#how many photos are u supposed to put on those things. i found 13 and in 3 of them theres fake blood on my face

[butchviking]

im looking thru my camera roll to find photos of myself that i can put on one of those stupid fucking dating apps bc im weak and its time. anyway ive realised im fundamentally quite a strange little person

[songsorter28]

Blackpink: The Album Review

Okay, this is the first time i’ve done this and the truth is i don’t know how, so i’ll just try my best.

First of all: I am a Jennie biased blink. That means I have no trustworthy sense of criticism when it comes to them and if you do, this is probably not the place for you. I will try to talk about this album with a sense of criticism, but sometimes, i’m just gonna like a song because it’s blackpink and y’all just gotta deal with it.

BUT, I am not afraid of saying i don’t like things that the pinks have said it to like, which is actually how i’m starting this review. So, if you guys are all about loving the girls and emotion and “think about how they must feel” this is a decision made by the girls, this place is also not for you either. I am a blink and i share a lot of love for those four women, but i am also a consumer of their work as artists. I will complain if I didn’t get something I thought was necessary as a viewer and listener for my money and attention to be spent. I will not, of course, hate on them in any way.

Ok, before anything:

1) English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for any mistakes. 2) Here, we’re gonna talk about the cover, pre-release single choices, writing credits, tracklist and my honest opinion about the album as a whole.

a) The Cover:

There’s not a lot to talk about but the fact that it’s gorgeous, but simple. I didn’t understand why a crown if the name was The Album (something unoriginal to be honest, but i’m not 100% against it) and there’s no reference to royalty throughtout the album besides maybe Jennie’s rap “didn’t want to be a princess”. I did find the cover visually pleasing tho, could be much more embarrasing.

b) Writing credits and Track List:

This one is quick. I’m extremely glad Jennie and Jisoo were credited as songwriters (Jennie as well as a composer) but Teddy gotta give Danny Chung to god. He hates rapper Jennie and he’s the reason Lisa doesn’t write. He’s always in charge of the raps so teddy gets confortable and Lisa doesn’t get a chance to write her own verses, which is something the sure thing cover showed us she can do. Also, he hates rapper Jennie to the point where she had to write her rap on the title track (wich is good, but, you know what i mean) and wasnt even given a chance to write more than 8 seconds. Melanie I hope this is the last time you were here. Loren you can stay. Tommy and Ryan yall were cute we had fun but it’s over let’s move one (seriously, these producers really made me appreciate Teddy more lmao pls sir never leave us). Okay that’s it. Now, to the track list.

I will be talking about the fact this shouldn’t even be called a full album on the My Honest Opinion About The Album As A Whole topic.

1. How You Like That

I say my opinion more detailed on the next topic but at at essence. Cute. A good opener to the album and what is to come, but too much of a bside to even be a pre release single.

6.5/10

2. Ice Cream

Again, my opinion it’s on the next topic. Cute song. Loved Chaennie’s high notes and wish i didn’t know english so the rap didnt sound that silly. Not as bad as blinks and non blinks make it out to be. 

6.12/10

3. Pretty Savage

I kinda also talked about that in the next topic lmao. It has everything a blackpink song should have. There’s been some controversy about Lisa “born skinny bitch” but Lisa was talking about herself since she has been body shamed through her whole career. She was right and she should say it. You’re entitled to feel uncomfortable but that’s just the thing she wasn’t talking about me or you. She was taking her pain and wearing like an armor. This was a diss track for the haters. Taking that away from her because of our own issues it’s kinda mistreating hers.

8.82/10

4. Bet You Wanna

Yes you guessed it right I talk more about it next topic. It’s a bop. Loved Jennie here. She has such a versatile voice I was very proud to hear her. And Cardi was also good. Just hope Lisa will get her rap part live cause she didn’t have much lines here. But I loved Jenlisa’s brigde. Rosé’s adlibs peak perfection and Jisoo’s chorus and english that’s what i’m talking about. The chorus can be a little repetitive and it kinda ends a bit suddenly but it doesnt bother me much.

8.37/10

5. Lovesick Girls

WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THIS MASTERPIECE OTHER THAN BEST BLACKPINK TITLE TRACK? Love that for me. It was so different than anything they’ve done so far, the lyrics were AMAZING, the message behind it also, the visuals in the MV, storylinne, RAPPER JENNIE OMG, she got the most memorable line “didn’t want to be a princess, i’m priceless” i love her tf the shade to the yg princess title and her scene in the car and in the mental hospital(will not touch on the controversies cause that was annoying) also Lisa’s rap/singing with a flow in the begining her voice OMG I WAS SHOOKEDT. Jisoo’s high note in the brigde? Rosé?? perfect.

10/10

6. Crazy Over You

Rapper Jennie for the last time with a 8 second rap again but LET’S BE POSITIVE. A bop. I loved the i. went. crazy. over. you. I love the lyrics. It bother a bit this much english but it’s bp’s idendity so i’m fine with it.

8.5/10

7. Love To Hate Me

This was a predictable song in the best possible way. Easily one of their best songs. There’s honestly nothing left to say. Also. Lisa’s rap. Maybe Danny Chung deserves some points. It even felt like she was a feat in the song like her flow yall just perfection.

9.4/10

8. You Never Know.

Great song I left with depression.

I like how this album talks with haters and blinks, it really shows a different side from the pinks. Only a few know the emotion Jennie starting off “but you never know unless you walk in my shoes [...] cause everybody sees what they wanna see, it’s easier to jugde it than to believe”. It was written by Loren, a close friend from the girls and the boy who’s Jenlichaeng  boyfriend in the LSG’s MV and Bekuh Boom, a producer who’s been with them for really long, but if anyone got a conspirancy theory that they were involved in the songwriting process of the song, sign me up. You don’t need proves. I believe you. ALSO JISOO GOT MOST LINE ON THIS ONE and we got singer Lisa. After a while, it become my favorite song from the album. Now, it’s my favorite song from their discography. Debate your mother.

9.62/10

c) Pre-Release single Choices: 

I can’t stress about this enough. Whoever was in charge for the single choices needs to go to jail. Not that HYLT is bad (at all) but comparing to the rest of the songs, it look MUCH more like a powerful bside than Love To Hate Me and Pretty Savage ever will. I will lecture later how Pretty Savage was the perfect choice to first release single, just wait. Now, to the controversial Ice Cream. To be honest, i found the song super cute and i think the MV was one of their best. It was different and refreshing, love that for me. But the whole sequence of events that turned out to that disasterous twitter timeline, with constant attacks to the girls especially Lisa over things they cannot control such as line distribuition and a sabotage from antis on yt comment section, was something I kinda already saw it coming. Ice Cream is Blackpink’s most successful single to date, but it was a bad choice from the start (I will talk about that in a second). For starters, YG decided not to promote the song well. While announcing the single, they gave us a poster with pictures from a summer package released months before. And each week they kept doing that, only using actual teaser photos in the release week. The hype was pretty much out. I can’t say my timeline is 100% blink because i have way too many fandoms that i’ve been following for longer than i’ve known kpop, but compared to the HYLT hype, they were pretty down and that’s on YGE. Also, ever since coachella, it’s been antecipated by fans and artists the possibility of a Blackpink x Ariana Grande (one of the most popular singes these last couple of years). The idea of an Aripink collab got blinks (who were already with an eye wide open after Blackpink was seen with Tommy Brown, Ari’s basically oficial producer, who has been producing for her ever since her second album and was reponsible for many hits of her latest project, Thank U, Next, such as 7 rings and Thank U, Next) even more hyped when YG announced (one of those old photoshoot posters. I’m sorry I will never let that go that company is so trash) that Blackpink’s second release was going to be a collaboration with a western artist, and Ariana herself like Jennie’s instagram post about the next single. I cannot put in words the reaction of my twitter timeline when YG confirmed that the collab was actually with Selena Gomez. 

Now, on a more personal note. 

You see, I actually like Selena. I like her songs, besides the critics. Perfect is pop perfection. Waverly Place is the best disney show ever since That’s So Raven. But, to a collab made to the US market, and besides the success of Rare, Selena isn’t a sales force like Adele or Taylor Swift, nor a streaming force like Ariana Grande. Nothing takes my theory that this was supposed to be an aripink collab but, for some reason, she dipped and then interscope (blackpink us label and selena’s label) picked her. Selena showed us a good time and promoted the girls more than YGE did but, it wasn’t a surprise when the song didn’t get a top 10 (a top 13 is really good tho, don’t get me wrong). 

Now back to the story telling

Selena was more than a feat, she sang the whole damn song, getting more vocal lines the the entire vocal line. She’s only a few seconds behind Lisa, who got the most lines in general. I understand that it is a collab, but this is the girls’ single. Why would they want to listen to them for only 16 seconds, the amount of time Rosé got? That set a bunch of solo stans (something that exists more in this fandom than everywhere else) to boycoitt the release, a huge fansite even taking out their funds for the full album (that was low, even for a solo account. JisooBar, you aint seeing heaven). Did i think it was a little of overeacting? As someone who’s an army that had to handle Not Today’s line distribuition, and especially since we’re talking about the main vocalist, someone who will for sure have more lines in the future (as she did), kinda. But, like i said, it was a bomb getting ready to explode at any minute. If it wasn’t that it’d be something else. That being said, NOTHING will ever justify the nastyness y’all did with Lisa and even Jennie’s comment section. Nothing. That was ridiculous even for solo stans. BUT for people who got worried about Lisa’s lack of posts after the release, don’t worry. She didn’t post a lot because Thailand is going through some stuff and I don’t think she has YGe’s permission to talk about it (when I catch the ones in power on that company istg). 

Wow, that was long. At essence, it  was a bad choice for several reasons, but i enjoyed the song a lot. Can’t wait for the live performances with chaesoo’s lines.

Now, back to HYLT. It was greatly promoted, it stopped Zico’s (huge in korea) releases and a bunch of other big artists in South Korea. Got 7 Perfect All-Kills and would’ve gotten more than 12 if the charts weren’t reforming at the time. It also broke a lot of records, and repeated Sour Candy’s position on the bb100 on #33. It’s another very Blackpink song that  I enjoyed but kinda aged. Many non blinks didn’t like it but it’s not like they were ever going to admit they liked a bp song. They’re annoying. The song’s biggest problem is probably the 2015 edm in the chorus. Like. Teddy. You gotta let that go. It’s time. He kinda heard us in the album. But, these kinds of songs are very liked by the general public, especially the korean one. An interview was made asking the general public if blackpink should change concepts and they said a bit fat no. So that tells what you need to know. And that it why i think Pretty Savage should have been the first pre release single. 

Okay, let me tell you another series of event. Back on november 2019, when we were starving because YGe does not like money, BlackpinkBar, a big fansite, payed trucks to be sent to YG building during a whole day demanding for better treatment to Blackpink. You can find all the demands online, but at essence, when it came to music related, blinks always mention: Jisoo’s lines, screen time and blackpink in your area, Main Rapper Jennie, Lisa dance break, Rosé’s high note. On HYLT, we got nothing. And everyone had to shrug it off saying it was just a pre release single, BUT it would be better hyped by blink and the hype to the second pre release would’ve lasted longe if PRETTY SAVAGE, who has basically all of that, was the pre release single. It would’ve assured us of so much. Jisoo said bp in your area twice, she RAPPED, she was singing, she could’ve had more screetime and center time especially bc she’s on all chorus. Jennie Main Rapper would go back and we wouldn’t have to be blue balled (which caused the ice cream meltdown)every single release and only having to wait till the title track and only to have a 8 SECOND RAP. I won’t talk about that now. Moving on. Rosé wouldn’t get a high note, but she would’ve gotten the brigde all to herself and the next pre release single, bet you wanna (wait for it), she would get those incredible adlibs. And Lisa’s dance break. Not only this is bp’s most danceable song and has a bunch of lisa’s raps, it also has jennie’s outro, where for a least 20 seconds lisa could’ve thrived. Yall we were robbed.

Now, real quick, back to Ice Cream. In a perfect world (or just a world where YG’s current ceo) had brains, if they wanted a collaboration to show the pink side of blackpink, with a poppy song and sassy lyrics, the artist not to be in the whole song, and to have an artist who would driven attention from the locals and is a big streaming force, THEY WOULD’VE CHOSEN BET YOU WANNA. My biggest problem with bet you wanna is Lisa’s lack of lines, which could cause stuff and well we just miss her they could have added a rap even for 8 seconds, BUT, seeing her all around pretty savage and knowing she’s gonna have Cardi’s rap during live performances would cool things down. Since we were in the middle of a pandemic, instead of a mv like ice cream where they had to do it separately, they could’ve done something like IU’s eight. A huge part in animation and a few with people. Literally YG why are you so dumb. Bye.

d)  My Honest Opinion About The Album As A Whole:

I did some math (lol) and my rank for The Album is 8.4. It’s easily one of the best releases from this year and I loved it so much, but something were left to be desired and i think i could pass everything and just turn a blind eye at things, except one: the fact we waited for 4 years, watched all ggs and yg groups getting comebacks last semester and only got 8 songs. Loona is releasing a mini album with that amount of songs. Stray Kids and BTS’s mini albums are longer than that. It was bad enough KTL had 4 songs and a remix (a joke) with 2 songs lacking raps and no rapper jennie only for them to carry YG’s dirty name after what their protected boys did. I legit hate it here they didn’t even had 30 minutes, their longest song wasn’t even 4 minutes. Also, before anyone says anything about the girl’s interview about quality over quantity. I’d like to say that i understand them having that when it comes to have one comeback a year and i’m honestly okay with that. But their first full album? 8 songs? Are you kidding me? Like I said, I’m a consumer. I refuse to receive this half assed excuse about quality over quantity when they had more than enough time to produce and write more than 8 quality songs? what, is impossible to write more than one song per moth? these songs have formulas, they can be made more than 8 times. A blackpink album its more than a thousand reals here. That 90% of a sallary. And please don’t come with the “if you don’t want it just don’t buy it” “you can just unstan them” bc that’s not the case. I love their songs. I love the girls. But I’m a consumer of their art and if they want to be takend seriously as artists, they gotta do more than 8 songs on a full album. It’s unfair to anyone that isn’t a diehard fan willing to sell out an overpriced photobook in hours. That’s not the only kind of fan blackpink needs. they need the store locals, the people who are not on twitter or tumblr or instagram. Cause those locals are gonna stay like they stayed with adele and taylor swift. stan twitter is much more likely to leave them with time.

Side note: I’m tired of commenting on rapper Jennie so I’ll just say Jennie deserves better than 8 second raps as the main rapper of the group. That doesnt mean I want Lisa to not rap or to Jisoo not to sing, as many will say bc apparently that’s what people hear when we say main rapper who trained for 6 years to be a main rapper should rap on at least most title tracks even if not on all songs.

But yeah, that’s it. Besides the unfortunate final note, I loved The Album and now Blackpink it’s my second most listened artist of all time. They were top 13 before the album.

[madlitparanormal]

This photo you see is one from after a seance conducted in my dining room. My Ouija board that I have used for the last few years with the planchette that came in the box, a lemon scented t light candle of which I had four, and a wax stained notepad and pencil for our friend Blaine to write down the boards responses.

April 12, 2019

It started as a couples game night. We played what the meme and two rounds of game of thrones clue. (Blaine stole my victory, I had my final accusation of Sansa Stark in the Gardens with the catspaw dagger and I was right! But Blaine guesses before me and was completely incorrect but he showed the cards from the secret envelope!) Anyways, we ate pizza and drank a few beers or a few glasses of wine. And then we decided it was time. Sigourney and I had always been intrigued by the board, Blaine who is Sigourney’s boyfriend had helped us with an experiment years ago and was fine with attempting to use it, and my boyfriend Edison usually declined with a “No, I’m good.” But for some reason he agreed to participate on this night. We lit four t light candles. The four of us placed our fingers upon the planchette, we moved the planchette around a few times to test the mobility, and then began the seance. “Is there anyone here that wants to speak with us?” Barely a shuffle. I asked again. Barely a movement. Of course this is me and after a few glasses of sangria so I got a little sarcastic with it. “Is there anyone here that doesn’t want to speak with us?” Still nothing. We dismissed the board.

April 13,2019 12:00 am

Sigourney and I decided to leave the men out and try on our own. Blaine acted as our recorder and Edison a witness. We all turned off our phones this time to see if it would help. Sometimes technology causes dull responses. Sigourney and I placed our fingers on the planchette. I said I would try to be a medium first and if that didn’t work then she could try.

“Is there anyone here with us?”

The planchette shuffled to yes.

“Are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?”

Somewhat jumbled letters.

“Ok let’s try for yes or no. Are you a good spirit?”

No.

“So you’re a bad spirit?”

Yes. The planchette shifted to the word yes and then quickly circled it several times. Edison said maybe we should dismiss it. Sigourney and I looked at one another. “Nah”. This conversation turned out to be one of the longest we had ever gotten.

“What’s your name?” Sam.

“Why are you a bad spirit, Sam?” Kill.

“Because you killed someone?” Yes—The planchette circled yes vigorously.

“How many people did you kill?” 949

“You killed 949 people?! Why??” My pleasure.

“You took pleasure in murdering people?” Moms.

“You murdered mothers?” Yes—violently circling the yes on the board.

“Where did you murder those women?” Baltimore.

“Sam that’s awful. Why are you contacting us?” Dead.

“Because you’re dead?” Yes.

“Well Yes Sam, you wouldn’t be talking to us through an Ouija board if you weren’t dead.” No response.

“Is there something you wanted to tell us?” 911.

“911? Do you mean the date or the number?” 911. Dead man.

“There is a dead man?” Yes—Violently circling the Yes again.

“Where?” Hole.

“The man is in a hole?” Yes—circling.

“What city?” Palm Harbor.

“What street?” Alderman.

At this moment we all looked at one another. Alderman was a street very near us and it runs through Palm Harbor. I don’t know why but suddenly the planchette violently shoved across “goodbye.” It was an intense session. I haven’t found anything leading me to believe there was a actually a dead man in a hole in Palm Harbor yet, not anything about a serial murderer of mothers in Baltimore. The closest thing I’ve found to the above conversation was a man named Samuel Little who is a convicted murderer. However, he is still alive.

April 13, 2019 1:00 am We began a new session. Sigourney and I placed our fingers on the planchette.

“Is there anyone here with us?” The planchette immediatey and with a strong push, crossed the board to the word yes in the left hand corner.

“What is your name?” Mama.

“You know, I’m not surprised that you would say that. Because you’ve been around for several years now.” I said, rolling my eyes. Yes.

“Who are you really?” B-E-E-L-Z-A-B-U-B

“That’s the name of a Demon...” I stated blatantly. GOD.

“You’re a God?” Yes-Violent circles.

“What do you want from us?” Souls.

“You want our souls?” Yes—violently circling the word yes again.

“Well you can’t have them. I’m baptized.” I said. “You’re out of luck on that one.” Signourney then mentioned that she is a redhead and redheads have no souls. The otherworldly being then spelled, Sex.

“You want to have sex with us?” (Keep in mind we were all partially intoxicated so we got very sarcastic and we joked around a lot). Yes.

“Why?” Souls.

“Oh, you steal souls by having sex with people?” Yes—violent circles.

“But I’m baptized and Sig has no soul. Is it true that redheads don’t have souls?” Yes.

“Well ... none of us are really interested in that..” Violent circles across the board broke out. The spirit on the other side vigorously shoved the planchette around and at some point the planchette even went off of the board and slipped out of our fingers a few times.

“Calm down!” I said as I forcibly moved the planchette back onto the center of the board.

“Why is it that when Sigourney and I use the board we get this kind of reaction but when anyone else uses the board with us it doesn’t work?” Sex ...

We ended up getting into a side conversation with the supposed Beelzabub and it lead somewhere completely inappropriate that I’m not going to discuss on here. It was pretty funny but again, personal.

The planchette on this night was more than ideomotor effect. It was violent, it was real, and it was creepy.

Last night while I was home alone I was in my bedroom watching tv. I had since cleaned up from game night and threw out the wax stained papers and put the board away. As I was sitting watching a few clips on Tik Tok, the tv shut off on its own. I looked up. I hadn’t set a sleep timer. And nothing else in the apartment had turned off. It turned on again and I heard the chime that comes with the power on. The movie I had on prior to this incident popped back up on the screen. I thought it was strange but decided that it was probably nothing, until it happened a second time...

I hope you all find this passage as entertaining and intriguing as I did. All accounts are true, names have been changed for protection.

To be continued...

[jungnoir]

May I please request college boyfriend!yuta in bullet point form? Please please please ❤️❤️❤️ I’ve been waiting so long for your requests to be reopened, I love your work!

a/n: thank you for being patient!! i hope you like this~

name: nakamoto yuta

age: immortal

major: bullshit undecided

if anyone were to try and define yuta,,, there would be a series of words that would be used,,, all of which may or may not be appropriate for ages 13 and under

yuta came to seoul from japan when he was just graduating high school on a scholarship for soccer

there were tons of schools that he really would have liked to go to all over the world, from places like New York to places in Brazil and Germany

and these schools all around the world really wanted him

he was, after all, a star on the rise

so you can see why his family was so confused when he chose to take a scholarship a little nearer to home, right in south korea

at the time, all he’d said was that seoul was somewhere he always wanted to live

which of course his family called bs on lol

yuta; what do you mean i’ve never talked about going to seoul before!! it’s my favorite place in the world!! great city!!! 10/10 would live there

literally everyone who knows this fool: you spelled seoul as seol once and it took you eight minutes to realize it

jk jk but look ok,,, he’s nowhere near as ditzy as he likes to joke about sometimes

cause yeah he’s great at soccer but he’s also got the brains to go with the brawn!! which makes him understand that despite the scholarships he’s getting to these overseas schools, not a lot of them cover all the expenses it will take to both get there and stay there

whereas the school in seoul is only 516 miles away from home, a stark difference to all those schools all over the world

if yuta wanted, he could go visit his family every weekend with the money he saved

and while seoul (shocker!) really wasn’t his dream place to be, it ended up being not too bad in yuta’s mind

to be honest,,, he kinda liked it

it was the actual school part he didn’t like

yuta felt most alive and happy when on the field, so having to take all these classes he neither cared for nor could understand on top of being in a foreign country and trying to master the language was t o u g h

while yuta never liked to admit it, there were often times he would find himself crying himself to sleep because he missed his family and old friends so much and being in another place, even if only 500 miles away, was stressful for him

thankfully, despite being one of the v few japanese students at his school, he wasn’t the only foreigner, and he’d met tons of good friends who were always patient with him when he mixed up his korean

ppl like taeyong, ten, jaehyun, doyoung, taeil, sicheng, mark, and johnny became some of his closest friends, but sicheng was his first

yuta could still remember his first day in classes at the school and how he couldn’t spot one (1) foreigner until his last class, statistics

yuta had just finished introducing himself to the class and he wasn’t really paying attention to everyone else as the teacher went down each table to get names, majors, places they were from, etc.

but then he remembered hearing this soft voice come from way across the classroom and this boy who was just a little younger than himself was introducing himself as dong sicheng and telling everyone that he was from china and would do his best to try and communicate and,,, fuk,,, it was like yuta’s world got a lil brighter

(i swear to god this is a yuta x reader fic and not a badly disguised yuwin fic ok)

almost immediately after class yuta tracks down sicheng and he’s like oh!!! hello!!! and tries to use his best korean for yuta but then yuta just pats sicheng’s shoulder with the most loving look in his eyes and probably tells sicheng he had been looking for him his whole life or something tbh sicheng doesn’t remember much of that moment except now yuta was his Best Friend and that was nonnegotiable

sicheng soon learned that yuta was also a foreigner and had gotten excited for all of five seconds before he found out he couldn’t speak much chinese, but sicheng was still pretty happy to have someone around who was in the same boat as him regardless

and, over time, sicheng began to teach him chinese and in return, yuta would teach him japanese

they would often try to navigate the horrors of being multilingual

and while yeah, it was pretty frustrating not being able to verbalize how you feel as accurately as you’d like, there were some perks

like insults. just hella insults

especially from sicheng to yuta

yuta absolutely loves pinching his cheeks and telling him how cute he is and follows the kid around and is so CLINGy and sicheng sometimes just has to smile and take it but other times,,,

sicheng: *in chinese* i’m going to skin you alive if you poke my cheek one more time you infuriating little man-

yuta: what are you saying, sicheng? *bats eyelashes lovingly*

sicheng: oh i was just saying ur my best friend in chinese hahahaha

yuta: awwww 💕❣️💓❤️💖💗💝💘

despite this though, the two really do love each other and often times do talk smack to each other about korean customs that they just Do Not Get

and all of their korean friends are just kind of like ???? why are u all so negative and yuwin is like “these are just the facts dudes”

it’s the relationships yuta has formed with these boys and more that really come in handy when yuta realizes in the middle of his second year that,,, he doesn’t really want to go to school for soccer anymore

he doesn’t love the sport any less!! but he just doesn’t feel like it’s what he wants to do for the rest of his life

there’s so much dedication and work that goes into it and yuta just isn’t in the same mindset he was in osaka or during his first year

he feels so ashamed when he informs both the school and his family that he was changing his major, and despite how his family still wants to support him in whatever he chooses, it becomes apparent that time is really running out for him at this point. most people say that declaring a major before your third year is crucial, and he has barely months left

of course, after changing his major, yuta also loses his scholarship and is therefore having to try and make ends meet in any way he can

if that’s taking odd jobs here and there and moving from the dorms into a small, cheap apartment a half hour’s subway ride away from the school, he does what he has to

it’s only randomly when he’s just wasting time with the boys at their dorm that one of them turns on this,,, anime

no it’s not hentai

and sometimes the boys joke abt yuta’s anime knowledge being sub par at best but yuta is just like “at least i’m not a weeb”

until they introduce him to this one anime

ouran high school host club

he learns that the basic premise is the protagonist ends up getting forced into working for a “host club” of pretty, rich boys who tend to the girls of their high school and raise money doing silly things like taking photos of the boys and selling them or auctioning off the host’s belongings

and while he thinks it’s pretty ridiculous,, he’s also inspired

and out of the blue after binge-watching all the episodes in two days, yuta asks if any of the boys thinks it would be possible to have a host club in this decade, specifically at their school

at first, most of them just joke about how weird it’d be and that there were hardly any rich students on campus, let alone ones pretty enough to successfully be a part of a host club

but then yuta is like “no,,, i mean we don’t have to be as elaborate as the anime but we could still do things right? like for people who are stressed with exams or who need to talk to someone because they’re homesick and their friends here don’t get it,,,,, and we can get donations and stuff to keep it going. and the more money we get the more fun activities we can organize for students to enjoy,, wouldn’t it be cool?”

so from there, a conversation spurs on and suddenly this thing is actually getting put to work

each boy is in charge of something, whether it’s being a shoulder to cry on and get advice from on (taeyong), a fun, laid back guy who knows where all the cool things to do on campus are (johnny), or a guy who is just a plain pick up line machine (yuta)

they all do something unique and different compared to the other boys and it all just,,, like it just works so well

at first the school thinks it’s fuckin weird and there’s so much they have to smooth out but they eventually end up getting a faculty advisor to look over their activities and soon enough their “host club” is in business

at first, people really don’t know what they’re getting into when they’re invited to the club on campus, only that it’s supposed to be either really funny or really embarrassing

and the boys are just as nervous as the first few students who arrive

but, at some point, something just clicks

there’s this one student who comes to taeyong every week and complains about their annoying roommate and their terrible history professor but by the end of the meeting, they feel so much lighter

there’s another student who honestly just comes to see doyoung bc he reminds them sm of like a goofy best friend who is both awkward and cute at all times and they often just go to the cafeteria and play board games for hours

and there’s another student who is a chinese transfer and finds so much comfort in getting to talk to sicheng in their native language about home bc they haven’t met many ppl on campus who are in the same boat as them and it’s just,,, a blessing

yuta’s crazy, out of the blue idea actually works

and as ppl become regulars, they tell their friends and their friends tell their friends and suddenly they’re really doing something

students who can are sparing a few bucks here and there and when the club pairs up with other clubs on campus, they also get money from the fundraisers they hold selling ice cream or organizing therapy pet meetings during exam week for all the stressed students

a portion of the money that the club gets goes to the members to help with books and other little necessities that they might have trouble paying for currently

now, yuta, like some of the other boys, doesn’t really have a niche in the club

some of them do!! and that’s fine!! but it’s a little disheartening because there’s always that student who is like “is there anyone here who can do [x] for me?” and there will be one of them there and that thing is right up their alley

whereas all the more broad and unexplored requests go to the other boys who haven’t quite established what they can do for their clients

yuta is usually good at cracking jokes and being an overall mood lifter, but,, so is johnny,,,, so is their youngest, donghyuck,,, so is their newest member yukhei

and once again, yuta just feels like he doesn’t know what he wants in life and doesn’t know where he fits in

and yeah, sure, he put together this whole club in the first place, but he leaves management in the hands of taeyong and doyoung and taeil…. the “responsible” ones

yuta was just the “goof”, the “sassy” one, the “greasy” one

he just doesn’t know where he fits….. he feels like a puzzle piece that’s missing its place from the big picture

enter you, someone who was definitely in a similar head space

you weren’t sure what you were doing with your life, if you really wanted to pursue higher education, and your mental health was suffering big time

you were pretty much on your last leg as you tried to figure out whether you should just call it quits this semester and drop out for good or if you should keep soldiering on

your friend notices that you’ve fallen so deep into a bad mood that you haven’t been able to drag yourself out of it yet, so she recommends that you come try this new thing on campus that a lot of students have been talking about

something about a “harem of handsome boys” and “the answer to all your problems”

you seriously couldn’t see how a boy would ever be the answer to any problem but nevertheless u went

after your last class of the day, your friend brought you to one of the empty rooms on the top floor of one of the buildings on campus overlooking the rest of the school

there,,, you hadn’t known what you expected but it definitely wasn’t this

there’s just a bunch of handsome looking boys sitting around the big classroom, one sitting on top of a desk and talking animatedly to one girl about god knows what, another in the back showing a girl some new trendy dance you hadn’t caught on to yet, and another standing off to the side with a kind smile on his face as he introduces himself as jungwoo, a member of the club

he asks you what you’re looking for for the evening, and you have a weird feeling about the way he asks the question but this seems so,,, innocent,,, odd but innocent

your friend nudges you to go on, and you kind of just shrug and tell him you don’t know yet

jungwoo just smiles and tells you that he knows the perfect person for you

and then he runs off to the back of the room, up to one boy who wasn’t talking to anyone yet

he’s got headphones on and the shade on the window next to him is rolled all the way up, letting the sunlight in and it highlights his sharp features and stunning hazel eyes

jungwoo says something, and then those hazel eyes are on you

you barely register your friend leaving, just that her fleeting words are “have fun with him, he’s a mystery”

hazel eyes blinks and then quietly waves you over, and out of instinct you look over to the familiar face of jungwoo to see if it’s ok

the boy who looks much younger in comparison to hazel eyes just nods and smiles that big smile again, waving you over as well

so you make your way over, catching eyes with a few of the boys who were with other “clients” as your friend had called them, some of them giving you a smile and some of them widening their eyes as they watched you make your way over to hazel eyes

jungwoo pulls a chair out for you and faces you toward hazel eyes, telling you to have fun and to talk to him if you had any questions

once he’s gone…. you don’t quite know what to do now

and hazel eyes has no problem staring at you while you try to figure it out

immediately, you decide that’s the first order of business

“so uh,,, i’m (y/n), what is ur name?” you ask, sounding much meeker than you intended

honestly, you were just tired and couldn’t quite believe this was what you were spending your very limited time doing instead of homework or staring at the wall in the middle of an existential crisis

hazel eyes smiles some, “nakamoto yuta, but you can call me later”

it takes you a second to process that he’s just used a pick up line on you,, and a bad one at that

by the time you even get a stunned laugh out of your mouth, he grins wider and you swear that the sun’s light burns a little brighter on his skin when he does, “i’m already taking your breath away, huh?”

“out of disbelief” “i know, right? i’m a marvel. it’s ok, you can admit it” he nods at you understandingly, as if he knew your feelings better than you did yourself

“is this your thing then? you’re the flirty one?” you ask, folding your arms on the desk separating the two of you and tilting your head to the side

the sun reaches you when you do and,, you looked beautiful from across the room but up close

you took his breath away

he has to collect what is left of his bearings, watching you in quiet awe as he thinks of what to say to you in response

there are no more pick up lines or witty remarks up his sleeve all of a sudden

how did you do that?

he finally clears his throat and looks away almost bashfully, “that’s more yukhei’s area”

“then what do you do?”

“uh,,, i don’t. uh. i don’t have a thing”

you hum lowly, “so do you usually get the clients who are indecisive?”

he thinks for a moment before nodding an affirmative

after a small awkward silence, he tries to fill the time you have together, “well, why don’t you tell me about why you decided to come today then? or how you’re feeling? i can find out what to do for you from there”

you try to think about what to tell him, unsure if you should go as deep as to tell the truth but also if you should stay elusive. after all, you had no idea what this club specialized in. maybe it was just for lighthearted interactions between students and nothing more

“i really only came because my friend said i should take my mind off of school stress and well, here i am”

yuta blinks for a few seconds before perking up, pushing himself up from his chair. the sudden movement surprises you, but then he’s walking over to the other corner of the room where there’s a locker located. he pops open the door and pulls out a soccer ball, then turns to you with a grin “wanna play me? loser buys slurpees at the corner store”

your eyes widen in surprise before you decide that you’ve nothing to lose and decide to accept with an added “slurpees and snacks, accordingly”

yuta ends up leading you out to the empty, open soccer field as the sun starts its descent out of the sky, kicking the ball around to you with more force and precision than you had expected

it’s only a quarter into the game when you realize that you are v seriously outplayed and yuta hasn’t broken a sweat

meanwhile you have drowned in your own bodily liquids and are probably watering the grass with it at this point

“you tricked me!” you accuse, breathing hard as you fall to your knees at another goal scored by him, but he just grins and his smile looks more devious out here than it did when you’d first seen it

“i never told you i was bad at soccer, i just told you to play me” “tricked!” “you didn’t ask!”

you rush over to retrieve the ball, wanting so badly to score a goal out of spite but when you kick,,, he just quickly blocks it and gets it into ur goal instead

finally, he decides to pity you and ends the game early with a whopping win 12-1

to make up for completely annihilating you, he offers to drive you both to the store instead of making you walk in your exhausted state and soon, the both of you are perched in chairs outside of the corner store, laughing over your slurpees and snacks and talking about everything that comes to mind, from the strange little trinkets yuta keeps in his car to your ankle socks decorated with little strawberries

the sun has fully gone down now, the night air cool but relieving on your heated skin

yuta brushes his hair back with his hand and takes a long drag from his straw before leaning back into his seat and looking at you, “so, how do you feel?”

you start at the sudden question, realizing that you have no ready-made answer on your tongue

honestly, you hadn’t thought anything about how you felt

the whole time you were with yuta, you just let go. you stopped thinking. stopped feeling. you just had fun

so you tell him just that

“i feel the most carefree right now than i ever have since i started school here”

a look of stupefaction floods his expression, making you shuffle in your seat “sorry, uh,,, was that too much?”

he quickly shakes his head, “no i just,,, uh… i feel the same”

you two just stare at each other like you’d done earlier when you’d first met, bewilderment and curiosity clear in the air

there’s something there, you both note, but what it is is still unclear

all you know is that you felt free, and all yuta knows is that he feels like he might have actually found his thing

he ends up taking you back to the school where it has gotten quite late and all the other boys have finished up with their clients and have gone home by now

yuta is going to wish you a goodnight and get back to his apartment when you turn to him and dig into your wallet all of a sudden, pulling out a few dollar bills

“i uh,, i guess you guys take donations and everything?”

usually, this wouldn’t feel so strange. after all, it’s what the club runs on next to fundraisers and the like

but

between the both of you, it just doesn’t feel right

so he pushes your hand away and grins, “you already treated me to food, silly!”

you look like you want to protest but yuta just smiles and heaves a big breath, “so! i hope i made your night”

you just look at him for a bit before blurting out “can i see you again?”

yuta is taken aback bc… well, he’s never had anyone request that of him before. he never really saw regulars like the other boys, so to imagine that he would have one just boggled his mind for a while

he soon recovered however, putting on one of his carefree smiles, “only if you’ll continue to suck at soccer”

you scowl before breaking out into laughter together, you waving a quick goodbye before slipping out of the car and heading off to your dorm room before the night got any older

and yuta really shouldn’t be surprised when he sees you in their room again the same day next week, hair put up out of your face with a funny looking headband and your body outfitted in a pair of shorts and a tee shirt and some sneakers that definitely aren’t made for running around on grass for hours

he doesn’t even get to ask you what the hell you thought you were wearing before you’re slapping your hands together and demanding a rematch for last week

and when he beats you (again), you treat him to slurpees once more

he expects you to really give up this time because now you’ve learned that he was recently attending school on a soccer scholarship and there was virtually no way that you, without any experience in the sport, could pummel him in it only after two matches

but then when he drops you off at the dorms a little earlier this time, your parting message is that you’ll be back for the next match

you meet him six days earlier, then five days, then four, three, two…

soon, you’re popping by every time you have a free hour or two to see if he’s in to play

slowly, you learn his schedule and he learns yours

the boys become well acquainted with you when you bound into the classroom with bright eyes and slightly more sport-appropriate outfits, simply yelling a “yuta, they’re here!” at the top of their lungs

while yuta starts to complain that all your meetings are the same, he does find that he’s having quite a lot of fun playing you

because, and don’t tell him i told you, but you’re getting better the more you play and he’s kinda proud

for those few hours every other day or so, it’s just the two of you messing around and playing soccer with each other

sometimes, you’ll get some talking in when you eat or when you both take a break and fall out on the grass in sweaty, panting messes

you learn all about how he wasn’t from around here, not too much of a surprise to you given his name, but you were awfully impressed with how he spoke almost like a native korean

he tells you about his life back home, about his family and how he’d gotten into soccer from a young age and adored it more than anything

he tells you how he has dreams of his mother’s homemade food and how he and his father message each other everyday about how much they miss each other

he tells you how ever since he changed his mind about his major, he’s felt lost and confused about his place in life and whether he would be anywhere near productive in the next ten years

and for the first time since yuta’s told someone about it, he feels like someone understands him

because you tell him that you feel similarly, that you don’t even know if what you’re studying for now will have any impact on your life in the future. you don’t have a clue what you want to do with your life and you don’t have a clue who you want to be,, but there’s something in that solidarity

and despite how scared the both of you are of your futures, you both decide that no matter what it is, you two can figure it out together

it’s different. it’s…. good. he likes the feeling of having someone understand him. he loves the feeling of having someone understand him and vow to walk the treacherous roads of life together. he really, really does

he also tells you about his funny habits like experimenting with making new foods (that he forces the other boys to eat and then enjoy) and teaching his unsuspecting friends out of context japanese just for kicks

you tell him if he ever teaches you something messed up in japanese you’ll kick him right in his soccer balls

he makes sure not to play u like that

except,,, maybe once

you: hey yuta how do you say “how much is this?” in japanese? i want to know if i ever visit

yuta: ohhh yeah it’s *in japanese* yuta is the best

you:…. did i just hear your name in that sentence

your friend pokes fun at you for going back so often but you honestly don’t care; you like being around yuta

in fact,, you kinda feel weird when you’re not with him

at first you had attributed it to him just having such a way with words that you would end up consumed in trying to decipher him rather than thinking about your day-to-day problems

but even when school stress was low, if he wasn’t around, you didn’t feel quite as peppy

yuta was slowly becoming something like your other half, fitting the pieces of you that you had long thought were missing

you guessed it might not have been the safest idea to start feeling so strongly for someone whose job was basically making people happy, but you felt that whatever you felt with him,, he felt with you

you could see it in the way he looked at you compared to his other clients, the way he would pretend not to light up when you’d walk in the room, or how he would try to prolong your time together in hopes that you’d stay longer,,,, keep your eyes on him more

you just didn’t know what to do with that information, didn’t know how to go about it the right way

after all, he had become someone you didn’t want to lose. if you screwed it up, you would be right back in the slump you were in before

you try instead to push the tumultuous feelings away for the time being and instead focus on meeting him again for your next match

you had managed to win your last two games and yuta was starting to get nervous, wondering if he was either losing his touch or you were just getting too good for him

when you show up to greet him that day, you notice you’re a little early and he’s with a client that had recently started coming to see him lately

she always came before you and always seemed to be somewhat starstruck whenever she would talk to him. you had eavesdropped on their conversations a number of times, so much so that you had enough blackmail fodder for d a y s

you had once teased him asking him why he never talked in such a cute voice to you as he did her

yuta: i don’t act cute for demons

usually, you would just sit off to the side and wait but you’re surprised when you’re suddenly approached by johnny who is grinning and plopping into a seat next to you, greeting you with one of his million dollar smiles “hey (y/n), waiting on yuta?”

you laugh, glancing over in the boy in question’s direction to see him fluttering his lashes at the girl “yeah, waiting on him and his girlfriend”

johnny snickers, “jealous, much?”

you fake a pout and rest your chin on your fist, “oh, definitely. i’m just overcome with the green-eyed monster!”

johnny looks over at yuta again and his friendly smile morphs into something a little sinister as he turns back to you, leaning in closer, “how obnoxious do you think we’ll have to be to get his attention?”

you take in a breath, wondering if you really should indulge johnny just for a joke, but then yuta looks over

and you start to laugh far too loudly as if johnny had just told you the most hilarious joke

you slap his shoulder for emphasis and feel yuta staring at the both of you, a slight pout on his lips as he can’t help but wonder what tf u two are even laughing abt

what’s,,, what’s with that loud laugh huh?? johnny’s not that funny??? you only laugh like that when he tells you jokes!!!!

>:(

you two keep it up well until you hear yuta call your name from the other side of the room and you finally realize the girl is long gone and yuta’s got his jacket thrown over his shoulder (all cool like, bc bad boys don’t wear their jackets apparently) and the soccer ball tucked between his hip and forearm, looking as serious as he ever has (but it’s rlly cute ishfiash)

“are you coming or are you two busy?”

johnny turns to you and tries to muffle a laugh, whispering for you to run along and that his “job is done”

whatever…. that means

you follow after yuta but he’s walking faster than usual, barely giving you a chance to keep up except for when he stops at the elevator

you try to jokingly ask him what he and his client talked about but he just mumbles “it’s confidential”

you can tell there’s something different in the air now and you’re feeling nervous, but you follow him out to the soccer field regardless and the game starts

it starts off fine, but you quickly realize that he’s playing in a totally different state than usual

he takes each shot seriously, seemingly getting you back for defeating him in the last two games

at one point, you guys get close to each other, you attempting to take the ball from him in hopes that you could somehow survive this game with more than two points or else he would totally annihilate you

your chests are bumping against each other, arms stretched backwards to fight the temptation of touching the other in order to get the ball

all it is is quick feet and sneaky steals

every time you steal, he steals back

it keeps going back and forth like that for a while, and you finally look him in the face

honestly, he could have gotten his point by now and finished the game

but,, he looks distracted

the mindless movements he makes prove that

he’ll steal the ball only to let you steal it back

“yuta…” you call his name softly, taking the ball from him once more

he seems to snap out of whatever it is that has him on another train of thought, and when he sees you have the ball, he steals it back immediately, but this time he gears up to kick it into your goal

you don’t know why you do it exactly, but you have to think fast if you want to save your ass in this game

your fingers shoot out and make contact with yuta’s sides and he jolts, breaking into an involuntary fit of laughter as you begin to tickle him

he demands that you release him in between giggles, hands weakly trying to pry yours away

you laugh too and manage to get him away from the ball just long enough to score a point while he’s compromised

yuta suddenly catches your wrists and pulls you into him, finally sucking in a breath as he realizes that you’ve just stolen a point from him. his cheeks are flushed from laughing so hard (or maybe from embarrassment, but he’d never admit to it) and he’s glaring at you, but not with nearly the same intensity as he had earlier with johnny

“you cheated” he breathes, voice low and quiet

you look up into his eyes and start smiling, flexing your hands in his grip and fighting the urge to laugh when he keeps that same hold on you, “you were distracted. i had to get your head back in the game” “you tricked me” “now, why does that sound so familiar?”

he opens his mouth to protest but finds himself speechless as he glares at you,,, and then pouts “is this payback?”

you shrug, “maybe… but why were you so distracted in the first place… you okay?”

he looks you in the eye before dropping your wrists, backing away some

and,, you miss the closeness instantaneously

yuta sighs heavily, and you’ve never heard him sound more upset before

yuta folds his arms over his chest and avoids eye contact, “i,, it’s really stupid”

“it’s ok, i expect nothing less from you” you joke, moving forward and softly tapping his chin to try and get him to look at you. you frown when he flinches away “seriously, what is it?”

“don’t you feel it?”

“feel… what?”

“you know what. just now, you felt it, didn’t you? all i do is move away from you and my whole body just feels,, wrong. it doesn’t make sense to me”

you watch as he shuffles quietly in the grass, face turned down in a thoughtful and nervous frown

suddenly, without a chance to rethink it, you grab his wrists like he had done yours and pull him right up against you, only,, you severely miscalculate his weight being thrown against you in comparison to yours being thrown against him

you go falling to the ground, right before yuta’s quick thinking has him twisting the two of you mid air so that his back hits the ground instead of yours

but again!!!! you two are really good at miscalculating!!!

and without meaning to (at least, not like this)…. your lips collide

it’s rough because of the momentum and your teeth knock together the moment you both hit the ground, but the pain disappears the second yuta hisses

and kisses you again

like you had grown so accustomed to, you get thrown into a world of your own, thoughts of the little things flying right out of the window

all you can taste is yuta’s lips and all you can feel is every nerve in your body going into overdrive

honestly, you wonder why you didn’t kiss him before

god, you really wonder why you didn’t kiss him before

you pull away first, biting your lip as you catch yuta almost chasing your lips and then letting his head fall back to the ground in defeat when you’ve moved out of his reach

“…are you still tricking me? so that I don’t call a foul on that tickling move earlier?” he narrows his eyes some, chest swelling with pride when you laugh again. because you’re laughing because of him

you cup his cheek and sigh, “you saw right through me”

that feeling you have when you’re near yuta seems to just intensify when you two decide to start dating

since yuta is naturally clingy too it just,,, works so well sehfiajsd

definitely the type of boyfriend to always be touching you in some way

sometimes if he’s not touching he’s hovering, for sure

you could just be standing and he’s like. There

the boys joke that he acts like he’s surgically attached to you but when they ask about you he always tries to act aloof like oh,,, them? yeah,,,, i don’t care abt them at all,,, i could live without them,,, *phone rings with ur caller id on the screen* wait shut up the love of my life is calling

always in The mood for some ominous reason

he’s just a bit,, kiss-starved ig

speaking of kisses!!! king of kissing you till you turn blue

he can go for quite a while and he has quite the tongue and i will leave that at that my friends

he’s such a touchy guy but if you’re equally as touchy he? goes into overload?

sometimes he might literally stop kissing you just to hyper focus on you touching him and ur like dude!!! come on!!! multi-task!!!

he blames it on the fact that you just mesmerize him and you’re too flattered to scold him again

;-;

you guys ofc still have your soccer matches, and you’ve gotten quite good

yuta had honestly missed playing between classes and the club and such, so you encourage him to rejoin the soccer team just for fun and he just loves it so much. he really did miss playing like he used to

speaking of the club, yuta is still a member, but it’s pretty clear his mind is elsewhere with clients

eventually, he decides that he can’t devote his full attention to clients any more so instead he asks 2tae and doyoung if he can maybe take an executive position

and they’re like?? uh YEH u started the damn thing lol

so yuta starts helping put together fun little outings and just tries to make the club not only more fun for the clients, but also for the members

and steadily, more ppl start to join!!! and not just boys!!!

honestly there’s a personality for everyone and something that everyone can enjoy

one time you came to visit yuta during the club hours and a newcomer mistook you for a member and started shyly asking jungwoo if she could pick you

needless to say yuta was v amused

“wow (y/n), if you weren’t dating me i’d probably hire u right now” “yuta please evaporate”

but anywho, despite all of this, yuta still hasn’t figured out what he wants to major in and do with his life

but also… he’s realized that’s okay

and that not everybody has life figured out like that

and if he has to take a year off and find something to do until he gets it then he will

and if he leaves school and never pursues it again, he’d be alright with that

because honestly, his fear of not being perfect or the rising star he was expected to be back home can’t overshadow the love he’s received not only from you but also his friends and family. and while everything in this day and age tells him he has to have it all figured out by now, he has other plans

he knows whatever he chooses to do from tomorrow morning till the last day of his life, he’ll make the decision because he wants to, because he loves what he’s going to do, and because his happiness is more important than any preconceived notions of “success”

he’ll be alright, he’s more than loved enough to see the silver lining

[maggotmouth]

     hullo it nora, back for more mess. this unhinged little nightmare is cecily who i first birthed around 3 years ago and i am so excited to finally be playing her again. feral wolf girl who loves silk babydoll dresses and bubblegum but would also cut your femoral artery if she was bored. is the eptome of that “somethin dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls” trope. amma crellin meets harley quinn meets addy hanlon.  ( pinterest )

APP.

( nora. 22. gmt. she / her. ) it might be HER FRESHMAN year but I still think CECILY DE ROSA looks exactly like FREYA MAVOR and sometimes I think the FEMALE is actually them. Of course I’m wrong, as they’re 19 and studying THEATRE while living in FIDELIS here at Lockwood. The GEMINI can be rather PUCKISH and CANDID, but also kind of SELF-CENTRED and HYSTERICAL. Their most played song on Spotify was CELL BLOCK TANGO by CATHERINE ZETA JONES AND THE COMPANY OF CHICAGO, so I think that says a lot.

BACKGROUND.

tw death suicide murder proceed w caution

born as ‘lamia romana’ in italy to catholic parents. her father was a struggling alcoholic and incredibly depressed. when cece was 4, and her brother was 3 her father fed the gas pipe through the back of their car whilst they prepared to go on their family holiday because he knew suicide would leave his wife and children penniless so he decided the most selfless thing would be to take them with him

cecily (lamia) and her brother luc by some miracle survived the accident, but were left orphaned. they were sent to a convent where they were raised by nuns. cece was incredibly religious. it became her whole life. she was devoted to god completely, almost crazed, because in the absence of parents she transferred the need for a guider and protector onto this spiritual other evoked by her religious beliefs.

she always had a strained relationship w her brother because she believed he wasn’t as devoted to catholicism as she was. when she was 13 he claimed that god wasn’t real and that she was a freak, and in a violent rage cecily thrust a crucifix through his throat. it was completely out of character for her. she screamed until her throat went dry. eventually,  when the nuns managed to tear her away from her brother’s body, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital in manhattan where she stayed for two years. driven to madness, she convinced herself that she had been possessed by the devil the moment she killed her brother, and soon she began to accept her fate, as not holy, like she had anticipated, but in fact it’s ungoldy antithesis

when she was released, she was adopted by an american distant aunt and uncle and sent to a manhattan boarding school under the new name ‘cecily de rosa’. see also: st. trinnians. lifted of any religious obligation, cecily grew wild. she delighted in acting up, cheeking her superiors, causing havoc and chaos, terrifying the other girls. sex became her weapon – she would seduce the boys from the local comprehensive and drop them like flies. to her, it was merely a game. 

uses sex as a weapon, a way in which to manipulate men, having filmed sexual liasons with both a former acting coach and a TA to use for the purposes of blackmail. 

 her expulsion from school was threatened after she streaked the school naked and doused in pig blood, but her academic prowess was an asset to the school, so they learnt to put up with her antics. she applied for yale but didn’t get in.

 she atended juliard for a year but was thrown out for indecency

theatre-wise, one of Cecily’s most commendable traits is her sheer tenacity and lack of inhibition – she is willing to do whatever it takes to climb to the top, and kick as many other people down as necessary on her way there. tthis unhinged hunger for success was evidenced when, in her breakout role, cecily played Tamora in Titus Andronicus. feeling the presentation of one of shakespeare’s most terrifying women was ‘pussy-footed’ and dulled down for a male audience, cecily took matters into her own hands, and during the famous banquet scene where Tamora is fed her own sons, she ate a pig’s heart live on stage – receiving both awestruck and horrified press reviews for her performance -- and getting expelled from her drama school. (thats why she is now at lockwood)

she is in a sorority house n the gymnastic squad. she speaks fluently in four languages. the kind f sociopathic lana del rey writes songs about. 

was raised Roman Catholic, and although she is now estranged from religion, it’s still an integral part of her identity. She holds it partially responsible for the need to repress emotion she still experiences. The only time she allows herself to truly feel, without perceiving it as a weakness, is when she’s performing

cecily was raised with dual-nationality and is multi-lingual. Her parents frequently spoke both Italian and English around the house, leading cecily to do the same. She is also somewhat familiar with Latin, having studied it alongside Literature, Contemporary Dance and Theatre at a manhattan-based performing arts boarding school.

ethereal wood elf. plays flute and does ballet. her favourite tv shows are making a murderer and dance moms. she is big on Tchaikovsky and Bukowski. poetry to cecily is soup of the soul, despite the fact that the only things she really feels are apathy and mild disgust. her poems mostly centre around the beauty of violence -- writing about it often prevents her from committing violent acts -- and also her cat.

loves gettin fucked up. always high on sometin -- cocaine, ecstasy, love, her own ego.

had her first taste of alcohol at 15 and has stayed fond of spirits ever since. likes literature of the macabre, isn’t fond of social media, and loves knee high socks and glitter. she bites her nails, will only take cold showers, and doesn’t drink coffee. loves cats. is vegan.

she sleeps like a cat, regularly but short amounts of time, and is usually found awake at night stalking the streets in the pursuit of self-destruction. she views herself as pansexual because she is attracted to people rather than genders but she thinks men are trash. probably biromantic or homoromantic. she loves the chase. she likes meaningless sexual liasons, but if hearts are broken in the process, even better. hearts are breakable and she believes those who have them are foolish.

aesthetic:  peroxide hair in a bathtub, bleach, glittery socks under spaghetti strap heels, silk slip dresses, glitter smeared beneath eyes, split knuckles, nose bleeds, a bubble of blue gum snapped against cherry flavoured lips, orange peel, knee-high socks, tartan two-piece skirt and blazers, kate moss posters ripped out of vogue, littering a bedroom wall, yearbook photos tacked together with red thread, clip in highlights, stick on earrings, french music humming from a crackly gramophone, a hip flask covered with hello kitty stickers

PLOTS.

i currently have NO PLOTS for her so everything is open. if you want a cousin / ex-lover / friend with benefits  / bully, or are dying for a specific connection, let me know or like this post and i will msg you!! LOVE U ALL xoxo

more plots all of these are plagiarised:

“you were drunk and you climbed in through my apartment window and I’m not really sure how you managed it because not only is the fire escape broken but you are really fucking plastered wtf please, teach me your skills?”

“i set your kitchen on fire ‘by accident’ because i hate your guts, and you know it was me but you have no evidence”

“we’re in a breakfast club style all day detention”

“you came over for ‘help studying’ and my roommate came home five minutes after we were done hooking up and you got roped into a conversation about her dogs and everyone is uncomfortable”

“we’re friends but it’s a really toxic relationship made up of trying to one up each other all the time”

“I caught you writing gay porn in the library and now you’re terrified i’ll tell everyone, but really i’m just waiting for the next instalment”

“i asked you to help me sneak my cat into my dorm but we got caught by the janitor and now we’re both in the principal’s office”

“you saw me come back to my apartment covered in blood one night, but you’ve never asked about it because you’re scared that yours might be the next blood i’m covered in”

“you broke into my apartment while I was out for whatever reason and when I came home I knocked you out and now you’re unconscious on my floor and idk what to do?”

“i just decked you in the face because i’m drunk and you were pissing me off but ow my hand really fucking hurts i think i might have broke it and oh look your nose is bleeding and now we’re both sitting awkwardly in the hospital while i glare at you from across the room. but wait are you giving me sex eyes?? stop that i’m supposed to mad at you??”

“you keep dragging suspicious sacks up to and down from your apartment and I don’t know what your deal is or why I still wanna bone you”

“we’re in the same rocky horror troupe”

“i stayed over at your house and woke you up in the middle of the night to have sex while your roommate is asleep and every time, your room mate yells “STOP FUCKING, JESUS CHRIST” right when we’re about to finish”

“we used to have a thing but  now we hate each others guts and can’t be in the same room without yelling at one another”

“i had a drunk one night stand with your brother last year and i threw up in your room, and now we’re in a class together and it’s really awkward.”

[risingsouls]

40 odd things about the muse.

1. Do you put ketchup on hotdogs🌭?   “Hotdogs...those are the tubes of meat people sell on street corners? And ketchup is the red stuff they put on it? I suppose I like it.” 2. Choice of soda🥤?  ”I prefer the citrus flavors if I drink soda.” 3. Do you put salt on watermelon🍉? ”That sounds disgusting. Why defile something that’s already fine without it. If it was too sweet, maybe, but I’ve never had any that bothers me.” 4. Can you swim? ”I can.” 5. How do you eat your steak🥩? ”Closer to rare to medium, I suppose. I’ve eaten raw meat and overcooked meat and neither bothers me. I learned to take what I got.” 6. Favorite type of food🥘 ? ”Earth’s ramen is surprisingly good. I’ve also acquired a taste for seafood here. 7. Do you believe in ghosts👻? ”Not particularly. From what I understand, everyone goes to Otherworld when they die. But I don’t care enough to look into the idea of spirits lingering in the living world.” 8. What do you drink in the morning? ”Water. Sometimes coffee.” 9. Can you do 100 push ups? ”Heh...easily.” 10. Summer, Winter, Spring, or Fall? ”Hm, South City doesn’t really see all of Earth’s season and stays relatively mild. But I’ve visited Kakarot and his family at least once in each season and I suppose I liked winter in the mountains quite well. It’s serene.” 11. Your favorite animal? ”I don’t really have one. Watching the gulls wreak havoc on the beach is pretty entertaining, though.” 12. Tattoos? ”I’ve considered it, but no.” 13. Do you wear prescription glasses? ”No.” 14. Do you have a fear? ”....I suppose we all do, don’t we?” 15. Do you have a nickname? ”A few, but I’ve come to like Radman.” 18. Rain or Snow? ”Snow.” 19. Can you change a tire? ”How hard can it be?” 20. Favorite flower? ”Nabooru had what she said were orchids in her house once. I’ll go with those.” 21. Can you drive a stick? ”....I wasn’t aware you could drive sticks.” 23. Favorite color? ”Darker greens and purples.” 26. Can you whistle? ”Yes.” 27. Where were you born? ”Planet Vegeta.” 28. Surgeries? ”Not many, surprisingly. The healing tanks made most surgeries unneeded.” 30. Shower or Bath? ”Shower. Though Nabooru has shown me how to ‘properly’ enjoy a bath as she put it, so once in a while, a bath is okay, too.” 31. Last song you heard? ”Some ‘hair metal’ song in the gym. Something about a hurricane. I wasn’t really paying attention.” 32. Broken bones? ”Too many to count.” 33. How many TV’s in your home? ”2. One in the living area and one in my room.” 34. Worst Pain? ”Having a hole blown through my abdomen didn’t exactly tickle.” 35. Do you like to sing? ”Sure.” 36. Are your parents still alive? ”Somehow, dad survived Frieza’s attack. I’m guess mom wasn’t so lucky.” 37. Do you like to go camping? ”It’s not bad. It can be pretty relaxing to be so close to nature.” 38. What do you binge watch? ”The competitive cooking shows. Especially the one where they sabotage each other.” 39. Favorite Pie? ”Cherry.” 40. A photo of yourself...

Tagged by: nah found it on FB and thought it would be fun Tagging: u

[junker-town]

7 athletes who deserved to have long, full careers

Photo by Rich Pilling/MLB Photos via Getty Images

Sports can be cruel sometimes, robbing us of some of our favorite players before they could fulfill their tremendous promise.

Whether by injuries or circumstance, many of sports’ brightest lights were extinguished far before their time. While it’s sad these players had their careers cut short, it’s important to remember the blessing that was watching them play, even briefly.

Here’s a look at some of our most cherished stars we would have loved to play much longer than they did.

Bo Jackson

It’s hard to overstate just how prevalent Bo Jackson was at his peak. A Heisman Trophy-winning dynamo who also hit tape-measure home runs, Jackson was almost more myth than man. Put it this way: In an early-1990s cartoon, along with Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, Bo Jackson was the animated star. Aside from the legend — like trucking Brian Bosworth for a touchdown, his “Bo Jackson says hello!” home run in the MLB All-Star Game, or any number of jaw-dropping throws — Jackson had plenty of substance, too. He’s still the only player to be named a Major League All-Star and an NFL Pro Bowler.

Jackson averaged 5.40 yards per carry in his 38 NFL games in four seasons, a mark no running back with at least 200 career carries has matched since. He had his best baseball season in 1990, hitting .272/.342/.523 with 28 home runs (142 OPS+, 3.5 WAR) at age 27 for the Royals. But then it all went to hell. A hip injury not only derailed Jackson’s first playoff game in either sport, but ended his football career.

He gave baseball another try, but injuries limited him to just 183 games over the next four years. Jackson was reasonably productive, hitting 29 home runs in 160 games — the equivalent of one full season — in 1993-94, but he was diminished. I don’t even necessarily wish that Jackson played until he was 40 years old. But damn, it would have been wonderful if Jackson got to dazzle us for five more years of his prime.

— Eric Stephen

I’m just here to say I second the wish for Bo Jackson to have played forever. Bo doesn’t know a full career, but, damn, it would have been beautiful.

— Sam Eggleston

Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images

Mark Fidrych

Once there was a baseball player who captured the imagination of a nation. Fidrych was a skinny 6’3, nicknamed “The Bird” in the minors because of his resemblance to Big Bird from Sesame Street. Like the lovable children’s character, Fidrych was endearingly goofy with an irrepressible openness that charmed even baseball curmudgeons.

He compulsively groomed the mound and talked to the baseball, asking it to do his bidding. He’d throw balls back to the umpire insisting they had hits in them, and he worked fast. After shutting down the Yankees on Monday Night Baseball in a game that took just an hour and 51 minutes to complete, his legend grew.

In his Rookie of the Year campaign, Fidrych went 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA and finished second to Jim Palmer in the Cy Young award voting. Then the injuries came. He tore cartilage in his knee during spring training the following year and had to shut down his second season after only 11 starts because of a torn rotator cuff.

The arm injury went undiagnosed until a visit to Dr. James Andrews in 1985 four years after he retired. When his career was over, Fyrdrych went back home to Northborough, Massachusetts, where he lived on a farm with his wife and daughter. In 2009, he was found dead under his dump truck, an apparent victim of a horrible accident.

Fidrych never would have made it in today’s game. He didn’t throw very hard and he averaged less than four strikeouts per nine innings in his breakthrough season. No doubt his antics would have purists clutching their cups.

But he knew how to pitch — he kept the ball low and in the park — and he knew how to have fun. He was, quite literally, just a kid living out an extended fairy tale in front of 50,000 fans and millions of television viewers. For one year, he was absolutely perfect.

— Paul Flannery

Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Andrew Luck

Not many NFL Draft prospects have ever been as hyped as Luck. He was the likely No. 1 pick in 2011, but decided to return to Stanford for another season. That spurred a year of “Suck for Luck,” a sweepstakes to see which team would lose enough games to draft the quarterback. The Colts won (?) that contest and immediately got three straight 11-win seasons with Luck at the helm. He made the Pro Bowl in each of those years and led the league with 40 touchdowns in 2014.

Then he started falling apart.

Luck missed nine games in 2015 with shoulder, kidney, and ab muscle injuries. He missed the entire 2017 season with a shoulder injury. And in 2019, with a leg injury keeping him out of action in preseason, Luck abruptly retired before the regular season began.

Luck’s career ended with just 86 regular-season appearances and eight playoff games — not nearly enough for a player who should’ve been one of the league’s elite quarterbacks for another decade or so.

He could make all the throws, but what made him really special was the physicality he brought to the position. Few players have ever been able to shake off pass rushers and navigate a pocket quite like Luck.

When USC cornerback Shareece Wright scooped up a fumble against Stanford in 2010, Luck destroyed Wright and forced a fumble of his own. When a fumble bounced into Luck’s hands in a playoff game against the Chiefs, he got the job done himself by bulldozing through the defense and diving into the end zone.

It’s a shame we only got five and a half seasons of that player in the NFL.

— Adam Stites

Photo by MARK LEFFINGWELL/AFP via Getty Images

Terrell Davis

Davis became the fourth player in NFL history to run for more than 2,000 yards in a single season in 1998. He was 26 years old and barreling toward the prime of his career.

Over the following three seasons, he’d play in just 17 games. He retired before he turned 30.

Leg injuries kept Davis from following up on that 2,008-yard, 21-touchdown campaign. He played only four games in 1999, snapping a streak that saw him run for more yards and more touchdowns than the previous year throughout the first four years of his NFL career. Between 1995 and 1998, Davis averaged 15 touchdowns per full season and 104 yards per game. He was a full-stop monster in a league where feature backs were still a thing.

Then it all drained away thanks to a torn ACL — suffered, cruelly, which trying to make a tackle on an interception return — and then stress reactions and other knee issues. Even in a diminished state he was ... fine, but clearly not the All-Pro he once was. He retired in the summer of 2000 when it became obvious the player who’d run for 142 yards per postseason game and scored a dozen playoff touchdowns wasn’t coming back.

Sure, Davis accomplished pretty much everything an NFL tailback can over the course of his first four seasons in the league. He won two Super Bowls, was both a regular-season and Super Bowl MVP, and was twice the league’s offensive player of the year. He was a deserving 2017 addition to the NFL Hall of Fame. But a full-strength Davis wouldn’t just be a a firework in the night sky. He would have been the aurora borealis that lit up an entire hemisphere of the NFL’s greatest offenses.

— Christian D’Andrea

Freddy Adu

Freddy Adu is a punchline. On American soccer, on the dangers of overhyping a teenager, and on racist stereotypes about African athletes lying about their ages. But Adu really was something special, as anyone who saw him before he signed in MLS will tell you.

MLS didn’t pick a random kid to promote as the youngest professional athlete in American history. He turned pro because he looked ready for it. He shined at the Under-20 World Cup as a 13-year-old. Even if you think he wasn’t 13 — which, again, is a claim based on racist stereotypes that there is no evidence for — he certainly was not 20. Players who perform well up an age group at the Under-20 World Cup are universally regarded as ready for professional soccer.

Ready on the field, that is. Off the field is a different story. Many leagues don’t allow players to make first team appearances until they’re 16 to avoid the kind of thing that happened to Adu.

The adults who were supposed to look after Adu failed him. In his rookie season, he was spotted at college parties that were broken up by police. Thomas Rongen, his long-time U-20s coach — a person who should have been doing as much as he could to help Adu while he was facing pressures that almost no teenager could possibly be ready for — has callously joked about him having a drinking problem.

I don’t know if Adu had a clinical issue and don’t wish to speculate, but it’s clear that he was completely incapable of dealing with the stress of being called the savior of American men’s soccer at 14 years old, and even more clear that he didn’t get enough help from supposed grown-ups. MLS and Nike had a plan to promote him and make him a media superstar, but no plan to take care of him.

Years after he was branded a failure, he still showed glimpses of brilliance. He was the United States’ best player at the 2007 Under-20 World Cup, and a year later the best player on an Under-23 team that qualified for the Olympics. He set up three goals in the last two matches of the 2011 Gold Cup, and looked set to revive his career. But it didn’t happen. Those individual great matches never turned into a great season.

Adu was not overhyped. He really was the best male prospect in the history of American soccer. He really was good enough to play against adults at 14. And the adults in charge had no idea what to do about it.

— Kim McCauley

Photo by Jordan Johnson/NBAE via Getty Images

Brandon Roy

Roy quickly became one of the best young shooting guards the NBA had to offer. He was an all-star in just his second season in 2007-08, and was the first Trail Blazer to be named to the team since Rasheed Wallace in 2001. Roy’s arrival in Portland helped the Blazers get back to being a regular contender, and it felt like he would be the franchise’s cornerstone for the next 10 to 15 years. In his three all-star seasons, Roy averaged 21.1 points, 5.2 assists, and 4.6 rebounds per game.

Roy was a great player. He may not have been elite, but he had respect from other elite stars around him like Kobe Bryant. Bryant was asked by John Thompson who was the toughest player for him to guard, to which Bryant replied, “Roy 365 days, seven days a week. Roy has no weaknesses in his game.”

Roy signed a max contract in 2009, but would only start in 88 more games as a member of the Blazers. Numerous knee injuries forced Roy to retire in 2011 because he lacked cartilage between the bones of both his knees. Roy attempted a comeback with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2012-13, but only played in five regular season games before needing yet another season-ending knee surgery.

The Blazers lucked out and ended up getting Damian Lillard, who has been incredible for that franchise. But you can’t help but wonder what could have been with Roy.

— Harry Lyles Jr.

Magnum T.A.

Yes, I’m adding a professional wrestler to this list — because Magnum T.A. deserves it. Only the most hardcore wrestling fans, or people alive to see him in his prime, will recognize his name, and there’s a good reason for that.

In the mid-80s, Magnum T.A. was everything. A big, athletic wrestler who feuded routinely with Ric Flair in the National Wrestling Alliance. Everything pointed to him being the next “great one,” with his natural charisma, gifts in the ring, and an unmistakable look that often drew comparisons to Tom Selleck. There was no doubt that not only would Magnum T.A. be a wrestler for a long time, but was poised to be the next “great one.”

Then, at the age of 27, he lost control of his Porsche and crashed into a tree. Everything changed in an instant. T.A. “exploded” two vertebrae in his back, ending his in-ring career and causing everything to come crashing down. In an instant he was reduced from being one of the hottest young stars in the business to an on-screen commentator and personality. He would later go on to become a confidant and trainer, helping some of the biggest stars in the industry today.

It’s not that Magnum T.A. had a sad life outside of the ring, but this is one of missed potential. He was so young, so promising, and in an industry where performers routinely are able to compete well into their 50s. Had Magnum T.A. not gotten into his car accident I have no doubt that today we’d look at him with the same household name recognition as Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan or Macho Man Randy Savage — instead, he’ll be remembered as one of the greatest of all time to never realize his potential, and it’s a tragedy we don’t have thousands of hours of incredible Magnum T.A. matches because of it.

— James Dator

We’ve given you our list, but we would love to hear which athlete you wished had the chance at a longer career. Please, let us know in the comments below.

[hottytoddynews]

Photo by John Brawley

As she stands behind the camera directing her latest project, alumna Tina Mabry (BA 00), writer and director for film and television, reminds people on set to have fun and be grateful for the opportunity to be doing what they all love.

“That’s the one thing I’ve said about film is have fun with it,” Mabry says. “If you’re on my set, you’re going to have a good time – you’re going to get work done and make something great – but you’re going to have fun doing it. I tell people to remember where we all came from when we all did this for free because we loved it.”

Growing up in Tupelo, Mabry never knew it was possible for an African-American female to write and direct her own movies.

“I’m the kid that grew up playing with Happy Meal toys,” Mabry says. “I was 4 years old and would have my own little sitcoms. It was the craziest thing ever. Who thinks that what you’re doing at that age is going to be possible, but sometimes that’s how far life takes you. Film and television opened up a world for me because I couldn’t afford to travel, but I could live it through watching it on a screen.”

After graduating from Tupelo High School in 1996, Mabry narrowed her college choices down to Ole Miss and Howard University. When her mother became ill, she knew she wanted to be close by in Oxford.

A political science major and member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Mabry had every intention of enrolling in law school after finishing her undergraduate degree. But a break from studying for the Law School Admission Test proved to be too powerful to ignore.

“I had my LSAT prep book, and I stopped and said I’m going to watch movies,” Mabry recalls. “I watched two movies I had never seen before: ‘Love and Basketball’ by Gina Prince-Bythewood and ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ by Kimberly Peirce. After watching those two films, it impacted me in a way that I realized I couldn’t go to law school.

“I’ve always loved film, and it never seemed like a real thing. But when I saw at the end of the film written and directed by, and it was a woman’s name, it was like it became something real that I could actually achieve.”

Mabry threw away her LSAT book and immediately started researching Prince-Bythewood and Peirce to find out where they attended film school. Four schools emerged that were highly regarded: University of California, Los Angeles; Columbia University; University of Southern California; and New York University.

D-Day

The cast and crew of ‘Mississippi Damned’ at Slamdance Film Festival.

After applying to all four, Mabry set a “D-Day” departure date to leave Mississippi and move to Los Angeles regardless of the outcome of her applications. After being rejected from three schools, she stuck to her plan and began the long drive out west on May 26, 2001.

“I got my LA apartment online and had an unpaid internship for a management company set up, so I drove across the country with my dad and a U-Haul,” Mabry says. “I had no paying job, so I became a telemarketer. I came home after work one day and got my letter from USC saying, ‘Congratulations, you got in.’”

Juggling three jobs to make ends meet while attending school as a full-time student, Mabry graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2005 with a Master of Fine Arts in film production.

“I met Tina while we were both attending graduate school at USC,” says Morgan Stiff, Mabry’s wife, producing partner and co-founder of Morgan’s Mark, a production company and editing facility. “I remember watching Tina go through the process of making her first short film, ‘Brooklyn’s Bridge to Jordan.’ I’ve never seen someone have so much drive and determination. I was struck by her writing most of all. She is a master of dialogue and can pull out such powerful performances from actors.”

Mabry was soon offered a chance to co-write a feature script, but the genre was comedy and her forte was drama.

“It was completely out of my wheelhouse,” Mabry says. “But it’s a feature film, and somebody wants me to co-write. It wasn’t for any money, but I got a chance to at least get my name on a feature. When you come out of film school as a writer [and] director, chances are you’re going to be unemployed unless you learn a trade while you’re there to sustain you while you’re trying to become a paid writer [and] director.”

Mabry ultimately accepted a job working with troubled teens at a local group home for boys. She didn’t realize at the time that her experience there and the skills she honed would later enable her to become a better writer and director.

“I stayed there for two-and-a-half years and never had to restrain one kid,” Mabry says. “I was able to talk to them and truly understand where they were coming from. That skill set of learning to deal with different personalities and talk people off a ledge really helps me as a director because that’s basically what you’re doing; you’re trying to talk everyone off a ledge on a daily basis.

“I tell people, look, I know you think this film is going downhill and off the rails, but I promise you we’re going to live.” Her experience at the group home even served as material for a television series pilot that opened doors for her to get other jobs.

Overcoming Adversity

Around the same time, Mabry’s mother, Betty, was diagnosed with cancer. Mabry spent her nights at the home while the boys were asleep working on a screenplay for “Mississippi Damned,” a feature film based on her own life experiences about three kids struggling to break the destructive cycles of their family.

But with her mother’s diagnosis, finishing the feature became a challenge.

“Every time I wrote, if that character that was close to my mom ever got sick or something was going to happen to that character, I’d stop the story and never finish it,” Mabry says.

“I felt that if I wrote about her health, I was going to somehow bring something bad. In going back and forth from LA to Tupelo to visit her, I told her I was writing a story about our family and I couldn’t finish it because her character is supposed to die. She said, ‘Promise me this. However it’s supposed to go, that’s how you write it. If my character dies, it dies, but I want you to promise me you’ll make this film and finish this script.’”

A few weeks later, her mother passed away, leaving Mabry with an unfinished script and a wealth of pain that was too great to allow her to confront the end of her story. On the advice of a friend who went through a similar experience, she slowly began to finish the script and found the process cathartic.

“Within three years of my mom asking me to make her that promise that we would make that film, we did.”

With her first feature film completed, Mabry began shopping it around only to find that during the recession in 2009, distributors were being very frugal when it came to buying films.

“Also at that time, the film ‘Precious’ was coming out, and every distributor said your film is great, we love it, but we’re afraid the market can’t bear two black dramas at the same time,” Mabry recalls.

“I’m like, what? Hearing that film audiences can’t take two black dramas a year was one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard. Just sitting in those meetings knowing you had a good product that people loved and watched over and over again and kept talking about years later, but you can never get a chance to get across that door. It really hurt.”

It didn’t take Mabry long to learn that rejection is part of being in the business. Thick skin and resilience in the face of adversity are crucial qualities for any aspiring filmmaker to have.

“I still have the three [film school] rejection letters,” Mabry says. “I kept them to remind myself that it only takes one yes. You’re going to go through life and get a lot of nos, a lot of push back, a lot of hurdles, but all you need is one person to say, ‘Yes.’”

Speaking Her Truth

Left: Mabry on the set of USA Network’s television series ‘Queen of the South.’ Photo by John Brawley. Right: Mabry and her wife, Morgan Stiff, at Slamdance Film Festival.

Unable to catch a break, Mabry continued to write, and much to her satisfaction, “Mississippi Damned” continued to do well on the film festival circuit, winning 13 awards including Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay. It premiered on Showtime Networks in February 2011 and is available on Netflix.

“I couldn’t be more proud [of her],” Stiff says. “I know how hard she has worked. I’ve been with her during every setback, both personal and professional. I’ve watched her rise to the occasion time and time again.”

The film toured the country, giving Mabry a safe vehicle to speak her truth. The feedback from moviegoers was stunning, with many approaching her with their own similar, painful stories that they were unable to talk about previously.

“One of the things that was really frightening for me in writing the film was not only worrying about what happens to my mom’s character but being a survivor of sexual abuse,” Mabry says. “It’s something you don’t talk about. You sweep it under the rug, and this film exposed all of that.

“I could [tell my story] through film because that was a safe spot for me, but I didn’t want my family to be criticized. It was a tough film to watch because of the realism and what you see this family go through, and I didn’t want to put them through that. But they have been so supportive in me making it, and I’m so grateful for that.”

Unable to support herself with the film alone, Mabry took a position as an adjunct faculty member for the Art Institute in North Hollywood in 2010 and California State University in 2013. By 2015, she hit a wall and began to doubt whether she wanted to continue in the industry that handed her a litany of nos.

With the support of friends and her wife, Mabry decided to hang in there a little while longer. A mere two weeks later, she received a phone call from Ava DuVernay, creator of the American drama series “Queen Sugar,” that jolted her career.

Rising Star

Mabry attends the 69th annual Directors Guild of America Awards in Beverly Hills, California. Photo by David Crotty/Getty Images.

Much to Mabry’s surprise, DuVernay asked her to direct episodes of the series airing on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Mabry jumped at the opportunity.

“Oprah’s producing it, and we’re both Mississippi natives telling a Southern story in that series, so it was perfect,” Mabry says. “Two weeks before I was ready to give up, something came through. It was a gift. That’s why I keep going back to how it doesn’t matter about the nos, it’s the one yes.

“I’m just so grateful for Ava and the opportunity with the show. She hired all females, and every last one of us has been working ever since. What she and Oprah did was kick open a door and said we’re going to give them a chance. It really galvanized and changed things.

“Of course, you can have a TV show completely run by a woman that women are directing that can still be good. To eliminate those prejudices and the bigotry that comes along with it is huge in an industry that is extremely male dominated.”

Throughout her career, Mabry has met many people that influenced her life. But perhaps most meaningful was getting to meet the two women who unknowingly gave her the ambition and determination to pursue a career in film.

“I’ve met both Kim [Peirce] and Gina [Prince-Bythewood],” Mabry says. “They’re my mentors. I’m not much of a crier, but when I met them both, I thought I’m definitely going to cry because they changed my life.”

Peirce couldn’t be more pleased to see Mabry’s success and is proud to count her as a close friend.

“She’s super talented and committed,” Peirce says. “She’s one of the good ones who you want to see succeed. I see the warmth, drive, brilliance and comradery in her, so she’s a real inspiration to me. She’s a great addition to our community, and it’s a pleasure to have her as a friend.”

Mabry has written, directed and produced numerous television and film projects, racking up awards along the way including the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children’s Programming (2017); Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award for “County Line” (2011); the James Baldwin Fellow in Media by United States Artists (2010); Chicago International Film Festival Best Screenplay Award for “Mississippi Damned” (2009); and Filmmaker Magazine: 25 New Faces of Independent Film (2009).

“One thing I’m passionate and diligent about is that no one does this by themselves,” Mabry says. “Yes, my name may come up, and it’ll show written and directed by Tina Mabry, but I didn’t do this by myself. You see the list of everybody else who worked on it – this is our project.”

Mabry knows her entire career started by somebody giving her a chance and makes it her life goal to do the same for others.

“When someone tells me you’ve changed my life or made me want to be a filmmaker, that humbles me beyond belief because I never envisioned myself being able to do that for anybody,” she says. “I just looked at two women and saw the names on the end of the films and decided that I would change my life.”

By Annie Rhoades

This story was reprinted with permission from the Ole Miss Alumni Review. The Alumni Review is published quarterly for members of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. Join or renew your membership with the Alumni Association today, and don’t miss a single issue.

For questions, email us at hottytoddynews@gmail.com.

The post Ole Miss Alumni Review: It Only Takes One Yes appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[berkeleyfreeclinicthesis-blog]

02.09.2017 - the dinner interview with Susan C, co-founder of the BFC

“Dinner interview with Susan C. BFC Co-Founder." Interview by Scott C, John D, and Jane M. October 2015.

Telegraph’s counter-cultural scene struggled from many of the same public health challenges as the hippies of Haight-Ashbury, and they also often failed to access mainstream medical care. Isabelle Weisman, an active member of the Berkeley Free Church writes, “Legally, only people twenty-one and over could authorize medical treatment without some form of parental or court consent.[i]” This made seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections particularly traumatic for young people in Berkeley. In other cases, mainstream health facilities would report drug abuse to the police, which was another barrier to mainstream medical care for the young transients of Telegraph Avenue. In short, the South Berkeley/Telegraph community was medically underserved. These conditions were recognized by a UC Berkeley social welfare graduate student named Susan C who in the early Spring of 1969 put together the Berkeley Comprehensive Health Planning Committee (BCHPC) to address the health crisis. This committee included several members from the Berkeley Free Church, Navy-trained street medics and Fred Cody, the owner of Cody’s Books[ii]. This committee would form the basic structure of the BFC. After consulting with Dr. Smith of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, Susan Cady wrote the mission statement of the BCHPC: “A temporary summer program formed to meet the immediate medical needs of young transients in Berkeley.[iii]” The original goal of the Berkeley Free Clinic had an incredibly narrow scope.

Susan C and her husband abruptly left the clinic in December of 1969 and never really looked back. Susan would become a public school art teach from the seventies until her retirement in 2011. I image the generations of students passing through her classroom that never knew they were being taught by the person who was instrumental in founding a historical free medical clinic.  That made me think about all the interesting stories my old public school teachers all had but that I never cared to ask about. Which ones should i have talked to while I had the chance?

The interview was conducted in October 2015 at a Thai restaurant. I tried to edit out all references to the coconut curry and only include the parts that are relevant to my study.

Susan C interview

SC: (Discussing how she and her Social Welfare Graduate student friends surveyed the social problems on telegraph) We were taught to get in touch with people in the community and there was a lot of stuff going on those days. We met a man on Telegraph avenue who told us that to see the real Telegraph we needed to come back at 3AM. We went and there was nobody there but the street cleaners. But we were so nice we still felt for them.    

SC: (Talking about putting together the Berkeley Comprehensive Health Planning Committee (BCHPC) We went out and met Fred Cody and he was wonderful… and we had a guy named Michael Moe David (Moe Moskowitz?) Who was kind of like a hustler He was doing health testing for the unions but he was on our board and we tried to get different people from the community. Fred was really helpful. And then we started looking for doctors, talked to people from Haight-Ashbury told us how to do it… we tried to look for doctors and meanwhile People's Park was going on. My husband (Chuck) was very engaged in using his medical training to further community rights. There were these soldiers and they were getting court-marshalled so there were people who did a vigil out on the street outside the presidio. They were sitting out there for weeks looking for a fair trial and that’s when he started getting involved as a medic. Then there was Dick Fine(?) Who was very active in MCHR. (Medical committee for human rights… Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), group of health care activists whose work in the late 1960s and early 1970s drew attention to inequities in health care in the United States. The MCHR was a part of the larger civil rights movement in the United States. It was formed in the summer of 1964, during the so-called Freedom Summer (Mississippi Summer Project), a campaign to increase the number of African Americans registered to vote in the state of Mississippi. The MCHR was created by a group of doctors led by American physician Robert Smith, who the year before had helped form the Medical Committee for Civil Rights and had protested against the American Medical Association (AMA) for its inaction in efforts to raise awareness of segregation in U.S. hospitals. – from Britannica.com.) Chuck (husband) was already running a first aid station down at the Berkeley Free church so it was May when the demonstrations were-- The People's Park thing was no joke.

SC: Chuck was trained as a navy medic and he knew all these people and he was the one coordinating all the medics on the street. The first day in People’s Park they fired on people on the roof. James Rector was killed and Alan Blanchard was shot in the face. I think my husband is the one tending to Alan Blanchard on the mural. (On the Side of Amoeba at the corner of Haste and Telegraph). There’s a photo of him up on the roof. Demonstrations weren’t my thing, but I hired Chuck for the BCHP because he was this cool white guy who was great. We started it on Haste and Dana, but then there were some demonstrations over there (referring to the event in which riot police stormed into the clinic space an through an xray machine down the stairs ?). There was a minister at a Church at the corner of Bancroft and dana. The minister was one of the board members and got us in there. Chuck had the clinic well-organized and we had many doctors volunteering. We were getting bigger and bigger and by that fall we had had a lot of medical equipment donated because of all of the doctors that worked there. I was pretty pleased that we had gotten this thing off the ground.

SC: Peter Raber(?) was one of our first doctors. He came in and was the most difficult doctor but we needed him. Peter and some of the other people started complaining that we were seeing African American people and African American American political people and they did not like that. In one case Chuck was chastised for giving treatment to the wife of Bobby Seales (the co-founder of the Black Panthers). My husband lost his temper. He did not like that the doctors were telling him who to see.

INTERVIEWER: What was the role of the medics?

SC: I ended up going to work so I wasn’t there everyday but I know Chuck had a lot of memories because there were demonstrations way into the summer… the thing in People’s Park was going on for a long time.

INTERVIEWER: How long did you work with the BFC?

SC: Until December 1969. We went out of town and when we came back, we found out that there had been a bit of a coup. My husband no longer considered to be in charge so he took all the keys and threw them into the bay. He was really good at what he did but he didn’t like being pushed around.

INTERVIEWER: How long was Chuck in the Navy?

SC: However long he was supposed to be. He enlisted when he was 19, wanted to get away from home. There was a program at UCLA for people who were in the navy, he trained a an x-ray technician and tried to open his own x-ray lab. Then he did industrial x-rays. Then everything came u and that’s when he went to the presidio demonstration and became deeply involved in community.

INTERVIEWER: After the clinic what did he go on to?

SC: He started helping some other political programs. He was like a handyman, he was good to do anything except electrical. We had many people who called him because he wasn’t very expensive and he was very good.

I: When did he pass on?

SC: 2000

I: Do you know the state of the clinic after he left?

SC: No. When we left the BFC we left. We got involved in other things, other community things. I was involved in the community control of police. I became a school social worker in a school in Alameda and when the funding ran out (prop 13?), I went back to school and got my teaching credentials. So I’ve been teaching all these years. I taught art in middle school and then high school. I retired in 2011 but I still work at the schools.

I: Did you know Phil Crawford?

SC: We called him “Wild” Phil Crawford. He was a really nice guy. (???must admit I am not familiar with wild phil ???)

I: Did you feel like you were part of a larger “free clinic movement”?

SC: Living in Berkeley always felt like you were part of a movement, it was such a center anyway, Berkeley and Oakland. This is what I said about the Berkeley Comprehensive Health Planning Committee… (reading from a mission statement) “a temporary summer program formed to meed the immediate needs of young transients in Berkeley.” There was also free food program, but that was through a church, not the free church. Continuing to read, “the clinic offers first aid and emergency switchboard from 4-9PM, 5 days a week. Therapy and individual consultation.” The board of directors was formed, formally, in October of 1969 and I served at the secretary.

SC: (Talking about the BFC logo… what’s its origin??) The dragon came in afterwards, its nice though.

SC: The panther paper was amazing…. All the stuff they were predicting, they were absolutely right. Everything was true in there. People thought they were paranoid, but they were right, what they were doing was that they were educating people and they (presumably the government) did not like that at all. Their (Black Panthers) understanding was very profound. The government went to great lengths to destroy their ability to function. That Oakland auditorium downtown, they wanted to do a free food thing and that entire auditorium was lined with paper bags and people walking up and down the ailes giving food. I think we raised $10,000 that day. They were really good people, but they kept on getting killed. Their understanding of how police operate is now general knowledge. There are cell phones these days (to record police brutality) but back in their day they were voices in the forests (?)

SC: the campus protests are where a lot of it started. During the Third World strike, which was one of my first experiences with Berkeley, I was friends with an African American guy who was a reporter and we were talking casually and within an hour the county sheriff’s deputies surrounded him and started beating him. They continued to beat him in front of the secretaries. All these young white ladies said things…racism was big. It was a wild time…

I: Do you remember what your tuition was?

SC: It was free…. There was a minor fee, we did not pay tuition in 1968. It was around that time that they were closing the mental hospitals. Guess what? That’s why we have so many mental patients on the streets, they closed the mental hospitals.

[i] In Berkeley Free Church Collection, 1959-1976, RLY File Box 5 File Folder 27, “Isabel Weissman File,” Special Collections, Graduate Theological Union Library, Berkeley, California, 1-6; Weissman, “Developmental History,”1.

[ii] Butterfield. “Free Drugs.” 54.

[iii] "Dinner interview with Susan C. BFC Co-Founder." Interview by Scott Caroll, John Day, and Jane Maxwell. October 2015.