#nice thing about this episode is it was filmed in the right small space in time where luhan was in exo and kris wasn't

[a9saga]

watching exo on happy camp 2014... luhan is too handsome something needs to be done about it

[callahanisms]

Impressions - Part 02

pairing: tashi duncan x bipoc! fem! reader

word count: 2.3k words

context: 2019. los angeles. tashi duncan has found her perfect actor after a vigorous round of auditions. but did the actor stumble upon the audition by chance? or was it premeditated?

no specific pronouns used. reader is able bodied and can speak. reader is about 25, while tashi is 31/32.

based on this post. check out part 01.

sorry for taking so long. grad school is really kicking my butt right now.

She doesn’t seem impressed.

The way she turns the pages of the stapled papers, her nails glimmering in the light. There’s a hint of glitter and they have a cream to pink ombre. They look really nice. And it was clear she had just gotten them done. The clear gloss made her lips look soft and shiny.

Your heart is pounding. You don’t know why. Tashi Duncan asked you for criticism of her work. Were you perhaps not harsh enough? It was hard to tell. The script was just…well, you wanted to keep reading. You had to read it a fourth time to actually start annotating and adding your notes. It was also hard to criticize her vision without any sort of visual. Film was a visual medium after all. It was hard to see what she meant when you were reading.

“Did you hold back?”

You pick up the glass of sangria and take a small sip. “Well…”

Tashi looks at you expectantly. “I thought you’d be harsher.”

“It’s hard to judge entirely. Because part of film critique is…to see the film…”

Her other hand plays with the fork, before stabbing a few leaves and tomatoes of her salad. “So…essentially, you can’t fully critique it without seeing the actual film.”

“A script is only part of it. I just think it’d be nice to have some sort of visual.” Your plate was already clean from your appetizer. It felt odd to be treated to a full course meal by Tashi. But she said you wouldn’t need to pay. Which was generous considering how expensive the restaurant was and being an adjunct didn’t pay as much as you wanted it to. Plus rent was due soon.

“That’s fair. I have a specific vision I want to achieve.” She closes the script and her finger runs over the colored tabs. She liked that the cover page had a key for the colors—by highlighter and by tab. “You seem well aware of that.”

“I’ve watched…most of your stuff. All your films. Majority of the television episodes you’ve directed. And I’ve watched a lot of behind the scenes interviews.” You feel your cheeks heat up. Honestly, you sounded like a bit of a fan.

There’s a smile creeping up on Tashi’s face. “It’s surprisingly rare to find people that have watched your work and…understand your process.” She says. “It takes a certain amount of trust and popularity to be given full control.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve proven yourself already. Your last film was amazing. 5 stars on Letterboxd.” You hold your glass, tipping it towards the director.

Tashi picks up her cocktail and gently taps the glass against your own. “You and the other hundreds of thousands of people.”

“Where are we?”

Tashi puts the car in park and turns off the ignition with the touch of a button. There’s a click and the rapid retraction of her seatbelt. “My house.” The sound of the door opening is crisp. Or maybe it’s because the sangria made things sound sharper than they should.

It was actually smaller than you thought. But certainly a lot of space for a person living alone. “How many bedrooms?” You unbuckle your seat and climb out of the car. The air feels refreshing against the hot skin of your face. You could feel the vessels throbbing beneath from the body’s processing of the ingested alcohol. You make sure to close the door all the way and follow after her.

Her keys have a keychain attached to it: a Sonny Angel with a frog hat. And he’s wearing a green shirt and some jeans. “Three beds, one full bath, one half bath.” She says. “It’s expensive, but I can afford it. And one of the bedrooms is…well, you’ll see.” When she looks back at you, it’s teasing. The corner of her mouth is curled into one of her charming smirks. The kind that also became a popular meme to use online. “The other is a guest bedroom. Because you never know when someone’s going to stay the night.”

“So…does that mean your parents drop in often?”

“Yes.” The door clicks and she pushes the door open. ��Hi~” Her voice is suddenly a pitch higher.

When you step into the house and close the door behind you, you see why. A gray tabby cat nuzzles up against Tashi’s leg, mewling. It suddenly jumps, trying to climb up her pants. You remove your shoes, setting them to the side so they aren't in the way of the door. And you make sure to lock the front door. “Who’s this?” You ask.

“I named her K.C.” Tashi gently pries the cat off of her pants and holds her.

“After your character on that spy sitcom?”

“Yes. Precisely.” Her nails scratch K.C.’s chin and there’s a purr in response. “She’s a little troublemaker. But she followed me home one day after I went out to eat. No one came to claim her, so now she’s my cat.”

You take a few steps closer to her and put your finger out. K.C. sniffs the offered finger and nuzzles her nose against it. “How old is she?”

“Around six months. She followed me home when she was only eight weeks old.” Tashi bends down to set the cat down. You follow the director into the kitchen, taking in the decorations after your eyes adjust to the sudden turning on of the soft lights. You’re not surprised to find plenty of movie posters on the wall, including one of Amélie and Tampopo. Which was smart. Putting the movie about food in the kitchen certainly made the hunger return.

Tashi quickly fills her bowl with some kibble, wet food, and a little bit of bone broth. She sets it down and K.C. immediately begins to eat. “Kittens. They always eat like they were never fed.” You joke.

“There was a time she literally ate my toast.” Tashi slowly plucks the rings off her fingers and washes her hands. They move so delicately. Covered in a thick layer of suds. Her scrubbing beneath her fingernails. The water washes away the soap and she turns off the faucet, drying her hands. The towel gets between her fingers. Her fingers. Her long fingers. She slides the rings back on. “She jumped up and just took my toast out of my fingers. And it had grape jelly on it—”

“Wait. You eat grape jelly?” You knew no one that actually liked grape jelly. Aside from your grandfather and younger brother.

Tashi rolls her eyes. “I prefer raspberry. But a friend got me an artisanal grape jelly when he visited the farmer’s market. Said it’d be good to try it. And it was good. I just prefer raspberry. The tartness balances better with the sugar.” She begins walking and when she looks back at you, you know what she’s saying.

Follow me.

Your feet carry you and you can faintly smell the lingering notes of her perfume. Tashi turns the hallway light on and then opens a door off to the side. She flicks the light switch on and the room is filled with a warm light. You stand in the door while she goes over to the desk and leans against it, arms crossed over her chest.

You’re taken in by the boxes in the corner, stacked. There’s an easel by the window. Multiple sheets of paper were taped onto the wall. There’s a board with more sheets of paper pinned to it. It definitely feels like an artist’s studio, a stark contrast to the reality of Tashi Duncan as a filmmaker.

“So you’re artsy?” You ask.

“You could say that.” She cocks her head to the side. “You can come in, you know.”

“Yeah…I’m afraid I might set this place on fire.” A nervous chuckle escapes you. It’s utterly gorgeous. And some of the pieces on the wall take your breath away. Gorgeous. Vibrant. Full of color and with gorgeous shading. There’s some photographs tapped around the room too. Mostly landscapes and settings. One collection is just a room at different angles.

“You won’t. Just come take a look. These are my storyboards.”

“...Huh!”

Your jaw practically dropped.

These were Tashi Duncan’s storyboards?

This was on a similar level to Ridley Scott. That was kind of mindblowing. “Y-Your storyboards?”

“I just have a really tedious process.” Tashi uncrosses her arms and rests them between her thighs. “It’s a little…frustrating. But it really helps get the images out of my head and onto something tangible. And if it doesn’t look like what I actually want it to, then I am still satisfied anyways because my vision was fulfilled.”

Your step is gentle and you walk over to the board first. This was clearly the storyboard with guidelines and vague shapes to indicate lighting and shadows. It was clear to see that Tashi’s strong suit was perspective. Your eyes slowly move to the big paper taped to the wall. A woman looking up. The light is shining down while the background is bathed in a dark blue light. Blood covers her mouth and drips down her chin and neck. The neckline of her dress is red, soaked from blood. And…

“She kind of looks like me.”

Tashi purses her lips. “Yeah.” She lets out a small laugh. “It just came to me in a dream.”

You look back at her, smiling. “It’s funny how dreams work, huh? The kind of people our subconscious recognizes and puts together. Which reminds me. I think you should maybe lean more into psychoanalysis for your movie. I know the idea of id, ego, and superego is overdone and may be boring…but I think there would be something interesting in presenting your three primary characters in that way. It never gets old. And honestly, psychoanalytical readings are never not trendy.”

“That’s actually an amazing suggestion.” Tashi licks her lips. You fail to notice her eyes trailing down your back.

“I’m happy you think so. I think a lot of film scholars would just go crazy over it.” You look at her. “Also, where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall to your right. It has a peacock on the door.”

“Got it. I’ll be back. I just had a lot of sangria.”

Tashi watches you leave. And she turns back to her desk, collecting the photos together and putting them in a neat pile. Pictures of you. Some of them were stills. Some your headshots. Others from your Instagram account. She opens the drawer and lifts up a manila folder and sketchbook, shoving the photos beneath. The drawer slams shut and she opens another drawer off the side, pulling out some more books.

She hears the sound of the toilet flushing and then the running water of the sink. You come back within three minutes, hands dried and rubbing lotion into your skin. “Where’d you get the lotion in the bathroom?”

“Costco.”

“Damn. That’s hot.”

You realize what you just said.

“I-I mean…it’s hot that you have a Costco membership!”

Tashi can’t help but laugh. “I would say the same to someone. Do you want something to drink? Some tea? Or maybe some water?”

“I think water would be good.”

“Be right back.” When Tashi leaves the room, her clothes brush against you. You feel the goosebumps forming over your arm. And there’s her perfume. It was addictive.

You decide to walk around the room, taking in the storyboards more. You don’t dare touch the boxes, despite the urge to look. There’s something else that satiates your curiosity: the books on the desk. You pick one up and carefully open it to a random page. It’s some sketches. You recognize one of the sketches as actor and producer Art Donaldson. You forgot that he was in Tashi’s second film, on top of producing it.

“Like them?”

You nearly jump, slamming the book closed. Tashi walks over and sets a mug of water on the desk. She hands you the other one and you take it. There are flowers on it. “Sorry. I was just looking—”

“It’s fine. You’re already in here. You might as well look.” Tashi shrugs.

“You’re like…amazing!”

“It took a lot of practice.” Tashi grabs the more run down book and flips it open. You purse your lips to stifle a laugh. “It’s okay, you know. We all start somewhere. Besides, Rian Johnson’s storyboards look the same. And this was my first time directing.”

Tashi Duncan’s directorial debut. Inside Audrey Horne.

“You’re right. I mean if it gets the job done…what’s the point in arguing?” You take a sip of the cold water. “So you practiced and now…you just do full on art pieces?”

“I like experimenting with color.” She shrugs. “And naturally if I am taking inspiration from Dario Argento and technicolor, then it’s best to figure out what colors mesh well.”

“So what do you use?”

“Pastels. I like my drawings to look smooth.”

“You do have a way with color.” Your eyes keep going back to the big drawing on the wall, of your lookalike staring up at something in both awe and horror. “I’m guessing that’s the scene of when I cannibalize my former castmate?”

“It is. I have a specific idea of what that shot would look like.” Tashi takes a sip, her brown eyes watching your body language. You’re at ease. You’re relaxed. You’re in the mood for chatter and to hear more, like the film nerd that you were. “So…do you have anything else you want to add?”

“I mean…your script is solid. And seeing what you intend to make just…it’s awesome to see what your vision is.”

Even though Tashi said she didn’t want a yes man, she still liked getting praise. It was necessary to know what she was doing right and how to keep it right. But hearing it from you was different. It was more special. So she decides to prompt you.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

[ecargmura]

Twilight Out Of Focus Episode 10 Review - The Evening Monologues

Remember how Shion declared that he’d fix Rei back in Episode 8? Congratulations, Shion, you fixed him! Well, he’s not completely fixed, but is in the process of being so. Anyways, it was nice seeing Rei’s perspective on his relationship with Shion and how his earlier actions were due to the inability to grasp change, but meeting Shion changed all that. I always liked that unlike the previous two couples, this one doesn’t follow the usual formula. Rei and Shion are not roommates and Rei does feel more “seme-like” compared to Hisashi and Jin who don’t feel as seme-like.

Rei is someone who dislikes change. That’s why he never puts effort into his past relationships. He is struggling to find a path in his life. However, Shion came and showed him that change isn’t scary and that anything is possible. That’s what caused him to develop feelings for him. To be honest, Rei’s inability to find a path for his future does feel relatable. I know a lot of people who still have no idea what they want to do. Rei is someone who likes being comfortable in his own space and rarely lets others in. I think describing Shion as a glitch or a bug fits him perfectly because Shion did come into his life unexpectedly and caused an issue in his system. Because of him, Rei is doing things he normally never does like chasing after Shion and even professing his feelings for him; he even feels jealous of other men around Shion too, a first from him. Heck, he even vacuumed his room just so he can have a good first time with Shion. You know an introvert who is holed up in his room all the time is making effort when he actually vacuums for the first time…wait, that’s not just a me thing? What I liked the most is that Rei’s hat flies off when he confesses to Shion, making him more honest about his feelings.

Anyways, his conversation with Jin was nice to see. During the Slow Motion era, Rei was the one who essentially gave advice to Giichi about Jin. I feel like the tables have turned since as Jin is the one giving advice to Rei. I can tell how close they are from their scene. Both Jin and Rei have changed when it comes to love, so it’s interesting to see how both react and process it. I love how Rei reacted to seeing Jin and Giichi kissing and how Jin reacted when Rei was right behind him.

I do like that Shion is looking for a relationship where he and Rei are equal in a sense. While he’s happy that Rei wants to go out with him seriously, he’s still nervous about how long it’ll last. He gives Rei his diary, which turns out to be a poetry journal. Oh ho, Mao has some competition in terms of being the poet in the film club. He lent it to Rei in hopes that the older boy can learn more about him and tell him about his worries and such. Fortunately, Rei knows the ups and downs of Shion. Man, it’s nice to see Rei be an affectionate boyfriend in his own way. 

I guess my only gripe is that they removed a lot of small details from the manga, but I’ll get to that when I review the manga. Other than that, it’s well-executed and has good pacing.

Anyways, what I like about this pair and for the other two pairs is that they’re written in a way that you do feel like they’ll last forever. Even if there are ups and downs along the way, they all have good communication with each other, so I’m sure things will work out for all of them. It seems that next week is a mix of all three couples, so I can’t wait to see how that’ll play out. What are your thoughts on this episode and the Evening Monologues pair as a whole?

[dontbotherwiththepronunciation]

The Theon poll was so interesting. I was just curious if you’ve ever seen any of the show? I couldn’t remember if you said you read the books first and then watched the show or if you’ve never seen the show at all. If you have, did you watch the whole thing? Was there anything you liked about it or thought the show portrayed well?

It's kind of you to show interest anon and I don't hold anything against you but oh god this was such a struggle and I ended giving up because I can't talk about the show without wanting to hurt people but also the longer I think about it, the less apologetic I want to be. I want to be allowed to tell everyone how much I despise it but I know I would get in trouble for that and I'm so tired of it. The more I think about it, the more depressed I get and the more hateful I become. I think it makes me depressed because fandom proved I'm not allowed to be hateful and angry, although I know I have the right to be.

"Was there anything you liked about it or thought the show portrayed well?"

I actively forget the show exists until someone mentions it, but I filled two journals with show thoughts (they were abundantly negative), so here are the few things I marked down as positives.

I’ve always been a fan of Ramin Djawadi's work and used to play some of his pieces so that was the highlight of the show for me. “Winds of Winter” and some other themes used for Dany give me goosebumps and so does “Light of the Seven”. There was a time I could play that one on the violin and piano.

“Watching your vicious bastard die gave me more relief than a thousand lying whores.” (I didn't even have to google that sentence. I heard it once and it became engraved to my brain)

Lena Headey and most of the casting for the Lannisters. I hated what they did to Tyrion's character later on and also how they made Cersei less unhinged but I think both of them had the range to play the characters properly had they been given decent scripts.

There was this thing they did with Sansa's hair that I thought was interesting. Her style changed and assimilated to whoever she was learning from/trying to emulate. A nice and fitting touch.

Up to Season 6 (I think. Not fully sure), I liked most of the costuming for Cersei. The red dress with the golden metal corset shaped armour...gay gay homosexual gay.

Florence + the Machine's adaptation of "Jenny of Oldstones".

The adaptation of "The Rains of Castamere"

Dubrovnik and Peñiscola as two of the most important filming locations were such a smart choice! I had been to both of the cities in the past and it was so fun to spot which places they filmed in. They really made the best out of such small and rather niche places and I applaud how much they played with perspective in order to make us ignore the constant use of the same set spaces.

I really liked Isaac Hempstead Wright's acting during Season 2. It felt very similar to this despair and impotence that ACOK Bran feels and my heart ached for him.

Season 6 episode 10 made absolutely no fucking sense but it was the most entertaining one and I think seeing Cersei blow up the sept was the happiest experience I had with that show. What an icon she was, burning all her enemies to the ground...would have made me even happier if her actions had consequences but I still cherished the moment on itself.

I hated everything related to the Greyjoys and the writing team threw every possible interesting plot and dynamic for them out of the window, but there was a scene somewhere in Season 2, when Theon returns to the Iron Islands in which Balon Greyjoy is given a more deeply and hurtful characterisation. Theon accuses him of "giving him away, like a dog he didn't want anymore" and the camera stays at Balon's expression of pain and desolateness. I really dislike most of the fandom's characterisation for Balon. This however, was interesting.

Michelle Fairley's last scream and her following lifelessness during the red wedding was hunting. I am #anti Robb Stark(/j) and I didn't like Richard Madden as Robb so I didn't feel a lot during that scene until she started to shine. Amazing actress.

Season 1, episode 10 (I think), a scene in which we see Catelyn and Robb react to Ned's death. Michele Fairley does this thing where she starts leaning against trees and breaths heavily in order to not let herself cry and Robb is hacking a tree with his sword before his mother hugs him as he sobs "I'll kill them all". I don't like Richard Madden but I loved that scene. The composition and setting was so atmospheric and the musical score was very emotional, love those strings. I rewatched the scene right now to make sure my thoughts were the same and, yes 15-year-old-me, I full-heartedly agree!

The animated shorts were a hesitant and reluctant source of joy for me. @/hell-heron has made use of them in gifs and I think they are lovely to look at.

That's about it

"I was just curious if you’ve ever seen any of the show? I couldn’t remember if you said you read the books first and then watched the show or if you’ve never seen the show at all. If you have, did you watch the whole thing?"

I watched till half of season 2 after spending three years analysing the books without any show influence or imagery, didn't like it, got called a slur and was told to go back to the plantation by show people because I didn't like the whitewashing, finished watching it in 2019 against my will, really hated it.

The concrete things that made the show a source of anger and sadness instead of allowing it only to be uninteresting for me, asides from Stark goggles and overall me hating show!Theon and show!Dany (two of my favourite characters), listed from most to least personally upsetting:

Missandei of Naath (Sexualization, pseudo-maturity and imposed adulthood of black Girls)

Jeyne-Sansa switcherroo (Not doomed by the narrative, just ditched and other unimportant, unsatisfactory, insufficient girls (Jeyne W, Penny, Kyra, Pretty Pia, etc.))

"Dark" "Dark eyes" "Dark hair" "Dark vs Fair" (Whitewashing under the pretence of ambiguity á la fanon!Rue from the Hunger Games)

The philosophical stance of the narrative (Nihilism vs. Optimistic Existentialism vs. Embracing the absurd & The Myth of Sisyphus; conclusion: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING)

Ableism (Wex Pyke, Ilyn Payne and my other fellow (selective) mutes, constant jokes on the expense of mutilated people that the watchers were meant to laugh at, the dismissal of Tysha, Bran's not-sense-making impotence/infertility and the connotations of lovelessness for disabled people, Tyrion making fun of a supposedly mentally disabled cousin just for the lols)

Renly, Loras, Jon Connington, Satin and "Olyvar" (???) (Home of phobia)

Sansa Stark (Destroying a character to marketise a YA Heroine)

Daenerys Targaryen (Slowburn character assassination)

The even stronger orientalist tropes in Dorne (Girlbossing your way through character massacre)

Robb Stark (Simplifying the text and creating a male oc)

Arya Stark & Brienne of Tarth (Contraproductive and unresolved internalised misogyny)

[obsessed-and-depressed69]

Alternatives to Doomscrolling

are you struggling with doomscrolling? so am i! thats why i made this really long list that will hopefully hold your attention for a little while and let you take a break from doomscrolling. this list is made up of my own ideas and ones i found online so have it! please! don't get stuck in the trap!

ALTERNATIVES TO DOOMSCROLLING: -Use Duolingo Game-like format that has the small bits of serotonin, but also feels like collecting so lasts for a long time -Use Headspace Lets you relax, allows you to take a step away from screens for a little while -BBC Sounds Still has sound if thats what you want, has variety if its the kind of music you’re into. -Some sort of game on your phone Mildly addictive like scrolling, but challenges your brain a bit more -An app called Calm Music and other soothing sounds to help you sleep better -Make tea What can I say? It’s tea, I love tea, I have lots of different varieties like lemon and ginger, green tea and mint, green tea and lemon. I’m drinking some while writing this. -Make. Lists. I made this list to avoid doomscrolling, and so far its working, because I like the feeling of using a keyboard, because it feels like I’m being sort of productive, also I like lists in general. -Start a journal I don’t journal particularly often, I mainly do it because I like nice notebooks and nice pens, so I get to use both of them, thank the stationary nerd in me for that. -Stretch Stretching is good, nice even if its only your hands. Its okay to go back to scrolling after but just a break for >5 mins is good because it takes your eyes away from a screen for a little while. -Audiobooks/podcasts I guess they can be good, you can curate them to your interests which is nice. -Think of something you’re interested in, read the wikipedia article on it. I like this because its easy to switch to if you catch yourself doomscrolling, it doesn’t take you away from the screen but it gives you an opportunity to learn something that you might not have none. I guess this is fuelled by the neurodiversity -The NASA Website Okay so I know this is really specific, but honestly if you go to the bit about the solar system or the universe its got some cool stuff for you space nerds like me out there. Here’s one I like https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/ -Find a craft Knitting, crocheting, just plain drawing whether its digital or traditional, jewellery making, something that has the dopamine and serotonin that you’re trying to get while doomscrolling -Start learning a new skill Similar to the last one but its less craft based, could be coding, a sport (not my thing but I guess some people are into that), or something similar, find something that you don’t need a lot to start with. -Start that book on your bookshelf that you haven’t read I’ve got so many on my shelf personally that I really want to read -Set yourself a schedule This isn’t an alternative to doomscrolling (I mean it could be if you want it to be), but it allows you to step away without having to force yourself in that moment, and have something ready for you to do instead. -Don’t get Pinterest It’s not TikTok or Instagram, but its still just as bad, its where most of my doomscrolling takes place, its the same as any short video format but in pictures most of the time. -Make a playlist I have so many playlists, its honestly a problem, I make them for hyper fixations or characters that I’m currently obsessing over, which is a pretty constant thing for me. -Watch a TV show/film Could just be an episode of a show, or a long film, depending on how much time you have. I also like YouTube personally, since you can find a lot of stuff on there, and I know the adds suck but honestly I find it bearable. -Just research alternatives to doomscrolling Seriously its good, I like it since it’s what I’m doing right now, you don’t have to turn it into something like this if you don’t want, but just knowing that there are other options can really help you step away from scrolling. -Decorate your environment My bedroom walls are covered in handmade and non-handmade things alike, it makes everything feel more unique and more comfortable. I’m not talking about re-painting your walls because I know that option isn’t available to everyone, but small things like a little handmade poster can sometimes help.

[demoreelrewound]

Little tweaks and big changes

To stay faithful to the spirit of the original, I will be doing the minimum amount of changes possible to the main five - Donnie, Rebecca, Tacoma, Karl and Quinn. Right off the bat here are the most noticable changes to the mains:

I've decided to give Tacoma a slightly different surname, one that still ends up being replaced with Narrows in the credits. One of my goals with this whole thing is to make the balance of comedy and drama a little more balanced, so I wanted him to have a name that could work in both contexts. His new surname is Newell.

I'm giving the previously un-surnamed Quinn the surname Mulryan because the combination of two Very Irish sounding names still has the Irish stereotype vibe to it even as I'm working to flesh out his character beyond it. (Plus the sheer Irishness of it will be coming up later in the series as a piece of irony. But more about that down the line ;-D)

Quinn and Karl will be getting the most intense treatment of expanding on character traits and backstories. They'll still be the macho badasses they are in the original, but especially with Quinn I'm adding a few more layers and chances to show a more unguarded side.

(Only small changes will be made to the main three's backstories, and it will be entirely for the sake of ironing out and enhancing what's already there.)

As for the minor characters...

Due to my personal comfort level with writing about real people, I have decided to create original characters that serve the same function as Uncle Yo and Egoraptor. Their names are Tyler Yokota (see what I did there?) and Jake(?) Easton respectively.

Related to this, I would like to rename(?) Donnie's wife from Mara to Brandy. Even though Mara Wilson isn't directly playing herself or appearing on screen, I wouldn't want to implicate her in my changes.

Instead of Fabrizio, the shady Italian tenant of next door's studio space will be one Fabrizia Armati - not only will Rebecca be able to talk to another woman at length, but Ms Armati will have a more direct connection to a character's past and a more subtle but still intimidating presence!

I've decided to give the family that hold Donnie captive in the latter portion of the series the surname Rivers because that's exactly what he was looking for, and exactly the people to spur on the final part of Donnie's character journey.

Tom Collins (main antagonist and leader of SWAG) will be getting a lot of attention from me, as a good story needs a strong antagonist to get things moving. Bearing in mind the little we know about him and the inherently petty beef SWAG has with Demo Reel, I have a lot of room to work in regarding his backstory and motivations.

Entirely new characters will be added to enhance certain plot beats or episodes, including an animal welfare consultant, an estranged sibling and... maybe someone else, not sure yet. Very minor parts anyway, one for only one episode and the other in drips throughout.

One more change I feel I really must make is to Donnie's mother - instead of being so directly based upon Elizabeth Hartman, she will be more of a general fusion of different actresses that are treated terribly by the film industry. Her new name will be Alice Harper, and she herself looks to Hartman as inspiration. More to come on her for certain...

That's all for now. Aiming to go for character profiles next, whenever I get the time.

Have a nice day ^_^

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

What I love about the gender and sexual diversity in Juno Steel isn’t just that diverse characters exist. It’s that they live in a world where their existence is taken for granted.

So many science fiction stories make diversity A Thing, even if it’s a really small and subtle Thing, and I hate it. I’m tired of it. I’m sick of far-flung futures where people live in space and have amazing technology but culture is still massively cisheteronormative, and I’m even more sick of worlds where authors try to make it so culture isn’t massively cisheteronormative but don’t lay their social groundwork so somehow make it even more of A Thing, revealing their own biases.

Juno Steel doesn’t do that. Not only are characters who aren’t cis or heterosexual everywhere, there’s no underlying assumption that they should be cis or heterosexual. Juno’s a he/him lady and at no point is this any kind of problem for anyone. In the whole series I can think of two people misgendering him (because they just met him and, like anyone when meeting a new person, go on apparent physical and social cues) and in both cases the correction just isn’t A Thing. Early in the series, he’s fighting a random thug, who tells him to “fight like a gentleman”, and he responds with ‘I’m not a gentleman, I’m a lady’ as fighting banter, and it’s treated exactly the same as if someone had called him a dumb blonde and he’d whipped a wig off and said, “actually, I’m a brunette” -- it’s not A Thing. It’s just meaningless fighting banter and they move on.

The second time, he’s at a party, undercover with his boyfriend. The hostess gets into a discussion with said boyfriend about Juno, who’s wearing a very eye-catching golden dress and very much playing up being a lady, and refers to hims as ‘she’, and his boyfriend does NOT do that stupid fucking thing that cis people always do and stop the conversation to be like “AcTuAlLy, my love’s *preferred pronouns* are -- ”, he just continues the conversation calling Juno ‘he’, and the hostess proceeds to do the same (without doing the even more stupid fucking thing of stopping the conversation to apologise, which is obnoxious and The Worst). It’s just Not A Thing.

Said hostess of the party is also trans, and until the party, had presented as a man with the world’s most eye-catching haircut (she’s a rich eccentric). At the party, nobody recognises her until she reveals her identity, not because of her gender presentation, but because she had a haircut. (It’s also a running joke in the series that sometimes someone will mention an old Earth custom that nobody else has ever heard of, like the one character on Mars who celebrates Christmas. This hostess, who has a Russian surname, changes it to the feminine form of the surname as Russians do, and explains it’s an ‘old earth custom’, which confuses the hell out of everyone -- it must get pretty complicated, changing your surname every time you get a haircut.) Her gender is just straightup Not A Thing.

Very early in the series, we meet a celebrity crime family who make a living off crime and reality TV. Imagine if the Kardashians also ran the mafia, and owned a major TV channel and several prisons and mental health facilities where they were allowed to market footage of the people inside for entertainment, privacy laws just not being a thing (or a thing they have circumvented through exploitative contracts). Everything about these people is big and over-the-top they’re terrible on purpose and if somebody dies then that’s great for ratings.

Two of these are Cassandra and her twin brother Cecil. It’s very heavily implied through the story that the pair are identical twins, and given that their voice actor’s voice is definitely not affected by testosterone, reasonable to assume that Cecil is a trans man. We can’t be sure, though, because that never comes up in the plot. Cecil has an underground torture dungeon where he films a twisted quiz show, once got himself kidnapped by gangsters on purpose for TV ratings, lost his arm in the rescue and now has a cool robot arm. Absolutely everything about him is played up and out-there and over the top for those delicious reality TV viewers. At no point is him being trans ever mentioned, even in passing. It’s not part of his persona because it’s just not interesting or unusual. It isn’t A Thing.

The agender characters aren’t A Thing. They’re just there. The gay and bisexual characters aren’t A Thing. They’re just there. Most of what we know about the sexuality of anyone is speculation based on their dating history; nobody ever comes out to anyone because there’s no need to, there’s no assumption of heterosexuality so the lack of heterosexuality isn’t a surprise. Juno can kiss Peter in one episode and Alessandra a couple of episodes later and doesn’t have to explain to anyone that he’s bisexual. Alessandra can have a fling with Juno and then get engaged and there’s no assumption that her fiance is a man, or surprise that she’s a woman.

Only twice in the series does anyone explicitly state romantic or sexual preferences -- Rita, in a strip club, is asked whether she wants the company of a man or a woman and says “just give me whatever”. (This is a reasonable question to explicitly ask in a strip club.) And Jet, in conversation, once mentions not having romantic or sexual feelings for anybody -- this isn’t explained because HEY LOOK EVERYONE ASEXUALITY AND AROMANTICISM IS A THING, LOOK AT OUR DIVERSITY, WE HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT THERE’S AN ACE GUY HERE. It’s explained because Jet overexplains and overspecifies everything. It’s a core character trait of his, and his sexuality is neither exempt from this nor given special treatment, because it isn’t A Thing.

I’m tired of stories with space travel that unconsciously reflect our own cisheteronormativity no matter how socially advanced they try to be, in the same way that I’m tired of stories with dragons in them that unconsciously reflect our own misogyny no matter how gender equal they claim to be. It’s just nice to see someone get it right occasionally.

[r6shippingdelivery]

All the drama in Twitter (long story short: people harassed Siege’s new UI designer until he left and then locked his account) had me thinking about online communities and fandom. And the short of it is that ALL communities I’ve seen or been part of are awful. 

Siege? The community at large is just a black hole of negativity if you take Twitter and Reddit seriously. The Sims? They have been complaining about everything and crying “Dead Game” for years. Dragon Age? Discourse up to your eyeballs no matter where you looked. Phasmophobia? Arguments left and right about whether the game is/was too easy or too difficult already. That to only mention a few. And let’s not forget communities I’ve never dabbled in but knew from reputation only that they were The Worst, like Overwatch or League. 

What about other non-gaming fandoms tho? For book series, films and TV series fandoms? Ship wars, discourse up to eleven: racism, queerbating, hate watching episodes just to complain about it, hating people who like certain characters, people harassing actors and/or writers, etc. It’s no different tbh. If you think a certain fandom is nice, I’m willing to bet a kidney you’re either new, sheltered/doesn’t engage in the community, or the fandom is just really small. Because the bigger a community is, they worst it gets usually. 

The only way to enjoy your time online is to carve your little corner, have a group of people you like and enjoying seeing their content and opinions. And that’s it. You can’t try to care for what the community at large thinks, because it will invariably take a toll on you and your enjoyement of that thing. That’s the bad part of social media being the ground for fandom/fan communities.

I’ve also always been a hard believer that having devs/writers/actors/etc interacting directly with the community on a daily basis was a mistake and terrible decision, both for these people’s well being and for the health of fan spaces, because parasocial relationships breed entitlement.

TL;DR: online communities at large are terrible places cause any sufficiently big group of people is a terrible thing. Get yourself a small corner you enjoy and make that your online space. There are no good fandoms/commuinities, only good groups of friends and/or curated spaces.

[bestiesenpai]

Youtuber Sukuna pt3

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life! I never thought youtuber sukuna would be so popular, so thank you everyone for giving me encouragement to continue this lil series. This will be the final part, but who’s to say we can’t have an OVA episode?? I smell a beach episode...or maybe a trip to an onsen? Who knows!

Part one --- part two

This had to be the stupidest thing he’d ever done. It certainly felt like it. Scrolling on Pinterest was the last thing he wanted to do, in fact it was something he openly mocked in the past, but now per your advice, he was looking at thousands of photos of home decor.

Sukuna was hesitant to admit to you that he had no furniture in his home. After seeing how well decorated and lived in your home was, it only made his shame increase at being a grown man with foldable furniture. But you took it in stride and offered to help, even making him share a Pinterest board with you so the two of you could get inspiration for a shopping trip.

That’s how he found himself at IKEA on a bright and early Saturday morning. You’d begged him to let you come shopping with him, and Sukuna was a man unable to refuse any request you made of him.

“Ah, this is going to be so exciting!” You shouted, nearly running to the carts at the front of the store. You were clearly more excited than he was, your energy seemed to know no bounds as you bounced on your heels and waited for him to trudge to the front door.

“What’s so exciting about furniture?” He grumbled, subconsciously taking the cart from your hands. Pushing into the store, Sukuna felt like he had been transported to another world. With staged living quarters that looked more real than his own home, he was at a loss for words.

“Sukuna, c’mere!” You were already ten paces ahead, standing at the entrance to one said fake home. Coming upon it, Sukuna nearly gagged at the color palette. There were bright orange tufted couches with a blue area rug and more pillows than he had owned his whole life. With white accents and gunmetal colored lamps, it looked far too much for him.

“It’s ugly.” He said, not caring about the other people around you that seemed to enjoy it.

“Really?” Taking another look around, you shrugged your shoulders and took a step back. “You’re right, it doesn’t really fit your whole vibe.”

That was definitely correct. If Sukuna had to give a name to his personal style it would be ‘who the fuck cares as long as it works’. He wasn’t one to dwell on his looks for too long, just content grabbing clothes that were easily accessible and trendy, ones that he knew would help him fit in. And that habit had bled into his furniture choice as well.

“Okay, you seemed to pin a lot of pictures that look like this-” Leaning over, he watched you scroll past picture after picture of what almost looked like the same thing, a living room with dark colored couches, a white rug and dark colored walls, almost always with a metal or dark wooden coffee table.

“Yeah, it fits me.” Wandering through the store, Sukuna glanced at an all white room with a window frame encasing a faux view of a city lit up at night. “None of this shit.” He made a vague gesture to the room, and the one following it that looked similar.

“You don’t want any bright colors at all?”

“My hair’s already pink, what more do you want?” That made you snort and giggle, and in turn made Sukuna smile.

“Okay but you can’t just have all black furniture, it’ll make your house feel like a dungeon.” Your hand came to rest on the handle of the shopping cart, dangerously close to laying on top of his. “Promise we’ll get at least a little color today? Maybe a yellow, or a pink to match your hair.”

“S-sure.” Sukuna couldn’t look at anything except for your hand. Your pinky finger was just barely touching his, almost enough that Sukuna could slide his hand under yours and interlace your fingers together.

“Ooh, what about this for your bedroom?” And just like that, you were gone. Dashing off to a display on the wall for bed sheets. “You said you only have a plain white one, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How about this? This design is really trendy right now.” You were pointing to one that was a deep navy, white grid lines crossing over to make big squares.

“I like it.”

“Awesome! Now, do you have a queen or a king bed?”

After picking out the bed sheets, Sukuna slowly opened up more to the idea of shopping. He was able to recognize pieces he’d seen on Pinterest, picking them out as things he readily liked and would enjoy looking at in his house. He was even persuaded to get a few area rugs for different places in his house, and before he knew it you had piled the basket high with things.

“Ah, today was so much fun!” You sang, bouncing in your seat on the way home from IKEA.

“Now I just need to build all this shit.” Sukuna was amazed at how much you’d convinced him to buy. He had new furniture for his bedroom, a new couch was going to be delivered, a dining table and chairs and even a new desk and chair for his office setup in the corner of his living room.

“Lemme help!” You looked far too eager to help him build, and although Sukuna wanted to tell you no - he really didn’t want you to see how he was currently living - he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to have you in his house with him, working together on something.

“Alright. Let’s stop somewhere and get food though, I’m hungry.”

One quick fast food meal that Sukuna loathed later, you were carrying things up to his apartment. He refused to let you carry the heavy things even if he could really use the help with some of the oblong boxes. But he didn’t want to risk you getting hurt, so you carried the small things.

When everything was inside the house, Sukuna watched your reaction to his place. You hadn’t made a sound when you first arrived, you were probably too busy trying to bring everything in from his car.

“Sukuna…” Scanning his apartment, your eyes landed on his abysmal furniture.

“Yeah?” He screwed his eyes shut, dreading what you had to say.

“This is totally what I expected from you.” You laughed, unpacking some of the fake plants you made him buy. “It totally fits you.” Letting out the breath he’d been holding in, Sukuna grabbed one of the boxes containing his new desk.

“Let’s get started.”

If Sukuna thought cooking with you was hard, building furniture with you was the final boss level. He had you read the instructions while he laid all the pieces out, and when you let out a whine at how many steps there were, Sukuna could have died happily right then and there.

It was easy to build the furniture he bought, but it wasn’t easy to work with you. There was no problem with your actual work, but the fact that Sukuna had to be so close to you at times, nearly hugging you when he had to hold up a piece for you to put a few screws in, it was too much to handle.

He quickly banished you to work on another project. It was your fault he kept getting distracted and forgetting what step he was on, so the only solution was to work on separate things. Plus, watching you flit around his house, hearing you change the bed sheets and lay down a new mat in the bathroom made him feel like you were newlyweds decorating your first home together.

“It looks so good in here!” It was well past dark when you finished everything. It truly did look like a brand new space, and not just in the living room. The touches you’d added, with bright pillows, fake plants and some actual art on the walls, made Sukuna happy to be home. His place finally felt like a home and not just somewhere to crash at the end of the day.

“You did a great job picking shit out, I woulda never been able to do all this.” Putting his arm around your shoulder, he gave you a squeeze.

“Are you gonna do a house tour when the couch and table come?” A house tour? Why would he do that? Knitting his brows together, Sukuna sent you a look. “C’mon, you know what a house tour is! All the popular Youtubers do them.” You giggled, wiggling your eyebrows. “And aren’t you a popular Youtuber?”

“I-” Well, you had him beat there. His subscriber count was well into the millions at this point. “Okay, I’ll do one when the rest of the stuff comes.”

“Yes!” Bouncing up and down in joy, you clapped your hands together. “I’ll help you film, I know how bad you are at angles.”

“Hey! I’ve been getting better!”

In a week, you were back at his place, more excited than him to film this video. You’d helped prepare a little script should he need it, and you were fluffing all the pillows so they looked nice on camera.

“Let’s have an entryway shot, those always look so cool!”

“Whatever you say.” Sukuna was merely a puppet on your strings, maneuvering however you saw fit. He made his hands as steady as possible getting b-roll shots of everything in advance.

“If you forget what to say, remember I made a script!” With that final warning, you were standing at the entrance to his apartment and waving your hand. “Okay, start!”

“Hi people on the internet. This is my house tour that (Y/N) is making me do.”

“Shut up!” You laughed behind the camera, trying not to shake it.

“This is my kitchen and dining room, (Y/N) picked out the table and chairs for me.” Doing a sweep over the kitchen, he transitioned to the living room. “And this is the lounge room, where (Y/N) picked out the couch and rug, and my desk stuff over there.”

“Yeah, Sukuna had no rugs in his apartment before!”

“Mhmm.” Somehow Sukuna managed to not stumble over his words, easily recalling parts of the script you had written for him. Highlighting the fake plants and cheap art on the walls, the two of you stood in the bathroom together.

“Look, it’s us!” You waved to the camera in the mirror, nudging your shoulder with Sukuna. Suddenly, the image of getting ready in the morning with you or winding down after a long day together in the bath flashed before Sukunas eyes. What would it be like to come into the bathroom while you were in the shower and join you? Give you a shoulder massage under the hot running water, or to brush his teeth and tell you to hurry up and not waste water.

“And this is the bedroom.” Quickly exiting the bathroom, Sukuna hid his blush with his hand as he entered the room.

“Hold this.” Shoving the camera in his hands, you leapt onto the bed. “This is where I sleep!” Your laugh was easy and you rolled around his bed a few times, simply having fun wrinkling the sheets.

“Uh- w-wha-” Sukuna nearly dropped the camera in shock. Seeing you in his bed, even if it was just on top of the sheets fully clothed, made his heart stop. Gripping the camera hard in his suddenly sweaty hands, Sukuna nearly tossed it to the side and joined you.

“Just kidding!” You were already climbing out of bed as soon as that thought entered his head. “But isn’t this room pretty? I picked out most of the stuff in here too.” Just like that you were back to normal, talking about some random print on the wall that he’d ordered per your suggestion.

Needless to say, Sukuna had a hard time falling asleep that night, the image of you in his bed burned into his mind like it was the only thought he’d ever have again. His imagination was going wild, and he tossed and turned all night - even after relieving some tension.

With his new desk setup, Sukuna felt motivated to edit the video as fast as he could. What you said about improving his living quarters was true; now that his place looked nice, he felt nice in turn. He even left in the part where you jumped on his bed, adding a funny break in the video like you’d shown him.

‘IT’S CONFIRMED. IT’S CONFIRMED. THEY’RE DATING’

‘sirpohdjb my ship has sailed!!’

‘I come here to see why sukunax(Y/N) is trending and it’s this bullshit?? Y’all need to get a life’

Sukuna often felt like a fool when he was with you, and sometime after as well. Even from the first comment he left on your Instagram, he knew people shipped you together and wanted you to date. He felt embarrassed more times than not, but it seemed he never learned his lesson. That scene of you on his bed had gone viral and he regretted leaving it in.

But could you blame him? You made his head spin, most of the time leaving him incapable of doing anything else beside standing in his place looking stupid. It was hard to edit the videos you did together because reliving the footage made him dizzy all over again.

(Y/N): SUKUNA. ANSWER ME ITS URGENT

It was the middle of the day in the middle of the week and Sukuna had nothing better to do than laze around and do nothing. Except now, he was texting you back with his heart suddenly pounding.

Sukuna: what?! Is something wrong where are you??

So much adrenaline was coursing through his body that he had started to shake.

(Y/N): I just got a great idea, I need to know if you’ll do a video with me!

What the fuck.

“What the fuck?” Sukuna said out loud, staring at his phone in disbelief. This is what was so urgent? Nearly sending him into an early grave for a possible video?

Sukuna: what the fuck I thought it was serious

Sukuna: I thought you were in trouble

He wasn’t upset per say, but Sukuna was definitely annoyed.

(Y/N): sorry :( i didn’t mean to scare you

Sukuna: you did more than scare me

(Y/N): I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!

Now Sukuna felt bad and it wasn’t even his fault. In all the time you’d known each other, you never had a negative interaction. He waited five minutes for you to text something, but you didn’t and it was making him anxious all over again.

Sukuna: well tell me what the idea is

(Y/N): no, it’s okay it was a stupid idea anyway

It took you another five minutes to respond, and your answer made Sukuna groan.

Sukuna: you got me all worked up and you’re just gonna leave me hanging?

He had to rectify the situation somehow.

(Y/N): I just thought...of maybe doing your makeup for a video?

Sukuna: what

(Y/N): I told you it was stupid! Just forget it

Sukuna: shut up it’s not stupid

As typing bubbles appeared and then disappeared, Sukuna could just imagine the way your cheeks puffed out indignantly.

(Y/N): here’s a link to someone else who did it with her boyfriend, they had so much fun together!

(Y/N): let me know if you wanna do it, I think it could be a lot of fun…

Sukuna only needed to look at the thumbnail to know he would say yes. The two people on the screen were very close, with the girl nearly touching her boyfriend's face with her own. They had big smiles on their faces as well, and that enticed him more.

Sukuna: I’ll do it

(Y/N): really?? That’s awesome! Come over to my place on Friday, we’ll order pizza and make a day of it!

And that’s how Sukuna found himself in your filming room, stomach full of pizza with a disgustingly cute green frog headband keeping his hair back. He’d seen this room a hundred times in the backgrounds of your videos, but now he was actually here. There were even more plushies than appeared on camera and you had a humidifier going in the corner.

“Okay now stay still, I’m going to wipe a toner on your face.” He had no idea what that meant, watching you with curious eyes pick up a bottle from the table in front of you and dab the liquid onto a cotton pad. “Usually I use my hands to apply toner, but we wanna wipe the dust off.”

With a gentle hand, you held Sukuna by the chin and swiped the cotton across his face, it’s soft chemical scent wafting into his nose. It felt nice, having you apply toner and moisturizer on his face. The most he ever applied was sunscreen, but maybe he could convince you to do his skincare for him every day.

“So today, I chose this makeup look by Beyoncés makeup artist! It’s a really popular style called ‘soft glam’.” Sukuna nodded along with you like he understood what you meant, taking a glance at the picture on your phone before you showed it to the camera. “I think Sukuna would really fit this kind of look, he is a natural beauty afterall.”

“Shut up.” He snorted, a light flush heating his cheeks.

“It’s true! There’s so many comments under your house tour video saying how good you look with the new furniture.” You spoke about the new makeup you bought for the video as you applied the products. Sukuna tried to keep up with what you were doing and saying, but he couldn’t really contribute anything to the conversation about makeup.

“Tuck your lips in so you don’t get foundation in your mouth.”

“What?” He jerked away right as you lifted the small dish you had with what he assumed was foundation.

“I don’t think you want to eat makeup, do you?” You chuckled and pat him on the cheek. “Tuck your lips in.” Doing as you asked, Sukuna flinched when you gripped the back of his head. “Try not to move too much, I want it to be even.”

As you applied the foundation and subsequently the concealer and powder, Sukuna barely moved. In fact, he barely breathed. You had leaned in far closer than you’ve ever been to him, your breath lightly fanning over his face as you worked to smooth everything out.

The hand on the back of his head dipped down to rest at the base of his neck, your body coming to lean more onto him as time went by. You were speaking, Sukuna could hear it, but he wasn’t responding. The excuse was he didn’t want to mess you up, but in truth he couldn’t find any words to say.

“Look at you!” Holding up a mirror for him, you laughed at his shocked face. “How do you like it?”

“I look so flat.” Turning his head side to side, Sukuna lifted a hand to touch his face.

“Don’t touch it, you’ll mess it up!” Snatching his hand away, you held it tightly in your grasp. Sukuna was thankful for the layer of makeup he had on now, no one could see his blush.

“What’s next? This eyeshadow shit?” He picked up a product on a whim, opening it up and staring at it. “Why’s there only two colors? Why are both of them brown?”

“That’s contour, we’ll get to that! This is the eyeshadow!”

Putting eyeshadow on Sukuna was harder than both of you thought. Not used to the feeling of the brush, he twitched every time it was swiped across his eyelid. Through plenty of trial and error, and many times of you telling him to just take a deep breath, you got through it.

“I’m gonna have to cut out so much of you flinching.” You teased, checking the camera to make sure everything was still working.

“I don’t get how you can do this shit, it’s fucking awful.” All Sukuna wanted to do was rub his eyes and face until his skin went raw.

“We aren’t even at the worst part yet: eyeliner.” Taking a seat, you lifted up a simple black pen.

“Oh god.” Hanging his head, Sukuna said a quick prayer for his eyes before straightening up and taking a deep breath.

“Sukuna, I gotta ask you something.”

“What is it?” Cracking an eye open, you were looking at him with your lip caught between your teeth.

“Can I...I need to sit in your lap to do eyeliner.” Sukuna audibly and quite loudly gasped in shock, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. “When I help my friends with eyeliner I sit in their laps! It’s just easier that way!”

“I-I uhm- okay?” He eventually forced the word out, copying your movements and turning his chair to face yours. “What uh- what should I…?”

“Sit still.” Pulling your chair flush with his, you pushed Sukuna’s legs closed and scooted up his thighs until your butt was firmly seated on him. Wrapping an arm around his shoulder, you uncapped the eyeliner. “There, now I can get started.”

Sukuna was in so much shock, he didn’t move. Even when the eyeliner tickled the inner corner of his eye, even when you moved his hands to rest near your lower back so you wouldn’t slide off, even when you did the bottom lashline, he was frozen.

If this is what heaven looked like for him, he would gladly take it and never leave. Your face was so close, he could feel it even when his eyes were closed. The soft skin of your hand held his powdered cheek gently, keeping yourself steady as you drew the lines on his eyes.

“All done.” You whispered. Sukuna opened his eyes and made a noise in the back of his throat; your face was close enough that if he tried to focus too hard he’d go cross eyed. You weren’t paying attention to his reaction at all, too focused on making sure his eyes were even.

The rest of the time went by in a blur. You’d slid off his lap after that, diving right into putting more powders on his cheeks. Swiping thick gloss on his lips is what drew him out of his stupor and into another one as you once again held his chin, swiping the corner of his mouth with your thumb when you were done.

“Sukuna, you look so good!” You said with a slight whine, showing all angles of his face off to the camera before showing him. “You have to promise when you get rich and famous and become a global celebrity that you won’t forget about me.”

“Shut up, you know I won’t.” He said with a smirk, swiping the mirror from you. “(Y/N)...I look fucking hot.” Bursting into laughter, you wiped imaginary sweat off your brow.

“Well I guess I don’t have to ask how you like it!” Patting him on the back, you got up to stretch and check the camera one last time.

“Would you fuck me, ‘cause I’d fuck me.” Sukuna said to himself, striking a few poses in the mirror and for the camera. “Hey, you watching this video you better fucking share this with all your friends. Everyone needs to see how hot I am.”

“We should have ordered you some clothes, turned you into an Instagram baddie!” You teased from behind the camera.

“Please, I don’t need fancy clothes when I’m this sexy.” Running a hand through his hair, Sukuna pointed the mirror at you. “Be honest (Y/N), you wanna date me right now. I look so hot, I bet I’m gonna have thousands of DM’s.” Sukuna’s confidence was the highest it's ever been around you. For some reason, the makeup gave him more assurance.

“Well let me know when to schedule a date with you then, I’d love to grab dinner sometime.”

“I’ll have my assistant pencil you in.” He joked, looking back at himself in the mirror. Sitting back down, you ended the video and made Sukuna wave to the camera. Not turning off the lights you used to film, you made him snap several pictures with you.

“This video was so much fun, Sukuna, thank you!” Rocking back and forth in your seat, you had a demure look while you fiddled with your phone. “And I wasn’t joking about dinner. I really like you, Sukuna.” That made Sukuna stop in his tracks, nearly throwing the mirror down in shock as he turned to look at you.

“Huh?!”

“I-I mean- I mean I like hanging out with you!” Obviously embarrassed, you leaped from your seat and began turning the filming lights off, pointedly avoiding his gaze. Both yours and Sukunas faces were burning with embarrassment, awkwardly not looking at each other.

“(Y/N)...” Sukuna half stood from his chair, forcing himself to move despite how awkward he felt. “I-”

“Let’s wash off that makeup now, I bet it’s uncomfortable.” Keeping your eyes trained on the floor, you went to the door. “I’ll show you what to use in the bathroom.”

The tension in the air was thick after that, and it remained that way for a few days after. Sukuna knew what he heard, he saw how your face looked as you said you liked him, he could hear the sincerity in your voice. But it obviously wasn’t something you were ready to say, as evident as you not texting him as much as you usually did.

When the video went up, Sukuna immediately felt butterflies in his stomach all over again watching it. Reminded of how close you were to him made him ache to have you near him, and seeing you sitting on his lap had another feeling rising in his stomach, warming him up in an embarrassing way.

He patrolled the comments as usual, but there were no mean ones that he could yell at. All of them were screaming about how the video just confirms that the two of you are dating, and surprisingly they weren’t calling out him for looking like he was in love with you.

The comments teased you this time, keen longtime viewers of yours pointing out specific timestamps where you looked embarrassed or looked like you wanted to kiss him. Sukuna checked out every single one, liking the comment for showing him that what you said earlier wasn’t a mistake.

Ever since that day, it seemed like you were promoting on Instagram and Twitter a lot more. Sukuna already had notifications turned on for all your socials and there was a definite uptick in your content posted to those platforms.

There were more sponsored posts and polls posted asking your followers for style advice, and which beauty items they preferred more. Sukuna was happy to see you got an increase in brand deals from the video you did together, a video that had now easily reached five million views and counting. He congratulated you whenever he saw a sponsored post, sending you cute little emojis along with the praise.

All week you had been hinting that there was a big announcement coming, a major event in your life that you were so excited to share with everyone. Sukuna, along with all your other followers, ate up all the crumbs you left throughout the week. Many suspected you were going to go work for a designer label, while others assumed you’d announce a sudden marriage.

(Y/N): Sukuna, check Instagram!

You texted him in the evening on Friday, but he didn’t need the update. He was already on your page when the post was dropped, waiting impatiently for the picture to load.

“A TV show, huh?” As he read the promo photo, he smiled. Appearing on a TV show was a big opportunity for you, one that was sure to lead to many more. Your role wasn’t stated in the photo, but your promo picture was a professional one no doubt taken at a studio.

“Wait, what?” When Sukuna got to the caption, he took a pause. Why were you going on a dating show? He read the words over and over, hoping for a different outcome each time. But there was no denying you’d be going on a dating show.

Checking out the show's page, Sukuna let out a groan. All the male contestants were hot and not even he could deny it. Some had muscles like he did, others were more unconventionally attractive.

Sukuna: you’re going on a dating show?

It took him a while to text you back. In fact, it took nearly thirty minutes for him to text you. Sukuna had gone through all five stages of grief several times, coming back to being in denial over and over again.

Dragging his feet to his kitchen, he grabbed a bottle of wine that one of his rich clients at the gym gifted him. Popping the cork, he collapsed onto his couch and took a long drink from the bottle.

(Y/N): yeah, I’m super nervous!

Sukuna: I bet

Oh, did he fucking bet. He’d gone through all the male contestants' Instagram pages, trying to talk them down in an attempt to lessen the blow that he could potentially lose you to one of them. Why did he have to wait so long to confess to you? Now the chance was gone, possibly forever.

(Y/N): what do you think about the show? I was kind of scared to take the deal

You didn’t want to know how he really felt.

Sukuna: it’s a great opportunity, great for exposure and it’s a lot of money

(Y/N): that’s true!! I’ll have to treat you to dinner with my first TV check!

Just great, a chance for you to gush about whoever you met on the dating show. Taking another long drink from the bottle, Sukuna crumpled even more into his couch. Back were the stages of grief, each emotion washing over him until he mustered up the courage to do something about it.

“Hello?” You answered the phone, confused as to why Sukuna called you instead of replying to your messages.

“(Y/N).” Sukuna said your name firmly, honing in on a spot in the ceiling. Swallowing around a growing lump in his throat, Sukuna forced the next words out. “I like you. I-I really, really like you.”

“What?” He could hear you gasp over the phone.

“I know, what kind of asshole confesses to you when you’re about to go on a TV dating show?” He chuckled, taking a deep breath. “But it’s true. I wanna be your boyfriend, (Y/N). I know it’s too late to back out of the show but-”

“Sukuna-”

“No, let me say this. I know it’s too late to back out, and-”

“Sukuna!”

“And I don’t want to hold you back from finding someone better suited-”

“Sukuna!”

“Better suited for you than me. I’m just a dumb, muscled up chump that-”

“Sukuna I’m a stylist, not a contestant!” You were finally able to get a word in, face flushed from the sudden onslaught of emotions going through you. Sukuna was silent on the other end, mouth hanging open as he processed the words.

“Y-you’re a...a stylist? So you won’t be dating any of them?” He whispered after a few moments, the shock starting to wear off and being replaced with humiliation.

“Yeah, I’ll be on the styling team.” Your voice also dropped to a whisper, the weight of his words beginning to settle down on the both of you.

“Oh god.” Putting the bottle down, Sukuna slapped himself in the forehead. He had never felt like a bigger idiot than in this moment. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, just- just forget it.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to forget it. I...I want you to be my boyfriend too, Sukuna.” There was a pregnant pause, and you could practically hear Sukuna’s brain working overdrive.

“Let’s go out on a date!” He shouted, pushing himself off the couch and to a shaky stand. “I’m free whenever, let’s go on a date!” The alcohol was definitely affecting him more than he first thought, and Sukuna fell back down onto the couch.

“Really? Okay, how about tomorrow? That’s like the only day with good weather for the rest of the week.”

“I’ll pick you up at noon.”

Sleeping restlessly through the night, Sukuna woke up way earlier than his alarm. Taking an obscene amount of time getting ready, he was still early to your house. Taking a lap around the block, he went to a flower shop and bought you a handful of flowers.

“Hi.” Your voice was soft, almost meek as you entered his car.

“Hey. I got you these.” Handing you the flowers, Sukuna bit his lip nervously.

“That’s so sweet, thank you!” Gently hugging them to your chest, your nerves began to melt away and you smiled, making Sukuna smile as well.

Sukuna once again had you pick the cafe you were going to. This one was in a bustling downtown street, not in the middle of the countryside, and as you two walked down the street there were couples passing you left and right.

Snagging an outdoor seat, Sukuna went inside to order for you. This cafe, unlike the last, actually served coffee and Sukuna was quick to get a large cup of it. Buying a few croissants cutely decorated with various creams, he went back outside.

“Say, you’re really cute, why don’t we sit and chat for a bit?” An unknown man was standing near your table, and Sukuna caught the tail end of his sentence.

“N-no, I’m good.” Your eyes were glued to your lap, obviously uncomfortable with the attention you were receiving.

“Aw, really? A pretty face like yours shouldn’t be all alone!” The man had a sleazy grin on his face, visibly eyeing you up in a salacious manner. “My name is-”

“Baby, who’s this guy?” Sukuna had had enough. Stepping right up to the table, he nearly slammed the tray in his hands down on the table. Your head shot up, relief flashing across your face.

“Who are you?” The man scoffed, curling his lip in disgust.

“I’m their boyfriend. Who the fuck are you?” Puffing up his chest a little bit, Sukuna stared the man down.

“Boyfriend? They didn’t say anything about having a boyfriend.” The man attempted to look at you again, but Sukuna beat him to it and caught your eye instead.

“Geez baby, I know we had that fight before we came but I’m hurt! If I get rid of this creep, will you call me your boyfriend again?” Laying a heavy hand on the man's shoulder, Sukuna gave it a squeeze.

“Y-you’re always gonna be my boyfriend, dummy.”

“That just warms my heart!” Sighing loudly, Sukuna gave the man a not so subtle push away from the table. “Well, you heard ‘em. Get lost, you worthless sack of shit.” Grumbling, the man walked away and Sukuna took his rightful seat next to you.

“Thank you.” Immediately, you latched onto him, squeezing his arm in a tight hug as you pressed your face into his shoulder.

“It’s okay, I’m here.” Wrapping you up more tightly in a hug, Sukuna pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “I would have beat him up if you wanted. Men are fucking disgusting.”

“Sukuna, you are a man.” You laughed lightly.

“Exactly my point.” Rubbing a hand on your back, Sukuna picked up one of the croissants. “I hope you like these because I can already tell it’ll be too sweet for me.” You laughed again and sat up, keeping your face close to his.

“I have something sweet for you too, I hope you like it.”

“What is it?” Quirking a brow, Sukuna jumped when you planted your lips on his. The kiss didn’t last long and the taste of your lip balm and feel of your lips was permanently engraved into Sukunas brain.

“There.” Your cheeks were absolutely on fire, shame rolling off of you in waves at having your first kiss in a crowded cafe on a busy day in the city. It wasn’t even a particularly romantic setting, but something spurred you to do it.

“W-what the hell! You can’t just do that!” Sukuna gasped, his own cheeks burning a deep, scalding red. “You gotta warn a guy first!” His dramatics were drawing attention from the other patrons, making the situation even worse.

“Sshh, you’re being too loud!”

“Like I care! Kiss me again, I’m ready this time!” Grabbing you by the shoulders, Sukuna tried to kiss you.

“W-wait, there’s people watching!”

“I don’t give a fuck who’s watching!” Grabbing your chin, Sukuna kissed you much firmer than when you kissed him. It lasted longer as well, bordering on too long for what is accepted in public. “There.” Pulling away slightly out of breath, Sukuna sat back in his seat and took a sip of his coffee.

“You’re so embarrassing.” You whined, hiding your face in your hands and hitting Sukuna with your head.

“All I’m hearing is how great of a boyfriend I am.”

“No you’re not.” You countered, getting wrapped in a side hug by Sukuna.

“It’s debatable.” Picking up the croissant he dropped, Sukuna took a bite. “Hm, this is sweet but not as sweet as that kiss you gave me.”

“Sukuna!”

[fortheloveofwonderland]

Reid My Lips - Spencer Reid x fem! Reader

A/N - on the twelth and FINAL day of shipmas fortheloveofcriminalminds gave to me…Spencer x Reader Fluff! Hope you guys enjoyed them, I had a lot of fun writing these! Find my Shipmas masterlist here. Find my full masterlist here.

My taglists are open for Spencer x Reader and all works so let me know if you want to be added. Requests are also open.

Requested: Yes l No l Kind of ?

Idea came from @andiebeaword as I was struggling to come up with something that wasn't either angsty or smutty! - "What about one where they're dating, but haven't kissed yet, and every time reader tries, for some bizarre reason, Spencer keeps dodging them. reader thinks he's trying a subtle way to say he doesn't want to kiss when in reality, he just doesn't want reader to think he's a bad kisser" - Set circa s15, some spoilers for the last 2 episodes.

CW: none that I can think of! Just lusting after Spencer's lips. Some talks of Spencer's insecurites and lack of experience.

Plot: In which all the reader wants in the world is to feel Spencer's lips on hers.

WC: 2.4K

—————————————————————

Spencer Reid’s lips were the kind they would have written poetry about.

They were plump, sinfully so, the first time you’d met him several years ago when you joined the team it was the first thing you’d noticed about him. How it didn’t seem fair for him have had lips such as these bestowed upon him. He had the most kissable lips you’d ever seen in your life.

If you were a writer and not a profiler, you may well have tried to write a poem about them. But alas, a wordsmith you were not. So you had to make do with just staring at them every available opportunity you got.

When he’d finally plucked up the courage to ask you on a date after six years of working together you were thrilled to say the least. Finally, after all that time imaging what those lips would feel like, you might actually get to see for yourself.

For your first date Spencer took for you dinner at a fancy restaurant. Despite the fact you had known each other so long, the date was awkward.

Usually, you never struggled to find things to talk to Spencer about. Most of the time while the rest of the team were sleeping on the jet the two of you stayed up chatting aimlessly between you.

But somehow when the word date was used, it made everything uncomfortable between the two of you.

The night started as a long, drawn out silence but thankfully you both eased into it and by the time your main courses came you were able to chat a little more freely.

You’d had dinner together countless times over the years. But that was just as friends. Not as two people who were clearly attracted to one another even though deep down that’s what you’d always been.

Spencer walked you home after dinner. It was a mild night and you didn’t live too far from the restaurant so you thought the walk would be nice.

The first few blocks you fell back into that uncomfortable silence but thankfully you found your voices again.

Despite everything, you’d had a great time and you’d hoped Spencer had too.

As you stood awkwardly on the sidewalk outside your apartment you were desperate for him to kiss you. He wasn’t quite so shy and dorky as he had been when you first met so you’d thought he might make the first move.

He did not.

“Goodnight Y/N. I’ll see you Monday.” He offered you one of his shy waves.

No, this would not do. You’d been dreaming about those lips too long. It was time to do something about it.

You moved in close, your eyes closing as you neared his lips.

But what met your lips wasn’t his own. You felt prickly skin and your eyes shot open to see her had turned his head and your lips had landed on his stubble grazed face.

“Uhm…” you stepped back feeling incredibly uncomfortable. “Goodnight then I guess.”

You chalked it up to shyness. You guessed thirty plus years of insecurities couldn’t be washed away in a three month prison stint.

***

The next time an opportunity presented itself to steal a kiss from Spencer was a few weeks later.

You were out of town on a case and he’d invited you to his room to watch Doctor Who. You’d thought or maybe hoped it was just an excuse to get you alone in his room. You were surprised to say the least when he actually wanted to watch Doctor Who.

You sat side by side on his bed watching the small hotel TV. You dared to shuffle your hand closer until your fingers brushed and eventually you’d taken the plunge and entwined your fingers.

He didn’t seem to mind, he just gave your hand a firm squeeze as he held it.

About half way through the episode you decided to go for the kiss. You were desperate to feel those lips on yours and you hoped whatever awkwardness he felt on your date had since washed away.

You turned to face him, momentarily breathless at how beautiful he was.

“Spence,” you whispered prompting him to turn and face you.

He had a dopey half smile on those lips as he looked at you. You moved quickly, closing the space ready to feel those lips.

But once again you were met with his stubbly cheek.

You tried to tell yourself he was shy. That’s all it was. It’s not that he didn’t want to kiss you. It couldn’t be, right?

***

You’d started to think maybe Spencer had changed his mind about the two of you dating. It had been several weeks since your first date and although you’d been busy with back to back cases there had been time if he’d really wanted to take you out again.

It was nearly a month after your first date he finally asked you on a second. You’d jumped at the opportunity.

Spencer took you to the Smithsonian, you’d walked around hand in hand with Spencer telling you all kinds of facts and statistics the institution didn’t share.

You hung off his every word, mesmerised by the way his lips moved as he talked and wanting to feel them on yours with a white hot passion.

He took you for coffee after and you fell into comfortable conversation. But you couldn’t keep your eyes off those goddamn lips of his.

As you stepped out of the coffee shop hand in hand you made a quick move to place a chaste kiss on his lips as he was in the middle of telling you a story about his mom. You thought if you were fast enough he wouldn’t even see it coming and you could just get this awkward air out of the way.

You leant in fast, and as your lips were about to collide Spencer side stepped, turning to face the window of the coffee shop.

You stumbled, correcting yourself before you fell face first on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t know they had donuts! Now I want a donut.” He chuckled and suddenly he was heading back inside.

“Goddamnit Spencer.” You groaned under your breath.

By now you were starting to think he just didn’t like you. Why else would he keep dodging your attempts at kissing him?

You felt downtrodden. You felt insecure. Why on Earth had he asked you out if he didn’t want to kiss you?

***

Six dates in and all you’d done still was hold hands. You really didn’t get him. He kept asking you out but never seemed interested in doing anything other than hand holding.

You liked Spencer, a lot, but you were not willing to be in a relationship where there was no kind of intimacy.

But that was all pushed to the back of your mind when you and JJ found Spencer passed out in his apartment.

He’d been involved in an explosion thanks to the psychopath Everett Lynch. He was late for work the following day which was really unlike Spencer so you and JJ went to check on him. That’s when you’d found him.

While the rest of the team worked on finding Lynch, you stayed vigil at his bedside.

When he’d finally woken up tears streamed down your face and you’d be up like a shot.

“Oh my god Spence,” you sobbed. “I thought I was going to lose you.” You leant in to kiss his chapped lips.

He rolled his head to the side on the pillow, once again your lips meeting stubbly skin.

“I’m really thirsty.” He croaked, seemingly ignoring your actions.

You swallowed your pride with a sigh.

“I’ll get you some water Spence.” And with your tail between your legs you left the room in search of hydration.

***

After that you’d decided no more. You were fed up feeling a fool every time you tried to make a move on him only to be shot down.

So you decided you wouldn’t bother anymore.

Since he left hospital the two of you still hung out but it was less frequent as usual and the word date was never used again.

One night, it came to a head.

You were in Spencer’s apartment watching some foreign film which you were struggling to comprehend despite the subtitles.

Your mind was whirring, lost down a rabbit hole of thoughts of you and Spencer. You were so preoccupied in your own head you didn’t even notice when Spencer scooted closer to you or put his arm around your shoulders.

“Y/N?” He whispered your name, snapping you out of the abyss.

“Hmm?” You turned to face him.

His tongue glided over his bottom lip and his eyes were trained on your lips.

The next few seconds happened in slow motion. Spencer started edging closer to you, his eyes fluttering closed and his lips pursed.

And you turned your head to face the TV, allowing his lips to hit your cheek the way yours had to him so many times.

He made a strange noise that sounded halfway between a sigh and a groan. You tried to pretend you were focused on the TV. You felt his eyes on the side of your face and you tried to ignore it.

After a few minutes Spencer paused the film, the room falling silent. You swallowed a lump in your throat and slowly turned to face him.

“Why’d you stop the film?” you hoped your voice didn’t sound as shaky as you thought it did.

“I think we need to talk.” Spencer chewed his lip. “I think I need to explain why I’ve been so...weird.”

“Spencer, trust me when I say you being weird is not an unusual thing.” you tried to lighten the mood.

“Weirder than usual then.” he was fidgeting in his seat, wringing his hands together in his lap.

“I hadn’t noticed.” you lied.

“Yes you have.” he told you.

“Look Spence,” you sighed. “If you don’t want to kiss me I get it. But why would you ask me out if that’s not what you wanted?” the words spilled out of your mouth.

He nodded his understanding at your words, running one hand through his messy locks.

“I do want to kiss you Y/N.” his cheeks stained red with embarrassment. “I’ve always wanted to kiss you, since the first time I met you. Jeez, kissing is just the tip of the iceberg of things I want to do with you.” his blush deepened.

Your chest tightened at his words, a twinge passing between your legs.

“You uhm...you have a funny way of showing it.” your voice was breathy. You didn’t mean it to be.

“I know.” he nodded, gnawing his bottom lip. “I freaked myself out. I got in my head and I panicked and I didn’t know how to deal with that. So I dealt with it really, really badly and I’m sorry.”

“What were you freaking out about Spence?”

He sighed heavily, the blush still straining his cheeks.

“It took me six years to finally work up the courage to ask you out.” he laughed shyly. “But when I finally did, I was terrified I wouldn’t be good enough.”

Your face dropped, sadness in your eyes.

“Spencer,” you reached for him and took hold of his hand. It was sweating and shaking.

He shook his head sadly, telling you not to try and convince him otherwise.

“Y/N, I am not...not so great with women in case you’d never picked up on that.” he chuckled again, but again it was a shy sound. “I don’t ha-have...so much ex-experience.” he swallowed hard. “There have only been...a few...women. Not enough to make me an...ex-expert in any sense.” he swallowed again. “I just wanted to be...good...for you.”

“Oh Spencer,” you felt tears in your eyes. You had no idea he’d been going through this mental turmoil. “Spencer I don’t care. I’ve wanted you for six years. Trust me, there is no way in hell you will not be good enough. I am crazy about you Spence, and all I want in the whole right now is to kiss you. I have waited too long to know what those lips would-”

He cut you off when his lips suddenly crashed against yours.

You let out a small whimper as those plump lips of his finally kissed you. They felt better than your wildest imagination.

The whimper allowed Spencer to slide his tongue in your mouth. He held your face in his large hands, exploring your mouth with fervor.

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer to you.

It was without a doubt the single most magical experience of your life. Nothing could have prepared you for how good his kiss would be.

It sent goosebumps flaring across your skin, making your chest tighten with lust.

It made you wet between your legs.

Maybe you should take a writing class because these lips, this kiss, definitely deserved poems written about them.

Your whole body felt as though it were on fire, every nerve ending in your body tingling with desire.

When the kiss ended you both gasped for air, trying to satiate your now empty lungs.

Spencer’s cheeks stained red again as he waited for your reaction shyly.

“I hope that was o-ok.” He stuttered a little.

You couldn’t help the large smile that broke out across your face.

“Spencer Reid, that was more than ok. It was perfect.”

His blush deepened and he looked away from you briefly before finding your eyes once more.

“Good.” He swallowed. “Because there’s a lot more I want to do with you Y/N.”

His words made you shudder.

“Now?” You swallowed, feeling oddly nervous.

“Right now.” He nodded before taking your face in his hands and kissing you again.

He was going to show exactly what his lips could do. And those poems practically wrote themselves between the sheets.

—————————————————————

Taglist -

@muffin-cup

@andiebeaword

@mggsprettygirl

@measure-in-pain

@ptrs-prkrs

[ohworm-writes]

BNA: Brand New Animal Various Relationship Headcanons

bna masterlist

‼ First Date Headcanons ‼

Featuring: Shirou Ogami, Michiru Kagemori, Nazuna Hiwatashi, Marie Itami, Pinga

Warnings: spoilers for BNA!, minor death mention in Marie’s part, anxious shirou

a/n - again, i love BNA, so i couldn’t resist! you can see which are my favorites very clearly~ enjoy!

content below the cut!

shirou ogami

» !! walk + bookstore viewing !!

» shirou is a bit clueless when it comes to a first date

» even living a thousand years, he’s rarely had a real relationship

» he’ll search up first date ideas, i have no doubt about that

» he’s not really keen on a fancy dinner or movie or that

» he wants something relaxing, something you could do as friends too

» it’s his own insecurities coming in at full force, but it’s what makes him comfortable

» he decides for the first part of the date, he’ll take you out for a walk

» sure, it doesn’t sound all the special

» but remember, it’s Anima City we’re talking about

there’s always something to see

» something to do

» he starts right at your apartment, walking around with you

» he tries to strike up conversation, as nervous as he is about it

» he really does like you, but he’s not all that sure of how to show it

» he’s scared to even take your hand in his

» will it make you uncomfortable? will he be overstepping? what if you never want to go out with him again?!

» if you want that sort of stuff to happen, you are going to have to be the person to initiate it

» if you do initiate it, though, he’d never turn you down

» he’s the quiet type, but a fantastic listener!

» he loves to hear you talk about yourself, the things you love, everything!

» he’s awkward talking about himself

» how does he explain to you that he’s the silver wolf

» that’ll take him a while for him to tell

» maybe after a few more dates?

» anywho, your walking inevitable leads you to a small bookstore in the middle of the city

» it looks small from the outside, but the inside

» it’s a wonderland

» even if it seems like quite the find from a random stroll

» he’s had this all planned out

» he watches your face as you walk inside

» the way your eyes light up

» the way your grin reaches your eyes

» he’s enamored by it

» he’d let you pick out anything you want

» a huge book series? it’s as good as yours

» a single book? that’s no problem

» a weird snake shaped eraser you found at the front? why not!

» whatever makes you happy

» you don’t see it, but he has this smile full of adoration while he’s around you

» when you finally reach your home, and it’s late into the night, only then will he ask you for a second date

» he’s all blushy, but his words come out strong

“I enjoyed today with you, more than I could have imagined. Would you want to do this again soon?”

michiru kagemori

» !! theme park !!

» michiru is a sweetheart, we know this

» so her bringing you to a theme park on your first date doesn’t seem all too out of character for her

» she’d probably meet you there, seeing as he doesn’t have a vehicle of her own

» and she doesn’t think you want to hang onto her for dear life as she flies the two of you over there

» so meeting up seemed like the more… plausible option

» tons of games!

» no matter what the game is, she’ll play every. single. one.

» those strength games?

» she may have won the top prize for it

» how? she’ll never tell

» loves the co-op games though, they’re her favorite

» very competitive

» it’s lighthearted, of course, but she will try and sabotage you

» she tries to win you tons of stuffed animals

» Y/n: Michiru, my arms are full, I can’t hold any more plushies-

» Michiru: wait Y/n look! that stand has a huge duck plush! i’m winning that for you

» Y/n: Michiru no-

» in all seriousness, she wants to make a lasting impression

» she goes with you on every ride that you want to go on

» the scariest roller coaster there?

» sure! just know she’ll deny you seeing her shaking like a leaf in line for it

» if you want to go on more mellow rides?

» she’s all for it! whatever you want

» towards the end of the night, she goes on the Ferris Wheel with you

» cliché? maybe so

» but it doesn’t matter to her

» she really likes you, and she wants you to know

» she won’t kiss you, she doesn’t want to force you into anything

» but she will thank you for spending your night with her

“If you want, can we do this again? I’d really really like to.”

nazuna hiwatashi

» !! movie !!

» oh my sweet, sweet girl

» she was so lost on what to do

» 1. you accepted her date

» why? how? she’s not complaining, not in the slightest, but- you? her? why!

» 2. she has no clue what to do for a first date

» she had to search up “first date ideas”

» but in all seriousness, she’s very excited for your night together

» she didn’t want to go out to a theater, so she opted to bring you to her place to watch something

» she bought everything you could ask for

» ice-cream? check

» drinks? check

» popcorn? she’s bought the packets and the stove-top brand

» she’s going all out for your night together

» she has quite the collection, so she’d let you pick out whatever you like

» once the movie is picked, it’s time to get comfy!

» she has so many pillows and blankets

» she not only are some of them placed meticulously around the area in front of the TV, giving you both a comfy space to watch

» but she also has extras in case you get cold or want more comfort! 

» she’s very adamant about giving you your needed space

» she doesn’t want to overstep

» butttt, if she can, she’ll lean up against you and watch the said movie with you

» you both give commentary on the movie as well

» critiquing it, the actors, the scenes, all of it

» it adds for some playful banter between the two of you

» Nazuna: i think the actor could have shown more emotion during the scene, you know?

» Y/n: Nazuna, he was playing a dead man. i don’t think he’d be able to show emotion

» Nazuna: well- still!

» when your night of watching films is over, she’ll bring you home

» it’s a lot more comfortable, especially when you tell her how good of a time you had

“Thank you for being with me tonight, Y/n. If it’s okay, maybe we can do this again?”

marie itami

» !! haunted location + ice cream !!

» cocky little thing, she is

» while she was surprised you actually accepted her offer, she doesn’t seem like it whatsoever

» she’s very confident, dripping with it

» so, why not impress you with something scary

» she’d found out this warehouse by the docks was actually the death site of several people

» and she also heard there had been ghost sightings, so she took to first chance to take you there

» she may seem all cocky and full of herself, but if something even mildly scary happens

» she’s out of there

» you don’t know that though

» she uses her phone’s flashlight to look around, you by her side

» if you’re scared, she’ll tease you oh-so much about it

» in a loving way

» honestly, no matter what you think of the situation, she’ll tease you

» Y/n, unfazed by the whole situation: are you alright Marie?

» Marie: are you asking me because you’re scared? come on Y/n, you know i’ll protect you~

» queue a broom falling down in the background, Marie screaming and running out of there with you

» after you both leave, she still tries to play off the whole situation

» she leads you to a small ice cream stand nearby

» she sounds annoyed when she pays for you, but she thinks it’s so worth it

» you won’t see it, she’s sly, but she’s staring at you the whole time

“So, Y/n, you free to do this again Saturday?”

pingua

» !! diner + dancing in the park !!

» pinga, the gentleman as ever, makes your first date classy

» he takes you to a small, family owned diner in the city

» the place itself is cozy, warm, welcoming

» he knows all the workers there

» he gets a booth for the two of you to sit at near a large window

» he spends a lot of the date admiring you

» the way your eyes light up as you talk about something you’re passionate about

» the way your cheeks flush when he compliments you

» the way your eyes are on him so intently when he talks

» he adores it

» speaking of…

» lots, and i mean lots of flirting and compliments from him

» he loves teasing you

» if you bite back, he’ll seem unfazed

» but he finds it awfully attractive

» his idea of a first date is really getting to know the other person

» their likes, dislikes

» the things that make them double over laughing

» the things that make them tick

» everything and anything

» of course, he pays for your food

» there’s no room for arguing with him

» Y/n: Pinga, please let me at least pay for this all

» Pinga: i’ll have no such thing. come on Y/n, dear, allow me

» he’s so nice about it, you can’t even tell him no

» once your dinner is over, he’ll hold your hand and lead you away from the diner to the park nearby

» [ a/n - i like to imagine this is the one in episode 6 where michiru and nazuna have their argument ]

» it’s late, the path is only visible from the streetlamps overhead

» he’d hold your hand tighter, not too tight, and slowly bring you into a slow dance

» the stars are barely visible in the city, but their still there

» he’s so elegant when he dances too

» light on his feet, full of passion

» he’s falling for you

“You know my dear, if you’d allow me, I’d love to do this again sometime with you.”

[sanstropfremir]

we're back baby!!!

it's queendom 2 time!!

i was debating whether or not i wanted to start my review series with the intro stages or just straight in with the main episodes, but i figured that i started with the dance performance film for kingdom so i might as well just get going. also it might be nice to have a reference back to the very beginning when we get to the end. idk it never hurts to plan ahead. this isn't going to be super long because i need to exercise some restraint, but i'm going to note a few things that stood out for me for each of the stages and then when the show finally kicks off on the 31st we'll get into the proper reviews with all the formatting and the whole kit and caboodle.

ordering this in order of personal faves because they split it up over two days for some reason:

hyolyn

HELL FUCKIN YEA!!!! perfect example of understanding scale and how to use lighting and simple effects to get the best dramatics. keeping to very simple projections and block lighting keeps the focus tight on her, so when it draws out to the full stage you get the full oomf of all that space. she's the only person who used the stage architecture (which is cool as shit, hello!) to her advantage; all those angled lines draw right into the centre and right to her, which is exactly what you want when you're the soloist.

remember how i always bitch about people wearing all black on stage? well this is how you do all black RIGHT. there are two very different variations in texture and both are reflective, so by way of controlling the lighting you can control how much of her is illuminated very easily and you can still easily see her limbs when necessary. plus you get two very different eye effects with the bedazzling and the shininess of the faux leather, so it's always interesting to look at

brave girls

i said that they might not always be the most conceptually interesting group yesterday and brave girls said 'well fuck you'! love to be wrong, and love that they went for something that was quite thematicaly different from the rest of the groups. love the suits, the choreo isn't complicated but it had a good amount of interesting movements and although they kept the space small because there's only four of them, the big incandescent bulb panels throw so much bounce in the atmospheric haze that it lit up that black space to make it feel so much bigger. plus i liked that they had a fun geometric opening 'frame' and that they kept it all on the steadicam in one take, as that also helped constrain the focus. very neat and tidy, no unnecessary bells and whistles, very similar to hyolyn in that they showed a very strong understanding of how to use all the design elements in their favour.

wjsn

i'm not gonna lie, it's absolutely fucking HILARIOUS to me that three of these groups are astronomy themed. y'all thought having the three 'z' groups in kingdom was bad, this is so much funnier. did mnet purposefully pick the three groups with space concepts? idk. regardless, i really liked wjsn's stage. good use of depth with the projections and i liked the idea of the costume change, i just wish they had made the transition a little bit more seamless. that type of costume 'transformation' is super common (it's how disney does all their dress transformations for their stage shows), but the key with the tearaway upper is that you have to misdirect from the physical tearaway in order to actually make it look magical, and there's a very obvious telegraph from the girl who's centre shot just before the wide cut. potentially it could have been an editing issue, since they had the right idea with hiding behind a smoke burst, but it didn't really clear for me though. great stage otherwise.

loona

i'm not entirely sure what this was supposed to be, honestly. my initial guess from the costumes (very stereotypical contemp style) and the thick ground fog was that the intent was to pitch the stage as more focused on their dancing, but if that was the intent the dancing was not up to par. i also do not know what the reason was for the state/stage change in the middle? literally nothing changed other than the fog disappearing and that would have very quickly dissipated with movement, so...what was the point? was it so they could 'kick' the camera just for the hell of it? usually a camera cover like that has a specific reason (like in mx's rush hour) so when there isn't one the gesture feels very empty. i also wish they hadn't been in all white because the exposure is so blown out (and mnet films on fucking potatoes) that it's hard to tell what's happening, and especially so when the fog is thrown in the mix. i do really like that they stuck to a very narrow blue/purple colour palette and i loved the projections in the back half, but that might just be my love of celestial illustrations talking.

kep1er

personally i'm not a fan of cheedleader/bandleader type things and i'm doubly not a fan of the whole 'we are the queens/kings' thing groups on these shows do and i'm triply not a fan of constant group name saying IN the songs itself. they've already got sashes with the group name embroidered on, it's not necessary and the combo of everything pushed this into obnoxious territory for me. it also doesn't help that they blew the lights and projections way crazy for no real reason other than visual noise. i would have liked to see the choreography better because the girls are fairly good dancers, but there was some really weird camerawork happening here that was not very flattering to the stage as a whole and made some sequences look very awkward, which i doubt they actually are.

viviz

idk who told these girls they can vogue but please can we not. serving empty plates. i appreciate that they made the effort and actually had a bit of set design to go for the club vibes with the disco ball and dry ice speaker, and i much prefer the lighting here to kepler's, but the way the projections are used made the space seem very small and like they didn't know what to do with it, which is exactly the opposite of how brave girls used the same sized space. also not sure what was up with the spirit halloween font, but that's not the font i would have chosen for a club type vibe.

---

final thoughts

this is about what i expected the shakedown to be in terms of an initial ranking. hyolyn and brave girls' experience definitely shone through and i was pleasantly surprised by how well constructed their stages were design-wise, which has my hopes up that the both of them have good performance directors on their side. also very promising that the wjsn team at least consulted with someone who has theatre knowledge; that also bodes well for their stages in the future. i know for a fact i'm going to have trouble telling all the space girls apart, especially if they stick to their concept(s), because all three groups are huge and well over my threshold of number of people on stage, so that's gonna be an uphill battle on my end. also hoping praying begging fingers crossed that this corner/triangle stage is the permanent setup for the rest of the performances, because it's a significantly more managable size than the kingdom stage and it doesn't have all that weird architecture that didn't make any sense. all in all, not a bad start!

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press: Elizabeth Olsen and Jurnee Smollett Compare Notes on Genre-Blending Acting and Advocating for Performers on Set

VARIETY: Neither Elizabeth Olsen nor Jurnee Smollett are strangers to having to really stretch their imaginations to dive into complex characters and even more complicated worlds.

Both have superhero films on their résumés: Smollett portrayed Black Canary in DC’s “Birds of Prey,” while Olsen stepped into Wanda Maximoff aka the Scarlet Witch’s shoes for Marvel’s “Avengers” franchise and then some — including Disney Plus’ first Marvel series, “WandaVision.” They are both now Emmy-nominated for projects that tasked them with jumping through time, blending genres and telling epic love stories (Olsen with “WandaVision,” Smollett with HBO’s “Lovecraft Country”). And, even though they are up in different categories (Olsen in lead limited series/TV movie actress; Smollett in lead drama actress), both of these shows are one-season wonders, leaving the performers and their audiences wanting more.

Olsen and Smollett dissected all that of when Variety brought them together post-nominations to talk about their celebrated roles and surreal playgrounds.

You both had a lot of magical or otherwise surreal elements to interact with on your shows. What did you actually have in front of you to react to on set?

Jurnee Smollett: We were very fortunate on “Lovecraft Country” because the whole VFX team worked so hard to create an atmosphere that was also practical in our space. I remember on Episode 3, the exorcism scene, we shot it over a course of three days and, while there was not a man in real life with a baby head on him, you’ve got the wind machines and the pictures are blowing and all the special effects makeup is being touched up. Atticus [Jonathan Majors] has pretty much turned into a rabid dog and I’m doing this spell with my ancestors and whether they were shooting behind us or shooting the elements, we were at our max capacity regardless because that’s just how we approach the craft. It was such a big sequence to shoot that that’s when the actor in you has to advocate for your instrument. I did go to the director and say, “Can you jump in and cross shoot Jonathan and I?” As an actor it is our job to shoot however many takes, however many angles you need, but then it is also our job to advocate for yourselves. And I love playing in this space because you get to use your imagination you get to go to crazy places. Because even while the practical elements are there; you get to go to crazy places. But I was grateful for the practical elements because it’s just so much easier.

Elizabeth Olsen: Did they have pre-viz so you knew what some of the supernatural elements looked like?

Smollett: With the Shoggoths they not only had a pre-viz for us, but for some of the scenes they had massive sculptures, like a dude standing there in a green suit with a Shoggoth head. The pilot we didn’t have this puppet, but by Episode 8, maybe we got more of a budget or something, but eventually we did get a puppet — which was really cool because you could see, “This is the moment his mouth is opening.” But also, Misha [Green], our showrunner, she just wants more blood, more dirt. She’d try to get them to blow spittle at us.

Olsen: That’s so gross!

Smollett: This concoction of Shoggoth spit, throwing it in front of this wind machine. I find the more practical stuff we have to work with, it just helps so much. And then there were the moments where it’s like, “No it’s just a green tennis ball and an X, and go.” How about you?

Olsen: For all those little things in the air and stuff in the ’50s, it was really important to our director [Matt Shakman] that we did everything ala “Bewitched.” It was all camera tricks, it was all wires. Our head of special effects had a lineage of a father who [did] special effects before him, and so puppetry and wire work and stuff like that were things that were already in his vocabulary, but we would have our special effect guys who are used to blowing things up and putting things on fire just balancing and making sure things aren’t swinging but they have to move. Even in the ’70s when she’s pregnant and everything’s in chaos, we really had a picture on the wall going in circles; they just figured out things with magnets.

When we were filming the finale, it was during COVID, during the fires last summer, and we shot Kathryn [Hahn’s] side at the beginning of the episode when she has my boys with her magic — we had to shoot them out because you always have to shoot the side with the kid out and also Kathryn was doing wires for the first time and of course it was with a corset and it was really hot and really bad air quality and so she had to be sent home by the medic at the end of the day. And so, on my side we were running out of days, and I think we had 35 minutes to shoot my side and my reactions to all of that, and there’s quite a bit of back and forth and throwing myself to the ground and hitting a different mark that will then stitch with the stunt double being pulled. I did a weird one-woman show sans kids, sans Kathryn. Our stand-ins were such a huge part of our show and I was so grateful to have them they’re reading lines with me, and our director, Matt Shakman, was like, “If you feel like you can’t do this, we’ll just do this tomorrow.” That gave an adrenaline rush to me and it just became, “I’m just going to do it.” There’s a lot of fear when you’re like, “Oh I don’t have the elements and I am on my own, literally.” But I’ve had to do this before and I’m just scared to do it because I feel stupid. But I already look kind of stupid — I’m shooting things out of my hands — so why don’t I just lean into it as full as possible and just do it and find it in some core, guttural space of desperation? That day was bizarre, but I was actually very happy that I didn’t put it off. I feel like sometimes as actors when there are things that make us nervous it’s like, “Oh we don’t have enough time to explore so let’s do it the next day if we can,” and then you’re in your head all night about it. And so, it’s nice to just do it, even if it feels silly.

Smollett: I’d imagine surrendering and using the fear and all that that you were feeling probably served you so well in it.

Olsen: And don’t you feel that, though? When you feel unsupported you just want to break down in tears and you’re not supposed to break down in tears or you’re not supposed to have those it’s those feelings in the moment, but there are other times where it is really useful and there’s something freeing about channeling it in some way.

Smollett: Yeah and it’s that word you just used: freeing. Being able to surrender — leap and the net will appear. And you’re right, if you would have gone home, you probably would have come back the next day and you would have overthought it. There’s something about using the adrenaline in that moment that I don’t think you can really teach an actor to do; it’s just experience. Because we go and we prep and we do all these things, and then you get to the set and there’s one distraction, two distractions, and those are the elements that just through experience you’ve learned to use.

But I have to say, when I was little, I used to go to sleep every night watching Nick at Nite and “Bewitched” was one of my favorite shows. I did not expect you guys, at all, to go to land of “Bewitched.”

Olsen: I didn’t either. I’m so grateful to it. I felt like I like forgot my body as an actor. You’re a very physical actor, so I feel like you probably don’t have that experience because you just seem so connected and free whether it’s on stage or doing action. And I really felt disconnected from my body until “WandaVision.” I was like, “Right, I have posture; I can walk; I have legs — all of these things are going to be telling the story and it’s period and so I get to move differently.” It’s been a while since I needed to create quite a different character, and it felt so good to wake up my body to the full character work.

Just watching you in the first episode on stage, I was like, “God damn, I want to feel that free on stage with a song and with an audience.” I’m a self-conscious actor when it comes to extras and things like that. There’s something about it where the crew’s the family, and with extras, I feel so vulnerable. And you seemed so at ease and in control and confident. It made you understand her fierceness and how fearless she was.

Smollett: Thank you so much! It’s so interesting that you point that out because, for me, singing in front of people terrifies me. It truly is one of the things that terrifies me the most. The thing about Misha’s writing is, she finds a way to teach you so much about a character in such a small amount of time. And in that first sequence we learn so much about Leti, from that fearlessness you talk about, the ease that she has in herself and in her person, but then you learn so much about her hypocrisy and the contrasting ideas that are at play inside. She’s a very complex one. In the scene with her sister where she’s talking about having dreams of pioneering into an all-white neighborhood in 1955, but she can’t afford to may for socks. [Laughs.] She didn’t come to her mother’s funeral, and yet she’s here yearning for some sort of family connection. And so, I just remember reading that and feeling so drawn to her and feeling like it’s a side of myself that I needed to unearth — there’s a Leti in me that I desired to actually be, but sometimes am not. And it’s interesting because through Leti, she really forced me to do so many things that I hadn’t done before and really become more fearless, become more unbound. It was just such a very cathartic experience for me.

Olsen: I felt that way with getting to do this sitcom comedy part. I felt like I was touching my childhood version of myself who was a ham doing children’s musical theater, who just who just like played for the laughs or whatever — that part that I don’t access at all, really, when filming. And Kathryn Hahn was such a force and Paul Bettany raised to the challenge, as well, of these comedic performances that were really physically funny. I started to get more comfortable — in the ’60s, ’70s, really got comfortable — and it was so much fun to touch that child that maybe was told too many times, “Oh, you’re such a ham” or you just felt like your big personality as a kid was not OK or wasn’t as appropriate. And so, getting to play with that was really freeing and very fun. As you were saying, there’s a release I needed to have, and through the comedy I was able to have it.

How did this sense of empowerment affect how you carried your own characters’ power? Was there something your character that inspired you to advocate for yourself or did advocating behind-the-scenes inform in-world behavior?

Olsen: I felt very lucky coming into this, because this is a world I know. And so, where my voice of advocacy came in was for actors who are coming into the world — like Teyonah [Parris], wanting to make sure that she had everything that she needed to understand where her character was going because this was a character that’s going to continue [and] if she had everything she needed for stunts. And then similarly with Kathryn, she didn’t realize there was someone who she could use to teach her hand gestures for her magic. And so, she was feeling nervous and lost, like, “How do I do this thing?” And I was like, “Oh, how do you not have that information!?” And then having a conversation with whom you need to on the crew up top and figure out how to keep everyone else feeling like they had everything they needed. And luckily, because this was a show with characters that Paul and I had before, the pieces came together and it was a situation where your voice is welcomed and heard.

From “Sorry For Your Loss,” the TV show I did with Facebook, I now have a producer voice that I can’t shut up. I now just need to talk to ADs a lot, and I need to talk to line producers a lot. I realize that I like having — especially if I’m No. 1 on the call sheet; if I’m a primary part — all of the information so I can understand why decisions that seem weird are happening, or else I’m going to get in my head about, “Why are we doing this this way? I just let people know that off the bat now because it makes me less of a control freak, having information. And it is a team effort and I think the actor’s value has changed in that in that respect. There’s a lot more opportunity for women to be vocal now, and so I’m just really seizing that opportunity.

Smollett: It was a very personal growing experience for me. It was time of transition [and] I’m still going through that transition in my life. In order to truly surrender and do the text justice, there was so much I had to bring to the altar every day to sacrifice. I remember talking to Jonathan about that, and he would refer to it as allowing your heart to break and hoping that the Holy Spirit would put it back together. She was essentially a woman trying to navigate her womanhood but she was never actually allowed to have a childhood. She was habitually abandoned by her mother and didn’t know her father and there’s something in that parental-daughter split that I found myself really relating to. Oddly enough like Leti, I was estranged from my father for years. He eventually passed away, really before there was that healing and so, oh man, it brought up so much shit with Leti. How does she see the world? She sees the world through the eyes of an abandoned child. With Leti, that made her overcompensate; with Jurnee, it made me shrink a lot. When you talk about that artist child, those of us who have been in this business for so long, you take on all the sensors. And I found myself just trying to love her a little more. One of the things I admired so much about Leti is this desire to love herself — this real desire to own herself unapologetically in a world that told her she was too Black and female, to exist in her entirety. It’s still a transition that I’m in, but I definitely feel so grateful to have been able to walk through some of that and navigate through some of that with Leti. But that’s, I think, the blessing and the curse of being an artist. You’ve got to be willing to bring your whole mind, body and spirit to it; nothing’s off limits.

Jurnee, the last time you spoke with Variety we were all assuming you’d get to return to this character, but now that HBO has said it’s not being renewed, do you have unfinished business with her?

Smollett: It’s no secret I’m heartbroken. I loved Leti and of course would have loved to continue playing her. But I am so incredibly proud of the work that we all created together — it feels so special and unique — and I am finding peace in that. We’re artists and there’s an endless well that dwells inside us— and there’s so much that’s out of our control. And I think I’ve done this long enough and I’ve experienced enough heartbreaks to know you don’t get attached to the results too much; you just try to stay in a moment. And I feel just so proud and blessed to have been chosen to go on this ride with these collaborators, so I am more so in the place of gratitude than loss.

On the other end of the spectrum, “WandaVision” was a limited series but Wanda Maximoff is a character you have been coming back to for years, Elizabeth. How do you approach that longevity — the changes in her, the changes in you and the interest in revisiting her at all?

Olsen: I’m 32 and I was 25 — so seven years ago — when I did the first one. There’s so much change that I’ve had, even as an actor and how I approach work and, I think, honor work so much more in the last five years, four years of my life. [Jurnee’s film] “Birds of Prey” feels like such a female-empowered thing, so I feel there’s a really incredible energy to beginning it, but then with me you hear people make comments about Marvel movies and it affects your own process. “WandaVision” really shook that up for me and made me reinvest.

Smollett: I so want to know your process with that because the comic book space was new for me. I’d been a fan; I’d seen all your movies and the other movies. How did you navigate all of those voices? Because they can be very loud.

Olsen: Luckily and also frustratingly my character was always this emotional anchor to a piece of the story. It was like the heart, if there’s a heart. Paul and I were the only romance that was really fleshed out in those movies. And so I just treated it like I would anything. And then, we have a really fun time filming “Avengers” And so it’s really goofy and the Russos are great. And so we, it feels light-hearted, and it feels like we have the last laugh at the end of the day. But when it comes to the reinvesting, that’s the whole mind game, right? Because you just hope that it continues to have this quality control, but the more the more things get made, you’re worried about that. Especially because I did a show on Facebook that was scripted, and I didn’t love the way they handled it. And it was hard. And so second season, we went back and we literally, as a team of producers, had meetings with people who ran Facebook Watch about where we thought they could improve. We had a whole presentation for them. And then eventually, they were like, “We’re not doing scripted anymore.” And so I didn’t have the greatest experience being a part of the launch of another streaming service. And so, the Disney Plus part made me nervous and then bringing these characters that are so big to television made me nervous. But Kevin Fiege explained to us that that they were not going to cut corners, and they’re going to try and create the same attention to detail, and they did. And I think it was really important for them to have that care for these first three shows that they were putting out because it was defining a new thing for them. And so, we were taken care of.

I think more for me with this with the reinvestment moving forward, I never had a six-movie or nine-movie thing; it was always two or three at a time — those were my contracts. And so, it’s always a really conscious decision. I wrapped “WandaVision” on a Wednesday and flew to London on a Friday to continue playing this part [in “Doctor Strange 2”]. I could have used getting out of the mindset, though, because they were totally different utilizations of the character and people would have had more time to understand “WandaVision” had we not just wrapped. And so there’s just a lot of, “We covered this in ‘WandaVision…’” It’s bigger than me, there’s lots of threads that are continuing on after me that I’m not aware of, and so it’s always about, “What can I get from this journey with this character that maybe I haven’t tapped into yet with her?” That’s where I keep approaching things from, so that I feel like I have some sort of strap-hang — that I can know that there’s going to be growth of some kind, even though it all maybe looks the same to other people. There is that conscious decision to learn a new element of this woman, or even of myself as an actor — something that I want to explore that I can bring to it.

Your passion for acting is apparent and you both produce as well. What about directing?

Smollett: I would love to one day. I find myself currently being incredibly excited about producing and ushering new voices and excited voices. I don’t know that I would want to direct myself — that’s a whole other skill. I remember watching Denzel Washington, who directed me in “Great Debaters” but he was also in it, and at that point he had such a command of his instrument that he was able to do that. But it’s a lot. And I remember him telling me, before directing himself, he went and made himself watch all his films just so that he could stomach this idea of watching himself in the editing room. And so, I love the idea of storytelling; I’m obsessed with just telling stories, but I don’t know that I would self-direct.

Olsen: I find myself still loving producing so much because I love asking questions and poking holes and thinking about reorganizing of storylines, things that I feel maybe need more structure. I loved writing essays in school so much; it was like something that I found creative because it was about putting so many different sources into a braid that could maybe create this larger conversation or thought at the end. And so, that’s how I look at scripts. That’s really satisfying enough for me, to play that role. I think one day I’ll think about it more honestly, what it what it would mean to be a director. I fear that if I were to do it anytime soon, I wouldn’t have the tools that I would want. I do ask lots of lens-y questions because I’ve really only been working for 11 years and only recently have I tried to really understand the art of what lenses to choose and why and what it makes an audience feel based on what you’re choosing. I want to have a better, more holistic understanding of [that] before attempting [directing] because I do think it’s such an art and just because I understand the structuring of a story or how a set works, I want to be able to provide the the image in my head. I don’t know if I have that skill yet, but I am curious about feeding it and nurturing that.

Press: Elizabeth Olsen and Jurnee Smollett Compare Notes on Genre-Blending Acting and Advocating for Performers on Set was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[safertokiss]

There’s No One Else

A/N: Heyooo! I loved this request so of course I had to write something for it. It’s my first MGG fic, but it was super fun to write and I plan to do more fics for his other roles. Thanks for the support and all the kind words!<3 P.S. I decided to try out 2nd person in this one.

Request: “Can you do an angst/smut with Matthew but it's the set of criminal minds and they are shooting a scene and reader likes Matthew but she is keeping it a secret? sorry if that didn't make any sense. I love your writing!!” ( @victomizedbyreginageorge )

Pairing: MATTHEW GRAY GUBLERx FEM! READER

Category: SMUT, slight angst, and of course fluff

Word Count: 5.2k

ENJOY!:)

~~~

MASTERLIST

~~~

Ever since you were a child, you knew that you were destined to be on the set of a production studio, surrounded by the biggest stars the business had to offer. Granted, you had always assumed you’d be the one in front of the camera rather than behind, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers in this world.

 It’s not that you disliked being Khalia Dark’s assistant. She was a world renown celebrity, loved by all who were graced with her presence, from afar that is. Anyone who had the “honor” to get up close and personal with her, yourself included, knew she wasn’t the sweetest of the bunch. If you were to use your own words, she was a mythic bitch. Adored by millions, envied by more, which was pretty much the case for all of the A-listers out here anyway. Although you could do without the woman being in your vicinity, you didn’t mind being her servant most of the time.

More often than not you were certain she forgot about your existence all together, which usually gave you a chance to breathe for a bit. While your job brought about many positives for yourself, for example the extensive knowledge of posh coffees that you would have memorized for life, the highlight of the endeavor was without a doubt the exclusive access to the extravagant movie and TV sets that the queen bee happened to be appearing in each given week. Today, much to your excitement, was one of those days. Usually movies were more her forte so it was always a nice, refreshing change when she booked a role for the small screen. 

Her newest conquest in the industry just happened to be one of your favorite shows to have ever aired, Criminal Minds. Of course you were trying to remain professional, but it became increasingly difficult the closer you got to the studio lot’s entrance. The child in you was screaming with joy at the prospect of being there, surrounded by some of your favorite actors and actresses in the industry. You couldn’t even consider the possibility that you would get to meet Matthew Gray Gubler, the object of your affections for as long as you had been watching the show. That simply was a no go. You were positive that if at any point in time he was in your vicinity, you would simply lose consciousness, and that wouldn’t exactly be the best first impression. The further you walked onto the set, the more amazed you were. You were so familiar with it after years of watching, it just felt like a second home. After breaking out of your stupor, you quickly spun around to try and locate your boss, immediately colliding with whatever was in front of you, letting out a small “oomf”. Well. Whoever.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t paying atten-.”

You immediately froze mid-sentence when your eyes caught up with your actions. Fuck. This is not happening. It was him. Standing less than a foot away from you was the one and only Mr. Matthew Gray Gubler, live and in the flesh. Fucking hell.

“Hey it’s no problem, I promise. Don’t worry about it. I’m not exactly the most coordinated person on the planet either, trust me”, he said, chuckling lightly. Running a hand through his unkempt curls, he momentarily let his eyes roam your frame before seemingly snapping out of it, clearing his throat and extending one of his strong looking hands towards you.

“I’m Matthew by the way.”

You, however, were still frozen in place. Realizing how stupid you looked just standing there, openly ogling the man in front of you, you quickly met his hand, a nervous smile adorning your face. His hands were so fucking soft.

Chuckling once again, he seemed to be waiting for something.

“And you are?”

Oh shit. You hadn’t even introduced yourself yet! So much for first impressions you thought.

“O-oh right! Sorry. I'm Y/N. Ms. Dark’s assistant”, you stuttered out, entranced by the specimen in front of you. “Wow, that’s a beautiful name. Well I guess it’s fitting. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

Wait a second. Had you heard those words correctly. THE Matthew Gray Gubler just called you beautiful? You must’ve been dreaming, there was simply no other explanation. But when you glanced at him he was once again trailing his eyes all over you. Holy shit. You thought you were going to implode on the spot.

“Th-thank you”, you muttered shyly, feeling the blush spread across your features faster than a wildfire in a dry forest. After your weak excuse of an answer left your lips, the two of you just continued to stare at each other for what felt like hours. Eventually you were broken out of your trance by the director calling all of the actors to their places across the lot.

“I-um-I gotta go do a scene, but it was a pleasure to meet you Y/N. I hope I get to see more of you around here.” With a quick wink in my direction, he was off in the direction of the other actors swarming to the set from their trailers. For the third time in the last five minutes you were frozen to the spot in which you stood on the pavement. What in the actual fuck just happened? He called you beautiful. He wants to see more of you. HE WINKED AT YOU. This time you felt like you were truly about to lose consciousness so you booked it to the bathroom to calm yourself. After splashing some water on your face, you felt your body temperature returning to a somewhat normal degree and decided you should probably go to the set in case the Queen of Hearts needed anything from you. 

When you approached the scene that was being filmed, you were able to deduct fairly quickly what the plot revolved around. Apparently Khalia had been hired as the episode’s damsel in distress victim, typical. She was definitely the type to rely on others for pretty much anything. That wasn’t what was catching your eye though. Even from where you were standing you could clearly see her making eyes at Matthew. I guess you couldn’t blame her, he was gorgeous, but it still made you feel so insecure. It really just served as a reminder that people like him would never go after people like you. They want the ones who count. They want Ms. Khalia Dark. In what world would someone like him want a nobody like Y/N Y/L/N? There wasn’t one that came to mind. And while this revelation was pretty damn heartbreaking, you couldn’t say you were shocked by the cold, hard truth.

Feeling like you had lost a war that hadn’t ever really even begun, you turned back to look at Matthew, deciding to make the most of however short the time was that you’d be here. However, he was nowhere to be seen. You quickly realized that while you had been distracted, the scene had switched to something else, one where Matthew appeared to be absent.

“Hey again!”

You literally jumped off the ground and let out a little yelp at the noise, you were so startled.

“Oops, I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you, sweetheart,” he got out between adorable giggles. Damn, this man was gonna be the death of you. Literally. If he scared you like that again, you might actually have a heart attack.

“Jesus Matthew! A little warning next time!” You couldn’t help but join in his giggling after a few seconds. Returning his gesture just made the two of you laugh even harder until both of your chests hurt like hell. His laugh was angelic. Perfect. Just like him. For some reason, after you guys had calmed down a bit, you noticed him once again looking you up and down, admiring your body. You even swore you saw him lick his lips. You must be imagining things. Weird. Very weird. Bringing his wandering eyes back to yours, a goofy grin was plastered across his face. You hadn’t even realized you were biting your lip until he reached towards you, dislodging your teeth from the soft skin. “Don’t do that,” he said with a much more serious expression adorning his features. Before you really had the chance to decipher what had just happened, a loud voice cut through the air directed towards you both, causing you to put a bit of space between the two of you. You were able to easily recognize the sultry voice as Shemar’s, turning towards him, a smirk on his face.

“What’s going on that’s so funny over here,” he questioned before his attention shifted to focus solely on you. “My, my. And what’s your name sugar?” You were starstruck for what felt like the thousandth time that day, standing there with your mouth awkwardly hanging open.

“Hi, I’m Y/N. I work for Kahlia, her assistant actually. Nice to meet you”, you answered brightly, a polite smile gracing your lips.

“Trust me, the pleasure is all mine sweetness”, he concluded with a wink. While the action was endearing, it had nowhere near the same effect on you as Matthew’s did. You had always adored Morgan on the show, but you didn’t really know Shemar well enough to have any serious opinions about the dude. Matthew, however, you knew everything there was to be known, from his haunted treehouse to his love of Halloween. You weren’t proud of your obsession, but you couldn’t deny the unbelievably strong attraction you had for the man to your left. Regardless, the interaction caused a blush to spread, though this time it was caused more by being flustered rather than speechless. 

You were about to say something else to try and salvage some of the pride you had just lost, but you were beaten to the punch by Romeo himself. 

“Nothing’s happening over here actually, Shemar. I was having a private conversation with Y/N and I’d appreciate it if you let us get back to it. Thank you.” Matthew’s voice had picked up an edge and his eyes were dark. Like really dark. Although the situation was super uncomfortable and kind of unsettling, considering how feral he looked, you couldn’t help to think about how HOT it was. How hot he was.

“Woah, sorry kid. I didn’t mean to interrupt, just thought I’d introduce myself.”

Seeming to notice his mistakes, Matthew’s eyes quickly returned to their normal color and he stuttered out an apology, with slightly labored breaths.

“No, no I’m sorry man. I didn’t mean to snap like that, just been kind of on edge today”, he said, darting his eyes towards you quickly before redirecting his attention and clearing his throat.

“It’s all good Pretty Ricky, I get like that sometimes too. I’ll catch you guys later. It was nice to meet you Y/N”, he spoke before turning and retreating in the direction of the cast trailers. Shifting your focus back to Matthew, you could tell he was still a bit tense. You gently placed your hand on his shoulder to grab his attention, quietly asking if he was ok.

“Hmm what? Oh, um yeah. Yup. I’m-I’m good. All good. Like I said just a little on edge today. I haven’t had enough coffee”, he hastily responded. Before you could push further, the silence was broken by a shrill voice you were too familiar with, Khalia, unfortunately calling for your assistance at one of the most inopportune times. You turned back to him and gave a sad smile.

“See you around,” you asked, with just a little too much excitement laced in your voice.

“Y-yeah. Of course!” He seemed to have perked up a bit and gave you a wide grin. With a small wave, you were off to do whatever in God’s name the queen wanted from you now.

~~~

The week you were on set was surprisingly going by pretty damn quickly.

As much as you were anxiously awaiting the end so you could be free from Khalia for a bit of time, you couldn’t help but lament the fact that you would have to leave what felt like your second home. You would have to leave Matthew. That’s what hurt most of all. The two of you had become quite close in the short time you had been on set. Well, maybe not close per say, but comfortable? Sure. You guys were comfortable with each other, maybe a little too much on your end. Since that moment with Shemar and his outburst, the tenseness never seemed to dissipate completely. The two of you had shared some quick glances while he was filming a scene or while you were navigating the complex maze that was this sound stage. Whenever the two of you were near each other, he always appeared to go out of his way to get some kind of contact with you, whether it was his shoulder rubbing against yours or his fingers brushing yours as he passed by you. You, still in the mindset that someone as amazing and talented as him would never want anything to do you with you, didn’t really think much of his actions, simply playing them off as accidents and coincidences. 

Although you caught him staring at you on more than one occasion during your time there, you definitely spent the majority of your time ogling the fine specimen. You didn’t understand how a person could be so perfect. Seemingly no flaws. Sure, you had known pretty much every fun fact about the man when you had arrived on set a couple days ago, but now that you had spent some time with him, you were even more enamored. Matthew was an enigma and you wanted him. So fucking bad. Unfortunately, so did basically every other girl on the planet. You really shouldn’t be wasting so much time thinking about him, but at this point you were just in too deep. Watching him do his thing on the sound stage was like watching your own personal exhibition, so much talent pouring out of him he shouldn’t have even been allowed to do what he does. The world would certainly be a lot darker without his geniusness though so you supposed it was ok. As the scene you had been watching came to a close, you decided you really wanted to talk to Matthew again, missing the sound of his velvety voice as he focused on you and only you during the few conversations you’d gotten to have so far. Just as you were about to reach him, though, Khalia appeared out of nowhere directly in front of him with the same look in her eyes she had given him your first day on set. Hunger. You didn’t really know what to do now so you just kind of stood there watching the interaction. The conversation was just out of range, but you could tell she had said something that had made them both laugh. You also watched her place her hands on him in a very flirty way. And much to your dismay, he didn’t seem to be that bothered by it.

You knew that you had absolutely no right to be jealous of her advances, seeing there was nothing between the two of you, but you couldn’t help but feel a bit hurt. You had known all along that he didn’t have those kinds of feelings for you, but the cold, hard truth being presented on a silver platter right in your face sucked. A whole hell of a lot. Deciding to leave the two of them to enjoy their moment, you turned and made your way to the snack table on the opposite side of the room. As you got closer, you noticed Shemar lingering around it, seemingly snacking on something among the array of treats presented on the table.

“Hey. Nice to see you again”, you said with a small smile, alerting him of your presence.

You had gotten a bit closer to him over the last few days, getting to know more about him, rather than just his character. He was a really nice guy. Very charming, much like his TV counterpart. 

“Y/N! Hey! How are you today?”

“I’m ok. Not one of the best, but hey I’m alive I guess”, you said with a sad smile. Worry quickly spreading across his face, he pulled you into a hug, gently caressing your back.

“Hey don’t say that babydoll. It might not be the best of days, but everyday is worth living in my eyes. We’re all so lucky to be given the chance to be here so why not say fuck it and make everyday a party.” You pulled away from him chuckling at his words, feeling slightly better than you had before. You were grateful for Shemar helping you out when you needed a mood boost.

“Thanks Shemar. You sure know how to make a girl feel better.” 

“Anytime baby girl”, he said with a wink, making you giggle again at his silly nicknames and behavior towards you. A little bit more at ease, you let your eyes survey the room real quick, eventually landing on Matthew. A very angry and annoyed looking Matthew. He was staring directly at the two of you, his hands balled into fists at his sides, his breathing heavy, his eyes as dark as could be. Less than a minute later, he turned around and stormed off in the direction of what you assumed was his trailer. Quickly focusing on Shemar again, you excused yourself and then immediately ran off in the direction he had headed just moments before.

You were able to locate the trailer simply labeled “MGG” fairly quickly and you cautiously approached the steps leading up to the entrance. Would he even want to see you? Why were you special enough to even be this close to his trailer? Before you could second guess yourself anymore, you speedily climbed the steps and knocked on the door, an action based solely on the fact he was without a doubt upset about something and apparently it was your fault to some degree.

You heard some rustling behind the door before his voice rang out.

“Who is it?”

Shit. He sounded really upset. Pushing aside the anxiety bubbling in your chest, you decided that you were curious more than anything and wanted to know what you had done to get his panties in such a twist.

“I-It’s Y/N.”

Immediately the door swung open, making you jump slightly. Without saying a word, he grabbed your arm and dragged you over the threshold, handling you like a rag-doll. Once you were inside he released your arm and began pacing around the trailer, breathing pretty heavily. Maybe it was a mistake coming here. You thought you should probably go and leave him alone for a bit so he could cool off.

“I-I shouldn’t have come here. I’ll leave you be”, you sputtered out, quickly making your way towards the exit. However, before you could even reach the door, his deep voice echoed through the trailer.

“Why did you let him touch you like that?”

You froze mid-step, unsure of how to respond. “Huh?” Wow, nice going Y/N. Really scraped the dictionaries for that one.

“Shemar. Why did you let him put his hands on you and touch you like that?” As he spoke his question, he slowly moved towards you, like a predator eyeing its prey. What was he talking about? Why did he care that you and Shemar had shared a brief hug? And most perplexing of all, why in the hell was he looking at you with such fire in his eyes.

“I-I don’t know what you mean Matthew.”

After his name fell from your lips, you saw his mouth twitch as he moved to close the gap between the two of you, leaving just enough space that your breaths intermingled, but no actual physical contact was occuring. 

“You’re mine, Y/N. You. Are. Mine.” What did he just say? Were you imagining this whole situation in some sick dream of yours? Your brain was struggling to catch up.

“What are you even talki-.”

Before you could finish your sentence, Matthew had surged forward, clashing his mouth against yours, hungrily devouring your lips like they were his favorite meal. You moaned at the contact, letting the shock envelope your entire body. He was ravenous, tongue pressing against your lips, begging for entry. Finally processing what the hell was happening, your mouth quickly opened and welcomed his needy tongue, feeling it tangle with yours as he released the most delicious moan you had ever heard in all the years you had been alive. His hands moved frantically, hastily ripping at the clothes covering your body, desperate to feel any part of you that he could. 

You couldn’t even comprehend how this was happening. Matthew wanted you? Not only did he want you, but he was acting on it too. Fuck. He had said you were his. Did he really mean that?

Breaking away from your lips to pull your blouse over your head, you could’ve sworn you heard a growl escape his throat as his eyes hungrily drank in your appearance, left only in your bra and panties. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous. How are you so fucking hot?” Holy shit. The pure lust that dripped in his words made your legs feel like Jell-O, barely keeping it together as he shed his own shirt and began unbuckling his belt. Apparently that was what caused the wire in your brain to snap, your body surging forward to reconnect your lips and rake your nails down his chest.

“Please Matthew”, you whined, not even entirely sure what you wanted him to do. You just needed more.

Groaning at the desperation evident in your voice, he let his hand drift down your body, toying with the waistband of your panties. “Please what? What do you want from me, sweetheart?” His words made you whimper, grasping his hand to try and maneuver it underneath the damp fabric covering the place you needed him most.

“Uh uh uh. I want you to use your words princess. You can do that for me can’t you?”

Nodding your head fervently, you pushed aside any embarrassment you felt and answered almost immediately as the words left his mouth. “I want you to touch me! Please Matthew, I’m begging you!” As soon as you finished your desperate plea, his nimble fingers had ripped your panties down your legs and he was guiding you towards the couch conveniently located nearby. The two of you stumbled onto the cushions, Matthew hovering over you pinning you down, his large erection pressing into your thigh through his pants. You choked on a breath as one of his long, narrow fingers entered you swiftly, pumping in and out of you at a brutal pace, soon followed by two more. You were a whimpering mess as Matthew had his way with you, perfectly curling his fingers to hit your special spot over and over again. You needed him inside of you now or you were gonna explode.

“You’re so wet sweetheart. This all for me”, he questioned cockily, savoring the sounds pouring from your lips, cherishing the way your body writhed underneath his. 

“Yes Matthew! It’s all for you. Only you”, your words were accompanied by a long, drawn out moan. 

“Good girl”, he growled as his fingers picked up their pace, pushing you dangerously close to the edge. Matthew must have picked up on the fact based on the way your muscles were clenching around his digits and the way your breath was becoming more and more labored. 

“That’s it, baby. Come for me, little girl. Come all over my fingers.” His graphic words made your eyes roll back in your head as you felt your orgasm crash through your body, Matthew continuing his ministrations throughout the entirety of it. As you came down from your high and opened your eyes, you were met with the beautiful vision of Matthew sucking your juices off of himself, staring intently at you with lust-filled eyes. “Mmmm, so fucking sweet baby”, he moaned as he licked the last bit away. Realizing you simply couldn’t wait any longer, you grabbed onto his forearm, pulling him to you as close as physically possible. 

“Matthew I need you inside of me right now. Please. Please, I need you.” You felt like you were on the verge of crying, you were so damn desperate for him. You didn’t miss the way his eyes instantly darkened even more after hearing you beg him to fuck you so viscerally. 

“Baby, I really want to feel you bouncing on my cock. Can you do that? Can you ride me like a good girl, sweetheart?”

Not even bothering to answer his questioning, you mustered up all of your strength to push him up and off of you, allowing yourself to straddle him on one of the cushions. You made quick work unzipping his pants and signalling for him to lift up his hips, allowing you to hastily pull down both his slacks and boxers in one go. God, you were so fucking horny and needy for the man in front of you, you felt like you were going insane. Actually, scratch that. You were already long gone. Finally having removed the last barrier between the two of you, his strong hands grabbed your hips and positioned you over his throbbing cock, slowly letting you lower yourself down. Both of you released matching groans at the overwhelming feeling. 

“Fuck, princess. You feel so fucking amazing”, he moaned before gently grasping your hips, encouraging you to start moving. You couldn’t control the string of whimpers that escaped your mouth as you started circling your hips, gradually picking up your pace. It felt so fucking good, incomparible to anything you had ever felt before. As your speed increased and he began thrusting upwards to meet you, his hands reached behind you, finding the clasp of your bra, practically ripping the garment off of your body. Without any barrier blocking your breasts, he sat back and ogled you as they bounced in sync with your rapid movements, eventually needing more and grabbing the pillowy flesh with his wandering hands. The stimulation only made you move faster, desperate for the addicting friction that you could feel radiating throughout your whole being. You felt Matthew’s grip on your hips tighten exponentially, in order to get your undivided attention. 

“I bet you thought you looked real cute flirting with him like that, didn’t you princess”, he sputtered, his voice strained and hoarse. The sound of it made your insides quiver even more.

“I-I wasn’t f-flirting. I w-was just being n-nice”, you stammered, feeling your climax slowly building more and more with each thrust. He growled and immediately picked up the pace, speaking his next words clearly for you to understand. “That’s bullshit baby and you know it. Do you really think he could fuck you like this, sweetheart? Do you think his cock could fill you up this perfectly? Make you feel the way I do?” 

“N-Noooo! No, of course not. I only want you!” You were a moaning, whimpering mess as you gripped his shoulders trying to maintain your balance, his thrusts launching you into a whole other universe. “What was that, little girl? I couldn’t really hear you.”

“Fuck! Matthew! I only want you! There’s no one else!” You couldn’t control yourself any longer. You lost the ability to move as he wrapped his arms around your waist, slamming into you so fucking hard you swore you could see stars. 

“There better fucking not be, little girl. You are mine, sweetheart. All fucking mine. Mine!” His words make the chord in your stomach snap, your climax overtaking your body dangerously fast. “MATTHEW!” Your vision was spotty, muscles clenched incredibly tight, when you felt his cock start to twitch violently inside of you. 

“Fuck! Y/N! Oh my god!” As soon as the words left his mouth, you felt his cum fill you up completely, warmth radiating throughout your body as his dick pulsated inside of you. 

You collapsed against his sweaty frame, holding on for dear life. “Matthew, Matthew, Matthew”, you muttered as you fought to regulate your breathing. Both of you were shaking, thanks to the world-shattering orgasams you had just experienced, his hands gently rubbing your back, soothing you. “Shhhhhh, breathe little girl”, he whispered so warmly it made butterflies bloom in your stomach, a stark contrast to the way he was speaking moments ago. 

Pulling yourself upright, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from his. After a few seconds had passed, a huge grin slowly formed on his beautiful face, letting out a light giggle. “Hey.”

Feeling a smile form on your own face from his silliness, you couldn’t help but fall for him even more. “Hi”, you shyly responded, reaching up to poke the dimple that was visible on his face, giggling when he playfully stuck his tongue out, trying to reach your finger with it. Completely absorbed in the moment, you had forgotten that he was still inside of you and you were probably hurting him, not that he was gonna complain. You slowly lifted yourself off of him, both of you wincing slightly at the sensation. He immediately pulled you back to him afterwards and continued to rub your back like he had before. It was so comforting, you were scared you were gonna fall asleep in his lap, which you pretty quickly concluded wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, noticing the way his eyes seemed to droop as well.

As you felt yourself starting to drift off, you heard his soothing voice near your ear. “I’m really sorry I got so rough Y/N. I didn’t mean to act like that. I just got so jealous seeing you with him and I didn’t know how to control my emotions. I didn’t know how to tell you how I felt.” He sounded genuinely sad when he spoke, the guilt evident in his quiet voice.

“Matthew, baby, don’t be sorry, ok? I really enjoyed every second of it, I promise. As for Shemar...you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I’ve only ever had eyes for you. You’re kind of stuck with me Gube.” You felt the chuckle vibrate through his body at your words and you lazily smiled against his chest.

“I know, sweetheart. I know.” You heard him hesitate and you wondered if he was going to finish his thought, hopefully before you knocked out cold. “Would you-would you maybe want to go out with me this weekend? Like on a-a date? You felt your heart swell in your chest at his question and slowly nodded against him. 

“I would love that, Matthew.”

Cherishing the feeling of holding each other in your arms, the two of you quickly succumbed to the drowsiness, falling into the most comfortable slumber you had ever experienced.

Tag List: @hopebaker​ @pastathighs​ @psychedellic-phase​ @gloryekaterina​ @sleepysnapesnake​ @racharr​ @etherealgubler​ @furiouspartyrebelhoagie​ @andiebeaword​ @liaabsurd​ @cielo1984​ @starkeybaby​ @rainsong01​ @moonlight-jukebox ​ @victomizedbyreginageorge

[lokiondisneyplus]

Director Kate Herron calls from her childhood bedroom. She's staying at her parents' home in Southeast London for the summer, having spent the past year apart due to the pandemic and directing her latest series, Marvel's Loki. "It's so surreal seeing the show go out," she says over Zoom, "and being in the room that I was last in as a teenager."

Loki's first three episodes have seen the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) team up with Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) and the all-powerful Time Variance Authority to track down a fugitive Variant of himself: A female Loki that goes by Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) who's set on blowing up the Sacred Timeline and, with it, the MCU as we know it.

"My dad, bless him, he was never into Marvel before, but now he's obsessed with it," she says. "When I got the job, he started watching his way through the films, and he's got all these different YouTubers that he now watches for theories, and he tries to get spoilers out of me. He's like, 'What does it mean?!' and I'm like, 'Dad, I can't tell you!' It's very sweet, but very funny."

Now, with three episodes left of the season, she's bracing for their first family viewing experience. "I might not be able to, though. I might be like, 'You have to watch it by yourselves and then we can talk!'" she laughs. "Wait to hear the Loki theme and be like, 'Oh, I can go downstairs now.'"

In the meantime, Herron fielded all of ET's midseason questions about making Loki's bisexuality canon in the MCU, flexing more of his magic than ever before and why Sylvie isn't really Lady Loki or the Enchantress.

We are halfway through the season. Outside your parents, how has the reaction felt so far?

It's been amazing. We had these big ideas in it -- like, about free will and good and evil -- and wanting to [know that] if we're going back in with Loki because he's so beloved, that it's going to be a good story for that character, but some fresh terrain. I think the response has been pretty joyous and it's just so fun seeing what people are liking, what people's theories are. I couldn't be more happy, to be honest.

Being someone who appears pretty online and active on social media, how deep are you going into reading what people say and diving into those theories and all that?

I definitely read a lot of them -- I don't comment on them -- but I used to love Lost and Game of Thrones, and I was on Reddit, commenting, like, "Ooh, maybe it means this or means this," and I think that's the fun thing with our show, right? Our fans are so smart and it's fun seeing what they're getting right and what's not right but is very interesting. The Easter eggs they dig up are always amazing to me. Some of them we put in there, and I'm like, "Well, let's see..." and I'm like, "Oh, they found it!" So, it's really fun tracking it online. It's very weird directing something where you know every frame will be [screen]grabbed by some fans because they're looking for stuff.

I loved your tweet about why it was important for you to confirm that Loki is bisexual in the show. Not really reveal -- because he's bisexual in the comics -- but make that canon. Talk to me about having those conversations with Marvel.

I think it was something very important to everyone. And I felt like, OK, how can we acknowledge this? We have aspects of the story that are there, so how do we build this into the story so it feels earned in the moment? I didn't want it to feel like we were just wedging something in, but we had this beautiful scene where these two characters are being really raw and really honest about who they are, and I was like, "Well, it is a part of who he is and who they are." For me, talking with Michael [Waldron] and Bisha [K. Ali], it just felt like it was the right moment for that line. This episode is really beautiful for me, because it's these two characters getting to know each other, so in that sense, it felt like the right place for that conversation to happen. And I thought it was done really beautifully by the writers.

Obviously, like I've said, it's very personal to me, and I said it was a small step in some ways -- because obviously, he's just talking about it -- but in the bigger scale of things, I'm like, oh no, it's massive actually. If I saw that when I was 10, it would be really big for me. It's been really nice getting comments from people online. Some people were like, "It helped me actually talk about how I feel to my family and helped me come out." And I thought, "Well, if it helped one person do that, then it's worth it."

This is the MCU's first lead character who is openly queer. Did you know that? Were you aware of how big a milestone this would be?

Yeah. Well, in some senses, yes, and in some senses you're never sure, right? Because [Marvel is] so secretive about all their other projects. [Laughs] For me, I was like, I'm telling Loki's story, it's a part of who they are and I just want to acknowledge it. It's canon in the comics and if we can make it canon in the films, that would be amazing. When I came on board, I was like, if there's a way to do this, it would mean a lot to me and, I'm sure, a lot of people. But it was very welcomed, and I think we're all very proud of how we did that.

This may be getting into spoiler territory that you aren't able to talk about, but acknowledging one's sexuality is one important part of representation, seeing it play out through relationships is another. Can we expect to see any further exploration of what it means for Loki to be bisexual in this show?

I'm trying to think how to answer your question. [Laughs] I would say in our story, this is how we acknowledge it. But I hope that that paves the way for deeper exploration.

We're halfway through the season. What were your biggest goals in these first three episodes?

I think the biggest one was obviously, the Loki we're with in this story is on a completely different path, so it was tracking his character in the sense that he basically sees this amazing arc that the other Loki had gone on across the MCU movies, he sees that he reconciles with his brother, but that wasn't him in that moment. He's watching a different version of himself. But seeing that moment and seeing that he has room for growth and change is really interesting with our Loki, because he's in a very different headspace. So, it was tracking, what's familiar about this character from the Loki that we've seen over the last 10 years go from villain to antihero? And what is going to be completely different and completely different sides to this character that we get to now dig our teeth into? That was something really important to me and to Tom and the writing team, and it was really fun unpacking that and what his identity means.

The other challenges, honestly, were just setting up the TVA, because it's outside of time and space and giving that a grounding and a reality and making that feel like a whole new exciting corner of the MCU. That was a big responsibility, and I was really excited by that. And then you have the bigger arc of the story, but you also knowing it's going out weekly on TV. So, how are we going to track this week by week. Where are we leaving the characters and what are we leaving for the audience? Something we always thought about was we knew there'd be discussion week to week, so it was like, "Where are we going to give them certain bits of information across the show?" We wanted to provoke conversation and discussion about even just things like free will, you know?

I will say about the TVA, I'm basically a human Miss Minutes stan account. I think she's the baddest bitch in the MCU. I watch every Miss Minutes fancam that pops up on my Twitter feed.

She's incredible! What I love about it is that she's in our first episode and she actually used to come out of the presentation that Loki watches -- she came out on the screen -- but it was too crazy. We were like, "OK, we can't do that in the first episode. We'll do it in the second episode!" But what I love about her is that we're seeing the TVA through Loki's eyes and it's, like, the status quo, right? And if our status quo is a Southern-talking, Roger Rabbit-style clock, the show is going to probably get quite weird. I think that's what I love about her. And obviously, Tara [Strong] is awesome. Yeah, Miss Minutes is a lot of fun.

You talked about exploring who Loki is and could be. He's always had an arsenal of powers, but in this series, you really get to explore and define what his power set is. What were those conversations like?

That was something else, coming in, I was so excited about. We have six hours of him, let's see some more magic. Because across the comics, he's super powerful, and for example, in the last episode, that's what was so exciting to me about that, the oner at the end of episode 3 was that I've seen a lot of oners but I haven't seen one with magic. So, I was like, let's put loads of magic in there! We get Loki using his telekinesis and his magic blasts and then also Sylvie, as well, and her powers.

For me, it was exciting getting to bring those in in a way that pushed the story forwards. Because I get it, when he first lands in the TVA, they can't use magic, so I know if I was watching, I'd be like, "What? No magic?!" But I think that's the fun thing is, we still have three episodes to go and also it was fun to put him on Lamentis and see him using his powers in different ways. It was definitely something important to me and the team, was to get to show a little bit more of him. But across the films, you can only do so much. Now we have six hours, so it felt like, of course we have to delve into that more.

I don't know if you saw this on Twitter, one of my favorite reactions to episode 3 was someone tweeted a screenshot of Sylvie screaming and her hands glowing and wrote, "she did the meme!!"

[Laughs] That's great!

We've now officially met Sylvie, and we're starting to piece together that this may be sort of a hybrid character of Lady Loki and Sylvie Lushton, the Enchantress. Are you able to confirm that you pulled from both to create your Sylvie? Or is that something that's to be further revealed?

I would say there's more to be delved into. One thing I would say is, like, she's different to the comics. Like, she's a unique character, but obviously, there's things that have been pulled from. I think for her character, she's on the run and she's called Sylvie and she's dyed her hair. The blonde that we associate with Sylvie is played in that sense, but it makes sense for her character within our story. But I would say deeper than that, yeah, there's more to be revealed about her character to comes.

The main thing I would say is: Lady Loki in the comics is a very different character to our character, obviously. I love that character and I think she's got a very different journey. But our Sylvie is a female Loki, in that sense -- because in episode 1 and 2, they know it's a Loki they're tracking -- but I think that's part of the discussion. It's almost like Loki -- as in Tom Loki -- he's like, "Wait, how much of my life have you got? Who are you?" And I think that's the real question is, who is she? So, we will discuss that as the show goes on. Why does she not like being called Loki? What's her past? Where did she come from?

Tom and Sophia have such great chemistry, but how challenging was it for you and Michael and Sophia and the writers to create a character that essentially has to match up with our Loki, who's had however many films to become the fan-favorite character that he is?

It starts in the writing. Because she's a unique creation, and that was exciting and I was intrigued where they were pulling from with the comics. I was like, OK, that's cool. Beyond that, I think it's casting it. Sophia is an incredible actor. I've worked with her before. She has this fire in her and she brings this amazing vulnerability to all her characters, but she's also, like, so funny. It's just, so many of these things she always brings, I was like, they're so Loki. So, I was like, "We've got to get her to read!" And we were just all blown away by her read of it.

She definitely can hold her own. That's the other thing, as well. I know her, and I was like, she will hold her own. I know she will. Because she's going against Tom's Loki and that's such the fun thing about them. Even just on the train, where it's the end of the world and Loki's solution is, "I'm going to have a party and I'm going to have a drink. I'm going to have a lovely time." And her solution is, "I'm not going to have a glass of champagne, thanks. I'm going to focus on the mission of getting off the moon." Those little differences is what's quite fun about them to me. How are they different, and how are they the same?

Was there something you got to do as a director in these first three episodes that you had never done before that you were especially excited or nervous or both to tackle?

I suppose so much of the show, right? Because I've done a lot of drama and a lot of comedy, but they were like, "Here you go! Here's the reins to this massive, genre-driven piece where you have to set up a new corner of the MCU and you're going to have this beloved character." There was a lot to carry. But I'd say in terms of something I was excited about, only because Kevin Feige was teasing me, when we filmed the big oner at the end of episode 3, I was really inspired in the writing, because it sounded like you were really with the characters. I love doing long takes anyway and I remember thinking, "Oh man, this sequence feels like the one that we should do as this oner," because I want the audience to feel like they're with Sylvie and Loki in this moment, and it's also a moment where you finally start to see an apocalypse and it feels more real, because you're seeing the horror and the terror that's going along with that.

For me, that was exciting, but the really cheesy bit that made me so excited is they had these foam rocks that fell on people, but it felt like real movie magic to me. I was so obsessed with the rocks. I was like, "Oh my god. This is like real, big Hollywood filmmaking." And I remember Kevin Feige was like, "You can take a rock home, if you want," and I was like, "Oh my god!" So I have this rock. It's in bubble wrap now, and I'm going to unpack it when I move into my place. But that's probably honestly the most excited I've ever been. [Laughs] I was just so excited by the rocks. Oh, and also, I remember when we were at Roxxcart and Tom gets thrown into those robo dogs, I was obsessed with the robo dogs. He was like, "I think this is the happiest I've ever seen you." So, those are my favorite moments on set. The foam rocks and the robo dogs.

Somebody's going to come into your flat in the future and there's going to be a shelf with just a rock and a robotic dog on it.

Mhmm! And I'll be like, "Yeah, guys, I did something." [Laughs] They'll be like, "What is this...?" But the foam rocks are genuinely amazing, because they look like real, heavy rocks, but they're so light. I was so fascinated with them. I was so excited. I made a lot of low budget stuff before this, so it was a big deal to me.

My favorite part of the first three episodes is the Kate Berlant cameo. How did that come to be?

Basically, I love comedy and my producer, Kevin Wright, does as well, and we were trying to think of people that could be fun. We've got Josh [Fadem] in episode 1, and that was a miracle. I just spoke to her about the part and was like, "This is a very small role, but if you're interested, you're very talented and you're so funny." And she was like, "You know what? That sounds really fun. Renaissance faire? Yeah, I'll come do it." So, it was very kind of her to come down and do that for us. She's so funny, man. She's so funny.

Do you let her riff at all?

We did. We have a lot of alts and a lot of very extended bits of her talking to the Minutemen. I think there's one where she talks about a bird show at the faire. She's so funny. I was very flattered and grateful that she did that for us.

I'm going to start the #ReleaseTheKateBerlantCut campaign. I want a whole episode of her alts. Or she can be the new Stan Lee and cameo in every MCU project. Before I let you go, if you had to choose one word to tease these upcoming three episodes, what is that word?

Hmm. I thought of one word, but then I'm like, it's spoiler-y, so I can't say that. [Laughs] Oh, one word. Exciting? I have to say "exciting," because I can't say the other one I wanted to say!

[olivinesea]

In the Golden Dark, pt. 2

Part 1

a/n: This was already pretty much done so here you go. These parts are all rather short but that can be nice right? ~1.6k

i can’t concentrate if i keep seeing your face showing up in tea leaves lit up on my tv i can’t stand up straight under your gravity so i lay awake with my eyes closed

“Did you know 12% of people dream in black and white?”

“Wha-what?” Hotch groggily looked at the time on his phone. He had answered it blindly, autopilot kicking in to attend to the buzzing beside him on the couch. He blinked again and brought the phone back to his ear to hear Spencer’s voice more clearly.

“Yeah! It used to be a lot more when television was only in black and white but now that’s shifted obviously. Elderly people are still a lot more likely to have dreams that are—“

“Spencer,” Hotch interrupted the way the words were beginning to tumble out. When he was met with an abrupt silence he realized he didn’t have a follow up, he just needed a moment to breathe. To take in the dark living room, the flickering light of the television, its muted colors and grainy film showing a syndicated rerun, the kind only played in the middle of the night or the middle of the day, times when no productive person was meant to be watching. Something soft in its age, he found it comforting to put it on when he couldn’t sleep, woken again by nightmares that some monster had found their way to Haley and Jack. That they were suffering and he didn’t even know.

On the other end of the line, Spencer held his breath. He had been nervous about making the call, he wasn’t sure if it was too intrusive, too far across the boundaries they normally worked within. It wasn’t that he was worried about waking Hotch, he knew the other man was already awake. Even before they had started talking more, casually sharing details about the time they spent away from the office, it was obvious that Hotch did not sleep like a normal person. It was something else that they shared.

Seemingly endless minutes passed without another word from either man and his fear that he’d made a mistake grew. He told himself that Hotch was not pleased with the interruption. That he was being too assuming—why would Hotch be interested in anything he had to say at three in the morning? He’d called spurred on by the acute need to share a thought and, though he wasn’t totally conscious of it, a wish to hear that comforting voice, maybe even a quiet chuckle. He had smiled imagining that gentle sound, only he hadn’t realized it, the corners of his mouth moving without informing the rest of his mind. He touched his lips now with cold fingertips, running them over the dry skin, oblivious to the way his jaw clenched.

The silence between them hung like a bridge. There was a moment where both of them looked out at their respective living rooms, mentally steeling themselves to take a step and hope the other would meet them. Hope that they wouldn’t find themselves suspended over the water, alone as ever.

“I’m sorry for calling so late,” Spencer sounded so remorseful Hotch felt guilty immediately. He hadn’t meant cause him any anxiety with his long silence, he was just trying his best to gather his thoughts. To make sense of what he meant to do.

“It’s ok, really, I—“ Hotch hesitated, unsure how much detail to go into, how much reassurance was the right amount. He felt unreasonably awkward suddenly and twitched his fingers in irritation, “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”

“Really?” Spencer scrunched his eyes up, disliking the eagerness bleeding from his voice. He couldn’t help it though, the prospect of having the other man’s attention, even if it was only his voice reflecting from a satellite, knowing that Hotch was listening made him feel more secure. He’d spent too many restless nights pacing his apartment, starting and abandoning tasks in attempts to distract himself from the way the night was pressing uncomfortably close, threatening to overtake his mind. To have a friend to talk to, to reflect back his own reality, was a gift he could barely believe he deserved.

Hotch grunted as he adjusted himself on the couch cushions, supporting the back of his head on the pillows, resting the phone between his shoulder and ear. With his free hand he pulled up the blanket that had tangled at his feet. “Wide awake,” he said dryly. “What were you saying about dreams?”

Spencer’s smile was so big Hotch could hear it through the phone as the man stumbled ahead with the details of some completely unnecessary study. Hotch wanted to ask what had led to him reading such a thing but he was enjoying the happy way Spencer was running through all the new material he’d learned. He adored listening to Spencer speak, how he sometimes stopped short when remembering a related detail and how there’d be a pause while he took a split second to make the choice whether to jump to the new train of thought. Hotch smiled to himself and was pleased enough to offer hums of interest at inflection points. He let his eyes wander back to the television, as the title credits of another episode of Bonanza played across the screen, the pale wheat and horses and cowboys, already a distant fantasy in the 1960s, ancient history by today’s standards. His eyes fell half closed as he continued to listen to Reid’s voice.

“And, they just published a new study about how sleep deprivation decreases the body’s pain tolerance.”

Hotch snorted softly at this. “They really had to get a bunch of scientists together to figure that out? Someone paid for that?”

“Well it is always important to gather data and scientific evidence for these types of things. Anecdotal testimony won’t lead to any developments in the care for conditions like chronic pain,” Reid paused when he heard more quiet laughter from Aaron. He grinned.

“Do you want to hear something really crazy? They’ve found a connection between a person’s favorite sleeping position and their personality. Can you imagine!”

“Hmmph,” Hotch sank deeper into the cushions, settling in for whatever came next.

*

The calls became as regular as the midnight pancakes. Spencer would call with some piece of trivia, every night a new topic. He had a seemingly endless well of knowledge to draw on. In truth he spent the day trying to think of new ideas to share, new information he thought Hotch would appreciate. For no reason other than his own private satisfaction, he grouped topics thematically. This week they were going to be talking about space.

Now Hotch was ready, drowsy but checking his phone every few minutes to see if he’d somehow missed it ringing. He was looking at it yet again when it buzzed. He stared at the screen for a moment before answering, letting the name that flashed send a small thrill up his spine. He was not sure how it’d happened but he had come to rely on these calls. They still hadn’t discussed it, hadn’t acknowledged what this extracurricular time spent together might mean. They were simply seeking comfort, not questioning how this might be perceived outside these invisible moments.

“Hey Spence,” he barely got the words out before Spencer launched into that night’s prepared curiosities.

“Did you know most of the visible stars are actually multiple star systems? The singular stars are so much harder to see that astronomers used to believe that it was fairly uncommon to find a singular star like our sun.They hypothesized this was a contributing factor to why we hadn’t found evidence of extraterrestrial life. It is much harder for a planet to have the stability necessary for a habitable atmosphere with the potential fluctuations of a binary star system. Without as many single stars it made sense that it was exceedingly unlikely for life to form outside of our solar system.”

“I think it’d be nice,” Hotch murmured, not really thinking about what he was saying.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, ah,” Hotch stammered, a little embarrassed to have the comment acknowledged. He felt his neck growing warm as he tried to make out a reply. “Well, having two suns. I think it could be nice."
 “Why?” Spencer was genuinely curious.

“Um, I guess, I imagine it would be warmer for one,” he paused before adding on, waiting to see what Spencer’s reaction might be. He could almost hear the wheels of his mind turning with all the reasons Hotch’s logic was faulty. He hurried on before he became too self-conscious to finish his thought. “And, I’ve just never really liked the night, all the darkness. Maybe with two suns we could have a little more light in the world.”

Instead of responding, Spencer remained quiet, surprised by this uncharacteristically whimsical thought. Hotch could feel his whole neck had turned red, along with the warming tips of his ears.

“I—I don’t really like the night either,” he tried to sympathize. “It can feel…overwhelming.”

They sat for a moment, not sure where to take this or how the facts had turned into feelings.

“I’m happy I have you to talk to though.”

It was simple, but it was true and sweet and Hotch smiled, closing his eyes to better absorb the words.

“I’m happy too, Spencer.”

Now they were both blushing, the depth of meaning behind these brief statements readily apparent. For a moment, feeling the heat dancing across his face, Hotch wondered if this wasn’t a mistake. Maybe he was allowing things to become something irresponsible, something he couldn’t so easily walk back. He pictured Spencer, sitting across from him, animated and full of life, pulling further away from the shadows that teased around the edges. It didn’t matter, he decided. It didn’t matter what this was, only that they had found a hand to hold through the night.

“So, what else have you got for me?”

~Part 3~