#meaning she’s promoting her young fans to look into his commentary

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I’m scared for the kids who might unknowingly buy the Harry Potter game or the books or the movies without knowing what’s going on. We need to ACTUALLY ban this franchise. Burn copies in stores. Smash your friend’s computer if you have to. I don’t know why we’re simply telling people to “read other books” and not going full scorched earth. There’s children out there who could be entrapped into this thing and not know until it’s too late…(It’s not censorship because it’s actually bad. Only minorities should be allowed to censor things because we know best.)

Nice try, buddy.

[chosetherose]

*WSJ Link*

There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift.

By Allie Jones

April 18, 2024 at 8:00 am ET

Taylor Swift was celebrating the end of the Australian leg of her Eras Tour in late February when a bit of unpleasantness sailed out from Down Under and landed on the home page of TMZ. The New South Wales Police Force was investigating a 71-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a 51-year-old man at a wharf north of the city, according to their media unit. Per TMZ, the septuagenarian was Scott Swift, Taylor’s father and a key member of her management team, and the younger man was a photographer. 

The story had all the makings of a public relations nightmare: (1) Celebrity family member allegedly behaves badly while (2) disembarking from a luxury yacht, resulting in (3) a police investigation. To make matters more complicated, Taylor was reportedly present for the alleged altercation—hiding under an umbrella, TMZ said. Though the man didn’t require medical treatment, the police said, there was video footage. Would this be the end of the pop star’s marathon run of fawning press? 

Not if Tree Paine could help it. 

Swift’s longtime publicist first released a statement that did not refute TMZ’s story, exactly, but offered some exculpatory evidence: “Two individuals were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water.” Subtext: Scott Swift was simply protecting his daughter and another defenseless woman from a couple of rogue aggressors. He was not charged. 

Around the same time, as if by magic, People found a video of Scott passing out sandwiches to young female fans at one of the Sydney shows and published it along with fan commentary. “Isn’t he the sweetest and cutest,” one cooed.

Online, Swifties clocked the People story as good old-fashioned damage control. As a chorus of fan posts put it: “The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.” (In late March, the New South Wales Police Force media unit said that the North Shore Police Area Command finished its investigation and that it is taking no further action.)

The public often sees Paine expertly attending to Swift’s needs, from smoothing out Swift’s red carpet dresses to leading her past scrums of paparazzi.

The average celebrity publicist does not have fans. But Paine, the 52-year-old redhead seen trailing Swift at awards shows and rubbing shoulders with Gayle King in the Eras Tour VIP area, has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right. Fans post reverently about her PR machinations and share videos of her expertly attending to Swift’s needs: smoothing out Swift’s dress on the red carpet, leading Swift right past a scrum of reporters whose questions have not been approved, subtly offering Swift what appeared to be water at the Video Music Awards—a night when the star was filmed dancing in a manner that suggested inebriation.

Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption. Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore. 

And Swift and Paine are creating a lot of lore lately. Swift spent the fall cheering on her new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as he sailed to Super Bowl victory, and dropped by the Grammys to pick up album of the year for Midnights and announce her new album in an acceptance speech for yet another award. The Tortured Poets Department, which fans speculate is at least partly inspired by her breakup with the British actor Joe Alwyn, drops this month, and Swift will promote it while balancing her public relationship, continuing her sold-out international Eras Tour amid growing criticism of her private jet usage and brushing off baseless conspiracy theories that she is secretly working as a Democratic operative to swing the 2024 election for President Joe Biden. 

In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Back in 2014, Swift’s world domination was not yet assured. That March, trade publications reported that the pop star’s publicist of seven years, Paula Erickson, had submitted her resignation. Fairly or not, during Erickson’s tenure, Swift developed a reputation for being both boy-crazy and unwilling to joke about it. See: Swift’s string of high-profile relationships with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles; her alleged wedding-crashing with Conor Kennedy; her humorless response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about her dating life. (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about the incident.) Erickson declined to comment for this story.

Paine, who had been working as the senior vice president of publicity in the Christian and Country divisions of Warner Music Nashville, came on board and quickly flipped the script. She launched her own firm, Premium PR, and signed Swift as her first and only client. “There isn’t a publicist in NY, LA or Nashville that wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work with someone as talented as Taylor Swift and her management team,” Paine told Page Six at the time. 

That year, Swift moved from Nashville to New York, went full pop with the release of 1989 and began flaunting her friendships with a gaggle of famous women, known colloquially as The Squad. The public started to forget about the time Swift, age 22, allegedly bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 

Now that Swift has hit the stratosphere, it’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Throughout this transformation, Paine refused to let rumors about her client fester. The very week her hiring was announced, she began issuing public rebuttals to the tabloids. “Never believe the National Enquirer,” she tweeted about an apparently false story that Swift declined to record a duet with Randy Travis. Ten years later, the gossip about Swift has changed, but Paine’s approach has not: She recently called out the anonymous gossip account Deuxmoi for causing “pain and trauma” by posting false rumors about Swift secretly marrying Alwyn before the two broke up. 

Paine became even more visible to fans in 2020, when she appeared in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Wearing white shorts and blue nail polish, she clinked white-wine glasses with Swift as the singer-songwriter anxiously prepared to post her first political statement on Instagram. Swifties have since turned Paine into something of a meme: Online, they joke that Swift’s “Out of the Woods” lyric “the monsters turned out to be just trees” is a reference to the publicist and that a redheaded Eras Tour backup dancer is Tree-coded. They have decided that in the inevitable Paine biopic, the publicist will be played by Amy Adams, and that she will win her first Oscar for it. 

The fan obsession has been fueled, in part, by how little Paine has shared publicly about herself. Her Instagram is private. The last time she sat for an interview was 2012, when she was a VP at Warner and appeared in Nashville Lifestyles’ “Most Beautiful People” issue; she posed for a photo in front of a shiplap-covered wall wearing a peasant blouse and made the astonishing revelation that she was “trying to enjoy life.” I cannot report whether that is still true; Paine declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Born Trina Snyder, Paine grew up in Costa Mesa, California. She was still going by Trina when she was initiated into Pi Beta Phi at the University of Southern California in 1990, according to the women’s fraternity’s official publication, The Arrow. 

Like her client, Paine is a Nashville transplant. In her early career, she worked her way up at a variety of L.A. record labels—World Domination, Maverick and Interscope, whose roster included Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. She launched her own guerrilla-marketing company, worked for the Academy of Country Music and eventually joined Warner Music in Tennessee. 

In 1998, she married Lance Paine, a businessman and onetime president of the Nashville candy brand Goo Goo Cluster, in Las Vegas, according to public records. (Lance also served as president of the company owned by HGTV’s Property Brothers.) The Paines have one teenage daughter, and according to the society pages, they have spent some nights mixing with locals at Nashville charity galas. 

Paine has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift.

But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story. “Once I started working in media, I would always hear about people getting emails from Tree Paine, or maybe, people being afraid of getting emails from Tree Paine,” says Hunter Harris, a self-described “Painiac” and the writer of the entertainment newsletter Hung Up, which regularly chronicles Paine’s engagement with the press. (Harris has also contributed to WSJ. Magazine.)

In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. 

It has, for the most part, worked. In the process, Paine has become one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. 

Getting any kind of journalistic access to Swift has become a fool’s errand. The star sits for few magazine interviews, and in between, Paine does her best to ensure that no information about Swift that Swift has not expressly chosen to share with the public becomes available. One magazine writer recalls the slightly fraught process of interviewing another artist on one of Swift’s stadium tours a few years ago. As a condition of the interview, the writer had to agree that anything they witnessed or discovered about Swift while spending time with the other artist before a show would be off the record. Paine was clear: No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it. 

When writer Emily Kirkpatrick reached out last year to seek Swift’s comment for a profile of the actress and musician Suki Waterhouse for the fashion website Ssense, Paine surprisingly acquiesced, with the caveat that Swift’s quote be printed in full—no edits, no line breaks. (Kirkpatrick, annoyed, accepted the terms.)

This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

The biggest year of Swift’s career has also been her most public yet. There’s the tour, the new album, the NFL boyfriend, the constant tabloid coverage of her relationship with the NFL boyfriend, the never-ending paparazzi strolls with her famous friends at sceney New York City restaurants. There have been stumbles: Swift forgot to thank Celine Dion, who presented the album of the year award, when accepting her Grammy. (A photo of the two singers hugging circulated online later.) She’s still taking heat for her private jet. She dated Matty Healy. 

But the sheer volume of information about Swift that pours, ceaselessly, out of every tabloid and news outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times typically washes away negative stories as soon as they are published. There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions. 

Swift is at a point in her career, however, where she could completely disappear from view and still generate more headlines than just about any other person on earth. Scientists at Caltech and UCLA recently published research proving the existence of “Swift quakes” (seismic activity caused by fans dancing and jumping at concerts). Ancestry.com shared on social media that Swift is a sixth cousin, three times removed, of poet Emily Dickinson. The New York Post talked to experts to guesstimate how much Kelce has spent wooing Swift so far (more than $8 million, allegedly). 

If Swift released The Tortured Poets Department with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.

[mrslackles]

what do you think are gg's biggest flaws?

Ooh, Anon! It’s like you’re in my head. 

I’m busy making a video (that will probably never see the light of day) about this --  my distance from the show has really helped with some super objective clarity -- so I’ll use my notes from that to help me answer. 

I’ll preface this by saying what I was most shocked by after putting down all the points was that Rio isn’t even mentioned until really far down??

Anyway, let's get into it.

These are Good Girls' greatest flaws in my opinion (and relative to season 1 -- while I think it had its flaws too, the list is far smaller and I think that's a separate post)

1. It didn't stick to its guns

What set this show apart from others in the 'Everyday person does crime (poorly)' genre was its comedic lightness, strong friendship element, relatability and emphasis on girl power.

a) By season 2, the lightness was already slowly disappearing to make way for season 3's darkness. (Quite literally; this show said sunlight scenes for WHO.) It also stopped being as fun. Remember how it genuinely used to be fun? I mean let's not forget The Best Scene Ever where Ruby shoots Big Mike by accident and we all laughed our asses off. (Compare and contrast to a similar-in-tone-and-context scene -- or even the whole episode -- like Boomer popping up behind them as Rio's package in season 3.) I think season 3 had some great lines and laughs, but in general, the fun element was completely missing for me.

b) As was the friendship. We already know Annie and Ruby basically became Beth's backup dancers in season 2, but at least then they still seemed to have some type of agency. In season 3, they rarely question Beth's (truly questionable) decisions, don't talk to her about shit like why she's still with her horrible husband and have very few true friendship moments as they did in season 1.

c) Which made it less relatable, but what also contributed was the major plot holes (it's less easy to relate when you're constantly having to remind yourself to suspend your disbelief). And, to be honest, their stupid actions. Just the most common-sense things weren't followed, like not taking your children to a crack den or not putting a hit out on a gang leader. It's frustrating watching a TV show -- where characters are supposed to learn things, have arcs and improve over time -- and feeling like you have more logical sense than all the main characters in every scene. (WHO would think a hitman was going to use a sniper rifle on people in broad daylight on the side of the road???)

d) You don't have to look any further than the title or the stans who shout "THE SHOW IS ABOUT THE GIRLS" -- or, hell, the first 10 seconds of the show where Sara is literally talking about the glass ceiling -- to know that the main characters being women is very important to the show. If not formally feminist, it was at least supposed to be empowering or feel like "girl power" (a term I hate, but we won't get into that now).

And I think it did it pretty well in season 1 -- it actually played on my favourite theme of the show, which is the world's perception of these women being what ultimately allows them to get away with so much. (Rife with opportunities for commentary about white privilege, but also a genius way to upend patriarchal beliefs.) But more and more it seemed like the show was asking you to accept empowerment as simply "these things are being done by women, yay".

And, well.

2. Its marketing

I'll keep this one short because I think we all know how messed up this situation is. Basically they're selling a show (every week!) that they're not making while ignoring all feedback on every social media platform. Which brings us to...

3. The marriage of Death

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times -- Beth's character development starts with getting rid of Dean. Her growth is stunted by him on multiple fronts and it's frustrating to viewers since she's constantly put forth as the main character. Not to mention how the audience, separately from Beth, was originally conditioned to see Dean as the scum of the earth (think of scenes like him crashing his car because he was perving on a woman jogging) so keeping them together is really... a choice. To actively root for this marriage (which seems like what the show wants, at least for the protracted moment) means either thinking Dean is a great person (which, as I said, we've only seen the opposite of) or believing he's all Beth deserves. Which leads me to...

4. Beth's (socio)path(y)

Is sociopath a 'good' word? Probably not. Have I seen dozens upon dozens of posts talking about whether Beth is one? Yes. And I see it from a huge variety of people -- from viewers who just binged the show last weekend to those who've been watching for years, the question keeps coming up. And I entirely blame the writing of the show that, by the way, I don't believe is deliberately creating Beth to get this reaction. I think she's written (and, to an extent, acted) in a way that is much too aloof and I'm not convinced it's meant to come off as cold and unfeeling as it does. Everything else leads me to believe that the audience is supposed to root for Beth, but it's just so difficult.

Beth does a lot of messed up shit that requires dialogue to sympathise with her and the inner workings of her mind, but in the later seasons Beth rarely gets to express herself verbally. And every time she does get to speak about her emotions, the dialogue is a pick-your-own-adventure between "She's in so much denial", "This person feels no emotions" and "I'll go find an analysis/fic later to explain this" (scenes like "Nothing" or "I was just bored"). Compare and contrast with some of the great scenes in season 1 where she emotes, like her paralysing shock after they first rob the store or admitting she enjoys crime, or (one of my favourites!) the one in the park where she's mimicking the other mothers beside her.

5. Brio

I said in the beginning that I was shocked Rio doesn't get mentioned until this point and that's because I've always felt like he was an integral part of the show. When people say the show is about the girls, they're truncating -- the show is about the girls getting into crime. That crime is represented by Rio over and over again -- they never bring in another criminal at his level (which is another one of its flaws, but that's also a different post); Rio is it.

And though I stand by Rio's importance, the truth is that Brio isn't as essential to the show, by which I mean that if all of the above were done well, it wouldn't be as sorely missed. In lieu of riveting plot, a fun friendship, character development and empowerment, most viewers have glommed onto Brio like a lifeboat (or ship, heh).

Unfortunately it's also what the show has most stubbornly refused to develop significantly.

It's honestly a toss-up for why I feel Brio is a flaw: is the flaw that they got together? That they never got together well enough? That the writing keeps bringing in these 'chemistry-filled' scenes that are ultimately filled with air?

I don't know. Maybe all of them; maybe just one, depending on the day.

6. Its criticism falls flat without intersectionality

This is a big one because Good Girls is *trying* to do something very clever. As mentioned previously, my favourite theme of the show is how the women's apparent innocence/vulnerability in the eyes of society is their biggest strength. The show plays with this and other interesting themes with varying levels of success, but ultimately they all fall a little flat when they don't feel intersectional.

When Ruby gets sidelined. When Turner, who sees and all but calls out by name Beth's privilege, is portrayed as the villain. When Rio is told he's gonna "pop a cap" in his young child's "ass". When the racist grandma becomes a sympathetic character whom we must later grieve. (And she really didn't have to be racist, now that I think about it? It was just that one line for laughs and that was it.) When, despite the real-world implications, Dean can loudly announce in a store that he's buying a gun to kill someone with and the show just glides past it. When Ruby has to grovel for forgiveness from Beth for trying to protect her husband and family from the system, with no acknowledgement from Beth about how their realities are different. When Rhea gets booted off the show as soon as she's done serving Beth's plot. When Rio gets treated like a prostitute for absolutely no reason. (Oh, and is accused of raping Beth and is literally spoken of as an animal and starts only existing in zero dim lighting as a one-dimensional stereotype... the list goes on.)

7. PR/The actors

I'll risk my life here to sprinkle this in because I do think it's a massive problem. The Manny/Christina of it all is just the tip of the iceberg (although wtf Good Girls? There's nothing you could do to get these two into an interview together??). The main actors do the bare minimum to promote the show and it's weird. I also think it's the height of unprofessionalism to keep characters on the show against the wishes of the majority of the audience just because you enjoy their actors (Boomer confirmed; Dean highly suspected). While, on the flip side of the coin, limiting a character's screentime because you aren't best buddies with them. Having less and less Rio when he's such a fan favourite is dumb; as is not including him in any series marketing material. It feels personal and that isn't how a TV show should be run.

8. The entire hair and wardrobe department needs a stern talking-to

[currywaifu]

𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: rival 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: sumeragi tenma/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 2.9k words, 3 images

𝐚𝐧: two people from the filo discord (ty to sel & kai) gave me the idea for this! i meant to push this out a while back, but only got the time to finish it tonight! at... 5 am... sorry for the long delay, @chewie-santatoast​ ! 

If someone were to ask Tenma why he was stalking your Instablam right now, he’d be able to spout off various excuses�� all with varying levels of believability.

His first excuse was that you were going to be one of his latest co-stars in a drama. Just because the both of you were going to be part of only a few episodes doesn’t mean he’s gonna stop being diligent. He’s just doing his best to be up to date with you and the other cast, for social reasons.

Why is he so focused on your page, then?

His second excuse would be that he’s only looking, following your account because you’re one of his rivals! Not only were you someone who also started acting at a young age, but you also recently started getting into theatre! Not only were you a threat to any possible awards he could get this season, but any notable troupe was a rival to Mankai for any possible competitions or awards! He’s only looking after the company by scoping out the competition!

Why is he so focused on a specific set of images?

His third excuse, actually still pretty believable, was that he was looking at your most recent posts wherein you were clearly promoting a new play, your repost of the poster signifying that you were the lead. Rival or not, he was still interested in plays or musicals— of course he was going to learn more about the production you were going to be a part of, right?

Why is he looking so intently at the caption and comments, then?

Even in his own brain, this is where Tenma began fumbling. You were just supposed to be promoting, so why were you posting a selfie with another actor, even mentioning that same person in the caption? And- and the people in the comments! Why were they talking about “shipping” you and that guy? Comments about how cute of a couple you’d make… were they fake fans of theatre or something? People who were more engrossed with the actor’s lives than the show?

That’s exactly it… he’s repulsed by people’s audacity. Fan service was alright, but you shouldn’t be feeding your followers anything unnecessary— and why were they so adamant in taking things too far and out of context anyway?

The door creaked open, and he quickly locked his phone as he hastily stashed it underneath his pillow, face unknowingly painted with a blush as though he was hiding something scandalous instead of a picture of you doing finger hearts at the camera.

… thank God it was just Misumi, who doesn’t mention anything possibly wrong with his appearance or attitude. The older boy mentioned something about eating triangle cakes together with the rest of the troupe, and he eagerly replied in agreement as he gets up from bed.

In his head, Tenma justified his actions by telling himself it’d just be a hassle if anyone (note: Yuki or Kazunari) caught him and automatically made assumptions.

When Tenma arrived on set, you were exiting out of your car as well.

‘I should probably be friendly and greet them, right?’ he thought to himself as his body was positioning itself to avoid you instead. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for him, you had already spotted him and with a loud “Tenma-kun!”, his gaze was forced to meet with yours.

You made your way beside him with a blinding smile, not giving him the time to formulate a greeting in return as you began talking up a storm.

“I’m excited to work with you again!” you said, briefly pausing to greet his manager as well before turning back to him. “The last time we’ve worked together was for a drama 6 months ago, right?”

“No,” he corrected immediately, the ‘you idiot’ that would have followed thankfully left out by Tenma. “We filmed a commercial 3 months ago, and then we had a magazine spread last month.”

When you blink up at him in surprise, he found himself getting a little conscious. “It’s… it’s not like I memorised it because of you, though!” he said, beginning to explain himself, “obviously a good actor remembers the things they’re a part of, right?”

When you giggled in response, a part of him started to feel… no, not worried, but something.

“No, no, I totally get that!” you raised your arms up in surrender, “I just meant like an actual acting gig, I guess? Nothing beats having a whole new script to learn, and getting to act with the people you admire. Right, Tenma-kun?”

Inclined to agree with you, he nodded in agreement. “Right…”

You looked at him with a blank stare on your face, like he was missing something (what was there for him to miss, though?) before quickly turning away to greet some of the production crew passing by with a wave and grin.

He, for once, managed to tune out the coos and comments of, “it’s so cute that they stayed friends after all these years!” and “aww look they even entered the set together!” in favour of wondering if there was something he said (or didn’t) that ended the conversation.

…

After filming finished for the day, he decided to lag behind instead of immediately leaving. He’s worked with a bunch of the cast beforehand, so it was a good thing to catch up with them.

“Mini Sumeragi,” one of his more… out there seniors, a friend of his father, began “are you gonna keep staring at their dressing room?”

Freezing up, he mentally took note to stop darting his eyes in that direction before anyone could make something out of it; it was too late, though, when the lead actress asked who occupied that room and several people replied your name in chorus.

“Ohoho~ our young boy is finally growing up,” the lead actor said with a grin, and the whole cast amusedly watched Tenma’s cool mask forming cracks.

“Could it be you’re waiting for them to go out? Is that why you’re staying behind to chat with us oldies?” none of them look the least bit offended, but while he was safe on that aspect, the little smirks and chuckles that escaped the others made him want to justify his actions somehow.

“It’s- it’s because I— have something to tell them!” Tenma explained, despite not knowing a) what he would even say to you, and b) that he was planning on talking to you in the first place. Even though all the signs were pointing to him wanting to do so, at least to an outsider’s perspective.

With widened eyes and an over-dramatised look of shock, the show’s director herself let out a gasp. “Sumeragi-kun, you don’t mean… you’re going to…“

Tenma’s perceptive after all, especially when it came to body language. He had to be as the Summer Troupe’s leader! He could tell there was something bothering you a while ago. As co-workers, he just doesn’t want you to have an issue with him is all! Not— not that he was super concerned about what you thought about him though, it was just—

“Tenma-kun?”

The whole group turned to look at the source of the voice, and who else could it be other than the devil itself.

“I’m glad you’re still here!” you exclaimed, a smile gracing your face as you approached the ginger. “I actually had something I needed to ask you about.”

“Huh? Oh, of course you did,” he crossed his arms, averting his eyes from your expectant gaze. “What did you want?” What— what else was he supposed to say?

Unexpectedly, you bring out your phone and hand it to him. Hold on, wasn’t this like those scenes in the dramas he acted in? Or Muku’s shoujo mangas? Where the main character would hand her phone to the guy she liked and asked for his number?

“Could we start chatting on LIME?” Tenma stiffened at your words, until you followed up with “Since you got into theatre before me, you’d probably have some tips or advice, right? I’m still inexperienced, so…”

After what felt like minutes, his thumbs quickly moved to enter his phone number, adding himself as a friend on your phone.

“I’m only doing this because it’s theatre related, okay? There’s no other reason!”

“Yes, yes, I know… Tenma-kun is always very nice to me,” with a closed-eyed smile making its way to your face, the both of you remained unaware of two things. First, the reddening of Tenma’s ears, and second, the hushed commentary of the others in the room.

“… that felt like a scene from a high school drama,” the director commented as soon as the both of you were out of earshot, looking contemplative, “they’re cute. Maybe I’ll cast them as the leads in my next show.”

Several laughs come out of the group, knowing glances thrown around from one person to another. The usually professional Sumeragi Tenma finally acting his own age, and the one who caused him to act that way. Whether you two knew it or not, you two’d become the hot topic amongst the crew for the next few filming sessions.

Unsurprisingly, Yuki’s the first one to notice something was up; while Tenma was good enough to be able to hide whoever it was he was chatting with on his phone, he was not slick enough to hide how affected he got upon hearing his phone ping, or the look on his face as he read and his fingers poised themselves to reply.

What kind of person gets smiley so early in the morning without eating breakfast, just because of a text message? Disgusting, really.

Also unsurprisingly, Kazunari’s second to notice, but unlike Yuki he’s the first to properly try and figure out who Tenma’s talking to instead of just making comments here and there.

After all, the blond can only conclude two things— first, they must be a special enough person to have the always busy actor chat with them consistently during his free time; second, Tenten… probably hasn’t noticed that he’s being so, so obvious to the point that Misumi thought their very own leader found a “very special triangle”.

Kazunari found it was a little difficult, trying to figure out who it was exactly that caught Tenma’s attention, especially with the latter keeping a tighter on his phone than usual.

However, it was not impossible.

It wasn’t uncommon for several members of the troupe to gather around the living room to watch the latest episode of whatever drama Tenma was currently in. It wasn’t that uncommon either for him to watch with everyone as well, judging his own acting and seeing how it turned out through the camera.

Tonight was different though, and it would seem that always having his phone on his possession had become his own boon… or perhaps the true boon was sitting in front of Kazunari, giving him the perfect view to have a bit of a peek without being evident about his intent.

…

Tenten—

Tenten, why—

Kazunari found himself sending a mental prayer to whatever deity existed in the universe, not just for his own sanity but for…

His eyes go to the one person on screen that Tenma’s clearly been hyper focused on. ‘Yes, I pray for your sanity, too…’ he thought to himself. It was so clear that you had some semblance of more-than-friendly interest towards his friend, and you were clearly fishing a compliment out of him— if not just for the sake of a compliment, then to gauge his interest level in you.

Honestly, he can’t let this go any further— him snooping getting revealed be damned. Tenma’s been typing and hitting the backspace key for a solid two minutes now, he was clearly hopeless, and Kazunari? Why, he was a texting MASTER— it was his duty to help out his poor disciple.

“Tenten~♪,” as soon as the ginger’s attention broke from the phone, he quickly grabbed the device out of said person’s grasp, ignoring his indignant noises as he quickly typed in a response that seemed in-character enough for Tenma, but enough to pander to you.

When Tenma finally got his phone back, Kazunari resisted the urge to take a photo of the former’s face, morphing and reddening as he registered the rest of the messages.

“Why’d you… why’d you call them cute?” Tenma whisper-shouted, looking around to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation, before turning back to Kazunari.

“Awww, so you don’t think they’re a cutie?” Kazunari asked, clearly baiting Tenma to refute.

“That’s not what I— that’s not the point!”

Unable to hold himself back, he let out a laugh while one of the more serious parts of the show was playing out, causing several people to look at him in wonder. He doesn’t really have an explanation without exposing Tenma, so he gave the vague excuse of seeing something funny on his phone.

Not his phone, but hot diggity dog, did he see something funny alright.

There was no way he’d ever admit this to you, or to anyone for that matter, but he genuinely doesn’t understand you. You were rivals, weren’t you? Sure he expected you to be civil, but you were being so friendly and kind… and even worse, you were making him feel weird. You were making him do things he normally wouldn’t do.

He glanced down, the newly bought bouquet of roses seated on his lap as he waited for the play to start— the opening night of the play you were going to be in.

Opening night… when the others found out about it, they gave him knowing glances, playful nudges, teasing comments but really, what did it matter if he just so happened to watch on opening night of all nights? It was the night he was free on!

Besides, you were his rival in acting! Obviously, he was going to watch your performance to simultaneously check out your strengths and weaknesses as an actor— how you differed on set and on stage.

… no, that didn’t sound right, even in his head.

Then, he’s watching you because you went through the trouble of asking him for tips about acting on stage, and getting into theatre. He’s kind of like your teacher, right? So he has to support you

… that didn’t sound right, either.

Even after the play ended, he waited for the audience area to be mostly deserted before coming to find you backstage, the stage manager apparently recognising him and letting him pass without much questioning on who he was here to see.

When he finally found you, he stilled in his spot. Oh, you were with…

For a few seconds, his stomach churned, like a fiery pit burning his insides on fire without so much a regard towards any pain he’d fill and—

“Tenma-kun!”

As quickly as it arrived, the fire gets extinguished at the familiar shout of his name. That person turned to you, quickly muttering something that made you giggle, the forming frown on his lips only leaving as the other man did.

“I’m really happy you came to watch me~” you told him, a little bashfully. “My parents couldn’t come tonight, so it was nice to have someone I recognised other than my manager in the crowd.”

Right, opening night was… a lot for him, too. Tenma nodded understandingly. “Obviously? Oh and congratulations, by the way, you did really well,” he added in, watching you gingerly take the bouquet of red roses from his grasp. Your eyes turned a little softer at the present, stuck on the little tag even though all that was written on that pre-made to and from card was your name and his respectively.

“I said I’d watch you, right? Besides, just because you’re my rival doesn’t mean I’m gonna go break a promise.”

You remained silent for a minute, and he worried again if he somehow found another thing that would cause you to stop talking to him, at least for a little while— a time period just enough to bother him.

When you break your silence, you make sure to make direct eye-contact with him.

“… rival?”

“Yes?”

With a heavy sigh, you began muttering to yourself. While he wasn’t able to pick up on comprehensible sentences, your expression was enough to tell him you were annoyed.

Before he could question you, the smile returned to your face.

“You think we’re rivals? That’s a shame… I don’t see you that way at all,” you remarked offhandedly, watching Tenma’s face morph into a mixture confusion and hurt.

“What? Do you not think I’m good enough to be your—“

“Okay! Stop the thought right now!” you interrupted, shaking your head vehemently. What kind of derivation was that? “I think of us as more than rivals, is what I mean.”

Tenma’s blush seared through his cheeks, looking almost as though his face was lit up on fire. Despite this, he made no attempt to move to shield his face from your gaze, or any movement at all really— save for how he sputtered in search of some semblance of a viable reply.

“What do you… what are you trying to imply? Are you saying you think of me as a friend or—“

He gets interrupted by the sound of you giggling. “Well, the meaning can be whatever you want it to be!” you exclaimed, the tone of your voice a little mischievous as you continued, “so just let me know which one, okay?~”

[danwhobrowses]

20 AEW Dark and Elevation Regulars that AEW should sign

Now I know, AEW has a very stacked roster, in fact I've considered writing an essay on the risk of AEW's growing roster being top-heavy

I mean we've barely scraped the potential of Brian Cage, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Sammy Guevara, TH2, Sonny Kiss, Matt Sydal, Proud and Powerful, Nick Comoroto, Will Hobbs, Serena Deeb (who I know is injured atm), and many more. But with Rampage oncoming maybe there is room for them.

But, we'll stick a pin in that for now, because tonight is AEW's 100th Episode of Dark. A big deal still considering it's one of AEW's 2 weekly youtube wrestling shows, and one of AEW's many Youtube weekly shows if you include vlogs such as BTE, SammysVlogs, Ethan Page's vlog and the AEW-promotional Countdown to and Outside the Ring with Lexy Nair segments and the Unrestricted Podcast. In the pandemic era, Dark became a home to several indie talents in need for work, some got signed but not all, so I'm gonna list 10 men's and 10 women's wrestlers who were regulars on Dark and Elevation who AEW can and should still sign

Note: I will not be including wrestlers who look set for regularity, so Wheeler Yuta, Jora Johl, Fuego and the Wingmen won't be on the list, as will any AEW Women's tournament entrants (Maki Itoh, Madi Wrenkowski, Nicole Savoy etc.). Danny Limelight and Konosuke Takeshita are also signed to MLW and DDT Pro just fyi

10 Men AEW should sign

The men's division is already stacked, and it has a lot of up and comers too, but there are still a few areas where AEW's Dark stalwarts have proven they can fill a void for.

Honorable mentions for: JDX, El Australiano, M'Badu, Jake St. Patrick, Brick Aldridge, Megabyte Ronnie, Suge 'Pineapple Pete' D and Vary Morales. Also Kidd Bandit, but he hasn't wrestled on Dark or Elevation so I couldn't add him in.

10. Marty Casaus Better known as Marty 'the Moth' Martinez from Lucha Underground, Marty trained with AEW after some time out with injury and made some appearances on Dark. As the Moth, Marty demonstrated his character work as a gross heel, but his size was also an asset to his disturbed and near-psychotic persona.

9. Dean Alexander An alumnus of the Nightmare Factory, Alexander has frequented on Dark and Elevation usually in tag action where he hasn't been able to get his dickhead persona across. He is your traditional cocky heel which in the Nightmare Factory showcases has led to his hilarious downfalls, even losing to Negative One in his multiple failures to win in the Main Event of these showcases. Frankly, this is what Baron Corbin should be like if you're gonna mock him, he's also very impressive in the ring.

8. Dillon McQueen Another Nightmare Factory alum, Dillon McQueen has also only been used for jobbing, but his character is actually great. The King of Queens, Dillon brims charisma that would be a winner for crowds, but he has a babyface fire to him as well, easily could be a rising talent with the right training.

7. Dan Barry To be honest, I like his Hawaiian Shirts. He has a lot of experience in the indies and can work in a similar way Colt Cabana works balancing serious and comedy wrestling, would just be pretty cool to see him more.

6. & 5. TNT (Terrence and Terrell Hughes) Sons of D-Von Dudley, TNT have had less appearances on AEW as of recent, which is a shame, because they can definitely be developed as some of the next gen tag teams the Acclaimed and Blonds have been. AEW haven't shied from legacy wrestlers in the past, and the duo definitely have potential.

4. Chandler Hopkins Chandler Hopkins has shown up to be squashed by the big men a lot, but somehow he also manages to eke out some strong entertainment and fluid wrestling in it. His match against Brian Cage is an effective example of this. Like Fuego, Chandler is definitely someone you can use on the undercard for some enhancement, maybe even push up once more character comes across.

3. Ryzin Ryzin has stuck with AEW for quite a while now, even having skits on BTE. The Unholy Father however never got a W on AEW, which is a shame because he has character and promo skills in hand. He could easily be a fit for Chaos Project as well or teamed with Abandon in a James Mitchell kinda role.

2. Carlie Bravo One of the first class alums of the Nightmare Factory, Carlie Bravo remains charismatic and athletic in his showings, he even had a great little pairing with Shawn Dean until Dean's signing, I'd love to see them bring that back - two Navy veterans tearing up the tag scene would be pretty awesome.

1. Baron Black Few have stayed the course during the pandemic era like Baron Black. Debuting in April and still yet to get his first win, he was one of the three touted stars by Cody on Sammy's vlog who he encouraged to be booked around the world because of his workrate and skill. If anyone has earned it that isn't named Fuego del Sol (or that other name Cody mentioned), it's Baron Black.

10 Women AEW should sign In contrast to the men's division, AEW's women's roster does look like it could use some buffing, for midcard and even building more stars.

Honorable mentions are plenty in this one, so just missing out are the following: Ashley D'Amboise, Leila Grey, Renee Michelle, Jazmin Allure, Savannah Evans, Willow Nightingale, the Renegade Twins, Holidead, Kenzie Paige, Jennacide and Brooke Havok (who I would guess will be signed once her leg recovers).

10. Ashley Vox With or without her Sea Stars tag partner, Delmi Exo, Ashley Vox has proven herself a frequent flier for AEW. Talented in singles and tag competition. She also has a strong rapport with many of AEW's current roster.

9. Alex Gracia The Pink Dream has been on ROH as of recent but remains a freelancer, her last appearance being a squash from Dr. Britt Baker DMD. AEW must've been high on Gracia at one point because they gave her a title shot on Dynamite. With experience in Shimmer and Stardom, Gracia would definitely be a worthy addition.

8. Tesha Price Another woman who AEW put on Dynamite rare times, Tesha proved herself to play face and heel during her time on Dark and Elevation. As a heel she showed a lot of fire especially against KiLynn King and Ryo Mizunami, the Psycho Sweetheart definitely has something she can give to the division - who are tbf lacking in heels right now.

7. Vertvixen I am not sure what it is about Vertvixen specifically, but whenever I see her I think she has the look, not to mention the athleticism to boot. Her triple threat on MPW against Jennacide and Jazmin Allure was a definite highlight as of recent.

6. Miranda Alize A former Mae Young Classic competitor, like Jennacide and Gracia she's recently been used by ROH, but she is definitely a confident wrestler and does not shy from the intergender matches either, having fought Laredo Kid and Danny Limelight. She's worked with many impressive wrestlers too, including an Impact Knockouts Title match against Jordynne Grace and matches against Deonna, Taya and Tessa.

5. Reka Tehaka The Samoan Savage may've debuted on AEW's first ever house show, but regular Dark and Elevation appearances have been met with positive reactions. Being partly trained by the Nightmare Factory, Tehaka has done well to establish herself despite only wrestling for a year and a half, she could definitely be a prospect.

4. Veda Scott Okay, so I cheated a little by saying no competitors, but I could not leave out Veda on this list. She has in-ring talent and intergender experience - tagging with her Speedball husband - but on AEW Dark and the Deadly Draw she proved herself excellent on commentary. A female voice in the booth even for just the women's matches would go a long way for the division and Veda's the perfect voice for it.

3. Dani Jordyn The Mean Girl is definitely someone you can call a regular on Dark and Elevation. She works hard and works with a lot of main roster talent, and I don't think I've seen her put on a bad match. So it would be nice to reward her with a contract.

2. Diamante It still baffles me actually that Diamante has yet to become All Elite. Deadly Draw winner and involved in a lot of the Elevation/Dark women's feuds, Diamante has a wealth of knowledge and experience under her belt. She's still popular with fans and can easily step back into her LAX days by pairing with the Inner Circle. Few unsigned talent have won as much as her too, I would say it's when rather than if, but when is taking a long ass time.

1. KiLynn King The three names Cody praised highly were Fuego, Baron Black and KiLynn King, so I think above all else they should be given contracts. In fact, I was surprised King wasn't on the Dark 100 card, by virtue that although King has shown up on Dynamite a few times, she has been on Dark and Elevation 41 times since debuting in May 2020, it was a shock that someone so regular wasn't on the card. King showed she could work as the bully heel but also as a charismatic babyface, even having a little faction brewing with Swole and Red Velvet as RSK, but when crowds came back we seemed to drop the potential of AEW's first all-women faction. King is over with fans...so long as you don't put her against someone as over as Thunder Rosa, and she has put on some lowkey bangers during her time on AEW, especially the one against Riho. Tall and powerful, but fun in the ring and outside the ring with clips of her in the crowd chanting and even vibing to Angelico's music. King would definitely be on the top of my list of AEW Dark regulars that deserve a contract.

I'm sure I might've missed some and opinions may differ, but I think these lot would definitely be able to fit into AEW effortlessly thanks to their time on Dark and Elevation. Many of whom could be used to build or become future champions themselves, and I hope still to see more of them beyond Dark 100.

[alistonjdrake]

Part Ten: The Summer Prince

Prince Argus an’Frederick Harver Born: Year 1763 after the fall of the Saints Mother: Queen Luca Breacher Engaged to Damaris ana’Sebastian Harver

Prince Argus was born a bastard. The illegitimate son of King Frederick and his mistress Luca Breacher. He would spend the first five years of his life in a hidden manor on the outskirts of Graza city so no one would know that he existed or that the mistress who once terrorized the court had ever been pregnant at all. 

As such, the young Prince Argus hardly even knew his father was a king or the concept of such thing. Something that would not extend to his later life in the slightest.

Much of his early years has been lost to time. What is assumed is that he was raised by maids sworn to secrecy and was not allowed to leave the manor in which he was birthed. It is also assumed that King Frederick visited infrequently. 

Prince Argus likely had some copy of the early education his siblings received. He was taught Escan and Oskyi, but was notably denied any access to learning Kellish or having Kellish teachers despite his mother being Kellish and, frankly, looking more Kellish than Escana (and having a Kellish name). He started violin lessons, knew how to recite and read poetry, learned his proper manners and etiquette, even though at the time there was no certainty of his future.

It was likely that Luca Breacher might have been pressuring King Frederick to divorce Queen Brandye although he did not have the leverage to as he had with Queen Crisanna. It did not seem at all likely or possible that Prince Argus would ever be recognized as a prince or King Frederick’s child. There are some rumors that eventually Luca Breacher would have left and attempted to put Prince Argus on the path of a religious career.

This would not need to happen. In 1768, when Prince Argus was five-years-old, Queen Brandye would succumb to illness and King Frederick would marry Queen Luca in secret, crowning her later when the last queen’s death was not as fresh. Prince Argus would also be officially legitimized and would become the only official bastard of King Frederick’s on record which truly only grew more gossip that there were likely others scattered around Escan.

King Frederick quickly made up for five years of neglect by spoiling his new son and wife rotten. Prince Argus was given anything he asked for and Queen Luca was intensely protective of him, and for good reason. The Kellish pair were not popular in Graza during these days. There was some talk that rebel groups planned to kidnap the young prince. As such, Prince Argus was never seen without a league of his own guards. But he was also surrounded by toys, riches, and companions gifted to him by eager courtiers looking to use their children to gain a promotion. He was given his own servants and quickly learned how to avoid them when he was to be brought to his lessons or anything he didn’t deem fun.

All the spoiling very quickly resulted in Prince Argus being a bit of a bully as a child. Even at his age, he managed to be particularly hard on his serving staff, sometimes breaking things or spilling drinks on purpose so that they would have something to clean. 

Due to the partial isolation, Queen Luca put him in, Prince Argus did not spend a whole lot of time with his siblings in his youth. He would see them in brief moments while his mother was still alive. Strangely, the one he would be the most fond of was Prince Leonides and would be seen following him around. For the most part its assumed Prince Leonides tolerated this despite the fact that he had not been fan of children before this.

Likely as a result of Queen Luca’s demise, Prince Argus would continue to be babied by his family well into his early teens which would only worsen his behavior. Prince Argus became talented at avoiding responsibility and a keen lover of attention and being doted on. He learned how to guilt King Frederick out of things and how to not face consequences for his actions.  

Prince Argus quickly saw himself as the black sheep of the Harver family. He was not the only one. The court took to calling him ‘The Summer Prince’ not only for the season he was born but a comment on the color of his hair and its rareness among the Escana population. Prince Argus would never stop being sensitive about his appearance despite the fact that it was never mocked, he simply never liked looking so different than his siblings as it caused commentary on whether or not he was truly King Frederick’s child. 

Prince Argus was never at a loss for company. He was close to his cousin Princess Damaris even if she was four years older. He’d been given a loyal companion in the young Enyo an’Tomas Serafin, and he was born at just the right time to be in a forced penpal relationship with Crown Prince Aayden of Oskya and the two of them would cultivate a friendship despite their violent disagreements and slight rivalry. 

At the age of sixteen, Prince Argus would start a relationship with Enyo after months of flirting and the two would be considered closer than ever. They more or less ran the youthful side of culture in Graza Palace, being the loudest members of their group and Argus’ nature to throw parties as a display of his richness and King Frederick’s ability to forgive him for all offenses. 

His sixteenth year would also mark the end of another round of Kellish rebellions with the proposal for Prince Argus, then regarded as the Kellish prince, would marry one of the remaining nobles of the nation. The council argued over this for quite sometime and as if to avoid further proposals from the Kells, had Prince Argus engaged to Princess Damaris.

This would cause a total break in their relationship, where the pair had once been close they descended into petty fights as Prince Argus was strongly against the match even though it was not his cousin’s fault. He would reignite his bullying nature, he and Enyo were known to be especially cruel to Princess Damaris who had already been a true black sheep in Graza’s culture. 

Most who knew him regarded him as a spoiled brat. Prince Argus was known to throw things out once he used them and would whine until they were replaced only to do it again. He loved throwing his money in people’s faces and would cry to King Frederick for more if he went past his monthly budget. But just as he was quite sensitive about comments over his looks, Prince Argus became equally insecure over commentary of his frivolous spending and partying nature. To amend this, he became interested in politics and turned his attention to doing something “important”.

However, due to Prince Argus being Prince Argus, he was not allowed in on council meetings let alone given the option to voice his opinions on matters of governance. 

In 1782, Prince Argus is nineteen and still very spoiled and very mean. His sidekick and partner-in-crime Enyo has become slightly annoying to him and he wishes to get his need for attention and affection elsewhere. And still, no one respects his political aspirations. 

[thearkhound]

1998 Metal Gear Solid art commentary from Yoji Shinkawa (revised translation)

Source:http://web.archive.org/web/20050109031649/http://www.konamijpn.com:80/products/metalgear/art/index.html

The following is a translation of various artwork commentary by Metal Gear Solid illustrator Yoji Shinkawa that were posted on the game’s official Japanese website on July 9, 1998. These pages remained online until 2008, when Konami decided to relaunch the website in order to promote the digital download release of the game on the PlayStation Store.

I posted an earlier translation of these blog posts on March 8 of this year (2019) that was missing most of the illustrations being described, since the image files were not archived. I’ve since found the missing image files on another website and took the liberty of revising my translation to fix mistakes or clarify certain statements. I’ve tried to edit the original blog post, but for some reason tumblr didn’t allow me to upload any new images, so I decided to delete it and post the revision as a new blog post.

I’ve also found the images of the scratch Metal Gear REX model sculpted by Yoji Shinkawa that were uploaded on the official site, but unfortunately they were watermarked by a fansite that copied them back in the day. With that said, it’s still better than nothing, so I added them at the end of this blog poster.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t found any of the photos used on the seventh blog post, so that will still remain untranslated for the time being.

Interviewer: First of all, it’s a pleasure to talk to you Mr. Shinkawa.

Shinkawa: Please to meet you too.

Interviewer: I’ll start by asking about the game’s protagonist Solid Snake. What kind of details were you paying attention to when designing his character.

Shinkawa: Well I talked about this before in Konami Magazine Vol. 2, but there were two Metal Gear games prior to this one, so I struggled to find a balance between them. The Snake in the original Metal Gear looked like a young musclebound guy, while in Metal Gear 2 he was more of a bitter middle-aged man. This time Mr. Kojima’s image of Snake was one of having a tough and athletic body like Jean-Claude Van Damme combined with the middle-aged nature of someone like Christopher Walken. As a result, he became something of a middle ground between the two.

Interviewer: I see. What was your work after Snake’s image was decided on?

Shinkawa: The truth is I had trouble designing his costume. At the beginning I was thinking of a conventional military uniform in blue urban camo. But then I thought it might had been a bit too careless to have Snake swim underwater wearing such a uniform. Since the story takes place in the near future, he ended up wearing a costume made of leather and waterproof material.

Interviewer: It’s an amazing attention to detail that you kept in mind Snake’s infiltration route when designing his costume. So there’s a scene where Snake is underwater? What happens if the Ninja lands in a pond or something?

Shinkawa: What would happen? Huh... He would spark up and then yell something like “Water! My weakness!” (laugh) Just kidding.

Interviewer: (laughs) I guess not.

Shinkawa: It’s hard to know when it comes to Mr. Kojima though...

Interviewer: Don’t worry about it. By the way, is there any behind-the-scenes stories about the game’s development.

Shinkawa: Yes. It’s not much of an inside story, but I drew Ninja in a train.

Interviewer: During a train ride?

Shinkawa: Yes, I drew him while riding a commuter train. I was stationed at Osaka at the time. Most of the people there not friendly, so I would spent time observing the college girls.

Interviewer: That’s pretty nice.

Shinkawa:I guess so. But the friendliness here is good though. But Tokyo doesn’t have such a thing, so it feels a bit lonely. How I should say this, but there’s something that could be described as “enjoying the reaction of people watching in my direction” that could be seen not just over there, but here too.

Interviewer: So that’s how you train your sense of observation!

Shinkawa: No, that’s not what I meant. (laughs)

Interviewer: Is there a type of woman that you like?

Shinkawa: I wonder about that.

Interviewer: I’m sorry, that was such a trite question. Let me rephrase that. Is there a particular celebrity that you like?

Shinkawa: I guess I have no choice. My type would be someone like Shinobu Nakayama.

Interviewer: Is that so? Personally I’m a fan of Yuki Uchida if you’re curious to know...

Shinkawa: Yeah, she’s not bad.

Interviewer: Ah!

Shinkawa: Well, let’s put that subject aside. The truth is that the character of Mei-Ling was actually modeled after Nakayama herself. I used to watch her drama series.

Interviewer: Ah! That’s such an interesting thing to learn. Now that you say that, Mei-Ling really does resemble Nakayama looking at her closely, doesn’t she?

Shinkawa: Mei-Ling was written to be a bubbly college girl. She tends heavily to my taste, since she’s in the right age range and has my ideal image.

Interviewer: That’s nice. Having your preferences tied directly to your job.

Shinkawa: It’s not just mine. The character of Dr. Naomi Hunter was made to suit Mr. Kojima’s preferences too.

Interviewer: I see. Huh? At this rate, will you have a type for everyone?

Shinkawa: That wasn’t the intention, but... (laughs)

Interviewer: When was this drawn?

Shinkawa: I think it was around the end of last year. Huh? Around six months ago. Time sure fly quickly! I drew it for a magazine ad.

Interviewer: I heard the Ninja was your idea.

Shinkawa:That’s right. But originally there was a trio. They would say something like “Worya! Trinity Attack!” and they were going to have random kanji characters on their backs such as flame (炎) or horse (馬) without any particular significance.

Interviewer: “Fire” doesn’t seem so unreasonable, but why “horse”?

Shinkawa: I’ve mentioned “horse” as a joke, but that sort of thing happens very often, doesn’t it? When it comes to the image of Japan from a foreign perspective, while the outline is the same, the finer details differ. I like that kind of thing. The finalized design of the Ninja is and isn’t a ninja. If nobody told you he was a ninja, you wouldn’t think of him as one. But if someone points out that he must be a ninja because he has some ninja-like parts if you look at him closely, then you might think of him as one.

Interviewer: Is that so? That’s the Shinkawa magic!

Shinkawa: (laughs) What’s that?

Interviewer: I think I’ve seen this artwork a long time ago.

Shinkawa: It was first published around a year ago.

Interviewer: I see. So why did you draw it like an American comic book?

Shinkawa: Well, in reality I was going for a BD-style. Doesn’t it look like that?

Interviewer: I’m sorry, but what does BD mean?

Shinkawa: It stands for bande dessinée, which is the term for graphic novels in France. It means “sequential art”.

Interviewer: Huh, I did not know. So, is there a particular reason why you chose the BD-style?

Shinkawa: Of course! There is a reason. While talking to Mr. Kojima during the early stages, he said “Alright! Let’s turn Metal Gear into B.D” as a conceptual image. So I drew a few illustrations like that. This one was used as promotional art.

Interviewer: I see. So that’s the reason. And this one was perfect for a promotional artwork. Huh! Why is Gatse Becker [the BCPD chief from Policenauts] there?

Shinkawa: That’s not him. (laughs) It’s the Secretary of Defense [Jim Houseman]... Jeez... (While saying this, Shinkawa’s mouse keeps hovering on Mei-Ling for some reason.)

Interviewer: (nervous face) Uhh... Mei-Ling’s skirt seems awfully short... By the way, will you be able to shake the female characters’ breasts like in Policenauts?

Shinkawa:...That’s classified information!

Interviewer: Well, here’s REX. Is there anything particularly different about this Metal Gear model?

Shinkawa: The Metal Gears in the previous two games had weak legs, so this new version has a strengthened lower body. During the initial planning I came up with several illustrations and settings, but the finalized version was settled pretty quickly.

Interviewer: How so?

Shinkawa: Since it was going to be turned into a polygon model, I made it into an actual model in order to solidify its conceptual image and verify its functions.

Interviewer: Is that so? Please show the model to me.

Shinkawa: Of course! REX was designed purely as a weapon, so it’s not exactly a heroic mecha. I decided on a dinosaur-like design like this one, since it conveyed a scary and grim image.

Shinkawa: There are three types of enemy soldiers shown here. From left to right: we have the light infantry, the heavy infantry and the arctic warfare soldier (nicknamed Yukinko by the developers). There’s also a gas mask-wearing fourth type.

Interviewer: Were you given any sort of references to use?

Shinkawa: I had books and photos that were given to me by Mr. Motosada Mori (MGS’s military advisor).

Interviewer: All the enemy soldiers have their faces covered up. Was that decided because they were terrorists?

Shinkawa: That’s certainly something that could be think of, but there’s actually more important reasons.

Interviewer: Huh? Explain!

Shinkawa: Simply put, we needed to reduce the number of polygons.

Interviewer: Is that really the reason?

Shinkawa: If you want to draw faces on your characters, you have to use quite a few polygons to get them to a satisfactory level, which ends up consuming too much resources. When taking into consideration the game as a whole, you got no choice but to trim certain parts. It’s a shame, but in the end I think the finalized designs suit the enemy soldiers better.

Interviewer: It’s a matter of balancing supply and demand. By the way, I really like the helmet worm by the Heavily Armed Troops. You don’t see them often in the game though.

Shinkawa: Well that helmet is an original design. Like everything, I try to keep things intuitive for game-playing purposes. The enemy soldiers are color-coded from left to right: brown, green and white, plus yellow for the gas mask-wearing soldiers.

Interviewer: There are indeed a variety of schemes. By the way, the arctic warfare soldiers are layered with clothing. Snake spends most of the game in arctic environments, but he isn’t wearing that much. Why is that?

Shinkawa: He’s wearing a high-tech suit.

Interviewer: You said it so bluntly... (laughs) One last nitpicky question. Who does the laundry in the base?

Shinkawa: They use a laundry machine. (laughs)

Metal Gear REX Model Photos

[svtskneecaps]

See You When I Fall Asleep

Jeon Wonwoo x reader; Soulmate AU

So this is a little different to the other soulmate au stories I’ve written, and it also explains the reason why I’m postponing updates on Stop Loving to an unspecified date, and why i’m on the verge of a mental breakdown. Sorry for the inconvenience, hope this makes up for it! I haven’t got anything up for Wonwoo yet, and honestly writing this really helped my stress. Ya know, I felt productive and all that. Anyway, hope you enjoy~!

((this is not part of my main soulmate au series))

Soulmark: when your soulmate sleeps, they appear near you looking like the person who’s on your mind. you can interact with them, but nobody but you can see them, and they’re not allowed to give you anything that would hasten your meeting (I like to call this a Guardian Angel Mark)

Main Masterlist

“You’re up late.”

“And you’re asleep early.” You glanced up at your soulmate. “Or late, depending on who you ask. What brings you here?”

“Driving. Decided I’d take a quick nap.” He sat on your bed (you’d asked his pronouns long ago). “Who do I look like today?”

“Tony Stark. But young, so not Robert Downey Jr Tony Stark. Like, imagine him, but as a young, acne faced, awkward, too skinny for his height teenager. Minus the beard.”

“Specific.” He laughed. “Any reason why?”

You shrugged with a soft smile tugging at your lips. “ ‘S for my essay.”

“Oh right.” He leaned against the wall. “How’s that going, anyway?”

“Not well, let me tell you.” You sighed, fighting the urge to slam your laptop shut. “Actually don’t, I won’t shut up.”

“Made any progress since I was here last?”

“Unfortunately, not much.” You rubbed a distracted hand across your forehead, smearing the foundation you’d forgotten to take off that evening. “Maybe another hundred words, before I started looking for better examples.”

“Five hundred isn’t bad,” he encouraged.

“On a four thousand word essay?” You shot him a wry smile, turning back to your computer screen. “I don’t think so.”

He watched you work in silence for a second, before scooting closer. “You know working in the dark like this and staring at that screen isn’t good for your eyesight.”

“I’ll wake the people in the next room if I turn on the light, and they’ll be upset.” Your eyes didn’t leave the screen as you scrolled down the page. “You know how they get.”

“You know how I get,” he insisted, leaning into your side. The hair on your arms stood up. You still couldn’t get used to seeing that, where his ghostly figure leaned on you but you didn’t feel a thing. “You’ve at least been eating well, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” you said, unconvincingly.

“Y/N, you know your health is important.” He sounded disapproving, and worried.

“I’m not going to die because I didn’t eat breakfast.” You successfully avoided rolling your eyes like a petulant teenager. “I did that for the past two years and look, I’m still alive aren’t I?”

He just stared at you. Damnit. You hated that he knew that worked on you. “Alright fine, I’ll try to eat better.”

“And sleep at a more decent hour,” he scolded, checking the clock across the room, reading a time well past midnight. You just sighed, long and low, resting your head on his phantom shoulder.

He stared at your computer, seeming curious. “What are you looking at now?”

“Fan fiction. I’m trying to figure out a way to back up my argument.” You straightened back up, and now you rolled your eyes. “Or, you know, make one.” You sighed again and pulled a makeup wipe out of the box on the table next to your bed, rubbing the foundation from your hand and face. “I hit the same damn block, for the millionth fucking time.”

“Language,” he chided.

You snorted, reappearing from behind the wipe. “Sorry, it’s just hilarious for me to hear teenaged Tony Stark saying that.”

He pouted, but moved past your comment quickly. “Maybe if you went to sleep, it’d make more sense in the morning. You’d get a fresh perspective.”

“Oh, probably.” You tossed the makeup wipe in the trash and grabbed another one. “But I’d lose time, and that’s what I really, really need.”

“No, you need ideas.” He closed your computer, an action you knew took immense amounts of energy, so you were shocked that he’d even bothered. “And you’re not going to get them from staring at a computer screen.”

You trashed the last makeup wipe. “Okay, but it’s only because I love you.”

“Good.” You couldn’t see his face anymore, since your computer screen had been the only source of light in the room, but you knew he was smiling. “Now get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay.”

~~~

It was always disorienting to fall asleep with your soulmate by your side and wake up to have him gone. You knew he’d show up soon, though, and besides, you had an essay to work on.

“You didn’t forget what I said, did you?”

You didn’t look up. “Which part?”

“The part about eating.” Your soulmate found a seat on the arm of the chair next to you.

“I did get breakfast, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good.” He seemed satisfied. “Any luck?”

You closed your laptop. “Not much. I’m probably going to give up for the morning. Clean my room or something.”

He followed along beside you. “So who am I today?”

You turned to look at him. “Jeon Wonwoo, from Seventeen. You know who he is or do you want me to describe him?”

“Describe him.”

You weren’t sure what that look on his face meant, but you shrugged it off. Your soulmate could be mischievous. Who knew, maybe he knew the guy. He mentioned at one point that he was an idol.

You studied him for a second. “Light brown-ish hair- I’m not sure which promotion this is from. He’s wearing glasses, actually, those cute thin wire framed ones that kinda remind one of Harry Potter. Kinda got the bookish nerd vibe going on if we’re being real. Umm... kind of a square jaw. Actually he has a really strong jaw. It’s nice. Never noticed that.” You shrugged. “He tends to be rated among the top visuals by fans, so take that however you will. I’m sure you know Korean beauty standards better than I do.”

“Yeah.” You could see him side eyeing you. “But do you find him attractive?”

You tried to keep your voice casual as your responded. “I mean I guess, I understand the physical appeal. And he’s got a lovely personality to go with it, which I can appreciate.”

He hummed in response.

You glanced back over at him. “What’s that big smile for?”

“Nothing.” He turned his head away slightly. You could tell the smile never dropped.

“Let me guess, you’re a Wonwoo stan? Don’t worry, once we meet in person I’ll describe you with all the care I do everyone else.”

“I’d love that,” he said, “more than anything else.”

~~~

He hadn’t shown up.

You’d known this was coming, of course; he’d said that his group would be touring in your country, but you didn’t think you’d feel his absence so keenly. Desperate to escape the lonely feeling, you spent a lot of your time in coffee shops. There was one downtown that you really loved, since it was in a non-sketchy neighborhood and the barista was kind of cute. She also didn’t mind when you accidentally fell asleep in the shop, which tended to happen quite often. Like today.

Your soulmate was wandering around in a downtown area not unlike yours when you showed up. He was obviously filming, so he didn’t acknowledge your presence, but you knew he was aware that you were there. He managed to slip away from the cameras for a brief second in a park as his members split off into various directions.

“Seems kind of early for you to be sleeping,” he teased.

“You know me.” You laughed. “Always falling asleep in random places.”

“I just hope this ‘random place’ is safe.”

“It is.”

You didn’t get much more than that quick exchange, since the cameras returned. The members went back to wandering around town (unfortunately, you couldn’t see what they looked like either, and although you weren’t sure why you figured it was because they were idols, and it would make your soulmate too easy to find). You narrated some of the things you saw, although you tried to keep it at a minimum. Despite your unending well of witty commentary, if your soulmate was caught smiling at nothing too many times the fans would catch on. His career meant a lot to the both of you and you didn’t want to mess that up.

Despite your unspoken commitment to staying quiet, you were getting confused, and with that came the desire to voice that confusion, because you knew a music shop with that name and you could’ve sworn that woman walking across the street from them was Mrs. Perkins from the nice clothing shop a few blocks down the street from the café you were dead asleep in, and you thought for a second that the friendly looking man switching the sign on the laundromat door to ‘open’ looked a lot like the grandfather of your best friend from childhood. And then you couldn’t keep quiet. “I think I’m around here.”

He looked over at you, then immediately jerked his attention back, but you knew he was listening. “I think I’m around here,” you repeated. “I know that shop, and I know him- and I recognize her- I might be right down the street.”

He said something in a low voice to his PD, who listened for a second, then said something to one of the staff members. Your soulmate looked back at you, and said one thing.

“Show me.”

After all those years an ocean apart, it was laughably simple to navigate through the streets to find the café, and seeing the look on his face when you pointed at your sleeping form, passed out on your computer keyboard, was simultaneously priceless and the sweetest thing you’d ever seen. As he pushed through the coffee shop door and moved over to wake you, you were suddenly struck by the realization that, this was it. You’d finally get to see what he looked like, to put a face and a name and a voice behind that personality you’d fallen for a million times over.

He placed his hand on your shoulder, and you were gone.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Wake up~”

You pulled your face off your keyboard, rubbing the impression the ‘f’ key had made on your cheek. The face of the stranger who’d woken you blurred in your sleepy vision. But it wasn’t a stranger, you remembered, it was your soulmate. You couldn’t rub the sleep from your eyes fast enough, eager to see who it was you were destined to be with.

Your jaw dropped.

And of course, your first reaction upon regaining your senses was to smack him on the arm. “You told me you didn’t know who Jeon Wonwoo was!”

“I never said that!” he defended, grinning at you. “I just said I wanted you to describe what he looked like.”

“Well he looks like you, you dumb nugget!” You huffed. “Did you even try to tell me that you looked like yourself?”

“Well no,” he admitted, “but I wanted us to be in the same position, you know? Makes this moment sweeter.”

“But it would’ve been sooner.” You pouted, although you both knew there wasn’t any real emotion behind it. You were elated, and so was he.

“It’s better like this.”

You looked back up at him, smiling. “You’re right.”

“I always am,” he said calmly. You leaned your head against his arm, your smile growing as you felt him there, as more than just a ghostly presence. It was comforting.

He smirked. “So, about that essay...”

“No! I just met my soulmate, I’m not gonna think about some stupid essay!”

[twiddlebirdlet]

Post Digest

I had so many posts yesterday, and I could not possibly answer them all in this lifetime. My apologies for not addressing these, but here they are.

The words belong to the anonymous original writers. They do not reflect my opinions. My posting of them doesn’t imply any endorsement.

· Anonymous said:

Chris really is trash for ruining another relationship maybe him and Jordyn woods can join the home wrecker club

·  Anonymous said:

Mood, give up. People will blame you, the girl, the weather, everything but Chris, who could have easily avoided any assumption by not taking the pics. Pics with kids, pic of dog, hospital visits, videos for sick children all this is good PR and he used in the past. But where is the good on taking pics with dancers? They were not fans. He is not helping to make them being respected or less objectified. He is not bringing any discussion about their work conditions to the table.

·  Anonymous said:

People saying this is nothing how do they explain her boyfriend deleting all of her pix? If it was nothing if she wasn’t with him why is boyfriend reacting that way?

·  Anonymous said:

That girl was so completely lusting after Chris in her pics and posts that I think she absolutely would jump out of her current relationship if Chris so much as blinked her way. She was going to go anywhere he was. I will wait to see what happens but it looks like Chris may have made another poor decision. Why is this man so intelligent in some things but when it comes to women he is just so way off? If he thought SSH was bad, just wait for a young social media millennial. Disaster.

·  Anonymous said:

Bella & her bf are still following each other on Instagram. Maybe he deleted those photos of her as a way of protecting her? Maybe he didn't want to make his Insta private & thought this would be a better way of doing things. In any case, he doesn't seem angry enough at her to unfollow her. But I don't think they broke up before the Chris thing, as he still had their professional couple photos up & they were still posting gushy comments to each other. So it's still weird and suspicious.

·  Anonymous said:

What is up with Chris and taken women

·  Anonymous said:

So I guess Chris really is a home wrecker

·  Anonymous said:

I just want to say thank you for all the information you're providing about this whole Chris situation. I'd rather have the full (or as full as we can get it) story with all the pieces together so I can make up my own mind what to think, vs bits and pieces and people misreporting information that they heard third hand, etc. So your summary post with receipts was very much appreciated by me.

·  Anonymous said:

To me the whole intern thing just seemed like she was trying to be linked to him judging by the times the ig pics went up. I guess everyone has their own opinions I know people who have basically said it was nothing and refused to talk about it but if it was someone else they would be all over it. It seems with him people pick and choose what issues of his they want to discuss. All of just seemed iffy especially know knowing that her bf deleted her pics. Hope you're have a lovely day.

·  Anonymous said:

I’m worried about the people worried about your health. They’re so invested in this celebrity that they are policing your blog. He’s a successful, famous actor. He has a whole team of people to handle this. And, none of those people are contacting you...

·  Anonymous said:

I don't get anons coming in here and complaining that you answering asks about the saturday night events is somehow blowing this thing up and causing drama. This anon should go to twitter where there are accounts that tag CE, JS, enty and provoking more and more ridiculous accusations, including Chris roofying Bella's drink etc. Twiddle at least sticks to things we can prove so if you wanna complain, go there and set these people straight. They make real damage not anonymous tumblr

·  Anonymous said:

The boyfriend could just be fed up with her throwing herself at ce and then getting comments forcing him to go private. That would be enuf for a 20 yr old in a long distance relationship. Doesn’t mean she is shaking up with ce. He’s too paranoid to do that

·  Anonymous said:

From what I've seen on Twitter, there's a little bit of talk about the burlesque aspect of it (mostly "Ugh, you're all such prudes, get over it!") but no one seems to be picking up on the intern part of it except for like 3 people. I'm torn. I kind of want to see him get shit for this, because he was very stupid and irresponsible, but OTOH I'd hate to see what kind of PR crap his people will pull up to distract everyone. A PRomance with Brie Larson, perhaps.

·  Anonymous said:

Just a funny coincidence but it appears her (ex) bf and Chris share the same birthday lol. But either way not looking good. We can only speculate but it looks like her ex bf/bf didn't like her behavior towards him or something really did go down. 🦊

·  Anonymous said:

I think everyone needs to accept their portion of responsibility in this situation. The people that harassed or contacted the interns, the girl and the performers need to respect boundaries. I understand you posts Anons, but you also decide which and how many. Yesterday you provided a platform and it had consequences, people felt emboldened and crossed lines. I think everyone can learn from this experience and correct their future behavior.

·  Anonymous said:

So you keep saying your not sure if mark was there when multiple people keep saying he was.YOU keep saying that the pics were taking at the same or about the same time but theres no proof that they were. YOU keep putting out info that isnt accurate or just coincidental. that girl bf realise his gf is a thirsty ass and she got what she got but it doesnt mean anything happen between her and chris. NOTHING HAPPEN WITH THE INTERN STOP SPREADING SHIT!!

·  Anonymous said:

I think the bf just wanted people to stop harassing him about her so he did that instead of privatize. Seemingly less like a breakup.

·  Anonymous said:

It’s possible and probable her boyfriend deleted any pictures of her/them because he was tired of being harassed and getting bombarded with comments. He still follows her. He could have just muted the comment section, but maybe he was hoping by doing that it would help this all die down, and for people to lose interest. Which is laughable, because this particular fandom has a hard time letting go. Either way, I don’t necessarily think this is the beginning of a new relationship for Chris.

·  Anonymous said:

Sending you love! I truly enjoy your blog and your commentary. What you wrote about your struggles with OCD resonates with me (I had anxiety issues as a teenager. Mild in comparison to some, but they dominated my life). I will try not to clutter your inbox from now on, but, please know you are appreciated and I love the discussions we have here.

·  Anonymous said:

I think that putting the blame on this or other blog is a total waste of time. You know what would have avoided all this? Not taking those pics. How hard would be for him to STOP doing something that is doing no good to him? As you said, nothing positive comes out of this. He is not attending the ask of a cute kid. He is not visiting a hospital. He is helping a club to promote their name, something totally uncessary for an actor who reached his fame.

·  Anonymous said:

The intern thing didn't make the rounds in the internt, but the meeting with Dan Creshaw did. Chris is being criticized for that and for the twitter interaction.

·  Anonymous said:

Oy, its looking like she really did risk it all. Dumb childish mentality, what did anybody honestly expect from this situation? That poor boyfriend.

·  Anonymous said:

I don't think it's a proof that something happened between her and Chris but for sure her bf (probably now ex) didn't aprove her behaviour and probably he thinks that some limits were crossed. I have to admit that I would not like to have a bf acting like that around a famous woman or any other woman and leaving traces in SM which is worse. I really, really hope that Chris is smart enough to stay away from that or another kind of fame will get attached to him besides the "f*ck boy" image.

·  Anonymous said:

WHOA! Deleting all her pics? Does that mean Chris successfully ruined another relationship??? Whuut!?

·  Anonymous said:

You are very kind and your head is definitely on straight. You’re less of an “opinion” blog and almost more of a news blog anyways. Don’t listen to the haters. You aren’t being overly invested, cruel, silly, or anything else. I’ve always found you to be fair.

·  Anonymous said:

I looked at mark’s following list and he followed one other intern (a girl) who was also in the city but didn’t post from the box!

·  Anonymous said:

Tbh, good for her bf-her behavior (the comments) were completely inappropriate IF in a relationship, long distance or not. Unbelievably disrespectful to him. Hope her thirstiness was worth losing a relationship and (maybe) an internship. I am several years older, but there is no way I would have behaved that way during my college internship. Morality clauses apply to personal time as well.

·  Anonymous said:

Omg he deleted every pic with her. So now we know for sure that something happened that night lol

·  Anonymous said:

And now apparently twitter thinks harpy was there with Chris and they're back together. Oh for fuck's sake!

·  Anonymous said:

It's funny because many Chris instagram fan accounts just share the pic of him and the black singer/stripper but skip posting the other with the women group with clothes close to the nothing that they find I guess too trash for share with their followers in saying Chris with a fan in NYC without details.

·  Anonymous said:

In the name of everybody sorry for the large number of asks we sent you and the tiredness we,people agree or not agree, have caused you. We don't think when we send you an ask that you will receive many, everybody, after seeing one and your answer, wanting share their opinion about what an anon or you said even if it's for exprime our agreement. It's a circle without end. I hope you had a good night. Let's forget that,this girl is history now,the fire is extinguished now. Kiss

·  Anonymous said:

I've been seeing this gifset on my dashboard lately from Chris' interview captioned "I'm smarter than I look". No idea if the quote is real because I've never seen this particular interview but I think given the turn of events of the past few days it's appropriate to say "no, Chris, you aren't" LOL

·  Anonymous said:

Ok, I can't believe I'm saying this, but this whole messy situation really turns me off. I've always known Chris isn't a saint, that he's NOT Steve Rogers irl, going to clubs like The Box is not a new thing for him, but he should've known better. I want to believe he's not that dumb, but he's THAT dumb. This is really upsetting and I'm so disappointed. After all those good days working on a serious project in DC, does he really not care about his image being sleazy like that? Damn it, Chris.

·  Anonymous said:

So Chris alone went to greet the dancers? From what Manuel submitted, that’s what it seems like. She wasn’t there with him and his friends exactly, but somehow found out where they were and met up with them? I’m so over talking about this. Idk how you’ve done this all day Twiddle. My bedtime prayer is dedicated to you tonight.

·  Anonymous said:

Thank you Twiddle for taking your time to answer here and on DM. I know you also do it so that you will be best informed to answer any questions here, we appreciate that some took the time to gather more information for the rest of us. It seems like at the end of these gossip we all end up confirming our first guest. I feel we shouldn't give this girl more room. My conclusion for the day is either he never thought that girl was that thirsty or he's really just dumb. I'm going with cute but dumb

·  Anonymous said:

It's not a great look for him to be pictured at places like that, particularly when he's employed by a family-friendly company like Disney. He's been obsessed with protecting his image ever since he got the role of Cap. Btw, I am not surprised he goes to places like that but you'd think he'd be smart enough not to get his picture taken.

·  Anonymous said:

Have people forgotten that one of these thirsty hanger-on types (just like this intern seems to be) is someone who sent a video of Chris to tmz? I mean, he wasn't doing anything bad-just partying it up after a super bowl and he looked like a drunk frat boy. But even that got a dodger pic response. My point is that he should be smarter about people around him, especially when he's drunk.

·  Anonymous said:

Denying pics comes with its own risks. You don’t want to piss people off because that can have its own dangers. This has happened with other celebs. There have been several occasions where his pics have been in return for free bottle service or other perks. I am not saying that is the case here though. Not trying to argue with you mod, just saying it’s not black and white. A lot of mistakes were made here and the worst part is how avoidable it was. But most seem to hinge on Bella’s actions. 🐩

·  Anonymous said:

Mark follows a few of the interns from DC, 2 of whom (Bella & another woman) posted from NYC Saturday night & this evening. Also a few of Mark's friends are NYC as well. It's not far fetched that going to The Box was his idea. Also Mark would've needed to make a reservation to ensure they got in.

·  Anonymous said:

I think you hit the nail. What Chris gets from taking those pics? For sure he is being polite and the people involved get happy but taking how society works and how many people think and what they can do with that information, he got nothing good on posing for those pics. And saying that is just pointing out and realising how society works. People are hypocrite and mysoginist.

·  Anonymous said:

I feel you on the eating away at your Sunday. It’s not my blog and even *I* can’t believe how much time I’m devoted to this, much less the swamp you must be dealing with. Really appreciate your views and your time. I feel so silly that I’ve gotten so caught up in it but it’s like a car accident you can’t turn away from. Get some rest and lots of love. 🐩

·  Anonymous said:

People been posting Info but clearly no one believes it. That tree anon mention it.

·  Anonymous said:

People who are saying Mark was there and that she was there with a group of friends are just assuming as much as anyone else who says Chris and the girl were there with each other. The only thing we know for sure is that they were both on the same place, at the same night, around the same time, after meeting the day before. We can't deny that.

·  Anonymous said:

I’d like to say this girl blew her chances but this is the same guy who gave MK & JS multiple chances despite their fame whoring ways. Whatever it is it won’t last long but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re seen together again. Too bad. His political project was exciting. Now it’s tainted because he’s proven what a lot of people thought of him to be true.  

·  Anonymous said:

You need to let it go now. This is a non story. It’s looking more like two separate trips were in the works and it was a “oh hey us too maybe we’ll see you we were thinking of checking out this club” now apparently you think because he’s ancient and she’s an impressionable child and burlesque shows are akin to live porn he should have shut it down. But those of us in the common sense world see this for what it was. Which is a giant nothing. So tip to TMZ. Guarantee they will think the same.

·  Anonymous said:

For gods sake. Read and post my second ask to you. Stop all this madness. Yes they know each other. That is it. They were at same club and of course hung out a little. So what They met at first dc meet I think. He was nice to her She was nice back. Nothing wrong with people meeting and being cool. Even if famous

·  Anonymous said:

Maybe I should rewrite this but Your acting as they were they in DC together. They MET and photographed but wasnt there together as Your wording puts it. Like I said you dont know of they were backstage together. Pics can be upload at any time of the night . Your just jumping to conclusions like everyone else.

·  Anonymous said:

The way some of you talk about women is so damn depressing ugh this fandom is on one today.

·  Anonymous said:

Liked what the PR/crisis anon mentioned, that it's wrong to think Chris was uninvolved in JS and MK's stunts when he dated them. It's naive to think he is that helpless and easily controlled.

·  Anonymous said:

What i really don't understand is how chris could have been so so dumb and didn't think of the consequences. Also his pr underestimated the whole situation. The girl was blatantly seeking attention and a story to tell, and any person with a brain would have got the danger of the all situation. I know that he loves partying but he was so superficial i can't even put into words. In my opinion the project has been hurt by this and everything happened today showed that.

·  Anonymous said:

2/2) as if he wanted to do that. I doubt he asked, but was asked to do it. 3) The girl jumped on the chance to go backstage after the invitation and took the pic. 4) People put the pieces together because the girl was thirsty the day before and liked the attention she got from her friends but now there is a chance she ruined the trip a little as people ran to protect their privacy.

·  Anonymous said:

I think if Chris wants to be taken seriously in what ever he decides to do. He needs to grow up and act his age and stop drinking as much and hang around different people that includes his friends from Boston. I feel most of his friends are just there for the ride including Tara. If he does ever get married she will have to trust him to no end.

·  Anonymous said:

"it's not at all weird for people here on a blog that is predominantly about Chris to talk more about chris' antics than about anyone else's. It doesn't mean they're more worried or think what he's done is worse, it's just that this blog is a place to talk about him more than anyone else. Nice try though." Nice try what? If you read the full ask, as Chris's fan, I'm more concerned that's he's doing publicity pics with treasonous Nazis than hanging at a burlesque show w/ an intern. But you do you

·  Anonymous said:

Hi! Sorry for this question but I just don´t understand what is going on here with Chris and this intern? I try to scroll down your page but I still don´t understand what has happened.

·  Anonymous said:

Some who don't have problem that Bella flies to NY and post the picture at the same place where was Chris was the first to be offend that Jenny posts pic when she was at the same place that Chris whereas she was dating him. Be careful anons I'm not a pro Janey but people were rude with her when it was normal(even if she trolled), she was spending time with his boyfriend but when another women did the same, without dating him, they think it's okay. Why?

·  Anonymous said:

I'm genuinely curious about what kind of impression he was trying to make on her? like you wanna hook up with this chick & you're letting her know that you like to gawk at other half naked chicks in your free time? Unfortunately this will never blow up, if his PR team can bury homewrecker scandal then they can bury anything.

·  Anonymous said:

He seems to unconsciously be attracted to attention-seeking women who view him as a prize. I wonder if it’s a defense mechanism to prevent him from entering a serious relationship? Also, seriously, why wouldn’t you just make it clear to her that she shouldn’t post their escapades on social media from the start? Has he learned nothing from the Jobby debacle????

·  Anonymous said:

Okay, from her comments and that pose, that's a girl that has no problem pushing someone out the way to get noticed. Like the pic, the side she was on was trying to get four people in, compared to the 3 on the other, so they had to turn sideways. I can see her making sure she was the one next to him. She didn't have to put her hand on his shoulder or stomach. She was trying for his attention. Did she get it? Don't know. Don't really care, but that's a college-age Janey. Just want that fame.

·  Anonymous said:

Now that there are pics of them together and seeing the way she's posing with her hands on his chest and shoulder (it is very reminiscent of SSH, isn't it? Which would hurt if I was js lol) taken with the comments from her and her friends, all I can say is YIKES. And also, SMH. I am not a prude and I actually like burlesque and have been to The Box and fully expected him to hook up with somebody in DC ~on the low~ but even I can say this is not a good look for him. This boy will never learn.

·  Anonymous said:

I’d like to think that he’d cut all ties to Bella now the he’s created a PR nightmare for himself, yet again. But considering for almost 3 years he was involved with a woman who was married when they originally met & got involved, I don’t think he will care. At least Jenny was almost the same age as him. He’s looking like an upgraded version of Dane Cook. For anyone who doesn’t know, Dane Cook’s girlfriend is 19, they started dating when she was 18, but were “friends” before that 🙄🤢

·  Anonymous said:

The more I see from this girl the more I think she’s just a thirsty very immature little girl. And has no idea what she could potentially cost Chris. But he’s not innocent as she found out where he was going somehow.. And then posted it everywhere. Him or his team should have warned them to be cautious. And once they arrived not continued to entertain them and allow them backstage. An adult would have said nice to see you I’m going over here goodbye. Just another dumb d*#k brain decision.

·  Anonymous said:

Oh, man... the boyfriend. I didn't even think about him. Can you imagine if the situation was reverse and her bf was acting that way towards a famous woman? I can imagine myself on that situation and I wouldn't like it. Even if she was just joking, which i don't think she was just doing that, it would be disrespectfull. I hope he is not hurt.

·  Anonymous said:

Tks for the clarifycation for don't hate the player. So the girl had no shame to run after a man who has close the double of her age just because he is famous. Not sure she is again with her boyfriend but if she is, he would be very happy. It's clear,even if Chris makes bad choices in women, he wouldn't do nothing with her, discretion level he couldn't count on her. 5min with him and she shared and tried already trash things.

·  Anonymous said:

And Chris, wearing that Red Sox cap in NYC will bring you a lot of unwanted attention ;)

·  Anonymous said:

He was probably advised to stay away from twitter or he decided to do that.

·  Anonymous said:

"He doesn’t deserve to be placed on a pedestal. " Literally no personal should be put on a pedestal. NO ONE. Mothers, fathers, friends, siblings, celebrities, every single person does stupid shit or has 'problematic' opinions. If you place anybody (family, friends, celebrities) on a pedestal, you're only looking to get disappointed.

·  Anonymous said:

Lets be real-Chris is charming, he is a schmoozer. He was working the crowd in DC. If you are nice to someone, than you get your interview. This time he snagged a desperate fan girl & hung out with her. Not the type of guy I would ever want to be involved with. I could not be w/ a guy that wanted to go to those types of clubs. I think SSH didn't like it either. If this is the life he wants to live he will either have to find a person ok with it, change or be single. 10 steps back for me.

·  Anonymous said:

I think she is just a fan with a crush and people are reading into this way too much. I don’t think that’s her hand on his shoulder and the pose is also something we’ve seen in comic con pics. Her “way good friend lol” to means she is joking because he isn’t. The “don’t hate the player hate the game” is again joking and means don’t be mad at her because she got to meet him and her friend didn’t. Was there flirting ? Maybe but we know he does with everyone and she might thought it was just her.  

·  Anonymous said:

I don't know how publicits work. Do they keep track of the mentions of their clients in SM? I wonder if Chris' publicist is already checking the situation. TIME FOR A DODGER PIC IF YOU ARE READING HERE!!!!!

·  Anonymous said:

I find it hard to believe Chris would use this venture to go fishing for a college aged hookup or girlfriend. He mentions age and sneaking into bars in that video, so he also knew her (Bella’s) approximate age. I have no doubt he gets plenty of action and isn’t a saint, but this truly seems like she is playing up something that doesn’t exist. I question her more than him here, again, because he knows this is an important project with “real life” important people, not hollywood actors.

·  Anonymous said:

Chris seems so immature. I know we want to put the blame on Janey and MK and all the other girlfriends but honestly am I the only that thinks maybe it’s HIM who’s the problematic one? Idk I’m young so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about lol

·  Anonymous said:

All this shot is crazy. I’m know Chris is no saint but come on! At least let her be in her late twenties or early thirties! That’s nasty because she’s two years younger than me!

·  Anonymous said:

I’m not down for slut shaming in any regard. If anything happened, Chris was most definitely down for it. I just think it was dumb on her part, because she posted about it. Any potential employers could see this as a red flag. They don’t want to deal with the fallout of an employee causing a potential PR scandal, especially in the political world. Like if she did this once, she’ll prob do it again. I don’t think she’s gunning to be Mrs. Evans, but she def wanted to party and maybe hook up.

·  Anonymous said:

There was another video of him sending a message to a different person on a different day. I don't think the fact she ask him to do that means anything

·  Anonymous said:

For someone who seemed smart enough to get near a HW star, she sure was pretty naive and had no clue on how this fandom work LOL

·  Anonymous said:

But what damage could be done ? It’s not like he did something bad. There is no need to excuse his behavior because nothing illegal was done it’s not like he was caught with a 17 year old in a “massage parlour”. You guys also need to stop with this “he is almost 40” like he was supposed to stop having fun and living his life at 35. If you don’t like it fine don’t live YOUR life that way but don’t be mad at him for refusing to just settle and die because he is “almost 40” .

·  Anonymous said:

Not be agree with the places Chris frequents doesn't mean we think he is Cap. I have enought to hear this explication, like we are too much stupid to make the difference between the actor and the role he plays. With the conversation we have here, the majority of anons aren't teenagers i guess. A lot of people don't feel comfortable with the sex industry(porno,stripclub or the one night stand). It would be my brother,my neighbour,my cousin,it's a vice we don't understand not naivety about Chris.

·  Anonymous said:

I don't have much to say about this situation but I wouldn't be surprised if it does turn out to be something sleazy. I mean, this is a guy who had an affair with his married co-star and just a few weeks after she actually left her husband for him, he was going to strip clubs & she was tweeting about how that upset her. So he's not always a stand up guy. Mostly I find it funny that even when the girl is a young intern not in HW, she's STILL an attention seeking type. His picker is so broken.

·  Anonymous said:

Well, Chris definitely has a type.

·  Anonymous said:

I don't think that people are being judgemental but more worried about the consequences that this could create. Internet can make things scalate too quickly and even change the facts. But let's be honest. Chris is white, male, straight, rich. He will be ok. But he has to stop taking pics in those places. Remember when he was dating JS and he went to a certain place in Canada? No pics, people left it behind. That's the right thing to do. No pics, so it's as if it didn't happen.

·  Anonymous said:

Burlesque clubs in NYC are often listed in magazines as “things to do” in the city. They are seen as touristy activities. I can see a young girl being excited to go & asking for a hookup to get vip treatment. The place is not what you guys are making it out to be.

·  Anonymous said:

Oh please. How should he have celebrated international women’s day ffs. This is starting to get ridiculous. Women. Including 20 year old ones are allowed to go to burlesque clubs. Get out of here with that comment. And if you’re going to invoke a feminist day maybe consider the fact that she went of her own volition? I mean this insinuation that he took a naive child to a strip club. It’s starting to get a bit unhinged up in here.

·  Anonymous said:

Are we forgetting he got involved with a whole ass married woman? Lmao, this whole situation is not much of a stretch as people are making. I wish he’d grow up like all of you. He talks the talk of wanting to be a husband and father. He paints himself as a family man. Which yes, he is family oriented. But then he does things like this, which are unfortunately also on brand given his past. Megan, his publicists names I believe, better be getting paid time and half putting out these fires lol.

·  Anonymous said:

Right but this is like barely a scandal. We’re just focused on it and there are some social media comments. So for all those saying he should be seen doing serious things umm he is? For the casual fan his serious image is 100% in tact. And my guess is will stay that way. This will blow over in 48 hours tops. It’s not getting any traction other than gossip corners of the internet. Being seen seriously doesn’t mean living like a monk ffs. He didn’t do anything wrong, y’all just dramatic and judgy.

·  Anonymous said:

I think we can all agree no matter what the reality might be, the optics aren’t great. If him &his friend are trying to get this new project off the ground in DC, and hes being photographed in a burlesque club in NYC in the same vicinity as DC interns, the DAY AFTER giving interviews, the optics are awful. Politicians would be quick to distance themselves from their project and with those hes already met, potentially wouldn’t give him their time again, especially if their interns are involved.

·  Anonymous said:

fans saying he should live his life however he wants-nobody is saying he shouldn't. But people shouldn't be naive enough to think that optics don't matter. They matter a lot.

·  Anonymous said:

If the other interns were there they were smart not to post about it. Like that other anon said I imagine the people in D.C. will not be happy about this I’m sure there are social media rules about how to behave.

·  Anonymous said:

Mark's been to The Box before, he's posted stories from his trips there.

·  Anonymous said:

Some are ok to see a 38 years old man having habits in strip,nightclub and before Playboy party. Good. Some women don't like men like it!Chris or not Chris! I find it perverse,it's all. Frat boys aren't my type of men and great my man isn't like it. And i don't see Chris change when he will be married. There will always be a Mark or an Adam for ask him to go. Scott seems to enjoy trashy club but Zack too so they go as a couple. Maybe am i too prude 😒

·  Anonymous said:

This truly blew up fast. Not a Pats fan, but a few years ago, Edelman hooked up w/ a girl he met out partying & she posted a pic of them in bed the next morning on Snapchat. I’m not saying that Chris hooked up with her, we will never know & honestly it’s no one’s business. But both situations definitely seemed opportunistic, but at least with this one people are holding Chris accountable too. The other girl got slut shamed majorly. Like girls, you don’t have to post everything on social media.

·  Anonymous said:

Even if there were more interns there, even if Mark was there with Chris... if they went with the interns it's still not a good look. They are both near their 40's. It's a no to rang out with 20's, principally in that kind of enviroment that revolves around sex. This could be used to damage his image, his career, this could be used to damage their initiative about the political site. It just take one article or one tweet from a Trump supporter with many followers for that.

·  Anonymous said:

She may or may not have been the only intern with him. She may or may not have ended up with him last night. This time it’s slipped on social media. Imagine all the other times it hasn’t! Disappointed if he’s on the same Leo, Cary Fukunaga and Jake train but are we surprised? Women around his age think differently, and clearly he’s not settling down this minute. Wonder what else would leak. I’ll be here with my tea and popcorn.

·  Anonymous said:

This doesn’t look good, but at the same time I feel bad for this girl and her BF, fellow interns, friends, etc. Suddenly a rabid fan base is combing through their every move trying to play detective. I get the curiosity, I’m curious too, but I know how people overreact. And while most are fine, already people are crossing the line and commenting. Not a kick on you, just kinda crazy the lengths that some go to. I’m so glad I grew up without social media for most of my life.

·  Anonymous said:

don cheadle once saying on a talk show that the cast of the avengers(including chris of course) all went to a burlesque bar in london. ALL of them. it's not a crime...or is it??? and as for that bella chick going wit him?? who the hell wouldn't go if we were invited? good for her.

·  Anonymous said:

I feel that a conveniently timed Dodger video (or photo) is imminent. Or will we go really old school with a video for a sick child? Some sort of distraction from the current (I agree ,totally inappropriate) drama. Thing is that sort of tactic will only work for so long, less and less people will forget each time. While there's no problem visiting a burlesque club,hell I've been myself, it's the company you take to the club that should be more carefully considered. Not a smart move.

·  Anonymous said:

Of course he has pr. But people don’t understand how pr works. He doesn’t clear every private dumb decision with them and ask for professional pr advice. He lives his life (and makes dumb mistakes clearly!) but typically a professional pr team isn’t involved unless it affects him professionally, like blows up into a scandal affecting his image and work. They don’t babysit his private life. We’re all fired up about it on our corner of the internet but we’re not really at a true scandal.

·  Anonymous said:

People were rightfully dragging Cavill for dating a 19 year old.Chris went to a strip/ burlesque club with a young girl (since one woman posted about them on the birthday video we know they were there together) and there are people still thinking this is ok? (Not saying you do mood) He is stupid many times: one for doing it, one for thinking that is ok, one for leaving traces of it.Oh, wait.The girl is the one who left the traces. That remember me of someone else who used to leave proofs behind.

·  Anonymous said:

Ok. I remember when him an Janey broke up, and a few weeks later he was in Houston for the Super Bowl. Him and his friends met some girls at a party, and he invited some of them back to the house with them. Some videos were uploaded. I don’t think this is that different. He went away for a trip, met a girl, and invited her along for the ride. More than likely this is nothing, and this girl is just being opportunistic. He really needs to pick ladies who can use discretion in the future.

·  Anonymous said:

I think this is just an example of how celebrity image works. If you aren’t part of Chris fandom or gossip you have no clue. Just a basic google news search for him right now shows his DC rounds and Captain Marvel tweet. And that’s the image he wants to have (and I think genuinely does to a point). But isolated Instagram pics that don’t fit easily into a narrative are never going to get traction. Sure they’ll always be there because internet, but give it another week and it’ll barely be a blip.

·  Anonymous said:

Chris is this guy who invite strangers during party/games night in his house or girls who his friends and him met to à bar for partying in friend's house(the tmz video after the end of round 1),it's seem to be how he is but he is the guy, in doing that who trust in everybody and after there are these kind of pic/video not flattering in not flattering place. I see some say he is single so he's enjoy it but he did it when he was with JS, her tweet where she was upset to his bf going to stripclub.

·  Anonymous said:

This would not be blowing up if this bella girl had seemed to be in the company of the same friends at the box as she went to NYC with but that is not the case. Mark might have been with them too but why would this rocky lanes person only follow bella's IG and not Mark's too?

·  Anonymous said:

All of this stuff is already on twitter and instagram tagging Chris, Megan and even Josh for some reason...

·  Anonymous said:

Maybe i missed something, but what’s wrong with Chris taking pics in that club or wherever he was & why couldnt the girl(s) put the pic on her ig

·  Anonymous said:

I haven't heard the video but the "my way good friend" comment seems like a joke. Like "this is my very famous friend who I just met and we're already close" And I think that if he denied those girls of taking a picture he'll be criticize, and considering what they work in and those outfits, seems to me like he ows them that little courtesy 🙄 cause

·  Anonymous said:

My phone was acting weirs so I don't know if my last ask got through: this bella girl is in NYC with friends from DC and a guy named doug, who works in DC, and has also met Chris is with her. If you go through their IG stories they spent the day together but she is the only one of them to post from the box something.

·  Anonymous said:

High end club or not, I checked the pic bellanovemberr posted with the women in her stories and their room seems cheap and have holes in the ceiling. It doesn't matter how expensive those places are, I always at least side eye how they treat women. Their employees deserve better and more respect.

·  Anonymous said:

C'mon! It is one of the most exclusive night clubs in NY. I read the reviews of The Box on the web and there’s nothing wrong with attending such a place. It is not absolutamnete a local “hard”. as he quotes a review I found: “It’s definitely not a local hard if any of you are asking, it’s fun, crazy and weird … it totally reflects New York.”

And, maybe, it was the birthday video girl who invited Chris to go there.

·  Anonymous said:

Do you think it’d be weird if Chris hooked up with a 20 year old...I mean look at Leo Dicaprio and his girlfriend

·  Anonymous said:

Some people have serious problems with celebrities (here: Chris), pedestals, and managing their own fantasies and expectations. They build them up up up, and inevitably get SERIOUSLY broken hearted, hurt, and bitter, when the celeb in question obviously fails to live up to them. I mean, how can they? They're human, and almost never actually aware of these expectations. And I wish I could say that these fans are young and inexperienced, but a lot of them are adults, so...

·  Anonymous said:

"Her IG is also followed by Mark Kassen, who is also in New York." Mark followed her the same day she posted that video.

·  Anonymous said:

I'm not naive to think single/married man and other famous actors don't go to those places but how many of them have pics taken there? None. I checked the club and it's a sort of freak show club too and celebs are part of the customers. A Vanity Fair article mentioned some names. But no pics. So it doesn't stick with them. It can be said that it's hipocritical go there and refuse pics but it would be the best decision for his image. Let's bet he will post a pic of Dogder?

·  Anonymous said:

Recently I came across this Don Cheadle interview on Seth Meyers, where he talked about him,Evans,RDJ,Hemsworth & Renner going to Burlesque club in London & nobody recognising them on street so I guess they all are into this kind of entertainment but only this guy is dumb enough to take pics

·      Anonymous said:

That girl’s comment about SSH made me laugh! Hope he had fun at that burlesque bar! Establishments like those are sooo nice.

                                                                                                                                 ·      Anonymous said:                                                 

The fact his boyfriend(ex now) deleted all the pics of her means himself discovered how is she is: at the same time she was dating him she doesn't have qualms to touch too much a man who has the double of his age, play like she said and pursue him in NY in a burlesque show, that imply naked women and alcohol when he was in far away of her. She didn't do all the things without have something in mind. She lost her boyfriend for have the attention of Chris for few hours. Well play girl.      

·     Anonymous said: 

I don’t think that one who makes a happy birthday video like this to a girl for her twenties, surprising her age so young, then he decides to have fun with a girl of the same age or little more.

[boricuareads]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Characters as YA Books

One of my favorite TV shows out right now is Brooklyn Nine-Nine. For those who don’t know what Brooklyn Nine-Nine (B99) is, it’s a comedy show set in a police precinct in Brooklyn, New York. Not only is it hilarious, but it also deals with real-life issues like discrimination, police brutality, traumas of incarceration, bisexuality, among other important topics. They manage to tackle all of the aforementioned while still keeping the show light-hearted with its friendships and close relationship among the co-workers of the precinct.

That brings me to my favorite thing about the show: the characters. I absolutely love how each of the core characters are fleshed out and multi-dimensional, never actually being stereotypes.  A character like Amy Santiago, who’s supposed to be The Smart, Tight-Laced One, but can still goof off on the job (like during the Jimmy Jabs and the Halloween Heists). Or Rosa Diaz, who’s The Broody, Angry One, yet has been a ballerina, reads The Babysitter’s Club to appease Amy, and can be struck as if by lightning when looking at a cute woman. All these characters mean so much to me, so I thought what better way to celebrate them than to, in a way, recommend a YA book that I think they’ll love.

Amy Santiago: For Amy “Nice Butt” Santiago, I recommend I Am Not Your Perfect American Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez. Though Amy is of Cuban descent, not Mexican, I think she’d identify with the struggle of having to be perfect in the eyes of not just Latinx parents but of everyone else who expects you to be the best at everything. In B99, Amy deals with so much pressure once she’s promoted to sergeant, but she learns she doesn’t have to be perfect, she just has to be good enough for herself. I think Sanchez’s book might help her along the way.

Rosa Diaz: For my dear *Pontiac Bandit voice* Rosa Rosa Rosa, I recommend Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova. After reading Bruja Born, my image of Alex Mortiz (MC of LL) morphed into one of a badass leather jacket bisexual (which is Valid in my mind). Thus, I think Rosa would think Alex is dope, and Alex would totally ask Rosa to teach her how to ride a motorcycle. I also believe Rosa would love Alex in Labyrinth Lost and would root for her and be able to see herself, in the same way I saw myself in both Rosa and Alex.

Jake Peralta: In B99, Jake Peralta becomes a huge fanboy of a fake fantasy series akin to Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. Which is why I thought, why not recommend An Ember in the Ashes, by Sabaa Tahir, to him? Ember deals with a state that heavily polices and enslaves brown folks while keeping white, affluent families in power. Sounds eerily familiar… Jake would love the social commentary that’s threaded into this fantastic series full of South Asian mythology and magic (and probably identify with Elias).

Charles Boyle: Boyle is a renowned foodie. He eventually owns a food truck (that’s consequently burned down) but his love for food makes him stand out (and almost always creeps everyone out). Because of this quirk, I’m recommending The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo to him. Goo’s story revolves around a Korean-American  girl named Clara who’s forced to work in her family’s food truck over the summer as a punishment. I believe Boyle would love seeing Clara’s evolution as she starts loving the food truck and thus maturing as a young adult.

Captain Raymond Holt: The Captain is almost always an unreadable man. He’s stoic, yet the most dramatic gay in the squad. Which means that though he usually keeps his emotions in check, there are still moments when anger, frustration, or surprise creeps out of him and is showcased to the entire world (like, let’s say, The Monty Hall Problem episode). Which is why I’m assigning Anger is a Gift, by Mark Oshiro, to Captain Holt. Oshiro’s book deals with a black gay teen named Moss who suffers of an anxiety disorder, usually triggered by the police brutality that has surrounded his life, particularly after the death of his father at the hands of a policeman. After the conversation he has with Terry about being black men in a white supremacist world, as well as the fact that Captain Holt is married to a white man, I thought he could see himself in the different aspects that make Moss’s character a vivid one.

Sergeant Terry Jeffords: Like Jake, Terry loves fantasy fiction. However, I’m calling him out for being a fan of mediocre white men who write fantasy. If this weren’t just a YA recommendation post, I would send him on his way with N.K. Jemisin’s entire book collection. But, since this isn’t that post, I’m suggesting he read Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. The book has a complex magic system, with amazing animal hybrids as sort of familiars, but it also deals with much heavier topics like colorism and the policing of black bodies. I also believe that he’d identify with Tzain, Zelie’s older brother who just wishes to protect her little sister and their family, just as Terry would do anything to protect his little girls.  

Gina Linetti: Of all the characters, Gina Linetti, the most eclectic person of all the squad, somehow was the hardest to pin down for a book. I didn’t know what aspect of her life to focus on, whether it be her passion for dancing, or her newfound love for being a mother. In the end, I focused on her take-no-prisoners attitude that could be bloody if she we allowed to. This is why I’m recommending And I Darken by Kiersten White as the YA for her. White offers Linetti a taste of what life would’ve been like if Vlad the Impaler had been a girl named Lada instead. A gruesome novel and trilogy, Gina would love Lada’s completely revolting character, as well as her dramatics and bloodlust (I mean, Vlad the Impaler’s the inspiration for The Dracula, so).

That concludes this recommendation post. If you liked this post, maybe reblog and share or click like. Let me know if you have any books you’d recommend to a member of the squad! Maybe for Hitchcock and Scully?

As always, make sure you follow me on Twitter and Instagram @boricuareads. Check out my edits, reviews, recommendations, and more.

[closetofanxiety]

Beyond Wrestling: Americanrana 18

I got home after 1 a.m. today and woke up at 6 a.m. Then it was a full day of home improvement stuff. I’m tired. I’ve got ice on my bad foot. But I have some thoughts and impressions about the hottest US independent wrestling show of, uh, the month of July, at least. 

Big crowd: This was Beyond’s biggest live gate of all time, and at the same time the most-watched live stream in the young life of Powerbomb TV, AND the single event responsible for more new subscribers than anything else they’ve shown so far. At the venue, a Polish-American club in Worcester with oil paintings of the Old Country on the walls, people were berserk for almost everything that happened during the night. I don’t know how it came across on TV (or whatever, screen, I’m talking about watching it on a screen), but people were loud and excitable. Dan Barry got the biggest reaction Dan Barry has possibly ever had. People reacted to the surprise appearance of Anthony Green  like he was Mike Bailey, and they reacted to the surprise appearance of Mike Quackenbush like he was Steve Austin. It’s so much fun to be with a crowd of people who are just going nuts for professional wrestling.

Final appearance: Matt Riddle had what is almost certainly his last-ever Beyond Wrestling match, getting pinned by Nick Fuckin Gage during a tag match that pitted Gage and Matt Tremont (the New H8 Club) against Riddle and Filthy Tom Lawlor. It’s wild to think that a year ago he was putting his undefeated streak on the line in the main event at Americanrana 17, and this year he was in a mid-card tag match where he ate a pin. He’s headed for big things, though. Gage is great as the fan favorite, thanking people for willing him onto victory, and looking genuinely delighted when he got the pin. Awkward moment: the crowd, excited at the announcement that the winning team was now called “the New H8 Club,” started chanting “C-Z-Dub! C-Z-Dub!” despite Gage having gone over to bitter rivals GCW and Tremont wrestling his final CZW match on Saturday night. Just chant “Nick Fuckin Gage! Nick Fuckin Gage!” Speaking of which ...

Working blue: This was the sweariest Beyond Wrestling show I can remember for some time. They had pregame interviewers with Wrestling Social Media Personality Alicia Atout in front of a fancy Beyond/Powerbomb backdrop, and Janela and ring announcer Rich Palladino, of all people, kept using the word “fuck” like a comma. Kids in the room, gentlemen! 

Unpopular Opinion #1: I like intergender wrestling a lot, but in order for it to become a normal part of pro wrestling, promotions and wrestlers have to stop loudly drawing attention to the fact that THEY AREN’T AFRAID TO HAVE INTERGENDER WRESTLING, DAMN IT. The opening match on the show was a terrifically fun four-on-four pitting Team Pazuzu against “Team WWR”: Kimber Lee, Jordynne Grace, Mia Yim, and Skylar. It was fun and crazy, as you’d expect from that cast of characters, and Skylar did a good job of keeping up with wrestlers who are much more experienced and established than she is. But then after the match, Chris Dickinson cut a promo about how HE RESPECTS THESE GIRLS SO GODDAMN MUCH AND INTERGENDER WRESTLING IS HERE TO STAY. Good! I like that! But the more you act like it’s some remarkable anomaly, the more people are going to treat it like that. It’s just another variety of match, like tag team wrestling.

Oh, also: There was a GREAT moment in the match where Dickinson was about to give Jordynne Grace a Pazuzu Bomb, but she was saved by Kimber Lee, who then stared Dickinson down. This was a callback to the spot in Beyond years ago where Dickinson waffled Lee with a chair and then hit her with a crazy Pazuzu Bomb in a clip that went viral and gave both of them some not-entirely-wanted exposure to the wider world. The crowd, happily, recognized this immediately and went APESHIT. I loved it!

Loco spotfests: There was an announced four-way tag match with Team Tremendous, the Gentlemen’s Club, the Beaver Boys, and the recently renamed Massage Force. There was also an unannounced Chikara showcase, with Solo Darling, Fire Ant, someone working a “Dasher Hatfield’s kid” gimmick, and Quack himself against a Dungeon of Doom-esque cast of characters. Also Travis Huckabee. I honestly groaned when I heard “Chikara showcase,” but they tore down the house. Quackenbush may be a guy who talks like Darril and wants to turn wrestling into TED Talk fodder, but he’s one of the most important US indie wrestlers of all time, and I had never seen him wrestle in person before. At one point, a sea creature or maybe the Gimp or someone picked Quackenbush up by his feet and heaved him backwards over the rope, and he sailed higher and farther than any person I’ve ever seen launched out of a wrestling ring. It was just a hugely fun match, and the four-way tag managed to top it. There was no “storytelling” or “psychology” in either match, and honestly, that’s fine for a big-spectacle show like Americanrana. Just have a bunch of talented people come out and do stuff they don’t normally do in a show, and go wild.

The plot thickens: The big news from the four-way tag is Dan Barry’s betrayal of beloved partner Bill Carr (there was a loud, enthusiastic chant of “Bill Carr fucks! Bill Carr fucks!” after the big man launched himself through the ropes. “Oh my God, I love it! I love it, you guys!” he yelled back. He is like a big happy golden retriever and it’s impossible to think negatively about him). Betrayals don’t always work on the indie level, and I’ve seen my share of partners turning on partners that are greeted with shrugs by the crowd, but people went NUTS after Barry screwed over Carr. A louder, more sustained negative reaction than I’ve ever heard in Beyond. Should be a hot feud! In further plot twists, MJF was injured and couldn’t wrestle Gresham in their blowoff, so Trent was drafted as a surprise Dream Team member. The match ended in a DQ and Gresham roughed up Stokely Hathaway while MFJ watched helplessly from the outside. THIS SETTLED NOTHING. Presumably. 

Unpopular Opinion #2: I think PCO’s run as the TV veteran who has inexplicably become an indie darling is nearing its conclusion. I also think that run does not sit as well on PCO’s shoulders as it would Gangrel. It should be Gangrel out there, getting the big paydays and the crazy receptions from crowds. PCO does not have a lot in his toolbox, if I’m being honest. He had a sloppy, overlong match with Brian Cage that was full of blown spots and awkward pauses. Let’s all focus on Gangrel from now on. 

A new favorite: I’ve done a total 180 on “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams, who used to bore me to distraction. I really like him now. I think it’s because I’ve heard him on commentary a bunch, and he reminds me of friends who lived in squats and punk houses in the 1990s but who now live in Brooklyn and have respectable jobs in the low six figures, but who are still capable of smashing a bottle in the face of a Nazi skinhead. 

Mayhem: What can I say about the main event, a no-ropes barbed wire death match between David Starr and Joey Janela, to settle a feud that’s been simmering on and off for years? It was extremely violent and bloody. It lasted 22 minutes but felt like 10. Starr won, and cut an absolutely searing promo afterward, calling Janela “a glorified stuntman” who only came to prominence because someone else made goofy Internet videos about him; seriously, it’s one of the best promos I’ve heard an indie wrestler give. Bile and bitterness from a man covered in his own blood; there would be no Triple H Handshake of Respect between these two gladiators.

Grace notes: This was the most efficiently run Americanrana I’ve ever attended. The doors were supposed to open at 6:30, and they opened EARLY. An indie show! This was good, but it trapped one of my friends outside, because he had gone to a bar, assuming it would take forever to get inside the building. I mean, he made it in eventually, he just had to wait at the back of the line ... There was a nice shoutout to Dominki Dijakovicokowiczogonov, gone but not forgotten from Beyond: during his match with AR Fox, Anthony Greene did the Feast Your Eyes and hit Dijakulakovich’s poses while the crowd chanted “Feast Your Eyes! Feast Your Eyes!” ... Chuck Taylor hit a Rainmaker during the four-way tag match and screamed “This one’s for you, Little Kazu!,” which is a reference to an ongoing Twitter joke that I’m almost ashamed to have recognized ... I bought a hat from David Starr and we talked about the need for national healthcare, which is a conversation topic that wouldn’t work with most wrestlers .... I don’t know why or how they do it, but Americanrana really feels special. Everyone seems to raise their game for the show, and the fans are really in a holiday mood. It’s not a show I ever want to miss ... The crowd went from skepticism over the Chikara wrestlers - one guy grunted, “Fuckin’ Vince Russo gimmicks” when the bad guys came out - to joyous acceptance, capped when the same guy yelled at the sea monster character, “Look at this big green bastard! How’s he able to breathe on land?” ... One of my favorite parts of the day was sitting in the bar downstairs while they broke down the ring and set up the barbed wire. Just seeing a bunch of the wrestlers relaxing and enjoying themselves, having a (non-alcoholic) drink with my friend Mike, enjoying the air conditioning on a summer night: this was a good night ... after the show, we stopped at a service plaza on the Masss Pike to get some unhealthy snacks and use the bathroom, and on our way in we passed Solo Darling. “Great match tonight,” we said. “Thank you!” she said. On our way out, we passed a much less happy Solo Darling as she walked over to the counter to give the McDonald’s people hell. “I distinctly said no cheese on ...” she began, as we hurried out. 

Final thought: There was a 20 or 25 minute break before the main event, where they set up the barbed wire and all that. Mike and I went downstairs to the bar while Mark stayed up in the hall. The first person we saw in the bar, sitting by himself at one end, was David Starr. He was hunched over a glass of water and a shot glass and staring into the middle distance, at nothing in particular. In a few minutes, he was going to walk upstairs and wrestle the most violent match of his career in front of 500 people and you could see the concern on his face as he went over the possibilities: barbed wire, steel chairs, staple guns, cinder blocks, baseball bats. One spot that goes a little sideways and someone leaves the building in an ambulance. That glimpse of David Starr brooding put the whole night - put all of wrestling, really - into perspective. This wasn’t an angle, this wasn’t a promo, he wasn’t in character: this was a man working up the courage to do something reckless and potentially dangerous because he wanted to do it more than anything in the world. It was the look of a man who has willingly taken a great weight onto his shoulders, as many of us have, or will have to one day. It was a wordless rejoinder to all those snide comments about how wrestling is fake: looking at David Starr’s face, sitting alone and being left alone by his friends and peers, his staring eyes showing exactly what he was prepared to do, one thing was clear to anyone who was paying attention - nothing is more real than wrestling.

[kuraiamore]

Gintama fic, Pay your workers fair wage or they’ll start a revolution!!

pairing: Gen

fandom: Gintama

rating: T

summary: Come experience a typical day in the Yorozuya office! Meet the team that makes the magic happen! Find out what it's like to be a member of a fantastic Odd Jobs team!

(In case of emergencies, please head to the Back Arrow button located on the top left-hand corner of your internet browser page.)

(This fanfiction takes no responsibility for any failed expectations on behalf of the reader. Terms and Conditions apply. See your local pro-fanfiction Tumblr post for details.)

notes: Very Very Very belated bday fic for @first-quarter-of-the-moon . This wonderful human being, whose friendship I’m so grateful to have stumbled across in this tiny fandom of shithead samurai, asked for a fic with a pun on the word “glasses”. I’ve no idea if I managed to pull it off, but nevertheless, here it is and I hope you enjoy it even if it is months late<3 <3 <3

ao3 or read below.

It's a quiet day in the Yorozuya office-cum-household-apartment; no jobs, no clients, no day-saving adventure to embark on for one to take pride in one’s life-and-career path as a Can-Do-All, NEET Samurai and Friends Pty Ltd., Odd Jobs™ business. The sort of day where face-planting on the desk for catnaps is considered high productivity and the walk from the couch to the fridge for a well earned snack after doing nothing for an hour is worthy of office-cum-household-apartment bragging rights.

So really, it's like every other day when they're not out disastrously, fantastically doing some combination of saving the world from mad aliens, accidentally joining forces with an assortment of oddball characters who really ought to get some life counselling, travelling through interdimensional planes of existence on ridiculously wacky adventures, or whatever have you, instead of actually, you know, making the required revenue to run a profitable business.

In other words: a standard Yorozuya working day.

At this current point in time, momentarily unaware of the literal office tour taking place for the convenience of this tired narrator, the self-made boss of the Yorozuya is seated at his desk, last week’s copy of Shounen Jump fanned out in a roof over the top of his head. His two young employees-in-training-slash-unofficially-adopted-children are lounging about the main room, one on each of the twin couches framing the apartment-cum-office’s only coffee table. The small, rickety thing has its worn, scratched-marked surface covered with evidence of the day’s work: magazines and dirty tea and coffee mugs. Advertisement catalogues, cooking magazines, idol pop magazines, sports magazines, cars, fashion, home real estate, and everything beyond and in between build up a veritable paper fortress blocking either couch camp from each other.

Odd Jobs™ business, you see; gotta be ready to deal with anything and everything.

As usual on these lazy working days, the trio that make up the Yorozuya spend more time making indulgent commentary on their reading material than actually reading the material itself. Then again, it could only be expected; none of trio have spent any considerable amount of time in school on account of their traumatic backstories which this tired narrator will ask both the beloved characters and readers to conveniently ignore for the sake for easy comedy, and so the expectation that any of them would seriously engage in any real, productive work is entirely preposterous, like seriously, what did you expect, we all know these characters are as dumb as bricks and—

“Hey, some people are trying to read here!” Kagura yells.

“Quiet, Kagura,” Gintoki say, an apathetic tone and expression in his voice and face reminiscent of old men working middle management roles that have no end-of-year bonuses or promotions to look forward to, “the boss is in the middle of important business and needs all his concentration.”

“A proper boss who has important work to do would be doing the work instead of wasting everyone’s time nagging at his employees,” Kagura bites back.

“Well you wouldn't know because you're not a boss, are you?”

“Miss Teen Idol says I am!” Tossing aside the magazine she's currently reading, Kagura tears through the paper fortress like a hurricane uprooting and scattering cities into the skies.

“Oieee!” Shinpachi yells, as his perfectly stacked tower of magazines with Otsuu’s name and face on the front cover, however big or small or scandalously associated, goes toppling over. “Don't worry, Otsuu-chan, I'll save you!”

The broken fortress becomes a battleground, hands and magazines flying as (thankfully empty) cups fall over. It's a battle of speed and precision, Kagura attacking with her rummage-glance-throw-away technique against Shinpachi’s valiant defence in protecting creases and wrinkles from Otsuu-chan’s face.

“Ah-ha!” Kagura crows later, after two minutes of constant barrage. Her arm swings wildly above her head in triumph, the magazine clutched in her hand waving like a banner of victory.

Gintoki yawns without bothering to cover his mouth. There's an empty cup of pudding on the side of his desk that he eyes mournfully. It had been the last one in the fridge, now serving as an ineffective paperweight to last month's overdue gas bill. He’ll have to go buy more soon, lest he suffer from sugar withdrawal. Maybe some of those new jelly-filled chocolate bites he saw at the convenience store too while he's at it.

But then again, a new ice cream parlour had opened two weeks ago, just twenty minutes away by foot from the Yorozuya office.

And he also dimly remembers a commercial from last night's re-run of My Pretty Kitty Takes Over The World, featuring some wildberry confectionery shaped into wearable cat ears.

Gintoki’s still daydreaming sugar-coated dreams when Kagura smacks her magazine onto his desk. The wave of air that comes fanning out from the two-page spread is so violent, it tickles his nose and sends his fringe billowing out around his face.

“Here!” Kagura points to the page she's opened up, revealing a blazing red title asking, ‘Are you Beauty, Brains, or Brawn? Find out your best attribute to win over the Man and Job of Your Dreams!’

Shinpachi joins them at the desk, scanning the heading with a frown. “Why is it ‘Man’ and ‘Job’?” he wonders aloud. “Since when did relationships and careers have anything to do with each other? They’re are totally different things.”

“What are you talking about, Shinpachi? Don’t you know that dealing with men is a full time job?”

“That's right,” Gintoki agrees, nodding along, “men are scum.”

“Yup, yup. They're a parasite on the industry of life. Oi, boss, you should give me a raise for all the effort and overtime I put in dealing with the scum in our workplace.”

“Sorry,” Gintoki says, “the agreement of the contract you signed stipulates that wage raises can only be considered after gaining a minimum of ten years’ experience in your working role.”

“Oh,” Kagura says, complete lack of understanding on her blank face. She shrugs. “Okay then.”

“Wait but we never signed a contract!” Shinpachi says, perplexed.

“What do you call that then?” Gintoki says, throwing his thumb out behind his shoulder.

Shinpachi follows the invisible line to a copy of one of their old advertisement flyers stuck on wall behind the desk. It's instantly recognisable, featuring three handprints and one paw print haphazardly framed around a picture of the Yorozuya team.

A prickly, tingly feeling rushes through his chest—it might be bad business manipulation at its best, but Shinpachi can’t find it in himself to argue against that. He clears his throat.

“In any case,” he says, “the quiz is clearly making the mistake of lumping the two together!”

“Now, now, Shinpachi,” Gintoki interrupts, back in that deliberately overemphasised, sagely, rather quite condescending tone, “it is merely your youth and inexperience with adult matters that make you think that way. You see, the office or workplace romance is the most intense and thrilling romantic experience the ordinary human will have in their measly lifetime. Therefore when a person takes on a job, they’re investing not just in their career and financial stability, but also in the promise of a lifetime partner. That’s what people mean when they talk about being married to work!”

“Gin-san, I don’t think that’s what that means at all, and anyway, you’ve never worked in an office or workplace with other people in your life!”

“You wound me, Patsuan. How do you think I got this far, CEO of my own business with one hundred percent employee loyalty at the prime young age of twenty-eight, if I didn’t have a lifetime of experience dealing with the intricacies of workplace liaisons, huh?”

“Gin-san, you have two underaged employees which I’m sure counts as child labour exploitation, and you never paid the registration fee for the business registration application. I’m pretty sure that the Yorozuya is technically an illegal operation.”

Immediately, Gintoki turns around and closes the window blinds. The room goes quiet as the possibly illegal boss and his two employees glance furtively around them to make sure they hadn't been overheard by any men in black suits who just happened to be creeping around for no reason other than the wacky slice-of-life genre specification.

“Oi, oi,” Gintoki says after a moment, with a shaky laugh, “don't joke about that, Shinpachi-kun. What kind of role model would we be to all our lovely viewers watching and reading us if they thought we were an illegal business? Sunrise would have our heads!”

“It's okay, Gin-chan,” Kagura goes to reassure him, “the only people watching this sketchy anime and reading its sketchy fanfiction are probably sketchy people themselves already.”

“That's right!” Shinpachi adds helpfully, though his neck still cranes around as if looking for hidden microphones and cameras. “Besides, even if we were illegal—which we're not!—then they would still know better than to waste their time coming after us. We're so poor, we wouldn't be able to pay the bail out money anyway! If anything, they should be targeting those multi mega corporations that do way more sketchy stuff! Like tax evasion!”

“And Amanto discrimination!” Kagura adds.

“And killing the environment!”

“And disrupting the view with their giant billboards!”

“And taking advantage of the working class to fuel their corrupt profits!” Shinpachi cries in heated passion, slapping his hand on the table.

“And increasing the price of pudding by ¥240 so Gin-san can only afford to have his sugar intake three times a week instead of four!” Gintoki joins.

“Um, Gin-san, that's not—"

“Down with capitalism!” Kagura cries, jumping back onto her couch and rising one fist into the air while her other hand still clutching the magazine waves it again like a great banner. “Come comrades! Let us take down the abominable bosses and factory managers who exploit the good-hearted working citizens!”

The magazine gets rolled up and becomes a baton which now points accusingly towards the Yorozuya boss. Gintoki looks to his left, and his right, and seeing no one on either side of him, points a finger to his own mug and mouths, “Who, me?”

“Rise up!” Kagura continues with her impassioned call, turning back to her audience of one. Shinpachi hears the call solemnly, eyes burning with the bright rage of workers’ rights. “Rise up and take down the evil corporations and greedy CEOs and business owners who use their money to hoard all the good things to themselves and never leave the sesame-flavoured subonku for the common folk!”

“Well if someone didn't spend all their money on monthly pork barbeque bun sales, they might have enough left over to buy sesame-flavoured subonku whenever the stores have them in stock!”

“But Gin-chan, two pork barbeque buns for the price of one!”

Shinpachi coughs delicately. “You have to admit, Gin-san, it is a very good deal.” Aside to himself, he mumbles, “they’ve saved me more times than I can count,” and hopes Tae never finds his stash of frozen pork barbeque buns he sneaks out at midnight when dark matter dinners prove too much for his stomach to handle.

“What are you two, video game characters who can only revive their health with pork barbeque buns?” Gintoki grouches, then leans back on his fake leather and plastic desk chair. “Ahhh, but really, society is scum. All those flashy, money-grabbing advertisements and media turning the free-thinking man into a mindless drone. Bah!”

“Well,” Shinpachi hedges, fidgeting with the Otsuu-chan NekoNeko double spread special open in front of him, “maybe it's not all so bad…”

“Eh? Don't tell me they've caught you already, Pachi-boy! Those sirens, always luring in the innocent cherry boys with their wily charms and pretty faces! Cover your ears, Shinpachi, before you drown!”

Shinpachi’s face turns bright red as it always does when reminded of his cherry-boy status, like soup that someone put beetroot in and left on the stove for too long so all the vegetables became a mushy red mess like a bloody murder scene like someone dropping a basket of actual ripe, red cherries.

“Like the bright flag of revolution!” Kagura adds to the overly extended and entirely nonsensical metaphor, waving her magazine again even though the front cover is yellow.

For all the embarrassing state of their being, the fantasies of cherry boys cannot be underestimated: in a split second, Shinpachi finds himself in the grip of a fervoured daydream where he's leading the pop idol revolution, Otsuu’s grateful, adoring eyes centred upon him from her Queen Idol throne made from glittery microphones and album awards, while he stands bearing her image and flag upon the conquered mountain of her rivals’ platinum albums and singles. Shaking himself free of this intoxicating dream takes truly the will of only the most stout-hearted and tenacious of samurai, but Shinpachi has always been deceptively strong, underestimated as he is by his otaku appearance.

“No, that's not what I meant!” he says vehemently, crossing his arms over his chest. “It has nothing to do with cherry boys, or rather, not only to do with cherry boys! Yes, the capitalist market may be a money-grabbing, exploitative, manipulative, marginalising machine"—he takes a deep breath here, having run out of air after his string of long, multisyllabic words—“but you can't deny that it's also given some people the chance to achieve their dreams, and in that way, helped inspire others too!” He gazes lovingly at his Otsuu spread, conveniently ignoring the headline to the side exclaiming, ‘Otsuu production company bankrupt?! Employee scandal!!’

“Ahhh,” Gintoki says in a bored, dry voice, “that was sure quick of you to swap sides there, Shinpachi. You went from glass half-empty to glass half-full in, what, less time than it takes for a teenage boy to hide his dirty magazines when his mum unexpectedly bursts through his bedroom door. What, you playing double glasses or something? Doubles G’s? Is that what you're into, Shinpachi?” Gintoki tuts, shaking his head. “Teenage boys are so greedy, always thinking more is better. No wonder they make such good prey for those dirty media companies. It's okay, Shinpachi, you'll learn, you'll learn.”

Shinpachi splutters, the thought of double G’s such a force against the foundations of his feeble cherry boy mind that he cannot pull out his defences. Taking advantage of the moment, Kagura jumps in with a question.

“What are you talking about, Gin-chan?” she says. “Shinpachi has always had two glasses. Like a pair of glasses! G. G.!”

She crooks her thumbs to her forefingers, touching the tips together so they make a pair of circles just the right size to peer out of, and presses them to her eyes. Somewhere in the distance, a group of broke university students break out into a flashmob, a chorus of ‘G’s and ‘baby’s rising up while a crowd of people just trying to reach the end of the street look on in confusion.

“Bless you,” Gintoki says, while Kagura continues to blink owlishly out of her literally hand-made glasses.

“My glasses look nothing like that,” Shinpachi complains to Kagura, because that is far safer than remaining in the grips of a Double-G dream. (Already he has had to discreetly wipe away the trickle of blood from his nose while Kagura and Gintoki were busy fooling around.)

“Of course not,” Gintoki reassures, “your glasses look like those cheap, mass-produced products that break and fail you right when you need them.”

“Well maybe if you actually paid us a living wage, I could afford brand glasses if mine offend your sensibilities so much!”

“For someone who’s only just over legal working age, you sure have high expectations!”

“You're not even paying me minimum wage, I could report you, you know!”

“Oh yeah? Report me to who? The boss?” Gintoki snorts, waving a dismissive hand.

Shinpachi’s nostrils flare, eyebrows drawing together in an angry line.

“I'll report you to… to… to the industry union!”

Gintoki laughs an evil, corporate laugh. “What industry union? The Odd Jobs union? Ha! Good luck with that! Even if one existed, it would never get anything done because its members would be too busy looking for odd jobs to make their daily living!”

Kagura’s eyes flash. “Pachi-boy, let's start a union!” she says, though what a fourteen year old alien would know about industry unions, the never-ending battle for workers’ rights, petitions, rallies, strikes and other various union organisation stuffs remains an unanswered question. Still, one couldn't fault her enthusiasm.

Unexpectedly, in utter abandonment of his straight man role, Shinpachi jumps onto the idea.

“Yes!” he says. “We can invite all the other Odd Jobs teams from the anime crossovers we have! ‘Odd Jobs’ is such a well known and overused trope, I'm sure there will be plenty who will want to join us!”

“The Odd Jobs industry revolution!” Kagura bellows, arms spread out wide like she’s presenting a magic trick. “Led by the Yorozuya!”

“O-Oi!” Suddenly faced with a revolution and overzealous employees, Gintoki has no idea what to do.

Luckily for him, right at that moment, the phone rings. Its noisy call goes on for two ring cycles, cutting through and silencing all conversation in the room, before Gintoki wipes out a hand to pick up the receiver. Suddenly Kagura and Shinpachi are pressed right up against his side, intense looks on their faces as they eavesdrop on the call, union revolution promptly forgotten at the prospect of a new job.

“Hello, you've reached Yorozuya Gin-chan, how may I help you? Yes, a job? Right now? You're desperate? Of course, of course, that's what the Yorozuya are here for! What exactly…? Yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, of course, yes.” As he listens to the job details, Gintoki catches the gaze of his employees and does a fist pump in the air. Kagura and Shinpachi grin at him and return the gesture. “...Yes, just leave it to us! We'll be down there before you can blink!”

With that, he hangs up the phone, pushes back his chair and stands, grabbing his bokutou and slipping it into his belt with a smooth motion.

“Alright, people!” he says, turning around to look down at Kagura and Shinpachi. “We've been called and now we got a job to do. Tell me: Are the Yorozuya ready to put their all, to go beyond, plus ultra—"

Shinpachi sighs; of course they couldn't get away without referencing another anime. He hopes at least with fanfiction’s grey legality, they won't be sued or have to cop another lecture about copyright laws from Sunrise.

“—to deliver the best Odd Jobs service to our dear and valuable clientele?”

“Yes!” comes the enthusiastic response, Kagura and Shinpachi standing with straight backs bearing their pride and excitement as a true Yorozuya member.

Gintoki cups his hand over his ear, leaning forward. “I said, are you ready?!”

“Yes!”

A short, approving nod. “Alright. Yorozuya Gin-chan, move out!”

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

'Being fat is not beautiful. It's an excuse': Revolve accused of fat-shaming with sweatshirt meant to shine light on horrors of trolling

Revolve is being dragged through the mud for releasing a fat-shaming sweatshirt. (Photo: Revolve)

What started out as a well-meaning sweatshirt has led to an uproar on social media over mixed messages about fat shaming and body positivity.

Social issues advocate and artist Florence Given found the sweatshirts on Revolve’s website on Wednesday, with the featured image showing a straight-size model in a pullover that read, “Being fat is not beautiful. It’s an excuse.” Disgusted by the message the sweatshirt sent, Given shared photos of it on Instagram. She also showed another sweatshirt the brand had on its website, emblazoned with the phrase, “Too boney to be boned.”

In tiny print below the quotes, the sweatshirts say, “as said to” beside an Instagram handle, giving the impression that these were comments pulled from someone’s Instagram account. The accounts attributed on the sweatshirts belong to models like Cara Delevingne and Paloma Elsesser.

According to Fashionista, the quotes were comments reportedly said to famous women — but the campaign backfired when the apparel was released early without any context. Since the $168 sweatshirt went up on Revolve’s website on Wednesday, Twitter has been awash with comments bashing the brand for the offensive message.

why is no one talking about revolve selling a “being fat is not beautiful it’s an excuse” sweatshirt, that’s so messed up

— m (@valentisilk) September 12, 2018

Hi @REVOLVE let's talk about why this is so misguided and stupid: https://t.co/YrLAe8yBNP

— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) September 12, 2018

What is there to say about @revolve's decision to include this sweatshirt in their inventory? That they think it's okay and will resonate with their customer base speaks volumes. pic.twitter.com/9x1xXXyBGR

— Lisa Braun Dubbels (@lisadubbels) September 12, 2018

honestly i sometimes wish i covered body positivity all day everyday because i'd love to go IN on this https://t.co/USC2C7SWnU

— Izabella Zaydenberg (@belkabelka) September 12, 2018

Also like may I say that the attribution text is so small as to render my first few reads of the sweatshirt as CHAMPIONING this awful line? You could read the quote a city block away but would have to be in conversational distance to catch the "as said to".

— Jenna Kass is sleepy (@JennaKassArt) September 12, 2018

The sweatshirt got the attention of outspoken actress Jameela Jamil, who posited a rhetorical question for the brand.

Jesus Christ @REVOLVE what are you doing?! pic.twitter.com/Jtv0fHQEpI

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) September 12, 2018

Tess Holliday, a plus-size model who recently faced backlash from haters over her history-making Cosmo UK cover, also called out Revolve for being “a mess.”

LOLLLLL @REVOLVE y’all are a mess. pic.twitter.com/CrzOkd5oE4

— Tess Holliday 🥀 (@Tess_Holliday) September 12, 2018

“They have a huge following that’s mostly young women and they are perpetuating the toxic idea that our worth is tied into our size,” Holliday said in a statement to Mic. “They must have never seen me, because I’m fat and beautiful.”

Instagrammers were just as angry. “I am actually disgusted and bewildered….. who in the design meeting thought – “hey – I know a good idea” … and what idiotic team agreed with them!!??????” someone commented on Given’s post. “This can’t be real,” another pleaded. “BEING DISRESPECTFUL ISNT BEAUTIFUL ITS DISGUSTING.”

Revolve already has a reputation for its lack of diversity (remember #RevolveSoWhite?) and this sweatshirt is just fanning the flames. According to Fashionista, the largest size available in the sweatshirt was an XL. And that’s a stretch for Revolve, since the brand usually doesn’t sell anything beyond a size L. Just look at its size guide.

The fact that the sweatshirt is modeled on a slender woman is just a slap in the face to curvy girls everywhere.

So…. @REVOLVE thinks its okay to market this sweatshirt — which only comes up to an XL, by the way — by putting it on a thin model? Considering Revolve doesn't even have diverse influencers this is….A Choice. https://t.co/40R1iWTHkp pic.twitter.com/JhdonQbF3Y

— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) September 12, 2018

“Can’t believe this is real? Why wouldn’t they just hire Paloma or another model who has been a victim of this kind of thinking. Do better @revolve @lpa,” someone suggested on Instagram.

As for plus-size representation? If you Google “Revolve plus size” you’ll find it. You won’t find anything in it though; there are “0 items” in the section. Not even the sweatshirt in question.

Revolve’s plus-size section is empty. (Credit: Revolve)

If this was Revolve’s foray into size inclusivity, it appears the brand missed the mark.

Given got a hold of LPA founder Pia Arrobio on Instagram, who explained the idea behind these sweatshirts, which was a collaboration with five women to “shine the light on how horrible trolling is.” The plan was to launch the sweatshirts on Thursday, but they “went up early on Revolve for some reason,” Arrobio tells Given on Instagram, before the context of the quotes was made clear.

View this post on Instagram

UPDATE: heard back from @palomija and she told me she is MORTIFIED about how this quote has been used, and is asking for her quote to be pulled • The brand @lpa responded and they have got @revolve to take down the shots – this is our convo. Problematic marketing = a problem with diversity in the work place. This is still incredibly problematic and an awful attempt at ‘claiming back’ toxic narratives because (in my opinion) it just gives them power by putting them back into the world and at a £162 price tag. The designs went up to XL, so the women who this tee is supposed to ‘empower’ probably wouldn’t even fit into one. But at least we got the pics taken down…Ugh.

A post shared by FLOSS (@florencegiven) on Sep 12, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

One of those women, actress Lena Dunham, distanced herself from the project Wednesday afternoon in a statement, citing Revolve’s presentation of only “thin white women.”

“As a result, I cannot support this collaboration or lend my name to it in any way,” Dunham wrote in part. “This doesn’t take away from my love or respect for what Pia has done with LPA, but I am deeply disappointed in @revolve’s handling of a sensitive topic and a collaboration rooted in reclaiming the words of internet trolls to celebrate the beauty in diversity and bodies and experiences that aren’t the industry norm.”

View this post on Instagram

  For months I’ve been working on a collaboration with my friend Pia’s company LPA through parent company @revolve – sweatshirts that highlight quotes from prominent women who have experienced internet trolling & abuse. This is a cause very close to my heart and the proceeds were meant to benefit charities that help young women by empowering them to express themselves through writing and art. Without consulting me or any of the women involved, @revolve presented the sweatshirts on thin white women, never thinking about the fact that difference and individuality is what gets you punished on the Internet, or that lack of diversity in representation is a huge part of the problem (in fact, the problem itself.) As a result, I cannot support this collaboration or lend my name to it in any way. This doesn’t take away from my love or respect for what Pia has done with LPA, but I am deeply disappointed in @revolve’s handling of a sensitive topic and a collaboration rooted in reclaiming the words of internet trolls to celebrate the beauty in diversity and bodies and experiences that aren’t the industry norm. *** I’d like to especially extend my love and support to @palomija, whose quote was the first to be promoted and mangled. She’s a hero of mine. Like me, she gave her quote in good faith and shared her vulnerability in order to support arts education and to spread her message of empowerment, and she wasn’t consulted in the marketing. Not an ounce of negativity should be sent her way. *** My only goal on this planet is to empower women through art and dialogue. I’m grateful to every woman who shared a quote and so disappointed that our words were not honored. As a result, I will be making a donation to the charity of every woman’s choice who was wronged with me and I hope that @revolve will join me with a contribution of their own. *** P.S. This Rubens painting makes me happy because it’s about women joining in love, but he didn’t recognize diversity at all- he just loved curvy butts. Problematic fave.

A post shared by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on Sep 12, 2018 at 11:47am PDT

Social media users were unhappy with more than just the way the top was modeled.  “[O]kay but why would they sell a shirt like that???” someone commented on Instagram. “Even with the explanation, those shirts are an awful and poorly executed idea.”

When the answer is “The merchandise went up early? Also, fundraising! And bullying is wrong!” to the question “Why are you selling a sweatshirt conflating fatness with laziness?” perhaps a rethink is in order? https://t.co/bJzdtovmHj

— The Immortal Iron Feminist (@lschmeiser) September 12, 2018

This sweatshirt from @revolve is part of a series of things said to different women BUT the truth is you’ve put this on a sample size model .. sizes only go up to a 10, it’s kinda hard to… https://t.co/GBd4avU4vJ

— Curves Become Her (@AartiOlivia) September 12, 2018

“This morning, images of a forth coming LPA collection were prematurely released on Revolve.com,” Revolve told Yahoo Lifestyle. “The capsule collection – originally conceived by LPA alongside Lena Dunham, Emily Ratajkowski, Cara Delevingne, Suki Waterhouse and Paloma Elsesser – was set to debut tomorrow as a direct commentary on the modern day ‘normality’ of cyber-bullying and the shared desire to create a community for those most affected by the epidemic.” Proceeds were set to benefit “Girls Write Now,” a charity focused on mentoring underserved young women and helping them find their voices and tell their stories through writing.

“We at Revolve sincerely apologize to all those involved – particularly Lena, Emily, Cara, Suki and Paloma – our loyal customers, and the community as a whole for this error,” they added. “The collection has been pulled. We are proud to donate $20,000 to ‘Girls Write Now’ in the hopes that those who need it can still benefit from what was to be a meaningful, insightful and impactful collaboration by LPA.”

While the brand admitted the promo shots were poorly executed, they would not comment on how those photos came to be.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Magazine editor gets called out for fat-shaming: ‘Why are you using 3 fat and out of shape women for your models?’

Woman fat-shamed by bakery customers gets revenge by buying all the cupcakes

Woman says she was fat-shamed at Universal theme park — and she’s filing a discrimination complaint

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.

[i-am-very-very-tired]

Nicki Minaj posted a comment on Instagram about the number of white rappers sitting comfortably atop the iTunes rap chart that became so “controversial,” she deleted it. Good thing the Internet lasts forever. Nicki’s post is below.

A post shared by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Dec 16, 2017 at 6:07pm PST

“It’s a great time to be a white rapper in America huh?”

In the screenshot, Eminem, Lil Pump, Post Malone, NF and G-Eazy round out the top five spots. Nicki’s 11 words may be controversial to some but to me, they are just the truth. These men have hit songs, yes? They are white or white passing (Lil Pump is actually of Mexican descent), yes? Then where did Onika Tanya Maraj lie to you? Why are you so outraged?

Even after she amended her post, many commentators hit back at Nicki Minaj calling her jealous (please), petty and even racist for pointing out a FACT. That’s a lot of white rappers. Again, WHY YOU MAD? Nicki’s critics have used the defense that the success of these rappers have nothing to do with race; that these songs are hits because that’s what fans want to hear. A friend e-mailed me yesterday with the same argument against Nicki’s post: “charts don’t rank people based on race. If you put out a catchy song, you’ll hit the top ten. Simple as that.”

I love this friend but I wholeheartedly disagree with them. It’s not simple. The artists who hit the Top 10 have largely been given the access and opportunity to be there. Whose songs get the most radio play before they land on those charts? Which powerful white label executive decided to sign and promote the sh-t out of certain artists? Who lands a record deal? Just because a song is played on the radio doesn’t mean it deserves to be there or that it’s there simply because audiences demanded it. If you think the pop charts truly reflect the best songs ever created then please explain the rise of Butterfly by Crazy Town.

And then there’s the whole issue of which artists, after the record deals and after the hit songs, get the most money and accolades. Eminem is the highest-selling rapper of all time. Em is quick to point out his privilege but that doesn’t mean he gets a pass from benefitting from it. When he first came along, the response to his music was like he invented rap and he went on to do better financially than any black rapper before him. Let’s not forget that time Macklemore won a Grammy over the greatest rapper of our generation, Kendrick Lamar. There can only be true meritocracy in a fair and equal system. The music industry is not rooted in equality for a lot of reasons but mainly because the system’s backdrop is America, one of the most racist and historically disenfranchised places in the free world.

Consider it like this: Nicki Minaj is a black female rapper in an industry that has consistently degraded and overlooked black women. She’s also a black woman herself living in a country that is designed to oppress black women. She’s had to work twice as hard to get everything these white dudes seemingly strolled in to get and she’s still only one of two black female rappers currently thriving on mainstream charts (shout out Cardi B). Then, imagine Nicki Minaj looking at those charts and they’re full of white men. She’s watching white men monopolize a genre that was created by black people as an expression of the frustration of being black while also being a celebration of blackness. Hip-hop was the safe space black Americans created when they had so few spaces of their own. At the very least, I don’t think it’s hard to understand why this screenshot and these specific rappers might make Nicki stop and say, “Huh.”

If the Twitter mentions of black writers are any indication, many people want to dismiss every observation that has the word “white” in it as racist. Nicki Minaj was making a commentary on the state of an industry and a culture she belongs to. She has every right to do that and she literally just stated FACTS. Black people are constantly called out for outrage culture but it’s the Beckys (men included) all up in Nicki’s comments who are the definitions of precious, little snowflakes.

Let’s also address the double standard of the reaction to Nicki’s comments. She linked to a J.Cole interview where he pointed out how white people have taken over jazz, a genre also invented by black people. Here are J.Cole’s comments:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcyaxjslUJM/

“The entire page of iTunes Jazz is 99.7% white people... Mind you, anybody can do whatever music they want but you have to understand that Jazz is a black form of music in its origins. And not only is it a black form of music, it was the hip-hop of its day. It was that much of a rebellious music."

Last year, there was entire Oscar-winning movie about a white dude mansplaining jazz. What I think J.Cole is trying to say here is that he doesn’t want the 2054 equivalent of Ryan Gosling to star in a movie where he saves hip-hop.

In response to the backlash to Nicki’s comments, Wale (a rapper who would probably be WAY more successful if he was white in my opinion) came to her defense and pointed out how black artists are often relegated to “urban” or R&B sections while white artists get to be pop and thus, have more mass appeal. We’ve seen this happen to Beyoncé at the Grammys, for example. So, J.Cole and Wale essentially said the exact same things as Nicki and no one is forcing them to delete posts or calling them racists. To borrow a phrase my friend Allya says often, “ain’t that being a black woman?” In Nicki’s words:

“Whenever a black woman speaks on ANYTHING she’s labeled as “mad” “angry” “bitter.”

The rise of the white rapper was always inevitable. When hip-hop became the genre dominating mainstream music charts and rappers became the official arbiters of cool, it was only a matter of time before the white kids who grew up listening to them would want to rap too. None of the above points are saying that white guys shouldn’t rap. I’m not saying that. I want to make that very clear. The conversation here is about bringing attention to the privilege that comes with being a white rapper, especially one that’s mediocre. Eminem is not a mediocre rapper. You could argue that he’s the only name on this Top 10 who deserves to be there based on talent alone. I just tried to get through a Lil Pump song and I couldn’t make it. I hadn’t heard of NF until today. He’s not terrible but he sounds so much like a PG Slim Shady knockoff it’s eerie. G-Eazy is the WORST. Post Malone has put out a couple of catchy songs but he’s the dude who repeatedly disrespects the very industry he exploits to his advantage. I can’t imagine a black female rapper getting away with some of the ignorant sh-t Post Malone has said about hip-hop. And yet, these dudes get to enjoy a level of success that talented, legendary black female MCs like Rah Digga and Trina never did or that current overlooked voices like Young M.A and Noname have yet to achieve.

It used to be that if you were a white rapper, before you were accepted by hip-hop fans, you had to be anointed by a member of the black rap community. Think Dr. Dre for Eminem or Run DMC for The Beastie Boys. In one post, Nicki said she wanted to sign a white rapper. I don’t see anything wrong with that if it’s an MC Nicki Minaj believed in and she got a cut of that cheque when they hit the iTunes Top 10. A New York Times piece about G-Eazy last year called this moment in hip-hop the “post-accountability era of white rap, when white artists are flourishing almost wholly outside the established hip-hop industry,” and that, “the freedom afforded them by their success verges on entitlement.” Entitled white guys are dominating hip-hop and Nicki Minaj isn’t allowed to point this out?

[owlswithfins]

A Justification of Drarry

Here’s a fairly extensive compilation of Drarry ‘evidence’ (it got kind of lengthy so the rest is below the cut) <3

I’ve been an avid Drarry shipper for almost as long as I’ve been a Harry Potter fan, and I’ve noticed that deep within the fandom, everyone seems to agree that it’s a Legit Ship. It tops the charts of AO3 and Wattpad and comes in as a close second on FF, and most people on tumblr accept it as plausible even if they aren’t die hard fans. Outside of this black hole we’ve all been sucked into, however, I’ve been yanked into heated debates about the legitimacy of Drarry.

Of course, this is often because some people are only interested in canon ships or don’t ship slash. For others, it’s just not their cup of tea. This post isn’t meant to convert the above naysayers, especially since, like I said, most of us here don’t need to be converted. This is more of a toolkit of evidence and arguments to justify your love of Drarry to people who “just don’t understand” or think “you just want every character to be gay” or that “you’re reading into things too much”.

Sometimes the best response is the always faithful “fuck you, I ship what I like” or the slightly more intellectual “I subscribe to the Mark Twain quote ‘never regret anything that made you smile’ and Drarry is my one true joy in this life so shut the hell up”. Other times, these debates get derailed quickly and leave Drarry shippers feeling like “maybe we got it wrong this whole time?” which is not a Great Feeling.

As such, I’ve compiled what’s essentially a shit ton of ammo from various sources to cite in these situations. Feel free to use it as you like, whether that be fortifying your own belief in this beautiful ship or passing out flyers door-to-door like a Drarry missionary. Now, we have seven books, eight movies, and bucket loads of interpretations to get through, so this could easily become a certified mess (and I’m not even going to go into every piece of evidence). As such, I’m placing the rest of the content below the cut, organized by objections and their counter-arguments to keep things nice and neat. On that note, lets begin.

One of the most common objections I hear is that Drarry isn’t legitimate because Harry is straight. Now, for some of us, this is irrelevant, since we ship based on the potential a pairing offers instead of requiring canonical pining (not that it isn’t there--it is--trust me, we’ll get to that), but for others, this is a critical point of concern. I would like to start by asking, who says Harry is straight? (please click here for some strategically placed self-promotion and on-topic humor)

To start, Cedric Diggory. (I’m talking about the angelically pure pre-Cursed-Child Hufflepuff god, not Cedric I-was-so-embarrassed-I-became-a-Death-Eater-and-murdered-my-friends Diggory, to be clear). If the mere name isn’t evidence enough, allow me to jog your memory:

“Cedric Diggory was an extremely handsome boy of around seventeen.” (GoF)

And also:

“Exceptionally handsome, with his straight nose, dark hair, and grey eyes.” (GoF)

And for those of you who aren’t yet convinced:

“‘You just weren’t concentrating properly--’

‘Wonder why that was,’ said Harry darkly as Cedric Diggory walked past.” (GoF)

PURE GOLD. Harry be like, “No homo, but when Diggory walks by I can’t concentrate. I just have this intense urge to comment on his extremely handsome face”. I think we can safely say that Harry is, at the very least, bicurious. I’d even go so far as to say he was never really all that into girls at all. Sure, he had a thing for Cho, but he didn’t exactly come back with the most resounding commentary.

“‘Well?’ Ron said finally, looking up at Harry. ‘How was it?’

Harry considered it for a moment. ‘Wet,’ he said truthfully.” (OotP)

And yes, there was Ginny, but in HBP there were multiple scenarios when Harry was far more interested in Draco than whatever Ginny had to offer.

"'And even better than that -- Malfoy's gone off sick too!'

'What?" said Harry, wheeling around to stare at her. 'He's ill? What's wrong with him?' 

'No idea, but it's great for us,' said Ginny brightly. 'They're playing Harper instead; he's in my year and he's an idiot.'

Harry smiled back vaguely, but as he pulled on his scarlet robes his mind was far from Quidditch.

Maybe it’s just me, but in my experience, people generally don’t obsess over people they hate when they have the opportunity to spend time with their crush. So maybe Harry is straight (I doubt it) but I think we at least have a case for reasonable doubt. As such, the sexuality objection has been shot down.

The next common point of opposition is that Drarry shippers are just “making it up” without any basis in canon. To counter this, we could go through every book and sort out exactly which lines serve as evidence, but that would take far more time than I have on my hands. Instead, let’s do a basic overview.

The course of their entire relationship is based on their first two meetings. In Madam Malkin’s, Harry started to associate Draco with Dudley, and this snap judgment caused him to choose Ron, his first friend, over Draco. Of course, Harry’s loyalty is part of why we love him, but this totally brushes aside Draco’s point of view.

For Draco, this was his first experience with someone outside of his parent’s rigid pureblood circle. He’d been taught that bragging and insulting “inferior” people were the ways to impress and make friends, so he did exactly that. And, likely also for the first time, Draco was rejected. Coming from a place of privilege, this rejection was heartbreaking, and by turning down his handshake, Harry cemented Draco’s future. Instead of benefiting from each others’ knowledge and principles, they became enemies.

Draco was, to Harry, a mere annoyance in the way of the bigger problems during the first five years at Hogwarts. At this point, I think it’s safe to say Harry felt nothing more than an irritation for Draco Malfoy, as one would feel about a particularly determined pest. Draco, on the other hand, saw Harry as his number one priority. His bullying focused on Harry because their feud was personal, unlike the more casual bullying Draco partook in regularly. His issues with Ron and Hermione were likewise based on Harry--Ron was the friend Harry chose over Draco, and Hermione was a Muggleborn, yet she became friends with Harry when Draco couldn’t.

Draco spent a ridiculous amount of time tormenting the Golden Boy, from climbing a tree for taunting purposes to making the ‘Potter Stinks’ buttons to joining of the Inquisitorial Squad just to get back at Harry. Now, I’m not going to go and say these things meant Draco was secretly in love with Harry the whole time (I’m also not going to say he wasn’t). Rather, this one-sided enmity was grade school pigtail pulling at best and full-blown obsession at worst.

Of course, Draco wasn’t the only one to become obsessed. Throughout the entire series, the two had an almost uncanny ability to sense each other, from Draco recognizing Harry based on his breathing to Harry being able to tell what expression Draco made purely by his tone. Even so, it wasn’t obsession on Harry’s end...until HBP. I mean, honestly, the bi who lived got it so bad his sixth year that even Ron was tired of hearing it:

"'Can you think of any way Malfoy--?'

'Oh, drop it, Harry,' said Ron." (HBP)

Let’s not forget when the weariness turned to full on ignoring:

"'Oh, and Malfoy knows, of course,' said Harry to Ron and Hermione, who continued their new policy of feigning deafness whenever Harry mentioned his Malfoy-Is-a-Death-Eater theory." (HBP)

And ah, the Marauder’s Map. Harry’s obsession with watching Draco’s name was especially notable in this book--even more so given JKR’s comment that Harry watching Ginny’s name in DH was a sign that he was in love with her. Let’s take a look, shall we?

"Despite his determination to catch Malfoy out, Harry had no luck at all over the next couple of weeks. Although he consulted the map as often as he could, sometimes making unnecessary visits to the bathroom between lessons to search it, he did not once see Malfoy anywhere suspicious." (HBP)

And, of course, JKR’s most precious gift to us:

"Harry, however, had never been less interested in Quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy." (HBP)

While the first five years were rife with Draco’s antics and Harry’s relative apathy, the moment Draco stopped giving Harry his undying attention, the tables turned. Harry had grown so used to his frequent encounters with Draco that he couldn’t stand the thought of being ignored, or *gasp*, the idea that Draco might actually have more important things to do than fight with him all the time.

This was also an interesting time because Draco finally experienced true darkness. Whereas Harry had been exposed to harsh reality as a young child, Draco was relatively removed from it all. Sixth year was when Draco caught up with Harry maturity-wise. Suddenly, he understood the truth of what his family stood for and who Voldemort was, and he was trapped, just like Harry was on the light side. It was the first time Harry began to see Draco as something more than a petty annoyance because it was really the first time Draco had been more than a petty annoyance.

We’ll visit the bathroom scene and the events of DH in the next section (Salazar, don’t even get me started on the wand thing), but even without those significant moments, it’s becoming clear that Harry and Draco have a lot of potential. They’re interconnected in an obsessive way that seems more extensive than that of normal enemies, and it’s no longer a one-sided affair.

The next objection I come across fairly frequently is the ever-present “but they hate each other!” My response to this is...nah, they don’t. Not really.

To start, most of their fighting was either simple childhood rivalry or all talk. Even when things escalated, they didn’t truly want to hurt each other. In many cases, they actually saved each other.

Remember in HBP when Draco petrified Harry and tried to send him back on the train? This could be seen as a simple “I hate you so I don’t want you at school”, but that’s inconsistent with Draco’s character thus far, given that his Hogwarts days practically revolved around tormenting Harry. Why send away your favorite toy? Perhaps this is stretching too far, but I’m not the only one who thinks that, just maybe, Draco did it to protect Harry.

To fully understand this theory, we have to go back to second year. In CoS, Dobby came to Harry with an abundance of praise, despite living in the Malfoy house, where the defeater of the Dark Lord was likely only spoken about negatively. Where did Dobby get his positive opinion of Harry Potter then? Ahem. May I direct you to...

"’everyone thinks he's so smart, wonderful Potter with his scar and his broomstick--’

‘You have told me this at least a dozen times already,’ said Mr. Malfoy, with a quelling look at his son.” (CoS)

Draco’s so-called ‘taunts’ sound quite a lot like compliments in disguise, and Dobby’s so-called ‘rescuing’ of Harry looked quite a lot like Draco’s train charade in HBP. To keep Harry safe, Dobby went through elaborate efforts to keep him from coming back to Hogwarts. Then in sixth year when Draco was aware that Death Eaters would soon run amuck in the school, he tried to send Harry away from Hogwarts on the train, almost as if he was trying to protect him.

Of course, that’s mostly theorizing, and some of you might not be convinced, but don’t worry. We’ve got a lot of explicit demonstrations of non-hate (for lack of a better term) as well. Take, for instance, the bathroom scene. It’s hard to tell if Draco would have been able to perform the Cruciatus curse if Harry had let him finish so we won’t talk about that, but Harry’s sectumsempra was a Big Moment in the Drarry world.

“'SECTUMSEMPRA!' bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly. Blood spurted from Malfoy's face and chest as though he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered backward and collapsed onto the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand. 'No --' gasped Harry. Slipping and staggering, Harry got to his feet and plunged toward Malfoy, whose face was now shining scarlet, his white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest. 'No -- I didn't --' (HBP)

As soon as the feud between them began to get real, Harry felt immense guilt and regret. It was one thing for them to taunt each other and fight, but as soon as he realized he’d caused true pain, he started backtracking. While his real enemies were finally starting to cross over to the okay-to-kill list, Draco was still firmly in the safe zone.

Later in HBP, we see another example of Harry’s non-hate. When Draco is about to kill Dumbledore in the tower, Harry watches as he lowers his wand. When Dumbledore dies, Harry doesn’t go after Malfoy--he goes after Snape. A lot of things were happening at once, but even in this moment when he was finally proved right about Draco’s activities, there was some part of him that didn’t blame Draco for what happened. He’d finally seen him become human during the bathroom scene, and he watched Draco’s wand “drop by a fraction”, so he knew the Slytherin wasn’t a murderer. If Snape hadn’t stepped in, Draco might have even switched over to the light. If Snape hadn’t stepped in, Dumbledore wouldn’t be dead. When he catches up to the two, he fires his curse at Snape, not Draco, again suggesting something other than hate.

While guilt is a passive emotion--making the bathroom scene a “hindsight’s 20/20” moment--and the climax of HBP was more of an internal shift, in DH we see their non-hate become more intentional.

“‘Well, Draco?’ said Lucius Malfoy. He sounded avid. ‘Is it? Is it Harry Potter?’

‘I can’t--I can’t be sure,’ said Draco.” (DH)

In Chapter 23 of DH, Draco risked his life to save Harry. Some people have criticised that he should have given a solid “no” if he really cared about saving Harry, but uncertainty was the only thing that kept Harry alive. If Draco had given them a negative, they would have killed him anyways. It was only the possibility that he might be Harry Potter that allowed him to live long enough to escape.

Harry later returned the favor when he saved Draco from the Fiendfyre.

“‘It’s – too – dangerous – !’ Ron yelled, but Harry wheeled in the air. His glasses giving his eyes some small protection from the smoke, he raked the firestorm below, seeking a sign of life, a limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood. . . . And he saw them: Malfoy with his arms around the unconscious Goyle, the pair of them perched on a fragile tower of charred desks, and Harry dived.” (DH)

Even though it would have been easier to let Draco die--even when Ron all but told him to leave Draco to burn--Harry saved him. By this point, both of them had risked their lives to save the other, and I think it’s fair to say that, whatever’s between them, it isn’t hatred.

That leaves us with the final objection I’m going to discuss in this post (essay?): the argument that Harry and Draco just aren’t right for each other. This one, while seemingly simple, has a lot of analysis to work through, and it’s also the one that separates Drarry from other popular ships in the fandom.

To start, they challenge each other in a way no one else can. Whereas Ginny grew up idolizing Harry, Draco spent those years sneering at the Golden Boy for his fame. Harry, who never wanted to be anything more than “just Harry”, needs someone like this in his life. He needs someone to see him as he is without his titles. Someone who hates his fame as much as he does. Someone who won’t let him get away with things just because he’s the Savior, and won’t confuse childhood awe with true feelings.

Likewise, Harry challenges Draco by meeting his prejudices and bigotry with full force. I don’t think Draco ever really did anything evil enough to need redemption as many fans seem to think (since, like we discussed earlier in this post, he was just a kid being taught his parents’ values, and as soon as the reality of the war hit, he was no longer on board), but he does need to understand the pain he inflicted through his bullying and be corrected in his misinformation. Draco’s ignorant blood purist comments would piss Harry off and inspire lengthy lectures (that you know Draco would profess to hate but secretly grow to agree with) which would help him become a good person when he wasn’t in the past.

In that same vein, Draco’s influence would help Harry find balance. Throughout the series, house rivalries shaped Harry’s point of view to the point where he barely thought of Slytherins as human. He repressed his dark traits, like Parseltongue, out of fear, and he pushed people away when unity could have altered the course of the war for the better. Of course, none of us can blame him for this, since his experience with Slytherins warranted such beliefs (most of the Slytherins in his life caused far more harm than good to him and his friends), but these beliefs are also part of what gave Voldemort so much power over him. By seeing Draco’s humanity and experiencing his love of the dark arts, Harry could begin to heal from his own deeply-ingrained prejudices and find acceptance of all parts of himself.

Beyond the value they’d bring to each other, let’s talk about this from a story perspective. It all comes down to the fact that they’re two sides of the same coin (cliche, but it sums up their relationship more accurately than anything else). Both of them were poster children for their respective sides, but while Harry was taken in by Mrs. Weasley and used by Dumbledore, Draco was raised by Lucius and made into a pawn by Voldemort. No matter how their paths veered, they always came back to each other in the end, so of all the people to end up together, the two who are constantly paired in every situation make the most sense out of anyone. When you really start to look at it, Drarry seems downright inevitable. The two were pitted against each other from the start, but that’s part of what makes their eventual unity so appealing. In a story about rifts and prejudice, light and dark, their pairing rights wrongs and signals a shift towards a better future. In the end, Drarry isn’t a superficial pairing at all. It’s the ultimate resolution.

[grapsandclaps]

GRAPS AND CLAPS REVIEWS 'FUTURESHOCK TAPPED III' - TAPPED WITH A VENGEANCE

Hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Graps and Claps this time taking me on a short journey to the Piccadilly area of Manchester for Futureshock Wrestling’s Tapped III event at the Fairfield Social Club for what will be in the first in a line of special Wednesday night events which seems a regular thing now in the British Wrestling sphere with many a midweek show taking place up and down this land, with the now defunct Lucha Forever being the innovator of said ‘midweek graps’.

Getting into Manchester for 6pm, I swiftly made my way to The Piccadilly Tap to meet up with some of the Graps gang (Steve, Ben, Andrew and our Geoff) for a couple of pints before walking around the corner to the venue. Only two pints before the show which included in the Piccadilly Tap – a pint of Marble/Heart & Craft Macchiato Porter (5.1% £5.80) that smelt coffee like but only tasted a smidgen like it’s supposed flavour which was maybe cancelled out due to it being a cold keg drink.

It was then a walk across the road to the Store Street Craft Beer Bar which is adjoined to the Double Tree by Hilton, so it is basically a glorified hotel bar offering supposed ‘Craft’ beer from Brightside Brewery and JW Lees plus the usual Craft legends called Foster’s and Heineken – they will literally stick the word ‘Craft’ to bloody anything nowadays. Anyways the £4.60 pint of Brightside IPA passed as a solid 6.5/10, but I did feel sorry for Ben who bought a £6.50 pint of Goose Island IPA which is an example of hotel bar prices. Décor though in this place is welcoming but it is certainly one place where you would only visit to have 1 pint and nothing else if especially you are on your way to the Apollo as it is very sparse in good pubs on that route.

Drinks done, it was time to get to the venue – whilst on the way my mate Andrew was telling me about a recent Kaiser Chiefs gig he had been to that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be with lead singer Ricky Wilson having a reet bad night on the mic. Arriving into the Fairfield Social Club I would estimate the audience to be around the 150/200 marker with many people taking in the fantastic ale selection (around 16 on tap on this evening anything ranging from £3.50 - £6 a pint), plus the food selection from Vasos Kitchen offering fries with different Indian style toppings including a Keema Option for £7.50 and a Masala option for £4 that I frequented – very fragrant in smell and a taste that certainly packed a punch but was well worth the price to fill a corner in my tummy!

Taking our seats at the back near the commentator’s desk which wasn’t being used, as Rob Halden and Matthew Richards decided to do their commentary from the couches near the bar watching on monitors from G-Man video editing lair – probably the best option as our singing would have deafened their ears in the first match between Angst Strongman – Big Joe and one of our personal favourites Sugar Dunkerton who was making his debut in Futureshock in what was if I am right in thinking – his 1 year anniversary wrestling in the UK since his debut on a cold Leeds Afternoon.

Early on in this match there were many chants aimed at Joe’s stature and also the Sugar chant was in full force thanks to his adoring fan club (us lot) meaning that his debut instantly got off to a great start with this response. As we eventually got into the action, we had Joe showing off his strength as Squatted Sugar but in turn after 3 squats, Sugar had him locked in a sleeper which left Joe laying on the floor. This lead to Sugar trying to quieten the crowd so he could pin Joe whilst he was asleep, but a big shout from the Nordic Alarm Clock on the outside woke Joe up at the two count.

Once Joe was back awake, he laid a beatdown to Sugar but Sugar was only playing possum during this as he fired back with a Pimp Slap to Joe then a DDT for a 2 count. As the match reached its conclusion Joe used his strength to power up Sugar to hit a fireman’s lift then a Vader Bomb for a 2, but when he went to the other side of the ring to hit a splash, Sugar rolled to the other side of the ring and offered Joe to jump anyways which he duly did after much persuasion from Thomas Wolfe on the outside and Sugar inside the ring, sadly for Joe there wasn’t enough distance on the dive and no water in the pool as he went SPLAT! Sugar took advantage of this by rolling up Joe for the 3 count to get the popular victory to start proceedings. In terms of Comedy style wrestling these two were a match made in heaven with the charismatic Sugar and the ever improving Big Joe who has his character down pat – just all around entertainment that you can’t ask much more of!

Second match now with the Futureshock Women’s title on the line with a clash of goodies as the Champion, Lana Austin took on her protégé of sorts – Hollie who was looking to possibly get the shock victory and maybe a championship by the end of this match even in her early infancy as a wrestler. The early feeling out process ended up with Hollie getting the best of it, but once Lana got into her stride she did so with hard forearms to the face. Hollie though came firing back with a couple of knee shots to get near falls. As the match was going on though, out came two newcomers to Futureshock (but already two regulars in WrestlePro), that being Alexis Falcon and Taonga who came to keep a watching eye, but they would soon get involved by attacking Lana from behind as the referee wasn’t watching.

When they chucked Lana back in, they willed Hollie to pick up the scraps but her conflicting head got the better of her as she refused to pin Lana so instead Taonga and Alexis took offence to this and came in the ring to attack both Lana and Hollie to cause the No Contest – BOOOO!!! So it looks like we have a possible tag match for a future show with Hollie & Lana taking on Taonga and Alexis Falcon which is a good thing to see as it is a change from the monthly Queen Bees vs Lana & Partner match we have got often in Futureshock recently. Match wise with Lana and Hollie it was a decent follow up from the first match and hopefully we possibly get to see it again in the future.  

A special bonus match now as the sirens rang out in the Social Club with the appearance of the Futureshock Champion Crater, much to the disgust of some in the crowd (my friend Mike especially). His opponents for the evening were not 1, not 2, but 3 opponents with the appearance of Karl Stoxx, Tom Thelwell and PCW favourite Philip Michael who got a good reception from the crowd even though this was his debut in the promotion – probably due to his familiarity on the North West scene. Sadly, though for the three lads, it didn’t turn out great as Crater smashed his way through them in quick style, despite them getting in little offence like double dropkicks to try and knock the big fella down. Crater soon finished it by hitting a double choke slam to 2 of them and putting a foot on the other to bring an end to proceedings. After the match though we had an appearance from Crater’s nemesis Henry T. Grodd who came out to spear Crater to the chants of ‘Grodd! Grodd! Grood! to once again stake another claim to a title shot against Crater in the future. To be honest though I do feel at this stage that the crowd are certainly behind a Grodd victory against Crater more than a John McGregor one!

Half time Main Event now, with The Young Guns (Ethan Allen and Luke Jacobs) taking on the makeshift team of Sam Bailey and James Drake – this was due to Zack Gibson being unable to compete due to Injury. Gibson though did get on the mic before the match to explain why people were asking – Why are Gibson and Drake friends again in Futureshock after a 9-month feud? To their credit they explained it as more of a friendly tiff between great friends/colleagues – which I am glad they have explained it (They must have read my comments about the lack of explanation at the Stockport show). Just to report – no chants of ‘NXT’ on this occasion! They did promise the Guns though in the future that they would eventually get a match against the Grizzled Young Veterans with possibly some gold on the line – but we shall just see!

Anyways with Gibson’s chatting out of the way, we got down to business with the Young Guns on top early with Jacobs first working on Bailey, then dissecting Drake. Ethan Allen then tagged in but was soon beaten down by both Bailey who hit a big superplex to young Ethan and then Drake followed up on Ethan with a Back Breaker to the boos of the crowd. The continuous beat down carried on to Ethan, that was until he got the hot tag to Luke who came in like a house on fire flooring both Bailey and Drake. It was interesting to see during this that Ethan was selling excellently on the ring apron from the beating – just the little things like that shows that this lad could be headed to the top. With Ethan back to full health, himself and Luke hit a Big Back Cracker double team to get a 2 fall, also in the home stretch we had Drake & Bailey hit their version of the Vets finisher which I will name for the purpose of this occasion – ‘The Ticket to Bailey’s House’ for a 2 count.

With the Guns on top though, Luke was ready to finish off James Drake, but from behind Zack Gibson waffled poor Luke to leave him in prime position for Drake to hit the 450 to get the win in a fantastic tag match, but sadly for the Guns another one in the loss column – which I do hope for their sakes they can pick up some wins soon!

Back from the break, we returned with Adrenaline Title action with No Limit after CJ Banks and Joey Hayes (Champion) went to a 15-minute Time Limit draw in Stockport, which has led to this match where the winner of the match will then go on to face Chris Ridgeway in Prestwich on the 23rd February. The early bulk of this match was CJ showing his dominance beating down Joey, including winning the best of the exchanges on the outside as they fought near the bar. Back in the ring though, both Joey and CJ went hold for hold for a good 20 minutes, that eventually ended in both guys’ double pinning each other much to the annoyance of the crowd who wanted an outright winner – so for the Prestwich show we now have a Triple Threat match with CJ vs Joey Hayes vs Chris Ridgeway for the Adrenaline Title.

Couple of things to point out from this match, included a post-match beat up of Joey from CJ, plus my overriding opinion of this match the day after and also on the evening, was that this was a good wrestling match but it did suffer from crowd heat and not one to be a toss as I am not a wrestler, but this always seems to be CJ Banks downfall as a baddie – when he is on the offence especially as he was against Joey, he doesn’t attempt to jaw jack with the crowd to get them to boo him, he just goes straight into the next manoeuvre with no response. CJ is a good wrestler but he is as bland as anything. 

Second to last match as the time was coming up to 9:30pm and with our Geoff wondering if he should go home as he had work at 6am in the morning, but he decided against this. In this match we had two up and comers on the North West scene with JJ Webb taking on Callum Corrie, with the latter trying to making 2019 his own, like he did in the latter part of 2018 in GPW. Corrie had the bulk of the crowd noise for him with chants of ‘Sandy Beach’ and ‘Callum Corrie’ blaring in his ears and it was this support that got him over the finish line in this match as he hit poor JJ with a DDT to pick up the 3 count in a good under 10-minute scrap that kept the audience’s attention throughout the match.

After the match though, this loss got too much for JJ who attacked Callum and then locked in a Crab to make Corrie moan like buggery, so this feud is going to continue so happy days as these are two good young up and comers.

Main event time now with John McGregor trying to prove he has what it takes to dethrone Crater in March, by testing himself against former Futureshock Heavyweight Champion Ashton Smith who was looking himself to get back on track after a quiet couple of months in the promotion due to WWE commitments - plus as ever it was good to belt out a rendition of ‘All of the Lights’ once again as Ashton made his way down to the ringside area.

A bulk of this match was very much Ashton being the aggressor as he beat down the much smaller McGregor, but John over these last couple of months is showed those fighting qualities from underneath that helped him win the Legacy Tournament, especially his match vs Zack Gibson where he was excellent. With John fighting through, he looked like he was ready for the loss as Ashton hit a GTS then a ‘Roll of the Dice’ for an agonising 2 fall that had the crowd on the edge of their seats but John managed to somehow recover from this as he hit a Jumping DDT to Ashton to get the 3 count in around 15 minutes in a very good main event.

After the match though, Ashton got on to the mic to say to congratulate John on the win, but then the pleasantries stopped at that when he said bluntly to John that ‘You are not ready for Crater off that performance’! – Which instantly I think puts in the crowd’s head that the Gentleman is not good enough to beat Crater in March, but this writer though thinks differently and can see him pushing Crater all the way, but with the threat of Grodd I can see John ultimately failing – we shall see!!

Show done, it was time to leave but not before having a quick chat with Ashton, ring announcer Neil and also Sugar Dunkerton who as ever was a gentleman to chat to. Overall as a show it was a good 2 ½ hours of entertainment with the Young Guns vs Sam Bailey/James Drake, Dunkerton/Big Joe and the Main Event being matches you should check out on Futureshock’s On Demand service.

Next time we will be at Futureshock will be the 23rdFebruary in Prestwich for the visit of PAC who will be taking on Soner Durson. Next time you will be hearing from me will be for Breed Wrestling’s debut show in Sheffield on Sunday 10th February – so as ever go and give this a share, likes and retweets and spread the word. So until then – BYE !!!!