#not to say this bob was the greatest thing to ever happen but...

[thepumpkin-queenn]

Halloween Asks 👻 🖤

🎃- What was your favorite Halloween costume?

👻- Have you ever played with a ouija board? Did anything strange happen?

🍬- What is your favourite Halloween candy?

🍏- Have you ever gone bobbing for apples?

🧙‍♀️- Which fictional witch do to relate to?

🏚️- Are you the first one into a haunted house or are you being dragged by friends?

✨- Hocus Pocus or Halloweentown?

🔪- You have 24 hours to survive a horror character of your choice. Who are you picking?Ghostface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Chucky, Leatherface or Pennywise.

🤡- What’s your biggest phobia? 

🧟‍♂️- In the zombie apocalypse, what would be your weapon of choice?

🔮- What superstitions do you believe in? 

🕯️- Halloween orange or Halloween purple?

🧛- If you had to become a mythical creature, which one are you picking?

💀- what is greatest Tim Burton movie of all time?

😈- What villain or monster do you think is misunderstood?

⚔️- What is your least favorite thing about Halloween?

🩸- Terrifier or Saw franchise?

👽- Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

🎬- What is your favourite Halloween quote/saying from a movie? 

🕷️- What would you say your Halloween aesthetic is?

[mpregandproud]

The man of my dreams

Getting pregnant was the best thing I've ever done in my life. I used to be the invisible kid in class. I was skinny, unattractive, nobody noticed me. I never had a boyfriend, and I had a hard time finding a guy to fuck. But sometimes life has surprises in store.

One night at a fraternity party I got drunk and woke up the next day naked on a bed. I didn't remember anything that had happened the day before, but something in me felt different.

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what it was. That night I don't remember I got pregnant. I was carrying a baby.

A month into the pregnancy, my belly was already showing a little. My skin glowed, my hair looked better than ever and my body grew. Something clicked with my fellow faculty members because from that day on I started getting visitors in my room or they would offer to accompany me to the bathrooms every time I had to leave class to pee. And it only got better as the months went by.

Frank, Isaak, Daniel, David, Aaron, Scott, Bruce, Bob… there wasn't a guy who didn't approach me since I got pregnant. Tall, muscular, blondes, brunettes, attractive, and with huge dicks. My ass had never had such a good time as it had these past few months.

But there was only one problem. The one guy I'd always liked, the one I'd been talking to at that party nine months ago, George, was the only one who hadn't paid any attention to me. He was the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Tall, athletic, intelligent, dark hair and beard. Someone mysterious, but successful. The man of my life, even if he didn't know it yet.

These last few weeks, on the other hand, my sexual activity has slowed down quite a bit. My huge belly, I am expecting triplets after all, prevents me from going to class every day. The doctor has recommended me to rest, so my encounters have gone. My pleasure lately is to eat like a pig, while lying in my underwear on the couch watching episodes of Friends.

One of these days, while I was devouring two huge pizzas, the doorbell rang. With great difficulty I got up and approached the door. I had to stop a couple of times, because for the last couple of days the contractions have started. I'm about to give birth, it's nothing unusual.

When I opened the door my water almost broke. The man that was waiting only lives in my dreams. George was standing there, wearing a tight white T-shirt that showed all his muscles. I didn't know how to react, I didn't know what to say, I was speechless:

- "Hello, handsome" - He said to me with a perfect smile.

- "H... h... hi. What are you doing here?" - I answered with a blush on my face. Was that a dream I was seeing?

- "I think you have something that's mine… ours. Don't you?"

- "What do you mean?" - I was speechless again. What would I want to say.

- "Nine months ago we were together... don't you remember? I was scared after fucking you, it was my first time with a man and I never felt that good with someone. I was stupid, I ran away and I haven't dared to come back here".

- "You? Was it you? Did you get me pregnant?"

- "Yes, I think I did. I spent the night with you, we were together all the time and after many drinks you took me to bed."

- "Thank you. I couldn't say anything else..."

- "Thank you?"

- "Yes, thank you for giving me the greatest gift of my life." - We were both crying and smiling at the same time.

- "Get the over here!" - He grabbed my face with his two strong hands and kissed me with a passion I had never felt before.

We kissed and went to the bed. He helped me take off my boxers and ate my whole cock. Fuck, what is this, I've never been so hard. If I didn't cum four times I didn't cum any, and this had only just begun.

With the same confidence with which he appeared in my house he grabbed my belly on both sides and kissed every inch of my skin and sucked my breasts that were already a considerable size with milk. My body was filled with an electricity that I had never experienced before. I was in heaven. This is real love.

When I thought it was all over, he opened my legs and pushed his penis in. A slow, gentle movement. The gentleness, the pleasure, the rhythm. Again, this man is a sex god, and the father of my children. He is mine. He is mine. HE IS MINE.

And then... the waters broke. A whirlwind of water rushed out of me. The three little people who united us forever were coming. In the end I will not give birth alone, George is here with me. Dad and daddy, finally together.

[scimagic]

SMG4: WOTFI 2024 Thoughts and Analysis Masterpost

WOTFI 2024 is finally here and I had so much fun watching it! I've even watched it a few times already!! I'm so glad this was my first ever live WOTFI, it makes me wish I knew of SMG4 earlier but alas! I'm still so happy I found SMG4 and it's wonderful community the way I did!

This is one large compilation of all my reactions, opinions and deeper analysis... -es on WOTFI 2024! I will go over the entirety of the video almost scene-to-scene with my OWN OPINIONS! (And yes, it gets hella long) I divided it into sections of the video and even included pictures for viewing convenience!

Hope you enjoy reading essays <33

Warning: Spoilers (duh).

✧ Before The Show

As said before this was my first live WOTFI, since the episodes release at 9AM for me I had to put on my alarm one hour before but I shut it off fhjkdsa

So you can imagine my panic when I had to make my breakfast 10 minutes before it started

Not my greatest planning but I managed to (somewhat) make it on time!

✧ Let's Jump Right In!!

WHUH HAPPEN

Loved the spin off of Mr Puzzles' jingle, I knew I was going to get it stuck in my head the moment the lyrics switched

I was amused when Puzzles re-enacted his life, thought he'd give a little more meat to work with but I'm glad he just explained what we already knew. Some of his charm lies in the mystery that is his life

"So I did what any ambitious, misunderstood young soul would do... I locked myself in my room and watched TV all day!" So real tho-

I'm surprised I didn't see many people react to Puzzles cursing so loud hfdskja maybe we're all busy with the rest of WOTFI but I SCREAMED when he went "-WERE VIOLENTLY FUCKING CRUSHED BY YOU LOT!!"

LET THAT MAN CUSS FREELY!!!!

"... yyyou!" <3

LOVE EVERYONE'S COSTUMES TOO!! They all look great!!

Maybe it's because of the teasers they gave but I thought the crew was going to go against Puzzles himself with the challenges, but pitting them against Mario and SMG4 made me pleasantly surprised (I will be a lot throughout all this!)

I ADORE THIS INTRO SO MUCH!! It's so fun and vibrant and the way it was animated was so cool!! I WANT THE POSTER SO BAD!!!

Haeheh big Puzzles from the website!!

Love how Saiko is just screaming at Puzzles too fhdskja

✧ Fun Carnival Torture Metho- Games!!

I didn't say what my challenge was but it was called Chuck N' Dunk: Who can dunk the other first in shark-infested waters?

It didn't make it but I do see shark-infested waters, so either I gave a bit of inspo or I'm just delusional hfdsjka

"I have to deal with internet comments all day! This is nothing!" HAH!!! THAT'S MY FUCKING YOUTUBER RIGHT THERE!!! (He still lost)

Love to see SMG3 and Puzzles appreciate the beauty of destruction together, gotta love two villains vibin over causing chaos, it'd make for a fun dynamic if SMG4 ever considers it

On that note, when SMG3 tries to shake Four's tight rope I knew that was Three straight up

Even under Puzzles' control, the cast still retains a bit of their personality, as shown here and in the Puzzlevision episodes

Bob has like- the coolest costume ever holy shit- I really wanna draw it some time

I KNOW IT'S JUST A MASK AND SOME RECOLORING ALRIGHT IT JUST FITS HIM AND HE LOOKS COOL

I LOVE HIM SO. FUCKING. MUCH. HE'S SO SMUG THE BASTARD

This is a really funny joke actually

PIE GUN GO BRRRRRRRRRRRR

I liked seeing Karen included in this WOTFI, she was a main character in a few episodes and her dynamic works well with the others! Just a tired mom wanting to work but pulled along silly adventures, grounding in a badass caring way

CHANGE THE WORLD. MY FINAL MESSAGE. GOODBYE!! God I haven't heard that meme in so long

Plus [Italian vc] YOU SONSOFFA BITCHES

"Hope you two have your running shoes on!" said in the gayest villain voice ever, I love him your honor

Bob going for the clown girl instead of the exit is the Bob-iest thing ever and it just drives my point of the crew retaining their personalities even under control, so people shouldn't be surprised when it happens fhdjksa (cus I've seen it!)

FOUR ONLY WINNING BECAUSE HE'S A CLOWN IS SO FUNNY YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND

So... Ben (SMG4's Thumbnail Artist) posted a lot of Gokus when someone mentioned Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls

That's why I thought there'd be some kind of reference to it in WOTFI which... now that I say it out loud sounds kinda dumb hfsjdka

But the moment Mario appeared as Goku I immediately thought of Ben and it had me gigglin fhdsjka

You'd think Tari would be in the ducky mini-game but you'd be wrong! <3

Final thoughts of the games, this year's WOTFI challenges were delightful!! They were all very clever from the audience and well chosen from the crew! Congratulations to the folks that got their prompt in!

✧ WHACK-A-LEGGY (aka forgive me father for this next part)

You........ CANNOT tell me he wouldn't treat you right- God- DAMN.

LISTEN. HEAR ME OUT. YES I'M GONNA BE SIMPY IN THIS REACTION POST FUCK YOU.

Puzzles is the type of guy to give you the best of the best simply because you say so and deserve it, doesn't matter if it's as tame as a big bouquet of flowers OR as extreme as absolutely destroying your enemies through the most painful torture you have ever witnessed

He would treat you RIGHT!!!!

THAT IS THE MOST PERFECT MAN RIGHT THERE

Oh yes and I love his interactions with Leggy, they're adorable, yes FHDSKJA

THEY MAKE A CUTE DUO

Speaking of Puzzles treating you right: I am on the FUCKING FLOOR. THAT MAN IS PROTECTIVE TOO.

It's just so endearing to me how protective he is of Leggy (yes yes I know I know he's done evil shit to Meggy I know) BUT LISTEN.

In an actual redemption arc, I can see Puzzles as the most loyal motherfucker that you've ever befriended, that man is going to go to the edge of the earth and fight for you if needed BECAUSE you're his friend and that is so lovely to me

It's cute how he's trying to tell Leggy where to go, where to hide and just how worried he is of her

Mind you, the contrast between Puzzles being worried and SMG4 and Mario wanting to curve-stomp that goomba to death is hilarious fhdsjka

So forgive me if I giggle like a schoolgirl over that man

✧ I'm Gonna Get Real With You For A Moment

MR STINKY

Oh this scene now- lots to unpack

First: Adore how this scene plays out, I love the portrayal of Puzzles' meltdown, induced by grief, sadness, anger and frustration over how things are playing out. It's a big "I'm supposed to win! Why don't you let me win!" moment, I simply adore when those happen.

The pitiful cries when you don't get your way when you've meticulously planned everything and done Everything to get it, and do everything did Puzzles indeed try

Second: The colors, the dramatic red light, the destruction of the park out of anger and overcharging it seems

It's basically a tantrum

Third: The voice acting is phenomenal, and that's been said all throughout the Puzzlevision arc, Brendan (Mr Puzzles' voice actor) is so good at his job- he's perfect in those high pitch inflictions of emotion and the lower threatening tones, that scream is chilling and painful

Fourth: I can try and decipher that blue screen

FATAL ERROR A problem has been detected and Mr. Puzzles has been shut down to prevent damage to himself. PUZZLEVISION.EXE Check to make sure any new show or movie is properly installed. If this is a new installation :It's not: ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any PUZZLEVISION updates you might need. :I don't need any: If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable CPU(?) memory options such as Unused Shows or Movies. If you need to use safe mode :I don't: to remove or disable components, restart yourself, press :nuhuh: to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode. :NO: Technical Information: *** STOP: 2xREADING (... xACTUALLY)

That last line is ineligible to me but I tried my best for y'all <3

Lots to unpack just in this tiny little message

In his system, Puzzles is programmed to shut down if damaged. Which is CRAZY TO THINK ABOUT. His OWN SYSTEM shuts down to prevent damage to himself.

Also he's SPEAKING THROUGH THE BLUESCREEN, he's actively saying No to "Safe Mode" and REFUSING any repairs his system suggests

THIS MAN DOES NOT CARE FOR HIS BODY (if you couldn't tell by the TV head part)

AND HE'S SO UNSERIOUS HE STRAIGHT UP TELLS HIS SYSTEM NUH UH!!!!

A little easter egg that someone else on Twitter found :)

Puzzles has become a rage horror monster and I'm here for it, the horror elements do go hard when they're played

URGH. AND THIS MOMENT. Many have pointed it out by now BUT THE TRAUMA OF THE CASTLE!! I AM SO WEAK

Puzzles REALLY plays into those psychological torture methods, it is so RUTHLESS of him, intentionally or not!!

✧ STEP RIGHT UP, MY FRIENDS, TO PUZZLEPARK!

He looks horrible in armor despite being everyone's pathetic knight in shining armor FHJDSKA

"You're MINE" I SURE AM SIR!!!

THAT GROWL THO- BRENDAN STRIKING AGAIN WITH THEM VOCALS!!!

AND THIS!! IS THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR OH BOY!!

The transition into the actual song is SO GOOD, instead of going higher like the actual Disney intro it goes LOWER and it's PERFECT for the intro!! It makes Puzzles sound INSANE (RIGHTFULLY SO!) It also tricks you because you know the melody so well until UH OH!! WE'RE IN DEEP SHIT!! LET'S GET THE FUCK IN!

3!

2!

1!

IMMEDIATELY threateningly playful I LOVE IT!!

It sounds so much like the songs in Nightmare Before Christmas, Kidnap Sandy Claws, Oogie Boogie's song, it has their same vibes! The same devilishly playful with their victims kind of vibes and it's RIGHT UP MY ALLEY BABY

It has SUCH an energizing beat too!! It makes you wanna jump in your seat to the beat!

The set up is so fun too, purple is an interesting choice to go with.

I cannot stress enough how GOOD THE VOCALS ARE TOO I WAS ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT

AND THIS PART. GOES EXTREMELY HARD. THEY ALL LOOK GREAT

They cooked with the choir of minions fr!! They sound great together!!

The chorus of the song is just as catchy as Creative Control, I had worries that I wasn't going to like this one as much as CC but I was SO wrong!! It's right up it's alley! They both have their strengths and their unique way of presenting Mr Puzzles, I wouldn't be able to decide which one is "better" since they both have different points to send across

Creative Control is jazzier, it taunts the crew and introduces Puzzles as the master villain with a bit of backstory, it's used to show the control on the crew both visually and lyrically with Puzzles putting them in different scenarios while singing how they can't leave

Meanwhile Puzzlepark, while similar in the controlling part, has more going on. It's not just Puzzles trying to control/stop Meggy, SMG4 and Mario, it's also them fighting back when they couldn't in CC. It also has the rest of the group trying to detain them, mind-controlled by Puzzles. It's crazier than just putting them in shows and popular culture references, it's throwing things at them, attacking them and messing with the world, trying to enact revenge yknow!

I particularly like when Meggy and Puzzles sing together, their voices contrast well

"But it's time for you to die now." Haehah! Hello!! This is the part where I kill you!!

AND A LAWSUIT ARC REFERENCE TOO!? OH I'M IN HEAVEN!!!

The lyrics scratch at a very nice part of my brain, I think SMG4 has always had a knack for rhyming, they've perfected it over the years and it's paid off well

And combined with the change in beat it goes for extra points, mwah!! Chef's kiss!!

"That child is gone... Six feet under right WHERE YOU AND YOUR STUPID FRIENDS BELONG!!"

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART FUCKING EVER!!!! THEY ABSOLUTELY COOKED

IT'S ABOUT HOW THREATENING PUZZLES IS IT'S ABOUT MEGGY STILL TRYING TO HELP HIM DESPITE IT ALL IT'S ABOUT HIM ABSOLUTELY REFUSING THE HELP BECAUSE THAT'S. JUST. HIM. PUZZLES. REFUSES. HELP. THINGS go his way or they don't go at all!!!

AND THAT ENDING NOTE MYYYY GODDDD GIVE THIS MAN AN EMMY RIGHT ABOUT FUCKING NOW!!!!

That was such a clean note, Brendan has an amazing singing voice and I'll be listening to this on repeat for A WEEK

SMG4 RELEASE PUZZLEPARK ON SPOTIFY NOW AND MY LIFE!!! IS YOURS!!!!

✧ In The End... It's For The Better...

They like using the trope of going inside a character's brain/heart/whatever to talk to them huh...

I'm not saying it as a bad thing! It's just a pattern I'm sure we've all noticed! I think it's cute!

SMG4 wouldn't be SMG4 if they at least didn't Try to save their villains, sure there's distasteful ones like that lizard that absolutely deserved it, but all the other villains had redemption arcs, heart to hearts, sympathy before dying... SMG4 is about chances, finding your people and having a heart even towards those who wronged you, even if in the end the worst happens to them

And I think that's beautiful

Regardless of having a heart, however, Meggy has the absolute right to be angry at Puzzles, maybe it wasn't right but I don't blame her for snapping at a kid, that kid Is Puzzles after all

I see two possible interpretations of Meggy becoming Leggy one more time: either- Truly to get close to Puzzles and become a true friend, or simple manipulation to get him to stop. Either are possible in my book, maybe with a little more thought I'd be able to know which one but for now I remain satisfied with being skeptical on this one, I don't care to find what the real intentions were since I know the ending.

Plus nothing is in black and white, there's a lot of layers to Puzzles' and Meggy's relationship........

And speaking of that ending-

HAH!!!!

I THOUGHT THAT SHIT WAS HILARIOUS!!

IN TRUE SMG4 FASHION YOU (SORTA) REDEEM A VILLAIN AND CELEBRATE SAVING THE DAY WITH A STUPID MEME

WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO FOLKS IT'S SMG4 IT'S THE FUNNY HAHA MEME SHOW!!

STOP TAKING IT SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY THE WHOLE TIME!!

IT CAN BE SERIOUS AND STUPID!!!!

Mr Puzzles SHOULD go to the psych ward, HE'S FUCKING INSANE

YOU DON'T GET REDEEMED IMMEDIATELY AFTER ALL THAT!!

I'm glad they didn't redeem him completely! I didn't believe him at all when he said he learned a valuable lesson! I was like No The Fuck You Didn't!

You can have a redemption later! That's okay! I trust the writers with handling the arcs and making them good! And you heard Luke, they might bring him back later! (Which is a definite yes!)

I would love for them to take it slow with Puzzles, not immediately of course, let him breathe and write another arc right now, settle things with everything and everyone and THEN you can break him out, the universe is full of possibilities, and I'm SURE I will enjoy whatever the SMG4 crew writes

Haeheh she looks like a nerd with those goggles

Someone's Artist Puzzles AU just came true btw-

"And Didney shut down..!" :D

The Showgrounds is gonna start looking more like an actual carnival too!! Wahoo!!

I WANT THAT FUCKING HOODIE-

That Puzzle plushie looks so ugly I LOVE HIMMMM

I WANT THAT FUCKING POSTER AND KEYCHAIN

SOMEONE PLEASE FUCKING COMMISSION ME SO I CAN BUY THEMMMMMM AEUGHHHHHH

Thank YOU LUKE AND SMG4 CREW FOR GIVING US THIS WOTFI!!! I LOVED IT WITH ALL MY HEART <33

I would love to hang out and go get some pizza with Mr Puzzles :(

And finally... that lil jingle to end with the rolling credits

✧ Final Thoughts

Believe me when I say I think this is the best possible ending for Puzzles, he doesn't die, he doesn't get completely redeemed, but he does face consequences and he gets a chance for the future, best of both worlds me thinks

I loved this rollercoaster that was Puzzlevision, I might've hopped on the train sorta late but I stayed for all the duration of the ride and I had a blast <3

Mr Puzzles was great and maliciously loveable, learning about all these characters and growing to care about them was amazing, I'm really happy I have a new series I can watch and analyze and enjoy!! I'll be remaining in my seat with my one ticket until I get off the SMG4 train, not sure when!! But until then you can expect me to still love this show, draw for it and analyze it much more than any reasonably normal person should.

If you've read this far, I love you soso much and hope you enjoyed this hell of a scroll, because I spent so many hours on this shit YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND-

K BYEEEE <333

[ohtobeleah]

Day Twenty [Nobody Can]

Summary: When a killer clown guts you like a fish, Bob is the one who stumbles upon you. Only to never come face to face who the person who did this to you.

Warnings: Bob Floyd x Seresin!reader. main Character deaths. Gore. Blood. Violence.

Word Count: 1.6k

Whumptober Prompt Day Twenty: Enemy/Stranger to caretaker, “I’m absolutely not qualified for this shit.”

Author Note: Please make sure you read the warnings provided. Disclaimer: I do not condone nor endorse the actions that are written about during the month of October. These works of fiction are just that, fiction and should be treated as such. Thank you to @ailesswhumptober for this year's prompt list.

Whumptober Masterlist | Main Masterlist |

“AH!” 

Diabolical forces are formidable. Those forces are external, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us as people, our very destiny hinges on which one we elect to follow. 

“Y/n? Was that you?” Bob Floyd had never liked you all that much. It wasn’t that you were a rude, hostile, or violent person by any means. No. It was more the fact he couldn’t stand your brother. Jake Seresin. That alone was enough for Bob to make a judgment call he thought was pretty on point for who you were. However, Bob was too kind of a person to completely ignore you. So, he tolerated your presence whenever you were in town. 

For a half-sibling, Jake had always been your biggest supporter. Your greatest protector. Your best friend. But right now? As you lay in a pool of your own blood on the floor of some wack-ass haunted house he’d invited you along to, Jake was nowhere to be seen. 

Never in your wildest dreams had you ever thought something like this would happen to you. This only ever happened in the movies, or some poorly punctuated fanfiction written at five-thirty in the afternoon the day before it was due for a prompt update. Things like this never happened in real life. Killer clowns in haunted houses on Halloween Eve? Yeah right. 

“Y/n?” Bob's voice dragged your mind from the inner workings of the Rolodex that was about to play out your life before your weakening eyes. “What are you doing?” It was something to hold onto though. Something to keep the very limited amount of blood still left inside you, pumping around. Oxygenating enough to keep you alive. 

“B-bob,” It was weak, so weak in fact you were left unsure if Bob had actually heard you. “H-elp me,” You begged barely above a whisper as you clutched at your stomach. Deep gushing blood spewed through your fingers as the blood-soaked shirt you wore absorbed enough oozing red to weigh you down. There was so much blood. Everywhere you looked seemed to be red. It stained your skin enough to show the small delicate lines that littered your hands like a sketchbook of memories. 

For Bob, this was all too much. First, the haunted house made him want to die at every corner he rounded. Then, he got separated from the group, making his anxieties skyrocket to new heights yet explored. And now? You’d decided to pull a stunt like this. And not a classy one at that either. 

“You and your brother really do my head in with your pranks” Bob shook his head in defeat. “This is just,” Bob couldn’t say what he really wanted to say, he didn’t want his mother rolling in her grave. “This is just upsetting to look at.” Even in his own anger, Bob could never raise his voice at you. His calmness, however, was usually something Bob relied on in situations requiring level-headedness. And that was about to be his biggest weakness. 

“Not. A. Prank,” You laid there on the floor in a secluded spot in the haunted house looking up at Bob, who thought you were messing with him. Sure you’d pulled a few pranks in the past whenever you’d come to visit your brother. But this wasn’t your doing. This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t fake. This was life and death. “Help me, please!” 

Bob stood there in idle mode for a minute longer than you would have liked him to. He stood looking down at you, bleeping out and cupping your intestines back into your body. Then it clicked. Holy shit… You weren’t trying to pull a prank on him. You were hurt, badly. 

“Oh my gosh, Y/n!” Bob finally snapped into action as he knelt down beside you. His hands immediately took over applying pressure against the open gash that had sliced through muscle and layers of fat and skin across your stomach. Your blood seeped through Bob’s fingers, kissing his fingerprints as he did so. “What the hell happened?” The look of pure terror that emanated off Bob’s face was enough to tell you that this was bad. Very bad. So bad in fact you could see yourself not making it. 

Not that you didn’t already think this situation was bad, hell, you knew that the second you saw your lower intensities spilling from your stomach. You weren’t a rocket scientist but you could conclude pretty easily after seeing something no human should ever see outside their own body, that you were in fact, screwed. 

“One of the c-clowns,” You tried to explain to Bob as he assessed your injuries. “Attacked me, with–an axe!” You never expected it. As you rounded one of the corners inside the haunted house, using your hands on the walls to guide you, you walked right into it as he swung. A sharp, bloodied axe. Right to the lower abdomen. It damn near split you in two. 

“Wh-where are the others?” Bob stuttered as little as he looked around the dimly lit hallway. Still holding you in his arms. “HELP! SOMEBODY!” 

“Shhh!” You pleaded with the aviator who you hadn’t always been the kindest to. You should have at least stayed till morning when you’d gone home with Bob three nights ago. You should have at least given him a reason as to why you didn’t want Jake to know you’d slept together. Maybe if you’d just told the truth and explained to Bob that you really did like him… it’s just that you didn’t think you were his speed. His type. Good enough for him. It was you, not him. 

Maybe then Bob would have liked you a little more. Maybe. Or maybe he’d still love you enough to pretend to hate you. 

Jake had always tormented you about having a crush on one of his colleagues. There wasn’t that much of an age difference, but Jake always had a way of teasing you about it. 

“He’ll hear you!” The blood you coughed up made Bob’s eyes well with adrenaline. Just how was he supposed to help you?

“We need to get you out of here,” Bob explained as he started taking his shirt off. “I need you to hold this against yourself to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t a matter of if you could stop the bleeding. It was a matter of how long you could prolong the enviable. 

“What are you–you gonna do?” You asked as you took hold of Bob’s crumpled-up shirt now pressed against your stomach. Immediately soaking up your crimson-red blood. 

“I’m absolutely not qualified for this shit,” Bob hissed through gritted teeth as he musted up all the courage he had to pick you up bridal style. “I’m gonna get you outta here, what the hell does it look like I’m gonna do, Y/n? Leave you here to die?” 

The sarcasm was tasteless in a time like this, but you bit back nevertheless. “You thought I was pranking you!” You tried to yell. But as you tensed more blood oozed out of your mouth. Your nose. Your ears. All the while Bob carried you through the haunted maze of windy corridors and false exits. “You think so little of me.” 

“Only because I thought we had something,” Bob confessed as he carried your bleeding self through the darkness. “So do me a favour here and don’t die, so that you can tell me to my face after I save your life how wrong I am, and that you love me the same way I love you.”

It was enough to have you fighting to keep yourself awake. It was just enough. Bob’s words sat heavy in your chest as he carried you closer to safety through the world’s most unrealistic haunted house ever erected. The only thing even remotely realistic was that stupidly terrifying clown. 

“I’ll try,” You replied weakly. Bob made eye contact with you for a few seconds. He carried you like dead weight in his arms, trying his very best to get you to safety. He may have felt some kind of way about you know but he didn’t want you to die. And he certainly didn’t want you to die like this. 

Diabolical forces are formidable. Those forces are external, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us as people, our very destiny hinges on which one we elect to follow. 

The only sound he made was a faint ‘Ugh’ sound before you were sent hurdling towards the floor in a heap of twisted lifeless limbs. You weren’t sure what had happened. Maybe Bob had tripped. In the fuss, you had been crushed you all of Bob’s dead weight. 

More blood oozed out of your deep wounds as you tried to escape from underneath Bob. But as you moved, you saw it. The axe sticking out of the back of Bob’s head. Now split like a coconut. Gushing blood as his body twitched above you in a heap. 

You wanted to scream, but you couldn’t. Your eyeline caught the clown shoes standing off in the near distance. Your eyes trailed up the legs, and the torso and even saw the grotesque mask splattered in what would could only assume was Bob’s blood. The chainsaw in the clown’s hand made your heart stop inside your chest. Fuck.

But it wasn’t until the clown removed the mask that you truly saw the face of pure evil. All the blood still left inside your body ran cold. 

“If I can’t have him, no one can.” Natasha chuckled as she made her way over to you. Chainsaw at the ready. 

[souperbloom]

deffo need some subtle sub!luke in my life - maybe y/n and the guys are all talking about sex lives & one of them slips out that luke once mentioned wanting y/n to be in control because it was usually the other way round, so later on they give it a go!

nothing too extreme, just y/n making decisions, praising luke & being on top etc

you don’t even want to know the sound that came out if my mouth when i got this notification.

(if u requested this reveal yourself.) (im joking.) (maybe.)

enjoy <3

————————

secrets, secrets. [L.H.]

🖤 boyfriend!luke

after what seems to be a secret revealed, you and your boyfriend Luke try something new in the bedroom.

a/n: FIRST LUKE SMUT WOOOO. i wrote most of this while listening to classical music which i just think is so silly and on brand for me. i also had a last minute epiphany and changed the title whoops.

CONTENT WARNINGS: references to weed/smoking, angst if you squint, sub!luke (duh), pet names, praise kink, oral (m!receiving), orgasm denial, protected sex.

WORDCOUNT: 5.7k

⋆⭒˚｡⋆

You hadn’t checked the clock for what seemed to be hours.

The guys and yourself had been wrapped up in a heated discussion sitting in a circle in Calum’s living room, all stoned on your own accord.

The conversation had been flowing since the moment you all sat in your respective places, turning from lighthearted banter into something much more vulgar than you were used to. You all hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks, which meant there was a lot of ‘catching up’ to be had.

But you weren’t quite sure how the simple conversation of ‘how have you been?’ morphed into something along the lines of: ‘have you ever had a dirty dream about me?’

"You’re lying! I can see it in your eyes!" An eager Michael shouts across the room at his dear friend, and your boyfriend, Luke. You watch the entire ordeal unfold perched atop Luke’s restless thigh.

He tries to hide a measly smile, as Michael has caught his bluff.

"Okay, fine… It was one time. Nothin’ to fuckin’ write home about."

"How does that even happen?" Calum, baffled, rubs his hand on his chin.

"It means he thinks about ya’ before he goes t’sleep," says Ashton confidently, motioning towards Luke with a cheeky grin.

"No! That’s not— no."

"Luke, c’mon. Don’t be embarrassed. I’m sure we’ve all had some pretty fucked up dreams about each other." Michael tries his hand at consoling your boyfriend, whose cheeks were now glowing red.

"I’m not embarrassed. You just— you forced it out of me. A man’s allowed to have secrets, y’know."

Secrets.

It always came back to telling secrets.

You’d like to think that you had a pretty open and honest relationship with your boyfriend, as well as his best friends.

But there were still some things about them that you didn’t know.

And you were afraid you were about to find them out.

"Speakin’ of secrets…" Ashton begins, adjusting his posture to rest his elbows on his knees, "…I’ve got one."

Bingo.

"Go ahead. This is a safe space," you say teasingly, trying not to acknowledge the fact that you had been so high for the majority of this conversation that you had completely forgotten to speak.

"Ashton’s got a seeecreeeet." Calum teases Ashton in a singsongy tone, but Ashton’s face was reading more serious than anything. He clears his throat before speaking his mind.

"Call me crazy, but takin’ on the submissive role in bed has gotta be one of the greatest things on Earth. And if ya’ haven’t tried it, then you’re not livin’ right."

You quirk your brow, and take a look at the rest of the room. Each of the guys’ faces were contorted into a different stage of grief.

Michael was amused, clearly. His eyes were wide and glassy like he had just witnessed one of the Seven Wonders. Calum’s jaw was practically touching the floor, trying to bite back a smile that was so obviously hard to hide.

And then, there was Luke.

He wasn’t making a face— his expression was unreadable. The only thing you saw was his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He swallowed hard, and you noticed that.

"Dude… what? I did not expect that from you…" Michael was still in awe of his friend, as he cupped his cheek with his hand.

"Don’t make assumptions, Mikey. You only live once."

As much as you wanted to say you were shocked, you honestly weren’t. You didn’t know a whole lot about Ashton’s sex life, but this didn’t surprise you. He’s the kind of guy to try anything once.

"Well? Don’t be a prude… Tell us what happened."

"Y/N—" Luke blurts, seemingly attempting to stop this conversation from unfolding.

"What? Am I wrong for being curious?"

"No, no— I agree with Y/N," says Michael, "Since you wanna rave about your endeavors as a submissive princess… Tell us all about it."

Michael’s sly comment earns a snort from Luke, who had been trying to remain steely faced since the moment he had called him out for having sexual fantasies about him. You smile to yourself, eyes darting between Ashton and your boyfriend as their stare down commences.

"What’s so funny over there?" Ashton quips.

Your boyfriend’s eyes shoot down to his lap. "Nothin’."

"Ash, get on with it." Michael was fed up, and ready to hear all about what Ashton was so persistent about.

You can’t help but stifle a giggle as Ashton lets out a sigh. He was taking this a lot more seriously than you thought he would.

"I’m not sure what came over me— but there was this one time. I guess I was feeling particularly lazy er’ somethin’, but I asked her to take over for the night. I won’t get into the nitty gritty but let’s just say; it changed my fuckin’ life."

"I am way too high to be talking about this right now." Calum says, his eyes wide as he is still processing everything.

Ashton continues, "Somethin’ about the feeling of your fate lying in your lover’s hands is just so… exhilarating. You never know what’s gonna happen next— you learn to expect the unexpected… It’s fuckin’ great, man."

Upon Ashton's admission, your seat in Luke's lap shifts slightly. He adjusts you, pulling you closer into his torso and resting his chin on your shoulder.

"Still can't picture it, but... I believe ya'," says Michael with a nod of approval. You laugh, feeling your boyfriend's fingertips drumming against your stomach.

"You guys ever tried it? Don't mean to pry but, as Y/N said, this is a safe space."

The room goes pin-drop quiet. Nobody wanted to speak up; not you, not Luke, not anybody else. It seemed as though this conversation had died out quicker than it came to be.

"Oh, come on. You guys are the freakiest fucks I know. Seriously? None of you?" Ashton presses the group for answers, his eyes landing on you. But you just shrug.

"I'm always on the bottom, Ash. You're preaching to the choir."

"Oh trust me, we know."

"Cal—" Your boyfriend huffs, cutting off his friend and pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

Confused, your eyes search around the room for any sign of an answer. You seemed to be out of the loop, which was unlike you in these kinds of situations.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" You can’t help but get a little defensive, now zoning in on the feeling of your boyfriend’s fingernails anxiously biting into your waist.

"Nothing! He means nothing..." Luke tries to defend, his voice a bit pitchy.

You bite back a smile. “Secrets, secrets are no fun…"

"Unless they’re shared with everyone, fuck, I know! But you don’t have to—"

Calum butts in, "Mate, relax. I’m just messing around."

"No, no— don’t give me that bullshit. What were you trying to say Cal?"

You weren’t sure why, but feeling left out of some sort of inside joke or secret was making you angry. Your temper was mellowed from smoking, yet this whole back and forth was getting to you a little more than you’d like to admit.

Luke lets out a sigh from behind you, dropping his chin on your shoulder in defeat. He didn’t feel like arguing anymore, with the rest of the room dead quiet as they wait for Calum to speak.

Calum on the other hand was holding back a high smile. A look of ‘I know something you don’t know’ was plastered proudly across his cheeks. He rubs his hands together, glancing at Ashton and Michael before he opens his mouth.

"I know you pride yourself on being a pillow princess Y/N, but… Luke wants to see you in charge."

Immediately, your face flushes pink. You didn’t know what you were expecting Calum to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t that.

It was almost as if everyone in the room was trying not to burst into laughter, Ashton and Michael slapping each other’s legs to get the other to stop snickering.

You swallow the newly formed lump in your throat, taking a second to look each of your friends in the eye.

"Well, this is news to me—"

"You fuckin’ suck, Cal." Luke blurts, embarrassment and anger laced through his tone.

As you sit cross legged, still perched on Luke’s thigh, you feel a tap at your lower back. This was your boyfriend’s cue; an unspoken means of telling you 'let’s get the fuck out of here.'

"I’m sorry," Calum laughs, "I didn’t mean t’ hit a nerve with that one."

"Luke, wait—" pleads Michael, who had been rather quiet throughout this whole ordeal.

"I think we’re gonna head out."

Soon enough, you’re rising to your feet, and your boyfriend is quick to follow. He grabs your bag from off of the floor, scooting you closer into the awkward energy of the circle. The rest of the guys just look at you in pity, but you were far too busy in your own head to notice their stares.

Luke wanted you to be in charge?

"Can’t force him to stay if he doesn’t want to," Ashton shrugs, clasping his hands together between his knees, "I guess we’ll see you two tomorrow?"

You purse your lips to reply to Ashton, watching your boyfriend feverishly pack up your belongings and shift you towards the nearest exit. But Luke is quicker than you, cutting right to the chase.

“Yeah, sure. Somethin’ like that."

The entire car ride back to Luke’s apartment was silent.

You were still hung up on how awkward those last few minutes had played out; but a part of you was just dying to know more about Luke’s little secret.

Pushing boundaries was something that you hadn’t yet considered when it came to you and your boyfriend. Your relationship was fairly new; with the both of you still testing the waters and occasionally stepping out of your comfort zones.

Luke was excellent at reading you. He paid very close attention to detail, which was one of the things that had you falling so hard for him in the first place.

But there was a piece of you that felt guilty for prying this all out of him, the way his entire demeanor seemed to drop when Calum spilled his beans. He was embarrassed, from what you could tell. And you weren’t quite sure what to do.

"Luke?" You pop your head out of the bathroom door, your face wash in hand, looking into your master bedroom at Luke splayed across the mattress. He’s still fully dressed, laying flat on his back with his shoes hanging off of the side.

You, however, took it upon yourself to get ready for bed. You took off your makeup, brushed your teeth, and changed into a little plaid pajama-short set to try and get your mind off of the awkward energy still floating in the air.

"Luke…" He hadn’t replied the first time you called out his name, so you tried your luck again. This time, he just sighed, before turning his head to face you.

His sandy blonde curls were haphazardly strewn across the made comforter. His body restless, as he drummed his hands along his abdomen and waited for you to reply.

"Yes?"

"You okay?"

"Mhmm."

Your shoulders drop in defeat, your eyes still lingering on his lanky frame. He lets out a deep breath before looking at the ceiling again, gnawing on his bottom lip mindlessly.

"I’m sorry," you say, "I didn’t mean to embarrass you."

"You didn’t."

His short replies were making your stomach churn. It was unlike the both of you to be so cautious with each other, walking on eggshells in hopes that the other would just let up and speak their mind. You didn’t want to make it worse, either— it seemed like this affected him, and the last thing you needed was for it to be your fault.

You turn back to face the bathroom counter, continuing your nightly skincare. But from behind you, you hear shuffling. The sole of a shoe hitting the floor, then another. The sound of a jacket unzipping, and pooling to the floor as well.

You could see Luke’s slouched posture in the mirror through the doorframe, watching him slowly rid himself of his clothes and leaving him in nothing but his grey t-shirt and pink heart boxers. The ones you gifted him for Valentine’s day.

The water was warm as you started to wash your face, warm enough to let yourself relax for a moment. It dripped down your forehead, into your eyes, momentarily shielding you from your surroundings as you bent over the sink.

In your daze, you turn the faucet off, your eyes screwed shut and vision starry. But as you blindly reach around the counter for a towel, you feel someone hand it to you.

"Here," the familiar voice drawls from behind you, before you feel a broad hand slither around your waist.

You let out a whimper from the back of your throat, unable to say "thank you" now, as you grab the towel from Luke’s hand realize his hips are digging into your backside.

When you dry your face and regain your vision, you stand upright. Luke’s torso is warm, and inviting, his blistered palm making headway beneath your shirt to drag across your torso. In the mirror, you see his face contort into a mellow smile, his curls pushed back away from his eyes.

"Hi," You whisper into the mirror, water dripping off of your eyelashes and down your cheek.

"Hi, pretty."

"Are you mad at me?" You hated asking that question.

"Of course not, why would I be mad at you?" Luke replies, pulling you into his cotton t-shirt.

"You seemed like you were a few minutes ago." The feeling of his fingertips was getting to be distracting.

"No, no. It was just— something I’d been meaning to tell you but… I just never got around to it."

"Oh."

His other hand has made it to your waist. "Are you mad at me?"

"Never."

"Good to know."

For a moment, the two of you stare at your reflections in the mirror. Luke’s eyes rake down your body, his hands still wandering along the delicate skin of your tummy beneath your shirt. You sigh into him, leaning backwards to rest your head on the crook of his neck.

"Wanna try something new tonight?" He asks, his voice huskier than before and mumbling into the top of your head.

"Mmm, like what?" You were unable to hide your melodic hums as his hands move closer beneath your breasts.

You already knew what Luke was going to ask of you, the excitement bubbling in the pit of your stomach as his eyes wandered, pretending to think.

To be honest with yourself, you had already thought a lot about what’d it’d be like if you two switched places for a change. But you were always too nervous to bring it up, especially in the heat of the moment.

"Want you t’ be in charge tonight, pretty. Do whatever you want t’me. Think you’d be interested?"

"Yes," you breathe without even a second thought, entranced by his fingertips as they creep towards the waistband of your shorts, "I’d love to."

"Sounds good t’me."

Not a second passes before Luke is spinning you around to face him. He dips down, and plants a gentle kiss on your lips, leaving you with a fuzzy head and a fluttering stomach.

When you pull away from him you notice the twinkle in his ocean blue eyes that hadn’t been there before. It was a look of anticipation. Pure excitement. You were about to try something new with the person you loved most in this world, and he was about as thrilled as you were.

You could just tell.

"How can I be good for you, pretty? Wanna be your good boy tonight."

His words made your heart skip a beat, but you figured it’d be best to just play it cool.

"Wellll—" You press your index finger to his chest, "Maybe start by getting on the bed?"

"Are you gonna come with me?" He asks sweetly, still holding you in his hands.

"Of course, baby… But I need you to just sit tight and wait for me, okay?"

He nods quickly, biting back a smile between his teeth before he’s shuffling out of the bathroom towards the bed. You linger in the doorframe for a moment, watching in complete awe as Luke crawls to the top of the mattress and sits with his back resting against the headboard.

Doing exactly what you had asked him to.

You start in slow strides towards him, swaying your hips with each step in hopes to kill some time.

You wanted to figure out a game plan. Since you’d never done this before, you weren’t sure where to start; and as much as it wouldn’t be shameful to ask Luke for advice, you wanted to impress him.

"Okay, done. Now what?" The anticipation in his voice made you want to just explode on impact. He was just the cutest fucking thing.

"Hmmm," you hum, crossing your arms as your eyes scan his body, "I’m gonna need that shirt off."

"Yes ma’am."

He then crosses his arms in front of his torso, pulling the hemline of his shirt over his head. He tosses it to the side, revealing his bare chest sprinkled in sandy blonde chest hairs.

As you watch him move, you gnaw on your bottom lip, scanning down his practically naked body and thinking of all of the things you could do. All of the things you could do to make this right for him. To make this worth wild.

You glance down at your plaid pajama shirt, clad and held together by buttons that gap between your breasts.

And then, you get an idea.

"You ready for me baby?" You ask your boyfriend, whose legs had been crossing and uncrossing impetuously as he watches you near closer to the bed.

"Mhm."

"Gonna play a game with you, m’kay?"

"M’kay." He mocks your gentle tone.

Before you could explain the rules of this new, made-up game of yours, you start to move. Dipping one knee down into the mattress, then the other. You crawl to him, straddling his lap and settling down atop of his obvious hard-on.

He was turned on just by the thought of you.

"It’s very easy," you start to say, reaching for the first button of your blouse, "and there’s only one rule."

Luke’s hands hover around you awkwardly, unsure of where to rest them, unsure if he was even allowed to touch you at all.

"What is it?" He asks, swallowing and adjusting himself beneath you.

"Tell me I’m pretty."

His eyes widen. He had finally noticed your hand lingering and toying with the button on your top.

"You’re pretty, baby. The prettiest."

And with that, the first button comes undone. You move your hands down to the second.

"Tell me I’m pretty."

His tongue juts out to wet his bottom lip, his hands now stagnant at his sides and twitching by your calves.

"You’re so pretty. Prettiest girl in the world."

Second button, undone.

"Tell me I’m pretty, baby. Tell me again."

As you reach for the third button, you make a point to grind your hips down, swiveling them in a way that he’d feel it. His face contorts in bliss, petal pink lips parting slightly.

"You’re so fuckin’ pretty… Prettiest I’ve— ever seen."

Third button, undone.

"Tell me more, baby. Tell me again."

You grind your hips down again, and a soft whimper escapes the back of his throat. You could feel his hands fidgeting down by your legs, reaching out to touch something that wasn’t even there.

"So fuckin’ beautiful… My pretty girl— ah—" He's cut short with another dig of your hips. The paper thin material of your pajama shorts leaving absolutely no room for the imagination. You could practically feel his cock twitching beneath your core, but you weren’t ready to give in just yet.

With his last words of affirmation, you undo the last two buttons on your own accord. The breeze from the air conditioning makes you shiver, instantly perking up your nipples.

Luke noticed that, too. He always does.

"So, so pretty…" He utters with one last labored breath, as if it were the last he’d ever take, upon seeing your chest.

"You did so good for me, didn’t you baby?"

Luke hums quietly, clearly feeling some sort of release due with the pressure of your body on top of him. You notice his hands trembling still, down at his sides and oblivious to the thought of touching you.

"You can touch me, y’know. Been’ such a good boy for me so far."

The eye contact between you was like trance; it was gentle, and warm. Still wavering with uncertainty, yet eager to continue. Luke’s hands eventually make it to your waist, something he had been dying to do since the moment you straddled his hips.

You could tell he was still hesitant to let his fingers roam as they usually would, and that was definitely getting to your head.

You swivel your hips one last time without a single word, dipping down to kiss him. Your hands are quick to cup his face, lips interlocking eagerly for the first time since this morning.

It’s not long before your tongues begin exploring, tangling together in the sweetness of your kiss.

You’re still grinding your hips. He’s still in a trance.

Luke’s hands had moved to grip your ass, pushing it down while simultaneously bucking his hips up into your core. This action of his makes you disconnect from him for a moment, a disapproving look in your eye.

"Ah ah ah," you tut at him, his cheeks now squished between your palms. He quirks his brow.

"What?"

"Not so fast, pretty boy. You said I could do anything, right?"

He chuckles, eyes flicking down to your lips, "I did say that, didn’t I? You're right, baby. Tell me whatcha' need from me... I'm all yours."

You suck in a deep breath, trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts that keep poking at your head and telling you to just let him have his way with you. You wanted to remain stern, whether he took you seriously, or not.

"How about this…"

You let go of his cheeks to shrug your pajama shirt off of your shoulders, tossing it onto the floor next to his tee. His pupils shake, eyeing down your breasts.

"…You don’t get to cum ‘till I say so."

"Oh, fuck— you're too good t'me..." His voice is soft and melodic, already so willing to give up the power he usually claims. "Yes. Yes..."

Your palms lay flat on his broad chest, feeling it rise and fall with every breath he took.

He was anxious; anxious in the way that one more subtle touch to his flesh would send his heart thumping right through his ribcage.

You couldn't contain your excitement anymore; just looking at him was already creating a slickness in your panties.

But Luke could've stared at you for hours.

"Are you sure, Lu?" You ask once your delicate boy once more, tracing little hearts with your pointer fingers across his pecs. He nods eagerly, eyes going doe.

"Yes, yes, yes. A million times yes. Have your way with me, please."

With a tug at your bottom lip, you take his words as your cue. You're quick to take out a condom from Luke's bedside dresser, and even quicker to shift your ass down to rest on his thighs.

As you move, his stare lingers. He nods at you slowly, to remind you of his approval. How desperately he wanted you to have your way with him.

His cock twitching and practically popping through the button of his boxers was already telling you everything you needed to know.

To try and read his eager pleas, you begin to palm him delicately through the pink heart fabric, heavenly sounds spilling past his lips and floating to your ears like a siren's melody.

He was grunting, whining; almost as if he were in pain.

"Easy now, baby," you coo gently, as a shiver runs down Luke's body, "Still my good boy, right?"

"Mmmmph."

"Good, good. Just like that, pretty baby." You squeeze your hand around his length, and his jaw falls completely agape.

You weren't planning on teasing him for much longer. It almost felt cruel to do so.

So, instead of waiting any more, you release him from the button of his boxers.

His tip was already leaky with precum; angry and red, that angelic face of his melting the second you wrap your manicured fingers around his shaft.

Tipping down to take him into your mouth, you hollow out your cheeks, tongue laying flat against him as you start to bob your head.

Sucking him off had always been one of your favorite things to do. In your head, it gave you a purpose— and you always loved the praise that would come with it.

But with the power dynamic now in your favor, you were already enjoying it all the more.

"Fuck me, pretty... So fuckin' warm..." Luke groans through gritted teeth, taking his hands to comb through your hair. You hum at him, sending a vibration down your tongue and directly through his body. He jolts, as if he’d been struck by lightning, while your hands begin to claw at his hipbone.

The walls of Luke's bedroom felt like they were closing in on you, each heaving breath that he was taking was making you dizzy. Your nails leave little crescent etchings deep into his flesh, the tip of his cock hitting the back of your throat each time you duck down.

"Fuck... fuck fuck fuck–" He grunts, he whines, he continues to writhe beneath you, completely at your disposal. You were eating up every single sound he made, every little spasm of his hands or jerk at his hips.

Picking up on the signs, you could tell he was close. He didn't even have to say it.

"Y/N... I–I'm..." He can barely even finish his thought before he's grabbing your hair in a handful. You always loved it when he was a little rough with you, and this time was no different.

With a tug at your roots, you hum around him again. His body comes lurching forward, almost as if to stop himself from fucking your throat.

"Baby– M'close..." He finally utters, which brings you to toss your head up, releasing him from your mouth with a pop.

"Shhh, it's okay," you whisper, watching his cock fall thump against his stomach and twitch here and there, "You’ve been so good for me so far."

"I have?" He asks the question sweetly, genuinely. With a little twinkle in his eye.

"Oh, of course you have, my pretty baby…" you say, running the back of your hand down his belly, "Gonna keep it up for me, right?"

"Yes."

"Such a good boy."

Luke tosses his head back, his bottom lip held captive by his teeth, and lets out a whine the moment you start to get off of him. The fact that he was whining at the loss of your touch was enough to send you over the edge right then and there, but you wanted to keep your promise.

You hastily discard your pajama shorts, tossing them into the growing pile of clothes on the floor. Luke whimpers again upon seeing you naked— you didn’t bother to wear your panties tonight.

"You are so beautiful, Y/N… My pretty little flower—" Luke sighs, in awe of you, despite the lingering sexual tension in the air. He always made it a point to compliment you, no matter the scenario.

"Thank you, Lu," You can’t help but giggle and blush, making your way back to his lap to straddle him.

Again, his hands find your waist. He sucks in a deep breath, eyes wired shut.

After only doing this for a little while, you were already comfortable talking to Luke in a more dominant way. The trick was to not think about it too hard. Just let the words roll right off of your tongue.

Simple enough, right?

"Tell me what you want me to do to you, baby." Your words are soft like down pillows yet loud enough to get a rise out of him. He shifts beneath you, still closing his eyes.

"Fuck me… please? I’m achin’ for you."

You take his pleas as your sign to start, wet enough from merely the obscene sounds spilling from his lips. The condom you had grabbed was still at your side so, you rip the package open with your teeth.

When you start to roll the condom down over his length, he lets out a hiss. Could have been the temperature; or maybe he was just too desperate to be ashamed of his sounds.

"Shit—" He whines, clutching onto your hips as your hand pumps his cock a few times.

"Easy, baby," you purr, adjusting yourself upwards to line him up with your dripping slit, "You ready for me?"

"Mhm— yes… yes please, angel. Please— fuck me."

His throaty cries only furthered the butterflies floating around in the pit of your stomach. You could barely contain yourself as you hover over him, biting your lip as you sink down onto his cock.

The both of you let out a collective groan; the feeling of him filling you up completely just seemed too perfect.

You lower your body so that you completely engulf him, taking his length fully and making your breath hitch in your throat.

"Feels good, pretty baby?" You ask, still buzzing.

"Mmph—" He whines, anchoring his hands to your hips as you start to swivel.

"Need you to use your words, Lu… Tell me."

You’re gentle with him, at first. Treating him delicately, like picking off the petals off a daisy. He seemed so weak beneath you and something about it was making your head spin. Your heart was bursting at the seams.

"Yes, Y/N— Feels s’fuckin’ good—" Luke whimpers, digging his fingernails into you, and holding onto you with his entire soul fleshing through his fingertips.

His cock twitches inside of you, as you continue your rhythm of grinding hips. It’s easy for you to tell when to pick up speed, testing his limits by his face alone.

"Such a good boy, baby.. You’re doing so fuckin’ well."

You start to notice the familiar furrow of his brow, that concentrated little notch in his forehead.

He wanted to close his eyes, but he just couldn’t seem to look away

"Y/N, I—"

He says your name again. It’s syrupy, like honey dripping off of his tongue. You place your palm flat on his tummy, tossing your hair out of your eyes to match his gaze.

"Takin’ my pussy so well, aren’t you?" You ask him, but don’t expect an answer. His face of concentration was telling you all you needed to know. How hard he was working to please your demand.

"Mmm… Th-think’ m’doin’ a good job…" He nods slowly, and you smile.

"Oh baby, you are… Keep goin’, m’kay?"

He smiles with a hum, through heavy, bated breaths.

"M’kay."

The sweaty flurry of blonde curls and baby blue eyes was slowly starting to unravel. The rise and fall of his chest was rapidly picking up speed, before he started to snap his hips up into you.

A slapping sound engulfs the walls of his bedroom, but you have no reason to complain. His cock was stretching you out, hitting that sweet spot with every stroke.

"Fuck, Lu—" You can’t help but revert to your old ways; yet not completely giving in, and letting him hold the reins. He was still beneath you, practically melting as your bodies entwine.

And that, was an incredible feeling.

"Y/N—" he whines, broken by panting, "m’close."

You nod sloppily, your tits bouncing at the speed of your swiveling hips.

"Hold it, baby— still my good boy, right?"

"Yes, yes… I am, Y/N. M’ a fuckin— a fuckin’ mess for you…"

A catty smile sprawls across your cheeks, feeling your orgasm budding lowly in the pit of your stomach, and satisfied at the way you had him completely wrapped around your finger.

"Mhm, yes you are. Such a pretty mess..."

Your orgasm was on the brink now, ready to burst and run through your body. Sloppy sounds filled the air; panting, whining, groaning. It was all meshing in your ears like the tune of a fucking song.

You felt your face tinge pink upon seeing your boyfriend’s concentrated expression, feeling a tad bit sorry for being so demanding.

So, you finally decide to let go.

"Cum with me, baby—" You gasp.

"Wha—"

"Let it go, Lu. Been s— so good for me, fuck!"

And with that, stars and galaxies are fogging your vision. You let out a cry as you finish, your walls clenching tightly around Luke’s cock as he does the same. He gives one last quick snap of his hips before you’re collapsing completely, going limp on his chest with him still inside of you.

You could hear his heart thumping through his chest; your sweaty bodies practically letting sparks fly. His hand moves to rub your back, as you both collect your devices.

"Was I good enough, baby?" He asks sweetly, that soft voice from before coming into play and making your stomach flutter.

"More than enough."

He giggles; seeming a bit shy about the semantics of it all, before planting a kiss at the crown of your head.

You can see his eyelashes fanning against the apples of his cheeks, glistening in the light of your bedroom as he grins up to the ceiling.

"I’m glad," he beams, "And you were right, by the way."

You pop your head up from his chest to look him in the eye. "About what?"

"Should’ve told ya’ about this a lot sooner."

With a shake of your head, you tut at him teasingly, just happy to feel closer to him than you ever have before.

"Guess it’s not a secret anymore."

⋆⭒˚｡⋆

[sparklingcid3r]

do u think musical!paul is enacting some revenge on darry by beating up his baby brother? like he must know that that's ponyboy when bob starts beating him up. how do you think darrel reacts the first time he finds out paul is now jumping those closest to him?

i haven’t seen the musical yet (dec 22 gang where u at🗣️) so i have nooo idea how the scene plays out, we’re rolling based on vibes alone rn. if it is revenge then it’s “messy gay breakup” revenge if i’ve ever seen it, like goddamn paul just say u miss him. ur doing too much

but dude. darry finds out paul jumped pony and it’s like the winter soldier just got activated. the next time it happens, darry’s got paul locked in on his scope and they start BOXINGG. except it’s the most one-sided iso you’ve ever seen bc paul’s out here throwing cute little “take that!” punches at a nasty ex while darry’s just seen his little brother get stomped and doesn’t know how he’s gonna keep the lights on next month. who do u think gets the dub

bob’s gonna have to scrape paul off the pavement when darry’s done warming up. catch darry blowing on his knuckles to cool them off before getting right back into it. only reason he doesn’t is bc he remembers his brother just saw the greatest get-back in history and thinks maybe he’s also doing too much

pony doesn’t give a shit tho bc seeing paul get washed by his big brother is literally the coolest thing he’s ever laid eyes on🙏

[hail-brod]

Hint

Midoriya Izuku x Reader

Masterlist

U.A. ball.

Every hero student in U.A. looked forward to it. After three years of training as heroes, they were given the chance to celebrate their breakthroughs and improvements on their incoming career as Pro Heroes. It was exciting indeed.

And Midoriya Izuku was delighted. Not just because he finally felt stronger than before and became much more confident, but because you were there.

You were stunning that evening.

The music played with so much life as the other students made a beeline for the dance floor, showcasing their mirth for being there. Illuminated by the disco lights above, shining green eyes became a shooting star as it landed on your seated form.

You. [Last Name] [Name]. His ever-loving childhood friend. He basked in your gentle demeanor, smiling so calmly as you watched the others dance.

You made no move to sit up nor ask other students to dance with you. You only sat there. Not with a looming gloom but with a contented expression. You were a proud loner that seeks nothing but solitude and Izuku admires that about you. In his eyes, you were amazing. He saw your own ways when it comes to interaction with other people and you were unfaltering. Always so composed albeit sometimes in a humorous way.

So you sat there with a gorgeous smile as you listened to your classmates beside you. You were a good listener so people tend to be rambling to you whenever. That leaves him quite jealous at times but who is he to think like that? He’s at least relieved that you were enjoying your time in such a crowded event. That’s all that would matter to him. Your comfort.

In addition to that, you were his comfort.

For as many times he could decide, you deserve so much more. He wants you to see that he can also be your greatest comfort, someone you’d want by your side no matter what happens. Izuku could only imagine things when it comes to relationships, and his heart swells at the thought of it.

The music suddenly shifted. From the constant beats of rhythm to a mellow swirl of instruments, the dance floor toned down to a slow dance.

At that moment, he took note how you shifted on your seat for a mere second before sighing joyously at the change.

He knew how much you enjoyed your own company but he couldn’t help but stare longer at you.

The way you would just giggle and laugh at jokes from others and give your small comments here and there was respecting enough. Your satisfied body rhythms as you bob your head to the song was cute in many ways. The smiles that you give to your classmates when they greet you was mesmerizing at its best.

Izuku could only tweak a small smile as he laid his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his palm.

Isn’t it a cliché dynamic in movies? The childhood friend falling in love with the main character.

Well, Midoriya Izuku is that childhood friend.

Evidently, a blush came up to his cheeks. It was too late to be going back into seeing you as just a friend. You were special to him and that won’t change sometime in the future. He wouldn’t say he regrets falling because just being close to you is enough to send him into a craze of joy. You were there at his lowest and even if you were no match to Katsuki back then, you still stood up for him. You have a kind heart, in return, that heart is what makes Izuku’s own beat faster.

“Stop that.”

“Huh?” Izuku let out. Turning his head beside him, he met a pair of glaring crimson eyes.

“I can clearly make out the look you’re giving her and it’s irritatingly idiotic.” Bakugou Katsuki continued. With a gritted teeth, he gave his green haired friend an irritated look.

Green eyes could only widen at his remark as shades of blush started to fade in on his cheeks. “K-Kacchan…. I’m not-“

“Shut it. You have googly eyes.”

Still blushing, the green haired man tried to conceal his vulnerability as much as possible. “W- What the hell does that mean?” Stuttering was not part of it as he only blew it by nervously looking away. Googly eyes? Was he really that obvious?

Clicking his tongue, Katsuki replied nonchalantly. “I’m not stupid and I’m sure as hell not unaware of your silly little crush on her. Almost everybody in class knows your ‘secret’ because you we’re too damn obvious, dumbass.”

Well, there it goes.

Izuku paled at information so much that he almost shouted his next words but thankfully, he refrained so because of the romantic atmosphere. “Y-You’re kidding.”

“The hell I am.” Katsuki grunted. Standing up, he placed his hands in his pockets. “Too bad, too late. I bet she also knows now too.” He then proceeded to leave the dumbfounded green haired man.

Izuku could only stare at nothing as he processed what he just heard.

“I’m so done. So, so, so done.”

How could he ever let this happen? He thought he was playing it cool and stuffs but he was actually playing it too cool for it to be awkward. No, he was very much obvious. Sure, Katsuki would’ve been lying to him to get him all worked up but he isn’t the type of guy to mess around with this stuff. He’d rather battle to death with him than scare him with absurd jokes.

Though, the crush part wasn’t actually absurd. It’s true.

Midoriya Izuku is crushing on his childhood friend. Repeating that thought again and again in his head seems to pull him out of reality. His cheeks won’t stop heating up especially now knowing that you might be aware of his hidden feelings.

How would you act now? Would you think of him less? You’ve been both in good terms so maybe you’re not all that bothered? No. Or maybe you could’ve been trying to brush it off to save your friendship?

Aaaaahhhh. He doesn’t know anymore.

But one thing does come in his mind. You weren’t that kind of person. You we’re too kind for that and surely, you wouldn’t just let it slide off. You would do your best to talk and confront because you will seek assurance.

You once told him that you knew too much how it feels like to be left out. Even when you like to bask in the comfort of your own world, there were times on your past that made you feel insignificant. But that eventually changed.

His emerald eyes then landed on your seated form, chatting with his other classmates. Of course, you didn’t talk much but you did try to go for small talks. You giggled and smiled at their words. Izuku wouldn’t stop thinking of it. He wouldn’t stop thinking how sweet you were and how you make him sigh dreamily. He looked at you with so much fondness that his heart would somewhat explode to bloom something more in him. Something that made his stomach flip.

Gosh, since when did he became so lovesick?

The thought made him frown, though, he was still flushing. Eyes never wavering at the sight of your existence.

It almost wavered though. You were now also looking at him.

Both of you stared at each other for a few good seconds as you stared back in a dumbfounded manner. Izuku was, well, shocked. It didn’t take long for you to wave at him with a smile that Izuku thought was cuter than before.

Quite taken aback from your action, he managed to wave back nervously. He almost scolded himself for being a nervous wreck when both of you are long-time friends. He just hopes you wouldn’t catch up on his little speck of shyness.

Thinking back to what Katsuki said, he felt like he should be doing something now. Since he said that everyone in their class are pretty much aware of his interest in you, he should be taking his risks now. Whether you know it already or not, you need to hear it from him and not from them.

For now, it’s him you should be listening to.

As decided, he stood up and walked towards you only to stop when he was close enough to face you. You gave him a questioning look as he stood there quite timidly.

You smiled up to him. “Hmm? What’s up, Izuku?”

Izuku almost twitched a wide smile for seeing you close, but he refrained.

“Uh…hey. So….I was gonna- Well, sorry if this is just sudden but…you know, I wanted to- to- “

Great. He’s stuttering. He just blundered his own front for being not too obvious in front of you that he could only hope you were dense enough to go past it.

Unfortunately or fortunately, that isn’t going to be the case.

You could only stare at him for a few moments, widening your eyes. You knew those gestures and those frantic eyes. Those stutters that were accompanied by his cute blushes. Sure, it might be something different as man to woman but it can be different when it’s entirely on a deeper sentiment.

Oh, hush, you. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. You…really shouldn’t.

“You…want to dance with me?” You almost muttered.

The green haired man tensed. It’s now or never.

“How- um,…. Yeah….” He bit his lip for a few second. Frantic eyes searched for your own as he was caught in a moment of trance. Ah, you were doing it again, making his heart swell a lot. He then showed his palm to you.

“Will you dance with me, [Name]?”

Izuku could never miss the way your eyes shine with elation as you replied.

“I would love to.” Chuckling, you took his hand. Basking in on his rough palms that was somehow so soft in many ways. Taking his hand like this felt different as it ignited a fluttering joy in you. You flushed.

Leading you on the dance floor, hands where they needed to be, you both swayed to the song. You rested your hands on his shoulder as he rested his on your hips. You felt the growing shyness in you take over but you rattled it with a quick breath. Looking up to him, you locked eyes with emerald ones. You saw how his lips twitch up in a smile at your attention as you finally saw it close up.

His cheeks were red as he only smiled at you. A smile that seemed so different to the other ones he gave you because it was much more clear and precise this time. His eyes shine so brightly, brighter than the dancing lights across the venue.

That only made you clutch his shoulder a bit as your insides felt a thousand flutter of wings.

You weren’t keen on human socialization and having a significant other was almost crossed out on your list. You didn’t know whether you would be qualified to be one because of your likeness to be in solitude and not a mind speaker. You would only rely a lot on your sight to observe and thoughts to decide on.

But when it comes to Izuku, you were much more open. You always feel at the best of your ability and comfort because he was he. The most adorable and kindest man you’ve ever known. You could say there’s a mix of bias in there but you know your feelings are genuine.

Too genuine perhaps.

Although, you would definitely admit that, Midoriya Izuku is — no doubt — your type of man.

You only decided he is because he’s the only one you would adore and look up to. Growing up with him does things, and it makes your heart beat pound.

You scanned his face. His cute little freckles stayed true on its spot since childhood, now colored with a tint of blush. He was incredibly handsome, your heart swelled. His stares had seemingly turned into a much more genuine contrast as his fondness was flowing in every corner of his gaze. Once again, that shyness crept up to you as you blushed furthermore.

“I’ve been wanting to ask.” Izuku broke the moment first. You hummed in reply. “A-Are you interested in someone lately?”

Your heart skipped a beat.

“Oh….you mean like- romance and stuff?” That caught you off guard so now that shyness took over you in a matter of seconds. Nonetheless, you already decided. “I guess…maybe, yeah…”

“Oh…”

Silence.

“Will you tell me who? If- If its fine with you.” He should really work on his vocabulary in front of you more now. Not long did he received a hearty laugh from you. His gaze stayed on you as you flushed on his question.

Izuku smiled at that.

“If you’re interested in someone, Izuku, would you tell me too?”

Almost with a quick breeze of panic, he tried to maintain his nervousness. “Ah- Yeah, duh. Ahahaha…” He sweatdropped.

So you didn’t know. Izuku thought so. That honestly made him relief knowing that at least you would be able to hear it from him. Right now — if he can.

But you beat him to it.

“You’re cute, Izuku.”

Dumbfounded, Izuku stared. “Pardon?”

You giggled and replied. “Nothing.”

It sank in his mind as panic rose. “You did not just- just- brush that off.” His blush before had deepened its shade of red. Feeling much more conscious from your eyes even though he knows that you were just as embarrassed. “What you on about?” Looking away, he retorted with the same blush.

Fortunately, it doesn’t end there.

“I hope you got my hint.”

“Huh, hint?” Izuku darted his eyes back on you, only for him to bask on the sincerity of your words. You then smiled at him as your eyes-

Izuku relished in your fond gaze as your cheeks flushed — and your eyes only stayed on him, searching for something. As if you were expecting something from him and it hit him.

“Oh, shit.”

Your pretty little eyes widened for a brief second as you eventually laughed at his reaction. “You swearing always gets me.”

“How can I not? You… do you really mean it or you’re just messing around with me?” He frowned and pouted almost so childishly at you. He blushed furiously.

You looked at him with much more sincere, not wanting him to take it the other way. Tilting your head, you bit your lips before replying. “I meant it.”

“Like- meant it that way…if you know..”

At that very moment, a prolonged silence ensued. You already avoided his gaze as the man processed his thoughts. He felt the signal. You were right there, and both of you were expecting something.

 “You’re really attractive.” He finally blurts it out.

.

.

.

.

“[Name], I like you a lot.”

It didn’t take too long for both of your hearts to erupt in a fluttering swirls of string that tug you towards each other. Cheeks mutually heating up from the growing tension. You looked up to him once again, recovering from your quick shock — you released your smile that took all of your shyness to spring it up.

Izuku finally said it and he could only tensed even more when you leaned forward, resting your head on his shoulder.

His heart was filled with warmth at the action as he smiled for the umpteenth time. And it only got wider when you said it.

“I like you too, Izuku…”

[alchemocha]

I need more of your Ivo Robotnik lore. Why is it he hates his first name ?

When Ivo Robotnik was a child, one of the overall favoured ways to reprimand and scold him by the adults in his life was to call or say his name disapprovingly. It was the tone. Disappointment, disgust, condescendence, shouting.

It happened often, to the point if he heard his name he would expect the worst. It was always the sign he was in trouble. And when he lived with foster families, however brief those times were, if he began hearing his name, it typically only meant one thing. He would be sent back soon.

(Have some lore!)

Now, during his much younger years, he honestly wasn’t that much a problem child, by objective standards. He was quiet, kept to himself most days, enjoyed tinkering with bits and bobs he’d collected. Ivo had always been leagues smarter than anyone else, and while he never asked for that, no one liked it either. Adults with sticks up their asses didn’t tend to take kindly to being outsmarted in few words by a child barely in double digits. He spoke plainly, simple and a bit blunt. If you’d ask anyone with a working braincell, he was just a very autistic kid who had trouble sounding… palatable to an angry allistic. Even if he made plenty of attempts at being polite. They also didn’t appreciate him taking apart and rebuilding things (they frankly didn’t need), even if he could put them back arguably even better than they started.

Ivo wanted to be good, to be praised and loved like he saw in other places. But no matter what he did, it just never happened.

No matter what he did, no one said his name with any inkling of care. Ivo was cold, tainted with disgust and disapproval, a precursor to misery. As years went by, just hearing it made his skin crawl and his chest tighten.

And when he was a scientist with 5 phd’s, the world of machines under his finger tips, it almost wasn’t an issue anymore. Dr Robotnik was his moniker and all anyone needed to know. People began assuming it was because no one was worthy of the doctor’s first name, and after a point, it was true. He was sick of the ignorance and negligence of humans, but that’s not how it started, and it’s not the whole truth.

His superiors now, commanders and the like, they do the same thing. They control him with simple utterances of his given name, have the greatest genius in the world shrinking away with a simple word.

No matter how hard he tries to bury his unpleasant past, the child who just wanted to be seen will always remain a part of him. As much as he tries to cut out every vulnerable part of himself.

If anyone dared utter it, they would sincerely regret the fury they’d illicit from the doctor.

Stone is a very, very rare exception, although even that took a while. He speaks Ivo’s name with such care and reverence, with such affection and warmth, and it aches, in a different sort of way. He’s not sure if he’ll ever stop hearing the voices from his past uttering it, but it’s a good start. Makes him hate it just a little less.

[thedeal-if]

How would the ROs react when the MC gives them a present

(Viktor better like it)

😆 dw anon Victor is actually a sweetheart deep, deep down!

I thought this was adorable and ended up doing a little drabble for all ROs I hope it's not too long lol. I might keep doing the drabble thing if I see it fitting the ask!

Dante is used to being the one giving gifts while receiving nothing in return so, he's quite shocked even if the gift happens to be something small and casual. His initial reaction would be to ask 1000 times whether MC is sure, whether the gift is really for him, and whether MC meant to give it to someone else. Once the shock wears off Dante would be so delighted and excited! He's that kind of person (demon? being?) who loves surprises and changing plans and he wouldn't even try to pretend and play cool about it. Dante would probably end up giving MC something in return so he can "repay the favor" tho. Maybe wouldn't buy something (because he's broke) but he'd find a way.

[It’s only now when Dante is finally holding your gift, that you see how his eyes light up with mirth, pupils darting back and forth between you and the trinket. The disbelief is still clear in his eyes, but it has dimmed down by the unfiltered cheer cursing through him.

“This is for me,” Dante repeats slowly. He holds the trinket close to his chest. As if afraid you’d say ‘no’. You nod either way, and the small bob of your head is the catalyst for the brightest smile you’ve ever seen on the demon “This is for me! And you’re not taking it back.”

“Dan,” you sigh his name fondly “It’s just—”

“Shush! It’s mine now,” Dante insists. Though he tries to tame his voice into neutrality, holding back his emotions has always been something Dante is terrible at. The demon grasps your hand and tugs you towards him “Thanks a bunch!”]

---

Situation-wise, Lilith is Dante's opposite. They've been spoiled before and they've exchanged gifts with people. It's been a while since it's been a personal thing though (nowadays gifts for her are practically bribes or attempts to get on her food side). If MC was the kind of person who likes to give gifts she probably wouldn't be all that surprised. If MC makes an exception for Lilith she would notice the change too, and that would feel just as special as the gift MC got for her. I'd say she's very detail-oriented and she'd find a meaningful way to make MC feel special too even if it's not through another gift.

[As soon as you show them your present, you see Lilith grinning, looking up/down at you eagerly, expecting you to make the move and relishing the possible ways you might do it. With a subtle nod, they prompt you to act. Their eyes flicker briefly towards the gift in your hands.

“I got you something,” you say, and hand it to them.

Amusement floods Lilith’s gaze. They take the present from you, they hold it carefully—but they are only looking at you. Like you’re the greatest gift she could have received. Affection has never been something they’ve tried to disguise, but the moment they channel it at you feels almost like a fire being fanned.

“Thank you, love,” they say softly “Can I?”

When you nod, you expect them to unwrap the gift. Instead, they step closer to you, lean up/down, and press a chaste kiss to your cheek.]

---

Josh is a bit of a contradiction. He receives gifts like he receives compliments: though he likes and feels grateful for them, Josh is immensely awkward about them. Answering properly is something he just doesn't know how to do. It's kinda funny to see Josh break a little when he's always so careful and in control of situations. If MC is someone who has always enjoyed giving gifts he resorts to some sort of default answer that Josh always uses, which he also does when it's his birthday lol. If it's unusual for MC to give gifts Josh's mind would probably shatter trying to find an answer. Dw, inside he's very happy, he just doesn't know how to articulate that.

[“Oh.”

That’s all Josh says for a few seconds. You know him, and you give him time. Your best friend looks like he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“Oh, wow. Fuck.”

“You don’t like it?” you tease him.

Josh scoffs, almost offended by the suggestion that he could dislike anything you’d do. He grips your present a little tighter, rolls his eyes fondly, and doesn’t even force back the smile that threatens to spill.

“Of course I do. You know I do,” you can practically see the gears in Josh’s mind turning as his entire posture shifts awkwardly. Like he wants to draw in himself in an attempt to hide from your inquisitive eyes. He ultimately sighs with finality “Thank you, Dot. Seriously.”]

---

Villanelle is the happiest woman alive. If she likes you romantically or as a friend, she's probably given you hundreds of little gifts (cookies she baked or bought, flowers, little doodles, etc). Villanelle has a lot of fun thinking about her silly presents and she believes that sharing is caring. She'd adore receiving gifts and would think of it as an exchange. Villanelle is cheerful and bubbly 90% of the time and she only lights up more when MC does something that makes her happy.

[When she sees you, Villanelle smiles. Then, she looks down, and the gasp the sight of the present draws out of her is dramatic, almost exaggerated. Finally, she shrieks with excitement.

Villanelle is upon you in less than a second. One hand grips the gift and the other is tightly wrapped around your midsection.

“Oh my God,” Villie mumbles when she pulls away. She points at the gift, at you, at herself, buzzing like a little fly with too much energy and too little time “Oh my God!”

“You like it?”

“I love it, silly!” she grins happily. And you believe her. Everything about Villanelle screams genuine glee “You’re amazing.”]

---

Victor is genuinely confused. It probably never crossed his mind that he'd get a present. He doesn't even get presents on his birthday lol (Alekto tried to figure out when he was born but has been unsuccessful). He'd probably think MC wanted something out of him if he didn't know them all that well. Victor isn't all that expressive so he (seemingly) might not even react at all. But seriously despite seeming very aloof, Victor is just very clueless about his feelings and how to properly act on them.

I made Vic's drabble a little longer because this ask was especially about him lol.

[You wonder if Victor would get mad if you laughed. You almost do, when he holds the gift like he’s afraid he might break it. Victor’s jaw is tense, his entire posture is, the discomfort and awkwardness seem to have overcome his very being.

“Who do you want me to give this to?”

That’s the moment you do laugh, much to his dismay. Victor frowns but says nothing. And you take the time to explain.

“It’s for you. I wanted to give you a gift.”

His frown deepens, “Why?”

“I wanted to.”

The giant Exorcist mutters something under his breath. Probably a complaint about your vagueness. But Victor doesn’t seem unhappy anymore. His posture relaxes little by little—you see it clearly, you’re close enough—, shoulders dipping slightly and muscles releasing the tension Victor seems to embrace readily.

With gentle care, he shifts and holds the present with one hand. The other is too busy coming up, slowly, to rest upon your head. Victor pats you twice, staring inquisitively into your eyes. The question is obvious: is this okay? You make sure to smile widely up at him. ‘Yes, it is. It is more than okay.’

“Thanks,” he says simply. Victor’s hand falls limp by his side.

“You’re welcome.”]

---

Aliyah has probably even forgotten what a present is. That's how long she's been without receiving anything, and giving to people who definitely shouldn't have a genie. Aliyah's first reaction is just a frown. Then she'd probably laugh, or force herself to laugh. Aliyah really hates it when someone has the upper hand. If it's an MC whom she's close to. She'd probably say something snarky and seem kind of annoyed. Whatever the trinket is she'd definitely keep though (even if she's not that close to MC).

[“What’s this?” she asks with a sigh. When you open your mouth to explain the meaning and origin of your present, Aliyah rolls her eyes, “Don’t answer.”

You see the conflict well enough to heed her words and stay quiet. To call it conflict feels like undermining whatever Aliyah is feeling, though. Her eyes are a storm. She’s barely holding back a frown, not even her smirk seems sincere. Aliyah purses her lips and stares at the present.

“I’m not going to owe you, you know? This—” her violet gaze finally flickers up to look back at you “This is a one-sided thing.”

‘Things’ are often one-sided with Aliyah, or so she insists on claiming. You smile patiently, “I know. That’s why it’s a gift. Not a bribe.”

That makes Aliyah chuckle, and she thankfully sounds a little lighter than before.

“A pity,” she teases “It nearly worked.”]

---

I've mentioned a few times what it's like being a demon but I've never said anything about angels... Let's just say they don't get gifts often. Nathan likes playing cool. He doesn't like taking situations all that seriously. If MC gives him a gift Nathan would tease them about it (he wouldn't be too mean about it). His true emotions are tightly kept under wraps, but not because he isn't grateful. He is! Nathan is just very sure that being funny is the best course of action and he's dying on that hill. He'd probably run away before Azriel appeared to spew what Nathan truly feels lol.

[Nathan presses a hand to his chest, presenting to you the very image of overdramatic flair. He points towards your present, a silent request for him to hold it, and when you nod Nathan smirks and takes it from you.

“You naughty human,” he tuts “If I didn’t know you I’d say you’re trying to win the favor of an angel! How scandalous.”

You frown, “I—”

“Are my miracles worth this much? You know you could have asked,” You also know that Nathan is lying “Unfortunately! That’s not possible.”

“Nathan, I don’t—”

“I’ll just pay you back some other way, yes?” he winks playfully.]

---

Whatever MC gives Eden is probably the first present she's received in a long time too. Gifts are such a foreign concept to her she'd probably squint at it like she was trying to figure out whether it's a bomb or not. Eden probably thinks she's about to receive bad news lol and she'd just forget to thank MC and wait for them to drop the metaphorical bomb. Whether MC explains or not Eden ends up understanding, finally gives her thanks and genuinely wonders whether she's supposed to get them something back in return.

[Eden grabs the present like it could burn her if she allowed herself to touch it properly. With the tips of her fingers and her arms slightly stretched out. You wonder what expression she would make if she was a little less aloof. But as it stands, she stares at you with a dead seriousness clinging to her eyes. Like you could burn her.

“Um,” you mumble “Do you like it?”

“Huh?” Eden tilts her head.

“The gift. Do you like it?”

“Oh,” the woman finally relaxes, and she pulls the present towards her. You wonder if Eden was trying to figure out what it was. Now, though, she’s trying to figure out your intentions. Eden stares at you with eyes that are slightly narrowed, but you know her well enough to see the appreciation swimming in her white, iris-less pools “I do. Thank you.”]

I hope y'all like the drabbles this took me the entire day to write 😶‍🌫️

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Matt Damon (& Co.)'s interview w/ GQ (18 July 2016)

The Encyclopedia of Matt Damon

As Matt Damon returns to the Bourne franchise, we decided to assemble this handy guide to the habits, quirks, and inner life of an honest-to-God screen legend, as told by George Clooney, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, and the other titans who know him best

By The Editors of GQ | Photography by Sebastian Kim | Illustration by Joe Mckendry

Matt Damon is, scientifically, the most liked man in Hollywood. He is serious, and he is funny. He is approachable-seeming and often jacked. He has been in six of your ten favorite movies in the past 20 years, and he's met a bunch of people along the way who like him a whole lot. But for all his familiarity, he's still elusive (which is how he likes it). So instead of asking Matt Damon dumb questions about the new Jason Bourne movie (out this month!), we got Damon and those people who like him a lot*—George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, Ben Affleck, Martin Scorsese, and Co.—to tell all the stories about him that you haven't heard.

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Accent, Boston

Matt Damon: I was sitting at George Clooney's pool in Lake Como, and Brad Pitt walked in, sat down next to me, and said, “Do you want to do a Martin Scorsese movie in Boston?” [Brad] was a producer on The Departed, and he felt like he had gotten too old for those roles. It's one of the most absurd things that's ever happened in my life.

[Marty] said to me early on [in production], “I don't know Boston. This is your town.” So I would show up with stuff that I'd write and give it to Bill [Monahan, the screenwriter]. and say, "Do you like any of this?" The first time I rehearsed with Jack Nicholson, he went over to get some coffee, and he turned around [and said], “You know, I never would have made it this long if I wasn’t a great fucking writer.”

Martin Scorsese (director, ‘The Departed’): He comes from Boston; he's familiar with that world. When we were cutting The Departed, my editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, used a term to describe Matt's presence on-screen that's stayed with me: He's seated as an actor. He enters a movie grounded and at ease in his character and in the world of the story.

Bill Simmons (Bostonian; host, ‘Any Given Wednesday’): [Jimmy Kimmel] had this Super Bowl party, and Damon was there. He was like, “I'm readin' ya book! It's fahckin' ahsome.” [Matt's Good Will Hunting accent] is the greatest Boston accent that's ever been captured in a movie by an actual actor. The Departed is a catastrophe of bad Boston accents. Leo just gives up halfway through.

Sarah Silverman (co-star, “I'm Fucking Matt Damon”): We are all Boston-area people. I don't know how Matt talks so pretty.

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Artist, The

Julia Stiles (co-star, ‘Bourne’ films): After The Bourne Ultimatum came out, there was a premiere in London. Prince actually came to it, then got tickets for the cast to come see him [perform]. We were summoned into a room to meet him [after the show]. Matt said, “So you live in Minnesota? I hear you live in Minnesota.”

Damon: Prince said, “I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon.”

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Career Precedent

Damon: I always thought the goal was William Holden. To just be in a lot of good movies.

Harvey Weinstein (producer, ‘Good Will Hunting,’ ‘Dogma,’ ‘All the Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’ ‘Rounders,’ ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,’ ‘Project Greenlight,’ ‘The Brothers Grimm’): Matt Damon is the closest thing we have to James Stewart. Matt can be funny, Matt can be charming, but there's an idealism in Matt, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life. But Jimmy Stewart also did those very tough Westerns. He wasn't Bourne, but you get the idea he flew 40 missions over Germany as an Air Force commander. [He's] that kind of great man with tremendous integrity.

Michael Douglas (co-star, ‘Behind the Candelabra’): [Matt] reminds me of me a lot, in terms of the kind of range of parts and things that he does. He always looks to what's the best script, what's going to make the best movie, and what isn't. He has a real sense of what it takes to make a good movie. Having the best part in a bad movie doesn't help you.

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Face, Matt's

Scarlett Johansson (co-star, ‘We Bought a Zoo’): The most amazing gift about Matt's physical appearance is that he can walk into the hair-and-makeup trailer looking like someone who slept directly on his face for seven hours and emerge a bona fide movie star. He has a great makeup artist.

George Clooney (co-star, ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Twelve,’ and ‘Thirteen’; director, ‘Syriana,’ ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,’ ‘The Monuments Men’): He looks swell in a Speedo.

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Face, Pitt's

Damon: I don't look like Marlon Brando. I remember Ben and I having a realization early on. Like, we were watching Brad [Pitt] in a movie, and one of us turned to the other and said, “I haven't heard a thing that guy said in five minutes. I'm just looking at him.” And we realized there's a good and a bad [that comes with that]. It'll mask one of your lesser performances, but it also detracts from your best performances. Because Brad has been legitimately brilliant in some of the things he's done, and he doesn't get the credit as an actor that I think he deserves. I never had to carry that water.

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Friend, Best

Tina Fey (creator, ‘30 Rock’): People would be like, “[Matt and Ben] are so cute!” And I'd be like, “They're J.Crew sweaters. When you see all the colors next to each other, they look cute, but when you get one home, you're like, ‘Damn, I just got an orange sweater.’ ” But now that is withdrawn. In person, Matt holds up.

Damon: Ben is the orange sweater.

Ben Affleck (co-writer, ‘Good Will Hunting’; best friend): The quality that has allowed Matt to maintain the illusion that he is Mr. Nice Guy is that he found a young TV actor who was just a pretty face and made friends with him so he would always look good by comparison. Matt is very media-savvy and manipulative in that way. He's like a mix of [O. J. Simpson defense-team members] Bob Shapiro and Alan Dershowitz.

Kevin Smith (writer and director, ‘Dogma,’ ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’; co-executive producer, ‘Good Will Hunting’): Matt made pretty thoughtful choices about what roles he wanted to play and the directors he wanted to work with after Good Will Hunting, which made Ben's more commercial choices easier to put down for some folks. The assignation was that Matt chose to be a serious actor in films, while Ben chose to star in movies. That script flipped when Matt was Bourne and Ben became a filmmaker.

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Friend, Brother of Best

Damon: Casey moved in with us [when he was 19]. He would walk in the room, and I'm like, “Is that my shirt?” It got so bad with the Affleck brothers that I was at the point where I wanted to label all of my stuff, 'cause it would just fucking show up in Casey's drawer. And if it's there long enough, then it's like some version of squatters' rights, where suddenly he's like, “No, dude, this is mine. You saw me. I've been wearing this since December.” Like, that doesn't mean it's yours! Just because you washed it doesn't mean it's yours.

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Good Will

Billy Bob Thornton (director, ‘All the Pretty Horses’): I did Armageddon with Ben, and I knew 'em before they made Good Will Hunting. They talked to me about it: “Hey, we got this script.” And I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Wish I hadn't have said that.

Steven Soderbergh (director, ‘The Informant!’; ‘Ocean's Eleven,’ ‘Twelve,’ and ‘Thirteen’; ‘Contagion’; ‘Behind the Candelabra’): I was looking for rewrite work, and one of the open assignments was for Good Will Hunting. I said, “What's it about?” And they said, “Math.” And I said, “Well, I'm terrible at math, so I'm the wrong guy.” Let's put it this way: Word was out on Reservoir Dogs at the script stage—I remember hearing, “There's this fucking great script out there written by this guy.” There wasn't that kind of thing about [Good Will Hunting].

Damon: Harvey [Weinstein] hadn't seen it—somebody lower down the ladder [at Miramax] had passed. And we were fucked. We had made a deal with Castle Rock where we had to sell it for a million dollars and whoever we sold it to had to allow us to star in it. If we didn't, it was gonna go back to Castle Rock and we were out of the movie. We asked [Kevin Smith] to direct it, and Kevin wouldn't. He goes, “I'm not a good enough director.”

Smith: I asked Ben to FedEx a copy of the script and hit it in the bathroom, intending to read a few pages while on the bowl. Two hours later, I came out of the bathroom crying [because] it was so good. [Co-executive producer] Scott Mosier said, “You were in the bathroom for two hours, and now you're crying. Should I call an ambulance?” I said, “No. We gotta call Harvey.” And we gave it to Harvey and said, “Remember when you picked up the Pulp Fiction script from TriStar in turnaround? This is like that. Especially the Oscars part.”

Weinstein: Kevin Smith gave it to Jon Gordon in my office. Jon Gordon gave it to me. I loved it.

Damon: Every Oscar weekend, the three big agencies host parties. In 1998, [the year we won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting], the CAA party was given in our name. Like, “Ben Affleck and Matt Damon invite you to the CAA party.” We called it “our party.” It was incredible. I talked to Tom Cruise. Even a movie like Cocktail, which the critics didn't particularly dig, was a hit. An agent said to me, “There's no career that's ever been like this. Everyone has ups and downs. This guy's never had a down.” He was the movie star's movie star. And I remember the way he talked about the business: He was not owed anything or could count on anything. And I was like, “Oh, my God. It's an insecure business for Tom Cruise!”

Simmons: I was dating this girl who moved to Chicago, and I was living in Boston. I was making, like, $200 a week writing a column and bartending, and it cost somewhere between $300 and $450 to fly to Chicago. So I went to see Good Will Hunting in Cambridge by myself. And at the end, he goes to see about a girl, and I was like, “You know what? I like her, but I don't know if I'd go to see about a girl.” We broke up within 12 hours. And my next girlfriend was my wife. That's why I always defend Matt Damon.

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Grimm, Brothers

Brian Koppelman (co-writer, ‘Rounders,’ ‘Ocean's Thirteen’): The nose [in Ocean's Thirteen] originated because we had heard this rumor that Matt had wanted to wear a weird nose in Brothers Grimm. He wasn't able to, so we decided we were going to give him an even bigger, uglier nose.

Terry Gilliam (director, ‘The Brothers Grimm,’ ‘The Zero Theorem’): He's got that cute little retroussé nose and a big bony head, and I thought his head needed something stronger. So we put the bump on, and he suddenly became like Marlon Brando—he was sexy, he walked different. And then we had a huge fight with the Weinsteins and they threatened to close the movie down if I put that bump on his nose.

Weinstein: Oh, my God. Matt and Heath Ledger, may he rest in peace, just on bended knees said, “Can you finance this movie?” And my brother said, “It's Terry Gilliam—let's just do it.”

Damon: I remember the night that Terry shattered a wineglass in his hand because he was in an argument with one of the producers. He said, “I'm not gonna fucking…,” and snapped the wineglass in his hand, and then went storming out. And Heath [Ledger] and I just immediately got up to follow our fearless leader. Terry goes, “I think that went well! Where are we going for dinner?”

He was deciding whether to refuse to shoot over the nose issue. And he came into the makeup room at five in the morning and said, “They gave me the money that I need to make the movie, but we have to not do the nose. What do you think?” And Chrissie Beveridge, who still does my makeup, pulled out the nose and put it on the table. And we literally looked at it and just started laughing.

Chrissie Beveridge (makeup artist): Terry [said], “Would you talk to Bob Weinstein?” I didn't.

Damon: It was a $3 million nose.

Weinstein: Ironically, it's Terry Gilliam's highest-grossing movie he ever had in the United States. [Editors' note: Actually, ‘12 Monkeys’ is.]

Soderbergh: So on [Ocean's Thirteen], I was like, “Dude, we can do it. Like, we can give you the nose.”

Damon: And in Invictus, I ended up wearing the actual [Brothers Grimm] nose.

Beveridge: It was a slightly different nose.

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Ledger, Heath

Gilliam: Matt is mathematical at times, and that's both a strength and sometimes… I think that's what it maybe was between him and Heath. Because [Heath's] heart was on his sleeve, and that opened up a lot in Matt.

Damon: He was too bright for this world. Coming off [The Brothers Grimm, I was] telling everybody that I just worked with the best actor I've ever seen. And people were like, “What are you talking about? The guy from A Knight's Tale?” And I was like, “You just wait. And wait until you see what kind of a director he's gonna be.”

There were things that he did where I couldn't have got there in three lifetimes. And there were ways in which he was like a puppy dog. You wanted to protect him.

[His death was] just fucking pointless. I called Terry when I found out, and he was like, “I'm sitting here in Vancouver. I'm looking out the window, and it's a beautiful sunny day, and the lights are turning red, and the lights are turning green, and cars are stopping, and cars are driving. I am surrounded by mediocrity. And he's gone.”

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Maaaaaatt Daaaaamon

Damon: The most common head shot that I'm asked to sign is pictures of that fucking puppet [from Team America: World Police]. And they always say, “Will you write ‘Maaaaaatt Daaaaamon’?” I'm like, “Okay. Matt, with, like, 16 *a'*s in it.” [Trey Parker and Matt Stone] are legitimate geniuses. But when that came out, I thought, Wow, is that what people think of me? That I'm really dumb? So I remember asking friends of mine, and they all told me that it didn't really make sense that I was dumb. I was like, “Are you just saying that?” And then [my wife] Lucy heard an interview with [Matt and Trey] where they said the puppet showed up the day before they were supposed to shoot with it, and it looked like it had special needs, and they didn't have time to change it with the budget. I don't know if they made that up subsequently.

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“Matt Damon, I'm F#©%ing”

In 2008, Sarah Silverman and Damon starred in a music video called “I'm Fucking Matt Damon” to “inform” Silverman's then boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, that she was “sleeping with” Damon.

Jimmy Kimmel (host, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’; nemesis): [The video “I'm Fucking Matt Damon”] was supposed to be a present for my 40th birthday. Just to make sure the punch in the stomach hit a kidney.

Silverman: [When the show premiered,] Jimmy was literally getting guests like the man with the longest arm hair. So as a joke, he would say at the end of the night, “Sorry, Matt Damon. We ran out of time,” because Matt Damon was the biggest movie star he could think of.

Damon: We had done The Bourne Ultimatum [spoof] with [Kimmel sidekick] Guillermo [as Jason Bourne]. Like, now Jimmy's kicking me out of my own movies? And we all were just like, “How do we keep this thing alive?” And the guy who directed that called with this idea that Sarah had given him.

Silverman: Matt came in, learned the song in a closet of the hotel we had, and then we had three hours with him to shoot because he had his daughter's Halloween pageant at noon.

Damon: It happened really fast, and then suddenly I was in the car. I was like, “Holy fuck, I'm going to a parent-teacher conference. I can't do shit like this anymore.”

Ben Affleck: As soon as I saw “I'm Fucking Matt Damon,” I knew I would be doing “I'm Fucking Ben Affleck.” So I called Jimmy, and they were already putting it together. Having Josh Groban yelling out, “I'm fucking Beeeeen. I'm fucking Ben Affleck!” remains a high point of my career and life.

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Mojo

Soderbergh: When [Matt] hit us on the Ocean's set, he said, “I really feel like I've kind of lost my mojo.” He'd just come off a couple movies that didn't work commercially [All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance], and they were not finished with Bourne—they were gonna go back and reshoot more after we wrapped. And I remember George [Clooney] and I saying, “We can do that with this. You're going to have a blast.”

Damon: I showed up like a drowned rat and just stumbled into the room [with Steven] and George. Steven says, “This is the movie where you're gonna get your mojo back.” And they had a big party because it was the “We have arrived in Chicago” party. They rented out a bar with the whole crew. And then we shot the next day, and then they rented out a bar and had a huge “We're leaving Chicago” party. And I'm like, “Wow, maybe I am gonna get my mojo back on this shoot.”

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Parenting, Matt's

Fey: Some people are lying when they say they want to go be with their families, but I think Matt actually really does like his family—his lovely wife and his 26 daughters.

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Parenting, Matt's Mother's

Soderbergh: One of the first thoughts I had when I met Matt was, Okay. This guy was very well raised. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. I was just like, “He's a good kid.” Like, “They raised a good kid.” Which is what you would want anybody to say about your child.

Julia Roberts (co-star, ‘Ocean's Eleven’ and ‘Twelve’): Matty's a good boy.

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Pilot, Carol the

In 2010, Damon began a four-episode guest arc on the NBC sitcom ‘30 Rock’ as Liz Lemon's boyfriend, pilot Carol Burnett.

Damon: Lucy and I started watching on the first episode and were like, “This is our favorite thing.” I literally went up to [Tina Fey] at the SAG Awards and said, “Look, your show is so great, and if you ever have anything on it, I would love to do a guest spot.”

Fey: [Matt] was like, “I wanna be on the show! I wanna be on the show!” We immediately flew back the next day and called WME, and the agent was like, “He's not doing this!” And we're like, “No, no, he told us he wanted to do it.” And you could tell his agent was like, “Faaaaaaahhhhhhck. He's too good for this!”

Damon: Yeah, that was one that Patrick was like, “What the fuck? What are you doing?”

Patrick Whitesell (Matt's agent): I wasn't opposed to Matt doing it. I thought it would be a fun thing. The only thing was I wanted it limited in the number of episodes.

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Scheduling Conflict

Douglas: [When I first heard about Behind the Candelabra,] I was recovering from a Stage IV cancer bout and was so unbelievably fortunate to look at this Richard LaGravenese script and go, “My God.” And Soderbergh's involved, and then Matt, who wanted to do the other part. And then when we were getting ready to go do it, both of them—both Steven and Matt individually—said, “You know, we've got conflicting schedules right now. So let's put this off for a year.” And my heart sunk. I thought, Oh shit, it ain't ever going to happen. The truth be told, I was so happy to be alive that I didn't recognize the fact of just how underweight I was. And I think both of them looked at me and said, “He's not ready to do Liberace.” And rather than in any way make me feel like it was a problem, they simply lied and said, “We have other projects,” and waited a year, until I got back on my feet and my strength was there.

Damon: I'll take it, but I did have a scheduling conflict. I think that Steven certainly knew that more time on the mend would not hurt at all. They replaced Michael from the neck down with a concert pianist, but Michael's arms had to be at the right place at all times or it didn't work. The amount of hours [that took], I don't even know. It was this virtuoso performance. And he said to me the last night [of shooting], “I couldn't have done this last year.”

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Sweating

Koppelman: We write [Rounders] on spec, and Harvey Weinstein buys it. Then we get a call that he wants to show us ten minutes of this film [Good Will Hunting] with this guy Matt Damon, who [they thought] should star in [our movie]. We immediately love the idea.

So we happened to be down at [the L.A. casino] Hollywood Park, and we started talking to these guys and mentioned that we'd written this poker movie. They go, “Matt Damon's our best friend.” And I said, “Oh, really? Matt Damon's your best friend?” Twenty-five minutes later, Matt and Ben come storming in. Neither guy had played casino poker. Matt was immediately like, “Tell me stuff I need to know.” So we got a table and [co-writer] David [Levien] showed Matt how to riffle chips. Within 10, 15 minutes, he's sitting at the table riffling like he's an old pro.

David Levien (co-writer, ‘Rounders,’ ‘Ocean's Thirteen’): He took poker very, very seriously then, and obviously Ben got bit by the bug. We said, “If you really want to learn about this, come to New York.”

Damon: I started getting in and sweating the games, which means sitting behind a player who agrees to show you their hole cards so you can watch how they play the hand. And these were rounders, the people who were making basically ten bucks an hour sitting there with no health benefits, just hoping that somebody new would come in so they could chop him up.

Edward Norton (co-star, ‘Rounders’): Matt and I got coaching from top poker pros, but also from some guys in the underground poker scene who were experts in working a game as partners with coded signals, because that was something our characters did in the film. We decided we'd see if we could actually pull it off in a game, and we cut it apart. Then we walked down Sixth Avenue a few blocks and chopped up our collective winnings. We agreed that our commitment to the craft of acting justifiably forced our ethical standards into the backseat. And most of the money we clipped came off Harvey and Bob Weinstein, so we agreed that was good for humanity.

Alicia Vikander (co-star, ‘Jason Bourne’): We were shooting [Jason Bourne] in Vegas, and I learned to play craps [the night we wrapped]. I asked Matt [for advice] because of course he and Ben are kind of known for that. I said that I was going to bed, and then I said that I was just going to have one drink. It happened to be quite a few.

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Sweating (More)

Damon: I've sweat some great directors for the last 20 years. When Ben was doing Gone Girl, I went over and visited the set and sat behind David [Fincher] while he was directing. There was a scene where Ben and Rosamund [Pike] walk into a bookstore and end up coming towards the camera through one of the aisles and kissing each other. So before the door opens and they come in, an extra walks by at the end of the line of books. David instantly starts monologuing: “Who fucking walks like that? Are you fucking… Am I wrong? Like, who fucking walks like that? It's ridiculous. I mean, he fucking looks like an extra in a movie. What the fuck?” Meanwhile, Ben and Rosamund are acting their hearts out, and I know they're gonna go again, no matter what they do, because this person fucking blew it. So David goes over and gives them notes, and they get ready to do it again, and Rosamund's makeup artist comes walking in to touch her up. David's looking at his monitor, and he goes, “Now, that's how you walk.”

Joshua Donen (David Fincher's manager): David denies that this ever took place, but out of respect for the talents of Mr. Damon, he has decided not to take legal action.

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Teeth

Roberts: He does have nice teeth.

Kimmel: I mean, they can't be real, right? They're so perfect. They're obviously something that some Hollywood witch doctor put into his head somewhere along the line, possibly on one of his jaunts to China where he disappears for six months and suddenly has a whole new look. One day he's Jason Bourne. The next day he's Liberace's fiancé.

Damon: True.

Larry Rosenthal, D.D.S., declined to respond to multiple requests for comment.

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Thing, Best I've Ever Been a Part Of

Damon: [The 2000 Cormac McCarthy novel adaptation All the Pretty Horses] failed the critics and failed to find the audience. I'm not over it 18 years later or whatever it is, so I'm just clearly never gonna get over it. It really fucking depresses me. I only saw Billy [Bob Thornton]'s cut once, and I just remember feeling like, “Oh, my God, this is the best thing I've ever been a part of.” It was Daniel Lanois's music that did it—it was all Daniel on this old guitar.

Thornton: The studio made us take Dan's score out.

Weinstein: It's great, but there were studio executives who fell asleep during the screening. The movie cost $48 million. You [ask], “Am I going to put a four-hour movie out?”

Damon: I was in Paris working on The Bourne Identity, and every night after work, I'd come home and I'd have a conference call with Harvey and Billy Bob. I would pace in this living room in this apartment I'd rented as I was talking to them. Billy's heart was fucking breaking. [When] he relented, he said, “Harvey, I have a chance to do four, maybe five great things before I die. And what I'm hearing you say to me is this isn't gonna be one of them.” And my knees literally buckled.

Thornton: You live with it. They did offer us the opportunity to put [my cut] out on DVD with the original music. But Dan felt like, “If my music wasn't good enough for them to put in the movie, then I don't know if I wanna put it in there on the DVD,” so I stood by him. I'm not gonna ever go side against an artist.

Weinstein: I've said to Matt, “I'll put up a million dollars any day of the week to restore it. I don't even care if I get the money back.” And I'm happy to sit down with Matt and Billy and do that. We've tried to resurrect that on a number of occasions, but the composer didn't want to let us do it, and he has strong rights. I understand. But time softens everyone. It's time to re-approach him.

Thornton: I think maybe one of these days I'm gonna just have a party over at my house to show it to 20 or 30 people.

Damon: I would love it if he did.

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Wife, Krasinski's

John Krasinski (co-writer, ‘Promised Land’): The day I met him was the scene in The Adjustment Bureau where he kisses my wife [Emily Blunt] in a very big way. And so when I went up to him, he turned to me, and the first thing he ever said to me was, “Hey, man. I was just totally tonguing your girl.” And I went, “Oh, okay. Cool.” And he saw my face and he just cratered. He said, “Oh, my God. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

Damon: A reason to do that movie was to meet those two. They're just the best.

Emily Blunt : I have never played a board game with the Damons. The four of us hang out constantly and drink way too much together. Red wine for the three of us, and John's allergic to red wine, so he has to take down the bottle of white by himself. Which is not an issue.

Damon: That allergy is recent. He used to not be allergic to red wine, so we were perfect dinner companions. Now everything is off.

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Worship

Chris Hemsworth (friend; Norse god): [I was going to be on the cover of GQ, and] I was like, “Shit, what do we do [for the story]?” Matt goes, “You should go bike riding! You can use mine.” So the next morning, I didn't want to bring the writer [into Matt's home because] I didn't want Matt to be uncomfortable. And Matt was like, “No, bring him in!” Matt's cooking pancakes and telling all kinds of interesting stories and quoting all sorts of interesting people. And I was sitting there going, “I just lost myself the cover. I can just see the cover turning into Matt's cover. This is the worst thing I could have done with this thing, introduce the writer to Matt.” I felt like I had a new girlfriend and I had introduced her to my cooler friend or something.

Blunt: It's almost sickening, actually. He's like the most universally loved person I've ever met.

Jessica Chastain (co-star, ‘Interstellar,’ ‘The Martian’): When I was going to go work on The Martian, everyone was going on and on about what a great person he was. You always wonder, like, “Okay, is the reputation accurate?” And with him, it was.

Jeff Schaffer (executive producer, ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’; co-creator, ‘The League’; Harvard classmate): “Great” gets thrown around a lot. Like, if you hate a movie, you go, “It was great!” In L.A., “great” means it's shit. So I have to drop down one to “good.” He's a good man.

Matthew McConaughey (co-star, ‘Interstellar’): I remember a late night in Laurel Canyon after A Time to Kill came out. Matt shared a genuine excitement for the success the film and I were having. He's always been like that, as far as I know—confident and self-assured enough to appreciate a peer's success while still paving his own path.

Krasinski: You look at him and think, Wow. You've maintained staying grounded with a career like this. For people who don't have even half the career of you, if we're not as grounded as you, we're just jackasses.

Paul Greengrass (director, ‘The Bourne Supremacy,’ ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’; director and co-writer, ‘Jason Bourne’): He is a really superb, aggressive, fast driver. Somewhere deep in that soul there must be a Jason Bourne lurking.

Simmons: If you're at a party and somebody's like, “You know who I fucking hate? Matt Damon,” people would be like, “What? Why do you hate Matt Damon? Did he fuck your girlfriend?”

Kimmel: He had sex with my girlfriend and then made a song about it. I think he's more devious than [his character in The Talented Mr. Ripley]. More diabolical. Matt Damon in real life is more of a pure evil.

Soderbergh: You could walk around town with a checkbook offering to pay people a million dollars to say something bad about Matt, feeling secure you'd never have to write a check.

Reported by Zach Baron, Lauren Larson, Anna Peele, Clay Skipper, and Caity Weaver.

[lokiondisneyplus]

Disney has revealed that it has spent $141.3 million (£110.6 million) on pre-production and filming of the second season of its Loki streaming series as it attempts to reinvigorate its struggling Marvel Studios division after a string of critical and commercial failures.

No expense has been spared on Loki Season 2 which cost more in pre-production and filming than many big screen Marvel movies including Doctor Strange (£102.7 million), Thor 2: The Dark World (£99.4 million) and Guardians of the Galaxy (£91.1 million).

Due to debut on the Disney+ platform in October, the sequel to the hit 2021 series stars Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous Asgardian god of mischief. He is joined by Owen Wilson and a new addition to the cast, Oscar-winning Indiana Jones actor Ke Huy Quan who team up to stop a time-travelling conqueror called Kang.

Indiana Jones star Ke Huy Quan is joining Loki for Season 2.2023 MARVEL

Quan's role has been particularly well-received with one fan gushing that "this is the greatest thing to ever happen. I adore this man". Another described it as "like seeing an old friend. It is comforting to see him on screen." One fan even went as far as to say that Quan is reason enough for tuning in. "I was on the fence on watching Loki season 2 but I saw that Ke Huy Quan is in it and yeah...I'm definitely watching that." It is more than can be said for most of Marvel's productions this year.

The studio kicked off 2023 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a sci-fi film which opened in February and introduced the Kang character. Its domestic debut weekend box office of $106 million was the highest in the Ant-Man trilogy but then it fell by 70%, resulting in the biggest second-weekend drop in the franchise's history. The movie ended up grossing $476.1 million worldwide which was lower than both of its prequels. As we revealed, Disney spent $193.2 million on pre-production and filming alone.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was widely criticised for its CGI Photo courtesy of Marvel ... [+]COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS

Just days after her departure, Marvel was rocked again when Kang actor Jonathan Majors was arrested on assault and harassment charges. He denies them and will get a chance to explain why when he goes on trial this month.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a rare recent success for Marvel © 2023 MARVEL.COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS

Then came Secret Invasion. Disney had high hopes for the streaming series which launched in June and was based on a beloved comic series about a race of shape-shifting aliens secretly invading the corridors of power. However, its serious tone, gaping plot holes and poor CGI put off fans leading to its crescendo becoming the single lowest-rated episode of any Marvel series with just a 7% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

As we revealed, staggeringly, it had a budget of $211.6 million. It explains why Disney's chief executive Bob Iger said in February that the studio needs to "reduce costs on everything that we make because, while we're extremely proud of what's on the screen, it's gotten to a point where it's extraordinarily expensive."

A total of 7,000 job cuts and $5.5 billion of cost-savings followed, but even that wasn't enough. Just last month, Iger told CNBC that Disney is slowing down when it comes to making movies and streaming series for its Marvel and Star Wars franchises. "You pull back not just to focus, but also as part of our cost containment initiative. Spending less on what we make, and making less," he said.

Season 2 of Loki was given the green light long before these comments and before Iger even returned to the helm of Disney in November last year. It shows.

The series was filmed at the historic Pinewood Studios just outside London as well as on location across the UK capital. It's a far cry from tinsel town and this shines a spotlight on the otherwise secretive cost of film-making.

Budgets of streaming shows are usually confidential as studios combine the cost of them in their overall expenses and don't itemise how much they spent on each one.

Shows made in the UK are an exception. They benefit from the government's Television Tax Relief scheme which allows studios to claim a cash reimbursement of up to 25% of the money they spend in the country.

To qualify, shows must pass a points test based on factors such as how much filming was done in the UK, the level of UK content and how much they promote UK heritage. Furthermore, at least 10% of the core costs of the production need to relate to activities in the UK and in order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up a separate Television Production Company (TPC) there for each picture.

These TPCs have to file publicly-available financial statements showing everything from the headcount and salaries to the total cost of the production and the amount of cash they have got back.

The UK government's regulations state that each TPC must be "responsible for pre-production, principal photography and post-production of the television programme; and for delivery of the completed programme." Accordingly, there is no doubt that their financial statements show all of the costs of each series. It isn't even possible for studios to hide costs in other companies as the law also states that "there can only be one TPC in relation to a programme."

The companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention when filing for permits to film on location. The Disney subsidiary behind Loki Season 2 is called Limbo Productions I UK in a nod to title character's transient status. Its first set of financial statements were filed on Sunday and cover the 18-month period to October 31 2022 which is when filming wrapped.

They reveal that the company was handed a $27.9 million (£21.8 million) reimbursement bringing its net spending down to $113.4 million which is still far from small beer. The colossal cost dates back to the peak of the pandemic when much of the world was locked indoors addicted to streaming content. Disney was eagerly adding shows to its streaming platform in a bid to attract more subscribers than its rivals.

Season 1 of Loki was the most-watched Marvel TV show to date on Disney+ ©Marvel Studios 2020. All ... [+]COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS

According to industry analysts Samba TV, Loki's first episode was watched by 2.5 million households in its first five days giving it a higher audience than any of Marvel's other streaming shows - a record which stands to this day. The streaming bubble has long since burst thanks to the easing of the pandemic and pure strings being pulled due to rising inflation. However, Season 2's budget could be more important now than ever. Disney doesn't just need it to succeed in order to give a glow to Marvel but to its entire streaming platform.

Unlike theatrical releases, which share ticket sales between studios and exhibitors, Disney receives all of the revenue from its streaming platform. Subscribers pay a single fee which grants them access to all of its new content throughout the year, with or without advertising depending on how much they pay. This makes it impossible to calculate how much subscription revenue is generated by each streaming show.

Instead, the total costs of the shows are deducted from the total revenue to determine whether the platform overall made a profit or a loss. The more subscribers it has, the higher the revenue and the greater the potential for profit. However, Disney wisely changed its goal of chasing subscribers in light of the bleak economic backdrop. Its aim now is to reduce the cost of the programming which also gives a greater potential for profit. It is badly needed.

Disney+ hasn't made a profit since it was launched in 2019 and made an operating loss of $659 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone. Disney has assured investors that the platform will be profitable by the end of its 2024 fiscal year and time will tell whether Loki Season 2's blockbuster budget is a help or a hindrance to that.

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Life Is a Cabaret! The Shimmering Kander and Ebb Classic Heads Back to Broadway Starring Eddie Redmayne

BY ADRIENNE MILLER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIEN MARTINEZ LECLERC

STYLED BY HARRY LAMBERT

March 5, 2024

When I was 15 years old, I saw Cabaret for the first time, at a community theater in northeast Ohio. Though I considered myself sophisticated in important ways (I recall that I was wearing a wide-leg Donna Karan bodysuit that evening), my experience as a theatergoer was then limited to The Sound of Music and Ice Capades: Let’s Celebrate. I wonder if my parents, who had season tickets to the theater, knew that the show wasn’t exactly “family” entertainment. Set in 1931 Berlin as it careens toward the abyss, Cabaret depicts alternating stories. There’s the doomed romance between a fledgling novelist named Clifford Bradshaw and a young singer of supreme charisma (and mediocre talent) named Sally Bowles. And then there’s the seedy nightclub, the Kit Kat Club, which is populated with a highly sexualized cast of misfits and overseen by a ghoulish Master of Ceremonies. The show’s ethos—the glamour and terror, the irreverence, the campiness, the unreality—shaped my taste forever, and I knew that I had just experienced one of the greatest works of art ever created. I would never look at theater, or life, in the same way again.

Over three decades later, I’ve seen more stage productions of Cabaret than any other show, including a revival starring the original Emcee, Joel Grey; I’ve seen the Bob Fosse film version over 50 times. I’ve pretty much always got one of Fred Ebb’s sardonic lyrics jangling around in my head. Today, it’s “You’ll never turn the vinegar to jam, mein Herr,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Youthful exposure to Cabaret also turned out to be a life-changing event for the star of the new production opening this month on Broadway, Eddie Redmayne. “Weirdly, when I was 15, it was the first thing that made me believe in this whole process,” he says. Redmayne was a student at Eton when he first played the Emcee; he had never seen Cabaret when he was cast. On this late-autumn evening, Redmayne is speaking to me from Budapest, where he is shooting a TV series. “It reaffirmed my love for the theater,” he says of his first experience. “It made me believe that this profession, were I ever to have the opportunity to pursue it, was something that I wanted to do.”

Now, as he prepares for the transfer of the smash-hit 2021 London production of Cabaret (in which he also starred), Redmayne is reflecting on the power and durability of the John Kander and Fred Ebb masterpiece. “The show was just so intriguing and intoxicating,” he says, adding that the character of the Emcee posed many questions when he portrayed him for the first time, but provided scant answers. A few years later, when he was an art-history student at Cambridge, he again tackled the part of the Emcee at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. At a dingy performance space called the Underbelly, he did two shows a night, the audiences getting rowdier and more intoxicated throughout the evening. He’d get up the following afternoon and stand along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile handing out flyers for the show, dressed in latex. “There was just a sort of general debauchery that lived in the experience,” he says. When his parents came one night, they were alarmed to find that their son had turned into a “pale, lacking-in-vitamin-D skeleton.”

Flash forward 15 years. The Underbelly cofounders and directors, Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, would approach Redmayne—now with an Academy Award for The Theory of Everything and a Tony for Red under his belt—with the idea of again playing the Emcee. Redmayne was eager to return to the role, but many questions remained—principally, who might direct it. In 2019 he happened to have been seated in front of the visionary young director Rebecca Frecknall at the last performance of her West End production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke. It was an emotional evening for Frecknall, who’d been working on the project on and off for a decade. She and Redmayne were introduced, but “I had mascara down my face and probably didn’t make a very coherent first impression,” she tells me from London, where her new show, The House of Bernarda Alba, has just opened at the National Theatre.

Redmayne was astonished by the depth and delicacy of understanding that Frecknall brought to Summer and Smoke, a romance with the classic Williams themes of loneliness, self-delusion, and unrequited love. A few months later, Redmayne asked Frecknall if she’d consider directing a revival of Cabaret. “I said, ‘Of course I’ll do it, but you’ll never get the rights,’ ” she recalls. Those rights were held up with another production but were shortly thereafter released, and Frecknall went to work assembling her creative team—among them musical supervisor Jennifer Whyte, choreographer Julia Cheng, and set and costume designer Tom Scutt. Frecknall’s transcendent production of Cabaret opened on the West End at the tail end of the pandemic and succeeded in reinventing the show anew, winning seven Olivier Awards, including one for Redmayne and one for Frecknall as best director.

When Cabaret begins its run in April at the August Wilson Theatre, starring Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth, and Ato Blankson-​Wood, it will be just the second major production of the show directed by a woman. (Gillian Lynne directed the 1986 London revival.) In Frecknall’s version, Sally emerges as the beating heart of the show. “I find that most of my work has a female protagonist,” says Frecknall, who has also directed radical new interpretations of A Street­car Named Desire, Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and Romeo and Juliet. “And I have a different connection to Sally,” she says. “I was really drawn to how young she was…and how she uses that sexuality and how other people prey on that as well.” The role of Sally Bowles, originated in this production by Jessie Buckley, who also won an Olivier for her performance, will be played this spring by the brilliant Scottish actor Gayle Rankin.

“When I first met with Gayle, I was blown away by her passion and fearlessness,” says Frecknall. “She’s a real stage animal and brings a rawness and wit to her work, which will shine through. She’s going to be a bold, brutal, and brilliant Bowles.” Redmayne also praises Rankin for the depth of emotion she brings to the part, and for the vulnerable and volcanic quality of her interpretation.

Rankin arrives at a candlelit West Village restaurant on a chilly winter evening in a sumptuous furry white coat that would put Sally Bowles to shame. Her platinum hair is pulled back from her face and her dark blue eyes project a wry intelligence. Rankin lives near the restaurant and mentions that she has recently joined a nearby gym—not that she’s going to have much time for workouts in the coming months. Over small seafood plates (of her shrimp cocktail, she shrugs and concedes, “It’s a weird order, but okay”), she shares her own rich history with Cabaret.

She grew up in a small Scottish village, watching Old Hollywood movies with her mother and grandmother. At 15, she left home to attend a musical theater school in Glasgow; on her 16th birthday, she visited New York for the first time with her family. “It sounds like a cheesy, made-up story,” she says, but when she and her parents took a tour of the city on a double-decker bus, they passed by the Juilliard School. “I thought,” she says, “ ‘I am going to go there.’ ” The following year, she and her father flew from Glasgow to New York for her audition. She would become the first Scottish drama student to attend the institution.

At Juilliard, there’s an annual cabaret night, in which all third-year drama students perform songs. Rankin sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, but she recalls her acute sense that she could have chosen a number from Cabaret. “I think I secretly always wanted to be that girl,” she says of the classmate who did perform those songs.

A couple of years after she graduated Juilliard in 2011, Rankin’s agents approached her with an opportunity to audition for Sam Mendes’s 2014 revival of his celebrated 1998 Broadway version (first staged in London in 1993), with Alan Cumming reprising his Emcee role. She was cast as Fräulein Kost—an accordionist sex worker who is revealed as a Nazi—playing opposite a revolving cast of Sallys, including Michelle Williams and Emma Stone.

Rankin has recently emerged as a fierce presence in films and in television (The Greatest Showman and two HBO series—Perry Mason and the upcoming season of House of the Dragon), but then “it kind of came across my desk this summer to throw my hat in the ring for Sally.” How does Rankin make sense of this fascinating, mystifying character? “Everything is so sort of up for grabs…. People feel as if they have a claim over her or know who she is. And the real truth is, only Sally gets to know who Sally is.” She has been rereading Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin—the inspiration for the show—in which the English writer sets the dying days of the Weimar Republic against his relationship with the young singer Sally Bowles. (In 1951, the playwright and director John Van Druten adapted the book for the stage with I Am a Camera; in 1963, Broadway director-producer extraordinaire Harold Prince saw that the play could be musicalized and hired Joe Masteroff for the libretto and the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.) Isherwood based Sally—somewhat—on Jean Ross, a British flapper and chanteuse who later became a well-regarded film critic, war correspondent, political thinker, and Communist. (He gave the character the last name of writer and composer Paul Bowles.) For the rest of her life, Ross maintained (correctly) that Isherwood’s portrayal of her diminished her reputation as an activist and as an intellectual.

“Ross wanted so badly to write to Isherwood,” says Rankin, “and to condemn him: ‘You slandered my name. You said all these things about me that weren’t true.’ And as far as she got in the letter was ‘Dear Christopher.’ ” As Rankin builds the character, it’s this notion of the real Sally—not the fictive version constructed by Isherwood—that she finds so captivating, and heartbreaking.

The upending of Sally as an “object” is another core conceit behind the production. “I felt that other productions I’d seen had this slightly stereotypical male-gaze idea,” Frecknall says. She views Sally’s musical numbers as describing different facets of female identity. “Don’t Tell Mama” deals with the fetishization of youth and virginity, and in Frecknall’s production, Sally, disturbingly, appears in a sexy Little Bo Peep costume; “Mein Herr,” a song about manipulation, control, and female sexual desire, is in conversation with the cliché of the strong, “dominant” woman. “I think Sally’s very clever at being able to play an identity, and also play it against you,” she adds. The character “has secrets to tell us,” Rankin says. “Important things to share with us. And I think that’s the umbilical cord between her and the Emcee.”

Although Sally and the Emcee share the stage for less than five minutes, the Emcee’s musical numbers can be seen as a kind of meta-commentary about Sally’s actions. “What interested me was the idea that the Emcee was a character created by Hal Prince and Joel Grey,” says Redmayne, referring to the actor who portrayed the Emcee in the original 1966 production. “He doesn’t exist in the book Goodbye to Berlin and was their conceit to connect the story of Sally Bowles.” Rankin believes that there is a kind of mystical bond between the two characters. “As to whether or not he’s a higher power, or higher being, he does have an access to a higher knowledge,” Rankin suggests. “I think Sally feels that too.”

And who is the Emcee? A supernatural being? Puppeteer or puppet? There are no clues in the text. Prince conceived of the character as a metaphor representing Berlin itself. “The idea of him as an abstraction,” Redmayne says, “and so purposely intangible, meant that I actually found a new way of working.” Redmayne built the character from the ground up, starting with big, broad gestures that would be gradually refined. The “very fierce, ferocious intensity” of Herbert von Karajan, the famously dictatorial Austrian conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and a Nazi party member, served as a particularly fertile inspiration.

Historically, the role of Emcee has been coded as gay, and embodied, in most prominent productions, by gay actors. Frecknall’s production had to address what it meant to cast Redmayne, a straight white male actor, in the role. “Tom [Scutt] and I felt very clearly that, well, it’s not going to be the Emcee’s tragedy,” Frecknall says. A person like Redmayne—given his class, ethnicity, and sexuality—would emerge from the catastrophe unscathed. Redmayne concurs: “As the walls of fascism begin to close in, he has the privilege to be able to shape-shift his way out of it.” The character’s journey is from Shakespearean fool to Shakespearean king.

In Hal Prince’s 1966 production, Grey’s delicate, meticulous performance as the cane-twirling Emcee is pure nihilism—as a representation of Germany’s conscience. In the later Mendes iteration, the Emcee emerges as the central victim: In that production’s chilling last scene, Alan Cumming’s louche Emcee removes a black trench coat to reveal a concentration camp uniform; a burst of bright white light follows, from, presumably, a firing squad. But in Frecknall’s version, the Emcee is exposed not as a victim of the system, but as the chief perpetrator. The show, she notes, “becomes the ensemble’s tragedy.”

“I was really intent that we cast it very queer and inclusive,” says Tom Scutt, Cabaret’s multitalented set and costume designer. We are sitting on a black banquette in the lobby of his hotel, across the street from Lincoln Center, where he’s working on Georges Bizet’s Carmen. To mount a revival of Cabaret in 2024, Scutt contends that “there’s no other way. That was really at the headline of our mission.”

There are two casts in the show: the main company and the prologue cast, which provides pre-curtain entertainment. In general, the members of the prologue cast don’t come from traditional musical-theater backgrounds, but from the worlds of street dance and hip-hop—“dancehall, voguing, and ballroom scene,” Scutt notes—and in the London production, some of the prologue performers have been promoted to the main cast. “There is something deeply, deeply moving about how we’ve managed to navigate the usual slipstream of employment.”

Part of Scutt’s intention with Cabaret has been to “smudge and diffuse’’ the audience’s preconceived notions. Inclusive casting is one mode for change; iconography is another. In this case, that has meant no bowler hats, no bentwood chairs, no fishnet stockings. The aesthetic is less Bob Fosse and more Stanley Kubrick. “We started off in a place of ritual,” he says. “I really wanted the place to feel as if you’ve come into some sort of Eyes Wide Shut temple.”

Scutt has reimagined the 1,250-seat August Wilson Theatre as an intimate club—warrens of labyrinthine new corridors and passageways, three new bars, and an auditorium reinvented as a theater-in-the-round. Boris Aronson, the set designer of the show’s iconic original 1966 production, suspended a mirror on the stage in which the audience members would see their own reflections—a metaphor that forced the audience to examine its own complicity; but in Scutt’s design, the audience members must look at one another. Access to the building is through a side entrance; as soon as you arrive, you’ve already lost your bearings.

In many ways, it’s remarkable that such a weird and complex work of art masquerading as a garishly entertaining variety show has had such longevity. Scutt has an explanation about why this piece—created by a group of brilliant Jewish men about the rise of antisemitism and hate, about the dangers of apathy—​continues to speak to us so profoundly almost 60 years after its Broadway debut.

“I can’t really think of anything else, truly, that has the same breadth of feeling in its bones,” Scutt suggests. “I honestly can’t think of another musical that does so much.” As grave, and as tragically relevant, as the messages of Cabaret are, he and the members of the company have found refuge in theater. Both Scutt and Frecknall grew up singing in their churches as children; theater is to them a secular church, a space where human beings can congregate and share healing. “It was made with such pain and such love,” Scutt says. “Which is absolutely the piece.” 

In this story: hair, Matt Mulhall; makeup, Niamh Quinn. Produced by Farago Projects. Set Design: Afra Zamara.

[small-tragedies]

for the ask game - 9 & 23! 🫶🏻

9: Write a recommendation of someone else’s fic you enjoyed!

“Cry Me a Liver” by @babsvibes It’s got everything you can want in a Louigan fic: Sad man-baby Logan, Louise, and Logan are miserable about the breakup, yet the hilarious thing is that neither one of them actually remembers or knows why they broke up in the first place. 😂 And you gotta love Gene and Tina for being the greatest siblings ever trying to figure out what happened! I love Tina and Louise’s dynamic, but I especially love Logan and Gene in this fic! Gene is just amazing in this fic, and I love them. Gene’s personality is just so perfectly written in this fic, and I adored this fic so much. And I was one of the people who, of course, loves pathetic Logan, and I got my juice and more lol.

I definitely recommend this fic to anyone who hasn’t read it; it’s a gem. 💕💕💕

23: Has your favorite character/ship changed over time?

The pairing between Lisa Simpson and Jessica Lovejoy has been with me for so loooong. I can’t say it’s changed, as my love for it is still going strong after all these years. They have been my OTP since I was 17 to 18 years old, and I think they’ll be my OTP until the day that I die. 🥹💕💕💕

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

the star beast reactions:

the end of time part 2: “the story never ends” switches to “ the story hasnt ended yet” this show is driving me to cookoo land

taxi logo! Very 2005.

“That says grand mistress!” “oh, catch up” [….sentient physic paper headcanon? Maybe everything the doctor carries is secretly sentient sdlkfj rip all those sonics that fell in battle]

NERYS HAD AN ACCIDENT. KARMIC JUSTICE.

"me putting up with that" ksksksks "what do I care? I’ve got the true greatest girls in the world" just u wait for what’s coming shaun. Hope u always secretly wanted an autistic queerplatonic husband.

"and I shoukd know, I invented them!" bully!donna headcanon comfirmed (?) to go with already-canon teenage!wreck donna.

"oh, yes definetly" sylvia "queer-coded mom "mother of a queer " subtext finally becomes text as "grandmother of a queer"!!!!

"you had a bit of a breakdown… and then you got better" sksksks every “the doctor is a hallucination” dark!fic ever/ alternatively: amy coded

"I should be really happy"'... but sometimes I lie in bed thiking, what have I lost?" THIRTEEN CODED THIRTEEN CODED OH GOD THE REGRETS OVER DROPPING THE FOBWATCH….

“Fuge” is iconic

THE MUSIC IS DOING A THING!!!

14 is definetly someone who lived 11/12/13's lives lol my girl is so tired

"I’ve read the files" when UNIT personel says this the translation is: I’ve watched all of three’s era.

"I dont know who I am anymore" understatement of the billenia!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "she's happy! Is she?” I mean tbf, is anyone ever? in this economy? Lol

"I don’t believe in destiny but-" (yeah you do?)

"You know my rules, no secrets in this house" I wonder if Donna didn’t get at least a little bit mad after this that everyone lied to her for 15 years dlskjf

NERYS. VIPER IN THE NEST

the bit with wilf’s accomodation was a good subtle commentary about accesibility again…

ok…. But the definite article bit was excellent??? sdlkfj i swear fandom is so recalcitrant sometimes

"two hearts! so do I!" [rtd: in case u didn’t notice, this is what we call A Foil]

"that’s not concrete ', it’s mortar" "thank you, bob the builder"

the doc in the wig…………………… valeyard coded

There will be no violence... UNTIL he deems it fit and proper! and that’s GROWTH(tm)

solar psychodelia my beloved eu band

"it just felt like the sort of thing he woukd do" t.t

"who cares about me?" "i do" T.T!!!!!

(sdklfj tho ngl it feels like it escaletes to this emotional level wayyyy too quickly)

clifftops.... grief... fingerprint… THE SMELL OF DUST AFTER RAIN……..

I mean he did very much kill donna (again?) ddklSjs THIS IS A VERY SIGNIFICANT THING THAT JUST HAPPENED???

“She chose her own name…” trans doctor fodder?

"male and femape and neither and more" tbh this works rlly well on the metaphysical level I was talking about (note to self: elaborate on that in another post), do have to agree it sounds a bit iffy on the gender politics front...

"cryptic, I hate that" liar, you’re all about that

tbh "shame you are not a woman anymore" feels riiiiiight in line with "you two are just time lords, you dumbos!" sdkfj donna has to be a lil’ bioessentialist about meta cris-es every time doesn’t she.

"and we choose to let it go" / [the one adventure I could never have] / [terf island will eventually let go of transphobia] / [“how to let go of depression”: the scifi/adventure series]

"why does it have to be one last trip?" good question!!! yaz would like to know as well!!!

CONCLUSIONS!

Fun as hell! But i did feel a tinge disappointed that rose and the nobles aren’t that developed (and Shirley as well).

I think The Point and The Message is a bit clumsily delivered, but overall the writers’ hearts are in the right place and it does work philosophically for where (I think?) the series is going next. As a ~Trial Of A TimeLord Enjoyer~ the bit where 14 puts on a wig made me go feral.

The meep is well realized but tbh I don’t think the OG story is that strong? And I think my Hot Take is….. I think that a straight-forward story wasn’t super compatible with all the mechanics and logistics and exposition that this “fix fic-ing the doctordonna” story necessitates. So the whole thing feels kinda bogged down by having to be a recap.

Finally… I think the resolution feels a bit too... mechanical? because Rose is not developed / put as the POV at the start, it’s not enough of an emotional thrill to see her saving the day (other than like, idk, if I interpret Rose Noble triumphing being a metaphor for Donna’s life being complete when she has her own life but also the doctor back again (?)).

[lewmagoo]

For the Sleepover, can I request “I know it hurts, love. You’ll be okay.” (the first one from the Whump list) with Floydsin? 💖

it was bad. bob knew it was. he tried to hide his concern from jake, but it was futile. bob was terrible at masking his emotions. his face always revealed his feelings. but this instance was life or death, and bob was terrified. his hands were pressed against jake’s side, where a nasty wound was causing crimson to stain the dark green of his flight suit. they’d gone down together, with bob manning the backseat. he’d come out relatively unscathed, save for a pretty deep gash on his shoulder and some other cuts and bruises. but jake hadn’t been so lucky. there was no sugarcoating it; if he didn’t get help soon, he was going to die.

bob was trying to put as much pressure as possible on the wound to slow the bleeding. however, he couldn’t pretend jake’s growls of pain didn’t slice into his heart like a sharp dagger. “i’m sorry,” bob apologized, gazing into the blonde’s face. “i-i-i know it hurts, love. you’ll be okay.” but jake let out a breath, which may have been intended to be a laugh, but it was all he could manage. “will i?” he asked. bob closed his eyes for a moment. “you have to be. i need you to be,” he whispered in reply. jake groaned again, taking a shuddering breath. “stop lyin’ to yourself, bobby. it’s bad, i can see it on your face. i’ll pr-probably be gone before search and rescue even get a read on our location.”

but bob was unwilling to accept that. “no!” he cried. “no. don’t talk like that. i won’t let you die.” at which jake gave him a hard stare. “what, are you god now? you can suddenly stop death from happening?” there was more venom in his tone than he intended. he felt bad when it made bob cry. “please, stop. i don’t…i can’t…jake, i can’t lose you!” jake finally placed his hand over bob’s, quieting his cries. “bobby, you’ll be okay without me. i promise.” but how could jake say such a thing when bob felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest? he was losing the greatest love of his life and he was unwilling to accept it.

“please,” bob whimpered. “just hold on a little longer.” but he was fading fast. jake had always been so vibrant and intense and larger than life. but now, he seemed so small as bob held him in his arms. in fact, he looked more like a wounded little boy than anything. there were tears glimmering in his eyes. they slipped down the sides of his face. he was trying to be brave, but he was scared. and he knew he couldn’t hold on, not the way bob wanted him too. he was so weak, and he could not fight the inevitable. “l-listen to me,” he whispered. “i love you, bobby floyd. do-don’t you ever forget that.”

“i love you too!” bob wailed, afraid that if he didn’t say it, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. “but please, don’t do this! stay with me!” however, jake was already gone. his body grew heavier still in bob’s arms, and the other man knew there was nothing that could be done now. so he remained there, huddled over the one he loved, the one he’d always love, and he sobbed brokenly, like a wounded animal. and that was how search and rescue found him. they had to physically pull him away because he refused to let jake go. letting him go meant that this was real. jake seresin was dead, and bob was left behind to pick up the pieces of his own broken heart.

[pinkboxess]

⭐️I want you to do a little directors cut so bad but I don’t have the time right now to pull out a specific scene from one of your fics so you chose!!⭐️

Okay, after thinking, I'm going to talk about sunflowers, again. I'll add a cut since this will get long. Also this is like....heavy and sad, so sorry about that.

This is one of my fics where I actually put more artistic thought into it. I wrote the fic after I visited a Monet exhibit in February. It made me think about Ted's visit to the Van Gogh museum in season 3, and the connections between him and Van Gogh (sunflowers, suicide), and thus the fic was born.

I'll give some more behind-the-scenes details about some of the sections

“Do you have any guns, knives, or other weapons on your person?” the employee asks. “No siree bob,” replies Ted. “Only guns in the room are these bad boys.” He flexes his arm comically, causing Rebecca to choke on a smothered laugh and elbow him in the ribs.

When I visited the Monet exhibit there was a security agent who asked us about weapons. I just imagined how Ted might respond to the same thing when he's feeling anxious and rambly

In the next room, the museum has placed Cafe Terrace at Night and Wheatfield with Crows adjacent to each other. They have similar colours: bright mustard yellow, a deep, powerful blue. Whenever Rebecca looks at art, she imagines herself inside of it. What might it be like to order dinner at that cafe? Or to chase the crows away from the wheat?

This is often how I engage with art. I imagine myself inhabiting it. I am really interested in historical clothing (and furniture and items generally, to a lesser degree) and I love to go to museums just to look at items and imagine who wore them, used them, and inhabited them. Imagined what it would be like to be the person who wore that dress. Place myself within their perspective by gazing at something that once was part of their life.

“He did it cause he didn’t think he was a good dad. Didn’t think he mattered.” “Oh, love,” Rebecca soothes. “But look at this guy. He thought the same thing, but here we are, all these years later lookin’ at his art.”

This section is heavily inspired by the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who. I'm not really a Doctor Who fan, but a friend of mine made me go watch a clip of that episode specifically, and it has violently imprinted itself into my mind.

In the episode, Vincent time travels with the Doctor to a museum displaying his work. The Doctor is doing it to convince Vincent that he is famous in the future and people love his work. He's hesitant to believe it because in his own lifetime he wasn't valued as an artist.

Then the curator of the museum says to a visitor that Van Gogh is possibly the greatest artist who ever lived, and Vincent hears him, and he gets it.

It is just so striking to me to imagine an experience like that. It's something that never could really happen, because it's sci-fi, but it's incredible to think about. What if you could know how people think about you decades or centuries in the future? After you're gone? What if you could see your legacy before it's even happened, and see that you even have a legacy at all?

We don't know anything about Ted's dad really, but I suppose in my imagination I think he's the type of person who would be changed by the experience of watching Ted go to therapy and process his trauma. If he thought he was someone who didn't matter in life, he might be surprised to see how Ted engages with his memory after his death. Ted's statement of "I still need my dad" is my attempt at something would impact Ted's father in a way that mirrors Van Gogh's reaction to the words of the curator. And I think Ted might think, in his own mind, that by healing himself, he is also kind of healing what happened with his dad, in some way.

Even later, a few weeks after their museum trip, Rebecca comes home to find a print of Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers hung up in the kitchen. She doesn’t ask him about it. She doesn’t need to: she sees his quiet smile as he looks at it while he cooks for her. 

This ending is a manifestation of that feeling for Ted. He's not avoiding Van Gogh-- in fact he's actively bringing it into the house-- because he thinks of it as part of the healing process.