#as someone who knows nothing about costuming and design but has dated a professional costume designer tada

[lildoodlenoodle]

Pavitr easily had the biggest glow up from comic to movie. The attention to detail was amazing.

Hobie is second, they were going in the right direction with his comic design but they gassed it with his movie design.

Lyla’s form was a really great improvement from the comics! The fur coat, the bob, the heart glasses, ugh so good.

I love Margo’s movie design. I did not like her comic suit(think it was the colors), and the movie was a big improvement with the mask too.

I like the changes they made to Porker’s design. Leaning into the cartoony art style was the correct choice.

Miles having a spray painted suit was genius, I do miss the webbed finger tips tho.

Having Peter B. rock stay at home dad chic was a good decision.

They fixed the one thing I didn’t like about Gwen’s design from the comics, those fucking slippers. Did they get around it with actual shoes? Yes. But still.

I like the direction they went with Jessica’s design. I love the tinted glasses and the chunky motorcycle.

I appreciate that they leaned into the anime/manga art style for Peni but I think I liked her comic design better.

Miguel is still a fucking menace in design and spirit. I don’t know why anyone was surprised. He has been insane in every adaptation.

On the surface Noir’s design is not bad like there is nothing wrong with it but god do I miss the patchwork mask, turtleneck, and black webbing.

[blackjack-15]

No, the Creature’s name is Fraulein’s Monster — Thoughts on: The Captive Curse (CAP)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraphs above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: CAP, mentions of SAW, mentions of ASH.

The Intro:

The obvious Frankenstein reference in the title of this meta is the only one I make in the whole meta, I swear. It was a mistake to make the monster look like Frankenstein’s Monster, but I’m not gonna drag you guys or the meta down with that.

We’re professionals here.

This is a game with rather big shoes to fill, to be honest — it’s our first game in Germany, comes right after a very well-received “haunting” game and has shades of being a “haunting” game itself, its (small bit of) marketing played off Grimm’s Tales, and Savannah’s comment about staying in a castle where she discovered that the real monster was human cruelty is directly pointing towards it. CAP and its story could have crumpled under the weight of high expectations like MED, MID, and (in a slightly more controversial opinion) SEA did, but instead it did the opposite: in nearly every way, it improved on the Faerietale Formula that SAW inspired, and added to it.

Rather than a spooky haunted faerietale with a Hidden Villain, we have instead a monster — out in the open, even — as our main villain. The difference between ghosts and monsters isn’t really important in, say, a “Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark” or “Goosebumps” book, but it’s fairly important in a mystery, and even more in a Nancy Drew mystery.

As I’ve said a few dozen times in this series — and if you’re not tired of it yet, you will be soon — ghosts are a Reality in the Nancy Drew universe; they exist, they cause trouble, and they sometimes even help the living (or at least coexist with the living).

Monsters, on the other hand, never really exist — not banshees, not werewolves, not malicious wolves with opposable thumbs and the ability to cook poisoned foods, and certainly not monsters that in no way resemble the main villain from a Universal classic horror flick. Monster in the Nancy Drew universe is a Title, not a type of creature. Whenever there’s a monster on the loose, it’s a sure sign that there’s a bitter individual somewhere looking to hurt someone — usually for a personal grudge.

Which, as it happens, is exactly what happened here.

We’re still firmly in a Faerietale game — the ‘Nancy’ games start with ASH — but I do think it’s important to note here that the girls in this game (the victims of the monster, Renate, Anja) are all shadows of Nancy. The previous victims, sharing the designation of the Girl in the Dress with Nancy, are shadows of what could happen to Nancy if she doesn’t change the fate that’s been designated for her — down to the red hair of the original Girl.

Renate is a type of detective, trying to solve the mystery of the tragedies that strike the castle through the actions of the past. And Anja — well, let’s just say that Anja and Nancy have a lot more between then than the first glance might show.

The two women are foiled, especially with their love lives. Nancy’s dating a good man — despite the obvious, glaring problems in the relationship — and so their argument (and her own selfish behavior) isn’t the end of the world, nor the end of the relationship. They stop, they assess, and — with a little help from Anja — Nancy’s determined to try a little harder, leading us straight into ASH. The big thesis statement of the game is delivered, like last game, by our villain — “There’s nothing like love to bring order to a scattered world”. Anja gives Nancy good advice: communicate, and work for what you want.

Anja, however, was not dating a good man; she encouraged him, much like Ned does with Nancy, to be better, to try harder, to really reach for what he could be — only to be cast aside as soon as all the hard work that she had put in to supporting him led to good results. Her world was not scattered before — but after Markus, there was nothing that could put it back together again.

There’s nothing like love, indeed, but when it’s the wrong kind of person…well, the message that Anja took out of it was that somebody, somewhere, should care about her. And if they weren’t going to…well, a tragedy necessitates the force of Fate, and we know what Renate says about fate:

“Fate has a habit of digging in its claws when tempted.”

The last thing I want to touch on in this introduction — which I realize is a bit heavy on themes, but so is the game — is the importance of Titles within this game. The Bürgermeister, The Castellan, The Monster, The Girl in the Dress — this game operates a lot on character tropes, like any self-respecting faerietale, and the titles go a long way to showing who each character is. Karl feels dwarfed and inadequate next to his title; Anja wanted hers so badly that she was willing to lie; the title of Monster strikes fear into the heart of the vast majority of our cast.

And the Girl? The Girl in the Dress is a symbol of helpless fate, a sacrifice to propel the narrative forward. Remember what Renate tells Nancy? “The monster, he is here for you.”

Tellingly, it’s Nancy’s changing of what exactly it means to be The Girl in the Dress that allows our faerietale to meet with a happy ending, rather than a tragedy (the ending normally brought about by Fate, in Renate’s words). In keeping the title but changing the scope of the title, Nancy figuratively beats the Monster, and saves the memory all the Girls that came before.

The Title:

The Captive Curse is, as far as titles go, a masterclass. Nearly all the titles of the 20+ numbers are fabulous, but CAP’s title is a shining star even among them. Let’s talk about the important word in the title — “Captive”.

There are a lot of things that are “captive” in this game. We have the captives of the monster, to start off with, but there’s a lot more where that came from. The residents of the Castle and the castle’s town are also captive — they’re held captive by fear, as evidenced by the doors that refuse to open even when Nancy begs them to.

Shrugging off the idea of keeping this meta even a little bit spoiler-free, I’d also add that Markus is a sort of captive of Anja — there under false pretenses, drawing a web around him to finish him off — and equally that Anja is a captive of Markus’ — the shadow of her dick ex-boyfriend hanging over her dream job, watching him profit off of being a truly terrible person.

Renate and Nancy get in on the action, too. Renate is a captive of guilt, returning to the castle to try to prevent further deaths, haunted by her sister’s early death. She’s also a storyteller — a profession famed for having a “captive audience”. Lastly, Nancy is forced into the costume rather than her own clothes — a captive of the tale that’s being spun by our major players.

The Faerietale

In SAW’s faerietale, Nancy was the visiting prince, the Knight in Shining Armor to look after and save the kingdom. In CAP’s faerietale, however, her role gets changed around — not the least of which because we discover what an actual Knight in Shining Armor really is, courtesy of Renate:

“A knight in shining armor never did nothing for nobody. He never fought. A knight in dented, scraped armor - now that’s what you want.”

This isn’t the cynical take that some might spin it into — the Nancy Drew universe is not and has never been a Nolan-style grimdark-fest, skeptical of any good deed or honest inclination — but instead a declaration that it’s what people do that makes them heroes, that makes them good, that makes them who they are, not what they are (or what they seem to be).

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in a game exploring what good a Knight in Shining Armor might be, that the series’ resident Knight appears within the context of his fight with Nancy.

Ned in the video games series is the closest to a Knight that we really get; he doesn’t make mistakes, he’s always patient and kind and understanding, and helps out the best he can without being actually on the scene. In other words, his armor has no dents, nor scrapes, not so much by his choice (excepting possibly CRY), but by Nancy’s. By constantly leaving him behind, she’s cast in him his role as Knight in Shining Armor — but, as Renate points out, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Ned has the potential to be and do more — as ASH will show us.

And yes, there’s someone in the series that fits the knight in dented, scraped armor, but this is not the time for a Francy meta. If ever there is a time for Francy meta.

The biggest thing that changes from SAW to CAP is that Nancy’s learned from last time, and starts trying to figure out the faerietale she’s in the minute it starts in earnest. When she hears Renate’s tale, she’s sure she’s figured it out — guessing it was about Renate’s sister — but we’re shown that her perception is a little off (as the girl was Renate, not her sister). This shifting up of the roles is crucial thematically to our ending, where Nancy gleefully assumes the role of the Girl in the Dress as the hero of the piece, rather than the victim that the Girl had always been.

What Nancy happens upon here I’ll cheerfully call the Power of the Storyteller. All faerietales shift and change depending on who’s telling the story — look at the thousands of versions of Cinderella had all over the world, all too old to just be a knockoff of their geographical neighbor’s story or (yes, I’ve heard this) based off the Disney property.

With Anja telling the story for the majority of the game, it’s a tale about how sometimes the “monster” (and her version of a monster, specifically) wins — and how sometimes they deserve to win, to perpetuate the faerietale as it always has been; as Renate reminds us, “when death goes to take a ride, he follows the road that serves him best.” In Anja’s mind, there must always be a Monster, and there must always be a Girl in the Dress. With Nancy taking over the story, however, it’s about how the victim doesn’t have to be the victim, and that they have the power to assume their own destiny.

In other words, they’re playing out the central conflict that Renate outlines in her first discussion with Nancy: “If our time together is a comedy, then I was brought here by coincidence. If our time is a tragedy, then it must be fate.”

Coincidence and fate are also, coincidentally (heh) the driving forces in a faerietale — except that fate is also a driving force for romance. And because romance is our Chief Concern in CAP’s story, a lot of the story is about fighting against fate. In the end, it’s a coincidence that Nancy arrives, but Anja tries to spin it into fate by making her the Girl in the Dress. It’s only when Nancy takes charge, not letting fate have its say, that she arrives at the ending and is able to best Anja.

One of the great questions that this faerietale presents is about the Monster is whether or not it ever existed. In a Faerietale, the Monster nearly always exists in some form or another, needing to be drawn out and killed by our hero(es) before the day can be saved.

Indeed, in Anja’s modern-day retelling of the faerietale, the monster doesn’t exist — at least, not in its Monstrous form. In her story, Markus is the monster, and she must put on the guise of a monster in order to defeat him — in other words, if a monster is going to win, it’s going to be her.

To quote Ned’s astute observation, “[Castle Finster] has too many monsters.”

But it’s Savannah’s words that we should look to, as she’s a Storyteller just as much as Renate is. Savannah, heavily implied to be speaking of Castle Finster, says that the monster she found wasn’t a ghost — it was human cruelty that made the castle and its history so terrifying.

So we’re faced with the question: did the monster ever exist, or was it solely bad people, stealing cattle and sheep and young girls away for their own wicked purposes? Was there truly an amorphous being roaming the countryside, or was it just a clever way to shift blame from those who would do evil unto others? Remember what Renate tells us about monsters:

“The worst monsters are self-made. They are people like you and me, but they have taken a terrible turn. They let everything awful, everything sad, take up all the breathing room in their hearts, until all they know is revenge.”

The answer I would give is that, for this faerietale, it doesn’t matter if the Monster is real or not. The concern is not the nature of the monster, it’s the people’s reaction to the idea of a monster, real or imagined, that sets off our faerietale and provides the stakes. The fear is real and palpable, and the ends of our villain, while understandable and perhaps even praiseworthy, require some downright dastardly means.

The Mystery:

We open first on a look back at a young girl in an Era Past being captured by an unseen monster in the woods near a castle…only to have Nancy drive up on the Castle Finster itself in the modern day. Nancy’s been called in by the owner of the castle, Markus, who wants any troubles with the legendary monster cleaned up before he and his Rich Investor Friends arrive.

Rather than a welcoming piece of history, Nancy is greeted with a scared, unwelcoming town, the fear of the monster looming large and cutting deep — and that’s before the Curse itself turns its eyes on Nancy, forcing her to play along as the Girl in the Red Dress, the favored victim of the monster. Those in the castle are kinder than those outside of it, but there’s still the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good, using the guise of the monster to wreak a little havoc of their own invention — and time is running out before the monster claims yet another victim…

As far as the mystery goes…I don’t like to use words like “spectacular” because let’s face it, every game has its holes, but honestly CAP’s mystery is pretty spectacular. Attention-catching, a bit sad, a bit horrific, and loaded with faerietale tropes, subversions, and themes — there’s honestly just not much wrong here, especially given the limitations of, well, making a Nancy Drew game in the first place. The writing does a masterful job at hinting at horrors that, given the rating, they can’t say out loud, while still telling a fully cohesive story that even the young players will be able to grab at and understand (if not to quite the same extent)

The Suspects:

The game begins with Lukas Mittelmeier, so perhaps we should too. Lukas is the rather precocious son of the head of security of Castle Finster, as well as being Anja’s nephew. Bright, mischievous, and a huge fan of games and pranks, Lukas makes the castle a little more interesting — as well as making Karl’s life a bit more hellish.

Unlike another youth living in a castle (coughJanecough), Lukas is bright enough to be a competent culprit…he just isn’t malicious enough. Sure, he’ll play dress-up, spook Karl a bit, and stall Nancy outside the gates of the castle, but that’s really as far as he goes. He would have been an especially poor culprit, thematically speaking, and so it’s a good thing that the game never really attempts to lead you there. Even his dressing up as the monster is more meant to lull the player (and Nancy) into letting down their guard so that the real monster is a bit scarier.

Next up is the Bürgermeister and bad-luck-magnet himself, Karl Weschler. Having encountered his doppelganger as a small child, Karl has expected — and received — bad luck for the rest of his life, and lives in fear of being the cause of unhappiness to those around him. He’s also a board game enthusiast, having developed the (incredibly fun, it should be noted) board game Raid! and enlists Nancy to help him polish it while she solves the “huge monster problem” that Markus hired her for.

As a culprit, Karl would have been interesting, but thematically a little off. It would have had to be a situation where enough bad things happened around him at the castle to make him want to shift the blame, dressing up as the monster in order to throw the punishment off of himself and onto a nebulous force. An interesting plot to be sure, but not one that fits the more sinister nature of the game.

Our charming castellan and cunning culprit, Anja Mittelmeier is next on the docket. Incredibly good at her job, polished, polite, and fiendishly dedicated, Anja keeps the castle in good running order, gives Nancy advice, and is a doting aunt — all while secretly sabotaging Markus by acting as the monster.

I have a lot to say about how good a character Anja is — which I’ll cover more in the next section — but she’s also the perfect villain. All the information you need to figure out who she is happens to be presented to Nancy pretty quickly, but none of it is in the proper context to make it obvious.  Even her line — “there’s nothing like love to bring order to a scattered world” — is sweet and romantic at the time, and rather chilling and menacing when you have the whole context of exactly what Anja is doing to ‘bring order to a scattered world’.

It seems only fitting that after Anja should come Markus Boehm, the owner of the castle and the ex-boyfriend that Anja is working for revenge against. Markus is snappish, short-tempered, obnoxious about his money, and rather boorish — though he has some of the funniest lines in any Nancy Drew game — and is guilty of a lot, though not of haunting his own castle.

Casting Markus as the villain would have made this game an entirely different faerietale, one that would have necessitated Anja becoming The Girl in the Dress rather than Nancy. It might have been a more stereotypical Nancy Drew story, but it also would have been weaker – after all, a lot of the horror in this faerietale comes from the curse having its eyes firmly on Nancy, rather than on her watching it unfold.

Finally, our most divisive character is probably Renate Stoller, a cake-loving storyteller bound to Castle Finster by a mixture of fate and history. Personally speaking, I’m a total fan of Renate; she has a lot of freedom to liken the situation to stories and to spell out the fact that all stories are ambiguous without being morally relativist or faux-deep.

As a villain, Renate would have been interesting — set to haunt the castle that has haunted her for so long and caused her pain — but it would have removed the Storyteller archetype from the game, causing the player (and Nancy) to doubt everything she’s said, which would have been a shame.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love in CAP, both big and small, so I’ll try to tackle this section with some sort of organization, rather than just gushing from point to random point.

My favorite moment in the game is (in a stunning change from 90% of Nancy Drew Games) tied between the beginning and the final confrontation. The old-time film style beginning (a great example of a “cold open” of a type of horror totally distinct from SAW’s brand of horror) through Nancy’s first discussion with Karl is tightly paced and incredibly well done, introducing our main problems, a few characters, and how Nancy is stepping into this faerietale that’s been all but prepared for her. Special shout out to Karl’s “huge monster problem” dialogue, and Lukas’ getting caught at the castle’s gates — just some really great, distinct character writing that we normally don’t get this soon into a game.

The confrontation, which is normally somewhat cheesy, sometimes awful, and nearly always ill-supported (HAU being the best/worst example of this) in a Nancy Drew game, here instead shows off Nancy’s quick thinking and almost triumphant, smug nature when she figures it all out and traps the villain. The games coming up, as I’ve mentioned above, I refer to as “the Nancy games”, as they give us a lot of insight into who Nancy Drew actually is, aside from an amateur/burgeoning professional detective, but SAW and (to a larger extent) CAP really start giving us peeks at Nancy’s character — not as an infallible main character, but as a girl with an actual personality.

My favorite puzzle in the game — and I realize that it barely counts — is quite honestly Raid. Normally, the games that HER comes up with as minigames within their games are lackluster at best and criminally annoying at worst, but Raid (along with the games in ASH which are particularly enjoyable) is fabulous; it gives us more of that faerietale vibe that the game runs on, brings in Germany’s well-deserved reputation of being the King of Board Games, and actually contains a few moments of good characterization for Karl as well.

And I’m a sucker for getting to create your own card for the game. That’s just stupid cool.

One of the things that CAP does particularly well is its characters, so let’s talk a bit about them here.

Renate, a common favorite, mostly lives up to her hype, due to her storyteller’s dialogue, status as a Sage (slightly different from the usual Sage in a Nancy Drew game, due to her backstory), and intense relatability with falling asleep after eating cake.

Lukas is one of the few child characters in the ND games that actually feels like a child, so he gets points there automatically, even without noting how charming he is. Having Nancy talk to him under the table is also gold, even with the sense that she’s just humoring him, and having him dress up as a monster in a fake out that fools nobody (and even better, is not meant from a writing standpoint to fool anyone) feels perfectly in character for a relatively unsupervised rapscallion like Lukas.

Last on the favorite character list is Anja, a character done To Perfection. It breaks my heart sometimes that she’s the villain, but her character also wouldn’t be complete without being the villain — nor would I love her so much. Anja is patient, loving, a great aunt, friendly, gregarious — and a villain. Her line when she’s talking to Nancy about how she was honest and worked hard every day, and no one cared hits me every time. Anja’s a perfect example of a character who is intensely sympathetic and quite relatable without ever having the thought that her scheme involving Nancy was even a little bit okay. She’s a villain that I’d love to have come back, whether as a villain again or as a begrudging helper.

Finally, let’s get down to the miscellany.

The dialogue in CAP is pitch-perfect, from the distinct way of talking that each suspect has, to Markus’ insults, to the one-off phone call with the pamphlet company. The game in part is so fun because the dialogue is so fun, walking the line between faerietale-style narration (Anja, Renate) and almost Buffy-speak modernity (Karl, Lukas, Markus).

The last thing I want to touch on it — yes, you knew it was coming — the fight between Ned and Nancy. Yes, I’m a Francy shipper, and I do love that Frank is the one Nancy turns to for help with the fight, but that’s not what this part is about.

First off, I love that problems that would /necessarily/ come up in a relationship like Ned and Nancy’s are brought up here; Nancy’s constant jet-setting, while a common side effect of the job she does, is also something that would cause tension — especially considering that Nancy doesn’t really tell him when she sets off for another state/country at a moment’s notice.

A thing that has become Increasingly obvious over the entire series is that Nancy is, let’s face it, not gonna win any awards for Girlfriend of the Year, and in fact might win the opposite award. Ned is constantly giving her attention, validation, helping out when she calls him, and is understanding when she cancels; for her to not give the same amount of care to him (in different ways, as everyone needs different things, of course) becomes more and more glaring as time goes on.

My firm stance on being a bit anti-Nedcy comes from the belief that Ned deserves to get as much out of a relationship as he puts in, and Nancy, as the person she is and even as the best person that she can be, just can’t provide that. Their needs as people are just too different for a relationship to be fair for either person – and, as this game demonstrates, though Ned has the shorter end of the stick, it’s not fair for either one of them.

The Un-Favorite:

There’s not a lot that goes into this section, to be perfectly honest.

The forest is probably my least favorite section of the game — the part that I consider before starting a new game over — but besides tweaking it slightly to help navigation not be quite so frustrating (see below), even the forest is a pretty good puzzle.

The bag puzzle — especially if you, like me, forget every time that you can rotate the objects in Renate’s purse — is the only other annoyance in the game, and ranks as my least favorite puzzle over the forest simply for the fact that you can use a walkthrough to navigate the forest, while you can’t use a walkthrough to do the bag puzzle for you.

Other than that, CAP is just a wholly solid game — no least favorite dialogue, no awkward moment, no point where I turn down my brightness to make it seem like This Isn’t Happening.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Captive Curse?

Honestly, the first and only change I would make is to fix the forest just slightly. I get that it’s a puzzle, but it’s not quite visually distinct enough to make it feasible for a lot of players to learn how to navigate. To fix this, I wouldn’t take out the forest, I would just make each piece of it a little more visually distinct, with more markers so that players couldn’t lose their place as easily.

There’s nothing other than that worth fixing. Even my dislike of the bag puzzle isn’t strong enough to suggest scrapping it, and it’s a type of puzzle that many people like and are quite good at — not to mention the fact that it’s not at all gamebreaking in its difficulty.

The Captive Curse is often sort of a “top middle” or just “middle” ranking for a lot of players due to the fact that it’s not quite as showy as a lot of “favorite” games, and thus can get lost in the fandom shuffle. But looking at it as both pieces and as a whole proves that this game is one of the most solid in the series sporting a great mystery, fantastic characters, and more than a little faerietale wisdom to carry to the next story.

[oikawa-tuwu]

🍬 Halloween Candy 🍬

Pairing: Gn!Reader x Tendou Satori

Rating: T

Synopsis: Tendou watches you make Halloween candy and thinks about love and the joys Halloween. Post-time skip, established relationship. (1.8k words)

Warnings: One swear, mentions of past bullying, dealing with insecurity things

(A/N: lol remember when I said I was going on hiatus?? Yeah so I was making hard candy last night and was literally slaughtered in the middle of boiling the sugar when I remembered that Tendou is a chocolatier so my lonely, Halloween-loving, and candy making self wrote this self indulgent thing. Enjoy, but its kind of a mess D: )

-

Tendou Satori’s favorite holiday is, without a doubt, Halloween.

There’s nothing quite like the buzz in the air of a brisk October 31st, children in costumes, ready to consume ungodly amounts of sugar, teenagers giggling as they leave a haunted house, only to turn right around with more cash in hand. Even adults get into the festivities, using the holiday as an excuse to drink copious amount of booze.

Its indulgent and its creepy and Tendou loves it with all of his heart.

In the past, if someone were to ask him why he liked Halloween so much, he'd just laugh and say he had a sweet tooth, because really, he didn't know how to articulate the joy that he gets from costumes. He could remember, as a kid, gleefully skipping down the aisles of a shop, flipping through the mass produced costumes on the rack until he found the perfect one.

The ones that came with masks were always a plus, too.

He supposes, looking back on it, Halloween was his favorite holiday because it was the one day where being “creepy” benefited him. It was on-brand, in-season, like the pecan pies that sit neglected in the summer months before being sold out by mid-November. And even if his hair or his gaze or his height was still terrifying, it was easier to hide behind a Batman mask. Perhaps it wasn’t a healthy way of coping, but somewhere along the way, he’d learned. He’d grown, and shifted, and costumes weren’t his favorite part of Halloween anymore.

No. This is his favorite part of Halloween. The build up to the day in question, preparing for the hordes of children coming to his apartment door, and you, standing in his kitchen, holding a candy thermometer.

It had been your idea at first, to make the candy at home and give it to the trick or treaters, rather than just handing out store bought. Of course, getting homemade candy from a stranger is usually a red-flag for parents, but not if said stranger is a somewhat C-list celebrity chocolatier, as you so kindly put it.

And it was true. There was some hesitation at first, but after a moment of putting together his face, the name on his apartment door, and the clearly professional design on the bags, parents were much more willing to accept the treats. Now, it’s a tradition of the apartment complex, and last year, he ran out of candy by 7 PM.

“You need to make more next year,” you had said, with a sort of confident finality that made him laugh. “Don’t you feel bad for the kids who got there just a little late?”

Did he feel bad?

Now that was an interesting question.

The thing was, he had been that kid. He’d gotten the short straw in life and it had been up to him to make something of it, even when others decided to cut the straw even shorter just for fun.

With an amused glint in his eye, he watches as you lean down, narrowing your eyes to read the fine print of instructions on your phone.

The kitchen is a mess, there’s no way around it, and although he’s deemed you proficient enough to be trusted with his equipment based on your past attempts at culinary efforts, he can tell you feel out of your league as you stir the molten sugar. Your cheeks are flushed from the heat and he’s certain there’s a few more hairs sticking out of place than there were ten minutes ago. Still, you square your shoulders and crack your knuckles as you read the temperatures, one oven mitt armored hand bracing the handle of the pot, and he idly thinks that the apron is officially his favorite piece of clothing on you.

Apparently, you didn't hear the door open and close, because your eyes are still trained on the soon-to-be caramel, and you let out a frustrated, "Why won't this sugar caramelize already?"

"It's stubborn like that."

He always expects you to jump at his voice. Somehow, you never do. Instead, your eyes flick up to him where he hovers in the entry-way, the barest of a smile gracing your lips.

"Welcome home," you say, pulling your eyes away from him to peek at the candy thermometer's temperature. "I feel like this sugar has been at 240° for way too long, is that normal?"

Tendou clicks his tongue, daring to venture further into the candy coated mess. "You have to be patient."

"Funny, coming from you," you smirk, but he notices the way the tension in your shoulders relax, and deep down, he knows he doesn't have the fight to even try to feel offended.

Still, he scoffs and leans against the counter next to you and puts the effort into looking offended, one hand fingering through the petals of the dying roses in a vase. "I'll have you know, I'm a very patient person."

You just give him a look. That look, specifically, with the skeptical eyebrow and wry tilt in the corner of your mouth. The look that always managed to see right through him, reaching in and sorting through each and every memory and quirk and thought and yet still managed to say I love you at the end of the night with a genuine smile.

Tendou knows you. He knows you, understands you, memorized the posture of your sleep deprivation, the quick bite of your words when you wait too long to eat dinner, the strange laugh that, to be honest, sounds more like a car backfiring, when a joke catches you particularly off your guard.

But also, on a much deeper level, he didn't understand you at all.

Why had you chosen him? Was it for the same reason you brought those half-dead roses home, saying, with a self-conscious flush, that they looked sad, dying all alone in the shop.

Was he those flowers? Bruised and beat-up and something to take pity on?

"You're too quiet," you muse, and Tendou realizes that he had been too quiet for much too long, the only sounds coming from the boiling sugar and the soft music playing over a speaker in the corner. "What's wrong?"

He doesn't know how to phrase his insecurities out loud like that, doesn't know if he even should, so instead, he asks, "Am I the roses?"

For a moment, you're silent, and he can see the way you're processing his words, toying with them until you figure out whatever metaphor or inside joke he's referencing. "I would say you're more of a lily guy, if that's what you're asking."

His next question is more blunt. "Why do you like me?"

This one surprises you. He can tell from the way you blink, just once, but also the slight curvature of your eyebrows. He wonders how long it's been since this expression was used in reaction to him.

"I don't understand," you say, finally. "Love and attraction are virtually indescribable emotions that poets and writers spend their lives trying to capture. I don't know why, exactly, but I do know that I enjoy being around you. You make me laugh, and my heart feels happy when I see you walk through that door. Isn't that enough?"

It should be, but Tendou has bad impulse control, and he can't stop the next words from falling out.

"But I'm weird."

The word weird sounds trivial. Weird is the word that girls who dye their hair and listen to indie music and post cryptic pictures on Instagram call themselves, not him. Maybe freak would have been a better word.

"And I don't like the sound of my laugh. We've all got insecurities, things that the rest of the world doesn't like about us so they force us to not like it about us. I know my voice is fine and there's nothing particularly ugly or abnormal about it when I giggle, but I can't help from hating it."

"I like your laugh," he says, and by speaking it aloud, he knows it's true, like whispering a spell that only makes him fall more in love.

"Exactly. And I like you. Weird bits and all. Keeps things interesting."

And just like that, it's gone. It shouldn't be this easy, to dismiss his fears like that, just a few confident words and a smile and suddenly years of his childhood and upbringing are null in comparison to you.

The sugar boils.

As he watches, you leave the almost-caramel on the stove to search for the pan to put it in to cool, already greased and ready for the molten sugar. It's a significantly bigger pan than last year.

When you notice his gaze, you say, "I wasn't joking about making more this year."

Tendou grins.

In high school, Ushijima briefly had a girlfriend. A cheerleader, if Tendou was remembering correctly. He wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't, he didn't pay much attention to her. But, one day, he walked past the gym and found the two of them. Ushijima was teaching her how to serve. Now, Tendou knew Ushijima was a strange person. The only thing he cared about was volleyball and his comically stoic, social ineptitude is what bonded them in the first place, but still, Tendou remembered thinking that bringing your date on your day off to play volleyball was really weird.

But, he supposed, now he understood, as one of your hands reached over to clasp his, the other, still stirring the sugar. He understood before that want, no, the need to share a passion with the one you love.

He squeezes your hand. Absent-mindedly, you squeeze back. And then he squeezes back and you squeeze back and back and forth and back and forth, until you realize the temperature hit the blessed 340° and now you're swearing like it's a prayer, oven mitt hand clasping the pot handle and pouring and hoping it didn't actually burn and-

-

The candies last until 8 PM this year.

He watches you hand the last one over to a kid dressed like some vaguely tropey children's superhero, watches that soft smile slowly warning whatever chill leeches in from the open door.

A wave and a nod to the child's mother later, you slowly shut the door, grin lingering still moments later. You turn to him, that determined gleam in your eye, and say, "We're making more next year."

Tendou laughs. "Fuck no."

But then you smile again, and he knows he can't say no, and, internally, he's already working on a timeline to get all the candy ready by the 31st.

And for some reason, the only thing he can think of is the we in your statement, and it cuts right into his heart faster than a knife as you pull him close and the words just seem to slip out faster than a well-greased cake pan.

-

"I love you."

-

"I love you too."

-

(A/N: Happy Halloween, nerds. Nowwww back to hiatus)

[365days365movies]

January 19, 2021: Léon: The Professional (Epilogue)

Hey, look! An elephant in the room! We should address that, huh?

So, recently, actress and Léon star herself Natalie Portman was interviewed about acting in this movie, and she said that the movie itself was fine to act in. It was the response to that work from...y’know what, perverts - let’s not dance around that - that she wasn’t the biggest fan of. It changed the roles she was willing to accept, and her acting style in general. Which makes absolute sense for her to do.

But now, you may understand why this film is...awkward. Because let me clarify something: this is a good movie! But, especially with relatively recent revelations from Hollywood in the last few years, you know that some people enjoyed this movie in a WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE fashion. Which is...well, again:

Because of that, this film was gotten a lot of negative attention, then and now. And, let’s also be fair here: I’m not a fan of the fact that Luc Besson put Natalie Portman in this...uncomfortable position in the first place. It’s a little squicky to be putting a 12 year-old in that context, is what I’m saying. Roger Ebert agrees, in the closing statement of his review on the movie:

But always at the back of my mind was the troubled thought that there was something wrong about placing a 12-year-old character in the middle of this action. In a more serious movie, or even in a human comedy like Cassavetes' "Gloria," the child might not have been out of place. But in what is essentially an exercise - a slick urban thriller - it seems to exploit the youth of the girl without really dealing with it.

.Yeah, I agree with that. But OK, if we take that uncomfortable aspect away from the movie (and it is possible to do so), then what did I think? Well, let’s get into that, shall we?

Recap

Cast and Acting

Strap in, this one’s gonna be long. Three parts, and a coda at the end.

OK, first I gotta talk about Léon, or rather Jean Reno as Léon. Here's the thing about these heroic bloodshed protagonists; they’re always these cold, reserved badasses with armored hearts that have been closed off by a personal tragedy, from when they were more innocent. But with Léon, we never see that tragedy; we have no idea what makes this man who or what he is. And yet, he still has dimension as a character, hidden depths within an unknown past, and also a surprising innocence injected into him. He genuinely enjoys going to see old movies, he’s teaching himself how to read, we only really see him drink milk, he cares deeply for his plant. And, before Mathilda, he’s lonely, and you actually feel for him? THis is, by the way, despite the fact that the first sequence of the film is him MURDERING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. And despite that, I really did feel for him in the end there. And while the directing and writing take a part of this, GODDAMN does Reno do an amazing job! He perfectly portrays the nuances of this character, but puts on an incredibly badass demeanor when he needs to. Reno deserves more credit as an actor in the USA, because he’s astonishingly great in his movie, seriously.

And then...then there’s Natalie Portman. See, back in the wild, wild west of the ‘90s, child actors were ALL OVER THE GODDAMN PLACE. And the vast majority of them weren’t very good, let’s be honest. But in her turn as Mathilda, awkward preteen crush and all, Portman KNOCKS it out of the goddamn park with this portrayal. And by the way...THIS IS HER FIRST ACTING ROLE. Yeah. Holy shit. She’s brilliant, and I’m a little mad that she didn’t get an award nod AT ALL for this role. She’s fantastic, seriously, it’s insane. And yeah, her character and the dynamic with Léon definitely makes me uncomfortable...but maybe it’s because Mathilda is surprisingly believable, acting with a surprise innocence of her own. Seriously...amazing job to Nathalie Portman.

If Reno was understatedly nuanced and complex, and Portman was talented and emotional, Gary Oldman was BATSHIT INSANE. And holy shit, is he a wonderfully engaging and terrifying villain. This is Oldman dialed up to...eh, 8? You get him dialed up to 10, and I’m pretty sure you get Dracula. But he’s a HELL of a lot of fun here, honestly, if also extremely creepy and frightening. He steals every scene that he’s in, with his speeches, mannerisms, and affectations. He upstages, well...EEEEVERRRYYYYYOOOOOOONNNNNE!!!

And is everybody else in here good? Yeah, they are, but they’re completely drowned out by these three. The acting in this film is wonderful all around. 10/10. I mean that, 10/10.

Plot and Writing

If I had a single word about the writing, it’d be...French. There are some lines, ESPECIALLY Mathilda’s lines about love, that definitely sound more French than American. After all, this is a French film, and the writer is Luc Besson himself! And other than that...the writing’s fine. Plot’s fine, too, straightforward and all that. I really don’t have much to say about the plot, if I’m honest. And if I had one negative thing to say...yeah, the childhood crush thing is still super uncomfortable, honestly. Still, put in context, it’s a little bit better. And I should mention that, while it’s SUPER CONTROVERSIAL here in the good old US of A, this wasn’t nearly as big of a deal in France. And I should also mention...it’s mildly autobiographical. Yeaaaaaaaah, that blonde girl in the very beginning of the movie is actually Besson’s WIFE. You know...the 17-year-old, who’d known Besson since she was 12 and he was 29, and they started dating when she was 15, and the had a child a year later, before this movie was made. Y-yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 7/10 here, nothing bad, nothing great. Basically average heroic bloodshed plotline, with some...other elements.

Directing and Action

Fun fact: Luc Besson’s reception in his home country is mixed, especially early in his career. This is because his directing style is focused far more on spectacle and bombast than it is on emotion. Definitely more American in style than French. And this movie definitely has some of that, although it’s definitely not as crazy as some of the other movies on this list. But some of the shots here are weird, some of them here are crazy cool, and most of them are just great. But this movie still focuses more on emotion and character buildup and revelations, than it does on action. Which is great, but this is Action January, so how was the action? This takes off of the gun-fu genre, with essentially all of it focused around gunplay. And the interesting thing is, while these aren’t the most bombastic action scenes, its the emotion around them that keep you on the edge of your seat and invested. So, weirdly, this might be the movie that’s integrated the action scenes with the movie’s overall emotional tone the most seamlessly. Well...of the English language movies, anyway. Overall, 8/10 here!

Production and Art Design

START SPREADING THE NEEEEEEEEEEWS, because it’s New York, New York! Most of this film was filmed on location, and it shows! As someone who grew up going to NYC on a regular basis, it definitely feels authentic to ‘90s New York. Which, of course, it is. Costume design, for Mathilda especially, is good, although one or two of her outfits feels a little over-complicated at times. Still, no complaints, really. I love Léon’s tiny glasses, and Stansfield’s suit (plain as it may be). Really, this movie is simply an authentic feeling New York, and there isn’t too much else to say about that. 8/10 again. 

Music and Editing

Music’s definitely good, including this song by Sting that we hear at the end. Editing is mostly OK, although there are some weird cuts here and there. And...I’m not sure I have much to say about this category. Oof. Sorry, honestly, this is probably a sign of good editing, since it wasn’t obvious. And as for the music, I remember it...but it was mostly overshadowed by the events of the film itself. So...7/10?

80%! And I’m satisfied with that, honestly!

This movie is built to make you a little uncomfortable while watching it. But, I still believe that it’s a movie to be watched. Good action, prominent emotional development, great acting. This one’s good, and give it a watch! 

Luc Besson, Luc Besson. You gave me a French English-language heroic bloodshed action movie about an older man saving a girl a generation or so younger than him, that also produced a well-known meme on the internet. More, please!

January 20, 2021: Taken (2008)

[thescorpioracer]

Sen Çal Kapımı 1 - Episode Recap

To be honest, this series of posts is mostly going to be a fashion roast. But DISCLAIMER! I really do love this show and Turkish TV in general, it’s just my preferred mode of media analysis is to pick things apart. 😂And I need everyone to know that I am very pro-women, and believe people should be able to dress how they want and not be judged for it or be looked down upon for it. But oh my god this wardrobe department/costumer needs to be STOPPED. I also have zero credentials to be talking about fashion, but will that stop me?

I’m going to make these posts assuming you’ve watched the show, and just comment on whatever comes up. There will be spoilers. Let’s go!

We start off with a voiceover from Eda Yıldız, an A+ romcom trope. (It wasn’t until my rewatch that I remembered that Eda used to do VOs at random intervals, and I’m kind of glad she stopped tbh.) She is a strong woman who wants to get her education and become a landscape architect/designer. She was all set to do that until- dun dun dun! - Serkan Bolat destroyed everything. 

Check out that dart board of a man (and this is the only time we see that photo there). And these outfits are probably the most normal and reasonable clothes she wears in the show. She’s a beautiful young woman, who was a college student, and now works outdoors as a florist. 10/10 outfit. 

Of course that transitions us into an epic slomo of Serkan exiting his private jet. He of course begins to berate his assistant on the phone in a way a friend described as reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada.

@teamnick​​‘s commentary back when she first started the show. 

Serkan returns to his office for the first time in 2 months after working on business deals in London. Chaos ensues: Miranda Priestly is baaaaaaack.

See... here we have some good fashion choices! We meet the girls for the first time, while they try to sneak off to their graduation without making Eda feel bad that she won’t be receiving her diploma. Melek “Melo” is dressed in a sweet dress with a bold, romantic color, which captures her personality perfectly. Ceren, the rich daughter from a family of lawyers, looks a bit more high-fashion. The dress is short but it has long sleeves and no cleavage so it works out to be chic and elegant. Fifi is unapologetically herself with her full-black, punk wardrobe. Eda is again dressed in a pretty, but casual outfit. Nicely put together for her lower-middle-class lifestyle and her job as a florist.

Enter: the plot device to get our protagonists together. Serkan’s face says it all.

We are then introduced to the main couple’s respective cars. Serkan has his 2020 BMW (though the show blocks out the copyrighted branding) while Eda’s beat up SUV is clearly unreliable. What’s that? Another plot device being introduced? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Also, I just noticed this, but for someone as uptight as Serkan, I’m surprised at how fun his suit jacket lining is. If I’m not mistaken the pattern is of a bunch of rainbow fish. #Snazzy, but they seem out of character?

Plot highlights:

Eda learns she can come back to school and finish her final year, but she’s lost her scholarship and will have to pay. She can’t.

Serkan gives his talk at the graduation (?)-- Is his talk just for architecture students? If so, why are Ceren, Fifi, and Melo there? We’ll never know. I know, I know... it’s all for the ~plot~

Eda calls Serkan out in front of everyone for taking away the scholarship that she earned from his company, Art Life. He is confused but unrepentant. She refuses to tell him her name.

She tries to deface his car with lipstick after keying the side (we never hear about the damage to his car after that). He catches her and wants to call the police, so she impulsively handcuffs them together with the plot devices from Selin’s wedding invitation sitting on his passenger seat.

They then have to go to Serkan’s urgent business meeting with an out-of-town client. Eda drives while they’re handcuffed together. Bickering ensues.

What is this? Foreshadowing? Symbolism?? Eda’s last name “Yıldız” is the Turkish word for “star” so... file that away for later.

One of my favorite parts about watching Turkish dramas is the experience of trying to decipher the fan translations. Add to the fact that Turkish only has 1 pronoun *chef’s kiss* 

Eda refuses to take the elevator to the 15th floor (we’ll learn about her claustrophobia later). Serkan is equally as stubborn, saying she owes  him for screwing up his day. But he has met his match in Eda with regards to stubbornness. They take the stairs.

More highlights:

First instance of fake dating - they need to hide the handcuffs from his client so Eda pretends she’s his girlfriend and a fellow investor.

The girls track Eda’s phone to the hotel and try to find her by asking around the premises. 

Eda charms the client into selling his land to Serkan.

We learn that Serkan is allergic to strawberries and has a lot of health anxiety. He’s a very tightly wound person.

Serkan says “Mashallah,” translator hears 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

Engin brings way too many people to open the handcuffs and chaos ensues.

I feel like nothing can do justice to the comedy of 58:45 to 1:00:00 with Fifi using a bobby pin as a lock pick. The dramatic editing is 👌🏼

Leyla gets fired for somehow causing this drama??? And she is so happy to leave that stressful workplace omg, we don’t deserve her 🥺

Serkan and Eda go their separate ways, Eda prepared to never see her enemy again, but of course her phone and purse are still in his car so she has to go to his office at Art Life and confront him again.

Serkan has found out that Whoops, Art Life did cancel the study abroad scholarships to cut costs, but his CFO did it without telling him. And Serkan is pissed, but I think mainly about the fact that Eda did have some (SOME) grounds for yelling at him in public.

Leyla then explains the nonsensical reasoning behind her being fired-but-not-fired and still working. (Spoiler alert: she never goes anywhere and she is my favorite side character to this day).

Eda: “How can I piss Serkan off?” Leyla: “Find a mistake he’s made and he will fixate on it forever. But you won’t find anything.” Eda: “Hold my beer.”

Eda walks into Serkan’s office and his meeting. She gets her purse back and they fight about him not being willing to apologize for ruining her life and education. He refuses and says she owes him an apology for embarrassing him in public (no, dude).

He wants to give her back the scholarship and make it all go away but she rightly tells him that it won’t fix her broken pride from begging the company and her university for a second chance. But somehow her calling him a heartless “Robot” is what gets to him???? And he short-circuits. Eda walks out triumphant. 

~dRaMa!~

MEANWHILE

Melo, as well as being a perfume sales girl, also works as a flight attendant and wants Eda to cover her shift (we’ll get into how that doesn’t make sense in a minute) 

Eda says no, she’s going to meet her boyfriend, Cenk, who she hasn’t seen in months and has just returned from Italy.

Enter: Selin. Serkan’s ex who he dumped a while ago and is now engaged to the heir of a hotel empire. Serkan doesn’t like this. The two of them grew up together and are set to each inherit 50% of the holding company that Serkan’s father currently runs.

Right away Selin serves us with a gender reveal level color scheme.  Personally not a fan. They confirm that Serkan is coming to her engagement party tomorrow.

Meanwhile Eda  meets up with Cenk. Her outfit is still reasonable and cute for her character. He looks mildly like a hobo and doesn’t seem to have anything going for him (I know he’s a throwaway character but the two of them really don’t have anything in common).

This creeper keeps staring at them, but Cenk tries to explain it away and says he’s busy and can’t meet her again until the day after tomorrow. Eda is disappointed but accepts this. Creeper girl remains and remains a red flag to viewers, but apparently not to Eda.

Cut to later that evening, and of course our broody main man enjoys astronomy in his free time (???) idk what he’s charting and to what purpose but okay? 

Eda finds a mini first aid kit in her purse that Serkan put there before returning it. Queue montage of them treating their respective wrists for handcuff-related injuries. #couplegoals

Of course we also needed a sepia-toned flashback to earlier that day when the handcuffs contrived their faces to get too close together. #romance

Finallyyyyyyy it’s morning again and a new day.

Since Eda can’t see Cenk (good, he’s so boring), she agrees to fill in as a flight attendant for Melo, who’s side job is for a private plane company.

Now. This should not be a thing. Eda was in college to be a landscape architect and now works as a florist for her aunt... Where has she learned any relevant skills to work as a flight attendant?? Presumably nowhere. And I really don’t think a private plane company would be so easygoing about just having a random person fill in to cover for her friend? 

But does this show care about that? What do you think...

Also, instead of the standard white shirt, black skirt uniform requirements, the girls decide that this skimpy dress and heels is fine? Hmmm

Also lol @ Melo for assuming that the client who wants jasmine tea and fruit salad is probably a woman. And her telling Eda that the PRIVATE JET COMPANY would in fact have its own tea was very random and unnecessary. 

Back at the Bolat house compound, we meet the parents: Aydan and Alptekin. We’ll see them again later. Selin’s engagement party is today. 

Meanwhile Eda is just.... being a flight attendant, I guess??? And who could possibly be the passenger she has to take care of? Take a wild guess. Of course it’s Serkan Bolat.

And of course that tiny dress (THAT ALSO HAS A LEG SLIT?? WHY?? I really don’t need to see her vagina) looks very practical and professional... not! (Hande Erçel is a gorgeous human, and the dress looks good on her, don’t get me wrong. BUT THIS IS SITUATIONALLY INCORRECT ATTIRE). Also him just folding his vest and then social distancing from it... K? 😂

Eda panics and doesn’t want Serkan to see her and runs away back to her seat pod thing - Serkan takes issue with his fruit salad for ~plot reasons~ (EDIT: I’ve been informed that it’s because there was a strawberry in his fruit salad and since he’s allergic, of course it needed to be fixed. Why doesn’t the plane have a note of that??) and comes back to find this mystery flight attendant.

Eda is very stressed out about this encounter and is also starting to have a panic attack because, surprise, she’s also claustrophobic. 

After Serkan calms her down, they have a cute/civil conversation for the rest of the flight.

When they land, Eda realizes they’re on an island 2h45min away from Istanbul and she isn’t sure what to do with herself (How did she not already know where they were going, as the FLIGHT ATTENDANT??? So may red flags with this private jet company).

Serkan convinces Eda to come with him and she can hang out at the beach while he’s at Selin’s engagement party.

At the engagement party we finally meet Selin’s fiancé Ferit. He’s sweet and non-threatening and clearly insecure about Serkan being Selin’s ex.

This dress/skirt outfit Selin is wearing isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t scream rich socialite to me. Anything with feathers seems... a bit tacky/too showy? Like someone pretending to be rich? Idk, this outfit isn’t one I’m going to really take a stand on.

Does this engagement party warrant being a 2h45 min flight away? No. They try to explain it away as the couple wanting to have something small and private, even though they also invite the press?? But okay whatever, as long as Serkan and Eda cross paths again, I suppose.

Kaan Karadağ has been mentioned a couple times in passing, but now we finally meet our “villain.” Ferit’s friend, and Serkan & Selin’s childhood acquaintance, who has it out for Serkan bc he somehow bankrupted Kaan’s dad? Idk and I don’t really care but tl;dr they’re enemies. 

Another thing I love about Turkish dramas is the censoring. Like, they’ll allow alcohol to be on screen, but they won’t say the word and they’ll just blur out the bottle and any liquid that we’d assume is alcoholic 😂

In the evening, Serkan is tired and wants to leave and Ferit snidely jokes about how Serkan is too picky to have a fiancé of his own. Serkan flashes back to 1 entire day ago when he and Eda pretended to be dating at his business meeting, and says that actually he is engaged to someone and then peaces out.

Serkan finds Eda on the beach, and they are preparing to leave when a crowd of people (Selin, Ferit, and Kaan mainly), arrive to get a peek at Serkan’s new “fiancé.” Eda very reluctantly plays along (good thing she has that unnecessarily sexy “work” dress to help her look the part) and Serkan notices that for the first time ever, Selin is jealous of another woman. #drama

After they finally escape the crowd, Serkan makes an annoyed Eda an offer: Pretend to be his fiancé for the 2 months leading up to Selin’s wedding so he can get them to break up and prevent Ferit marrying into the company. In return, he will pay all the fees to help her complete her last year of studies in Italy.

Eda refuses, stating that she doesn’t want anything from him, and besides she has a boyfriend (Sure Jan; Cenk is such a joke). They have it out and then fly back to Istanbul. But of course the gossips at the engagement have spread the news of Serkan’s new woman so the paparazzi corner them at the airport when they land. 

So glad that we got to see this random mechanic find out the news (???)

They escape the cameras and Serkan takes her home, saying that Art Life has a press conference tomorrow, and she should come so he can save face and tell everyone that she was his assistant accompanying him for work to the party. Eda agrees. 

It should also be mentioned that Serkan still doesn’t know her name at this point?? She refused to tell him and Engin still hasn’t sent him the names of the scholarship candidates so it’s a bit miraculous that their relationship was at all believable.

The next day, Cenk wants to meet but Eda has to go to the press conference. The girls come too for whatever reason, and Melo is convinced that Cenk wants to propose. Eda just lets that fantasy take hold (why tho?), and Cenk shows up unexpectedly right before the press conference and takes Eda into the nearby hotel’s cafe so they can talk.

Eda seems ready for a proposal (they haven’t seen each other or really communicated in months??) but Cenk wants to break up. Eda is shocked (???) but then Cenk mentions that he has a new girlfriend from Italy that he adores, and oh by the way, it’s the creepy girl from the other night who also happens to be here right now?

Okay fine, I guess??? Cenk: “She’s doesn’t speak Turkish” Girlfriend: *clearly a Turkish actress*

Eda is upset that he brought his jealous girlfriend with him to break up with her and says something about how actually, she’s seeing Serkan Bolat now (maybe it’s just me being someone who doesn’t follow tabloids, but are business people really that popular in every day society where everyone knows who they are?). Cenk laughs at Eda, saying that everyone wants to be with Serkan Bolat, and that she’s bluffing.

Eda makes an impulsive decision, and walks away, over to where Serkan has started the press conference. And seals their fate as fake dating in the public eye.

Queue confetti. No really.

And there we have it. That’s the episode!

In all seriousness, it’s a pretty great pilot, especially for a romcom. It hits all the right beats, includes enough tropes, and tells us a lot about what we should expect in the episodes going forward. And no matter how much I make fun of it, I really do enjoy this show! It’s been such a nice distraction from Current Events. I’ve spent a lot of time watching these episodes just saying “oh my god” out loud to myself as I watch all of the cute/romantic gestures that give me a lot of second hand embarrassment (I forget that PDA makes me kinda uncomfortable 😂).

There wasn’t actually that much terrible fashion in this episode, which I didn’t notice until my rewatch. If I continue with this series of posts, I’m hoping they’ll end up being less plot-centric, and more about the situationally inappropriate outfits and strange subtitling choices. 

See you next time? 

[dakotacrisis]

Transferred (7)

Kagami and Marinette are adorable besties and no one can change my mind.

---

Today was the day! Marinette was going over to Kagami’s house to work on their project. She had been rehearsing what all she was going to say to her when she got there. Marinette really wanted this to go well. Now if only she could keep her cool and not get tongue tied while speaking and everything should be fine.

Marinette arrived at the address Kagami had sent her. It wasn’t what she had expected. It was a rather modern looking house with smooth pristine white walls and large windows. It didn’t really seem to match the brick and wrought iron architecture of the rest of the city. She rung the door bell and waited until Kagami answered.

“Good afternoon, Marinette, I hope you didn’t have trouble finding the house.” Kagami smiled at her. She was dressed in a pair of dark grey sweatpants and a t-shirt with a cartoon character’s face on it. Seeing how casual Kagami was Marinette was starting to think she was overdressed in her sundress and ankle booties.

“Hey, Kagami, I found it just fine.” She stepped inside, “Wow it looks so much bigger in here.”

The house was simply designed with lots of open space in all directions. Some pictures lined the walls and a couple of houseplants rested in the corners but besides that it was pretty plain.

“Can’t have too much stuff crowding the hallways for mother.” Kagami said, “Oh, can you take your shoes off? I have a pair of slippers you can wear.”

“Not a problem. My mom used to try to implement the same thing at our house but with how much running in and out we do she gave up.” Marinette stepped out of the ankle booties she had put on and wiggled her feet into the slippers Kagami had handed her.

“Can I ask who that character on your shirt is?” Marinette asked.

“Oh that’s Pucca. She’s the main character from this TV show I was obsessed with as a kid. Kinda still am.” Kagami looked at Marinette with a chuckle, “Kinda looks like you with the dark hair tied up in red ribbons.”

“New Halloween costume idea.” Marinette followed Kagami into the living room and sat down.

They started unloading their project materials. “What is up with that empty room we passed on our way in here?”

“Practice room. When the weather is bad it is where I practice fencing. It was where I usually practiced all the time before I convinced mother to let me start training outside at different parks. Had to convince her the open air and city noise was better for getting me accustomed to fighting in front of noisy crowds.”

“Got a pretty short leash as a kid, huh?”

“That was last year.”

“Oh,” Marinette shifted in her seat, “Kagami, I am so sorry. I didn’t--”

“Don’t be. It was a short leash.” she made a little choking gesture that made both of them laugh. “Now, where were we on the project?”

Marinette relaxed and looked over her checklist of project hit points. “We finished the list of laws and regulations in class and were starting on the essay. At some point we are also going to draw the map of the island.”

“You’re the more artistic one if you wanted to do that part and I’ll construct the essay from our notes.”

“But that seems like so much more work for you.”

“If we collaborate on it then I feel our different styles of writing may clash and it will look a lot less neat than one person writing it consistently. Also, don’t take this the wrong way but, I wanna make sure it gets finished on time. Your schedule of chaos may impede that.”

Her mouth dropped open. “My schedule is not chaotic.”

Kagami arched a single eyebrow at Marinette. “Sure. What are you doing after we finish up here?”

“Go home and finish the rest of my homework, research water flowers, finalize the design I want to paint on my blouse, call Nanette, eat dinner, I need to get back to Jagged’s assistant Penny about if I can help design a new t-shirt for his tour, I haven’t watered my flowers yet today too, then I…” When she listed it all out like that is did seem pretty packed, “Okay I see your point.”

“Don’t worry about the essay. We’ll write down what the values and culture of the island is like and then I’ll piece it together.” She assured her. “Sound fair?”

“I suppose.” Marinette still felt like she was getting off easy in terms of the workload.

“Also, Marinette,” Kagami said, “Don’t overwork yourself.”

Marinette smiled at her and the two got to work. Kagami was a very diligent and straightforward worker. No surprise there seeing how she is in life. Which made it almost impossible to find a place to bring up the Adrien issue.

Marinette cleared her throat and turned fully to Kagami, “Hey, I wanted to say something.”

“Go ahead.” Kagami kept her gaze down on her notebook.

“You got a bathroom around here?” Marinette kicked herself for chickening out.

“Down the hall, first door on your right.” Kagami pointed, not looking up from her notes.

“Thanks.” Marinette got up and went down to the bathroom. After locking the door she opened her purse to let Tikki out.

“Is something the matter?” Tikki asked.

“No, just wanted to chat.” Marinette leaned against the sink. “How you been? Anything new?”

“Marinette,” Tikki flew up to eye level, “You’re just putting off talking to Kagami about Adrien. There isn’t going to be any better scenario to do it so you might as well go out there and bring it up now. The sooner you Ladybug-up, the sooner it’ll all be over.”

“Ladybug-up? Is that supposed to be like man-up or--”

“Marinette!” Tikki poked her nose.

“Alright! I’m going!” Marinette snapped, “You know you are really cranky when you miss your after school cookie.”

Marinette left the bathroom and walked back to the living room. Kagami was still working ever steadily on the project. “Ladybug-up,” Marinette whispered to herself and entered the room again.

“Hey, Kagami,” Marinette sat down next to her, “Can we talk about something?”

“Get lost on the way to the bathroom?” Kagami smirked.

“No, nothing like that. And it isn’t about the project either.”

This grabbed her attention. Kagami stopped writing and diverted her entire attention to Marinette. “You have my attention.”

“Okay, perfect,” Marinette took a deep breath, “Well, the thing is, I um--I wanted to say--it’s not a big deal or anything but uh...drat.”

Kagami was patient and didn’t push her to get to the point which was appreciated.

“Alright, there’s no easy way to segway into this so I’m just gonna go for it.”

“Please do.” She nodded.

“You and I both like Adrien and every time someone mentions him things between us get weird and it makes me really uncomfortable because I really like you and I don’t think a crush on the same guy should ruin the friendship we have.” Oh by the powers above Marinette felt like that simultaneously took three years off her life while also lifting a huge weight off her shoulders.

Kagami wasn’t saying anything. Her composure seemed to have slipped a notch and her big brown eyes were blown wide. ‘Please say something!’ Marinette screamed in her mind. ‘Anything!’

“Well,” Kagami looked away, “That was...not what I was expecting you to say. But I’m glad you said it.”

“Really?” Marinette didn’t dare relax yet.

“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it a great deal too.” She tugged at the hem of her t-shirt, “I know that you and Adrien have known each other longer and he thinks a great deal of you. He got so concerned at the ice rink when you left. Seeing how quickly he came to your aid made me a tad envious.”

“He’s like that with everyone really.” Marinette tried to keep her emotional distance, “He’d be there in an instant for one of his friends.”

“But when one of those friends has a crush on him?” Kagami probed.

“It’s not like he notices.” Marinette clenched her hand around her pencil, “In truth, it got to be more hurt than it was worth at one point. I almost gave up on him completely in terms of romance.”

“Why?”

“You.” Marinette felt her face grow hotter, “You two get along so well and have a lot in common. When he came up to me asking for advice on how to ask you on a date it crushed me but I said yes because I want to see him happy. Whether that be with me or you or someone else.”

“It probably also helped that you had a cute older guy mooning over you the entire time we were at the rink.”

“Luka. It is a lot easier with him, that’s for sure.” Marinette shook the thought from her head, “We’re getting off track. We were supposed to be talking about how our crush on Adrien is affecting our day to day interactions.”

“Right. Yes.” Kagami straightened, “If we’re being brutally honest then I should say that I feel a little threatened by you in that regard. I’ve done everything short of confessing to Adrien and still I feel like he keeps looking back at you.”

“Threatened by me? How? You’re so confident and cool all the time. Not to mention that you’re insanely pretty. You’re like Mulan made real!”

“Are you kidding?” Kagami scoffed, “How many passions do you excel at? You can create just about anything and already have major professional contacts in different industries. Also, you wanna talk about pretty? Have you looked in a mirror recently? You little blue eyed, button nosed, cream puff! How am I supposed to compete with the definition of a cinnamon roll?”

The two girls stared at each other before bursting into laughter.

“Oh, wow,” Marinette held her belly, “A cinnamon roll? Seriously?”

“Are you serious? Confident and cool all the time?”

“You are!”

“I can’t even muster up the courage to talk to my classmates in a social capacity half the time. For class or fencing I have no problem but if it is just me trying to be casual then…” Kagami trailed off. Their laughing fit flitting away into a dark hole of insecurity and awkwardness.

“Kagami, look at us,” Marinette rested a hand on her shoulder, “We’re friends. Nanette and Quinn and Adrien are all your friends too. There is nothing for you to be nervous about. Not in front of us. Not in front of anyone.”

“We are friends.” Kagami sniffed, “And I don’t want Adrien to come between us.”

“Neither do I.”

“But I also don’t want to stop pursuing him.”

“I don’t want you too either. Just like I don’t want to stop my pursuit of him. But I think we can rope that off as its own entity.” Marinette could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“You mean the both of us keep on crushing on Adrien and try to date him but keep it civil between us.”

“Exactly. No sabotage. No jealousy. And if one of us does get to date him then we will back off and be happy for the other. Sound good?” Marinette stuck out her hand.

“Sounds perfect.” Kagami shook it. “I am so glad we got that out of the way.”

“You cannot even imagine. I was so stressed about bringing it up because it never seemed like the right moment and I didn’t want to run the risk of making you angry or ruining things further.”

“And I didn’t want to scare you off. I know I can be intimidating sometimes but I like you and I just wanted this whole uncomfortable part of our lives to disappear.”

“It’s over now.” Marinette cast her eyes down to the coffee table littered with their project supplies, “Unlike this major project we have to present in a couple days. We should probably get back to that.”

“Oh geez, I didn’t realize how long we were talking. Hand me the notes you made on the culture of our island.”

Now panicked and pressed for time before Kagami’s mother came home the two girls raced to make up for the time they had lost. By the end all that was left to do was for Marinette to take the rough draft of the map they had constructed and make it neater while Kagami ironed out their essay. They said goodbye and Marinette made Kagami promise that the next night they had free they were having a sleepover.

Marinette caught a bus home and took a few minutes to relax in her room before she jumped onto the list of other things she needed to do.

“I’m glad you worked things out with Kagami,” Tikki was sitting on Marinette’s knee munching on a cookie, “I knew the two of you would make great friends.”

“I’m more thankful that it’s over with. I never want to have a conversation like that again for at least the next year.” Marinette reached for a cookie off the tray by her computer. “Hm…”

“What is it?” Tikki perked up again. “Wave of inspiration?”

“Sorta,” Marinette booted up her computer and started searching. “Kagami is gonna love this!”

---

“And you’re sure that we can do this?” Adrien was on the phone with Chloe. Usually at this time he was talking to Marinette but Chloe had brought something to his attention that was pretty dire.

“When have you ever known me to fail?” Chloe bragged.

“It’s not that I don’t doubt you, Chloe.” Adrien was pacing his room, “But are you sure there isn’t anything I can do to help?”

“I’ve already explained your part in this, Adrikinz. Don’t worry about a thing and keep Dupain-Cheng’s nose out of this. I’ll call you when I have an update.”

“Can’t I at least hint at it?”

“Adrien,” Chloe’s tone was warning.

“Fine. I’ll keep my lips sealed. Goodnight, Chloe.”

“Sweet dreams, Adrien.”

They hung up and Adrien slumped onto his couch. He didn’t like the idea of keeping things from Marinette but this was a pretty big deal. Hopefully it would all work out in the end.

---

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (8)

[insanityclause]

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

A Director Making His Mark in More Ways Than One

LONDON — The director Jamie Lloyd was giving me a tour of his tattoos. Not the Pegasus on his chest or the skeleton astronaut floating on his back, though he gamely described those, but the onyx-inked adornments that cover his arms and hands, that wreathe his neck, that wrap around his shaved head.

When I asked about the dragon at his throat, he told me it had been “one of the ones that hurt the least,” then pointed to the flame-licked skulls on either side of his neck: his “covert way,” he said, of representing drama’s traditional emblems for comedy and tragedy.

“I thought maybe it’d be a little bit tacky to have theater masks on my neck,” he added, a laugh bubbling up, and it’s true: His dragon would have eaten them for lunch.

It was early December, and we were in a lounge beneath the Playhouse Theater, where Lloyd’s West End production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring James McAvoy in a skintight puffer jacket and his own regular-size nose, would soon open to packed houses and critical praise.

Running through Feb. 29, and arriving on cinema screens Feb. 20 in a National Theater Live broadcast, “Cyrano” — newly adapted by Martin Crimp, and positing its hero as a scrappy spoken-word wonder — capped a year that saw Lloyd celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

In London last summer, his outdoor hit “Evita” traded conventional glamour for sexy grit, while his radical reinterpretation of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” starring Tom Hiddleston, was hailed first in the West End, then on Broadway. Ben Brantley, reviewing “Betrayal” in The New York Times, called it “one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.”

When Time Out London ranked the best theater of 2019, it gave the top spot jointly to all three Lloyd productions, saying that he “has had a year that some of his peers might trade their entire careers for.”

Lloyd, who is 39, did not spring from the same mold as many of those peers. There was for him, he says, no youthful aha moment of watching Derek Jacobi onstage and divining that directing was his path. Epiphanies like that belonged to other kids, the ones who could afford the tickets.

If there is a standard background for a London theater director — and Lloyd would argue that certainly there used to be — that isn’t where he came from, growing up working class on the south coast of England, in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

The first time I laid eyes on him, chatting in the Playhouse lobby after a preview of “Cyrano,” he was the picture of working-class flair — the gold pirate hoops, the pink and black T-shirt, the belt cinching high-waisted pants.

He looks nothing like your typical West End director. Which of course is precisely the point.

What’s underneath

“It’s quite often said of him,” McAvoy observed by phone, once the reviews were in, “that he strips things away or he tries to take classical works and turn them on their head. I think he’s always just trying to tell the story in the clearest and most exhilarating way possible.”

The “X-Men” star, who put the number of times he’s worked with Lloyd in the past decade at a “gazillion,” calls theirs “probably one of the most defining relationships that I’ve had in my career.”

Yet Lloyd himself is on board with the notion that his assertively contemporary stagings pare back stifling layers of performance history to lay bare what’s underneath.

Like the tiger and dragons that he had emblazoned on his head just last May, though, the unembellished nature of his shows — as minimalist in their way as his tattoos are the opposite — is a relatively recent development.

Lloyd’s first “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Douglas Hodge in 2012, was also his Broadway debut. It was, he said, “absolutely the ‘Cyrano’ that you would expect,” with the fake nose, the hat, the plume, the sword-fighting.

There is, granted, sword-fighting in the new one — but the audience has to imagine the swords.

Lloyd’s productions, including a lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Passion” in 2010, long marked him as a hot young director on the rise. But he sees in some of his previous work a noisy tendency toward idea overload.

The pivot point came in 2018, with a season that the Jamie Lloyd Company — which he formed seven years ago with the commercial producing powerhouse Ambassador Theater Group — devoted to the short works of Harold Pinter. The playwright’s distillation of language forced Lloyd to match it with his staging.

That immersion led to what the director Michael Grandage — one of Lloyd’s early champions, who tapped him at 27 to be his associate director at the Donmar Warehouse — called Lloyd’s “absolute masterpiece.”

“I had quite a lot of ambition to do a production of ‘Betrayal’ in my life,” Grandage said. “And then when I saw Jamie’s, I thought, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t ever, ever want to direct this play.’ Because that’s, for me, the perfect production.”

Playing dress-up

Charm is a ready currency in the theater, but Lloyd’s is disarming; he seems simply to be being himself, without veneer. Like when I fact-checked something I’d read by asking whether he was a vegan.

“Lapsed vegan,” he confessed immediately, with a tinge of guilt about eating eggs again.

Pay no attention to any tough-guy vibe in photos of him; do not be alarmed by the sharp-toothed cat on the back of his head. In conversation, Lloyd comes across as thoughtful and unassuming, with an animated humor that makes him fun company. If he speaks at the speed of someone with no time to waste, he balances that with focused attentiveness.

His father, Ray, was a truck driver. His mother, Joy (whose name is tattooed on his right forearm, near the elbow), cleaned houses, took in ironing and ran a costume-rental shop, where young Jamie would sneak in to dress up as the children’s cartoon character Rainbow Brite.

“It’s very embarrassing,” he said, squelching a laugh.

Seeing professional theater wasn’t an option then for Lloyd, whose grown-up passion for expanding audience access — one of the things he has made himself known for in the West End — grew out of that exclusion. His company has set aside 15,000 free and 15,000 £15 tickets for its current, characteristically starry three-show season, which will also include Emilia Clarke in “The Seagull” and Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House.” At the 786-seat Playhouse, that adds up to just over 38 full houses.

Lloyd, who was studying acting at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts when he decided he wanted to direct, found his way to theater as a child by acting in school shows and local amateur productions. Twice he was cast as a monkey; in “The Wizard of Oz,” thrillingly, he got to fly.

The details of his early days have always been colorful — like having a clown as his first stepfather, who performed at children’s parties under the stage name Uncle Funny. But Lloyd is quick to acknowledge the darkness lurking there.

“It sounds a little bit like some dodgy film, because he was actually a really violent man,” he said. “And there were times where he was very physically abusive to my mum. There was a sort of atmosphere of violence in that house that was really uneasy. And yet masked with this literal makeup, but also this sense of trying to entertain people whilst enacting terrible brutality behind the scenes.”

This is where he locates his own connection to Pinter’s work.

“A lot of that is that the violence is beneath the surface,” he said. “And on the top there is this sort of, what I call a kind of topspin, a layer of cover-up.”

Long relationships

Lloyd was still at drama school when he staged a production of Lapine and William Finn’s “Falsettoland” that won a prize: assistant directing a show at the Bush Theater in London. Based on that, Trevor Nunn hired him, at 22, to be his assistant director on “Anything Goes” in the West End — a job he did so well that Grandage got word of it and hired him to assist on “Guys and Dolls.” While Lloyd was doing that, he also began directing in his own right.

The costume and set designer Soutra Gilmour, who has been a constant with Lloyd since he cold-called her for his first professional production, Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” said theirs is an easy relationship, with a “symbiotic transference of ideas.” Even their creative aesthetics have evolved in sync.

“We’ve actually never fallen out in 13 years,” she said over mint tea on a trip to New York last month, just before “Betrayal” closed. “Never! I don’t even know how we would fall out.”

Of course, the one time she tried to decline a Lloyd project five years ago, because its tech rehearsals coincided with the due date for her son’s birth, he told her there was no one else he wanted to work with. So she did the show, warning that at some point she would have to leave. Now, she says, he understands that she won’t sit through endless evening previews, because she needs to go home to her child.

Lloyd and his wife, the actress Suzie Toase (whose name is tattooed on one of his arms), home-school their own three boys (whose names are tattooed on the other). Their eldest, 13-year-old Lewin, is an actor who recently played one of the principal characters, the heroine’s irresistible best friend, on the HBO and BBC One series “His Dark Materials,” whose cast boasts McAvoy as well.

Enter the child

Lloyd’s interpretation of “Betrayal,” a 1978 play that recounts a seven-year affair, imbued it with a distinctly non-’70s awareness of the fragility of family — the notion that children are the bystanders harmed when a marriage is tossed away.

Its gasp-inducing moment came with the entrance of a character Pinter wrote to be mentioned but not seen: the small daughter of the couple whose relationship is imperiled. In putting her onstage, Lloyd didn’t touch the text; it was a simple, wordless role. With it, he altered the resonance of the play.

To me, it seemed logical that Lloyd’s production would have been informed by his experience as a husband and father — and maybe also as a child in a splintering family. How old had he been, anyway, when his parents split up?

“Five,” Lloyd said. “The same age as the character would be.” He paused. “Oh God, yeah, fascinating. I’d not thought about that. Exactly the same age.”

If that fact was of more than intellectual interest to him, he didn’t let on. He volunteered a memory, though — of being a little one “amongst these kind of big giants, and I guess what we can now see as the mess of their lives.”

Blazer-free

Doing “Betrayal” in New York, Lloyd was struck by how eager Americans were to chat about his tattoos. Still, he told me after I texted him a follow-up question about them, he hadn’t expected his appearance to be such a talking point in this story.

It’s not just idle curiosity. It’s about what the tattoos signify in a field where, in Britain as in the United States, the top directors tend to have grown up very comfortably. It’s about who is welcome in a particular space, and who gets to be themselves there.

For a long time after Lloyd started working in the theater, he wore a blazer every day: a conscious attempt to conform in an industry where he felt a nagging sense of difference.

“Every other director at the time was from an Oxbridge background,” he said, “and looked and sounded a particular way. I spent a long time pretending to be like them.”

It was a performance of sorts, with a costume he donned for the role.

It was only about seven or eight years ago — around the time he left the Donmar and started putting together his own company — that he stopped worrying about what people might think if he looked the way he wanted.

“My dad had tattoos” was the first thing he said when I asked him about his own.

“I guess it’s partly getting older,” he mused, “but it’s just sort of going, ‘You can’t pretend to be someone. You’ve got to be who you really are, in every way.’”

The tattoos that have gradually transformed him are from a different aesthetic universe than his recent work onstage. Yet the impulse, somehow, is the same.

In shedding the blazer, in inking his skin, Lloyd has peeled back layers of imposed convention to show who’s underneath.

And should you spot him at the theater, where he is hard to miss, you’ll notice that he looks just like himself.

[marcloveskylie]

Kylie Minogue Sunday Times interview in full. (Thanks to Darren Nixon)

Kylie Minogue interview: the pop star talks love, regret and new beginnings ahead of playing the Glastonbury ‘legends’ slot

Kylie Minogue is glowing. Of course she is. As the blue-eyed, blonde princess of pop music and golden girl of pop culture, idolised by millions since the 1980s, Minogue, I imagine, floats around in a perpetual state of looking luminous. She has also been dancing in front of our photographer for an afternoon and, as she puts it, “should be glowing after all that make-up!” It’s not just the make-up. On the brink of releasing a new album, the gig of her career, her 51st birthday and with the thrill of a new man, she is happy. “I could say nothing and you could read everything,” she laughs, pointing to her smiling face. “I’ve met someone who I feel good with. It feels right.”

Post-shoot, Minogue sits upright and cross-legged on a sofa in our east London studio, her 5ft frame wrapped in a barely-there slip dress. Much has been written about her dabbles with Botox, something she admitted in 2009, but today she looks beautiful and natural — faint lines on her face, yet still miles younger than 50. She speaks so softly that I strain to hear her and she answers many questions with a giggle. On the surface, dainty and delicate. Underneath, nerves of steel. “None of this was handed to me,” she says, “but this was my destiny. I was meant to do it.”

The first music I remember was a 1989 VHS tape of Kylie’s videos. Aged five, I watched nothing else for months. Fever (2001) and Aphrodite (2010) — the CDs scratched from overuse — made up much of the soundtrack to my clubbing twenties. Interviewing her is an excruciating test, as I attempt to maintain professionalism while trying not to touch her face. (Full disclosure: when we hug at the end, I scream a bit. She doesn’t mind.) But aren’t we all Team Kylie? In 2005, when, at the age of 36, she revealed her breast cancer diagnosis, support from fans and the press came in floods. When her highly public relationships end, it is always her the world sides with. She is, perhaps, the only non-Brit considered a “national treasure” by the tabloids — The Sun ran a campaign in the early Noughties to have her bottom listed as a World Heritage Site on the grounds it was an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Brand Kylie has mastered the near impossible: triumphing for three decades, with gold- and platinum-certified records, scandal-free and to global adoration. She’s still considered both a reigning disco diva and a bubbly, Aussie girl next door. Underestimate her at your peril, though. Being Kylie, she says, “takes a lot of work, graft and insecurity — not always what the wrapped-up end product looks like. There have been times when I’ve thought, ‘I just can’t.’ But you’ve got to take the knocks because they’re always coming. It ain’t all roses.” A pause. “But maybe otherwise it wouldn’t be as sweet in the end.”

She values her private life as “precious”, and admits that she has “sacrificed some anonymity”, no doubt because her romances have been tabloid fodder for years. Her most high-profile relationship was with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence from 1989 to 1991. In 1997, long after they broke up, he committed suicide. For four years, she dated the French actor Olivier Martinez, who supported her through her cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy (“Olli was there all the time,” she said in 2006). They broke up in 2007, but were rumoured to have reignited their romance in 2017, claims that she has never addressed. Then there was an engagement to the British actor Joshua Sasse. The two started dating in 2015 and that December she told Desert Island Discs that Sasse, then 28, was “my love”. They announced their engagement in February 2016, but broke up 12 months later; last September, he married an Australian entrepreneur. It strikes me as sad, but her steeliness quickly reappears.

You’ve had your heart broken, I begin. “I don’t know about heartbroken,” she flashes. “I’ve made mistakes.” Such as? “I regret lying to myself. Like, ‘This is OK,’ and doing the merry dance. When that honest bit inside of you knows, but you’re busy covering it up? I regret doing that. It’s not fair on yourself. And yet I think we’ve all been there, we’ve all done it. But I don’t see myself doing it again. I’ve met someone who I feel good with.” She has been dating Paul Solomons, the 45-year-old creative director of British GQ, for just over a year. When talk turns to him, she lights up. “I can feel my face going,” she says. “People say, ‘Your face changes when you talk about him,’ and it does. Happiness. He’s an inspiring, funny, talented guy. He’s got a real-life actual job! It’s lovely.”

Their weekends are generally spent in her Knightsbridge home, watching documentaries on Netflix — “We liked the Ted Bundy Tapes. I was too scared to watch them on my own” — or listening to podcasts — “Have you heard Dear Joan & Jericha [Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine’s mock agony-aunt podcast]? I’ve literally creased myself to that, it’s so inappropriate.” He does most of the cooking. “He’s got me cooking too, actually. He’s the first to do that. It can no longer be the family joke that I can’t cook.” Her family are all still in Australia. Her parents, Ron and Carol, worked as an accountant and dancer respectively, and her younger sister, Dannii, followed in Kylie’s showbiz footsteps as a pop star. She also has a younger brother, Brendon. They are a close family who text daily and speak frequently. I imagine they are overprotective about any new boyfriends. Minogue tells me that the first time Solomons met her clan was spending last Christmas with them. “They [already] could tell I was good within myself. They liked him before they met him, and they liked him more after they met him.”

Her Australian accent is still distinctive, but she has lived in London since the early 1990s, when Soho was her stomping ground. “I was really deep in London nightlife back then,” she says. Now, generally, the only time she’s up until the early hours is when she’s on tour. Her last big night out was her 50th birthday party, a year ago, at Chiltern Firehouse, complete with performances by Rick Astley and Jake Shears. “I went to bed at about 5am, but probably had no more than a glass of champagne all night. I was talking and dancing and high on life. The icing on the cake was that I had my special someone to share it with.”

It’s remarkable that Minogue has the stamina to dance until 5am at an age when many women are experiencing the menopause. Indeed, she’s already been there, done that. As is common with younger breast cancer patients, her menopause was medically induced when she had treatment, to suppress her oestrogen levels. On Desert Island Discs, she stated that she would love to start a family. It’s a difficult subject to broach, but I wonder if she feels the chance to have children has passed. “I can definitely relate to that,” she answers. “I was 36 when I had my diagnosis. Realistically, you’re getting to the late side of things. And, while that wasn’t on my agenda at the time, [cancer] changed everything. I don’t want to dwell on it, obviously, but I wonder what that would have been like. Everyone will say there are options, but I don’t know. I’m 50 now, and I’m more at ease with my life. I can’t say there are no regrets, but it would be very hard for me to move on if I classed that as a regret, so I just have to be as philosophical about it as I can. You’ve got to accept where you are and get on with it.”

Born and raised in Melbourne, she attended acting school in her home town and became a superstar at 18 as Charlene in the Australian soap Neighbours. Charlene’s wedding to Jason Donovan’s Scott in 1987 was witnessed by 20m viewers in the UK. Despite no formal singing or dancing training, she left the show to pursue music, and her debut album, Kylie, released in 1988, was No 1 in the UK for six weeks. She has since released 13 more studio albums, as well as dozens of compilation, live and remix records. Next month she is releasing Step Back in Time, her latest greatest hits album. All the big hitters are on there: Spinning Around, I Should Be So Lucky, Confide in Me. She doesn’t have a favourite, but points to Where the Wild Roses Grow (1995) and All the Lovers (2010) — “just glorious”. She had to brace herself, she says, to listen to some of the older tracks. “I recorded Locomotion when I was 18 or 19. I was so young and I felt so young.” She shakes her head in bewilderment.

Minogue has just finished the Golden Tour, six months of shows in Europe and Australia. “I don’t know how much time I’ve got before my showbiz hips and knees start to protest,” she laughs. “They’ll be like, ‘You’ve been treading those boards for a long time, we think you should slow down a bit.’ ” This summer, along with gigs in London, Manchester and even Scarborough, she will take to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in the Sunday afternoon “legends” slot, previously filled by the likes of Dolly Parton, Barry Gibb and Lionel Richie. It is particularly poignant as she was set to perform there in 2005, but her cancer diagnosis meant that she had to pull out. She sang at the festival in 2010, as a guest of the Scissor Sisters, but has never performed solo. “I’m bound to cry,” she says. On stage? “It’s going to happen. When I was meant to be there, I watched it from Australia. I was dealing with much bigger things back then, but when I’m there it will take me back to when I wasn’t there. But I’ll work through that.”

She confirms there will be guests joining her on stage, but won’t tell me who. Dolce & Gabbana designed the Greek goddess-inspired costumes for her Aphrodite: Les Folies tour in 2011, but her on-stage style now is “more human, more real”. “But even Elvis had a few diamantés on him,” she continues. “Come on! I’m thinking of it as a big sing-along. It’s daytime, so you can’t have the lights, effects and lasers that I normally have. I think the simplicity is part of what makes that slot so magical. Dolly Parton just walked on out. Lionel Richie just walked on out. I mean, I’ll sashay on out.”

Minogue’s manager then intervenes. The car is waiting and the star has somewhere to be. “I keep threatening my team that I’m going to retire,” she winks, safe in the knowledge that there are decades left of her career. And, with that, she sashays out. Glowing.

Step Back in Time is released on June 28

[ooihcnoiwlerh]

The Dirt!Tommy Lee imagine Pt 1

So I made a post a week ago mentioning a dream I had that inspired this very long fic of which I’m posting this first part.  I want to preface this by saying that while I really enjoyed The Dirt as a movie, I also don’t want to glamorize or ignore the faults of the men behind Motley Crue.  I’ve also never written fanfiction about a musician, let alone fanfiction about a slightly fictionalized version of a musician.  And this is definitely more about the film version of Tommy Lee than the man himself.

She was fresh out of college and brand new in LA, applying for work and living on someone’s couch when she first heard them, and she was hooked.

Sher certainly enjoyed the sound, which reminded her a little of the independent punk scene back in New York, but the look of it—the theatricality of it—inspired her.  Four years studying production design with the hopes of applying it to a film and theatre career, she decided, led her here to these people.  They had massive budget ideas with limited money for a limited space and she wanted to help them expand.

She kept trying to work up the courage to speak with them, and found herself choking up every time.  She, unlike they, was not a performer, not comfortable inserting herself into a group.  She lacked the confidence of some of the other women in the crowd who slipped their way into dressing rooms and raised their skirt just so.  Part of her had thought about emulating them—after her first concert she found herself paying more attention to the gangly, animated drummer over the strutting blond lead singer before dismissing the thought. She had something these other women couldn’t offer.  The band wouldn’t take her seriously if she offered to fuck them first.  She continued on sending her resume out, and, just to widen her prospects, started applying to record labels.

Tom Zutaut sought her out first—he felt that her youth and interest in the music scene would lend her some credibility with the band once they signed over to Elektra.  He assured her that they would appreciate her vision.

She sat down and spoke with them for the first time at a restaurant with her portfolio tucked under her arm and her nerves ringing as she prepared her speech on how she appreciated the band’s vision and how her visual style would work well for them on tour.  She glanced between every face: Mick Mars and his aloof, unimpressed demeanor and folded arms; Nikki Sixx and his quirked brow and slight smirk; Vince Neil and his smug grin; Tommy Lee and his frenetic energy and eager smile.  She focused on him and what she saw as a friendly, open face as she opened her portfolio to show her rough sketches…

…and felt a pair of hands slide along the inside of her thighs and push her knees apart.

She flinched and rose, but not before the men at the table snickered and a woman poked her head out from under the table.

“I’m used to sucking dick,” the woman said, grinning, “but I could go either way.”

Y/N glanced at the men at the table and realized this was a test of sorts.  Could she handle this environment?  She was certain of it.  She also knew she didn’t want a stranger to go down on her in semi-public.

Y/N cleared her throat.  “You know, sweetheart, I am so flattered.  But these are leather pants I’d have to push down to my knees and I just don’t know if I want my bare ass on this seat,” she said as she sat back down.

It was the best she could do, and apparently it was enough.  After a round of shots and some cursory glances at some of Y/N’s plans, Motley Crue had an artist ready to go on tour with them.

………..

“You sure you can handle this?” Doc asks as they get ready; the boys have their own accommodations, better rooms and first class on the monstrosity that the company calls a tour bus.  There are no other women present save for Vince’s latest girlfriend—all seamstresses and make-up artists are present at each venue.  They don’t travel with the band.

Y/N laughs.  “I’m from New Jersey, Doc.  I’ll be fine.”

Doc doesn’t look convinced.  “Listen, obviously I spoke to the guys and they do have some respect for you; see you as more than, you know...”

“A groupie.”  She hopes there’s no venom behind those words; she doesn’t hate any of the women that cling to the band and she imagines it would be pointless to get angry over how frequently they stay and how disposable they become.  To get angry with a band for having groupies, she reasons, is like getting angry at a Western movie for having horses.

She doesn’t hate them, at least, she thinks she doesn’t.  But she likes Tommy’s unmatched energy and lanky body and playful grin.  She hears stories about his stamina and size and it is more difficult to ignore the whispers about him than it is about Vince and Nikki.  Mick, it seems, dismisses any sort of physical contact. Y/N imagines it would be prudent to do the same.  She’s the only woman on the production team and is fully aware how easy it would be for everyone to resent her more than they already do.

“Yeah.  Exactly,” Doc says. “You’re not like them.  You’re here to work.”

“I know, Doc.”  Y/N gestures towards her books of sketches and layouts.  “I know.”

……..

None of this is to say that Y/N doesn’t interact with the band at all. As she anticipated, it’s something of a collaborative effort.  Nikki in particular has a lot of ideas about staging and costumes that go into effect. Granted, Motley Crue itself appears to be his brainchild, and he’s in charge of most of the creative decisions. He’s smart (although he’d be loath to describe himself as such) he’s attractive; he’s talented.  Y/N imagines that in another world she would be more drawn to him than she is.  But she’s not; she appreciates his mind and the work, and she hopes that he thinks the same of her.  

She wears long pants and jackets most of the time; she seldom wears more than the slightest bit of makeup on tour and she doesn’t try to give the appearance of curves to her slight frame where there aren’t any.  She never gives off the impression that she is sexually available, and as a result she’s left alone.

Vince ignores her.  Mick is about as pleasant towards her as he is capable of being towards anyone, and Y/N appreciates his candor.  She’s told he has a condition that causes constant, often excruciating pain and isn’t sure how to design a set to accommodate him, as if he’d ever accept the help.  Nikki is usually somewhat well-behaved around her, even as he knows he doesn’t have to censor himself and that Doc will sometimes complain to her about his coke binges and public indecency.  She doesn’t need him to tell her; she stays in the same hotels and when one or more is up to a set of antics she can plainly hear it from her room.

Tommy is playful; there are times she could swear he was flirting, and she cannot tell if he’s joking or not.  She also can’t tell if, if he is flirting, whether it’s because he’s attracted to her or because any woman of an appropriate age and decent appearance is a potential one-night stand. A cum dumpster.  

She should separate herself.  She should keep a professional distance.  

She goes to parties with them sometimes and does shots with them that have her staggering and slurring her words long before they’re down for the count and wakes up with hangovers that make her fear opening her mouth. She’s still tamer than they are and abstains from hard drugs and day drinking. She wishes Tommy luck before shows and listens to all of his ideas, good and bad.  There’s no greater feeling than his excitement when she puts one of his ideas into practice.

She has sex one night with a tall man with long dark hair who isn’t Tommy but in the dark and after whiskey could be close enough for a few minutes.  She can pretend, for a moment, that it’s he who’s inside her, gasping as he comes and holding her hips in a bruising grip.  She sneaks out of his room at five AM and heads back to her hotel.

When there she pulls her pants down and brings her fingers to her clit and thinks about him; his tongue, his cock inside of her and his lips on her clit everything finally being right. Alone in a hotel she finds the release she couldn’t get with a pale imitation of what she wanted.

The shame sets in seconds after her climax.  She groans as she wipes her fingers off on her inner thigh and tries to ignore the pull in her gut as she kicks her pants off the rest of the way and somehow manages to sleep.

……….

Tommy starts dating a girl named Roxie.  Tommy has had casual girlfriends as long as Y/N can remember. He seems to fall for every girl who shows him attention and soon forgets each one.

Y/N could say that she doesn’t like Roxie because it’s clear Roxie doesn’t really care about him, that she doesn’t know him and just wants to cling to someone with fame and power.  And all those things are true; she doesn’t trust Roxie nor does she expect her to stick around.  She says nothing, though, because what really eats at her is how much she resents the hell out of Tommy being so devoted to her.

Tommy introduces his parents to Y/N first, though.  Not because she’s the most important, of course, but because she’s the first familiar face he sees after Doc as he’s giving his parents a tour of the set.

Tommy has mentioned his parents; his mother, a Greek immigrant and former beauty contestant and his father, an army vet.  They seem too polite, too conventional for this place and yet Y/N can immediately see how someone like Tommy was able to emerge from what appeared to be a typical suburban upbringing; they clearly love him for everything he is.  So she likes them and tries to stay composed when Tommy brushes his hand along the small of her back to introduce her.

“This is Y/N.  She makes the magic happen.  The lights, the dancers, the backdrop, all her ideas.”

Y/N laughs.  “Not entirely true; it’s more collaborative than that.  I just draw up the plans and make sure we have the right people and equipment to make them possible.”

“You storyboarded our first music video.  Take some credit!” Tommy insists.

Y/N preens under the attention even as she tries to avoid what must be Mrs. Bass’s knowing gaze.  “If you insist,” she says.  “The business card says ‘production designer,’” she adds for the parents’s benefit.

“And you’re not married?” Tommy’s mother asks.

Y/N can feel herself blush.  “Oh, no.  Not at all!” she tries to laugh it off.  “Got hired for the portfolio and I’ve been on board since.”  She hears distantly Tommy gently admonish his mother and it doesn’t quite register.  She should get out of here.  His mother can probably tell what she thinks of her son and could easily bring it up. “Well, it was wonderful meeting you both,” she adds before finding an excuse to leave.

………..

“Did you hear Tommy proposed to Roxie?” Nikki asks as Y/N shows him several plans for the next leg of their tour.

Y/N feels like she’s been kicked in the gut.  She keeps her face in repose and manages to speak.

“You think it’s gonna last?” she asks.

Nikki sighs.  “I didn’t think it was gonna last this long.  You know Tommy’s mom called her a groupie to her face?”

Y/N laughs; it’s cruel and she relishes in it.  She has so few petty comforts she’s sure she can have this. “She’s not wrong,” she says as she packs up her drawings.  “I mean, it’s not like she’d be interested in him if he wasn’t famous.”

Nikki sits back and watches her.  “You would, though,” he tells her, and of course he notices her pause.  Of course he noticed how she looks at his bandmate.

Y/N can’t look back at him.  She manages to find her voice.  “Does Tommy know?” she asks.

“Nah.  He’s completely oblivious,” Nikki says.

“Well, good,” Y/N says faintly, and after setting everything into her portfolio briefcase, stands.  “I think I need a drink.”

Nikki grins.  “You joined the right band for it.”

……………………………

Tommy calls off the engagement as abruptly as he began it. Y/N didn’t see it, but apparently there was a fight involving him being stabbed in the back with a pen, him punching his fiancée in the face, and liberal use of the word “cunt.”  Specifically, Roxie referring to Tommy’s mother as one. The driver drops Roxie off at a Phoenix bus stop with a bag filled with her clothes and no one speaks of her for the rest of the trip to the next venue.

The show goes off without difficulty and Y/N manages to find Tommy afterwards before he can disappear with a mountain of coke, a bottle of Jack, and a girl who looks nothing like Roxie to take his mind off of the dumb decision he’d been about to make.

“Hey, you alright?” she asks.  She’s closer to him than she’d normally dare and as he turns around, she remembers just how much taller he is than she.

His eyes are wide but he seems neither upset nor inebriated.  He looks her over once and asks, a little louder than Y/N would like, “Are you wearing make-up?”

Y/N shrugs and takes a step back, forcing herself to meet Tommy’s gaze.  “One of the ladies was bored and offered to do some work on me before packing up,” she says.  “Anyway, let me buy you a drink.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Tommy says, and for a moment, Y/N shrinks back, gets ready to apologize, to back away, to hide in her hotel room. It lasts only a moment.  “But yeah, I’ll grab a drink with you.”  He smiles at her and it seems genuine; everything he says and does feels earnest.

He leads her to the bar closest the venue, and packed as it is the patrons and bartenders make room for the two of them as they sidle up to the bar.

“A Jameson and ginger ale for me and whatever this guy wants,” Y/N says, and glances over at Tommy, who orders a double shot of Jack Daniels. They won’t have much time to themselves, of course.  The other guys will join him and drag him to a private table, and before that fans are already lining up and getting ready for autographs.

“So, I guess you heard what happened,” Tommy says.

“Yeah.”  Y/N takes a sip from her drink.  “How are you holding up?”

“Fine, I guess.”  He finishes his shot and signals for another.  Y/N waits for him to say something else; Tommy always has something else to say.

He looks down at the bar, at his right hand as it rests against the polish wood.  “I hit her,” he says, finally.

“I know,” Y/N tells him.  Tommy glances up, looking alarmed.  “I also know she screamed at you, cursed at you, cursed your mother, and tried to stab you with a pen before you did.”  Y/N rubs her thumb along the condensation forming on the outside of her glass.  “I’m not saying you did the right thing; I don’t condone punching people in the face. I am saying she provoked you, that she would have continued trying to provoke you, and that it’s good that you’re not together anymore.”  She takes a sip from her drink.

Tommy keeps looking at her.  “You didn’t like her, did you?” he asks.

Y/N leans her elbow on the bar and faces him; his eyes are very blue. “You’re right.  I didn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

Y/N exhales.  “I didn’t believe for a second that she loved you,” she says.  “I thought she was using you.  

“Listen, I get it.  I get that you guys sleep with whoever and it’s no big deal.  It’s casual and that’s how it’s supposed to be.  But that’s for all the times there isn’t an emotional investment.  When there is, though, if you decide to give that to someone, they sure as hell better deserve it.  And she didn’t.”

It’s then that Y/N realizes she doesn’t remember the moment her favorite part of the job ceased to be seeing her designs and sketches put onstage, but instead every moment she gets to see Tommy.  The crazy lifestyle, the weirdness, it doesn’t matter.  She can take it.  She wants this, wants every part of him.  If she says anything else she’ll burst forth and say everything.  For a few agonizing moments they sit in silence and she wants to lean forward, wants to bridge the inches between them. She could kiss him so easily.

“T-Bone!”

Why did neither of them notice Nikki come up to them?

“Come on, man.  We got a room set up back.  Bottle service, strippers, the works.”  Nikki claps Tommy on the shoulder.  “Gonna get you back on the horse in no time.”

Tommy looks over at Y/N.  Y/N feels her throat constrict, wonders how she can possibly speak, and simply raises her glass in cheers and forces a little smile.

“I…” Tommy stands and motions for the bartender.  

“I want you to put this on our tab.  This and anything else the lady might want tonight,” he says, patting Y/N on the back.

“Have a good night,” he tells her as he follows Nikki to the back of the bar, and Y/N raises her glass once again before knocking back the rest of her drink.

“Another?”

Y/N pushes her glass forward.  “Please.”

The bartender gets to work.  “You know those guys?” he asks.

“I work for them,” Y/N tells him.  

“Sounds like fun.”

She forces a smile.  “It has its moments.”

She leaves two hours later after making very small talk with the bartender, ignoring horny barflies, and ordering several more drinks. She eventually gets a cab to the hotel before stumbling to her room and collapsing fully clothed on the bed.  Good thing sober her made sure to schedule a wake up call with the front desk, because drunk her wouldn’t dream of waking up at eight AM—in five hours and presumably hungover.

[aubrey-plaza]

Staubrey theater au? :)

there are SO MANY iterations of this- Aubrey and Stacie as actors who hate each other- tyrannical director Aubrey and diva actor Stacie- diva actor Aubrey and annoyed techie Stacie- major fan Stacie and diva actor Aubreyand that’s not even counting musical theatre and all those dynamics

but let’s go with:

Stacie Conrad is one of the best new costume designers on the east coast and it’s something she’s worked very hard to achieve. She might still be considered ‘up-and-coming’ to some but nobody can do what she does and she knows it. This gives her the freedom of picking her projects so when Cynthia Rose Adams, a brash and sharp stage director, approaches her and tells her she’s doing an all-female production of Glengarry Glen Ross and has David Mamet on as a consultant, Stacie instantly says yes

Cynthia Rose has a clear and crisp vision and her production manager Flo is a dream to work with and Stacie’s looking forward to this project

She sits in the far-back of the theatre, hidden, during callbacks and starts sketching outfit ideas for each of the women as they read lines

They cast Levene (Cynthia Rose takes a chance on a new girl called Jessica Smith from Wisconsin), Aaronow (Emily Junk, theatre legacy who’s been in the business since a child on account of her mother), Moss (Ashley Jones who’s trying to make the jump from musical theatre to plays), Williamson (assertive Australian Amy Hobart who Stacie is quite honestly pretty excited about seeing on an American stage) and even the detective (Denise Walmsley, an unexpectedly stellar actress who’s only done off off Broadway plays)

There’s some backlash from some men’s rights groups so Cynthia Rose reluctantly casts Jesse Swanson as the sole male in their production and Stacie sniggers when Cynthia Rose ends up giving him the role of the weakest man (Lingk)

They still don’t have a Roma because Cynthia Rose has someone very specific in mind. Flo assembles her crew and Stacie’s excited to meet the people she’s going to be working with but Cynthia Rose still won’t tell her who’s going to be Roma and Stacie is starting to get impatient because she wants to finalise her looks to present to Cynthia Rose who apologises and says it’s all under wraps

When they do find out who’s playing Roma, Stacie has to reluctantly agree that Cynthia Rose had been right not to tell her because there is no way she could have kept that secret

Aubrey Posen hasn’t been in the business long, but the work she’s done has been phenomenal. Stacie hadn’t even known that Posen was up for grabs because of her residency as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire in London that’s earned her a Laurence Olivier award and okay, so maybe Stacie has a small crush

“Aubrey, this is Stacie Conrad, our costumier,” Cynthia Rose introduces them

“Nice to meet you, Stacie, I look forward to meeting the woman in charge of making me look good.”

“I can only make you look better than you already do,” Stacie says awkwardly and Cynthia Rose grins with surprise over Aubrey’s shoulder at Stacie but Aubrey just laughs softly and Cynthia Rose leads her over to the other crew members

“What was that?” Chloe teases and Stacie is mortified

“Nothing! Go back to ogling the set designer,” Stacie snaps at Chloe who laughs before walking away to talk to Beca

And, okay, Stacie is hot as hell and Aubrey has eyes but she also has a pretty strict rule about dating within a production and no matter how incredibly inviting Stacie’s boobs might be, Aubrey’s a professional. She knows Stacie has a crush on her so she’s a little mean on purpose just for the brunette to stop tempting her

Once they actually start working together, Stacie realises how absolutely Difficult™ Aubrey Posen can be and somehow, she ends up liking Aubrey even more (and has several “jesus christ Stacie what is wrong with you?” moments along the way)

“Measuring time, Posen,” Stacie calls out while Lilly plays with the measuring tape next to her

“I already sent in my measurements,” Aubrey says back, returns to her script

“I don’t care,” Stacie says but Aubrey completely ignores her so she gets up and walks over to Aubrey, ripping the pages from her hands.

“Hey!”

“We take fresh measurements, Posen, get over there,” Stacie says and the blonde is glaring at her but she does follow Stacie’s instructions and lets Lilly measure her as Stacie notes down the numbers

Lilly whispers something to Stacie who shakes her head. “No, just looking at her I can tell that she’s clearly not a 32, do it again please,” Stacie says to Lilly who measures Aubrey again and mumbles something to Stacie. “That’s more like it,” Stacie says with a nod, very aware of the glare being levelled at her by Aubrey

(okay, so maybe she’s being purposefully difficult as well because the measurements Aubrey had given them was correct, but Stacie really likes pushing Aubrey’s buttons)

Aubrey comes into the theater one day early for rehearsals and finds Stacie on the stage, fabric draped over her shoulder and singing some Adele song. She’s standing on a step to reach the curtain rods while she sings, and Aubrey doesn’t mean to sneak, but she stays as quiet as possible as she watches Stacie work and sing. Stacie finishes the song with a flourish as she hops off the step stool and Aubrey forgets that she’s trying to be sneaky and claps her hands and Stacie whirls around at the voice, a loud “AAH Fuck!” falling from her lips.

Aubrey laughs softly and walks closer, drops her bag on a chair in the first row. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I thought I was alone.”

“You have a gorgeous voice.”

Stacie shrugs. “Thanks.”

“Why aren’t you on Broadway?” Aubrey asks and Stacie rolls her eyes

“We’re not all cut out for the stage,” Stacie says but Aubrey cocks her head inquisitively, arches an eyebrow and Stacie melts. “I’m a terrible actress.”

“Shame,” Aubrey says with a coy smile. “You certainly have the looks for it.”

“You been checking me out, Posen?”

“Hard not to when you always have enough fabric for our costumes but never for your legs,” Aubrey says offhandedly, referring to the short shorts that Stacie likes wearing, flipping through her script even though Stacie knows she’s known all her lines since the first rehearsal and it’s one of the first signs Stacie gets that Aubrey might actually like her back

The second happens during one of their fittings. Aubrey’s in a tight pencil skirt but there’s something off about the inside lining so Stacie’s frowning and staring at the skirt as she says, “I’m gonna put my hand under the skirt now, okay?” and Aubrey nods but when Stacie reaches up under the fabric, her fingers brush up between Aubrey’s thighs to tug down the loosened inside lining and Aubrey gasps loudly and Stacie’s gaze flicks up in surprise at the sound, finds Aubrey blushing bright red. “You okay?” Stacie says and Aubrey just nods, clears her throat and says “Fine.”

The third time, Stacie’s standing in her underwear in the dressing rooms when Aubrey comes in. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says immediately, but she’s staring at Stacie’s body and Stacie doesn’t even have to suppress a smile because Aubrey is staring nowhere near her face. “It’s okay,” Stacie says but Aubrey’s breathing is stunted as her eyes trail down Stacie’s stomach and hips, linger on her underwear before looking further down at Stacie’s legs. Lilly urges Stacie to turn, so she does, grateful for the mirrors when she can keep watching Aubrey, sees as the blonde melts, biting her lower lip as she stares at Stacie’s butt. Lilly holds out a dress and Stacie steps into it and that’s what finally snaps Aubrey out of her staring and she’s blushing fiercely as Stacie turns to her while Lilly zips up her dress.

“You look nice,” Aubrey says and Stacie laughs because that’s an understatement coming from someone who just spent a good minute ogling her. “What’s that for?” Aubrey asks, moving further into the room and closing the dressing room door behind her as she puts her bag down on one of the tables

“Opening night,” Stacie says. “Do you like it?” Stacie twirls even though she hears Lilly grumble behind her and Aubrey’s caught in a daze again as she nods, watching Stacie

They’re two weeks away from previews and the flirting dies down considerably. Stacie has a million tiny things to do and Aubrey is super focused. There are still small moments, like when they do their first run-through in full costume and Stacie calls out “Roma!” and holds out the hanger with her outfit and Aubrey brushes her fingers against Stacie’s as she takes the hanger and softly says “Thanks for making me look good”

They go through two weeks of previews and lock down the final performance. Critics aren’t allowed to watch the previews but somebody leaks that the production is very good and suddenly they’re sold out for the first 3 weeks of the show. The opening night performance goes off without a hitch and the crew are all backstage celebrating with a few bottles of champagne afterwards when the actors come backstage. Before any of them can even reach for a glass, Stacie loudly says, “Costumes, please!” and everybody slinks towards their dressing rooms because the past two weeks have shown them just how relentless Stacie is with keeping the clothes in perfect form.

Aubrey comes off stage and Stacie knows how wired she gets, how intense she can be so she doesn’t take it personally when Aubrey sharply says, “Stacie, come with me,” and just follows the blonde to her dressing room. She takes it very, very personally when Aubrey pushes her up against the closed door and kisses her, unleashing all her pent-up adrenaline on Stacie. Stacie kisses her back, but then her hands brush against Aubrey’s hips and the fabric there and she pushes the blonde away from her

“Stop,” Stacie says but it comes out so breathless

“What?” Aubrey asks, face falling, suddenly regretting making a move because shit is going to get really awkward now, all because she’s grossly misinterpreted Stacie’s behaviour. She bites back tears as she pulls away, her adrenaline rush crashing fast as she says, “Stacie, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Take off your clothes,” Stacie interrupts and Aubrey’s getting whiplash from the sharp turns this conversation is taking

“What?”

“Strip.”

“Huh?”

“Aubrey, please take off your clothes before I rip them off you and ruin all my months of work,” Stacie says darkly and—

“Oh.”

Aubrey moves away from her as she untucks her blouse from her skirt and starts unbuttoning it, and Stacie stays pressed against the door as she watches Aubrey unzip her skirt and step out of it, hanging it up and then shrugging out of her blouse and draping it over the skirt. Aubrey drops down onto the couch and bends down to roll her thigh high stockings down her legs slowly. Once she’s done she stands up again and gestures to the garments draped over the chair. “Happy?”

“Clip,” Stacie says, points to Aubrey’s hair and the blonde smiles, bending down to look at herself in the mirror as she takes out the bobby pins and clip holding up her hair. Stacie’s eyes are drawn away from Aubrey’s legs when blonde hair tumbles down Aubrey’s back as she stands up straight. Stacie pushes off from the door and strides over to Aubrey, and the blonde barely has enough time to turn around before Stacie’s hands slide around her middle and pull her closer as she leans in to kiss Aubrey

And okay, Aubrey knows she has a rule about dating within a production, but it’s unfair how good Stacie looks in a black turtleneck and leggings and now that she knows how soft Stacie’s hair is all she wants to do is tug it free from the tight ponytail Stacie keeps it in during shows and run her fingers through the strands

When Aubrey tells Stacie that’s why she’d been so standoffish in the beginning, Stacie laughs and just kisses her harder

send me a Staubrey AU and i’ll tell you 5 of my headcanons for it

[psychiccupid]

All the asks.

YES!!!! THANK YOU!!!!

ALL 45 FROM HERE UNDER THE CUT!!!

0: Height? I’m 5′3″ last I checked!! (which was a while ago >w1: Virgin? Helllll no2: Shoe size? 8 1/2!3: Do you smoke? I vape ‘cause I’m cool but I’ve never had a cigarette and I’ve only smoked weed three? times and each time I did it out of a pen and felt nothing lol 4: Do you drink? Occasionally! I love me some rum and vodka! But it’s been a while... mostly a social drinker...5: Do you take drugs? Nope6: Age you get mistaken for? I passed as a teen until college now I just look lie a perpetual 20+ year old lol7: Have tattoos? NO BUT I WANT 5!!!!8: Want any tattoos? OH WHOOPS... I WANT 5!!!!9: Got any piercings? Just my ears! But when my stomach reaches a personal goal size I’m gonna pierce it as a reward! 10: Want any piercings? God dammit... lol... I want a belly button piercing :D11: Best friend? I HAVE LOTS OF BEST FRIENDS!!! @hatgh0st @nicecreamdeer @teslagannon @mentalserendipity AND @puggger BEIN’ MY CLOSEST FRIENDS :’)))))12: Relationship status? I’m dating @puggger but it’s open and poly! 13: Biggest turn ons? Bite. My. Ear! Breathe. On. My. Neck! Shower me with constant adoration and momentarily cure my ever looming existential crisis :> 14: Biggest turn offs? Bigots. Toxic Masculinity. Insulting me or the things I love. 15: Favorite movie? Tie between Tangled and Kimi no Na Wa!16: I’ll love you if? *Coughs* YOU SHOWER ME WITH CONSTANT ADORATION AND MOMENTARILY CURE MY EVER LOOMING EXISTENTIAL CRISIS! And talk to me about Pokemon and Anime ^-^17: Someone you miss? @hatgh0st DDD’‘‘‘: 18: Most traumatic experience? Yo I’m not going into that lololol19: A fact about your personality? I will /always/ act happier than I am so if I’m upset I’m about to lose it.20: What I hate most about myself? “Now, we don’t have time to unpack all of that...” I’m not a huge fan of how I look physically - but absolutely my face and stomach overall. 21: What I love most about myself? I love my personality and how I don’t really give in to society or peer pressure. I love how I refuse to give up my passions and do not really care about material possessions. Not that that’s bad!22: What I want to be when I get older? Anything creative!! But especially a voice actor or a professional cosplayer!!23: My relationship with my sibling(s)? Eh... 24: My relationship with my parent(s)? EH... Like I love both of my parents and my sister... but I need like four months away from them for every week I spend with them y’know?25: My idea of a perfect date? FIRST We go to an aquarium! We spend hours and we both get excited reading about all the different fish!! SECOND we have lunch/dinner by the beach. It’s sushi. We inadvertently hold hands and then dip our toes in the ocean while you compliment my bonnet and matching swim suit. Walking along said beach is a must if there’s time! FINALLY we go to a dive-in movie. Ideally, they’re playing Kimi no Na Wa so I may cry into the pool. You, without really thinking about it, say, under your breath “You are the Takeshi to my Mitsuha” (though if you reverse the names I won’t be upset). We get spontaneous Safeway cheesecake on the way home! (You give me your raspberry piece in exchange for my double chocolate piece). We fuck. Afterwards, I get to sleep as the Big Spoon. I get to wake up and cuddle you.... you said perfect not financially acceptable lolol26: My biggest pet peeves? INDECISIVE PEOPLE. Especially negative people (like, people who know how to make it better but keep complaining... this is mostly about me lol). Boys who don’t know how to play the Question Game. ��27: A description of the girl/boy I like? Cares about absolutely everyone. Has the voice of an angel! Wears pigtails and likes dying her hair! Likes to dance and play dress up and dreams of performing for crowds... uh duh... of course I’m talking about Hatsune Miku 28: A description of the person I dislike the most? UhhhhhHHHHH like... I could go broad here and just put Trump but like... I’m trying to think more personal?? Hmm... like I could put my mom too but I don’t dislike her the most? UHHH @ my own anxiety: Tells me the world is a lie and that we’re in a simulation and that I need to wake up. Makes talking to bosses/people above me impossible. Tells me no matter what that I’m doing something wrong and that I’m not good enough. 29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend? Didn’t wanna hurt their feelings? The truth was worse than a lie?30: What I hate the most about work/school? Going. Capitalism. I have a degree. 4_ years of retail/food service work under my belt AND I’ve worked at Disney and I still can’t get more than minimum wage. 31: What your last text message says? “Nah I’m ok I just feel bad” yup.32: What words upset me the most? “How can you be gay if you’re dating a boy?” “Ok sure you’re Enby. But why do you still relate to women?” “This is my daughter, Jessica” 33: What words make me feel the best about myself? “Wow! You could make a career out of this!” “This is really good!” “You’re working really hard aren’t you?” “You are smart.” 34: What I find attractive in women? Absolutely everything. I’ve never met a woman who didn’t blow me away. All women are so pretty and talented and so strong and I love them all!35: What I find attractive in men? Anytime they have feminine hair/features I lose my goddamn mind. When they’ve come to accept every part of themselves and are super confident not because that’s what they’re used to but because they really worked for something! When they’re genuine and they get that sparkle in their eye!! 36: Where I would like to live? Anywhere I can be me and creative! Right now it’s looking like Austin, Texas... but LA or Tokyo... LA ‘cause that’s where I feel like I have to go... Tokyo ‘cause that’s where I’ve wanted to go since I was 7 but I don’t know if I could live there...37: One of my insecurities? Everything??? But I’m very insecure about how I look. I have a mighty fear that I do not get far in life because I’m ugly as sin (I’m not but god I think so). 38: My childhood career choice? In order from age: 4: Vet, 11: Lawyer, 14: Software Designer, 16: Gene Specialist/Splicer, 18: Calculus Teacher, 19: Script Writer, 19: Stage Actor, 20: Costumer/Cosplayer/Voice Actor (Not that I haven’t been doing these since I was 16, but I didn’t decide they could be career choices until college) 39: My favorite ice cream flavor? Phish Food, Cookies N Cream, Cookie Dough, Raspberry!40: Who wish I could be? SOMEONE HAPPY. A professional voice actor!41: Where I want to be right now? Hmmm... probably Tokyo? The Pokemon theme park that existed in 2002ish! In a line about to meet Arin Hanson? Back in bed lol? ON THAT DATE I MADE EARLIER!!42: The last thing I ate? Leftover gluten-free pumpkin spice & blueberry pancakes ^w^43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately? HALEY FROM STARDEW VALLEY! ... Audrey from Huniepop... 44: A random fact about anything? I can name 21 digits of pie from memory and I am very talented knowing what a pokemon’s national pokedex number is :’D  

[violetsystems]

#personal

I’ve really forgotten at this point when or where this all started in terms of lockdown.  I went to New York for my birthday mid February and that’s when it started to slide downhill.  The city has been officially locked down since mid March.  One of those more interesting things to see is how we get drowned out by the rest of the country.  As far as liberating times in the city of Chicago, things have been less aggravating than they’ve ever been.  People here have read my posts and know what kinds of things I speak about.  It’s pretty obvious that I harbor some pretty complex ideas about anarchy and freedom.  Looking back at all the years I’ve lived in Chicago isn’t some rosy reflection for me.  I wasn’t always a strong enough person to stand up for myself.  Or when I did it wasn’t very graceful.  If you leave people to themselves to make their own mistakes they will eventually learn to move past or drown in them.  I’m an only child and have always been very hard on myself.  I was picked on and isolated for everything from my weight to my intelligence for years.  I moved to Chicago years ago to be closer to culture.  I grew up in suburbs where the only creative outlet was to hang out at Denny’s until four in the morning.  Punk shows and raves happened but always under the threat of being hassled by police or extremist recruiters.  These days I roll out of bed to the kitchen which acts as the only office I’ve ever had with windows.  My life resembles more William Gibson novel than Clive Barker.  I’ve had the same job for two decades now.  It’s only in the last few weeks where I’ve realized that I’m more vital.  And at the same time I feel just as forgotten as I was.  An invisible ghost in the machine.  The perks of being able to do what you want without second thought.  Spending years explaining the motives behind them without ever really saying it outright.  My own subculture has grown around the fuzzy edges.  I have always loved computers.  My mom told me recently she had a premonition when I was young.  That I needed to be around computers.  Before we even had one.  My dad brought home an old apple with a modem on day from work.  It was a brick.  It was so he could work from home.  Years later I can’t get away from them.  Computers that is.  Last night my dad and his wife facetimed me for the very first time.  It was a big deal for them.  For me it was just another day in my kitchen on camera.  Still me.  My parents and my coworkers are about the only people I socialize with on video.  Everybody knows my writing is how I connect to people.  That’s why nothing has ever changed much emotionally for me down here.  Just a far more stable connection on all levels.  Chicago to a fault these days.  The coffee still gets delivered.  Monday is still April 20th.  I’ve forgotten what it feels like to worry about it all for once in my life.  

If you ask me if I worry, it’s true I do.  Not about dying or anything.  That’s fucking stupid to worry about in my mind.  How many times have I lived through miraculous bullshit?  I can’t even count or remember at this point.  I’m resilient for sure.  I’m sure everybody knows how mature I am.  I don’t dye my fucking grey hair or anything.  I don’t even really like going on camera anymore for social media.  The audience is like a void to me.  It has never returned anything except stray likes and the illusion of care.  I’ve written what I’ve wanted to say here for years.  And some of the most beautiful and amazing people in the world have read this.  I find anybody who is patient enough to sift through my prose to be a genuine enough person.  But I have always been a writer.  I used to run a poetry zine in high school.  It had the painfully edgy titled “Emotional Anarchy.”  I almost got expelled from a christian high school because of it.  Though it was mostly gibberish.  I studied English and Psychology at a suburban college in Romeoville, Illinois.  College was definitely culture for me.  I ended up running a radio show in the middle of the night for years.  Nobody listened.  Inmates maybe.  Years later people in Shanghai on the other side of the world bring up college in casual conversation.  Turns out the connections go beyond cool shit.  It’s not somebody asking about some show I played or somebody I dated.  It’s a Catholic school across from a state prison where I received a scholarship.  Years later I work at a school.  I have worked for a school for years.  My boss and I were djs professionally at one time.  I definitely did not make enough money to sustain myself through music.  But working at a school has sustained me through other ways.  I spent a portion of yesterday working with a sewing machine.  I’ve spent years thinking about using one.  I spent years being inspired by fashion and even working directly with it.  And like a tree falling in the forest, I quietly design myself a new mask in my persistent office.  My mom used to spend every Halloween designing costumes for me.  One year I was Spiderman.  I wore the mask.  These days I’m far more Watchmen than I realize.  I wear a balaclava.  I want to upgrade to something a little more fashionable.  My dad couldn’t believe I had a sewing machine.  I have two.  My connection to the internet has been slowly becoming more rigid.  My home is my office for the foreseeable future.  I do have office hours.  People can see me working from the train platform every day.  I help deliver an education across impossible distances.  I don’t think there will ever be a lack of opportunities in that department.  I’ve learned skills I’ve never had.  I could do this from my kitchen all day.  Sitting here alone by myself wondering why.  I don’t worry.  I just don’t know.  Like everybody out there just doesn’t know.  So I focus less on what I can’t control and more on what I can.  Which turns out to be my home.  As officially as this morning  expanded into the 312 area code. 

American media and pundits talk about liberation.  Americans want to point the finger at the root cause.  A scapegoat and boogeyman to turn the attention away from themselves.  They want to pass the blame onto someone else instead of sharing it.  The truth is that it is us.  We as human beings are to blame.  A virus is a perfect example of this.  A poetic one.  The virus doesn’t really care about your freedom.  At least not in the way most Americans understand it.  And yet I do care about freedom.  Because I have been living under duress for longer than I can conceivably imagine.  These days being forgotten about and under the radar isn’t always a problem.  People pay attention more to what really matters.  My writing.  My feelings for certain people that have persisted beyond these fucked up few months.  My way of living with life as it is.  I do want more.  I do not want to be alone day in and day out.  I grow in silence.  It’s not like no one sees it.  Everybody sees it.  Everybody knows exactly what I am about.  And everybody sees me living it just like I’ve always been.  Maybe a little less awkwardly.  Maybe a little less timidly.  Maybe a little more cautious.  I’ve always been cautious.  Always had the capacity to be tender.  These days I’ve felt far more free to live my life.  I still ride public transportation to the store.  I still run in an empty medical district where giant public housing projects used to loom.  I still live in a state where the governor I voted for has exceed my expectations in every way.  And I hate politics for the most part.  Our mayor is the face of America and yet has more impact as a meme than a positive news story.  The news is never positive in America.  The last I’ve read people are criticizing us for buying masks from China low key.  And yet in terms of leadership throughout all of this we in Chicago and Illinois at least know where we stand.  We have the best medical systems and professionals in the United States.  We have some of the best art and design colleges too.  And we have hope that people can get visas next fall to study here again.  We all take this very seriously because health is important to us.  Is freedom important to us?  I mean I don’t want to live anywhere else right now for the foreseeable future.  This might be the reason why I signed a two year contract on Internet.  It might also be why I chose to get a home number.  For the record it’s pretty easy to move your service these days.  But what more am I looking for at this point.  I’ve already found everything I care about thanks to the internet.  The world has changed.  I’ve been changing.  Growing.  Becoming free to be the person I need to be.  Free to love and free to speak my mind.  Free to catch a virus and die too I guess.  Welcome to America.  Free to upgrade my connection speeds to six hundred megabit down.  The connection as steady as my love for you.  Offline and on.  Same as it ever was.  Just locked up safe and sound.  Like the future.  <3 Tim

[gyromitra-esculenta]

And this is absolutely not the continuation of that and that. (and another superhero prompt courtesy of @downwithwritersblock down). crack. srsly.

The pictures were still worth it even when Angela gave him another concussion after healing the first one. And then healed him again. Whoever granted her medical license was a natural born sadist and hated all living things in the world with an inconceivable amount of passion.

The plush horse sat on his desk in a place of honor, just by the purple porcelain cat figurine Sombra gave him once when she had forgotten herself, as a random gift. He still suspected it was more of a joke.

“As a side note,” Jack addressed the class, “Schrödinger's cat thought experiment was created as a way to highlight the inherent absurdity of applying the laws of quantum physics to objects existing in the range of macro world physics. It also pointed out the need for an undisclosed something, or someone, to be the observer that collapses our poor cat into being very alive, or very dead, among other things, but that deals more with the history of quantum physics and different interpretations of quantum effects we will actually save for the next lesson. Myself, I like to think, it also highlights the fact that we, as humans, still have a considerable objection to treating time as just another dimension, like, for example, length, if all we experience is its linear progression. So, the electron might be once observed as a particle, another time as a wave, and why exactly is it? For the next week, try to think about one such unruly particle that not only exists in spatial coordinates, it also exists spread over some amount of time, miniscule as it is. Class dismissed.”

Students started to leave among comments like ‘mind blown’ and ‘hey, wanna get high behind the gym before art?’. All except one. Jesse slowly approached the desk and then put a small cowboy hat on the horse plushie.

“I, uh, I’m glad that you like it. So I made the hat for it. So it looks… classy?” Jack almost dropped his papers. And smiled.

“It is an especially fine equine specimen, Jesse.”

“I reckon it is, Mister Morrison,” Jesse tipped his own hat while grinning goofily. “See you next week.”

“Yes, Jesse, next week,” Jack waved him away and then slumped in his chair, trying to set fire to the plushie with his stare because that absolutely made no sense. After some time spent thoughtfully putting together all the little clues in the right context, it actually made frighteningly too much sense.

Honestly, who else if not Gabriel fucking Reyes, strangely buff and a bit reclusive costume and set designer for several avenues in the city? And it made him feel itty-bitty bad about that one time he punched Reaper out when the opera house came under the attack during the premiere. He really thought the whole project was exquisite and had been a tad frustrated his night out got interrupted.

“Ey, old man, quit stalling, you’re getting laid tonight after all,” Sombra clicked her tongue and then sat down on the desk. Jack sighed, reached for his wallet, and gave her fifty credits. “You know I only bet you because he asked me if you liked that atrocity?”

“I’ve guessed as much.”

*

In his life, Gabriel tried Tinder. He also tried Grindr. He tried We Both Like Pineapple on Pizza. He even stooped as low as creating an account on OkCupid. It just didn’t work out. The furthest he got was three dates – and then any interest he might have felt just fizzled out.

Which left him with this, getting set up on a blind date by his own son, and worse, getting fashion advice from the very same son that took to dressing up cowboy style when he was five and never looked back, because ‘nah, too dramatic, try this, he’s real classy, you dun wanna make him run when he sets eyes on ya, do you?’.

Gabriel started to pick at the hem of his shirt and glanced around exactly at the same moment goddamned Jack Morrison had stepped inside. This had to be someone’s idea of a fucking joke. Gabriel discreetly angled a bit to the side and tried to hide his face behind his palm. For a second, it seemed like it had worked.

“I believe, Mister Reyes, you’re waiting for me?” Bastard. Gabriel caught the subtle drop after the first syllable of his last name and glared righteously at the man setting himself down in front of him. Yeah, him and his big mouth, he should have left while the blonde was still unconscious. He just figured the whole hospital conversation would be long forgotten seeing as the guy had been high as a kite, and then some.

“Is this some kind of ploy?” He hissed.

“Certainly. But I suppose the only ones plotting were our progeny, and towards sending us off to have a nice cozy romantic evening,” Jack smiled picking up the menu.

“We can go both on our separate ways then because this is not going to work out at all.”

“I came for free food, mostly. I think I’ll have the duck with truffles.” Gabriel stared at him.

“Free food? Last month you held up the federal bank and absconded with twenty-five million credits!”

“Details,” the bastard scoffed. “Besides, you will have to drive me home, my daughter seems very committed to the idea of getting me laid, she took the car back with her.”

“You can take the cab.”

“Now, that wouldn’t be very romantic, would it?”

“There’s nothing romantic about…” Gabriel pursed his lips when the waiter came over. The fucker made his order. “To think I let you daughter sleep over at my place all those years.”

“Your concern for Sombra’s chastity is touching, but it has never been threatened, believe me. Your son’s as gay as they come. No-one puts that much dedication into dressing like a cowboy otherwise, unless in the professional capacity.”

“Says the man who so very often wears that one blue travesty against any sort of fashion sense.”

“Says the man who routinely goes out in one quite kinky black leather number.”

“…Touché.”

Jack raised the wine glass in a toast.

“Now, Gabe, can I call you Gabe?”

“Most certainly not,” Gabriel glared at his ‘house special’ which turned out to be some pity amount of fish with fancy garnish.

“So, Gabe, let us put down some ground rules first. I believe we should keep our private lives off limits, and I mean, completely out of any mention or action. I do imagine, you have many more enemies than I do, and their involvement, dare I say, is much more personal?”

“Are you… Really, you have the audacity to threaten me?”

“I’d never,” Jack laughed, apparently the bastard was having entirely too much fun. “I’m merely noting that the destruction is mutually assured in our peculiar case.”

“Duly noted,” Gabriel shook his head. “I should’ve let you there to bleed out.”

“But you didn’t.”

From that point on the discussion turned to quippy banter reminiscent of their usual clashes and then somehow to Jesse’s academic results and goddamn Morrison even suggesting some additional classes he could attend and what schools would be good to apply to with his grades and aptitudes.

So, when Gabriel stopped in the driveway and the blonde unclasped his seatbelt, the night was already full of things he had not expected, and driving his nemesis home was certainly on that list. Jack shrugged and leaned to the side…

Oh.

OH.

Getting head in the driveway from the said nemesis everyone already thought he was involved with for who knows how long would never even make it to the ‘unexpected things’ list. It was straight out of the ‘those things have no right to exist’ list. But then, it had been pretty long since… Gabriel decided to go with the flow.

“Oh, yeah,” Jack wiped his lips. “I want to say I’m genuinely sorry about that one incident at the opera, I was actually looking forward to seeing the whole show. Drive safe.”

That… smug… bastard.

*

“You’re home early,” Sombra didn’t even try to hide her disappointment. “That bad?”

“It was a disaster.” Jack sat down on the couch and started flipping through channels.

“Too dramatic?”

“Worse.”

“Too academic?”

“He used ‘abscond’ in a sentence. But worse still.”

“Oh, the horror, what could be worse?” She plopped down sideways in his lap.

“Honeybuns, you set me up with Reaper.”

“This makes scary amount of sense,” Sombra agreed slowly, looking up at him. “But you still blew him in the driveway.”

“This is all part of a long term strategic planning.”

His daughter raised her eyebrows.

“Well, okay, he picked up the tab and then drove me home. I figured he deserved to get something out of that,” Jack admitted with some delay.

***

Prompt used: 

4.  Who would have thought I’d be set up on a blind date with my biggest enemy.

[ahmenophus]

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 92 truths about you. At the end choose a number of people to be tagged.

I was tagged by: @illuminatingfear​

LAST:

Last drink: Milk. With my cake

Last phone call: whatever customer I spoke to last at work

Last text message: To my mother complaining about getting out of work late today

Last song you listened to: It's Quiet Uptown

Last time I cried: I cry all the fucking time so I don't remember. Sometimes I'm just crying because I'm too tired. Though I did almost break and cry at a meeting because I was pissed and I hate my job

HAVE YOU EVER:

Dated someone twice: No

Been cheated on:  No

Kissed someone and regretted it: No

Lost someone special: Yes

Been depressed: a lot more recently

Been drunk and thrown up: nope

IN THE PAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

Made a new friend: I suppose if you count work friends

Fallen out of love: that would involve being in love in the first place

Laughed until you cried: all the time

Met someone who changed you: maybe?? I mean I'm sure I could at least say in superficial ways. I always pick up random traits from people

Found out who your true friends are: well that has already always been a very small list

Found out someone was talking about you: no

GENERAL:

How many people on Tumblr do you know in real life: one and I'm actually trying to keep it that way. I'm on here for a reason

Do you have any pets: one cat but I might be getting a kitten

Do you want to change your name: In reality no but in my dream life I've wanted my name to be Evelyn since I was nine

What time did you wake up this morning: too fucking early I was awake at like 4 then fell back asleep til my alarm at 6:25 and I didn't even go to bed until 1am

What were you doing last night: I was at my cousin's wedding so drinking and dancing. Hence the not going to bed until 1

Name something you cannot wait for: Halloween

Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yes

What’s getting on your nerves rn: WORK WORK AND MORE WORK also the lack of progress on my halloween costume and every other project i have going

Blood type: literally no idea

Nickname: just Sam. There are a few select people who are allowed to call me Sammy (and a few who I can't get to stop). I have one coworker who calls me Samantha Fox (who is apparently a singer)

Relationship status: single - everyday I find men to be more and more of a waste of my time

Zodiac sign: aries

Pronouns: she/her

Favorite tv show: BONES

College: yep bachelors in interior design IADT 

Hair colour: brown

Do you have a crush on someone: nope

What do you like about yourself: can i get back to you on that

FIRSTS:

First surgery: none. My parents wanted to have my tonsils removed because they were constantly giving me problems when I was young but that went no where

First piercing: ears. I was like four and did NOT want them. Only got them because my sister did and my mom was like "well might as well do hers too"

First sport you joined: volleyball

First vacation: first one that actually involved going somewhere - disneyworld when i was 12

First pair of sneakers: like i remember that

Eating: Is this supposed to be like faves section? Because pasta 

Or is it what you are currently doing? Because nothing right now

Drinking: amaretto stone sours if fave. Nothing if current drink

I’m about to: sit on tumblr until i get tired and go to bed

Listening to: currently nothing, might open pandora

Want kids: NO.

Get married: this is one of those things where I get awesome ideas for a wedding - except actually having a spouse. so no not really

Career: professional organization

WHICH IS BETTER:

Lips or eyes: eyes

Hugs or kisses: hugs i guess

Shorter or taller: ummm compared to what exactly

Older or younger: idk

Romantic or spontaneous: those aren't necessarily different

Sensitive or loud: ?

Hook up or relationship: relationship i suppose too ace for this hook up nonsense

Troublemaker or hesitant: I don't even get where this one is going

HAVE YOU EVER:

Kissed a stranger: no

Drank hard liquor: yes

Lost glasses/contacts: no

Sex on first date: hahaha

Broken someone’s heart: not that i can think of

Been arrested: no

Turned someone down: if you count creepy men hitting on me then yes

Fallen for a friend: no

DO YOU BELIEVE:

In yourself: sometimes

Miracles: no

Love at first sight: not really

Heaven: i don't even know

Santa Claus: no i never really did growing up either. my parents were too lazy to even care about santa/the tooth fairy/whatever so it was never a big deal to me

Yeah i don’t even know I’m not gonna try to tag anyone

[josephianni]

Upon Listening In On Perspectives on Race and Representation

I improvisationally composed this piece whilst listening to a live feed from the Whitney Museum of American Art concerning Perspectives on Race and Representation streaming from their Facebook page. The talk included many well established artists including Elizabeth Alexander, Christopher Benson, LeRonn P. Brooks, Ken Chen, Malik Gaines, Lyle Ashton Harris, Terrance Hayes, Ajay Kurian, Christopher Y. Lew, Casey Llewellyn, Mia Locks, Claudia Rankine, Sarah Schulman, Christina Sharpe, and Herb Tam. 

Much of the talk revolves around Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket, it is, to quote their Facebook, “a starting point, tonight’s program looks at questions about the ethics of representation and the responsibilities of artists and museums. The Whitney is partnering with Claudia Rankine and the Racial Imaginary Institute to convene this conversation with artists, scholars, and critics to gain their insights into these issues in relation to the 2017 Biennial and our contemporary moment.”

This piece is largely unedited. It for me functions as archive in order for me to return to it and meditate upon at some later time. It also represents a listening and reacting to the experience of a mediated reflection upon the events in real time. In all honesty this piece of writing is a series of questions and definitions trying to transcribe, in some medium, what acts such as these are engaging in. It is my reacting and consequential producing. It is a product and a reaction.  For context, a Facebook friend shared the live stream and because I had sufficient free time I began to listen in about half way through just as Claudia Rankine was finishing her portion. First, I began taking notes as if in a lecture and then realized I was doing something else altogether.  --- Who is authorized to destroy?

What laws are of humans and not also upon them?

Does the destruction of property frighten us because of its connection to the body

Nothing is property without propriety, right?

propriety

noun

the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals

Apropos - being both relevant and opportune

If the A- hear is negational then is what does that make propos, irrelevant and inopportune?

Propos - French for about

prop -

noun

a pole or beam used as a support or to keep something in position, typically one that is not an integral part of the thing supported.

verb

position something underneath (someone or something) for support.

noun

a portable object other than furniture or costumes used on the set of a play or movie.

mid 19th century: abbreviation of property.

abbreviation

proposition

proprietor

pro,

professional or

you positive?

Let us not confuse David with Goliath! The prophet extolls this! Why?

What profit does the prophet make from this ex

                    -tolling?

ex- prefix

from Latin meaning ‘out of’

What was the original toll?

What has come out of toll?

What is the toll of the body?

What is the toll on the body?

How much does the casket cost?

What is the use of an Open Casket when we will bury or burn the damned thing anyways?

What is the Damned Thing?

The body, the body, inside the casket is the body, are we trying to avoid the body by putting it in a casket?

Can the body be painted?

Can the body be put away in a painting?

I’ve heard of a painting embodying but what of a body empainting?

em-

noun

a unit for measuring the width of printed matter, equal to the height of the type size being used.

late 18th century: the letter M represented as a word, since it is approximately this width.

pronoun

short for them, especially in informal use.

Middle English: originally a form of hem, dative and accusative third person plural pronoun in Middle English; now regarded as an abbreviation of them.

prefix

variant spelling of en-

abbreviation

electromagnetic.

Engineer of Mines.

enlisted man (men).

ing-

denoting a verbal action relating to an occupation, skill, etc. "banking"

denoting something involved in an action or process but with no corresponding verb. "scaffolding"

-ing

forming present participles used as adjectives. "charming"

-ing

a thing belonging to or having the quality of.

What is the body?

We put the body in the Earth, does the earth own the body?

When the government taxes us for land use do they own the body?

If they own the body, should they take responsibility for it?

What is the dead body?

What can the dead body do?

If the owner can be said to be responsible for the body, the body must be troubling something, causing some issue for another body?

Is that other body living?

Wait, is the body a zombie or some other undead?

un- prefix

Old English, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Latin in- and Greek a-

in-

adjective

(of a person) present at one’s home or office

fashionable

(of the ball in tennis or similar games) landing within the designated playing area

adverb

expressing movement with the result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else

expressing the situation of being enclosed or surrounded by something

expressing arrival at a destination

(of the tide) rising or at its highest level

(of an infielder or outfielder) playing closer to home plate than usual                                                                                    (of a pitch)

Old English in (preposition), inn, inne (adverb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German in (preposition), German ein (adverb), from an Indo-European root shared by Latin in and Greek en.

a- prefix

What is a prefix?

What if I take the word apart?

What if I take the word a-

part?

What if I take the word, a part?

Is this an autopsy of the word?

Do I upturn all the quiet graves disturb the bodies or the Earth when I define, or search into the etymology?

Is the word a body?

Is the body propos or apropos in this sentence?

Whose opportunity is the body?

Is life a sentence?

sent - english

verb

simple past tense and past participle of send

sent - french

a smell, a stink, something foul-smelling

a feeling,

a touching,

a groping

en - within; inside from Greek

expressing a conversion into a specified state or location

ce - this

Am I trying to make this a poem?

Is this a poem?

I don’t want to lie when I say I don’t know, but I wonder how?

If I want to ask the question, will it come out as just a statement?

How am I responsible to other human beings in anything I make?

Is that question complicated enough?

How do we not know?

Am I yelling?

Am I yelling?

Am I yelling?

What is right now?

What is now?

What now?

now

adverb

at the present time or moment

used, especially in conversation, to draw attention to a particular statement or point in a narrative.

conjunction

as a consequence of the fact

adjective

fashionable; up to date 

---

I’ve also added the video of the talk if anyone might be interested in listening to it themselves. Thank you.

https://www.facebook.com/whitneymuseum/videos/10154262121821433/

[renaroo]

Double Time (1/24)

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Warnings: Language, Canon-typical violence Pairings: Tuckington, Chex Rating: T Synopsis: [Hero Time Sequel] After the events of Hero Time, the city and Blood Gulch are prepared for the true return of superheroes in a big way. But while Washington is attempting to adjust to a new relationship and a new living arrangement, the call of new heroes and a new mayor mean major changes for his professional life as well as his personal one. How will the balance of values fare when his new partners come to test everything he’s made of.

A/N: We are finally, finally back to this AU that has been the start of just so much in my fandom experience here with RvB. I adore this AU and while I needed the short break it’s fantastic to be back in the swing of things and getting back to the part of the story that captured so many people’s hearts to begin with: the relationship between our hero and our civilian. Hopefully everyone’s as ready for some high octane hero romance as I am!

I want to once again thank my collaborator and the just all around awesome artist @ashleystlawrence who helped inspire this AU as well as has provided just amazing artwork and costume designs throughout the installments. And also to @goodluckdetective for being a huge inspiration for this AU as well. This series is a labor of love dedicated to the inspiration of the two of them.

Startlingly Routine

Cities were never really quiet, and in that way, a hero who worked in a city was never really done. 

Washington wondered, somewhat idly, if that was the reason behind never exactly hearing about superheroes in the more sprawling wilds of rural country land, but he also supposed that a simple counterpoint was that heroes didn’t look nearly as cool prowling on tree limbs as they did on rooftops.

Clearly. 

He looked to the police scanner that Church had built him at the behest of Tucker and tuned into the several frequencies. Really, it was any wonder he was able to patrol without the little device on his wrist formerly -- it made finding trouble and being able to assist that much easier. 

And it had only been a few months since the entirety of the Blood Gulch Crew had entered into his never-completely-simple life. 

“Still nothing?” he asked the air around him, aggravation clear in his sigh. “Though, I suppose that’s better than something. By someone’s book.”

As a professional superhero, Wash knew that not every patrol was met with intrigue, but he was far from ready to call it a night either. 

Not until he checked in on his... work in progress. 

With an aggravated sigh, the catlike superhero began to change his patrol path and race instead toward the mechanic’s shop where his second longest rehabilitation attempt was stationed.

The Red Dead Blood Gulch Gang had long been operating out of Lopez’s garage -- their mechanic the ever befuddled and seemingly unhappy member given the unfortunate codename Brown. It was the kind of information which Wash would have given an arm and a leg to know when he was hunting down their crime patterns as the newly returned superhero Washington. 

Instead he gave them practically every other part of their body when he bounced off their hood and windshield.

For being a former criminal organization, even if did fancy itself to be more akin to Robin Hood than straight up debauchery, the Reds were not a particularly intimidating bunch to drop in on.

Stealthily as he might have been, Washington couldn’t help but think that former criminals sitting around  a mechanic’s garage and drinking beer while the reminisced should have been at least a little aware of his presence. Then again, he was obviously giving the Reds far, far too much credit on nearly every account.

“What’s got Lopez all pinched up and pissed off?” Grif asked, throwing a used can toward the garbage and missing, earning an annoyed look from Simmons.

“I think that’s just his face, guys!” Donut stage whispered to them, using his arm that was still in a brace. Wash tried to take some solace in the fact that it was no longer a cast (there was little to be had).

“He’s turning blue on us, just wait!” Sarge howled. “He’s all in a pissy mood and whatnot because we scheduled this meeting for the Gang on one of his precious date nights with our newest getaway driver.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, old man, I’m still your driver!” Grif snapped.

“Probably until you actually start driving again,” Simmons said with a roll of his eye.

“Even so, Sheila hasn’t agreed to be the getaway driver,” Grif argued.

“Oh, she will be! Her time will come, and she will see what her true calling has been all along,” Sarge chuckled.

Lopez sat in the back corner, arms crossed angrily over his chest as he released a long, aggravated sigh but otherwise didn’t even contribute to the conversation.

“Believe me, Sarge, getaway driver is not a calling anyone feels happy to answer to,” Grif huffed.

Having heard more than enough, Washington stepped more fully into the garage and partially into the light, tilting his head. “Strictly speaking, if you’re not doing things illegally anymore, you wouldn’t be a getaway driver at all. Just a driver.”

Nearly all at once, the Reds jumped up in surprise, causing more spilled beer cans than Sarge would have ever allowed in his poker basement. A fact that it pained Wash to know after the time he was drug down there by Tucker for a way to ‘relax with the guys.’

“Wow! Wash! Don’t jump out of the shadows like that!” Donut cried out. “Makes people think you’re about to shake them down for information they don’t have or something!”

Incapable of escaping the flinch that caused him to make, Wash merely sighed. “I’ll make note of that for the future, Donut,” he offered before looking more specifically to Sarge. “But I did promise to make more casual drop ins to see how you guys were doing with keeping the neighborhoods safe instead of taking on the system. In… utterly counter productive ways.”

“Yeah, well, at least painting stoplights and getting back at dumb bakeries was fun,” Grif huffed. “People barely thank you when you work on improving the community. Stupid community. What the fuck has it ever done for us? Nothing. That’s why we became a badass gang to begin with.”

“So eloquent, Grif, no wonder you’ve not been moved up to leader of a mission yet,” Simmons scoffed.

“I know it’s a… difficult adjustment to make,” Wash offered. “But for what it’s worth—“

“Not a hell of a lot, son,” Sarge harrumphed.

“But for what it’s worth,” Wash pressed on, “I think together we’re actually doing something to improve Blood Gulch. I’ve been on the police scanner all night and I’ve not heard anything. That’s the second time this week we’ve had a quiet night.”

“Second time this week you and Tex have had a quiet night,” Simmons corrected.

“Yeah, you’ve still not had us helping out with the actual crime fighting stuff,” Donut whined. “When’s that going to get started? I’d love to start on that stuff! I mean, planting a new community garden and cleaning up the park are great—“

“No they’re not,” Grif retorted.

“But we thought recovering from former villainy would involve more hero-type stuff,” Donut explained with a wide smile.

Wash put his hands on his hips and forced a smile. “I’m afraid I can’t really force crime to happen. And if I could, I wouldn’t. It’s good for our city to have a downtick in dangerous activity. But as soon as we start having emergencies again, when heroes are needed, I’ll know when to call you… So long as your community service hours are being kept up on.” He squinted at them. “They are being kept up, aren’t they?”

The Reds all glanced to each other then back to Washington.

“Oh, yeaaaaah, sure, Wash! We’re right on those!” Donut called out in what was bound to be his least believable voice.

“No,” Lopez voiced.

“See! Even Lopez agrees about how well we’ve been doing!” Sarge chuckled.

Washington scowled. “No is still no even in Spanish. I understood him perfectly.”

“We’re fine, stop moaning and groaning about the number of hours we have left to our community service,” Grif huffed. “You’re literally the only person who cares.”

“Technically the law cares,” Wash reminded them.

“And we’re only a few hours behind our projected capita, Sir,” Simmons bit out nervously. “We’re good on them, promise!”

Wash sighed. “I know going straight is hard—“

“I’ve never even tried it!” Donut rang in almost instantly.

“Yeah, like you’d know the first thing about going straight,” Grif laughed at Wash’s face.

“You know what?” Washington sighed. “I’m just going to go home. Don’t forget to clock in your community service hours this week. I’m serious. It’s important that you do that.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Mister Fancy Pants in a new costume. All blue and disgusting — you should be ashamed of yourself,” Sarge grumbled.

“I’m far from it,” Wash said, heading out of the garage. “Seriously, keep up doing the good work and I wouldn’t have to pay you surprise visits.”

There was some garbled resentment, but Wash was far from caring about it.

With the Reds taken care of for the night, he was on his literal last stop of the night, and couldn’t be happier to finally get there.

Home was still a seemingly normal flat overtop a seemingly normal (because it was) laundromat. But behind such normal doors was security, protection, and — newly added — people waiting for him on the other side of it all.

Coming in through his bedroom window, Wash was at least a little disappointed that his room was empty. He never liked it when he kept people waiting, but living with said people had really made that gut reaction turn up to eleven.

Quickly dispensing with his patrol uniform, Wash changed into some boxers and a tee for comfort before going to the door and hoping that he was only keeping one person waiting instead of two.

In the main room, Tucker was preoccupied with a laptop and wearing pajama pants but not much else. Which, considering his usual bedroom attire, was a bonus, Wash supposed.

There was no Junior which meant the little quasi-alien was in bed and not waiting for the superhero role model to return home safely and give adventurous tales he could draw out and further cover the fridge with.

Standing in the doorway for a moment, Wash leaned against the frame and just looked at the sight set out before him. At his life — so different and new from what he had known just months before. And all because he had, by complete happenstance, ran into Tucker. Tucker and Junior and every remotely wild and obtuse friend and family that came along with them. From Reds to former evil geniuses to old not-so-dead fellow Freelancers, and landlords that Wash was more than happy to never deal with again.

It was all because of Tucker, and Wash’s heart swelled in his chest at the very thought of him.

That was, until Tucker happened to glance up from his laptop, get spooked and scream, and react by throwing a television remote Wash’s way.

Surprised, Wash moved out of the way and let the remote to the new television crash against the wall behind him and shatter. “Tucker! What the hell—“

“Wash!? What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you have to sneak up so quietly everywhere you go!?” Tucker cried out, bewildered. “If you were a cat I’d put a bell on you.”

Wash looked through the darkness at his partner and raised a brow. “Hilarious.”

“It’s not hilarious, it’s a valid threat,” Tucker said, sitting up on his knees and leaning over the back of the couch. “Any trouble tonight?”

Wash walked toward the couch. “Unfortunately no.”

“Unfortunately?” Tucker mocked. “I’ll never understand superheroes, I swear.”

“Unfortunately in that there won’t be a whole lot to tell Junior when he forces us both awake for breakfast in a few hours,” Wash said, leaning against the back of the couch, just inches from Tucker. “And for someone who will never understand superheroes, you’ve done a fairly decent job of getting together quite the crew of superhero tropes to surround yourself with over the years.”

Tucker shrugged passively, a smirk on his lips. “Eh, I’ve got my own power of magnetic personality. I just draw them all in.”

Tilting his head, Wash couldn’t help the fond smile across his face. “You certainly do,” he said. “I just hope it makes you happy.”

“What does?” Tucker asked blissfully, shutting his laptop.

“Being surrounded by bigger than life issues, living here with me, being friends with almost-nearly-convicts, pretending I didn’t see that it was porn on your screen before you shut your laptop,” Wash listed off almost wistfully.

“Make me happy?” Tucker laughed. “Wash, it’s like the definition of what makes me happy right now. I’m staying up late not because I had to pick up extra late night hours at the diner to cover the appliances. I’m staying up late watching porn in a living room I share with my superhero boyfriend who has a bankroll due to the kinda sketchy government coverup stuff that people on Blood Gulch couldn’t even dream up.” He then raised a brow of his own. “You ever going to tell me the full story of that someday?”

“I’m sure I will,” Wash said. “Just not tonight. Not when I can spend that time sleeping next to you in bed instead.”

Tucker waggled his eyebrow, as to be expected. “That all?”

“Well, I did have a slow night,” Wash lamented before leaning in and meeting Tucker for the kiss the man had been very obviously moving in for the entire conversation.

His life was becoming startlingly routine, but Washington had learned to very much love that.

And he truly did. It was the thing in the world he loved third most of all — right after Tucker and Junior.

At the back of his mind, though, Wash knew to be anxious, even if he wouldn’t dare show it to his partner. Because for a hero, slipping into routines, having things one loved most of all in the world, always seemed to have a price to be paid.

Sooner or later.