#and I would rather buy a vhs or something to watch the whole movie rather than just the music

[ur-local-neighborhood-scene-kid]

I saw an “mlp G1 the movie” record at a collectibles shop and it said that DANNY DEVITO STARRED IN IT

I didn’t get a pic and I didn’t buy the record but MAN was I shocked. I think he played the elf/gnome guy that was featured on the cover, but I would have LOVED to see him voice a pony

[extremelyblackandwhite]

innocence - 33

PAIRING: bodyguard!bucky barnes x innocent actress!reader

WARNINGS: assault, swearing, trauma, tones of ptsd 

A/N: this chapter is heavy with prominent mentions of assault. if that triggers you, please skip this chapter. 

NEXT CHAPTER

She stood in the middle of the set, surrounded by bright lights as the cast and staff moved around to change the setting of the set design. There was nothing she could really feel and she felt herself almost out of her own body, the lack of sleep weighing not only on her eye bags but on her brain and ability to properly function. She felt she was watching herself out of her own body, watching as she dragged herself from scene to scene, almost changing into a completely different person when the cameras were on. It was mechanical, an ability of someone who’d been acting since she was a child. She slipped in and out of her own consciousness, almost knowing everything with a sharp eye but ignoring it. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t sleep. Any news that appeared regarding HYDRA or criminal organisations were always a trigger to keep her up at night. The silence itself was a trigger. Every blank letter she would get would send her into a spiral, every knock on her door. Wherever she turned, either Bucky or however haunted her seemed to surge. Except this time, Bucky wasn’t around. Sharon was but she couldn’t help to think something was off. 

Two weeks. 

Something was off.

She was no super soldier and she was no agent so all she could do was merely put a smile and say “nothing” whenever they asked her if something was wrong. Not that they asked, she was a good actress after all so to everyone else, even Sharon, she was peachy keen, with the same shy smile she always had on set. After all, this was the place she could be anyone but herself. Anna, the character she was playing, was so far removed from her own personality that whatever she felt seemed to dissipate mid takes. Yet, there was no comfort in becoming someone else, becoming someone who was so one dimensional she’d rather be back in her mind. Wherever she turned, she felt trapped, shackled by the weight of her own thoughts. There was nothing she could do. 

     - CUT! It’s a wrap everyone. - the bright lights dimmed as a ‘pop’-like sound removed her from her own dazed consciousness. She clung onto her own arms, turning around with a quickened heartbeat which slowed down as she realised it was merely a bottle of champagne which was now being half poured into flutes and half poured onto the floor. Yet, all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears.

She stood in the middle of everything, almost like a movie shot. Things moved fast but she knew they moved slowly and she remained there, in the middle of the shot, listening to everything as if she were underwater. Everyone was celebrating, drinking and laughing out loud but she couldn’t hear anything. Just a buzz. That’s all she could hear. The buzz and the sound of the wind bustling her dress. 

     - Y/N? - Sharon moved through the crowd, knowing way too well what was happening. She had seen it before. She carefully put her hand just slightly over her shoulder, not touching her but anyone would sense it. - Can you breathe in and out?

    - Huh? - she was once again pulled out into her body and suddenly everything was just too fast, everything was just too loud as if someone had pressed the forward button on an old VHS tape. Her eyes moved side to side as her own hand pressed against her chest, a forceful reminder to feel her own heart beat. - Yeah, hum, I just need a break.

    - That’s fine. - Sharon nodded her head and started to guide her out the middle of the set; however, a much familiar sound of heels hitting the gravel halted those plans. The she was, always board in hands. - Move. 

    - You’re needed. - Ms. Olson pointed at the actress in front of her with her pen. - The director wants to speak to you. 

    - Yeah, that’s fine. - Y/N pulled a fake smile. There was no use putting a fight, she had already done so and something told her not to stray too far off the cage they had put her in. She knew that with Bucky gone and Sharon under the cover she was one of her old university classmates which had settled down in New York as a stage manager, she had no protection, at least no personal protection. What she had belonged to the agency and if she toed out of line, she’d be left to fend for herself. She could barely look at the mail without shivering, much less fend for herself. She was a short woman, anyone taller than her could easily overpower her and that was the sad truth.

Once again, she found herself out of her body, watching as she walked the gravel with Ms. Olson to the trailer belonging to the director. Y/N was tired, she had no intention of wanting to speak to anyone, all she wanted to do was try to sleep yet here she was knocking on the door of the man she had learned to stray away from. The door was opened by his assistant, a small woman barely in her twenties, couldn’t be much younger than 5 years from Y/N, who had an almost meek look to her, hunched back even. Before Y/N could ask her what was wrong, the director, Mr. Powell, was already yelling out for the assistant to leave and for Y/N to come already.  The girl stepped out and closed the door behind Y/N, leaving the two of them inside his trailer. It was grimy with papers and open bottles everywhere and the stench of smoke was thick in the air. It was almost comical, cartoonish even how it looked as if a cartoon, over exaggerated version of a 70′s movie director. 

   - Sit down. - he pointed to the spot on the brown couch near him. She was hyper aware of everything as she sat down on the couch, yet living a big space between the two of them. - You almost ruined my shot today with those puffy eyes, darling. 

    - I’m sorry, sir. I’ve been having some personal issues, I thought they would’ve de puffed by today. 

    - I’ve heard. - he took a puff of his cigarette which laid in the middle of his calloused fingers, laying against the couch rest as if he were on top of the world, when he was merely as much of an unknown as she was. He was no famous director, he wasn’t even a good one. - I thought you were missing your shadow. Where is he anyway? Lost his mind again? You know, darling, I’m always worried about you. I mean once a killer, always a killer, right?

    - ... You’re pathetic. - it came out of her lips without her even noticing it. She stared at him with a lack of respect few people saw yet as quickly as she said those words, she was pined down against the brown leather of the couch. She could feel the cracked leather against the skin of her neck. His hand gripped her throat, hard, cutting her air flow and keeping her against the couch cushions. 

   - You ungrateful little bitch. - Y/N started kicking her feet, trying to somehow roll over on the floor. - I gave you the best role, put up with you not losing any weight and looking like any average shopping girl and how do you repay me? By being a whore? 

She continued to kick her legs up in down so fast it had already started to tire her muscles. Her hands clawed at his face, leaving scratch marks which were sure to remain red and angry on his cheeks. 

   - I’m gonna give you some advice, darling. You wanna get ahead? Start whoring yourself for someone other than your boyfriend.

His hands left her neck and he returned to sit down where the place where he had been, as if he hadn’t just chocked her against the couch pillows. Y/N got up from the couch and bolted towards the door, pulling it open and climbing down the stairs, noticing the assistant was in front of them. Same meek look, yet Y/N continued to charge away from the set villa until she stopped on the sidewalk, sitting down as she watched the traffic in front of her. The weather was cloudy and dark yet somehow the cars lights made it brighter and it hurt her head. It hurt her head too much. The smell of fog and the bright lights hide her away as she tucked her head in the middle of her knees, chest going up and down yet no tears rolled down her face. 

     - Hey ... - Sharon sat by her side. - Let’s go home, yeah? 

The fog merely thickened and lowered, covering the whole of New York in a somber mood. The wind itself was also fast and freezing and as Bucky stepped inside government headquarters, the mood as just as somber. The lights were yellow yet everything had a weird green-like tinge. Everyone was mechanically induced into their own work yet he was hyper aware of everything. Two weeks. Two weeks to bring in a HYDRA general and a senator which were sure to buy their own bail and go back and all he could say and think was he was tired. James “Bucky” Barnes was tired and worn down. 

He strutted towards the interviewing room where Agent Cox and Doctor Raynor were. It was nothing new to him, it was always the same; he would return from whatever assignment had been given to him and be questioned on it by whatever agent was looking over the case and then had a “therapy” session with Doctor Raynor. It was never to check if he was alright, or at least it barely was. They just wanted to see him, to see the Winter Soldier was still inactivated. He understood that yet that didn’t mean he particularly liked it.

He told the agent all he wanted know, from where he had found the two he had just brought in, to some background info. There wasn’t much to say and when he was done, he was left with Doctor Raynor. He stood against his metal chair, convinced to get this over and done with so he could go back to Brooklyn. Back to her. 

    - How are you, James?

    - I’m good, doc. Can I go now? 

    - James, that’s not how this works. You should know that by now. - she opened her notebook. Great. - Tell me about the mission.

    - It was an extraction, mission. No one got hurt. - lies. He had gotten hurt, he had taken a pretty harsh blow to his cheekbone which was developing into a nasty purple bruise, yet, that was not who they were questioning him about. If he had gotten hurt, it didn’t matter. - No nightmares either. 

    - Are you lying to me, James?

    - No, I just want to get out of here. I haven’t seen my girlfriend in two weeks. 

    - Tell me about your girlfriend. - she closed the notebook, almost as if this was off book yet he knew that nothing was off book. Not for him. Everyone has the right to privacy but the Winter Soldier. - What’s her name? 

    - Y/N. 

    - How old is she? 

    - Younger than me. 

    - No need to be hostile, James.

    - No need to ask me about my love life, doc. 

    - Any big fights? Any ... problems regarding your condition? Healthy sex life?

    - Are you asking me if I abuse my girlfriend? - his blood boiled yet he tried to keep cool. He knew an anger outbreak would only keep him in this session for longer than he wanted. Despite this, he chose to get up and leave the room. 

He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear those accusations, he didn’t even want to think about it. Bucky did not like the idea of the Winter Soldier and Y/N together. He didn’t want to merge those two worlds together. The Winter Soldier was someone, a part of him which he didn’t fully understand and he didn’t want Y/N together with it. No, Bucky wanted Y/N to only see whatever bit of kindness, whatever few bits of goodness lied within him. He didn’t want her to the Winter Soldier’s girlfriend. He knew he didn’t deserve her and that title only further reminded him. 

He continued to be lost in his head, those questions running through his mind as he unlocked the door only to be met with Sharon pointing her gun at him. She lowered her gun once she realised who it was that stood in the entrance, putting the gun back in between her jeans and her shirt. 

   - Two weeks? That was long. 

   - Not my fault, Sharon. - Bucky dropped his duffel bag to the floor. - How is she?

   - Not good. - Sharon crossed her arms. - You have to tell her things, James. C’mon, you can do that with me and Steve and maybe even Sam. We know them, we’ve been in missions before but she doesn’t. 

   - Spare me this.

   - She barely slept while you gone, James. God, are you so afraid she’ll stop loving you if you tell her about the Winter Soldier that you’d rather her live in constant anxiety every time you have to leave?

    - I won’t have to leave. 

Sharon scoffed, grabbing her jacket from the coat hanger.

    - Do you seriously believe that, James? 

    - Since when do you care about Y/N?

    - Stop being your worse enemy, James. She deserves to know.

God, she sure was awful now, Bucky thought to himself as Sharon left probably to return to Steve. The flat was intact, things were just as he had left them and everything was quiet except for the TV in the living room. Their bedroom door was slightly opened, probably so Sharon could keep an eye on Y/N. He took his shoes off so his steps wouldn’t alarm her and walked into the bedroom. She was there, in the bed, laying on her side, sleeping peacefully. Bucky walked up to her side of the bed, leaning down to kiss her forehead. 

She stirred in her sleep, eyes slowly opening as Bucky began to shush her, trying to make sure she went back to sleep. Last thing he had wanted was to awake her up.

    - Bucky? - she held herself onto one arm, the other hand coming to rub the sleep off her eyes. Once the blurriness dissipated and she confirmed it was indeed her Bucky, she wrapped her arms around him tightly, almost knocking him into the bed.

Bucky melted in her touch, burying his nose in her hair, sensing the scent of vanilla from her shampoo and the warmth of her skin. This was home, not Brooklyn but her. She was home, she felt like home. She pulled away from the hug for a bit to examine him, her fingers brushing the bruise on his cheekbone.

    - What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?

    - I’m fine. It’s just the bruise, Y/N. 

    - I’ll get some ice. - she prepared to get out of bed but he pushed her back on it. She felt onto his chest and he held her against him with one arm. What he did not expect was to see how uncomfortable she became at the inability to move. He was used to playing around with her, rolling around or having her on top of his chest. 

   - What’s wrong, princess?

   - Nothing ... - she shook her head. - I just missed you. I was afraid you were hurt or you were dead. 

   - I’m not hurt, I’m here. 

   - You’re staying, right? - she questioned, rolling to his side of the bed, laying on his side. - You’re not here just to visit.

   - Yeah, I’m staying, princess. - he caressed her cheek, leaning his forehead against hers. Sharon’s words, however, kept pulling at him. She loved him, he knew she loved him. Right? 

   - You’re making the face.

   - What face?

   - Your thinking face. - she cuddled against him, fingers softly pulling his chin down so he was looking at her. - What are you thinking about?

   - You love me, right? - he probably sounded insecure, he could hear himself sounding insecure, his voice cracking. She cocked her head to the side before raising her fingers to trace his jaw. 

   - Of course I do. You think I’d be marrying you if I didn’t love you?

   - I wanted to hurt them. - he blurted. - I wanted to torture them. Both of them.

   - Who?

   - Every time they send me to any of these assignments. Make amends ... I wanna hurt those people, I wanna hurt them like they hurt me and I hate it.

   - Buck ...

   - I’m ... I wanna be a good person, Y/N. I wanna be good. - he shut his eyes tightly. - And I’m not. 

   - It does not make you a bad person to want to hurt you hurt you, to want revenge. You do not act on it and that’s the difference. You’re not a bad person, Bucky. 

   - You’re the only person who thinks that. 

   - Doesn’t matter. - she smiled at him, softly kissing him. - I’m not expecting you just to move on and let it go. It’s part of your life and it’s part of you and I love you. All bad and all good, I love you. 

   - Maybe you need a better judgement. 

   - I have the best judgment between the both of us. I have no thrown myself off a plane without a parachute. 

   - That can’t be your way of winning arguments. 

   - It is my way of winning arguments. - she giggled at him. - Let’s just go to sleep. 

The night seemed short, way too short but it did not matter because both of them were there. It was calm, too calm until a harsh knock had both of them wake up from her slumber, the morning barely bright yet there was already some light. Y/N clung onto his arm as another harsh knock was delivered against his door. Bucky moved slowly to take his gun from under the bed before he walked out the bedroom, putting his gun behind his back as he opened the door. The police stood in front of him, quite a few of them. Way too many.

   - James Buchanan Barnes, you are under arrest for the alleged harassment and stalking of Miss Y/N Y/L/N.

taglist: @disasterbi​ @lookiamtrying​ @buckysteveloki-me​ @americasass81​ @jamesbarnesappreciationclub​ @lostinthebeans​ @mariahthelioness29​ @oh-nohoney​ @peaches-roses-sins​ @theadorasabditory​ @sipsteacasually​ @saiyanprincessswanie​ @booktease21​ @noiralei​ @learisa​ @everythingisoverratedbutgreat​ @uglipotata72829​ @naturalthrone22​ @husherstan​ @mandiiblanche​ @vicmc624​ @newyorkgoddess​ @itsallyscorner​ @chipilerendi​ @emzd34 @writerwrites​ @bluevxnus​ @that-girl-named-alex​ @captnrogers​ @nsfwsebbie​ @sarge-barnes-sir​ @niki-is-a-thing​ @cynic-spirit​ @tenaciousperfectionunknown​

[pappydaddy]

Opposites (s.h.)

  A/N: This is for the request asking for a Steve x Reader where the reader was like Jade West from Victorious (also known as one of my bi awakenings). I am sorry for the delay, this Thanksgiving was crazy (I’m Canadian) and there was so much to do! I tried my best to write the reader like Jade without having her not vibe with the kids bc we all know that the kids come first with Steve. Now, without farther ado, here is the request! Hope you like it lovely Anon!!

Edit: I changed the name bc there are so many fics under the name Opposites Attract😅.

pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

show/movie: stranger things 

requested

warnings: fluff??

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation

- not my gif -

  Opposites attract. Something everyone has heard before. It can be applied to magnets or to relationships. While there was no denying that when it came to magnetic pulls, opposites did indeed attract, but Steve was never too sure about it in a relationship sense. He had always gone after girls who fit his lifestyle. Parties, the popular crowd, the girls who fit in to societies expectations. It wasn’t until he had met Y/N that he had realized that maybe everyone was right. Just like magnets, opposites attract did apply to relationships as well. He could not think Robin enough for introducing the hard headed, sometimes (all the time) scary girl who Steve would have never approached. A goofy guy such as Steve paired with the rocker chick who intimidated nearly everyone? Steve had never thought that would be possible outside of the movies. 

 Now, here Steve sat on Dustin’s couch as he bounced his knee, the party bickering all around him as they tried to figure out what they were going to do today. “Why would we watch movie’s all day, we always watch movies, Dustin!” Lucas exclaimed from where he sat on the floor next to Max. Dustin looked up from the pile of VHS tapes he had already selected before hand. 

  “Because movies are awesome and clearly the best option right now,” Dustin answered as if it was obvious. “Nobody can agree on one place, so the logical solution is to stay here and watch a movie.” He shrugged, shuffling through the tapes once again, ignoring Lucas’ groans of protest. Steve tuned them out the best he could as he watched the front door, willing for it to open revealing the two missing members of the party. 

  “Dustin has a point, Lucas.” Max piped up, not even looking up from watching the titles of the movies Dustin was debating on. 

  “Why,” Lucas asked simply, turning his head to face her in an exaggerated fashion. “Just why,” He repeated. “Why do you think it��s better to sit here and watch movies all day as opposed to going to a bowling alley?” 

  “I’d rather watch movies than go to a bowling alley, but we are clearly forgetting the best option brought up,” Mike inserted himself into the conversation again, banging his pointer finger against the coffee table before continuing. “The Arcade. There is a huge re-opening deal and a ton of new games!” 

  “We’re not going to the Arcade, it’ll be too crowded to have fun as a group!” Dustin turned Mike’s idea down once again. 

  “And sitting in a dark living room all day watching movies will be a fun group bonding experience?” Mike snapped back, sending the three boys into a tailspin of bickering. Steve and Max both heaved out sighs at the same time just as the front door opened, Robin walking in first followed by Y/N. The two girls ceased their previous conversation, blinking at the chaos ensuing. 

  “Finally, what took you two so long?” Steve leapt from his spot on the couch, rushing over to the pair, his eyes wide with relief. Instantly, he wrapped Y/N in a tight hug. The girl tensed for a second before melting into his hug, patting his back with one had. She wasn’t much for hugs, not being an overly affectionate person in general, but she couldn’t help but to lean a bit closer to Steve whenever he was affectionate towards her.           

  “Sorry, Stevie-boy,” Robin apologized half-heartedly, plopping herself down in the spot he once occupied. “Y/N got caught up trying to decide which Stephen King book to buy and then she saw the Stephen King display they had put up.” 

  “Ended up getting Cycle of the Werewolf, it came out a few years ago, but I was too wrapped up in the release of Cujo to focus on his book releases,” She told him, not even waiting for him to ask. She pulled out of his grasp, reaching into the bag she carried to hand him the book. Steve shivered slightly, not understanding how she could read or watch Stephen King’s books without getting the slightest bit scared. “But I couldn’t pass on the great deal they had on, they had Danse Macabre for half off so they could get make room for another shipment.” She pulled the second book out of the bag, walking passed Steve who read over the back of the book he held, eyeing the words as if they would jump off the page at him. 

  “That’s great, Y/N, but we need you and Robin to help us decide what to do for the rest of the day,” Dustin interrupted the girl, earning a glare from her (which he ignored). Y/N sat on the middle cushion beside Robin who dug through her own bag to retrieve her own book: Dark Companions. “Lucas wants to go to a bowling alley-”

  “I would rather stab my eyes with rusty scissors then go to a bowling alley.” Y/N cut him off, flicking through the pages of her new book. Dustin laughed in victory as Lucas gave Dustin a warning look in return. 

  “We didn’t get to hear what Robin thought.” Lucas pointed out, hoping that Robin would be his saving grace, but his hope was quickly shot down. 

  “I’m with Y/N,” She stated, looking up from her book. “I hate those places, they are a cesspool of germs. Kids pick their noses then use their booger covered fingers to pick up a ball.” She turned her nose up at the idea. Lucas slumped back in defeat, Max sending him a sympathetic smile despite her internal happiness that she didn’t have to go to the bowling alley. Steve hid his own excitement as he sat down on the other side of Y/N, slinging his arm over her shoulders as she began to read her book. 

  “How about the Arcade, huh? You guys can watch us play awesome games and not touch anything!” Mike brought up his idea, trying to sell the girls on it. Robin shook her head instantly. 

  “Arcades are my personal hell,” Y/N grumbled, flipping the page. “Kids running around screaming and the noises from the games. It’s nauseating.” She cringed at the thought of it. 

  “So that leaves watching movies here then.” Dustin smiled brightly, showing his still missing teeth. Mike and Lucas groaned, flopping back on the floor dramatically, missing the way Y/N’s face twisted into a scowl and Robin’s nose turned up once again. 

  “Sitting here all day watching movies?” Robin asked. 

  “I would rather stuff myself into a wood-chipper.” Y/N commented once again, her eyes never lifting off her page. This prompted Lucas and Mike to shoot back up, smiling widely at Dustin’s defeat. 

  “Hey, isn’t there that band stopping by to preform a little outdoor concert, super low-key and free?” Max finally brought up the idea she had been sitting on the whole time. She knew that Robin and Y/N would have backed her up, but the boys would have shot the idea down immediately. Y/N and Robin slowly lifted their heads, intrigued by Max’s idea. 

  “So? What band would be coming to Hawkins to play a free show? Are they even worth seeing?” Mike lifted his upper lip in a grimace as he got ready to shoot the idea down. 

  “Yes, they are,” Max narrowed her eyes at the boy. “It’s a relatively new rock band, kinda like Def Leppard meets Guns N’ Roses meets AC/DC. They are playing free shows in smaller towns to build a name for themselves, all their earnings come from their merch sales.” 

  “Now that,” Y/N finally closed her book, setting it on the coffee table as she uncrossed her legs. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she clasped her hands together and pointed her pointer fingers at Max, a smirk playing on her dark painted lips. “That sounds awesome.” She unclasped her hands to high-five Max, the red-head beyond happy that her idea was chosen.             

  “It does sound really cool,” Robin nodded, sharing a look with Y/N and Max. “I’m down.” 

  “You know what,” Steve finally spoke up, bobbing his head, a goofy smile on his face as his eyes gazed at Y/N as she leaned back under his arm, looking up at him. “I’m in too. I could use a good concert.” 

  “You’re just agreeing because your girlfriend wants to go!” Mike accused, earning two glares from Y/N and Steve. He shrunk back under Y/N’s hard glare.

  “Come on, guys,” Steve encouraged. “You guys could actually like their music, you might even find a new interest or meet some new people,” He tried to sell the reluctant teen boys. They hummed, actually listening to him. “There really isn’t any harm in going.” They nodded, muttering their lack-luster agreements in choosing the concert. 

  “Forget all that mushy, positive shit,” Y/N waved her hand at Steve’s sappy selling of the concert. “Just go and live outside of your comfort zone, taint your innocent, pure souls. You will thank me later, trust me.” 

  “Are you corrupting my kids?” Steve asked her as the boys all hollered ‘yeahs’ and hopped around the room as if they were tough. Max and Robin rolled their eyes at them, but Y/N looked back up at Steve, a sparkle in her eyes. 

  “Yeah, someone had to undo all the goofiness you instilled in them - make ‘em cooler.” He smiled down at her, pressing his lips against hers softly as the boy’s continued on. The roudiness melted away as they shared a loving kiss. As their lips pulled away reluctantly, parting the sweet kiss. Steve was never more sure that they were living proof of opposites attracting.         

[surveysonfleek]

1609.

MULTIMEDIA What did you think was the worst movie of all time? i dont usually gravitate towards shitty movies. im also coming up wi a blank, sorry! If you could be any celebrity, who would you be and why? rihanna. must be nice Ever buy a bootlegged VHS or DVD? If so, of what? haha sooo many back in the day. id usually get tv series like one tree hillm the oc etc. Would you rather watch movies at home or in the theater?: at home for sure What kind of food do you buy at the theater?: its been over a year since ive been but i usually have dinner before going

What artist do you love to sing along with?: basically all rnb artists.  What artist do you think has no right to be as popular as they are?: im sure theyre all great in their own right. the more important question is, which artists should be more popular than they are rn What’s a song that makes you cry? (come on, there has to be one): dance with. my father - luther vandross What movie makes you laugh so hard your stomach hurts?: white chicks and mean girls Are there any dance/action/fighting scenes from a movie you can perform?: no lol Is there any movie you can quote word for word?: white chicks and mean girls!

LOVE AND DATING. What do you think of kissing on the first date?: yes, it’s fine Have you ever experienced unrequited love?: no, thankfully Have you ever dreamt about your crush/significant other?: many times! Was it a good dream, or a nightmare?: ive had both Do the words “I Love You” scare you?: no Have you ever wanted to ask someone out but didn’t? Why?: nopeeee Have you ever been on a blind date?:  no, idk if id ever agree to one either

THE PAST. What was your favorite childhood toy?: i didnt have one fave but i do miss my cabbage patch doll  Did you play with kids in your neighborhood when you were little?: yes, all the time! How many times have you moved?: three What were your “awkward years”?: early teens Did you have a security blanket/stuffed animal you always slept with?: nah but i used to love smelling my mums hair before i went to sleep haha, weird i know What was your favorite childhood TV show?: sesame street and arthur Movie?: aladdin Did you have lots of new toys or hand-me-downs?: new only because i was an only child for 6 yrs Is there anything you would change about your childhood if you could? not at all, i was a happy child

THE FUTURE. Do you want to live in the same town for the rest of your life?: it looks like i will be, not mad at it either Do you worry about the future a lot?: a little What’s the next big event you’re counting down to?: hmm i have two weddings to attend this month! What kind of technology advances are you expecting?: smarter home tech Do you believe in a date for the end of the world?: nah, i feel like it would happen randomly How do you think it will come about, anyway? similarly to the big bang or a virus that wipes out everyone

YOUR THOUGHTS. Do you believe in all the teachings of your religion?: nope If you could go back in time for 1 week, what date would you return to?: i wouldnt, im all for the future What do you feel is the best source of venting sorrow or anger?: sleep Do you believe in magic?: no. but i still love the whole allure about it Are computers annoying or helpful?: both Does laundry really need to be separated into colors and whites?: yes haha What’s the best place to meet new people?: through mutual friends Can the future be predicted?: to some extent, for sure. like the weather, for instance Why do you fill out these surveys?: boredom and time killing

FAVORITES. Attraction at a zoo/carnival: i love seeing bears for some reason lol Brand of peanut butter:   i dont hate peanut butter, ive just never been a fan Planet: earth Foreign food: sushi or korean bbq Way to torture someone: telling them ‘ i have something to tell u later’ Flavor of muffin: mars bar, pretty specific haha Toothpaste brand: colgate Piece of memorabilia in your room: my corkboard. ive been pinning things onto it for like 13+ years Writing utensil: gel pens Extracurricular activity: netflix lol Person to pick on: no one

[flirting-with-psychology]

Has the person you like ever seen you in your pajamas? Yes

Did the last person you kissed celebrate your last birthday with you? He was celebrating thanksgiving with his parents during my birthday but he called me

What’s the first word of the last text message you received? I

Do you think you’ve changed at all over the past year? I’ve gotten more anxiety and gotten fatter

Is there a song that reminds you of your ex? Do you still listen to that song? I Almost Do, Red, and If This Was A Movie (all by taylor swift). Yes I still listen

Did you tag anyone in your last Facebook status? Not in the post I shared, but in my last original post I tagged my boyfriend

How do you behave when you’re drunk? Usually giggly and overexcited

What is your least favorite type of chocolate? White chocolate

When was the last time you felt disappointed? What was the reason? Disappointed that the gym won’t let me cancel over the phone and might still charge me for february

Is there someone that can make you smile, even when you feel like crying? Not always

Is there a certain person on your mind right now? Tell me about him/her. My boyfriend

You’re getting ready to go to bed, and the last person you kissed shows up, what do you do? Get into bed with him

What was your last thought before you went to bed last night? Being annoyed at my dad’s snoring through the walls

Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? Maybe

Are you okay right now? I haven’t been okay this whole year

What time did you get up today? Like 1:30

When was the last time you saw your mom? The other day

What is the last thing you drank today? Water

Do you dislike/hate anyone? Donald trump and Mitch McConnell

Where is your best friend right now? At home I assume

When will your next kiss be? As soon as we get negative test results

Will you be up before 7 am tomorrow? No

Does anyone completely understand you? No

Who was the last girl you hugged outside of family? I don’t remember, it’s been a long time

Have you held hands with somebody in the past three days? No

What will you be doing in 3 hours? Probably wasting time

How often do you straighten your hair? Never now, I used to when it was short

What are you currently looking forward to? The costume sale that hopefully I will be able to go to

Is tomorrow gonna be a good day? What are you going to do? Lol probably not

Who did you last hang out with? My dad

Did anyone see your last kiss? No

Could things possibly get any better? I fucking hope so

Do you know who you’ll even kiss next? I assume it will be my boyfriend

Do you ever sleep in jeans? No, that sounds really uncomfortable

Name something you dislike about the day you’re having? Stress

Did you get a full 8 hours of sleep last night? No

Are you in love lately? Not sure

How often do you see your ex? Rarely

Who was the last person to text you? My boyfriend

Did you like anyone last summer? Yes, my boyfriend

Do you replay things that have happened in your head? Yeah

Who was the last person you stayed up with till 2am? My boyfriend

Do you want a boyfriend or girlfriend? I enjoy having one

Are you currently in a relationship? Yes

Do you use a full length mirror daily? Most days

Would you be shocked if the person you have feelings for texted you? No

Is there anyone you wish you could fix things with? I would like to reconnect with my friend Shaina

What are you planning on doing after this? Idk

Is there a girl you would do anything for? No

Who IMed you on facebook last? My mom

How old are you? 26

Do you love dogs? Yes

Were you finished childhood and teens when Harry Potter movies came out? No, they started coming out when I was in elementary school

Did you keep all your VHS tapes? Probably

Do you think Jack Nicholson is a good actor? Yeah I think so

Have you ever watched an episode of “The Honeymooners”? No

Have you ever owned a pair of high-top Converse? No

Do you have rain boots with a cute pattern on them? I have cowboy rainboots

Would you rather eat an apple or an orange right now? Apple

Would you rather do a cartwheel on land or a backflip in water? If I could do either of them, a backflip in water would be cool

Have you ever performed on stage in front of people? Yes

Were you kinda scared of the goths in high school? Not scared, just didn’t have anything in common with them

What size is your mattress?(single,twin,double,queen,king) Full size

Do you eat foods from all 4 food groups everyday? Lol no

Do you sleep in PJs? Yes

Do you prefer watching TV or listening to music? Watching TV. Listening for music needs to be accompanied by another activity

Would you rather watch a movie in theatre or at home? Theater is fun, but right now at home

Do you prefer brown or white rice? White

Do you like spaghetti? I love spaghetti

What about lasagna? No, I don’t like red sauce

Do you celebrate Christmas? No

Is your Thanksgiving celebrated in October too? Who does that?

Do you like chocolate bars? Yes

what about ice cream? Mostly, although sometimes the plain flavors are boring

Have you ever been stung by anything? What was it? Wasps a few times

Do you get tired easily? Only in the morning

Or do you always have plenty of energy to spare? No

Have you ever done volunteer work? Where? I volunteered as a teaching assistant What about court-ordered community service? No

Have you ever worn contacts?(even just to try them out) I tried but it made my vision all swimmy

Would you wear contacts on a daily basis? Maybe if I got some that worked

Are your ears pierced? How many times? One on each ear

Do you have GOD-GIVEN(not dyed) natural brown hair too? I have natural brown hair but I don’t believe it’s god-given

Or were you born blonde? No

Have you found a gray hair on your head or body before? I don’t think so. Both of my parents kept their hair color for awhile so hopefully I got that gene

Have you ever had any suspicious moles removed? Yes, on my arm

Have you ever been screened for STDs? Yes

Are all your wisdom teeth pulled? Yes

Did you have your tonsils taken out? No

Did you have your appendix taken out? No

How many kidneys do you have?(have you donated one?) I have both of them

Would you(to save someone)?^^^ I'm not sure. If it was someone I loved and there wasn’t one already on hand, maybe

Have you ever found a bug or slug in your salad? ewww no

Do you like Harry Potter? Yes

What about Twilight? It was ok, I liked it at the time I read it How do you feel about Lord of the rings? I like the movies

Are you going to see ‘The Hobbit’ when it comes out? I did

Do you have a glass that says 'Molson Canadian’ on it? No

Do you have any collector’s glasses or cups or mugs? I have a bunch of shotglasses from places I visit

Would you rather have a white fridge or a black fridge or a stainless steel fridge? Stainless steel

What size shoe do you wear? 7.5-8 womens

Do you have a wide foot or a narrow foot or just average? Kind of dorito-shaped, so some shoe types just don’t fit

Do you bite your nails when you’re stressed? No

Do you have to take an allergy pill daily in order to live normally? No

Are you on the birth control pill? No

Or are you trying to get pregnant? I’m trying not to get pregnant, but I use condoms instead

You’d rather wear black sneakers or sneakers in a bright color or pattern? Probably bright color

Has anyone ever told you they were attracted to you? Yes

Can you swim well in water way above your head? Decently

Are you afraid of thunder & lightening? No

Have you ever experienced an earthquake? No

What about a tornado? No

Are you closer to your dad?(more so than your mom) I’m probably a little closer to my mom

Were you your parents’ first born? Yes

Do you have a child? Is the father still with you? No

Did you trade stickers at recess when you were a kid? No

How old were you when you had your first crush? Do you remember their name? I was like 5 the first time I put a word to it and his name was Aidan, but I probably had sort-of crushes even before that

Can you even remember what the hell they looked like? Blond, bowl-cut at the time. He actually grew up to be really hot so I guess I knew how to pick em

Have you ever operated any type of motorized vehicle before? A car

Are you going to drink alcohol tonight? Maybe

Have you ever heard of the Canadian kids show called “Mr. Dressup”? No

What about the kids show “Fred Penner’s Place”? No

Did you hate Sesame Street when you were little too? A little

Were you born perfectly healthy or with some(or a lot) of health issues? I might have had some minor things

Do you collect DVDs? Not as a collection, but I buy movies I like a lot

Do you download music? Yes

Or do you still go to stores and buy CDs? No, those are like twice as much

Did you skip(jumo-rope) a lot as a kid? No, I was bad at it

Did you ever catch any bugs or insects with your friends as a kid? Only roly polies

Didn’t you just LOVE art class in elementary school?! Yeah

Have you ever played dodgeball? Yes but not well

What about Red Rover? No

Have you ever played “What time is it mr. wolf?”? It sounds familiar but I don’t remember it

Do you hate your weight? Yes

Have you ever struggled with a mental illness? A little

Serious question, peanut butter or nutella? Peanut butter for a sandwich, nutella for eating straight out of the jar

Have you ever stepped on a snail? No

Do you prefer baked potatoes or mashed potatoes? Mashed

Do you prefer ankle socks over regular socks? Ankle socks

Last movie you’ve seen in theaters? I can’t remember

What is your oldest sibling’s middle name? I don’t have one

Have you ever been to Disneyland or Disney World? Both

Would you ever go backpacking across any country? Probably not

Would you prefer to travel around the world by yourself or with a friend? With a friend

Do you like breadsticks? Yes

Do you usually wear shorts around your house all year long? No, but I do wear short sleeves year round

What state were you born in? Colorado

Have you ever had a nose bleed? All the time

How far away do you live from your birthplace? Like 15 minutes

Do you have a weak stomach? No

Do you know anybody who has been diagnosed with cancer? Yes

Have you ever had to take care of an intoxicated person? Yes

Have you ever considered becoming a lawyer? Slightly but not really

Do you *really* like donuts? Yes

Do you think Disney World could ever get old? At some point

If you could, would you hookup with the last person you texted? Yes

What are your favorite things to spend money on? Jewelry and nerd stuff

Will you talk to the person you like on the phone tonight? I am talking to him right now

What do you usually order on a pizza? No sauce, cheese, garlic, pinapple Do you and your boyfriend/girlfriend fight a lot? Not really

Who’s the first person with the letter “m” in your contacts? Mac

Which would you rather have a new puppy or kitten? Kitten

How old will you be on your next birthday? 27 yikes

What color are your underwear? Turquoise

Do you ever feel self-conscious when you eat around other people? If it’s messy

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

So, I learned something recently...

Mary Kate Olsen (the top billed twin; I feel kinda bad for Ashley) is married to a man 17 years her senior, who also happens to be the half brother to the former President of France.

That sounds like the plot to one of their movies! Like, there’s a foreign exchange student at their school and they discover that he’s secretly foreign royalty.  I can picture the whole thing in my head, I’ve thought about this a lot:

It has a late 90s/early 2000s aesthetic; kinda grungey and “totally radical, dude!”

Twins Mary Jane and Kelsey are just your average upper middle class teenagers living in multi-million dollar beachfront property with their widower dad, a security guard with dreams of being a detective.  His firm just got a big contract to provide security for the visiting diplomats of the vaguely Eastern European kingdom of Slovotia (it’s generically foreign; funny accents, weird customs, offensive Slavic stereotypes, the works. The writers based it on Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Austria-Hungary, Ruritania, Backwardistan, etc)

At school, the girls are introduced to hunky Slovotian exchange student Nico.  He’s, like, SO cool, but he doesn’t flaunt it.  He’s quiet, tries not to make waves, and sneaks away at lunch to be by himself; the girls follow him and find him talking to a a burly bodyguard.  Turns out, he’s the Crown Prince of Slovotia!  His uncle, Count Bartok (who is clearly the antagonist but SHHH don’t tell anyone, we don’t know that yet) is visiting America as part of the Slovotian delegation; his brother, the King, wants to normalize relations with the west, but the Count doesn’t really like America.

Nico and his bodyguard Dolf (a hulking man of few words) ask the girls not to reveal his secret; he just wants to live a normal life, and be a normal teenager.  The girls decide to show him around town and introduce him to hip American concepts like the mall and beaches and fast food.

They buy a hot dog from a street vendor, and Nico looks appalled.  “My uncle, he say Americans, they are dogs, but I did not know they were to be eating them, yes?”

“They’re not really made out of dog, Nico!  Try it, you’ll like it.”

He takes one bite, and is enraptured.  “This is best thing I have ever to be eating!”  He walks over to the vendor and offers to buy him out.  “You there, meat monger. This dog that is hot, it is food fit for king!  I buy your shop, I pay ten million Slovotian Kronle, good price yes?”

“Sure thing, whatever you say boss!  Good price!  Great price!  My ticket’s finally come it, it’s easy street from here on out!”

They show him around “the city.”  It’s never specified which city that is though; they live on a beach and go surfing, so it might be LA, but there are hotdog vendors and people with Brooklyn accents, so it could just as well be New York.  Maybe there’s a shot in the middle of the film where the bad guys are looking at a satellite map of the USA, and the camera zooms into the center of the country, or there’s a blinking red dot somewhere on a random coast.  The point is that there is no definitive location; it’s just meant to represent whatever city is closest to the viewer’s hometown (the writers didn’t put that much effort into it because this is a no budget direct-to-VHS Mary Kate and Ashley movie.  What did you expect?)

Dolf follows them everywhere they go, and Nico complains that he wants to have some privacy.  “You do not be seeing other kids with bodyguards, yes?”  Wacky hijinks ensue as the trio try to evade him; there’s definitely a chase scene set to a punk rock song like SR-17′s ‘Right Now’ or something by Bowling For Soup.  They sit on a park bench reading newspapers as Dolf runs by, then hightail it in the opposite direction.  They casually steal hats and sunglasses from passersby to blend into the crowd.  They walk in line behind a couple buys carrying a sofa.  The chase ends with them hopping into a taxi and laughing with one another as we see Dolf give chase for a second before giving up in frustration.

Nico confides in the girls that life as a prince is not easy.  His father, King Vladimyr XVI, is always telling him how big a responsibility he has, how important he is to Slovotia’s future.  “My father, he tell me, Nico, you will one day be King, so you must to be acting like one, yes?”  It’s so hard to be royal, he can never just be himself, he has to act a certain way to make his parents happy.  The girls tell him that they know exactly what he means; high school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either.  They have homework and chores, and they too have to act a certain way or the cool kids will think they’re a couple of losers with a capital L (Nico doesn’t understand what the word cool means, “what does temperature have to be doing with this?”)

Suddenly, the trio is attacked by some dude in a track suit and gold chains with a jersey accent; he tries to kidnap Nico, and just when all hope seems lost Dolf appears from nowhere and lifts the would-be abductor up by the collar.

They interrogate him; Dolf holds him by the ankles from a second story window.  “I ain’t sayins nothin, youse will never get a word outta me.”

Dolf says that if he doesn’t start talking he will disappear.  “Maybe you wake up in gulag, yes?”

He sings like a canary.  He was hired by Count Bartok to kidnap Nico.  Bartok hates America and thinks his older brother Vladimyr is foolish for trying to normalize relations with them.  He hoped that by having Nico kidnapped, he could blame the American government and end the diplomatic mission early.  If anything were to happen to the boy, Bartok would become next in line to be king!  He’s going to blame the girls’ father for Nico’s disappearance because he was supposed to be head of security.

“That’s everything I know. Hey, I’m sorry, okays?  I just needed the money, ya know? I ain’t a bad guy, I’m just in a bad sitchy-ation.”  The girls tell Dolf that he can let the kidnapper go, but he takes this literally and drops him out of the window (onto a bush! He’s fine)

They have to race to city hall to meet the Slovotian delegation and stop Bartok from doing anything drastic.  Mary Kate plays the edgy tomboy, so she teaches Nico and Dolf how to skateboard so they can get across town super fast.  This sequence is filmed with a fish eye lens so it looks “totally bodacious.” As the group barrels down the crowded sidewalk, pedestrians leap out of their way.

They make it just in time to be locked out of the ceremony.  Bartok is giving a big speech condemning the Americans for kidnapping his poor nephew, and the girls have to watch helplessly as their dad is taken away in handcuffs.  Dolf uses his espionage training to break into city hall and get the trio into the sound booth undetected.

“Hey Dolf, where’d you learn to do all this stuff?”

“I have many skills” (he is implied to be ex-KGB and it’s played for laughs)

The girls interrupt Bartok’s speech with video they took of the kidnapper revealing his entire plan.  Bartok denies it, but the girls’ dad pulls some as-yet-unseen sleuthing skills out of his ass to prove that Bartok is lying, finally living his dream of being a detective.  Nico bursts into the room and orders the Slovotian guards to arrest his uncle, but Bartok pulls a pistol and holds one of the twins hostage.  Nico uses some of the American skills he learned to free her (he kicks his skateboard towards Bartok’s feet, and he slips on it)

Bartok is taken away, screaming that he would have gotten away with it were it not for those meddling twins, and the girls break the fourth wall by making a Scooby-Doo joke to the camera.  Nico delivers a heartfelt speech to the gathered crowd at city hall about how much he has come to love America and how he’s proud to be representing Slovotia and normalizing relations with the west.  He wants to open malls and hot dog stands and skateboard parks in Slovotia, and he gets a standing ovation as the mayor awards him the key to the city.

The girls are so proud of their dad, and he is just as proud of them.  Just then, King Vladimyr and Queen Anastasia themselves make a live appearance, apparently having flown all the way from Slovotia (it’s never explained how they got there so fast).  They thank the girls for helping their son, and award their father their kingdom’s highest honor. They even offer him a job as Dolf’s second in command, but he declines, saying he’d rather remain at his humble career and raise his family in the states.

The girls encourage Nico to tell his father how he feels.  He knows he will be king someday, but that is very far off, and he would like some time to just be a kid instead of a prince all the time.  The King decrees that Nico may stay in the United States and have a normal high school experience, “you are to be having twelve bodyguards instead of twenty now, good compromise, yes?”  The girls roll their eyes and laugh; Nico’s dad still has a lot to learn!

Nico tells the girls that they are “very cold” (he meant “cool,” but it’s the thought that counts)  He and Mary Kate kiss, and Ashley jokingly asks if he has a brother.  As it turns out, there’s a nerdy kid at school who is played by the same actor as Nico who’s had a crush on her for years, so she gets with him instead (once he takes off his glasses)

Freeze frame

THE END

Roll credits

80 minute run time

Return the tape to Blockbuster and never watch it again

[mementomcriis]

´   ･   .   ✶   ⧼   maya   hawke,   demiwoman,   she   &   her   &   they   &   them   /   girl   with   one   eye   by   florence   and   the   machine   +   the   soft,   white   noise   crackle   of   an   ancient   vhs   tape,   aging   newspaper   clippings   and   yellowed   family   photographs   pinned   to   a   corkboard   and   connected   with   a   distinct   red   string,   and   the   cloying,   all   consuming   smell   of   lavender   and   sage   ⧽   ━━   don’t   look   now,   but   that’s   SIDNEY   AMELIA   KNOX-KHAN.   the   twenty   two   year   old   HUMAN   has   been   here   in   seattle   for   their   whole   life,   and   is   a   FILM   STUDENT   &   VIDEO   STORE   CLERK.   they’ve   always   been   IRREPRESIBLE   &   IRON   WILLED,   but   i   guess   this   town   just   brings   out   the   worst   in   people   ;   apparently,   they’ve   been   way   more   CONTRARIAN   &   VOCIFEROUS   than   usual.   it   wouldn’t   surprise   me   if   they   knew   what   was   going   on.   you   can   check   out   their   stat   page   HERE.

       i   wish   that   i   could   say   that   i   am   a   LIGHT   that   never   goes   out   /                           BUT   I   FLICKER   FROM   time   TO   time.

section one of three : bullet point history trigger warnings for talk of murder

sidney was born here in seattle, washington. her mother was BEATRICE KHAN, a fairly well known name in the publishing world ( though she never released any of her own countless numbers of novels ), absolutely unrelenting when it came to cutting her clients a good deal. her father was julian knox, a one time american football player who PEAKED in college and turned to writing romance novels after a career ending injury forced him to confront that he wasn’t much qualified for anything else. the family unit that they created was full of love and ever nurturing - perfect, from the inside to the out.

they were the quintessential all american family, where it COUNTED. parents that were sickeningly in love. two kids, with the perfect age difference between them. they lived in a house in the suburbs with a picket fence ( that was actually stained brown, not white ) and a perfect lawn, where the cat they had in place of a dog due to julian’s allergies would lounge, day after day. even the neighbours figured they were perfect ; the kind of thing with with all smiles, to their faces, and muttered darkly in the privacy of their own suburban homes. beatrice would go to work from eight to five, every day. julian would stay home. he got the kids their breakfast, he got them on a bus. he would go inside and write and break up the day with gardening or do it yourself projects, attending community meetings, fulfilling his pta role - and then his kids would come home, and dinner would be on the table in time for his wife’s return. perfect. clockwork. 

sidney loved it, personally. she had no desire to act out. no need to break the mold, so to speak. she never felt as if she were stifled, or that her parents were pushing their own ambitions onto her. if anything, the thing that was most shocking about her early life was that she actually ENJOYED it. school could be challenging, in it’s own way - she was diagnosed with dyslexia young, but it took a few more years for them to pinpoint her adhd - but she got all the help that she could have dreamt of needing. she was allowed, if not encouraged, to try every whim that came to mind. they were, after all, within a privileged position enough to ALLOW it. piano lessons for two years, the violin for five. she attempted gymnastics and managed to break her wrist just two lessons in - never bothered to try another more physical activity, after that, but she had a healthy appreciation for watching sports, just like dad. her home life was excellent. her school life was just fine. she was a BRIGHT and curious soul, and she had aspirations for the kind of college that should she have attended, her mother could have lived VICARIOUSLY through her. she was extremely lucky to like her parents, and to appreciate the life that they had given her for all that it was.

she shouldn’t have to look back on these earlier years with sadness, and yet, life simply doesn’t work the way that it SHOULD. the week before the murders, she never could have presumed what was going to happen, though she was plagued by nightmares - something that she attributed to the horror movie marathon she had just completed or the milk drank before bed, and not to anything legitimate. she dreamt of hooded figures and serrated knives and a screaming that never stopped ringing in her ears, even after she awoke in a cold sweat and struggled to fall back asleep. she would struggle from the tangle of bedsheets with the urge to wash her hands, compulsively ; as if she were trying to get non-existent blood out from beneath her fingernails. she was fifteen years old, and she googled things like ‘can my period give me nightmares?’ and ‘is the milk before bed thing legit’, but she had NO REASON to fear the images that slipped away, as night turned into day. 

it seems cruel, in it’s own way, that the night which changed the course of sidney’s life for good is one she spent completely unaware. she was staying at her girlfriends house - a sleepover planned for almost a MONTH - and the next morning, when the police came to pick her up, she had been in the midst of eating breakfast with the affectionately named ‘in laws’ and trying to swallow back a persistent feeling of unease. she was lucky that she was waiting for a lift back to her house - she was luckier, still, that a nosy neighbour had noticed her mother’s car hadn’t left for work, yet, and popped around to check in on them. if they hadn’t, and if she had gotten the early morning bus as planned, then sidney would have had to live with image of her bloodied parents until the day she DIED, too.

her mom and dad were gone. this was the gut punch, number one. number two was that her sibling - her should have been legal guardian - was under arrest. the MURDER weapon ( a phrase she had only ever heard on tv, and could never have guessed would be said in regards to her life ) had been found wrapped in one of their jackets and thrown in a dumpster outside. they had been picked up a block away, and in interrogation, their alibi didn’t stand up. it was a rather cut & dry case, and suddenly, everyone in the neighbourhood - what felt like the whole world, back then - was doing their level best to pick sidney’s picture perfect life apart. people who had once only ever had good things to say now talked about late night arguments between mom and dad. said that they had never trusted the look of her sibling, not even when they were a kid. said there was something not right about them - and that they couldn’t be sure sidney wasn’t the same. the circumstantial evidence piled against the only member of family that sid had left, and there was nothing that could be done. she was put into the system a mere week after the murders, and everything moved quickly on. she talked to a handful of reporters, but for the most part, people out in the world didn’t care for the story. it wasn’t anything too SPECIAL, she supposed. 

too many stories talk of foster care becoming a sort of hell for the children stuck in it. for sidney, however, her foster home was her only salvation from the world outside her door. the one thing that she could rely on, even as she went through the most momentous changes. her first week back at school, the staring was almost painful. the whispers were worse. sidney requested she be moved, and in the process, she allowed herself be cut off from her old life - the friends she had, the partner she had loved. she started somewhere new, and she was... different, now. stranger. sidney’s way of dealing with all that had happened was to cling to things that had once only been a special interest - UNSOLVED crimes, sensationalist stories, horror movies and the supernatural. she spent a lot of time in her room, and she spent even more indulging in these new interests. the people at her new school figured that she was weird, and that assumption only got worse when they discovered what had happened to her parents. whispers of her being like her MURDEROUS sibling were somehow worse than anything else that had ever been said, but she took it, for the most part, on the chin. she couldn’t explain her sudden draw to the macabre, even less than she could explain why everything in her life had fallen apart. frankly.... it didn’t matter. she simply was.

sidney’s foster family supported her, right up until she turned eighteen, and even after. she sacrificed the dream of an ivy league school for something more achievable, beginning to attend a seattle local college after graduation and majoring in film, finding among those students - OLDER and more mature, of course, than high school kids - something she had started to forget was possible. her job as a film store clerk didn’t exactly help her rake in the cash, but once she started selling movie reviews to online publications, sidney was able to save up some money and buy professional equipment - beginning her podcast in late 2018. she doesn’t tend to talk about what happened. she doesn’t tend to think about her SIBLING. she’s got a life, now, and it’s not exactly the one she ever expected to be living - but it is her own, and that’s really all that she can hope for. 

section two of three : headcanons

sidney dealt with her grief by… hyper fixating on a special interest she had always sort of had, and becoming quite the little movie buff. horror movies, more than anything, but people didn’t react very well when she went off on a tangent over wes craven’s talent, so she broadened her horizons a little. she enjoys film, maybe moreso than she should. all that led her to other special interests, and now she’s dabbled in just about everything that a woman can. 

her podcast deals, of course, with unsolved mysteries. this usually takes the form of unsolved CRIMES, but... she believes in ghosts and aliens, and she throws an episode in every now and then that deals with them. she’s very open about this side gig, solely because she hopes that someday, it’ll be what she does for a living - and because there’s no point in attempting to hide something that’s such a huge part of her life, even if people do tend to... not enjoy her being so into these things, as the daughter of two murder victims.

her older sibling was acquitted of the crime - eventually. sidney still doesn’t enjoy thinking about them or it, per say, but when the news reached her, she did begin to... hyper fixate, once again, and begin to obsess over what the TRUTH was. she has cork theory board dedicated solely to her parents - and more recently has added another one, dedicated to what’s happening in seattle. she’s not gifted, or in the know, but she’s certainly not an idiot.

has a pet rat named church ( which is a fairly ironic reference to the cat in pet sematary ), and he’s NOT her first. she’s owned several since she was put into care, and they’ve always been something of an emotional support for her. 

while i align sidney more with ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘true crime’ than i do ghosts and ghouls, i will admit that i tend to push a lot of spooky cliche’s onto her, because i like having a character who’s very IN TOUCH and into that season, in particular. promise i’m trying to control the impulses.

always has on at least five necklaces and eight rings, and never has any less than ten bracelets. her style would be hard to define, but the amount of cheap jewelry is FAIRLY indicative. 

section three of three : wanted connections

sidney knox-khan, our maya hawke is looking for their older sibling who resembles finn cole, tiera skovbye, dacre montgomery / up to player and should be 23+. applicants do not have to contact rachel to talk over details before applying.   (   pls allow me preface with the fact that i wld be happy for her sibling to be half / adopted / fostered either, and they don’t necessarily have to be named after a horror character like sid was - though the latter is a fun lil thing abt the family, so i would love if u went that route too ! sid and her sib have had. a rough life. and by that i mean, they had an entirely perfect life up until the sib was aged 18 - when they were arrested for the murder of their well to do parents. it’s all explained more clearly within sid’s intro, and basically… the evidence was circumstantial and flimsy. it probably would have made sense they spend SOME time behind bars, but it’s also possible they didn’t -  though sid was put into care for the remainder of her teens, so may not know they were ever released ! the two very distinct routes this could go in are …. sid being suspicious of them and feeling as if they must of done it, because who else could have, or alternatively - sid being open to the idea of them not, because nothing about the case ever sat right w her. we could talk more abt it, but i feel like it’s one of those connects i just. wld love to have !  )

sidney knox-khan, our maya hawke is looking for their foster family ( parents, siblings, etc ) who resemble ariela barer, iman meskini, madchen amick, santiago segura, herman tommeraas, bradley cooper / up to player and should be any age. applicants do not have to contact rachel to talk over details before applying.   (   sid never took their name, so first up - that’s a detail open to applicants ! basically. there’s a mother, a father, and their merry band of foster kids - probably… four… five? a nice amount. none of them have to be like one another. none of them have to fit a specific role. this is the family that took sidney in after her parents were murdered, and the fact of the matter is - there are a LOT of stories in which foster care became a hell for the protagonist, but that’s not sid’s story. she was ostracized in school. she had lost her only blood relations. her foster home became a safe haven, and the people within it became as close as could be to her. we stan one supportive household who still hold her whole heart, to this day.   )

sidney knox-khan, our maya hawke is looking for their close friends ( max. four ) who resemble virginia gardner, justice smith, sydney park / up to player and should be 21+. applicants do not have to contact rachel to talk over details before applying.   (   sid didn’t have ANY friends until she got to college, due completely to how #weird people began to find her. she eventually found her squad, but they’re basically. like every good horror movie group. her equivalent would be rany meeks from scream 1996, or noah foster from scream tv. she fits their archetype, but i wouldn’t say that the group MUST comprise of likeminded people. in fact, it’s more fun if they don’t. they’re not a group of jocks or cheerleaders or popular kids, but they are a sort of breakfast club. a merry band of b-listers who grouped together and have remained together for a real long time.   )

sidney knox-khan, our maya hawke is looking for their ex poly ship who resemble up to player and should be 21+. applicants do not have to contact rachel to talk over details before applying.   (   sidney made a bunch of… not entirely excellent choices, in the yrs following her parents deaths. that isn’t to say she acted out, or that she did anything that was too out of character for her. she really didn’t - but she did become a much more WEIRD version of who she had always been, and people pushed her away because of it. when others came along that seemed to be able tolerate who she had become, she clung to them - to almost extreme degrees. the relationship was a whirlwind if ever there was one, and perhaps wasn’t ‘true love’. maybe not even close. but they did seem to work right up until when they didn’t - and the end was quite messy, by all standards. sid did a good job of ending relationships on friendly terms, but this didn’t - all details aside from these are open for discussion !   )

[yutaya]

what was your first Conan fic?

Oh boy, storytime!

So there is a short answer and a LONG answer to this question. 

The Short Answer:

You didn’t ask this for the whole story, you asked because of what I mentioned in my tags: that the first DCMK fic I ever read had a scene where Conan lays out exactly how easy it would have been, after Kaito’s slip up referencing the great magician Kuroba Toichi while in disguise at the lodge on that one case, to just... look up Kuroba Toichi. With the filters from other things Conan had extrapolated, such as likely age range, combined with the kind of closeness to Toichi indicated by Kid’s bringing him up, it would have taken maybe half a day to narrow down the likely identity of the new Kaitou Kid. Conan knew that was all he had to do. And then... he didn’t. He purposefully never looked there, let it remain a mystery.

UNFORTUNATELY, I remembered wrong. My first DCMK fic, while the gateway to a whole new world for me, is not actually the fic that has this scene. :/

There was a little community of DCMK fics I was reading back in the livejournal days (ManyCasesOneTruth LJ community, whatup!!!) and it was one of those that had that scene, but I’m not sure which one. :( If someone reads this monster and happens to know, please tell me so I can reread it. Haha.

Anyway my first Conan fic was Windfall by Ysabet.

The Long Answer: (AKA how Detective Conan changed my life)

The year was 2004. I had finally started watching the Case Closed dub on Adult Swim - videotaping it because I couldn’t stay up to watch it at 1AM - after half a year of being too afraid because the commercials involved dead bodies and it looked scary.

That summer, my family was on vacation, and there was no way for me to watch the episodes that would be piling up on the VHS back at home. I had briefly ventured onto the ff.net page before, but found so many summaries centered around unfamiliar names that I assumed I had to watch more and meet all these fan favorite characters before I’d be able to make heads or tails of any of it. But - I was at ends, and so I decided to give it another shot. A google search brought me to a site called something like The Red Thread, and a list with winners of some fanfiction awards. Best overall for... whatever year it was - 2003? - was Windfall by Ysabet.

Now, the funny thing about Windfall is: not only does it use all the Japanese names that so confused me back then, not only does it center completely around characters I had not met yet and assume knowledge of events and backstory that I didn’t have - it’s also actually the fourth fic in a series. Not that I was aware of that. Character that isn’t in the canon? I assumed it was yet another canon character that I just hadn’t met yet. Everyone else was. Probably the only name I recognized in that fic was “Conan” and he ended up playing such a small part (though I extrapolated that “Ayumi” was “Amy” pretty easily). But it was so good, and I devoured it anyway.

Only 7 chapters of Windfall were posted on TheRedThread. I finished this fic about Kaito, who I didn’t know, and Aoko, who I didn’t know, and Ayumi, who I had seen trapped in a car trunk with a “severed head” in one CC episode but who I had not at all seen grow a friendship with a thief sheltering on her balcony, and I wanted more.

When I got home, I found the wait for Case Closed episodes to air more agonizing than ever. I took to google again, seeking out more information, and somehow, someway, stumbled through my first ever torrent download. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I didn’t know episodes of television could be available online. I couldn’t believe it when I saw a link titled “episodes 1-10″ and just blindly followed whatever instructions I could to see what it was. Downloading Bittorrent, downloading VLC... Imagine my surprise when I finally opened up the show I was looking for but.. in another language. With subtitles!

It all took off from there. I learned all about how most of the cartoons I liked were actually anime from Japan and that when they were dubbed in English the companies often also changed characters’ names and censored stuff and altered large swathes of dialogue to make things more palatable to American audiences. I learned about manga that I could buy in Waldenbooks and that most of them were flipped but some of them weren’t because the original artwork was meant to be read right to left. I learned about, basically, everything that I had been missing out on from the stories I liked, that had been diluted out of the original versions for my consumption.

I started following a Detective Conan fansubber and downloading their latest episodes as soon as they came out, and learned all about “Shinichi” and “Ran”.

I discovered that Windfall was actually part of an entire Wind series, and had a lot more than 7 chapters besides. Fanfiction was my entire introduction to Kaitou Kid and I used to draw fanart based entirely on descriptions in fic and then was super excited when the preview for the next Detective Conan episode  (76!) included Kaito! Kaito Kuroba, the main character in Windfall, my introduction to this entire world! (And my mental image of him from fanfic was a fair ways off - it was elating to see the actual character. I think I immediately drew like 8 different pictures based on that preview, since I had a reference.)

As I mentioned earlier, there was a very small community of Conan fics I was reading back then - probably about 5 or 6 core authors on a Conan fanworks livejournal community (Many Cases One Truth!) who wrote a number of fics that I recall fondly. There was the psychic detective Heiji series by KosagiNoLegion - I LOVED that one. The Shinichi and Kaito find out they’re actually identical cousins fic (Relative Truth, by Becky Tailweaver).  Ysabet‘s entire Wind series, obviously. The most notable BNF was probably Icka M. Chif, who I always remember was once described to “own 3/4 of the Magic Kaito fandom in fic.” To this day I will idly doodle fanart for Billie Jukes’ The Impossible Murder. I could go on for ages about all the now quite old DCMK fic from back in the livejournal days, but... that would take a lot of writing. Haha.

Anyway, the Detective Conan fandom and its explanations about dub names, etc. is the reason I found out about anime and manga and dubbing and censorship and rewrites and how very different the Digimon movies are from The Digimon Movie, and all about 4chan One Piece vs actual One Piece, and is the reason I now always try to watch foreign films in their original languages with subtitles and basically altered the trajectory of my entire life at 13 years old.

(Well, probably not. Probably I would have discovered all of these things anyway, and sooner rather than later. But I didn’t, and Detective Conan will always get the credit for my life.)

[fedorasaurus]

Domestic Ship Headcanons

Question source: http://gabetastic.tumblr.com/post/45754507464/collating-all-the-domestic-ship-memes-together

I’m doing this for SodomRolento first, but feel free to ask me about any other ships to answer these for! Obviously these are my own personal headcanons and tend to stray toward silliness, so take my answers with a grain (or box) of salt.

Who’s more dominant: Rolento, 1000000%. I'm fairly certain that “dominance” is one of his canon character traits, although I also like to imagine that he softens on that when he's really comfortable with someone he trusts, indulging in submissiveness.

Who’s the cuddler: Sodom. He just looks like he gives great hugs.

Who’s the big spoon/little spoon: I imagine that it varies. Rol probably likes the security of being the small spoon, but on the other hand, there's also something really sweet about the physically smaller one being the big spoon.

What’s their favorite non-sexual activity: Watching anime. Rol wasn't into it at first, but Sodom eventually got him hooked on some action-packed magical girl shows (Rol admires that the protags are so beautiful and strong).

Who uses all the hot water: Rolento sometimes... zones out while he's in the shower. Sodom doesn't mind being stuck with the cold water, though; he thinks it helps him hone his focus and warrior spirit. Of course, this all assumes that they aren't showering together...


Most trivial thing they fight over: "Why do you wear your armor in bed?" "Why do you wear your GRENADES in bed?!"


Who does most of the cleaning: Rolento is pretty filthy and rugged as a person, but he's also really into keeping things organized and efficient. Also, clutter stresses him out. He can't believe Sodom lives like this.


What has a season pass on their dvr/Who controls the netflix queue: Sodom has a Crunchyroll account for sure. But also any sort of service on which he can watch his favorite old samurai movies, assuming he doesn't already have them on VHS or DVD/Bluray.


Who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working: Both of them seem like the type to try to fix things themselves, but if it came down to it, Rolento would make the (hopefully not too threatening) phone call.

Who leaves their stuff around: Sodom. In fact, this is pretty much canon. Have you SEEN his stage?


Who remembers to buy the milk: Rolento. He takes this mission very seriously.


Who remembers anniversaries: They're both pretty good about this, especially with something like "the anniversary of when we blew up the Shadaloo base and drove off into the sunrise together."


Who cooks normally: Sodom, 100%. His cooking is probably the only Japanese thing he's good at. Otherwise Rolento is out there hunting squirrels and eating uncooked instant ramen.


How often do they fight: All the time, if we're talking about combat training. As far as arguments, I don't know, all of the Madgears are odd birds, so I imagine that they're mostly used to each others' quirks at this point. Maybe the occasional outburst after a bad day, but nothing that can't be resolved!


What do they do when they’re away from each other: If Rol is out of town on a mission or something, Sodom texts him every day with lots of haikus and emojis to convey how much he misses him. Rol isn't really big on mobile communication, but he might have one of his soldiers discreetly check in to make sure that things are okay at home and Sodom's business.


Nicknames for each other: Sodom calls Rolento "Rol-chan" or "Show Gun." Rolento pretty much just uses "Blood Brother," but if he's feeling extra romantic, he might tell Sodom that he's his "handsome and competent samurai man."


Who is more likely to pay for dinner: Probably Sodom, being the one with a fierce sense of honor and a legitimate source of income.


Who steals the covers at night: Sodom. Rolento can tolerate a lot of discomfort, so he doesn't really mind, and of course this is always a good excuse to initiate spooning.


What would they get each other for gifts: Rolento gets Sodom authentic Japanese swords or other equipment, which may or may not have been stolen from a museum. Sodom gets Rolento really cute cell phone charms, which he pins to his uniform like it's a goddamn medal.

Who kissed who first: Rolento, and he was nervous as hell. It was one of the few times that Sodom has seen him flustered.


Who made the first move: Rolento, though he ended up having to make a lot more moves after that because Sodom was so oblivious.


Who remembers things: Rolento remembers a lot of things that he would have preferred not to, but I guess in the context of a relationship, Rol is pretty good at keeping up on things as long as they stick to a solid plan/routine. Sodom is more good when it comes to improvising.


Who started the relationship: Rolento initiated the friendship way back when Sodom first joined Madgear and Rolento thought that his whole "urban samurai" thing was just a street fighting persona. By the time he realized that that was actually literally Sodom's THING, they were already too smitten with each other to back out.


Who cusses more: ROLENTO FUCKIN' SCHUGERG. Although, Sodom can be heard screaming in broken Japanese obscenities whenever someone messes with his truck.


What would they do if the other one was hurt: If it's during a fight or something, Rolento would tell Sodom to tough it out, but then immediately take down the person who hurt him with sort of an overkill vengeance. If Rol was hurt or got into a dangerous situation over his head, Sodom would shield him with his body and try to intimidate the enemy away using his size and spectacular fighting moves. Rolento has the most first-aid skills of the two of them, but if it's a situation of emotional pain, Sodom is the most patient and comforting one. Rolento doesn't cry in front of anyone else.

Who is the dirty talker: ROLENTOOOOOOOOO

A head canon: Being that it's Halloween at the time of writing this, here's a domestic Halloween headcanon: All the neighborhood kids know that Sodom & Rolento's house is like... the best, because those guys give out fancy Japanese sweets, and sometimes Sodom gets really hype over the kids' cosplays. Rolento has seen enough real-life horrors that he can't get very festive for spooky Halloween fun, but he respects that at least the youths are going door-to-door for candy rather than getting into trouble... for the most part. He does, however, attend Halloween parties with his Madgear buddies every year. Sodom helped him make his vampire alt costume, though the exploding skulls, he did himself.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #180

“why don’t presidents fight the war, why do they always send the poor?”

Do you study anything? If so what? Not currently.. Listening to music? What’s the opening and last lyric of the song? "From her throne of skulls rules our queen of endless might / and lead us the the kingdom of chaos where the dark hearts forever dwell" ("Dark Mother Divine" by Dissection). Are you a fan of sci-fi? Neutral. What’s your favorite musical? Musicals make me cringe. Have you ever taken an underwater picture? No. What was your favorite color when you was little? Has it changed? Red, and then pink when I learned it was its own color. It's still pink. Are you a fan of cheesecake? Omfg no Ever been on a ride and hated every second? I don't believe so. When was the last time you jumped? And why? biiiiih I have no idea. What color is the floor in your bedroom? Tan. Who’s the last person that slept over at your house? Sara. What color is the hair on your arms? Very light brown. Favorite color eyeshadow? Black is the only way to go. Do you have any friends that you’ve known for 10 years or more? Yeah. Who was the last person that cried in front of you? Did you do/say anything to comfort them? My niece or nephew, because we were leaving, and yes. Who was the last person you cried in front of? Did you feel embarrassed about it? Mom, probs. No. What was the last compliment you received from someone of the opposite sex? My psychiatrist said I was doing well with improvement or something. Does the person you love/like have any pets? Yes. Are you satisfied with the way your life is right now? No, things need to begin changing. Do you wear socks to bed? Who the fuck does that. Do you actually love your parents? Yeah. Do you like being in a relationship? Yeah. Do you prefer the tanning bed or the sun? I don't tan. Are you taller than your mum? I think she's like, a half inch taller than me? What’s something you want to purchase next time you’re at the mall? If it has a Hot Topic, some band or graphic t-shirt. Do you prefer regular or diet soft drinks? Regular, as the artificial sweetener in diet inevitably gives me a headache. Tastes awful, anyway. How long do you need to get to know someone, before you’d think about having a relationship with them? I think this depends on how quickly and deeply you click. Would you ever consider going to meet up with someone you started talking to online? Already have, would meet more. Have you ever wanted to be on American Idol? When was this? No. Do you have any friends you’d trust completely with your life? Sara. Are you failing any classes you’re taking in school? N/A Name one song lyric from your favorite song of all time? "In school, I would just bite my tongue, and now your words, they strike me down. The flags are false and they contradict, they point and click which wounds to lick." Do you know anyone who owns a pet chinchilla? Are they fun? No. Do your parents trust you alone with members of the opposite sex? Yeah. What is the most visited website you have listed right now? I'm sure it's YouTube. Do you enjoy singing? Why or why don't you like it? Sometimes, but I suck at it. Have you ever been in a talent show? What was your talent? No. Do you have a best friend who is of the opposite sex? No. What’s one song you’re definitely getting sick of at the moment? I don't listen to such songs once they get old. Do you know the full anatomy of the human body? Why or why not? No, because I've never specialized in studying it in its entirety. Have you ever cheated on a significant other before? No. Does your boyfriend or girlfriend have a pretty smile? ACTUAL SUNSHINE What is your favorite past-time or hobby? Why is this your favorite? Gaming, 'cuz it's the best escape from reality imo. Are you committing a sin at the moment? Which one? Sloth. Always. What do you consider being the worst curse word? I don't believe in "curse" words. Do you like kissing lightly better than just making out? I mean I'm pretty sure anyone would reply with "it depends on the mood." On average, how many songs do you listen to in a day? No clue. Sometimes many, sometimes none. Do you ever buy your pet(s) birthday or Christmas presents? Yes. Do you still own any VHS tapes? Do you ever watch them? Mom probably has old home videos. Otherwise, no. One thing you promised yourself you’d never do and then did? Not trying at all to be dramatic, but I seriously did promise myself I'd never risk loving someone again after Jason. Have you ever had to call 911? No. Have you ever rolled off your bed in your sleep? No. Do you get along with your significant other’s friends? I only know Tiffany, and she's great. Do you enjoy board games? No. What is the most expensive gift you have ever given someone? A promise ring. Describe your socks. I'm not wearing socks. I hate them. Do you believe in yourself? Sometimes. Do you feel bad when you kill bugs? Usually no... sadly. I should. If it was like a butterfly and insects of that sort, I'd feel awful. What is your favorite planet? Saturrrrrn. Do you have any pets that you had since you were born? No. Do you own anything that you had when you were a baby? Yes. Are you one of those people who are always cold? No, I'm like, permanently hot... Do you enjoy Mario games? Not especially. Things like Mario Kart though are fun to play with friends. Describe your signature: Legible but written waaay too slowly. What are some of your favorite card/board games? Battleship, Scattergories, Clue, Magic: The Gathering, uhhh... Do you own a gaming console? Which one? PS2, Wii, broken PS3 that I wanna get repaired, GameBoy, Nintendo DS Lite. What is the name of the last bar you went to? Never been to one. Do you follow any sports teams? No. How old were you when you attended your first concert and what was it? Ummm 17-ish? Alice Cooper. Which one of these words describe you the best: stubborn, impatient, hot-tempered, lazy, arrogant? Lazy. How about these: compassionate, forgiving, altruistic, honest, open-minded? Compassionate. If you had to choose one activity to do for 10 minutes, would you rather jump rope, hula hoop or hopscotch? My knees are baaaad, so all I really could survive is hula-hoop. What's the last TV show you watched, and do you relate to any of the characters? Ash had Naked and Afraid on at her house, but I related to neither contestant very much. If you had to compare yourself to one character from Friends, who would you say you're most like? Never really watched it. What is one movie you saw only once because you hated it so much? None solely for the reason of not liking it. Would you have sex with the last person you text messaged? THAT WOULD BE MY MOTHER UM LEMME THINK NO. How many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust? None. Nightmares ruined my dad to a degree I don't think I can completely recover from, even with how close we are. Out of absolutely nowhere, I had another one that resulted in me jerking awake and literally giving out a short scream. I feel in my heart I should fully trust my dad and that his image is wrongly affected by my own fears, but I'm not very sure how to change that. Ever used a bow and arrow? Not a real one. Favorite Taylor Swift song? Fuckin FIGHT me "Picture To Burn" SLAPS. Give me a song that is underestimated/not well known: "Possession" by Otep. Otep songs in general. Does everyone in your family have a job? I'm the only one who doesn't. Name a reason you would most likely go to jail for: Probably killing someone when defending a loved one from being physically attacked, and there won't be enough evidence to show that I did it as defense or that going that far was justifiable. I have actually worried about this lmao. What kind of car did your parents have while you were growing up? A blue and then tan van, and Dad had a series of old, tan cars named Frida the Cheetah I-III. :') Do you tie your socks together or roll them up? Roll them up. What was your last bad date? I don't think I've had a bad one... Do you ever wish your birthday was on a different day? Yup, 'cuz it's occasionally Superbowl Sunday. What holiday would you want to have your birthday on? BITCH HALLOWEEN. Have you ever gone snorkeling or scuba diving? No. If yes, what’s the coolest thing you’ve seen? N/A What’s your favorite filling in chocolates? Fudge. When’s the last time you had a s'more? Some time after Sara's visit in June when we had some stuff left over. Does your best friend have any phobias? ... How am I blanking. I know some of her fears, but they're rational. Do you prefer the taste of lemon or limes? Lemons. What would you name your firstborn son? Probably Damien, or Severin. Do you cook anything you don’t like eating? I don't cook. What’s the last picture you colored? One I drew. What is the cheesiest way a guy could propose marriage? M'kay, it's always a man who proposes, I'll take note. But regardless, idk. What’s the first instrument you ever played? A recorder. Do you have an attic? A small one. Have you ever lived in the country before? My whole life. Do you drink coffee every day? No, I hate coffee. Have you ever stayed in a suite? No. Do you take good pictures? Sometimes, though I suck at manual mode because it's hard for me to tell when things are *perfectly* in focus. Have you ever been in a tornado or hurricane? Hurricanes. Do you have any bookmarks in your internet browser? If so, how many? Four. Do you know anyone in the military right now? I believe so. What’s your favorite show on Comedy Central? Don't watch it. How old is the oldest person you know? Uhhhh... late 80s? Early 90s? Do you usually go to sleep before or after the people you’re living with? Varies. Which band has the best name, in your opinion? Cradle of Filth is badass. Which one of your exes do you feel like you have the most chemistry with? Have, none, had, Jason. Do you like where your house is located? No. What’s the best hotel you’ve been to? One right by the beach. Are you into designer clothes? Nope, forget those prices. The only I plan on buying something from sometime is Cloak out of relentless support for The Man and The Apprentice. Have you ever done any internship? No. What’s your favorite store? (other than Hot Topic) Do not attack me like this. But anyway, Rebel's Market. What do you think about tattoos on women? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA fuck you. Have the cops ever gotten onto you for anything before? No. Do you have a Myspace? And if so what is your screen name? It probably still exists, and idk. Do you have a YouTube? Yeah. Facebook? Yeah. Gaia? Idk what that is. Bzoink? No. What email thingy do you use? (yahoo, gamil, rock) Hotmail and Gmail. Do you own a cellphone? If so what kind is it? A Shitty Samsung™ Do you have a digital camera? What kind is it? A Nikon D3200, but I'm hopefully getting a new Nikon or Canon soon. This camera's just about toast. What is your most common typo? Ummm. Idk. I don't make many now as I have to type slowly on this annihilated keyboard. What happens now is just not pushing down hard enough, so I wouldn't really call them "typos.' What kind of computer do you have? My actual one is a Sager, but the one I currently have to use is an Acer. Do you have an iPod/MP3 player? Yes. Literally had it since the beginning of middle school. What is your favorite video game of all time? Silent Hill 2 for story, Shadow of the Colossus for gameplay. For overall, they're pretty much tied. Have you ever played Call of Duty? No. Do you play games on the computer? When I get the Sager fixed... How many doors are in your house? Windows? Doors leading outside, I'm guessing? Two. Windows... at least eight. Nine? Most are small, though. Do you have any posters on your walls? Of what? Metallica, a unicorn at therapy being told "you need to believe in yourself," Homecoming-styled Pyramid Head, Marilyn Manson, Illidan from WoW, Silent Hill 3, Jack Skellington, a music one, and meerkats. What kind of bed do you have? (fouton, twin, bunk) Queen. Is your bed comfortable? Eh. Where is your computer located? I only have a laptop. Other than a closet, do you use a dresser/wardrobe to keep your clothes in? I have a dresser. How many mirrors do you have in your house? (other than hand-held) Uhhh two? Do you have a garage? No. Should you be doing anything right now? What? No. Do doctors or dentists make you more nervous? Doctors. Did you ever think you were about to die before? Ha, in the fourth grade when I was writing my DARE paper and I accidentally stabbed my freshly-sharpened pencil into my left palm... I thought it was lead so I ran SOBBING to my mom about how I was going to die lmao. Then after I ODed, I acknowledged there was a possibility, but I didn't care to think about whether I lived or died to like... think either one. Have you ever really had a near-death experience? Was it cool? "Was it cool." Fuck off. There's no such thing as a "cool" way of almost dying. Anyway, I got in a car accident when I was young, but Mom's driving saved our ass. I don't know if you'd classify the OD as near-death... I apparently didn't take enough to where a certain ingredient became heavily toxic or something, plus I was fucking drowned in fluids to counteract the amount I did have in super quickly (or something like that), so I didn't really experience an "I'm dying right now" fear like I did when I saw the wreck coming. How often do you brush your teeth? Once a day. How often do you shower? (Come on, tell the truth) Every other day, or if I'm being lazy, I go an extra day and regret my decision. What body type do you have? Um not skinny help. What kind of nose do you have? It's kinda little. Are your eyebrows thick? Normal. What color eyes do you wish you had? A more sapphire blue. Do you have fat lips? I'd say they're normal. Do you have a long neck? No. What are your views on abortion? Ultimately, when all things are considered, pro-choice, but I believe in avoiding abortion as well as you can. Like, just getting one solely because you were being sexually careless is a no from me, but like, if pregnancy and/or bearing a child would be an incredibly difficult feat for you emotionally and/or physically, you have the right to put yourself first. Gay marriage? All for it. What different types of churches have you visited? Catholic and Christian. Who would you want to be the flower girl at your wedding? Aubree, buuut I doubt her dad would allow it considering there's a high chance I'm marrying a woman, and he's homophobic as all hell. Do you want to be married within the next ten years? Ideally. What group are you most active in on Facebook? I'm only in one, a WoW group. I rarely comment on anything tho. Are you ashamed of anything? Yes. What were your favorite Disney rides as a kid? I don't really remember them. What were your favorite rides at Cedar Point? Never been. Have you ever owned a succulent? No. Favorite type of tea to drink in the fall? I hate tea. If a brand were to sponsor you, which brand(s) would you prefer? *shrugs* Have you read the entire Bible? No. Do you make bucket lists for each season? No. What is the next hobby you want to start? I'unno... I guess I'd like to get back to reading. Do you dye your hair regularly? No, it's not something I can afford, especially because I want complex color combos. What makes you depressed? Thinking too much about my current life issues, above anything else. My brain confuses depression and boredom a lot, and I'm bored plenty. Loved ones being hurt or upset, and sometimes thinking about the future. Do you think you could ever be famous? Nooooo, I absolutely do not want that. Do you think you have what it takes to make it big in the entertainment biz? Definitely not. What industry is it that you want to go into? Art. Do you have a job now? If so, what is it? No. What are some jobs you’ve had in the past? Sales clerk/associate. What are some jobs you want to or would like to have? List five. Photographer, zoologist, archaeologist, meerkat biologist, artist. What are some jobs you have considered? Archaeologist, vet, movie director, game designer, movie editor, and now zoologist and photography. What are some health problems you have had in the past? That I don't still have? Lots of ear infections, high cholesterol, insomnia, and talk about embarrassing, but last year I had this random span of premature nighttime incontinence... that fucking sucked. What are some of the best medications you’ve ever had? The Latuda + Lamictal combo is one of the biggest reasons I'm still alive. What is your favorite vitamin? I don't have one. Have you ever made money off of YouTube? No. What was a video you watched over and over as a kid? OH MY GOD so Nicole and I watched "Before He Cheats" covers (why idk????) and she found this one of a girl lip-syncing along to a super sped-up version and we found it stupid funny. Have you ever experienced depression as a side effect? Yes; I have both bipolarity and depression, but taking anti-depressants while also bipolar ramps your bipolar symptoms the fuck up, so of course my times of depression were soooo much worse than they were supposed to be. Have you ever been suicidal as a withdrawal symptom? No. How old were you when you started wearing glasses (if applicable)? Some time in middle school, I think? Have you ever been told you have an accent? As a kid I really did; when seeing my NY relatives, they would always point it out lmao. Now I think I only super faintly do and it's only slightly noticeable with some words. Actually at the reptile con in Illinois, after a bit of talking, a girl I met asked if I was from the U.K. because apparently she detected a faint trace of B r i t i s h? Describe the last situation in which you had to give up on an individual? I've gone back and forth with Colleen so many times that I feel anyone who reads these knows the story. What are some things that cause you to abandon association with someone? Shoving opinions in my face, arrogance, disinterest in our relationship, closed-minded, just to name a few. When was the last time you made a new friend? Ha. What is the most unusual thing within your general vicinity? Ummmm I'm not sure. Maybe my python, as she's a morph? What are some things you enjoy that not many others do? Writing, reptiles and amphibians, conspiracies, looots of snow, foreign music, watching others play games, uhhhh. Are you one who considers preserving your past important? In some ways, sure, but not a lot. Focus on the present and aim to create a future better than your past. When was the last time you had some sort of a meltdown? I'm not sure. Some time last month, I think. When was the last time you were super busy? Psh. I'm never busy. Not always a good thing. What is a quality someone might not assume you have? Serious impatience. I don't think I hint towards that weakness until like, you see me in a doctor's office. What was the last thing you did that was healthy? Got a good night's sleep. What was the last thing you did that could harm your health? Drank soda oops. Do you know anyone who self-injures? Not in the present, I believe. Have you ever had to reside with an individual who had a mental disorder? Mom has depression.

[lovemesomesurveys]

On average, how many songs do you listen to in a day? Most days I don’t listen to any, but sometimes I’ll put on my Spotify, hit shuffle, and let it play for awhile. Oh, and if I go anywhere I’ll hear music in the car. It really just depends, man. Do you ever buy your pet(s) birthday or Christmas presents? Yep! I always do. For her birthday we get her a special doggy cookie or something and for Christmas she has her own stocking.  Although, it doesn’t have to be her birthday or holiday for her to get presents we kinda spoil her just a tiny bit. ;) What is something new that you learned today? Nothing so far. Worst movie ever? Uhhh. One that just came to mind is Nocturnal Animals. I didn’t like it.

Can you lick your nose? Nope.

Can you lick your elbow? No. Do you think your current relationship will last forever? I’m single, but yeah I probably always will be let’s be honest.

What do you want most out of life? I just want to be in better health physically and mentally,  or at least ya know feel like I’m managing it better and just be in a better place mentally, and to find happiness. I’d like to just be in a better place all around. Who would you love to punch in the face right now? No one. Would you rather watch a movie in the theater or at home? Depends on the movie. Some movies I just have to see in theaters because it’s better that way and adds to the experience, and others I can wait to rent at home or watch on TV. Do you still own any VHS tapes? do you ever watch them? We still have our Disney ones. I haven’t watched them in how I don’t know how long. A very long time. One thing you promised yourself you’d never do and then did? A lot of things. What is something you forget to do often? I forget. What hobby have you always wanted to pick up? I just wish I was crafty and did like DIY stuff. Do you ever feel like life is going by too fast? In the moment it feels like it’s dragging sometimes but then you look back and you’re like omg where did the time go. Like we’re almost in October and the end of the year will be here before you know it. What do you miss about your childhood? Everything. I miss just being a kid and being in my own little world of imagination and playing Barbies and playing with my cousins and stuff. I was dealing with stuff then, too, but I was a strong, resilient kid and I got through it. The tough stuff isn’t even what sticks out when I think of my childhood. My adult self is so weak. Where was the last place you went out for dinner? This local place. Have you ever had to call 911? No. Are you more scared of going to the doctors or dentists? Both. Would you ever stay in high school for an extra year? Why on earth would I have wanted to do that?? What do you like the best about the city you live in? My family is here, but otherwise nothing. What’s the closest orange object to you? The orange string of lights I have across my dresser. Have you ever rolled off your bed in your sleep? When I was a kid that happened sometimes so I had a railing put on the side. What is something that you do everyday? Drink coffee. Dark or milk chocolate? Milk. Have you ever had a pen pal? Yeah, we did that in 3rd grade. What is your favourite thing to order from a restaurant? Chicken tenders and french fries. Do you own any Nike shoes? Yes. Do you put your shirt on or your pants on first? My pants. Do you edit a lot of your pictures? I add a filter to them. I don’t do any like Facetuning or anything like that. What was the silliest thing you got mad about this week? I don’t know, I get irritated/annoyed at any little thing sometimes. How do you like your potatoes? Mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, in french fry or potato wedge form, in hash brown form, in potato chip form... I love potatoes. Do you get along with your significant other’s friends? I’m single. Are you one of those people who will not use a public washroom? Only if I really need to. Are you afraid of spiders? EXTREMELY. I just looked up at my ceiling to make sure there weren’t any. I check that a lot. What is something that you do often with your family? Watch TV. Have you ever been stung by a bee? No. Do you enjoy the sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning? I don’t hear any. Do you prefer ice cream in a bowl or cone? Bowl. I take too long to eat it so cones get messy. What is a good name for a baby boy? Alexander. Have you ever tried counting the stars? How far did you get lol? Yeah, I have. Not very far, ha. They’re innumerable. What bank do you go to? You don’t need to know. Do you enjoy board games? I love board games. Who is the most overrated singer? Taylor Swift. Do you need a haircut? Nah. Can you say the alphabet backwards? I mean yeah, but it would take me longer. When was the last time you were sick? I last had a virus thing back in like May, but otherwise I feel some kind of crappy, sickiness often. What was the scariest moment of your life? The last surgery I had. What is the most expensive gift you have ever given someone? Hmm. Do you hate Mondays? They’re just another day for me now since I’m no longer in school and I don’t have a job. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth? Yes. Describe your socks. They’re black ankle socks. Does it bother you when people talk throughout the whole movie? Yes. What do you regret the most? Just not taking care of myself better. Some of the things I’m dealing with now could have been prevented. Do you believe in yourself? No. Do you think you have found your “true love” yet? Nope. What is your greatest weakness? I don’t know. Would you rather live “A good life” or “THE good life”? A good life. Do you feel bad when you kill bugs? No. :X How much water do you drink each day? Only like 3, sometimes 4 glasses. :/ I used to get the full 8 a day, but when I got that virus back in May I slacked off and haven’t gotten back on track since. When was the last time you ate popcorn? Last Saturday. What is your favourite planet? Earth. Do you like animal print things? Not clothing, but I have a body pillow with giraffe print that I really like. Do you have any pets that you had since you were born? No. Do you own anything that you had when you were a baby? Yes. Are you one of those people who are always cold? Nope. I’m usually the one always hot. Do you enjoy Mario games? Yes.

[novantinuum]

Movie Night (one-shot)

AO3

Rating: K

Words: 1200~

In which Stan and Soos bond over movies, and Stan has a rare moment of emotional vulnerability.

He’d taken pity on the kid that day, inviting him to stay at the Shack after hours to “watch a movie, or whatever.” When his morose expression finally lifted and glimmered as bright as one of his Fourth of July firecrackers, Stan knew he’d made the right decision. He knew how rough this day was for the kid. Might as well offer him a little something to help make it better. Of course, to be fair Soos wasn’t actually a kid anymore since it was his eighteenth birthday, but no matter. Once Stan passed fifty, suddenly everyone was a kid in his mind.

“What we gonna watch, Mr. Pines?” Soos asked with wide, eager eyes, munching away on a thick slice of meat lover’s pizza.

Stan finished off his third, and promptly licked the grease off his fingers. “It’s your birthday, kid,” he said. “Pick whatever you want.”

Soos set down his plate and crawled across the plush carpet to the video cabinet. Opening the wobbly doors revealed two shelves full of VHS tapes, ranging from old 60s westerns, to black and white period pieces, to a good selection of the 80s greatest hits. He didn’t own anything recent. Rather, the odd mishmash of entertainment was just as antiquated as Stan himself. He watched with intrigue as the kid began shuffling through his selection.

“Let’s see, you have Return From the Past… Grandpa the Kid: The Long Nap… Exterminators…” He piled VHS tapes on the carpet, digging through to the back of the video cabinet. Seeing something he must have recognized, he flashed a toothy grin. “Oooh, you have the entire original trilogy of Galaxy Wars!” he exclaimed, holding the tapes up. “Those are like, my favorite movies in the whole world!“

Cold, bitter recognition caused Stan’s heart to sink about as far as his butt did in the cushion of this chair.

“Heh, those nerd movies?” Stan jokingly scoffed, scratching at the nape of his neck. “That really what ya’ wanna watch?”

“Sure, if you’re okay with it.”

He made a dramatic show of deciding their evening’s fate, pursing his lips and stroking his chin like a second rate Bond villain. “Hmmm. Well, I did say whatever you want… Sure, sure, pop ‘em in. Hell- heck, might as well make a full night of it, watch all three.”

“Really??” Soos beamed. He nearly stumbled over his feet running to the couch, and suddenly Stan found himself smothered in the sturdy, earnest embrace of this young man. “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Pines!”

He popped in the first movie of the original trilogy and settled in at the foot of the couch, the two sharing a six pack of Pitt Cola and a bowl of popcorn between them. Every few minutes, Soos would rattle off a “fun fact” about one of the actors in the movie, or how they filmed a certain scene, or how they recorded the lightsaber noise. Stan nodded as he listened, genuinely impressed with the sheer breadth of knowledge he had about all this. It reminded him a lot of- well. No matter. No sense in letting his mind wander in distant memory tonight.

“Hey, you know what’s funny?” Soos asked after they finished the second one. “Your copy of Return of the Jedi totally doesn’t match the others, dude.”

He cracked open another can of soda. “Oh, that?” he muttered. “Well, I bought it some years after the others, so of course it wouldn’t.”

He didn’t even buy the first two. That was- well, it was his brother. Ford. He was the nerdy one who was into all this sci-fi space battle stuff. Stan found them shoved in a closet a year or so after That Winter. They were some of the only movies Ford owned. Curiosity pulling at his heart, he watched the two- Galaxy Wars: A New Hope and Galaxy Wars: The Empire Strikes Back- while nursing a beer one night. (All right, so maybe it more than one beer.) The point is, they were some of Ford’s few personal belongings beyond mere academic awards or boring textbooks or clothing, so they must have meant something truly special to him, right? When he finished the second movie and realized there was a third one- one that Ford had never gotten to see, because of you, because you pushed him too far- he drove himself to the video store and snatched up the first copy he could get his hands on. He wanted his brother to have it, if when he finally came back. He watched it alone that night, imagining how Ford might react to the plot twists. How Ford would gleefully pick apart the bad Hollywood science. He totally didn’t cry at the end when the galaxy was saved. Or when Yoda died. Or when he realized Luke and Leia were twins. Nope, he definitely didn’t shed a single tear over this silly movie franchise, not at all.

He hadn’t watched through these movies since. They brought up too many melancholy memories for his own comfort, he supposed. Too many ghosts of the past. And now, watching it with Soos, the kid’s childlike excitement constantly reminded him of Ford…

The way his eyes would light up at any new discovery.

The depth at which he cared for the characters in the fictional shows he watched in his youth.

Soos let out a yawn towards the beginning of the third movie, and curled up closer against the foot of the couch. His commentary was few and far between this time. It was late, about half past eleven. Stan could tell the kid was nearly tuckered out. Still, when the scene came when Luke realized he and Leia were twins, brother and sister, for some unknown reason he felt compelled to say something.

“Y’know,” he said quietly, “I’ve never told ya’, or anyone else here, but I’ve got a twin. A brother. Ford… He’s just as nerdy as you, actually.”

Stan let out a soft chuckle, his words fading into silence as he realized what he’d just admitted. What he’d never told a single living soul in this entire town, what he’d never entrusted to anyone.

“I… I miss him a lot, kid. A whole damn lot.” He tugged at the collar of his undershirt, suddenly feeling indescribably uncomfortable at sharing such personal detail, and yet all the same… Once he’d started rambling, he found that he couldn’t stop, like deep down he needed this release. “Heh, I suppose that’s why I get ya’ so much. Why your birthday’s such a hard time. ‘Coz… anymore, my own’s not that great either, y’know?”

The sudden silence prickled at his nerves. He glanced down at the kid, aching for any sort of vocal or non-vocal response, heart thrumming in the silence he left his admission to die in, and…

Soos’ mouth was wide open, breathing gently in and out.

The kid had already fallen asleep.

He almost barked in laughter. It was just his luck, wasn’t it? The one moment he tried opening up to another human person for once, and no one was awake to hear it. Perhaps this was the world’s way of telling him that no one else needed to know. It was his burden to bear, his past. He’d hate to force the kid to carry that knowledge with him too, and on his birthday no less.

Carefully, Stan pulled himself to his feet with a grunt. He nabbed a spare blanket from his own bed, and then returned to the TV room. With a watery smile, he tucked the blanket around Soos’ sleeping form.

“G’night, squirt. Happy birthday.”

[surveysonfleek]

1287.

On average, how many songs do you listen to in a day? it depends if i’m working or not. i must listen to like 10 hours worth of music when i work. Do you ever buy your pet(s) birthday or Christmas presents? i have before. What is something new that you learned today? ...nothing. lol. Worst movie ever? there are many but i’m drawing a blank right now. Can you lick your nose? nope.

Can you lick your elbow? nope. Do you think your current relationship will last forever? i hope so. i’d hate to start over. anything can happen but i really hope this is it. What do you want most out of life? happiness, good health, the best for my family and friends. Who would you love to punch in the face right now? no one. Would you rather watch a movie in the theater or at home? at home tbh. Do you still own any VHS tapes? do you ever watch them? i don’t think so, i think we’ve thrown it all out. One thing you promised yourself you’d never do and then did? drugs lol. What is something you forget to do often? hmm nothing in particular. What hobby have you always wanted to pick up? cooking. Do you ever feel like life is going by too fast? yes. this year flew. What do you miss about your childhood? just how stress free it was. being an adult sucks. having to work for money to live sucks. ugh. Where was the last place you went out for dinner? the local sushi place. Have you ever had to call 911? i did once because it was 3am at night and i was driving home from work and there was a random tree engulfed in flames in a suburban area. it was huge. Are you more scared of going to the doctors or dentists? dentist for some reason. i never liked going to them as a kid. Would you ever stay in high school for an extra year? no. i’m done with school. What do you like the best about the city you live in? it’s gorgeous on a good day. it’s one of a kind. What’s the closest orange object to you? the lights are out so idk. Have you ever rolled off your bed in your sleep? nope. What is something that you do everyday? pee. Dark or milk chocolate? milk. Have you ever had a pen pal? haha kinda. my cousin lives in usa and we used to write letters to each other as kids. What is your favourite thing to order from a restaurant? such a broad question. depends on the cuisine. Do you own any Nike shoes? yes. Do you put your shirt on or your pants on first? pants usually. actually it changes. Do you edit a lot of your pictures? nope. What was the silliest thing you got mad about this week? idk. How do you like your potatoes? any way! fried, mashed, baked etc. Do you get along with your significant other’s friends? yes. we have the same friends. Are you one of those people who will not use a public washroom? eh, if i have to i will. and i’ll always ask friends if it’s clean if they go before me. Are you afraid of spiders? not afraid, just cautious.  What is something that you do often with your family? shop. Have you ever been stung by a bee? nope. Do you enjoy the sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning? omg no. it’s annoying af. Do you prefer ice cream in a bowl or cone? bowl. What is a good name for a baby boy? idk. Have you ever tried counting the stars? How far did you get lol? omg never lol. What bank do you go to? stg. Do you enjoy board games? yes! i loooove them! Who is the most overrated singer? selena gomez lol. Do you need a haircut? oh yes, definitely. i need a trim asap. Can you say the alphabet backwards? i could if i tried. When was the last time you were sick? a couple weeks ago. What was the scariest moment of your life? idk. What is the most expensive gift you have ever given someone? not sure... probably a golf club set for my boyfriend.

Do you hate Mondays? it depends whether i’m working or not. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth? yes. Describe your socks. not wearing any. Does it bother you when people talk throughout the whole movie? yes. What do you regret the most? no point dwelling on it. Do you believe in yourself? no. Do you think you have found your “true love” yet? i hope so! What is your greatest weakness? staying home lol. Do you feel bad when you kill bugs? nope. i hardly do it though. How much water do you drink each day? just under the recommended amount. When was the last time you ate popcorn? a couple weeks ago. What is your favourite planet? this one. Do you like animal print things? not really. Do you have any pets that you had since you were born? no. Do you own anything that you had when you were a baby? yes. Are you one of those people who are always cold? no. if i’m cold, it must actually be really cold. Do you enjoy Mario games? yes!

[missanthropicprinciple]

Old review of The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries from the late epinions site: “Thoroughly Modern Millie meets Miss Marple!” Aug 04 '03

SPOILER ALERT:

“Author's Product Rating

Product Rating: 5.0

Pros Diana Rigg. Great sets & costumes. Enormous fun!

Cons Is this a trick question?

The Bottom Line: Diana Rigg scores another triumph in a set of elegant, swellegant mysteries. She plays the wry, sophisticated Mrs. Bradley to perfection in 4 wonderful cases. Great entertainment!

Full Review: Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot. The bad news is that the notation of "Set 1" here is apparently a misnomer. There will likely not be a "Set 2". These 4 episodes were filmed in 1999, and I can find no indication that any more were ever made.

The good news is everything else. Rigg introduces each episode, Rigg stars in each episode -- the whole thing is Rigged! There is also a pilot episode from 1998, "Speedy Death", that is not included in this set but was issued separately at the usual excessive price. Based on the ad that aired with the series, this set should have all 4 episodes -- the listing doesn't yet provide any details about exactly what "set 1" contains. Check before buying!

Diana Rigg is superb (like we're surprised?) as Adela Bradley, an educated, liberated, and enlightened (and very wealthy) widow who has great success as an amateur detective in the 1920s. This was a time when most women were still house slaves. It's interesting that the series doesn't show men being particular upset by her successful flaunting of convention (when told, "This is a respectable hotel", she retorts, "Is it? Too bad."). In any event Rigg plays the role with great panache, wittily engaging the camera in brief monologues from time to time (cf. Ian Richardson in "House of Cards" and its sequels). It should be observed that Rigg isn't really the right physical type for this role (Mrs. B. is described as "birdlike" and "frail"); but she makes the role utterly her own, so who cares?

Seconding Mrs. Bradley, Watson to her Holmes, is her chauffeur and probable lover, George Moody, played with solid reliability by Neil Dudgeon. Her is her seriously dedicated, almost dour, very observant, and extremely handy man. Dudgeon is simply marvelous in the role, with a subtly controlled (almost disguised) sense of humor. He's a splendid foil for Rigg's la-de-da approach.

Seen on some episodes is Inspector Christmas, played by Peter Davison. Christmas is a businesslike cop who seems to relish Mrs. Bradley's assistance. Davison plays him in an almost curiously deferential manner ... until the 4th episode, when he's nice enough but seems less than pleased to see Mrs. Bradley when she first shows up.

There are a variety of other actors, varying from episode to episode. They are all solid and convincing in their roles. Every production is elegantly presented with a literate script, attractive and interesting settings, and dedicated performances. Rigg's outfits are stunning. The realization is widescreen...very nice.

In the 1999 season the episodes are:

1. Death at the Opera. Mrs. is invited to speak to the girls at a finishing school ("where girls go to be finished, which they will be if they believe all the twaddle...") that she attended long before. Before her speech, a murder occurs during a (hilariously inept) performance of The Mikado. One of the great charms of this series is its use of period jazz ... as in this case, when the opening music is "Just a Japanese Sandman". The investigation of the crime is typically labyrinthine ... at one point Mrs. B. volunteers Moody to model for a life class ... she's always volunteering him to do degrading little chores ... but by the same token he's nicely nosey and always finds valuable clues. For the first time Mrs. B. meets Inspector Christmas, who is very charming and Moody goes all ... well, moody. There is a delightfully kinky array of red herrings, and a second murder, as we find is usual in these affairs. The final break in the case comes through hypnosis.

2. The Rising of the Moon. Inspector Christmas, all bustle and enthusiasm, calls Mrs. B. in on a perplexing case of a fatal stabbing at a mostly Romany circus ... the partner of the knife-thrower, who of course quickly comes under suspicion. It's a clear case of cherchez l'homme, since la femme is the victim and gypsies don't have butlers. In this episode, Mrs.B. volunteers Moody to have knives thrown at him. "Scratches on the back indicate a passionate relationship, which is why my late husband remained totally unscathed." You gotta love this lady. The actor to watch here is Kenneth Colley as the red-headed Mr. Burlington. He's got a well-known face on British telly, and he uses it most wonderfully expressively here. Also Janine Duvitski, ditzily hilarious as Jane in "Waiting for God", and equally expressive, as one of the townspeople who don't cotton much to ousiders -- unless, in her case, they wear pants. In the music there's even a bit of Gershwin..."Walking the Dog" when Mrs. B. is striding along, and Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" as the murderer is confessing.. Then we have the usual 2nd murder, and numerous cases of local people making pratts of themselves. And then Burlington tells Moody ... ah, well, you'll need to watch it then, won't you? Watch the pot on the stove. We get "Blue Moon" and "You're the Cream in My Coffee" at the end. Very nice.

3. Laurels Are Poison. Mrs. B. visits a haunted house in the country (always best for murders), to visit a friend. We get a bit of what must be her theme song, "Anything Goes". What fun ... you get to learn what a ha-ha is. "Anything Goes" includes a gift of Lady Chatterley's Lover, then banned in Britain, to her friend -- who is alas, rather elderly and up-tight. The place is crawling with secrets and subjects not to be discussed right from the beginning, especially regarding events of World War I. Shades of "Gosford Park", says I. However, since the old master of the house is already dead, the cook buys it instead. The gardener, otherwise gorgeous, is a nasty bit of work. Red herrings abound. Moody is also experiencing a bit of tension because the new master of the house, the old master's son-in-law, was his commanding officer in the War and they have unfinished business. The second death is a little late, and (alas) only a suicide. And then the guilty little secrets multiply like rabbits, but the ending is mostly happier than one might have expected.

4. The Worsted Viper. Mrs. B. pops off to a seashore town to present an award to local resident Inspector Christmas, whose welcoming smile is something of a grimace. Moody's daughter also lives there and is getting married. Her intended, Ronald Quincy (Eddie Marsan), who looks a bit of twit, is with her when she greets her father and they break the news to him. He's the son of the local hotel owner, a lady of delightful uptightness. A familiar face in the production is John Bowe, who portrays Reverend Baines ... who also writes a local newspaper column secretly under the name of "Miss Behavior". It's a name Mrs. B. can't help but love. The first murder victim shows up almost immediately, the Reverend's elder daughter Chastity, strangled with a worsted viper ("some sort of woolen snake" Moody calls it) and her hair cut off. Mrs. B. immediately suspects a connection with a case of multiple ritual murders she had solved years ago. Again, there's a whole school of red herrings. "My belief in god is roughly on a par with my belief in the tooth fairy," Mrs. B. observes at one point, apropos of the prevalent churchy atmosphere. Moody this time is volunteered to wait tables at the hotel. He looks vaguely as if he'd rather be back with the nude modeling. Mrs. B. contemplates children and observes: "There are 3 golden rules for bringing up children. Alas, nobody knows what they are." It helps the case a whole lot that Temperence, the Reverend's other (very young) daughter, has remarkably beautiful penmanship. Really. The second murder doesn't come off, despite a game attempt. There's a whirlwind ending that hinges on whether a third murder attempt will succeed. The solution of the case hinges on a big surprise and you won't hear it from me. Mrs. B. gives her advise on marriage whilst walking under a ladder ... "I'd advise patience, tolerance, -- and above all, separate bathrooms." ((Young love will overcome a deficiency in the last department for a time, as I can attest ... but within 8 months we got a place with 2 facilities. We live there still -- and now it has 3. Old love demands convenience.))

As you can imagine, I recommend these mysteries very highly. If you were unable to record them when broadcast, and assuming your local PBS station is like mine, not very forthcoming with repeats, you can always buy the commercially recorded version. The only problem is that the people who sell these seem always to want 2-3 times what they should. Alas, it's precisely this sort of thing that hardly ever shows up used.

I have said these are suitable for children from age 13 ... not that they are sophisticated enough to be interested. Few indeed are the teenagers who would be attracted to a quality British mystery with quality American (and British) period music.

Recommended Yes

Viewing Format: VHS Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older” [x]

[mst3kproject]

Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules

This here Sword-And-Sandal epic was directed by Guido Malatesta, who wrote the screenplay for Colossus and the Headhunters, and stars Margaret Lee, of Secret Agent Super Dragon; Luciano Marin, of Hercules and the Captive Women; and Andrea Aureli, of The Loves of Hercules. Clearly this one is fully qualified, even without the hilariously unconvincing monsters that peer out of every corner.  My copy is an ancient VHS that looks like sun-baked shit and for some reason has no title card.

A tribe of cavemen, who I will call the Sun Tribe, are migrating south to escape the ice age.  They reach the edge of the glacier, I guess, and build a village, but soon find themselves being menaced from multiple angles.  There’s a stupid monster puppet living in the local lake, and another tribe already making their home nearby, the Moon Tribe, who have a strict anti-immigration policy.  Lucky for them, Maxus the Son of Hercules happens to be in the area, and he’s all about fighting monsters and protecting the rights of refugees!  Lots of people swing Styrofoam clubs and throw fake spears at each other, more terrible puppet things show up so Maxus can kill them, and I sit and think about how Cave Dwellers would be a much better title for this movie than it was for Cave Dwellers.

Holy fuck, you guys, this movie is so bad.  It has its dull stretches but most of them don’t go on too long, and whenever something is actually happening it is hilariously awful.  I could fill this whole review with a bullet list of the moments that made me laugh.

We’ll start with the dubbing, which critic Howard Hughes (not that Howard Hughes) described as the worst of all time.  He clearly hasn’t seen Gamera vs Guiron but it’s still really bad.  It’s not so much the performances, which are kind of crappy but no more so than in a thousand other lousy imported movies.  It’s the lipsync, or rather, the lack thereof.  Nobody made any effort to match the English dialogue to the way the actors’ mouths move. Sometimes it’s distracting. Sometimes it’s funny as hell. Sometimes it’s annoying. Sometimes it loops right back around to being funny again.  The best part is that to re-release Maciste Contro i Mostri as Fire Monsters against the Son of Hercules, they had to dub the name Maxus over every occurrence of Maciste.  The guy they hired to do so has a voice several notes higher than the original dub actor for Maciste, and introduces himself like he’s on a phone sex line.

The onscreen cast are pretty bad, too.  The actors look like they belong in the ice age about as much as anybody in Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell belonged in the Hyperborean.  They’re all standing around dressed in fun fur and those cow rugs you can buy at IKEA, and they all look kind of awkward and embarrassed about it.  Maxus has an amusing henna pompadour and his primary facial expression is the ever-popular smug smirk.  The women wander around in fake leather miniskirts and bouffant hairdos like they have no idea what they’re doing here.  The cannibal tribe wear little horns on their heads, like they’re Vikings who haven’t invented helmets yet.

The monsters are unbelievably bad.  I can’t actually think of an adjective to describe how magnificently terrible they are. They’re the fakest, fabricky-est puppets I have ever seen in a movie.  The first water dragon Maxus slays looks like a cheap plush toy version of that thing from The Neverending Story. Another is represented by stock footage of what I think is a perentie lizard, which is only seen in a cutaway because they couldn’t be bothered to back-project it.  A three-headed cave dragon looks like a hand puppet you’d buy on eBay and leave a bad review about because it fell apart the moment you took it out of the box.  It looks like it’s made of construction paper and felt.  It makes The Loves of Hercules look like Jurassic Park.  The screencap doesn’t do it justice.  You’d need to see this thing in motion to truly understand just how stupefyingly shoddy it really is.

Oh, and despite the title of the movie being Fire Monsters, not one of these stupid things breathes fire.  I am both disappointed and relieved, in that I would have loved to see it but if they’d tried it on this budget they would probably have burned their sets down.

This delicious chocolate icing of badness is slathered on the rich, gooey cake of what actually happens in the movie, almost all of which is ridiculous.  Maxus fights a bunch of boneless water serpent creatures while the camera pays loving attention to his crotch.  There’s a bit where several people theatrically lose their balance on a log bridge and fall into the ravine one after another, and it’s funnier every time.  Maxus and his love interest get buried up to their necks as a form of punishment and people stand around throwing things at them but never hit them because nobody in this movie can aim.  Then they’re freed by a random earthquake that just happens to split the ground right where they are.  I was staying with my parents at the time I first saw this movie, and to keep from waking them up in the wee hours with my laughter I had to munch pillows like a vampire wedding night.

But I’m not here to laugh – or at least, not only to laugh – I’m here to analyze.  Believe me when I say that very little in Fire Monsters against the Son of Hercules merits analysis, and even less is intended to be analyzed.  The movie tries to set up a dichotomy between the two tribes. Our heroes, the Sun Tribe, worship fire and the sun god, live outdoors in wattle huts, and hold religious observances during the day.  The bad guys, the Moon Tribe, worship the moon goddess, wear seashells and live in caves around an underground river, and sacrifice at night.  Sun/Moon, Fire/Water, Day/Night, Peace/War, Light/Darkness, and to some extent Male/Female.  It’s a list of opposites, so simplistic that I really can’t think of anything more to say than just to write them out.  I doubt any deeper meaning was intended by it.

If I want something to actually talk about, Maxus never has an arc (I guess being the son of a demigod, he’s already perfect), but some of the minor characters do.  The young chief of the Sun Tribe is supposed to be growing into that role, though he leaves most of the actual heroing to Maxus and it’s unclear how old he’s supposed to be (Luciano Marin was thirty-one when the movie was released). There is an interesting bit where he rails at the sun god for his misfortunes and is warned against it, but whether the gods actually exist or are active in this universe remains mysterious.  It is true that a convenient eclipse halts a series of sacrifices, and that Maxus is saved by the volcano, but these could just be coincidences.

The odd thing about these two events, now that I think about it, is that while among the humans the Sun Tribe just want to live peacefully while the Moon Tribe wants to make war, their gods seem to have the opposite idea.  If the eclipse (portrayed by effects people who clearly have no idea what an eclipse of the moon actually looks like) is the goddess’ doing, it is a frightening but peaceful intervention.  Her worshippers asked for a sign, and she sent one that she does not approve.  If the volcano is the work of the sun god, it is a catastrophic event that destroys the Moon Tribe’s home and livelihood, and kills many of the tribesmen.  Not to mention that the main villain dies when the solar idol falls over and literally crushes him.  Who’s advocating violence now?

I’ve gotten distracted, though.  Getting back to the characters – the Sun Tribe’s leader is secondary not only to Maxus, but to Moa, the deposed rightful leader of the Moon Tribe. Moa probably gets more screen time than any other single character, and has the best claim, after Maxus, to main-character-hood.  Her father and brothers have been murdered by the evil Fuan, who now wants to cement his claim to being legitimately in charge by marrying her, but she can’t stand him.  I think she’s supposed to be one of those Strong Female Characters, but if so she’s a pretty half-assed effort.

For starters, while her introduction makes a big deal of her lost inheritance, she never does anything to try to reclaim it until Maxus turns up inside the caves. You’d think she could nurse a rebel cell biding its time or something, but all she does is sit on her shapely bottom and refuse to marry Fuan.  I’m left with the impression that while she may be the obvious genetic heir, she actually doesn’t have any support base. The rest of the Moon Tribe prefers Fuan for some reason, and she’s left to sit there and pout and wait for a man to save her.

At the end of the movie, Maxus tells Moa that her job now is to make peace between her people and the Sun Tribe.  One might expect the usual trope in which she does so by marrying the Sun Tribe’s leader, who is much more polite and less hairy than Fuan.  He’s already got a wife, though, and saving her from the sacrificial block was a big part of his motivation.  It’s no surprise, then, that Moa instead chooses to walk off into the sunset with Maxus. I guess she’s learned that nice girls don’t want political power.

That’s all pretty lousy, but the rest of the movie is all so deliriously fucking awful that there’s no point in taking it seriously, even as an example of shitty gender politics.  Give this one a watch if you can.  It’s a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

[shirlleycoyle]

My Life as a Meme: ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ Revisited

In November 2007, an entirely contextless video of me being punched in the face went viral. You might have seen it. It still does the rounds every couple of months, often when something notably bad happens that warrants a response of disbelief. In these strange times, it’s managed to remain endlessly prescient.

For the uninitiated, the video in question is an 11-second clip in which, aged 16, I appear wearing a dressing gown cord around my head, a chain necklace, some children’s sunglasses and a black T-shirt. I sit down and address the camera, ostensibly about to tell the viewer what I was thinking. I am immediately interrupted by my friend Tim, who appears stage left and lamps me. Rather than react in pain or anger, I err more towards disappointment and dismay, bewildered that something like this could happen. “Ah fuck. I can’t believe you’ve done this,” I said. End scene.

It’s been nearly 14 years since I uploaded the original video and to this day it still prompts questions. Who was the guy who got punched? Why did he get punched? Who punched him? What was he thinking? Why did he react that way? Why did he leave YouTube?

In recent years I’ve come to appreciate and even enjoy its bizarre status as an enduring piece of internet history, but my relationship with the clip in the decade that followed its inexorable rise hasn’t always been easy. To understand why, it’s useful to remember that the internet in 2007 was, for better or worse, a very different place.

Having spent the best part of my school years filming stupid skits with mates instead of studying, there was something semi-appealing about the prospect of being able to put videos online to share with friends. It began in mid-2003, when myself and a group of friends would have been in our early teens. Inspired by the likes of Jackass and Bam Margera’s CKY movies, our impressionable young selves set about ignoring all relevant safety warnings, hurling ourselves out of trees, riding scooters into curbs, and racing tyres down hills on skateboards.

At the age of 14 or so, I had envisaged cutting the footage into a chaotic feature-length video of “stunts.” I’d probably have soundtracked it with music from the Tony Hawk games, alongside countless other homemade skate videos people made circa 2003 that probably featured a mix of Ace of Spades or Guerilla Radio. I still have a box full of VHS-C tapes kicking around somewhere, which can only be viewed on one of those absolutely insane VHS adapters. Having not watched any of it in well over a decade, I can safely say that the content contained within those tapes is unequivocally shit.

All of a sudden you're everywhere and it's out of your control. You either try to fight it and get destroyed, or embrace it and try to cash in.

Looking back, the whole endeavour was entirely aimless, but aside from coming away with mild head injuries from time to time it was an innocuous way to spend my childhood. At the very least it also means I have a bizarre, tangible record of my youth that I’ll be able to laugh at one day when I’m old and wizened.

By summer 2004, we had started filming on Mini-DV, which opened up a whole new world of editing possibilities. Plugging a video camera into a computer and capturing footage directly to editing software is pretty much a given for today’s generation of content creators, but back in the early 2000s, this was revolutionary.

We’d eventually gravitate away from ‘stunts’ towards more structured skits and sketches. Nothing was ever scripted per se, but we’d usually start out with a rough idea of something and see how it played out.

There was an ambitiously misguided 'silent horror' short, soundtracked by Mike Oldfield��s Tubular Bells, in which someone chopped off ‘my cock’ (a banana) with a garden shear. We considered this to be the absolute pinnacle of comedy.

There was an ill-advised 'Ballers' skit in which we ventured out in sports gear to make a mock training video taking the piss out of a guy at school who fancied himself as a bit of a gangster; this painfully middle-class white kid who listened to rap metal and liked basketball. He obviously never saw it and there's no question that we looked like idiots filming it at the local park. It’s probably quite offensive in hindsight.

The author at the Bristol Climate Change Protests in September 2019. Image: Shanya Buultjens

There was a James Bond 'spoof' that involved misquoting portions of dialogue from that scene in GoldenEye where Q gives Bond an exploding pen. It was funny to about three people. One of them was my mum.

One time a mate of mine fell out of a tree when he tried to swing from a branch. He landed on his back and ended up coughing up blood. He didn’t go to the hospital even though he probably should have. He’s now a doctor and a father.

Mercifully, none of this stuff ever made it online, but I did sell a couple of DVDs to people at school who rightly/probably/hopefully never watched them. In an ideal world, I'd own the only copies. I'm also fully aware that writing about this now only makes it more likely that one of the four people that still have a copy will dig theirs out. Please do not do that.

In 2005 and 2006, YouTube was very much in its infancy. This was the time when clips were limited to about 100mb and you could only upload about 30 seconds worth of footage at a time, which basically made it perfect for bursts of frenetic, inane content. As the platform grew, it became a dumping ground for skits and footage that we’d accumulated over the preceding years. Much of it went completely unnoticed until late 2007, at which point things started to get a bit weird.

The truth is that, nearly a decade and a half later, I’m still processing it.

The clip that people have come to know started out as an aimless skit filmed in Summer 2006. We hadn’t planned anything, least of all me being punched. In the footage building up to the event, I pushed Tim off the chair, he fell and hit his head on a filing cabinet off-camera. Rather than react to Tim, I sat down and proceeded to ad lib something that I’d venture to guess would have been considerably less funny than the act of violence that followed. Unprompted, Tim upsided me and I reacted with an inexplicable, completely incredulous response, which has followed me online ever since.

The footage sat on a tape until July 2007 when I decided to upload a brief segment under an ambiguous title. Fast forward to November and the video had somehow blown up, had its comments section relentlessly spammed, been ripped countless times and had offensive Wiki pages written about it. I also received a few direct messages which could at best have been described as ‘worrying’ and at worst ‘threatening,’ which was nice.

To this day, I’m none the wiser as to how it blew up in the way it did. I originally uploaded the video under the title ‘ ___________’ but the video somehow found its way onto 4chan where it spread like wildfire. The earliest mirrored link I could find was from January 2008, by which time it had been re-uploaded by multiple accounts, the most prominent of which had already clocked up almost double the number of views compared to my original upload.

At the time, going viral wasn't really comparable to any other experience and it certainly wasn't something I could discuss in solidarity with my friends. All of a sudden you're everywhere and it's out of your control. You either try to fight it and get destroyed, or embrace it and try to cash in. After yanking down several other videos on my YouTube channel, I opted for the latter.

When the video blew up, I got a call from a friend who informed me that the video had made the front page of Break.com. I peripherally knew what that meant: they offered a buyout scheme for videos that made the front page, which meant that I could make some money from it.

As it transpired, this wasn’t such a great idea. After signing a release form with some pretty appalling terms, over the following months I had several unnerving interactions with researchers for various TV shows looking to license the clip. Each offered far more favourable terms than those of Break. One of them harassed a bunch of my mates on Facebook. I think he even offered to pay one of them for my contact details.

By that point, it was all too apparent that I had completely fucked it. Break had the rights and I couldn't do anything with it even if I wanted to. At just 18 years old, I had sold out. In the short term, I used the money to buy a TV, which was great, but I soon started to get the creeping feeling that this was a decision that would come to haunt me. At that point, it was easier to disassociate myself from the clip, abandon YouTube, and move on with my life.

And yet, for the best part of 14 years the questions have kept coming: no, it wasn’t staged or scripted, it wasn’t a set-up, I didn’t know it was coming and, yes, it hurt. It was also very funny, which is presumably why I felt the need to upload it in isolation in the first place. Incidentally, Tim and I are still friends and contrary to some of the absolutely insane comments people leave on YouTube I can confirm that neither of us are in prison, the punch wasn’t a reaction to some sort of disagreement and he’s a lovely bloke.

To be clear, the lack of context wasn’t a deliberate choice to add intrigue either. I’d never even considered the possibility that anyone outside my circle of friends would see it. To me it was just another daft clip that a few mates would find funny.

Around the time I’d started to make peace with the issues around ownership, in 2018 it came to my attention that Break had shut down and its owner Defy Media had gone bust. The site was subsequently purchased by Yeah1 Network, but to this day I have no clarity whatsoever on my legal rights to the video. Any attempts to receive guidance have either turned up dead ends, or led to suggestions that I speak to IP lawyers, whom I have neither the means nor the time to deal with. Incidentally, if anyone has any insights in that area, I’d love to hear them.

Having said this, there’s something quite empowering in taking something embarrassing and admitting to it before someone else can point it out to you—a bit like taking ownership of an amusing surname. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what gags can be made from the name ‘Weedon,’ but I learned quite early on that if you make the jokes yourself and beat others to it, no one can fucking touch you. It’s much easier nowadays to hold my hands up and admit that I shouldn’t have sold the rights, make a joke of it and move on. At the very least, it makes for a good anecdote at parties.

As I suspect is probably the case for old content creators, if you can even call us that, the real story about I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This isn’t in how it’s aged and endured, or even how it’s impacted my life. For me, it’s tied up in issues of rights, ownership, and monetisation. As mercenary as it might be, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t regret missing out on a slice of the pie when it came to YouTubers being able to monetise their content sooner. On the one hand, that's probably a very cynical view for something that was created by a bunch of teenagers who were fooling around making videos for fun in the noughties, but on the other, that's just the world we live in now.

Perhaps the strangest thing about my experience with it nowadays is the way people engage with it on a day-to-day basis. The comments vary from young people discovering its origins for the first time, surprised to discover that it is in fact a 14 year old video and not a recent creation filmed for Vine or TikTok. At the other end of the spectrum are those who are incredulous that someone with a video that has 9.2 million views and an account that’s amassed over 15,000 followers without really trying would step away from the platform and not want to make content.

The truth is that, nearly a decade and a half later, I’m still processing it. I love seeing how it’s been re-interpreted in modern mediums and that positive association has made it easier to accept. Charles Cornell turned it into a sad song. It got sampled in a KIll The Noise track. I had a nice interaction with The Sidemen about it. Will Smith even featured it in an insane Instagram post during the pandemic. I DM’d him to say thanks and he obviously didn’t reply.

To that end, a small group of us have recently started work on a film project exploring the nature of the meme, how it grew, its impact on my life and my relationship with the internet at large. In doing so, the hope is that, while answering some of the burning questions that other people still seem to have, I’ll ultimately be able to make peace with the whole thing.

@Twotafkap

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