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quokkacore · 4 years ago

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𝔯𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔪𝔟𝔢𝔯 𝔪𝔢 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔠𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔰 [nct collab call]

take a look inside the chapters of this history book and read of several events spanning across all of human civilization. read about people from all walks of life: great heroes, legendary foes, daring outlaws, ordinary people. read about the rise and fall of empires, conspiring courts, the rise and fall of empires, forbidden alliances and romances. in fact, dear reader, don’t just read. learn from the past, because if we don’t, we are doomed to repeat it.

𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉

in lieu of hitting 500 followers, i’ve decided to announce this collaboration!! i’ve always loved history so why not? some of these eras are specific to certain cultures and places, but others are a lot broader. at the end of the day, they’re your stories. also if you saw me post this on accident the first time... no you didn’t <3

𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

this is a historical au collaboration, but any genre is allowed as long as your story is set in your chosen era! however, smut is not allowed for jisung or if you, the writer, are underage.

all works must be member x reader. love triangles and the like are allowed, but the main male character must be the member you chose.

eras and members are chosen on a first come, first served basis. please message me if you want to participate! if your main blog isn’t your writing blog, please be sure to tell me your writing blog so i can add it to this list correctly :)

you must have discord, since i will be sending all writers working on this collaboration a discord server link. there, i will send announcements and we can all give each other feedback!

tag any triggering content. if you’re not sure, ask in the discord server!

research is definitely encouraged as you will be writing about historical eras, some with specific cultural significance! please be respectful of any cultures or traditions you write about.

in the same vein, don’t romanticize any historical events or figures that are controversial, or have had negative cultural impact (ie, 9/11, the crusades, colonialism). again, if you’re not sure, ask in the discord server!

minimum word count is 2k. your words cannot be blurbs or timestamps.

please inform me if: you’re changing your url, you’re going on hiatus, or if you need to leave the collaboration.

the deadline is currently november 2021, but it is very flexible and can be pushed back even further should several writers ask!

after you’re added, i would really appreciate it if you reblogged this post to boost its reach :D

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖝

moon taeil -

johnny suh - @aquamoonchaii - the joseon dynasty

lee taeyong - @moondustaeil - the victorian era

nakamoto yuta -

qian kun -

kim doyoung - me! - the renaissance

lee ten - @sleepylixie - the 1940s

jung jaehyun - @doderyscoffee - the rococo era

dong sicheng - @loonacitys - the regency

kim jungwoo - @smileyjaeminies - ancient greece

wong yukhei -

mark lee - @lamaiejeno - the 1920s

xiao dejun -

wong kunhang - @zephyr-abyss - the golden age of piracy

huang renjun - @seulgiswhoreee - the 1930s

lee jeno - @jenoentry - the roman empire

osaki shotaro -

lee donghyuck -

na jaemin - @jaehyyns - the 1960s

liu yangyang - @lovelyutas - the late middle ages

zhong chenle - @softcrescendo - the tang dynasty

jung sungchan -

park jisung - @heejinnien - the three kingdoms period

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖚𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖘

listed below are historical eras to choose from, a brief description of them (except anything past the 1900s as they’re pretty self explanatory), and a few examples of media or cultural phenomena you could use as inspiration if you can’t think of anything! media will be in italics, cultural phenomena will not.

ancient greece (800 BCE—32 BCE): a civilization based in the mediterranean, known for its extensive mythology and advancements in math, art, western philosophy and government. inspiration: the odyssey, hercules, the iliad, percy jackson.

the han dynasty (206 BCE—220): known for its long reign and achievements, it was the second imperial dynasty of china. it is highly regarded as an age of peace and prosperity that allowed china to grow into a major world power. inspiration: painted skin, the virtuous queen of han, the king’s woman

roman empire (27 BCE—476): in its time, this was one of the most powerful empires in the “known world” as a result of its political prowess and military power. it spanned from england, to the mediterranean, to parts of the middle east. inspiration: the heroes of olympus, pompeii, gladiator

the tang dynasty (618—906): regarded by many as china’s golden age of arts and culture, the tang dynasty allowed aristocratic life to flourish. poetry, art, and education prospered. inspiration: house of flying daggers, the empress of china

the viking age (793—1066): time period in scandinavian europe during which vikings conquered parts of north america and england. inspiration: vikings, how to train your dragon trilogy

the three kingdoms period (892—936): period in korean history in which the korean peninsula was split into three kingdoms, all wanting to conquer one another: goguryeo, silla and baekje. inspiration: the blade and petal, hwarang

feudal japan (1185—1602): period of civil unrest in japan, during which the political world was unstable, and power fluctuated between the shogunate and the royal court. it can be separated into two main eras: the kamakura period, and the sengoku period. inspiration: samurai, inuyasha, hakuouki

the late middle ages (1250—1450): a relatively brutal period, known for its numerous wars and civil unrest, throughout europe and asia. inspiration: the princess bride, robin hood, marco polo

joseon dynasty (1392—1897): the last and longest ruling confucian monarchy in korean history. inspiration: 100 days my prince, mr. sunshine, rookie historian goo hae-ryung

the renaissance (1450—1600): period based in europe (mainly italy) which was known for its advances in art, technology and science. inspiration: shakespeare in love, romeo and juliet, ever after

the golden age of piracy (1650—1730): during which maritime piracy across the world grew more and more prominent due to large shipments of cargo making their way to places like the caribbean, west africa, north america and europe. inspiration: pirates of the caribbean, treasure island

the rococo era (1737—1770): art movement in europe which glamorized grandeur and luxury, revolving around heaven, angels, love and lavishness. inspiration: barry lyndon, marie antoinette, a little chaos

the age of revolutions (1765—1849): a period in which a shift occurred in the western world, and monarchical institutions were overthrown in places like latin america, north america, and france. inspirations: les miserables, hamilton

the regency (1795—1837): british time period surrounding the time before, during, and after which prince george of england iv ruled as prince regent after his father was deemed unfit, during which time aristocracy flourished. inspiration: pride and prejudice, emma, bridgerton

victorian era (1837—1901): period spanning the rule of queen victoria of england, during which the industrial revolution occurred and urbanization became widespread. inspiration: the young victoria, the phantom of the opera, penny dreadful

the old west (1860—1890): period in american history during which many made the dangerous decision of migrating west of the Mississippi river, in search of gold, new land, and money. inspiration: jane got a gun, the good the bad and the ugly

the 1900s: moulin rouge!, finding neverland

the 1910s: downton abbey, my fair lady, anastasia

the 1920s: the great gatsby, boardwalk empire, silent films

the 1930s: bonnie and clyde, the handmaiden, the beginning of hollywood’s golden age

the 1940s: casablanca, the godfather, the notebook

the 1950s: swing kids, grease, dead poets society

the 1960s: american graffiti, the british invasion, summer of love

the 1970s: the lovely bones, mindhunter, the birth of punk music

the 1980s: atomic blonde, stranger things, the americans

#nct smut #nct fluff #nct angst #nct au #nct scenarios #nct x reader #kpop x reader #kpop scenarios #kpop angst #kpop fluff

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cup-ah-jho · 4 years ago

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So I finally finished Omori!

Uh...I got thoughts. Lots of them. They’re bulleted below for your viewing pleasure and my mental checklist. Spoilers abound below the cut, so please refrain from reading if you haven’t finished the game!

Omori is a love letter to video games. From its Earthbound inspired design to its various little nods to other games whether intentional or not. (The music at the train station and the musician whose song sounds like a K. K. Slider classic [Animal Crossing], the baseball and the bat [Off], the whale level [Kingdom Hearts], and the toaster and the blender [To the Moon and Finding Paradise, as included in the game per Cr*aot*c’s request to Kan Gao unless he lied about that, too...] are some of the one’s I noticed!) It feels very similar to the RPG Maker games I grew up with like Wadanohara and The Grey Garden, so I felt at home exploring the world!

I agree with a lot of the points that uricksaladbar (a fantastic youtuber, and I highly recommend his content if you like well-edited and well-written video game essays) brought up with regards to the use of Headspace and how the events there do not progress the plot, but I think Headspace’s main function is like a daydream to distract from what lies hidden and that the time spent there isn’t supposed to advance the plot. Traumatic memories are sometime repressed to protect a person and that’s the primary function of Headspace: to keep those memories from resurfacing. It’s kind of why it starts to crack, slowly but steadily, as Sunny leaves his house. It’s also why Sunny has a fear of heights, drowning, and spiders because his memories associated with them are intertwined with his trauma. Whether aware of it or not, those phobias actively keep him from thinking about Mari. Despite the pacing issues, I had a lot of fun exploring Headspace (except for the area from the Last Resort to Humphrey. Especially Humphrey. Fuck you, Humphrey), and it’s interesting to look at its “lack of progression” as being a meaningful design choice than “padding for length.”

I really like the Faraway Town sections more, but that’s because I prefer the more natural color scheme and grounded setting. My favorite gaming series of all time is Story of Seasons, so casually taking part-time jobs and getting to know the townspeople was definitely something I enjoyed more than the RPG elements of Headspace.

Omori does a great job of showing how different people grieve, and I love how it reconciles with the fact that there is no “right way to grieve.” I remember talking with one of my old roommates about the book The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, and she said she didn’t like it. It conveys a very unconventional method of grieving, similar to the one found in the manga Haru’s Curse/Haru no Noroi by Asuka Konishi, which can make it hard for some people to relate to. More than anything, I do genuinely believe the crux of this story is learning how to accept and overcome grief, and it’s wrapped up in a happy little tale of friendship!

I don’t have much to say on the characters (except for Basil; he’s got his own bullet point after this). They’re functional for the plot. That’s about it. But I would like an IRL Hero for myself, please.

I...don’t really like Basil all that much. And while a lot of people, my brother included, keep calling him “best boy” and “the bestest friend you could ever have,” all I saw was an insecure boy. It’s true that the trauma haunting him may have contributed to it as well, but the need to be the photographer, to take pictures, to enjoy from a distance, tells me just how desperately he needed them in his life. (Note the photo album is called Basil’s Memories and not referencing the group as whole.) Which is why his involvement in Mari’s death and the ensuing fallout, while already traumatic for anyone, probably hit him the hardest. Because he ended up alone, unable to escape the trauma, compared to the other four who found other avenues of coping besides Constant Suffering, even if some of their coping mechanisms weren’t exactly healthy.

The personification of their trauma is fantastic. Basil’s takes the form of roots that act like vines, trapping him. Sunny’s is the silhouette of Mari’s hanging body with her eye open, looking at him, haunting him like a ghost. Very symbolic!

I...uh...thought the twist was kind of...underwhelming. The game does a very good job foreshadowing Mari’s death being related to her hanging herself, which I did believe for most of my time with the game, but I was having second thoughts with what Shadow Basil, Basil, and even Aubrey was implying. Clearly Basil had something to do with Mari’s death, but my conclusion was that he killed Mari as an act of self defense to protect Sunny and Aubrey witnessed it. Like I literally thought Mari was a slimy sister that was wonderful and great to everyone but Sunny. (I’m so sorry, Mari.) This falls in line if this game were actually a psychological horror, but this game fell kind of flat in that regard. I don’t consider it as a psychological horror (more just psychological with slight horror elements), and I think coming in expecting a full blown psychological horror kind of dampened The Plot Twist for me. I was expecting to be absolutely horrified but...I just ended up feeling really bad for two kids who were so traumatized they literally Could Not Handle It.

Besides being a very good story for grief, Omori does a fantastic job in showing the affect that trauma has on people. I should also note that Sunny’s three phobias is a very typical when several traumatic instances happen in close succession. We often like to think of trauma as a result of a singular event, which it can be in cases like say a terrible car crash, but it sort of simplifies and reduces the effect of the trauma in a way. Trauma is best described, in my opinion, as an onion or a mille feuille, insert your choice of layered object here, because that singular event is composed of tiny little events or memories (perhaps broken down by senses). The game uses a simplistic way of doing it by breaking Sunny’s reaction to the drowning event into three phobias compartmentalized in Headspace, but it is something to note since most media likes to handle trauma as The Thing instead of the Amalgamation of Things that Make this Thing Traumatic.

Lastly, the soundtrack is a whole banger. Absolutely amazing.

To those who got to the end of this, thank you for reading! This isn’t necessarily a review for Omori, but it’s more so a place for me to jot down any thoughts and expand upon them. It’s been good practice for me in breaking down narratives and trying to see things from different perspectives or expanding upon why I don’t like things besides just not liking them lol.

#omori #jho speaks #game analysis #might as well use that tag now because i know i’m gonna have Thoughts when I finally play Nier Replicant #added additional commentary because of a kind anon’s clarification!

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americangodstalk · 4 years ago

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Notes on S2E4: The Greatest Story Ever Told

# During the flashback to the Boy/CEO background we pass by three main eras. The Pong era, the Game Boy era and the one with the computer (well, one of the first computers). See my Game Boy theory.

# Bast licks the wounds for them to heal.

# Ibis and Jacquel are prosectors. They save tissues for analysis and do autopsies for the county medical examiner (while also being a funeral parlor snce 1863). They found a “niche” during the Civil War, opening up as a funeral parlor for people of color (though of course they did not identify themselves as people of color). Upon being asked about the name Cairo, he only answers “chicke-egg”.

# Odin is against monogamy.

# To meet Money, “the most influential god in America”, “untouchable asshole but his stocks never fall”, they go to Saint Louis, a “big city with big money”.

# It is mentionned that Anansi and Bilquis know each other “biblically” (aka they had sex).

# New Media mentions to Technical Boy that “we need each other”. New Media says that Media “died”, while Technical Boy opposes that Media didn’t die but simply “changed” into New Media.

# When Mr. World arrives, there are numerous electric disturbances. He is of course pissed off at Tech Boy’s failure, saying that “war is won with information”. Technical Boy mentions that he knows a “guy” that own him, in Silicon Valley, and that can provide them with a “new network”. The guy will of course turn out to be the CEO.

# Apparently, Money was born (or at least it is implied by Wednesday) in 1933, when Roosevelt took the dollar out of the gold standard, so that money couldn’t be exchanged for gold anymore. As a result, money became more than a piece of paper - it became a “story”, a “value”, the “greatest story of all” and thus gave birth to the most powerful god of America.

# Mama-Ji is present in all of the Motel Americas across the United-States. It is mentionned that she and her followers (those that practice hinduism) own half of the motels in America. (Is it true? I’ll need to check). The day Kali slew Raktabija is mentionned - however they imply that Odin was here to with her?

# Of course, there are the Penny Scouts.

# The company of the CEO is Xie Comm. New Media manifests herself through screens, holograms and SMS to taunt Technical Boy. The Xie office has in it numerous white faces - later revealed to be the faces of Technical Boy. “I always thought I’d see you again. You will show me something new?”

Let’s note that Xie is a Chinese surname, meaning “immortal” or “enlightened one”, and that the Xie Comm headquarters are shaped as a symbol of infinity.

# Bast is referred to as Thoth’s sister. Bilquis and Anansi apparently know each other “since infancy” (which is... up to debate). Anansi talks about slavery - designing it as a cult. The gods clearly represent here their worshippers.

# Argus is referred to as “CCTV”. More precisely “a relic, a desiccating, necrotising, geriatric, organic sack of redundancies. CCTV?”. Tech Boy mentions that he creates “coltan-encased microchips”, and that thansk to him people carry “trackers” to give up their “locations, card numbers and facial IDs” (interestingly, this is all the things Mr. World knew in season 1). Tech Boy goes as far as make a Jesus comparison with “I have given of my flesh to my disciples”.

# When asked by Shadow if the Penny Scouts give candy, Wednesday answers that he will take them “a gold bar and nuggets”. These are references to money - a nugget is a slang for a pound coin, and money in general in the UK, and is a nod to the “gold nuggets”, while a gold bar is obviously what it is - and a pun on candy bars. The Penny Scouts keep repeating “Credit or debit?”, which is THE question every foreigner in America is puzzled upon hearing because this way of paying is quite unique to the continent - in France for exemple we don’t have that. Odin identifies himself as “Odin the Allfather”.

# Among the Penny Scouts badges you can see the All-Seeing Eye, the American flag, and the sentence “e pluribus unum”. Shadow reveals that he has no debit and no credit in his file, “no trace” whatsoever, and Money apparently hates those that have neither debit nor credit.

# Bilquis says that Jesus was a “rebel” and a “troublemaker” that died because he angered the men in power and refused to be controlled - and for that he became one of the most popular and worshipped gods. As Bilquis says, “he was onto something” - she visibly identifies herself with him or wants to follow his route.

# At one point, the Book of Thoth is mentionned by the other gods - a legendary book said to contain the secrets of all the Gods.

# One should not forget that the speech of Anansi is actually a trick. While he says true facts, he actually exaggerates and change some numbers so that they are a bit higher than the official ones - again, Anansi is a trickster god known to twist the truth.

# New Media shows to the CEO a “pattern”, and while many people were confused by it - if you look carefully enough, a humanoid shape actually appears in this pattern. It seems what New Media shows the CEO is the future Quantum Boy.

# The “face-hugger” makes a new appearance, this time to “retire” Technical Boy.

# Mr. World is offered a “Payback candy” by the Penny Scouts, but Mr. World answers that to meet Money he has “no need to buy candy” because he “retired a god today”. Which grants Mr. World access to a meeting with Money.

# Mr. World says that money is not “cash and gold” anymore but zeros, number sequences, and banks and accoutns with no physical presence”. Money appears as an old man with trembling hands, and while he says that he loves profit, he refuses emotions, and thus refuses to involve himself in the war.

# Mr. World says that he “prefers to be feared”.

# In the credits, it is quite interesting that the man who is identified as “Money” in the episode is actually identified as the “Bookkeeper”. As for the “Son” aka the “CEO”, two of his “childhood” actors are identified - the one for 1977 and the one for 1987.

# Among the badges, well actually the “scout patches” worn by the Penny Scouts, one can see the Chinese Yuan, the Indian Rupee and the British Sterling Pound.

# An interesting point is that the father of the CEO wanted to teach his son faith in the ingenuity and talent of humanity, by showing you the musical works of Bach. But the son only saw algorithms and patterns in the music, and then used a computer to create something identical if not better (in his mind) - because the CEO has faith in technology over humanity. And this is precisely this displacement of faith that apparently led to the creation of Technical Boy.

# Some think that the Bookkeeper only “put up an act” of being a senile old man, asking for the bill, because they note that he is much more serious when Mr. World and Wednesday sit at his table.

# Mr. Nancy mentions that he did not took the deal of the New Gods because it is a rigged one - in fact he equals it to slavery and to its modern variations (human trafficking, prison industry, racial profiling, etc...)

# Many people interpret the line of Mr. World “retiring a god” as basically him having sacrificed a god in order to obtain the favor of the Bookkeeper, literaly doing a sacrifice so that he wouldn’t have to pay to meet him.

# Interestingly, while Mr. Nancy is against peace and says that peace only reinforce complacency and apathy towards oppression, Bilquis and Mr. Ibis answer that suffering and “social ills” are universal, and that waging a war is definitively not the way to change those, because ultimately everyone is equal in front of death and all could end up killed.

#american gods #season 2 #the greatest story ever told #new gods #old gods #money #mr. nancy #bilquis #mr. ibis #mr. world #technical boy #new media #ceo

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t100ficrecsblog · 5 years ago

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an interview with @that-english-nerd (she/hers)

what are you working on right now? Three things!

My next chapter for my witch!AU where Bellamy is the son of a witch, and Clarke enlists his help to find out what happened to her father and his sister.

And a prompt for @bellarkefic-for-blm with princess!Clarke and knight!Bellamy. It's a little outside of my comfort zone but I enjoy writing it. I currently have stumbled upon some technical difficulties where I lost everything I wrote for it so now I'm back to square one.

I’m also looking for the next chapter of a Voltron fic I’ve been working on. It’s super silly but it’s ridiculous amounts of fun, I want to write so much for it.

what’s something you’d like to write one day? I think it's been a pipe dream of mine to write a novel that captures the spirit of the YA books I grew up on but that people of all ages can enjoy. I want it to be my ultimate self-indulgent fantasy where I combine all the things I loved as a reader. A fantasy/sci-fi, action, a good satisfying romance, complex emotions.

It's also important to me that the main character is brown-skinned like I am, and that the book discusses different philosophies and cultures without ever saying one is right. Growing up as the child of immigrants, I've always struggled with clashing cultures and it took me a while to learn that neither culture is more right than the other, and that our differences in how we think are what makes being human meaningful. I want something that acknowledges those parts of the human experience without villainizing or glorifying its existence.

what is the fanwork you’re most proud of? Honestly? It's this moodboard I made for my Winx Club!AU. I really like how it came out aesthetically speaking, and I'm fond of the story. I do have some things I'd change about the story stemming from the fact I wrote it one sitting but I don't know if I'll ever make the changes. Still. It was a fun piece to write.

why did you first start writing fic? I really, really just wanted to write some more scenes for my favorite couples who I felt were robbed in books. I just wanted to write some cute shit, man. Since then I’ve written for 39 Clues, Maximum Ride, Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Powerpuff Girls, Hush, Hush, Danny Phantom, Giver, Legend of Korra, Jimmy Neutron, Code Lyoko, 100, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Lucifer, and Penryn & the End of Days.

what frustrates you most about fic writing? plot. specifically, non-emotional plot. like what even is that. If the plot is driven by emotional development, it’s still hard to come up with specific structures for moments but like if things need to happen outside of their emotions, oh whee boy do I struggle. For me, emotions tend to naturally evolve from one thing into the next and it’s easy for the characters to lead me where their emotions take them. It’s harder when things need to develop outside of that.

Other than that, motivation is a big roadblock. Struggling with depression, anxiety and my other responsibilities, I can go without touching a piece of writing for months. I feel the itch very often but it’s one that goes unindulged.

what are your top five songs right now? - Experience by Victoria Monét with Kahlid, SG Lewis - BALI by Rich Brian with Guapdad 100 - Etch by RILEY THE MUSICIAN with Iker - Culver by Mac Wetha

what are your inspirations? Usually pictures or stories! My witch!AU was inspired by an aesthetic picture I saw on tumblr and most of my other stuff has been inspired by other stuff I read. It’s not necessarily specific plot points—though, sometimes some plot threads are too good to give up—but rather the emotional journey the characters go through. Poems and other media also feed the old noggin.

what first attracted you to Bellarke? what attracts you now? It turns out I have a thing for reluctant partners turned lovers. I really liked how the two shouldered responsibilities that no one else really had, and that despite their differences, they had the capacity to understand and empathize with each other when no one else would. It would've been so easy for Bellamy and Clarke to fall into an endless cycle of blaming each other for their decisions. We see it in the other characters, in other TV shows--a constant battle where only one person's philosophy can prevail. But with Bellamy and Clarke, they have always shown empathy and accepted each other. It might not have been right, maybe they themselves would've done something different, but at the end of the day, Bellamy and Clarke try to understand and accept each other for who they are. Present tense. I think that kind of, frankly mature, love is something we don't see in media all too often.

BESIDES Bellarke, what character or pairing do you like best on t100? hmmmm

I do enjoy memori, they make me happy. I also have a soft spot for Raven and Roan. Anything with Wells is gold bc I really want to see how he could've changed the show. Oh, and Minty. This wonderful idea will always be a favorite of mine.

why did you decide to start writing for bellarkefic-for-blm? I’ve been wanting to do more for a bit because I, personally, avoid social media activism. @bellarkefic-for-blm is an amazing way to leverage whatever platform I have to incite awareness and action by using my strengths. I can do this really cool thing that I enjoy to help something critically important.

what’s your writing process like (esp for prompts, chopped!, etc)? it’s a hot diggity dog mess. I kind of do whatever I feel like. If I want to write a scene, I’ll write a scene. If I want to write dialogue, I’ll write dialogue. If I want to write an outline, I’ll write an outline. Chronological order is not guaranteed. Because writing tends to be an extremely emotionally exhaustive task for me, it’s easier for me to write more if I let go and follow whatever whims I have so that I don’t compromise my urge to write. My guarantee is that I try to milk the whim for whatever it’s worth. If I start an outline, I’ll finish it. I’ll have music in usually but I’ll pause it often to think about whatever it is I need to say.

what are some things you’d like to recommend? Some bellarke fics that’ll make you chuckle: So put your hands down my pants and I bet you’ll feel nuts by Chash You know you drive me up the wall by coffee_grounders The (Bullet Pointed) Life and Times of Bellamy Blake by crystalkei, dirtytrix

Other than that:

- Albums: Ungodly Hour by Chloe x Halle, SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama, Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers - Musicians: Matt Nathanson, Mat Kearney - TV Shows: Nikita, Code Lyoko - Books: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

You can find her on here on Tumblr @that-english-nerd, or on her AO3 here. Request a fic written by her via @bellarkefic-for-blm.

#bellarkefic for blm #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #bellarke #bellarke fanfiction #bellarkefics for blm interview

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theonewiththefanfics · 6 years ago

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A Midnight Reminder (one-shot)

Synopsys: Ben Hardy has been dating the Reader for little more than a year now, and their relationship has been amazing so far. But when some things are revealed and insecurities flare up, she’ll need to remind him of who owns her heart.

Pairing: Ben Hardy x f!Reader

Genre: fluff, toiny bit of angst, SMUT

Warnings: SMUT (unprotected sex and all that good jazz. Wrap it before you tap it, guys.), swearing, jealousy

Word count: 3499

“I have better things to do on my Saturday nights,” Ben said as Roger Taylor and then smugly smiled. “I could give you their names.” On cue, Gwilym as Brian May rolled his eyes and that’s when the director called cut. The two men stood up and stretched their legs, looking at a makeup artist who was doing the finishing touches on Rami’s hair, and Joe who had just decided to tag along, since he wasn’t in the scene. But that was not what took away Ben’s attention. There in the corner talking to Lucy was the most beautiful girl, with Y/E/C eyes that sparkled like diamonds and a smile that always took his breath away. “I hope my name is the only one you’re giving away,” Y/N said, giving him a small smile when Ben finally caught up on the fact, that she was actually there. In a second’s time, he had sprinted across the set and Y/N, anticipating his next move, had already jumped up, their bodies colliding as she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms had a death grip on his shoulders. “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here,” Ben kept mumbling in the crook of Y/N’s neck and she just vigorously nodded as a response. Without thinking much, he started to make his way back to his assigned trailer when she muttered in his skin, “Are you not gonna let me say hi to Rami? Or introduce me to the rest of the guys?” “Nope,” Ben popped the ‘p’. “I haven’t seen you in two months, so forgive me if I wanna spend all of my time with my girlfriend. Alone.” At the last word Y/N saw his pupils dilate and a shiver went down her spine, but she had to be the grownup, even though her heart screamed to give into the mind of that horny teenager.

“Come on,” she said pecking his lips. “I wanna meet Queen.” Begrudgingly, Ben set the girl down and interlocking their fingers, he led her around the set to meet the guys. “Okay, that’s Gwil, Joe and you know Rami. Great, now you’ve met them, let’s go,” the excitement in Ben’s voice as he thought of spending time alone with Y/N was palpable, but she just laughed, pulling him back. “Don’t be rude,” Y/N kissed him quickly. “I’m here for two whole weeks, so we’ll have enough time. Besides, I don’t think I heard them call wrap, so you still have work to finish.” Ben groaned and dramatically let his head flop down on Y/N’s shoulder. “But you’re here,” he whined, wrapping both arms around her waist. “Wow, you really have him wrapped around your finger,” Joe said, but it was not meant in a mean-spirited way. Y/N shrugged. “What can I say- he has me the same way.” Sooner rather than later, the guys were called to re-set, and they ran through the scene a few more times, Rami finally joining in before they wrapped for the day. Ben was the first one to dash to hair and makeup, sprinting to wardrobe just so he didn’t have to waste any second, he could be spending with Y/N. When he found her again, she was talking to Allen Leech and the man was completely in awe. Ben grinned, seeing her get along with his fellow cast mates so well and came up from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Hey, my Ben’s back!” Y/N smiled pecking his lips. “Allen and I were talking about going to your trailer and just chilling. Maybe order a pizza or something.” “Sure, you were. Or is that just your way of saying you want pizza?” “I’m off the fucking diet, so if you wanna talk shit about me enjoying life, I can go straight home.” Ben didn’t say anything just smiled and kissed her cheek, as he, Y/N and Allen all made their way to get together the rest of the gang and hang out.

***

The cast, including Lucy all, sat in the ‘Band’ trailer, just talking and discussing things. Loud laughter erupted through the small space as everyone cackled at what Allen’s reaction to his first meeting Y/N had been. “I’m just a huge fan of her music and movies. Can you blame me?” Y/N just waved a hand in a ‘stop it’ motion and snuggled closer to Ben. The man smiled down at her, and honestly, he couldn’t say that Allen tripping over a bunch of wires and stumbling over every single word that tried to make its way out of his mouth, was that off from his own experience. Y/N was an actual Rockstar and an Academy Award-winning actress. They’d met when he first had heard the rumours about a biopic of Queen being made. Instantly, Ben had gone to the closest studio to his London apartment to meet up with the person that would be his drumming teacher when he’d walked into someone, literally making the person fall on their ass. “Holy, shit! I’m so so sor-“ but he stopped mid-sentence seeing the one the only Y/N Y/L/N brush off the dust from her jeans. “ ‘S fine. Should’ve been watching where I was going anyway.” She looked up only to see two big green eyes and a wide goofy grin. “You’re Y/N Y/L/N.” The girl chuckled extending a hand. “And you’re Ben Hardy.” He started nervously laughing. “You know who I am.” On the inside he was feeling like a child on Christmas, the giddiness almost making him bounce on his feet. “I do,” she smirked before walking around the man and towards the exit of the studio. “And if what I’ve heard from Rog and Bri is true, I’ll be seeing you around. Top candidate for the role of mister Taylor and all.” Ben stood there, in the middle of the hallway, a dumb grin stretched across his face until his drum teacher clapped down on his shoulder, bringing the man back to reality. “You look happy.” “I just met Y/N Y/L/N.” “Ah,” his teacher smiled, leading them to the practice studio. “Well, then you might want to keep your fangirling on the inside. You’ll be seeing her a lot around here.” And he had. She was there to record another album while Westworld was on break, her playing one of the main characters and all before she went back to LA to start filming. But it was three months down the line they had formed something akin to a friendship. It was the middle of the night, when he’d seen her again, tears streaming down her face as she stormed inside the studio and suddenly, she had screamed. Ben was by the drums, trying to memorize the beats to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ when the loud yell had scared him. Instantly, he was out of the recording booth and saw a hunched over form sobbing in her hands. “Are you alright?” he wanted to smack himself the moment those words left his mouth. Of course, she wasn’t alright. No one cries like that when everything is good. “I- yeah,” Y/N said, wiping a tear away. “What are you doing here anyway? It’s past one o’clock already.” “Practicing,” Ben said, and she just nodded. Slowly he made his way next to the couch and sat down beside her. “Do you wanna talk about it?” Y/N shook her head and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Just hold me, please.” So, he did. He wrapped both his arms around the girl and hugged her. Together they laid down on the sofa and fell asleep. After that incident, they became closer and closer until the man finally gathered the courage and asked her out for a coffee. The smile she had given him had made his heart stop. Ben was so far back into the memories of how he’d met the girl and had fallen in love with the talented human being, it was when she said words he never expected to hear, that brought him back. “You know, if things had been different, it wouldn’t be me and Ben here together, but me and your lead singer,” she pointed at Rami with her chin, who chuckled at that. That threw Ben for a loop. Of course, he’d heard the rumours of the two stars of Night at the Museum hitting it off behind the scenes as well, but never did he think it was true. Media always liked to speculate. When the two had started filming the first movie, tabloids absolutely loved writing that the actors who played the love interests in the movie had a romance of their own going on off stage. Instant jealousy rippled through his veins as he looked at Rami, who had his own hand on Lucy’s knee, her eyes wide and looking back and forth between the two. “And what happened?” she asked. Ben felt Y/N shrug. “I don’t know. I think we kinda decided to try it out because everyone else was saying how good we looked together, how great the chemistry was and blah blah blah. But as the ‘relationship’,” Y/N put the word in air quotes with her fingers, “progressed, it just didn’t feel natural. It felt like I was dating my best friend, but not in a good way.” Rami nodded along, looking off into the distance. “We tried to see what everyone else saw, but ultimately it was not what either of us wanted or needed. And honestly, I know you feel the same Y/N, so I’m just gonna say it- kissing you off-set was the weirdest fucking thing ever. I think that is why it took us until the third one to actually do anything. Just the thought of you that way made me feel weird.” Her loud laugh echoed through the trailer, but Ben couldn’t stop thinking about the new revelation. She had been together with Rami. Not for long and neither seemed to have enjoyed that kind of a relationship, but still. It was a pretty big thing Y/N had kept from him and the actor didn’t like it. Of course, he realized how unfair he was being towards the two, all of that having happened years ago, but when you’re surrounded by the glitz and glam so much, it’s hard to sometimes distinguish what is real and it makes you question things. “Don’t take this wrong, Rami, but even if we had ended up having something serious, it wouldn’t have lasted long.” “Yeah,” the man nodded and looked down at Lucy with the same fond smile Y/N looked up at Ben. “Why’s that?” the blond asked, uncertainty in his eyes. Y/N seeing this sighed and slid a palm to cup his cheek. “Because I found love in you. And I could not fathom being with someone who doesn't own my heart.” There was an audible ��aww’ from Gwil and Allen, but Joe scoffed, playfully rolling his eyes. The bromance between the two was one of Y/N’s favourite things as Ben always sent her funny snaps and Instagram messages of the two goofing around. "Gross," he muttered and the trailer was overtaken by laughter.

***

Y/N’s head was heavy as she leaned against Ben’s shoulder, as they made their way together to his trailer, after four more hours of talking and giggling with the cast. “You alright?” he asked, the deep voice she adored so much laced with concern. “Mhm,” she hummed, closing her eyes for a second. “Just tired.” He pressed a sweet kiss to her temple and wrapped his arm tighter around her waist. “We’re almost there.” She walked the rest of the way with her eyes closed, trusting Ben to guide her and not let her trip over things or hit her head at a low hanging sign. With a soft click. Ben unlocked his trailer and he let Y/N step inside first. She didn’t even wait for the door to be closed when she pulled off her pants and shirt. “Giving me a show, are we?” Ben smirked, eyes raking up and down his girlfriend’s body, but both of them knew, he was just teasing. Y/N was so tired she could fall asleep while standing up. Gently, he scooped her up in his arms and went over to the bed, placing her above the covers, while he quickly got rid of his own clothes. A soft whine of ‘come here’ fluttered through the air, making his heart clench. As he laid down, Y/N pulling the bedding from underneath her and over them, Ben wrapped her in his embrace and sweetly kissed her. “Night, love.” “Love you.” Y/N fell asleep in a second, but Ben seemed to be doomed never to close his eyes. The thought of her being with Rami had overtaken every part of his brain and he hated how bitter it made him feel. She wasn’t in love with his costar, Y/N was in love with Ben, and he knew it without a doubt, so why this new revelation made him so jealous, was beyond the Brit. “Baby, you okay?” her voice was raspy with sleep and Ben sighed, turning to his side to wrap an arm around her midsection. Her worried tone made his chest hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “About what?” “About you and Rami? Why didn’t you tell me you had a thing with him?” Y/N was becoming wider awake with every passing second, so she leaned up on her elbow to better look at Ben’s face. “Because, as I said before, it wasn’t even a thing. And what does it matter? That was more than two years ago, and nothing came of it. He’s like a brother to me.” A devilish smirk appeared on her face. “Is someone jealous?” Y/N whispered leaning up and letting her teeth nip at Ben’s ear. He groaned feeling her hips roll into his as she had hiked her knee over his side. “Can you blame me? You’re this amazing actress/ fucking rock and roll legend at this point. How could I not be when you could have anyone you wished to?” She continued on with the motions, eliciting delightful moans from Ben. “And have you seen yourself in the mirror, darling?” Y/N groaned, feeling him stiffen with every movement their bodies made. “Fuck, if I let myself go off every time, I read a comment on any social media about how much of an Adonis you are and how much everyone wants to be with you, I’d handcuff you to the bed and glue myself on top of you, just to make a statement that you’re mine.” Ben’s mouth quirked up. “You know, that doesn’t sound that bad. Actually, that sounds like fucking heaven.” His hands settled on her soft sides, as they helped her keep a steady rolling rhythm. The fabric that separated the two was beyond offensive in Ben’s opinion, but there was just something about teasing Y/N and in the end himself, that made the climax of everything so much more amazing. “Ben, I need you,” Y/N’s voice was desperate. The man just hummed as his lips lazily moved up and down the column of her throat, and he smiled, feeling her get more and more frustrated. But it was when she pulled his hands away from her waist and pushed them up and over his head, pushing him on his back and grabbing his wrists in a tight grip, an animalistic growl reverberated through the air and his bones. “Now,” her voice was low and dangerous and holy shit did that turn him on. Instantly her nightshirt was off, and her panties followed suit, Ben practically ripping his own boxers away. There was no time for foreplay, as the ache in both of their bodies had become insufferable. As much as Ben wanted to slam up and be hugged by Y/N’s velvety wall, he let her grip his member at the base and slowly ease down. Profanities, that he didn’t even know he knew, passed Ben’s lips and Y/N echoed them by pressing their lips in a tight kiss. It had been so long, too long since they had been together like this, she was almost sure she’d burst just from the feeling of him being sheeted inside. Ben gave Y/N a minute to gather her breath and as she did so, he felt her stretch and adjust, and once again mould to him. Her mouth was by his ear, praising him and whispering confessions of love as her hands moved up and down his biceps. It was in that moment, that Ben wanted to punch the living daylights out of himself for ever doubting Y/N and her feelings, for ever thinking that she was with him simply because it was easy and practical. Because in reality, it was far from it. The distance and work lead to fights and tears, and they had to solve the issues, rather than abandoning them, which is what both had usually done. If they didn’t, the pair knew all of the brilliant moments spent together, the tender lovemaking, and gentle laughs would crumble. And never had Y/N or Ben wished to keep something so much as they did with one another. “Can I move?” Ben’s words were a plea because suddenly not moving was incredibly uncomfortable. The soft moan rippling from Y/N’s throat was all the green light he needed, so clasping both his hands down on the small of her back, he pushed his hips up, until he had bottomed out and then slipped almost all the way out, leaving only the tip in. Her sigh of content was a sound Ben assumed he would only get to hear in heaven. Yet there he was, biting down on the shoulder of the most gorgeous girl he’d ever met as she marked his neck with love bites of her own. “I love you,” he groaned feeling Y/N tighten around him as his shaft finally hit that spot that made her Y/E/C eyes roll to the back of her head. “I love you so fucking much.” “I love you too, Ben,” her reply was breathless, but her gaze was fiery and piercing. “And don’t you ever forget that or doubt it.” Each word was accentuated by a harsher snap of her hips. The sounds of their bodies colliding, and Y/N’s slick having coated both of their thighs, sweat sliding down their frames and onto the sheets was more than obscene. He knew he wouldn’t last long, he could feel the release approaching like a freight train, but at the same time, Ben was not about to cum first. Detaching their lips from the heavy kiss the pair had been engaged in, he licked the pad of his thumb and brought it between them. The second Y/N felt him touch her clit, she saw white. Her vision blurred at the edges and the hold she had had on Ben’s arms became so strong, her nails broke his skin in places. Instantly, she wanted to apologize, guilt settling in her chest, but the movement of his finger became more erratic and without a warning, she was cumming all over him. It was like the orgasm had been pulled from somewhere deep within her soul, for she had never actually felt on the verge of passing out. Y/N screamed Ben’s name into the dark and if he hadn’t had a hold on her body, she would have most likely fallen off the bed, her thighs and stomach spasming so hard. Ben shut his eyes, forehead scrunching up as Y/N squeezed him so painfully hard, she almost pushed his member out of her, but instead, he trust up a few more times and let bliss take over his body. She felt him release, hot thick streams of cum filling her up and painting every inch of her walls. Ben remained like that- still buried to the hilt inside her warm and now leaking center- for what felt like an eternity, but not nearly enough, before Y/N rolled off of him, a whine of discontent making its way into the air that smelled of sex and love. “Do you think anyone heard us?” Y/N asked, already being pulled back to dreamland by Ben’s steadying heartbeat. “Well, if they did, then they will definitely know, who made you feel that good.” And with a snort, Y/N closed her eyes.

*** Lucy’s head was laying on Rami’s sweaty chest, both of their breathing laboured. “Do you think they heard us?” she asked, big eyes drooping closed from the activities they had taken part in. Rami shrugged, pulling Lucy’s body closer and together they fell asleep.

***

Joe’s eyes were wide as he stared at the ceiling. “I hate my life,” he muttered and turned to the side, just in case his neighbours decided to go at it again, placing a pillow over his head. No matter which pair.

Tags (crossed out wouldn't take): @16wiishes @wanderingsami @desir-ae @thiccio-and-thicciet @roseslovedreams @vesoleil @gloomybisexualemo @kostyaownsmyheart @perriwiinkle @screaminggalileochickenwrites @lumelgy @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @reblogger-not-a-blogger @m-a-t-91 @dalilx @i-need-a-hero-i-need-a-loki @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @in-the-end-im-still-trash @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch @avxgers @unlikelygalaxygiver @sweet-ladyy @magicwithaknife

A/N: I’m so tired and stressed and holy shit does everything feel like it’s happening all at once.

I have two fics of Roger (both set in the 80s Retro and 70s Vintage world) lined up to write. On is in the early days of how they met and then another one is revolving around the Golden Globes.

P.S. what did you think?

P.S.S. my tags are always open.

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years ago

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Good Omens, Queerbaiting And Death Of The Author - Quill’s Scribbles

I confess this is the most reluctant I’ve ever been to write a Scribble. When this topic came up, I remember just groaning and putting my head in my hands because I knew that, due to the nature of what I tend to write about on this blog and the fact that I’m an out and out biromantic demisexual queerbo, people would be asking me to contribute to the discourse. And honestly I don’t particularly want to. I don’t get to enjoy many films and TV shows anymore thanks to the industry doing their very best to ruin everything they touch. Can’t I just watch one good TV show without being dragged into some ideological battle?

Okay. Guess I can’t really put this off any longer.

On the 31st May, the long awaited adaptation of Good Omens was released on Amazon Video. I thought it was quite good. Not perfect. There are some things I could criticise, but overall it was a worthy adaptation of the source material and it was very enjoyable to watch. And that seems to be the general consensus with both critics and fans. However over the past couple of months since its release, a ‘controversy’ began to emerge within the fandom regarding the show’s main characters Aziraphale and Crowley. See, a large proportion of both the media and the Good Omens fanbase have interpreted the angel/demon double act as being gay, but this has sparked a backlash from some fans with them going so far as to accuse the show of queerbaiting as the show never explicitly confirms the characters’ sexuality. This then led to a backlash to the backlash, sparking a whole debate as to what constitutes good LGBT representation. Not only that, Neil Gaiman, the showrunner and original co-author of Good Omens, has stubbornly refused to confirm one way or the other whether or not Aziraphale and Crowley are more than just good friends, which has added further fuel to the fire.

Now before we go any further, I just want to disavow one argument that I see cropping up a lot and that really gets under my skin. That Aziraphale and Crowley can’t possibly be gay because they’re not men. They’re genderless beings that feel no sexual attraction. The implication being that the characters are asexual, but the way you hear people going on about it, the Ineffable Husbands seem less asexual and more like soulless robots. First off, you do know asexual people feel love too, right? We’re not Vulcans. Second, can we stop this ridiculous logic that they can’t be gay because they’re not men? It reminds me of the ‘controversy’ that surrounded Mass Effect 3 when BioWare confirmed that you could play as a gay male Commander Shepard. When people pointed out to the critics and haters that you could already play as a gay Shepard if you picked FemShep and pursued Liara, they retorted by saying that Liara doesn’t count as a woman because she’s a ‘monogendered alien.’ And my response to that was... so? She still looks like a woman and she still uses female pronouns. If FemShep is attracted to her, there’s a good chance she might be gay. It really is that simple. Aziraphale and Crowley may be genderless, but they look like men and use male pronouns. So if they were attracted to each other, they just might be gay. Period.

Anyway. Tangent over. Lets talk about Aziraphale and Crowley. You might be wondering where I stand on this whole issue. Do I believe that Aziraphale and Crowley are gay? Well honestly it depends on which version we’re talking about here. If we’re talking about the book version, I would say probably not. Don’t get me wrong. I’m almost certain book Aziraphale is gay as there are a number of references that seem to suggest that. His bookshop is in Soho, which is famous for its thriving LGBT community, the narrator mentions him going to a ‘discreet gentlemen’s club’ in the 1800s, and there’s of course this brilliant line:

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

So yeah. There was never a doubt in my mind that book Aziraphale was gay. (And before anyone comments saying that the next line mentions that Aziraphale isn’t gay because angels are sexless unless they make the effort, let me ask you something. Who, out of all the characters in the book, does he make a genuine effort for? Aha!). Book Crowley on the other hand isn’t quite so clear cut. Sure there are occasional flashes of something, but it could easily just be interpreted as being gestures of friendship rather than romance. Personally I always saw book Crowley as being more aromantic/asexual. In fact their relationship reminded me a lot of my relationship with my best friend. I’m more like Aziraphale, due to being very camp, somewhat old fashioned and often quite emotional, whereas my friend is like Crowley in that she displays a facade of confidence to mask her insecurities and is extremely loyal to her friends. Now please note I’m not trying to destroy anyone’s personal headcanon here. I know for a fact many LGBT people have interpreted and drawn inspiration from Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship for nearly 30 years since the book first came out in 1990, and I wouldn’t dream of depriving anyone of that. I’m just merely describing how I personally interpreted the characters when I read it.

So, while book Aziraphale is almost definitely gay in my opinion, I personally don’t think they were anything more than just good friends. Do I think the same about the TV version? Actually no. In fact completely the opposite. I think TV Aziraphale and Crowley are 100%, unquestionably and unashamedly in love with each other and this view is supported by the extra material Neil Gaiman has written for them, most notably the 30 minute long cold open of the third episode that shows Aziraphale and Crowley’s blossoming relationship over the course of human history, as well as how the show frames them. We hear the kind of swelling, orchestral music you would hear in a romance when Crowley saves Aziraphale’s books from a WW2 bomb, the scenes where the two argue about running away to Alpha Centauri are presented as being like a legitimate breakup (with the addition of some random passerby telling Aziraphale he’s ‘better off without him’), the other angels occasionally refer to Crowley as being Aziraphale’s boyfriend (albeit in a mocking way), and the way Michael Sheen and David Tennant play the characters makes them feel much more like an old married couple rather than being simply friends. There’s even a wonderful moment in the third episode where Crowley asks Aziraphale if he could give him a ride somewhere, to which Aziraphale responds “you go too fast for me Crowley.” It leaves very little room for doubt in my opinion, and yet Neil Gaiman refuses to verbally confirm this, even though the actors and the director have expressed numerous times that they interpreted the characters as such. Not only that, but the writing and filmmaking leaves just enough room for plausible deniability, never explicitly confirming the relationship. So the question remains, does this count as legitimate LGBT representation or is this just a very advanced form of queerbaiting?

Well first it would be useful to talk about what queerbaiting actually is, because a lot of people arguing against Good Omens don’t seem to fully understand the term. Queerbaiting is when a creator hints at a possible same sex romance without ever actually confirming or depicting the relationship. A recent example of this would be Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series.

JK Rowling first ‘outed’ Dumbledore as gay back in 2007, saying he was in a relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald, but unless you read the interview, you would never have known this because the book doesn’t provide any sort of hint or clue or reference to that relationship. Worse still, when given the opportunity to rectify this in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Rowling chose instead to downplay the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald significantly. This is queerbaiting. Implying a character might be gay or promising to introduce a gay character only to then backtrack or not fully commit. Another example would be Avengers: Endgame where the Russo Brothers announced there was going to be a gay character in the film only for it to be some nameless guy who’s only on screen for about a minute. It revolves around luring people in with the expectation of LGBT representation only to then snatch it away once they’ve got bums in seats.

(Also, just to clarify, queerbaiting is not when a bisexual or pansexual character becomes romantically involved with someone of the opposite sex. Yes it’s important that we see more bisexual and pansexual characters and yes it’s important we see more same sex couples on screen, but do NOT conflate the two. Deadpool’s pansexuality, for instance, isn’t suddenly invalid just because he has a girlfriend).

So, with this in mind, does Good Omens fit the criteria of queerbaiting. Well the sexuality of the characters are often the focal point of many interviews, with the director and actors explicitly describing Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship as ‘a love story.’ Most notably Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale and who has been carrying a torch for the Ineffable Husbands since Good Omens came out. But unlike JK Rowling and the Russos, the makers of Good Omens can back up their words with content. As mentioned above, the way the show frames the relationship makes the implication quite clear. There’s even a bit where Crowley thinks Aziraphale has been killed and he leaves the burning bookshop while ‘Somebody To Love’ is playing in the background. It isn’t really very subtle. So, by my understanding, queerbaiting doesn’t seem particularly accurate when talking about Good Omens. The issue here is one of presentation. The overt subtext is all well and good, but does the fact that there’s no explicit confirmation of their relationship make it invalid? To answer that question, we must look into another relevant term. Queercoding.

Queercoding is when a character is given the traits typically associated with those commonly attributed to gay people, such as effeminate behaviour or ostentatious dress sense. This is used often as a way of getting queer relationships past the censor. Implying a character might be gay without explicitly confirming it for fear of the studio or publisher putting their foot down.

While queercoding is often intrinsically linked to queerbaiting, it’s worth noting that while queerbaiting is always seen as a negative (and rightly so), queercoding is neither positive nor negative. It’s merely a contextual device and can be positive or negative depending on execution. A positive example of queercoding would be Deadpool.

While the Merc with the Mouth has never been officially outed as pansexual, both the comics and the movies in particular have framed him as someone who doesn’t conform to heteronormative expectations. The marketing of both movies present Deadpool in traditionally feminine poses as a way of mocking and commenting on how gender is perceived in these kinds of tentpole blockbusters. The comics often make fairly explicit references towards Deadpool’s sexual flexibility for the purposes of humour, such as in his interactions with characters like Spider-Man or Thor.

The movies follow suit. The first movie is littered with moments where Deadpool alludes to being not entirely straight. He occasionally uses gay slang, we see his girlfriend Vanessa penetrate him with a strap-on during the sex montage, and there are frequent references to how sexy Hugh Jackman is, most notably near the beginning when Deadpool describes how he had to give Wolverine a handjob in order to get his own movie. The second movie meanwhile takes it a step further. Not only is the entirety of Deadpool 2 essentially one big allegory for how members of the LGBT community cope with abuse and discrimination, we also see Deadpool express a sexual interest in Colossus many times, the extended cut even going so far as to depict Deadpool trying to give him a blowjob.

Now as I said, Deadpool has never been officially outed as pansexual. That information comes from one of the comic book writers on Twitter. The comics and movies have never verbally confirmed it. We never hear Deadpool describe himself as such. But to say he’s not queer would be absurd because he clearly is. That’s how he’s framed and presented to us across the majority of media. What makes Deadpool a positive example of queercoding is how we view the character. He’s clearly extremely comfortable with expressing his own sexuality and feels no shame in his antics. While the majority of his queer moments are used for the purposes of humour, we’re always laughing with him, not at him.

Now lets take a look at a negative example of queercoding:

This is Moriarty from the BBC series Sherlock written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Sherlock is without a doubt one of the worst adaptations of the canon that’s ever been made and the show’s treatment of Moriarty is a big reason for that. When he’s first introduced in The Great Game, when he’s posing as Molly’s boyfriend, Sherlock deduces that he’s gay based on really no evidence at all other than that he puts product in his hair and his underpants are showing. It’s ostensibly playing on that stereotype that any man who takes pride in their appearance isn’t masculine and therefore must be gay. (if that were true then David Beckham would be the gayest man on the fucking planet). While it becomes clear at the end of the episode that this was just an act Moriarty was putting on to fool Sherlock, he never really loses the metrosexual image. He boasts about his ‘Westwood’ clothes, we see him prance and preen like some over the top camp supervillain (more on that later) and he makes numerous double entendres that imply he’s interested in men, specifically Sherlock. There’s even a moment in The Reichenbach Fall where we see Moriarty sitting on a throne wearing the crown jewels. Ha! Do you get it? Because he’s a queen!

What makes this form of queercoding more offensive than Deadpool is, again, how we as the audience are supposed to perceive him. Moffat and Gatiss want us to laugh at Moriarty’s camp behaviour and they clearly find the prospect of shipping Moriarty and Sherlock utterly absurd, as demonstrated in the episode The Empty Hearse where we see the Sherlock fan club suggest Sherlock survived the fall because he and Moriarty were secretly lovers. This bit was there for no reason other than to take the piss out of Sherlock fans who read too much into the show’s intentional subtext. Also, crucially, Moriarty has no real character or backstory other than as a gay stereotype. He’s a lazily written caricature who serves no real purpose other than as a homophobic punchline. There’s a lot more to Deadpool than just being queer. With Moriarty however, there’s simply nothing underneath.

Moriarty is also an example of how queercoding is most commonly applied to villains. There are countless examples of this across various media over the years. The Joker from Batman, for instance. Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Scar from The Lion King. In these cases, whether intentionally or not, queercoding plants ideas of gender identity into the viewers’ heads. A male supervillain like the Joker is presented as being eccentric, arch and incredibly camp while Batman, the hero, is big and strong and serious and honourable. A manly man. Likewise, Ursula is presented as butch and unfeminine, scheming and malevolent, whereas Ariel is attractive and sweet and innocent. The ideal woman. Queercoded villains have been used to demonise the LGBT community for decades by presenting an ideal, hetronormative image of what a man or woman should be like, battling an antagonist that doesn’t fit in with traditional gender roles. Obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a camp male villain or a distinctly unfeminine female villain, but it’s worth bearing in mind where these ideas originally came from and the impact it could potentially have.

So lets bring this back to Good Omens. The queercoding of Aziraphale and Crowley is obvious and it’s never presented in negative terms. (there’s a moment where Shadwell refers to Aziraphale as a pansy, but considering the man is a complete moron who draws eyes on milk bottles and thinks nipples are the gold standard way of identifying a witch, I think we can safely say he’s not to be taken seriously). In fact their relationship is incredibly sweet and endearing. Except... I can understand why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman weren’t explicit in expressing the characters’ sexuality when the book was first published. It was 1990, both Pratchett and Gaiman were still relatively fresh faces and Western society’s attitudes toward homosexuality weren’t quite as progressive then as they are now. But it’s now 2019. Things have changed. Gay characters are appearing more frequently in books, movies and TV shows, people in general are more accepting of the LGBT community and Gaiman is now a hugely successful author with a lot of influence in the industry. Why not just make the relationship explicit?

Well there are two ways of looking at this. The first is that it really doesn’t need to be explicit. You would never hear a man and a woman talk about how incredibly hetero they are, would you? Actions speak louder than words after all. But when the two characters in question are of the same gender, suddenly the whole thing becomes a massive debate to the point where unless someone comes right out and says they are gay, people simply won’t buy it. Deadpool, tragically, has suffered from this with obnoxious frat boys deliberately glossing over the obvious queer subtext and hijacking the character for their own self-aggrandisement. This really shouldn’t be the case and this whole ‘straight until proven gay’ mindset isn’t the fault of the show. It’s entirely the fault of the viewer. The second involves our last topic of discussion. The Death of the Author. (no pun intended. RIP Pratchett).

Death of the Author refers to a literary essay written by the theorist Roland Barthes in 1967, which argues against critiquing a piece of literature based on authorial intent. Basically, once a book or movie or TV show is released to the general public, any relation to its creator becomes immaterial. The work in question must stand on its own and be judged independently. The intention of the author no longer matters. (I’m simplifying obviously, but that’s basically the gist of it. If you ever get the chance, read the essay yourself. It’s a fascinating read). Gaiman appears to be a firm believer in this philosophy. On his Tumblr account, @neil-gaiman, when asked about the the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, he often refuses to comment, invoking the Death of the Author mindset. It’s up the reader/viewer to interpret the characters. If you think they’re gay, then they’re gay. If you think they’re just friends, then they’re just friends. Some could call this a bit of a cop out, and you’re entitled to do so, but I understand where Gaiman is coming from. We’ve seen writers like JK Rowling get into trouble for queerbaiting, saying that she always intended for Dumbledore to be gay, but never actually showing any real evidence for it in the text, and Gaiman doesn’t want to fall into the same trap. Plus it demonstrates that Gaiman respects the views and interpretations of his fans, unlike Rowling who responded to criticism of her queerbaiting on Twitter with GIFs of people sticking their fingers in their ears and ‘blocking out the haters.’

In some ways I do feel very sorry for Gaiman. On the one hand he wants to stay true to his and Pratchett’s original vision, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to disappoint the hundreds of fans who do view the characters as being gay. Good Omens has been cited as an extremely positive influence on many queer readers, some even going so far as to say that it was this very book that allowed them to finally accept their identities and come out of the closet. Heartwarming stories like this can be found all over the web and hopefully many more will emerge now that the TV adaptation has been released. If Gaiman were to suddenly turn around in an interview one day and say ‘oh. No. Sorry. Aziraphale and Crowley were always intended to be just friends. You’re all wrong’, it would destroy people who invested so much in this relationship. Likewise, if he explicitly confirmed in an interview that the two characters are definitely gay, people would either accuse him of queerbaiting if the show doesn’t fully live up to their expectations or accuse him of shoving his political opinions down their throats. He can’t win either way really. That being said, I can’t help but respect Gaiman for sticking to his guns. It demonstrates that he’s confident in his skills as a writer and his ability to make his intentions clear in the text, that he respects the ideas and opinions of his readers and fans, and that he also respects the ideas and opinions of the cast and crew of the Good Omens TV show. While Gaiman has refused to confirm one way or the other, others like Michael Sheen or director Douglas Mackinnon have made their views very clear. Aziraphale and Crowley are in love. That’s their interpretation and they have every right to it.

So do I believe Good Omens is queerbaiting? In my opinion, no. Does that mean I believe it’s faultless? Again, no. If the intention is to depict Aziraphale and Crowley as being lovers, then I think they could have done a bit more. Obviously I’m not suggesting a full blown sex scene or anything like that. Even something as simple as them holding hands or hugging each other would have done. Some physical intimacy of some kind. Because as it stands, Good Omens does share problems with a lot of other TV shows in how they present same sex couples, in that they’re consciously aware that they are presenting to a heterosexual viewer. This is why a relationship between two women is often sexualised and eroticised for the titillation of straight men whereas the relationship between two men can often be quite chaste. Very rarely do you see two men making out or doing anything beyond a quick peck. Good Omens sadly fits into that camp, though just to be clear, I’m not blaming Neil Gaiman or the show for this. I’m merely saying that this is part of a wider systemic issue that needs to be talked about and addressed as the industry moves forward. (Hell, that might as well be be the title of my entire Tumblr profile). Also, whether you believe the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is platonic or romantic, it does not change the impact this story has had on many LGBT readers nor the fact that the story is about love. It’s important to bear this in mind because while, yes, it is important to have this discussion, we can’t lose sight of the positive message it conveys with regards to building bridges and closing divides between opposing groups.

“And perhaps the recent exertions had had some fallout in the nature of reality because, while they were eating, for the first time ever, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. No one heard it over the noise of the traffic, but it was there, right enough.”

#aziraphale #crowley #good omens #lgbt representation #quill's scribbles

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shoddy-sonneteer · 6 years ago

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Accepting Despondency

Pairing: Suga*Reader

Genre: Angst/Fluff-ish

Word Count: 2517 words

Summary: One simple miscalculation, changed Yoongi's life forever in ways he never imagined it would turn out to be

Trigger Warning: Major character death and mentions of accident and blood

“Namjoon-ah, I have to leave early. I’m meeting her parents today. Call me if you need anything though.” Yoongi said stretching on the chair he had been seated for more than 7 hours.

“Sure hyung. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll handle it. Tell them I said hi.” Namjoon said giving him a knowing nod and proceeded to go ahead with the tunes they were mixing.

“Of course. I’ll see you guys later.” Yoongi said making his way out of the studio to buy some stuff on his way to meet (Y/N)’s parents.

The trips to visit (Y/N)’s parents were always bitter sweet. But those trips were like his own personal therapy session for him. Especially after that fateful day.

----

Yoongi first saw you when you were new to class during middle school and took an interest in you. It was not because you were new or good looking. But it was the song you were listening to during the break – Stony Skunk’s Ragga Muffin. Not many people were aware of them and even if they did, they did not like their music and style enough to sing them or hear them in public. But for Yoongi, it was that song that made him want to become a producer.

He could not hide the excitement he felt when he saw that song play on your music player. Before he knew it, he was standing in front of you with a shy smile.

You were not the least bit surprised at his sudden presence. You were approached by a lot of guys both from your class and also others. You gave him a lazy look removing only one side of your earphones because you were sure that the conversation wouldn’t last more than 2 minutes.

But what surprised you was that he wanted to talk to you and have a conversation about your favourite reggae band and not ask you out.

After a month of fangirling about the band together, Yoongi realised that the both of you had a lot more in common than he realised and that made his interest in you peak.

One day when the both of were hanging out, he couldn’t resist but ask you out. But to his disappointment, you weren’t interested in him like that. He respected that and the both of you continued to be good friends.

Soon, he took part in the Big Hit auditions and won the second place and had move to Seoul while you were still in Daegu continuing your schooling.

The last he saw you was when you came to his place to say goodbye to him one last time before he left. Back then, he had no hopes of ever meeting you again in life and was happy for the time he got to spend with you.

But time had a different way of playing. After three years of debut and a mind filled with high hopes for the future with his ARMYs, he met you again. As a blind date he was forced to go on by Kihyun, the only person other than the members of BTS who could force him to do something though it was for his own good.

You were one of Kihyun’s childhood friends that reconnected with him because of the developing social media and as the two of you began reconnecting, he insisted very strongly that you go out with one of his closest idol friends that had a lot of things common with you.

When you arrived at the restaurant, you were surprised to see that it was Yoongi that was seated at the table that the waiter guided you to. But you didn’t hesitate because it was better that it was someone you knew rather than some stranger you have seen only on the television.

“Hey.” You greeted him as you took a seat opposite to him.

The sound of your seemed to have startled him and when he took a look at you, realisation dawned on him and his expression smoothened.

“This is a surprise I never expected.” He said giving you a small smile.

“Me neither. Its good meet you after so many years though. And also, congratulations on your debut and the success of the latest album. The songs are really amazing.” You appreciated him sincerely which made his cheeks glow in a faint red colour and mumble a thank you.

The rest of the date went well with the both of you exchanging numbers and plans for another date quite soon.

Since that day, to say that the both of you were inseparable was an understatement. The members often found the both of you cuddled together either in his studio while you helped him work or at the dorms watching a movie or joking around with the other members.

In short you were there for him through all his good and bad days as he was for you.

This was the topic for the members most of the day to make fun of him. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was how you were with him supporting his dreams and also giving him some suggestions and motivation to make his work better. He loved how you were able to sense his mood even through a small text that he sends and you do all you can to make sure that he feels better.

The only thing that Yoongi hated absolutely was the fact that he had to travel a lot for shows and concerts. Though he loved spending time with ARMY, he wished he could also spend some more time with you and be there by your side.

Though you had told him numerous times that though it was frustrating for you sometimes too, you knew that he was always there for you and that you knew what you were signing up when you decided to date an idol. Especially one as busy as BTS.

One day, you got all call from Joon that Yoongi has been in his studio for the past 5-6 hours and by the way he spoke, you were positive that he hadn’t bothered to eaten anything. These types of calls weren’t rare as he had a habit of locking himself in the studio for long periods. So, you decided to pay him a visit with along with some food.

You entered the code for the studio without knocking because you have done this a lot of times before. As you opened the door you could see that he was busily working on his system with his headphones on. You decided to startle him without making any voice though it wouldn’t be difficult given that he was already wearing headphones.

You slowly walked over to him and back hugged him removing the headphones and keeping it on your ears. But he was quick enough to pause the song and unplug the headphones before you could get a sneak peek on what he was working.

Normally, this wasn’t surprising because he would only play the completed version to you to get your feedback. Sometimes you didn’t even get that. But the look of panic on his face when you took the headphones was what surprised you.

Yoongi wasn’t a person that panicked that easily for matters like this. Annoyed? Yes. Panicked? No. This was new and made you frown.

“What happened Yoongles?” You asked proceeding to sit on his lap placing the headphones on his table.

“Nothing babe. I just wanted you to listen to that song after its done. Anyway, what are you doing here? Not that I’m complaining.” He said hugging your waist and snuggling his face on your neck making you giggle slightly.

“Joon called me and told that you haven’t been out of the studio for hours and haven’t eaten anything. So, I brought some food.”

“Thanks a lot babe. I love you.” He said kissing your cheek. The both of you froze at what he said. It was the first time either of you had said ‘I love you’ to the other.

“Wait. You like love me?” You asked turning to look at him completely.

“No… yea. I love you. What’s not to love about you? you’re amazing, you care about me even though I don’t sometimes care about myself, you have seen in my worst and are still here and most importantly, you’re the only person I see myself wanting to spend the rest of my life with.”

That’s the most sweetest and open thing Yoongi had ever told you in your five months of relationship and the little confession from him made your heart melt entirely. The look on his face was filled with sincerity with a tinge of hesitation.

“I love you too pabo. Of course, I love you.” You said looking into his eyes trying to match the sincerity he was displaying with a smile.

“That song. I was going to play it for you before I said it. That’s why I snatched the headphones.”

“Aww. You romantic gummy bear. Play it now. Right now!”

“First of all, gummy bear? Seriously? If you wanted to call me after a candy, I’d rather it be something better than that. Second of all, the song is not completely done.”

“First of all, gummy bears are amazing. And the name is perfect for you because of your gummy smile and also because you sleep like a bear in hibernation. Second of all, I don’t care if it not fully completed or not. You wrote it for me and I want to listen to it.” you declared taking the earphones and putting them on.

Chuckling, he played the song. It wasn’t like any other songs he wrote before. It was filled with emotions in each and every word he had rapped. The words brought tears to your eyes even without you realising it. Yoongi slowly rubbed circles in your hand in an attempt to calm you.

“Yoongi this is amazing!” you exclaimed, hugging him tight after the song ended.

“You really like it?” He asked doubt lacing his tone.

“Yes! This is so amazing that I’m in tears right now. you’re an amazing composer. I’m so in love with this song. But only after AGUSTD. That album will always be on the top position.”

“After all this time, I don’t even know if you’re joking or not. you’re jamming to it almost always. Anyways, I’m glad you like it.”

“Of course, I like it. my boyfriend that loves me composed it for me to say that he loves me.” You said leaning forward to kiss him.

But before neither of you could take it any further, his stomach gave away that he hadn’t been eating anything since breakfast. So, you decided to continue this later and got off his lap to give him the food you brought on your way here.

It had been three years since the first actual date the both of you had been to, excluding the blind date Kihyun made you guys which was the main reason you guys met again (though neither of you would say that to him and give him the satisfaction). The both if you decided to go visit your parents because it had been really long since the you guys visited them and the finally got a whole week off.

You spotted him waiting for you outside the cab parked opposite to your apartment. Smiling, you started walking toward him unaware of the fact that a car that was approaching your way.

Before Yoongi could warn you about it, things had gotten out of hand and you were lying on the road in a pool of your blood, barely conscious.

It ripped Yoongi’s heart that you – who were one of the strongest women he knew – weren’t able to make it out of the hospital alive. What killed him the most was that he could have stopped this from happening if had paid more attention to the surroundings and warned you sooner.

If only he had done that, you would have been in his arms right now, cuddling with him.

Even though the other members and even your parents tried telling him that it was not his fault and that it was an accident that no one could have possibly foreseen, he couldn’t help but feel like somehow, he was also responsible for this.

He knew that this accident had not only robbed him of the love of his life but also the only daughter your parents had and that he had to be there for them as their strength and also let them be there for him.

Since then, he had been visiting them at least once in two weeks to make sure they were eating properly and taking good care of themselves and let them pamper him as if he were their own son. That time he was visiting them was the only time he let his guard down and let them see the actual Min Yoongi apart from when he was with the other members or his own family.

Though you were no longer there, you gave Yoongi another family that loved him and took care of him like his own and gave your parents a son they never expected to have.

---

Removing the gloves, Yoongi knocked on the door that was opened by a friendly looking female whose face lit up after seeing his face.

“Come on in. Right on time. I was just making samgyeopsal for you.” She said pulling him for a hug.

“Thanks mom. You didn’t have to though.” He said returning the hug.

“Nonsense. How can I not after knowing that you’ll be visiting us?”

“Thanks mom. I got you guys some things I thought you might need. I remember dad complaining that it was too cold to go outside. So, I got him some gloves and muffler so he doesn’t skip his morning walk anymore.”

“That’s nice. Finally, he will no longer have an excuse.”

“Thanks a lot, son.” Dad said sarcastically coming to the door to greet him.

“No problem dad. What did the doctor say during the previous appointment?”

“Oh, he said a lot. I’ll tell you when we are eating. Now go and rest. You must be tired after the travel. Your room is ready for you.” Mom said making him walk towards the room to freshen up.

“Okay mom. I’ll be right back and help you with the cooking.” He said closing the door behind him and placed his bag on the freshly made bed.

This wasn’t his room exactly. It was your old room filled with all your memories from your childhood till you moved out to go to uni. This room gave him a feeling that you were by his side looking over him and guiding him throughout while making some important decisions. It was that feeling that has been keeping him going for the past one year along with the strength given to him by his members, his family – both of them and of course ARMY.

#bts #bts scenarios #bts namjoon #bts jin #bts yoongi #bts jhope #bts jimin #bts taehyung #bts jungkook #bts angst

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ayearofpike · 6 years ago

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The 2010s reprints, all at once

So if Simon & Schuster is going back to the well for Pike’s vampire books, what’s stopping them from bringing back other stories from their one-time best-selling young adult author? Form factor, perhaps. It’s the twenty-first century now, and no self-respecting teen would be caught dead reading a pocket-sized paperback. We need something big and beefy to show that we’re Serious About Literature even as we read about murderous insane girls. Fortunately, he’s written more than a couple continuations that will link together into a handy packaged bind-up. But a lot of these books were originally written twenty years ago or more, when the absence of technology and communications wasn’t something that needed to be addressed to explain why these bastards weren’t better informed. Indeed, new audiences (the ones we in education call “digital natives”) might not even understand the characters’ rationales for action without being able to step back in time and forget what they take for granted.

Is it worth rereading these new editions? How different are they from the originals? Lucky for you, I’ve decided to find out.

Remember Me

Compiles Remember Me, The Return, and The Last Story Simon Pulse, 2010 789 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-0596-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Re 2010 OCLC: 646299604 Released July 6, 2010 (per B&N)

Since this was the magical bestseller that made Pike who he was in the first place, it shouldn’t be too surprising that not much is changed or updated in this edition. Still, the very nature of the YA market having morphed into the vehicle that allows these stories to be reprinted throws a pretty massive wrinkle (like, even worse than the fact she’s publishing under her white name) into Shari’s expectation that her mom will never read Remember Me. Come on, dude — I guarantee she already read about the vampires.

The only changes I found through all three stories were giving Lenny the Latino gangbanger a CD player rather than a cassette (because 2010), saving the final story on a jump drive rather than a floppy disk (again, 2010), and swapping Shari’s green pants for blue jeans (I guess to match the outfit Jean is wearing when she falls off the balcony?). One thing that hasn’t changed: Third Book Whitewashin’ Shari is still an asshole. You’re lucky I’m so determined to be thorough, otherwise I would have never reread this shit.

To Die For

Compiles Slumber Party and Weekend Point, 2010 408 pages ISBN 978-0-545-26432-1 LOC: not listed OCLC: 679759450 Released September 1, 2010 (per B&N)

Little weirdness here, as this is a Scholastic joint rather than Simon & Schuster, but the covers are all coordinated, down to the typeface. Not sure whether the two houses worked together to try to sell their books (at Pike’s agent’s suggestion?) or whether Point saw an opportunity to mine some back catalog and tried to copy the existing presentation as close as possible.

The oldest viable stories (read: not Cheerleaders) must have some major rewrites pending for a modern audience, you’d think, but it’s not that drastic. The main complication would be these kids being able to reach someone outside the immediate group and report problems, so Pike quickly writes around that with a single line in each story establishing the locale as beyond cell service. They also both turn emergency CB radios into walkie-talkies, which isn’t even close to the same thing. It’s a little hinky at times, especially in accepting that Lara Johnson has packed an alarm clock instead of a phone, but it does the job.

Most of the rest of the changes hinge on contemporary references. Slumber Party loses its Richard-Pryor-lighting-himself-aflame-while-freebasing joke, but keeps the kids watching Dr. Zhivago at the first fateful party. Weekend has to adjust a lot more — party music is no longer on record, David Bowie becomes Bono (replacing a ten-year-old reference in 1985 with a ten-year-old reference in 2010), Angie’s Datsun is now a Camry, and song leaders are finally just cheerleaders. At times, he’s just wiped out a reference altogether: gone are Pat Benatar, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, Fonzie, Michael Jackson, and most tragically the Carpenters, which undoes a joke at Sol’s expense and removes any understandable sense from the passage they once were in. Oh well. At least he spelled “gringo” correctly in this edition.

Until the End

Compiles the Final Friends trilogy (The Party, The Dance, and The Graduation) Simon Pulse, 2011 846 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-2252-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Unt 2011 OCLC: 693810612 Released August 30, 2011 (per B&N)

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure what this compilation is doing here. Did anybody clamor at the bit for Final Friends even back in the day? I mean, there must have been some demand to let our boy write a trilogy, but even as a teenager I saw the problems embedded in this tale. Simple time-shifting adjustments weren’t gonna fix those. And this is the beefiest book of the lot, maybe to appeal to young readers who like the huge format and want to show off how much they can read. (I had it in the waiting room of my kid’s doctor this week and another dad said it was the biggest book he’d ever seen.) It’s a lot to plow through for the sake of completeness. Still, we’re committed, right?

I got like 200 pages in and did not see a single change — not even in the computer lab where Bubba is “hacking” into the district grade data bank — which made me worried I was going to just be rereading the same stories over again. And 650 pages later, GUESS WHAT. Literally the only difference is that Jessica, in bemoaning her travails with Bill, says she was “trying to seduce a gay guy” instead of merely “a gay.” Like, even the part about it taking all day to transfer 40 megabytes via modem and filling up a school computer’s hard drive is still there. This was NOT done for new fans. But reading it so fast and soon and smushed together did help me realize that The Rock does indeed have a given name. (I’ll save you the research time: Theodore Gordon.)

Bound to You

Compiles Spellbound and See You Later Simon Pulse, 2012 490 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-5971-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 OCLC: 777602521 Released August 7, 2012 (per B&N)

Maybe this is the only bind-up where the two stories could have been anything. (The Point book: those were his only two under Scholastic, so it makes sense.) There’s a back catalog of literally two dozen books not otherwise committed that they could compile. So why these two together? OK, sure, we’re four years away from the phrase “sexy lizard teens” entering the lexicon, but for sure Scavenger Hunt is better paired with Spellbound than a story about nuclear war survivors time traveling out of regret. See You Later seems like a really obtuse deep cut to me, but if he was committed to it why not pair it with The Midnight Club, which is similarly about love lost to inevitable death? I don’t really see the connection, and am too lazy to do any rationale research. But I’m not actually mad at the books — they’ve shown as two of my favorites in this reread.

Spellbound, being the oldest of the S&S catalog, does need a little reworking, particularly in the racist elements of an African shaman going to a podunk Old West high school. Pike didn’t take them all out, of course, because we have to know what a dick the boyfriend is by his connection of the dude to savage cavemen. However, the lack of cell phones is very glaring in the bits where they’re trying to find the brother/potential murder victim, and Cindy has to sit around the hospital waiting to be paged. In 2012 it’s inconceivable that high school kids wouldn’t have SOMETHING. You tried to reach the brother at his house, at his friend’s, at his girlfriend’s ... did you call him directly? Such a simple fix: “He’s not answering his cell.” It probably would have made the unease even stronger.

See You Later, hinging as it does on the main character understanding a video game, has its own needs for updating, and does it better than the Final Friends remake. Still, it’s a little slapdash. Becky works in an electronics store instead of a record store, but do these places even sell physical media computer games anymore? Even six years ago that shit was all download-only. And Ray STILL works in a bookstore ... do those still exist? Mervyn’s definitely doesn’t; they went bankrupt in 2008. As for the game itself, it requires 12 gigs of RAM rather than the paltry megabyte, which is what my newish machine runs six years later. (At the time I had ... two gigs?) Also, in the original Mark asked who won the 2010 World Series, which isn’t the future anymore in 2012 ... but it’s weird that he’s now asking about 2020, just eight years off rather than twenty. Most unsettling, though, is how the tenor of international violence rhetoric still rings true for the setting of this story, even though we’re not worried about Communists anymore. The Cold War is long over, but we’ve swung through tolerance and hope and are right back on fear.

Chain Letter

Compiles Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil Simon Pulse, 2013 456 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-7215-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Ch 2013 OCLC: 852941511 Released July 23, 2013 (per B&N)

Chain Letter was also not originally published by S&S, so it’s interesting that they’ve gotten the rights to print it in this volume. (Though they were compiled in the UK in 1994, so maybe it wasn’t too hard.) By now, though, it feels like they’re reaching, as the teen fiction world shifts yet again to futuristic dystopias and Pike doesn’t really have anything like that. Thirst was on its way out too; the fifth book appeared just before this, and we’ll note that even though Pike didn’t finish the story the sixth has yet to emerge. Curse you, unpredictable teen girls!

Not too much is different from the original editions here. Obviously Pike was throwing in his timely references that had to be cut for understandability (Nastassja Kinski?), but by Chain Letter 2 he’d learned to rein that in. Also, there’s a moment in the first one where Alison yells “Hate you!” at the attacking Caretaker, which always struck me as awkward. This version changes it to “Screw you!” which makes me think Pike originally wrote it as “Fuck you!” and had to bowdlerize for YA. Of course they have to throw some shade at snail mail, too, since that’s how the letters arrive in the first place.

But the main differences are cassette recorders and phones. Obviously the kids aren’t going to tote around a whole bunch of old-school tools when we are now six years into the smartphone era. There’s some nice cleaning up in The Ancient Evil, writing around the idea that people need to (or even CAN) look numbers up in the phone book, but in lots of cases it just makes things awkward. Like, why is Joan going after the driving controls to turn the incriminating recording off if it’s on Kipp’s phone in the backseat? Why do Alison and Brenda have to sit around the kitchen waiting for a return call? Why is Kipp waiting until he gets home to check his voicemail? Did he seriously leave his phone in his room while he ran to the store and left a seven-year-old sister alone at the house? It just makes less and less sense.

You might have seen somewhere online a mention of another compilation, collecting Last Act and Master of Murder. This book does not actually exist. The ISBN and OCLC numbers associated with the title both lead to a British printing of the second half of Final Friends, by Hodder Publishing. I emailed the house just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and they responded that they’ve never printed these two stories together. There’s no record of it anywhere else, certainly not on Simon & Schuster’s Pike page, and reviews I’ve found where people have attempted to buy this collection attest to the fact that they’ve actually received a copy of Final Friends Part 2 But Not Book 2 Even Though the Second Half of Book 2 Is In It.

There also used to be another one named on Wikipedia called Time of Death, which was supposed to compile Bury Me Deep and Chain Letter, but why the hell would they do that when Chain Letter has its own sequel already? There’s not any verifiable record of such a book anywhere online, not even a flawed cross-listing like the first.

So fuhgeddaboudit. I’m done reading compilations.

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reistellae · 6 years ago

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A really really long reflection 2/3

The second part in my long, reflective essay. If you haven’t read part 1 (it’s a snooze admittedly), lemme summarize: racism within American society is long and runs deep, it will not be erased overnight; in pop culture and entertainment, Asians/Asian-Americans have never been taken seriously in post-WWII America; the rise in popularity of anime and jpop and the Internet eventually leading to the globalization of kpop. We are currently at 2016.

We last left off in 2016, where BTS was gaining some major traction worldwide. During this time, other kpop groups were making their moves in the States. GOT7 had their FLY Tour shows in the United States July 1-11th 2016 and were doing tons of press interviews to promote the concert. The kpop convention + concert (KCON) had steadily been growing in popularity since its first con in 2012 with a 2016 lineup that featured Seventeen, BTOB, Ailee, Crush, Dynamic Duo, BTS, Day6, Mamamoo, and Eric Nam at the New York convention and Amber, SHINee, Block B, Dean, GFriend, IOI, Girls Generation TTS, BTS, Eric Nam, Twice, Monsta X, and Astro in at the LA convention. EXO had their EXO’lu’Xion Concerts in the States from February 10-21st, 2016.

All in all, it became very clear that kpop had an audience in the United States and it wasn’t listened to by just Asian-Americans anymore. The audience became diverse, with people of all ages finding groups that appealed most to them. 2016 saw the year of the announcement of One Direction’s indefinite hiatus, which meant there were teenagers and young adults who were looking for new things to listen to, causing a small shift in fandom culture. I say small because kpop fans and Directioners famously had a lot of conflict, particularly on Twitter, and many Directioners would be xenophobic and racist towards kpop fans and their favorite groups with comments such as “You listen to ching chong music,” “You can’t even understand what they’re saying,” and so on, so I think the overlap between Directioners and kpop fans was very minimal. 5 Seconds of Summer, another popular band in the West, had announced a hiatus around 2016/17 and I believe this was where a lot of new fans came from. 5SOS had an audience of relatively “emo” and “edgy” teens who look for something different and tend to be more open minded, against the “mainstream” groups like One Direction. A lot of 5SOS fans shifted into kpop during the band’s hiatus, from what I’ve seen on Twitter.

However, racism is not just an American problem, it’s global. And within kpop and South Korean culture, racism and colorism run almost just as deep. This was no secret to many Asian-American/non-Korean Asian fans or to black fans. Many groups have incidents of blackface, saying colorist comments, allegations of cultural appropriation, and saying n*gga. A common defense fans would come up with when confronted with the scandal would say “they didn’t know any better,” “they don’t have black people in Korea,” “get over it, it isn’t hurting you,” and many more excuses. As a result, this tends to cause a divide between black kpop fans and non black kpop fans. The discussions of racism within kpop tend to go one-sided, with black kpop fans feeling as though they are silenced and ignored by other fans, idols, and companies. Pop culture in America often takes things from African American culture and acts like they are “new” and “fresh” and “trendy” which leads to kpop idols adopting these things as well to seem cooler.

Back on BTS, they were no strangers to racist scandals. Leader RM debuted with a fro-hawk-like style, did a rather poor imitation of Stevie Wonder while wearing dreads and sunglasses, and said that he was surprised with how dark fellow members were when he first met them. No formal apology directly stating what he had done was ever issued, so it can be assumed that Bighit Entertainment, the company in charge of BTS, brushed it off. Despite this, the fandom would continue to grow on their main platform of Twitter.

Twitter is the most immediate way to find people who have common interests as you and to keep up with your favorite celebrities and BTS established early on that they were good at keeping up. Posting little videos of day to day life, interacting with fans often, and posting selcas almost daily, ARMYs were able to feel close to BTS through these interactions. ARMYs would also find other ARMYs and they built a community full of fandom jokes, fanart, fanfiction, and so on. The momentum continued into 2017 with the release of WINGS and its repackage You Never Walk Alone. The MVs for Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Not Today broke Youtube records at the time and they were to go on to another world tour for WINGS.

2017 is also when some major issues within the fandom began being discussed. Stan culture within itself wasn’t new and while it provided positives such as giving people a community online, it was unforgiving to those who were not within the fandom. ARMYs had a history of fanwars against the other biggest fandom, EXO-Ls and both have done terrible things to each other. In late 2017, African-American rapper CupcakKe had tweeted stating that she would like to have sex with member Jungkook. Subsequently, ARMYs harassed her and said everything in regards to her size, to her being black, and slutshaming her. The abuse was so bad that she deleted her Twitter for some time.* RM and African-American rapper Wale collaborated on a track and some ARMYs accused Wale of just using RM/BTS for clout. Around the same time, however, BTS themselves were making progress within the United States. They had been invited to the Billboard Music Awards to accept an award for Top Social Artist and that same year performed DNA at the American Music Awards, both firsts for a South Korean group.

*I’m ending this part here because as I was checking the dates for the CupcakKe incident, I watched a video which talked about when CupcakKe returned to Twitter to call out the double standards of how fans can tweet things like “I want Taehyung to cum on my face for 365 days” without a blink but when she says “I want to jungkook to fuck me,” she gets harassed. I made the crackhead choice of checking the comments and I was honestly disgusted. Here’s some screencaps of what I read:

Now I obviously am trying to remain completely unbiased in this history rundown and will hopefully give my full opinion in the final reflection, but this shit is what disgusts me. CupcakKe is a grown ass woman and uses her social media however she damn well pleases. Literally her whole brand is about a big, beautiful black woman being openly sexual and clearly these commenters and those who upvoted don’t understand that. They do not understand the actual trauma black people have to deal with when they are called dehumanizing things, especially as a public figure on social media. “Oh she’s just looking for attention,” “Ignore this and vote for Mama!” It literally has my blood boiling as I’m typing this. THIS is why black women feel unsafe talking about their experiences with racism, slut shamed, double standards, etc. Because NO MATTER WHAT, people will try to silence them. And yes, I know it’s a small fraction of the fandom but the fact that there’s even HUNDREDS of people who think similarly really is telling. And I looked at the replies too and not many people were actually defending her AT ALL and those who were weren’t getting much love.

Anyway, part three will be coming probably tomorrow. I’m drained.

Part Three

#opinion #kpop #personal #thoughts #canvasbyleo long post

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metalandmagi · 6 years ago

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October Media Madness!

It’s the last day of the month, so you know what that means! What-no not Halloween! It’s time to see how one person wasted their time this month by keeping track of all the media they consumed! And if you thought October would mean a lot of horror movies and books and TV shows...you are going to be very disappointed because I’m a fucking wimp who hates horror.

September media

Movies!

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Scott Pilgrim, aka the most intentionally unlikable protagonist ever, has to defeat the seven evil ex-boy...uh I mean exes of the cool girl he’s dating. Yeah, I’m super late to the Edgar Wright party, but since this movie was finally available on Netflix I figured it was time. And it’s pretty good aside from the fact that Scott is the worst. But at least he owns up to it in the end. It’s crazy over the top ridiculous, has tons of little details that film theorists love to salivate over, and Scott’s roommate Wallace is hilarious. I just wish I could hear what Michael Cera says half the time. Oh well, there’s nothing good or bad I can say about this movie that hasn’t been said before. 8/10

Coraline: Coraline Jones, an imaginative young girl with inattentive parents who has just moved into a new apartment, discovers a secret door that leads to a world where everything is better, and everyone has buttons for eyes. However, under the perfect exterior, things are more sinister than they seem. I got the urge to re-watch this because it’s freaking October, and although I don’t watch horror movies, I felt obligated to watch something at least kind of Halloween-ish. And I stand by my long held opinion that this is the all time creepiest movie marketed for children ever made. Literally everything about this movie is creepy. There’s creepy music, creepy dolls being made and following people around, creepy cats, creepy people with buttons for eyes, creepy ghosts of children, creepy children with their mouths shown shut...the list is endless. And Laika never fails to make beautifully animated stop motion. 9/10

Sierra Burgess is a Loser: The latest film in Netflix’s attempt to dominate the rom-com genre, in which an unpopular high school girl ends up texting a handsome jock while leading him to believe he is texting a gorgeous cheerleader named Veronica who also goes to her school.

Okay, this isn’t a bad movie, so let me start with the good. I appreciate the message of how you need to make yourself stand out to colleges and how high school in general is becoming a toxic competitive environment. There’s a lot of good material about living up to expectations and stereotypes, both from Sierra’s side and her partner in crime Veronica’s. And speaking of Veronica, I was completely blindsided by how much of a great character she was and how much she grew throughout the film. I also liked Sierra’s best friend and the love interest, even if they were a little generic.

That being said...I didn’t like Sierra. When main characters intentionally lead people on for no good reason (and thinking some guy you’ve just met isn’t going to text you back because you’re not “conventionally attractive” is not a good reason) it annoys the hell out of me. Not only does she lie through texting him, but she and Veronica lie to his face multiple times. She also does something really horrible to Veronica because of a misunderstanding that could have been avoided if she taken five seconds to use some common sense. She also thinks she’s above doing a simple homework assignment for her poetry class because she wants to be different. I realize she needs to stand out in order to get recommendations for college, but come on. And finally, when she’s upset about how she looks, she blames her parents because her mom is attractive??? Yes it is frustrating to have these brilliant “conventionally attractive” parents, but they always try to build her up, as opposed to Veronica’s mother who only tears her down. I DID NOT HATE HER CHARACTER, but I think she could have been portrayed better. The other major thing that bothered me is that there is the complete lack of proper conflict resolution. All the problems and hurt feelings just magically go away in order to have a happy ending. Overall, the movie’s just okay. 7/10

Howl’s Moving Castle: Sophie, an ordinary girl who gets cursed by a witch, turns into an old woman and ends up working for a wizard who steals hearts. It feels like Studio Ghibli’s version of beauty and the beast, except Howl is the beauty with a questionable personality, and Sophie is the “beast” who whips him into shape...until the second half of the movie anyway. I’d prefer to watch an entire movie of old woman Sophie interacting with the other characters rather than deal with the war aspect of the plot. Anyway, the animation is awesome, and I appreciate the English voice cast...except for the fact that no one had the good sense to use Crispin Freeman as Howl instead of just having him as Turnip-Head! I know lots of people have talked about the differences between the book and the movie, but I like how the movie portrays that even though being old is physically painful, it can also be emotionally freeing. Either way I think Sophie is a great character with a fun sense of humor! 8/10

First Man: The story of Neil Armstrong and the years leading up to the moon landing...which apparently a lot of people didn’t like? Some people are butthurt about there not being a shot of planting the flag (which if they actually saw the movie they would know the focus of the scenes on the moon were to show Armstrong dealing with wonder and grief, NOT rallying together as Americans). Some people are unhappy that an American hero can be portrayed so negatively, and some people just thought it was boring and dragged a lot…

Okay, yes, the movie is a drama that does not portray Armstrong in a glowing light, and yes there are certain scenes that go on too long. BUT I really liked this movie...and this is coming from someone who doesn’t like Ryan Gosling. It is a family drama that captures how different people respond to grief and stress set in the backdrop of the space race. I also liked learning about this period in history and the controversy around the space program in general. It was beautifully shot and had very creative music choices, which was the main reason I saw it in theaters. I came away from it awed and terrified that we basically sent these people to the moon in freaking tin cans, and that in the sixties men shunned their emotions so much that they wouldn’t hug their children before going to space! Overall, it was good in a solid way, but it did drag a bit. 7.5/10

Mama Mia: Another protagonist named Sophie is getting married and invites the three men who could each possibly be her father to the wedding. But who cares about the plot, the main purpose of the film is to show women having fun with their friends! This movie...isn’t exactly good, but it 100% knows what it wants to be and accomplishes that. It’s a wacky, ridiculous, musical romp that people only watch with their friends when they’re plastered because they want to hear ABBA songs. It’s the very definition of a guilty pleasure movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I will say that it’s harder for me to relate to because I don’t have friends that I act this ridiculous with, and sometimes it gets to be a bit much. Although, I have seen the Broadway musical and remember absolutely loving every minute of it...so maybe it’s just the movie overplaying it. Oh well, it’s just something fun to have on in the background or watch when you need cheering up! It’s a 9/10 for being accomplishing what it wants and a 6/10 as an actual movie.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: In this Marvel filler episode between Infinity War and Captain Marvel, Scott is under house arrest and Hope tries to get her mother out of the quantum realm. Okay, this was a fun movie with some great moments, but it definitely had its issues. For a movie called Ant-Man and the Wasp, the two did not do much fighting together...or at all until the end. It felt more like an origin to their partnership than a team up movie (and I’d rather have a Wasp and Black Widow team up movie...or all the Marvel women team up movie). It also couldn’t figure out who the villain should be. It’s like they realized half way through writing it that Ghost was way too sympathetic and cool and had to come up with a bunch of more forgettable villains. And because this was more of a hot potato rather than a heist, I didn’t think it was as fun as the first movie overall. HOWEVER I still really enjoyed the inventive action and the characters. I will always watch 2 hours of Evangeline Lilly kicking ass, and Paul Rudd being himself. And I am convinced that Marvel is using The Adventure Zone route of needing competent women to solve everyone’s problems. But the heart of the movie is really family. Hank and Hope, Scott and his daughter, and even Ghost all had very compelling stories that drew me in every time. And that post credits scene...I knew it was coming, but come on! Marvel is the only current studio who can basically do a horror movie “The End…?” in their credits now. 7.5/10

The Chronicles of Narnia-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Disney version of the classic C.S. Lewis book; come on we all know the story. Okay, I watched this for the first time in several years because I also read the book this month. And holy cow, when you see what material the movie had to work with, this is a freaking masterpiece. It takes a very simple children’s book and turns it into an epic fantasy! The score, the little details, and the setting are all perfect. All the characters are so real and fleshed out AND ACCURATELY PORTRAYED FOR THEIR AGES! All four siblings are struggling with something, and the actors do a great job considering they were actual children while making this! I am so angry that Disney let this property’s potential slip through their fingers because I truly believe that if they kept making movies like this, it could have been their Harry Potter by now. Prince Caspian was also excellent, though I don’t remember much of Dawn Treader, but I think if they put the money and effort into continuing this franchise it could have been great.

One thing I don’t appreciate about the movie is how they reduce Edmund’s mental journey. I have always especially loved Edmund as a character, and something the movie fails to mention is the fact that APPARENTLY in the book the Turkish Delight is enchanted to make whoever eats it think only of eating more and more until THEY EAT SO MUCH THAT THEY DIE?! He’s not just a greedy kid. And there’s a lot more to his time with the Witch that makes his actions easier to understand. Anyway it definitely goes down as one of the best book to movie adaptations I’ve ever seen, and it is on my very short list of movies that are better than the books. 10/10

Books!

The Chronicles of Narnia- The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: It’s the first Narnia book; we all know the plot. I am one of the many people who had this series read to them as a kid, but it’s been like...eleven years since I actually read these books for myself. Even then I only got to The Horse and His Boy before stopping because it was boring as hell. I’ve been wanting to re-read the series all year, and with only the Disney movies in recent memory, imagine my surprise when I found out that Lewis’s writing style is absolutely bananas! I think he’s acting as some omniscient narrator, but his style is so stream of consciousness it’s hilarious! He constantly addresses the audience in these 2007 fanfiction author-esque asides. The Pevensies are the most posh, old-timey sounding British kids ever, and it’s amazing to visualize children that actually speak like this. Everything happens so quickly because it is 100% meant to be a children’s story, not this epic adventure we all associate with the movies. So...if you’ve never read it before definitely check it out just to discover how utterly wild everything is. My only real complaint is that it’s kinda sexist, and no one except for Edmund gets a character arc. Even though Susan gets a bow and Lucy gets a dagger, they’re treated like they shouldn’t be fighting because they’re girls and not...oh I don’t know...because they’re children! 7/10

The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzie Lee: The second installment of...idk...the “Guide” series? I talked about the first book, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue in my May Media Madness, and this book is just as good! This series takes place in the 1700s, and while the first book follows arrogant bisexual disaster Monty, his (boy)friend Percy, and his sister Felicity through a romp across Europe, this book follows Felicity and her friends on a...let’s just say “scientific expedition” involving pirates. The less you know about the plot going in the better. And did I mention her friends include a badass Muslim pirate princess and an Elle Woods-esque dog loving naturalist? And also did I mention Felicity is CANONICALLY revealed as ARO/ACE?! It’s strongly hinted at in the first book, and in this book Mackenzi Lee basically shoves any doubt about it out the window. It’s fun, hilarious, and also heartbreaking at the same because of all the challenges each character faces because they’re ambitious women in this time period. Sometimes it feels a little heavy handed in its feminist messages, but you can’t deny it’s not accurate. I’m really only saying that because I am a woman, and the struggles are nothing I haven’t seen or read before. Anyway, this is a fantastic series that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a fun read, and it gets bonus points for including Monty and Percy being disgustingly in love together! 1000/10

Dear Evan Hansen the Novel by Val Emmich (and also Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul):

Buckle up.

I really love the Dear Evan Hansen musical (which I talked about in my August Media Madness.) The novel is almost a word for word adaptation of the musical, in which Evan, a teenager with anxiety, writes a letter to himself that is stolen by a boy who commits suicide, leading everyone to believe Evan and the boy, Connor, were best friends because they assume Connor wrote the letter to Evan. There is a lot I could say about this adaptation, but the number one thing is: I really don’t know if people who haven’t seen the musical or heard the soundtrack will like it as much. The strength of Dear Evan Hansen is mainly in its performances and its music, and while they tried to work the music in as best they could, I enjoyed the story more because I can link it back to the actors’ performances. Yes, the story is interesting and the message is important, but I honestly don’t know how much people going in blind will like the writing and how the characters are portrayed. Overall, it seemed like a well written fanfic- in a good way, not a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child way. That being said, I did really enjoy a lot of things about this book. They expanded on a lot about Evan’s relationship with his absent father and the aftermath of the big lie. They also expanded on a lot about Connor…

I honestly don’t know how I feel about Ghost Connor. Yes, I’m glad Connor shows up as a ghost in the book. What he doesn’t do is ACTUALLY INTERACT WITH EVAN...LIKE AT ALL! The best parts of the show are when Connor, as a figment of Evan’s imagination acts as a comedic buffer and his “moral center.” However, here ghost Connor exists to give snippets of Connor’s life. He barely comments on what Evan is doing at all even though he sees everything. All of Connor’s sections made me feel like the author was going through the DEH tag on AO3 and picking things to throw in. I liked his sections, but the writers really missed the more entertaining story of having Connor actually commenting about the shit Evan is doing.

So overall, I’d say watch the musical if you can find a bootleg, or at least listen to the soundtrack and then read the book. It was very enjoyable, although I think the ending dragged a bit in its quest to give more closure than the musical. 8.5/10

Bonus Manga

Shimanami Tasogare: Tasuku Kaname, a closeted boy starting his first year of high school meets a mysterious woman named Anonymous who helps him finds solace in a lounge run by other members of the LGBT+ community. This is the kind of manga that really hits and misses for me. It does a great job at portraying the struggles of a community with different sexualities and gender identities, and it has some really great characters and beautiful moments that I really think would be even better animated. But there are some character arcs that I feel are really...incomplete. It feels like the author was rushed into finishing the manga and did the best they could, but certain characters come off as major hypocrites or suddenly act like their arcs never happened. I also appreciate having an asexual character play such a big role, but the chapter where she talks about her identity as a person is just kind of...bizarre. Not to mention I barely understood what was happening for the first couple chapters because everything Anonymous says is so vague. There’s a lot I could say about this manga, but really I think it’s something everyone should read for themselves (and you’ll definitely need your tissue boxes). 8/10

TV Shows!

Arrested Development: “The story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.” Aka Ron Howard narrates the shenanigans of the worst people you’ll ever see. Yes, I finally got around to watching this, and yes the first three seasons are hilarious. It’s got the same beats as a soap opera (twins, adoption, losing limbs in seal attacks), but in a sitcom format it’s genius. The fourth and fifth (or at least what there is of the fifth) are just nothing special in my opinion. I thought the fourth season was structured terribly, and once the family starts getting into politics the show tries to be a form of satire that just doesn’t work for it. Plus I live with a family of Trump supporters; so it’s not as funny when you have to live with the racist people the show is making fun of who take all the “wall” stuff seriously. 8/10

Documental: A Japanese...social experiment/documentary/game show type thing on Amazon Prime wherein 10 comedians all get locked in a room together and attempt to make each other laugh without laughing themselves. The twist is each of them contribute 1 million yen to play, and the winner gets the pot of 10 million yen. In the first season, the show is more interesting as a social experiment than it is funny. You’ll like it if you like Japanese comedy. But the thing about Japanese comedy is...well, just picture an episode of Osomatsu-san, with all the disgusting and bizarre shit they do, and then picture real people. Though I do love seeing the faces everyone makes when they’re trying not to laugh! HOWEVER, the second season is so much better. I was laughing so much every episode that it hardly felt like the same show. They also changed the format a little so there would definitely be a winner at the end of the time. There’s still gross weird shit, but it’s a much better season. I give season 1 a 6/10 and season 2 an 8.5/10

Over the Garden Wall: In case you’ve been skipping the entire season of autumn since 2014, OTGW is a 10 episode miniseries that aired on Cartoon Network detailing the journey of two brothers Wirt and Greg who are lost in a mysterious wood called “The Unknown.” But really the whole thing is like a stuck in Purgatory story. It’s one of those shows that goes from adorable and funny to dark as fuck real quick. I think it’s impossible to go through the fall season without watching this at least once. This is another one of those things where there’s nothing I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. The atmosphere is perfect for Halloween, the characters are great (Elijah Wood voices Wirt, and it’s the best), and there are so many hidden clues that after it aired we all demanded a Gravity Falls crossover…

I could go on. This show is perfect except for the unnecessarily silly school teacher episode...and fact that it goes by too fast...and also the fact that now I know Elijah Wood has an adorable singing voice, and I’m salty that he didn’t really sing in Lord of the Rings. This is the atmospheric “watch it once a year” type of show that we desperately need more of...it doesn’t have to be the same characters or even have the same messages, but dang it Cartoon Network you can’t just give us this masterpiece and walk away!!! 10/10

Yuri On Ice: Yes, the figure skating anime. This is Tumblr so I doubt I need to post the summary of the show, but I do talk about it in my Hufflepuff Anime recommendations post. Since I couldn’t watch the Yuri On Ice marathon (which was coincidentally held on my birthday!) I decided to have my own dang marathon. There’s just so much to love about this anime: the music, the animation, the characters, the diversity, the humor, and the accuracy to the sport. But I think the main reason I love this show so much is because, as someone who watches a lot of sports anime, I really appreciate this show doing something different and focusing on ADULTS WHO ACTUALLY RELY ON THE SPORT AS A CAREER and using drama that way instead of the main source of angst being “we have to win the match for our senpai!” This is one of those shows you can watch a million times and still find new things to love! 10/10

Podcasts!

I don’t know why I made a separate section for this, since I only listened to one.

Hey Riddle Riddle: A podcast with three hosts that go talk about riddles and puzzles (aka puzzies and riddies) and role play various ridiculous answers to them. I started listening to it because Justin McElroy was on an episode, and it was pretty funny. The podcast is interesting and entertaining, except for the fact that sometimes their role playing and improve can go on for too long, and they don’t know when to let a joke die. Also one of the co-hosts is really annoying, but the other two make up for it. 8/10

Honorable Mentions

Camp Camp released a Halloween episode called Arrival of the Torso Takers and I watched it...probably four times...I don’t have a problem.

Some shows I watch on actual television came back this fall! Bob’s Burgers, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Fresh Off the Boat, Speechless, Modern Family (yes I still watch that), and The Good Place!

I don’t know if this was a leak or what, but there’s a new My Little Pony christmas Hearthswarming special, and guys...I thought it was pretty great. Say what you want about this show, but it knows how to do holiday episodes. Anyone who has been a fan for a long time or even fans who have fallen off the show will probably love it. It’s very sweet and never went in the direction I thought it would.

And last but not least, shout out to all the anime coming out this fall...there’s just...so much to watch...please help...

#media madness #long post #hey riddle riddle #yuri on ice #otgw #documental #arrested development #shimanami tasogare #dear evan hansen #the ladies guide to petticoats and piracy #the chronicles of narnia #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #ant man and the wasp #first man #mama mia #sierra burgess is a loser #scott pilgrim vs the world #howls moving castle #coraline

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lilacskyent-blog · 6 years ago

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Breakfast with Alex Wex

People have a million opinions and false facts about the digital world we live in today, and even more about social media. For a lot of people, they use platforms like Instagram and Twitter to follow celebrities, and some use it to bully celebrities. Most forget that that connection can also be used for good. We live in a world of amazing accessibility and, when used properly, could foster a wonderful connection between people. A prime example of this is the Will Smith Jump event that took the internet by storm, that all started with a video message. It’s incredible what can happen when you reach out to people. That was the main thought in my mind before sitting down with Alex Wex yesterday. Alex Wex is an amazing Twitch streamer, and until recently, was a producer for FBE and REACT on Youtube. As of this interview, Alex Wex has fostered a wonderful community through Twitch and Discord known as the Jank Squad, and recently broke his view count record at 210 viewers for his birthday stream, also hitting close to 600 subscribers. Given that I was in Atlanta and he was in LA we couldn’t actually meet for breakfast like I usually do so we had an amazing video chat instead.

So for starters, I just want to thank you for sitting down with me. I’ve been following your work since I first saw you on FBE and I think you’re an awesome dude so thanks. I wanna start at the very beginning because I’m really interested in your story. So, I know you went to high school in Atlanta, GA. What can you tell me about that?

I was actually born in Manhattan, my family moved to Atlanta around pre-K and I lived there up until I graduated from Riverwood High School. All my friends wanted to go to UGA or Georgia Tech but I was really interested in traveling and branching out, so I went to Ohio for college, and now I live in L.A. I made some truly amazing friends in Atlanta, and having this kind of east coast, south culture mixture has made life pretty interesting.

When did you know you wanted to work in entertainment, and what led to you becoming a producer?

When I was a kid, my family liked to record family videos, and I always wanted to see the recording. I had the eye for production pretty early. Once I started high school I got involved in performing, did Grease, The Wiz, and a few other school plays that got me interested in the performance aspect as well. In college, I majored in video production with a minor in film and sociology so I gained real knowledge of the art that happens behind the camera.

How does one go from school in Atlanta to working at FBE?

As I mentioned before I went to college at Ohio University, what got me was their video production department. I actually still work with the head of the department and speak to the alumni when they come here, advising them on some dos and don'ts. As a graduation gift, my Dad gave me an all expense paid trip to anywhere I wanted to go in the U.S for a few days and I chose L.A. So I was here, hanging out with my current roommate Johnny and we just decided to come out here permanently and live the dream. So I packed up my car and drove from Atlanta to LA and started looking for internships while working at Chipotle.I first joined FBE as an intern, then got hired as a PA and eventually was a writer for some of their scripted shows, and I worked my way up until I was offered the producer position. I loved producing because that involved every aspect of working behind the camera, from writing to filming to editing and seeing the baby from birth to fully grown. Being in front of the camera came back when FBE launched the community team and started streaming on Twitch.

Watching Alex grow on YouTube, putting reactors in hilarious challenges, eat crazy concoctions and brave some insane hot sauces that would make Sean Evans proud, his personality radiates through the screen. His passion for both sides of the camera is clear in the quality of every video he makes. However, taking part in one of his Twitch streams gives you an even more full experience. It’s like the difference between a teaser trailer and a full film.

Freddy or Jason?

Freddy is my favorite in Dead By Daylight but I love Jason, in fact, Friday the 13th was the first game I ever streamed. I’d have to say, Jason.

So, we were in high school in the baby years of YouTube, I mostly used it for music videos and anime, I think back then I only followed Phil Defranco and Timothy Delaghetto consistently. Back then, did you ever look at YouTube and think “this is going to revolutionize the world and turn traditional media on its head?”

Yeah, it’s changed everything. Almost every network has a YouTube channel now. Late night shows and things like SNL upload segments that get massive amounts of views. YouTube is still growing, testing out its premium service and channel enrollment and things like that, but it’s exciting to see where it’s going to end up.

It’s even crazier when you think about how much Twitch has already changed the game.

Definitely, I mean we’ve seen what happens when some of the top YouTube creators come over to Twitch and realize that it’s completely different from what they’re used to. It’s more like an improv radio show, you have to be on for two or three hours and avoid dead air, rather than being able to edit something together. It’s hard to be constantly entertaining when you're used to delivering a finished edit rather than a live audience. For example, Logan Paul had over 100,000 people in his first stream but after that, the numbers dropped just cause that’s not his world. Live Streaming is a constant conversation. It’s the opposite of YouTube.

I remember seeing YouTubers flood to Twitch after the adpocalypse and feeling like it made no sense. A lot of vloggers and creators who never expressed any interest in video games were all suddenly obsessed with Fortnite. However, when people like Alex Wex came to Twitch they brought genuine love of gaming, skill, and a great sense of community.

What insight can you give into the world of a producer? Especially on the internet, how to figure out what videos are gonna get views or go viral?

It’s a case by case basis depending on what you make. With Challenge Chalice, we made it during the high point of internet challenges and we had consistent challenges to make content with constantly, but this past year challenges have kinda quieted down so that got more difficult. We revisited and revised a lot of earlier challenges to make them more interesting, and that has to do with being present during every step of the process. You can’t slack off on anything, from script to editing. Being organized is key, and definitely take on the ideas and criticisms of the people working with you. Be flexible and open-minded. It’s not about balance, it’s about harmony.

3 Breakfast must haves?

Bacon

Grits

Belgian Waffles are incredible

Hack-n-slash? RPG? Or FPS? And why?

That’s complicated. Overwatch is one of my favorite games but it doesn’t play exactly like an FPS. For me, hack-n-slash for games like Dead Cells, Rogue Lights, I love games with massive replay value. I’m playing Diablo 3 on switch right now and I love it.

What games are best for streaming? Does the game you play matter?

A little, but it shouldn’t be everything. You want your audience to gravitate towards your personality. Never play something you don’t enjoy playing. I love Overwatch and it’s not one of the current hot stream games but I love playing it. Story games are complicated. If people miss parts of story mode games they tune it out cause they won’t know what’s going on. More than anything put your own spin on what you’re doing. For example, when I do Dead By Daylight I do stream vs chat where my chat helps the survivors escape if I’m playing the killer. In fact, chatting streams are starting to really blow up. It’s more about the person playing than the game they play.

What game has you hype for 2019?

That’s tough, but probably Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m excited for Smash Bros for my last game of 2018 too.

What led you to Twitch?

I’d seen some of it, but Tom had been doing it for 6 months and kept suggesting it until one day I finally did. I had a decent setup with an ultra-wide monitor and Tom’s old video capture device and I started streaming Dead by Daylight. We actually came into the name Jank Squad because of how janky the streams were in the beginning.

What led you to leave FBE and what are you working on now?

I wanted to focus more on my Twitch, and it was exhausting streaming at work on the days when I’m also streaming at home. I wanted to give my audience the most energy I could and be more involved with them as a community. I’m creating new ways to interact with my audience, more active in my Discord, and after working there for 5 years I felt stuck. There wasn’t any new learning experience and things felt a little sour and monotonous with the new direction things were going in. I’m actually getting a new camera and a green screen to upgrade the stream quality. I’d love to make partner with Twitch.

What’s the dream?

I take things to step by step. I’m definitely in a transition right now. I’m looking for another good full-time job at the moment. I’d love to be a full-time streamer but I’d also love to produce my own stuff and then stream after work. Streaming is probably one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done. Funny enough, that’s part of what got me into it cause Tom knew my leisure activity was video games, and streaming just takes that to another level. It definitely takes work, but the community you foster on this platform is unlike any other with the rating system and how everything is set up.

Alright so the zombie apocalypse is upon us and you can have 1 mortal character, one god tier video game character, and one Reactor in your survival squad, who you got?

Kratos from God of War 2 causes his chain blades would tear through everything, my regular would be Leon from Resident Evil 4 cause his aim is amazing and he’s used to zombies, and my Reactor would be Chelsea cause she knows so much about The Walking Dead. That’s my squad.

East Coast or West Coast

East, it’s where I was born and bred.

Top 10 songs or artists on your playlist right now?

Meek Mill- Intro with the amazing Phil Collins sample

Tyler the Creator’s Grinch is great for the holidays

The Cool-Lupe Fiasco

Chance The Rapper’s new songs

Paramore- Ain’t It Fun

You come from the same city I did with only a two year age difference, and you’re the first brown face I saw in relation to FBE and now you’re killing it on Twitch. Do you know how dope you are?

I appreciate that. I like to think I’m dope in some ways but I also do my best to keep it real, keep myself humble, and not letting the numbers get to my head. I hope everyone thinks they’re fucking awesome, cause they are. I have my good and bad days but I like to look at what has been built and keep grinding. Everyone is on a different time stream. I don’t want to rush things, I’m on my own path, and right now I just wanna build this community.

I for one, am excited to see what comes next from Alex Wex, including his stream later this week. You can find him @ItsMrWex

-Strawberry Smirk of Lilac Sky Entertainment

#twitch #fbe #stream #gaming #producer #lilacsky #alex wex #digital #media #breakfast

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wdwimagine · 7 years ago

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broadway - ZH.

pairings: reader x zach herron

warnings? nah.

summary: you and zach were old friends but unfortunately drifted about, but that was until you bumped into each other in New York City.

requested? no.

Being on Broadway was always my dream. I never thought I would see the day where at the age of 16 I was a member of the Les Miserables company, just singing and dancing in the back. I never thought I would see the day where I done exactly the same thing but for Aladdin. I never thought I would see the day where I got scouted by a talent agent. I never thought I would see the day where two months away from my nineteenth birthday I got cast to play Glinda the Good Witch, from Wicked, on Broadway.

I originally lived in Dallas, Texas. But moved to New York City with my family so that I could attend more auditions and actually do what I dreamt about ever since I could remember. That meant that I had to leave behind my friends and my family, and due to my busy schedule I ended up losing contact with majority of these friends. I did however still have them on social media, so I knew what they were getting up too every single day.

———

“Are you ready?” My friend Randy asked me when we were backstage at the show. “Ten minutes till stage time. Third show, are you ready?”

I sighed, looking at myself in the mirror. Tonight was only my third show playing Glinda and so far I had heard no negative comments about my performance. But that doesn’t mean that I still wasn’t nervous.

“I’m ready.” I replied, standing up, walking towards backstage so I could get rigged up to go into my bubble. I made sure to grab my wand, make sure my curls looked perfect, my crown was placed on properly, my dress looked amazing and that I looked perfect to play the Good Witch.

I walked over to the rigging station, standing on my bubble. I was hooked up to it and lifted into the air, getting ready to fly across the stage during the song. I closed my eyes and waited, something I done all the time to calm me down.

‘No One Mourns the Wicked’ began to play and I opened my eyes. My palms were sweaty, my chest felt heavy but over all my heart was beating fast out of adrenaline. This was my time to shine and to prove that at only nineteen years old, I can be a main character on Broadway.

———

I stared in awe at my fellow cast mate, watching as she held her notes in ‘Defying Gravity’. The first act was nearly done and so far the audience had seemed to have loved it. The safety curtain lowered and I ran off stage to get ready for the beginning of the second act, goosebumps covering my body when I heard the audience going wild. Hearing people love what I do was one of the best things to happen to me. It was one of the reasons why I loved performing.

I ran to my dressing out of breath, getting ready to change my outfit. I took a huge gulp of water and fanned myself down.

“You did amazing!” My sister said coming into my dressing room, which was currently a bit chaotic.

“Thank you.” I smiled at her, still trying to catch my breath.

“I also found out that apparently there are famous people tonight. Their manager got invited, and he brought them and they want to meet the cast.”

“Who are they?”

“I have no idea. I can’t see from my seat. Are you gonna meet them?” She asked.

“Obviously.” I laughed.

“Okay. I’ll go tell someone to let them know. Good luck, (y/n).”

She left the room and I sighed, getting ready to go back on stage and stun the crowd. I’m ready to shine.

———

The show finally finished and I was over the moon. I was backstage in my dressing room, taking a sip of water when I was called to go and meet these ‘famous’ people. I grabbed a cardigan to throw on over my costume, not having to have time to change out of my final dress. Even though I was crying on the inside because I’d been wearing it for a while and it was heavier than me for sure.

I walked towards the stage and saw a group of boys standing there talking to some crew and admiring the sets.

“And here’s one of our stars.” Aaron, one of the set directors said pointing towards me. I walked over cautiously but stopped in my tracks when I saw who these famous people were.

“Zach?” I asked, staring at the brown haired boy. This is not a coincidence.

“Hey (y/n).” He smiled at me. I smiled back and walked towards him, throwing my arms around him. He hugged me in return, holding me tightly. After all these years he still wore the same cologne.

“You two know each other?” Aaron asked confused. I let go of Zach and turned around.

“We used to be best friends, we lived across the street from one another.” I explained. “But I moved to New York to be on broadway and he moved to LA to become a singer. Which clearly worked.”

“This is my band Why -“ Zach started but I interrupted him.

“Why Don’t We.” I finished for him, giving all the boys hugs as a welcoming gesture. “Just because we stopped talking doesn’t mean that I stopped following you. I’ve been a fan since day one. I love your songs and I’m really proud of all your successes.”

“Thank you.” Corbyn smiled at me.

“Well, what are you doing here?” I asked turning to face Zach. Having not seen him for over three years meant that he had definitely changed. His style got better, he grew taller, he matured and he looked hotter.

“Well, my manager David, got invited to come and watch Wicked with one of his friends, but when I found out you were playing Glinda, I had to come and watch you. I booked tickets, told everyone about you and well, here we are.”

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked skeptically.

“It was amazing.” Jonah said.

“Brilliant.” Corbyn said.

“Fantastic.” Jack said.

“Magical.” Daniel said.

“It was like I was watching you perform little homemade musicals in my backyard, but this time you were on stage.” Zach smiled at me. I couldn’t help but give him another hug. It’s like we never stopped talking.

“He cried.” Daniel said making me laugh.

“A lot.” Jack continued.

“I was proud!” Zach argued making me laugh.

———

It was the next night and I was in the VIP section of the crowd at a Why Don’t We concert. Thankfully, today was my day off and when the boys invited me to see them perform, I couldn’t refuse the offer.

It was crazy to me how it felt like Zach and I had never stopped talking but in reality we had missed out huge chunks of each other’s lives.

Throughout the concert, I could see Zach glancing non-stop in my direction. He even laughed when he saw that I was crying, because just like him I was so proud. He’s so incredibly successful now that it’s weird for me too see him on stage and not just in his house back in Dallas.

———

“So tonight was crazy.” I smiled at Zach from the other side of the table. It was about midnight and the two of us were alone, sitting in a random five guys that was still open.

“It’s always crazy.” He replied taking a bite of his burger.

“Life is crazy now a days.” I said sipping my drink. “It’s like the past three years of my life has been put into fast forward and now I can’t slow down.”

“Same. I mean touring the country, going to Europe, selling out shows, performing at MSG. Life has been so crazy but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“Don’t you think it’s crazy how we haven’t spoken for so long, but yet we are here, reconnecting randomly and it feels like nothings changed but in fact everything’s changed.” I said.

“Maybe it was fate.” He smirked at me with that award winning smile of his. “Maybe there’s a reason this happened.”

“It definitely is fate.”

“We need to keep in contact, (y/n). I need you in my life again.” He said making me smile. Those words were so special to me.

“I need you in my life too, Zach. I wanna live the fast paced life with you.”

“Deal.”

Maybe this is a coincidence and its fate telling us something.

a/n: short, sweet and a cute friendship. idk how you lot feel about it but i like it.

#zach herron #zach herron imagines #zach herron imagine #why dont we #why dont we imagine #why don’t we #why don’t we imagines

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chauhanparkash1998universe · 4 years ago

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Technology Is A Great Tool But Don't Let That Be Your Foundation

Growing up as child in the mid 1990′s when Hip-Hop was as yet in its baby stage, there was one female demonstration that ruled: Salt N Pepa. The gathering which remembered three of the hottest ladies for earth gave a portion of my fondest beloved recollections.

I mean who could deny their hits and it was continually something exceptional about the woman behind the turntables: DJ Spinderella. I recollect me and my companions would contend about who was the hottest individual from the gathering, and somebody would consistently say "Salt N Pepa are cool, however Spinderella is the baddest."

Recently I got an opportunity to meet the incredible DJ Spinderella and we examined everything from music tech, the artistic expression of Djing and her part in the battle against Diabetes.

1. How have the progressions in the innovation influenced the DJ culture?

It's made it much simpler and worked on it. It's significantly less work in contrast with the days when we use to heft around cartons of records and rhythm tally ourselves. It's programmed now.

2. How would you feel that disentanglement has influenced the innovativeness of the artistic expression?

You actually can use inventiveness, obviously somehow or another it has made a desensitizing impact. You don't need to practice the pieces of the cerebrum that you use to need to. However, there are some Dj's that utilize the innovation and become inventive.

3. Do you actually commit time to tuning in to new music?

Gracious Yeah! That is the great part. The old fashioned method of doing it was: you would purchase the record, read the credits and play the records. I'm what you would call a "Turntablist," so I would invest a great deal of energy going to the record store and looking for music.

These days, you can buy music on the web, yet you don't get the very components or emotions that we use to. It was such a lot of fun in those days, simply an exemplary inclination.

4. How would you discover the vast majority of the new music you tune in to this moment?

I'll buy music on the web. Additionally, I love going to antique shops that have old records. One man's rubbish is another man's fortune. I locate that exceptionally fulfilling. Also, you can hit each road by fusing the new school method of getting things done with the old fashioned way.

5. Did it require some investment for you to acquire regard from your male DJ partners?

Obviously it did, haha. It was difficult to get regard, on the grounds that the vast majority took a gander at is as an oddity of a female doing a man's work. I needed to refute that, and it was difficult in light of the fact that when you saw me with Salt N Pepa back in the days I was discovering some new information.

I was gaining some new useful knowledge and I was fundamentally learning it before the crowd. In this way, It took some time for it to get settled to me. Individuals would consistently say "I need to fight you" or "She's adorable yet she can't DJ." (Laughs)

6. Is Twitter positive or negative for Hip-Hop?

Twitter is an Excellent instrument! We didn't have Twitter, Facebook or any type of web-based media in those days. It was fundamentally verbal, television and radio.

Twitter is simply one more road to advance, stay refreshed on whats going on, and now you don't need to trust that the news will convey things in the incorrect manner. It's a superb apparatus, it simply relies upon how individuals use it.

7. After such countless years in the game, what gets you energized?

Umm, I'm most likely more enthusiastic about the fine art of Djing than any time in recent memory. Well likely not ever in light of the fact that you can't actually coordinate that sensation of what was occurring when Hip-Hop initially began.

Be that as it may, I have made this world for myself where I appreciate things more in spite of the entirety of life's impediments since it's a blessing to have the option to in any case display my ability and motivate individuals.

What motivates me more than anything else is to see more youthful dj's with a genuine enthusiasm for the work of art and I love to see the manner in which it has extended to a worldwide fine art. I simply love to see the more current DJ's contemplating the set of experiences, coming to back and as yet utilizing turntables.

8. For what reason did your public broadcast "The Backspin" end?

It's never finished it's simply been in a break for some time. Frankly, I'm getting a great deal of solicitation for it to return and I have been truly considering the big picture. I have another accomplice, Mo Dave, who assisted me with delivering it. It was a great deal of reasons why it delayed down. You know, radio was experiencing a few changes thus when the market started to debilitate it took more work for me to assemble a show.

I began working from on the web and when I moved from LA things kinda changed. We have a chronicle and stock of shows for a very long time so when everything looks good we will put it out. That resembled a foundation or period in time that individuals will need to catch. So when everything looks good I will most likely repeat them and put them out once more.

9. What is your number one Salt N Pepa melody?

God, Lol. I have a couple. I love the primary collection, despite the fact that I wasn't a piece of the gathering at that point. I love the subsequent collection too. Thus, I would say a great deal of my main tunes are on those two. Exemplary records like "I'll Take Your Man," "My Mic Sounds Nice," and one of my top choices is "I Desire."

In the event that you move along and as we grew up we began to tidy the tune up and make it all the more acoustically satisfying and we had tunes like "Whatta A Man," and "Shoop." The last collection which never took off like we needed it to was designated "Pristine" - that was an incredible collection too. It's truly difficult to name only one.

11. Since become a representative for the American Diabetes Association has your wellbeing/way of life changed?

It's been nearly year since I subscribed to the reason and assisting with fund-raising and attention to the reason. For me it's simply focusing on my wellbeing and what I eat. At the point when we get more seasoned we don't have it like we use to. (Snickers) So we certainly need to make that way of life that gives us the wellbeing and the energy that permits you to be ready and expands your life expectancy. I'm squeezing more, working out additional, however I'm absolutely not great.

My job is to help give mindfulness and overcome any barrier between the individuals who think about the ADA and those that don't have the foggiest idea. A many individuals don't understand that there is data and help such is reality saving.

12. What counsel would you provide for a youthful Dj?

The best exhortation is to know where you came from. Innovation is extraordinary instrument however don't leave that alone your establishment. Likewise, recall that Hip-Hop began with the DJ. It adjusts you and its likewise enjoyable to fuse the outdated method of Djing with the new school way. Additionally consolidate yourself as a brand, since you're not simply playing music - you are a business.

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buzzkillmag · 5 years ago

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2019 WRAPPED: a few contributors’ (and my) records of the year

in order of release, here are some of our contributors’ albums of the year, alongside my extremely extensive list of my favorite LPs released in the past 365 days.

1. january 18, heard it in a past life by maggie rogers

this album, without a doubt, shaped this entire year for me, but whenever i’m asked to explain how, or why, i get choked up. at the time of its release, i was in such a strange place mentally that i couldn’t listen to “light on” - one of the most popular songs on the album - without sobbing uncontrollably, even if that meant excusing myself to cry in the restroom when it came on at work. i am so grateful to have had hiiapl to grow with this year. maggie rogers is one of the most influential artists in the world right now, and i know this album is a lot of people’s record of the year. recommendations: light on, burning, on + off, the knife

2. january 25, amo by bring me the horizon

the return of british metalcore band bring me the horizon was such a heavily anticipated one, given the fact that their last LP release was in 2015, but i don’t think anyone could have expected the record they were going to release, or how different it would be from anything they’d ever made. bring me the horizon made a really impressive leap into something of an unknown; there has been, both unfortunately and understandably, some backlash regarding exactly what genres the band had decided to experiment with and whether they’d lost their roots in deathcore. but they’ve promised that despite this jump, they’ll still be as rowdy as ever in their live shows. amo is one of my favorite records of the year because of its genre-bending, and because of its desperation and emotion. it’s turned bring me the horizon from a band i never really cared for into one i now seek out when i’m thinking of what to listen to on drives. recommendations: mantra, in the dark, sugar honey ice + tea, mother tongue

3. february 1, midnight by set it off

my favorite record of 2019 is midnight by set it off. not only did the band completely reinvent their aesthetic, they also showcase a more mature and cohesive sound. cody (the lead singer) is a classically trained clarinetist and I think his knowledge of music really shows on this record. each song has little surprises here and there, and shows the work of musicians who understand rhythm and texture. there’s a little something for everyone, from the angsty undertones of “killer in the mirror” and “dancing with the devil,” to the raw, beautiful emotion of the ballad “unopened windows.” hands down best record of 2019! -gabriela (twitter || instagram)

4. march 1, wasteland, baby! by hozier

I wish I could do my dissertation on the various ways Wasteland, Baby! is a masterpiece but unfortunately I'm in a museum studies program and I don't think my professors would accept that proposal. Hozier was somehow able to fit every emotion a human being is capable of feeling in a mere 57 minutes (and 21 seconds of course) and, by the end, has made the listener feel warm and hopeful despite a large theme being, y'know, the literal ending of everything. Don't even get me started on his referencing and imagery we could be here FOREVER talking about Shrike alone! Even Spotify was like "Hey this is literally all you listened to this year, you good?". Hozier and Wasteland, Baby! have been through one of the toughest years of my life with me - including the transition into a new country - and they will forever have a place in my heart. -alissa (instagram)

5. march 22, mystic truth by bad suns

up until this year - and this release - bad suns were always a background artist in my life. i’ve been listening to them since they first released “cardiac arrest” and it was a single of the week on itunes, but only casually. this was, however, the year i saw them live, on their mystic truth tour in late spring. recommendations: away we go, the world and i, love by mistake

6. march 29, you are ok by the maine

the maine are the most dramatic band in the world, and i love them to death for it. after staging a funeral for their 2017 release, lovely little lonely, in october 2018 to signify their departure from social media, they spent nearly six months in silence to write and record before releasing their seventh record, you are ok, this past march. this record makes me more - for lack of a better word - emo than any of their previous work, in spite and as a consequence of its blatant deviation from the loneliness of anything they’ve released pretty much since black & white. you are ok is, from its very first breath, evolved. recommendations: slip the noose, my best habit, tears won’t cry (shinju), heaven we’re already here

7. march 29, when we all fall asleep, where do we go? by billie eilish

the debut full-length from music prodigy billie eilish was long-awaited by dedicated fans and the general public alike, and when it finally dropped in march of this year, not a single person on this planet was disappointed (probably a hyperbole and consequently bad journalism, but who cares, i never claimed to tell the whole entire truth). when we all fall asleep is a genre-defying masterpiece; the tracks don’t feel as if they should be played on the radio, but because of eilish’s more mainstream previous releases, she’d essentially earned a permanent slot in most popular stations’ rotations. i also had the privilege of watching her play to one of the biggest crowds that reading festival’s main stage had ever seen, and she blew myself (and everyone else there) away. recommendations: xanny, all the good girls go to hell, when the party’s over, my strange addiction, bury a friend

9. april 26, the balance by catfish and the bottlemen

despite criticisms that they’ve been making the same album for five years, i genuinely believe that with every new release, catfish and the bottlemen produce more emotionally coherent and intelligent music. i finally got to see them this year, on their tour supporting the balance, too, after years of casual listening. the balance turned me into a ravenous catfish fan; i spent two months after the show devouring all of the content surrounding them i could find, listening to all three of their albums on repeat, and crying endlessly over how beautiful van mccann is. this album absolutely defined the back half of my 2019, and i’m always shocked to learn that there are people who don’t love it as fiercely as i do. i have such an overflowing fountain of feelings about this album that i’m still not entirely sure how to write about, but all i have to say is that, if you haven’t yet, please please please give this album a spin. recommendations: fluctuate, conversation, intermission, overlap

10. may 24, future dust by the amazons

the amazons are the best band i discovered this year, hands down. according to my spotify year in review, i listened to over 9 hours of their music since seeing them at reading in august (not including all the times i spun this record on vinyl in that time as well). future dust is a masterpiece; there is not one bad track; every time i listen to it, it gets better. they’ve got rock and roll on lock. no one else has come close since maybe the arctic monkeys, but the amazons have brought it back. i’m having a hard time stringing together words about the way this record makes me feel, but i hope that you’ll see this, listen to it top to bottom six or seven times, and make your own feelings about it. recommendations: mother, fuzzy tree, black magic, 25, doubt

11. june 14, doom days by bastille

i will probably forever hate myself for falling out of love with bastille after i graduated high school. i’m not entirely sure what happened (actually, i am - i was shoved too far up the maine’s ass to care about anything else) but i know that i loved them more than anything when i was a teenager, and the doom days album cycle - specifically their reading set - reignited that love, so i’ll be forever grateful to it for that. this album is conceptual and amazing, set over the course of one night when the writer - presumably frontman dan smith, whose brain this came out of - attends a party with his friends in an attempt at escapism. the world is fucked - dan’s words, but also mine - and sometimes we really do just need to pull the wool over our own eyes for once and let loose, even if just for a night. it starts at a “quarter past midnight,” when the night has only just begun, endless possibilities stretched out ahead of him, and finishes with “joy,” about waking up on the kitchen floor, your phone going off in your hand, the only person who really matters in your life on the other end of the line. bastille have always released music that makes it clear that they give a fuck what happens to earth and her people, and with doom days, they’ve perfected that sound. recommendations: quarter past midnight, divide, million pieces, joy

12. august 23, GINGER by brockhampton

after a brief hiatus, my favourite all-american boyband returned with their fifth studio album, GINGER. with a noticeably matured and somewhat mellowed shift within the hip-hop collective, this record explores themes of grief and disconnection to the backdrop of upbeat melodies such as on "boy bye" and sweet love songs such as on "sugar". though perhaps my favourite sentiment on this record lies within the fact that it opens with the echoed words, "I don't know where I'm going," and closes poignantly with the heartfelt statement, "Thank God that I'm built for the distance." -katy (twitter | instagram)

13. september 13, hypersonic missiles by sam fender

hypersonic missiles, the debut full-length from geordie singer-songwriter-maestro sam fender, was my most anticipated release this year. fender has faced a mess of obstacles this year, mostly health-related, after winning the BRIT awards’ critics’ choice award at the start of it, and as a result has had to cancel a majority of the shows he’d had schedules and push back the release of hypersonic missiles a whole month. it was well worth the wait, though, and i ended up writing an essay-length review of it for highlight magazine when i finally did get to hear it. filled to the brim with emotional ballads and belters alike, hypersonic missiles is a culmination of over five years of songwriting and even longer of sam being fed up - with his government, with his peers, with the misrepresentation of mental health by the media. we’ve only had this record for three months, but i can already tell it’s timeless. i’m only hoping sam’s voice recovers enough that he can continue to tour to promote it before returning to studio (reportedly the electric lady in new york city!) to record his second release. recommendations: hypersonic missiles, white privilege, you’re not the only one, will we talk?, two people

14. september 13, pride & disaster by sleep on it

my favorite record of the year is undoubtedly ‘Pride & Disaster’ by Sleep On It. Pride & Disaster arrived the perfect time for me, as I just transferred out of college. I felt lost and unsure of my future. However, listening to Pride & Disaster gave me a sense of hope and support that I’ll be okay on my new journey. -julie (twitter)

15. october 4, interrobang by bayside

Just like the title, there's no single form of punctuation that can explain the brilliance of this album. 'Interrobang' takes the classic Bayside sound to a new level with heavier riffs, faster time signatures, and iconic lyrics. From "Heaven," a stand out anthem for aging punks in the scene to "Bury Me," a melodic metal inspired breakout track, this album is laced together perfectly with both the past and future of Bayside. By tip toeing the line between metal, alt rock, and pop punk, the band has shown that even after almost twenty years as a band, they can still innovate and transform with new music. -katie (twitter | instagram)

16. december 13, fine line by harry styles

i wanted to include this in this roundup, considering i haven’t stopped listening to it since it came out (and i saw him live!), but i did also write an entire review of the album. you can read it here!

honorable mentions (aka albums i didn’t feel like writing an essay about - or just didn’t listen to all that much - but still think you should give a chance)

1. swmrs, berkeley’s on fire (february 15, 2019) 2. circa waves, what’s it like over there? (april 4, 2019 - i wrote a whole review about this record for highlight and not many of my feelings about it have changed since then.) 3. cage the elephant, social cues (april 19, 2019) 4. ten tonnes, ten tonnes (may 3, 2019) 5. palace, life after (july 12, 2019) 6. clairo, immunity (august 2, 2019) 7. the myserines, take control ep (august 8, 2019) 8. muna, saves the day (september 6, 2019) 9. from indian lakes, dimly lit (october 18, 2019)

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sholiofic · 8 years ago

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Are you still taking prompts? I kept thinking about how (possibly after infinity war) when someone on earth would offer Peter one of those super fancy and high tech iPod/stark-phone to replace his "out-of-date" zune, and peter would just refuse

Okay, so first of all, I’ve actually read a really neat fic that deals with this, with Tony and Peter.

I can’t do anything that awesome, so here is what came to mind instead. Because maybe it’s Peter Quill’s turn to deal with a curious young Terran, also named Peter.

Also posted on AO3: Good Morning Starshine.

–

“So, Earth must be pretty boring compared to what you’re used to, huh?”

Peter looked down at the teenager skipping along at his side as they explored the main shopping district of what Peter had been told was one of the biggest cities on this particular continent (Fifth Avenue, New York City, North America, Earth). “Boring? Why?”

The kid – whose name was also Peter, so they had settled on “Parker” and “Quill” – looked up at him with wide, guileless eyes. “Dude, you’ve seen whole different planets. You’ve been on spaceships.”

“You’ve been on a spaceship,” Peter pointed out mildly. “My spaceship.”

“Yeah, but, like, once. You can fly them! You’ve been to whole shipyards full, I bet. And – and Infinity Stones, and – I mean, all I can compare it to is sci-fi movies and stuff, but you’ve seen the real thing. How in the world can anything on Earth compare to that?”

Peter looked up and down the street. They had been walking for awhile, and had wandered out of the high-class stores further north and were into an area now that the little handheld map on his StarkPhone told him was called Greenwich Village. He liked this better; it had a lot of interesting little shops that he found more appealing than the glitzy shops uptown, which put him in mind of certain districts on Xandar that tended to try to arrest him for loitering as soon as they got one look at his Ravager-red coat.

The thing was, objectively speaking, Parker was right. Once you’d been to Knowhere, once you’d been offered your own planet, once you’d flown through the Well of Ten Million Stars at incredibly unsafe speeds and held an Infinity Stone in your bare hands, how could a small planet in a quiet neighborhood of the galaxy possibly hold any wonder at all?

But that was asking the wrong question.

He’d been to a hundred planets, and every last one of them was interesting in its own way. This one was even more fascinating because it was the one that his people had come from. Every single person on these streets looked just like him. He couldn’t get over it. Oh sure, some of the colors were different, some of them were a little shorter or taller, but that was such a tiny difference that he hardly even noticed it. Every last person he saw around him could be related to him – in fact, actually was related to him, if you went back far enough. And every last item in each one of the shops had been invented and built by his people.

If he were going to lose his sense of wonder, he’d have long since lost it after a few years of wandering around alien markets with Yondu and the Ravagers. Instead, everything he saw just made the next thing more interesting by contrast … all the more so on his long-lost planet of birth. Nothing here could ever seem dull to him.

But he wasn’t quite sure how to explain this to Parker, who had literally never been off this planet (which Peter still found hard to wrap his mind around) except for very briefly on the Milano.

Peter couldn’t help thinking that Yondu would have laughed and laughed to see him showing the galaxy, even tiny little bits of it, to another wide-eyed Terran kid who even happened to be also named Peter. There was a time when that thought would’ve felt like a ragged saw blade across his heart, but time’s passage had done what he’d once thought impossible: it had faded his grief to something gentle and warm and only slightly sad.

We’ll meet in the stars someday, you old bastard, and I’ll tell you all about this, just in case you don’t already know.

But he couldn’t imagine how to explain any of this to someone Peter Parker’s age, someone who’d literally never even met anyone except Terrans until Peter’s team showed up, so all he said was, “I like Earth. I wish I could see more of it before I have to leave, but this city is my favorite place so far.” He watched the kid preen, because of course the city was his place (and the odd thought occurred to Peter that he might actually have already seen more of this kid’s world than Parker himself had had a chance to, so far). “What else should I see before I leave?”

“Ooh. The Brooklyn Bridge, for sure. There’s a pedestrian walkway, which is pretty rad, but I like to web-sling from the towers. That’s the best part, and it’ll be sunset soon, which is awesome from up there.”

“Where’s that?” Peter asked. He held up the StarkPhone and let Parker touch the map with quick, deft fingers. “Oh, that bridge. The one with the big swooshy parts. Here, hold on.”

“What are – ack!”

Peter had engaged his rocket boots, swooping away into the sky and leaving behind a chorus of awed gasps and some flashes of those little communication devices everyone carried here. A moment later, they dropped out of the sky on top of the peak of the bridge’s towers.

“Dude,” Parker panted, sitting down on a concrete buttress. “You can’t just do that here. I mean, seriously. People don’t just fly around here.”

“Literally half the people I’ve met on this planet can fly.”

“Yeah – but – look, the people you’ve met so far aren’t exactly, uh, normal.”

“Neither am I,” Peter pointed out. He put away the StarkPhone and put in an earbud from the Zune. Parker was right, the sky was beginning to show the first flush of color. He hadn’t seen a sunset on Earth yet and he was looking forward to it, so this needed some music.

“You know you can play music on the StarkPhone, right?” Parker said, eyeing the Zune.

“I know. Tony told me.”

“I mean, how many songs can that thing possibly have on it?”

“Three hundred,” Peter said absently, scrolling through his playlists. Perfect: Otis Redding, (Sitting’ on) The Dock of the Bay. “Want to listen?” he asked, holding out an earbud to Parker.

“Three hundred … songs. You know the StarkPhone can fit like 500 times that many, right?”

“Oh, believe me,” Peter said, “I’m not leaving this planet without all the music I can stuff onto whatever storage media you have here.” He’d asked each of the Avengers if they would put some of their favorite songs together for him, and he was looking forward very much to hearing all of them on the long jumps between the cold stars. He’d heard some of Tony’s music and liked it already; they even knew some of the same songs, which was something he’d never actually had in common with anyone besides his mom before.

“But, don’t you think –”

“Do you want to listen or not?”

“Okay … fine.” Parker took the earbud. “Even this thing is kinda old-fashioned looking,” he remarked, looking at it. “I would’ve thought a spaceman wouldn’t be so … retro.”

Peter couldn’t help smiling again; Yondu was definitely laughing his goddamn blue ass off about this, somewhere out there in the stars. “Someone gave it to me … someone who loved me, and now I carry a little of them with me, wherever I go. That’s important when you don’t live on the same planet with the same people all your life. Home isn’t places, not really; it’s people.” He ran a light thumb over the Zune. “And sometimes this is the closest thing you have when people aren’t there anymore.”

He was fully expecting this to sail straight over Parker’s head, but instead the kid gave him a smile with a trace of wistfulness. And yeah, come to think of it, he didn’t remember hearing anything about any of Parker’s relatives except for an aunt. Peter’s mother had died on Earth; he should know better than anyone that his birth planet was not without its full measure of pain.

“What did you say this song was called?” Parker asked.

“Dock of the Bay. Otis Redding.” Peter tapped to start the song. “Now, show me one of these Earth sunsets I’ve heard so much about.”

“It’s right there,” Parker said dryly, pointing at the western horizon as the first beats of the music began to play.

“Smartass.”

#guardians of the galaxy #gotg2 #peter quill #peter parker #spider-man #gotg2 spoilers #Anonymous

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