#how the hell am i supposed to get experience if nobody will even interview me (:

[poorsapadvocate]

Look obviously I'm upset about now it due to stuff going on in my own life but companies are going to need to start reevaluating their hiring policies real quick because this shit aint sustainable. I can't count how many jobs I've applied to without even a stock rejection letter. I've made it to a few interviews where they told me they'll make a decision next week and then just. never heard from them again. If I do get rejection letters, they're 4 months after I applied and got my hopes up on it. I've even gotten one rejection letter that was 2 sentences long and had a typo in it. And that was a state job paid for with my tax dollars!! I'm at least worth a callback for all of these jobs. Not even getting around to rejecting me properly is just such a sign of distespect.

I was told I wasn't hired for this job despite a) being recommended by the person leaving, b) already being trained for it, and c) absolutely crushing it in the interview because I "didn't have enough experience." But if nobody's willing to give experience, then what the hell am I supposed to do? What's going to happen in 10-20 years when the people who already had experience get to retire and the only people left are the ones who weren't given a chance to gain experience?

[hawkesvarric]

applying for jobs i’m definitely underqualified for bc i just so desperately am hoping somebody somewhere will give me a chance :o)

[jaalismyhusband]

Took you long enough

Title: Took you long enough

Pairings: Sebastian Stan x f!reader

Warnings: angst with a happy ending, explicit language, age gap, corruption kink if you squint

Wordcount: 2.9k

Masterlist

To say that these past few months have been stressful is an understatement. You were an aspiring actress and somehow landed a pretty big role in a movie. It already had some famous names attached to it and you were quite intimidated to star along the other actors. But nonetheless, you put on your big girl pants and took the opportunity. Caught in a loop of constant stress, memorizing the lines, filming the scenes, promoting the movie, you had only so much time to really appreciate what was going on. It was only after the first month of filming you realized what the hell was actually happening.

Your co-star Sebastian Stan has helped you a lot with handling everything. You remember, when you found out he was starring in the movie as well, you almost passed out. Getting to know him was such a surreal experience. Although you had a big crush on him, you stayed respectful towards him and you two became rather close friends.

To be honest, the more you got to know him, the more you liked him. And this time it wasn’t just a platonic crush. You tried to fight it, but your struggles were fruitless. You had it bad for your best friend. Acting on your feelings was not an option however. It was no secret that no woman occupied his bedroom for more than one night. You knew it was bad news to fall for him, yet you couldn’t help yourself. You liked how he didn’t pretend, but actually listened to you. How he seemed to remember even the little details you mentioned to him. How protective he was of you from the day you met, especially while defending you when people called you “the new kid” - the nickname stuck with you during the whole period of filming, much to your dislike. You knew they meant well when they called you that nickname, trying to make you feel like a part of the group. You were much younger than most of the cast, but you didn’t think of yourself as a child anymore. It seemed impossible to convince others of that, though.

Only a few people respected you enough not to use that nickname - one of them being Sebastian. At times you thought he didn’t see you as a kid with the way he treated you and you were naïve enough to get your hopes up. That was a mistake, you thought, as you watched the interview Sebastian had done earlier that day. He was asked about the cast members. You anxiously waited for your name to be mentioned, palms sweating as you guessed what he would say about you.

“What about Y/N? You seem close, not to mention how often you are spotted together.” The interviewer raised his brow, as he waited for an answer.

Sebastian smiled widely as he answered: “Yeah, we are really close. She’s like a little sister I never had, you know?”

Your heart clenched painfully, as you stopped the video. You just had to accept that it would never work. How could you be so stupid to think he’d actually like you, when he had so many women at his feet, begging to be noticed by him. You were thankful you were his friend - that had to be enough. It wasn’t, though. No matter what you told yourself, you always ended up thinking about him in inappropriate ways.

The door on your trailer opened and revealed happy Sebastian with take out.

“Hey, I thought to bring you some food, since it’s going to be a long day today.” He smiled at you as he sat down next to you on the couch, handing you your food.

“Thanks.” You smiled back. You didn’t waste time and dug in, only now realizing how hungry you were. He seemed to know you better than you knew yourself.

Sebastian broke the comfortable silence: “Hey, so, I want to ask you for advice.” Did he seem nervous? No, you thought as you hinted him to ask away.

“There’s this woman, that I like. I shouldn’t, but something about her is so intriguing, I can’t help it. And I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.

“I can’t believe you are asking me for an advice on how to pick up women. You getting rusty, old man?” You joked, as his face fell in disappointment.

“I’m serious, Y/N. I think I’m ready to go all the way with her. But she’s not really – uhm, how to put it – available. That’s why I’m so nervous about it,” he sighed, as he ran a hand through his hair.

“Right, sorry. But still, I think you’re perfectly fine. Just ask her out. She’d be stupid to reject you,” you spoke sincerely.

“Thanks, I’ll go for it then.”

The rest of the lunch was enjoyed in silence.

Few days have passed and your mood seem to only decrease as the time went on. You secretly hoped Sebastian was talking about you and that he would ask you out later. But this was your life, not a romcom. Your hopes were crushed, when you asked Sebastian about it and he confirmed what seemed like your worst nightmare.

“She said yes!” he exclaimed excitedly and you gave him a hug to hide the mixture of unpleasant emotions plastered on your face.

“I’m so happy for you,” and you were, truly. As long as he was happy, you would be too. But why did it hurt so much anyway?

Ever since then, you just weren’t your ever smiling self. What you were was a millennial and you did what millennials knew best – repressed your emotions. Stuffed them deep inside your soul where nobody could acknowledge them, not even you.

The days seemed repetitive. You were exhausted from putting up a show not only when you were filming, but now also when you were in a company of your friends. Luckily, there was only one scene to film and then a much needed vacation awaited.

“CUT!” screamed the director. “What the hell Y/N?! This is the seventh take and you still can’t get it right.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll get it this time, I swear,” you apologized and immediately took your spot, wanting nothing more, than to finish this scene, go home and curl up in bed while watching your favourite show.

Today was just one of those days, when it seemed like the whole universe conspired against you. First, your alarm didn’t go off, which resulted in being late on your last day. Your hands were shaking by the time you got to the set and you managed to knock over the cup of coffee, just barely missing your costume. Not to mention how anxious you were, since you were purposely avoiding Sebastian. You only missed him more and yet, you couldn’t stand being in his presence. It hurt not being able to look into his eyes. This all held you back from giving a flawless performance in front of the camera, which only frustrated you even more.

“We believe in you, kid. Breathe, focus. Action!” You were truly thankful for the support, as you finally got the scene right.

“And cut! We got it! Ok, that’s it, guys. It’s been pleasure to work with you all. As you may have heard, there will be an afterparty, if you will, tonight. Please, do come! Till then have a great day everyone!” Finished the director and people started to clap. There has been a heavy boulder of a rock lifted from your shoulders as you realized this was it. You quickly said your goodbyes to everyone, eager to go home and hide.

“Y/N! Wait!” you were on your way out when you heard your name being called. You sighed and put on a smile, before you faced Sebastian.

“Hi, I’ve tried to call you, but you weren’t picking up. You’ve been distant lately. Have you been avoiding me?” He accused.

“No! No, I uh… My phone has been malfunctioning these days, I’m getting it repaired soon,” you weren’t proud of yourself for lying to him, but you weren’t ready to tell him the truth just yet.

“Are you coming to the afterparty?” It was obvious he didn’t buy your white lie, but decided not to ponder on it.

“Oh, I don’t think I am. I’ve had an extraordinarily shitty day and I don’t wanna be a party pooper.” You immediately gave him a list of excuses.

“Yeah, yeah, quit it, queen. I’ll pick you up at 7.” He left you no space to argue and just walked away. You shook your head in disbelief and made your way home.

“Finally,” you exhaled a big breath once you collapsed on your bed. Sleep was an alluring way how to avoid your problems. So, you did the reasonable thing and took a nap.

You woke up right as the sun was setting. You still hadn’t decided if you were going to go to that stupid get together or not. You knew it would be a nice change of pace, to let go for one night. Afterall, it was a celebration of the hard work the cast had done. On the other hand, Sebastian would be there. And now that you thought about it, he would probably bring that woman, he asked out earlier. You weren’t ready to see Sebastian all lovey dovey with someone else, god no.

But this was also the chance to see him for the last time. You weren’t sure if he would keep hanging out with you after the movie was done. Tears stung in your eyes as you realized that he would probably cut ties with you. Sure, you would call each other once a week, then once a month, then only on holidays and then he would eventually stop calling you whatsoever. You were going to lose him. You were so sure of it. The tears were now streaming freely down your cheeks as you hyperventilated. All of those emotions that were supposed to stay stored away came at you at once, demanding to be experienced, to be felt.

You couldn’t calm down and there was only one person who was able to soothe you. Your best friend from high school. Due to your career you two weren’t hanging out as often as you’d like, but your bond hadn’t suffered because of that. You dialled her number after you blew your nose, so you were able to somewhat form words.

“Hi, Y/N! Oh my god, it’s been so long since we’ve actually talked!” You sobbed even harder when you heard her enthusiastic voice.

“Baby, what’s wrong? Talk to me,” she pleaded, as you tried to calm yourself enough to talk.

“Today has just been such a shitshow,” you cried out. You told her all about your day, but the topic soon enough changed to the real reason why you were crying – Sebastian.

“You know what’s the worst thing? I love him. So fucking much. And I know he doesn’t feel the same. He sees me as his little sister. SISTER. No way he would be attracted to someone he considers a sibling. Oh, and have I mentioned that now he’s suddenly had a change of heart and stopped sleeping with random women because he mEt SoMEoNe sPeCiaL?” you mocked him, “I just can’t. I know that I did this to myself and it’s not his fault, but fuck! I can’t even tell him how I feel, because there is only one scenario to this – him ending our friendship because of it. I don’t know if I’m ready to lose him completely.” You kept on rambling as your supportive friend listened, offering you her kind words here and there.

Soon after she apologized profusely, as she explained her break was over and she had to get back to work. You assured her it was okay and that you were thankful she found some time to listen to you pour you broken heart out through the phone. She ended the call by reminding you that she loved you and hung up.

You sighed and blew your nose again. You stood up from your bed, taking the used tissues with you.

“Fuck.” You stopped dead in your tracks, feeling like a deer in front of a headlights. There stood a very shocked Sebastian.

“How did you get here?”

“I came to pick you up, remember? Front door was unlocked, so I let myself in. You didn’t respond when I called your name. I looked for you and found you here, crying,” his voice cracked at his last words: “I have never seen you cry before.” He seemed truly sad, but you were too frightened to notice.

“How much of it did you hear?”

“Everything.” He exhaled and you struggled to meet his gaze. You huffed, storming out of your bedroom, leaving him behind. You just wanted to disappear right on the spot and avoid this confrontation.

You almost ran to the kitchen, throwing the tissues to the bin. You hoped this was all just a bad dream and that in fact Sebastian wasn’t here, but all that convincing was futile once you turned around and saw him sitting in your kitchen. There was a tense silence, as none of you knew what to say next. The air grew heavy, suffocating you.

“So,” Sebastian cleared his throat, “you like me?” To which you only nodded, as you leaned on the counter.

“Why?” he asked. You laughed at that, the sound so alien to you because of all the crying.

“You were nice to me from the first day. You gave me a chance to get to know you. Once we started hanging out I just, I don’t know. I like how you talked to me, like I wasn’t just the new kid. You actually listened to what I had to say. You made me feel special, Seb. Not to mention, you look like a fucking Greek god,” he chuckled at that.

“Weren’t you discouraged by my age? Or the fact that ‘I slept with random women’?” he asked, using your words against you.

“Well, I can’t blame you for that. And I can’t blame those women either. And your age never bothered me. In fact, it’s just another thing about you that turns me on.” You realized too late what you were about to say and just said it. Your eyes widened and your face heated up, as you tried to shrink your existence and hide from Sebastian’s piercing gaze.

“I turn you on?” Sebastian asked, amused by how embarrassed you were. He stood up and walked up to you. You shied away, but he trapped you in between his arms against the counter, so you wouldn’t run.

“I’d like your advice on something,” he started as he looked you straight in the eyes, “There’s this girl I’ve befriended. She’s really young and innocent, like an angel. I think I liked her right from the start, but I knew I wasn’t good for her. And yet, I can’t help but be attracted to her. I’ve tried to forget, but all those meaningless nights and faceless women couldn’t fill the void. Couldn’t erase the feelings she brought up in me every time I thought of her, saw her, touched her. I think about her almost every night. About how I’d hold her, kiss her, make her moan my name.” You squirmed under his gaze, but he paid no mind as he continued his monologue: “I fantasize about deflowering her, turning her into a mess, while I transform her into my greedy whore. The image makes me painfully hard. And now, I have a chance to make her mine. What do you say, doll? Should I go for it?” You gasped at his confession and only weakly nodded.

His lips met yours in a desperate kiss. It was all tongue and teeth. He wasn’t gentle with you by any means, not that you wanted him to be. His hands pulled you impossibly close, as they squeezed your ass, making you moan into the kiss. You both had to stop and take a breath, your foreheads connecting as you panted.

“I made her up, you know,” spoke Sebastian softly.

“What?”

“The woman. She doesn’t exist. It was you who I’ve been talking about, but then I chickened out.”

“Why?” you were curious and anxious at the same time to hear his answer.

“You called me an old man! I thought you would be creeped out!” he got defensive.

“That was a joke, Seb,” you laughed, “Why did you tell me that she accepted?”

He awkwardly scratched his neck, as he mumbled: “I didn’t want to disappoint you, that your advice hadn’t worked.” You just burst out laughing at that. Sebastian didn’t like that, as he faked getting offended and hurt, which only caused to make you cry-laugh. You finally calmed down, after a while, only now seeing how Sebastian was watching you the whole time. He gently wiped the tears away with the pad of his thumb, as he held your face.

“I love you, Seb,” it felt good to finally say it out loud. You were absolutely lovestruck and at this point you didn’t care.

“Took you long enough,” you rolled your eyes at him, as he smirked.

“I love you too, doll.”

[medical-gal]

Death by a thousand cuts

I have been thinking about writing this for months now. Even before I decided to quit the residency at my previous job.

COVID has been kicking our ass, true, but that was (is) true for most healthcare providers all around the world.

No, my struggle started a bit before that actually.

First some background, I have been working at one of the biggest most famous ID clinics in central Europe. The clinic is in a different country than I am originally from so there was a bit of cultural accommodating at the begging. But we were a big group of ID interns/residents/fellows and specialists.

I don't actually remember that much from my first year working there. And I couldn't figure out why, but then I read in some study that when u experience a high dose of stress and/or sleep deprivation for a long time, your brain kinda stopps being able to transcribe short term memory into a long term.

I was working 100hours/week, sometimes less, sometimes more. After a year and a half, when the last half I worked in the ID ER for five months, I always stayed after working 24 hours, sometimes over 36hours, and I would see and treat 70ish patients. Nobody from the older docs would help me out, nobody from other interns either bc usually they would have their own kind of hell to take care of.

The fact that basically, inexperienced doctors are taking care of patients never really phased my ex-boss. Her mantra was that if there was a problem that you cannot resolve, you can call her and she would advise you. Which most of the time was true, I must say that.

But we all have been young docs, barely out of our medical school garments, and sometimes as it happened, we could not recognize there IS a problem that maybe needs a more experienced opinion.

I am often confronted with this idea or more like a culture, of pretending that once you are an MD you don't need help and asking for it is a kind of weakness and that then you are forever on the list of WEAKLINGS.

And let me say this only once.

That's absolute bullshit.

Anyway, the first time I decided to quit I worked there for about a year and a half, I went for a long-expected holiday, I took three weeks off, had interviews and talked with my bf about my options.

Second thing...my man, bless his beard, would support me no matter what. He is almost 10 years older than me, so he has more work experience and I find it reassuring to discuss stuff like this with him bc I know he will not sugarcoat it. He said that I should dig my heels in and last at least one more year till the end of my "internship". As a "resident" who worked at this specific department, I wouldn't have a problem finding another job. We r basically the equivalent of a french legion of medical professionals (when u work in this specific department and everyone knows it, I will come back to that later).

So I took his advice. Thankfully as a part of our training, one of those parts is a year-long internship at the internal medicine department, which I did shortly after we had that conversation and guys, that was a revelation of how medicine and just...work and life can be experienced. There were enough docs for a floor, an attending who had the time to manage and advise us. I´ve grown that year as a doc so much. Other internships were mandatory so I could have become (equivalent of) a resident, and it was a general surgery, anesthesiology, radiology, microbiology etc. But I did them all and became a resident.

The moment I came back to our clinic, my boss would put me in our outpatient department. Which I have never worked on before. The head of the department has quit a few months before, and I had no idea what to do there, bc it's a very different type work. The only thing my boss told me when I spoke of my concerns were "you will learn".

Thankfully the previous head of the department was a good friend of mine and she would always answer my questions and requests. Suddenly I no longer had to deal with the hectic life of an ID floor or ER, no sepsis, meningitis, etc.

Most of my patients were the chronic type...Lyme, chlamydia, mycoplasma... let's say it literally drained the life out of me. But I managed. Also, I started to work for their outpatient office which takes care of patients with chronic hepatatis. That I enjoyed more.

I also started to dip my toes in vaccinology, either planned like for travel but I started to be more interested in preventive care in the immunocompromised and my own phantasmagoria was to make a palliative care team in our hospital. Bc, we had none. And then a wonderful thing happened, other docs, older experienced, great at their work, started to refer their patients to me specifically.

There were more examples of the utter a complete FUCK U(s) which were kindly provided either by the system or by the head of the department or the hospital.

Then covid hit and the shit hit the interstellar space.

I still can't make myself remember the first few months bc it actually causes me to go into a rage fit, and honestly, I am done with that kind of negativity.

I hold out for a year. Year of such shitty treatment from the chief and our hospital head. No thank you- s or you are doing a good job or we r all on the same ship.

No.

People will say that I quit bc of the money. And that's not true, tho it did irk me a bit. All the other ID specialists working at different hospitals would get covid bonuses every month. We got jack shit. Again, the best biggest most know ID clinic. We were the first and oftern the ONLY ones who would test for/diagnose/hospitalize/treat a patient who had covid FOR MONTHS in the beginning.

I mean, the medical community is small, the ID community even smaller so yes, we were able to compare and contrast the work at different ID departments in other hospitals bc our friends worked there. And all of them would go speechless when they would hear from us what we were living thru.

At one point at the beginning of the pandemic, ALL the ambulances would go thru our ER department and we were supposed to decide where the patient should go.

AN EXAMPLE

Ambulance with a woman who has known colon cancer, had a fever, stomach as a rock and is projectile vomiting. I was supposed to decide where she should go and the surgeon would be super pissed when I said that I don't think she has COVID but without PCR I can't be sure but I think there is a bigger pressing issue. I remember him saying:

"well if anyone else gets infected at our department and dies, it's on you."

fun.

There were other examples of seriously stressful episodes which I and my coworkers lived thru, for which we were not trained for, advised, or properly supervised. At a certain point, I started to take anxiolytics before and during my all-nighters bc I didn't know what I would do with all that stress which was so callously shat on me and my coworkers.

For a few months, I stopped working nights, only thru the mercy of my coworkers who saw how exhausted I was and would take my shifts.

Anyway, after only two months I had to start working nights bc I needed the money. The basic pay for docs was just not enough without the extra from night shifts. Talk about exploiting.

The moment however when I decided to QUIT, when I was DONE, when I actually heard my heart break, was the moment at the end of the previous year. They decided to start vaccinating in our tiny small vaccination centre. Let's say a "shit storm" brewing is the light version of events that ensued.

But basically, as I was trying to discuss with my boss that we are all exhausted, that this wave is not slowing down and that throwing more work at us, the docs and nurses and other staff, who are overworked, is not a good idea,

What she basically said to me is that who says things like that is lazy and that if she can handle it everyone must be also.

The thing is..most of us were at the bring. Some would handle it with casual and calous sex, drugs (legal or not), a bottle of wine before sleep. A coworker ended up with antipsychotics.

But u know,

we were all lazy apperently.

I realized there is no way out of this other than quitting. I could not continue being so tired and sad all the time. I took two weeks off, really thought about it. Had diarrhoea and nausea for a week as I realized I will have to quit :D

On a Monday I came back, handed in my notice. Basically what she told me and how she reacted made me realized how right the decision was.

I had to stay there for another three months bc that's the law, but my mood changed significantly.

I got another job in a smaller ID department, working with amazingly kind people, but that's another story.

But that was the only interview I actually looked for and did. I, however, did get several job offers from different types of medicine. From heads of different departments in my old hospital to smaller general medicine chain offices who are looking for ID specialists, to insurance companies.

Like I said, french legion.

Or Runway and your boss is Miranda Pristley. Once u survive that, u survive anything.

But at my old work they would keep hitting you with wave after wave of passive agressive comments about how if u quit, u wont be able to find anything as"prestigious" as this.

There were many other exmaples of a shitty and questionable situations which were treated as "normal" but there is not point on getting on that rage train.

Contrary as it might seem, I am greatful I got to live thru this, good and bad, bc now I know what I am and am not willing to sacrifice for a job. No matter how much I might love it.

[thevibraniumveterans]

I'M STARTING WITH THE MAN IN THE MIRROR...

I'm asking him to change his ways And no message could have been any clearer If you want to make the world a better place Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

-

A couple of points to make.

1. Loki and identity

According to head writer Michael Waldron, "in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story." 

Loki learning to love himself, reflecting on who he really is as a person, and forgiving his past misdeeds, is the ultimate character growth, something that the TVA was hell-bent on preventing because it did not line up with how they saw Loki to be. Loki seeing himself in his mirror and realizing that he needs to change? Yeah. That's the big thing going on here.

According to Tom Hiddleston, "I don't think Loki's relationship with himself has been very healthy. Trying to accept those aspects of himself, which he's been on the run from, was a way of thinking about that in a really interesting way."

Think about how Loki praised Sylvie for being amazing because she's been running rings around the TVA. Again, it's a metaphor, because Loki has never in his entire life, honestly praised himself and talked about himself in a good and honest way. I will talk about how Sylvie is Loki's mirror and metaphor later, because this is important. It's also the reason why I started this post off with the chorus of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror". It's relevant, okay?

According to director Kate Herron, "The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey." And it is! It's kind of how the saying goes, when one reaches rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up, right?

2. "Love is a dagger."

Terrible metaphor it may be, according to Tom Hiddleston of what Loki says to Sylvie in Ep3, "They were having a talk about love and trusting other people, and not being able to either love or trust for whatever reason." The dagger, then, would represent "Loki's experience of love, I suppose. He certainly feels like it's not been something he's been close to. It has been some sort of illusion that he has trusted and been let down by."

(https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/loki-love-is-a-dagger-sylvie)

3. "Love is… uh, something I might have to have another drink to think about."

Interestingly enough, I've had several thoughts on the relationship dynamic between Loki and Sylvie.

Yes, Mobius did describe it as "Two Variants of the same being, especially you, forming this kind of sick, twisted, romantic relationship", but even I'm having opinions that would start to contradict each other.

At first I went around saying that the dynamic between Loki and Sylvie are strictly platonic, and I pointed out that to me, the Nexus Event might've been honesty and truth, because according to the "Sacred Timeline", those are two things that nobody associates with Loki, and the fact that in that short amount of time, Loki realizing that he needs to be honest with himself throws the entirety of TVA into disarray. It's a chance for Loki to be honest with himself and really come to terms with who he is as a person.

Now where does Sylvie fit into all of this?

In my opinion, even from Episode 3, I saw Sylvie as a mirror, Loki's perfect metaphor. Why do I say this? Remember in Ep2 when she told Loki, "If anyone's anyone, you're me"?

I had jokingly thought to myself that Loki was just about to tell Sylvie how he feels about her and himself (because Loki talking about his feelings is rare, as he himself said, “this is new to me”), but then I thought a little deeper and went, “hmm, this doesn’t have to be taken in a romantic way at all, Sylvie is not a love interest (because to me that’s just weird, no offense, unless the circumstances were super different, under which I think it might’ve been okay then and depending on the situation, but not here in these circumstances) it’s just Loki admitting what kind of a person he is, and if he can be better, it’s just Loki figuring himself out.” (I'll talk about why I have conflicting thoughts later.)

Even Tom Hiddleston, in a recent interview with ComicBook.com, had specifically stated about his character: "It will be interesting to see what happened when Loki can't talk his way out of a situation, as is his dominant strategy in most encounters. I am most excited for fans to see what happens to Loki when he has nowhere left to run, when he can't delude himself anymore." That last bit with Sylvie? Yeah, Loki coming to terms with himself, being honest, not being able to delude himself anymore. He had nowhere left to run.

I know I did say that at first I did not see Loki and Sylvie as having any romantic tension between them, but please, hear me out first. 

According to Classical Mythology, PSYCHE is "a personification of the soul", which is exactly what Sylvie is to Loki. It would make the "if anyone's anyone, you're me" comment make way more sense. Remember how I said Sylvie is Loki's mirror? Loki getting this close to talking about his (what I see as non-romantic) feelings about himself, how he sees his own person, talking about himself in an emotional way, really admitting to his mirror that reflects the deepest parts of himself who he really was, and then just STOPPED before he could do so was so heartbreaking.

I had said that he was not gonna tell her he loved her because that’s so messed up (I get that narcissism is loving yourself but Sylvie is NOT Loki, nor is Loki Sylvie, they’re two different individuals), but Loki was just about to reveal his true feelings, his real emotions that he’s been trying to hide from himself all along. Loki can no longer run away (remember this comment from one of the interviews?), from himself, his emotions, there’s nowhere for him to run, it was time to be honest with himself.

Somewhere I made a comment that went like this:

Loki finally finding a connection with someone who is so much like him, yet so much unlike him is rare. ("Sylvie's not Loki. Sylvie is Sylvie" and "while they're the same, they're not the same" - Hiddleston / "She is him, but she's not him." - Herron) In that Loki has always been alone, and everything that he did was a cry for help that he never received, while Sylvie had been alone for so many years she's had to rely on herself to survive.

It makes sense then, that both Loki and Sylvie see themselves in each other ("I see a scheme, and in that scheme I see myself" from Ep2) and acknowledge that they are both lonely survivors who made it through so much, that they had each other for even that short amount of time.

That connection they had, that emotional attachment that they came to share, was not romantic in any way. (I'll get to why I’m conflicted about this, and why I may come to be okay with it, in a bit.) I read somewhere that the Nexus Event was not as Mobius described it, but was that Loki finally knowing that he'll never be alone, that he's honest with himself, which is something that goes against the TVA's dictates. THAT's the Nexus Event!

According to the TVA and Ravonna, Loki can't be caring! He can't change from being a homicidal maniac! He can't change! But we know Loki can. Loki himself knows that he can change. This knowledge and acceptance was enough to cause the damn Nexus Event, because the Timekeepers did not decree it! Even in Ep1, Loki declared that he would not let the TVA dictate how his story ends. It's clear that Loki's story is nt over yet.

Two lonely survivors find each other, so it's not surprising that Loki himself was THIS close to finally admitting the truth about himself, admitting and being honest with himself... until Ravonna pruned him.

Ravonna has always been pro-TVA and anti-Loki, so it's not surprising that earlier when she was speaking to Mobius, he's like, "Loki can change" but she's like "no because the TVA said so", so therefore when she hears that Loki is finally being honest with himself (through almost revealing his feelings to Sylvie), Ravonna cannot take it and obliterates him herself. According to her, which says that according to the TVA, Loki having an honest and real change of heart is the real Nexus Event and as such, must be prevented.

Now, about love, I guess, new to Loki as it may be. 

(Talking points from https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/loki-sylvie-in-love)

Here's where I think I can explain why though I'm not 100% on board with Loki being romantically involved with Sylvie I might warm up to the idea, the possibility of them being kind of a thing. I'm a little divided on it myself, but here goes.

First and foremost, here's something that head writer Michael Waldron says about the possibility of a romance: "That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story. We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy?" Maybe, maybe not.

You see, as you know, Sylvie is a version of Loki, but is not Loki. Mobius describes them as "Two Variants of the same being." Director Kate Herron notes, however, saying of Sylvie about Loki that "she is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences." Tom Hiddleston chimes in with "Sylvie's not Loki. Sylvie is Sylvie. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same."

But what about the love story?

Mobius concludes through context clues that Loki is "an incredible seismic narcissist! You fell for yourself!" He taunts Loki, "You like her! Does she like you?"

Here's where it gets interesting. Loki had reassured Sylvie that people like them don't die so easily, they survive. He had praised her for running circles around the TVA, calling her amazing (again, another metaphor, but I think I've covered that), after which she had placed her hand on Loki's arm. Notice his reaction - he looks down at where her hand had made contact with his arm, shifts in a way that suggests his surprise. He's like, 'Is this warmth I'm feeling? I've never felt someone's gentle touch before. I think she cares for me, is that even possible for someone like me?'

He looks up at her, and though his story differs from Sylvie's, he recognizes that though he may have suffered, she had been physically on the run her entire life, whereas Loki had been mentally and metaphorically on the run from himself. We see from the look on his face that though Loki and Sylvie had spent less than 12 hours in each other's presence, he's come to respect her and her courage to do what he could never have. "You're amazing," he says.

Michael Waldron continues, "The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship. Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA."

Sylvie's not sure if she's got any sort of feelings for Loki, but she does ask if he's okay after they reach the golden elevators that would take them to the Timekeepers. Anyway, after the time loop punishment on Asgard, during which Lady Sif tells him, "You deserve to be alone and you always will be", Loki realizes that he's scared of being alone. He hopes that there might be someone out there with whom he can connect on a deeper level.

Director Kate Herron points out, "Who's a better match for Loki than himself?" Or Sylvie, for that matter. But because "but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences," it would make so much sense and would totally be in character for Loki to connect with someone he sees himself in, again, metaphorically speaking.

This is the ultimate journey of "self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself", as Waldron puts it, so for Loki to come to terms that he might possibly love Sylvie is a metaphor for accepting himself as he truly is, not what or who he projects himself to be. It's about being kind to himself, because as he reflects on this new feeling about Sylvie, he's also reflecting upon himself and whether or not he can keep running from his emotions, as Tom Hiddleston says. The answer is no, he cannot run any longer from his acknowledgment that he's got feelings for Sylvie than he can run from his own realizations about himself. He forgives Sylvie as a metaphorical way of forgiving himself for his past misdeeds, like admitting that cutting off Sif's hair was not funny at all. It would make sense then, according to Waldron, that "that would be Loki's first real love story." Not a story about a narcissist, but a story of identity and self-acceptance and honesty.

The fact that Loki and Sylvie are two COMPLETELY different people who are so dissimilar except for the fact that they're two lonely survivors, could possibly result in them having a relationship.

Hear me out on why.

You know how Loki had said to Sylvie at the end, "this is new to me"? He means that he has never before known how to express love and care because he's never received any of either. For all of his life, he had been treated badly by all except perhaps his mother, but as in Ep3, he agrees that though he's had courtships before, none of those relationships, none of it included any type of love that felt tangentially real to him. Loki doesn't know what real love is... until Sylvie comes along. She does not make him know what love is, because he comes to terms to his feelings all on his own.

Tom Hiddleston says, "When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity." Herron adds, about the relationship, "It was just about giving it the space to breathe and digging into it in a way that felt earned." And I think that I might come to accept that it is earned, in some way.

Two lonely survivors who quite literally run into each other, who recognize each other for who they really are, who accept each other and themselves, and who can finally be truthful and honest with themselves and each other. It's not always a game of checkers or chess. Sometimes, it's a maze of metaphors and mirrors.

I understand that this relationship between Sylvie and Loki is controversial for some, cute for others. If I hadn't already made myself clear, I was never really against the pairing, just that I was never 100% sure I'd board that train myself. I was initially of the opinion that their dynamic was strictly platonic, but because I'm open to different interpretations, I decided to have a look at why people saw the relationship between Loki and Sylvie as a beautiful one.

The conclusion I came to, is that there definitely is more than one interpretation of Loki and Sylvie's dynamic, and that I'm okay with both. We've got two episodes left, so I'm curious to see how Sylvie and Loki's dynamic plays itself out.

Ultimately, this story is about Loki.

Loki has to start with the man in the mirror. The person he metaphorically sees himself in is Sylvie, his perfect mirror, and he's asking himself to change his ways. No message, no relationship, no reflection, no realization, no feeling could have been any clearer. So, if Loki wants to be a better person, which we know he can and will be, he will take a look at himself in his mirror and make that change.

[cinnonym]

take the day off, get a massage (cause we've got this one all under control)

Written for Day 8 - Winter Solstice of 12 Days of Supercorp @supercorpbb

Read on AO3

***

9:15 am

“Golly, am I looking forward to this day.” Kara yawns and huddles closer against the curve of Lena’s back. Her breath tickles Lena’s neck, warm and comfortable. Lena hums.

“Four.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s the fourth time you’ve said this,” Lena murmurs. “Not that I mind.” She can feel sleep tugging at her eyelids once more and relishes in the thought that she won’t have to fight it. That she can succumb to the weight guiltlessly.

Kara doesn’t reply. She’s probably drifted off again already and will wake in half an hour with the same sentence on her lips once more. Lena smiles a bit about the predictability of it all, before a yawn overcomes her and drags her down with it.

***

9:51 am

“Golly,” Kara says, sleep still blurring her words. “I love this, I really do. What a good idea.”

Lena makes an affirmative sound, somewhere between a sigh and a purr. She hasn’t felt this relaxed in months, maybe even years. The warmth of Kara’s arm around her waist, the cold of Kara’s nose against her neck, what more can a woman ask for?

“I am starting to become a bit hungry though,” comes Kara’s voice from behind, and Lena has to suppress a chuckle as she rolls around to face her girlfriend.

“Of course you are.”

“Hey!” Kara’s eyes were still closed, but they open now, blinking slowly several times until all traces of tiredness have given way to a semi-offended glare. “It’s – “ she pauses and squints at the clock “ – more than two hours after my usual breakfast time. Of course my stomach is demanding attention.”

Lena lets out a laugh. “Demanding, huh? And that although you so dislike to be ordered around.”

Kara’s on her suddenly, pinning her down so quickly that Lena strongly suspects the involvement of superspeed.

“Damn right,” she says in a low voice, letting her gaze wander over Lena menacingly. Unfortunately, the effect is somewhat undermined by Kara’s stomach releasing a protesting grumble just then. Kara blushes, and just like that she rolls off of Lena again.

“Boss said no,” she murmurs, shrugging helplessly.

Lena grins. “Good thing we’ve got all day.”

“Golly, am I looking forward to that.”

***

11:38 am

The phone rings just when Lena is beginning to contemplate a nap. The sun still hasn’t peeked through the clouds once, and so it continues to be exactly the kind of dreary that you could wish for on a day like this. The kind of dreary that practically invites you to sleep.

But the phone is ringing, and that means Lena has to make a decision. She groans as she lifts her head from Kara’s chest to look at her.

“Reject or ignore?”

Kara shrugs. Her fingers are drawing lazy circles on Lena’s back, and she looks about as sleepy as Lena’s felt just a minutes ago.

“Maybe I’ll look who it is and choose then,” Lena decides, reaching for the vibrating device. It’s Jess, and apparently it’s not the first time she’s tried to get through to Lena. They have somehow managed to miss three calls, and if that isn’t proof of a dedicated sex life, then Lena doesn’t know. She chuckles quietly.

“It’s Jess,” she tells Kara, “for the third time.”

“What does she want?”

“I wouldn’t know.” The call stops. A small flutter of worry stirs in Lena’s stomach, even though she doesn’t want to feel it. Doesn’t want to leave the comfortable bubble Kara and she have created for themselves today.

Kara seems to sense where her thoughts are going, because she takes the phone from Lena and puts it on the nightstand again.

“No work,” she says sternly, “no outside world, and no leaving the bed unless it’s for food or bathroom breaks. Those are the rules.”

Lena bites her lip. She swallows the ‘What if’s’ that lie on the tip of her tongue. She banishes the thought of work to the remotest corner of her mind and kisses Kara on her collarbone instead.

“You’re right,” she murmurs, “they’ll get by without me for one day.”

***

2:01 pm

It turns out that Kara is much less relaxed when it’s her phone that’s ringing. Or maybe it’s the amount of calls she gets. But with every time her ringtone sounds out, she gets quieter and quieter, until at one point, she grabs her phone exasperatedly, turns it off, and tosses it into the armchair at the opposite corner of the room.

“One day!” She exclaims. “One day, the darkest day of the year, and a Sunday at that! You’d think the criminals would stay at home voluntarily, snuggle up to their girlfriend maybe, enjoy a good 32 hours in bed, and just take. One. Day. Off. It’s not that hard, or is it?”

“It’s not,” Lena concurs, finishing one braid in Kara’s long and unfairly soft hair and starting another.

“I work the year round, every day. And night, mind you. Weekends, holidays, always. And I do it gladly. I do it selflessly. I do it with a smile on my face, even. But one day off. One day. Is that really too much to ask for?”

“It’s not.” Lena pauses her braiding to put a soothing hand on Kara’s head. “You’re just doing such a good job the rest of the time, people have forgotten how to take care of themselves without you.”

Kara leans into the touch with a sigh and a grateful smile. “Is it wrong that I kind of like how much they depend on me, even though it annoys me today?”

“Of course not.” Lena lightly scratches her nails over Kara’s scalp, drinking up the contented sighs that fall form Kara’s lips. “I think everybody wants to be needed. It gives us purpose. It gives us strength.” She leans down to press a gentle kiss to Kara’s forehead before she takes up her braiding again. “It’s one of the greatest paradoxes of humankind that this strength doesn’t suffice to sustain you. That you need breaks from being useful, lest your strength depletes.”

Kara nods, momentarily upsetting the row of braids Lena has already finished.

“I love you,” she says.

Lena smiles. “I love you too.”

***

3:45 pm

“I think my butt fell asleep.”

“I call your butt and raise you two legs.” Lena groans. “How do teenagers do this?”

“Do what?” Kara asks, giggling a little at the exaggerated noises Lena is making.

“Do this.” Lena gestures at the two of them, sprawled out on the mattress. “Lie in bed all day, barely moving, except to change the video game or whatever they occupy their brains with all day.”

Kara laughs, loud and hearty. “Rao, Lena, sometimes you are so odd.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Not all teenagers spend all their time in bed, dummy,” Kara says, and it’s only her fond tone that saves her from the pillow Lena almost hurdles at her. “I, for example, was a very active teenager.”

“You hardly count,” Lena retorts, sticking out her tongue when Kara narrows her eyes at her. “Because you’re always active.”

Kara wrinkles her nose, but Lena’s point holds. She huffs.

“What about you then, what did you do as a teenager?”

“I,“ Lena says dignifiedly, “didn’t experience an adolescence.”

“Lena, your adolescence was less than ten years ago.”

Lena sighs dramatically and rolls over, facing her girlfriend with a regretful stare.

“Tell that to my back pain…”

***

4:09 pm

“Isn’t it sad,” Kara muses, kneading Lena’s trapezius muscle with blissfully strong hands, “how it’s already getting dark again?”

Lena moans softly when Kara hits a particularly tense spot. “Is it?”

“Yeah.”

They are silent for a while, Kara moving slowly and methodically up and down Lena’s back, Lena shimmying in and out of consciousness. No phone has rung in over two hours, nobody has disturbed them in their self-imposed solitude, no rule has been broken so far. They are doing exactly what they’ve planned for the day, and it is nothing.

“What a good day,” Lena murmurs, “What a good idea.”

Kara gives her ass a squeeze, and Lena, well on her way to another nap, almost jumps.

“The hell?” She exclaims, which immediately earns her another slap. “What?”

Kara’s voice is a melange of amusement and indignation. “You forgot the golly!”

***

6:37 pm

They start speaking at the same time.

“It’s almost Christmas,” Kara says, and Lena murmurs “How am I already tired?” and then they look at each other and laugh.

“What did you say?” Simultaneously. “You first.”

Lena recovers faster, so she pokes Kara, who’s still laughing, between the ribs.

“Tick, your turn, please speak now.” She presents Kara her fist as a mic, which only results in another burst of laughter. Then Kara’s hand closes around hers, pulling her closer.

“Hello hello, can you hear me?”

Lena giggles. She feels carefree in a way she hasn’t felt in possibly all her life. “Loud and clearly. Please repeat your question.”

“Yes hello,” Kara says, pompous in a way that is exactly like on real TV interviews. “I didn’t so much ask a question as rather observing a fact. That fact being of course the upcoming holiday, namely Christmas.”

At this point they have to drop the act, because Lena is laughing so hard that the mic is shaking and “the connection seems to be bad, hello hello?” And Kara grins at Lena like she did when Lena first fell in love with her, wide and open and with her heart in her hands, ready to give it to anyone she thought worth fighting for. Even a Luthor. Even Lena.

“I’m looking forward to Christmas,” Lena says, but what she means is that she’s never liked the holidays much, until Kara came around and made them worthwhile.

And somehow Kara understands.

“Yes,” she says, “me too.”

***

8:52 pm

“There’ll be much work to catch up on tomorrow,” Lena sighs, playing with the thought of looking at her phone and deciding against it. “But that are tomorrow’s problems.”

Kara hums. She’s floating half an inch above the bed because she finds the mattress is too warm after bearing her body all day.

“I’m still looking forward to that somehow.”

Lena chuckles. “Yes, me too. Isn’t that weird? I thoroughly enjoyed today, but I couldn’t do it again tomorrow.”

“It’s about the – “ Kara forms the chef’s kiss gesture minus the kiss “ – purpose.” She turns on her side to look at Lena. “Or so a wise woman once told me.”

“Sounds very wise indeed. Did she also say something about the reason why I’m tired even though we did nothing all day?”

“Nope.” Kara pops the p, then lets herself fall back on the bed. “But here’s my theory: inaction is like negative action. And at the end of the day, it’s the absolute value that counts, minus or plus doesn’t matter. So if you’ve balanced action and inaction, you won’t be that tired, because they cancel each other. But if you have an overload of either action or inaction…”

“… you’ll feel about as exhausted as I do right now,” Lena finishes, her eyes already closed. “Seems reasonable. It’s compatible with my strength theory, I like that.” She yawns, and feels blindly for Kara’s hand. “Either way, all in favour of an early night, raise your hand.” She lifts their entwined hands off the mattress. “Whooo.”

Kara breathes out a laugh. “Also, if we go to bed now, then tomorrow will come faster.”

“Scientifically incorrect,” Lena murmurs, “but golly.”

“What?”

Lena snuggles into Kara’s embrace until all she can smell is Kara, and all she can feel is also Kara. She yawns again.

“Golly am I looking forward to tomorrow.”

[maggotmouth]

          hillo sexthy legends !!   i’m nora and i’ll be writing margo colby n probs sm1 else bcos lets be real, i lack self-control. u can find her pinterest here n some info abt her sexy self below the cut. plot with me on discord ( hot girl midsommar#8664 ) or in my ims !!  x o x

     * CAMILA MORRONE, CIS WOMAN + SHE / HER  | you know MARGO COLBY, right? they’re TWENTY-THREE, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, ELEVEN YEARS? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to SCRAWNY BY WALLOWS  like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole BLEACH WHITE SNEAKERS POUNDING ON A GYMNASIUM FLOOR, USING THE SAME BLUNT SCISSORS TO HACK THE SLEEVES OFF AN EXES T-SHIRT THAT YOU USE TO CUT YOUR 3AM FRINGE, A WALNUT-SHAPED ACHE IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH FOR THE PERSON YOU COULD HAVE BEEN thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is AUGUST 8TH, so they’re a LEO, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nora, 25, gmt, she/her )

CLICK ANYWHERE ON THIS SENTENCE FOR SEXII GOOGLE DOC!!

bullet point summary of margo.

—   born margaret but NOBODY calls her that. its colby, coach or margo, and go to the privileged few. margo grew up in the creek commune n then dropped out of school cos of a teenage pregnancy so she was a bit of a cautionary tale back in’t’day (said tht in my yorkshire accent). she now works for summer camps coaching pee wee soccer and pee wee cheer, as well as helping out her beekeeper dad on his honey farm, which is jst north of abernathy creek, and working at scuba on the off seasons.

—  its just her and her dad, and has been for as long as she can recall !! everything she knows about her mum could fit on the back of the weathered passport photo she keeps in her wallet of a stranger who shares her face - her name’s melody, or at least tht was name she used when working as a dancer, she’s from argentina and dropped mag’s dad as soon as someone w more money came along.

—  margo’s father is a beekeeper with his own organic honey company. margo and her dad moved to irving in the early 00s, the summer between grade school and middle school, because her dad had heard about the communal living in abernathy creek and wanted to lend his skills there and live off the fatta the land in a very lenny from of mice and men kinda way.

—  for a few years of middle school margo was bullied for living with the ‘freaks from the creek’, but when they realised how chill her dad was with underage drinking, margo ‘keg-bringer’ colby soon gained popularity among the more renegade students. every so often, the high school parties would happen at her end of town, occasionally with members of the commune even offering the high schoolers a spiritual experience they’d never forget (often in the form of mushrooms) which meant people tried to stay on her good side. to get an invite to a margo colby party handed you a free pass to make up the most ridiculous shit about the commune you liked and nobody else could say anything, because they’d never been to the creek.

—  at school, margo had a lot of ‘behvioural issues’ bcos of undiagnosed adhd, she found it difficult to sit still for hours n write down huge chunks of information n her restlessness was seen as laziness. she was encouraged to do sports, as were most of the kids who weren’t that academically inclined, but she turned out to be pretty hot shit at sprinting, because she grew up surrounded by bee houses and he who runs slowest gets stung, baybeyy!! so yea, in school sports became her LIFE. she was gonna get a sports scholarship to college but ended up dropping out of school in senior year n becoming one of those kids who could have had it all but lost it.

—  she had sex with sutter at a house party when she wasnt really ready because it felt like the right thing to do at the time and everybody else was doing it. she’d attended health class, she’d seen the corny videos. she knew about all the statistics, but she also knew that it had never happened to anyone she knew and the pull out method was basically safer than the morning after pill and way less expensive.

—  a teenage pregnancy knocked her out of the runnings for prom queen and meant she had to leave school early. she didn’t go to college when her friends did, instead she spent the time interviewing potential foster candidates and eating her weight in lindt chocolate while marathoning love island in her room.  

—  she had a son, who she passed off to someone else a couple of towns away.  it was a closed adoption which seemed like the best idea at the time, but she now wishes she had access to his life.

—  after peaking in high school and jumping between jobs for a few years, she got a more permanent role at scuba which she loves with all of her heart and soul, but unfortunately a bar job doesn’t pay the rent.  

—  she works at summer camps coaching  junior soccer and netball on the side. she’s extremely competitive and takes it very personally if her team lose. the kids all call her, coach colby n write her longwinded letters about how they’ll never forget this summer camp before they go back to their suburban picket fence houses n she keeps all the letters in a drawer n takes them out to read when she’s feelin depressed.

—  enjoys surfing and worked for a number of years on resorts like mila kunis’ job in forgetting sarah marshall. she went on to work 18-hour days as a stewardess on luxury yachts which is a part of her backstory i added after watching season one of below deck because i guess i really am that fucking impressionable. met most of her surf friends doing tht but said she’d never in her life do it again bcos it was mostly just picking up after rich white ppl for shit pay. she came back to irving n thats when she started doing the summer camp jobs so she could move out of the creek n get her own apartment. 

—  she never actually finished senior year so she’s currently going to night school at the community college to get through her exams and is trying to save to go to college or open university. she wants to major in criminology. she’s super ambitious but also super adhd so she fluctuates between thinking she can achieve anything to just feeling like a failure n thinkin whats the point

—  used to shoplift to feel joy and as an act of resistance to her hippy commune routes, but now sees herself as a reformed, bin-diving freegan (sims 4 eco living can i get a hell yaaaa). also she thinks it’s totally wrong to steal when you have enough money and clearly don’t need to steal to survive, ppl risk imprisonment for basic necessities, so for her to do it for a brief thrill and some new shades felt a bit derogatory

—  was raised jewish. became a vegetarian as a child because it seemed, at the time, easier than having to explain which foods she was and wasn’t allowed to eat together, so she just cut out meat entirely. still a vegetarian now and dabbles in veganism, although its become less about not eating certain meats in the milk of their mother and more about her global impact / carbon footprint

—  nurses little animals to health in her garden. has a hedgehog name OJ short for orange juice not the other one filthy pig. her and her dad have always been huge animal rights activists and existed on a vegetarian diet. the only one in their house who isn’t vegetarian is their cat, auggie. (short 4 augustus gloop)

—  has a lot of stupid ass stick and poke tattoos. there was a phase during her years as a barmaid where she wanted to train as a tattoo artist n would mostly practice on herself or any friends who would let her

—  she doesn’t form many long lasting friendships cos she tends to be super excited when she makes a new friend and just see them all the time but then it wears off and she can ghost a bit. she’ll always coming pinging back but she’s not the most predictable or loyal friend, sometimes she’ll sleep in your house every night for a week and then you won’t even get a text from her for a month. her best friends are elderly neighbours and houseless people she meets when volunteering at the foodbank. she thinks they’re more authentic than most of the ‘fake posers’ she meets down the vela pier

—  calls herself a butch lesbian but still has sex with men when she wants validation. sexually attracted to some men, especially effeminate men, but only romantically attracted to women. very possessive of the gals in her life.

—  stopped giving a shit about getting older or adhering to anyone elses bullshit standards, realised it was all fake p much as soon as she dropped out of school and one by one her friends just stopped texting her

—  lives in one of the lofts in port apartments. it’s open plan with rugs and lava lamps everywhere. she has a palette bed. its all very ‘sustainable chic’. like, oh wow, a pallet bed that im supposed to think you made from scratch but i KNOW you got it  off ebay because you thought it looked trendy

—  constantly says shes poor but still buys clothes from urban outfitters. sus.

—  frequently found at fannies flirting with the cute bisexual bartender with a choppy black bob.

general vibe / personality

vibrant, vulgar, self-absorbed, tenacious, veers bewteen apathetic and dogmatic, temperamental, flighty, unreliable, magnetic, charismatic, passive aggressive, likes to play devil’s advocate, takes the moral high ground. estp and a leo

likes: 70s music, john wayne movies, black mirror, philosophy, cowboy chic culture, dc comics, the smell of locker rooms,, deep red lipstick, lacrosse sticks, smoking weed from a bong, dogs, karaoke, pet rats, kate moss, late-night strolls, hawaaiian shirts worn open over a bralette, skinned knees, thai food, picking the apples at the very top of the trees, zip-lining, cigarettes, the idea of pegging but not the practical application of it, decorative lamps, LGBTQ+ pin badges, worn-out furniture, twangy electric guitars.

dislikes: girls who call other girls ‘pick me’ girls, woody allen movies, mental mathematics, wealthy children, quentin tarantino, ironing, institutionalised misogyny, the imaginary future, french literature, ‘dump him’ feminism, wes anderson films, spoken word poetry nights, college-educated bar staff who act like they’re better than you,  indie softbois, the general mentality of cheerleading squads.

aesthetics

orange peel, the smell of bleach, skeleton drawings in the margins of a journal, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, bleach white sneakers pounding on a gymnasium floor, setting dumpsters on fire for the hell of it. a hit flask of vodka decorated with hello kitty stickers, split knuckles, alien conspiracy theories and sci-fi paperbacks, doc martens with fraying laces, a child in an oversize bee keepers suit, scabbed knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you,  a tennis racket you punched through in a fit of temper, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

hoo boy this is getting LONG AS FUCK but here are my wanted plots

wanted plots

ok margo’s been in irving since she was like 10. she’s quite a vivacious person?? she dresses completely instinctively without any sense of cohesion so she stands out. a guy once told her she was wearing the ugliest outfit he’d ever seen and he thought that was so cool and brave of her. but anyway where was i going.. she grew up in the abernathy creek so stuck out like a sore thumb,,,, maybe ppl who were super interested in the creek or maybe poked fun at her bcos of it idk.....

b4 she dropped out, margo used 2 b in with the cool kids at school bcos her dad would buy them booze and rarely ask for the money. maybe a fun plot cld b with some of the ‘it girls’ she used to hang around with b4 she got pregnant n dropped out and they all went off to college n stopped texting her.

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! some1 she feels like she knew before irving ???

since margo literally can’t differentiate between romantic and platonic love, she’s got off with so many of her mates, so i want awkward friendships where they nearly dated, or exes that have now just turned into weird friendships. fwbs. enemies with benefits. all the angst. all the slow burn mutual pining we hate each other narratives

locals who play sports. margo wld be all over community soccer n take it way too seriously. maybe ppl she plays hockey with. girls who she’s like, weirdly intimate with but its not a thing cos the other girls straight !!! what do u mean !! aha just fun !

she works part time at scuba. i want a mate that just goes and sits in there talking to her until her manager gets angry.

she's also a surf instructor and occasionally works as a lifeguard!! gal has like 7 jobs ik but regular swimmers hmu

ppl she coaches at the gym !! she wants to be a personal trainer

i reckon she might have recently started meditating to try and calm down her mind cos its always bustling with thoughts, n i think she’s p interested in buddhism so if anyone’s a buddhist hmu

someone she’s trying to make a zine with on female empowerment and women in film and art, etc. just a very feminist zine. 

TLDR:  angry sports gay, former high school track prodigy turned drop out, who likes feminist literature, wearing leather jackets over slip dresses, and smudged red lipstick.

this was so long !!! im sorry !! if you’ve read this far have a biscuit, love x

[mrchalamet-mrstyles]

Reputation Management and the Rot at the Heart of Celebrity Journalism: How Armie Hammer Tried to Get Ahead of the Story—with Help from a GQ Writer

On September 30, 2020, GQ UK published an interview with Armie Hammer. The headline: Armie Hammer wants you to pick up the phone and call a friend. Like, now.

The interview was packaged as a rare, candid conversation with a movie star about his mental health struggles. A man who supposedly had it all—looks, breeding, a successful career on the silver-screen—was admitting that appearances can be deceiving. And he wanted the whole world to know he was having a hard time. Why? So that others in a similar position would feel inspired to seek help.

So humble. So brave.

Looking back, it's clear the interview represented a calculated attempt by a well-oiled publicity machine to prop up the 6'5" oil heir as a hero, lest he be exposed as a monster.

By September 2020, many of Armie's alleged DMs were already ricocheting across social media. In fact, they'd gone somewhat viral on July 15, following his divorce announcement.

What Armie's reputation needed, asap, was a good old-fashioned scrubbing—something to show that, whatever his demons, he was addressing them. Armie was doing the work.

And boy, did GQ UK come through for our leading man. It even put him on the cover of the November 2020 issue, all broody and soulful and wanting to open up about his pain, man.

But why did Armie's team go all the way to the United Kingdom in search of the ideal publication through which to launder his image?

This is where things get interesting.

Armie's mental health cover story was written and packaged by GQ UK's Chief Content Officer, Jonathan Heaf. It marked the second occasion both men worked together in less than two years: Armie had graced the March 2019 cover of the magazine—the accompanying profile of the actor was written by Heaf.

It's not exactly unheard of for celebrity coverage to be cloyingly sycophantic. But Heaf's 2019 article? Never before had a glossy magazine printed a rim job quite like this one.

He takes great pains to let the reader know that he really likes Armie Hammer:

It’s easy to want to be friends with Hammer. You can kind of tell, right? I swooned, plus he’s terrific company.

He really, really likes Armie Hammer:

"Did I tell you how much I like Armie Hammer? Well, let me tell you again: it’s very easy to like Armie Hammer."

It's a familiar experience—you become infatuated with someone, and you want to talk about how great they are to anyone who will listen.

"I am compelled to tell Chalamet what I feel compelled to tell you: about the sheer decency of Hammer as a human being."

Anything else you told Armie's co-star about Armie, Jonathan?

"I tell him that I believe there is something noble about his friend, mentor and colleague. Not noble as in a sense of hierarchy or blue-bloodedness, but more in a decent, gallant, chivalrous way."

Geez, man. It sounds like you started to worship Armie Hammer. I hope you didn't go even further overboard with the compliments, because they might look embarrassing in retrospect.

Ah, well. Nevertheless.

You should've listened to your role model, Jonathan. He wasn't wrong.

The question is, Why? What the hell happened to make a journalist become so chummy with his interview subject? (Beyond the obvious lack of professionalism, of course.)

Unfortunately for Jonathan, he might not be in a position to answer this. There's that pesky lack of professionalism, for one. While the interview with Armie Hammer was technically supposed to be a "work" thing, Jonathan ended up getting drunk. Very, very drunk. So drunk he doesn't remember how he got home. So drunk he barely recalls the evening he spent on the company dime, "interviewing" Armie Hammer.

I'm not making this up. Jonathan Heaf, Chief Content Officer of GQ UK, spent half the article talking about how hungover he was the day after the interview. Half the article. Surely, nobody who leafed through the March 2019 issue of GQ UK looking for the Armie Hammer profile gives a rat about Jonathan Heaf's hangover. I'm not sure anybody in the world would be interested in reading these many words about Jonathan Heaf. Not even his mother. Yet here we are.

There's another reason we are unlikely to ever get an answer for why Jonathan Heaf loves Armie Hammer so much. The reason is because the two men share a secret. A salacious secret. A secret so juicy and hilarious, the two men can't help joking about it on Twitter.

Oh man, you really had to be there. It was a bonding moment between two dads. (Yes, both men are fathers.) It even got immortalized in a very funny photo! Jonathan loves talking about "THE PHOTO." But he won't let you see it. No, sir. It's a secret photo. A secret photo related to an even secreter secret shared between Jonathan Heaf and Armie Hammer.

And let him tell you, Jonathan Heaf is very, very relieved that his secret is safe with Armie Hammer. So safe he can play coy about it in the pages of the magazine that employs him.

If you see Armie Hammer out on the street, looking tall and noble, ask him. Ask Hammer the actor what happened to him and the British journalist after the Martini session in the Sunset Tower Hotel bar in November last year. Walk up to him. Say hi. Smile. Wave. Talk. Engage in a conversation. He’ll like that. Be nice. Be civil. Be a bit more, well, be a bit more Armie. I mean, he probably won’t tell you. Why not? Well, he’s Armie Hammer, isn’t he? It wouldn’t be gracious. It would make you laugh like hell, sure, but it wouldn’t be loyal. It wouldn’t be decent. And, you know, we could all do with being a bit more Armie Hammer sometimes. Right, Armie?"

If you've made it this far (first of all—thank you), you may be wondering whether I'm being too harsh on poor old Jonathan Heaf. How was he supposed to know his utterly decent, supremely loyal friend Armie Hammer would turn out to be a sadistic psychopath? Jonathan Heaf is probably just as freaked out as we all are. Right?

On Thursday, Heaf uploaded a photograph to his Instagram grid, of himself wearing a flashy tracksuit. If the tracksuit looks familiar, it's probably because you've seen Armie Hammer wear it on the pages of GQ UK.

And in the comments of his dapper tracksuit insta pic, Jonathan Heaf, Chief Content Officer of GQ UK, wrote, "cut me, I bleed breakfast wine 🍷"

(X)

[angelkurenai]

Imagine having the ‘Wired Autocomplete Interview’ with Jake and seeing all the things people have googled about him and you, only to find more ways to flirt with him and tease him.

“Hello, I'm Jake Gyllenhaal.” the man smiled at the camera for the intro.

“And I'm (Y/n) (Y/l/n).” you introduced yourself the same way with a smile while adding “And we're doing a wired-”

“Autocomplete.” Jake added without you even having to look at him.

“Interview.” you ended, your smile getting even bigger when you heard Jake chuckle next to you, already knowing what was on his mind “This is like the perfect intro for us. You wouldn't even need to tell us, we complete each other's sentences on a daily basis like some-”

“Some old married couple. As Ryan says.” Jake completed your sentence once more with a nod of his head.

“Well, at least one of us is old enough, so-” you only shrugged, looking completely serious at the camera and without even having to glance at the blue-eyed man next to you, you knew he was giving you a look so in the end you burst in laughter.

“Ouch!” he placed a hand over his heart “My heart, no, my heart is bleeding! Ah they were not wrong when they said that love hurts.”

“Alright you drama queen, stop hanging out with Ryan and you'll be just fine.” you chuckled at his small act and he grinned as well “Now time for the interview!”

“We'd like you to answer this one question first, before you get the cards.” the person in charge said behind the camera and you nodded your head a bit “Have you ever googled your own name?”

“Googled your own name?” Jake pursed his lips nodding his head with a thoughtful look on his face “I think everybody has at some point, right?” he turned to look at you, comfortable in his chair as you still thought about it.

“Googled my own name. No.” you shook your head looking back at the camera “No I don't think I have googled my own name. Goggled Jake's name? Hell yeah! You bet!” you said so casually your made the blue-eyed man laugh in surprise “I spend hours upon hours googling this dude. So a warning: Half of the questions will be things I searched!”

“I'm-” he still couldn't even breathe properly because of all the laughter “I don't know if I want to ask whether you're joking or not.”

“Do I look like I'm joking, Gyllenhaal?” you raised an eyebrow at him smirking “What you don't want to know is the things I've googled.” you laughed “No, I'm kidding. I have googled your, I won't lie about that, but I think it was back when I was first getting started and I stumbled upon a movie of yours.”

“Oh, makes sense, yes.” he nodded his head “I'd admit I've done it too and it's how I became a huge fan but this will be out on the internet and Ryan won't let me hear the end of it, so... yeah.”

“Alright, we're good. We can get started now, here's the first card.”

“Oh you've played this game before, right? You were with Ryan too, weren't you?” you asked your co-star, taking hold of the first card.

“Yes, yes we have. You've seen it? How were we? I think I've completely forgotten.”

“Oh you-” you shrugged “You sucked.” you looked him seriously in the eyes “Just kidding. Kidding.” you chuckled “Alright... maybe I'm not. But hey, that's a good thing. How much worse can it be this time? Plus, I'm not Ryan and that makes everything 100 times better.”

“I guess it did show our- how do you say it? Our energy.”

“Yeah. That's for sure, I agree: 100% chaotic.” you shrugged, grinning casually while he looked hopelessly at the camera “Alright, onto the actual interview now cause this will get out of hand real soon.” you looked at the card “Oh I see it has your name. So I'll do yours and you do mine, yeah?”

“Sounds about good enough.” he nodded his head before you both looked at the card.

“Is Jake Gyllenhaal-” you pealed the first sticker “In the MCU?” you both nodded your heads as you spoke “Pretty easy. Yes, yes he is. He is Quentin Beck or better known as Mysterio or better known as that little shit in the new Spider-man movie you don't know if you want to love or hate.” you said matter-of-fact with a smirk, glancing at Jake when he laughed “Yeah I suppose you know what character I mean by now. Anyway, I remember I had to drag him to audition for the movie. I said either he auditions or he sleeps on the couch for the rest of the month.He complained like a little kid at first but really what other choice did he have? I could torture him even worse if I wanted to and he knows it. In the end he definitely enjoyed it, though. Don't deny it, Gyllenhaal.”

“I won't, really I won't.” he said when he recovered from his laughter “It was uhm a unique experience that you won't get to live every day, let me tell you, and the character himself is one that in many ways is similar to the kind of characters I want to portray and chose to portray. He is definitely a character to remember and one I will remember for a long time. Plus, we had so much fun on set that it made it all ten times more worth it.”

“Would you say you liked it that much as to play Quentin again?” you asked, leaning back in your chair.

“Oh yeah, yeah absolutely.  I had such a great time, I think doing a Marvel movie as Quentin again would be lots of fun!”

“And then he got to be Quentin in a movie with Deadpool.” you looked at the camera with a grin “And regretted everything he said that day.”

“Don't give them any ideas! Don't!” he said with wide eyes, unable to hold back his laughter though.

“Ryan will be visiting Kevin very soon I predict.” you giggled “Oh that's a movie I'd pay millions to see. But since I can't have it now yet, let's see the next one. Is- Oh this one's tricky. Is-” you pealed the sticker “Oh (Y/n) (Y/l/n) the reason why Jake Gyllenhaal auditioned for 'Light between oceans'? Oh alright-” you laughed “First, how did you google such a thing? This is a whole sentence. And second, I want to hear it from you Gyllenhaal, this is an interesting one. Am I?” you smirked, looking back at Jake.

“Alright, so there's actually a story about this.” his laugh was less nervous than you expected “I did admit I had been a fan for years and of course Ryan knew it and he wouldn't miss a chance to try to point it out. So uhm the promotional tour for the movie 'Life' which I did with him around the same time was no more than a month right after our movie and as you might expect he had to mention it every time we had an interview. One time a question came up about 'Light between oceans' and, well, leave it to Ryan to say that I auditioned for it because I knew you'd be my costar. Which-” he laughed a bit “I have to admit it was true, but I didn't give him the satisfaction back then by saying that yes I wanted to work with you on project that much. And after that it sort of became a big thing, I think, hence the google search.”

“How come I haven't heard of that before? I mean what the hell, I could have used that to my advantage!” you grinned even though Jake shook his head next to you “I think I should keep up with the net more.”

“What about you? Why did you audition for the movie? I don't think we ever talked about that.”

“Oh for me it was even easier. I saw 'making out' and 'Jake Gyllenhaal' in one sentence and I was immediately like-” you snapped your fingers “I'm in!” you shrugged innocently, only to make Jake double in laughter “It was that easy for me. I didn't even care to find out about the plot. I think I remembered to read it about a day before filming started. Let's be honest, I'm just in it to make out with Jake, don't thin I even remember any of my lines now. I only went in to be able to kiss this guy and let me tell you I didn't regret it one bit.”

“That's-” Jake started but pressed his lips as he tried to fight his laughter, or even a smile, but much as he tried he was failing miserably “An interesting reason, I must admit. Certainly good to know.” he glanced at you from the corner of his eyes and you giggled shaking your head.

“Much as I'd like to ask-” you cleared your throat, looking back at the board “I think we're going to get a lot out of this interview so the next one: Is Jake Gyllenhaal... real?” you both snorted “Wow now this! This is something I've googled. You know what?” you glanced at Jake before looking straight at the camera “I don't even know. I keep asking myself the same thing all the time, still no answer. Some would argue, namely Ryan, but-”

“We all know what Ryan would say, so let's just skip that part.” Jake completed your sentence.

“Yes, let's.” you agreed “Ok the next one. Is Jake Gyllenhaal... an actor?” you snickered while Jake made a funny face “Wow someone out there is having some serious doubts about your entire existence buddy.”

“What's up with that? Why am I getting all these weird questions?” he looked at the camera, his voice coming out slightly high pitched “Yes, yes I am an actor... I think. Or at least I try to be, for five minutes. Once a week.”

You laughed as he snickered “Come on! Yes-” you turned to the camera “Yes he is, and an incredible one at that. Whatever Ryan Reynolds tells you after this is a lie because he is jealous and on the occasion a mean little shit. Let me tell you that all jokes aside and I'm 100% serious when I say Jake might as well be one of the best if not the best actor I've had the pleasure to work with in my entire life.”

“Wow, I think I'm going to cry.” he said a bit jokingly but you could also tell there was sincerity in his words “Nobody has ever been that nice to me since I was a baby.” but of course his words were still funny so you couldn't hold back a laugh.

“Alright let's move onto the next one because we've got so many cards left. Ok the last one: Is Jake Gyllenhaal... single? Wow straight to the point huh? Now this-”

“Did you- Did you google this?” he grinned and you laughed.

“Wouldn't you like to know huh?” you winked at him “No, see, I didn't need to. You guys out there though-” you smirked at the camera “You really wanna know huh?”

“I'd like to see you answer this one.” he eased back in his seat.

“Easy.” you shrugged casually before looking back at the camera “No. He's mine. Sorry.” your smile was far from innocent, especially as Jake burst into laughter next to you.

“Have something to say, Gyllenhaal?” you raised an eyebrow at him and he raised his arms in surrender.

“No, no I definitely don't. If you say so, who am I to say no?”

“Gad to hear that. So there you have it.” you grinned at the camera before getting rid of the first card “Onto the next one!”

“Oh it's going to be a long interview!”

[mediapuppy]

Gosh it’s so flattering that people want to know more about me!  Now you wouldn’t expected these to be loaded questions, but let me preface this by saying that I’m an absolute mess when it comes to college.  I do nothing normally.  Sleep is nonexistent.  My advisors are going to stab me in my sleep. Come with me while I take you on the wild, dysfunctional rollercoaster that is Media’s College Misadventures™

Now I like a lot of things in an abstract sort of way.  I love cooking and baking.  I used to do a lot of overseas work with genetics and animals.  I’ve always been fascinated by the brain in the sort of vague way most people are. But this doesn’t sell, so I went into my freshman year an Economics/CS major as prep work to take over the family business!    Please for the love of god don’t follow in my footsteps but I spent the last two years of high school running with a dangerously fun crew whose blood was 80% vodka and 20% bad decisions and we all somehow got into our top universities.  Out of sheer notgivingafuckness I put all the top universities I got into in a hat and just picked one.  The next morning I woke up with no recollection of the previous day and a thank-you email from the college I apparently accepted.  I was very drunk, yet I regret nothing. This college decided the best course of action would be to send me to Ireland for my first year where I immediately proceeded to make friends with all my professors and go drinking with them after class every day.  They showed me pizza clubs and these really fancy underground bars for the Irish elite, I think one of my best memories was going to a gay bar in the back alleys of southside Dublin with my economic perspectives prof then drunk stumbling over to this game shop at 2AM to learn to play magic with these very confused guys that readily accepted us as their new best friends. I learned absolutely nothing.  If you’re wondering just how much of a mess I was the dean of the entire fucking university knew me as the girl that was always asleep on the floor between classes with this dude who looked like the human version of Animal from The Muppets guarding my stuff.  The dean would go to this chocolatiers place across the street and get a few chocolate treats with his morning coffee to put in my hungover, asleep fish hand for when I woke up.  That man was a goddamn delight and I still talk to him to this day. A lot of things happened in Ireland that I will happily tell ya’ll if you want!  Just as an overview during these few months we also: got tazed repeatedly because we lived in gang territory (thanks uni for putting us there!!), watched our friend get kidnapped overnight from our favorite club (he was fine), got the entire country of America banned from several bars on our street, got accepted by the gang that terrorized us for the first two months, watched as on Halloween our entire apartment building got set on fire by said gang and we just went outside to drink beer with them while our advisor was having a nervous breakdown, and many, many bad decisions on my part.   After a few months we all got shipped back to the actual campus back in the states where things all went downhill.  My advisor straight up quit in my first week and I never got reassigned so I was just this poor tiny freshman stuck in upper-level classes with very confused and sympathetic seniors.  Halfway into the second semester one of my profs, the head of the whole econ department, started hitting on me.  If you’ve ever had the wonderful experience of being A Female In College ™ you know the type.  The ones that lean in a little too close, smile a little too wide when they see you.  So I said hell no and switched out of the major before the semester had even ended Into my second year, I was just taking classes aimlessly for a while picking new majors every few weeks while my advisors prayed for my demise.  I dabbled in psychology and sociology until I realized it was just memorizing terminology (but I made a friend in intro and together we both completed a minor in it just to hang out).  There was a very short-lived stint in biology for a while.  I dipped my fingers into Neuroscience for as long as they’d tolerate me.  Mathematics wasn’t too interesting without a double.  I ended up joining a lot of clubs and my main one was an engineering club (my uni is engineering-focused, rip me) but none of the facets of engineering interested me. Following from my long laundry list of good decisions I decided to just start befriending more professors and to aimlessly take their classes instead.  Long story short I accidentally completed a full B.S. in Philosophy of Science my sophomore year after overloading courses and being bored as all hell so a friend of mine, one of the top profs in the department, asked me to take his new upper-level quantum course so I said yes if he’d wave the prereqs and oop it turned out to be a senior thesis course and then I was all done with that major. I hadn’t made university hours so the beginning of my third year I was just taking mathematics and a few other courses while my advisors breathed down my neck ready to murder me.  They wanted me gone so bad, man, ya’ll have no idea.  I’m not even mentioning all the times I raised absolute hell on campus we just focusing on my major-based misadventures right now. Okay, so part of my university is something called co-op: a mandatory work experience period where students take semesters off at a time to do paid work in the field of their choice.  I hadn’t really any set majors at the time except for whatever bullshit showed up on my degree audit so I started searching for my 4-6 month co-op just to get it out of the way. Unfortunately for everybody involved, I interview extremely well and look good on paper.  I look damn good in a suit too and like to entertain when they’re supposed to be grilling me, so nobody stood a chance. I applied to the most ridiculous jobs I could find.  I was not qualified for any of it.  I got accepted to 90% of what I applied to. Out of notgivingafuckness pt2 I decided to give myself to the highest bidder which is how I ended up working for a defense contracting company that liked my coding background and how I just kinda roll with whatever’s going on.  So on the cusp of the covid pandemic I was working in security and dispatch for a major city hall that controlled the police department, fire, sanitation, everything under the sun.   I was so bad at my job, but I was enjoying it and that was everybody else’s problem.  When covid really started up and they let me go with 6 months full pay I immediately switched into PoliSci/Cyber and that’s where I am now, in my 4th year!   So to answer your question: my major is a mystery to everyone including me, but it’s something like PhilSci/PoliSci/Cyber and I’m taking 6 classes and I am dying fams.  My college experience is not and will never be normal, and I’ve still got masters/phd to go.  I’ve got a ton of great friends who constantly worry for my wellbeing because I do crazy shit and I am currently taking on the daunting challenge of befriending profs over zoom, who are only half into it. Don’t be me, but go out there and have fun!  College doesn’t have to be all about studying, and while now I’m taking too many classes to do much of anything else in my first few years I joined a ton of clubs and experienced all I could, so just get out there and do your best!

[iya5rt]

Kalopsia Project [Bakugo Katsuki x Reader – Tokyo Ghoul AU]

Epilogue – re:Kalopsia Project

Chapter Summary: Despite its ever-changing nature, life waits for nobody. It continues on, and so do you.

Quick Note!! This drawing you see here was done by the wonderful @CxldRain over on Wattpad!! Please, please, please check them out!! I am seriously so honored and thank you so much♥

Kalopsia Project Masterpost

“And now – exclusive information coming straight from the police about a discovery from a few days ago. Following an anonymous call reporting a sighting of multiple ghouls, police and Investigators from the CCG were led to the site of the raid from 4 years ago in which All Might – a renowned investigator, lost his life in a brutal fight against a skilled and feared ghoul nicknamed Endeavor by the CCG. The building, a former research facility of the CCG, which was thought to have been abandoned following the raid, was discovered to still have been in use.

“Inside, the police found traces of a fight and continuous use of the facility for the last couple of years. It resurfaced that this had been the main operating headquarters of a horrific human experimentation project. Unfortunately, no further data could be recovered and the organization responsible for this project has yet to be unveiled. The police are working together with the CCG to get to the bottom of this baffling case.

“The man thought to be the mastermind behind this inhumane act was caught at the scene. So far, his claims have been insufficient and, according to the CCG’s research department, false and contradictory. Multiple of his supposed “subjects” were discovered at the scene. Two of them appeared to have been killed by a ghoul, while the rest were temporarily incapacitated. Multiple organizations are currently looking into the matter, so stay tuned and we will keep you updated.

“Now, to have a look at the situation in the second ward. Sightings of the binge-eater ghoul which had been terrorizing the ward for a couple of months now have gone silent. No new victims have been discovered since the suspicious scene with no remains from last week. Has the threat been eliminated? Will the second ward finally be able to-“

The woman’s monotone voice coming from the small TV sharply cut off. Or rather, it was the sound of the TV instead that disappeared, as Monoma let out a frustrated sigh and set down the remote. He sure was getting quite the attention, though perhaps a news reporter wondering if he was finally dead for good wasn’t the attention he had been hoping for.

It was yet another bright and early morning at the small café which held a tiny secret most knew nothing of. The late-night venture of its staff from a couple nights ago hadn’t made it to all of the news stations quite yet (seems like the CCG still wanted to keep it under wraps as long as possible) and the concern and rumors hadn’t spread among the public for now. Of course, everything had been so carefully planned out, so as to not allow a single unsuspecting person to discover what exactly had transpired there.

One by one, the rest of Yuuei’s staff finished up their morning chores and gathered in the main area, sitting beside the counter, at the tables, or already working on preparing for the day (poor Midoriya and Todoroki had it tough).

Monoma’s eyes swept across the bunch of people and he raised a brow.

“Well, would you look at that. We’re starting any moment now, yet [L/N]-chan is nowhere to be seen.”

“She should be arriving very soon,” Ida chimed in. “Apparently she’s squeezing in some more kagune training with Bakugo-kun whenever she can.” Monoma followed up with a small hum.

“Huh, is that so…? Won’t the customers get worried she’s all bruised and beaten when they see her then?” his raised brow fell and he leaned back against the counter. Uraraka tried to stifle a giggle but failed.

“No way. Bakugo-kun’s still probably going easy on her. At least until her regeneration’s good enough, that is. And who knows,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe even after that.” Another giggle slipped out through her knowing grin. Meanwhile, Monoma’s curiosity turned into a devilish smirk.

“Betcha they’re just making out the whole time-“

Smack!

The towel easily knocked his head forward, leaving him to rub at his reddening neck, as a couple people laughed a little.

“I heard that, you know?” you reached out to retrieve your towel. Hey, he deserved much worse. You were being nice. Not minding Monoma’s pouting face, you dug around for your apron. “Once I get the hang of it, I plan to challenge you to a fight. Get back at you for that oh so pleasant “date” we had.”

“You’re welcome to do so. Any time you like, in fact.” Monoma closed his eyes and put a hand to his chest in a dramatic gesture. “I don’t plan on losing to a newbie.” His eyes looked back at you, a challenge just as clear evident in them.

Though, like you had said, that challenge would have had to wait. They weren’t wrong – you still had a long way to go before you could proclaim to have all the meticulous control over your kagune you’d need to take down somebody as experienced as him. Landing a single blow on Katsuki was already next to impossible throughout your training sessions.

But when that day was to finally come, you were determined to turn the tables on him. On both of them.

Another thought resurfaced in your mind.

“Oh, that’s right! Seems like only Kirishima-kun will make to today’s interview. I hope that won’t be a problem. The rest should manage to find a free slot by the end of the week though!”

“Interview?” Uraraka paused, just as she was putting a big mop away. Ida also looked at you with a slight tilt to his head.

“Ah, you guys were dealing with the clean-up, huh. Forgot you ran a little late. Well, you see-“ you walked towards the door, then turned to face them once again. “Once everything was done and over, Kirishima-kun and the other three somehow managed to convince Aizawa-san to let them work here! They said they’d all been looking for some part-time jobs anyway! Not sure why he insists on interviewing them but hey, I wouldn’t really mind graduating from taking out the trash!!”

With a small hop to your step, you turned the sign on the door, the word “Open!” now inviting all passer-by inside

***

“Katsuki-kun!” you called out from beside him.

His steps momentarily came to a halt, his eyes widening just enough for you to notice, only for him to shake away the surprised expression as quickly as it had crossed his features. You let out a laugh.

“I love the funny face you make when I call you that!” This time, he made a small growl.

“Well, excuse me, but it’s not my fault, now is it?” Not that his complaints were going to put an end to your constant giggles though. After a few seconds of silence on his part, just enough for the funny scene to pass, you hummed quietly.

“I still think we should’ve saved this for when I finally manage to land a hit on you during training.” Katsuki, however, only scoffed.

“Yeah, so never?”

Your small fist hit his shoulder, though he gave no sign of having even felt it. You looked around the mostly empty street, yet your eyes wandered back to him. Hands intertwining behind your back, you tilted your head in pretend curiosity, failing to hide the smile from the joke you hadn’t even made yet.

“Say, you’re not gonna try and eat me too, are you?”

With a single roll of his eyes, Katsuki replied simply.

“I’m not a cannibal.”

You paused mid-step. He noticed your hesitation and stopped too, raising a brow when he looked back. He didn’t necessarily say anything, but you had come to appreciate just how many words his face was able to convey. You didn’t need him to ask you to know he had a question.

“I guess I’m not really human anymore, huh. It’s been a few days, but the thought still feels as foreign as ever.” At the sound of Katsuki’s approaching footsteps, your eyes flicked to him.

“The hell are ya talking about?” He stopped before you, leaning his head towards yours. “With all you went through, you might just be more human than anyone else.”

The blood rose to your cheeks and you let out a laugh to hide your embarrassment.

“Wow, never knew you could be so cheesy, Katsuki-kun,” you smirked. If he was getting to embarrass you, you could easily do the same. Nonetheless, you smiled at him, putting your hands on his shoulders, and leaning in closer. “But thank you – it means a lot to me, you know?”

You pecked him on the cheek and pulled away, skipping ahead with a big smile. He didn’t like it when you saw him blushing or making a weird face, so you could at least give him the space he needs to shake it off. In no time, he was walking by your side again.

Suddenly, his eyebrows scrunched in concern and his eyes focused somewhere up ahead, as he took hold of your hand to stop you from going on by yourself.

“Act natural,” he leaned in and whispered. You followed his gaze and your heartbeat quickened at the sight of the two men clad all in white and carrying those trusty briefcases of theirs.

Passing them by took only a couple of seconds, yet it felt like you hadn’t breathed in a single time all throughout. The two of you rounded a corner, Katsuki looking back to make sure the investigators were well on their way, while you finally took a deep breath to recover.

“Gosh, my heart’s thumping,” you laughed, though the relief written across your face was clear to Katsuki.

“Well, better get used to it – this is going to be your life from now on.” He patted your back a few times.

He was right, huh?

Your path had seemingly been decided so long ago, from the moment that experiment had succeeded. A path of misery, of suffering, of tears shed alone, and of a life doomed from the start.

Yet, with the help of those you’d always thought to be your enemies, you had created a new path. One that was still rocky, rough, filled with thorns. But it was a path you had chosen by yourself. It was a path you weren’t meant to walk alone.

You turned to face Katsuki, two pairs of eyes looking straight at each other. The smile on your lips grew even larger, as you reached out for his hands with your own.

“Get used to it, you say? Hm!” By this point, you were practically grinning already. “I think I’ll manage. But you have to promise me! That you’ll stay by my side, just like I’m going to stay by yours.” Once again, you leaned in closer. “That we’ll help each through it, right?”

Katsuki shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips when he opened his eyes again.

“Sure, sure,” he breathed out.

That was more than enough.

The distance between you became smaller and smaller, until your lips finally met in the middle.

And in that moment, you realized. Both of you realized.

What an ironic situation you had been put in from the start of it all.

Yet in the end, it was an irony you both had learned to love.

~Fin~

***

Author’s Note: And so, it is… done? That’s kinda crazy.

A few quick notes before I start with all the sappy stuff. I know that this was an extremely short chapter, especially compared to last week’s beast, but I really wanted to show those two particular scenes and make it short and sweet, so I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! Also, the chapter title! I intended for it to come off as a reference to Tokyo Ghoul:re but if you noticed, the :re is actually placed at the start. That’s because, while Kalopsia Project:re feels like a new start, re:Kalopsia Project gives me more “in response to Kalopsia Project” vibes. Not sure if that made any sense or came across nicely though.

And lastly, at first this was going to be it for sure. Done and Over. But after hearing what you guys have been saying, I’ve been considering writing a sequel to this story one day. It won’t be for a while and I’ll get into the reasons for that later, but the fact is, it will probably happen. I hope you’ll enjoy it too!

And now – thank you all so, so much. You might have noticed already that I don’t shy away from getting wordy in my notes, so please forgive me for that. I’m just infinitely grateful for all the support this story has received – this was my first proper attempt at something with a plot, and also at an AU. It was a fun experience for me and I hope you all enjoyed it too! Every single interaction makes me have this big stupid smile on my face and, while I was a little anxious about posting this story initially, you’ve made it all worth it. So thank you so much to everyone who read this story, who liked or reblogged it, and especially to anyone who stuck with it all this time. It truly means the world to me since I wouldn’t be doing this without you all♥ I hope you’re all staying safe during quarantine! 

And finally, I feel a bit odd self-promoting like that but hey, if you enjoyed this story, and especially the character writing, and are looking for something else to binge during long days at home, I do have one more story! Granted, it’s Bakugo x OC, though I always say that you can easily pretend the OC is either you or your own character, and it is canon-compliant. However, it’s also a good 4 times longer than this story! It’s also my first ever story, so the writing in some of the beginning chapters won’t be up to par with what you’ve been seeing here! But if you feel like it, I’d really appreciate it if you gave it a chance! In fact, now that “Kalopsia Project” is over, I will be returning to plotting the fourth book of that story and hopefully go back to writing it soon enough! Here’s a link to it on Wattpad/Quotev/AO3– I hope you’ll enjoy it^^ Alright, enough blabbering on my part.

Once again, thank you all so much, I love you and I stay safe and have fun~ Hopefully I’ll see you again some time! 

Bye~

(Also, I haven’t quite decided what I’m doing with this blog yet but I plan to type a probably somewhat long post once I figure it out! In the meantime, thank you all so much for the support!  And hey, @afuckingunicornn  @creativedogs  @chims-kookies  - it’s finally over huh?)

[monaedroid]

Janelle Monáe: Living Out Loud

For them.'s debut cover story, Lizzo and Janelle Monáe sit down to discuss coming out, freedom, and living and loving out loud.

April 12, 2019

When Janelle Monáe came out as queer in a Rolling Stone cover story last April, the revelation made headlines around the world. As one of the most prolific multi-hyphenate artists of a generation, her declaration carried immense weight, both for herself and for queer black women and LGBTQ+ people everywhere. The announcement was followed by the release of her most brilliant, vulnerable work to date: Dirty Computer, an album that was at its core about embracing the freedom one finds in self-exploration and discovery. Bold, unabashedly fluid anthems like “Pynk”, “Screwed,” and “Make Me Feel” further solidified Monáe as a leader for “free-ass motherfuckers” (as she delightfully referred to herself when coming out) everywhere, one who challenges social binaries and norms alike with grace and strength.

Always evolving sonically and aesthetically, today, Monáe is entering a new era of her genre-bending career. The constant, though, is her work, which remains centered in advocacy, agency, and empowerment, regardless of what form it takes. With reverence for the responsibility of an artist and activist, Monáe uses every platform she builds to amplify intersectional discourse about race, gender, and sexuality in new ways. She takes action in a way that makes everyone take notice.

Monáe’s ascent as an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community has tracked alongside her own journey towards personal enlightenment and fulfillment of purpose. It has come with an understanding of the paradox of visibility, and a reckoning with the fears and challenges that queer people, specifically queer people of color, face when living authentically. In taking center stage to speak out and perform against aggressive oppression, Monáe’s voice and vision for humanity help to define what it means to advance emancipation for all.

That’s just a sliver of why we chose Monáe to star in them.’s debut cover story, “Janelle Monáe: Living Out Loud.” It would only be right to have one free-ass motherfucker interview another for the occasion, which is why we recruited Lizzo, an inimitable musical force in her own right and an unerring LGBTQ+ ally, to speak with Monáe below. Both women are known for hits that make you dance while reaching for something deeper, and both share a commitment to uplifting marginalized communities, championing self-love and self-care, subverting social expectations, and speaking their truths through their work. In the wide-ranging conversation below, they touch on that common ground and more, speaking to the terrifying, liberating process of challenging the world’s preconceptions about you, what it really means to live freely in our world today, and loving and living out loud.

Lizzo: First of all, shout out to freedom, okay? Because when you first started talking about sexual fluidity in Rolling Stone, you made me feel like I could do whatever I wanna do and feel how I wanna feel. That’s freedom.

I think that there's so much freedom with sexuality in the world right now. And you are a huge part of that wave. Can you tell me about that journey?

Janelle Monáe: It's been a journey. For me, sexuality and sexual identity and fluidity is a journey. It's not a destination. I've discovered so much about myself over the years as I've evolved and grown and spent time with myself and loved ones. That's the exciting thing — always finding out new things about who you are. And that's what I love about life. It takes us on journeys that not even we ourselves sometimes are prepared for. You just adapt to where you are and how you've evolved as a free thinking person.

Absolutely. I was just talking about this the other day, about how fluidity can mean so many things. It's not just what you like in that moment. I've seen fluidity change with age. I've seen people come out in their sexual identity in their forties and fifties. Yet there's so much pressure on young people to choose an identity, when you're a teenager and your hormones are jumping off — it's like, "Choose an identity, choose a sexual orientation." It's like, "How?” When I like everything sometimes, and I like nothing sometimes.

Do you have any words for those who are struggling with their sexuality or coming out? At any age, but especially for young people.

Don't allow yourself to feel any pressure other than the pressure you put on you. And I think there's so much power in not labeling yourself. That said, there's also power in saying "This is how I identify,” and having community with the folks you identify with. Everyone is on a journey of self-discovery, and those of us who may not understand others’ journeys should be more empathetic and tolerant and supportive.

A big thing for me is just being patient with myself, and not allowing myself to make decisions based in fear, or a fear of people not understanding me. And it's hard. You go through experiences where you feel fearful, and you end up being depressed, or having anxiety, and not taking care of you. But that fear should not get in the way of how you love or who you love.

To be young, queer, and black in America means that you can be misunderstood. You can be hated. It also means that you can be celebrated and loved. And I think there's a lot at stake when you’re living out loud in that way.

Right. And when you’re in the public eye, there's another layer to that with your sexual identity — added pressure, or another kind of fear. Coming out is such a personal, liberating experience. It's nobody's business. But especially when someone famous comes out — and even if their friends or family already know who they're stickin' and lickin' — it’s like, when everyone knows and it's in your heart, is that even really coming out?

Do you feel like Dirty Computer was a public coming out? Or how did you see that statement you made?

Well, one, whenever I'm making music, I start with where I honestly am and what I honestly have to say. I work inward, and then I focus outward, on how it can impact people and be helpful to others. But it starts with me.

I knew the title of this album since before The ArchAndroid, so I’ve been sitting with it for some time. There were just conversations that I had to have with myself and my family about my sexuality and the impact that speaking honestly and truthfully about it through my art would have. I grew up in the Midwest; you did, too. You spent time in Minneapolis. I spent time in Kansas. I grew up there, in a very small town, and I went to a Baptist church; to be anything other than heterosexual is a sin in that community, and growing up, I was always told I'd go to hell if I was. There was a part of me that had to deal with what that meant.

After I had those conversations with myself and I saw a therapist, I had to be able to talk about what it meant to identify as bisexual. What does that mean? How would discovering that impact the relationship I was in at the time? How do I talk about it with my family? How do I go back to my church? The bottom line is I had to have conversations with myself and the folks that love and care about me, and realize they may not understand what it means for me to be a person who identifies as queer in this world. I’ll also add that it wasn't like I wanted to even make it a declaration. I knew that by being truthful through my art, people were gonna have questions, and I had to figure out a way to talk about it. And in having those talks with myself, I realized it was bigger than just me. There are millions of other folks who are looking for a community. And I just learned into that. I leaned into the idea that if my own church won't accept me, I'm gonna create my own church.

Hallelujah. How do you feel about the state of queer acceptance in 2019?

How do I feel about it? I mean, to be young, queer, and black in America means that you can be misunderstood. You can be hated. It also means that you can be celebrated and loved. And I think there's a lot at stake when you’re living out loud in that way. One thing I’ve realized even more was that when you walk in your truth, you can inspire and encourage people to walk in theirs’. I don't know if you got the opportunity to see, but I watched this episode of Queer Eye the other day, and there was this woman, Jess. A young girl from Kansas who really touched me. And I think she touched a lot of people. It was a special episode because I could relate to her — I knew what it meant to be that young and living in the Bible Belt. And she wanted so badly to be this strong, black, queer woman, and she said that I had influenced everything from the way she was dressed to the way she was seen. I just said to myself, "Man, the fact that my album has reached another young black woman like her, and it's helped her in her life, it makes me feel like I'm walking in my purpose and it's really what I'm supposed to be doing." And I can't give up.

I think people are looking for that validation. When they're trying to talk to their parents and their parents don't see that representation out in the real world and people being accepted like that — it's foreign to them, and I think that by being the example, we make it a little easier for kids to be able to talk to their loved ones about it.

Well, listen, sis. People were lit to know that you were queer as fuck. It was exciting. [laughs]

[laughs] I was terrified.

You were scared? What did you think was gonna happen?

I thought people were gonna say, "Oh, she's doing this as a publicity stunt." I thought I wasn't gonna be able to go back home and be at all the barbecues. I had anxiety. And a lot of it was just untrue. It was my fear of what people were gonna say. And I'm thankful that I didn't allow that fear to get in the way of my freedom.

The entertainment industry has not caught up. We're making some waves, but we can do better. And again, it’s about normalizing and telling more stories, and inviting more LGBTQIA+ folks into the conversation on the front end, and giving us a seat at the table early on. Because we can’t afford to see things in a binary way. That’s not how the world works.

That’s the fear of being part of any marginalized group. That fear — of being black and queer and a woman and young — that fear of erasure is really real. And being a public figure, coming forward with your identity and allowing people to be emboldened by that and inspired by that — back in the day, women like you were erased.

I talk about Sister Rosetta Tharpe all the time. She was black and queer and big, and invented rock and roll. And where is she? Where are her monuments? And by setting the example, you can help us change that, and counter that kind of erasure.

Are there any black queer women and artists that you wanna shout out? I feel like we need to get the flowers to these women.

Yeah! I love Lena Waithe. Having her representing on the film side and as a producer, a writer, and the fact that she's thriving and so successful, it’s encouraging. Lorraine Hansberry. Bell Hooks. Meshell Ndegeocello. Who else? I just hope we can get to a point where black women who don’t identify as strictly heterosexual are normalized.

Yes. And making it more intersectional as well, and including trans women in that narrative. I love Janet Mock. I am obsessed with her.

Yeah, me too! She is an incredible woman. And I love MJ Rodriguez. I love Indya Moore. I love Laverne Cox. Those women are amazing, and they are, every single day, normalizing what it means to be a trans woman, and speaking their truth and walking in it.

Amen. It’s all about representing. I just wanna pass out flowers and receive flowers, that’s all I wanna do. I think representation is so important. I wanna see drag queens at the Oscars. I wanna see a drag queen host the Oscars. Can that happen?

Listen, if it was on my watch, I would make sure it happens. I think the entertainment industry has not caught up. We're making some waves, but we can do better. And again, it’s about normalizing and telling more stories, and inviting more LGBTQIA+ folks into the conversation on the front end, and giving us a seat at the table early on. Because we can’t afford to see things in a binary way. That’s not how the world works.

No! It’s a spectrum, and everyone needs to realize and respect it. Respect the spectrum!

You also work with Time’s Up, and I think that’s really important. We gotta protect women’s rights. What work are you doing moving forward to help LGBTQ people gain a foothold in the film industry and media? And how has Time’s Up helped open up some doors?

I'm honored to be a part of Time’s Up and support women. And that's inclusive of all women. As a black woman, however, that's what I know and that's the lens that I'm looking at things through. Whether it be behind the scenes, producing and engineering, to writing or being in front of the camera, there's a lot more work that needs to be done.

I've also started my own organization, Fem the Future, which is a grassroots organization that provides opportunities across the entertainment and the arts, through mentorship and education, for those who identify as women. Through our work, we try to highlight and empower women behind the mic, behind the camera, the stage, the screen, the boardroom. Everywhere. And I founded Fem the Future because I was looking to collaborate with more women on the engineering side and production side and songwriting side, and it was so difficult to find women in these roles. It was frustrating. And I understood why. I said, "Oh, okay. We gotta make more noise." And so I decided to do something about it.

With Dirty Computer, I made a bigger declaration to myself — that I'm not putting out an album if I can't be all of me. You're gonna take the blackness, you're gonna take the fact that I love science fiction. You're gonna take the fact that I am a free ass motherfucker. You're gonna take that all in and because that is what you're gonna get.

That's amazing. I think women are phased out of creative industries by the quote-unquote “boy’s club” way early on. It’s more than just getting them the job — it's giving them the training, making them feel comfortable enough to make mistakes and lean into something and have a girl’s club. So they can get all the experience they need to be at the top of the game.

Let me tell you. It's not that we're not there, we're just not given the opportunity. We can compete at a high level. It's what you said, it's about us pulling for each other. And it's about men, also, who are in the experience of power actively seeking out more women. As artists, we get the opportunity to have this platform and shine light. And that’s the blessing.

Yes. I want to segue into you as an artist, and the music you’ve created and brought into the world. People who know you know that you're in control of the Janelle Monáe story, and your saga, and how the saga unfolds. Can you walk me through your character arc from The ArchAndroid all the way to Dirty Computer, and all of the things you've learned about yourself through your music?

That's a great question. I like to think that I know everything that a project is gonna do and be when I go into it — “I'm gonna go in and write this song, and it's gonna mean this.” But you know like I know, once you put something out and you sit with it, you find out new things that you weren’t even paying attention to. People will come up to you and say, "This is what this means to me." And you're like, "Wow, I had no clue that that's what I was saying, and that you would feel that way after you heard it." The beauty of art is that it reveals itself over time, even to the artists who create it.

I think I do have strong visions; I always have strong visions. With ArchAndroid, I knew what I wanted the content to be, and I used the tools that I knew how to use at that time to create it. In my projects, I always challenge myself to grow and learn my voice and how to stretch beyond what I can comfortably do. So I started to engineer myself more, which meant I got to spend more time with me. I produced as well. And I'm a writer, and a storyteller. So as I grow and as I'm taking in information and growing at this exponential rate, I try my best to create music and albums that support that, that allow me to completely be all of me.

With Dirty Computer, I made a bigger declaration to myself — that I'm not putting out an album if I can't be all of me. You're gonna take the blackness, you're gonna take the fact that I love science fiction. You're gonna take the fact that I am a free ass motherfucker. You're gonna take that all in and because that is what you're gonna get.

Yes. Take it or leave it. Making music — is that therapeutic for you, working through all of that?

Well, yeah. It is hard. It takes discipline to finish an album, to really sit down and say, "Okay, I need to show up." You gotta show up mentally. You can't just show up when every day is beautiful and you have the perfect candle and flowers there and it's smelling good. You gotta work through it. Even when I didn't feel like writing, I wrote, because it was important to challenge myself, to stretch my muscles and finish.

I didn't feel like I had all the time in the world to write Dirty Computer. When you think about the state of this country, when you think about who's in office, when you think about having a Vice President who believes in conversion therapy, and you think about how 77 percent of LGBTQ teenagers surveyed in 2018 report feeling depressed or down over the past week — I didn’t think that this album could wait.

I read from the Trevor Project that suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 24. And that LGB youth contemplate suicide at at least three times the rate of a heterosexual youth. When you think about our trans brothers and sisters, our trans sisters being murdered, and when you just look at the state of the world, and when I'm working on an album like Dirty Computer that is centered around uplifting marginalized groups and those who feel isolated and outcast from our society, this album couldn’t wait. I had to get really focused.

And I also didn't wanna filter myself. I wanted to say it how I felt it. If I was upset, if I was feeling sexually liberated, if I was feeling afraid and vulnerable, whatever feelings I had, I laid it all out on the table. Once I finished, that was how I measured success. That's how I measured if I was gonna be proud of this work — did I show up? Did I show up?

Wow. When you talk about the world like that, and you lay all of those devastating facts ... It's not even facts. It’s what's happening to real people.

It can make self-care feel like a luxury, when people are being so aggressively oppressed — not just in their own neighborhoods, but throughout the country, by our administration. And because my messaging is self-care, because my messaging is self-love, it makes me want to reappropriate the term “self-care” into something that could save your life. It’s an idea that’s becoming trendy right now, but it’s much more than that. It’s like, “How do I take care of myself in this world that's not designed to take care of me?”

Artists like us, who do have a message in our music and connect with people on that level, have a responsibility to make self-care less about a fluffy day at the spa and help people in our community understand how important it is. How did you find self-care while you were dealing with talking about your sexuality to your friends and family in your community, and also while making Dirty Computer? And how can we repurpose that and help younger people learn that that term is more than just a trend?

I think one of the greatest gifts that I've been given as my therapy is music, is art. It's a gift that I honestly wish everybody could have and receive. And I think mental health is an issue in all communities, but particularly suicide rates, like I mentioned before, in the LGBTQIA+ and black communities. My community was not pushed to go spend their check on a therapist. It was, spend your check on some new Polo shirts and some Jordans. We weren’t taking our money growing up as teens and going to therapy. And I think a lot of us could benefit from that. But I do know that not a lot of people can afford it. And what I hope is that we can put more money into the mental health system around the world for young folks.

I love the Trevor Project. I love a place in New York called The Center. There are lots of places that offer help and therapy for those who have been pushed out of their homes. But I think what I've been able to do through albums like The ArchAndroid or The Electric Lady or Dirty Computer is to be able to talk about where I am at that time, and to release it and speak it out loud. And that has helped me immensely.

And also, I think it's important for us to be particular about the people we're hanging out with, too. I love the fact that I can be who I am at Wondaland with people who are inviting and patient with me as I walk through my process. And I think that it's our friends and our loved ones that we speak to and communicate with every day who can add to releasing pressure — the pressure and weight that we feel as we're trying to navigate life and walk through life, and embrace the things that make us unique.

You know what I noticed? The more I started loving myself, and the more I started self-caring, the people around me changed and became more conducive to that. The people who were toxic and weren't conducive to a self-loving nature just were segued out by God, by the universe, by my energy just repelling them. And I wish it didn't have to be that way, I wish it was the other way around. I wish that the people around us could help us find self-care and self-love. But that's unfortunately not the world that we were given.

We have to create our own worlds. And I think that mentorship is so important. Like you were saying, therapy's expensive. But mentorship can be free. And that's something that we can start with. Especially in lower income communities, the black community. But for now, we just have you.[laughs] We have music. People are looking to Dirty Computer and artists like you as mentors, long distance mentors. And I think it's really special that you hold that place in people's hearts and that it's reaching a culture. You can watch Queer Eye and see your influence. I'm just so happy to breathe the same air as you.

Oh, please. I’m happy to breathe the same air as you. You also are a free ass motherfucker to me in the way that you approach how you perform, how you love yourself publicly, how you embrace your body. And you're just gorgeous. On stage, offstage, the fact that you play an instrument, the fact that you're writing, the fact that you have ideas as a black woman — you are redefining what it means to be young, black, wild, and free in this country. And you are someone I actively look to whenever I feel like second guessing if I should take risks or not. Because I see the risks that you're taking and the love and appreciation that you show for yourself makes me lean further into loving and respecting myself, and being patient with myself, and not allowing myself to live by anybody's standards.

We are the standard. Thank you, sis. And you know what? Just keep rockin' in the free world, keep showin' 'em what it is. In every industry.

I will. You too. Let’s do it together. Collaboration. Come back over so we can keep on going. I cannot wait for your album. It's time. You've got to put a dent in the culture and in the planet. Rightfully so.

Let’s go. Let’s go!

Photographer: Justin French

https://www.them.us/story/janelle-monae-living-out-loud

[poedamern]

The reader is Mena’s wife but it’s a secret. They were supposed to tell the press but you got pregnant and the two of you decided that stress would not be good for the baby. Will knows because he is the would-be godfather of the child. One day, Mena is in a press conference in your hometown when your mom texts him and Will that you’re in labor. Mena and Will leaves leaving the press and cast confused.Next day the announcement of your baby girl and you is made and the world loves it.Thanks, love!

PAIRING: Mena x Female Reader / LENGTH: 1K / DISCLAIMER: Gif is mine! + I really don’t know anything about babies so I apologise haha. / NOTE: Damn this is such an interesting imagine so I hope I did it justice anon! 

Mena and you were counting down the days until your bundle of joy was welcomed into the world but with that came trying to schedule your jobs appropriately. You both worked in the entertainment industry as actors, which was hurdle no.1, hurdle no.2 was nobody knew you were his wife and no. 3, no one knew a baby was on the way. Plans and times always changed and the perfect time to tell people didn’t really exist. But you always made sure that you both got to do what makes you happy, even with a baby on the way. Both of you were slightly stubborn in your ways, nothing could stop either of your dreams. So you promised Mena, for his peace of mind, him and Will, soon to be god father of your child would receive a text if the day ever came and they weren’t around. The thing was, no one ever expected the baby to come today. 

Mena was sat next to Will at the latest Aladdin press set up, the whole cast together during a Q&A. “What can you tell us, are you as romantic as Aladdin or do you think you could take a few tips from him?” The interviewer joked with Mena. “Oh no way, as humble as Aladdin may be at times he truly is a hopeless romantic.” Mena laughs. “I can try my best but I think romance comes almost naturally to Aladdin, despite the mistakes he makes along the way.” Mena answers the question calmly before he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. Usually its incredibly rude to look at your phone during things like this but with the baby so close. He had to check. She’s in labour. He reads your mother’s text to him. It was the emergency text. He stares almost lifeless at his phone. The baby came earlier than expected, he thought he’d have another week at least. Without thinking twice, Mena grabbed a hold of Will’s arm, eyes wide. “We have to go, I have to go, I–” Mena looks at Will who instantly understands and take authority over the situation. 

“What’s going on guys?” Naomi asks, genuinely unaware of what was going on. Will stands and speaks into his mic. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s just say a wish has been granted today, so me and Mena will be departing, we’re sorry to be leaving so soon but hey, genie’s got a job to do.” He jokes, the audience gives mixed reactions as well as the cast and but Mena doesn’t have time to apologise before he tries to calmly walking off the stage with Will right behind him. 

Mena’s mind races as he goes from walking to a full on sprint down the hallway with his manager. “Is she at the hospital?” He asks, worried for your well being. “She’s going to meet you there, she’s on her way now.” It only makes Mena run faster, grabbing his things and heading out the door, him, Will and his manager calling the closest taxi, not bothering with grabbing one of the press cars. “Get in, Don’t worry about the others.” His manager says, getting them in the cab and closing the door behind Will before running off back into the building. “Get us to the hospital, now!” Mena yells before he has a chance to put his seatbelt on. “Go, Go!” The taxi driver speeds down the road towards the hospital with Mena sitting on the edge of his seat, scared shitless. 

“Breathe.” Will reminds Mena. “How am I meant to breathe when there’s a baby on the way right now and I’m not with her?” He sounds almost angry, frustrated at himself. Will grabs tightly onto Mena’s shoulder and looks him in the eyes. “Breathe. Cause the love of your life is out there going through one of the most painful experiences in a person’s life. We will get you there and she will be safe and so will your child.” Will can’t help but smile. “You’re going to be a dad. Like all dads, you need to learn to live your life ready for anything to happen.” All Mena can do is sit in his own shock and turmoil. Everything was going to be fine, it had to be. And it was. 

––––

“So, I guess I should explain myself to you all.” Mena writes into the description of his latest instagram post. “There was never a perfect time cause the perfect was always by my side. Y/N and me have been happily married for some time now and well, we’re happy to announce we’re also new parents. Welcome Y/child’s/N to the world. We ask for your love and support and thank you for your understanding. Now is as perfect of a time as ever.” Mena lets out a deep breath he had been holding as he lays beside you in your hospital bed. “Do you think this is good?” He asks, showing you the picture of you two and your new baby girl. Mena’s wide smile and your tired yet radiant face hovering over your girls small frame. It was an adorable photo and a perfect post. “I think so. Post it to the world, Mr. over 1 Million followers.” You tease with a soft laugh, still holding your girl in your arms. 

Mena posts the photo and puts his phone on the bedside table, leaning over the pair of you and staring loving at you two. “I can’t believe the day is here.” He whispers, his thumb rubbing gently of your baby’s face before kissing your forehead. “I love you.” He mumbles against your skin. “I love you too, both of you.” You smile, bringing both of them close to you, never wanting to let go. Then, Mena’s phone goes off, again and again. He picks it up and watches as the flood of likes, comments and support rushes in. ‘Congrats you two! / Oh my god, I knew it! / I’ve never seen a cuter baby what the hell.’ The comments all read the same, nothing but love. Soon texts from family and friends came in. You two spent the day with your newborn and the seemingly never ending love from the public. You couldn’t be happier. 

[thefloatingstone]

Hey C-Puff! So I know I keep saying that I love your taste, but I'm curious, what would you consider essential scifi movie viewing?

Oof! (and thank you! 8DD) It really depends what kind of mood you’re in. Because “sci fi” is essentially a weird genre, because it can be mushed with literally any other genre and still work without straying too far from the ‘sci fi’ concept. Sci fi is a genre the same way fantasy is a genre or horror is a genre. You can make a horror-comedy or a fantasy comedy, but you can’t make a drama-comedy (At least without some major tonal dissonance). So it REALLY depends what you feel like watching or what mood you’re in or what tolerance level you have in some aspects.

I can list a few though which I feel are super essential viewing but are vastly different from each other. I’m not gonna give a full summary break down of each one because it’ll take me like 3 hours to write (these things take a while sometimes) but I’ll give a little indication!

Edit: oops…. I ended up spending 4 hours writing this….

1: Alien (1979)(Sci-Fi horror)

These days the Alien franchise seems to automatically = Xenomorphs. So it can be hard to remember the very first movie that not only started the franchise but literally changed sci fi as a genre, you barely see the Xenomorph on screen, and when you DO the film does its best to hide what it actually looks like with lighting, camera angles and editing. Because the first movie’s Alien costume was not really good, and the movie had a VERY small budget comparatively speaking. So it literally has the opposite goal of trying to show off the xenomorph as much as possible.

Originally sold as “Jaws but in space”, the whole idea of the film was “What if you were a bunch of truckers in the middle of space and nowhere to run, and something unknown started picking you off one by one. Where can you run? Who can you contact? What can you do?”

The original’s entire focus is on fear. From long sequences of Ripley running where it’s filmed facing her so you can’t see “behind you” as the audience to instill paranoia, to hearing what sounds like extreme amounts of gore off screen where you can’t see it, the entire film is designed to be terrifying.

It’s difficult to remember that with what the franchise is known for today.

Also noteworthy is that so much of what is Alien came from Jodorowsky’s “Dune” which was never made, but nevertheless still achieved Jodorowsky’s goal of changing sci fi forever.

2: Blade Runner (1982)(Sci-Fi Noir)

in 2012, Ridley Scott said in an interview; “30 years ago, I saw the future”.

As far as I am aware, the first movie to ask the question “where exactly does ‘being human’ start or end?” regarding robots. The original Blade Runner is filmed in a way to replicate a 1940s style crime noir story, complete with brooding detective and femme fatale. However, it is set in the FAR OFF FUTURE of 2019.

The story follows our detective, known as a “Blade Runner” chasing down a specific class of robot which is illegal on Earth (but used in off-planet labour deemed too dangerous for human work) after the model number started a riot on one of these off-world labour camps. Detective Decker is tasked in finding and “retiring” a group of robots recently landed in futuristic Los Angeles, especially since the robot group is tracking down and murdering the designers in charge of creating their line.

However, the further Decker investigates things, the more uncomfortable questions he finds himself asking. How are these robots so much more different than us humans? What are their motives? Are they really just machines gone berserk? Or is there something very very human they are trying to achieve.

A film that exploded in Japan and essentially caused every anime between 1982 and 1995 to be in some way a Blade Runner fanfic, it changed the genre even more than Alien did. This time letting philosophical questions and atmosphere do most of the work, as the cyberpunk aesthetic of future Los Angeles was as important a character to the story as any of the human players. It was the first time we truly saw Cyberpunk, and literally EVERYTHING we consider “Cyberpunk” these days came from this movie’s direction and cinematography.

Watch the Director’s cut. DO NOT watch the Theatrical version. The Theatrical version was forced to add narration to the long stretches of silence as the movie distributor thought audiences would be too stupid to handle a movie with so little dialogue in it. The Director’s Cut is how the film was meant to be watched, doing away with all the needless talking and letting the film’s visuals and music speak for itself.

3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)(Sci-Fi Mystery)

Yes yes I’m biased because it’s my favourite movie. But even if it wasn’t it’s an essential film to watch in the Sci-Fi genre.

Some people will think E.T. holds this title, but E.T. came out 5 years AFTER Close Encounters and so, Close Encounters is one of the first movies if not THE first movie that came out and asked… “What if the Aliens came and were our friends?” Because up until this point, All the “Big-Eyed Grey Aliens in Flying Saucers” movies portrayed them as invaders trying to take over the planet. And the sci fi stories and movies that DIDN’T have this narrative, the aliens were always human looking (Star Trek, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc)

And so, this is one of the first movies that suggested that maybe the weird looking space aliens from another planet who look nothing like us could be our allies. Would want to speak to us. Would want to know us.

Not that the movie is full of love and friendship. in some places it feels more like a horror movie than anything else. But that’s because the film thinks its audience is smart, and it doesn’t have to have a character EXPLAIN things to us. We can understand what’s happening by WATCHING. And if something is strange and doesn’t make sense, it either will by the end of the film thanks to context, or it was never that important to understand anyway.

Also a giant part of the film’s power and influence comes from its visuals, but even more importantly, its soundtrack which I can’t communicate in a gif. And so I am left linking a trailer.

I think it says a lot that it was THIS movie, not Star Wars, that helped the first Star Trek movie to be made a few years later, and with that, helped give us Star Trek TNG. Not bad.

(You can watch any of the 3 cuts of the film. I’m most familiar with the Director’s Cut so that’s my fave and what I would recommend but I haven’t heard of any of the 3 cuts being “the bad one”)

-

4: Total Recall (1990)(Sci-Fi Action)

It was only a matter of time before Arnie showed up on this list, being in no less than 3 Sci-Fi game changers in the 80s and 90s.

What makes Total Recall Unique, however, is that we have Paul Verhoeven as director, who likes movies that have a little more to say than “Arnie shoots a bunch of bullets at things” (as great as that is, don’t get me wrong) And I think the fact that people will STILL debate this movie says a lot about it.

The story is set in the far future, where normal construction worker Arnie is bored with his normal life (which is weird considering he’s built like a truck and married to Sharon Stone but I’m not here to judge). He’s been having reoccurring dreams about going to Mars, as well as a strange woman he meets there. One day while traveling home on the subway, he sees an ad for a copany called “Rekall” who can use a sort of brain implant machine to give you instantaneous fake memories. Basically, you can take a vacation that lasts 6 months in your memories within the span of 10 minutes real time.

Arnie’s character decides to visit, and asks that his fantasy take place on Mars, and describes the woman he meets there. However, during the fake memory implant something goes wrong. VERY wrong. The machine drags up suppressed memories Arnie has of being a sleeper agent, put on Earth until needed, as well as images he’s been seeing in his dreams. The Rekall employees have to sedate him and send him home, refunding him for the poor experience.

However, Arnie can no longer just forget what the machine dragged up from his subconscious, and starts to question if his life really is his life. If his wife really IS his wife. (after all…. Someone who looks like Sharon Stone married to a construction worker who looks like Mr Universe living in a very cushy apartment? Something doesn’t add up.)

Arnie finds himself suddenly dragged into a massive conspiracy plot revolving around Mars, the corrupt governor running it, the rebellion and its mysterious revolutionary, as well as who the hell WAS he before he was who he is now?

That’s the movie’s plot at least. But as many people who watch the movie has pointed out, despite the movie itself never making a point of it, funny how all this adventure and conspiracy hits Arnie right after he’s plugged in to a fantasy machine at Rekall. Convenient.

Nobody to do with the film has given a straight answer as to how real the movie’s events are supposed to be, and film fans have been arguing to this day of it was all real as the movie shows it to be… or a meta narrative.

5: Robocop (1987)(Sci-fi Satire)

The movie that very almost got an X rating for its violence, also directed by Paul Verhoeven and even more biting in its meta-narrative than Total Recall.

The STORY of the movie is that future Detroit is a complete shithole so full of crime that the police force just can’t keep up. After a police officer named Murphy is blasted to fuck, his corpse is used by the CPO company to create a “robotic law enforcer” meant to be put on the street to handle crime. Robocop is his name, and if he proves to be effective, CPO is planning to mass produce them. During the course of the film, however, Murphy learns to regain his humanity through the help of his police partner, and uncover the scrupulous CPO company’s hand in the city’s crime wave.

So that’s the STORY of Robocop… but it’s not what Robocop is “About”.

Robocop is essentially an enormous criticism of Corporate America in a way that’s basically come true since the movie came out. Robocop is one of those rare movies that is BETTER now than it was when it came out.

OCP is essentially Apple or basically any current American company. Focused on rushing out products for the good press it’ll give them before ironing out the problems and bugs, and taking MASSIVE and inhumane shortcuts in development to meet a deadline, uncaring who gets hurt in the process.

This message is further highlighted by the fake commercials peppered into the movie, a very clear criticism of everything from America’s extreme focus on its military and racism of other countries, American manufacturer’s disregard for what is environmentally safe in favour of “Status Symbols” in its fuel guzzling cars, America’s obsession with defending people’s ownership through unethical violence, Medical and health advertised on television like a luxury product, as well as just the inane meaningless garbage that is/was American television.

As a native of the Netherlands, Verhoeven pours so much cynicism and criticism towards American culture, both in the jokes as well as the core theme of the movie, that the film as a whole is less “Watch Robocop shoot his handcanon at bad guys” and more a dystopian nightmare, and finding humanity in it despite it all.

The only movie to top Robocop in its criticism of American culture would be “Starship Troopers” also directed by Verhoeven. But that movie is so depressing I almost can’t even reccomend it, despite it being GENIUS.

It’s the movie where the human race wins a war against giant bug aliens… and that’s the worst ending that could happen.

6: Enemy Mine (1985)(Sci-Fi drama)

*leans forward and smiles at you* hey there, friend. Do you like aliens? Do you like enemies to friends to lovers? Do you like found families? Do you like “Racism is bad” narratives? Do you like non-binary aliens who have no gender? Do you like romantic undertones between non-binary aliens played by a male actor and a cis white dude also played by a male actor?

Because BOY DO I HAVE THE MOVIE FOR YOU.

You think I’m joking with that description…. I am not. Not even a fucking little.

I very rarely see anybody talk about “Enemy Mine” and that’s a fucking crime because this movie is friggen AMAZING. The fact that it exists at all, let alone was made in the 80s is borderline absurd.

The movie takes place in the future. Humanity is in an intergallactic war with an alien race called the Dracs. Battles and skirmishes between the two races explode throughout the galaxy on various planets whenever the two species run into each other, and we follow our human main character Davidgewho, during a spaceship confrontation with the Drac, crash lands on an uninhabited planet, along with the Drac pilot named Jeriba Shigan.

The planet they crash on is a violent world battered by meteors and storms, which forces the two pilots to seek shelter in a cave near their crash site (and there was only one cave!). Despite them both needing shelter, the two absolutely despise each other, completely prepared to kill the other one the second they make a move. It’s a tense and paranoid stand off where each one waits for the other to move first. Neither of them do.

They find out that the planet is sometimes used by human miners for its rare ore (who use captured Drac as slave labour) but they only visit the planet periodically when the years- long bad weather settles. And so, Davidge decides to wait for rescue, despite knowing it may take several years before any human comes to the planet. Until then, he just has to survive and NOT get killed by the Drac he’s sharing the cave with.

So… the two wait. And a weird truce is called. And they wait… and time passes… and with literally no other life to turn to for company… well…. they start talking. First spitting and insulting each other. Then, slowly, learning more about each other. Then, slowly, sharing cultural information with each other, learning about their different species, learning about what each’s species have been telling them about the other. And well…. after several years… it becomes very hard to see the only living person you have been talking to for years as an enemy.

And then, after a while, Jeriba (nicknamed “Jerry” by Davidge) brings up a tiny problem.

He’s pregnant.

Davidge asks how the fuck that’s possible. Jerry explains his race has no gender or binary sex, and they produce asexually. So… ok…. Now you’ve got an alien you don’t FULLY trust who is pregnant and going to have a baby on this hostile planet.

…..oops.

Also, as time goes on another problem arises. The humans who will eventually show up to mine this planet use Drac as slave labour. This wasn’t ORIGINALLY a problem…. but it’s kinda become a problem now.

This movie is fucking amazing and nobody talks about it. Go watch it. Although be prepared for tears and feelings.

7: Galaxy Quest (1999)(Sci-Fi Comedy)

In modern day America (or rather 1999 America) there use to be a show called “Galaxy Quest” which DEFINITELY WAS NOTHING LIKE STAR TREK OK???

It was a very big show, but it eventually got cancelled. However, it is still considered a massively popular and influential tv show, enough to have its own conventions and dedicated fanbase. (AGAIN. IT’S NOT STAR TREK STOP SAYING THAT!)

The actors who starred in it many years ago now struggle to get work in other roles which they all deal with in different ways. Our Kirk Character played by Tim Allan is an egocentric selfish asshole who bathes in the “glory” of his role as the captain, despite it having been years, in complete denial that he’s a has-been and the fact that none of the other cast like him. Our Spock character is played by Alan Rickman who wants to know where his life went wrong. He use to be a REAL actor. He use to star in Shakespear plays. How did it come to this? He hates all of you. As well as Sigourney Weaver who had the important role of “Sexy Girl” in the show (a fact she resents) and a handful of others.

One day at a convention, they are approached by some super awkward and weird cosplayers, who ask them in-character if they could help their alien species, the Thermians, who are getting decimated by a warrior race lead by a General Sarris. As the Thermians are peaceful and have no experience in battles, they’ve come to ask the “Crew of the Starship Protector” to aid them. Alan Rickman agrees, believing it to be a promotional gig, and signs up his co-stars (only telling them after the fact which they resent him for)

The next day they play out their roles as they did on the show rather unenthusiastically, ordering the Thermians to simply shoot at General Sarris to defeat him, and then take them home.

Things turn complicated tho when the Thermians show up again and say “uhm… it didn’t exactly work. general Sarris is still alive and killing out people.”

And then our motley crew find out… the Thermians are NOT actors. They are in fact a real alien race. An alien race who are unfamiliar with the concept of “lying”. Their species had picked up the radio waves from the Galaxy Quest TV show and, believing it to be a historical record, modeled their entire civilization after the show. And now they need the crew of the “Protector” to help them in the face of this threat that could wipe them out as a species.

So our washed-out has-been actors find themselves pretending to really be their characters in a real space mission to save an alien race. Which is kind of a problem considering they have no idea what they’re doing at any point during this adventure.

8: Terminator 2 (1991)(Sci-Fi action)

I could have put the first Terminator movie on here… but I didn’t. Beause although both are excellent I personally prefer the second one. You don’t really need to have seen the first one to understand the second one either. I saw the second one first and it’s pretty easy to follow since the first movie’s plot wasn’t that complex.

10 or so years ago, Sarah Conner was visited by a time traveler who revealed he was from the future, and that in 1997 an AI known as “Skynet” would launch all the world’s nukes, causing the human race to almost become extinct. But Sarah Conner is the mother who will one day give birth to John Connor, the human rebel leader who will one day vanquish the machines. The machines know this, and Skynet sent back a robot called a “Terminator” to kill Srah Connor before she can give birth to humanity’s last hope.

Fast forward to this movie, Sarah Connor has been put in a mental institution (for rather obvious reasons) and her son, John Connor now 10 years old, lives with his aunt and uncle and is what we call a “problem child”. With no father figure in his life and his mom “going nuts”, John is a kid who smokes, steals bikes and is constantly in trouble. Then, one day, a robot from the future shows up to kill him. An advanced NEW kind of terminator sent by the machines, made of liquid metal, it is another attempt by the machines to kill John Connor before he can grow up to be the rebel leader.

This time however, Humanity has sent someone else to protect John. The exact same model of Terminator who tried to kill his mother, repurposed and reprogrammed to protect John from this lethal machine.

John, being a child, has to cope with the fact that not only is a killer robot trying to murder him, but ALSO his “nuts” mom turned out to be right. And he also starts developing a weird relationship with the robot sent to protect him. Looking for some kind of father figure to fill that hole in his life.

Although the first Terminator might have been more impactful in terms of visuals and ideas, the second Terminator is the one people remember as a movie. This is where “Hasta La Vista Baby” come from. This is where “Made from Liquid Metal” comes from. This is where THIS comes from

and where this comes from

and this

I don’t know if I can call it a BETTER movie than the first Terminator… …except it kinda is…. And one of the very few sequels where it ended up having more of a cultural impact than its predecessor.

9: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)(True Sci-Fi)

One upon a time there was a show called “Star Trek”. It then had a movie which did kinda of ok at the box office but many thought was rather boring.

And then they made Star Trek 2.

Set several years after the original show, where all the main characters are off living different lives. Kirk is an admiral working on Earth behind a desk. Spock is a training instructor to students who will one day be pilots and crewmembers in the Federation. The rest of the Enterprise’s former crew are all scattered across the Federation, either on Earth or on other Starships.

Far off in space, a Federation ship is looking for a dead planet to test a brand new technologcal creation called the “Genesis Device”. While doing so, they find Khan and his crew, who 15 years ago were left on a lifeless planet by Kirk after they tried to take over the Enterprise for use in Khan’s mad plans revolving around Genetic engineering. Khan and his crew take over the ship and learn of this “Genesis Device” with its power to destroy all life when unleashed on a living plan. Khan only has one goal in his mind; Revenge.

While on a 3 week long training mission under Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal, and go to investigate.

This movie honestly has no right to be as good as it is. Even if you have 0 knowledge of Star Trek (as I did when I first watched it) it makes complete and perfect sense on its own, and its extremely easy to understand what’s happening and why. It helps if you’re familiar with the characters, but the film on its own portrays their friendships and relationships with each other so perfectly that you completely buy every scene with them together, and WHY they’re friends. And how LONG they’ve been friend, without having to watch seasons and seasons worth of episodes to catch up. You don’t even need to watch the first Star Trek movie.

The film is a story about revenge… but it’s main core theme is about grief. Grief in many forms. Khan’s grief over the death of his wife which he blames Kirk for and his burning fiery hatred. Kirk’s grief as an aging space captain, unable to cope with himself growing old and the fact that he never truly learned how to handle loss, as someone who ALWAYS believes there is a way to save the day. Grief over lost relationships with his ex-lover and a grown son he never knew about and lost an entire relationship with.

Despite being about spaceships in space shooting at each other and long drawn out tension filled scenes between Kirk and Khan, it’s a movie about mortality, and the need to face it.

10: The Last Starfighter (1988)(Sci-Fi Adventure)

I could have put many things down for “Sci Fi movie about having an adventure”. I could have put ET or Explorers or Flight of the Navigator, but I decided to put The Last Starfighter. Even though ET may be the better known adventure film, it’s also the movie most people will have already seen, and Flight of the Navigator might look better, but it’s story is far weaker. So Last Starfighter it is.

In backwoods tiny-ass American town there lives completely normal teenager Alex Rogan. He doesn’t have that much going for him. He lives in a trailer with his mom and younger brother and has just recently had a scholarship rejection. Frustrated with his life and with little else to do in the trailer park, Alex spends most of his time playing the only arcade machine called “The Frontier”. After a lot of play and effort, Alex manages to get the high score on the machine.

After doing so, he is approached by the creator of the machine called Centauri, who is there to offer him a ride in his fancy car as a prize for holding the grand score. Having been taunted by the other teens around the area, Alex decides to take Centauri up on his offer, only to get abducted. And not in the “Teenager kidnapped by a creep” kind of way, but the alien kind of way.

It turns out there is a very real intergalactic war going on between Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire. And the arcade machine had been placed on Earth as a sort of recruitment tool for new pilots to fly for Rylan Star League.

Given the chance to actually have something happen in his Life, Alex has to learn how to be a Starfighter with the help of Centauri who reveals himself to be an alien, and the rest is simpy fighting the Ko-Dan Empire and saving the day.

Most notably, The Last Starfighter’s space battles were all done using early CG and it has… .not exactly aged that well tbh.

But is still incredibly impressive for 1988 and helped paved the way for special effects, leading to their peak in Jurassic Park in 1993. But although the CG might be why the movie is important to the genre on a technical level, the reason most people remember this movie is nostalgia in its purist form.

Who wouldn’t want to be so good at a video game that aliens come and give you a spaceship and ask you to save the galaxy?

I personally find the scenes on Earth without the CG to be the better parts of the movie, but it does what it sets out to do. To be a sci fi adventure film for teenagers and kids to watch and enjoy and see the hero win. Uncomplicated, fun, and easy to digest as a movie.

I was gonna leave it at that but I gotta add one more

11: 2010: The Year we make Contact (1984)(pure Sci-Fi)

in 1968, a year before America landed on the moon, Stanley Kubrick made the groundbreaking movie “2001: a Space Odyssey”. The movie is a sort of horror movie in space, but also not quite. It tells the story of an enormous black rectangular monolith being found on the moon in the year 2001. Upon human astronauts touching it, it sends off a signal into space. Not long afterwards, another monolith, this one more than several kilometers in size appears orbiting Jupiter.

A crew of 5 men and an AI computer are sent to investigate. But the AI, called the HAL 9000 goes mad and kills off all the crew except for one, named David Bowman, who takes the HAL 9000 offline before leaving the spaceship and entering the Monolith.

The original movie is a masterwork of film, suggesting that the monoliths are responsible for jumpsarting human evolution. But it is also a very SLOW film. Famously taking 40 minutes before the first line of dialogue is spoken. And its horror of distrusting computers maybe be seen as rather old fashioned by today’s standards.

Then in 1984 they made a sequel. 2010 takes place 9 years after the first movie (obviously). Several American astronauts and scientists are approached and recruited for a secret mission joint sponsored by America and the Soviet Union. Their mission is to travel to the long abandoned space station, find what information was retrieved from the monolith, and try and discover what caused the HAL 9000 to malfunction. Time is of the essence as the abandoned space station will crash on Jupiter’s moon Io soon. The Soviets want to know what caused the disaster, but they need the Americans’ help to get into the space station, and an uneasy joint mission is formed, lead by Dr Floyd who was in charge of NASA when the original disaster occurred and had since been disgraced, but who would prove the best person to find out what happened to cause the disaster.

The movie, although perhaps slow by modern standards, moves at a much better pace than the original, and although you could say its plot is more basic, it’s also easier to follow and understand. There are moments of extreme tension from multiple areas. Reactivating the HAL 9000 and having to try and NOT repeat whatever it was that caused it to murder the original crew. The time limit before the space station is set to crash on Io, the mystery of what happened to David Bowman. The presence of the silent monolith orbiting Jupiter. And the seemingly unimportant political differences between the American crew and the Russian crew, despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.

It also has some of the most incredible space cinematography I’ve seen in a film. Rather than the modern depiction of space in movies as a swirl of navy and stars and colourful nebulas, the space of 2010 is pitch black, with endless stars and enormous looming planets in the foreground, and nothing but a wall between you and the endless void.

Anyway those are my reccomendations.

Please consider donating to my kofi…. this took like 4 or 5 hours to write.

☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

[goodbyecringe]

(Un)Natural Selection Chapter 17

Enjolras

“Citizens of Illeá, I have decided to narrow the current pool of Selected girls to the ten Elite,” I read from the teleprompter.

While I usually memorized my speeches, my father demanded that I use a pre-approved speech written by his advisors. For once, I wasn’t offended because as soon as I began I could hear one of the girls begin to cry.

“I don’t want to drag this out any longer than it has to be so the following ladies will be staying. Lady Iris Hathor of Hudson, Lady Adele Castro of Waverly, Lady Liberty Cook of Bonita, Lady Teresa Gilbert of Hansport, Lady Harley Housten of Calgary, Lady Keliah Little of Paloma, Lady May Munez of Sota, Lady Musichetta Smith of Angeles, Lady Cosette Fauchelevant of Kent, and finally Lady Éponine Jondrette of Allens. To everyone else, I am incredibly sorry and I hope this opportunity was a positive experience for you to serve your country. If anyone leaving wishes to speak to me I will be available to meet with you. ” I said, keeping my eyes locked on the camera.

The crying intensified as the ten eliminated girls were escorted out of the room for their individual goodbye interviews. There were several hugs among the newly announced Elite and I could see several girls crying tears of happiness. I knew that the eliminated girls would be demanding explanations as to why they were sent home and I would be forced to comfort several of them, which was unsettling. I debated whether I should be blunt or sugarcoat things while Kyran interviewed The Elite so Illeá could see their genuine reactions.

Some of the girls, like May and Liberty, were very emotional and needed a moment to compose themselves. Other girls, like Musichetta and Teresa, stated that they weren’t surprised they were Elite because of the strong connection they felt with me. On the other hand, Éponine and Cosette both said they were shocked to have made it so far in the competition and were honored. After finishing with the girls Kryan invited me to discuss the method I used to determine who was eliminated. I could see photos flash across one of the televisions that showed several girls speaking passionately and others looking clueless.

After the show ended I began to make my way to the eliminated girls.

“Julien,” I heard my father say from behind me.

“Are you satisfied with my choices or do we need to film a redo?” I asked without turning around.

“I’ll be satisfied when you stop all of this nonsense and marry one of these nine girls,” he growled.

“There are ten Elites,” I said rolling my eyes.

“You can play dumb with me but you know which one I’m talking about. She was just meant to be a bone thrown to the Lower Castes, not any actual competition. Either she’s the next to go-”

“Or what? In case you haven’t been paying attention I don’t know any castes of The Elite so I, therefore, have no clue who you’re talking about. My idea to make this a caste-blind Selection has meant to stop caste supremacists. I’ve done what you asked. I’ve read your stupid script, I’ve taken my time throughout this ridiculous facade, and I’m about to comfort ten hysterical girls. So I’m getting on a plane to Carolina tomorrow and delivering an obituary with or without your support.” I said, leaving the room.

Of course, I knew he was talking about Éponine. It didn’t take a genius to determine that she was different from the other girls. But she was good and refreshingly different from those raised in the Higher Castes. Even though the other girls were naturally well mannered and educated, Éponine wasn’t afraid to speak her mind or challenge my beliefs. Éponine had become an ally to The Friends of the ABC and would support our cause to abolish the caste system in Illeá.

By the time I arrived three of the eliminated girls had left the palace. Charlotte was the first to run into my arms and pour out her apologies. She didn’t need an explanation, which made her the easiest girl to deal with. Most of the girls had cried all of their makeup off and those that hadn’t left black stains on my shirt. The whole experience was like the third circle of Hell and I was happy when Claudia announced that it was time for the girls to pack their things so they could go home.

As I began to make my way to my office I couldn’t help but feel drawn towards stopping by Éponine’s room. During the Report, she seemed to be so composed that part of me thought she wasn’t even excited about becoming an Elite. As I stood outside of her room I realized that I had only ever been to a girl’s room once and if I wanted to keep the role of Romantic Prince I would need to dedicate more time to the Elite. When Éponine finally opened the door I noticed she was still dressed in her evening gown.

“Awfully late to still be so dressed up,” I greeted her.

“I give my maids the night off after we do the Report. We don’t have any classes tomorrow and I usually take breakfast in my room on Saturdays which gives me an excuse not to sleep with my hair in rags,” she laughed, inviting me inside.

I noticed that her room had changed since my last visit and there was a large number of pictures covering her wall.

“You’ve redecorated,” I noted.

“Oh, these are the pictures that Monsieur Marius sends me. Having them on the wall makes me feel like I’m out of the palace and in the real world,” she said, sitting at her vanity to brush her hair.

“Do you wish to be out of the palace? You seemed a little disinterested during the Report.” I asked.

“Not at all Enjolras, I’m very grateful for my opportunity to be here. You’ve been nothing but kind and generous towards me and I want you to know that I appreciate that.”

“Six months ago I asked you why you wanted to be here. Do you remember what you said?”

“I never answered the question. I said when I figured it out you would be the first person I’d tell,” she said, moving to sit next to me.

“Have you figured it out yet? You once told me you were here so that your sister could attend college, but earlier today you were talking about moving to Paris. Forgive me if I’m crossing a line but if you don’t want to be here-”

“I’m a nobody, Enjolras. I always have been and I always will be, and nothing about being here will change how people see me. But from the moment we’ve met you’ve treated me like your equal and now I never want to go back to the way life was before I met you.”

“So why do you want to be here?” I asked again.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, Enjolras.”

Suddenly I realized tears were beginning to pool in her eyes. I had scared her and made her believe I was going to send her home even though we had only once talked about her feelings and emotions surrounding the Selection. I made her believe I was sending her back to her abusive parents. I had been ignoring Éponine as a contender because she had become an ally in my political war. Once again, Patria triumphed at the expense of someone else.

As if time had stopped completely I felt her smooth lips against mine. I don’t know who initiated the kiss but I soon began to feel Éponine’s tears on my cheeks, which pulled me away from the smell of cucumber in her hair. It was wildly inappropriate to kiss a girl that I had just upset, no matter if I was meant to be dating her. It felt like my stomach was doing backflips and I could only imagine the horror that Éponine was going through as I broke away from her.

“I’m a Six,” she whispered to her lap.

“That’s why you can’t ever marry me. I’m just here for some diversity that will satisfy the Lower Castes. But now you know so I’ll start packing my stuff,” she said standing up.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I said without thinking.

Even though she had broken my rule, I didn’t want to send her home. Éponine was too valuable to the cause and I wanted to protect her while I still could.

“Do you have feelings for me?”

“Not romantically. But you’ve become an important asset to our cause,” I said, looking at her dead on.

“So you don’t love me?”

“No, I don’t love you. But I don’t love any of the other Selected girls either.”

“I don’t love you either,” she shrugged.

“I guess it’s good that the feeling is mutual,” I said standing.

We stood in front of each other for several moments of pure silence. Éponine pressed her finger to her lips and I wondered if she was still thinking about the kiss. My stomach was still doing backflips as we stood awkwardly, like two children that had just gotten in trouble.

“Why didn’t you talk about what happened in Carolina?” She asked, breaking the silence.

“To be honest, my parents believe that The Selection provides more hope to Illeá than addressing the real problems in our country.”

“So you're just going to roll over and do whatever they tell you to?” She asked, picking her brush up again.

“I’m actually planning on flying to Carolina tomorrow to deliver a speech.”

“That’s good. I’m sure everyone will really appreciate it.”

“I just hope all the coverage about The Elite won’t overshadow it,” I said, beginning to pace around her room.

“I see how that could be a problem. Maybe it would get more coverage if you brought the Selection with you,” she said, turning around to face me.

“I suppose it would force a few hands. But I’m not sure it could be arranged this late at night. The pilot would have to adjust for more people, we would need more guards, all of the maids would have to be notified. I’m not even sure if Claudia has briefed you on travel and press etiquette,” I began.

“Enjolras, you’re the Crown Prince of Illeá, I think you can make a few things happen. And if it will make you feel better, I can go down and tell all of the maids for you,” she smiled, standing up.

“You would do that?” I asked.

“I’d do anything if it meant you would stop pacing in my bedroom,” she laughed, putting a robe on over her dress.

“Well, I appreciate it. I suppose I should go call the Captain of the Guard, but I can only hope Javert is in a good mood,” I said, while Éponine slid into a pair of slippers.

“Your Captain of the Guard will get over it. However, my maids may never forgive me for this tragic fashion disaster.”

“I’m sure the evening gown-nightwear collection is just about to be released,” I laughed.

I stared at her again while she rolled her eyes.

“Thank you for keeping me Enjolras. I meant it when I said I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

“And I wouldn’t want you anywhere else,” I said, opening the door.

Éponine went towards the kitchen to alert the maids while I journeyed to my office, hoping Javert was in a good mood. It wasn’t until I sat down to write my speech that the adrenaline from kissing Éponine finally subsided.

[xavantina]

I got my hands on a copy of the new Euroman for @idontfindyouthatinteresting, and I took the opportunity to translate some of the interview as well. I tried scanning the article, but my scanner is broken, so you’ll have to make due with iPhone pics of the photos until someone with a working scanner gets in the game.

Rest of the photos and the interview under the cut.

The interview itself was a monster of a thing with lots and lots of flowery descriptions of random scenery, so I cut it down to just the questions, though a few highlights of the rest include:

When he was knighted the Queen of Denmark told him she liked Flame and Citron and he was like ‘fuck yeah’.

He rolls up with his classic bedroom eyes, mismatched tracksuit, and worn sneakers, and just needs a smoke before they go in.

The reporter thinks it’s pointless for a hairdresser to style Mads’ hair because it’s amazing already.

Mads goes around introducing himself to everyone in the room with “Hi. My name is Mads.”

He speaks very fast in Danish.

Onward with the questions:

Q. You were an unknown dancer for ten years before you became an actor. In terms of staying grounded, has it been an advantage for you that you had your breakthrough at such a mature age?

A. Yes, I think so. I probably wouldn’t have had problems staying grounded even if I had been 20 years old. But I think it’s harder for a 17-year-old today, where you can have your breakthrough on a whole different platform and gain three million followers, or whatever the hell they have. It’s obvious that if everyone thinks you’re cool, and you’re told so a bit too often, then you start thinking ‘yeah, I am. I’m cool’. It’s easier to handle being recognized in the street when you’re 32, than when you’re 17. I think.

 Q. Your James Bond co-star Jesper Christensen has said that he can no longer enter a public space and just sit there observing, because everyone is always staring at him. He can no longer gain inspiration for his work from real life– from ‘ordinary people’ – like he used to. Do you feel the same way?

A. It’s a terrible loss. It’s not that I’ve always been preparing to be an actor, but I’ve always been curious. Even as a child, I would sit in different places and watch what was happening over there, human behavior, the way they looked and the way they walked. Always. And too often I started copying people when I saw them. I would sit just like them for a while, just to try how it felt. That’s over now. Whenever I’m out somewhere, 50 people are sitting around staring at me. Then I have to worry about scratching my nose, and there’s 40 camera phones in my face. Then I have to go to a different country.

Q. Don’t you get recognised abroad?

A. They know me around the world to various degrees. There are definitely many places where they don’t care at all, but James Bond, Star Wars, and Marvel movies, all of which I’ve starred in, have a great reach. The happy result of this is that people become curious about me as an actor, so I’m often stopped abroad because people know me from The Green Butchers or The Hunt. That’s super cool.

Q. Is it important for you to get recognition in the business? And do you?

A. A foreign colleague whom I have great respect for told me that he and three friends would sit down and watch the Pusher trilogy every weekend. That made me happy. Recognition from colleagues is important. Recognition from yourself is just much more important. You can get into a cycle where you go around constantly patting each other on the back because you need it so badly in my line of work. We’re judged all the time. It’s really hard, and so we probably have a tendency to praise each other more than we should. You should be happy when other people think what you’re doing is great, but you need to remember to consider what you think about it personally. ‘Was this what I wanted? Yes, okay, fine. Next time I might go in this direction instead.’ That’s important. And it’s the same if what people are saying about you sucks. There are many opinions out there. And if you start reading on social media you’ll never get to bed. You should stay away from that.

Q. Where do you find material and inspiration when you can’t go people-watching anymore? Do you have a memory bank you draw from?

A. Probably. I can also sit and watch people on screen, television and so on. But inspiration should primarily come from the script and the director. But I really miss sitting around and watching other people, and I certainly miss them not staring at me. I don’t try to hide though, I never wear a cap or anything. Sunglasses annoy the hell out of me, so I don’t use those at all. Luckily I‘m forgetful: I walk outside in the morning and don’t spend a second wondering how it’s going to be when I arrive somewhere – whether I’ll be recognized, I mean. That’s not just something I’m saying. I get in my car and drive somewhere and enter wherever I’m going, and don’t think about it at all. It’s not until people do this (Mads widens his eyes and turns his head) and do a double check that I’m reminded what it’s like. And that’s good, because otherwise I’d never leave the house.

Q. But you haven’t always been famous – in Hollywood you were a total unknown in the beginning. As the unknown from a small country did you have to work to earn the respect from people around you when you did your first foreign films?

A. I never consciously considered that I had to do something to make them listen to me. If I thought something could be done differently, I haven’t been afraid of going up to people and telling them. Obviously it’s not like it is in Denmark where I can just call Thomas Vinterberg up and say ‘hey, I just had an idea, won’t you come over?’ A Hollywood director on a big movie has maybe 30 actors on his list and everybody wants something from him, so the scale is different. But I still speak up, if there’s something wrong, and only if I’m serious about it. If I’m not serious about it, we just start working on whatever we’re doing.

Q. Are you treated differently on set now that you’re a bigger star?

A. Yes. I was very surprised with first time I was part of a large foreign production. We were on set, and I approached someone from the light-crew to ask about something. Then he looked down at the ground and didn’t answer. Turns out there had been this big name actor, whose name I can’t be bothered to mention, who had just done a movie with this crew, and the crew was under strict orders to never look this actor in the eyes. So there I was, a product of all this. Those were the kind of things I had to get used to. Luckily I found out that if I just focused on my work in the same way I usually did my surroundings would relax pretty quickly. They care more about things abroad than they do in Denmark. I’ve had some pretty weird experiences on foreign jobs. For example, I’m often assigned a so-called handler. Someone who meets me at the airport and helps with checking in and stuff like that. Which is fine, if you’re in Beijing and your have no idea where you’re going. But on foreign gigs I’ve also tried being a assigned a handler at Copenhagen Airport, who is supposed to follow me and help me. That’s pretty absurd, since I’ve checked in 2000 times before in Copenhagen and know how to do it. A handler is always dressed really nicely too, so everybody at the airport ends up staring at me even more. That’s a weird service.

Q. How about the treatment you receive from the other stars, or the business as a whole? How do you experience the hierarchy in Hollywood?

A. When I worked with Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange and with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale it was their first big films as well, so the hierarchy wasn’t crazy. I’ve been spared from meeting someone abroad who was a real hot shot or just tired of doing what they were doing. There are plenty of people with attitude, plenty of large personalities, but I’ve met very few proper divas who are impossible to work with. The few I have met have been here at home. It’s actually a myth, that this is a diva business. If you did an inquiry and compared us to bus drivers or doctors for example, I think actors would rate much lower than them on the diva-scale. We’re very conscious about not behaving like divas, so everyone tries to act natural. Nobody wants to be branded like that. And when one finally comes along, which obviously happens, then it’s so exciting, and it sounds like the whole business is infected with them. But holy shit, man, how many little kings in their little kingdoms have you met driving the 8 Line?

 Q. Your generation, which had its breakthrough 20-25 years ago, has taken up a lot of space back here at home and internationally. You’ve become…

A. You can say ‘old’. We’ve gotten bloody old.

Q. Has it only now become clear how much space you take up?

A. No. I think it was obvious from the beginning. We were a generation that grew up with a big fascination for certain foreign films. Many of us had Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola in common. There weren’t’ many Danish films we could relate to. [here follows a whole bit about Danish movie history that no one outside Denmark will care about, so I’m skipping it] We felt like we were living in the 50’s. We were watching foreign movies like ‘Taxi Driver’ and saying to each other ‘is this from 1975?’ What have we done in Denmark this year? It was crazy. Completely crazy. Obviously something had to be done. And it was. We grew in different directions but suddenly the gap wasn’t so wide… I mean, we were no longer being told what it was like to be a teenager by an 88 year old director. We were the same age and we communicated directly. Just like Scorsese and De Niro in the 70’s. Same age, let’s go, rock’n’roll. Obviously it’s hard for the next generation, who comes after us, to just change things as well. Because we did the right thing. So now they either have to copy that approach, or improve it, or come up with something completely new. It was easier for us, if I’m being honest. We said ‘Hey, have you seen this before?’ and people went ‘No, we haven’t. Cool!’ But we had to do it. And we were allowed to do it, first and foremost. Some things went wrong, some things went right. But it was really important.

 Q. You and your brother both seem like you’re very down to earth. Is that a result of growing up on Nørrebro?

A. Yes, I guess. No… Where the fuck did Pilou (Asbæk) grow up? He has some higher ‘a’s than I do, when he taaaaalks. But he’s damn well down to earth too. So I think it’s a Danish thing. If you try to rise a bit above other people, it won’t be very long until you’re pulled back down.

Q. Have you tried it?

A. No. As a Danish person it’s very hard to demand only to be served the yellow M&Ms without people laughing at you.

Q. Can’t it be limiting, that we’re like that? That everything has to be so down to earth.

Pause.

A. It’s funny, because we’re different than the Swedish. They have a whole different way of engaging with their stars. The Swedish are down to earth too. But when Swedish actors sit down to talk like this, like I’m doing now, and a journalist enters the room, that they start (Mads straightens and adopt a somber tone) speaking like this. And the things they say become great philosophy. They also start to move (he waves his arm theatrically) like they were on stage at the Royal Theatre. When I see that I think ‘what the fuck just happened?’. The Swedish write with great reverence about their stars as well. They have a huge amount of respect for what they give us. Swedish stars have a whole different status in society than we do in Denmark. They like putting things up on a pedestal, and they’re allowed to do that in a totally different way then we are. You can’t do that here. And thank God for that. But you can also say, that in Denmark you don’t always respect people for what they can do. Sometimes people will go ‘Fuck man, I can do what Caroline Wozniacki does. She’s the worst I’ve ever seen.’ Okay? I mean, it’s nice that we’re down to earth in Denmark. But it’s grotesque to say that ‘What Wozniacki does, I can do just as well.’

 So that’s how I spent the last five hours of my life...