#i should really nail down whether she actually has those or not.

[aberration-abbey]

shout out to Queenie's tail stripes, which appear and disappear at random apparently

[muntitled]

𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐲 𝐕𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 | 𝐋𝐮𝐤𝐚𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧

Lukas Matsson x Fem!Reader | Kendall Roy x Fem!reader

Summary: Kendall had always been a competent, steady boyfriend, but there is always, always room for improvement.

Warnings: Language, Politics, Business, Cheating, Mentions of murder, Smut (+18) Minors DNI, CNC, Rough Sex, choking, degradation, ownership kink, dom/sub dynamics. Roman as his own warning.

I am mentally unwell, and so is Matsson.

Due to your perilous schedule as a political and public figure, arguing with your lover had never really made it past scheduling in the smorgasbord of your career. Perhaps that is why Kendall decided to pick unnecessary fights in the middle of a Swedish trip. He felt, and rightfully so, infinitesimally insignificant when compared to the hellscape that is your established career in the American political sphere.

You can see it in the way his broad shoulders hunch slightly, the way his larger lower lip protrudes into a petulant pout.

You're appalled.

"Kendall, you can't be fucking serious," Your first night on Matsson's retreat was scheduled to be filled with myriad orgasms in myriad uncanny positions. You and Kendall should be christening this luxury suite, but, instead you find your voice has climbed to ungodly octaves to a point that you feared you may shatter the glass wall that displayed the quiet Norwegian woods.

You couldn't give even half a shit as to whether others housed in adjoining tree-house suites might hear your furious bickering.

"You're a fucking child," he says lowly, desperately trying to regain control over the situation but only fumbling it by the second, "Do you know that?"

"No!" You exclaim, "Iverson and Sophie are!" He turns his back to you. Your nails dig into the bedsheets, "Those are your actual children, yeah!? When was the last fucking time you called them!? You're too busy measuring your dick against the Swedes- you're too busy to give Rava a fucking call."

"I have met plenty of selfish sociopaths in my day, Kendall, but this is unfathomable." His shadow falls over you like a second cloud in the already darkened suite's interior.

"Did she put you up to this?" He asks in that manic state of his with his hand pointed outward in condemnation of his most recent enemy.

"Are you aware that you have children together? You will know her for the rest of your life, are you aware of that?"

Kendall is quick to deflect, "Fuck! I can't catch a fucking break. Of course you run to my ex and- and- what? You fucking-meet up at Tasha's. Fucking talking about Kendall's cock-rings over your croissants."

You withhold the urge to laugh by letting a wave of fury wash over you anew. "You didn't even tell them their grandfather died before you dragged us out to fucking Norway, Kendall! That's unhinged! You're unhinged!"

"I'm perfectly hinged!" He says, turning away from you, pyjama pants billowing as he grabs his keys and a pack of cigarettes, "I'm like the doors on fucking Downing street, motherfucker," He speaks lowly. Voice simmering. "I'm fucking hinged."

The door slams with finality, leaving you clinging to your robe in front of a backdrop full of trees.

There's a deeply sated sigh that leaves your throat as you haul yourself over the Egyptian linen sheets. Fighting with Kendall had always been an impossible feat- something akin to yelling obscenities at a brick wall smeared with cocaine, but it always left you marginally satisfied after. A part of you felt like you might be saving him.

There is a frown, slight and not at all visible in the low evening light, drifting across your face as you stare down at yourself with disappointment and a hint of disapproval. Kendall was supposed to rip this robe right off you the second you got out of the shower. But, instead, you find yourself turning on your side, staring at the pines beyond the glass.

The sound of the door clicking open, ruins the serenity that had begun to settle.

"I for sure thought you'd gone and blown your head off for real this time, Ken." You mumble monotonously while staring ahead at the glass.

"While all these hungry vultures at my retreat does make me lean into the sound of suicide, I quite enjoy living."

You're quick to pull your unravelled rope across your frame as you sit up against the oak headboard.

"Not Kendall." He says.

Matsson towers enough to hunch slightly and disrupt the flow of the sleek, vertical finishes.

"Why are you here?"

"Well it is my retreat."

He smiles. Or at least you believe that he believes he is smiling. Sharks can't smile, you don't think.

"My house."

Lukas shoves his hands in pockets as he continues to stare at you. His disciplined eyes never stray or drift across your exposed legs, they never gloss over your deadly grip on the tightened robe digging into the plushness across your middle.

He's staring at you. Eyes boring into eyes.

"I've come to deliver a noise complaint."

"Consider it delivered."

He does not leave. Instead, he delves deeper into your space, the space shared with your boyfriend. You watch carefully as Matsson plants himself on the edge of the bed. There is an air of nervousness that bristles throughout the Norwegian woods as he brings one leg up to cross the other. You watch, entranced by how the soft Tom Ford sweatpants crease slightly under his fluid movements. His beige Balenciaga shirt sits comfortably and it elicits a sense of control as he makes himself comfortable in front of you.

The one thing you could never allow yourself to be was intimidated, and intimidation is all you heard from the mouths that affirmed this man. However, the subtle yet suffocating label whoring, the designer sandals…

He was just another man, suffocated by the weight of his own money. He had everything to prove. That gave you control.

"I didn't know when Kendall brought me on this trip that I was to be subjected to an invasion of privacy,"

"I heard you the first time," He says, chuckling in complete condescension, "I am aware you're here with Kendall. You don't have to bring him up the whole fucking time."

"Are you here under work pretences then? I'm not involved in the hellscape that is ATN, nor the Nazi wonderland that is Waystar so I would make a lousy spy."

"I know who you are," his eyes dart away, giving you enough time to break slightly, take heavier breaths and compose yourself, "I've seen the work you are… attempting to accomplish in that flaccid dick of a country," His gaze is back on you, "And while I do applaud you, politics bores me. You're all fucked anyway, I just came here to enquire if you would like to have sex with me?"

The manner in which he says those words, so calmly and succinctly, has you praying for another moment of regeneration while he darts his eyes away.

"You mean the noise complaint was a fluke?"

"In addition to the noise complaint, I would like to sleep with you, yes."

You're practically suffocted with the over abundance of choice. Matsson would be a fun and interesting side project for you to sink your claws into and manipulate with the added advantage of sex.

But there is a darkness lurking behind this man's gaze that promises far too much risk with little to no reward.

"No, I think I'm good. Thanks for stopping by, Lukas. It was certainly not a pleasure talking to you-"

You speak calmly, shuffling off the bed so you can escort him to the door. "Please find yourself outside of my personal and habitual space kindly and quickly-" but the axis tilts, and he does a daring thing by encircling a strong grip on your forearm. You try to lurch your arm out of his iron grip but it's fucking sealed around you like a constricting python. The darkness seems so incredibly poignant. God, all this man holds is darkness.

"I did not ask for myself." He says with a hint of condescension, "I asked for you." Matsson has you locked between his spindly legs while your robe billows open. Your face warms as you feel coolness settle against your exposed stomach but Lukas' eyes never leave your own.

From this angle, there is no chance to look away. Everything is maximised, from the wrinkles running like river channels underneath his bright blue eyes to the slight overbite in his teeth, perhaps his only external flaw.

What a dangerous individual.

"They're Roys." Lukas says, "He's a Roy," You suddenly feel juvenile and bashful, as you take the scolding, "You should know better,"

You're only vaguely aware that the distance between you two has been lessening because the air feels warmer. His breath is mixing with yours and his hand is doing a funny little dance along your forearm. "You should know better," He says.

And perhaps you should have closed the distance, perhaps you should have chased him away. You certainly should not have waited for a pair of irregular footsteps approaching to finally push the lumbering man away from you. Thankfully, he kindly obliged although Matsson's hand stalled, still rubbing against your elbow when Kendall stumbles in.

"Uh, what the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck is he doing here?" Kendall's eyes are tired and bloodshot and you step away from Lukas' gravitational pull as you curl into Kendall's side. Kendall's suede Versace jacket is cool but his skin is warm as you burrow into the side of his neck. Your guilt worsens as you feel Kendall's arm curl around your waist.

You speak into Kendall's ear, loud enough for Lukas to hear, "Matsson is still trying to rape your company, I'm afraid. " You say with a lazy smile.

"Already raped," Says Lukas, shuffling passed the two of you, "Logan was the decision maker, remember?"

Before the man finds himself over the threshold, Kendall speaks up.

"Hey, no more private visits, yeah? Not cool."

You watch with bated breath as Matsson only cracks a toothy lopsided grin before tapping the wood of the doorframe and disappearing.

That evening had ended, like most of the evenings to come, with angry, jealousy-fueled sex. There had always been a distinct animosity between Kendall and Matsson but whatever had been in the air seemed to triple. Kendall kept you close during the entire experience. He kept you under Kremlin-level surveillance but he couldn't be with you all the time. In the moments you found yourself without Kendall, Matsson would appear from out of the shadows like a demon, slinking behind you with a hand ghosting your hip. He watched you from above the rim of whiskey-filled tumblers and even asked for your input whenever conversation within the group got a little political. One such conversation had the unfortunate interjection of one Roman Roy, who saw you as another toy in his toy box.

"What do you need two assistants for anyway?" The grinding of your teeth come to a deafening halt as you turn your head to face the youngest Roy. The smile on your face is amicable, some might even call it polite, but it is a well enough facade veneering the tempest brewing beneath.

"What- does Jess hold your balls while you tell knock-off Maya Angelou here" He points to you, "-to bend her head and suck?"

There were a number of things you simply allowed when it came to your courtship with Kendall Roy. You would even shame yourself into admitting that you might have found Kendall's overall emotional incompetence and dysfunctional family quite endearing in the beginning. But, like every magnificent, spine curling orgasm, the magic ebbed away quickly and soon, you were left with nothing but the wetness of his cum, cooling between your thighs.

That is what Kendall and his siblings were like most times.

Cooling, diabolical cum.

"Rome, come on." And therein lay Kendall's consistent, valeant response, of which he chose to defend you.

Rome. Come on.

Simply hearing those words leave his brother's mouth with even the faintest hint of disapproval sent Roman into a frenzy (you could see his pupils dilating and his cock hardening from your spot on a couch adjacent to Roman and Shiv). Matsson's entire foyer was set alight with amicable, drunken murmurs, of which Greg's nervous whimpers were occasionally heard peppered in.

Tom had retired to bed, (whether that would be in the same suite as Shiv, would be a satisfactory cup of tea you would divulge with your girlfriends later.) Matsson and his followers sat in their own private harem in a corner beside you.

"What?" Roman cries, slamming back a handful of ground nuts (an admittedly clever substitute for Swedish alcohol) "I was just asking a question. I know your people like to claim reparations for a lot of shit these days but I'm sure enquiring about the girl my big brother's fucking doesn't equate to slavery."

Although you hated the little demon with every bright blue blood cell running through your arteries, you did admire the sure-fire way he would spit his hateful vitriol.

"I appreciate the faux-concern, Roman." You keep it curt, cute and even forgiving, hoping he might take the win and leave you to down the last of your Hennessey in peace.

"That's your cue," Kendall announces, "Drop it."

"Look at how wet she's getting from my rich white brother finally using his voice to defend her for once." The conversation between the Swedes had long since ceased and your throat clogs as the music tins through hidden speakers. "Kenny so clearly has a type," Says Roman, now facing his brother with his elbows steepled on his knee. "I bet you couldn't wait to dive into that plethora of liberal pussy, could you, big brother?"

Your patience had long since snapped and your words are flying before you could stop them, "Considering you couldn't even get pussy without catching a rape charge or an incredibly disappointed prostitute, I'll assume this pseudo-incest interest you have in Kendall's sex life is normal,"

Roman only laughs, "No amount of sick burns is going to release you from the fact that your fucking a crackhead. Maybe it's the money," he taps the bottom of chin in a flamboyant display of consideration, "Although if it's raping our company that's your main goal, the Swedes might have you beat." Matsson straightens in your periphery, not by a lot but by enough to have a stoney smile cracking across your face.

"ATN is not my vice. Racist Propaganda doesn't get me as wet as it gets you, Roman."

"How convenient. I thought all Leftys held special orgys dedicated to besmirching racist propoganda."

Your response was already loaded in the back of your throat, aimed and ready to fire at Roman with reckless abandon. If it weren't for Lukas' interjection, you would have hoped to leave the little man bleeding all over Matsson's marble floors.

"You let him talk to your woman like that?" The rest of the party had left this specific ring of people behind, but that seemed okay. Everyone within the circle, the important people, were silent as Matsson turned his attention to a floundering Kendall.

"Maybe worry about your situation over there and I'll worry about mine."

"I'm not worried." Says Lukas, with a fierce stoicism that was so unique to him. Your heart rate speeds up ever so slightly as the couch groans while Lukas begins to rise. His friends each hold knowing smiles. Hungry smiles.

"Would you like to know why I'm not worried?" Asks Lukas, advancing with a slow gait. You turn your head just in time to watch Kendall's Adam's apple against his throat. He was speechless as per usual when the discussion didn't involve drugs or stock prices.

"Ask." Says Lukas as he advances. "Ask me why I'm not worried."

Upon you first meeting, you had found Lukas' height to be quite rude and unbecoming. You expected him to duck down, almost out of courtesy for the rest of the world laying low underneath him. As his shadow falls over you and Kendall, you find yourself grateful for this giant man making your boyfriend feel small for once- almost as small as you were made to feel around the Roys.

"Why aren't you worried?" Kendall's voice is still masked with confidence as he peers up at Matsson.

Matsson, who's teeth glint in the low evening light, like a hungry shark. He bends down low. You move slightly out of the way as he whispers into Kendall's ear.

"Because I'm gonna fuck her, okay?"

Absolute silence grows pregnant between the two and you're left to do nothing but watch as the exchange unfolds and Kendall's perceived control over everything and everyone unravels. His mouth opens and closes slightly while Matsson watches with a sadistic sort of pleasure in his eye…

"What the fuck did you just say to me?"

"Nothing," Says Lukas, having returned to his full height. "I didn't say anything. I just asked your-" His blue eyes darts to you and back, "-friend, if she'd like to see my bookshelf in the living room. I saw her reading Bronte earlier," Matsson shrugs, "Thought I might extend the invitation."

Lukas is not one to wait for confirmation, nor is he a man that waits for validation. He shuffles out his foyer, quite comfortably leaving present company behind with his hands stuffed in his pockets. No rebuttal from Kendall needed.

"Where the hell do you think you're going? What are you doing?" You lift yourself from the couch, ironing out the invisible creases on your plaid Chanel skirt as your eyes dart to Roman, now in idle conversation with Siobhan.

"They're just books, Kendall." You sigh softly. "You can't honestly believe I'd be any safer here." You deliver one final gaze at his lesser appealing siblings before following Matsson out of the foyer. The amount of people congesting the dark corridors lessen as you venture further into Matsson's abode. The walls are built with a dark, heavily sanded stone. Something casting a very ominous, yet unmistakably earthy glow throughout the corridor as the mouth spills into a large and defining living room. The colours are dark. The coal walls are all encompassing and Matsson stands beside a low leather couch, waiting rather awkwardly for your arrival.

"There is no library or bookshelf." He says with his hands still stuffed in the pockets of his sweats.

"I figured. You strike me as someone that would keep all their books stored on some gadget."

"Technology and leisure are the two civilizers of man," He says, watching you with bated breath as you slink around his living room, eyeing but never once prodding his things.

"Don't misquote Disraeli, it's not very attractive."

Matsson seems to relax at that, opting to take a step closer to you as he speaks, "I'll misquote Disraeli as much as I want. The 'increased means and increased leisure' part seems a little far-fetched." Your heart begins to hammer in your chance at the advancing man and you turn, whether out of cowardice or bashfulness, choosing rather to examine the sculpture along his mantle.

Your back begins to straightens as warmth radiates from him. He does not move but he cages you in. You would not be able to leave his sphere even if you wanted to.

"We don't have to fuck, obviously. It just didn't seem safe for you to stay in that situation."

You turn slowly and you find yourself slightly jarred by Matsson's proximity. His turtleneck hugs a string and definite build and the hunger in his eyes melts all inhibitions.

"I don't need saving."

"I'm talking about the little angry man." He says, referring to Roman. "I've seen your debates. It's the little nugget of American politics I find myself quite entertained by and I have no desire to wipe a Roy's blood off my floors this evening."

His words end up snapping any and all inhibition as you're throwing yourself quite mercilessly at him. The kiss is silent but so inexplicably charged allowing you to bump into various pieces of furniture in the process of pushing you up against the nearest stone wall. A wall that is cold to the touch, eliciting a surprised gasp which fuels Lukas all the more. He displays wet slobbering kisses down the nape of your neck as he murmurs drunkenly in your ear.

"I like seeing you like this. I like seeing you among my things." The conviction present in his gravelly vibrato has a pool of wetness gathering in between your legs. Your arm circles around his broad back until your pulling, rather roughly at the blonde hair curling at the nape of neck. This had consequently been a morbid mistake because his grip travels to your throat lightning fast, compressing a dangerous weight on your oesophagus as he rips his lips away from your throat.

"You don't get to do that," he says far too casually. "You don't get to assume control when you are here in my house with my things."

Matsson keeps his eye trained on you but your focus in compounded, solely, on his wandering hand tracing the hem of your skirt. "Hey, hey, hey." As you strive to keep watch of his wandering hand, Matsson moves his head into your line of vision.

"My things. Yeah? You're apart of that now."

As his hand inches underneath your skirt you're suddenly flooded with a wave of unfamiliar emotions - fear being the most poignant and defining one.

"I don't want to do this anymore-" You're not sure whether you mean it or not but you're quite certain that Matsson doesn't care. You're suddenly truly aware that you had released something you don't really know how to control.

"Bullshit, you don't want to do this anymore." You finally feel his hand sliding into your panties and your legs wavers underneath you, "Your words say stupid shit," Sings Lukas as his fingers ghost over your swollen clothes, "But your cunt just can't seem to lie." His grip on your throat tightens before relaxing as he brings your head up to his lips. "You're fucking soaked."

"I'll fucking sue you," Although you're unable to assume a single confident tone as his fingers begin to play with your cunt, "I'll fucking take you to court for fucking assault, motherfucker."

"You wanna call Kendall for assistance?" He asks, slyly pushing his middle finger deep inside you with no regard for your strangled gasp. "Here, let's call him together. Say 'Kendall!'"

The only thing able to leave your mouth is a straggled moan as Matsson keeps you pinned to the wall by the throat. The sound of your voice - so incoherent and helpless has him evading any sliver of decency he might have had. "Fuck, you're so perfect." He places a chaste kiss on your cheek before spinning you around until he is sandwiched between your body and the wall. "I have to fuck you."

"Watch the door for me," he says, pulling your hips right up against the bulge in his pants. "Watch just in case Kendall, shows up. Right, sweet girl?"

You're nodding dumbly as Lukas hunches his tall frame while grinding his bulge into your backside. He has your skirt lifted, and his shadow casted over you as he murmurs diabolical things into your ear.

"God, you're a fucking slut, you're such a fucking slut." He keeps a grip on your throat while the unoccupied hand reaches around to lift your shirt haphazardly, "No amount of smart ass comments will ever hide the fact that you're just another whore." The casual air with which he degrades has you simultaneously humping the air while you push back against his bulge. It is in that moment when he finally decides to release his aching cock from his sweatpants dotted with precum.

"Jesus Christ, feel how hard you made me. Feel how fucking turned on I am just because you decided to be a stupid slut." You can feel the head of his cock pressing into you until you're unable to hold in the desperation.

"Jesus- Lukas!"

"What? You want me to fuck you? I think you want me to fuck you but I'm not sure." You're unsure of what he's asking, too blinded by the possibility of a carefully curated orgasm.

"Go on." He says, "Ask me to fuck you. Ask me to fuck your pussy while your boyfriend waits just downstairs."

There are tears pooling in your eyes at the sheer lewdness and the unapologetic quality of this betrayal, but your mouth opens and soon, you're shakily crying out. "Please just fuck me, Lukas."

His cock rams into you with a surety that leaves you winded. He seems as if his patience had been waning as well, what with the haggard sigh that leaves his throat and the numerous disquiet groans that float in the air. Despite yourself, you do keep a half-lidded gaze on the entrance, not put off, but rather spurred on with the possibility of your boyfriend finding you being railed by his latest rival. The thought alone has you clenching around Lukas' cock with your orgasm cresting.

"Whatever you're thinking about, I'm going to need you to think about it again- you're so fucking tight."

There's an animalistic quality to the sex- being bent over for him while he rests against a wall, a firm grip on your throats and your tits as he rams himself into you again and again.

It's far too much.

You wouldn't think there was something so ruthless hiding underneath such a calm veneer but that's all it is. All it always had been. A veneer.

"You're not with him anymore, do you hear me?"

"Fuck- Lukas I'm gonna cum soon," his grip on your throat tightens until it vacuums out any and all air. Your hand encircles his wrist, begging for release but to no avail.

"Tell me," he says as he continues to fuck mercilessly into you, "Tell me you don't belong to him." He finally gives you lee-way to talk and you're gasping out your response, "I don't. I don't belong to him," he nods slightly, brows firing as he bites into your shoulders.

"Fuck- I didn't plan to cum inside you-"

"I don't fucking care- I'm really close." Lukas nods quickly before releasing your neck to drag your cheek until your faces are pressed together in a smouldering kiss. "Fuck I'm gonna cum inside you-"

His words already have you diving headfirst into a groundbreaking orgasm. You're crying out helplessly, until Matsson has enough sense to cover your mouth with one large hand. He fucks you through it, filling you with cum as he groans just as loudly as you had been.

"Fuck," he chuckles quietly, "Kendall is not going to like that."

"Kendall," You breath heavily, safely contained in Lukas' comforting grip, "Is not my Keeper."

Lukas delivers a chaste kiss on your cheek, his stubble grazing against the side of your face.

"I plan on killing them anyway." He says, simultaneously unaware and aware that he's drifting into pillowtalk.

"Every last one of them."

[mumms-the-word]

Love Letters

Alistair and Lucy Amell

These letters were written as a collaboration between @callmethebrightness and myself for the lovely @elspethdekarios's birthday. callmethebrightness wrote the AMAZING letter from Alistair (and I'm obsessed with it, she nailed his voice so well) while I wrote Lucy Amell's reply letter <3 This was so much fun to work on and I am in awe of the talent my friends have in this little corner of tumblr. Thank you @elspethdekarios for trusting us with your OC! I hope you have the happiest of birthdays and that you adore these love letters!

Full text under the cut!

Alistair's Letter by @callmethebrightness

To Warden-Commander Lucy Amell, Hero of Ferelden: Lucy, I love you. I know, bad form to start a letter like that; without even a hello and how are you, but it's literally the only thing that comes to mind when I think of you, so I had to write it down first. I love you. There. Now to the rest. We're making strides looking into the Wardens and Corypheus, this "false Calling" he's managed, though it's not the sort of progress I'm particularly excited about. Every time I think I've figured out the worst of it, more bad news rears its ugly head. I'm a bit less skeptical now that we have some proper allies: not only the Champion of Kirkwall, but Inquisitor Sulah Lavellan, who has all her people putting their heads together to do something about all this. We should consider having an army at our disposal for all our problems, it's really marvelously convenient. Skyhold is an amazing place. Not just the fortress itself, where I've gotten into all sorts of places I shouldn't be ("Oh, I haven't seen this door before" -- surprise, it's a dungeon. No, thank you.) but the people and the activity here. It feels like everyone from the servants to the Inquisitor herself is committed to working together. I've met Fereldans, Orlesians, city elves, surface dwarves, ex-Templars, mages, farmers, nobles, Chantry sisters, Dalish spies, qunari, Tevinters...I could go on. If anything might be able to actually unite all of Thedas, the way the Chantry says it does, it's this thing. It's this place. Maker, I wish you could see it. Every time I see something incredible in my travels, I think that, you know. "Lucy would love this, I wish she could see it." And every time I see something horrible I think, "Maker, I wish Lucy was with me." You get the idea, don't you? You, with me, all the time, no matter what. Sometimes you're all I think about. But you knew that already. We're going to figure this thing out, Lucy. I'm going to make sure the Wardens have nothing more to fear from this Elder One, even if I have to fight him myself. And when you return, whether you've found what you're looking for or not, and I see you again -- I'm going to take you in my arms and never let you go. I mean it. That's not an exaggeration. I never want to be apart from you again, Lucy. Nothing is more important to me than that. What else? I love you. I miss you. Leliana is scarier than ever, but in a good way. I've eaten Orlesian cheese and do not care for it. I miss you. I told the Inquisition's ambassador I would include a small note in their missive to the Hero of Ferelden but my letter is now longer than the official one. I hope those creepy ravens of Leliana's can carry a little extra weight. When you see it, write her back and tell her it's creepy; she won't listen to me. There are less terrible birds, Leliana. Maker, I miss you so much I don't want to stop writing to you. Is that odd? Probably. But you wouldn't say odd. "Alistair, you're too sweet." That's what you always say when I'm being a fool, especially a lovestruck fool. Can't say I don't appreciate it, though. I'll write you again soon. There's talk of the fortress at Adamant, a potential siege. All sorts of military talk I do not care for. Whatever happens, you'll hear from me soon. I never can stand to wait long. Yours forever, Alistair

Lucy Amell's Letter (by me)

To Warden Alistair: [In a smaller script] Leliana, don’t be nosy! You’ve got your own letter! My darling, I love you. I don’t care if it’s bad form, just seeing those words at the start of your letter gave me so much joy and comfort that I couldn’t even read the rest of letter at first. I just wanted to linger there on those words and imagine them in your voice. I love you. I love you. I love you. And, Maker’s breath, I miss you, too. As my journey out west bring me farther and farther away from recognizable society, I find myself traveling alone more often than not. There are good people out here, and plenty of interesting distractions, and more than enough danger to keep my mind occupied, but again and again I wish you were at my side. I know taking down the Elder One is important, but these days I wish I had been more selfish and brought you along. But what’s done is done, and it’s good that you’re there, trying to shake some sense into our fellow Wardens. Someone has to.  What you’ve told me about the situation, and what little Inquisitor Lavellan has included in her letter, troubles me. It sounds like Corypheus is more dangerous than we thought…but if the Inquisition has the army and the resources that you say it does, then I trust them to succeed. And I trust you to survive whatever comes your way. We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes, the two of us, haven’t we? Regardless, I’ve asked Inquisitor Lavellan to look after you. I know, I know, you would say I’m fussing over you too much (but I know you love it). But if she’s your ally, then she’s my ally too, and I feel no shame in asking this much of her. I want you in one piece when we meet again, my love. Be good for me. Don’t wander into dungeons that you can’t wander out of. Avoid the Orlesian cheese if you hate it so much. Remind Leliana to eat every now and again. I know her work keeps her busy, and I can only imagine that the death of the Divine has shaken her more than she’s letting on. And take care of yourself, too.  Oh, and I’m not telling Leliana that her birds are creepy. Just be glad she’s not sending missives via nug, or we’d never get letters to one another. I’ll write soon, my darling. I love you. I miss you. Yours always, Lucy [below, in a messier scrawl, as if added to the end of the page in haste] Alistair, I’m glad I didn’t send this letter right away! I’ve got big news. I think I’ve found something, and if I’m right, it means the end of this journey is in sight. I don’t want to say what it is just yet, but…I have a really good feeling about this. This might be the cure we’ve been hoping for.  But if not, I don’t care. If it’s not this, then I’ve got nothing else to investigate out here. If this isn’t our cure, then the silver lining is this—I’m coming home, and nothing is going to stop me. Meet me in Redcliffe when all of this is said and done. Whether I’ve found the cure for our Callings or not, I will be there, in the place we first started to fall in love, at the start of the next summer. And once we are together again, my love, I swear that nothing will ever separate us again. With all my love, Lucy

[horrorslvts]

just my type | leo valdez part one

keywords : leo valdez, riordanverse, canon x oc

writer's note : uhh yall ate up the idea of a daughter of hermes oc x leo valdez so mommy will feed u my children... i present to you absolute chaos and comedic relief couple. enjoy.. ship is very inspired by 'just my type - the vamps'

the sound of metal hitting against metal reached the girl's ears, making her eyebrows stiffen a bit as she made her way onto the real crime scene; all those awful sounds came from argo II being made; and although silena de leon, daughter of hermes; beloved half-sister of luke castellan really respected the cause, the sound made her absolutely cringe.

the raven haired girl almost tripped over a few tools that had been abandoned in the middle of the way, making her cuss under her breath and look down at her sneakers to make sure they were not damaged by some stupid leftover hammer. with a little shake of the head silena finally approached the curly haired boy who was, apparently, putting some wooden planks on the side of the boat, and also spaced out enough to not realize she was making her way near. he stood on the third step of a high ladder. "hey bob the builder; don't you want to catch a break sometime?"

leo looked down at the -surprisingly- shorter girl, and flashed a little smile. he lifted his arm to wipe some dust away from his face and nose with his sleeve and shrugged a bit. "if you are asking me to-" he gently threw the hammer on his hand aside, letting it fall on some spare nails, and stepped down from the ladder he was on. "interrupted your sleep again? sorry, i'll make sure to delay an entire quest so you can get a few more hours of naps" leo said with a little chuckle and leaned with one arm on the boat, his hand running through his curls pushing them back making silena watch in awe.

now, silena and leo didn't know each other long. for what it's worth, silena met him and percy through annabeth who she has known forever; given that luke set them up to be friends when sil arrived at the camp for the first time; and they actually did. but gods, ever since meeting this dam son of hephaestus she had been losing her mind. whether it was the back and forth signs and jokes, or the absolute denial that either of them would ever see each other in any way above platonic; something made her heart skip a beat whenever she was close to the tanned boy, that's all she knew; should have seen her face when he first laughed at her spaniard accent; any other person would have taken a punch but he just got lucky with a push.

"yeah, that'd be so sweet of you!"

leo gave her a death stare with a chuckle, knowing damn well she wasn't anywhere near serious.

"so if it isn't that, why pay us a visit?"

silena slowly walked towards the rope ladder of the ship, tugging on it . "just curious to see how the ship is going. very good apparently." she pulled herself up the rope ladder which instantly caused a reaction by the other, making leo rush to bring her down in case she fell.

"whoa whoa you know that's not tied well yet right?!"

sil sat on one of the rope ladder's thin steps, only a couple feet above him and chuckled, swinging her feet to show her winged sneakers. "why do you always forget valdez?"

the curly haired sighed a bit. " if you get all tangled up in the ropes these aren't going to save you-." he looked at her from below with that signature troublemaking smile that brought an aching on her heart.

"i know, but you will."

the boy let his suspenders fall from each shoulder and climbed back up on his ladder, finally reaching her height and being almost face to face with the blue eyed girl; his breath was always cut short when the two were this close. it was funny how after so long of percy and annabeth being sappy now annabeth teased these two like her life depended on it.

"although you're not exactly knight in shining armor material.." silena reached to wipe his forehead from some mechanical oil. " more like greasy armor.."

"you know what's funny, sil?"

"hm?"

"your back is touching my fresh painted planks-."

sil finally realized why her shirt was sticking on her back for the past minute.

"VALDEZ-!"

[sleepyficss]

taco (ii) x reader headcanons? general headcanons would be nice, although if you could include ones involving reader having a cutesy girly gender presentation + having BPD and NPD that would be even better. please and thank you :3

taco, bpd & npd headcanons!

taco x reader, fluff

authors note:

as my first actual request, thank you so much!! the fact that its for taco, too <33 i don't have either bpd nor npd myself, but i will try my hardest to make it accurate!! + by general, i wasn't sure whether you meant romantic or not, so i left it up in the air. could be read as either.

- written as post-ii season 2 in mind (so don't blame me if she seems inaccurate in a few episodes time lolol)

- taco has struggled a lot with her own relationships over the last few years, so the fact that you've gotten this close with her? she must really trust you.

- she's honestly terrified of you leaving her, considering the number of people who have done exactly that in the past (although, it hadn't been unwarranted...)

- swears to do whatever she can to keep you from leaving her, especially since you might be one of the very few people she has left.

- because of this, she completely understands it when you're afraid of the possibility of abandonment – but you learn to work through it together.

- she loves to remind you of how much you mean to her, that she wouldn't want you to be any different than the way you currently are <3

- the last thing she wants is for you to feel that you aren't good enough, or to have bad self-images of yourself.

- makes SURE that you know her opinion of you is highly regarded, that she loves you for you, no matter if you've had a bad week.

- taco has definitely picked up on any micro-expressions, or usually unseen habits you have that reveal the way you're feeling; especially for times that you struggle more to show those emotions.

- in turn, she's learned how to keep her own emotions in check. taco is a very grounded person, and knows how to keep calm in most situations, and will often be the one to sort out difficult situations that involve either, or both, of you.

- of course, she has her own triggers that may set her off. as long as you're there to remind her that she has you, and that the past is the past, and it can't be changed, she'll calm down enough to listen to you.

- she's a very patient person, and takes pride in understanding other people easily.

- if you're ever having a difficult day, or particularly bad 'flare-ups', taco understands not to always take any harsh words you say to heart. most of the time, she knows you don't really mean them anyways.

- she'll always wait for you to have calmed down to talk things through with you. trying to talk while hot-headed will only make things worse, she of all people knows that.

- at the end of the week, though, all she wants to do is sit down with you and relax.

- whether thats having sort of a parallel-play with each other (where she'll often read a book, or do some sort of puzzle, while you do your own activities), or you'll simply talk to each other for hours, about anything and everything.

- she's almost clingy herself, wanting to spend most of her free time with you when there's nothing else to do.

- taco isn't the type to admit it, but she enjoys seeing the outfits you come up with, complimenting you any chance she gets.

- if you ask her for ideas (in terms of what you should wear, what colour you should do your nails, etc), she'll be at a bit of a loss. she won't be much help in that department, you're better off giving her a few options to choose from, first.

- i can imagine you'd be able to convince her to match a bowtie to your outfit, though. you two would be the cutest !!

- if either of you have days where you feel almost too tired to get out of bed, the other will be happy to join in setting up the couch with blankets and pillows, and turning the television on to a show that both of you enjoy.

- taco just wants a cosy life, now that she's put her past 'plans' way behind her, and would be happy to spend every day with you.

[finalacts]

Your thoughts on ep 7 give me life! I get that Becca is making frustrating decisions for some viewers--but I think you hit the nail on the head! All of the characters are treated with such care, but Rebecca is consistently a favorite of mine. She's so messy. She's so human--and she's trying to find meaning and sift through these tortured voices because she hears herself in them. The show has set up very clear parallels, and Riley Keough's portrayal has added so much to that! This version of Rebecca Godfrey is so haunted by her past "mistake" and they made that so clear via her conversation with Warren about wishing she could drown sometimes too and those small moments in the bath. I remember reading an early interview with Quinn Shepherd talking about conversations she had with the real Rebecca Godfrey as they were shaping the character, and she mentioned how glad the real Rebecca was that the character would sometimes be an anti-hero. As a narrative tool, the story really needed that, to have her stand as a foil to Cam and what she stands for. God, Just, the conversations this show is trying to have. About Manipulation. Violence--communal and interpersonal. About justice--whether or not it's attainable, how it can look so different. About truth and stories and the media and the audience and how they keep getting tangled up and fundamentally change each other--

Sorry, I just love this show so much and appreciate your insight so much!!!

hi thank you for this!!! yes, becca as the show's anti hero is so apt and i love the juxtaposition between her and cam as well--i think, at their core, they want the same things, they're just completely missing each other on a few key points and that tension is wonderful to watch unfold. i love that the show operates in a grey area because it allows for nuanced discussion of things like policing and justice. like, becca is 100% right in her belief that the system will always work in favor of the most privileged but cam is also 100% right that we should first and foremost center victims in our critique of the criminal justice system! they're both sooo right now if they would just sit down and finally talk to each other......

also to your last point about the show also being about truth and media and audiences--100%!!! becca coming in as a journalist/writer, supposed discoverer of truth (in opposition to cam, the police, who is supposed to be the gatekeeper) but then it's revealed that her book is actually entirely biased by her own perspective/experiences thus complicating what objectivity and truth and journalism even are? the entire character of rebecca godfrey being an in-show critique of the true crime genre overall? as a j-school dropout this is very delicious to me. this show is so smart i love talking about it thank you for sending this ask!!!

[saskiavalentineapologist]

sketch time

you will sit down. you will look at my horrible little women. And You Will Appreciate Them

no this is NOT going under a cut you will see the blood sweat and tears i put into belialah's demon form and you will appreciate it, me, and saskia's off the charts world class monsterfucker status

we got saskia. we're familiar with saskia--or at least you should be. go look at the art by korppipoika and give them so many notes--this post will wait. and while you're out, look at the post about the matriarchs too. and if you're not up to date on saskia and belialah, here's another one for your list. i'll be here when you get back.

up to date? excited? horny? me too!!

so we got those two. in order for the images: saskia (recent), belialah (first draft, still happy with this and haven't been able to capture this vision since)

we got their dynamic:

saskia being a bitch and belialah being, despite everything, head over heels. still can't quite nail belialah's human face, but we're learning

...it took me a long time to nail down belialah's demon form. it went through a lot of drafts---many of which i am not sharing. this one is the oldest one i'm willing to share:

i believe this is draft 3? patch notes from earlier drafts: 4 fingers instead of three, took out "humanoid" eyes, added floaty halo bits. other than that, this is what it's mostly stayed true to. chase gave me an inspo and i remixed it and made it worse because i love body horror. so we have this! extra joint between the wrist and elbow, loads and loads of eyes, sharp teeth (yum!), wings, and a broken halo plus the big horn. love her. she has spider legs below her waist--she has "skirts" that are made from her skin that she usually wears (has?) over them.

made some eensy sketches for ideas:

i tinkered on size, proportion, posture, etc. it's vague, but not exact for either of them. i want a bigger height difference and this is for me first and foremost

i settled on this body type for saskia:

no nipples so she's not naked :) this is for anatomy reference, tumblr. ANATOMY. be so nice to me ;-;

ignore the stuff at the edges, this is part of a larger project idk if i'll finish where i look at all the matriarchs and their body types. saskia is the most...well, besides ethalind, the most hourglass shape. this is the most recent drawing of her i have besides the one at the very end, this is the one i would say is most canon. hence why it is included--the last one i have doesn't quite hit right for me. still working on consistency.

as i improved my art, i wanted to take another stab at belialah. which meant figuring out her lower half.

i did these ones reeaaally recently. i looked at so many things for inspo: crabs, spiders, human pelvises, centaur speculative biology, drider speculative biology, an introspective look at how much of a monsterfucker i am, etc. until i found something i was happy with. these are within the last few days. the lil sketches at the far bottom right of the first page are what i settled on. after that, i tinkered with how she looks with skirts vs no skirts---ignore the sword, it's no longer accurate to what it actually looks like, but that's endgame shit and no spoilers :)

i'm really happy with how she's turned out and i think she's kickass and awesome and i can't wait to beat her and saskia into the ground.

and then we have:

team gaslight gatekeep girlboss :)

i drew this last night!! really happy with how my art is coming along. i hesitated on whether to draw the skirts, because i think the spider legs are so fucking cool and i know logically the skirts are there but tbh its funner drawing the spider legs than the skirts :(

i want to make it very clear: belialah is submissive in the way a guard dog is submissive, to quote a post i once tagged as gilt and lost. belialah is loyal, devoted, willing to protect--but will wait for an order before acting

btw, to make something else clear: saskia? saw the demon form first. is more attracted to the demon form than the human form. is far more willing to smash with belialah in demon form. i love my weirdest little freak of a woman <3

ok that's all bye

[magicmindless]

have any hcs for Emmlette?

Y’all I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made one of these😭😭 mainly due to (lack of) interest in making these and other sorts of things

Anyways

A HC List but it’s just Emmlette

I really like her… theatre kid chicken lady…

- Very cheerful and sweet but is down-to-Earth. Being a transparent person, she can come off as a bit snarky sometimes but she only means well. She’s a gem to have around and usually tries her best to make people feel comfortable around her

- Has ADHD. It’s hard for her to focus and stay in one place, her thoughts overlap a lot, and she can be forgetful sometimes. She wasn’t diagnosed until her 20s. She uses medicine now to deal with it which helps her enough

- Developed depression for a good portion of her teenage hood and college years. She hated school and needed accommodations to barley keep her grades up but. Undiagnosed ADHD didn’t make it any easier

- Unsurprisingly she’s a theatre kid. It was one of the few classes she was good at and she always made sure to audition for every single musical/play Sakura Bay High ever did during her high school years (yes she went to Sakura Bay High and became a teacher there. Funny huh?)

- Her favorite musical is Into The Woods and she has a fond memory of it because she got to be the witch back in high school (I’m sorry I haven’t watched enough musicals and most of the ones I’ve watched idk if she’d like bear with me-)

- She used to write songs and play them on her piano as an outlet, even going as far as to record them though she’s never really shown them. She still has the recordings and admits that they’re really cringy looking back at

- Should be mentioned she’s actually really good at singing and playing the piano

- Her nails always look bad since she tends to bite or rip her nails whenever she’s bored or stressed out. Vicky nearly fainted seeing her nails for the first time

- The reason she became a theatre teacher was due to not only her having a lack on confidence in herself to make it big as an actress back then, but no one else at the time believed in her either, so she settled for teaching. She does sometimes wonder what could’ve been though…

- She does like teaching and has met some incredible students who’ve gone off to do great things, but teaching can also stress her out whether it’s from misbehaving students, or those who just have no interest and are taking theatre as only an “easy grade” in their eyes

- She’s not only a good support for her students, but also for her adult friends when they need someone to talk to or provide a shoulder to cry on

- Always had a bit of a chicken obsession. She had a neighbor who had chickens when she was little and she’d frequently go to their place to spend time with them. Now she has 4 of her own chickens named Scrambles, Tamagoyaki, Sunny, and Fluffles

- People think it’s weird that she doesn’t like to eat chicken out of guilt but is willing to eat eggs and other meat. It’s just an attachment thing for her

- Likes giving gifts to people randomly. Usually they are edible things like mochi or bread from a bakery but she also gives things like cute little keychains

- A great cook. She likes making cute bentos and stuff like that and has even cooked for her friends and family

- She’ll act like a mom sometimes trying to make sure her friends are eating enough and doing well. Some of her friends (like Petrona and Rollie) have found it irritating but they will sometimes tolerate it

- Is able to cry and stop crying on command. It’s a little disturbing, but helpful in acting

- Is the type of extrovert to adopt introverts, including Petrona

-She can read people’s faces and body language scarily well. Even if someone stands slightly off she can tell if there’s something wrong or bothering someone

- Keeps a bit of a close eye on Petrona since she always worries about her physical and emotional health due to her work ethic. She’ll usually try to do things like get food for Petrona’s lunch break or talk to her a bit if she suspects Petrona’s been crying/having a rough day. And despite Petrona’s annoyances, she seemed to have warmed up to her overtime

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Ben Affleck's interview w/ Premiere (2000)

Adventures in the Celebrity Trade

In which the author faces a dread beast of epic proportions (his own alter ego), perils that would destroy a lesser man (e.g., worldwide fame), and uncouth fans, all whilst shamelessly promoting his new movie

By Ben Affleck | Photography by Sam Jones

Oscar Winner Affleck talks to himself about the hazards of fame, the art of publicity, and why you should see his new movie.

-

I'm promoting my movie. in doing so, it is incumbent on me to do an interview for a movie magazine. I've asked the good people at PREMIERE to let me contribute an article rather than be interviewed, in an effort at a little break from the norm. I've run the first draft past the studio whose movie I'm hawking, and they were kind enough to give me some feedback. In general, I believe they found my pithy little attempt at a first-person description of what it's like to actually do publicity and my own idiosyncratic deconstruction of said process mildly amusing. But they had some notes. With those in mind, let me say this: Every man, woman, and child on this earth must drop everything and run to their local multiplex to see Reindeer Games. Well, there might be a title change in the works, so maybe it won't be called Reindeer Games, but pay that no heed! Whatever the marketing folks decide to call the movie, it is absolutely imperative that you see it immediately, two or three times if need be. Watching this movie will make you smarter, more successful, and a (much) better lover. I implore you, for your own sake, pay to see this movie. It is, quite simply, the single greatest dramatic narrative of the modern era.

Now, on to the irrelevant part.

I. A DRIVE-BY

"Affleck, you suck!" was all I made out as a full can of beer sailed by, inches from my head. I believe that was the precise moment I knew things had changed.

It was a drive-by beer-canning—a little-publicized-but-all-too-real hazard for the working actor in L.A. It was June of 1997, somewhere around midnight. I was coming out of a record store on Sunset Strip, and in retrospect, I guess I should have seen it coming.

I hadn't been subject to public stoning by Budweiser since my high school days, in Boston. I remember thinking that in this new context, it was a fairly artless, albeit effective, form of what in acting class we used to call "a critique of the work." That was the first day it occurred to me that there is a side of fame that might be unpleasant. It was a peculiar induction—one Jason Patric has aptly characterized as "baptism by flashbulb"—to a strange club whose membership requirements are simple: People you've never met, seen, or spoken to develop opinions (occasionally quite negative and almost always judgmental) about you, your work, and whether or not you "suck." Though my holy water was alcoholic and carbonated and gunned at me by strangers, I suddenly had an affinity for how Mr. Patric must have felt.

Before Good Will Hunting and Armageddon, I did quite a few movies, but nobody saw them. In fact, the entertainment press corps in general seemed aggressively disinterested. When I went to Atlanta to promote Chasing Amy, I clearly remember that the few journalists who showed up to interview me seemed bored (with me), dejected (at having such a low-rent assignment), and desperate (during the actual interview) for a reason—any reason—to write anything. Later, the movie became a minor cult hit, and occasionally I would be confronted by a stranger or two (oddly, these interactions also tended to happen in record stores). But instead of berating me, these guys usually wanted to know, "Did you really nail that girl?" "Was she really a dyke?" and "Do you have her number?" While deeply flattering, these rare interactions didn't prepare me in the least for what I was to face down the road.

That night, I wondered if perhaps this was something that even the great ones have had to endure, but I could never quite convince myself that there was some rangy teenager standing outside Brando's house, hectoring the deaf masonry with the likes of "Why'd you pimp Kabuki-style gear in Moreau?!" Surely there is a point at which one is accorded some space, respect, and privacy. I just wasn't there yet.

The gangly kid's harangue at a thespian about his play is a fair confusion of character and actor. But the words and pictures that provoked the beer-flinger were not of a character in a film; they were representations of me in the press-specifically the tabloid press, coverage in which I had taken no part. So I decided to become the captain of my own destiny, or at least of my own image. I decided to stop avoiding or passively enduring press coverage; instead, I would start a conversation with the public by engaging the press, thus having control over the words and images representing me.

This was, to put it mildly, a blunder. I had underrated the forces at play in the creation of celebrity media and overrated my own ability to withstand and control them. As if that weren't bad enough, I also discovered that I was my own worst enemy.

It wasn't until my third or fourth interview was published that I began to suspect something. I would run into people who know me fairly well (like my mom) and they'd fix me with an uncertain and dubious stare. I began to anticipate the inevitable: "I read your thing in [insert name of rag here] . . ." Then their voices would trail off. I knew the sentiment. I'd experienced it before. Earlier in my career I'd get that. People would say, "Hey, I saw Phantoms. . . ." Though I understood the comment in the context of a movie where I played a sheriff in Colorado battling an ill-defined but vaguely menacing sewer monster, I didn't see the connection with the interviews. But when I asked my girlfriend what she thought about the mixed reviews I seemed to be getting, she let me have it. "I don't even recognize that person." "Who?" I lamely asked. "The guy in that interview, in any of your interviews . . . Interview Guy."

Sonofabitch. Interview Guy.

What I found when I read back over my own inanities was as phony a frat-boy-chucklehead as you're ever likely to encounter—and someone who, I hope, bears little resemblance to the guy typing out these words. Somehow I'd inadvertently given birth to a monster. Interview Guy liked to come off as a cross between a pseudo-intellectual college sophomore who'd just read his first chapter of Proust, a drunken motorcycle fanatic, and an all-around, aw-shucks-can-you-believe-I'm-just-a-regular-Joe ham bone.

The idea here is to set this gruesome record straight. I'll bring Interview Guy face-to-face with myself. The transparent difference will dissolve Interview Guy; the remaining image will be me. Either that or it'll be another in a long series of publicity disasters. At this point, I don't have much to lose.

II. INTERVIEW GUY

INT. MY HOUSE-DAY: INTERVIEW GUY, 27, bearing a striking resemblance to Ben Affleck, but wearing Prada stretch plastic trousers, comes running into the room with a beer. He does a handstand, slams his beer, and slouches into the sofa. Ben Affleck, a.k.a. ACTUAL BEN, sits across from him. Actual Ben is not nearly as good-looking as Interview Guy and seems a little taken aback.

INTERVIEW GUY: I take Viagra and I think the kids should try it at home, the little ones! [Interview Guy runs around the room twice, then heads outside. After a beat, he comes crashing back through the door on a motorcycle. He wipes out.]

INTERVIEW GUY: (Cont'd) [Re: motorcycle] I'll get another one. [Re: nothing in particular] Acting is a journey, right bro?

ACTUAL BEN: Not really. Most of the time it seems like a gigantic press junket, where I talk about my "arc" and decry the invasive nature of the press in my life—then go and have my woes translated into Korean and beamed via satellite to Asia. [A beat]

[There is another awkward beat.]

ACTUAL BEN: (Cont'd) Are you unable to smile or behave normally when having your picture taken? I mean, do you have a particular aversion to looking normal, or are you satisfying some innate urge to look like an idiot?

INTERVIEW GUY: Hey, man, I'm just a regl'r guy who likes to have fun-

ACTUAL BEN: Also, in your photographs you seem to clench your jaw, squint your eyes, and suck in your cheeks. Is something wrong with you physically? Do you have TMJ?

INTERVIEW GUY: [Flushing red] I . . . That's my strong, leading-man jawline and laser intensity coming through. . . . I can't help that! That's not on purpose. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: This isn't going anywhere; let's go to the questions. . . .

[Ed Note: During this segment of the interview, both Interview Guy and Actual Ben have agreed to answer a list of prepared questions. A tape recorder was placed in the room, and the following is a verbatim transcript of their answers.]

QUESTION: What is your favorite magazine?

INTERVIEW GUY: Maxim . . . no PREMIERE! This is for PREMIERE, right?

ACTUAL BEN: I don't have a favorite.

QUESTION: Who is your favorite actor?

INTERVIEW GUY: Arnold, Sly, your mom . . . just playin', guy. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, Cole Hauser, Casey Affleck, Jay Lacopo, Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix, Don Cheadle, the brothers Wilson, Ed Norton, Nicolas Cage, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Zeljko Ivanek, Dennis Franz, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Frances McDormand—there are really a ton of actors I think are great and whom I admire. And I honestly believe after seeing The Talented Mr. Ripley and All the Pretty Horses that Matt Damon is one of, if not the, finest young actor around.

INTERVIEW GUY: That Ripley thing, that's a gay picture, right?

ACTUAL BEN: Well, no, it's not. . . .

QUESTION: In the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School, there has been greater scrutiny on the level of senseless and gratuitous violence in movies. What role do you think movie violence plays in influencing real people, and what is the responsibility of filmmakers and actors?

INTERVIEW GUY: I'm so sick of that question. Some idiot kid who played too much Mortal Kombat and can't get a girlfriend decides to shoot up his school . . . that's not Sylvester Stallone's fault for making Cobra. The guy was trying to make a kickass Marion Cobretti biker picture. Forget about teaching masturbation in schools; they ought to hand out twenty bucks and a map to Korea town. You get yourself a little massage-parloring down there, you feel a lot less inclined to blow up your lunchroom!

ACTUAL BEN: I disagree.

INTERVIEW GUY: 'Course you disagree; you smoke cock.

ACTUAL BEN: No, I don't "smoke cock," I just think there is some responsibility to be had by those of us who have some impact over the content of movies and how violence is presented. Doubtless, there is blame aplenty to go around. But the exploitation of mindless violence for the sake of titillation, without any attention paid to the genuine trauma that real violence does cause, is irresponsible.

QUESTION: What qualities and/or attributes do you find attractive in a woman? What would your "ideal woman" be like?

ACTUAL BEN: I can't say I have any one "type." I have dated and been attracted to all kinds of women. I tend to be able to look past first impressions and am usually attracted to a woman whom I like and want to be around. No matter how "hot" some woman is, I'd find her very unattractive if I couldn't stand to have a conversation with her.

INTERVIEW GUY: You done, Jake-O? Okay. That's bullshit. Everybody goes by appearances. I got nothing against the homely broad, I just don't care to give her a jump, you follow me? As far as what type of chick I most like, I'd say I'm your basic, red-blooded, Claudia Schiffer-Pam Anderson type of guy. And, you know, her beaver doesn't have to be shaved but . . . I don't mind it!

[Ed. Note: There is a five-minute segment of the tape where Interview Guy runs around the room, high-fiving no one in particular and repeating porn dialogue to the tune of the theme song from Martin. Finally, he cracks open a beer and sits back down.]

QUESTION: Are movies important?

INTERVIEW GUY: I think they can be. You go see Anaconda and you know you can't take a river trip with Owen Wilson, a rapper, and the guy from Deliverance, 'cause it's gonna end badly. So that's a public-health message, in a way. Fuck, come to think of it, that was the second bad rafting experience for Jon Voight. There's a fucker you really don't want on your Outward Bound crew. . . .

ACTUAL BEN: No.

QUESTION: Can you define your relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow?

INTERVIEW GUY: Well, she's my friend. She's very smart, very sweet, really just a good, decent person, and someone I both respect and admire. She's also a dynamite actress. As it happens, we just did a movie together called Bounce, which will be out in summer 2000 at a theater near you.

[Ed. Note: At this point there is a second lengthy pause on the tape and sounds of a struggle. Then nothing. It's the Blair Witch of Books on Tape. . . .]

III. BEING SEAN PENN

There's a reason that the National Enquirer has the highest circulation of any paper in the country. People like it. And people like it because, despite what most actors tend to imagine the general public is fascinated by (i.e., every subtlety and nuance of their latest performance), it concerns that very thing that drives most people to the movies in the first place: sex. And not just sex but gossip-who is having it with whom, who's been jilted, who gets the kids, who's getting above their station, who threw a fit on their show and fired a bunch of people. All of it. The movie business has become a kind of ongoing soap opera. The same characters move from one story to another, augmented by bits of background titillation from newspapers and magazines, and people go to see how the latest installment in the Schwarzenegger serial will turn out. Therefore, it should be no surprise to actors that their private lives seem inexorably entwined with whatever perception people have of their performances, and vice versa. In fact, that gossip, that tabloid fodder, is an organic part of the perceptions people have when they go to the movies.

The majority of famous actors are not famous because of roles they've played. The random passerby, when asked, will tell you they've heard of a particular actor but will have difficulty naming more than one or two movies he's been in. What people do see, far more than the movies, are the television shows and magazines in which actors promote their films. This creates a strange dynamic, where celebrity becomes the goal, publicity the means, and the actual work takes a distant backseat.

If one takes for granted that the goal of an actor is to assume the identity of another person, then doing publicity as oneself seems absolutely the wrong thing to do. The less people know about you, the less apt they are to project some preconception onto your performance. There are actors who seem to understand this conundrum and have managed to deal with it in a sensible way.

There are powerful forces at work that compel an actor, after appearing in a movie or two, to whore out every last detail of their gonorrhea treatments, incestuous experiments with grandma, shock therapy, and the time they had one too many and got a five-dollar hand job in T.J. And later the same bunch that threw you to the press will tell you not to give so much away. You can't win.

So what, then, is the lesson? I really don't know. You can lie to the press (my brother, Casey, once told Interview magazine that he had a Ph.D. in eugenics from Columbia), you can bullshit a little (whereupon your friends from home tell you you've changed and you're full of shit, and you're mom is ashamed of you), you can go ahead and talk about the "touching game" you played with Uncle Ted (and then your mom really is ashamed of you). Or you can go the route of the dignified and be Sean Penn. Just watch out for the backlash—it gets ugly.

Whenever I've run this theory past the cocktail-party crowd, the response is always a Pollyannaish "What's wrong with the truth?" Or "Just be yourself!" Now, while that may be sound and novel advice, in this case it misses the mark, for two reasons. First, after you've had to distort and misrepresent yourself for every producer in town (e.g., like the time you had to pluck every emotional chord you've got to muster up some semblance of passion for your Beverly Hills 90210 crying-scene audition), you hardly know who or what the real you is anymore. Second, no one really wants to "be themselves" in public. We are reluctant to expose ourselves even to friends, much less to a jaded public with an eye for scandal and an unquenchable thirst for hubris and its attendant fall. So I, like every other sensible person thrust into (or thrusting themselves toward) the glare of the public eye, tried to project an improved version of myself. Big mistake.

Before anyone imagines that this is some kind of lamentation of a great evil in the world, let me say this: Any actor who has had any success whatsoever ought to count his lucky stars that he turns over enough bread for the Enquirer to even consider including him on the "worst dressed" list. Clearly, successful actors (and particularly those who, even for a fleeting moment, are anointed "movie stars") enjoy wealth, power, and privilege wildly beyond their station. We should take what we get and like it—I don't contest that. I do, however, find the situation of "promoting" myself and my movies curious and contradictory.

But in the end, it is probably not worth deconstructing. It's a pretty straightforward thing: Talk to somebody, brag on your movie some, and hope that a few more people go to see it because they're intrigued with what they've read. And, hey, maybe they've gotten to know the actor a little better. In that spirit, let me end where I began: Who I am, and why you should see my movie.

I'm somebody who probably has too many mirrors in his house, but doesn't much like what he sees when he looks into them. I try to be generous, try to be kind, and try to remember how lucky I've been, but I've been known to fall short in all three regards. As far as fame and fortune go, I generally believe one should understand that none of it is deserved, but try to take as much advantage of it as one can in good conscience. I like quiet and the idea of rest, but can't seem to stop moving. I like people (as someone once said), but I hate gatherings. I try to expose myself to diversity, change, and new experiences, but when alone in my car, I end up listening to the same song over and over on the CD player. I know that fame and fortune are fleeting (as Matt recently said in GQ, "the phone stopped ringing for better actors than me"), but I can't help hoping that I can do this forever. I believe in the friends and family I've known since childhood, but I've already lost touch with too many. I love company and the security of love, but most days I feel alone. If I had to choose between being held in high regard by those in the movie business or esteemed by those around me whom I admire, respect, and have known through thick and thin, I'll opt for the latter: a life where people still talk to you even if the phone rings only occasionally, and where your friends don't mind if you haven't made it onto the cover of a flashy movie magazine in quite some time. Oh: And go see the movie I made with John Frankenheimer. It's pretty good.

Ben Affleck, actor and Oscar-winning writer (Good Will Hunting), blew his deadline but only misspelled two words in this piece.

[burningtacozombie]

random Mayans thoughts, episode 5x05 edition:

- Miguel and Angel's conversation was actually really good, although Angel didn't say much. Miguel is actively trying to protect him and whether or not he wants to be the big brother, I'm seeing it that way and I like it. because here's the thing: Miguel went out of his way by not telling Soledad it was the Mayans who raided that cook house, even after her specifically ordering him to drop the sympathies he might have for these low-lives. and with Potter letting that cat out of the bag, Miguel is in a lot of trouble with her now. in return, Miguel wanted Angel to go to "someone EZ would listen to" but with Sofia blindly loyal to EZ and telling him what Angel said, it puts him in a world of trouble too. and to make matters worse, he slipped and said "I should've just fucking burned all this fucking shit down too", basically confessing to the warehouse fire.

- when confronted about stopping all of the insanity EZ said he doesn't want to lead as a dictator and I was like... since when? but then again, when he did ask the other members in the templo if they want everything to stop or keep going, everyone wanted to move forward. especially with that kind of cash on the table because money is a powerful motivation.

- btw, Guero and Downer had some sort of banter going on from day one and I'm so here for it. Guero: You realize, those have probably been in at least like a hundred strippers’ sweaty ass cracks? Downer: God, I hope so. my man's not only hot and badass but he’s also funny, I can count on these two to make me laugh.

- Hank didn't know it but telling EZ that Creeper will have the rat's name soon was a huge mistake. soon came quickly, and while at first Creeper didn't want to believe Kody when she told him who the rat is, after the other dude gave him the same name he couldn't not believe it anymore. then when EZ came to visit, he should have played it down and not tell him that he knows it's him. I feel so fucking bad for Creeper, he's easily the most tragic story in the club. always been loyal, only ever wanted to be there for the club and his brothers because they're the only family he has, and this is what he gets back. he's also easily the one with the most injuries. I was so fucking sure, it would be Gilly in the coffin from the trailer but now my fear that it's Creeper keeps growing. Kody should be leaving town fast, she'll be on notice too.

- in that conversation where that other dude warns Patricia Devlin to stop digging around a Potter-adjacent "very powerful, very effective and very protected" individual, they must mean Miguel. confirmed by her showing up at Miguel's house later. Potter cleared Miguel from Palomo’s murder Adelita framed him for, yes, but at what cost... now he controls, and pays for, Miguel's entire life and lifestyle. honestly, I kind of want Miguel to work with her and get rid of Potter. sure, I want that fucker dead but how satisfying would the visual of him behind bars be, knowing he'll never get out no matter how much scheming he tries. and if that means Miguel would have to spend a decade or two in prison himself, that's still better than getting killed. I've said it long before season 5 started but if Miguel ends up in prison by the time the show is over, I could live with that. at least he'd be alive, and that's all I really want. btw, what was that dick competition necessary for that Potter threw around??? yikes. how do I unhear that...

- the Grim Bastards, yeah sorry but I have no idea who they are or where they came from. from what I've gathered they're a leftover from the SOA show? the president made a good point about how the feds investigate and only come knocking on your door when they have enough to already nail your ass. good for them, trying to broker peace.

- that fight during the meeting with the Sons was fucking insane, and ngl, it was pretty damn satisfying to see EZ get his ass handed to him for a minute. even though he ultimately won, which admittedly is good for the club, on a personal level I wouldn't have minded if that giant had taken him out right there. that scene in the clubhouse might be their version of a party but all of them yelling EZ's name and slamming their fists on the tables like maniacs had something very cult like but maybe that's just me.

- I feel so bad for Izzy, and Marcus is getting on my nerves with his head stuck in the past. motherfucker, you have a beautiful life and family right in front of you, pull your head out of your ass and start acting like it before you lose them. by the end of the episode it seemed to have sunk in, with Izzy's ultimatum and all. hopefully it’ll last.

- I'm really glad Bishop is doing so much better, it was kinda awkward between him and Maggie's son but he was sweet with that little baby girl. I think after having lost his own child and possibly not having been around any so closely since, holding that little girl might have cracked him open up in a way he didn't think was possible again.

- Letty and Hope's dance party was fun, Coco would have loved to see that, but what the fuck, Isaac found them... that was pretty shocking and I'm scared of what he'll do to Hope and what he'll make Letty do. anyone else thinks that a) with Hope kidnapped, it's gonna be Letty who's gonna join the Broken Saints out of desperation (episode 7 synopsis, my first thought was Emily) and b) there's more between her and Hope? or at least there could be more feelings developing?

[sakebytheriver]

Just saw Barbie and it was exactly what I expected, a fun way to kill a couple hours with a good friend dressing up and getting pink food before watching a fairly enjoyable movie I'll probably never watch again

The cast was great as I expected, the big stand outs for me were definitely America Ferrera, she delivers a speech that a lesser actress could have butchered and made incredibly cringe, but she nailed it perfectly for the movie she was in and also Ryan Gosling, he was incredibly genuine in everything he did, he's a very genuine actor in general, you look into his eyes and you believe him everytime

Yes, I understand why Simu's agent staked their whole career on this role

The feminist messaging was very surface level and extremely broad and in no way encapsulates the entirety of intersectional feminism or literally anything past the idea of "women can do anything men can do" and there was also an insanely cringey part where the teenager dresses Barbie down with a whole bad stereotypical gen Z rant about consumer capitalism that really reminds you this movie is being made by a conglomerate of giant corporations and the "Mattel" company in the movie is just .... bad. Absolutely ruins the entire movie. Will Ferrell tried his best, but there was absolutely no way to salavage a single one of those "Mattel" executive parts, so sorry, not even Daniel Day Louis himself coming out of retirement could have sold those roles, they were absolutely awful, Disney channel level of villainry and writing was put into those guys

I have one last thought about a scene I would have done differently, but it's super spoilery so I'm gonna put it under a read more and say my conclusion here,

It was a fun excuse to get dressed up like a Barbie doll and spend the day with my friend, I went in with super low expectations in the hopes that they'd be beaten and they were, it was better than I thought, but also about what I expected. Your uncle buck will complain about the overhanded feminist messaging, but not the way I do! And if you get high like me you might even cry when you think the dad is dead until it's revealed he's actually just off somewhere sucking at Spanish.

All in all Barbie was a fun movie with absolutely nothing under the surface which I will never watch again 💕🫡

Okay, so for all you bitches who've seen the movie or don't care about spoilers, there is a moment where Barbie has to decide whether she wants to be human or not and a montage of a bunch of home family videos starts playing on the screen in a dreamy haze

This moment was at the very end of the movie and it was also The Best Part. Period. Habds down. End of sentence.

And they didn't even execute it right

The montage moves much too slow and it ends way too fast, it should have been the other way around, make it twice as long and twice as fast, have it start of slow and then ramp up more and more and more getting faster and flashier and the music swells and it's huge and big and there's videos of kids at playgrounds intercut with people at funerals and people watching loved ones dying then cut to a wedding and then to a kids first day of school. This montage should have been absolutely jam packed with stuff and it should have been hitting the audience way faster until the end when it hits the cresendo and we cut back to Barbie and the air feels like it gets physically ripped out of her chest violently as she says, "Yes."

In the movie the montage lasts about as long as it took me to think, "oh this is the best scene in the movie" and there's absolutely no moments of sadness in it, like no one at a hospital, no one getting sick, no one grieving, the whole movie is about learning to love the good with the bad and then this montage just shows you kids being goofy and people at bowling alleys, like where is the fucking heart? And then it ends and we cut back to Margot Robbie very delicately saying, "yes"

And that was it

We move on to seeing Barbie in the human world with her human family and this big climacitic moment that should feel the way you feel when symbols crash in a classical song just fizzles

The last scene of the entire movie however I will say was a great way to cap a live action Barbie movie, Margot Robbie's giant grin as she says, "I'm here to see my

Gynecologist!"

Was good.

Okay the end I'm done thanks for reading 💕

[cobaltswriting]

Morality in Glass Onion

Time to make people upset!

Or, at the very least, maybe anger @aparticularbandit

Because my idea for today is to judge how terrible each member of the Glass Onion's 'Disruptors' are.

Oh, and of course, this will have spoilers. I will put a spoiler tag but soon I just... won't bother with Glass Onion stuff, they will not have spoiler tags any more. But due to the extent of the spoilers, I will tag it.

I should state that this applies to what we know about them, and since it's just the Disruptors, it doesn't include Helen, Peg, Whiskey, or Blanc. I also won't be including Andi, because, from what we see, she isn't THAT bad. Like, the one bad thing she did, which could be seen as blackmail, with the napkin, was done because she had been pushed to the brink and betrayed by those she had considered friends. I wouldn't necessarily consider that TOO bad, all things considered. Not saying she's perfect, she definitely has an ego, but still.

So, we'll start off with the one who is clearly the worst of them. This won't be in a 'best to worst' order, by the way, it'll just be whatever order happens.

But yes, we start with the worst of the bunch...

Miles Bron.

...We don't need to say too much about him, really. He's an idiot. He at least did manage to get his friends famous but it basically came with stipulations. A sort of 'I made you and I can destroy you' sort of thing, especially when he took over Alpha completely, making the rest of the Disruptors commit perjury to do so. And a lot of the problems end up coming back to him.

He is the one forcing Lionel to power a manned flight with Klear. He is the one forcing Claire to ok a power plant for Klear. He is the one who seems to be totally fine with helping Whiskey 'cheat' on Duke. And he's the one who could have told Birdie what a sweatshop was before it became a huge problem. Although we don't know that for CERTAIN, all we know is that he was an investor who helped fund it.

He's a piece of trash. Maybe he started out with good intentions or whatever, but... yeah, he's a shitbag. Not exactly surprising.

Duke Cody

The streamer. The YouTuber. The maledom guy.

We hear that he was selling 'rhino boner pills' to teenagers, although he claims the pills had no rhino in them. He uses his girlfriend to try and further his career, whether it be as eye candy on his videos, or 'cheating' on him. He did also need to push quite a lot to get Whiskey to 'cheat' on him, and it made it sound like he had done it before.

Also a lot of just... toxic masculinity with him. Masculinity is fine until it gets toxic.

The main issue I have with him, though?

What is the first thing he does when he figures out that Miles killed Andi?

Blackmail. He attempts to blackmail Miles over a former friend's murder. He could have basically NAILED him for the murder, got him put in jail, but no, he decides "I could use this to further my own career".

Bandit did say, at some point, that they think Duke was the one who 'learnt' the most from Miles, the one who was most similar to Miles, and I agree. And I'm not going to say he's stupider than Miles, because Miles is VERY stupid.

But Duke is definitely not very clever.

Let's move on to the other one of the group who isn't very clever...

Birdie Jay

Honestly, Birdie is a bit of a tough one to nail down here. And actually the one I was thinking about when I decided to do this.

Birdie is... not very clever. And she's very clearly envious of Whiskey, since she basically has Miles wrapped around her little finger, which used to be her thing.

But all in all... I don't think Birdie is spiteful or mean.

It is basically spelt out fairly early on, when Blanc says "It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth."

Birdie's not evil, I think she's just very ignorant. Which unfortunately ends up with stuff like her Beyoncé tribute (Which I think is implied to have been blackface?), comparing herself to Harriet Tubman (in spirit, apparently), and using slurs. One of them is mentioned in the movie but I won't mention it because I'm a weenie who doesn't wanna get in trouble.

But yes, I don't think Birdie is spiteful or mean or anything bad, she just doesn't think, and is ignorant about a lot of things. Like the sweat shop, she just thought it was a place where they made sweat pants.

The closest she gets to being mean or evil is her envy over Whiskey and she never really acts upon that.

Now then, let's move to the opposite end of the intelligence scale...

Lionel Toussaint

Lionel is one of my favourite of the group, mainly because he's one of the more level headed. And obviously, the most intelligent, other then perhaps Andi.

Our introduction to Lionel is him arguing with a bunch of people to tell Miles 'no' over Klear. And, to his credit, he does tell Miles that he needs time to work, to figure out if Klear is safe or even viable as an energy source. As Miles' reckless move proves, it is viable as an energy source... but it's certainly not safe. Which Lionel knows, he says so earlier, because of hydrogen gas that regular households are not equipped to basically handle, which means that a small spark could basically turn a house into, as Claire puts it, the Hindenburg.

I'll give Lionel props for telling Miles that he needs time to figure it out. But that's about where the props ends.

Despite knowing it's dangerous, and that he needs more time to study it, he is still aware that it's too dangerous to be used as fuel, because of the hydrogen thing.

However, on Miles' orders, he still gives the okay for it to be used ON A MANNED FLIGHT. WHICH IS BASICALLY GUARANTEED TO GO BAD. And when it does, Lionel's whole reputation is ruined because he is the scientist who said it was fine. Which doesn't impact on how bad it is to put such a dangerous substance on something like this.

Speaking of people giving the okay for Klear...

Claire Debella

Ah, Claire, Claire, Claire. If this were real, I might actually be a fan of you, since you have at least some idea of what carbon emissions are doing and part of your pledges are to bring the carbon footprint down.

Unfortunately, the person funding your campaign is a moron.

Claire gets to be a LITTLE less bad than Lionel, because she doesn't actually know if Klear is safe or not. Which still makes it bad that she's ok'd a power plant for the stuff, on Miles' orders, but not quite as bad as Lionel putting it on a manned flight that was basically fated to go boom.

It is slightly outweighed by the fact that, by doing this, she is putting it into MILLIONS of people's homes. Which is pretty hecking bad, honestly, when you have no idea if it's safe or not. But we can give her the benefit of the doubt a little on it.

Basically, if you WANT a list from baddest to goodest on them, it'd be...

Miles Bron Duke Cody Lionel Toussaint Claire Debella Birdie Jay

Now to go hide from Bandit :P

[chickensarentcheap]

She loses her balance as a small, gentle wave rocks the board beneath her feet; losing the grip on his hair and shrieking as she again topples backwards into the water. Already giggling when she breaches the surface; hands frantically pushing wet hair away from her face and out of her eyes. She’s never been more beautiful; the sound of her laugh, water glistening on her deeply tanned skin, and the sunburn on her cheeks and nose causing her freckles to become more pronounced. Possessing a ‘girl next door’ adorableness not expected of someone who has fought the battles she has; a youthful innocence that not even her nightmare of an ex could strip her of.

“I DO really stink!” She laughs as she swims towards him; treading water as she rests her forearms on the surfboard. “Like really badly!”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Resting an elbow on the board, he reaches across with his free hand to smooth down her hair. “Took me a long time to learn. Even to get used to standing up for more than ten seconds.”

“Bullshit. I refuse to believe it. Everyone knows that Australians are born knowing to surf.”

“That’s a lie. We have to learn to surf. We’re only born knowing how to wrestle crocs and punch out sharks.”

“Speaking of sharks…” She glances down at her feet; bubble gum pink toe nails shimmering in the water.

“Shark spotters will see them before they get anywhere near you. And if something does go wrong and they do get that close? Don’t worry. I’ll choke a shark out for you.”

“My hero.” Leaning across the board, she pecks his lips. “My knight in shining armour. Or should I say ‘slightly tarnished armour’.”

“I like that a little better. But it’ll have to be a small shark. Not like a great white. Or a hammerhead. Or anything like that. Like a baby shark.”

Laughing, she scoops up a handful of water and tosses it into his face. “For someone so cute, you can be such a shit head.”

“You’ve called me that twice today. In the span of five minutes.”

“But I’ve thought about it a dozen or so times. Listen, you can play the big, bad mercenary card for everyone else, but not for me. I live with you. I share a bed with you. I know all your little quirks. How big of a softie you can be.”

“And you’ve already been sworn to secrecy. Because if any of that ever gets out…”

“I know…I know. You have a reputation to uphold. I will take your precious secret to the grave. Or wait sixty years and then leak the proof to everyone we know. You know, kinda like the files on who killed JFK. Anyone involved will be dead and no one can be held accountable. Or embarrassed.”

“I promise you that if things get out even then, I’m coming back and haunting your ass.”

“Oh please. The only reason you’re coming back to haunt is because you like it so much. It’s a nice ass. A great ass, even. You like looking at it and touching it. And doing things to it.”

“You’re lucky this water is as chilly as it is. ‘Cause talking about your ass like that…”

“Don’t worry. When we get back to the room, I’ll help you out with your shrinkage. Make it all better.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I hope you do.”

Kissing him once more, she giggles when he prevents her from pulling away; fingers tangling in her dark, wet tresses as he deepens and intensifies things. Until they’d met, she’d never been kissed like that; as if each one is better than the last and he can’t get enough of her. Whether it be those sleepy kisses first thing in the morning or the frenzied and hungry in the midst of passion, no two are ever the same and she never tires of them; the press of his body against her and the taste and the feel of his lips and the smell of his skin.

“You know, I was thinking…” Resting a forearm on the surfboard, she places her chin on top of it. “...it would be really nice. To be able to do stuff like this more often. It’s fun. Doing things like this with you.”

“I’m just glad to have someone to do this shit with. Not the same; doing it on your own.”

“I think you were a lot lonelier than you’ll actually admit to. Before I came along.”

“My life certainly was a lot more boring. And a lot quieter. Not to mention there was a lot less hair in my shower drain.”

She gives a derisive snort. “And people say romance is dead!”

“It’s been…nice. Having someone around. Seeing their stuff all over the place. Just knowing they’re there. I don’t know…” He loops hair behind one of her ears, then the other. “...you know I’m not good with this kind of stuff. Feelings. Words. Words about feelings.”

“Well I’m just happy you want to share things with me. You love to surf. What a better way to get to know each other more, right? Share the things we love. I wish I was better at it, but…”

“Stick with me kid. I’ll have you on your own two feet in no time. At least for a few seconds, anyway.”

“Who knows I could be a prodigy. Once I get used to it. I could be a regular Kathy Slater.”

Tyler frowns. “That’s Kelly Slater. And it’s a guy.”

“Than a female version of him! Once I get my balance, I could be a natural! I could be a pro!”

He stares at her pointedly.

“Okay…” Esme laughs. “... maybe not. But staying up for thirty seconds would be nice.”

“You’ll get there. Takes a while. Practice makes perfect.”

“I also don’t have any Australian in me. I bet there’s something in the blood. That makes you such a good surfer.”

“Baby. in the past six months, you’ve had plenty of Aussie in you.”

“You’re disgusting!”

******

@muchadoaboutcj @mrsmungus @munstysmind @tragiclyhip @youflickedtooharddamnit @secretaryunpaid @residentdormouse @asirensrage @thesirenrealm @themaradaniels @ninjasawakenedmystar @starryeyes2000 @muchadoaboutcj

[yvesdot]

HALLOWEEN DRABBLE 2022

Mel and Jenny go to the pumpkin patch. Jenny struggles with her words, while everyone else struggles with Mel.

Happy Halloween! The festive season brings with it our yearly Hallowdrabble featuring: everyone's favorite couple from Something's Not Right, father-daughter bonding with goth from KAY RAINIER, bisexual polyamorous love triangle with swords from Forest Castles, & saccharine thirty-year-old LeGButTs from Sometimes it Happens. Read below or at the Google Doc!

Mel carts his armful of totes out the door of the bus and steps down after Jenny, who looks decidedly nervous despite objectively having the upper hand. Mel still doesn’t really understand what a pumpkin patch is, and even if that weren’t the case, he figures being clairvoyant should lend some security.

But Jenny bites the edge of her nail as the bus drives off, looking anxiously in the direction of the tragic chain-link fence around the park. Mel squints and sees small children running about. He is disappointed to have apparently missed out on being the right height to put his face in all the silly ghost-themed cutouts.

“I haven’t been to one of these in ages,” Jenny says. “I’m not even sure, actually, that this one is for adults.” She turns abruptly, as if she’s considering walking off in the direction of the bus line, but fortunately just looks at Mel. “Is this really that important to you?”

“Spending quality time with my girlfriend is important to me,” Mel says. “Anyway, isn’t this themed?”

“Themed?” Jenny echoes, seeming not at all there.

“For us,” Mel explains. “You know, witch and vampire—we’re Halloween-themed! Like those couples who get engaged on Christmas. Except we are not in a Chris Fleming video, and, well, I guess Halloween is themed after us. But it makes sense,” he says, standing on his tiptoes a little so he can put an arm reassuringly around Jenny’s shoulder. Jenny seems borderline mollified by this—at least, enough to give him a kiss and lead him around to where the entry is. And also to wait for him to judge whether it counts as a door or not, because of his many problems with doors.

“We’re good,” he whispers, which always makes him feel like he’s involved in a secret operation. It’s nice to be involved in operations with someone else. Jenny ducks the both of them immediately into a corner, too, with a crinkled map she’s pinched out of a display. 

“We have to make a plan of attack,” she says, which feels even more like a secret operation, only Jenny does not look like she is enjoying hers. “I’ll look a little into the future before we go anywhere. That way, we can be sure everything is as it should be. Also, I can see if I’ve—or—well, anyway, look at these teenagers,” she says, waving her hand demonstratively at two or three bored-looking youths dotting the field. They do not appear to be paying attention to their surroundings. “I’m not taking you on a half-baked hay ride.”

“Well, I guess not, because I don’t think there is a hay ride anywhere on there,” Mel says, inspecting Jenny’s map with a crane of his neck. “But I don’t mind. A normal person would deal with some teenagers, right? I mean, what are they going to do, make fun of my goth outfit? Goth outfits are in really big with the teens, Jenny.”

“Yeah, look at that guy,” she mutters. Mel follows her line of sight.

“I don’t think that is a teen, Jenny,” he says, as the not-a-teen goes jogging around the corner of some kind of plant-based structure. “Oh. I think it’s Atlas, actually. From last Halloween, remember?”

“Well, he is awfully short,” Jenny says, “but—no, you’re right, just born under an absolutely terrible moon.”

“Don’t moons do more than determine your height?”

“They also do that.” Jenny unfolds the map. “Hold on while I plan our outing.”

“Now, don’t you start clairvoyancing,” Mel reminds her. “I can tell when you’re clairvoyancing—Jenny, you’re doing it right now.”

“I can’t help wanting to do a nice date,” Jenny says, but Mel has taken things into his own hands, which is to say, walked off at random. “I like to make sure these things go well. I plan because I care about you, because—Mel—Mel!”

“I’m going to pick apples!” he chirps, pointing at the relevant sign. “Look at all the apples, Jenny! All You Can Pick Apples! For $2!”

“They’re All You Can Pick because they’re All Gone,” Jenny moans, but she follows him over. There is a little box by the two bedraggled trees, which she drops a $2 bill into. Jenny always seems to have $2 bills, and quarters with bats on them. “Mel, do you—Mel?”

“I am stretching,” says Mel, quite occupied with reaching one of the remaining apples. Jenny waits for him to return to normal stance before continuing.

“Do you think we’re—I mean, what do you want to do with the apples?”

“Predict it,” says Mel, and Jenny goes quiet. He gathers another four apples without realizing the type of them might be important. He knows that there are many kinds of apples around, but not really what the point of the different ones is. He once accidentally said his favorite apple was Granny Smith at a party and got laughed out of the room.

“We’re going to use them in pies,” says Jenny. “Because we also get pumpkins, which we decide to make into pies, and we try these apples and they’re really sour—but they can’t be that bad,” she says, reaching for the one Mel is trying to drop into the basket. She takes an exploratory crunch off the top. “Oh. God. Yes, okay, we’re going to have to make them into pies. Stop picking them, Mel!”

“I’m a completionist!” Mel cries, just as a brunette with overgrown bangs stomps up to their tree. Eliza, probably, who still looks teenageish. Mel feels at home among the lack of aging.

“No eating the apples!” she snaps.

“Does it really matter?” Jenny asks. “I mean, for $2, does it make a difference if we eat one?”

“It’s policy,” Eliza says, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and she stalks off again. Mel watches her go, thinking that surely if he had such a nice orange vest for a uniform he wouldn’t be half as grumpy. Though maybe they won’t let her wear it if she doesn’t enforce her policy. The thought makes him a little more empathetic.

“These people are insane,” says Jenny. “Also, Mel, we really don’t need this many apples.”

“What about our many friends?!” Mel asks, but he quits his picking. He has to leave a tote free for the pumpkins.

“Let’s make them first,” says Jenny, which is not fair, because Mel has almost repaired the Granny Smith incident. But he hauls his tote-and-a-half of apples onto his shoulders, which is not too bad even if he has to plan around how much heavier it will be for Jenny, and follows her towards the nearest attraction that seems unpopulated by teens, which is a large inflatable slide. A fat, long-haired man and a skinny blonde person are standing a little ways away from it. Ephraim and Elle, Mel recalls.

“What do you do here?” Mel asks the both of them.

“Isn’t it obvious?” says Ephraim. “You slide.”

“No, I mean you,” Mel says, putting his tote bag of apples down. Jenny reads a sign nearby, shells out some quarters, and gets two tickets from the blonde person. “What do you do? What’s your job with the bouncy house?”

“Make sure people don’t take a fork to it,” says Elle. “Okay, now you give those tickets to me and you can ride.”

“Why do I buy tickets from you if I’m just going to give them back to you to ride?” Jenny asks.

Elle shrugs. “I never said it was efficient. It’s just policy.”

“It feels like the opposite of efficient, actually,” says Ephraim, scratching his neck. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been here for years.”

“Oh, yes.” Elle looks sort of down and sideways at him. “Like three years. Maybe even four. I’m shocked Bren hasn’t moved out.”

“Where is Bren?” Mel asks.

“School,” the pair say, in unison. Jenny nods understandingly.

Mel leaves them and climbs up the grips beside the slide. He finds he is not very good at climbing them, despite his substantial experience with trees. The slide has a piece of paper taped to it at the top which says in all-caps Arial 35-point bold font PLEASE SLIDE ONE AT A TIME, but the inflatable is very large, and Mel thinks it is pretty silly to be told what to do as an adult, so he waits until the two slide-watchers are looking the other way and yanks Jenny down with him. She screams all the way down, but in fairness, neither Elle nor Ephraim seem to be doing their job very well. Mel picks up his tote bags and jogs off towards a wall of plants near the edge of the field just in case, trailing Jenny.

“Wait!” she says, just as he stops to investigate the weird plant wall. It appears to be corn. Also, there is an opening that Mel can just walk into, so he does. It does not count as a door, so he doesn’t have to ask. “Mel!”

“I’m taking a walk in the corn,” says Mel, peeking around a corner. “Human people really just do this? It’s not serial killer behavior?” 

“It’s a corn maze,” says Jenny, grabbing hold of his arm. “Now, don’t go anywhere or else we’ll get lost.”

“But I’ve already taken two turns,” says Mel, because he has. And he’s not sure which direction he turned in, come to think of it.

Jenny groans loudly.

“Okay,” she says. “Fortunately for us, I know the secret to all mazes. Just hug the right-hand wall.”

“Do you predict we will make it out of this corn maze alive?” asks Mel, because he would like to see her predict something.

Jenny puts a hand to her mouth. She considers.

While she is considering, Atlas falls out of the corn. He picks himself up, brushing off his goth outfit. His piercings look different today. He does not seem to catch Jenny’s annoyed glance.

“You seen a guy around here?” he asks. “Oddly dressed? White? Really unfortunate hairline?”

Mel thinks about this.

“Oh!” he says. “Constantine? No, I don’t believe so. Not yet.”

“Okay. Well, if you see him—” Atlas waves his hand demonstratively. “Make his life hell, or whatever. We are making up for two incidents of wrong pronouns and one incident of—just a really weird thing to say, like, who dresses up their pumpkins anyway, and if you’re going to dress them up, why the fuck are you so specific about which one of them wears a bow tie—anyway, you haven’t seen him?”

“We have not seen any guys matching your description,” Mel confirms. “Or dressed pumpkins.”

“How long have you been looking?” Jenny asks.

“I started a while ago,” Atlas admits, “but I got distracted. I also lost count. And I switched the bow tie and the corsage on the pumpkin, because, again—fucking corsage pumpkin. Pumpkins don’t have hands.” He pulls a piece of corn husk out of his hair.

“This sounds very distressing,” Jenny says, “only you interrupted me in the middle of a prediction about whether I am going to live or die, so I am a bit distracted right now.”

“Oh,” says Atlas. “Sorry. But I have to be going, anyway. I came to this pumpkin patch to do two things, and I’m all out of pussy, or whatever. Hold this, just in case.” He gives Mel an unseasonal water balloon and disappears back into the corn. 

Mel processes this.

A woman steps carefully out of the corn from roughly the same direction as Atlas’s initial trajectory, buttoning up her vest. Mel looks away from the vest and sees that she is also wearing a white button-up, a burgundy coat, and an ascot the same color as the aforementioned coat. This makes her definitely Kay, he thinks, also from last year. She puts a finger to her lips and seems about to return to the corn when she spots the water balloon in Mel’s hands and frowns. She takes it from Mel, turns in the other direction, and flings it absolutely as hard as she can. It skips a few times on the ground, then explodes. Kay nods to Mel, then disappears into the other side of the corn wall.

“See?” Mel says. “Total serial killer behavior.”

“We live,” Jenny says, looking up. “Sorry. Had to kind of start from the beginning there. Anyway, they were cheating; you’re not supposed to walk through the corn.”

“Well, of course not,” says Mel, putting his hands on his hips; “there would be no point to it then. We are going to make it out of this maze. Sorry for making you precognize.”

“It’s fine,” Jenny says, and she takes his hand normally this time. “Only, I was going to say, you have to stop running away everywhere. I’m going to lose track of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mel says, honestly. They take a right turn. “You’re always right there, is all.”

“I know. And I am enjoying myself. Which is to say—” Jenny pauses. “I mean, I like being with you. One could even say,” she tries, “that I l—”

A man falls face-first out of the corn. When he gets up, Mel sees his hairline.

“Someone’s looking for you,” he says.

“My son?” Constantine Rainier asks.

“Well,” Mel says. He forgot for a second that Kay was closeted, and/or that Constantine was dumb. “Not exactly. But Atlas was, for sure. He gave me a water balloon, which is gone now. Probably against policy.”

Constantine runs his hand through his carefully gelled hair.

“It was a perfectly reasonable discussion,” he mutters. “Dressing pumpkins is a grand tradition. I find it quite relaxing, personally. I can’t help it that there is no gender-neutral formal attire for the squash.”

Mel and Jenny look at each other.

“Total serial killer behavior,” Jenny says.

“Serial killer,” says Mel, “and cannibal behavior.”

“Harsh!” Jenny comments.

“I tell it like it is,” Mel says, shrugging.

“My son will find me eventually,” Constantine says as Mel and Jenny walk past him. “Hopefully before Atlas.”

“Keep your eyes suuuuuuper wide open!” Jenny calls back, and then she pats Mel’s arm. Mel thinks back.

“One could even say?” he tries.

“Hm? Oh.” Jenny droops a little. Her ponytail falls over her shoulder. “No, one couldn’t say. Or maybe one could say, but apparently, I couldn’t say it.”

“You were so rudely interrupted,” Mel agrees, patting her arm. “I’m sorry, Jenny.”

“It’s okay.” Jenny helps him round another bend. “I mean, there are other things to do here. Maybe the pumpkins will give me bravery.”

“Oh, yes!” Mel had forgotten that the patch would have purchasable pumpkins. Perhaps primarily, per pumpkin patch particularization.

“And look,” Jenny says, pulling Mel out into the field proper again. “We made it! No thanks to your running off, of course.”

“What would I do if you weren’t there to—what do you British people say? Get me out of scrapes?”

Jenny does not reply, which Mel is at first worried at, but then he looks over and sees she is busy staring lovingly at him. He lets her do it for as long as she wants, and even does it a little back, at least until he trips over a pumpkin and interrupts whatever she was about to say.

“Hey!” It’s Eliza again. She’s in a booth, of all things, with a sign for various confections and a pair of guys struggling with a cotton candy machine behind her. Red and Avner, judging by the ostentatious hair. “You break it, you buy it!”

“We’re working on buying it!” Jenny yells back, before bending down to inspect the kicked pumpkin. Mel bends down, too, though he’s not really sure what he’d do with it. It looks like a pumpkin. No corsage or bow tie, Mel notes approvingly. Actually, he’s not opposed to dressing it up—maybe with some felt bunny ears, and a little pom-pom for a tail… 

He’s about to ask Jenny for her opinion on a possible pumpkin craft night, maybe on Tuesday night when they’re both not stuck at the shop, but when he looks up she is concentrating very hard on something.

“Jenny?” he asks, gently.

“Sorry,” she says. “Just—formulating things. In my mind.”

“Is it the pies?” he asks, hefting two pumpkins into his arms. “I think these are very good, by the way.”

“Oh? Oh, sure.” Jenny takes one, and also one of Mel’s totes. She brings them over to the booth, where Red and Avner continue to do something to the cotton candy machine—possibly fixing it, but if so not very successfully. Red flings a pouf of cotton candy floss at Avner, who ducks it and then catches it with one hand. Eliza sets Mel’s pumpkins on a scale, which seems like a funny way to value them. Mel picked them for roundness.

“Do you all work here?” he asks, as Jenny counts out change.

“Well,” Eliza says, “I work here. Those two get paid to flirt.”

“This is extremely important work,” Avner gets out, ducking another pouf and barely catching the next in his mouth. “We’re—cleaning out the machine—”

“Send the next one to me, then,” Eliza says, and in the middle of counting Jenny’s cash she turns her head and bites it clean out of the air. Mel applauds quietly. Jenny reaches for his arm, and he gives her a reassuring pat, just in case.

When they make it back to their bus stop, tote bags in tow, Jenny is quiet again. Mel waits patiently for her, watching: the way her curls spiral together and apart in the inconsistent wind, the way the traffic lights reflect in the corner of her dark eyes, the set of her unconscious pout. She takes a deep breath, and the set of her shoulders changes, pulling together and then apart again.

“Jenny,” he says—she looks up, alarmed—“I have something important to tell you.”

“Me too!” she says. “But—no, you go first.”

“Oh,” Mel says. “Well, thank you. The important thing is that: I love you very much.”

Jenny blinks at him. She sits up very straight. “But, Mel—that’s what I was going to say!”

“It is not. Oh,” says Mel, thinking again, “is that what you’ve been trying to say all day? Well, sure, then. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t steal my idea. But I’m glad we agree,” he says, patting her arm, as Jenny buries her head in her hands. “Oh. Jenny?”

“Yes?” she says, her voice muffled. The bus huffs obediently down the street, pausing at the intersection ahead of them for the stoplight.

“Can we dress our pumpkins when we get home?”

Jenny looks up at Mel. She gives him a silly, pretty little smile.

“Yes,” she says, “of course,” and she kisses him before hauling up the tote bag on one arm and stepping up onto the bus. Mel pauses—just to admire the view—before following her in, looking forward to pumpkin crafts and even more beyond.

[drugstoreglitter]

location :   uncle joe’s crab shack, fort lauderdale, florida.

featuring :    FRANKALLIE !!!!! but it’s an au in which they’ve never met

for :    @gallagherisms​

       it’s a red-hot florida summer, tide low, coast sandy, and the temperature’s already pushing ninety. saturday was meant to be her day of rest and relaxation in a rare week off from the yachting season, but so far all she seems to do is pick up the slack left by her brothers. she should be out in the van, tearing down the highway with dolly blaring from her tinny speaker, flowers in her hair and incense hanging from the mirror. she could even be tanning on an aft deck off the adriatic coast right now, a shammy in her hand and the sun on her back, had she booked on for another week of work rather than taking a so-called ‘holiday’. instead, she’s trapped inside uncle joe’s crab shack covering for leo while he plays hooky to nail some chick from arizona, because technically she owes him one, and when a castro makes a promise they take that shit to their grave. but fuck if she doesn’t wish she were someone else right now. take that cute curly-haired chick with the killer smile, for example — probably a holiday maker, sat with a bunch of other fresh faces, laughing at kai who runs the whiskey cove paddle board tours — looks like she’s having the time of her life, a stress-free existence, where all she probably has to worry about is what colour bikini to wear and whether or not she’s gonna let kai get the home run tonight. why do girls like that always end up with douchebags like kai. it’s fucking unfair. still, frankie’s trying to be a force of positivity, live laugh love in the moment and remind herself of everything there is to be grateful for, but it’s hard when it’s hot enough that it feels like sweat drips from the ceiling like stalactites, and her supposed ‘break’ has been pushed back so many times that she’ll likely have to go without. whatever. four’s only like, an hour away. she can manage ‘til then.

      can you check on table fifteen, it’s the big one with the out-of-townies, kelly’s asking her, loading frankie with another two plates before she can leave the kitchen, wince bitten in by her teeth. feels like being a stewardess all over again, but there’s a reason she’d made the switch to deck crew. she’s not good at saving face and sucking back how she really feels when faced with opposition. she can’t just lie back and think of england, never had a mother who stuck around long enough to teach her the secret handshake that held the code to being a girl.  “ can’t you just get bodhi to do it ?  i’m already covering, like, five tables, and those guys look super picky. ”  kai’s always asking for like, the weirdest thing on the menu, and then adding on a load of vegan, gluten-free, soy-free extras, as if he wants you to fuck up his order so he can write you a bad review on tripadvisor. the only thing worse than working when you’re supposed to be on holiday is serving people your age who are actually out having fun.  “ fine, whatever. i can get their drinks orders. but then i gotta take my fifteen minutes. let me just run these lobsters over to table twelve. ”  

      somewhere in the short commute, the instructions get lost in translation, frankie instead standing before the HBO remake of forgetting sarah marshall at table fifteen, all of them fresh from the surf and smelling of saltwater.  “ two surf ‘n’ turfs ? ”  frankie asks, ignored at first, then clears her throat, asks for the second time, cutting through the conversation a little more coarsely.   “ anybody order these surf ‘n’ turfs ? ”   these plates are fucking hot. her eyes are kinda pleading with the curly girl on the end, and it’s only when she feels a tap against her back and a child’s voice that says, uh, i think those are ours...  that frankie realises her mistake.  “ balls. ”  embarrassed, she whips around on her heel with such a voracity that there’s no time to slow her roll, and there’s a body where an empty space is meant to be, an edgar wright smash cut to something wholly unexpected, like that scene where regina gets totalled by a bus. she smacks straight into bodhi, now outfitted in the contents of his two seafood platters, her own spread of steak and lobster flying into the customer behind her’s lap, too startled to even hear the gasps of the hawaii five-o extras or the kid that’s covered in chowder. prawns hanging from her uniform, frankie turns back to the to the customer ; a lobster now sits like a cat in her lap and beef dripping clings to her shirt.  “ holy fuck... i am so sorry. like, you have no idea. ”  kelly’s gonna put her fucking head on a roasted halloumi and vegetable skewer. cautiously, frankie plucks the lobster from her lap. in her head, he grows an animated mouth, tells her cheer up, kid, it might never happen. well it fucking has happened. the most ridiculing moment of her life, thus far.  “ please don’t tell my boss, i’m not even meant to be working today, i’m just covering for my stupid... jesus, why am i saying this ? you don’t care about my idiot brother. ”  foot in mouth disease. sighing, frankie drops down, and begins plucking the fragments of plate from the floor where the sad steak sits in a pool of it’s own trimmings.  “ um, i can like... cover your meal ? ”  she says, her eyes scanning back up to the surfer chick covered in surf ‘n’ turf, the full florida experience.  “ or your drinks, if you’re just drinking. ” though it’ll probably cost her the entire day’s pay check with the shit they’ve been drinking. it’s like margaritaville on crack.  “ look... can you just... tell me how i can make this up to you ?  because if i don’t then i’m not gonna sleep tonight. i’ll just keep seeing your face and bolting upright in bed like that rigged little dummy kid in monsters university, y’know. ”

[joy2paris]

Thoughts on this article:

I wanted to do a full review after reading but I just keep having all these thoughts coming to my head whilst reading and I do not want to forget them. Some of these probably do not make any sense so they will definitely be edited at some point.

Really intelligently written and I love the way it sets up an idea, then breaks it down. She initially distinguishes between logic and emotion when reacting to the creator of something great exposed for doing/being something horrible and immoral. "we tell ourselves we’re having ethical thoughts when really what we’re having is moral feelings."

felt she was Woody Allen at points, felt connected to him by his "ability to stand in for the audience. The identification was exacerbated by the seeming powerlessness of his usual on-screen persona: skinny as a kid, short as a kid, confused by an uncaring, incomprehensible world." So the exposure of the abhorrent thing he did felt like a personal betrayal. separating art from the artist calls for us to have this kind of distance, but this feels like a betrayal against art itself in a way? as in when it is so good, you do take it on in this wholehearted way, when you truly connect with something.

Poses the question of:  "It’s the voice of the middle-brow male critic, the one who truly believes he knows how everyone else should think. We is corrupt. We is make-believe. The real question is this: can I love the art but hate the artist? Can you? When I say we, I mean I. I mean you." - who gets to criticise

This is also all just fascinating to me after doing a philosophy essay on forgery in art - whether we can dismiss a piece of work that formerly was thought to be by a great painter after finding out it was actually a fraud - with the idea being we thought it was the great artist in the first place so surely the work should still be praised. I concluded that we should begin to view the work differently now, as our intentions within art our intrinsic to who we are as people and our life journey's.

I think holistically. And I would like to believe that moral issues are linked. It is also interesting because this writer also says "Allen is fascinated with moral shading, except when it comes to this particular issue—the issue of middle-aged men fucking teenage girls. In the face of this particular issue, one of our greatest observers of contemporary ethics—someone whose mid-career work can approach the Flaubertian—suddenly becomes a dummy". It is a wonder to me that people can be so aware of one thing but so disconnected from something else. Is that truly because he is not a woman so he will never fully understand?

"Heidegger has this notion of dasein and vorhandensein. Dasein means conscious presence, an entity aware of its own mortality—e.g., almost every character in every Woody Allen movie ever except Tracy. Vorhandensein, on the other hand, is a being that exists in itself; it just is—like an object, or an animal. Or Tracy. She’s glorious simply by being: inert, object-like, vorhandensein."

"Just as Manhattan never authentically or fully examines the complexities of an old dude nailing a high schooler, Allen himself—an extremely well-spoken guy—becomes weirdly inarticulate when discussing Soon-Yi. In a 1992 interview with Walter Isaacson of Time, Allen delivered the line that became famous for its fatuous dismissal of his moral shortcomings:

“The heart wants what it wants.”

It was one of those phrases that never leaves your head once you’ve heard it: we all immediately memorised it whether we wanted to our not. Its monstrous disregard for anything but the self. Its proud irrationality. Woody goes on: “There’s no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that.”

"I had a difficult time getting through Manhattan—it took me a couple of sittings. I mentioned this difficulty on social media, this problem of watching Manhattan in the Trump moment. (I fervently hoped it was a moment). “Manhattan is a work of genius! I am done with you, Claire!” responded a writer guy I didn’t know personally. This was a guy who had withstood many of my more outrageous social media pronouncements, some of which involved my desire to execute and chop up the male half of the species, Valerie-Solanas-like. But the minute I confessed to having a funny feeling when I watched Manhattan—I believe I said the film was making me “a little urpy”—this man stormed off my page, declaring himself done with me forevermore." - loved this part as I really resonate with it. A lot of men do have this extreme overreaction, so much audacity in the extremity of their appal at you. inability to comprehend it any other way...

"I had failed in what he saw as my task: the ability to overcome my own moralizing and pettifoggery—my own emotions—and do the work of appreciating genius. But who was in fact the more emotional person in this situation? He was the one storming from the virtual room."

I would have a repeat of this conversation with many men, smart and dumb, young and old, over the next months: “You must judge Manhattan on its aesthetics!” they said.

She rehashes a conversation about it between a male writer and a female writer, to which at one point the man says, “You’re just thinking about Soon-Yi—you’re letting that colour the movie. I thought you were better than that.” - I find that kind of ironic in itself, as this man is thinking holistically/conjoining her opinion with her existing self. Yet by this very comment, is asking her to do the opposite towards Woody Allen. Also, there is this complete right off - this one shot opportunity to be perfect that men apply to women. From this singular comment, this female writer is utterly written off in this man's eyes, forever. I constantly see the intersectionality of race and gender, as the same applies for the way a lot of white people view black people and even more so, the one-shot chance black women are given before they are written off (I see it every year in Love Island - a black female contestant does one bad thing and tarnishes the impossible standard the UK audience had for them, and the audience washes their hands of them and demands they are voted off at the very next dumping. Whereas, the white female contestants and even more so, white male contestants can spout whatever vile misogynistic shit they like and still make it to the final with adoring fans chanting their name, with forgiving comments like, "he didn't mean it, he's not his words etc". This is really making me realise we really cannot separate the art from the artist, as patriarchy and racism is intrinsic in all of our structures, consciously and not. Or, if we can separate the art from the artist, all women, black men and black women must be afforded the same privileges of separation. how is there any integrity to any of our words if we constantly compartmentalise our opinions about things and remove them from morality. Surely, art of all things is not objective? So why do we take an objective standpoint on them? Especially when the creator of these things has done abhorrent things? Because also, it feels to me, not only has this abhorrent person gotten away with not taking accountability, they also get to experience the highs of praise. In the same way a boy from my sixth for S assaulted people I love and know, it truly burns me inside that he is happy, smiling and enjoying the fruits of his life, with his sheep comrades around him, able to move on whilst my friends are still reaping the devastating consequences of what he did.

Linking to the love island example, this can also be identified in this years "I am a Celebrity Get Me out of here" - where raging racist Nigel Farage lands 3rd place whilst Nella Rose is incarcerated over something so insignificant that she said. Munya Chawawa is amazing in his humorous but informative take on this - he is so necessary as a figure in our current climate. I personally think it is ridiculous that these politicians can go on this show in the first place.

"Which of us is seeing more clearly? The one who had the ability—some might say the privilege—to remain untroubled by the filmmaker’s attitudes toward females and history with girls? Who had the ability to watch the art without committing the biographical fallacy? Or the one who couldn’t help but notice the antipathies and urges that seemed to animate the project?"

"A great work of art brings us a feeling. And yet when I say Manhattan makes me feel urpy, a man says, No, not that feeling. You’re having the wrong feeling. He speaks with authority: Manhattan is a work of genius. But who gets to say? Authority says the work shall remain untouched by the life. Authority says biography is fallacy. Authority believes the work exists in an ideal state (ahistorical, alpine, snowy, pure). Authority ignores the natural feeling that arises from biographical knowledge of a subject. Authority gets snippy about stuff like that. Authority claims it is able to appreciate the work free of biography, of history. Authority sides with the (male) maker, against the audience."

Me, I’m not ahistorical or immune to biography. That’s for the winners of history (men) (so far).

The thing is, I’m not saying I’m right or wrong. But I’m the audience. And I’m just acknowledging the realities of the situation: the film Manhattan is disrupted by our knowledge of Soon-Yi; but it’s also kinda gross in its own right; and it’s also got a lot of things about it that are pretty great. All these things can be true at once. Simply being told by men that Allen’s history shouldn’t matter doesn’t achieve the objective of making it not matter."

"When you’re having a moral feeling, self-congratulation is never far behind. You are setting your emotion in a bed of ethical language, and you are admiring yourself doing it. We are governed by emotion, emotion around which we arrange language. The transmission of our virtue feels extremely important, and weirdly exciting." - interesting, very interesting, especially in our current landscape of social media - the prioritisation of showing people that you are right etc. Writer is also addressing the faults of one themselves too (rephrase).

"In everyday deed and thought, I’m a decent-enough human. But I’m something else as well, something vaguely resembling a, well, monster. The Victorians understood this feeling; it’s why they gave us the stark bifurcations of Dorian Gray, of Jekyll and Hyde. I suppose this is the human condition, this sneaking suspicion of our own badness. It lies at the heart of our fascination with people who do awful things. Something in us—in me—chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills to the drama of loudly denouncing the monster in question." - surely there is a barometer to all this? and I personally think the most important thing of all, is accountability in change. you are nothing if you do not see the wrong in the wrong things you do and on top of that, do not try to better yourself.

The critic Walter Benjamin said: “At the base of every major work of art is a pile of barbarism.” My own work could hardly be called major, but I do wonder: at the base of every minor work of art, is there a, you know, smaller pile of barbarism? A lump of barbarism? A skosh?

There are many qualities one must possess to be a working writer or artist. Talent, brains, tenacity. Wealthy parents are good. You should definitely try to have those. But first among equals, when it comes to necessary ingredients, is selfishness. A book is made out of small selfishnesses. The selfishness of shutting the door against your family. The selfishness of ignoring the pram in the hall. The selfishness of forgetting the real world to create a new one. The selfishness of stealing stories from real people. The selfishness of saving the best of yourself for that blank-faced anonymous paramour, the reader. The selfishness that comes from simply saying what you have to say.

I have to wonder: maybe I’m not monstrous enough. I’m aware of my own failings as a writer—indeed I know the list to a fare-thee-well, and worse are the failures that I know I’m failing to know— but a little part of me has to ask: if I were more selfish, would my work be better? Should I aspire to greater selfishness?"

The female writers I know yearn to be more monstrous. They say it in off-hand, ha-ha-ha ways: “I wish I had a wife.” What does that mean, really? It means you wish to abandon the tasks of nurturing in order to perform the selfish sacraments of being an artist. - bro this is also so interesting when thinking of the gender dynamics within my own family. My dad as an artist, my granny wanting to be one but could not in pursuit of her family whilst her brother freely could.

"

She mentioned a short story she’d just written and published.

“Oh, you mean the most recent occasion for your abandoning me and the kids?” asked the very smart, very charming husband.

The wife had been a monster, monster enough to finish the work. The husband had not.

This is what female monstrousness looks like: abandoning the kids. Always. The female monster is Doris Lessing leaving her children behind to go live the writer’s life in London. The female monster is Sylvia Plath, whose self-crime was bad enough, but worse still: the children whose nursery she taped off beforehand. Never mind the bread and milk she set out for them, a kind of terrible poem unto itself. She dreamed of eating men like air, but what was truly monstrous was simply leaving her children motherless."

"In a way, I’d been asking this question privately, for years, of a couple male writer friends I believe to be actually great. I write them both charming emails, but really I am always trying to find out: how selfish are you? Or to put it another way: how selfish do I need to be, to become as great as you?

Plenty selfish, I learned as I observed these men from afar. Lock-the-door-against-your-kid-while-you’re-working selfish. Work-every-day-including-Thanksgiving-and-Christmas selfish. Go-on-book-tour-for-weeks-at-a-time selfish. Sleep-with-other-women-at-conferences selfish. Whatever-it-takes selfish." this is all so fascinating. but also, can women afford to be this level? I don't think this world allows them to be. The would be branded as something worse than an art monster. Cast out of society even.

Maybe, as a female writer, you don’t kill yourself, or abandon your children. But you abandon something, some nurturing part of yourself. When you finish a book, what lies littered on the ground are small broken things: broken dates, broken promises, broken engagements. Also other, more important forgettings and failures: children’s homework left unchecked, parents left untelephoned, spousal sex unhad. Those things have to get broken for the book to get written.

Sure, I possess the ordinary monstrousness of a real-life person, the unknowable depths, the suppressed Hyde. But I also have a more visible, quantifiable kind of monstrousness—that of the artist who completes her work. Finishers are always monsters. Woody Allen doesn’t just try to make a film a year; he tries to put out a film a year.

My friend and I had done nothing more monstrous than expecting someone to mind our children while we finished our work. That’s not as bad as rape or even, say, forcing someone to watch while you jerk off into a potted plant. It might sound as though I’m conflating two things—male predators and female finishers—in a troubling way. And I am. Because when women do what needs to be done in order to write or make art, we sometimes feel monstrous. And others are quick to describe us that way.

*

Hemingway’s girlfriend, the writer Martha Gellhorn, didn’t think the artist needed to be a monster; she thought the monster needed to make himself into an artist. “A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.” (Well, I guess she would know.) She’s saying if you’re a really awful person, you are driven to greatness in order to compensate the world for all the awful shit you are going to do to it. In a way, this is a feminist revision of all of art history; a history she turns with a single acid, brilliant line into a morality tale of compensation.

Either way, the questions remain:

What is to be done about monsters? Can and should we love their work? Are all ambitious artists monsters? Tiny voice: [Am I a monster?]"

Claire Dederer is the author of the memoir Love and Trouble. She’s at work on a book about the relationship between bad behavior and good art.  

wow, what an article!

I need to read Sylvia Plath so bad. I just know I will love her. I love Kate Chopin and I feel the are of a similar elk. I love Fanon and Aime Cesaire and Jamaica Kincaid. It is so interesting being the product of the kind of intersectionality/cross section I discussed. A black father and a white mother. There is a line somewhere that talks about what each possesses and the other can afford within these identities they hold. I can't wait to write my dissertation.