#but it is the price i must pay for getting into john green in 2023

[gonzofromspace]

forgive me for I have sinned (gotten into John Green again in the year 2023)

[halfmoth-halfman]

and i think i'm gonna love you for a long, long time

Pairing: Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x GN!Reader Word Count: 585 Warnings: alcohol mention, fluff, gaz and reader being complete saps for each other Prompt: Dressed Up & "I really want to kiss you right now." Disclaimer: I do not own modern warfare or any of the modern warfare characters. A/N: up next we've got a sweet, little drabble for @glitterypirateduck's GazFest 2023 💜

The wedding for one John MacTavish is a simple, beautiful affair.  

An outdoor event, themed in pale golds and dark greens, nestled in the soft glow of delicate string lights and moonlight. Love fills the air, swirling with a mix of laughter and happiness. There are no worries or stress, only the happy couple and their gentle dance as they smile and giggle with each other. 

It’s pure and perfect, but you don’t think about any of that. 

All you can focus on is the man sitting next to you. He’s not doing anything particularly special–his attention is elsewhere as he jokes and drinks with his captain while keeping a warm hand resting on your thigh–but you can’t help but stare. 

Beautiful is the only word you can use to describe Kyle Garrick. It’s so rare for you to see him dressed formally without the military fanfare. Not that you mind seeing him in uniform, but there’s something different about seeing him in a dark-colored suit with the golden light haloing his rich dark skin. 

He smiles wide, all shiny teeth and mirth, as he laughs at something Price says, and the exhale that leaves you is one of longing and desire. 

You must’ve been some kind of saint in a past life. The universe’s allowance to have him in your life has to be a gift, a reward for a good deed of herculean proportions. There’s no other way you could be so lucky to have met him, to be bestowed the privilege of his love. 

Price catches you staring, which isn’t hard considering that’s almost all you’ve done the entire night, and sends you a sly smile that you don’t pay attention to in the slightest. He tips his glass to Kyle, giving the sergeant–your handsome, perfect sergeant–a sly wink as he nods his head in your direction. Kyle tilts his head, turning around to catch your admiring gaze. 

He chuckles the moment he sees you, hand squeezing your thigh as he gives you a soft kiss on the crown of your head. 

“Having a good time?” he laughs, a look full of knowing as he meets your eyes. You hold his gaze, allowing yourself to get lost in the deep brown of his eyes.

When you don’t answer, too busy ogling him, he leans his forehead against yours with a knowing smirk. 

“What are you thinking about?” he murmurs, watching your eyes fall to his mouth. You look back up at him, blinking at him almost pleadingly. 

“I really want to kiss you right now,” you confess, a gentle purr of pure want. 

He hums thoughtfully, pretending to consider whether he’ll oblige you. You know he will; he couldn’t deny you anything anymore than you could him. 

You lean in, nudging his nose with yours in an attempt to get him to close the gap. Kyle laughs again, hand leaving your thigh to lightly grasp your chin and pull you in. 

You compare kissing Kyle to what heaven must feel like. His love is all-encompassing, surrounding you with warmth and love, leaving you feeling nothing less than cherished.

He pulls away first, and you chase after him, peppering kisses along his cheeks as they swell with laughter.

You don't know how you got so lucky, but he kisses you again, and you know that it doesn’t matter.

The universe has given you your soulmate–the other half of your heart–and you have no intention of ever letting him go. 

[raincitygirl76]

I love and greatly miss Farscape. And yes, its characters all start the premiere episode strangers to each other, thrown together by chance. And crucially, all the characters start out in that episode utterly isolated from any previous support systems and biological families. Those strangers, over the course of time, really do become a family. Sometimes a very messy and dysfunctional family who can barely stand each other. But family all the same.

Farscape was an uneven show. It could be and often was absolutely fucking brilliant. Particularly in seasons 2 and 3. That show could make me bray with laughter at how funny it was, and cry my eyes out when it was sad. But there were, admittedly, some episodes that were absolute turkeys. But Farscape’s creators took creative risks. Those risks didn’t always pay off, but they kept right on trying. And when the risks did pay off, the show was spellbinding.

Farscape (1999-2004) is also the last major tv series to avoid CGI alien creatures, shortly before CGI took over Hollywood. All the aliens for the show were puppets created by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. The actors frequently physically interacted with the puppet characters in scenes. It was so much better than acting against a green screen for a CGI alien that will be added later via pixels.

I realize that puppetry is expensive and labour-intensive, while CGI gets cheaper all the time. Mostly due to the exploitation of digital effects artists, who are not unionized and are often expected to work 60 to 70 hour weeks while only being paid for 40 hours. But relying on CGI special effects is a race to the bottom, from an artistic POV. As we see from the puppet aliens on Farscape, who are unmistakably real. On my most recent rewatch, I realized just how shitty supposedly “state of the art” CGI on movies and TV shows released in 2023 looks compared to a TV show that started in 1999 and avoided green screens.

John Crichton talking to the non-humanoid alien character Rygel (just as one example from an early episode in S1) was absolutely believable, because Ben Browder literally had his hands on Rygel (voiced by an actor but onscreen, “played” by a puppet). Now, obviously, that scene, like every other “hands on the puppet” scene, must have been meticulously choreographed.

The director, Browder, and the puppeteers operating Rygel must have worked together to do the scene without damaging the very expensive puppet or injuring any of the puppeteers. But the effect of the actors physically interacting with the puppets is bloody amazing. I didn’t think of Rygel (or the other non-humanoid characters) as the creation of puppeteers and a voice actor. They were as real as any other character. Here’s a scene from Season 1 between Crichton and Rygel. It’s not an especially physical scene, but it was the first I could find on YouTube.

I also recently discovered Farscape is available digitally for purchase on the iTunes Store. The advantage of buying it on iTunes is I now have digital copies that I own. Apple can’t take them away from me, even if they lose the rights to sell downloads of the show in future. Those digital downloads remain my legal property. Which is great! Although pay attention to the pricing. iTunes Store Canada was offering all 4 seasons plus the miniseries for $79.99 CAD. But if you buy each season and the miniseries as 5 separate purchases, it only adds up to $73 CAD.

I’d gone looking for it digitally the first time a few years ago. At the time, it was only available digitally on one of the streaming services with a monthly subscription. Can’t remember now which service (possibly Amazon Prime?), but you only have access to the content as long as you keep the subscription. And of course, when the streaming service’s contract with the production company that made the show expires, the show can easily disappear from the platform.

Yeah, i still have my Farscape DVD box sets from back in the day, and no plans to get rid of them. But I watch less and less TV on my actual television set these days. My couch isn’t very comfortable, and the living room blinds let in too much sun, the glare make it hard to see the screen sometimes. Over the past few years, with more and more of what I watch being streaming on Netflix or other platforms, or with digital downloads I own, I often grab my laptop and watch TV in bed. The bedroom has blackout curtains, and my bed is comfy. Also, the laptop screen is much smaller than my TV, but I’m sitting or lying much closer to it. And my laptop screen has excellent resolution.

Obviously, not everyone is in a position where they can drop $73 CAD to buy digital downloads of a show they already own on DVD, and/or could access much more cheaply via a streamer’s monthly subscription. Owning the show both digitally and on DVD is an optional extra. But for me, it was a nice treat to myself a few days after I got my tax refund.

Everybody who’s ever called a group of people who vaguely get along “found family trope” owes the farscape crew $500 for appropriating the term. You WISH you had what they have

[gyrlversion]

JAN MOIR: Surely not another coffee shop clogging up the high street

Someone please make it stop. It was revealed this week that four new coffee shops open in Britain every day, with another 6,500 scheduled to open by 2023.

This effectively means that in four years’ time there will be more than 32,000 coffee shops clogging up UK streets, most of them faceless outposts of the international chains. And you won’t get a halfway decent cup of coffee in most of them.

What seems to be the problem, ma’am? Only that despite their ubiquity, the offerings from the majority of coffee chains veer from the bland and forgettable to the downright bad or unpleasant.

It was revealed this week that four new coffee shops open in Britain every day, with another 6,500 scheduled to open by 2023 – most of which are big chains like Cafe Nero

And please, barista, make sure the water is scalding hot so that it peels the skin off my hand when spilled, thank you kindly. Any chance of a stale blueberry muffin, an inferior sandwich assembled at some far distant central facility, or a factory-made, microwaved croissant that tastes like a buttery floor cloth? Well, don’t mind if I don’t.

I used to buy a coffee on my way to work most mornings, sometimes from a chain, occasionally from a fancy but glum independent which sells cinnamon buns for a fiver and a tiny latte for £3.

‘With not very good latte art,’ someone moaned on a review website recently. As if that were the deal breaker, instead of the adventurous pricing, the double depresso service and the grim coffees that make the whole process such a cheerless, expensive waste of time.

Now I have fresh coffee at home, instant at work and have cut the chains out of my life. Cry freedom from the tyranny of the frappuccino fiends! I might buy myself a small Cessna jet with the money saved.

Yet despite the lack of quality on offer, coffee shops are now everywhere. And, sadly, their unstoppable proliferation — along with vaping shops, tattoo parlours, charity shops and shops that sell covers for your mobile phone — is turning British High Streets into windblown tundras, bereft of the tiniest waft of culture or beauty.

The Starbucks Venti is just a pint of coffee in a charmless mug or a cardboard coffin, Moir writes

And there is still little end in sight to the expansion of chains such as Caffe Nero, Costa, Greggs, Pret A Manger (actually, I love Pret) and Starbucks, to name a few. Obviously, selling 11 grams of coffee and a shot of hot milk for £2 plus is a lucrative business for all involved.

Today, coffee chains are like burger chains, complete with lots of advertising campaigns, central sites and huge rents to pay. In prime positions in every High Street, they are the most visible representation of our changing culture and they continue to boom as pubs go bust. Why? Younger people are drinking less, while Britain’s mix of ethnicities and religions has also had an effect — especially when one considers 56 per cent of non-whites declare themselves teetotal, compared to only 16 per cent of whites.

Beer duty and business rates have also taken their toll on pubs, where demanding customers now want craft beers, silly gins, food and their ghastly children to be admitted.

So coffee has surged into this vacuum, and who could blame it?

I pass eight coffee outlets on my walk to work, including Danish chain Joe & The Juice. What the heck is that all about? Joe seems to be full of silent young people tapping away on phones and laptops.

Bonhomie and conversational skills have been washed away by technology, amid the atmosphere of a trendy morgue.

Their advertising campaign suggests the ideal Joe customer is an attractive Nordic skateboarder with a lizard tattoo. All the better to raise your glass of Sex Me Up juice (please, no) along with your avo wrap and turmeric shots.

Perhaps it’s not them, it’s me? Yet there is still a place in my heart for the good, independent coffee shop. When I first moved to London, how I loved those Italian coffee places with their hissing machines and great walls of sandwiches in glass cabinets, generously stuffed with about three inches of egg mayonnaise or crammed with ham.

In prime positions in every High Street, the chains are expanding exponentially and replacing pubs because younger people are drinking less

In Cornwall, imaginative independents thrive, such as the Honey Pot in Penzance and the Cook Book Cafe in St Just, where the owner makes heavenly sandwiches with bacon from her own pigs.

To walk into any of the Bettys Tea Rooms in Yorkshire is to be assailed with the aromas from another age: fresh baking, savoury toast, roasted coffee beans. And, oh, the civility could make you weep. Tablecloths, milk jugs, sugar tongs, a smile.

There is no comparison between a lovely coffee served in a perfect china cup and saucer at Brasserie Zedel in Central London and a monstrosity such as the Starbucks Venti — over a pint of coffee in a charmless mug or a cardboard coffin.

So, hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to drink you up again. Although not in a chain, never in a chain, even as they become increasingly hard to avoid.

Don’t shed a tear for evergreen Eva

Eva Green revealed she feels insecure about reaching her 40s next year because acting ‘depends on the desire’ of others

Eva Green is an exquisite beauty. However, at the age of 38, the actress (pictured) is worried about the ageing process.

Eva, a word. Only when one gets older — much, much older — will you truly understand what a perfect age 38 is and how lucky you are to be perched there, on the cliff face of life. Most of the early angst is over, but you are still pre-40 watershed. Make the most of it!

Yet Eva feels insecure about reaching her 40s next year because acting ‘depends on the desire’ of others. ‘Will people still like me?’ she frets.

Possibly not, if you carry on like this, darling.

But let us not mock Eva, for I honestly believe the ageing process is so much harder on the beautiful and the damned.

If you have been used to the warm and appreciative male gaze all your life, it must feel very chilly when it begins to fade.

The gain of feeling no pain

You might not believe this, but there is a woman in Scotland who feels no pain and never complains. No, it’s not me.

Her chemical imbalance means that she is also always in a good mood, which means she is definitely not me and neither is she Lorraine Kelly, who admitted last week in a tax hearing that her super-cheery on-screen persona was fake. (Can I just pause here to mention that Lorraine has also just revealed that she never takes off her bra, not even when she goes to bed, which is even more shocking.)

Jo Cameron is the remarkable woman whose unusual gene mutations stop pain signals reaching her brain. For 71-year-old Jo, childbirth was a breeze; she only needed aspirin for a painful operation; she walked away from a serious car accident, and she munches on scotch bonnet peppers as if they were plums. When she was a little girl, she didn’t even notice she had broken her arm roller-skating.

Jo Cameron (left) has led a virtually pain-free life due to a rare genetic mutation that affects just one in several million

It makes you strong, but it also makes you weak. She had no indication that her hip was crumbling, or that osteoarthritis had pushed a thumb bone into her palm.

Experts believe her condition is only found once in every several million people and she is now helping medical experts explore the parameters of pain management, especially for those who suffer chronic pain after surgery. In a way, I’m glad that she discovered this at a late age — one can only imagine what medical science might have wanted her to do earlier.

What a remarkable story. She has never felt pain in her life, but I bet she still runs screaming from the room when someone mentions Brexit. Or Lorraine’s bra.

 Havana truly bizarre time

Has there ever been a more hilarious royal tour than the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall’s recent 12-day jaunt to the Caribbean? Every second was a joy, for us — not them.

The sprightly septuagenarians crammed more than 70 engagements into a schedule that seemed to leave rigid royal protocol behind and had the pair of them shambling around the islands like a couple of crumpled pensioners on a Saga cruise.

Highlights included Charles striding along the sand in his beach brogues, Camilla looking like a discarded sweetie wrapper at his side and about a thousand cheesy photo ops, including one in Cuba where they actually did eat actual cheese.

Prince Charles and Camilla make a mojito on their trip to Havana, Cuba, this week

There were moments when it was more like an episode of Flog It! than a royal visit. The couple tootled around in a classic car, then sat next to a statue of John Lennon, Camilla visibly wilting gently under a parasol. They learned how to make a mojito cocktail (above) and sampled their work. ‘That hit the spot,’ said Camilla, after a long gulp. Charles used a sugar cane treadle, posed with a parrot, got into a boxing ring and looked like he was having the time of his life, even if he was not.

Looking thrilled at municipal events is his superpower. He even met Lionel Richie at the Coral Reef Club Hotel in Barbados and greeted him with a line from one of his hits.

‘Hello,’ said the Prince. ‘It must have been you I was looking for.’

Close, but no Cuban cigar, you dear old thing.

At Reading University, food scientist Dr Stuart Farrimond claims to have discovered the recipe for the perfect toasted cheese sandwich. In his formula, two medium slices of white bread are toasted on both sides, then buttered right to the edges. 

Then he adds 50g (1.8oz) of grated medium cheese, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and places them exactly 18cm (7in) under the grill.

Is he COMPLETELY MAD? Everyone knows that you don’t use butter when making cheese on toast, and that you toast the bread on one side only, then add the cheese. 

What kind of savagery is the prof encouraging? Honestly. You simply cannot trust half-boiled eggheads to do anything properly.

Fury from the Madden crowd

Richard Madden fans are troubled. They feel that the actor has been snubbed because he didn’t receive a Bafta nomination for his performance in BBC drama Bodyguard.

Unluckily for Richard Madden, the Bafta nods this year include two of the best male turns in television drama for years, meaning he’ll miss out

His portrayal of protection officer David Budd (pictured) was compelling and one for which he has already won a Golden Globe. But, unluckily for him the Bafta nods this year include two of the best male turns in television drama for years — Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe in A Very British Scandal and Benedict Cumberbatch as Patrick Melrose.

A different class, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant Budd?

The post JAN MOIR: Surely not another coffee shop clogging up the high street appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress https://www.gyrlversion.net/jan-moir-surely-not-another-coffee-shop-clogging-up-the-high-street/