would have taken it well enough eventually, by all accounts he was a fun person who loved to try new things, and he was an openly gay British vocalist in the 1960s when it was literally illegal to be gay in Britain, so I imagine nothing could possibly rattle his cage that deep in the long run.

But can you honestly tell me you wouldn't freak out at least a little trying to understand just what exactly the future was showing you? Can you honestly tell me your cynicism and world-weariness would be worth anything in the face of all this knowledge about what the world was going to do with your creations and work?

Can you honestly tell me, just now, that you have any idea what the hell is your legacy or reputation as an artist, or even what your art is known for, going to look like in a decade or two from now? And that things aren't going to get weirder than they are now?

I find that fact both frightening and strangely assuring at points, and exciting above all.

[matpisound]

memes, and the role of music

Yeah, you heard me right. I'm gonna be talking about memes. Lately, I've been thinking about how much music has become intertwined with meme culture, and how certain songs can become memes on their own. Given that I write a music blog, I thought I'd write about my thoughts on the subject. How DOES music reach meme status?

Well first, we have to define what a meme even is. Obviously it's not just an image edited with a funny caption in Impact font or oversaturated to the point at which it's incomprehensible. Music has to be involved somewhere in there, or else this whole argument falls to pieces. There has to be a broader definition somewhere, right? Yes, there is, and it gives us a perfect grounding for establishing the meme status of music. According to Wikipedia, the term "meme" was coined in Richard Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene, and it defines the word as a cultural entity that can be considered a replicator; basically an idea that can be spread by people copying it and showing it to others, and it can include images, melodies, behaviors, and anything else that can easily be transmitted.

So why does this matter? We can now devise a way to categorize music memes based on what aspect of culture they appeal to. I won't go into every single meme song that exists, but I will go over some of the biggest meme songs in the past couple of years, and there are four main categories that all of them fall into:

Songs that have some sort of cultural significance on their own

Songs relating to shared cultural experiences

Songs that serve as part of a meme, without which the meme potential is lost

Remixes, typically of a sound that has cultural significance

For songs with their own cultural significance, we need look no further that January 2021 with the sea shanty craze; specifically, "The Wellerman". It's a perfect example of how social media has become embedded in musical culture and how sites like TikTok can bring people together through features that allow collaboration. Adam Neely made an in-depth video on this, but the gist of it was that the duet feature in TikTok allows people to come together with collaborative projects like singing sea shanties in a time when we're forced to stay apart. There are other songs that became memes through similar means. "Gangnam Style", "The Cha Cha Slide", and "The Cupid Shuffle" all became popular to the point of memes because they went viral on social media (mainly YouTube) and they were participatory in the sense they had signature dances, which were easy enough for anyone to do, solidifying them into a widespread culture. Some songs are memes due to their established presence in this culture, and they're songs people are expected to know either within a certain group or just in general. Just think "September", "Mamma Mia", and even "Renai Circulation" all became memes simply because of their existence within modern culture.

Culture also follows songs that are entertaining, i.e. funny, and funny songs are part of the epitome of meme culture. These come from the very early days of YouTube all the way to some of the newest TikTok audios. Take the keyboard cat on YouTube for example. Who doesn't love a cat in a suit playing some funky tunes on a keyboard? And Nyan Cat; an upbeat tune made out of synthesized meows while a cat with a PopTart for a body flies through space while farting rainbows. These random gems reflect the spirit of the internet in terms of creativity and just pure fun. There are also songs that are almost like musical shitposts; songs that have almost no meaning but exist for the sole purpose of entertainment through the random. Big Shaq's "Mans Not Hot" is such a fun song, and was really popular a few years ago because of its random lyrics and especially the verse that was just beatboxing. Songs that are so bad they're funny are popping up a lot as well. "Gucci Gang", sporting a laughably terrible sounding beat and 99% of the lyrics just being "Gucci Gang", climbed its way up to meme status just because of how bad it was. The meme status of these songs depends on the hilarity and ridiculousness that internet memes were founded on, and because of that, have embedded themselves into the worldwide meme culture.

Next is songs that relate to shared cultural experiences, so basically all of the movie tunes, game soundtracks, and just other experiences that aren't inherently musical, but contain musical elements. Everyone loves Smash Mouth's "All Star", and was popularized through none other than the hit movie Shrek. On its own it's a great song, but it's unlikely it would have reached the fame it has today had it not been for Shrek, which in and of itself has become a meme. Of course, the other one that everyone knows is "Megalovania" from the game Undertale. Its simple musical motifs combined to make it the insanely recognizable tune it is today, and has almost detached itself from its source entirely. Mario Kart has had several songs that have become memes, including "Coconut Mall" as well as "Dolphin Shoals", which gave birth to the famous Mario Kart Lick. And who could forget about Star Wars with its main theme, "The Imperial March", and "Duel of the Fates" among others. Lazy Town gave us a few gems as well, like "Cooking by the Book" and of course "We Are Number One". Most of these reach meme status because there are simple musical elements that make them instantly recognizable and can trigger pleasant memories of whatever media they came from, that media being a shared piece of culture among the majority of a generation. "All Star" begins that iconic leap from the the root to the fifth of the scale on the opening line, and "Coconut Mall" creates that frenzied feeling like entering a Macy's on Black Friday which just makes it so fun to listen to.

I need to take a minute to comment on the songs in this category that arguably had the biggest impact on the culture of this generation: Minecraft Parodies. Simply say "Creeper" in a room full of high schoolers and I guarantee you it will be followed by a chorus of "Aww man", most likely followed by the rest of the song. You probably already know what song I'm talking about. "Revenge" by CaptainSparklez and Tryhardninja was the song that powered a generation of Minecrafters, and its resurgence in recent years was met with a flash flood of nostalgia and overall good vibes. We had other hits that grew to immense popularity, like "Fallen Kingdom" and "TNT", along with countless others (and I really do mean countless). The parody craze was so prevalent, some people who otherwise probably never would have gotten into music began releasing hit songs. Not to mention all of the original Minecraft songs that came into the spotlight, like "Take Back the Night", "Creepers Gonna Creep", and so many others. This craze spread beyond Minecraft to some newer games like Fortnite, which allowed the creation of one of the most popular parodies today: Leviathan's "Chug Jug with You". Overall, these helped define a generation and not only allowed musicians to be involved in the things they like, but also allowed many people into the world of music.

This next category involves music that became associated with a certain format, as in there's little to no meme within the music outside of that format. The one everyone knows is the iconic Rickroll, the act of building suspense and breaking the tension with the beginning to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" rather than whatever else would logically release tension. Meme formats are tailored to the individual song, and this is no different. The song begins with a sudden electronic drum fill before going into an upbeat 80s dance tune. Often the video preceding the Rickroll will build up to something desirable to the viewer, and that sudden fill subverting their expectations invokes a sense of disappointment, having been cheated out of their reward. However, the fun sound of the rest of the song helps ease that disappointment. The Coffin Dance and Shot on iPhone memes employed a similar concept by building up tension and releasing it by cutting to the music. However, here the music played throughout to help build up that tension while a video, often depicting someone doing something risky or getting hurt in some way, cutting to just the music at the climax of the clip. This employs driving principle of EDM, building up tension and releasing it at the drop. The meme works by mirroring that suspense and resolution of the video with that of the song, and that resolution being different than what would otherwise logically happen is what allows the meme to spread. Obviously, this isn't the only way songs can be part of a format; songs like "Baka Mitai" and "Shooting Stars" have all had their time to shine. However, these memes that work to subvert the expectations of the audience arguably have the biggest impact of the songs in this category.

Finally, we have the remixes, which typically involve altering any of the songs from the above categories. One of the most popular forms of the remix is the mashup, and who better to bring up here than the legendary SilvaGunner, whose videos advertise a track from a video game OST, but end up being some other meme mashed up into it. The reason mashups work as memes is because it subverts our expectations, even when we know it's a mashup. Our brains know how each song goes, but when we listen to them together it creates something completely new that either sounds great or absolutely horrendous. Yet we still listen to them because they're interesting. Additionally, remixing a meme song in a funny way is a common form of musical meme. It can occur through, super heavy distortion, or repeating a section of a song throughout the song at a level far more than a mere motif, or deleting parts of a song leaving only the memeable parts, or simple pitch shifting, among so many other ways of remixing. The possibilities are endless. The reason remixes are such good memes is they take songs with cultural significance and change them entirely, giving them a whole new meaning.

Well there you have it. Music and memes have gone hand-in-hand since the very beginning, and as culture evolves and memes become more advanced, there's no doubt that these threads will entangle themselves even further. Thanks for reading and if you have any interesting thoughts on music memes or just wanna talk about your favorite ones, feel free to share! That's all, and I'll catch you at the double barline!

[thattimdrakeguy]

what did you think of the current gotham nights

I only read the latest issue and I assume that’s what you meant,

So I can tell ya that I thought it was really bad. It’s the type of things that panders to fans, but it’s really really flawed.

If this was a fan fiction, it would just be slightly below average. Characterization would suck, but when it’s a fan fic writer were this isn’t their job, and don’t have the knowledge of everything, it’s easier to forgive and not mind, because that’s pretty ridiculous to get angry over.

But this is an OFFICIAL DC Comics published comic. Their is higher standards to them. It just stunk fiercely, and I’m not even gonna give them an excuse, because they don’t deserve it. They’re making comics, they barely try, and getting money for it.

Everyone’s just rounded down to one trait, literally in the beginning in Tim’s case.

And one of the other traits he has, that made him important to the Batman legacy in the first place, which is understanding Batman and why Robins so important, is given to DICK.

I assume because this writer never did any research on Tim, and I don’t even think Steph, because she’s a non-character. She just says the generic lines anybody could, because they realized she wasn’t saying much, or at least that’s my guess, because I kept forgetting she was here. Maybe just cause she blends into the background more cuz the colorist dulled all the colors. Like Tim’s costume is just gray now.

Getting back on track though, when you can’t even be bothered to read a character’s origin when it’s your job to write them in official media, you’re a crappy writer, you are dog shit. This is just pathetic. They couldn’t have been bothered. Even editorial didn’t bother correcting that.

My guess for this is just because everyone makes Dick the motivational, inspiration Robin, which isn’t completely wrong. But don’t give him Tim’s spiel when he’s literally right next to you. It’s not like they’re bothering to give him any other traits besides smart and mildly pessimistic.

And it half-way acts as a character study too, so that makes it EXTRA EXTRA bad. You just can’t be cocky and assume you know the characters, when the only thing you make clear is that you don’t.

But I wouldn’t expect anything else from the writer that thought Damian, the kid that was abused and broken over and over again till he became a perfected warrior, who thinks of himself as an adult, and has only been shown having more sophisticated interests (besides a laptop and I think an iPhone? But to be an iPhone or iPod or what ever makes no sense. I don’t even understand the laptop, because that’s in his origin, and why the heck would Ra’s give their experiment kid that they abuse about every day access to the world wide web?), interests such as like painting, a freaking interest in video games, and specifically acting like his favorite would be called called “Cheese Viking”, when he hasn’t played with anyone his age (Super Sons wasn’t around yet, and if it was it was very very very early on. I think Super Sons sucked regardless cuz of bad characterization), he’s been shown in the Manor for three years without an interest that I can recall, like he lives with Batman and an elderly former secret service agent as a butler, and it doesn’t fit his personality. This writer couldn’t be bothered to put care into anything. Most thought is cheap fan service that doesn’t work from a character perspective.

Basically what I’m saying is, when I saw the name “Tim Seeley”, I knew it was going to suck, because he just never tries all that hard. He just does fan service to scrap by.

This is the guy who does so much fan service, he co-wrote “Grayson”, a series notorious for having scenes that are so weirdly sexualized for the fans, that it can come off as sleezy, and in a lot of cases, just writing Dick to be constantly sexually harassed. It’s not great the way he chooses to write.

He even writes Dick and Damian’s relationship to be like Dick and TIM’s. Dick and Tim was absolute big brother little brother. Dick was more serious with Damian, he was his mentor and father figure, he was stern, not Batman stern but he was still in-charge of him and wanted him to learn, he used to let Damian know what he did wrong (at least some of the time) and sometimes even taught him lessons the hard way. Dick and Damian love each other, but they always get misrepresented as a Dick and Tim relationship. Which I don’t understand, because even though I like Dick and Tim’s more, since I am a Tim fan, Dick and Damian’s is way more interesting from a writing perspective, and they always just write it so bad to be pandery.

When you take take one of Tim’s most iconic traits, and well-known relationship, and give it to others, you should not be writing these characters, or a character study on any scale.

Jason in this is just an angry, cynic. And I like when he’s angry and a cynic, but they just make him absolutely annoying. Jason has charm. Read Under the Red Hood, he does horrific stuff, but he’s a charming personality despite that. In this they just made him almost whiny. Like a bad parody of Jason rather than the actual spectacle the real character is.

Nothing about this was good.

It’s only getting by on fan service, but I’m not blinded by any fan service, because I just want good stories that do the characters justice. Which is ultimately what any critic would go off of if they care. “Does it tell a good story?” “Does it do the characters right?” “Was it ever bland anywhere?” “Does it not make sense?” “Are there any mistakes?”

Those are basic things that people do for actual critiques, not just saying your personal opinion as ya read without much thought, and an opinion is an opinion, but I review stuff so this is what I go off of in a lot of my posts.

The story is half attempting to be a character study, and it failed very quickly, so it doesn’t tell a good story.

How the story failed was because Tim Seeley is a lazy writer who doesn’t know the characters better than a superficial level. So it doesn’t do the characters right.

It’s bland because they’re in the same spot the whole issue. Which could be good, but they’d have to actually do the characters well, to make the story interesting, which they obviously didn’t, so it’s just bland and tasteless.

And it doesn’t even always make sense, because why is Steph there? I know she’s a Robin, I consider her a Robin, but not in this timeline. She literally sees for herself that she was Robin another timeline, and gets emotional because she wasn’t in this one. So why would Clayface kidnap her with the other Robins, if she’s not a Robin in this timeline? Clayface logically wouldn’t know that, because he wasn’t involved with the Bat-Family at the time that was found out. At least nowhere in a place to overhear it as far as I remember. I’m pretty sure only a few people ever knew it too.

And Tim is sadly ... “Drake” in this issue. But-- Damian calls him “Red Robin” in a scene, and I can’t tell if that’s him being snarky or rude by calling him by his old name, but to me I just think it was a mistake.

The issue was just garbage. Like I can’t say anything good, besides the concept could’ve been good, but that’s still saying they did a crap job with the concept.

Tim Seeley shouldn’t have been the one to write it. I don’t know who because I have yet to see a DC writer that can actually right the characters well, and not just write them superficially and make stuff up on their way.

DC isn’t in the place where I think they could actually make this work. They don’t have the talent or the range.

[wizardrocksampler]

It’s that time of year again! Do you spend a lot of time thinking about Harry Potter? Do you want to turn those thoughts into awesome music? Consider submitting something for the 2021 Wizard Rock Sampler!

The Wizard Rock Sampler is a free compilation of original music inspired by the Harry Potter universe, and it’s gearing up for its 2021 release - the sixth album in this series! All voices are encouraged to submit songs, regardless of how much or little experience you have. It’s totally cool to write your first ever wizard rock song just for this album! Past Samplers have featured studio recordings next to iPhone recordings, comedy rock songs next to emotional folk ballads, and everything in between. If you think it might be wizard rock, it probably is! And we definitely want to hear it.

Here are a couple of guidelines to follow:

Make sure the song is your own creation. Parodies are welcome as long as you’ve created all the parts of the song (no karaoke tracks, basically).

Songs must be recorded or released after July 31, 2020.

Previously released tracks are very welcome - songs do not need to be exclusive for this compilation.

Songs must be submitted as high-quality audio files (WAV, AAC or FLAC). If you need help with this, just e-mail me!

One song per band/artist, please.

All tracks will be mastered again this year, and there will be another listening party to celebrate the release in September. Please note that because this Sampler is given away completely for free, all contributions are voluntary and unpaid. You are of course welcome to sell your song anywhere else you like - you retain all of the rights to your art. If you have any questions, please reach out to wizardrocksampler@gmail.com. Thanks for being part of the magic!

Meet these guidelines? Then you’re ready to submit!

HOW TO SUBMIT:

Just go to this Google form and fill in all the details: https://forms.gle/qJPWBhDng1H8zvf26

Songs must be submitted by June 30, 2021! The compilation will be released on September 1, 2021.

NEED INSPIRATION?

Check out the Wizard Rock Samplers from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 to see what people have been making over the past few years. There are over a hundred free songs waiting for you over there! And if you need any help or encouragement, reach out to me (TK Lawrence) at wizardrocksampler@gmail.com. I believe that everybody can benefit from making a little art, and that it doesn’t have to be anything fancy to still be awesome. Let me know how I can help!

I’m so excited to see this project enter its sixth year - many thanks to everyone who’s been a part of the Sampler in the past, you’ve made it something really special. I’m honored to be taking over the Sampler from the one and only Grace Kendall. Thank you for your incredible work. I can’t wait to see where this community takes us next!

[davidmann95]

Your power is mine: thoughts on Kingdom Hearts’ newest, oddest character

Finished Final Fantasy XV over the weekend. Mixed feelings to say the least, but it does give me an excuse to talk about Kingdom Hearts again, specifically this weirdo:

And how it feels like most of the people discussing Yozora and trying to figure out what his deal is are missing half the point. Yes, there’s the apparent connections to Sora and Riku, and there’s his meta association with Noctis and the entire real-life corporate backstory there intertwining with the in-game narrative to an unknown extent. But when he’s discussed as some kind of fusion of Sora and Riku, or a literal reincarnation of Noctis, or that Verum Rex might end up a real game, or something similarly straightforward in terms of “he’s going to be a very important central character going forward”, the ideas or at least the tone of how they’re presented seem to miss an absolutely critical component of how he was introduced to us, in a way that shapes not only him but by extension the entire future of the franchise and its thematic concerns:

We aren’t just supposed to be surprised he’s important because he’s real where we thought he wasn’t. We’re supposed to be surprised because he’s introduced to us as a self-evident gag character.

Not that we’re not supposed to take him seriously where it counts: it’s clear he has an important role going forward and is a force to be reckoned with. But no matter what deep, foreboding connections to the Keyblade and Master of Masters may lie within his backstory that may determine the fate of more universes than one, he will never not have had the hilariously inauspicious beginning of being a toy played by Rex the Dinosaur. He doesn’t even have the dignity of being introduced as a game on one of the plot-heavy original worlds! He’s a throwaway gimmick to spice up one of the filler Disney segments, literally a child’s plaything.

Even before we learn the context he’s being presented in...well, look at him. He’s like Riku, who’s cooler than Sora, and Noctis, a Final Fantasy character and therefore cooler than all this Disney stuff, but also he has a LASER SWORD and a CROSSBOW - that are clearly functioning as cool future tech instead of dopey magical powers - and his eyes are MYSTERIOUS MISMATCHING UNNATURAL COLORS and he fights GIANT ROBOTS with a dude in a fedora in a city straight out of the REAL WORLD to save a helpless lady/prize: truly, let no mistake be made, he is VERY, VERY SERIOUS INDEED, AND ALSO, RAD. TO THE MAX. He’s every attempt at reframing contemporary Final Fantasy as slick and modern and cool dialed up and up and up until the tone breaks, without the barest hint of self-awareness even as it advertises its action figure tie-ins. I don’t think that his little Keyblade pattern on his jacket being near-impossible to spot unless you’re looking for it is just to preserve the surprise, but also because the sight of the big keys with the Mickey Mouse logo on them would be anathema to his entire vibe, so important as it may be it must be squirreled away where it can’t make him look dumb. Heck, when Dylan Spouse announced on Twitter he was playing this major character in a childhood favorite franchise of his, surely knowing more than we do about Yozora, his description of the part was “I have lived out my edgy JRPG character fantasies...I even got to say ‘Sorry, but I don’t lose.’” We’re supposed to receive him off the bat as Square Enix, and more specifically Tetsuya Nomura, poking fun at themselves, going ‘yes, we suppose this is all getting to be a bit much, isn’t it?’

And then he enters the story for real.

Obviously he’s much more than a joke now, but the idea of him as something off, something that doesn’t fit in these games, endures. His episode isn’t just in a modern cityscape but skinned in the graphics of the grittier, more detailed style of the Pirates of the Caribbean world meant to evoke photorealism rather than the look of the rest of the game. He interferes with the gameplay in ways no other enemy does, stealing your items and weapons (we’ll get back to that). When he casts you into a void to be attacked by the mechs, it’s not a pure empty white but a mass of abstract polygonal space, evocative of the visuals of early game development. What details we do get of his backstory frame him as a counterpart to Sora on a parallel journey all his own, but the associations with his other source material in Noctis are considerably more...cutting. Credit to @kitsoa, whose own extensive musings on Kingdom Hearts’ increasingly overt metafictional concerns brought to my attention the obvious parallel: that Yozora being changed ‘beyond recognition’ with his heart replaced by another’s is a reasonable, albeit scathing description of Noctis’s revised character in the shift from the Nomura-helmed Final Fantasy Versus XIII to the largely overhauled Final Fantasy XV (and by the same token, the Nameless Star’s identity being stolen comes across as a shot at Versus XIII’s Stella Nox Fleuret being entirely replaced by Lady Lunafreya. Who, by sheer coincidence, would have been corrupted in planned but cancelled DLC into a monster of darkness).

While the comparisons to his source material are not only intentional but textually overt - his introduction as a real boy is literally scored to the FFXV theme music - so is the distancing from that material, given that if Nomura simply wanted to use Noctis the very premise of Kingdom Hearts as a series could have allowed him to use Noctis, and even change him to fit his original vision however he wished given the design and backstory changes to the other Final Fantasy characters involved. Yozora has a distinct role in which he’s still meant to represent that tone and aesthetic, and all signs point to that being because as that representation, he hardly seems an endorsement. He’s a parody, offered up in a demeaning context and tangled up narratively in real-life creative bitterness before being placed as an antagonist, however well-meaning (though keep in mind every secret boss of his kind before - other than Julius, I suppose - went on to become an endgame boss later on), in the player’s path. He may not be a villain, but all signs seem to indicate he’s a figure to be regarded as a contrast to the heroes.

And it’s in that role as a contrast that I have my own theories about what his deal ultimately is, thematically if not plotwise.

For those who saw this in the Kingdom Hearts tag and aren’t superhero fans, that’s Superdoomsday, introduced in Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics about 8 years ago. One among many takes on an ‘evil Superman’ from a parallel universe, the twist with his world is that rather than a survivor of Krypton, he is literally the materialized concept of Superman - imagined by his reality’s Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen, who created a machine which could bring ideas to life - that when sold to a corporation was reimagined in service of wide public appeal into an all-powerful, uncompromisingly brutal monstrosity clad in armor somewhere between an iPhone, 90s Rob Liefeld battle gear, and Nazi regalia, who ultimately journeyed into the multiverse to stalk and kill other incarnations of Superman, seeing them as competition to his domination of the ‘market’. “The curse...of Superman...” murmurs the dying Kent of that world, “...he becomes anything you want...him...to be...our world...wanted that...”

Yozora is...probably not exactly a 1:1 to that. But as a counterpart to Sora, it absolutely seems as if the main factor by which he contrasts him is that he’s ostensibly the sleeker, edgier model, new-and-improved. He reworks Sora’s story arc and aesthetic into something theoretically cooler and more palatable, steals his power, ‘saves’ him by sealing him away to presumably fight in his stead and thereby take his place as the lead. He is the protagonist so many feel Kingdom Hearts has needed for years, the somber AMV-ready Secret Movie tone and aesthetic stepping into center stage at last rather than maintaining a sunshiney Disney-esque child hero lead to anchor the assorted conspiracies and horrors of much of the rest of the tale. The manner in which he is presented as to make metatextuality an in-universe concern (to call back to Grant Morrison again, his next work after Action Comics was Multiversity, where a major plot point was that the events of parallel universes were unwittingly documented in each others’ pop culture; in that case comic books, in here video games) for Kingdom Hearts to explore in the next main entry is I believe so as to ask what, in fact, Kingdom Hearts as a series should be; is it a Disney series with some incidental Final Fantasy stuff in it? A Final Fantasy spinoff with some Disney elements cluttering it up that should maybe be discarded as it grows up? Something all its own? Is it time for Kingdom Hearts to get Serious? Even if the Kingdom Hearts as imagined by a marketing executive vision of Verum Rex isn’t what’s next, what is, as things get darker and that vision is now part of the narrative whether for good or ill?

So yeah it looks like Kingdom Hearts IV is Kingdom Hearts vs. its own Gritty Realworld! Urban Fantasy AU fanfiction for the soul of the series, and I am extremely here for it.

[ahappydnp]

if you had to pick one wife ... bryony or cornelia?

Anon, this is illegal!

Cornelia just radiates warmth. She’s so kind and creative and her voice is like a melody. But she’s also got so much fire in that tiny body! Am I a little afraid of her because I feel like being near her would be like staring at the sun? Yes. Did I make other people walk in front of me in London as we approached the IRL booth just in case she was there and I had time to run because I am not worthy to be in her presence? Yes. There is the issue of the bucket hat man. Not sure how we’ll get past that one. My point is she’s gorgeous and she’s the kind of beautiful that you can’t stop looking at because it’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. Cornelia is art.

But then there’s Bryony....Y’all know I’ve been harboring a crush on her for the past 13 years. She’s funny and witty and sharp (and can craft like a damn PRO holy shit). Did I show her Zooey Deschanel iPhone parody video to literally everyone who spoke to me when it came out because I thought she was a GENIUS? Yes. Is she way cooler than I could ever hope to be? Yes. She’s a stan who gets internet culture and that only makes her hotter tbh. She’s also the only person I’ve ever met who loves Drop Dead Gorgeous as much as me, so like 50 points for that. And like...she’s so fucking stunning. Like truly insanely pretty. The only person who can pull off highlighter yellow hair. Every time she posts a selfie, I ascend because it’s unfair that she just looks Like That. Not to mention her style?!? It’s bold and fun and fuuuuckkk I love her. And yes, she probably does hate me by default for being in this fandom and honestly that’s fair (the shit people have put her through...She has the patience of a saint). In conclusion, I would drop dnp’s asses and listen to kpop for her.

[winterknight1087]

Science Songs for Their Sunlight

Summary:  Logan and Virgil are science YouTubers; Roman and Patton are dealing with these introverted scientists. Lo and Vee write two songs for their boyfriends.

Word Count: 4,988

Warnings: food mention, two small kissed on forehead and cheek, small amount of angst

Pairings: Romantic LAMP

AO3 Link    My Writing

This is a random idea I had while watching AsapScience so made a small AU out of it, I guess. The two songs are from AsapScience. Highly recommended to watch the videos before reading, or not, whatever I guess :) Science STYLE Cover - Taylor Swift Acapella Parody

The Science Love Song

“What are you doing, Vee?” Logan slumped into the seat next to the man.

Virgil glanced at his boyfriend, deciding if he wanted to address the issue immediately or let it sit a little, before letting out a sigh. “I’m taking a small break from working on a possible new video to look through our YouTube comments for future experiments.”

“Hmm…” Logan was trying to be interested, but nothing really mattered compared to what was on his mind. “What is the video idea? Another lab?”

Virgil nervously shifted. “No, it’s a song. People liked the “Science Wars” one, so I figured that I could be petty back- I mean people would like another song?”

That caught Logan’s attention. “Why do you need a means to be petty and what has Princey done this time?”

Virgil went red as he started playing with his mouse. “I… well… Ro was just being Ro and probably doesn’t mean it. It’s just that it felt a little too personal and I didn’t tell him to stop because we were just poking fun at each other but it just kind of stuck with me so I figured that a passive-aggressive science song would make me feel a bit better about the whole thing. Now that I’m saying it all aloud though, I’m realizing how stupid all of it is and I am now just wasting your time and have already wasted a bit of my own time working on it…”

Logan gently moved Virgil’s hand away from the mouse and set it on his chest. “Virgil, breathe with me. We can discuss the cognitive distortions you are experiencing once you are breathing properly.”

Logan quietly worked the man through the breathing exercises, relieved to have a real distraction from his own issues with their other partners. Finally, Virgil was breathing properly and sat back, looking awkward, but otherwise better.

“Now, let’s talk this through. You are welcome to feel whatever you felt regarding Roman’s… comments. Would you be willing to tell me about them?”

Virgil sighed. “It was just passive things like ‘you nerds are so interested in something so out of style’ and that we aren’t even doing anything fun like making iPhone apps or whatever.”

Logan nodded, shoving his own irritation at Roman’s comments aside. “So, you are working on some song to help you achieve what?”

The man’s head hid behind his hands as his voice squirmed out of his fingers. “It’s a Taylor Swift parody of her song ‘Style’ but about science.”

“May I see what you have so far?”

Against what was probably Virgil’s better judgment, he switched to the video ‘script’. Logan scrolled through the work Virgil had already put into this. It was just as dramatic as ‘Science Wars’ had been.

When did he do all of this work? Logan couldn’t help but wonder.

“If it is any consolation to you, Virgil. I believe this would be incredibly well received by our fans. I also believe it is a fair… what is the term?... oh clapback at the science haters.”

“Yeah?”

Logan nodded. “Yes. You have my full support and willingness to participate in this parody for our channel. Please inform me when you wish me to set up our cameras and sound equipment for the recording.”

“Heh. Thanks, Lo.” Virgil had a small grin now, but it quickly vanished. “OK, so my problem has been addressed. What’s got you all weird?”

It was Logan’s turn to sigh. “I may have overheard our partners discussing how my attempts at showing affection are sublime.”

“I don’t see Patton ever saying something like that,” Virgil stated.

Logan nodded. “He wasn’t openly saying it, but he had been with Roman discussing ways to explain what love was because, and I quote, ‘Logan just doesn’t seem to understand’.”

Virgil thought that over before carefully answering. “That still doesn’t feel like something Pat would say or do, Lo. I have a feeling that you are missing a bit of information from what happened.”

He nodded. “That is what I assume as well, but it is still hard to not worry about. I don’t wish to bring this up with Patton as I am sure it was supposed to be a private conversation, but I wish to do something.”

“Huh, same solution for different issues.” Virgil huffed with amusement.

“What do you mean?”

“A science love song,” Virgil answered. “You can show Patton that your understanding of what love is may not be the same as his, but you do understand, and you can fill it with cute little lines that Patton will love.”

Logan thought about it. “I… believe that may work. One issue though, I do not write the songs we perform. You do. I am not well-versed in song-making.”

Virgil smiled at the poor nerd. “You write a bunch of lines about love and science, all your own words, and I can arrange it into a song. I should be finished with my petty revenge by the time you are done.”

“But lines like what? That ‘the chemical formula for love is C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2’?”

“‘…and you make my brain the chemist who produces it.’ There you go. One line of science love.” Virgil commented. “Wait, do you really have the formula for love in your memory?”

Logan wasn’t sure he had ever blushed as deep red as he was right then. “I will plead the Fifth before returning to my study to consider what you have proposed.”

“Nerd.” Virgil laughed as he returned to his own work.

 *     *     *     *

 “RoRo, I’m starting to get worried about those two. Neither of them has shown up longer than a few minutes to get more coffee or a snack from the fridge since yesterday morning.”

Roman’s eyebrow shot up. “Well, I figured Vee would be off hiding but Lo is too?”

Patton gave the other a questioning look. “And why do you figure VeeVee?”

“I…Well… We were having some of our normal banter and I think one or two of my comments shook him more than normal. I tried to talk to him about it, but he said that he was fine.”

“Roman, what did you say to our poor anxious babe?”

“It was just normal banter stuff! We were poking fun at each other’s views of Disney, music, YouTube preferences, that sort of thing. I think one just got under his skin this time.”

“And what about Logan?”

“I didn’t say anything to him! Other than my normal morning and proclamations of love for our dear nerd!” Roman threw a hand over his chest, pretending to be offended that Pat would suggest he hurt two of his loves in the same day. “Maybe he’s helping Vee with whatever I said that set him off.”

Pat leaned against the counter thinking. “I don’t know, Ro. I’m just getting worried about the two of them. Normally, they would at least have a meal with us if they were doing stuff.”

“It is nothing to be concerned about, Patton.” Logan’s voice appeared before the man himself. “We are merely working on some interesting video ideas for our channel.”

Roman raised an eyebrow at him. “You almost sound excited, Lo.”

Logan rolled his eyes but didn’t respond to the prince. “Were you requiring us for something, Patton?”

“No, but I can just miss seeing my two favorite science nerds!” Patton answered, cheerfully, desperately trying to keep his concern to a minimum.

Logan started preparing a couple of sandwiches. “Both of us have made sure to seek you out and show you that we are fine, Patton. There is no need to be concerned about Virgil and me. Our video is just very special to the two of us, so we are focused on that right now.”

“What’s the video about, our amazing northern star?” Roman asked.

Logan paused for a moment, which made the sunshine half of the relationship worry even more. “We will show the two of you once we are finished. It’s merely a video about an important formula: C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2.”

“And how you have that entire thing memorized is still beyond me!” Virgil stated, making the three men jump, not having noticed him join them.

“I thought you were deep in the middle of the composition, Virge.”

The anxious man grinned as he raised a very familiar item up. “I was, but we ran out of coffee.”

Logan grinned. “Oh, the beloved C25H28N6O7.”

“I guess the nerds aren’t making a video on coffee then?” Roman sounded like he was trying to state it, but his lack of chemical formulas made it into a question.

Patton took the coffee pot from Virgil. “Just how much coffee have you two consumed since yesterday?”

The starlight half glanced at each other before Logan answered. “Together? I want to say about six pots? I assure you that we have also had water and tea intermixed with the coffee.”

Patton’s finger tapped the side of the empty pot. “Before I let you two have another, I would like to ask that you two show up for dinner tonight, alright? Yes, Logan, I can see that you are making Virgil and yourself sandwiches. I still wish to have a proper dinner with all three of my boyfriends!”

Once again, the starlight half looked at each other. This time, the looks were clearly fond and amused, which ease something in Patton.

“Only if we might request that we have the house to ourselves tomorrow. We have quite a bit of recording to accomplish and would like the assurance that we aren’t bothering the two of you.” Logan answered.

“Bothering us? With what? You two rarely make enough noise that it passes through the walls.” Roman commented.

“What is this, 20-questions? Can we just make this request without having to explain everything?” Virgil asked.

Patton sighed. “Alright, but more secrets? I’m starting to become really worried about the two of you. Did we do something wrong? Please, just assure me of that. Did we do or say something wrong to either of you?”

“What?” Logan sounded surprised. “No, of course not, Patton.”

“Well, Ro has said plenty, but nothing is wrong, Pat. We are just excited about what we’re working on and we want to have it finished quickly. The two of you will be the first to see the finished product, Lo and I promise! You’ll understand once you see the video!”

“Alright,” Pat sighed. “I’m not sure what Ro and I will do, but we’ll let you two do your thing tomorrow.”

Logan smiled at him. “Why don’t you leave that to me? This part of the video process is pretty much Virgil’s job anyway. It’ll be a way for us to apologize for worrying you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to! We can figure something out.”

“Have and want are two different things.”

Roman, being the dramatic prince he was, pretended to crumple under the table. “Such horror! Lo-berry using Patty-Cake’s own ideas against him!”

“Perish then,” Virgil stated, taking the coffee pot from Patton and setting the machine up.

 *     *     *     *

 What the sunshine gays wouldn’t find out until dinner was that Logan set them up for a day of their favorite activities, ones that the starlight gays had no interest in participating in. He explained it away to Virgil that Roman wouldn’t be able to complain about never getting to go dancing for at least a month after tomorrow.

Virgil nodded along, knowing that whatever Patton and Roman had actually been discussing, they would understand just how much Logan loved both of them after tomorrow. A full day of things both of them loved and enjoyed? With nothing close to an ‘I’ll do it because someone else loves it’ option? Virgil was watching the planning masterpiece of a man truly in love.

 *     *     *     *

 The next morning, the four boyfriends enjoyed a sleepy breakfast together. Virgil had spent almost an hour making sure everything was perfect before Patton and Roman sat at the table. Logan came down a full ten minutes later but still appreciated the effort Virgil put in, though he was mildly concerned about whether Virgil had actually gone to sleep or not.

Once breakfast was finished, Logan presented Patton and Roman copies of their itinerary. He had already placed an extra in the car and sent a photo of it into their group chat, knowing that the two were probably going to somehow lose the paper copies and, if he were a betting man, one of their phones.

Patton was pulling on his shoes as Virgil started dumping some of their recording stuff on the living room couch. He could see how excited the normally anxiety-ridden man was. Virgil was humming a song, Patton wasn’t sure but it sounded like Taylor Swift, as he worked. The sight was enough to finally get rid of the worry Patton had been feeling and fill him with his own excitement.

Upstairs, Roman was starting to become more confused, rather than relaxed. Logan was acting very… un-Logan-like. He had a small, shy smile as he went about gathering things. Roman was also certain he could hear the normally stoic man muttering science stuff under his breath about atoms, balancing equations, and another chemical formula. Logan even went as far as to compliment Roman’s outfit!

“What is up with you, Calculator Watch!” Roman finally demanded.

Logan looked shocked as his body took an automatic step back. “What are you talking about, Roman?”

“You are acting weirder than normal!”

“Do I not normally compliment your choice of outfit when you dress up?” Logan asked, confused.

“I…Well… Yes, you do… But?”

Logan glanced at his watch. “Patton and you should be leaving fairly soon if you wish to make the movie.”

“Uh… Yeah, right. Off I go, I guess?”

Logan kissed his cheek before returning to whatever it was he had been doing. Roman was feeling even more off now but didn’t say anything else. Downstairs was almost normal if the Emo ever actually listened to pop music. The comment slipped from Roman’s lips before he’d actually thought about it.

“Not my fault that you are constantly getting weird songs stuck in my head. I have to listen to some pop songs in order to finally have at least the full song in my head when one of your random bursts gets a single line stuck.” Virgil answered.

“Oh, just let them be, RoRo. They’re excited about their video, so let them be excited. It’s a nice change compared to their usual show of interest.” Patton said as they got into the car.

“Which is little to none! It’s strange!” he answered.

Patton slipped his hand into Roman’s as he backed out of their driveway. “Put it aside and let’s enjoy our day out. Logan put a lot of thought into it, so let’s make sure we enjoy it!”

“True, alright, Padre, let’s see!” Roman reached into his pocket for his copy of the schedule, only to find it wasn’t there.

“Logan really does know us.” He commented, grabbing the car copy.

 *     *     *     *

 “So, you’re telling me that this song is designed as a simple thing because it’s Logan’s song?”

“Yeah, I figured simpler would be better for him.”

“Gurl, if those two sunshine and rainbow gays do not love this, I say the two of you dump them and let me join. I’ll even bring my own sunshine.”

“Remy, it is not considerate to drag Emile into a polyamorous relationship without consulting with them about it first.”

“Gurl, you are lucky those two will absolutely love this then.”

Virgil rolled his eyes before looking at all the friends who had agreed to help them on such short notice. “Thank you all so much for helping us with this. We have a lot to do, and little time so let’s get this long day of filming over with!”

The team decided to conquer the Science Style video first as there were a lot of working parts to it compared to the Science Love Song. Did everyone in the room know it was insane to try and record two full songs in one day? Yes. Were they determined to beat some imaginary record on video making skills? Absolutely.

As Logan checked in with everyone, he felt relief fill him that Pat and Ro were out for the day. The team had split into different groups: filming, animation and drawing, editing, and sound, each taking up a room of their own. Filming had the living and dining room. The art group had the kitchen, which had the most light as they screamed, kicking out any and everyone trying to take their lighting away. Editing sat in their bedroom, taking advantage of all comfortable spots as they worked. Sound sat in the house’s converted studio. Logan was shocked at the amount of work they were all placing into this video, and he was suddenly struck with something as he knew he couldn’t have ever made better friends.

With his small break, Virgil made everyone sandwiches for lunch. They’d all agreed on pizza for dinner as a reward for all the stuff they had accomplished today, but Virgil figured that sandwiches were a safe enough option for lunch. People would be able to eat them as they wished when they weren’t solely focused on their task. Once that was done, and as he was called back to recording, he sent off the pizza order so that the store had time to make the ten pizzas. Thank goodness for coupons, Virgil couldn’t help but think as he was maneuvered to his spot.

 *     *     *     *

 “RoRo! Look!”

Roman turned and saw a little pottery painting shop. “Lo’s schedule says we’re supposed to be having lunch, Pat.”

“But we’re going to a buffet later! Let’s go make something for our precious scientists! We can make them new coffee mugs!”

Roman pretended to think about it as Patton put up his greatest attack. “Oh no! Patty-dog eyes! One of my three weaknesses! Right up there with Lo’s pleased smirk and Virge’s giggles! I shall never recover from this great defeat! What shall we put on these mugs of those nerds?”

“Well, they are super into whatever science video they are making today, so why don’t we make it something about science for them? LoLo has been super interested in chemistry and those long formula things, so we could put like different ones on it with like the weird drawings that go with them! It’s a simpler idea, but he enjoys the smaller details and we could draw the formulas for happiness, love, interest, that sort of thing. For VeeVee we could do little science images like lab coats, little goggles, and a flask thingy or the Mars rover with the 1s and 0s spelling out ‘we love you’! It’ll be still science-y but full of images of science things he likes!”

Roman nodded as he opened the door for his heart. “How about you work on Lo’s and I do Vee’s? I think I have an idea for his.”

Patton nodded. “Alright, but we are signing both of them with lots of love, OK?”

Roman placed a kiss on the other’s forehead, as a worker came over to help them. “Of course!”

 *     *     *     *

 “OK, Patton just texted saying that they are leaving the swing dance club–which I still do not believe exists, for your information,” Virgil commented to Logan.

Emile giggled. “Guess it’s time for all of us to skedaddle outta here if we want to be One Jump ahead of your SO’s!”

Talyn glanced up from their laptop. “There is still so much editing to do.”

Logan chuckled. “We can explain to those two why you and Joan are on our couch. It means so much that all of you helped us do the impossible. Thank you!”

“Gurl, I think Lo needs to go to bed if he’s getting sentimental. Well, see you ladies and non-binary gentlefolk tomorrow for the adorable reveal!” Remy announced as Emile dragged him out the door.

Logan and Virgil got to cleaning up once everyone but Joan and Talyn was gone. Thankfully, their friends had been neat, so it was mostly straightening things and taking out the trash. The two boyfriends grinned at each other before plopping onto the couch with the last two.

Almost half an hour later, Patton and Roman walked through the door, talking about something they’d seen earlier. They were mildly startled to see two extra people in their living room, but Patton let out a squeal before tackling Talyn in a hug. After some chitchat, Joan suggested they head to the studio to continue working on the edits. Virgil went with them, after telling Patton that Logan was to go to bed. The man did not appreciate it but did as he was told.

Three of the four boyfriends curled up in their bed, unfortunately, used to the forth not being there. Pat pouted at that thought, wishing Vee would go to bed more often, but if Joan and Talyn were going to work through the night on the video edits, Virgil was going to be there as well. Patton didn’t know that the other two in the bed were also thinking the same thing.

 *     *     *     *

 “RoRo and I need to go pick something up. Did you two want us out for longer?”

“Nah, I think we are good to go. Would you mind if some more of our friends came over later though?”

“Our dark prince wanting to throw a party? Who are you and what have you done to our beloved introvert!”

Joan grinned. “Exhaustion has finally claimed the boi!”

“I’m not the one who couldn’t say Viking metal at least.”

“What?”

The two sleepy ones started to giggle while Talyn looked ready to shove them into a fiery pit. “They kept saying Vetal Miking.”

“How the three of you ended up discussing that is beyond me,” Roman commented. “But I have no issue with a friendly get together! How about you, Patty?”

“I’ll be sure to pick up some more snacks! We seemed to have run out.”

Logan snorted which sent all three sleepy ones into a fit of exhausted giggles. He rolled his eyes at them, which made them giggle even harder. Pat and Ro went to pick up their mugs while Logan made Vee, Joan, and Talyn take a nap. Not too long afterwards, Roman and Patton returned with bags, chatting, but were quickly silenced by Lo, who waved at the sleeping figures on the couch. After a quiet lunch, Logan texted their friends that they were welcome to return for the reveal.

It was approximately two hours after lunch, Logan surmised, by the time everyone arrived, each ready to watch the final product of their extensive effort yesterday. He was a bit nervous to see what it looked like as only Virgil, Joan, and Talyn saw what was finished. Finally, Virgil pulled up the first video and told their sunshine half that this was the first of two videos. He started with the Science parody of Style.

Roman instantly knew this was what became of Virgil’s unease with his comments. Not that Virgil would ever know, but Roman tucked away the thought ‘avoid making fun of science videos’ into his list of things not to poke fun at. Despite this, he was laughing with everyone else at the two nerds trying to be cool and just being their nerdy selves.

“I guess I now know why you were humming Taylor Swift yesterday.” He joked once the video was finished.

“You were still the reason I even knew of that song’s existence. So, it’s still your fault.” Virgil laughed. “So, is science out of style?”

Roman laughed as he yanked the nerd into a hug. “I guess not, but you two pretending to have style is so out of style. I love it and I love you dorks.”

“Alright, so next song is quite a bit of a change in tempo from that, so you two enjoy!”

By the point the song got to the line ‘I’ll be your star if you’ll be my space’, Patton was sobbing and clinging to Logan. Lo was adorably shy and smiley and Patton just couldn’t help but cling to the stoic nerd. He didn’t fully understand some of the more specific scientific parts but it was a love song and his two favorite nerds wrote it and like it was perfect!

“Alright, so I understand the first video, but what was up with the second?” Roman asked.

Logan awkwardly cleared his throat. “I may have overheard you and Patton discussing how I don’t seem to understand love, so Virgil proposed that we make a scientific love song.”

“Oh no no no no!” Patton pulled him in even tighter. “I was saying that you didn’t seem to understand what I was doing to show you affection! That wasn’t about you, Logibear! You show love in small things. I wanted to know what I could do to show my love to you, in ways you would be comfortable with!”

“See, there was more that you didn’t know, Lo,” Virgil commented.

“Wait, then what was that formula you were sprouting out then?” Roman asked.

Virgil huffed. “He has the formula for love memorized and tricked me into realizing what it was too! Blasted chemicals for dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin! He tricked me into memorizing the formula as well! He didn’t even use the cute line that started the entire song idea! Like, come on! You’d have been a puddle for ‘the chemical formula for love is C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2, and you make my brain the chemist who produces it’.”

“Gurl, I almost want to see you try and shove that line into the song,” Remy commented.

“Actually, that reminds me! RoRo, this is the perfect time to give them their presents!” Patton giggled.

“If our beloved heart says so, then so shall it be!” Roman announced before picking up two bags, one purple, and the other navy.

“GAAAAAAY!” one of their friends called, causing an amused chuckle to ripple through the group.

Logan and Virgil accepted their bags with confusion. Logan pulled his mug out first and looked over the various chemicals and their structural formula designed on the mug. Each was in one of their favorite colors. Dopamine was in red. Oxytocin was in a navy blue whereas Serotonin was in a lighter blue. The final formula was endorphins, which were in purple. Logan bit his tongue as he began to pick out the minor errors in the structural formulae. He would probably end up taking a Sharpie or something and carefully fixing the errors later, but for now, he vocally praised the mug, knowing that Pat and Ro designed it with him in mind, which was more worthy of his attention than some small errors.

Virgil pulled his mug out to find the word STEAM on it. Behind each letter was a cartoon of something related to it. The ‘S’ had a lab coat, goggles and a beaker like a scientist. The ‘T’ had an iPhone with little apps that Roman has suggested Virgil attempt to make. ‘E’ had a computer screen on it with a bunch of 0s and 1s on the screen (which Roman would later tell him was binary code for ‘we love you’ and Virgil did not tear up at that, no siree). ‘A’ was the props from their Science Wars video. ‘M’ had a coordinate plane with the shape and equation of a heart on it. It was so extra and so obviously Princey and Patton that Virgil couldn’t help but love the mug, even if it were a bit more eccentric than his normal style.

“Wow, you two are just as nerdy as we are.” Virgil commented, before yanking the other three into a tight hug.

“Well, we do happen to have two brilliant scientists as our boyfriends, so it was bound to happen that we would pick up some nerdy things.” Patton giggled.

The group hung out for a bit before people had to get going. Logan stopped Remy and Emile before insisting that they ensure Joan and Talyn got home safely. The non-binary pals tried to fight it, but Mama Remy was already in full swing, so they accepted their fate. Virgil watched, knowing that they had it lucky, especially when Mama Lo turned on him.

Half an hour later, Virgil was cocooned in blankets with his boyfriends surrounding him on their bed, ensuring that he wouldn’t make a bid for freedom. He had a fat smile on his face as Pat and Ro gushed over the videos and Lo explained some of the finer points to them.

How two scientists managed to fall in love with these two rays of sunlight, Logan could only theorize. He did know that they were the loves of his life. He watched as his starlight fell asleep to the sunshine’s chatter, finding his eyes getting heavy as well.

Patton was unsurprisingly the next one to fall into the realms of sleep. While he loved the videos equally, the love song was soft and specifically for them. His mind couldn’t help but replay every word from it, softly singing him to sleep with the insanely intelligent men around him.

Roman was the last to give in. He carefully set aside Lo and Pat’s glasses so that they didn’t accidentally break them. Roman smiled, staring at his three loves: Logan, his stars; Virgil, his moon; and Patton, his sun. He gave an amused huff as he shut his eyes. Maybe Lo and Vee did rub some of their nerdiness on him, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world.