#nicole ryder x you

[mynotsohealthyobsession]

Disembodied Part 3/8

Warning: Mention of death // Angst // Fluff

Pairings: Adrian Raines X MC // Nik Ryder X MC

Words: 1.348

Part 1 is here and part 2 over here!

As always, tags in the reblog!

"Adrian." Amy called him, a tiny smile creeping the corners of her lips. He observed her for an instant, almost as if he could see beyond Alex's face. "It's so good to see you." A week had passed and every fiber of her body was missing him. 

"Excuse me but I don't believe we have met before." 

"I know this is going to sound crazy. Insane actually. But I swear it's true." He was looking at her with a cold analytical stare. It was intense and piercing. It reminded her of her first interview with him so many months ago. "I'm Amy." He stood stoic as ever. "Amy Miller. As in Amy Miller your, well, I was going to say assistant but I think that's not totally adequate." 

"I think you mistook me for someone else," Adrian said, politely, turning on his heels, and heading to Raines Corp.'s front door.

"I had a free minute. Is this the  candidate?" Adrian stood, turning to observe her once more. "To Nicole's annoyance, you interviewed me. You told me a story about a genie and a man. You hired me on the spot."

"That's not conclusive."

"You saved Lily for me. That night we kissed for the first time in the rooftop restaurant." 

"You'll have to excuse my skepticism–"

"You told me about Charles and Eleanor." Amy took a hesitant step towards him. "You talked about them in your cabin when Vega set you up. We were with Kamilah. But we spent the night together alone and you said you would always be there for me." 

"How did you–"

"You have a silver locket with Charles' drawing. It's the most important thing to you. You risked coming here with me to take it out of the safe before the fight with Gaius when you destroyed your labs. And after I stabbed Gaius and he attacked me back, you ran to me and held me." As the memories filled her heart with both pain and warmth, the emotion cut off her words. She blinked, trying to contain her tears, touching her chest unconsciously. "I died in your arms." 

"Amy?" Adrian looked into her eyes, almost like he was expecting to recognize her soul. "How can it be you?" She took a step forward and before she expected it, Adrian had dropped his briefcase and was hugging her. For the first time in the last week and even trapped inside this strange body, she felt like herself. His warmth and his hand on her head, putting that perfect amount of pressure so typical of him, calming her nerves. Amy closed her eyes; letting the feeling spread. "I knew there was something off. It was your appearance but it wasn't you." 

"You really noticed it?"

"Of course I did." She hugged him back, taking a deep breath. They stood like that for a while, ignoring the curious looks of the people walking past and the destroyed city around them. Finally, he gently pulled back from her, attentively observing her 'new' face. "What happened, Amy?" 

"I don't know, I… I remember the fight against Gaius and then I woke up under the sun in New Orleans looking, well… Like this." His hands cupped her face, eyebrows furrowing with sorrow and concern. "Do you really believe me?" 

"I do." 

"Even with all the craziness?"

"Even with it." Amy focused on his eyes, that calm stare that always comforted her. "After all, we are getting good with craziness, don't you think?" She softly chuckled before becoming serious again. 

"I have been so worried and scared, I woke up alone and none of you were around and I thought that Gaius–"

"We are all fine, Amy. I promise." 

"I just… I missed you." She whispered.

"I missed you too." Adrian took a deep breath, leaning his forehead down with his eyes closed. “There are so many things I need to say to you. So much to ask you. I–”

"Sorry to cut off short such a cute encounter…" Nik's sarcastic voice said as he walked to them. Instinctively, at the sight of his bow, Adrian stood in front of her. Amy smiled to herself, remembering the first time he had protected her like this in Priya's fashion show. "...But I need to see if Alex is okay, Amy." 

"I know, I know." She sighed and Adrian turned to her. 

"What is going on, Amy? Who is he?" He asked her, suspiciously. 

"Nik Ryder, Adrian Raines." Both men eyed each other. "You said it was my appearance? So, my body is here?" Amy asked Adrian. 

"Seems like it." Nik took a step to the door but Adrian extended his arm, stopping him. "I still don't know who you are." Nik watched him clearly mad. "Until Amy explains everything, a nighthunter will not come into my building." 

"Then you do know who I am," Nik smirked, smuggling. 

"No. I just know your type." He replied, coldly, his stare stopping in all and each of the weapons that Nik was carrying with him.

"Now listen, bloodsucker…" Adrian narrowed his eyes at that term and stood his whole high, looking more intimidating than ever. "...I don't have time for this. I will come in with or without your 'permission'." 

"Nik, cut it out." Amy said angrily, rolling her eyes. "Adrian, Nik is Alex's friend. The girl this body belongs to. We think that if I'm in her body–"

"--She is in yours." Adrian finished her sentence and Amy nodded. "Seems plausible." 

"Okay then." Nik headed to the front door again but Adrian stopped him once more. "What game are you playing, Raines?!" 

"I trust what Amy says without doubt but, before this, she doesn't know who you are." He was calm but firm, his body was taut, ready to take any course of action that was necessary. "Alex has to corroborate who you are. I'm not risking Amy's soul or body in the hands of a nighthunter." Amy smiled at him, gently squeezing his arm. 

"I could say the same about you." Nik's voice was more similar to a snarl than actual words, however, Adrian kept his composure. 

"I concur. That's why Amy is going to talk with Alex alone. Do you agree?" Nik simply nodded so Adrian turned back to her. “In that case.” He gave her the elevator key. “She’s in the guest penthouse. We will be waiting here." 

"Okay."

"If you need me, call for me. I will hear you." He gently touched her cheek, searching her eyes like he was still trying to see beyond her features. "Take your time." He planted a small kiss on her forehead. 

“Amy.” She whirled to Nik. “Tell Alex I'm waiting for her too.”

"I will." Amy took a deep breath and headed to the crystal doors, feeling her stomach twisting around anxiously. As she walked inside the building everything felt familiar but at the same time so different. Maybe it was because this strange face was reflected in all the glass instead of hers. The metallic doors were replaced by the wood ones that belong to the penthouse. Amy stood there, thinking about what she was about to find on the other side. To see herself like that, out of her body, was a scary thought without a doubt. And there was no way to know how Alex would react. If it was Alex at all. The seconds passed until she gathered the courage to lift her hand and ring the doorbell. She heard steps getting closer and closer as her heart sped up uncontrollably. 

“Who is it?”

“Um, sorry to bother you but Adrian sent me here.” Even though it wasn't entirely the truth, it would be easier than saying who she truly was. It was a chat to have face-to-face, not with a door between them. 

“That’s weird, he didn’t mention anything about someone coming–” Amy held a gasp when her own image swung open the door and the other woman looked at her dumbstruck, clearly not expecting the vision she had in front of her. “What the…?”

[capitano-marina]

Tagged by @bellasdelucaa & @spampisavrex thank you 🤍🤍

Favorite Characters Alphabet Tag!

Rules: Name your favorite character for every letter of the alphabet! First or last names count, try to avoid nicknames!

Amelia Shepherd (Greys Anatomy)

Lauren Bloom (New Amsterdam)

Carina DeLuca (Station 19)

Alex Danvers (Supergirl)

Waverly Earp (Wynonna Earp)

Emily Fields (Pretty Little Liars)

Grace Ryder (911 Lone Star)

Spencer Hastings (Pretty Little Liars)

I

Jamie (The Haunting Of Bly Manor)

Kat Edison (The Bold Type)

Leighton Murray (The sex Lives Of College Girls)

Maya Bishop (Station 19)

Nicole Haught (Wynonna Earp)

Oksana Astankova (Killing Eve)

Eve Polastri (Killing Eve)

Q

Rebecca Welton (Ted Lasso)

Sara Lance (Legends Of Tomorrow)

Tally Craven (Motherland Fort Salem)

U

Alex Vause (Orange Is The New Black)

Kate Whistler (NCIS Hawaii)

X

Cristina Yang (Grey’s Anatom)

Zari Tarazi (Legends of Tomorrow)

Tagging @wicked210 (pressure 🤭) @mayasdeluca @herewegobacktomoon @scooby-doo-creepymechclown @noheadthoughtsemptyig

[tabloidtoc]

Star, May 3

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Shiloh Jolie-Pitt

Page 1: Christina Aguilera at 40 -- she talks about child stardom, learning to love her body, and what she wants her daughter Summer to know

Page 2: Contents, Renee Zellweger, Phoebe Dynevor and James McAvoy at the BAFTAs in London

Page 3: Mariska Hargitay and Law & Order: SVU co-star Ice-T take a selfie during a break from shooting the cop drama in NYC, Heather Graham at the beach in Mexico, stepping into the America's Got Talent studio Sofia Vergara elevated her casual cropped jeans with strappy platform sandals in L.A., Jason Momoa cutting a rug with an unidentified partner ahead of filming a scene for his upcoming fantasy film Slumberland in Toronto

Page 4: Colton Underwood comes out -- saying he's the happiest and healthiest he's ever been, the former Bachelor clarifies his orientation

Page 5: Lena Dunham is no stranger to controversy, so it comes as no surprise that her foray into fashion design has also come under fire as she partnered with a plus-size label to create the capsule collection 11 Honore x Lena Dunham, but the kicky line quickly came under fire as critics are calling it tone-deaf, mediocre and not inclusive at all since its largest size is a 26 and some are even going so far to call Lena a grifter who gained weight in order to make money off the plus-size community but Lena, who underwent a hysterectomy at 31, has pointed to early menopause as the cause of her straight-up gut -- while Lena refuses to be intimidated by bullies, she is listening to the complaints about sizes and is planning to address it

* Once a cautionary tale of the perils of child stardom, at age 40 Macaulay Culkin is a father himself as he and girlfriend Brenda Song welcomed a son, Dakota -- he's finally overcome his demons and Brenda has been a huge influence on his life and helped him get back on the straight and narrow and he's even pursuing acting again, shooting season 10 of American Horror Story; his life has taken such a positive turn

* A year after announcing her split from Jay Cutler, Kristin Cavallari is seeing the upside of divorce, saying it's made her a better mom in some ways because she has her kids half the time now so when she has them for her week, she is so incredibly present with her kids Camden, Jaxon and Saylor and she is not distracted by her phone or anything else; she is with them -- Jay and Kristin each have the kids 182.5 days a year and court papers also revealed that her ex is allowed two phone calls and two FaceTime or Skype calls a week and vice versa so now every moment is precious and if someone is having a temper tantrum or something, she remains calm because she knows that she is losing them in a few days

Page 6: Gwen Stefani is widely thought to have had some help in the nips and tucks department, and as her wedding to Blake Shelton approaches, he is starting to object to her constant tweaking of her face -- she's always messing with it by getting more fillers and Botox and Blake is afraid of what he'll see at the altar and he's freaking out at Gwen's increasingly extreme beauty routine which is becoming increasingly over-the-top; Gwen can barely move her face to smile at him anymore and it looks weird -- while he frets, he's trying to reassure his wife-to-be because Blake thinks she's beautiful just the way she is

* As an executive producer on the long-running Law & Order: SVU, Mariska Hargitay has tasked the writers to come up with more storylines featuring one of her favorite characters: defense attorney Trevor Langan, played by none other than her husband Peter Hermann -- Mariska and Peter originally met and fell in love when Peter guest-starred on the show and she loves to keep that magic alive by bringing him back to play Trevor but the trouble is he is busy with his own gigs as a series regular on Younger and his recurring role on Blue Bloods and Peter loves working with his wife, but he has his own acting career apart from Mariska -- still, he may soon have his day in court because Peter understands how Mariska feels and is trying to work his schedule to allow him some guest spots in the near future

Page 8: Star Shots -- Lenny Kravitz with a guitar flaunted his well-sculpted midsection during a stroll on the beach, Suki Waterhouse with her on-the-go grub on the set in Liverpool

Page 9: Louisa Jacobson and Taissa Farmiga and Denee Benton on the set of The Gilded Age in NYC, Conan O'Brien sipped on a soda at lunch in L.A., Katy Perry in the American Idol bathroom

Page 10: Kate Hudson with mom Goldie Hawn and kids Ryder and Rani, Kate Hudson twirled solo modeling in a pal's swimwear collection, Jude Law's daughter Iris Law who will make her acting debut in Danny Boyle's upcoming Sex Pistols biopic makes a call in London

Page 12: Kelly Osbourne handed out items at a food distribution event as the Islamic Center for Southern California, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the gym, despite a no-social warning a cheeky Nicole Kidman shared a pic from the set of Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos in which she portrays Lucille Ball

Page 13: Anabella Sciorra and Donnie Wahlberg gloved up for a Blue Bloods scene in NYC, Heidi Klum and husband Tom Kaulitz started their morning during a walk on the beach in L.A.

Page 14: Travis Barker showed off his body art stepping off a Hollywood tour bus shirtless after filming a music video, a cheerful Britney Spears gave a fun look into her wardrobe in a pink floral frock, Scott Disick and Amelia Hamlin color-coordinated for a walk near the beach in Miami

Page 16: Lamar Odom and Aaron Carter put up their dukes to promote their Celebrity Boxing Match in Philadelphia, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and husband Nick Jonas at the BAFTAs in London, Ellen DeGeneres on the phone during a stroll in her main hood of Montecito

Page 18: Normal or Not? A denim-on-denim clad Jay Leno scratched an itch while filming a project in Los Angeles -- not normal, dressed in a Siggi sweatshirt Katie Holmes picked up some seasonal blooms on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- normal, Kate Beckinsale multitasked during a car ride by applying undereye patches -- not normal

Page 19: Gavin Rossdale appeared to be pleased with his Kitson purchase by doing a little dance after leaving the popular L.A. store -- not normal

Page 20: Fashion -- stars wow in statement-making capes -- Gisele Bundchen, Charlize Theron, Zoey Deutch

Page 21: Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning

Page 24: Justin Bieber: How Love Saved Me -- the formerly troubled pop singer gives praise for wife Hailey Bieber

Page 25: Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles' romance has already cooled and the pair are giving each other space -- turns out Olivia and Harry don't actually have much in common -- the two jetted to London after wrapping Don't Worry Darling, but they were soon waylaid by their respective responsibilities as Olivia has been spending time with her kids Otis and Daisy while her ex Jason Sudeikis shoots Ted Lasso while Harry, who was spooked by how quickly intense things got, is gearing up for his role in My Policeman -- for now, the two have decided to reassess things when they're back in L.A., which leaves the window open for Jason, whose strategy was to let her and Harry fizzle out, then see where she is at, and it's going according to plan

* Jennifer Lopez calls off her relationship with Alex Rodriguez

* Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher are better than ever after overcoming a rough patch, one that had their inner circle convinced they were headed for divorce -- Mike had a serious roving eye that made Carrie anxious and she would treat him like he was Mr. Underwood and tensions between the two were at an all-time high when the pandemic hit, forcing the two into extra one-on-one time, but as it turns out, their new routine is just what they needed because they set boundaries, divided up tasks and put time aside for fun things and they prioritized romance, which has made all the difference -- Carrie and Mike are re-committed to their marriage and they've been through so much so much and neither wants to throw it away

Page 26: Cover Story -- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's model kid -- Shiloh Jolie-Pitt the gorgeous teen is ready for her close up, but Brad and Angie are at odds about Shiloh's new passion -- Shiloh's been experimenting with girlier styles lately, including growing out her hair and she's at the age where she's starting to change things up -- Brad isn't thrilled about Shiloh's modeling dreams and idea of her walking into the lion's den gives him cause for concern -- Angelina began modeling at 16, just one year older than Shiloh and Shiloh knows that's what set her mom on her path to fame and Shiloh is constantly asking Angie about the pros and cons of the modeling world

Page 29: Model Kids -- these celeb offspring also know how to strike a pose -- Hailey Bieber, Sofia Richie, Amelia Hamlin, Lily-Rose Depp, Brooklyn Beckham, Paris Jackson, Kendall Jenner, Corinne Foxx, Ireland Baldwin, Margaret Qualley, Kaia Gerber, Leni Klum, Patrick Schwarzenegger

Page 30: Prince William and Prince Harry: Behind Closed Doors -- the estranged princes are forced to reckon with their rift as the royal family gathers for Prince Philip's funeral

Page 32: High Anxiety -- it's not so simple for celebs who struggle with panic attacks -- Emma Stone, Stephen Colbert, Amanda Seyfried

Page 33: Hugh Grant, Ryan Reynolds, Ariana Grande

Page 36: Beauty -- nail it -- self-care essentials to score the perfect at-home manicure and pedicure -- Kaley Cuoco

Page 38: Style -- cute cases -- step up your tech, and fashion, game this season with a trendy cellphone cover -- Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Page 40: Entertainment

Page 48: Parting Shot -- Corey Feldman embraced wife Courtney Anne Mitchell as the two ventured out for a romantic outing in L.A.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Eve’s Coven

Here are the vampires I mentioned earlier, along with updated bios for some old ones. A lot of stuff is WIP so keep that in mind:

Allen Lecarde: A drifter vampire and hopeless romantic, he fell in love with Rika Amano and turned her without her consent, ruining their blossoming relationship. Miserable and remorseful, he wandered about the city until Eve’s coven took him in. His power is WIP.

Amon: The oldest and most powerful vampire and the leader of the coven. Eve calls him a close personal friend, and he has been alive for thousands of years. Unbeknownst to all, he is also the father of Nadia, Dracula’s adopted daughter. He is an extremely powerful wizard and has the incredible power to negate natural laws, cancelling out things such as gravity or momentum or density... or increasing/kickstarting them if he sees fit.

Bartholemew Comstock: A pilgrim from the 17th century, he wandered off from his colony and nearly died in the wilderness, finding salvation in Eve, who claimed to be an angel… she just left out the “fallen” part. Miserable upon learning he was a vampire and deeming himself an affront to God, he went into hiding for years,eventually coming to believe that there was little meaning to his actions if he was damned to Hell. He begin to strike down and feed off those he viewed as sinners, all the while bemoaning his miserable lot in life and fearing retribution from God.

Beatrix Cullen: A black widow type serial killer who loves to carve up her victims with a chainsaw. She is an incredibly skilled seamstress, and utilizes this in conjunction with her power, which allows her to give life to the lifeless, essentially allowing her to create golems without use of spells or scrolls. She has a very special project lined up utilizing her seven favorite husbands, but she’s looking for just the right head...

Cyrus Lovelace: A former slave owner, Confederacy member, and all-around unpleasant person who captured slaves and auctioned them off to vampires as cattle. He was the one who purchased Dahlia from her parents for her infractions and had rather untoward plans for her before Dracula broke up his operation. He has the power to hypnotize people with his voice.

Dallas Ryder: A white cowboy from the late 1800s, he was hunted relentlessly for the crime of loving a black man. He dedicated much of his time to roaming the South and slaughtering any Klansmen he found without mercy. He was eventually captured and nearly lynched, but he was rescued by Amon. He has the power to control the trajectory of any projectiles he releases as long as they remain within his eyesight, be it bullets from his gun or a paper airplane. The efficiency of the projectiles is also increased. 

Dee Comporre, Giorgio Nero, & Mr. Viticcio: Three members of Cosa Nostra who once worked to enforce the will of an extremely powerful criminal in the 1920s. Giorgio is their leader, and has the power of magnetism, capable of feats similar to Magneto from X-Men; Dee is incredibly violent, paits her face up like a skull, and has the ability to secrete corrosive acid; Mr. Viticcio wears a coat, hat, sunglasses, and has a heavily bandaged face, and has the ability to stretch his limbs out like rubber. It is unknown if their names are real or aliases.

Elizabeth Bathory: The Blood Countess herself. After evading death in the 1600s thanks to Eve, she became a loyal follower of the demon, and was recruited into the Order of the 1800s. Dracula and Rasputin managed to defeat her and supposedly kill her, but Bathory is notoriously hard to slay. True to her infamous reputation, she tends to “Feed” by bathing in the blood of her victims. 

Elvis Chavez: A big fan of Elvis growing up in the 60s and 70s, Elvis wished to someday be like the impersonators he saw at his father’s bar. He got his wish in the 80s when he went to Vegas, but was often ridiculed by his peers for portraying the chunkier Elvis of his later life due to his weight. He became a vampire mostly out of spite for those people, hoping to outlive the even as he indulged in gluttonous behavior. He is absolutely unashamed of his gut and kept his chubbiness even after he was turned. Power is WIP.

Flanagan & Tantomile: A pair of psychic vampire twins.

Jack Fairchild: Jack the Ripper himself. He has the power to travel through shadows. He is the most hated and feared member of the coven, and he has committed nearly every atrocity you can imagine, gleefully. He views himself as above laws and morality. He was once a student of Dracula, and the lover of Rose Milliner, but was swayed to join Eve and slaughter his peers at Dracula’s school. After Rose rejected him, he went on to become the cannibalistic, immoral spree killer he is known as today.

Kane Dødsstreik: A Nordic warlord. He has a quiet intensity and is in general given a fair amount of respect. He stands at 6′5″ tall. He has the power to use his voice as a weapon (a la Black Bolt); he tends to speak softly and infrequently, though this is less because of his power - which he has complete control over - and more because he finds most of his fellow coven mates unworthy of his words.

Kristoph Hollenfeuer: A former Nazi who commanded a secret paranormal investigation branch known as Enigma. He has the power to generate tracking bombs from his hands.

Michelle Kitt: Once a notorious cat burglar in the 50s alongside her husband, she would steal from the rich and give to the less fortunate (though she would still keep some for herself). After eventually settling down, enemies she’d made broke into her home, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face cut up and scarred heavily, as well as costing her an eye. She has the ability to ignore the rules of sacred hospitality, allowing her to enter buildings uninvited at the cost of her pronounced combat skills being weakened, as well as the power to move silently.

Mickey Harrelson: A former hitman and one of the new Order. His power is WIP.

Nestor Sokolov: A lost cosmonaut, whose supposed death was covered up by the Soviet Union after he burned on reentry. While he did suffer severe burns, he managed to survive, and was saved from death by Amon. He often still wears a modified space suit to hide his face. He has the power to phase through solid objects. 

Pierre Labeau: A man hailing from Louisiana, he was born with a disfigured nose that made his upper class mother feel ashamed. She locked him in the attic, his only friends and interests being the various spiders therein; eventually, his mother even cut his nose off, something he would return to her in kind before killing her. He began to kill people like her, snobbish upper class twits, cutting off their noses and slitting their throats. He learned of the phrase “cut off her nose to spite her face” and decided to dub himself Spider Face after the mondegreen one could discern from the phrase. He was eventually caught in the act and driven into the bayou where he supposedly died, though Amon in truth allowed him to join Eve’s coven. His love of arachnids caused him to gain their powers, making him much like Spider-Man, as well as giving him incredibly virulent venom. While he certainly isn’t totally wicked, he also revels in being something of an area boogeyman and proudly proclaims himself a villain any chance he gets.

Piper Sanchez – One of the new Order. Formerly a young, mute homeless man. Loves rock music and has a guitar. Has the power to control and empower rats, which he can do with his music.

Rhapsody Von Braun: Hailing from the early 60s, Rhapsody was an artist who had her career derailed by workplace sexism, which led to a car accident that permanently damaged her leg and led to her becoming a drug addict. She spends a lot of her time sleeping, and walks with a cane even as a vampire. She’s rather sweet and pleasant, though she is a bit scatterbrained. Her power is to make drawings she draws come to life.

Ryo Amano: The elder son of the Amano family and a criminal mastermind, for years he served alongside Jemima Mathers, regulating crime in the city and ensuring his work would go unhindered. However, his cruel past caught up to him: when it was revealed he had his sister violently beaten and kicked out of the family, and that he had driven his own mother to suicide by making her blame herself for her daughter’s disappearance, he had to go into hiding. Eve soon discovered him, and his lineage was revealed to him - his father was Amadeus Zephyri, which made him a dhampyr. Granted vampirism, he soon found himself in possession of a powerful new skill. Where his father could stop time, he could essentially utilize a localized acceleration of time, causing negative effects to rapidly occur, such as allowing a decrepit pillar to crumble or to cause a knife wound to fester and kill the victim immediately. 

Sawney Bean: The infamous Scottish cannibal of legend, transformed into a vampire by Eve as he was about to die in his sealed-in cavern alongside the remains of his family. He eventually decided to give in to the ultimate vampire taboo and consume another vampire; finding he liked the taste, he continued to eat other vampires who crossed him, eventually twisting and transforming into a terrifying monster with metal teeth and claws that stood well over seven feet tall. He rarely ventures out from his hideaway unless called by his masters.

Walter Sherman: A good, kindhearted man who ever since the 1910s always looked to the future and was excited for progress. After his wife and two children died in a freak accident, he attempted suicide, but was turned into a vampire instead. Power Is WIP.

Wayne Nicol: A former circus clown. He has the ability to enter people’s minds and utilize their most powerful fears against them.

[clansayeed]

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 8: The Hunters

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Katherine returns with a friend and some bad news. Nadya meets another member of the Council.

[READ IT ON AO3]

“Hey, Adrian?”

“Hm? Yes?”

“I think I put that I knew shorthand on my resume.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I think now’s a good time to point out that I don’t know shorthand.”

Adrian’s delayed laughter is like a lag in the matrix. He looks up from his files and offers a comforting smile. “No worries. You’re not here in an official capacity.”

She hopes it isn’t obvious how she slowly slides three of her four colored pens off the tabletop and into her sweater pocket. If Adrian notices he doesn’t call her out in it. Not like orange pen would show up well on yellow office paper anyway.

Before she can ask him to clarify there’s a sharp rap of knuckles; the conference room door opens to Nicole with a stack of papers tucked neatly in her elbow. Not a hair out of place. God what Nadya wouldn’t give to look so impeccably perfect right about now.

Everything in the VP of Operations’ body tenses when she catches sight of the pair of them sitting thick as thieves at the end of the long white board room table. Nadya tries a small wave, but she’s not surprised that Nicole ignores her.

“Mister Raines, your ten-thirty has arrived.”

“Great,” he nods and starts piling up the spread of documents and research he’s slowly been hoarding, “send her in.”

Nicole looks as if she’s debating saying something — whether it’s her loyalty to Adrian or her professionalism in the workplace that wins out it just leaves Nadya feeling even more confused.

“She’s brought a guest.” When Adrian looks up; “Another one of them.”

The vampire’s expression darkens and Nicole takes her leave. Professionalism her butt — Nicole looked delighted to have upset her boss just so.

Nadya watches him pace with growing concern. “Then what am I supposed to be doing, exactly?”

“Keeping you in the dark just doesn’t sit well with me anymore,” explains Adrian, “not on anything.”

The door opens again — this time without announcement — and they both turn to greet their guests. The vibrant punch of colored hair sends Nadya reeling into another moment of nostalgia. She’s been having a lot of those in the last month. But it isn’t Lily who joins them — it never will be.

“Katherine, a pleasure to see you again.”

Adrian crosses the room in a single bound. He’s been doing a lot of that lately, Nadya notices. His eyes scanning documents faster than her heart can beat and the occasional vampiric dash to catch something falling. Even his familiar black-matte water bottles no longer carry the guise of a tea bag string hanging over the cap.

How hard must it have been, she wonders, for him to pretend to be human with me?

A charade he obviously doesn’t need to have around Katherine. With everything going on she’s not thought about the mysterious stranger from the Gallery in a while but now she’s just another piece of the puzzle that’s growing faster than Nadya can solve it.

Katherine backs up; nearly into the figure behind her, at Adrian’s approach. Plasters on an obvious grimacing smile and doesn’t take his offered hand.

“Yeah, wish I could say the feeling’s mutual but — it’s not, so.”

At Katherine’s back the dark-haired man’s face grows somehow more stern; something Nadya wasn’t sure was possible. Were his brows furrowed any lower they’d obscure his eyes. He doesn’t move to put himself in the way of Adrian but there’s an obvious connection between the leather-clad guests that Nadya can see even at a distance.

Adrian’s well-versed in the world of business transactions; knows he’s not going to be able to force either of them to ease the tension through stiff-if-polite interaction. He nods curtly to the man and gestures for them to take any of the open seats at the conference table.

Katherine pulls out one of the chairs and only then seems to notice Nadya.

“Well look at you,” though everything she says seems laced with sarcasm there’s an impressed sparkle in her eye, “all grown up and at the big kids’ table now?”

In her confusion, Nadya only fumbles. “I—huh?”

Katherine’s friend yanks his chair back and practically falls into it — kicks his snow-caked boots up on the pristine white table and gives less than zero fucks about the flecks of mud that dirty the marble.

He jerks a thumb at Nadya; still floundering. “This the muggle you were talking about?”

Katherine nods. “Yeah, but I could’ve sworn she didn’t know a thing.”

“What, that vampires are real?” She pushes up her glasses and puts on her best fake smile. “I’m pretty perceptive.”

“Not just vampires.” There’s a chuckle hidden deep in the man’s Southern twang that brings a pink to Nadya’s cheeks. Before she can ask what he means, Katherine hits his legs.

“Can you at least try and act professional, Ryder? Christ.”

“Anything for you Kathy.”

Ryder’s boots find their way firmly onto the floor. He gives Katherine a ‘What?’ look with only his face but remains silent.

Back at the front of the room Adrian clears his throat. “If we could begin… I have another meeting in an hour.”

Not that Nadya expects Katherine or her friend Ryder to suddenly pull out a presentation on the overhead projector, but whatever this meeting is (importance aside) she hoped for something a little more official. But apparently official just doesn’t exist outside of secret meetings at city events.

“Anything for you, boss.” The word drips off Katherine’s tongue with nothing less than her full sarcastic capability. “Did you follow up on the information I gave you on Courette?”

Courette. Even hearing his name sends a shiver down Nadya’s spine. Makes her remember everything Courette led to; The Shrike, the Baron, Maricruz — what happened to Lily — the Cellar…

“Yes, thank you for that again,” Adrian sifts through his papers and pulls out a small packet, slides it down the table where Ryder snatches it up to lazily peruse, “but it led to a dead end.”

Nadya glares at him sharply. “Seriously? What about the Summons?”

“He appeared in front of the Council as per the pact. But Courette stopped showing up for work a week prior to his attacking you. Sometime in between the two events he was Turned Feral. The Council voted and decided there was no connection.”

When was this, Nadya wonders; can’t help but wish she could give that Council — and The Baron — a piece of her mind on the matter.

Adrian squeezes her shoulder reassuringly. It helps and it doesn’t. Too many things were complicated these days.

“I hope you know info’s info and I demand payment regardless.” Katherine warns. Adrian gives her a curt nod.

“Kamilah’s already transferred your funds as well as a compensation for hazard pay. We do appreciate the danger you’re putting yourselves in — whether you believe us or not.”

The comment seems directed at Ryder; who snorts and goes back to reading. He’s not a man of many words.

Coming into this, Nadya had hoped Adrian would at least fill her in beforehand. Trying to pick up the story from context is proving harder than she thought — but there’s no way in Hell she’s raising her hand and asking what’s what. Katherine and the Ryder guy were hired by Adrian and Kamilah for something involving the Ferals — something that was starting even before she was attacked.

“Well that’s mighty generous of you,” drawls Ryder, “but I think it’s in Kathy’s best interest to up the pay anyway.”

Adrian stills. “And why is that?”

“You wanna tell him or should I?” Ryder seems to be getting some sort of delight in whatever information they’re withholding. Katherine smacks his arm but his smirk doesn’t abate.

“We think we found a couple of viable candidates for the Feral that Turned Courette.”

“A couple?” asks Adrian, appalled.

“Well, a few.”

“I need a number.”

“Eight.”

The color drains from Adrian’s cheeks. “Ei — over half a dozen?”

“Well, there were ten, that’s why Kathy called me up from the Bayou.” Ryder explains. “But we took care’a two of ‘em.”

It’s Nadya’s turn to offer comfort as Adrian sinks into his chair with a hand on his forehead. He’s not sweating — she doesn’t even know if he can — but he’s definitely more pale than usual. With the bright fluorescents overhead the shadows under his eyes are more prominent, too.

“Is that more than you thought?” she whispers while pushing his water bottle close. He shakes his head like he can’t even stomach the news let alone a drink.

“We’ve killed a good baker’s dozen on our own… and thought the problem handled.”

Ryder clears his throat to draw their attention. “We’ve narrowed down their territories to a couple square blocks per target. I’m sure I don’t gotta tell you these bastards are normally pack-oriented — but they ain’t smart enough to divide and conquer.”

“So most likely scenario we can come up with is that someone’s making Ferals with no relation to one another to keep them separate. Nothing to tie them to each other or whoever holds the leash.” To her credit, nothing in Katherine’s voice is amused. In fact Nadya wonders if she catches a quiver of unspoken fear.

Adrian doesn’t immediately reply — the duo wait in patient silence. She feels so useless, so ignorant; like any suggestion would be met with Ryder’s laughter and scorn and an explanation as to why she’s so wrong. She doesn’t know what to do and it’s an awful, awful feeling knotting inside her.

When Adrian finally stands the room lets out a collective exhale of relief. Palms flat on the tabletop, he keeps his eyes downward.

“Nadya, can I have you head back up to the office and set up a meeting with Kamilah before the night is through?”

It’s a little bit of a shock. Takes her a moment to realize he’s talking to her even though he very clearly said her name.

“Uhm, yeah,” because that technically is part of her job, but… “like, right now?”

“Yes. Please.”

It takes her a few seconds to catch up, but she does. It’s in the way Katherine suddenly won’t meet her eyes — how the Ryder fellow’s dark gaze hints at pity. Whatever Adrian has to say — really say — he doesn’t want her to hear.

She wants to argue even though she knows it’ll make her look like a petulant child. After all wasn’t that why he’d asked her down here? So out of respect for her dignity she doesn’t. She does, however, make sure she pushes back her chair a little louder than necessary when she grabs her things.

“Let her know it’s urgent.”

“Yes, Mister Raines.” She finds small satisfaction in his almost imperceptible flinch.

“Nadya…”

“Anything else I can do for you, Mister Raines?”

He sighs. “No. Thank you.”

“Of course Mister Raines.”

So much for not keeping me in the dark. She gives a nod to Katherine and a polite smile Ryder’s way as she leaves. Finds herself lingering by the doorway — literary irony thou art a cold-hearted witch — to catch the turn of the conversation just briefly before it closes.

“How much will extermination cost?”

“For something like this? A favor.”

When she tiredly scrapes her key in the door the first thing she hears is the faint lilt of opera music through the thin wood.

Nadya’s gotten used to living alone. She didn’t want to — sometimes her brain even tricks itself into hearing the familiar sounds of digital violence and Lily’s cheers of inevitable victory. “The harder you hit the buttons and the louder you yell the more powerful you are,” that’s what Lily would say. And she played like it was a proven fact, too.

But there’s no pretending this is Lily. Winter’s been melting into spring and her grief still burns bright but not so much it makes her ignorant.

Her thumb hovers over the button to dial Adrian as she slowly pushes the door open. Yes, most people would call the police. But most people didn’t have a two hundred year old vampire for a boss and yes she’s still frustrated at that very vampire but that wouldn’t stop her from letting him make a midnight snack out of anyone stupid enough to break into her apartment and listen to opera.

When a voice she doesn’t recognize calls from inside she almost drops her phone from fright.

“Miss Al Jamil, finally. Here I was starting to worry something terrible had befallen you on your commute home.”

It’s not quite sunrise yet. Maybe an hour—hour and a half until it would be dangerous for Adrian to drop her off. Yet the living room curtains are drawn and the whole place smells of faint spices she’s not indulged in since she moved away from home.

She closes the door behind her and tries very very hard to understand the broad-shouldered figure sitting at the tiny table she’d forced Lily to buy prior to taking up her share of the lease.

“Senator Vega.”

The Senator smiles; all charm and one left dimple in the way that’s won him at least the household wife vote. He looks dreadfully out of place — Adrian was the last time something that expensive walked through her doorway — but at the same time doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable. He just is. But he is in her apartment.

“I gotta tell you,” yes, she’s disturbed beyond belief, but Nadya follows her routine like it’s any other day — leaves her shoes by the doormat and goes to put her dirty lunch container in the sink, “there’s such a thing as going too far with your constituents. This. This is too far.”

But why else would Senator Vega be in her apartment? She’s not dumb.

“The sun will be up soon.”

Vega laughs with a shake of his head. His fingers drum continuously on his starched pants.

“Well, Adrian wouldn’t have signed you into his Clan if you weren’t bright. But I have to say Miss Al Jamil —”

“Just Nadya is fine.”

“— Nadya, then; you should be a little more careful going forward. I’m sure you can guess our kind aren’t deterred by locks and deadbolts. Do you even carry a stake in your purse?”

She chugs half a bottle of water from the fridge before turning to Vega fully. “You know, until now I hadn’t seen the need.”

“Tsk tsk, then Adrian has failed you in properly ensuring your protection.”

Her fists clench at her sides. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t break into my place to tell me what Adrian’s not doing right, Senator.”

“Please,” with that same politician-smeared endearing tone he uses during newscasts, “call me Adam.”

“No thank you.” Even in the darkness barely permeated by the overhead kitchen lamp she sees the tick of his frown — there and then gone in a flash. Vampires are cunning and politicians are cunning so what happens when you put all that cunning into one vessel? Nadya’s got a sickening feeling she’s close to finding out.

He waves it off easily. “I digress. Yes, Nadya, I am not without ulterior motive for visiting you tonight. But I’m not the only Council member eager to put a face to the name Adrian praises so often these days. My associate Cecil had the, ahem, pleasure, I was told, but he’s not the most hospitable even on a good day.”

“Cecil?”

“Our friend ‘The Baron.’” He says the name like it’s on the same tier as ‘The Boogeyman.’ Nadya sucks in a breath and nods.

“Yes, yes we were told you two had been acquainted. Dreadful business — certainly something that never would have happened under my purview.”

“Sucks you weren’t there, then.”

Vega obviously finds her funny but he’s the only one laughing. “Indeed. Now, onto business…” Nadya does her level best not to tense when Vega starts pacing the apartment. His angular nose twitches — makes her wonder if he can catch some whiff of what happened to Lily. Adrian tried to insist on a cleaning crew but Nadya refused — wanted to take care of it herself. Took a long weekend and spent it on her hands and knees scrubbing industrial bleach over the tiles and threw away everything with even so much a speck of dirt on it just in case that dirt was blood.

He stops opposite her, the kitchen island between them, and thumbs the leather strap of her purse idly.

“I don’t know how much your dear employer has told you about the Council. How it was founded. Why it was necessary — why it continues to be a necessity in these troubled times. What we stand for, and what we stand in the way of when it comes to the balance of things.

“This city is teetering precariously, Nadya. We’ve become a mountain on the head of a pin in the middle of a hurricane. And if things continue as they are…” He doesn’t have to give her the visual. “I’ve already prepared for the inevitable; as many of us in the Council have. But I fear Adrian may be too ensconced with the present to be thinking ahead as he must.”

She fumbles for words. It’s a lot to take in. “If you think — or know — something bad is going to happen, why don’t you try and stop it?”

“Such a finite way of thinking about things; part of that mortal charm, I’m sure.” Answers Vega — only it’s not an answer at all. He’s just talking in circles.

“The Council and I need Adrian Raines to be looking far ahead — his sights set on the future. Your influence has apparently been enough to keep him fixated on the present, so perhaps your influence might be enough to tilt his chin up a bit — if you get my meaning.”

No, I don’t, she wants to say. Get the hell out of my apartment, she wants to say.

But he’s waiting for an answer, so…

“Yeah.”

“Good. If you value him as much as he values you then I think you’ll find this leads to an outcome beneficial for all.”

The sudden beeping of her phone cuts through the tension harshly. Makes her jump and grasp her chest before she looks down at it. Her sunrise alarm greets her with a digitally smiling sun.

Vega’s the one who turns it off — takes a moment to look at the screen with something akin to amusement before hitting the snooze. “I believe that’s my cue to leave. This has been an enlightening discussion but the sun waits for no vampire — no matter his age.”

Discussion? She can’t remember really discussing anything. Only talking in circles.

“No need to show me out, I remember the way.” Vega takes her hand without prompt and kisses the back of her knuckles. God, how she wishes chivalry was dead right about now. “Thank you for entertaining me, Nadya. I hope you found this meeting as delightful as I did.”

She resists every urge to yank her hand back, but crosses her arms defensively. “Sure. That’s a word for it.”

The Senator heads out likely in the same manner that he came in; as though he owns every piece of ground he walks on. He stops just shy of closing the door behind him and gives Nadya a final farewell with his unnerving politician-practiced smile.

“Don’t forget to vote.”

The door clicks shut but Nadya doesn’t move. She stares at the blank wood with a trembling lower lip. Just waiting, waiting for him to come back inside. Or for another vampire to invade her space.

Her snooze alarm snaps her out of her trance. Nadya sinks to the kitchen floor in blubbering tears.

“I do not seek to invalidate your fear but leaving your front door unlocked sends a message even I am confused about. Has it been this way all day? Nadya? Where are y — Nadya.”

Kamilah sighs as she takes in the sight before her. Nadya on the kitchen floor, legs curled to her chest, phone clutched in her hand. White knuckles that won’t thank her for keeping such a tight grip later on in life.

“What are you doing down there?” She waits for an answer but Nadya… she doesn’t give one. Doesn’t think she can speak more than the dozen desperate voice messages left on Adrian’s cell.

A dozen whimpering, tear-filled pleas for him to come protect her and what did she get in reply?

[TEXT]: Nadya I’m so so sorry. Out of the city. Calling Kamilah ASAP. -Adrian [TEXT]: Kamilah en route. Stay there. Have a bag packed. -Adrian

“Stand.”

She lets out a shaky breath and shifts her legs. Pins and needles race along her skin and her knees ache in protest. How long has she been down here?

“Are you impaired, now? Or injured in some way?” Then Kamilah’s face comes into her sight line; the vampire crouched before her in a way that lesser, confused people might call concerned.

“Nadya, look at me.” Her voice, like smoke and cinnamon, draws Nadya’s eyes to hers. Lets her map every little crease that was allowed to set in before she was Turned — frozen in eternal beauty. Holy… wow. “Are you injured?”

It takes a second for her to recover but Nadya manages to shake her head. Kamilah nods, satisfied, and when she stands she has a slim hand extended in offering. With her help Nadya pulls herself up.

“Oof!” The pins and needles catch up with her; angry at her audacity to move after being still from sunrise to sunset. She sways and reaches out for purchase. Finds herself held steady by a lithe and impossibly strong grip.

“You said you were uninjured.” chides Kamilah; who now looks Nadya over with almost medical scrutiny.

“I’m fine,” though her voice probably shouldn’t sound foreign to her own ears, “seriously — my legs just fell asleep. I’m fine, Kamilah. I promise.”

Only when the vampiress seems satisfied does she let go of Nadya — Nadya who’s desperately putting every brain cell she has left into resisting flushing crimson red. Without another word Kamilah vanishes in a blur — reappears not a moment later. The opera music no longer plays.

“The premises are empty.”

“Yeah, I could have told you that.”

“You seemed incapable of doing much of anything.” Kamilah glances back where Nadya had been on the floor and, well, she’ll give her that. “Adrian contacted me hours before, but I could do nothing until sunset. He said you were attacked. But I see no evidence of —”

“Not — it — lemme explain—”

“I expect nothing less. After we’re far from here.”

Nadya packs under Kamilah’s careful surveillance. She has to wrangle her old suitcase out of her closet — runs past her vampire protector several times to grab her things from the bathroom, the living room, Lily’s room — but manages to shove in a couple changes and enough comfy hoodies to last a prison sentence in Siberia. And a change of work clothes just in case.

“Make what you can carry last,” Kamilah advises her from the doorway, “you likely won’t be returning soon.”

Nadya pushes up her glasses — a reminder that has her rifling for her spare pair in her bedside table. “What do you mean?” Well there’s one pair… what happened to the third?

Kamilah scoffs. “You’re unprotected here.” She says it like a fact; something obvious. And in retrospect the fact that she continued to sleep in the same place where Lily was attacked — where Lily was killed — for weeks after… It makes Nadya pack just a little bit faster.

She’s known objectively that Kamilah and Adrian were very different people — but learns just how different when Kamilah opens the passenger side door of a car that would look more at home on a 60s spy film set. Her suitcase stays clutched in her lap while she waits for Kamilah to join her; both taking in the dark leather-lined interior and finding herself terrified of damaging it.

Kamilah shuts her door with possibly more force than necessary. “What are you staring at?”

“My student debt cost put into one vehicle — how did this thing not get stolen while you were upstairs?”

“If that is truly your only curiosity then you should really reconsider your living arrangements.”

“A broke girl lives where a broke girl can afford.”

Kamilah looks at her sharply — Nadya quickly backtracks. “Something Lily used to say; but without the expletives.”

It’s no surprise that Kamilah’s empathy has a limit — and she’s expended all she can manage. The car peels away from the curb in a squeal of tires and blaring taxi horns. If she wasn’t so exhausted she’d be a little more terrified of crashing. Instead Nadya lets the purr of the engine and the lights of the emerging New York night lull her into a snooze until they arrive.

There’s one thing glaringly wrong with all the splendor of Ahmanet Financial and the apartment Kamilah sets her up in: it’s nothing like the condo at Raines Corp. at all. Still wide and spacious but every turn of her head makes Nadya dizzy — no surface left un-adorned with antiques older than she can even fathom. And despite the night every curtain is still drawn shut and clasped with a wrought iron hook. Nadya wouldn’t mind seeing the view from this side of the city but she’s not going to impose on Kamilah more than she already is.

“I thought we were going to Adrian’s.” She follows Kamilah’s lead and toes off her shoes at the doorway. Steps on the raised hardwood floors and feels the cold leech through her socks.

“Adrian is out of town until tomorrow. Urgent Council business.”

“You didn’t go with him?” The arched brow she gets makes Nadya fumble to take her words back. “I—I just mean, you know, as a Council member too.”

“No. I did not. Lucky for you.”

Her tour is brief — closed doors mean stay out and she’s strongly encouraged to take a shower. “Or a bath, if you prefer, I trust you know how not to drown.” And the way she gestures to the single fanciest bathtub Nadya’s ever seen in her entire life incites just a hint of jealousy.

All too soon Kamilah’s sliding her heels back on at the doorway. Nadya stares silently — she can’t help but feel a little like a babysat kid… or a house pet left to its own devices.

“Try not to have any life-threatening emergencies. My butler Gerard can be reached through the landline.” Christ she’s not seen a landline outside of an office in ages. “Keep up after yourself.”

“You’re not going to…”

Kamilah’s stare stops her words in her mouth. “What,” asks the vampire, “did you think I would stay?”

Adrian would, she thinks, and definitely doesn’t say it out loud because she values her head on her neck.

“While it may be the single most bothersome occupation I’ve filled my time with, the running of a Fortune 500 company does not simply happen. We’ve made ourselves titans of business and now we must follow through.”

“Yeah, yeah no, of course.”

Kamilah opens the door; seems to remember something and flashes a look over her shoulder.

“And one more thing — do not leave. This is where you are safest.”

She wasn’t planning on it. “Thanks — again. I mean… for everything. Thank you, Kamilah.”

“Mm.” The door closes with Kamilah on the other side.

Nadya wraps her arms around her middle and tries — with little success — not to feel so utterly alone.

[cinema-tv-etc]

Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t

Yesterday, Kristen Stewart fell out of the con-artist comedy Focus after Will Smith replaced Ben Affleck as the male lead; according to Variety, she was nagged by "the feeling that the age difference between the two would be too large a gap." For the record, Smith is a mere four years older than the 40-year-old Affleck, and if it seems a little odd that either of them would be considered a romantic partner for the 23-year-old Stewart in the first place … well, welcome to Hollywood. It seems like time and time again, male movie stars are allowed to age into their forties, fifties, and even sixties while the ages of their female love interests remain firmly on one side of the big 4-0, but is this a perception borne out of reality? To find out for sure, Vulture has analyzed the data of ten middle-aged leading men and the ages of the women they've wooed onscreen; you'll see the results in the charts below.

How'd we arrive at our conclusions? For each of our leading men, we tried to pick a representative sample of films — usually ten — where that A-lister had a notable love interest or wife, then we plotted the age gaps on our charts over the course of that star's career. (Because production dates for older movies can be hard to come by, we measured the stars' ages on the day the film in question was released.) The results confirmed our suspicions: As leading men age, their love interests stay the same, and even the oldest men on our list have had few romantic pairings with a woman their own age (or even one out of her mid-thirties). If our actor was sharing the screen with an A-lister of commensurate star power like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie, the age difference would drop somewhat, but in movies that relied solely on our guy's big name, the lesser-known love interests would nearly always be decades younger.

Scroll down to check out our findings in-depth.

DENZEL WASHINGTON Denzel Washington's pushing 60, but you wouldn't know it from his love interests, who tend to stay 35 and under. Perhaps that's because Washington rarely gets to romance an actress as formidable as he is (a fact of life that may owe more to Hollywood's racial prejudices than gender inequality), because when he went toe-to-toe with Angela Bassett for Malcolm X and Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife, the age differences weren't quite as egregious. (He did pair with Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie when they were newbie superstars, but those films — The Pelican Brief and The Bone Collector — were cautious and chaste when it came to suggesting a love connection). The older Washington gets, the less it seems to matter to his love interests, as the last three notable ones — Paula Patton, Lymari Nadal, and Kelly Reilly — were all more than twenty years younger than he was.

HARRISON FORD Ford rose to stardom in his late thirties, but the first time he had a notable love interest in her late thirties, it was in 1999's Random Hearts … when Ford was an age 57 to Kristin Scott Thomas's 39. The vast majority of Ford's love interests have been at least fifteen years younger than him, and some were far younger than that: When Six Days Seven Nights came out in 1998, pundits debated whether the sexuality of Ford's co-star Anne Heche might prove a distraction, paying little mind to the fact that Ford was 26 years older than the woman he was supposed to woo.

JOHNNY DEPP Johnny Depp likes 'em young: Nearly all of his notable love interests have been 25 or under, and a few of them — including Winona Ryder, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Keira Knightley (who shared a kiss with Depp in the second Pirates film) — would have been carded at the time they swapped spit with the star. In fact, the cradle-robbing Depp has only had two notable love interests in their mid-thirties, and all Juliette Binoche and Angelina Jolie had to do to make that cut is win an Oscar beforehand. Easy!

TOM CRUISE Tom Cruise has had an interesting romantic trajectory onscreen: At the start of his career, almost all of his love interests were older than him. Shelley Long in Losin' It, Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business, Kelly McGillis in Top Gun … time and time again, an older woman would seduce the sexually inexperienced Cruise onscreen. It's no wonder women used to love him! In the nineties, though, Cruise began squiring the five-years-younger Nicole Kidman, and he's remained the older man in all of his romantic encounters since. From Vanilla Sky on, the closest Cruise will let a woman get to his age is ten years; in the new Oblivion, he's a full seventeen years older than his female lead, Olga Kurylenko.

GEORGE CLOONEY Compared to Cruise, the women that George Clooney screen-dates are a smidge more age-appropriate (most of them are only eight or nine years his junior), and twice he even wooed actresses who were three older than him: Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day and Holly Hunter in O Brother, Where Art Thou? When it comes to co-stars, Clooney tends to have his pick of classy actresses in their mid-thirties, though as he gets older — Clooney will turn 52 in May — the age of his love interests still seems to have plateaued.

RICHARD GERE Former Sexiest Man Alive winner Richard Gere is a good-looking 63, but his love interests haven't aged much in the three decades he's been a star: From Pretty Woman on, Gere's female co-stars have been 10 to 30 years younger than him, a trend that shows no signs of abating now that he's in his seventh decade. To be fair, he's played husband to the three-years-older Susan Sarandon in both Shall We Dance and Arbitrage … but in the former, he spends far more screen time with the much younger Jennifer Lopez, and in the latter, he's stepping out on Sarandon with supermodel-turned-actress Laetitia Casta, who's separated in age from Gere by a solid 29 years. At least Gere had the tables turned on him somewhat in Unfaithful, where his fifteen-years-younger screen-wife Diane Lane had an affair with a younger man, Olivier Martinez. How much younger than Lane was Martinez? Well … one measly year, actually.

STEVE CARELL When your breakout film is called The 40 Year Old Virgin, it ensures that audiences will forever be aware of your age … even if you were actually 43 when it came out, as Steve Carell was. In that movie, he fell in love with the three-years-older Catherine Keener, and ever since, Carell has looked most at home with romantic partners nearer to his age, like Lauren Graham, Tina Fey, and Julianne Moore. Every so often, though, Hollywood will insist at throwing a twentysomething starlet at Carell, and it's just awkward: Movies like Get Smart, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone had more than a few problems, but the main issue in all three is how ill at ease Carell seems when romantically paired with an actress who's twenty years younger. Let's hope Carell got the memo and will continue to be the rare male star who mostly sticks to love interests in their forties (as his new screen paramour Kristen Wiig will be when Anchorman 2 comes out this winter).

BRAD PITT Brad Pitt began his career as a romantic idol by taking a page straight out of the Tom Cruise playbook: After his roll in the hay with the eight-years-older Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise, he then began screen-dating the much younger women he was seeing in real life, Juliette Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow, who were both around a decade Pitt's junior. (That's apparently his sweet spot, as Angelina Jolie would later be able to attest.) The rest of his romantic history runs the gamut, though Pitt did once take a screen-wife his own age: Mary-Louise Parker, who only got a handful of lines in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

LIAM NEESON Remember how Depp only allowed a love interest within striking distance of his own age if she was an Oscar-winning actress? The same more than holds true for Liam Neeson, who was partnered with older Oscar winners Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep in the mid-nineties. Aside from that brief moment in time, Neeson usually robs the cradle by wooing actresses around fifteen years younger than him, and ever since Taken reestablished his box-office virility, the age of his love interests has dropped precipitously: More than two and a half decades separated Neeson from his screen-wife January Jones in Unknown, and in Paul Haggis's next film, Third Person, the 61-year-old Neeson will bed 29-year-old Olivia Wilde.

TOM HANKS Well, here's something novel: an A-lister whose leading ladies actually age alongside him (though they still tend, on the whole, to be a bit younger). There aren't any egregiously age-inappropriate pairings in Tom Hanks's portfolio, since Hanks keeps his love interests within at least ten years of him at all times. He also aims high: Most of his female co-stars are Oscar winners or nominees, from Helen Hunt to Halle Berry, and he'll co-star with two-time nominee Catherine Keener (who's only three years younger) in this year's fact-based drama Captain Phillips. Then again, maybe it shouldn't surprise us that Hanks is an A-list aberration in this group: For 25 years, he's been married to the same woman, actress Rita Wilson … and both Hanks and Wilson are 56.

* The charts for Steve Carell and Tom Hanks have been updated.

By  Kyle Buchanan

http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leading-men-age-but-their-love-interests-dont.html?mid=twitter_vulture

This is neither perfectly accurate nor complete, but here is a rough comparison with Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep: Susan Sarandon OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- The Greatest: Susan, 63 / Pierce Brosnan, 56 2007- In the Valley of Elah: Susan, 61 / Tommy Lee Jones, 61 2007- Mr. Woodcock: Susan, 61 / Billy Bob Thornton, 52 2004- Shall We Dance: Susan, 58 / Richard Gere, 55 1998- Stepmom: Susan, 52 / Ed Harris, 48 1988- Bull Durham: Susan, 42 / Kevin Costner, 33 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- Solitary Man: Susan, 63 / Michael Douglas, 65 2002- Moonlight Mile: Susan, 56 / Dustin Hoffman, 65 1992- Lorenzos Oil: Susan, 46 / Nick Nolte, 51 1987-Witches of Eastwick: Susan, 41 / Jack Nicholson, 50 In Summary: in 10 movies spanning 22 years, Susan Sarandon has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men (including Tommy Lee Jones, who is 1 month younger than she), and YOUNGER than 4. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 9 years (Bull Durham). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was also 9 years (Witches of Eastwick & Moonlight Mile). Meryl Streep OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Alec Baldwin, 51 2009: Julie & Julia: Meryl, 60 / Stanley Tucci, 49 2002: Adaptation: Meryl, 53 / Chris Cooper, 51 1998: One True Thing: Meryl, 49 / William Hurt, 48 1996: Before and After: Meryl, 47 / Liam Neeson, 44 1990: Postcards from the Edge: Meryl, 41 / Dennis Quaid, 36 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2012: Hope Springs: Meryl, 63 / Tommy Lee Jones, 66 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Steve Martin, 64 1995: The Bridges of Madison County: Meryl, 46 / Clint Eastwood, 65 1994: The River Wild: Meryl, 45 / David Strathairn, 45 1991: Defending Your Life: Meryl, 42 / Albert Brooks, 44 1986: Heartburn: Meryl, 37 / Jack Nicholson, 49 1985: Out of Africa: Meryl, 36 / Robert Redford, 49 1982: Sophies Choice: Meryl, 33 / Kevin Kline, 35 1981: French Lieutenants Woman: Meryl, 32 / Jeremy Irons, 33 1979: Kramer v. Kramer: Meryl, 30 / Dustin Hoffman, 42 In Summary: in 15 movies spanning 22 years, Meryl Streep has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men, and YOUNGER than 10. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 11 years (Julie and Julia). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 19 years (Bridges of Madison County).

[bigyack-com]

Super Bowl 2020 Commercials: Funeral for Mr. Peanut, Tears for Google

An audience expected to be around 100 million. Big companies paying as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds of advertising time. In addition to deciding the National Football League champion, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year for TV commercials.For the most part, the commercials have were light and bright.Blasts From the PastNostalgia was an early theme, with companies marketing their products with ads that showed love for the ’80s and ’90s.Cheetos had the rapper MC Hammer and his zoot-suit-inspired pants in an ad that aimed to popularize the word Cheetle, Frito-Lay’s term for the orange dust the snack leaves in its wake.Squarespace sent Winona Ryder, the Gen X star who has made a comeback thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” to Winona, Minn., where she was born. Bill Murray, with a sidekick from the rodent family, relived the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” for Jeep, and Mountain Dew Zero riffed on the 1980 film “The Shining” with an assist from the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.A commercial for Avocados From Mexico features Molly Ringwald, the star of “Pretty in Pink” and other ’80s comedies.The nostalgia mixed with sentimentality. And three simple commercials seemed to have left the deepest impression on viewers.A spot from Google — about the 85-year-old grandfather of a Google employee searching for ways to remember his partner, Loretta — inspired a flood of “I’m not crying, you’re crying” social media posts. New York Life Insurance explored various forms of love using several real couples and relatives, without a celebrity in sight. WeatherTech’s commercial focused on the chief executive’s golden retriever, Scout, and the doctors who saved him from cancer.A Stunt Ad Lights Up Social MediaAfter much hype in recent days, Planters ran a commercial showing the funeral of its mascot, the monocled creature Mr. Peanut. Other brand avatars were at the grave site, including the Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean. After the Kool Aid creature shed a tear, something sprouted in the dirt. And then a baby version of Mr. Peanut sprang to life, squeaking like a dolphin, saying, “Just kidding, I’m back,” and asking for a monocle. The reaction on social media was not kind.The unusual Planters campaign, which involved the character dying in a car crash, was put on pause last week, after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. In recent days, its parent company, Kraft Heinz, swapped the position of a Heinz ad with the Planters ad, putting footage of Mr. Peanut’s funeral before a halftime show that was scheduled to include a tribute to Mr. Bryant.The Streamers Are HereThe New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spent this Super Bowl as a Hulu spokesman, saying in a commercial for the streaming service that “it’s time to say goodbye to TV as you know it” before slyly adding, “but me, I’m not going anywhere.”An ad from the short-form streaming service Quibi, featuring bank robbers who pause to watch a quick show on their phone screens, made one thing clear: how to pronounce “Quibi.” (It’s kwi-bee, not kwee-bee.) A spot from Amazon Prime Video is expected late in the game.Unity Amid DiversityIn other Super Bowl ads, Verizon, Sabra and other companies are emphasizing — and celebrating — what Americans have in common beneath their differences. Don’t we all complain about the same things? Don’t we all defy cultural stereotypes? And don’t we all love hummus?Those are some of the messages that figure in the sunny portrait of a nation that will emerge from the more than 80 commercials scheduled to appear during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast.“We’re at a moment in the country where it’s important that we all contribute to things that unite as opposed to things that separate,” said Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon. “It’s a sensitive point — we’re a big company and we have many, many customers, and our intention is in no way, shape or form to have a political message.”To fill advertising slots costing as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds — a high — New York Life Insurance and Snickers were among the brands with big-budget commercials showing a wide variety of Americans embracing their differences.Sabra cast two former contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, making it possibly the first Super Bowl commercial to feature drag queens. One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that recently pushed the Hallmark Channel to pull ads featuring brides kissing each other, circulated a petition demanding that the Sabra spot be removed, to no avail.Companies are also slipping into other companies’ commercials. Pringles paired up with the animated Adult Swim series “Rick and Morty” for an ad filled with horrifying child robots. Tide, which overran the Super Bowl 2018 with crossover commercials, teamed this year with Bud Light and the Fox show “The Masked Singer.” Pop-Tarts, which featured the flowing hair of Jonathan Van Ness of “Queer Eye” in its commercial, called out Hyundai’s Boston-accented spot “Smaht Pahk” by posting on Twitter: “Pahp-Tahts.”Politics Crashes the TV PartyThe first of two 30-second ads from President Trump’s campaign, which together cost more than $11 million, aired at 6:55 p.m. in the first commercial break after kickoff. The spot focused on Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence in federal prison on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering when her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian West, the reality television star. Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence in 2018.It was the first Super Bowl to feature national ads from two presidential candidates, and the political tone of the ads has stood out in a broadcast filled with companies trying to avoid sensitive topics the day before the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.Just before the second half kickoff, the billionaire presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg presented an ad about gun control that featured Calandrian Simpson-Kemp, whose football-loving son died in a shooting in 2013. Mr. Bloomberg has swarmed the Democratic field with more than $275 million in advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. But this is not his first foray into the Super Bowl while talking about gun laws — he did the same in a 2012 ad with Thomas M. Menino, who was then the mayor of Boston.The Jay-Z InfluenceAnother exception to the escapist fare is a spot on police shootings. Surprisingly, it comes from an organization that has shied away from the issue: the National Football League. The spot shows the retired 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin reflecting on the 2015 death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer, and it includes a dramatic re-enactment of the killing.The commercial promotes the N.F.L.’s Inspire Change initiative, a social outreach program that the league has put together with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Colin Kaepernick — Mr. Boldin’s onetime 49ers teammate — set off an uproar a year after the killing by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. The N.F.L. struggled with its response for years.More PositivityBut the great majority of Super Bowl LIV spots are jaunty and optimistic. TurboTax has a commercial involving people of many races, genders, ages and walks of life dancing to a bounce-inflected earworm of a jingle, “All People Are Tax People.”The mood continues a trend toward tonally light commercials that became pronounced in 2018. In 2017, the first year of President Trump’s administration, Budweiser and Coca-Cola, among other brands, touched on immigration, equal rights and fair pay.A Bud Light Seltzer commercial posited that the brain of Post Malone — the pop star and songwriter known for melding disparate musical styles — is operated by a diverse group of technicians in a control room who all bear his distinctive tattoos. Martin Scorsese, who is nominated for an Oscar this year for “The Irishman,” was also involved in a Super Bowl commercial, but not behind the camera. Instead, he appeared in an ad-from Coca-Cola, waiting anxiously at a party for Jonah Hill, whom he had directed in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to muster enough energy to join him. Mr. Hill, who was cast first, suggested Mr. Scorsese when the company asked him to recommend someone to play the out-of-place friend.Space RaceWhile many ads looked to the past for inspiration, Turkish Airlines and others were fixated on the cosmos. Olay alludes to the first all-female spacewalk last year in an ad featuring Lilly Singh and Busy Philipps with the retired astronaut Nicole Stott. A spot from the home carbonation company SodaStream, which includes a cameo by Bill Nye, showed astronauts finding water on Mars. And Walmart crammed references to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Mars Attacks!,” “Men in Black” and “Arrival” into its commercial.Tech FirstsFacebook’s first Super Bowl ad is expected to pair Chris Rock with the “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone. Microsoft’s ad features Katie Sowers, the San Francisco 49ers assistant coach who will be the first woman and openly gay person to help lead a team to the big game. Other tech ads included Amazon’s commercial with the ubiquitous pitchwoman Ellen DeGeneres. Read the full article

[weolcantramp]

The Midheaven: How You Will Be Remembered

The Midheaven (MC) is commonly thought to describe one’s career path. Although this is a decent indicator of one’s overall path, it can be hard to relate to a specific career so early in one’s life. So, if you don’t relate to your Midheaven like, “Oh, you have a MC in Aries, so you’re probably going to be a police officer, solider, or athlete" then maybe try thinking of the Midheaven as how you will be remembered or what you are generally associated with. (Always trust your dominant sign to describe you the most- *a post similar to this coming soon) ✨No matter what career you decide, you will be remembered by your peers, co-workers, friends, and family by traits from the sign, aspects*, and planets* bestowed upon your 10th House.✨

♈ Aries MC: will be remembered for their courage, boldness, intimidating/unsettling nature, and/or originality. (ex. Stephen King, Meryl Streep, Kanye West, Joan of Arc, Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, Madalyn Murry O'Hair, Pablo Picasso, Rachel Maddow, Will Smith, Franz Kafka, Tyra Banks, Aleister Crowley, Tina Fey, Francisco de Goya, Julia Roberts, Chris Farley, Joseph Goebbels, Marvin Gaye, Iggy Pop, Kate Moss, Alfred Hitchcock, George Wallace, Hank Williams, Ayn Rand, Rob Zombie, Alexandre Dumas, John Steinbeck, Anne Frank, Twiggy, Jack Black, William Blake, Celine Dion, Galileo Galilei, Al Gore, Emmylou Harris, Las Vegas-Nevada, Manhattan-New York)

♉ Taurus MC: will be remembered for their extravagant style or possessions, their values, and/or “diva” attitude. (ex. Henry VIII, Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner, Pope Francis, Jackie Robinson, Selena Gomez, Drake, Donald Trump, Freddie Mercury, Agatha Christie, Muhammad Ali, Frida Kahlo, O. J. Simpson, Justin Timberlake, Marlene Dietrich, Malala Yousafzai, Christopher Columbus, Michael Bay, Luciano Pavarotti, Nicole Richie, Woody Allen, Marilyn Manson, Maya Angelou, Martin Scorsese, Bernie Madoff, Ringo, Josephine Baker, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sarah Palin, Josh Groban, Chris Brown, Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen, Norway)

♊ Gemini MC: will be remembered for/through words (writing, phrase, acting, thoughts, speech), their cleverness, and/or mental/emotional detachment. (ex. Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Albert Camus, Madonna, J.R.R. Tolkein, Donna Summer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chelsea Handler, Alex Trebek, Kurt Cobain, Julie Andrews, Oscar Wilde, Jay-Z, Richard Nixon, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Tom Hanks, Kris Jenner, Walt Disney, Miss Cleo, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Hugh Hefner, Lizzie Borden, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Kathy Bates, Winston Churchill, Melissa Ethridge, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Mitchell, Paul Simon, Greece, Tokyo-Japan)

♋ Cancer MC: will be remembered for their emotional impact, sensitivity, and/or parental care/control. (ex. Beyoncé, Matamha Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Venus Williams, Britney Spears, Arthur Rimbaud, Elizabeth Warren, Denzel Washington, Jeffery Dahmer, Sun Yet-sen, Bob Hope, Stevie Wonder, Anderson Cooper, Cat Stevens, Anna Nicole Smith, Joe Jonas, Rock Hudson, Alice Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, Barbara Walters, T. S. Elliot, Coretta Scott King, Albert Schweitzer, Ted Cruz, Monica Lewinsky, H.P. Lovecraft, Anaïs Nin, Katie Couric, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carole King, Neil Diamond, Harper Lee, Giacomo Puccini, Sidney Poitier, September 11 attacks, United Kingdom)

♌ Leo MC: will be remembered for their theatrics, arrogance/vanity, power, and/or regality. (ex. Grace Kelly, Prince, Isaac Newton, Adolf Hitler, Katy Perry, Charlie Chaplin, Aretha Franklin, Sigmund Freud, Jacqueline Onassis-Kennedy, Stanley Kubrick, Courtney Love, Mark Twain, Chaka Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Kathy Griffin, Jim Carrey, Alfred Nobel, Eric Clapton, Annie Oakley, Martha Stewart, Divine, Louis Pasteur, Robin Williams, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Chuck Berry, Vladimir Putin, Clint Eastwood, Missy Elliot, Frank Sinatra, Mel B, Edgar Allan Poe, Los Angeles-CA)

♍ Virgo MC: will be remembered for their scandals/controversy, never-ending toil, physicality/health and/or attention to detail. (ex. Hillary Clinton, Bruce Lee, Kim Kardashian, Ellen DeGeneres, Brad Pitt, Nelson Mandela, Bette Davis, Justin Bieber, Elvis Presley, Erykah Badu, Jimmy Page, Eartha Kitt, Leonardo de Vinci, Bob Marley, Joan Crawford, Margaret Thatcher, Eminem, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Lynch, Chaz Bono, Marlon Brando, Björk, Ozzy Osborne, Emily Brontë, Bernie Sanders, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diana Ross, Kahlil Gibran, Russia, United States)

♎ Libra MC: will be remembered for their inner/outer beauty, adaptability, and/or desire for or appearance of stability. (ex. Elton John, Jane Goodall, Malcolm X, Coco Channel, Kylie Jenner, Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Michelangelo, Oprah Winfrey, Bob Dylan, Winona Ryder, Jimi Hendrix, Mother Teresa, Elizabeth Taylor, Cristiano Ronaldo, Angela Merkel, Tom Brokaw, Alan Watts, Charles Darwin, Brigitte Bardot, Patti Smith, Chuck Norris, Linda Lovelace, Ray Charles, Lionel Messi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lewis Carroll, Noam Chomsky, Lucille Ball, Venice-Italy)

♏ Scorpio MC: will be remembered for their physical attractiveness, taboo activities/topics, and/or natural talent. (ex. James Joyce, Billie Holiday, Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, Carrie Fisher, Jim Morrison, Selena, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Queen Elizabeth II, Ariana Grande, Marie Curie, Anthony Hopkins, René Descartes, Nina Simone, Willem Dafoe, Paul Newman, Mariska Hargitay, Thomas Jefferson, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Stalin, Larry King, Duke Ellington, Joan Jett, Buddy Holly, Megan Fox, Johnny Knoxville, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gwen Stefani, Francis Ford Coppola, Sophia Loren, Marcus Aurelius, China)

♐ Sagittarius MC: will be remembered for their joviality​, reckless/wild free spirit, sense of humor, and/or philosophy/spirituality. (ex. Al Capone, Deepok Chopra, Shia LaBeouf, Audrey Hepburn, Harvey Milk, Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Bettie Page, Pablo Neruda, J. K. Rowling, Christina Aguilera, Michael Jackson, Henry David Thoreau, Adele, Janis Joplin, Maximilien Robespierre​, Ellen Pompeo, Whitney Houston, Paul McCartney, Evel Knievel, Bruno Mars, Jimmy Fallon, Peggy Lipton, Karl Marx, George Takei, Ryan Gosling, Whoopi Goldberg, Vincent Price, Rio de Janeiro-Brazil)

♑ Capricorn MC: will be remembered for their accomplishments/legacy, conquering of odds, and/or persistence. (ex. Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, Rihanna, Isadora Duncan, Benjamin Franklin, James Dean, Nikola Tesla, John D. Rockefeller, Serena Williams, Joan Baez, Snoop Dogg, Alexander the Great, Barbara Streisand, Ron Howard, Stevie Nicks, Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, Immanuel Kant, Queen Latifah, Johann Sebastian Bach, Walt Whitman, Che Guevara, Liza Minnelli, Amelia Earhart, Mariah Carey, John Lennon, George Lucas, Donatella Versace, Louis Armstrong, Pakistan)

♒ Aquarius MC: will be remembered for their rebellious nature, involvement in a social organization/group​, and/or unpredictability. (ex. Miley Cyrus, Tim Burton, Voltaire, Mick Jagger, Carl Sagan, Rita Hayworth, Neil Armstrong, Amy Winehouse, Pamela Anderson, Carlos Santana, Edward Snowden, Leo Tolstoy, Mae West, Orson Welles, Charlie Sheen, Eva Peron, Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Johann Kepler, Suddam Hussein, Ruby Rose, Gerard Way, Helen Mirren, Howard Stern, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, George R. R. Martin, Kristen Stewart, Jean Piaget, Ronda Rousey, Willow Smith, Florida, India)

♓ Pisces MC: will be remembered for their delusional optimism, supernatural success, and/or they are often idolized. (ex. Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Irene Cara, Cher, Salvador Dalí, William Shakespeare, Edie Sedgwick, Fidel Castro, Lady Gaga, Dalai Lama XIV, Steven Spielberg, George Michael, Marie Antoinette, RuPaul, Judy Garland, Michael Phelps, Sally Ride, John Cena, William Faulkner, Victoria Beckham, Lee Harvey Oswald, Douglas Adams, Jean Renoir, Buzz Aldrin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Farrah Fawcett, Osama bin Laden, Sam Cooke, Michael Jordan, Switzerland, North Korea)

[dbethelcomics]

Mass Effect: Andromeda is the Mass Effect I Wanted

Dan's mind at 2am. (gif by CactuarKitty.)Imposter Syndrome is a natural psychological consequence caused by breaking free from personal norms. Trying something new can be scary. For those already beset with anxiety issues, the Imposter Syndrome converts us to flagellants, knowing simultaneously that these thoughts are bogus while also knowing they motivate us to push through the arbitrary and unconscious barriers we set for ourselves.

In graduate school, I had a bad case of Imposter Syndrome––one of many manifestations of my anxiety. The anxiety caused me to eat and drink a lot; it tickled my health in various ways; I lost a lot of sleep. I often woke up at one or two or three in the morning, spinning my impending failure through all possible scenarios or, if it was a good day, trying to harvest and codify all the ideas bouncing off each other like balls in a bingo spinner.

Eventually, I trained myself to just get out of bed. Go do something. Distract yourself. In the case of distraction, I learned that video games did that best.

Most of these nights happened after Nicole and I moved into our second Sacramento townhouse, away from the social thrum of midtown, which left us with mostly quiet nights; so, what sleep I could get would be uninterrupted and pleasant. On the anxiety nights, however, I crept downstairs, headphones already on and listening to podcasts––some video game commentary, some comedy interviews, some political debate, some history––and I’d fire up my Xbox 360 for hours of distraction, getting a good chunk of game in before the world even woke up. When I look back at these nights, the games that I see most in my memories are the Mass Effect series, specifically the two sequels.

Since I was playing with the sound off (so as to consume quality audio entertainment), I rarely worked through story missions during these insomnious sessions. Instead, I searched for the mundane in the games’ side missions: fetch quests, collection runs, delivery missions. The most calming task I could do, and what I did most often, was planet scanning.

I can feel myself calming down already. (Mass Effect: Andromeda screenshot courtesy of USgamer.)

For those that haven't played the series, scanning planets to gather resources was a system introduced in Mass Effect 2 that slows the player down in their progression through the game. Though under the guise of elements and minerals, the gathered materials can be boiled down to different types of currency to upgrade your ship or craft items. Scanning takes place off-planet, from the comfort of the bridge on your spaceship (the Normandy in Mass Effects 1-3, the Tempest in Mass Effect: Andromeda), because that's what captains do. Forcing the player to explore the very intricate and thoughtful galaxy BioWare had constructed keeps the impatient player from barrelling through the narrative and, perhaps, gets a player that would normally not be so invested in the world, characters, and story of a game invested in this one, at least. The system changed with subsequent games, and was pretty much universally loathed, but it survived all the way into Mass Effect: Andromeda as well. And thank goodness it did.

An argument that planet scanning was the series’ true mechanic is not the aim here––I know busy work when I see it (I am a teacher, after all). But they did define the series for me in a way that focused my experience, helping to expose what became my Mass Effect.

If anything, scanning puts the series' narrative into a cosmic scope for me, elevating the role of space in the games. As it's told, we experience the story on a galactic scale (*pushes my glasses up my nose*) and is less “cosmic” than “epic” or, if I’m trying to be as accurate as possible, space opera. It's a story about a powerful person; where it's set doesn't really matter. However, when I think of “cosmic” storytelling, I think of  Lovecraftian philosophy, called Cosmicism; I think of man’s realization of his insignificance which would either incite existential madness or balance and calm (I'm definitely the latter). I think of man's relative impotence in the universe. There are many aspects in the Mass Effect trilogy that capture the cosmic idea very well––the Reapers (at least initially) captured that idea as did Mass Effect 3's DLC "Leviathan" which pushed the series ever closer to Lovecraft––but on the whole it was a series about the Chosen One and how a tiny human was going to save the universe. While exciting in a power fantasy kind of way, it’s silly if you step back and observe from a cosmic-scale vantage.

Scanning planets, on the other hand, captured perfectly the strange, silent calm of what we understand of outer space. Unlike humans and our societies, our values, or our ecosystems, there’s nothing fragile about the cosmos. It simply is, existing slowly toward some end that is neither frightening nor threatening. Again, it simply is.

I discovered this existential neutrality while scanning. As much control as the games seemed to be handing me––spinning planets around, doing so cautiously to feel the slight variation in my controller’s haptic feedback, sending out a probe at the peak of the planet’s resistance to my scanner––all I was really doing was observing. I was the hapless and tragic Lovecraftian protagonist who was trying to understand and control that which cannot be understood nor controlled by a mere person. Though it looked like I was turning planets back and forth to find the richest peak on my scanner, I was the one moving, trying to take in the entire planet and make it mine. But these planets could swallow me and I wouldn't even leave a mark on its surface.

Dan's mind at 2am. (gif by CactuarKitty.)

I found a calm in reading about the planets, their makeup and environment. How their names would be creative and important around inhabited systems but would revert to impersonal streams of numbers and letters in the outer reaches. But the planets don’t care what they’re called. They still wait and spin at their own speeds, harboring important resources whether they are named after a great Turian warlord or not. Interspecies politics and the ravages of interstellar war don't matter to the universe. Every dish is small when placed on a table that stretches to infinity.

I realize this is not what Mass Effect is about. But it is what Mass Effect is to me. Focusing on this aspect of the games in my early morning cooldowns from panic-induced awakenings did reframe the narrative. The struggle of the species did seem silly and futile. The politics were childish and petty. The choices in these games that players venerate and hold up as the peak of personalized gaming experiences revealed to me what they truly are: binary. Yes or No. Good or Bad. Right and Less Right. Red and Blue.

Planet scanning also emphasized the flaws in the overarching narrative. If the series shines anywhere it is in their smaller, mission-based interplanetary dealings, the Shepard-shepherded stories that had lasting consequences among the species of the Milky Way. It was in the narrative thrust of the games––again, specifically the two sequels––that things fell apart for me. Both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 had static created by the “we must hurry, doom is fast approaching” narrative and the “take your time to be best buds with your crew, fall in love, and do side missions” systems. Because of this, the games seem a bit ridiculous narratively and, instead of being frustrated by it, I chuckled and played them how I wanted, being quite unmoved by the narrative itself though I did find it completely engaging. The developers wanted a sense of urgency to motivate the player, but they didn’t want you to move too quickly. It seemed that BioWare created a story for a game they didn’t want you to play, or they created a game for a story they didn’t want to tell. It was why I argued for years that the original Mass Effect was the best of the trilogy, because of its ludo-narrative synchronicity.

“What if,” I thought many times while playing the latter two games of the trilogy, “there was a Mass Effect game that was about exploration? What if the story they told needed me to take my time and and open up the map? That would be the Mass Effect for me.”

Enter Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Me and the front of my scanner, er, scout ship, the Tempest, at Kadara in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

There's not much to say about the game itself because I got exactly what I wanted out of it. I didn’t go in expecting the space opera to end all space operas, like some, because that’s never what the original trilogy was to me. I also happened to role-play a Ryder (the protagonist of the new game) that fit rather well into the awkward writing and stilted acting––she was a science bookworm nerd who found herself suddenly in a leadership role, so she was overtly logical when the situation demanded it and, when confronted with dealing with people, she over-postured and was well-meaning but a bit of a social clutz. I felt a kinship with her. Even though the game didn't have a  “press X to sleep” option, if there had been then Ryder would wake up way too soon, shaken by her sudden responsibilities and her psychological response to the weight of the new role as Pathfinder for the human race, saddled with the purpose of finding a new home planet for those that willingly left the Milky Way for Andromeda. Indeed, some of the missions had her exhibiting signs of Imposter Syndrome. For me, it all worked. Perhaps it was timing, perhaps it was expectations, perhaps it was my own stupidity, but this game clicked with me despite being fully cognizant of its flaws. It's something I had to do every day in grad school. It's something I continue to find myself doing every now and then as I head to a classroom or put pencil to paper.

What worked for me the most was that the game wasn’t in a hurry. The premise wanted me to explore, to scan, and to probe the galaxy. There was a threat, but it was a small threat, and the larger, looming threat––the Scourge––was like all things in the cosmos: devastating but slow-moving; a problem to be solved with time, research, logic, and practice, not with knee-jerk trigger-pulls and rally cries. It's a threat to be managed, not mastered.

Though I’m not fraught with manifestations of Imposter Syndrome anymore, anxiety still hinders my sleep, though less often now. But I was happy to have a Mass Effect game to come downstairs to with my headphones on, podcasts in my ears, and the Andromeda galaxy––with all of its planets––waiting in silence and patience.

[cantmakeyouloveme-blog1]

ship tag drop

[cardboardedison]

The Process: Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation by Evan Derrick

In The Process, board game designers walk us through the process of creating their game from start to finish, and how following their path can help others along theirs.

In this installment, Evan Derrick describes how he created the Shadow Corporation expansion to Dark Moon.

Process

I made a happy discovery when I began designing Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation: Expansions are so much easier to design. The core system was set in stone and had been proven to be successful, so I simply needed to iterate on top of it. I immediately discovered why designers like Alan Moon and Donald X. Vaccarino put out a seemingly endless stream of expansions for their popular designs. When the development time is as much as 80% less than creating a new game from scratch, it’s not hard to see the appeal of creating five expansions in the time it takes to design one new game.

I had two central design goals when I designed Dark Moon. The first was to create a similar experience to its spiritual big brother, Battlestar Galactica, but in a third of the playtime, and the second was to ratchet up the paranoia and mistrust between players as quickly and intensely as possible. When I sat down to design DM:SC, I didn’t just want to preserve those two goals, I wanted to improve upon them. To that end, DM:SC both shortens the playtime without sacrificing any of the gameplay as well as amplifies the mistrust that players experience. If you experienced a lot of finger-pointing during games of Dark Moon, be prepared to point twice as many fingers when you add in DM:SC.

The Takeaway: Expansions are simpler to design since you’ve already done the hard work of building the foundation.

Theory

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hate that Infected players can publicly “reveal” themselves in Dark Moon. In my designer heart of hearts I never wanted to give players that option. The fun of the game comes from the paranoia and mistrust which, let’s be honest, pretty much evaporates when all of the Infected players have publicly revealed. “If you’re Infected and you played poorly and the other players quarantined you and took you out of the game, too bad! Play better next time!” That was never going to work, however. If a new player (especially one that wasn’t great at lying) was dealt an Infected card, it wouldn’t be much fun for them if they were chucked into quarantine 10 minutes into the game simply because they didn’t have a convincing poker face.

Unfortunately, this means that some Infected players jump the gun and reveal themselves early when they really shouldn’t. Those shiny Infected actions are just too tempting! And the players don’t realize I included those in the game as a release valve, not as a viable strategy (and why should they?).

So for DM:SC I wanted to correct that behavior, which led to the evacuation ship.

Thematically, the evil corporation Naguchi-Masaki has heard about the pathogen spreading across their mining colony and they want a sample of it for their weapons division. They have “helpfully” sent an evacuation ship to Titan hoping that an Infected miner will get on board. The ship, however, has a limited number of seats, so only a few players can actually get on.

Mechanically, players can vote one another on and off the ship, and once it’s full they can vote for the ship to take off. As soon as the evacuation ship takes off, the game immediately ends and players check the status cards of everyone who was on the ship. If everyone on the ship is Uninfected, the Uninfected team wins, but if a single Infected player managed to sneak onto the ship then the Infected team wins. This means that Infected players cannot reveal themselves early, since it would be simple for the Uninfected team to use their voting power to load themselves onto the ship and take off.

The evacuation ship is easily the proudest I’ve ever been of a design mechanism. It accomplished all of my design goals in one fell swoop:

Shorter playtime: Since the game ends as soon as the ship takes off, sessions can be even shorter now without sacrificing any of the fun. Ending the game early and watching each player that was on the ship slowly flip over their status card is an amazing climax to the game.

More paranoia: If you thought it was easy to point fingers in Dark Moon before, wait until people start voting one another onto the evacuation ship! It easily adds paranoia on top of paranoia.

De-incentivize early Infected reveals: Infected players are incentivized to stay hidden as long as possible now. Publicly revealing themselves isn’t a path to victory now, but to defeat, as the Uninfected team will just hop on the ship and take off.

The Takeaway: Highlight what worked best with the original game and make sure the expansion doesn’t do away with the game’s strengths. Instead, make sure the expansion amplifies the original game’s strengths.

Theory Part 2

When I started designing DM:SC, the evacuation ship wasn’t necessarily the centerpiece of the expansion (which it is now). I threw in the kitchen sink of things I had discarded for the original game but had always wanted.

The first was a brand new team called the Company Man. If you receive the Company Man Status card, you’re playing to win all by yourself (it was inspired by the Tanner role from One Night Ultimate Werewolf). Unlike the other teams, surviving isn’t part of your win condition. Instead, your goal is to collect a sample of the pathogen and send it back to the company, no matter what the cost.

The second were blackmail cards (which eventually became Threat cards in the final version), a mechanism that had been floating around since the very first version of Dark Moon. Every player is dealt one of these cards at the beginning of the game, each card has specific instructions that that player must follow, and each instruction is for the player to do something incredibly suspicious. Thematically, the company is blackmailing the players to do something horrible (throw other players in quarantine, recklessly throw in all their dice on a skill check, etc.). Mechanically, this forces Uninfected players to act even more suspicious (the consequences for NOT performing the action on your card are much, much worse) and gives the Infected players an opportunity to act.

The main problem with both of these mechanisms is that they’re fairly complex. They require all of the players at the table to have a really strong grasp of the game and how it works and can be disastrous for new players. Misreading your Threat card or failing to understand the Company Man’s victory conditions can throw a wrench into the entire machine. Both add some fascinating tension to the game but they also ask a lot of the players.

Even for an expansion it felt like too much. The evacuation ship, the Company Man, and the Threat cards ratcheted up the learning curve significantly, even for experienced Dark Moon players. I was loathe to get rid of anything, however. Which is when Stephen Buonocore, the president of Stronghold Games and publisher of Dark Moon, made a simple yet brilliant suggestion: “Why don’t we just make them optional modules?”

Boom. That solved everything. The core of DM:SC is the evacuation ship and is included in every game, but the Company Man and Threat cards are now optional modules that you can add to the game if you want to. This allows players to get a good grasp of the expansion and its new rules at their own pace. Fearless groups can throw everything together for their first game, while most will introduce the modules slowly.

The Takeaway: Take particularly complex mechanisms and label them “modules,” thereby encouraging players to introduce them slowly rather than all at once.

Playtesting

The playtesting process for this expansion was so much easier than playtesting a new design. Whereas Dark Moon took 2-3 years of consistent development and playtesting, DM:SC was done in only a few months. Rather than make sure an entire game works from start to finish, you’re simply testing to make sure that the expansion doesn’t radically break the original design. Additionally, you have a built-in audience that is fairly eager to try out all of the new stuff you’ve created, making it that much simpler to gather playtesters.

From an emotional standpoint, playtesting a new design can be a fairly grueling process. You have high hopes that this version is the one that’s really going to work, only to watch it crash and burn in the ashes of your shattered dreams. But with an expansion you figure out what works and what doesn’t fairly quickly. You have the context of the original game to work within and that makes the design process substantially easier.

The Takeaway: Playtesting an expansion is much easier to do, given that you have a built-in audience as well as a successful design.

About

Evan Derrick is the designer of Dark Moon, Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation, and the upcoming Detective: City of Angels. He is the Creative Director for Van Ryder Games and oversees the art direction for all of their titles. He also has no free time, although he recognizes that’s really his own fault. You can email him at evan@vanrydergames.com or find him on Twitter at @evanderrick.

Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.

ADVISERS: 421 Creations, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek

SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games

JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Aidan Short, Jay Treat

ASSOCIATES: Robert Booth, Stephen B Davies, Scot Duvall, Doug Levandowski, Aaron Lim, Nathan Miller, Anthony Ortega, Mike Sette, Kasper Esven Skovgaard, Isaias Vallejo, Matt Wolfe

APPRENTICES: Darren Broad, Kiva Fecteau, Scott Gottreu, Nicole Kline, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Neil Roberts, Marcus Ross, Sean Rumble, VickieGames

[me-uglypretty]

hey 👋 I was wondering if you're gonna continue your Nicole Ryder x reader fics? I miss them

-🧞‍♀️

Helloo, I would if I have writing juices to use! but who knows, if I was suddenly hit with a good idea then ill write it done for sure <3 and thank you for reading!

also i don’t think i have any drafts/incomplete fics for nicole rn

[itsfinancethings]

(LONDON) — Johnny Depp gave evidence in a London court on Tuesday, denying claims that he hit ex-wife Amber Heard and accusing her of assaulting him and depicting him as a “monster.”

Depp sat in the witness box in a wood-paneled High Court courtroom on the first day of his libel case against The Sun over an article that branded him a “wife-beater.” The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star began by taking the court oath and giving his full name: John Christopher Depp II.

Depp is suing the tabloid’s publisher, News Group Newspapers, and its executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an 2018 story alleging he was violent and abusive to model-actress Heard during their short, tempestuous marriage. Depp strongly denies the claim.

Depp said Heard had “said to the world that she was in fear of her life from me, and I had been this horrible monster if you will. Which was not the case.”

Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary” and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. They divorced in 2017, and now bitterly accuse one another of abuse.

Depp and Heard arrived by separate entrances at the neo-Gothic court building on the opening day of the three-week trial, one of the first to be held in person since Britain began to lift its coronavirus lockdown. Both wore face coverings over their noses and mouths. Proceedings have been spread over several courtrooms to allow for social distancing.

Witnesses are scheduled to include Depp’s former partners, Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder, both of whom have submitted statements supporting him.

Depp’s claim centers on an April 2018 story in The Sun headlined: “Potty – How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”

While Heard isn’t on trial, the case is also a showdown between the former spouses, who accuse each other of being controlling, violent and untruthful.

Describing one incident in which Heard claims he hit her, Depp said the opposite was true.

“As things tended to do, (it) escalated and got physical, ending with a bit of assault. Ms. Heard struck me,” he said.

He painted himself as a peacemaker who tried to de-escalate things.

“Whenever it would escalate I would try to go to my own corner, as it were … before things got out of hand,” he said.

The Sun’s defense relies on Heard’s allegations of 14 incidents of violence by Depp between 2013 and 2016, in locations including Los Angeles, Australia, Japan, the Bahamas and on a private jet. He denies them all and says Heard attacked him with items including a drink can and a cigarette. He also claims that on one occasion Heard or one of her friends defecated on his bed.

“She was the abuser, not him,” Depp’s lead lawyer, David Sherborne, said in a written statement.

“She is a highly complex and aggressive individual who suffered extreme mood swings, would provoke endless circular arguments, and fly into violent rages.”

The case is set to put the two performers’ complex private lives under a microscope.

Under cross-examination by The Sun’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, Depp acknowledged taking myriad drugs over the years, including marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and prescription pharmaceuticals.

He said his drug use began when he was an 11-year-old child with “not a particularly stable or secure or safe home life.” He said it was “the only way that I found to numb the pain.”

Wass also tried to depict Depp as someone with an anger management problem, bringing up an 1989 arrest for assault and a later incident in which he damaged a New York hotel room.

“I was angry, but that doesn’t mean I have an anger problem,” Depp said.

In pre-trial wrangling, the Sun’s lawyers tried to have the suit thrown out on the grounds that Depp failed to disclose text messages he exchanged with an assistant showing that he tried to buy “MDMA and other narcotics” while he was in Australia with Heard in 2015.

Heard alleges that Depp subjected her to “a three-day ordeal of physical assaults” while they were in the country after drinking and taking drugs.

The newspaper’s lawyer, Adam Wolanski, said withholding the texts was a breach of a previous court order requiring Depp to provide all documents from separate libel proceedings against Heard in the United States. Depp is suing Heard for $50 million for allegedly defaming him in a Washington Post article about domestic abuse. That case is due to be heard next year.

Last week, judge Andrew Nicol ruled that Depp had breached the court order, but refused to throw out the actor’s claim.

He also rejected an attempt by Depp to force Heard to disclose evidence including communications with actor James Franco and Space-X founder Elon Musk, with whom she allegedly had affairs while involved with Depp.

The judge said the issue of Heard’s extramarital relations was irrelevant to the central issue in the case, which is “whether Mr. Depp assaulted Ms. Heard.”

Depp’s lawyer, Sherborne, said the actor had brought the case to “clear his reputation.”

“This is not a case about money,” he said. “It is about vindication.”

[mastcomm]

Super Bowl 2020 Commercials: Funeral for Mr. Peanut, Tears for Google

An audience expected to be around 100 million. Big companies paying as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds of advertising time. In addition to deciding the National Football League champion, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year for TV commercials.

For the most part, the commercials have were light and bright.

Blasts From the Past

Nostalgia was an early theme, with companies marketing their products with ads that showed love for the ’80s and ’90s.

Cheetos had the rapper MC Hammer and his zoot-suit-inspired pants in an ad that aimed to popularize the word Cheetle, Frito-Lay’s term for the orange dust the snack leaves in its wake.

Squarespace sent Winona Ryder, the Gen X star who has made a comeback thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” to Winona, Minn., where she was born. Bill Murray, with a sidekick from the rodent family, relived the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” for Jeep, and Mountain Dew Zero riffed on the 1980 film “The Shining” with an assist from the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.

A commercial for Avocados From Mexico features Molly Ringwald, the star of “Pretty in Pink” and other ’80s comedies.

The nostalgia mixed with sentimentality. And three simple commercials seemed to have left the deepest impression on viewers.

A spot from Google — about the 85-year-old grandfather of a Google employee searching for ways to remember his partner, Loretta — inspired a flood of “I’m not crying, you’re crying” social media posts. New York Life Insurance explored various forms of love using several real couples and relatives, without a celebrity in sight. WeatherTech’s commercial focused on the chief executive’s golden retriever, Scout, and the doctors who saved him from cancer.

A Stunt Ad Lights Up Social Media

After much hype in recent days, Planters ran a commercial showing the funeral of its mascot, the monocled creature Mr. Peanut. Other brand avatars were at the grave site, including the Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean. After the Kool Aid creature shed a tear, something sprouted in the dirt. And then a baby version of Mr. Peanut sprang to life, squeaking like a dolphin, saying, “Just kidding, I’m back,” and asking for a monocle. The reaction on social media was not kind.

The unusual Planters campaign, which involved the character dying in a car crash, was put on pause last week, after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. In recent days, its parent company, Kraft Heinz, swapped the position of a Heinz ad with the Planters ad, putting footage of Mr. Peanut’s funeral before a halftime show that was scheduled to include a tribute to Mr. Bryant.

The Streamers Are Here

The New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spent this Super Bowl as a Hulu spokesman, saying in a commercial for the streaming service that “it’s time to say goodbye to TV as you know it” before slyly adding, “but me, I’m not going anywhere.”

An ad from the short-form streaming service Quibi, featuring bank robbers who pause to watch a quick show on their phone screens, made one thing clear: how to pronounce “Quibi.” (It’s kwi-bee, not kwee-bee.) A spot from Amazon Prime Video is expected late in the game.

Unity Amid Diversity

In other Super Bowl ads, Verizon, Sabra and other companies are emphasizing — and celebrating — what Americans have in common beneath their differences. Don’t we all complain about the same things? Don’t we all defy cultural stereotypes? And don’t we all love hummus?

Those are some of the messages that figure in the sunny portrait of a nation that will emerge from the more than 80 commercials scheduled to appear during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast.

“We’re at a moment in the country where it’s important that we all contribute to things that unite as opposed to things that separate,” said Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon. “It’s a sensitive point — we’re a big company and we have many, many customers, and our intention is in no way, shape or form to have a political message.”

To fill advertising slots costing as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds — a high — New York Life Insurance and Snickers were among the brands with big-budget commercials showing a wide variety of Americans embracing their differences.

Sabra cast two former contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, making it possibly the first Super Bowl commercial to feature drag queens. One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that recently pushed the Hallmark Channel to pull ads featuring brides kissing each other, circulated a petition demanding that the Sabra spot be removed, to no avail.

Companies are also slipping into other companies’ commercials. Pringles paired up with the animated Adult Swim series “Rick and Morty” for an ad filled with horrifying child robots. Tide, which overran the Super Bowl 2018 with crossover commercials, teamed this year with Bud Light and the Fox show “The Masked Singer.” Pop-Tarts, which featured the flowing hair of Jonathan Van Ness of “Queer Eye” in its commercial, called out Hyundai’s Boston-accented spot “Smaht Pahk” by posting on Twitter: “Pahp-Tahts.”

Politics Crashes the TV Party

The first of two 30-second ads from President Trump’s campaign, which together cost more than $11 million, aired at 6:55 p.m. in the first commercial break after kickoff. The spot focused on Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence in federal prison on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering when her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian West, the reality television star. Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence in 2018.

It was the first Super Bowl to feature national ads from two presidential candidates, and the political tone of the ads has stood out in a broadcast filled with companies trying to avoid sensitive topics the day before the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.

Just before the second half kickoff, the billionaire presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg presented an ad about gun control that featured Calandrian Simpson-Kemp, whose football-loving son died in a shooting in 2013. Mr. Bloomberg has swarmed the Democratic field with more than $275 million in advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. But this is not his first foray into the Super Bowl while talking about gun laws — he did the same in a 2012 ad with Thomas M. Menino, who was then the mayor of Boston.

The Jay-Z Influence

Another exception to the escapist fare is a spot on police shootings. Surprisingly, it comes from an organization that has shied away from the issue: the National Football League. The spot shows the retired 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin reflecting on the 2015 death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer, and it includes a dramatic re-enactment of the killing.

The commercial promotes the N.F.L.’s Inspire Change initiative, a social outreach program that the league has put together with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Colin Kaepernick — Mr. Boldin’s onetime 49ers teammate — set off an uproar a year after the killing by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. The N.F.L. struggled with its response for years.

More Positivity

But the great majority of Super Bowl LIV spots are jaunty and optimistic. TurboTax has a commercial involving people of many races, genders, ages and walks of life dancing to a bounce-inflected earworm of a jingle, “All People Are Tax People.”

The mood continues a trend toward tonally light commercials that became pronounced in 2018. In 2017, the first year of President Trump’s administration, Budweiser and Coca-Cola, among other brands, touched on immigration, equal rights and fair pay.

A Bud Light Seltzer commercial posited that the brain of Post Malone — the pop star and songwriter known for melding disparate musical styles — is operated by a diverse group of technicians in a control room who all bear his distinctive tattoos.

Martin Scorsese, who is nominated for an Oscar this year for “The Irishman,” was also involved in a Super Bowl commercial, but not behind the camera. Instead, he appeared in an ad-from Coca-Cola, waiting anxiously at a party for Jonah Hill, whom he had directed in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to muster enough energy to join him. Mr. Hill, who was cast first, suggested Mr. Scorsese when the company asked him to recommend someone to play the out-of-place friend.

Space Race

While many ads looked to the past for inspiration, Turkish Airlines and others were fixated on the cosmos. Olay alludes to the first all-female spacewalk last year in an ad featuring Lilly Singh and Busy Philipps with the retired astronaut Nicole Stott. A spot from the home carbonation company SodaStream, which includes a cameo by Bill Nye, showed astronauts finding water on Mars. And Walmart crammed references to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Mars Attacks!,” “Men in Black” and “Arrival” into its commercial.

Tech Firsts

Facebook’s first Super Bowl ad is expected to pair Chris Rock with the “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone. Microsoft’s ad features Katie Sowers, the San Francisco 49ers assistant coach who will be the first woman and openly gay person to help lead a team to the big game. Other tech ads included Amazon’s commercial with the ubiquitous pitchwoman Ellen DeGeneres.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/super-bowl-2020-commercials-funeral-for-mr-peanut-tears-for-google/

[singlemuse]

ryder x nicole

01. marry me wow cute

02. sad song starter

03. sweet creature happy

04. sexy pictures post snap

05. flashback spin the bottle

06. gala invite

07. breakup tour gif inspo

08. date night thread

09. first time thread

evelyn x miles

01. bad news dad dying

02. snap thread

03. the i love you thread

04. mom's liver thread

05. nsfw thread from snap

matthew x violet

01. first/last big fight resolved

02. be my girlfriend moment

03. decorate pink moment

04. snap thread

liz x elijah

01. imessage thread

02. bloody kiss

03. new angst one

zack x amara

01. after the party

02. imessage thread

03. first time having sex

gabriel x caroline

01. cute beach thread

02. cont of snap thread

03. tootimetootime

jesse x priscilla

01. snap thread

02. imessage thread

james x vienna

01. snap thread

02. dancing thread

rosa x hendrix

N/A

aiden x clara

01. shitty bestfriend boyfriend

navid x andy

01. snap thread

riley x juliet

01. professor coke thread

parker x talia

01. first thread 

adira x hudson

01. first thread 

xander x leila

01. first snap thread

tati x alondra

01. first thread 

maren x wren

01. first thread

kai x brady

01. snap thread

[umgnetwork]

#MrDopeChef - Be attending this exclusive listening party event as a special invited guest. I'm happy for my Brodie and respect his craft and skill in this music industry. @xylenyc Full Moon is the debut album from New York Hip Hop artist, X-YLE, which will be featured in an all exclusive and intimate listening party to a select audience of music lovers and supporters of X-YLE and his special guests. VIP guests will receive interviews for our exclusive media outlets!  HOSTED BY: Mari MUSIC BY: DJ ETHER Confirmed Media Outlets Include: DeUnequeTV Brickhouse Studios Validated Magazine DASH Katie Kay Photography Sponsors include: Brick House Studios  Breaktapes Design Dreamz Event Planning Validated Magazine Special celebrity guests (confirmed and not-confirmed, but not limited to) who will be in attendance include: Hot 97 Radio personality Hip Hop Mike Hip Hop artist Kyah Baby Hip Hop Weekly writer Ms. Royal Bey YouTube Sensation Ruben Burgos Desert Storm Radio DJ Cassius Clay Love & Hip Hop star and Former G-Unit artist Precious Paris MTV Pop artist SHENNA Choreographer/R&B Artist Chantel Nicole and more...   About The Artist: Hailing from Queens, New York, X-YLE (Donald Patterson) has been influenced by artists such as DMX, Nas, and many more. He is an artist and a man who believes in the unity of his community through the power of music. His songs often reflect those of having a good time by enjoying life and the things surrounding you no matter the circumstance you are in. His music also pushes men to question their ambition, hustle and role as a leading man whether it is in their community or home. X-YLE has been featured on various media outlets such as The Source Magazine, Power 105.1 (NY), Hot 97 (NY) and more. He has been interviewed by Jack Thriller for This Is 50 and has shared the stage with Tony Yayo of G-Unit and the Ruff Ryders,. His touring credits includes doing shows for Violator, Street Sweepers, Bad Boy, G-Unit, Interscope Records, and Def Jam Records. His lengthy credits allow for others around him to be able to network as he believes that uplifting other musicians and/or business owners is a priority.   (at Brick House Studios)