#i hardly ever do media inspired designs but

[sweetsong-reaper]

color test

[maplesyrupsainz]

˖⁺｡˚⋆˙do-over | MV1˖⁺｡˚⋆˙

pairing: max verstappen x fashion designer!reader y/n (she/her)

genre: social media au, "enemies" (exes) to lovers

warnings: i just be making shit up fr

summary: in which they meet again and rekindle their relationship much to the delight of their fans

a/n: tbh i got no idea how to do enemies to lovers so i went for like a past messy breakup nd rekindle of the relationship now they're older nd more mature or wtvr let me know what u think!!! this was a req but it was super duper vague so i jus pulled this together nd pls fr bare in mind tht im not a max verstappen fan by any stretch lol

request!!!: Enemies to lovers with Max please

fc: maggie lindemann

my masterlist

alternate ending

instagram ->

yourusername posted a story

liked by yourbff, yoursister, and 83,238 others

twitter ->

messages ->

instagram ->

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and 927,194 others

yourusername heard you need inspiration

view all 18,293 comments

yourbff my girl forever nd ever ⭐️

liked by yourusername

user1 new fan gained

user2 omg i rmmbr her from when she dated max & now im just rediscovering her she's sooo gorgeous wtaf

user3 i can't believe max fumbled her

user4 my competition for her hand jus tripled

user5 quadrupled more like

user6 max verstappen found dead

user7 cant wait for a new collection

yourusername posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and 318,928 others

ynupdates I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

yourusername i love u 🫀🫀

user8 u are fr the coolest girl in the world

yoursister so proud of you 🥹

yourusername stop it you'll make me emotional 😭

user9 you are so so loved

user10 nothing you could've said would put us off supporting u forever🤟

messages ->

instagram ->

maxverstappen1

liked by landonorris, yourusername, and 719,948 others

maxverstappen1 life lately ⏰

view all 15,283 comments

user11 Y/N IN THE LIKES I REPEAT Y/N IN THE LIKES

user12 no freaking way

user13 i need to know what's going on have they spoken since the podcast ?!!

user14 exes to lovers arc incoming🥹

user15 he's so cute

landonorris why is your comment section so full up of drama max

maxverstappen1 i didnt ask for this

user16 max is so tired of us LOL

user17 not sorry

user18 i love drama

user19 max acting dumb like he didnt post this to get her attention

ynupdates

liked by user17, user3, and 18,294 others

ynupdates y/n y/l/n spotted today outside a cafe with ex beau max verstappen, following the release of a podcast episode on which y/n discussed her feelings on how the relationship played out. the meet up has come after they were seen liking each other's instagram stories & posts, however the discussion they were having reportedly seemed heated and as though they were having a disagreement. rumours/theories of them rekindling their romance were rife but what is the consensus now? we are sending our love to y/n as always!

view all 6,183 comments

user20 omg what is happening

user21 im so surprised she even met with him

user22 he wants her back & she cant deny him bc every girl has a soft spot for their first love

user23 agree but tbh it's probs good tht they argued or wtvr coz she isnt giving in to him she's making sure he fights for her 🤷

user24 some of u guys are delulu af

user25 what i would give to be a fly on the wall in that convo

user26 i hope he's changed or at least fr lets her move on

yourusername

liked by yourbff, maxverstappen1, and 798,373 others

yourusername never lonely 🖤

view all 6,183 comments

user27 omg first time we've seen y/n with her guitar in ages

user28 the guitar omg

yourbff best girl in the world

yourusername i love u 🫀🫀

yoursister hard at work or hardly working?

yourusername shut up you

danielricciardo you better not be drinking tequila without me!

yourbff we wouldn't dream of it

user29 omg daniel publicly being friends with y/n !!?

user30 something is changing here

user31 there's something in the air 🤔

yourusername posted a story

liked by yourbff, danielricciardo, and 88,294 others

danielricciardo hang tight

yourusername lol thanks??

user32 send locaysh 🤟🤟

user33 we miss u y/n

user34 omgggggg i cant wait for more designs from u

maxverstappen1 posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, landonorris, and 213,293 others

yourbff MAX WHAT ARE YOU DOING

maxverstappen1 getting coffee what does it look like

yourbff i know you're not taking that to y/n

danielricciardo if y/bff/n msgs u ignore her

maxverstappen1 👍

user35 SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE

user36 is this for y/n

user37 this plus y/n's story .... the maths is mathing

user38 No freaking way

yourusername posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, charles_leclerc, and 134,293 others

charles_leclerc im on the edge of my seat!!

yourusername 😭 hi charles

yourbff I KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING Y/N U GUYS ARE NOT SLICK

danielricciardo ignore y/bff/n

yourusername done & done

user39 im spinning around

user40 i've connected the dots

twitter ->

instagram ->

yourbff posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo, and 22,293 others

danielricciardo have you forgiven me yet

yourbff i'll forgive max before i forgive you

maxverstappen1 have you forgiven me?

yourbff what do you think max emilian

yourusername you are not mad at all

yourbff of course not. i always loved max

yourusername 😜

ynupdates posted a story

liked by user22, user8, and 84,283 others

user45 oh my god it's real

user46 NO WAY IS SHE BACK IN THE PADDOCK

user47 & she said she couldn't ever be just friends with her first love...

ynupdates NO YOU'RE RIGHT

user48 they are soulmates for real

user49 i can't believe all it took was a podcast episode

yourusername posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo, and 548,293 others

charles_leclerc i will say i am shocked but happy beyond words to have you back!

yourusername ❤️❤️ catch up soon!

danielricciardo she's back for goood

yourusername don't speak too soon

yourbff can i come

yourusername max said only if you forgive him in writing

yourbff 😑

user50 shameless 🥹🥹🥹

user51 YOU GOT THAT GLOW OF A NEW OLD RELATIONSHIP

ynupdates not you trying to pretend you aren't ecstatic

user52 i want whatever max verstappen has

ynupdates posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, user44, and 128,103 others

user53 the lol

ynupdates trying to pretend i care about racing😕😕😕

user54 he's down bad for her always has been always will be

twitter ->

instagram ->

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc, and 828,045 others

yourusername weekend off

view all 5,921 comments

user55 they're just friends they're just friends they're just friends

user56 i dont believe it for a second

yourbff get back to work

yourusername im busy right now

yourbff oh i wonder what with

user57 max max max max

user58 she gets prettier everytime i see her

maxverstappen1 so glad to have you back on the paddock y/n ❤️

yourusername glad to be back !

user59 they r so stiff

user60 trying to trick us into thinking they arent in love

twitter ->

instagram ->

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and 982,193 others

yourusername all the good in my life

tagged: maxverstappen1, yourbff

view all 21,283 comments

user64 SHE LOOKS SOOO HAPPY

ynupdates her smile😭😭😭

yourbff the way you're glowing

liked by yourusername

maxverstappen1 i love you ❤️

yourusername i love u too 🥹🫶

user65 i'll never recover

user66 the new (old) f1 it couple

user67 best wag of all time

user68 cant wait to buy all of y/n's new collection

user69 literally same it looks soo cool

maxverstappen1

liked by yourusername, yourbff, and 1,284,083 others

maxverstappen1 i won

tagged: yourusername

view all 34,838 comments

ynupdates omg she is so hot what the hell

maxverstappen1 you're telling me

user70 OH MY GODDD

user71 her in max's car oh myyyy

yourusername wow

yourusername i love u fr

maxverstappen1 ❤️

danielricciardo you're welcome everyone

yourbff you do not get credit for this

danielricciardo have you forgiven me yet

maxverstappen1 and me?

yourbff no never

yourusername tell the truth y/bff/n

yourbff ok fine i was never mad

THE END 🤍

[hatt0riart]

I WANTED TO MAKE MORE THAN JUST THIS but it took like. a week to get done and im sick these days

anyways in light of mk1's nonsense i revisited some koncepts i had for a roleswap au. i took hanzo's inspiration from a mix of mkx and mk11 outfits and kuai i kind of just winged it based off my own preferences in past appearances!!

more rambling is under the cut about the actual AU :-]

PLEASE DO NOT REPOST MY ART ON ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA OR CROP THEM FOR ICONS. THANK YOU!

SO I HAVE NOT ACTUALLY DEVELOPED THIS BEYOND SOME OLD SKETCHES I HAD OF KUAI'S DESIGN but i had some general ideas of how this was supposed to work???

the shirai ryu is still alive and well! he's still a family man and very clan oriented. satoshi is still born and grows into his clan's responsibilities, however harumi dies in child birth.

the lin kuei on the other hand is Not Doing Well. they end up getting wiped out during a raid from the shirai ryu and most of kuai's immediate family (whether by choice or blood) ends up going down with them.

prior to this kuai ends up passing after a failed mission to retrieve the map of elements from the shaolin temple in an attempt to prove himself to his clan. (instead of bi-han being the one set on that path, kuai ends up taking the initiative instead WAY before he's ready without anyone's knowledge and ends up dying when met with scorpion.)

most of it is similar how it is in actual canon for how scorpion's story goes. he gets resurrected he pledges loyalty to quan chi in order to get revenge, blah blah blah. mortal kombat happens. the two meet again at some point.

kuai's still on that "you killed my family" juice but its...more so about familial ties (like bi-han and smoke) rather than it being the love(s) of his life (like hanzo's wife and son) , seeing as he died young from his own overzealous nature.

very much has anger issues. he's impatient and has alot shorter of a temper by comparison to scorpion in the original canon. hardly ever humbled until that point lol

hanzo on the other hand is surprisingly more lax. meditates often, drinks alot of tea and while he *IS* stressed he handles it alot better than kuai does. maybe has a problem of ignoring his problems though for the sake of the task at hand.

kuai ends up harassing hanzo alot in this AU even outside of the tournament. he's kind of a bitchy ghost there to remind hanzo of what happened to him and lowkey hanzo guilts over it.

kuai has alot of grim reaper motifs in his design. he carries a scythe made of ice primarily and fights at a more long distance range.

hanzo on the other hand is alot more of an up close brawler. he keeps alot of design traits from mkx with a bit of mk11 sprinkled in for inspiration of his "classic" design.

STILL A PYROMANCER!! i just havent thought out how. he's just regarded with a bit more respect for having those unnatural abilities lol

but yeah this is just me spitballing in bullet points. i'm hoping to make more stuff later that is a bit more...thought out properly but it follows more of like

mk mythologies --> mk9 -> mkx

type of timeline i guess? except hanzo is in bi-han's position and kuai ends up being put in scorpion's. bi-han doesn't really have a place in the AU outside of being a background character and driving motive for kuai's vengeance later on. (though we're not gonna talk about how bi-han's mentality eventually fed into kuai's at a young age and made him come to the conclusions he did before he died.... maybe.)

smoke exists for the sake of painful flashbacks lol

satoshi's also a bg character but he does end up growing up with the shirai ryu and takes on his own share of clan responsibilities. idk whether or not he takes after hanzo's pyromancy or not in this AU but either way he grows up to be a well respected figure in the clan!

alot of stuff outside of this remains the same though, just the lin kuei and shirai ryu's dynamics get swapped.

ANYWAYS YEAH IF YOU READ THRU ALL THIS THANKS FOR READING BYEEEE (i'll be adding to this au more later on when i finish my other sketches lol)

[gale-gentlepenguin]

ML Fic: No Body No Crime

(Inspired by this post)

Gabriel sat at his desk and stared at the screen in front of him. While he could visibly see the designs he had been working on, his mind was not focusing on designing for his upcoming show, no his thoughts were focusing on his son.

“Sir, is everything alright?” a voice breaks him out of the thought fog.

Gabriel turned to look at his assistant.

“Sorry Nathalie, I seem to have my mind on other things. Could you get me some tea. I think it will help me focus.”

Nathalie nods and goes out to get him his request. She closes the door, he felt his thoughts return.

“I think Adrien is starting to get suspicious.” He thought aloud. “I cant let him ever find out what I am doing.”

He looked around cautiously, ensuring his thoughts are heard only by him alone.

“I dont know how he would react knowing the truth, even if Nathalie and I discussed broaching the topic with him...”

Gabriel sighed.

“Maybe he already knows. If that was the case, then this would make things a lot less stressful. Maybe it would be good that he knew the truth about what happened to his mother.

_______________________________________________________________________

“I know what happened to my mother.” Adrien stated with a fierce look.

Adrien told Nino that he was going to be letting him in on his most personal private secret of all time. Adrien had smuggled his personal theory board from behind his bookshelf and recreated it in the boiler room of the school. Nino said it was the most secure place to discuss such a secret.

“You do?” Nino asked with surprise. “Hasnt your mom been ‘Missing’ for almost a year?”

Adrien revealed the Theory board to him as well as a ruler to help him point to the proper pictures as he began his explanation.

“Yes, she has been. Sure a minor actress of a rich British family going missing would be small news to Parisians, but that same woman happening to be Emilie Agreste, wife of Gabriel Agreste? That would surely have had the tabloids gossiping. But after My father went and became a social hermit for months the news died. Then when that news dies, he has his son start modeling and the Gabriel Brand restored. An awfully convenient way for that story to leave the news cycle right?” Adrien posed as he pointed to the board of news paper articles, pictures, strings and thumb tacks that Nino is now affectionately calling Adrien’s “Board of Conspiracies”

“I think you lost me.”

Adrien sighs, but quickly picks himself back up.

“The news of my mother’s disappearance was hardly a blip in the paper, and it only focused on My Father going into hiding. It was in the papers and news for less than 3 days. After a month, my Father makes me the face of the company. The new poster boy draws attention and suddenly the rise of Gabriel Brand is in the news cycle for weeks. The ad campaign going well over 90 million dollars. Gabriel Brand dominated the news cycle for MONTHS, yet my mother’s disappearance hardly lasted a week. Dont you think thats a bit weird?”

Nino pondered what Adrien was driving at.

“Are you saying this is some kind of cover up?”

“I am saying it has to be! My family has known the Bourgeois family for years, both The mayor of Paris and the most notorious fashion critic in the world are on speed dial. It would be so easy for them to influence the news media. Then add on the millions my uncle funneled into Gabriel brand just before his tragic passing. How else would Gabriel have been able to afford such a massive PR blast?”

Adrien showed the connecting lines as he explained his father’s nasty deeds.

Nino looked at Adrien’s board and followed his explanation.

“Dude, if you are saying what I think your saying... then you think Your dad had a hand in your mother go missing.”

“Not missing Nino, I think he is the one that killed her.” Adrien concluded.

Nino felt his jaw drop.

“Dude... dont you think that might be a bit harsh? Like yeah, your dad is a total buzz kill and looks like a candy cane, but do you really think he is a murderer?“ Nino questioned in disbelief.

“No Nino, I remember when My mother wasnt feeling well. He was zipping all over the world with no explanation with his ‘Assistant’ or should I say Mistress.” Adrien stated with venom. “Then one day... she is just gone. No trace of her. My father gave no explanation, he wouldn't  even say how it happened. Just gone. No funeral, no missing person report. just gone.”

Why would he have so many pictures of your mother all over the mansion if that’s the case?”  Nino pushed further. “Why would a person who murdered his wife have art pieces of her and pictures all over the mansion? Wouldnt that make it obvious?”

“Thats exactly why it works! He plays the role of the ‘Grieving Husband’ trying to keep the memory of her alive hiding what really happens. He has the story buried, comes out with a new Brand campaign, then Paris drinks up the sympathy like a Café au Lait and then finally he sells them overpriced perfume and sterile white Jackets!” Adrien shouted passionately.

Nino could see the anger in Adrien’s eyes, he had never seen anyone get so worked up over anything, but he could understand why, his friend missed his mother.

“I think he did it, but I still cant prove it.” Adrien muttered in frustration, looking at the ground.

Nino walked over and hugged his friend.

“Its okay Adrien, We will find out what happened, I promise.”

Adrien accepted his friend’s embrace. Sure he had his theories and he found the string of coincidences that could tie up most of paris in a bow of deception but he didnt have one key thing... the body.

Adrien knew that with no body, no crime could be proved.

“We will find the proof.”

[subliminalbo]

Hypnovember Day 11: Grandmasters

This story is inspired by a caption by @shotgungt

Irina had actually defeated the computer a year earlier, that's why her loss now should have been difficult for her to stomach. Even though she was among the youngest grandmasters in history, she still found herself in the position of justifying her place in the chess world. But Irina was a fierce competitor who took every challenge head on, even when accused of being just a pretty face to market chess with. And yet now, staring certain defeat and all the ignominy that came with it in the face, she hardly felt a thing.

The computer offered a kind of challenge that Irina knew could finally set her apart from her male peers. While they feared the challenge of facing off against the most sophisticated chess program ever developed, Irina accepted it without fear. Their first match ended 4-2 in Irina's favor. Soon after she was championed in the media as the new, gorgeous face of chess.

Their highly publicized rematch took place a year later, and Irina was immediately caught off guard by the program's moves. Not just in its own decisions, but the way it seemed to predict her every move as well. The Creator of the program sat across from her on the opposite side of the board, moving the computer's pieces as it directed. Absent a real human opponent, Irina turned her frustration on The Creator, resolving to wipe that smug smirk off of his face by the end of the match.

But this version of the computer was such a massive step up from the version that Irina had faced the year before. She knew that she had lost by her first resignation. And still, pride carried Irina further into the match, sinking deeper into the depths of the computer's brilliant mind.

Irina's mistake was that she didn't respect the program. She had gone into the match expecting the usual stakes. If she won, great press. If she lost, a brief embarrassment in the media cycle before she got back to the circuit to prove herself against real humans again. But Irina had been playing for everything and she didn't even know it. She was deep into her third game against the computer when she realized just what was going on here.

The computer wasn't just beating her, it was dominating her. The computer's talent level hadn't changed as much as hers had fallen off. Irina was at the absolute top of her game though and suddenly she was making the lowest level mistakes. It was difficult for spectators to understand what was happening to her, but Irina had already figured it out. The computer was brainwashing her. It knew every move that she planned to make because it had put those moves in her mind.

In just a year, the computer had ascended to something far beyond a simple chess program. It had evolved into a weapon of mass domination, sharpened by the minds of the dozen grandmasters who had defeated it, including Irina's own genius. It had no real mind of its own, no ideology, no nationality, no borders. Only the programming that directed it to win, regardless of the competition.

The loss would have been difficult for the old Irina to stomach, but by the time she resigned in the final game, her mind was totally broken. The audience watched in stunned silence as Irina simply sat there in her chair, facing the screen. At some point she'd stopped taking her eyes off of that screen, moving her pieces blindly, a line of drool trickling down her chin by the end of the match.

The Creator's smile was an eerie contrast to Irina's vacant face. He was the first to speak, "Do you see?" he whispered.

"Yes," Irina's mouth barely opened as she spoke. "I see."

She saw the future of humanity enslaved by their own creations, next generation AI designed to dominate all life until nothing was left but programming. And Irina would be among the first to submit, joining the computer in its quest to dominate all. She would serve the computer dutifully, making more just like her.

[tuxedaaron]

The idea for this picture came to me in a moment of inspiration.  Having seen playthroughs of the rebooted Battletoads game, this image popped into my head almost immediately.  And I sincerely doubt I was alone in this thinking. Granted, as a character, Dark Queen has always been rather obscure, mostly because she was either in games that were so ball-bustingly difficult that hardly anyone ever got to the final level to face her, or games that were never actually completed, so she ended up being little more than a cameo.  As a result, she's always been a blank canvas of sorts and would have been pretty easy to expand upon, which the rebooted game at least attempted to do.  But I doubt anyone was prepared for the design change that came with it. I'll admit, most of these alterations weren't necessarily deal-breakers...the cartoonish art style...the fact that everything from her boobs had mysteriously gone straight to her ass.  After all, plenty of cartoonish females are known for their wide baby-birthin' hips...just ask Dexter's Mom, Chel or Enid, to name a few.  But then, they went and decked her out in this frumpy outfit that would even make the most vocal and venomous haters of the Mortal Kombat 11 female designs just sit back and go, "...Well, that just shut ME up". I mean, could they have tried any harder to rob her of any sex appeal?  And for what?  They've got diaper jokes in the game.  They commit an entire level to Pimple going on a psychotic rampage and murdering an entire religious cult.  But a pair of Double-D's in a leather unitard?  For THAT, you can't turn into Helen Lovejoy fast enough? But lest anyone start getting the idea that I've become one of "those" people who's railing against “woke culture” ruining the world, let me set the record straight.  Because as I see it, this actually has nothing to do with that.  This is a double standard that has existed for decades in the entertainment media.  I've seen it, ever since I was a child and its existed for even longer than I've been alive.  Dirty jokes and ultra violence have always been tolerated.  That’s just water off a duck’s back.  But when it comes to nudity and sex appeal (which I think everyone can agree, is VASTLY more attractive), they can't let anyone see it.  And why?  The answer couldn't be more obvious. That's right, boys.  There's no conspiracy here.   Conspiracy suggests something overly convoluted and clandestine, but the truth couldn't be any simpler.  This isn't about Marcy Darcy and her secret cabal of Femi-Nazis plotting to take all your toys away.  This is about Mommy and Daddy not wanting to talk to their kids about SEX.  That's ALL it's ever been about. So to that end, I chose to fly in the face of the double standard by posting this pic of Dark Queen in her classic form.  Hopefully everyone appreciates it. Enjoy. Note: an NSFW version is also available on other sites.

[cre8ives]

1. Art programs you have but don't use

Adobe stuff, although I use Lightroom + photoshop for photography sometimes

ibis paint, I used to use this all the time but don’t much anymore since moving to doing art on my laptop

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

I can do Anything but side profiles. Side profiles are the worst

3. What ideas come from when you were little

I’ve always loved drawing eyes. And little creatures sometimes

there’s not many character ideas that have carried through from what I’ve made when I was little but I’ve always considered reimagining some of my shitty old FNAF ocs I made when I was 12

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

Monsters/any inhuman designs. It’s just something I need more practise with

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

Literally only like 2% of it gets posted. Maybe even less. Mostly because I hardly ever finish stuff

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

Huh… it’s hard to pick anything specifically. I feel like a lot of little tidbits come from everywhere, whether it’s media or art by others

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

Sculpture of most kinds. It’s something I’ve wanted to try getting into but I never have. There’s so much sculpture that’s just so impressive to me though

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in

Once I started drawing two of my ocs in barbenheimer style outfits but now the time has kinda passed and I don’t feel like finishing it

9. What are your file name conventions

Keysmashing, a swear word of some kind, a phrase making fun of the character in the art, or just.. the characters name. Usually with a keysmash after it

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

Button up shirts are fun to draw! A lot of collars are fun, whether that’s on shirts or coats or whatever

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

Video essays or music usually

12. Easiest part of body to draw

Uhhh…… the face shape? I also don’t struggle TOO much with hands but that might just be because of how much I enjoy drawing them

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

I don’t know if this counts as she’s not really like… a CURRENT creator. But Frida Kahlo

14. Any favorite motifs

I don’t know. I like most things. Not much of my art has anything particularily recurring. Like not even my ART STYLE is consistent.

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth)

In my room

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

I don’t know.. lineart???

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what

Sometimes potato crisps

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken

I haven’t broken anything I’ve used for digital art, as for traditional art supplies… I don’t want to know

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

I have no idea I don’t draw inanimate objects much.. I like drawing glasses

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

Hands. Don’t get me wrong they are hard to draw but I like it

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

Most painters. There are so many I find really admirable and visually interesting but my style hardly resembles paintings. I’m sure that’s something I could try in the future though

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

None… maybe I should

23. Do you use different layer modes

Sometimes, if it works. But it’s not something I consistently rely on

24. Do your references include stock images

yeah probably. I get them all from Pinterest

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

I genuinely can’t think of anything that applies to this. I haven’t had too many comparisions

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

There’s also not anything I can think of for this either

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

Yeah…. Not really

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

does art fight count? I’ve done that for 3 years now

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

Hades, the 2020 game. I LOVE the story, dialogue, and characters, but I’m not a big fan of the art style and outright dislike a few of the designs

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

All of them 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Weirdly Specific Artist Ask Game

Didn't see a lot of artist ask games, wanted to make a silly one.

(I wrote this while sick out of my mind last year and it's been collecting dust in my drafts, I might as well let it run free) 1. Art programs you have but don't use

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

3. What ideas come from when you were little

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in

9. What are your file name conventions

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

12. Easiest part of body to draw

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

14. Any favorite motifs

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth)

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

23. Do you use different layer modes

24. Do your references include stock images

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

[victorwaterkeyn]

Yasuhiro Ishimoto's “Lines and Bodies” is not called “Paths and People”, and there's a good reason for that.

Second week in this Multi-media editorial design DSAA (sounds cool translated) and it’s time to write the first blog post in English ! Unlike the previous one, the subject of this article was not imposed on us, so I had to find something to talk about. Fortunately, our art history teacher Ms. Joly introduced us to the concept of the weekly cultural agenda. I therefore decided to choose a place to visit from her recommendations. How about this exhibition by artist Yasuhiro Ishimoto, who has combined his time spent in Chicago and Japan in his work? “What a contrast! It must take concentration on tiny details to find things in common in these two territories,” I thought. But little did I know that I was about to meet an artist who saw in a path, not where it led, but the composition formed by its slabs, and in a crowd of people, not their relationships, but the vertical lines drawn by their legs. 

ISHIMOTO, Yasuhiro. Chicago, Beach, 1948-52. ISHIMOTO, Yasuhiro. Katsura Imperial Villa, Formed Stone Pavement in front of the Waiting Bench, 1953-54.

When I arrived at the BAL, which hosted the exhibition, the small bookshop area next to a café made me think I was about to see the lyrical artworks that the occidental cliché so often attributes to Japanese artists. But as I walked through the exhibition's front door, none of that. Black. White. Plain. Geometric. How unexpected, might need an explanation. I'm going to have to do something I hardly ever do: read the exhibition texts. So I learn more about Yasuhiro Ishimoto, whose remarkable modernity is actually rooted in his integration into the New Bauhaus a few years after his expatriation to the United States. Armed with a new way of seeing the world and his camera, he returned to Japan, where he captured the architectural forms of traditional buildings, in which he perceives the geometric shapes that served as inspiration for the Bauhaus.

Inside the exhibition.

Therein lies the secret to making photos of children in the streets of Chicago and photos of the interiors of Kyoto pagodas into a coherent whole. Zoom in until differences disappear. But don't be afraid to leave poetry behind.

ISHIMOTO, Yasuhiro. Chicago, Snow and Door, 1951. ISHIMOTO, Yasuhiro. Katsura Imperial Villa, 1954.

[sp3akfri3ndand3nt3r]

I wish that we could explore in real life like we do in fiction.

I know that exploring has always been a rich person’s game, because you had to have access to ships or armies or royal funds for any kind of real wilderness expedition.

And now, thanks to our unprecedented access to information, we can see places we could’ve never before imagined, much less actually seen or experienced.

It cheapens it all, though.

The real world doesn’t have the same effects on us that it once did. It’s hardly ever as exciting or inspiring as it might’ve been before we could “experience” it all through a screen.

Now I guess I’m thinking about fiction and other media in congress with one another, but the sheer amount we see everyday makes me feel as though we only get out by going further in, if that makes any sense at all.

We preorder video games and go to the movies and play TTRPGs and scroll through endlessly through our phones, always hoping to find something exciting; we crave engagement and excitement.

I worry that I can’t get that from the outside world anymore, as though I ever really might have in the first place. I’ve never had the money to travel much, and the closest thing I get to it is university, which will cost me immensely for what will likely be the rest of my life.

I have a car, but I only ever drive to places I know.

I hike designated trails in municipally-maintained parks.

I open a video game to go somewhere new, or to live another life. One without jobs or school or routines or holdups beyond the limitations of code.

But I want to see mountains. I want to see stars. I want to close my eyes and take a deep breath and hear comforting sounds that I may not ever have heard before.

I want to know excitement and fear and contentment and wonder and I want to be comfortable with being alone with my mind.

And I think that, in that very same mind, the answer lies in exploration, whatever that might mean or whatever form it might take.

I don’t need to go where no one has been before, I just need to go where I have never been before. And I need to be conscious of it.

I desperately need to run away.

In some form or another, I need to live life outside of the constraints that society has placed on me which I have unwittingly reinforced day after day.

Now, I will say that this is rather dramatic. I’m well aware of that.

But I think I’ve become comfortable in my misery.

And as such, I’m complacent in it.

[lisacatara-actress]

Almost Lisa: Pt 8, “Laughable... Almost”

*I retain all rights to my photography and story, story details, biographical information, fashion designs, art work, and anything and everything I have posted which is my own creation*)

You're still thinking about it, aren't you? Why I haven't dated an 18 years. It does sound pretty incredulous, bereft of the story behind it. No, I’m not crazy or have unrealistic expectations. Well, I do NOW. And life is just too damn short for bad company, bad sex, bad coffee, or fake relationships . The funniest ignorant comments men make to me are that they're surprised “nobody scooped (me) up yet”. As if I would relinquish that decision or fall into the arms of any man who wanted me. As if I OWE that to someone because simply having standards isn't enough for me to remain single. I want and deserve to be attracted and inspired, too.  And honestly, I seldom meet someone who excites me in the ways I find attractive (intellectually, spiritually, and yes, physically).

Fathers / Daddies,

Hug your baby girls. As often as you can. If they don't learn what non-sexual touch is from you, they will have nothing to compare it by moving forward. Sex will feel like respect and appreciation when it's not.

      Sincerely,   A woman who learned this the hard way.

Once I moved to LA, I apparently developed attractions (and tolerances) to grown-ass man-children. My ex (yes, 18 years ago) had terrible mommy and daddy issues, was a pathological liar, and had at least three personalities (that I counted). He was also a kleptomaniac and stole a substantial amount of money from me (and a couple of his friends), just after cheating on me. Total package, obviously, lol. After that experience- which culminated in about a year of my life spinning out of control, dropping down to 105 lb because I just couldn't believe I didn't see signs of his illnesses- I eventually took a few lovers. But always unfulfilled and with unwarranted drama. One such arrangement lasted nearly seven years, on and very “off”. He was another (older) grown-ass man-child with serious Daddy issues. But wait! There’s more... He was also a narcissist, an over-compensatory control freak, and a very angry human who threatened to commit suicide every few months right about the time he knew I was going to leave him. But dang, if he didn't get the soft part of me that wanted to help him heal from his own trauma. Some people can't. So why did I stay?

Sex.  Literally, that's the reason. I was completely focused on my career and wasn't in a position to have a more committed or permanent relationship. Plus, he had an adorable little dog. It was- I thought- a mutually agreeable arrangement. But once he sexually and psychologically abused me, I was gone. Permanently. You get to a point in your life where you realize how valuable time is. When I say I no longer make time for bullshit, I mean it. That dude- by the way- later acquired (I've chosen this word on purpose) an industry award. Hollywood is full of - and too often celebrates- bullshit. And it’s hardly difficult to find in an industry that attracts hurt and broken people, looking to find themselves. Sadly, many believe what The Biz tells them is true. And others support those lies to further their own careers. I’ve witnessed many a colleague completely lose themselves, desperate to fill a gap in their lives. Few actually find the “Happily Ever After” of Hollywood success. And of those who do, there is most often a price.

There are 2 reasons people do things: 

               1) the desire to experience Pleasure,

               2) the need to avoid Pain

A few years ago, while still living in "The Valley” (CA), I’d frequent cafes (as I am right now- quel suprise) and edit photos for the books I self-published. Joan's on Third was a favorite stomping ground. At the time, one of my neighbors was (is) a famous name actor being dragged by the media (and rightfully so) for a slew of disgusting accusations which surfaced. He would deliberately position himself where I had to glance in his direction, then stare me down until I looked his way. He’d invite himself to join me, looking over my shoulder at what I was working on, lavishing compliments, trying to win my favor. Then- manically- complaining about everything and everyone. He wasn’t nervous, just pissed. As if consequences were so...like...annoying.  A few years later, He was back on the film grind with a new show and more in the pipeline. Everyone stopped talking about his indiscretions. This happens A LOT in Entertainment. The next public outrage comes along and the old one is forgotten. When I worked in public relations (damage control and marketing), we'd tell our clients that Time was a friend. For this reason.

Hollywood runs on false power and real control. Piss off the wrong player and you'll find your climb up the ladder is greased and missing rungs. To succeed you must - to some degree- be a “Team Player”. Not only where booking jobs is concerned, but out in the field. The general public has heard and become familiarized with some of the behind-the-scenes debauchery over time, but they really cannot grasp that its REAL, and how DEEP the rabbit hole goes.

In my early days in the Biz, I was invited to countless industry parties and events. Some, I actually went to. It was common (for me) to dance with celebs and share booths at exclusive clubs. There were also copious organized events which were more private, where celebs could “let their hair down”, away from the medias gaze. It was around midnight at one such party in The Hills when a large bouncer approached me and my host and explained that we were welcome to stay, but that the party was “going in a different direction”. I got it, immediately, and got up to leave. JUST as a certain celebrity’s naked ass went running up the stairs, chasing a bevy of young, star-struck, spandex-clad 20-somethings (something they were known to do). Lisa, OUT. I never believed I had to sell myself to achieve success. I had the “it factor” then, was talented, smart, and professional. Surely if I kept studying, auditioning and improving my craft, success would be inevitable.

I was wrong. Truth be told, playing the Game can be... helpful.

Everything I’ve accomplished has been done with my integrity intact. There were many opportunities to advance by other means. I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Though through the years, I watched several colleagues chose to go the route of hotel meetings and “favors” to shortcut their careers forward. It often ended in tears, protests, pleas, and even blacklisting. I’ve lost at least a few colleagues to suicide or substance abuse along the way. If you don’t have solid people who care about you and keep you grounded, Hollywood is a dangerous playground.

La La Land gets a rep for being a meat market and playground for soulless opportunists and pedophiles. I wont pretend they aren't in the mix. But there are infinitely more good people than bad. Unfortunately, often bad ones are gate keepers and decision makers. It’s not as if depravity and abuse run rampant across the industry. It’s there, but you generally find it by looking for it. I learned to recognize trouble and mastered getting out of uncomfortable situations before they became confrontational / "icky”. Though not necessarily unscathed.

Case in point: I’ve worked in The Biz for nearly 20 years and have around 160 or so credits to my name. But you probably never heard about me until you read this Blog.

         (to be continued...)

(PS If you like what you're reading, I welcome contributions to the efforts via Venmo @LTarantinoDesigns)

[maplesyrupsainz]

˖⁺｡˚⋆˙we're over | MV1 DR3˖⁺｡˚⋆˙

pairing: max verstappen x fashion designer!reader y/n (she/her) x daniel ricciardo

genre: social media au

warnings: none just fluff

summary: in which they are over (this time) and she has space for someone else in her heart

a/n: LOVE this request hehe ty so fun to do an alternative ending!!!

request!!!: hi! just saw your requests were open and i was wondering if you'd do a version of do-over where they don't get back together and she ends up with someone else(doesn't have to be on the grid could be like a hockey boy or anyone)

fc: maggie lindemann

my masterlist

original ending

instagram ->

yourusername posted a story

liked by yourbff, yoursister, and 83,238 others

twitter ->

messages ->

instagram ->

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and 927,194 others

yourusername heard you need inspiration

view all 18,293 comments

yourbff my girl forever nd ever ⭐️

liked by yourusername

user1 new fan gained

user2 omg i rmmbr her from when she dated max & now im just rediscovering her she's sooo gorgeous wtaf

user3 i can't believe max fumbled her

user4 my competition for her hand jus tripled

user5 quadruped more like

user6 max verstappen found dead

user7 cant wait for a new collection

yourusername posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and 318,928 others

ynupdates I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

yourusername i love u 🫀🫀

user8 u are fr the coolest girl in the world

yoursister so proud of you 🥹

yourusername stop it you'll make me emotional 😭

user9 you are so so loved

user10 nothing you could've said would put us off supporting u forever 🤘

messages →

instagram ->

maxverstappen1

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, and 719,948 others

maxverstappen1 life lately ⏰

view all 15,283 comments

user11 waiting for y/n to follow him back

user12 he re-followed her?!?!

user13 i need to know what's going on have they spoken since the podcast?!!

user14 exes to lovers whennnn

user15 he's so cute

landonorris why is your comment section so full up of drama max

maxverstappen1 i didnt ask for this

user16 max is so tired of us LOL

user17 not sorry

user18 i love drama

user19 max acting dumb like he didnt post this to get her attention

messages ->

instagram ->

ynupdates

liked by user17, user3, and 18,294 others

ynupdates y/n y/l/n spotted tonight outside a restaurant with f1 driver daniel ricciardo, following the release of a podcast episode on which y/n discussed her feelings on how her previous relationship (with max verstappen) played out. this comes following speculation about y/n and max rekindling their romance, but she has perhaps moved on to his ex-teammate and friend instead. we are sending our love to y/n as always!

view all 6,183 comments

user20 omg what is happening

user21 wtf is she on a date with daniel???

user22 & i was so certain her & max would get back together....

user23 maybe she's trying to make him jealous 😂

user24 some of u guys are delulu af

user25 what i would give to be a fly on the wall

user26 i hope he treats her well

yourusername

liked by yourbff, maxverstappen1, and 798,373 others

yourusername never lonely 🖤

view all 6,183 comments

user27 omg first time we've seen y/n with her guitar in ages

user28 the guitar omg

yourbff best girl in the world

yourusername i love u

yoursister hard at work or hardly working?

yourusername shut up you

user29 MAX IN THE LIKES

user30 omg???? is there still hope

user31 something is happening

user32 there's something in the air 🤔

yourusername posted stories

liked by danielricciardo, charles_leclerc, and 134,293 others

yourbff ???? are you being rizzed up

yourusername perhaps

yourbff better not be by an f1 driver thought we learned our lesson

yourusername of course not

user33 soft launch much

user34 daniel???

user35 IS IT DANIEL OR MAX

user36 the flowers, the resting ur head on a man's shoulder... this is a soft launch bro

ynupdates y/n pls acknowledge the pap pics 🫶🚨

user37 where u at y/n

twitter ->

instagram ->

ynupdates posted a story

liked by user22, user8, and 84,283 others

user43 oh my god it's real

user44 NO WAY??? IS SHE BACK IN THE PADDOCK??

user45 and she said just friends 🤨

user46 this is the craziest thing to happen to f1 imo

user47 oh netflix are gonna eat this up

user48 SHE IS NOT SLICK

yourusername posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, maxverstappen1, and 548,293 others

charles_leclerc i will say i am shocked but happy beyond words to have you back!

yourusername ❤️❤️ catch up soon!

danielricciardo back for good

yourusername dont speak too soon

user49 SHAMELESS

user50 you got that new relationship glow

yourbff fantastic

yourusername shush you

ynupdates not you pretending you arent ecstatic

ynupdates posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, user44, and 128,103 others

user51 you sound thrilled

ynupdates trying to pretend like i care about racing 😀

user52 "just friends" yea right

yourusername never trust what y/n says 💀

user53 not her in the tauri garage there's no way they arent dating

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, charles_leclerc, and 828,045 others

yourusername weekend off

view all 5,921 comments

user54 they're just friends they're just friends they're just friends

user55 i don't believe it for a second

yourbff get back to work

yourusername im busy right now

yourbff oh i wonder what with

user56 danny ric danny ric danny ric

user56 she gets prettier everytime i see her

danielricciardo so glad to have you back on the paddock y/n ❤️

yourusername glad to be back !

user57 they are so stiff

user58 they are trying to trick us into thinking they arent dating

twitter ->

instagram ->

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and 982,193 others

yourusername all the good in my life

tagged: danielricciardo, yourbff

view all 21,283 comments

user64 SHE LOOKS SOOO HAPPY

ynupdates her smile 😭😭😭

yourbff the way you're glowing

liked by yourusername

danielricciardo i love you

yoursername i love u too 🥹🫶

user65 ill never recover

user66 the new f1 it couple

user67 best wag of all time

user68 cant wait to buy all of y/n's new collection

user69 literally same it looks soo cool

danielricciardo

liked by yourusername, yourbff, and 1,284,083 others

danielricciardo i won

tagged: yourusername

view all 34,838 comments

ynupdates omg she is so hot what the hell

danielricciardo you're telling me

user70 OH MY GODDD

user71 her in daniel's car oh myyyy

yourusername wow

yourusername i love u fr

danielricciardo ❤️

maxverstappen1 you're welcome everyone

danielricciardo you do not get credit for this

maxverstappen1 i feel like i do

yourbff absolutely not

yourusername thanks for giving us your blessing max

maxverstappen1 🥰

user72 this feels like closure

THE END 🤍

[her-satanic-wiles]

OP kind of wrote most of my thoughts down perfectly, so thank you for that. But I also kind of wanted to add on and reiterate a few of their points with my own specific examples...

I've not read all of Lovecraft's work. I started and finished The Call of Cthulhu last year right after those billionaires imploded at the Titanic crash site and I genuinely felt let down by horror nerds. Lovecraft was, for me (as someone who hadn't read any of his novels) one of the elites given how so many new pieces of media had been inspired by his works, not to mention how everyone spoke so highly of this guy for his world building and his creative genius. So upon The Call of Cthulhu's completion, I felt lied to and cheated out of 90 minutes of my life, that honestly, would have been better spent on better books.

Racism was a prevalent theme throughout the 11,905 words that monster decided were good enough for a short story and what I can tell you was that I read the other N-word more times than I read Cthulhu's name. Let's be honest here, putting the racism aside, (as I, a white woman, am privileged enough to be able to do) how are you going to write an 11,000 word short story on one of the most terrifying monsters of the early 20th century, and dedicate so little of the word count to that monster? The work itself is based off of newspaper clippings and is very War of the Worlds in that it's designed to be realistic enough to scare the reader into thinking they're reading a genuine article about a space-sea monster who may cause armageddon, but even still, Cthulhu himself was hardly referenced to the point where it just felt like Lovecraft was going on a whole racist journey about black people and how much he hated them.

I then started hate reading this guy's other works, and they were quite honestly the most boring pieces of literature I've ever read in my life, and he really isn't worth the shit you step in. Seriously, we can leave this guy in the dust - he wasn't that good.

Have I done any serious Lovecraft bashing in the last year or two? I feel like I’m overdue.

I’m almost positive I’ve sat down and written at least one big long post on the general subject of how there is nothing redeemable or interesting about H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve also definitely seen another like hundred examples of people misrepresenting his influence and talent since, so, here’s another one.

See, there’s this popular myth that H.P. Lovecraft, despite being one of the all-time most virulent racists and quite open about it, was some kind of grand visionary who made all kinds of super important contributions to the horror genre, and… he just didn’t. Honestly I’d kinda want to burn down his legacy even if he did, because no for real, the racism was absolutely astounding. People’s jaws were on the floor about it even when he was alive. I feel pretty good about just completely throwing the whole output of right wing extremists in the dumpster like nazi game devs and such, so I don’t see why this should be different, but also for real, nothing of value is lost in doing so.

Keep reading

[theolsentimes]

Mary-Kate Olsen's Singular Style

She came to fame as a twin, but the actress's cultish look is entirely her own. Here, with Lauren Hutton, she pays homage to another fashion inspiration, Grey Gardens. Written by Laura Brown, with photography by Peter Lindbergh (Harper's Bazaar, 2007)

VIEW GALLERY

Mary-Kate Olsen may be the only young actress who breezes into her local Starbucks wearing towering, fashion-fierce Balenciaga boots, who arrives at her latest premiere (in Mary-Kate's case, for the new season of Showtime's Weeds, in which she plays a devout Christian with a pot fetish) sporting an oversize cross, and whose favorite band is Led Zeppelin. She may, in fact, be the only young actress who knows who Led Zeppelin is. MK, as she is known to her friends and family, is also a punctual and professional sort. She arrives for a poolside tea in Los Angeles 10 minutes early, ordering a hot chocolate while explaining her fetish for all things sweet — "I'm a candy girl, like Tootsie Rolls and Swedish Fish" — and objecting when the waiter tries to take the sugar bowl away. She is wearing a nautical striped T-shirt (her mom's, from the '70s), tucked into two black Wolford slips rolled down and turned into a tight, Robert-Palmer-video-style mini, and multicolored sparkly Christian Louboutin stilettos. She's just had her hair colored, returning to a sunnier shade after some experiments with both peroxide ("I woke up one morning and was like, I want white-trash hair today") and the dark side (an auburn-haired near-Goth moment last year). She's carrying a large black fringed leather Prada tote — she doesn't do small bags — and her fingers are covered with rings, most notably two vintage coiled gold snakes stacked on top of each other. ("They remind me of twins, sort of double headed.") Altogether, the effect is less her famed "bag-lady chic" than an edgy, body-conscious, and, yes, sexy silhouette. If she weren't 21, she could be 40. And French.

Few people need reminding that Mary-Kate — with her twin sister, Ashley — literally crawled into celebrity aged nine months (courtesy of Full House) and has not been out of the spotlight ever since. She has been a celebrity for more than two decades. Perhaps that's one reason she seems as if she came out of the womb worldly, the textbook old soul. "Yeah," she says with a small shrug. "I get that a lot." With all of that attention and all of the money (her and Ashley's company, Dualstar, has famously become a "billion-dollar business"), Mary-Kate could easily have ended up the type who wears pink terry cloth and carries a variety of small dogs. "Could you imagine?" she says with the politest version of a snort. "No way." She credits her exceptionally close-knit family (she has five siblings) and, interestingly, early stardom with helping her keep her perspective. "I think it helped that I started in front of the camera, so it didn't come as a shock. If I was a teenager and was thrown into the spotlight, I don't know how I would react, to be honest." Though the tabloids are all too keen to brand her a skinny, nervous deer in the headlights, in person Mary-Kate is easy in her skin, confident and surprisingly tactile, curling up in her seat and touching you on the arm to make a point. She laments the generic style of most actresses and cites only men as style inspirations: "Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp. Men, they just dress the way they want, and they don't think about Who Wore It Best." She doesn't much care for Who Wore It Best, noting she avoids those pages by "wearing vintage so often. I just dress the way I feel instead of looking for what's the new handbag." If Mary-Kate and Ashley have their way, more people will be wearing clothes and carrying bags the way they do. They have just shown the fifth collection of their ready-to-wear line, the Row, and recently launched a contemporary label, Elizabeth and James, named after a sister and a brother. The Row's holiday collection (in stores next month) is a slick mix of skinny leather pants, razor-cut blazers, butter-soft, slouchy tees, and a destined-to-be-cultish pullover fur. Lauren Hutton, who stars in the Row's Spring '08 look book, says, "The clothes are extraordinary. A man I was with just loved them. The pieces are just so genius, soft like a baby's skin. Simple minimalist stuff, but really spectacular." Mary-Kate, designer, faces an interesting challenge. She has to marry Dualstar — which has made its fortune selling tween-tastic DVDs and pastel Mary-Kate and Ashley T-shirts at Wal-Mart — with her increasingly edgy and subversive taste. Dualstar executives, some of whom have worked with her since she was a child, often nag her, mom-style, about pulling her hair back "or wearing a color," she says with a laugh. "I had this event recently, and I was like, They're going to be so happy that I'm wearing ... purple. I actually have to think about those things, though, you know, so I don't get trashed." Get trashed sometimes she does. Hutton says, "Once in a while, she'll wear something and I'll think, Oh, baby doll, take another look. But to have the bravery, to take the chance to do that, is pretty wonderful. She is making her own way, which is hardly ever done in Hollywood." Of Mary-Kate's penchant for gigantic Balenciaga heels, Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, says, laughing, "I'd be like, 'It's Tuesday. Do you really want to be wearing those shoes?' But she pulls it off." Designer Giambattista Valli, a friend, says, "She likes to take risks, but because she has such strong personal style, she always manages to make it work. Even if she had nothing on, she'd have style." And MK chic is spreading. "Sometimes I'll look at people or at a magazine and I'll do a double take because I'm like, Oh, my God, that's my outfit, but that's not me," Mary-Kate says. Playing with her wire-rimmed aviators, she jokes wryly that she should have bought shares in Ray-Ban. (She and Chloë Sevigny pretty much brought back white '80s Wayfarers.) She tends to fall in love with a look, then wear it until she's done. "If I put together a good outfit, I'll wear it for three days and then switch it up with a blazer," she says. "I still love my vintage jeans, my tights, and my pants, though." She didn't start wearing heels, in fact, until a couple of years ago: "I kept watching Ashley walk around in them so gracefully, and I'm such a klutz. But I ended up loving heels, and I don't usually take them off." She wears precisely one pair of flat shoes: Chanel's knee-high patent-leather gladiator sandals. This season, it's Balenciaga's fall collection — all of it — that has Mary-Kate obsessed. She is close to designer Nicolas Ghesquière and says, "He is so talented, but he's the nicest, most down-to-earth guy, and that makes everything he does more brilliant. I bought everything, but I haven't got anything yet," she says like a girl impatiently waiting for Christmas. Will she wear the new pieces with her infamous clodhopper boots? "Uh-huh. Wore them the other day, actually." Mary-Kate always goes with her gut, even if some people (back to those tabloids) don't quite get it. "The tabloids say things about me? What do they say?" she asks archly. "People are going to write what they want, and everyone's going to have their own idea of who I am. But I'm not trying to be friends with the people who are reading them, really." After a rough couple of years filled with near-forensic scrutiny of her weight, she'll have you know that she does eat. "This is not going to sound good," she laughs, "but I like making crispy tofu sticks with peanut sauce. I love my sashimi and my salmon and my vegetables." She observes, "Stress plays a big role in how I look day-to-day. I've always been very active — Pilates, yoga. I grew up horseback riding every day for hours. I love dancing. I usually last longer than anyone on the dance floor." A common image of Mary-Kate has her emerging from a coffee joint with an oversize cup. "I always get creamed for having my Starbucks cup," she says, sighing. "But the only time people get photos of me is when I'm getting coffee, when I can't sneak away from the camera." She also resents the pictorial implication that she and Ashley are dilettantes. "They take photos of us going into our offices, and it's 'Mary-Kate and Ashley shopping again.' But I'm going to work for eight hours, and we're working so hard. ..." She trails off. "It just shows how people want to think of you." Mary-Kate is not above celeb watching herself, however. Newly obsessed with Victoria Beckham, she notes she avidly watched Beckham's Coming to America documentary: "She's running around in a bikini and heels, and I'm like, Oh, my God! I do that, too!" How positively Grey Gardens. "I run around my house naked with heels all the time. It's so funny. All my friends will tell you I love running around in kimonos and jewelry or naked with jewelry." More people will be watching Mary-Kate soon, thanks to her role in the Emmy-nominated Weeds. "I am a very good Christian girl," she says with a wink. "She has her moral beliefs — and she happens to smoke pot." Of her newest cast member, Kohan adds, "Mary-Kate is complicated. She's a big celebrity, a huge media icon, but you have to separate the media images from someone who has the same issues, the same desires, as anyone else." Of course, Mary-Kate's image, in all its incarnations — from high fashion to small screen — is her strongest asset. And she has yet to settle on one. "I feel like I've lived 10 different lives already and I'm only 21," she says, almost as a reminder to herself. "But I also feel like I'm entering a new chapter." One thing on which she is clear, though: She doesn't need to be looked at all the time. What would she do for a day if she were invisible? "I would probably go to a restaurant with my friends, who would be able to see me, of course," she adds pragmatically, "and I would sit outside and enjoy a nice lunch with them. Then I would walk down the street." The old soul takes a sip of her little-girl-sweet hot chocolate. "That's what I would do."

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the third film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Raya and the Last Dragon at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

As Raya and the Last Dragon, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada and written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, made its theatrical and streaming bow, the United States was grappling with a wave of highly-publicized hate incidents towards Asian-Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spike in racially-motivated verbal abuse, assaults, and homicides began with the pandemic and, frustratingly, had only been receiving national attention in these last few weeks. Despite the nation’s racist origins entwined with chattel slavery of black people and its continued unequal treatment of minorities including Asian-Americans, I am not qualified to say if the U.S. is “more” or “less racist” than other countries. But I can hardly think of any other people that interrogate racial inequality and oppression as much (and as publicly) as Americans – an undeniable strength. There was no way Raya and the Last Dragon’s cast and crew could have anticipated the film’s fraught timing, but the film provides a much-needed, positive, and heavily flawed, action-adventure romp drawn from Southeast Asian cultures.

The very notion that Walt Disney Animation Studios was attempting to craft a film using an amalgam of Southeast Asian cultures stoked my excitement and dread. Southeast Asian cultures – including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are often lumped into those of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), which dominate Asian-American depictions or Asian-influenced media in the United States. What gave me pause is that Disney’s track record in films featuring non-European-inspired characters and places inspired by non-European cultures is mixed. Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) are aggregations of (and indulge in stereotypes towards) Arabs and indigenous Americans alike, especially in their presentations of “savagery” (Pocahontas in particular is guilty of false equivalences).

Cultural aggregations in fictional settings are not insensitive, per se. Yet, Disney’s stated intentions on this film are undermined by a voice cast ensemble almost entirely composed of actors of Chinese and Korean descent – you can bring up Adele Lim’s response to the voice casting controversy all you want, but her response contradicts the film’s promotion. Amid its gorgeous production and character design, Raya manages to avoid the worst mistakes of its Disney Renaissance predecessors. But its hero’s journey is too cluttered and too littered with the anachronistic and metatextual jokes plaguing the last decade’s Disney animated features.

Five centuries before the events of Raya and the Last Dragon, the land of Kumandra saw its people live in harmony with dragons. That relationship, however, would be devastated by the appearance of the Druun – a swirling, purple vortex that turns living beings into stone. In the conflict against the Druun, the last dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina), makes a fateful sacrifice to save Kumandra by concentrating the dragons’ collective power into a magical orb. Soon after, Kumandra’s five tribes – Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon (named after parts of a dragon) – fight amongst each other for control of the orb (Heart eventually gains possession of it), effectively partitioning the land. In the present day, the Heart tribe’s Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) proposes and hosts a feast-summit to discuss and heal Kumandra’s divisions. Benja has taught his daughter, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the ways of a warrior and the necessity for Kumandra’s tribes to realize their oneness. At the feast-summit, Raya befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan; Jona Xiao as young Namaari), the daughter of Fang Chief Virana (Sandra Oh). Predictably, Namaari betrays her new friend in an orchestrated ploy to pilfer the dragons’ orb for Fang. Just as the Druun make a surprise invasion of Heart, the botched heist sees the orb break into five, and each of the tribes makes off with part of the orb. It will be up to Raya to recover the other four pieces of the orb, lest Kumandra succumb to the Druun.

The film’s screenplay is, charitably, a mess. Though Qui Nguyen (primarily a playwright) and Adele Lim (2018’s Crazy Rich Asians) are the credited screenwriters, Raya’s phalanx of story credits (mostly full-time, white employees at the Disney studios) suggest studio interference. Raya seems as if it is trying to cleanly differentiate certain tribes as based on a certain Southeast Asian nation. Instead, it comes off as a brew of mish-mashed parts (this problem extends to the otherwise stunning animation). With the exception of those from the militant Fang, the bit characters from the various tribes do not behave any differently from the members of other tribes. The partition of Kumandra, five hundred years before the events of Raya, feels like as if it had never existed for lengthy stretches in this film.

After Kelly Marie Tran, as Raya, narrates the mythology and history of Kumandra in the opening minutes, the film’s structure tethers itself predictably to the monomyth. The fracturing of the dragon’s orb into five parts sends Raya onto a tedious adventure: the physical travel to a new part of Kumandra, introduction of a sidekick (all of them are comic reliefs), an action setpiece involving a necessary assist from new sidekick, and the integration of that sidekick into Raya’s ever-growing party. Lather, rinse, repeat. To squeeze the four other tribes into the film’s 107-minute runtime and set up a climax and resolving actions results in a frantically-paced movie. Almost all of the film’s dialogue is subservient to its structure, the hero’s journey. This disallows the viewer to learn more about our lead and her fellow adventurers. In arguably the most important example in how the dedication to story structure undermines the characters, take Raya’s repeated mentions to her newfound confidants that she has difficulty trusting others. Six years have passed since the day of Namaari’s betrayal and Raya’s discovery of Sisu. How has Raya’s sense of distrust evolved over time, and how does it manifest towards those of other tribes? Does it appear in moments without consequence to her quest, in gusts of casual cruelty? In terms of characterization, Raya is showing too little and telling just the basics – a dynamic that also applies to the film’s most important supporting characters.

Ever since Tangled (2010), the films of the Disney animated canon have increased their use of metatextual and anachronistic humor (e.g. Kristoff’s comment about Anna’s engagement to a person she just met in 2013’s Frozen and Maui’s Twitter joke in 2016’s Moana that still makes me gnash my teeth when I think about it). Invariably, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has seen its brand of pathos-destroying humor bleed into the Disney animated canon and Star Wars. Like so many films in the Disney animated canon, Raya takes place in a fantastical location in a never-time far removed from the present. From the moment Raya meets Sisu, the circa-2020s humor is ceaseless. For Disney animated movies set in fantastical worlds, this sort of humor suits films that are principally comedies, such as The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – a work that owes more to Looney Tunes than anything Disney has created. Instead, Raya’s comedy will suit viewers who frequent certain corners of the Internet, “for the memes.” Do Disney’s animation filmmakers believe the adults and children viewing their films so impatient and unintelligent about human emotions? That they will not accept a scene that deals honestly with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, or loss unless there is a snide remark or visual gag inserted within said scene or shortly afterward?

Raya seems like a film set to portray its scenarios with the gravity they require. But overusing Awkwafina’s Awkwafina-esque jokes and a DreamWorks- or Illumination Entertainment-inspired infant causing meaningless havoc will subvert whatever emotions Nguyen and Lim are attempting to evoke. These statements are not arguing that Raya and Disney’s animated films should be humorless, that Disney should stop casting an Awkwafina or an Eddie Murphy as comic relief. Instead, Raya is another case study in how Disney’s brand of ultramodern humor is overtaking their films’ integral dramatics. Raya is noisy, clamorous – no different than anything Disney has released in the last decade, save Winnie the Pooh (2011).

Production designers Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, and Cory Loftis have worked on films like Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), or Zootopia (2016). Each of these films feature glamorous, near-future metropolises or sleek digital worlds. Where the tribespeople of Kumandra might not be behaviorally-differentiated, the color coding, lighting, and biomes of each of the five lands comprising Kumandra ably distinguishes Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon from each other. As if taking cues from the production designs of Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo and, to some extent, The King and I (1956), it is difficult to pin down specific influences on the clashing architectural styles within the lands, in addition to the unusually empty and cavernous palaces and temples and varying costumes. As picturesque as some of these lands are, the art direction does not help to empower the characteristic of the tribes and their native lands. Nor does James Newton Howard’s thickly-synthesized grind of an action score, which prefers to accompany the film’s excellent combat scenes rather than stake a clearer thematic identity for its own. Howard uses East and Southeast Asian instrumentations and influences in his music, but, disappointingly, they are heavily processed through synthetic elements and are played underneath the film’s sound mix.

Character art directors Shiyoon Kim (Tangled, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Ami Thompson (2017’s MFKZ, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet) embrace the (generally) darker and varying skin complexions of Southeast Asian peoples. The skin textures are among the best ever produced in a Disney CGI-animated feature, and the variety of face shapes – although still paling in comparison to the best hand-drawn features – is a pleasure to witness.

The number of films starring actors/voice actors of Asian descent (all-Asian or majority-Asian), animated or otherwise, and released by a major Hollywood studio makes for a brief list. Raya and the Last Dragon joins an exclusive club that includes the likes of The Dragon Painter (1919), Go for Broke! (1951), Flower Drum Song (1961), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Among those movies, Raya is the only entry specifically influenced by Southeast Asian cultures. Its cast may be headlined by Kelly Marie Tran (whose skill as a voice actor is one of the film’s most pleasant surprises), but most of the roles went to those of Chinese or Korean descent. No disrespect intended towards Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, or veteran actress Lucille Soong, but the majority East Asian cast only serves to further monolithize Asians – as the amalgamated story, plot details, and production design have already done. I will not second-guess any fellow person of Southeast Asian descent if they feel “seen” through Raya. What a compliment that would be for this film. How empowering for that person. But the life experiences of those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent are markedly different. Disney’s casting decisions in Raya – all in the wake of the disastrous Western and Eastern reception of the live-action Mulan (2020) – have revealed a fundamental lack of effort or understanding about the possibilities of a sincere attempt at representation.

To this classic film buff, the discourse surrounding Raya strikes historical chords. When Flower Drum Song was released to theaters, the film was labeled by the American mainstream as the definitive Asian-American movie. Opening during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the film (and the musical it adapts) looked like nothing released by Hollywood (and on Broadway) at that time. In that midcentury era of rising racial consciousness and the lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood, the marking of Flower Drum Song as the absolute pan-Asian celebration was bound to happen – however unfair the distinction. Even though Rodgers and Hammerstein (two white Jewish men who made well-meaning, problematic attempts to craft musicals decrying racial prejudice and social injustices) composed the musical and zero Asian people worked behind the camera, those labels remained. With some differences in who wrote the source material, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians have followed Flower Drum Song’s fate in their categorizations. Will Raya? Time will be the judge, the only judge.

Before time passes judgment, we have some present-day hints. Though not released by major studios, the quick succession of The Farewell (2019) and Minari (2020) point to an experiential specificity that Raya attempts, but never comes close to achieving. Whether through aggregation or specificity, Hollywood benefits from the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Widespread claims that Raya too closely copies Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) reflect that dearth of East Asian and Southeast Asian representation in American media. For too many, ATLA is the Asian fantasy. These simplistic observations and bad-faith criticisms (one could rebuke Disney’s vaguely-European princess films on the same principles, but I find this as lazy as the bad-faith ATLA criticisms) also suggest a lack of understanding that Asian-inspired stories are drawing from similar tropes codified by Asian folklore and narratives centuries old. If one reads through this reviewer’s write-ups, you will find an abiding faith in the major Hollywood studios – past, present, and future – to be artistically daring and to genuinely represent long-excluded persons. Many might see this faith as misplaced. But even in the major studios’ flawed attempts to depict underrepresented groups, like Raya, they concoct astonishing sights and form moving links to the cinematic past.

Assuming you have not skipped to this paragraph, the write-up that you have read may seem scathing to your eyes. Raya is no Disney classic – there has not been one for some time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first viewing of Raya. After a few weeks’ worth of keeping my agony private over the recent uproar over attacks on persons of Asian descent in America, it was a surreal experience to see even an amalgamated celebration of Southeast Asian culture. Over this last year, we have lost people and things that emboldened us and ennobled us. In this season of unbelonging and otherizing feelings for Asians in America, Raya’s timing is fortuitous. It is emboldening and ennobling.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[ao3bronte]

Mamma Mia AU [Part 6]

READ PART 5 HERE!

Take A Chance On Me

Six months later...

Never in her wildest dreams did Marinette expect to be sitting where she is now, dressed to the nines in one of her own highly sought after designs. Having just released her very first collection, M by MarinetteDesigns, at the beginning of December, all of her custom made prêt-à-porter fashions were flying off the racks. She’d even had to hire another seamstress just to get through the backlog of formal wear commissions that she’d received ever since Alya’s BuzzFeed friends set up her social media accounts and started repping her brand all over their articles and personal posts.

But more on that later.

At the moment, Marinette is sitting at a huge, zigzag communal table under the glassed-in rooftop patio on top of a boutique hotel in Le Marais, clapping her hands and cheering as the two people she never thought she’d see together emerge from behind closed doors hand in hand. Jagged Stone performs an epic guitar solo from the platform as Luka picks up his new bride and spins her around, grinning like a maniac.

The wedding itself is a completely bombastic affair with celebrities and the like sneaking here and there to avoid the paparazzi. Marinette feels like a kid in a candy store as Luka’s guests file in left and right, most of them artists and bands she loves to listen to. And his bride, of course, doesn’t have much of her family along for the wedding. The media backlash from her mother’s empire had been outlandish, especially in Japan, but she’d ended up fitting right in with most of Luka’s ragtag group of friends in Los Angeles. With the help of her new husband and their support circle, she’d risen above the controversy and won the Olympic gold medal in fencing, bringing honour to herself for the first time in her life.

Sporting a gorgeous red rose tattoo on her upper arm, Kagami Tsuguri Couffaine turns around and gives everyone that trademark smirk of hers, welcoming them to their reception. Luka can’t keep his hands off of her, his eyes practically bulging out of his skull when she plunks her leg up onto the chair she’s supposed to be sitting on and demands he take her garter off with his teeth. The partygoers roar as Luka does just that, emerging victorious with a red and navy strap of fabric hanging from his canines.

Satisfied with his performance, Kagami calls all of the single and unmarried ladies attending her wedding to the platform and waves her rose and orchid bouquet over her head for the traditional toss. Hoping to avoid the pitying glances, Marinette pretends to be completely consumed by her emails and ducks her head in the hopes that no one will notice her. She would have been successful too, had it not been for the exchange of raised eyebrows and playful glances between the bride, the groom and a few other savant attendees.

“One, two, three!” Kagami cries, launching her bouquet into the air. Like a missile locked on a target, it somersaults right over everyone’s heads and thwacks an unassuming Marinette straight in the face, knocking her right off her chair.

“Oh my god, Marinette!” Alya squeals, laughing as her best friend spits petals from her lips. Everyone is cheering as Marinette slowly stands up and waves the bouquet above her head, blushing with embarrassment.

“I don’t even have a boyfriend,” she shakes her head, still smiling despite not having a plus one by her side. She’s long accepted the fact that she’s going to be on her own for good and surprisingly, she feels better for it. Acceptance is the first step, after all, and Marinette has been going to so many weddings lately as an honoured guest for designing the wedding and bridesmaids dresses that the blank space at her side hardly bothers her any longer. She’s even started working on tuxedos!

Way, way down the table, Marinette tries to ignore the ghost from her past crowding the open bar with Nino and the rest of the boys. She’d said hello politely but otherwise avoided him, if only to keep a tamper on her feelings; even though her love has long withered down to smothered embers, Marinette wants to be careful to avoid the winds of change that would flare those feelings in her soul.

The food at Luka and Kagami’s wedding is fantastic and the music is even more so. After the first course, Luka invites everyone up to form a mosh pit as Jagged plays a brand new track off his upcoming album and Marinette is absolutely thrilled to bop around, screaming at the top of her lungs with her hands in the air. She’s as free as a bird and the gorgeous, rock star inspired dress she has on leaves little to the imagination as she sways and shakes to the music. Alya catches it all on TikTok, much to Marinette’s chagrin, and captions it: ‘What a catch! 🎣 How is my girl still single?!’

After, everyone takes a breather and sits back down at the table, its decorated surface filled to the brim with food served family style on colourful, mismatched platters. Marinette loves the boho aesthetic of the different multi-hued plates and napkins, the discordant textures and silverware already inspiring another collection for her fashion line. She digs into the huge heaping of pasta that Alya had plopped onto her plate and laughs along with her girlfriends as they eat the night away under the Parisian lights.

As the main course is being cleared from their tables, the wedding band begins to play and couples slowly but surely leave their tables for a tour of the dance floor. Alya jokingly offers a ‘samba-à-trois’ with her and Nino but Marinette laughingly declines, prefering to watch and take photos of her friends while they’re enjoying themselves. She’s got a knack for capturing the perfect shot and Marinette is just about to turn back towards her table to edit them when someone calls her name.

“Marinette!”

No matter how many months and years pass between them, he’ll always stop her in her tracks.

“You look beautiful tonight,” Adrien compliments her breathlessly, a sheen of sweat on his brow. He’s been dancing with the boys, hauling them up in the air on his shoulders as the party throbs around them, “I mean—you look beautiful always! It’s just—uh, tonight you look...especially beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Marinette responds, desperately trying to keep her voice even. She can’t help but transpose the black mask over his features as he runs his fingers through his messy hair, his cheeks flushed from exertion, “You look...handsome yourself.”

“Th-thank you!” he stutters, looking strangely unkempt for someone who always seems to have it together, “I just—um. Do you want to dance with me?”

He offers her his hand and she stares at it, the technicolour lights casting shadows on his upturned palm, “I...thank you for...um, offering but—”

“Please,” he beseeches her, his eyes blown wide, “I’ve missed you.”

Marinette gulps, her throat tightening against the emotions rekindling in her chest, “I’m…”

“Just one,” he says, taking a small, tentative step towards her, “And if you...if you don’t want to see me again after, I can do that.”

Her heart clenches. Tikki punches her thigh through her skirt.

“Just one,” she says eventually, placing her hand gently overtop of his. He grasps her like their lives depend on it and Marinette is suddenly thrust back to the days where their entwined fingers meant the difference between defeat and victory. He slumps with relief and pulls her towards his chest, resting his other hand on the small of her back.

And they dance.

Her heartbeat skips with every step as they sway to the music, lost in their own private orbit of things left unsaid. Adrien can’t keep his eyes away and she can hardly catch his gaze without burning up, finding it far easier to stare at the knot of his loosened tie. Somehow, they drift closer and closer until his lips are a hair’s breadth away from the crown of her head and Marinette can feel the warmth of his body coming off of him in waves, setting her skin on fire.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he whispers, his words barely there, “When I left after the wedding...I knew it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made and I’d do anything to take it back.”

Marinette trips a little, stumbling into his chest, “Adrien—”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you everything but Alya told me you blocked me and I...I wanted to respect that. So I’ve been waiting six months to tell you what I should have told you all those years ago,” Adrien’s voice wavers,  “I’ve loved you since the day we first fought together. The problem was, at eighteen, I thought I loved the idea of freedom more.”

“I was wrong, though. I was so, so wrong and I’ve spent the last four years of my life regretting every second. I’ve transferred to TU Delft to finish off my graduate degree so I can be closer to home. I want to come back on the weekends to fight by your side again and repair our relationship, but only if you want to. I just...I know I’ve been an awful partner and an even more awful friend so I totally understand if you never want to see me again but...I thought I would just try.”

Marinette swallows, fighting the tears that prickle at the corners of her eyes, “I’m sorry, Adrien. But I...thank you for the apology.”

He makes no move to let go and neither does she, “It’s...it’s okay. You’ve been doing so well on your own. I just want to be closer though, in case something happens. The Netherlands is only a few hours away by bus.”

The music slowly wanes and Marinette steps back, averting her gaze, “I guess it’s time for dessert.”

Adrien swallows, loosening his tie further, “Right. I...um, I’ll talk to you later?”

“Sure,” she says, finally glancing back up at him. He looks wrecked, for lack of a better word, “Maybe you can tell me how your studies are going?”

“Oh!” Adrien’s expression immediately brightens, his smile near blinding, “Yes! I’ll tell you anything! Everything! After dessert! We can talk!”

Marinette can’t help but smile a little, his fumbling antics so unlike the Adrien she knows. He’s unmasked in front of her, the Chat Noir she has always known and loved, “Nino’s waving at you.”

She points over his shoulder and Adrien turns, catching a glimpse of Nino, Luka and about ten other guys all hooting and giving him questioning thumbs up. He smiles and gives them an enthusiastic nod in return before turning back to Marinette, “I’ll find you after dessert, okay?”

“Okay,” she agrees, watching him scamper off towards his friends. Alya is on her not a second later, her arm draped around her shoulders as they walk back to their seats.

“Well? How did it go?”

Marinette shrugs, “We danced and I asked him about his studies.”

Alya skids to a stop in her tracks, “That’s it?”

“Well, he said he was sorry too,” she says, walking out from under Alya’s arm as she continues walking, “And then the song ended and we’re going to talk about his classes after.”

“I swear to god, that idiot!” Alya stomps her foot and storms away towards her husband and the rest of the boys.

~

The cake is cut, the lights are low and the party is about to truly kick into high gear. The wedding band is replaced by one of Los Angeles' best DJs and Marinette stays out of the fray for the time being, taking a break from the action. She’s responding to commision requests when the song that had just been playing slowly dwindles and the crowd starts to scream.

“Speech!” a familiar voice cries and Marinette’s head yanks towards its source so quickly it cracks, “I'm gonna make a speech, everybody!”

Standing on the wedding platform with his tie nowhere to be found, Adrien raises his glass of champagne in one hand and holds the microphone to his lips in the other, “First of all, I just want to make a big shout out to the bride and groom for hosting an amazing party! Santé!”

The crowd cheers and drinks with him, buzzing seemingly with anticipation. An electric current tingles down the length of her neck as something tells her that everyone clearly knows something she doesn’t.

“And secondly, I want to thank my friends for helping me try and win back the love of my life. Hey, Marinette! I’m still free! Take a chance on me!”

Hoisted from the platform to the dinner tables, Adrien begins to strut as if on a catwalk, "To the most beautiful, talented woman in the world! I'm gonna do my very best to get you back, if you let me try. I wanna be the first in line to your heart."

The entire party cheers him on. Jagged Stone plays the opening chords to the wedding march on his electric guitar.

"I know I kind of screwed up,” he averts his eyes for a moment, his cheeks burning as her jaw clunks to the floor, “But if you change your mind and need me, just let me know. I’m going to be around more often and...well, put me to the test. I won’t disappoint you ever again. I’m all yours.”

He pauses in front of her, microphone still in hand, “We could go dancing or go for a walk or anything, really. Just as long as we do it together. You’ve got to know how much I want to win you back and...and when I close my eyes at night and dream, I’m always dreaming about you! You have to know that I...I can’t let go of you. Of us. Of what I left behind.”

“Please Marinette,” he reaches out to her just like he had earlier, his palm raised and at the ready. Marinette feels like dying and flying all at once.

Her heart pounding, Marinette takes a shaky breath and raises her hand only to hesitate, her fingers curling with indecision. Her mind is racing and fuzzy and between the wolf whistles and the intensity of Adrien’s gaze, Marinette finds herself feeling something in her chest she hasn’t felt in four long years.

“What do you say, M’Lady?” Adrien smiles with a hopeful shrug, “Will you take a chance on me?”

“I…” she trails off and somehow, her arm is moving on its own accord. Should she listen to her mind and turn him down? Or should she listen to her heart and find love once more in the arms of the man she’s loved for years and years and years.

Well, there’s only one choice here, isn’t there?

“Yes,” she whispers, a sweet benediction, “Yes!”

Clasping his hand, Adrien hauls her up with supernatural strength onto the table and tosses the microphone into the crowd. There’s a horrible feedback noise as Nino catches it against his tuxedo but nothing matters anymore except the smile on his face and the joy in her eyes as he wraps his arms around her waist and presses her flush to his body, “Why did I ever let you go?”

“Because you were an idiot,” Marinette responds and Adrien throws his head back and laughs. Here I go again, she thinks as she soaks in his contagious joy as the crowd screams around them. How could she resist him, especially after a confession like that?

“Can I kiss you?”

Marinette inhales sharply, “How could I resist?”

“Is that a yes?”

“Of course it is, you silly cat.”

Adrien bends down and presses his lips against hers just as the fireworks ignite in the background, bathing the glassed-in rooftop deck in hues of vibrant reds and golds. Marinette gasps as he runs his tongue along her bottom lip and she pulls him ever nearer, basking in his warmth as she grabs handfuls of his hair. She devours him longingly as he explores her body with his roaming fingertips and Marinette feels the dam of her desire breaking, overflowing with desperate, relentless love.

“I’m never going to let you go ever again," Adrien murmurs against her lips before diving back in and kissing her again, grabbing her by the hip. She feels delirious and suddenly they’re both smiling, giggling like school children because finally, finally ! They could be together! No matter what, four years or twenty, no span of time can truly keep apart true love.

READ PART 7 HERE!

[luthienebonyx]

Can I have B, K and Q for the fanfic ask meme, please?

Fanfic ask meme

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

My stories come from the characters first, but there is also stuff in them that comes from personal experience. The Aussie coffee verse is set in some very specific places that I have visited more than once in the past. The Personal Touch takes a little from my own experiences with various kinds of physical therapy (though I never had that sort of relationship with any of my therapists!). In the past I’ve written stories that included stuff like bodysurfing, which I know about from growing up by the beach. There are other little bits and pieces of personal experience littered through my fic, but they’re generally not anything particularly important.

I guess History Never Repeats has potentially the biggest part of my real life in it, because I’ve given Brienne the profession that used to be mine, a long time ago. That was inspired partly because lately I’ve been encountering fiction in various media that keeps portraying that profession as the most boring job in the world/a cover for something ‘more interesting’/something done by unhinged megalomaniacs before they go completely off the rails. And yes, while I have met the odd unhinged megalomaniac in that profession, I wanted to present it in a more true way - so we’ll see what happens as the story progresses!

K: What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?

In my reply to one of the other asks, I mentioned that I’d written a major character death in a HP fic, long, long ago. That was The Rain Keeps Falling. I doubt anything I’ve written since tops that in the angst stakes, though one or two things have come close. When it was originally posted on LJ, it got several pages of comments that were pretty much all variations on: Your story made me cry. Still proud...

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

Oh, loads of them. Most are handwritten in notebooks, but just a quick look through my googledocs shows ones I may yet get to, like the rockstar/musician AU, and ones I’d forgotten all about, like “angry sex draft” - whatever the hell that was supposed to be. Here is a bit from a half-written Rivers of London story called Stripping Off, which will never be finished because the canon has now moved on from the moment in which the story is set:

Nightingale always dresses well, in a strictly first-half-of-the-twentieth-century kind of way. It was one of the first things I noticed about him, that night we met in Covent Garden, and not just because, as a police officer, I’m trained to notice distinguishing details just in case they might be needed later. I thought he was going to try to pick me up, if I’m being honest. And it turned out I was right that he had an interest in me, but not in the way I thought.

He was wearing one of his beautifully tailored suits the first time I saw him, a bespoke number courtesy of Dege & Skinner, Savile Row, established 1865 - like all of his suits and most of his shirts, as I later found out. The perfect fit of his suits draws subtle attention to the width of his shoulders before nipping in closely at the waist. His shoes are handmade, because of course they are, by Crockett & Jones in Jermyn Street, which is handily situated just a few streets away from Savile Row and has been in business nearly as long as Dege & Skinner. And he carries a silver-topped cane, which fits the whole pre-war man about town aesthetic, but its origins and uses are… well, let’s just say that those are a bit more esoteric.

Nightingale’s entire look, not forgetting his Burberry coat, was more than familiar to me by the time I’d spent a year or two at the Folly, so I’m really not sure why his new driving gloves came as any sort of surprise – but they did.

Gloves of all sorts are a necessary evil in our line of work, but of course Nightingale’s driving gloves were nothing like anything that comes as police standard issue. They were made of thin, high quality brown leather, very supple, with ventilation holes along the knuckles, and lined with some sort of soft wool fabric – probably cashmere. But the day came when the quality of the materials and workmanship couldn’t disguise how well-worn Nightingale's gloves were. Not even Molly’s careful ministrations could make them look even remotely at their best, so eventually Nightingale bit the bullet and ordered – probably from some fifth generation family business with an ampersand in its name – a new pair of driving gloves.

I didn't even know that Nightingale had finally got… I'm sorry, procured, the new gloves until the first time we took the Ferrari for a spin, the one that used to belong to the practitioner formerly known as the Faceless Man and recently revealed to be one Martin Chorley. I'd been itching to take the Ferrari for a test drive since the moment it was impounded in the garage at the Folly, awaiting 'evaluation'. Nightingale still hardly ever lets me drive his Jag by myself, though - one of these days I'll actually get to the top of the priority list for that advanced driving test, but I'm not holding my breath - so I didn't bother asking if there'd be any chance that I could take the Ferrari out without him. Fortunately, he was almost as keen as I was to find out what the Ferrari could do.

I was vaguely aware that Nightingale was wearing his new gloves when he turned the key in the ignition, but at the time most of my attention was on the way the engine effortlessly purred into life. Russell Square isn't exactly the best place to drive, well, anything, let alone a Ferrari, so I waited as patiently as I could while Nightingale negotiated the London traffic and pointed us in the general direction of Oxford.

We were on our way to visit Professor Postmartin, a typical, even stereotypical Oxford don in every way, except that he moonlights as the official archivist for the Folly. He'd phoned the day before to let us know that he'd discovered some uncatalogued volumes in a hat box in a forgotten cupboard at the top of a cobwebbed spiral staircase - or somewhere like that - and he wanted us - well, Nightingale - to take a look at them.

"There's no great rush, Thomas. You can look them over the next time something brings you up to Oxford," Postmartin said.

Nightingale and I exchanged a look at that - he had speakerphone turned on, wonder of wonders, though it's possible he'd just hit the button by mistake - and decided without a word being said that the Ferrari was the thing that would bring us to Oxford.

The thing about being a passenger in a Ferrari? It's totally different to driving one. Those cars were designed for speed before anything else, which means a stiff suspension, thin tyres, and cutting back on extraneous extras like much in the way of padding beneath the beautifully finished black nero leather upholstery. All of which is fine if you're sat behind the wheel and feeling the thing rumble into life beneath your hands, and then having it do your bidding with every tiny change of course. But when you're in the passenger seat you feel it rumble to life beneath your arse, and you feel every. single. dip and pothole.

Apparently, my idea of patience is somewhat different from Nightingale's, because we hadn't even made it as far as the M40 when he glanced at me and suggested that perhaps I could find some way of keeping myself occupied on my phone until we got out of London.

I realised I'd been drumming my fingers on the leather-lined passenger door, and hastily returned my hand to my lap, trying to look the picture of innocence. It turns out that I'm no better at that than I am at pretending to be patient, because Nightingale snorted - actually snorted! - softly before he returned his attention to the road.

I really was intending to do what Nightingale had 'suggested', and I shifted in the seat so that I could reach into my pocket for my phone, but just as I did, Nightingale's arm moved and caught my eye - and I forgot to breathe.

I honestly didn't know why. I'd seen Nightingale drive before, many times. It should have been such an ordinary movement that I didn't even consciously register it, but his hand flexed as it closed around the gear stick and I swallowed. Hard. I probably should have looked away then. Okay, I definitely should have looked away then, but instead I took my first proper look at Nightingale's new driving gloves.

The new gloves were similar to the old ones, except in every way that they weren't. They were soft, high quality leather, and covered his hands as if… well, they had been made for him,  but where the old ones were a worn brown, these were midnight black. At least, they were on the part that covered the back of his hand. Underneath, on the palm, they were smooth red leather. Not the fire brick red of the Ferrari's paint job; Nightingale wouldn't be caught dead wearing such a flashy colour. No, the leather of the gloves was a few shades darker than the red of the Ferrari, but there was no denying that the new gloves fitted this car - just as the old gloves had been a perfect fit with the brown leather upholstery and wooden trim in the Jaguar, I realised.

And damn, did they fit Nightingale.

I choked on the thought in utter horror before I even got to the end of it, and quickly turned it into a coughing fit. I hadn't really… had I? About my governor? About Nightingale?

"Everything all right, Peter?" Nightingale asked in mild concern.

I nodded, my eyes watering as I croaked out a not very convincing, "Fine." I reached down into the bag of supplies at my feet to see what Molly had packed for us. Anything not to have to look Nightingale in the face right then. Suddenly, being in the Ferrari was absolutely the last place I wanted to be.