#i think people forget how much those first few months of being “off” in 2019 was for both of them

[blossoms-phan]

phil’s second draw my life is one of my favourite videos on his channel i looooooove phil just talking openly and honestly about things

[seasidewanderers]

How Did I Even Get Here? Or As I Like To Call It, How I Became Syscourse Informed

I've been meaning to make this post for a while. I've been in syscourse for years now, more precisely from I think it was 2019. So for those curious of how even does one get into syscourse... Here's all the lore and backstory.

I'll put it under a cut. Read with extreme caution if you choose to, it's... gonna get ugly in here

Warnings: long ass post; talking about trauma, drug and alcohol abuse, self harm/suicide, psychosis

I had just started university and everything was going to shit. Yeah, I like cold opens alright. You should read my stories. A-hem. I had just started university. I was struggling to make friends - I never had friends before university - I had just shaved all of my hair off. New beginning and all that. My grades in high school weren't stellar but I was managing, while in uni it went all down the drain within the first month.

Living alone meant I could be doing everything I could ever dream of! Getting blackout drunk almost every night. I was buying a bottle of gin and a pack of Monster Ultra White cans to mix in my personal gin and Monster tonic every other day. I was an already psychotic teenager fighting regular psychosis with alcohol induced psychosis, having so many nightmares I was consuming the equivalent of 15-20 espressos a day just to stay awake. The only times I managed to get more than 3 hours of sleep I was near comatose. I wish I was misusing the word.

I was near constantly actively delusional.

(I've talked about it once or twice in here in the context of delusions related to trauma and DID, my most prominent delusion is related to survivor's guilt and early infancy medical trauma. I still get episodes, though now it's more chronic bizarre thoughts and sporadic psychotic depression)

In a year, I left my dormitory room to be with other people in the dormitory exactly once.

I also got to know a guy who turned out to be a drug dealer. I mean, a really nice guy otherwise. He never got me on hard drugs (it was his personal policy to not start someone who has never done hard drugs on hard drugs, and I had mad respect for that lad); he did otherwise just give me stuff if I asked for it. Mainly it was sleeping pills.

I was minding my business with a mix of alcohol, tranquillisers and caffeine up until a point where I took a little too much, fell asleep in class, and couldn't wake up no matter how much my friend was trying to get me awake. I got rushed to the ER and now I'm banned from taking sleeping pills again. Somehow my liver is intact though! Yay

So... what does it have to do with syscourse, you might ask. And you'd be absolutely right to ask.

Nothing and everything. I discovered my system eventually in university. I started noticing that even when I was not drinking, I wouldn't remember shit anyway (which only made me drink more, if I'm not to remember anything, why bother staying sober?)

I then started noticing that I didn't remember anything. About anything. My childhood is a blank. Middle and high school is so fragmented I have no idea what happened, and the few memories I have I'd rather forget.

So what does a 19-20 years old with no friends, almost always drunk, lots of the time high as a kite, forgetful and incredibly depressed, do with their free time?

Tumblr. I started out with looking up people who were talking about ADHD, thinking my forgetfulness was poor attention; then nothing really clicked, so I moved on to mood disorders spaces, thinking it was just depression; then again, yes I do have depression, it's been terrible for many years now, but stable enough, so the sudden heightening of forgetting and not being "really there" didn't really make sense to my depression.

By the end of the school year in June by means that I don't fully remember, I landed in system spaces. First just people talking about being plural, then I discovered the pit full of burning acid that is syscourse.

It actually wasn't so bad for me at first, but I was having a nice time online because I was just following that handful of blogs that I liked, and also I wasn't active in syscourse, just lurking around like a bog creature.

When I started expanding my niche of syscourse blogs, it was... something for sure though. I didn't understand why people were fighting. I didn't understand why everyone is so awful all the time. I get that spaces filled with trauma survivors are bound to get emotionally charged, and as the old adage goes, hurt people hurt people. I get that rationally, I get the anger, sadness, and grief, but I wouldn't imagine taking my frustration out on a passerby who's not the cause of my trauma. I don't get being mean on purpose.

At some point a few years ago I stumbled upon @sysmedsaresexist and @thecircularsystem (or rather, circulars-reasoning and circular-bircular)

If I remember correctly, they were both anti endo when I got to their blogs, and I was very pro endo. I didn't, and still don't, have any reason not to be.

I started reading everything they were putting out. Every little link and file they shared got under a microscope by my part.

Part of it was just paranoia - I know they're saying something terrible. There has to be something in there that says endos are all murderers or something and I'll be in so, so much trouble for being pro endo.

Part of it was just curiosity - what do they have to say? Let me take a look at that.

And then... There was absolutely nothing that made me believe they hated me specifically (more broadly, nothing in their resources that disproved the existence of endogenic plurality, but at the time that to me was equal to "if you're pro endo I hate your face and I'll be stabbing you in a dark alley first chance I get")

And... I loosened up a bit. I still didn't properly talk to them until this year, after SAS' Changing Mindsets post, and I can say I regret not reaching out sooner. I kept reading everything they were putting out, laughing at memes, and asked lots of questions. I tried going at it with more and more curiosity and less and less fear of stepping out of an imagined line.

It didn't always go well. I am very paranoid and it takes very little for me to retract into my shell like a turtle. But! I made a lot of progress with that, too. I also learned that a) I don't have to immediately respond to asks, comments, etc out of impulse or anger, I can actually take my time! and b) I don't have to reply at all if I don't want to!!! How great is that!!!!!

I don't know why people keep saying that you can't be friends with pro/antis. That's what I needed to do! I needed to get the fuck out of my own head, get to know other people, talk to them, see where they're coming from.

Though I wouldn't say I'm friends with them exactly, simply because friend to me has a specific connotation, but they are nice people who I love talking to. Who'd have thought the Scary Anti Endo could be *reads notes* a person with their own interests and hobbies?? Oh SHIT this is NEW.

Enough talking about my background, over to the thanks, like it's my wedding day and y'all are my best men.

Circ, Dude (and all other SAS mods, though I know half of you half as much as I would like), thank you. You've done a lot for me even if you didn't know who the fuck I was until two or three months ago. You threw some PDFs and links over to my general direction and, man, I needed that.

I've been very bad. And then I've been slightly better, and then very bad again, and I'm better again. This time I don't plan on going very bad again though. I hope I can get better every day.

[dizzyduck44]

How 24 hours can change a lot in F1

Right let’s get into this mess, though talk about an ever developing story.

Red Bull managed to send warning shots off to a quarter of the grid in the space of about 6 hours, yet to understand the full effect you can’t even go chronologically.

Nyck

Following Daniel Ricciardo’s tyre test at Silverstone on Tuesday it is now reported that having seen the timings (we’ll come back to that) Christian rang Helmut Marko halfway through who in turn immediately fired Nyck De Vries (via his manager) and gave his spot to Daniel.

Nyck has had a nightmare time this season. The car is awful, the support has been non-existent and 10 races is nothing. We can’t say it’s unexpected, the Red Bull family have shown multiple people the door mid season, lest us not forget Max Verstappen was a mid season replacement at Red Bull. It became that common that it manifested itself in Lando’s head in his first year at McLaren that if he didn’t perform he could be gone mid season.

Nyck’s lack of results, pace and collection of penalties (Kevin isn’t going to miss you) has been confounded by the fact his two fellow rookies are swimming. Logan has shown genuine improvement and James Vowles was very vocal this weekend about how Logan is doing exactly what is expected of him. Meanwhile over at McLaren, well even if you take out this last weekend’s impressive results, Oscar had points, made Q3 a few times and had a CEO, a team principal and teammate who wouldn’t shut up about how well he was doing. The contrast couldn’t be bigger.

Nyck hasn’t really been given a fair shot in any aspect. Time on the grid, getting to know the team, support from his team. Then again remember we were told he turned up and told the engineers everything wrong with the car? Maybe his card has been marked for a while.

What I will say is that Nyck may be the first driver Red Bull has offed and told everyone that they didn’t really want him in the first place! I mean I’m sure Alex Albon might have felt it in 2019 when they had aggressively gone after Lando, to then hire Alex at the last minute. However I’m sure his promotion to the big team to replace Pierre killed off his fears. Nyck didn’t get that redemption arc.

Nyck has now said that his understanding was that he would be in the Red Bull alongside Max next year. Which leads us onto

Daniel

I have been critical of Daniel for the last 18 months, with good reason as a McLaren fan. The passion in the car was gone, he had worked himself up to a point where even if he could get the best out of the McLaren, he had told himself he couldn’t. He was a man very much in need of a break.

I’d say it took maybe 4 races before he wanted back. The hunger was back, he realised these were his people. He had positioned himself In such a way that there was a clear road back for him, but at the same time if being away from it was right then he could move away slowly.

I’ve no issue with him having a second shot. I think anyone who had seen him through his career felt that McLaren would have been a sad way for him to sign off. That being said, he has just tested the best car on the grid. However he will be racing for Alpha Tauri. Again see comment above about the issues Nyck had with that car.

This car will be significantly worse than the McLaren he has struggled with for the last two years. And he is betting his future career in F1 on this!😬😬😬 (Why Daniel? Why?)

He simply has to beat his teammate. He has to. I know the excuses Daniel fans come up with, I’ve heard them on repeat for the last two years, his teammate is more familiar with the car. The team screwed him over. It was the tyres. Literally none of that will wash with Marko.

This might be the most high risk move of Daniel’s career because it’s either excel or there is the door. Which leads us to

Yuki

As those who have followed me for a while may have noticed, I have a soft spot for Yuki. Heaps of talent with an express rise through the ranks (seriously he makes Lando and Oscar look like they took their time), the downside being he hadn’t fully matured and didn’t have a complete grasp of English when he hit F1, but was suddenly expected to cope.

There has been improvement, no one can deny this, but now he is being measured against Daniel. No offence Pierre, the bar just got raised.

This is do or die for Yuki. He wants to be alongside Max. I’ve no doubt he would do great things in that Red Bull, but now he has to stand out against Danny Ric. So not only has the bar been raised but the goal has been moved as well.

Yuki was a seat push from Honda. He must feel the pressure on his shoulders now, especially as every year he expects to be shown the door. He must see that Daniel has been placed alongside him for one reason and one reason only, the same reason he has been fighting his guts out. The second Red Bull seat.

Sergio

This was meant to be it for Sergio. After years of being no one’s first choice, ousted from McLaren, forced to put Force India into administration to save them, for Racing Point/Aston Martin to show him the door. Sergio has had a tough career. Once considered the greatest balance to Max they had found, it’s clear that the two of them are not the best of buddies and his results are less than inspiring, despite his comeback in races being epic (even if I did chuckle that a few races ago when he couldn’t get past Lando I could imagine Daniel cheering the Brit on).

So how do you get the old Checo back who will bring you the results? Announce Lando is the perfect fit for Red Bull and then put Daniel in the sister car just down the pitlane from him all within the same morning. Yeah, that’ll work a treat, have an early lunch!

Everyone knows that Daniel is in that seat as a warning to Checo. Get your finger out otherwise your replacement is literally a few feet away. I’m not sure if they are looking for compliance or results anymore but the whole pitlane heard this warning. We will swap you out in a heartbeat, because

Lando

As a Lando girl I’m gonna say something controversial here. I have no doubt in my mind that after his “Max spoils everything” dig on Saturday, Max did not give much of a fight off the line on Sunday to let Lando lead his home Grand Prix, safe in the knowledge he would pass him, which he did and then Lando came back into his DRS range and everyone at Red Bull had kittens! The Ferrari they expect a fight, they know Mercedes will hunt them as best as they can, they have the legs on the Astons. Who but 50p in the McLarens?

Lando has been the bone of contention for Red Bull for about 6 years. Dismissed by Marko as a youngster as not as good as Max, yet at least once a year Christian starts the “but I want that one” charm offensive on Lando. I’m not saying that Marko’s current assessment is wrong but to me there is only one reason to bring Lando to Red Bull, to light a fire under Max. Because let’s not assume they aren’t trying to pressure Max.

Tyre testing

Now a bit of confused reporting here causes anxiety for Sergio, Lando and Max. It was first reported that Daniel’s testing time were quick enough to put him on the front row at Silverstone. In other words, he really is that good Sergio and Max and well you’re not that impressive after all Lando. However Chris Medland is now reporting Daniel was .7 off Max’s pole time, which would have put him behind both McLarens, both Ferraris and both Mercedes. Read from that what you want, who’s agenda that serves.

Liam Lawson, Alex Albon, Zane Maloney

Three drivers that you would think had designs on that second Red Bull seat or Alpha Tauri seat.

My understanding is that it was felt Lawson wasn’t quite ready for the AT seat at the start of the year and was packed off to Japan to see how he got on in Super Formula. He already has the super licence so this would be about experience. Currently second in the championship he doesn’t want to give up a chance of winning. However if he does win and there is still no F1 seat as they swapped Daniel and Sergio, kept Yuki and are trying to chat up Lando (again), he will begin to feel it doesn’t matter what he does.

Alex has kept his ties with Red Bull, probably due to the drinks company being 50%Thai owned, but with the stellar job he’s doing at Williams, he must have thought that there was a chance Red Bull might want him back at some point.

Finally poor Zane Maloney. Imagine being in F2, named as a Red Bull reserve driver and realising that there will need to be a blood bath if you have any hope of getting into an F1 seat at this rate. Interestingly Zane shares a management team with Lando and they were seen with Helmut this weekend.

So in conclusion, 6 F1 drivers and both of your reserves in the space of 24 hours. Take a bow, that headfuck is impressive by anyone’s standards.

I’m amazed he didn’t take a swipe at Lewis and try and kick Roscoe on the way out.

As you might have guessed by now, this is not a Helmut Marko fan account!

[paroxysmal-distaste]

proximity. || ch13, weird

IVE LITERALLY BEEN GONE ONLY BC IM GOING INTO UNIVERSITY IM SO SORRY HERE'S A CHAPTER UIJKRF THIS HAS BEEN SITTING IN MY DRAFTS FOR MONTHS

◬ Chapter 13 - Weird ◬ ◬ Pairing: Bill Cipher x Fem! Reader ◬ ◬ Date Published: 27/05/2019 ◬ ◬ Word Count: 5146 ◬

Sixty degrees that come in threes. Watches from within birch trees. Saw his own dimension burn. Misses home and can't return. Says he's happy. He's a liar Blame the arson for the fire. If he wants to shirk the blame, He'll have to invoke my name. One way to absolve his crime. A different form. A different time.

...

The entirety of your night was spent tossing and turning, clutching the sides of your head the same way you would if you had a headache. What you had, however, was worse.

Gaining Bill’s powers hadn’t taken a toll on you this badly. Not before, anyways. It’s like your body was allowing you to slowly digest each ability as a way of adjusting and preventing you from going into instant shock (or death) from the sudden change. Evolutionary, perhaps?

Sure, you could handle a little intangibility or teleportation, things that very much differed from your normal ‘day-to-day’ metal control or electrical generation- but last night marked the beginning of a new problem.

Every. single. hour was spent trying to ignore the cacophony of overlapping thoughts from hundreds of different people at once.

Out of both curiosity and as a way to feed your sanity, you managed to tune into the mind of a random but strange individual, probably someone only a few kilometres away from you, only to be marvelled at how disgusting and unfiltered their thoughts were.

Made sense, these were their thoughts- it’s why they’re so personal, and it’s not expected someone could involuntarily end up reading their mind anyways. In some manner, who were you to make judgements about someone in the privacy of their own head? But after hearing that man’s dialogue, you had opted for trying one last time to sleep (out of horror), forcing the multiple human voices to be hushed into white noise.

But those whispers of rhyme… what did they mean? Was it because of Bill?

Your mind drifted off to the events of yesterday.

"Na-ah-ah, doll. You didn't think I'd forget about you calling me your boyfriend, now did you?"

Ugh.

You hated the way Bill made your face glow multiple times a day. Just the very recollection made a bad taste spread across your tongue. Call it a blow to your pride or genuine embarrassment, you didn't care- all you knew was that you didn't like it.

Obviously, your embarrassment was due to his teasing and that would be fine if you had to only dabble in his presence every once in a while, like a proper friend. But he was attached to your hip. He saw every reaction he wanted and he was basically living with you at this point, so moments of embarrassment for you were as clear as day and came more often than not.

After hearing his question, you got a little defensive, turning your head from him, absolutely mortified you had just walked into a trap that will give him enough fuel to last him weeks.

“It was the first thing I thought of! What the hell did you want me to say?” It was a hoarse whisper shout at best, and your eyes flickered to the group of teenagers behind Bill.

Bill’s grin grew so incredibly wide you wanted to slap him for being so annoying. You let out harsh air through your nose as he closed his eyes lightly and tsked, shaking his head.

“Why would that be your first thought?”

You paused.

Ironically? It wasn’t actually your first thought. But still, you could’ve said he was your cousin or family member... you later realised. You chewed on your bottom lip, staring at the ground in thought.

“Doll?”

“Hm? Oh.” You tilted your head up at him, hands on your waist defiantly, “I would’ve told him we were friends but the last time I visited I told him I had no friends, so it was just a precaution. I was being paranoid.”

He snorted, “You got that right.”

You lightly smacked his arm, muttering ,"Which part," before adding, "You're really not the sort of person I'd usually be caught dead hanging out with anyways."

He quirked an eyebrow, a flicker of disdain flashing across his face so fast that it scared you.

"For someone that doesn't have any 'friends', you've got quite the mouth on you." He replied almost a little too quickly, as if he was ready to pounce at any sign of your rebellion.

"I don't have any friends because I don't want any. Sort of requiring too much effort–especially with my time spent on people I'm never going to talk to again 5 years from now. Not because of my personality or anything." You sounded unsure now, and perhaps a little insecure. Pure pure coping right now.

Friends were something you had barely stayed in contact with, but it still hurt to not have anybody checking up on you. After a while it was something you got used to, and nowadays having friends seems to be more of a burden than anything else. It didn't matter, you told yourself, you've got your work to focus on.

"Maybe that IS why you don't have any."

Your mind had already drifted into another hazy thought and the 'friend topic' was now gone. Hearing Bill's comment had actually made you falter in what the hell he was going on about this time.

"I hope you realise how bad that sounds." You replied absentmindedly, slapping a hand over your forehead and cringing when you realised what you said.

"Hm? Your mind's going there, huh?" He smoothed his hand over his opposite forearm, smiling at you with eyes half-lidded. The look would be complete if he had a cat's tail waving mischievously behind him. Or maybe the Devil's tail.

You flushed trying to cover up your mistake and backtracking, "Not like that, God." A glance from side to side and then back to Bill made you squint at him this time, "...Besides, I don't see your friends anywhere."

"I don't just keep my friends nailed to my sleeve, doll. Not anymore. They're waiting for my return in my dimension, you'll see." He smiled sleazily at you, like he knew more than you did.

God, it was annoying how he seemed to have a response for everything.

You snorted as his grin grew wider, "No but seriously doll! Last time you visited, you also hadn’t met me.” He used both hands to refer to himself proudly and raised his eyebrows like what he was saying was factual and he was just waiting for you to get it.

“Aww, what are you saying? That you do see me as your friend?” You held your hands together, and batted your eyelashes, scrunching your nose with a smile.

Bill rolled his eyes, “Unfortunately for you, doll, I’m not your boyfriend.” He diverted his attention to the teenagers talking behind the two of you, a fire lighting up inside his eyes when he settled his vision of fury on Dipper.

“Very funny. What would I know about relationships? Clearly you're the expert– pathetic me would stand no chance in the presence of Bill Cipher.” You spoke sarcastically, whispering the last part, deciding to play along mostly out of curiosity.

I mean, who could really blame you? This dream demon talked so much mad game, it would be next to impossible to not feel even an ounce of intrigue in whether or not he's actually managed to be hooked into the life of another romantically. "So tell me, have you ever been in one?" You asked boldly, gnawing on the inside of your cheek.

Bill looked away, "I don't know what you're referring to."

Your eyebrows furrowed, embarrassment beginning to creep up your neck at the question, "You... you know what I mean. Relationships."

“...I don’t like to engage in human affairs,” he huffed, turning to examine his surroundings. The action was suspiciously avoidant and you crossed your arms and tilted your head, a gleam beginning to show in your eye.

“Wait. So you’ve never-” you caught yourself as the words began to fly off your tongue and into the air.

Bill whipped his head over at you after eavesdropping at the Pines and your brother’s conversation, “What? Whaddaya mean?”

You blinked innocently.

“I mean,” you fiddled with the hem of your coat, regretting indulging into your , “You’ve… you’ve never…?”

If Bill knew what you were hinting at, he definitely didn’t show it. His face showed how perplexed he was and he nudged his head to tell you to continue. Another trap? Probably.

“Out of all the trillions of years you’ve existed, and the billions you’ve had in contact with humans, not one time, as a human… have you ever…” You avoided his gaze.

He squinted.

If he wants to play games, so can you. Ask and see his reaction. Then... gaslight gatekeep girlboss? You weren't sure, you were just curious to see what he would say if you referred to something more. Curiosity, that was it.

“Had contact with a human.”

Bill’s eyes widened, his milky one catching your glance.

Now he was getting it.

“So that’s the human affair you were referring to.”

Your own eyes widened and you frantically waved your hands side to side, partly in an attempt to see his reaction before taking it back like an absolute coward, "No, I just meant the whole relationship part! Not that intimately. Unless you wanna answer- I meant, you’ve never had a significant other before? Not even as a deal?”

Nailed it.

He stared at you as if you were slimy. “As a deal? How desperate do you think I am?”

“Not sure if you want that answered, to be frank,” you stuck your tongue out to the side as he crossed his arms and glared at you.

Bill looked like he was going to retort quickly but B/N’s voice from behind interrupted first, “Guys, I’m taking my leave now!”

Right, you had forgotten that you were conversing outside the Mystery Shack, with a couple of teenagers having their own talk a few metres away from you.

And that brought you to here, at home.

As soon as you arrived home, you dropped your body onto the couch and fell asleep. Bill must've noted this earlier because when he wrapped his arm around you to teleport the two of you home, he murmured something about your obvious eyebags.

You sniffled and didn't reply, slightly ashamed that your disgustingly unstable sleep schedule was beginning to show on your face.

When you awoke however, the last thing you expected to find was a warm thick crochet blanket you kept in the linen laid across your body. Well, across was an overstatement. It looked like someone threw the blanket in your direction and hadn't bothered to straighten it out.

It was as if the intention was there, but the effort wasn't.

You sighed, Bill.

Your toes curled as you stretched your legs and you hazily opened your eyes, blinking to unblur your vision. What you did not expect was Bill's transparent eyeball inches away from your face.

"Y'ellow."

A shrill scream left your throat and you, quite terrified, scurried your body back to lean against the couch arm rest, breathing heavily as Bill only burst into laughter and pointed at you, "You should have seen the look on your face!"

Your hand automatically went over your heart as you took a deep breath and closed your eyes, in some effort to calm down. Smacking your lips together, you clicked your tongue and looked away from him for a second, finding the words to express your annoyance.

Rubbing your eyes harshly, that's when you noticed that it was Bill floating in front of you. Not his human body, but his triangle outlined form - the same way he looked when you first met him.

You raised an eyebrow at him, "Wait, how are you- oh my God." You half screamed as your eyes trailed to the doorway, where Bill's body laid, his eyes hallowed out.

It looked like a legitimate corpse- it's mouth wide open, its soulless and limp display like... well... a puppet. Bill really has outdone himself this time and your top lip wavered, "W-what the hell did you do?!"

Bill's single eye trailed to the stiff and cold body laying on the ground in front of your room.

"Oh, that?" He pointed before flying over to it, attempting to kick it only to have his foot go through it, "Apparently these meat sacks need rest, so I figured if I just leave it for a while, I won't have to actually sleep."

You frowned, pinching the bridge of your nose. Despite his mental age, this had to be one of the stupidest logical fallacies he's ever displayed, "Bill, you still have to sleep in it. If you go back in it later, it's not going to be any less deprived of sleep than it was before. Your soul may not require the sleep, but the body does and it probably needs something to occupy it to really count as 'sleeping.'"

Bill didn't reply, but instead went back into Brendan's body, the hallow eye sockets filling with eyeballs and his skin brightening. He stood up, and dusted himself off. "Happy now?"

"Sure." You replied, letting your back hit the couch and pulling the blanket over your shoulder. "Now go away, I want to sleep some more."

"Aren't you forgetting doll? We have to go shopping for tomorrow's party! Remember the plan?" He squatted himself down in front of your body and lifted a hair strand away from your face, a gesture that made you swat away his hand.

You groaned, "Bill please, we can do that later. Just let me sl...." Your hand waving in his face caused him to gently grab your wrist and set it down, "Doll, I might just have to leave my body again if you don't get up right this second."

You sat up suddenly, "I'd rather die."

"Now that's the spirit!"

"Alright, you seem to know Gravity Falls more than I do. Where to?"

The two of you were stationed in the middle of the Gravity Falls town, with a variety of stores surrounding you. To be quite honest, it looked larger from the inside, especially with the escalators on either side of the mall indicating a second floor.

"Gravity Malls. But that place is disgusting. I don't want any old peasant streetwear. I want to look charming." Bill flashed a cheesy grin and shut his eyes, almost as if to imagine cloudy visions of paparazzi photographing him or something.

"Let me see what I have and what we can afford." You reluctantly pulled out your phone and removed three five dollar notes and a coin from its case pocket. "I have $17- nope, never mind. That is a chocolate coin."

"Think you can cover for me? I'm not very liquid right now." Bill turned his pockets inside out and a white moth flew out of it. That's how poor he was. You raised an eyebrow and blinked at him quizzically.

"What if I conjure something? I mean what good are these powers if I don't put them to use?"

Bill nodded, "As much as I hate to admit it, you are almost as strong as me, but that doesn't mean your fleshy body is." He pokes your side, "Think you're up to it, doll?"

"How hard can it be? It can't be that difficult." You stated, squirming away from his touch and looking up at him with your eyes wide.

"That's both cute and ignorant, sweets."

You laughed, shaking your head, "Well, I'm not even going so it shouldn't be a problem to only focus on your outfit."

Bill stopped and turned to you, grasping your shoulders dramatically, "What! I thought we had a mutual agreement! A deal, even."

You gently removed his hands from your shoulders and stared at him, "Bill... I don't know... I don't think it's a good idea using Old Man McGucket. I've heard he's a little wacko now. I don't doubt he's a nice man but I'm skeptical on how he could be of service to us."

"It's the best chance we've got! You do want this portal completed, don't you?"

"Yeah, but what am I going to say? 'Hey, can you help me assemble a portal leading to another dimension?'" You asked rhetorically in a dumb and mocking voice, Bill rolling your eyes at your lack of confidence in him.

"You need this just as much as I do, you just gotta confide in my ability to sway others. It worked on you, didn't it?"

"You KNOW that's not true. I only agreed because we both mutually benefit from ridding me of your insane powers." You walked ahead of him as the two of you strode through the double doors of Gravity Malls.

"That's how it always starts, doll. That's how it aaaaalways starts." He jogged a little to keep up with you and you only rolled your eyes at his mindless comments.

"Oh you shush," you put your hand on his face and pushed aside, Bill spluttering at your sudden contact to his delicate features, as he would call them.

"Hands off. Besides, I'll do the talking. I just want you to fancy up a little! You're too... high strung."

"So those are your true intentions." You bit your lip, "The whole thing just seems weird to me- it's not really my... scene. Usually it's me, my work and I. What the hell do I know about a masquerade ball? Which is, super old fashioned by the way." Waving your arms about, you ultimately stopped your movement outside of a store called 'Edgy on Purpose' and spun around for his reply.

"Come on, sugar?" He neared you, licking his top lip, "For me?" The new nickname made your eye twitch.

"You just gave me even more of a reason not to do it." Honestly, this whole event seemed really intriguing and maybe a little fun, but with your lack of sociability, you did not want to fumble, especially in front of Bill.

Bill groaned, rubbing his temples indecisively. Wow, he was the fed up one?

"Okay, then please? For you? You gotta live a little, ya know? Otherwise you'll never have those friends you always complain about not existing."

You groaned, eyes shut and in deep thought, crossing your arms and tilting your head to the side.

Maybe there's no harm in it.

"Letting that slide. But... alright. I'll go." Your lips were pulled taut into a straight line, but it was to hide the smile that you knew so well that Bill would eat up. Surprisingly, as soon as you uncrossed your arm, Bill grinned and pulled you into a hug, catching you, (and probably anyone, since its Bill) off guard. You tensed, your arms stiff and set on your sides. Honestly you would've hugged him back if you weren't so dumbfounded.

"You won't regret it." He said, suddenly realising what he was doing and pulling away, patting your back roughly and brushing off his shoulder. Had to be one of the most out of character actions from Bill, so much so that you questioned if maybe someone else had possessed this body for a second. He seemed more indulged in his own reaction to even begin to notice the warm glow emitting from your cheeks, something you slapped yourself in the face lightly for feeling.

"I-I hope so," you mustered weakly.

"Right, so because you're new to this, we should find ourselves a more basic version of our outfits. A base, if you will. Something that just matches the colour."

"Have anything in mind?" You questioned.

Bill tapped his chin in fake thought, "Tell me if you get the picture, doll." He suddenly grabbed the back of your head and pulled it towards his own, your foreheads just barely connecting. He shut his eyes, almost as if he was getting you to read his mind.

On cue, you felt an image manifest itself in your brain and as it grew clearer, you realised what it was. "Woah, that's kind of cool," you breathed, more about the mind connection than anything else.

Yellow, almost a gold shimmering tailcoat, with black sleeves, gloves and tailored pants. That was Bill's idea? Sure.

You cocked your head but didn't say anything particular about it, "Guess we'll need a yellow shirt and black jeans." The two of you walked into Edgy on Purpose and awkwardly went on the look out for what you needed.

After picking the two articles of clothing off of the nearest rack, Bill suddenly spun around, almost causing you to trip over, "What colour dress are you going for, doll?"

Right, you were attending too, you almost forgot. You shrugged, "I don't usually do this so I don't really know where to start. Any pointers?"

Bill scanned the store, eyes squinted before pausing. He walked over to a rack, pulled a summer dress off and held it up for you to see.

"How bout it, doll?" He waved the dress at you and wagged his eyebrows in a silly manner, seemingly proud of the choice he made upon seeing the broad grin forming on your face.

Your fingers rubbed at the end of the dress, feeling for the fabric's quality. "Wait- how did you know F/C was my favourite colour?"

"How did I know that you talk in your sleep?" Bill's own smile disappeared almost as fast as it appeared and he lowered the dress, "Who's Oliver?"

You gaped like a fish, "E-excuse me?"

One hand on his hip showed how much he was demanding an answer for someone who should not be in any place to be asking invasive questions, "You heard me, doll, who is this 'Oliver' character ?"

The phrasing of his question was enough to make you giggled but you relented with the pressing question of: how does he know about your ex?!

"Were you- did you- You watched me sleep!?"

"Yes. Who's Oliver?"

You turned away, both embarrassed and irritated, "No one, just an old flame."

Bill waved his hand up and down, as if to signal you to keep talking. You squinted your eyes, "I heard he lives here now, so I don't know... I was thinking about him for a bit. That's probably why I dreamed about him briefly."

Bill looked at you, very annoyed, "Why didn't you mention it before?"

You swung around, shocked that he would say that. "Why would I? It's not really something I would bring up. To be frank, I didn't think even you cared that much about my personal life unless it benefitted you. Am I wrong?"

Bill frowned, not knowing what to say.

The feeling bubbling up in your chest hurt a little, and you weren't sure if it was the sudden mention of Oliver's name all over again or Bill's reaction that made you feel so sick.

"It's not really an experience I'd like to detail again."

"My mistake, doll."

"Its... whatever, let me pay for these." You snatched the dress from his hand and walked a few metres to the cash register, leaving Bill stunned. He wiggled his fingers as his arm was bent and held close to his torso, unsure of how to approach you next.

You exhaled, passing your clothing items to the cashier. She looked at you slyly, "How long have you two been together?"

Your eyes shot up, clear contempt swirling within them, almost as if to challenge her to continue, "Sorry?"

The guilt would come later for how rude you were being, it just seemed like the world kept throwing hints at you about Bill– and you had no idea how to take it.

The cashier looked taken aback by the emotion in your pupils before she pushed her lips up in the direction of Bill, "Him. That man, you two were arguing about something. You just looked like you were a couple and I was going to offer a piece of advice."

"Urm, what makes you say that?" You asked, feeling slightly uncomfortable as you took out your money from your phone case.

The cashier trained her eyes on him, "The way he looks at you."

You turned around, only to make eye contact with Bill. His pursed lips turned in a smile. You immediately felt bad now for your previous reaction.

"Thanks." You mumbled, taking your bag with newly bought items, walking to Bill and dragging him by the hand.

Bill visibly brightened at this, "Getting touchy already?"

Weird. He said 'hands off' not long ago. I guess he doesn't like anything in his face.

Aaand you're overthinking again.

You shook your head dismissively, pressing your lips together, "No, the cashier was just... being weird." You let go of his hand at the mention of it, and wiped it against your coat.

Bill fake pouted.

"Let's go home. We've got some party outfits to make."

“The answer is yes, doll.”

“Hm?” You tweaked your head to catch Bill laying on the couch, book in hand. No idea where it came from, since it wasn’t yours- but he didn’t seem morally grounded enough to not commit petty theft, so you settled on that.

“You asked me earlier if I’ve had… that human contact.” He gave you a side glance.

Your eyes nearly bulged out of their head, “Oh-! But... but I thought you said you didn’t engage in human affairs. I guess, unless it benefits you?” You sat up from your own seat, shifting to make yourself comfortable for this conversation.

Seated where you were, you had been laying the newly bought clothes on the table and dressing them on a mannequin, with a lot of struggle.

Bill obviously didn't help, so it was mostly silent with the two of you basking in each other's company. That is, until Bill randomly spoke.

“I said I didn’t like to engage, not that I didn’t.” He snapped, shutting his book and mirroring you, staring across the room mindfully.

You watched his jaw clench, “You know, if the topic makes you uncomfortable, we don’t have to-“

“Don’t patronise me.”

You gulped, looking away and tucking your legs beneath your chest. Bill cast a glare towards you before sighing, “It wasn’t part of a deal, like you said. But I had to persuade some people my own way. Sometimes the situation called for it, and a demons’ gotta do what a demons’ gotta do.” You didn’t miss the glimpse he gave you to gauge your response and you tightened your lips.

“Well," you paused, "...It sounds like a very regrettable stage in your life.”

“It was- is. Having to associate with meat sacks in that manner, doll- it was torture. Not in the pleasant kind either. It was…” he wiggled his fingers, staring deeply at them like they held a secret.

“Wait, are we talking about the same thing? How… how far did you go?” The lump in your throat demonstrated how unfamiliar you found discussing a topic you weren't experienced in. Luckily, Bill was on the other spectrum- knowledge truly was a curse at times.

However, it was because you were inexperienced that hearing about a demon's own form of affection appeared so interesting.

“You know… the act where humans press their lips on each other? Just the very thought of it makes me want to flip myself inside out.” He was somewhat like a child- all this intimate conversation disgusted him.

“A kiss?”

“Gah, I know what it is, I’m not 1 billion.”

“Well what else do you want me to call it? Because that’s what it is- it’s kissing. Generally it’s not that unpleasant, so I think you might’ve just been kissing the wrong people.” You crossed your arms, ignoring the nudge in your skull saying, What do you know? You've only kissed like two guys. Not even.

“What? And you know?” He sounded disgusted, and you furrowed your brows, sulking.

“Uh, yeah- I’m human?”

“Right right, sorry doll. I had forgotten you and Oliver probably got it on many times over.” He air quotes you with his fingers, a resentful scowl growing on his face.

The mention of his name again in a private setting versus a public one like the mall made you unbelievably upset, “Hey- don’t… don’t say that.”

“Look what this stupid vessel is doing to me. I’m becoming more human! I'm... feeling... things. It's dreadful." Bill stared at you, like you were the source of his problems, "Doll, all the more reason to hurry this up so we can go our separate ways." He suddenly stood up and began to leave the room, riling up your emotions more, "Hey! Running away never solved anything! It's cowardly!" You bit your lip, regretting that last part.

He stopped walking and eerily turned his head over at you, "Not wanting to engage in pathetic chatter with a proletarian isn't cowardly. It's self preserving."

You stared at him, amazed at his sudden cruelty while he just scoffed and continued to walk away. A sigh escaped your lips. With Bill? It's always 3 steps forward and 10 million microsteps back. He brought up the topic too!!

Progress with Bill was almost impossible, but to say you hadn't seen a change in his behaviour towards you for the past few days, would've been a total lie. Now it looks like that had all unravelled. What had happened? What did you do wrong? Maybe he was right, maybe he was turning more human. You hoped it wasn't something that ignited from you.

Maybe that's why he surprised you when you were napping with his translucent form. He tried to cover up his reasoning with his twisted humour in seeing you frightened at the corpse-like appearance of Brendan laying on the floor, hollow and lifeless.

Bill knew you were going to see it at one point so he might as well have called attention to it himself and explained it.

It meant-

It meant that that little sneak was lying. He didn't leave Brendan's body so he didn't have to sleep in it. He's not stupid- Bill should know that leaving a body doesn't suddenly make it replenish itself.

Suddenly, it occurred to you why.

He left it because he could feel himself becoming more human.

So he was trying to spend some time in his normal default form because he probably felt himself getting carried away with his mind conforming to how a human brain thinks.

To how a human brain feels.

He probably felt scared. Embarrassed, even. He was changing into something he wasn't comfortable with.

Bill was slowly becoming more and more human, and you weren't what you could do about it.

taglist: @spilled-mi1k | @crystalsdoodles | @kenryug | @bones-baggins

If you want to be removed or added to my taglist, send me a pm for which story!

If you don't see your name here, it's likely that I can't tag you!

[wherethingscomebackx]

Top 25 Larry Fics of 2020

h 2020 was HELLISH. So thank you to all the writers, and I mean ALL of them, who kept us occupied as the world continues to burn.

You may be familiar with these lists:

Top 25 Larry fics of 2016

Top 25 Larry fics of 2017

Top 25 Larry fics of 2018

Top 25 Larry fics of 2019

We’re going on our 5th year!!  As always, I read a lot of fic and the majority of it is Larry. I like making lists and I like Larry so I thought I’d do some minimal research of the top 25 larry fics published/completed in 2020 in order of least to most kudos (with links). All of these fics are top notch so you should all check them out!

25.) a trail of honey through it all by @yvesaintlourent (27k)

The boy in front of him, well really, the man in front of him, was like something out of a confusing wet dream. Built, tall, tan and muscular, his skin glistened with sweat after a long day of working outdoors with his hands. He was wearing a cut up old American football shirt, the bottom hem was torn and the sleeves were cut off to the point where the t-shirt was really just a loose tank top. The shorts he had on had clearly been full length jeans at one point, and were now just crudely cut off above the knee. His white socks were pulled up too high on his calves, and the brown work boots he had on were old as fuck, the leather peeling along the edges of the soles. Curly brown hair stuck out from the edges of his backwards snapback, and there was a smudge of grease wiped along his brow bone. The smattering of hair along his jaw proved that he hadn’t shaved in a week or two, the hair growing in thicker across his upper lip and around his chin. His sinfully bowed mouth was pink and plump, and Louis was suddenly hyper-focused on the way that he chewed at the toothpick stuck between his lips. He looked like he needed a shower. Louis wanted to lick him.

Or, the TPH fic we’ve all been waiting for.

24.) even the best laid plans by @falsegoodnight (25k)

“Anyways,” Louis stresses, narrowing his eyes, “just let me say it and then rate how terrible of an idea it is on a scale from one to ten.”

“Alright,” Zayn agrees, sitting up expectantly.

“I want to ask Harry Styles to take my virginity,” Louis blurts, holding his hands out for emphasis.

The way Zayn’s eyes bulge is almost comical. “Negative infinity,” he says, voice choked. “Negative infinity times negative infinity.”

“Technically, a negative times a negative is -”

“Really negative infinity,” Zayn corrects himself, shaking his head wildly. “Louis, what the fuck?”

-

Or, Louis wants to have sex with someone and decides Harry is the perfect alpha for the job.

23.) A Distant Hazy Light by @greenfeelings (76k)

Life’s pretty ordinary for Harry. He lives with his best friend, got into university just like he’s planned, and manages to support himself just fine for an unbonded omega. If he sustains that lifestyle by getting paid to help alphas through their rut every now and then, that’s nothing to be hung up on. Until he’s hired by an alpha that turns everything upside down.

Or, Harry’s working on taking Louis’ walls down, until he builds his own up.

22.) Ghost Note Symphony by whoknows (96k)

Louis is on tour when he first hears about it. It’s all over the news – Harry Styles Attacked By Fan runs in headlines for days. It’s not even just the gossip rags, either. Actual journalists are covering the story. It would have been impossible to avoid hearing about it. Technically, Oli is the one who tells Louis about it, but it’s not exactly being covered up. Harry doesn’t answer Louis’ text asking if he’s alright, but that’s not really surprising. They haven’t spoken for months, and it’s been a lot longer than that since they’ve had a real conversation. The sting of the text going unanswered is still there, less painful than it might have been a few years ago.

It’s not that it’s easy to forget about, exactly. Louis has a whole life outside of One Direction now, though. So Louis goes on with his life, figuring that if Harry was seriously hurt he would have heard about it by now. He might currently be in the same country as Harry, but being on opposite sides of it puts enough distance between them that putting it in the back of his mind is easy. There’s nothing Louis could do, even if he thought Harry might want him to.

That’s why everything that happens next comes as a complete shock to him.

21.) Until by @allwaswell16 (38k)

Rural Eagle County, Colorado wasn’t the type of place to find a famous musician or actor. At least not until songwriter Louis Tomlinson showed up with pop star Niall Horan to visit his uncle’s horse ranch, and they just happened to find themselves next door to a reclusive former movie star.

20.) Strangers in Love by sweetums (42k)

Louis wakes up to find himself in a marriage with the last man he thought he'd ever end up with.

-

Prompt 51: An amnesia fic where louis and harry were enemies to lovers but after an accident, louis only remembers those memories that him and harry hated each other. now harry has to fix it. I think something like this less dark and less angsty compared to other amnesia fics and it could be funny

19.) A Long Way From The Playground by Pink_Sunsets (170k)

One Direction is broken up. They broke up five years ago. That should be the end of the story, right?

Harry is finished with One Direction. He now has a new life, one with two kids and a successful solo career. And he’s happy.

But a call one night from management flips Harry’s whole new life upside down, and he’s forced to face the life he had left behind.

As well as a certain blue eyed man who had left him behind.

18.) my love’s not simple (it’s fragile) by @falsegoodnight (27k)

“Can I take you out tomorrow?” he asks. “My shift ends at 7 but we can go for dinner at 8.”

Louis is silent for a few seconds and then, “Like… on a date?”

Harry swallows thickly. He hasn’t done this in years, hasn’t ever wanted to. “Yeah.”

He’s worried he’s misread things but then Louis raises his head to kiss Harry’s cheek. “Yeah,” he says easily. “Sure.”

Tension leaves his body swiftly. “Are you sure?” asks Harry. “I know we’re both so busy but I can’t not try with you, Lou.”

“Neither can I,” says Louis. “I think we can figure it out. I care about you a lot Harry. We’ve known each other for a week, but I already like you so much.”

-

Or Harry's new job is threatened by his impending rut. Desperate for a solution, he allows Niall to introduce him to Louis, an omega whose heat begins the same day. They click.

17.) Cocaine for Breakfast by @harryeatsburger (309k)

“It’s an easy job.” He continues, as if Louis wants to listen. “Like I said, a few trips. Parties, students, nothing dramatic.”

Louis gazes over to Harry. He’s looking thoughtful now, eyes on the green like he’s talking more to himself than Louis.

“Clubbing, drinks. Whatever, the business is just a side thing.”

That’s not how Louis remembers it to be, “You lying?” He honestly can’t tell.

Harry shakes his head slowly, meeting Louis' eyes.

“No,” He answers almost toneless. Harry clears his throat, “I won’t put you in any dangerous situation.” His voice is sincere, Louis can tell he means it, his jade green eyes glinting with truth.

or, - Louis Tomlinson is a drug addict, sent away from his beloved party-scene to recover. There, he discovers that small towns have just as much access to drugs as London did, plus something even better that he just can't get enough of. That something is a boy with green eyes and bouncy curls named Harry Styles. -

16.) Tastes like Strawberries by @sadaveniren (4k)

I’m stressed. I’m nesting and demand cuddles. Come over

Harry frowned and double checked who the text was from. Yup, it still said Louis - Grad, which meant it was from Louis from his grad school.

aka Louis texts Harry by mistake. It works out

15.) the way the storm blows by @rbbsbb (21k)

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick.

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.

Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea.

14.) bruise you like a peach by @falsegoodnight (40k)

There’s two reasons Harry despises Econ.

The first is that it’s boring as fuck. The second reason is a bit more personal, a bit more focused in a way. As in it’s focused on one specific thing, or in his case, person.

His name is Louis Tomlinson.

13.) Watching The World Fall by whoknows (11k)

This segment has been going on long enough that Louis knows what’s coming before James starts in on it, trying to sell him on something he knows that Louis wouldn’t normally be buying. But there’s four cameras surrounding him, and an audience watching him expectantly, so if Louis wants to continue convincing people that he’s doing just fine, he’s going to have to go along with it.

“We have a whole host of single men backstage waiting to meet you, Louis,” James tells him. “We want to help you find love tonight, on Late Late Live Tinder. Is this okay? Do you want to play?”

It actually kind of makes sense that his first date after the break-up is going to be just as public as said break-up. Something like coming full circle.

“Alright, James,” Louis agrees, hopping down off his stool.

“Okay, come down to the stage,” James says. Louis can’t even tell whether the excitement in his voice is genuine or not. “Right now, come on down!”

12.) Quiet People Have the Loudest Minds by @2tiedships2 (38k)

Broadway shows were one of the few things that could keep Louis’ attention for a full two hours without needing to move about. But not tonight.

The alpha next to him was both infuriating him and practically turning him on at the same time. He needed to leave. The alpha, that is. Louis was staying.

Or the one where Louis is a nonverbal omega who has accepted the fact that he will never find an alpha that will treat him as an equal. On the other hand, he’s never met anyone like Harry.

11.) The Wrath of the Emerald Eyes by @purpledandeli0n (85k)

His chin is grabbed harshly, facing the two deep green eyes that have been getting on his nerves for the past ten minutes. The smirk on the man's face does not vanish. The grip of his hand on Louis' chin does not soften, his thumb at the side of his lower lip.

His smile widens as he answers Louis' question, ''My name is Styles, but you will call me Captain."

•

Pirate AU

10.) Canyon Moon by @eeveelou (40k)

For as long as Louis has remembered, he has been promised to be mated to Harry, his best friend and the future pack alpha. But Louis’s heart belonged to the forest and to the hunt more than he could ever imagine it belonging to Harry.

Then Harry’s father dies in a violent accident, and Louis’s future alpha disappears on the wind.

An A/B/O Lion King AU

9.) We Both Got Nothing to Hide by lovelarry10 (43k)

“Talk to me, Lou.”

“I can’t,” Louis mumbled, knowing he genuinely couldn’t say it. He couldn’t admit to what he was doing. “Don’t ask me to say it, because I can’t.”

“Then… I’ll try and guess. You’ve… got some stuff of Harry’s. Something of his to make it smell like him?”

Louis just nodded, eyes fixated on the floor. This was humiliating, but he knew Zayn wouldn’t stop until he found out what was going on.

“Okay. Like… a blanket, or a comforter or something?”

“Kind of…”

//

Omega Louis has a secret nest. Alpha Harry keeps losing his clothes.

8.) sleeping on our problems by @falsegoodnight (67k)

I’m in love with you, Louis thinks. He feels empty, weighed down by his sadness and the loss of Harry inside him just moments ago before his knot finally went down.

There’s moments where he’s sure Harry feels the same. Like now, when he’s gazing down at Louis with so much adoration and tenderness. It’s like they’re both on the cusp of something more, but neither of them ever say a word.

His confession is on the tip of his tongue ready to slide out like honey, and yet he remains silent. They both do, looking at each other and recognizing the reluctance mirrored in each other’s eyes. It’s then that Louis realizes they’re both scared.

-

Or Louis sleeps with Harry and they have more than just catching feelings to worry about.

7.) like it’s a game by @soldouthaz (32k)

there is little harry hates more than truth or dare.

and louis.

6.) before we knew by @falsegoodnight (39k)

“C’mon Lou,” says Zayn after a moment, He sounds even more exasperated than before. Louis sort of has a knack for exasperating people, especially people like Zayn who aren’t usually bothered by his brattiness. “Can’t you give this guy a chance? Harry Styles? Aren’t you curious about him at all?”

Despite his best efforts, Louis still flinches at the name. He really shouldn’t be so affected after all these years. He’s seen the name printed down the curve of his waist in obnoxiously and uncommonly large loopy letters every single day since his sixteenth birthday eight years ago. He’s very familiar with the name Harry Styles.

It sounds pretentious and Louis hates it.

He hates everything about his supposed soulmate.

He hates his large handwriting that stands out like a claim on his skin whenever he’s walking around shirtless. He hates his pretentious name. And now he hates his supposed curls and green eyes and dimples.

-

Or Louis has been skeptical of soulmates for years so it seems like fate when he finally bumps into the owner of the obnoxiously large signature printed into his skin since age sixteen: Harry Styles, a human rights attorney who is firmly against soulmates.

5.) Mine Would Be You by @crinkle-eyed-boo (114k)

Louis blinks his eyes open, his eyelids fluttering as the room swims around him. He takes several gulps of beer once he confirms that he’s definitely not hallucinating, that the very first portrait Harry Styles ever painted of him is hanging on that wall.

Louis stares at the wall, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest as he realizes that there’s not just one painting of him, there’s five, the portraits lined up like they’re some sort of storyboard depicting the rise and fall of his deepest love. His greatest heartache. A pain that cut him so deep that he left the fucking country, severing all ties with his life in New York, now suddenly surrounding him as if he’d never left.

Fucking shit motherfucker fuck.

Louis returns to New York City five years after he left it – and the love of his life – behind. He didn't intend to see Harry again, but fate has a funny way of pulling them together, whether they like it or not. After making a begrudging truce, they both start to wonder: Would it be so bad if history repeated itself?

4.) You’ve Got My Devotion (Hate You Sometimes) by @harryrainbows (95k)

Harry was in the biggest boy band in the world. He was also one half of the best (or worst, depends on who you ask) kept secret relationship in the music industry.

Now, almost five years on, after One Direction has broken up, and Harry and Louis' relationship has as well, a video threatens to put everything at risk.

One determined Irishman, a massive publicity stunt and two begrudging exes are all it takes to bring One Direction back to life and maybe, just maybe, Harry and Louis' mangled love life too.

Or: Harry and Louis are forced to fake-date after an old video from when they were dating emerges.

3.) The Space Between by @lads-laddylads (39k)

Harry Styles is the alpha rockstar who can’t sleep and doesn’t know why.

Louis Tomlinson is the omega PhD student who helps him figure it out.

2.) Nothing But You On My Mind by @absoloutenonsense (83k)

Louis Tomlinson is a PR manager hired to improve the image of royal bad-boy Prince Harry Styles. Unfortunately for him, that means being faced with the Prince's constant innuendos, incessant dirty jokes, and relentless flirting. Louis just wants to make it to Princess Gemma's coronation; once she's crowned Queen, his contract is up and he never has to see the Prince again.

1.) Collision by @tequiladimples (224k)

Mythology/Fairytale!AU in which Louis is a dainty fairy with a temper who wants to be intimidating and Harry hurts people. Naturally, they hate each other.

(Featuring Liam, the big and not-so-bad wolf who’s got a thing for humans, Zayn, a human with supernaturally good looks, and Niall, the cupid who just wants his job to be easier.)

[hangovercurse]

For the Past Four Years

You and Colson have been friends forever, but when you start getting lessons from a certain drummer, he gets a bit jealous.

Request: Sooo I was just wondering if a jealous!coulson whose your friend would be something you’d like to write? Maybe y/n and yungblud or rook or someone is getting a little too friendly and it makes him angry either fluff or smut would work tbh

Colson x Reader

Warnings: Cursing

A/N I am so sorry this took so long! This is the one I was talking about when I said I got to the end and wasn’t feeling it so I rewrote it.

Word Count: 2019

You hated being the only one in the crew who couldn’t go on tour. The travel interfered with your job too much, so you were left alone for months out of the year. But that made it all the better when you could join the tour. You were grateful for the two weeks off you were given while Colson was on the Hotel Diablo tour.

You flew out to their show in Phoenix and planned to stay on the tour bus with them until they got back to LA. The boys were ecstatic to have you around, having known you for almost 4 years. Colson was probably the most excited to see you again, seeing as he had known you the longest.

You were in the green room for the fifth show since you’d join the tour, the energy through the roof. Colson was busy talking with Ashleigh about the show, so you found entertainment in Rook, who was currently tapping away on his practice kit. “Ok, guess this one.”

You were currently trying to figure out what songs he was playing, and you were doing pretty good. He started playing the intro to “You Could Be Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes. ”Really? It’s like you’re trying to make this easy for me.”

“It’s not my fault you know literally every song ever made.”

“Yeah, but Guns N’ Roses? Obviously, I’m gonna know it.” You smirked and he squinted at you.

“Fine. You’re so good, why don’t you play something and make me guess.” He held out his drumsticks for you to take.

You pouted, “Rookie you know I don’t know how to play drums.”

“I can teach you.” He offered, making your eyes light up.

“Wait, actually?” He nodded, standing up and grabbing another stool.

“C’mere.” He led you around the kit and sat you down, sitting on the stool behind you. He put the drumsticks in your palms and then moved to hold the outside of your hand. “We’ll start with the basics.”

When Colson came back into the room, he saw you and Rook laughing. You were looking back at Rook as his hands were wrapped around yours, a smile on your face. He couldn’t help his heart sinking, and he tried his best to maintain his composure. Luckily, he only had to endure a few more minutes of you guys obviously flirting before everyone had to move to side stage.

You noticed Colson slumped on one of the couches across the room and you sent him a smile. “Rook is teaching me how to play.” You mouthed to him, and he nodded sarcastically.

“Good for you.” He mouthed back, obviously uninterested and upset about something. You raised your eyebrow and tilted your head, silently asking what was wrong. He just shook his head.

“Alright guys, backstage.” Ashleigh announced, and all the boys jumped up.

Rook stood up and you followed, handing him his drumsticks. “We shall continue this later, young grasshopper.” He joked, bowing dramatically. You rolled your eyes and pushed him towards the door of the green room.

“Don’t suck too much.” You smiled, and he turned back to stick his tongue out at you. Colson watched the interaction and it looked like steam would start blowing out of his ears. You bounded over to where he had just stood up. “Good luck hug?” You asked sweetly, a tradition you had started the first time you went backstage before a show.

Instead of answering, he walked right past you, leaving the room. You stared after him, confusion present on your face. You wanted to talk to him about it, but decided it was best to leave it for after the show.

 Colson seemed to be in a better mood on stage and after the show, insisting on partying on the bus. You had no complaints; you loved the endless party that was touring with MGK. Once you got on the bus, however, his mood seemed to drop all over again. You didn’t really notice it at first, a bit distracted by the loud music and the other guys. You loved spending time with them, they were as much your family as Colson. But your good time was spoiled by Colson sitting on one of the couches scrolling through his phone with a drink in his hand.

You didn’t want to have fun without him, he was your best friend, after all. So, you walked over to him, reaching your hand out. “Come dance with me.” You smiled, which he did not return.

In fact, he barely looked at you, just took a sip of his drink and said, “why don’t you go dance with Rook since you like him so much.”

You were taken aback by his comment. “Umm, what?”

“You heard me. If you like Rook so much why don’t you go dance with him? Why don’t you just sleep with him while you’re at it?”

You took a step back, offended. “I don’t know what your problem is right now, but either talk to me like a grown up or get over it.”

Colson sighed, standing up and grabbing your hand to drag you to the back of the bus, away from the crowd. He opened the door that separated the bunks from the rest of the bus, leading you in and closing it behind you. You waited for an explanation from him, but he just stood there, glaring at you.

“Okay, what the fuck is your problem, Colson? I’ve been here for all of a week so I don’t exactly know what I could’ve done.” You tried to keep your voice quiet, but your tone was still sharp.

Colson’s tone stung just as bad. “Oh right, because you haven’t been flirting with Rook ever since you got here. I mean seriously could you make it any more obvious?”

You raised an eyebrow, “Okay, one, I’m not fucking flirting with anyone, much less Rook. Two, even if I was flirting with him, or anyone for that matter, it’s none of your fucking business.” Colson had a habit of doing this; anytime you started talking to a guy, or even just dancing with one at a club, he made sure it stopped immediately and you were fed up with it.

“It is my business. He’s my bandmate and you’re my best friend. If you two hook up or do anything, guess who’s caught in the middle? Me.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “Yeah, and I suppose that’s why you’ve run off every other guy I’ve tried to do anything with?”

He stepped towards you, eyes getting darker. “So you were trying to get with Rook?”

“Oh my god Colson, no!” You let out an exasperated groan, “I’m just saying you have a pattern of getting in between me and literally any member of the male species. Rook and I are just friends, you know that. And I would never put you in a situation like that.”

He stepped closer to you, standing over you now. "Maybe I just don’t think they’re good enough for you.” His voice got quieter, but you weren’t backing down.

“You’re supposed to think that. That’s what friends are for. But that doesn’t mean you get to get in the way of every potential relationship I have.”

“Stop saying that fucking word.” His voice got deeper, darker.

You furrowed your brows, confused and a bit nervous at his tone. “What word.” Your voice came out quieter than you expected it to.

Colson sighed and hung his head, backing away from you, “forget it.”

He turned so his back was facing you, running a hand through his hair. You watched him carefully, studying him. “What word, Colson?” You pushed him.

He rubbed his face with his hands, letting out another heavy sigh. “Did you ever stop to think about why I didn’t want you to get anywhere with those guys?” Your heart seemed to stop beating for a second, and your shoulders fell slightly.

“N-no.” You stuttered, walking towards the man, who was still turned away from you. “Colson, I’m really confused right now.” Your voice was soft. You reached out to touch his arm, but he spun around before you could.

His hand reached out to tilt your jaw up, so you were looking into his eyes. You expected him to be angry, but there was something else instead. His face was really close to yours, enough that you could feel his breath on your nose when he spoke. “There’s a reason I don’t want you to flirt with Rook, or with any other guy for that matter.” You had a feeling you knew where this was going, and you took a sharp breath as your heart fluttered.

“Colson-“ You started, but he cut you off.

“Just let me finish, please. I have to say this or I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” You stayed silent, your eyes begging him to continue. “I don’t want you to be with anyone else. Fuck, Y/N, it hurts like hell to see you flirting with other people because I want you to be flirting with me.”

You smile, trying not to giggle. “And I realized when I left for tour that I’m kind of really in love with you.”

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling his lips onto yours. His hands wrapped around your waist as his lips moved against yours. When you pulled away, he placed his forehead against yours, eyes closed. “I’ve kind of been flirting with you for the past 4 years, loser.”

His eyes flew open, head moving away from yours. “What?”

You laughed, rolling your eyes. “Yeah, I’ve kind of been really in love with you for a long time.” You mimicked his earlier words. “You never said anything about it so I just assumed you didn’t feel the same way.”

He let out a breath through his nose, “God I’m so dumb.” You giggled, shaking your head and pressing your lips against his.

“You are not, you’re just a little oblivious.” He rolled his eyes, pulling your hips closer to him and kissing you again, longer this time. He started leading you backwards, so your back pressed against the wall of bunks lightly. One of your hands moved to rest on his cheek and the other played with the hair at the base of his neck.

The kiss deepened, his tongue swiping against your lips. You granted him entrance, his tongue slowly exploring your mouth. His hands began to move down your waist. They were about to reach your butt when the door opened and Dre walked in. “Oh shit,” He paused, looking between you two and slowly smiling. “About time you fuckers got it on.”

You buried your head into Colson’s chest, a blush on your face. “Duuuude.” Colson groaned, his head falling backwards. “Get out.”

Dre chuckled, hands in surrender. “In my defense, you guys are the one making out in a tour bus full of people in the bunk room.”

If looks could kill, Dre would have been murdered by Colson by now. “Okay, I’m leaving. But just know I’m telling everyone about this.” He smiled, quickly leaving, and closing the door behind him before Colson could hurt him.

You laughed, pulling the man back to you and connecting your lips to his, a smile on your face. “I’m gonna kill him.” Colson mumbled against your lips.

You rolled your eyes, “As hot as that would be, society generally frowns upon killing your friends.” He chuckled and pressed another kiss to your lips, his hands reaching up to cup your face.

“Wait, would you still like me if I was a murderer?”

You giggled, “Depends on who you kill, but probably.”

He pecked your lips, “What if I killed Rook?” You glared at him, and he smiled. “What? I’m just asking in case it happens.”

“You’re not allowed to kill your band members.”

“So if I kicked him out of the band and then killed him, it would be okay?”

“Colson Baker!”

“Kidding!”

[new-sandrafilter]

How Timothée Chalamet Channeled The Blockbuster Pressure of Leading Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ Back Into His Role – Venice Q&A

DEADLINE: In a few days Dune will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. You first met Denis Villeneuve about the role in May 2018 and started shooting in the early half of 2019. It was always going to be a long journey, but the pandemic stretched it even further. How does it feel to have finally arrived at this moment?

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: You know, I like to think that with every film I’ve done, whether it’s Call Me by Your Name or Beautiful Boy, The King, or Little Women, the character you play is almost a piece of your flesh. And that’s always true, but simply from the perspective of how long the shoot for Dune was, and also the arc that Paul Atreides is on, as well as the huge love and almost biblical connection that so many people have for the book and the original film, it really felt… tectonic, if that’s the right word for it. Just getting to this finish line feels like: phew.

And independent of what the film is now, and what it has become, the experience of making it was I was put in such a safe environment, which you can never take for granted as a human, as an actor, but especially when you’re just starting your career, and when this is the first film of this size you’ve ever done.

To get to work with Denis on it, to get to work with someone of his caliber, let alone on a book that he considers the book of his youth and one of the things he has connected to the most… When he would have it in his hands on set, his body language would become that of a fan; of a kid who had fallen in love with the book at home in Montreal. And when all the kids around him were wearing hockey jerseys with their favorite players’ names on the back, this was a kid wearing a jersey that said ‘Spielberg’ on the back.

For it all to come together, especially with the added challenge of the pandemic, it has all combined to make this moment feel especially spicy [laughs].

DEADLINE: The entire ensemble will show up in Venice.

CHALAMET: Right. And I just can’t believe it; Jason Momoa has the number one film on Netflix right now with Sweet Girl, which I just watched. And since we shot, Zendaya has had all this success with Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. Just to be part of this cast, period, let alone as one of the title characters, it’s really the shit you dream of.

And let me not forget, too—and I know I’ve told you this before—that The Dark Knight was the movie that made me want to act. That movie had a score by Hans Zimmer, and he has done the score for Dune. And it’s almost not what you’d think. It’s totally appropriate and excellent for the movie, but he has somehow managed to do something subversive, in my opinion. It’s a pinch-me moment all over.

DEADLINE: So, take me back to the start. Is it true you had a Google alert set up to track the latest news on this project before you were ever cast?

CHALAMET: Yeah, it’s true [laughs]. Not right away—Legendary had the rights and was developing it—but as soon as Denis got involved, I set up a Google alert and that’s when I got the book.

In total honesty, I think my understanding of Dune at that point was from a graphic novel I’d seen at Midtown Comics when I was shopping for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards when I was about 10. The year you and I first met, when I was there at Deadline Contenders with Call Me by Your Name, that would have been 2017 or early 2018, and Denis was there with Blade Runner. I remember I was trying to put myself in front of him as much as possible and set up a meeting with him. We had a night at the BAFTA where one of my good friends, Stéphane Bak—who’s also an actor—saw Denis across the room and was like, “Hey buddy, he’s right over there.” So, we went over to talk to him. I kept trying to put myself in front of him, but I didn’t really get a sense of the possibility [of working with him].

I was about halfway through the book when I got the call that he was going to be the president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was in London prepping The King. He asked me if I could come out there, so I quickly busted through the second half of the book as best I could. So, like, the first half of my copy is properly annotated and full of my thoughts, and then the second half I just raced through. And then I had that meeting with him, and it was such a joy.

I’m struggling with this even now, as I’m working with Paul King [on Wonka], because he’s another guy I have huge respect and admiration for, and it’s hard to feel on a level. Not that you ever are, because as an actor you’re a cog in the machine, and you’ve got to be humble to the vision of the director. But with Denis, he was pacing around the room, throwing ideas around, in some fancy suite in Cannes, and all I could think was that a year before I was just sat on a stoop on 9th Street in the East Village or something.

DEADLINE: Was that your first time in Cannes?

CHALAMET: Yeah. Well, bizarrely, my sister would do dance camps growing up. Ballet intensive programs in a town called Mougins, which is nearby Cannes, so I spent a lot of time there growing up, but never during the festival, and not on the Riviera. To get to be there for the festival was just nuts. I went to see the Romain Gavras movie, I think, and it was just a huge joy.

I got attached [to the role in Dune] a couple of months after that, and it was nerve-wracking from the announcement, because like I said before, the fans of the book, and the fans of David Lynch version, the computer game, and everything, there’s so much love and strength of feeling. And so much of our pop culture and films and books have been derived from Dune, and all the philosophy the book. I’ve been shocked to learn how many people have a next-level connection to the book. I compare it to how our generation grew up with Harry Potter, and that one makes sense to me. But it’s cool to see with Dune also, when you actually sit down and read it… It’s not that it’s a quote-unquote “hard read” or anything, but it’s not made to be consumed easily, I think that’s fair to say.

So, I was grateful to be working on something of this size not only with Denis Villeneuve leading it, who between Polytechnique, Incendies and Prisoners had nailed the smaller indie film across languages, and then had nailed Arrival and Blade Runner, but who, in his own words, he didn’t feel he’d made his greatest film yet. But also, to be working with this cast. I don’t know if there’s some nightmare version of a film where a young lead is not supported by the rest of his cast, where every one of them had been the leads in their own huge projects. But on this, everyone was there to support, and I think it’s because we all wanted to be foot soldiers for Denis, and I think we understood the potential, based on the script by Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts and Denis, that this could be something really special.

DEADLINE: I don’t have a connection to Dune; this movie is really my first experience of the story. What strikes me is this is clearly an enormous universe—a broad canvas being painted with various families and factions and politics and mythos—but that ultimately it comes down to very elemental, human themes, and we feel them through this character you play, Paul Atreides. Did those themes help ground the experience for you?

CHALAMET: Yes, and I would give the credit entirely to Denis. He would constantly say on set that he had some opposing drumbeat or something. In my diminished intellectual standing, I didn’t understand it, but it was like some vision for the movie based on how biblical the book is that tries to tackle so much that it doesn’t tackle anything. I think he felt the need to be close to a character in it, and Paul is that guy in the book. He’s a character that is still in formation, like a lump of clay, which makes him a great figure for the audience to mirror off.

It speaks, I think, to Denis’ premonition and his directing ability that there were times when we’d move on from a shot or move on from a scene, and I swear, literally, we’d go back because Denis wanted to get something over my shoulder, or push in on my reaction, just to make sure [it stayed on Paul].

And again, it’s something where I’m pinching myself. I had the best time on Interstellar, and that was one of my favorite films I’ve ever worked on, but it was very much something where I was aware of when I had the opportunity to do real acting. And on a movie like Dune, again, one could think it would get lost in the scale and scope. But I felt every day like my plate was full.

DEADLINE: One of those themes is fear, and Paul must overcome his to become the person he needs to be. When you are number one on the call sheet on a project of this scale, and the cast list reads like an address book of Hollywood in the 21st century, and Legendary has injected hundreds of millions of dollars into this production, and it’s all falling on your shoulders, I have to imagine fear is a theme you can readily relate to.

CHALAMET: Oh yeah, and they can bleed into each other for sure—not to diminish the other work that goes in. It’s great when your life experience can inform the role. That’s not at all to say I’m on some crusade in the universe or anything, but definitely… And I had that same good fortune with The King I think. My life is not nearly as significant or as exciting as Paul or Prince Hal, but we all share an unwitting needle in the haystack feeling. On The King that feeling was because I was so new to having a career. On Dune it’s because of, as you say, just feeling the pressure of the hugeness of the project in all those different ways. Those things can absolutely inform each other.

And then there are the moments of glee that come, too, like seeing Jason Momoa running at you at a hundred miles an hour, or just getting to shoot the shit with Josh Brolin, or getting to do a scene with Oscar Isaac. I felt so supported, whether it was Rebecca Fergusson or Charlotte Rampling. When Zendaya came, it was a total breath of fresh air, and she’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I just got really lucky, and I can’t wait to see them all in Venice.

Denis split the book in half, and the hope is a second movie will get a greenlight. That’d expand Zendaya’s role in the story.

CHALAMET: Definitely, Chani will play a huge role in the next film. I don’t know if there’s a script yet, but just based on the book, along with Lady Jessica [Rebecca Fergusson], they have a lot to do together, let’s put it like that. And Zendaya was incredible in this movie; the moment she pulls the mask down, it felt properly showstopping and powerful. I was hiding behind the camera, counting my lucky starts, because I was there in month two of the shoot and here was a total powerhouse just coming in for the first time.

And as I said before, this was before I’d seen Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. She’s doing such incredible work and is just trailblazing her own path, and she’s so, so cool. She also happens to be in the most-watched trailer of the moment, too, for Spider-Man: No Way Home. I cannot wait for that movie, and I was there, by the way, with everybody else, clicking through the trailer frame by frame looking for clues [laughs].

[cooloddball]

Someone submitted something in my inbox and they wanted to remain anonymous. Since this is an extremely long essay, I will put it under the cut. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

xxx submitted: hey, i was the one who ask what do you think of Misha and Jensen's current relationship First off all thank you for your answear it means much to me cause im easy to be convice and this person who keep telling me that they are no longer friends can be so convicing, so I'm actully trying to forget what she said 😅 so I'm just writing a few. she said that since they no longer work together, they will forget about each other, and do their common things like the gay jokes, face touches ect. With other people, and neglect each other, don't talk to each other, and then meet new people who will replace the other. And and she talked about the gish thing, she said she sure they didn't talk since the end of the series, because Jensen didn't know where Misha was and Misha didn't know about the Radio Company vol 2 (but i saw people say that, they were just pretending, because Misha liked something about Radio Company Vol 2, before the gish live, so in theory he already knew then or something like that) and She said Misha wrote a poem about Darius not Jensen and now I will write down what she sent me : I saw a post about Jensen's current activities on social media, and I've come to the conclusion the only person he doesn't interact with is mish. Sadly this makes my break up theory even stronger. I feel like this is a goodbye to one of the biggest parts of my life. They've moved on from "uk what I haven't told you today? That i love u"+ from "miss my only jensen" from "i love u misha i mean it from the bottom of my heart" from "jensen has no flaws" from "misha is the funniest thing ever happened to me" from all that love and affection from everything they developed together and now they're apart leaving their lives like nothing happened and call me a dramatic but they both have the same energy now as someone has after a big break up. and Jensen comments on almost every of his friend’s post except Misha’s"+ Jenmish is genuinely the best thing that has ever happened in my entire life. I owe them literally everything. They're the reason i hold on. Unfortunately on this essay i have to start using past tense verbs for them, and i have to continue on that. I don't know for how long y'all been in spn fandom. But even if u joined one year before the show ended you'd know how close and intimate jensen and misha were. Everything about them was unmatched.+ The chemistry and how they just fit eachother. They had always been all over eachother. Like they were holding on eachother for dear life. They completed eachother and were like world's most powerful thing. They were the definition of soulmatism. No matter where, they ALWAYS kept interacting with eachother. Each possible tweet or insta post. On cons that the other wasn't there, the other one would bring up the othere's name for no absolute reason. +The looks and repeated love confessions. How invested they were both into eachother. The family they had built together cuz we know how close dee and mish are (look all the charity work they've been doing together recently). There are youtube videos to proof everything I've said so far.When i say break up, my real intention is that they've grown apart. Everything started in the the third or forth month of pandemic. Before than jensen used to interact +(comment mostly) on almost all of misha's posts. But after a while everything just stopped. At first personally didn't care that much. Bcuz I believed too much in them that I thought not even the gods above could separate them. I told myself maybe they spend long hours chatting or video calling and that's why online public interactions are gone. But as it passed it almost diminished to zero. Except some likes from jackles and eventual ones from misha there weren't anything else.+ We got absolutely no content and the show went off too. We were helpless and were sticking to everything we had Dee had a big social media shot down, so as jensen. Misha was busy with the election. We got some interviews for it with all of them. But we didn't get much.except remember both of them pulling a bff

move. and texted eachother during an online con where everyone else were dead-serious about politics? That flickered something in me. That showed me that+ they can't ever possibly let eachother go. And the times everyone else were talking and these too would just talk random things together (the one jackels had a white hat on with stacy abraham).And then Misha posted that for jensen's bday We really overlooked it. That shit was too intimate. To close. Fav march baby? U just don't go around and called ur bestie baby and when u mean it deeply. Especially not when ur friend is jensen ackles the "I suffered form internalized homophobia my whole life+ but fuck my wife's an angel and i have an angel bf too and another angel which is his wife but I'd rather die than come out cuz my asshole dad pulled a John winchester on me". It doesn't work like that. But uk how mish is. Carefree and open. I believe they got into a fight bcuz of this. He didn't even like the post. AND that was when the tiny bit of interactions we had was gone too. For a while jensen didn't even liked his posts. After a month it started again.What made me finally believe in that they had grown too+ far: I still remember the night misha posted that he and jensen were going to have a con for gish together. I remember how hard I cried. Lile the whole world was given to me. But deep down in my heart I knew that something would definitely happen. It didn't sit right with me and unfortunately my senses never lie to me. Jensen showed up at the wrong time bcuz of misunderstanding the time zones (this was HILARIOUS). That's not even my point.+ I've seen that interview 3 times so far. It always reminds me of when i saw my ex at a party and we were both so thrilled to see eachother and we still loved the other dearly, but we just couldn't work it out. Jensen and Misha's expressions were EXACTLY the same. The genuine smiles and longs pauses were they just stared at eachother. I'm so happy that it was online cuz if they actually gave that looks to eachother standing right next to the other one I would've collapsed. Misha didn't know that jensen's album+ was out. And he got so embarrassed when he found it out. He didn't know that jensen was on set and hadn't been home for 8weeks. Jensen had no idea where misha was. And this means that they hadn't talked in a long long time.When you're that close with someone for more than a decade, i mean THAT close, even if u're separated from eachother you'd at least check on the once a week, or at least once in two weeks. But it was vividly clear that they hadn't. I hate how this world works. They would always be in my heart.+ I would be thankful from them for everything. It hurts, and it won't stop and im so sure I'd be carrying this pain for a long time. They mean too much to a lot of us. Sometimes I think to myself that god i love them so much. Remember in 2019 when we used to get SO many jenmishdee interactions? That was LIT. It was THEE year for us. I hope they're doing good. I really do. I hope we don't get more proofs and I won't have to update this thread. Cuz my heart won't be taking it very+ well.Something i gotta add U may say that Jensen's busy and that's why he doesn't comment. But he comments on a lot of jared and his new costar's posts. So that's no excuse. So yeah that's it. I don't know what am I supposed to think. english isn't my native language, so sorry for the mistakes

Here is my response:

I don't know who this person who has been talking to is but I have to say they seem to be project their previous relationship experience on cockles.

I believe Jensen and Misha are okay and are together. Social media likes and comments don't mean anything. I mean it's not like Jensen or Misha used to comment on each other's posts before. Jensen didn't even wish Dee Happy Mother's Day this year, does that mean they are not together anymore? Nope. He has other best friends he has known for over 20 years like Jason Manns, Steve Carlson etc that he doesn't wish happy birthday, does that mean they are not friends anymore.

Please let's not put value on social media likes. I don't even follow my own family on sm and I don't always like or comment on my bf's or bff's posts on sm. So it doesn't mean anything.

As for the Gish Panel, I have talked about it before, the time Jensen was slotted to attend the panel, he was meant to answer fan questions. I honestly believe they decided to not do it at that time because they knew the questions would be about Destiel and not their new projects. If you watched that panel, Misha knew that Jensen's album was out as I pointed out. He was just trying to promote the album and soldier boy. He knew Jensen had also buffed out. It was all to promote Jensen. Anything else you hear is trolls and antis just being loud. Also don't forget Jensen called him "babe".

If Jensen and Misha weren't okay, he wouldn't have attended or participated all those panels Misha organized especially for Gish. Danneel also posts a lot about RA and likes Misha's posts. I am 100% Misha visited the Ackles when he went to Colorado last month.

Stop listening to trolls and/or antis or just people who are projecting and look at facts.

[saltywritings]

I’ll Wait For You | Five Hargreeves x Reader

Summary: Ordinary! Reader x Five Hargreeves. When Five time travels back to save his siblings and the world he decides there’s someone he needs to find first. You and five were in a secret relationship during the time of his disappearance and you have not seen him since he disappeared all those years ago. However, he realizes that everything has changed as soon as you open the door.

Warnings: None!

Word Count: 1,603

Number Five had been back in 2019 for two days now. Since he had managed to jump back the only thing that had been on his mind was you. You were what Five thought about all day everyday since he was trapped in the apocalypse. Five had become so deranged at the time that he named a manikin after you and talked to her like she was you. Each day Five thought of how good it would be to kiss your lips one more time, to hold you in his arms, or to feel your hand in his. You were the most extraordinary person he had ever met, and yet, you contained no supernatural or superhuman abilities. Five loved you, as much as a thirteen year old boy could have loved someone.

However, being away from you his brain had continued to grow and romanticize the love he had for you. By now he was still gushing over the memories a thirteen year old boy had with a thirteen year old girl.

You on the other hand? The thought of number five had never really left your mind. At first, you had thought that Five was trying to break up with you. After all, he never responded to a single letter you left hidden for him, he was never at your meet up spots... The easiest explanation was that he was just done with you. It seemed so unlike Five, to leave things this way. You would continue to leave letters and sit alone at the café of months. In hopes he would one day appear back into your life. Little did you know you would be doing this for some time. Each Tuesday by yourself with a donut that was meant to be split between two people. You would often cry and eat it all until one particular Tuesday you went to the café. While you did not recognize the girl that sat across from you the outfit resembled Fives closely. 

The pale girl with dark hair claimed to be his sister. With a handful of the letters you had been sending him she explained Five’s disappearance to you. Vanya would be the only person to ever know about you and Five. 

Each week Vanya would be the one to meet you at the café, she would sneak out and split a donut with you. The two of you decided to keep this up until Five returned. That way neither of you would be lonely without him. However, the weeks turned to months and the months turned into years. You waited for him because even though you were young, you had loved him. So, you waited. You waited as long as you could. Vanya would tell you, “It’s okay, Y/N. You can move on.” For years you wouldn’t listen to her. After ten years of waiting for him to come back you decided to let Five go. You moved on the best you could. 

Vanya told Five everything. How she found you hiding letters, how she found out about the two of you, and how you and her would meet in the café that you and Five use to. Vanya gave Five the letters she saved, but he still could not bring himself to even open them. 

"Maybe you should go see her?” Vanya had suggested to her brother, who had currently been crashing in her apartment. 

“And say what...?” Five questioned her. He wasn’t sure what to even say to you that would make up for all the time Vanya said he waited for you. 

“Does it matter? If you still love her it might be good for you to see, you know . . . that she’s okay” Vanya tried to explain, she was trying to be helpful. Five on the other hand was trying to avoid it, he thought if he saved the world first it would make the reality of seeing you easier. 

“Even like this?” Five asked gesturing to his body, physically he wanted to be a man. An adult like you had been. Maybe it would have been easier for him if the both of you looked different then you had remembered. 

“That’s probably for the best” Vanya had assured him, and just like that, with the current support of Vanya, and your address in his hand he made his way to your door. 

Five was satisfied with the exterior of your town house. It made him feel good to know that this is where you had been living. Somewhere nice. He tried to find your body amongst the rubble when he was stuck in the apocalypse, but he was unsuccessful. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure what you were suppose to look like at the age of thirty. Five stood at your door, his hands shaking while he attempted to make a fist. Weakly, Five knocked on your door. You, on the other hand, had simply been doing the dishes. Quickly you dried off your hands and made your way towards the door. “Coming!” You called out. In this moment, you had not really been thinking of who was here. But when you opened that door you hadn’t expected to see Five Hargreeves. Therefore, when you opened the door you almost couldn’t believe that the boy you loved all those years ago was in front of you. “F-Five?” You questioned him. 

“Yeah, Y/N. It’s me.” Five said, he looked over your features to see how you had changed, the curves of your body was those of a developed woman. Your hair was shorter then before, a few more freckles had covered your skin, and your nails no longer and been chewed. You had changed in ways he had not imagined. But still, he looked at you and his heart still stopped. 

What you should be feeling was lost on you right now. The feelings were overwhelming and hard to sort through. You could faint, however, in order to avoid such a fate you suggested, “Why don’t you come in and we could sit or something,” five simply nodded and complied. You sat down on the sofa, your breathing almost out of control while you tried to grasp that Five came back. 

The feeling of panic was the first feeling that had overcome you among seeing Five. Your body was shaking when the second feeling overcame you. Guilt. If only you had waited longer. If you had waited longer then he would have someone to return to. While you had been on the couch trying to sort out your feelings and think of something to say, Five had taken a moment to look around your home. The boy in front of you had still been standing at this point. Five’s eyes looked around at the toys that were on the ground and the pictures on your wall. The pictures of you with another man. 

The pictures of you with your husband. To say that seeing this did not initially hurt Five would be a lie. To see you in this house, with small toys on the ground, a ring on your finger, and photos from a wedding was enough to make Five’s heart ache. He wanted this with you some day. He imagined what it would be like to have this life with you. to see you have it with someone else was enough to bring tears to his eyes. 

“I-I’m sorry,” You finally broke the silence, his head not turning from the wedding photo that had been framed on your wall. “I waited ten years for you five,” You tried to justify your decisions. Your marriage, or why he came back to you to see this life you built. 

“I know- I’m not . . .” Five had trailed off, trying to collect himself. “I’m not mad at you, Y/N. For a while when I was gone I thought I could still come home to you but . . . after the years pasted I hoped you had this” He confessed. 

Warm tears slipped from your eyes and down your cheeks. Five walked across the small distance that had separated you and him, using his thumb to wipe the tears from your face. “I should have waited longer,” You managed to say, the feeling of guilt overwhelming you.  

“No, trust me Y/N. You waited too long. I’m happy that you have this life.” Five said, his hand still holding your face as he spoke. He offered you a small and sad smile as you offered him the same. “Does he make you happy?” Five asked you. You only managed to nod and he continued on with the sad smile he had been offering you since he closed the gap. 

“Good.” Five said simply, lowering his face down slowly to be level with yours. “You’ve grown to be more beautiful then I ever could have imagined” Five cooed to you, his bottom lip trembling as he tried to keep himself together. But then, you had pulled him into your arms for what would be the last time and Five enjoyed what he had missed all this time. He enjoyed your embrace for the moments he was able to hold on. But Five knew what he had to do. He had to let you go, and therefore, Five let you go. “I hope this life is good to you, Y/N. I’ll never forget you” Five said, and in a moment of blue light he was gone. 

Five was just gone. Tears continued to slip from your eyes as your hands reached out for something of him, anything. 

“Five. . .” Your voice echoed into the silence of your home, and once again you fell onto your couch. 

As Five transported onto a near by street he looked back to your home and whispered, “I’ll wait for you”

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in July

Once again I’m doing my monthly round-up of movies I’ve watched. This was a good month for the cinema getting back on track and seeing new releases including the new M. Night movie, Old and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Pretty sure Marvel put out a new movie also. I’m hoping that this list can help in guiding a decision about what to watch (or what to avoid) and introduce people to movies they may otherwise not have heard of or bothered to see. These short reviews are my own subjective opinions on each individual movie and maybe a more informal approach to movie criticism can help include others who are just passing through. Here is every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of July.

Bridesmaids (2011) - 4/10

Off to a good start. I won’t say Bridesmaids is a terrible movie but I don’t think I’m exactly the target audience. As far as I know, this is a beloved comedy but I just can’t get on board with all the boring, juvenile humour; with Maya Rudolph shitting in the street, with Rose Byrne and Kristen Wiig trying to one-up each other at a toast that went on forever, with Melissa McCarthy shitting in a sink… the conflict is so done to death and makes the movie feel unspecial. I do understand the appeal of the film, especially for women in that before this movie the likelihood of seeing something like this, where women play up the more crass and gross side of comedy, was probably few and far between. But the story is very tired and while I did appreciate some moments, namely a couple of decent jokes and some of the more intimate scenes, for the most part it felt like they wanted to corner a more quiet type of line delivery in a way that was supposed to be understated but very funny so as to not rely on over the top body language or musical cues, and it ended up being super dull.

Spectre (2015) - 7/10

As far as I can tell, a lot of people don’t like this instalment of the James Bond franchise… but I really enjoyed it! I’ve really taken a shine to these Daniel Craig-era Bond movies and while I can’t say any of them are the most amazing thing, I have a lot of fun with them. The biggest problem I have with Spectre is the villain being utterly pointless and uninteresting in basically every way. The idea of every villain Bond has fought before being tied to this one organisation controlled by this one guy is ridiculous, and what makes it worse is that the villain is barely in it! There’s so much that doesn’t come together in this but as it goes, I still had a really good time. Daniel Craig holds the whole thing together; he is excellent as 007 and the main reason I’m up for each of these movies is because of him. Sam Mendes directs again after the previous instalment and for what it’s worth I do think he does a good job with some of the action set pieces and the locations. I’m so ready for No Time To Die.

Shazam (2019) - 7/10

Shazam is a genuinely fun superhero movie that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. I was having a great time throughout and while it could conform to some of the same tropes we’re used to with these kinds of movies, it still remained playful and used the character of Shazam to his fullest potential in a way that showed an understanding of just how silly the idea of a kid who can turn into an adult and shoot lightning out of his hands is.

High School Musical (2006) - 6/10

So as you may or may not know, I co-host a podcast: The Sunday Movie Marathon. It’s a film podcast and every week I get together with my other co-hosts and watch movies. For episode 38, we watched the High School Musical trilogy. This first movie blew me away. I was really surprised with just how much fun I had, and if you want to hear more of my thoughts on the film, please listen to episode 38 of the podcast.

High School Musical 2 (2007) - 4/10

We then jumped into the second and while it’s certainly not as good as its predecessor, there are still some brilliant songs that manage to top the last movie. Again, more of what I have to say can be heard on episode 38 of the podcast.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) - 3/10

Senior Year was pretty hard to get through. I don’t remember it being as bad as it was, but then I didn’t really remember it anyway. It did however have one redeeming quality, which you can discover on episode 38 of the podcast.

The Piano Teacher (2001) - 9/10

What the fuuuckkkk. The Piano Teacher is horrendously affecting and I was so upset when it ended, maybe not because it’s not what I wanted but because it’s just so fucking dour and unrelenting. This is the second Haneke movie I’ve seen (after the original Funny Games) and I’m so impressed with how well executed it is. Following a woman who teaches piano, we get a glimpse into the life she lives, how sheltered she is from living with her mother at an age where you’d reasonably expect a person to be living alone or with a partner or friends (even going so far as to be sleeping in the same bed as her), and how repressed she is sexually. It’s clear she’s never experienced any kind of sexual interaction or romantic love with another person, so she goes out of her way to take control and make that happen. The upsetting nature of it comes from just what she does in pursuit of it or as a result of her repression, and what is done to her. It is by no means a movie to recommend to your parents but The Piano Teacher offers so much in terms of the ideas it presents (and I’ll admit there seems to be a lot more going on than I think I picked up on a first go round) about women in modern society, and about the portrayal of sex and expectations of people when it comes to how that is represented in a person’s character depending on their gender. I really enjoyed this movie but it is not for the faint of heart.

Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure (2011) - 1/10

My podcast co-hosts decided it’d be a right laugh to add Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure to this episode and that might have been a fun idea for them because they got to watch it together, but I was just watching it alone. Just a 24-year-old man watching Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure alone and having a miserable time, I might add. But for a short and sweet ramble on what we all thought, please listen to episode 38 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

Dr. No (1962) - 6/10

A lot of very iffy parts of this movie. A lot of discomfort arising from how black people are portrayed that really didn’t sit right with me. As far as a Bond movie goes, this first instalment in the series is one I’ve seen before and it’s not wholly engaging but it plants the seeds for the rest, with Sean Connery breathing life into the role and making an otherwise lacklustre plot bearable.

Black Widow (2021) - 6/10

I think probably the best part about Black Widow is the experience I had while watching it. It was great being back in the cinema with a couple of friends in a packed theatre. The energy was high and I’m sure for a lot of people, this is the first time they’d been to the cinema since Endgame. For what it’s worth, I did have a lot of fun with Black Widow and I’ve explained more of what I thought about the movie in episode 39 of the podcast.

The Climb (2020) - 10/10

The Climb was added to Now TV recently and I already knew I loved it, having seen it in an empty cinema theatre last year, which I had an absolute blast with. The Climb details the years of a rocky friendship told over scenes filmed as one-shots. Not only is the presentation something to gawk at, but the performances by the two leads playing these friends with a terrifically dysfunctional dynamic is truly captivating. They’re both trying to figure out their own lives and where one can come across as being rather selfish, the opposite is true in his counterpart, whom everyone loves. This is a truly funny and heartwarming movie with a lot to say about how we choose to live our lives and who we choose to be with. It’s a shame the distributors of The Climb didn’t do a very good job because if not for it being available on Now TV, it would be near impossible to watch without forking out more money than is necessary to purchase a film.

From Russia With Love (1963) - 5/10

The second Bond movie. I thought perhaps I’d change my mind on it with another watch, having seen it for the first time maybe a year ago. But no, it’s still largely boring and it treats women like absolute garbage. From Russia With Love is one of those movies I forget as I watch it, and I was trying very hard (in the middle of the day!) not to fall asleep.

The Good, The Bart, and The Loki (2021) - 1/10

I don't usually talk about the short films I watch but for this I'll make an exception. As we all should know, Disney owns The Simpsons now, through their acquisition of Fox, so, coupled with another of their properties, that being Marvel, they decided to make a six-minute animated film wherein Marvel’s Loki is stranded in Springfield. This felt as though it was a minute long due to the horrendously jarring pacing; it is a movie that feels adamant that it needs to exist, while trying as hard as it can to be over as soon as possible. It serves only to stare the audience directly in the face and say “look, characters from The Simpsons are dressed as Avengers”, shit out three credit scenes, then end before you’ve even processed the atrocity you just bore witness to.

Russian Ark (2002) - 8/10

For this next episode of the podcast, we watched a few Russian movies, starting with Russian Ark, a film shot completely in one take as the camera moves about a luxurious museum in a first-person perspective as this main character watches what is happening around him, seeing people moving about the place but unable to interact with them, guided only by another man who seems to be just slightly out of his own perception of reality. This is a tremendous feat in filmmaking and more can be heard about what I have to say in episode 39 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

Ivan’s Childhood (1962) - 7/10

For my own pick of Russian movies to discuss on the podcast, I chose the debut feature from one of my favourite directors, Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s amazing that while this is not his best film by far, Ivan’s Childhood is still such a stellar debut, jumping around in its timeline as it details a child’s experience in the second world war. Again, I do go into more depth in episode 39 of the podcast, so be sure to check that out.

Outlaw (2019) - 1/10

The third movie chosen for this marathon is apparently the fourth Russian LGBTQ+ movie ever made. I’m unsure of the ultimate goal of this movie but what seems to be clear is that it hates the LGBTQ+ community. This is perhaps the worst film we’ve discussed on the podcast to date, so listen to episode 39 to understand exactly why it’s such trash.

Almost Famous (2000) - 7/10

I too love heavy music and also studied journalism so it stands to reason that a movie about a teenager who makes his way onto a band tour, following them through America and interviewing them as they hang out and play shows is going to be a premise that resonates with me. This certainly did. I enjoyed Almost Famous a lot; this kid is living the dream and I was so along for the ride, seeing a lot of myself in what was being portrayed. That said, the story itself is at times a bit by the numbers and I really would’ve been more on board if the visual component was more interesting. For what it is, technically it’s fine enough but nothing in that department ever jumped out at me.

Minari (2021) - 8/10

It’s crazy that this didn’t get a theatrical run where I live in the UK. It feels as though I complain about film distribution all the time but I really don’t understand the process by which a movie gets no cinematic release and yet, months later will pop up on the front shelf of hmv, taking pride of place. But of course I got the blu-ray straight away. Minari has a lot to say about the immigrant experience, specifically in America as a family comes over from Korea and tries to start a business and make something of themselves. You get to see a lot of what you might not think twice about when you think about immigration: the hardship of coming from a place where you know everyone to somewhere rural and sparsely populated, having to make friends with locals and integrate within the community; the strain it can put on a family and on a marriage where this idea is presented about the importance of making it on your own in order to live and not just survive, while also taking into account why you’re doing it in the first place and the value you place on being part of a family that you decided to make because that was more important than money, than economy, than proving you were good enough to make it in a place that gave you very little advantage from the offset. This concept of the promised land, of the American dream is a construct. There are times when it’s not pretty, when you have no running water, or you’re in debt, or a family member is dying and it just feels like you’ve been dealt as bad a hand as you can get. But it is better to know you’re not facing all that alone.

Roma (2018) - 10/10

This was my recommendation for the podcast episode on Alfonso Cuarón movies. Roma is as beautiful as it is heart-wrenching and I would recommend listening to episode 40 of the podcast to find out more about my thoughts.

An American Werewolf In London (1981) - 8/10

In all fairness, London is enough to make anyone a little crazy at the best of times. An American Werewolf in London showcases some fantastically grotesque effects, akin to something like Carpenter’s The Thing, in showing the dead brought back to life and a horrifically gory transformation scene. Although the film is from the perspective of an American protagonist, directed also by an American, the depiction of British culture and climate is something I’ve not seen many films pull off quite so well, and I was pleasantly surprised at the more comedic tone the film has overall, which is something that works more in its favour than straight horror would.

The Party’s Just Beginning (2018) - 6/10

Karen Gillan’s directorial debut is… pretty good! There are a lot of ideas I like in this movie: a woman living life and through convenient circumstances, is confronted with death in many ways. Gillan obviously knows her homeland as well as she can, imbuing the whole thing with an intensely Scottish vibe (though maybe not in the same vein as something like Trainspotting) that makes it a bit more unique than a more run of the mill movie of this ilk, backed up in no small part by her own main performance. The plot itself is no great diversion from the kind of story I’m used to with these smaller movies and for something that’s trying to include messaging about transgender issues and suicide, it probably could have been handled better or done in a different way.

Solaris (1972) - 9/10

Another Tarkovsky joint, one I thought I’d revisit to see if there was indeed more to get out of it a second time. Well, it’s no surprise that yes, there was certainly more to get out of it. Solaris is a crazy trip of a movie and I would liken it to Kubrick’s 2001 in terms of how grand the scale of it feels. Yet this is a film that comes across as deeply personal, choosing to focus on a specific character as he goes to a space station to help those on board who are experiencing some kind of emotional crises, only to feel the effects of the planet, Solaris invading his own mind as it has the crew. To many, I can see this lengthy Russian sci-fi being a tad slow but my personal experience is one of deep engagement. Solaris pulls its viewer in a lot of different directions and it is always doing something unexpected in terms of where its narrative goes. There’s a lot to think about with the movie and thankfully it’s no chore to watch again.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001) - 9/10

Another recommendation for the podcast episode on Alfonso Cuarón movies. This is a very relaxed experience, following three young people as they go on a road trip, visit different places and have sex. Listen to episode 40 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast for more of my thoughts.

Children of Men (2006) - 10/10

My favourite Cuarón movie, one that never stops being tense as its characters are constantly moving towards the end goal. Set in a future where humans are infertile, the oldest living person is 18, and London is the last city in the world that’s still keeping it together, somewhat. This is masterclass filmmaking. Listen to episode 40 of the podcast for more insights.

Minority Report (2002) - 5/10

I’m really not the biggest fan of Spielberg… Minority Report is an interesting movie in terms of its concept of stopping crimes before they happen by way of prediction, but I just didn’t connect with the heart of it. The colouring is way too overexposed in a way that’s supposed to be eliciting a futuristic vibe but instead feels so early-2000’s in the worst way. My biggest problem with Minority Report is just how long it is, clocking in at two hours and twenty-five minutes which allows for a lot of meandering, all while never quite developing characters enough for you to care about.

Caché (2005) - 9/10

Oh god! Another Michael Haneke movie! Here we see a couple periodically sent video tapes featuring hours of footage of the outside of their house. The anxiety ratchets up and the mystery gets deeper with every minute. There’s always at least one moment in any of his films that have so far made me realise just how out of my depth I am. Caché is no exception, and I won’t spoil anything here because I think it’s better just to watch the movie and see for yourself. He is a director that wants the audience to know something and that something is never what is explicitly shown at face value; it is pressed into the fabric of the film - plainly evident, yet hidden. Caché is so stupidly clever in displaying its themes and messaging - making reference to the Siene Massacre of 1961 as well as a deeper study of colonialism - and there’s no way to change a single detail of it without risking the Jenga tower crumbling to the ground. It all works in tandem. It is passion and fury and haunting.

Coco (2017) - 7/10

Pixar had a string of around seven forgettable movies before this point so thankfully Coco emerged to show the company still had something good in them. Coco deals a lot with themes of death and legacy, remembering those who are gone in order to preserve them and while its plotting is quite basic and there are certainly moments that either drag or cannot escape the same Pixar formula, most of what the movie has to offer is a lot of fun, with creative, colourful animation and emotional beats that resonate the way they’re supposed to.

Incredibles 2 (2018) - 5/10

Oh, they almost had it! There's a lot here that could have been explored in far more interesting ways. Setting Incredibles 2 directly after the events of the first movie was not a good idea. If it had taken place five or ten years after, the characters could have been in different places in life and it would feel as though they'd actually changed and developed. But instead of trying to be a film that actually cares about its characters and the journeys they go on, a lot of the film is wrestling with the idea that Bob isn't supportive of his wife and Jack-Jack has to fight a raccoon… They have to shoehorn in a villain that in no way compares to the genius of the original. The ending of the original introduces another antagonist that gets wrapped up within this film's first ten minutes, except they don't catch him and he's never mentioned again. It's a real shame because the animation is fantastic and the acting is superb and there are great ideas sprinkled throughout. It just doesn't come together.

Toy Story 4 (2019) - 6/10

I was rather reluctant to watch Toy Story 4 because from the get-go I’m not really here for sequels being made just for the sake of it. Everyone loves Toy Story and making another one is a sure fire way to make money. This is the first time I’ve seen Toy Story 4 and for what it’s worth, I did enjoy it. The animation is immaculate and that alone feels like a huge flex from Pixar who tend to step up the game when it comes to animation in film, despite not having the best track record for films generally at this point. While it was nice to see these characters again, I found a lot of them to be side-lined (namely Buzz) in favour of a story that focuses mainly or entirely on Woody, who I just don’t like as much as in the previous movies. Generally the movie is good and decent enough but there’s no real antagonist and the plot is quite loose… it doesn’t feel as though it needed to be made from a story point of view.

Onward (2020) - 6/10

And with that I have seen every Pixar movie. And Onward is a fine one to go out on. While I don’t think it compares to the likes of earlier Pixar it’s still pretty fun. Or maybe I��m just a sucker for a medieval setting filled with bright colours and magic! Speaking of which, the animation was super and the medieval quest element is something that hooked me with the film. Again, plot-wise it does feel very familiar and I don’t know, maybe I’m past the point now of expecting Pixar to mix it up where their formula for story-telling is concerned but the movie is quite predictable. Nonetheless, while I’m not rushing back to see Onward I would hardly turn it off or refuse if someone wanted to watch it.

Old (2021) - 3/10

Oh boy! New M. Night movie dropped and my word, was it fun! For more of my thoughts on this… masterpiece (?) of a movie, please direct your attention to episode 41 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

T2 Trainspotting (2017) - 5/10

Trainspotting is perhaps one of my favourite movies and I had never bothered with the sequel, 20 years on, because the ending of that first movie is so conclusive. T2 felt more an excuse for these guys to get together again and in that, I probably would have preferred a couple of pictures on Twitter of the main cast and director, Danny Boyle having dinner or something. This is a fine movie - very arty in its presentation but meandering and dull in its story that doesn’t offer much in the way of proof that it had to exist.

Taste of Cherry (1997) - 9/10

What makes life worth living? This is a central question and theme of Taste of Cherry, and one that leaves such interpretation not only up to its central character but to the viewer as well. This film got me thinking about times in my life when I truly have had no answer to hard questions. Because it’s hard to convince people of things they are so adamantly against and harder still to rationalise what you believe if you’re not even entirely sure why you believe it in the first place. We are all of us alive and in recognising that, does that make it precious? And if indeed living is not a happy thing, why then should we fight so hard to preserve it? I felt upset as I watched this movie because I’ve been asked these kinds of questions before and it makes me feel stupid when I’m unable to answer. But the only real answer I can give is, everything. And if you can’t see the point then you’re not looking hard enough. Taste of Cherry is beautiful in its exploration of these topics and in its overall presentation, offering some of the best visuals in any movie I’ve seen - fitting for a feature with so much to say about the beauty of life - and an ending that as much pulls the rug out from under you as it does pull you out of the dark and make you realise just how lonely you’ve felt.

Bones (2001) - 2/10

Snoop Dogg is Jimmy Bones! This film is super funny but I’m not sure it’s trying to be and I really didn’t love it overall. But I do talk more in depth about it in episode 41 of the podcast.

The Duchess (2008) - 5/10

Another recommendation for the podcast. The Duchess was pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be and there’s a lot to like about it but generally it’s a bit sparse. For more chat on the movie, listen to episode 41 of the podcast.

The Man With One Red Shoe (1985) - 1/10

This was another one for the podcast and man, was it awful. We had to watch it at 1.5x speed towards the end because it just wasn’t getting finished otherwise. To find out more, make sure to listen to episode 41 of the podcast.

The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) - 7/10

Pull the lever, Kronk! Haha! Slays me. I do quite miss this era of Disney, where the animation was hand-drawn and the stories were actually compelling and funny. The Emperor’s New Groove is vibrant, it’s got great characters and memorable moments that will forever be ingrained in the memory of culture. All in all, it’s just a solid flick that doesn’t waste time, developing the standard fall from glory type of arc but smoothly and in an entertaining way.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - 8/10

Oh, bloody hell! They actually made a good one! The Suicide Squad is not only better than the ‘Suicide Squad’ of 2016 in every way, it’s a genuinely great film! This time, James Gunn (director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies) is at the helm and it seems clear that Warner Bros. basically let him do what he wanted with the movie, as it doesn’t seem to bog itself down with the restrictions of a more family-friendly rating. The result of this is a far cleaner, colourful film with a clearer vision that takes from early Vietnam movies and uses that style to craft a superhero/villain movie that differentiates itself among the copious amount of existing films of the genre.      The Suicide Squad wastes very little time, introducing fun, crazy characters we’ve not seen on the big screen before and isn’t worried about killing a whole bunch of them, with standouts being Elba’s Bloodsport, Melchior’s Ratcatcher 2, Stallone’s King Shark (expertly rendered with fantastic visual effects), and Robbie’s returning interpretation of Harley Quinn.      A lot of Gunn’s trademark sense of humour is laced throughout and more often than not, it hits. The audience at the cinema were truly loving this movie and I’ll admit, I was right there with them. This mix of the gritty, gory and absurd is not something that should work as well as it does but the basic premise of the film is already so silly (and boy, do they know it) that it just works! Certainly one of the best DC movies since The Dark Knight and one I’d be more than happy to watch again. This is what the modern comic book movie should be: just balls to the wall fun!

[jikookuntold]

I Can’t Believe We Are Still Talking About This!

Disclaimer: The post you are going to read here, is my personal opinions, plus some evidence. A part of the incidents I mention in this post, is my own observation and the rest came from some trustable sources but yet I don’t claim to be 100% true because first, the sources can be wrong, second, the human mind is tricky and a long time has passed so I can’t claim everything I remember is true. Some of the incidents could get fact-checked, but some couldn’t because the receipts are gone.

First, I had no intention to write about this controversial subject because many people don’t like to bring this up, and I was with them, but it seems people have many questions about it, and they don’t know the details of the incidents. So, I concluded that maybe it’s not bad if we open up a little bit and discuss this subject from different points of view with more details.

But again, I have to clarify this post is not factual, it’s just the things I remember about the subject in a ranting way. This incident had and still has so many unclear aspects, and everything we say or claim is just a theory. I’m not intended to shade or hate anyone, therefore I’m not going to mention any full names here.

TW: Rumor, Suicide, Scandal, Conspiracy Theory

 The Break

You all might know about the break the members had in summer 2019. When their Japan tour ended, and they did some shooting and interviews (like Summer Package), the LDF concert on August 11th was their last schedule and based on BH statement, they were free for 30 to 35 days.

At this time, the members posted updates about being on vacation, but there was not much coming from JK and JM, except JK posting on weverse about staying awake and eating ramen and JM thanking him for eating ramen because of him (it was interesting that JM answered JK’s post about ramen at the same week we had the run episode moment where JK told JM “This is my heart” while putting ramen in his plate). After that, JM posted the videos of Run bottle cap challenge on August 26th.

Anyways, it was pretty clear that JM and JK were together on their days off for at least two weeks since JK mentioned in Bon Voyage 4 (their first schedule after the break) that he didn’t meet any of the members except JM and JH in his days off and since JH was the resident of the same complex, this kinda approved the theory of living with JM. JM also approved this theory, but we will go on that later.

The Rumors

In late August (27th or later) JM’s photos in Paris leaked, and JK was seen in Seoul eating churros, and a photo of his knuckle tattoos started to spread. Everyone was confused, and it was too soon to believe anything. After JM coming back from Paris for JK’s birthday, and leaving for Hawaii the next morning (as he explained in his 12th October Vlive, that year) things started to get weird. I know I didn’t bring up the Paris incidents, and I don’t want to, because it has nothing to do with the subject.

I still haven’t mentioned the subject directly, but I think most of you have guessed it right. In early September 2019, the rumors of JK going to a tattoo shop in Seoul started to spread. At first, the majority of the fandom didn’t take it seriously since the tattoo shop denied the rumors of JK being there, and even the photo of someone backhugging a short-haired girl claiming to be JK got mostly ignored because the photo was low quality and the man in it didn’t look like him that much. This was the time we heard the news about JK going to Geoje Island for vacation, alone, after visiting his family in Busan.

The real deal started when he appeared at the airport on September 16th (the day they were leaving for filming Bon Voyage4 in New Zealand) when we saw his knuckle tattoos, and the rumors turned out to be true. At first, we were excited about him getting tattoos without even knowing if they are permanent or not. But on the same day, the storm came. A photo of JK (this one was clearly him) sitting with that short-haired girl, (LM) eating lunch broke the internet.

The photo was taken from an angle to make it look like they were together alone, but at least two other people (later we found out they were more) were already there, and it was nothing like the date the person behind the camera was trying to make it look. The hugging photo which was taken from the CCTV of a karaoke room resurfaced along with the restaurant photo, and at this time, almost everyone in the fandom started to believe that they are dating.

The Statements

The mess on social media was getting bigger, and everyone was waiting for an official statement from both sides. BH released the statement a few hours later, denying the rumors and no further explanation. Almost one day passed, and there was nothing from LM, not even a single word. Finally, she posted a statement on her Instagram account (which gained a crazy amount of followers, and she didn’t even go on private the whole time).

The statement was extremely shady and been deleted a few hours later. LM claimed that she wasn’t ignoring the situation, and she was afraid to say anything because she knew we won’t believe her. “I am not dating JK” she used this sentence twice in her statement, and at the end, she said “his “J M” tattoos are not our initials!” and made the situation way worse. But the funny thing is, this wasn’t even the shadiest thing she did.

As I said, she got lots of followers (nearly 100k) and interactions on her account and started to delete the negative comments as she should, but she liked multiple comments congratulating her, saying she and JK look good together and things like that. I heard she even liked a fan-art post, but it didn’t end here. When the member came back from New Zealand she posted a selfie with the caption “I have missed you”. At this point, it was clear that she was enjoying the situation and acting shady to make it worse and fuel the rumors and stay on top of the news. But this wasn’t limited to herself because her colleagues at the tattoo shop weren’t any better.

In those days, one of the close friends of LM at the tattoo shop told an ARMY that LM has a boyfriend and there is nothing other than friendship between her and JK. And guess what? The Tattoo shop manager fired him the next day. What was the reason? Were those rumors a booster for their business, and they didn’t want them to die down? The number of followers and attention they gained at that time can approve my point. They were getting the best free promotion, any business could ever have.

Don’t Forget Me!

A few days later, when the public, started to forget the rumors, someone from the tattoo shop (I don’t remember if it was LM herself or her friend) talked to the media about the harassment they were getting from the ARMY to play the victim role. This again fueled everything and made us think over the situation. Was it all a frame for JK? The evidence suggests that it could.

Let’s go back a few days in the timeline of the events. Why JK chose that tattoo shop? Because his 97liner friends recommended him to go there (apparently this line of friends, have matching tattoos either) LM herself is a 97liner, and she is friends with plenty of idols, male and female, so they sounded pretty trustworthy. At the tattoo shop, they (LM and her tattoo shop colleagues) recommended JK to spend his days off at a guesthouse in Geoje Island, and based on LM’s Instagram posts, they were there days before JK, waiting for him, to make it look like they run into him accidentally? I don’t know, but this is a stalker's behavior

After having lunch with LM and her friends at the restaurant (where Sasaeng were there, ready to take photos), they went to a karaoke room and JK, who was pretty drunk (based on what the karaoke manager said later) backhugged LM. But the Sasaengs couldn’t be there to take photos, so they (allegedly) bribed the karaoke employee to show them the CCTV footage and took a low-quality picture of it.

The biggest question is, if the Sasaengs weren’t there, how did they know there is something worthy in the CCTV to check? The answer is they weren’t the main culprit, and karaoke or tattoo shop employees or both were cooperating with them. I mean karaoke employees definitely cooperated with Sasaengs, but the tattoo shop benefited the most. So why not? Anyways, that photo and that moment was the most “intimate” thing they could capture to use against JK.

JK went on that trip with his manager (The guesthouse manager gave out this information later, the part that was lacking in BH statement which could close the speculations way easier and earlier) and stayed at that guesthouse for two days to rest, but everything went wrong from there. This incident has three sides, LM and tattoo shop, the Sasaengs, who were following JK as their full-time job, and the media/industry which was trying to ruin JK’s image. I’m going to talk about all these three but let’s continue with the first one, LM and the tattoo shop.

Almost one month after the incident, LM’s friend interviewed with Korean media and claimed that ARMYs keep harassing her to the point that she wants to commit suicide. This was another attempt to bring everything back on top, but this time, it was disgusting because she did this interview right after one of the famous faces of Kpop committed suicide (October 14th, 2019). She used the situation and the public’s emotions to play the victim role on a higher level. Before this, many believed that she was a victim of some crazy Sasaengs, and she had nothing to do with the incident (I’m clearly talking about the people who didn’t think the rumors are true) but after that, it was clear that she is an attention seeker.

But I think she wasn’t just an attention seeker. She benefitted a lot from the situation. Her business blew up, she became one of the most famous non-celebrities in Korea (if not in the world), and she was literally shipping with one of the most popular men on the planet, who doesn’t like that? Anyways, LM had several friends, foreign older friends who were interacting with I-ARMYs for some unknown reasons, and one of them exposed something very interesting. She said she feels sorry for LM because she thought she had a chance with JK and that chance is long gone. Besides, people saw some conversations between LM and her friends on her Instagram comments about finding an idol boyfriend for her. These conversations happened before the incidents but it’s interesting since LM has several idol friends.

LM had another comeback to the media at the end of October and the next and the last update about the situation, happened in early December when BH stated that they (BH and LM!) are suing karaoke for leaking the photo. But after almost two years, we don’t know how this ended up. The last and probably the worst thing happened in the final episode of Bon Voyage when JK unnecessarily apologized for his behavior. I know JK himself, wanted to do this apology but he didn’t have done anything wrong and didn’t owe any apology to ARMY or anyone else, even if the rumors were true.

A New Ship on the Shore

After that, LM did nothing shady except posting photos of JK’s arm tattoos or someone with similar tattoos in December 2020 explaining their meanings, which was a weird action. After the rumors, JK didn’t visit that tattoo shop ever, and now, an artist who works with BH does his tattoos (the same artist who has done JM’s tattoos). LM announced on April 2021, that she has a boyfriend and some of JK/LM shippers, quitted their beloved ship after that. But not all of them.

We believed that the rumors weren’t true from the day JK and BH denied them, but many people didn’t. They were strongly believing that BH is hiding the truth because it’s Kpop and in this industry, idols are not allowed to date openly, so they had no choice but to deny any dating rumors. But this wasn’t their only reason for their denial. The main reason was the way JK was misunderstood and misrepresented by this fandom (I have a post about it, you can check it here).

At this point, there are people out there, shipping JK and LM. They bring several “proofs” for them being real such as:

1. Having similar tattoos: LM had designed and done JK’s tattoos, so it’s pretty normal for them to have the same style, especially the hand tattoos since he hasn’t changed or added anything on that part. But his arm tattoos have changed a lot, and you can’t see a similarity in them. Besides, knuckle tattoos are very common among tattoo lovers.

2. Having eyebrow piercing: This is another common trend. JK loves piercings and tattoos, and it means nothing, literally.

3. Similar drawings: This one is a little bit tricky and it needs a back story and a conspiracy theory. On 13th May 2020, BH released a Bangtan bomb from MAMA 2019 backstage, where JK drew a sketch of the moon and stars on a whiteboard. On the same day, people started to make a fuss, because LM had a design on her Instagram, very similar to JK’s improvised sketch. The date of her post was 11th December 2019, but the day JK drew that sketch, was December 4th (MAMA ceremony), and this means LM posted her design one week later. So who copied who? Does JK saw that design somewhere in that tattoo shop and had it in his mind, and drew it subconsciously? I don’t think so. Because JK improvised it in front of the camera, and it was originally his idea. Do I think BH has some insiders who took the photo of that sketch and showed it to LM, and she took the idea and made it hers? This is exactly what I think because I trust JK, not LM, nor BH. And the timing of the posts and Bangtan bomb is on my side. Preach!

That’s it. These are the only proofs people bring to say something is going on between them, and the funny thing is, this hasn’t ended even after April when LM announced that she is dating (apparently she had broken up with the last boyfriend right after the rumors started, definitely not sus, lol) The only reason people made a huge deal of those two photos, was one word: Heteronormativity. If LM were a man, none of this would have ever happened. But since this fandom is obsessed with the idea of het-JK, they bought these rumors eagerly. Back to the subject, as I said earlier, the other sides benefitted from this situation. I mean Sasaengs and the media/companies who had a part in the incidents.

Sasaengs always follow their targets and collect photos and videos of them, but they barely share anything publicly because they are criminals, and if they get busted they will be punished by the law. They have their isolated communities and share their information inside those communities. Of course, there are many accounts on social media that claim to be Sasaengs and gain lots of followers, but most of them are fake, and the real ones don’t share information for free, they sell them for high prices. So, there are two possibilities, in this case, someone bought JK’s photos from Sasaengs and published them, or Sasaengs did it themselves because someone asked/ordered them. I can’t see any other possibilities. Sasaengs wouldn’t gain anything from publishing these photos, but other people would, and they are the ones who made this happen.

Who were they? LM herself and tattoo shop? The fansite who wanted to destroy JK’s career? Or BH, who wanted to punish JK for his boldness about getting tattoos and make him more obedient? Or the media and rival companies, who wanted a scandal for their enemy? Or the people who wanted to revive the idea of het-JK? All of these are plausible and I can’t prove or disprove anything, but you can read more about this in the post I linked before.

Did This Affect Them?

Here comes the most interesting part; how did this affect Jikook? Did it affect them at all? Let’s review the timeline of the events again, from this point of view. As I mentioned earlier, we believe Jikook were together until 27th August and then JM went to Paris without any plans and came back for JK’s birthday. On the selfie, he posted that night he had written: “I’m glad to see you after not seeing you for a few days” which confirms that they were together before JM’s unplanned trip. At this point, JK had started getting tattoos and had most parts of his knuckle tattoos done.

When JM left Seoul for Hawaii the next day, JK went to Geoje, and the incidents happened, but nothing was public yet. Then he got arm tattoos and added some new parts to his hand tattoos including J which makes an obvious JM on his ring finger (The part LM claimed that is “not” their initials lol). JK’s completed hand tattoos were not exposed until September 16th when they were at the airport to leave for New Zealand. It was the day all the theories and rumors started. But in Jikook’s point of view, it happened on the second day of their trip.

Now we can start to analyze their moments on Bon Voyage 4. Of course, this series doesn’t show everything, but it gives us some clues about the dynamic of their relationship on those days. The first day of the trip when they were at the airport and Thailand (?) was pretty normal, but after that, at some moments I felt a strange atmosphere between them which I decided to not read too much on. But I found out I wasn’t wrong when in the last episode, JK talked about the awkwardness he felt about the issue with the members.

Jikook had many cute and domestic moments in the first two episodes but the grand gesture happened on the third one when JK climbed a hill without telling anyone, to bring a chunk of snow for JM as a gift, and we all know how much JM loves snow. This was an undeniable romantic act, but do I think this had anything to do with the situation? I believe Jikook was unbothered by those rumors because they completely trust each other, but the image you make for the others is different from the things you know and believe. Maybe this was a grand gesture not just for JM, but for us either.

After coming back to Seoul, there was no news from them for more than two weeks, and then they left Korea for Riyadh. The remarkable moment in the Riyadh concert was related to JM’s birthday. The members had planned a surprise for JM on the stage (The concert was on October 11th one day before his official birthday in Korea) and when it happened, JM said that he was happy because he saw JK happy and JK played a big role in that surprise. Honestly, you have to be deep in love to be happy just because your significant other is happy, even if it’s your own birthday. Let’s not forget the vlive JM did the next morning, and some pretty obvious moments happened that I can’t discuss here, but I bet you already know what I’m talking about. And also JM exposed the things he did for JK’s birthday that year.

A few hours later, on 18:22 (1+8+2+2=13) on local time and 00:22 on Korean time (only 22 minutes after JM’s official birthday in Korea started), JK tweeted one of the most amazing birthday tweets of all time which is comparable to a love letter. I’m sure you know everything about these tweets, so I’m not going too deep on this, I’m only saying that this tweet also was a grand gesture. And let me make another conspiracy theory here. After the rumors started, every time we had a big Jikook moment, something was coming from LM the next day. For example, when JK made this historic tweet, the next day LM's friend was interviewed about committing suicide. Or when SYS Seoul concerts happened (one of the biggest Jikook feasts of all time) and LM herself was at the VIP seats with her friends, the next day she did another comeback to the media. These can be just coincidences, but… never mind.

I Never Thought I Would Fall for a Man

Let’s not forget about the most obvious statements JK made on his first public appearance after the rumors. On JH’s vlive on 24th September, JK said: “I never thought I would fall for a man”. He said these words about JH dancing at CNS music video, and it clearly had nothing to do with Jikook, but it had a deep meaning. We know JK is not a shallow person, and lately, he stated that he thinks a lot before doing anything. So this didn't come out of nowhere, he didn't spit this out without thinking, in THAT situation. You never say such a thing when the internet is exploding with your dating rumors with a girl, do you?

His words can translate to “Do you ever consider the possibility of me not being straight?” This is what I read from his words and his facial expression. Maybe you think I say this because I’m a shipper, and I have this shipping goggle that makes me see everyone gay and debunk any girlfriend rumors. Some people even ask childish questions like “if they are dating why they didn’t travel together?” There are 100 explanations for that, and any couple who have been together for more than two years can answer you. When you date someone, you don’t stick together 24/7. Everyone in a healthy relationship has individuality, and sometimes they want to spend time with friends or alone, especially when they already had a world tour together lol.

Anyways, maybe I have a different point of view as a shipper, but this is not the problem. I never have a problem with my ship not being real (which they have shown enough to know they are). In fact, I will be delighted if any of them announce their relationship freely and publicly, but they haven’t done it yet. JK denied the rumors and gave us lots of hints about the truth, and I’m not delulu for believing him. But if you think he has to be het for backhugging a girl or having an eyebrow piercing, you are the one who is delusional because you are living in a heteronormative world where boys and girls can’t be friends and everyone is straight unless they come out in public.

I really can’t believe this post turning to be this long, and I thank you for reading it all. You might ask why I cared enough to write +4000 words about some stupid rumors that happened two years ago. This is the main question. This had to be ended in September 2019, but many people didn’t want it to end, because they loved it, they enjoyed it, they gained from it, so they protracted it as much as they could, and heteronormative people supported it blindly because of their homophobia or Y/N fantasies or whatever reason they had. I can’t believe we are still talking about this!

[tobinheath]

Leah Williamson and Keira Walsh have shared enough “written in the stars” moments in their 23 years to make them feel that they were fated to be best friends. Since meeting on an England Under-15s camp, their football careers have played out with a striking, almost eerie, similarity. They each play for their childhood clubs — Williamson for Arsenal, Walsh for Manchester City — and have a knack of picking up the same injuries at the same time.

They both received their first senior call-up on the same day in 2017. The 2019 World Cup was their first senior England tournament: they called each other to celebrate even before they called their parents, which resulted in Williamson shrieking “bloody hell — what have we done here?” in tears outside a London branch of Nando’s.

Most memorably, Williamson made her England debut coming on for Walsh, in the final six minutes of a World Cup qualifier against Russia in 2018. “My mum’s just framing my shirt, pestering me for that picture,” Williamson says.

Walsh interrupts, giddily. “I think that’s the only time I’ve actually done a full-teeth smile. I was so buzzing.”

“Yeah,��� remembers Williamson, “because I was game faced, and you proper smiled at me and I went…” before jerking her mouth into a tight-lipped, nervous smile, chuckling.

“If it was anyone else,” Walsh picks up, “I’d have been, like: ‘I don’t want to come off’. But as soon as I saw it was Leah, I was buzzing.”

This is life at the top for two of England’s most talented young players: phenomenal success and too many good memories to count.

Today, best friends will turn opponent and they will face each other in the Women’s Super League (WSL) for the first time this season — hosts Manchester City are fourth, four points behind second-placed Arsenal — with Williamson pointing out that in a pre-COVID-19 world, she would have stayed after the match with Walsh’s family in Rochdale, where Walsh’s mother Tracy is “just like my mum”.

Over the hour they spent together on Zoom, they are gloriously good fun: warm, ebullient and habitually careering into laughter. They balance each other out, Walsh says: she is “shy and awkward” — though you would not know it here — and Williamson is the “buffer” in certain situations, and the more “logical” one of the two. Williamson views Walsh as the honest one, sometimes brutally so. “I have to step in sometimes and give it a smile and keep it balanced,” she says. “If I play a game and I’m not actually sure how it went, I would text Keira, because I know I’d get the most honest answer from anybody, even if that means it’s not what I want to hear. I think that is where the respect comes from.”

To track the pair’s football careers has been to often forget how young they are. Walsh made her City debut a few months after her 17th birthday and in November this year, Williamson played her 150th game for Arsenal. It is common for those in women’s football to grow up fast but in conversation, one is reminded of the duo’s gleeful, wonderful youth. There was the time, for instance, they rented electric scooters one afternoon at the World Cup in France to explore with Walsh’s Manchester City team-mate Georgia Stanway. The room-mates — Stanway with Williamson, Walsh with Lucy Bronze — had a group chat titled “The three best friends and Lucy”. Stanway, the youngest England player at the tournament, sped ahead on her scooter and they had to “rein her back in”, Williamson says.

“You were being a bit of a Cautious Claire, weren’t you?” teases Walsh, turning to Williamson, “probably as you should do at a World Cup. I think we were just enjoying being kids, weren’t we? Obviously, we were playing, and the reason we were there was to win, but we have so much free time that we were just enjoying being the younger ones.”

“All the older ones… that’s what they kept saying to us,” says Williamson. “Kaz Carney was like: ‘Make sure you enjoy your time now, because hopefully one day you will be the senior ones and there’ll be a lot more pressure on you. Just have the best time ever, make as many memories as possible. Jill Scott — I mean, she was a bit more wild than we are — said she’s got some of the best memories ever from those early tournaments and she wished she could do it again. I don’t think we wanted to waste a second.”

Do not presume, though, that the pair are anything other than serious competitors. By 20, Walsh had won every domestic title going: the WSL, FA Cup and League Cup. Williamson has won the league once, the FA Cup twice and the League Cup twice, finishing as runner-up in the latter to Walsh’s City in 2019. Walsh, an artful holding midfielder in the mould of Sergio Busquets — she grew up watching clips of him and David Silva with her father — will be among the most important players in the England squad moving forward and Williamson, capped 17 times, is touted as a future England captain.

It has not always been easy, though. An early test came in the form of Williamson’s ankle injury, sustained playing for Arsenal against Walsh’s Blackburn Rovers in the FA Youth Cup final. It was so traumatic Walsh admits there are still occasions she will search for Williamson’s results, see her friend has come off and think, “Please tell me it’s not her ankles again. My mum mentions it to me. She’ll say: ‘Did you see Leah came off?’” She addresses Williamson. “Because I’ve seen you in person do it, I feel like I automatically panic. When I see you at camp two weeks later, you’re like: ‘Maybe I was being a bit soft when I came off — it’s nothing to do with my ankles’. But I know what you’ve been through with them, so it is the first thing I think about.”

Williamson, in her own words, “basically just snapped my ankle and everything in it” after misplanting her foot. Stretcher, gas and air, a wheelchair, a doctor advising her to go straight to hospital. “I’m trying to fight back the tears and she’s nearly crying looking at me as well,” Williamson remembers. She stayed at the game because Arsenal had lost the season prior and she wanted to collect her winner’s medal.

“I think I played most of the game thinking, ‘I just hope she’s OK’,” says Walsh. “The only thing I actually remember from that game — not the goals or anything — was afterwards, I saw Leah on the side in a wheelchair with an Arsenal bobble hat on, having to wheel herself on to get her winner’s medal.”

A few months on from Williamson’s injury, Walsh damaged her ankle ligaments — it was an impact injury, and on her laptop, Williamson has pictures of her and Walsh “in wheelchairs at different times”. Walsh collected her second ankle injury at a training camp in La Manga, by which point Williamson’s ankles had betrayed her again. “We were both sat on the bench laughing because it was just crazy luck that we’d both done it again,” Walsh smiles. “I knew I couldn’t sit there feeling sorry for myself next to you.”

During their separate rehabilitation processes, they maintained the habit of visiting each other as often as they could. Their close friendship meant they were never allowed to share a room on international duty to ensure they didn’t isolate themselves from the rest of the group. Walsh was the class clown and Williamson the captain, meaning that “Leah would always get told off for me. They’d always be like: ‘Leah! You need to tell Keira she needs to be a bit more professional!’”

What it all meant was they had lost time to make up elsewhere. Each Christmas, Walsh would come to London from Rochdale and Williamson’s mother Amanda “would treat us to something from Jack Wills. That was like an annual little thing that we did, because I don’t think that I’d ever heard of Jack Wills, being from the north, until I met all these southerners at camp that used to wear it. I think I actually used to go down to see Amanda more than you, to be honest.”

What did they think of each other when they first met?

“You first,” says Williamson.

“No — you go,” Walsh replies.

“I’m going to big you up here,” Williamson begins. “Keira’s always been… she was always one of the best there, and you always want to be mates with the good ones.”

Walsh returns the favour: “I think I was quite jealous of you when you first came because everyone was like: ‘She’s amazing. I was thinking, I want to be amazing, as well, so I want to be friends with her.”

“That’s good, that we both thought the same thing.”

“There you go, then. That’s why we’re friends.”

“I’d say I’m your fangirl, Keira. I’m your hype man.”

Walsh has always been Williamson’s biggest supporter — “when you scored your first goal for England, I think I was happier for you than I would have been if I’d scored” — but probably has good reason to worry about Williamson calling herself a hype man. Before the World Cup, Williamson visited Cex, the second-hand goods chain, and spent £50 on some DJ decks to master during downtime at the tournament.

“I just looked across the corridor and I was like, ‘What is that noise? I’m sure that’s Leah’s room’,” Walsh recalls. “I opened the door and you had these big headphones on, mixing the decks. I saw Georgia just lying on the bed and I was like, ‘What is going on in here?’ They had the balcony door open and you were like: ‘Wait for the drop. Wait for the drop’. I was like: ‘OK – I’ll wait for the drop. You like your music, you are good with music and you actually might be very good. I trust you’. And the drop just never came.”

Williamson hoots with laughter. “Never came. I thought it would be so much easier than it was. It was so hard.” She shakes her head, jokingly rueful. “Massive flop. Massive flop.”

“I feel like you just try your hand at loads of random stuff,” continues Walsh. “I see you on camp and you’re like: ‘I’m doing the harmonica now’.”

Williamson says she has “found her calling” playing the piano in lockdown, but Walsh is unimpressed. “It’s just you try to give off this cool vibe and I feel like people don’t really know you. It just makes me laugh. What have you got — a lightsaber pen? And Star Wars pyjamas? People would just not think that. When you see the exterior of Leah, you would just think, ‘No – not Star Wars’. She’s done all these photoshoots, she’s dead cool, and then she just whacks out the craziest stuff and just makes me laugh.”

Williamson holds up her hands. “It’s true. I can’t deny it.”

The World Cup was particularly testing for Walsh, for whom fierce social media criticism left her questioning whether she wanted to continue to play football. Walsh has spoken numerous times about the impact on her confidence, but what was it like for Williamson, who did not feature as much as Walsh, to witness? She pauses. “I think it’s hard,” she begins, “because you just feel so powerless when you’re not playing. It’s not even like I can go on the pitch and have a shocker to save her from the criticism,” she laughs. “If I tell Keira she’s great, there’s a slight bit of her that’s… I’m her best mate, so I’m going to try and pick her up as much as possible.

“The main thing, especially from a squad perspective, is that we all know how valuable Keira is to us and how — I’m bigging you up here — she’s the centre of what we’re doing as a team. It just annoys me. I wish I could eradicate all those other people because we, as a team, appreciate her so much. That’s all I ever said to Keira – if anybody was picking a team, you’d be the first name on the teamsheet. But it’s hard to get… like I say, I’m her best mate, so I’m honest with her, but at the same time, she probably needed to hear that a little bit more.”

They didn’t talk about it so much, Walsh says. “Because you weren’t playing, I didn’t want to put that on you because I felt like it would be selfish,” she adds. “I thought, at the time: you know what? We’ll just make the best of it off the pitch, and I think that’s why we had such a good time.” Williamson’s first appearance, from the bench in the round-of-16 match against Cameroon, changed Walsh’s perspective “because I was just so happy for you that I didn’t care what people would say about me at that moment. People could say whatever they wanted because I’ve just played in a World Cup with my best friend. Not many people can say that.”

To be best friends, as professional athletes, is a balancing act: in any other walk of life, they would — could — rage at each other, moan, weep, get angry. As professional footballers, they are wary of distracting the other. “I know what you want to achieve, so my problems taking a back seat is fine with me if I know you’re going on to achieve what you want to achieve,” Walsh tells Williamson.

To Sunday, then, and what will happen when two best friends turn competitors for 90 minutes. Walsh smirks. “I feel like you try and keep a really focused head, and then I’ll just be like…” she cups her hands for a high-pitched whisper and springs up like a Jack in a box. “’Leah!’” Williamson rollicks back with laughter. “Then she’ll turn around and she’ll start laughing, but I do it because I know she’s going to laugh and I know that she’s trying to focus. I feel like I’m a lot more relaxed than you. You’re like, ‘Game face, game head, here we go’, and you just have that annoying friend in the background.”

Stanway is the worst, apparently, to the point where Walsh and Williamson will intervene — Williamson with a stern “we’re not having that today” when Stanway inevitably flattens her early doors. “We always text each other a couple of days, speak to each other earlier on in the week before we play each other,” says Williamson of her and Walsh.

“In the game and stuff, we have our little tiffs, and if I say something and she doesn’t agree with it, we’re both playing for the win, and we both understand that,” Walsh concludes, “but then afterwards, we’re straight over to each other.”

She starts to sign off, but Williamson beats her to it. “See you Sunday,” they chorus, in unison.

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

Award shows - ɟ

Heeeelloo, my fellow CS 👋🏼

The idea for this post came to me because I recently saw again that some fans still can’t explain some things about the awards, therefore, I’m going to briefly explain the things I’ve read on which they’re still confused about so that maybe I’ll automatically answer some questions you guys have too.

First of all, celebrities, whether they’re actors, singers, models, heirs, fashion mavens, aristocrats, etc., are notified months before they’ve been invited. Usually, the reason why they were invited is written along with the invitation. The reasons obviously vary. They may have been invited because they were nominated for an award, or because, and they may accept or decline, they were asked to present a category or a performance, or to interview someone on the red-carpet or backstage, or to perform, etc., etc. They can also be added as I like to say ‘+1’. But be aware, there’s a difference between being invited as a ‘+1’ and as a guest.

‘Are they not the same thing?’ you’re probably wondering. No, they are not. Being invited as a guest is simply that. A celebrity who invites their partner, or their kid, or one of their parents, or a friend, as indeed their guest. The +1, on the other hand, is a term that I’m using because I don’t think there’s one to describe when a person who is also a celebrity is invited by another one. You know the seats they show us with pictures of celebrities and how some seats next to it lack these pictures? Those seats without pictures belong to the celebrity guests or their team members. If a celebrity invites another one, then next to their picture there will also be that of the celebrity they invited. Aka, the term I’m using in this case: the +1.

I’ll give you an example:

I’m a singer and my fake PR boyfriend has to perform that night, but I don’t, and neither have I been nominated for any awards and therefore not even invited. Also to keep up appearances of our relationship, I get invited as his +1. This means that you’re gonna see my picture next to his in the seats and the cameras will film me for literally two seconds counted during his performance. It also means that my fake boyfriend and I will be wearing matching outfits, that we’ll arrive on the red carpet together, that I’ll have to show unnecessary PDA out of the blue while one of our managers films us to make us more believable and real, and that I’ll have to pretend to be happy to be his arm candy. Do I accept or do I not accept the invitation?

Yeah, of course I do. It’s a great idea actually, both to show people my support as a cheerleader for him, and as publicity. Publicity not only for us as a couple, but also for myself. Our management, and yes, we have the same management, has arranged interviews for me too on the red carpet, so why shouldn’t I accept that? Plus, I want to go. Helloo? We’re talking about an important award show. Not to mention that my girlfriend performs too the same night and has also been nominated for several awards, so it’s just an extra incentive to want to go and be able to support her. Oohh, how foolish of me. I apologize for my forgetfulness. My name is Lauren Jauregui and I’m talking about the American Music Awards 2018.

See what I did there? 😏😏😏

These events are very exclusive and have an invitation list. If you’re a celebrity and you’re not on the list, then it’s very hard for you to be able to attend. But there’s a way, and no, I’m not talking about finding a way to sneak in. The only other way to get there is by taking the place of someone who had been invited and couldn’t attend.

Let’s say you’re a celebrity and you want to go there. Let’s say you want to go because you’ve been out of the spotlight for a long time and want to make a big comeback with a beautiful dress to show yourself off. The first thing you do is call your publicist and see if there are still seats available. Not all celebrities can attend those events despite being invited because they may have other commitments, or they’re out of town, or I don’t know, they’re on tour or something like that. So there’s the possibility that you can have their seat. If there aren’t any, then your publicist themselves may be looking for another way to get you in. Again, for an X reason, the celebrity who was supposed to present an award cannot go, and therefore your publicist manages to get you the invitation as one of the presenters. If none of these options are possible, then.. well, I hope you enjoy the show watched in the living room of your home.

You want another practical example? Okay, okay, babies, I’ll content you 😏

Latin Grammy Awards 2019. Still me, Lauren Jauregui, hi 🙋🏻 🙈 I wasn’t invited. I had no reason to actually be there, except for one…

I didn’t even publicize and say on my social media that I’d have been there. It was so unexpected and awesome for you nuggets, wasn’t it? Well, my girlfriend was invited but she unfortunately couldn’t go due to other commitments. You can imagine how sad she was not only to not being able to attend, but also to not being able to perform with Alejandro who is one of the people in the industry that she loves and admires the most, right? You can imagine her pout and her kicked puppy face for not being able to sing the song she wrote and dedicated to her little sister, can’t you? Well, I couldn’t bear to see her that way, so I told her: ‘Don’t worry, babe. I gotcha. I’ll go for you. I’ll go to represent you’. Also because her team didn’t need to be there, not even to collect the award which I later discovered she won the same evening. Awards, my beautiful chickens, are shipped months after the night they are received.

And so it was. I went with Brenda (my manager). I got dolled up. I did my interviews, even teasing my fans about my new project with Tainy. I sat in my baby’s seat in the front row. THE FRONT ROW. Front rows are reserved for the evening’s award winners. They NEVER put the winners in the back rows because it would take them too long to get to the stage when their name is called otherwise. And I was there, for her. And in addition to enjoying the show, I tried to hold back my happiness, especially since there were cameras everywhere, both during Alejandro’s performance as soon as my love appeared on the screens, and when they won the Record of the Year. I swear I had to get a hold of myself. I had to restrain myself and concentrate on clapping my hands like a normal person and not smiling too big.

*end of the sketch*

As you may have noticed so far, these are the only ways to attend award shows if you are a celebrity. But, just because you’re a celebrity, there’s no guarantee that you get invited. And you certainly cannot show up there with the hope that they’ll let you in without being invited, or nominated, or without a ticket just because you’re ‘someone’. Security kicks your ass out no matter who you are.

Every year, hundreds of celebrities don’t make it onto the invitation list. Keep in mind that the ‘exclusivity’ of these events is also due to the seats. Take as an example precisely the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles where the AMAs 2018 took place. It has 7,100 seats. These seats are reserved for people in the show’s broadcast network, the telecast’s sponsors, the production team, the accountants, the legal team, the donors, the representatives, the press and media in general, etc., and THEN for the invited celebrities including singers and their teams, so also their publicists, agents, managers, [and not even all of them have a reserved seat; maybe only one of them has it and the rest are backstage or in the dressing room or not really there], etc., actors, and as with singers, their teams, the team of people who worked on the film with them, etc. See how many people and how few seats?

I’m still not 100% sure about this but, Emmy’s, Oscars, Golden Globes, Tony’s, and Grammy’s are the only award shows where the names of the winners aren’t revealed until the envelope is opened live on stage. All the remaining shows? Pfft, it’s all an organized thing. What you see on TV, the reactions ‘Oh my God, did I win? I can’t believe it!’, ‘I really wasn’t expecting that’, they’re all fake. Yes, the emotion for the win is true, but everything else? It’s all bullshit. Winners are notified long, but very long time before that. Indeed, many award shows only invite winners to attend. Haven’t you ever noticed how in some of them the other artists nominated in that same category aren’t even there? If they happened to be there, it’s because it’s very likely that they had won another category, or were there for other reasons, like presenting a performance or whatever.

Aaaand I’m done 😎😝 I think I’ve answered pretty much all the questions I’ve seen on the subject, even though I haven’t seen them here. If you yourselves have questions about this or anything else (even if you want advice on a personal level), as I’ve already said other times, feel free to ask. I’m at your disposal 😊

And thank you, Mari. It has been a while since I’ve done this, but I hope you know that I’m serious every time I thank you. Therefore, thank you once again for virtually letting me into your world and thank you for letting me continue to have little spaces in your blog 🤗🤗🤗

Thanks also to you babies for reading, liking, and re-blogging my occasional posts. But thanks mostly for her. Thanks to those who follow my friend’s blog with the right intentions. That is, with respect and without attacking her. Thanks to those who follow her because you actually like her and the content she posts, and thanks to those who use their brains before asking or submitting something to her. Thanks for real 🙏🏼

I hope you’re all well and that your holidays are continuing with peace and serenity. Stay safe, please. Stay patient. Keep the boat afloat. As usual, always with love, F ❤️

P.S. since I’m currently on vacation for a few more days before having to go back to work, and since I have a little bit more free time, I’m preparing something else for you based on some information that I was able to found out. Stay tuned for the next post 😉 The initials of the title are U and S, so you’ll know when you see it. Byee 😘

___

I was smiling with every word of this submit. Thanks for this clarification, F. It was awesome as usual

[mal3nko]

“Why wasn’t Life is Strange 2 as popular as the first game?”

A lot of people like myself have wondered what exactly made Life is Strange 2 go so relatively unnoticed compared its predecessor, Life is Strange 1. And when you think about it, you may come up with the few obvious generic answers, such as the lack of Max and Chloe and just the original cast in general. However, I think there was a lot more at play here that prevented Life is Strange 2 from reaching the amount of success/popularity the first game had. So I want to take the time and break down what exactly happened to Life is Strange 2 and the things that hurt the game’s ability to really connect with the audience of LiS1.

Disclaimer: We do NOT know how well Life is Strange 2 was for Dontnod and if it was a success or not. No sales numbers have been given out to the public so there’s no way of knowing for sure how well the game did. What we do know is that LiS2 did not receive the same amount of attention/popularity as the first game. That can’t be denied, it simply didn’t. However, based on the fact that Dontnod have recently announced they are working on six new games at the moment and are now expanding their studio, even if LiS2 was a “flop” it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on them (most likely due to the success of Vampyr). Dontnod is going to be fine either way. Another thing I want to mention is that this is not a anti-LiS2 post and that I am a fan of the game. I’d consider myself a pretty big fan actually. I have my problems with the game of course and don’t agree with a lot of the writing decisions but I enjoyed the game very much overall. But for the sake of this post I will try to be as unbiased as possible, giving out only what I’ve observed when it comes to reactions from the fandom on different websites and forums. So with that all being said, let’s dive in to this.

Here I will be listing the many different reasons as to why Life is Strange 2 failed to reach the same amount of popularity as LiS1 or even BtS managed to achieve. This list isn’t in any particular order but some reasons are bigger/more important than others.

For some background, there was a lot of hype going into Life is Strange 2. The teaser trailer for it with the cop car trended at #2 on YouTube, a huge feat for the series. It generated immense amount of views and comments in a short period in time, completely surpassing Before the Storm’s announcement trailer in just a few weeks. So what exactly happened to all that hype? Where did everybody go? Well, let’s break everything down.

1. The lack of Max and Chloe: Yes I said that this list wouldn’t be in any particular order in terms of importance but I think it’s obvious this one is one of, if not the biggest reason as to why LiS2 failed to match LiS1’s popularity. When the protagonists Sean and Daniel were first revealed, the reception was pretty divisive. Specifically, a very vocal part of the community were baffled and disappointed at the lack of Max and Chloe present within the trailer and subsequently the game itself. This instantly turned off a lot of people from the game, as they couldn’t connect with the new characters or simply didn’t want to. At that point in the franchise Max and Chloe as well as the original cast from the first game had been the face of the series for almost three years. It’s understandable why it was hard for people to just…move on. To this day people are still asking for Max and Chloe to return. The Life is Strange subreddit is still dominated with Max and Chloe fanart. Whenever the social media accounts for Life is Strange post anything Max and Chloe related it gets way more attention compared to a post about Sean and Daniel. Whenever a post online goes viral about Life is Strange you can bet it’s most likely about Max and Chloe. Hell the only reason why episode 5 of Life is Strange 2 trended on Tumblr was because of the fucking picture of Max and Chloe. On the releas day of episode 5 of LiS2 the top post on the subreddit was the Max and Chloe picture. It was almost as if that one photo of them completely overshadowed the entire episode. Point is, Life is Strange 2 lost a lot of momentum the moment it was revealed Max and Chloe would not be present. Case closed, let’s move on.

2. The release schedule: Words cannot describe how frustrating the release schedule was for LiS2 when it came to it’s episodes. For those reading this who didn’t follow LiS2 until the game was finished, each episode took around 3-4 months to be released. This was because Dontnod bit off a bit more than they could chew with the road trip story in having to create new locations and character models from scratch. The reason why this wasn’t a problem for LiS1 was because Max was for the most part always in the same locations around the same characters (I’m pretty sure you roam around Chloe’s house like 4 times throughout the season), which made development a lot easier since the devs could just reuse a lot of the assets. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for LiS2 due to the nature of it’s story. The wait times between each episode made a lot of people leave the fandom due to loosing interest or simply forgetting about the game altogether. This also impacted youtubers/streamers as many of them either stopped coming back to play the new episodes or they’d not be as connected as they were in the previous episode due to the amount of time that had passed. One of the reasons why LiS1 gained so much popularity was because of youtubers/streamers and how they would bring in their audience and would pretty much make them fans of the series. With quite a handful of youtubers/streamers quitting LiS2, the game was not able to draw in as much of an audience as previous games did. This is how detreminetal the release schedule was for LiS2.

3. The marketing (or lack thereof): Square Enix really fucked up on this aspect. Due to the ridiculous wait times you would think Square Enix would try and advertise the game heavily when a new episode was about to be released, right? Well they didn’t. Not at all actually. Throughout the games release schedule from September 2018 up to December 2019, I had not seen a single ad for the game. Nothing on YouTube, nothing on reddit or any other websites, it was like Square Enix had completely forgotten about the game’s existence. Now don’t get me wrong, SE did do a few things with LiS2 like starting up the community series on their YouTube channel and also the dev updates that came after episode 1 (that stopped after episode 2 for some reason) but these went relatively unnoticed to people outside of the fandom and did pretty much nothing. I believe SE was trying to wait until the game was fully complete with all of it’s episodes released before actually marketing the game (and they DID start advertising the game after episode 5 came out) but that’s just WAAAY too long to go without any type of advertisement. I understand marketing teams have budgets and what not, but you’re telling me there was no way for SE to market each episode in anyway as they were about to be released? Seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?

4. The road trip story: I completely understand why Dontnod wanted to branch out and do something different with the story of Life is Strange 2 and I respect them for stepping out of their comfort zones. However, it can’t be denied that the road trip story where characters are cycled in and out as Sean and Daniel make their way to Mexico was a very…questionable decision. Seeing as how LiS1 was loved for it’s world filled with a reoccurring cast of characters that developed as the story went on, it’s really easy to understand why LiS2 was so off-putting for a lot of fans. It was off-putting for me, even. It just…wasn’t fun having to leave these truly interesting characters behind because the plot demanded it. This left a lot of characters feeling underdeveloped to many people and by the time you meet new characters you already know they’re most likely gonna be gone soon anyways, so it made it even harder to connect with them. Couple this with the fact that LiS2 lacked any type of mystery unlike LiS1, speculation and discussion fizzled out a few weeks after each episode was released. LiS1 kept people speculating and wondering about what would happen next, while LiS2 left a lot of people struggling to care.

5. Politics: Yeeeeaaaaah I think I had to put this somewhere on the list. While many of the people who tease and mock how LiS2 handled its political topics were most likely not fans of the series anyway (the type of people who called LiS1 “Life is Tumblr” and hate Chloe), I do think it’s important to realize that some people just don’t want politics in their games, period. I’ve seen people online come out and say that while they agreed with what the writers were saying when it came to the political topics, it overall still came off very forced and one-sided to them, lacking any type of nuance or subtlety. I could write an entire essay discussing if the politics in LiS2 were handled well and whatnot but this is not that post so I’ll just leave it at that.

6: Lack of a prominent female cast/wlw: This is a bit more tricky to talk about (for the record the person writing this is a black gay guy) but I will try and write about this the best way I can. For many women, specifically queer women, Life is Strange was a series they could expect representation from. Max, Chloe, Rachel, and Steph are all popular characters amongst the fandom and even other wlw ships such as Marshfield, Chasefield, Chaseprice, etc are popular. So when LiS2 was revealed to be about two (hispanic) males, the queer women within the community were understandably upset. It felt like DN were simply throwing away the community that for the most part made up the entire fandom. At the time I simply found the situation ridiculous and overblown as many people were dismissing Sean and Daniel as “generic straight males” (even though it turned out Sean was bisexual in the end) before really getting to know them. However, looking back I totally get why people were upset. A lot of the fanart/fanfiction that was made for the LiS series was mostly created by queer women, so when the franchise pretty much stopped giving them representation, they left in search of other media (like She-Ra, which honestly has better wlw rep anyway). LiS2 is also mostly male dominated in terms of its cast, and features no queer women as well, which is really disappointing in my opinion.

7. Price: This one is pretty simple. When Life is Strange 2 was first released the full season costed $40. This was a pretty big jump in comparison to LiS1’s $20 price tag (original price was $25 however) and BtS’s $16. Obviously people would be more skeptical about buying a sequel that is pretty much double the price of its predecessor and has completely new characters. With the pretty mixed reception from gaming communities I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people saw the price and decided to either watch a playthrough or simply not check out the game at all. With the first episode now free the base price has been lowered to around $30-32 I believe so yeah.

8. Daniel Diaz: Some people just don’t like kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people grew easily frustrated with Daniel early on and once he got more irrational and bratty as the story progressed they just stopped playing altogether. Even if you do like kids, or at least don’t mind them like myself, Daniel can still be quite a pain.

9. Not having control of the powers: This one is honestly really disappointing and I know it was to a lot of other people as well. In LiS1 Max had the ability to rewind time and do certain scenarios and conversations over and that basically acted as the more interesting gameplay segments. In LiS2 Sean doesn’t have the power, his brother Daniel does. This leads to the gameplay feeling much more boring and mundane. There are also no interesting puzzles this time around, most likely because Dontnod didn’t know how to implement them without the rewind power so they just…didn’t even attempt to add any. The power itself, telekinesis, is also much less interesting compared to rewinding time, according to a lot of people.

SO YEAH that’s basically it for me. I know this probably came off a bit rambly/incoherent but I tried my best to be as clear as I possibly could. I don’t doubt there are other reasons at play as to why LiS2 failed to meet LiS1’s success (such as liscensed music not being quite as good as LiS1) but I think I hit the main points I believe were key reasons. And the thing is, there isn’t just one main reason why LiS2 didn’t do as well as LiS1. It’s overall very unfortunate so many things went wrong with it that ended up making people lose interest in it. I think the lack of Max and Chloe hurt the game the most right off the bat, but the other reasons just led it to do even worse. Oh well.

I hope any of the people who read this enjoyed it (it was a BITCH to write). I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down about this for SO long but just never had the motivation/time but I finally did it!

Again, thanks for reading! If you have any disagreements or just thoughts in general don’t be afraid to reply or dm me about it and I’ll be sure to reply! Now back to reblogging Marco posts….

[sevensided]

how did you get into writing fic? i'd love to start but idk even where to begin! I loved adats so I was wondering do you have any advice?

Oh my goodness! I am so flattered you’ve asked me this. Yes, I can absolutely help. I’ll throw a bunch of rambling under the cut.

I started writing fic probably when I was... sixteen years old? A lot of my early works were oneshots. I couldn’t figure out how to do anything plot heavy for the life of me, so I just stuck to AUs or whatever I felt like. I wasn’t in any particular fandom -- I really wrote whatever I had ideas for. I remember I tried once to do a plot-heavy story and I received a review absolutely ripping it to shreds. Like, it was so cruel I cried lol. I ended up deleting the fic. Years later, I get what they were trying to say (basically, more substance, less style), but at the time it cut to the quick. Really, it was only when I was in my twenties that I started writing work that was longer and/or better.

The fandom that helped me actually write plot heavy work was a historical-based fandom. As I’m a historian, it was perfect. I got to use my research skills and knowledge to create works that, above all, aimed to feel authentic. I mainly read historical fiction, so I was familiar with how that genre worked. Miraculously, people loved my work. I think I wrote about ~200k in the period of a year? These were several short stories (20-40k) and a few oneshot filler fics. While I was part of this fandom I also helped organise a Big Bang which was a lot of hard work but was extremely rewarding. Along with that, I interacted mainly with other fic writers, so I spent a lot of time chatting to people about ideas and encouraging other writers, and it just created a lovely medley where no concept was impossible or any line of dialogue too difficult. We supported each other and it was truly like a little commune. I gradually stepped away from the fandom mainly because it was just a part of my life at a very specific time, and almost as soon as that time was over, my love for that story/ship faded, but I firmly believe I figured out a lot of how/what I do now purely through that experience.

Regarding ADATS

With ADATS, it stemmed entirely from wanting to “explain” three months in canon (at the end of season three). I was interested in the idea of season four setting up Will/Mike in canon, and I wanted to test the source material to see if I could draw from what already existed to create something authentic. I began with that simple idea: what happened from July to October in 1985? Then I thought about the major themes I wanted to hit -- family, friendship, coming of age, sexuality -- and I nested them around the bigger concept: how do I get Mike from being ostensibly straight to realising he is gay? That meant thinking of two steps: Mike discovering his attraction to guys; Mike discovering his attraction to Will. Those two concepts were separate “arcs” that needed addressing in different ways. Balance was key to weaving them together and making the reader feel like they knew what was coming (and that they felt smart for putting the pieces together) without just rushing through and going “now kiss!” That’s partly why ADATS needs a sequel, lol: because it’s not finished!

Writing process

The first thing I do when I start to get an idea is I write it down. Sounds obvious. But when you have a killer line of dialogue come to you in the shower and you think “I’ll remember that” -- reader, you will not remember it. You gotta get it down ASAP! I do that the whole way through, as generally I’ll be thinking of scenes I’m stuck on and then it’ll just come to me and I’ll quickly jot it down.

The next thing -- or what I do in the meantime -- is start structuring. I plan. I try to plan a lot. Sometimes it’s okay to write “and something happens here to get them here”, because you’ll figure it out later, but for the most part I’ve discovered that planning is like gold and you can’t get enough of it. I break my work up into generally 3-4 parts/sections, and I treat each section like a mini story. So each part needs a conflict and resolution, and it needs to flow into the next section. You need to have a feeling of things evolving and maturing. Once I’ve planned those little bits, I start thinking about the bigger plot arc and how I can drop in hints along the way. I’m probably not a subtle or skilled enough writer to yet pull off that sort of gasping twist you get in really excellent books, but I’m trying to get there. It’s hard, is what I’m trying to say, but that’s okay, because we’re all learning.

Then I generally do aesthetic stuff. Sounds stupid, probably. But nothing helps me get more into a mood than doing a Pinterest board or -- most of all -- making a Spotify mix. I start thinking about the vibe and the general atmosphere, and then I almost exclusively listen to that mix when I’m working. Sort of like muscle memory? Just to get the creative juices associated with that particular selection of songs.

Another thing I’ll do along with plot structure is character structure. This is a biggie. I mean, a story is nothing without characters. So I’ll just jot down a bunch of bullet points of characters and particular aspects that I want to highlight or remember. I hate continuity errors in fiction. Like, if someone says they work on Maple Street but later in the fic they’re working on Pine Street. I hate that. So I keep note of specific things that my main character might notice at repeated points in the story (colours, places, smells, names, sounds -- so they’re all consistent even as the narrative evolves). That’s another thing -- your characters’ motivations. Not everyone is going to be a huge player, but they all do serve a purpose. The most important character is obviously your main character. I personally think it’s important to let your M.C. be an arse at times. They’re going to be mean, they’re going to misinterpret things or fly off the handle... just let ‘em. Let them be wretched humans, and then bring them back and make them realise what they’ve done. Let them learn! I love consequences in fiction, lol.

At the same time, I’ll probably start writing. We’ve already written down some snippets of neat dialogue or descriptions, but now we should start the actual process. For me, I used to start at the beginning. Usually this was the most fleshed out anyway: I’ll have a clear idea of the beginning and the end, but nothing in the middle. These days, if I have a scene in mind that I can’t forget, I’ll just write it. It will possibly get scrapped or rewritten, but that’s okay, because at least you’ve got it down and now you can devote your brain power to something useful (like figuring out what the middle is supposed to be). I’ll have half a dozen of totally out of context scenes just littered in my Word document that I’ll add to as I go along. Eventually, though, you’re going to start writing properly, and that’s when you write your opening scene.

Opening scenes: super important. Every time I write a scene I think: what is the point of this? What do I want the reader to learn or takeaway? Sometimes you do have filler scenes, but they also serve a different purpose (perhaps to establish a group dynamic or to explore/describe a character’s surroundings). Mainly, though, every scene should push something forward in some way, whether it’s character development or a plot point. So, with an opening scene, I always think you have to establish: where you are; who you are; what they are doing; where they’ve come from (in a philosophical and practical sense); and where they’re going (ditto). That doesn’t have to happen in the first paragraph -- that would be silly. But if you sprinkle that information in over time it’ll gradually build up a picture of your character and that way the reader can get an idea of who they are. You basically need to give a snapshot of what your story is about. This also goes back to the character creator stuff: where they are at the start should be different to where they end up. How that happens is, of course, because of plot, and because you’ve structured everything to the nth degree, we’ve got a very clear progression of that character’s growth (/s easier said than done lol).

General advice

Write down everything: every idea, a bit of dialogue, a description, whatever. Write it down. Doesn’t have to be neat. Just has to be on paper. You can’t remember everything, so if you’re spending time trying to hold those things in your head, it’s taking up space for new ideas to come along.

Structure, plan, structure, plan. Sometimes it’s boring and I hate it. Other times, when I’ve not written in a few days and I open the Word doc and think wtf is this supposed to be, I am very grateful for Past Me for leaving such detailed notes. Seriously, it helps so much. Oneshots don’t really need planning, in my experience. You just get those out there. But multi-chaptered stories really do, even ones that “just” focus on a relationship.

Whatever you want to write, commit to it. Space goblins invade Hawkins? Do it. Eleven and Max find themselves in a cult akin to Midsommar (2019) and must escape? Yes. Just... whatever you want to do, remember that you’re writing it for you. Write what most interests you, what makes you when you reread it go AHHHHH I LOVE THIS!! Because that makes it a thousand times easier to actually get on with the writing when you enjoy what you’re doing.

Write a lot. Every day, if you can, or at least at designated times. Occasionally I have a very specific headspace/vibe I have to be in, but sometimes it just hits me and I’ll say to my partner “I need to write now” and just disappear, lol. The more you write the more you write. It’s so, so, so true. Cannot emphasise this enough. When I wrote that ~200k in twelve months? It was because I literally wrote every. day. Or near enough. Remember that some days you’ll write 200 words, and other days you’ll write 20k (this happened to me with ADATS -- part of the reason I finished it so quickly was because I had sprints of writing 10k+ at a time that only happened because I was in the rhythm of it). Write, write, write. Who cares if it’s crap! No one will see it until you are ready. In the meantime, just write!

Probably last of all (although I could go on and on) is connect with other writers. If you’re struggling to start, sometimes just talking about it can help a huge amount. I hope it goes without saying that you can message me whenever you want, anon or not, and I will talk to you. We can talk about ideas or I can beta stuff, whatever you want! Find like-minded people and talk to them about what you want to do. Another thing this helps is in advertising your work when you do publish. I see a lot of first time fic writers get super down because they publish their magnum opus on AO3 but no one comments. Honestly, it’s because no one knows you’ve published! You don’t have to be tooting your own horn every which way, but just actively talking about your work and even collaborating with other content creators with get you hyped and other people too (and the input and encouragement other fandom members give is just... out of this world. Anon messages helped me finish ADATS when I was really worried I wouldn’t [that’s the truth]. Seriously, support is everything). When you have people excited about your work, you get excited. It’s really as simple as that.

I could go on but this is already horrendously long. I hope even a bit of this helps! If you want to chat or have any more questions, just hit me up any time.

[duhragonball]

I was thinking about Goku and Krillin's friendship and it occured to me that they spent months training with Roshi together but then only saw each other for maybe a day every few years. Have you ever had a realization that tripped you out like this?

This is a really good ask, anon, and I just wanted to take a moment to say so. 

I have had a few ‘a-ha’ moments like these, but I’m kind of blanking on specific examples.  I’ll see what I can come up with.

1) For openers, there’s the whole thing where the Red Ribbon Army has a Dragon Radar, but it’s nowhere near as sophisticated as the handheld one Bulma invented.  I think the same holds true for Emperor Pilaf, but his gang is only three people.   You’d expect the RRA to have the best equipment possible, because that’s their whole deal, and by normal standards they probably do have the best possible Dragon Radar... but Bulma’s is simply that much better, because she’s on another level.   And it’s easy to overlook that, because Bulma’s supposed to be a genius teenager, like Donatello in TMNT, but the RRA’s Dragon Radar is the first hint that she’s even more special than we could have guessed. 

2) Rewatching Dragon Ball in 2019, I gained a new appreciation for the filler episodes where Mr. Popo trained Goku.  The first time I saw them, I was hoping we’d see Goku grow up and make progress over the three year gap, but instead they just focused on his early days on the Lookout, with Popo just saying things and Goku failing to understand.  It was very frustrating to watch.  

But in 2019, I noticed that all those episodes get paid off in the Piccolo Junior fight.   Popo kept telling Goku to be “quicker than lightning” and “quiet as the sky”, and Goku just couldn’t figure out how to do that, let alone fight at the same time.   He had to unlearn all the stuff that had helped him defeat King Piccolo, and he couldn’t do it... at first.    But by the time he fought Piccolo Junior, he put it all together, as demonstrated with his big finishing move.   Piccolo thought he had vaporized Goku, only for Goku to fly up into the air and crash into him.   Why didn’t Piccolo sense Goku’s presence?   Because Goku had learned to become as “quiet as the sky”.  Why couldn’t Piccolo dodge it?   Because Goku had learned to become “quicker than lightning.”  So it vindicates those filler episodes pretty nicely.   They weren’t just marking time, but they were setting up what the manga was going to do later.

3) I think last year, it hit me that Vegeta had probably never lost a fight before he went to Earth.   That alone isn’t probably any big deduction.  The only people stronger than him were all working for Frieza, and he knew to steer clear of them until he was ready.   But it explains why he was so giddy about the zenkai effect.   He had always known about it, but he never mentioned or cared about it until he experienced it for himself after losing to Goku, and then Zarbon. 

Yeah, I think this occurred to me during a conversation about Vegeta killing Nappa instead of helping him.   In theory, Nappa could have recovered and gotten a lot stronger, just like Vegeta did.   But Saiyans Saga Vegeta didn’t care about that.   He only gave his henchmen one chancemand discarded them as soon as they lost.   This attitude would also explain why he never dared to challenge anyone at a higher level.    He knew no one would show him any mercy, so the zenkai boost would have been meaningless to him. 

So he might have regretted killing Nappa after he experienced the zenkai firsthand, although he was so drunk on his own increased power that he probably never stopped to consider it.   But before Earth, Vegeta probably dismissed the zenkai as a crutch for lesser Saiyans.   In his mind, a truly great Saiyan never loses battles in the first place.  Or so he believed, until he lost a few times, and became stronger for it, and had to reconsider.

And that also explains how he warmed up to the Super Saiyan Legend over the course of one afternoon.   He and Goku made such sick gains that week that he started to wonder if you could zenkai your way to Super Saiyan, and then he was begging Krillin to shoot him just so he could get a step closer.

4) In the same vein, it occurred to me at some point that Bardock was probably stronger than King Vegeta, and neither of them realized it.   Maybe it was just a dub-ism, but I’m pretty sure “Father of Goku” has a line about Bardock’s power level being 10000.   At the time it was released, 10k wasn’t that big a deal, but in the Saiyans Saga, Vegeta was somewhere around 18-24k. Later, he would claim to have surpassed his father as a child, so I think it’s fair to assume that King Vegeta must have been in that 10,000 neighborhood. 

Which makes a nice subtle commentary on why the Saiyan Kingdom failed. They tried to breed better warriors, putting all their stock in the royal family, when the true secret lay in warriors like Bardock, who were constantly getting clobbered and healed.  Prince Vegeta only started to make real progress once he began fighting on that same regimen.

5) Also about “Father of Goku,” Frieza only wanted Planet Kanassa subjugated because of the psychic powers of its inhabitants.   I think the dub insinuated that the planet itself gave people those powers, but whatever the case, Frieza heard about these people with unusual powers and wanted them stamped out immediately.   Just like he wiped out the Saiyans over the Super Saiyan Legend, and just like he planned to destroy Namek to prevent anyone else from using the Dragon Balls. 

In short, Frieza fears and despises legends.  Why?  Because he’s so powerful that real people can’t hurt him, so his fears naturally turn to half-truths and folklore.   He chases down ghost stories and rumors, because let’s face it, what else does he have to occupy his time.   That’s why King Cold was happy to have the Saiyans working for him, while Frieza wanted them all dead.   Cold didn’t share Frieza’s hangups.   Cold barely knew what a Super Saiyan was, while Frieza thought about it all the time. 

6) One day I thought about that timeline where Cell killed Trunks and took the time machine to find the androids.    That specific timeline is pretty much empty.  The Z-fighters are all dead, and so are all of the androids and Trunks.  They don’t even have a Cell anymore because he went back in time and never returned.   There’s still a population, I guess, because the Trunks of that world wouldn’t have just stood by while Cell absorbed everyone on Earth, but that’s about it.   Bulma might have survived Cell’s attack on Trunks, but she’d be the only “name” character on the board.  It just sounds like a pretty depressing world.   Maybe this was the timeline Whis picked out to relocate Blunks and Future Mai in Dragon Ball Super.

7) It sort of blows my mind that the entire Majin Buu arc takes place over a couple of days.    Like, episode 207 through 250 all takes place over one day.   We know this because Goku only had 24 hours to be back in the living world, and that time was cut short by his use of SSJ3.  Then the Elder Kai started doing his ritual to make Gohan stronger, and that took like 25 hours, I’m pretty sure.  That wrapped up in #262, and there was no break in the action from that point onward, all the way up to the defeat of Kid Buu in #287.  So yeah, eighty episodes over two days.   It’s practically real-time footage, save for skipping over the Elder Kai’s ritual and Goten and Trunks practicing and sleeping. 

It’s hard to catch on to this, though, because so much stuff happens in the anime version that leads you to think that it’s a much longer span of time.    After Vegeta wrecks the stadium, the anime can’t decide whether or not Mr. Satan would stay there or return to his dojo.   In the Fusion Saga, Mr. Satan wanders from Buu’s house to the nearest town, then he wanders to the next town over, doing his “Last Man on Earth” bit, except this all happens during the Gotenks/Super Buu fight, which barely lasts half an hour.   In the afterlife, Chi-Chi is worried that she can’t find Gohan, but she wouldn’t have even been there that long, and wouldn’t she still be in line to meet King Yemma?  She was one of the last Earthlings to die, so how did she end up in heaven so quickly?

8) I used to think Movie 13 (the Hirudegarn one) was canon, but the last time I watched it, I noticed all these glaring problems.  They use the Dragon Balls in this one, which means it has to be set six months after the wish to make everyone forget about Majin Buum which means it’s been a year since Kid Buu was defeated.  Okay, fine, except Gohan and Videl are still in high school.   Shouldn’t they have graduated by then?   

More importantly, their high school and Bulma’s house seem to be in the same city.   I guess that’s an easy mistake to make.   It took me a long time to even notice, but Orange Star High is in Satan City, which is a totally different place from West City.   I mean, right?  They’re not terribly far apart, but they’re not the same place either.

Then again, they seemed to make the same error in Episode 287, where Bulma’s out shopping and Great Saiyaman 1 and 2 foil a robbery.   Are they in West City or Satan City?  Maybe there’s more to this...