#i still managed to get in because the choir director actually WANTED me as part of varsity (and what an ego boost that was!)

[cluster-b-culture-is]

NPD culture is shaking internally whenever you fail/feel like you did and having trouble with speaking/moving comfortably afterwards (also if it was a group work believing everyone hates you now and being deadly afraid of meeting them)

.

[ring-a-ding-dumbass]

Companions as Hallmark Christmas Movie Love Interests

Happy Holidays!! I’ve been watching a LOT of bad Christmas Movies, so here are the companions as Hallmark movie love interests! (I’ve left out Codsworth, Dogmeat, Strong, and DLC companions.) [disclaimer: I know most jobs listed in these do not work in the way that I will imply, but that’s pretty standard for these kinds of films, so I’m rolling with it. Also, most of these are based off of SOME movie I’ve seen this Christmas, so obviously it’s not going to be super original. They’re Hallmark movies; they’re not supposed to be ‘good.’]

Note: I’d love to expand these into a fic, but I really don’t have the free time right now. If anyone is interested in taking one of these ideas and running with it, please do!! Just tag me when you’re done so I can read it!!

Cait- Cait owns a bar and she has a strict “No Christmas” policy. No Christmas music. No singing Christmas carols. No decorations. She hates the holidays because she thinks that all of the happiness and love that they inspire is a bunch of BS. She say’s it’s all fake for the sake of Christmas cards and holiday specials. One day, you’re the last patrion in her bar, and Cait slips on some ice while she’s locking up. You take her to the hospital and she has *gasp* AMNESIA. You let Cait stay with you because you can’t find any friends or family of hers, and the hospital can’t keep her. To your surprise, this Cait actually seems to like Christmas. She treats everything like she’s learning about it for the very first time. She’s not all soft and lovey-dovey, sure, but she doesn’t mind the peppermint bark and ice skating and snowball fights and eggnog. As she begins to get her memory back, she gets colder, and she opens up to you that the reason she hates Christmas is because Christmas never meant anything to her as a child. Her parents were mean to her 24/7, and that didn’t stop around the holidays, which is why Cait was always so certain that Christmas cheer was a hoax. Cait regains her full memories, but because of your re-introduction to the holiday, she doesn’t mind it as much anymore. She’s no santa claus, but she does stock up on peppermint vodka and candy canes for the bar, and wears a mistletoe headband during December, which you always manage to take advantage of. 

Curie- Curie is the owner of a flower shop in North Pole, Alaska. Every year, more people move out of town, and Curie has to try to sell more items during Christmas, which is her most profitable season. You’re a character actor who works as an elf for a mall santa agency, and this year, you’re sent to the Fairbanks/North Pole region. One day, you go to see the sights in North Pole and meet Curie while she’s working in her shop. She’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off. You ask if she’s busy, and she mentions that she just lost her only employee to the local Build-a-Bear. She charms you, and you apply on the spot. After she hires you, you realize that there’s a well dressed real estate executive that comes in at least once a week to hit on Curie. She explains that he’s been offering to help her business in exchange for a date, but she won’t do it. As you and Curie ready up for the Holidays, you realize that you’re really compatible. You have fights with the fake snow used for window displays, you help organize flowers in the walk in freezer together and bring hot chocolate in when it gets too cold, and you start sneaking kisses to one another when you have to retrieve an order from the back. One day, the business man comes in and tells you that he’s buying the land that your shop is built on unless you can afford to pay an astronomical hike in rent. Curie begins to worry that she’ll have to sell her shop, but you promise her that it won’t happen. Together, you come up with the idea to sell Christmas packages online, so families who live far away from each other can send a little piece of christmas to other family members for the holidays. The idea takes off. Not only are you able to sustain the hike in rent, but you’re able to pay for your own land to move the shop, so Curie will never have to worry about rent again. You never go back to the mall santa place, and you run your shop with Curie for years, making a comfortable living in a cozy town. 

Danse- Oh, Paladin Danse-- He’s the son of the president, and one of the best generals in the country, and he’s getting married. You are the baker for his wedding. One day, when you’re trying to haul a prototype cake to the other end of the capitol building to put on display to show Danse and his future spouse, you turn a corner and run into Danse, covering the both of you in cake. You don’t recognize him, and he doesn’t introduce himself, but offers to help you in any way he can to rebuild the cake. He insists on helping, so you let him, which sparks a friendship between you. Once the cake is ready, you bring it back upstairs, to find Danse and his spouse ready to look at the cake. Danse and you start speaking when you run into each other in the halls, and one day, he asks you on a walk around the grounds, where he confesses to you that he doesn’t personally feel attracted to his spouse, but it must be done for the good of the country. Just before his wedding, you confess your feelings and Danse runs off. The wedding comes to a halt and nobody knows why until Danse shows up to tell his future spouse that he can’t go through with this because he is in love with someone else. He approaches you as you’re cleaning up the confectionary table and tells you that he has to be true to himself, and that means being true to you. 

Deacon- You’re a server working at a diner in a moderately large town. Deacon comes in one day and introduces himself as the new hire. You train him, and he’s kind of terrible, but he makes you laugh. You slip him your number after a week or so of light flirting and banter, but he turns you down. You leave to let Deacon close, but realize that you left your phone at the diner in an embarrassed hurry. You head back to the restaurant and find Deacon snooping through the boss’s files! After you catch him, he confesses that he’s an undercover spy, sent to keep an eye on your boss, who is suspected of using the diner to launder money. Now that you know, Deacon brings you on as his partner, and swears you to secrecy. You two go on a cute stakeout, have researching sessions together, and slowly fall in love over the course of December. At the end of the month, you come in for a shift to see your boss being arrested, and Deacon isn’t there. It isn’t until Christmas eve that you get a knock on your door. Deacon is there with takeout. He explains that his boss decided to go in without asking him, and they forced him back to the office, barring any outside contact until he could provide a full report. He confesses that he has fallen in love with you, but has also lost his job because of it, because he confessed to breaking cover. You reunite with a warm kiss and warm takeout, and, now that you’re both jobless, you start a P.I. agency together. 

Hancock- Oh. Oh. Oh. BAD BOY CELEBRITY gets in trouble with his publicist over general bad-boy-scandalous behavior. YOU are a choir director for a low income rec center in a small town and you are putting on a Christmas Pageant. You don’t have the funds, but eventually the publicist finds out about your little operation, and she is ALL over it. She brings Hancock in to work with the kids and she brings an entire media team with him. He’s arrogant at first, and doesn’t even remember your name for the first few days, but you notice a change in him as you begin to work together. As skeptical as you are, Hancock really connects with the kids, and really seems to care about the Christmas Pageant. While you’re there, the kids start teasing you two, and implying that you have crushes on each other. In the end, The publicist scores him a comeback story and interview on a national morning talk show, but it would mean missing the pageant. While it seems like he’s chosen to go to the talk show, he changes his mind and arrives just before the pageant with flowers to apologize. After you accept his apology, the kids push you two under some construction paper and white puffball mistletoe. 

MacCready- RJ is a single father who is still getting over the death of his wife. He has yet to move on in part due to his son’s illness. You are an heiress to a rather large fortune, but you’re told that you have a year to get a job and learn about good old fashioned hard work before you’re allowed to have access to the fortune. You start out with no discernible skills, so you become a babysitter for RJ. He goes to work in the evening as a security guard and you take care of Duncan at home. Duncan confesses to you that things haven’t been the same since his mother died. One night, you decide to ask Duncan what he wants for Christmas, and he tells you that he told the Santa Claus at the mall that he wants his dad to be okay. One night, RJ comes home and confesses that with the holidays coming up, he doesn’t know if he can afford to keep paying you to watch him every night, to which you reply that you’d gladly work for half salary. One night, you two stay up until Duncan has to get up for school, just talking about your lives. MacCready starts inviting you on outings with him and Duncan. One day, after RJ loses his job and can no longer to afford medicine for Duncan, you confess to him that you’ve been rich the entire time, and that you can pay for it yourself. MacCready accuses you of lying to him this entire time about who you are, and he asks if he can ever trust you again. You tell him that omitting to your fortune was a lie, but your feelings for him never were. You two make up, move into a house together, and Duncan thanks you for granting him his wish. 

Nick Valentine- Did someone say GHOST ROMANCE? Yes, I did. You inherit a small farmhouse from an old relative that you haven’t seen in years. You go to get a good look at to see if it’s even salvageable, and you find that not only is it relatively well kept, but things move when you’re not looking. You spend the night and are woken up in the middle of the night by someone rummaging around in the attic. You find Nick, and you threaten to call the police. He’s polite, and promises it’s not what it looks like, but tells you not to call the police. When you do, they show up to find nothing in your house. Once they leave, you turn back, and Nick is in your house again. He explains that he’s a ghost, and for some reason, he can only be seen by the deed holder of the house, which is why your relative hasn’t been to the house in years. Nick explains that he died in this house a few decades ago, but he doesn’t know how it happened. Determined to figure it out in hopes that it can help him pass on, he was looking in the attic to see if it might have any proof of how he died and if foul play was involved. Over the course of your investigations, you two become good friends, and as much as you want it to be more, you tell yourself that it could never happen. Together, you slowly piece together that Nick was murdered just before proposing to the daughter of someone who used to own the house. As you and Nick celebrate this information, you realize that Nick hasn’t passed on. Nick explains that ghosts can’t pass on until they feel they have nothing to leave behind. He explains that he has grown attached to you, and doesn’t want to leave you behind. You move into the Farmhouse with Nick where you two live until your spirits can both pass on together. 

Piper- Piper is a journalist who has been tasked with writing a weekly features column about Christmas, but she has found herself disillusioned with the holidays. She thought she’d be getting a Christmas bonus that she could use to buy Nat something special, but there was never a bonus, and money is really really tight. You’re quite literally the child of Santa Claus who has been sent out into the world to be with the people and really learn what the true meaning of Christmas is before you start your apprenticeship with your father to be the next in line. You meet Piper at charity event where you’re gathering toys to send to low income communities. After Piper interviews you, you start asking her questions, and upon seeing that the cold world has turned such a warm heart into a Christmas cynic, you decide to give her the Christmas of a lifetime. I’m talking ice skating, light shows, snow on christmas, and Nat getting a few extra presents. On Christmas eve, you’re called back to the North Pole. Your dad wants you to start your apprenticeship with him on Christmas by seeing how it’s done. You tell him that you can’t, because you have your own duties this Christmas, and he’s proud of you for that. You tell Piper about your dad, and she doesn’t believe you at first, but after bringing her and Nat to the North Pole to see it all happen, she apologizes for not believing you. You kiss, and agree to split time between the North Pole and Piper’s hometown, because you would never make her give up what she loves. 

Preston- You grew up in a small town, but moved to the city to get a job at an ad agency. Around the holidays, your agency notes that they’re looking for something more down-to-earth and rustic for their new ‘winter campaign,’ so they send you to your hometown for Christmas. They’re expecting a campaign plan by new years, but while you’re trying to do your job, you find Preston, selling Christmas trees at the local Christmas tree farm and greenhouse. He teaches you to slow down, and to appreciate a christmas built on family, camaraderie, and love. You use your ad/social media experience to save his dying christmas tree farm. At the end of the year, you decide to quit your job and stay with Preston, who brings you on as a partner in the business and in life. 

X6-88- X6 is a loan company executive who has been sent to audit the inn that you have been taking care of since your spouse passed away years ago. He’s quite serious and no-nonsense, which clashes with the capacity for compassion that you clearly possess. He thinks such traits are inefficient and pointless. Despite that, you include him in all of the Christmas dinners and events that you have planned, even if he’s not enthused about them. Through the Christmastime events that you plan for the inn throughout the Christmas season, X6 realizes that you’re not just all heart and no head. You have great ideas, and you’re inclusive of him even when he’s pessimistic. He uses his own knowledge of your loan plan to outsmart his own company and save your inn for the time being. He decides to leave his job in the city to live with you at the inn so he can handle the business and finances. 

[purpleyellow]

When my love blooms

BTS 8th member

Sunny’s masterlist

“Sunny's expeciences during When Our Love Blooms”

a/n: JUST FYI, Jinyoung plays a dude named Jaehyun and Sunny plays the character named Jisoo.  Your opinion is very important for me, send feedback and requests anytime 💜 Also, don’t be shy and interact a little, ask box is always open

DAY 1

Looking at herself in the mirror, Sunny fixed her now brown hair and snapped a quick picture. Sending it to the BTS group chat with an “I should have bangs more often :p” she quickly locked her phone and put it away, leaving the small changing trailer the stylists had led her to.

“Sunny, let’s go this way so you can do a table reading before we start shooting” One of the producers called her to one big room where most of the staff were already seated in a big table.

Looking for her name tag, she saw her empty spot next to Got7’s Jinyoung, who was already seated playing on his phone. The few times Sunny had met him before, they never really interacted that much, since she usually stuck to talking to Bambam because they’ve known each other since trainees. Bowing respectfully, she sat down next to him trying not to stay too close.

“Excited to start shooting?” Jinyoung tried to make the atmosphere less awkward, turning towards her as he took a sip of his coffee.

“Yes, a little nervous as well” Sunny nodded, suddenly trying to remember all of the acting classes she had taken the week prior.

“You’ll be fine, table readings are a great way to get used to the storyline and build confidence in your character” he smiled sweetly at her.

Smiling a thanks to him, she paid attention as the director and producers started giving out tips to the actors and fully explaining the storyline to every little detail. “It’s important all of you get in sync with the ages you’ll be interpreting” was a sentence heavily repeated, since the story would be set in two different times.

After about two hours, when the meeting ended, the two idols stood up and grabbed their stuff from the table. “Your character is really in love with mine” Jinyoung nudged her with his elbow smirking.

“He’ll be just as whipped for her in less than two episodes” Rolling her eyes, Sunny joked back and started walking side by side. 

Looking around to see if anyone was paying attention, she decided to share one of her worries with him. “I know this might seem out of nowhere, but I’m dating Sehun from EXO. And by what they said a few minutes ago there will be a lot of kissing involved. Do you think I should tell him about it?” 

With wide eyes at the sudden confession, Jinyoung assessed the situation before speaking “Does he know you’re acting and I’m the love interest?” After Sunny confirmed he shrug his shoulder, face back to its relaxed state “Then it’s implied. Mentioning it to him would only make it look like it’s a bigger deal than it actually is”

Still a bit unsure about it, Sunny tried to assure herself it would be fine, Sehun had never been the jealous type and he looked very excited when she told him about the project. Sensing her uncertainty, Jinyoung placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Look, seventy percent of the shots will be manipulating camera angles and lighting, we’ll just need to stand very close to each other” She rose an eyebrow at the last part and he sighed “I swear everything will be strictly platonic, just try to look like you’re in love with me when the cameras are rolling” With a breathy laugh, Sunny calmed down a little.

DAY4

Stepping out of the fake bedroom, the girl grabbed a tissue handed by a staff member and started to dry a few tears. Waiting for the director to tell her what to do next, she looked around and found a very excited boy jumping and waving her way. 

“Okay everyone, that’s enough for today” The middle-aged man shouted and Sunny took off towards J-Hope. 

Engulfing her in a hug, he patted the top of her head and smiled brightly “I missed you so much. You’ve been working a lot lately, we barely see each other on the dorms since you always leave way too early and come home very late”

“It’ll only be for a couple of weeks. Here let’s go to catering, I haven’t eaten yet” Sunny grabbed his arm and took him to a bunch of trailers parked. 

After she got her lunch, they sat down in a table and she started eating with him stealing a couple of bites here and there. “Jungkook said he will pay you a visit as well, he’s trying to set a date with Yugyeom so they can come together”

“He’s really tight with his 97 friends huh? I wonder if he would come at all if Jinyoung wasn’t in this” Sunny rolled her eyes remembering the many times she had to repeat what she had said because Jungkook was too absorbed in his group chat to pay attention.

“Let’s just be happy he’s making friends” Hobi smiled and Sunny laughed “I’m being serious, you were very quick to befriend other idols and do your thing, I thought Kookie would never leave our side” 

“But he did talk to other people” Sunny tried to reason with him.

“Yeah, only when V or Jimin was around, the boy took introverted to another level” he looked around and reverted his gaze to her. “And you, have you made more friends here?”

“I talk with a few actors and the staff are nice I guess” Sunny shrug her shoulders “You just said I made friends easily, why so worried out of nowhere?”

“Because I know you” Hobi smiled gently at her “You probably spend most of your day worrying about doing a good job and studying the script. Not trying to break this to you, but I don’t think you’ll ever get the chance to do this again, do you really  want to let the experience pass instead of making connections and having the time of your life?”

Sighing, Sunny placed her arms on the table and looked around as well “It’s just, people here are always working. I know that seems like heaven for me, but it gets tiring only talking about techniques and obsessing over the storyline. Also, I don’t think other people are interested in talking with an idol. I’m like a choir kid who wanted to try out the drama club”

J Hope laughed at her comparison “I’m glad you’re not leaving Bangtan to become an actress then” He smirked and she rolled her eyes with a small smile “How about the other actors? I guess Jinyoung’s on the same boat as you”

“I guess so. We talk in between shots sometimes, he’s probably the closest I have to a friend” as she said that the boy raised his arms in victory.

DAY6 (yes, it was on purpose)

“Okay, cut” The director yelled and Jinyoung retreated his lips from the corner of Sunny’s mouth “Please don’t leave the phonebooth, I’m going to check if we need to do that once again”

With the amount of space restricted, Sunny rested her back on the glass and the Got7 member tried to back away as much as possible, but it wasn’t enough to be a respectable space. 

“I’m sorry if this is awkward,”  Jinyoung said looking everywhere but at her. Not that Sunny knew because she was literally doing the same. “I’d open the door, but I’m sure he’d yell at me for doing so”

The girl didn’t have time to respond back, as someone yelled they were done for the day. Finally breathing properly, she stepped out of the small place and saw Yugyeom and Jungkook on the back watching the staff work. 

Looking at Sunny with wide eyes, her groupmate walked very fast towards her and dragged her somewhere more secluded. “Do you know how intimate that looked?” he said like he was scared making the girl laugh.

“Well, it is a romantic drama. I’m sure it was supposed to look like that” she said shrugging her shoulders and leaving to get out of her costume.

Grabbing her arm again, Jungkook prevented her from moving “Still, it’s awkward. Aren’t you uncomfortable with it? We can talk to your manager and get them to change the script or something”

“Are you crazy?” Sunny put her hands on his shoulders and shook him a little, getting him out of his shock “They signed me to play their character, I’m sure they would straight up fire me if I did anything even remotely close to changing the scenes”

“Well… I-I’m uncomfortable with it” He stuttered a bit but ended up crossing his arms and fixing his posture as if he was some kind of authority, all Sunny did was raise an eyebrow at him “Sehun Hyung won’t like this either. Plus you’re like a child, isn’t this like, illegal?”

“I’m literally a year younger than you” she reminded him,

“Well, it’s legal then” He nodded “But, Sehun? Does he know this?”

“Of course, I’m not going to lie to him about where I spend most of my day”

“I’m not talking about that” it was Jungkook’s turn to raise an eyebrow, making Sunny sigh.

“I haven’t told him about the kisses, if that’s even what they are, but he does know I have a love interest” She linked arms with him and started walking towards a trailer, she desperately wanted to get out of those clothes and go home “I’m scared if I talk too much about it it’s going to seem like I care too much about what’s going on”

“But if you don’t it might seem like you’re trying to hide something” Jungkook pointed out being led by her “If it were me I’d want to know. I would probably become petty though”

“Yeah, you would” Sunny smiled at his personality.

“What do you mean by those not being kisses by the way?”

“Oh. Fake kisses are so boring, like, lips aren’t even fully touching. Plus, the real feeling of-”

“That’s enough” He cut her off flustered “ I already know that I don’t know why I needed for you to say it. Please forget I even asked”

DAY 7

“So, that’s what has been going on” Sunny said to her phone. Pacing from one side to the other on the empty makeup trailer.

“Okay” She heard Sehun’s muffled laugh on the other side “I already know you would be doing stuff like that. It does worry me a little that something made you feel like you had to tell me this now”

“I had talked with Jinyoung about this and he told me it wasn’t a big deal, but Jungkook came yesterday and said it would be better if you were aware”

“Oh, so you asked your fake boyfriend what to do about your real boyfriend?” Sunny could feel him smirking through the phone and unconsciously rolled her eyes.

“This really isn’t going to become a problem right?” She stopped pacing and faced her brunette figure in the mirror.

“Trust me it isn’t. You’re going to give me double the kisses to make up though” Sunny smiled at his silliness “I have to go right now. I love you”

“I love you too” she blew a kiss and he hung up.

Leaving the trailer, she saw Jinyoung also walking towards the set she was going to. “Hey, settled everything with the boyfriend?” 

“Yeah, and he said he already expected it” Sunny started walking with him, the space between them enough to fit another person.

“I told you, you should have trusted Sunbae” Jinyoung smiled at her, using his nickname from the drama, and Sunny rolled her eyes once again.

“Keep talking like that, and I’ll have to start calling you Jaehyun” she spoke with a mischievous grin and it was his turn to roll his eyes.

“Aah Jisoo, your friendship means the world to me”

2 Months later

Sunny was laying on her bed while scrolling through social media and checking out people’s reviews on the latest episode when her notification bar rolled down showing a new message from Sehun 

“Come to my place, we need to talk”

(please don’t kill me, pt 2 will be coming soon)

[georgemackayhey]

Worth Fighting For (Part : One)

summary: You're entirely certain George is the one. So he hasn't got to put up much of a fight... but in a way, that's all he knows to do.

a/n: Drum roll! I believe this is the moment you've all been waiting for! I'm really excited about this one, too yall. So just know... I'm fully committed to this fic! I cross my heart to update as often as I can, but it maaay be a little slow. I hope yall enjoy the beginning of this labor of love. Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to be tagged!

w/c: 2k

───※ ·❆· ※───

You watched as a dozen grader schoolers fumbled out of the studio door, clutching their mother's hands, some still dancing.

Every Friday, that's all they did. Your job was to teach them how. To the best of your ability, you helped kids learn to let loose through music on the weekends. You took pride in your perfectly crafted playlists and the fun patterned joggers you'd show up in; your favorite being a bright green pair that's pockets turned into dinosaurs when you pulled them out.

When you signed up to teach the weekend classes to a bunch of kids, you figured it would be the easiest job in the world. But the rambunctious group kept you on your toes in more ways than one, and always left you breathless at the end of every Friday. Still, you'd hardly have it another way. How could you wish for more?

Okay sure, maybe it would be nice to afford a car so you could get away from the dreaded city bus. And maybe you'd like to drive your hypothetical car to your very own hypothetical home in the country, one day. But all that empty space would only leave you lonely for now.

Good thing you were busy, these days. There was usually too much going on for you to think of anything besides your schedule. Between Friday dance classes with the kids, you taught private lessons to more serious paying customers. To top it all off you were often called in to choreograph all of the local school's plays and productions, community theater included.

You stayed later this afternoon, to think up a dance between a few props the school choir director dropped off for you to work with. So once your group of kids had flooded down the hall that separated the row of studios from the massive gym in the front of the building aptly named Fit For All, you got to work.

You'd been loaned a large paper mache tree and an old pirate chest to think up a dance around. As you started to move the props to the middle of the room, you found the pirate chest was much heavier than you'd expected. You cursed, using the bit of momentum you gained to pull the thing along, but lost your inadequate grip too soon. The chest came slamming down on your hand with an unsettling boom, and your shriek that followed might have been embarrassing if it didn't hurt so bloody bad.

You pushed the chest away and yanked your hand to your heart in a flash, backing up from the scene as if that would help ease the numb sting

"Y/n? What happened?" A voice thick with concern and hurried in asking echoed through the empty studio. You turned to see a friend of yours... well, someone you'd known for a while now.

George was almost always at the gym, every time you peeked in on your way to the studios in the back of the locally owned community center of sorts. The nights you both headed to the parking lot at the same time, you'd chatter about the weather as he walked to his car, before you stalled at the bus stop.

Once, when he was waiting on a ride from a friend, and your bus was late, you'd stood under the awning out of the rain and talked a little about why you were both always where you were now. George was some sort of trainer, you gathered. His jarringly shy demeanor must have put the kids he worked with at ease. But that's just nearly all you knew about the guy.

"I just- ow- I just lost my grip and-" You tried to explain calmly, gesturing to your stiffened hand with the other, trying to move the fingers that you couldn't quite feel anymore.

George took a few steps to meet where you stood, focusing his eyes on your injury. He brought a hand to your shoulder and gently nudged you out of the room while you went on explaining what happened.

What a sight you must have been. In your bright orange joggers and the t-shirt with spaceship designs you bleached to make it look a little cooler. Your hair mused loose from the tight hold you tried to keep it out of your eyes during this afternoons lesson. Dressed like you hadn't managed to let go of the past, trying not to go woozy from the way your hand pulsed with a steadily growing ache, now.

If you knew George would have been the one to swoop in to save the day, you might have at least applied a fresh layer of lip gloss.

He led you toward the gym, but entered one door too soon. Inside was a small medical station, where the athletes came to find first aid kits and tape for their wrists, but hardly much more. George found an ice pack, though, and asked you a series of questions all of which you failed to answer correctly.

"Your hand is most definitely broken."

"Thanks for coming to the rescue." You shrugged, trying not to let your new blossoming worry show.

"Come on." George waved, lingering in the door way of the tiny medic room. His sky blue eyes were ringed with hints of exhaustion as they considered you for a beat. You stared back, more anxious about the fact that he'd just given you instructions than worried about why. Then, you wondered.

"What?"

"Come on. You missed the last bus till nine."

You floated along at his command, because only a fool would deny him. Your glance crossed the clock on the wall that read a few minutes past when your bus was due at the end of every day. You weren't even thinking about getting home when Geogre pressed the icepack to your knuckles. You were too busy trying to play off the sting.

George turned to make sure you were following close behind, as he started opening the door that flooded out to the car park.

///

So that's how you ended up sitting in the waiting room of an urgent care with a melting bag of ice that's chill numbed the hand you could feel- next to George. He shoved his hands in the pocket in the front of his pale jumper and slouched next to you without a word.

When the doctor came round for you, and confirmed your hand was, of course, definitely broken- you listened to his recommendations and thanked him for the few minutes he spent assuring you the injury could be fixed much easier than most others.

George was still sat in the same lazy position when you came back from getting checked out and halfway fixed up. And when he insisted on driving you home instead of letting you linger at the nearest bus stop, you let him. But you had something else in mind...

"Are you hungry?" You asked, bouncing your knee in the passenger seat of his old, warm car. Its personality shone through the vintage detail, as it's floors and seats were empty of any kind of clutter.

"Are you?" Geogre asked back, casting his bright blue eyes to you for a second before his attention focused back on the road ahead.

"Well, yes. Come to dinner with me. I'll buy since you've been entirely too kind to me this afternoon." You grinned, hopefully. Yeah, you wanted to thank him for wasting a couple hours of his night to help you sort out your situation. But you were also mostly looking for an excuse to spend a little more time at his side.

George was painfully quiet. You hadn't gotten to know him better at all during the couple of luxurious hours he'd spent near you tonight. You were nearly more confused by the guy than you had been back when he didn't know to acknowledge you on your matched leaves from the centre where you both worked. It made you even more desperate to know what he was about.

And for a couple of blocks, you tried to coax him into pulling into the lot of the fanciest place he could think of, in order to repay him properly. But Geogre just chuckled and waved you off.

"How about just DeAngelo's?" Geogre looked to you as he turned the wheel in the direction of the towns most beloved eatery. Frequented by all types at odd hours and as often as one might get away with, without breaking bank. Which was easy, because their exceptional food was just as exceptionally priced.

"Just DeAngelo's? That's like saying, how about we just have the best night ever?" You chuckled, as the blink of a broken stop light stalled Geogre's car behind a few others.

"Okay." George grinned too, a smile you had to pull your oggling stare away from. "Just the best night ever it is."

///

The diner was aptly busy, but you managed to score a cozy booth near the back. Next to a window that might have let in a draft on colder evenings, you had to actually think before reaching for a menu, because your dominant hand was out of commission and, for a dancer, you were embarrassingly uncoordinated.

"Order one of everything you'd like!" You mused, from behind the worn familiar menu. You were the kind who ordered the same thing almost everytime. But there was something about George's presence that made you feel as if you had to peruse the list of options. "Hell, I'll buy the place out if that's what you want."

"Well, I won't ask too much of you just yet." George tossed away the menu in his grasp after only a brief consideration. You had to bring your laminated list a little closer to hide your blush, though.

You both gave your orders to a tired eyed waitress who smiled your way when you remembered her name.

Then there were two.

"So..." You bit your lip, glancing over the vast expanses of the table that separated you from the mysterious and meek George. His piercing blue gaze was already sleepily settled on you as you dared to venture further into small talk. "Boxing, yeah?"

"Yeah," He agreed with a strain. "These days I just train, though."

"Just train." You arched a brow, hoping he picked up on your call back to the way he'd placed the adverb before his decision to come to DeAngelo's- wondering if he meant anything any it now.

"It's work." He grinned, casting his eyes down to your hand that had been given a new home inside an ugly, removable cast.

"I see." You shifted your weight, trying not to visibly squirm under his pretty, intense gaze.

"I like the sport. But I found it wasn't worth all the trouble." Geogre explained, vaguely. You had to bite back a laugh at how withheld he seemed. The way he studied you, as if there was so much on his mind. The way he kept to himself, even as you nudged for him to tell you more. So you tried his trick of keeping your mouth shut and your eyes focused on his. You nodded to George with a smile that insisted he keep talking. That promised you were listening.

And after the waitress left your drinks on the edge of the table as she breezed by, George slowly spoke up again.

"Boxing, it's... the only thing I'm good at. I could never be a banker or a builder or anything. So I'm lucky to have this job."

And you start to get the tiniest hint as to why he sounds so divided. So cautiously passionate. But every time he opens his mouth to answer your questions that you're hoping clear the enigmatic air about him, George only leaves you more complexly mystified.  

Then he asked about you. First, by wondering if the dinner you ordered was up to par. Then by asking if your debilitated hand would give you much trouble dancing. The answer was no, not really. You'd be set back a day and likely rush through recycled show choir moves to teach the kids later. But if anything, you were fine as ever. You'd even venture to say you were very good, but you blamed your calm happiness on the pain killers and went on talking about your work- because Geogre asked.

It wasn't often you got to gush over your job to someone who didn't already know how dearly you loved it. It wasn't often someone who asked about your dancing, to seemingly fill the gaps of conversation, listened as intently as George.

You figured it was because he was eager to bring up Barney. The older gentleman who'd built and ran Fit For All, with his late husband. The pair were interested in so many types of fitness they decided to open a space big enough for their favorite kinds of sports to live. The studios in the back were rented to dancers, yoga classes, and a few odd takewandow lessons. The gym in front was for boxers, bodybuilders and whoever felt like popping round to wear down the tread mill once a week.

According to Geogre, Barney was the one who coaxed him into picking up boxing. And you weren't surprised. Since the passing of his husband, Barney spent most of his time in the building, marveling over the classes and encouraging new faces to come back and get better. He'd watched you take lessons in the very studio you held yours own in now. It was home away from home, and Barney made it so. Even the mild George seemed to light up a little bolder while he yammered on about the owner.

Your history with Bareny was all either of you talked over till your meals were finished.

"How was your just DeAngelo's, then?" You asked, hoping sincerely that you'd treated him to something lovely enough to make up for his helping you, earlier.

"It was pretty close to the best, like you insisted." George chuckled, shoving his plate away as you noshed on the last of your chips.

"Well then we'll just have to come back till it is the best." You smiled coyly, as your waitress floated by to take away your rubbish.

///

George was quiet as ever as he drove you home. But for the first time, you were less mystified by his silence, and far more eager for a chance at asking him twenty questions the next time you got the chance.

When his vintage ride pulled to a stop outside your flat, George offered you a pleasant goodnight as you collected your bag. But before you returned the sentiment you dared to ask one final question. "See ya tomorrow?"

"Probably." George answered in a thin veil of sarcasm. The look in his eyes made his answer seem inevitable. The tone is his voice made it seem like he wasn't done keeping you on your toes. You took the smile on his lips as a good sign either way, as you returned a grin of your own- and thanked George one last time.

And on your skip to the door of your flat, you kept your cool and didn't look back to the guy you'd spent all night trying to get to know. But you crossed your working fingers as you slipped inside and wondered if it'd be entirely too strange if you started to pop round the gym more often.

───※ ·❆· ※───

taglist: @haileymorelikestupid​ @maria-josefin​ @imaginationandlove​ @queen-bunnyears​

[khangowrites]

Is it a Complaint Essay or is the Workplace Unsuitable?

Ah, what am I writing today? Oh, well I suppose it’s almost 12am. Seems like a good a time as any. I wanted to just jot down a few re-occurring experiences I’ve had in the workplace and sometimes in other social spaces, and attempt to analyze them.

CW: mild mentions of abuse and bodily ailments.

A bit of forward: I tend to mask myself heavily whenever I am in any social situation; whether it be at work, at home, with friends or online (although I’m getting better at being myself on Discord at least. I owe a lot to my friends who accept me and whom I care so much about.) What this means is I often plan out what I’m needed to say in advance of a situation. I have an arsenal of about 5 minutes of small talk before I tank and several small greetings/placations I can cycle through on any given day if I’m not overloaded. I also limit my natural inclination to movement.

It’s called unprofessional/unsightly to sit with your legs folded under you, or to sway and shake your arms and legs back and forth in time to music in your head. But it’s okay if you tap your pencil. Everyone does that.

I have to wonder how noticeable my ‘masked’ self is. How real or fake it appears.

There have been a few trends I’ve seen with the way people treat me as an employee in the time I’ve been in the workforce. For clarity, I am a 23 year old 5’1” AFAB person with a face that looks like it stopped aging when I was 12. I’m non-binary, but I’ve seen that many have a hard time using a different pronoun for me because I look ‘so feminine’. I had one old man repeatedly tell me that my body was too pretty and that I shouldn’t hide it and ‘pretend’ to be something else. I was and still am quite unsettled and disgusted by that comment.

I haven’t used my full preferred pronouns at work simply based in fear of being fired or discriminated against further. Same thing at home- I haven’t told all my family out of fear. I may look back on this at some future date where I fully respect myself and I’m confident. I look forward to that day.

Oh, and I’m autistic.

Perhaps it is one of these things or all of them that cause people to treat me certain ways. I’d like to find out.

I worked outdoors at an Orchard for a season. They called me Cinderella because of the way I looked when I cleaned. They gave employees gloves and heaters. Only not me. When I asked, I was given a broken one and told to fix it. A coworker who had intellectual disabilities and poor eyesight was not offered a heater at all. I did not renew for the next season. Kim and I stayed in touch though.

I worked next at a gift shop at a historical site. I loved the history and the old buildings, but the cashier work was admittedly difficult. Most of the employees were kind, retired old ladies who treated me gently, like a child. Sometimes too much like a child. The assistant manager seemed wary of me, and she often avoided me. I don’t know why. I’m not good with eye contact, and I always fear that people will mistake my zoning out as being creepy or disrespectful; maybe it was that. She never brought her kids with her on days I worked.

The head manager was courteous, but always called me Special. We had an older man work in the last 2 years I was there who had a strong inclination to associate with the children at the shop, and in turn, me as well. He would always want a hug or pat me on the back, but ignored the other workers. I told the managers my uncomfortable feelings about him, but it went mostly unnoticed.

When it was found that I was decent with computers, I was tasked with entering jewelry into the system and creating labels with number associations. I enjoyed it, and they promised me a decent raise. My pay was raised a dollar several weeks later, and I found myself being tasked with more and more computer work, to the point of becoming an office manager myself, earning a grand total of 9 dollars an hour while my counterpart who started a year earlier owned a home on the same work.

I left that job after 4 years to be the music director at a local church. I love music and was excited. Maybe too excited. I developed acid re-flux and was hospitalized the week before my start day due to a panic attack. I realize now it was from stress. I also had an ovarian cyst removed a year later- it took up my entire pelvis and its formation was also attributed to stress. I’ve since been diagnosed with generalized anxiety, and I continue to have ever changing digestive issues, muscle problems and panic attacks.

After realizing I was autistic and also non-binary, so much of the stress of life started to make sense. The past few months I have been making life changes, and working towards finding a workplace that is accommodating and safe for me. My stress has lessened.

I worked at the church for 2 years. My last day is actually at the end of this month. As is the trend, I was not treated with respect when it came to my job. My pastor started choosing the hymns over me, and would make comments about me during services. His favorite was to say that my music made him fall asleep, and wait for laughter from the congregation. He had no musical knowledge, and forced me to play every song as fast as I possibly could. He didn’t believe I could do my job. Any attempts at mutual work failed to manifest. I unfortunately was groomed by a member of the hiring committee there as well, a type of abuse I didn’t even realize I had fallen into until several months after it was too late.

I currently work at a high school as a choir accompanist. I use she/they pronouns there, but no one uses they and I’m too worried to be fully they like I am outside of work. I am wary of soiling my relationship with the director further. She’s quite religious in the ‘gays don’t have rights’ way, so I have my fears.

The director is kind, but sees me as this innocent child that happens to have natural piano abilities, and the mutual respect that I’ve come to dream of just isn’t there again.

The director has the key to the doors and lets students in without fail, but conveniently forgets to let me in almost every day. At one time, I was in physical therapy and had a hard time standing and walking for any period of time. I almost went home because she didn’t answer any communication, class started 20 minutes previously, and it was 90 degrees outside and I needed to sit down because my legs were cramping. She plans the music weeks in advance, but doesn’t give them to me until the day the students get it, despite my repeated asking for time to prepare.

One day I was on zoom and she and the student teacher greeted me and then ignored my presence and played the piano herself for class. She struggled with the parts and commented to the choir that, “wow, Ms. Khango is actually pretty dang good at this- that little girl can play!”, but didn’t listen to me when I offered to play. I left the zoom after an hour.

The online students seemed to share my surprise at least, and I am grateful to them. They kept me grounded and reminded me that I matter and should have the same respect as everyone else in the room, zoom or not. They talk to me about not being heard and their chats not being read during class. It bothered me, too. The next week I brought it up to her in the form of making sure the zoom students were heard and she quickly dismissed it, like it was a puff of smoke. The students online now ask me questions directly and I relay them. It’s met with annoyance by the director.

They have voices too.

One of the scariest moments of my life was last week- I wore my ‘disability rights are human rights’ shirt to school. (Okay, maybe not scary to some, but it very much was for me.) After class, one of the students came to me and asked if I could help him find a way for his grandfather to get a seat at the concert, as he was disabled and he didn’t know how to proceed.

It filled me with joy to help him, and it filled me with rage when the teachers asked if his grandpa could just get out of the wheelchair instead.

My overall conclusion to all of these things is that people simply don’t understand, or don’t want to because it makes their lives harder.

Is discrimination and ignorance really easier than respecting people?

I’m not sure if this is all just one big complaint essay. I guess it is. What I needed to do was write it all out. All the things that make me uneasy or feel like lesser of a person. And I wanted to know why.

I note that at every job I am perceived as a child, or as someone naïve. I am not treated the same as another adult employee. I was ostracized for my way of moving and talking. Taken advantage of. My needs were not accommodated.

Even now, I feel guilt for writing this, like I’m just playing the victim for attention or something.

I want to be strong enough to stand up to it and ask to be treated with respect and have it follow through.

I want to unmask myself more and let myself move and talk naturally, and use my real pronouns.

My respect for myself and for others must become a powerful force.

My friends on discord- my real, genuine friends, have become monumental in my life. Most of my life I did not have true friends. Without them and their unconditional love and support, I would not be where I am right now. We are all equals. I want to embody that strong respect and bring it to others.

It’s getting late. 1 a.m. now. Well, I have tomorrow. Plenty of time for Star Trek.

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT

Yes it’s true - the only things I’ve been watching lately are prestige TV shows starring women with bad red wigs. I’ll get back to movies someday!! In the meantime, I finally watched all of this miniseries that has Netflix and the world aflame with love - and I am aflame too....WITH HATRED OF ALL OF THESE WIGS!!! I have so much to discuss with this show, y’all. A friend of mine (who hasn’t watched this show yet) probably said it best when he told me he thought the wigs in this show were supposed to be wigs WITHIN the narrative of the show (and therefore allowed to be bad): “wait I thought this was about a chess spy - that’s supposed to be her real hair? NO” INDEED!!! Let’s take it episode by episode (SPOILERS ABOUND) and DISCUSS.

Episode 1 - Openings

We begin in Paris, 1967. Beth Harmon, chess champion (?) awakens in a bath of ice (?) in the dark of her hotel room, clearly hung over or maybe still drunk. Her red ‘60s flip wig looks like HELL as does she, so...ok I guess this bad wig wurqs...for now. She sits herself down to play CHESS!! This whole show is about chess, obviously, and everyone is just mad about chess now! I am mad, too, because the show does not make chess seem interesting or sexy and I still hate it. 

Anyway, we rewind about 10 (?) years to a young Beth Harmon, who is suddenly orphaned after her mom definitely commits suicide via car accident. Her mom has super short bangs and cries a lot. We see some even further flashbacks to an even younger Beth IN THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS BABY WIG (MORE ON THAT LATER). We learn that her mom is very unhinged, but also probably brilliant, as Beth herself will become later. LET’S HOPE SHE NEVER GETS HER DRIVER’S LICENCE (note: she never does?)

Apparently the mid to late ‘50s were all about very VERY short bangs, and on this non-wigged little girl I guess that is fine.

BUT THEN! She is brought to an orphanage where they burn her old clothes (YES REALLY!) and cut her hair into a bob (the kid’s actual hair so again - ok!) and also give her and all the other girls constant drugs! The 1950s were really wild, amiright? If I have learned anything from movies set at orphanages in the 50s, drug abuse was the main issue (the only movie I’m referring to is obviously The Cider House Rules and the only thing I remember about that movie is that Michael Caine had an ether addiction). Anyway, the sedative drugs make her immediately put her hand on a hot radiator (safety first, orphanage!) 

She also makes friends with an older girl named Jolene (I LOVE THE NAME) who teachers her to save the sedative drugs for nighttime when they can help her sleep. Great advice, Jolene! Also: there is absolutely no way that African American Jolene would be in an integrated orphanage in mid-50s KENTUCKY but this is just the beginning of issues I have with this series......

Moving on! In avoiding the orphanage’s weird insistence on Jesusy choir practice, she discovers the basement realm of janitor Bill Camp, who never actually does any janitorial work (that I could see?) but definitely plays a lot of chess. And thus, her chess obsession begins! This is also helped by those sedatives she takes every night which give her really absurd chess hallucinations on the ceiling. This orphanage has it all!

Essentially, this miniseries is Valley of the Dolls if those characters got addicted to both pills and chess at the age of 9. Beth gets very VERY good at chess and some rando chess guy from the local high school comes and gives Beth a doll (BETH HATES THE DOLL BUT LOVES DOLLS DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE). And she goes to the high school and plays a bunch of terrible high school boys at chess simultaneously and beats them all. Also: the orphanage suddenly gets in trouble for giving sedatives to small children for years and Beth is PISSED. She goes through withdrawal and years for the big ol’ jar o’ pills!!!

AND THEN! During a kind of Jesusy film presentation, Beth sneaks away to the orphanage pharmacy and just goes hog wild on the pills! TRULY: Valley of the Dolls has nothing on this sequence. 

Obviously, Beth is caught pill-handed and she also spills all the pills, breaks a giant glass jar, and then falls onto both of them. SHE IS 9. I THINK I LOVE THIS SHOW.

Episode 2: Exchanges

So after Beth’s completely insane pill odyssey, she is punished by being forbidden to play chess! Fast forward an indeterminate number of years, and we meet a slightly older Beth (now played by the bewigged Anya Taylor-Joy). AND THIS WIG, Y’ALL. WOOF. Completely dried out and bent, it really makes you appreciate the fact that they just cut the younger Beth’s hair. I realize that Anya is going to go through many 50s and 60s hairstyles to come but I really wish they had just done the same and used her real hair because we are about to take a bad wig odyssey that will last throughout this series. Also! I love that Jolene is played by the same actress! How old is too old to be in an orphanage?

Speaking of age! Beth is apparently now 15 but when a super weird couple expresses interest in adopting her, the orphanage director lady lies and says Beth is 13 and everyone just goes with it....FOR THE REST OF THE SERIES. Seriously, this age difference is never ever visited again or challenged. Beth is basically 15-17 for at least 5 years and no one gives a shit. OK? Anyway, Beth is adopted by Marielle friggin Heller (aka director of Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) who has a very Mamie Eisenhower wig which is just fine compared to the bent and dry-ass mess on Anya’s head.

It is later revealed that Marielle adopted Beth because her husband is mainly away on business and she needs an older gal pal around to fetch her....sedatives from the magazine store! I wonder if Beth will totally get addicted to them again! I’m no chess player but you can absolutely predict plot devices in this series about two pawns away (is that a chess term? I still don’t know or care!) 

So yes: as predicted Beth absolutely gets addicted to sedatives again (also the specific sedatives she gets addicted to are the exact same ones she was addicted to at the orphanage - WHAT A COINCIDENCE! - and also they are made up sedatives for the purposes of this show only in case we all want to get the same magical chess sedatives and see chess on the ceiling too). ALSO! Beth is still mainly addicted to chess despite the fact that she was permitted from playing it for the last 5-7 years (depending on what version of her age you’re going on?) but still is good at it? Most upsetting: she rips apart her lovely bed canopy in order to see her ceiling chess hallucinations! THE NERVE OF THIS KID!

Also nervy: bitch totally stole chess magazines from the pharmacy when she was also stealing sedatives from her adoptive mom! Kleptomania is Beth’s #3 addiction after chess and pills also comes into play when it is revealed that her new adoptive mom is kinda poor since her husband is away all the time and doesn’t give her enough money so Beth can’t enter those chess tournaments she read about in the magazines she stole. SO she writes to janitor Bill Camp and asks for $5 to enter the chess thing and if she wins she’ll send him $10. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT PLOT POINT WHICH WILL COME INTO PLAY LATER. So Beth goes to the chess tournament where she meets some not handsome twin dudes and a very handsome other dude named Townes.

Basically all the chess dudes at this tourney suck in the same way? To be fair: if I saw Beth walking up in her ugly orphanage clothes and orphanage cut wig, I would think she sucked at chess too? Oh also - all the girls at her new high school also think her style sucks. I WONDER IF IN COMING EPISODES SHE WILL GAIN MORE STYLE AND CHESS FAME THAN ALL THESE GARBAGE PEOPLE. Spoiler: she does and also beats this dude named Harry and becomes the Kentucky chess champion. Also! Beth’s adoptive dad totally abandons her and Marielle Heller!  I still hate chess but will continue to watch this show because of its haunting wigs and lowgrade feminist vibe.

Episode 3: Doubled Pawns

This episode begins with a flashback to Beth’s shitty birth mother and her shitty banged wig and remember that time I said I was going to talk about the wig on the littlest girl who plays her? WELL HERE WE ARE. Baby Beth has the absolute WORST WIG ON THIS SHOW and given how terrible all the wigs are, that is saying a lot. This wig looks like it was ripped off an American Girl doll which had been mistreated for years and thrown of a jungle gym or something. IT IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST (as is her mom, who makes this poor kid believe she had drowned!!!) 

ANYWAY. We get a new wig in this episode!!! Beth manages to grow out her orphanage bangs and allow her hair to have a 50s wave bob. Do not be fooled by the higher quality of this cut, however - the quality of the WIG continues to very much suck! WHAT IS THIS HAIR PART! No hair underneath! And everything is still a dried out, bent mess! ALSO HER ROOTS ARE A NIGHTMARE. This is also the episode wherein Marielle Heller basically becomes Mama Rose to Beth and really gets into Beth supporting both of them via chess winnings and becomes her chess manager (ACTUAL JOB TITLE). Also Beth gets nicer clothing. Hilariously, Marielle tells Beth’s high school that Beth is just constantly sick so she can skip school to go to chess tournaments even though Beth is straight up on the cover of Life magazine?! I wonder if this will at all come to the attention of the high school - IT DOESN’T! PLOT HOLES BE DAMNED THIS SHOW IS ABOUT CHESS! She does go to high school long enough for the snobby girls who once made fun of her to invite her to the dumbest party ever where they just sit around and ask Beth dumb questions about Chess fame and then all have a sing-along to a song Beth doesn’t know because she has no idea what pop culture is: ONLY CHESS CULTURE. I watched this show with my mom and asked if ‘60s parties were like this and she laughed her head off and said NO. ALSO! Beth’s kleptomania comes into play at this party where she steals a bottle of gin and leaves without saying goodbye to anyone. WHAT A BITCH.

Speaking of bitches, Beth meets a new chess diva in the form of Love Actually’s resident child drum prodigy! He has a character name but whatever: Love Actually is his name and he has longish shaggy (non wigged) hair and dresses like Crocodile Dundee and is loved and feared in the chess community for being such a non-nerd (?) chess player. I asked my mom if anyone dressed like this in the ‘60s and she said “NO! But I guess I didn’t know everyone” WHICH IS A GREAT ANSWER BECAUSE MY MOM DIDN’T RUN IN WEIRD CHESS CIRCLES IN THE ‘60s. We are lead to believe the ‘60s chess community of weirdos consists of the same 5 rotating dudes who are all at the same chess tournaments always and also possible love interests for Beth and she’s better at chess than all of them.

The only weirdo chess dude that Beth cares about is Townes, who you may recall from the last episode in which he was the only attractive chess dude at that first chess tournament Beth went to with borrowed Bill Camp money. Anyway, she runs into him at some chess tournament (LIKE I REMEMBER WHICH ONE PLEASE) in Las Vegas where he is now a chess reporter (ACTUAL 1960s JOB, Y’ALL). He invites Beth back to his hotel boudoir where he takes some non-boudoir pictures of her playing chess and Beth is all aflutter with chess love but SUCK IT BETH, TOWNES IS GAY!!! I have to say that the only believable part of this show is that the only attractive chess dude would be homosexual. It still does not forgive any of the other plot nonsense.

SO! It’s still the big Vegas chess tournament which is super duper important-chess wise (though this show also makes it seem like every chess game IS THE MOST IMPORTANT so who is to say?) Anyway, Beth and her 50s wave wig (even though it is the 60s?) play Love Actually and....they both win? I didn’t know this was a chess pastability but ok? Beth is pissed that she didn’t beat Love Actually, I hope I never have to see him again (SPOILER HE’S IN MANY MORE EPISODES AND HAD I KNOWN THAT MAYBE I WOULD HAVE STOPPED WATCHING NOW BUT I DIDN’T!) 

Episode 4: Middle Game

We are still stuck with this weird ‘50s bob in this episode. IT STILL LOOKS BAD. New developments are: Beth is taking night classes at the local college (even though she is technically still in high school?) in order to learn Russian to better understand people who are more obsessed with chess than she is: Russians. Anyway, he ends up going to the most wild and stereotypical hippie party with a college dude after class and yep - loses her virginity to him. Ok? At least it wasn’t to a chess weirdo? She also stays behind and parties and drinks alone in the hippie apartment because of all her substance addiction and kleptomania. Also! She graduates from high school despite being 2 years too old for high school (a plot point never explained) and missing all that high school for chess tourneys (another plot point never explained!) OH WELL: CHESS! 

Beth and Marielle go to Mexico City for some chess tournament (AGAIN I COULDN’T TELL YOU WHICH ONE). Marielle is excited because she is pen pals (OMG THE 60s Y’ALL) with some Mexican weirdo who I definitely feared would steal all the chess winnings but then ultimately just sucks in the same way the adoptive dad did. Beth also runs into those chess twin weirdos because the chess community is comprised of only 5 dudes as I said. Their hair looks bad but not as bad as her wig. 

Beth doesn’t see much of Mexico City - nor do we unless you count a truly outrageous sequence in which Beth and Marielle go out on their hotel balcony and look into a green screen rendering of Mexico City that would have felt at home in CGI ghostmare, Bohemian Rhapsody. Anyway, Beth and her olde timey 1950s wig which is spending way too much time in the 60s even though she’s supposed to be stylish now, take a lot of chess baths while Marielle drinks a lot because that Mexican pen pal/boyfriend sucks so bad.

So Beth wins enough chess to play Borgov, who we are led to believe is the Russian white whale/Bond villain of the chess community and LOSES! She is pretty pissed about it but not as pissed as...

....coming back to the hotel room to discover Marielle Heller and her luscious Mamie Eisenhower wig DEAD. TWICE AN ORPHAN, Y’ALL. Mexican coroners tell Beth that her mom died of hepatitis (!!!) and Beth somehow implicates low quality tequila in this hepatitis death. I LEGITIMATELY GOOGLED ‘DOES TEQUILA GIVE YOU HEPATITIS’ IMMEDIATELY. I DON’T THINK IT DOES?!?!?! THIS SHOW IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS AND YES I WILL CONTINUE WATCHING IT DESPITE THE TERRIBLE WIGS AND MY HATRED OF CHESS.

Episode 5: Fork

Beth returns to Kentucky IN THE RAIN BECAUSE TV AND MOVIE DEATHS ARE ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY RAIN. She is about to be super lonely in the house she know owns (according to a super sketchy international phone call with her adoptive father which will definitely not hold up in court) and then...she gets a call from Harry! WHO THE EFF IS HARRY! Again, luckily, there are only 5 chess guys who need to remember and he is one of them (he is the one she beat for the Kentucky chess whatever in episode 2). She invites him over because she’s lonely!

Harry is definitely the saddest of the weirdo chess dudes because apparently he’s been harboring a secret love of Beth (who at the time of their first meeting was like 13-15 depending on what timeline you’re going on and he was...20? OK GROSS BUT OK). BITCH EVEN GOT HIS WEIRD TEETH FIXED SO HE COULD BE LOVED BY BETH AND HER BENT ASS WIG AND SERIOUSLY NO THANK YOU HARRY. Regardless, Beth lets Harry have sex with her a few times and live rent-free in her house and ultimately Harry gets enough self confidence to leave this effed up living situation since he will never be one of Beth’s obsessions (which are still: chess, pills/alcohol, stealing shit). 

So Beth goes to Ohio for some other chess tournament and reunites with UGH Love Actually. At this point in the show, Beth starts wearing long scarves as headbands and her wig has never looked better because most of it is covered by the scarf. THANK GOD. So Love Actually totally chess hustles Beth for a lot of coin playing speed chess (DEAR GOD WHY HAVE I BEEN FORCED TO LEARN WHAT SPEED CHESS IS) but in the end, she still beats him for the chess title. EFF YOU, Love Actually! May I never see you again! OH SHIT HE JUST INVITED HER TO  NEW YORK TO TRAIN HER FOR THE PARIS CHESS THING DEAR GOD WHY IS THERE SO MUCH LOVE ACTUALLY IN THIS SHOW OK FINE I’LL STILL WATCH IT.

Episode 6 - Adjournment

Ok so Beth and her ok wig that is mainly covered by a scarf go to Love Actually’s apartment in NYC which IS AN UNDERGROUND BUNKER AND SHE HAS TO SLEEP ON A BLOW UP MATTRESS. Again and for the millionth time: Love Actually is the worst! Especially the worst because he introduces her to all these rando bohemians he knows, including some French bitch who will definitely eff everything up when Beth is already teetering on her pill/alcohol obsession and should probably not meet any other enablers. Somehow, he does get her to quit the pills/alcohol long enough to have sex with him (UGH).

And so we are in Paris, 1967. Where we started the show with Beth’s awful 60s flip! AND WE MEET ANOTHER PLOTHOLE. Only a week before this, Beth was in NYC with hair about 3″ shorter and still wearing scarves in her hair. WHAT IN THE VERY HELL, SHOW! I realize that this show has a very vague sense of time or how old Beth is or whatever but truly: NOPE. 

Anyway, it’s the night before the big match against Borgov and Beth is on her very best behavior when who should ring her up but that French bitch Love Actually introduced her to! She is downstairs at the hotel bar and just come down and have one drink and don’t ruin your entire chess career, mmmkay? THIS ENABLING BITCH!!!! NEVER TRUST ANYONE WITH THIS CRYING GAME WIG UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO BE A CRYING GAME. Of course, Beth goes downstairs, drinks every drink in the bar, has sex with some rando French dude and...wakes up in the icebath we see at the beginning of the show and sweatily plays Borgov in her wig that has never looked frizzier, loses, and is shamed from the entire chess community. Also Love Actually wants Beth to come back to NYC but NO THANK YOU TO YOU AND YOUR BUNKER OF ENABLERS.

Back in Kentucky, Beth....is shown learning how to flip her hair. WAIT WHAT SHE ALREADY HAD A FLIP HAIRSTYLE THE ENTIRE TIME IN PARIS WHAT KIND OF WIG GASLIGHTING ARE YOU PLAYING, SHOW?!?!?!??!?!?!!

UGH anyway, with THE EXACT SAME FLIP WIG AS WE’VE SEEN HER IN, Beth tries to be a responsible young person of indeterminate age who owns a house in Kentucky and not drink or take pills or steal shit. EXCEPT remember that time her adoptive dad said she could just have the house if she paid the mortgage? WELL BITCH SHOWS UP AND J’ACCUSES HER OF STEALING THE HOUSE FROM HIM. Which is hilarious because of all the things she stolen in this show, the house wasn’t one of them. In any case, she buys the house! And takes herself out to dinner! And has a drink! AND UH OH.

At this point the show just goes completely off the rails in addictive nonsense. Beth just goes around the house in her terrible flip wig applying makeup and barfing in to chess trophies. It’s every stereotypical drug/alcohol scene from every biopic ever except this chick doesn’t really exist and this show is wearing on my nerves and Beth has to stop making so many terrible live decisions and this wig has BETTER GET BETTER.

And then magically - Jolene shows up in the most fabulous afro wig!! WHAT! OK I WILL WATCH THE BITTER CONCLUSION OF THIS SERIES BECAUSE I LOVE JOLENE.

Episode 7: End Game

Jolene...Jolene....Jolene. Jolene. I love Jolene. I don’t love that this show uses her by making her be the “magical negro” trope who helps Beth get her life back together. Predictable nonsense! So yes, Jolene looks around Beth’s ramshackle drug den and tells her to get her life back together. AND THEN BETH DOES. No AA or rehab required! WHAT! I really appreciate that Jolene also compares her to Susan Hayward (star of Valley of the Dolls!) which is the sick burn/comparison I needed. 

The other reason Jolene showed up was to bring Beth to janitor Bill Camp’s funeral. At the funeral, which is very poorly attended, Beth reveals THAT SHE NEVER PAID BILL CAMP THAT $5 HE LENT HER (AND $10 SHE PROMISED HIM) AT THE BEGINNING OF HER CHESS CAREER. WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT. It is at this point that I fully decided that I wanted Beth to fail at everything because she is a garbage person who never gave propers to Bill Camp for changing her life for the better. THIS BITCH!! She even goes back to the orphanage where she discovers Bill Camp’s CHESS SHRINE DEVOTED TO HER! SHE FEELS LIKE SHIT AS WELL SHE SHOULD! I FULLY HATE HER!!!!

Jolene is much more forgiving of Beth than me and also introduces Beth to a new obsession: squash! Ok? It does allow Beth to wear a headband which is great wig-wise (in that it hides all the seamwork). Beth also turns down these Jesusy people who want to fund her chess trip to Russia and so Jolene GIVES HER $3,000 TO GO TO RUSSIA. IF THERE IS ANYTHING I’VE LEARNED IN THE LAST 5 MINUTES OF THIS SHOW IT IS THAT BETH WILL NOT PAY THAT MONEY BACK AND JOLENE PLEASE DO NOT!!!!

Jolene does. Beth goes to Russia which is straight out of every Bond movie and gets her shit together and wins a lot of damn chess. 

Though her midweight coat game rivals that of Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, her wig game ALSO RIVALS THAT OF NICOLE KIDMAN IN THE UNDOING IN THAT IT IS ALSO A RED NIGHTMARE WIG. This show spent so much goddamned money on clothes, sets, and CGI greenscreens of Mexico City AND YET NO MONEY FOR WIGS. BOO.

I did enjoy this one chess opponent’s walrus hair but otherwise, Beth’s flip wig has absolutely overstayed its welcome and is a compete and utter bent nightmare. Also! Remember that one hot chess dude? He shows up and helps Beth with Chess!! HUH?

Also every single weirdo in the chess community somehow form a chess calming circle in Love Actually’s bunker apartment and call Beth internationally to help her win against Borgov at chess! WHAT IN THE DAMN HELL? It is sweet I guess, but also makes ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING SENSE AS BETH WAS A TOTAL ASSHOLE TO ALL THESE PEOPLE AND DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE A PART OF THEIR WEIRD CHESS GANG.

Ultimately, Beth beats Borgov and wears THIS FUCKING HAT. I think we’re supposed to believe that she is now the white queen chess piece (I HATE THAT I NOW KNOW CHESS PIECES).

She is actually dressed in head to toe white and somehow convinces her American handler that she will just walk...to the airport? And despite being invited to the Johnson White House (girl go there!) would rather just wander the streets of Russia without any purse or luggage or way of getting home. THIS BITCH. She finds a new chess community of old men who play chess outside at folding tables and decides to join them WITHOUT GOING HOME TO PAY JOLENE ALL HER MONEY BACK WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY WHAT SHE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT AND ALSO MAYBE SETTING UP A BILL CAMP CHESS FOUNDATION BECAUSE YOU NEVER PAID HIM BACK YOU PIECE OF SHIT. No, she is no longer addicted to pills, alcohol, or stealing but is absolutely addicted to chess on a level that is probably lethal. I spent the last moments of the show demanding that the Russian chess hobos murder her and her immaculate white outfit because BETH IS A SELFISH ASSHOLE AND ALL HER WIGS ARE GARBAGE LIKE HER!!!!

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ

[checkoutafrica]

Twitch; The Romantic Gangster

What a great time to be alive! Right now we are in the middle of a revolution, African music is slowly taking over and finally receiving the attention it deserves. Even in a pandemic, no one can stop greatness!

All eyes are on us but more recently, all eyes are on rising African star, Twitch, as he releases his highly anticipated debut EP, Lost. The Ghanaian singer and songwriter manages to mix elements of Afrobeats, RnB, and Pop to produce a sound he likes to refer to as Coastal Music and I have to say it’s quickly become one of my favourite sounds – his song chaskele has been on repeat non-stop since the release of Lost.

The punchy, four-track offering centred around the theme of “love”, Twitch shares: “It’s been a long time in the making. A lot of effort went into the music in this project. I wrote each song to capture the emotions I feel and hopefully leave a piece of me with every verse.” His EP for me is a true representation of what it means to be young and the emotions we feel as we transition from young people to actual adults, so many of us are lost in love and so many of us are lost in life trying to figure out the people that we truly want to be.

This is literally only the beginning for Twitch – there’s a lot more that the continent and global music community can expect from the 22-year-old in years to come and I can’t wait to see his career blossom!

View this post on Instagram

What song are you listening to?

A post shared by Twitch 4EVA (@twitch4eva) on Aug 13, 2020 at 3:58am PDT

When did you first discover your passion for music?

I’ve been singing since childhood, I grew with my grandmother, mom and little sister so we didn’t have electricity at the time and she didn’t want me going to a neighbours house or anywhere else really so she would teach us how to sing in parts. I’ve been singing since childhood, I was a choir director at my primary school and the secondary school too – I’ve always had this passion for music!

Would you say that your sound/ vibe has changed in any way from when you first started making music to now?

Yes because I started making music as a normal ling man who knew nothing about music. It was just me, my voice and vibes. Then when I met up with ground-up chale, that’s when things sort of changed – they’d give you songs to listen to and then they’ll nurture you – give you a couple of videos to look at, really help you move out of your comfort zone. I really think they’ve helped me to develop a lot as an artist. Then me, myself I listen to a lot of music, I’m always trying to better my sound- right now my favourite artist is Burna Boy. I feel like he talks to me all the time, as a musician, I would want to preach what he preaches as well, I feel like he says things that I would love to say but he makes it so perfect.

What would you say is your biggest achievement so far in your career?

When it comes to streams we’ve done well for quite some time because I think I’ve streamed more than a million on apple music, Spotify and youtube etc. I am very grateful for that, I’m still trying to connect people and bring them into my circle musically so I am doing that bit by bit.

View this post on Instagram

Really appreciate the love and support from you guys so far Chale. Pre add LOST EP by tapping the link in my bio

A post shared by Twitch 4EVA (@twitch4eva) on Jul 26, 2020 at 1:14pm PDT

How did you come up with the term coastal music to describe your sound?

Coastal music is more of like music, let’s say from Africa but mostly from ghana – so music from like highlife but at the same time I’m also trying to get influence by other parts of Africa as well, I listen to Nigerian music, South African music and I fuse it all together. So coastal music can be music that you listen to with your girlfriend in your room or music that you listen to at the beach, in the stadium, when you’re sober when you’re happy – it fits every mood and you can listen to it literally anywhere. It’s just vibes; mainly Ghanian but also fused with other parts of Africa.

Tell us more about your ep lost.

It’s called lost because I feel like I’m lost in love and then, on the other hand, I’m lost in life – when I say I’m lost in life, I feel like this applies to everyone because people don’t know the right or correct formula to be successful, everyone is just coasting through life trying their best not to mess up and find their own paradise.

Then I’m lost in love – I’ve been in certain relationships and it happens all the time that I end up broken-hearted and I don’t know what the problem is because I am a very emotional person and I try to love people a lot and it never ends well.

Lastly, like I mentioned before I grew up with my mom, grandma and little sister so me witnessing arguments between my mom and dad before my dad finally left her at the age of 6 made me realise that maybe sometimes love is not real but it still is real – the whole thing is so fucked up.

How would you yourself describe the feeling of being in love?

Being in love for me is being in a moment where you can’t think of ANYONE ELSE but your partner, you’ll be in a position where anything and everything you do, you’ll be thinking about that person 24/7 – you just think about that person all day every day, it’s like your brain just stops multitasking. That’s love.

View this post on Instagram

No Returning

A post shared by Twitch 4EVA (@twitch4eva) on Jun 4, 2020 at 12:20pm PDT

Which song from the ep holds the most significance in your life?

Every single one of them, I feel like I needed to say a lot but I was able to say enough on just 4 songs because if I had said everything, it would’ve been a whole album, you get me? I tried my possible best to say everything on those 4 tracks.

On the first song, I talk about the distance between my and my partner, at that time she wasn’t in the country but I was trying my absolute best to make her feel like I was with her and I don’t really give compliments in person, I’ve got this gangster thing about me so I put all my emotions in a song and be like “yo, just listen to this song, I’m trying to speak to you” I was trying to let her know that I’m always with her no matter the distance.

Then with the second song baby, at that point, I didn’t think about anyone else. It got to a point where even if she did wrong, I still didn’t have a problem with it, so I was just trying to exaggerate that I love her with that song.

The third song Chaskele, is when I was broken-hearted and I also drew inspiration from my mom and dad, my dad left when I was 6 and I didn’t understand the fact that my mum loved my dad so much and then they parted ways, I felt like I came into that position too when my partner left me.

Lastly, the fourth song on the EP which is dada and that’s me trying to motivate the youth and trying to tell everybody that you should know yourself and you should know the purpose that you’re meant to serve in life, once you know that, no one can ever lie to you because you’ll know your worth.

You call yourself a romantic gangster but not a romantic person, what do you mean by this?

Naturally I don’t talk too much and I am a very straight forward person, when I see you going wayward I will tell you directly and when I give out compliments I don’t say a lot so I feel like people don’t really feel it but I really do mean it, luckily for me, God has blessed me vocally so I’ll put all the vibes in a song and make you feel emotions through my music so you know what I’m trying to say.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for a girl?

I once travelled 6 hours to surprise a girl – I just texted her like “yo, what are you doing?” she was said she was in her room and I told her that I was in front of her gate. I didn’t even catch a flight, I was on the bus for 6 hours with my hoodie up because I didn’t want anyone to see me, I was just waiting patiently to meet her.

View this post on Instagram

4EVA @lelewan__

A post shared by Twitch 4EVA (@twitch4eva) on Apr 26, 2020 at 1:23pm PDT

What is your favourite thing about growing up in Ghana?

Ghana is a very beautiful country you know? Compared to other countries I feel like it’s very relaxed, there’s no pressure from what I see. This country allows you to sit and think about how you can be successful in life, there’s pressure but there’s no pressure – the love is more than the hate, no matter how gangster someone may appear they still love their people. So I love being Ghanian.

If you could collab with anyone dead or alive who would it be and why?

Dead I’d have to say Michael Jackson or Bob Marley for obvious reasons! And alive, without a doubt Burna Boy, him before anyone else.

Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?

In the next 10 years I see myself being the topic of African music!

View this post on Instagram

Have You Watched The Video for BABY yet?

Check link in my bio!

A post shared by Twitch 4EVA (@twitch4eva) on Aug 15, 2020 at 10:27am PDT

Listen to his EP lost Now;

The post Twitch; The Romantic Gangster appeared first on CheckoutAfrica.

from WordPress https://www.checkoutafrica.com/twitch-the-romantic-gangster/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=twitch-the-romantic-gangster

[thegayagenda-forkids]

Lunch Detention

T.J. grabbed his lunch from the cafeteria before he walked into the choir room for his lunch detention. Part of him chuckled as he thought about how afraid he was about being found guilty by the school council. Gus made it sound like he could have gotten expelled, when all he did was just get some lunch detention. There wasn’t anyone actively supervising lunch detention, only the band director checking in occasionally, but he would go next door to the band room for most of the time to do his own work.

Cyrus came in a little later with his own lunch, and two muffins proudly stood on his tray, a chocolate chocolate chip one, and a blueberry one. He sat down and put the blueberry one on T.J.’s tray, smiling.

“Underdog, did you get this muffin by yourself?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding proud of himself. “Walked straight up to the front of the line like I already owned them. Then I just took them. People know not to mess with me now because you’re my friend.”

T.J. smiled, loving to hear that Cyrus thought of him as a friend. “Look at you Underdog. Few months ago, I’m pretty sure that was on your biggest fears list.”

“Well, I officially deleted it off of the list, actually. Grabbing muffins from the front of the line is just...another thing I actually can do.”

“Proud of you,” he said. “Maybe I can be a tiny bit of a good influence.”

“You’re a great influence...98 percent of the time.”

“And the other two percent?”

“My parents’ worst nightmares,” he joked. “All four of them.”

“I don’t know, they seem to like me enough. At least that’s what they thought of me at your bar mitzvah.”

“You talked to them? When?”

“It was after…” After T.J. loosened the cap of the sparkling cider. “Never mind…”

“Come on, tell me!” He said, tugging on T.J.’s shoulder. “You can tell me! You gotta tell me!”

He sighed. “I don’t want to spoil it…”

“Spoil what?”

“I loosened the cap of your sparkling cider so you could open it and get all the glory,” he said.

“That was you!” He said. T.J. looked away, waiting for Cyrus to yell at him and call him a jerk for not believing in him.“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me!”

“Wait...really?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t do it myself,” he said. “I know that. I practiced seven times at home...even dropped a bottle and got my mom’s living room wet with cider. I ruined her couch and three cushions!”

T.J. smiled and chuckled a little. “So you’re glad I loosened it?”

“Yes! Because then I got to open it and look cool, while not making a total fool of myself. You took the fool part right out of it.”

“Well, I’m glad that makes you happy,” he said.

“I thought my step-dad was the one who did that,” Cyrus continued. “It makes me happier knowing it was you.”

T.J. smiled and then looked over at the piano in the middle of the choir room. “Hey, what’s your favorite song?”

“What?”

“What’s your favorite song?” He asked again.

“Oh...uh...I don’t know…” he said. “I guess I kinda like the Shallows song from A Star is Born. Why?”

T.J. smiled and got up and opened the piano there, and started playing the opening chords to the song, looking over to see Cyrus look absolutely amazed and elated. He started moving over and sat next to T.J. on the piano bench, watching his fingers dance over the black and white keys.

“I had no idea you were such a piano man,” he said chuckling happily. T.J. smirked and changed song, playing the opening riff to Billy Joel’s Pianoman. “Oh no way!” Cyrus said looking at him with a smile and a sort of softness in his gaze. T.J. smiled back, still playing the song.

“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in,” he started singing. He didn’t have the strongest singing voice, but that didn’t matter, it was about the feeling he was putting in, this playful softness.

“There’s an old man, sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin,” Cyrus sang the next line. T.J. kept playing, feeling emboldened, and the two started singing the rest of the song together.

“He says son can you play me a memory?

I'm not really sure how it goes

But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete

When I wore a younger man's clothes

La-la-la de-de da

La-la de-de da da-da

Sing us a song you're the piano man

Sing us a song tonight

Well we're all in the mood for a melody

And you've got us feelin' alright.” They didn’t sing well. In facts, their voices were cracking and they changed their pitches randomly, but they enjoyed the singing and being together.

“Now John at the bar is a friend of mine

He gets me my drinks for free

And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke

But there's someplace that he'd rather be

He says Bill I believe this is killing me

As a smile ran away from his face

Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star

If I could get out of this place

Oh, la-la-la de-de da

La-la de-de da da-da!” Cyrus put his hand on T.J.’s shoulder, leaning into him a little as they kept singing.

“Now Paul is a real estate novelist

Who never had time for a wife

And he's talkin' with Davy who's still in the navy

And probably will be for life

And the waitress is practicing politics

As the businessmen slowly get stoned

Yes they're sharing a drink they call loneliness

But it's better than drinkin' alone…” T.J. started playing the riff again, and Cyrus watched finding the chords that T.J. kept playing over and over again and would sometimes join in on that chord to add a little dimension. Sometimes it was more of a cacophony than a melody, but it didn’t matter to them.

“Sing us the song you're the piano man

Sing us a song tonight

Well we're all in the mood for a melody

And you've got us feelin' alright.”

T.J. started singing alone now, slowing down the song.“It's a pretty good crowd for a saturday

And the manager gives me a smile

'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see

To forget about life for a while.”

Cyrus picked up and sang the next part alone, trying to play along with T.J., who kept correcting his hand placements gently. “And the piano it sounds like a carnival

And the microphone smells like a beer

And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar

And say man what are you doin' here?

Oh, la-la-la de-de da

La-la de-de da da-da!”

They looked at each other with devilish grins and they stopped playing the piano entirely and T.J. put his arm on Cyrus’s shoulders. “Sing us the song you're the piano man

Sing us a song tonight

Well we're all in the mood for a melody

And you've got us feelin' alright.”

They started laughing a little until the band director came in. “Look the piano playing was great and all, but this is lunch detention,” he said. “Go back to your seats.”

They both blushed and got up from the bench and into their seats again, eating lunch and watching the band director leave again before they both cracked up. “So...enough on the edge for you?” Cyrus asked.

“It was perfectly in the middle,” T.J. replied.

“Thanks for driving me here.”

@anarcoqueer1994 @thespiritsquid @tyrus-tide

[unfolded73]

Kit Kat Girl Number One (1/1) - schitt’s creek ff

Summary:  The story of the Schitt's Creek production of Cabaret told from the point-of-view of Kit Kat Girl Number One. (ao3)

Twyla/Kit Kat Girl No. 1 (mostly an original character); Patrick/David also although mostly in the background. For @thedidipickles​. Rated Teen, 4500 words.

I named the character of this Kit Kat Girl after Jade Whitney, the dancer who played her. If you haven't seen Jade dancing on her instagram, what have you been doing with your life? Thanks to the Rosebudd denizens for cheering me on!

__________________________________________

The flyer for Cabaret auditions hung in the foyer of Jade’s Elmdale dance studio, but she wasn’t the one who noticed it — her eyes had always dragged over that cacophony of colorful paper without really seeing any of it. It was her friend Seo-yeon who pointed it out as they left their hip hop class, Jade already dreading her drive back home.

“Oh, I love Cabaret,” Seo-yeon said, looking at the bulletin board while Jade bent down to re-tie her sneaker. “We should audition.”

Jade wrinkled her nose. “Are you suggesting that we do a musical? You and me?” She stood up and shouldered her bag. “I don’t know if the Elmdale Community Players can handle us.”

“It’s not in Elmdale, it’s in the Creek.”

“Oh, even better.” Jade stepped over and joined her friend next to the wall of flyers. “Schitt’s Creek community theater. Yikes.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Jade. It might be fun. You were just saying how bored you are.”

Jade sighed, fiddling with the strap of her bag. “I can’t sing.”

Seo-yeon whipped around and frowned at her. “You can sing; I’ve heard you sing.”

“I can carry a tune, but I can’t sing.” The memory of a middle school talent show surfaced in her brain, when she’d attempted to sing Katy Perry’s “Firework” and her thin, reedy voice had been way overmatched by the material. She could feel her throat trying to close up just thinking about that distilled moment of humiliation.

“So? You can dance well enough to make up for it. Come on, please? I don’t want to go by myself.” Seo-yeon bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, a wheedling smile on her face.

Groaning, Jade turned and made for the door of the dance studio. “Fine, I’ll go with you, but expect me to complain about it a lot.”

“Deal.”

~*~

The audition was weird.

There was a woman named Jocelyn who was nominally running things, but she kept deferring to an oddly dressed older woman in impossibly high, impossibly white heels. Jade had never seen anyone in Elmdale who looked like this woman (who Jocelyn called ‘Moira’), and she seemed even more wildly out of place in the tiny town of Schitt’s Creek. Jade wondered where the hell she had come from.

Seo-yeon and Jade showed off some of their dance moves, playing music from the tinny speaker of Seo-yeon’s phone and performing the hip hop routine they’d been working on in their weekly class. Jocelyn and Moira both looked impressed, and Moira said they danced like ‘sensual marionettes’, and further proclaimed ‘despite the cacophonous accompaniment of this routine, I can see them both in a pre-war Berlin brothel.’ Jade wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. They also were asked to read some lines for Sally Bowles and to sing, but that didn’t go as well, at least not for Jade. Her voice sounded as thin and strangled as it always did, like her throat was trying its best to prevent the sound from getting out. Jocelyn gave them a kind smile and said she’d call them.

They walked out onto the front steps of Town Hall, looking over at what passed for a downtown in Schitt’s Creek. Jade thought back to the last time she’d been down here, taking stupid selfies in front of the town sign with some so-called friends from high school, all of them too drunk or high to drive, including the driver. God, she’d been an idiot. It was a miracle she was still alive.

“Do we really want to spend the next two months coming down here for rehearsals?”

Seo-yeon shrugged. “I mean, I get it. You’ve got such a demanding career.”

“Fuck off.” Just because she struggled to get more than twenty hours a week at the restaurant where she waitressed didn’t mean her best friend had any right to be dragging her like this.

“I still think it’ll be fun.”

“Maybe we won’t get cast in it.”

“I bet they’re hard up for dancers,” Seo-yeon said, marching off toward her car. “We’ll get cast.”

~*~

“I’m Kit Kat Girl number one,” Jade told her mother, whose back was turned, stirring ground beef in a skillet on the stove. “And Seo-yeon is Kit Kat Girl number two.”

“What does ‘number one’ mean? Is it the biggest part?”

“No, Sally Bowles is the biggest part,” Jade said.

“So what does it mean, Jade?”

“I have no idea.”

“It’s not going to help you get more hours at the deli,” her mother said.

“It’s not going to affect that,” Jade huffed. “And besides, it’s dance. I majored in dance, and you keep saying—”

“I keep saying that you need to get a job related to what you studied. This isn’t a job. It’s community theater. It’s not even in Elmdale, it’s in—”

“I know, Mom.”

They’d gone round and round over this a hundred times since Jade had come home from college and moved back into her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house. She needed to get a job. No, a real job, not a waitressing job. She needed to move to the city if she wanted to pursue her dreams. She couldn’t afford to move to the city. How would she ever afford to move to the city, working part-time at a deli? Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Well, who’s involved with this production?” her mother asked. “Anyone I know?”

“Do you know people in Schitt’s Creek?”

“A few.”

“Umm, the directors are these two women, Jocelyn and Moira.”

“Moira Rose?” her mother turned, spatula poised in the air.

“Yeah, that sounds right. Why?”

“She’s one of the Roses.”

Jade blinked at her mother. “Who are the Roses?”

“Oh, you were away at college when all that happened. Moira was a D-list actress and her husband used to own Rose Video. Anyway, they lost all their money — I think I remember reading that their business manager robbed them — and they ended up living in the Creek. It was kind of big news around here at the time, but that was a couple of years ago now, I guess.”

Well, that explained the clothes she’d been wearing, maybe. Maybe nothing could really explain the clothes that Moira Rose had been wearing.

~*~

“I’m Alexis,” the unfairly gorgeous woman said, holding her hand out limply for Jade to… shake? Kiss? She had no idea what to do with Alexis’ hand, but she made an attempt to shake it. “So I guess we’re all Kit Kat Girls?” She gestured, indicating herself, Jade, Seo-yeon, and three other women Jade hadn’t met yet. They were taking a break during their first rehearsal, which was less of a rehearsal and more of a series of weird acting exercises during which Stevie, the girl who’d been cast as Sally Bowles, seemed supremely uncomfortable. It didn’t make Jade feel great about the quality of this production.

Also, a lot of the cast seemed to know each other already. Stevie, Alexis, and somebody named Twyla were already friends. Alexis was Moira’s daughter, and she mentioned that the guy playing the Emcee was her brother’s boyfriend. All of it made Jade feel like an outsider, and she was grateful that she at least had one friend in the cast. Failing all else, she and Seo-yeon would be able to commiserate when it looked like the show was going to be disastrous.

Twyla came over and introduced herself during the next break. She had a wide smile and sparkling eyes, and something about her made Jade smile back. “You were really good at the movement exercises,” Twyla said.

“I majored in dance at college,” Jade said.

“Wow,” Twyla said, seeming genuinely impressed. “I can’t wait to learn from you. I’m more of a singer; the most dancing I’ve ever done has been the basic stuff we do with the Jazzagals. Show choir-type stuff.”

Jade was still adjusting to the fact that Twyla didn’t immediately ask the follow-up question everyone in Elmdale asked her when she told them she majored in dance: What are you doing here, then? “Umm, I don’t know, it looks like you know how to move your body,” Jade said, and then winced that those words had come out of her mouth.

Twyla was unfazed. “Oh, I do yoga. That probably helps.”

“Yeah, anything that increases your balance and flexibility will definitely help.” They were just nodding and smiling at each other, and Jade fumbled for something to say. “What do you do for a living?”

“I waitress at the café in town. You?”

Jade let out a breath. “I’m a waitress too.”

“Oh, cool!” Most of the time when Jade met another waitress, they spent five minutes talking about how awful it was. Twyla seemed to genuinely think it was cool. “Do you like it?”

“Not really. I’m trying to save up money to… make a fresh start somewhere, I guess.”

“Somewhere you can dance?” Twyla asked.

Jade nodded.

“Well, I’m glad we have you here now,” Twyla said, and Jade thought for one reckless second that her smile was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “Before you go off and get famous.”

~*~

“So why did you want to be Cliff?” she asked Patrick as they sat side-by-side against the wall while Moira worked with Bob. They’d been talking in a group about their auditions earlier, and Jade had been surprised to hear that Patrick hadn’t come in gunning for the Emcee when he was clearly the most talented male on the cast by a mile.

Patrick shrugged, pulling the neck of his t-shirt up to wipe sweat from his face. “I just figured I seem like more of a Cliff. It actually didn’t occur to me to audition for the Emcee. I don’t look like… I don’t know.”

She thought she knew what he meant. Patrick was physically a far cry from Joel Grey or Alan Cumming. The kind of guy who everyone probably assumed was straight, who caused people to rethink their assumptions when he was affectionate with his boyfriend in public. She could see why he wouldn’t have thought of himself for the leading role.

“Well, you’re doing great,” she said.

He winced. “I’m not a very good dancer. I’m hoping if I sing well enough, people won’t look too hard at my dancing.”

“You’ll get there. We just need more practice.”

He smirked. “I appreciate you putting the ‘we’ in there when you had the choreography mastered on day one.”

It was probably a terrible cliché, but it had put Jade at ease with the suggestive choreography that she and Patrick had to do together, knowing he had no interest in her physically. There was one moment in the opening number where Patrick had to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder, and until they got the hang of it, his hands on the backs of her thighs sometimes strayed higher than he probably intended. Then she had to sling her leg around his waist at one point and over his shoulder at another, the two of them moving in a way that was fairly intimate when you thought about it. But Patrick had an easy way about him, friendly and focused on getting the steps down, and Jade had felt comfortable with him from the start.

Stevie joined them against the wall, sliding down next to Patrick with her water bottle in hand. “What are you guys talking about?”

“About me being a terrible dancer and Jade being an amazing one,” Patrick said.

“That’s nice of you to say when I’ve basically been flashing you my vag every rehearsal,” Jade said to Patrick.

He blinked at her. “I’m sorry, you’ve been what?”

“That split I have to do right in front of you,” she said. The choreography required her to lie down on the floor and do a split in the air.

“Oh, right.” Patrick chuckled. “Most of the time I’m so focused on my own feet, I don’t even notice you doing it.”

Stevie was struggling not to laugh and spit out her water. When she’d swallowed it, she patted Patrick on the back. “You are so fucking gay.”

He shoved Stevie’s shoulder playfully. “Yeah, what was your first clue?”

She leaned over to Jade and whispered loudly, “He and David had sex for the first time in my bed.”

Jade tried to picture what circumstance could have led to that, but her imagination drew a blank. “With you in it?”

Now it was Patrick’s turn to try not to spit out his water. “No, not with her in it.” He was blushing adorably. “Privacy was at a premium back then and can you not tell everyone we meet that story, Stevie?”

“Mmm, no, sorry. I think I have to.”

She really liked these people, Jade thought as she laughed with them. She wasn’t sure what she imagined the people doing community theater in Schitt’s Creek to be like, but she hadn’t expected to find people here that she wanted to be friends with.

~*~

“Have you ever taken voice lessons?” Twyla asked her as they moved into warrior pose.

Twyla had asked Jade to join her for yoga a couple of mornings a week, and Jade tried not to analyze why she was willing to get up at an ungodly hour and make two additional drives all the way to Schitt’s Creek and back when she was already doing it for play rehearsals. Twyla had told her that she used to teach a yoga class a couple of years ago, but after she broke up with her boyfriend, the class lost its venue and sort of fell apart. Jade met Twyla at her house on Tuesdays and Fridays, and it was just the two of them moving through poses. Jade had been impressed that Twyla had a house of her own, but Twyla explained that it was really her grandmother’s house, and that her aunt was letting her live there while she tried to find herself in New Mexico.

Jade scoffed. “Why would I take voice lessons? I’m a terrible singer.”

Twyla frowned. “No, you have a lovely voice. You just need to relax your throat and sing from down here.” Twyla reached out and touched Jade’s abdomen, below the swell of her breasts.

Trying not to flinch at the contact, Jade shrugged. “I have no idea how to do that.”

“Can I show you?”

Jade felt unaccountably shy. “Okay.”

“First, you want to stand up straight but loose,” Twyla said, moving so that they were facing each other. “Feet shoulder-width apart, and when you take a breath, imagine that you are breathing all the way down to the floor, if that makes sense.”

She breathed.

“Good, your shoulders didn’t rise up; that’s good.”

Smiling, Jade said, “Yeah, I’ve learned proper breathing from dance instructors before.”

Twyla wasn’t affronted at all by this. “Then you’re one step ahead already!” she said with one of her wide grins. “Now, when you sing, imagine all of that air that you breathed down to the floor coming up and flowing through you.” Twyla breathed and then sang out a single, clear note.

Jade took another breath, imagining the air going all the way down, and then as she let it out, imagined it coming all the way back out. She matched Twyla’s pitch, and her voice sounded better and clearer than it ever had. Full, like a note from a brass instrument.

“That’s great!” Twyla said, clapping. “Let’s try this: Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome,” she sang easily, her voice filling the room.

“We don’t have to do this,” Jade said, her face heating up. She felt twelve again, trying to perform in front of people who were going to laugh at her.

“Come on, please?”

Jade sighed, and went through the breathing process again before belting out the first line of the opening number. But her throat felt tight, and singing it didn’t feel as good as that one pure note had felt, when she was matching Twyla.

“That’s better,” Twyla said, all gentle encouragement even though Jade didn’t think it really had been better.

“Should we get back to yoga?” Jade asked, begging with her eyes to be let off the hook.

“Sure, we can do that,” Twyla said, getting back into position. “Let’s move into child’s pose.”

Jade gracefully sank to her knees and stretched her arms out before lowering herself over into a deep bend, her nose an inch from the floor.

“You know what I think?” Twyla said. “I think sometimes we can hold our fears in our throats. Our fears can be like a boa constrictor, trying to choke us before our voices can be heard, calling out to tell the world our truths.”

Jade sat up and glared at Twyla. “Really?”

Twyla shrugged, still smiling her Twyla smile. “I know, it sounds silly. But think about it.”

~*~

Jade walked into the office at the dance studio in Elmdale and handed her resume to Derrek.

He looked at it. “What’s this?”

“My resume. I’ve noticed your hip hop classes are getting more popular, particularly for kids, and I bet if you hired another instructor you could offer more sessions. I’d like to apply for a job here.”

Derrek glanced over the paper for a minute before looking up. “I’m stretched a little thin. Not sure if I can afford to hire another teacher right now.”

“I could start with one class. And I have a friend, Alexis, who might be able to help you with marketing. Bring in more students.” Jade crossed her arms and regarded him evenly.

He tilted his head to the side. “Give me a few days to think about it.”

Jade nodded and turned to leave his office before quickly turning back. “Oh, and one more thing. What do you know about Cabaret?”

Derrek raised his eyebrows. “I was in a production of it once, why?”

“My friends Patrick and Stevie who could use a little bit of extra help with one of the numbers. What would you charge for a couple of private lessons?”

~*~

“The thing you have to remember about ‘Don’t Tell Mama,’ girls, is that while it is an upbeat number, it also speaks to the rebellious nature of these women who have defied their family’s expectations. Defied society’s expectations. It’s both a raucous proclamation of their freedom, but perhaps it is also a cry for all that they have lost,” Moira intoned, looking from one face to another. “You must convey all of that in your singing and dancing.”

Stevie turned and gave Alexis a brief look that seemed to say, How the hell do we do all of that?

Jade thought she at least could handle the raucous proclamation of her freedom right now. She remembered everything Twyla had said to her, even the corny stuff about her fears constricting her voice, and she opened her mouth and sang.

When the rehearsal was over, Twyla came right over to her. “I could hear you! You sounded amazing.”

Because of you, Jade wanted to say, but she felt too shy all of a sudden, every nerve on alert because of Twyla’s proximity. There was sweat glistening in Twyla’s cleavage, and Jade had to work not to stare.

Taking a step back to gain some equilibrium, Jade muttered her thanks and quickly went over to grab her stuff and make her escape before she did something crazy.

~*~

“You can’t get married until I get back from my trip with Ted,” Alexis was saying, which made Jade turn around for her make-up mirror to see who she was talking to.

“We’ve been engaged for literally one day, Alexis. I think we can manage that. Also it’s still supposed to be a secret—”

“You’re engaged!” This from Twyla, who was bouncing on her feet with glee. “When did this happen? Tell me everything.”

She could tell Patrick was blushing under his makeup, mostly based on the flush that was spreading down his neck. “I proposed yesterday at Rattlesnake Point.”

“Aww, it’s beautiful up there. That’s so romantic.” Twyla was literally clutching her hands together under her chin, the portrait of a person overwhelmed by the idea of love.

“Well, it maybe wasn’t my best idea, taking David Rose on a hike, but… it turned out pretty romantic in the end.” Patrick chuckled, looking at the floor. “Especially since he said yes.”

Alexis reached out and booped Patrick on the nose. “I can’t believe you’re going to be my brother-in-law. I mean, knowing David, I never thought I’d have an anything-in-law.”

Patrick frowned at that, but let it slide. “Okay, enough. We technically aren’t telling people until later tonight, although it seems like—”

“Still no sign of Stevie?” Jocelyn shouted, sticking her head in the dressing room. When a few people shook their heads, she dashed off again. Alexis and Twyla followed after her in a flutter of pink negligee, leaving Patrick to turn back to the mirror to continue working on his makeup.

“Congrats,” Jade said, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “Wow, marriage though.”

Patrick shrugged, bashful. “Yeah.”

“I literally can’t imagine liking someone enough to spend the rest of my life with them.”

“Well, until you meet someone you really love, it does seem unimaginable.”

“And like, you’re sure that David is the one?” she asked.

“I don’t know if I believe in ‘the one’, but I know what it’s like to try to make it work with someone who definitely isn’t the one. So if there is such a thing, then yeah, David is it for me.”

“You’re an inspiration to cynical people everywhere,” Jade said.

He smirked. “I try.”

~*~

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Seo-yeon said, hugging her.

“I know.” Jade said, stumbling a little bit on the damp lawn under her friend’s overenthusiastic embrace. “I’m glad you convinced me to do this. It was crazy. Crazy but fun.”

“It was fun,” Seo-yeon slurred, already a couple of sheets to the wind. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do with all this free time.”

“Well, I’m going to prepare for the dance class that I need to start teaching in the fall,” Jade said with a small smile.

“Derrek said yes?” Seo-yeon screeched, hugging her again when she nodded. “That’s amazing!”

They walked arm-in-arm around to the other side of Jocelyn’s house, where the deck was dominated by a bubbling hot tub.

“I’m not getting in Roland’s disgusting jacuzzi,” Jade heard someone say behind her. “Who knows what diseases could be lurking in that water?”

She turned and saw Patrick with his arm around his fiancé. “I knew you wouldn’t,” Patrick said, kissing David’s neck. “Someone should make sure Stevie doesn’t slip beneath the surface of the water and drown, though.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Jade said, glancing over at Stevie, who had a beer in one hand and a cup with what looked like whiskey in the other. Twyla sat next to her, the thin spaghetti straps of a bikini on her shoulders just visible above the frothing water. “You wanna get in?” she asked Seo-yeon.

“No, I’m with David — I’m not a fan of hot tubs. You go ahead.”

She glanced at Patrick one more time, but he only had eyes for David, and she suspected they weren’t going to be staying at the cast party that much longer. “Hey Patrick, don’t be a stranger, okay?”

He hugged her, strong arms squeezing her tight. “I won’t. Let’s get together soon.”

“Good luck with the wedding planning,” Jade said.

Patrick chuckled. “That’s mostly going to be David’s arena, but thanks.”

“You’re a great dancer,” David added. “You and my fiancé had some very sexy moves which I whole-heartedly approved of.”

Laughing and bidding them both goodnight, Jade went over and peeled off her jeans and t-shirt, revealing the swimsuit that she’d dutifully worn at Jocelyn’s reminder that they were going to be firing up the hot tub for the party. Sliding into the water next to Twyla, she watched as Stevie swallowed the last of the whiskey in her plastic cup and chucked it at Adam Cox’s head. The actor who played Cliff chuckled it back at her, leading to a tussle between them on the other side of the water.

Sitting close enough to Twyla that their shoulders touched, Jade let her head tip back until she was staring up at the night sky.

“Are you glad it’s over, or sad?” Twyla asked.

“Sad, mostly.” She looked up and met Twyla’s eyes. “Can I still come over for yoga?”

“Of course! I would hate it if you quit coming just because the show is over.”

Jade swallowed nervously. “You really helped me with that stuff you taught me about singing.”

“Yeah? I’m glad. I mean, not as much as you helped us all with the dancing, I don’t think, but still. I’m really glad.” She smiled, and it lit the whole night up.

“I’ve decided to be better about… what was it you said? Telling the world my truth?”

Twyla stretched out her legs under the water, and one of her feet brushed up against Jade’s. “And what is your truth?”

Jade’s heart thundered in her chest, the steam rising around them and giving the impression of privacy that they definitely didn’t have. “That I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

Biting her lip, Twyla looked around before she looked back at Jade. “Okay.”

Their lips met gently, one press followed by another, and another. Jade opened her mouth enough to take Twyla’s lower lip between her own, and she tasted like strawberry lip gloss and summertime. They kissed until they trailed off into giggles, foreheads and noses pressed together as they recovered their breathing.

“Kind of sorry I waited until the last night to do that,” Jade said.

Twyla tilted her head to the side in thought. “I feel like these things happen when they’re meant to happen.” And then she reached out and ran a hand up Jade’s arm, raising goosebumps in her wake. “But I also think that it might be easier for us to do yoga in the morning if you didn’t have to drive all the way back to Elmdale tonight and then drive all the way back here tomorrow.”

Fuck. “Do you want to get out of here?” Jade asked.

Twyla grinned, but then glanced over at Stevie, who somehow had managed to get more whiskey.

“That is,” she amended, “do you want to make sure Stevie gets home safe and then get out of here?”

Nodding, Twyla settled back against the edge of the hot tub and looked up at the sky. “Do you need to let your parents know you won’t be home tonight?”

“Don't tell Mama what you know!” Jade sang in an exaggerated German accent, making Twyla laugh. Stevie, not too drunk to hear her cue, launched into Sally Bowles’ part, and soon all of them were singing, clear and confident voices rising with the steam into the summer air.

[mr-stjames-icon]

Words Fail: Self Para/Starter?

@imcooperanderson​

Jesse laughed softly at her question. “What was I like in High School? God, that takes me back.” He chuckled string his iced tea with his reusable straw. The sound of the ice clinking against the glass filled the air as his smile slowly vanished. He gave a small shrug and shook his head reflecting on his time at Carmel. “I… I wasn’t a nice guy. I had one goal and that was to be the best. Better than anyone else. I joined the best show choir in the country. I rose to the top of the ranks and we won. Year after year and year. We won four consecutive National Titles and it felt… Amazing. To know everyone in that audience is cheering for you? There’s no greater feeling. The rush of going onto stage to belt out those first notes, the way the heat touches your skin from the lights… It’s ecstasy.” He began softly. “You know what was the best? Coming home with that trophy. Showing my folks I did something that awesome. I guess I always felt like I had to prove I was better than who I was to them because I was never really theirs…” He didn’t meet her eye knowing that perhaps she might feel the same. “It was amazing entering school with that trophy. Everyone loved you.  Everyone wanted to take a photo with you and everyone was dying just to be close to you… I thought those times would never end.” Jesse admired his hard work back then, he was proud of almost everything he had done. 

His thoughts turned to Rachel and how he had hurt her. How he had chosen a trophy over a relationship that actually made him feel something back then. He threw it all away for a fourth consecutive National Title. For a first trophy, sure but he had always regretted the actions of his former self. “Okay Sea Monkey, I’m going to go start dinner…” He sat patting her shoulder gently as he hid himself away in the kitchen, 

Jesse looked out of the window of the kitchen and to the garage where Cooper was. Had he been doing that now? Was he still choosing a trophy over love? In his eyes their relationship had always started with a drunk kiss which evolved into so much more. Cooper was the reason Jesse knew he liked dudes. Cooper was the person to make him feel that way Rachel made him feel all those years ago. But there was no trophy this time, at least not one that was obvious to him. 

He had noted his absence of late and his mind couldn’t help but wonder if Cooper did worry he didn’t like him. It was understandable, he was harsh, rash and critical. But that was how he had always been. Carmel demanded the best and there was no room for weakness. It was lessons he had carried with him, even into his adulthood. It had made him a great director and a fantastic actor willing to take on as much feedback as possible. He was tough but only because he cared. 

Jesse turned on the oven and started to busy himself with the food as he reflected further. The fights they had, the arguments, the tears that they had both shed. They had both been through a lot together. The ups and downs, the ugly and the beautiful. Jesse had always found answers in Cooper, answers to questions he didn’t even know he had. He would have never moved back to LA, not after the first time around. The embarrassment of being kicked out of UCLA. The way people talked about him, like he was some kind of idiot, a kid who had a pretty face but nothing upstairs. But here he was. Living in a house and now coaching a new show choir. It was something that a few months ago he would have found absurd. In fact, he had only ever had hopes of living and dying in New York. It was his home but he had come to the realisation that his home wasn’t New York. It wasn’t Broadway and it certainly wasn’t their old apartment. It was Cooper. 

Their family was expanding beyond anything he had ever dreamed. He had Moriah who he loved, of course. But now they had a teenage foster-daughter, a kid that needed a lot of love. Jesse admired that girl beyond anything he would care to admit, even to himself. Ramona would be in foster care still if the two of them hadn’t come along. They would have an empty room filled with meaningless trophies where a bed currently lay. 

It was nice to feel loved. To wake up every morning next to someone and see their face, just knowing that they trusted and loved you was a blessing. Waking up next to Cooper was the best part of his day because he was still by his side. They had both gambled in this life but his best risk had always been that brown eyed boy. Perhaps he had been too harsh in recent times, perhaps the quarantine was to blame or perhaps it was time to let down those walls. Cooper was the man he had decided to propose to. The man who he wanted to give marriage a try with again. He trusted him, didn’t he? 

Of course he did and he knew Cooper trusted him in return. While he had never been good at being emotionally supportive, he appreciated the trust that Cooper had put into him. Perhaps it was time to lower the guard. Jesse opened the fridge and poured himself a glass of wine. He swirled the liquid in the glass and quickly downed it. Would it kill him to be honest with Cooper? 

Jesse lowered the oven’s heat and left the house making his way to the garage. He was about to knock and enter when he stopped himself. Did Cooper even want him here? The two had seemed quiet and indifferent with each other of late and he wasn’t sure why. All he knew was that things had changed. 

He took a step back and looked at the door in front of him contemplating knocking and telling him that he loved him. Deciding the best way to tell him how much he truly loved him. More than anything. But that voice was being pulled down back into his throat by the tiny hands of the devils from years long ago. 

Jesse ran a hand through his hair as the words ‘man up St James’ flooded his head. ‘Pull yourself together. We can’t win this with you being emotional.’ He brushed a tear from his eyes and kicked a nearby bush cursing under his breath. Why couldn’t he do this? Did he even need to do this or was it all in his head? 

That was when an idea struck him. Jesse rushed back into the house and found Ramona still on the sofa where he had left her. “Ramona, I need your help.” He grinned happily in his checkered navy shirt. 

*

It took a lot of doing to keep Cooper out of the house, a lot of convincing and a lot of distraction, but the two had managed to do it. Jesse had turned the living room into their own personal fort filled with all the nerdy shit he loved. There was printed posters of Star Wars on the walls, black curtains with cut out stars placed around the blanket walls of the fort and candles safely lit to provide that natural glow of life within the fort. He sprayed soft vanilla around the room and selected Disney + on the TV apps. He loaded up the first Star Wars movie and finally, he headed out to Cooper. 

Jesse knocked and only when he was told to enter did he do so. “Okay, so here’s the thing: Doofus. I love you and I know you’re not an idiot. Myself and Sea Monkey have deliberately been keeping you out of the house today and that’s because I have a surprise for you. 

He took his hands softly in his and led him into the living room to show off their handy work. The Star Wars theme was playing in the background courtesy of their digital assistant and Ramona stood proudly by their homely fort wearing her hair in Leia’s signature buns. 

“You tell anyone I did this and I’ll kick you in the nads.” She teased lightly as she admired their handy work on her hair. 

Jesse took both of Cooper’s hands in his and looked at him. “I know I’m hard on you sometimes and I’m sorry. I think I’ve been a little too mean on you recently and I’m sorry… God, this is killing me to say that word so many times in such a short time…” He paused. “I’m sorry for that comment. But right now, I want you to forget about anything other than Luke Skywalker finding out he’s a jedi. Going to fight Darth Vadar on the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia and meet Han Solo and the carpet. I haven’t been honest with you Cooper. I watched all those dumb movies the day you told me that you were cast in Mandalorian. I support you in everything you do and I want for you, right now to join us in a family film night watching the first movie. Well, technically we’ll be watching the fourth movie in the series but the first to be released into the world. Did you know originally it was going to be called Blue Harvest and that it was only ever called Star Wars not Star Wars: A New Hope?” He clicked his tongue proudly. “That’s right, I did my research.” He turned to Ramona mouthing; “Did I get that right?!” Only for her to shrug. 

“Pizza is on the way, I made sure to order your favourite, plus there’s a cold bottle in the fridge with your name on it. We can’t go out for date night so baby, I brought date night to you. Will you be my date?” He asked innocently. 

[smallnico]

do you have any trivia info about the actors or crew that you can put in a post like you did with the carpenters?

i definitely do, i was just waiting for someone to ask :p

crew:

- the crew have the weirdest fucking conversations in the box and over the headsets. they need to be paying attention to cues, and for the most part they are, but between cues, jay n kash are in the box having an intense debate about their old sonicsonas and what they think aspects of said sonas really reflect about their old wounds. meanwhile qi’s just standing over them pinching the bridge of his nose and occasionally reminding them to do their jobs, and mandy’s somewhere backstage being very quiet and responsible until the intermission, when she softly drops the bombshell that she once wrote sonic/shadow fanfiction when she was 13 and that it’s still out there somewhere. kash loses her goddamn mind.- jay has a huge crush on mandy, and as a result is very afraid of talking to her. kash tries to be a good wingman, but she’s not a good wingman, and most of her pep talks boil down to “the more you go out of your way not to talk to her the more you’ll freak her out”. like she’s absolutely not wrong but the various intricacies of social interaction and social anxiety go careening past her and crash into the nearest wall. kash is about as sensitive as a rock but she’s doing her best.- speaking of which, jay and kash are in the same computer engineering program on top of working on adjacent switchboards. they’re the closest bond in the crew group, with qi and saadah as a close second. qi spends more time with lani and olivia than with anyone else in the theatre, but he also gets along pretty well with saadah, the only person who can touch (and cut and style) his hair without sending him into a downward spiral. mandy and qi are also sort of friends, but they’re not the sort of friends that meet up much outside of work. saadah’s closest friends aside from qi are beau and theo.- kash also has a (far less debilitating) crush on mandy. she doesn’t know about it and isn’t planning on becoming aware of it any time soon.- mandy has a crush on hugh jackman.- saadah’s one of those people who radiates trustworthiness and chill. she knows a lot of secrets about people, and won’t share them unless she has to. she won’t judge anyone for the bad choices they’ve made in the past, as long as they’re putting in the work to make better choices in the present. she draws the line in reasonable places most of the time. she will absolutely not abide by tacky fashion trends. silly bandz are her sworn enemy. olivia once came in with about a hundred on each of her arms and saadah refused to speak to her for two days.- jay’s bedroom is covered in plants. one of his attempts to trounce his anxiety led to him bringing in the spiderettes off one of his spider plants into the theatre and offering to advise anyone who wanted one how to plant and take care of it. many of them still have their baby plants today.

cast:

- sofiya is miko (director, theatre dad #2)’s actual blood daughter! she’s the reason he stopped doing his old job and started doing this cool new one. she’s repressed every memory of his old job and has a potful of psychological issues, but she’s alright. really. she’s fine. it’s fine- this means her family unit consists entirely of theatre people, including miko, theo, grace, and beau. she’s at the heart of the whole huge round river found family, cus most of the structure of the relationships in round river is built around this one core grouping.- dom gets along well with literally everybody, with the singular exception of candace, who reminds him entirely too much of his very catholic mom for him to relax around her. candace is just trying her best to make sure her friends are all leading happy, healthy lives, but her methods of encouragement come off as. judgemental. dom doesn’t respond very well to judgement or shame, which is why he hasn’t tried to reach out to his estranged family in close to eight years. - lani tries to get along well with literally everybody, but she’s only beloved among the cast (and qi), who think she injects a pure sort of fun into their lives. the techies (including qi) all think she’s the absolute worst because of how many props and costumes she’s managed to remove from the premises, and because of how much inopportune improv she’s prone to do during rehearsals while they’re just trying to set cues and blocking. also, if you don’t get along well with lani, she will know and won’t care, as long as you’re not ignoring her.- chris and maven dated once for about a month. no one’s quite sure when this one month took place, and erol has a conspiracy theory going that the two of them are still hooking up in secret. maven will adamantly deny this. chris will not. (x files music)- chris has gotten both maven and grace out of jail, either by pulling favours or shelling out bail money, respectively. she’s the big reason why they’re both at round river. - candace doesn’t have any close friends in round river. she likes a lot of the others, and Wants to be friends, but she has trouble connecting with them, with the exceptions of sofiya and mandy, who make sure she gets included in things. candace is nice, she was just born with the soul of a white suburban pta mom. she’s the second newest to the theatre after grace.- erol holds the current record for “most hookups through workplace connections” at round river. they haven’t had a stable relationship since high school, but they’re having fun. i won’t tell you who of the other theatre kids they’ve slept with, but i’ll save you some trouble and say that it’s only three of them. the rest of erol’s record is filled out with temporary hirees and choir folks.- erol’s (very intentional on their part) insufferable hipster image is somewhat hampered by their very real caffeine addiction.- leandro gets along incredibly well with grace of all people. he too would kill for you, except he can’t stand the sight of blood, so actually, you’re on your own there. they have some shared life experiences. he keeps trying to convince her to try acting at least once.- leandro wishes more than anything that fewer people hit on him. everyone thinks he’s a twink, because he is, but he wants nothing to do with dating and even less to do with sex. he’s just a gnc aro/ace whose favoured response to being hit on is “how dare you presume to speak to me”.- on a scale of the most to least needlessly dramatic: leandro, chris, lani, candace, erol, sofiya, dom. mind you that on a scale of 1-10 they’re all still like, in the 7-10 range, with the exception of dom, who i’d put at around a 3, but only because he doesn’t have the energy to be very dramatic unless he’s performing.- lani and chris are those two girls you knew in high school who set their relationship status to “married” on facebook with one another even though they’re not even dating. they compete against each other for roles.- dom is the party guy. he’s the only one who lives alone, so the group usually ends up using his house for cast parties, but he’s also the go-to guy to call if you need someplace to crash for whatever reason. his couch is your couch, and the presence of a guest gives him a much-needed excuse to buy something other than cereal to eat.- sofiya is responsible for the only one of beau’s four rats to have a non-french name. there’s bebe, emil, eloi, and lasagna. lags for short.

[dailyskyferreira]

Sky Ferreira Returns With an uncompromising vision and the studio hours to back it up, the enigmatic singer is back with a new single—and a promise that her first album in six years will be worth the wait.

So, what’s Sky Ferreira been doing all this time? Well, for the last 35 minutes or so, she’s been in the bathroom.

“I’m so sorry,” she says when she finally emerges, eyes wet, arms full of winter layers. It’s a late-February afternoon at New York City’s Russian Tea Room, the fabled blini-and-caviar haunt of candy-red banquettes and eternal Christmas ornaments where Madonna once worked the coat check. About a half hour ago, the 26-year-old singer turned up for our afternoon-tea reservation only to disappear in an immediate whorl, as if a czarist vortex sucked her into the basement. What she had thought was an asthmatic flare-up, she now explains, was actually a pretty severe anxiety attack. A panicked twinge remains in her expression, like the distant memory of tasting a lemon. In town from Los Angeles for three days, she tells me, “I’ve been anxious to the point that I haven’t slept at all.”

It’s a nerve-wracking moment for Sky, a pop artist, actor, and model who’s lately been keeping a low profile. This is partly because she seems to find the social contract of the PR exchange stressful, but also because she doesn’t want to suck up all the air before she gets a chance to breathe. “You really can get sick of someone’s face,” she says, as only someone who has loaned their own to Jimmy Choo and Calvin Klein could. “I don’t see the point of doing a bunch of photoshoots or press when I don’t have anything out.”

The fact that she hasn’t had anything out might be the biggest stress of all. Signed to Capitol Records at 15, Sky spent years in teen-pop A&R purgatory—groomed as a naughty-girl-next-door type with mall-Shakira hair and prefabricated singles with names like “Haters Anonymous” and “Sex Rules” (“We are animals/No matter what we deny/Our bodies strong, like magnets” are actual words she sang)—only to have her minders decide she wasn’t worth the trouble and shelve her long-promised full-length debut. Rather than give up, she used money she’d earned modeling and finished the album without their help.

Released in October 2013, Night Time, My Time was a rare major-label triumph of craft over product, a purposeful barrage of seething recriminations coated with ’90s-grunge textures and ’80-pop incandescence. It sounded like “My So-Called Life”’s Angela Chase mainlining John Hughes films and channeling her existential anguish into a record—except Night Time was the vision of a 2010s 21-year-old, and the truths were all hers.

The right people loved it. In the spring of 2015, Sky announced her second record’s name was Masochism and promised its first single that summer. The summer came and went, then the fall, and some winter too. On that New Year’s Eve, she addressed the delay obliquely on Instagram (“I refuse to put out something that isn’t honest”) and promised “in 2016 you will hear it.” In 2016, you did not, and now it’s 2019, and, still, no album. At this point, she can’t post online without some commenters popping up to heckle, “where’s the album sky” or “MASOCHISM!!?” or “still waiting,” like they’re hungry people rage-texting Seamless.

These impatient fans aren’t alone in their enthusiasm. “She’s one of those beautiful, rare people who can probably do anything,” says Debbie Harry, who’s had Sky open for Blondie. “If there’s anybody I would ever be jealous of, it would be her.”

Naturally, all of this—the anticipation, the unfulfilled promises, the time lapsed since her last release—is adding to the pressure she puts on herself. She feels like she has to explain. “It wasn’t by choice.” It wasn’t creative paralysis, nor was it a creative hiatus. “I wasn’t just taking time for myself the last five years.” During that time, she landed a half dozen movie roles, but she says she didn’t decide to focus on acting instead. “I never stepped away from music.” She alludes to vague external hindrances: “I’ve been at the mercy of people the last few years”; “gatekeepers”; “the rug pulled out under me”; a “someone at my label” who undid the generous arrangement she had to work with Kanye West musical director Mike Dean; and the very real issue of a young woman telling men what she wants and not settling for less. Then the labyrinthine nature of her production process is, as you’ll see, akin to playing charades blind-folded while riding a dog, and everyone else guesses with kazoos. Plus, she’s a perfectionist. Obsessive. She’ll do 800 takes. She’ll consider every option—and then she’ll consider it again.

But the primary reason it’s taken so long: Sky doesn’t just want her new songs done, she wants them to be good. By good, she means, executed the way she intended, no matter how long she waited to find the right violinist. Properly mixed so they don’t accidentally sound like pop-punk in the car, because “someone puts some shit on my voice” and she forgot to play them in an Uber. (Sky never learned to drive.) Songs that know their place in the broader pop continuum, not what’s hot on streaming. “I’m not looking for ‘a moment,’” she says. “I’m looking for a career—and real careers, you build them.”

She’s deemed two songs good enough to share with me. The first single, “Downhill Lullaby,” is a five-and-a-half-minute, goth-noir, chamber-pop piece—with strings!—that could have easily closed an episode of the revived “Twin Peaks.” (The association may be deliberate: Sky appeared in the show’s 2017 return, deeply admires its director, David Lynch, and the series’ music supervisor, Dean Hurley, produced the song alongside her.) Another forthcoming track, tentatively titled “Don’t Forget,” is a new wave time warp, a lovely bit of nostalgia therapy for people who were never there—even if it is, according to Sky, “about burning down houses.”

By now we’re settled into a booth, one Sky has selected in the empty part of the restaurant, far away from her manager and publicist, who’ve come along to chaperone. Her natural espresso roots have outrun her hair’s blonde highlights, and her dark T-shirt reads “CHICAGO METAL MANIA.” We’ve managed to order tea by asking the waiter to bring what he likes (a nice, orangey, spicy chai) and then momentarily horrify him when Sky asks if, instead of sending the teeny triangular sandwiches with mayonnaise back to the kitchen (she hasn’t touched them, and mayo makes her gag), we can give them to someone who’s homeless. “I’ll get you the ones without mayonnaise,” the waiter says, taking them away.

“I don’t have a back-up plan,” Sky says. “I never have. I don’t have an education. I don’t know how to, like, play music in the [traditional] sense. I’m socially awkward and stuff—I couldn’t really do a lot of other jobs either,” she says. “Literally, there’s no other option for me. So this has to work.”

There are many Sky Ferreiras. There’s Sky the model, a Hedi Slimane muse who’s walked the runway for Marc Jacobs and perfected a glare so haunted the Bates Motel must be jealous. There’s Sky the actor, who played a key supporting role in director Edgar Wright’s big-studio heist flick Baby Driver, but doesn’t have an agent. There’s Sky the live performer, who battles stage fright, but who also opened a 2014 Miley Cyrus arena tour, fell down an elevator shaft on night three, and still took the stage the next day.

There’s also the Sky here at the Russian Tea Room, whose left dimple comes as a surprise because, come to think of it, you’ve rarely seen photos of her smiling. The Sky who shouldn’t eat gluten because of an autoimmune condition, but doesn’t really tell people about it because it sounds like bullshit. The Sky who’s watched enough “Game of Thrones” to see her pets’ personalities reflected in the show’s characters. (For the record, her cat Egg would be a Lannister, while his brother Squirrel would be from the North.)

This Sky speaks in em dashes. It’s less that she loses her train of thought, and more that her thought train is screeching onto a new track. Sometimes you’re right there with her, but other times you’re watching the conversation from a distance like a detached caboose that just kept going straight. “I know I keep going in circles,” she says, “but my mind kind of always does that—spins.”

You don’t interview this Sky as much as steer her, but first you listen. “I’ve always been really shy,” she says, six minutes in. “I was actually mute for years when I was a kid.”

Little Sky Tonia Ferreira hummed along to the radio before she could talk. Raised around Los Angeles, mostly Venice Beach, her young parents split when she was a baby. Her dad tended bar, sometimes with her in tow, and when his roommates got cable, she devoured MTV. “I always hung out with a lot of adults,” she says. “I was, like, one of those kids.”

Being one of those kids meant she didn’t know how to talk to the kids who knew how to talk with each other. She was bullied constantly. She also had trouble with numbers and spelling—she suspects she’s dyslexic, but never got tested—and for a while, was so unhappy, she stopped talking altogether. “I had really long hair, didn’t speak, and had dark circles around my eyes,” she says, describing herself as a child. “I looked kinda feral.”

As the story goes, Sky’s first-grade classmates didn’t know she could talk until she sang “Over the Rainbow” in school. “As long as I can remember, I’ve felt the most like myself when I was singing,” she says. (Roughly 18 years later, she covered the Wizard of Oz ballad at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and the director still raves about her version, telling me, “It was incredible. So beautiful.”)

She lived with her grandmother, who worked as a hairdresser. One time when Sky was around 7, she sang for one of her grandmother’s clients. Impressed, the man suggested she join a gospel choir. The man was Michael Jackson. So she did. Jackson also gave a 9-year-old Sky some grown-up advice that’s shaped her approach to art and music ever since: “He was like, ‘Don’t focus on things that are just around you—you need to look back to the history of music.’ And that’s what I did.”

Yes, Sky went to the Neverland Ranch—“a lot.” She also went to Jackson’s other houses. No, she didn’t witness anything untoward. “It wasn’t just because I was a girl,” she tells me, a few days before the controversial HBO documentary Leaving Neverland aired. “I was around a lot of kids.”

Yes, she’s grown hesitant to talk about her grandmother’s larger-than-life client—for all the reasons you’d expect, along with a few you might not. Like, that it’s difficult for people to wrap their minds around the fact that the King of Pop could be a formative elder acquaintance in the casually anodyne way of, say, a dancing-school teacher or a little-league coach—someone whose small encouragements could be so big. “I was really quiet, but when someone sees something in you...” she says of Jackson, before abandoning the thought. “I had a connection to him, but I’m not, like, his family.”

Sky has also routinely been asked to account for the bad behavior of men in her orbit. A dominant narrative surrounding Night Time, My Time’s 2013 release was her relationship with indie rock band DIIV’s frontman, Zachary Cole Smith—an ex-boyfriend with whom she was arrested that September. He was the driver of the vehicle in which heroin, ecstasy, and a stolen license plate were found (and someone who’s since publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction). Throughout that album cycle, the arrest became a more delicious red herring than anything Sky had actually done.

“The thing that’s still so fucked up about that: I didn’t have a drug problem, I dated someone who had a drug problem, I was in a car with someone who had a drug problem,” she says. “No one wants to talk about how my charge got dropped.” And the whole Kurt and Courtney star-crossed mythos that dramatized the headlines around the arrest? Spare her. “I was really young; I wasn’t even 21 yet for most of it. That wasn’t my great love story of my life,” she says, adding, “The people that have treated me so much better—they’re the ones who deserve the attention, not that guy.” (Presumably, one of those people is her current partner, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, frontman of the Danish punk band Iceage.)

Those who have followed Sky’s personal life could easily read “Downhill Lullaby” as an extended metaphor about a tumultuous relationship: “I can see that you want me/Going downhill too/Going downhill into a lullaby.” But she’s adamant about distancing her songwriting from the egos of her ex-boyfriends. “That’s the one rule I made,” she says. “The one thing that I’ve always had is my music. If someone treated me badly, they don’t get to have that. I don’t want to drag the weight of what they did around forever.”

For Sky Ferreira, time is not a flat circle, but rather a sticky mass of saltwater taffy. She tends to run late, but once she’s present and engaged, she can summon an Iron Man endurance. At the Russian Tea Room, two hours of conversation easily floats into six-and-a-half, and eventually we’re the last diners to leave. Somewhere in this elasticity, she talks about her refusal to give up on the work. “I’ve literally been using my life savings to do this record.” She is not motivated by money—to her, time isn’t money, but money is a thing to buy more time.

This springy relationship with time can make Sky seem almost anachronistic. In conversation, her offhanded pop-cultural mentions span director Todd Solondz’s 1995 cult indie Welcome to the Dollhouse, Courtney Love, the 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter, the 2018 iteration of A Star Is Born, and the cheerful ’60s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” (which she concedes, “No one my age knows”). Sky’s reference points, like Michael Jackson once advised, exist within a totality, not a blip.

One of her artistic lodestars glows brighter than the others: When Sky was 13, she discovered David Lynch. “He’s the first person who ever saw the world the way I saw it,” she says. “It was the first time anything made sense.” You can see Lynchian dream logic throughout her work. In fact, the staggering, airy title dirge from Night Time, My Time came to her in a dream. “I wrote it in the middle of the night, half-asleep,” she remembers about the album closer, which was built around a line spoken by the doomed girl at the center of the “Twin Peaks” saga. “Then I woke up the next day and I finished it in an hour. I still have the notes; the handwriting’s all fucked up. ” When she finished the song, she knew the album was finally done.

So Sky’s cameo in “Twin Peaks: The Return” had the meta-ness of astral projection. She played Ella, an enigmatic bar patron who talked about a penguin and flaunted a “wicked” armpit rash. “She played that scene so perfectly,” Lynch tells me. “She inhabited that character and made it real from a deep place. When she scratched that rash, you could really feel the itching!”

“Downhill Lullaby” summons the creeping orchestral gloom of “Night Time, My Time.” A sweeping arrangement in five parts, Masochism’s first single begins with a sashay of strings and an interpolation of the unmistakable squee of the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” followed by a murmuring, angered bass. Sky exhales a numb indictment—“You leave me open/When you hit me”—and amid the layers of kettle-drum thunder and keening violins, there’s seduction and revenge, confusion and queasiness, silkiness and elegance. It sounds like the last thing Daniel Day Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock hears before the poison takes hold in Phantom Thread.

This habit of visualizing music—Sky does it too. Except for her, it’s the first step of many in the song creation process: “I see it like it’s projected in a movie theater.” “Downhill Lullaby,” in particular, began with a vision of water in darkness. “Lakes kind of terrify me,” she explains, recalling a childhood memory of feeling lost in a Maryland forest that packs a similar unease. “In a lake, by yourself, you look at the bottom and it’s murky and still and you can’t really see anything or feel anything—and if you do, it’s fucking terrifying. It always feels like something will grab you and pull you under.” The eeriness became the foundation for the song.

She likens the ordeal of making “Downhill Lullaby” to Mickey Mouse’s Fantasia turn as the sorcerer’s apprentice. “You know how all the brooms are making a gigantic mess and the water starts rising and rising and rising and rising?” she says. “It was sort of like that: Magical, but at the same time, ‘What is going on?’ And then cleaning it all up.”

Her technique is more like a collagist—one who both scavenges her raw materials and oversees the fabrication—than a traditional songwriter. Conceptually, she works backwards, starting a song with an imagined outline of the final arrangement, isolating each sound element, and then embarking on the oft-laborious task of identifying studio musicians with the time and patience and willingness to conjure each sound individually, so that once she’s gathered all the pieces, she can begin the meticulous process of putting them all back together.

This unorthodox approach to songwriting has led to recurring logistical difficulties for Masochism. Namely, figuring out how to articulate what she hears so that someone who’s not in her brain can actualize it. “Nobody really understood what I was trying to say or wanted to do on paper,” she says. “It was a really long process.”

Sky never learned how to read music and she’s too self-conscious to use instruments that aren’t her voice in front of others. So if there’s an obvious reference point—like a certain note in a ’90s-radio staple she wants imitated—she’ll play that for her collaborator. But when there’s not, she’s often like a conductor asking to summon a mood.

In the case of Danish violinist Nils Gröndahl, who recorded all the strings on “Downhill Lullaby,” she recalls telling him: “‘Play it as if you’re one of the birds in Snow White, singing underwater, while slowly being suffocated by plastic.’” And you know what? In the end result, it’s easy to hear all that.

Additionally, Sky is even more particular about her final mixes. She will only be satisfied after she’s evaluated her song in seven different listening contexts: a car stereo; a smartphone with “regular” headphones; a smartphone with Apple earbuds; a smartphone’s built-in speaker; on a laptop; through “really bad, bad computer speakers—like the ones that came with Dells back in the early 2000s”; and the lush splendor of the studio, which is a personal luxury because, as she notes, “most people aren’t gonna listen that way.”

And she goes through this convoluted course of action for every song. It’s no wonder Masochism has taken so long. Says Sky, “I’ve accepted this is how I work and stopped feeling bad about it.”

Two Fridays after her insomniac New York trip, Sky is on the line, self-confidence restored, completing a high percentage of her sentences. Earlier in the week, she received the “Downhill Lullaby” master, immediately dropped her phone and shattered its screen, so now she’s on speaker. “I was like, I hope this isn’t a metaphor?” At least she’s laughing.

As for Masochism. She tells me she produced most of it herself, wrote with Los Angeles-based dream-pop artist Tamaryn, and worked with Ariel Pink collaborator Jorge Elbrecht. The proper album is coming, Sky swears, almost positively in 2019. Granted, she said the same thing last year—and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that—but this time, she has finally loosened her grip on some songs.

“Downhill Lullaby” may sound like dying Disney birds and “Don’t Forget” may be electro-pop arson, but Sky promises “more poppy” songs on Masochism too, as well as more “abstract,” orchestral stuff. “It’s very big, but also very violent,” she says, half-chuckling. “But not all the songs are super-dark.” Beyond that—the number of songs, tracklist, other credited collaborators—who can say? Sky can’t yet. She has some songs in mind she’d still like to write.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

Solo: a Star Wars Story - A Review (which I managed to keep short at least when it comes to my standards *puts gold sticker on self*)

So I saw Solo yesterday, and I’ll be putting my detailed/spoilery thoughts under the cut.

As for a general overview while trying to spoil as little as possible… I definitely liked the movie. To compare it to another anthology movie, I didn’t like it as much as Rogue One, but it was very enjoyable: basically Western meets film noir meets sci-fi, and the combo worked pretty well.

I have to admit, before the marketing for the film started, I was very meh about it. I didn’t hate it in advance like some people did, but I was pretty much planning to see it just because Lawrence Kasdan was the screenwriter, Donald Glover was Lando and I honestly couldn’t have thought of a better casting choice, and Thandie Newton aka my dreamcast for Selina Kyle/Catwoman was in it.

I did start getting a bit more optimistic as time went on. And since I’m a creature of dust and ashes and, most especially, salt, I wanted Alden Ehrenreich to succeed as Han partly because of the fandom being all “HE’S NOT HARRISON”, and also partly because if he hadn’t told the big bosses the original directors wanted Han to be space Ace Ventura, this movie would have been a mess.

And… despite all the complications, they actually did it. And unlike Justice League, I didn’t really see big contrasts indicating there had been two different visions working on the movie.

So it honestly makes me sad that the movie is underperforming because it's a genuinely well-made, multi-layered heist film. I don't think it's the film itself's fault: Lucasfilm/Disney had some pretty terrible timing and promo for the film overall, and they REALLY should have pushed it back to December.

Everyone in the cast was very good, well-cast: Alden did a terrific job playing Han and while I didn’t think he looked a lot like Harrison Ford at first, I can see the resemblance now; Donald Glover was perfection as Lando, and Emilia Clarke and Qi’ra turned out to be pleasant surprises and I enjoyed them a lot more than I expected to.

For some reason… the overall storyline and how it drew out kind of reminded me of a video game. I’m not sure why, though. That’s not to say it was badly done, but it could simply be that I became used to how quickly paced TFA and R1 were, or how TLJ was either jarringly edited at first viewing, and how certain elements were rushed and others dragging for too long. Solo didn’t have any pacing issues… though I might change my mind after repeat viewings.

There were a lot of things I was a bit afraid of before the film came out that thankfully did not bother me too much, but I did read spoilers before going in. I kept myself spoiler-free to a certain extent for TLJ and I kind of regret it, so I decided not to take any chances. (SO YOU CAN BE SURE AS HELL I’LL DO IT FOR IX.) So I was prepared going in, so there’s nothing I saw that upset me.

Shout-out to the soundtrack. It was GREAT.

Anyway, the spoilery part is under the cut. Read at your own risk.

Alden was really a pleasant surprise. You can really forget he’s not Harrison and even if Han is a lot more optimistic and cheerful than the cynical scoundrel we meet in ANH, he’s still the dumbass Han who brags a lot even if he’s a dumbass and who tries to talk his way out of shit and fails because he’s a dumbass. He's not the cynical scoundrel we meet in ANH *yet*, but it made sense for me for him not to be like that right now. He's basically a dumbass puppy dog like his son. No wonder Qi'ra is so protective of him.

Donald Glover as Lando was a scene-stealer. I even wish we saw more of him, or scenes of him with Han, because they had some pretty good frenemy chemistry. 

Han and Chewie were probably one of the best parts of the movie, and even my favorite relationship out of all. Their encounter was very well-done, and they totally sold how they’d do anything for each other.

Qi’ra… I could honestly write an entire post about her alone, and I probably will, because she was hands down the most intriguing character in the movie. And it’s nice to see Emilia Clarke show off her acting chops and see her in other stuff than Boobs, Dragons, Death. Though, I will say, my point of view on Qi’ra will probably be different from the point of view I’ve seen from other people, but yeah.

As a sidenote, I definitely saw the parallels between Ben and Rey, and Qi’ra and Han. As a lot of people pointed out, Han and Qi’ra in the elevator and then confronting Dryden Vos was basically “Throne Room, take two”. This said, I can definitely see how Qi’ra and Ben are similar, and how Han and Rey are similar, but I did spot some similarities between Qi’ra and Rey, and between Han and Ben. I’ll probably expand it in another post, once I get down to writing it, but one thing Qi’ra and Rey have in common is how they smile even in the most dismal situations and in order to hide their vulnerability – even if their reasons for smiling are very different. Qi’ra is a Stepford Smiler to survive, and because she knows how ugly the world can be, while Rey is not only a lot more sheltered than Qi’ra (even if her life was by no means easy), but she puts on a happy face because she’s in denial about her parents, and probably because she so desperately wants to be accepted and loved. So long story short, Qi’ra is basically how Rey would have been if she had gone through what Ben went through. So that really brings a whole new perspective to how Han views Rey in TFA: I think he sees his youthful optimism in her, but he’s also fully aware what could happen to her if she went back on Jakku, because of what happened to Qi’ra. But again, I’m preparing a full-blown analysis of Qi’ra. Stay tuned.

I legit cried when she told Han she thought of him and the two of them flying away whenever it was hard for her. I’m still getting kind of teary-eyed thinking about it. 

 Okay, last thing about Qi’ra: I wouldn’t say she becomes a crime boss because she craves power or because she���s scared and has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. I’d actually argue she chose love over power, and she’s ultimately a tragic case of “to love is to let go”. So yeah, it’s a lot more complicated than it seems, and it’s all about her being pretty much Han’s dark guardian angel of sorts. But again, I’ll expand on it in another post.

Tobias Beckett was great. A total asshole, but you still get attached to him even if you want to kick him in the balls.

I really liked Val and Rio, and it’s a waste they died so early. You could totally buy Val and Beckett as the old-married couple who bicker all the time. They managed to make their deaths emotional—and special shout-out to Rio’s death. Nice bit of foreshadowing when he dies saying that dying alone is the worst thing (now please excuse me while I roll in a ball in a corner and cry, thinking of how Han died nearly 40 years later).

I know L3 annoyed a lot of people. She didn’t annoy me too much, mainly because I just decided to not take her seriously and to see her “droid rights activism” as a joke. I mean, just looking at how Lando takes it, every time she makes a comment about it or does something about it, he’s all “Oh God not this again”. As some people have pointed out before me, she’s basically a robot version of Lisa Simpson. Her dying didn’t move me as much as Val or Rio, though.

Also, the TLJ novelization mentions a virtual intelligence of sorts in the Falcon that has a pretty foul sense of humor, so that’s probably foreshadowing for the reveal that L3 has been integrated into the Falcon after her death.

I’m going to talk about Dryden Vos in my Qi’ra post, but I don’t know if it’s due to Paul Bettany’s makeup, but he looked kind of… frail? Don’t get me wrong, he’s totally the Affably Evil Sociopath type, and he’s definitely someone you do not want to mess around with, but yeah. Him looking almost skeletal was probably part of the deal.

Enfys Nest was EPIC. I really hope we get comic books or novels about her, and it’s nice to see other rebel cells around. And her theme was THE SHIT with the choir and all. (Also, for my fellow Les Mis fans reading this: her actress (Erin Kellyman) is going to be Éponine in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Les Mis.) 

Spotted Warwick Davis playing one of Enfys Nest’s crew.

Also, the confrontation between Han and his crew versus Enfys Nest was some space spaghetti western shit. And Lando leaving with the Falcon was absolutely hysterical.  

That’s all I can think of right now. I’ll maybe have more thoughts later on.

[inkofamethyst]

September 29, 2021

Today was... A Lot.  Let’s go chronologically, and I’ll make it quick (as I can, so we’ll be here a bit) because I’d like to be in bed within the next two hours, I think.

I began the day thinking I was peeing myself.  That wasn’t the case, I had just started my period.  A fitting day for it, of course, with an exam, an org fair, three classes, and a lowkey presentation.  I forced myself to eat some crackers before popping two Tylenol, and the pain wasn’t too bad.  

Then I had my first closed-book exam in a year and a half.  Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I feared it was going to be.  The difficulty was about the same as the practice exam.  I’d be surprised if I get anything less than a B.  Actually, I feel confident enough that I think I got an A.  I wish I’d started reviewing a few days earlier, but the exam was definitely fair which I greatly appreciated.

Then I had physics (it was about as good as could be expected), then I went to the org fair for forty minutes or so.  I mostly just power-walked my way through the half of it that I got to, as there were a lot of people and almost no one wore a mask.  I signed up for the ballet classes again :)  I also ran across the people who run the choir I intend to audition for, and I expressed my unease with the idea of sight-singing, and the choir director told me flat-out that there would be no sight singing!!!!  “F sight singing!” he enthusiastically told me with a smile behind his mask, and I laughed in relieved agreement.  I spotted my old Bible study folks, but there was no interaction, as I pushed my way through the crowd to flee as nonchalantly as possible.  That was, honestly, one of the more stressful parts of the day, and it only made up fifteen seconds of it.  They either saw me and didn’t say anything (fine), didn’t see me (great!), or didn’t recognize me (even better!).

Cramping began to really set in just before my theatre class.  I spent two hours (it seemed like thirty minutes though??) with dull pain before heading extremely slowly to eat a super light lunch (eating on my First Day is almost never something I want to do... tbh I don’t really want to do anything on my First Day) before popping two more pills, then I slowly made my way back to the apartment to prepare to present my data for my internship.  It went okay.  I have to recheck everything I’ve done because the data is weird, and I know that’s part of the process of properly analyzing data, but it still feels... idk.  It feels... I don’t know.  Not The Best.  I’ve got a few hours of work ahead of me this weekend since our deadline is coming up.

Then I took a nap.  It was a little late for a nap, but it was desperately needed.  It was going to be another one of my hour and a half naps, but my RA came in to do a room inspection about an hour in lol.  I spent the next half hour just resting until my alarm went off, and I still managed to rise feeling decently well-rested, thankfully.  Afterwards I got dinner at the dining hall (salmon + teriyaki sauce which was really really good, actually), then I decided that it would be a good idea to go rock climbing.  On my First Day.  Yeah.  Anyway they have these specific nights where you can climb with people who share part of your identity (woman, poc, lgbtq, disabled) and they extend the climbing hours on these days which is really cool.  The place was practically empty which was nice, actually.  I wasn’t feeling much pain, actually, which was cool.  I do have one goal before the wall closes at the end of October: do a pull up on their jump thingy.  It’s not a regular pull up, which I can do, because your palms are grabbing away from you and you start hanging with straight arms.  It’s hard but I wanna do one.

So yeah.  Today was a lot, and I still didn’t get to practice the audition music.  I’m going to finish transcribing it in Noteflight tonight, then I’ll work on it a ton on Thursday and Friday, I guess.  Again, I don’t think I actually expect to get in.  I’m sort of just going for the experience of auditioning again, but also there’s no way I’ll get in if I don’t try.  I also got some information about the band which I think I might want to do in the Spring, maybe.  Maybe with my sax???  When I go back for homecoming I might try it out again~

I know I keep talking about how much I’m loving this Witcher dude and his books but like,,,, I legit smile when I read it.  All.  The.  Time.  I smile, I make faces, alladat in the dining hall, in my room, in the kitchen, on the campus lawn, in the libraries... it’s just really fun to read.  I’m glad it’s making me happy and I want to express that to Future!Nina, yknow?  I’m almost finished with Blood of Elves which is exciting!  The chapters are long.  If I’m on track to complete two and a halfish books in a month,,,, I could probably finish the other four books in the series within this semester (assuming I can find translated versions lol)!!  I haven’t just gone through and read a series like this in ages :D

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine Advent - “Negotiating Limits” (Rated NC17)

While going through Kurt's checklist of 'limits', Blaine feels overwhelmed, but not just by this.

By the whole of his life right now. (1655 words)

For @itallstartedwithharry.

Written for the Klaine Advent 2017 prompt 'limited', and takes place early on in their relationship, close to the very beginning of Blaine moving in with Kurt. And for anyone who asks, yes, they were Dom and sub before Blaine moved in, but their limits were much more casually managed than they would be with Blaine moving in. Hence, the official checklist, which probably not only covers what they do in the playroom, but how they handle things on the day to day. Dom Kurt, sub Blaine. Warning for self-doubt and insecurity.

Part 60 of Taking a Journey Together

Read on AO3.

“Hard limit, hard limit, hard limit, hard limit …”

Blaine scans down the checklist, at the many, many boxes he’s ticked hard limit, and sighs. Kurt, reading his email on his phone in the seat perpendicular, raises an eyebrow.

“That was a heavy sigh, pet. Is there something wrong?

“No, Sir.”

Kurt lifts his eyes from his phone in silent reprimand, and Blaine sighs again at being caught in a lie – a white lie, almost transparent, but still a lie. One of Kurt’s first edicts when Blaine moved in was to break him of what Kurt calls ‘easy lies’ – the types of lies people tell so as not to be a burden to others, such as saying I’m fine when asked the question How are you? because you don’t want to reveal that you’re sick to your stomach, or that your favorite pet just died and it’s tearing you to pieces.

Or because you know that the person asking doesn’t really care. They’re just being polite, practicing a commonly expected social convention.

Conversational lies.

Convenience lies.

But Kurt isn’t just anyone. Kurt is Blaine’s Dom, and Blaine’s role as Kurt’s submissive doesn’t make Blaine a burden. They aren’t just boyfriends, aren’t just lovers. Kurt has taken on the responsibility of caring for Blaine, so those types of lies have no place in their home.

“I’m sorry, Sir. It’s just that … when we first talked about this, I was so sure that I was going to mark yes to everything, that I would be open to trying anything, especially the things I know are green for you. But looking at it all, considering it seriously the way you said … I feel so restricted. Limited. I … I feel like an amateur.”

“A-ha.” Kurt logs out of his email and puts down his phone, ready to give this issue his complete attention. “Something tells me this has more to do with just our limits list, pet. Doesn’t it?”

Blaine keeps his eyes trained on the list, on the checked boxes and on the items he has yet to get to, which he knows are going to be a no. But his Master is right. This isn’t just about this list. Blaine has no reason to be upset over it. They’ve talked about it many times. Kurt warned him there were things on it that he more than likely wouldn’t be ready for. It was a jumping off point, a way for Blaine to not only identify his wants and needs, but also to expose him to the things out there he never realized existed. It was actually kind of exciting reading through it all. Even the things that repulsed him on sight he found he was still mildly curious about.

But Kurt happened to give it to him on a day when real life insecurities were coming to a head, so instead of being this thing he could look forward to digesting slowly and examining rationally, it became the straw on the camel’s back.

“I thought that rehearsals for the show were going to be like the audition, Sir. And I did so well in the audition, you know? Everyone there – the casting director, the producer, Cyndi Lauper – they all seemed so impressed with my talent. But now, getting into it, immersing myself in it … it’s not the same. I feel like I’m not even in the same universe anymore. This isn’t my league.” Blaine shakes his head. “How did I even get this part?”

“You got the part because you are amazing, pet! You got it because you were so much better than everyone else, and it showed. You got it because you have an impressive resume – leader of a nationally ranked show choir, lead roles in off-Broadway plays …”

“But, maybe that’s where I peaked, Sir,” Blaine says, flinching when he realizes he just interrupted his Master. Kurt doesn’t call him on it, choosing to let this one slide, but one look in Kurt’s eyes tells Blaine that he’s gotten this far, he’d better continue. “Maybe those roles were the limits of my talents. Maybe the casting director for Kinky Boots made a mistake when he picked me.”

Kurt’s brow furrows. He suspects this comment isn’t coming from Blaine. Blaine has his moments of self-doubt, but getting this role in Kinky Boots had yet to be one of them. “Why would you even think that?”

“I … I can’t help it,” Blaine says with a heavy swallow. “Our director, he … he likes to yell. A lot.”

Kurt frowns. He doesn’t like that. Some random douche yelling at his pet? He doesn’t like that one bit. Kurt has worked with some pretty temperamental directors in his brief time on the stage, but one that yells from the get-go? Enough to erode his lead actor’s self-esteem after only two weeks of rehearsal? That’s beyond unprofessional! Kurt has clout in this city. There has to be something he can do about this! And as much as he’d like to press Blaine into telling him the details about this asshole so he can find this man and beat him to a pulp, that isn’t a solution to Blaine’s problem.

But it would sure as hell feel incredible!

Kurt can’t run into every situation with sword in hand and fix Blaine’s life for him. Blaine is an adult, and Kurt has to have faith that Blaine can handle things on his own. For now, Kurt will just have to add this man to the long list of people in Blaine’s life whose head he’d like to hang from his wall and move on.

“Like it or not, pet, life is about limits – recognizing limits, negotiating limits, pushing limits, even accepting limits.” Blaine raises a hand to rest his forehead on, but Kurt intercepts it, takes it in his own and holds it – for comfort, and to try to break Blaine of a habit that’s going to give him forehead wrinkles in the future if he continues. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. Limits are important. They keep us safe. They stop us from making rash and reckless decisions. Acknowledging your limits, especially here with me, is not a weakness. I will never, ever try to force you or manipulate you into going beyond a limit you’re not comfortable with. There are some things that are non-negotiable. I have those, too. And we have to live with that. Plus, just because something is a hard limit for you now doesn’t mean it’ll stay a hard limit forever. Tastes change in BDSM, the same way they change everywhere. For example, when I was in high school, I was good friends with a girl who was obsessed with reindeer sweaters ...” Kurt shudders dramatically. Blaine chuckles. “Luckily, she grew up, went to college, took my advice for once in her damned life, and the sweaters found their way into the Salvation Army donation bin.” Kurt tilts his head, gazing at his solemn sub with fond and nostalgic eyes. “You remind me a lot of her, actually.”

“Wha---why?” Blaine asks with an endearing look of surprise on his face. “Is it my … do you not like …?” Blaine looks down at the shirt he’s wearing – a white button-down with little red lobsters embroidered on it, his own hold-over from high school so it’s a bit outdated. But Kurt never said anything about his clothes before …

… even though he’s replaced quite a bit of them.

“Not your outfit, pet,” Kurt assures him. “I think your lobsters are darling. Your talent. Your ambition. She had both in spades, and so do you. She knew that if you gave her a stage and a spotlight, there wasn’t anyone in the world who could outperform her. See, there’s a difference, pet, between ‘can and can’t’ and ‘will and won’t’. When it comes to performing, I firmly believe there isn’t anything you can’t do, Blaine Devon Anderson, once you put your mind to it. So don’t worry about your yelling director, or anyone else who tries to bring you down. He’s trying to make you submissive, pet. Compliant. But you only submit to one person, don’t you?”

Blaine smiles. “I do, Sir.”

“And who’s that?”

“You, Sir.”

“That’s right, pet. In the end, he doesn’t matter. You got this role by being the best. So show him you’re the best. But don’t live up to his expectations. Live up to your own.”

“I’ll try, Sir,” Blaine says, and underneath the table, Kurt stomps his foot loudly against the wood floor. “I mean, I will, Sir! I will! I will! It’s just going to take a little practice, pushing that to the side.”

“Well, maybe you should try approaching him from a different angle, put on a different face when you walk through the door. This schoolboy charm you have is adorable …” Kurt runs a hand through Blaine’s curls, combing them through his fingers, watching them coil back to Blaine’s head when they break free “… and hot … but maybe it gives certain people the wrong impression.”

“Can you help me with that, Sir?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Blaine turns the list towards his Master and points to an item, one of the few in a sea of hard limits that he’s marked soft - interrogation.

Kurt looks at his handsome submissive, still with sad, puppy-dog eyes, but an enticing flush of red in his cheeks, and a subtle smile that’s both breathtakingly innocent and bewitching. Kurt imagines throwing a hood over that handsome face of his; tying him to a hard, wooden, chair; positioning him under bright, hot lights; and putting him through his paces very, very slowly. Excruciatingly slow. Kurt grins. If Blaine can withstand that, then rehearsal tomorrow should be a piece of cake.

“Finish this up, and then … it would be my pleasure.”

[unproduciblesmackdown]

so funnily enough one of the infinite things that could put you in my moms bad graces was to seem like you disliked being around her ever, so i'd try to find ways to make my Mandated Periodic Strategic Quality Time at all actually enjoyable for me, which wasnt always easy, in part because of my moms random Moral Outrage. like her Bad Moods, the degree to which she responded to everyday levels of pg-13ness (or just pg-ness. or g-ness, if it wasnt papally approved) could vary from "entirely reasonable nonreaction" to somewhere between "pearl-clutching" and "carrie's mom." when she found out my 18 yr old brother knew how to unlock the Parental Controls for the tv that restricted certain types of tv-14 ratings and up, she changed the code for it. my legal adult brother. actually now i remember, when i was 18, i think she had a crisis when she realized i knew anything abt the mechanics of sex or that people had it Before Marriage. wonder how much of a blow it wouldve been if she'd found that out when i was a few yrs younger? terrible news. she was a catholic church choir director (and last i knew, a catholic school teacher) so you can imagine the crushingness

anyways, what im trying to say is that we both listened to npr on occasion, but even that could be too risqué. more than once in the car the boring-toned Hourly News Update man would utter the phrase "same-sex" and she'd be wheel of fortune spinning the tuning knob before he'd finished the word and calling it "vulgar," which in itself is sort of disconcerting. when was the last time anyone earnestly called anything vulgar? its not like she was born in 1880. also disconcerting since none of her kids are straight. but the point is that my mom was very sensitive and very into taking a censorshippy approach to life.

so a few yrs back, i get to take a road trip with her. also, just me and her. for a few days. this is like, worst case scenario. i figure maybe something or other abt the trip might be fun, but overall it'll be misery and she'll get mad at me two dozen times and i'd rather not go at all (this'd turn out to be true of course, i actually didnt even bother picking out a destination i actually wanted to go to b/c i didnt want to ruin the experience for myself). but the most dangerous part is having to be in a car for 10 hrs. i had to avoid conversation in as many ways as i could as it'd just be silence on my part and that'd make her mad, and we could only listen to the music she had so many times over, so i had to try looking for a few hr long episodes of npr podcasts to put on her walkman and take up half the trip over. it was such a challenge finding like, six or seven episodes from the full archives of these public radio shows that i didnt think would offend her. (because also if she thought i was endorsing this degeneration, that could be trouble for me. grounded over all things considered. jk i couldnt be grounded coz i had no friends.)

so anyways im scouring these episodes for shows where nobody swears or cracks a joke abt sex or swears or takes the lords name in vain or talks abt sex as something people have or talks about gay people w/o condemnation and disgust or is gay or has non-christian beliefs and mentions them etc etc etc etc. it is surprisingly difficult to find an hrs worth of npr content i could bring along that wouldnt make me look like i was by proxy approving of something on her Oh No No list. but i managed it and also managed to wrangle these podcast downloads onto her walkman, tho they ended up scattered to the winds of the files and had to be searched out at random

the moral is i started her off on a especially solid radiolab episode i figured anyone would enjoy well enough, and she did like it so i figured it was good, and i liked it to so i could actually talk abt it (coz i'll talk to anyone abt things im interested in, even an abuser of mine, its a Monologue on my part every time anyways) and that was good b/c we were stopping for lunch. but what she ended up doing was quizzing me on where i thought the source of human compassion lay & telling me that it was jesus. so, so much for getting a conversational topic out of it. they still took up the car ride time. and on the ride back she was mad with me the whole ten hrs as i figured she'd be, so it didnt much matter trying to keep her happy.

fin