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alolanroy · 9 months ago

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2024 Watch Thread-Part 2

part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/alolanroy/739287467975458816/watch-thread-2024-pt-1

Resident Alien S1: Decent humor and it did a pretty good job of the small town with many interlocking sub-plots vibe. I wouldn't say that it is consistently laugh-out-loud, but you really never know when it'll floor you. I do kind of wish they toned down the attempts at serious drama, because this is a fish-out-of-water alien show, how serious can I take it? 5/10

Helldivers 2 at Launch: It scratches my multiplayer itch. Maybe the trick to making a successful live-service game was to...make it fun? The balancing is just teetering enough to be a blast. I didn't even mind the horrible queueing problems, nonfunctional matchmaking and level breaking bugs once I had half an hour of actual playtime. 8/10

Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger: I'll be honest, in the beginning I was worried we might drop it, but it won me over hard. And I mean maybe my second favorite sentai so far (Donbrothers will remain undefeated for all time). While simplistic, the writing manages to unfurl a web of history, personality and cultural identity. While the choice to film most of it on green screed made it look awful most of the time, the strong writing and acting pulled it through, especially in the later chapters where the reveals kept getting bigger and the characterization swings. Personal favorites are Kaguragi's backstory, which feels out of a proper prestige drama and the two-parter on earth. It saves up its budget and goes ham. 9/10

Forbidden Planet: While I find a lot of this movie repulsive for its 50's-ass gender politics, I choose to say 'wow, cool robot'. I see why Robbie is iconic and was disappointed by how little of him I got. Its tedious pacing makes me appreciate how Star Trek TOS distilled this formula into the blueprint for great TV. (Sidenote: I gotta figure out where this ancient alien megastructure vibe comes from. I feel like a lot of dwemmer related skyrim mods are repeating this without knowing it.) -4/10

Ice Station Zebra: Nice of them to start the plot in the second half after the intermission. For such a basic thriller, they seem to think this was a cinematic event with all of its intermission cards and posturing. Did they think the submarine set was worth half the runtime? I find its red-scare politics kind of pathetic and I've seen more complex thrillers air on Cartoon Network on weekdays. 3/10

Ultraman Geed the Movie: Connect! The Wishes!!: A team of scientists distilled tokusatsu summer movies into a thick paste and molded it into the shape of a tourism ad for Okinawa. The results made me cancel my plans to watch the ultraman movies and doubt if I actually like Geed. 1/10

Skyrim: Midwood Isle: Really impressive stuff here. A good variety of locations and a satisfying main quest. The reveal of a mirror map filled with locations and daedric realms really got me excited. The only downside is that some of the back and forth with the mainland got old and the LOTD patch didn't work. I'm a little surprised this doesn't get talked up more. 8/10

Dune Part II: Incredible watch. Gorgeous visuals and really strong performances all around. Great cinematography and violent sound design really made me FEEL the power (the lackluster theater speakers could barely handle it). I do feel a lot was lost in the cracks though and didn't hit as hard as the first, but boy am I glad I saw it. 8/10

The Mummy Demastered: This is a very good video game. An efficient love letter to metroidvanias (and boy I can see the metroid) with some neat ideas and that Wayforward polish. If you like these sorts of games, what are you doing here? Go play it! The paired-back scale means none of the ideas get old, and none of the backtracking is egregious. But my real favorite spin was the varied and interconnected environments that flowed so well together. 8/10

On a sidenote: this really feels like a mirror into another universe where the Dark Universe actually took off. In a way, it made me more excited for it than the actual movie. It made me wistfully muse about what might have been (committee driven slop movies)

Born to Fight (2004): This movie occupies the same part of my brain as RRR. I'll overlook almost any nationalism if resolves in an hour-long string of white-knuckle Olympic sport action. Genuinely some of the most insane stunts I've seen committed to film. My watch group was hooting and hollering! 8/10

Death Code Ninja: Sometimes Godfrey Ho's chop-shop ninja movies are an ironic good time. This is not one of those times. It couldn't hold any of our interests. -3/10

Blue Submarine No. 6: This owns. It was so continually visually interesting and the art so distinct I didn't even mind the early CG. Sure a few threads might have been underdeveloped, but I admire how much of a non-traditional ending it had. Conclusiveness doesn't have to come from nukes and resolution doesn't have to be on screen. Honestly, good on them for redirecting most of the strange sexual energy to the fish girl, though I don't know how to feel about her role in the end. 8/10

Ninja Knight: Thunder Fox: man this sucked. At least two white guys in ninja outfits killed each other with shotguns at the end. -2/10

Money Plane: Just because it could be a whole lot worse doesn't mean it couldn't have been a whole lot better. Try having your wrestlers have action sequences that let them fight good. -5/10

Chop Socky Chooks: Sometimes we put bad TV on the wheel to see what would happen. Apparently, these things are supposed to be chickens, but without any form of exposition or attempt to set the stage in the first episode, I can't really say. I don't know which is worse, the radiation of vague racism or how aggressively bad this is on 'TV you watched when you are home sick from school' standards. -2/10

Gridman Universe: It's hard to talk about gridman without going on a series of digressions about the purpose of fiction, growth and the Ultraman Fandom. Most of it I would describe as some cute fan service without much meat, and a plot that just kinda happens. But my cynicism melted away in the final act. Man, I love the passion in these designs. 7/10

Werewolf Santa: I felt nothing. 2/10

Undertale Yellow: Perhaps my standards for fangames have gotten a bit high, but I was a little disappointed. There are some good gags, don't get me wrong, but the overall energy kinda drags. I don't think it helps that the boss battles are more transparently endurance tests for the defense minigames. I never felt like I was talking them down, just that I was letting them monologue at me until they let me go. Maybe it pulls some zingers in the last half but I can't bring myself to care. 3/10

American Ultra: This might be Black Panther for stoners, but to me, it is just Max Landis's wish fulfillment. the half hour we stomached felt longer than some seasons of netflix. 3/10

Thankskilling 3: Possibly one of the biggest delights of the year. Extrapolating from Thankskilling 1, I was worried this would be the bad kind of self-aware. Instead, the watch party was floored by the tireless barrage of joyful camp. They cracked the code, just mixed up the bits enough so that another gets old and washed it over with cinematography good enough that it too becomes a joke. I'll give this the rare +/-8 for being legitimately great and entertainingly bad (intentionally)

Viking Seige: First of all I feel lied to. This poster is nonsense. There were no dragons or longboats. Instead, it is a single-set zombie 'thriller' that would have been alright under normal circumstances. Still, the overall momentum isn't really there and the quality of performances is uneven. 4/10

Los Campeones de Justicieros (1971): Luchadors, little people, mad scientists, and non-stop jazz. Especially non-stop jazz when it is least appropriate. -7/10

Spy Kids Armageddon: This isn't nostalgia for the originals speaking, this was just a legitimately inferior product. The design philosophy of making a movie with everything a kid could want but camp for the adults is absent. Netflix original tier. -4/10

Zone of the Enders Dolores, i: The first act had me nearly drop the show. The worldbuilding was sloppy and the character design and environments were totally incongruous with the sci-fi setting this was supposed to be selling. However, when it remembered it was supposed to be a space opera, the show became much more watchable. By the end I was surprised how attached I had become. 7/10. It would've been higher if the beginning wasn't so tough.

Zone of the Enders 2167 Idolo: The story that it has is good, but it sure is in a rush to have it over. What I find interesting is that in many ways this is one of the more complicated mecha designs that Sunrise animated towards the end of the cell era. It makes me a bit sad now knowing how much of a downgrade the early Digipaint sequel is from a visual standpoint. 7/10

Godzilla X Kong The New Empire: THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN! I initially recoiled at the possible return of the podcasting gang, but all returning characters benefit from a more solid group dynamic that avoids the cringe the series hadn't quite shaken. The monster madness is as camp as it comes, but I the cinematography made me feel like I was having a panic attack with all the rotating. 7/10

MacGyver: I bounced right off this. Maybe it gets better in later seasons, but the pilot and the first batch after that were cheesy in a bad way. I don't like Anderson's accent and the vibes are too cartoon-drug-psa-episode. It could barely hold my attention 4/10

Battle Beyond the Stars: Forgot to add this one. I've seen enough 7 samurai 'in space' but the cast was varied enough be counteract the dull male lead with the fun factor. 6/10

Outer Wilds: Few games out there are real originals. And I'm glad to have played as much as I did. I've given the writing major props for making this silly setting feel real and consistent. A personal highlight was landing on the sun cannon station first try without knowing what it was because of my raw uncut skill. However, I don't really feel like definitively scoring on this one since I paused playing it for about a year right before getting to the finishing sequence. I honestly had no idea how to pick things up again. It felt like I ruined it for myself and resorted to watching a playthrough of the end. I'd probably say maybe a 7-8? A few of the environments cross the bridge between exciting to traverse to dull and maze-y wandering.

Lensman (1984): Gorgeous, and occasionally kind of charming, but not enough to overcome the general malaise of the non-starter plot. The vague Heroes-Journey shaped plot doesn't bother to explain what a lensman is or what the titular lens does until the final moments. There wasn't really enough there to not make sense. It almost says something about how resistance can take many shapes, even insignificant ones, but I almost feel like it does so on accident. 5/10

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mangoofthesea · 3 years ago

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I was tagged by @abstract-moth to post 10 songs I’ve been obsessed with lately. In no particular order. Thank you so much I was thinking how I haven't done a tag game in ages so this was very fun to think about (you have excellent choice in songs btw I love loads of the ones you mentioned)

1. EXPIRED by jenny nuo

I honestly love this song since I heard it, it has this angry vibe about being tired of a town you moved to where you don't belong and never have and looking forward to moving away which is me this year while I wait for the autumn and its incredibly cathartic. "i think this town has expired on me" "school is just a building where people come and go"

2. The Red Means I Love You by Madds Buckley

I love songs like this that are kind of different and fun and its based on a villain from bnha, Toga, and it just makes me feel cool and evil lol

3. Funkle Phil by Bear Ghost

I heard the beginning of this song on an animatic by an artist i love (Yamz Animatics on youtube go check them out i love their videos) and the vibes oh my gosh i listened to it on repeat for a couple days the other week and has a very hype vibe and excellent electric guitar and drums which i adore. classically rock/punky. "gonna blast off, oh oh ah, and rocking til the day we die"

4. To The Bone by JT Music

Another one like red means i love you that's about the game undertale sung by the two main skeleton characters Sans and Papyrus. I never played undertale but I heard about it from friends. This is the song with the lyrics "I am the mastermind he's my accomplice, you're only still alive because I made a promise" - I heard it the first time on a hq tiktok and something about it just had me obsessed. It was my spotify top song last year and I still like it. (84 plays in 2021)

5. B.O.M.B by emlyn

The chorus is 'I'm back on my bullshit' and about reclaiming your Energy and getting over a breakup. I'm not getting over a breakup but I like the energy of Getting Back Up Again.

6. Made for This by City Wolf

Such a vibe oh man. Another get back up kind of song that always makes me want to bear my teeth and grin. I heard it the first time on a Zuko music video that was overlaid with his words about fighting to survive. "you're stronger now can't hold you down, you were never born to quit, keep on throwing rocks and fists, you gotta stand up, you were made for this" "stand tall head first into danger".

7. Between My Teeth by Orla Garden

First song I found that properly conveyed my feelings towards relationships and my last relationship where I knew I would hurt them if we stayed together cos I didn't want a relationship. "you need me I don't need you" "please don't lean on me cos I don't want your heart between my teeth" "I can't take the pressure of it I can barely breathe" "You deserve someone else".

8. Bored by Tessa Violet

Slightly self explanatory "its 4am again, you'd think that I could sense a trend. I'm staying up too late just so that I can stay awake". Also its a bop and I love it.

9. Merry Go Round by MAN WITH A MISSION

It's the theme of bnha season 5 part 2. I really really love it. Feels like a song about a fight and hypes me up especially when I listen to it while writing.

10. Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos

I heard this first on a beautiful bnha animatic for a fantasy/pirate au and I don't know what it is about it but it makes me want to cry and dance at the same time. Very folky and soft and hopeful then finishes in a brilliant faster fiddle section that sounds like you would dance to around a fire in a field with the biggest smile.

this all made me realise I only pay attention to around 30% of the lyrics in most songs I love lol. Honorable mention to Surface Pressure from Encanto too just cos I love it.

Tagging @apparently-a-robot @r0ckyr04d @ihavenomoralsss @ash-and-starlight and @that-was-anticlimactic but no pressure of any kind do it if you want and if not have a lovely day

#tag game #songs #song recs #music

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mental-dilemma · 4 years ago

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DATPT part 5

The boys have a conversation with Bruce before all hell breaks loose.

we're gonna ignore the fact I haven't posted in months, for compensation can I give you an extra-long chapter? BTW yes I did finish editing this during class, I'm also not great with pranking siblings, and since this was the way to tell them bout Marinette/Ladybug I ran with it.

Read from the beginning:

“Ok, Damian, have fun.” Dick turned to his brothers. “Well, boys it looks like we’ll have the apartment to ourselves Damian’s staying with Marinette tonight.”

“And you're ok with that?!” Jason asked, shocked Dick would let their youngest brother stay over with his girlfriend.

“Oh don’t give me that they’re both eighteen now and something tells me Marinette’s parents will keep more than one eye on them. So what do you guys want to do tonight.” The three brothers had decided that this trip to Paris would also be family time, especially considering how they didn’t really get any of that during the year.

“Movie?” Tim asked.

“Which one.” Jason was not watching another

“How bout this one?” Tim picked up the box that Damian had left sitting out on the coffee table earlier that morning. Jason plucked it from Tim’s hands and began reading the title. “Night of the living statue. Are you sure this doesn’t even seem scary?”

“I mean there’s always the crowbar wielding clown we could watch.”

“Oh yeah, that one got burned a while ago.”

“Fair enough.”

“So Night of the living statue it is,” Dick said, already making the popcorn.

------------------

“No don’t go into the basement, oh come on!” Jason was yelling at the screen.

“Jason you know they can’t hear you right?” Tim said rolling his eyes, which were illuminated by the laptop screen sitting in front of him.

“I don’t care Replacement the fact they’re doing it goes against every bit of common sense, it just doesn’t make, well--”

“Sense?” Dick supplied walking back into the room with the third popcorn bucket of the evening.

“Exactly I just don’t get it!” Jason held out his hands and made a grabbing motion for the bucket Dick easily sidestepped him and plopped down between the two.

“Ok, Tim popcorns back computers off.” He said as he finished getting settled.

“But I’m almost in, five more minutes and we get authentic Wayne manor security footage, and that’s better than any movie.

“Rules are rules replacement you agreed to the trade so you have to deal with it,” Jason said munching on popcorn.

“He’s right, and anyway if you keep going at it we’re gonna get a call from Al-” Right on cue, the video call screen popped up on Tim’s computer. He groaned before hitting accept.

“Hey, Alf good to see ya ol’ buddy ol’ pal! How’s the good ol’ USofA?” He said in an overly perky voice.

“Master Drake if I might request you stop attempting to hack onto the Batcave system it would be much appreciated.” Alfred’s voice rang over the call.

“Just hacking into security footage, huh?” Dick said glaring at Tim, Paris was a no hero weekend and Tim just broke that.

“I uh… I’m gonna go.” He said ending the call, moving quickly he closed his laptop grabbed a handful of popcorn, bolted over the couch to the room he was staying in, and closed the door.

“Well, that’s the last we’ll be seeing of him tonight,” Dick said moving to grab his phone. He opened up Alfred’s contact at called him back. “Sorry, Alfred he’s just itching to get a case. He’s gotten really bored seeing Paris like a normal person, well as normal as you can get given we’re Waynes.”

“Don’t worry about it I have one of those as well.” He panned his camera over to where Bruce was sitting cowl down at the computer in the Batcave. Dick and Jason both gave a small laugh.

“How is he doing?” Dick asked.

“Oh same as usual, sulking during the night, acting like a complete buffon during the day.” Jason laughed, Dick heard Bruce mutter through the phone, and Alfred brought the camera over to Bruce.

“Hey, Bruce how ya doing?” Dick asked innocently.

“How am I doing? Let’s see Richard, my sons hijacked the plane to go to Paris on a whim with no planning whatsoever, I got a call from Damian’s school that he was absent today. I'm also dealing with a very angry Italian ambassador, oh and with all the girls out on other missions I’m dealing with the entirety of Gotham and WE by myself for who knows how long. How do you think I feel?” The bags under Bruce’s eyes were more pronounced than usual as he berated his two older sons for a few more minutes, “now do you two have a reasonable explanation, or am I going to be feeding your asses to Harley Quinn for therapy sessions this week.”

“Damian has a girlfriend,” Dick said smoothly, Alfred and Bruce both paused, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

“Please Dick if you’re gonna come up with an excuse at least make it a plausible one,” Bruce said while Alfred was attempting to compose himself in the background.

“I’m telling the truth, her name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She’s in his class and apparently, they’ve been dating for the last few months.”

“I’m going to search her up and if you’re lying to me it’s three therapy sessions with Quinn.” Dick shivered remembering the last time that happened, He had been suspended over a shark tank until he admitted he needed to start putting himself first. Bruce typed a few things on the computer and let out a sharp whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“See I told you,” Dick said smugly.

“That doesn’t change the fact that---” Bruce was cut off as they heard a scream come from Tim’s room.

“Sorry, Bruce gotta go check that out. Call you later.” Dick ended the video

following Jason to Tim’s room where they saw him sitting over his computer furiously banging on the keyboard.

“Woah Woah replacement if you keep that up then there won’t be any computer left to type with.”

“I don’t care! Someone cut the power and I was in the middle of checking Parisian crime records.

“Don’t freak out,” Dick said calmly, “I’ll go check the fuse box, you and Jason can go check the router. Ok?”

“Ok,” Tim said taking a breath. He put his computer aside and walked out of the room with Jason following him. Dick tried to call Damian to find out where the fuse box was, but for some reason couldn’t get a signal inside the apartment. He walked out onto the balcony waving his phone up wildly seeing if a bar would show up. He sighed as he brought his phone down. Nothing. As he turned to go back inside he felt a small pinch on his neck he moved to swat at it and he felt nothing. As he stepped forwards his eyelids began drooping, he stumbled and reached for the railing. He missed and before he slipped into unconsciousness he felt the bite of cold cement against his arms.

---------------------------------------

When Dick woke up the sun was streaming through the living room window. He felt a weight on his stomach and when he stretched his neck up he saw Jason was lying on him, with Tim lying on the top of the pile. He laid there a moment as the night caught up to him, he began formulating who would knock them out, and how he was going to get out of this dogpile when a sharp“Ahem” sounded from the doorway. Standing there was Damian in jeans and a shirt.

“Well, it looks like you guys had a blast last night,” Marinette said poking her head in. It was the first time Dick had seen her without pigtails, instead, she had her blue-black locks tied back in a messy bun and she was suspiciously wearing Damian’s sweatshirt.

“You want to tell me why Father called me last night wanting to know all about my girlfriend and why I hadn’t told him about her yet.” Jason and Tim gave simultaneous groans of annoyance as Dick hopped up.

“Listen Damian I can explain,” He said stepping forward. He felt something hook his foot. “What the--” he got out before red paint came crashing down on top of him. Jason and Tim, both awake now, shot up trying in vain to avoid the downpour only to stumble into more strings. Before anyone could blink glitter rained down from the ceiling sticking to the paint coating the boys. A camera flash later saw them giving the death glare to Damian as he and Marinette stood off to the side trying not to laugh.

“What. the. Hell.” Dick said as he wiped paint from his eyes.

“If you want to live Demonspawn you better hope that this paint comes out,” Jason said as he attempted to shake glitter from his hair.

“If Con ever finds that picture Jason isn’t gonna be the one you should be scared of,” Tim said dangerously low. Damian finally cracked and started laughing. Collectively the three batboys stopped and looked up in shock. They hadn’t heard Damian laugh before, sure they’ve heard the evil laugh and the Robin laugh but never his laugh, it was soft light, and infectious. Before long Marinette was laughing too, while Jason Tim and Dick were all smiling.

“Ok you were right that was better than anything I could think up,” Damian said as he composed himself.

“Hey give some credit to Luka,” Marinette said, “He was the one who suggested glitter.”

Jason’s eyes widened as he realized that not only did Demon spawn pull a nonlethal prank, but Marinette was in on it. Not just Marinette but some kid named Luka too.

“Wait back up, you’re telling me you guys decided that you should knock us out, and then dump red paint and glitter on us?” Tim said blearily.

“Well, we couldn’t just come out and tell you,” Marinette responded.

“Well we could, but this is revenge for your little family trip,” Damian interjected.

“Tell us what? That you hate us with a passion? You’re an evil psychopath?”

“You know for a family of detectives you guys can be rather slow.” Marinette slammed a hand over her mouth realizing what she had said. “I’m sorry I didn’t me--”

“I love you so much right now,” Damian said gawking at her, Marinette blushed.

“Ok, will one of you two please talk to us rather than whatever,” Jason gestured vaguely to the two of them, “that is.”

“What color is the glitter?” Marinette said as she turned her attention from Damian. She sounded almost like a school teacher would when talking to children.

“Black…” The boys responded in unison.

“And what color is the paint?”

“Red.”

“So what’s red and covered in black spots.”

“Lady----- Oh for fucks sake,” Tim said slapping his hand on his forehead.

“There it is,” Marinette said triumphantly, a smile spreading across her lips. A few moments later Jason and Dick both gasped as the information finally sunk in.

“Why can’t anyone in this family be normal.” The second youngest Wayne lamented.

“Well, at least this means you can join my team and me on patrols. I bet that’ll make Paris a little more interesting.” Tim perked up.

“Woah. Woah. Woah. We can talk all that out later but you need to go get cleaned up before the paint stains the carpet.” Damian interrupted, he didn’t like the fact Marinette was talking about patrol with his brothers.

“I would like to remind you that this was your plan, Damian,” Dick said.

“It may be my plan but it’s someone else’s carpet now go.”

The three boys were shepherded to the bathroom while Damian and Marinette cleaned up the mess left in the living room. All three of them were rather impressed with the way the two of them had revealed Marinette’s identity, although it went unspoken how if anyone revealed it there would be serious consequences.

It took them over an hour to even begin making a dent in the glitter-paint combination that covered their bodies. Dick having been directly under the bucket had it the worst, with Jason coming in at a close second. Jason thought he had at least gotten out the stuff in his hair during his shower, only to look in the mirror and let out a quiet fuck. Dick gave him a questioning look, in response, Jason just pointed to his hair. Where his white streak was now stained a deep crimson. “This means war.”

Tag list (closed):

@ur-average-reader @dast218 @allulily @acoursedprophetwithasmothie @k-laconia-bug1 @smolplantmum @g-arya @loysydark @mewwitch @itsemeanne @hauntedstudent99 @pawsitivelymiraculous @clumsy-owl-4178 @eeveeofstewjon @demonicbusiness @zotinha456 @t1dwarrior-of-earth @chocolateherringtacofan @abrx2002 @toodaloo-kangaroo @wannajointhecrabcult @miraculous-simmer7 @notmycupoftea26 @legodetectivemalsblog @fusser90 @ladyrwby @buginetye

#damian wayne x marinette dupain cheng #damientte #damianette #marinette dupen chang #Damian wayne #Maribat #Maribat au #Marinette #Damian #Jason todd #dick greyson #tim drake #ml fic

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allsassnoclass · 4 years ago

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i blame it on the weather (can you make it better)

Pairing: Michael Clifford/Calum Hood

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Key Tag(s): College AU, Cold, Angst with a Happy Ending

Word Count: 6,177

Read on AO3

A/N: this was tailor-made for @michaelownsmyheart. I hope you like it darling <3 also big shout out to @clumsyclifford for looking this over and giving me Good Advice

—

Michael doesn’t remember the dorm being this cold when he left in December. He doesn’t know how the space between him and Calum got that cold, either.

—

The drive back to campus feels shorter than normal, songs on the radio flying by with other cars on the highway the further Michael gets from his family and the closer he gets to the loneliness of an empty dorm. Normally he wouldn’t mind having the place to himself, especially because that means he can blast music as loud as he wants and no one else is going to take the shower with the good water pressure, but there’s something foreboding about it now.

His phone is still empty of messages from the one person he’s been waiting to hear from. Two weeks alone in the dorms wouldn’t be so bad if he had Calum on the other end of the line to keep him company.

He pulls into his parking spot right as snow begins to fall, a little earlier than predicted. He sends a quick text to his parents to let them know he made it safe, then grabs his bags and makes the trek to his dorm. It’s an older building elegantly nestled between the newer residence halls with better air conditioning or elevators that don’t break down every month, but there’s more character to it. The other dorms are boxy and made of dark brick, but this one is lighter with turrets at the top and heavy wooden doors. It looks more like a fantasy castle than a dorm building, and Michael’s mum had fallen in love with it immediately on their campus tour a few years ago. Now that Michael is living here it’s lost some of its luster, but it’s also the only building to have single rooms, and while having Luke as a roommate turned out alright in the end last year, he likes being able to have the room to himself all of the time.

Michael fumbles for his key card to swipe himself in, biting off one of his gloves so he can get it out of his wallet. Thick flakes land on his coat and hands, the kind that would probably be good for making snowmen if he still did stuff like that but that will be hell to drive in later. Hopefully the roads will be clear enough by tomorrow, and he probably has some ramen that he never made from last semester that he can heat up for dinner tonight.

Inside doesn’t feel much warmer than outside, but there’s no snow or wind. Michael stomps his feet in an attempt to get all of the snow off his boots, but freezes as soon as he glances up.

Nestled amongst the armchairs, big windows, fireplace, piano, and little side tables that make up the front lounge, Calum Hood stares back at him like a deer in headlights. He’s got a notebook and pencil in his hand and a textbook open in front of him, blanket wrapped around his shoulders in a way that Michael wishes he were. He looks exactly the same as he did when Michael last saw him a few weeks ago, except he’s fully clothed this time. He looks good. He looks cozy.

He looks like Michael is the last person he wants to see.

Michael clears his throat.

“I didn’t know you were back on campus,” he says.

“I’m taking a j-term and thought it’d be easier to focus here,” Calum replies, lifting the notebook halfheartedly. “It’s a prereq for my chem class this semester. It turns out that switching majors put me a bit behind this time.”

Michael nods. Calum started as a music education major, then switched to an elementary education major before realizing he didn’t want to deal with little kids. Now he’s studying to be a high school science teacher, which means he has a few freshman science classes he needs to squeeze into his schedule. He hadn’t said anything about a j-term to Michael when he registered, but they also haven’t exactly been communicating much since before finals.

“I didn’t expect anyone back yet,” Calum says eventually.

“I got permission to come back early so I can take a few more shifts. Gotta pay for college somehow, you know…”

Michael trails off, unbalanced and uncomfortable. It feels wrong to be reacting like this around Calum, just like it felt wrong to not hear from him during finals or break, but after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence and chewing his lip he hefts his bag higher on his shoulder and makes an excuse about wanting to get his room back to rights. He feels Calum’s eyes on him as he leaves, the weight of his gaze lingering even after Michael has entered the stairwell, dug out his key, and entered his room. When he takes off his jacket he immediately reaches for a blanket, wrapping himself up and trying to suppress the shivers threatening to erupt throughout his body.

He doesn’t remember the dorm being this cold when he left in December. He doesn’t know how the space between him and Calum got that cold, either.

-/-

Once he has a bowl of instant ramen in front of him and his stuff more or less put away, Michael calls Luke.

“Good morning,” Luke answers, a leftover joke gone stale from when they were roommates with opposite sleep schedules. It almost makes him wish for a simpler time when Luke was forcing him to go places like Welcome Week events and they were literally running into people like Calum and Luke was forcing them all to be friends even though Michael’s smoothie got spilled and Calum dropped his nachos. Michael would take being newly flustered over a hot guy who got a strawberry drink all over his favorite sweatshirt rather than having Calum not fucking talk to him.

“Did you know that Calum’s doing a j-term?”

Luke sighs on the other end of the line.

“I’m doing fine, Michael, thank you for asking. How are you?”

“I’m bad. Calum is here and no one warned me.”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t tell him that you would be back early, either.”

“That much was obvious.” Michael stirs his noodles, suddenly feeling like he doesn’t have the right appetite for this. “He looked like me showing up was the worst thing in the world.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not,” he says. “You should’ve seen him. He hates me now, and I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Luke says. “He misses you, too.”

“If he misses me so much, he should respond to my texts.”

Luke hums on the other end of the line.

“You’re both in the same place now. Maybe you can corner him in person.”

“I wouldn’t have to do that if someone would just tell me what happened.”

“What happened is that you two slept together and then Calum ghosted you,” Luke sighs. “If you want his reasoning, you have to ask him. I will not be a messenger pigeon for you two.”

“I feel like that metaphor works best only if he’s been asking about me, too,” Michael says. Luke doesn’t respond right away, a drawn out pause that makes Michael look up from his noodles. He wishes they were video chatting so he could see what sort of expression Luke is wearing. “Luke, has he asked about me?”

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” Luke says.

“You fucker, he has talked about me! Do you know why he ghosted me?”

“Stop using me as a go-between! If you want to know why Calum hasn’t replied to your messages, ask him yourself. You both need to get your heads out of your asses and communicate. I can’t believe I’m the one who has to say that.”

Silence descends and Michael pulls his phone away from his ear to see that Luke hung up on him. Michael huffs. A second later his phone lights up with an incoming call, a very unattractive picture of Luke staring at him from his screen. He considers letting it ring out and go to voicemail, but in the end he decides to take the high ground and answer.

“What,” he says flatly.

“Sorry I hung up on you,” Luke says. “I don’t like being caught between you both.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I don’t like it, either.”

“Will you try to talk to him? He’ll let you if it’s in person.”

“I guess.”

Luke hums. They stay on the phone a little longer, small talk filling the silence so Michael doesn’t have to be alone while he eats, but he knows he’s being a bad conversation partner, too distracted by what Calum may or may not have been saying about him to Luke. When they finally hang up Michael flops back on his bed and groans, wondering if he should just move to Antarctica and change his name rather than put himself through this.

-/-

He manages to go the rest of the night without any indication that Calum is there. They miss each other in the bathroom, but every sound in the hallway has the hair on his arms standing on end, wondering if it could be Calum or just the settling of the near-empty building. He sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning on the sub-par dorm mattress, cuddling deeper into his blanket in an attempt to find some much-needed warmth.

The last night he spent with Calum, and the first night they’d spent together in that way, Michael fell asleep warm. It was almost too hot, sticky under the covers and burning wherever their skin touched, but he loved it. He’d take the heat over the cold any day, and he hasn’t felt warm since he woke up alone, bed feeling too big without the other boy in it to act as his personal space heater.

That morning the sheets had still smelled like him, but they were cold. He’d left long before Michael woke up. Michael’s first morning back feels like a mirror of that day. Right before he fully wakes up he catches himself reaching for Calum and coming up empty. When he realizes what he had been doing, he forces himself to get up rather than stay in bed and wallow only because he can’t afford to be late to work on his first day back and he doesn’t trust the roads to be cleared yet. The college is situated on the outskirts of town, an odd placement that puts a woodsy area to one side and only a few smaller shops next to it. Michael hadn’t managed to land a job in one of those places, but the family-owned restaurant he works at pays enough to be worth the gas it takes to get there. He throws on a hoodie and slippers and shuffles to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Calum is already at one of the sinks when he enters. Michael doesn’t let his eyes stray from his face, refusing to take in the tan shoulders and torso or the drops of water glistening against him, leading down to the towel wrapped around his hips. He has a toothbrush in his mouth, foam gathering at the corners of his lips, lips that Michael has--

No. He can’t think about this now.

“Morning,” he says, clearing his throat to get it to work properly.

“Morning,” Calum replies around his toothbrush, consonants muffled. He spits into the sink and Michael makes himself focus on his own morning routine, meticulously putting toothpaste on his own brush and hoping it’s not obvious that even glancing at Calum is dangerous for him right now.

Neither of them try to say anything more, and Michael wonders if the silence is hanging as heavily in the air for Calum as it is for him. Before break, silences between them were the only types of silences Michael could stand. He’s fidgety by nature and gets uncomfortable without background noise, but Calum always managed to temper that a bit. Being around him settles something inside, something that right now makes Michael want to scream.

He’s about to try to break the silence when Calum picks up his bathroom caddy and leaves without so much as a glance his way. Michael tries not to let it bother him, but he misses the weight of his gaze. Calum used to look at him fondly, filled with enough affection that Michael could feel it in his heart. He doesn’t understand why that would have to change now.

By the time Michael goes to start his car for work, Calum has set himself up in the lounge again, laptop open in front of him. He’s turned on the fireplace, something that Michael thinks they're not technically supposed to do but that he’s certainly not going to call him on, and he doesn’t look up when Michael comes down the stairs. Michael lingers by the doorway longer than he should.

They’ve spent a lot of time in this room, whether doing homework on the couch, trying to play duets on the piano in the corner, or hogging the chess set by the window, figuring out how to play and passing the time.

The chess board is set up for a fresh game. In a naive fit of hope Michael walks over to it and moves one of the pawns forward. Calum doesn’t glance up from his computer, but he’s still in a way that means he knows what Michael is doing.

On his way out he thinks he hears someone say drive safe, but the howling of the wind is already filling his ears and he can’t be sure.

-/-

Michael gets sent home early because of the snow. He fights it all the way there, pulling in late because he had to move so slow, and halfway through his shift the manager calls it, deciding to close up for the day. Right after he clocks out Michael gets a notification on his phone for a severe blizzard alert, and he steels himself to face it before leaving behind the warmth of the restaurant. Outside the world is covered in a thick sheet of white, plows not able to keep up with the large flakes still falling from the sky, and Michael wills his car to survive the drive, windshield wipers going furiously in an attempt to keep him seeing as much as he can. The drive takes three times longer than usual, and when he finally spots his dorm through the snow it comes with a sigh of relief.

Calum is still in the lounge when he comes inside and stomps his feet to get some feeling back into them. With the snow came a biting wind, and even after barely being outside he feels frozen.

“I was getting worried,” Calum says, startling him. “It looks like it’s bad out there.”

“It is,” Michael says, taking off his hat and shaking snow off of it. He squints at Calum, in a different position and bundled in a blanket now, the big blue one that Mali got him as a grad present. Michael once again has to push away the urge to cuddle up to him.

“It’s fucking cold,” he says instead, because it’s true and if he doesn’t make small talk he’s going to blurt something embarrassing like I’ve been thinking about you all the time or why did you leave me or I love you I love you I love you I’m sorry please can we be friends again?

“Going to be a cold night for us, then,” Calum says. “The heating’s been shit this break. I don’t think they keep it up as high when there’s only one student here.”

“I’ve had a few cold nights,” Michael snorts before he thinks about it. “I mean--I’ll use some extra blankets.”

Calum nods once. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then snaps it shut again, looking down at his computer. It feels like a dismissal, like Michael isn’t worth his time anymore, and it stings.

He should go upstairs, anyway. He needs to find some blankets of his own. He glances over the piano and the fireplace, eyes landing on the chess game by the window.

Someone has moved a pawn on the other side. He glances at Calum, then moves a knight, continuing the game. He wants to ask Calum to sit down and play a proper round with him, but one glance at Calum’s posture has him biting his tongue. He’s closed off, blanket wrapped around him securely and face tense, and Michael can’t bring himself to bother him, not when interacting with Michael seems to be the last thing he wants to do.

Michael looks back at the chess set, three pieces out of place, and heads to his room.

-/-

The night comes simultaneously fast and slow in the way that all boring winter nights do. Michael sits in his room scrolling through social media while the sun sets around him, and when he does eventually get up it’s only so he can make more ramen to eat. He had lunch at the restaurant and never did get to the grocery store, but he has a few snacks to munch on and if things get really bad he can always see if Calum has anything he’s willing to share.

Calum initiated conversation earlier, so things can’t be too bad between them, right? It’s still terribly stiff and uncomfortable, but at least he’s not getting the silent treatment anymore. At least Calum looked at him for a little bit.

He plays video games until he’s too bored to continue, then showers and crawls into bed. It’s still cold, just like Calum said it would be, but they haven’t lost power yet. Michael piles on the blankets and pillows, but his sheets are frigid, not yet warmed by his body heat and making him shiver. After a few minutes of tossing and turning he considers boiling water just to have a warm mug to hold in his hands.

Maybe it’ll be better in the lounge with the fireplace on. No one’s here to get mad at him for falling asleep on the couch, but then he’d have to haul all of his blankets down there, something that he doesn’t think he has the energy for right now.

He wishes Calum were here. It feels like all he’s done since getting back to campus is think about Calum, his presence in the building affecting him more than it would have if he was fully alone, but in a pragmatic sense he also really wants a warm body next to him right now. Two people under the covers are warmer than one, and he’s already put on socks and a hoodie. Wrapping himself in Calum would keep him warm on a physical level, and maybe it’ll settle him enough that he’ll actually be able to sleep without having weird dreams or waking up every few hours.

He hasn’t even gotten close enough to touch him since getting here. Before break, he and Calum were always handsy with each other, personal space a myth with the two of them. It feels wrong to have seen him and not immediately gone in for a hug.

He flops onto his stomach, trying to get comfortable without disturbing the blankets too much, but sleep isn’t coming easy. When a knock comes on his door, he’s immediately awake and alert. He wonders if it was a piece of a dream instead, given that there’s only one other person in the building and late night visits did not seem to be an option on the table, but after a few moments someone knocks again.

The light of the hallway is bright after the dark of his room, making him squint at the silhouette of Calum standing before him, wrapped in a blanket like he always seems to be right now. His hair is messy, no doubt from his own fitful attempt to sleep, and Michael wants to run his fingers through it and put it back to rights.

“Hi,” Michael says.

“I called maintenance about the heat,” Calum says. “They said they’re having a bit of issue with it and will send someone out, but with the road conditions it could be a little while. I think they forgot that there were people here.”

“Oh,” Michael says. “Okay.”

He stares at Calum again, cataloguing how tightly he’s wrapped up and the way he’s chewing on his lips. Michael waits for him to say what he really came here to.

“It’s really fucking cold, Michael,” Calum blurts finally, a little desperate.

“I know,” Michael says, not sure how to tell Calum that he’d set the world on fire for him if it would help.

“It’d be warmer if we were together. Like, scientifically speaking. If we cuddled, it would warm us up a bit.”

“Well, you are the scientist in this duo. You would know.” Calum finally meets his eyes, looking up through his eyelashes a little in a way that’s completely unfair. He’s already got Michael wrapped around his finger, heart skipping a beat at the simple occasion of having his attention again.

He has it so bad that it’s pathetic.

“Is that all?” Michael asks, trying to scrape together some of his dignity. Calum has been ghosting him for weeks, and a conversation about the bad heating isn’t exactly what Michael wanted from a real conversation with him. He’s too tired for small talk and much too cold to be standing here when he could be under the covers.

“You’re shivering,” Calum says. Michael hadn’t noticed the small tremors, but now that Calum pointed them out he can’t ignore them.

“Come on, Mikey,” Calum says, stepping closer. Michael wants to lean into him and the warmth he promises. “I promise it’ll be warmer if we cuddle.”

“Do you want to come in?” he asks. Calum nods, so he steps aside.

Having Calum in his room again when the last time included one of the best and most overwhelming experiences of Michael’s life is weird, to say the least. It’s like Michael can see two versions of him: the current Calum, wrapped in a blanket and closed off in every conceivable way, and the Calum from that night, laughing at all of Michael’s jokes and spouting off facts about gravity to explain how they kept getting closer and closer.

“See, everything with mass exerts gravity on everything else, except typically it’s not enough to be noticeable compared to the gravity of the Earth. Your gravitational field must be really strong today.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No, Michael, you idiot. Stop misinterpreting what I’m saying!”

Calum surveys the room, the safety light reflecting off the snow outside just enough to give him silhouettes to work with. Michael wonders what he’s remembering.

“How do you want to do this?” Michael asks when the silence has stretched on for too long. Calum shrugs, so Michael climbs up onto his bed, sliding under the covers and leaving a corner flipped up in invitation. Calum hesitates, and for a moment Michael thinks he’s going to turn tail and run, but he throws his blanket on top of the covers and joins. The bed is too small to avoid some awkward elbows and involuntary brushes of clothing, barely big enough for one person, let alone two. Michael holds his breath while Calum gets somewhat settled, pressed against the wall to give him as much room as possible.

“It’ll be warmer if we’re touching,” Calum whispers, words hitting Michael like a shout with the close proximity and otherwise silence of the room. If the lights were on, Michael would probably be able to count his eyelashes, but now his face is a combination of different shadows.

“How do you…” Michael trails off. Calum reaches out first, a cold hand wrapping around his own and pulling him closer. They end up with Calum on his back and Michael’s head on his shoulder, legs tangled together. Michael’s sure that Calum can hear how loud his heart is beating, but he can feel Calum’s own beating in a similar pattern so he can’t be too upset about it. He can hear every inhale and rustle of clothing, can feel the soft cotton of Calum’s shirt against his cheek and smell the faint remains of his soap.

He’s warm. It’s not the burning heat from their last night together, but it’s almost worse with the gradual way that Michael can feel himself unthaw in his presence, slow enough that he could forget it’s happening only to wake up as an irreparable puddle.

“Okay?” Michael asks, sending flashbacks to the last few times he had asked that question and Calum’s answers: always positive, whether a verbal yes or a nod or a fierce kiss and wandering hands.

“Yeah,” Calum says. Michael swallows.

Calum starts tracing a design on his back with his finger, barely-felt with Michael still bundled up. Michael wills himself to stay in the moment rather than slipping into the past or wishing for a different future.

It’s not bad like this. He gets Calum close at least, receiving that little piece of contact from him that he’s been craving. If this is the last time they’re like this, he wants to enjoy it if he can.

He shifts, Calum freezing under him for a moment until they both exhale and relax a little more.

Michael closes his eyes and wills himself to sleep.

“Michael?” Calum whispers after a few minutes. For a moment he considers not answering, sure that anything Calum might think to say in the dark of the night will be something he doesn’t want to hear, but all he’s been asking for the past few weeks is his attention, and it seems vindictive to reject it now.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Michael should ask for clarification on what, exactly, Calum is apologizing about. He’s opened the door to this conversation, and Michael should take the opportunity to finally walk through and get their wires straightened out, but he can’t bring himself to do any of that, not like this. Not when Michael is breathing him in and stealing his warmth and there’s absolutely nothing between them to act as a buffer.

In the dark cuddled up together, Michael can keep pretending that Calum isn’t about to crush him. As long as he doesn’t ask for clarification, it’s like Schrodinger’s heartbreak: Michael can be both loved and lonely at the same time.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” he asks. “We need to talk about it, but I’m tired. And cold. Not tonight.”

“Okay,” Calum says. Michael waits to see if there’s anything else, but Calum just resumes tracing his secret design on Michael’s back.

Michael closes his eyes and hopes they don’t freeze to death in the night, twin skeletons found tangled together by some unsuspecting third party when the thaw comes. He’s not sure when he falls asleep and begins to dream, but in his mind Calum presses a kiss to his hair and Michael tries not to let such a simple action break him.

-/-

When he wakes up the bed is cold and empty again. It shouldn’t be surprising, certainly not after last time. There was less expectation to stay here, but everything is ugly in the cold light, shattering the fragile balance of the night before. Michael feels a pit in his stomach, but also a hot flare of anger.

Calum is the one who came begging for his company yesterday after completely ignoring him for weeks. Calum is the one who left without a trace after Michael showed him he loves him the best way he knows how. Calum is the one who keeps running away from this, but Michael is the one who keeps getting hurt and that’s not fair.

It’s a little warmer in the building now, the heaters likely getting sorted while they were sleeping, but Michael still grabs a blanket. No one answers Calum’s door and the bathroom seems to be empty. He heads downstairs to see if he has set himself up in the lounge again and knows he’s on the right track when he starts to hear piano music drifting softly towards him the more he descends the stairs.

Calum is one of the only people who ever uses the grand piano in the lounge. It’s slightly out of tune, just enough for Michael himself to notice but for Calum to complain about a lot. Michael has spent a lot of later nights in the lounge listening to him play, whether he was practicing back when he used to be a music major and take lessons or just playing for fun. Calum curses a lot when he practices, but Michael has also caught him with his eyes closed and a content smile on his face, letting the music take him away. Watching him like that, Michael sometimes wonders why Calum switched from music to science, but the rarity of the moments makes them all the more special.

He’s playing a piece that he’s been working on for a while. Michael tries not to disturb him, walking slowly towards the chess set where another piece has been moved in a continuation of the game. Calum must have pulled the curtains by the windows up, deep drifts of snow piled against them and sunlight reflecting off the white to set the entire room aglow. In this setting and with this soundtrack, the morning feels less frosty.

The last note hangs suspended in the air and Michael holds his breath until it dissipates. Calum sighs, breaking his posture to slump down, and turns to face Michael.

“You’ve gotten better at that one,” Michael says.

“Easier to practice when I don’t have to go to the music hall and no one’s here to use the piano.”

Michael studies him, taking in his rumpled appearance. He doesn’t look like he’s been up that long, still in the same pants he went to bed in and already folding the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands to keep them warm.

The sweatshirt he’s wearing is one of Michael’s. His heart flip-flops.

“Did you want to talk now?” Calum asks.

“Yeah,” Michael sighs. Calum nods once. He scoots over on the piano bench, making room, and Michael gingerly sits next to him. After a moment’s hesitation, he offers part of his blanket, nearly sighing in relief when Calum accepts it.

“I’m sorry for how I left, and for not replying to any of your messages,” Calum begins. “That was a jerk move.”

“It was,” Michael says. “You’re my best friend, Calum. If I had known that’s how you’d react, I wouldn’t have--” He stops, because he doesn’t want to say he regrets sleeping with Calum unless he has to. It would be a lie. He’d rather have Calum as a friend than nothing, but the will-we-won’t-we would’ve killed him eventually, and the night itself was amazing right up until Calum left.

“I don’t want to jeopardize that,” he says instead. “You mean a lot to me.”

Calum presses his lips together.

“Why did you leave?” Michael asks. “I thought we were on the same page. I mean… you wanted it, right? You said you did. I thought you did. I didn’t--”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Calum interrupts. “I did want it. I really wanted it. Too much, probably.”

“What does that mean?”

Calum sighs, looking down at his lap and fidgeting with his sleeves again. Michael wants to know why he’s so nervous. He wants to grab his hands and hold him steady the way that Calum does for him when he’s freaking out, but that wouldn’t be welcome right now.

“Michael, I can’t do something casual with you. You’ve said before that you’re not looking for anything serious, but I can’t be friends with benefits, not with you. Not when I’m in love with you. It’d tear me apart.”

“What made you think I wanted something casual?” Michael asks. “Apparently you couldn’t tell, but that night was kind of a big deal for me. I’m not exactly known for sleeping around.”

“Michael--”

“I’ve been crushing on you since we met, okay?” Michael says, turning to face him more fully. “I wasn’t looking for something serious with anyone else because I’ve been hung up on you. That night was one of the best nights of my life, and then you weren’t there in the morning. I thought I had fucked up. I thought I had ruined one of the most important relationships in my life.”

“You didn’t,” Calum says, grabbing his hand. “I should have talked to you instead of running away. That’s on me.”

“Yeah it is,” Michael sulks. “Why didn’t you? Why’d you just assume what I wanted instead of bothering to ask me? That hurt, Cal.”

“I know.” Calum grimaces, then shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought I knew what you wanted. Or didn’t want, I guess. I didn’t consider that you could like me until you kissed me, and you’ve never shown interest in an actual relationship. I wasn’t ready for you to reject me.”

“But I wasn’t going to,” Michael says. “You’re you. You’re the exception.”

“I didn’t know that, though. We didn’t exactly sit down for a conversation. Our mouths were otherwise occupied that night, if I remember correctly.” Michael opens his mouth to protest, then snaps it shut.

He doesn’t remember exactly what he said in the heat of it, but he remembers biting back I love you, knowing it was too early to be throwing that phrase around, no matter how true it was. Maybe he ended up hiding the sentiment a bit more than he anticipated.

“You still should’ve talked to me,” he says.

“I know,” Calum replies, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better with that.”

Michael squeezes his hand back.

“So,” he says, “you like me?”

“Yeah,” Calum says. “A lot.”

“You got that I like you, too, right? I said that. I’ve had it bad for you since we met.” Calum frowns.

“You took a while to warm up to me. I thought you were still holding a grudge because I spilled your smoothie.”

“No, you had me tongue-tied,” Michael says. “I had to figure out how to function around you. You’re really hot and it made me flustered.”

“Shut up,” Calum says. He’s blushing, crimson staining his cheeks enough for Michael to see, sending a strong thrill of satisfaction through him.

“I’m serious,” he needles. “You’re ridiculously attractive, dude. You’re not going to hear the end of it from me now. I’ve said it once and now there’s nothing to stop me from saying it five times a day.”

Calum laughs and tucks his face into Michael’s shoulder. Michael feels his own happiness bubble up inside him, threatening to burst. He brings Calum’s hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it in an attempt to release some of the pressure.

“Are we boyfriends now?” Calum asks.

“Fuck yeah,” Michael says. “Unless you don’t want to be, but that’d be lame.”

“I want to be,” Calum says quickly.

“Good,” Michael says. “Then we are.”

“Good.”

They sit for a while, and this silence feels comfortable again, like their old ones. Michal could stay suspended in this moment like the final note of Calum’s piano song and feel content with it rather than uncomfortable. That more than anything lets him know they’ll be okay.

“I’m cold,” Calum says eventually.

“We should move by the fire.”

“We should eat breakfast,” Calum counters. Michael hums and gives Calum’s neck an exaggerated sniff, making him squirm and giggle again.

“You should shower,” he says.

“Fuck you. That’s rude.”

“I could join you?” Michael offers.

“These showers are not big enough for two people,” Calum says. “Nice try, though.”

He stands and kisses Michael on the forehead, tucking the blanket back around him.

“Can I kiss you properly?” Michael asks. Calum nods and leans down again, the gentle press of his lips both familiar and thrilling, sweeter in the morning light.

“Breakfast, then I’m going to shower alone, then I think we have a chess game to finish.”

“Or we could make out all day while we have the lounge to ourselves.” Calum considers him, tilting his head and giving a wry smile.

“We can do that if you win the chess match.”

“Deal,” Michael says. It’s an easy bargain, because Michael is better at chess than Calum is, and with that prize on the line nothing’s going to distract him.

“Breakfast,” Calum repeats, tugging on his hands until he’s standing, too. Michael leans forward and kisses him again, just because he can now. Calum beams and leads him to the stairs, Michael tripping over his blanket and Calum’s laugh filling the room.

It could just be the heating kicking in more, but Michael isn’t sure he needs the blanket right now, not when Calum is here warming him from the inside out.

#my writing #5sos fanfiction #malum #michaelownsmyheart #lads. I cannot describe to you the difficulty I had in picking a summary for this bad boy #I'm sorry it's vague but you just gotta trust me when I say the fic isn't bad #I personally think it has some great lines in there #anyway I made the moodboard before I wrote most of the fic what's up with that #just felt Creative I guess #in the wrong medium because I'm really skimming my personal deadline here #anyway! hope y'all enjoy

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thesunnyshow · 4 years ago

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Name: Juliet

Writing Blog URL(s): @wonderlustlucas

Nationality: American

Languages: English, beginner level French, teeny tiny bit of Korean

Star Sign: Virgo

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Favorite color: Pastel yellow

Favorite food: My mom’s Sunday gravy

Favorite movie: Howl’s Moving Castle (The Lion King is a close second though)

Favorite ice cream flavor: Specifically Turkey Hill’s Double Dunker (get it— it’s so good)

Favorite animal: Humpback whale

Go-to karaoke song: She’s Kinda Hot by 5 Seconds of Summer

Dream job (whether you have a job or not): Neurosurgeon! Or a Twitch streamer HAHA

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? Ahhh probably coffee, I love tea but I need my coffee </3

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? Shapeshifting! Clearly the superior superpower I don’t take constructive criticism.

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? This is weirdly specific, but I would love to be in Scotland during the 1700’s. Alternatively, the 1980’s.

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? 100%. I know everything happens for a reason but getting a redo and being able to fix all the big mistakes I made would be pretty nice.

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? One horse-sized chicken! 100 tiny horses would be crazy tiring.

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? I would probably be the gay side character that gives good emotional advice but is hella lonely LMAO

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? Yes, both!

What are some small things that make your day better? Driving with the windows down and music blasting, picking up coffee, playing video games, & talking to my internet friends on Discord.

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I discovered my love for writing through Warrior Cats roleplay😭

What fandom(s) do you write for? Right now, only Kpop, but I wouldn’t mind writing for 5SOS or some of my other fandoms!

When did you post your first piece? On WattPad, December 2015. On Tumblr, April 2018 :)

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I write everything! Fluff/smut/crack is my favorite and slight angst (usually just slow burn though cus I’m soft).

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? Again, I write anything and everything! Currently, second or third person reader inserts are my main style, but I also do ships and would love to write more OCs.

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? Before Tumblr, I was on WattPad for different fandoms but eventually fell off. Then, when I got into Kpop in 2017, I found that urge to write again and decided to move to Tumblr since WattPad was becoming… weird. Plus Tumblr was a better fit for me!

What inspires you to write? To be completely honest, it’s the little things throughout the day that inspire me. For example, “Honey” was inspired by me not being able to open my locker in high school. “I Hemoglobin You” was based off my friend giving me a head rub while I was donating blood. Kpop idols just so happen to be my muses that I like to put into random moments of inspiration!

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? High school or college AUs are my favorite, along with some good ol’ friends to lovers slow burn. Angst isn’t my forte so I usually just stick to fluff, smut, and some crack. I haven’t written any but fantasy AUs are some of my favorites too! (RIP to my League of Legends AU that I started and haven’t touched in months.)

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? Just like other fanfiction authors inspire me, I hope some of my work inspires others. Considering fanfiction is free, there is so much out there to read and when I find a good story that inspires ME to write better, I’d love for my writing to do the same.

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? 3 options: 1) Skip that scene and jump ahead to one I’m excited to write; 2) Erase what part I’m on and completely redo it; or 3) Drop it. The majority of my works usually take a few months to write as I will completely stop working on it until I find the right inspiration again.

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? “Four” is definitely my favorite work. It’s one of my longer pieces and there was a lot of raw emotion in there on my end. I love the relationship between Hyunjin and the reader and especially love the ending. “Greatest Gift” for Chanyeol is my most successful, and one of my other favorites!

Who is your favorite person to write about? Easily Hwang Hyunjin. It’s so easy to place him in any of my works, and sometimes it’s a struggle to NOT write him. It sounds stupid but sometimes I really feel like I “know” him so being able to describe him physically and mentally is easy for me.

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? Yes and no. Yes, because most of the time, fanfiction is totally original as well and requires just as much thought as a 400,000 word novel. No, because fanfiction uses a specific person as a muse.

What do you think makes a good story? Detail and realistic dialogue! Of course, everyone has their own style of writing, but detail is especially important to me. Sure, you can have a great plot, but having concise, detailed writing to get immersed into makes a story so much better. I also find realistic dialogue to be a big deal— I hate when teenage characters are speaking in deep analogies because, if we’re being honest, my daily language is 95% just “Bruh.” If you’re like me, I’d actually prefer realistic dialogue over anything else.

What is your writing process like? Process… yikes. Sometimes… I have a random thought and then I’m like… hell yeah let’s write that. I actually have no process. I don’t outline, I just start writing and keep writing until I’m finished. Then I’ll read it all over to make edits, then I’ll use the Read Aloud feature to catch any mistakes I missed, then I’ll run it through Grammarly before posting!

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? Hm, maybe? In the future, possibly, but as of right now I wouldn’t use any of my fics to do so.

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? Oh, gosh, tropes. Gotta love them. Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, stuck together (AKA forced to share a bed), and fake relationships are my favorites. They may be corny, but I also love truth or dare or 7 minutes in heaven games in fics cus… they’re just classics. Also love fics with a popular x shy pairing. I can’t say I dislike many tropes, but I definitely have a love/hate relationship with vampire and werewolf tropes because of how romanticized they are.

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? Hm, to be completely honest, only a little bit? I mainly write for myself, it’s like a guilty pleasure to just get all my thoughts and desires out, and then I just so happen to make it public on Tumblr. Nevertheless, receiving comments and asks actually make my day, and sometimes I still struggle to wrap my mind around people enjoying my writing! So, thank you to everyone who has ever left me a kind message, I truly appreciate it ♥

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? Getting involved! I think one of the best ways to grow is to join networks, which not only gives you the opportunity to share your work on a greater scale, but also allows you to make connections. Like real life, making connections and making friendships with other writers can play a huge role in growing as a writer and growing your account.

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Yes :( As someone who’s involved with other fandoms, I’ve heard the way some people think of fanfiction and it’s really sad. People do not know how much goes into writing and just see it as cringey and disgusting when it’s just… not.

Do you think art can be a medium for change? Yes! In all its forms, art is something a creator can use to influence their audience (in a good way, hopefully).

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? Like I said in #40, I mainly write for myself. Even when I’m writing a request, chances are if I like the request enough I’m going to create a story out of it that fits my personal desires the most.

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? No! However, I’d still consider myself a small account and do not have TOO many works posted. But so far, I don’t think I’ve faced this problem :)

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? Only a few! My best friend Maggie is on Tumblr with me and only 2 of my other pals know I write fanfiction.

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? How much I love each and every one of them for supporting me and sticking around even when I won’t post for months🥺❤️

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? Don’t psych yourself out! In the time I’ve spent on Tumblr, I’ve never received any substantial hate. My main advice is don’t write fanfiction to get popular on the app, write fanfiction because you love to write and love your muses!

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? No, as much as Tumblr can be annoying at times, I love the people I’ve met and the content I’ve found and wouldn’t have wanted to use any other platform.

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? @pinktea99 — Mo, you’ve been around since the beginning honestly, and without you I wouldn’t have been able to come out of my shell! Thank you for all your love & support & for being my SF9 buddy❤️

Pick a quote to end your interview with:

“Like mate, stop procrastinating.” — 3RACHA

BONUS ROUND: K-POP CONFIDENTIAL

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listdepot · 5 years ago

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Top 10 Indie Games of the Decade (5 - 1)

5. Celeste

I don’t find difficult games fun. I can understand and appreciate people who enjoy the challenge and I’m not afraid to dive into something hard as long as its balanced right but more often than not, I find it purely frustrating and the result often gives me a headache. Celeste is... a hard video game. There are moments in the game where I had to put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again before dying a bunch more times on a single screen. But never once did I feel frustrated as I often do with games that are difficult. Because that’s what Celeste is about.

Madeline, the protagonist, is just coming off of what’s implied to be a big mental breakdown and her bad brains and anxiety-riddled feelings feel the best way to defeat it is to climb Celeste Mountain. Despite warnings from others, and offers of help from fellow climbers, Madeline is determined to make it on her own. She has to do it by herself. And soon her determination is taunted by her own internal monologue, manifested on his mysterious mountain by a spectre-like mirror vision of herself.

But Madeline never stops. And despite my occasionally need to put the game down, neither did I. The game at no point pulls a dirty trick, even during the vastly more difficult B-side challenges it provides. Its pure pattern recognition. So every so often I would put my controller down, take a breath, and pick it up again. Because I was as determined to control my frustration as Madeline was to conquer her fears. The headaches I often get with hard games never manifested. Sure, my hands hurt after every level from gripping the controller but, in the end, I had felt satisfied, even proud, to have scaled Celeste Mountain along with Madeline. Even if well... take a look

16 hours and 3000 deaths and it was fully worth it.

4. Cuphead

I remember it fairly vividly. A quick cut of indie games for the Xbox One back in 2013 at E3. Just a sizzle reel of the games coming and I saw Cuphead. I believe my exact reaction on Twitter was “HEY WAIT WHAT WAS THAT HOLD ON” or something similar.

As someone passionate about animation history, it stood out strong for all the reasons everyone loved it. The bouncing rubber hose animation (fully hand drawn and digitized), the echoes of Fleischer Studios and extremely early Warner Bros, the intensely jazzy soundtrack full of washed out audio. But what made Cuphead really unique to me was it wasn’t just a tribute to one old form of media.

Sure, of course, the 30s animation style was my big draw, but as more stuff came out about it, I noticed it was essentially just Gunstar Heroes, Treasure’s incredible frantic run and gunner for the Sega Genesis. With that element, Cuphead transformed for me from a game that looks pretty and has a fun concept to a game I knew I would love. And, despite waiting 6 years for it to come out on a platform I could actually play it on, I absolutely did love it.

Unlike Celeste, I did eventually put down the punishingly difficult ode to old school cartoons, but I know its there waiting for me to pick it up again and marvel at every focused enemy encounter and every lushly animated boss fights and stages.

3. What Remains of Edith Finch

Annapurna Films came out swinging hard in 2017 with their game publishing branch Annapurna Interactive by releasing Unfinished Swan creator Giant Sparrow’s follow up game, a simple “walking simulator” focused on familial lineage.

Edith Finch returns to her old family home located off the coast of Washington. A large estate full of locked doors full of rooms frozen in time, preserved as shrines. You see, the Finches are, in a way, unfortunately cursed, forever plagued with dying in often odd circumstances. As you explore this home and Edith’s narration guides the player. Each room lets you experience a minigame of sorts, a vignette of that very death, told often from the perspective of that very Finch, each one interpreted in its own way.

As morose as that sounds, and there are plenty of sad moments (you play as a damn baby who drowns in a bathtub for crying out loud), its a game who’s whimsy and gallows humor is proudly worn on its sleeve. One story has you playing as a hermit Finch who lives in the home’s basement, desperate to avoid the curse, as you open cans of food over the years. That’s it. That’s the gameplay. And as soon as that Finch feels confident to have survived the curse, he walks out through a hole in his bunker, only to find himself on the railroad tracks with a train approaching.

And in a lot of ways, that’s what Edith Finch is about. Its a game that exists to be about the absurdity and peculiarities of death, what makes it sad, what makes it often funny and how it affects those who love those who have died. Edith Finch is like playing an interactive eulogy to a family that never existed and there are multiple moments that gave me a good laugh and plenty that made me tear up.

2. Undertale

I don’t have anything to say about Undertale. Its an insanely popular video game and for good reason. A story full of heart and a weird sense of humor, a game that subverts traditional RPG mechanics by not only letting you whether to fight or spare your enemies but turns an enemy’s attack into an always cool bullet hell sequence.

Its a game who’s characters are well known, its lines are repeated often, its soundtrack has been turned into memes and is intensely beautiful constantly.

I have nothing to say about Undertale because Undertale speaks for itself. It is an independent underdog game that blasted into the stratosphere of video games. Its good. Play it sometime.

1. Frog Fractions

I wish I could even begin to describe what Frog Fractions is but I can’t begin to express my love for this free weird browser game. Ostensibly a parody of edutainment games, you play as a frog eating bugs to keep them away from fruit and those fruits you collect go toward upgrades. Its fairly simple until, uh... it isn’t.

The ultimate joke of the game is that this fraction game about frogs is barely about frogs and, of course, never about fractions. The only fractions that you actually see are the weird points you gain when eating the bugs. And then that edutainment game becomes a shoot-em-up, which becomes a maze, which becomes a text adventure, then a DDR-like, then it just keeps going on like this until it just suddenly ends. Frog Fractions just kinda never stops until it very quickly does.

What makes Frog Fractions incredible to me is there aren’t many other games that came out this decade that, despite the vast connection between people that now exists with social media and chat platforms like Skype and Discord, elicited such a strong “Hey you gotta check this thing out” reaction as Frog Fraction did in my circle. I remember there being a lot of talk about both not spoiling what happens in it and helping each other try to solve that goddamn text adventure section where you’re fixing a spaceship.

Frog Fractions, for its pure word of mouth weirdness, managed to create enough buzz to even make a sequel, one that came out years after the first one that was slowly revealed with an insane ARG that included hidden images in other indie games (Firewatch included) and eventually launched inside ANOTHER game that you had to dig deep to find. And as fun and weird as Frog Fractions 2, it only has its progenitor to thank for the pure weirdness that it. A game that exists to be “Check this out”, especially in an era of social media, and a game that is just so fantastically bizarre that sends you on a journey through Bug Mars and beyond. That’s the best indie game of the decade.

#lists #games of the decade #indie games

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soaptunes · 4 years ago

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Soap’s 2020 AOTY Reviews: JPEGMAFIA - EP!

This EP (!) is really just a collection of all the loose singles Peggy dropped on a roughly monthly basis over the course of 2020. Despite that, and maybe even because of it, it’s still a contender for best rap project of the year.

I feel like I’m getting tired of saying that JPEGMAFIA is one of the most creative artists making experimental hip-hop right now. Even more tired of that appellation is Peggy himself, who on one track here proudly shouts out, “Fuck the underground, I’m going pop.” Of course, on the same song (the raucous, clattering “COVERED IN MONEY!”) he claims he beats his dick when he looks in the mirror and compares his gun to Portia La Rossi’s strap-on, so. Take that as you will.

It’s strange that Peggy’s 2019 album All My Heroes Are Cornballs is over a year old now. That isn’t that long ago, but a lifetime has happened since then, and the thing still sounds more immediate than most projects that dropped this year. The same is true of 2018’s Veteran, but both projects have some songs that fall short. I won’t get specific, this isn’t a review of those albums, but a few tracks on both are experiments that don’t pan out - they get lost in the weeds of harshness and strange samples, they lack strong hooks or funny bars, they follow an obscure groove that’s hard to get a handle on. EP! proves that cut down to its essential moments, a JPEGMAFIA record can be a 25-minute blast.

This is only 8 songs, we can take it track-by-track, which I think we’ll be doing for any EP reviews I do on here.

The first song is “BALD!,” a song that dropped in February, just before the pandemic turned this singles series into a quarantine project. If your first thought is that the beat sounds like something out of an obscure Nintendo racing game, that’s because it is - the main sample here is from Ridge Racer 3D for the 3DS. In pretty much every picture of JPEGMAFIA you can find from before this song’s release, he’s wearing a bandana or sweatband or something around his forehead, but this song literally served as the announcement to his fanbase that he’d shaved his head. This is a fucking hilarious concept for a song to begin with, but the beat is genuinely pretty and Peggy’s flow is merciless. Knocking the breakbeats out from under the synths makes them wash out and sound like the audio equivalent of a shitty screensaver, which I mean in the best way possible.

BEST BAR: “Hairline proof God needs balance, BALD.”

“COVERED IN MONEY!” is a serious contender for song of the year for me. I would absolutely love to watch this guy figure out a beat, because the instrumental on this goes unbelievably hard and simultaneously makes no sense at all. It’s squeaky, stomping, clattering, shambolic, and feels like it’s completely falling apart. Does a beat like this come together in his head first? The drum pattern is borderline nonsensical, did it just come from him messing around in ProTools? I would genuinely love to know, he’s seriously a gifted producer and I wish he’d produce more for other rappers. Somehow Peggy hops into a triplet flow on top of this wonderful mess, the overall impression ending up somewhere in the ballpark of a cartoon character rapping while bouncing on a rusty pogo stick. The man namedrops Ving Rhames, Cannibal Ox, Bernie Mac, and the aforementioned Portia La Rossi all on the same song, and he’s really out for blood on this one, it’s one of his best flows ever. The way he makes the listener wait for the “fuck the underground” line is flawless, he’s slipping between time signatures effortlessly. He does an amazing job of wrangling the herky-jerky rhythms of the beat on the hook, making one of his stickiest choruses yet with the instant-classic line about “borderline dressing in drag.” There’s a beat switch about halfway through the song, which Genius tells me is a second half tilted “The Devil Wears Prada,” but “BALD!” has a lyric about them fucking up his lyrics on Genius, so, you know. It’s not as much fun beat-wise but his bars are just as good, and the song ties up with Peggy repeatedly apologizing and claiming he’s just been “shitted on.” This track is a must-listen, in my opinion, definitely one of the best of the year.

BEST BAR: “I’m covered in money, I’m out for the bag, I flew out the country, borderline dressin’ in drag.”

The sensual R&B of “BODYGUARD!” isn’t a total departure from stuff Peggy has done before - “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot�� had some of those vibes and “Free The Frail” proved that not only can he write a great melodic song, he’s a respectable singer. Bodyguard is Sexy Peggy coming to full fruition though, warm synths draping around soft beats and lyrics that could’ve come out of any 90’s hit. Peggy’s ear for a nice chord progression is evident, and there’s still strange touches like clipped vocals, off-kilter melodies, background chatter, and what sounds like a bicycle chain winding as part of the beat. This one took awhile to grow on me but it definitely did, and it provides a much-needed moment of calm on the EP.

BEST BAR: N/A, but I do like “who’s gonna turn me? Bitches gotta earn me.”

Then comes the remix of “BALD!” with Denzel Curry. The beat kicks in in the same way as it did before, and Peggy’s first verse is identical, but the entire back two-thirds of the song is one furious verse from Denzel. At first, his section gets a more muscular version of the racing game beat, but midway through, Peggy drops the drums out and just lets Denzel do his thing over a skeletal, washed-out instrumental. He spans a wide array of topics, from his stress over violence in his hometown, to loss of touch with his friends, to how cutting his famous dreads let him feel freer and more in control of himself. It’s a very cool verse, and I appreciate him linking it back to the haircut theme in an original way.

BEST BAR: “Dreadlocks had your boy like Sideshow Bob”

“CUTIE PIE!” puts Peggy on a genuine boom-bap beat, with nonstop flexing about his production chops. He gets pretty specific, and the title is apt given how genuinely adorable the sounds on the beat are. This one rolls almost normal for a JPEGMAFIA song, and despite the trove of weird references and the colorful atmosphere, it feels almost like a breakthrough, like he’s being more realistic or candid in his boasting. Like these are genuine points of pride for him and not just braggadocio, you know? Props for the music video here too, it’s definitely one of the best of the bunch. Super distinctive and weird, with Peggy hiding behind cacti and dancing in the middle of the desert with a near-nude woman.

BEST BAR: “Your beats inaccurate, muddy low end and you over-compressin’, ‘cuz you don’t know what you doin’, so y’all be stackin’ it, don’t know the diff so they just hold and attack it.”

The beat on “THE BENDS!” is almost oppressive, orchestra hits and a glacial pace lending the track a dark atmosphere. Autotune slurs Peggy’s bars, and the lyrics are relentlessly cynical and bleak. His actual political beliefs are obfuscated behind humor like “caught a body in a MAGA hat” as usual, but he ends the song with a breathy “fuck Trump,” so that much is clear. The glowing synth lines under the heavy saw bass give the first verse a cinematic quality, the “fantasies, fantasies, fantasies” line only adding to that. This is one of the briefer cuts, and one of the weaker ones too, but even this one has a ton of personality.

BEST BAR: “Strap on my hip ‘cuz I’m bitter and old, Mountain Dew sippers, they hating the scroll”

“ROUGH 7” is EP!’s only true miss, and it’s definitely not Peggy’s fault. The beat is shadowy and evasive, and his verse is ice-cold, but the featured rapper, Tommy Genesis, kind of flattens the song. Her adlibs are cringe-inducing and her rapping is flat and devoid of personality, she tries to do the emo-rap scream double-track but it doesn’t work with her style, especially since what she’s rapping about isn’t tragic or even sad at all. The track picks up instantly once Peggy comes on, as usual he can slither into the cracks of an unusual beat and inject his cartoonish, acrobatic character into it. This is a topically unremarkable verse by JPEGMAFIA standards, but he leans into the beat’s rhythms like on “COVERED IN MONEY!” and it ends up working out in his favor and restabilizing the song by the close. His dejected “wow.” and “huh.” and “nasty.” adlibs help make it too, it’s really kind of ridiculous to compare his adlibs to Genesis’s.

BEST BAR: “Light a square n*** up like Billie Jean.”

Peggy closes the EP with “living single,” probably the second-best song either. He sings a surprisingly heartfelt interpolation of Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” as the hook, bringing to mind his has-to-be-heard-to-be-believed cover of “Call Me Maybe.” This beat could pass for vaporwave, its slurred groove and downshifted vocal snippets lending an atmosphere to it like Peggy is sitting outside a club smoking after too much alcohol. The stabbing synth riff that breaks through the fuzz keeps him on his toes and lets him work up a relatively speedy flow over the dazed instrumental. I’m not sure why I rate this one so highly, but the vibes are excellent and this is one of the best verses on the project for sure, it’s another one where he really hooks his flow into the off-kilter lurch of the beat. That may be my favorite thing about him as a rapper, the way he can tie himself to a beat and make sure it’s working for him instead of being outshined by it, even if it’s completely insane.

BEST BAR: “Champagne for the pain and sufferin’, fans same color as voice of Tim Duncan”

Hoo, I wrote a ton about that. Maybe I won’t go track by track for the next EP, this is way too long already. In any case, I think due to its brevity and release method this great little record is going to get passed up on a ton of year-end lists, which is a damn shame. It has easily some of JPEGMAFIA’s best work on it - with no time for filler or botched experiments, Peggy delivered a tight, consistent, outrageously entertaining experimental rap joyride.

#jpegmafia #ep!#ep review #album review #alternative music #indie music #rap #hip hop #experimental rap #experimental hip hop

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photolover82 · 5 years ago

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The Masked Singer Season 3 Episode 2: Group A Playoffs (Thoughts and Guesses)

Hello, my fellow Masked Singer lovers! Yesterday was the playoffs for Group A of The Masked Singer, where 5 masks compete for 4 spots in the championship round (where the top 3 go into the final 9), so you know what time it is: me giving my predictions and opinions (I am adding opinions on performances and stuff too since it will be boring for me repeating the same freaking guesses over and over again even though I am inserting my little direction of this week’s batch of clues). Ok, here we go!

Let’s start with the reveal of the day... **SPOILER ALERT Y’ALL** don’t say I didn’t warn you... The person who got eliminated was **DRUMROLL PLEASE**

The Llama

Who was revealed to be **AGAIN SPOILER I SAY**

DREW FREAKING CAREY (aka Price is Right dude... well that’s how I know him)

I guessed it!!! Peep my recap from Monday... I knew it guys, it was kind of obvious but here are his clues from this episode:

They had superlative clues after the performance and his was “Most Likely to be Near Firing Cannons” = he was in the Marine Corp Reserves

In the clue package, he was playing an accordion in front of a live studio audience, pointing to his shows that he has done in front of a live studio audience, like Price is Right and Whose Line is it Anyways.

As for my opinion on his performance, I thought it was an average performance so it was no shock that he went home. I think he is a really good singer for someone who isn't a professional singer. Honestly, his costume was hilarious and his run on the show was great, especially seeing him move his strap on booty lmao. (Btw the song he sang was It’s Not Unusual by Tom Jones)

Anyways, now that that's done, let’s get into the 4 remaining masks who I still need to guess.

1. The White Tiger

Ok so let’s start with the White Tiger’s Performance: He sang Good Vibrations by Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch and honestly, he isn’t a great vocalist, which is expected because he isn’t a professional vocalist at all. However, his dancing made the performance for me and kind of made up for the vocals he lacked (sorry but the guy can rap at the very least, he cannot sing, he could talk sing or rap but singing isn’t something he should be doing full time, which is completely fine because it isn’t for everyone and he seems like a cool guy, no shade). Anyways, yeah, having said that, this is who I believe he is:

ROB “GRONK” GRONKOWSKI

Why do you think that, you may ask? Well, take a look at the clues:

All throughout the clue package, he mentions that he “loves a good block party” and he loves to dance. Well, Gronk is very well known for his insane block parties as I said last week so everything is tying together here.

Picture of a cow skiing: pun on his last name: Gron-KOW-SKI get it?

Boombox in the clue package: Patriots went viral with a video of them dancing and celebrating their Super Bowl victory with a boombox blasting music

Superlative: Most Likely to go to the mat for a friend= he did do a wrestling match with one of his close friends

2. Miss Monster

Performance: Miss Monster performed Fancy by Reba McEntire and I gotta say I loved how her voice sounded with the song. Like, the song is a typical country song, but her voice isn't what you will associate with country music but the blend of both is so awesome to watch. You can tell that she is an experienced vocalist, kind of gives me the same vibe the Flower aka Patti LaBelle gave me last season, such an iconic vocalist. So, of course my guess has to be the legendary....

CHAKA KHAN

Ok so let’s look at the clues aka the reasoning behind my guess:

In clue package, we see a queen chess piece and she is the queen of funk as we mentioned last week.

Butterfly drawing = has a song called “Hot Butterfly”

Superlative: Most Likely to be in the presence of royalty = she did meet the queen in 2009 and she is royalty in the music industry

3. The Kangaroo

Performance: Kangaroo performed You Know I’m No Good by Amy Winehouse and wow that song was perfect for her like on point with her voice. Her voice is amazing, which I never expected from looking at the mask. Ok, so my guess for this one is....

JORDYN WOODS

Ok so, I have debated back and forth with this one, the only doubt I have is the voice because I have never ever heard her sing... I searched on YT and nothing popped up of her singing, which is odd. It would make sense if her voice was like the llama or the white tiger, good but not amazing. However, she sounds like a professional singer so idk but these clues add up:

In the beginning of the clue package, it says “Kangaroo Kourt,” which could be alluding to her previous association with the Kardashians

We see makeup in the bench and Jordyn did have a makeup collaboration with Kylie Cosmetics and does makeup tutorials on YouTube

Also, she made a Fresh Prince reference saying she wanted a “fresh start” while playing basketball because her father was a sound engineer on that show.

Superlative: Most Likely to Appear in a List with Seal and Mike Tyson... what I have seen about this is that this is a list of celebrities with gap teeth (which she has since fixed with dental work)

4. The Turtle

Performance: I am gonna say it, Turtle is literally my favorite singer in this group of masked celebrities. He is so smooth and his voice is like butter. He sang “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur and I am sure everyone in the audience was in a trance after that performance. His voice is so amazing, but also so recognizable which is why I think he is the one, the only, the ever so dreamy...

JESSE MCCARTNEY

Ok so I am so sure about this, you cannot change my mind, but if you insist, we’ll look at the clues:

In the clue package, there’s a menu with Ginger Snaps= his mother is named Ginger; Slow Cooked Beets= had a band called Sugar Beats before Dream Street

Also, there is something written on the chalk board that says “Don’t Rave Ever At My School Turtle,” which if you take the first letters of each word, spell out DREAM ST, the name of his former boy band back in the day.

Another thing I found interesting was that he was the voice of Leonardo in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which could be the source of inspiration for the costume he’s wearing.

Superlative: Most Likely to Hunt for Booty = Pirates = he did a couple of acting roles and his first movie was a pirate movie

Ok, so that is it! Thank you for reading my little recap/commentary/deep dive on the Masked Singer! I’ll see you guys next week with some more guessing and reveals. Bye!

#The Masked Singer #TheMaskedSinger #the masked singer season 3 #drew carey

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let-it-raines · 6 years ago

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Betting on the Bullseye (Part 6)

Summary: Emma Swan loses a bet that means she has to ask her celebrity crush to be her date to her office's annual fundraising gala. Killian Jones is that celebrity crush. She expects all kinds of humiliation and for her dignity to be completely lost. What she doesn't expect is for him to say yes.

Rating: Mature

A/N: You guys are continuously the best, and I ask you to remember that not all things are resolved in one chapter :D

Found on ao3: beginning | current

Tag list: @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @branlovesouat @dreadpirateemma @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog

“So tell me, darling,” he murmurs, his fingers tracing the concave of Emma’s breasts before he finds her left wrist and feels the thin bones beneath her skin, “what exactly is this little mark on your wrist? It’s not a freckle, that much I’ve gathered. I don’t believe it’s a birthmark either.” He looks up from her wrist to see her eyes trained on his fingers, lips parted in fascination. She’s so bloody beautiful, her hair mused from their activities and her cheeks flushed in pink.

“It’s a tattoo.”

He barks out a laugh, the sensation rumbling through his stomach before he looks back at her wrist and sees that the mark is perfectly black and perfectly round, like the needle touched her skin before she pulled away. “Is it really? What would that be? The world’s tiniest tattoo?”

“No,” she shakes her head, pulling her wrist from his grasp so that she can look at it, eyes narrowed in concentration. “It was supposed to be a buttercup, but I chickened out the moment the needle hit my skin.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” “Yeah, well, it was my eighteenth birthday, and I was finally going to do something not under the control of my foster parents at the time. But then I was basically, like, holy shit I’m not sure I want this on my skin for the rest of time. I’d never really had anything in my life that permanent, and it just seemed overwhelming.”

He grabs her wrist back, pulling it to him and pressing a kiss to her skin, right over the dot. “I like it. You ever think about going and getting it finished?”

“Nah,” she sighs, scooting closer to him and pulling the blankets up over them while her freezing feet stick between his calves, “not really. I like tattoos and all, but I never could quite figure out what I wanted. Maybe one day.” She runs her hands down his arm, finding his bare wrist. “What about you?”

“I actually almost got one as well, but it was only when I was thinking about going into the Navy.” “What?” Emma laughs, the sound sweet in his ears as her eyes scrunch up in amusement. “I didn’t know that. When were you almost in the Navy?”

“Well, you know, Liam was in it back home, the Royal Navy, and when we moved here, I didn’t know what else to do so I looked to see if I could enlist with how my citizenship was. But I couldn’t and instead started working building sets.”

“How does one go from almost joining the military to building sets for movies?”

“With a hell of a lot of luck and an older brother who found the job listing in the newspaper.”

“Wow,” she laughs, whistling under her breath, “that’s old school. A newspaper?”

“Hey now,” he chuckles, leaning over and pressing the quickest of kisses against her lips, feeling her smile into it, “I am not old. You’re four years younger than me, darling. Did you not do the same?”

“Online, buddy,” she speaks against his lips before capturing his bottom lip between her lips and rolling over so that she’s half on top of him, her skin smooth and soft and warm. “When’s your birthday anyways?”

“Shouldn’t you know that in all of your googling of me?” He waggles his eyebrows, and Emma slaps his shoulder while her eyes roll. “I’m kidding, love. It’s May eighth.”

“Gotta keep that in mind.” “Yeah, you planning on being around?”

He’s testing the waters, seeing if Emma’s willing to say anything in the darkness of the night and the playfulness between the two of them right now. He knows that she’s still slightly unsure of him, of this, and he’s taking a risk pushing her. But if anything, this week has proven they work well together, that they are good together.

“Maybe,” she shrugs, breasts moving against his chest, “if I can be. Or if you want me there.”

He moves his hand from her back to tuck her loose hair behind her ears. “I do want you there, but it’s on a Wednesday.”

“How do you know that already?”

“Because I know everything.”

“Such a smartass.”

Emma falls back asleep before he does, curling off of him and around her pillow while he struggles to fall into the same slumber, eventually succumbing after scrolling through his photo roll from the last week, deleting anything that’s blurry or unfocused. He wakes to movement and a loss of heat, his eyes opening to find Emma’s bare legs moving above him as she gets out of bed.

“Hey,” he mumbles, rolling over and grasping at the back of her bare thigh, skin unbelievably warm, “where are you going?”

“Downstairs for coffee,” she answers while his fingers move up and down her leg to try to coax her back to bed, wanting this morning to last as long as possible, “but I need something to wear because your house is freezing.”

“I think your jeans are somehow over by the balcony door.” “Yeah, that’s not happening. Those are like wearing spanx over my entire body. Where’s your closet?”

“In the bathroom, on the right.”

Emma walks away then, swaying her hips in a way that he truly appreciates, and he watches her go until his phone goes off. He fumbles around to find it, seeing that Will texted him to ask about plans for the day. He can’t do anything. He’s got Emma and work, and Will’s going to have to wait to hang out until Emma’s not around, as sad as that makes him. While they’re texting, he mentions Emma, telling Will about her staying with him and saying they’ll talk later about all of the new things in their lives. It’s been awhile since they had a beer.

Now that he’s a little more sure with what’s happening with them, he’s got to tell the rest of his friends and his family. Really now, Liam is the only one who doesn’t know, and he makes a mental note to tell he and Elsa that’s he’s seeing someone new. Maybe Emma can meet everyone the next time she’s in LA, whenever that will be.

If that’s not too much. She might not be up for that.

He hears a cough before looking up to see Emma wearing the blasted ugly Christmas sweater he bought to match hers for the video. He barks out a laugh, unable to contain his amusement at the ridiculousness of it all.

“Bloody hell, darling, what possessed you to put that on?”

“What possessed you to keep it?”

His right eyebrow ticks up, and his hands find their way to her hips under the sweater, pulling her down on top of him so that she’s straddling his hips, her skin warm against his.

“What? You’re telling me you didn’t keep yours?”

“Only because we have a tacky Christmas sweater party at the office every year.”

He hums as his hands run up her sides over the sweater, finding their way to rest at her neck. “You know, the first time I ever saw you, you were wearing this sweater. I was actually in this very bed and thought you were beautiful.”

“That sounds a little pervy, Killian.”

His eyes roll, and he leans forward to press a quick kiss against her cheek. “Shut it, Swan. That’s not what I meant. Robin showed me your video, and he found you to be positively charming, just as I did.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like that video to be purged from the internet.” His eyebrow quirks again, and he smiles looking up at her, the sweater only making everything better. He can definitely understand her not wanting that to be online, but he’s rather fond of the video that brought them together. “Not that I’m not glad I’m here. I am. I know I said that last night but – I really…I really like you.”

His thumb moves against her cheek and he swears he can practically see the affection in her eye. “I like you, too, darling. You need not worry about those affections being returned.” He rolls his hips to make a point, and she scoffs, laughter making its way through the both of them even with his ridiculously dirty move when his attraction to Emma is so much more than physical. “Obviously. I’d also really like that breakfast you were talking about before I see you off, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

“You have to stop saying that.”

“Never.”

She climbs off his lap, adjusting the sweater while leaving the bedroom and walking down the hall. He takes a moment to calm himself down after Emma walks away, leaving an imaginary trail of green tinsel behind her. God, that’s the sweater that somehow keeps on giving when it comes to her. How dare she suggest he throw it out. He never would, especially now that he knows her so intimately, physically yes, but mostly emotionally. She’s bloody wonderful, and her telling him she likes him meant the world to him, even if he’s far past that stage.

But he’ll let Emma pace them, her walls built a little higher than his when it comes to trusting someone new with their hearts.

Groaning with the ache in his strained thighs, he gets out of bed, pulling on his sweatpants from work yesterday and brushing his teeth before walking downstairs, a bounce in his step he hasn’t had in awhile despite how tired he is, how much Emma wore him out last night. She’s leaving today, but he’s trying not to think about that too much, pushing the thoughts down knowing that he has to work right after she gets on her flight and that’ll distract him from his melancholy. It’s been a blessed week, and not just last night – or early this morning really – and his mind is already running through scenarios of him being finished with filming and able to fly to Boston to visit her near the end of April. It’s only a month, maybe a bit more really, but it feels a bit longer right now.

Even if he’s trying to push that thought to the back of his mind so that he can enjoy breakfast with Emma before he drives her to LAX.

He hears voices when he gets downstairs, and the moment he recognizes the one that’s not Emma, his pulse increases and his body heats in fear.

Fuck.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“I was invited. Killian invited me.”

“Why would he do that? Are you delusional? You asked him out through a video, so I’m kind of thinking you are. God, I should have talked to him about that, especially after I saw the photos. I should have never let it slide.”

“He’s a grown man. He can make his own decisions.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Liam,” he hisses, stepping into the room to see Emma shielding herself behind the island counter while Liam stands with his arms crossed by the stove. He looks pissed, but so is Killian. Liam can’t just barge into his home and accost his guests and then threaten to call the police like he knows what’s going on. “What the fuck, brother? You can’t just walk in my home and start yelling at someone I asked to be here.”

“What are you talking about, little brother? You asked her to be here? She’s a fan. Have you lost it?”

His blood boils, the rage setting in as he stares down his brother. “She’s…we’re dating. And she’s supposed to be here. You’re not.”

“I have a key, and I hadn’t heard from you in days,” Liam grits, straightening his shoulders in a move that Killian knows is an intimidation factor he’s perfected over the years. He’s not going to let it work today, not with this. “I was worried about you and walking into this didn’t exactly help my fears. How was I supposed to know she hadn’t broken into your house? She’s even wearing the bloody sweater.”

“I’m just,” Emma stutters, stepping backward until she’s standing beside him, her hand lightly brushing his, “I’m going to go upstairs and get packed to leave. I feel like this isn’t my conversation to be had.”

“Emma,” he cautions, looking down at her with pleading eyes, “you don’t have to go.”

She smiles. It’s soft, and it’s sad, something he doesn’t want to see grace her face when they were just so happy. So damn happy. Fuck, he should have already told Liam, but he was waiting to see where this was going and was going to tell him later this week. He was already planning it all out. He knew Liam would be protective, but he didn’t think he’d be like this. This is ridiculous. He’s a grown man. He should be able to make his own damn choices. Why the hell is his brother acting like this?

“No, Killian, I think I do.”

At that, Emma walks out of the room, leaving him with Liam and an anger that’s barely contained within him.

“What the hell was that? What do you mean you’re dating her?”

“I mean that she and I are seeing each other,” he explains, stepping forward and slamming his hands against the marble counter. “We talk, kiss, she stays at my place, all the things normal people do. You’re married. You should understand the concept.”

He doesn’t technically know if they’re dating, the words not explicitly said between them, but if anyone doesn’t need to know that right now, it’s Liam who seems to have a stick up his arse this morning.

“Very funny, brother,” Liam scoffs while rolling his eyes. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, so you’ve said. I do, and it’s really not any of your goddamn business.”

“Killian, you could be making a mistake here. Think about what’s happened before.”

“You’re not my father, Liam. And I’m a grown man in my thirties, not some naïve kid who doesn’t know better. I can make my own choices without your judgment even if you don’t seem to think so right now.”

“I am the closet thing you have to a dad, and you need my help.”

“We don’t have a dad, Liam,” he spits, stepping closer to Liam so that their feet touch. “I sure as hell don’t need you to be one because you likely scared Emma away when that’s absolutely the last thing that I needed or wanted. I am willing to try again, to open myself up after not being with someone for so long, and you aren’t even giving Emma the benefit of the doubt. Hell, you’re not even giving it to me.”

Liam’s lips part before he scratches at his chin, his jaw ticking. “You’re bloody in love with the woman.”

“Of course I am.” He slaps his hands against his thighs before running his hands through his hair, making it stand up in a hundred different ways, and taking a few steps back as he shakes his head back and forth in frustration. “I love her, and you’re being an insufferable ponce.”

“She’s a fan, little brother. How could you be so blind? Have you not learned your lesson from the past? All I want is to protect you.”

“Younger brother, and while I’m younger than you, I’m not bloody stupid. I know what I’m doing here.”

“Do you?” He takes a step forward so that he towers over Killian. He’s not that much shorter, but at this moment, he feels about as big as a child. “She practically ran away when someone other than you knew about her, someone who could protect you. Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious?”

“For God’s sake, Liam. You walked in on her while she was barely dressed and then threatened to call the police on her. She’s embarrassed and likely pretty pissed that you berated her when you realized who she was. It’s not suspicious. Robin knows about her, so does Will as of this morning. It’s new and we’re figuring things out, and I don’t need you and your pompous arse ways ruining something before it even begins.”

“Killian – ”

“No, just leave. I’ll talk to you later when I don’t want to punch you, but I don’t want you here right now. And I’d rather you not try to talk to me until I call you. I’ll work things out with you later since you’re not flying across the country this afternoon.”

He doesn’t wait for Liam to leave before he runs up the stairs, his anger at his brother replaced with fear that Emma’s going to be in her room packing her bags and leaving without saying goodbye. She’s not in her room, her bag still unpacked with clothes everywhere, and he checks in the bathroom before jogging to his room and finding her sitting on the couch he has out on the balcony, the sliding glass doors open so that the ocean air travels in.

“Hey,” he whispers, cautiously walking outside and squatting down in front of her, taking her hands in his even though she doesn’t squeeze back, her hands cool against his, “you okay?”

She doesn’t look at him, her gaze trained on the water outside. She’s so bloody beautiful even with her hair all knotted and her makeup smudged while wearing a ridiculous Christmas sweater. But she’s probably pissed and upset, and he’s honestly surprised he wasn’t immediately berated for everything that just happened. He can’t even begin to imagine how she feels. It’s one thing for him to be pissed at his brother. It’s another for Emma to have been berated by a man she doesn’t know for doing nothing but existing. God, Liam, why of all mornings did he have to show up today?

He rubs his thumb over her knuckles trying to coax her to look at him, and when she finally does, he gives her a lopsided smile.

She doesn’t return it.

“Is your bother always such an ass? I thought you said he was your best friend.”

“He is, and he can be,” he explains, trying to think how to explain things to her. He knows Liam was wrong and an arse, and he’s right pissed at him. But he’s still is brother, and there has to be a way to work all of this out. He can’t – he doesn’t want any of these relationships to be suffering, but it might be too late now, at least with Emma. Liam can be easily fixed, their bond too strong not to make it past something like this. “Liam’s my brother, but he’s also like a father figure, as you know. He’s a little protective.”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes and yanking her hands away from his to cross them under her chest. “I don’t have a brother or a father, but that wasn’t protective. That was asshole. And I know I have no right to be a raging bitch to you about your brother but – ”

“You have every right.”

“Okay, then. Your brother makes a fucking horrible first impression, and I kind of want to shove a very pointy heel up his ass. How dare he accuse me of all of that. I’m an adult. I’m not some kid in a foster home who gets reprimanded for being out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I sure as hell shouldn’t be reprimanded for being in a house I’m supposed to be in.”

He cringes, the thought that she’d relate that back to her time in foster homes not occurring to him. He should have known. He spent time in them himself, and she’s right. He knows what it’s like to be yelled at for being somewhere you thought was safe, and it’s not pleasant. God, this is all screwed up.

“I know.”

“And fuck Killian,” she uncrosses her arms and throws them in the air, “why the hell didn’t you tell him about me? What was this? Just some game? A week vacation just so you could sleep with me? Because I’m feeling like an idiot right now.” “Emma no. I lo – I like you so much. You have no idea.”

“Then what? Because all of my friends know about you. And don’t think I missed how Robin thought I was here for some kind of fan engagement. I’m kind of feeling like a dirty little secret right now, and that is not me. I’m not a plaything or someone to be ashamed of.” “Swan, I know, okay? I fucked up. My brother fucked up. We all fucked up. I’m not ashamed of you. I just didn’t know what to say. It sounds so stupid now, but I didn’t…don’t know what we are. And I felt like it would be odd for me to just tell them I’ve made a new friend who I very much like, but I’m now realizing I went about this all wrong. But Emma, love, never in my wildest dreams could I be ashamed of you. I am so, so sorry that I could ever make you feel that way. You don’t deserve it.”

Her eyes flicker up and down his body, the green not nearly as bright as usual despite the water that resides there. She’s studying him, using her superpower she shared with him one night during a phone call to see if he’s lying. He knows that’s what she’s doing, and he tries to steady his gaze. He’s not lying. Every word he said was true, and he hopes she sees that. She has to see that. He can’t lose her, not now, not after he’s finally feeling like things are going right.

But if she wants to go, if this bothers her enough, he has to let her. He can fight for her, but she has to want him. And if anything, he deserves for her to be furious with him. He did screw up. Liam certainly hasn’t helped matters, making everything an absolute shit show, but it isn’t all Liam’s fault. A lot of it is on him.

“I believe you,” she finally whispers, her eyelashes hitting against her cheeks before she looks him dead in the eye, “but I am pissed. That’s not just going to go away.”

“I know.”

“And I still have to go home.”

“I know.”

She wipes away under her cheeks before looking back out at the ocean, the sky suddenly dark and waves rough, as if a storm is coming. “I need to pack.”

“You have time.”

“Not really. I’m supposed to be at the airport in an hour, and if anything, I know that traffic is horrible here.” She gets up then, using the sweater to cover herself and then walking through the balcony doors into his bedroom and out of view.

He leaves her be while she packs, picking up her clothes from the bedroom and folding them before getting her shirt from the hallway, picking his own up as well. It’s all a mess, but he thinks that it has to get better. It can’t possibly get worse right now But he has to stop screwing up when it comes to Emma. Like she said, her coming here this week was a huge deal for her – for him too – and after so many days of bliss, it’s been mucked up in a matter of minutes.

Sighing, he takes the folded clothes and heads down to her room, knocking on the door even though it’s ajar. He doesn’t want to invade in her personal space if she doesn’t want him to. She’s changed into leggings and a sweatshirt, the Christmas sweater long gone.

“Hi,” he holds up the clothes, “I brought you these.”

She gives him a soft smile, lips slightly tugging up before taking the clothes out of his hands, her fingers brushing against his skin and sending pinpricks throughout his body. “Thank you. I, um, I need to go soon.”

“I know. Can I still take you to the airport?”

She nods her head in answer before turning around and finishing her packing. He stays at the doorway for a moment, watching her, before heading back to his room and taking a shower, letting the hot water hit his skin and burn out all of his frustrations.

He takes her to the airport, and as if the world has decided to turn against him, there’s no traffic on the way to LAX. He was expecting time with her, time to work things out, but he gets there in record time after a car ride full of awkward silences and stilted conversations. He needs more than this, doesn’t want to let her go quite yet, so instead of dropping her off at the curb he pays for one-day parking and pulls into the spot nearest to the building.

When he turns the engine off, neither of them move, silence settling between them while planes roar up above and car horns honk in the distance.

“I should – ”

“Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Swan, I know you have to go. You have to be at work tomorrow, and you have this entire life at home. A life that is yours and wonderful, and I’m so glad I’ve gotten to be a part of it. But I don’t want this week to be it. And I know I fucked up, but I can be better. Do better. For you.”

“I’m not…it’s not that. It’s not you,” she fumbles, resting her head back against the seat and turning to face him, the corners of her lips tugging downward. “It’s…God, Killian. It’s just that I’ve had a bad day. This morning was like coming down from some kind of wonderful high, and I’m wallowing in it and in going home. I need some time to think things through. But it’s fine. We’re – whatever we are is fine.”

“Yeah?”

She smiles and nods her head before her palm find his cheek, fingers running over the scruff. “You and me, KJ, we are complicated, this relationship, us being together, and us on our own, but despite every fear that I have, I think things might be okay. If anything, I think me going home will allow us to calm down and help us figure things out. God knows I need it.”

He turns his head and kisses her palm, lingering there for a moment. “So you’re not going to get on that plane and never talk to me again?”

“You know too much. I can’t stop talking to you now.”

He barks out a laugh, the tension in the small space fading away, before leaning across the console and tentatively pressing a kiss against Emma’s cheek, lingering to see if her body tenses or if she’d relax into it, silently letting him know how she feels about more physical contact. She doesn’t tense and she doesn’t relax, but she does turn her head and press a kiss against the corner of his lips, almost there but not quite.

“I have to go.”

“I know,” he sighs, smiling down at her with their foreheads pressed together. “There’s not a day will go by I won’t think of you.”

“And yet I’m the stalker.” He laughs against her lips before kissing her again, a fleeting little thing that’s not enough, but it’s a real kiss this time. And she kisses him back. “Good.”

They get out of the car, and he gets her luggage out of the trunk, placing it on the ground and locking everything back up. He begins to trail it toward the walkway so they can go inside, but she stops him, her hand on his chest.

“I can go in on my own.”

“Are you sure?”

“I do know how to take care of myself believe it of not.” She rolls her eyes before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug, the scent of her perfume invading his senses. She smells like flowers and the vanilla of her shampoo that’s lingering on his sheets. He’s going to miss that. It sounds insane, but he is. She pulls back and takes a step away, separating them and smiling. “I’ll text you when I get home, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan, love.”

He nods and she turns around, walking away with her suitcase trailing behind her, and he feels like the most dramatic arse in the world. He is, isn’t? He shouldn’t be this upset, but he’s also watching the woman he loves walk away when they’re still unsure of everything. It’s a new relationship, and all of the thrills and fears spark through his body as he watches the blonde hair disappear around the corner.

The skies open up then, the storm he sensed earlier while out on the balcony coming into full effect, and it storms in Los Angeles twice in one week, water beginning to wash everything away while also nurturing new growth.

Killian drives to set after dropping Emma off, pulling through the guarded gates and parking before making his way to hair and makeup. It usually doesn’t take long, but he knows that they have to paint cuts and bruises across his skin today, making everything elongated. He closes his eyes as his makeup artists do their magic, occasionally taking a sip of the coffee that was already waiting for him when he arrived, and when he opens them up, he looks as if he’s been slashed across the face, blood escaping his skin.

“Bloody hell,” he grimaces, testing out his facial movements, “this is fantastic but also terrifying, Kendall.”

“Thank you. I’ve been practicing on your mannequin.”

“Love, I’ll never quite be over you having a realistic copy of my face. It’s damn creepy.”

“Yeah, well, it helps. Don’t get wet when you’re going to costume, okay?”

“I’ll try my best.”

He’s dressed in his worn and battered clothing, rips and blood stains covering his body before he spends the next three hours shooting the aftermath of the fight scene they begin yesterday. It’s like torture, his body aching with every movement, and he knows half of it is from the physical exertion of the stunts yesterday but the other half is from him rutting himself into Emma for half of the night. God, how the hell does being sore make him think of her? That’s ridiculous.

But the scene is eventually finished, and while he’s sure they’ll make them do reshoots later, he’s glad to get to sit down and have his makeup removed before a few new, lesser scars are added to show his healing as days past while the rest of this scenes for this episode are filmed throughout the rest of the day and far into the night.

He lets a driver take him home, leaving his car there to pick up tomorrow, and by the time he gets into bed, he’s nearly asleep, eyes fluttering closed until he remembers that he hasn’t talked to Emma, his phone staying in his trailer without use all day.

Emma: Just landed. It was a long flight, and the woman next to me talked the entire time.

Emma: I know all about her son’s problems in his marriage, and she asked for my advice on what young women want out of relationships.

Emma: There was very long conversation about sex. I have still not recovered.

Emma: Anyways, I’m home, back at the apartment and everything. Maybe you could call me when you get these?

He checks the time stamps and sees that these are all from hours ago, and while it’s four in the morning here, it’s seven back in Boston and Emma will be up getting ready for work. Pressing her number, he calls.

“Hello?” she answers, yawning into it.

“Hi, love. Sorry I missed your texts earlier. It was a crazy day of filming, but I’m glad you’re home safely.”

“Me too. Don’t you need to be sleeping?”

“No, no,” he protests even as he curls himself into bed, “tell me about your flight before you have to go to work. I want to hear all about this sex talk of yours.”

“Of course you do.”

“Yeah, well, can you blame me? You’ve painted an interesting tale.”

“Okay,” she begins before weaving him the tale of her flight home and her time in the airport, lulling him into a sense of comfort he hasn’t really felt in the past twenty-four hours. He didn’t think she’d be open to so much talking, but he can hear the smile and the laugh in her voice as well as the sounds of traffic behind her as she moves through the streets of Boston. Things are messed up, repairs still needed to be made and conversations needed to be had, but for this moment, he thinks he and Emma are going to be okay.

#betting on the bullseye #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic

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primal-slayer · 7 years ago

Video

youtube

Katie gets VERY candid (kudos to tv echo over at previouslytv arrow forum for transcribing majority of the video)

On working on Arrow and the Arrowverse, KC: "It's been pretty amazing, ever since the pilot. our writers, producers, they've been pretty awesome. They, um - for me, specifically, you know, they've written my character very well. Then they have - by the way, spoiler alert - uh, not written my character very well. Season 4. Episode 19? Is it 419? (Pauses) Nobody knows. Okay, good, we'll keep it like that. And then they bring the character back. (Laughs) And they start writing for you again. So it's awesome."

On whether Sara and Earth-2 Laurel will ever meet, KC: "Interesting. I've actually brought this up to our showrunner, Marc Guggenheim, because when I was doing research and back story for Black Siren, I specifically asked, 'Is there a world on which Black Siren will meet Sara and/or Laurel Earth-1? And if so, what does that look like?' And he just said, 'Interesting.' Dot, dot, dot. So, I feel like that's more like, stay tuned, and we'll see how that turns out. (Laughs) So I definitely think there's a world in which they play that out, and we'll see what happens. It'd be pretty crazy."

On how the BC/BS Canary Cry is shot, KC: "In silence, atually. I'm not kidding. When I first started doing the Canary Cry and they had me bring it to screen, I was really stressed out about the fact that I would be screaming a - like, probably quite loud. And also in the middle of the night in downtown Vancouver, shooting outside. People, I don't know, they may not realize we're shooting a TV show and I'm playing the character whose scream could kill someone. Or at least damage their ear drums. So I just literally did it without a sound. So imagine just a 'haah' sound. And that's been sort of the way whoever's come after me has sort of handled the whole situation. Because we would also really love to continue having a voice to be able to work days after. Uh, and if you're screaming at the top of your lungs, chances are - yeah, I would not have been able to speak or shoot other scenes. So - it's kinda in silence. It's fun, though. It's awesome. She's amazing."

On whether she prefers to play BC or BS, KC: "I like my job. (Laughs) I can't answer that... I love playing both characters. They've been really fun. Very challenging, very different, although obviously similar. So it's been tricky, but I'm having a blast and I'm very grateful."

On how she felt when she found out about Laurel's death, KC: "Well, I cried, to be honest with you. I was, you know, obviously sad... It's so funny, we start the season, Season 4, and I'd been roommates with Danielle Panabaker and Caity Lotz - not at the same time, different times - Danielle, then Caity, and now Danielle again - and at the time, I was roommates with Danielle. And it was the beginning of Season 4 and I remember her asking me - and I think I mentioned this yesterday - and she had said, 'ooh, what if you're in the grave?' I remember looking at her and being like, 'I don't even know if anybody's in the grave. This is television. Maybe there's no one in the grave. Who knows?' No. And then yes, cut to February and getting a phone call that Marc and Wendy wanted to have lunch to discuss things. And I'm like, 'oh crap, I'm in the grave.' ... It sucked, but it happens. I understood from a writing perspective, you know, producer's perspective, because it's a platform for all the other main characters, the storyline, driving them in different directions. And I'm really glad they brought me back. I'm having fun."

On what she would change about E1 Laurel's death, if she could change one thing, KC: "Well, it was (makes frustrated noise) too simple! In my opinion, at least. She just got - out of nowhere, just like got stabbed and then what. And I also - she was alive and then all of a sudden had a seizure and wasn't.... Just that it would make a little bit more sense, I think. Or have a little bit more merit to it. Um, however, having said that, I still - I think they've done a good job so far and hopefully they continue to do so."

When asked in what way she relates most to Laurel, KC: "Laurel is very dedicated, and she's a fighter. I think that also comes along with being stubborn. I think those are some qualities that I definitely can relate to."

On what it's like to work alongside Caity Lotz, KC: "She is awesome. She's awesome. We were actually - we're so lucky. You know, I started with the pilot and then learning that they were bringing my sister back was great. But, you know, as an actor, you never really know, you know, where, who you're going to end up having to spend 90% of your time with. But we were really, really fortunate. Our cast - not only are they really good actors, but they are incredibly good people. And Caity Lotz is a huge testament to that. So is Danielle Panabaker. Everyone has been - you know, especially for the females - like I said, Shethority, that's where it all comes from. We support one another and stand up for one another, and I think that's really important. And she's a badass chick... and I'm proud of her, honestly."

(Fan question was not in video) KC: "I wish that I had had a little more of that, um, Million Dollar Baby moment. Of transitioning from, you know, Laurel into - she hits rock bottom - into the superhero... I just remember that I was just very much looking forward to that whole transition, and I put so much effort in it, time and dedication to it, physically. I do wish they would've played that out a little more. But I'm still very fortunate and very happy with the way they went with everything."

On whether it was difficult to switch to evil E2 Laurel, KC: "I'm going to be very clear, very upfront about this question. Actually, no. It wasn't hard to. I was kinda mad. They killed my character off. So it was like, 'Okay, you want me to come back? And you want me to be mean? [Unintelligible words], you guys? Okay. That's no problem.' ... It was easy for me to channel that, you know, frustration. As I'm sure, we all can relate. You know, it's a job, a job, a job happens and sometimes - whether it be they decide to let go of the character or position or whatever it might be, it kinda sucks to be on the other end. But it's reality and you just have to rise above it... By the way, thank you to everyone who supported me throughout this whole getting killed off, being brought back - cause I actually do, I think it's been - I think you guys have a huge influence... Uh, I certainly owe a lot - most of it to you. The support was pretty unbelievable and you guys have been pretty unbelievable. So thank you. And thank you for continuing to support me."

On whether Black Siren will join Team Arrow, KC: "Ooh, I hope so. I feel like that would sort of - you know, she's a bit of a loose cannon. It would sort of mix things up a bit. But who knows? You gotta keep watching."

On what she thinks is the best part of playing BC, KC: "I think the journey that she's been through... Well, obviously Laurel. But whether it be Caity, myself, Juliana, I think we all have a certain interpretation. For me, it was - she's a fighter. And she rises above. Uh, she shall overcome is sort of what innately comes to me. And that's strength and female empowerment, uh, equality, you know, all these things come to my mind when I - as my interpretation of Black Canary. And I'm sure Caity Lotz and Juliana - they probably have other things that, you know, what it means to them. For each of us, it's probably different. But - a hero, you know."

On whether she'd ever want to travel with the Legends, KC: "Yeah! That sounds awesome... I want to travel the world. In all times."

On whether she read about BC in the comics, KC: "I did start reading 'em when my character, from Season 2 to Season 3, uh, was transitioning, but I didn't read - a lot of people asked me if I read them ahead of time. But it's actually very difficult for me as an individual to even do that when it comes to our episodes and our scripts. I wait until we finish shooting the episode we're currently on. Um, just for me, storywise, and a person, it's better to live in the moment and not take on too much, before I'm ready. So it wasn't until my character actually transitioned that I started doing research on the actual comic books and the actual comic book character in depth."

When asked about her favorite things about E1 Laurel and E2 Laurel, KC: "I like Earth-1 Laurel - well, I think all of it, all in all, I feel like, the fighting aspect. I think she's a fighter. Heart of gold. And I find that to be the similarity between Earth-1 and Earth-2... I think they are both fighters. In different ways. They've had different lives. On different Earths... They're survivors. And they've both been through a lot. And again it's that the same aspect of she shall - we shall overcome."

#katie cassidy #Dinah Laurel Lance #laurel lance #black siren #black canary #arrow

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theparaminds · 7 years ago

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Independency in the music industry is possibly the greatest challenge an artist can take on, to keep themselves on track and work with what’s available to create something special is an entire talent on its own. For 17 year old Victor, this is just a daily occurrence.

Making music out of his bedroom with whatever is available to him, Victor has created a landscape of soft and soothing tracks which he hopes will empower those who share the same roots as he does, as well as the social hardships he’s overcome.

Paramind has had the unique opportunity to speak with Victor, not only on himself, but also about his story, fans and one of a kind sound.

Paramind: First question as always, how's your day going?

Victor: My day is going well. I woke up at 6am to shower and I went back to bed and finished a few episodes of Law and Order. My room was cold so I had the heat on blast and ended up falling asleep again until 1pm. I might go to Dave and Busters later with my best friend, Julian.

PM: To begin at the starting of your musical journey, where would you say the decision to take music seriously came from, and more so, what influences in your childhood affect this moment?

V: My decision to take music seriously was a product of stress and boredom. I just woke up one day and said, “hey, fuck it, if I can make trap beats for my friends I can make beats for myself”. It's funny because the first song that I ever put out was so bad, yet people messaged me everywhere encouraging me to "make more please" and "this shit slaps". The song was probably a minute and a half in length and it was called "Run". I released the song last summer in a Facebook video, which was just a Sailor Moon gif of Usagi running, hence the song title, "Run". While the song was definitely one of my worst, I can't deny that I had fun making it. That pushed me to start making more. As far as childhood influences go, I owe a lot of this to my family which is made up of musicians left and right. My mom was lead pop singer in a Mexican band called "Ecstasis", they made a lot of synth-pop. My dad and his entire family are made up of mariachi music and gigs. My uncle is a worship leader at my local church. A lot of this is just experience that I grew up with and learned from.

PM: Would you say you were normal growing up? If so, do you wish you had strayed outside the box more, and if not, what did being an outsider teach you?

I was not normal at all. My close friends will know this and I always bring it up, but I grew up in a very religious household. My parents met at church and at some point they led the worship team there. I wasn't allowed to listen to any music with labels "explicit" or "dirty" on it. I remember using Limewire on my dad's computer and I remember he'd get worked up when he saw me downloading "explicit" music. My mom wouldn't let me watch certain TV shows. She hated Dexter's Laboratory because he'd say "stupid" a lot and in retrospect, she didn't want me picking up foul language which I understand now. Although I do wish my parents would've let me explore as a kid, I am grateful that I wasn't "normal". I was never the cool kid growing up so I didn't feel the need to try and fit in with anyone. I'd just do me and to this day that's how it's always been.

PM: You display very proudly that your roots are Mexican-American, acknowledging its importance into your sound, with a growing number of artists such as Cuco and Omar Apollo doing the same. Leading to the question of what is the importance of representing your heritage in your music and allowing it to influence your sound, especially in the world we're living in currently?

V: Being a Mexican-American boy has always been hard for me. My first language is Spanish, so up until the third grade, I was in ESL classes. Fortunately for me, I'm a fast learner so I picked up English quickly. My accent was not the best though, so all the white kids (I was living in the suburbs) would make fun of me when I mispronounced something. For a long time I would feel ashamed of being Mexican and I would feel embarrassed whenever my parents spoke Spanish in front of my friends in fear of getting made fun of. Looking back now it was so stupid but I feel that a lot of people like me went through it. We eventually lost our suburban home and moved out to Little Village, Chicago. The majority of Little Village is Hispanic, so I went to school with a bunch of brown kids and I think that is when I felt more comfortable with myself. After stumbling upon Cuco on the internet one day, I remember feeling cool. I thought to myself, "People can sing in Spanglish like this? Over synth-pop beats?" People like Omar Banos make me feel proud to be Mexican and I think that brown kids deserve opportunities in every industry and place. This encourages me to speak about my heritage. It's who I am. I wanna represent those Little Village kids. I wanna represent my family. My parents are immigrants and although they split and I'm living with my mom now, I still worry about them both and pray that they don't get taken or some shit. I'd be so bummed. No one should live in fear of their parents being taken away. The evil of this world gets stronger but music is my family's anchor and that's what I will always hold on to.

PM: You also work with no management team or label backing, what surprise positives have you found in that route?

V: I had something like a "personal manager" for a few months, my friend Sydnie Giles. We're both juniors in high school right now, and she's planning on a music business career. She'd help me by writing out emails and offering advice. She wasn't hired or anything (we're both broke high school students) but her passion for music drove her to help me out and encourage my growth as a solo artist. Besides that, I've had no real management or label reach out to me or "pick me up". I remember being on the phone with Omar Apollo a week or two ago and we had a small discussion about management. That discussion was a wake up call for me, and I decided to stop working with Sydnie for now (we are still close friends and it ended on good terms). I've found in having no management or label are that I have full creative control and I don't have to follow any schedule. In other words, I am able to work on my own time and I get to keep any profit that I make. I'm also able to put together my own team and that means that when I win, my friends win as well. It feels good to be doing this at 17.

PM: Now before we can talk about your music, It's always good to know where it comes from, so what have been your biggest musical influences and how have they changed you?

V: It's difficult to point out influences when you're constantly influenced by everything around you. I listen to Blonde at least three times a day, but it doesn't make me want to get up and work on a new song. Sometimes my friend will tell me about her boy problems and that will strike up a song. Sometimes I'll be scrolling through my camera roll and admire my girlfriend for like fifteen minutes. That will make me get up and write a song. I don't really have big musical influences, but I do enjoy listening to Omar Apollo, Frank Ocean, Michael Seyer, and HOMESHAKE. These are all people I look up to as artists and I have many more. I find that my friendships shape me more than anything else.

PM: Who do you hope to inspire with your music and what do you want your legacy to be 200 years from now?

V: I hope to inspire the kids with broken computers and broken families. I've been through a lot of shit but it hasn't stopped me from creating and doing the things that I love most. You don't need a studio to make bangers. It's okay if your family is financially unstable. It's okay if your dad isn't around. It's okay if you're not poppin' at school. Do what you gotta do and pour your heart into it. My legacy in 200 years? Shit, I don't know. I don't know if I'll make it that big for people to remember me 200 years from now. I know what I want 200 years from now to look like, though. I just wanna see more brown kids making cool shit. This alternative pop scene is whitewashed and I hope more brown kids show out. Use whatever resources you have. Steve Lacy started with just an iPhone. I started with a Gateway desktop computer someone at church passed down to me. You can get it done if you work hard.

PM: Onto your music, you have cultivated an aesthetic of a striped back sound and lyricism, does this come at all from the way you make music and the resources available to you?

V: I'm always telling people, "I just make the shit I'd listen to" but that's the biggest lie I've ever told. I actually don't like listening to my voice in songs, it's weird. Would I rather teleport or fly? I don't know, I think teleportation would be cooler. I'm always late to things so this would help a lot. Unless I accidentally teleport to school in nothing but my Calvin Kleins. That'd be so stupid.

PM: Do you think there's been a shift to a diy approach to music such as yours? And if so, why?

V: This shift is stupid. People have turned a real life struggle into a musical genre. "Bedroom pop" is what they call it. Really, it's just a bunch of kids with cracked softwares making what they can. Borrowed microphones, cheap VST's, all that shit. None of this is intentional, I just find comfort in my bedroom and I don't have money for studio time. Would I still go to a studio if I had the money? Probably not. In my room, I can eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch while working on a track. You can't do that in a professional studio. I like the fact that I can make an entire album from my bedroom.

PM: Do you think if given the chance, you would become more studio based and label managed?

V: I like being independent. I don't think I'm ready for contracts and paperwork. I'm only 17. I'm actually looking for a job right now, I might check out Panera. I heard they were hiring and they have cool discounts for employees. Again, if I could work in a studio, I probably wouldn't. It depends. I like working by myself. It's just me and my thoughts, it feels cute and intimate. I do need a manager though with a lot of money. If you qualify, please hit me up. I don't have money but I can make you trap remixes of your favorite songs.

PM: Do you believe you'll have to innovate your sound to continue to stay as popular, or is that growth not always necessary?

V: Honestly I'm just going to keep making whatever sounds good to me. Chris Brown has been making the same shit for years now and he's still popping. 57-track album, nothing groundbreaking in there but some of his singles went gold/platinum. I don't wanna be pretentious and try reinventing a genre or some shit like that. If it hits me, I'll just do it naturally. I don't go into working on music with these things in mind. It's usually a very natural process for me. I trust myself.

PM: But finally, what is the core element to Victor that will have to stay even through change, what can't ever be lost if you are to still be yourself through the musical journey you're embarking on?

V: Good taste. I have good taste and I feel that I don't get enough credit for that! You have artists that make music solely for the people. They make shit that the masses wanna hear. You have artists that are genuine and do their thing. I'm a good balance of both. I know what the people want, but I don't always give it to them. I enjoy experimenting with different genres and trying new things out. At the end of the day, I have good taste and if I want to try something new, I'll make it work so that everybody can enjoy at least one part of my work.

PM: Do you have anyone/anything you'd like to shout out to promote? Do you have any projects coming soon? the floor is all yours!

V: I grew up without any older siblings or cousins to look up to, so shout out to Omar Apollo and Holladay. Whether the feeling is mutual or not, Omar has inspired me from the No Pulp days and I used to idolize him (low-key). Since we became friends, I've been constantly amazed by his work and impact on the community. He is that older sibling to me and I appreciate him. Holladay, for being passionate about the brown community and always talking about this idea of "passing it down". He's done a lot for me by putting me on although we are miles away and I will forever be grateful for his efforts. Shout out Blake Saint David for giving me a chance and giving me my first show ever. Shout out my best friend Andrea Reyes for doing my cover art and always supporting me when she doesn't have to. Shout out Omar Banos (Cuco) for retweeting my song and giving me a small platform. Lastly, shout out to my amazing partner and best friend in the world, Brenda Millan. My girlfriend is a huge part of who I am and she is always pushing me to do my best. I love that we can support each other's work and root each other on. I love my friends, fans and I love the internet.

Check out Victor:

Victor’s EP

Instagram and Twitter

Follow Paramind on Instagram and twitter

Victor’s friends:

Andrea Reyes

Omar Apollo

Holladay

Blake Saint David

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kaiserdingus · 5 years ago

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Brief Thoughts on the Sonic the Hedgehog Movie

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Trying something new with this, I don’t want to make a habit of it, but since I’ve fallen behind on uploading video essays I’ll do a blog post about the Sonic movie. Since there’s no video to go with this, I uploaded a play through of the promotional movie content in the mobile game Sonic Dash. More video essays are coming, the entire Every Sonic Ever series has been written with gameplay footage recorded. I’m hoping to finish the Classic Era within the next month.

Anyways, let’s talk a little about the Sonic movie. I’m going to try my best to avoid spoilers, but if you haven’t seen it yet then it’s worth checking out.

What can I say other than I loved it? Maybe love is a bit too far, I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I would though. I’m trying to hold myself back from going too far into detail because I do have a real video essay planned for the Sonic movie, but it was a nice surprise. I would go as far as to say I would welcome the idea of the Sonic movie canon taking over as the main canon for the Sonic franchise.

The movie follows the basic premise of Sonic being a creature from another world who somehow winds up on Earth. Sonic’s home world closely resembles his world in the games, specifically Green Hill Zone from Sonic Generations. On Earth, Dr. Robotnik is investigating a mysterious energy blast when he discovers Sonic. Witnessing Sonic’s abilities, Robotnik decides to capture him with the hope of harnessing his power for himself.

The story is pretty basic, but the characters are what really sell it. Sonic was sent to Earth as a baby in order to hide from anyone looking to claim his power for their own uses. He spends ten years living alone and avoiding detection, gorging himself on American pop culture while longing for friendship. He’s like an energetic kid who’s eager to impress everyone. That doesn’t sound like Sonic at all though, does it? Actually, it smells like character development. Over the course of the movie Sonic goes from a vulnerable kid who hides his feelings with a sarcastic attitude to the confident hero we know from the game.

They do the same with Dr. Robotnik, and yes they do call him Robotnik in the movie. Of course you already know about the Eggman/Robotnik name issue, he was Eggman in Japan and Robotnik in the West in the 90′s, then he became Eggman everywhere in the 2000′s. They take the Sonic Adventure route here, with Dr. Robotnik being his real name and “Eggman” being a nickname Sonic gives him. Dr. Robotnik starts off as an eccentric, but successful government scientist who starts going crazy after being unable to capture Sonic.

The cast were surprisingly great, Ben Schwarz had a great energy to his performance as the voice of Sonic, and the ever wonderful Jim Carrey channeled his 90′s persona as Robotnik. Being this is a kids movie about a talking cartoon hedgehog in the real world, there would of course be unnecessary human characters to connect the cartoons to the culture of whatever year the movie takes place in. Often the human character’s story would get in the way of the title character’s plot, my fear was that Sonic would be a secondary character in his own movie.

Fortunately the human stuff was brief and moved along at a brisk pace, serving its purpose to get us from one part of the story to the next and adding a little emotional element to the movie. Surprisingly enough, I actually enjoyed the human characters. They had great chemistry with one another, and especially with Sonic, to the point where it really sold the idea that Sonic was a real person in the room.

The fan-servicey stuff made me happy, it was nice to see the Sega Saturn logo on Sonic’s map of the universe. There were some deep cuts, like Sonic’s island looking exactly like the map of South Island from the Game Gear version of Sonic 1. Then there were the obvious references like Sonic eating chili dogs, the town being called Green Hills, and Sonic’s ping pong table being a sign for Hill Top. I gotta admit I was smiling through the whole movie at the little details like those.

The most important thing I have to mention is that the audience at my local theater was made up mostly of families with young kids, as well as a group in the front row that seemed to all be video game fans. Everyone in the theater was pretty unanimous on the movie, laughing at all the right moments, gasping at the big reveals, one kid got really excited about the Sonic Mania theme at the beginning of the movie. I’ve read other accounts of kids going crazy for the movie at every showing, they all loved it. I’m glad that the video game I liked as a kid is still making kids happy today.

If the box office numbers are anything to go by I’d say we’re going to be seeing a sequel sooner rather than later. I’m really happy that the movie was a hit because it could be the shot in the arm the franchise has so desperately needed since Sonic Generations came out. Hopefully the sequel is good, after the ending of this movie I’m confident the sequel’s in good hands.

Give Me Your Lunch Money, Nerd

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic boom #sonic movie #movie #animation

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whimzea-blog · 7 years ago

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Types of Boyfriends part 1

This fic is inspired by the Dolans’ “Types of Boyfriends” video (a MASTERPIECE) and the movie “4th Man Out” (well one part is anyway)

“Zane, stop,” Heath hissed. “We’re gonna get kicked out.”

They were in a very upscale baby boutique in Santa Barbara, where they’d decided to go for a couple of days. Liza’s baby shower was the following weekend and they still hadn’t picked out a gift. Unfortunately, going shopping with Zane was generally a nightmare.

Zane took the tiny toddler hat off his head and put it back on the mannequin, crossing his arms and frowning. “Can we go? We can’t afford anything in here anyway.”

“Yeah, okay,” Heath sighed. Zane wasn’t wrong- Heath had just picked up a $50 bib and then immediately put it back, hoping he hadn’t gotten his germs on it.

They walked around the shopping district for another hour, ultimately deciding to buy something for Liza instead of the baby. David and Liza were wealthy as fuck and could buy their own shit for their kid. But Liza probably wouldn’t be as willing to spend money on herself, especially when she had a newborn.

Also, they had no idea what the fuck to buy for a baby.

“What about a gift certificate to that spa she's always talking about- the one in Santa Monica?” Zane suggested. “She fucking loves that place.”

“Yes,” Heath said, nodding his head rapidly. “Let’s do it. We can pick it up on our way back home. Goddamn, I’m so tired of shopping.”

“Me too,” Zane agreed. “Coffee? Then beach?”

“You read my mind.”

Heath slid open the glass door of their suite, marveling once again that they’d been able to find something right on the beach. They’d paid an arm and a leg, of course, but still. It was nice.

Despite living in Los Angeles, they didn’t go to the ocean very often, especially not now. They were both posting three videos a week, and had several collabs lined up for the next couple of months. Zane was still going to auditions, mostly for TV, and had actually gotten a few call-backs.

But they had decided to go away, busy schedule or not, and they’d pre-filmed some challenge videos so they didn’t have to touch their cameras at all.

It was late in the afternoon, and the perfect temperature for lounging. And luckily, it wasn’t the weekend, so the crowds weren’t too bad.

“Let’s go!” Zane called out, pushing past Heath and running towards the beach, their towels in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

Heath shook his head and smiled to himself, grabbing his bag and their cooler and following Zane towards the water.

Zane had chosen a spot where they were pretty far away from the other beach-goers. He’d set up their umbrella and laid out the towels, and was already on his back, his eyes closed.

“You better put this on before you fall asleep,” Heath advised, throwing a large tube of sunscreen on to Zane’s stomach. Zane grunted but didn’t move.

Heath rolled his eyes and took the tube, squirting a large amount on to his palm before beginning to rub it in to Zane’s chest.

Zane sighed in contentment, and Heath did his face, shoulders and belly before moving down to his legs. He made Zane flip over and covered his back and neck.

“Heath?” Zane asked, his voice muffled by the towel.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve gotta tell you something.”

Before Heath could respond, Zane ripped a huge fart, so loud that the guys could probably hear it back in LA. And since Zane’s back had been facing Heath, Heath got the full blast.

“You fucking asshole!” Heath yelled, falling back onto his towel as Zane cackled. The smell was horrific, so bad that Heath almost gagged.

Heath moved as far away from Zane as he could while still staying under the umbrella, thinking he deserved a bit of the silent treatment. He lathered himself up with sunscreen, but when he poked Zane so he could do his back, Zane was already asleep, an arm thrown over his eyes.

Heath sighed. Sometimes he wondered if Zane’s brain had ever progressed beyond that of a six-year-old.

Heath tried to reach around and get some sunscreen on his back, but he wasn’t very flexible and ended up getting a huge glob right in the middle of his back.

“Need some help?” a male voice asked, amused. Heath looked up.

Heath would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t find other guys attractive, other than Zane, of course. He did- it just didn’t happen very often. But now was definitely one of those times.

“Oh, um, uh...” Heath said, very eloquently he might add. Not.

The guy laughed. “Don’t worry, I don’t have some sort of weird sunscreen fetish. I’m a lifeguard,” he said, pointing down to the white cross on his red swimsuit. “This happens all the time.”

He held out his hand for the tube of sunscreen. “Here, stand up.”

Heath stood up slowly, turning so his back was facing the lifeguard. The image of the guy’s cut upper body was burned into his mind.

“So, what’s your name?” the guy asked, rubbing cream on to Heath’s neck, and then his shoulders. His hands felt amazing.

“Heath,” he answered, entirely too slowly for such an easy question.

“Cool, I’m Jesse.” His hands moved to Heath’s back, and Heath tried to think of something to say so he didn’t moan at how good it felt instead.

“So...you’re a lifeguard?” Heath asked. There you go, Heath.

“Yeah. I’m off-duty now, but I generally stay around the beach for a few hours after my shift ends. I have a lot of friends here,” Jesse explained.

Heath was about to ask another question when Zane snored so loudly that it made Heath jump.

“Who’s that?” Jesse asked, and Heath could tell he was trying not to laugh.

Heath bit his lip. He still felt uncomfortable introducing Zane as more than a friend, but Jesse seemed pretty chill.

“My boyfriend, Zane,” Heath answered, steeling himself for Jesse’s response.

“You have to share a bed with that guy? That must be rough,” Jesse laughed. “I’ve never heard a snore like that.”

"He’s not always that bad,” Heath replied, relieved that Jesse hadn’t even blinked an eye at his admission.

“I hope not,” Jesse said, running a hand one more time on Heath’s lower back before closing the lid on the tube with a snap. “And, you’re done!”

Heath turned around. God, this guy’s body. It was perfect. Every muscle perfectly defined, every inch of skin perfectly tanned. And his face, fuck. Heath had never seen a jawline like that up close. Heath felt blasphemous for thinking it, but this guy was even hotter than Todd.

Jesse was smiling, revealing perfectly white teeth. His brown eyes twinkled. He gave Heath the sunscreen, wiping his hand on his shorts before running it through his thick brown hair.

“Thanks,” Heath said finally. He hoped he wasn’t drooling.

“No problem, Heath.” Zane snored again, and Heath closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. How could Zane manage to embarrass him even when he was sleeping?

“Hey, you wanna take a walk with me? I can show you some of the cooler spots on the beach. Otherwise, I can try to find you some ear plugs,” Jesse offered, grinning.

Heath looked back at Zane. He’d be okay for a little bit, right? They didn’t have anything good to steal, and he had the hotel key in his pocket. Heath still felt a bit uneasy, but he didn’t really know why. Probably just because this guy was so fucking gorgeous.

“Sure, that sounds great.” Heath smiled at Jesse. “Lead the way.”

Heath walked with Jesse far down the beach, chatting the whole way. They actually had a lot more in common than Heath would have thought (mostly a mutual love of cooking and red trucks), and Jesse was super impressed that Heath was able to make a living from YouTube.

They met a few of Jesse’s friends along the way, and several times Heath offered to head back so Jesse could get on with his evening.

“No way. I haven’t showed you the best place yet,” Jesse winked, leading them further towards a length of steep cliffs.

They were at the bottom of a very sketchy wooden staircase when Heath’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and gasped when he saw the time.

“Jesus, we’ve been walking for two hours. How the hell did that happen?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Jesse answered breezily, giving him that utterly devastating smile.

Zane had texted him. Where are you? Come back with the room key ASAP. Left mine in room. Need to poop.

Heath grimaced. Charming.

“I gotta get back to Zane. He needs to get in the room,” Heath said with a sigh. How many of Zane’s bodily functions were going to interfere with Heath’s evening?

“Oh, that’s too bad. The view up there is incredible.” He looked genuinely disappointed.

“Well, maybe we can meet up tomorrow and try again? Then Zane could come too,” Heath offered.

A strange look flashed across Jesse’s eyes, but when Heath blinked, it was gone, and that smile was back.

“Yeah, that would be great. I get off work at 4.” Jesse pulled out his phone. “What’s your number? I’ll text you when I’m close by.”

Heath had that uneasy feeling again, but he shook it off. Must be the heat.

Heath gave Jesse his number, and Jesse beamed as he finished entering the contact. “I’ll text you so you have my number.”

At that very moment Heath’s phone buzzed again in his hand.

Baby, I’mma bout to boo boo in the ocean.

“I really gotta get back. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Heath said apologetically, turning and starting to jog in the opposite direction. He cursed Zane’s bowels the entire time.

If Heath hadn’t been annoyed at Zane, this all would have been kind of funny. When Heath jogged up to Zane, gasping for air, he handed off the key to Zane who ran- nay, waddled- for dear life back to the room, like they were in a relay race at the Olympics.

Heath collapsed on to the towel, trying to catch his breath. He had nearly recovered when his phone buzzed again.

See you tomorrow. Oh, and the drugstore down the street sells earplugs. ;)

Jesse. Heath grinned and added his contact info to his phone.

Heath wondered if Jesse would boo boo in the ocean.

Probably not.

#zeath #zeath fic

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hotcookinmama · 7 years ago

Text

HVFF Nashville -- My Story

Oh my gosh! That really happened!

This is the story of how I died.

No, wait. That’s the line from the beginning Tangled.

I guess I really didn’t die. Instead, I thrived! Heroes & Villains Nashville (2017) was an amazing experience, and I’m so excited to share it with you.

Buckle up. This may be my longest post ever. I wrote this for my own keeping-track-of-my-memories benefit as well as a post to help other first timers who attend Heroes & Villains and to help re-experience the joy for those who attended.

It might help to understand that I’ve been wanting to do to a fan convention since I was 15 years old, and I’m 45 now. I remember watching Saturday Night Live (live, of course) when William Shatner was the guest host. He did that famous sketch set at a sci-fi convention. After getting some rather silly questions asking about the smallest minutia of Star Trek, he finally broke. He yelled at the convention attendees to “get a life”. He asked one guy “have you ever kissed a girl?” He told them they needed to move out of their parents’ basements.

As a die-hard Star Trek fan, I thought the sketch was hilariously funny but a tad bit close to home. Going to a sci-fi convention sounded wonderfully fun, but I was NEVER going to be THAT crazy! Nope. Like a normal kid, I moved out of my parents’ house when I went to college and married a guy three years later. The guy in question, however, was also a Trekkie and fellow geek. For years, we had talked about going to a con, but life was always in the way. School, work, kids, money. It was never the right time.

Everything finally aligned. When Heroes & Villains announced “Buy 1, Get 3 Free” general admission tickets for Nashville, I realized I could take my whole geek-loving family to a convention 35 minutes away for only $75.

Score!

I was really, truly going to be in the same room as Stephen Amell and David Ramsey. This was going to happen! Plus, my adorable 8-year-old daughter, Tea loved the idea of dressing as Felicity Smoak. This was going to be awesome. (My daughter’s name is longer than “Tea”, but since we all call her this nickname anyway, I might as well protect her identity a little.)

Then the awesomeness got even better. When HVFF announced that Melissa Benoist had joined the line up, @jbuffyangel started making plans to attend as well. Her daughter Lauren is a big Supergirl fan, and Jen decided to make this a special mother / daughter trip. (Jen has posted Lauren’s name multiple times on her blog, so I figure it’s safe for me to as well.)

Ya know… it’s all Jen’s fault. I’m in this fandom today because of her and now I’m in deeper than ever because of her.

Back in October 2014, in trying to make sense of “Unthinkable” (Arrow 2x23), I found Jen’s “How Oliver Queen Fell in Love with Felicity Smoak”, and I fell down the rabbit hole of fandom. Jen’s “The Ring” was the first fanfic I ever read. Now, I was able to attend my first convention having Jen, a convention veteran, by my side. We became internet friends in October 2015 due to me begging — ummmm — volunteering to beta / edit her fan fics. Thank you again @louiseblue1 for connecting us. I’m so grateful! Jen & I lamented several times that we wished that you, Lou, could be with us for this weekend.

This past weekend, however, Jen & I were able to become not just internet friends, but IRL friends as well. What a treasure!

The week started off with a major disappointment though. Melissa Benoist cancelled. No Supergirl for Lauren or Tea. And a rather pissed Jen. For good reason. When fans spend hundreds of dollars on airline tickets to attend a con, it really sucks when celebrities cancel, even if it’s for “work”.

To ease Jen’s frustration and disappointment, I offered to pick them up from the airport when they arrived. Jen also mentioned that she had always wanted to visit Nashville and thought she and Lauren might do some fun stuff around town. I offered to be their tour guide. I LOVE being a tour guide for friends. It’s a blast to show people the best and most interesting things about places I love.

Friday afternoon, Tea & I picked up Jen & Lauren from the airport and got them checked in at their hotel. None of us had gotten lunch and, fortunately one of the best barbecue places around is right across the street from the hotel. It didn’t take long at all for 8.5-year-old Tea and just-turned 10-year-old Lauren to become fast friends. Hanging with Jen was awesome for me as well.

Folks… I gotta tell you. That wonderful brain of hers... the one that delivers such incredible insight into our favorite characters… it is always on!

Whether we were enjoying BBQ for lunch, touring around Nashville, having dinner with my husband later, standing in line to see David Ramsey the next day, or fighting traffic getting to dinner the next night, her brain was always making connections.

We got insights into the good & bad of season 2 (yep, plenty of bad stuff that people forget about!), her conversations with Marc Guggenheim, especially about 5x20, Stephen Amell’s height, speculation on behind-the-scenes issues and contracts, similarities between Olicity and CaptainSwan on Once Upon a Time, insights on negativity in the Arrow fandom, why How I Met Your Mother’s ending was so screwed up, how The Vampire Diaries should have ended, how various Arrow season 6 spoilers are all connected and so much more. In many ways, keeping up with her brain was the most challenging and enjoyable part of the weekend.

Saturday morning arrived and my crew was ready to go. Fortunately, all three of my kids were excited and in great moods. My teenage twin boys never want to pose for pictures, but they cooperated and we got this great family picture. If I do Christmas cards this year, this will be on it!

My whole family loves Arrow and we watch all four CW Arrowverse shows, but none of them are as passionate about it as I am. (duh) (At age 8, my daughter has only limited exposure to some of the shows.)

Fortunately, there were things at HVFF that interested each of them.

My husband got to see the car from Supernatural. (Cost $10 if you wanted a picture of you next to it.)

My boys found a trailer full of wide screens, comfortable seating and video games. We could even rent it for a future party (graduation, maybe?). Anytime they were bored at the con, they asked if they could go hangout in the video game trailer. So glad it was free!

My daughter couldn’t wait to try the space walk (also free).

First up for Arrow stuff… the John Barrowman panel.

We’re all big Doctor Who fans in this family too. In fact, I think I would be the only one who likes Arrow more than Doctor Who. So the boys wanted to see Barrowman, but I was a little concerned. I’ve seen videos from his panels before, and I knew they were NOT G-rated. Sure enough. Barrowman came out wearing a Doctor Who romper which he ripped open to reveal a Doctor Who dress.

(We were in the back, and this was the best picture I got. I won’t bore you with my other bad panel photos.)

He started out by telling a story about one of his early jobs doing song and dance here in Nashville long before he was ever on television. (Lots of stars have gotten their starts in Nashville, and not just country music ones either. Oprah, for instance.) Barrowman’s Nashville story, however, involved a drink spiked with laxatives, high kicking on stage, and people in the front row getting quite messy. If you want the gory details, here is the link to the video of the whole panel.

Even though my daughter was engrossed in a game on her tablet, and thankfully, not really paying attention to Barrowman, I decided it was best to not run the risk of her hearing anything even more inappropriate for her young ears. Us two girls left the panel to stand in line to see Stephen Amell. I wanted to get ahead of all of the people who would be getting into the line after Barrowman was done. Even so, the line was LONG! In fact, we had to stand in line to purchase our tickets to stand in line again.

As we were going from one line to the next, I spotted a bag that I had been looking for. It was @scu11y22’s Frak Cancer bag, so… that must be Tracy! It sure was!

Tracy was another one of the people I connected with early in my fandom experience. I remember checking her and Jen’s blogs daily on my browser long before I joined Tumblr or Twitter. We’ve connected in numerous ways online over the years, but the most special for me was recently when she agreed to co-host my Arrow Fandom Pampered Chef fundraiser to raise money for the fight against breast cancer. I knew I had to meet up with her at HVFF. After all, I had a set of cake pans to deliver to her! LOL!

I have always appreciated Tracy being such a positive force within the fandom. She doesn’t write fic but she’s the biggest fic cheerleader there is. Plus, no matter what’s happening on the show — even if she doesn’t like it — she tries to find a way to keep things positive in the fandom. Tracy was at the top of my list of fandom friends I wanted to find. I also was able to meet her posse.

@quant-um-fizzx, @redpensandgreenarrows, @ireland1733, @laurabelle2930

Meeting fandom friends at a con is a hoot. Out of habit, most people start with their real name.

“Hi, I’m Angela.”

That’s returned with a nice, “Oh, nice to meet you” and a hand shake.

Then someone else says, “Guys, that’s Hotcookinmama!” Then everyone says, “Hey!!! GREAT to meet you” and you get hugs. That process was repeated multiple times over the weekend.

Next time, I guess I’ll just lead with my screen name... or wear a button that says it. Tracy’s crew had the great idea of putting their screen names on their convention badges.

Back to Stephen’s line...

According to Jen and several others, Stephen almost never does selfies at his booth, but he was doing them this time. Most con veterans had told me that you get to spend more time doing an autograph than getting the professional photo-ops. I had wanted a picture, but I also wanted to chat a little. Since he was doing the selfies at his autograph booth, I figured we had the best of both worlds.

The lines were so long, that we stood in line for almost an hour before we even got a glimpse of him. From that glimpse, however, I could tell that the Code 8 beard was gone. Hallelujah!

During the time we stood in line, Barrowman’s panel ended, my husband took my daughter to get something to eat, my boys played video games in game trailer, and eventually we all gathered back together in time to meet Stephen. Unfortunately, we noticed the clock moving closer and closer to Stephen’s 1:30 panel slot. So did Stephen’s handlers, I’m sure. When we finally got up to meet him, he was very nice, but a bit rushed. He commented on my daughter being mini Felicity. He signed the photo collage I had brought, and we got our picture together. It all went by so fast.

As we were finishing up, I asked what kind of wedding will we see this year. He responded, “Ah, I can’t tell you that.” He thanked us for coming. And that was it. It still doesn’t even seem real that I actually met Stephen Amell!

We grabbed a quick bite to eat and my mini-Felicity found a seat next to a guy with an fantastic Green Arrow costume. I commented to the others at the table that I never thought I’d be eating lunch with Oliver and Felicity!

Next up… Stephen’s panel.

To get seats at the big panels, you have to line up beforehand. Then they carefully control how people are let into the seating area. They try to fill in all the gaps as they let people in. Since we had stopped to get a bite to eat, we were afraid we might not get any seats for Stephen’s panel. The cutoff for seats was right in front of us. Fortunately, a few seats were found after he had started and they ushered us in. We even had pretty good seats right behind the VIP section. This gave us a great view of the people asking questions.

Much to my surprise, I noticed Jen & Lauren in line to ask a question. Jen wasn’t even watching Stephen while she was in line. She was just typing on her phone. Was she texting during the panel?

No! She was live tweeting! She had her eyes on her phone and kept typing. All those informative tweets you all got during the panel… most of them was while she was standing in line! I know from my attempt at the experience the next day at the Arrow cast panel, it’s not easy. I’d much rather sit back and just watch the panel. So every time you enjoy a stream of great live tweets during a convention panel, know that the “reporter” is busy typing away instead of watching the panel.

Lauren did a fantastic job asking Stephen what he likes most about Felicity.

“I love how smart and how capable she is, that she can stand on her own and do her own thing. And I think that one of the biggest lessons that Oliver has had to learn is that he doesn’t always need to help her. He just needs to let her be her own person.”

Captain, my captain! I love how much Stephen loves and respects the character of Felicity Smoak!

Others have done a better job — and quicker job — recapping everything that was said at the panels. Here are some of my favorite parts:

He loved Nashville. Loved the atmosphere. He said it was as if Austin and New Orleans had a love child.

A fan asked if he had ever heard any good Arrow-themed pick-up lines. He responded “Hey girl, I’m all a quiver”. He said it was more of a “dad joke”.

He thought the beard was gross.Yay!

The flashbacks in season 6 will be move limited. There will be episodes without any flashbacks. The ones we get will also feature other character’s story lines. Oliver’s big 5-year flashback arc is complete.

After the panel, my husband and kids did a little shopping. My teenage boys LOVED all the geek merchandise at the booths. After a while, however, hubby and the twins decided they were tired and were ready to go home. So glad I had decided we were taking separate cars. Tea & I weren’t ready to go at all.

Jen wanted to get David Ramsey’s autograph and we noticed the VIP line wasn’t that long. She said it was fine if I tag along. She said David is usually really good at spending time with everyone, giving spoilers and fantastic hugs. She was 100% right! I stood there a couple feet away from Jen while they were chatting it up.

I took a picture of the very nice collection of David Ramsey photos. When you purchase an autograph, you can get it on your own merchandise or choose one of these photos.

David told Jen that Diggle and Oliver were going to clash early this season. He compared it to Civil War. (Pretty sure he meant Marvel’s Civil War and not the actual War Between the States.) When they were done, Jen and Lauren got their hugs. David saw me standing off a bit. He said “Come here” and wrapped me up in a huge hug. I thanked him and we walked off.

Jen was stoked about the spoiler and instantly started theorizing, but I was too moved by what had happened to say anything. She looked back at me and I realized I was crying a little. After having such a brief, rushed encounter with Stephen earlier in the day, I was so touched by how much time David took with us and how genuine he seemed to be.

As Jen later said in her HVFF post: “I was just so happy to be part of that purely joyful moment with her. It’s so rare when we are gloriously happy as human beings and she absolutely was.”

I will ALWAYS get in line to meet David again in the future.

Later in the day, the lines are much shorter. We spent time with Echo Kellum and Ming-Na Wen (Agent Melinda May on Agents of SHIELD and the voice of Mulan).

Echo was sweet and super tall.

Ming-Na Wen was even more sweet and so beautiful. She had bead bracelets and candy to give away to the kids who visited with her. And… damn, while looking her up to make sure I spelled her name correctly, I discovered she’s 53! Wow. She must have some of that non-aging cream that Stephen has.

The girls decided they wanted to enter the cosplay contest held at the end of the day. Each contestant walked across the stage and introduced themselves at the microphone. After Lauren walked by, one of the moderators said “who was that?” and the other shrugged his shoulders. These comic fan boys had no idea who Felicity Smoak was. Grrrrrrrr….

Tea went next and when she went up to the mic, she said her name and that she was dressed as Felicity Smoak. So proud of my girl walking up there all by herself! She didn’t seem scared at all. Our girls didn’t make the finals, but they did great and had fun.

There were some pretty fun and amazing costumes.

By the time the cosplay contest was over, we were wiped out, but we still had people we wanted to see. Jen & I both wanted to track down @dollyrose09 and we found her just before we left. She was also dressed as Felicity. “Felicity in the field” for her. Standing with our season 1 Felicity & season 2 Felicity, they made quite a trio.

While we chatted, our two Felicity girls had fun dancing.

Dolly headed to her photo-op, and we were ready to head to dinner. As we picked up Tracy and her friend Qwen @quant-um-fizzx from the front of their hotel, this giant sea of people was coming straight towards us from over the river.

In downtown Nashville, the Shelby Street Bridge is a old bridge that is now a pedestrian bridge. (For all you “Nashville” fans, it’s where Deacon proposed to Rayna.) It crosses the Cumberland River and connects the football stadium to the rest of downtown. The out-of-town visitors in my van were a bit taken a back. I don’t remember if it was Jen or Tracy, but one of them said that they had only seen a swarm of people crossing a river like that in movies, and it usually meant it was the apocalypse. We all laughed that these folks didn’t look like zombies or people fleeing zombies. They were, in fact, all leaving a US Soccer match that had been held at Nissan Stadium. Good thing we had decided to get out of downtown for dinner!

On the way to dinner, we had another stop on our Nashville tour. We drove pass one of the houses that they use for the show Nashville. Yep, here’s Deacon’s house.

Dinner was a Five Points Pizza (named for the Five Points area of East Nashville — not the shape of the pizza) and was delicious!

Several times I just had to pinch myself. Here I was sitting next to Jen and across from Tracy, two of my favorite people in the fandom, chatting it up about all things television and especially Arrow. If you ask my family, they would say that I’m a talker, but I was one of the quiet ones (along with my new friend Qwen) at the table. That was fine by me!

By the time we dropped off everyone at their hotels, it was too late for the girls to go swimming like we had planned. Not wanting to deny our daughters their swim trip, we made plans to meet in the morning. Jen’s hotel had a roof-top pool, and it opened at 8 am.

Unfortunately, hubby wasn’t with us on Sunday. He woke up with a bad headache and decided to stay home.

Day 2 of the convention was a lot less crowded! Jen said it’s usually like that at most cons. The lines were much shorter and it was easier to get seats at the panels.

The Arrow cast panel was first thing in the morning. Stephen wasn’t on this panel since he had his panel the day before. This one had David Ramsey, Rick Gonzalez, Echo Kellum, Katrina Law, Caity Lotz, and Madison McLaughlin. This time I was going to try my hand at live tweeting. Then Tea said she wanted to ask a question. Sure, let’s go get in line! Live tweeting while standing is too hard for me. I did, however, get a great video of David Ramsey dancing!

https://twitter.com/hotcookinmama2/status/884080356751749124

Since I was standing in line with Tea, I decided to come up with my own question. At dinner the night before, our group had lamented that we’ve never learned anything about Diggle’s parents. We know he’s from the Glades and we know his brother’s story, but we’ve never heard anything about his parents.

So, that turned into my question. “We know about Oliver’s family and Felicity’s family, will we ever learn about Diggle’s mom and dad?”

David joked “Diggle was hatched! He came out just like this.” He said it was an excellent question (cool!) and that they’ve been talking about it for season 6. Then he said that he thinks we’ll see a Diggle relative this season, “at least one”. He said “that will be important to the script.” Wooo-hooo!

Then Tea asked her question. She asked the new people how they have enjoyed becoming part of the show. Rick Gonzalez (Rene Ramirez) said he was very excited. He didn’t know that he would be playing Wild Dog when he auditioned. When he found out, he said “the 10 year old inside of me was jumping for joy!” Madison McLaughlin (Evelyn Sharp) also didn’t know that she was going to be playing Artemis. She remembers the first day meeting Rick and Joe (Ragman). It was the day they shot the “On the line!” scene. They all went out for dinner afterwards. “I realized that I didn’t just join a show. I joined a family. I love these people. They’re awesome.”

Going back and listening to our voices on the official videos of the panels, I realized that my voice sounds a whole lot more nervous than my daughter’s. She’s a champ!

I’m very glad they’ve posted all three panels (Stephen Amell’s, John Barroman’s and the Cast Panel). When watching the video, it doesn’t seem fast paced, but it’s hard to digest it all when you’re sitting there. While sitting in the seats, I was easily distracted by my kids and other people moving around. I tried live tweeting during the cast panel, but I only got a handful of tweets out. By the time I finished with one, I was engrossed in the next question. It’s a lot to take in.

After a little archery practice...

... shopping ...

(I LOVED finding geek-themed kitchen items!)

... and lunch, I went to get my David Ramsey autograph.

Even though the line wasn’t long, it was very slow moving. As frustrating as that is while standing in line, it’s SOOOO worth it because David spends time with each and every fan, including several I knew!

I wish my husband had been there that day, but we got some FANTASTIC family pictures with David. His arms are so long, he didn’t have any trouble holding the phone and doing the selfies himself! What a pro!

After getting our pictures and autograph, I reminded him that I was the one who asked about Diggle’s parents. He thanked me for that. He’s looking forward to that story line. I then asked him a question that was inspired by a conversation I had with Tracy @scu11y22 at lunchtime.

I said, “I’m working on a story that involves Oliver having to ‘out’ himself as the Green Arrow. What do you think Diggle’s reaction would be if Oliver ever had to do that?”

Quick as an arrow, he said, “He’d become the Green Arrow.” Then he shook his head like he had been caught. “Oh man, now I gotta tell you this. You managed to guess the plot for the first 6 episodes of season 6.”

“Wow,” I responded. “I guess I better finish my story before then, huh?” I thanked him a whole lot and walked away shaking like a leaf in a storm.

Jen was standing nearby but hadn’t joined me in line so she didn’t hear the conversation. As I walked away, she saw me and thought that I was just emotional about meeting David again. I shook my head. I couldn’t even talk. After a minute, I explained that I just got the BIGGEST spoiler. I told her what David had just told me and she said “You need to tweet the hell out of that, girl! Your twitter is going to explode!” She was 100% right.

As our girls were standing in line to do a “space walk” bungee-jumping thing, Jen helped me get out my tweets. My heart was racing and my thumbs were all over the place. She took my phone and edited my tweets for me to get them to fit. I laughed… All those times I’ve edited her words, and now she’s editing mine! She joked “the student becomes the teacher.” LOL!

For the next several hours, my phone was almost useless. I was getting Twitter notifications every second or two. I’ve never experienced that!

We finished our shopping — telling Jen that my daughter wanted to get a “Pop” caused confusion. She thought I meant a soda drink and I was talking about a Funko Pop figure. LOL! — and headed out the door, exhilarated and exhausted.

I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that much adrenaline and exhaustion at the same time. I was wired. I have a new appreciation for what it must feel like to be on Team Arrow. So pumped up and yet having your body be so spent at the same time.

Dropping off Jen and Lauren at the airport was sad, as much for Tea as it was for me. We had both had a wonderful time creating and developing friendships. We were sad to see the weekend come to an end. At least I knew that I would still be contact with Jen on a regular basis. We both assured our girls that we would help them stay in contact electronically.

Thank you so much for sitting through this whole post. Being my first con, I really wanted to document it as completely as possible, for my own sake more than anyone else’s. I hope that it will be a help to those who have not yet been to a con as well.

To finish my post, I want to thank Jen and all the amazing, awesome fandom friends that I met in person at HVFF and apologize for the ones I missed. I felt especially bad about missing @mel-loves-all . I really, really hope we have another chance to meet up sometime.

It was fantastic to be able to put faces to names!

Dolly @dollyrose09 (@Duckyrose09 on Twitter)

@vaelisamaza Vanessa (@varellanoemo on Twitter) & Jason @jpg_pr (@JPG_PR on Twitter)

Forgive me if I missed anyone!

This fandom is wonderful, y’all. Thanks for making my first con such a delightful experience.

Y’all come back now, ya hear!

#hvff nashville #arrow #olicity #arrow fandom #fandom friends #jbuffyangel #scu11y22

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