#also apparently he has a family and released a christmas song and also a whole album. you cannot make this shit up
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burke-juliet ¡ 6 months ago
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just watched a youtube video explaining the history of Mr Blobby... are british people okay? i'm going to have nightmares about it. i have regrets
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imthepunchlord ¡ 3 years ago
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LMAOOO Did you know that apparently Asstruck made a tweet bashing Encanto for having, en quote, “Weak base mythology. Weak situations. Weak stakes. Weak people because too many, so no time to develop them well… Weak songs, nothing left in mind…” and so much more utter RIDICULOUSNESS??? Bruh this dude is straight up delusional I sweeeaaarrr
I've heard. And what's funny is that he's describing more of his own show than Encanto. Cause I watched Encanto. It doesn't have those issues. It was amazing. I cried. ML has not brought me to tears but Encanto has.
But if we want to be salty first thing in the morning...
- Weak based mythology? Yeah, no, its simple in set up. Through an act of love and sacrifice, the miracle came giving a magical house, a protective barrier, and offers gifts to descendants. ML's own mythology and lore I couldn't entirely explain as not everything is established and they will make changes out of the blue (like adults naturally more powerful, but what defines an adult? The age? One's mentality? How mature they are?)
- Weak situations. Yeah, its a low stake film, but hey, they covered family drama and issues better than ML. In short of 2 hours, they have addressed issues in this family and resolved things. ML is still 4 seasons in and nothing has changed in the Agreste family.
- Weak stakes. Yes, Encanto is a low stake film. But guess what? Not everything needs to be high stakes to be enjoyable. And honestly, I felt more for Encanto's low stakes than ML's high stakes. Largely because the issue was brought up, there was actual loss, and there was no magical cure that fixed everything in the end. The big issue with ML's high stakes is that there's never no real loss. Paris is fine. Damage all erased.
- Too many people. That's really rich coming from him, as this show will bring in new characters, then forget said characters, and only bring them back when needed. Like, you could really honestly wonder if you needed these characters. Should Lila really exist if Chloe is going to stay a bully and they're going to forget her existence? Did we really need Zoe's existence? If they allowed Nino to be his own character, Luka could've been cut and Nino could've easily filled that role. And did we really need a whole Zodiac of kwamis? In Encanto, yes, there's a lot of people, but they felt like a family, and you got a quick sense of who each of them were. Yes, you may not entirely be able to say what all the relationships are, but I didn't feel overwhelmed by the number of characters, unlike ML.
- Weak songs. I'm sorry, how many musicals has ML done? That one very forgettable Christmas special? Yeah, no, you can't boast and say that you have the better music. I've been bopping to Encanto's music while at work. It's amazing.
Also, Encanto does a far better job at representing the culture of where it's set at than ML ever has. I remember when the trailer released someone from Colombia made a whole post listing all the details of what was what, and what was seen in Columbia. ML hasn't even proper represented it's own culture, much less others. Only ONCE do we see characters greet each other by kissing each other's cheek which realistically should be more common. Also they have actual French heroes that have used miraculouses, yet when they dabble in miraculous history, they never talk about those heroes. You got Jeanne d'Arc as one. Why not ever bring her up? Give kids of the show someone to look up later.
Yeah, Encanto is vastly superior to ML. And it's a sole film.
Personally, I think Thomas is just salty whenever something of higher quality comes out and does certain thing better than him. So he has to make a post about how "terrible" it is to validate himself.
At least, that's what I gather from what I've seen so far. I know he also trashed Wonderwoman but I hear that was really good. Planning on watching it soon.
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chrisevansluv ¡ 3 years ago
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Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:
The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist
The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.
By Adam Sachs,
Photographs by Norman Jean Roy
May 2012 Issue
"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.
"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"
We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.
On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.
"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.
Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"
But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.
"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"
Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.
To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.
Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:
Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'
Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.
Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.
Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:
Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?
Chris: Nothing wrong with that.
Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?
Chris: Looooong time.
Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?
Chris: No names, Ma!
Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.
Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.
Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.
We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.
East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.
"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."
Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.
Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.
From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.
It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.
What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"
By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."
Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.
"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"
Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.
Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"
One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."
What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."
There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."
Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."
"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."
"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.
"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."
My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"
At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"
I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"
Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."
East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.
"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."
I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."
Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."
The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"
And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."
We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."
Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."
I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."
He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"
Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?
"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"
Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:
The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist
The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.
By Adam Sachs,
Photographs by Norman Jean Roy
May 2012 Issue
"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.
"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"
We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.
On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.
"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.
Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"
But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.
"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"
Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.
To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.
Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:
Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'
Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.
Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.
Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:
Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?
Chris: Nothing wrong with that.
Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?
Chris: Looooong time.
Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?
Chris: No names, Ma!
Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.
Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.
Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.
We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.
East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.
"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."
Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.
Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.
From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.
It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.
What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"
By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."
Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.
"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"
Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.
Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"
One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."
What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."
There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."
Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."
"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."
"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.
"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."
My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"
At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"
I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"
Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."
East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.
"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."
I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."
Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."
The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"
And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."
We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."
Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."
I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."
He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"
Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?
"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"
If someone doesn't want to check the link, the anon sent the full interview!
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lovesanmotion ¡ 4 years ago
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yandere!fanboy!ateez reacts: s/o writing a song about them
This is: requested | I guess....the yandere!ateez as fanboys are a success from what I can see. I only uploaded them without thinking. Also, don’t hesitate to blow up my request box! I’m jobless like Hongjoong, Yeosang and Wooyoung. Also, to the sender who requested this, thank you so much for appreciating my blog and writing! 
Lyrics I placed in order:  Love Battery - LOONA (Immortal Songs)  Shadow - F(x)  Going Crazy - Secret Jieun ft. BAP Yongguk Peekaboo - Red Velvet Shampoo - After School Babe - Hyuna Into You - Yuri Love Foolish - TWICE 
Hongjoong: 
“Even if you are not handsome, I like it. Even if you’re not buff, I like it. You are just for me, to me, you are the best.” 
Hongjoong stood among the crowd with a foolish smile painted on his lips. His hands placed on top of his chest as he listens to your new song that you are performing at your comeback concert. 
“Hold me one more time. Hold me tightly until I burst. Love’s effect must be fading. I need you.” 
A soft sigh escapes his lips dramatically. Lovestuck as he watches the love of his life sing a song about him and how she constantly needed his touch or else she’d die from his lack of attention on her. 
“Fill me with love. Love battery has drained. I can’t live without you, I really can’t live without you. You are my battery.” 
He clutches his chest tightly, his heart beating loudly inside. He didn’t cared how wild the others were cheering for your comeback stage, all that matters to him is that this song was made for him. Just for him. Normally he would promote your songs by requesting them on radio stations, but he hesitated on the idea of promoting it. This was his song. And only he gets the full rights to enjoy it. The others are just listening to it, he thought that you were kind enough to let everyone hear the song you made especially for him. 
“To me, you are everything. I like you so much, I totally like you. My only love, there’s no other, my love. You are the best.” 
As the comeback concert ended, everyone inside the concert hall talked about how your comeback song is a hit and promised to get you another music show win. The others gushed how you must be in love that you wrote a song about affection. 
Hongjoong could only chuckle to himself as he walks out of the venue, hands filled with your individual merchandise and a wallet almost empty after emptying the shelves of your concert goods. 
“Stupid fools think that the song is for them when in fact the song is about me. Me! Only me! Why would Y/N ever notice all of you when a whole me exists?” Hongjoong thought to himself as he walked alone late that night. 
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Seonghwa: 
“Everyday, I secretly chase after your footsteps. I’m always careful so you won’t notice. No one says it but our date has started, our own date.” 
Click click! Seonghwa focuses his camera on a different angle before taking another shot of you. Click click! 
“Where are you going? Step by step, I follow you. Without a word you lead me. Step by step, did you notice me? I have nowhere to hide anymore.” 
Yesterday, Starlight made a comeback and today, they are performing their comeback song at a radio station. For this comeback, Starlight’s Y/N participated in the song writing, having been credited two songs in the mini album. She partook writing the comeback song! 
“When the sun rises, I walk in sync and together with you. I am really really into you. When the moon rises, you fall asleep in my arms. I really really like you.” 
Seonghwa’s parents had been praising him for landing a wonderful job in the corporate world. When in reality, he was only hired by a fellow sasaeng that gave him much flexible work hours so he could still manage to slip out of his work and follow your every footstep in the country or out. He was being paid fairly well even when all he did was just to follow you around.
“Day by day, we resemble each other more and more. Your laughter and tears, I know it all. Don’t be scared, were a fate tied by the sun, its our destiny to be together.” 
As the performance ended, the girls sat back down on their seats and the interview rolled in. Fansites can only hang outside of the studio, and of course, Seonghwa is up close, nearest to Y/N. 
“Congratulations to Starlight! This is their third comeback and the song is really catchy!” The MC remarked. 
“It’s sounds like a summer song! I heard Y/N took part in the production?” The second MC asked, the cameras then turned to face Y/N. Y/N who was flustered, nodded her head. “Yes” 
“Can you tell us the story behind the song? Your fans are dying to know the meaning behind such a good song.” The first MC says. 
Y/N held the microphone in her head, smiling, she explained: “This is a true to life song. I made a song about a guy who was really handsome and captured my heart. We were always going in the same direction and one time, his hand brushed into mine. And I felt so happy by the small connection.” Y/N chuckles. 
When Seonghwa heard about it, he lowered his camera and stared at Y/N. The song was about him. He remembered how he would spend his vacant period at work to follow Y/N when they were shooting an ad around Namsan because of the newly built skywalk. His hand brushed on hers when they were buying food at the convenient store. Seonghwa was so moved by the explanation that he felt like his feelings grew more for you. 
“My sunshine likes getting attention. My attention. That’s right, my sunshine, bathe in my attention only. ” 
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Yunho: 
“It’s not love, this isn’t love. It’s just your obsession. Wherever, Whatever I do. It’s frightening. The you who watches me.”
Yunho watched as Y/N practices for her upcoming comeback stage at The Show next week. He admired how she dare approached a bold and mature comeback. And he was so happy to see this new side of his girl. However, he felt like he needed to be more protective of her since she was going for a more risque concept. 
“Have you gone crazy? Why are you like this? Please just leave me alone now. Seeing you is suffocating. Please disappear from my sight.” 
Yunho stood behind the cameras as he watches Y/N and the featured artist practice. He heard a few staffs make a comment about how the featured artist looks like him. And maybe how you might’ve fallen in love with him. Yunho’s feeling swelled when he heard of those comments. In fact, he was so happy that he heard it from them. But you on the other hand, why do you still deny your feelings for him? Why was it so hard for you to be up front and honest with what you feel? Is it because he works as your manager? You’re in the same company as he is? And that you kept insisting to be professional? At this point, Yunho would resign if that was the case. If he can’t have you because of his line of work, he would be more than pleased to resign and be in your arms everyday. 
“Get lost. Just back off. I really can’t breathe. Wherever I go, wherever I am. It’s frightening. The you who follows me.” 
Yunho managed to lift the debts off his family. After paying the debts, he was able to even buy a new home for them around Gangnam area. His parents hesitated on the idea at first since owning a land in Gangnam costs way more than renting, Yunho told them not to worry. Not to worry since he is being paid royalty in his job. After that, he was able to spoil you with luxurious gifts and live with you in your apartment. More like forced himself into your home. 
“This ain’t right, this isn’t love. It just hurts me, don’t be like this. I loved you. But I don’t now. Erase me from your memory.” 
And when the song was released, Yunho was all up for promoting it. He made everyone he know listen to the song in various streaming platforms and watch the MV as well. Whether you would like it or not, Yunho is here to stay in your life. Permanently. 
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Yeosang: 
“Peekaboo! This is new, is this love? All my friends yell at me, they say I have a problem. I’m fine fine fine fine fine fine.” 
A small painted Yeosang lips as his eyes followed you on stage. He watched you as you danced in a tight red dress. That was his gift for you last Christmas to be exact. The designer brand didn’t really put it out for sale. They only made one and had it up for auction. It was a dress that accentuated your curves and complimented your skin. Yeosang won the auction and had it included in your next comeback. 
“Tag you’re it! It’ll be fun! I’ll include you here. Til the moon hangs on the jungle gym, let’s play” 
Since Yeosang is someone who holds a high position in the company, he made a proposal to be your sponsor. At first, your members didn’t like the idea since sponsors have a bad reputation attached to it. But you were naive and still proceeded with the sponsorship. You thought it would go bad, but Yeosang made you feel comfortable in his home and gave you all the fame that you wanted. Never did he once ask anything that was against your morals. 
“Peekaboo! It’s strange, you’re different. I stop this game and I look at you again. I’m not a fraid, because I just felt that a new story will begin” 
Your members were still cautious about Yeosang orbitting around you. There was something about him that they could not lay a finger on. Scared that they would find their contracts terminated the following day. But seeing you happy, they felt like they needed to stop. As long as you are happy, they are happy. Yeosang included. 
“Don’t worry, my love. You’re safe with me. Anyone who accuses you will come to me first.” 
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San: 
It was 9pm when you made a surprise V live alone in the recording room of your company building. San was actually nearby, he was hid inside the convenient store where he bumped into you before. 
“Hello everyone! Have you all eaten? I missed you alot.” He watches his Y/N pout in the screen. His heart raced a bit, 
“I ate already, my love. Don’t worry.” San responds, as if it was only him that you were talking to. 
“I made a new song and I’m in the recording room. Apparently, I was given permission to spoil the song for you!” Y/N happily takes her phone and draws it closer to the company phone of where she is doing her live. 
“I wanna be shampoo Trickling down your hair I wanna embrace you With my strong fragrance  I will wrap around your entire body With white foam  So even the mirrors can’t see you I will cover you  So no one can have you You won’t ever get rid of my scent” 
“That’s all the spoil for now.” Y/N stops the recording and turns the camera to her face again. She leaned her face closer and read a few comments about how would the fans think. 
“What is your inspiration behind this song?” She read aloud. She leaned back in her seat with her lips pursed. “In all honesty, I met a male fan last week. I actually bumped into him and I was able to smell his perfume and...” Y/N paused. “He smelled so good that...was it possible to fall in love just by smelling their perfume?” Y/N chuckles softly. 
San had his eyes wide. The song was about him. He felt like bursting from his seat but he refrained himself from doing so. 
“I hope he isn’t a weird fan. I also have a fan who constantly bothers me even at the late hours. It’s bothering me. And I hope the person stops soon.” Y/N said. Double jackpot! He got mentioned twice by you. He couldn’t wait until the song releases, he was already booking train station platforms in honor for the release of your song. 
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Mingi: 
Was it possible to fall in love with just a touch? Ever since the incident at the Incheon Airport, your company has become stricter and hired more bodyguards when it comes to outside activities. From what you heard, VS Media is even rewriting their rules when it comes to fan and idol gift giving. 
“Come on, let me play some more. Why treat babies gently, I cannot count on you, my age. You’ve walked in any magic. I am the one for you. Everyday I wake up. This is mine.” 
Ever since the incident at the airport, you slightly became uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the dorm. Despite your feelings, rest assured that your members were always there for you. 
“I am not sleeping today. I remember my eyes. I’m not sleeping.”
It’s been a month since you stepped foot inside the airport again, things were going okay. You were able to walk inside and through the gates without any problem. The fans still following your footsteps, you tried to loosen up yourself a bit - smiling and waving at them. Nothing could go wrong. 
Until, you saw a figure from your peripheral vision. You turned your head to take a look, but no one was there. Strange. As you and your group were able to board the plane, you took a seat near the window and pulled out your lyrics notebook. Flipping through the pages, you stopped at an unfinished work. The unfinished work is your solo song used as an outro for Starlight’s upcoming full album. 
“Babe babe babe in your eyes. Babe babe babe in your hand. My appearance is babe babe babe babe. I want to hear it again.”
“Are you writing a song?” You were startled with the question. You turned your head and didn’t noticed how a man with a mask and cap sat besides you already. 
“Yes I am” You spoke softly. “Can I read it?” the man besides you asked. 
You hesitantly gave him the notebook, the man took it and read through the lyrics. 
“I like how you composed the song. It’s still in its raw form too. You’re a genius.” The man complimented. You smiled and thanked him for the compliment. The next thing you knew shocked you. 
The man placed a hand on your knee, his other free hand removed his mask and cap. Song Mingi. At that moment, you couldn’t process what was happening. All you knew was that your mind kept telling you to tell at least your members. But your body started heating up at his touch. 
“Did you miss me?” 
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Wooyoung: 
Wooyoung had disguised himself as the photographer for your album. The night before it came, he worked on creating his fake ID and borrowed a spare camera to use for the production. 
“At that smile that sees my eyes. For me, the whole world is bathed in light. Hold my hands and I close my eyes. I hope this time stops here.”
Wooyoung’s breath almost took away as he saw you in black under shorts and wrinkled and almost unbuttoned white button down. He didn’t know what the concept was but his eyes were already feasting on your body, not ever feeling full. 
“Fall in love more deeply, you and I. Let’s fall in deeply, you and I together. The one thing that I want. You seep into me, you spread inside of me.” 
“Ms Y/N taking the bold move of doing her first sexy concept.” Y/N’s manager teased her. Wooyoung knew everyone who was on set. Him, Y/N, Y/N’s manager, stylist, make up artist and a few production crew that wasn’t part of VS Media. 
“What’s the story behind this concept?” Y/N’s manager asked, Wooyoung could only stare in awe at Y/N. Never did he see this side of her. He always knew of Y/N as the sweet and bubbly girl in soft concepts. But of course, Wooyoung love to break the types. 
“I actually like to search my name on the internet. And I came across fanfics of myself.” Y/N chuckles. Oh that sweet sound that made Wooyoung’s heart beat fast. The audio recorders can never outdo it. 
“There is a certain blog that possibly does a lot. That blog posts photos of me, writes fanfics and posts my schedules too. He’s doing god works for my other fans.” Y/N chuckles. As the production of the photoshoot started, Wooyoung did his best to capture the real beauty of this side of Y/N. 
“What a hardworking fan. What’s the name of the blog?” 
“ForY/N” 
Wooyoung’s eyes widens as he heard the name of his blog. His blog inspired you to make a song....about him? 
“Filling my whole heart. With you, I feel my heart. Fall in love more deeply, you and I. Let’s fall in deeply, you and I together.” 
“The way that person writes really amazes me. I’d like to get to know the person.” Y/N explains. His mind fell into a spiral. Part of him wanted the song to be released already but there was also a part of him that wanted the song to be released for him only. 
“Wish will soon become tomorrow. Today is more heart fluttering than yesterday. I want to go together with you. Closer to the place where my dream reaches.”
The bonus thing about what Wooyoung did today is that as a photographer, he was able to keep some of the photos. Running away even with some. 
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Jongho: 
Jongho fell in line for the release of your album. He was actually second in line as he was actually camping outside of the building of your company. 
“Everyday I called out your name, about a thousand times, about ten million times Before you finally heard it Cut and rewind, why can’t you be mine? Ooh the one who spins my head like this It’s you, just running running running around you  My repeatedly-midnight promise  I don’t know what to do”
Jongho, who had his arms crossed over his chest, looked up and down to turn around where that song was coming from. He hasn’t heard of this song but he knew that was your voice.
“Crazy love!  I love you, love you, hate, foolish Crazy love!  I love you Make me feel so high Love!  I love you, love you, hate, foolish Crazy love!  I hate you Make me so bad It’s weird, the more I fall for you I’m sorry, I’ll hate you I don’t know, I can’t explain this I’m trapped in a labyrinth of strange emotions”
The whole room was adorned with your own merchandise and on the TV display was actually an MV of your b side. Jongho took a basket and grabbed a handful of your limited and regular version of your albums, along with a packet of your photocards and a griptok. 
As he was in line to pay for his orders, in which his basket was filled as he actually bought more of your items. You made a sudden appearance into the room. For Jongho, he felt as if the room got brighter when you suddenly stepped inside. When it was his turn to pay for his items, the people behind the counter were amazed at how many he was able to fit into his basket. 
Tapping his feet impatiently, he wanted to be able to greet you before you left the room. When his bag was handed to him, he immediately took it and sped walk towards your direction, talking to a few. 
He felt as if the gods were with him. As he drew closer to you, the ones you were talking to left and it just you and him now. 
“Hello Y/N!” Jongho greeted. You turned to him happily. “Hello!” 
“I really really like this song of yours!” He gushed happily. “Can you tell me about it?” 
You nodded happily. “The song is actually about someone who makes me feel happy, the idea of love in a dangerous way? The idea send me thrills.” You chuckled. Jongho felt ecstatic. Beyond the moon even. You wrote a song about him! 
That afternoon when he got home, he made sure that everyone in Seoul would be able to hear the song that you made. It was for him so he had full brag rights to do so. 
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bananaofswifts ¡ 4 years ago
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Taylor Swift appears to be waging war over the serial resale of her old master recordings on two fronts. She recently confirmed that she is already underway in the process of re-recording the six albums she made for the Big Machine label, in order to steer her fans (and sync licensing execs) toward the coming alternate versions she’ll control. But now that she’s followed the surprise release of “Folklore” with the very, very surprise release of “Evermore” less than five months later, the thought may occur: If she keeps up this pace, she may have more new albums out on the Republic label than she ever did on Big Machine in a quarter of the time. Flooding the zone to further crowd out the oldies is unlikely to be Swift’s real motivation for giving the world a full-blown “Folklore” sequel this instantaneously: As motivations for prolific activity go, relieving and sublimating quarantine pressure is probably even better than revenge. Anyway, this is not a gift horse to be looked in the mouth. “Evermore,” like its mid-pandemic predecessor, feels like something that’s been labored over — in the best possible way — for years, not something that was written and recorded beginning in August, with the bow said to be put on it only about a week ago. Albums don’t get graded on a curve for how hastily they came together, or shouldn’t be, but this one doesn’t need the handicap. It’d be a jewel even if it’d been in progress forevermore and a day.The closest analog for the relation the new album bears to its predecessor might be one that’d seem ancient to much of Swift’s audience: U2 following “Achtung Baby” with “Zooropa” while still touring behind the previous album. It’s hard to remember now that a whole year and a half separated those two related projects; In that very different era, it seemed like a ridiculously fast follow-up. But the real comparison lies in how U2, having been rewarded for making a pretty gutsy change of pace with “Achtung,” seemed to say: You’re okay with a little experimentation? Let’s see how you like it when we really boil things down to our least commercial impulses, then — while we’ve still got you in the mood.Swift isn’t going avant-garde with “Evermore.” If anything, she’s just stripping things down to even more of an acoustic core, so that the new album often sounds like the folk record that the title of the previous one promised — albeit with nearly subliminal layers of Mellotrons, flutes, French horns and cellos that are so well embedded beneath the profuse finger-picking, you probably won’t notice them till you scour the credits. But it’s taking the risk of “Folklore” one step further by not even offering such an obvious banger (irony intended) as “Cardigan.” Aaron Dessner of the National produced or co-produced about two-thirds of the last record, but he’s on 14 out of 15 tracks here (Jack Antonoff gets the remaining spot), and so the new album is even more all of a piece with his arpeggiated chamber-pop impulses, Warmth amid iciness is a recurring lyrical motif here, and kind of a musical one, too, as Swift’s still increasingly agile vocal acting breathes heat into arrangements that might otherwise seem pretty controlled. At one point Swift sings, “Hey, December, I’m feeling unmoored,” like a woman who might even know she’s going to put her album out a couple of weeks before Christmas. It’s a wintry record — suitable for double-cardigan wearing! — and if you’re among the 99% who have been feeling unmoored, too, then perhaps you are Ready For It. Swift said in announcing the album that she was moving further into fiction songwriting after finding out it was a good fit on much of “Folklore,” a probably inevitable move for someone who’s turning 31 in a few days and appears to have a fairly settled personal life. Which is not to say that there aren’t scores to settle, and a few intriguing tracks whose real-life associations will be speculated upon. But just as the “Betty”/”August” love triangle of mid-year established that modern pop’s most celebrated confessional writer can just make shit up, too, so, here, do we get the narrator of “Dorothea,” a honey in Tupelo who is telling a childhood friend who moved away and became famous that she’s always welcome back in her hometown. (Swift may be doing a bit of empathic wondering in a couple of tracks here how it feels to be at the other end of the telescope.) One time the album takes a turn away from rumination into a pure spirit of fun — while getting dark anyway — is “No Body, No Crime,” a spirited double-murder ballad that may have more than a little inspiration in “Goodbye, Earl.” Since Swift already used the Dixie Chicks for background vocals two albums ago, for this one she brings in two of the sisters from Haim, Danielle and Este, and even uses the latter’s name for one of the characters. Yes, the rock band Haim’s featured appearance is on the only really country-sounding song on the record… there’s one you didn’t see coming, in the 16 hours you had to wonder about it. Yet there are also a handful of songs that clearly represent a Swiftian state of mind. At least, it’s easy to suppose that the love songs that opens the album, “Willow,” is a cousin to the previous record’s “Invisible String” and “Peace,” even if it doesn’t offer quite as many clearly corroborating details about her current relationship as those did. On the sadder side, Swift is apparently determined to run through her entire family tree for heartrending material. On “Lover,” she sang for her stricken mother; on “Folklore,” for her grandfather in wartime. In that tradition the new album offers “Marjorie,” about the beloved grandmother she lost in 2003, when she was 13. (The lyric videos that are being offered online mostly offer static visual loops, but the one for “Marjorie” is an exception, reviving a wealth of stills and home-movie footage of Grandma, who was quite a looker in a miniskirt in her day.) Rue is not something Swift is afraid of here anymore than anywhere else, as she sings, “I should’ve asked you questions / I should’ve asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me / Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt / ‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me,” lines that will leave a dry eye only in houses that have never known death. The piece de resistance in its poignance is Swift actually resurrecting faint audio clips of Marjorie, who was an opera singer back in the day. It’s almost like ELO’s “Rockaria,” played for weeping instead of a laugh. Swift has not given up, thank God, on the medium that brought her to the dance — the breakup song — but most of them here have more to do with dimming memories and the search for forgiveness, however slowly and incompletely achieved, than feist. But doesn’t Swift know that we like her when she’s angry? She does, and so she delves deep into something like venom just once, but it’s a good one. The ire in “Closure,” a pulsating song about an unwelcome “we can still be friends, right?” letter from an ex, seems so fresh and close to the surface that it would be reasonable to speculate that it is not about a romantic relationship at all, but a professional one she has no intention of ever recalling in a sweet light. Or maybe she does harbor that a disdain for an actual former love with that machinelike a level of intensity. What “Evermore” is full of is narratives that, like the music that accompanies them, really come into focus on second or third listen, usually because of a detail or two that turns her sometimes impressionistic modes completely vivid. “Champagne Problems” is a superb example of her abilities as a storyteller who doesn’t always tell all: She’s playing the role of a woman who quickly ruins a relationship by balking at a marriage proposal the guy had assumed was an easy enough yes that he’d tipped off his nearby family. “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer ‘ Til someone’s on their knees and asks you / ‘She would’ve made such a lovely bride / What a shame she’s fucked in the head’ / They said / But you’ll find the real thing instead / She’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred.” (Swift has doubled the F-bomb quotient this time around, among other expletives, for anyone who may be wondering whether there’s rough wordplay amid Dessner’s delicacy — that would an effing yes.) “‘Tis the Damn Season,” representing a gentler expletive, gives us a character who is willing to settle, or at least share a Christmas-time bed with an ex back in the hometown, till something better comes along. The pleasures here are shared, though not many more fellow artists have broken into her quarantine bubble this time around. Besides Haim’s cameo, Marcus Mumford offers a lovely harmony vocal on “Cowboy Like Me,” which might count as the other country song on the album, and even throws in something Swift never much favored in her Nashville days, a bit of lap steel. Its tale of male and female grifters meeting and maybe — maybe — falling in love is really more determinedly Western than C&W, per se, though. The National itself, as a group, finally gets featured billing on “Coney Island,” with Matt Berninger taking a duet vocal on a track that recalls the previous album’s celebrated Bon Iver collaboration “Exile,” with ex-lovers taking quiet turns deciding who was to blame. (Swift saves the rare laugh line for herself: “We were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be.) Don’t worry, legions of new Bon Iver fans: Dessner has not kicked Justin Vernon out of his inner circle just to make room for Berninger. The Bon Iver frontman whose appearance on “Folklore” came as a bit of a shock to some of his fan base actually makes several appearances on this album, and the one that gets him elevated to featured status again, as a duet, the closing “Evermore,” is different from “Exile” in two key ways. Vernon gets to sing in his high register… and he gets the girl. As it turned out, the year 2020 did not involve any such waiting for Swift fans; it’s an embarrassment of stunning albums-ending-in-“ore” that she’s mined out of a locked-down muse.
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deepperplexity ¡ 4 years ago
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Prompt: 5. Memories
A/N: So, we are on day 5 of SNAPEMAS and I have a little longer fic for you today! Fair warning though, it is very mixed between joy and sorrow because I try to shine some light on tough subjects with my writing. I know it's a jolly time of year but it is also around this time of year many suffer - often in silence. So, with that said, I hope you enjoy this one!
Setting: Your home on a little hill covered in snow, Christmas morning
Pairing: Snape x Wife!Reader
ABBR.: │(y/n) - Your Name │
Word count: 4240
Warnings: Sexual content, Angst, Sorrow, Mentions of miscarriage, Fluffiness & Cute stuff
Masterlist page // Masterlist post // SNAPEMAS POST
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Christmas, it's finally here! It was the first thing you thought as you woke from a soft slumber next to your husband. It was still early, pitch black outside despite the heavy layer of snow you knew was just beyond the frost-covered window. You sighed, completely content as you snuggled up next to Severus. His arms snaked lazily around you as he grumbled a 'good morning' with that raspy voice you adored.
You kissed his chest as you were tucked into him, your head heavy on his pale shoulder. "Good morning hubby," you purred and you saw a little smile tug at his thin lips. Your fingers traced idle circles on his chest, swirling in the black chest hair you always loved to drag your fingers through. He chuckled and moved his free hand to be beneath his head.
"How long do you think we have?" he murmured and it vibrated through your skin where your head rested against him. "'dunno, an hour maybe," you whispered back, he chuckled. "That's more than enough." Before you knew it he was on top of you. He held up his weight with his arms on either side of you as he snuggled in between your warm legs. Fitting perfectly together.
You giggled as your arms snaked around him; your warm hands landed on each of his shoulders before you moved them down his scarred back. You barely noticed all the marks he bore any longer. They were a part of him and nothing with him could be ugly. Not even the near-white marks that covered most of his back. You knew what memories they carried and you had been determined, from the first time you saw them, to take away his pain. As he did yours.
His lips travelled down your temple, cheek and jaw; ventured down your throat as he purred against you. A soft moan escaped you as one of his hands stroked down your ribs and hip; then up again. "Severus," you whispered and he hummed. "I love you," was his answer to your call of his name before his head dipped further down to your breasts as he kissed, licked and nibbled. "I love you too," you panted softly as your hands grabbed on to his back. Your nails slightly dug in and he moaned against your warm skin.
He ventured further down and your opening was slick with want. A feverish need pounded in you as he stirred you awake in every way possible. You loved him dearly. The perfect man that was yours to love and cherish, to care for and support. As he did for you in all ways possible. The way he made you tremble with arousal was just the biggest of bonuses. He was masterful in the art of seduction and just as skilled when it came to the actual deed. He never left you unsatisfied if he could help it.
"Oh, Sev, please," you pleaded as he suckled and licked at your most sensitive spot. As he tenderly stroked and sucked the little bundle of nerves. Your body stiffened ever so slightly as he hummed against you. It was a far better experience than any vibrating toy could ever give you. Could there be a better way to start of Christmas? No, no I don't think so...
"I love-" Just as he was about to say something you both froze. Then in a flurry of movements, he threw himself up and you both snuggled up to each other pretending to be asleep. You tried to calm your body and breathing, he was trying to do the same. You both inhaled and exhaled a long, deep breath and just a second later your door gently squeaked open. Just as you both were able to scold your faces into sleeping masks.
You pretended to be asleep as little feet padded the floor on their journey towards your bed. The mattress bent and the bed groined a bit as a little body climbed onto it.   "Mommy," a sing-song voice whispered. You feigned sleep and tried with all your might not to smile. "Mommy," the little voice whispered again, a little louder. But you did not stir. You knew to lay still and be quiet, pretend to sleep as this, this very moment, was your husbands favourite part of Christmas morning.
The bed dipped, someone small crawled over you and snuggled in between yourself and Severus. "Daddy?" the little voice whispered, "daddy wake up." You felt Severus stir as he feigned waking up with a grunt. "What is it my little princess?" he murmured with that raspy voice and you laid still, listened. Tried to still the yearning and pounding Severus had stirred in you a moment earlier. "I can not sleep," your daughter whispered with a sigh. Severus chuckled and you knew it was because she spoke like him. Said each word. She never used 'can't' or 'won't', not even 'I'll'. No, she spoke every word just like her father. Except if she was mad. Then it was a splurge of words of all kinds.
"You can not sleep, you say?" You felt the nod she gave. "Should we go and make breakfast then?" Severus continued in a hushed tone, "so mommy can sleep?" "Mommy is sleeping hard," your daughter said with a sigh and Severus chuckled. "She is indeed," he whispered and your daughter giggled as you presumed he gave her a little tickle or kiss to the top of her head. "Come on then." They both left the bed with muffled steps and you knew Severus was holding her hand and in her other hand his old, nearly worn out, pyjama pants of black silk was most likely clutched and trailed after her.
She had never had a teddy bear to fall asleep with or anything like that. No, your daughter had laid claim to Severus's pyjama pants when she was no more than 7 months old. His favourite pair. But he had given them up freely. You smiled at the memory of his shocked eyes as your daughter had screamed and screamed only to fall asleep instantly when you gave her the pants. They smelled of her father and it soothed her immensely. Since then, the king had lost his garment to the little princess who refused to share.
The door closed and you heard the stairs groan under their weight as you turned over and sighed. Sure, you had not had the satisfaction of sweet release but you had so much more to feel content about. So as you layed there you allowed memories to flash by. Some happy and some sad. Some horrible and some wonderful.
Your mind drifted away to Christmas's passed. The first Christmas you had ever spent with Severus had been a, well, trial. He had said no to music, no to garlands, no to Christmas cookies and star-shaped lamps. No to a tree and no to a party. He had blocked you at every turn as you had tried your darndest to decorate his house at Spinner's End.
Well, he lost that battle and every Christmas battle since, you thought as a chuckle escaped you. You had gone up at two in the morning and decorated the whole damn house in red, green and silver. Everywhere hung decorations, in the oven cookies were being baked and from the radio in the kitchen came soft Christmas music. You had ordered a tree to be delivered at exactly six in the morning as Severus was a bit of a sleepyhead back then and usually didn't get up until after nine in the morning.
You had moved some furniture and placed the tree smack in the middle of the living room and boy oh boy had it been decorated. There were all kinds of decorations and so much glitter you could barely see the tree beneath it all. The house was a Christmas Wonderland by the time Severus shuffled down from the bedroom and his face. HIS FACE! I can still not get over it, you thought and you had to muffle a laugh with your hand not to be too loud.
He had looked utterly outraged and shocked. His exact words were 'What devil has spewed Christmas all over MY house?! (y/n)! What have you done to my house, you wicked woman!' You had stood your ground and the minute he had whipped out his wand to take it all down you had snatched it and ran into the kitchen where the smell of cookies hit him like a wall of sweetness. And you knew, the battle had been won when he saw the gingerbread heart decorate with glace that spelt 'I love you, my sweet Grinch'.
He had choked on a rumbling laugh and he seemed to have lost the anger and outrage as he gingerly looked at the cookie you had made only for him. That saved my arse, you chuckled again as the clear sounds of breakfast in the making reached you from downstairs. "Daddy, I ... ham ... plate..." You could hear some of the words your daughter was uttering but the unmistakable sound of Severus's praise was impossible to miss.
More feet clapped and thudded against creaking floorboards. "Oh boy, you have your hands full now my Grinch," you chuckled and how right you were. Jolly voices rang through the house, chaos broke out as apparently everyone was awake and up - ready for Christmas. You heard the unmistakable sound of begging with words of gifts. Then grumbling about waiting only to be followed by shouting and feet stomping the floor.
Three, two, one- "Go get mommy!" There it is, my queue to save my poor husband, and here comes the cavalry! The door burst open and several little bodies filled the bed. "Mommy! Mommy! It's Christmas!" a boyish voice with a high pitch rang out and you opened your eyes only to grab all of your kids and gave them kisses as they struggled to get away while laughing. "It is my little darlings, it is!" you said with joy as you looked at your daughter and your three sons.  Happiness filled your chest and you could barely keep the tears away. You had not always been so fortunate as to have a family, to have children. There was a time when you feared it would never happen.
Jacob, your oldest son of nine years, fortunately broke your train of thought as he pulled on your arm. "Let's go, mommy! Daddy says we can't have our gifts yet!" he hollered with a disgruntled sneer he had learnt from his father long ago. He was adorable with his father's black hair and your eyes paired with his pale skin. "Daddy said so! Daddy's mean!" Ethan and William declared at the same time, their twin behaviour was getting almost spooky. Despite only being seven years old they already acted like one - no matter how hard you tried to make sure they always knew they were their own individual persons.
You sighed and shook your head, "daddy is not mean. Daddy is very nice and loves you very much. Don't hurt his feelings like that." The twins looked a little sad at that but seemed to quickly shake it off with a hasty nod. "Mommy, can you come now?" You looked at your daughter, little Elisa who had slid off the bed and stood next to your head. You smiled and nodded. "Let's go make sure daddy has set the table properly guys," you said and the cavalry filed out of the room in a thunder of hurried steps as the twins raced each other to get to the kitchen first; despite the fact you called after them not to run.
In the kitchen, Severus was preparing tea and coffee while your children messed up the table setting as they moved things around to their liking. You leaned against the door jamb as you watched the chaos that was your family. Your perfect little home with the messy fridge covered in the children's art, the worn floorboards, the creaking cabinets and that one drawer that wouldn't fully close in the little kitchen. There laid toys here and there, books as well. Now during Christmas times, there was even more stuff everywhere as you were crazy for Christmas decorations and your children seemed to have inherent that as well. But it was your mess, your family's things and it made you smile.
"Ah, there you are, about time," Severus smiled as he filled your cup with tea and his own with pitch-black coffee. "Hot chocolate! Hot chocolate!" Elisa hollered as she tugged on her fathers pants before you had had any time to answer him. "Alright, alright. Easy does it," Severus chuckled and gave you a silent look. You nodded and started to prepare the hot chocolate as all the kids swarmed towards you with their favourite mugs in their little hands. they were all twinkling eyes and wide smiles as they were dressed in their Christmas pyjamas and slippers.
You made each cup to their liking. Elisa's with rainbow marshmallows. Jacob's with whipped cream and chocolate powder on top. The twins, Ethan and William, preferred theirs with an extra scoop of chocolate and exactly five blue marshmallows. No more, no less. "Careful now," you chided as they started to walk towards the table with their filled mugs and they all slowed down so as not to spill the warm drink.
Again, it was chaos. Elisa only wanted Severus to make her breakfast, Jacob wanted to have more of everything, the twins wrestled for the same pieces of ham to put on their sandwiches but all were happy. And once everyone had what they wanted a soft silence fell as you all enjoyed a hearty breakfast while the littler radio played soft carols in the background.
You sipped your tea and nibbled on a sandwich as you made sure the kids sat properly and didn't flail their arms about too much. Severus gave you sweet looks and little smiles whenever little Elisa allowed him to not be fully occupied by her talk of reindeer and snowmen.
It didn't take long for the nagging about Christmas gifts began. You simply rolled your eyes, it was the same thing every year. The kids were always so preoccupied with the thought of gifts that they somehow always missed checking their stockings and you never reminded them before breakfast, always after. You had done that mistake only once and would never do it again as the whole breakfast was ruined. The kids only played with the things they had received instead of eating. It had been a mess and a struggle to get a Christmas breakfast that year.
So you smiled and hummed, added little words like 'oh no' and 'really' when needed as the kids babbled about everything they could possibly think of to try and persuade you to give them their gifts. Breakfast was always like that - full of talking that is - but on Christmas, you actually let them babble for as much as they wanted. It was a time for freedom and joy, not reprimands and silencing. And, who wouldn't want their children to feel like they always can speak to their parents? About anything. Well, you wanted them to feel that they could do just that.
When breakfast had been cleared away and you were about to tell the kids to check their stockings Jacob shrieked before you even had a chance to say anything. "Stockings! WE HAVE STOCKINGS!" he hollered loudly and for a moment everything was quiet and still. Then the cavalry literally ran to the fireplace where six stockings hung. You chuckled as both you and Severus followed silently. Holding freshly filled cups of tea and coffee respectively.
The kids played with their morning toys - a tradition your family had had for many generations. As a child you didn't think much of it but now that you yourself had children you understood why the tradition came to be in the first place. To keep the little ones calm, and occupied, for a few hours. Until they get the bulk of the gifts, you thought with a smile and a swift glance around the room.
Around your wrist were a silver bracelet, it had waited in your stocking. The chain was adorned with little letters in between even spaces. All the first letters of your children's names. Your husband had always been a thoughtful and caring gifter so you were not surprised to find something you wanted without even having known you wanted it to begin with in your stocking. He, on the other hand, was enjoying a rather hefty book. A muggle book to be precise; a collection of classics from Charles Dickens, Bram Stroker and Jane Austen.
Your husband would never admit it but he adored classical romance with all it's intricate emotions and linguistics. So you bough collection edition for him; just so he could pretend it was the other stories that fascinated him rather than the once with a lot of romance. Even if those were the ones he read over and over. In this particular collection 'Pride & Prejudice' was the most romantic story and you already saw him skipping to the latter half of the book to read it.
As you sat there -the kids played, your husband read and you enjoyed a fresh cup of peppermint tea - memories flooded in again as the happiness you felt poked at the less happy times that seemed to always linger in the back of your head. No matter what you did to cast those memories out. They were, truly, useless as they held no sway any longer. They were healed wounds. Merely scars now.
However, they pulled you back to the third Christmas you had had with Severus, the first one as a married couple. It wasn't a happy Christmas. The gifts he had given were perfect, the food delicious and the house sparkled with decorations as a hefty smell of gingerbread cookies filled the air. He had done it all. Severus that is. You, you had barely had the energy to get out of bed.
It was the first Christmas you could remember not being jolly, or singing, or dancing. Not baking or cooking or decorating. No, you had been curled up under heavy blankets with one of Severus's sweaters tightly held to your chest as you sobbed and cried for hours.  
The memory made you shudder, Severus noticed from the other side of the little living room. "Love?" he asked in that worried tone of his, "are you cold?" You shook your head but grabbed a blanket to put over your folded legs anyway. He arched a brow and you gave him a tight smile before your eyes returned to rest on the children, as they were playing on the rug before you. I'm so happy I have all of you, my little darlings...
But no matter how happy you were the memory kept pressing, as it had done every Christmas. Your children reminded you of it, more often than you cared to admit. But you didn't hold that against them and you never spoke of it. With them, your husband or anyone else.
It was 12 years ago and you preferred not to utter a word about it. After all, why speak of such horrible things as miscarriages with the lovely little humans that were your children. Why torment yourself and your husband with words of what was lost when there has been so much gain afterwards. It was just useless. And, usually, the memories faded away hurriedly after you just let them play out. It was still hard to allow them through.
But you remembered. Always remembered the pain, horror and dread from losing a child before it even arrived in the world. The emptiness, that hollow feeling where something - someone - would always be missing. You had only been three months pregnant when it happened. But the fact it had happened a mere two days before Christmas seemed to make the experience even worse. And now, now those memories were at their peak around the happiest time of the year.
But you never let it take over and you always cherished what you had. Four beautiful children, a loving husband and a warm place to call home. After all, some unlucky souls never got children. No matter how hard they tried or how many times they manage to get pregnant or how badly they wanted it. If it was a choice to not have children; you were happy for that person. But to never have children, or to miscarry, when you desperately wanted to have your own little family was nearly unspeakable.  
So, you never spoke of it. You were slowly getting past it even if the memories remained. But they were further away now. Not so demanding and not so vivid any longer. Scars rather than wounds. You were thankful for that. I have more than I could ever have hoped for, you thought and a warm smile spread across your lips as Elisa crawled up on the couch and snuggled into your embrace with her new dragon plushie held tightly.
"Do you like her?" you asked, your daughter smiled. "You think it is a she?" she asked, "I mean, it is green." You gave her a smile as you stroked her hair. She already spoke so clearly. A fast learner it appeared. "It can't be a girl because it is green?" you asked, your daughter pondered the idea. "It has purple spikes," she stated, "and purple eyes," she continued. "Elisa, you decide if it is a he or a she. Listen to the dragon, what is it telling you?"
Your daughter stared at the plushie and seemed extremely focused. "It's not a he or a she," she stated firmly. "Oh, what is it then?" you asked with a smile, she looked at you with her face set in a determined expression. "It's a dragon." You smiled and laughed, good answer my little clever darling. "That sounds very good sweetheart, what is your dragon's name then?" "Dragon," she stated flatly as if it were the most obvious thing in the whole world that the genderless dragon's name was just Dragon. Yeah, how could one not immediately understand that? You nodded with a wide smile - and a damn good try to not laugh at how cute your daughter was - and she returned to hugging the plushie; obviously happy with her own logic.
The memories of the sorrow and heartache, the loss, faded away and you sat with your daughter in your arms and a wide smile covered your lips. Life is good, you thought for yourself and as if faith had little tolerance for your enjoyment all hell broke loose as the twins stole Jacobs toy. They screamed and fought for the toy. All six hands grabbed after it. Severus was quickly over at them and settled the situation though so you continued to cuddle your little daughter.
It didn't take long for Jacob to come over and Elisa swiftly moved over to her dad where she seemed even happier to be curled up. You took Jacob in your arms, quite happy he still wanted to cuddle despite being nine years old and always proclaimed he was 'a big boy now' when you tried to hug him or kiss him. So you enjoyed it. Loved the moment as he talked about all the things his robot toy could do, how his robot had saved the universe and always remembered mother's day. It was quite amusing as Jacob always seemed to forget about that particular day.
You kissed the top of his head and he ran off to his room to play with the toy, the twins followed - always wanting to be close to their big brother - and Elisa was quick not to be left behind. A calm quiet fell over the living room and Severus came over to you. You smiled and he lifted your legs before he sat down next to you and placed your legs over his.
"Happy?" he asked with a glance at the bracelet. You beamed at him. "Very, you? Enjoying your new book?" you asked with a little wicked smile and he chuckled. "I know you know, but I'll be damned if I ever admit it." You laughed loudly at his words and he kissed your temple. "My sweet Grinch," you whispered and stole a quick kiss from his smiling lips before he had leaned too far away again.
"Think they will play for a while?" he asked as his hands stroked your legs atop the blanket. "Half an hour maybe, why?" He smiled wickedly. One of those grins that made your body vibrate with want and lust. The heat from earlier ignited instantly. "Let's finish what we started," he murmured as his hand slithered in under the blanket. Your cheeks flushed and you both knew you were playing a dangerous game out in the open of the living room. You hid under the blanket and in an instant, all thoughts of Christmas, gifts and losses were torn away from you as Severus took over your mind, body and soul yet again with the soft sound of children laughing and Christmas carols in the background.
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So, before I write anything else - I know it's Christmas and it's supposed to be light-hearted, jolly fics and stuff but I still feel like holding true to reality as Christmas his a hard time for many people for different reasons. This being only one of them. And I do want to shine some light on tough subjects through my writing - I try at least - but I am trying to keep it as light as possible during Christmas. Considering it's supposed to be a jolly time ^^
So, I hope you enjoyed this little longer fic. I have been trying to keep my writing a bit shorter for Snapemas as I won't otherwise be able to do as many prompts as possible - hopefully all of them. But I will do a few longer ones when I feel it's required or I have the time to do it ^^ After all, you guys are used to my fics being a bit lengthy xD
Masterlist page // Masterlist post // SNAPEMAS POST
Tags: @lizlil​ @snapefiction​ Want to be tagged? 💚 You can tag yourself HERE! Or tell me and I’ll gladly tag you! 😍
[Dec:2020]
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popculturebuffet ¡ 4 years ago
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Ducktales Shadow Into Light (Lena Restrospective) Finale!: Lena In Season 3! (Commission for WeirdKev27)
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Hello all you happy people and welcome to the FINAL part of my look at the life and times of Lena Sabrewing. It’s been a long and satsifying journey through the character’s rich arc and some of Ducktales 2017′s best episodes. Lena started as a tourtured but complacient teen willing to do bloody awful evil things if it meant her freedom, who through the power of love and friendship realized what she was doing wrong, that she loved Webby and turned on Magica... and after a brief stint of this going horribly wrong a magica simply just bodyjacked her, she sacrificed herself for Webby he story seemingly done. Of course it wasn’t, Disney woudln’t let them kill a teenager... fully grown lion men horrifcally decaying indiana jones style yeah, of course it’s disney, but killing a teen is where they draw the line. Point is Lena was merley trapped in the shadow realm with a bunch of those guys Yugi beat and with the help of everyone���s faviorte stoic hummingbird, freed Lena. Lena found new family in Violet.. but also found dying is easy but living is harder and had to wrestle with both her fears of turning out like Magica and Magica herself who naturally was gaslighting her to try and get the last scraps of her power back. We also took a detour or two to see where she came from: looking at both Minima De Spell and her rivalry with a 34 year pretending to be a small child, and Magica’s Shadow whose like Lena except almost nothing like Lena. We also took a look at her one comic apperance which was never released here for some reason and was incredibly disapointing. 
So yeah i’ts been one long, fun ride filled with gay subtext, launchpad’s spider sense, giant legs, movie refrences from warriors to jaws to nightmare on elm street 3: the dream warriors, toddlers who look and probably are 34, launchpad apparently huffing enough paint to damage his brain as that’s the only way to explain the terror of the terrafirmains subplot and gay subtext. I’ve enjoyed every step of the way so before I take the last one of those steps, i’d like to thank all of ya for reading this. I’ve gained at least 10 if not more followers off this series alone and I appricate all of you. I’d also like to thank Kev for directly comissioning this, keeping me in work and in x-men comics since 2020. 
As you can probably guess by the title.. this one’s a bit different. This is a combination of two things: The first is that i already reviewed “The Phantom and the Sorceress” when I was reviewing each episode of Season 3 as it came out.  My thoughts have not changed  at all so I felt redoing that review would be redudant and a waste of Kev’s money. The same goes for Split Sword, which has the extra issue of  being a three story episode with only one of the parts starring the focus of this retrospective. The second is while she shows up about the same amount as season 2, her apperances in season 3 outside of her Christmas Cameo are all more substaial outside of her two starring roles. Both COTHJSW and The Last Adventure shed some more light on our faviorite shadow and feel like natural evolutions of her character so it felt wrong to just flat out ignore them. 
So rather than do a full review of the episodes i’m just going to go into Lena’s apperances for Season 3. This way I can cover Phantom again without fully repeating myself, and fully track the last steps Lena takes as the series closes out in a fresh and hopefully enjoyable way. So join me under the cut for one last step into the shadows as we finish bringing Lena into the light. 
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Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!
Challenge was one of the very first Ducktales I ever talked about on here, alongside Quack Pack, so it’s quite a trip returning to it a year later, even if i’ts just my memories of it. It’s also an excellent episode, with a great and engaging main plot and a “it’s just kind of there” subplot. 
It’s also one of the only three episodes to focus on Violet, and one of only two that focuses just on her and not on Lena in any way. It is a shame: While I love Lena as a character, I wouldn’t of just spent several weeks talking about her if I wasn’t getting paid for this retrospective or not, Violet is equally intriguing and so i’ll be taking a second out to talk about her as I really HAVEN’T gone into her character this retrospective and given how important she is to Lena and to all of us, most Lena fans like Violet just as much and vice versa. I’ll still be talking about Lena in this episode, obviously, but I feel her sister from two misters deserves some time in the spotlight too as the show only gave her three episodes, and one was more focused on Webby and Lena by design and the other we’ll get to. 
Violet is an excellent character. She speaks well and with little emotion but that’s just how she is and she’s never called out for it or insulted, something I like. Likewise she dosen’t judge others, never really batting an eye at the rest of the groups own quirks and at most being freaked out by leg huey a bit. She’s just a kind, curious, intellgent young lady. 
And this episode shows that off: We get to see her in the spotlight of her own, every bit the Woodchuck Huey is and more, but still supporting and encouring him, seeing their contest as a friendly one and putting no stakes into it as she’s failed before, she can fail again. What matters is she get back up and keep going. Her “razzing” is also just downright adorable, and nicely shows off her and Lena’s new dynamic: they’ve gone from friends to siblings, something really not shown off last time and something that wason’t confirmed on screen till now but it just works naturally, the cool and collected but chaotic underneath that lena just plays perfectly off the uttelry calm and deadpan violet. It’s a natural, perfect dynamic that they clearly had mapped out from the beggining and simply had to build up to that. 
Her genuine shock at Huey’s betryal... hurts the heart, as she genuinely thinks it’s her fault and not just my boy having a panic attack and doing something questionable. But it also shows her character.. when givne the same opprunity and no guilt for it, he struck first.. she dosen’t. She saves him because it’s the right thing to do and shows Huey she really is the bettter woodchuck.. but htere’s no shame in it. It’s okay to fail, what matters is you keep trying. And as a result despite giving Huey the opporunity to win with her.. he turns it down. She gets a deserved win, celebrating with her family and just wearing the most adorable smile. She also just has.. buckets of chemistry with Huey. I mean it was apparent to me with the whole Library Scene in Nightmare but god damn do they ramp it up with this one. They just contrast each other perfectly here, the handshake is adorable and he clings to her.. while also being hilarious “I naturlaly defer to authority!”. I will take this ship to my grave, and fully support it... that being said if you ship Huey/Boyd or all three togehter, go for it man. I do the latter sometimes. Your good. You didn’t need me to tell that but sometimes shipping discorse can get downright ugly so rather than make it a war between two ships, I just wanted to offer an olive branch for once you know? Same with Weblena. I obviously adore that ship but if you have a non-boys ship with her, tha’ts cool too. Ship what you want to.. i’m just doing me through this retrospective. 
Now back to Lena. Her apperance in this episode is really heartwarming and really nice after all the shit she’s been through. This is the first episode she’s in where NOTHING bad happens to her. No really, every apperance, even her two cameos had her suffer in some way. She spent the entire first season grappling with Magica, and her season 2 apperances trapped in a shadow dimension and nearly loosing her girlfriend to her own jealously, horrifically stalked by her abuser using her own self doubt against her, attacked by a literal tempest in a tea pot and captured by aliens. The girl has not gone one friggin onscreen break since the series started and probably not many off it either. 
Here? She just gets to cheer her little sister, proudly celebrating both her and her new dads. She gets to teach her sister to trash talk, even if that ends up backfiring a bit but she meant well. And she gets to celebrate with her family when her little sister wins. It’s all small stuff.. but it’s all things she’s NEVER had. A sibling to be proud of and support. Dads to sit with and go places with. A family to celebrate things with. This is all pretty normal stuff, but not something everyone gets to have and something Lena NEVER had even remotely. But now she’ll ALWAYS have that. A supportive loving family to give her a place to belong, and to support in turn. After a nightmarish 14-15 years of existance, she’s FINALLY allowed to just be happy without having to fight a giant monster first. 
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She’s finally made it, she’s hoped and she’s waited, for the first time in her life she dosen’t feel alone. Her hearts started to heal, to know this is real, this is how it feels.. to have a home. Yes I haven’t given up on that song. And if you think this is the last time i’m going to quote a song you clearly didn’t read the review I did of the next episode. 
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The Phantom and the Sorceress:
Season 3′s primary focus outside of the FOWL plot was tying up loose ends. Pretty much every major recurring episode outside of Fethry got an episode tying up their character arc and of course Lena was no exception.
You’d think with Magica no longer a threat to her and having fully accepted she’s a good person now, and having found a place to belong that Lena was done.  But while she accepted her past, that she’s not magica, and that she deserves to be happy.. she never accepted Magic as part of her despite being made of it and that’s what this episode ties up as well as the mystery of the blue aura that surronded her magic at times. 
The episode starts with Lena’s amulet, which she has back now which is the only part of this episode I don’t like as they don’t really explain why she’d take it back from Violet. But her magic keeps goofing up and making Sleepovers dangerous, and gets Scrooge grousing about how magic is bad.. only to naturally backpedal when an angry Webby points out Lena is magic. He does amend things and genuinely apologize for it, having not meant her at all and not even thinking of her as part of his hatred of the stuff. It also shows why Lena likely didn’t take him up on his offer.. with her self loathing still going she probably thought he was just pitting her and would always resent her.. when really he just geninely did not care despite his overwhelming hate of magic. It worked out granted, she found a better fit for her family wise.
But Lena hates it too.. and while she hasn’t fully brought it up before it makes perfect sense: We saw how she viewed it as dangerous and not worth the risk to bring her back in Friendship Hates Magic and Magic has brought her nothing but pain, nearly killing her on several occasions, allowing magica to fuck with her head  or directly control her and general putting the one person she cares about more than anyone in harms way. She hates what she is.. because it’s brought her nothing but pain and misery. She has ever reason to resent it..
Yet this episode is about forcing her to accept it.... to realize that Magic is part of who she is, and that it’s not inherently good or bad, it’s all about the intent of who uses it. Her last two uses of it were not made with any malice and in fact using it to pull her friends into her dreams allowed her to break free of Magica. 
And it’s perfectly done by giving her a new enemy, something I REALLY wish tehy’d done with Fenton at some point, but get why it took this long with Lena: The Phantom Blot. The Phantom Blot, like many characters in this series is HEAVILY redone: he keeps the iconic look and threat level but instead of being an operatic supervillian, he’s an anti-villian with a link to magic he never really had before. He works with FOWL sure but it’s likely because unlike the rest of FOWL he actually agrees with Bradford’s goal for a less chaotic world and his desire to wipe out magic is perfectly in line with that. 
He’s also given a backstory that perfectly parallels him with Lena: Both were created by Magica in a way and horribly abused by her: Lena mentally and phsycially, and Blot by having to suffer under her rule after he took over her family and then barely survivie as she wiped out his villiage, his family and his normal life swearing vengance on her. LIke Lena magica didn’t care about him or see him as a threat, figuring like most people who swore eteneral vengance on her he’d get swatted down like a gnat once and never return. INstead he returned again and again and again for decades, learning each time getting stronger and wiping out more magic along the way. He went from what was probably a good normal person to a vengeful vigliante dedicated to wiping out magic good or bad because he can’t concieve that it isn’t ALL bad. He’s easily what Lena could’ve become if , ironically enough she hadn’t encountered him, seeing the end result of hating something just for what it is as it tried to murder her. That hating and resenting Magic would just lead her to become as hollow and vengful as the blot, having a good cause to start.. but slowly loosing yourself to hate and anger. Letting the person who ruined your life still control it simply by focusing all your energy on hating them and people like them. 
It also gives us an interesting and painful teamup as with the boys and Scrogoe stuck in another dimension, there’s only one person they can turn to deal with Magic: Magica herself, whose resulted to depression eating pizza and the most she can do as a threat is eat the garlic Violet was wearing in case of vampires (”There now your susceptible to vampires!” is easily the best joke of the episode, from how Magica eats the garlic in one bite to her manical laugh to Violet just being annoyed rather than terrified or anything). Magica only agrees because they have a common enemy and if he sucks up her magic amulet, that’s the end of any magic she has left. 
It’s also here we learn the reason for the blue and purple color coding: Duckworld magic is indeed color coded.. but rather than be based ont he emotions used or anything.. it’s based on the user. The purple is Magica, and as we later learn Poe’s, magic, and thus Lena borrowing it via the amulet. The Blue is HER magic. Tapping into her emotions and her own inante power. It’s a nice twist I didn’t see coming but makes absolute sense in hindsight: Every time she’s triggered it.. it’s been when she’s been using her own emotions and been doing thigns for her own good, and not for anyone elses. It also explains why the Magica powers aren’t working for her or stable: their not HERS to control and thus are fighting her. 
So she trains to use her own using the time honorted traditions of montages and having your sibling shoot things at you out of a magical amulet. She grows in her talent and power and herself, even if she learns from the person she hates more and comes to accept magic.. in time to fight the Blot who misguidedly thinks harming her will show Magica the pain he felt.. even though as we learn later that ship already sailed and we already knew she cares nothing for Lena. 
But as he drains her amulet... she focuses on what she cares about... and if we didn’t already ahvea  MOUNTAIN of subtext for webby and lena her “frienddship” montage has maybe one or two shots of her sister.. and about 80 of webby. Seriously they.. they weren’t even hiding it at this poitn outside of the finale, which we’ll get to. 
And so she takes hold of her magic, no longer need the amulet to channel it and taking on her super mode! Which was highly contreversal at the time.  BUt I get why. As a transformation, ala dragon ball, and a superhero type costume it works, giving her a power and grandeur not seen before and showing she’s using all of it, giving weight to when it only shows up in the finale when she needs it most and likely would’ve given it weight any other time it showed up. But it wasn’t clear if this was her permenant look now and Frank’s response to it was to say he wanted to dress everyone up in that outfit , at the same size Lena has it, including launchpad wearing it like a cape. Which while hilarious and it was, was also blatant trolling as her return in Split Sword showed it wasn’t her default form, and they could relax. But as a form showing the apex of her power, character development and confidence, it works and has all the drama i’d expect from a form like this, reflecting the blot’s power back onto him and overloading the gauntlet and facing down Magica easily. 
It’s the perfect way to cap things off... Lena finally acccepts herslef as she is fully: she’s not evil and neither is magic.. magic is a part of her and her power is not something to hate.. but to embrace. To use to protect the world from people LIKE Magica who would misue their power to harm others or the blot who belivie her power is inherently evil. This is a lena freed from the chains of self hatred, fully accepted. It turns her story into a wonderful, beautiful story of escaping abuse and accepting yourself as who you are, that no matter what you are or where you come from, you are beautiful, you are good and you can do good. And as she flies off with her sister and girlfriend, she’s finally, fully, truly at peace with who she was who she is now and flies into the future.. and to free her girlfirends dad from another dimension. Nothing is holding her back now, no one can push her around, she’s who she wants to be, she’s the master of her, and the thoughts enough to lift her off of the ground. She and Webby are independent together and they are flying. And yes i’m linking the song again. 
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But even with her character Arc Wrapped she still could support others in their own growth. Case in point:
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The Split Sword of Swanstantine!
This was the vingette episode, with a pair of the kids, one from Team Magic the other from the Duck Boys, going after a piece. And while Violet’s segment is neat it dosent’ really expand on her enough for me to go into it like I did with Challenge, so i’ll only be covering the cold open and Lena and Huey’s segment. Given these two are some of my faviorites, Lena hasn’t really gotten to have any meaningful interactoins with anyone besides Webby, Violet and Magica (And scrooge but for like.. two minutes), and this bit is really creative and intresting I loved it. It also has Steelbeak so I got a nice Jason Mantzokus fix on top of that despite him barely getting to speak in this one.. and really all season. Season 3 REALLY wasted Steelbeak, only using him three times and just ignoring the whole idea of him growing more compitent with time. Maybe Frank’s saving that for darkwing duck if he gets to do that I dunno. At least Invincible and Close Enough are using the man properly so I got that. 
THe setup to the episode as a whole is comedic gold: Scrooge has taken the kids to Monocrow to find the split sword, one of the missing mysteries before FOWl.. only to then realizze in one of the best jokes of the season, after HOURS of plane travel probably that Violet and Lena had also come along having slept over and thus spending the episode in their sleep clothes. As Violet puts it in LIebe’s best delivery of the series “You said eveyrone get on the plane so we got on the plane”. So, fricking relatable. Scrooge’s awkard “Do you.. like history?” is also great, David is a treasure, as if he’s just now realizing he really dosen’t know Webby’s closest friend and girlfriend and is scrambling for some common ground so he can stop talking. 1/2′s good enough and we’re off. 
Lena and Huey’s plot, the final one of the three, likewise has a simple setup: Huey finds the sword piece.. and also Steelbeak, whose ready to punch  him some children. Lena freezes time as she can do that but can’t delay the inveitble, just give them time to plan. 
And this is a nice showcase for Huey and a nice chance for Lena to be snarky as Huey wants to try anything and everything he can do that dosen’t involve fighting as he hates it and Lena endulges him as he gets tossed around, playing on her phone while he tries dumb scheme after dumb scheme from prtending to be his dad, to his inner child, to construction to offering him a snack, to “what sword piece” while hodling the sword blade twice his side behind his back.
Lena eventually calls him on it: He can’t keep avoiding this and there’s some reason he dosen’t want to fight. The reason turns out to be he bruce bannered himself and thus has a split personality for all his agression and primal rage, the duke of making a mess,  Huey’s version fo the McDuck family anger he’s buried away and is ashamed of, hating his  more impuslive emotions due to his desire for control. 
As for how Lena impacts this.. it’s her own acceptance of the part of her she hated, her magic, that gives her the clarity to help Huey, helping him realize like her this shit isn’t healthy and to make peace with the Duke instead of fighting him and locking him away. The result is a perfect combo: a huey with all the power and strength of a mcduck, but the nuance and tactics Huey normally has to beat Steelbeak easily. Lena is impressed, a friendship is forged and we see how far sh’es come: from hating herself.. to helping others stop doing it before it gets worse. 
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How Santa Stole Christmas!
All we really learn here is that she and Violet share a room and a king sized bed.. but we got that cheek smooch and I had to mention that so there you go. 
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The Last Adventure!:
Like most of the main cast Lena gets a decent note to go out on, if a bit wobbly. The wobblyiness comes from two sources. The first is just a nitpick of mine; We don’t get to see the climax of her fight with the Blot alongside Manny. No really. The Blot got two spotlight episodes, his own sidekick/wife/amy sedaris, and was built up as one of FOWL’s biggest threats.. and his defeat isn’t even shown on screen for some damn reason. I feel they just ran out of time but given how important Lena and Manny were series wide and how awesome the keith david reveal was, it’s a cop out
Speaking of Cop Outs we can’t talk about this episode without talknig about the elephant in the room: Lena saying Webby “already has two sisters”, seemingly shooting down any posiblity of Weblena. I do not see it that way but do feel the two could’ve phrased it better and we could’ve gotten SOME Weblena by the end instead of none to offset this. I feel Lena’s motivations, esecpailly given the context were purely to try and placate Webby to keep her from investigating the twins further and endangering herself, not realizing how badly this wouldn’t work as Lena’s never cared about where she comes from and her past is all pain and abuse before Webby, while Webby had this gnawing at her her whole life. I do think the last episode was the WORST POSSIBLE place to put this, as it comes off as queerbaiting evne though I don’t think that was the intent. So yeah this line sucks and was poorly conveyed. 
Everything else though is thankfully excellent: Her raging frekaout at June feels warranted, as June is literally trying to cut Webby out of her life and was purposffully trying to galight webby as we find out. Her and Violet’s reason for going is also just pure awesome, pure heartwarming and pure badass, both angrily and simply proclaming when stating why their going on the final attack no fowl “It’s Webby”. Webby helped Lena become a better person and lnvoes her more than anyone else and vice versa and Webby gave Violet Friends, a sister and a life of her own. Nothings going to stop them and Scrogoe wisely backed down on that one before they strangled him. 
Her final scene is the best though: Not only do she and Violet give May and June friendship braclets but despite the earlier hostlitlity... Lena helps them with not a second though. She now understands them, gets that their like her: a being made by an evil dickhead who saw them as a tool to use and not a person and was willing to kill them the moment they were no longer useful. She too was once lost, sad and felt alone..but Webby pulled her out of that and now she’s going to be there for these two, these alterante versions of the love of her life, to give them the same support and encourages them they’ll find their home. And sure enough my boy comes by not a second later to adopt both of them. In an instnat they’ve gone from alone with only webby like Lena was.. to having a family of their own and loyal friends to stay by their sid.e 
And so Lena ends the series charing off into the wild blue with her sister and her newfound friends, the future all ahead of her, the past finally put to bed, and herself finally at peace, in love with Webby.. and with herself at long last. 
This retrospective was a wonderful time. I throughly enjoyed going through Lena’s history and being more and more impressed how much I’d missed and how it was even BETTER the second time around. This arc is Ducktales at it’s best and Lena is the finest thing they acomplished. This is easily Kimiko Glenn’s best role and really let her show off her range. Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ll see of this wonderful lesbian shadow, but as it stands with peace, love and self worth found, it’s still a good place to leave her. If she ever returns i’ll of course pick this up again, and free of charge but for now I enjoyed the ride and throughly enjoyed this retrospective. T
Thank you all so much for reading. If you liked this retrospective, please stick around. My next comissioned story arc is covering the various crossovers Lilo and Stitch did, but after that in three weeks return here for Season 2. All three arcs, All done intermidtley. Buckle up. 
Until then follow for more, and join my patreon. My next stretch goal is monthly reviews of darkwing duck and reviews of the super ducktales mini series, and after finsihing this post i’m going to throw in some extra non-duck ones! 25 is being changed up from covering Tailspin every month, to covering a Danny Phantom episode every month, and the beloved special ultimate enemy. So check that out. I may throw in some more on both 20 and 25 so stay posted. And just for joining at the 2 dollar tier you get acess to my discord server and get to pick one of the shorts for my varoius shortstaculars I do. Next one up is goofy’s birthday with Donalds in june so join now! 
ANd if you just have one speciifc episode I haven’t covered you’d like me to, those are 5 bucks a pop on commission and available via my ask box, direct messages on here or discord at technicolormuk#6550 and until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure
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Christmas Special: Characters spending Christmas with their S/O
HAPPY HOE-LIDAYS!!!
Christmas morning is happening all around the world, but no matter what you do or don’t celebrate, or how you do or don’t celebrate it, we here at Afterdark hope y’all have a wonderful time! 
The holidays are hard (pun not intended), but please know that if you’ve ever enjoyed a post on this blog, we love you, we appreciate you, and wish you all the best in the world.
Here’s your present!
Trevor
AINT NO CHRISTMAS LIKE A BELMONT FAMILY CHRISTMAS! 
Lights, food, music, more lights!
His whole extended family gets together for this, so expect to be dragged along to many many events throughout the month. 
No pressure about the gift buying though, they're all very practical people and contributing to the food pile is a perfectly acceptable offering. 
You never would have guessed the size if his personal ugly sweater hoard.
And you are less surprised to find his mistletoe belt buckle. 
It's not so much he gets jolly as he and his family honor the traditional route of drinking and feasting. 
He's very shy about his few gifts he gets you though, when you both get to have Christmas Day to yourselves. 
He gets a few necessities, like the soaps you like and socks to replace all the holey ones he tossed behind your back. (The man can have holey underwear but is weirdly specific about socks being intact)
But among them he'll get a cheesy sentimental thing, like a locket his nan thought you'd like or a card with a better poem than he has any right to be able to write. 
With the rest of the month having been crazy, this day he wants to spend with you, in pjs, nibbling on leftovers and watching movies. 
Begs you not to get sexy santa lingerie because he really doesn't need to be reminded of his family while fucking you that night. 
Adrian 
He can enjoy the sentimentality of the season, but you can see him roll his eyes at gaudy Christmas displays. 
He sees mistletoe in doorways less as an opportunity for a grand romantic gesture and more of a game. 
How many seconds does it take him to go from noticing to smooching your face?
You have the suspicion he might also be so quick about it because he wants to make sure there's no window of opportunity for anyone else to come in.
He offers to spend the holiday with your family if you prefer, his parents aren't sticklers about the exact day you visit. 
He uses the cold weather as an excuse to be ten times more cuddly than normal.  Obviously he just doesn't want you to catch a cold. Obviously…
Kid damn near forgets to buy gifts. 
He's just so used to getting things as you need them he forgot to actually hold anything back to the holiday. 
He does get cheeky with them though, adding things like "Christmas Edition" naughty dice next to your favorite candy. 
Hey, the point of the holidays is to have fun, right?
Sypha
Caroling, caroling, caroling- Sypha it is literally December 1st.
Expect there to be music playing through the house 24/7 of a wide range of genres.
While her family has always spent extra care to teach each other about the variety of celebrations during the winter months they would settle on Christmas as the day to actually get together. Work schedules and all. 
Has much more fun with Christmas activities than gifts or food. Sledding, building snowmen, watching movies, quality time is huge for her. 
Her family has such a variety of ways to spend the holiday she has to ask you exactly what your family might expect of her if you visit. 
Very much a getter of "us" gifts. Fancy coffee for us to try,  a new toaster for us to use, spa passes for us to go to tomorrow. 
When things boil down she's a bit glum, knowing most people will go back to being less kind without the holidays and a looming hint to be nice. 
But she can't stay sad for long with you to be with her until next Christmas. 
Hector
December always sneaks up on him, you can tell by the eye rolling when he hears the music in the stores change overnight.
Not digging the cold much, but he will risk freezing to avoid the gaudy Xmas sweaters. 
Snowflakes are fine, he draws the line at lights and tinsel. 
You can tell he gets a little salty about a lot of people only acting nice during this month but he can't stay sour when he sees you glow under the lights strung up between street lights. 
Spends extra time at the animal shelters, helping them bring critters in from the cold and he donates all the blankets and pillows he can grab from second hand stores. 
He's not a huge gift giver, but if there's something specific you've been eyeing he'll go out of his way to make sure you don't get it for yourself.
Is the YouTube boyfriend who gets you the puppy/kitten you've been looking at online,  minus actually filming it. 
He also loves making a big Christmas Eve meal,  even if it's just the two of you,  and then having delicious leftovers for days after. 
Isaac
Probably the one who needs the most persuading to be…"jolly".
No Christmas sweaters, no Christmas music, any carolers are getting a door shut in their face. 
He finds it the biggest spit in the face for people to think being jolly for 25 days undoes all of the cruelties of the world.
But you discover he has a soft spot for decorations, especially the lights. 
He likes the handcrafted ornaments and the reflection of people's personalities in how they arrange their homes. 
But of course he won't discourage you from enjoying the season, he just has trouble doing it himself. 
When it comes to gifts he's very simple,  minimal wrapping, but he does make a little game of it.
Why put everything under a tree when you can find small tokens of his affection by the coffee mugs, on your nightstand, maybe in the pantry?
He cuts off the baking early in the month though once he notices the slightest tightness to his belt. 
He can't say no to your cooking, clearly this isn't his fault!
Dracula
Is he a scrooge? Not… exactly. 
He gets testy about the hypocrisy of a celebrity holiday turned commercial and the religious overtones and the worst version of "Santa Baby" to be released in his lifetime which he always thought was a garbage song in the first place-
But for you he can suck it up. 
He always gets confused at how people with wish him a Merry Christmas for things like holding doors during December, even though he does that year round. 
To be honest he'll follow your leads, not carrying many traditions with him. 
You like big family gatherings? Sure, he can bring the roast beef or honey ham for the crowd. You want to hide away and drink peppermint schnapps in hot chocolate watching horror movies? Strange approach but whatever makes you happy. 
He won't buy a ton of gifts, but the one thing he has a weakness for is holiday lingerie. It is perhaps the one thing he could argue that pays tribute to the original holiday practices, fucking. 
It's gaudy and can be ripped apart easily but replacing it is what next Christmas is for.
Lisa 
You can guess by the boxes upon boxes labeled "XMAS" living in the attic that there's some serious decorating that's gonna happen December 1st.
Lights everywhere, giving a little ray of hope and magic. At least that's how she will describe the effect she wants her elaborate display to have. 
No religious symbols, since she wants the feelings of goodwill to be broader in scope. 
She'll drag you outside to browse other people's displays, squeezing your hand and pulling you close and she gets lost in the glittering lights. 
She doesn't push much for the family get togethers, she likes to keep things intimate and personal with you. 
Movies, going ice skating, just taking the time to appreciate being together. 
Which means she's a hell of an accurate gift giver, always finding the exact thing you need without you having to ask for it. 
She also does a loooot of baking. She does donate a lot of it, and will give it to carolers if they come by, but you might need to step in to tell her that you have no more room in the fridge or pantry for all of the goodies. 
Godbrand
The whole of December was quiet...too quiet. 
Sure he was up to his usual hijinks, but not really feeding into the holiday theme.
Aside from the stash of eggnog in the fridge and gigantic bottle of rum to go with it. 
You would've thought he'd completely ignored the tree aside from a few baubles that got rearranged. 
Then Christmas Eve rolls around and he's full ugly sweater, glitter and lights in his beard, sack of gifts over his shoulder,  "Ho ho ho Merry FUCKING Christmas!" 
Apparently he doesn't think much of wasting the whole month being half assed when he can go balls to the walls in one night. 
Spoils the fuck out of any kids in either of your families. 
Once your home alone, expect the whole ribbon on his dick, sexy Santa ready to "cum down your chimney" bit.
Is it gaudy and ridiculous as fuck? Yes.
But he'd rather be over the top for you than make you think he just hadn't cared at all. 
-Mod Soviet
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sometime-in-1995 ¡ 5 years ago
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hi i saw ur post about sm and the graduation system and i’m kinda new to kpop and kpop companies, i was wondering if u could explain what the graduation system is?
Hi! Uhm Okay, please bare with me 'coz I don't know where to start or how to explain this properly but I'll try lol
Let's start with history, shall we?
So a graduation system is basically a group concept made by SM Entertainment a music label/entertainment company where SJ, SNSD, SHINEE, F(X), NCT, EXO, TVXQ, RED VELVET, BOA & others are housed. So as per my knowledge, the 'Graduation System' was first applied or given to Super Junior when they debuted in 2005 making their debut album titled as 'Super Junior '05'. Meaning, the 12-member original lineup back then will be reorganized (idk if that's the proper term) based on their performance making the members work hard or do their best if they want to be part of the next lineup for Super Junior '06. It's like competing with your own members. So basically, every year or every comeback, there's a different or a new set of members. On the following year (2006), they added another member which was Kyuhyun making SJ a 13-member group, the largest pop group in history so far at that time. There were backlash when Kyuhyun was added. Fans (ELF) were worried and threatened about the instability of the group and the uncertainty of the concept that they have. Fans were worried about the members' future after going through intense training for yearsss so basically they didn't like it. And then in 2007, SM introduced another new member featuring which was Henry in SJ's 'Don't Don' comeback. Backlash continued. SM didn't expect that SJ's first and original lineup would appeal to the public like that, afterall, SJ was known to be 'TVXQ's leftovers'... damn writing this hurts... After all the backlash that SM received, they never tried adding anymore members into SJ and cancelled the 'graduation system'. They made Henry and ZhouMi (both are Chinese) members of Super Junior - M (SJ's sub-unit based and marketed in China) instead. Yes, just a member of the sub-unit, not the main group. If you still don't know since you're new to KPop, SJ was the first group to ever venture into sub-units. Considering they have large number of members, SM saw this opportunity to utilize their artists. It's like value adding. The first sub-unit in KPop was Super Junior - K.R.Y, a ballad sub-unit composed of SJ's main vocalists: Kyuhyun, Ryeowook, & Yesung. So yeah, the graduation/rotational system failed with SJ. They remained as a 13-member group since then (15-members actually including sub-unit members Henry & ZhouMi) Basically, SJ was a lab rat for SM, an experimental group. They gave the graduation system to them and tested the sub-unit thing as trial and error.
Fast forward to 2012, SM debuted EXO with 12 members as a whole divided into 2 sub-units which were EXO - M (Mandarin; based in China) and EXO - K (Korea) with 6 members each. There were no graduation system in EXO although they are an improved version of the sub-unit concept given, tried and tested first by SJ. SM would like to think that they left the errors they encountered with SJ's sub-unit system and then apply the 'improved' version of it to EXO. Did it also fail? You tell me. I'm seriously hoping that history won't repeat itself on WayV. Once you get deeper into Kpop especially into SM groups, you'll see eventually the connection, trend, similarites and differences between SJ, EXO & NCT (SM's largest groups) and also their Chinese sub-units, Super Junior - M, EXO - M, and WayV respectively and realize how SM worked around this concept of graduation/rotational system and infinite members and infinite possibilities that they gave NCT.
Fast forward to 2016, NCT debuted with its first sub-unit NCT U which has this rotational concept. Apparently, in NCT's case, rotational system and graduation was made separate and different. Any member in NCT regardless of what fixed unit they belong to could debut and release a song & MV as a member of NCT U depending on whoever fits the song. It could be a duo, a solo, a trio, or indefinite number of members.
SM would like to think that they left the errors they encountered with SJ's graduation system and then apply the 'improved' version of it to NCT Dream. NCT Dream debuted in 2016 with the original lineup of 7 members composed of Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle, & Jisung. They were literally just 14 - 18 years old (Korean age) back then, teenagers. And the graduation system that SM gave them was that when they reach the age of adulthood which is 20y.o in Korea, they have to 'graduate' or leave the group and re-debut separately into another fixed unit which is based in another country's city ('coz SM was planning to conquer the world through music somehow lol). So after reaching the age of 20, these kids who literally grew up together as childhood friends are bound to be separated. Mark turned 20y.o in 2018 and graduated by the end of the same year. The members threw him a Kamsa (Thank You) Party which is like a send-off party around Christmas time of 2018. He was no longer part of NCT Dream's activity or comebacks after that nor seen together with the other NCT Dream's members unless it's a full group (NCT as whole) activity. So in 2019, 00liners Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, & Jaemin turned 20y.o and were expected to graduate from the sub-unit at the end of the year just like Mark. But SM announced concert tour schedules for NCT Dream on November of 2019. Til 2020 came and Chenle also turned 20y.o and SM never mentioned anything about the graduation. Not until today April 14, 2020 where they finally broke their silence and announced that NCT Dream's graduation system is abolished and will adopt NCT U's rotational system instead making NCT Dream a fixed unit. I know this might cause confusion later on especially for new NCTzens so I'm gonna clear it up here now. NCT U's rotational system includes everyone in NCT and give them opportunity to collaborate and release a song regardless of the sub-unit they belong to. While NCT Dream's rotational system is only exclusive to NCT Dream's 7 members: Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle, & Jisung.
SM isn't really good at taking back whatever they've started, they'll see to it that at some point, they'll still be able to push through their original plan. That's why I said on my previous post that they've 'compromised'. They didn't give in to our demands, they've 'compromised' thinking that this is the 'best' they could give us given the situation.
Other people say it's no big deal, they're still in the same group just not in the same sub-unit. Or they're just separated in sub-units, it doesn't mean they're no longer friends which is all true. But if it's just something that light of a thing to deal with, it wouldn't affect the members so much. SJ have mentioned in some ocassions before that the graduation/rotational system they had during debut was extremely hard on them because even if they didn't want to, the concept made them look at their members, their friends as rivals. It made them compete with each other. The managers kinda pressured them into thinking that way, the company made them feel that way. They were still budding into adulthood back then, around 18- 22y.o. They were struggling because their concept gave them so much uncertainty. Imagine joining the company at a young age aspiring to debut as an artist so you could put food on the table for your family (because most of SJ members came from poor families) so you went through years of intense training and then to debut in a group where your future isn't assured. While for NCT Dream, since they are childhood friends, some of them have said on ocassions before (specifically Jaemin & Jisung) that aside from their members, they don't have friends. Because they've dedicated their childhood in intense training. They didn't have the time to mingle with other kids in school because right after classes, they'd go straight to training so the only friends they know and have are their members. Think that all those years they were building that relationship together, while SM were planning to separate them from each other when they turn 20. SM even made Jeno, Haechan & Jaemin drop out of high school just a few months before their high school graduation to focus on NCT Dream's graduation. Think about how they were robbed of that opportunity. I specially/personally feel bad about knowing how Jeno enjoys school and excels in academics. Think about how hard they cried during their first ever concert The Dream Show thinking that it might be their first and last concert together because even themselves don't know what SM plans to do with them after graduation. That's what the 'graduation system' does to young group of people. Although the concept is not all bad, but it's not nice to play with other people's emotions like that. That's why no one wants it.
So yeah, that concludes my explanation. Sorry if it's kinda information overload. I think, while writing, it became more of a vent/rant more than explaining. 😅
If there's any of ya'll who comes across this post may correct me (politely, of course) if any of the info I've wrote were wrong. Thank you. I hope this helps to you dear and to any Kpop newbies out there 😊
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blackmuzak8484 ¡ 4 years ago
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nortey dowuona’s best of 2020
to be completely honest, I decided to do this entirely for TSJ. otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered at all. Best end lists are for music nerds and billboard chart nerds and industry vultures, and i happen to be subscribed, in the discord and in the comments of the youtube vids of these folk. so, i decided to pick 10 out of random from the big best of 2020 i was compiling for the whole of the year, which I was gonna post to this Tumblr at the end of the damn year, but I guess I can just post the link to the playlist in the bottom of this post. Here, i’m gonna write about 10 songs I personally love, and pick out a few artists i specifically loved:
artist of the year.
RAP Ferreira put out his best album and best verses in a year everybody either stagnated, fell off or got rendered irrelevant by the world at large. He was ebullient, hilarious, thoughtful and even surprisingly honest. I enjoyed the fact that now he’s begun to create a real platform for many talented folx, and I hope he continues to do that in the margins and make even more beautiful music in the years to come.
rookie of the year.
Enny by a mile. Everybody else who debuted this year got hamstrung by the pandemic but she created 3 great songs, each thoughtful, insightful and a joy. Apparently she just started publicly releasing music to a large audience, and I hope she gets better and better, and even gets bigger than J-
most pleasant surprise.
Vic Mensa’s V Tape. An artist who I though had no more moves left completely turned around his whole career with a fantastic performance at Lollapalooza, a fantastic fleet of features and tis gorgeously produced EP which had some of his most brilliant songs on it. I love it all, Vic Mensah is well and truly back. Welcome back bro. (ALSO, DROP THE DRILL TRACK.)
GREAT THING A GHANAIAN ARTIST DID.
Strongman Burner, Amarae, Okunta Kinte, Vic Mensah in general.
cool things my friends and classmates did.
Justine Darcenne’s #4TheBaeless. Valencia Rae’s Siren thyhomebodies’s Coming of Age. (Phil, a producer in the group, made his own studio!) Brad built his own computer. petit abri put a track on APT9 Record’s compiliation album Volume II. khaalid anderson’s transitions. (khaalid will also be performing at Beats & Brunch on January 23, 2021 at 11 am.) Yannick Paul’s Bear Fruit. The Big Climax’s This Is Ya Boy kxng jetson’s Waves (ft. Kokko Williams & Mike Mezzl) Nicole Gonzalez performed in The Composer’s Melody. Victoria Marie released a bunch of beaufiful covers on her Insta, @toriiii_marie @ph0ssy_jaw works as a counselor online. Pay her at her PayPal. Johnny Aperano Yoba was on People AND Vogue. Dalitso is a wonderful pianist at his church back home in Zambia. Kobina is a fantastic drummer at his church. Kayla graduated with a BS in Music Technology and Industry! Damian been cookin on his insta. Travis graduated! (Look out for Clan of Dragons.) Rorghino Flores made a documentary! Francis (and Animax FYB) put out Mmofra on AmaLexPrime! (play it with yo kids.) A Hype has been dropping crazy all year, roll by his SoundCloud and check out Persistence Of Memory. Reina H been doing great covers on her Insta, @challenges_inlife. Hannah placed music on C. B. S.
best albums of the year (that nobody’s written about).
Maya Huyana -1991 DaWeirdo - Broke and Ugly $ilkMoney - Attack of the Future Shocked, Flesh Covered, Meatbags of the 85 VI Seconds - Because Why Not/Never Knows Best Erik Cain - Heart & Soul Vol. 2 Dimitri & the Scarecrow - Messenger is Sender (from 2015, finally got released onto streaming this year, still pretty great and another great Zimbabwean rapper for us to all fawn over, just like billy woods) Flowking Stone - Gifted 1 The Hoodies - Incommunicado Jayy Grams - Every Gram Counts Domo Genesis/Mike and Keys - Just in Case1/2 Madwiz - God’s Gold Teeth Maez301 - Hasaan Daara J Family - Yaamatele Dai Burger - Dessert EP TeePhlow - Road To Phlowducation II Tef Poe/Blvck Spade - Preacher in the Trap Terrell Hines - Portal One: The Mixtape redveil - niagara Nyukyung - Trap Harmonix AdrianXpression - Sucka Deante Hitchcock - Better (Deluxe) maassai & jWords - ve.loc.i.ty tobe nwigwe - cincoriginals everything Kelsey Lu did this year.
strangest things happening in music in general.
vic mensah actually making a great record. goldlink going through a narcissistic collapse and winding up making the best music of his career. redveil blowing up off Fantano calling him wack. pharoahe monch finally making a rock pivot and it actually works. meet me@the garden coming 10 years too late for my 14 year old self. RAP Ferreira being in the NYTimes, selling a vinyl record for $72, creating an actual nostrum grocers in a video game so we can listen to his next record. The entirety of the playboi carti phenomenom. The entirety of the lil uzi vert phenomenom. The entirety of Chance’s instagram EP being far more money worthy then the entirety of the Big Day and yet being released on Insta and not immediately monetized. Deante Hitchcock releasing a great album and being completely forgotten armand hammer releasing their underground kings wayyy too early. my ass continually not actually looking into amapiano despite always loving it when I review it. several good songs needing to be tacked on to a prior youtube vid as an ad for me to find them instead of actually listening to the artists. santan dave still releasing good verses after he made his illmatic. (expect his new album to suck.) slowthai becoming cake. (we let that go way too far.) Guapdad and BfB Packman being wonderful. Finding out BfB PAckman is a better rapper than Sada Baby. John Boyega putting on Ego Ella May. Having to admit Young Dolph was good all this time and i missed out like a fool.
best tv performance.
Chance The Rapper’s “A Chi-Town Christmas.” IDK’s “Change The Channel.” Sa-Roc’s Tiny Desk Concert. Chika in general. Robert Glapser’s “This Changes Everything (ft. Denzel Curry).” SZA at the Roots Picnic. Sampa The Great at the Roots Picnic. RAP Ferreira in general. Umi’s “Introspection Live Show.” Alexa Esperanza’s cover of “Is It A Crime.” Bad Bunny in general. the jwords, nappy nina and MIKE performances at Satellite Syndicate
most embarrassing piece of music i love with all my heart
Logic’s No Pressure. In all sense of the words I should not love this album like I love my siblings but I do. It is beautiful.
best 10 songs of this year objectively
1 - RAP Ferriera - An Idea Is A Work Of Art (ft. Mike Ladd) [prod. by Kenny Segal, mr. carmack and Mike Parvizi]
I know, I know. In all honesty Doldrums should be here. Then Noz put it on his best list and I had to be all ChiTown Go-Getter and pick the next better thing: this. And in all honesty, it has the best lyric RAP spits on the album: “we build better answers.” But it’s not just that, it’s RAP’s most animated performance, the most dexterous piece on the whole album and the most gorgeous beat, a loping bassline sliding behind the flatfooted drum, allowing Mike Ladd, his musical father, to gently drift through, saying, “what if royalty depised us?” and knowing the only gold is soul and giving it to all of us, all us maggots and vultures and locusts and weevils, to hold to the light so we can finally see. On the quest to get open and free, we continue.
2 - Chika - U Should [prod. by Lido]
I heard this the night it dropped and shot 2 insta videos playacting as it played. But apart from that, it’s a intimate, beautiful song about getting to know a new lady love, so tenderly sung it might melt and disappear if not held gently, with a sweeping guitar lick and purring trumpets sliding all over the place, Chika softly holding each frayed piece together into a considered, gorgeous piece - wait, she’s talking her shit.
3 - Issa Gold - Boys Don’t Cry [prod. by Kingjet & Sherwyn and Matt Zara]
The only reason this isn’t number one is because it dropped on Christmas Eve. But otherwise, it’s a openheart letter to us all. “it’s a lonely path being different,” Issa says, swimming in the melted ice caps as he once danced happily on the edges of melting glaciers that failed to drown him, looking at the world that keeps hurting his heart, yet he still opens his eyes and smiles, and dances. The heavy drums are so bouncy the whole song suddenly flies, formerly a hidden murmur becoming a bright sunlit flight across the sky so we can all see. I can’t wait to see Tempus, if it’s anything as good as this was.
4 - Deante Hitchcock - Growing Up/Mother God [prod. by Brandon Phillips-Taylor]
In all honesty, “Growing Up” is really not the best song on Better. It’s a sweet, happy song with a smooth, crackling bassline with soft, ghostly synths, but still kinda ok. It’s the song added at the end, “Mother God”, that has warm, sizzling piano chords and gorgeous singing in the back. It’s one of the few time I’ve ever heard a man pay homage to the woman in his life and to the God above while being entirely sincere and not faking the funk. The way he praises his mom, his lady, remembering the women in his family taking care of him and him foolishly neglecting Breonna due to his overburdened mind feels full of details, remembrances, explanations and praises. Plus, it actually makes sense that God, if she exists (she does) is a woman since -
5 - Yana Perrault - whiskey and weed [prod. by slate]
Apparently, Yana Perrault is verified now. Excellent. {YES YES MY GOD YESS}, It means more folks know about how great this song, and Yana herself is. If I had any sense, I would’ve written up 12:21 as the best song of 2018, but such is life. Anyway, we have this smooth, bass heavy slinker with shimmering percussion and lumbering drums about hooking up with a former flame who’s “sober” yet keeps on calling Yana to break their sobriety, “know we ain’t talked in a while but you still know my address,” she wryly mentions. As the beat sprints away under a warm cocoon of accapella echoes, it mirrors a relationship so tenuous it might disappear into the wind. Yet still strong enough to have whiskey on call.
6 - Marlon Craft - Culture Sick Freestyle [prod. by Cormill]
Apparently this was supposed to be a shot at Flex. And since Flex is a woman beater and a lame, good for him. Shouldn’t have even gone on Flex to be honest, but then again neither should Jay Critch or Tyler or Black Thought and besides, I watch those freestyles too. And on the freestyle, Marlon frankly put things in perspective. “You don’t want us to better, you just want to be cool still.” This describes all of rap media to be real. And tellingly, it only has 310,000 views. Methinks nobody really wants real. But I do. Thank u Marlon, you continue to be the best white rapper alive. (Nowhere near the best rapper tho, and if Token hadn’t fell off -)
7 - Miah - Cascades [prod. by Cedes]
I’m sideeyeing the boy Miah cuz I had to search up his Audiomack to find the producer’s name (it’s Cedes, and they have a really great avalanche of Drake Type Beats is you like that kind of thing). Were you trying to trick folk into thinking you produced it yourself? You don’t need to do that shit. Especially since you’re writing stuff like “back in high school all my peers were tryin to hit the league / until the league too far from reach so they tap dancing over beats.” When you can frankly break down life that clearly, don’t be trying to hide producer’s names unless you actually learn to produce too. Plaster your name all over that shit.
8 - Justine Darcenne - Off Days [prod. by Mikhail Miller] / Enny - Peng Black Girls (ft. Amia Brave [prod. by Paya]
Justine is indeed my classmate, but that’s not why this song is here. it’s here because it’s a nice little guitar driven song with a spellbinding bridge that’s the best thing I’ve heard her do yet. And I’mma keep it short cuz I already wrote this up at the Singles Jukebox.
Enny released this soft, cushiony record with washed out synths over bulky drums and floated FLOATED over them without even trying to run in the tar, saying frankly, “He said to me, 'they put guns in the streets, that’s what they wanted for me.’ And I said, ‘G, someone can fix you a plate but no one can force you to eat.’” After all, why not try to live for something greater than what the world has expected you to be. And Amia sings, “We’re gon be alright, ok?” with the joy and excitement of someone realizing the words coming alive on their tongue. One of the best songs of this miserable year, and it’s kinda funny watching Jorja accidentally Drake out Amia and even Enny (and by funny I mean irritating.)
9 - Tobi Lou - okay (ft. Dreezy) [prod. by Matteo Woods & Dilip]
Fun fact: Dilip did some great songs with Otxhello, a producer who recorded and mixed 2 records on my first album. That again is not why this song is here. The warm, swinging synths and heavy, bouncy drums are why this is here. Oh, and Tobi’s goofy, silly lyrics and his surprisingly effective Missy Elliott tribute are great too. But obviously, the verse that vaulted this into top 10 was Dreezy, which opens with such a openhearted line, “i can’t help it, it’s too hard to say I’m sorry.” And every line is harder than the last, until she closes with “and I ain’t talkin frontals but we got the city sown up.” Absolutely amazing.
10 - Strongman Burner - Pilolo (ft. KelvynBoy) [prod. by Nixie]
The sweet, gooey synths are poured over the soft, zipping and smooth drums as the wiry bass whirls between Kelvyn’s soft, thin crooning as Stoneman tap dances over the drums, both desperate and defiant, trying to salvage a sinking relationship that he knows is already gathering coral and snappers. It’s the best afropop song of the year and yet it still has a Nigerian on it (well, I put 4 Nigerians on here, next year I’m rectifying that.) And they even did a song together last year , not as good as this. At all. (still pretty good tho.)
best 10 songs i love (but not enough to write full paragraphs for, I already put 10 in and this is already 5 goddamn pages)
11 - Logic - Heard ‘Em Say
best song on the project that isn’t Dadbod but at least it isn’t tempting fate.
12 - Deqn Sue - Creep
I already love this for having a gorgeous bridge, and is cute af. Yes Sue, you can creep.
13 - Quelle Chris & Chris Keys - Sudden Death/ka - i love {moms, mimi, kev}
QUELLE CHIS CAN SANG SANG./ka can heart heart write.
14 - IDK - Square Up (ft. Juicy J)
I don’t know why this is here either but this slaps regardless.
15 - Nappy Nina - Modestly (ft. Maassai)
Maassai is creating some of the best raps out here. so is Nappy Nina.
16 - Kehlani - Lexii’s Outro (ft. Lexii Ajaii)
Let’s celebrate our great rappers when they’re alive (and this includes me. Pls Chika, don’t win Best New Artist.)
17 - Samad Savage - Goodnight
What Travis Scott should’ve tried to be instead of what he is now. Samad still dope af regardless.
18 - Bad Bunny - Si Veo Tu Mama
The way Bad Bunny actually hits that last note makes me feel so excited and alive.
19 - Fat Tony - Back In The Saddle
I fucked up. But I’m getting back in the saddle, back in the saddle next year. NO NIGERIANS ALL NIGERIENS. #ENDSARS tho.
20 - Lady A - the truth is loud
Why am I the only one who has this on a best list? I have 34 bot followers. Vibe, step it up.
best of 2020 music right here folxs.
worst music things of the year:
The Pop Smoke album. Just in all areas. (Better win that Grammy tho.) Travis Scott in general. (So loud and empty and boring.) Big Sean’s Detroit 2. (why does this exist? Just put out Deep Reverence and Detroit Night Cypher and leave everything on the cutting room floor fo the next album.) Remembering all the great rappers who are dead or incarcerated. No Kendrick album (just leaks. Not good enough.) J. Cole and Noname beefing and Noname getting strung up by twitter. Jay Rock pushing being anti-vaccinations. The realization that Normani might never drop a single record ever again. Tory Lanez in general. Joyner Lucas making actually good songs and falling off almost immediately. Cardi B in general. Anything positive being said about steven Universe songs. Luzamity shipping (until it’s canon please stop! Willuz is RIGHT THERE!)
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rossmccallsqueen ¡ 6 years ago
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Smile (Joe Mazzello Imagine)
Pairing: Joe Mazzello x Reader
Summary: You, Joe, and the gang have a weekend away with a few surprises in store.
Word count: 1.4K
Warnings: None! JUST LOTS OF FLUFF
A/N: This is dedicated to @sohoneyspreadyourwings ! HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY MY GIRL! You are one of the most special people I know, thank you for being in my life. I hope you enjoy this! Love you!
Also it goes with this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klNkjnJtFig just for reference!
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A cozy winter weekend, that's what you were looking forward to the most. As someone from Southern California, you never thought you’d find yourself saying that but here you were. Your boyfriend Joe suggested a weekend away with your friends in a cabin in the mountains, and it sounded perfect.  All of you were stressed thanks to work recently, and a weekend away was just what you guys needed.
Your hand was intertwined with Joe’s the whole time, which already made things feel a lot better. There wasn’t much talking though, as you were looking out the window at the mountains. You hadn’t seen snow since you were little when your family used to get a cabin for the holidays. This trip already made you smile, it reminded you of your family.
Every so often you would look over and see Joe looking at you with a smile. You’d catch him out of the corner of your eye too, and you would have to remind him to look at the road again, but his focus seemed to be on you.
I just want to make you smile
I just want to make it last
I'll go the extra mile
Just so I can make you laugh
“Something wrong babe?” You asked when you caught him smiling at you for the millionth time.
“Yeah, you’re just beautiful is all.” He squeezed your hand in response.
“That's all huh?” You asked and he nodded and making a kissy face at you since he couldn’t kiss you while driving.
Ben and Gwil were cuddled up in the backseat, and Rami and Lucy were in the car behind you. When you looked back, the two of them were asleep on each other, and you wished you had your phone out to take a picture. You thought it could be their Christmas card.
“Could you guys keep it down? We’re trying to sleep back here.” You heard Ben mumble.
“We’ll do our best loverboy.” You told him, and you saw him cuddle into Gwil in the rearview mirror. Those two were definitely something else for sure.
“Almost there babe, don’t worry,” Joe told you, and soon you were pulling up to the cabin. It was absolutely beautiful. It was one of those picturesque places like you’d pulled the scene in front of you right out of a movie.
You and Lucy tried to help the guys take the luggage inside, but they wouldn’t let you. So you just went inside and got comfortable. You watched as Joe carried the giant pile of board games he insisted on bringing with you inside. He was determined to make sure you all had a good weekend away, and apparently, board games were the solution to that. He always knew how to make you smile.
“Whats that look?” Lucy asked you when she sat down, she caught you staring at Joe.
“I just love him so much ya know? He's right over there and I miss him! How sad is that?” You laughed a little.
“It’s not sad Y/N, its cute.” You knew she was your best friend for a reason, she always knew what to say.
Once all the luggage was brought inside (and the very important board games), Gwil started a fire in the gorgeous fireplace. Ben started making dinner, while Joe and Rami started setting up Monopoly.
“Joe, don’t you know Monopoly has the power to end friendships?” Lucy asked.
“And relationships!” You chimed in. Joe stopped in his tracks and looked at you, concerned.
“Babe that's not funny! Don’t joke!” He said You laughed and gave him a kiss to remind him that you loved him. Sometimes he just knew how to be extra cute, and right now was one of those times.
We're all around the fire
Feels like the holidays
You know my style
I'll do anything
To make you smile
You decided to play in couples, with Ben and Gwil playing together. It would have taken forever if each of you played individually (plus you didn’t want Joe to get worried again). It was going well so far, except Joe felt the need to buy everything you guys landed on. You tried to tell him you needed a strategy, but he was very insistent.
“Come on Y/N, I really like this one!” He gave you his famous puppy dog pout.
“Joe honey, you love every property! We don’t need this one!” You kissed his cheek, letting him know he wasn’t going to win this one.
“She has a point.” Ben commented.
“SHUT UP BEN OR ILL GET CARDY B FROM THE CAR.”
“YOU WOULDN’T!” You didn't know what was making you laugh harder: the fact that Joe had managed to hide Cardy B somewhere in the car, that he had brought Cardy B all the way up to the cabin with you, or Ben’s response.
After the whole Cardy B fiasco, you all needed a break. Gwil tended to the fire with Rami, and you watched as Lucy and Joe went into the kitchen. When they didn’t come back a few minutes later, you got up to investigate. You saw the two of them together, looking thick as thieves. You knew they had to be up to something.
“Whatcha up to guys?” You asked stepping into the room.
“Nothing!” They said in unison. Yeah, they were definitely up to something. Lucy smiled at you and walked back into the living room.
“You two worry me sometimes.” You walked over to him and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around you and smelled your hair. He began rubbing small circles on your back with one of his hands, and you relaxed into him. This was absolutely perfect like you almost wanted time to stand still right at that moment. You even looked out the window to see it was snowing.
Catch me smiling ear to ear
Everything I need and want is all right here, yeah
That's the greatest gift of all time
Joe released you from the hug and looked down at you, smiling at you like he had been all day. What you hadn’t noticed was that the rest of your friends were standing in the entryway to the kitchen, watching the two of you. But your eyes were locked on Joe’s and you never wanted to look away.
“You know I love you right? And your happiness is the most important thing to me?” Joe asked you.
“Of course babe, why?” Now you were the worried one.
“Your happiness will always be my number one priority. You will always be my number one priority. I want weekends like this one all the time, for the rest of our lives.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Far from it. What I’m trying to say Y/N, is that I love you. I can’t imagine you not being in my life. You have the most beautiful smile and heart, you always know how to make me feel better, and you’re quite literally my other half.” He stopped talking and got down on one knee, pulling out a ring from his back pocket. “Will you marry me?”
Your mouth dropped to the floor, and then you realized it was Lucy’s ring.
“Joe isn’t that Lucy’s ring?”
“Y/N! Focus and answer him!” You heard Lucy say from the entryway. You looked back down at Joe, who was still offering you the ring.
“Of course I’ll marry you Joseph Mazzello.” He placed the ring on your finger, and stood up to kiss you. All of a sudden your friends engulfed you in a huge hug, and it became a celebration. Rami popped a bottle of champagne as if from nowhere, and you started to think this was planned.
“Is that what you two were talking about in here?” You asked after Ben had given a toast that had made you all almost cry.
“Yeah, he forgot the ring at home so he asked to borrow mine. I couldn’t say no! I wanted to see my best friends get engaged!” You gave her a hug, and there seemed to be a lot of those going around.
“I promise I’ll go get it tomorrow!” Joe insisted.
“Joe you don’t have to! Besides, look at this snow.” You told him.
“I’ll drive carefully I promise!”
“Since when do you drive carefully?” You asked, raising an eyebrow. Everyone was looking at him because they wanted to know the answer to your question.
“Since I know I have a future with you.” And that was it. You knew you would never stop smiling.
I just want to make you smile
I just want to make it last
I'll go the extra mile
Just so I can make you laugh
-------
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A Christmas as (a Fake) Elu 2/3 (rating: mature)
On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350677/chapters/51132139
The second day in Strasbourg starts off with pancakes for breakfast (Eliott lets Lucas sleep in and brought him breakfast in bed. Yes, Lucas’s heart collapsed), they make gingerbread houses (yes, Lucas and Eliott ended up eating everything in their packets), they went into town as a family to go shopping (Lucas and Eliott ran around trying to find the most extravagant and over-the-top outfits they could find), and had a nice family-dinner in with last nights leftovers and they all watched a couple rom-coms (to Eliotts disdain). Lucas and Eliott shared a bed for the second night. (Lucas is starting to think that maybe that should have just not been a rule.)
The third day Lucas wakes up before Eliott, which is rare. The sun isn't fully over the horizon just yet, and the room is shrouded in a pleasant darkness. He shifts out of Eliott’s grip (yes Eliott’s a cuddly sleeper and Lucas won’t complain about being spooned) without waking up his (fake)boyfriend. He sneaks his way to the bathroom with a towel in tow. He doesn’t really bother to check the time before turning on the water. He waits a good five minutes for the water to heat up, and he’s about to hop in where there’s a knock at the door.
Lucas gives a glance at the shower and the door before huffing in defeat and moving to answer the door. And, honestly, Lucas should have guessed it was Eliott but he was still taken aback by the sudden presence at the door.
“Sorry, did I wake you up?” Lucas asks in a whisper.
Eliott shakes his head and rubs at his eyes, “nah. Well, I mean, yeah, but I was going to get up soon anyways. Mind if I come in and brush?”
“Oh, yeah, be my guest,” Lucas says and opens the door for Eliott to slide past.
Lucas decides to wait for Eliott to leave to strip down and enter the shower, since the shower doesn’t actually have a curtain, just a sliding glass door. However, after Eliott places his toothbrush back inside the cabinet he turns back around to face Lucas and doesn’t make a move to leave.
Lucas raises an eyebrow at him, “you gonna leave or what?”
Eliott smiles, “I think I should get to see my boyfriend naked, wouldn’t you agree?”
Lucas scoffs, “ fake  boyfriend, Demaury.”
Something flashes across Eliott’s face. It’s so fast Lucas doesn’t catch it, “I could wash your back for you, like I used to,” he adds a wink for good measure.
Lucas shakes his head in exasperation, “no way in hell. Now get out so I can wash up before we wake up the whole house.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll leave,” Eliott says and he has his hand on the doorknob when he turns to say, “also, we are driving up to the ski resort today, so you’ll need all your skiing stuff. We’ll probably get back around seven-ish, and my mom apparently booked us, as like a couples thing, dinner at a fancy restaurant in Strasbourg’s downtown area. I didn’t want to say no, because, well...you know. So when we get back we have that to look forward to.”
Lucas smiles, “can’t wait. First official date as a fake-couple.”
“Right.” Eliott gives Lucas a sad smile, “see you then,” he disappears behind the door.
::
Lucas wasn’t exactly expecting for the temperatures at the ski resort to reach below zero, but just his luck. His feet and fingers already feel like icicles by the time they step out of the car. And it only gets worse as he straps on his skiis and has to shimmy-walk besides Eliott’s long-ass giraffe legs.
“Shut up!” Lucas pouts and hits Eliott on the arm when his fake boyfriend began laughing, “you will never know the pain of walking with skis.”
“You’re right, I won’t. Because I was an intellectual and decided on snowboarding.”
Lucas rolls his eyes, and is about to rebuttle when he gets cut off by Janine shouting towards them, “we’re heading over to the black diamond! We’ll meet up with you guys later!” With that the rest of the family walks off.
“You can go with them if you want. Don’t let my incompetence at skiing stop you from having fun,” Lucas says.
Eliott looks down at his fake boyfriend with a smile on his face, “are you kidding me? This is the most fun I’ve had on these family trips, like, ever! I wouldn’t leave you for world.”
Lucas is barely able to register what Eliott is saying because his damn skis decide to slip on a giant ice patch. He yelps as he goes down, and grabs onto Eliott’s arm yanking him down as well. They both ;and with an “oof” on the ice patch. Lucas groans and already knows that there will for sure be a bruise there tomorrow.
“Oh, shit,” Eliott says with a groan as he sits up and rubs the back of his head, “you really felt the need to be bring me down with you, huh?”
“If we go down, we go down together,” Lucas says as he rises from the ground.
“You did NOT just quote a Chainsmokers song at me, did you?”
Lucas laughs as he is pulled up off his bum by Eliott, who, as they walk away, feels the need to keep their hands entwined. When Lucas tells him he would like his hand back, Eliott simply says he will not be releasing his hand because it is for both their safety, in order to ensure Lucas doesn’t crack open both their skulls by falling for a second time.
Lucas starts on the bunny hill, dragging Eliott along with him. They are surrounded by toddlers and elementary schoolers as they make their way down the nearly flat hill. Eliott would be snowboarding circles around him if it wasn’t for the fact that Lucas would probably eat it if it wasn’t for Eliott’s hand keeping him steady.
After about thirty minutes of just going down and back up and down again, they decide to move onto a dark blue diamond ski slope. Which was a mistake. Lucas is shaking practically the whole way up in the ski lift, and as soon as his skis touch the snow, he is sent barrelling down the hill with Eliott racing after him. Lucas, being his clumsy self, gets his two skis tangled together, and ends up tripping, flying through the air, before landing face first into the snow. 
He has tears streaming his cheeks when Eliott finally catches up with him. Lucas sniffles when Eliott kneels down beside him, “it hurts. That was scary.”
Eliott gives him a sad smile, “oh, baby, I’m sorry. You did good though. I’m proud of you.”
“Did you even see what happened?! I literally flew through the air!”
Eliott laughs and Lucas starts laughing with him, but it turns into a groan when he finds that his stomach is already sore. They are able to get Lucas back on his feet, and Eliott helps connect Lucas’s boots with his skis before guiding Lucas back down the hill slowly. 
“I think my lip is busted,” Lucas mumbles.
“Lemme see,” Eliott says and twists Lucas to face him. Lucas feels the wind being knocked out of him for the second time that day when Eliott’s thumb presses down and pulls on Lucas’s bottom lip. The pain makes Lucas wince, but goddamn Eliott’s eyes grow dark as he stares at Lucas’s lips, “you’re bleeding a little bit. You must have bit it when you landed on your face. We should probably ice it.”
Lucas sighs, “I’m so sorry, Eliott. You probably didn’t think you would have to babysit me during your ski trip.”
“Hey, I knew what I was getting into when I invited you along. You can’t ski to save your life,” Lucas rolls his eyes which makes Eliott laugh, “but I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to snowboarding, but rather just getting to hang out with you.”
“You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better.”
Eliott looks at him as if he just grew horns, “of course I’m not! I’m having way more fun than if I was up on, like, the double black diamond all by myself.”
Lucas doesn’t necessarily know how to respond, so he simply gives Eliott a toothy grin. Eventually they make their way into the lodge. Eliott goes to fetch Lucas some ice for his lip while Lucas prepares them two cups of hot chocolate. When Eliott gets back they are able to snatch a couple chairs in front of the giant fire pit, which helps warm them up. Well, at least it helps thaw Lucas’s frozen face from when it landed in literal ice.
Now, listen, Lucas can obviously see himself dating Eliott. It’s easy to, since they are close anyways. But it’s times such as these when Lucas actually  forgets  that he is not dating Eliott. He forgets that Eliott isn’t actually his, and yet it is so easy to not remember. 
“Why did you say that,” Lucas can’t stop the words before they are barrelling out of his mouth.
“Say what?”
“I mean, did you really have a crush on me back in high school?” Eliott’s silent for a second, and Lucas is honestly about to repeat his question when Eliott says, “yeah. Well, even after high school.”
Lucas whips his head towards Eliott. They lock eyes immediately. Eliott’s expression filled with a cold-steel. Lucas opens his mouth to ask him ‘how long have you had a crush on me? Do you still have a crush on me? What-what does this mean?’ but he’s cut off by gloved hands grabbing onto his shoulders. He jerks away in surprise, but Janine then comes into view with a toothy grin.
“I see you guys have made good use of lounge,” Emelie says as she, Janine and their partners take a seat on the bench in front of the fire pit.
Eliott smiles, “Lucas got into a bit of an accident. So we called it a day and got some hot chocolate instead.”
“Eliott, if you want to go snowboarding I can chill with Lucas so he isn’t alone,” Janine offers and she glances Lucas’s way, to which Lucas nods in agreement. “We can just, like, come watch you guys.”
“Yeah, for sure. Eliott, don’t let me hold you back. Go have fun.”
He pauses and with a purse of his lips asks, “you’re sure?”
Lucas laughs and reaches up to ruffle Eliott’s hair, “of course, you goof,” then Eliott is grinning back at him, grabbing his snowboard and places a kiss to Lucas’s cheek, “thanks, baby.”
And there’s that damn word again. The word that makes Lucas’s heart leap from his chest and butterflies scratch at his skin. It’s the word that makes Lucas melt from the inside out, and the ice around his heart that he has built up over the years begins to chip away bit by bit.
Eliott’s hand finds Lucas’s as they walk out of the lounge and towards the double black diamond ski slope. Lucas, being his paranoid self, doesn’t miss the sidelong glances from other people as they walk past. Though, he feels a burst of pride when they walk past a group of teenage girls, and they look longingly towards Eliott before each of their eyes slowly drift down to where their hands are connected. They look away.
When they finally get to the ski slope Lucas walks Eliott up to the ski lift. Eliott turns and pauses in front of Lucas, and for some reason Lucas suddenly becomes scared. Not necessarily for himself, but for Eliott.
It must show on his face because suddenly Eliott’s palms come up to cup his cheeks. “You look nervous. You know you aren’t going, right?” Eliott laughs.
Lucas pouts, “I know, just...come back safe.”
Eliott chuckles, “you make it sound like I’m going off to war,” when Lucas doesn’t say anything Eliott continues, “I’ll be back in three minutes. This course runs fast.”
“Okay,” Lucas sighs and melts into Eliott’s touch, “but I prefer my boyfriend in one piece.”
Eliott hums, “is that so?” Lucas nods, “well I will just have to ensure that happens.” He presses a kiss to Lucas’s cheek. Closer to the corner of his mouth than anything.
Lucas turns and walks away after Eliott gets onto the ski lift. He joins Janine under the tree she found herself. They start off the conversation light, as she asks Lucas about University, his job, yada yada. Then comes the “if you mess with my brother I will have to go angry-big-sister on you.” Which, fair, Lucas was expecting that conversation at one point. It is sort of alarming though, because once this week is over Eliott will have to let his parents know that they “broke up.” Which physically pains Lucas to think about.
“He talks so highly of you, you know,” Janine says, pulling Lucas from his thoughts, “he always has. He still thinks he isn’t deserving of you.”
Lucas smiles, “well that’s stupid. I’m the one not deserving of him. Your brother is someone truly special.”
“You know, Lucille was sweet enough. We could all tell she was caring towards him, but we weren’t sure if there was any real love there. She left a weird taste in our mouths when we met her. But you and Eliott...man, now that feels right.”
Lucas feels a pang of guilt in his chest. He hates tricking her like this, “thank you, that means a lot-”
Hands wrap themselves around Lucas’s middle, yanking him back to a hard, strong chest. His breath is knocked out of him when he lands. When he feels Eliott’s chest move with laughter he gets a flashback from the first day back in the kitchen when Eliott had snuck up on him that time as well. 
“I came back in one piece,” Eliott says to both Lucas and Janine, though more to Lucas.
Lucas turns around in his arms and lays his chin on Eliott’s chest to look up at him, “that’s good. Did you have fun?”
“Very much so,” Eliott says with a smile, “I didn’t eat it like you did,” he says with a little tug on Lucas’s bottom lip.
Lucas winces at the contact, “ow! It’s still sore, you asshole!” Lucas complains and smacks away Eliott’s hand.
Eliott laughs, “sorry, baby. Do you want to go back to lounge, maybe shamelessly fill our stomachs with free food before we leave?”
Lucas grins, “you know me so well.”
::
Later, when they get home from the ski resort they start getting ready for their ‘date,’ both using the one small bathroom on the upstairs floor. Lucas trying to brush his teeth and wash his face, while Eliott attempts to style his untamable hair. 
“If you elbow me in the throat one more time. I swear…” Lucas says as he tucks his toothbrush back into his bag.
Eliott laughs, “sorry, sorry. I’m almost done anyways.”
“It looks the same as you started…”
Eliott gapes at him, “how dare you! I have spent thirty minutes on this look! All i want to do is look good for my boyfriend!”
Lucas rolls his eyes, “oh my God, you are so dramatic.”
Eliott doesn’t say anything in response, but instead gives Lucas his best puppy-dog look. Complete with sad eyes and a pouty lip.
Lucas sighs, “you aren’t going to make me apologize are you?” another long sigh, “fine. I’m sorry. You look amazing.”
Eliott frowns, “it just doesn’t seem like you mean it…”
“Okay we have like twenty minutes before we have to leave so I’m going to go change.”
“Make sure you wear something nice by the way.”
“Who do you take me for? A guy who wears the same sweatpants and t-shirt everyday?”
Eliott laughs, “that’s exactly what I take you for.”
Lucas shrugs, “fair enough.”
He walks out of the bathroom and back to their room, where his one nice outfit is laid out on their bed. It’s a simple crisp white button up shirt and black dress pants and black dress shoes. It’s simply, but the form of the clothes definitely helps to highlight his good qualities. He changes quickly, just in time so that when Eliott walks back in he’s buttoning the last button on the shirt. 
“Oooh,  baby ,” Eliott says with a grin and a toss of his brush towards the chair in the corner, “you lookin’ hot as fuck! Give us a twirl.”
Lucas rolls his eyes and spins quickly in a circle, “you like what you see?”
“Oh I’m loving it,” Eliott says before reaching out and placing his hands on Lucas’s hips, “really accents that tooshie.” 
Lucas yelps when one of Eliott’s hands quickly squeeze his ass before releasing and running away from Lucas’s reach. 
“How dare you!” Lucas says and throws the nearest object towards Eliott.
He ducks away from the attack with a laugh. He opens his mouth to say something else when a knock at the door nearly makes Lucas jump out of his skin. “Eliott, Lucas!” it’s Emilie, “you’re going to be late!”
“We’re coming!” Lucas yells back and motions for Eliott to get changed.
They’re outside and heading down the road in the car within a couple minutes. Eliott can change surprisingly fast. A talent even Lucas didn’t know he had. And dear God Lucas has never seen anything more beautiful. When he pulled out a tight green turtleneck sweater Lucas knew he was done for. And when Eliott pulled it on Lucas was physically deceased. It hugged him in just the right way, especially in the pectoral and waist and arm and...honestly it just hugged him everywhere.
“After you, baby,” Eliott says as he holds the door of the car open for Lucas.
“Why thank you, sweetheart,” Lucas replies and gives Eliott a soft touch under his chin as he climbs out of the car.
Now, Lucas wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting. Maybe a semi-decent restaurant with prices that don’t go above $30. But when they walked in that was not what Lucas got at all. The restaurant had the full nine yards. Low lighting, real candles at every round table, small platters that cost over $40! So when Eliott walks in, Lucas in tow, and says “reservation for the Demaurys” Lucas thinks his soul leaves his body. They’re the  Demaurys  for the night. They’re the DEMAURYS. And this entire fancy restaurant thinks of them as THE DEMAURYS.
“Lu, you okay?” Eliott asks with a small touch to Lucas’s shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” he says before looking around one last time. Out of fear, or something else, Lucas isn’t really sure, he grabs Eliott’s hand as they follow the hostess through the restaurant, up a flight of stairs, and to the second floor where there are less people, more decorations and a better view of Strasbourg.
“Here we are, gentleman,” the hostess says, “let me know if you need anything else.” She speaks more to Eliott than to Lucas, but as she leaves she catches a glimpse of their hands still interlocked, and Lucas swears he sees a flash of disappointment across her face.
Lucas ends up getting a filet and Eliott orders a Foie Gras dish. When the waitress leaves they are left in an awkward silence, which is something that hasn’t happened in many, many years. They always have something to talk about. Except now, apparently.
“So, you had a good time today snowboarding? Even though you had to deal with my clumsy ass?”
Eliott laughs, “I did. Very much so. I honestly don’t know how to tell you how thankful I am you were able to come with me. I wouldn’t have wanted to be here with anyone else.”
“Well you came with Lucille before,” Lucas says before thinking. He immediately bites his tongue after the words pop out of his mouth.
“I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else,” Eliott repeats, more resolute this time.
Lucas gives him a soft smile, “well I’m glad I came then.”
Eliott’s smile fades and his tongue dashes out to wet his bottom lip before he says, “listen, Lucas, I’ve actually been meaning to tell you something for a while, and if I don’t say it tonight I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to say it. I mean, tonight just feels perfect. The day has just felt so perfect,”  he’s going to do it,  Lucas’s head says,  he’s going to tell you that this all has to end once the week is over. He’s going to say that ‘the day has just felt so perfect and our friendship means so much to him.’ End it before he does. End it.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you something too,” Lucas cuts Eliott off, “I guess it’s more of a question. This ends when we get back right? I mean, you’re right, this day has felt so perfect and our friendship means so much to me. So our fake relationship ends...right?”
::
Eliott feels like Lucas just ripped out his heart, stomped on it, and then tried to fanagle it back into his chest. He chants to himself: don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Don’t make a scene. Don’t cry. You should have seen this coming.
“Yeah, yeah, right.” Eliott feels like there’s a bowling ball in his throat, “right. Yeah. Our friendship is-yeah, it ends when we get back.”
“That’s what you were going to say, right?” Lucas looks up at him through his lashes. And, fuck, Eliott just wants to kiss the shit out of him right now and scream in his face: “it’s you, idiot! I’m in love with you!”
“Yeah, for sure,” even he can hear how distant his voice sounds.
“Wait, Eliott, what were you going to say?” Lucas says and begins reaching for Eliott’s hand across the table, but he flinches away from the touch.
“I was-, I don’t know what I was going to say. It’s okay, just forget it.”
When their food comes they eat in silence. Eliott barely touches his food, because everytime he closes his eyelids he sees what could be. What an Eliott and Lucas are doing in a different universe. Eliott confesses, and Lucas tells him how much he loves him right back. They barely eat their food because they are too busy smiling at each other and playing footsie under the table to bother actually eating anything. They leave the restaurant with their hands intertwined and stars in their eyes. They are a few meters from the car before parallel Eliott can’t wait anymore and pulls parallel Lucas towards an alley, presses him against a wall and kisses him until they are both out of breath. Because, God, every Eliott in every universe has waited so long to kiss their Lucas that it all comes out in a burst of beautiful passion.
But here they are, eating in silence. Lucas pays more attention to his steak than anything else. Eliott asks for their bill only about thirty minutes after their food arrived, and the waitress seems nearly taken aback by how quick their dinner went. The bill arrives with a number written at the bottom and a “call me ;)” underneath. In a parallel universe maybe Eliott wouldn’t pay any attention to it, but in this one, when he sees Lucas frown at the number, he makes a point to type it into his phone. 
“You aren’t seriously going to talk with her, right?” Lucas brings it up as they grab their coats from the coat check and head out to the streets of Strasbourg.
“The waitress?” Lucas nods, “maybe. It’s not like we’re dating.”
“Eliott, she lives like five hours away from where we live! You can’t be serious,” Lucas says and stomps his foot as he comes to an immediate stop.
Eliott turns around towards him, trying his best to keep his neutral expression in check, “maybe I’ll see her again while we’re here.”
“How would that even work?! That would blow our cover to your family!” Lucas exclaims, hands waiving around.
Eliott shrugs, “maybe we should just say we broke up.”
Lucas’s expression scrunches up, and if Eliott wasn’t on the verge of tears from bitterness and heartbreak then maybe he would comment on how it made Lucas look like an angry hedgehog, “are you serious? Eliott, that wouldn’t make any sense,” silence stretches between them, “why are you so mad right now?”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes you are! I know you well enough to know that you’re pissed at me! Just tell me what for!”
“Obviously you don’t know me as well as you think you do, or else you would know that I-” Eliott bites his tongue. He takes a deep breath before taking a step towards Lucas, “listen, I’m sorry I’m not in the best mood right now. I promise I’m not mad at you though. I could never be mad at you. At least not for long, not when you look like such a cute hedgehog.”
“No, Eliott, don’t just dismiss this! You tell me that I don’t know you as well as I think I do, so tell me what’s wrong!”
Eliott takes a deep breath in before bringing his hands up to cup Lucas’s face, which must be cold, but Lucas doesn’t even flinch, “I’ll tell you. But can we walk for a second? It’s cold.”
“You’re hands aren’t making it any better,” Lucas mumbles and Eliott laughs as he pulls his hands away, “seriously, they are like little ice boxes.”
Eliott gapes at him as they begin walking, shoulder to shoulder, down the winding streets, “little?! Have you seen the size of yours?”
Lucas laughs, “dude, that’s gay.”
Eliott rolls his eyes, “pan, actually.”
“You are so pretentious, I swear,” Lucas says and shoves Eliott off the sidewalk.
The atmosphere between them doesn’t feel quite so heavy as they walk towards Strasbourg Cathedral. Lucas stops to get a cup of hot wine, which Eliott shares a few sips of. They also make a small detour into a Christmas shop and pick out a couple ornaments that they can travel back with. Eliott grabs a hedgehog, Lucas grabs a raccoon. Afterwards they walk the remaining distance to the church.
“Whoa!” Lucas exclaims, “it’s beautiful!”
Eliott smiles, “sure is. Too bad they don’t let us climb the tower this late. I’m sure the view up there is amazing.”
“We can always come back if we wanted,” there’s a beat of silence, “do you want to...talk now?”
Eliott sucks in a breath when his eyes meet Lucas’s. He looks enchanting in the soft light from the cathedral’s clock being lit from the inside out, “yeah, um,” he runs his hand through his hair. Lucas follows the motion and bites at his bottom lip. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, but it’s making Eliott go crazy, “I’m not sure if we should talk here, now, you know? It’s late and maybe it would be better to talk alone. Plus, we’ve had a long day. I know I’m exhausted.”
Lucas drops his gaze, focusing instead on the paper cover around his cup, “sure. Tell me when you are ready. Just, please let it be sooner than later. I want to make sure my best friend is okay.”
Eliott’s heart feels like it’s melting, “my family is leaving early tomorrow to go out for breakfast. I told them we’d want to stay home and sleep. We can talk then.”
Tomorrow morning  , Eliott reminds himself as they walk back to the car, shoulder to shoulder, hands brushing,  tomorrow morning I tell Lucas how I feel, and this all ends. 
::
Lucas wakes up feeling warm and cozy, the events of last night hazy in the back of his head. Plus, it’s not every day he gets to wake up with Eliott’s arms wrapped around him, a warmth spreading from inside out. Eliott has molded his whole body to Lucas’s back, and Lucas doesn’t fight the feeling to press back just a little more. Eliott’s hair tickles the side of Lucas’s neck and face. His breath a steady puff of air on Lucas’s neck. Lucas momentarily contemplates on falling back asleep...until he remembers that Eliott and him have to talk today.
Lucas told himself last night that today would be the day. He tells Eliott, either it goes swimmingly or terribly. One of the two.
Yet, Lucas doesn’t necessarily want to wake Eliott just yet, and he knows that getting up and unwrapping Eliott’s arms from around his body will surely wake him. He’s a very light sleeper. But, there may be a problem slightly south of Eliott’s arms. Because he’s hard, and so is Eliott. Obviously it’s written off as morning wood, every guy gets it, but Eliott has managed to sandwich himself right between Lucas’s...cheeks. And Lucas is doing everything in his power not to shamelessly grind backwards. His breath coming out in quick pants as his heart begins to speed up, beating sporadically in his chest.
Now, Lucas is a pretty smart guy, so he knows that he should just separate them and move on. And if Eliott wakes up just tell him not to worry. It’s a bodily reaction. It happens to every guy. But when Lucas shifts to get up Eliott’s arms tighten their hold and a small whine of “Lucas,” spills out of Eliott’s mouth, a small grind of his hips accompanying the sound. That’s when Lucas knows he’s too deep in.
“Eliott…” Lucas says as his hands come to grip on the back of Eliott’s hands.
Lucas knows he messed up when Eliott stirs behind him, responding to the call of his name. Lucas knew he was a light sleep, but not this light. “Oh, shit,” Eliott says immediately as he gains consciousness, and attempts to move their lower halves away, “Lucas, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even know-I’m sorry-”
“Eliott,” Lucas says, breathless. Wrecked.
“Lucas? What’s wrong?” Eliott says as he sinks back onto the mattress, head coming back to rest in the crook of Lucas’s neck.
“Eliott,” apparently that’s all Lucas can get out at the moment, “help, I-” Lucas doesn’t give anymore warning before his hand curves around and presses on Eliott’s lower back, pleading him to come closer without saying the words.
Eliott complies and mumbles into Lucas’s neck, “you are going to be the death of me, Lallemant.”
It’s all hands and breath and desperation and HANDS until Lucas reaches his climax, clutching at the ends of Eliott’s hair. Eliott follows shortly after, moaning Lucas’s name into the soft skin behind Lucas’s ear.
Slowly Lucas comes back to his senses. The burst of brilliant white he had seen starts to clear and he thinks: shit. They just...they...what just happened. How did that just happen. How will he ever face Eliott again? If they’re friendship wasn’t ruined after Lucas proclaimed his love, it sure is ruined now.
He takes a shaky breath before flipping around to face Eliott, who is...way closer to Lucas than he thought he would be. When Lucas finally looks in his eyes he swears he sees stars reflected in them. Lucas was expecting Eliott to maybe be confused or alarmed or...something, but definitely not starstruck. Seriously, the guy looks like he just saw Harry Style and Timothee Chalamat walking together. When Eliott doesn’t say anything Lucas takes it as a sign that he’s waiting to see how Lucas reacts - so that he knows how to respond.
Lucas honestly doesn’t know what to say, he keeps opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. Should he proclaim his love now? Should he ask what this means to Eliott? Should he just suggest a casual friends with benefits situation? Eliott had that before...right? He’s had fuck buddies. Maybe that’s what this is to Eliott. Maybe Lucas was just a prospective lay and now he’s just starstruck because it happened. Oh god, Lucas feels like an idiot. Eliott was just using him for a quick fuck.  Well, guess what, Demaury,  Lucas thinks to himself,  I’ll prove to you that I, too, can have casual sex with my best friend without it meaning anything. Just watch.
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drsilverfish ¡ 6 years ago
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Dean’s Jungian Shadow Arc in S14 - Confronting the Internal Father (2x22 to 14x20)
“This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is” 
(Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious 1991: p21) 
Jung believed that the psyche was composed, in part, of a relation to “archetypes” (shared human psychic formations). One of these is the archetype of the father.
He distinguishes between the actual father (i.e. your Dad) and the “imago” of the father (a term he borrowed from Freud). That means, the psychological internalised construct of the father, which partly resides in the unconscious, and which is not identical to your real Dad, because it’s about your childish and foundational perception of them, but, also, for Jung (not Freud) it is linked to the archetypal (or mythic) father. The father archetype (for Jung, who has a gendered perception of the world rooted in his time-period) is about power and control. And when someone subconsciously over-identifies with the father-archetype, this results in out-of-control power fantasies:
"The danger is just this unconscious identity with the archetype, the more a father identifies with the archetype, the more unconscious and irresponsible, indeed psychotic ... he ... will be"
 (Jung, 1906-1916 writings collected as Freud and Psychoanalysis: 1961:p316).
So, subconsciously over-identifying with the father-imago has negative consequences for a person, and those around them. 
Let’s talk Dean, The Shadow and Dean’s Daddy Issues.
Remember this? (Gods but the colour palette was gorgeous back then).
This is Dean shooting Azazel, the yellow-eyed demon who killed his mother, Mary Winchester, with the Colt in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part II.
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He does it with his father, John Winchester’s spirit’s help (released from Hell):
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But, when I say help, remember that, symbolically, John has also been mirrored to Azazel, by means of Azazel’s possession of John (1x22 Devil’s Trap):
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Hooboy -  Daddy issues right out of the gate. That’s not news to any of us. The whole show is about “wayward sons”, after all.  
Fast foward twelve years, and this is Dean (in the role of The FatherTM) almost shooting Jack, his own adopted Nephilim son (who also represents his child-self) with the Hammurabi, the mystical gun Mark II, which Chuck forged and named after an ancient Babylonian law which codifies “an eye for an eye” (i.e. a “Revenge Gun”TM):
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Jack the Nephilim, whose eyes glow yellow when he is in his power, and who has (apparently) killed Mary Winchester (again):
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(Jack in 13x14 Good Intentions)
Notice that both scenarios - Dean, mystical gun, yellow-eyed supernatural being who killed his mother - take place in a graveyard. 
Mary is dead twice (at least as far as Dean is concerned) and her death haunts the scenes.
Chuck has deliberately set up the second scenario to mirror the first (he is, in my view, testing Dean, the way he tested Abraham).
At this moment, in Moriah, we could say Dean is possessed by his Shadow, in the form of the father archetype, the Ghost of John Winchester, in his subconsious. He is ready to act out John Winchester’s revenge quest redux, and in doing so, to do violence all over again to his child-self, in the form of Jack, who symbolises child-Dean in this moment. 
A repetition of the damage done to Dean himself as a child; who was forced, by the tragedy of Mary’s death, and his own father’s traumatic revenge-quest, to grow up too fast, is playing out before our eyes.
Jack-the-mirror, who lost his own mother at birth, and looks twenty-something but is only two, kneels, a willing sacrifice, in the role of child-Dean, before his father, adult-Dean, who is shadow-possessed by John’s Ghost, ready to be murdered, just as John “murdered” Dean’s childhood. 
“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” 
(Carl Jung, Collected Works “Christ: A Symbol of the Self”).
Jung suggests we are subject to “fate” (i.e. our own unconscious forces taking control of our actions) when we do not confront our Shadow. 
Ties in beautifully to Supernatural’s larger theme of fate vs free will, right?
Now, back then, when Dean shot yellow-eyed demon No 1, Azazel, Dean was (as his subconscious taunted him at the time) “Daddy’s blunt little instrument” (3x10 Dream a Little Dream of Me)....
Back then, Dean obeyed his father and called him “Sir”,  “...following Dad’s orders like a good little soldier” (Sam in 1x10 Asylum). Sammy was the rebellious one.
When Dean stood up to his Dad, it wasn’t for himself, it was to protect Sam:
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(1x20 Dead Man’s Blood). 
Dean’s obedience was linked to his angel-engineered role as the Michael vessel (God’s obedient son) whilst Sam’s rebelliousness was linked to his equally engineered role as the Lucifer vessel (God’s rebellious son).
They ripped up that script and wrote their own ending in 5x22 Swan Song, but, while Sam said “Yes” to Lucifer (his Shadow-self) and beat the Devil, Dean said “No” to Michael.
S14 is the season in which Dean, having said “Yes” to AU!Michael in order to beat Lucfier (again) in 13x23 Let the Good Times Roll, undertakes his own Shadow-work. 
Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative is in full swing.  
Back then, John’s revenge quest, to get the yellow-eyed demon who killed Mary Winchester, became Dean’s mission too. He internalised it (even before he knew about Azazel). Sam wanted to get out of hunting, Dean was driven to follow in his father’s footsteps (whatever his real feelings and desires were, he buried them to follow the “family business”). 
Here is Young!Dean in Bad Boys (9x07) looking out of the window at Young!Sam in the Impala, about to give up his happiness at Sonny’s and his young love with Robin in order to put his Dad’s way of life (hunting/ revenge), and his brother (who needs him) first:
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One way a child deals with a parent who is hurting them is to want to become them, to idolise them and to believe that they’re right (Dad’s car, Dad’s music, Dad’s machismo, Dad’s heterosexuality, Dad’s way of drinking and squashing down emotion). 
DEAN: “We have the coolest Dad in the world.  He’s a superhero.” (3x08 A Very Supernatural Christmas). 
Jung would say Dean internalised a strong identification (partly conscious, partly unconscious) with the father imago. 
Dean’s been on a long, long journey to get out from under his father’s shadow. We’ve seen that struggle over many seasons.
AU!Michael in Dean’s head in S14 represented the repressive ghost of John Winchester embodied as a destructive archangel in Dean’s mind, i.e. serious crunch time for Dean’s psyche - things coming to a real crisis point for him, psychologically. 
Dark!Kaia makes the parallel in 14x03 The Scar (just hear “John Winchester” for “him”):
KAIA: “You’re no different from him. Threats, violence anything to get what you want.” DEAN: “I am nothing like him.” KAIA: “Yeah you are: you always have been!”
You can read some of my previous meta on Dean’s struggle with AU!Michael as his repression/ the Ghost of John Winchester here (which also emphasises that one aspect of John’s repression of Dean is, in subtext, the repression of Dean’s queerness):
Queer Gods and Monsters (14x02)
https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/179226151009/queer-gods-and-monsters-14x02
14x03 The Scar - Dean Confronts Dark!Kaia (Dopplegangers, Mirrors and John Winchester’s Ghost)
http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/179463975289/shirtlesssammy-14x03the-scar-meta-writers
AU!Michael and the Closet (14x10 Nihilism)
https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182120562849/aumichael-and-the-closet
Jung and Dean’s Journey Towards Self-Integration in 14x11 Damaged Goods
http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182299438269/jung-and-deans-journey-towards-self-integration
In 14x02 we get this shot of Dean facing his mirror-self, AU!Michael, and Michael tells him, “I own you!”
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In 14x10, Dean, desperate to contain AU!Michael, manages (with Sam and Cas’ help) to lock him in a fridge-locker in his own mind:
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 And he says, “I am the cage!”
Dean then builds a Ma’lak box and intends to lock himself in it and throw himself (and AU!Michael with him) to the bottom of the ocean. Yikes. At the start of 14x12 Prophet and Loss, he dreams that he is alone, and terrified, in that very box:
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Sam says to him about this plan (14x12 Prophet and Loss):  “But what you’re talking about is far worse than death. Michael’s an archangel. He could literally keep you buried in a coffin, alive, forever.”
Remember Dean also described his possession by AU!Michael as like “drowning” over and over (14x03 The Scar): 
DEAN: “I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was under water. Drowning. And that I remember. I felt every second of it - clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out but I couldn’t: I wasn’t strong enough.”
Now hear what is happening, psychologically... 
Dean’s subconscious, his Shadow-self (aka AU!Michael representing the Ghost of John Winchester) i.e. Dean’s own self-repression and over-control, both inherited from John’s impact on him, is saying to Dean “I own you” and “I am the cage”, you will be buried in a coffin, alive, with me forever. You are under water and you can’t make it out.    
That’s pretty scary right? Dean is trapped by himself (by the traumatic internalised impact of his past and his consequent over-identification with his father).
If this were IRL, we’d have given Dean the name of a good therapist, a long time ago. But it’s Supernatural, so instead Dean gets to confront the ghost of his father, John Winchester, in the flesh, in 14x13 Lebanon. He wishes on the magic pearl to get “Michael out of my friggin’ head” and lo and behold John Winchester magically appears before him (cemeting the symbolism of AU!Michael in Dean’s head representing/ mirroring John Winchester). 
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Dean gets to hear his Dad say, “You are a grown man and I am incredibly proud of you.” Dean gets to say to Sam, that he wouldn’t change anything: “I’m good with who I am. I’m good with who you are. ‘Cause our lives – they’re ours.”
He gets to tell his father he “has a family”, not a conventional one - “an angel and Lucifer’s kid”, but it’s good: 
 An Angel, and Lucifer’s Kid? Queer-Coding and Dean’s “Found Family” in 14x13 Lebanon
http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182794294534/an-angel-and-lucifers-kid-queer-coding-and
And he gets to choose to let his Dad go, with love. What beautiful psychological progress, huh? AU!Michael is out of his head and so is the controlling Ghost of his Father, replaced by a loving one!
But, it’s not that simple. When the pearl is destroyed, time is reset and AU!Michael is still installed in Dean’s noggin. It’s only when Dean and Cas have been whammied by the Queer Gorgon, that AU!Michael (Dean’s repression, remember) finally gets out of his mind (14x14 Ouroboros): 
The Kiss of the Queer Gorgon in 14x14 Ouroboros
http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/183323000224/the-kiss-of-the-queer-gorgon-in-14x14-ouroboros
Jack (Dean’s child-self mirror) kills AU!Michael (John’s repressive ghost mirror) but, the burden is great and the cost is (at least part of) his soul. 
Moreover, when Mary is subsequently “killed” by Jack (you all know by now I have a theory she’s been fake re-fridged, and she’s actually been blasted into an AU, and we’ll see her again), Dean regresses. He goes back into uber-controlling mode, over-responsible mode, as a way of dealing with the fact his world has fallen apart again. Psychically (as many of you clever people have already pointed out) he’s been taken back to the trauma his 4 year old self experienced when Mary died the first time. 
So, Dean puts on his control-mask, the one he learned from his Dad, and (just like John did) he focusses on dealing with the yellow-eyed “monster” who killed Mary, to contain the pain. He refuses to listen to Sam or Cas. He tells them to get on board with his (suicidal again) plan or get lost. HE is the one who instigates locking Jack (remember, also a representation of his child-self) in the Ma’lak box:
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And he is the one who won’t listen to his loved ones,  but jumps all over and obeys without question, the Word of God (the Law of the Father) that the only way is to shoot Jack with the new mystical gun (Colt Mark II) when Chuck shows up with it. 
 Displaced-in-time John said, in 14x13 Lebanon (having been filled in by his sons):
JOHN: “I-I went out takin’ out Yellow Eyes. I mean, that was the point, right? I mean, get the thing that killed mom.”      
Chuck offers Dean the same choice (and, again, I think it’s a test).
Remember, as well as being the Revenge GunTM, the Hammurabi is also know as “The Equaliser”, so whatever happens to the person who is shot, also happens to the shooter. A perfect, perfect metaphor for the way in which John’s revenge quest rebounded on his sons (compounding the emotional trauma of losing their Mom). 
If Dean’ follows in his father’s footsteps and shoots the yellow-eyed “demon” who killed Mary, his own adopted son Jack (who, did I mention, represents his child-self) he will die - literally, according to the “law” of Chuck’s mystical gun, but also symbolically.
Because symbolically, that choice represents the fact that Dean has been crushing the life out of himself, for a long time, thanks to the internalised Ghost of John Winchester in his head (demanding that he be a substitute-parent to Sammy, that he stay “on mission”, that he perform a certain kind of masculinity, that he is responsible for everything and everyone, that he constantly fails [because he is trying to live up to an impossible standard]).
And at the last, Dean passes the test. He says, “No,” to the ultimate Father FigureTM (God) who is shouting at him to pick up the gun and pull the trigger.
He says “No” even when Chuck promises to bring Mary back from the “dead”. 
He does not repeat the cycle of his father’s revenge quest. He lowers the weapon of RevengeTM and of Re-bounding Suffering/ DeathTM.
He (finally) has compassion for Jack and thus (hopefully, hopefully) for his own child-self mirror. 
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On symbolic Mount Moriah, Dean confronts his Shadow-self, the part of him that is “just like” his father, the part that keeps controlling or pushing away his key relationships (with Sam and Cas and now Jack) the part that finds safety in orders, and in a black-and-white view of the world where monsters are monsters, and in which revenge is the answer.
Confronting the Shadow, as I wrote before 14x20 aired, can release us from “scapegoating”:
The Scapegoat: Speculative Musings on S14′s End (Moriah) (Linked to the Season’s Jungian Themes - Scapegoating and the Unacknowledged Shadow)  
https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184068368304/the-scapegoat-speculative-musings-on-s14s-end
So, Dean says, “No” to God, the ultimate father-figure, and in doing so he is released from his Shadow-possession by the father-imago in his unconscious
DEAN: “No, my Mom was my hero, and I miss her, and I will miss her every second of my life, but she would not want this.” 
As a counter-point, he embraces the feminine (his internal anima, according to Jung). He evolves.
And so, the mirror is broken through between the self and the Shadow-self, the ego and the id. AU!Michael/  the Ghost of John Winchester/ the Voice of God are out of Dean Winchester’s head. They can no longer control him: he has faced them all. 
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Now,  Dean has to learn to be himself, a whole new final chapter in the journey.
“The shadow, when it is realized, is the source of renewal ...  no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality” (Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow, 1990).
And, if you’ve been following the thread in the links to my other meta on Dean’s Shadow here, on how John’s repression in Dean’s mind was depicted (in subtext in S14) as, in part, Dean’s repression of his queerness (the Ma’lak box and the fridge-locker in Rocky’s mind-bar being symbols of the closet) then this culminating confrontation with the repressive image of The FatherTM in the form of God himself, as symbolic of Dean’s own controlling, self-repressing, self-closeting, Shadow-self, does seem to clear the way for... interesting developments (dramatic irony claxon - Dean still doesn’t know God is, in fact, himself bisexual). 
However, as always, I caution that the overtly homoerotic denoument is more than likely to remain closeted at the last, in favour of the “familial”. 
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dailytomlinson ¡ 6 years ago
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Louis Tomlinson may be one-fifth of one of the biggest boybands in the world, but there's so much more to know about the singer than the fact he was in One Direction. Now that he's getting on with his solo music career - AND just dropped his amazing new single 'Two Of Us', Louis is a major household name across the world.
Louis William Tomlinson was born on Christmas Eve in 1991, making him 27-years-old at the time of writing. Louis is the oldest member of One Direction, being 13 months older than second eldest Zayn Malik.
Louis Tomlinson's star sign is Capricorn. Apparently, typical Capricorns live by the motto, ‘Slow, steady and win the race.’ Where is Louis Tomlinson from? Louis was brought up in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Other famous people who hail from the town include Jeremy Clarkson, Kevin Keegan and Brian Blessed! Louis Tomlinson on The X Factor Louis first auditioned for The X Factor in 2009 but didn't get through the producer's audition, but that made him more determined to return in 2010 as a solo artist at the age of 19. He then met his future bandmate Harry Styles in the toilets at The X Factor auditions in Manchester.Although he made it through to bootcamp after singing a version of Plain White T’s ‘Hey There Delilah’ and getting a clean sweep of yeses from the judges, he wasn't able to progress as a solo artist.However, judge Nicole Scherzinger suggested that he go through in a group with some other rejected solo boys, and he was put together with Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Harry Styles. They went through to Judges' Houses, singing an acoustic version of 'Torn' by Natalie Imbruglia with Simon Cowell himself commenting that the group "were confident, fun, like a gang of friends and kind of fearless as well."They were Simon's last act standing on the series, but finished in third place behind Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson.When One Direction formed, Louis’s big ambition was to go "straight to the top." Proof that dreams come true! He also once said that if he could give anyone a tip when auditioning for The X Factor it would be "just be yourself and really try and get your personality through in your song choice and interview." Although Louis has returned to The X Factor as a performer, he took part in the show in 2018 as part of a brand new line-up alongside Robbie Williams - coincidentally, someone who Louis once called his 'man crush'.He also once said that Robbie is his biggest role model, telling KISS, "I’ve got a massive musical icon and that’s Robbie Williams. We actually got to sing with him on The X Factor and it was absolutely amazing." Louis Tomlinson in One Direction After coming third on The X Factor, the boys were signed to Simon Cowell's label Syco in a reported £2 million contract and immediately started working on their debut album. They took part in The X Factor Live Tour in 2011, and released their debut single 'What Makes You Beautiful' in September that year, which debuted at Number 1.The debut album 'Up All Night' was released in November 2011, and Louis’s favourite track on ‘Up All Night’ is the Ed Sheeran-penned track ‘Moments’. The track appears on the deluxe version of the record.They released second album 'Take Me Home' exactly one year later. Their documentary and concert film One Direction: This Is Us was released in August 2013 and grossed $68.5 million worldwide.Third album 'Midnight Memories' was released in November 2013, and fourth album 'Four' came out in November 2014. Just prior to the release of their fifth album 'Made in the A.M.' in November 2015, the band announced in August that they would be taking a hiatus, following the departure of Zayn Malik in March.
What was Louis Tomlinson like in One Direction?
According to his bandmates, Louis has the smelliest feet in One Direction! Niall once said, "Louis wears plimsolls with no socks so his feet get very sweaty and the sweat is captured. If we are on a bus or something and he takes them off we all pretty much start gagging." Despite having smelly feet, Louis is a big fan of shoes! His favourite types are chinos and Toms and he's a size 10.
Louis also revealed in an interview with us that Niall is the one person in the world he would swap bodies with, "I’ll go close to home Niall Horan, he doesn’t worry about anything in the world, Irish accent I’m not too bad I spend a lot of time with Niall."
Louis was given a telling off by police when filming the ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ video Los Angeles in July 2011 for his erratic driving. Afterwards, he explained, "I got pulled over by the US police. They thought I was all over the place. The officer goes, 'Listen, man, I can shut this thing down if you carry on driving like this. You're driving like a maniac.' And I was like, 'Man, put the gun down. I don't want no trouble.'"
He also says that he and his 1D bandmates are like brothers. Admitting that they occasionally bickered in the band, Louis told Digital Spy, "Because we're around each other so often it's like arguing with your siblings. You fall out with them, go away and have a bit of a paddy, then come back and get over it."
Louis once said that he likes snuggling up in bed with one of the One Directioners... HARRY! He said, "A few weeks ago I made a cup of tea, then went and got in bed with Harry and we watched a show called something like The Top 50 Boybands Of All Time." Nice!
Louis has approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds of solos on ‘Up All Night’ – the second least behind Niall Horan. Louis says he’ll "never get used to" the adoration he receives from fans. He once said, "At the end of the day we’re doing something that we really love and to be appreciated for that is really nice."
Louis hates rumours, especially when they involve Harry and himself. In a Tumblr interview he explained, "Me and Harry are best friends, people look into our every move. It is actually affecting the way me and Harry are in public, We want to joke around but there seems to be a different rumour every time we do anything."
Louis told us the one thing he misses about being in One Direction, "Probably touring, that’s why I’m excited to perform today and excited to get out and spent time touring the world as that’s probably the best thing about being an artist."
Louis Tomlinson's new music
After his successful solo performance on The X Factor in 2018, Louis delighted his fans in March when he dropped his amazing new single 'Two Of Us'.
The song, which is adored by fans, is a tribute to Louis' late mum Johannah Deakin. Johannah left behind seven children, including Louis, at the end of 2016, when she lost her battle with an aggressive form of leukaemia at the age of just 42.
Louis' track 'Two Of Us' features the lyrics, 'I know you'll be looking down/Swear I'm gonna make you proud/I'll be living one life for the two of us.'
The heartwarming music video saw Louis team up with 83-year-old Richard Green to complete a bucket list of adventures that he'd been trying to complete after losing his wife Pat in December 2016 - the same month Louis tragically lost his mother, Johannah Deakin.
Thanks to the success of the video, Louis has helped to raise a whopping ÂŁ10,000 for the Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice with the music video, which encourages fans to donate to the Sheffield-base charity in a call to action on his music video, which also promotes the Alzheimer's Society and Cancer Research UK.
He told us about the video, "He is, honestly, one the most amazing men I’ve ever met. Probably the most amazing man. I was so in awe of him, you know. Eighty-four, and to have that outlook on life. He was an amazing guy. Really funny as well.
"Just his outlook in general was what I took from that whole experience. You know, he recently had lost his wife but his outlook was so positive and a lot of people are entitled to dwell and be sad about those kind of things. But he was the exact opposite. He was so upbeat, so fun, and up for anything."
Louis Tomlinson's family
Louis' parents are Johannah Deakin and Troy Austin. In 2011, his mum Johannah and stepdad Mark split up and he took on his stepfather Mark Tomlinson’s surname. Speaking about his mum, Louis said, "It must be so much harder for her because I’m living this fantastic life and being so busy every day whereas she’s still in the old life I was in but without me... It must be really difficult for her not to get upset."
Johannah sadly passed away in 2016, and Louis paid tribute to his mum on the anniversaryof her passing.
Louis was incredibly close with his mum, and she once told Sugarscape that Louis is a giver and not a taker. In fact, there’s nothing he enjoys more than giving his friends and family presents, "He’s not a materialistic person himself, but he likes to give people things. He spoils me and the girls and he's happiest doing that."
He also has five younger half-sisters - one on his father's side (Georgia), and four on his mother's side (Charlotte, FĂŠlicitĂŠ, and twins Daisy and Phoebe). Sadly, it was announced in March 2019 that Louis' sister FĂŠlicitĂŠ tragically passed away after suffering a suspected cardiac arrest, at the age of just 18.
Just days after the release of his brand new single 'Two Of Us' in memory of his late mum, Louis' 18-year-old sister FĂŠlicitĂŠ Tomlinson tragically died after she suffered a cardiac arrest.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson confirmed, "Police were called by London Ambulance Service at 12.52pm on Wednesday, March 13 to a residential address in SW5 following reports of a female in cardiac arrest. At this stage the death is being treated as unexplained. A post-mortem examination will take place in due course. Enquiries continue."
What did Louis Tomlinson do before The X Factor?
Louis had a number of part-time jobs before The X Factor, including working at a local cinema and as a hospitality waiter at Doncaster Rovers Football Club. When he was younger, Louis wanted to work on a farm.
He also once revealed that if he wasn’t a multi-million selling pop megastar, he reckons he’d be training to be a drama teacher.
Where did Louis Tomlinson go to school?
When he first auditioned for The X Factor, Louis was a sixth form student at Hall Cross School in Doncaster. Louis also attended The Hayfield School in Doncaster, but dropped out when he failed his first year of A-levels.
Has Louis Tomlinson ever acted?
When he was just 11-years-old, Louis had a role as an extra on ITV drama Fat Friends. His newborn sisters Daisy and Phoebe starred as babies on the show. Spurred on by his appearance on Fat Friends, Louis attended acting school in his spare time and eventually had small parts in 2006 ITV drama If I Had You! and Waterloo Road.
As a student, Louis played the lead role of Danny Zuko in a high school production of Grease. He says playing the part gave him the confidence to audition for The X Factor.
Does Louis Tomlinson have hearing problems?
Louis suffers from a ringing noise in his right ear. Although yet to be officially diagnosed it’s thought it could be tinnitus which can lead to deafness if untreated. He once said, "I am going slightly deaf in my right ear. It’s tinnitus, something like that," before joking that it was because of screaming fans.
Is Louis Tomlinson good at cooking?
Louis admits he’s a really bad cook. Speaking to us in May 2019, Louis admitted that whilst he's very romantic, he's not great in the kitchen! "I am a horrific cook, a very, very bad cook. I give it a go, you know what I mean, I’ll try.
Despite his lack of skills, he appeared alongside Harry in a cooking segment on This Morning in September 2011.
Can Louis Tomlinson play any musical instruments?
When he was 14, Louis played lead guitar in a band called The Rogue with his schoolmates.
Louis is also pretty decent on the piano and he loves to play ‘Mr Brightside’ by The Killers. Louis is a big fan of Las Vegas rockers The Killers. After seeing them perform at V Festival, he tweeted, 'Watching Mr Brightside live last night was unbelievable. LOVED The Killers!!'
Unfortunately, Louis was fined £80 for speeding on the way to V Festival in 2012. It’s reported that he was going 48mph in a 40mph zone, which means that he may also have had three points on his licence. Ouch!
What are Louis Tomlinson's favourite TV shows?
His favourite TV shows are Misfits and One Tree Hill. In a recent interview with us, Louis revealed that he also loves Westworld and Black Mirror.
Louis Tomlinson's other favourite things
Louis once said that he is a big fan of girls who eat carrots.
The two traits Louis looks for in a girl are confidence and a good sense of humour.
If Louis had a superpower, he would want to be able to fly.
Louis’s favourite band is The Fray, and his favourite song of all time is ‘Look After You’ by The Fray.
Louis’s favourite colour is dark red.
He once said that if he could visit any planet it would be... Narnia. Erm, it’s a fictional place Louis!!
Apparently, Louis said that if a movie was made about his life, he’d like Leonardo DiCaprio to play him.
Just like Zayn and Harry, Louis supports Manchester United Football Club.
One of Louis's favourite mottos is, "Live life for the moment because everything else is uncertain."
Louis loves Marmite and has big dollops of it on his toast.
Louis’s celebrity crush is Natalie Portman.
Louis is an avid fan of surfing. In fact, he loves the beach so much he says he’d like to get married on one.
Louis once said his favourite country is France.
Other Louis Tomlinson facts
A man who works in the music industry once tried to have a snog with Louis! "It was a press guy.... he just started going in for a kiss!" said Louis.
Louis once owned a Porsche Boxster and sold it on eBay in 2012 for ÂŁ30,000.
Louis would love to copy Michael Jackson and have a pet monkey. He said, "I'd like to adopt a chimpanzee and build an eternal friendship, that would be amazing."
Louis admits that he’s a messy person. In fact, he hasn’t met anyone who’s messier than him!
Louis’s pet hate is when people chew their food too loudly.
In August 2012, Tulisa prank called Louis during a live webchat. When Louis answered she spoke to him in a Donald Duck voice in front of thousands of viewers. The N-Dubz star tweeted afterwards, 'soz babe we had 2 get ya! Thanks 4 being a laugh n entertaining us!'
Louis is prone to sleepwalking and once tried to get into Niall’s bed!
Louis is a big fan of silly string! He’s sprayed it on stage at gigs, press conferences and even at a security guard who refused to let him speak to fans.
Louis loves to party! He once told TOTP magazine, "To be honest, I’m sure the majority of 20-year-olds go out and party. I’m not going to feel oppressed."
It takes over 30 minutes for Louis to get his hair ready in the morning.
Apparently, Louis has revealed that his least favourite food is baked beans.
Louis once said that, if he was Simon Cowell for the day, he says he’d go on a date with Susan Boyle.
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CODE REALIZE: WINTERTIDE MIRACLES
Release Date:  February 14, 2019 (North America) Developers:  Idea Factory, Otomate Publishers:  Aksys Games Platforms:  PS Vita, PS4
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  I literally took my time playing this FD, knowing it’s the last (physical) otome game that will ever grace localization in the PS Vita.
Code Realize: Wintertide Miracles (Shirogane no Kiseki) is the second fandisc of the series, Code Realize. This game contains varieties of alternate and after stories that happened after the events of the last fandisc, Future Blessings.
  This fandisc contains the following stories:
Cantarella (Side Story) – Walkthrough available here.
Finis’s Epilogue
Sholme’s Epilogue
Love Triangle Stories (Short Stories)
Wintertide Miracles “First Christmas” (Alternate Stories)
Special Epilogues (Epilogues for White Rose’s stories in Future Blessings)
  ART AND MUSIC I know this is probably redundant as I’ve gushed about it a few times in my reviews for Guardian of Rebirth and Future Blessings. But, the artist Miko has done it again! I could not for the life of me, describe how incredibly beautiful the CGs are for this fandisc. There were also new sprites available for all the main and side characters, wearing their cozy winter outfits. Even Queen Victoria gets a new sprite wearing her expensive royal fur faux garb!
What I also loved about this fandisc were the new BGMs added for the series, they were all unforgettable and were specially made for the game’s Yuletide theme. One song that really stood out to me was the second Ending theme (Finis’ and Sholmes’ ED) “Beside You” by the artist SHOJI. Listen to the full track below:
***I purchased the whole soundtrack for Code Realize: Wintertide Miracles in iTunes. Link here.
  NEW CHARACTERS
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Cantarella (CV: Mamiko Noto) – Fuuka (Persona 4), Kotomi Ichinose (Clannad), Inia Sestina (MuV Luv), Felicita (Arcana Famiglia), Marvis Vermilion  (Fairy Tale)
Miles Strand (CV: Keiji Fujiwara) – Kagura Mutsuki (Blazblue), Jiro Hyuuga (Binary Star), Reno (Final Fantasy), Kiriya (Senran Kagura), Sakuya Tougane (Psycho Pass)
Baron of Aiguille (CV: Sugiyama Noriaki) – Akito (Norn9), Thor (Kamigami no Asobi), Suou Hana (Ayakashi Gohan), Katsuragi Naomasa (Yunohana Spring), Kashika Galle (Cendrillon Palika)
  SIDE STORIES AND AFTER STORIES I did Cantarella’s route first, followed by Finis and Sholme’s epilogues, then knocked out the love triangle dates before I played the main course, that is the “First Christmas” alternate stories for Wintertide Miracles. I myself, enjoyed this play order, though I would suggest playing whatever story you feel like playing first because that’s the whole point of a fandisc! lol
  CANTARELLA (Another Story) This story happened somewhere in the middle of Guardian of Rebirth’s common route. On their way home, after watching a performance at the Royal Opera House, Cardia and the rest of Lupin’s gang witnessed an attempted kidnapping of the Opera House’s beloved songstress, Cantarella. They’ve managed to save her as well as send her perpetrator running for the hills. They then took Cantarella to her home for safety measures, which lead the gang to meet her so-called “father” Miles. In this story, Cardia finds a friend in Cantarella and later on, discovers her true identity as both their existence managed to connect each other’s fates.
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Just like “Lupin’s Gang’s” (side) story in Future Blessings, Cantarella’s route offers new likable characters and an interesting new plot for us to follow. Although I’ve very much enjoyed this story (for what it is), I didn’t like how the writers threw in these important characters on the third game, since canonically they don’t matter anymore as the main plot officially ended in Future Blessings. I would rather have this as an alternate story than a side story because It felt kind of unfair for Cantarella, Miles, and Auguille to get dissed like that after this little episode. lol Unless they’re planning on a third fandisc! (laughs)
Although the choices you make in Cantarella’s route, will not change the whole outcome of her story. It will, however, change a few scenes and dialogues in the game depending on the guy (main characters) your choices are inclined to. You can view my walkthrough for this route here.
  FINIS’ EPILOGUE (After Story) This after story took place right after the end of Finis’s route in Future Blessings. 
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Six months have passed since Cardia managed to save his little brother, Finis from the unfortunate Nautilus incident in London. During this time, both twins return to their home in Wales and spend each day cleaning and repairing their old abandoned house while enhancing their bond as siblings. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose when one of Isaac Beckford’s invention called the “Knockers” have been spotted destroying a couple of buildings in London. It was made clear in the story, that these supposed-to-be-quarantined inventions of Isaac were “wrongly” activated by accident and it is now, up to the  Beckford twins (Finis’ most especially, since he’s fully knowledgeable when it comes to their father’s inventions) to stop this heaving uproar that threatened London its peaceful days.
This was probably one of my favorite After Stories in the series. Not only we get to see Finis in his true nature, as Cardia’s adorable cinnamon roll lil’ brother. We also get to see Lupin’s Gang and the Gordon Family in action as they help out clear the disruption in the streets of London during the main incident. ***This epilogue was very heartwarming and I absolutely enjoyed seeing Finis’ soft side while he deliberately declares threats whenever one of the main bois flirts with his sister! *chuckles* (´ ω `♡)
  HERLOCK SHOLME’S EPILOGUE (After Story) This after story took place right after the end of Sholme’s route in Future Blessings. 
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It’s been half a year since Sholmes defeated his arch nemesis, James Moriaty (in Code realize Future Blessings). During this story, Cardia becomes part of Sholmes’ Detective agency together with his partner John Watson. The three of them fight crimes for the cause of good, even to the extent of ‘trying‘ to stop Lupin, the gentleman thief’s planned diamond heist of the prized jewel called “Mermaid’s Tear”.  Though try as they might, Lupin, as cunning as he is, still gets the upper hand and was able to escape with ease together with his genius engineer assistant, Impey. I know this was just a filler episode but it was kind of weird seeing Cardia as their enemy for once, but oh well…
Anyway, Sholmes actual main story revolved around finding a cure to Cardia’s poison.  As the Horologium still present in Cardia’s body, this fact still poses a threat that one day it will activate again, killing her along with the demise of London and its people. With this complication at hand, Sholmes gathered his A-team geniuses in the field of science and medicine; Victor Frankenstein, Dr. John Watson, Impey Barbicane and even the deviant genius scientist Nemo, who apparently now lives in a tiny cardboard box located in sewers (laughs) 😂 Poor guy! As all of them try their hardest to conduct research on a formula that will counteract the horologium’s poison, more problems seep into the picture that eventually causes Sholmes and Cardia make one life-threatening decision.
I like how Sholmes’ epilogue was narrated in a fairytale-esque kind of way. I enjoyed the story’s fluff content though, to be honest, this is probably the weakest story in the game (imo) as there really wasn’t anything “new” going on. Nonetheless, if you’re a fan of Sholmes, I’m sure you’ll have an awesome time discovering a few surprising sides of our favorite hot daddy detective. 
  FIRST CHRISTMAS “Wintertide Miracles” (Alternate Stories) These are “after stories” that happened right after Finis’ route in Future Blessings. It’s merely an alternate story where our heroine Cardia finds love during the Yuletide season. We get one story for every five main characters. What’s really special about these stories is that Cardia falls in love with one of the guys while his brother is alive! …THIS couldn’t be any more perfect, ❤️ I almost wished this was headcanon!
  Spoiler Warning: I will only be posting each story’s premise but I’m putting up my spoiler banner just in case.
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  Victor Frankenstein After Isaac Beckford’s Nautilus incident that wreaked havoc in the city of London six months ago. Victor ended up opening a clinic located in the downtown part of London in order to help as many people as possible at a cheaper cost.
Victor’s main story started when one day he receives a mail from his parents in Switzerland telling him to settle down. He, in reply, told them he has no plans in getting married anytime soon but then started talking about how he’s currently interested with this ‘one girl’ and went all out writing two whole pages regarding his feelings for Cardia. (´ ε ` )♡ Without thinking of any repercussions, he sends the letter back to his parents judging its only the right thing to do as he’s speaking honestly from his heart. uwu. The next few days, he receives a reply letter from his mom saying they’re coming to London for Christmas so they can meet their son, Vic’s girlfriend. 🤣
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In result, a panicked Victor travels to Wales to ask Cardia to be his “pretend” girlfriend just for Christmas while his parents are in town. 😂
***This was by far the cutest, most endearing “First Christmas” story I’ve read among the selections and I absolutely enjoyed it to bits! Besides its overwhelming fluffy contents, we also get to see Victor introducing Cardia to his parents (in CG!).
  Saint Germain Six months after the Nautilus Incident, Saint Germain, visits Idea’s leader Omnibus and reports that both Finis and Cardia, Isaac Beckford’s “problematic twins” are now living peacefully in Wales as normal human beings and are no longer a threat to humanity. As one of Idea’s faithful apostle, he awaits for Omnibus next order but was surprised to hear her tell him to take a long sweet vacation instead.
Still dumbfounded by their leader’s words, Saint Germain goes back to the mansion to find something to do with his newly acquired free time but since everyone in Lupin’s gang went about their own lives after London’s incident, he was left as the only resident in his house. This made him feel lonely and he admits to himself how much he misses the rowdy group clamoring inside the premise of his mansion. What’s more, is that he longs to see the face of his beloved, who he has not seen since his last visit in Wales.
This made him decide to write invitation letters to the group for a Christmas “Get-together” party. Though unsure if his anticipated guests would actually make it to the planned event. Saint Germain waits with hopeful eyes to see the faces of his precious friends again.
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***The part where he waits for his friends actually made me tear 😭. Why are Saint Germain’s stories always melancholic? Why?! Thank goodness, this ended really REALLY happy. I would also like to gush on the fact that this is the only episode in the whole series where we get to see Guinevere outside her armor! Seriously, you absolutely can’t miss this!
  Abraham Van Helsing After London’s Nautilus incident, Van decides to travel with Delly all over United Kingdom in search for survivors of the Vampire War.
During their travels, the duo hears about the upcoming Christmas festival in London and decides to come home for the occasion as well as attend the gang’s Christmas party at Saint Germain’s mansion. They haven’t seen everyone in a while, so this decision made Van and Delly both excited. While at it, Delly proposes to take a side trip to Wales before coming to London and see the Beckford twins. Van agrees with him with Cardia in mind. ( ´ ▽ ` )
A few days have passed and they both arrived at Cardia and Finis’ home in Wales only to be disheartened to see the twins not being around. But with optimism as their friend, Van and Delly decided to wait. Night falls, and finally, Cardia and Finis arrived in the most unfashionable way ever (their automobile almost came crashing towards the duo) 😂 Everyone says their greetings when Cardia noticed that Van and Delly have been waiting out in the cold for too long, so she insisted they stay for the night.
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The supposed-to-be one night stay turned into days and the group eventually decided to go to London together. While still in Wales, Cardia wanted to make everyone Christmas presents in the form of knitting and Van insisted on helping her with it.
***I love this! (/▽\*) This surprising side of Van Helsing is all I ever wanted. I’m so glad to see him happy, always smiling and in his positive beaming self. It’s so refreshing! I need more happy-ray-of-sunshine Van Helsing in my life!
  Impey Barbicane Half a year has passed since the Nautilus incident in London and Impey visits the deviant scientist Nemo in prison from time to time as he plans to re-invent the gravity alleviator and is currently taking notes on Nemo’s advise while at it.
One day, In Saint Germain’s mansion, Saint tells Impey they received word from Van and Delly saying they’ll be back in London for Christmas. Since Lupin and Victor are already residing in the city, they decided to might as well invite Cardia and Finis in order for the gang to reunite once more this Yuletide season.
Meanwhile, in Wales, Cardia, (while fixing their automobile) thinks of how Impey’s constant declaration of love for her makes her heart feel woozy. She gets confused because she’s sure she loves Impey back but also “loves” the other members of Lupin’ s gang as well as her brother Finis. With this train of thought, she pesters her little bro and forced him to say the phrase “I love you” (to her), to which a blushing Finis, with all the effort, reluctantly did. 😂 But then yo girl was like “Oh but why does it feel different when Impey says it?” 😂 😂 😂 ROFL. This was adorably hilarious! I just can’t! 😂 
Later that day, they received a package from London in the form of a miniature Impey doll with a recording of Impey, Saint Germain and Lupin’s voice telling the siblings to come home for Christmas.
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***I really enjoyed reading this one! I love how Cardia was strongly forward of wanting to explore her own feelings as she tries to discover the different meanings of “love”.  …and seeing Impey immensely blush time and again was such an awesome treat, I couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear! Another plus point was that we get to see Nemo give love advises to yo boi and that, to me was the icing on the cake in this story! (laughs)
  Arsene Lupin After the Nautilus incident in London six months ago, Lupin is back doing his thievery schemes like the proud gentleman thief he is.
One day while on a mission to steal a prized necklace from a corrupt Duke’s estate, he ends up being chased by Leonhartd as usual and just when he was about to execute his dashing escape, he gets distracted (by thoughts of Cardia) and gets shot by a rubber bullet instead. This, not only surprised Lupin himself but his perpetrators, Leonhardt, and his men were also perplexed at how they were able to take out the famed gentleman thief in one easy shot. In the end, an injured Lupin still managed to get away as he limped his way back to safety.
Back at the mansion, Victor along with Impey confronts Lupin saying he’s not being his usual self lately and asks him to perhaps, take a rain check from work (theft missions). A week later, Saint Germain chimes in, telling him the same and suggests that perhaps he’s longing for “someone”.  Taking in the Count’s advise to heart, Lupin begins to think of Cardia and how her absence is taking a toll on him. He then concedes with his true feelings and finally admits he misses her badly and the only way to cure this yearning is to see her face to face. So he starts writing the ‘perfect’ love letter for his beloved lady. 😂
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***I must say, this after-story has the best CGs, as expected from the game’s headcanon boi. Just like Lupin’s uwu story in Future Blessings, it had its glorious romantic moments between the couple. As far as I see it, the game is clearly biased on Lupin’s story… the kabedon scene and that loooong kiss at the end, come on!  I couldn’t ask for more!
  TRIANGLE DATES (More CGs!) These are short stories which involve scenarios of Cardia spending her day with two main characters in the series. Although these are rather shorter stories compared to the ‘Wintertide Miracles’ selection, I was really impressed by how exceptionally good these little episodes were. You think you’ve had enough doki-dokis? Try this one on for size!
Here’s a list of all the Love Triangle episodes (you can play it in any order):
Lupin and Victor
Lupin and Impey 
Lupin and Van 
Lupin and Saint Germain 
Van and Impey 
Van and Victor 
Van and Saint Germain 
Impey and Victor 
Impey and Saint Germain 
Victor and Saint Germain 
Secret Episodes:
Delly and Sisi 
Aliester and Nemo 
Hansel and John Watson
  SPECIAL EPILOGUES These are short epilogue stories continuing the last events of Future Blessings (White Rose). These will unlock last, after finishing all of the above’s selections.
  IMPEY It’s been a few days and Impey hasn’t returned home after going on a work-related project (fixing airships and submarine engines in London).  Cardia was left alone in the mansion and although she knows Impey will come back soon, she thought of surprising him by gathering a lot of research documents related to their ‘moon-project’. She leaves for Wales to collect any information her father might have written in the past that can possibly help with the project. Not to ruin the surprise for her hardworking husband, she leaves a note that says “I’m going”.
Impey arrives at home, finds the note then begins to panic thinking Cardia has left him.😂 So he hurries and follows her to Wales to clear out this whole silly misunderstanding.
  LUPIN Cardia and Lupin go on a picnic at their secret place which has a great view of the industrial city of London and Lupin suggest that it’s about time to go on a honeymoon. Next few days, he takes Cardia to his birth city, Paris. There, they visit and the grave of his master, Theophraste and both of them said their prayers. They also ran into the head of the French police whom Lupin coined as someone equivalent to ossan Leonhartd. They had everyone (French police) chase them for fun and the couple gallantly escaped in style.
  VAN Cardia and Van are finally getting married and Shirley helps Cardia put on her wedding dress. Cardia decided to step outside the church so she could practice walking in her high-heel shoes when a bunch of men in black suits kidnaps her and takes her to another wedding location. There she finds an impatient man wearing a groom’s outfit who urges her to walk down the aisle with him. Cardia remembers the combat techniques her husband taught her and throws the man to the floor. Meanwhile, a worried and upset Van bursts out through the church door and started taking down the men in suits Liam Neeson style! 😂 😂 😂 Before things get worse, the gang stops Van and explains this was all a misunderstanding as the kidnappers and groom were actually actors and the bride actress never showed up for rehearsals so they thought Cardia was her by mistake.
The Moral of the Story: Don’t mess with this couple… ever! 😂
  VICTOR Cardia is now working as Victor’s assistant in the Royal Society and they spend their days doing research in Victor’s lab. Though they call themselves husband and wife, they realize that they never really had an actual wedding ceremony. So Victor asks Cardia if she wants to have a proper wedding and she says yes. A few days later, they began their search for a church in London but couldn’t find any since it’s peak season. Queen Victoria, along with Leonhardt notices Victor’s sullen expression and asks him what’s wrong, Victor tells them their circumstance and a snarky Victoria promises to help him only if he can prove to her how much he really wanted the wedding. After their deal, Victor comes home later than usual as he’s working extra hard to get her beloved wife that perfect wedding she deserves. Finally, the day has come for Victor to propose to Cardia and Victoria granted them permission to use the newly renovated St. Paul’s Cathedral. They got married in front of their friends and the Queen, and Cardia couldn’t be any happier.
  SAINT GERMAIN Cardia is now free of her poison and she and Saint Germain return to London so they can hold their wedding ceremony. The Count buys the ship “Gloria” from their mafia adventures in Lupin’s Gang (Future Blessings) episode and tells her this will be their venue. A day before their promised wedding, Hansel takes Cardia to Omnibus cottage and there they meet with Saint Germain and the leader of Idea herself, Omnibus. The old lady gives them her blessing, saying they will no longer be in the watchful eye of Idea and Saint Germain is now finally, freeee!  Both couples said their thanks to Omnibus. They got married in their luxurious ship the next day and all of their friends are with them happily celebrating the couple’s most special commemoration.
  Will I be able to enjoy this game even if I haven’t played Future Blessings? There were a lot of characters and events in Future Blessings that were present and added to this game, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to skip Future Blessings in the series. In addition, the main “Wintertide Miracles” stories continue from the last events of Finis’s route in Future Blessings, so, all the more reason not to skip the first fandisc.
Localization There were a couple of typo mistakes that I couldn’t really overlook which makes me think that perhaps because of it’s promised released date on Valentines Day, the game was rather rushed and there wasn’t a lot of time spent dedicated solely on proofreading it. ┐(︶▽︶)┌
  TRAILER
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  FINAL THOUGHTS? \(^▽^)/ My overall play length for Code Realize Wintertide Miracles was a good 10-15 hours. Despite me trying to make the game last forever for about at least, two weeks, I finished it pretty quickly because I just couldn’t get enough of it.
Cantarella’s side story was way better than the gang’s Mafia adventures in Future Blessings and I sure did wish the ‘Cantarella-characters’ would’ve made a cameo in the special epilogues, because seriously, what a waste of good characters to be squeezed in, on the third game. ┐(‘~` )┌
Finis wins best boi in my book. This was one of the things I really appreciated most in this FD, and I’m sure most Code Realize hardcore fans would agree. Finis’ character finally gets justice! We get to see more of his adorable side as Cardia’s little brother while maintaining his hostile and dubious personality 😂. Who would’ve thought this boy is such a tsun-tsun! ❤
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Do I recommend this game? YES (esp. to all Code Realize fans) Take note, this game is the series’ second fandisc. So literally, one cannot play it all willy-nilly without fully playing it’s first two predecessors. Personally, I’ve enjoyed this game a lot but that’s because I’m such a huge fan of the series. Perhaps to those who aren’t into Code Realize, you probably won’t enjoy this as much.
With the production of PS Vita consoles and games, completely shutting down worldwide this year, Code Realize Wintertide Miracles was such a special treat for us otome fans ~ esp. now, where there is scarcity of otoge releases in the West.
The game’s romantic Christmas theme really took this one up a notch and the newly added side stories are really something to look forward to. If you already like this series, loved the game’s main casts and wished for more adventures with them, this game is definitely worth the purchase.
  CHLO’S RATING: 8/10
Code Realize: Wintertide Miracles Review CODE REALIZE: WINTERTIDE MIRACLES Release Date:  February 14, 2019 (North America) Developers:  Idea Factory, Otomate Publishers: 4,080 more words
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Apparently my mom became a sort of boss..
Like one day she said Abu was escaping so she said for them to capture him then take him where he wanted to go.
For me, that's some bull shit to stay kidnapped and cry and complain she wouldn't be safe here.
That alone is all you're too much hassle to deal with during Christmas and Hanukkah. You didn't care about 31 of mine, you can stay in the hospital. Instead of us catering around you and your care and trying to enjoy our holidays, minus you and our life is better just as she said during nearly 33 years.
Because every dam day it's gonna be checking on mom and making sure things are okay and dealing with her bullying if she desieres to be one.
I was willing to do it so my dad could see her and us during the holidays and she didnt feel abandoned.
But she can have that feeling.
Of course my other siblings can vote, we set up different possibilities but im not baby sitting her like we were going. Another holiday but not 2 weeks of it.
......
My best friend was trained by my mom in the kitchen. One day she overslept so Abu sent for her father to protect her. And he became an in between from another farm to his daughter's. Neither one were sure who they were with but they felt better. Like how I always felt with her or our friend. Just better. No real reason why. Just better. Stronger and mentally clean. Like happiness isn't a sin.
.....
Our other friend was just a common slave, hidden under the ranks. But he had a guitar and things like that that many others didnt have. He was told to say he stole it. But he found it under a tree around Easter. A gift from God or the Easter Bunny. So he was treated with respect and protected more than other common slaves. Although he himself would protect any one there. As he went to save our friend. But was unable.
He gave lessons and found books of music sheets to learn new songs, here and there, usually tucked in his sheets when it was noticed he was failing at happiness.
While it may seem like only he got gifts... Anyone whom could hear recieved the gift of music and the more he taught others, the more guitars that would appear.
And one day a piano appeared. A small organ piano.
So he was the rockstar in the Queens eyes. Because i knew the Queen would protect him.
....
For our friend in the kitchen unique spices and recipies would appear hidden in the cabinet or sitting on the stove, again starting around Easter. Hers was before and the magic of music after. This granted her a better bed from the Queen and better shoes on Christmas, the kind nurses wear for all the farms kitchen workers, again from the Queen as Abu requested.
As my mother complained she quit cooking because her feet hurt. But refused to do anything about it, including asking the Queen, So i told Abu, i want to beat her face in so bad. And Abu said i have a better idea. Lets prove to the Queen they deserve them, in only the way the Queen will understand.
And so i prayed.
And i knew we won so i growled at my mother. And it scared her. But i did not attack her like a wild animal should, although I wanted to.
....
Abu found people all over that he felt a kindred spirit with so he did all kinds of things for them.
Of course new recipes and new spices induced a fresh day for my friend and fresh taste for all the victims that ate from her kitchen and as Abu saw it working, all the kitchens on all the farms.
....
It came from God, it is true. It did.
But as others have said that i have done a miracle this past week... I say it could not happened without help from other humans.
I choose not to be As critical of myself or Obama (as much as usual) for it being so long they have been kidnapped before I could help them, and since God blessed his human traffic victims with gifts that protected them as provided from Abu and his workers that would slip in the gifts and surprises. It makes it easier to not be so critical of him and myself.
....
The reason I write is because of another dear friend i saw as a father. We call him Hondo.
Because Ms Hindi says he thinks like her.
And Ms Hindi said God says no Christmas for mom. As her punishment as he can review his list.
But Hondo was kidnapped with the promise of surfing down South and he wanted to teach his son.
But instead he became a human traffic victim.
He thought his son had died over a decade and half ago. So he could not return home. He thought he didn't deserve it.
So he told himself it was better to stay with Abu and make sure Abu stays good. And doesnt end up like my mom. So one day, he kept his fingers crossed, that he could promise me i would be safe with Abu. And he could teach me the truth and the difference between him and her.
Then maybe, maybe, God would tell him or he would feel or finally believe he could go home and his wife would not hate him
But at least maybe he could get into Heaven to see her Then because he helped someone that he saw and took care of and loved as he did his own kid.
He uses Matt to send money home on the holidays. And he uses his money from work to hire security and protection for his wife and daughter at home. Matt bought them a new house -- But Matt hes a dork. Was too afraid to So he pretended he bought the trailer they were in and hooked it up and tried to move it. So he apologized with 1 million dollars.
Boys are dumbasses. But it worked!!!
....
So you see that all kinds of people i know but each one are absolutely different.
While Hondo is afraid and ashamed.
My mother is manipulative and egotistical.
One friend has no father But another has had hers nearby and has built a relationship with him. (Our male friend went to pack, not wanting to leave, not knowing who is really behind the move - knowing the bull shit his father is capable of although dead -- they're all the same; while shes with her dad and they had packed the first minute she had)
....
Crates with packing material have been flown in about 2 hours ago and the DNA test kits arrived and some people have been tested.
Like my mother was tested and then compared with my DNA test i had already taken at 23andme.
Some of us were hoping she was buried down in the common slave department. Unfortunately we all know our parents even when we don't want them.
....
My best friend's mom as we were taught is her mom is still alive as is her younger sister and shes got nieces and nephews. But her family is like mine and got mixed with non familial relatives and family. So the DNA tests will come in handy.
Our friend still has his brother and the mom he had has died but the father he was left to is still alive. And hes a good guy, he always said his mom was only good at cooking and he was supposed to ignore her otherwise. So he has his own family to return to, although its a mix of blood and love. His was based on honesty although his father is a horrible criminal, he was raised with as much information as possible. DNA tests will be helpful also, though but not as, we feel, dammed important. Not Because his father is a criminal, we just feel there's honesty.
Hes the same as Declan and so there's no bad to fall upon him, he wasn't asked to be born to him. Or to be born at all.
And so no one really that i know of is to be treated bad at all.
My mom although we aren't giving her what we want for 99.9% of the victims, shes not being punished as far as real punishment goes. We are electing her to get real instead of having fun. So being in a mental hospital or physical hospital instead of being at a house with guards and family time. It happens all the time everywhere. Regardless if you're a human trafficker or new born with cancer or a teenager that no one listens to.
....
So i do hope that everyone understand that the majority over 99.9% didn't want to be kidnapped to be kidnapped and human trafficked.
And a lot of the adults feel guilty and ashamed.
Weak and dumb and a whole list of things that should give them reasons to be hated by their own family.
Like Hondo.
.
So many people think if i do this one thing and it's good to God then i can move on.
So those that have been here 10 years. Not all feel that way but im sure that quite a large handful do.
And those in Iraq will have that mental disturbance.
....
So for y'all at home waiting for your loved ones. Remind them to be safe. Like no hitchhikers and no hitchhiking.
But also remind them that its okay. Its okay they are home.
Our neighbor Hondo was in the Military and took a ride with Jeremiah. We trusted him to a small degree as he was always in the neighborhood and had a charm like a sleezy car salesman.
Which is why they are going to be gifted cars, so they don't take rides with someone they shouldn't trust but do.
And we admit there will be a huge amount of mental issues, thoughts, that will be difficult to deal with for the victims and for the families to give correct advice.
Guidelines of Safety and Emergency Situations will be provided to both the family and the victims.
Like a mental break down is possible. A panic attack is possible.
For both sides.
Step One is to realize the situation. 1. The kidnapped has been released and is free. Breathe. 2. Both the family and victim are loved. Breathe.
Usually there's just a simple "what color shirt do i want to buy?" Can set off a whole fucked up system in the minds. It can happen to a "normal" person. Don't think im not speaking from experience!!
Step Two: step away. Drop the topic. Stop what you are doing. Let someone else handle it. Or try again after sleep. Not because there is something wrong with you but because you're not taking care of you. Youre probably over stimulated. Again personal experience. So don't feel like trash.
Step three: pray. Just ask. Insert the word "God and help and me and what you are trying to do."
Repeat.
There's more examples in the lists that will be sent. But this is the short version. And they will cover emergency situations which is just about the same but the why is explained in details.
And the above works for any one And everyone.
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