#its just that barbie was a very big part of my childhood and i knew from the start (unlike some people apparently???) that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

1kook · 4 years ago

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disney+ & bust

this is part of my netflix & chill collection !

summary; There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb. It’s not. It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. warnings; arguments, feelings of insecurity, bit of asshole jk, smut in the forms of degradation, dumbification, choking, fingering, spit kink, self punishment, unprotected but [ passionate ] sex, jk losing his cool, return of mean jk, he is actually an emotional mess in this one wtf miscellaneous; ANGST, anniversaries, the L word😳, app developer kook, rip ‘pretty girl’ </3, we all become phineas and ferb stans word count; 13k !!

notes; me: *writes couple who’s whole arc is being silly* y’all: MAKE THEM SUFFER GIVE US ANGST!! u ask I deliver so now we all suffer 😐 ngl it was hard writing this fic n u might notice there’s some parts that seem weird n that’s bc this was TWO fics w diff wording but I ended up mixing them bc I’m insane. still had a lot of fun! felt like I challenged myself!! not proofread bc when I say we suffer we SUFFER

please let me know what you think!!! a simple ask goes a long way <3

previous part: kissanime & foreplay

Approximately one week after The Bullet Bestie’s rise to prominence, Jungkook grows annoyed with it as his weirdly competitive nature rears its ugly head the more and more orgasms that little vibrator coaxes out of you. It turns on a weird switch in him, something slightly stuck up and snooty that he’ll never admit to out loud but is there nonetheless. By the following Friday, The Bullet Bestie is nestled deep in your garbage can and Jungkook’s back to pleasuring you with his tongue and fingers alone.

He had those moments in him, the ones where he liked to think he was better than any and everyone else, and occasionally they manifested against inanimate objects like a bullet vibrator.

Despite his polite and generally soft exterior, you catch glimpses of that cocky spirit more than anyone else. Over the past year, you’ve come to realize that Jungkook’s personality was like a coin that had been left out in the sun too long. He had this sweet and reserved nature you saw most times, a kindhearted boyfriend who adored you almost as much as you adored him. He was your angel whom you knew had a heart of gold, even if you were slowly bringing out his more childish tendencies. You knew him like the back of your hand, knew what his mom’s favorite color was and how he liked to stack the plates in his cabinet according to size and make. It was a side that was rusted from years of being out in the sun, basking in its adoring warmth, and you loved every inch about it.

And still, there was this other side to him you rarely saw. This cocky asshole who hid beneath the soft smiles and careful hands, making his appearance only through sly smirks and a tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. He was a braggart, a man who knew his greatness yielded for no one and wanted that fact shoved down everyone’s faces. This Jungkook, this other side that never saw the light of day, was like the Hyde to his Jekyll. An unexpected, almost mean side to him that only dared make his appearance when his exhilaration was at an all-time high. Like when he was fucking you into another dimension, or kicking your ass in Mario Kart, or like now, when he was receiving an award at an annual tech ceremony.

On the eve of your one year anniversary, Jungkook’s company invites him to an awards ceremony for other web and app developers like him. It’s a grand event, filled with all the biggest nerds in the developing industry here to present the baby nerds with awards. Jungkook lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, both a seasoned player and a rookie all at once. He spends the night tolling you around in a floor-length gown and fangirling over all the “legends” in the room.

You know next to none of these people and none of their accomplishments but still pretend you respect them to hell and back. By the end of the main dinner, you’re sympathizing with Barbie’s ever-smiling features because your cheeks feel sore.

Towards the end of the night, Jungkook wins that random award— okay, who were you fooling? He wins the Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award, recognizing him for all the hard work you’ve seen him put in this past year. It’s probably the highest recognition he can receive at this point in his career. It was an esteemed award that was bestowed upon only the most innovative developer of the year among tech companies, something Jungkook had briefly mentioned he always wanted. It’s basically the equivalent of placing first place in his field, but given Jungkook’s competitive industry and his young age, you think it’s like telling all these old Facebook lords to suck his big fat cock. (But that was your job when you got home.)

He gives a short little thank you speech, promising to work hard and own up to this title. The people around you are swooning, obviously endeared with his soft puppy dog features and melodic voice. They don’t know him like you do, don’t know that uppity twist to his grin like you do. It doesn’t slip off his face even when he steps down off the stage, arms wide open as he comes barreling towards you. Even with you in his arms, the congratulations that are thrown from every direction ring loudly in his ears and swell that ego of his.

The night goes like that for the most part, Jungkook’s acquaintances approaching him every few minutes to rain down their praises. He goes a little crazy at the open bar after a while, shoving the gold trophy into your arms as his beloved work seniors whisk him off for drinks. You don’t mind because you resigned yourself to a night of playing Jungkook’s perfectly perfect partner anyway, watching him politely mingling with his coworkers. Despite his earlier success, you know he won’t brag about it verbally. No, he’ll wait until the two of you get home—your place or his—and remind you how amazing he is with a quick snap of his hips.

As you said, he’ll never boast aloud.

However, that doesn’t mean you won’t.

“That’s my boyfriend,” you explain to the seventh person that greets you that night, excitedly pointing to where said boyfriend was slowly losing all sense of self by the bar. You don’t know anyone here beside Jungkook, and you’re pretty sure no one in their hammered minds is going to remember who you are anyway, so a little gloating never hurt anyone. “He won the ‘I’m Better Than Everyone Else’ award tonight,” you emphasize to the tipsy woman beside you who only laughs at your exaggeration. You assume she’s like you, accompanying one of the many developers here, because as soon as you finish boasting about Jungkook she moves to brag about someone too.

Truth be told, you spend the whole night re-analyzing the Zootopia movie you saw on Disney+ the other night in your head. So if the little fox fellow didn’t control himself would the city have fallen to ruins? Why was the useless sheep girl so evil and bitter? Why was there an unreal amount of romantic tension between the fox and the rabbit? Whatever, you’ll have to rewatch it some other night, and with your new Disney+ account, you could watch it anywhere you wanted to.

Now, you had never bothered to purchase a Disney+ subscription or even tried to swindle Jungkook for his password before. As far as you know, Disney+ was filled with old tv shows from your childhood, sitcoms that made you laugh when you were ten. There’s nothing wrong with that, but personally, you were a firm believer that that which was perfect should not be touched once finished; in other words, you were utterly terrified you’d rewatch an old episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, only to find out the same joke you’ve been regurgitating for the past ten years doesn’t actually go that way.

However, the harsh reality was that Disney+ was good for a few things. Ugh, you hate when giant corporations provide decent services. Aside from Zootopia, you’ve watched about every animated media on there as well, all of which you replay in your mind as Jungkook has the time of his life with these nerds, knocking back champagne glass after champagne glass.

Anyway, the night ends a little past midnight, and Jungkook who is buzzed on alcohol and high on exhilaration ends up calling an Uber for the two of you. Your apartment— the new one he had not only helped you hunt for but also helped you move into, greatly cutting the cost of movers out with those glistening biceps and thick thighs —is still going through her rebellious phase where the potted plants are trying to take over, courtesy of Kim Namjoon. So for now, there’s a potted plant in an awkward corner that both of you stub your toe against on your way to your bedroom.

You’re thinking Jungkook is going to go to town tonight, given the fact he’s on Cloud 9 and has had his ego stroked by a bunch of dudes for the past couple hours. Maybe you guys can try out the hot role-playing scenario you saw on GirlsWay a few weeks ago, or the handcuffs you impulsively bought from Amazon one Monday night. Or maybe, and this one really makes you flutter, he’ll let you fully take the reins for once.

All those lewd fantasies end up being for naught because just as you shimmy out of your gown (with the help of his hands, of course) and turn to climb him like a tree, he’s on the other side of the room getting your makeup remover out for you. And also talking. A lot. And way more than usual.

“Did you see him, babe?” he sighs, dare you to say, dreamily, handing you the cotton pads as he begins pulling a million pins out of your hair. Slowly and with a lot of confusion, you pull your fake lashes off and begin cleaning your face. “He was amazing.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, having absolutely no idea who ‘he’ is or why Jungkook is so in love with him and not you at this very moment. “But so were you,” you add. Perfect. Stroke his ego and then stroke his cock.

Jungkook sputters at your praise. He’s carefully placing your hairpins on your thigh, cheeks flaming red every time he leans over you. “Was I?” he murmurs, voice sweet in that cute little way it always gets when he’s downed one too many shots of whiskey, enough to be buzzed but not enough to be wasted.

You turn and the pins clatter to the floor and across the bedsheets. “Yes,” you confirm, ignoring his sad huff at the mess you’ve made. Instead, you grab him by the collar of that pink button-up he taunted you with all night. “You were fucking incredible and I think incredible men deserve to have their dick sucked.”

Jungkook laughs at your vulgar statement, holding you gently by the hips as you climb into his lap. “Is that so?” The soft, shy persona is gone now, replaced by the gentle stirring beneath his dress pants. You nod hurriedly, plopping down on his lap and running your hands through his styled hair.

“Yes,” you confirm, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Luckily for you, I know this nymphomaniac who would gladly gobble up your cock at your every command.”

He snorts just as you push him into his back, nose adorably scrunched up. “First of all, you know I hate that word,” he chuckles, finally gracing you with a sweet peck that only makes you want him to fuck you into the fifth dimension. “Secondly, please don’t ever say you’ll gobble my cock up ever again.”

Something inside of you squeals with excitement as he rolls the two of you over, firm body pressing down on yours. “Oh, baby,” you groan, lazily throwing a leg over his hip. Jungkook grins and then decides to entertain you for a few minutes with a sloppy kiss.

You say a few minutes because just as things are heating up, he pulls away. He smiles apologetically. “As much as I’d love to be here with you, I actually have an early morning tomorrow.”

You frown at the sudden change in events. “Huh? They’re gonna make you work the morning after a Gatsby party?” you gasp, sitting up as he gets off of you. With every step he takes away from the bed your heart breaks a little more. “They can’t do that— that’s illegal!��

From the doorway he levels you with a comically raised brow. “No, it’s not.”

You scamper after him down the hall, watch the muscles in his back flex as he pulls his suit jacket on. “You can’t work on our anniversary— that’s illegal!” you offer instead.

He stops at your front door, feet squeezed back into his shoes. “Baby, it’s not,” he rolls his eyes, leaning down to peck your forehead. “It was either I work in the morning or work at night,” he explains, giving your messy hair a soothing caress. He’s looking at you with those eyes, the ones that make your heart lodge itself into your throat and make life a tightrope experience. There’s a devastatingly lovesick part of you that wants this moment, this kind face, to be engraved into your mind for the rest of your life. You want this to be the first and last thought you have and nothing else: just Jungkook’s adoring gaze on you for the rest of time.

The moment ends too soon when he flutters one last peck against your lips. “I’ll be done in the afternoon, okay?”

You pout. “Okay, your place?” you huff, making sure to get one last octopus squeeze around his waist. He nods. “Promise you won’t be late?”

The corners of his gaze soften. “You know I won’t,” he smiles, leaning down to bump your noses together playfully. “Can’t stay away from my pretty girl too long. Besides, I have a gift for you tomorrow.”

It’s with that sentiment and a hammering heart that you let him go. With Jungkook gone, there’s really nothing for you to do now. You took the next two days off in preparation for your anniversary sex, so you don’t have to head to sleep early like usual.

With nothing else planned, you decide on rewatching that Zootopia movie that had plagued you all night, ready to dissect every plot hole to hell and back. You don’t think Jungkook’s seen this movie yet so you add it to your long list of animated movies you’re forcing him to watch.

Part of you is actually really surprised Jungkook left. Well, kinda sorta, very, but not really. Jungkook was a good boy, that much was obvious. He took his job seriously, and if his job wanted him to come in at the asscrack of dawn, then he’d come in before the sun even rose. He was a goody-two-shoes, but even so, you were occasionally able to bring out that darker side in him.

Jungkook working, like actually working in an office setting, was pretty rare though. The dude had a chill job that let him stay home most of the time, and essentially clock in whenever he wanted. Every now and then you were able to convince him to stay, tucking him beneath your body or the covers, depending on the night, and refusing to let him go the morning after.

Once he had eaten you out until the wee hours of the day, ravenous between your thighs, and then went to work the next morning like he hadn’t broken you. Another time you had persuaded him into watching every season of the 2017 DuckTales reboot through the night. When the alarm had rung in the middle of the season finale, he had simply gotten into your shower and gone off to work.

So maybe you were a little confident in your skills, and Jungkook slipping between your fingers tonight was a huge bummer. But there was no use crying over spilled milk, you tell yourself, flinging your bra off somewhere in the corner as you snuggle back into your sheets. You’re ready to tear this Zootopia movie apart, scene by scene.

Even though your apartment is a little cold, you’re comforted by the fact Jungkook will be here to keep you warm all day tomorrow.

All men do is lie.

Despite his promise to come home early the next day, Jungkook ends up lying. The meeting he had been in all morning— the same one that had stopped you from getting bent like a pretzel the night before —drags on well past noon. Then, Kim Namjoon, AKA Jungkook’s favorite senpai in the entire world, catches wind of Jungkook’s success last night and absolutely has to take him out to lunch to celebrate.

You scoff, glaring down at your phone and the impulsive messages you’d sent out an hour ago when Jungkook had first texted you telling you he would be late.

You whirl around to stomp off in the direction of his living room, where all of yours and Jungkook’s favorite foods were growing colder by the minute. You had spent the longest time carefully laying them out, making sure the fried chicken was closer than the pizza but not closer than the breadsticks. Truthfully it’s a nightmare. There are about eight stomach aches worth of food sitting on his coffee table, the greasy stench makes you gag and will certainly stick to your hair for weeks, but none of that mattered because it was all for your beau.

Your very late beau who was making you grow more and more agitated with each minute that passed. Ugh! How inconsiderate of him to test your patience on a day like this. You didn’t want to be upset with him, but this was your first, real milestone as a couple with him. You had wanted to spend the whole day cuddled up, maybe finally tell him how much he really meant to you— definitely not waking up alone with eyeliner crusted eyes and an aching heart.

Deciding you’re being a little too dramatic, you head into the bedroom to calm down. This was fine, you tell yourself, carefully laying out the damn near harlotrous lingerie you had yet to put on. Jungkook would come over soon and everything would be A-okay.

Except for the part it’s actually F-not okay because soon it’s nearing sunset and the food has gone cold so you’ve stocked it into the fridge, and the pretty sheer bra has a wonky wire that’s two seconds away from piercing through your heart, but that doesn’t even matter because Jungkook being late for your all-day anniversary celebration has already ripped it to shreds anyway.

You plop down on the couch in defeat, impulsively opening up the Disney+ app to cry through another episode of Phineas and Ferb. You’ve abandoned the satin robe that came with the lingerie in favor of donning a big t-shirt that smells like him and makes your heart hurt even more. The setting sun paints the living room in muted oranges, the chirping of birds outside the soundtrack to your lonely day.

You end up watching some other cartoon on Disney+, avoiding the Marvel section because you had promised Jungkook he could be there when you lost your Marvel virginity. Well, at least one of you was good at keeping promises, you think bitterly. For a second, you think about randomly watching one of the infamous MCU films out of order just to spite him. But then you think of that soft puppy gaze and how disappointed he’d be in you.

Whatever! It wouldn’t ever match up to the way you felt now.

Anyway, you circle back. When you’re five episodes into Phineas and Ferb you hear the doorknob rattle.

You sit up just as the door swings open, visible from your spot on the couch. He meets your gaze almost immediately, big doe eyes caught in the act. What act? You’re not really sure. In fact, you don’t even know what you’re looking at when he walks in because he’s drowning in shopping bags. His lips twist into a grin. “Honey, I’m home,” he says playfully.

You don’t laugh.

Jungkook frowns, dumping all his bags down at the entrance before waddling over towards you. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, coming to stand before you and cupping your face in his hands. He’s towering over you, so tall and gorgeous but for the first time, you’re not dazed by his beauty.

“Kook, you said you’d be back hours ago,” you say slowly, avoiding his gaze. You try to keep the frustration out of your voice, but you’ve had hours to dwell on it now, and those annoying cartoon characters, though charming at first, had only served to multiply your annoyance.

Jungkook blinks, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I mean… yeah. But I got you presents?” he beams, glancing back at the mountainous pile he made by the door. You look over too. There are some luxury bags squeezed in between other shops you like, the occasional jewelers' logo on the side.

You stand with a sigh, sauntering off into the kitchen with him on your tail. “I don’t want presents,” you mumble, reaching to pour yourself a glass of water. You’re briefly aware of how childish you must seem. Jungkook hovers behind you.

“What? Yes, you do,” he says. “You had an entire wishlist on my Amazon of things you wanted.” It’s his turn to level you with an unreadable expression, slowly crossing his arms over his chest.

Your frown only deepens as you turn to match his stance against the counter. While it may be true that you did indeed have an entire list of impulsive items on his Amazon, that didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them all. Sometimes you just wanted to stare longingly at a pair of satin gloves without actually buying them. You don’t know how to explain this much to him. “They’re not…” you stop with another deep breath. “Forget it. Thank you for the presents.”

Now it’s Jungkook’s turn to question you. “What,” he says in an unimpressed tone, padding over to you before you can escape back into the living room to watch the entire princess movie collection on Disney+. “No, tell me what’s wrong.”

For some reason, that’s exactly what you don’t want to hear. “Jungkook,” you say flatly, narrowing your eyes at him. “You come home six hours after you said you would without telling me why, and normally I wouldn’t care, but today was supposed to be a special day for us.”

Jungkook reels at your bluntness. “Babe, I was out getting stuff for you. I know it’s our anniversary— that’s why I wanted to treat you,” he responds, oddly condescendingly like you’re a child who doesn’t understand what exactly he was doing.

You brush his hands away from your shoulders. “Yeah,” you huff. “Now I know that. But I spent all day waiting for you,” you stress, chest puffing as you grow more and more agitated by his inability to understand you. God, can he let you go now? At least a bunch of animated, geometrically drawn cartoons won’t question you like this and make you feel as childish as he was.

When he doesn’t say anything else you stomp back into the living room, snatching up your phone from its forgotten spot against the couch. “I’m going to bed.”

At that Jungkook seems to kickstart back to life. “What? ___, it’s barely six,” he says as he follows after you into your bedroom. You ignore him, shuffling beneath the covers. In all actuality, you’re going to bed to mope and watch more animated family shows, maybe cry under the guise of the plot just being so sad. Jungkook sits beside you just as you click back on to finish off your episode. “Baby, I don’t get it,” he sighs. “You’re always talking about how much you want this or that, and I go out and get you it all but now you’re mad?”

You bite down on your lip, eyes lasered in on the pictures moving before you. “Jungkook, just forget it.”

“No,” he says, more sternly than he’s ever been with you before. “If there’s a problem, tell me.” There’s a heavy pause, and then he says, “don’t make me waste my time guessing what’s wrong, okay?”

“Waste your time?” you scoff, sitting up with pinched brows that you find match his. “I’m not trying to waste anyone’s time— in fact, that’s hot coming from you, Jungkook.”

He rolls his eyes. “What are you even saying? You’re mad because I took a little long getting presents, for you, might I add,” he huffs, plopping down on the edge of the mattress beside your knee. “You’re always saying you want this and that, but you can’t handle me going out to get those things? Do you hear how weird you sound?”

You whip the covers off of you. “Me talking about things doesn’t always mean I want them,” you defend.

Jungkook snorts. “Yes, it does,” he says. “Anytime you ramble about stuff for minutes like a little kid it’s because you want me to buy it for you.”

You blink. “Like a little kid?” you repeat, stunned by his comparison. Granted, you always knew you were the more childish of the two, but you never thought that would equate Jungkook thinking of you as a child. Something red and nasty flares in your chest. “Well sorry,” you spit, crossing your arms over your chest defensively, “sorry we all can’t be perfectly mature golden boys who would never see the light of day if I constantly wasn’t dragging them out.” You know it’s a somewhat low blow, especially because Jungkook’s told you before how his introverted tendencies were a sensitive issue growing up, but you can’t help it.

Jungkook groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Baby, don’t do this now,” he warns, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Stop acting like this.”

“Like how?” you spit, “like a kid?” Jungkook says nothing, leveling you with a blank stare from the corner of his eye. You roll your eyes, phone falling off your lap. Another episode of Phineas and Ferb had started, the corny opening tune filling the space between the two of you. “At least now I know what you think of me,” you mutter over the guitar riff.

“Oh my god,” Jungkook blurts, sitting up wildly. “Of course I’m gonna think of you as a stupid little kid, look at you,” he seethes, gesturing at the phone beside you. You flinch. “All you do is watch kids shows and whine whenever I wanna watch anything normal adults watch. You complain every single day about the most normal things, like your job? Why should I fucking care that you’re working a dead-end office job in a field you didn’t even study for— that’s not my problem, __!” he snaps, eyes narrowed into little slits. “I just won an award last night,” he says suddenly, voice back to its regular volume. “I’m at the height of my career and I’m only going up, but I can’t even enjoy that because I have to come home and cater to you,” he finishes, a loud scoff punctuating the final word.

You had never imagined Jungkook finally bragging about himself would be at your expense.

A beat of silence passes, the angry glint in his eyes quickly fading away the longer you don’t say anything. You sniff once, turning your head idly to the side where Phineas and Ferb is still blaring loudly from your phone speaker. Picking up the device, you throw it across the room where it hits his closet door with a terrifying bang the breaks the silence.

The sound snaps Jungkook out of whatever shock he’d been in. “Baby…” he says slowly, carefully, like you’re a caged animal that’s just escaped the zoo.

“I’m going home,” you say, also a little too calmly. You saunter over towards his closet where your shattered phone screen glares up at you as you yank a pair of sweats off a hanger. Jungkook is still frozen on the edge of the bed, watching you with wide eyes as you move about the room.

It’s when you’re in the hallway leading downstairs that Jungkook finally snaps out of his daze, scampering behind you as you descend the stairs. “Baby,” he rushes out, loudly bounding down after you, “___, wait,” he gasps, catching you by the kitchen counter collecting your keys. “I-I didn't mean that,” he rushes out, eyes wide and frantic as they flicker over your expression. “I don’t think that—I don’t, baby, please, just… let me explain, please.”

“Jungkook, let go of me,” you respond, shaking your wrist in an attempt to release yourself. He’s not even holding you tightly— he never would—but the sound of your heart pounding in your ears makes your movements jerky and erratic. “I wanna go home.”

“No,” he chokes, cornering you against the counter. “No, baby, please just listen to me, I-I—“

“You what, Jungkook?” you snap, placing a hand on his chest and forcefully pushing him away. He lets you, stepping back with a wobbly bottom lip. “You need to tell me how you’re too good for me? How much I hold you down because I wasn’t lucky enough to get a job like yours straight out of college?” He says nothing, swallowing roughly as you jab a finger into his chest. “Well let me tell you something,” you snarl, chest heaving, “I may be childish and a huge complainer, but I’m not stupid enough to let someone walk all over me like this.”

With that, you make your great escape. Truthfully, you don’t want him to see the tears in your eyes as you yank his door open, stomping down his steps and in the direction of the nearest bus stop. The door opens right after you tug it shut, painting your shadow across the sidewalk. There’s the scrambled sound of house slippers against the concrete that follows you down. “Go the fuck back inside,” you snap without missing a beat.

Sensing your obvious anger, he pauses before he can reach you. “Text me when you get home?” he calls out quietly.

“No,” you respond.

You would never admit to anyone that you spend the entire night eating a tub of mint chocolate ice cream. It’s disgusting and makes you gag, but it’s the only one you have in your apartment. And of course, it was brought over by none other than Jeon Jungkook himself a few days ago. Even when you’re trying to comfort yourself over how mean he was, on your anniversary night no less, you’re plagued by thoughts of him everywhere.

As much as you want to brush his words off, put on that cool girl exterior you’ve maintained since high school, there’s something different about this situation. You guess it’s impossible to brush off such hateful words when they come from someone you love and adore so much.

Were you too childish? You had always believed that side of you was what made your relationship with Jungkook so perfect. The two of you meshed well because of your differences, like yin and yang. So how had he been able to so easily deconstruct every inch of that balance in a matter of a few seconds? Was this perfect reality all in your head this whole time?

You want to tell yourself it was just a heat of the moment outburst from Jungkook, give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s never snapped at you like this before. Of course you’ve fought a couple of times in the past year, but neither of you had ever stooped as low as you did yesterday. Furthermore, the insecure part of your brain says he obviously felt this somewhere in his heart to bring it up at all. What he had said to you wasn’t something someone could make up on the spot.

You don’t text him when you get home, partly to spite him, but mainly because you had left your phone at his place anyway. You know he tried calling you last night because the call log is synced up to your laptop. He called on and off for about thirty minutes before he probably found your phone in his room. Whatever, he can mope in his regret for all you care

—is what you wanna say, but the longer he goes without showing himself to you the more your insecurities and hurt fester. Was this it? Was this the end of what was probably the best year of your life? It’s too painful to think about, to even consider the possibility that Jungkook might have gained a new insight last night and decided, hey, maybe this is for the best after all.

You drown yourself in an ungodly amount of sugar for breakfast, your laptop blaring yet another episode of Phineas and Ferb on the dining table. Muscle memory has you making Jungkook’s favorite pancakes before you can stop yourself, and by the time you do realize, you’ve resigned yourself to the blueberry smell anyway.

There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb.

It’s not.

It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. You open the door with a fright, jumping back when he slumps forward and almost crashes face-first into the floor. “You didn’t call,” Jungkook cries, leaning a little too much of his weight onto you when you reach out to steady him.

The thundering of your heart slows upon registering it’s him. “Kook?” you frown, nose pinched at the ungodly stench of alcohol wafting off his clothes. “Have you been drinking?” you ask even though the answer is staring you right in the face (and in the nose).

He groans, staggering deeper into your arms. You blindly push the door shut behind him, resigning yourself to this new situation while your pancakes grow cold in the other room. “Baaaby,” he slurs, letting you guide him into the living space. He’s unceremoniously dumped onto the couch, half-opened eyes gazing up at you. “Let me,” a hiccup, “explain.”

You won’t lie. There’s a very obvious sense of discomfort sitting in your chest, torn between two paths that you don’t wish to choose between. His skin is warm and flushed like he’s just walked all the way here in this morning sun. You step over to the window that faces down onto the street below. There’s no sign of his car; you would have killed him if he ever tried to drive in this state.

“Did you walk here?” you ask instead, deciding there’s no need for one singular path, not when you can walk straight down the middle, both cleaning him and grilling him at the same time.

Jungkook’s response is delayed, head lolling from side to side as you help him out of his sweater. His skin is sweaty beneath, scorching to the touch. “Uh-huh,” he groans. Jesus, you sort of assumed but him confirming it really set things into perspective.

By no means did you and Jungkook live on opposite ends of the earth. On a good day, a drive from your place to his took about ten minutes. But walking? Easily an hour. Had he walked all the way from his place, drunk on top of that?

You brush his hair away from his face, his eyes fluttering shut at your touch. His lips are pouty yet chapped, dehydrated from the sun and the alcohol he reeks of. “Sit up for me,” you instruct, scampering off to your room for chapstick and water.

“Anything for you,” Jungkook wheezes, throat probably dryer than a desert. When you return, he’s two seconds from face planting into the coffee table and breaking that pretty face of his. You catch him with a hand on his shoulder, keeping him balanced. “Tell me what to do,” he chokes out, voice hoarse.

“Just need you to drink some water,” you say, pressing a cup against his lips. He drinks it, but a drop still dribbles down his chin.

“No,” he groans, catching your wrist in his hand when you reach up to apply some chapstick on him. “Tell me what to do,” he stresses, “to fix this. Fix us.”

His words make you pause, the tube of chapstick hovering over his plush lips. “You don’t have to do anything,” you respond quietly, trying to finish the application so you can pull away.

Jungkook doesn’t let you go. You try to look away, but there’s something about him that looks off. Maybe it’s the raw skin under his eyes, red and swollen. Or the sad droop to those same eyes that hold you captive. Or maybe it’s the subtle tremble in his hands, the fingers that hold tightly to your wrist, not to keep you there but to ground himself. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he rasps out, shakily bringing your hand to his mouth, where he presses one airy kiss to your knuckles. “Tell me ho-how to fix this and I’ll do it,” he pleads, a vulnerable look in his eyes.

Unable to withstand the sheer amount of agony on his expression, you look away. “___, please,” he chokes out, stumbling off the couch in his drunk and desperate haze until he’s kneeling in front of you. “I can’t… I can’t,” he sniffles, tears clouding those pretty eyes you’ve come to love so much. “I don’t know who I am without you.”

You clench your jaw. “You’re Jeon Jungkook,” you murmur, slipping your hand out of his hold to run through his hair. It’s knotted and a little too greasy, two things Jungkook would usually never allow. “This year’s Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award recipient,” you remind him, trailing your thumb across his cheekbone when he turns to look up at you with those big Bambi eyes. “Sweet and shy, but you love being rowdy with your friends. You love movies and TV and organizing your shirts according to fabric type. You work harder than anyone I know and never complain. You date me, even though I’m a huge child,” you smile sadly.

“No!” he jumps, turning that frantic stare back into you. “Y-You’re not— it’s not,” he stammers, words still slurring together. “I’m a liar,” he cries, resting his forehead on your knees. His shoulders shake. “I don’t deserve you,” he weeps quietly. You place a hand on his shoulder. “Y-Y-You make my life so much better, ___, so colorful and fun. I-I wish I knew you in high school,” he admits, “maybe I wouldn’t have been so emotionally constipated now.”

“You’re not,” you reassure him softly.

He disagrees. “You bring out the best,” he hiccups, “the best in me.” Your heart skips in your chest. “I-I love you, you know that?”

You sputter, eyes wide at his sudden confession. “I… love you so much, y’know? I think about you ev-every night, ___,” he rambles, eyes dreamily gazing off into some miscellaneous spot on the wall behind you. “I can’t get you out of my head. Like you're a song, o-on repeat but it’s not annoying because it’s my favorite song, and I could listen to it for the rest of my life, y’know? My favorite song, I know all the words b-because it’s all I think about! I love... My love… I love you so much.”

“Kook,” you rush out, cheeks flaming as you try to pull him away from where he’s slumped over your legs. His passionate speech has you abuzz, body tingling everywhere until you feel overwhelmed, head spinning like you’re on a rollercoaster. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He nods sleepily, seemingly coming down from whatever alcohol induced rampage has allowed him to walk for an hour straight in this searing heat just to confess to you. “Y-You don’t have to say it back,” he continues to stutter as you guide him through the living room on wobbly legs. “I just-I just— can I?” he babbles. “Can I love you, ___?”

You pass through the kitchen space, where whatever you were watching on Disney+ is blaring loudly. It distracts Jungkook for about two seconds before his attention returns to you. When you don’t answer, he presses on. “Is that okay?” he asks, whirling around to face you, catching your shoulders in his hands. He towers over you by the entrance to your bedroom, dark curls tickling your forehead. His eyes are dark and glazed over, both in tears and an emotion so raw and unfiltered it squeezes around your chest until you can’t breathe. “Is it okay for me to love you?” he murmurs softly, knocking his nose against yours.

Your cheeks blaze. “Yes, th-that’s fine, Kook,” you blubber, placing a hand over his chest, where his heart is also hammering away. “Just need you to go rest now, okay?”

He nods sleepily, nudging your nose with his one last time, like a soft almost-kiss, before letting you push him into the room. “Yes, yes,” he breathes, his body finally crashing from his adrenaline spike. He flops down onto the bed unceremoniously, dark waves fanning across your pillows. You try to wiggle him out of his shirt, but it only gets about halfway up his chest before he blindly reaches for the covers. His legs stick out awkwardly, clad in the sweatpants you’ve come to associate with him.

When he’s all swaddled up in your blanket he finally goes limp, tiny snores leaving his lips as he dozes away from reality. You sigh, pressing a palm to his forehead. He’s still warm and clammy, but at this point, there’s nothing you can do but wait for him to sober up.

With a final kiss to his forehead, you leave the room, closing the door behind you before sliding against the wooden surface. There’s a trapped bird in your chest, wildly flapping its wings in an effort to get out, and it’s all stupid Jungkook’s fault in the next room. Stupid Jungkook who demolished and remodeled your heart all in less than twenty-four hours. It doesn’t calm down, even when you rush off into the kitchen for a glass of water, or when you try to immerse yourself in some other show on Disney+. It stays beating against your ribs and your chest until you’re forcing yourself to sit down on the couch and process.

He wakes up a little before dinner. You hear him from the living room, where you’re flicking through the options on Disney+ for the nth time that day. You’ve seen the first fifteen minutes of about twenty different series and movies by now, always growing antsy and abandoning them early on. The only reason you know he’s awake is because the shower turns on for a few minutes, and then his bare feet are heard padding across the hallway back into your room.

By the time he resurfaces in the living room, you’ve resigned yourself to just more Phineas and Ferb, nonchalantly watching the silly cartoon. (Except you’re anything but nonchalant, and your heartbeat rings in your ears.)

Jungkook hovers by the door, clad in a pair of shorts he’s left here before, and a t-shirt you stole from him. “Hey,” he says quietly, lingering by the doorframe. You nod back in response. “Can I watch with you?” Again, another nod.

Slinking over to the couch, he’s rather careful as he sits down, leaving a few inches of space between the two of you. You don’t even think he can see the screen of your laptop until he murmurs, “he’s my favorite character,” when Perry the Platypus appears on the screen.

You hum. “Thought you didn’t like these kids shows?” you ask. You don’t mean it to sound as petty and backhanded as it comes out, but that’s really no one's fault but his own.

Jungkook’s breathing tightens beside you. “No,” he admits, “I don’t. Only watch them because I know you like them.” You contemplate pausing the episode and engaging in a real conversation with him, but at this point, you’re very tired from the events of the last day. Jungkook doesn’t press either, just shuffles more comfortably beside you.

You get about five minutes in, quiet chuckles shared between the two of you, before he strikes. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, so hushed you almost don’t hear it. His hand is resting in the space between you, pinky brushing against yours. “About… being late. And the presents.”

You inspire slowly. “That wasn't even the problem, silly,” you brush off. From your peripheral, you see Jungkook’s slow nod. “I didn’t want any presents,” you mention, “I just wanted you.” You look away from the screen immediately after, pretending like the spot on the ceiling is actually really interesting.

The two of you fall into silence, the animated characters on your screen rapidly chattering away. “Oh,” Jungkook says after a moment.

You roll your eyes. They’re moist but you don’t want him to see. “Yeah, oh,” you parrot back softly, relaxing into the couch again. “Did you eat the food I left out?”

Jungkook shuffles beside you, the soft lull of the speakers soon being cut as he reaches over to pause Phineas and Ferb. A couple of seconds pass and then he’s leaning into you, head resting on your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, placing a palm over the hand he had been teasing for the past few minutes. “I thought I knew what I was doing but I was wrong.”

His voice is so soft and sincere, it makes your chest ache. You try to burrow your face against your opposite shoulder, try to hide the stray tear that escapes out of the corner of your eye. “It’s fine,” you brush off, voice choked off and hoarse.

Jungkook leans up, pecks your cheek so tenderly it makes you go mushy. “No, it’s not fine. I acted like a know-it-all and said something way out of line,” he murmurs, raising his head to look at you. His hand feels warm over yours. It’s the touch you craved all day and yesterday, the warm feel of his body against yours. You’re embarrassed at how easily you melt into it. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long time,” he tells you, holding your hand close to his chest. “I had no right to say those things to you.”

You sniffle, resting your head against his shoulder now. His heart beats loud enough for you to hear. “Was it true?” you mumble. “Do you really think of me like that?”

He shakes his head, his soft breaths fanning across your forehead. “No, never,” he answers. “I think you’re incredible. My brain was just trying to justify my dumb anger.”

You nod, even if you don’t believe it just yet. But that was a conversation for later, you suppose, sometime in the future when you aren’t on the verge of tears and threatening to crumble apart at the simplest word that leaves his mouth.

“I should have come home like you wanted, thought about my words before saying them,” he says, snuggling closer to you. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” you sniffle, covering your face with your free hand as he presses a kiss to the vein that runs over the back of the hand he’s holding captive. “Now it just sounds like I'm just being inconsiderate of your gifts and a crybaby.”

Jungkook kisses your temple softly, gently. “Don’t think about the gifts,” he says. “Just tell me what you wanted to do, doll.”

His voice calms you, has you like putty in his arms. “Watch movies,” you mumble, toying with a thread on your couch cushion. “Be with you.”

He hums. “Then we’ll do that,” he says, reaching for your laptop again. The screen nearly blinds you when it flickers back to life before you, Jungkook’s low breaths against your ear making it near impossible for you to process the titles on the screen. “You liked Disney+?”

Belatedly, you nod. “I like the animated movies,” you admit quietly, the anxieties of before slowly melting away, even more so when he slides his arm around you, pulling you close against his chest.

Unlike other times where he’ll critique the hell out of such childish films, Jungkook says nothing as he starts up the Zootopia movie instead, the same one you had wanted to show him before, right from the beginning. “That bunny looks like you,” you murmur when Judy Hopps first appears on the screen.

Jungkook snorts. “You say that about every cartoon bunny.”

You turn your head to glance at him over your shoulder. He meets your gaze with a small smile you return. “It’s because you’re so cute,” you say softly, lips twisting playfully when his cheeks grow scarlet.

He knocks his forehead against yours, eyes fluttering shut. “Not cute, just lucky,” he chuckles. “Lucky enough to have you.” Your heart turns over in your chest, threatening to burst out of your rib cage at his words. You try to turn in his arms. Before you can say the words that have been sitting on the tip of your tongue for months now, he’s beating you to it once again. “I love you,” he confesses in a hushed whisper, no alcoholic influence.

Something inside of you blossoms, eyes wide as he chastely kisses you. He pulls away without you ever reacting, too caught up in surprise to kiss him back properly. He stays close, curls tickling your forehead as he leans over you. “You don’t have to say it back, I just wanted you to know. I love you,” he says again, long lashes blinking down at you. “So much. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager again, going to the mall to buy a gift for my crush.” He laughs sheepishly, reaching down to tangle your fingers together. “Is that okay?” he asks quietly, pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

It mirrors the confession he’d given you that morning, those slurred words and teary eyes. It had been difficult to pinpoint the legitimacy of it before, the meaning scrambled by his hazy mind. But with him staring at you like this now, like you single-handedly plucked the stars from the sky to put them in those sparkly eyes of his, it makes something inside you ache.

Still, you choke on your own spit. “I-Is it okay for you to love me?” you sputter incredulously, realizing the oddity of the same question he’d thrown at you earlier. But now, you’re both sober and you can really tear apart that sentence. Jungkook nods a little too seriously for your liking. “Are you crazy?” He blinks in confusion, brows pulling together as you slowly but surely lose the last bits of your sanity. “You’re an idiot, Jeon Jungkook,” you huff, “a stupidly handsome, rich, walking dream, idiot who goes out with stupid girls like me.”

“Not stupid,” he murmurs, closing in on you again as he finally understands the truth behind your masked insults. He smells minty and like his favorite body wash of yours.

“No,” you deny. “You’re actually, like, insane. You have a bachelor pad, make enough money to sustain an entire litter of kittens, look and talk like every teenage girl’s dream boyfriend— but you mess it all up by dating evil, conniving hoes like me who lose their shit over Disney cartoons.” He says nothing, watching you with an amused grin as you talk over yourself, basically regurgitating his statement from yesterday except it kinda seems plausible now that you’re over it. “It’s stupid. No, you’re stupid. No— I’m stupid.”

Jungkook chuckles, kissing the corner of your mouth gently. “Done?” he says, a dimple appearing on his cheek. You could kiss it away, but you need him to know the amount of stupidity in this room was astronomically high. “You’re not stupid, baby,” he says. You level him with a look. “Well. You have your moments.”

“Moments?” you repeat, standing up in a hurry that has him flopping down beside you. Your laptop is lost somewhere on the cushions, the voices faded as they grow farther away. “I am so stupid. I called Namjoon a whore for taking you out for lunch!” you cry. “I am the stupidest person in the world.”

Jungkook cackles, standing up beside you. “Yes, yes, you’re my stupid girl,” he teases, tapping the pout on your lips playfully. “So stupid she slanders herself instead of just telling me she loves me too.” He bumps your noses together, dark eyes staring at you almost daringly after his claim.

You fold soon enough. “I love you,” you mumble, “even if I’m too stupid to say it.”

He rewards your confession with a kiss, pulling you into his arms soon after. He sighs, almost wistfully. “Whatever shall I do with my very stupid girl?”

After exactly three minutes of feeling safe and loved in his arms, he abandons the living room in favor of leading you back to your room, where he pushes you down against your mattress. You cling to him, leaving him positioned over you at an angle. His chest presses against yours, arm curled around the back of your head. “Gotta get up, baby,” he laughs.

You shake your head, caging him in your arms. “Nuh-uh,” you murmur, legs wiggling when he places a hand on your hip.

Jungkook chuckles, pressing a kiss against the side of your ear. “Your movie is still playing in the other room,” he reminds you, thumb drawing soothing circles on your hip. You don’t release him, his mindless touch only encouraging you to keep him close. “Babe?”

You say nothing, relishing in the comfort of Jungkook’s presence. His hair smells good and feels even softer against the side of your face. The cotton shirt he found is crumpled beneath your fists, dark blue pattern wrinkling. Finally coming to terms with his new home, Jungkook eventually relaxes into your hold with a sigh.

“Alright,” he hums, patting your hip as he repositions himself more comfortably. “I get it. My pretty girl must’ve missed me, huh?” You nod, soaking in every detail about him in this moment. Jungkook shifts, the hand on your hip suddenly falling over your thigh instead. “Or should I say my stupid girl?” he purrs, hand slipping between your thighs. “My stupid, little girl?”

A gasp catches in your throat when he runs his fingers over the front of your panties. Your legs kick out wildly at the sudden touch, toes curling at the hands you dreamt about all day and night. “Oh,” you pant, each brush of his fingers feeling better than the last.

“What?” he says, mouthing against the side of your neck. His tongue feels warm, but the trails of saliva he leaves have you shivering. “Too dumb to speak?” he scoffs, biting down against a particular spot on your neck. You whimper, unsure if it’s because of his hands or his mouth.

“N-No,” you try to sneer back, fingernails digging into his skin through his shirt. His hands are getting braver now, the pad of his pointer finger dancing over your engorged clit. The sheer material of your panties certainly doesn’t help, each touch feeling like it’s being magnified three times over. And if it felt this good with underwear, you can’t even begin to imagine how it’d feel without.

You don’t have to ponder for long, because soon after Jungkook is slipping his hand beneath your waistband, touching your sensitive pussy head-on. “Kook.”

He uses your momentary vulnerability to ease himself from your hold, finally recoiling enough to smother your mouth with his. You moan in surprise, thighs quivering as he gets to work circling your hardened bud sans your panties. Jungkook isn’t the least bit kind as he kisses you ruthlessly, likes he’s trying to compensate for something with his movements. When he finally pulls away it’s with an obnoxious pop and cherry red lips. He huffs, glancing down to see where he’s got his fingers pleasuring you.

Your thighs are squirming back and forth, closing around his hand every few seconds. Jungkook snorts. “Huh, look at that,” he mutters, trailing down until his fingers are gliding over your quickly sopping folds. “Stupid girl is good for something.”

Your cheeks burn. “Kook, I’m not—“

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Not what? Not stupid? But I could’ve sworn you just spent the last few minutes saying you were,” he drones meanly, landing one light slap against your cunt that makes your hips buck.

You bite down a whimper. “I was just…” you trail off, eyes rolling back when he teases one finger against your opening.

“Kidding?” he supplies. “Well, I wasn’t.” Your heart stutters in your chest, eyes growing wide as he finally pushes himself off of you, propping himself up with an elbow beside your head. His gaze is dark and unrecognizable. “I think you’re so fucking stupid, doll,” he sneers. “And what are you gonna do about it?”

You should have seen this moment coming, the manifestation of that shiny side of the coin finally reaching its full potential.

While Jungkook wasn’t exactly shy about his interests, he certainly wasn’t tripping over himself to tell you every new kinky thing he wanted to try. You sort of guessed he had some interest in this sort of play a few weeks ago when you watched the Barbie movie at his place. A lot of that night had branded itself into your three am wet dreams, but there was one particular moment that stood out to you. That was you, on your knees, with him condescendingly patting your head. Or just last week, you vaguely remember the term slipping through his lips as he pleasured you with The Bullet Bestie.

The thing about Jungkook was that, until last night, he would have never admitted, or so much as even thought, that he was better than you. That was fine because you would say it enough for the both of you anyway. Did you think Jungkook was amazing, an absolute diamond among these measly rocks? Absolutely. (Were you slightly biased because you were his girlfriend? Skip.) However, you also had this insane evil villain complex that made you want to brag about everything you possibly could, especially if that meant bragging about your boyfriend.

Realistically speaking, he was better than you, that much you could look past yesterday’s anger to admit, and not even in a stuck-up, conceited way; he had a really good job, an architecturally amazing house, and a hot girlfriend. Meanwhile, you had a mediocre job, an okay apartment, and an insanely sexy Calvin Klein boyfriend, half of which he had pointed out yesterday. Regardless of how powerful that third factor was, he still outnumbered you three to one.

Sue you, Jungkook was amazing. Anyone could see that! Except, maybe, himself.

And if the only time Jungkook would openly brag about his greatness or establish how much better than you he was, was in a post-fight, sex-induced setting, then you were more than happy to be his punching bag. So long as it was on your terms, and not as a result of his weirdly bottled up feelings.

(Yeah, you would have a long talk about that tomorrow.)

But for now, you pout up at him, clamping your thighs shut purposefully. “You’re stupid too,” you defend, “stupid and mean.”

Something in his expression changes. Suddenly, he’s moving at superhuman speed as he snatches his hand out from where you had previously trapped him between your legs, yanking you up by the front of your shirt. “Mean?” he mocks. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” You shiver, fingers wrapping around the wrist that holds your sweater. “Wanted me to be mean and push you around like a little rag doll?”

Jungkook looks at you for another two seconds, before he’s slowly pulling away from you, leaning back on his knees. His tongue is pressing against the inside of his cheek, jaw tightening from the movement. “Baby,” he says so quietly it instills a prickle of fear in you, tainted with delicious excitement.

“Yeah?” you whisper, sitting up tentatively as you watch him, He was a bit frightening, like a wild animal about to devour you whole.

Jungkook rolls his neck, the joints in his spine cracking as he begins tugging off his shirt. You salivate at the sight, too focused on the sinewy muscles of his body to catch the dark gaze he levels your way. He throws it off to the side, his sleeve of tattoos that wraps around his bicep and begins to crawl down his chest wonderfully unobstructed now. “Eyes up here,” he says and you quickly meet his gaze. He leans forward, muscled arms coming to cage you against the headboard. “Stupid little sluts don’t have the room to make such comments,” he rasps out, unamused expression adorning his normally soft features. “Don’t you think so?”

“I-I don’t know,” you stammer, leaning away as he comes closer and closer, eventually just turning your head to the side to avoid that emotionless look. It’s the wrong move, and Jungkook lets you know as much by forcefully digging his fingers into your cheeks and turning your face back around to meet his gaze.

A hand grabs beneath your knee, tugging harshly until you’re flopping down onto your back with a squeal. You settle with his knee pressed hotly against your core. Jungkook stays towering over you. “Dumb little girls who make me watch cartoons,” he spits, tracing a hand over your chest, molding your breasts beneath his hands roughly enough to make you gasp. “And watch little animal movies on Disney+. Aren’t they just so stupid?”

“So stupid,” you concede, subtly shifting your hips for some desperately needed friction. Jungkook snorts, finally granting you your wish with one rough slide of his thigh against your core.

“I agree,” he says, and surprises you with a hand around your throat as he leans in to properly grind his thigh into you. “All they’re good for is being dumb little sluts with good pussy,” he murmurs darkly, thumb pressing into the side of your neck forcefully. “Sometimes, they don’t even do anything,” Jungkook continues, his other hand on your hip hauling you higher up his thigh. You mewl, soaked panties rubbing roughly against your folds. You miss the soft swirl of his thumb, the gentle prod of his fingers. Even so, you can’t deny this change in Jungkook is doing something to you, riling up a part of you that you hadn’t known existed. Maybe it’s the horniness from yesterday that was left unfulfilled, the one year anniversary sex that was put on pause. “Just lay there and take it, too fucked out and dumb to say anything.”

His fingers loosen for the briefest of seconds and you gasp for breath. “That’s terrible,” you whimper, rolling your hips up into his thigh, so close to his swollen cock.

Jungkook chuckles without an ounce of humor, pressing your foreheads together as he helps grind you to completion. “Isn’t it? I think that stupid little girl is cute though.”

“I’m sorry,” you blurt, vision spotting as he tightens his hand back around your throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you moan, stomach tight from all the stimulation.

Jungkook hums, slowing you down with a tight grip on your waist. “Hm, what are you sorry for?” he croons, pink lips pulling into an evil smile. “You said you weren’t that stupid girl, __.”

You shake your head, trying to roll your hips up again but he’s holding you too tightly now, rendering you immobile beneath him. “I am,” you choke out shamefully, grabbing at the hand on your hip in a feeble attempt to remove it. “I am a stupid little girl.”

Jungkook smirks, leaning down to slot his mouth over yours. “That’s right,” he murmurs, “nothing but a dumb little slut.”

You shiver, opening your mouth when he slides his tongue against your bottom lip. He’s not the slightest bit nice, and more messy than usual. He pulls away with a bite to your lower lip, meeting your trembling gaze with that same unrecognizable glint in his eyes. “Come on, dummy, keep up,” he snarks before devouring you again. You try to, you really do, but he’s moving like an animal today, despite his slow and drunken movements from that morning. So you end up with his saliva dripping down your throat, clinging to the corners of your lips as he begins slowly grinding you against his thigh again. He flashes you a wicked smile, pearly teeth on display for you as he glances down at your messy appearance.

“Are you gonna touch me?” you ask, lower lip trembling at the thought after your desperate rutting. Jungkook purses his lips together in thought.

“Mmm,” he hums. “Don’t know yet.”

You whine. “Jungkook, please,” you whimper, wrapping your legs around his waist. “I need you.”

Jungkook chuckles, running his hand up your waist and taking your shirt with him. He slips his fingers beneath your bra, pushing the wire over your chest as he mouths at your neck. “Cute,” he says. “Can’t do it yourself?”

You tremble, chest arching into him as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “I-I can,” you gasp. “Just feels better with you.”

Jungkook follows your statement with a nip against your skin, tongue soothing over it right after. “Why? Because I do everything better than you? Even make you cum better than you?”

Your cheeks heat up at his blatant ego rearing its head, hands carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. You say nothing, and that only eggs Jungkook on. “Come onnn,” he teases, finally, finally rolling his hips down onto your core. You squeak, head falling back against the pillows as you’re granted the one thing you’d been chasing. “Say it.”

“Say what?” you ask, voice wobbly as he continues to slowly rut against you, the front of his shorts pressing against the soaked crotch area of your panties. “Oh, oh, Jungkook,” you whine.

Suddenly he bites down harshly, teeth digging painfully into your skin. You yelp in surprise, pussy throbbing at the pain that shoots throughout your body. Jungkook pulls away and doesn’t bother soothing over it as he leans up to capture your jaw this time. “Say you’re a stupid little slut who can’t do anything without me,” he purrs, kisses too soft for the words he says.

Your mind blanks, torn between the humiliating phrase he wants you to say and properly checking him in his place. In the end, it’s with a twisted need to please him that you’re repeating the words back to him. “I-I’m a stupid slut,” you whimper, fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he continues pushing you right along the edge. The rope pulled tightly in your core is slowly being pulled apart, threads hanging on for dear life. “Can’t... can't do anything without...”

“Without who?” he asks, reaching down and untying the front of his shorts. “Can’t do anything without who, baby?”

“Without you, without you,” you cry, bucking your hips up against his, the combined movements of both your bodies making you shake like a leaf. “Ah, K-Kook,” you wail, hips stuttering as your orgasm finally swallows you up. Your panties quickly grow wet and icky from your own arousal that pools between your thighs. Jungkook lets you writhe beneath him as you chase your high, mouth sucking a pretty blossom against your jaw.

You know better than to expect the night to end here, especially after seeing the glint that had been in his eyes as he watched you unravel.

He leans close, let’s his nose brush against yours as you catch your breath. “So perfect for me,” he groans, slotting his lips against yours. You can barely keep up with him, languidly going along with his hot tongue. “Perfect, perfect girl,” he murmurs, a stark change from the less than friendly adjectives he used just moments before. “Tell me you love me?” he says softly.

You nod, mind fuzzy as you wrap your arms around his neck. “Love you,” you exhale, letting your fingers knot in his hair. Your proclamation does something to him, makes him grind the front of his cotton shorts hard against you. For someone that was often rough and brutal with you in bed, he sure was sensitive to the mushiest of things.

“Don’t deserve you,” he huffs, hot breath fanning across your skin. He switches gears fairly quickly. “Tell me you hate me,” he begs hoarsely, rutting against your soiled panties. “Tell me I’m a piece of shit and you could do better without me,” he pleads, voice too airy to be another one of his usual sex-induced thoughts.

You shake your head, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he rolls his hips. “It’s not true,” you whisper, “I love you more than you’ll ever understand.”

Jungkook groans, suddenly winding back and tearing your ruined panties down your legs. You gasp in surprise, letting him haul you about in his blind, self-inflicted rage. “Stupid, stupid,” he huffs, though at this point you can’t tell who it’s directed at. With your underwear out of the way, he wastes no time plunging his fingers back into your cunt, bypassing the tight ring of muscle around it without any of his usual care. “You should hate me,” he snarls, lips pressed against your ear.

You moan, back arching at the sudden pleasure that blossoms between your thighs. “I-I don’t,” you gasp, toes curling.

Jungkook groans, the sound traveling down your spine and straight into your pussy. “Stupid girl,” he huffs, slipping an arm around you to pull you so close until you can’t breathe, chests lined up together. His skin is warm to the touch, scorching almost. “Fuck,” he groans, curling his fingers inside of you. You whimper and moan, incapable of staying still beneath him as he tortures you with a thumb to your clit. “Tell me you hate me,” he seethes again.

Despite the fog that’s settled over your mind, you still manage a resolute shake of your head. “N-no,” you cry, digging your nails into his back. They run dark red lines over his skin, making him hiss at the sting.

Whatever punishment he’s trying to put himself through is falling through with your refusal to admit such a thing. It aggravates him even more, your adamant stance on loving him so, and he’s retracting his fingers before you can cum again. “Please,” he chokes, face tucked into your neck. He’s sloppy with his movements; as he pulls his shorts down and kicks them away, he nearly suffocates you with his weight. “I don’t deserve you, ___, please.”

“I love you,” you whimper for lack of explanation. Jungkook leans back, that same madman gaze in his glossy eyes. He’s looking at you in disbelief almost, pouty lips puckered and swollen. Your hands slip from around him, falling on either side of your head.

Like a cobra he strikes, collecting your wrists in one hand he pins above your head. The sudden movement has him leaning in close, lips brushing over yours. His lashes are coated in a wetness he refuses to acknowledge, looking at you like you drive him insane. “If you ever try to leave me,” he whispers, jerky breath fanning over your skin, “I’ll lose my mind.”

He loves you so much it aches.

“I won’t,” you whimper, feeling your own eyes well up with an emotion that consumes every inch of your being. “I’ll never leave you, you stupid, stupid boy.”

A faint smile crosses his features at your words, lips quirking to the side. You relish in it for all of two seconds before he’s ramming his cock into you, your sensitive walls spawning around him. You sob loudly, eyes rolling back into your head. Your legs instinctively hook themselves around his waist, digging into the base of his spine as he rolls his hips into you.

You feel full and complete like he belongs there in this moment and every moment after this. It makes your heart constrict painfully. Jungkook’s soft groans follow your more unraveled noises, the vulgar slapping of skin on skin the underlying melody to it all. “Ffffuck,” he spits, greedily swallowing your moans up. You whine, arms bucking in an effort to hold him close. But he’s determined in his act of restraining you, long fingers tightening around your wrists until they hurt. “I warned you, didn’t I?” he huffs, snapping his hips into you.

Your walls clench around his hard cock, the drag as he exits sending shivers throughout your body. Jungkook’s body towers over you, glistening in sweat as he nails you into your mattress. “Remember what I said?” he asks, voice but a shuddery exhale. You shake your head numbly, overwhelmed by the rough drag across your walls. “All those months ago, when you first came over,” he adds. The hand on your hip abandons its post to cup you beneath the jaw, palm pressing sinfully against your throat enough to block the tiniest of airflow. “I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he murmurs, voice deeper than the pits of hell. He licks a fat stripe over your cheek like you’re nothing but a sweet for him to devour. “Do you remember that, pretty girl?”

You nod jerkily, hips arching up into him when he thrusts into you again. It’s a memory that replays in your mind every so often, your first night with the man you had planned to humiliate over a mere misunderstanding, now your boyfriend of one year. “Want that,” you gasp, tears blurring your vision when he begins picking up the pace. “Wanna be y-your pretty girl forever.”

Jungkook groans, kissing the corner of your mouth. His thighs are some magnificent beings, keeping his pace consistent even as he loses himself in his overwhelming need to kiss you. “Always,” he manages, soft lips pressed against yours. “I won’t ever let you leave.”

A shriek tears itself from your lips as he picks up that harsh piston, releasing your jaw to hold both wrists above your head. It makes his curls dangle in front of his eyes, covering that beautiful dark gaze. It makes his thin little necklace swing back and forth too, though it’s too small to actually touch your face. The rhythmic swing has you hypnotized, just like everything else about Jungkook.

With the length of his hair, you’re left staring at his lips, pulled taut between his pearly white teeth. The word from before sits heavy in your chest, begs to drip from the tip of your tongue. But he’s moving too fast and too hard, scrambling your thoughts until all you can think about is the cock plunging into your heat. His name falls from your mouth like mindless blubber instead, arms thrashing as your second orgasm swallows you up. It sends you crashing, body spasming as the sheer euphoria waves over you slowly and then all at once.

“Perfect,” he grunts, leaning down to slot his mouth against yours, “my perfect girl.” Your cum makes the sound of his hips erotic, the loud squelching following your panting. Still sensitive from your high, your body unconsciously tightens around him, keeps his cock from fully leaving. It brings a soft whine out of Jungkook, one he tries to muffle against the side of your face.

“Inside,” you whimper, even though your body feels like jelly beneath him. “Cum inside, Kook, please,” you beg.

It only takes a few more thrusts into your leaking hole for him to finally reach paradise, hips stuttering when that first shot of pleasure hits him. “Fuck, fuck,” he growls, wildly snapping his hips into your achy cunt. You moan, feeling just about brainless at the overstimulation. His cum leaves you full, almost makes your belly bulge from it. When he’s done he doesn’t bother pulling away, simply slumping into your limp form. His cock, though quickly softening, serves as a plug for the cum threatening to spill out of you.

There’s a muted noise coming from the other room, the faint sound of the mail slipping through your letterbox, the quiet chattering of the street outside. And of course, the loud blaring of your laptop playing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Jungkook registers it at about the same time as you, a soft chuckle leaving his lips.

He pushes off of you soon after, leaning on his palms over you. He’s got that molten look on his eyes, the heat of a thousand suns burning behind those irises as he looks at you. Like he can’t get enough, even though he’s just about taken everything there is to take. “Love you,” he murmurs quietly.

A drop of sweat rolls over his forehead, clinging to the end of his eyebrow. You reach up and brush it away, let your hand trail down his face to cup his cheek. Immediately he leans into the touch, eyes falling half shut. “Love you more,” you respond.

“Impossible,” he scoffs.

Soon after you’re both stumbling out of bed, clothes haphazardly shrugged back on as you drift through the living room. There’s a thin, hot pink package sitting at the door, just having slipped through the letterbox; the stark Sexuality Unleashed logo is printed on the visible side, so you have to wonder what Doyeon could have possibly ordered this time that could be so thin. The laptop is awkwardly sandwiched next to a throw pillow, barely open a crack. Jungkook retrieves it, sets it on his lap as you scamper over to the couch.

“More Phineas and Ferb?” he asks quietly. He hates it, you know he does. And still, he wants to watch it with you.

You nod. “Please.”

He isn’t so concerned with the plot as you, clicking some random episode to start. You snuggle into his side, quietly singing along to the opening. After a moment, Jungkook speaks again. “Phineas and Flirt?” he offers cheekily.

You roll your eyes. “That might’ve been your worst one yet,” you sigh, trying to drown out his indignant huff by focusing on the screen.

“I don’t exactly see you coming up with these,” he points out, obviously feeling wronged.

Without missing a beat you say, “Disney+ and bust.”

epilogue

commercial break one ; the resolution

#goldenclosetnet #networkbangtan #bangtanhq #ksmutclub #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jeongguk smut #jjk smut #jeongguk smut #bts smut #jjk♡#jeon jungkook #mine

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dat-town · 3 years ago

Text

wish you were here

Characters: Mark Lee & you

Setting: wish dragon au (and a bit of aladdin because mark even has a tiger in their garden like jasmine did. don’t ask why, just blame the regular mv), childhood best friends to lovers (at least there’s potential?)

Genre: fluff and humour

Warnings: mentions of a sick animal and a wild animal kept as a pet in a huge garden (just like jasmine’s tiger, it’s very tamed)

Summary: A magical teapot, a dragon that wants everyone to be happy and an old friendship being revived. Oh yeah, have I told you that you have 3 wishes?

Words: 6.4k

For @restlessmaknae 💕

When your mother told you you got delivery to your childhood home, you certainly did not expect this: a brown box as big as a small watermelon with your old Canadian address and MARK LEE scrabbled next to your name as another recipient but no sender. Not to mention, the first stamp on the thing was dating back to the early 2010s. Where the hell was this package for 10 years? And what would you and your old neighbour slash best friend have gotten together?

Okay, first things first:

You and this clumsy, kind of cute kid, Mark had been quite tight while growing up. You were born in the same year, only a month apart, and his family lived in the house next to yours in the suburbs of Vancouver, so it was kind of natural. You two might have been against the world kind of comrades, playing hide and seek when you were six and wondering about whether time travelling was possible through black holes at twelve. But no matter how close you used to be, you fell out of touch when Mark's family moved to the other end of the world, back to Korea, their roots when you were fourteen. You slowly forgot about him, and started university in the city, moving away from home, so nothing really reminded you of him ⎼ and your stupid, big fat crush on him that you had no courage to tell him about in middle school ⎼, nothing until this box.

You put the delivered package on your kitchen table while you make some dinner for yourself out of what you have gotten during grocery shopping earlier just before you picked up the mysterious stuff at the post office. You eye it suspiciously over your pasta, really not wrapping your mind about what it could be but instead of annoying yourself with this pointless curiosity, you put your fork down and stand up to open it. It’s a struggle at first, the box being secured with multiple adhesive tapes over the years but when you finally get rid of all that and can look inside of it, an intense feeling rushes through you… immerse disappointment.

“A teapot? For real? What were we thinking?” you furrow your brows taking the small, green and pretty old teapot into your hands. It looks like a piece of a traditional Asian set with its jade colour and dragon pattern. It couldn’t have been in a much better shape 10 years ago either seeing how wayworn it is but still, you expected something more… exciting? Something funny that might or might not give you an excuse to look up Mark Lee on the internet and message him for the sake of old times. But how lame it would be to befriend him on Facebook only to tell him that you got delivered a teapot under both your names. Hah, you would rather not embarrass yourself like that.

You shoot one last glance at the teapot before leaving it on your counter and going back to your food, you successfully forget about the whole ordeal. You carry your life on with only one small difference: Mark Lee back on your mind after long, long years.

It was just a small crush, you tell yourself, sighing as you look into the mirror, absentmindedly wondering how he’s doing. Does he think of you sometimes as well? Did he go to music college like he has always wanted? Is he happy? You wish he was even if he’s half a world away and with that thought you think it’s time to go to sleep despite the upcoming weekend days. You don’t want to mess up your sleep schedule over some boy but as soon as you pull the blanket over your chest and close your eyes, something explodes in your kitchen.

You jump out of bed faster than lightning, in slight panic over the fact that your neighbours will hate you for bothering them late at night and your landlord would kill you if you managed to blow up your microwave. But the sight that welcomes you is like no other that you imagined. The whole room is covered in thick pink glittery smoke. Like your worst Barbie nightmare.

“What the⎼” you cough, waving your hands to clear the air and once it dissolves into nothingness with its weirdly cotton candy smell, there’s a boy in the middle of it all, sitting cross legged on your kitchen counter so casually as if he owned the place. His pink-ish purple hair hangs into his eyes and he seems to find your coffee machine strangely interesting. You grab the first thing you can ⎼ a blender ⎼ and hold it up in defensive before yelling at the boy: “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”

The stranger’s mouth pulls up in a charming smile, his eyes sparkle as he turns his attention to you, hopping off the counter. He’s all thin and long limbs, so you hate how you hate to look up at him as he walks towards you before bowing ceremoniously.

“Hello, sorry for the sudden appearance, I just couldn’t wait any longer! I’ve been stuck in that teapot waaay too long. I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. My name is Taeyong, I’m a wish dragon and you’re my new owner,” he smiles and what he says makes absolutely no sense.

“A wish dragon?” you mumble in shock, looking around to see if this is just another prank of Johnny. You wouldn’t be surprised to see him jump out from under one of the cupboards. Or maybe you just fell asleep and you’re dreaming. Yeah, that seems like a realistic scenario.

“Ah, yes! I know I don’t look like it but modern times require modern solutions. Most people freak out because of my dragon form, so human it is,” the boy who seems only a few years older than you grins as he’s chatting and you have to give it to him, he takes this role pretty seriously. “You have three wishes as my owner. You can ask for anything as long as it’s not about death or love.”

So you got yourself someone who thinks he’s basically a genie? Oh gosh, is he that drunk?

“Aha, very funny. I’m too tired for this prank, so I would appreciate it if you left the same way you came...” you point towards your window because there’s no way he came through the door. Putting down your blender because the guy looks pretty harmless despite his crazy blabbering, you move to go back to your bedroom.

“No, no, no, I can’t do that,” the boy, Taeyong as he introduced himself, appears in front of you within a second and grabs your shoulder as if he could shake some sense into you. He looks pretty desperate. “I can only get a new owner if I fulfill all wishes of yours. It was super stuffy in that box the last decade, you know.”

At that excuse you let out a laugh.

“You don’t even fit it the⎼”

“You were saying?” Taeyong is suddenly nowhere near ahead of you but instead a small creature, supposedly a dragon, in the size of your palm flies in front of your eye level. “It’s magic!”

Okay, now that sight makes you feel like it’s you who is drunk. Or worse.

“Am I dead?” you have to ask in a small, uncertain voice, trying to think back what could have happened. Maybe that explosion literally blew your apartment up? But it hurts when you pinch your arm and turning back into his human form, Taeyong wants to prove the very same thing. Not the hurting but the not dead part, obviously.

“No, you’re very much alive and a happy owner of a wish dragon. Not permanently, of course, but still,” he tells you as he drags you onto your couch in the living room. As if sitting down could help processing all this.

So you have a wish dragon in your home, a magical creature that can casually switch between its dragon and human form and he says you should wish for three things, so he could leave and you could go back to your old, boring life without magic and things that scare you to death at 11PM.

“Can I ask… why? Why me? I’m not really owner-material,” you whisper because heck yeah, you even managed to kill your cactus before. Taeyong purses his lips as he sits down, a hand at his chin.

“Well, it’s unusual indeed to have a peasant girl, no offence, as my owner but as far as I know, you and your friend asked for a sign that magic was real.”

Oh, you remember that, being so obsessed with shooting stars and other stuff like that, you two used Mark’s brother’s computer to browse the internet, trying to find evidence about all that. You were kids wanting to believe in a world beyond the one you knew. But...

“That was like 10 years ago,” you furrow your eyebrows, not getting the timing.

“Well, sorry, you weren’t put on the top of the Heaven wish list and the shipping from Shanghai to Vancouver isn’t the fastest either,” Taeyong shrugs as if it was supposed to be natural. As if that was the most unbelievable thing. Well, delivery services are sometimes a pain in the ass, that’s true but getting a wish delivered by Heaven was something you would have never thought of and it all drains down on you. Strangest realisation of your life.

“So… it’s all real,” you whisper ahead of yourself: magic, dragons and all that. You could basically see your old best friend’s I told you so smile and let out a soft chuckle. “I wish Mark could meet with you, too.”

At that the guy ahead of you claps his hands and rubs them together, creating the same purple smoke from before. You look at him alarmed.

“Your wish, my command,” Taeyong grins and lifts his hands and before you could make a sound of protest because gosh, you didn’t mean it literally, you feel the ground move under your feet and you’re falling, into the darkness but despite shutting your eyes automatically, fearing the impact of the crash, nothing comes. Only the smell of soy sauce in the air and warm sunshine on your skin… Wait, what?

Your eyelids fly open and you notice in shock that you’re not in your flat anymore, ready to sleep. Instead, you stand in the middle of a goddamn street somewhere in Korea based on the signs still in your PJ shorts and tee. Oh my gosh! You hide in an alley right away and yank the seemingly proud Taeyong with you.

“I didn’t tell you that I meant right now! I can’t meet Mark in my PJs and I need my phone and wallet to function anyways. Not to mention, I don’t speak Korean at all...” you ramble panicking, the realisation that you’re indeed on the other side of the Earth due to some magic is yet to register. But the awkwardness from the stares you have just gotten has already turned you bashful.

Listening to you, the wish dragon seems sheepish and slightly embarrassed as he scratched his nape, his colourful hair falling into his cast down eyes.

“Oh… sorry. I got so excited over the wish that I didn’t think about it! It’s been a while since I did teleport magic but hey, I still have it in me. Anyways, sorry. Phone and wallet, you said? Here you go,” he pulls out something from his pants which magically seems to be indeed your belongings. That definitely makes things earlier.

“Uhm, thanks. Where are we exactly?”

“Ah, well you mentioned your friend Mark Lee, so we’re here. Well, one bell away because I did remember that it’s rude to intrude other’s houses without permission first,” oh now, you know, you snicker internally and gulp because hell, even if you wanted to see Mark, you wouldn’t have thought that the meeting would come so soon. You didn’t have enough time to prepare yourself mentally.

“So… you’re telling me that this… is where Mark lives?” you point at the impressive apartment complex on the corner of the street but Taeyong shakes his head.

“Nope, This is where your Mark lives,” he says and before you could object about the ‘your’ part, the dragon points at the other side of the road at a luxurious house with a huge garden, basically a palace. Seeing the beautiful fountain, the modern and yet traditional Korean style building beyond the fences makes your jaw drop.

“Hahaha, alright for a magic dragon you must have made a mistake. There’s no way the Mark Lee I know lives here,” you look back at Taeyong finding it funny that the kid who used to wore his favourite tees until his mother basically threw them out would live at such a place.

“Mark Lee, korean name Minhyung, supposed to be 22 years old internationally soon. Bad eyesight, contagious laugh, clumsy but has surprisingly good reflexes, gets embarrassed easily. Sound familiar?” Taeyong crooks a brow at you as he reads the information off from a parchment he just took out of his pants. Everything he listed is just so Mark that you’re left in disbelief.

“Uuh… that sounds about right.”

“His father hit it big in 2016 with a tech company, their net worth has too many zeros to count,” Taeyong explains, seeing how surprised you were over the fact that he lived a lavish life like this. Not that he doesn’t deserve it! Mark is such a sweetheart, so of course, you would only want the best for him but as if half the world wasn’t enough, now you have another huge gap between you.

“Gosh, I really can’t believe this. How am I supposed to just ring the bell and say hello after so much time?” you sighed with your head in your hands. “Argh, I need to buy some clothes and change.”

Taeyong approves the idea based on how enthusiastically he hollers, you wonder why nobody on the street seems to pay no attention to him. Maybe only you see him, just more reason for you to be crazy.

“Good idea because we’re having dinner with Mark!”

“What?” you look up in shock, not following through. Taeyong grins down at you, flashing a giddy smile and with a twirl he’s changed from his baggy, casual clothes to something more chic but still laidback.

“Your wish was him meeting me, so I arranged everything. I can't meet him without you and the teapot there, you know,” he explains as if it was supposed to be obvious. You aren't ready yet though.

“You just want to eat all the fancy delicious food he has,” you squint at him suspiciously and the dragon stays silent, so you must be right. He laughs nervously.

“Maybe, but can you blame me? I haven’t had a feast since a literal decade!” he hollers and somehow you really cannot find it in yourself to be angry at him. You are in Seoul for god's sake after all and magic is real, you can put up with the inconvenience of buying clothes and making yourself look decent before dumping all this surprise on Mark.

An hour later you stand in front of the gates of the Lee mansion and nervously you wipe your sweating hands into your dress. You can totally do this, you just say hi to an old friend, it's not like you're afraid he wouldn't remember you, hah, of course not–

"Y/N!"

You whip your head at the call of your name to the source of that all too familiar voice. Sure it's deeper than you remember but there's no mistake in whose it is. Plus, who else would call your name in South Korea of all places.

"Mark, hey!" you wave the boy who just got out of one of the fanciest cars you've ever seen in your life. And yet, despite the Prada suit and expensive shoes, styled hair and Swiss watch on wrist, Mark Lee still has that goofy little smile and the doe eyes that used to make you weak in the knees. Hah, who are you kidding? They still do.

"Oh my god, dude, you… you got pretty," Mark jogs up to you and having no filter like always he blabbers immediately only to stutter as his ears turn red. It was so him talking before thinking, so you didn’t really mean to dwell on his words. Although you felt your cheeks dusted with pink soon enough. "I mean, it's really good to see you! I was so surprised to see your name in my calendar for today's dinner! You should have told me you were coming to Korea, I would have picked you up at the airport."

His calendar? Ah, of course, he must have been busy and all that. You wouldn’t have been surprised to see an assistant run after him at this point, so you wonder how your wish dragon magically put you onto his list of important people to meet. Gosh, it was so weird.

"Ah, I have a funny story about that…" you chuckled to yourself but before you could have get out anything, even a please, can we go to a more private place? Mark’s eyes zero on the guy next to you and his eyes grow comically wide.

"And uhm, who is your friend?" he points at Taeyong who waves him in exchange with a kilowatt smile. He looks back at you with his mouth agapé. "Oh my god, you came to invite me to your wedding?"

He says oh my god way too many times for an eloquent rich kid, he really is the Mark Lee you knew.

"No, never! I mean, of course, I would invite you but Taeyong and I– I literally met him on my way here," you explain hastily cursing yourself for the silly lie. You came to tell him the news not to try to make it believable.

“I heard there’s food,” the wish dragon pipes in very helpful and you shoot him a disapproving glance he doesn’t notice. Luckily, Mark doesn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, yeah, of course, dinner! Come on in, let’s get you two settled,” he grins albeit a bit awkwardly as he leads you through the gate after opening it with his card.

On the way through the very, very, very big garden, he’s chattering about how he misses the Vancouver weather, especially on humid, hot days like this and talks about how he thinks the fountain in their yard is a bit too much but his mom loved it and then before you know it, you sit by a huge dining table with fine food in front of you. Suddenly you can’t decide whether you're grateful for Taeyong’s shameless presence – he digs into the jjigae right away – because at least the situation isn’t awkward because of your silence or you’re annoyed by it because you must seem like a weirdo because of him. That’s why you decide to rip off the bandage and tell Mark as soon as the last maid has disappeared too.

“Okay, so actually I came here because I have a surprise,” you speak up, probably too serious because the boy almost chokes on his food due to how fast he turns his head towards you.

“More surprise?” he coughs out and you offer him a glass of water which he takes with a smile.

“You literally won’t believe this one!” you assure him and wait until he gulps down the drink. Only then you point to Taeyong and tell him that your childhood wish has come true.

Mark almost falls off his chair this time.

Not after you tell him that though. He laughs at that with that wheezing laugh of his as if you told the joke of the century then pats you on the shoulder murmuring That was a good one, bro and turning back to his food. But then you look at the magic dragon pointedly and Taeyong puts down his chopsticks with an exaggerated sign. Then he flexes his magic: turning into his dragon form among additional sparkles and Mark suddenly looks like he’s about to faint. He reaches out to tap on your shoulder while not taking his eyes off the wish dragon.

“Am I dreaming?” he whispers and honestly, you totally get his reaction while Taeyong mumbles something about ‘people these days not believing in dragons’ as he shows off all the things he could do: gift riches, make one stronger than they are, giving skills of whatever one wants. He starts rambling about how this one Chinese emperor became wealthy thanks to this, how that one actor in martial arts and all this before changing back to his human form and he continues eating his pasta like nothing ever happened.

“I can do this all day,” he shrugs as if he didn’t just perform the coolest magic tricks.

“This… this is the best thing ever!” Mark exclaims with those sparkles in his eyes you missed so much. He was always so excited about new things and it automatically makes you smile how he bombards Taeyong with million questions like: ‘So you are the wish dragon that grants wishes?’ or asking him about his scales, his unique color, how it feels to live in such a small teapot, how old he is and the dragon glows under all the attention. Can’t blame him but Mark has always been so curious about the world, it’s endearing.

“So your first wish was to meet me?” he turns to you after long minutes of interrogating Taeyong and suddenly, under the spotlight you don’t know what to do with yourself. You can feel yourself blushing because you didn’t necessarily mean to wish for that but it’s not like you’re regretting it, it’s just… you don’t want him to misunderstand.

“I thought you should meet him, too, after all the package was delivered for the two of us,” you look down, trying to sound nonchalant while picking your food, avoiding Mark’s gaze. No matter how open armed he welcomed you, you still aren’t convinced that it’s okay to be here because the more time you spend with him, the more you would like to stay a part of his life. “It’s just… I wasn’t really sure we could ever meet again. We didn’t keep contact after you left.”

With dropped shoulders, you try not to sound too downhearted because of what happened because you know all too well, it wasn’t his fault, it was a family decision and look at him, it did good for him! He seems happy, they live in a practically mansion but most importantly, he didn’t seem to change with the wealth. He might wear expensive clothes but under it all he’s still the boy with the most loveable smile.

“I… I was thinking about you a lot, I just thought you forgot about me,” Mark admits with a sheepish smile, tucking his hair behind his ear shyly. He really still is the same and it’s playing silly little games with your heart. If this was a cheesy Disney movie, a slow bgm would start to play as you look into each other but your moment is broken when Taeyong accidentally kicks into his chair as he stands up. At first he looks alarmed but then giggles.

“I will just… go. Don’t mind me,” he disappears like smoke with a wink, leaving you two alone at which Mark lets out a woah. You chuckle at his cute reaction, heart doing somersaults in your chest.

You thought it would be awkward, just the two of you alone after long years but Mark has this thing that he makes people feel comfortable around him, so it’s actually quite nice. You catch up on everything and anything that comes to your mind: old neighbours, studies, friends, what are you doing now and what would you like to do, too.

After finishing the delicious dinner, Mark offers a home tour which you would never refuse and you jaw drops at the huge crystal chandelier in their living room as well as their swimming pool but your favourite place in the whole mansion is Mark’s room because it’s just so him. You can’t describe it well but the moment you step inside, it feels like home. It’s cozy to the point it makes you want to cuddle a pillow. It has colours of pastels, a synthesizer here, a guitar there, posters of singers framed on his wall and vinyl records hanging down. His window has a view of sunset and Namsan above their green garden and although you haven’t been in Seoul before, you’re pretty sure it’s your favourite place in the whole damn city, too.

“Wait, there’s someone I would like you to meet,” Mark suddenly exclaims while you’re looking through his pictures and he pulls you out of his room, out of the house, into the garden: You giggle all the way as he’s being so secretive about it but then your steps halt unexpectedly and the hand you have in Mark’s yanks him back.

“Mark… why is there a tiger in your garden in the middle of Seoul?” you ask as quietly and as immobile as you can. You don’t want to attract the sleeping animal’s attention to yourself. But to your biggest surprise, the boy just laughs, his thumb caressing your skin soothingly.

“She’s Jasmine and she won’t hurt you,” he reassures you but needless to say, you’re not too calm and you’re pulled close to the wild animal that lifts its huge head towards you lazily. “She was abandoned by her mother as a cub and she was outcast in the zoo because she’s a bit sick, so she has always been weaker than her siblings. Dad made a donation and we have raised her since she was young.”

You hiss when Mark reaches out without fear but the tiger basically purrs as he strokes down his fur at the neck. You watch in awe as this big wild animal becomes a soft cat under the hands of Mark Lee. When the boy encourages you to pat her too, you hesitate but he promises you that it’s gonna be alright and you take a leap of faith.

“What’s her sickness?” you wonder aloud as your fingers get lost in the soft fur of the tiger. You hope she’s not in a lot of pain.

“It’s an immune system thing, not sure what exactly but she wouldn’t have survived this long in the wild,” the boy tells you and his mouth curls up in a smile when Jasmine licks your hand. It seems like you’re tiger-approved. You look into its warm brown eyes and your heart churns at the thought of her condition.

Mark tells you stories of Jasmine, about that one time she crashed his birthday cake or how much she likes to swim with him in their pool during summer and gosh, you could listen to him go on and on forever. You’re only reminded of the reality, that all this is just a possible one-time thing, a weekend getaway with magic when Taeyong shows up in swimwear, ready to crash in said pool.

“I guess he might have been bored in that teapot,” Mark laughs, not minding at all. He even offers you to join but you have a better idea.

“Taeyong, I have my second wish!” you call out for the wish dragon who’s suddenly much more excited about that than the water. He’s beside you in a moment, beaming and curious. You glance at Mark with a soft smile before looking at your personal genie confidently.

“I wish Jasmine would be healthy,” you whisper, playing with the tiger’s furry ears which she seems to enjoy. You were a little bit afraid the dragon would say it’s not possible, that he can’t cure sickness but to your relief, he just grins.

“Your wish, my command,” he nods and puts a hand over the animal. Nothing but a smoke of purple signals the magic being done but you believe in it and so does Mark by the looks of it. He reaches out for your hand and squeezes it gently.

“Thank you,” he smiles and you smile back. He used to be your best friend after all, it’s the least you can do for him.

Mark convinces you to stay the weekend and there’s no way you could tell no to him, not when he clears his schedule just for you. He never complains about how busy he must be working for his father’s business while being a music major at a local university. All he ever talks about is the places he wishes to show you and he takes you around Seoul as if he was your certificated tour guide. It’s lovely how enthusiastic he is about it while what really matters to you is the time you spend together. He makes sure you two take a million photos to remember by, Taeyong posing on half of them since he joins you on your little trips and sometimes it’s just the two of you watching the wish dragon being genuinely in awe by modern technology, 10 years is a long time after all.

On the last day before you have to go back to Vancouver (thanks to Taeyong’s kind offer to take you the same way you came back since he misunderstood you, you don’t have to sit through a 10+ hours flight and you have more time), Mark not only tries to make you breakfast despite having an in-house chef (his eggs are ugly as heck but you appreciate his efforts and can’t help but coo at his dreamy smile under that grey hoodie when you tell him it tastes yummy) but he also introduces you to his friends in Korea. Of course, they tease you (mostly Mark) about where he has been hiding you but it’s all chill and fun you’re not quite ready to say goodbye. But you should go because the more you stay, the more you don’t want to leave. You’re lucky enough for this chance to reunite with Mark but all good things end eventually.

“Let’s not disappear from each other’s life again, okay?” the boy grins at you as you’re ready to go, Taeyong already working on his magic.

“Yeah, let’s not,” you agree easily, looking forward to your video chatting and constant texting even if it’s from the two opposite ends of the Earth with a terrible time zone difference.

You glance at the wish dragon who’s drumming with his fingers while pursing his lips as if he was waiting for something and you let out a huff before working up the courage to actually do something about these feelings inside of you. You might have regretted not confessing in middle school, you have spent years wondering about the what ifs, so you don’t want to make the same mistake twice but still, you want to give Mark a chance to ignore it all if he wants to. So you step forward and wrap your hands around him as you hug him close. It’s obvious that your action takes him aback, he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands and his body tenses under you but it all melts as you say those words that have been threatening to fall from your lips all this time:

“I have missed you.” you confess, honest and based on the hitch in his breathing, Mark must be surprised. You can’t blame him though, you just wanted him to know. You step back with a weary smile, his big Bambi eyes on you but before he could say anything you nod at Taeyong and you feel yourself falling, purple fog pulling you in. A few moments later you’re back in Vancouver, in your apartment, without him.

The first few days pass in a blurr, you can still barely believe what just happened. Your weekend with Mark feels like a too good dream but Mark kept his side of promise and texted you almost immediately as you left. He sends you selfies, songs that remind him of you and you talk about your days like you never did before. Still, it feels like you’re dancing around certain topics which are basically the elephant in the room and maybe that’s why Taeyong tries to cheer you up in his own way. Though, he soon realizes that you not being happy isn’t the problem, you are happy, you just… miss Mark more than you ever did.

“Enough of moping, you still have a wish left!” Taeyong exclaims, throwing himself onto your bed. “Come on, close your eyes, imagine what you want the most in the world and make a wish!" he singsongs. However, before you could even just indulge him, your phone pings with a new notification.

fullsun00 tagged you in their post!

You click on it right away, wondering what Mark’s friend Donghyuck is doing online at 1AM. The uploaded post turns out to be a photo of you and Mark when you all hang out near Han river. You were too busy at the time laughing at how the boy almost lost his whole scoop of ice cream before he could have had a single bite to notice his smile while looking at you. Based on his caption Donghyuck apparently wasn’t.

fullsun00: just old friends, they say. friends my ass @buttercupyn @onyourm__ark

You click your tongue wondering what Mark thinks of the callout but you press like on the post anyways. You put your phone aside before you could see how his other friends join the teasing in the comment section.

“Actually, I do have my third wish,” you speak up as you turn to Taeyong before he could make a remark on your tinted cheeks.

You’ve been thinking a lot about it during the past days. You could wish for anything but you’re at a point of your life where no riches or fame would make you happier because you’re happy enough just the way it is. It might not be perfect but you don’t want to be selfish and you want to make decisions you won’t regret: like catching up with Mark, curing his tiger and bringing happiness into the life of somebody who only ever served other people in his life.

“Ooh, what is it?” Taeyong claps, giddy as if he was waiting for this to happen. He probably did.

“I wish you would go on a vacation and enjoy life,” you tell him but unlike his usual reaction, this time the dragon’s smile fades and he blinks at you, confused.

“You could ask for anything in the world and that’s what you want? Are you sure?” he furrows his brows, not quite believing your words but you just smile, knowingly.

“Yes, Taeyong, I’m sure.”

“Your wish, my command,” he bows with his hands put together and with a twirl suddenly he’s in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, looking as ready for a holiday as one can be. You chuckle and tell him to just go, you’ll be fine.

You’re fine, you really are. Life goes on, you study and work, you laugh with your friends, you video call with Mark regularly and his friends are regulars on your social media, too. It’s just sometimes the feeling of missing something hits you harder than other days. Especially when you’re looking through the pictures you have from your Seoul weekend.

“I wish you were here,” you whisper ahead of you at one particularly good photo of Mark and the sunset, smiling at you behind the camera. You miss his smile, the cute wrinkles around his eyes when he crunches his nose, the sound of his laughter, his hand on your wrist… you miss him.

Ding-dong.

You stand up startled at the sound of your flat’s bell, running to the door to open it even though you have no idea who it could be so early on a Saturday morning. Not having a better idea, you expect it to be either a neighbour of your landlord but on the other side of your doorstep stands a boy who you thought was a continent away. He’s dressed semi-casually this time, his shirt tucked in his jeans, hair lightly falling onto his forehead and a nervous smile on his thin lips.

“Mark! But I⎼ I don’t even have more wishes,” you blink, taken aback, looking around to look for Taeyong in case he came back. But your behaviour just manages to confuse Mark instead.

“What?”

“I just wished you were here,” you blurt out without thinking, your words only processing later in your brain and it’s then when heat creeps onto your cheeks. Mark tries to but can’t really hide his growing smile at that.

“Really? I’m glad then. I just took my new private plane on a test drive,” he says bashfully, a silly excuse for real.

“All the way to Vancouver?” you tease, watching Mark fumble with the hem of his shirt. Your heart beats overtime just because of the fact that he’s there.

“Well, what can I say? I did miss the weather here,” he plays along with a shrug but he’s more serious when he looks deep into your eye and adds: “And you left without letting me answer.”

Oh yes, you did. You were kind of afraid of his reaction but seeing how he was ready to travel across the world just to see you, maybe there’s no reason for you to be so afraid. It feels like deja vu but a reversed one in a way as Mark gently pulls you into a hug, his lips grazing your hair with a whisper that makes your heart skip a beat: “I have missed you too.”

You really wouldn’t wish for anything more.

#nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct x reader #mark lee x reader #mark lee x you #stories

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Come Home to My Heart, Chapter 2 (Lemyanka) - Plastiquedoll

read on ao3 ✨| chapter 1

A/N: hiii, this is chapter 2 of this lemyanka childhood friends, friends to lovers, idiots to lovers whatever you wanna call it. I really wanted to play with the time skips to show different parts of their lives together throughout the years so this is a continuation from chapter 1 a few years later. thanks for reading <3

-2-

At the age of thirteen, there were many things Priyanka loved. The list included: electric blue glittery nail polish, writing her name with a golden pen, pop music and girl groups-especially Britney Spears and The Spice Girls-, any movie with Lindsay Lohan in it, acting in the school productions -especially if she got the main role-, sleepovers over Lemon’s house where they secretly watched The O.C., seeing films with Lemon without an “adult” with them, re-acting scenes of the Cheetah Girls movie with Lemon…

She was at Lemon’s a lot.

The thing was, Lemon was the only child of her parent’s marriage, her parents both worked, and most of the time she had the house on her own. For Priyanka -who lived with her siblings and her parents and couldn’t spare one second of privacy at her own home- it was like paradise. They did everything together, on the weekdays they did homework together and afterward, they would lay in the blonde’s room reading magazines and cutting pictures of celebrities and clothes they liked, or listen to a new CD they had been saving for weeks to buy for hours until they knew the lyrics by heart.

Her room had yellow walls -big shocker- and it was covered in posters and pictures with Priyanka, white carpet on the floor, and a mix of Barbie dolls and makeup over the boudoir. She also had a large single bed only for herself with like a million fluffy pillows they had shared more than once.

Lemon had ballet classes three times per-week and Priyanka had rehearsals with the drama club but those were the only moments they were apart. Being childhood friends, their parents got into the obligation of sending them to the same primary school after finishing kindergarten and now they would attend the same secondary school once summer was over.

It was a warm day of summer, Lemon rolled over her bed and showed Priyanka an item she liked, Crazy in Love by Beyoncé played on the radio while the other girl was trying to cover a pimple on her chin with some foundation she had bought in the mall.

“You’re going to make it worse.” Lemon made her remove her hands.

“It hurts, it’s like a little red dot full of hate.”

“Use toothpaste instead.”

“Does it work?”

“Allegedly.” She shrugged. “I read it somewhere.”

“Okay… What did you want to show me?”

“Look at these,” she pointed at a picture of Hillary Duff. “I need those shoes.”

“That’s a pump.” Priyanka said, unimpressed.

“But it’s pink and yellow. How you don’t like the gradient in the colors? I’m in love.”

“Can you even walk with heels?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I can. When you’re short like me, you gotta have some options.”

Priyanka couldn’t argue with that, for her age she was already one of the tallest girls in the classroom. Sometimes she disliked being that tall, she felt like a little deer that couldn’t control its feet, wobbling around awkwardly.

Her best friend flipped a few more pages.

“Look! It’s a poster of Ryan Gosling from that movie… The Notebook.” She sounded excited.

Right. They were supposed to be excited about handsome muscle guys but there was something about it that didn’t click with Priyanka. She thought maybe she was just too young to get it, that when she’d grow older she’d get the feeling but until then, she had become very good at pretending.

“Oh, he’s so hot.” She hoped Lemon didn’t notice the fakeness of her voice.

“I know, right?” She giggled. “Do you want his picture?”

“Ah… you can keep it… I already have Leonardo DiCaprio’s and that’s just too many white guys.”

“Alright.” She picked a pair of scissors and started cutting the actor’s silhouette. The pair of dark-framed glasses she had on kept sliding down her nose bridge.

Priyanka smiled fondly at it.

“I’m home!” It was Lemon’s mom that had just returned from work.

Lemon jumped out of the bed and stood in the door’s frame. She looked even smaller in that oversized t-shirt of the Powerpuff Girls and shorts she wore as pajamas. Her hair was tied in a messy ponytail that brushed her shoulder blades.

“Hi, mom.” She yelled. “Priyanka’s here!”

“Hi, Priyanka!”

“Hello, Mrs. Baptsita!”

Priyanka adored Mrs. Baptista, she was a little wacky for Lemon’s taste but it was because she was younger than most moms with kids their age. She liked Priyanka and she supported their friendship since kindergarten, called them the Ketchup&Mustard duo since that Halloween they had matching costumes.

“Is she staying for dinner?”

Lemon turned around. “Are you staying for dinner?”

Priyanka shrugged. “Sure.”

“She is mom!”

“I’m making spaghetti!”

“Sound good!” She turned back to Priyanka again. “I hope you like spaghetti.”

“You know I do.”

Just a couple of minutes later, they heard the sound of Mr. Baptista’s car at the entrance.

“That’s my dad.” Lemon pointed.

“Hello, I’m home.”

“Hi, dad! Priyanka’s here.”

“Hi Lemon drop, hi Priyanka!”

“Hello, Mr. Baptista!”

Lemon grinned but not even five minutes later than her father’s arrival, the vibe of the kitchen changed and it was clear by the sound of their voices, her parents were arguing. Another argument…

“I swear to God… this is the third time this week."

Lemon sat on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands. She looked tired.

Priyanka gently touched her knee offering some comfort. Lemon pulled a weak smile that faded as soon as the voices increased in volume.

"Hey, I have some extra cash, wanna get some pizza?” Priyanka offered.

Lemon bit her bottom lip and nodded. “Let’s go.”

Lemon changed her shorts for pants and put on a pair of sneakers, then she grabbed her keys and both of them were out of the house. It wasn’t that late yet and there was a pizza place a few blocks away they could get on foot; they walked in silence until Lemon’s house was behind, then the blonde let a big sigh out of her chest.

“Pri, I can’t do this…” She sounded fragile as if she was holding the pieces together trying not to break with all her strengths.

Priyanka ran her arm over her shoulder and held her when she seemed about to fall.

“It’s okay, I’m sure they are going to work it out.”

Lemon snorted. “They started going to couple’s counseling and it got worse, they have pretty solid arguments to fight now.”

Priyanka covered her mouth holding back the laughter. “Sorry.”

“You dumb bitch.” Lemon shook her head.

They walked hugged like that the rest of the way, ate greasy pizza with extra cheese, and returned to a sepulchral silent house. Priyanka laid on the bed next to her, so close yet so far. If she extended her hand just a little more, she could touch her shoulder, make sure she was okay but for some reason, she couldn’t. Yet, she hoped that being there for her friend was enough then.

On the other side, Lemon had her eyes wide open, unable to drift off when her mind was going through a million different scenarios. Everything could only go downhill from there.

They didn’t know at that moment but the worst was yet to come.

She dashed out of the house as soon as she got the phone call, barely having the chance to put on a helmet before grabbing her bike. Priyanka was still catching her breath by the time Lemon opened the door.

Her face was bathed in tears, her eyes completely red and she couldn’t stop crying not even to explain what had happened. Priyanka had a vague idea judging by what was said on the phone but it wasn’t until she saw her friend she knew it was bad. Very bad.

Lemon wasn’t the most physically affectionate person in the world but she let Priyanka hug her and cried it out on her chest. They sat on the porch until the blonde began to calm down and could explain it better.

“Pri, they… they are getting divorced. It’s all happening so fast.”

Priyanka held her hand and squeezed it lightly. Lemon looked at her hand and then at her face, her eyes flooded with tears again.

“Hey,” The brunette tried to comfort her. “I’m so sorry, I know you love them both and they love you very much but this is probably for the best.”

“No, Pri, you don’t understand. They are… separating for real. They talked about lawyers and My mom she…” Lemon sobbed. “She wants us to move out…”

“Oh, I mean, that’s normal like-”

“…to New York.” Her voice was weak, defeated.

It took Priyanka a moment to process the newly acquired information.

“New York?!” She repeated in disbelief.

“Apparently, she has a job offer there, and… they think it’s for the best to put some distance between them.”

“I get the ‘moving out thing’ and the distance but that’s a completely different country!”

“I know! That’s what I said. Tell me I’m right, she’s out of her mind.”

“But wait, when does she want you to move out? What about school?”

“She thinks it’s a good idea if we go before the new semester starts so we can settle in and…”

“No, the new semester starts in two weeks… What about your dance lessons? Your life here?”

What about us?

“She said there are plenty of dance academies over there… That I would do fine. I hate it. This doesn’t go with the plan we had.”

Priyanka and Lemon had a life plan since they were ten, sealed with a pinky promise. They were going to graduate high school together and go to university in Toronto where they both would be roommates throughout college. It was their way of being together, to accomplish things in the company of the other, a sign of their unbreakable friendship.

“Wait but… what about your dad?” Can’t you stay with him?“ There was a hint of hope in Priyanka’s voice.

Lemon stared at the wooden floor of the porch for the longest time before looking back at her friend.

"I can’t. My dad travels a lot for business and while he’s going to remain here… my mom gave me no choice. They even said that it’s either New York or some boarding school in Quebec.”

Lemon surely had gone mad about it for her parents to threaten her like that, it didn’t sound like the Baptistas at all.

“This can’t be…” Priyanka shook her head. The tears felt warm on her cheeks.

“We’re leaving next week.”

“No…no, that’s… that’s too soon. You can’t leave… who’s going to help me buy a new outfit for the first day? Who’s going through the first day of school with me?”

“I hate to think about it. They really think this is for the best and then decide to drag me to a different country for the first year of school… «You have to be reasonable» they said, but they are the ones that come with these ideas out of blue.”

It was too sudden it made Priyanka felt dizzy; she couldn’t even begin to imagine what her friend was feeling like.

She squeezed her hand again. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You keep saying that but-” Lemon shook her head.

“Because it is going to be okay. I promise you, we’ll still be together, and… maybe we don’t get to attend the same high-school but we can still go to college together, the plan can still work out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely. You’re my best friend in the world; nothing is going to change that.”

Lemon smiled for the first time after getting the news of her parents’ divorce.

“Thanks, Pri.” She went for a hug and was received with open arms.

They hugged for a while without saying a single word, in that situation, words were unnecessary.

The day of Lemon’s moving, ironically the sun was shining and Priyanka kept reminding herself that in different circumstances they’d be at the park with their bikes or at the local pool but no, she was heading to her best friend’s house to say the last goodbye.

Priyanka hadn’t cried in front of her since that day on the porch but she had cried a lot when no one was seeing her. She was sad, upset, and mad about the situation but she didn’t want Lemon to leave with a sad note. So she went ahead and planned a week dedicated to her best friend, to enjoy the things they loved the most.

They had made each other friendship bracelets with their names –Priyanka was red and orange and it had a little golden star hanging next to her name; Lemon’s was pink and yellow and a butterfly next to hers- they had movie nights and sleepovers, karaoke sessions and dancing marathons every day until that awful day arrived.

Priyanka rode her bike like she had done millions of times before. There was a «FOR SALE» sign hanging outside and she hated it with all her soul. There was a truck parked outside as well with many boxes stacked inside and some furniture pieces they were taking to New York. Lemon was sitting on the porch’s stairs with a backpack on, the scene was oddly familiar and for a second time stopped.

She didn’t notice Priyanka’s presence until the brunette touched her shoulder.

“You’re here.” She said and did her best to smile.

“Where else I’d be?”

Lemon stood on her feet and hugged her, Priyanka hugged her back.

“Promise me you’re going to wait for my calls every week… and that you’re not going to have another best friend… ever.” Lemon sobbed on her shoulder.

“I promise it.” Priyanka patted her back in a calming gesture.

“I’ll visit on holidays, my dad is probably going to get a shitty apartment but still, I’ll be here.”

“I know you will.”

Lemon let go of her embrace. “Thank you, Pri. You’re my best friend in the world.”

“I know, right?”

The blonde giggled. “You’re so stupid…”

“Luce, get in the car, it’s time to go.” Her mom called her as she carried one last box.

“I have to go now. I already said good-bye to my dad; he had a flight to catch early but… It feels so empty without him here.”

“Lemz, I’m sorry.” She hugged her one more time. It was quick but it lingered. “Take care and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do in New York.”

“That sets the bar very low, don’t you think?”

Priyanka laughed. “I’ll miss you like crazy.”

“Me too.”

Lemon’s mom waved in their direction, the car was already on and the truck was closed and packed.

“Well, I guess this is our goodbye for now.”

“Count the days because I’m going to be back in no time, okay?”

She nodded.

“Love you, Pri.”

“Love you too.”

And with that said, Lemon started walking toward the car. It was painful to watch her leave but Priyanka didn’t want to look away, she wanted to remember it all until they could meet again.

The car started moving but stopped abruptly as Lemon opened the door and ran back to where Priyanka was.

“Lemon, what…?”

“I almost forgot, I was supposed to give you this the first day of school but…” She was out of breath. Suddenly a brand new CD of Spiceworld was on Priyanka’s hands. “You were so sad when your sister broke the one you had worked so hard to buy and I thought…”

Priyanka was hugging her again. “Oh, Lemon…”

“Please don’t forget me.”

Her mom honked at them, the truck was already hitting the road.

Lemon walked back and this time, she left for real.

#rpdr fanfiction #drcan #can1 #priyanka #lemon #lemon x priyanka #childhood friends #friends to lovers #lesbian au #timeskips #angst #come home to my heart #plastiquedoll #concrit welcome #tw mentions of divorce

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nicolemagolan · 5 years ago

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Two Cities, One Galaxy: How Star Wars Connects And Divides Us

Early in 2019, I wrote a personal essay about Star Wars. It centered around SWCC (Star Wars Celebration Chicago) and my experience of watching the live stream in my living room at 4am, when the episode IX teaser and title was unveiled.

It’s about fandom, the internet, and isolation. It’s about how Star Wars impacted my life, and about my relationship with my brother.

It also, eerily, foreshadows the disappointment I would eventually feel about The Rise of Skywalker. So here it is, under the cut. Please give it a read, and let me know your thoughts!

***

My phone blinks 3:30am, April 13th, 2019. In Chicago it’s 10:30am, yesterday. I should be asleep. I should stay present in Auckland, where no one else is awake except the moths gathering on the kitchen window.

My brother is slumped beside me, eyes closed, lost somewhere between sleep and boredom. We sit in the darkness of our living room, outlined by the grey glaze of the television. I’m wearing pyjama pants and yesterday’s T-shirt. An empty bag of chips is screwed up on the carpet, a half-drunk can of Lift Plus sits on the mantelpiece.

I stare at the TV. Waiting. My knee bobs up and down. I glance at my phone, and refresh Twitter. The tweets are coming in a blur: people yelling in caps lock, streaming without punctuation, some of it indecipherable, some of it from me. It’s happening kids / MERRY IXMAS, EVERYONE / I'm trying to remember it's called Star Wars Celebration not Star Wars oh my god I'm so stressed-ebration / I AM READY TO BE EPISODE IXed. The world around me is asleep, but the world under my thumb has never been more alive.

I take another sip of Lift Plus and feel its energy tingle through my bloodstream. Or maybe that sensation is the force.

When I was in class earlier in the day, wearing a Star Wars tee, writing in a Star Wars notebook and drinking from a Star Wars bottle, I was already stewing in anticipation. My mind was in another galaxy; speculation ran through me like shooting stars. My dedication to the Star Wars universe is fuelled not by the incessant marketing or the cheap merchandise, but by the passion I have for stories, space wizards, and the cute-yet-creepy alien bird race known as the Porgs.

Star Wars Celebration Chicago is set to begin livestreaming on YouTube in just a few minutes. A countdown slowly ticks on screen. This will be the first big panel of Celebration, and the one I am most eager to see. The panel is for Star Wars: Episode IX, consisting of a Q&A session with cast members. Our first real, palpable look at the film, at beloved returning characters, and the new additions, to hear from returning Director J.J. Abrams what his vision for IX is.

But the real reason anyone is staying up all night to watch the livestream isn’t to see Abrams dodge spoilery questions. It’s to be amongst the first to witness the Episode IX trailer. The very first teaser trailer. Imagine a choir singing angelic sounds behind that one word and maybe you’ll begin to understand. What I really want is to catch a glimpse of the upcoming film, to learn the title—oh my goodness, the title—along with thousands of far, far away fans; some watching live in the dead of night or crack of dawn. The lucky few are crowded into the panel room itself. I swipe through pixelated and blurry selfies posted with #SWCC. It’s a big auditorium, packed with media, families, and cosplayers, and many are swinging lightsabers above the crowd’s heads. Purple, blue, green, and red beams of light. The stage itself is lit up with a bright blue backdrop.

When I told my parents I was going to camp out in the living room to watch the livestream of Star Wars Celebration, they rolled their eyes. When I asked my brother if he wanted to join me, he cried, ‘Whyyy,’ before revealing his true colours when he showed up on the couch at 2am.

He was all too keen to eat my snacks, but now as time crawls forward, he seems to have come to the conclusion that it is ridiculous to stay up for something you can watch on your phone, from your bed, when you wake up. I have come to the conclusion that he is lying to himself. On the path to the dark side, perhaps.

He’s always joined me on my silly adventures, making fun of me along the way. But the fact that he’s willing to be there is enough, as he is now. Star Wars has been a part of his life as much as mine; we grew up roaring Chewbacca impressions and fighting with cardboard lightsabers; He’d be Darth Maul and I’d be Obi-Wan (so I got to chop him in half every time). Kids would tell me I was a weirdo for liking Star Wars, for playing with Barbies and Darth Vader figurines, blurring the lines between allocated girls’ or boys’ toys. But my brother and I knew: Star Wars is a fun space adventure for whoever wants to enjoy it.

We got older and the movies lost a touch of their magic: the internet revealed the intense hatred shovelled at the prequel trilogy. Little-me had loved the ridiculous Jar Jar Binks, but the middle-aged fans who grew up with the original trilogy saw him as an offence to their childhood obsession. (JUSTICE FOR JAR JAR is the hill I will die on.)

Then Disney bought Lucasfilm and ushered in a new era. I have a series of selfies from midnight premieres—me grinning from ear to ear, my brother with eyes closed and discontented frown (his go-to photo pose)—in the blurry light of the Imax screen on Queen Street. But one glance at his smiling face during the film and you know he loves this galaxy as much as the next fan.

Sometimes that’s the problem: our love for this story is so great and so ingrained, that it can bubble over into endless online debates. Debates become heated, become personal, become hateful. In this era of social media, everyone has a voice, but the ones who spit poison are the loudest. We struggle to find common ground sometimes. But it’s always there, beneath out feet and on our TV screens. We love Star Wars. We love to watch it, re-enact it, dissect it, wear it, read it, and write about it. Whether the common ground we stand on looks like the sands of Tatooine or the lake country of Naboo, it’s all the same galaxy. Even though the galaxy-shattering film The Last Jedi threatened to destroy us, we can find a way to stand together. Because when the fans unite, at movie premieres, or conventions, the fandom can become something worth celebrating.

Like today, right now, 3:59am in my living room.

I look up from my phone. The countdown reaches zero. I hold my breath. A soft echo of music trickles through the speakers, and John Williams’ familiar score wraps around me like a blanket. Goose bumps pop up on my skin.

The Star Wars logo vanishes and the screen cuts to black. I snap up and nudge my sleeping brother’s arm with my toe. He jolts awake, looks at the black screen and scowls.

‘Nothing’s hap—’

He’s cut off by a roaring applause as the blue-lit panel stage lights up the screen. The room around me fades. I’m in Auckland with my brain fuzzy, and I’m transported to Chicago with heart thumping.

My brother jumps up and stands in front of the screen. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

I babble, ‘butthepanelisabouttostart,’ craning my neck around his legs.

‘Oh well,’ he says. He walks off.

Stephen Colbert is pacing around the stage, babbling on about Dagobah and S-foils, trying to work the crowd up—unnecessary, since we are all waiting for the cast and crew.

I’m leaning forward, straining my eyes, and wondering if anyone actually finds his ‘jokes’ funny. Twitter tells me, yes, they do. The excitement level is high, making everything fresh and exciting, even if it’s a Star Wars pun heard years ago. I almost feel like I could twist my neck and hear people whispering behind me, instead of tweeting alongside me.

The closest thing to this feeling in my own city is Armageddon Expo, the annual convention at the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane. Nerds I’ve never met become my best friends. We jam the halls like squashed-up skittles. I don’t know their names but I know who they are. When I’m dressed in Rey’s dusty scavenger outfit, with staff in hand and hair bunched in three bobbles, young girls point and giggle. I wave at them, their eyes wide with wonder, and my heart is full.

The internet fandom space is a mix of tweet-before-thinking garbage and fun bite-sized meta. The real-world fandom spaces, such as Armageddon, are a big geeky party; no one hiding behind an anonymous wall, and no one left out.

This livestream is somewhere in between. I am connected online from where I sit in Auckland. Reading tweets and writing tweets and liking gifs. Yet I am in Chicago, oblivious to the sleeping city around me.

Stephen Colbert brings out Director J.J. Abrams and head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy, and the content we’re all waiting for finally begins. I take in every detail, every non-answer. I enjoy it. I loathe it. Stephen Colbert asks unanswerable questions, like the fate of Daisy Ridley’s character, or how the relationships develop. No word is uttered more than ‘spoilers’.

The cast members are introduced onto the stage; first is Anthony Daniels who plays C-3PO—one of the remaining few original cast members from 1977. He waves hello to the crowd before looking for the cameras. In his charming British accent, he says, ‘On tweets today people were, all over the world, saying “wish I could be here”. And I know we’re on camera, so I don’t know where the camera is, but whoever is in Australia or…’ He pauses for a flicker of a second, ‘…all the other countries around the planet; I wanna give you a big wave, and you are here in spirit. Okay?’

I grin a little wider. Of course he would mention our neighbour, Australia. So close, and yet so far.

In New Zealand, despite the growing connections through social media, I feel isolated. Even in the vast Auckland city, where I easily get lost in the busy roads and busy people. New Zealand is separate. And that’s part of what makes it special.

But the isolation is also part of what makes being part the Star Wars fandom special.

It’s a larger world. Out there in space; out there in the world wide web. Legendary or anonymous, you can be a part of something. You can tell your story; you can make one up. After movie premieres, there is a sense of privilege and power in that none of my fellow fans in America have yet seen the movie. The Last Jedi came here a few days early, and I knew all the things before anyone else. We were isolated again. And it felt so good.

Did I go and post spoilers? No, because I’m not an asshole (you know who you are). But I told people they’re gonna love it. I told them the film is exciting and unexpected and dabbles deliciously in subtext in a way that’s fresh for Star Wars. I sign off with eagerness for the upcoming dissection and discussion of the film.

The next day I’m shocked to learn that many many many people felt it was a ‘betrayal’ of Star Wars. A disaster of a movie. A cluttered mess of a story, an anti-climactic sequel that instead of building on what came before, tore the past to shreds. My brother is one of them.

And the fandom split in two.

But not today. Not tonight. I refuse, and so does everyone on my Twitter feed, because we’re tired of defending Rey, who is not a Mary Sue; and Vice Admiral Holdo, whose purple hair does not make her a lesser fighter; and Rose Tico, who fell victim to dude-bros saying she’s the worst character ever, she ruined their childhood, and Asians don’t belong in Star Wars; until eventually the actress, Kelly Marie Tran, deleted all her social media.

When Kelly walks onto the panel stage, she gets a standing ovation. There are tears in her eyes, and there are tears in mine.

They introduce the new cast members, and display behind the scenes photos, and babble on about the brilliant practical effects. There’s a touching tribute to Carrie Fisher, an awkward bit about Adam Driver’s chest, and the introduction of new droid D-O. When the duck-inspired droid rolls onto the stage, you can hear cash registers ring.

My brother comes back in the room as the panel is winding up. He flops into the chair and sighs. ‘So, did I miss anything?’

‘You missed everything.’

‘So I didn’t miss anything then,’ he smirks.

Stephen Colbert asks J.J. Abrams if there’s anything he wants to leave with the fans. I lean forward. ‘This is it,’ I screech.

This is it. It boils down to this simple, repeated moment in time: the day, or night, or very-early-morning that a Star Wars trailer is about to debut. I am alone, and yet so very not alone, united in a nerdy passion that doesn’t call for such depth of devotion. But here we all are. Here I am. And here’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (omg).

I switch off the TV. The darkness eats my eyeballs.

‘How am I supposed to sleep after that!?’ I yell. ‘Palpatine. Freaking Pal-pa-tine! NO! YES! Why?!’

Silence.

My brother is asleep.

I throw a pillow at him. ‘DUDE! Palpatine is back!’

He mumbles, ‘Haha, lame.’ His eyes don’t open.

I slide down the couch until I hit the hard floor. The Rise of Skywalker. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I sit there in the lonely living room, and let my thoughts trail off into the dark.

#star wars #writing #my writing #the rise of skywalker #swcc #star wars celebration #star wars essay #personal essay #creative nonfiction #tros #writeblr #sw

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harperfinkles · 5 years ago

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My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie

A few months ago I finally decided to watch every barbie in order. When I was a kid I loved barbie movies, but I stopped watching them after Princess & The Popstar came out, and I felt like I’ve been missing out ever since.

Here I present to you: My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie!

Keep in mind that I’m basing this off of my personal enjoyment of each film, and not by how “good” it is. There are many movies here that are ranked high despite being objectively flawed, as well as there are movies ranked low despite being objectively good. My opinions are also subject to change, especially since some of these I’ve only seen once.

36: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Puppy Chase

This entire movie is a mess. Like most of the barbie & her sisters movies there’s no real plot. The events of this movie only happen because of bad luck, which is never a good way to kick off your movie. I also find barbie to be completely OOC in this movie. Her disorganization and lack of planning is something that isn’t present in any of the sisters movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy movies that humanize barbie and give her more flaws but there are way more creative ways to do it. It doesn’t help that her insistence to “keep positive!!!” and “be optimistic :)))” just robs this movie of any meaningful message.

Then after the frustrating mess that is the puppy chase itself, Chelsey STILL wins her dance competition despite the fact that barbie didn’t let her practice, and she cheated by adding her sisters and the horses to the dance. It’s unbelievably stupid. I don’t know how the writers of this movie thought we would buy into that. I’m probably never going to watch this movie again.

35: Barbie Presents Thumbelina

The main reason I don’t like this movie is because of the style of the Twillerbees. Unlike Mariposa (the only other movie that doesn’t have a barbie protagonist) their faces look inhuman in a way that makes it hard to relate to them. I would’ve much preferred if Thumbelina had just gotten the normal barbie face, just her body becoming smaller. Besides that I think the girl whose name I can’t remember is annoying, and I didn’t like Thumbelina’s plan to get on her good side to save their home. Both of their character developments were weak and unbelievable. Then once the parents were convinced to stop demolition the movie lost all of its dramatic tension. This movie isn’t ‘bad’ per say, just completely boring. Not I understand why I never rewatched this as a kid.

34: Barbie In Princess Power

This movie had so much unrealized potential, but fell apart due to its plot that went all over the place. The villain and his frog were extremely annoying, Kera’s friends were completely one note characters, and Dark Sparkle was so petty and unnecessary. The part that pissed me off the most was how Kera’s identity was revealed to everyone. First off Wes was forgiven for this way too easily, despite it completely making me lose what little faith I had in his character, and secondly her parents handled it so casually. It seemed more like she had gotten in trouble for sneaking out to go to a party than her being forced into getting superpowers and using them to fight crime in the city. Plus the animation was absolutely horrible. What is with Mattel and changing barbie’s model every new movie?

I really wish this movie was better. Barbie as a superhero is such an amazing concept, and it makes me sad to see it executed so terribly.

33: Barbie & Her Sisters In The Great Puppy Adventure

Another movie with the most annoying villains possible. They’re the core reason I couldn’t stand watching this. In addition to that I found that the treasure being under the big willow tree was completely predictable from the first ten minutes of the movie. And even though the puppies were quite cute, their voices were so annoying. There are also a few plot holes (if you can call them that) such as the metal detector app (it hurt typing that) and how the girls knew that scaling the wall of the cave would lead to where the elevator lead. Despite this I still liked learning about barbie’s childhood and all of her achievements, though her grandma was quite creepy.

32: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Pony Tale

This movie straight up has no plot. It’s the worst of the sisters movies in that regard. Many chunks of this movie felt like filler (such as the party scene), and the character conflicts were weak and contrived (such as Chelsey and Staci's). One thing that I really liked about this movie is Barbie’s character, but that’s pretty consistent with all the sisters movies that aren’t Puppy Chase. I also found the two french guys very annoying (is there any sisters movie with a good villain?).

31: Barbie: Fairytopia

I feel bad for putting this one so low, especially considering how high my placements of all the sequels are. It feels like information is revealed to quickly at the beginning and the rest of the movie is just boring. Elina is very interesting but she could use a lot more character development. The part about her being bullied for not having wings was relegated to cheesy dialogue and didn’t really amount to anything. Plus the fungi aren’t nearly as funny as they are in Mermaidia.

The main reason I’m not putting it lower is for nostalgia and setting up the rest of the Fairytopia series. Aside from that I also really liked the vibe of the one underwater scene, and the “friends you haven’t met” line was quite good. This movie is just a complete anomaly in the great track record of early barbie movies. You honestly don’t even need to watch it to understand the sequels.

30: Barbie: A Perfect Christmas

As a musical this movie really sucks. The only song that I actually liked was barbie’s one solo, and even her singing voice there really didn’t sound like her. There’s really no plot to this movie, but I did find myself enjoying the dynamic of the sisters a lot more than the other sisters movies (even though Skipper’s Arc with the concert came out of nowhere and stressed me out). The way Santa’s magic was shoehorned into the story really bothered me though.

29: Barbie Video Game Hero

The best thing about this movie is definitely the side characters. They all had nice designs and personalities, especially Bella and Chris. The concept of this movie is also so creative and fun that I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I liked it mostly during the first two levels as well as the bonus one, but the last two really soiled it for me. The fact that there’s an open world game with no clear way to win makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game, and the Just Dance advertisements are absolutely cringey. This movie has a strong beginning but really falls behind in the second half. The last scene of the movie really made me want to rip my eyes out.

28: Barbie: Spy Squad

This movie really suffers from not getting the audience to care. The characters aren’t developed enough in the opening and the way the girls got their jobs as spies seemed too easy. The storyline felt too straightforward, and even the plot twist at the end was kind of cheap.

Despite this I still really enjoyed many parts of this film. For one the animation is amazing. I loved the character designs, especially Patricia’s. Speaking of her, I thought she was a pretty good villain, even if she was a little cheesy and her ‘redemption’ arc was very clumsy. I also thought Lazlo was sweet. A lot of modern barbie movies only go halfway with the romance because they don’t want to be seen as bad role models for girls, and a lot of the times the Ken characters just seem unnecessary. I thought it was a good idea to have him be the “love interest” of a non barbie character so his inclusion doesn’t feel useless, even if they never actually got together. It was also just really fun to see all the spy technology.

27: Barbie: The Princess And The Popstar

The placing of this movie is extremely unfortunate since I actually really liked Tori and Kiera’s characters. They both had spunk and I really like the tropes of the roundy princess and the celebrity who doesn’t find satisfaction in fame. The reason this movie is so low comes down to the terrible plot. It felt like they were trying too hard to make it similar to the Princess & The Pauper even though Tori and Kiera’s characters would much better suit a different plotline. The villains were just insanely frustrating and had such unclear motivations. The songs were also pretty bad (other than Here I Am), the Ken character is annoying, and the climax has barely any emotional weight since it wasn’t led up to properly. But hey, at least Tori/Kiera is a high quality ship. If it wasn’t for their relationship this movie would be much lower.

26: Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

I love the set up for barbie’s character in this movie. She’s just been fired for the first time, Ken broke up with her, and she feels like her life is falling apart. She really reached a new layer of dimension with this movie, and she’s the best barbie as herself character in all of the movies. My main problem is the boring plotline with the flairies. Their character’s aren’t interesting and what they do to the clothing isn’t anything special. This movie also suffers from the boring villains. Barbie’s character is my main reason for liking this movie, along with the Ken plotline, even if it could be quite contrived.

25: Barbie: Star Light Adventure

This is a very weird movie. I had completely different reactions to it during the two times I saw this movie. The first time I thought it was very disappointing. The title said “adventure” so I was very surprised when the characters spent most of the movie training in the same location and we barely got to see any cool new locations. The pace was also extremely slow, especially near the beginning. The second time I started to appreciate the movie for what it is. The animation is absolutely stunning and I love what we saw of the creatures in this universe. Sa-Lee is definitely one of my favourite side characters, and the rest of the team was pretty cool too.

They also added a bunch of new things that I think are very unique to this movie. For instance I loved that barbie’s had telekinesis. She definitely needs more superpowers in future movies. I also liked that we got to see her parents.

My main gripe with this movie has to be Constantine. He was annoying for no reason and I think the movie would’ve benefitted from either having him be nicer and more of a character arc, or having him be a full villain who’s using the team for personal gain.

24: Barbie: Mariposa & The Fairy Princess

As a sequel this movie sucks. It doesn’t cover the same themes as the first movie, we don’t get Elina telling the story, the stakes are nowhere near the height as the first one was, and the characters in the first movie don’t get nearly enough screentime. Willa and Carlos’s part in this movie was underwhelming, but I’m especially annoyed by the fact that Rayna and Rayla weren’t even mentioned once. This all probably would’ve been different had the movie been made closer to the original, and I’m extremely confused as to why they waited to make it in 2013.

However if you disassociate it with the first movie it becomes way more enjoyable. I thought Catania was sweet and lowkey ship her with Mariposa (though it still doesn’t compare to the Mariposa/Carlos/Willa OT3). The crystal fairies themselves were an interesting addition to the universe and their designs were really pretty (I actually wish I was still into barbie at the time it was released just so I could’ve got some of the dolls). The increase in animation quality was also a plus. I’m also so happy that after the first movie Mariposa started running a library. It was such a natural progression in her character arc and it’s so perfect. There are still a lot of problems, such as a villain who feels utterly disconnected from the main story, clumsiness and miscommunication being repeatedly used as plot devices, and the annoyingness that are the puffballs. I’m still glad this movie happened and if you liked the first movie you should definitely check this one out too.

23: Barbie And The Secret Door

Oh boy is this one a mixed bag. It was actually the first "new” barbie movie that I saw, but it definitely did the trick of making me want to watch the other ones.

On the positive side this movie is so pretty. I love all the bright colours and the designs for Nori and Romy. Speaking of which, they were such great side characters, and an adorable ship! I especially like Romy since she was so funny and adorable. Plus, the “what’s a boy?” comment made me laugh. I thought that the world building aspect of this movie was really interesting, even if the animal designs weren’t the best.

On the negative side, I feel like the music was extremely disappointing. It got less annoying on my second watch through, so maybe I just have to warm up to it. I also feel like the villain was boring. This movie deserved a more serious antagonist, especially since we saw how terribly she affected the fairies and mermaids. I did overall like princess Alexa, but I’m kind of unsure about her arc relating to responsibility. I think a lot of modern barbie princess movies in general just aren’t as interesting as the ones that take place in the past.

22: Barbie: Dolphin Magic

What a cute movie. I loved Isla’s so much! She and Barbie were so adorable together. The dolphin’s themselves were quite cute too.

This is a very feel good movie, and it almost makes you ignore its flaws. The main thing that annoyed me is why couldn’t they just pick up the dolphin and put him back in the ocean? He’s not even that big, and there isn’t much distance that you’d have to walk with him anyway. The plot and villain aren’t that interesting either, and the sisters were sometimes annoying (such as Staci’s broken foot having no weight on the plot, and Treasure being absolute garbage). Barbie also seems a little too perfect in this movie, which isn’t even true for the rest of the sister movies and they’re all way lower on this list. I also laughed a lot when Barbie called Ken her “Friend”, since apparently romance is too inappropriate for a barbie movie. Still, if you ignore this and just watch all the Barbie/Isla scenes, the movie is really good.

21: Barbie: Fairytopia: Magic Of The Rainbow

Being introduced to all the different fairies in this movie was so much fun. I love all their different personalities and designs, especially Glee, Sunburst, and Lumina. Elina grew so much in this movie, and it truly is the perfect ending to the trilogy. The flight of spring was really cool too. The only real flaw this movie has is how clumsily Elina’s magic abilities are added in. It almost seems like she knew how to use it all along, even if we know she didn’t.

Also Dizzle is the worst. And that one apprentice’s wings being the braids in her hair was FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

20: Barbie In Swan Lake

This movie is definitely the most legitimately beautiful barbie movie out there. The colours are so nice, the dancing is so majestic, and I’d want to live in the forest any day. Odette is one of the prettiest barbie characters and I love her wardrobe. This movie also has two of the most iconic villains of my childhood who make me laugh every time I think of them.

Despite this I still don’t think this is nearly as good as everyone makes it out to be. First off, Odette’s character arc as the ‘chosen one’ wasn’t executed believably, and she wasn’t even that interesting. The romance was way too instalove-y for my taste (even Rapunzel had a more believable romance than this). The message of this movie was also really unclear in the Chelsey scenes. Overall it’s a great fairytale that I have lots of nostalgia for, but it doesn’t hold up as well when you really dig into it.

19: Barbie: Fairy Secret

I love how Barbie and Raquelle’s relationship is expanded upon in this movie. In Fashion Fairytale Raquelle’s motivations were confusing and she felt very flat. I love how we got to see them forced to work together despite their hard feelings and eventually come to forgive each other at the end once they got to the root of their issues with each other. It’s the ideal enemies to loversfriends scenario.

This movie is just really fun. Exactly what a barbie movie should be. Barbie’s stylist friends were great, and the Ken parts were pretty funny. I do overall like the worldbuilding, though Gloss Angelos looked way to small to even be classifed as a city, let alone the biggest fairy city in the world. It’s like 90% castle and 10% actual city.

In the end I always wish that Barbie, Raquelle, and Ken remembered what happened to them, and that’s the most frustrating part about this movie.

18: The Barbie Diaries

Despite being made by a completely different studio than the other movies (and having a downgrade in animation quality), this movie really holds up today. There’s a lot going on here, and it makes the plot seem way more complex than any other barbie movie. We also get to see into barbie’s head a lot more than any other barbie as herself movie, what with her fantasies that we got to see visualized. This movie is just the perfect blend of magic and normal life, and even if I do prefer the fantasy based barbie movies, this one will always hold a place in my heart.

17: Barbie And The 12 Dancing Princesses

There really isn’t much to be said about this movie. It’s just plain good. There’s nice music, a good plot, a great villain, a cute cat character, and a girl obsessed with bugs. What more could you want?

The only thing I don’t like is the wedding scene. It seemed quite out of place. Their relationship wasn’t that important to deserve the last few minutes of the movie.

16: Barbie And The Three Musketeers

Barbie sword fighting is all I’ve ever wanted in life. This movie really broke the mold for what barbie could do. Corinne is a great protagonist, and the other musketeers were great too (even if their personalities weren’t developed that much). I love how important their friendship was and how easily Corinne integrated into their group. This movie is super fun and just makes me want to scream “GIRL POWER” from the top of my lungs.

There were still some drawbacks though. The prince was annoying, I got so tired of that one sound effect that keep on repeating over and over again (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about), the cat was way too immature, and while the villain was good, he was not subtle at all. The movie still had a solid storyline, and I loved how it ended with the girls going on another adventure. *sigh* If only this movie had a sequel.

15: Barbie: The Pearl Princess

Lumina is one of my favourite barbie protagonists. She just felt human in a way that not many others do (even though she’s technically a mermaid, not human). She was naive, but not stupid. I loved seeing her react to a world she hasn’t seen before. This movie had such a unique approach with her aunt Scylla. Her aunt may have done something completely wrong, and she admits to that, but Lumina doesn’t ignore the way aunt Scylla has cared for her and loved her over the years. She accepts her found family and her biological family at the same time, and lets her have a chance at redemption. In addition to that I really loved Lumina’s pre transformation outfit. It’s my second favourite barbie mermaid outfit next to Nori’s in Mermaidia.

I also liked how much the animals of this movie felt like active members of society, and had intelligence levels equivalent the mermaids. I’ve never really seen that in a barbie movie, at least to this extent. Kuda was a great animal sidekick who really felt like one of Lumina’s true friends. I also like how Spike looked dangerous but was a real softie on the inside.

There are a lot of other elements of this movie that I liked too, like how sweet Fergus was, and his love of botany. I liked the gag about Caligo thinking he’s being poisoned, and being paranoid about which cup he’s gonna drink from. Even if the Ken character wasn’t utilized much, I liked his dolphin friend. My only complaint is that the climax was a little messy, and I didn’t enjoy Caligo as a villain that much.

14: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale 2

This worked very well as a sequel to the original Mermaid Tale. Eris’s return as a villain felt very natural, and this movie continued to have Merliah feel like a genuine teenager with her own dreams and mood swings. The only reason it’s lower than the first one is because the plot isn’t as all encompassing and it doesn’t feel like Merliah’s life has changed as much as it did originally, if that makes sense. The plot also feels a little too fast at times, but the pacing doesn’t affect the movie drastically.

Kylie was a wonderful addition to the cast. She was mean, but you could clearly tell that it came from her insecurities about her own talent. I cannot emphasize how well her conflict with Merliah was developed. I loved their banter at the beginning and how they came to understand each other at the end, to the point where it didn’t matter who won the competition. It’s just.....SO GAY. I love it.

Speaking of which, Fallon and Hadley were both really cute in this movie too, more so than the first one. I just love how little men there are in the Mermaid Tale movies.

13: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Last time I watched this movie a few years ago I absolutely hated it, but after rewatching it again my opinion has completely turned around. The plot of this movie may still be very basic, and the supporting characters, Princess Isla and Hadley, were very one note, but it’s the strength of the Protagonist, Blair, that really makes this movie. I love seeing her determination in an environment she’s not used to, and how selfless she was even when she’s surrounded by selfishness.

Also can we appreciate how dark this movie was? Dame Devin literally MURDERED Blair’s parents in a car accident. It’s not like that hasn’t happened in any other movie, but in this one the tone just feels a lot more jarring.

I really appreciated Delancey’s character development. She seems so cold and unforgiving at the beginning, but as more information is revealed to her she changes for the better. She was raised in such a negative environment and I can’t help but be proud of her. Her friend Portia was also really funny too. I love the “YOU STOLE MY CAKE” scene.

12: Barbie As The Island Princess

Is there anything better than crazy island girl characters who talk to animals? I think not.

I love Ro’s animal family. Azul and Sagi are essentially Ro and Tika’s dads, and it’s adorable. Azul’s peacock sounds are just absolutely ridiculous, and I love it.

The music of this movie was also soooooo good. Words cannot describe how The Rat Song makes me feel inside. On a more serious note, I Need To Know is absolutely perfect. I love the visuals that go along with it. And just when you think it’s over, Ro’s part ends and Prince Antonio comes in AND IT’S SO PERFECT. Love Is For Peasants is also the best barbie villain song in any movie. “You need to stop reading those books. Filling your head with thoughts!” ICONIC. The soundtrack of this movie isn’t as good when listening to it outside of the context of movie when you compare it to stuff like the Princess And The Pauper, but it’s still really good nonetheless.

The romantic element of this movie was also really good. I think this is the first time on this list that I’ve listed the romance as a positive aspect. Ro and Antonio are just really compatible people who fulfill very essential parts of themselves when they meet. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I also love Tika’s development in regards to their relationship too.

The villain was pretty okay, but I especially love princess Luciana. She may be a romantic rival to Ro, but she’s a victim too, and she’s given a very sympathetic role in the story even if her mother is the villain. Her arc was very satisfying.

11: Barbie In A Christmas Carol

Not really a typical barbie movie to list as one of my favourites, but it’s a christmas essential for me. Having Barbie be Scrooge was a very risky move, but god, did it pay off. Eden was cruel, but her story is so sad. I always feel her fear when her aunt disrupts Catherine’s party. This is definitely another one of the darkest barbie movies.

Also, GHOSTS. Ghosts should have been in more barbie movies. They all had cool concepts and designs, mainly Aunt Marie and the ghost of christmas future.

Catherine was such a joy to see in this movie. She’s a very kind and selfless person, but her friendship to Eden puts her in conflict with that side of herself. Seeing her fulfilling Eden’s role in the vision of the future was actually kind of scary. It makes it all the more satisfying when Eden apologizes to Catherine in the end. I really love their friendship.

Christmas Carol was always one of my favourite christmas tales after I watched the Mickey version, and I think this movie did it justice (thought it was slightly less traumatizing than that, thankfully).

10: Barbie In The Nutcracker

Even though I’ve had a copy of this for the longest time I never really took the time to watch and appreciate it. And now that I have I’ve gotta say that this was a great start to the barbie saga. The producers still hadn’t settled on making barbie movies the way they’re known for now, and you can tell by the lack of female characters and a few of the 2D sequences, but the sense of adventure this movie has is so unlike any movie that came after. And despite the limited resources they had for animating it still ended up looking stunning. They animators had such a good sense of colour, and all the landscapes looked amazing.

Before watching this I always thought that The Magic Of Pegasus had the best (canon) romance of any barbie movie, but now I actually think that this may be better. Clara and Prince Eric have great chemistry and such a believable bond. The last dance scene was amazing and it so was heartbreaking when Clara was sent back to the real world. I love the scene when Eric visits Clara’s house and confirms that it wasn’t all a dream.

Also, I really appreciate Clara’s decision to stay in the magical world. So much media, including barbie movies, puts emphasis on people staying with their family and choosing more stable environments. What writers don’t realize is that that’s boring. We don’t watch movies to learn about people’s normal lives, and I’m so grateful that this story ended the way it did. So yeah, thanks writers.

There were also many scary moments here too. The rock monster is TERRIFYING. Maybe the reason I don’t remember this movie is because the rock monster traumatized me so much I had to repress it. The Mouse King was also quite creepy. I wish newer barbie movies committed to making scary villains like him.

9: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale

I probably have the most nostalgia towards this movie since it was always my sister’s favourite growing up. Now it’s one of the only barbie movies she’ll watch with me other than the sequel. I expected to not enjoy this movie as much since I’d kind of exhausted it by this point, but I guess I surprised myself.

As I mentioned in Mermaid Tale 2, Merliah feels like a genuine teenager. She likes her normal life and hates responsibility. Because of this her arc of deciding to save her people feels so much more genuine and poignant.

The world building of this universe is just so good. The plot with Calissa and Eris was great, and I love the scene where Merliah is picking out a tail. The world just looks so pretty and magical, even if magic doesn’t play a huge role in this film. The soundtrack sets the scene so nicely, and Queen Of The Waves is definitely one of my favourite barbie songs.

8: Barbie In The Pink Shoes

This is definitely a huge unpopular opinion, so I should get all the negatives of this movie out of the way first. The animation of the faces is extremely creepy, Kristin was very irresponsible to decide to change her routine up at the last minute, and she would’ve worked much better as a choreographer than as a dancer. Despite these flaws there’s still something about this movie that makes me love it.

For one, despite the creepy faces, the dancing animations were still pretty good. And even though Kristin’s arc wasn’t the best I still find her final dancing scenes (the one in the ice palace and the one on stage) to be so inspiring. Keep On Dancing is such an amazing song and it gave me chills the first time I heard it. The movie is also quite pretty. The ballet outfits aren’t as traditional as ones in earlier barbie ballets, but they still have flare and nice colours.

The movie is also really funny. It makes fun of the ballets it covers a lot. I love the “you don’t look a day over 16″ part. The two suitors especially, Hilarion and Prince Albrecht, were so funny. I loved how their petty jabs at each other turned into compliments when faced with adversity. Hayley was also pretty funny since she was the realist of the movie.

I think the irl characters were used very nicely in the ballet world, and I liked how when Kristin got back it turned out that everything wasn’t as bad as it seemed before. Tara wasn’t as mean and Madame Natasha wasn’t nearly as scary. That’s one of my favourite tropes in fiction.

7: Barbie & The Diamond Castle

Liana and Alexa are basically a married couple. There is literally no way to refute this. Their arguments are adorable and domestic, and they clearly love each other more than anything in the world. They may have their differences at times but when it comes down to it they know each other more than anyone else does and work together so nicely. Every aspect of their lives is intertwined so much that separation usually isn’t an option for them. My heart broke when they parted since I knew that that was how Lydia would defeat them. I cried when Liana came to Alexa’s rescue, and the movie ending with them going to back to their normal house instead of staying at the diamond castle was beautiful. Truly the best and purest barbie ship.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s talk about everything else. The plot of this movie is so unique. There is no other barbie movie that’s about music itself. The muses and their drama and betrayal with Lydia was so intriguing. Seriously, Lydia was a scary villain. I was terrified of her as a child. Liana and Alexa seemed like they’re helpless against her powers, and it feels all the more victorious when they defeat her. The last fight scene was truly epic.

I really appreciate how little Liana and Alexa care about the two twins. They’re my least favourite part of the movie, and even if they do start working with them later on in the movie it’s made very clear that they don’t care about them at all.

6: Barbie In Rock ‘N Royals

I really didn’t have high expectations for this one. It was after I had watched The Princess And The Popstar and Secret Door, which both gave me a bad feeling about barbie pop musicals. But this movie really came through and made itself my second favourite barbie musical movie, and my sixth favourite overall.

The only thing I disliked was Courtney’s weird facial design. That’s it. The rest of the movie is basically perfect.

The movie started off at a relaxing pace but I was never tricked into thinking it would end that way. I love the Camp Pop vs. Camp Royalty plotline. Finn and Lady Ann seemed simple at first but their past was revealed at the perfect time. Clive was hilarious and him becoming the real villain was executed so well.

Seeing Courtney and Erika react to the camps was a delight. Their friends were so quirky and nice to them, and the camps themselves were pretty fun too (UNICORNS). Them finally meeting at the beach was such a breath of fresh air. I could imagine them becoming great friends in the future (cough sequel cough). Erika was probably my favourite of the two since she just looked really cool and had a more interesting arc. I just love it when two groups of people who have seemingly nothing in common come together to achieve a common goal. Also I have a theory that Sloan and Princess Olivia were in love the whole time, and the competition was the first time they could smile around each other without being ridiculed by their peers.

Now, onto the music. My favourite song is probably Gotta Get To Camp. I was shocked at how good it was. The choreography was also the most interesting since it was the only time the characters spontaneously burst into song. When You’re A Princess is also such a bop.

This is definitely the first movie I’d recommend to any classic barbie fan who wants to try out some of the new ones.

5: Barbie: Mariposa & Her Butterfly Fairy Friends

This is probably the closest to a perfect barbie movie you’ll get. The protagonist is very relatable, the supporting cast is great, everyone has good development, the world is scary yet so fascinating, and the villains are amazing. Also it has a non barbie protagonist. Having Elina narrate the story was such a great decision. Mariposa really sticks out in the long list of barbie protags. Her transformation scene near the end was so great. It fits the theme of the movie so well and I think that anyone can get inspiration from Mariposa’s journey.

When it comes to characters everyone is so much fun. Carlos is another one of my favourite barbie love interests, even if the movie didn’t commit to the romance fully. He and Mariposa have their love of reading in common and they like each other for non superficial reasons. Willa is also adorable and sweet. It would be very interesting to find out how she and Mariposa met, since they’re so different, yet they’re close friends nonetheless. Rayna and Rayla are both quite interesting cases. When they first showed up I rolled my eyes and thought they’d be tossed out of the way very soon, but they continued through the story and changed as people. They gained respect for Mariposa, and vice versa. Henna was also pretty cool too.

The setting was so interesting too, more than any other Fairytopia movie. Every place looks like it has danger lurking, and he characters genuinely felt small next to the landscape. One of my favourite things in this movie has to be the absolutely horrifying Skeezites. I remember playing the DVD game as a kid and having nightmares about it later.

4: Barbie As Rapunzel

This is probably the scariest barbie movie. Unlike other scary ones like Mariposa and Diamond Castle there’s such an aura of misery and helplessness to this movie that is like no other. Gothel is the main reason for it. The tower just looks so dark and every scene in the normal world has such tension surrounding it. It makes me even more emotional when Rapunzel finally frees herself from the tower.

All the paintbrush scenes are integral barbie moments for any kid growing up. I remember being fascinated by her art, and by how hope came to Rapunzel in her worst moments. We don’t get a real answer to how the paintbrush came to be, but it doesn’t feel necessary. It’s just so beautiful.

I love the animal sidekicks in this movie too. Penelope is so adorable, and I love how she, like Rapunzel, found the courage in herself to stand up and disobey her father. And having a dragon be one of the good guys was a really risky move for the second barbie movie, but it payed off so well.

This was truly an ethereal movie.

3: Barbie And The Magic Of Pegasus

This movie definitely has the most riveting original plot of any barbie movie. Wenlock was a terrifying villain and Brietta’s story is so sad. Plus, barbie standing up for Wenlock’s wives at the end basically invented feminism. I love that it’s about an ice skating barbie, and all the skating scene were so fun too.

Shiver is also adorable. I had a lot of the dolls as a kid and the only things I have left from them are the Shiver toy and the Wand Of Light. Speaking which, that wand was so epic and pretty. The movie was just so aesthetically pleasing.

Annika is another one of my favourite barbie protagonists. Like Merliah, she genuinely feels like a true teenager who's rebelling against her strict parents, and she learns a great lesson. Aidan was also a great mirror for her and when I was younger they were my favourite barbie couple. They have lots of good banter and I really buy their relationship development. I especially love the ice dancing scene at the end.

This movie is a barbie essential for me. It represents so much of my childhood. I used to watch this movie obsessively and it’s just as good now as it was back then.

2: Barbie: Fairytopia: Mermaidia

This is kind of an odd choice for my second favourite barbie movie. This one used to be my #1 favourite before I rewatched the one coming. I was obsessed with mermaids and fairies as a kid and no other movie captured my imagination the way this one did. The land of Mermaidia is so pretty and reminds me of everything I dreamed about as a kid. It also gave me Nori, my favourite non barbie character in any barbie movie and one of my biggest childhood crushes. I love how her sass comes from her insecurities about Nalu, and how she and Elina start to like each other once they see past him.

Elina/Nori is also another contender for my favourite barbie ship. They have nice banter (and I’m sure by now you all know how much I love that) and I love the scene when Elina sacrifices her wings for a tail to save Nori (that’s totally my favourite scene in any barbie movie). I wish we got more of their relationship in Magic Of The Rainbow, but I guess that wouldn’t have fit with the movie. Oh well.

This movie works very well as a sequel, while also being better than the original in every way. We had the same villain, and we got to see a part of the Fairytopia universe that we only saw a glimpse of in the first one. After Elina got her wings it only feels natural that the possibility of her losing them again is explored, as well as the prospect that maybe she doesn’t need wings to be herself. And compared to the original movie the stakes have been raised much higher, we have more reasons to care about the characters, and it’s so much funnier. The fungi annoyed me in the first movie but in this one they made me laugh constantly. And this movie wouldn’t be complete with the amazingness that is opera Bibble.

This movie doesn’t have the best plot, but it doesn’t suffer from it either. It’s one of those movies that just makes me feel relaxed and at peace (other than the Depths of Despair scene, though at this point I’ve seen it enough that it doesn’t phase me as much anymore).

1: Barbie As The Princess And The Pauper

We all knew this was coming. No other barbie movie comes close to this classic. It’s gonna be hard to describe why I love it so much since everything that’s amazing about this movie has already been said a thousand times before, but I’ll give it a go.

Anneliese and Erika are amazing characters. They may come from different social classes but they both have the shared experience of not being able to fulfill their dreams. This movie is so good at showing you how trapped they feel, yet still their duty to their lives never waver. My mom has an interesting story about how she got into this movie. She initially thought that barbie would be a terrible role model for me and my sister until she saw The Princess And The Pauper. Anneliese and Erika are clearly very complex protagonists who have interests outside of romance and are active participants in changing their destinies and saving the kingdom. Especially with Erika, who decides to achieve her dream of becoming a famous singer before getting married to King Dominick.

This movie has a bunch of nice relationships too. Anneliese and Erika click with each other so well and respect each other’s troubles without downplaying their situations due to the class difference. The romances were both nicely developed too. Erika and Dominick may have fallen in love over the course of a day but I appreciate how much he likes her stranger side (like when he walked in on her singing to her cat lmao). Anneliese and Julian’s relationship feels especially believable since they’ve known each other for a very long time. I also really like that they waited for Erika to come back before getting married. OT4 goals.

Preminger is a barbie villain like no other. The rest of my top ten has been dominated by scary and serious villains, but Preminger is just so funny and dramatic compared to them all. He’s the only barbie villain that has became very well known in pop culture.

All of the songs in this movie are so iconic. I think that’s the biggest strength of this movie. I'm constantly listening to music and the soundtrack is a great way for me to take this movie everywhere I go. The Cat’s Meow is a beautiful song, Written In Your Heart feels so inspiring, I Am A Girl Like You is great character study, If You Love Me For Me is a beautiful and tender love song, How Can I Refuse? is an iconic villain song, and Free is a great introduction to the characters, as well as my number one favourite barbie song. Every song has something special about it and that makes it one of the most memorable movie soundtracks ever for me.

I also love the cats Serafina and Wolfie. They’re two of the best animal sidekicks in any barbie movie since they feel a lot like the human characters. THEY ALSO HAVE SO MANY BABIES IN THE END FUCKING GOD.

I hope you all enjoyed my ranking. Feel free to comment with your favourites and least favourites, just be aware that this is all personal to me and really says nothing about the objective quality of each of these movies.

#barbie #barbie movies

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division-m · 7 years ago

Text

The Merge [2] - Sweet Pea

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Paring: Sweet Pea x Reader

Genre: angst | AU

Word Count: 1,898

Part [2] Warning: Light swearing

Part [2] Brief: ❝In which a young member of the Crescent clan meets a flaming Blossom, lets just say; the sun ruled during the day, a fireball as fierce as the hair that laced around Cheryl, however when the crescent moon rose at night, it was time for the wolves to run. When the wolves ran under the light of the moon, so did the snakes; a certain serpent in particular especially. ❞

Masterlist

Did anyone ever tell you the story of little red riding hood?

Well.. once upon a time,

Little Red, She was a curious little girl, who loved to gift freshly picked flowers to her grandma,

A girl who was always told to never stray too far from the path, because if she were to stray into the menacing forest,

She would come across the big bad wolf that stalks anyone who dares to cross into his turf ,

However, how much do we really know about Little Red?

Did she follow the path to get to Grandma's house like her parents told her?

Or did she wonder into the forest nobody dared to enter?

Would all these little girls who had wondering soul turn into;

Little Red

The girl who followed the path her parents told her to follow?

The Big Bad Wolf

The creature who strayed, and made its own path?

"Well well well, the lone wolf returns" Cheryl declared while waltzing down the stairs with the Bulldogs Football Captain Reggie by her side, oh and you can't forget the flock of cheerleaders at her disposal.

"Blossom" [y/n] said with quite the distaste upon her tongue, this was clearly visible as she could hear the giggles from her peers which earned a deadly glare from Cheryl.

"There is the school spirt I so fondly remember" Jughead sighs as he takes his arms away from [y/n] to only place them around himself.

"Cheryl, no one invited fascist barbie to the party" Declared a girl with hair as dark as ravens feathers, it moved as effortless as grass in the wind, she was beautiful.

'I like her' [y/n] made a mental note at the girls response.

"wrong Veronica, no one invited South Side scum to our school.. listen up ragamuffins, I will not allow Riverdale High's above average GPA to suffer because of classrooms that are overcrowded with underachievers.. So please, do us all a favour and find another school to deface with your hard scrabble ways." Cheryl stated with her nose looking down at the leathered gang before her.

This objectifying declaration did not sit well with the girl who stood slightly behind [y/n], this was evident in the strong nudge she felt as the girl pushed passed.

"Then why don’t you come over here and say it to my face"

[y/n] observed this girl.

She now stood with a hip jutted to one side, her right arm draped across her slender body, clasping the elbow opposite. Her head lolled down to one shoulder casting her long multicolored hair onto the faded Prince t-shirt that was two sizes too big, this laid under her very obvious serpent jacket. Her skin reflecting a honeyed hue, and her voice now the loudest in the halls.

'I like her too' [y/n] thought with a perked up eyebrow.

This bickering went on for a few minutes longer until Principal Weatherbee swiftly ordered the student body to get to class.

It was now lunch time at Riverdale High and Archie had just informed Betty that [y/n] was back in town, Betty gleamed at the thought of her childhood best friend coming back into her life, after everything that had been going on the past year Betty was really loosing hope in this town now she has a glimmer of hope.

At this moment Betty, Archie, Veronica, Jughead, Kevin, Toni, Sweet Pea and Fangs are lounging in the break room, curiously as Archie and Betty tell tales of the crescent girl, everybody laughed at the crazy things the Trio got up too even Sweet Pea chuckled.

"Well seeing as [y/n] is very close to my girl and my man.. I am very exited to formally meet her" Veronica said with a genuine smile, yet she couldn't help in the back of her mind think she was the replacement of [y/n] when she came to think about it, but she pushed that thought away as soon as [y/n] presence was known.

[y/n] was casual, but smartly dressed, I'm not sure if you'd say she was classically beautiful, but her large liquid green eyes held such an intelligence and serenity that it was impossible for all who looked within them to not to be held prisoner by them. Sweet Pea especially felt that way, yet he would not admit that fact when Fangs nudged him with a perked eyebrow, that earned a side eye from Sweets and a hushed;

"Shut the fuck up fang, really".

He studied her more;

Her cheekbones weren't especially high and her nose was a little too rounded to be perfect, but there was undeniable symmetry to her features and perhaps that's what held Sweet Pea so captivated. [y/n's] hair was long and fluid, lying gently over her shoulder bones, kissing her soft skin;

He promised himself he wouldn't stutter or blush when she addresses him, and he knows she will, she had this forward nature about her, almost fearless.

During his study session Betty jumped off and over the lounge too basically tackle her beloved friend.

Hugs with Betty could never be long enough for [y/n]. In her arms she felt safe and all her worries disappeared like rain on a summers day on earth. In that embrace she felt Betty's soft skin and soon gentle squeeze after a harsh one. [y/n] bathed in her warmth and the smell of freshly laundered clothes.

Giggles and I miss you's were exchanged with tear filled eyes.

"Let me introduce you to everyone, there are some new faces around here" Betty beamed while cradling [y/n's] shoulders.

[y/n] scanned the room to only fall victim of Sweet Pea's glare, she caught him in a moment of weakness as his eyes told a story of admiration for what stood only a few meters in front of him as he witnessed the reunion.

However that was short lived as he soon diverted his eyes to the direction of Toni Topaz to spark up a conversation [y/n] could not hear.

Betty also noticed this short interaction to only loll her head to the side to try and read [y/n's] expression yet she only meet an expression just as confused one as her own, both soon raising their eyebrows at each other.

Veronica stood up first to eagerly stride towards the duo,

[y/n] spoke up first;

"I like you, the way you stood up to Cheryl when she waltzed down those stairs, I loved it" [y/n] handed out her hand for it to be rejected, instead receiving a welcoming embrace.

A muffled "oh" leaving [y/n']s lips.

"Veronica lodge, and I like you too" Said with her signature smize.

Veronica originally had a ill feeling when welcoming a friend she knew would become inner circle just as quickly as she did when entering Riverdale. Yet, she couldn’t deny her admiration for her, the way she captured the attention of everybody in the room when she walked in.

Veronica admired strong women, and promised herself when she came to Riverdale that she would never bring down a women for no reason, and will always give praise when deserved. Veronica witnessed [y/n's] hair flow effortlessly and heard the softness in her voice, to Veronica she looked like some kind of water sprite.

They exchanged smiles.

Betty and [y/n] walked around the room to rekindle an old friendship with Kevin, to then move over to the serpents, which then Jughead took over.

[y/n] didn't fail to notice the snake on his back the moment she saw him again, she had mixed feelings. The Jug she knew would throw up at the idea of being in a gang, he was as he liked to call It;

"self identified loner".

He still wore that grown shaped beanie on his head, which meant her Juggy was still in there.

"Let me introduce you to my friends now" Jughead looked down to you with a welcoming smile earning a nudge from [y/n].

"Well go on then" spoke [y/n] eager to finally learn the name of the serpent who saved her from embarrassment by face planting onto the floor.

"Toni, [y/n], [y/n], Toni" Jughead gestured between the both of you.

Toni wasn't as welcoming as Veronica was, all Toni offered was a handshake which [y/n] kindly took, her gesture was faint yet Toni's eyes radiated sunshine and her smile was calming.

"It's nice to meet you, I think we will be good friends the way you addressed that queen of hearts in the hall this morning";

"Blossom" Toni mocked you

"That was hilarious you should have seen her face" Toni said to soon after grab her lip between her teeth while waiting for a response.

[y/n] laughed heartily, which made Sweet Pea's heart skip slightly at the sound.

"This here is.."

Before Jughead could finished Fangs spoke for him, Fangs never let anyone speak for him.

"Fogarty, or you can just call me Fangs, whatever takes your fantasy" He had a stern voice and just as identical features yet he spoke with sincerity.

"[y/n]" she spoke back with an eye smile, earning a nod from Fogarty.

Sweet Pea sat with his forefinger resting on his plump lip and thumb just under his chin slowly going back and forth, this action was an anxious action which he seemed to play off very well, in a cool careless like manner.

[y/n] swallowed her anxiety to face this boy.

"And you are the boy who stopped me from falling on my ass" She stood before him crossed armed as he still sat below her.

"You're welcome, princess" This comment turned many heads in the room, because his voice was far from quite.

His voice has that rich, silky tone. He speaks as if he controls the world. His voice was like nothing [y/n] has ever heard before. It sounded like a drum, but deeper, like a tuba, but deeper. It was smooth, like butter, but it could be as rocky as rocky road ice cream. His tone was as deep as the sun at midnight.

Luckily [y/n] had long sleeves on, or everyone would be able to see the goosebumps that have risen on her arms.

"The names sweet pea by the way, I know you were wondering"

"My night in shining armour, he has a name now"

He enjoyed her banter.

"Just in stead of a white horse, I have a Harley Davidson"

Their eye contact didn't break once, Sweet Pea was used to girls looking away from his intensity, it was almost like they were challenging each other.

But something Sweet Pea was yet to find out about this Crescent girl was;

She had a Sweet tooth.

A/N: Hmmm do you think Miss Crescent's sweet tooth will be happy with our SP I mean he always be looking like a SNACC so I think so ;)

Darlings!! Part 1 got over 200+ likes that is so amazing and a few people requested part two, such as @unaveragewriterfreak <3 I'd love to make that a thing, if you guys pop up into my ask box I'll be more than happy to mention you here in the A/N!! You're support means the world! Please stick around for part 3 :) how do you guys like the story so far? I hope you are understanding and enjoying my writing, I love to build characters and the storyline, I don’t like to rush so I hope you like the anticipation.

Be Well x

#sweet pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #sweet pea #sweet pea au #sweet pea riverdale #sweet pea smut #riverdale imagine #riverdale fanfiction #sweet pea headcanon

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musemash · 3 years ago

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TUCKER TRANSMUTES LOSS INTO GRATITUDE – by David D. Fowler / updated July 18, 2021

NOSTALGIA FOR MOVING PARTS is the fourth book by gifted British Columbia poet DIANE TUCKER. The embedded videos present a visualization of the title poem; her recitations of selections from the book; her tribute to George Herbert; and her book launch readings, with guests Sheri-D Wilson and Kevin Spenst. Multi Facet Fables offers several of her poems below.

Turnstone Press describes her work as follows: "Poised between thoughts of mortality, and an exquisite taste for the most tender, small details of life, the poems in Nostalgia For Moving Parts are whimsical, quirky, and resonant with memory. Deeply grounded in the rainy mists and green reeds of the Canadian west coast, solitude becomes a spiritual practice – transmuting loneliness and loss into grand appreciations, for the gift of childhood and the untravelled road ahead."

Fellow poet Rob Taylor writes: When Diane Tucker hangs up a payphone in Nostalgia For Moving Parts' title poem, she observes that 'there is (oh unexpected pleasure) a real click.' When she lays down to sleep: 'the prayers / that fight up through me make a sort of hum.' Click and hum. Nostalgia and prayer. What's been and what will always be. Nostalgia For Moving Parts reminds us how to hear and see the ephemeral in the eternal and the eternal in the ephemeral: the moving parts of all our lives."

Finally, playwright Ron Reed enthuses: "Three poems about childhood... made me cry... So particular, so much compassion. Get yourself a copy. I'm not kidding." You can find the book at this link: https://www.turnstonepress.com/books/poetry/nostalgia-for-moving-parts.html

CHILD'S POSE Both hands spread to feel the floor, the child I am is still kin to carpet, tile, dust-drift beneath cupboards. The child I am spreads forearms along this coolness, taking in how much the floor gives and resists. She curls into her kneecaps, warm familiars, pressing into the small dark made by her greying head. The tops of her feet flat against the ground, the child I remain makes herself hummock, hill, barrow full of the self's jewels, small spine a path from darkness to darkness, arms twin tree roots cradled in earth.

DANNY Skipping ropes at school, their woven heft. Steel poles around the roofed playground, the rain running down them luminous, metal-melting. I’d press my tongue against a pole and drink. School was a world of delicious new textures: fat crayons, creamy manila colouring paper, notebooks, worksheets stacked fat as animal bodies. Tables and chairs with shiny metal tubes for legs. Even light at school felt stronger than at home. They showed us filmstrips of marmalade leaves against a blue blue sky, all technicolour-crisp. How I loved those glowing celluloid leaves! Then the cloakroom hooks’ imploring curves, parallel silences in calm, rectangular shadows, the pavement tap-dance beat of skipping ropes. How I loved school, the sweet order of desks in grids. So I wasn’t totally upset when, in grade two, Danny with the French last name tied me to a pole with a skipping rope so he could kiss me, Danny with the round eyes, a cherub’s mouth, curly hair. He was small even among the small, as I was. No doubt I’d flirted with him, grade-two style, cute and clueless. I thought myself a lady. Were kisses procured? I bet there were a few. Soon the rope loosened and I made a dash. But Danny pushed me back. A metal pole I loved, from which I’d drunk the rain, rushed up and struck me in the bone below one eye. A shiner it was called. I had a shiner. I’d seen them on TV, cartoon-red beefsteaks on faces. Danny got the strap then, or another time, or both. He came back to class subdued, his crying eyes swollen. As if a hiding could patch up his love-starved soul. He chased girls, he lifted skirts, he stole kisses, and the grown-ups just spanked his ass? Poor Danny, tiny paramour, tiny batterer! As long as I knew him, Danny chased the girls, staring expectantly through big brown eyes. Whatever makes boys seize girls roiled in him. That yearning he had, no strap could smack it out. And no black eye stopped me flirting. I was seven and had imprinted on romance like a baby bird. I followed its Hollywood promises everywhere, persistent and imploring as a cloakroom hook.

IF I CAN BE BRAVE I love to lie on the rust-orange carpet by the shiny floor that stops at the heat vents, black slats like little venetian blinds. I peer between them. Can I see the basement? Can I hear Grandma and Grandpa talking? I slide along the varnished floor in sock feet, turn and creep down the basement stairs. If I face it, the darkness, if I can be brave, Grandma will give me a glass of 7UP and scratch my back on the green and white brocade couch and let me watch every last minute of The Lawrence Welk Show. Let me make it through the black basement kitchen, then run into the living room. Lamps will be on. Grandpa will smoke a pipe in his brown leather chair. Grandma's hair will shine in its perfect silver waves. Everything will be safe, blanket-cozy, almost-bedtime good.

BEAUTIFUL GRADE FOUR TEACHER always wore his shirt half open, had dry-look hair and eyes bigger than Donny Osmond’s. Sometimes he used swear words in class. I fell hard in grade four love. I remember the day I had to wear the hand-me-down dress to school. Polka dots, pleats, Peter Pan collar. 1974 was bell-bottoms, feathered hair, Three Dog Night and Doodle Art. It was neither pleats nor polka dots. It was in no way a Peter Pan collar. But crushy teacher, lounging atop a desk, fixed me, with round, pale eyes, in his stare. He grafted two trees to a single rootstock, kindness twinned forever with desire. You look smashing, he said, in that dress. The world lit up. I clutch that moment, talisman still, the heat that flowered when he noticed my smallness, my sadness, and spoke.

LOVE THE SAD MEN The small, huge things that sad men do, sad men who build with everything but words. Build dollhouses, train sets, HO mountains from cereal boxes and plaster of Paris, building the mountains they can for their sons. For daughters they build scroll-sawed shelves to hold phalanxes of dolls, blown-glass animals, Barbie barns above the bed’s blue lace. Sad fathers who’ve eluded words carve magic circles in their back lawns for swimming pools. They sieve stones out of the soil circles so nothing will nick the pools’ thin blue skin. This is the testament of sad men who live starved of words: drywall, carport, pickle jars of nails, lawnmower, farmer’s tan, house paint, apple tree, soldering gun, handsaw, wood plane. Wood shavings falling from the vise, wooden curls on the cold garage floor, wooden curls warm on little girls’ ears.

VANDUSEN GARDEN IN OCTOBER Imagine being planted long enough that your roots grow up through the earth, breaking the mossy surface the way a fish’s spine rises from the bronze lake. Imagine walking in a chilled silence until you hear three black squirrels chewing and hear their tiny hearts beat when the raven screams. Imagine white-gowned women in a fern dell. Imagine they’ve swallowed all of the October light and shine with it like walking birches. Imagine small bridges over a dry stream. Imagine every leaf assembling, red-gold current of autumn wind running under ice-hearted stones. Imagine pausing there, letting the chill slip itself down your back, into your lungs. Imagine your coat, your scarf, your boots loosen, open, and let slip in November’s sleek and blandishing hands.

UN-SISTER The un-sister who barely came to be in this world stayed in God's mind with the un-roses: red almond-shaped shadows. I dream her idling about the un-garden with all the un-born, bodiless smiles painted on the airless atmosphere of the vast un-place of the un-made, faux perfection of the un-tried and un-spoken. I hold up my hand of flesh, bathed in particle waves of material light. It cannot close around nothing. We're always bearing handfuls of atoms. Even when very still and thinking of my un-living sister among the haze of un-created flowers, matter sparks. Light dances across synapses in the mind's dark, where everything imagined has its name, its own small electric body.

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orbemnews · 3 years ago

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A photographer tells her family's story about the dark side of an American dream For 20 years, photographer Diana Markosian thought she knew her family’s immigration history — or the gist of it, at least. In 1996, when she was seven, Markosian’s mother, Svetlana, woke her and her older brother, David, in the middle of the night, telling them to pack all of their important things: the three of them were going to see America. The way Markosian remembers it, neither of them asked any questions. That night they boarded a plane in Moscow bound for Los Angeles, without saying goodbye to their father. Diana Markosian, My Parents Together, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian When they disembarked at the airport, the family was greeted by Eli, a pudgy, much-older, American friend of their mother’s, who brought them into his home in coastal Santa Barbara. The trip, Markosian was told, was meant to be a holiday. But after Svetlana and Eli married less than a year later (they remained so for nine), Santa Barbara became home. “When we came to America in the ’90s, it felt like an absolute dream to be here. (My mom) fell in love with being an American, she embraced it,” Markosian recalled in a phone interview. “I am not sure my mom was leaving anything behind. Everything had already been taken.” Even before they lived there, Markosian had been aware of some version of Santa Barbara. The 1980s American soap opera of the same name was the first TV show of its kind to be broadcast in post-Soviet Russia, and her mother was among the millions of Russians who made “Santa Barbara” a hit, escaping into a world that felt exciting, exotic and far-removed from their own. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Svetlana, an economist, and her husband Arsen, an engineer — Armenians who emigrated to Moscow to finish their doctorates, and separated before Markosian was born — were living in poverty, amid widespread unemployment and hyperinflation. Arsen hawked Matryoshka dolls in Red Square and sold homemade Barbie dresses across Moscow to make ends meet. Svetlana assisted him with his bootleg Barbie business, and waited in the bread lines for handouts to feed the family. Diana Markosian, Moscow Breadline, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian But in January 2017, when Markosian was 27, that narrative was disrupted. As the newly ascended President Trump enacted his first travel ban, Markosian, who was then working as a photojournalist for the likes of National Geographic and the New Yorker, began pressing her mother about their own immigration story. “I just started talking about it and trying to understand: How did we even manage to do this? How did we manage to come to America? And I saw [my mother had] this real desire to tell me, and this readiness to reveal something that felt so shameful, so difficult to tell me. And that’s kind of how it came about” Markosian said. In reality, Svetlana, enamored with the vision of America she’d seen on TV, had met Eli through an ad she’d had circulated in American newspapers and magazines through a Russian agency that matched Soviet women with American men — a popular route for women looking to immigrate at the time. Her proposition was simple: “I am a young woman from Moscow, and would like to meet a kind man who can show me America.” Her first husband had had no idea she was looking to move, and was blindsided when she flew across the world with his children and severed communication. (When she was 22, Markosian and her brother tracked her father down during a trip to Armenia. He had returned to Yerevan, the capital, where the family had lived when Markosian was a child.) Markosian was stunned. “You hold your parents up on a pedestal and I think, for me, there was this anger, (this feeling) that this can’t be our story. Why didn’t I know more about this? Why wasn’t I included in this decision?” she said. “It’s not just us coming to America and living an American life. It’s us coming to America, keeping this secret of where we are for 20 years, and of not seeing my father for 20 years. It’s completely abandoning our past for this dream.” Diana Markosian, The Disappointment, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian To help her process the revelation, and learn to empathize with her mother’s decision to abandon her life in Moscow, Markosian set out to reenact her family’s journey on camera, through a short film and an accompanying photo series titled “Santa Barbara.” Shot from her mother’s perspective, the project saw her auditioning hundreds of actors to play her family members (she looked at 384 women before she found an actor to play Svetlana, someone “who would understand what it meant to give up everything for this one decision”), and shooting in locations across California, as well as the family’s former apartment in Yerevan . (The current tenants allowed her to rent the space.) Ana Imnadze, the actor who plays Svetlana, even wears pieces from her mother’s wardrobe; Armen Margaryan, who plays Arsen, wears her father’s watch. “I started seeing it as a story, and trying to divorce myself from my own life,” she said. “It needed to be a work of fiction, almost, for me to accept it, to process it, to fall in love with it. Because otherwise, it just felt too, too painful.” The photos that comprise “Santa Barbara” are a careful mix of the cinematic and the personal, fantasy and reality. There are dramatically framed domestic scenes, moodily lit (nodding to the dark Americana of Gregory Crewdson and David Lynch), and overexposed snapshots, including one that shows her “father” holding out a birthday cake, a still life with cigarettes and a cherry-red rotary phone, which looks like its been borrowed from a family scrapbook. Palm Springs, from Santa Barbara, 2020 © Diana Markosian, courtesy the artist Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian Similarly, Markosian said the accompanying film, running about 15 minutes, “relies on all these different formats to kind of understand a chapter in my family’s life.” Recreated moments from Russia and California are intercut with Super 8 videos and photos from Markosian’s childhood, as well as auditioning actors’ screen tests. Much of the dialogue is organic: At various points, Svetlana is interrogated by her doppelganger, dressed as her younger self, over the dinner table; and Markosian and Svetlana have their own back-and-forth in voiceover. Markosian had originally intended for the project to be scripted. She even recruited one of the original writers from “Santa Barbara,” Lynda Myles, to pen a script, and gave her family the opportunity to edit it. In part, this was a way to mitigate her own anxiety about telling a story in which she felt like a bit player. Diana Markosian, The Wedding, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian “The hardest part of this project was coming to terms with the fact that I was the narrator,” she said “I sometimes sit with that thought and think why me? I was the youngest person in the room; I really didn’t have a voice in any of the decisions that were made. Why am I the one who’s in the place to tell this story? “It was a collective memory, and we all had our own version.” But finding a version of events that her family could agree on — from the nuances of Arsen and Svetlana’s relationship, to the realities of life in California — proved impossible. She brought Myles’ script to her father in Armenia, giving him the opportunity to inject his own perspective, but when she returned to California, her mother ended up crossing out his words and replacing them with her own. The process repeated when she handed the script to her brother. Hearst Castle, from Santa Barbara, 2020 © Diana Markosian, courtesy the artist Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian “The whole thing is disputed (but) I think we reached a place of understanding that we were never going to really agree on any of it. (The differences were) not so dramatic that I couldn’t put out a project, but enough that I started to understand how fascinating memory is, and that if I leaned into the gray, if I leaned into every perspective, I would arrive at a closer version of the truth than just this one version that I called my own,” Markosian said. “I looked at the script (after everyone had added their notes), and it became a piece of art in itself.” Diana Markosian, The Argument , 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian In November 2020, Markosian released “Santa Barbara” as her debut monograph with Aperture. This summer, she will exhibit the photos and debut the finished film at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, sharing one version of her family’s American dream with the world. There are also plans to turn it into an immersive show at the International Center of Photography in New York in September. “I remember how special it was to come to America, and I never took that for granted. It just came with a very big sacrifice for all of us,” she said. “That second chance to remember and recreate a part of your life is an absolute gift, and I think that’s what art has given me.” Source link Orbem News #American #Dark #dream #Familys #Photographer #side #Story #Tells

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 9/11/20 – I AM WOMAN, BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY, RENT-A-PAL, UNPREGNANT AND MORE!

Thankfully, we’re getting a slower week this week after the past few weeks of absolute insanity with so many new releases. This week, we also get a nice string of movies about women that are mostly made by women directors, so hopefully these won’t get lost in the shuffle of theaters reopening.

To be perfectly honest, I went into Unjoo Moon’s I AM WOMAN (Quiver Distribution) – this week’s “Featured Flick” -- thinking it was a doc about ‘70s pop sensation Helen Reddy. Imagine my surprise to discover that it actually was a narrative film with Tilda Cobham-Hervey playing the Australian singer who moved to New York in 1966 after winning a contest, expecting a record deal but only winding up with disappointment. Once there, she’d meet journalist Lilian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald, being able to use her real Australian accent for once) and Jeff Weld (Evan Peters), the man who would become her manager and then husband. Once the couple move to L.A. with Helen’s daughter Traci (from her previous marriage), things began to pick up at the same time as Reddy starts dealing with issues in her marriage and friendship with Roxon.

Listen, I get it. To some (or maybe all) younger people, including film critics, Helen Reddy represents the cheesier side of ‘70s music. I only know her music, since I was a young kid who listened to AM Top 40 radio for much of the ‘70s, but by the end of the decade, I had already switched to metal, punk and noisier rock. As you can tell from watching I Am Woman, Reddy is a particularly interesting music personality, particularly once you realize how hard she struggled to get into the business with a husband who only feigned to support her after dragging her to L.A. for “her career.”

There were many takeaways from watching Moon’s film, but one of the bigger ones is how amazing Cobham-Hervey is at portraying a woman that few of us may have actually seen perform even on television. I’m not sure if Cobham-Hervey did any of her own singing or is lip-syncing the whole time, but it doesn’t matter because she instills so much joy into the performances, especially the two times she sings the highly-inspirational title song live.

Although there isn’t a ton of major drama in Reddy’s life, most that does exist revolves around her relationship with Wald, who is depicted by Peters as an out-of-control coke-sniffing monster. Those in Hollywood may have dealt with Wald as a movie producer or during his stint as Sylvester Stallone’s manager, and only they will know how exaggerated this performance is. Far more interesting is Helen’s friendship with Macdonald’s Roxon which would inspire her to perform the song “You and Me Against the World.” (Seriously, if you want a good cry, throw that song on after watching I Am Woman.)

Moon does a great job with the material, whether it’s recreating New York in the ‘60s – often using music to set the tone of the period -- or by framing Reddy’s story with Phyllis Schlaffly’s fight against the ERA, as depicted in FX’s mini-series Mrs. America. Still, it never loses track of Reddy’s journey and her role as a mother to Traci and slightly less to Wald’s son, Jordan. The movie ends with a wonderful and tearful epilogue, and I will not lie that I was tearing up more than once while watching this movie.

I Am Woman may be relatively uncomplicated, but it’s still a compelling relaying of Reddy's amazing story bolstered by an incredible knock-em-dead performance by Tilda Cobham-Hervey. It’s also one of the most female-empowering film I’ve seen since the Ruth Bader Ginsburg movie On the Basis of Sex, starring Felicity Jones.

This week’s primary theatrical release is Natalie Krinsky’s THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY (Stage 6/Sony), starring Geraldine Viswanathan as Lucy, a young woman who works at a gallery who is still obsessed with her ex-coworker/boyfriend Max. On the night of her disastrous break-up, Lucy meets-cute Nick (Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things), who later inspires her to rid of her hoarding issues by creating the “Broken Hearts Gallery.” This is a place where people who have broken up can bring the remnants of said relationship by donating the mementos they’ve maintained from their partners as sentimental value.

I’m a big fan of Viswanathan from her appearance in Blockers and TBS’ “Miracle Workers” series, as she’s clearly very talented as a comic actress, but I couldn’t help but go into this with more than a little cynicism, because it does follow a very well-worn rom-com formula that can be traced right back to When Harry Met Sally. Yup, another one. Much of this movie comes across like a bigger budget version of a movie that might play Tribeca Film Festival, and I wish I could say that was a compliment because I’ve seen a lot of good movies at Tribeca. But also just as many bad ones.

The problem is that The Broken Hearts Gallery isn’t very original, and its roots are especially obvious when it starts interspersing the recently-heartbroken giving testimonials. It’s also a little pretentious, because rather than the real New York City that would be recognizable to anyone who lives there, it’s more of a Millennial woke fantasy where everyone is a 20-something LGBTQ+ of color. Even so, the main trio of Lucy, Nick and Nick’s business partner Marcos (Arturo Castro from Broad City) do keep things fun even when things are getting predictable.

To be honest, I’ll be perfectly happy to see Viswanathan become the next Meg Ryan, because part of the reason why I warmed up to the movie is because I thought she was quite great in it. (I hate to say it but she’ll definitely need a simple name to remember to make that happen. I’d like to suggest G-Vis… as in G-Vis, she’s awesome!) There’s no question she’s the best part of the movie, but it also thrives from some of the other women cast around her, including Molly Gordon, Phillipa Soo and (surprise, surprise!) Bernadette Peters. (At times, I was worried Lucy’s friends would get particularly annoying, but you’ll warm up to them as well.)

Krinsky’s movie is cute, and while it certainly gets a little overly sentimental at times, there are also moments that are quite heartfelt, so basically, it’s a tolerable addition to the rom-com genre. The fact that the characters are so likeable kept me from outright hating the movie, especially once it gets to its corny and somewhat predictable ending. Another thing I like about Broken Hearts Gallery is that at least it’s making an effort to have some sort of theatrical presence, including drive-in theaters.

Next up is Jon Stevenson’s RENT-A-PAL (IFC Midnight), a rather strange and very dark horror-comedy. It stars Brian Landis Folkins as David, a lonely 40-year-old living with his elderly mother suffering from dementia, who has been using the services of a dating service called Video Rendezvous. This is the ‘80s after all, so it involves getting VHS testimonials from various women. One day, David finds a tape labelled “Rent a Pal” and he decides to check it out. It turns out to be a video of a guy named Andy (Wil Wheaton aka Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) who David begins having conversations with, but once David gets his chance to have a real relationship with a nice woman named Lisa (Amy Rutledge), he’s been dragged too far down the rabbit hole with Andy’s evil urgings.

This was recommended to me by my own personal rent-a-pal, Erick Weber of Awards Ace, who saw it weeks ago. I totally could understand why he would have liked it, because it’s pretty good in terms of coming up with an original idea using elements that at least us older guys can relate to (especially the living with your Mom part which I had to do a few years ago). I wasn’t sure but I generally thought I knew where it was going, because David’s trajectory always seemed to be heading towards My Friend Dahmer or Maniac territory. What I liked about Folkins’ performance is that you generally feel for him right up until he gets to that point. I also really liked his innocent relationship with Lisa and was hoping things that wouldn’t get as dark as where they eventually end up. I also have to draw attention to Wheaton’s performance, because as one might expect if you only know him from the “Star Trek” show he did as a kid, this is a very different role for him similar to Seann Michael Scott in last year’s Bloodline.

Either way, Stevenson is a decent writer and director who really pushes the boundaries with where Andy takes his new friend, and it’s especially great for its synth-heavy soundtrack that reminds me of some of John Carpenter’s best scores, as we watch David’s inevitable descent into madness. You’ll frequently wonder where it’s going, but for me, it just got too dark, so I only really could enjoy it up to a point.

A little cheerier is UNPREGNANT (HBO Max), the new film from Rachel Lee Goldberg, who directed the recent Valley Girl remake, although this time she’s adapting a book written by Jenni Hendricks. It stars Haley Lu Richardson (from Split and Support the Girls) as 17-year-old Veronica who discovers that her dopey boyfriend Kevin has gotten her pregnant. Since women under 18 can’t get an abortion in Missouri without a parents’ consent, she goes on a road trip with her estranged childhood friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) to New Mexico to get the job done.

It’s more than little weird seeing this movie come out in the same year as a much more serious version of the same movie in Elyza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometime Always. That aside, Goldberg and her cast do their best to make this something more in the vein of last year’s Book Smart, although that’s also a fairly high watermark for any movie.

Because this is a road trip comedy, it tends to follow a fairly similar path as other movies where they meet a lot of strange characters along the way, as they try to get a ride after being busted cause Bailey stole her mother’s boyfriend’s car for the trip. For instance, they meet a friendly couple who tend to be pro-lifers who want to change Veronica’s mind, and the best side character is Giancarlo Esposito as a conspiracy theorist named Bob.

I guess my biggest problem with the movie is that it just isn’t that funny and feels fairly standard, but at least it has a decent ending to make up for the predictability of the rest of the movie.

Now streaming on Netflix is Maimouna Doucouré’s French coming-of-age film Mignonnes aka CUTIES, a film that premiered at Sundance and then stirred up quite a bit of controversy last month due to its marketing campaign, but is actually not the pervy male gaze movie which it may have been sold as. It’s about an 11-year-old Sengalese girl named Amy Diop (Fathia Youssouf) who wants to join the school’s “cool girl” dance group, known as the “Cuties,” even though it goes against her family’s Muslim beliefs. Amy learns to dance so she can be part of the dance team and take part in a dance competition, but you know that this decision will led to trouble.s

Cuties got a lot of backlash from for the trailer and Netflix’s decision to release Doucouré’s movie, which is about a young girl discovering her sexuality, although it isn’t really something lurid or gross but actually a very strong coming-of-age film. I haven’t seen the trailer, but I can only imagine what scene it focused on that got people so riled up, since there are dance scenes that felt a little creepy to me. Other than that aspect of the film, Cuties is as innocent as a Judy Blume book. I mean, how else do you expect kids to learn about real life than movies like this? (Unfortunately, the movie is TV-MA so young teens won’t be able to watch it.)

The big problem with the Cuties is that they’re actually kind of bratty and bullies, almost like a younger “Mean Girls” girl gang, so it’s very hard to like any of them. They’re also trying to act way older than they really are, and you can only imagine what dark places that might led, as you worry about Amy getting dragged down with them, just because she wants to have friends and feel popular.

Despite my issues with Cuties, Maimouna Doucouré is a fantastic filmmaker, and this is a pretty amazing debut, especially notable for how she’s able to work with the young cast but also make a movie that looks amazing. That said, Cuties is a decent coming-of-age film, although I feel like I’ve seen better versions of this movie in films like Mustang and The Fits.

Also from France comes Justine Triet’s SYBIL (Music Box Films), starring Virgine Efira (who appeared in Triet’s earlier film, In Bed with Victoria) as the title character, a jaded psychotherapist who decides to return to her passion of writing, getting her inspiration from an actress patient named Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who she becomes obsessed with. I don’t have a lot to say about this movie other than it wasn’t really for me. As far as French films go, a movie really has to stand out from the usual talkie drama filled with exposition, and though I thought the performances by the two women were great, I didn’t really care for the script or the pacing on this one. After playing at last year’s Cannes, Toronto and the New York Film Festival, Sybil will be available via Virtual Cinema through Film at Lincoln Center and the Laemmle in L.A. as well as other cities. You can watch the trailer and find out how to watch it through your local arthouse at the official site.

Now seems like as good a time as any to get into some docs…

Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés’ doc ALL-IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY (Amazon) follows Stacey Abrams through her run for Atlanta Governor in 2018, but it also deals with the laws that had been put in place to try to keep black voters from taking part in their right as Americans to be able to vote. I’m not sure what’s going on with me right now, but I generally just don’t have much interest in political docs right now, maybe because there’s so much politics on TV and in the news. I also have very little interest in Abrams or even having the racist history of the American South drilled into my head by another movie. I was born in 1965, my family didn’t even live in this country until 1960, and I’ve spent my life trying to treat everyone equally, so watching a movie like this and being preached to about how awful African-Americans have been treated in parts of the South for hundreds of years, I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to do about it here in New York. I guess my biggest problem with All-In, which is a perfectly fine and well-made doc – as would be expected from Garbus – is that it lacks focus, and it seems to be all over the place in terms of what it’s trying to say… and I’m not even sure what it is trying to say, nor did I have the patience to find out. I thought Slay the Dragon handled the issues with gerrymandering far better, and I think I would have preferred a movie that ONLY focused on Abrams and her life and political career than trying to make a bigger statement. All-In will open at a few drive-ins (tonight!) and then will be on Amazon Prime on September 18.

I was similarly mixed on Jeff Orlwosky’s doc, THE SOCIAL DILEMMA, which debuted on Netflix this week. This one looks at the addiction people have for social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and how the information of what people watch and click on is collected into a database that’s sold to the highest bidder. Basically, it’s your worst fears about social media come to life, but my issue with this one is that the filmmaker decided to hire actors to dramatize parts of the movie, showing one family dealing with social media and phone addiction, which seemed like an odd but probably necessary decision other than the fact that the topic is so nerdy and so over my head that maybe it was necessary to illustrate what’s being explained by programmers. Again, not a terrible doc, just not something I had very little interest in even if it is an important subject (and I’m probably spending too much on social media and essentially more of the problem than the solution).

I saw S. Leo Chiang and Yang Sun’s doc OUR TIME MACHINE at Tribeca last year, and I quite liked it. It follows influential Chinese artist Ma Liang (Maleonn) who collaborates with his Peking Opera director father Ma Ke, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, on an elaborate and ambitious project called “Papa’s Time Machine” using life-sized mechanical puppets. I don’t have a ton to say about the movie but it’s a nice look into the Chinese culture and traditions and how the country and art itself has changed between two generations.

One doc I missed last week but will be available digitally this week is Michael Paszt’s Nail in the Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro about semi-retired professional wrestler Ian Hodgkinson aka Vampiro, who is a Lucha Libre legend.

There’s a lot of other stuff on Netflix this week, including THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN, the sequel to the Samara Weaving-starring horror-thriller, again co-written and directed by McG (Charlies Angels: Full Throttle). This one stars Bella Thorne, Leslie Bibb and Ken Marino, as it follows Judah Lewis’ Cole after surviving the satanic blood cult from the first movie.

I don’t know nearly as much about the British comedy series The Duchess, other than it stars comedian Katherine Ryan as a single mother juggling a bunch of things. Julie and the Phantoms is Netflix’s latest attempt to be the Disney channel with a movie about a young girl named Julie (Madison Reyes) who decides to start a band with a group of ghosts (hence the title). It’s even from Kenny Laguna, who is best known for the Disney Channel’s biggest hits High School Musical and The Descendants.

Other stuff to look out for this week include Kevin Del Principe’s thriller Up on the Glass (Gravitas Ventures), which is now available On Demand, digital and Blu-Ray; the Russian dogs doc Space Dogs (Icarus Films) – available via Alamo on Demand; Phil Wall’s doc The Standard (Gravitas Ventures), and Andrei Bowden-Schwartz, Gina O’Brien’s tennis comedy All-In (on Amazon Prime and VOD/Digital) and Sam B. Jones’ Red White and Wasted (Dark Star Pictures).

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #TheBrokenHeartsGallery #IAMWoman #Unpregnant #AllIn #Cuties #rentapal #Netflix #VOD #streaming

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whitneyrmcguireblog · 5 years ago

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Crashes

Making time to reevaluate childhood trauma as an adult before its too late. Sometimes I feel like i’m a passenger on a speeding jet, ascending into the air, my life, the landscape beyond my window. Everything feels like a blur. As I am working through upending fears to create joy, I have decided to write through this process as best I can. Feel free to leave feedback. Or not. Today’s fear: Crashes. Read more below.

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I remember a loud crash. My head was resting on my mother’s lap as we both sat on the floor. Her french tip acrylic nails tracing calms down my back, repeating affirmations of better days to come as if writing sentences over and over the way ornery pupils do for punishment. Goosebumps emerged from my skin filling my body and mind with comfort. belonging. A pervading knowing that I was loved. The crash happened during my mother’s evening prayers, a ritual she embraced just 12 years prior to my arrival Earthside. It was 1991 and I was five years old. Glass shattered in our living room and all I could see were headlights. Our elderly neighbor, one my mother was never really fond of, accidentally pressed her gas instead of her break and sped into our front porch. “She’s a bitch,” my mother would say, ignoring the social mores of swearing in front of children through her feigned smile every time we pulled into our driveway, under the watch of this neighbor. She never returned the smile. The matriarchs of my family rushed to our aide that evening. I stood on my favorite stool, hunched over the kitchen sink, dry heaving from the fumes of our neighbor’s mangled Buick LeSabre. A few of my braids affixed with plastic, colorful beads, tapped the side of the sink escaping my grandmother’s gentle grasp catching remnants of my spit. The patriarchs remained outside with the police.

I’ve only a few memories in this kitchen. Most of them revolving around the swift need to diffuse tension. Despite the frequent goosebumps offered to me by my mother’s touch, my stomach held memories of a different sensation, prompting my uncle to offer me ginger supplements often. Apparently I worried a lot. My parents’ arguments filled the home as I watched them between banister posts on the stairs. My mother humorously recalls “losing it” on my father a few times, once so badly she chased him out of the door and down the street with a knife. The other times she would grab the closes hard object and hurl it at him out of frustration and exhaustion. A hairdryer is the only inanimate object my father fondly recalls being thrown at him.

My parents lived together for only one year of my life. I met my father when I was 4. He was released from prison shortly before my 4th birthday. The first time he drove me to pre-school, without my mother, I screamed the entire way there. Later that day, I fell off of a swing and cracked a tooth. Bloody and all, I knew the first person I would see outside of pre-school staff would be my mother. I was right.

The second crash occurred a few months later. My mother and I rushed to a Buddhist meeting, skipping morning prayers. An elderly woman in a very big green car rammed into our toyota sending it careening into on-coming traffic and eventually on the lawn of a small law firm. I was secured in a booster seat in the back. Somehow I managed to hold onto my barbies the entire time. I don’t remember fear. The door closest to me was too dented to open, so I crawled out of the opposite window into my mother’s arms. No one from the law office came to check on us. We were in the “white part of town.” They did let us use their phone to call the police, however. My mother never skipped her morning prayers again.

The green paint from the woman’s car streaked the gray and silver dents on our car, which eventually stayed in our driveway. We couldn’t afford to get it fixed. Every time we approached our home, I saw the “good side of the car first, feeling a flash of hope that it was fixed, but at we got closer, I would spot the side that was impacted by the wreck. And I would grow instantly cold. Even in the summer. This is when fear began to set in for me, for just about everything. If we parked next to a wrecked car in a parking lot, or pulled up next to one at a stoplight, my 5 year old body would tense up, my heart would race, my stomach would churn and sometimes I would cry. My mother, unaware of my newly-acquired phobia, would repeatedly ask me what was wrong. I don’t remember what I told her, but I’m sure it was, “nothing.”

The third crash happened outside of my presence. My grandmother, a new widow and our primary support, was apparently leaving the parking lot of a gas station when someone slammed into her Lincoln town car causing significant damage to the anterior of the car. She came home shaken up, but quite unaffected in my opinion. I, however, feared going into the garage everyday until the car was fixed. I noted the way my grandmother and mother handled these situations. Ones that seemed to completely jar my sense of security seemed nothing but blips on the radar for them. It’s worth mentioning that I never saw either of them cry after my grandfather, my grandmother’s husband and my mother’s father passed away the year prior.

He was a pervading force in my life. My first father. He made me waffles, eggs and bacon in the mornings and we would discuss fishing, books, and my mother - his favorite child, though he never expressed that verbally to her. In the evenings, curled up in his lap, I would often stare at the gold playboy bunny symbol that dangled from one of his many gold chains. Eventually, I would find his Playboy stash and marvel at bodies I simultaneously wanted to devour and admire. His death left an imprint on my psyche. Men leave.

The day I won the kindergarten spelling bee, my mother was absent. My grandfather met me backstage with a bouquet of flowers and drove me home. The garage door opened shortly after and my mother also walked in, greeted with her own bouquet of roses i excitedly presented to her with a smile on my face. “CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR DIVORCE!!!” I yelled à la Oprah, with arms outstretched in power stance. She thanked me bashfully. “Glad that’s done,” she said.

The year I turned 6 was an opposite year. Everything was different as if I had unknowingly agreed with some higher power to participate in 365 opposite days that year. You know, the kind where you wear your clothing backwards or days when the teachers dress up as students and vice versa. Except I wasn’t in on the joke. When I blew out the candles on my 6th birthday I wished for my grandfather to come back. He never did. Apparently my grandmother couldn’t get the image of his dead body slumped in his favorite chair during March madness out of her mind either. We moved from that house soon after. She, into a smaller, family-owned condominium across town, and my mother and I in a cute, run down two story home somewhat near her.

Although my new bedroom was twice the size of the one my mother and I shared in my grandparents’ home, I spent most of my time in my mother’s room perusing her fancy clothes and watching MTV and Nickelodeon on her personal television. My mother was a teacher during the day and a Jazz singer at night. I consider myself a “stage kid” because I grew up used to the daily grind of having a parent who worked two jobs, to which one I could accompany her, when appropriate. Her most consistent gig was at a restaurant near the airport called Shades of Jade. We would have to drive almost an hour to get there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those days I would meet her at home from the bus stop and hop in the tub to wash off the day. She would lay out my outfit for the evening and I would watch her apply vibrant shades of red lipstick, black eyeliner, and blush to her caramel-colored skin. She was always a beautiful woman, but on those nights, her beauty was especially enhanced. Her charisma and stage persona always made me feel a little small. Like I could never do what she’s doing, despite her encouragement for me to join her on stage for what she thought would be cute mother-daughter moments. Also, tips were more abundant when the singer’s child was present. But I never acquiesced. A retired white couple befriended my mother during her residency at this restaurant. They were regulars and often bought me extra shrimp toast and egg rolls to eat while I sat through my mother’s four-hour set. They were artists themselves and often brought writing and drawing implements to keep me busy. I loved to draw. I loved to write.

The fourth crash happened the summer before my first year in boarding school. My mother had recently accepted a job in Las Vegas after explaining to me that “she had exhausted the Mid-West circuit (for performing).” She was ready to regain her sense of self and step even more fully into the person she was before I came along. She met my father before moving to New York after graduating from Central State University in Dayton, Ohio. They remained in contact during the 13 years she spent performing with some of the biggest names in music at the time, Chaka Kahn, Prince, Rick James, etc. One divorce under her belt and the trauma of watching her first cousin and twin flame die from AIDS sent her back to Dayton, our hometown, for a change of pace and more stability. “I didn’t want to be no damn teacher,” she’s often reminded me. But when my father was convicted of a drug offense, she was left with no income and a newborn baby. “I had to do what I had to do,” she said. My father remarried rather quickly after their divorce, their second my the way. My mother divorced him while he was in prison, perhaps as a way to regain a sense of control during one of the most chaotic times in her life. My step mother, a more simple woman who pragmatically sought stability through a government job she held for nearly 40 years, and a teen mom, reminded me of my mother, only in looks. Both had short hair, channeling Anita Baker. Bother were the same complexion. Both were consistently aggravated by my father.

On the day of the fourth crash i was brewing with anger in the wake of one of the most explosive arguments I had ever had with an adult - my father - the night before. We sat in his black GMC truck arguing about whether he should have to pay for the laptop computer i needed to rent for boarding school. The $400 rental fee may seem like small change for many, but for my family it meant the difference between being able to afford necessities versus something that seemed rather extravagant at the time. “You don’t need a computer. You can use a pen and paper.” I retorted with the fact that most of our assignments were disseminated via computer and that I would be at a significant academic disadvantage without one. “Well why can’t your mother pay for it? Child support doesn’t cover these things. I am not obligated by the court to pay for a computer. What is your mother using the child support for?” “BILLS!!!” I responded at the top of my lungs, I’m sure followed by many expletives I brazenly employed — a hallmark of my communication tactics with my parents. I don’t hold my tongue. The morning after, I decided to skip church, but my stepmother, a faithful woman at the time, guilted me into attending church that day. I was always annoyed by her driving. She always stopped too short in my opinion, driving too closely behind cars that were in front of her. In fact, I often questioned her depth perception. This day was no different. While in traffic she stopped short and actually tapped the red pickup truck in front of us, but then, “BANG!” The loudest bang there ever was. The cereal I was eating from a cup flew out from between my legs and scattered all over my white pedal pushers and the dashboard. My step mother checked the rearview mirror and all we could see was the red trunk of her Mazda 626 mangled. “My CAR!” she exclaimed then checked me to make sure the cereal milk was not, in fact, blood. The first responders to the scene asked me a few questions then looked at me sympathetically. “It happens,” the firefighter said to me pointing to my wet pants. “It’s MILK!” I said, curing the embarrassment he was transferring to me from his assumption that I had wet my pants.

I received a few hundred dollars from the settlement from that accident and went to the nearest Walmart to purchase snacks for my dorm room. I had been accepted to boarding school the year prior as the result of my misunderstood independence. Just a year prior to that, when I was 12 years old, I met one of my mother’s favorite students, Jamila. She had the longest hair I had ever seen on a 100% black girl, sort of like Aaliyah. She carried a confidence that I often tried to mimic, but could never really nail. She was tall, beautiful, and her eyes sparkled with new beginnings and an “other side of the train tracks” aura. My mother introduced me to Jamila by reminding me that she was attending boarding school for high school. I had no idea what boarding school was so I inquired about her experience as if her little sister, ready to hang on to her every word. “You will really like it. You should apply,” she said. Following that conversation, I read my first (and only) harry potter book and another written by a black woman Buddhist member my mother had recently befriended. Both stories, one fictional, the other biographical, told the story of boarding school with the same amount of magic. Except Charlene’s magic was navigating an all-white institution as one of the first black students to integrate her historically white male boarding school. I saw myself in both characters. I saw myself in Jamila. So I decided that I would pursue the opportunity to apply to boarding school via a feeder program for inner city youth.

A few months, lots of judging from my family who thought my mother, father and me were crazy, many re-writes of handwritten applications and essays later, I was in! Five out of five boarding schools accepted me, but only one offered me a full-tuition scholarship, Jamila’s school, St. George’s high school in Newport, RI. The first time I visited campus I felt goosebumps, like the ones my mother’s nails caused. For the first time in a long time, I was fearless.

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cooperjones2020 · 7 years ago

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What’s Past is Prologue, What to Come

The first in a series of interrelated vignettes from Jughead Jones’s obsession with Betty Cooper. Can be read with Marked, part 1 and part 2.

Starts in childhood and will go partway through season 1. If I don’t get bored.

Dark!Jug, Creepy!Jug, Stalker!Jug, generally Sociopathic!Jug

TW for implied abuse, and, as always, gratuitous Shakespeare references

(ao3-->http://archiveofourown.org/works/11394858/chapters/25519734)

The day he met Betty was the day he discovered the monster in his chest.

He stared at her through the boughs of the shrub he’d been sitting in for the last five minutes.

Now that the sun had sunk below the eaves of the house, the underside of the boxwood hedge was dark and cool. The shiny leaves brushed against him, tickling his skin and snagging on his hat. He heard Archie, still counting, through the open bedroom window, but he knew the other boy wouldn’t find him here. Even then Jughead Jones knew Archie Andrews wasn’t very smart. For starters, he hadn’t actually meant that Archie should count to a hundred when he said count to a hundred. Archie kept messing up thirty-three and thirty-four and having to go back.

But that was okay. Archie always had new comic books and he didn’t mind sharing his legos. Plus, when they went over to the Andrews for dinner, there was always enough for seconds. Usually thirds too.

In his green and dappled fortress, Jughead hunkered down for a nice quiet wait. He had a dead frog in his pocket that he’d picked up on the walk over.

Then the gate opened and what he could only describe as a cartoon character come to life walked through. The little girl had curled blonde pigtails, a stiff pink dress, and saddle shoes with ruffled socks. She was the cleanest thing he’d ever seen. She actually glowed.

She also had a tupperware container.

Jughead debated whether or not to come out. On the one hand, Archie was almost done counting and if he came out, he’d almost certainly lose. On the other hand, if he didn’t come out he might not get to eat whatever was in the tupperware. He’d already eaten two hot dogs but he also knew he’d eaten the end of the cereal at their house that morning.

Then the back door opened and Archie ran out, his orange head almost as strong a beacon as her yellow one. “Betty, you came!”

“Of course I did, Archie! And look, my mom sent us brownies!”

Brownies. Okay he was coming out.

He emerged from his crouch in the hedge and the girl—Betty—looked startled.

“Wow, that was a good hiding place, Jug! I never would have found you.”

Jughead shrugged at Archie, but stayed in his place in the bush, his hand around the frog in his pocket.

“Come meet Betty! She’s my new neighbour and she has a sister and a cat and her parents are putting a swimming pool in their yard!”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Archie, I said that was a secret!”

“Jughead’s my best friend, Betty. Secrets don’t count with best friends.” Jughead didn’t think that was true. He was pretty sure there were things his dad hadn’t told Mr. Andrews. Like for instance, he was pretty sure Mr. Andrews didn’t know about the stuff his dad brought home from work. But this didn’t seem to be the moment to point it out.

She moved forward. “Hi Jughead, I’m Betty. Do you want a brownie?”

“Yes.” He stepped out of the shrub and reached up a hand to make sure his hat was on tightly.

He ate three brownies and drank a glass of milk while Archie and Betty argued about what they should play. Archie insisted girls couldn’t play with GI Joes. Betty insisted he was wrong. GI Joe looked exactly like Ken so if Archie wouldn’t share a GI Joe with her, she’d just go bring one of her Ken dolls over. And maybe she’d bring Barbie too.

Archie’s eyes widened in horror. Jughead watched their exchange. The sheer speed with which words left her mouth was disorienting. He didn’t think he’d ever heard either of his parents talk that fast. Or that much.

But he was also fascinated by her hands. She kept making fists and releasing them. They curled so tightly he knew they had to be hurting her. But she kept them by her sides. She never raised them like his father sometimes did late at night.

Archie called him back to the present. “Jug, tell her a Ken doll is not the same as a GI Joe. Ken is for girls.”

Jughead had never seen a Ken doll, but he also didn’t want Betty to leave. So he sided with Betty. Archie only looked hurt for a moment before shrugging and running upstairs for the basket of toys.

He didn’t understand why he couldn’t stop staring at her.

He watched her from his place to her left on the grass. For all Archie’s complaining, as soon as they’d started playing, he’d let Betty take charge of the game. She was currently collecting rocks from around her and ordering Archie to fetch extra food. The GI Joes were going on a stakeout in the desert.

She turned big green eyes on him and asked if he wanted to help her build their fort. He scooted a little bit closer.

When her mother called her home, a sharp Elizabeth traveling over the tall, white fence, Betty had looked scared. Immediately, Jughead had a vision of her mom as a fire-breathing dragon. Or as the evil stepmother wanting to lock Betty away in a tower. Something black and foreign clawed its way up his throat and for a moment his vision tunneled. The thing roared in his ears. Jughead had never wanted to play knight before, but he wanted to protect Betty Cooper. He wanted a sword to swing and charge and whack at her mother.

He watched her slip back through the gate and into her own yard. Through the slats of the fence, he could see her mother yelling, saying things like You knew what time you had to be home and where is my tupperware and how did you get grass stains on your dress. Betty stared at her shoes. Jughead wished again for a sword. He wished the thing inside him could come out. Archie kept playing with his GI Joe.

That night, when Archie fell asleep, Jughead rolled out of his sleeping bag and crept to the windowsill. Her curtains were open. A nightlight illuminated a tiny figure hunched on the bed. If he didn’t breathe, he could hear the strangled sound of her crying.

Without thinking, he pulled the head off the GI Joe that had been on the floor next to him.

He wanted to hit whoever made Betty cry. He wanted to hit Betty so she’d keep crying.

When his mother left for Toledo the first time, taking a black eye and a ten month-old Jellybean with her, when his father said he was too young to be left alone and dropped him off at the Andrews for a couple hours that turned into five days, Betty Cooper baked him cookies.

By then, he was used to her feeding him. The instances in which Betty appeared at the Andrews house unaccompanied by baked goods were few and far between. She seemed to use them to unlock the magic door that kept her imprisoned. She used them cut a path in the tangled forest that isolated her tower. She used them like an excuse so her mother would let her come over.

The times Archie wasn’t home, the times his parents would fight and Jughead would sneak his way past them or out his window, and would run and run and climb until he could fling himself into the treehouse in the corner of Archie’s yard, Betty’s blonde head would appear, quickly followed a small plastic bag or a tupperware container. When he was really lucky, she’d also bring a sandwich.

On the third day of Gladys and FP’s absence, when Jughead was beginning to wonder if he was an orphan, Betty had arrived.

Betty told him these cookies were special. Polly, older than them and so infinitely wise, had helped bake them. Archie was made to promise not to eat any. They had chocolate chips but no walnuts, which her mom normally put in. They had reese’s pieces. They had pretzels. And they were as big as two of his hands.

He ate four while Betty took off her coat.

As usual, he noted how clean she was. He wasn’t sure if pink was her favourite color — he’d never asked her — but she sure wore it a lot. Today, though, she had a white gauze bandage wrapped around her right forearm.

Polly the infinitely wise hadn’t been able to find the oven mitts. “So I used a dish towel, only it didn’t work as good. So when my hands got too hot — well I’m not sure cause it happened so fast — but I think I must have tried to balance the tray on my arm instead and then I burned myself.” Tears sprung to her eyes and her lower lip wobbled. “Juggie, it hurt.”

The black thing in his chest, the monster, shifted in its cage. He hugged Betty, because that’s what you were supposed to do. That’s what Mrs. Andrews had done the day before when Jughead had stubbed his toe and said a word that made Archie turn as red as his hair.

Betty sighed and turned her face into his neck.

“What if I sign it? We can color it and draw pictures.”

“It’s not a cast, Juggie.”

“So? It looks the same. And then when you look at it, you can remember how much fun coloring is instead of how much it hurt.” She looked at him the way baby Jellybean sometimes did.

Betty had been right, though. A gauze bandage was not the same as a cast. He’d picked a red marker and Betty had picked a pink one — maybe that really was her favorite color — but soon after they started, the colors began to bleed together, and Betty winced and then she started to cry for real. Something darker than the red marker reached up and swallowed the letters of their names.

Mrs. Andrews wasn’t mad. Mrs. Andrews was never mad. Jughead had never even heard her yell. She just took Betty into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet and pulled out a first aid kit.

Jughead hovered in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. His eyes bugged out when she unwrapped the bandage.

A red, shiny patch as big as a baseball covered the inside of Betty’s forearm. But in the middle of that, old, brown blood had crusted, and something yellow and oozing seeped around it. The red of the fresh blood flowed in and through the the raised yellow bits, making tracks like water between tiles. Tiny blisters ringed the whole mess. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

It was made up of brighter versions of the same colors Betty’s fists made when she clenched them.

But soon enough, Mary had it rewrapped, with a fresh layer of neosporin under the bandage. Betty smiled at him through the droplets that clung to her eyelashes.

“It’s probably time for you to go home now, Betty. We don’t want your mom to be mad.”

“Okay,” said Betty in a small voice. She hugged Jughead and ran out.

When Betty left, Jughead retreated to the treehouse with his cookies. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had been making Archie leave him alone unless he said he wanted company. He didn’t.

He’d discovered he could see into Betty’s room. She’d forgotten her Nancy Drew binoculars the week before and he could use them to see through her window to the mirror above her dresser. And then he could usually see her sitting on her bed. It wasn’t as good as the view from Archie’s window, but it was good enough.

Jughead took the red and yellow markers out of his pocket. He used his right arm to draw on his left.

When it had been nine days, FP returned. He smelled and his beard had grown in and Jughead was pretty sure he was wearing the same clothes. Mr. Andrews had given him a look, a look Jughead had noticed passing between the two men increasingly often, but ultimately, Jughead had been bundled into his coat and sent back to the trailer park.

He went inside but his dad stopped to sit on the steps. When Jughead came back to check on him a while later, he had fallen asleep. Jughead sidled around to his front. There was a small, familiar lump in FP’s front shirt pocket. He reached in and removed the lump gingerly, then snuck back inside with it clutched in his hand. Curled up in his bed with his back to the door, he cupped a palm around the lighter and flicked the flame on and off.

#bughead fanfiction #bughead #riverdale fanfiction #dark!jughead #jughead jones #mine #betty cooper #riverdale #wpip #the beast within

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bitterbuttercups · 8 years ago

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Review: Beach Beasties Draculaura and Lagoona Blue, and Gloom Beach Frankie Stein

Yesterday, on the way to dinner, we passed a Five and Under and I found these three girls on sale and couldn’t resist! I had so much fun with my last review I knew I had to talk about these, too.

Kala Mer’ri and Posea Reef, who I reviewed previously had much nicer and more exciting packaging than these three, but, the simplicity of the window box feels intentional here.

I’m not as much of a fan of the pink body colour she has, it feels very generic somehow, but i do love how bright and fun her hair and her bathing suit is.

First thing I noticed with Frankie was that instead of her stitches being molded plastic, they’re bright and painted! That’s cool!

And Lagoona, oh my goodness. I’m in love with her bathing suit! Teal and red is my absolute favourite colour scheme.

The backdrop for Draculaura and Lagoona is a mostly monochrome blue with an off center coffin shape frame. I found it really easy to get out of the package, too! the bottom isn’t sealed as you can see, so I just ran a finger under the plastic and it popped right off. Most of the plastic ties holding them down were fine and not terrifically intrusive, but I was very dismayed to again see plastic ties in her head attached to the carboard. What am I supposed to do with that? Cutting them risks cutting her hair and even then leaves nasty little pointy plastic pieces embedded in her head. I don’t like it and I wish they would find a better way to secure their heads.

Frankie’s Gloom Beach box is similar, in that it’s also monochrome and has the coffin shaped frame, but it’s yellow instead of blue, and has a sandcastle at the front and an appropriate skullete in the background. I think I like Frankie’s more.

But we can only talk about one at time, so I’m going to start with Lagoona. I like the art on her box. She’s got a little hang ten thing going on. I wonder if Lagoona likes to surf? It does seem like a sea monster girl’s hobby.

I think the back of her box is nice. It’s very simplistic compared to some other boxes I’ve seen, but since the front was also pretty simple, I think it works.

I kind of expected this to have information on Lagoona herself instead of just the line, but I guess that’s fine. I think it’s a little weird though, that since Lagoona and Draculaura have the same excerpt on the back of their boxes, it should have larger text so that it could fill up the entire box. It looks a little unfinished- or at least, it looks like the box was made seperately than the text, so I expected their boxes to say different things, but they don’t.

You know, I do have a lot of problems with the body images fashion dolls promote. I am unhappy with how boy dolls are thicker than girl dolls and how skinny girl dolls are, but I do respect that Monster High pushes inclusion and uniqueness in such a genuine sense. I’ve seen Monster High dolls with artificial limbs and even a doll in a wheelchair, and I read the back of my Posea Reef box and it looks like she has ADHD. I have ADHD! I thought that was really nice and it made me smile.

There’s also a picture of Draculaura from this set, who I also got, and Venus McFlytrap, who I really wish I had! I grew up in Cape Fear, the only place in the world the Venus Flytrap is native to. I like her colours and her fuzzy undercut. I do think her name could have been a little more creative though. Venus is a perfectly good name, but McFlytrap isn’t exactly a pun or anything.

And there’s Lagoona herself, out of the box!

She has grey-blue skin with fins on her arms and legs, and straw-gold hair with cerulean streaks.

She’s got a soft, clear plastic headband and a pair of hard clear plastic sunglasses. It looks like she has a small button nose and large lips, but we’ll get a better look at her when we get her accessories off.

And oh but my favourite part of Lagoona is her arms and hands! Her arms below the elbow and her hands are cast in clear blue plastic and then painted to match her skin tone, except for the webbing between her fingers and the fins on her arms. I know in my last review I said I don’t like webbed hands but the reason I don’t is that it makes hands look blobby and vague, but this is such a neat gimmick! All her fingers are still visible and individual and I am a HUGE sucker for clear plastic.

She also has clear plastic detachable fins on her legs.

They peg in and out so that you can get pants over her legs, which makes sense. I can imagine I’m going to lose them within an hour, though, which has me wary. They also have different pegs so you can’t put them in the wrong leg.

She’s also got bright orange clear plastic shoes. They’re made of soft vinyl so the thinner parts are flexible, but the thicker parts are not. These are wedge sandals. I wish she could wear some truly beachy flip flops, but fashion feet stand on their tip toes and she can’t really wear flats. Or stand on her own. Try as I might I could not get any of these three to stand on their own during this review, and I don’t own a doll stand and they didn’t come with any. So I leaned them against my backdrop for the most of this.

Her bating suit is a cute pattern. Lots of little swirls, and some little tentacles and fishes which go with her sea monster theme.

The ruffle on Lagoona’s shoulder is very cute with a double tier of pink polka dotted teal ruffled fabric with a line of clear red plastic sewn on. My only problem with this design is that I feel like it would look better if the lower side was a little higher, so that the plastic was above her bust. Having the fabric cover her bust there seems a little accidental looking, and initially I thought it was when I was redressing her. It’s not that bad, I just think it would look better that way.

It velcros shut at the back and layers pretty flat. It also has puffy little plastic circles around her thighs. I like those too! They have a lot of character.

Her head accessories are all tied on with plastic bands. A lot of them, actually. Lagoona’s head is hard and filled with glue. it doesn’t turn well and cannot look up or down.

There’s even more on the back. Her glasses don’t really loop around anything, they just sort of stay on her head by pressing against the sides. they’re okay- they’ll definitely stay on for a photograph, but not for much playtime. Her hairband has a peg at the back. It stays pretty solidly pegged in which is nice.

She also comes with a green clear plastic shell shaped purse. It’s made of soft plastic so it opens easily. I think it’s very cute, and usually I would wish for some paint apps, but I am a sucker for clear plastic, especially soft clear plastic and I love it as its. It’s got lots of nice details- the row of pearls at the bottom and for the handle, the little stars (starfish?) where the pearls attacks, and the little ribbings along the shells bumps.

I found her hand a little annoying to get through the bag loop- It was of course very easy to get on by taking her hand off and sliding her wrist through, but the opening is big enough to fit her hand through without taking it off, meaning it can slide off after you’ve put her arm through. I wish it would either be a little bigger of an opening so she could pick it up easier or a little smaller so she could hold it better, instead of just being pretty okay at both. It’s not a major complaint, but it is something I noticed.

I took off her accessories and let her hair down. I was a little annoyed by the gel in her hair. It made it stiff and unpleasant to brush- it was only on the underside, but I didn’t like it. I should probably wash it, but I don’t really feel like doing that right now. Washing hair is a big to do for me.

Other than that, her hair is pretty soft. It’s also layered, so parts of it are shorter than others.

From the front, I think her eyes are a little unfocused. I like her pink-lavendar-blue eyeshadow and I love the little blue highlight under her eye. She also has shimmery eyeshadow below her eyebrows, and those I’m less favourable towards. I don’t know where the purple comes from? The shape is nice but she has yellow and blue hair. So, uh? what? alright.

Her freackles are maybe a little dark. They lightened them for her packaging art and I can kind of see why. Maybe if she had some spots on her nose it would look better. It doesn’t look terrible though. I like her eyeshadow though, the bottom of it looks a little like fishy fin webbing, which is neat. I thought monster high eyes usually had a line-dot style of reflection, but this is two small dots. I like the lines better.

She has very large pink lips and I actually like these. Sometimes the pointy corners of the lipstick doesn’t match the edges of a girl’s lips and it looks weird up close. Lagoona’s looks nice though. Her nose is super small though. small and flat.

yeesh. and from a profile, her nose looks creepy and alien. Her forehead feels too long and her face is so flat. I don’t like it. #GiveLagoonaANose2K17

It doesn’t look much better at a three quarter profile. Her lips still look nice but her nose just. It all falls apart in the center of her face.

Also, check it out! She has cute little fishy fin ears!

And here she is without her bathing suit. I like her leg fins, but I’m not sure the plastic actually matches the colour of her arm plastic.

I also noticed Lagoona has some information stamped between her upper shoulders.

Hey! This is my first doll with feet and my third aquatic girl, funnily enough. She has those fashion feet and can’t stand on her own. I wish she could wear flats. :( I understand it’s easier for shoes and for molding and heels are more versatile and all kinds of stuff, but, I just like flats. And I don’t like heels. I get it, I do, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

And wow, she sure has some detail! her ankle is visible even from the front and all her toes have been molded and shaped. It’s pretty neat, actually- I remember my childhood barbies all had Lumps for feet.

She’s got molded panties, too, with a little checkered diamond pattern. They do this for modesty purposes, which makes sense.

they do mold their butts, though. Also, Lagoona has a little extra plastic on hers.

Speaking of defects, she also has a little plastic rub on her forearm. You can really see the colour difference between her arm paint and the upper arm plastic here- it’s not very noticeable in real life, but it is in photos.

I really like the detail monster high dolls have in their bodies- she has smooth little collarbones and a belly button and I really think it goes the extra mile. Plain dolls with flat upper chests and tummies look very weird to me in an uncanny valley type way.

Here’s everything she came with! Her bathing suit, her headband, sunglasses, purse, shoes, and towel- which had one white stitch of fabric holding it together I needed to cut.

I wish her towel was wider. She can’t like, wear it like a bath towl, which is unfortunate I think. It’s a nice set piece to lay her on or put i her bag, but, come on, one more inch.

At this point I put her hair up in a ponytail except for the front parts. I think it looks really cute, even with the weird little wave in the middle.

It almost looks like it’s flowing over her shoulders, but, it’s just a very conveniently placed kink. She can hang out like that for awhile until I wanna take more pictures of her.

Next up is Draculaura! I love the pun in her name but I think it’s odd she’s like, the only one with no last name!

It says the same thing as Lagoona’s, except that she’s the daughter of Dracula.

This one has another picture of Venus (wistful sigh) and Lagoona, who I just finished talking about!

Pink is my favourite colour! I love bright bright pink. My hair is that colour, my car is that colour. If they let you buy it in pink I buy it in pink. However I don’t think bright pink and light pink go well together. So I love her hair and her outfit, but, her skin feels off, like it doesn’t really match.

Draculaura also cannot stand. She’s kissing the wall a lil bit.

It looks like she has a sharp face, and I like it. I also love her hair- I love the curly pigtails and while a lot of people hate bangs on dolls? I’m into it.

I think her hair is split nicely- the plugs are crossed so you can’t see her plastic head.

Look how cute her bathing suit is! White and black distressed stripes with hot pink bat outlines and pink ruffles along the thighs and the neck, down past the bust to a hot pink palstic waist bow. I love everything about this swimsuit, 10/10 character appropriate and with a great colour scheme and design.

The back of her swimsuit velcros shut.

She’s wearing hot pink heels with a little ribbon around her ankle and a bow on the toe. There’s a slit on the back I forgot to take a photo of, making it easier to get off her foot, but, her shoe is a little finnicky to get off.

She’s got a very sassy face! I like the shape.

Very pink

very pink.

Draculaura also has molded panties, but I think these are actually dots, not diamonds? My Draculaura has these two blue black dots on her right hip. They won’t come off.

Maybe they are diamonds? I’m not sure. They look a little different from Lagoona’s, but maybe I’m seeing things.

Let’s take a look at your pretty face!

She also has a button nose like Lagoona, but hers is more pronounced and her forehead is shorter. She has thin eyes and very pronounced eyelids and very sharp dark eyelashes. Her eyes are purple and these have the white streaks. She also has medium brown eyebrows, a red heart on her cheek, and bright red lipstick with white fangs.

You know, I like the shape of everything here but not the colour. Why does she have such large brown eye shadow? Why brown? Brown might go with her light pink skin but certainly not with the otherwise bright pink colour scheme of her hair and her clothes. It’s a little weird and doesn’t match I think. Also, again, with the eyebrows! Why are they brown? I like her lips and her lip colour- usually pink and red don’t go togehter, but it’s okay here.

She has a much nicer profile than Lagoona does. I think this looks fine, but her brown eye makeup could at least be pointy, couldn’t it? I guess not.

She has a nice three quarter profile.

Here’s everything she came with. Her swimsuit, her shoes (would you wear those to the beach?), her sunglasses, her sunscreen, her totebag, and her towel. I really like her towel- it matches her bathing suit by essentially being the exact opposite of it. Her tote has the same problem Lagoona’s does, though.

I especially like her little sunscreen bottle hehe. The black design is printed directly n so its not a sticker, which is cool. It says “SPF: 500,”Which is super appropriate, because she’s a vampire, hanging out at the beach. Haha.

And there’s Frankie! I think she’s the main character of the line. She’s front and center on the website and she’s in all the movies. I like her personality. Frankie is outgoing and likeable and is always trying to help people and make new friends. I think she’s a very good role model for young girls.

She also came with this cute postcard!

Aw, it’s to Ghoulia. I think this is a really sweet little postcard.

And there she is out of her box!

I took off her sunglasses to turn her around because I found them very cumbersome- they’re shaped like lightning bolts which makes her hair ruffle up around them as they get caught in the corners.

I like her eye focus a lot, she doesn’t look cross eyed like some other dolls do.

I think her bathing suit is really cute and matches her electricity theme well. It’s also a little offbeat with the blue and yellow stripes and the tartan- but it all still looks very cohesive! Her wrap is very annoying to deal with because it keeps sliding up her waist, but it looks really really nice.

It velcros very low on her back and you can see the problem this outfit has. Her shoulder straps came with a plastic band tying them together and I can see why- they will NOT stop slipping down her shoulders. I wish they’d just made it a higher cut back.

Well would ya just LOOK at that sweet face! She’s really been designed to look friendly. A wider button nose and a big round chin and very gentle eyes. I like her lipstick especially- it really really matches everything well. I think her heterochromia is super fun! And I like the bluegreen eyeshadow she’s wearing. She also has the white flecks of light in her eyes and some purplish dots? It doesn’t show up well in her green eye. She’s also got brown eyelashes. Again, I’m confused by this. She has has a little line of frankenstein stitches on her right cheek. They don’t look like the ones on her body, but I can see why- those would probably look very intrusive on her face.

And hey, oh my goodness! She has little earrings that match her neck bolts.

Frankie has a good profile with pouty lips, a nice sized forehead, and a round nose. I think her eye rounds oddly from this angle, but I love her jaw! It makes it look like she has a little babyfat in her cheeks.

The stitches on her neck and body use a reflective silver paint and then a black outline. They are not molded to her body but I actually like them a lot like this and probably prefer them. She also has steel coloured neck bolts!

Her sunglasses are really annoying to mess with but they look really nice. A nice bright blue with electric bolts on the sides. I love clear plastic haha

I also really love her sandles. The paint is a little messy but it’s also fun. She has black wedgish sandals with yellow straps and bright blue buckles.

You can see them a lot better from this angle.

and oh my god! I thought EAH had my favourite hands.... holy cow! Look at them. They’re gentle and delicate.

very soft palms.

and just look at this. it’s beautiful and artistic. It reminds me of a Renaissance painting.

She can actually sit up on her own quite nicely! She doesn’t need any support for that.

But she can’t really bend her knees much.

I was half expecting her to have a secret line of stitches somewhere!

I like her pale green body. It’s not quite mint, but it’s not gross.

Her hips look very weird when you pull them apart though!

Here’s everything she came with! (I realized too later her bathing suit was inside out, sorry) Her bathing suit, her sandals, her wrap, her brush, her sunglasses, her hairband (which I found SUPER difficult to unsnap and open), and her bag. I like her bag, but it doesn’t seem very beachy to me, even though its very detailed and looks good with her.

but you know what the best part of dolls are? Playing with their clothes!

First up, here’s Lagoona in Frankie’s outfit!

And then Lagoona in Draculaura’s!

Draculaura in Frankie’s outfit!

And Draculaura in Lagoona’s outfit!

Frankie in Lagoona’s outfit!

And lastly, Frankie in Draculaura’s outfit!

Aaaand just a few group shots. :)

Final thoughts:

These three dolls cannot stand on their own and all three have very hard heads, though Lagoona’s is the worst. They are not as articulated as some other dolls, but they move well enough for nice photos and fun play, and they have really nice outfits unique to their characters! I think they are fun to play with, but I also think that because they have a beach theme their outfits are simpler than some other dolls and that they have fun colours and shapes and faces and I really enjoy them. I hope I find more at the next Five and Under I stop at!

#monster high #frankie stein #lagoona blue #draculaura #lagoona #mh #doll #toy #articulated doll #fashion doll #review #gloom beach #beach beasties #toy photography #photography #long post

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blschaos3000-blog · 5 years ago

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Its 12:09 pm hazy/chilly/the robins are back

Welcome to “8 Questions with…..”

Today is a little bittersweet for me. With this interview of the very talented Christina Johnson,my series of “Women In Horror Month” ends. I got to chat with six amazing actresses who really impressed us with their love of horror and being fearless in doing some seriously fun and creepy things just to scare the fur off of your head!! Now how can you go wrong with such nice people willing to go the extra mile just for that one scare?? Take our next guest,the lovely Christina Johnson. Christina hasn’t made a couple of horror films,she is a bonafide horror veteran with 11 movies under her belt. That is true dedication to a most worthy genre,am I right? Christina is one of the most interesting people I have talked with as of late and she wasn’t shy about talking about her craft,her family and her love for all things Disney. She also loves to cosplay and while I was kicking myself about not asking Christina about that,it also occured to me that its something I can ask her when we chat again. (Pretty smooth how I did that,right?) But for now let me step aside and let Christina have her say as she answers her 8 Questions…..

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current project.

I’m Christina and I’m an actress. I’m from a small town in Northern California and I’ve been living in LA for about 7 years now. I’ve been acting for over a decade and really excited about this year and what’s to come. Currently I just booked a supporting role in a horror film. This will be my 11th horror film and very different from ones I’ve done in the past. It’s the same production company, Poche Pictures, that I’ve been working with on and off for a decade. They have become great friends and the most amazing supporters. I’m very excited to collaborate with them once more. I also just booked a role in the Renaissance Faire. I’m apart of their Pub Crawl Cast and very excited. I’ve always wanted to be apart of this faire and now I get to!

What was life in your house like growing up? What are three of your favorite memories growing up?

My childhood was amazing. My family are the greatest people on Earth and I wouldn’t be where I am without their love and support. I have great parents that have been together for over 35 years, and wonderful younger siblings that never made my childhood dull. There are so many great memories to choose from but if I have to be limited to just three then my first one is when we picked out our first family dog. I was the one who found the “puppies for sale” in the newspaper (yes the newspaper. We didn’t have internet at the house just yet) and it was love at first sight. He was a beautiful beagle that become family in an instant. He has since passed away but he started the trend to always having dogs in the house. There are now 2 small mutts that live with my parents today and I love them to death.

My second memory would be our Bucket List Trip to Hawaii. I was blessed with many family vacations and trips and it’s hard to just pick one but this trip was amazing. We got to experience things that we never could dream of. I went zip lining for the first time, we rode mules to the Kalaupapa Leper Colony on Molokai and lots more. That’s the last big family trip we’ve taken and it was over 5 years, which is crazy to think about. I miss those family trips.

My last memory is opening night of my high school play that I was in when I was a senior. I got the lead role and this would be the first time that my family had ever seen me act. The feeling of having everyone there that I loved so dearly see me act was unimaginable. That was when I knew that this is what I wanted to do and my family has supported me 100% ever since.

How did you end up at UC Irvine? What was your experience like there?

For one, I didn’t have to audition to get into the drama program. I don’t know if they’ve changed that, but 10 years ago you didn’t need to audition. You just got in. Secondly, it was 15 minutes away from Disneyland and I’m a Disney freak. I’ve been going to the parks since I was one years old and I really wanted to work there as a face character. Unfortunately, my school work and part-time job didn’t give me the time to even audition.

My experience was pretty positive. I did transfer as a Junior from my local Junior College so many people had a leg up on me. Many of my teachers were fabulous and I made friendships that have lasted 10 years. I will say that their Graduate Student Program is more immersive and would highly recommend it. When you go see one of their plays or musicals, most of the time, the same graduate students will be cast as the leads again and again. It’s a little hard for a transfer to be cast in their shows but the shows are pretty amazing. I was the light technician for their production of The Book of Tink. It’s a crazy and different version of Peter Pan that I will never forget and hopefully get to be in one day.

What led you to becoming a actress? What was the reaction of your friends and family?

I have always loved creating stories and being characters. I would create story upon story with my Barbie dolls when I was a kid, and whenever I went to the movies I would take on my favorite character when I got home. I love being different people and telling their stories to others. As I started to grow up, I actually wanted to become a Veterinarian because I loved animals. However, the thought of putting a dog down or losing one on the operating table along with having to do science classes for years, I decided not to be a Vet my sophomore year of High School. One of my friends, convinced me to take the acting class and after the first day I was hooked. I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

My family were a little shocked when I told them because I was a very shy teen. I think they were also afraid that I wanted to enter an industry that will eat you up and spit you out and has no real sense of security. However, after they saw me get the lead role in my first play ever they thought a wee bit differently. They helped me get my B.A. in Drama from UC Irvine and have been my biggest supporters.

Have you encountered any scammers while Hollywood? Promises of big things but they never become reality? How can a young artist protect themselves?

I have encountered quite a bit of scammers in Hollywood. It’s worse, I believe, for young actresses trying to make it because the men will promise you a lot in exchange for sexual favors. About 5 years ago, I was a cast member in LA’s Haunted Hayride and there was an older male cast member that become infatuated with me. I wasn’t interested in him romantically at all, I only wanted his friendship. He insisted that he could get me this role and that role and the lead in a TV series if only I would be his girlfriend. Long story short, I said no and haven’t spoken to him or seen him in years.

I think young artists, especially females, have to be careful. You really have to trust your gut and if someone doesn’t seem trustworthy or they only want something sexual from you, then say no and move on. I know it’s hard when all we want is a chance and this person comes along and you think all your dreams will come true. I’ve been there a few times and each time ended with me walking away. Just trust your gut and if something seems off, then it usually is. Also ask around about people. Word of mouth is gold in this town and usually someone will have worked with whomever you have doubts about.

How important is a good manager to a actor? How did you meet yours and how has it benefitted you?

A good manager is someone you believes in you, supports you and wants you to succeed and is very important to an actor. Too many managers and agents will convince you to sign with them and then won’t do anything for you or your career. It’s hard to judge sometimes and just having an agent or manager on your resume sounds amazing, but you can’t just sign with anybody. They are working for you and you have to choose someone that will have your best interests at heart and someone who will work with you. I love my manager. I’ve only been with her since November but we have a great relationship and she got me my first big pilot audition in January. She also is helping me expand myself and my brand in order to advance my career. I was blessed enough that my acting teacher recommended me to her. I just sent her an email saying so-an-so recommended me to you, here is my packet and then we had a meeting and I was signed. Amazingly that’s how it usually happens.

Tell us about your award winning film “The Sandman”. How did you get involved and what was your experience like in shooting it?

The Sandman was an amazing project to be apart of. I have known the director for a decade and he brought me onto the project. It’s the same production company of the horror film I just booked, Poche Pictures. I love working with this company and feel blessed to still be apart of their projects. The Sandman was a different kind of role for me because I’ve never played a nun before especially one that harbors a dark side within her. I’m not going to spoil the twist, so you’ll just have to go watch it. As for the award, I didn’t even know that Richard Poche submitted the film for the American Golden Picture International Film Festival. I randomly saw that I won Best Supporting Actress when he posted it on Facebook. I was shocked to say the least but was extremely grateful. The only other award that I’ve gotten for acting was from my High School which was pretty cool. I didn’t know I was submitted for that either! It’s funny how the world works. All in all, I had a fabulous time on set and look forward to future projects with Poche Pictures, and hopefully another award.

What three things about horror films appeals to you?

One thing is all the supernatural elements that can happen. I’ve dealt with ghosts, zombies, more zombies and vampires and it’s fun to battle these creatures. When I started doing horror films, I was a victim most of the time. I rarely survived which made dying become an art form for me. I’ve died by ghost possession, eaten by a zombie, bitten by a vampire and risen as one and then shot with silver bullets, and much more. I can say that I play dead easily because I’ve done it so often. Another thing is lately I’ve played the villain which I have a blast with. I love having that power and control in a character. It’s nice to play the bad guy after playing the victim for so long.

What scares you?

I think the big thing is failure. Being apart of this business, you get rejected a lot and you have to come to terms with that. I’m afraid that I won’t make it in this career and have to settle for something that drains my soul. I know that sounds dark, but so many of us can’t fathom doing anything but act or sing or dance or write. I’ve had to take 9-to-5 jobs because of finances and, though I make money and I’m good at it, it’s not what I want to do. This, acting, is my dream and the thought that I might not make it breaks my heart. That’s what scares me the most.

How did you get your SAG-AFTRA card?

I got my SAG-AFTRA card pretty easily. I was taft hartleyed into a AFTRA industrial about 9 years ago and I joined AFTRA shortly after. All you had to do to join AFTRA was pay the fee to join and then quarterly membership fees. You didn’t have to get 3 vouchers for AFTRA. This was a year before the companies merged. When they did, everyone who was AFTRA just become SAG. We thankfully didn’t have to pay an extra joining fee or get vouchers, we just were merged with SAG. I feel very blessed to not have had to go through the stress of getting vouchers and paying the $3,000 fee to join.

Do you feel now that Harvey Weinstein has been convicted of sex crimes,will Hollywood become a safer place to work or will it become business as usual?

I think Hollywood is changing because of the Me Too movement and Harvey Weinstein. It’s been long over due and I’m glad that these crimes are coming to light finally. I do think that some people are using it to just destroy reputations and make money, and unfortunately that takes away the power of the true victims and what they’ve gone through. I am glad though that woman and diversity are coming into play but it still is taking too long to truly change the system. It’s coming along just not at the pace I think we all want.

What do you like to do for fun when you’re not on location?

I love being with family and taking the time to recharge and relax. I love to read, watch films (I go to the movies a lot), play with my 2 beautiful fur babies, explore LA, hang out with friends, go hiking, collaborate with fellow actors and filmmakers to create projects that are close to our hearts, and just do the things I want to do. I’m a homebody and a bit of an introvert so staying at home is wonderful to me. One of my favorite past times it tarot card reading. I’ve always had a fascination with Wicca and witchcraft and find enjoyment doing tarot cards. I actually have an Etsy store, Magick Vale, where I sell readings and help people to the best of my abilities.

Old Zoo Picnic Area in Griffith Park

The cheetah and I are flying over to watch your latest film but we are a day early and now you are playing tour guide,what are we doing?

Since we are in the City of Angels, there are plenty of things to do. Universal Studios and Disneyland are my go to amusement parks, especially Disneyland. I used to have annual passes for both which I miss greatly. If we wanted to see nature, Griffith Park is a great place to hike and going to the Old Zoo is always creepy and fascinating. I live in the Valley and there are some great places to eat like Craving Board, Ike’s Sandwiches, Gus’s Fried Chicken, Tipsy Cow, The Woodman, The One-up and Dojo Sushi. There are so many things to do in LA that it’s kinda hard to condense into one paragraph. Needless to say we wouldn’t have a boring day and I would show you have awesome the Valley truly is.

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I like to thank Christina for taking the time to chat with me. I’m looking forward to watching her films in the near future. She is a another example of what hard work and a good get it done set of ethics can do. I believe Christina and all the actresses who did our “Women In Horror” series bring a lot to a project and we’ll be seeing their faces more and more.

But if you can’t wait and want to see what Christina is up too,you can follow her through her personal website. Inside her site you’ll find links to her other social media pages as well as her IMDb page.

I had a real blast interviewing the actresses in my “Women In Horror Month” series and am looking forward to doing it again next year. What I’m really happy about is I was able to interview everyone who responded (and had films released). Thank you all so much for supporting Christina and her peers by reading these interviews.

If you’re new to the blog and the “8 Questions with…..”series,you can catch up by clicking here. Feel free to drop a question or a comment below.

8 Questions with……….actress Christina Johnson Its 12:09 pm hazy/chilly/the robins are back Welcome to "8 Questions with....." Today is a little bittersweet for me.

#8 Questions With #actress #Cosplayer #Disneyland #Hard work #indie film makers #indie films #indie horror #interview #Me Too Movement #Music #Poche Pictures #SAG-AFTRA #UC Irvine #Women In Horror

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