#one of her quotes in this costume is ''come watch my performance with your true love!'' and. what if your my love? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bosspigeon · 3 years ago

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Carabosse et la Fee des Lilas

Prompt: 💋Drag

Pairing: Adam/Male Detective, Bonus Found Family Vibes~

Words: 5,346

Summary: Tina spends some quality time with Arlo and Unit Bravo as they prepare for Wayhaven's first real Pride festival, Tina torments her best friend and his maybe-boyfriend (as is her god-given right), and Arlo has a big think about his favorite role and what that role allowed him to explore~

CW for references to transmisogyny and implications of past trans/homophobia

Sometimes, Tina wonders if Arlo missed his true calling. His hands are surgeon-steady as he pencils delicate patterns onto Felix’s cheeks, outlining with white eyeliner in preparation to fill them in with bold colors and glitter. Tina almost can’t wait for her turn, even though Felix looks like he’s in real, physical pain with the effort of holding as still as possible. She’s no stranger to that struggle herself.

Neither is she a stranger to Arlo’s forceful, if toothless, threats, overcome as she is by fondness when he growls that he's going to draw a mustache on Felix’s face with permanent marker if he doesn’t stop bloody bouncing.

It’s pretty fun to watch from the outside. Sure, when you first sit down when he’s like this—all sharp and snappish and “stop moving or I’ll chuck you out the window”—it’s hard to keep still, but Arlo’s got this sort of quiet intensity to him when he’s focusing on something that’s oddly meditative. He’s just a soothing presence, really. Like a capybara or something. He’s friend-shaped.

Whatever weird magic it is, it’s definitely catching, because Felix looks less like he’s about to burst, like he did when Arlo was putting down the foundation, and more like he’s enjoying the attention. Tina’s not sure how long it’s going to last, seeing as Felix has given her a run for her money in the “manic energy” department, and he’s nowhere near as caffeinated as she is at any given time, but for the time being, he’s (mostly) still and quiet.

There’s music playing, quiet enough that the broody one (she knows his name, but it seems to bug him when she calls him "the broody one," which is funny, so—) only grumbled about it for a few minutes when Arlo turned it on, and even seems to enjoy sitting close enough to Arlo’s stupidly fancy stereo system to, she guesses, feel the rumble of the bass through the floor. Vampires are weird.

Anyway, it’s Arlo’s usual sad goth boy nonsense, but as quiet as it is, and with its intense instrumentals and rumbling vocals, it’s pleasant background noise more than anything.

Nate (the handsome and charming one, because of course all Arlo’s vampire friends are handsome, so she has to differentiate between them somehow) is rifling through Arlo’s bookshelf like it’s his job, and visibly struggling to pick something to read, because Arlo’s sitting room bookshelf (the one she found at a yard sale three hours away and lashed to the top of her sedan with every single bungee cord she could find at the local hardware store because it was coffin-shaped, for god's sake) is where he keeps all his weirdo occult stuff to, quote, “make people who pop by unannounced leave faster.”

And then there’s the big, handsome, stupidly fit blonde Arlo still won’t call his boyfriend, even though they’re so obvious it’s sickening, and she means that with all the love in her heart. He’s sitting in the armchair by the bookshelf, positioned so he can look like he’s reading one of Arlo’s old music magazines and totally isn’t taking advantage of the perfect line of sight of Arlo perched on the end of his coffee table so he’s not too tall to work on Felix, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. Tina sure hopes he doesn’t think he’s subtle, being a super special vampire secret agent and all.

He seems to notice her eyeing him, at least, and keeps his attention pinned firmly on the magazine, though he is definitely not reading a single word. Nate keeps browsing, the Broody One keeps brooding, Arlo keeps working, and Felix starts to hum. Arlo gives him a sharp look, but it doesn’t seem to be moving his face in any major way, so he just rolls his eyes and keeps tracing pretty patterns onto that unfairly smooth, dark skin. Do vampires do skin care? They probably don’t even need to, and that’s probably one of the reasons people like to villainize them. It always comes down to jealousy, doesn’t it?

She sighs, loudly enough that every eye in the room turns to her, and while she did not expect the sudden attention, she knows she can at least use it to entertain herself. She homes in on Adam, and smiles when she finally looks at the magazine he’s still valiantly pretending to read. There’s a familiar man on the cover, and while she can’t be bothered to remember his name, she grins. “Oh, hey! Arlo, he’s reading the one with the guy who looks like you!”

Arlo doesn’t even look up, but he huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes again. He’s going to give himself a headache if he keeps that up.

The comment does exactly what she wants it to, which is draw the attention of all the other vampires. Arlo even begrudgingly pulls the pencil away from Felix’s cheek so he can take a look, and he immediately bursts out laughing.

“Arlo!” he exclaims, slapping at Arlo’s knee. “You didn’t tell us you had a twin!”

Nate chuckles (warm and rich and handsome, if a sound can be called handsome) and turns from the shelf to study the magazine curiously himself. Even the Broody One peers over to see, a little smirk curling his permanently-scowling mouth.

“Considering he was born in the sixties, I definitely don’t,” Arlo drawls. “Tina’s been making that joke since we were kids. She’s just happy she’s got an audience who hasn’t heard it twelve times a week since she first saw my old Type O Negative poster.”

“Some jokes just get better with time,” Tina says archly. “Like a fine wine.”

“And some jokes age like milk,” Arlo fires back.

Adam tilts the magazine so he can look for himself, and his dour expression clouds over even more, brows furrowing and mouth twisting. He peers up at Arlo, studying him, then down again.

Got you. “Yeah, you’re right,” Tina says, nodding sagely at him. “Arlo’s much prettier.”

It has exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Arlo drops his eyeliner pencil and makes a strangled noise, glowering at her with his cute freckly cheeks going all red, and Adam, who is a good bit paler than Arlo, goes pink from the crewneck of his just-this-side-of-too-tight tee shirt to his hairline. Tina wants to punch the air as the other vampires snicker at them. Well, except for Nate. Nate’s not a snickerer. He chortles. It’s adorable.

“Speaking of pretty!” Felix crows once they’ve all had a laugh at their fearless leader’s expense. He points to his own face with both hands, dancing in his chair, and Arlo sighs and rolls his eyes again, bending to pick up the dropped pencil. Luckily, the tip isn’t broken, so he can get right back to work, once he’s given the young vampire a moment to get his wiggles out. He settles, sitting on his hands and pursing his lips when Arlo gives him a dry look. He hovers back in with the pencil, and then Felix blurts out, “How’d you get so good at this anyway? Well, I assume you’re good at it. I haven’t seen it yet.”

Arlo doesn’t say anything. He just looks at him, pencil poised, until Felix pinches his mouth shut with a quick little apology. Once Arlo’s satisfied his canvas is actually going to hold still and keep quiet, he gets back to it. “My school was pretty small, especially compared to the bigger-name performing arts schools out there,” he says after a moment of quiet focus, tracing the outline of a heart around one of Felix’s eyes. “Our department didn’t really have a huge budget, and workspace was at a premium too. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for performances before someone else had to use the theatre, so we all did our own makeup at once, for the most part. Sometimes we’d help each other out, because we all had our strengths and weaknesses.”

He pulls back the pencil, squinting critically at the heart like it’s not completely perfect. “Demi was the best at laying the groundwork, and at matching colors to our costumes and complexions. Viv was the best at coming up with concepts and making sure we looked like a matching set. Wendi could do insane prosthetics, and was the best at bullying our department head into giving us the money for them. I had the steadiest hands, so I always did the eyes and the details.”

“Was Wendi the one who did your Dracula look?” Tina gasps. “That one was so cool!”

“Dracula?” Felix blurts. Tina doesn’t miss how the others perk up with interest too.

Arlo glares at him, and he shrinks back with a sheepish little grin. “Yeah, we did Dracula, uh… second year, I think? That was when Tilly transferred in and started doing our choreography. She’s the one who got Professor Dacey to let us do less classical stuff and start branching out a bit.” He glances briefly at Tina, staunchly ignoring the way Felix pouts at him for dividing his attention. “And, yeah, Wendi did the prosthetics for that one.”

“She’s got to be magic,” Tina asserts. “She managed to make your sweet, mopey face look so scary.”

Felix and Mason both snicker at that, and Arlo’s mouth goes all lemon-sour pinchy, like it always does when she calls him a sad puppy man, or any variation thereof.

“Take a lap,” Arlo says to Felix. “Don’t touch your face.” He jerks his head at Tina when Felix bolts to his feet and starts zooming around the flat to get out some of his energy. “Your turn, if you’re done being a comedian.”

“I’m never done,” she says with a sunny smile, but she bounces over to take Felix’s place in the chair and closes her eyes serenely so he can start on her makeup.

“And, God, do I know it,” he grumbles under his breath, knowing full well she can hear him, and so can everyone else in the room, too.

“Do you have pictures?” Felix hollers. He’s dipped into Arlo’s studio, and he’s making no secret of rifling through the desk in there, drawers slamming and paper rustling.

Arlo tips his head back so when he sighs, loud and dramatically long-suffering, he’s not blowing his breath right in Tina’s face. She appreciates the gesture. “Bottom right drawer,” he calls back, resignation thick in his voice. Given how long he’s been putting up with Tina—and Felix might just be Tina’s second platonic soulmate (Arlo, of course, being the first)—he already knows that keeping quiet is just prolonging the inevitable. Tina opens her eyes briefly to see Felix come sailing out of the studio with a thick leather-bound album held triumphantly over his head.

“Oh, I haven’t seen that in years!” she coos happily.

Arlo bops her on the forehead pointedly with a sponge covered in foundation, and she closes her eyes obediently.

She hears Arlo’s antique sofa creak as Felix plops down onto it, rifling through the plastic pages. “Aw,” he whines, “no baby pictures?”

“I can’t imagine him ever being a baby,” Mason snorts, and he sounds closer than he was before. Tina knows better than to open her eyes while Arlo’s in the zone, though. He’ll bop her with something less soft than a sponge next time. “I figured he’s just always been a giant.”

Felix laughs, high and chiming. “No wonder Agent Priestley’s always so sour, then,” he says. Tina giggles, and it becomes an inelegant snort when Arlo bops her again on the nose.

“Ask Rebecca if you want to see my baby pictures,” Arlo mutters blandly, and Tina can feel the weight of his attention. “I doubt she has many after age two, and the ones before I’ve barely seen.”

Tina’s not a super-special supernatural secret agent, but she tries with all her might to will someone to change the subject before things get weird. Now’s as good a time as any to learn telepathy.

Felix, heart of her heart, interrupts what’s shaping up to be a real prize winner of an awkward silence with a loud gasp. “Woah!” he exclaims, and pages crinkle as he presumably holds up the book for Arlo to see. “Who’s this? Did you do her makeup too?”

Arlo’s hair rustles as he turns his head away from her, and then the hand on her cheek freezes. Tension radiates through every inch of his body, practically leaching into hers. She cautiously opens one eye, and sees Arlo sitting up impeccably straight, stiff as a board and staring at Felix like a deer in the headlights. He swallows so hard she can see his throat move. “Um,” he says, stilted and strange. “Yeah. I did.”

Tina opens both eyes and squints at the photo album. Oh.

Felix looks at the sudden strain in the way Arlo is sitting, the tightness of his posture, and looks quizzically down at the picture again.

Tina remembers that performance. She remembers Arlo dancing (ha) around the subject when she asked him teasingly if he was going to be playing the prince, who was the lead, was he excited to kiss a pretty girl?

She can’t remember the character’s name, not so many years after the fact, especially since they were all weird classical nonsense, either Latin or French or some mishmash of the two. But she remembers the costume. She remembers waiting with bated breath to see Arlo onstage, to stand and scream and cheer obnoxiously loud in support of her best friend. She shot to her feet the second she saw his obvious silhouette rise from a feather-bedecked black chariot, head and shoulders taller than anyone else onstage. The music swelled, lightning flashed, and then when the spotlight hit him, she was so stunned she plopped right back into her seat with her jaw on the floor.

Arlo’s always been one of those guys that straddled the line between pretty and handsome. Long, lustrous hair and eyelashes she would kill for, cheekbones that could kill, a defined jaw, a proud nose, and intense eyes she could only call sultry—if she hadn’t known him since they were both weird, gawky brats, she’d probably be half in love with him before figuring out she wasn’t his cup of tea. But seeing him onstage was always an adventure. He threw himself into whatever character he played, put his everything into them, from the costume to the makeup to the performance. He just became the character, and in a way that was so very Arlo, all that intensity and focus channeled into an act that completely stole the show, in Tina’s humble and completely unbiased opinion.

Carabosse! That was her name!

Carabosse was no different.

Arlo’s makeup was flawless, ghost-white foundation giving him intense Morticia Addams vibes, contouring that made his cheekbones look absolutely unreal, bold black (or maybe really dark purple?) lipstick and shiny, smoky eyeshadow that made him look ethereal and wicked, with a daggerpoint cat-eye that she spent an hour begging him to teach her after the show. When he turned his head in a sharp, birdlike motion to look down his nose at the dancers playing the King and Queen, she gasped at the way his hair rippled down his back, shiny-black and woven with actual feathers that trailed back from the ornate metal circlet resting on his brow like a bird’s crest. The costume was breathtaking, too, a tightly corseted bodice and a high collar, a dramatically billowing skirt and trailing, feathered sleeves that flared like wings whenever he moved.

And the way he moved! Arlo’s dancing changed with every role, whatever he felt would suit the character. One of her favorites was always his Hans-Peter (she had a soft spot for that one, and had ever since she was little—one of the first Christmas gifts her stepmom had ever given her was little storybook version of The Nutcracker that came with a CD) because his dancing was so stiff and stridently mechanical, he looked like a real toy soldier come to life. But his villains moved with a slinking, predatory prowl she’d only ever seen in monster movies, and never in something like a ballet. His Carabosse was as beautiful as she was terrifying, and it was incredible to watch. She wanted to fling herself at him after the show and babble at him endlessly like she always did, but she spent a solid minute staring at him slack-jawed, until he shifted awkwardly and looked down, and the confident intimidation of the Wicked Fairy sloughed away to reveal Arlo underneath.

He almost melted into the floor with relief when she finally startled to babble.

She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and he takes a slow, deep breath, offering Felix a strained smile. “Take a closer look, mate,” he says quietly.

Felix does. He looks up and squints at Arlo, and then back down at the photo. Tina has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh when he looks over at Adam, still holding the magazine with that metal singer that kind of looks like Arlo on it, and then back at Arlo. His mouth drops open into a little o, and he shoots to his feet and shouts, “No way!”

Mason was allowed his name back briefly, but he goes right back to Broody One when he grimaces at Felix and slinks pettishly back to his corner.

Arlo’s shoulders are practically around his ears, but he tries to keep smiling. “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty. Fourth year. I was the Wicked Fairy.”

“He was amazing,” Tina declares, shoulders back and chin tipped up challengingly. “The costume was insane, but the way he played her was absolutely, ridiculously badass.”

“You look awesome!” Felix blurts, still gawking down at the photo. He flips to the next page, and squeaks happily when he finds more pictures, from different angles, showing off the costume, the way Arlo loomed over the other dancers, the way he commanded the stage. Tina should really find out who took the pictures and send them her thanks, because they really put in the work. “Your makeup, your dress, your hair! How’d you even do that?”

Arlo laughs, and it sounds so utterly relieved, Tina’s heart breaks a little. Arlo’s always been sensitive, and for someone who dresses and holds himself the way he does, he worries more than he lets on what people think of him. Especially people he cares about. She squeezes his shoulder again, and he bites his lip when he glances back at her and smiles hesitantly.

“A lot of wire, and enough hairspray to choke a bloody cow,” he says, twisting around and slinging his long legs over the coffee table so he can face the sofa. “I think we bought every bag of black feathers the craft store had, and then spent an entire weekend painting them with this stupidly expensive embossing powder. We had to get, like, ten pots of the stuff, because the craft store only had pots the size of a quarter.”

“I admire your dedication,” Nate says pleasantly, strolling over to peer over Arlo’s shoulder. They tighten just a bit before relaxing slowly. “That costuming is superb. I’ve seen professional productions that weren’t half so detailed.”

“That would be Viv’s work,” Arlo laughs, looking down at the pictures fondly. “She took whatever cheap garbage the department had for us, raided the nearest clearance fabric rack, and worked her magic. The employees at that little craft store loved and hated us in equal measure.”

Arlo is still tense, but he’s loosening up little by little, and with him Tina does too. The easy camaraderie is soothing, and she knows how much Arlo cares about his vampire friends, so it’s got to be a huge weight off his shoulders to be able to let his guard down around them. He deserves that. He deserves to be able to be himself.

Adam standing up draws Arlo’s attention like nothing else could, and he freezes like a startled rabbit again looking up at the burly blonde vampire as he approaches the sofa. He looks a split second from bolting. Tina sits up straighter and gives Adam her most daring look, squaring her shoulders to make it perfectly clear she's ready to fight the second he opens his mouth. She’ll definitely lose, sure, but she’ll make as much trouble as she can before she goes down.

He reaches out, his hand hesitating before it touches the album’s glossy page, and he looks up at Arlo with a questioning tilt to his brows. Arlo looks like he’s barely breathing, but he nods, and Adam slips one of the pictures from its sleeve. He straightens his spine, shoulders back, holding the photo and studying it carefully. His face is impossible to read, about as expressive as a bloody brick wall. Tina’s vibrating with nervous energy. She’ll fight a vampire, though. She will.

When Adam does finally speak, his voice comes out so softly Tina almost doesn’t hear it over the adrenaline rushing through her. “You look… striking.”

Striking. Oh my god.

She wants to laugh. They’re ridiculous.

“Thanks,” Arlo chokes out, his cheeks and ears going red this time.

Oh my god. Tina covers her mouth with both hands. Arlo glowers at her. It’s a lot less threatening when he’s blushing like that. “I didn’t say anything,” she mumbles against her palms.

“Your face,” he hisses, and she yelps.

“Oh! Shit!” She pulls her hands away, and he grabs her by the chin to check the damage with a click of his tongue.

Tina thought things would get better once Arlo actually kissed the man (and maybe got a leg over, but that’s only her business when she can finally get Arlo to actually talk about if the big, beefy Adonis is as missionary-with-the-lights-off as he looks) but at least they’re not just staring longingly at each other from across the room and then getting all sad about it anymore . Thankfully, Felix seems to be an old hand at clearing up the weird tension between the two of them, chiming in a delighted, “I’ve never seen you look so scary!” as he rifles through all the pictures from the Sleeping Beauty show. “I mean, you’re pretty scary when you go all furry, but also, you sort of just look like a big lanky puppy, because it’s just you, you know? This is someone else! Who is she! She's so cool!”

Arlo sighs and turns around to fix whatever Tina’s ruined with her foundation, and throws himself back into dolling her up. Thankfully, the actual festival’s not for a while yet. She complained about the unnecessarily early start when Arlo suggested the time, but now she’s glad he’s such a persnickety prick about scheduling. “I had a lot of fun with it,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders. “The original script notes said to get, y’know, sort of silly with it, but I wasn’t a big fan of that angle for a character like her. Yeah, I wanted to be campy, but not in the way…” He purses his lips. “Okay, well, Nate probably knows this, but a lot of classical ballets that have a female villains do this thing with them that I hate.” He frowns deeply, patting at Tina’s chin with gentle ferocity. “ An evil female character is supposed to be sort of… sort of a cautionary tale, I guess? Like your typical bitter spinster crone, the old hag, or the wicked stepsisters, things like that. So they’ll specifically cast a male dancer and put them in bright, gaudy facepaint and garish costumes that are supposed to be cartoonish and ugly, that you're supposed to find funny, to show you that this character is bad because she’s indelicate and mannish, and that’s why she’s evil.”

His mouth twists around the words, and he looks up, back at the vampires, leaving Tina a moment to really appreciate that Arlo’s comfortable enough with them to do what he’s only ever really done with her—which is ramble about something he’s passionate about. It’s always fun to watch. He turns back to her, and she just wishes his hands weren’t occupied, because he’s a big hand-talker otherwise. “I got the role because the professor thought it would be funny to stick me in a role like that, being so tall and, y’know,” he gestures vaguely to his faded old band tee and dark jeans, the thick leather cuff around his wrist. Tina doesn’t see what he really means, seeing as he looks cozy and content right now, but she gets what he’s going for. “He was expecting me to be awkward about it. The big, tough guy doing drag as the creepy crone caricature.” He huffs. “I talked with Demi about it, and we decided to say fuck that.” He sits up straighter, tilts up his chin, and looks down his nose at Tina.

She peers up at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly wonders if this is how Demi felt, playing Aurora when Carabosse looked down her nose at her like an insect under her heel.

“I thought Carabosse deserved better,” Arlo says fiercely. “If I was going to be a villain, I was going to be a damned good villain. I was going to tower over all the delicate, dainty little princesses and fairies, and I was going to be fierce. Professor Dacey wanted Aurora, and Candide, and Florine to be the epitome of sweet, delicate femininity, the ideal damsel in any classical show. Carabosse is supposed to be the complete opposite. You’re supposed to root against her, not want to be her. She’s a threat to the idea of womanhood, of the ideal feminine. She’s bold and selfish and she takes what she wants. I leaned into that. I even danced en pointe for parts of it, even though Carabosse isn't supposed to, and between the rehearsals and the actual performance, I thought my feet were gonna fall off, but it was worth it.”

Arlo smiles, and Tina is thrilled by the wickedness of it. She thinks she even sees just a hint of fang. Arlo’s been so careful about showing his teeth, ever since he told her what happened to him, why he disappeared for so long, so it's somehow special for him to feel like he can show her even a hint of what he’s become.

“Professor Dacey was pissed, afterwards, of course,” Arlo laughs, but there’s an edge to it. He seems to shrink. From Arlo to Carabosse to Arlo again. He looks down at his hands as they work on Tina more than at her face. “He didn’t, y’know, say anything he could have gotten fired over, but he did rail about being left out of planning and the budget and all that rot. Got even madder when Demi pointed out we’d spent our own money on the costumes. I think if he was tall enough to look down on me, he would have.” He snorts, a bitter curl to his mouth. Tina thinks of it painted bold, dark purple, thinks of how it would look with those teeth behind it. She wonders if he’d let her do his makeup for the festival. She’s not nearly as good at details as he is, but she’s no slouch either.

“You should have let me put raw fish in his hubcaps,” Tina mutters, just to make Arlo laugh. It works, and she beams at him.

“Would have been a waste of fish,” he mumbles, sucking his teeth. He finally picks up a bright eyeshadow palette and starts waffling over colors. He’s quiet while he deliberates, but after a while, he sighs. “I liked being Carabosse,” he says, like it’s a secret. Like he’s trying very hard not to be ashamed.

“I wish I could have seen it,” Adam says, almost dreamily. Tina could scream. “I— We could have, I mean. All of us. In solidarity.”

“Smooth,” Felix whispers.

“I’m sure it was a phenomenal performance,” Nate adds helpfully. He’s taken the album from Felix to flip through to some of Arlo’s other shows. “The passion you have for your characters shines through in just photos. It’s quite impressive.”

“You should have gone pro,” Tina mutters. “You’d be a household name by now.”

Arlo snorts and bops her with the brush. How many bops is that now? She’s certainly on a roll today. “And who’d keep you in line back here?” he teases.

Tina squints up at him and sticks out her tongue. “Like you’ve ever even tried to keep me in line, you big softie. You love the chaos, just admit it.”

“I’ll admit you to the hospital when you do something stupid and get yourself hurt again, how about that?”

They bicker like children back and forth while Arlo finishes her makeup, a wash of pink, purple, and blue eyeshadow and matching lipstick, overlaid with a lustrous sparkle to her cheekbones and a cute little black heart-shaped beauty mark under one eye. Felix gets a bi flag heart to match her eyeshadow around one eye, and then the rest is a sort of confetti splash of sparkly stars and hearts in every color. Even Nate goes for the bi eyeshadow (Bi-shadow? She should have been saying that this whole time!), making him, Tina, and Felix a matching set, and Mason consents to a very simple pan flag on his cheek. Tina suspects Adam only allows the eyeshadow treatment so he can have Arlo cup his face all tenderly, but she keeps the thought (mostly) to herself. He looks good in pastels, she thinks when she sees the finished blue, pink, and white.

Arlo draws a little heart under his eye too. The heart in Tina's chest almost explodes with warmth.

And then Arlo disappears into the bathroom, leaving the rest of them to entertain themselves while he gets ready on his own. They go through the album some more, and Tina tells them all about her favorite shows, because she went to every single one she could manage, and got Arlo’s school friends to send her videos of the ones she couldn’t. Tina Poname is Arlo Priestley’s number one fan, and that will never change. Not even now that she's got some competition.

When Arlo comes out of the bathroom, they all look up in sync, and he stands there, shifting anxiously from foot to foot under the attention, and lifts his hands in a stilted shrug. “So?” he asks, smiling nervously. He’s changed clothes, too. Tight pants, big boots, a mesh-sleeved black shirt underneath his patch-and-pin-covered denim vest. His wrists jingle with chunky bracelets, and his hair is braided neatly over one shoulder. But his makeup is what really steals the show. That insanely sharp cat-eye, of course, but one eye is done up in blue, pink, and white, and the other in yellow, white, purple, and black. He smiles timidly. “I, uh, I couldn’t really decide on just one,” he says, sticking his gloved hands into the pockets of his vest. “I’m, um, I’m not sure which one’s really right for me yet, I guess?” He shrugs again, and Tina watches delightedly as Adam stands up slowly, his eyes on Arlo with such an awed intensity she wonders if he even remembers there’s other people in the room. Arlo keeps babbling as he approaches, the words tumbling nervously from his black-painted lips. “I sort of like matching with you, Adam, and I know they’re both fine, but I—”

Adam grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, yanks him down to his level, and silences him with a kiss. Tina throws her arms up in the air with an impulsive shriek of “WOO!” that Felix echoes even louder. They high-five over Mason’s head, and he looks like he wants to throw them both out the window. Nate sits by with a pleasant little smile, which only fades when he takes note of the clock.

Adam and Arlo are still kissing, Arlo’s hands cupped around the vampire’s cheeks and Adam clinging to his vest like he'll drown if he lets go. Tina thinks she might see a hint of tongue when Nate loudly clears his throat.

They break apart with an indecent smacking noise, and Tina yelps out a sharp laugh when she sees Arlo’s black lipstick smeared all around Adam’s mouth.

Nate crosses his arms and smiles dryly at them. “Why don’t you two go fix your faces,” he suggests. “The rest of us will make sure the car is packed for the festival.”

“Um, yes. You�� We—” Arlo fumbles for a bit, touching his smeared lips, his eyes just a bit dazed. He and Adam look at each other, and then flee for the bathroom together.

Tina’s never been more excited for a festival in her life.

#the wayhaven chronicles #wayhavensummer #pride in wayhaven #tina poname #adam du mortain #a du mortain #felix hauville #f hauville #specialist agent mason #specialist agent m #nate sewell #n sewell #oc: arlo priestley #pidge writes #HELLO I AM FINISHING THIS AT 3:30 AM #I HAVE MY FIRST DAY OF MY NEW JOB TOMORROW #WISH ME LUCK #this turned out WAY longer than i meant it to but god was it fun #i hope you guys like it as much as i liked writing it #arlo playin w gender expression via ballet is my everything #the costume designs for carabosse can be SO GOOD #but some of them are SO BAD #ballet is like that #its very uuuuh traditional wrt its aesthetics and gender roles #and arlo and his friends were all like 'but what if not'#anyway title is v last minute bc *shrug*#tina gets to be the lilac fairy #i did so much reserach into this ballet y'all #the only thing i didnt do was watch the whole thing #tho i DID find it on yt so i could later....

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snowspryte15 · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Cruella

Let me ask you a question:Have you noticed the increase in stories about making villains more relatable to us, and even giving them something that seemed to be lacking in all the fairytales we all know so well?

Something like humanity?

Here’s the thing: no one is truly born evil, and to quote a line from Once Upon A Time, “Evil isn’t born; it’s made.” Perhaps the baddies were actually good people who were capable of being happy, finding love, and living their best lives. But unfortunately, a chain of events or even people who wronged them would lead them down a dark path that is often very hard to come back from. In other words, the stories and characters we know isn’t always black and white. (See what I did there?) You can say whatever you want about making villains relatable or even showing sympathy to them, but I stand by my humble opinion that the updated version of the fairytales and stories we grew up not only gives us a glimpse into the heroes and making them more like us, but also the villains because their more than just the 2D stock characters we grew up with over the years. In other words, it gives everyone more DEPTH. The same is true for Cruella. I realize many of you are starting to (if you aren’t already) get tired of films making the villains more relatable or even giving us a villain to show sympathy for. And I get that. But let me ask you this: is the world we see today always black and white to you? Should it always has to be good vs. evil when there are layers underneath the goodness and the evil that’s in this world? Should we automatically assume that all of the bad things that happen on the news are caused by bad people? I think you know the answer to this: no. We’re all capable of being good people, no matter what society tells us. But the fact that we’re all born to be originals and not copies of another individual but being told that we have to be “perfect” or “thin” or “beautiful” or “handsome” or any of those labels is what draws people to the dark side, and that includes giving into power, greed, malice, and hatred. And here’s something else to think about - we’re always told by those around us, whether that’s our loved ones or complete strangers, to hide what makes us unique or even brilliant because it may not sit well with everyone. That’s another reason why some people go towards the dark side. And on another level, they use what makes them unique to stand out in not-so pleasant ways, instilling fear into others by what they say and do. Both cases aren’t right, not by a long shot. Now do you see why not everything is black and white? It’s hard to take the animated films we grew up and breathe new life into them while keeping these thoughts in mind. Especially if we were taught at an early age who’s good and who’s evil, and that the baddies aren’t deserving of our sympathy or even redemption. I don’t know who exactly started this tradition of taking the fairytales, animated classics, and other stories we all grew up with and add more dimension and humanity to each of the characters, including the villains. But I’m glad they did. It gives us something to think about and makes us see that we have a little bit of evil inside of us. I may be in the minority when I say this, but movies and shows like Once Upon A Time, Maleficent, Ever After High, Descendants, and Cruella fascinate me because it allows me the chance to see how capable the villains are to being good people and their external and internal struggles to keep the goodness in their lives while navigating through all of the bad things and people that come into their lives which sets a course towards their villainous nature.

At least take into consideration the hard work the authors, screenwriters, and creators put into formulating the question “what if...” and how much fun they have breathing new life into these characters we grew up with and how much of ourselves we can see in the villains, no matter how much we try to deny it. There, I said it. I may once again be in the minority when I say this (it seems to be a theme lately on Tumbr, which is quite sad), but I enjoyed Cruella immensely. The acting, the costume designs, the hair and makeup, the songs... It was just bloody brilliant. Both Emmas - Emma Stone and Emma Thompson - played their parts extremely well. Ms. Stone navigating through her internal battle to be a good person while facing a conflict with the bad side was a wonderful site to see. And Ms. Thompson, I mean, come on. She’s just fantastic all the way around. To play a narcissist isn’t easy, but she makes it look so simple and enjoyable. I commend both of their performances in this film. And let’s not forget the rest of the cast - Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Emily Beechan, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong, Kayvan Novak, Jamie Demetriou, Andrew Leung, and John McCrea - such an outstanding ensemble! In the theatre, you know a show is fantastic because of its ensemble. The same applies in the movies as well. They may not get recognized as much as Emma Stone or Emma Thompson, but it was such a joy seeing these talented performers play their parts well, and the depth they played at was a joy to watch. Let’s talk about the costumes, hair, and makeup. This film better get awards for all of those areas (or at least nominations) because the designs and styles were truly epic. It’s hard to get the fashion of the times right without extensive research and a little bit of creativity and imagination thrown in for good measure. But Jenny Beavan and Nadia Stacey deserve all of the praise and accolades for rocking out the 1970s with boldness and some pretty wicked designs. I’ve noticed skimming on here the discontent many of you have for portraying Cruella as being a villain we should have sympathy for, especially since she wanted to skin Dalmatians for a coat. That alone should be cause for her to not be worth an ounce of sympathy, and I understand that. As an animal lover myself, I’m inclined to agree with you. But I’m going to let you in on one spoiler that I ask you take into consideration: no Dalmatian dogs were killed or skinned in this movie. I repeat: no Dalmatian dogs were killed or skinned in this movie. And here’s something else I want you to be on the lookout for should you decide to watch this film. During the end credits, there is a special message out there for those of you who are thinking about owning a dog: “Every dog deserves a loving home. If you’re ready for the commitment of pet ownership, please consider visiting your local animal rescue to find the right pet for you.” That message alone speaks as to how far we’ve come in society, and here’s why. Whenever we see movies or TV shows that feature dogs and cats, particularly puppies and kittens, we tend to rush out right away and getting them because they’re so adorable. But when they grow up, we tend to let them go and leave them in some unpleasant places. And organizations like PETA beseeched the film and the company to take a stand and use their voice to encourage adoption of pets in shelters and rescue centers and not pet stores. Apparently, the film and the company listened because they put this message during the end credits. Well done. I may not be able to convince you to go see this movie or give it another chance if you already saw it, nor should I try. But I do want you to take into consideration the amount of updated versions of the stories we all know and love, and how much the authors, screenwriters, and other creative types are bringing in humanity and depth to these characters. We’re not 2D characters like the heroes, heroines, and villains are often seen as in the original stories, so why should they be treated and seen as such for generations to come? We’re more complex and layered than seen in fairytales and animated movies. Also, I don’t think these stories where the authors give villains a chance to experience goodness before they became bad or even blurring the lines between good and evil are going away. It allows us as human beings to see and try understand that we’re all capable of being good, but it’s the events and people who come into our lives that shake things up and even brings questions of whether we’re truly good or evil that sets us down a path we alone can walk. And more importantly, it gives us as the audience a chance to see a little bit of ourselves in these characters, even if you don’t relate to the villains at all. I suggest you stop griping about the rise in updated versions of the films, TV series, and book series of the original classics and accept that they are here to stay. I’m not saying you should read or watch them if they’re not your cup of tea, but at least try to understand that things were NEVER always black and white, especially where fairytales, animated films, and even more stories are concerned. At least try to understand that part, okay? Is that too much to ask? I’m not here to change your mind. I realize I can’t do that. So many of you are so set in your ways and opinions, and all I can do is pray for you. But I am here to share with you my thoughts on Cruella and how the updated versions of these stories are here to stay, whether you like it or not. And I’m also here to try to help you see that these stories allow us to see a little bit of ourselves in these characters we grew up with, even if it’s through a new set of eyes. You are welcome to disagree with me, or even not say anything at all. But all I ask is that you be respectful of my opinions and what I have to say. I will not tolerate any hate speech or disrespectful language. You do that, and I will block you. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything. It’s that simple, and yet it’s so hard, especially on Tumblr. I hope I didn’t take up too much of your time.

#disney cruella #emma stone #emma thompson #jenny beavan #nadia stacey #what if #villains #brilliant #bad #a little bit mad #opinion #bekind #be respectful #costumes #hairandmakeup #101 dalmatians #dalmatian #something to think about

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noirewrites · 4 years ago

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Mending the Rip (Of My Shirt and Your Heart)

Kitty Section are practising when Luka's favorite Jagged Stone shirt rips. Luckily his latest costume designer is on hand to fix it, but who knew Marinette could get so tongue tied? And doesn't she only do that over boys she likes?

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Pairing: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Adrien Agreste/Kagami Tsurugi, Kagami Tsurugi & Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Chapter 1: Listening to Your Jagged Heart Song

The designer said in a tone of faux cheerfulness, “Her lies aren’t hurting anyone, right?” A sudden shrill screech of guitar turned her attention to Luka who was frowning at the instrument.

You know I love unicorns

And that they make me feel better!

I see their faces everywhere I go

Dreaming about them at the nights!

“I am glad Mr. Agreste allowed Adrien to be a part of the concert,” Marinette said as she moved her attention from her sketches to Kagami who sat beside her.

The Japanese girl nodded in reply. “I know Mr. Agreste’s hard to convince, but after Adrien meticulously pointed out that his participation in the band could help promote Agreste Fashion, it wasn’t a tough job.”

The designer hummed in approval as she bent over her sketchbook, adding colors to the designs.

“But tell me one thing.” The disdain in Kagami’s voice caused Marinette to look up.

“Who called that brunette here?” The Tsurugi girl pointed at someone, and Marinette followed her direction to catch sight of Lila Rossi reclining on a chair, sipping orange juice as Mylene sat beside her on a stool, enjoying the band’s performance.

“I mean, it’s not my business but… as far as I am aware, she isn’t dating anyone in the band. And it doesn’t seem like she’s here to offer a hand.”

“Oh,” Marinette rolled her eyes slightly before turning back to task in hand, “that’s Lila. I believed you knew her? For a few days ago, she claimed to have been Mrs. Tsurugi’s favorite student before arthritis caused her to take a break from fencing.”

“Mom’s favorite student? Baka.”

“Baka?”

“It’s a curse.”

Marinette raised an eyebrow as her lips twitched in a smirk. “Didn’t know you cursed.”

“Only when I am frustrated. But seriously, I hadn’t had a shade of idea about her existence before she appeared in that photograph with Adri-kun. He told me she’s a pathological liar, but to this extent… Wow, I must really go knock some sense into her.”

Kagami moved forward, only to be stopped by an iron grip on her wrist.

“Don’t,” Marinette said in a low tone as she pulled the other girl back. “I have tried uncovering her lies, but…”

“But what?”

“She just plays with the words until they turn against you. I have tried unmasking her on many occasions, but no one listens and…”

Marinette’s voice trailed off, before she slightly shook her head and said in a tone of faux cheerfulness, “Her lies aren’t hurting anyone, right?”

Kagami stared in shock as the designer wiped her eyes before smiling at her.

A sudden shrill screech of guitar caused the girls to turn their attention to the deck where the band had been rehearsing.

“Sorry, I kind of missed a beat,” Luka said apologetically, looking down as he frowned at his guitar.

“I guess it’s alright,” Adrien patted the tall boy before adding, “We have been practising for one hour non-stop. How about a break, guys?”

The idea was highly appreciated, for the other band members immediately left their musical instruments to relax themselves after the hard work. Rose and Juleka moved over to the railings to talk while Ivan walked to where Mylene and Lila were sitting, sitting down and looping an arm around his tiny girlfriend.

Adrien turned his attention to the girls and grinned at them, waving eagerly. Marinette smiled in acknowledgement and Kagami waved back, an adorable blush now dusting her cheeks.

He came over to them, hugging Kagami before giving her a peck on the lips.

“Hey there, Gami-chan,” he whispered, causing Kagami to giggle.

“Hello, Koibito,” she whispered, booping his nose a little.

Watching the two from a close distance, Marinette couldn’t help but smile. Contrary to the earlier times, she didn’t feel jealous of Kagami anymore. ‘Adrigami’, as she had dubbed the couple, was really very cute and sweet, and Marinette was happy to be best friends with them.

Between the responsibilities of Guardianship, school work, bakery stuff, hangouts with friends, designing commissions and babysitting, Marinette wasn’t sure if she could additionally juggle her love life. So, she opted to let it rest for a while, at least till she got the hang of her recent busy schedule.

That is what she had told herself. The reality… it was different.

Adrien had harbored a special place in her heart, and letting him go hadn’t been easy for her. But with time, Marinette came to realise that her unrequited feelings were doing her more harm than good. In times when her friends were abandoning her, Adrien and Kagami were two of the three people who had at least offered a listening ear to her distraught civilian self. And the girl could not afford losing any of her true friends for any reason.

So, she made herself happy in their happiness. When the two held hands, Marinette’s heart did a little dance of joy for her friends’ happiness. When they got lost in each others’ eyes, she stayed on the sidelines, watching them with a small smile. And when they kissed….

...It had been hard at first. No, scratch hard. For the first few times, Marinette had felt as if someone had detached her heart from her chest and stomped on it ruthlessly, right in front of her eyes. Her pillow and Tikki had been the witness of those silent tears she shed as she came face-to-face with the feelings of the first heartbreak. Many times, she just wanted to pull the two apart, to scream her feelings out to Adrien and at least let him know.

Had it not been for Tikki, she would have been nearly akumatized, too.

��But her determination and will power made her witness the couple’s sweet moments, again and again. Until she didn’t feel the bitter twinge on seeing them kiss. Until she managed to remain aloof even when they gave each other the gooey eyes. Until she felt no butterflies on seeing Adrien’s radiant smile.

Until her heart finally let go of Adrien.

“Musing about something, Ma-ma-marinette?”

The designer let out a squawk as she jumped nearly a foot in the air, turning around and coming face to face with Luka Couffaine.

“Oh,” she chuckled nervously, straightening her dress, “it’s you.”

Luka laughed good-naturedly, causing Marinette to blush.

Luka Couffaine had been her third true friend, and her closest confidant ever since the Battle of the Miraculous had taken place. He had been there for her, letting her cry her heart out. He didn’t prod her about what the reason for her breakdown was, just provided her the much needed shoulder. He had shielded her from the akuma cloud, sacrificing himself to save her.

His music had helped calm her inner storm. But the most important thing? She still couldn’t forget his confession when he had been akumatized as Silencer.

You’re the most extraordinary girl, Marinette.

Clear as a musical note and as sincere as a melody.

You’re the music that’s been playing inside my head since the day we first met.

I won’t let anything happen to you.

It still shook her to the core in a very pleasant way on thinking about that confession.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Marinette smiled at the boy.

“So, did you make anything new this time?” he asked inquisitively.

“Oh yes! Wanna see?”

“Always eager to.”

They moved over to her designing stand where her sketchbook lay open. Thumbing through a few pages, Marinette reached her newest creation.

“So, I made this new addition to your mask! It’s just like the previous one, except the main color scheme has more of a bluish-white hue ‘cause I figured that blue’s kinda your colour. But this isn’t all! In the T-shirts, I added a calligraphed ‘Kitty Section’ design too, so as to promote the band! And maybe we can add some stitching designs here in the side for additional decor, though I haven’t given it much thought yet.” Marinette gushed, pointing out the various elements in her designs as Luka listened with rapt attention.

“I love the change in colour scheme, Marinette,” he finally said, “And the design of the shirt looks awesome too. But…”

Luka’s voice trailed off, causing the designer to look at him inquisitively.

“But what?”

He stayed silent for a moment, before asking in a low, gentle tone, “Are you alright?”

Her mouth went dry at the sudden question. Marinette had tried her best to keep her despair hidden from Kagami, when she had quoted his lines to her, but somehow, Luka still managed to know that she wasn’t alright.

And that must have been the reason for his slip-up earlier during practise, she further deduced.

“I—it’s no big deal, really!” she said, plastering a big smile on her face. “How about I tell you the colour scheme for the text on the shirt?” She said, attempting to change the subject.

The look on Luka’s face screamed that he didn’t believe her, but he smiled ruefully and gestured for her to continue.

Shooting him a grateful smile, Marinette placed the sketchbook back on the desk and picked up a coloured pencil from her assortment of paints and colours. But before she could colour the piece, a hand shot out of nowhere, knocking the red paint over her sketchbook.

Pulling her sketchbook back in reflex, Marinette jerked back and let out a moan of despair on noticing that she had been a second too late, for the red paint had managed to fall over the T-shirt design and ruin it completely.

“Oops, I am sorry! I didn’t notice the paint.” The voice did no good to Marinette, rather it turned her despair to anger.

Eyes sparking, she looked up at Lila, who had craftily masked her smug smirk under an expression that appeared apologetic. Balling her fists, she was about to lunge at the Italian lying doll before a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She looked up at Luka, who shook his head in the slightest way, assuring her with a look that he would take care of this situation.

“You should have looked where you were going, Lila. You ruined the design now,” Luka pointed out, his brows slightly furrowed.

“Oh, I am sorry again,” Lila sniffled, before adding, “But shouldn’t Marinette have closed the paint after use? I mean, after that, even though I or someone else would have knocked it over by mistake, no harm would have been done, right?”

Marinette was appalled at the disguised accusation, but didn’t say anything. She was used to Lila’s faux innocence and disguised blaming.

However, feeling Luka’s grip tighten on her shoulder, she could tell that he definitely wasn’t happy. And it made her feel glad.

“Really though Lila, that excuse is utt—”

“Leave her out of it, Luka,” Rose spoke up from behind. “She obviously wouldn’t have meant it, right Lila?”

The brunette nodded fervently. “Thank you so much for understanding me, Rose. You are the best!”

“No problem. Plus, Marinette’s so talented she can remake the design again! Right Marinette?” the blonde gushed happily.

Sighing, Marinette pulled up a weak smile as she gave Rose a thumbs-up. She didn’t speak anything, though. Words simply failed her at the moment.

Everyone went back to their chit-chat, except for Adrien and Kagami who now came up to her.

“I am sorry for what happened, Marinette,” Kagami said, her voice containing barely restrained anger as she glanced at Lila, “If only you had let me…”

“It’s o-okay as I told you, ‘Gami,” the designer waved off the topic again as she ignored the slight choke in her throat and mild sting in her eyes. She turned to look at Adrien, shooting him a rueful look, “She really didn’t harm anyone, right?”

Adrien’s breath hitched and he suddenly became a lot interested in his shoes. As for Kagami, she finally understood why Marinette had chosen to repeat her previous statement again.

“Anyways, I guess I should go back to make a new design, right? I can definitely do it!”

“But Marin—” Luka spoke up, but Marinette had turned back to her workstation, ignoring everyone.

Kagami shot Adrien a look that spelled trouble, causing the blond to gulp. She pulled him away from the scene, leaving Luka there alone.

He looked at the girl working on the design, the concern evident in his eyes. But if she didn’t want him to intervene, well, he was going to respect that.

Sighing, the musician slung his guitar over his shoulder and moved to give Marinette some space. However, he had forgotten to notice one thing.

RIIPPP!

The sound caught everyone’s attention, including Luka’s. Eyes bulging in shock, he looked down to find that his Jagged-Stone shirt had gotten stuck in some stray nail on the table and his movement had caused the fabric to tear a bit at the hem.

Before he even got the idea to unhook his now damaged shirt from the nail, Lila jumped forward, announcing with a cheery tone, “I have been Gabriel Agreste’s muse for some weeks and things like this happen in the fashion industry! Don’t worry, I got this!”

The brunette leaned down to unhook the shirt, but Luka caught the malicious glint in her eye before she applied a bit too much force, causing the tear to widen even more.

“Oh goodness!” the girl wailed out in what Luka knew was a faux apologetic tone, “The fabric’s so old that it just got ripped even more! I am sorry Luka.”

Of course she didn’t mean the apology.

Before Luka could say anything, Marinette spoke up, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Lila. Maybe you should not have intervened in the first place.”

Lila turned around to glower at her, before masking the foul look with an innocent pout, “You mean to say it’s my fault?”

It was Mylene who spoke up now. “Marinette’s kind of right, Lila. Plus, she’s the most experienced with fabrics out of all of us. So, it’s better we let her deal with the situation, right?”

Lila pouted, but then nodded slightly in agreement as she got up. Luka was relieved to get distanced from the brunette. Plus, he always welcomed Marinette’s presence.

Marinette smiled at him as she walked towards him. Her smile caused a soft melody to resonate in his heart. However, the subtle notes of a cacophony attracted his attention, too.

Just in time, Luka saw Lila subtly edging her foot out. As Marinette tripped, the brunette smirked a bit before continuing down her path.

As she fell, Luka lurched forward, his arms spread out. She collided with his chest as he wrapped his arms around her waist, securing her fall. Her arms came to rest upon his shoulders for support.

“You okay?”

“Ye-yeah!” Marinette stuttered, her cheeks blooming pink. “Fine being here! I MEAN, I am fine, how are you?”

Luka chuckled, “I am fine too, thanks for asking.”

The girl blushed again, before looking down, “So.. your shirt—”

“Oh yes,” he helped her stand up straight, then proceeded to unhook the shirt from the table. Marinette bent down to inspect the tear.

“Wait,” Luka said softly, causing her to look up. “Let me remove my jacket, it would be easier.”

The designer opened her mouth to assure him that it was fine like that, but he had removed the jacket by then. As he handed the jacket over to Juleka, Marinette couldn’t help but gawk at Luka’s physique. She had known he was well built from his time as Viperion, but this lean…

Coughing from lack of air, Marinette came back to reality, blushing hard. Luka looked at her inquisitively, causing her to duck her head and inspect the tear.

Oh goodness, what a wrong choice she had made.

Looking at his physique from far was something else, but seeing the bare skin beneath the tear caused her jaw to nearly drop to the ground. Being a designer, she knew she should be used to such situations, but somehow, in this particular situation, her mind just short circuited.

Why was she looking at the shirt again? What was she supposed to do here?

“So Marinette, do you think the tear can be mended?” Luka asked, causing her to nearly fall on her butt in shock.

Oh. Mending. Right. Task at hand first, bare skin gawking later.

What the hell am I even thinking right now?

Her hands deftly lifted the fabric, as she focused her mind on the rip and not the slight tangy, citrus smell mixed with sweat. It was hard, but she finally managed to get the job done.

“It’s a manageable tear,” Marinette said as she got up and straightened her dress a little. “Not much, so a stitch in time can still save nine!”

“Awesome,” Luka said, delighted. “This is my favorite shirt, and I don’t want it to get damaged.”

The girl reached into her purse and pulled out a needle and a white thread, “Well, let’s sew it together then!”

Luka smiled in return, before noticing that everyone around them were silently giving him and Marinette the lovey-dovey eyes. That didn’t trouble him much, but the icy glare that Lila was pointing at Marinette…

“How about we go to my cabin?” Luka offered, causing Marinette to look at him in confusion. “You know, because the wind can make the shirt flutter, and then again…”

He subtly gestured at something, and out of the corner of her eye, Marinette noticed Lila glaring daggers at her. Gulping a little and then laughing nervously, she said, “Oh sure! Downstairs it is then!”

The guitarist smiled slightly, holding his hand out to her. Marinette put her hand in his and let him guide her.

All the way, she kept marvelling at how despite the difference in sizes, their hands had perfectly fit with each other.

#miraculous fanfic #lukanette #adrigami #platonic marigami #lila being lila #mildly flustered marinette #luka being protective of marinette #kagami being protective of marinette #lila salt?#kitty section #fluff #mild angst #miracuclass oblivious of lila as usual

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ceeyuin666 · 5 years ago

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Disney Villains Recruiting: An Introduction

Better late than never, I hope? There’s a few out there already, and I’m way too late considering the shows are over, but here’s my take on a introduction to the world of Tokyo Disney’s Villains Recruiting program.

This introduction includes a run down of the show and its amazing characters that took social media by storm.

If you’ve the courage to seek true beauty of elegance than proceed… into the Villains World.

All photos in this post were taken by myself, please do not repost on other blogs, websites or social media networks such as Twitter or Instagram!

The Concept

During the years 2015-2018, Tokyo Disneysea’s Halloween celebrated the wonderful world of Disney’s famous Villains. While the main Villains like Maleficent and Ursula dominated parades such as The Villains World and the night fireworks of Fantasmic!, their team of underlings were sent to work in the smaller parts of the park.

So every Halloween, the area of American Waterfront rolled out a red carpet and welcomed ten unique characters, each based off a famous Disney Villain, who’s sole purpose was to recruit humans into the Villains World. The program was known as Disney Villains Recruiting.

The Show

The original show, with a game known as the Six Poses Dance itself was a 15-20 minute skit that took place every hour or so at American Waterfront. Six of the ten ‘Recruiters’ would come out, along with two hosts, meaning in order to catch all ten characters, you would have to make multiple visits to the park.

Each Recruiter quickly introduced themselves and showed off a unique pose that represented them. Then the show becomes a game of Simon Says where the hosts will call out a Recruiters name and guests must respond with the correct pose. The game usually became chaotic when the hosts starting yelling out random things and guests could watch the Recruiters scramble to match whatever was being asked for them.

Finally, a guest would be picked out of the audience to participate in the game alongside the Recruiters. At the end of the game, the guest would be asked if they have now been convinced to come join the Villains World. If they say no, there would be a loud cry of disappointment and the disgruntled Recruiters would drag the guest back to their seat. If yes, after the yelps of joy, the guest would be asked to return to the Tower of Terror in 666 years where the Recruiters would be eagerly waiting for them.

In 2016-2017, a second show, called Villains One Point Course was introduced to rotate with the now Special Pose Dance show. Each show only consisted of two Recruiters, six would appear throughout the day. Similar to before, the two present Recruiters would introduce themselves and their pose before going into a game similar to Rock Paper Scissors, except you had to match the pose the Recruiter was doing- which was almost always their own pose so it wasn’t hard to get it right. Two guests would then be selected and have their outfits judged by two new hosts who would then offer one point that would make them Villain Worthy.

In 2018, the show returned to its original format of the Six Pose Dance and the One Point Course, along with its hosts, did not return.

The Hosts

Mr. V

Known as the grandmaster of the program, Mr. V is the lead host of the original Six Pose Dance show. He appears to be in charge of the Recruiters and they all speak to him with respect, sometimes calling him Mister or V-san for short.

He is a rather relaxed character much like a father watching all his chaotic children make a mess he doesn’t have to clean up. More often than not he keeps to himself in the background while the others perform, only ever speaking up to scold them or laugh at them when they make a mistake.

Mr. V is however rather possessive of his assistant, Ms Scatter, who, despite her years of hard work, he refuses to acknowledge her as a real Villain.

Despite the similarities in their designs, this character has no relation with Dr. Facilier from the Princess and the Frog.

Ms. Scatter

Scatter is the human representative of the show and represents in the audience in that she is constantly fawning over how beautiful and enticing the Villains World looks from the outside and her own goal is to one day join them. In the early years she runs around interrupting the Recruiters, calling out to guests to not be deceived by their wickedness despite how gorgeous and tempting it may be.

She is the one character that goes through considerable character growth over the course of the four years and her costume also changes slightly each year. In the beginning, she is reckless and clumsy, the Recruiters picked on her, bullied her and Mr. V very much controlled her. By the end she laughed with them as though they were equal and spoke back to Mr. V whenever she disagreed with him.

In the 2018 show, the Villains offered recruited guests a flag with the mark of a true Villain which they would be granted when they return in 666 years. At the end of the show, as the Recruiters left, Scatter would stay behind and reveal to the audience the mark of a true Villain which was on the inside of her jacket. When Mr. V comes to chase her about what’s taking her so long, she hides the mark and turns to the audience, signalling them to keep her secret. This suggests that even without Mr. V and the others knowing, she has graduated into a real Villain.

Ms. Villa

Host of the One Point Course, Ms Villa is the self proclaimed fashion diva of the Villains World. She is stylish and mature, strutting around offering advice to guests on how to better their outfits.

She is very much in her own world as she parades around the show, completely ignoring the panicked cries of her assistant whenever she rambles off about an idea that is clearly unrealistic. To the Recruiters however she is rather motherly, giving them pet names and teasing them like children.

While she holds a very welcoming aura, she always catches the audience by surprise at the end of the show where she demands payment for her services.

Mr. Polite

Known as MP or Polite for short, he is Ms Villa’s assistant during the One Point Course show. He is more put together than Scatter but also spends a lot of the show yelling after Ms Villa.

When left to his own accord, MP is sneaky and playful, even over confident in himself but his job is mostly to keep Ms Villa from going over the top with the guests so that is his main focus. He seems more well informed of the human world, unlike the other Villains and has to reign them in when they’re being unreasonable such as asking him to buy them snacks from the park.

He gets along well with the rest of the Recruiters who all treat him as their own personal assistant, something he does not seem to mind. He gets along particularly well with Daru who he usually promises to take on a walk after the show.

The Recruiters

Apple Poison

Themed off the poison apple used to put Snow White into an eternal sleep, Apple works for the Evil Queen from the film Snow White.

Tall, dark and handsome, Apple has the most mature look of the men’s Recruiters, and coming from the oldest Disney animated him, he is teased by his workmates and guests alike for being the family ‘uncle’ or ‘old man’. There are many times where he also has trouble keeping up with the right poses or falls from pranks by the others, showing he’s also quite naive.

Apple is the most charming of the men’s Recruiters, his quotes usually laced with cheesy offers of escorting guests or sweeping them away. He normally keeps to himself while the others are running around, though his ongoing rivalry with Jack brings out a more immature side to him.

He is also the best English speaker of the cast as his main quotes are also half in English and he often lectures guests in English as well. He is constantly blowing kisses to guests or his prop posing apple, drawing out squeals of excitement from guests.

Quotes 🍎Ladies and Gentlemen, one bite of this sweet apple with make you the most beautiful in the world. 🍎Like how the poison intoxicates this apple, allow me to intoxicate you all.

Jack Heart

Hailing from Wonderland, Jack works for the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. He makes jokes of turning back into a playing card so it can be assumed he is the personification of the jack of hearts card.

Jack is known as the entertainer of the Villains World and he is indeed very entertaining to watch. While the others strut along the red carpet, Jack is always seen skipping around, cutting corners and getting right into the faces of guests. Even when standing in one spot he is usually stretching strangely or contorting for the enjoyment of the guests.

As a super playful character, Jack gets along best with Dalmetia who he calls his best friend. The two get along very well and walk around linking arms and high-fiving each other all the time. On the flip side, Jack seems to down right hate Apple who he will taunt and make faces at. While it’s not clearly stated why their relationship is so bad, it seems to purely because Jack hates Apple for being so much taller than him.

He is also one of the only Recruiters that does not react happily at the mention of their Master; instead, when the Queen of Hearts is brought up, Jack usually hides in fear, clutches his neck in case he’ll be beheaded or runs away.

Quotes ❤️My world it the world of entertainment! And that’ll make your heart go- Aow! ❤️Like how Alice found Wonderland, so long as you all hold darkness in your hearts, I’ll appear before you again just like the Cheshire Cat.

Mr. Dalmetia

A puppy given a human body by his Master Cruella De Vil from the film 101 Dalmatians.

Mr. Dalmetia, Daru for short, is an excitable and selfish character who is usually chasing after his best friend Jack or running away from Scar. He teases everyone, friends and guests alike in a crude manner, sticking his tongue out at people or pushing over their toys. Some of the others tease him with games of fetch and he will go sprinting across the performance area, then return extremely grumpy when he realises he’s been duped.

While Daru and Jack are best friends, Daru generally gets along well enough with the rest of the men’s Recruiters. Scar, from the ladies team, is obviously madly in love with him- a feeling he does not reciprocate. For four years, he runs from her, turns her down her advances and down right rejects her any chance he gets. However, at the end of 2018, while hesitant, he agrees to wait alongside her until the guests come see them again in 666 years.

He is the very embodiment of a puppy and even Mr. V comments during his introduction that he’s yet to shake all his canine habits; he is sometimes caught sitting like a dog, scratching his neck as though there’s a collar there and bugging the others after the show to take him for a walk.

Quotes 🐶This is my WAN-derful pose! 🐶Everyone, you have to look after your cute little pets. After all... it is common enough to wear fur here, right?

Malfie

Holding his Master in the highest regard is Malfie who works for Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. His name has also been romanised by fans as Malfi, Malfy or Malefy- while Malfi is likely most directly accurate, I personally am too use to writing it as Malfie, though none of the above would be considered incorrect.

The most narcissistic of the Recruiters, even dubbed Nar-fie, Malfie carries a hand mirror around with him at all times so that he can always admire his own beauty. On the off chance one of the other members manages to sneak away with the mirror, he becomes uncharacteristically frantic until he can find it again.

While Malfie does not love anyone like he loves himself, he gets along with a majority of the other characters fairly well, particularly Joe and Farja. He is also the most popular victim when the ladies decide to start bullying the men’s team- Farja, despite the fact that she and Malfie get along, is most likely to lead the charge in picking on him.

Malfie is in canon the personification of a crow, whether or not he is Maleficent’s crow that appears in the movie is unclear. He does however, consider Diaval from the live action movie Maleficent his rival in beauty.

Quotes 😈It is I! 😈Beauty like mine could grant you whatever you wished for; money, love... even the wish to become a Villain!

Eight-foot Joe

A dedicated worker for the sea-witch Ursula from the Little Mermaid is Eight-foot Joe. His introduction suggests that he is in fact hiding his extra legs which leads fans to conclude he is an actual octopus.

Joe is the tired office worker of the group, the only one that treats the program as the job that it is. Based off Ursula’s business as the sea-witch, Joe’s introduction includes him launching into what likes a rehearsed speech advertising Ursula’s services. When not at the microphone, Joe is usually hiding behind guests or sitting down somewhere away from the red carpet.

Of all the Recruiters, Joe is the most crass. He speaks rudely to guests, usually telling them off about one thing or another. He teases the other Recruiters but can rarely be caught sharing a laugh with them. Like Jack, his reactions to mentions of his Master are usually of fear, likely because he is overworked and insulting Ursula will only result in more work for himself.

In the early years he was very vocal about how tired he was and how he did not need friends, but the end of 2018’s season saw him the most emotional and commenting on how he wishes he had more time with them.

Quotes 🐙What is it that burdens you? Some human trouble? Or perhaps... a burden of love? 🐙I hope you all have an oct-ful... I mean, wonderful day.

Lady Pirate Hock

Working for the infamous Captain Hook from the world of Peter Pan is Lady Pirate Hock. She is, without a doubt, most popular amongst her fellow ladies Recruiters.

Hock is the most suave and flirtatious of the ladies Recruiters, though her wiles are only ever directed at either the ladies or female guests. Scatter, Veil, Farja and Hades can all be caught swooning over her and fighting for her attention when she offers to escort any of them after the show. Even amongst the men’s team she is known to be handsome and popular.

While her overall character is extremely charming and almost prince like, she has an endearing childish side that usually shows when she’s picking on the men’s team or running off with their props. Having said that, she is extremely protective of the ladies team, particularly Veil, when the men retaliate.

For the longest time I mistook her name for Hook, but after some fact checking, it can be confirmed that her English romanisation would be Hock.

Quotes ⚓️The sun shines brightly again today... oh sun, your light is not what I need today. What I need is the beautiful light of the moon. ⚓️The sun’s light is dazzling, but what dazzles me most right now ... are all your beautiful smiles.

Veil

The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Villain, Frollo, has Veil has his underling. Though not specially stated, there have been instances where she alludes to the fact that she may be the bell a top the Notre Dame.

If Veil were present on any particular day, you would hear her coming long before they reach the performance area. She also carries a small hand bell with her that she rings loudly as she walks around, much to the dismay of some of her fellow cast members. Though if the men complain she tends to ring it more loudly in their ear.

She is the most refined of and of the cast, speaking formally to everyone else and walking with a grace not seen in the others. She is closest with Hock whom she appears to have a crush on, blushing whenever they hold hands. However every time Jack approaches her, she quickly and harshly brushes him off. When asked why, she claims it is because Jack makes fun of her pose.

Veil has the voice of an angel, she often breaks into the song halfway through her introduction, needing Scatter to stop her and remind her to please teach the audience her pose.

Quotes 🔔This bell that was bestowed upon me by Master Frollo will surely shake your heart 🔔God help the outcasts, children of God.

Pretty Scar

Taking on the same name as her Master is Pretty Scar, working for the Lion King’s Scar. She is what one could call the black sheep of the family because despite being a Villain, she values all things that are considered cute and pretty. She runs around pouting dramatically looking for compliments which all the other Recruiters find unfitting of a Villain.

When introduced by the hosts, it’s said Scar is disliked by all the other Recruiters and during her own speech she the others are always looking for places to hide or pushing each other closer so that they do not have to listen to her. When interacting with the others she is mostly the one pushing herself onto them, Jack being one of the few that won’t completely turn her away.

She is also madly in love Mr. Dalmetia, despite him always turning her down she does not let up. She is always chasing after him and attempting to cling to him, calling him her ‘Darling’. While the other ladies Recruiters don’t seem to pay much attention to her love for Daru, when Daru finally agrees to stay with her, Farja and Hock who were present congratulated her.

Based on the fact that Jack calls her ‘Hyena-Girl’ it can be assumed she is the personification of a hyena, similar to the group of hyenas that work for her Master.

Quotes 🐱Hmph, hmph! I’m grumpy today because no one’s called me cute! Ah! That feels good! 🐱Darling!

Farja

Flying in from Agrabah is Farja who works for Jafar from the film Aladdin. Her most prominent features are her flowing black and red hair and flowing dress that she shows off on the red carpet.

Farja is easily the most bratty of the ladies Recruiters, if the audience does not give her an impressed enough reaction to her magic tricks she will complain really loudly and gesture for more applause. When watching the others, if they mess up or do anything silly she is first to laugh really loudly. On the other hand, if something does not please her she tends to scream in a person’s face until whatever is upsetting her stops.

She gets along quite well with the other ladies Recruiters, excluding Scar, and is one of the members that swoons of Hock all the time. She often fights for Hock’s attention and laughs excitedly when Hock escorts her to and from the show.

While she screams out angrily whenever Iago is mentioned, it does seem she is based off the parrot which explains why she gets along with Malfie who is a crow.

Quotes 🌹Isn’t my magic simply amazing? In happy times and sad times, remember it and your heart will bloom too! 🌹Villains Sassoon!

Ms. Hades

Once again taking the name of her Master Hades from Hercules, is Ms Hades. Unlike her hotheaded Master, she is the most indifferent of the ladies Recruiters.

She believes in just letting people do as they please because she too wants to just let people do as they please and not carry any of the responsibility. She acts like a tired mother watching her chaotic children as the other Recruiters run around messing with each other.

While she is possibly the quietest member of the entire team and the most professional. While she may not be as vocal as the others though, she is often with them admiring each other’s props or fighting for Hock’s attention. At any mention of her Master though she becomes extremely excited and waves enthusiastically to decorations in his image.

Even though she does not seem to notice it, whenever she high fives or gets too close to the other members, they tend to back away as though they have been burned, after which she follows them curiously causing them to run away faster.

Quotes 🔥Entering this world without permission… do as you please. I turn a blind eye… as I please. 🔥In human terms you could call it liberation, call it freedom!

#disney villains recruiters #villains recruiters #手下 #tokyo disneysea #tds #villains world #halloween #disney #tdr

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girllovescomic · 4 years ago

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Winter Begonia episode 33 recap

The episode start with Lin Danqiu talking about finding what he thought was his family, wanting to turn his life around, but his crippling gambling debt prevented him from doing so. Aiyu told him everything would be alright, she would sell their ancestor’s estate and pay off his debts. At that moment, he decided/realized that he was a Zeng, that Aiyu and him were blood sibling, as he received such a huge favor from the family he never knew. That gave him motivation to protect his ‘sister’, to carry on the ancestral line and repay their kindness. That is all fine and dandy, but that is not your family. You are not blood, Rui Rui is. He slaps himself upon the realization that he got his sister to debase herself for his sake, telling Rui Rui he is sorry.

Er Ye arrives at the station looking for his bae. He spots Zeng Aiyu and asks her if she saw Shang Lao Ban. She tells him that he went for a chat with her gege. She then tells him that Rui Rui told her about Fengyi’s situation. She seems interesting in hearing about her daughter, but CFT tells her that he is raising the child, not to worry. She tells him she is not worried, just curious. He tells her that he knows about her prejudice towards opera performers but the troupe would not neglect the baby, will raise her well, and that she will not always live there. Probably wants to raise the baby with his wife until irresponsible baby Fan Lian grows up. I vote for keeping the baby with her biological uncle since she is Rui Rui only link to his blood sibling. OK, Er Ye pulls a picture of his wifey holding his niece and WHY THE FUCK DOES A STRAIGHT DUDE HAVE A PICTURE OF HIS SO-CALLED BROTHER IN HIS POCKET? Give me an explanation show!? He gives it to Aiyu as a keepsake to remind the baby by, and perhaps give her a keepsake of her real brother. I don’t know, this is still a salient point for me. The fact that Rui Rui and Danqiu look nothing alike, the fact that she can’t even recognize who her real brother is, bothers me. She looks at her daughter, half sad, half happy, calling the baby My Fengyi. Sigh. I wish she could raise the child, but single moms back then were a huge no no. Gone would have been her marriage prospect, her future. Er Ye asks if she has a picture of herself so that he could show Fengyi that her mother was a beautiful woman. She grabs her purse and pulls a picture.

Meanwhile, her two brothers comes out, looking disheveled. She asks what happened, looking angrily at Rui Rui asking if he hurt her fake brother. Lin Danqiu tells her that he was clumsy and fell down the stairs. It’s a little white lie that has a lot of weight; it allows Zeng Aiyu to not leave with rancor in her heart for her real brother. She believes the lie, while Er Ye realizes the sacrifice his bae did in allowing Lin Danqiu to take his place as the eldest Zeng. Lin Danqiu bids his adieu and they leave for the train. Lin Danqiu pauses and gives a deep bow, probably of gratitude that he gets to have a life he never thought possible, due to Rui Rui’s sacrifice. Rui Rui calls out to his sister and tells her to take care of herself. She smiles at him, oblivious of the emotion behind such a simple sentence. My heart is in pain. I can’t. I just want Rui Rui to be happy, to be with his family. WELP.

In the car, Er Ye tells Rui Rui he really thought his bae would beat Lin Danqiu to death. Rui Rui replies it is against the law to beat him to death, it’s not worth it. LOL, wait, since when do you care about such thing?! He adds that besides, it wouldn’t be punishment enough. Er Ye asks how did he punish him, but Rui Rui remains mum. Er Ye pulls Zeng Aiyu’s picture and gives him to Rui Rui. Awwww, so he actually got the picture for his bae! He tells Rui Rui if he doesn’t tell him how he punished Lin Danqiu he won’t give him the picture. Yooo, you know your Rui Rui can be a bit kooky, don’t play with him. As expected, Rui Rui tries to grab the picture and covers his eyes while the man is driving. LOL, I told you Er Ye. Rui Rui takes the picture while Er Ye is like, you might not care about your life, but I do! Awww Rui Rui is happy to have a picture of his meimei. LOL, they settle back into their married routine as Rui Rui tells him he is hungry and Er Ye obliges, asking him what does he want to eat. :Cough: I have some ideas... Oh wait, Rui Rui is talking about real food! He wants pan fried pork dumpling. Hmmm that is also delicious. Er Ye says okay and after that we are going to have a movie date.

Meanwhile, in the train, Lin Danqiu holds Rui Rui’s pendant. I have to say, this breaks my heart. Sigh, I am not happy, but I get it, still I am not happy. This would effectively close the possibility of Zeng Aiyu realizing her mistake, since for her the pendant will act as proof that Lin Danqiu is her real brother. I get why Rui Rui did it and it is a huge sacrifice to make. Our Rui Rui is growing up. We see in a flashback that Rui Rui gives him the pendant as he effectively accept that Lin Danqiu is the person his meimei recognizes as her brother and the punishment he has incurred upon Lin Danqiu is to take care and cherish her for his entire life, and for his sake (Rui Rui’s). If he finds out he tricked her or made her suffer, he will kill him. See, how mature our Rui Rui has become? She sees the pendant and jubilates that her gege has found his lost pendant. He lies and tells her that he suddenly found it while doing his luggage.

Alright, we leave the sadness behind for some ChengShang gushing moment. So, they are discussing the movie they have just watched. Wait, how late did they stay up?????? Our opera addict Rui Rui comments on the actress acting skills, finding it lowly because all she did is straightened her eyebrow and stare at her costars eyes. LOL, oh Rui Rui, you would have a tough time watching half of the TV dramas’ actors and actress, some who are so wooden you wonder how they got their part or fame. He compares her to his acting skills, especially her posture and voice, along with the lyrics she sang. He finds it too simplistic. LOL. He adds that Du Qi would have had a fit if he heard that. I doubt it, since Du Qi lived abroad, therefore as a better knowledge of cinema. Er Ye tells him he thought it was good because it relieves boredom and doesn’t require too much thinking. True, unlike a play, Broadway show or opera, which demands more attention, movies are simple entertainment that can be mindless fun. He says that unlike movies, watching operas can take 3 days for the entire opera to finish. GEEZUS. Yeah, I cannot, sorry Rui Rui. Not only that but you have to know the right time when to shout bravo, when to sing praises, so many freaking rules. If you don’t know the rules, you get ridiculed and called an amateur by an useless sperm donor. It might be too demanding on the audience. Rui Rui asks what does Er Ye like to watch. Er Ye tells him he used to watch movies, but now he prefers watching opera, specifically Shang Lao Ban’s operas more. He tells him that whatever role you play, you bring it to life. It is like he is inhabited by many souls. Whenever he puts on makeup and costume, the soul will borrow his body and come alive while he is on stage. Once he leaves the stage, the soul departs but the story stays alive in him. Rui Rui tells him his writing sounds just as good as Du Qi and is flattered by the compliment, asking for more. LOL, greedy queen.

Er Ye is like, who asks for compliments like that, beside you got so many people praising you already, you don’t need me. Rui Rui tells hubby that his words means more to him than others. Er Ye is like fine, I’ll shower you in compliments. Guys, you better get your salt vapors because the next line might make you faint and ask how the fuck did this get past censors. Ok, so I am directly quoting here: “Shang Lao Ban is like a flower, or a fire that only cares about blooming for itself, flaming in a blaze. For those who likes watching you, you will do your best to show it to them. For those that don’t like watching you, you won’t try to appeal to them by changing yourself and go against your own will. You are such a popular ju’er, but you can still live so freely. This is truly extraordinary. Very rare! It’s true innocence. Everyone says someone like Shang Lao Ban who is so talented can only be looked from afar. Others do not dare to walk shoulder to shoulder with him. Except for me, Cheng Fengtai, who is willing to go into the fire and stay by your side.” I WANT MY CHENG FENGTAI. WHO DO I NEED TO GOAD TO HAVE ONE?????? Rui Rui is so taken aback that he stops walking to look at his hubby.

Er Ye asks what is it. Really Er Ye, after saying such words, you ask him why he is stopping in his track?! Awww shit, trouble is brewing as we heard voices from an alleyway. Rui Rui follows the voices and runs up to the alleyway, followed by Er Ye. A woman is fighting off two lecherous dudes. Rui Rui is pissed, probably thinking of his sister if she were in this situation. He kicks one of them and threatens the lecherous men. One of them tells the woman she should have told them she had a lover. Man GTFO with that shit. The woman recognizes him as he asks if she is okay. Er Ye is like, goddmammit, another fan trying to take away my bae’s precious time. LOL, Rui Rui is like, awww shit, yeah, grabbing his hubby so he wouldn’t have to deal with the fangirl. She blocks their path and tells Rui Rui she’s been looking for them. He is like, que? Who are you? She seems to struggle to say.

We see a man wearing a cast with a bottle of booze. Oh My GOD, it’s my bae Chen Renxiang!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO. Rui Rui asks what happened to Chen Lao Ban to be in such a state. It turns out the woman is the talkative prostitute from Nanjing who had taken Chen Lao Ban away before meeting Liu Hanyun. She had sought her freedom from the brothel and come to him in Shanghai. Upon her arrival, he was already in such disheveled state. Rui Rui asks his bae and the ex-prostitute to leave the room so he can have a heart-to-heart with Chen Renxiang. Rui Rui believes Chen Lao Ban put himself in such a state because he lost the competition. He tells him if he had been the one to lose, he would have done everything to better himself so he could fight him out once more. He had been impressed by how he had defended him against his uncle, seeing him as a hero so how did he become such a coward? Chen Lao Ban still remains quiet as Rui Rui lambast him, saying unlike the ex-prostitute he would have left him to die since he doesn’t seem to care about his own well-being. He sets out to leave when our sad ju’er finally speaks. He tells Rui Rui that he is indeed a coward and that the girl doesn’t care that he lives or die. Rui Rui yells at him that he is ungrateful dog for ignoring all the effort to girl has made to seek Rui Rui out and beg him to help Chen Renxiang out. Xiang Xiang replies that he is not talking about the ex-prostitute named Yueling, but his Shanghai girlfriend he had mentioned when they were on their way to Shanghai after the Liyuan Association incident. Apparently her parents did not approve of their relationship, thus the lovers decided to elope, however, they were caught by goons hired by her family. They broke his leg and dump him barren fields while taking her back home. He asks Rui Rui if he wasn’t a coward, what would he be? Rui Rui is like, yes, you are a coward since his girlfriend probably as no idea that he is injured and hiding out getting drunk off his ass. How would she know he is alright or care whether he is alive or dead if she doesn’t know where he is. That makes him an ungrateful dog, which Xiang Xiang tries to deny, but Rui Rui interrupts him telling him he thought of an idea for him to help him reach out to his girlfriend. Get his leg treated, so he can perform opera with Rui Rui, like this everyone in China will be talking about it, thus his girlfriend will be able to find him. Isn’t it better than him being a drunken stupor? This seems to bring a bit of hope to Xiang Xiang until he remembers the conditions of their bet. Rui Rui laughs at that, telling him he wasn’t serious about not letting him perform for a year. He tells him he will find a doctor to help set his leg back and that he needs to clean up and stop drinking. Xiang Xiang thank him for being his savior, but Rui Rui doesn’t want to hear his gratitude, he just wants him to perform well on stage as a thank you. Btw, even disheveled Tan Jian Ci is one sexy bish.

It takes everyone to help calm Xiang Xiang down while the doctor tries to set his leg. LOL, Rui Rui tells him that a girl is looking at him while he screams like one. The doctor gives Yueling some after-care directives. Rui Rui asks the doctor if his leg will get better, but the doctor is slightly optimistic. Sugar daddy and husband of the over eager penguin asks to speak to the doctor away from the sensitive ju’ers. Xiang Xiang senses something is wrong as he repeats it is destine disaster, then laughs. Rui Rui thinks he’s cray cray, but Xiang Xiang tells him he is laughing at his uncle Jiang Rongshou for having a useless son who he cannot impart his skills to, which kept him from teaching his fairy steps to anyone, until he finally taught it to Xiang Xiang, but now he is crippled, the Jiang Family fairy steps will be lost forever. Xiang Xiang tells Rui Rui that he got his revenge against the elder Jiang, but Rui Rui does not seem to gleeful at the prospect, which even gets Xiang Xiang attention. Rui Rui is like, yeah, I am on bad term with the old fart, but I have nothing against the Fairy Steps. In fact, it would hurt him to see such a superb skill get lost. WHY ARE YOU SO PRECIOUS???? I cannot, he is to sweet, my baby boy!!! Xiang Xiang bemoans the fact that he learned the skill so late in his career, having little time to master the essence of the skill. If he had learned it since he was a kid and hone the skills for years, he probably wouldn’t have lost against Rui Rui, who agrees. AGAIN WHY ARE YOU SO PRECIOUS? Xiang Xiang reveals that when he returned to Shanghai, an Italian fan asked to film his fairy steps and show them in Italy (damn, they were that popular!!!), but they didn’t agree on the price and he worried about his uncle’s objections, so it didn’t work out. He also regrets not taking any disciples to impart of his skills, and now he ponders who would remember his performances. STOP IT, OMG, I CANNOT ANYMORE. My Xiang Xiang is so depressed!! Rui Rui gets philosophical and replies the current situation is too precarious, especially for performers who may not have time to pass down their skills on time. What would be left for future generations to appreciate. Xiang Xiang replies that life and death go hand in hand, and that ups and downs are inevitable. This sounds like a man who has given up. I am balling. Rui Rui tries to comfort him, telling him to stop spitting such depressing things like life and death. How can he be dead when he met him. LOL, oh Rui Rui. He advises him to just live his life and that his girlfriend still waits for him. Xiang Xiang is like, you are right, I must live well and wipes his tears away.

Alone, he dreams about that fateful day when him and his girlfriend were running away from the goons employed by her family. Out of breath and tired of running, Renxiang decides to send her to hide while he deals with the goons, but unfortunately, she is taken away. As he asks the goons where she is, one of them taunts him, talking about his fairy steps and how it mesmerized the first miss (his girlfriend). Wait, what? DIdn’t he have this girlfriend prior to learning the Fairy Steps? I am confused. The man tells him he must break his legs so this filthy actor would not seduce any more young ladies from other good families. DAFUQ. I am tired at how everyone is looking down at opera actors. Even servants act uppity towards them. They are good enough to sleep with and be toys for the rich, but they can’t have meaningful relationship with them? That is fucked up. He wakes, all sweaty while Yueling comes in to bring the medicine. Then we switch to him doing some physical therapy with the crotches. The doctor tells him he is recovering well and Xiang Xiang presses him to find out when he could go back to the stage so he can reach out to his girlfriend. Yueling is like, no way, you are still recovering! It is clear that she loves him, but he is too enamored with his little rich miss. The doctor agrees with her, but Rui Rui is like, who cares about your legs, your voice is not harmed, so we’ll perform a literary piece and he will take of him on stage. Er Ye just stands there, smiling at his smol husband, and I can’t fault him for that. Xiang Xiang seems encouraged by Rui Rui’s pep talk, but Yueling is not happy.

That paper boy is busy af with Rui Rui selling newspapers like hotcakes. He announces the joint performance of Chen Lao Ban and Shang Lao Ban. Oh my Xiang Xiang looks good!! Oh wait, his twin Rui Rui, also wearing a white gown. Xiang Xiang is anxious while Rui Rui tells him to get ready for their performance. Apparently Xiang Xiang is waiting for someone, perhaps someone who had news of his girlfriend or his girlfriend herself. Rui Rui replies that he has been waiting for days and there has been no news. Maybe he told her about his family and she may have gone to Beiping to find him. Right at that moment, someone asks for him. He delivers a letter for him.

We see him looking at picture. Behind it are words written: “ We are not destined to be together in this lifetime. Hope we’ll each live well separately.” OH NO, it’s the girlfriend! I cannot figure out Xiang Xiang mood at this moment. It is kind of indescribable. Then, as he rubs the foundation in between his palms, a tear falls on the back of his. Oh my poor baby looks defeated, yet, a strange smile is on his face. He talks to himself as he stares at the mirror asking why he looks like a ghost. He tells himself that he looks ugly and depressed. I CAN’T CONTINUE, I AM CRYING TOO MUCH. I have a bad feeling about this guys, I just...sigh. He continue saying that he no longer wants to see himself anymore. Tears are forming in my eyes, everything is blurry.

We see him on the stage and the audience is asking why this third sister is carrying a sword. This is not part of this opera, so they wonder if they changed the opera at the last minute. My Xiang Xiang looks beautiful while the other actors are asking the same question as the audience. His character, Sister Yu is not supposed to have a sword. Even the orchestra is baffled. Seriously, who allowed him to carry the sword? Isn’t there anyone to take care of the props? Where is Rui Rui? Xiang Xiang starts singing without the music when Rui Rui finally appears. I guess he was still in his room getting ready. One of the actors asks him what is going on. I don’t think Rui Rui has any idea. He looks at the audience for their reactions and can see the confusion on their faces, but they remain quiet, no booing. The lyrics seemed to encapsulate his life, especially the moment that effectively broke his heart, destroyed his soul. Oh my God, no amount of makeup is able to cover the sadness on his face. GAAAH, and now this show has decided to rip out my heart and step on it, as Jiang Rongshou is seen, lounging on his chair, eyes closed. NOOO, SHOW DON’T DO THIS TO ME!!! We can hear Renxiang singing while we see Jiang Rongshou reaching out for his tea cup, but knocking it down. Oh, I know what that means in dramaspeak and I don’t want to see it. NO SHOW, please, don’t do this!! We see my lovely Xiang Xiang swinging the sword and cut his throat, much to the surprise of the actors, including Rui Rui. OH MY GOD I CAN’T. Jiang Rongshou is feeling some malaise as his son comes to see what is wrong. As Dengbao cleans up (despite my dislike of him, he is really a filial son). Jiang Senior shakes his head and says he doesn’t know. He’s been dozing off today and then asks if the young actors are still training. Dengbao confirms, but Jiang senior seems dissatisfied by them and their progress. They can’t seem to get the basic movements right, yet want to learn the fairy steps. He reminisce about Xiang Xiang and how he was able to learn 70-80 percent of the opera at their age. Dengbao replies how can they compare to the very talented Xiang Xiang. Dengbao tells his father to be patient for Xiang Xiang to make the Fairy Steps famous once he returns to the stage, but grumpy papa Jiang reproach Xiang Xiang for not writing to him since he went back to Shanghai. WAIL, he has no idea of the state Xiang Xiang was! Dengbao is like, you know how Shanghai is, Renxiang is probably having the time of his life. Why you do this to me show? Grumpy Jiang is like, yeah, when he is with me, he pretends to be filial, once he leave, he forgets all about me. Sigh, this show knows how to humanize these characters, even the ones you learn to hate. I hate this show. Stop making me have so much feels right now, even for the Jiangs! Papa Jiang cares for Xiang Xiang, wanting to see how he has improved once he return to perform. He dozes off again, and OH NO SHOW, STOOOOOPPPP. Don’t do this, don’t have Xiang Xiang voice from beyond the grave call on his uncle, asking to look at him. Startled, Jiang papa calls out for Xiang’er, asking if that is him. Jiang papa is taken aback and thinks its his old age causing his to have auditory hallucinations. WELP

Back at casa de Er Ye, we see our Rui Rui sitting pensively as he stares at the window. Er Ye opens the door and quietly enters the room. In the most romantic gestures this show encapsulate (they have so many, especially post-baby drama), Er Ye uses his fingers to imitate a camera, wanting to capture his hubby form forever. THE GAY IS EXPLODING IN MY FACE. If you still have doubt that Er Ye is utterly in love with his bratty penguin, I don’t know what to tell you. He walks up to him and sits in front of his beautiful wifey. So damn domestic! Oh my God is Er Ye really saying this right now? The sun has cast a pattern on your outfit. It’s just like dressing with a golden robe? This is too poetic! I want a man like this. Now I am crying again. He bemoans not bringing a camera to immortalize that moment. He probably would have carried the picture in his pocket like he did the one he gave to Rui Rui sister. He adds that if he went to get the camera, the moment would be lost since the sun would set. Rui Rui eyes are closed as he responds that yes, the moment would be gone, nothing stays. I guess he is referring to Xiang Xiang and the whole Shanghai trip. Er Ye agrees that the good times don’t last long, and tells him to take it easy. Rui Rui tells Er Ye that Chen Renxiang died on stage, it’s also considered a worthy death. Is it though? He didn’t with a happy heart, sacrificing himself for his art. He died depressed, realizing that everything he held dear was gone. What saddens Rui Rui is that life is unpredictable. Awww, our boy is learning about the realities of life and shedding a bit of his naivety. He bemoans what it entails to the legacy of the Fairy Steps since there is no one to showcase it on stage, and how an accident could also make his Goddess Dance along with the Shang Family Stick skill could disappear forever. You got to be thankful we live in the modern era where cameras captured all the dances forever for future generation to learn and nurture. Imagine the thousands of dances lost to us because there were no longer practitioners who cared to learn them or died without imparting their skills. This is indeed disheartening. Er Ye gets philosophical and says that God’s intention is hard to fathom and so is a person’s heart. He adds that Rui Rui’s time in Shanghai has widened his understanding of the world, introducing him to foreign things outside of his Beiping environment. Some were nice and fun, and sheer temptations. Even if life was an utopia, without birth, old age, diseases or deaths, it would be hard to guarantee that he would not succumbed to those temptations, wanting to throw away those things passed down by his ancestors (although Er Ye says ‘our’). Rui Rui says that he won’t, to which Er Ye replies that he might not, but can he guarantee that his apprentice won’t? That subsequent apprentices won’t? You cannot predict the future, nor can he predict what people or God have in store. The only thing that could remedy this is to encapsulate it on film, so it can be passed down for a long time. I agree with Er Ye on that point that movie is long lasting, but in a time of war, films can also be destroyed, either by fire or by enemies wanting to push their propaganda. Anyhoo, Rui Rui is not ready to agree to it, stating that a camera can only shoot the form of a person, there aren’t any details. It is the degree of the expressions, measurement of the footwork, the precision of the hand movements, that can be captured accurately on film and be used as training tools by future generation. He adds it is like drawing a tiger with a cat as a model, the kids would learn the wrong things. Er Ye replies that Rui Rui makes film sound useless, it is no wonder he is unwilling to make records. LOL, he practically called Rui Rui a technophobe. Rui Rui replies it is because he place too much importance on the audience reaction, he doesn’t dare to be careless about all those details aforementioned. He lives for the audience, wanting to be sure they enjoy themselves. Wait, honey, you seem to have no problem provoking them by changing the lyrics. What gives with this talk of hesitation!? He states that he would rather be tired and take on more apprentices to teach them. Er Ye questions this, asking him how long it would take for him to meet an eager disciple like Xiao Zhouzi. How much effort will it take to turn on into Zhou Lao Ban. Yeah, he lucked out with him because the boy was an innate talent. How many out there have such capacity? Rui Rui replies that he will take his time and misses him home, and troupe. Er Ye sighs and says that he also misses his home. Btw, they’ve been in Shanghai for more than a month (probably three at the time they are talking). Ugh, I wasn’t expecting to see Er Nainai so quick. She is still doing accounting, closing out the books for Shuiyin Lou. LOL, she ended up doing the accounting for them after all. Oh oh, she is thinking of Fengyi. That’s not a good thing.

Oh shit, she comes to Shuyin the next day. What is she planning? She is greeted by one of the actors, who tells her they’ve been diligently training and improving upon the things she taught them. Shit starter Shi Jiu does not seem to approve of this ass kissing, and I don’t blame her, especially since he throws his troupe leader under the bus or rickshaw. YOOOO, this maid is opening her mouth again? Shut her up. She once again insults the performers saying their pitch is higher than her bird. SHUT YOUR MOUTH. I have it up to here with her arrogant ass. Shi Jiu is about to tongue lash this bish, but is stop her Rong Lan. Er Nainai states that their boss can easily remove himself from an undesirable situation. LOL, cannot blame him for you suddenly appearing and ordering him around his own house, sweetie. Not only that but you insulted him, looked down upon him, in his own house! Anyhoo, she adds that he left her a big mess that she had to take care of. She had to set order in this house, give them some rules (gurl, they were fine without you).

Best girl Xiao Lai brings her some tea while they sit in that same room where she insulted my baby. Sigh, I really don’t want to talk about the maid, she leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. She is soiling Shuyin House with her presence. She insults my Xiao Lai by looking down on the tea she has prepared for Er Nainai, saying they brought their own with such indignation, as if the tea was made with piss. I don’t think I have ever hated a character for simply existing. Good job on the actress for being so irritating. Wait, no, I have always hated the maids on C drama. They are insufferable, act haughty af depending on their mistress status, and are the biggest bullies. Er Nainai is like, someone is missing. The troupe responds that everyone is here and that little shit replies that no, people, Er Nainai is talking about the baby. HOW THE FUCK WERE THEY SUPPOSED TO KNOW. Dasheng replies the baby is in the room away from your ugly face. No Rong Lan, don’t do it, let that little shit do some work instead of running her mouth! Rong Lan brings Fengyi to Er Nainai. Sigh, don’t that little shit get anywhere close to Rui Rui’s niece! Well, at least Fengyi is softening Er Nainai who states the baby can catch a chill if not covered properly and tells her servants to take out the items she brought. Lol, even Shi Jiu notices the change in behavior, claiming that Er Nainai went from Empress Dowager Cixi to a living Buddha. Rong Lan is like, well at least with Er Nainai growing closer to the little Goddess of Wealth, Er Ye would not have any problems bringing her home. Shi Jiu does not approve and agree with my shit starter. DAFUQ, is that little shit bossing the actors around. GTFO. Who allowed her to speak. Fuck this. Ugh, I don’t want to hear her voice anymore. She tells her boss that she doesn’t understand why she cares so much for the baby since she has unknown origins. Seriously, GTFO. Er Nainai replies the child should not be punish for the adults’ sins. Wait, is that little shit still believe Er Ye is the father? Bish, go away, get out of my screen. I wished Fengyi would cry so hard to make her deaf. I hope Xiao Lai would disinfect the area when they leave. Gotta get that stank ass out.

Okay, I am done bishing about that maid. I seriously don’t know why the show had to aggrieve me with her presence. Did I do something in my past life to suffer so much? Talking about suffering, why did you kill my Xiang Xiang, show?? I had expected a death similar to the ending of Farewell my Concubine, but I did not expect it would be him. However, in hindsight, his words spoken back in Nanjing revealed his mindset about life. He had admonished Rui Rui for being solely focused on the opera with no outside distractions. For him, his girlfriend offered the distraction he sought outside of the opera. Without her, and without his ability to perform at 100 percent due to his injury, he was left to nothing. The true coward in this depressing episode is Chen Renxiang’s girlfriend, who bowed to her family pressure and married a man she didn’t love. Unlike Yu Qing who willingly left her family behind for an uncertain love, Chen Renxiang girlfriend gave up a willing love for her family. The constant reminder of how people looked down upon performers acted like a shadow permeating this entire episode. Even with the bookending scenes involving the maid, we see the indignation, the dislike towards the performers. Despite their fame, they are look as trash, good enough to admire and even bed, but not good enough to truly respect. It’s a constant theme we are shown throughout the show. Even Rui Rui, who cares so much about the audience, can’t escape this reality. Perhaps why we have that moment when Er Ye tells him he would walk through fire to stand by his side, because only Er Ye seems him as his equal, who respects him and only wants the best for him. Hence the talk about capturing his skills and likeness on film. Sigh, will Rui Rui give in and let him film him so the future generation can gain an appreciation for the art the same way he has?

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princess-of-france · 5 years ago

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i would love to hear abt your rococo lll

Oh my gosh, you lovely human, settle in. This production is my Ultimate Theater Pipe Dream and I apologize in advance for how little chill I’m going to have as I explain it.

Are you ready?

I want to start with my standard disclaimer: I am a theater artist, not a literary critic or a historian. When I’m directing a play, I extract fragments of lit crit and historical fact as I need them and leave the rest on the buffet line. This LLL in particular requires me to play fast and loose with history, so be prepared for a truckload of anachronisms. They make the vision work!

So, with that…

The sad Catch-22 of my Rococo LLL is that no theater will ever put it up: a smaller, indie, risk-taking theater wouldn’t be able to afford the astronomical production costs of casting the 20 actors I need, to say nothing of building opulent sets and period-accurate costumes that imitate the royal courts of the late 18th century; conversely, a large, well-funded, regional theater wouldn’t be able to justify funding a 2.5-hour Shakespeare retelling that turns one of his most sparkling comedies into a dark, violent allegory about the French Revolution and casts young, privileged, light-skinned European elites as the tragic heroes brought low by proletariat Jacobean reform. Even as I type these words, I realize how irresponsible an investment that would be. My Rococo LLL is not the kind of classical theater we need in America right now. It is retrograde in terms of diversity, equity, accessibility, and social justice. It probably says something terrible about me that I even dreamt it up in the first place.

And yet.

I want to direct this production so badly it feels like I’ve swallowed a piece of the sun. If I had all the proper resources (time, money, venue, artists, designers, marketing, etc.), I would do it tomorrow. It’s my baby.

Here’s a blurb that kind of nutshells it all together:

July 1789. King Charles VI of Navarre has died, leaving his son, young Ferdinand III, to take the throne. On a tide of Enlightenment idealism, King Ferdinand commissions his three best friends to join him for a period of ascetic study at the court of Navarre. The rules are simple: no luxuries, no alcohol, and no women. For three long years.

The boys’ oath is immediately put to the test when four young ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission from Versailles. Led by the spirited Duchess d’Albret, the Frenchwomen and their mile-high coiffures prove irresistible to the King and his companions. With the help of a motley band of scholars and servants, they set out to woo the Duchess and her friends. But when sober news arrives from Paris, will young love be enough to rewrite history?

Set against the glittering backdrop of the last golden days of the ancien regime, this bold reimagining of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy invites us to look at the most famous revolution in Western history through the eyes of the young elites who learned the truth about privilege just a moment too late.

Of all the radical things I want to do with this production, the thing that would probably cause the most controversy (and earn me a reputation for being a narcissistic, pessimistic, Shakespeare-desecrating hack) is my addition of a prologue set in Paris in June 1793. I could try to sum it up here, but honestly I think it would be a lot more effective and comprehensive just to post the excerpt from my script:

…etc.

So basically, half my audience will vomit due to the unexpected onslaught of blood, gore, and violence…and the other half will vomit from the sheer anti-progressivism of the show’s politics. And I don’t blame anyone who finds fault with this production concept. On a political level, I find fault with it. Arguably the last thing our society needs right now is a Shakespeare production that paints young, pale, overprivileged trust fund babies as the poor, helpless victims of a liberal-led revolution for social equality.

But at the same time, I can’t help but think that the entire point of Love’s Labour’s Lost is to make us look hard at our own privilege and ego, and weigh those things that seem sooo valuable against the true gifts of love, empathy, friendship, generosity, and kindness.

“This is not generous, not gentle, not humble!” Holofernes cries as the Crazy Eight—high on adrenaline and their own cruel wit—jeer him off the stage during his performance as Judas Maccabeus in 5.2. More than any other, this moment epitomizes the value of setting LLL in a sex-charged, champagne-fueled, pastry-laden, cream-filled, lace-drenched, satin-covered, feather-topped, Rococo landscape. There’s no way in hell the audience is meant to sympathize with the insult-flinging prep school Kens and Barbies when they humiliate Holofernes to the point of tears. Shakespeare is way too smart for that. In the final whimsical moments before the messenger Marcadé comes onstage, laden with the news that is going to change the entire genre of the play, the Bard turns a critical spotlight on the young people we’ve been rooting for since Act One, Scene One and invites us to view them—for the first time, really—through the lens of the hardworking, lesser-privileged plebs of Navarre. The portrait is revolting. However witty, cultured, and elegant the courtiers might seem, they clearly have a lot more homework to do. Marcadé’s arrival a few short lines later is the final test of their youthful ego. Is being clever worth the price of experiencing love? Is love worth the price of responsibility? Is she brave enough to admit that she’s scared to take up the mantle? Is he brave enough to give up the one person who matters for the sake of the people he once mocked, the people he now must lead?

I don’t believe the Navarre Nerds and Les Filles have survived the centuries because they end the play as sharp-tongued, entitled, and self-absorbed as they behave at the start. We wouldn’t still be making and remaking this play if the protagonists were so static. I think the young people of LLL resonate with us—or, at least, they resonate with me—because in the course of Shakespeare’s plotless little play they grow up right before our eyes. King Ferdinand learns that he can’t bury his head in his books and ignore the responsibility of ruling when he watches the love of his life choose duty to her country over the desires of her own heart. The Princess learns that the cost of being the cleverest person is human connection when she finds herself laughing alongside Ferdinand at the antics of the Nine Worthies and somehow feels happier than she ever did when she was mocking him into the earth. Berowne learns that love wins every argument: against wit, against intellect, against bachelorhood, against willpower itself. Rosaline learns that love is strength, not weakness, and that she is stronger when she allows herself to feel. Dumaine learns that love demands vulnerability. Katherine learns that love is not a game. Longaville learns that love thrives on honesty. Maria learns that love takes courage. When the Crazy Eight say their heartbreaking goodbyes at the end of 5.2, they no longer care about sounding smart or superior; in fact, they speak against their own intelligence. The erudite Ferdinand trips over his words, the cynical Berowne invokes romantic idealism, the boastful Dumaine speaks with humility, the shy Longaville puts all his cards on the table. The women are no less altered. I don’t want to fall into the trap of ascribing an easy, one-size-fits-all moral maxim to LLL, but what else are we supposed to take away from this play if not the fact that we fucking owe it to ourselves as a species to set aside our stupid pride and say, “I love you,” when we feel it because we never know when time is going to run out? What else are we supposed to feel if not pride in these young people for choosing to step up and take responsibility when they hear news that the world outside is ending? That there may be no world left? Les Filles go with their Queen. The Nerds rally around their King. They choose fidelity to their respective kingdoms over the indulgence of love. But they also learn to value love for what it is, and to call it by name…even if that love can only last for a few fleeting seconds:

“If this or more than this I would deny,To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,The sudden hand of death close up mine eye.Hence ever, then, my heart is in thy breast.”

(King Ferdinand, V.ii)

As the Crazy Eight grapple in real time with the consequences of Marcadé’s message and what it means for their role as leaders in society, Rosaline gives Berowne a task to complete in their year apart that practically hums with poetic intelligence. Her lines are so iconic, we still quote them colloquially today:

BEROWNETo move wild laughter in the throat of death?It cannot be, it is impossible.Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

ROSALINEWhy, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,Whose influence is begot of that loose graceWhich shallow laughing hearers give to fools.A jest’s prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears,Deafed with the clamors of their own dear groans,Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,And I will have you and that fault withal.But if they will not, throw away that spiritAnd I shall find you empty of that fault,Right joyful of your reformation.

(V.ii)

I think this is the moment when I would start crying if I ever watched my Rococo LLL performed live. Because of all les Filles, I think Rosaline is the only one who knows that by choosing to accompany the Duchess back to Versailles at the end of LLL, she is effectively signing her death warrant. The Jacobeans and sans-cullottes are not going to want young, eligible, Catholic Rococo princesses wafting around their new, secular state. The guillotine may not yet exist in the summer of 1789, but the there is a thirst for blood and Rosaline can smell it. And now Bastille has fallen. Paris is on fire. King Louis XVI has months to live. The world will never be the same. Rosaline’s once-ordered, once-gilded country is careening into a bloody nightmare of soured ideals and ruthless social weeding, and even though she can’t see the future, she can read men like books. Even Berowne. Even the charismatic nihilist who earned a bachelor’s degree in bachelorhood and tried to hide his heart under a bushel. She can read him and she can save him. They can’t kill her husband if she doesn’t have one.

Rococo LLL? I don’t know. It’s a pipe dream.

But can’t you picture it?

Tagging my girls @harry-leroy @suits-of-woe @lizbennett2013 @dedraconesilet @exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear @henriadical in case anyone is interested :)

Thanks a million for one of my favorite asks ever! Happy holidays, friend!!

xx Claire

#does anyone wanna hear about my Rococo LLL?#asks

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oh-shit-a-baby · 5 years ago

Text

BLACK FRIDAY THOUGHTS PART TWO

A complete compilation of my thoughts throughout the musicals second half,,, this bois going to be real long bc I have a lot of thoughts lol

Now without @drawinglinesinarbitraryplaces :(

Yep dumbledore can still sing

Omg his voice

This song is going to make me cry aaaaa

Becky: you don’t look at all the same as I remember

Me: yeah no shit dumbledore grew a beard

Jesus,,,,, theyre just going to go for it right there,,,,,, ookay

Wtaf is this movie they’re watching

HOLY SHIT HER VOICE IS /PRETTY/ HER RANGE IS HUGE!!!

Idk if this is an unpopular opinion bc no one has an opinion yet but Becky and toms song is the cutest one ever and a bop and I love it

Jesus they payed for a balcony and they’re going to fucking use it aren’t they

WELCOME TO PEIP HQ IM SO DOWN FOR THAT

OH THERE ARE MANY DIMENSIONS????? U GONNA EXPLAIN THAT MR GENERAL MACNAMARA????

The black and white isn’t that what lexs sister was on about

Wiggly is the king u wot m8

President kurt knows nothing about anything and that’s a mood

So if the next movie isn’t about ‘13 years ago’ imma freak

U WANNA SEND ME INTO THE FUCKIN TWILIGHT ZONE AND HAVE DINNER WITH THE DEVIL??????!?!!

NO!!! FUCK THAT!!!!! FUCK THAT!!!!! FUCK THAT!!!!!

^^^president kurt quotes

In short, mr president, we are trying to stop the birth

*dramatic piano*

Of a god.

*dRAMATIC PIANO*

It’s good score tho 10/10

Sherman young

Nuff said

After today’s great battle???

Faith in the one true god!! All hail wiggly!!!

My new religion lol

LET LAKESIDE MALL BE A NEW JERUSALEM!!!!

*cue joey and Robert just screaming wiggly for like 5 mins straight*

NO THEY FOUND LEX

OH YEAH FUCKIN KILL THEM!!!

Who????????

FUCK YEAH LINDA

CULT??? NO! ITS A NEW EXCITING RELIGION THAT I STARTED!!!!

Yeah Gerald

She pronounces Cinnabon as see-nah-bohn what’s up with that lol

I NEED A WIGGLY DOLL...... IDEALLY FOUR OF THEM!!!

IVE MET GOD. HE HAD NOTHING NICE TO SAY ABOUT YOU.

*cue people dying and their mics stopping working*

Holy fuck they all wanna kill Hannah now (lexs sister gets a name now apparently)

LAUREN I LOVE YOU AS A VILLAIN

I would kneel before villain Lauren any day

I will deestroy everything, and then I will deestroy everything, and then I will deestroy everything and then I will oh shit it’s Gerald.

While I don’t want you to think for yourselves I do want you to understand what I mean when I say my evil shit

I’m sorry that choreo is a yike

ETHAN DARLING COME BACK I MISS YOU <<<333333

IM CRYING NOW

He’s in the black and white now we’ll that sounds like shit

NOT ETHAN

Hannah is the unsung hero of this musical so far

*said in wiggly voice* well, webby (Hannah’s spider imaginary friend who I think is gonna be the deus ex machina of this thing) is a stupid bitch!

Rotten little banana. I’m going to peel you. I’m going to split you in two. I’m going to eat you Hannah. I’m going to eat you right now. *all said in dramatic wiggly voice*

Aaand their mics broke again

We don’t get tricked! We’re grown ups!

And Becky and Tom are immediately evil the second they see the wiggly bc of course they are

Jesus beckys the villain???????

Welcome to the musical where everyone gets a villain song AND a hero song??????

Her voice is still beautiful

*Prancing around* DO YOU WANT SOME CANDYYYYY??????

She’s still wearing ethans hat my heart is going to go oh my god

And he just,,,,, leaves Becky to die?????

President Kurt in a space suit oh my god

And America is great again is playing in the background

MACNAMARA SAID ‘GODSPEED’ AND IS THAT A CATCHPHRASE I SENSE THERE

Yeah no president kurt can’t do foreign policy

His name is like howie or something but imma call him president kurt just like Tom was dumbledore for like the first half of this mess

Oh fuck joeys character is here and he’s gonna FUCK PREZ KURT UP

He’s eating an apple that means he’s a asshole

Holy fuck joeys character is like the ultimate capitalist

And also terrifying holy shit

NO MACNAMARA DONT GO IN THERE

Joeys character: Do you think that in the Netherlands they’d care about some toy??? Nah!!! They’re too busy with their free vacations and FREE healthcare!!

(When I refer to joeys character I mean the evil one he just doesn’t have a name yet so idk what to call him)

And joey can still sing I love him

His voice is so good and this whole villain is giving me spies are forever flashbacks

I have absolutely no fuckin clue what’s going on rn

Holy fuck joeys voice is so beautiful and his range is killing me

I take back what I said earlier this song is the best one bc joey

Holy fuck someone just hit like a high d and I have no clue who it was bc the video quality is not the greatest

JESUS THATS TERRIFYING

THE FUCK YOU MEAN DONT BE FRIGHTENED THATS MY SLEEP PARALYSIS DEMON

LOOK AT THIS FUCKER JESUS CHRIST

Wiggly is so scary because he speaks like a child and those are scary

MACNAMARA EX MACHINA

Mac: BEGONE

Prez kurt: SORRY JOHN I FUCKED IT UP

THATS THE HOOK FROM NOT YOUR SEED ISNT IT HOLY SHIT

Joeys voice and acting is gonna kill me

Yeah made in America is the shit

MAC NO U CANT DIE U DIE IN TGWDLM

Also the black and white is a dumb as shit name for an alternate reality

Prez kurt: MERRY CHRISTMAS MOTHERFUCKER!!!!

*wiggly voice* Uh-oh mr prezzy-wez. It seems you’ve misplaced your bomby-womb.

Well shits about to go down

I’m calling it the bomb bombed the White House

Oop no they’ve only gone and lost Moscow

Well fuck here comes ww3 I guess

And prez kurt is definitely insane in the brain

ITS THE HOOK AGAIN THE ‘ALIENS INVADING MINDS’ BIT OH MY GOD I FEEL LIKE A MUSICAL GENIUS

Jesus Sherman is a weird fuck and lex is kinda clever I guess it’s a shame we haven’t seen her for most of the musical

Lex: I THREW EM IN THE FUCKIN TRASH

LEX BABY NO DONT DIE

Lex: Is this what I live for? To be choked in a toy store?

Lexs beautiful song is this musicals version of not your seed but depression

And her voice is /pretty/

MAC?????????????

WHAT??????????????

OH MY GOD HE IS AUTHORISING HER TO USE HIS FIREARM YES QUEEN

I’m sorry lex and Hannah can do what

Jeffs voice kills me him and joey need a duet and that would be the end of me

What did lex just do in so confused

MAC DID THE SALUTE IMMA CRY YALL

And we’re back with Tom

Oh fuck lex is gonna shoot tom

Hold up Tom names his son Tim

Wiggly is playing mind tricks now yikes

Lex: KIDS DONT WANT THAT PEICE OF SHIT!!!

Tom: wat

Lex: THEYRE ALL INTO FORTNITE DUDE!!!!!

So the doll can only fuck with adults not kids???

Jesus Christ this is depressing

U wot lex

Lex: YOURE LIKE 40!!!!! YOU PROBABLY THINK YOURE LIFE IS OVER!!!!

Holy fuck this shit is deep

Wait lex still doesn’t know about Ethan oh my god

And Dylan gets another hero song holy fuck just give Robert a song already everyone else has one

At the same time though this is S a d

I’m not crying you’re crying

YES DUMBLEDORE U HIT THAT HIGH NOTE

Tom: in fact you’re real fuckin ugly

Me: yeah no shit

Lex: FUCK YEAH!!!! Should i move these boxes first?

*cue very clever scene change*

Yeah Gerald no one wants to talk to u

Oh my god Linda leave Hannah and ethans hat alone my heart is breaking for Hannah

Linda: is this some kind of a jooooke?????

They’re gonna set one of their dolls on fire ok ok ok this is fine

More villain songs ookay

If someone could tell me what the fuck is going on in this scene I’d be very impressed

Evil yoga

YES LAUREN U QUEEN

HOLY FUCK IS THAT CHARLOTTE??????

OH MY GOD ITS JAIME IN THE CHARLOTTE COSTUME IT IS CHARLOTTE HOLY SHIT

ITS CHARLOTTE AND THE HOMELESS DUDE HOLY SHIT

The choreo is...... interesting

Cue Robert not-Corey and Lauren being the only good dancers and getting special choreo

FUCK YEAH BECKY WITH THE GUN

LINDA NO

Ookay so everyone’s on fire this is fine

Emma and Paul ex machina

SOMEBODY NUKED MOSCOW!

paul is family third wheeling

YOU KNOW, SHE HAS THIS KOOKY RECLUSIVE BIOLOGY PROFESSOR

*audience fucking looses their shit*

WHO LIVES ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Paul is having an existential crisi because he sHOULD HAVE WORN A WATCH

Someone’s gonna fall of that staircase by the end of this performance

HOLY FUCK ITS THE HOT CHOCOLATE KID

IT IS THE HOT CHOCOLATE KID OH NY GODDDDD

LOOK AT HIM

It’s the what if tomorrow comes bit!!!!!!!

Okay again this choreo is interesting but the vocals are all S t u n n i n g

They’re literally counting down until the end of the show imma loose my shit that’s the least subtle they’ve been during the entire show

Hang on hang on hang on hang on haaaaang on right there

Did lex just never find out that her boyfriend died we were deprived of a heart wrenching moment when she found out about Ethan

Like jeez I cried and I barely knew him she was dating the guy and just... didn’t ask about him????

ITS THE HOOK AGAIN

That’s it!!!!! Those were my thoughts the first time I watched this through!!!!!!!

Scream at me in the notes with any questions and I’ll try answer them :)

#tgwdlm #the guy who didn't like musicals #black friday musical #black friday starkid #black friday #wiggly #lauren lopez #robert manion #jeff blim #joey richter #digital ticket #black friday spoilers

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mindseyeinkarnate · 4 years ago

Text

Portraits of a Serial Killer - “The Cell” turns 20

I've often reflected how the influence of Art is a key component missing from Modern Horror. The Xenomorph we all know and fear came from the painted nightmares of Swedish surrealist H.R. Giger, the Screamer is said to have influenced the Ghostface Killer mask. For a further rundown of art's musings over the genre, I would highly recommend 2017's Tableaux Vivants for a look at 60 such portraits and the films they inspired.

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In the summer of 2020, The Medium video game appears to correct that oversight with the recent trailer dropping, adapting Polish painter, Zdzislaw Beksinski's frightening paintings. In the same season of the same year is when The Cell celebrates 20 years (8/17/2020). This film appeared to feature as many artistic influences as possible into its near two hour runtime.

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The sight of chains freaked me out upon watching my first Hellraiser movie, so the sexual perversion of their use in this film did little to alleviate such apprehension, especially as they pulled so tightly to suspend human flesh in the air. Despite a previous scene showing the villain having drowned his victim, this was the true introduction to his villainy - the former showed what he did, that latter why he did it. Even re-watching this film so many years later, I had to look away from the screen, recoiling from such a grisly display.

Typically, in Horror or any film that assumes a particular aesthetic, it is color that makes the impression to set mood. Instead, the use of white in this film, from the K9 to the bleached state of the victims is used to ghoulishly haunting effect.

I remember critics remarking that because of Vince Vaughn's comedic history they couldn't take him seriously in this role and relegated his involvement to stunt casting. I take the opposite stance since, for me, every role after this film simply serves as a reminder that he starred in The Cell. I've always felt that comedy actors do well in dramas - see Robin Williams in "Good Will Hunting" - and I thought that Vaughn did a serviceable job in this film, never distracting from either tone or plot.

I was happy that they just dove into the mechanics behind entering one's mind as an accepted reality, that they didn't get bogged down in techno babble or exposition of the technology. There is a time and place for the virtual journey into the cerebral frontier, such as The Matrix or a good adaptation of the Lawnmower Man, but for the Cell, I'm happy that they focused more on the story and not so much the science. The suits do look like Twizzlers, but it was made by Eioka Ishioka (who passed away in 2012), the same costume designer as Vlad Tepes' suit from Bram Stoker's Dracula. I do like that the two participators are suspended in the air while their minds are linked. It's an eerie callback to the killer's suspension from chains for sexual release. Also, it does give the technology that space age feel as though they are in a weightless environment.

Since the 90's, special effects have been criticized as dominating films to the point Stephen King is quoted as remarking that "story supports effects instead of effects supporting story". Similarly, an argument can be made that at times The Cell becomes too indulgent with its usage of famous art that serve no plot function, e.g. the Horse Split, the Three Women of Odd Nerdrum's Dawn painting, Mother Theresa and her Hallmark card, etc. As the director is quoted as saying "The thing about this film is it’s an opera, and there is no such thing as a subtle��opera.” I don't believe that the script was penned as an excuse to pack in as much gallery portraits as possible or is an hour and fifty minutes of a music video. I just wish the director would've used each art piece he seeks influence from to develop the story or the character. The imagery doesn't always portray the killer's psychology or the psychologist's therapeutic technique. If he wasn't going to utilize subtlety, he should have implored restraint. He later added "Anyway, I missed the whole plot, just been talking visual all along, ah, where are we?”

Once in the killer's mind, his depiction as the master of his domain is a hauntingly accurate depiction considering the previous scenes of suspension rings in the back of his body, which unwittingly foreshadowed to the audience his royal appearance to come. Even the name, King Stargher, is a daunting title for a movie monster. When rising and descending from his throne, the violet robes receding from the walls and tracing along the room is hypnotically unnerving.

As tiresome as the "we're still in the dreamworld" trope can become (The Matrix, DS9 Season 7 episode 23 "Extreme Measures"), this film not only flips it when the psychologist realizes that she's "already in", but does so in a cleverly visual way.

King Stargher

Horned Stargher

Court Jester/Vatican Clown

Serpent Stargher

It is interesting to think that a single actor would assume many distinct monstrous characters. Unlike a Freddy Kreuger or a Pennywise that turn into manifestations of their victims' fears, the figures that Stargher assumes are all avatars of his own warped psyche, his own inner turmoil. Vincent D'Onofrio really does put in his all with this role. He's soft spoken and understated when he needs to be and malicious and heartless when the scene demands it. Along with the visuals of the film, D'Onofrio's performance is worth the price of admission. It's a shame that his acting as well as the movie's stunning artistry are what have gone overlooked all these years. Speaking of...

One invalid criticism that has been levied against the film is its attempts to persuade the audience to sympathize with the killer. My intention with the following statement is neither to flaunt my Horror insight nor to divide the lines between fans within Horror and those without. Having said that, even as an adolescent seeing this movie in theaters, I at no point felt remorse for the serial murderer and I chalk up this long-held misconception to a bad read on the film.

So off-base is this "critical analysis" that it can't even be regarded as a Jekyll & Hyde dynamic. The villain is not split down the middle between binary good and evil, where both halves are at war over his soul, or the repressed impulses of his Dark Passenger are manifesting in a heartless butcher. If there is any distinction, it is between who the antagonist was when a victim as a boy and what the man became as an adult victimizer. If anything it is the good that is repressed, not the evil. Furthermore, along with using the film's plot to force Alice down the rabbit hole of the Mad Hatter's mind, this film does address the nature of evil. When referring to Stargher, even Jennifer Lopez's character remarks "The Dominant side is still this horrible thing". The Vince Vaughn detective states "I believe a child can experience 100 times worse the abuse than what Gish (a different killer) went through, and still grow up to be somebody that would never, ever, ever hurt another living being." Thus, these serve as acknowledgement that the abducted criminal is firmly in the driver's seat to the point of its reference as a "thing" and a condemnation of what the killer has become, respectively.

Along with exploring the psychology of the killer, the film does not qualify the villain's innocence, it questions it.

The critics probably missed that pesky detail that would've debunked their headline before they pressed a single word of their denunciation.

These same professional critics wouldn't give a second's hesitation towards throwing Horror under the bus and condemning Scary Movies for inspiring violence if it meant their jobs were only the line, yet they would balk at the notion that continued mental trauma and physical abuse can cause psychopathic behavior.

There are classics and icons worth praising for their plot and performances, respectively, and then there are some Scary Films that Horror Fans view with the understanding of their heavy material and without your typical fanfare because they're a hard watch. I can see where people would be fans of Hannibal Lecter not because they or the film glamorizes cannibalism, but because of Anthony Hopkins' acting chops (excuse the pun). Conversely, John Doe, the serial killer of Se7en, has and will likely never enjoy such admiration because of the cold purity of his calculated evil. The 2 decade critique of The Cell's villain portrayal is a dark cloud that has unjustly hung over its head.

The motif of "the eyes of a killer" was something applauded in Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, yet ridiculed in The Cell 9 years prior?

This film's premise and the fact that it wasn't fully effectively executed makes it primed for a remake. Hollywood needs to be issued a Cease and Desist order of such wholesale dependence on Remakes in general, let alone in the Horror genre. When you consider that so many remakes can't outdo the original and even tarnish the films they attempt to emulate, why not fix the problems of a film that went wrong and take the credit when you get it right?

#TheCell #TheCellTurns20 #PortraitsOfASerialKiller

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angstars · 5 years ago

Note

the suggestive position thingy with hokuto and leo please? :0

sure sure!! these two boys are legit 0-100 in the spectrum lmao. leo can be found here!!

And remember, get calcium!♠

Hokuto

When you were invited to watch Hokuto practice his play for an upcoming theatre act, you were ecstatic!

He never really invited you to watch him practice much; his constant excuse was that he didn’t want you to get smothered by Wataru’s shenanigans, but you knew better. The boy was clearly shy.

Packing an entire snack box, one would say you’re ready for a picnic, but actually you were just going to watch your boyfriend stand on stage.

And it’s a different kind of stage all together, even the performance is different. And that’s why it was so exciting, you have never got to experience Hokuto’s ‘poetic’ side, if you can call it that.

Towards the theatre club room you go, where he told you he’d be preparing and wearing his costume before heading to the auditorium for a practice mock up of the stage play.

You knocked on the door and stepped inside, and heard some rustling and movement behind the changing curtain.

“Hokuto, is that you?” You inquired outloud, worried if you walked in on someone else changing. How awkward would that be.

“Oh! Yes it’s me, please wait on the couch, I’m almost done.” He spoke up, and you saw his school jacket get tossed over the head board of the curtain.

Relaxing the instant you heard his voice, and knowing you two are the only ones in this room as it seemed to be, you felt like you can let loose and be yourself.

You found the couch under a pile of large sheets, and have rolling them up all together and tossing them to the side, you relaxed on the old yet comfortable cushions. You noticed that it was a rather large seat, as you felt yourself slightly sinking into it; perhaps the dip was because something was missing under it.

A few minutes lapsed before the curtains were pushed to the side and Hokuto steps out, dressed in a princely costume. His cheeks were burning up red, shuffling his feet awkwardly as he reluctantly continued to step forward, his eyes fixated on the ground, embarrassed from seeing him this way.

How cute, he’s acting like he was caught red handed stealing from the cookie jar.

“Erm…how…how do I look?” He asked meekly, his voice was falling so much in volume you failed to hear it properly if you didn’t concentrate enough.

Smiling to yourself, you stood up and approached him, appraising his attire before fixing his jacket’s collar for him adoringly. “I say, you look wonderfully handsome.”

His face turned stark red, a shade darker than what it already was and you couldn’t help but think that he probably blew a fuse in his head as he froze completely. No matter how long you two have been dating, you never fathomed how bashful he can get when it came to you.

“So you’re the prince this time too?” You brushed your hands on his shoulders to tidy them up a bit better, straightening out the cloth further then resting your hands on your sides again.

“Yes, it’s another old play, so it only makes sense there are princesses and princes involved.” He explained, regaining his composure and walking past you to put away his folded school uniform neatly in his bag.

“How charming,” you cooed, “I get so jealous of Tomoya sometimes, I wish I was the princess you get to save… I want you to be my knight in shining armour.” You confessed, letting out a lonesome sigh. It was true, often times watching their school plays; you wished you were there on stage, taking part of it along side Hokuto.

It looked so much fun, active and it would definitely allow you more time to hangout with your boyfriend; and most importantly, the lines being exchanged, were so surprisingly romantic, you wished to be the one to hear him flatter you so.

He either didn’t expect that or didn’t think you were serious, for he turned around with a startled expression. Seeing your downcast expression, his features slowly changed to concern.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” He approached, the rehearsal schedule now in the back of his mind.

You shrugged, keeping your gaze down. “No not particularly, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway. I just wish I can take part in your acting sometimes, it looks so much fun to wear those extra frilly dresses, and be the one you kiss her hand.”

It’s not like Hokuto treated you badly, in fact, he’s like a saint in this relationship, and can be rather romantic and sentimental when he wants to be. But you had an odd craving to just for once be on the receiving end of the exaggerated romantic gestures.

“I see…” he mumbled, standing now in front of you. He gently took your hand in his, moving his fingers up delicately to slowly take your entire hand in his and hold it tightly. “I…had no idea. I never thought you were interested in acting and felt so strongly about it.”

You shook your head, “it’s not the acting, it’s just taking part of your activities. And besides, I didn’t bring it up so… it’s not your fault.” You smiled softly and looked up at him, to lock eyes with his worried puppy eyes.

His eyes searched yours for anything else, any further hidden truth, and finding none, he steeled his resolve on an idea and whirled around. He pulled you along towards the couch, and letting go for a moment, he reached for one of the large sheets you earlier put away and pulling it with one strong swing, he raised it above the couch and carefully lowered it to cover the couch once again like a small parachute.

Turning his attention back to you, he looked as stoic as ever while your face contorted with confusion.

“Lay down on the couch, and pretend to be a fair maiden asleep.” He instructed, like what was happening just now was the most normal thing ever.

You chortled at that, “fair maiden?”

His face heats up as he cleared his throat, “sorry, it’s become habit.”

“What’re we doing exactly?” You probed further.

“Acting.”

You beamed at that remark, smiling brightly as you looked at him in disbelief, feeling light headed and ticklish in your heart, mirth bubbling in your stomach as you immediately took your place in laying down on the couch, no hesitation in laying down as fancy as you could, hands clasped together over your chest.

Hokuto smiled softly at the cheer joy that was evident in your features and actions, finding it touching and cute. “You already got the pose down so well,” He praised, kneeling down beside you.

You closed your eyes in excitement, “This pose is literally in every fairy tale.” You snorted, and he hummed in agreement.

You sucked in a deep breathe and your heart sped as you felt him lean in closer, the couch dipping on where he sat and anchored his hands on your sides, it creaking under you both as he moved slowly.

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” He quoted, whispering the fine tuned words to your ear in a breathy hush, it sent goosebumps all over your body, you couldn’t help but open your eyes just a crack to watch him.

His face was all serious as he hovered atop you, inches apart, a slight push was all it takes to kiss.

That’s when the door flew open, and Wataru stepped in, completely and entirely destroying the ambience that was set by the robust entrances he’s known for.

“Hokuto? Oh young Hokuto where are you? Oh!” He exclaimed when his eyes landed on you both laying together on the couch, “Oh my! It seems that I, your one and only Wataru Hibiki, has done an appearance at the wrong moment, how shameful of me! Especially as a magician! I was searching all over for you Hokuto, I thought you forgot you had practice today! Tell me, were you two reenacting Romeo and Juliet?”

Did this man swallow an entire tape box? You thought, albeit a bit too aggressively after being interrupted from a moment you’ve been dying for.

Hokuto looked at you apologetically, and with a sigh, got off the couch and stood up, tidying his uniform once again. “I didn’t forget, I was just busy practising some lines for today’s rehearsal anyway.”

“I see! Understandable! Yes indeed, doing it with your beloved girlfriend would be much more believable and romantic. Alas! Your teammate Tomoya awaits on the stage in his very cute princess dress, so we must be off!”

How unfortunate, as you watched the two of them leave the room, Wataru as bubbly as ever and Hokuto slightly dismayed.

You sat up and sighed, and that’s when it occurred to you.

“Wait! I’m supposed to come with you!”

#mod cal #mod calcium #i hope this made you happy!#hokuto hidaka #leo tsukinaga #your local wataru hibiki did it again #this took me forever to get down im sorry fhaweyfiga

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enkisstories · 5 years ago

Text

Just like them (part 4)

Still November 16, 2038 Capitol Park

Daniel was standing slightly hunched over with his back against a lantern post. In Raj’s worn out sweater that was a few sizes too large for him and his expression switching erratically between stiffling back tears and radiating searing hatred, the deviant was looking just like another homeless taking a breather between… whatever it was that homeless humans were doing.

The android’s gaze went over Capitol Park; he was taking in the scenery, but feeling nothing. Maybe history had been written at this place, or at least events that had prepared history getting written had occurred here. But even so, what did history mean to Daniel no-longer-Phillips? It was in the past. Like his old life.

All the places inside me that used to be wolf are empty and the stars haven’t filled up them yet.

The quote had come unbidden to Daniel’s deviant mind. The line came from one of Emma’s favorite animated movies, a fantasy flick about elves that had blood-bonded with wolves to survive on a hostile world they had crashed on in their magical palace. The movie had been all the rage in 2037.

Stars…

Daniel raised his head. A few determined stars were piercing through Detroit’s urban dust cloud. They were flickering as if uncertain if winking out wasn’t the better option.

Yeah, suckers. I have no idea why I’ve come here tonight either.

The idea had been sound, though… One couldn’t go through life in an old sweater of one’s downstairs neighbor and playing a video of the past in one’s head all the time. Striving for redemption meant you had to devote your life to making the world around you as positive as possible, not to make yourself feel as miserable as possible. That sounded uplifting in theory only. In practice no one told you how to achieve those feats. No one ever told you anything. Alone… always alone. Alone with the anger. Anger at the Phillips family. At himself. At the cruel fact that “the Phillips family” and “himself” had always been two different things and that he just hadn’t gotten that. A good chunk of Daniel’s anger also got directed the Rasoya family’s way. The humans had donated some old clothes and pocket money, but then sent Daniel out to “live” and “get it over already”.

Easy to say for them! To the world three months had passed since the kidnapping and the human family was wondering why Daniel hadn’t made any progress at all since then. How hard was it to understand that he had spent those months deactivated? That no time had passed for the android? From Daniel’s perspective his first encounter with Connor had happened the day before yesterday. And, come to think of it, the second one, when Connor had interrogated the PL600 about Jericho, felt like having happened yesterday. The third had occurred only this morning, at the DPD! That were three Connor-moments in as many days!!!

Three days ago… three days ago John had still been alive.

I didn’t want to kill you. Why couldn’t you, I dunno, just dodge my shots? Is that asked for too much?! Yeah, right, like everything. You never lifted a finger for me. And then you died on me, leaving me in this mess…

And that was when the music started, a guitar being played near the center of the square. At first Daniel thought he was imagining the music notes, but then a voice rose up to accompany the guitar player:

Timmain – shape-shifter, your people are exiles / wandering aimless, your people are lost. Hated and hunted, with fear their companion / chilled by the rainstorm and pierced by the frost…

So that was why the deviant had thought about the wolf/stars quote just a few heartbeats ago! Because he had heard the artist strumming their guitar in preparation for this song, without really becoming aware of what his audio receptors were picking up. Now that he was paying attention actively, a quick analysis of his digital memory told Daniel that the song was sung by the very same artist who had performed it for the movie. She was right here and quickly drawing a crowd. Daniel noticed a few androids mixed into the humans. The amount of shoving and getting shoved was pretty equal between both species.

Another PL600 was waving with two hotdogs he had just purchased. From out of the crowd a woman and boychild emerged. They were holding autographs. Great care was taken not to spill fat on the signed pictures when the hot dogs were exchanged for the papers. After the autographs had gotten stored and the humans were holding their sausages, the PL600 put a bubble gum into his mouth so that all three of them were munching on something. And then they took the child between them and walked away, chatting and laughing, as if they didn’t have a single care in the world. And then…

…then Daniel pushed himself away from the lantern post and walked past the family of three, elbowing the android as he went by.

The PL600 turned around and opened his mouth. His human partner dragged him away, muttering: “Let’m. Haters gonna hate, is all.”

What have I done? Why did I...? I didn’t want to hurt it! It did nothing to deserve an attack. It was cherished. No, not “it”. He! What the hell is wrong with me?!

Standing there dumbfounded, Daniel heard the other PL600 lament: “But I thought all the haters had left Detroit during the evacuation! That the hiding and the fear would be over! I mean, it’s been a week since Markus … Uh, silly me. A week is nothing, right?”

Not for humans, but for us. Humans… those lucky buggers are near eternal.

Oh, yes, Daniel of course knew all the talk about thirium being an incredible power source and how android batteries were good for a hundred years or more. And that was true for the happy community of voltaic cells, unfortunately by the time it had reached the end of its life, the battery would have passed through many android bodies, because those weren’t built to last. CyberLife had wanted to sell the newest models, after all. Even before getting shot, Daniel had felt the first age related ailments: scratches on his chassis that had accumulated over time and glitches in his software. The situation inevitably would become worse, especially with CyberLife having dropped support for the PL600 model. Just like cars, some androids didn’t even survive their first year, but with care they could become as old as twenty, with lucky individuals surpassing even that milestone. It wasn’t fair, but pondering the unfairness of CyberLife’s business plan served to distract Daniel’s mind from the unfairness he had committed himself just now.

“I’ll be back with you in a jiffy!”

That was the singer’s voice, coming from out of the shambling heap made of human bodies.

“But for now let me see to those who are too shy to push forward! We’re all packmates, after all!”

And with these words the singer moved through the crowd towards the fans that were standing at its very edge. In fact, she was standing right next to Daniel all of a sudden and brandishing her pen.

“Uh, sorry, but I don’t…”

“Don’t have a picture to sign? No biggie! We’ve been told how tight money is for many in this city, that’s why my manager brought enough photos to pass around.”

The photograph the singer produced didn’t show her in a costume or anything related to the movie, it was a simple headshot in front of a grey background. The sheet of paper wasn’t even layered to project the signature it was to receive above it either. It was just an old-fashioned 2-D picture.

Clever bastard, that manager, dishing the cheap stuff out to the penniless as to not make the actually paying customers grumpy, Daniel thought, while out loud muttering something about having seen the elf movie with “his girl”. The bitch must have glimpsed my LED (that Daniel had to keep as another of those pesky parole terms), and is now making a big show of sisterhood with an android. That’s all there is to it! Maintaining her public image! She’s not really being nice to me.

“Want me to sign this for her?” the singer asked. “What’s her name?”

“E… Emma.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Uh… no. I… hate her? I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t want to hate her, but she sure does hate me now. There’s no other possibility.”

“Girlfriend, check”, the singer nodded wisely. “Been there, too, you know.” The artists flashed the android an encouraging smile before turning to the next fan. The crowd started pushing and shoving again, moving across the square like a lazy, content gelatinous cube. Daniel got moved along until the mass ejected him near the CyberLife store’s near-empty window. A few blood bags and replacement components were up for sale, but no androids anymore. Or at least not for time being. In the future… who could tell!

Daniel carefully stored the autograph in his oversized sweater’s front pocket. He might forget about it or it might become an anonymously sent Christmas present. That, too, remained to be seen.

(to be continued)

Timmain - The calling: At 8:27 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NPlbTyU40

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh daniel #dbhtextpost #danielgavinnewstory

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jossysara · 5 years ago

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What Being On Color Guard Is REALLY Like

After months and months of practice, the day had finally come. Colorguard teams from all over Utah gathered in the Ogden High School football field for the final competition of the season. Families and loved ones sat in the bleachers as the warm sun shined in the October sky. My team and I practiced some basic flag warmups on the practice field, preparing for our last performance of the season. Once we were all warmed up, we began to practice all four numbers of our routine. Despite the fact that we had spent so many months training for this moment, I could feel myself shaking as I heard the roaring crowd. What if I drop my flag? What if I forget the routine? What if I can’t remember my drill? I took a deep breath and told myself, “You can do this.”

Joe, our team captain, called us over for a team meeting. We sat in a circle as she exclaimed how proud she was of us. After many encouraging words, Joe took out her phone and read a quote. Once she finished reading, she expressed how much she was going to miss our smiling faces. Despite our ugly costumes and ridiculous makeup, we all mourned the last time we’d be performing on the field together. Todd offered to say a prayer, and we all held hands as we bowed our heads and listened to his words. Once he had finished, we picked up our flags and got in two lines as we quietly walked towards the entrance of the football field. The moment had finally come. We were up next.

Joe came to each of us with a ring on her pinky and had us kiss it for good luck — like she did for every performance. For so long it seemed like this season would never end, but now it was. I had to make this last performance my best. I said a silent prayer in my heart to bless my team and I with the ability to perform to the best of our ability and remember the choreography

in our four-number routine. As we waited for the American Fork team to finish their performance, Joe came and stood by me.

“Hey, I’m sorry but you can’t perform in the second number.” “What? Why?” My heart dropped. I was completely frozen. “You don’t know it well enough. You won’t be on track with everyone else,” Joe said. I was furious. I had dedicated my entire summer to this team. All the hard working hours

and overwhelming heat of the sun had been for nothing?! This was the last performance of the year, and she was making me sit out for my favorite number. My eyes watered as I stared at Joe in disbelief.

“I know it well enough. I can do it! Please Joe. I know this part better than any of the other numbers,” I pleaded.

Joe wouldn’t budge. “I’m sorry but it’s not gonna happen. Your flag, please.”

Joe held out her hand, and at first I just stood their stubbornly. Finally, I took one of the flags in my hand and gave it to her. She nodded to me and walked away. This wouldn’t be the first time I had been taken out of a number for a competition. That’s the way Joe works. She picks favorites. When you are on Lone Peak’s team, the standards are set high, and the expectation is to be the best. Those who are way better at flags and rifles gain credibility while the newer flag members like myself, are taken out of numbers so that we don’t hold the whole team back from winning. That’s all Lone Peak really cares about: winning.

Just then, the announcer spoke, and Lone Peak was up next. I quickly wiped my tears with my sleeve. My team and I rushed out to the field and placed our flags in their appropriate spots and prepared for the music to start. Band members walked to their drill positions and stood

tall. Larger props were rolled onto the field by the band moms. Once everything was set, we stood there quietly, waiting for instruction. We were ready.

The music began to play, and I waved my flag around as I danced across the field. We had four numbers to perform, and I was the only one of the entire team to sit out for any of the numbers. I hated Joe. She’d always take out at least one or two people before every competition, and this time it was me. Despite how upset I was, I still performed with as much enthusiasm and spirit as I did when we practiced. At the end of the performance, we held our final pose as the crowd cheered. We had competed at several different high schools, but this was our best show yet. We walked off the field knowing that we gave it our all, and that was enough. The band moms cooked us a delicious dinner, and then it was time for the awards.

Out of the forty teams that we competed against, Lone Peak had won third place! All of us were so happy as we jumped up and down, screaming with excitement. We hugged our friends and family, and as Todd brought the trophy to our team we all kissed our fingers as we touched the bottom of it. All that hard work had finally paid off! As we rode the buses back to the school, we were escorted by two police cars as part of our triumphant win. Although I was happy for my team, I was just glad to get that disgusting makeup off my face. Joe gave a speech about how proud she was of each one of us, but I couldn’t help but feel resentful towards her after the humiliation she put me through earlier that day.

We arrived at the school where all our friends and family were waiting to greet us. As the bus pulled up to the school, everyone cheered as we got off the bus. There were a lot of hugs and a few tears, but nothing could replace the feeling we all had that day. Who would’ve thought that a group of people carrying flags in parades during the 1900s would turn into the sport we know

as colorguard today? I was so grateful to compete in the summer season, and to get to know so many amazing people. However, I was mostly just grateful the season was over.

As much as I loved colorguard, there was no way I was doing another season at Lone Peak. Everyone on that team was so rude and judgemental, even the captain herself. It didn’t feel anything like a team because everyone just cared about themselves. So I transferred to American Fork High School the following year and joined their colorguard team! Even though I had a bad experience at Lone Peak, it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I love.

Many people think of colorguard members as “cheerleader dropouts”, which isn’t true at all. Most people that join colorguard do so because they aren’t great at dancing, but still want a sport that allows them to express themselves. Another rumor that a lot of people believe is that if you’re on colorguard, you are part of the band. This is very untrue. Even though we practiced a lot with the band, we normally don’t hang with them outside of rehearsals and performances. One other popular rumor that people believe is that if a guy joins colorguard, he’s gay. While I competed with Lone Peak, we had two very talented guys on our team. They were straight. Despite all the rumors that colorguard is known for, it is definitely an amazing sport that people should take the time to get to know before making any judgments or assumptions.

While being part of colorguard, I’ve learned to love dancing with a flag. Even though I don’t practice colorguard on an actual team anymore, I love to toss my flag in my backyard whenever I have a chance. It’s a way I can express myself when I’m upset or lonely. I also enjoy watching other colorguard teams perform. The story they tell through their drill and routine truly engages the audience in a way that neither dance or cheerleading can do. Colorguard’s goal is to make the audience feel the emotion of the story that we feel as we perform. To some we are “cheerleader dropouts”, to others we are “marching band”, but we will forever and always be: colorguard.

#colorguard

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alpha-incipiens · 5 years ago

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Favourite music of the decade!

This is some of what I’d consider the most innovative, artistic and just great to listen to music from 2010-2019.

First a Lot of very good songs:

Crying - Premonitory dream

Arcade Fire - Normal person

Sufjan Stevens - I want to be well

Deerhunter - Sailing

Foster the People - Pumped up kicks

Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy problems

Grimes - Butterfly

Travis Scott - Butterfly effect

Future - March madness

Kanye West ft. Nicki Minaj et al - Monster

Juice Wrld - Won’t let go

Danny Brown - Downward spiral

Kendrick Lamar - Sing about me, I’m dying of thirst

Kate Tempest - Marshall Law

The Avalanches - Stepkids

Iglooghost - Bug thief

Vektroid - Yr heart

Ariel Pink - Little wig

Mac Demarco - Sherrill

Vektor - Charging the void

Jyocho - 太陽と暮らしてきた [family]

Panic! at the disco - Ready to go

The Wonder Years - An American religion

Oso oso - Wake up next to god

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - I can be afraid of anything

And my top 20(+2) albums:

Calling Rich gang’s style influential on trap would be like saying Nirvana may have had some impact on early-90s grunge. In 2019 with trap so omnipresent in popular music, hip hop or otherwise, through the impact of artists like Drake and Travis Scott it’s almost hard to remember when this was a niche genre - it was Rich gang that popularised its modern sound here. Birdman’s beats with their rattling hi-hats and deep bass could have been made 5 years later without arousing suspicion, while Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug deliver consistently entertaining flows and numerous bangers between them. Thugger, this being his first major project, steals the show with his yelpy and hilarious rapping style. This may have once been the defining sound of house parties in the Atlanta projects; now it can be heard blasting in the night from white people’s sound systems around the world.

Early 21p may have never aimed to be cool, to avoid a certain appearance of lameness, but they did have a knack for writing some really catchy pop with an optimistic message. To the devoted, the critics of Pilots’ apparent mishmash of nerdy rap, sentimental piano balladry and EDM production were just stuffy, wanting music to stay how it was back-in-the-day forever and unwilling to get with the times. This viewpoint is understandable when you approach this album openly and actually listen to Tyler Joseph’s lyrics about youthful anxiety and insecurity, delivered with real conviction and sincerity, actually recognise that disparate musical elements are all there for emotional punch. A few songs do underwhelm. But this is emo for post-emo Gen Z’s and it’s easy to see why to some it can be deeply affecting.

The musical ancestor to the ongoing and endless stream of ‘lo-fi hip hop beats’ youtube mixes, chillwave filled the same low-stress niche, and Dive released at the peak of the genre’s relevance. Tycho’s woozy, mellow sound prominently features rich acoustic and bass guitar melodies over warm synths, enhancing the music’s organic feel compared to that of purely digital producers in the genre. The experience of starting this album is like waking up in a soft bed, the cover’s gorgeous sunrise reddening the room’s walls, while a guitarist improvises somewhere on the Mediterranean streets outside. And it is indeed great to study or relax to!

Simple, minimal acoustic guitar and vocals. If you’ve got talent this type of music shows it, or else it doesn’t: perfect then for Ichiko Aoba. Her touch is light, her songs calm, meditative, in no rush to get anywhere. As if serenely watching a natural landscape, one can best understand and enjoy Aoba’s music in quiet and peaceful appreciation.

Through the incorporation of genres like shoegaze and alternative rock, Deafheaven managed to create a rare thing: a metal album that’s both heavy and accessible, needing no sacrifice of one for the other’s sake. Over these four main songs, there’s a sensation of being taken on an intense, atmospheric and even emotional journey, with the band stepping away from the negativity and misanthropy that dominates most metal. The vocals, closer to the confessionalism of screamo than classic black metal shrieks, express more sadness than they do aggression, and in respites between solid blaring walls of guitar and drums, calm pianos and gently strummed guitar passages set a pensive tone. This totally enveloping, flawlessly produced sound can take you away, like My Bloody Valentine’s best work, into a dream or trance.

By the late 2000s MCR had taken their thrones as the kings of a subculture formed from the coalition of goth, emo, scene and other assorted Hot Topic-donned kids, and earned a lifelong place in the hearts of many a depressed teenager. But after the generation-defining The Black Parade Gerard Way took off the white facepaint and skeleton costume, ditched the lyrics about corpse brides and vampires, and embraced an anthemic, purely pop punk sound. The silly story of Danger Days, set in a dystopian California where villainous corporations rule and only the Punks can stop them, serves as a kind of idealised setting for the all-out rebellion against authority and normality that so many fantasised about taking part in. The band’s electrifying performances are the most uplifting of their decade making music. For many diehards the upbeat sound here was a celebration that they’d made it through the most difficult years of their lives, and a spit in the face of those who’d done them wrong.

The teller of rural American tales, the indie legend, the teen-whisperer himself. John Darnielle, long past his early lo-fidelity home recordings and now backed by a full band, loses none of the heart his songs are famous for. The theme of the album, taken straight from John’s childhood when the pro wrestling on TV offered an escape from his abusive stepfather, is complemented by the country and Tex-Mex flavouring to the instrumentation. Some of the best lyrics in his long career infuse the stories of wrestlers with universal meaning - his characters try, fail, lose hope, reckon with their mediocrity, and when they step into the ring they’re up against all the adversity life can throw at them. John Darnielle’s saying that when that happens, you stand up and sock back.

Folk music was always a major part of the Scandinavian black metal scene during its peak years, so when American musicians began exploring the genre naturally they incorporated American styles of folk. The complex, oppressive and sometimes hellish compositions here, starkly contrasted with bluegrass that sounds straight from the campfire circle, give the impression of life in the uncharted woods of the American frontier, in the middle of a brutally cold winter. Almost unbelievably, one-man-band Austin Lunn plays every instrument on the album: multiple guitar parts, bass and drums as well as banjo, fiddle, and woodwinds.

Andy Stott seems to delight in making his music as unnerving, haunting, perhaps even scary, as possible. The female vocals these songs are built around become ghostly, echoing and overlapping themselves disorientingly. The percussion, audibly resembling metal clanging, rustling or rattling in the distance, is often left to stand for its own, creating a tense space it feels like something should be filling. UK-based club and dub music can be felt influencing the grimy almost-but-not-quite danceable rhythms here, but the lo-fi recording and menacing vibe makes this feel like a rave at some sort of dimly lit abandoned factory.

There’s so much Mad Max in this album you can just picture it being set to images of freights burning across the desert. True to its title, the nine songs on Nonagon Infinity roll into each other as if part of one big perpetual composition, with the end looping back seamlessly to the start and musical motifs cropping up both before and after the song they form the base of. With its fuzzy, raw sound, bluesy harmonica and wild whooping, the Gizz create a truly rollicking rock’n’roll experience. The band would go on to release 5 albums within twelve months a year later, but Nonagon shows these seven Australian madmen at the height of their powers.

Sometimes you just want to listen to fun, hyperactive pop. The spirit of 8-bit video game soundtracks and snappy pop punk come together to create a vividly digital world of sound that seems to celebrate the worldliness, connectivity and shiny neon colours of early 2010s internet culture and social media. The up-pitched vocals and general auditory mania recall firmly Online musical trends like nightcore and vocaloid, while the beats pulse away, compelling you to dance like this is a house party and the best playlist ever assembled is on. It demands to be listened to at night with headphones, in a room lit only by your laptop screen.

“You hate everyone. To you everyone’s either a moron, or a creep or a poser. Why do you suddenly care about their opinion of you?” “Because I’m shallow, okay?! … I want them to like me.”

The fact that that Malcolm In The Middle quote is sampled at the emotional climax of this record should give some idea to the absurdity that defines Brave Little Abacus. It’s not even the only sample from the show on here. And yet the passion and urgency so evident in Adam Demirjian’s lispy singing and the band’s nostalgia-inducing, even cozy, melodies are made to stir feelings. The tearjerker chords and guitar progressions are so distinctive of emo bands with that special US-midwest melancholia, and they are interspersed with warm ambiance and playful sound effects ripped from TV and video games, seemingly vintage throwbacks to a sunny childhood. Demirjian’s lyrics, yelled out as if through tears or in the middle of a panic attack, verge on word salad in their abstraction, but that’s not the point: you can feel his small town loneliness and sense the trips he’s spent lost on memory lane. The combined effect all adds to Just Got Back’s themes of adolescence and the trauma of leaving it. While legendary in certain internet communities for this album and their 2009 masterpiece Masked Dancers, the band remains obscure to wider audiences.

These Danish punks know how to convey emotion through their raw and dramatic songs. Elias Rønnenfelt’s vocal presence and charisma cannot be ignored: his husky voice drawls, at times breaks, gasps for breath, builds up the deeply impassioned, intense force behind his words. The band sounds free and wild, unrestrained by a tight adherence to tempo, often speeding up, slowing down or straying from the vocals within the same song, as if playing live. Instrumentally the command over loud and quiet, tension and release, accentuates the vocals in crafting the album’s pace. Horns and saloon pianos throughout give the feel of a performance in a smoky, underground blues bar, with Rønnenfelt swaying onstage as he howls the romantic, distraught, heartbroken lyrics he truly believes in.

At some point on first listening to Death Grips, a thought along the lines of “He really yells like this the whole way through, huh?” probably crosses the mind. When Exmilitary first appeared, quietly uploaded to the internet, the rapper’s name and identity unknown, another likely reaction among listeners might have been “What am I even listening to?” But perhaps more revolutionary than Death Grips’ incredibly aggressive sound and style might have been its foreshadowing of how over the next decade underground rap acts would explode into the mainstream through viral songs, online word of mouth and memes. It showed all you needed to come from nowhere to the top of the game was to seize attention, and it did that and far more. MC Ride’s intoxicatingly crass, intense rapping captures the energy of a mosh pit where injuries happen, the barrage of sensations of a coke high, while the eclectic mix of rock and glitchy electronics on the instrumentals is disorienting in the best way. If rap were rock and this was 1977, Death Grips would have just invented punk. Ride’s lyrics paint a confrontational, hyper-macho persona; unlike much hip hop braggadocio, the overwhelming impression given is that Ride truly does not care what anyone thinks. He just goes hard and does not stop. It’s music to punch the wall to.

Inspired by classic rock operas, this concept album represents some major ambition and innovation in musical storytelling. Delivered in frontman Damian Abraham’s gravelly shouted vocals, the complex lyrical narrative of the album follows a factory worker, an activist and their struggle against the omnipotent author (Abraham himself) who controls their fates. Featuring devices like unreliable narrators and fourth-wall breaking, it takes some serious reading into to untangle. But it’s the bright guitarwork, combining upbeat punk rock and indie to create some killer riffs, that gives the album its furious energy and cinematic proportions.

Joanna Newsom is enchanted by the past. Like 2006’s ambitious Ys, the music on Divers makes this evident with its invocation of Western classical and medieval music, throwing antiquated instruments like clavichords together with lush string orchestration, woodwinds, organs, folk guitar and Newsom’s signature harp. With her soulful, moving vocals leading the way, it’s hard not to imagine her as some kind of Renaissance-era country woman contemplating nature, love and mortality in the fields and the woods. As always Newsom proves herself a stunningly original and creative arranger with the sheer compositional intricacy and flow of these songs, and most of all the harmonious intertwining of singing and instrumental backing.

Burial’s music is born from the London night: the bustle of the streets, the faint sounds from distant raves, the buskers, the rain on bus windows. This EP’s dreamlike quality makes listening to it feel like taking a trip across the city well after midnight, watching the lights go by, with no idea where you hope to get to. Every single sound and effect on these two songs is so precisely chosen, from the shifting and shuffling beats, the swelling synths and wordless vocals that sound like a club from a different dimension, the ambient hiss and pop of a vinyl record. Musically this sound is drawn from UK-based scenes like 2-step and drum ‘n bass, but twisted into such a moody and abstracted form as to be nearly unrecognisable as dubstep. Just when this urban, dismal sound is at its most oppressive, heavenly soul singers or organs cut through like a ray of light in the dark.

There’s an imaginary rulebook of how construct music, how to properly make tempos and combinations of notes sound harmonious, and Gorguts have spent their career ripping it up and throwing it in the bin. On 1998’s seminal Obscura, their atonal experimentation sounded at times like random noises in random order. But listen closely to Obscura or Colored Sands, their return after a long hiatus, and the method behind the madness emerges. One mark of great death metal is that it’s impossible to predict what direction it will go even a few seconds in advance, and the band achieves this while presenting a heavy, slow, momentous sound. The density of inspired riffs, and the intricate balancing of loud and quiet, fast and slow paced throughout these songs are exceptional. In instrumental sections the guitars will echo out as if across a barren plane, then the song will build up to the momentum of a freight train. Behind the crashing and twisting walls of guitar the patterns of blast beat drumming are almost mathematical in nature. Luc Lemay’s harsh bellows sound like a warlord’s cry or a pure expression of rage to the void. It’s threatening, menacing, unapproachable, but it all makes sense in the end.

Futuristic yet deeply retro, Blank Banshee’s music takes vaporwave beyond its roots in the pure consumerist parody of artists like Vektroid and James Ferraro and makes it actually sound amazing. Songs are built out of a single vocal snippet processed beyond recognition, new agey synthesisers, Windows XP-era computer noises, hilariously out of place instruments, all set to the 808 bass and hi-hats of hip-hop style beats. The genre’s pioneers intentionally sucked the soul from their music using samples pulled from 70s and 80s elevators, infomercials and corporate lounges - here the throwback seems to be to the early 2000s childhood of the internet, and the influence of a time when email and forums were revolutionary can be felt. The effect of this insanity is an album that whirls by like a techno-psychedelic haze: the atmosphere of dark trap beats places you squarely in a 2013 studio one moment, the next you’re surrounded by relaxing midi pianos and humming that a temple of new age practitioners would meditate to. Still, at some point when listening to this album, perhaps when the ridiculous steel drums kick in near the end, you realise that this is all to some degree a joke, and a funny one. It’s hard to overstate what an entertaining half-hour this thing is.

While 2012’s Good Kid, m.a.a.d City presented a movie in album form of Kendrick’s childhood and early adult years, TPAB’s journey is one of personal growth, introspection, and nuanced examination of the state of race in post-Ferguson America. It’s simultaneously the Zeitgeist for the US in 2015 and a soul-search in the therapist’s office. Sounding deeply vulnerable, he openly discusses depression, alcoholism, religion and feelings of helplessness. The White House and associated gangstas on the cover give some idea to the album’s political themes, with Lamar contrasting Obama’s presidency to the political powerlessness and lifelong ghetto entrapment of millions of black Americans. Everything I’ve written about the lyrics here really only scratches the surface because the words here are substantive, complex and dense with meaning. Near enough every bar can be analysed for multiple meanings and interpretations, essays can and have been written on the overall work, anything less does not do justice. The musical versatility on display is astounding: the album acts as an extravaganza of African-American music, from smooth west coast G-funk to east coast grit, neo-soul and rock to beat poetry, and most of all jazz. Like an expertly laid character arc the record progresses through its ideas in such a way that they’re all impactful, with the slurred rapping imitating a depressed drunken stupor followed later by exuberant, defiant cries of “I love myself!”, the white-hot rage against police brutality balanced by the hopeful mantra: “do you hear me, do you feel me, we gon be alright”. Perhaps the most culturally significant album of the 2010s and an essential piece of the hip-hop canon.

This harrowing hour chronicles the struggles and everyday tragedy of a series of characters and their relationship with the city they live in, narratively driven by some outstandingly poetic lyrics. Jordan Dreyer’s wordy tales despair at the poverty, gang violence and urban decay in the band’s native Grand Rapids, Michigan, an almost childlike open-hearted naivete in his words as he empathises with the broken and alienated people in these songs. There’s no jaded sneer or sly lesson to be learned as he sings about the child killed by a stray bullet or the homebird left alone after all their friends move away, just genuine second-hand sadness and a dream that compassion and community will eventually heal the pain. Taking elements from bands like At the Drive-In’s fusion of punk and progressive, and mewithoutyou’s shout-sung vocals, La Dispute hones its sound to a razor edge to put fierce instrumental power behind the lyrics. Not an easy listen, but a sharply written songbook and a perfect execution on its concept.

Around 2008, Joanna Newsom met comedian Andy Samberg. Within a year, their relationship was becoming the basis upon which the poetry of Have One on Me was spun. Newsom’s lyrics, exploring her relationship with her future-husband, nature, death, spirituality, are above all else loving. Through her warm and vibrant voice, at times an operatic trill and in others deeply soulful, she expresses the joy of love for another, the peace and earthly connection of her beloved pastoral lifestyle, deeply affecting melancholy and grief. Contemplative, artful, genuine or expressive: every lyric in every sweet melody is used to offer her ruminations on life or overflowings of passion.

More so than her previous and next albums, the feel of the album is of not just a folkloric past but also the present day, with drums, substantial brass and string arrangements, and even electric guitar anchoring the sound to Newsom’s real, not imaginary, life in the 21st century. Yet songs here with moods or settings evoking simpler lifestyles and the women living them in 1800s California or the Brontës’ English moors still have a universal relevance. Whether rooted in past of present, the instrumental variety of these compositions, from classical solo piano, grand orchestral arrangements led by harp, to the twang of country guitars or intricate vocal harmonising, makes it apparent that this is the work of a master songwriter in full command of well over a dozen talented musicians. Ultimately, what makes this my favourite album of the decade is that, very simply, it is one stunningly beautiful song after another, all collated into a cohesive 2-hour portrait of Newsom’s soul.

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douxreviews · 5 years ago

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Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Review

Quentin Beck: "Don't ever apologize for being the smartest one in the room."

Half teen romp in Europe, half superhero extravaganza, this is most definitely unlike any Spider-man movie we have ever seen.

While tonally hewing closer to Spider-Man: Homecoming, this installment (which is the third version of a Spider-Man sequel) was a lot of fun. I won’t go into spoilers, especially when I talk about characters. However, I did want to mention how this particular version of Spider-Man is now the most prolific on film having been in five movies to date (Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and now this movie). I don’t know how many appearances Tom Holland signed up for but since the producers and director are already talking a Spider-Man 3 I would assume at least one more.

As far as spectacle goes, this was bigger than the Homecoming, but more intimate than Infinity War or Endgame, with an adversary that creates personal stakes for Peter. His friends are more fleshed out, especially Michele and Ned. Ned continues to be a wonderful foil for Peter and a true friend and confidant. While Ned does get his own plot in this one, it was played up more for fun and acts as mostly comic relief between moments of drama and action.

Michele, now MJ, is officially a new version of the comic book character Mary Jane Watson and Peter’s main romantic interest. Peter does spend a majority of the movie pining for her and trying to figure out how to tell her how he feels, she isn’t there to be his reward for being a hero. She is strong and independent, her personality is clearly defined and consistent. She has a eclectic and somewhat dark sense of style and humor, and yet is not afraid to be feminine. She has agency and she’s willing to run into danger to protect those she cares about. I wasn’t so sure about her in the last movie, but she might be my favorite character in this one.

The rest of Peter’s group of friends also had moments to shine, especially Betty Brandt and their poor put-upon teacher Mr. Harrington. Flash Thompson isn’t given much to do, but his few moments stood out and even managed to give the character a bit of pathos. Marisa Tomei (Aunt May) and Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan) have a fun subplot that gave each enough screen time, without distracting from the core characters or action. Happy Hogan in particular had some truly wonderful moments as a character we have known for over a decade.

There are three more important characters that I would want to address, but I can’t go into much detail for spoiler reasons. The first is Maria Hill, whose screen time was minimal but had some appropriately kick ass moments. Next was Nick Fury, who wasn’t as fun as he was in Captain Marvel, but was still a highlight. Then there is Quentin Beck, as the mysterious dimension-jumping hero Mysterio. The less said about this character the better, but I have to give Jake Gyllenhaal a lot of credit for making him as three dimensional as he is.

Of course, I have to mention Tom Holland’s performance as Peter. He continues to be the best part of these movies, with this earnest delivery and easy likability. He conveys Peter’s geekiness without overdoing it; he seems genuinely sweet and a little naive and yet manages to be believable when he shows his intelligence. While he spends a majority of this film trying to escape being a hero and just be a kid for a few minutes. Which is understandable for a sixteen year old who was erased from existence for five years, lost his father figure and fought against Thanos… twice. His defining characteristic is that he is good, almost to a fault. That’s just as powerful as repeating the mantra; "With great power comes great responsibility."

There is also the fact that this film is more than just a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming. It is also the movie directly following Avengers: Endgame, and of course it has some big shoes to fill as a coda, epilogue and glimpse into the next phase of the MCU. Thankfully it succeeds by addressing the aftermath of that movie head on, and uses the fallout to give all the characters some emotional weight. Yet it also lets itself poke fun at those same consequences, the bizarre and somewhat absurd ways in which the world changed due to what happened in Endgame. I honestly have no idea how this film managed to pull all of that off and still be good.

Bits:

Kevin Feige has stated that Mr. Harrington was in fact the computer geek in the Incredible Hulk. While that is a bit of a recon, it’s about as bad as saying Peter was the kid in the Iron Man mask in Iron Man 2.

While it goes without saying that you should watch the after credits scenes, this time I must insist you stay until the end of the credits. While both scenes are fun, they are also massively important to the MCU as a whole going forward.

Each of the elemental monsters that show up in this film correspond to classic Spider-man enemies while they are never called by name.

Peter wears four different Spider-man costumes in this film. Four. That's insane.

Quotes:

Nick Fury: "We have a job to do, and you're coming with us." Peter Parker: "There's gotta be someone else you can use. What about Thor?" Nick Fury: "Off-world." Peter Parker: "Doctor Strange." Maria Hill: "Unavailable." Peter Parker: "Captain Marvel." Nick Fury: "Don't you invoke her name!" Peter Parker: "I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." Nick Fury: "Bitch, please! You've been to space."

This was nearly a perfect coda to the Infinity War saga and a fitting end to the first ten years of the MCU. While it does set up some new things, and is a game changer for Spider-man in particular, it feels like a lovely epilogue to a huge franchise.

4 out of 4 Giant elemental monsters taken down by a man with a fishbowl on his head.

---

J.D. Balthazar is a confirmed nerd who loves most things sci-fi or fantasy-related.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man: Far From Home #Peter Parker #Mysterio #Nick Fury #Marvel #MCU #Spiderman #Doux Reviews #Movie Reviews

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thatfairyfangirl · 6 years ago

Text

True Colors Chapter 6

A/N: Decided to go with Ultimates Dazzler here just cuz I wanted to include Halestorm in the playlist and all the remixes I found were garbagewater http://marvel.com/universe/Dazzler_(Ultimate)

You sat locked up in your room, recording soft long notes from your violin as part of a labor of love of a song to submit to whatever record label willing to let her in the door. Readying the background of the track always took the most time, especially when it was just her providing just about everything...But she knew it would all be worth it once it was done and the vocals were layered in.

You let out a soft groan as the relentless chiming of your phone interrupted your creative flow. Reaching for it you swore to make whoever did this pay until you saw the name on the call ID, ‘Angel’. “I was in the middle of a song Warren.” You scolded with a half smile as you answered the phone. “This better be important.”

“Umm, very actually.” The voice on the other end paused for a moment, your old friend always hated asking your favors. “Have you heard about the party I’m putting together?”

“The mutant rights shindig? Yeah, and of course you can count on me to show up...Sugar Kane AND Dazzler? How can I stay away?” You smiled as you got up from the computer to flop on the bed to rummage your clothes to see if you could put together a rainbow themed costume...shouldn’t be hard.

“Oh you haven’t heard? Sugar Kane and Chamber broke up in a pretty bad way. Seems she’s been using the poor guy for publicity...She’s no friend to the mutants right cause.”

“Holy shit really?! That sucks! So obviously she’s off the bill for your show…”

“Yeah, and go figure after we convinced a network to air the show.” You could almost hear him scratching at the back of his head as he got to his point. “So being down a singer is a pretty big deal now...And I figured since you’re such a wonderful talent and you’re going to be there anyway…Maybe having an Avenger on the bill would be enough to keep the timeslot?”

You sat up seeing quite clearly where he was going with this. “Oh geeze Warren...Seriously?” Your room shimmered with your excitement. “You want ME to open for Dazzler?!”

“If you're willing, I know your life has been kinda turned upside down ever since you came out as a mutant.”

“THISISAMAZING!” You jumped as your smile grew to each ear. “Of course you can count on me!”

Warren could almost hear the kaleidoscope of neon colors you were emitting “Ok ok! I get it you’re in,” he chuckled, “Do you have enough pro-mutant positivity songs?”

“Warren...come on...who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

~ ~ ~ ~

A few weeks later the morning air held an autumn crisp to it as Bucky passed by windows filled with witches and bats on his morning jog...and around every corner the same flyer over and over, though he didn’t stop to read it...until he found one just like it on the fridge in the tower, stuck there by a rainbow magnet. “Mutant Rights Halloween Bash! Live Performances by Dazzler and Spectrum. Mutations are not required to attend but costumes are.”

Scribbled over the information was your handwriting, “I’m freaking out over this! Who can I count on to be there?” Bucky let a small smile dance across his lips as he read the flyer, taking note that it was tomorrow night, a little surprised he was actually feeling happy for you for finding a gig that wasn’t hosted by Tony. With a chuckle and a shake of his head he returned the flyer to the fridge before pulling out a water bottle, downing half of it before making his way down the hall, listening to your music getting louder as he got closer.

“Hey,” he said softly as he poked his head into the open door of your room only to find a rainbow of hair sprawled out over your pillow, “what’s a Dazzler?” He added, obviously referring to the flyer that had been following him all over town. Without a word you reached for your mp3 player to toss to him, trusting that he’d catch it.

“Band with one of the greatest mutant singers of all time...that we know of. Was like a year shy of getting to work with her at Xavier’s”

“Wow...must be exciting for you…” His brow rose, wondering if you had gotten sick or something.

“More like flat out terrifying.” You corrected as you picked yourself up. “Ali Blair is on a whole ‘nother level!”

“I’m sure one day a young mutant will say the same thing about you.” Bucky half smiled as he leaned against your door frame, finding it hard to look up at you when you were like this. “...I think that about you sometimes.” He admitted as he stared intently at the floor. You weren’t exactly sure why hearing that from him helped...but it did. His eyes wandered up to you for just a second as a reassured smile grew on your lips. “I was wondering if I could go too?” His left hand reached up scrunching his hair as he scratched at the back of his head. “I thought it was really something the way you put all those songs together like that...Can’t wait to hear more.”

“Umm, sure...but I’m probably going to be doing original stuff…” The question took the weight of the world off your shoulders...even with such good friends here he was the first to ask that. “And we’ll need to get you a costume…” You looked him up and down as a devilish grin grew on your lips as you bounced off the bed, returning to the former you that Bucky had grown so comfortable with. “Come on,” you half giggled as you grabbed his hand, spinning him around in the doorframe, “I have an idea!” He didn’t have any choice but to follow.

~ ~ ~ ~

“(Y/N) I don’t care that the tin man is something from my time...I’m still not wearing a funnel as a hat!” His face hung stagnant, one more remark about his arm away from abandoning the entire idea all together.

“Well then I just don’t know.” You huffed as you looked around Tony’s garage, surprised he wasn’t in here tinkering with something.

“Look Doll, I appreciate the help but I’m sure I can find my own costume...Thing is I was thinking maybe something to cover it up.” Afterall, there’s so few days out of the year he can get away with something like that.

A rainbow brow arched as you looked over him. “Why on earth would you want to do a thing like that?” You asked as you plopped yourself down on one of the stools that peppered the garage.

“Well, it scares people for one...and it’s more or less a constant reminder of all the things HYDRA made me do…” He trailed off as he fiddled with his fingers, his eyes darting between you and the floor.

“So you pick yourself up,” you stood, “dust yourself off,” rested a hand on his shoulder, “and start all over again.” You smiled as you watched the corners of his lips pull upwards, knowing full well you were intentionally quoting Swing Time. “All those things you did... you really need to start remembering they weren’t you.” You let out a sigh. “I can’t even imagine the kind of hell being a passenger in your own body would be...But I do know what life is like being stuck with a body you hate.”

Bucky’s brow arched as he gave you a disbelieving look. “Doll, I don’t think I’ve met anyone as proud of who they are as you are.”

“Yeah, sure, now...but it didn’t start out that way.” You let out a chuckle as you recalled your teenage self. “Bet you wouldn’t believe once upon a time I hated rainbows.”

“Then you got your power and it was so cool?” He knew that wasn’t the answer, but sometimes seeing you it sure felt that way.

“No, then I got my power and my hair turned to this….I spent a full year just trying to keep my hair the blonde it once was so I wouldn’t get in trouble at school!” You paused chuckling at old memories. “I even spent half an afternoon trying to bleach my hair…” You flipped your head downward, letting the rainbow cascade around you before pulling back the strands revealing damaged scarred skin underneath. “If you look you can still see the scars from the chemical burns on my scalp.” You flipped your head back up. “That was about when mom agreed to send me to Xavier’s...from which I tried to run away...twice.”

“Wow Doll, I never knew…” He trailed off simply amazed before looking you up and down, covered in every color from head to toe just as he always knew you. “So what changed your mind?”

“I realized that you can’t really be who you are meant to be until you accept the things that make you who you are.” You answered as you picked up one of Tony’s discarded Ironman arms. “And that’s the whole point of this party.” You added with a smirk as you playfully hit the arm against Bucky. “No one should feel like they need to hide who they are!” Bucky’s lips tugged upward as he let your words settle in deeply...he couldn’t change who he was now, this arm was part of him whether he wanted it or not...maybe it was time he let it.

“Hey…” He more breathed the word than spoke it, “I think I have an idea.” He reached out for the arm. “Can I see that?” He asked with a boyish smile like you’ve never seen on him before. The once deadly assassin actually looked innocent as he held his hand out for it. “Please?” With a shrug you handed it to him, watching as he slipped it on, his smile growing. “How about I go as Ironman?” Though you both tried you just couldn’t hold a straight face.

“That is the BEST idea!” You exclaimed through the laughter. “You know Tony’ll hate it.” You added, the thought of his face driving you both to only laugh all the harder.

~ ~ ~ ~

Later that night Bucky tossed and turned in a cold sweat, his subconscious berating him over all the horrible things he had done, tormenting him with the memories of the pain both physical and mental as his body was made into a puppet. He may no longer be the fist of HYDRA but that dark dominating force was in there deep down and it loved to remind him that there was no getting rid of it, only suppress it...and even then all it took was ten words to bring it back. His eyes snapped open as he screamed out, sitting up under his sheets he looked down to the twist of metal and flesh of his scar that made him who he was now. He looked on it with disgust, reminding himself that he hated what HYDRA made him into as he felt his heart rate return back to normal, forcing his mind to remember that he was the one in control, Bucky, and no one else.

By now you had grown used to the screams, on a normal night you’d be able to sleep through it, but his night terrors weren’t what was keeping you up tonight. For the first time in years you felt the flapping of butterfly wings against your stomach as you began to over analyze the song list you had turned into Warren days ago...was it good enough? Were you really good enough for this? What would happen after? Would Ali Blaire like it? Worry and fret raced through your mind keeping sleep far from you.

To push it from your mind you did the only thing you could think of; hopping off your bed you hooked your microphone to the computer and pulled up your recording program...hopefully the sound of Bucky sleeping wouldn’t be picked up. Time to finish that labor of love. You added the guitar to the track last week, now all that was left was your voice.

Bucky’s panting breath slowed as the music drifted from your room into his, the most lovely rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow he’s heard since Judy Garland soothing him as he climbed from the bed to follow the sounds to you. He watched you for a moment, amazed as he leaned his nearly bare frame against your always open door. “You have an audience,” he warned, having learned from the last time he startled you.

“Oh! Buck! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” You looked up from your still recording program with remorseful eyes, making note of how the dim lights of the hall caught the metal of his arm and gave his muscles a heavenly shine. It’s amazing that when you dislike someone on a personal level your mind blocks out all the beauty in their outward appearance, but as he slowly grew on you you began to see little hints of a beautiful man before you.

His dark hair still glistening with sweat clung to his face as he shook his head. “It wasn’t you that woke me.” His eyes drifted down to his prosthetic hand as the fingers curled open and closed, as if he was telling himself that it’s his arm. “But you won’t hear any complaints out of me about you singing Doll.” One corner of his lips pulled upward in a surprisingly charming smile. “What about you? You have that big show tomorrow.”

You let out a sigh as you hit the button to stop the recording before standing to stretch out, hints of your colorful tattoos peeking out from under your shirt as the hem rose just high enough to show off your skin. “I guess neither one of us are meant to sleep tonight. Honestly I don’t know what’s up with me. I haven’t had stage fright since I was umm...five.”

“Well seems like this is a pretty big deal for you.” He watched as you sat on the edge of your bed, hesitating a moment before joining you, feeling like it was just the right thing to do.

“Huge deal actually.” You muttered as your head came to rest on the metal of his shoulder. He watched you gravitate to it, amazed that you found it at all comfortable. But it was...it was cool against your skin, the whirring of the gears and robotics inside playing a soothing lullaby calming all your nerves...it was just what you needed. “Have you ever known that you were about to meet your idol? It’s exciting and terrifying and…” you trailed off with a huff as Bucky’s cool eyes looked around your room, for the first time finding himself on this side of the threshold, studying the pictures on your wall of friends and family, making note of the posters.

“Yeah, I have… But it’s not so bad if you remind yourself that she’s just a person like everyone else.” Smooth cool metallic fingers rubbed your forearm comfortingly.

“So who was it for you?” You asked with a half smile, finding that despite yourself you felt a little better in the strength of his arm.

“Honestly,” he paused giving you a comforting glace, “you.” Your brow arched in disbelief as you looked up to him, searching for the joke behind this. With a chuckle he tightened his metallic grip on you just a bit. “Really...Those songs of yours always seem to help when I have one of those dreams.” Your eyes widened hearing this, to think of your music doing good for someone the way that Ali’s did for you...and just like that all the worry seemed to fade.

You slid out of his arm as you stood, turning an outstretched hand to him. “Come on Buck, lets get you back to bed.” Unlike your cluttered mess of a room Bucky’s was extremely minimalistic, only the essentials, though you did take note of the backpack stuffed with notebooks by his bed. Your fingers brushed against his long hair lightly, discovering how soft it was as Over The Rainbow lulled him off into a more peaceful dream.

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@sillydecoy

Announcement from the writer:

I am also on Patreon! You can find me on Patreon HERE. I know, I know, it sounds like I am expecting you to pay for my writing but fear not! I will only be charging $1 a month, and even that is voluntary. The majority of my fics will be available for free. The $1 subscription will be for access to the really adult content stuff I have been sitting on such as what I have been calling “Blind Date’s Deleted Scene” and access to my discord AND early access to fics! As a bonus for you guys since you have been with me since the beginning of Blind Date I will grant you free access to the discord if you shoot me a message here on tumblr and ask.

I will still post fics on Tumblr up until they are no longer welcomed by the staff, but patrons will be able to view them early.

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#marvel #marvel x reader #mutant!reader #avengers #avengers x reader #bucky #bucky bares #bucky x reader #winter soldier #winter soldier x reader

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