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illuminatedcomics · 2 years ago

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Today I remembered Mad Magic, and I made a LONG post about it. MM ran from November 2017 to May 2020 for a total of nearly 200 pages, my longest comic yet, not only in terms of actual continuous posting, but in development, as I have sketches and art dating back from 2011. Almost ten years of planning and drawing resulted in me having a big burnout that lasted a year and a half. It wasn’t MM fault that happened, and this post is sort of me coming to terms with what went wrong.

While the details and the higher concept shifted and changed multiple times, the heart of this comic always remained the same: there’re two girls, they’re roommates, and they live through a series of comedic horror adventures.

Around early 2017, I combined this first draft with many newer ideas about high concept parody/deconstructions of Harry Potter: “What if a teenage Chosen one enters their adulthood and realizes they can’t top all the stuff they did as a kid?” and “What if one of those wallpaper background bullies that work as henchman for the main rival was the center of the narrative?” To be honest I was never a huge fan of Harry Potter, but still, I was in the right age group to see the movies as a kid, and read a few of the early books, so these concepts intrigued me.

Enter Mad Magic, the story of Joy Kaplan, former Demon Goat (that’s your house Slytherin), who after getting kicked out of school, ends up living a life of expedients, together with sassy Alix Peck, a punk girl that appears normal but has actually a mysterious past.

You know how they tell you “don’t make your first comic your big end all epic magnum opus”? Well, Mad Magic wasn’t technically my first attempt at a webcomic, but it nailed the too big for its own good part. When I finished planning it, it was going to be 17 chapters long (40 to 80 pgs each), with dozens of characters, twists, turns, action scenes, magic, time travel, vampires, elves, doppelgangers, lovecraftian gods, crossovers with other stories of mine, long haul plans a la Once Piece where that one character introduced in one panel in page 4 of chapter 1 was supposed to become the main villain of the story arc of chapter 12…

Considering the series ended after 4 chapters and a quarter, we know something broke down along the way. But what? Well first off MM was a ton of work. I structured the pages in a large euro-comic style, with four rows of panels, that fluctuated between 10 to 20 each, all full color. With a day job, completing a full page could take a couple of days or even a full weekend. So that was tiring, maintaining the schedule ate up a lot of free time, and whenever I missed an update or decided to take a brief hiatus I always regretted it and felt like crap about it.

But the biggest problem was a lack of general fulfillment and this absence was caused by my perceived inability to “find an audience”. There’re plenty of articles online explaining the causes of burnout, and one of the big ones is the problem with “reward”, when you don’t feel like the effort you put into something is worth what you’re getting in return.

There were people reading Mad Magic, there were people that seemed to love Mad Magic, but in my eyes, they were never enough… but what would’ve been “enough” anyway? What magic number would've made it worth it??? Ultimately, this junction between my inability to gather a larger interest, and the presence of this foggy, undescribed “number” of people that would’ve satisfied me caused the wheels to break down. I was letting things like subscriber counts, likes per page, pageviews and reblogs dictate how I perceived my own creation. If a page got fewer likes than average, I started wondering, obsessing what was wrong with it.

The point is, after nearly three years of working on Mad Magic, doing my damnest to put out pages weekly, I was seeing absolutely no growth in reach or audience and I didn’t really know what I was doing wrong or if I was doing anything right in the first place. This stagnation led to stress, which led to losing pleasure in doing the comic in the first place, so that I was forcing myself to make pages, eventually leading to burnout and the complete loss in my desire to draw again. It took me a year and a half to get back into things, a period so nasty and bleak that even the idea of reading a comic made me queasy. The fact that this coincided with the global covid pandemic exacerbated the problems, but I think that even without that, it would’ve simply taken a bit longer to reach the same point of no return. I realize now this mentality was unfair towards the few readers I had, and to myself too. I try not to worry about the idea of “finding an audience” anymore. I make the stuff I make because I want to, if I catch myself thinking “people won’t care about this” I nip it in the bud. I’m lucky enough that I don’t need to draw for a living, and considering artist’s spaces on the web seem to be constantly shrinking, the whole endeavor of finding a following online seems just a headache. I also try not to be bothered by the concept of schedules and updates. I only draw when I want, when I feel like it, and it works. I look at stuff like Toxic Park, one of my current projects: in 2022, I produced around 80 pgs of story in two blocks, when the will and inspiration to do so hit me. That’s roughly the same amount of pages of Mad Magic I made in a similar period 2017/2018, by forcing myself to have at least one page ready every single week. So, the change in schedule or lack thereof, didn’t result in a change in output. Not to mention, that in both cases, I tried to develop other ideas simultaneously, and while with MM coming out that felt like crunching, at my leisure carefree pace I also made a 20 pages historical comic, Theo the Lucky, and nine more shorter comics, which are all around two to three pages worth of story (and you’ve seen posted on this blog). Simply put, I feel like I draw so much more now that I don’t cage myself in a mentality where “I must get this done before this completely imaginary deadline hits”.

I still hold the Mad Magic’s cast dear to my heart, they’re part of a ten year journey. I often try to think of ways of bringing it back, but continuing from the point where I left it off, where things were just starting to get interesting, doesn’t feel right. I may follow Osamu Tezuka’s Star System, where the same characters in personality and design are recontextualized in completely different stories. We’ll see.

Mad Magic is still up on tumblr where it was originally posted! And looking back at it, I think it still holds up relatively well. I lost all passwords and emails relative to that account so I can’t access it, but the entirety of the comic in its uncompleted state (I think some pages might’ve been weirdly flagged during the tumblr porn ban?) can still be read here:

@madmagic-comic

#my comics #webcomics #tldr #wall of text #illuminatedcomics #mad magic #web comics

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scoobydoo-ghoulschool · 2 years ago

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15 Questions

Thanks for tagging me Alice @memes-saved-me

Are you named after anyone?

Yes, I’m named after Granville Bennet’s wife Zoë in the book All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot.

When was the last time you cried?

I think it was like four days ago? I had a bad dream that totally freaked me out.

Do you have kids?

No.

Do you use sarcasm?

Yeah, genuinely can’t imagine not using it.

What is the first thing you notice about someone?

Probably hair? I’ve also found I’m still good at recognizing people with masks on so I guess the top half of faces leaves an impression for me.

What is your eye color ?

Brown.

Scary movies or happy endings?

Are these mutually exclusive? Idk I definitely have a longer relationship with the romantic comedy genre (even tho I still love horror) I have to go with happy endings.

Any special talents?

I don’t know, I can write a college paper in one day and still get an A grade on it. That feels like a talent when I’ve procrastinated.

Where were you born?

Indiana. I ask that television stop making shows that take place here. Nothing happens. Ever.

What are your hobbies?

I paint water colors, and I sketch a bit. Writing is becoming more of an actual job for me, but I still obviously write fanfic in my free time. I also have gotten into book binding, it’s a very soothing craft!

Do you have any pets?

Yes. Look at my baby♥️

What sports do you play/have played?

I played soccer (football) in middle school, and then I ran track in High School. I like running still but I can’t do it in group settings anymore bc my track coach was a control freak and ruined the appeal.

Favorite subject in school?

In high school it was English, I had a few teachers that just really inspired me to keep writing and I owe them a lot. In college, I took this one course on technology and media studies which was awesome, I learned a ton about the media industry through it.

Dream job?

I would give anything to be a showrunner. I love television as an artistic medium and I feel like I have good stories to tell. I’ve pitched a couple shows before, but I’m not out of school yet, and also I live in the Midwest at the moment, so this is still a very very future endeavor. But also if it came down to it I do live working with kids and if it paid well I’d love to be an art teacher.

@anakinkshamer @redleavesinthewind @mrsblackruby

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illustratorintheprocess · 2 years ago

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Week 11: Monday - Tutor Group Meeting!! Yaaay!

Diving straight into week 11 because week 10 is a blurr. After last Wednesday I know I did some chores and stuff off my to-do list but it's all a blur now and then I worked over the weekend. So Monday usually hits like a truck.

What I do remember from last week is ordering Tracing Paper and Carbon Paper on Ebay to make the transfer from sketch to Lino plate easier. I also ordered and collected 5 A3 lino boards from lcc at some point last week. It was heavy carrying it all the way back.

Alright so Monday and week 11 have come!

At the beginning of this group meeting we talked through the brief of the major project already, just so we've heard it officially at least once before the winter break. I had already printed and read the brief at the beginning of the year so this was just a nice refresher + some extra notes from Maisie, our group tutor, who has seen multiple years work on the major projects. So she has good tips and insights for us.

After that we were left to work on our projects while 3 people at a time would talk to Maisie about the progress we made with our projects. I was really nervous because with a lot of doctor and dentist visits + covid booster sickness + recent crying at the crit + last weeks crazy Tuesday night....it's just so much. And it left me feeling like a total useless slacker who doesn't even deserve to be here.

So yeah. I was anxious.

Maisie called Mia, myself and another member of our group who I don't know by name up first. Honestly the best thing that could have happened because if I was left alone with my thoughts again I would have probably freaked out again. So, the guy in our little group went first and I remembered him because of the presentation all of us gave a whiiiiile back on our project ideas. He is working on a single player table top game for people with severe social anxiety. I can somewhat relate. He has designed 15 cards already and the illustrations looked super good and the characters were very endearing! I would love to purchase his finished game honestly. You can tell he has spent a lot of time and love in developing every detail of it and it blows my mind he made a whole game by himself for this project! Truly original and amazing.

I also knew about Mia's project. Packaging design that caters to the blind consumer. Again, very original and out of the box thinking. I don't remember her showing any samples of her work but she was talking about doing lino cut instead of screen printing. She is also Route B in CTS which means instead of a loooong dissertation like me, she is working on yet another physical project and a shorter essay.

Then it came to me showing my progress and I was really nervous so I can't even remember half the stuff I said but Maisie was really nice and agreed with my work plan of finishing over winter break and printing first thing in January. She said that for the Lino cut prints I have to figure out how to make the characters stand out and pop. That was good feedback and I'm thinking about it a lot. I told her about thermo powders, Ellen mentioned to me, those could be applied to the ink after printing and give the whole image a nice shimmer.

Maisie also encouraged me to check out the 3D workshop area to make a quick wooden board I could put my lino board on while cutting. A little corner in the top of the board would hold the board in place, making the whole process safer.

After the group session Mia and I showed the guy (I REALLY WITH I KNEW HIS NAME AAAH) where the digital print and print finishing area is. Then I showed Mia our common room because turns out she never went there before. I delivered all zines, posters and post cards for the winter art fair here and Mia and I went to the 3D workshop together. Since we both are doing lino cut each of us needed a wooden board like Maisie suggested.

The technician was really nice and had a very calm demeanor. He cut some scraps for us and let us glue the corners to the boards. It took 30 minutes for the glue to dry during which Mia and I took a little lunch break in the cafeteria. It was nice catching up with her again.

The boards turned out nicely so we thanked the man who helped us and headed back home just as it got dark.

All in all a day full of productive and surprising turns.

Oh and I have bought new planner for 2023 and it's all blue and pretty!!

Things are looking up.

#student life #ual #university of the arts london #london college of communication #studyblr #illustration and visual media #lcc #uni life

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smutbymia · 4 years ago

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hiiii can i request a smut with ex bf turned fwb jaehyun where he still loves y/n thats why he agreed on that setup but he gets y/n pregnant along the way djsjajhaa thank youuu it could be fluffy at the end thankbyooouu ❤️

You pushed through the front doors of a restaurant bar, scanning the space for your high school friends. It had been a few years since you first graduated and even though you kept in touch with them it wasn’t easy for all of you to meet up due to your busy schedules.

You saw a few hands waving you down from across the room and walked over, smiling.

“Great, you all got here at the same time,” said your friend Lia. You were confused at her comment until you turned around, only to see that there was a group of guys behind you that had entered just after you did. And one of the boys in that group happened to be someone you were very familiar with.

Going to an all-girls school was supposed to help you focus more on your studies and have less distractions but that was all useless considering the fact that there was an all boys school right across the street. You remembered the days when droves of school kids would hang around the entrances trying their best to look nonchalant while they whispered amongst their friends about the boys that they found attractive until it was time to head home for the day.

Most didn’t dare approach the opposite sex on the other side of the street, except Lia’s cousin Johnny happened to be a student at the boys school and so he would often use “picking her up from school” as an excuse to hang around the front gates of the girls academy. Lia’s parents traveled a lot for work and so during the school year aside from some weekends, she would stay with Johnny, her aunt, and uncle since her family home was in the next town over.

That was what led you to meeting your ex-boyfriend Jaehyun. He was handsome and cute all in one and even back then the girls would drool over him, however he was extremely unapproachable in the eyes of many. The day you met, you had gone to the convenience store near school with Lia. The two of you sat outside on top of one of the tables with your legs outstretched as you typically did. Lia was ranting about a drama she had been watching and eating ice cream and you were scribbling clothing designs in the mini sketchbook that you always carried around when Johnny turned the corner with a group of his friends following closely behind.

“Look who it is,” he said as he threw his backpack onto the empty benches you rested your feet on. The rest of his friends followed suit throwing their bags as you and Lia shrieked, lifting your legs out of the way just in time as they made their way into the convenience store. Except one boy walked calmly towards the door, dropping his bag on the table next to you without even looking up once from the book he carried in his hand.

That day they hung around eating snacks and causing a ruckus but Jaehyun was very easy going. You couldn’t help but steal glances at him as he ran his fingers through his hair and skimmed through his textbook which happened to be about computer programming. He suddenly glanced up and realized the two of you were the only ones sitting around the table while Lia and the other boys all fooled around nearby, gaming on their phones and dribbling around a basketball.

He yawned and shut his book as he leaned forward on the table, eyes glued on yours as you felt heat rush to your cheeks.

“What are you doing?” he questioned, gesturing towards your sketchpad.

“D-drawing,” you stammered embarrassingly. The corner of his mouth raised into a gentle smirk as he caught onto the nervousness in your tone of voice. He scooted over next to you and you could feel the air leave your lungs.

Just as he leaned over to peak at what you were drawing, you slammed the sketch book shut, not wanting him to see the sketch you had drawn of him reading.

“Are they... naughty drawings?” he teased.

“No, no of course not. Not at all!” you protested getting more and more embarrassed by the way he smiled at you. You slipped the sketchpad into your bag, and got up from your spot next to him. You turned to Lia.

“It’s getting late, I should go,” you said to her. She instinctively started to collect her belongings too but Johnny stopped him.

“Jaehyun lives on her street so he can take her. I need you to come with me to the store. Mom’s birthday is this weekend and I have no clue what to get her,” he whined. Before you could get a word in, the group had split and gone their separate ways leaving the two of you alone.

Living on the same street is what brought you closer. Jaehyun started walking you home whenever you happened to hang out with Johnny and his friends and the two of you would sometime stop on the way home for bubble tea, or at stationary shops when you needed art supplies. Eventually he started meeting you at the end of your street each morning before school and even on the weekends at the park in your neighbourhood. Eventually the two of you started to secretly date and were known as the “it” couple between the all boys and all girl school once your secret got out just before graduation.

You maintained the relationship through your last summer before going your separate ways once university started. You still remembered sharing so many of your firsts with Jaehyun. Your first date, your first relationship and your first kiss.

And now here he was years later sitting across from you like he did back in high school. It would have been awkward had your friends slowed down with the drinking. Instead, after a few short chats about what everyone was up to and a bunch of shots later they were all stumbling out into cabs or moaning at the table about missing each other.

You and Jaehyun had always been the tame ones out of the bunch so the two of you took turns getting the remainder of your friends into cabs until it was just the two of you left. You stood outside the bar with him after getting Johnny into the last cab and sending him off. Jaehyun sighed as he stood next to you on the sidewalk.

“They’re such a handful,” he complained. You chuckled softly in agreement.

“Yeah, they totally sobered me up,” you whined, “what a waste.”

“Well it wouldn’t be fair for us to go home sober, would it?” he asked with that same mischievous smirk he always pulled out.

That led to the two of you going to the nearest convenience store which coincidentally happened to be the one near your old schools, taking shots of soju outside on the dining tables. The two of you reminisced, while avoiding the topic of your former romance until you both decided it was time to head home.

Both of your families had moved from your old neighbourhood but you did still live nearby after finishing school. Jaehyun offered to walk you home despite your refusals. He insisted. And of course, as if it was planned by the Gods themselves, just as you arrived it started to rain. You knew it would be rude to leave him drunk and alone to hail a cab and so you reluctantly invited him into your place to wait until the rain eased up a bit more.

A mixture of the alcohol and the tension between the two of you that had been building all night led to you pressed against the door of your apartment which you locked behind you, and Jaehyun hovering in front of your face.

“W-we shouldn’t right?” he started in a whisper, “because...”

His arms gripped your waist and you watched as he tried to focus on thinking coherently instead of letting the alcohol scramble his brain as his eyes scanned yours for a reaction. It looked like he needed you to finish the sentence because he was struggling to find a good reason as to why he should stop himself from taking your right there in the entrance of your place.

You couldn’t lie to yourself. You were dying to get a taste of him. He had matured nicely, his muscular frame filling out his clothing. You ran hands over his arms,

“Fuck it, J-just this once,” you said quietly as you trailed your hands up to his neck and drew him in for a kiss. You could feel Jaehyun relax in your embrace as his lips met yours softly. There was no urgency in his actions. He parted his lips and slipped his tongue into your mouth, deepening the kiss. He kissed you like he had been yearning to do so.

As much as the romantic mood touched your heart, you needed more to be satisfied and so you took it upon yourself to intensify things. You captured his bottom lip between your teeth and tugged softly. You caught him by surprise as he momentarily opened his eyes. You could see his gaze transform into something a little darker before trailing kisses down his neck. Jaehyuns breathing grew heavy as he flattened the palm of his hand against the door behind you to steady himself. He pushed his hips forward, letting you feel how excited he was, drawing a low moan from his lips.

“Bed,” you gasped as Jaehyun let his hands wander across your body gripping your ass and making their way back up as he explored every curve he could reach, “now. Before we do anything else, I need you in my bed.”

Jaehyun smirked at the desperation in your voice as you two rushed to kick off your shoes. You walked briskly through your apartment towards your bedroom. Jaehyun however lingered, taking in the space, stopping to look at artwork on the walls and look at photo frames.

“Jae,” you whined as you paused at your doorway, frustrated that he wasn’t right behind you. Jaehyuns heart fluttered from hearing the nickname you called him after such a long time as he put down a frame he had in his hands.

He laughed as he approached you, leaning down to plant a soft kiss on your lips before catching himself. He stood tall again, letting out a deep breath.

“Sorry,” he said as he stepped into your room, lifting his shirt above his head and turning back around to face you. You stood frozen taking in his muscular frame with your mouth frozen in a gasp.

“You- you really matured well,” you said as you crossed the room to place your hands on his chest. His dimples became visible as he moved to stand behind you. He lifted your shirt over your head and unclasped your bra from behind, looking over your shoulder down your chest as the garment fell to the ground to expose your bare chest. He wrapped his hands around your body, squeezing at the soft flesh as he trailed kisses down your neck and pressed himself against your behind. You gasped softly at the way his fingers ran back and forth over your nipples, sending electricity racing through your body, letting your head fall back to rest on his chest.

Jaheyun moved his hands down your stomach until he reached the waistband of your jeans, undoing the button and lowering the zipper, not waiting any longer. He slipped his hand into your underwear, dipping his digits between your folds as you cried out his name in satisfaction from finally being touched.

You gripped his thigh behind you, steadying yourself as you shifted your legs to open them up wider in order to give him more access to your core. You could feel your knees buckled as he drew circles under the hood of you folds directly over your clit. Jaehyun adjusted his grip on your body, holding you up when he realized you were growing weak under his touch. He was impressed at your ability to hold back your pleasure.

“That’s my good girl. You’re doing so well. I need you nice and wet,” he cooed as the sound of your wetness echoed with every occasional dip of his fingers towards your entrance before he drew your juices back up to wet your sensitive bud.

“I can’t last much longer,” you whined. Jaehyun slowed the assault on your clit and instead flattened his hand between your legs, gripping your entire core without moving as he allowed you to regain your composure. You couldn’t help yourself as you slowly rutted against his hand. He chucked softly behind you.

“Hey, don’t cum yet,” he whined back as he squeezed at your center, slowing your ruts and making your mind go fuzzy, “I want to feel you first.”

You couldn’t believe this was the same sweet but mischievous boy you had known for so long. He slipped his hand back out from between your legs and pulled your pants down from over your hips until you had undressed entirely. He motioned for you to get on the bed as you watched him undress, pumping his length between his fist as he hovered over you.

You sat up on your legs, spreading them as you reached for him wanting to take him into your mouth. Jaehyun stood rested a knee on the bed as he stood, letting you lick softly at the head of his dick as he grunted, just as you covered it with your mouth and felt him jerk forward into you. You whimpered softly feeling him push himself back and forth over your tongue as you hollowed out your cheeks and pumped along his shaft. He grew harder with every stroke until he couldn’t take it anymore and gripped your chin as he slid himself out from between your lips.

“Fuck,” he gasped as he let himself fall onto the bed beside you, propped up by only his elbows. You took the opportunity to climb on top of him, straddling his hips as you hovered above him, dropping your head down to kiss him and silently guiding him to lay down.

He ran his hand down your sides and over your back as you felt him fumble with himself before positioning himself at your entrance, letting you sink down onto him. The sound the two of you made as your bodies connected at their cores had you whimpering along with the sensation of being filled up completely.

Jaehyun brushed a strand of hair behind your ear as he gripped at your face, cursing as you took more and more of him into you.

“Are you sure you can take it all?” he murmured, planting kisses across your cheeks. You nodded shakily, focusing as you felt your abdomen grow tighter the further you sunk down, feeling as though you were running out of space until you felt your rear end finally make contact with his balls. You let out a shriek as Jaehyun let out a dreamy moan, head falling back into the pillows as you settled comfortably around him.

“Shit, that feels so amazing,” he whimpered. You planted your hands firmly on his chest, sitting up and rotating your hips slowly on top of him as you adjusted to his size. Curse words fell from his lips as he gripped at your hips, slowly and gently fucking up into you every time you circled your waist.

His thrusts grew more frantic as you started to lift yourself with each rotation of your hips, letting yourself slam back down into his thrusts. The two of you grunted, quickening the pace. As you both grew more desperate, Jaehyun repositioned himself, wrapping his entire arm around your waist as he propped himself up with the other so that he was in a seated position. He bent his knees slightly, planting soles of his feet against the mattress to steady the both of you as he used his strength to jerk his hips right up into your opening so you didn’t have to exert as much energy, and allowing him to control the pace.

The combination of his thrusts along with the way your clit conveniently brushed against his his lower abdomen sent you into a spiral. You fell apart instantaneously. The feeling of your body clenching around him had Jaehyun releasing himself into you as your name spilled from his lips. The two of you could only keep your eyes open long enough to clean yourselves up a bit before you both fell asleep in your bed.

The next morning wasn’t awkward at all, thankfully. The two of you woke up and showered, and decided to go out for some coffee and breakfast at a nearby cafe before taking a walk at a park near your place. The conversation was easy. It was officially the weekend and so neither of you were preoccupied with many other responsibilities. Despite the very intimate sex, things otherwise seemed normal.

“I should probably go back to my place,” Jaehyun said as he gestured towards his clothing. You had already spent a few hours together and had totally forgotten about the fact that he was still wearing last nights clothes.

“Oh... shit, yeah. I lost track of time,” you said sheepishly. He smiled sweetly.

“Me too,” he responded hesitating before continuing, “about last night...”

You could feel heat spread across your cheeks.

“Don’t worry. It was nothing,” you said quickly out of embarassment.

Jaehyun looked perplexed, then a bit frustrated. You knew him well enough to know that you had ticked him off. Just as he opened his mouth to tell you off, you interrupted him.

“Wait, no! What I meant to say was that it was amazing but I also totally understand that it was a spur of the moment thing,” you said as you grabbed one of his hands to grasp in between yours.

Jaehyun nodded, letting out a sigh and trying not to let the disappointment show too much on his face.

“Text me so I know you got home safe,” he said as he removed his hand from your grasp. You nodded, and said your goodbyes as the two of you went your separate ways.

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t thinking about that night since it happened. A week had gone by and even though you and Jaehyun kept in loose and casual contact through text, you still couldn’t stop thinking about him. You couldn’t satisfy yourself either. Nothing felt quite as satisfying as his touch and it was starting to wind you up.

You were getting ready for Johnny’s birthday party when there was a knock at your door that you weren’t expecting.

“Oh, hey...” you said.

You were very surprised to find Jaehyun standing on the other side. He already smelled of alcohol but didn’t seem to be too wasted.

“Sorry I was going to call but my phone died when I was out with my coworkers,” he mumbled, “do you mind?”

He held his phone up and you stepped aside, letting him enter your apartment and lending him your phone charger. He was also going to Johnny’s place later for his party in a few hours and according to him he was in the area. He sat quietly in the living room for most of the time. As you were finishing up your makeup, he knocked softly on the bathroom door.

“What’s up?” you asked in a monotone voice as he opened the door. You were focused on your own reflection applying your mascara.

“Hey, do you have anything to drink? I think the party already started and everyone already started drinking so I thought it would be a good idea to start now so that we could catch up,” he said as he scrolled through his phone texting what was most likely the boys’ group chat.

“Yeah, check the cabinet above the fridge,” you said. Jaehyun hovered in the doorway watching you for a moment.

“Is everything okay? I spoke with Lia earlier. She said you’ve been a little... bratty this week,” he said. You turned to glare at him but he raised his eyebrows, challenging you to kick an attitude with him. If there was anyone who didn’t tolerate your moodiness it was Jaehyun.

“Did something happen?” he asked. You shook your head no.

“I don’t know I just feel a little.. tense, I guess. It will pass,” you mumbled as you touched up your lipstick in the mirror next.

Jaehyun stepped behind you, catching off guard. He stood close to you as he locked eyes with you in the mirror. You watched as his hands disappeared behind you before you felt him pull the zipper of your dress up. You had forgotten to do it up earlier when you first put it on.

“Maybe drinking will help. C’mon,” he started as he took the lipstick from between your fingers and closed the lid before resting it on your counter and pulling you out of the bathroom, “you already look perfect.”

The two of you took a few shots in your kitchen. The alcohol did help a bit but not entirely. You rotated your head, stretching your neck out as you sighed deeply. Jaehyun was buzzed and in a much better mood than you were, he knocked back another drink before moving behind you and massaging at your neck.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong now?” he asked. You took a deep breath as his fingers worked against your skin and you leaned back just slightly into him, closing your eyes.

You shook your head. He continued to massage out the kinks in your neck as he watched the tension slowly slip away from your face, smiling. It wasn’t until you started to let soft moans slip from your mouth that he froze momentarily.

“Jae, don’t stop,” you whimpered, “please.”

He felt himself harden just from the tone of your voice. He had to catch himself when he found himself instinctively leaning down towards your neck to drag his tongue across your skin.

Your eyes fluttered open as you craned your neck to look up at him, wondering why he had stopped his massage. His eyes were glazed over and you felt that tension ease its way back.

“O-one more time” you whispered.

“What?” he question, not understanding what you were referring to.

“For fucks sake, Jae!” you groaned. Turning around and pull him closer to you as your lips hovered in front of his.

“I can’t be drunk around you like this without caving and literally nothing satisfies me anymore after last week so let’s do this one last time and then you have to promise not to come back here again,” you said, words spilling uncontrollably for your mouth as you began unbuttoning his shirt.

He stopped you, gripping your hands.

“Wait, is that what’s been bothering you all week? You needed sex?” he asked, baffled. You felt your cheeks heat up, suddenly feeling a bit ashamed.

“Y/n... look at me,” he said as you lifted your gaze to meet his. He slipped his index finger under your chin.

“If that’s all that you need to feel better then you know you can call me anytime, right?” he said, smirking. His heart tensed up a bit when he put the offer on the table. You nodded, head spinning from the alcohol.

“Alright, we’re already late,” he said as he abruptly lifted you up onto the kitchen counter behind you and hiked up your dress, slipping your thong down past your ankles and discarding it onto the floor.

He pulled your mouth to his, not wasting time letting his tongue massage into your mouth as he let his fingers work at your clit the way he knew would have you dripping in just a few seconds. He unzipped his pants, pushing them down just far enough for him to free himself. He was already hard enough to push into you, slipping easily through your folds and deep into your entrance. He drew a high pitched moan from your lips as he thrusted into you quickly.

Even though it was much easier to take him this time, you still were very taken aback by the way he made you feel so full.

“Anytime you want, anywhere you want,” he grunted as he slammed his hips forward, palming your breasts through your silk mini dress, “And however you want! I’ll take care of you”

You felt a weeks worth of frustration build up in your core as you felt your orgasm approach you. You gasped for air, slapping your hands against his shoulder to get him to slow down as you pleaded, “f-from behind. I need you from behind, please!”

Jaehyun didn’t miss a beat. He lifted you off of the counter before slipping himself out of you just long enough to turn you over and bend you over the same counter before snapping his hips back into you again.

“Harder,” you begged and he complied. You felt him tighten his grip around your waist and rope his fingers into your hair as he jerked his hips forward, not slowing as you came, soaking him from the inside. You screamed out his name as he kept up his pace.

“Be a good girl and hold on a little longer, okay? I’m almost there,” he said through gritted teeth. Every thrust left you tingling as your walls squeezed around his cock, just as you felt him release into you and collapse onto your back as he caught his breath. Your moment of bliss was interrupted by the ringing of Jaehyun’s phone.

“Shit, our uber is here,” he chuckled. The two of you cleaned up as quickly as you could before heading out to the party. You touched up your hair and makeup in the car, cursing Jaehyun for ruining your hard work even though he insisted that you looked totally fine.

That was the beginning of what became a really rewarding arrangement. Jaehyun kept his promise. He would come by your place after work some days, and did a great job of keeping you satisfied, going down on you in the middle of netflix marathons or fucking you against the wall of your shower. He even picked you up from your office, slipping his fingers into your undies and making you cum on his fingers behind tinted windows in the middle of traffic. The best days were the ones where he would sleep over at your place. It was nearly impossible to have a bad day when it started off on such a positive note and there was a noticeable shift in your mood. Until... something happened.

Your vision was blurred by your tears, as you swiped at your eyes. You desperately wished that you were dreaming. You stared at the pregnancy test you held between your fingers as you sat on your couch sobbing at the results. You had really fucked up this time. All the constant running around and travelling between your place and Jaehyun’s had caused you to accidentally forget to take your pill one day. You had gotten back on schedule but it was too late. The test in your hand proved that it was a big enough mistake for you to end up pregnant.

You were so shaken up that you called out of work for a week very suddenly. You ignored calls from everyone, including Jaehyun and even lied to Lia about being under the weather to keep everyone from reaching out. Jaehyun kept his distance at first. You both had kept your arrangement secret from your friends and so he wasn’t exactly in a position where he could ask around too much about you. After not hearing back from you after a few days he couldn’t take it anymore and showed up at your doorstep.

“Y/n,” he pleaded through the door, “don’t do this to me. I know you’re in there. Just let me in so I can at least see if you’re alright.”

You hesitated before opening the door. He stormed in right away.

“What the HELL has been going on? You know how worried I’ve been?” he asked. He was raging. You knew ignoring him would most likely lead to such a reaction but you could barely cope with your current situation.

“I can’t even ask your friends about you because you wanted to keep this a secret. Why haven’t you at least aswered my texts? Even Johnny hasn’t mentioned anything. I’ve been losing my mind trying to get a hold of you,” he scolded.

You sat next to him on your couch before bursting into tears, sobbing your eyes out. Jaehyun was so startled he immediately moved from his seat to crouch down in front of you.

“Oh my God, y/n,” he said, reaching out to hold your hands, “What’s wrong? You know you can trust me with anything. Whatever it is, I’ll --”

You interrupted him, “I’m such an idiot. I thought it would be okay but I missed a day and now - now i-- i’m so so so sorry” you sobbed.

“What... what do you mean?” he asked, confused.

You took a shaky breath before whispering, “I’m pregnant.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Jaehyun had all but collapsed to the ground into a seated position, breathing deeply.

“Oh, thank GOD,” he said when he finally found the words to speak.

You couldn’t even believe what you were hearing.

“So you’re okay then? Oh, thank God,” he said as he let out a sigh of relief.

“N-no, i’m not okay Jae!” you yelled, tears filling your eyes, “I don’t know what to do, I-i don’t know if I can be a mom! We were supposed to just be messing around... why aren’t you freaking out.”

Jaehyun’s heart sank and you watched tears fill his eyes next.

“Aren’t you scared too?” you asked him as you broke down, sitting in front of him on the floor.

“Actually... I-i’m really happy, y/n,” he began, getting choked up.

You threw yourself into his arms. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just saying the right thing. Neither of us planned on this happening. I’m just in shock,” you said.

Jaehyun wrapped his arms around you, stroking your shoulder as you rested your head against his chest.

“I’m really excited to be a dad. If you want to go through this, at least,” he said. His words resonated with you deeply and for the first time you imagined what it would be like.

“Do you... really want to do this? I just feel awful. It’s all my fault” you whispered.

“Listen to me, y/n,” he said. You nodded, trying your best to look strong as you wiped tears from your eyes.

“I’m having a baby with the love of my life! I think this might be the best day of my life,” he said as he flashed a dimpled smile.

Your mouth fell open at his sudden confession.

“Oh please, don’t act all surprised,” Jaheyun said as he sprinkled kisses over your face, making you laugh for the first time in days.

“I love you too, Jae. You’re going to be the best dad,” you said as he violently attacked your face with affection.

He froze, holding your face between his hands.

“Does that mean we’re really doing this?” he asked excitedly. You nodded your head, smiling back at him.

“I hope it’s a girl,” he blurted out. You both bursted out into laughter before he continued quietly, “... and then two more boys, then another girl, and then...”

“Oh my God, Jae...” you groaned as you swatted at his chest.

He reached out to run his fingers across your belly though it was way too early for you to show.

“Sorry, I just can’t believe I really did this. Filled you up so much that I actually get to have a little one,” he muttered as his hands started to wander again.

You felt your body heat up as he closed the gap between the two of you on the floor and drew you in for a deep kiss.

“This is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place,” you joked.

“Yeah well since we’re already here we may as well make the most of it for the rest our lives, right mama?” he said sweetly.

And as expected, Jaehyun kept his promise. He stood proudly by your side through everything from telling your friends, to breaking the news to your families. As days went on you became increasingly excited about the future and felt so lucky to have ended up in such an interesting situation with the perfect man.

#nct smut #nct scenario #nct scnearios #nct soft hours #nct hard hours #nct jaehyun #jung jaehyun #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun smut #jeong jaehyun #jaehyun #nct fluff #nct fanfic #nct 127 smut #nct 127 scenarios #nct 127 fanfic #nct 127 imagines

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borkthemork · 3 years ago

Text

Finally cleaned up this draft based on @/popcornbee’s art and it is now officially on AO3 as well, so I hope all of you enjoy!

---

There were numerous pathways for a sparrow to travel. Following their migration patterns, they'd travel down to warmer lands, typically somewhere protected for the nights. In doing so, they'd rest in the winter and return back all new. Refreshed for the upcoming springs and summers.

For American Tree Sparrows, these patterns were necessary to survive.

For Joe Sparrow, the true information depended.

He liked to flit about on rapid wing beats. He preferred curdled mealworms due to previous battles hurting his digestive system. For migration, he remained stubborn on whether he liked the warmer breezes or if the Newtopian stables were of true home than anything else.

Newtopia had a history of domestic birds. Joe Sparrow was the mixed case when he grew all-natural, got captured and owned by one or more owners who called him previous names, and then found Marcy in the middle of sweltering rain. Where a mission lead to something new and surprising, bold and unorthodox, and the moment Joe saved her — chose her hand of all people — Marcy promised to keep him safe. Safe, protected, cared for.

And nothing had pulled these two away from each other. Not even the fleeting concept of gravity. Or the fact winter threatened his nests.

Anne asked about him before. On one occasion, where Marcy groomed him under Plantar barn shade, Anne looked at his big, round, puffy belly and wondered out loud where the scar above his eye fit in out of all things.

Of course, Marcy had the answer.

“Oh, you know Joe,” she sighed. “He keeps pushing his limits. You won’t believe how many scars this bad boy got during his old career. For the eye one, he actually got that scar back when he was just a fledgling, but this was during the morally ethical times where amphibians didn’t really care for mounts unless they were battle resistant.”

Her hand parsed through his plume, giggling when Joe tweeted pleasantly against her skin. “But now he’s in a morally ethical place, aren’t you, boy? Yes, you are.”

Anne snorted. She ruffled Joe’s feathers too, and the two giggled quietly when the sparrow seemed to lean into the touch. Almost as if the sparrow connected immediately to Anne.

And Anne teared up over the thought. “It’s just like mother nature intended.”

The week afterward reminded Marcy of her sparring days, but instead of swords and smoke bombs, she had worms and patience. Lots of patience as Anne attempted to feed some mesh into Joe’s beak — and ultimately got stuck when she leaned too hard into his mouth.

It was funny how all this bonding time left her blind to anything else on the schedule. Marcy could instruct Anne to direct the mealworms to Joe for hours and still find Anne’s laughter to be the highlight of her day. Maybe Joe would sit on Anne, and leave her yelling and laughing under floof-fulls of bird, and Marcy would sketch that scene than the typical mission schematics Lady Olivia instructed her to look through.

Marcy hypothesized that Joe's love for attention spurned her focus. It made sense for birds to tease if they didn’t get the proper reaction out of people. It made sense for a bird such as Joe to find affection in someone who exuded goodness from their heart. But then Marcy would remember Anne. For Anne had Joe’s affection at the palm of her hands but irritated the bird enough to prefer dipping her into a nearby pond just for the sake of playfighting. And that enough had gotten her intrigued.

Was it another phenomenon she needed to analyze? To understand fully until the cusp of discovery?

Perhaps. Not right now though.

Marcy had found a breakthrough. A breakthrough in Animal-Human Sociology. But her focus lingered elsewhere, came down to how she rested next to a bucket load of dirty feathers — snoring into her best friend’s shoulder until the moon rose high above the Amphibian mountains.

---

When Marcy stared through the sky, and the act alone reminded her so much of Kid Icarus. If she ignored the wings branching out from the corners of her eyes, and only focused on the colors then she thought of herself as flying. Flying through skies that bled yellows and reds like Aivazovsky, framed so well against the crisp horizons that Marcy could almost paint the perfectest picture in her mind.

And when wind buffered her hair, parted the clouds with her hands, she swore that the taste on her tongue was of fresh saltwater.

Navigation. Freedom. The fades from orange to blue to maroon. Marcy loved riding for a reason. She held onto Joe’s reins with the utmost quickness, spelled out her name with short dives and leaps through cumulus tufts. And in the aftermath, she wrung her coat dry of moisture.

At least, until Anne became a priority.

Anne Boonchuy. Friend of ten years. Friends since the term friends became part of the Merriam Webster. Now, the latter sounded silly, but friendship could be a frank concept at times, it was something Marcy had no clue how to navigate, and yet Anne found her and decided Marcy was worth her time.

So they were here now: One readying an avian saddle, the other petting Joe’s tufts with the heaviest affection. And aw, Joe seemed to like it, what with the amount of cooing he’d been doing for the past hour.

Not like Marcy didn’t want to get in on that action. She just needed to finish clipping on the latches — and when she did that, it would be go-time, her a-game.

“Anne, can you push me that satchel?”

“Sure thing, Marce.” With ease, Anne somehow lugged a chair-sized bag over to where Marcy was, and they remained silent afterward as she finished the remainder of preparations.

What preparations? Well, the kind that remained out of her league.

“Sooo, where are ya’ going, exactly?” Anne asked. She had the same perturbed look to her ever since she whiffed the scents from the bag itself.

Marcy couldn’t help but rub her neck, not knowing how well to respond. “Well, I’ve been planning to scout an area somewhere high up in the Southern sect of Amphibia. I got wind that some bandits plan to use a route to jump ambassadors from here and there on the pathways, and I just wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen again, you know?"

“For sure, dude. I mean, you are the boss after all. That stuff’s gotta be pretty important if you’re getting loads of homework for it.”

“Well,” Marcy puckered her lips. She was right in some sense. Chief rangers plopped themselves into some high category up in the Newtopian ranks. It made sense. “Correct, kinda. I don’t really call it a boss position, more so a job. A very fun job, actually. You’d be surprised at how many prefer office desks to infantry, it’s nuts.”

Although, the more she thought about it, being able to stay safe in a big ole’ cube than getting skewered by bandits did sound appealing. Less probability for harm, sure. But Marcy loved the hunt way too much for her own good.

If Andrias gave her another objective, she might as well do a little dance at this point; there was always something exciting to partake in.

And with Joe, the fun always doubled with him.

At least, until she remembered that Anne had been staring at her, snapping her fingers in front of Marcy’s nose. “Marbles, you good? Another zone-out moment again?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. Thanks, I was about to get worried, the internal dialogue I had was getting way too extensive for my taste."

"Well, now that you’re out of your internal dialogue stuff, I got to ask.” Anne peered at Joe again. “Can I get on your bird?”

Marcy blinked at her. “Oh. Of course. You don’t really need to ask me if you’re curious about riding him.”

“I know, but he’s a big softie, really wanted to make sure I got your permission before anything else.” She coughed. “Plus I’m not gonna take any vehicles without permission. Tried that once. Didn’t go so hot.”

Somehow, Marcy found herself giggling. She couldn’t pinpoint why; Anne’s honesty must’ve just been that funny. “Well, if you want to jump on the SS Joe Sparrow, I’d be happy to show you around and get you a front-row ticket to some action.”

“For real?” Anne beamed, only for her expression to melt into a frown, scratching her chin at the thought. “Aren’t you on ranger duty though?”

Okay, she had a point there. “I mean, yeah, but I’ve mainly done this stuff solo. Sure I’ve got Joe to accompany me but it’ll be interesting to have a second person on board for the ride.” Without a skip in her beat. “And why wouldn’t I have you go with me? Of course, I would. You’re always the best on road trips.”

And with that, Anne’s smile grew tenfold. Oddly beautiful. Oddly hard to describe. Weirder to even have herself think those things in the first place. “Count me in, then. Let’s go, Marbles!”

Oh well. She’d think about that later.

---

Joe softened his landings in-between. And at certain points, when the mountains dipped to valleys he rocketed around and buffeted the gales just for the heck of it. He had the heart of a little kid sometimes, every moment he swooped through some current or plummet forward if he got the chance. He liked to make himself seem so grand when he cheeped. And Marcy confided in the idea that no matter how aged this sparrow would become, he’d still be the softest avian around.

Always there. Always playful. Always…eager for potential mates. He was the total package for best mount in all of Amphibia, and Marcy didn’t want it any other way.

So with Anne, Marcy became delighted when Joe kept that same kindness. It wasn’t just Marcy doing rough landings against solid ground or her zipping through the air. There were two people, two people to consider on the back of his saddle.

And Joe never disappointed her. He pivoted, swerved on command, and coaxed giggles from the girl behind her, whose arms pressed tightly to her waist until their hair puffed out from the wind.

“Keep your arms locked in, Annie B!”

Marcy’s hands whipped the reins, whooping at the top of her lungs when the dive pushed oceans of air into their faces.

The straps and belts dug into their laps when Joe pulled up, braced them in a loop-de-loop that had their eyes rolling when they finally exited out to a steady level.

And Marcy could hear the laughter behind her.

The laughter spoke of so much joy and happiness, of a symphony that Marcy had heard so many times before, and Marcy leaned into her warmth when they passed from the hallowed groves to the shimmering Newtingale creaks.

All throughout the Southern sect, all throughout the faint rattle of Marcy’s heart.

---

The ride home had been a lot darker than Marcy expected. For most of her trips in and out of the valleys, a lot of her path-finding culminated in something one could describe as an adventure. If one described her and Anne beating up an entire bandit group disguised as a clown posse to be an adventure, then yes. That was what happened.

They went head-to-head, toe-to-toe. All while decked out in white makeup and smelly rotten clown noses. This all sounded ridiculous, but out in Amphibia, one should never ever underestimate a theatre group.

For entertainment was their cruelest weapon.

Anne had been the first to ambush the bandits during the mission. With the agile reflexes of a cat, she deflected each oncoming slash with ease while Marcy took aim, calculated her crossbow trajectory until the enemies all knocked unconscious in the mud.

If one ignored the clown get-up, then what she talked about seemed like a typical day for Marcy. Always saving someone. Always doing her best. Always making sure no newts got chewed up by some toad or frog dressed up in rogue wear.

But the difference today was that she had someone to accompany her. Or how that same someone jumped onto Joe and gave that feisty bird a few scratches to his feathers, trying to wash her face in the water bucket they stored earlier today.

It all seemed domestic-like. The kind that Marcy dreamed about in fantasy stories, where the protag had a close ally to travel the world until their dying breaths.

And gosh, it was so cool that Anne became that friend.

She seemed to enjoy it too, what with the close embrace when they finally took off for the night, her chin propped on her cloaked shoulder, or the fact her exhales drifted in crisp Amphibian air.

A sign that she was enjoying everything. Everything from the swoop of Joe’s wings, the purple haze of the night, or how the moon cloaked their forms in red lighting — masking the landscape in darkness like a blanket over bedding.

Anne sighed contently. Her face nestled close to Marcy’s neck. She didn’t show that she regretted being here.

Not one bit.

“I’ve never been this high up before,” she mumbled. “The only times I did were when some creature flung me up into the middle of nowhere.”

Marcy hummed to that. Anne's fingers ghosted the triceps of Marcy's arms, left goosebumps to form and bristle in the cold, it made everything feel weird. Comfortable. Safe. “So is this less traumatizing and more exciting then?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.” Her voice rang, all charmed and sweet. “By a long shot.”

And Marcy was glad about that. Ever since she found Joe, a lot of her adventures had gotten easier to deal with. From zooming over to the Dry Swamp to the many forests hidden deep underneath solid canopies, one of the many pros of having a steed like Joe was of the view.

A view that made scouting ten times easier. The kind that entangled her in clouds, the song of avians, and the dance of the breeze. The kind that chilled her nose, left cumulus droplets on her thumbs, and when she settled down from grazing the upper layers of oxygen her body’s equilibrium warmed her up like it always intended to.

To have Anne feel that same experiences — the same elation — made the trip all the more worth it. Especially when Marcy’s skin grew warmer under non-equilibrium circumstances. All due to the cuddly contact.

Oh, Anne.

“If you want, I know a froggy pitstop nearby that sells slushies twenty-four-seven,” Marcy said softly. Joe went into a descent, already maneuvered by Marcy’s quick hands at the reins. They weren’t going to land yet. At least until Anne said so. “Wouldn’t hurt to take in the view on a full stomach.”

“That sounds amazing.” Anne pressed closer, and Marcy tried not to think about the murmur, how low it rumbled against Marcy’s ear. Gosh, she must be really relaxed by now. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m ready for some grub.”

“Well, they aren’t really grubs more like a mish-mash of every insect on the palette.”

“I try not to think about it.”

With laughter escaping them, Marcy directed Joe into the forest space below, her heart synced with the beat of sparrow wings.

#amphibia #marcanne #annarcy #Finally it's its own standalone fic #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #I mainly just placed this stuff in the drabbles comp but I loved this one too much that I had to clean it up #I FORGOT TO PUT THE MARGINS

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vavuska · 4 years ago

Text

Who changed Lola Bunny?

Malcolm D. Lee explained, “This is 2021. It’s important to reflect the authenticity of strong, capable female characters. … So we reworked a lot of things, not only her look, like making sure she had an appropriate length on her shorts and was feminine without being objectified, but gave her a real voice. For us, it was, ‘Let’s ground her athletic prowess, her leadership skills, and make her as full a character as the others.'”

(See the complete interview here: X)

So, gone are her curves, thigh-high drawstring shorts and midriff-baring crop top. Instead, Lola Bunny now takes on a sportier look wearing a more standard basketball vest and leggings under her track shorts.

But, let's see more deeply what determinated this choice:

1. Being mad at a fan art is sad, people.

Before, a sad 50 yo guy starts complaing about how "cancel culture" or "politically correct" ruined his life - Really? Changing a cartoon bunny from a movie you didn't see for a decade ruined your life? Wow. Someone should really review the list of their priorities -, let's see how really Lola looked in the 1996 original Space Jam.

Here we have original Lola Bunny:

(Here you can see all Lola's scenes in Space Jam: X)

Yes, Lola walked in a sexy way that show off her curves, or at least she seemed to have curves (a little breast, tight waist, long legs, bootie), but those are not big as in the fan art you are seeing around, and Lola's curves are not evidenced during the match or when she played. Is more her attitude and posture that made her look sexy. However, althought her curves clearly changes every time she is doing something different, from action to action, there are some scenes in which she is purposely made sexy, with saxophone music as soundtrack and male-gaze sections that ends in the same way, Lola surrounded by a bunch of horny and howling cartoon guys.

That's appropriate with Jessica Rabbit: she is purposely made and designed as a parody of the femme fatale from old hard boiler movies, in which attractive, mysterious women were portrayed as evil and manipulative gals who hide criminal intentions. Jessica, with her intentionally exaggerated body, subverted the misogyny of 40s and 30s detective movies: she is kind-hearted, truly loves her naive and goofy husband Roger and uses her powers (beauty and cunning) to protect him. Her body too is used for comic sketches, while this not happens for Lola, that's just a serious and indipendent basketball player. So, the male obsession for her body is out of place, expecially because she reacted with anger at being misconsidered only for being an attractive female bunny. “Don't call me doll” is her catch phrase. So, it seems strange she didn't react at all at the very sexualized presentation at the final basketball match: Lola simply shows her basketball skills, ignoring or accepting passively the reaction of the honey crowd of wolves around her. (Please, notice the association: Lola “admirers” are wolves, predators, while Lola, their object of desire, is a rabbit, a prey)

This is the cartoon version of cat calling: they are like a group of men who sit on their porches and whistle at girls everyday when they walk in from of them. A normal girl or woman would pass over this thing, even if they are bothered, unconfortable or embarassed, because they are more scared by a possible violent reaction of this whistling horny guys at their legitimate anger objections. But here, we are talking of Lola, a strong Looney Tunes bunny, and she could smash that damn basket ball on wolves' face, breaking all their teeth. That would be very a Looney reaction. But Lola doesn't react at all at this situation. Here, on my opinion, screenplayers missed an opportunity, but probably they thought to have already did too much with Lola's personality and “girl power”.

Remember also that Lola is the only young cartoon female character we see in the whole movie. So we can't do a proper comparison with other female relevant characters' rapresentation. (See here for a deeper analysis of Lola's origin and development: X)

However, compared with Bugs, Lola looks more fit, more humanized than Bugs. Lola has clearly a definited breast and booty, but it looks like is more her posture that makes them relevant. Lola has clearly shoulders back to show the rack. Bugs is anthropomorphic but remains an animal, has no shoulders or pectorals more like a human and looks a bit over-weight (fat belly). And his posture don't keep that stomach in, chin up, and march forward.

Lola, on the other hand, has a more human structure. That's why I say she has curves. An example are Mickey and Minnie who are two beans in the same way it is not that Mickey is a bean and Minnie has small tits, they are structurally alike.

Lola's body remembers highly No-Ribs-Jasmine from Aladdin (see the gif for reference). That unrealistic Barbie-like waist that was so popular in the 90s and 80s. (See here for references: X and X)

Now, we are changed a lot from the past 24 years. Barbies didn't have that impossible, unrealistic waist-line anymore, Disney princess concept has changed (see Merida and Moana).

Lola concept is changed in 2012: her design for the new cartoons is totally different and her personality too. She wear a blue or violet dress, almost flat-chested and she was made annoying and silly, just to make a contrast with Bugs smarter. Just like Daffy Duck is dumb as hell and his new girlfriend, Tina Russo (no more dear old Melissa Duck), is way smarter than him. Tina is tough, street-smart, rebellious and feisty. But we will see this thing in the next point.

2. People on the upper floors hated Lola personality.

Lola Bunny had only few lines in Space Jam, but she definitely passed the first impression that she was draw only for make male characters fall in love. Lola was a good basketball player and show it off, in front of a skeptical and then astonish bunch of cartoon guys and also Michael Jordan. She also had a strong personality and said it clear to Bugs she didn't like being called "doll". Lola was beauty and curvy, but not a cheerleader. Lola was a basketball player. Remember this part, because we will talk about basketball in the next point.

If at the box office Space Jam was a success, at Warner Bros there were those who turn up their noses, and they are important people, from the upper floors, who accused the film with Michael Jordan of having completely distorted the philosophy of the Looney Tunes. They blamed Lola Bunny more than everything else. Producers of Warner Bros said she was too perfect for the moody group of Warner cartoons: she was too sensual, provocative and independent, totally alien to that core of crazy characters that act as an exaggeration of the vices of 'man.

And fans hated her too. Chuck Jones, creator of the Merrie Melodies said: "Lola Bunny is a character with no future, she’s a totally worthless character with no personality."

So, Lola Bunny was deleted. Lola would make only some brief apparitions in some comics edited by DC Comics, in Baby Looney Tunes, in which she was a toddler with a very similar personality and resemblance to Space Jam adult version, and also as playable character in some unsuccessful videogames.

Years passed and projects for a sequel of Space Jam never become reality, so in 2003 Warner Bros relased Looney Tunes Back in Action. But Lola wasn't here, because the movie purposely want to make a deep cut with what we saw in Space Jam, according to what said it's director Joe Dante. This movie was a totally failure, but it gave back to Looney Tunes their craziness.

Years passed again, but this time is 2011, 10th of May on Cartoon Network was relased the second episode of The Looney Tunes Show. The series aimed to strongly relaunch the Looney Tunes, long gone from the glories of the past, updating the stories of Bugs Bunny and associates in a sitcom key, with the rabbit sharing a house with Daffy Duck in a suburb of Los Angeles. All interspersed with sketches by Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner done in CGI and the updated return of the Merrie Melodies. But the big news of the second episode is that LOLA BUNNY RETURNED.

And Lola was a character with some relevance within the series, even if something didn't seem right with her. Lola looked different, she was no longer the rabbit version of the femme fatale seen in Space Jam: she was naive, talkative, with her head in the clouds, crazy to the point of becoming Bugs Bunny's stalker. Bugs after having fallen in love with her at first glance understands on the first date that he absolutely can't stand Lola. She is no longer the Lola we used to know, even if the appearance is similar and the name is the same. Lola is effectively a Looney Tunes now. And the fans like her, the public like her, Warner Bros like her.

(See Lola in The Looney Tunes Show here: X)

But this is a big walk in behind from the indipent character we used to know in Space Jam. Lola was turned into the stereotype of the crazy girlfriend for a while. And this is not a surprise, if we remember that in 2012 were popular the "overly attached girlfriend" meme template. (See here for references: X)

However, in The Looney Toons Show Lola has some very funny moments, while in Space Jam she was more serious and a little out of space among the other characters. (See here for references: X)

3. What women wear when they play basketball?

Women's National Basketball Association was only created in 1996. So, women's basketball were not considered - and still is not considered - as important as men's basketball at the time Space Jam was filmed.

In Space Jam 2 there will be WNBA players with a significant role, for example Diana Taurasi and Nneka Ogwumike.

Professional female athletes aren't that curvy because curves are determined by body fat and they have a little.

As a busty volleyball player, I can say, dear people, breats could be very annoying during sport activities: it could be a pain, when you run or jump. That's because a lot of women wear sport bra to compress and support their breast. Sports bra may also include layered cups or a high neck to keep everything in place and protect from painful hits, so women can be safe and comfortable during workouts.

Female basketball players didn't wear crop-tops and tight shorts to play. They wear exactly what Lola wears in the picture above: long sleeveless tees, large shorts and maybe protective gears such as knee pads, sleeves or braces to reduce chronic pain caused by the immense burden put on the knees in basketball, to prevent bruises caused by collisions and hard fall and to provide support after a significant knee injury like an ACL tear. They could wear also compressive arms sleeves to help muscles that are sore or overworked to recover faster. The sleeve enables your blood flow to circulate quicker to the heart, which helps you heal and recover quicker.

Wow. WNBA wears Exactly what wear NBA players. So surprising.

4. This is only a promotional character sketch, not what Lola would look in the movie.

Space Jam 2 would be developed in CGI and there are a little preview frames going around, included one showing Lola jumping and you can see her breast shape. But she totally looks like a comic cartoon character. It's not humanized. It's not designed to be the sexy love interest. She doesn't look out of space among the others anymore, expecially because seems that there would be also Tweety's Granny and Melissa Duck or Tina Russo as players too.

5. Reality.

Really? You want a human anthropomorphic rabbit? Well, Lola as a rabbit would have something like six nipples, but no human-like breast. And, also, real life girls have ribs. No one in real life is that thin. Oh, well, if you don't considered Pixee Fox, a model who had surgically removed six ribs and wears daily a compressive bust corset (yes, like the one that made Elizabeth Swan faint in the first movie of Pirate of the Caribbean) to look like a cartoon fairy (Tinkerbell, you are the one to blame for this).

(See here for references: X)

In conclusion, we can say that all this controversy is based only on a porny fan art and that Lola “new” graphic isn't change too much from the original Space Jam movie. It's just a little more cartoonish.

We can also firmly remeber that Space Jam 2 is going to be developed for children, to relunch Looney Tunes among new generations of children, who are the largest buyers of merchandising (including Happy Meals surprises) and consumers of new cartoons that surely would be developed, if Space Jam 2 would be a success.

However, we should admit that those kids probably know better the 2011 version of Lola than her original version and that 2011 version was more appreciated by fans and producers. Lola's voice actress, Kristen Wiin won BTVA People's Choice Voice Acting Award in 2012 and was nominated for that prize also about three times in the following years. Also Rachel Ramras, Lola's voice actor was nominated for BTVA People's Choice Voice Acting Award in 2016 for her role in Looney Tunes: Rabbit Run.

We don't know anything about Lola's personality in Space Jam 2, so we can't do a proper comparison or a prevision, but, according to what Malcolm D. Lee said, we can assume that original personality of Lola would be preserved.

The controversy is relevant only for Lola's body and not for her personality, and that's is highly rappresentative of what impressed more this bunch of grow-up kids. They grow up to be like the horny wolves and they are howling because their prey is not available anymore.

And, to be honest, being so obsessed with the breast and the body of a cartoon character (that is clearly made up for kids) it's not sane at all. Sorry to say that, but sometimes people need to drink from a bottle of truth.

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dog1teeth · 2 years ago

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Commissions Page (OPEN)

☆

TOS

by commissioning me you agree to the following terms;

I have the right to decline your commission, if this happens you will not be expected to pay. If I had accepted it previously, you are more than welcome to ask for a sketch as compensation

Please note that I will usually turn down a commission if the character does not have an active reference or image I can access easily UNLESS you have some sort of collection of images to base it on

If the art is used in a public space, some form of credit is preferrable, but not required

If a character's design is outside of my comfort zone, I may charge extra. You will be made aware of this

Unless asked to do otherwise, I will likely post the commissions. Please tell me in advance if this is something you would not like!

I will let you know what your total will be before I begin the drawing

Things I need to know/ask you about when you commission me:

your username

your email address

commission size (i.e. headshot, bust, halfbody, etc.)

commission type (i.e. sketch, colored, shaded, etc.)

deadlines, if any (must be flexible)

references or examples (i.e. character reference sheets, style references, pinterest boards, etc.)

additional requests (i.e. specific posing, colors, style, etc.)

Payment

i will only accept USD

i only use Paypal as of right now !!

i dont do refunds. this is because payment is only expected AFTER the commission is finished, and both parties are happy with the result

i repeat;

You will NOT be expected to pay until AFTER the commission is finished

Will Draw:

ocs

gore

animals/feral

fanart

ship art

oc x canon

diverse body types (non-fetish)

furries

anthro

humans/humanoids

human passing androids (i.e. Detroit: Become Human)

birds

fish-like creatures (i.e. sirens, mermaids, selkies)

mythological creatures

skeletons/zombies/undead

Won’t Draw:

domestic romance (i.e. kissing, hugging, cuddling)

soft NSFW (nothing is showing but things are implied)

NSFW (18+, uncensored porn basically)

kink(s)

offensive imagery/text/symbols

fetish(es)

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incest

ship art of real people (i.e. dsmp, mcyt, youtubers and streamers in general, celebrities)

If you try to commission anything in the above section, you run the risk of getting blocked

Discuss in DMs:

suggestive outfits (bunny suits, lingerie, revealing clothing)

art of real people (not ship)

robots (FNAF characters are okay, robotic prosthetics are fine too, just nothing like Transformers or Wall-E)

I’m in/know about a large number of fandoms so it’s very likely I’ll know what character you’re talking about, but telling me the media and showing me the character is recommended (regarding oc x canon or fanart)

Prices

note; all shading is an additional $5 USD. If you want me to fully render something you better bribe me 🤑

Discord/Twitch Emojis:

Single Full Color - $5 USD

Full Body ``Chibi``:

Three Full Color - $10 USD

"Black and White"/Lineart Only - $10 USD

Full Color with Shading - $15 USD

Reaction Image/Meme Redraw:

Black and White - $15 USD

Profile Image (headshot with facial focus):

Sketch - $5 USD

Full Color - $15 USD

Simple Color Background - +$0.50 USD

Headshot (head to neck/top of shoulders):

Sketch - $5 USD

Full Color - $15 USD

Simple Color Background - +$0.50 USD

Bust (head to mid upper arm):

Sketch - $10 USD

Full Color - $20 USD

Simple Color Background - +$0.50 USD

Background Details - $5 USD

Half Body (head to stomach/hips):

Sketch - $20 USD

Full Color - $25 USD

Simple Color Background - +$0.50 USD

Background Details - $5 USD

Full Body:

Sketch - $25 USD

Full Color - $45 USD

Simple Color Background - +$1 USD

Background Details - +$10 USD

More Than One Character Interacting (based on starting number of 2):

Sketch - $40 USD

Full Color - $80 USD

Simple Color Background - +$5 USD

Detailed Background - +$30 USD

Simple Shape/Prop Background - +$20 USD

Regarding Additional Characters:

Every character you add the price will be plus the original. Up to seven characters can be added (subject to change)

Examples of my work can be found here on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter

Feel free to DM me and ask for more, as I don’t post everything online

Where to Contact Me:

@dog1teeth on Tumblr

@father_the_cheddar on Instagram

dog1teeth#4525 on Discord

#dtcommissions

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therosevest · 4 years ago

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happy hawkins holiday hiatus to @mikewheelerthepaladin !! here’s a lighthearted fic + a playlist of songs i listened to a lot while writing, i hope you enjoy 🥳

& a big thank you to @sevensided for putting this together, it’s been super fun <3

It’s the first time he’s been in over a year, really, but he’d entertained the thought of asking Will over the summer, for one last challenge before he left. It never happened, everything went by too fast; and, honestly, Mike didn’t know how to talk to him with the goddamn weight of everything - hi, we’ve barely spoken in the last year and we just almost died, again, and now you’re moving away forever - wanna hang out?

It’d never been that hard.

And it sucked. The whole thing. Now that Will is gone, it gnaws at him daily that they could have had more time together. Or a proper goodbye, at least. Instead, he spent a lot of time last summer sitting around, figuring out how to approach El and his feelings toward her, and most of all, alone.

But now the Byers are coming home for Christmas. And staying with The Wheelers, on top of it all.

So, seeking some sort of cryptic universal answer to his life problems, Mike returns to the place of a lot of younger memories, of crowding around machines with Lucas and Dustin and Will, a conglomeration of shouting and booing and cheering when one of them topped a high score, of frantically patting down their pockets for a few extra coins.

All of these wistful memories come to halt, however, when he finds a familiar redhead occupying one of their favorite games.

Max glances at him through the screen. “What do you want?”

“Uh, to play?” Honestly, he doesn’t care; he’s not sure he could focus enough to win much anyway. “Kicking your ass would be a plus.”

“Yeah, as if.” Her gaze fixes back on the colorful pixels dancing in front of her face.

Okay, well, she’s not moving anytime soon. He could probably just walk away, but a part of him wants company, even if it’s from someone hellbent on disagreeing with him.

Even when the Party hangs out now, Mike finds himself bickering with Max over what movies to see, where to eat, nearly anything, even when he doesn’t really give a shit. It’s the principle of the thing, and she gets under his skin.

Maybe it’s a good thing.

Mike sighs, leans against one of the neighboring games, and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”

“Well, if you’re looking for me to throw pity money at you, it’s not happening.” After a beat, and losing the level, she kicks at the machine and turns to him. “Now look what you made me do. All your moping and talking - I could’ve beaten that if you would just leave me alone.”

He offers a quarter.

“Forget it.”

“I’ll buy you a pop, then.” She glares at him. “Seriously, okay, this is the first and only olive branch. Take it or leave it.”

After a moment of scowling at him, her arms folded, she slowly concedes, a smug look taking over. “Okay. I’ll take it, Wheeler.”

“So, you’re stalking me at the arcade because… of nothing?”

Mike presses his lips into a line. “I’m not stalking you,” he says, “and it’s not - it’s not nothing. I was gonna ask Lucas or Dustin to come, but… I felt like I needed to be here alone.”

Max sips on her drink. “That didn’t work out.”

“Guess not.”

“So you did need to talk to someone.”

“Guess so.”

God, this is borderline painful. Sitting in a shoddy little booth across from Max, whom he never once intended to have a heart-to-heart with, is a new level of desperation. But here they are.

With the most grandiose sigh he’s ever heard in his life, Max straightens in her chair. “Well, I don’t love giving advice to annoying teenage boys, but I’ve been told I’m good at it. Advice, you know.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “Was it El who said that, by chance?”

“Bite me.”

Amused, Mike smiles, and he slides the near-empty cup between his hands like a little game, something else to focus on. “Okay, fine, give me some advice.”

Max frowns at him like he’s the biggest idiot in the world. “Maybe give me a situation to work with?” She mutters something under her breath that he doesn’t bother with.

“Well, the Byers are coming home and staying with us, and I wanted to come up with something really nice to do, you know. I know that they’re really nervous because it’s… the holidays have been rough, the past few years.” He finishes his drink and stares at the lid. “They almost refused. So, I dunno, I figured I could do something to make them feel like it’s still home.”

“Oh,” Max nods, finally breaking into a slight smile, “well, cool, you could set up something really romantic for El! She’d love it.”

Right. The girlfriend.

He had no clue where the hell they left things when the Byers moved. About a month ago, Mike called to tell her the distance was confusing and they might need to take a break. He figured she would’ve told Max because, from his understanding, they spoke on the phone on an almost daily basis.

“Sure - yeah, yeah, that’s - it’s a good idea. For sure.”

Max falls back into a confused squint. “Was there something else you had in mind?”

Mike isn’t sure how to get it out without sounding like a total airhead. So he copes with it the best way he can. “You know what, this was dumb. I’ll figure it out myself.” He grabs his jacket and stands to leave.

“No, no, Mike - I want to help.” She’s looking up at him with a genuinely nice expression, holding out a hand to stop him from fully up and leaving. “I’m really good at this stuff, just let me know what I can do. No judgment. I swear.”

“I have to get home tonight anyway,” Mike says cautiously. “Told my mom I’d help with dinner.”

“Can I come over tomorrow?”

He frowns, and something digging at his stomach makes him respond with, “Why do you care?”

Max’s jaw sets. She stands up to meet his eye level and sets a look on him. “Even if I didn’t, even if I couldn’t care less about you, Mike, I care about El. And Will. And I want to be a part of their homecoming. So maybe you could figure out a way to not be a dick about it.” She snatches her drink cup and storms off from the table, leaving Mike to scramble after her with more apologies.

He’s gotta get better at this whole ‘girls’ thing.

He catches up to her outside. “Okay, listen - come over after school tomorrow. We can meet outside by the stairs.”

She barely turns to him, says, “Fine,” and then hops on her bike and rides away.

That’s how Mike ends up with Max in his basement, slowly walking and examining his things, but not touching any of them, thankfully.

It’s going alright, thus far. A part of him feels like he should reach out to Lucas and Dustin, too, since they’re also Will’s best friends. But something about this… works. He and Max can’t seem to stay entirely civil in each other’s company, but she gets something. And she hasn’t brought up El even once since yesterday.

“So, I’m gonna come up with a really cool campaign - well, I’ve been working on it, and I can tell you about it - “ Max lifts herself on tiptoe in his peripheral vision, “ - but anyway, we can pull an all-nighter, if everyone’s up for it, and make snacks and drinks and stuff, and we can have movies on for you guys, and I thought I might even look for some costumes because I really think Will would get a kick out of it. I can put lights up, too - “

“You draw?”

Max’s back is to him, as she’s looking over his wall of posters and pinned pictures. As he steps closer, he realizes her eyes are fixed on a sketch that definitely bears some resemblance to him.

“No, Will sent me those,” he says quickly, not wanting to seem like a giant narcissist, because Will’s drawing is - how can he say it - beautiful. “He’s been using charcoal a lot recently, he told me he got some new art stuff. I think he wants to send one of all of us.”

Max turns to him, and he can’t tell if she’s tearing up for some reason, but she quickly wipes any sign of tears away. “That’s so neat,” is all she says at first. There’s a small silence between them, and she’s just looking at him, and he has no idea what the hell he should say. “He’s such a good person,” she adds quietly, “I wish I got the chance to really know him.”

Mike’s breath hitches for a few seconds. “Yeah. I mean, he mentioned hanging out with you a few times.”

A smile lifts the girl’s cheeks. “Yeah, to bitch about you, mostly.”

“Hey!” he protests, but he can’t help but smile too, this time. This might just be their most pleasant interaction to date. “He never mentioned that.”

“I don’t know how he could, all you freakin’ do is talk.”

“Whatever.” Mike messes with some Christmas crafts on the table, holding them up in his vision to see where they might fit in the basement. He clears his throat. “You know, El and I, uh - we split.”

Max nods slowly. “She said you guys don’t call much.”

“No, we didn’t. I mean, I don’t even call Will, we just write.” He leans against the table, eyes glazing over as he looks over years of memories, dorky craft nights, and shitty school projects that he or his mom made a point to keep. “It’s too hard to talk - to either of them, you know. I didn’t think I could hear their voices without…”

Max cuts him off. “I get it.” She crosses over to the table, helping him pull apart old paper snowflakes. “I’m just the opposite. I’m scared if I don’t talk to them, I’ll convince myself it was all fake. And maybe it’d be for the better, but I’m glad I knew them. Even if only for a little while.”

Mike bites down on his lips, attempting to bury all the emotion threatening to spew out of him. “Yeah.”

Max finally looks up at him, and though they seem to have shared a moment, she snaps back out of it. “All offense, Mike, these are ugly as shit. I’m helping you make new ones, okay?”

“It’s for the memory!”

“No more living in the past.” She raises her eyebrows at him, and he pinches his face in annoyance, so she says, “Okay, you can put them up, in like, little corners, but we’re making new ones. Surprise. Work with me here, Michael.”

“It’s my basement, Max.”

“Did you or did you not ask for my help?”

Mike blinks. “Not really.”

She throws a crafty paper star at him. “Shut up, you’re glad I’m here.”

He shakes his head and moves on, but though he may never admit it, a part of him really is glad.

Weeks pass in what feels like a span of days or maybe hours, with Mike and Max sorting out their surprise plans with a typical amount of bickering - but hey, they get it done. Max has lots of opinions about decorations and music that make Mike roll his eyes, but she’s got a good eye and she offers to help with baking, which is not a strong suit of his. Yes, they throw a lot of streamers at each other, and threaten to storm out every other hour, but it gets done.

And the day is finally here.

Mike pulls himself into his best festive sweater and eyes himself in the mirror. He messes with his hair, though the long, wavy curls never seem to fall exactly into place - maybe growing it out was a mistake - and tugs at the creases of his sweater, letting out a huffy breath. None of it is working with him. When he can’t stand looking at himself anymore, he dashes down to the kitchen to help his mom with desserts.

She smiles when he plops into a seat. “You okay, honey? You seem a little tense.”

Mike jolts. “Uh, yeah, just excited.”

“Good! Joyce said the kids haven’t stopped talking about the trip for weeks.”

Great. “I hope we live up to the hype.”

“Oh, Mike. You know you don’t have to try that hard.” Karen stops frosting for a moment to look at him. “Will’s your best friend. El is excited to see you,” she nudges at him, and he coughs out a nervous laugh, “and Joyce thinks you’re an angel-”

“God, mom-”

“I’m serious. Don’t worry so much.” She leans forward on her forearms. “I know you think every problem in the world is on you, but it’s not. It’s enough just to be around the people you love. If anything, you’ve gone overboard.”

Overboard. Hopefully, it’s not too much.

Finally, he caves, exhaling slowly with a simple, “Okay.” He stays beside her, tapping his fingers, and eventually ruining a gingerbread man’s face until she notices and smacks his hand away.

There’s a knock on the door, and while Mike hops to his feet, his mother calls out, “Come in!” earning a panicked look from him. She mouths, ‘Chill,’ but he still half-jogs to the door and throws it open.

Nancy calls down the stairs, “Who is it?”

It’s Max, brandishing a few small wrapped gifts.

“Hello, sunshine,” she says. After a moment, “It’s great to see you too, Michael, allow me to invite myself in.”

“It’s just Max,” Mike calls back. He steps aside, and Max brushes past him, dropping her gifts by their tree and running into the kitchen.

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler!”

“Hey, Max, Merry Christmas!”

Mike’s mom seemed to think Max was one of the most charming people on the planet, something they frequently disagreed on, but he can’t be mad at their pleasant chatter right now.

Especially not when the next knock comes so soon.

Probably just Lucas and Dustin, dragging their feet as usual.

Mike opens the door, prepared with a quippy remark for his friends, but his stomach drops immediately.

It’s Will. Holding a bunch of luggage.

Mike is caught up in everything about him. He’s taller. New, floppy hair, tousled and messy in the biting snowy winds. His forearms exposed as his bags push against his jacket. Will.

The boy smiles at him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Mike manages.

Will looks past him with a tiny wave, and Mike turns to see Max beaming and waving back, and then Max slips back into the kitchen and Will returns his gaze to Mike. “Can I come in?”

“Hey, Mike!” Joyce interrupts from the car, straining to grab something in the backseat. “Merry Christmas, honey!”

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Byers!” Mike, finally catching up his brain-to-movement reactions, moves to let Will in. “Yeah, come in. I’m gonna, uh, go help your mom.”

“Cool.”

He immediately forgets why he’s moved and attempts to step out as Will crosses the threshold, almost knocking him over, so Mike grabs his arms to stabilize with a, “Sorry - uh - whoops, haha, don’t fall,” and Will chuckles and shifts a bag to his shoulder, saying, “It’s alright,” and Mike spends his walk to the Byers’ car trying not to curse himself out.

“Oh, Mike, thank you, sweetie,” Joyce grunts, pulling a heavy tote bag from the floor of the car. “Can you carry this?” Mike nods and takes it from her easily, offering his arms out for extra luggage. Together, with Jonathan, who greets him with a, “Merry Christmas, man,” they manage to get everything inside in one trip. Mike hardly notices El rummaging through the trunk until she comes stumbling along with a basket full of gifts.

Finally, they’re all inside, and only a beat goes by before Nancy comes bounding down the stairs to greet Jonathan, and Joyce is grinning around at everybody, and then Karen rushes in from the kitchen with excited greetings.

“It is so good to see you,” Joyce says, opening her arms up to Mike for a hug. “You’ve grown so much-'' she looks at Karen and mutters, “-so much-” then looks back at Mike. “We’ve missed you all.”

“I’ve missed you guys too,” Mike says, “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“We couldn’t miss it. Figured it’s best that we’re together, you know.” Her expression falters, but she takes a breath and carries on with moving bags and ‘Merry Christmases.’

Joyce and his mom wind up chattering, and Karen takes off her apron to help transfer some luggage to the spare room. Nancy takes Jonathan’s hand and heads upstairs, grabbing one of his bags from the ground.

Will seems to have disappeared into the kitchen with Max, leaving his things behind, so it’s just Mike and El.

Mike takes in a deep breath.

It wasn’t an ugly breakup; honestly, El seemed unfazed. Their calls were little more than small talk about their days, most of the time, and even though he thought they might hold onto their past, everything they’d been through… it seemed to work best that they didn’t.

“Hey, Merry Christmas.”

El smiles easily. “Merry Christmas, Mike.” She lifts the basket slightly for acknowledgment. “Can these go by the tree?”

“Yeah, yeah, go for it.”

El nods and slips by the couch over to the tree, carefully laying out the gifts. After a few moments of Mike awkwardly leaning against the couch arm, thinking up something to say - thank god she didn’t seem too focused on him - Max walks in, her mouth stuffed with a truffle.

“El!” She darts over to the tree, and El jumps up, eyes bright, immediately throwing her arms around the girl’s shoulders. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” El giggles. “I brought you a gift.”

“You too. I can’t wait for you to see it. But first, you have to try one of these sweets Mrs. Wheeler’s making. They’re like frickin’ heaven.” She holds out the last bite of her own, and El takes it from her hand, eyes lighting up mischievously as she bites into it.

“It’s amazing.”

“I know. I think we should go sample some of the others.”

Mike calls out to their backs, “You guys better leave some for later on,” and in response, hears Max mimic him. He rolls his eyes and stands up from the couch.

And then it’s just him and Will, who’s beaming at him, seemingly amused by their banter.

Okay, Mike, now or never. “Uh, I’ll show you downstairs.”

“We’re not staying in your room?” Will asks simply, crossing over to retrieve his duffel bag.

“We totally can, I just have something I wanted to show you.”

Will nods. “Oh, okay, cool.”

Mike assists with a smaller bag and leads him to the basement door; before he runs down the stairs, he catches Max’s eye, and she gives him a thumbs up and mouths, ‘You got this.’ Deep breaths. At that moment, he’s incredibly thankful for her presence.

He watches as Will follows him down, slower, glancing around at the familiar surroundings. His eyes catch on everything Mike and Max put together over the past few weeks, and his footsteps grow slower as he takes it all in.

Streamers of all festive colors and off-balance fairy lights hang along the corners of the basement, phrases of ‘Welcome home,’ hand-cut and pasted on the front wall; at the table, a game mat and figures sit in wait, silly hats placed in front each chair; even the TV is prepared with a Santa hat, the couch covered in blankets and pillows, a few sleeping bags folded on the floor.

“Mike,” Will says quietly, stepping in a small circle, “what is all this?”

“Your homecoming party.” Mike is all jitters; he leans against the wall and shoves his hands in his pockets to disguise any visible shakes. “You like it?”

Will finally looks straight at him, an indiscernible look painted on his face. “Yeah,” he says, nodding rapidly, “yeah, it’s great - but we, uh,” he swallows and shakes his head, “we don’t, um, have to play D&D. I mean-”

“I don’t know, Will,” he ventures to step away from the wall, taking slow steps over to the table. Will follows every move. “I mean, I was really excited to have you back, even just for a little bit. We all were.” He reaches the table and leans back on his hands. “Figured having our cleric back warranted some festivities.”

Will shakes his head, runs his hands along his face, and turns away. The bit of confidence Mike has slowly starts to trickle.

“Is it okay?”

Will shakes out of his stupor and chuckles. “It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. You’ve truly outdone yourself, Michael.” He lifts himself on tiptoe to look at decorations on top of Mike’s shelves. “Are these from our big craft night, like, years ago?”

The horrible crayon work makes Mike smile - they made half of the snowmen evil, citing a Great Abominable Snowman War, and gave them wicked frowns and smiles, claws on their stick hands. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you kept them.”

“I keep everything.” An awkward chuckle breaks from his chest. “Not everything, like, a hoarder or whatever, but - “

Will simply smiles and pushes himself forward toward the back wall, brushing past Mike, to his different pinups. He fixates on the sketch of Mike that he’d sent about a month back. “You know, you should probably take this down. I don’t think you’ll hear the end of it from Lucas and Dustin if you don’t.”

“Screw ‘em.”

“Right.” Will quirks his eyebrow and moves to sit in his designated chair, right next to where Mike is currently resting. “So, they know about D&D?”

“They know.” Mike smiles, and looks at the floor, right where their legs brush up against each other. “They seem pretty excited to have the party back together. To remind you of how badass your first one was,” he adds.

Will peers up at him for a moment before quietly saying, “I never joined another one.” Mike meets his eye for a moment, then, threatened by the silence that follows, clears his throat and distracts himself with a particularly interesting notch in the wood paneling. “Did you guys find someone else?”

“No, no,” Mike assures him. “We haven’t touched any of this stuff. It’s not the same.”

A silence settles between them, one that neither seems to know how to navigate. But Will keeps his gaze steady on Mike, trying to breach some barrier, to fall back into their usual ways.

Something is different, though; it’s not uncomfortable, it never could be, but it’s something intimidating. Will seems more comfortable, at least; he’s not shying away from anything Mike throws at him.

And he tries to break the silence first. “Y’know - “

“Will,” Mike cuts him off, and he’s not sure what he’s saying, or where he’s going with it, but he knows he’s supposed to say this. His name. “I need you to know that I missed you.”

Will blinks at him, cocks his head. “I missed you too,” he says matter-of-factly.

The words are eating at him, right there on the edge of his mind, and Will looks almost concerned and now Mike just wants to drop it because that’s not what he wanted. But he can’t, not now. “I missed you the most.” It sounds so juvenile. “More than everyone else. I missed you before you even left. I just didn’t know how to say it.” He breathes in and out, focusing on Will’s cheeks, the tip of his nose, anything but his eyes. When Will doesn’t say anything, the rest just spills. “I missed you when our first first day of school apart came and passed, and I didn’t even call. I missed you at homecoming. And,” he licks his lips, not really sure where his speech is heading, “I know you had to go, it’s fine. We’ll figure it out. But I feel like we haven’t been on the same page in a long time. So, I missed you, and I love you, and that’s that.”

Will looks at him funny, and then his face softens into something like laughter, and Mike is genuinely about to run and throw up somewhere, but then the boy closes his eyes and says, “I love you too.”

Mike blanches. “I don’t think I said that.”

“Oh, you definitely did.”

“Oh,” he nods, mind spinning, “well, you know…”

Will stands to be at Mike’s level, leans forward on his knees. Mike stops breathing. “I do,” he says, “but tell me again.”

Mike swallows down a breath of courage and suggests, “I think I might like you.” His eyes flit to Will’s lips, then back to his eyes. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll allow it,” Will says, a bright smile causing lines near his eyes. Mike smacks at his arm, nervous laughter coming out with a quiet, ‘Shut up.’ Will moves so he’s resting his fingertips on the table. Inches away.

“Same page, then?” Mike asks.

“Same page, yeah, for sure.”

Mike nods absently, distracting himself with the strings on Will’s sweatshirt. “So I don’t sound crazy?”

Will laughs. “I dunno. I always counted on us going crazy together. Figured we might have a few extra years, but hey, I’m all in.”

And then Mike is flashed back to a night on his couch just over a year ago. Knees knocking together, shared smiles. A promise.

So much has changed.

He wants to know what Will meant. A future of being in each other’s lives, maybe, getting old and senile and batshit crazy. Always being there.

He never dared to think about it before.

“So what now?”

Will shrugs. He dips his head to meet Mike’s eyes with his own. “What do you want, Mike?”

And finally, he thinks he might know.

Or maybe he’s always known.

He scoots forward, takes Will’s face in his hands, and kisses him. It’s just a quick press of their lips, but in that moment, he knows a few things for sure. His heartbeat is going a mile a minute, and Will must be able to feel it; it’s absolutely exhilarating, surreal, insane that he’s kissing his best friend; and, he is definitely in like, or maybe love, with Will Byers.

He’ll probably love him forever.

When Mike pulls back and his eyes flutter open to see Will, flushed, blinking back at him, slightly dazed, he doesn’t want to pull away at all. He did that. Mike’s hand remains on his jaw, lax, and he runs his thumb along Will’s bottom lip, curious to see his reaction, curious about a lot, now.

Will lets out a breathy chuckle. “Wow,” he mumbles, “that’s new.”

“Yeah.” Mike exhales shakily, takes one of Will’s hands, and says, “Merry Christmas, Will.”

“Yeah, Merry Christmas.”

The world doesn’t seem to fall apart like Mike thought it might if he ever got to this point, so, that’s nice.

“So…” Mike begins carefully, “you’re gonna have to be slow with me here. This is sort of a lot for me.”

“Me too,” Will replies simply. He squeezes Mike’s hand. “But we’ll figure it out.”

“Totally.”

Will takes his cheeks in his hands and smiles into a very gentle kiss, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Mike’s neck. It’s soft and sweet and lingering - but not for too long, as moments later the door upstairs busts open and shouts of, “BYERS!” from their dear friends sound through the air, and Mike and Will jump apart, equally startled and laughing.

“Down here!” Will calls out. He looks at Mike, smiles, offers, “To be continued?” and as he walks past, he leans in, just to leave a quick peck on Mike’s cheek.

And all Mike can do is laugh and shake his head and run after him to meet their friends; Lucas and Dustin are horribly late to the surprise, but they collide into Will the second they see him, shouting over each other, ‘What’s going on, dude?�� ‘Merry Christmas!’ ‘You’ve missed so much,’ and everyone is grinning and chattering, and it’s awesome.

Max approaches him, watching all of the madness, smacks a hand to his shoulder, and says, “You did good, Wheeler.”

“Yeah, I did.” She punches his arm lightly, laughing, so he adds, “thank you for everything. Seriously.”

“I think we should work together more often.”

Mike scoffs into a laugh, and says, “Yeah, guess so.”

Max rolls her eyes, but at least now they’re actually laughing in each other's company. It’s great progress from just a few weeks ago.

After a minute of watching the boy’s shenanigans, Max smiles. “Well, Merry Christmas, anyway.”

“Merry Christmas,” he responds, and he watches as she jumps up onto a kitchen stool, chatting and giggling with El.

With everyone back together again, finally, Mike feels really alive; so, he jumps in with all the excited shouting and group hugs and bickering, and celebrates the merriest Christmas he can remember in a long time.

#stranger things #hawkinsholidayhiatus #tuserjake #byler #byeler #mike wheeler #will byers #fanfiction #playlist #ik it might be a lil cheesy/dorky BUT i hope it makes u smile it was written w a lot of love <3 #mine

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fiftyyearfilms · 3 years ago

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50 Years Later: The Still Sweet Legacy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Image source: https://people.com/food/gene-wilder-death-willy-wonka-pure-imagination/

I first watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory during the summer of 2001, when I was four years old. Sometime after the end credits rolled, I waddled into our little English garden and decided to have a nibble of one of the buttercups poking through in the grass. You will be unsurprised to discover that it tasted acrid and bitter and that I promptly screwed up my face and spat it out again. ‘But— but- -’ little four-year-old me thought, ‘—but in Willy Wonka’s garden the yellow butter-tea-cups are edible and filled with a breakfast brew! The toadstools and mushrooms ooze sweet white cream! And the trees don’t sprout boring old fruit, but giant jellified gummy bears!' According to my four-year old logic, in Wonka’s edible garden these synaesthetic saccharine delights could exist and so in our garden they could too. So was the bittersweet belief that ‘Anything is possible’ the film inspired - bittersweet because, of course, it's not true. Today marks the 50-year anniversary of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which premiered in the United States on this day in 1971. Time reveals a legacy that is more sweet than sour.

The 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ has an origins story that reads like a saccharine fairytale, complete with the requisite obstacles. Once upon a time, the story of Charlie Bucket and his lucky visit to a chocolate factory found its way into the hands of a 12-year-old girl called Madeline Stuart, the daughter of a Hollywood filmmaker, Mel Stuart. Madeline approached her father and asked him to make a film out of the story. In Stuart’s memory, his daughter’s innocent plea went something like this: ’Daddy... I want you to make this into a movie!’ A self-confessed chocoholic, Stuart said yes. And the rest was history? Not just yet...

The early 1970’s wasn’t Hollywood’s happiest hour. Low attendance and a struggling national economy meant that the U.S film industry was in a state of near-collapse and financing the movie was no easy feat; studios were cash-strapped. It was a stroke of sweet luck that the producer of the film, Mel Stuart’s friend David Wrober, had a connection to the Quaker Oats Company who, by happy chance, were looking for a way to break into the chocolate industry. In an unprecedented move in Hollywood, Quaker Oats agreed to finance the film on account of the fact that it would allow them to launch a ‘Wonka’ bar. A convenient if imperfect marriage was formed between the food company and the producers. A Happily Ever After? Still not yet...

There were active forces that didn’t want the candy man to make the leap from page to silver screen. Having long been vocal about Hollywood and its poor representation of black people, the NAACP objected to the adaptation because of the colonial overtones of the Ooompa Loompas in Dahl’s story (described as “a tribe of miniature pygmies” who were imported from Africa); they didn’t want additional attention being brought to the novel. The NAACP eventually suggested that “The solution is to make the Oompa-Loompas white and to make the film under a different title.” Mel Stuart agreed. The title was changed to ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, a change that would also benefit the marketing of the Quaker Oat Company’s ‘Wonka’ bar. After Stuart consulted with some black actor friends, it also was decided that the elf-like characters would be carrot orange with grass-green hair. Whether this amounted to ‘whitewashing’ or not is a matter for the individual to decide but changing the skin colour was the only way to adapt the book without making more significant changes to Dahl’s story. After all, it was the man himself penning the screenplay.

Image source: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/search-perfect-willy-wonka

Dahl’s screenplay - bloated and too close an adaption of the book, was eventually revised by newbie screenwriter David Seltzer, but the fantastical elements of the author’s story remained largely intact: chocolate rooms with chocolate waterfalls and rivers, fizzy-lifting stations that send Charlie Bucket and his grandfather floating to the ceiling, and elevators that fly straight into the sky. Harper Goff, famed for his work on the 1945 Disney film ‘20,000 Leagues under the Sea’, was tasked with bringing Dahl’s demanding vision to life in the art department. Then there were difficulties in casting too, and a cross-country search took place for the Oompa Loompas and the lucky ticket-winning children (lamentably, only white actors were cast). With scouting and sketching underway, producers had the formidable challenge of finding somewhere to shoot the movie. After considering the Guinness Factory in Ireland and – wait for it - a national monument in Spain, producers settled on the Munich Gas works and Bavarian Film Studios in Germany as the central filming locations. It was cheaper than America and the location’s foreignness to British and American audiences would work in the favour of creating a ‘Neverland’ story.

Tinged with sweetness and sourness, pre-production on Wonka came to a close in late August 1970 and principal photography began. For the adults on set, budgetary problems were an ongoing source of stress and the unusual marriage between Hollywood and the food industry was one of the main causes. Unlike Paramount or Universal, who might have expected the film to go over budget, Quaker Oats viewed the film as one long advertisement for their new bar and were unsurprisingly less sympathetic when the weather was bad and shooting had to be delayed or when something went wrong on set and more money had to be poured in (or, in the case of the chocolate waterfall, a specially sourced anti-foaming solution). The kids also had their tribulations (and were only renumerated £60 per week for their hard labour). Stuart was a tough director. So tough, in fact, that the child actors used to joke that they deserved Oscars for their roles (or for putting up with Stuart). He treated the young actors as adults and perhaps that’s one reason why the performances are so strong. But Stuart reflected that overall, it was like ‘one big slumber party’ for the child actors. Stories from the set include Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, releasing bees from underneath a bell jar in Wonka’s chewing gum machine. Denise Nickerson (playing Violet Beauregarde) and Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) fought over Peter Ostroff, who played Charlie Bucket, and took turns being his ‘girlfriend’ day-by-day. After lunch breaks, Ostroff and Gene Wilder, who played Wonka himself, would walk back to set together sharing a chocolate bar. There was an excitable atmosphere on set and, filmed without storyboards or pre-production rehearsals, it translated into authenticity in the final film.

Image source: https://www.thedelite.com/willy-wonka-and-chocolate-factory-movie-facts-you-never-knew/

Filming came to a bittersweet end in November 1970, cast members said their teary goodbyes, and then seven months later, Willy Wonka premiered in the United States. While time has judged differently, the contemporary reception to the film was, at best, lukewarm. From a $2.9 million dollar budget, the film only made $4 million in theatres and ranked as #53 in the box office. There were a number of reasons for this. Several reviewers panned the movie; a critic from the New York Times called it ‘tedious and stagy with little sparkle and precious little humor’. The fun and spectacle of Willy Wonka didn’t sit well with an anxious and cynical audience. In the Vietnam era, The French Connection, The Omega Man, and A Clockwork Orange were in, and optimism and fun were out. The film also had to contend with the declining weekly movie attendance across the U.S, which reached an all-time low of 14 million in 1971 (from 44 million in 1963). On top of this, Dahl didn’t exactly enthuse about the final product. Finally - and this is what the director attributed primary responsibility to: a lacklustre marketing effort on behalf of Paramount Pictures.

But box-office results aren’t everything. Like sherbet - sour at first and then Oh so sweet, Willy Wonka has gone on to gain a mass following of fans and gained the all-desirable ‘cult’ film status. The phenomenon happened over time. Six years after the film appeared on cinema screens, it was sold to Warner Brothers and became one of their best-selling video cassettes. Then, periodic screenings on cable and network television over the following decades meant that it gained an even wider following and stayed within Western cultural consciousness. The never-ending references to Willy Wonka in popular culture - from The Simpsons to Austin Powers to Marilyn Manson’s music videos, is testament to this. The same could be said about the upcoming Willy Wonka origins story, whether it turns out to be a good film or not. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory currently stands as the second most watched film of 1971 on Letterboxd (the Goodreads of film).

Re-watching the film in 2021, it seems almost inevitable that the film has found new and wide- ranging audiences and there’s one main reason for it: a stellar and totally captivating performance from Gene Wilder. The director attributed the film’s longevity to the fact that ‘it was made for adults; it was not made for children’ and it was Wilder himself that brought the grown-up fun. Wilder’s Wonka is sarcastic and witty, ensuring that the final film ended up as a ‘story for children’ only as much as After Eights are for post-dinner treats and Yorkie bars are just for boys. Wilder created a more nuanced and entrancing character out of Wonka than what is portrayed in the book - a Wonka who is dishonest but trustworthy, sarcastic but still empathetic, indifferent but deeply caring, and aloof but charming. Sure, the sets seem slightly dated (the chocolate room in particular) but watching Gene Wilder sing ‘Pure Imagination’ is so wholly captivating that one almost doesn’t notice the set’s limitations. Creating, let alone portraying, such an enigmatic version of Wonka is a tall order, but Wilder made it looks effortless. As evidence of his skill as an actor, Willy Wonka shows Charlie little interest until the very end of the film and then within minutes conveys a parental love to the boy that seems entirely believable. Wilder’s tantalising hot then cold, sugary then sour, sweet then salty performance sustains the whole film.

From the outset, it seemed like the Wilder-Wonka synergy was made to be. Wilder was a relative newcomer to Hollywood in 1970, making his feature film debut in the 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde, but when he walked into the casting room at the Plaza Hotel in New York, Mel Stuart knew he was the man straight away – ‘That’s Willy Wonka!’ he said. Wilder himself immediately seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how to bring the character to life, agreeing to take on the role on one condition: he said to Stuart, “I would like to come out [of the factory] with a cane and be crippled because no one will know from that time on whether I’m lying or telling the truth.’’ Like a magician, Wilder’s Wonka was going to draw you in and keep you in the palm of his hand. To the child actors on set, the Wilder-Wonka symbiosis was very much real. Julia Winter recalled that between takes the kids would crawl all over Wilder yelling, ‘It’s my turn to sit on his lap!’. In turn, Wilder would tell them jokes and stories; he ‘never got cross’. I remember feeling the same captivation as a child watching the film: I wanted to spend time with Wonka. It was only some adults who missed the magic trick. Dahl criticised Wilder’s performance as ‘pretentious’ and insufficiently ‘gay’. Wilder himself recalled hearing talk of mothers saying that the film was ‘cruel to the children’, but he understood that ‘maybe some mothers felt that way, but the children didn’t feel that way...there are limits and they want to know the limits’. The continuing classic status of the film is evidence that the kids (and Wilder) were right. The Wilder-Wonka magic has survived 50 years without souring. The only bittersweetness in watching the actor sing and twirl across the screen is knowing he is no longer with us.

Image source: https://cometoverhollywood.com/2016/08/29/musical-monday-willy-wonka-the-chocolate-factory-1971/

If Gene Wilder carried the film, then what about the story itself? The plot is simple, heart- warming, and doesn’t deserve close scrutiny. Willy Wonka really is a ‘show’, the story is secondary to the individual charisma of Wilder and the spectacle of the image and music. We don’t know if Charlie will be happy or sad once he’s inherited Wonka’s factory. We also don’t know what happens to the rest of the children after they’ve been punished. But who cares? The audience is taken to a joyful fun park where you want to eat everything on screen and play with all the gizmos and gadgets, and where the music is so catchy that you can’t get it out of your head for days and weeks after.

Select ideologues have (and will) taken issue with the story, discarding it as gauche capitalist propaganda. One Marxist criticism of the story even gained enough traction that the director took notice in later years. The parts seem to be there: a businessman running a competition by hiding five golden tickets in his candy bars, competition from other candy makers, the Wonka-Oompa Loompa relationship, and a ‘Rags to riches’ story for Charlie. But one might ask if this is an unnecessary and selective reading. The parts for an alternative vision are equally apparent: from the wild and uncontrolled creativity and experimentation inside the factory to the joy found within the chocolate work itself, and from the relentless drive forward ‘You have to go forward if you want to go back’ to the end picture of the elevator shooting through a glass ceiling and into the skies. If a critic really wanted to make the comparison, such images would sit more easily in Soviet Russia than capitalist America. Wonka might have a capitalist wrapper but take a bite and look closely inside and its ideological filling is incoherent (it is, after all, entertainment). One could imagine how the film might be set in a collectivist community rather than a ‘capitalist’ factory, but it would have made for a worse film. It is the sense of unease that runs throughout the film that has made it timeless, whether its Wonka’s frustration with August Gloop for polluting his pure chocolate river, his fear over someone leaking the secret recipe for the ever-lasting gobstopper, his nightmares in the tunnel sequence, or his anxiety over finding a worthy heir for the factory, which finally manifests as a misjudged outburst at Charlie. It’s the fraught relationship between abundance and greed that makes for such compelling watching. Anyway, as the screenwriter stated in an interview, the film is ‘...not the function of sitting down and intellectualising... it’s the function of scotch tape, cardboard, let’s put on a show!’ Why spoil the fun and examine the parts individually when the sum of the parts is a universal message people need to hear now as much as they did in 1971? Reward honesty and integrity, not greed.

A moral message delivered in an almost subversive tone is another reason for why the film feels timeless. Instead of adults dragging tired and bored children around, the adults in this film are at the mercy of their kids and Wonka. Young viewers can marvel at the gluttony of August Gloop, the smart-mouthed Violet Beauregarde, the wanton bad behaviour of Veruca Salt, and Mike Teevee’s devotion to cable. It’s escapism at its best to watch other kids do what you can’t do: speak back to parents and yell and scream. It’s equally as tantalising when the naughty children are punished in fantastical ways. Augustus, drinking from the chocolate river, falls in and then gets sucked up a chocolate chute. Violet chews forbidden gum and then blows up into a blueberry the size of a small horse. Veruca falls down a garbage chute. And Mike finds himself sucked into a television. Best of all, the parents are equally guilty of bad-behaviour as the kids - and, boy, do they pay for it. Wonka might be a film for children and adults, but you can guess who’s going to really have the best time. It is little Charlie, after all, who wins Wonka’s factory at the end of the day.

In the scene where Willy Wonka drinks from a yellow flower-shaped cup and then eats the cup, the cup itself was made of wax. Gene Wilder had to chew the wax pieces until the end of the take, at which point he spat them out. Adults that once watched the film as children now know that flowers in the garden aren’t edible. Our eyes can pick up the small imperfections in the film - the sweets that look plastic and chocolate river that looks like exactly what it was - ‘dirty, stinky water’. But through a child’s eyes - even coming to the film half a century after its release, the film really can be a ‘world of pure imagination’. In another fifty years, will children still wander into the garden, pick up a buttercup, and bite into it with all the belief in the word that it’ll taste like sweet, white chocolate? As long as parents continue to show children the film, they will - and what a marvellous legacy for a film to have. Fifty years on, it’s safe to say that Willy Wonka has had a sweet and indelible impact on our sadly mostly inedible world.

Sources for post:

Mel Stuart, Josh Young, ‘Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, 2001.

Julia Dawn Cole, ‘I Want It Now! a Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, 2011.

Pure Imagination: The Story (Making) of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yyev_3S_Y4

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#Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory #1971

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maybedefinitely404 · 4 years ago

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Day 1: Logince

@tsshipmonth2020

Day 1: Your soulmate’s name is on your wrist.

Content: Flower/Tattoo Shop AU, background character death (unspecified cause, none of the sides), that’s pretty much it, it’s just soft Logince.

Word count: 2.7k

A small ding from the store entrance pulled Roman out of his thoughts, and he groaned softly. It was nearing the end of his shift, almost closing time, and another customer at this time would probably mean he was staying after hours again. All he wanted to do was go home and watch cheap reality TV in his sweatpants while shoveling handfuls of hot cheetos into his mouth. So sue him, it had been a long day. But nooo. Someone else had just walked in, probably someone with a very specific style that was out of season and they would argue for half an hour, no matter how many times he explained that tulips aren’t blooming right now, Vanessa!

Sure, usually his customers were great. Nervous first anniversaries, eccentric brides, all that romance stuff. He loved it. And they were usually all too willing to give him a budget and a color scheme and let him go wild, which was the best part about his job. He was good at it, too. His boss had seen his eye for style and almost immediately gave him solo shifts, which meant decently good pay and hours alone to belt out songs amongst the flowers and daydream to his heart’s content. It was a small enough business that the only mandatory part of his outfit was a green apron, so he could wear whatever he wanted, and he didn’t need a pesky nametag. Those had always weirded him out just a bit. So yeah, he loved his job, but right now, he knew himself too well. He had awful luck.

With a forced customer service grin, he poked out of the backroom and began his usual spiel of, “Thanks for coming to The Rainbow Bouquet, what can I get started…”

His words died in his throat at the mere sight of the man before him. Never had he been so equally attracted and frightened at the same time.

He was tall, probably just taller than him, but he held himself in a way that made Roman feel miniscule. Both arms were covered in tattoo sleeves, the left one a flurried mix of black and white and color, beautiful strips of pink and blue galaxies blending with grayscale skulls and clocks. The other had more order; shadows of a forest growing from around his wrist, shimmering mist curling up over his bicep and ending with a full moon stamped on his shoulder like a crest. A corner of something peaked up around the collar of his torn vest, and if Roman had to guess, there were most likely plenty more tattoos that were covered by his ripped black jeans and blue Nasa shirt. Not that his mind was going there at all, no siree.

Once Roman’s brain had screeched to a halt back in his body, he spoke again.

“What can I get started for you today?”

The man swallowed with difficulty, taking in the rows and rows of flowers surrounding him. He definitely didn’t look in his element.

“I need an arrangement for my mother. She’s in the hospital.”

Ah, the part of the job that Roman didn’t enjoy. Probably half the orders that came in were for sick people or funerals, and those were always a lot harder to arrange. It was always hard to find joy in creating for something so dismal.

“I’m sorry to hear. Did you have anything specific in mind? Does she have a favorite flower?”

“Daisies. She likes Daisies,” He murmured, still admiring the space around him. Roman couldn’t help but smile at the man’s expression. It was just a little awe inspired, a little bit of childish wonder, under that rough exterior. It was a gorgeous shop, that’s one of the reasons Roman had started working there.

“That’s good, it makes it a little easier for me to design something when I have that to go off of. Do you have a budget, or…”

He shook his head weakly, finally turning to look at Roman. “Price isn’t an issue. This is one of the last things I’m going to be able to give her.”

“Oh,” Roman whispered, slowly putting down the pen he’d been writing with, “I’m so sorry.”

“It can’t be changed. There’s no point in losing sleep over it.”

“Just because it’s going to happen doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You’re allowed to be sad about it.”

The man narrowed his eyes, giving Roman a once over before lifting his chin slightly. “I don’t need advice from a stranger.”

“Of course you don’t,” Roman quickly corrected, remembering he was still at work, “My apologies. When did you want to pick it up?”

“I’m visiting her tomorrow at noon. Could it be ready by then?”

“You bet. Can I have a name for the pick up?”

“Logan.” Roman’s pen skittered over his notepad, almost falling through his fingers.

Having a common name on your wrist was a curse in and of itself. And poor him, the hopeless romantic that he was, had met countless “Logan’s” in his day, and consequently fallen for most of them at first introduction, only to figure out quickly that they weren’t destined for a “Roman”. As inconspicuously as possible, he tried to glance down at Logan’s wrist, only finding a mass of swirling tattoos covering his skin. Dammit. There were some people born without soulmates, or had their soulmark fade to nothingness when their person passed away, and he tried not to think too terribly hard on which one Logan was. He tampered his rush of excitement as quickly as it had arisen and turned back to his notes, ignoring Logan’s raised eyebrow at his sudden stop.

Roman scribbled down the name and phone number as it was given, setting down the notepad with a customer service smile. The man spent no time dawdling, immediately starting towards the door, only to hesitate before walking out.

“Her favorite color is yellow.”

Roman nodded, the fake smile slowly morphing into an authentic one. “I can work with that.”

It was now a week after Logan had picked up the bouquet, a somewhat awkward interaction filled with small compliments towards the arrangement and Roman nearly dropping the flowers as their fingers touched while passing it over. As he was ringing up the total, he’d been able to uphold a brief conversation where Logan revealed he was a tattoo artist (no shock, considering he showed more inked skin than plain), and Roman showed off his rose tattoo on his upper arm. It would have been fine if the conversation ended there, but no, Logan had to reach up tentatively to brush his finger along the edge of the piece, commenting off handedly about how the color had started to fade.

“How long ago did you get this done?”

“Probably ten years, give or take.”

“You’re what, mid twenties? There’s no way you were legal ten years ago.”

“Who said I was?” It was said with a small wink that made Logan pull his hand away, an action that immediately dampened Roman’s mood.

“If you ever want it touched up, come by the shop. It’s just down the road.”

Roman had promised to consider, pulling the collar of his long sleeve shirt back up over the rose and bidding the man a good visit to his mother. Even now, a full week later, he couldn’t help his thoughts that were so centered around the tattoo artist. So maybe that was why Logan walked back into the shop the following Wednesday. I simped so hard I summoned him, Roman thought weakly as the gorgeous man strode straight up to the counter, leaning on it like he owned it.

“I have a question.”

“What’s your question?

“A client asked me yesterday to design a tattoo for her. A bouquet, seen from the top, and all she specified was it should feature hydrangeas, and she asked me to, quote, ‘go nuts’.”

“This isn’t sounding like a question so far.”

Logan sighed apprehensively, adjusting his glasses, “I was hoping you could give me some ideas on how to start. All the tips I found online contradicted each other in some way or another, and the arrangement you created for my mother was so well done…”

He trailed off, giving Roman a look that clearly said I need your help but don’t make me ask for it. Chuckling slightly, he leaned onto the counter as well, his face inches away from Logan’s. For the first time, he could see the small piercing on the man’s tongue as he sighed again. God, that’s hot.

“I’ll help you. On one condition.”

“Being?”

“Help me design my next tattoo.” In full honesty, he hadn’t even considered a second tattoo until that second.

“Deal.” There was no hesitation in his answer, and he took Roman’s offered hand, barely shaking it in the small space between them.

“Alright!” Roman pulled back, satisfied but disappointed as their hands separated, “Let’s talk flowers!”

And talk they did. For hours, in fact. It started with Logan’s tattoo dilemma, and Roman’s skillful eye and creative mind solved that problem in a flash, crudely drawing out a bouquet idea that fit all the criteria. The tattoo artist took it from there, using the notepad paper and Roman’s sketch, along with a quick round of the shop to see what the recommended flowers, fillers, and greens would all look like, and drew out a detailed piece that put Roman’s own art talent to shame. After explaining that his shift was done at the parlor and he had the rest of the afternoon free, Roman invited Logan to stay for a while longer, seeing as his day had dragged on customer-less so far, and he was bored. Plus, now was as good a time as any to pay back the favor. Two mugs of breakroom coffee later, the two were huddled around the counter, Roman describing his ideas and Logan sketching them like there was no tomorrow. Maybe half way through the brainstorm, the conversation switched to Logan’s mother (which he talked about hesitantly), then to Roman’s family, slowly changing to the absurdity of satin couch cushions, then to their favorite foods, and finally ending with a loud debate on whether pineapple deserved to be on pizza.

“It’s a fruit, Logan! Why the hell would you put fruit on a pizza?!”

“All I’m saying is that the sweet flavor of the pineapple balances out the tanginess of the marinara sauce, and adds more to the plain crust!”

“That doesn’t make it right!”

Logan had to go soon after that, wanting to visit his mom before visiting hours ended. He left with a begrudging smile on his face and a promise to come back another day, drawing an ear to ear grin from Roman. He’s just a friend, he reprimanded himself sternly, all the while sliding the drawing of his next possible tattoo into his phone case with startling reverence. No use getting attached to some who wasn’t his soulmate.

Yet, he still couldn’t help but feel saddened as a week passed again, then two, then a month. His job had returned to it’s boring normalcy, with only the flowers and no cute boy to keep him company. Even when he sat at his little desk next to the counter, hands working effortlessly to string together order after order, he couldn’t help the occasional glance at the door. The hope that his prince charming would waltz back in, piercings and ripped clothing galore, never faded.

A month and a half later, the little chime above the door dinged, and Roman glanced up from his handful of Baby’s Breath (seriously people, there are other fillers). Immediately a huge smile pulled at his lips and he dropped the half finished bouquet onto his table.

“Logan! What took you so… long…” His expression morphed into one of worry as he took in the other’s appearance. Gone was the usual grunge attire he was so prone to wearing, replaced with a black hoodie and beaten up Vans. His eyes no longer held that dangerous glimmer that had intimidated Roman so much when they first met. He just looked… small. Logan had never looked small before.

“My mom died last month,” He whispered.

Roman was over the desk in a second, pulling the man into his arms before he could protest. It took Logan a second, a long, awkward, stiff second, before he let his arms wrap around his waist, allowing his forehead to rest on the florist’s shoulder.

“I thought I’d be okay when she died… it was inevitable. It was her time… so why does it still hurt so bad?” The desperate whisper shattered Roman’s heart.

“You’re allowed to feel sad, Logan.” He felt him merely shake his head in response, but he said nothing to push the topic further.

Logan didn’t cry as they stood there, though he clung to Roman almost desperately. If he had to guess, the poor man was probably already cried out. He looked exhausted, and his unusually slumped posture only weakened more when Roman tightened his arms ever so slightly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. You were probably waiting.”

“Hey, no apologizing.”

“I just… didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“So what changed your mind?”

Logan shrugged, still not pulling away, “I couldn’t seem to snap myself out of it. And I needed someone who wouldn’t laugh at me. If our few interactions were anything to go by, you were that person.”

Roman decided to ignore the blatant implication that Logan didn’t have anyone except a practical stranger to go to. They could talk about that later, if he decided to stay for a while. Roman really hoped he did.

When the tattoo artist finally pulled out of the hug, many minutes later, he pushed his sweater paws under his glasses to scrub at his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t cried, but he sure was close to it.

“I’m sorry-”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I don’t even know your name, and I-”

“It’s okay, stop-” Roman reeled back slightly, eyebrows shooting into his hairline, “Oh… sweet Zac Efron. I never told you my name! Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“It felt too late to ask,” Logan smirked subtly despite himself, letting his hands fall back to his side.

“Oh, my sweet summer child.”

“I am none of those things.”

Roman sighed in soft exasperation, smiling at the barely perceivable glimmer in the other’s eyes. Ah, there it is. “My name’s Roman. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

He was instantly concerned with the way Logan’s face fell into one of total shock. Shit, what did he do wrong? The fear was quickly replaced with understanding, however, as the artist’s hand drifted to his right wrist.

“What are the chances that your wrist says my name on it?” Logan said it like he was scared to be hopeful, like a happy ending was just not imaginable for him. Roman couldn’t comprehend all the emotions he felt at one time; elation, shock, fear. He answered in a choked voice, smiling all the while.

“One hundred percent.”

The both upturned their arms in near harmony, Roman pulling his gardening glove down to reveal the name. He squinted at Logan’s wrist, finally noticing the small writing that just barely stood out underneath a grayscale (anatomically correct) heart. No wonder he missed it before, it almost blended in with the outline.

And then Logan did cry, but so did Roman, so it was a little more okay. He seemed more confused than anything as Roman pulled him back in, holding him even tighter than before.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I’m so unused to… well, feeling. I’m not usually like this, I believe I’m just sleep deprived and worn out from-”

“You never, ever need to be guilty for feeling, you absolute punk stereotype.” Roman pressed a long kiss to the other’s temple, letting him unwind in his arms. “We’ll work on that together. I promise.”

A muffled affirmative hum was all he got in response. He pressed another kiss to the top of Logan’s head as his crying slowed, breathing out heavily into the man’s hair. Together. That’s all that mattered.

Peep this gorgeous art piece for this fic

#lywrites #tsshipmonth2020 #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #logince #logan sanders #roman sanders #ts soulmate au

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