#poor billy has been living in the new islander house for So Long

[sparkylurkdragon]

At last...

AT LAST...

BILLY IS LIVING IN HIS TRASH

[lunarliza]

Fake Boyfriend | Chapter 4: Kook Conventions

JJ x Kook!reader

series masterlist | prev. chapter| chapter one

my masterlist

You’re a Kook Princess who has everything you ever wanted... until your handsome Kook Prince dumps you for a hot new fling. To save your reputation, you bribe the one person he hates the most, JJ Maybank, to pretend to be your boyfriend for the summer. All’s fair in love and war. But where do you draw that line when you’re suddenly wishing your fake boyfriend is your real one?

note: slight mention of panic attack

If there was anything you learned about JJ that Friday, it was that he was the absolute worse at sticking to the plan.

For one, he spent so much time looking for the tennis courts, instead of following your clearly written out instructions, that he ended up being late altogether to pick you up. What was supposed to be a grand gesture turned into you sitting on the front steps, while the sun was near done setting, waiting for stupid JJ while everyone else had already left.

“What the hell took you so long?!” you scolded, slamming the truck door shut in annoyance once he finally showed up.

“This place is confusing as hell! I kept having to make loops. It is called Figure Eight for a reason,” he tried to justify, pulling out of the lot.

“JJ I texted you specific instructions on how to get here!” you groused, rubbing your temple, “Anyways, it’s fine, whatever. Let’s just hurry home so I can get ready. My house is just a little bit up that way.”

“Yeah, uh, about that,” JJ mentioned sheepishly, keeping his eyes on the road, “I kinda have to help Pope and Poppa Heyward with something right now. It will only take an hour tops! I’ll just meet you at the party after I’m done.”

You groaned loudly, face-palming yourself. “JJ what the hell! I told you specifically to cancel your plans tonight. It was supposed to be our debut!”

“I did! I just,” he scratched the back of his neck, “kinda broke one of their carts this afternoon, so I have to help them fix it for tomorrow. I think they’re catering your little brunch thingy.”

“How did you even break the cart to begin with?!”

He hid his face from your dagger-eyes and admitted in a low voice, “I, uh, tried to surf on it down a hill when they weren’t looking.”

You had to fight the urge to smack him upside the head, but you didn’t want to risk him veering off the road. Lucky bastard.

“Fine,” you grumbled, “Just make sure you’re on time to the party.” You then eyed his outfit up and down. Even in the little sunlight that emitted from outside, you could tell it was all dirty from his day activities. “And please change into something a little nicer,” you added, “These Kooks would run you to the ground with that on.”

JJ dropped you off at your house and sped away as you unlocked the door into a near empty house. Looks like it would just be you and Alfred for dinner.

Your parents were headed off to the mainland for some business convention. Thankfully, your presence was not needed which saved you an entire day of pretending to be a perfect obedient daughter. It was an exhausting act.

Most teens your age would kill for a night alone, but after countless nights sleeping isolated in a big empty house, it got old and depressing. Most of the time, you’d sleep over at Sarah’s for some kind of company. You were always welcomed at the Camerons’.

Greeting Alfred your usual hello at the foyer, you darted upstairs to wash off and get ready with the little time you had left. The aroma of filet mignon and freshly seasoned veggies filled the house air.

“Oh and Alfred,” you called out over the intricate metal banister, “It’ll just be me eating tonight, so just set the table for one please.”

“Miss Y/n, your friend is not coming?” he asked with hints of concern. You just shook your head with a sad smile. “No, he had to run last minute.”

Alfred gave you a curt nod, making way back into the kitchen while you dashed into the bathroom.

—————————————————

Instead of throwing JJ straight into the shark’s tank (even though, given his already poor track record, you strongly contemplated throwing him to literal sharks), you decided it was best to ease him into the whole boyfriend role.

You figured he’d be more in touch with his aura if you invited him to a Kook party first— which was exactly where you were, furiously texting him where on earth he was.

It was already ten o’clock. The party started hours ago, and he was nowhere to be found. An hour with Pope your ass!

Flopping onto the giant living room couch in Billy Irvine’s mansion, you frowned amongst the throng of drunk privileged kids. Around you, the Glossy Posse was gossiping with other Kooks about some of the summer newcomers while sleazy guys from out of town tried to grab their attention. It never worked.

“So y/n,” Chloe asked next to you on the couch, “I have some great news! It’s no secret that you need a date to the all the fundraiser events, and I might just have one for you! My cousin, Gerald, is coming into town next week, so I can totally set you guys up!”

She proceeded to show you pictures on her phone of a lanky tall guy with discolored hair and a creepy smile. You resorted to taking a gulp of your drink to hide your horrified expression. “Thanks, but, uh, no thanks. I actually have a date already,” you informed, typing away heatedly at your phone for JJ to arrive that instant or so help you.

“Ooh, who is it?” Ivy nosily chimed in at the mention of you finally having a date. From the couch over, you also saw Anne-Marie and Warren lean their heads closer to get the scoop.

Jeez, were people really that interested in your love life?

“It’s-”

Before you could reveal the name, a loud ‘ding’ went off from your phone followed by a text from JJ to alert you that he was out front. “Oh! He’s actually here right now,” you announced, hopping up from your seat to collect your very problematic date.

“You’re late, again!” you scolded to the blond standing all gloomy at the front of the stone curved driveway. He changed into a nicer grey long-sleeve with khaki shorts and his signature red snapback, much to your relief. It didn’t quite match with your intricate white romper, but it would do for the time being.

“The guard wouldn’t let me in the gate! I ended up having to sneak through one of the fences,” JJ explained. You rolled your eyes at his ridiculous excuse. “Then why didn’t you just call me to let you in?” you pointed out.

“It was more fun this way,” he peskily grinned, earning himself a smack on the arm. The guy was impossible. “Ow!” he whined, rubbing the spot. Ignoring his complaints, you seized his hand and led him inside. It was about time!

The foyer flashed with various-colored LED lights while thundering rap music echoed from basically every corner of the house. All around, eyes gawked at you stepping through the Victorian-style entryway with a Pogue of all people. It was like walking into a cave of bats.

“Anyways,” you began, disregarding all the probing eyes, “This is Billy Irvine’s place. It’s the nicest house on the Eight. His parents are out of town right now, so we’re celebrating the Glossy Posse’s birthdays.”

It alway was a coincidence to you how all three of them had birthdays on back-to-back days. Witchcraft, honestly.

“Those bitches?” JJ grimaced at the mention of his sworn female enemies, “Ew why? They hate the Pogues.”

“Just shut up and suck it up. Here,” you grabbed a glass from the champagne tower in the middle of the spacious room, “Have a drink to get your mind off it.”

“Champagne? What the hell is this, England?” he yelped, taking a swig. Rolling your eyes, you hoped the alcohol would alleviate his irritability for the night. Fortunately, the blaring music was enough to drown out his constant bickering.

“Now put your arm around me! It’s time to make our rounds,” you demanded. He obliged and you turned on your best lovestruck game-face, giving him the grand tour of the mansion.

Billy’s mom was also one of the important people of the Island Club, so you had been going over there ever since you were nine being that your moms were friends. Still, you were always amazed by the extravagance of their house. You could tell JJ was also in shock of it all too.

It looked like a castle with two grand marble staircases circling the front with a tall vintage Tiffany chandelier hanging over everything. The floors were the shiniest white marble even with hundreds of teenagers recklessly dancing and slipping all over it.

“Damn, so this is how the other side lives,” JJ commented, marveling at how the LED lights reflected off the diamonds on the chandelier.

He slid his hand down to your waist as you stood closer to his side, taking a whiff of his teakwood cologne. Deep down, it was nice to have someone to attend parties with you, even if it was fake and with JJ.

You took him up the right staircase where plastered kids— some you recognized from school, some just in town for the summer— stumbled up and down the stairs or sloppily made out while pinned to the side walls. Realistically, it didn’t seem that off-brand to JJ’s party scene.

“We’re only staying an hour right?” JJ reminded in your ear as you approached the open bar upstairs. Yes, the Irvine’s had a literal bar in their second level.

“Yes, grumpy!”  

“Do you know if Sarah and John B are coming?” JJ continued to question. You settled on top of a retro bar stool as he leaned against the Irvine’s prized rustic bar.

“No,” you answered, “Sarah doesn’t come to these because Topper’s here. And she hates Kooks.”

“She’s the smarter one of you two!” JJ shouted among the loud music. You shook your head and whacked him again, but lightly this time. Seemed that would be you guy’s thing— hitting.

Even in their inebriated states, Kooks were still staring at you like you had grown a third arm. Which, honestly, was what being with JJ felt like half the time. From the corner of your eye, you caught a glimpse of the Glossy Posse and Warren making their way to you with either wide or curious eyes.

Oh boy.

“Y/n!” they exclaimed, shoving through the crowd. You matched their seemingly gleeful expressions, though you knew deep down they were judging you hard.

“You must be y/n’s date,” Ivy stated without much of a formal introduction.

“Aren’t you that Pogue from the Boneyard that always tries to hit on us?” Chloe brought up once she got a better look at JJ’s face. You snorted, but no one heard you.

You were slightly worried JJ would take their snarky comments the wrong way and lash back, but his cocky grin still laid proudly on his face as he held his hand out to your girl friends. “Name’s JJ. And yeah, I’m y/n’s new man.”

New man. Well, that was certainly a title. All of the Glossy Posse’s threaded eyebrows shot up at the word.

“Y/n,” Anne-Marie said in amazement, “You didn’t tell us you were dating again.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to keep it kinda lowkey,” you lied, signaling JJ to put his arm around you again.

Expecting your friends to stick up their nose at him or give you guys condemnatory looks, you were surprised to find they were more stunned than snobby. Intrigued, you caught them eyeing JJ up and down as if he possessed some kind of magical charm.

From behind the group, you saw Warren trying to stick his hand out at JJ to introduce himself as the girls did kinda take center stage earlier, shielding him out. “Don’t believe we’ve met yet. I’m Warren, Warren Van Doren.”

JJ had to hold back a laugh at the sound of his rhyming name. So immature.

“Hey man, I’m JJ. Nice to meet you,” he greeted, shaking his hand, “Wait a sec, aren’t you that quarterback that got in that fight at regionals last year?”

Warren smiled sheepishly and looked away. “Yeah, that was me.”

You remembered that fight. The video of it actually went viral for like a week. Warren was a very nice guy, but pissed of, he was an animal. He pummeled the shit out of some of other players during that game. The topic of fighting seemed to bond the two boys as they unknowingly drifted away in their own conversation. Thank God, you were glad that at least one of the boys there would be friendly towards JJ.

“Wow, look what the cat dragged in,” Chloe announced, gesturing towards the stairway. All four of your heads turned to see Max and Anya parade up to the top step linked to one another.

That was the cue.

Furtively, you nudged at JJ’s side, interrupting his football conversation. You gave him an alerting look that said ‘look like you’re in love with me ASAP’ and he quickly enveloped his arm around you to pull you close.

Given the fact that you and JJ hardly knew each other, much less touched, it was a very ungraceful and awkward gesture. Even Warren shot you both a weird look. Either way, you figured it would be perfected after going at it a few times.

Just as the Hollywood couple sauntered in to the packed bar area, JJ dipped his face closer to yours. It was a nice touch to the act. He started whispering some stupid joke in your ear that you could hardly make out among the music and chatter, but you went along with it anyway, playfully slapping at his chest. He even placed his snapback on your head backwards. You almost yelled at him for ruining your hair, but for the sake of the show you were putting on, you pretended it was the cutest thing.

You tried not to look at Max as he passed, as you didn’t want to make things so obvious. But in the split second you did glance his way, his mouth flew agape. In that moment, you knew you had him right in the palm of your hand from twenty feet away. The evil laugh cackled inside your head while you raked your hands through JJ’s hair. It was surprisingly soft.

For the next few minutes, you could feel Max’s stare bore into you back as you leaned closer to JJ, kissing up his jawline and cheek. 

“Damn, y/n, didn’t know you felt like this about me,” JJ teased.

“Shut up. I’m giving them a show,” you hissed with an infatuated smile to mask your threats.

“They’re gone now,” JJ noted lowly in your ear. You both detached like repelling magnets.

Fortunately, the posse and Warren dispersed among the crowd while you and JJ acted out your little PDA scene— it was probably from discomfort, if you were being honest. You did make sure not to hold anything back while you were draped all over JJ.

“Is that it?” JJ droned, back to his normal whiny self, “Am I done? Can we leave?”

Clicking your tongue, you shook your head, but with a grin this time. “Yes, you idiot, we can leave now.”

“Finally!”

JJ’s hand crept to your lower back as you both weaved through the mass of people to the exit. Before you could make it halfway down the staircase, however, you heard a rumbling behind you that stopped both your tracks. Warren’s six-four gigantic self was rummaging down the stairs, leaving booms in his wake.

“JJ! JJ!” he called out, grabbing hold of your fake boyfriend’s arm, “JJ dude, you gotta check out this new game system Billy has upstairs in the game room. You can play live Madden!”

“What?!” JJ’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas as Warren tugged you both back up the stairs with his giant football-player muscles.

“Dude it’s fucking sick! You gotta try it out,” Warren kept insisting. You knew JJ wouldn’t be able to resist. His eyes were practically glowing with excitement when he turned back to you as if to ask for some kind of approval.

“Okay, I’m just going to stay for one game,” he swore but you were a hundred-and-ten percent sure he’d be hooked and you could stay for much longer.

“Knock yourself out, Maybank,” you responded with a knowing smile, shooing him off to some depth of the Irvine’s enormous home. When he disappeared, you took the liberty to go search for your friends and finally enjoy the party for yourself.

As you predicted, one game turned into thirty real quick. It was well past midnight and JJ was still buried away somewhere doing who knows what. You didn’t mind. Warren was very responsible and you trusted him to take care of your date.

Plus, it gave you enough time to take rounds of various colored jello shots with Billy, dance on Mrs. Irvine’s countertops with the birthday girls, and devour the four-tiered tiramisu cake with fake-puking Barbie doll toppers that you helped pick out at the bakery.

When it got around one thirty, you grew a little concerned about JJ’s whereabouts so you sent him a quick text just to make sure he was okay and not shoving his head down a toilet. Your phone chimed back instantly—

Im jus fine y/n!!! One mor game! I almos beat War Ins Ass! Fuckin kwarter back!

Oh yeah, he was definitely gone. You texted your family’s driver to come by in about thirty minutes to make sure he’d get home safely. Then, you proceeded to dig in to your third slice of cake. Unlike the rest of your friends, you embraced the joy that was carbs— especially when you were drunk and there was chocolate involved.

JJ came downstairs a few minutes later and found where you were sitting on the couch surrounded by your circle of friends. Even amid the dark yet colorful beaming lights, his hair was still its usual sweaty mess with eyes a tad droopy, indicating just how drunk he was.

“Y/n! There’s my baby!”

He walked up and collapsed right onto your lap, tossing a dangly arm around you. You kept his snapback on for the entire night, assuming your hair was probably a bird’s nest underneath it. Everyone around seemed amused at the sight, and a few girls from school even began asking how you two started dating.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Well, that was until your thigh circulation began ceasing due to JJ’s bony ass on it. You immediately demanded that you switch places with him, and he sloppily obliged. The throng around you giggled, intrigued by the new lovey-dovey couple. Secretly, you ate up the attention and knew JJ did too.

He was in the middle of telling everyone a dumb Boneyard party story when Max and Anya entered the living room premises. They looked like they were fixing to leave. Your date felt you tense a little in his lap and caught on to your sudden judder.

Boldly, JJ made direct eye contact with Max and threw him one of those ‘what’s up’ nods. Then, out of nowhere, in his completely trashed state, JJ cupped both of your cheeks and planted a very brazen kiss on your lips for everyone to see. Shutting your eyes, you heard a few whistles from the crowd around you, especially when he, very obviously, added his tongue to the mix.

JJ was a good kisser, you had to admit. It quite literally, took your breath away when he pulled back. Biting your lip, you mimicked his shit-eating grin while he pressed his perspiration-filled forehead on yours. It was a huge acne-hazard just waiting to happen. But, like the snapback, you didn’t care. It was the most thrilling thing you had done in months.

“Don’t look now, but Vega and his girl have their jaws dropped to the floor behind you,” he muttered in your ear. You giggled and held onto him closer, leaning your head on his chest.

It was probably be best fifteen hundred bucks you had ever spent.

—————————————————

The next morning was your mom’s weekly Saturday brunch. By default, you showed up an hour early to help greet the guests, frequently checking your watch and phone to see when JJ would arrive.

You had a tennis tournament earlier that morning, however, you didn’t even bother making your fake boyfriend go. After the events of last night, you knew he’d be too hungover in the morning and wouldn’t wake up in time for it. He was getting to be very predictable.

At t-minus five minutes until the brunch started, everyone had already made their way into the ballroom. That left just you waiting in the lobby area for your date. The look on your face was just about ready to kill JJ whenever he walked through the door. You also didn’t see Sarah and John B arrive either, so you assumed they would be a no-show yet again.

About a minute past noon, the blond sauntered past the doors wearing a black suit that looked two sizes to big for him with hideous shoulder pads. You presumed it was his dad’s old one. He also had on jet black sunglasses to mask the grogginess from the party, but it was pretty evident he looked and felt like shit.

“You’re late again!” you hissed through gritted teeth, snatching his hand like he was an uncontrollable child. Maybe you should invest in a leash and collar for him since he could never get his attendance right.

“What do you mean? You said noon,” he yawned, unfazed at your irritation.

“The brunch starts at noon!” you jeered, “That means you have to show up early!”

“Well you failed to mention those rules,” he tried to bicker back, but you flashed him one of your bitch-looks before he could go any further. That had him shriveling at the sight.

“Whatever, just hurry up and let’s get seated,” you ordered, leading him through the majestic looking double doors, “And take off those sunglasses!”

Much to your dismay, the doors made a very loud creaking noise when they opened. Just about everyone did a double-take to see you arrive late and with a woozy-looking boy shoving sunglasses in his suit pocket.

Eyes were glued on you while judgmental whispers filled the already tense air. There was a small churn in your stomach as you weaved through the round tables. Something was also gnawing at your brain, telling you that it was a terrible, terrible idea. You attempted to brush it aside, though, as you and JJ took your seats.

For some odd reason, the Glossy Posse didn’t show the same enthusiasm towards JJ like the did at the party. They were back to their pretentious ways— you figured it was probably just their hangover attitude.

On the other hand, Warren happily greeted JJ when he sat down, exchanging one of those typical ‘bro’ handshakes. They started chatting on about the previous night while you tried to make small talk with the girls. Unfortunately, they were still being short with you and were, very obviously, throwing looks at JJ, along with their dates.

Glancing to your parents’ table, they didn’t look like they cared too much about your situation, having just flown in from their trip. They were too engrossed in entertaining their friends to really pay you any mind. Sometimes you were grateful that they were oblivious to some things. When you look over at the Vegas, however, Mr. and Mrs. Vega both sent you a disapproving look. The other families followed.

You couldn’t help but feel like you were in over your head at that point. Was it a mistake bringing JJ to this event?

The servers came out and made their rounds at the tables, setting bowls of water in front of everyone.

“Thank God, I’m starving,” JJ piped, taking his dessert spoon to sip water from the finger bowl.

“JJ,” you yelled-whispered as guests continued to stare.

“What?” he chided back with an attitude, completely unaware of his surroundings.

“The water is for your fingers.”

His face shot up from the bowl and scanned the room at people dipping their fingers into their respective bowls. “Oh shit,” he sputtered as your entire table tried to hide their snorts.

When the food finally came out, it didn’t really get any better. Baked chicken was on the menu and, well, JJ was the only one in the room who didn’t use a fork and knife. Everyone stared at him incredulously as he used his hands to gobble up his plate. Though, the boy didn’t seem to notice any of the baffled eyes.

Attempting to shield your red face, you continued to take tiny bites from your food, hoping the next hour would go by fast.

You hoped too soon.

As soon as JJ was done eating, he let out a loud belt to where the tables around you could hear. Warren high-fived him. At least someone got a kick out of it. You, along with the rest of the guests, had nothing but revolt on your faces.

Once the plates were cleared, the servers brought out creme brûlée for dessert. You were grateful it was something semi-clean to eat. JJ seemed to get a knack out of all the food. He even leaned over to you with his mouth full and muttered, “This food is fantastic! My compliments to the chef.”

You half-smiled back in embarrassment and took a spoon-full of your dessert. Thankfully, your mom waltzed over when you were half-way through to ask for your help carrying in the posters and stands from the lobby that displayed all the charity and donation information.

Immediately, you rose and scattered out, away from all the the dense room.

At the front, you began picking up the easel stands to bring inside until you spotted the jet-black locks of the last person you wanted to run into that afternoon. You almost dropped the large items in your hands when he came up to you.

“So, I see you brought Maybank here. Looks like he’s really enjoying himself in there,” Max commented dryly beside you. Mrs. Vega must have asked him for a hand as well.

You winced at the oozing criticism in his voice. It was the first time you had spoken to him one-on-one since the breakup.

”Yeah, we’re, uh, kind of together now,” you mentioned, lugging a display. He grabbed the two remaining and rushed to keep up with you, following you back in.

Out of nowhere, he let out disbelieving laugh, “You can’t be serious, y/n, you and Maybank?”

Taken aback by his brashness, you stopped right before the ballroom doors, frowning. “Yeah,” you shot back sternly, “Why not? I get along with him fine.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me. The guy’s a total tool. I’ve told you that from the beginning. Trust me, I know.”

“Know what? What’s good for me?” you pressed, growing more and more exasperated at the sound of his deep and raspy voice.

It was sexy, no doubt, but just the things that were coming out of his mouth made you want to slap him silly. How dare he prance up to you in his gorgeous light blue Armani suit and tell you what’s good for you!

“I just know who you are, y/n,” he went on calmly, with not an ounce of anger present in his tone, “And JJ’s just not a good guy for you.”

You were seeping with outrage at that point. Hiking in a breath, you spoke with the speckles of tranquility you had left in you. “Well I appreciate your concern, though I hardly understand why you have any for me. But we broke up, Max. You completely lost the right to tell me any of that.”

With that, you furiously stomped into the brunch and set the displays at the front for your mom. Max looked dumbstruck as he trailed behind. But you didn’t care.

“Everything okay? Did something happen with Vega?” JJ asked when you got back to your seat. You remained silent. It was the only way to keep yourself from screaming.

It was all too much— the piercing stares, the messy eating, Max.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you informed to JJ as he listened to another one of Warren’s football stories, “And then we’re leaving.”

Before he could respond, you were already racing to the bathroom as fast as your Jimmy Choo wedges could take you.

You needed air. And fast.

Bursting through the bathroom door, you heaved yourself into the biggest stall and flopped down on the toilet seat, taking in deep breaths to calm yourself. It didn’t help much. The room was still twirling like you were on the Graviton at a carnival. Too nauseous from it all, you didn’t even care that you were ruining your new white Valentino dress.

You just wanted to hurl inside the antique-decorated bathroom but couldn’t. It was miserable. But at least the bathroom was empty.

All the seeming success of last night crumbled away with every disapproving look or whisper of the guests. And then Max— that fucking asshole. Your head was thumping endlessly as you felt the stress knots crawl up your spine.

What were you thinking? Maybe you were in over your head. No one was believing it. Not for a second.

Even JJ was terrible at playing along. You should’ve known it was just wishful thinking. You knew you had to throw in the towel and told yourself you would call it off once you found some way to stop the hot tears that were streaming down your made-up cheeks.

As you felt your breathing start to normalize, you slowly lifted from the toilet seat and smoothened out your dress. When the bathroom door slammed open against the wall, you immediately fell back down, wanting to avoid any form of human interaction for the rest of your life.

Titters and snickers echoed the air as two girls stumbled in, mid-conversation. They didn’t seem to notice you in the stall at all. Thank God.

“Would you believe y/n? Bringing that dirty Pogue here? She’s gone insane!” A nasally voice spoke by the sinks.

You scrunched your nose, trying to catch a glimpse of their shoes from the opening underneath the stall. You nearly puked. Nameless brand heels? Unacceptable.

“I know! He’s so disgusting and that suit is just repulsive! Does she not have an ounce of embarrassment?” the other one added.

You didn’t recognize their voices, but assumed they probably went to your school by the way they knew you and JJ. A part of you wanted to charge out of the stall and drag their pitiful selves to the ground. But seeing as you were just recovering from a near panic attack, you didn’t have the energy. And they didn’t deserve your breath.

Nevertheless, they still went on. 

“Ever since Vega dumped her for California girl, she’s completely gone off the rails. First the hair change and now she’s dating a Pogue like Sarah Cameron is. It’s so pathetic!”

“Seriously, train wreck of the year if you ask me.”

Train wreck? Pathetic? You’ll show them what pathetic is! Especially with those god-awful shoes. Do they have an ounce of embarrassment showing up here with that kind of atrocity?

You were seconds away from emerging from your ashes to put them in their place. But, lucky for them, they escaped before you could come out of confinement.

Huffing, you stormed out of the stall and towards the mirrors to fix yourself. God forbid you’d ever let anyone see you with smeared mascara!

Dabbing a wet cloth on your cheeks to soothe out the redness, you heard the creak of the door opening behind you and immediately tossed it into a bin. You pretended to fix your hair. Fortunately, the redness faded to a soft pink to look like blush.

Anya strolled in the bathroom behind you. Ugh, the cherry on top of the cake.

You faked a tight smile at her. She threw a cheery one at you, walking up the sink next to yours to toss up her bouncy, voluminous hair. “So, I thought you said that guy out there wasn’t you boyfriend,” she pointed out, not taking her eyes off her own reflection.

“Oh, psh, well you know,” you sputtered, not expecting the sudden inquisition, “One thing led to another that night at the Boneyard and it just kinda… happened.”

It was the first real conversation you had with her, and you wanted to hold your breath at the awkwardness. Anya nodded at your answer, puckering her lips slyly. “I just think it’s cute that you’re trying to make Max jealous.”

You almost did a double take. It was so subtle and smooth, her comment almost flew right over your head. “Excuse me?” you shot back, turning to the blonde-haired home-wrecker.

She didn’t even flinch a muscle at your snub expression, just continued to ogle at herself. It was menacing. Evil really did take form in Anya Carmichael.

“Oh, did I need to spell it out for you?” she blinked, “Y/n, you’ve been out of the picture. If you think showing up with that god-awful guy in his dad’s raggedy suit is gonna change Max’s mind about you, I assure you it won’t work.”

She crinkled her eyes in a hateful smile.

What was with people and their audacity that afternoon? Whatever was in their water, you were not about to have any of it. No one spoke to you like that.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you said blandly, wanting to get under her skin.  

“Yes you do,” she snarled back, placing both hands on the sink in a threatening manner, “Look. Max and I are together now. You need to get that in your tiny pea-brain head. Do not play dumb with me. I see you looking over at him every five minutes. Get. Over. It.”

“Like I said,” you responded back in a fake-innocent tone just to push her buttons some more, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Anya. I think all the hairspray is really getting to your head.”

Two can play that game.

She narrowed her almond eyes at you and straightened up proudly. Even though she was way taller than you in her six-inch heels, you still stood your ground, blinking up at her tauntingly. At least your swanky parents taught you that much.

She scoffed. “Give it up, seriously. Using that guy to try to get back at your ex is just pathetic. Max was right about you. You’re just a shallow virgin with a handbag.”

With that, she tossed her hair behind her shoulder and strutted out the door. Your blood was boiling, having half a mind to go out there and rip the bottled-blonde right off her head. You should’ve known it was all an act!

Fuming, you treaded back to the brunch table, your face doing a complete one-eighty once you stepped through the doors. A lady never showed her seething anger underneath.

JJ spotted you and promptly stood up, snatching your purse, and getting ready to leave.

“Sit,” you demanded, pushing him down by the shoulder so his ass plopped back firmly on the chair. The look of utter shock flashed on his face, but he just took it.

“I’m feeling better now. We’re staying,” you informed as if you were a commander at war. You glanced over at the Vegas’ table where Anya hung her arm proudly on Max’s bicep as he made some joke to his table. She threw over a glare at you. No one but you noticed.

You draped an arm on one of JJ’s ridiculously large shoulder pads, nuzzling your nose to his neck. He was still as confused as ever though, but still went along with it, digging his fork into your half-eaten dessert which he later finished.

If Anya wanted a war, you’ll give her one. May the best bitch win.

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note: YES SHE WENT THERE! you kno i had to stir in anya- y/n drama!!! 

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[constantlyirksome]

For Pose’s Second Season Activism is in Vogue (2x01 Review.)

The most impressive element for Pose’s second season premier is the importance given to accurately portraying some truly harrowing realities for the LGBT community and people of color during the AIDs crisis. The show has jumped forward in time to 1990, where the body count has reached an unacceptable amount, and the community is fed up. Fed up with the state, the church, and with everyone else just willing to sit and watch their chosen families and friends die. The balls are just as fabulous, camp and fun, they are the shows most joyous moments, as you watch contestants prance, preen, and get read to filth by Pray Tell, you just wanna be there. But everyone in the ballroom feels the urgency and the sorrow of the times they live in. While the main characters snatched trophies a lot of interesting, real history was covered, and it made what is already an incredible show into something cultural essential.

The first scene opens with Pray and mother Blanca taking a trip to the very real and very horrendous Hart Island to pay their respects to a deceased friend. Hart island was essentially a mass grave on an island in the Bronx, where unclaimed bodies from city morgues, and those whose loved ones couldn’t afford proper ceremonies were buried. It became a dumping ground for victims of the AIDS epidemic, their bodies separated from everyone else, lest they give the disease to other dead people, makes sense right?

The disinterested worker who Blanca and Pray encounter just makes the place sound all the more horrible with how totally nonchalantly she describes the layout and the rules. The duo is deservedly mystified. It sort of drives home the disinterest, the total dismissal of those who died by the straight communities, by those unaffected. The actual scene they encounter after is something from a nightmare. Big diggers carve out mass graves, stacked with wooden crates, each with a body inside, with nothing but a number spray-painted on top to indicate who the poor souls inside were. Knowing that Blanca and Pray both have HIV, you can see the heartbreak and terror as Billy Porter and MJ Rodriguez give a tearful goodbye to their friend.

Jump forward to the world listening to Madonna’s Vogue, that has just been released, and the people in the ballroom scene have a reason to celebrate again, believing the exposure to their world will bring positive change. Blanca, in particular, sings queen Madonnas praises the whole episode, believing blindly that the song will change their lives. Now nearly thirty years on, we know the song didn’t do that. Madonna sort of sanitized the movement and no one outside the LGBT cared to wonder where it came from. But it’s hope; hope that drives Blanca to push herself and her children to do better.

She pushes Angel, who’s been taking cute photos with Lil Papi, to pursue modeling. She has the talent and the beauty, winning the season’s first ball looking rich AF (can we talk about that titty bounce??) Indya Moore is breathtaking both in beauty and performance. Her optimism, and then her deep shame when a photographer takes advantage of her is a thing to see. The close up shot on her face, while he takes nudes of her for his “personal collection” is so sad, you don’t need to see her body to feel her shame, and feel totally pissed at the photographer, who deservedly gets beaten half to death.

Lil Papi is her guardian angel this season, the two having become inseparable in the most adorable way ever. Their chemistry is out of this world as they flirt, and he looks at her like she’s a star in the sky, and she is! Seeing him smash that guys face in, or throwing his jacket in a rage over how she was treated is amazing. He’s everything Stanley from season one wasn’t. Stan saw her outward beauty, used her to explore whatever he was feeling with little regard to how that made her feel. Papi sees her beauty and then beyond, into how special she is inside. I personally cannot wait to see that relationship bloom, long live Papangel.

Just like I hope to see more of Papi/Angel Curiel-Bismark this season, so to do I want more of Sandra Bernhard as nurse Judy. Her compassion and patience with the people she treats, coupled with her fire at rallies is incredible, and Sandra B just brings something iconic to it that’s uniquely her. She brings Pray to his first rally with ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), is probably going to be one of the most significant incidents of the season. ACT UP is another real element Pose creators have added, including one of their Stop the Church protests, a passive lie in at a new york church led by Judy and the Evangelistas. The shots taken and interspersed that looked like real life VHS footage drew you back to the idea that while these are actors in a show, these protests were very real. Act Up was and is still an amazing group that works to fight Aids politically, religiously and medically. Pose’s decision to include these things is going to bring a lot of attention to the warriors on the front line of the AIDs crisis just like it did with ballroom, and that’s epic.

Pray Tell learns that liberation and change won’t come from a song but in radically tearing shit down and building it back up again, and he ends up screaming this message at Elektra, who decides to stay away from anything political this episode. Her time is spent planning an elaborate ballroom presentation so spectacular and choreographed Pray rips into her for misusing her time when her family needed her. He throws her trophy at her feet with the applause of everyone in the ballroom. I don’t believe Elektra is a bad person. I think there is a reason she is the way she is, and hopefully, we see more of that as she walks for the house of Ferocity, who sorely need her help.

Pray Tells call to arms is as fitting today now as it was back then, as people in the LGBT and trans women of colour are still being subjugated, murdered and treated like shit. Pose isn’t just shining a spotlight on the amazing ballroom scene, it’s also using its platform to integrate essential messages into its story, and hopefully it continues to teach in the same awesome ways as in the premier.

“We better start caring for ourselves. Show up for your lives, Wake up!”

Best Look: Elektra’s over the top, let them eat cake cotour, complete with spinning skirt and working guillotine. 

Best Read: Substitute ballroom announcer Jack (played by real ballroom icon Jack Mizrahi, “Trash bag realness darling, sponsored by GLAD. Hefty hefty hefty, wimpy wimpy wimpy!”

[youremyonlyhope]

The Last Jedi

Here we go. The most controversial Star Wars movie ever (unless Rise of Skywalker has reviews that are just as mixed. I haven’t read any so I don’t know how it’s been received yet.) I actually really really enjoyed the Last Jedi, but I haven’t rewatched it since I saw it in theaters.

Also, unrelated, but literally just a few hours ago I met Oscar Isaac. I was doing a caroling event where I work, and he came by with his son to watch. During one of our breaks, he asked if his son could try the microphone and he held him up so he could whisper and sing stuff into the mic. It was adorable.

I seemed to be the only person who recognized who he was, though one of my co-workers said he had thought so too but he wasn’t sure until I confirmed it. So I went up to Oscar and said hi, asked if he was Oscar Isaac, shook his hand, and thanked him for coming. He says that it was great and that his son loves to sing.

I always joked that I’d bump into Oscar one day since he lives in Brooklyn, but I didn’t think it’d actually happen. And not while I’m wearing a Star Wars shirt and Star Wars socks (which he obviously couldn’t see since I was bundled up in a coat and a scarf and boots but whatever). And definitely not the day before I’m supposed to see the Rise of Skywalker.

I’m still freaking out oh my god. Ok. Time to rewatch the Last Jedi.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... This was the first Star Wars movie I’d seen in theaters in like 12 years at this point. Seeing those words on a giant screen again was amazing. “Certain that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker will return and restore a spark of hope to the fight.” I love that line. I love any and all comparisons of Luke to hope. Yes I am biased. But also, restoring the spark is exactly he does in the end so yes, I love it. It’s just now hitting me that we’re picking up exactly where we left off. Having 1 night between the two movies is every different than having 2 years. ...Was that whatsherface from Game of Thrones, Catelyn’s creepy sister? (IMDB says yes) *BB8 beeps* “Happy beats here buddy, come on.” BB8 sort of said the thing! Also, OH MY GOD I JUST MET OSCAR ISAAC AND NOW HERE HE IS ON MY SCREEN WHAT THE HELL. Was today even real? Oh General Hugs. “Skinny guy. Kinda pasty.” Knowing Oscar and Domnhall are friends makes this better. Oh BB8. Very honorable of Billie Lourd’s Lieutenant Connix to make sure she’s in the last ship leaving the base so everyone else leaves before her. I forgot about the chain reaction of bombs destroying their own Resistance ships... You know, Paige dying while dropping the last of the bombs was already emotional. Rewatching it after you know she’s Rose’s sister makes it worse. First Binary Sunset of the movie. General Hugs has a very good upset face that makes me not feel bad for him at all. More like I want to punch him. Snoke can use the Force across the galaxy... forgot about that. I realized I didn’t mention this in the last one, but I remember the crew complaining that when they filmed the end of Force Awakens it was a cloudy day, but then when they went back to the island for TLJ it was super sunny. And now that it’s been pointed out, I noticed it immediately. Luke throwing the lightsaber. I can’t remember if I was spoiled for this but I feel like when I watched it, I wasn’t that thrown off by it. Something else I didn’t mention at the end of Force Awakens is that I LOVE this set. The stone houses are amazing. Oh porgs. Also, that porg looking into the lightsaber always gives me anxiety. The first words we hear Luke say in 40 years are an annoyed “Go away.” which at least is less whiney than the Tosche Station. Oh Chewie’s like “DUDE. WE NEED YOU.” “Wait... where’s Han?” Awww. Throwing in a little Vader’s theme in there. More temper tantrums. People getting mad at Luke calling a lightsaber a laser sword (in a purposefully mocking way) even though George Lucas himself called them that in some interviews. Yes, it’s not a laser sword, but Luke is trying to show how ridiculous he thinks the idea of him taking down everything is by calling a lightsaber that. I remember being like “Luke... no let’s not just milk that thing... oh ew” I do love the shot of Luke using the giant stick to cross to the other cliff and kill the fish. God that’s a steep hill. “No one’s from nowhere.” “Jakku.” “Alright that is pretty much nowhere.” That’s funny. “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” Remember when that line in the trailer made the fandom literally break down? I love knowing that behind the scenes, Carrie had to slap Oscar a billion times. Also, I do not blame Leia at all. So many people were mad about Leia and Holdo demoting Poe, but Poe was too fearless in that moment. Yes, he destroyed the ship and it worked out, but they lost so many people and they already didn’t have many to begin with. It was worth it, but at a very high cost. So I don’t blame her. Heyyyyyy it’s that girl from that Black Mirror episode and what was that other show? Chewing Gum or something? (IMDB says yes it’s Michaela Coel) See and Poe’s already learning a little by asking permission. Of course... later on he doesn’t ask permission... but whatever. Leia’s Theme... causing me pain. Oh, Kylo didn’t kill his mom. We’re supposed to be happy about that? The bar is on the ground. The utter horror I felt the first time the control room was destroyed and Leia was pulled into space. Oh I love the moment when Leia flies in. Because I’d heard that in the books and comics, we get to explore Leia’s Force abilities and stuff but we don’t get it in the movies besides “I feel that Luke’s in trouble.” Which sucks, because she is the “other” if Luke didn’t work out, so she’s just as strong as Luke if she got trained. They should have just trained both kids honestly, why did they pick the boy? Not saying Obi-Wan and Yoda are sexist... but they’re probably sexist. Also, foreshadowing. I actually noticed the hologram of the ship and Leia flying through this time. Oh Chewie. I like the porg that literally has his jaw dropped in horror. Knowing now that the dice were kind of a symbol of Kira (was that Emilia Clarke’s character?) and Han’s relationship makes me not like them as much. Still, cute throwback that they’re still on the Falcon. We can just ignore they weren’t there in Force Awakens (I kept an eye out and didn’t see them) The way Luke laughed when he said “R2!” I just... my heart. “Nothing can make me change my mind” *R2 plays the Leia hologram* I literally just went “AWWWW” out loud because I forgot that that’s why R2 started playing it. Oh my heart. That hurt the first time. Luke standing over Rey, but offering to help her. Parallels. Oh Admiral Ackbar. I love Holdo’s dress. I love the draping. Someone teach me how to make it. “Thank you for making me aware.” Yeah Poe, she already knows. Stop mansplaining. This is literally a case of mansplaining, why would Poe think he’d have to explain to a commander that there’s no fuel? Yeah it’s a little harsh, but is Holdo wrong? All of these fanboys complain about Canto Bight, but forget that it was Poe’s idea. Then they go and say Holdo was too mean should have put Poe in charge. Guys. Poe’s impulsive. We love him, but he’s the ultimate Gryffindor with no fear and will just do anything without considering consequences. I do wish Holdo had been more open like “I have a plan. You don’t need to know all the parts of it. Just let me do what I need to, ok?” instead of “Just follow my orders.” but still. Oh poor Rose. “Doing talking....” Oh she’s so cute. “I’ve had to stun 3 people trying to use this escape pod.” We love a girl who can fight. Yeah. Once again. Not mad at Rose. Finn does have some selfish tendencies, he’s well meaning but ultimately selfish (or at least, only thinking of Rey). So I do not blame Rose for stunning him.

And now I will take a nap since I have to go to a show tonight. And then I will finish the last 3/4-ish of the movie when I get home later.

Annnnd I’m back!

See. Rose has good reason to be mad at deserters. Ok so it wasn’t Poe’s idea to go to the Star Destroyer it was Finn’s. I will give him that. But still Poe went along with it. “That... wasn’t exactly my...” Oh 3PO. I wish Maz had had a bigger scene. More Lupita please. I have one question: from what angle is this hologram filmed? And how does the camera follow her? I guess it’s multiple hologram cameras, but still, it followed her as she rolled and ran around. Also, did Finn call Maz or did Poe call her? Because as far as we know, only Finn knows her. It seemed like they both had the idea to call her, but that Poe had it first. Did Finn tell Poe about Maz? I’m glad they showed Finn handing Poe the binary tracker thing, since for a second I was like “What if Rey had popped up next to Finn on the Star Destroyer?” I’m glad Rey’s first instinct is to shoot Kylo. “Can you see my surroundings?” “You’re gonna pay for what you did.” “I can’t see yours.” Why do I remember that line so vividly? Why does it make me feel so unsettled? Rey, my sweet Rey, I wish you had just told Luke that you saw Kylo. I love Luke’s explanation of the Force. And him messing with Rey was funny. I love when Rey’s reaching out and feeling life, death, peace, violence, etc. And I love Luke saying the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi, because it doesn’t. The Jedi failed years ago. “You didn’t even try to stop yourself.” Luke’s horrified. But also, Rey’s just like an extreme version of Luke. Yoda knew that Luke’s emotions could make him vulnerable to the dark side, Rey’s already vulnerable. Yeah, I don’t blame Luke for being scared of Rey after he feels like this is Ben all over again. Oh my god. I love the porg that has a metal piece over its head. That actually made me laugh out loud. Poor Chewie.

I just had to refresh tumblr because my draft wasn’t saving. It brought me back to my dashboard. Where there was a spoiler for the new movie and it wasn’t tagged. PLEASE tag your spoilers people.

The water hitting Kylo still confuses me. Say what you will about the Canto Bight plot... the costumes are AMAZING. The costumes literally make the whole side plot worth it to me. Literally I was just in awe by all the costumes during every single scene. And the set! The set’s fantastic too! I literally just paused every single second to take in all of the costumes. Do I care if the Canto Bight trip ended up pointless? Nope! Because it gave me some of Star Wars’ best costumes. Oh... to be an extra in the Canto Bight scene... Just show up... And put on a beautiful outfit... And do nothing else but pretend to drink, talk, and gamble... That’s the dream. Oh hi Mark Hamill! That was cute that they let him voice that little thing. I remember noticing the thing and being like “...is he important?” and nope, it’s just Mark doing an extra voice. Oh I love the Fathiers. Aww and it’s the little Force sensitive boy. I have thoughts about that kid that I can get into later. The way BB8 jingles with the coins. I love it.

Rey: *Does a move with her stick* Rey: *Does the same exact move with the lightsaber* Fanboys: She’s too good too fast! Mary Sue!

As I said throughout all of the Force Awakens, she’s just applying the skills she already had. If anything, a lightsaber’s easier since it’s half the length and she doesn’t have to worry about the back of it hitting her. LOL, remember when we thought this shot was an epic shot of Luke training her? Good times. Oh that poor fish nun. Everything Luke says about the Jedi is true (also did I not say they failed earlier in the post? Luke agrees with me). Rey’s right that a Jedi got Ani to come back from the dark side, but the Jedi’s system enabled him to turn in the first place. Soooooo yeah. Oh Luke. Don’t blame yourself. Kylo was already basically gone. Sure, seeing his uncle standing over him with a lightsaber definitely didn’t help... but it’s not the only thing that made him turn. Who is this captain of the medical ship? He looks familiar. (IMDB says he’s Danny Sapani. I probably recognized him from the Crown) Oh BB8. Finn, did you learn nothing from Rey? Put the cover back on the vent! Awww the Fathiers have such sad eyes... I love the Resistance ring. Can I buy one? Ok. The shot of the bubble egg lady singing felt like it was much longer the first time, but it’s really only a split second. I. LOVE. THE. CANTO. BIGHT. SET. I know it’s a real town in like Italy or somewhere near the Mediterranean. I want to go. I love it. I love that the first thing Luke does when he decides to use the Force again is to seek out Leia. Oh poor Adam became a meme after this. He just has a very wide and bulky body, ok? God Luke looks so scary in Kylo’s flashback. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” That reflection scene is so visually stunning. So in a way, it’s like Luke is failing Rey like he failed Ben. He’s not helping her in the way she needs, so she’s being lured by the dark side instead. I love the walls falling around Luke. “Did you do it? Did you create Kylo Ren?” Rey, he already told you earlier that he believes it’s his fault, so the answer from him is yes. I can’t remember if we hear this story of Luke and Kylo one more time after this or not. “Then he’s our last hope.” Ok ew. No. Kylo is not allowed to be compared to hope. Only Luke, Leia, or Obi-Wan can be. Oh for a second I thought that torch was a lightsaber. YODA!!!!! I think I had been spoiled for Yoda showing up. It was definitely still exciting though. “The sacred Jedi texts!” Oh Luke. Oh memes. Not as whiney as I remembered. “But that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.” Because Yoda knows she stole the books. Oh Yoda. I love Yoda. Oh Rose. Ok, so I will give it to Poe that at this moment it doesn’t seem like Holdo has a good plan. Abandoning ship isn’t necessarily cowardly, but on the surface it does seem like it puts them in more danger. Literally earlier today I watched a video about the layout of the Millennium Falcon, and the escape pods were mentioned. And I thought to myself, wow that must be something from the novels since we’ve definitely never seen that in the movies. Welp... I was wrong... Rey’s in one now. I was about to be like “Do they not care that an escape pod just docked?” before I saw Kylo. LOL the iron coming down like a ship. I feel like I remember being completely terrified when Rey stepped in front of Snoke. Oh BB8. Bumping into stuff. I remember being super relieved that DJ (has he told us this is his name yet? I can’t remember) gave back the medallion. Captain Phasma! Hey girl hey! Leia shooting Poe is still funny to me. Also Lieutenant Billie Connix is smart.  I love the scene of Holdo and Leia saying goodbye. Also, Holdo’s purple hair with her bright blue eyes is super striking. Good choice. Snoke puts down the lightsaber. Unknowingly sealing his fate. Literally when Snoke reveals he connected their minds, I was like OF COURSE. Because the whole time I’m like neither of them are strong enough to do this. “She was more interested in protecting the light than she was seeming like a hero.” See. And that’s the flaw in both Poe and Finn. And Rey to an extent. They’re thinking about the big picture, but in context of smaller things like seeming like a hero, saving Rey, saving Kylo, etc. But Holdo’s thinking of only the big picture. I knew DJ betrayed them, I just forgot how badly.

And here’s another annoyance (which I was sorta trying to touch on earlier). Everyone hates the Canto Bight plot, yet they complain about Holdo trying to take charge. If Poe just let Holdo take charge and ignored Finn and Rose’s idea, then her plan would have been a complete success. No Canto Bight, no DJ to betray them, all the transports make it to Crait unnoticed, and the First Order eventually destroys a ship that’s empty except for Holdo. They complain about Holdo, but don’t think about the fact that Holdo could have prevented another plot they hated if the main characters had just listened to her.

And then Snoke hits Rey and literally puts the lightsaber back to where it will kill him. Ok literally I just misread a caption that said “Lord Vader” as “Lord Voldemort” and I was very confused. Taking a second to say that I love this set of Snoke’s throne room. Been thinking it forever, but Kylo picking up the lightsaber off the ground and seeing the reflection in the smooth red floor is amazing. Kylo igniting the lightsaber through Snoke is amazing. Also, I typed “Ben igniting” before literally freezing for a second and being like “...ok that’s a lot to unpack” I guess when he does something good my brain thinks of him as Ben instead of Kylo. ALSO, arm #16 and #17, I love that Snoke’s arms were cut off too in true Star Wars fashion. And I am VERY excited to see this fight scene again. I told myself not to pause at all during the Kylo and Rey team up fight, but I paused literally a second into it because Binary Sunset yes.

And my idiot brother and my mom are texting in the family group chat so it’s popping up on my screen throughout this scene. Ugh.

All of these red knight weapons are so cool. And I forgot about the one that gets chopped up... Oh my god one is a sword that transforms into a whip. LOVE. IT. And I love the quick lightsaber ignite through the head. Love it. Woah how is there still 44 minutes? I remember this battle being much closer to the end. I was wondering when the red walls went away, but I rewinded and saw that they had been slowly burning away after Rey made something hit them. Nice touch.

Ugh my brother and mom will not stop texting.

“You have no place in this story.” Wow Kylo, harsh. Oh shoot I forgot about the lightsaber breaking until they started their Force tug of war with it. I’d always wondered what would happen if someone lightsped through something... I want to say that I realized what she was doing before they told us, but now I realize that they basically told us what she would do when the First Order guy said “they’re preparing to hyperspeed.” so I guess I just caught on to the obvious hints.

God that moment still gives me chills. The silence. The way it sort of goes black and white. The multiple angles. So good.

I know for a fact that I spent the rest of the movie from this point on with my hands over my mouth in a constant stake of shock/fear/anxiety. Oh BB8. Some people thought this was ridiculous. But I had just spent the last few months rewatching the prequels before seeing this, and compared to the stuff R2 does, BB8 clumsily controlling a walker is nothing. Oh how I love Gwendoline Christie. I FORGOT THAT WE SAW HER EYE IN THE MASK. I hope Phasma survived. She’s so awesome. Ok my quality is like horrendous right now so I’m gonna refresh. LOL I FORGOT ABOUT GENERAL HUGS NEARLY ATTEMPTING TO KILL KYLO. Oh I forgot how much I love Crait as a set location. OH AND THE ICE DOG THINGS! LOVE THEM! Poe petting BB8 when he comes back kills me. I like those space age two person laptops. “People believe in Leia.” *Binary Sunset plays* My heart. Ok for a second I was like “This first person camera is like a war movie” and then it turns and we see the trench and I’m like “...ok... ok fine but that was very literal.” The red footsteps. Just... guys this set is so AMAZING. Ugh, these red streaks of dust behind them are so amazing. And when Finn passes in front of the camera, it gets covered in the dust and blurs part of the lens. Just like the Rathtar goo in the Force Awakens. I wonder if that’s going to be like... the thing of the sequels. One shot that has the camera lens partially covered by something. Also, I just wasted time trying to figure out if there’s an official name for that or not... oh well. The winding stripes left behind as they weave around... just... amazing. YEAH! GO CHEWIE! GO REY! Oh my god I forgot about the porg roaring. “Oh, they HATE that ship!” I’M DEAD. Look at the salt and how it forms the crystals in the trench. I love it. I FORGOT ABOUT THIS SHOT OF THE CAVE FULL OF THE RED SALT. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. I remember when the trailer had the first shot of the gorilla walkers, and I didn’t notice at first that there were normal AT-ATs next to them, and then I realized these things were twice as big as AT-ATs and I was horrified. See, and now Poe has learned that you can’t always be a hero and is making a good decision. I forgot about Finn’s speeder literally melting as he gets closer. I don’t understand the people who were mad that Rose stopped Finn. I for one was HORRIFIED at just the thought of Finn dying this way and thankful she stopped him. “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” The kiss is pointless but I love the line and sentiment behind it. Oh god. Ok. Here come the emotions. Binary Sunset is playing. I was a wreck. And a little of Han and Leia’s Love Theme as she sees the dice. I remember actually noticing that in the theaters and half-sobbing. Oh god the forehead kiss. Oh and he winks at 3PO as he walks by. My heart. This is the specific shot of the gorilla walkers and the AT-ATs in a line that freaked me out. That shot of Luke standing up against all the First Order walkers and ships. Amazing. That shoulder brush though. Kylo’s so dumb, he literally just watched that lightsaber get destroyed, he HELPED destroy it. He should have known something was up, it couldn’t have been repaired that quickly. Purposeful shot of Luke’s feet not moving the salt. That Matrix back bend though. “I will have killed the last Jedi.” He said the title. Also, is that the only time it’s said? Because they say it a lot in Force Awakens but I don’t think so yet in this movie.. “And I will not be the last Jedi.” Ok so now it’s said again by Luke. Purposeful shot of Kylo’s shoe leaving a footprint as he runs to Luke. I’m pretty sure I probably shrieked when he tried to slice Luke in half.

I just now remembered that I’d actually kind of wondered if he’d be a Force projection or something when he first showed up. Because I’d just watched Return of the Jedi like a week earlier and saw Obi-Wan do it, so I wondered if Luke was doing it too. Especially when Poe said Luke was distracting the First Order. It passed my mind and was confirmed when Kylo couldn’t hit him. And here’s where I started to feel like my world was crumbling...

Oh god. My eyes are wet. It hurts. But when I watched it the first time, I really felt like my world was absolutely falling a part and ending forever while I watched Luke die. With the stupid binary sunset in front of him just like when he was a teenager and when he was a baby. One of the first things he ever saw was the binary sunset. I was like “This is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I’m not completely in pain and dying.” That shot from above of Kylo with the stormtroopers, mirroring a shot from the prequels of Ani. Nice. So do they still have that connection even if Snoke’s dead?

HEY! Hey. Those dice were still visible to Kylo even after Luke was dead... was Leia Force projecting them to Kylo? It wouldn’t take as much work as doing it to everyone else at once from lightyears away. One person, your son, would be easier. So maybe... maybe Leia’s the one continuing the projection of the dice. I’m gonna stick with that theory thanks.

Awww BB8 asked Rey about his antenna, just like when they first met. Remember when people were like “Are Poe and Rey gonna be a thing?!?!?” and of course I’d much prefer that over Reylo thanks. The books! Somehow, that obvious shot of the books goes over so many people’s heads. So many complaints about the books getting burned, when they literally show us that Rey saved them. I had never noticed the bunks in the Millennium Falcon either until I saw that video earlier, and I’m glad I got to actually see one in use since Rose is sleeping in one.

Oh GOD the entirety of the Resistance can fit on the Millennium Falcon... that is NOT good.

I LOVE the scene of the kids retelling the story of Luke. I must have already gone in depth about this 2 years ago, but I love it. Luke became a legend in the end. He didn’t necessarily want to be one, but he’s become one. It was exactly what was in the opening scroll, he restored the spark of hope. That subtle use of the Force by that little boy. With Binary Sunset playing. And I love that last shot of him holding the broom up like a lightsaber.

I nearly forgot that they put in “In loving memory of our princess, Carrie Fisher” at the end. That’s what got me to finally cry. 40 straight minutes of covering my mouth in anxiety, then feeling like my world was crashing down around me as Luke died. Having it dedicated to Carrie made me just start sobbing so hard. Watch that happen again tomorrow.

I remember when I left the theater, at first I was like “What if the boys is Rey’s brother?!” but then... I realized that a huge point of the movie went over my head for a second there.

The fandom got so caught up in figuring out who Rey’s parents are, whether it’s Obi-Wan or Luke or Leia or even Palpatine, that they were mad when Kylo said they were no one. But like... guys... not every single Force user is related to the Skywalkers or anyone else we already know. There were hundreds of Jedi in the prequels, because anyone can be Force sensitive. Obi-Wan’s parents were nobody, Qui-Gon’s parents were nobody, Mace’s parents were nobody. They didn’t come from long lines of Force users (at least in movie lore), BECAUSE THE JEDI WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE KIDS. The Skywalkers aren’t even a long line, it’s just 3 generations at this point. So literally none of the Jedi of the past came from powerful Force users (or at least from ones who got the chance to become Jedi) since that literally goes against the code.

Luke found at least 11 other Force sensitive kids to train alongside Ben, their parents were all definitely nobodies since he’s the last Jedi. Ben is an anomaly, Luke and Leia are anomalies, the Jedi don’t have kids! The fandom got so caught up in figuring out who Rey could be related to, that they forgot that for millennia the individual Jedi were not related to anyone.

Anyone can be Force sensitive. Anyone can be a Jedi. Rey is an example of that. That little boy is an example of that. That’s why I love that the little Force sensitive boy was the final shot of the movie. He was meant to reassure and remind us after the Rey parentage reveal that anyone can end up Force sensitive. They don’t need a famous/powerful parent. They can come from anywhere and be anyone. And I love that that’s the final note of this movie.

Some people were not reassured. Some people couldn’t handle the idea that Rey’s powerful just because she’s Rey, not because she’s someone’s daughter. She HAS to be related to someone to be that powerful, right? But every Jedi before her who was just as powerful wasn’t related to anyone, so why does she have to be?

ANYWAY! I was actually worried over the last 2 years that I’d rewatch The Last Jedi and not like it as much as I did in theaters. I still like it a lot. Even the Canto Bight scenes get redeemed by the costumes and the set being so amazing. But I love the message of don’t be a hero, this is bigger than just you. And I love the message that even if you’re “nobody” from “nowhere” you could still be Force Sensitive and you could still be a Jedi. I love Luke’s send off, I love that he does end up reigniting the spark and being a beam of hope again. I love it.

And I’m excited to see the Rise of Skywalker tomorrow.

[stilljumpingback]

(via Black Sails Episode 406 - XXXIV)

Slaves being freed from their shackles is a needed bright spot in a very dark season.

Another show would make the relationship between Eleanor and Madi a simplisticly happy reunion.  Black Sails forces us to consider how privilege and inequality impacted their relationship in profoundly deep ways.

“My father didn’t mistrust Flint.  My father mistrusted all of you.”

Jack threatens to kill Eleanor and/or Flint, but Eleanor cannot be bothered to take him seriously and just walks away.  I feel like this perfectly summarizes the entirety of their relationship.

Silver giving Billy to the slaves to be tortured is…super dark.  Like, darker than anything Flint has done, right?

Silver:  I did not want this.  Flint is my friend, but I know what he is.  I have no illusions about it.  But for all the dangers he presents, for all his offenses, the one thing he’s never done is force me to choose between him and you.  That, you did.

Billy responding to Silver’s patronizing speech of ‘forgiveness’ with “You chose.  Live with it” makes me like him more than I have in a long time.

I would love to see this episode from Julius’s POV.

I continue to be fascinated by Max and Jack’s relationship.  They are business partners, sometime lovers, partners to the same woman.  Their reunion is gut-wrenching because Jack is all emotion, and Max is all logic.  Still, he rescues her (for the first of two times this episode).

Flint and Eleanor talking about their former partnership is my everything!!!

“You know, there was a time not so long ago when you shared their concern, when you saw what I saw.  The benefits of being free of British rule.  To make the new world something more than just an extension of the old.  Is it so unthinkable that that might happen again?  You were a pirate once.  Stranger things have happened.”

Although Flint has been betrayed by Eleanor just as much as Jack has been betrayed by Max, their reunion has had SUCH a different tone.  They are still civil, and they seem to still respect each other.  Why is this?  Because they always knew who the other was – someone ambitious and cunning and not above changing sides for a better outcome.  Flint and Eleanor knew each other so well that their relationship could survive betrayal.

Speaking of changing sides, in an instant pirates and British soldiers must work together to defeat the new Spanish enemy.

Silver needs to learn to read a room:  sitting in a throne in ominous lighting is not a great way to propose partnership with newly freed slaves.

Woodes Rogers gets on land, sees destruction, murder, and rape all around him…but it’s not until he learns that Eleanor is at risk that he actually begins to care.  What an asshole.

I will forever love Jack for deciding to wait for his former partners despite recently learning that they were willing to give up his cache without his knowledge or assent.

Max reunites with Anne.  Max is so defensive, but when she sees Anne’s brutalized face, she sees the full ramifications of her decision.

Max:  I loved you, and I betrayed you.  But I cannot apologize for it.  I did what anyone would have done when confronted with the same impossible choices.  If I apologize, you will know it is a lie, and I do not wish to lie to you ever again. Anne:  Leave. Max:  No.  I am going to stay with you.  I want to take care of you. Anne:  Get the fuck out.

No, Max, you didn’t do what anyone else would have done.  PLENTY of people did the exact opposite, in fact.

Eleanor:  One can be happy that way, can’t they?  A life of isolation and uncertainty, as long as it is lived with someone you love and who loves you back.  It is possible, isn’t it? Madi:  It is.

Who is Madi talking about here?  Her mother, and the life they had on Maroon Island?  Or Silver, and the life they might have in the future?  If it’s Silver, that seems to contradict her earlier silence when he asked if he was enough for her.

Silver hears the Spanish coming around the back over the din of battle?  Um, okay.

Madi and Eleanor share a smile, which is so great but FUCK FUCK FUCK you can see the Spanish soldier standing in the background flexing his hands and it’s so creepy!!!

Eleanor’s final fight is so desperate and beautiful.  She survives so much, and if that isn’t a symbol of her entire life, I don’t know what is.  I also really admire the show for how sexual assault is depicted:  we keep the female POV and never disempower her.

When she kills the Spanish soldier, she immediately goes to Madi, MY HEART.

Flint sees Miranda’s house on fire and Eleanor’s body.  The two most important women in his life.  😦

Eleanor:  Was he with them?  My husband? Flint:  No, he isn’t.

MY HEART.  Flint cradles Eleanor’s face as she dies, and his own face is just utter devastation and hopelessness.

Eleanor’s last words are: “Madi.  I tried to save her.”  But it doesn’t look like Madi made it out of the burning house.

In the wake of Madi’s death, Silver says of the rebellion, “It’s over.”  But Flint orchestrates a tactical retreat, insisting upon saving everyone.  They’re acting as good partners here, even if they are not in emotional agreement.

“It wasn’t supposed to end like this.  How can we all have sacrificed so much and none of us has anything to show for it?”

Finally, some emotion from Max.  I think her fierce adherence to calm logic is why I have felt so disconnected from her.  Now that she’s drowning, I like her a little bit.

Continuing with the theme of “emotional investment changes everything,” Max finally sees civilization’s true face and wants revenge.  But…by going to a different version of civilization.  What makes her think this time will be any different?

Honestly, I understand and almost agree with Max’s “fight civilization from the inside” philosophy.  But…it didn’t work.  Not that fighting from the outside worked either.  The moral of the story?  Changing society for the better is messy and complicated, and it takes all kinds of people fighting all kinds of battles.

Woodes Rogers finds Eleanor’s corpse.  By bringing Spain to Nassau, he murdered his wife, and none of his enemies were killed.  YOU IDIOT.

Silver is absolutely gutted and is grieving for Madi.  Flint puts his hand on Silver’s shoulder.  I can’t read whether or not Silver’s “It wasn’t your fault” is truthful or just a means to get Flint out of the room.  My poor babies!

BUT THEN.  The pirate revolution has grown enormously on Maroon Island!!  The first time I watched the series I was SUUUUPER depressed by this point, and seeing all these pirates determined to join the cause gave me hope so intense it felt physical.

“They came from other islands, the colonies, maroons from camps like this one, pirates from as far away as Massachusetts.  They heard that Nassau had fallen, and they came to join us.  The revolution you promised has begun!”

[bones-bones-bones-bones-bon-blog]

I Especially Am Slow [1/3]

[Ao3]

“Do you think you'll tell them?”

Trini looks up from her plate to see Kim watching her, leaning forward across the table with that weird, eager light in her eyes.

“About being-” A quick glance around the deli to make sure no one is listening (who would be? They are just two teenage girls, as far as most people know). Trini lowers her voice, anyway. “About being a Ranger?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Hah!” Trini bisects her remaining piece of cake with maybe a little more force than is strictly necessary. The screech of fork-on-ceramic does draw a few heads their way- Trini can feel their eyes prick pins-and-needles at her neck. She runs her tongue over her teeth, scowls. “Like I said- my folks like normal. They'd lock me up before believing I was a- a superhero.”

“Even if you morphed in front of them?” Kim says, full volume.

Trini winces. “They'd probably just test the tapwater or something.”

Kim snickers. “Seriously?”

“Naw, but- I dunno. Don't wanna give them a reason to move us again, I guess.” She shrugs, pushes a crumb of red-velvet across her plate. “Love to see the looks on their faces, though.”

“Well,” Kim smiles, lowers her voice only now to say, “I wouldn't want you to move, either.”

The silence lingers just long enough to be uncomfortable, for the fingers of a blush to start a crawl up Trini's neck, then Kim grins and reaches across the table to steal the last of Trini's cake off her plate.

Her smile, afterwards, is syrup-red, and she licks the frosting off her lips just a beat to slow to be anything but deliberate.

“You do know I've never cut someone else's hair before.”

“You did an alright job on yours,” Trini says, trying to keep her voice level, trying for the cool don't-give-a-fuck drawl that had the others calling her 'crazy girl' well into their friendship (she is terrified that one day they will realize how fragile she is, how scared, that it is mostly an act, that they will decide four Rangers is enough, after all, if it is her they are losing).

But.

But she is not thinking about that right now, because she is mostly shirtless in Kim's untidy bedroom, just a plain, laundry-day bra and goosebumps between her and the open air, and Kim's hand is brand-hot where it is resting on her shoulder, casually, like she doesn't even realize she is doing it.

“Yeah, well.” Kim opens and closes her scissors, experimentally, a metal snip shiver-close to Trini's ear. “I didn't really care what happened to me then, hair or otherwise.”

Trini has heard the story by now, of course- they all have, she's pretty sure, how Kim showed that poor girl's nudes to people she shouldn't have, how she paid and paid for it.

Maybe more than she should have. Maybe not.

Teenage girls can be mean, is all Trini knows, wishes it wasn't usually directed at other girls.

She doesn't say that. Not with Kim's hand on her shoulder, not sitting in her messy room, staring at the sticker-residue in the mirror of her whitewashed vanity.

She says, “Well, fuck it. Maybe I don't care either.” shrugs, and Kim's hand rises and falls with the movement, creeps a little closer to her collarbones.

(of course, she cares more about herself now than she has in a long time, but-)

“Well, you should,” Kim says, that weird easy intensity she has, 0-100 in the space of a sentence.

Trini shrugs, again. “Well, I'm here anyway. All else fails I shave it all off. Always wanted to try a buzz cut anyway.”

“You'd look good with one,” Kim says, her hand hot on Trini's shoulder a beat longer, then she is lifting it to Trini's jaw, tilting her head gently to one side and taking her sewing scissors to the 'new-girl-in-town' haircut that's growing out shaggy from Trini's scalp.

They're silent, for a while, just the metal snick of scissors to fill the small room.

“I don't think they should have done that to you,” Trini says. “Those girls, I mean. Your old friends.”

Kim stops snipping, a moment.

“You did a really shitty thing,” Trini says, already regretting this conversation. “Like- seriously. But they didn't have to go like- full Godfather on you. Metaphoric acts of violence and shit.”

“I dunno,” Kim says, “wouldn't you have?”

“I'd have kicked your ass for sure,” Trini says. “Just- been done with it. Knocked your tooth out, maybe.”

Kim laughs, at that- startled, maybe. “I'd have deserved it.”

“Yeah,” Trini shifts, keeps her eyes fixed down, at the expired eye-shadow palettes and dirty makeup brushes scattered across Kim's tabletop. “You would've.” Kim's thumb scrapes, maybe by accident, across the slope of Trini's skull, tracing a line from her ear backwards, intimate and strange.

There's a beat where maybe Kim's gonna say something- Trini kind of wants to, but she's not sure what. Can just feel it tense and growing and a little warm behind her ribs.

Then the scissors pick up their even rhythm again, Kim's hands tipping Trini's head this way, then that, gently- always gently.

“You know,” Kim says, after a while, “Jason never said that to me. Just gave me some line about- forgiving myself and moving on.”

“Hmm,” Trini says, this involuntary noise from the back of her throat.

“What?”

“Just didn't think you'd badmouth our- uh, brave and glorious leader like that.” (and Trini loves Jason, she does, their boyscout screwup of a team captain, but he can be a bit blue-eyes James-Kirk Capital-H-Hero for her, sometimes).

“What, just cause he's in charge-”

“Naw, I just thought you two were- an item, you know?”

Kim snorts. “Jason?”

Trini shrugs, again. Kim's hand is back on her shoulder, thumb warm at the join of her neck.

“No, he's- cute. Great abs. But I don't really- see him like that.”

Trini looks up, meets Kim's eyes in the mirror. “No?”

Kim smiles, a little intense- knowing, maybe, or maybe Trini's reading into things.

Trini's the first to look away. She's sure Kim can feel her pulse, loud and traitorous where it beats through her throat.

“Looks good,” Kim says, putting the clippers down with a deceive thunk on the vanity.

“Yeah,” Trini says, can't stop her hands from coming up to run through her hair- pixie-short and buzzed at the sides, the stubble prickles sharp against her palms.

It makes her look- older, maybe, or- younger, her eyes bigger, her jaw sharper- different, certainly.

“Do you like it?” Kim says, and her voice wavers, a little, like she's worried, like there is this to be scared of, after all they have done.

Trini meets her eyes in the mirror, anxious wide, her lip caught red between her teeth.

“It's- different,” Trini settles on. Rubs a hand back over the stubble.

“Good-different?”

Trini drops her hands, finally, twists to look Kim in the face for real, no mirror between them. “Yeah,” she says, “I think so.”

“WHAT have you done with your hair?” Her mother demands of her, reaching to touch, to grab without permission, and Trini jerks away, all her newly-honed fight instincts kicking in at once.

And her mother says something like I can't even touch my own daughter any more? And it is at least something they have not argued about before, novel for that if nothing else.

Trini wanders down to the spaceship, sometimes, when their house gets too crowded, not too many people but all of them too- loud, to grabby, too- the way her family is.

The ship is old and creaky and smells like rust and oil, and there's a door that squeaks in a way that startles her every damn time she opens it, but it's not her house, so it's an improvement.

“I like having my head shaved too,” Billy tells her, one of these days. He's propped up on a counter in their common area, tinkering with something Trini can't quite parse, a tangle of wires and steel in his careful hands.

“Why's that?” Trini says, offhand, digging in a pocket for her phone to pull up a game of snake (and she still feels rude, for doing it, but Billy gets squirmy if you look him in the eyes too long, in conversation, so it's not, not really).

“It feels nice,” Billy says, running a hand over his scalp like Trini's done so many times in the last week.

“Yeah,” she says. The loading screen opens with a fanfare of royalty-free music, and Trini startles, scrambles to flick on the silent.

“Is that why you like it?” Billy says into his tinkering.

“I dunno. It's- new, I guess.”

“Is that good?"

Trini laughs- the question's such a strange mirror of the one Kim'd asked her in the bedroom (though Kim had been... touchier).

Billy's heel starts to drum an even rhythm against the counter, a muted thump thump thump of rubber-on-steel; background noise to Trini, by now.

“Uh- yeah, I guess,” she says. “New is good.” She thinks, briefly, of the endless new-but-identical small towns she'd lived in. “Sometimes.” Her snake runs into its own tail and dies in a flicker of black-and-white.

“I don't like new stuff," Billy says.

They sit there a moment, in the belly of a buried spaceship, the halls literally alien and by now familiar.

“Well, usually I mean,” he amends, and Trini laughs.

“Yeah," she says. "I know what you mean. This is-” she thinks of Kim, her too-sweet-coffee-and-powder-deodorant smell, her crowded room, the white slash of her smile. “Good different.”

Billy sends a smile her way, holds his hand out for a high five, and it's so rare he seeks out any sort of touch it pulls a smile out of Trini, too.

They slap palms.

Perfect 10.

Trini pads downstairs to get a glass of water, one night, and her mother eyes her over the kitchen island, goes, “Trini, sweetie, you should take it easier at the gym”

Trini stops, mid-pour, and thinks (because she's no new hand at lying to her parents, but she's been doing it so much, now, she sometimes forgets what lies she's told). Gym, gym- was there even a gym in Angel Grove?

Her mother saves her the trouble of puzzling it out, comes around the counter and grabs Trini's arm- it'd be too hard if normal people could hurt Trini, any more. “It's good to be healthy, but girls shouldn't bee too muscular.” she says, squeezes, like Trini's an avocado she's testing for ripeness.

Trini flexes, deliberatly, and her mother pulls away, frowning.

“I only want you to fit in, Trini- boys don't like girls who are too...” she fishes, for a moment. “bulky. And with that haircut... well, people might be getting the wrong idea.” She drops her hand down Trini's arm, gentle now, a soothing gesture. “I'm just worried.”

“I don't-” want a boyfriend, Trini thinks, but her mouth's gone stale-bread-dry. Care if people get that impression, she thinks, and-

and she fights monsters, in her free time, but she is still a coward, in some important ways. She looks down at the counter, green linoleum, specks of white like dandruff.

“You need some friends and least,” her mother presses, and Trinny sets her jaw. Says, to the countertop,

“I have friends.”

She can picture her mom's expression without looking up, see her lips whiten where they'll be sucked back against her teeth, like she's eaten something sour.

Trini knows exactly how her mother feels about her friends.

“It was very nice to meet you, ma'am.” Zack says, as he's leaving Trini's place for the first time.

His spine is straighter than Trini has ever seen it, his hand politely outstretched, at strange odds with his peeling, faded leather jacket, his rip-kneed-jeans, the smell of his too-strong bodywash.

Trini's mother shakes Zack's hand with a carefully polite look on her face, like one might give a preschooler's macaroni art.

(Later, she will say, “Well Jason seems nice, and it's... sweet, of you, to spend time with that... Billy, was his name? But the others, I just- don't think they'll be good for you).

Zack, who Trini's mother thinks is some undefinable type of bad for her, waits around after Jason gives the others a ride home.

His hands are jammed in his pockets, one foot scuffing at the ground.

“You weren't kidding about your family,” he says, after a moment.

“No fucking shit.” Trini snaps. Drops onto the front step and tugs some early-summer grass out of the lawn, shreds it deliberately into green confetti.

Zack just laughs, extracts one hand from his pocket to clap her on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he says. “I got a bottle of Costco rum under my bed, we can spend the night at the quarry. Light some shit on fire.”

Trini barks out a laugh- something sharp and a little mirthless, but Zack gets that, she thinks. Is standing there slouching in his leather jacket, one arm politely outstretched.

Trini wipes off the grass shreds sticking to her summer-sweaty palm, lets Zack tug her upright, away from her house and forward into the creeping warmth of the June evening.

They drink too much and end up sprawled against one another, watching their bonfire shoulder-to-overwarm-shoulder.

“I just,” Zack is saying, slurring really, the fifth time he has tried to start this sentence, “I just- it's just I don't think a family should act like that, you know?”

“Yeah,” Trini says, tosses a pinecone into the fire. It is gilded along every edge, for just a moment, before it comes undone.

“Just like- if I was your mom, I wouldn't care if you- cut your hair, or wanted to make out with Kristen Stewart, or whatever.”

Trini snorts, too drunk to be very maudlin about it. “Thanks then, mom.”

Zack shoves her, a drunk-clumsy bump of hand and shoulder that wouldn't do much damage even if Trini wasn't superpowered.

“You know-” he says, “You know what I mean, though?”

Trini tosses another pine cone into the fire, watches it hiss and spit as it dies. “Yeah, man.”

“My mom wouldn't- would not do that.”

It's a fact. Zack's mom is very cool.

She had laughed, watching them smuggle the rum out of the trailer: “you be a gentleman to Trini, now,” she's said, and somehow it hadn't been judgmental, hadn't been implying anything.

“Yeah, your mom's the coolest.”

“Damn right.” Zack nods, all leather jacket and cool-boy swagger.

They lean into each other and watch the fire.

No, Trini figures, thoughts gone sort of muddled and slippery with heat and $15 rum, no family shouldn't act like that, but maybe-

maybe like this.

Like Zack passing her the plastic bottle, his shoulder warm against hers, maybe like the golden light of the fire, the smell of woodsmoke and the gentle snap of flames.

Maybe, she thinks, tosses another twig to the fire.

Maybe just like this.

“Come on,” Kim says, “Again.” There is blood on her teeth from where Trini'd landed a lucky hit and a strange, manic look in her eyes.

Trini bounces from one foot to the next, waits a beat longer then throws a punch, hard, for Kim's jaw.

She ducks, neatly, and grabs Trini's wrist, uses the momentum to slam her up against the wall of the pit.

“Nicely done,” Trini manages, the breath knocked halfway out of her, and chalks the stammer in her pulse up to the exercise.

Her mother had said, “I just don't think they'll be good for you,” and Trini's pretty sure she's right about Kim.

Kim who's letting up her hold, falling back to her starting position, pushing sweaty hair out of her eyes.

She is bad for Trini's heart, certainly, in a ratty tanktop and sweatpants, strong arms and a bloody nose.

“Come on, try me again,” she says. They've been sparring all morning.

Trini works her arm, experimentally- sore, by now, but it'll heal. “What is up your ass, anyway?” 

Kim shrugs, hands coming up to the ready position. “Beat me and I'll tell you.”

Trini grins, feels the weird adrenaline-buzz of a fight pull through her tired limbs. “Bring it on, Hart.”

Kim pins her one, two more times after that, always the same way, grabs her by the wrist and twists until Trini is shoved up against the wall, concrete-grit against her cheek, blood in her mouth.

Whoever's defending in a fight always wins, with them- those in-tune instincts that let them morph, make them a deadly team, also mean that Kim knows when Trini's going to attack, how hard to push back without hurting her.

Something about that burns a little in Trini's gut, like she's eaten something rotten, like Zack's Costco booze, about being known by other people right down to her fast-twitch muscles.

“You okay?” Kim says, backing the pressure off her arm.

Trini shakes herself, works her arm in it's abused socket. “Yeah. Another go?”

Kim grins.

(she is beautiful like this, Trini thinks, without quite meaning to, drying blood and a feral light in her eyes, a messy ponytail and workout clothes, and damn this crush, it is only a matter of time before Kim finds her out and then where will she be?)

“You ready?”

Triny tests her balance- backwards on her heels, forwards, then she throws the exact same punch she has in the last three matches.

Kim falls for it, easily, even says “you're going to have to try harder than-” before she realizes it's a feint.

Still off-balance, it's easy enough to flip her onto her back, and Trini's got her forearm against Kim's throat before the next heartbeat.

“Not bad,” Kim says, sounding a little winded herself, and Trini realizes how close they are, her practically draped over Kim's body, the thrum of pulse against her forearm.

She rocks back upright, looks away. “Water break?”

“Yeah,” Kim says, “I think I'm done for the day.”

They had carted a mini fridge into the ship in the week after defeating Rita Repulsa because cold Gatorade is, according to Jason, just as vital to their fitness as first aid and regular exercise.

The contents of the mini fridge, currently, are one bottle of $8 wine, half a pizza, and a truly embarrassing amount of sports drink.

Kim tosses a blue over her shoulder to Trini before fishing out a bottle of her own.

“Thanks,” Trini cracks the cap and takes a long swig, sliding to a seat against a wall. (Her favourite flavor used to be the yellow, but she refuses to be quite so colour-coded, honestly, and fuck what the alien-destiny-coin said).

Kim grins an acknowledgment, presses a cold bottle to her pulse point- a temporary relief against the fingers of summer heat that reach muggily all through Angel Grove, driving out the last hints of spring. She slouches over across from Kim, head tipped back against a row of lockers.

(Kim, on the other hand, had used an Amazon gift card she'd stolen from her ex to special-order the pink lemonade Gatorade by the crate-full, 'cause it wasn't carried locally.

Different strokes, Trini figures).

“So,” she says, stretching the sparring session out of her back with a satisfying pop. “I won. Wanna tell me why you were so hell-bent on handing me my ass today?”

“Hah.” Kim cracks the cap on her drink, takes a swig rather than answer right away. When she finally speaks, her teeth are stained just the slightest bit Gatorade-pink. “The fight last week,” she says. “It's been screwing with me.”

“Oh,” Trini says, and can't think of the next thing, after that, sweaty and lead-limbed and she was never that good at talking, in the first place. That was shit the superhero movies did not tell you, that coming up with inspiring speeches or witty quips was damn harder than fighting the monsters.

Across from her, Kim slides her bent knees out straight, bare feet and stubbly legs, one of her toenails painted and chipping.

“You remember,” she says, “That sea monster?”

“Of course,” Trini says, because they are superheroes, sure, but she is not yet at the point in her life where she can just forget a serpent clawing itself out of the ocean like Old Testament, yellow lamprey-eyes and bits of old ship in its teeth.

“We beat it, though.” Trini says. “It's dead.”

Kim shrugs. Trini slides her legs straight, so her ankles knock up against Kim's knees across the hallway.

“What, then?” She says, that deep-chest pressure burning in her lungs, like someone's struck a slow-match against her ribs.

There is something she needs to say, Trini thinks, or maybe something Kim is trying to say, and it is building up between them, thick as the muggy summer.

“I just-” Kim shifts, so one of her knees is hooked over Trini's leg. “When it knocked you over, I thought-” she shrugs, again,

Oh, Trini thinks. “Next time you're worried about me,” she says, “Just- you can buy me a drink, instead of kicking my ass.”

And Kim is tilting her head to the side, a little, considering, and Trini's brain catches up with her mouth, realizes what she's said- what it sounds like she's said-

“I mean-” She blurts, throat closing over, but Kim is standing, smiling, offering her hand.

“Come on,” she says. “I'm sick of this place. Walk you home?”

And so maybe it's fine, after all.

She is so relaxed when she gets home, summer heat and exercise endorphins, she nearly forgets what is waiting for her.

Does forget to put on a jacket before she walks in the door, forgets the hand-print bruises blooming like fingerpaint all over her arms, forgets what she must look like.

Her father looks up as she walks in the door and his eyes track from Trini's face to her bruises and back to his newspaper in the time it takes Trini to lever off one shoe.

He says, “Remember to take the garbage out.”

“Yeah,” Trini says, suddenly less relaxed than just tired.

In the kitchen, Trini's mother's eyes track the same pattern- face, bruises, away again.

“Remember to take the garbage out,” she says, she only says,

“I'm doing it.” Trini runs her tongue over the tender, copper places along the inside of her cheek, souvenirs from sparring practice.

That night, her off-hand keeps finding the bruise at her shoulder and prodding, like it's a missing tooth, like she keeps forgetting it'll hurt.

When she eventually falls asleep, she dreams of Andromeda, chained to the rocks, a monster looming at her out of the water.

The bruise goes a very impressive shade of green, before it disappears.

Billy uses Burt's Bees moisturizer. He always smells like engine grease and waxcomb, and he fixes the creaky door in the ship like it is so easy, to take things apart, and to fix them.

Trini finds Jason practicing his Inspirational Leader Voice in the mirror one morning, his arm in a cast after a big fight, saying “we've got this” over and over until the words run into each other like wet ink.

Kim is-

Well.

She's something, Trini is certain, she gave herself a lopsided star tattoo on one wrist and she likes a shitty, gas station beer called “Keystone Blue”. she can shotgun a can of the stuff in about thirty seconds, even though the rest of the team is pretty convinced it's just just old piss run through a filter.

And,

and-

she is the kind of beautiful that people turn to watch. That Trini turns to watch. She has a scar on one knuckle from punching out a boy's tooth (they put it back), and she bites her lip just a little when she is concentrating, and she never remembers to tie her shoes, and she is beautiful.

Whenever she is in the room, Trini's eyes catch on her, over and over, like a bad hangnail.

Zack has three different chess apps downloaded on his shitty old phone, and he runs out of free daily plays on every one of them, every day.

He understands, Trini thinks, the loud stupid fear that drums inside her head, sometimes, that makes her do stupid things just to prove it is not winning.

Is right alongside her, often, jumping cliffs and getting drunk and screaming full-voiced into the face of terror.

Trini loves all of them, fiercely, more than she has loved anyone, she thinks, their tics and habits and shortcomings, and she is fairly sure she will never tell them.

They know, already, probably, except-

She loves Kim like the rest, of course, that action-movie comrades-in-arms thing she's disgusted to find out Fast and Furious did not lie about.

Except, sometimes,

when there is that slow-match feeling in her chest, some unspoken pressure building, when Kim and her hang out alone and there is this thing between them, heavy in the air like the fog that rolls in off the harbour.

Less elegantly,

Mostly Trini is glad just to have them all but sometimes she wants Kim, specifically, to pin her to a wall and take her apart like some broken old appliance, with her hands and tongue and teeth.

She hopes Kim does not know this.

“So,” Kim says, after a fight, stepping out of her Zord and flipping up her visor, a gruesome cut above her eyebrow like she's some conquering Valkyrie, some war hero, “you wanna get drunk?”

An alarm sounds deep in Trini's gut, but she's flush with battle-high, had barely dodged the club of the giant that had staggered furious into their town- had torn its throat open with her mech's claws, like cutting butter.

Monster blood is still steaming in the air, Trini's blood is still sheeting from a rent in her suit, and she says “yes” like it is the easiest thing in the world.

[samanthasroberts]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

[adambstingus]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181456618922

[allofbeercom]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

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15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling deficiency of self-awareness. The biggest recreation calamities were born out of a clusterfuck of hallucination, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve invested much of this last month cheering the outputthat challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame–in the hopes that maybe, simply perhaps, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 duds from the past time, be it commercial bomb or tone-deaf culture grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Severely, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously crouching former White House press secretary Sean Spicer ultimately espoused the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearing during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and abhorrence, applauding him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many spectators, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a humankind who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

” As a parent of daughters …” strong>

This entire summary of the year’s disasters could be inhabited with the frightening misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year–from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond–and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behaviour and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified why i am father-gods who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the specific characteristics of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture,” Merely a sociopath needs a daughter–or a sister, a girlfriend, a spouse, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks–to attain him queasy enough at the believed to be a sexual predator in his industry to do anything about it .”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake attained in a very public meeting. Perhaps it was an ominous warned against the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live catastrophes during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a patronage track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next carol before storming off. It was an inauspicious lane to begin the new time, specially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as “the worlds”, albeit in this case only the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was scarcely managed elegantly with Carey’s team and the production corporation engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial behaviour in lines of tough questioning–always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC received it admirable enough to expend $15 million to wooed her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launching a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it shunned the attributes that attained Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to conceal their dislike for the host.

La La Land em> Oscars gaffe

The phrase” Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a movie voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily reckon “ve earned it” , not for a situation in which the literal incorrect win is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards–Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land em> as Best Picture instead of Moonlight — is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of everything there is construct everything worse. The La La Land squad had to concede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award demonstrate can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight , a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural instant like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserves to additional measures, the amount of attention given to the La La Land em> team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the accident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase” worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new Tv present, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment attained in the series and its hubris in presuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget gamble included a liberate in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical operate that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply,” Stop talking .” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add subtlety to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly set all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews , Suburbicon and Downsizing , have underperformed at the box office and subdivided critics. All that on top of the route he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall . em>

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Adoration You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17 -year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60 -something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation , not bothering to stop when a female producer, are applied to such things, enters the chamber. What was purposefully provoking in the movie now borders on lunacy after The New York Times supported an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy ‘ s theatrical freeing was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, beheaded Trump head was–which happened instantly–she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity contentions have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every amusement undertaking she comprised, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic occurrence in disastrous injury control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to sun, famous humankinds are guilty of truly horrific behaviour that for so long was excused–yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee testified, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretense, with no infrastructure in place to assistance, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral bird-dogs, mountains of litter , no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the rise in lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or simply a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating , notorious tragedy of a interval movie, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled liberate dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched freeing of the cinema, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of merely 9 percentage, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, quoting the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s” Senate operate”

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap brew and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a scarcely veiled advertising stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the ludicrous mind, and, considering the trajectory to public agency mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted apply of “gay” as a pejorative–let alone his espouse of the Confederate flag.

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But glistening a spotlight on this turd including with regard to came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office carry, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you are able fragrance from miles back that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If “youve been” want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, simply read this quote:” The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t to construct critics but instead general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films–a family escapade and a raunchy R-rated comedy–were critic-proof .”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a dealership reboot cash-grab use a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic cosmo, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, fitted with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy . It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy , not to mention abysmal evaluations, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at the least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its designers, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jump-start ship for other projects.

Read more: https :// www.thedailybeast.com/ 15 -biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2 017 -kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-and-more

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/01/01/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

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Tagged by @saxrohmerwon ages ago on my brief other blog and just noticed it, thanks bruh ily <3

Rules:  Always post the rules, answer the questions given to you, then write 10 questions of your own, and tag some friends!

1. Favorite city (or town/small island/et cetera) in the world and why?

I guess it’d be Avalon. I basically spent every summer of my life there with family and it’s really small (only seven miles long) so you wind up going to the same few ice cream places or antique stores or pizza shops all the time but you never really get bored of it. The whole place has a quiet, old-timey shore town nostalgia to it too that’s super sweet. And like some of my all time favorite memories were staying on the beach until sunset when the lifeguards were gone so we could swim wherever we wanted, or climbing on the outfall pipe and walking to see how far out I was brave enough to go (it got “higher” ((read: the sand started to disappear)) the further out over the water you went), or walking on the beach at night. That was my favorite part, the nighttime. It’s weird how quiet but how alive everything got after dark, and I could hunt for ghost crabs or watch fireworks and the lights from town on the water, and the sand never bothered me as much when it was cool from the dark.

2. Describe your favorite scent/s.

Autumn, if that counts as a smell. But the combined scent of really brisk air and smoky burning leaves and fresh damp ones and hay and I guess plant life generally decaying, but in a sweet way? I also like flower smells obviously, and food smells, but those are boring to talk about. Gasoline, the specific kind of fake (cotton) paper money is printed on. Coffee. I’ve learned to kind of like the smell of cigarettes on clothes, because my boyfriend smokes and I like waking up in the sweater I wore the night before with that smell still on it. People have smells too. Like my mom smells like perfume even when she isn’t wearing any, and it’s nice. And babies smell rad and trigger ALL of my maternal impulses (cannot wait to reproduce, it’s gonna be gr8). And the boy smells really nice... Not even in like a what-deodorant-are-you-wearing kind of way but like skin and sweat and waking up warm in a cold house on Wednesday mornings. And when he comes home from work smelling like fresh cut grass and wet dirt it’s v nice.

3. Who is/was your favorite teacher and why?

My Romantic Lit professor currently, because he teaches exactly what I want to teach and I have a career crush on him. He’s also just super excitable and enthusiastic (let’s talk about that WEIRD weekend in Geneva the Shelleys took guys! Blake was an EDGELORD!) which I love.

I also had a professor at my old school who was super cool and helped me through a lot of shit? I took her personal essay class right as I was sort of in recovery for depression following a terrible, low key emotionally unhealthy (abusive? I still don’t know if I can use that word? Either way, OVER-SHARING YAY) romantic relationship and I explored that and a lot of other stuff pertaining to my childhood and relationships and discovering my queerness in my work for her class, and she was super supportive and involved in helping me experiment with new formats and really use writing as a therapeutic tool and it helped me heal a lot. She was also just a super cool lady (lots of tattoos and wispy blonde hair and a quiet voice, kind of a hipster fairy) who hung out with me at a local music festival in town when I was like fresh out of the hospital and having trouble being around my normal friends. She just always made sure her door was open and went out of her way to make me feel better, and to this day I appreciate that.

4. What is your favorite poem?  (Substitute with “song” if you don’t have a favorite poem.)

Oh my GOD, don’t make me choose. I’m obsessed with the Romantics and a few contemporaries have my heart, but I guess I’d have to say “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. It’s just beautiful and hopeful and simple enough that tiny me could fall in love with it and appreciate it almost in its fullness when I was too young to grasp other works.

5. Weirdest thing you’ve ever heard out-of-context?

Ever? I don’t tend to remember stuff like that for a long time unless I’d like hypothetically overheard a murder or something, but last night some girl was walking back from our student center with her friends and angrily shouted that she wanted to “put her dong through a snare drum” which made me laugh.

6. Best concert experience?  (If you have never been to a concert, what do you hope your first concert will be?)

Still gotta say Green Day after just turning 15 years old. I’d never been to a concert before and they were my favorite band at the time. I was so proud to be there because I had 0 dollars to my name and no one would hire me because I was underage, so I had to earn every penny for those tickets doing gross menial work like removing and scrubbing window frames that hadn’t seen soap in maybe a decade (SO MANY SPIDERS), and teeny bopper me thought that was 'punk.’ And at one point Billie Joe Armstrong, who my pathetic little emo self wanted to MARRY told the audience he was proud of everyone who’d worked their ass off to afford to come see them play and I remember turning to my dad and screaming “HE MEANS ME!” It was so wholesome.

7. Favorite holiday (or other special occasion) and why?

Christmas! My house was THE Christmas house growing up. My parents put so much effort into it and it was the cutest thing. Besides the outrageous amount of decorations and the amazing food that takes all week to make and the cute tradition of having my grandparents spend the night to watch us open presents first thing in the morning, the best part of Christmas growing up was definitely the effort my family put into making us kids believe Santa was real for way longer than necessary. One year my uncle got a flashlight and a red solo up and climbed trees in our yard so we’d see “Rudolph’s nose” if we looked out the window. We put out reindeer food every year. My dad would stomp around shaking jingle bells and someone always climbed on the roof making noise, and my mom knew calligraphy, so she’d write us scrolls from Santa on legit parchment and toast it in the oven so it would curl. One year we had an old, old family friend who was a Santa impersonator show up with a legit sleigh and a giant book with all the family member’s names and the years they were naughty and nice in it and stories about why and it was so cute. So whereas most kids found out around like 8 my parents went to extreme lengths so that I believed it until I was like 11 and honestly, I’m really glad they did, because it was a kick ass childhood. I definitely want to be that level of extra when I become a parent.

8. Did you ever play an instrument growing up?  If so, how did it go for you?

Guitar, bass, after I learned guitar I could play pretty much anything pluckable with strings, so I had a Romanian lap harp (I was such a cool kid) and I would sometimes play my sister’s viola (often incorrectly and like a guitar, but it was fun to sample when I recorded stuff). I haven’t sang or touched an instrument in like seven years though. I kind of gave up after sad life stuff happened but I want to pick it back up again. I really miss music.

9. If you were given $100 today, what would you do with the money?

Use it toward Christmas presents for loved ones. Since I’m basically not allowed out of the house after I go home for break I have to do Christmas early with the friends and boyfriend.

10. What’s the scariest movie you have ever seen?  (Define scary however you like.)

I love scary movies so this is hard, but I guess anything in which children are genuinely evil? Like not even in a supernatural way; it’s not horror but watching We Need To Talk About Kevin fucked me up. I guess being a mom is like so much something that I want, and imagining that happening would def keep me up at night. Especially because I would not know what to do.

Now, for questions:

1. What’s your favorite article of clothing?

Dresses but also plain black leggings. And I have very soft sweatpants that fit just right.

2. Do you still sleep with a stuffed animal?

Nope. I can’t sleep with the live one either lol, Bynx likes to sleep RIGHT where I want to roll over and screams and puts his paws in my mouth when he wants attention.

3. Do you believe in heaven? Hell?

Both, Catholic.

4. Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorite ones?

Not really, but I’d like to, in theory. It just seems like more effort somehow than watching TV and I am always tired.

5. What was your go-to game during recess?

Four square.

6. Where do you see yourself in the next ten years– not in a job interview kind of way, but actually?

Awwww this is cute to think about. I guess I’d like to be living in like a really woodland but not isolating place, somewhere where my house can be on a lake or by woods or mountains but if I drive ten minutes there’s a cozy-sized town with all I need. Maybe in like Virginia or Vermont. I’m a professor of Gothic Literature at the local college, and my students are engaged and inspiring and call me by my first name. I’m in a pretty and not-too-big house, but it’s warm and smells like our fireplace. I’m married to my lovely guy, and both our jobs are flexible enough that we can have dinner as a family and spend time with our brood of kids. And they pay well enough that we might not be wealthy but we never have to worry. The cat’s still with us and we’ve got a dog, too. We go on camping trips and The Lumberjack teaches the kids how to build fires and tie knots and dad stuff like that. One of the kids at least loves reading and the house is full of books - I’ve got a home office full of bookshelves and a reading nook. We’ve got a porch where we can bundle up and drink wine in the evening after the kids are in bed. We’re not rich but not poor, and our families get along and come to visit. My parents still ask us over for Christmas every year. Wherever I teach, my kids can go there for free.

7. Do you have a favorite visual artist? Who are they?

Oh lord, I don’t know. I mean I like art but I hate the process of liking art. It’s so much more involved than “I like how this piece makes me feel” and I don’t enjoy that. I like individual pieces and I don’t know enough about art to really speak on it.

I guess, though, I like Dali and Khalo as people. They seem unpretentious and fun. Which is surprising because I guess the way their work is talked about you’d think the opposite.

8. Do you really like a food that most people think is disgusting? Or, do you like a popular food to a disgusting degree?

Not really but like I put too much hot sauce / jalapenos on everything and it disgusts people. And I put way too much sugar in coffee, and creamer too.

9. What music did your parents play in the house/car?

My mom is a New Wave junkie like me and my dad had more complicated taste. He was never big into music, so he only really likes a few artists for their voices and some songs for nostalgia. So we listened to a lot of oldies and swing and Judy Garland, but he also loved Blondie and Boston.

10. What would you tell your 15-year-old self?

I’d tell her she’s a lot stronger than she’s going to think she is one day and to tough it out. That people love her and will love her. That when you get older, family is hard, but it’s worth it to work on things. That she’s smarter than she thinks she is and should try harder in school, because when she finally does have faith in herself, it’ll pay off. 

Tagging whoever else wants to do this - it’s cold and rainy (here at least) and we could all use a day of warm socks and procrastinating with asks, honestly.