#round: april 2019

[miniy00ng1]

Not Yours

Five Hargreeves x Female!Reader

wc: 1845

warnings: swearing, fighting, lmk if i missed anything!

find my masterlist here

hiii lovelies! i really enjoyed writing this, i will probably make a part two since the ending isn't really an ending, but i just wanted to get something posted! in this piece i refer to Viktor's character as Vanya since in the series at this time he did not come out yet! as always please ignore any grammar errors, give me feedback, and i hope everyone enjoys! thank you <3

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A bright blue flash appears in the foyer of The Umbrella Academy, from the flash comes the Hargreeves siblings, slowly coming to after being disoriented from time travel. The siblings surround the singular round table in the room, sitting atop the table was a newspaper.

Five Hargreeves, the youngest looking of the group, snatches the paper off the table frantically searching for a date. “Holy shit…I think we did it. It’s April 2nd, 2019, the day after the apocalypse.” Five lets out a dry chuckle, surprised he and his idiot siblings succeeded. 

Klaus lets out a cheer of excitement, he rests both arms over the shoulders of his two nearest siblings, pulling them close, “Go team! I mean look at us, we’re so amazing you guys. I think we should celebrate by breaking into Dad’s very special liquor cabinet.” The siblings laugh, all relieved they survived and saved the world, yet again. As the group begins to wander towards the sitting room, Five stops in his tracks–something, no, someone was missing.

Five looks at the bunch ahead of him, he counts their heads once—only five, and then recounts afraid that he’s made an error. He whips his head behind to check for the missing person–his missing person. Five releases a shaky breath he didn’t realize he was holding, panic beginning to set in, “You guys…where’s Y/N?” The siblings immediately become aware to the fact that you were missing.

“Maybe she ended up in another part of the house? We should split up and look for her.” Vanya suggested. The group murmurs in agreement, designating sections of the house for each sibling to search. Before the siblings can break off, something strange catches Diego’s eye, “Hey, why is there a painting of Ben over the mantelpiece?”

The siblings immediately gather around the mantel and stare in confusion at the painting of their dead brother, which was previously a painting of their missing brother. “Shit, that can’t be good…” Five hisses, trying to figure out what was going on. The siblings attention is pulled away from Ben’s painting as a figure abruptly stands up from a nearby chair. The fireplace sheds light on the figures, it was their previously dead father—Reginald Hargreeves.

“Dad, you’re alive.” Luther says softly. The older man scoffs and speaks in his shrill voice, “Why shouldn’t I be? And I am not your father, boy.” The monocled man corrects Luther causing him to furrow his brows in confusion. “What? What’re you talking about? Yes, you are. This is the Umbrella Academy.” Allison questions. “And you would be wrong again. This is not The Umbrella Academy, this is the Sparrow Academy.” As if on cue, six figures appeared near the railing of the balcony in the room.

“Those are my children, The Sparrows. After meeting you lot in the 60s, I was so put off by you that I made it a point not to adopt you, and instead found the others. I was quite successful and adopted eight of them.” Reginald states proudly, his hands behind his back. Another familiar voice grabs the attention of the Umbrella’s, “Dad, who the hell are these assholes in my house?” Ben Hargreeves, formerly dead, but now clearly alive stands before the group. Five squints his eyes at Ben, trying to determine what was off about him. Was it the hair?

“Oh my god! Ben-er-ino is that you? You look so good alive! Well, I mean beside that haircut, but I can look past that. Come give your favorite brother a hug!” Klaus squeals in excitement, approaching Sparrow Ben with his arms wide open. Sparrow Ben meets Klaus with a solid punch to the face. Klaus stumbles back and Luther manages to catch him. “What the hell was that for Ben?” Klaus groans, holding onto his nose.

Five examines the Sparrow siblings, trying to size them up, “You said you got eight. Where is the last one?” Five questions out loud. Suddenly, a small teenage, female figure appears seemingly out of thin air next to Ben. The Umbrella siblings slightly jump at the appearance of another person in front of them before they calm down and realize it’s you. But why are you standing next to Sparrow Ben and why are you wearing a school girl outfit with a sparrow logo on it.

“Y/N?” Five calls out, you tilt your head in response to hearing your name. You squint at Five with confusion, “How the hell does the kid know my name?” You look to Reginald for answers to which he doesn’t provide any. The rest of your siblings join you and Ben in front of the strangers in your home. “I think it’s about time you guys leave.” Marcus states, puffing out his chest. “We’re not going anywhere, this is our house.” Diego replies stalking closer to Marcus. “All right, it looks like we’re going to have to settle this the old fashion way.” Both groups of siblings get into fighting stances, readying themselves to beat the shit out of each other. 

You roll your eyes, your siblings have always had a flare for the dramatics and it’s just never been your style. You use your powers–manipulation of your appearance, to make yourself invisible once again. You study the way the young boy immediately looks for your presence, trying to get even the smallest hint of where you’ve gone. As your siblings start to fight with the strangers in your house you sit back to enjoy the show.

Each one of your siblings is matched up and fighting one of the Umbrella Academy siblings and with the way things are going down, you’re betting on the Sparrows. Marcus is clearly winning against Luther and you’re becoming bored watching them hit each other back and forth. You then come across Diego riding around on Christopher asking him repeatedly about “who his daddy is” this makes you giggle. You then make your way into the foyer where you observe two more pairs of siblings fighting.

Something on the table catches your eye. A sleek, black briefcase rests in the middle, you don’t recognize it, but recall that the Umbrella’s first appeared in this room. You snatch the briefcase and decide to keep it, just in case. “Y/N! Come here and look at this freak!” You hear Jayme call your name from the top of the staircase and follow her voice. Once you reach the top of the stairs you make yourself visible and see the teenage boy, who they call Five, making out with the air. “Guess who the little perv is macking on.” Jayme says wiggling her eyebrows suggestively at you.

“Gross Jayme, why do you have to say it like that?” You say scrunching your nose in disgust. “Let me deal with him.” You signal Jayme to go away. The boy is still stuck in his daydream and continues to make out with the air. In order to get him out of the dream state you hit him in the side with the briefcase, knocking him off balance. Five rolls to the floor, shaking his head trying to re-enter reality. Immediately realizing his compromised position he quickly gets to his feet raising his fists but once he realizes it’s you, he drops his arms.

“I’m not going to hit you Y/N. I would never fight with you.” As Five lets his guard down, you use this to your advantage, immediately swinging your body in an attempt to roundhouse kick him in the face. He blinks away, dodging the kick, and appears on the other side of you causing you to stumble back since you missed your target. You prepare to hit him again but he blinks away for the second time, this time right behind you and pressed to your backside. Five’s arms wrap around your body, holding you in place, the briefcase still tightly clutched in your hand.

“Love, stop this. I am not going to fight with you.” Five says through gritted teeth as he holds you arms down to your side. You struggle against his grip trying to wiggle free, “I am not your love.” In that moment you swing your head back hoping to knock into his head but a flash of blue light surrounds you. You’re back in the foyer with Five and a couple of his siblings. “Someone hold onto her and make sure you don’t lose that briefcase. I’ve got to make sure Vanya’s okay and then we’ve got to get the hell out of here.” Five calls out to his siblings, Luther takes over the hold on you as Five blinks away and snatches the briefcase out of your hand. “I will kill you if you don’t let me go you fat gorilla.”

The Hargreeves siblings manage to “win” the fight against your siblings thanks to Vanya’s powers and take you as hostage without the Sparrows noticing. Luther carries you over his shoulder while the group tries to find a place to rest. Once arriving at a nearby park, the siblings sprawl out and complain about their aches and pains. Luther sets you down on a park bench laying his legs over yours to hold you down. “Get off of me you overgrown monkey! Let me go home or I’ll make you regret it!” You say trying to come off as threatening but Luther doesn’t take you seriously. “You know Y/N, you used to be a lot nicer. Now you sound like Five, and he’s an asshole. Here’s a fun idea! Why don’t you go back to being the nice Y/N we all know and love.” Luther sighs, covering his eyes with his arms and ignoring anything else you say or do.

Five sits up straight from the table he’s sitting at, “Luther quick, hand me the briefcase. Maybe I can time travel us back to the correct timeline.” Luther groans at the thought of having to move, he brings his hand to the floor in search of the briefcase to which he finds nothing. Luther lets out an awkward chuckle, “Yeah…about that…I might have dropped it when that blind one was chasing us with her scary birds.” Luther winces in preparation of Five’s wrath. The look on Five’s face turns murderous, “I ask two simple things Luther, that’s it. So simple even a monkey could do it…or maybe not. Keep my wife safe and don’t lose the briefcase. Is it that damn hard!” 

You let out a laugh and tune back into the conversation at the mention of yourself, “Not your wife short stuff!” Five’s attention is now back on you, his nostrils flaring in frustration, “Yes Y/N, you have made that painstakingly clear. And you’re certainly not as sweet and loving as my Y/N and you’re annoying as hell. But until I can get my Y/N back, you’ll have to do. Not to mention, you’ll come in handy once the Sparrows realize you’re gone.” Five lets out a breath as an attempt to calm down, “We need a game plan and a place to stay seeing as we don’t have one anymore. Anybody have any ideas?” 

part two, part three

[operafantomet]

Big mirror / small mirror

The current Middle East / European Tour seems to alternate between two different mirrors. For the original production in Romania 2015 and the current revamped version premiering in Norway 2018-2019 they featured a big, round window/mirror with such a depth Christine could sit inside it. For the mirror scene she therefore sat there.

For the Greek premiere in 2020 they introduced a smaller mirror for the Thessaloniki stop, while Athens had the bigger one.

When the production continued to Riyadh, Dubai and Sofia in 2023-2024, they kept using the small mirror. But it looks like the big mirror had a comeback for the Sofia revisit in 2024.

Me? I'm "Team Big Mirror" all the way. As the stage is quite bare, apart from Christine's dressing room, it has a bolder visual impact. It also means Christine can walk through the mirror instead of crawl through it. A tad more elegant. But the smaller mirror makes the Phantom more visible, so I guess both versions has its merits.

(Photos from top: Bucharest 2015, Oslo 2018, Oslo 2018, Thessaloniki 2020, Athens 2020, Thessaloniki 2023, Dubai 2024, Sofia April 2024, Sofia September 2024)

[rederiswrites]

Why are we afraid of a Trump presidency? Well, here's the beginning of political historian Heather Cox Richardson's daily writeup:

April 30, 2024 (Tuesday) This morning, Time magazine published a cover story by Eric Cortellessa about what Trump is planning for a second term. Based on two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors, the story lays out Trump’s conviction that he was “too nice” in his first term and that he would not make such a mistake again. Cortellessa writes that Trump intends to establish “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.” He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people. He is willing to permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to try to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. In a second Trump presidency, the U.S. might not come to the aid of a European or Asian ally that Trump thinks isn’t paying enough for its own defense. Trump would, Cortelessa wrote, “gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.” To that list, former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer added on social media that if Trump wins, “he could replace [Supreme Court justices Clarence] Thomas, [Samuel] Alito, and 40+ federal judges over 75 with young zealots.” “I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?” Cortellessa wrote. No, Trump said. “‘I think a lot of people like it.”

[olivette-branch]

Oh baby, is it time.

normally this is where you'd expect to see @yamball and her magnificent primers.

Alas, it is but me and my attempt to let the world know about the puck-slinging, hit-throwing, scared of haunted houses, pale as a vampire forward that has captured our hearts:

Tye Kartye

photo credits: steph chambers

*disclaimer: all of this information is googleable & found across various interviews from Tye, his parents and other information surrounding him & games he has been in! If you want a link to a specific article, please feel free to ask! Also, feel free to send this to others, but keep the primer on tumblr & don't crosspost to other platforms :) keeping fourth walls intact is very important to me.

Childhood

Tye Kartye was born to Richelle & Todd Kartye on April 20, 2001.

His mom is a clinical nurse educator & his father is a chemistry teacher in Kingston.

Tye also has a younger sister, Talya, who is two years younger. They were both also incredibly athletic kids. Tye played soccer and hockey, plus touch football while Talya played basketball and volleyball.

This boy is also so hardworking. Well-known by the nickname, "No Quit" Kartye, he is constantly lauded by numerous past coaches as incredibly hard-working, and focused. To quote his dad, he knew from his childhood that, "he wanted and was going to be in the NHL."

included also, since there are very few photos of Karts as a kiddo: here are some of his Prezi's. Note from topics like stick flex to environmental effects, he is so dedicated and focused in his details. Truly a teachers' son

Stick Flex Prezi

Environmental Effects Prezi

Tough Road Ahead

Of course, Tye's path hasn't been easy to where he is and it starts pretty young.

He took the more traditional route, played in house leagues before going up into high school hockey and then AA & AAA.

Of course, then comes time for the OHL draft. Karts isn't drafted in the first round, nor the second round, not even the third.

Tye is drafted by the Soo Greyhounds in 2017 in the eighth round. Not only is he selected dead in the middle, but he also was cut his first training camp. Instead, he went back to midget AAA and worked his ass off.

In fact, his former coach John Dean, who was named HC of the Greyhounds in 2018-2019 had heard about the skinny kid told to get bigger/stronger in his exit meeting. He came in that year, and said about Karts that "Here comes this moose of a man, who clearly took direction very literally and took it to heart."

Karts took his time in the OHL, and spent a good bit of it working to improve. As it came closer to draft time, he bumped up his work to a more physical level. This was supposed to help his game, but also his potential for the draft. Keep this in mind.

Karts was first eligible for the 2019 draft. He was not selected. Now, he'll mention that he didn't feel he was ready at all at the time.

But! He does partake in the 2019 Development Camp for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

So, Karts plays another year and, is eligible for the 2020 draft.

He isn't selected again. In fact, routinely his scouting reports talk about his skating ability, or lack thereof. Even for a larger player for his age (6'0 and 175+), his skating was seemingly enough of a deterent. He was disappointed, especially after a good season.

Then 2020-21 hits and the OHL season is cancelled. Tye keeps practicing.

photo credits: this blog post about tye

The Undrafted Kid

2021 comes, and the Kraken need bodies for their first development camp. They've got draft picks (Matty Beniers, Ryker Evans, Ryan Winterton to name a few) but they've gotta invite a few more for the incoming guys to spend time with.

Mike Dawson, a scout for the Kraken, started doing his homework. He noted how weird it was this kid hadn't been picked, mentioned it might be because he's a later bloomer.

He gets an invite to the 2021 Development Camp, and while he doesn't get a contract the Kraken now know his name.

He begins to push in his 2021-22 season with the Greyhounds. Not only did he recieve an A, he also scored over 100 career points with them, but also ended the year 4th overall in league scoring, and led the league in PPGs and GWGs as well as ended the season with 79 points (and 57 PIMs, he's been a bit of yapper his whole life).

So March 2022 hits, and the Kraken finally bite. Tye gets an ELC, and he's ready to work.

Also additionally, Ron Francis is an ICON for Tye, who is a Soo Greyhounds alum. The Rink in the Soo is literally on Ron Francis Way.

CVF + Hard Work makes the Dream Work

Tye comes into the new CVF team for the 22-23 season. He attended Kraken training camp, but let's be real. Tye needed more time to prepare.

Karts comes in, and is ready to show off what he can do. He also is trading cold, Canadian weather for the hot Valley and grabbing his golf clubs.

Note of importance: he becomes really good friends with Ryker Evans & Luke Henman.

He starts as a fourth-liner. And, he struggles. He has little ice time, as well as few opportunities.

But, he gets better. And better, and better and better. Soon, he's one of the Firebird's top 6 forwards, and he's skyrocketing towards being a potential call up.

Although it comes later, by the end of the 22-23 Firebirds season (off of a devastating Game 7 loss to the Hershey Bears), Tye is awarded the Dudley "Red" Garrett Memorial Award for AHL Rookie of the year and is also placed on the AHL Rookie All-Star Team. He led all rookies in points, and appeared in every game for the Firebirds that season.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because Tye's breakout moments in the AHL don't just end there. They lead to the real deal.

photo credits: Firebirds Media

The Call Up & Goal Heard Round Colorado

So come April, Tye gets recalled to the Kraken who are going on a completely unprecedented and expected playoff run. Not only is it a little unexpected (he's a rookie coming up from his first year in the AHL instead of a vet, and he's having to replace the Jared McCann).

But, Tye gets it because of what has always been the case. He's a hardworker, a grinder and he will make others notice him through it.

So, he comes in for Game 5 of the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs versus the Colorado Avalanche. He finds out that morning he's playing, and sends a single word text to his mom, just saying "playing" at 12:00 PM EST.

His parents begin their journey to Denver, arriving just a few minutes into the first period.

The first period stays scoreless, and the second begins. Geekie scores, before a response by Nathan MacKinnon.

Then a few moments later, Nate MacKinnon trips and is laying on the ground. The crowd is roaring for a call, and Eberle is skating the puck up and around Colorado goal. A quick shot down and a one-timer from Karts nails the puck in the back of the net past the Avs goalie.

Let me say, even for those as a fan of the Avs, the look on NateMac's face when this happens is unbelievable. He's in shock, completely. And meanwhile, Tye is having a fantastic time grinning and celebrating what only 7 other players have done, scoring their first goals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Also, let it be noted that Karts gets back to the locker room after the game. Pure joy from his goal, and what is the first thing he does? Check his phone to see the Firebirds game and how they did.

Not only was that his first instinct, he also was almost more excited about the potential to be back down with the Firebirds. He loves following his dream, but god did he love the Firebirds and family he built there.

Of course, the Kraken’s road to the Stanley Cup is ended in Game 7 of the Second Round vs. the Stars. But! In this time, Kartye has stayed up and even in the place of Jared McCann in some spots.

And then he goes back down to CV for the harrowing journey that was their 22-23 Calder Cup Playoff Run.

photos credit: Steph Chambers & Icon Photography

The Summer After & Rookie Experiences

Of course, Tye became one to watch in the lead up to the 23-24 season.

During which included a delightful video with bestie Ryker Evans and Matt Tennyson, on Episode 7 of Tenny Talks.

I'm simply going to link to the video, because it is insanely funny and it also shows off Tye's personality so well.

So, the summer ends and Tye ends up with the Kraken for 23-24 season.

I could probably spend hours discussing this season, but for our key highlights we're gonna focus on just a few things.

Throwback to our note of importance: anytime Ryker gets called up, he stays in a hotel. Not only does he end up knowing the car valet by name, any time he does almost anything, it is with Tye & Joey. He literally went over to Tye’s to do laundry while Tye’s girlfriend cooked them dinner. Besties for real.

First and foremost, Tye doesn't get a ton of chances. First rookie up (really the only rookie during the season for the Kraken minus other call ups), he gets scratched first a decent amount of times, especially prior to December. But! He keeps working hard, and by the end of the season he has well cemented his place as a fourth liner (who can def move up the line up if needed to).

Second, he really starts to gain a lot of perspective & skills from Yanni Gourde. Note, not only did he dress up as the Easter Bunny in 2024 for the Kraken's kiddos (like Matty did in 2023), but he also really focuses on the aspects of his game that he can improve and make stronger. So what does he do?

He gets into a few scrums (which early on he loses badly), and becomes known as a player who will fight for his teammates. (key fights include: him absolutely lighting up Pospisil after the first period hit on Adam in the Kraken v. Calgary game on March 3).

He also starts to up his physicality. And when I say up, I mean up. Tye ended the 23-24 season with 229 hits, placing him 19th in the entire league.

And of my favorite: Tye is a Grade A yapper. Like literally, this man will yap whenever he needs to. And one of the most iconic times might I add is against Connor McDavid, who Karts almost succeeds to into scrapping with. Known non-fighter Connor McDavid. (Note: this occurred after McDavid checked Ryker Evans, these firebirds turned squids don't play about each other).

photo credits: steph chambers (i believe, but if not, please correct me!)

gifs from: @starshipoftheseus

This Season and Beyond

So where does that leave Tye now? Well, if you tune in to almost any Kraken game, you're sure to see him on the fourth line (likely with Yanni Gourde & Brandon Tanev).

He’s likely to be spotted hanging out with fellow former firebirds Joey Daccord, Shane Wright, and Ryker Evans. They all went to the Halloween party in a group costume and are frequent dinner buddies, with Joey finding gluten-free restaurants for himself and Ryker.

There's also some interest bubbling up, especially because as of posting this, the Kraken re-acquired Daniel Sprong. What does that mean? Well, due to lots of cap things & money stuff, the Kraken essentially with every player healthy can only carry a 20-man roster. This means either someone has to be traded, or you've gotta send the 13th forward down to the AHL. While Karts hasn't been rumored in any trades (and frankly his contract isn't big enough trade value-wise to really help), there is still the possibility he could go on waivers and be sent back down to CV if not performing. So this is definitely a step-up time while the Kraken wait for Vince Dunn to get off of LTIR (which we saw on the 11/12 game against CBJ, where Karts scored the first goal in the second period and his second of the year).

[jinxedshapeshifter]

Ace Attorney Birthday Ranges: Part 1

So I've done the math and research to figure out some Ace Attorney character birthday ranges, since they don't have specific birthdays and the Ace Attorney wiki has this to say about it despite it really not being all that complicated to figure out birthday ranges. It's just good old fashioned deduction.

To figure these out, I factored in two things: what dates are included in the time characters don't show up (for example, the only time we don't have a case happen in the main series is November), and/or what the court record says in a specific case, as it's implied that the court record rounds age up depending on when a character's birthday is (for example, Ema says she turns "16 this year" in Rise from the Ashes, making her 15, but the court record labels her age as 16). These calculations also function on the assumption that birthdays aren't talked about much in the Ace Attorney universe.

Here's how I calculated Ema and Klavier's (because I think I'm going to wait until I've played Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice to figure out everyone else's birthday ranges):

Ema Skye: February 23 - March 12. As mentioned above, Ema says she turns "16 this year" in Rise From the Ashes, making her 15. When she first appears in Investigations on March 13, 2019, two years later in the Ace Attorney timeline, she's 18. This makes the only possibility for her birthday to be sometime between when she said she was turning 16 on February 22 and March 13.

Klavier Gavin: October 27 - April 18. Klavier has a pretty wide range, simply because he doesn't show up a lot outside Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. He's 24 for the duration of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (or at least from Turnabout Corner to Turnabout Succession), and 25 in Turnabout Academy. He first meets Apollo on June 15, and Turnabout Succession ends on October 9. The 2017 section of Turnabout Succession happens on April 19, 2019 and Klavier is 17 there. Turnabout Academy happens from October 24 to October 26, 2027.

[dreaming-marchling]

2024 Fic Round Up

Tagged by @princessfbi (thank you! so thrilled to have discovered your work this year!)

2024 Word Count: 661,417

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

Safe In Certainty Started in 2023, Completed in Feb 2024 | Fast & Furious | Marked in Trust Series | 223,657k

Part four finished! Still stunned to be here story after story with the most amazing commenters I could have ever asked for. Not bad for a story I had never intended to share!

MARCH

Marked in Faith 10 chapters posted in 2024 | Fast & Furious | Marked in Trust Series | Roughly 60k posted in 2024

I'm putting this in for March because this is the month I began posting one story a month until Reckless in Devotion started. Some of those babies are longer than my oneshots, lol. Forever love exploring other POVs in the Marked in Trust world!

APRIL

MAY

The Ex 911 | Bucktommy | 17.5k

My first 911 story! My first Bucktommy story! Buck as a character totally captured me this year. I haven't been taken by a new fandom in so long so this was so exciting! Of course I beat the crap out of Buck right in my first fic for him :)

JUNE

Eyes On Me 911 | Bucktommy | 18k

Post lightning strike cataracts, I had so much fun with this one. I constantly think about extending it or maybe doing a Buddie version of it, I just loved the storyline so much and other scenes popped into my head after I posted

Doctor/Warlock Confidentiality Shadowhunters | Magnus-Centric | 17k

My first Shadowhunters of the year! Magnus Bane gets therapy against his wishes. I felt very clever for the title, lol

Heart & Universe 911 | Buddie | 6.8k

My first Buddie story! Why be stuck in a ship war when you can have BOTH?? I love writing them realizing they're in love :)

JULY

The King of the Dark Storm Shadowhunters | Malec & Chairman Meow | 5.8k

I've had this stray headcanon about Chairman being an old god trapped as a cat floating around in my head for fun for so long and finally I wrote it!

Not Sexy 911 | Bucktommy | 7k

Listen, I need more fics about Buck using sex in unhealthy ways. It's catnip for me. Tommy got a glimpse behind that particularly miserable door in this one

Invasion 911 | Buddie | 10k

Nakedperil!Buck and protective!Eddie - a match made in heaven, in my opinion

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

Over the Cliff 911 | Gen 118 Fam | 6k

This was originally supposed to be how Buck got injured in Not Sexy but I was having way too much fun with the cliff rescue which wasn't even the point of Not Sexy so I chopped them in half to make a gen 118 family/Buck whump story and gave a much more to the point explanation for Buck's injuries in Not Sexy

Away From Us 911 | Buddie | 76k

My first 911 multichapter story! A presumed dead lawsuit era story full of angst. I fully anticipate more lawsuit era angst in my future, lol

OCTOBER

Art Class and Earthquakes 911 | HenRen/Gen Buck & Karen | 5.5k

Karen Wilson is awesome and needs more stories

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

Reckless in Devotion Fast & Furious | Brian/Dom | 33k posted in 2024

The 5th installment in Marked in Trust series!! This took me so much longer than I thought it would but it's finally up and running and I am so excited for everyone to see what's to come :)

To Be Bonded Shadowhunters | Malec & Parabatai | 30k posted in 2024

I still literally cannot believe that this is finally being shared. I started this story in 2019 - I know I keep saying that but like this thing took me 5 years. It is my nemesis, finally vanquished. And people are enjoying it??? What? I've been cursing its name and people are now enjoying it. Wild. Wonderful

2024 has been kind of a crappy year for me irl but in fic it as been wonderful. A new fandom, so many words shared and, best of all, such amazing support and kindness from readers. You're all so wonderful and you have truly been one of the brightest pieces of my year. I cannot thank you all enough.

Tagging: You know the drill, if you saw this and thought "I wanna do that" then you're tagged. Literally @ me so I can read yours, that's how tagged you are.

[novantinuum]

Today (April 2nd, 2019 was original post date) is the 5 year anniversary of Crack the Paragon!

It’s both wild to think how much I’ve accomplished on this story since then and also intensely frustrating, lol, since I still have so much more story to tell but am a ridiculously slow writer.

As celebration, here is a round-up post of all the full color, full background illustrations I’ve created for this story over those years- including the final one, which is for a yet-to-be-posted future chapter. >:3

[lightleckrereins]

The Six the musical 2024 covers - alternates, swings, rehearsal swings and emergency covers

End of the year means alts post and a new round of complaining about the fact that US (and Canada) alt promo photos are not always released. And last year of cruises which also means last time rehearsal alts show up in this.

West End

Meg Dixon-Brasil: Rehearsal swing, Norwegian Breakaway 4.0; covering Boleyn/Seymour/Howard. Swing, West End; Joined October 2023 covering all six queens. Emergency cover, UK and International tour; joined the tour as a swing during the Italy tour stop in April 2024.

Gabriella Stylianou: Principal Seymour, Bliss 2.0. Alternate, West End; Joined October 2023 as alternate Aragon/Seymour, acted as temporary replacement Seymour from cast change until November 2023 and between May and September 2024.

Naomi Alade: Alternate, West End; Joined October 2023 as alternate Boleyn/Cleves.

Hannah Lowter: Alternate, West End; Joined October 2023 as alternate Howard/Parr. Emergency cover UK tour; joined the tour for one show in July 2024.

Natalie Pilkington: Alternate, Norwegian Bliss 1.0; alternate Aragon/Cleves/Parr, covered Seymour. Swing, alternate, UK tour; joined June 2021 as swing, became alternate Seymour/Parr March 2022, left April 2023; returned as emergency cover for a few shows in May 2023. Emergency cover, West End; joined the cast as alternate for a few shows in June 2022. Universal swing, UK productions; came back in October 2023 as universal swing for West End and the UK tour covering all six queens, left June 2024.

Leesa Tulley: Alternate, UK tour; joined March 2022 as alternate Boleyn/Howard; acted as temporary replacement Howard between August and October 2022, left April 2023. Emergency cover, West End; came back on standby between August and September 2023; returned as standby on and off between February and July 2024.

Danielle Rose: Alternate, West End; Joined November 2021 as alternate Boleyn/Howard, left October 2023; returned as alternate Boleyn/Seymour/Howard between June and September 2024.

Hana Stewart: Alternate, West End; joined October 2019 as alternate Seymour/Parr, left November 2021. Alternate, Broadway; joined March 2022 as alternate Aragon/Seymour/Parr, left April 2022. Swing, West End; returned between June and September 2024 covering all six queens.

Claudia Kariuki: Principal Seymour West End; joined November 2021, left October 2023. Emergency cover, West End; returned for one show in June 2024.

Harriet Watson: Alternate, UK tour; alternate Seymour/Parr, left March 2022. Standby, UK productions. Universal swing, UK productions; came back as standby cover for both WE and UKT throughout 2022, left January 2023, returned for a few shows throughout the year. Emergency cover, UK productions; returned to the UK tour in June 2024 and to West End in August 2024.

Esme Rothero: Swing, West End; joined November 2021 covering all six queens, left October 2023; returned as swing between November 2024 and January 2025. 

UK and International tour

Shakira Simpson: Swing, UK and international tour; joined April 2023. Universal swing, UK productions; came back in September 2024 as universal swing for West End and the UK tour covering all six queens.

Ellie Jane Grant: Alternate, UK and international tour; joined April 2023 as alternate Aragon/Cleves. Emergency cover, West End; joined the cast as alternate for a few shows in July and August 2024. Universal swing, UK productions; came back in October 2024 as universal swing for West End and the UK tour covering all six queens.

Izi Maxwell: Alternate, UK and international tour; joined April 2023 as alternate Boleyn/Howard; acted as temporary replacement Boleyn between March and May 2024. Emergency cover, West End; joined the cast as alternate for a few shows in April and May 2023

Tamara Morgan: Alternate, UK and international tour; joined April 2023 as alternate Seymour/Parr. Emergency cover, West End; joined for a few shows in June 2024.

Harriet Caplan-Dean: Swing, UK tour; joined March 2022, left April 2023. Emergency cover, West End; joined the cast as swing in April 2023 and September 2023. Emergency cover UK and international tour; returned as swing during the April 2024 international tour stops.

Milly Willows: Alternate, UK and international tour; joined August 2024 as alternate Aragon/Parr.

Erin Summerhayes: Alternate, UK and international tour; joined August 2024 as alternate Boleyn/Seymour.

Lorren Santo-Quinn: Principal Boleyn, Bliss 7.0. Alternate, UK and international tour; joined August 2024 as alternate Cleves/Howard.

Broadway

Ayla Ciccone-Burton: Alternate, Broadway; Joined August 2022, covering Boleyn/Cleves/Parr, temporarily left between September and November 2023; left March 2024.

Aubrey Matalon: Alternate, Broadway; Joined December 2022, covering Boleyn/Seymour/Howard, left March 2024. Emergency cover, Broadway; returned for a few shows in August 2024.

Kristina Leopold: Alternate, Broadway; Joined December 2022, covering Aragon/Seymour/Parr, left March 2024. Principal Aragon, Boleyn tour; joined April 2024, left July 2024.

Cassie Silva: Alternate, Broadway; joined January 2022 as alternate Howard, left March 2022. Alternate, Aragon Tour; alternate Boleyn/Cleves/Howard. Standby, Broadway; returned as a standby in July 2022 with her tour covers while still part of the tour company. Universal alternate, US companies; returned September 2023 as alternate for Broadway and the Boleyn tour, covering Aragon/Boleyn/Cleves/Howard, left March 2024. Principal Boleyn, Boleyn tour; joined April 2024, left July 2024.

Sierra Fermin: Alternate, Broadway; Joined December 2023, covering Aragon/Cleves/Howard.

Wesley Carpenter: Principal Seymour, Bliss 3.0. Universal alternate, US companies; Returned September 2023 as alternate for Broadway and the Boleyn tour, covering Boleyn/Seymour/Howard/Parr, left September 2024.

Jessie Davidson: Alternate, Broadway; Joined March 2024, covering Seymour/Howard/Parr.

Jenny Mollet: Alternate, Broadway; Joined March 2024, covering Aragon/Boleyn/Seymour.

Zoe Jensen: Principal Howard, Broadway; joined December 2022, left December 2023. Temporary replacement, Broadway; returned as principal between August and September 2024.

Nicole Kyoung-Mi Lambert: Alternate, Chicago and North American tour; alternate Aragon/Cleves/Parr was temporary principal Cleves during the St. Paul run. Alternate, Broadway; covering Aragon/Boleyn/Seymour/Cleves/Parr in 2020, switched to Aragon/Boleyn/Cleves in 2021, left December 2022; came back on standby late December 2022; returned between December 2024 and January 2025 as alternate Aragon/Cleves.

Boleyn tour

Aryn Bohannon: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Boleyn/Seymour/Howard, left July 2024. Standby, Aragon tour; temporarily joined the Aragon tour with her three covers. Alternate, Broadway; joined October 2024 with her Aragon tour covers.

Jana Larell Glover: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Aragon/Cleves/Parr, left April 2024. Alternate, Broadway; joined April 2024 changing her covers to Aragon/Boleyn/Cleves/Parr.

Taylor Pearlstein: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Boleyn/Howard/Parr, left April 2024. Alternate, Broadway; joined temporarily in August 2024 with her tour covers.

Kelly Denice Taylor: Alternate, Aragon Tour; alternate Aragon/Seymour/Cleves. Standby, Broadway; became standby for Broadway starting June 2022 with the same covers while still being alternate in the tour company. Standby, Boleyn Tour; joined the Boleyn tour for a few weeks in July and August 2023 but didn’t play any performances. Alternate, Boleyn tour; rejoined the company full time with her Aragon tour covers. , became principal Seymour, Boleyn tour; became principal in April 2024.

Amaya White: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Aragon/Seymour/Cleves, Joined April 2024.

Carlina Parker: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Aragon/Cleves/Parr, Joined April 2024.

Taylor Sage Evans: Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Boleyn/Howard/Parr, Joined April 2024.

Caroline Siegrist: Principal Howard, Breakaway 6.0. Alternate, Boleyn tour; alternate Seymour/Howard/Parr, Joined November 2024.

Canada

Hailey Lewis: Alternate, Canada; alternate Aragon/Cleves/Parr. Alternate, Boleyn tour; joined November 2024 as alternate Aragon/Boleyn/Cleves/Parr.

Julia McLellan: Alternate, Canada; alternate Boleyn/Seymour/Howard

Abigail Sparrow: Principal Howard, Breakaway 3.0. Alternate, Canada; alternate Seymour/Howard/Parr.

Darcy Stewart: Alternate, Canada; alternate Aragon/Boleyn/Cleves

Australian tour

Chiara Assetta: Swing, Australian tour; joined when the show reopened in December 2021; returned in August 2024 for the second run.

Cristina D’Agostino: Alternate swing, Australian tour; joined the company in June 2021 as resident choreographer, became alternate (emergency) swing in April 2022; returned in August 2024 for the second run.

Gabriella Boumford: Alternate, Norwegian Bliss 6.0; covering Aragon/Cleves/Parr. Swing, Australian tour; joined in August 2024 for the second run.

Thalia Smith: Swing, Australian tour; joined in August 2024 for the second run.

Norwegian Bliss

7.0

Izzy Formby-Jackson: Alternate, Norwegian Bliss 7.0: covering Boleyn/Seymour/Howard. Swing, UK and international tour; joined August 2024.

Hannah Lawton: Rehearsal swing Norwegian Bliss 7.0; covering Seymour/Howard/Parr.

Norwegian Breakaway

6.0

Deirdre Dunkin: Alternate, Norwegian Breakaway 6.0; covering Aragon/Cleves/Parr.

Giulia Marolda: Rehearsal swing Norwegian Breakaway 6.0; covering Boleyn/Cleves/Parr. Alternate, Norwegian Bliss 7.0; came back changing her covers to Aragon/Cleves/Parr.

Poland

Agnieszka Rose: Alternate, first polish non-replica production; alternate Aragon/Seymour.

Aleksandra Gotowicka: Alternate, first polish non-replica production; alternate Boleyn/Howard.

Marta Skrzypczyńska: Alternate, first polish non-replica production; alternate Cleves/Parr, emergency cover Howard.

Hungary

Mónika Horváth: Alternate, Hungarian non-replica production; alternate Aragon/Cleves.

Krisztina Magyar: Alternate, Hungarian non-replica production; alternate Boleyn/Howard.

Dóra Csonka: Alternate, Hungarian non-replica production; alternate Seymour/Parr.

[itsonlyanapple]

Am I being silly or is Five supposed to be at least 64 in s4? Cuz he says he's 63 and it's not computing for me.

In s3, it's April 2019 and Five is still 58. After 'six years later', it's December of either 2024 (assuming they rounded up from 5 years and 8 months) or 2025 (being over 6 years). They pass October, which is their birthday, so Five should be either 64 or 65??

please tell me i'm not going insane 😭

[kingkestrel]

Liam and Yuki’s Euroformula Open season highlights (April 27- Oct 13th 2019)

Hey Ya’ll! So, I've been researching Yuki and Liam’s history in preparation for a potential fic and… well let’s just say, I went down a deep rabbit hole and found some treasure so I thought I’d share the wealth and compile a resource for anyone else who has an interest.

This is focused on Yuki and Liam’s interactions the 2019 Euroformula Open. I will make a separate post for their 2019 F3 season.

Okay enough rambling let’s begin.

————————————————————————————

So, to start with it’s important to know that on the 18th Feb 2019 Liam and Yuki were both announced as having signed to the RedBull young drivers program. (This allowed Liam to have the funding to enter F3 and without it his career would’ve been over)

Liam and Yuki competed in Euroformula as rookie teammates with Team Motopark. Liam came second in the championship, Yuki came fourth. Their cars are the ones with the RedBull liveries and yellow-tipped nose cones. (Lawson 30, Yuki 15)

They were battling on track constantly throughout the season but lets look at the highlights.

French Grand Prix Round 1 Race 1 (27 April 2019)

In the first race of the season Tsunoda qualified 2nd and Liam 3rd. The race started well for Liam and he overtook Yuki off the line. He then managed to take the lead and although Yuki worked his way to second he used too much of his tire to mount a comeback. Liam won on debut, Yuki came second.

Highlights. Liam’s Debrief after race

French Grand Prix Round 1 Race 2 (28th April 2019)

Lawson took pole Yuki 3rd. They had contact right at the start and were lucky to both stay on track. Liam recovered to 2nd, Yuki unfortunately dropped back to 6th.

Highlights

Circuit de Pau-Ville Round 2 Race 2 (19th May 2019)

On a wet track Yuki started in 2nd and Liam 4th. Tsunoda held position whilst Liam moved up to third then aggressively attacked Yuki. Liam made a beautiful move and overtook him for second. Yuki struggled on his tires and dropped back to 4th. Liam pushed on for the lead but when he attempted the overtake, he went down the inside of the corner where there wasn’t room and crashed himself and the leader out. Billy Monger went on to win and Yuki finished 3rd.

Liam Post Practice Debrief Full Race (26:09 Lawson’s overtake on Yuki, 31:52 for Liam’s crash)

Spa-Francorchamps Round 4 Race 2 (9th June 2019)

Yuki qualified 2nd Liam 5th. Yuki made a great move at the start and took the lead as did Liam who was soon up to 2nd place. On the second Lap Lawson overtook Tsunoda but Yuki tried to take it back again at Eau Rouge. They came together and crashed out again. Clips show them chatting afterwards but it’s unknown what they said.

Highlights. Alternative view of Liam/Yuki crash with funny commentary

Monza Round 9 Race 2 (13th October 2019)

In the last race of the season Lawson started 2nd Yuki back in 9th. Lawson made it to first and Yuki made it all the way to 3rd. After a few corners of absolutely insane three-way battling, Yuki briefly took the lead before Lawson came back on him and retook it. On the next lap, Yuki challenged Lawson again and retook the lead as a big crash involving Jack Doohan happened behind them.

After the safety car the fight was back on and Liam retook the lead again. He went on to win and placed 2nd in the championship by 1 point despite missing two races for F3. Yuki came second in the race and 4th in the championship. (he also missed two races for F3)

Highlights

Other interesting competitors that year included Jack Doohan who finished 11th and Billy Monger who finished 9th. Franco Colapinto also completed one weekend (Spa)

Thx for reading!

Liam and Yuki and the end of season prizegiving ceremony

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 有翡/Legend of Fei.

Legend of Fei is a 2020 adaptation of priest's webnovel Bandits that tells the story of a competent yet sheltered young swordswoman, the terrible gremlin boy who decides they're married now, and their various friends as they venture into the jianghu to acquire the legendary MacGuffin that will do ... uh, something, probably.

This show is a delight. It is pure goofy, tender-hearted sincerity. It has so many precious baby angels with adorably pinchable cheeks performing so many fetch quests in so many styrofoam dungeons. It is funny on purpose and funny on accident. It is 51 episodes of rollicking, slapdash, green-screened adventure.

I am trying real hard here not to bite on @agendratum's wonderful rec post for the series, which includes the words "discount word of honor with teens," a phrase that lives rent-free in my head. Go look at their work for a more detailed character guide. What I have here are a mere five reasons above and beyond said post that you should watch this darling little show.

1. All the production values of a sixth-grade class play

This show flopped pretty hard, and I can understand why. It was a highly anticipated drama with two big-name headliners. Fans expected a lot from it! And what they got is something that looks and feels like a mid-budget syndicated UPN show from 1993, complete with how all the high-schoolers are played by actors in their thirties.

This show is comically janky and earnest. Stunt people fall down before they're hit. Breakaway furniture abounds. Actors bounce gently off "stone" walls. Damn near everything was filmed on sound stages with greenscreens. (Filming ran from September 2019-January 2020, stopped for pandemic reasons, and finished March-April 2020. While this certainly is not the only cause of the show's jankiness, it definitely contributed.)

This it not a show with no money; this is a show with an appropriate amount of money spent poorly.

The flow and pacing of the story are as smooth as a car crash. So many times, a scene with Characters A and B will be happening, the show will cut (sharply) away to a different storyline, and by the time it jumps back, Character A is in a completely different location and Character B has departed. When did that happen? Why did that happen? Where are we now? No time to ask questions! Establishing shots are for weenies! This director knows filmmakers who maintain narrative continuity, and they're all cowards.

Speaking of the narrative: I've seen Saturday morning cartoons from the '80s with more depth. I would be hard-pressed to explain what exactly is happening that's driving the plot. There's big business with a deposed emperor and a forever war happening on some distant front and disgruntled veterans of the army that's fighting it ... but, like, it doesn't matter? All those machinations are barely relevant to the plot at hand, which can be summed up thus: Bad Guys want Thing, Good Guys go on adventures to stop them from getting Thing.

And I am listing all this messiness as a selling point -- as the show's primary selling point, in fact -- because I think it's all charming as heck. This show is plain, unpretentious fun. It's a downright romp! It's got a very teenager's-eye-view of the inscrutable situation driving the whole plot, which does a good job of drawing attention to how maaaaybe this whole situation is bullshit and the grownups should stop killing themselves and other people because of it.

Here's a good metric: If the Ye Olde Haixing parts of Guardian warmed your heart, you are in exactly the right frame of mind for this.

There's no way to tell how much of this campy, underfunded aesthetic was intentional, and how much was the result of both poor budgeting and way too many cooks in the production and screenwriting kitchens. I'm not going to say this was a labor of love, because it was at best a labor of like. Everybody onscreen is giving it their all, but no one's giving the same all as anyone else. Go into it expecting that and nothing more, and you'll have a great time.

2. Punching the Bechdel Test into next week

Are you someone who loves c-dramas, except for the part where you're like, gee, I sure wish there were some girls in this? Oh, my friend, there are so many girls in this.

I actually kept being stunned while watching it by just how many girls are in it. Old girls! Young girls! Evil girls! Nice girls! Rich girls! Poor girls! Strong girls! Weak girls! Just a whole lot of girls!

Truly, it's not just how many female characters there are, but the sheer variety of them. The main octet includes an awkward tomboy who can kick your ass, a spunky brat who's not above crocodile tears to get what she wants, and a soft femme who's a brave little toaster despite having zero martial arts skills. The show absolutely loves them all and thinks they've all got important things to contribute, no matter how hard they can or can't punch.

And that's before we get into how many female side characters there are, both heroes and villains. I've seen that some people hate on these side characters. Those people are wrong.

Maybe the best part is how much they interact. There are many scenes with multiple female characters in them, sometimes with male characters too, and sometimes just the girls. Because this is a jianghu story with martial artists, several of the female characters have unique skills that they pass on to other, younger female characters. Women are often the honored masters of things who have competent all-ladies support staff. And there's no sense that they wash out after a certain age -- even the grannies can still school you as needs be.

...Of course, the sad thing is, I'm touting all this ladyfolk representation when maybe 20% of the total listed cast is female (doing quick math from the MyDramaList cast page). Pound for pound, the Untamed's listed cast has a (slightly) greater female:male ratio, and nobody would call that a girl-forward show. It just makes a difference when what female characters you have, you push toward the front of the narrative and give them reasons to have relationships with one another, instead of making them occasional props in the background while real (read: male) people get to be people.

The entire reason the Bechdel-Wallace Test exists is not to praise or condemn any individual piece of media, but to comment on larger trends in the depiction of women in fiction. It's not a problem when one thing doesn't pass the test; it's a problem when nothing passes the test, or when the things that do pass skate by on single moments and technicalities. The more things that fail its three criteria, the more that indicates the prevalence of an attitude that regards women only as accessories to men's stories.

Legend of Fei is aware that not only do women have inner lives, but they relate to one another in very specific, culturally informed ways. The female characters in this are not just male characters with incidental she/her pronouns. Zhou Fei not only gets to be the protagonist who goes on the whole hero's journey of growth and change, but along the way she also gets to have some complicated interactions with her own gender and how much expected modes of femininity do and don't suit her. But it's also not because she's Not Like The Other Girls! It doesn't make her better or worse to be that way. It just makes her more like her mom -- and if there's one thing I know that makes a teenage girl break out into a cold sweat, it's the idea that she's anything like her mom.

This little drama is hardly some revolutionary piece of thought-provoking feminist insight, or anything like that. It's just that if you're feeling the lack of ladies in your c-dramas and wish to see girls on film (as it were), Legend of Fei may be what you're looking for!

3. Chaotic bisexual (asexual?) extravaganza!

priest's work is queer as fuck, and while this story itself does not rise to the level of being textually gay, there's still a great big rainbow flag flying over the whole business. You can rest assured that when two dudes or two ladies are giving one another meaningful looks, it is not an accident. We all know who's writing this.

Do you like relationship charts? Because I've got a doozy for you:

How many of these are me making jokes? Way fewer than you think.

There are of course some actual canon couples in there, and the amount of real estate they take up in the narrative means your affection for them will make or break your affection for the show. Fortunately, all the teen pairings are super-cute!

Zhou Fei embodies the bisexual stereotype of liking all the ladies and maybe one dude. Xie Yun falls so hard and fast for this beautiful butch-by-local-standards that his head spins. Together, they are the romantic backbone of the story, and they are just a treat.

I've seen people say these two have no chemistry, and I think that's bullshit, but okay, let's assume that's your read on it. You can still understand why they like one another, beyond your standard, he's a boy, she's a girl, what more do you want? Zhou Fei likes Xie Yun because he's funny, emotionally available, and socially unacceptable. Xie Yun likes Zhou Fei because she's fierce on the outside and warm on the inside. Sure, they're in love, but what's more important is that they're good partners and great friends.

(I think it helps that even though the characters are supposed to be around the same age, Zhao Yiling is literally a decade older than Yibito is, and he clearly thinks even off-camera that she's dreamy.)

Also, it's great when he helps her sheathe her sword. This is a couple that's going to take about three whole minutes to figure out pegging.

Li Sheng and Wu Chuchu are the normie couple. He is big strong boy-man! She is small helpless lady-girl! ...Except no, this is yet another case of a wife guy who thinks his girlfriend's strengths are awesome; it's just that in this case, her strengths are her brains.

The fact that her attack and defense scores are nearly zero does not keep Chuchu from being the most competent person in any given room. She starts out as the girl who's important because she's got an important dad and an important key item, but she winds up being basically Jianghu GameFAQs. She never stops being soft and pink and feminine and tender, and she never learns to fight worth a damn, and none of that keeps her from being a vital (if unfortunately kidnappable) part of the team!

Meanwhile, Li Sheng is never really a male chauvinist, because he's grown up under his aunt, who kicks so much ass. But he is a bit of a cocky teen-boy turdface who needs to get knocked down a few pegs. It's great, then, that the show pairs him with the kind of helpless femme that he's supposed to want, then has him decide the fact that she's miles smarter than he is is the best.

And then there's these dipshits.

Normally in c-dramas, I'm used to triangles that are a strong canonical line between the main guy and his girlfriend, a strong but unacknowledged line between the main guy and his best friend, and maybe a faint dotty wisp between the girlfriend and best friend. Not so here! Ying Hecong, Li Yang, and Yang Jin (L-R above) are a damn near equilateral triangle. I mean, okay, technically they're set up as a more conventional love triangle, where both boys like the same girl, and she does sort-of choose one of them in the end. But in that arrangement, you'd expect the boys to become rivals -- and they never are. In fact, they become special allies who trust and take care of one another more than they do anyone else.

They're a great weird trio. Ying Hecong is a poorly socialized weirdo whose special interests are poisons and befriending snakes. Yang Jin is the chief of Doctor Village, a position that he got not by being a doctor, but by being a dumb jock who didn't realize fast enough why nobody else wanted the job. And Li Yang is the spoiled little sister of Li Shen and cousin of Zhou Fei, prone to getting what she wants by pitching a damn fit about it, who has decided that both of these boys are hers now and she can do whatever she wants with them.

(Li Yan is actually the most Actually A Teen of all the characters, and is the one who makes me wish so much that more of the cast had been played by actual age-appropriate actors. Some character traits are adorably tolerable when someone's twelve and verge on really fucking annoying by the time that same person is twenty-five.)

If you are into OT3s where two partners have to join in solidarity with one another so they can survive their third, you've found your pot of gold. Each one of them is enough of a catastrophe that they need two whole love interests to manage them. Between the three of them, they almost make one well-functioning human being.

Now: A thing to note about all these relationships, and one thing that may be surprising to you about something adapted from a priest novel, is that this show is negative horny. All of the romance is extremely chaste. At no point does any grownup worry that leaving these teens alone with one another will lead to some hanky-panky. Nobody ever volunteers to chaperone, or seems to need one. The adults aren't particularly horny about one another either! This is the kind of universe where people blush while tenderly embracing, then go to pick their baby up from the local cabbage patch.

Even my jokes about Zhou Fei's fuckable grandpa are just jokes, because nobody actually wants to fuck him. They all want to duel him, or to fuss over his health, or to follow him around and bask in his nobility. He has two kids, but we never meet their mom(s?). He deflects the obvious interest of multiple beautiful women with ease. He is the perfect man, both fuckable and unfuckable at once.

This may be what's having people read the main pair as having no chemistry. They have a lot of chemistry! It's just not a particularly sexual chemistry. It's extremely tender and playful, and there's plenty of physical intimacy. But it's not horny.

And that's not on the two actors. I've seen both of them look at someone else like they wanted to eat that boy alive. That was a choice this show made, to play all the romance about as spicy as when the puppets on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood hold hands. The only hints of horniness are in the fighting/injured bits, because sex is a big no-no, but nice polite violence is always okay! (Hey, uh, culture? We need to have a talk about this.)

4. The Grownups

As you may have gathered, most of this show is about the younguns. But a great deal of the supporting weight is carried by characters who are supposed to be of their parents' generation (even if most of their actors are only a decade or so older than the "teens").

I cannot fully in this post detail my great affection for every adult character; I wouldn't have room for anything else. So here's my top-three shortlist of the most memorable old folks.

If you like your ladies badass and crazy, Duan Jiuniang is here for you. Her grip on reality is ... well, it's complicated, but it doesn't stop her from being able to roast you from the inside out with her special skill. She's a terrible teacher and an even worse step-grandma who's made a lot of life choices that weren't what she wanted, but were what she needed to do to survive. I have no idea where she got those hideous leggings, but I kind of want a pair. She doesn't stick around past her one arc, so enjoy her while you've got her.

Speaking of crazy, the Phoenix, Mu Xiaoqiao, is a beautiful, tragic, genderqueer, completely insane middle-aged drama queen with a pipa to play and an ax to grind. I would watch an entire hundred-episode drama just about his campy antics. Hands-down my favorite character in the show. I'm not even going to say anything more. This bitch must be experienced. Love you, baby.

This fucking DILF. Holy shit. Shen Tianshu has a chocolatey voice and the world's most inconvenient prosthetic hand. At first his facial hair seems excessive, but then you see him without it in flashbacks and you're like, no! put it back! put it back! Frankly, I'm glad for the tufty brows, because this man does so much eyebrow acting, and you wouldn't want to miss a sinister moment of it.

And he's not the only one! Every single villain is running with full Bad Guy From A Power Rangers Episode vibes. No piece of scenery remains unchewed. They're what make this whole thing feel like you're watching a stage play. Every arched brow, every expansive hand gesture, every maniacal laugh, all of it plays to the nonexistent back row. (In fact, one of them -- Eyepatch Guy -- was so over the top that we had to look up his whole deal. Shockers, he's got an opera background.) If you have affection for the points I discussed in selling point #1, you will have love extra for the adult antagonists.

If you've ever watched a show made for a young audience starring young actors, you know exactly the grownup vibe I'm talking about. No, real adults don't act like this. But these are not real adults -- they are adults seen through the lens of a YA narrative, where everyone has big emotions and ultimately pretty simple motivations. Violence is acceptable but sex is not, and sexualized violence is especially not. You can threaten the kids but you (mostly) can't kill them. Parents should be removed from the main storyline, by death if necessary (offscreen preferred). By the end of the story, all adults must defer to the wisdom and battle strategies of the kids or be ready to be taken down by them. The lessons of age and experience are ultimately only useful once handed to the next generation.

Which is fine! ...provided it's the vibe you're expecting. I'd put this as another item in the list of probable reasons that this show did not go over as well as it should have.

5. We use every part of the Wang Yibo

Okay, so if you're like me, your introduction to this beautiful man was the Untamed, where 95% of his job is to keep every one of his facial muscles from doing anything -- and, if you're like me, you then watched some Untamed behind-the-scenes stuff and went, holy shit, this boy can make expressions?

This boy can make so many expressions.

I'm not going to argue that Wang Yibo was necessarily miscast as Lan Wangji, because that's not a fight I'm interested in having with internet strangers. I do, however, think it's undeniable that the Untamed misused him by all but ignoring his two primary skills: his giant goofy smile, and his being a dancer.

Legend of Fei makes use of both of these to great effect. Xie Yun is a gremlin who can't fight but can dodge. The show loves to leave the camera on him and let him spin and duck his way out of battles with his own mischievous grace. Wang Yibo does a remarkable amount of his own flipping and fighting, with and without wires. In a world of stunt doubles and smash cuts, it's a delight to watch.

My favorite thing about Xie Yun is that he likes that girl so much. He looks at her like she's the best thing in the world. He is her biggest hype man. He's all wife guy. Every time she's stronger and butcher and meaner than he is, he's pulling out his pompoms and cheering her on. He is in no way emasculated by the fact that she kicks so much more ass than he does. He is actually her wife, and he knows it. Kick their asses, baby, he'll be your flower.

Wang Yibo sells that devotion with each look in her direction. He brings every piece of his inherent chaotic good energy to the role. He's a comedic scamp right up to the point where he rips your heart out. If you are at all a Yibito fan, you owe it to yourself to get this show in front of your eyeballs so you can see what trouble that precious baby boy has gotten himself into this time.

Bonus: Do you like Word of Honor? Because this is how you get Word of Honor.

So I'm betting a lot of you did what I did, which was that you watched Word of Honor, and you loved it, so you went to read the book, and you were like, the fuck? Because Faraway Wanderers is also great, but uh, after a certain point, they're two very different stories.

While I cannot prove this, I would place a large amount of money on the screenwriter for Word of Honor's having been very aware of this production while doing the adaptation. See, in case you haven't read it, Faraway Wanderers itself barely spends a page of time with anything outside of what the main dads-and-kids quintet is doing, which makes for a fun danmei webnovel, but doesn't translate so well to live-action. I am almost certain that in the same way that they used frog DNA in Jurassic Park to fill in the gaps in the dinosaurs' code, this screenwriter (who is a priest fan) used Bandits/Legend of Fei to build out Faraway Wanderers' moments into a whole drama.

The timeline goes like this:

June 2010: priest publishes Qi Ye

October 2010: priest publishes Faraway Wanderers

November 2015: priest publishes Bandits

September 2019: Legend of Fei starts filming

June 2020: Word of Honor starts filming

December 2020: Legend of Fei airs

February 2021: Word of Honor airs

So yeah, it's not like the Word of Honor screenwriter could have watched Legend of Fei prior to penning the Word of Honor script. But there's too many similarities to be coincidence. To be clear, I'm not accusing the Word of Honor screenwriter of ripping off Legend of Fei. Watching it is more like seeing bits of Word of Honor's first draft. The Color of Ocean and Heaven and its five tokens become the World's Armory and the Glazed Armor. Wu Chuchu becomes Gao Xiaolian. Mu Xiaoqiao becomes the drama version of Xie Wang. All the nonsense with Yu Wenzhi and the Demons becomes all the nonsense with Zhao Jing and the Scorpions. Someone with more time than I have could probably make a thorough accounting of the number of times scenes with Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu visually parallel moments Xie Yun and Zhou Fei have, and how often those scenes were in bits not related to the original Faraway Wanderers plot.

And I think this is great. It's why, even though a lot of Word of Honor was not in priest's original text, Word of Honor is still very priest-flavored. Frog DNA, you know?

All of which is to say: If you love Word of Honor, you owe it to yourself to watch Legend of Fei. It's much sillier and straighter, and it's way less sexually charged, but it's got a very similar vibe, and it's fascinating to see what the two have in common. Think of them as two distant cousins, where you're like, sure, I can definitely see how you're related, but ... huh.

Ready to embark on your journey?

So many options! It's on iQiyi (VIP), Viki, and YouTube.

We watched it on iQiyi, and the subtitles were ... well, they made some interesting choices. You could always tell what they meant, but the actual phrasing was often wonky. Occasionally, where you'd expect a "Dammit!" or "Crap!" these subtitles would have someone exclaim, "Screwed!" And we never stopped laughing about the poor villain whose name those subs rendered as "Pathetic Clam." I cannot tell you if the other subtitles are any more polished, but I can promise that the awkward translations just added to the charm.

Do I have a soft spot for well-meaning television that does not have the means to achieve its goals but tries anyway? You better believe it.

Just a pile of precious cutie pies.

[april-is]

April 4, 2024: Coyotes by the Eliot House, Glyn Maxwell

Coyotes by the Eliot House Glyn Maxwell

Tom I’ve a question and all I have is a question. There are lots of coyotes near this old house you lived in. I didn’t expect them here in the green Northeast. Figured them things of rocks and the high sierras. There goes another one bounding for the bushes. First time, I thought: that’s a dog acting really strangely. But it didn’t turn back for approval or get distracted by an insignificant thing, as a dog will tend to. No it was gone by now, it had made me nervous. They’re the size of a family dog but they’re on their own. Folks round here reassure me there’s no danger unless you attack their cubs so I’ll shelve my plan to attack their cubs, chrissakes. Tom, Tom, apologies, I have loved my time in your house.

Last night at dinner we heard a siren wailing off in the town and all of them started howling, all the coyotes for miles around in the bushes aghast, alerting their young, alarming their old, rising and heightening, matching its pitch and power, one near the blue spinning light in its thrall, uniquely bound by this unpredicted visitation. Then after the siren faded they packed it in. What do they think that is, that demands of them and gets of them their love or their terror or both? What do we poets do when we know it’s nothing? Not for them or against them or about them. Tom, I had to be here to ask that question. I expect I’ll have to be gone before you answer.

--

More animal poems.

More poems responding to T.S. Eliot, my problematic fave:

Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope

Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

Today in:

2023: I Know Someone, Mary Oliver 2022: I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense, Danez Smith 2021: In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens, Molly Brodak 2020: Interesting Times, Mark Jarman 2019: The accident has occurred, Margaret Atwood 2018: Little snail, Anonymous 2017: Poem for My Son in the Car, Jennifer K. Sweeney 2016: Postcard to Baudelaire, Thomas Lux 2015: What The Dead Tell Us About Charon, Ferryman Of The Dead, Brett Ortler 2014: The Trees, Philip Larkin 2013: A Small, Soul-Colored Thing, Paisley Rekdal 2012: Last Supper, Charles Wright 2011: I Said to Poetry, Alice Walker 2010: Disgraceland, Mary Karr 2009: What To Say To A Bear, Ionna Warwick 2008: In The City of Light, Larry Levis 2007: the mockingbird, Charles Bukowski 2006: Part of Eve’s Discussion, Marie Howe 2005: I thank You God for most this amazing, e.e. cummings

[thecaptainoutoftime]

"Five years ago, we lost. All of us. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves. Today, we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones, get them back. One round trip each. No mistakes. No do-overs. Most of us are going somewhere we know, that doesn't mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other. This is the fight of our lives. And we're going to win. Whatever it takes. Good luck."

"He's pretty good at that."

"Right?"

Happy 5th Anniversary to Avengers: Endgame

April 26th 2019-April 26th 2024

[zeldahime]

I did math on David Tennant's hands (so you don't have to)

EDITED WITH MORE ACCURATE PHONE INFORMATION AND A DIFFERENT CONCLUSION.

I swear all I wanted to know was what kind of phone Crowley has in season 1.

See, I have an iPhone, and one of my gigs shares a building with an Apple Store. I was taking a screenshot of his contact picture for Aziraphale, and noticed that the camera on the back of his phone is laid out horizontal. Most iPhones aren't! So, I fell into this rabbit hole: what phone does Anthony J. Crowley have?

(The bit where you can see the cameras, immediately before the cool heart-in-flames picture he has for Aziraphale's contact, is basically impossible to screenshot; the phone moves very fast and reflects the environment. But his contact photo for his angel is so neat and I love it ❤️‍🔥)

I figured out very quickly the only iPhone with that camera layout is the iPhone SE series, but there have been only three generations: 2016, 2020, and 2023. Season 1 of Good Omens was released in 2019. The iPhone SE first generation was also Apple's "budget" phone. It just didn't make sense to me that Crowley would have an old budget phone, but the new SE wasn't commercially available so it also didn't make sense to me that the prop department could have given him a new phone.

The main visual differences between gen 1 and gen 2 are threefold: gen 1 didn't come in black; gen 2 has slightly more beveling; and they are different sizes. The first two visual differences are basically meaningless, because it's trivial for a props department to turn a white phone black and the beveling difference only is obvious in comparison. So I had to figure out what size Crowley's phone was.

We see Crowley's phone in s1e4 and s1e5, but the only thing in its environment we can really measure to get an accurate read on its size is... Well. David Tennant.

More specifically, we get a fairly good shot of the phone in his hands, held level with the screen, and thumb easily available to use as a reference.

But if anyone has done David Tennant Hand Math before, they weren't on page 1 of Google and therefore may as well not exist. So I took up this quest myself.

So first, I had to find a picture of David Tennant holding something of known dimensions. I am, first and foremost, a Doctor Who nerd. There's only one answer to that.

Another Doctor Who nerd on the internet went and figured out 10th Doctor's sonic screwdriver was about 160 mm and the head of the sonic from tip to the joint with the middle section was about 40 mm.

I then got out my actual goddamn fabric tape and measured this man's fingers on my computer screen. After converting the measurements back to scale, first to second knuckle on his middle finger was 54.55 mm.

Then to figure out how long his thumb is, I needed a photo of his hands. This one is courtesy of the GO Reference Server:

His thumb came out to being approximately 68mm long. (My thumb came out to 55mm long. Not relevant, I just got curious while I was doing all this measuring.)

Finally, the data necessary to the main event: the goddamn phone.

Using the thumb as a reference, the phone came out to 136mm in length.

The iPhone SE Gen 1 was 123.8 mm long; the Gen 2 was 138.4 mm long.

Given that I rounded quite a bit during my calculations to keep things at 2 digits or less, I'm very comfortable saying: Crowley had an iPhone SE (second generation) during the events of Good Omens Season 1, a phone that would not become commercially available until April 2020.

I don't know how the props people got their hands a phone that wouldn't be released for a full year and change after filming, but they did that for us. It's a character note that practically nobody noticed, for a prop that gets barely a full minute of screentime. They could easily have used an iPhone XR or iPhone XS Max, which were the newest iPhones actually on the market at that time and which people would have recognized when the episode aired, but they knew Crowley would have the newest iPhone before anybody else had the newest iPhone and by Jove, he did.

After I posted this in Discord, @giveintomay pointed out that the iPhone SE second generation used the same build as the iPhones 7 and 8, which came out in 2016 and 2017 respectively. So, he most likely had an iPhone 8, which would have been the latest generation while filming (as generation 10 became commercially available over the summer and fall).

[foreverlogical]

It was a time of fear and chaos four years ago.

The death count was mounting as COVID-19 spread. Financial markets were panicked. Oil prices briefly went negative. The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rates to combat the sudden recession. And the U.S. government went on a historic borrowing spree—adding trillions to the national debt—to keep families and businesses afloat.

But as Donald Trump recalled that moment at a recent rally, the former president exuded pride.

“We had the greatest economy in history,” the Republican told his Wisconsin audience. “The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded ... 2.65%, that’s what your mortgage rates were.”

The question of who can best steer the U.S. economy could be a deciding factor in who wins November’s presidential election. While an April Gallup poll found that Americans were most likely to say that immigration is the country's top problem, the economy in general and inflation were also high on the list.

Trump may have an edge over President Joe Biden on key economic concerns, according to an April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. The survey found that Americans were more likely to say that as president, Trump helped the country with job creation and cost of living. Nearly six in 10 Americans said that Biden’s presidency hurt the country on the cost of living.

But the economic numbers expose a far more complicated reality during Trump's time in the White House. His tax cuts never delivered the promised growth. His budget deficits surged and then stayed relatively high under Biden. His tariffs and trade deals never brought back all of the lost factory jobs.

And there was the pandemic, an event that caused historic job losses for which Trump accepts no responsibility as well as low inflation—for which Trump takes full credit.

If anything, the economy during Trump's presidency never lived up to his own hype.

DECENT (NOT EXCEPTIONAL) GROWTH

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”

If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%.

By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

MORE GOVERNMENT DEBT

Trump also assured the public that his tax cuts would pay for themselves because of stronger growth. The cuts were broad but disproportionately favored corporations and those with extreme wealth.

The tax cuts signed into law in 2017 never fulfilled Trump's promises on deficit reduction.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit worsened to $779 billion in 2018. The Congressional Budget Office had forecasted a deficit of $563 billion before the tax cuts, meaning the tax cuts increased borrowing by $216 billion that first year. In 2019, the deficit rose to $984 billion, nearly $300 billion more than what the CBO had forecast.

Then the pandemic happened and with a flurry of government aid, the resulting deficit topped $3.1 trillion. That borrowing enabled the government to make direct payments to individuals and small businesses as the economy was in lockdown, often increasing bank accounts and making many feel better off even though the economy was in a recession.

Deficits have also run high under Biden, as he signed into law a third round of pandemic aid and other initiatives to address climate change, build infrastructure and invest in U.S. manufacturing. His budget deficits: $2.8 trillion (2021), $1.38 trillion (2022), and $1.7 trillion (2023).

The CBO estimated in a report issued Wednesday that the extension of parts of Trump’s tax cuts set to expire after 2025 would add another $4.6 trillion to the national debt through the year 2034.

LOW INFLATION (BUT NOT ALWAYS FOR GOOD REASONS)

Inflation was much lower under Trump, never topping an annual rate of 2.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual rate reached as high as 8% in 2022 under Biden and is currently at 3.4%.

There were three big reasons why inflation was low during Trump's presidency: the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve actions, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump entered the White House with inflation already low, largely because of the slow recovery from the Great Recession, when financial markets collapsed and millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

The inflation rate barely averaged more than 1% during Obama's second term as the Fed struggled to push up growth. Still, the economy was expanding without overheating.

But in the first three years of Trump's presidency, inflation averaged 2.1%, roughly close to the Fed's target. Still, the Fed began to hike its own benchmark rate to keep inflation low at the central bank's own 2% target. Trump repeatedly criticized the Fed because he wanted to juice growth despite the risks of higher prices.

Then the pandemic hit.

Inflation sank and the Fed slashed rates to sustain the economy during lockdowns.

When Trump celebrates historically low mortgage rates, he's doing so because the economy was weakened by the pandemic. Similarly, gasoline prices fell below an average of $2 a gallon because no one was driving in April 2020 as the pandemic spread.

FEWER JOBS

The United States lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump's presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the pandemic months are excluded, he added 6.7 million jobs.

By contrast, 15.4 million jobs were added during Biden's presidency. That's 5.1 million more jobs than what the CBO forecasted he would add before his coronavirus relief and other policies became law—a sign of how much he boosted the labor market.

Both candidates have repeatedly promised to bring back factory jobs. Between 2017 and the middle of 2019, Trump added 461,000 manufacturing jobs. But the gains began to stall and then turned into layoffs during the pandemic, with the Republican posting a loss of 178,000 jobs.

So far, the U.S. economy has added 773,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden's presidency.

Campaign Action

[sabrinacdaily]

Full Interview/Article By Lucy Feldman Below The Cut!

'Sabrina Carpenter is settling into a tiny banquette, one leg in pinstripe capris folded onto the bench, when she orders a… cappuccino. The obvious joke hangs in the air. “I've intentionally stopped myself from getting them now,” the “Espresso” singer says. The last time she was at this particular French restaurant in downtown New York, they surprised her with a round of espresso martinis.

It’s the kind of thing that surely happens all the time, now that the 25-year-old artist—unmissable with big, bright blonde curls and a 5-ft. frame—has rapidly become one of the most famous women in pop culture. To say that “Espresso” was one of the songs, if not the song, of the summer hardly captures the extent of her reach. The disco-inflected bop, released in April, became her first to exceed a billion streams on Spotify, where it hit No. 1 globally. But Carpenter’s buzz only got louder in June when she dropped the music video for “Please Please Please” (another Spotify global No. 1), co-starring her rumored boyfriend, the Oscar-nominated actor Barry Keoghan. And the singer sent the internet into a full-blown tizzy in August when she released her clever and cutting, genre-blending album Short n’ Sweet alongside another viral video: a campy, Death Becomes Her-influenced love-triangle romp, co-starring Jenna Ortega, for “Taste.” The album, now certified platinum, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 at release and became the third biggest debut of the year, trailing only Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.

Carpenter is everywhere. Swift, Beyoncé, Adele, Christina Aguilera, and Selena Gomez have all sung her praises. If you didn’t catch her on the season finale of Saturday Night Live, you probably saw her on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. If you didn’t see her at Coachella, you definitely tuned in for her performance at the VMAs. And if you missed her opening for Swift on 25 stops of the Eras tour, you cannot be helped. The moment Carpenter herself says she knew she’d reached a new level: when there was a joke about her in Dan and Eugene Levy’s opening monologue for the 2024 Emmys. “That was probably the first time I was like, Oh, I'm not even there.”

When we meet for an afternoon pick-me-up, just over a month has passed since the album release, and Carpenter has been going nonstop. She’s back home in New York after the first three shows in her sold-out, 33-date Short n’ Sweettour, fresh off an 11-hour bus ride from Detroit. Hence the need for caffeine. “TMI,” she adds, “But I’m in my luteal phase, and just feeling like a monster.” When the server comes by with coffee, she orders a chocolate mousse for us to share. 

Carpenter may appear to have materialized from nowhere as a fully formed pop star, but she has been grinding for 16 years. Growing up in East Greenville, Pa., she started posting videos of herself singing on YouTube when she was 9. Her big break came at 13, when she landed a role in Girl Meets World, a reboot of the classic ’90s series Boy Meets World. Carpenter makes a point to note that she signed with her first label, Disney’s Hollywood Records, at 12—before she booked the TV show. “I knew that I wouldn't be able to thrive as a recording artist the same way I would have been able to working on a show as a child actor,” she says, “which I know sounds weird to have that perspective at 12, but I was really lucky to.”

Carpenter released four albums with the Disney-owned label between 2015 and 2019 and continued to act, in movies like Adventures in Babysitting, The Hate U Give, and Tall Girl. But she couldn’t quite break through to the mainstream as an artist. “For a long time, I was constantly guided and misguided,” she says. “I'm so grateful for all of those times where I was led astray, because now I'm a lot more equipped going into situations where I have to trust my own instincts.”

Her 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send—her first more adult project on a new label—was an opportunity to do just that. She put out a collection of songs about heartbreak, attraction, and scrutiny that were wiped clean of Disney’s perfectionistic sheen. “My last album was f-cking sad, straight up,” Carpenter says. She describes the first stretch of the pandemic, when she was 21, as a time when she realized she wanted to “make some mistakes,” or at least be less hard on herself. “I wanted to make sure to still be young while I’m young… To go through your life trying to be a little robot angel, you’re going to have a lot of regrets later,” she says. “That’s also why during that time of my life I was a little bit of an emotional wreck.”

The album contained songs that fans connected with tantalizing gossip, having deduced that Carpenter might have been the “blonde girl” described as winning over the person (purportedly fellow Disney actor Joshua Bassett) who broke Olivia Rodrigo’s heart in “Driver’s License.” Carpenter’s song “Because I Liked a Boy” seemed to respond: “Now I'm a homewrecker, I'm a slut / I got death threats filling up semi-trucks.”

“Because I Liked a Boy” made an impression during Carpenter’s Eras tour performances—but it was another song, “Nonsense,” about getting tongue-tied around a crush, that got new audiences hooked on the cheeky sensibility she's become known for. Carpenter says the tour with Swift, where she had no set, dancers, or props for her act, taught her how to stand in front of a crowd alone and put on a show. It stirred up hype for a tradition, which had begun on her Emails tour, where she delivered a punny new outro for “Nonsense” each night, creating viral clip after clip as the lines got more suggestive and ridiculous. One night in Australia: “Broke up ’cause the size was underwhelming/ Tried to give him pointers, wasn’t helping/ Maybe I just need a boy from Melbourne.” She confirms that she’s done with the bit, at least for now. “The extreme ‘it's over forever’ is just not in my repertoire. Maybe I’ll feel random one day and bring it back,” she says, but, “that was for that album, for that era. You’ve got to keep a thing good.”

Carpenter may be only 25, but she is coming into her own with the earned confidence of a veteran, and she knows how to give the people what they want. Her brand—she’s short, she’s funny, and she’s horny—is specific enough to feel authentic but also general enough to capture an ever-broadening audience. And she’s not afraid to make a joke about herself. “If you want to call me a Polly Pocket, a Bratz doll, I don't care,” she says. “You'll meet me and then you'll be like, damn, she talks a lot more than the dolls do.” It takes a certain amount of time under pressure to build the sense of self that Carpenter embodies—we’ve seen it this year with artists like Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, too. It’s hard to remember now, but even Swift was once a rising country-music star trying to break into the mainstream.

Jack Antonoff, who worked with Carpenter on multiple Short n’ Sweet tracks, was following her career long before they collaborated. “I look at all Sabrina's work, and she's just crystallized more and more,” he told TIME in a recent interview. “I guess the lesson there is there was nothing wrong. It was just about staying the course. That's really what it is to be an artist.”

Carpenter is reaping the benefits of her persistence. “There were so many things I dreamt of doing as a little girl I got to do this year that felt like such a cool, sweet, little bucket-list moment for my younger self,” she says. “I literally threw up when I found out about SNL. Not to be graphic.” The VMAs performance was another dream realized. “I grew up watching those performances and being like, I want to do that. But then it all just seemed so—not even out of reach, just like I had a different plan in my head of when it was all supposed to happen,” she says, meaning it wasn’t supposed to take this long. But now that everything has unfolded the way it has, Carpenter can see the advantage. “I feel so prepared for these moments,” she says. “If I was even 17 or 18, I think I would have been way, way more nervous and intimidated.” 

The next thing that could make her throw up with excitement, if the call came tomorrow: “If I could perform at the Grammys.” 

As polished and well-packaged as the Sabrina Carpenter brand is, it’s her willingness to be messy that really makes it all work. In Short n’ Sweet, she’s in turns cocky, desperate, petty, brutal, deliriously horny, and not all that pressed. The effect is that, no matter the drama at hand, Carpenter refuses to take herself too seriously. “I like the fact that I just put out a song that starts with ‘I can't relate to desperation,’ and then I’m putting out the most desperate possible sounding chorus I could in my life,” she says, of “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” “The idea is like: if everything is super calculated, then the second you make a statement, that's who you are for the rest of your life—as opposed to it being like: or you can be super confident one day and then the most emotional wreck the next day.” 

Carpenter describes Short n’ Sweet as a “time capsule” of a certain period in her life, and a few songs on the album seem to, fairly overtly, reference a relationship she had with Shawn Mendes during off-again stretches of his past romance with Camila Cabello. (See: the lyrics of “Coincidence” analyzed against timelines of who was seen where with whom. See also: the roast ballad “Dumb & Poetic,” “Taste,” and a particularly savage line of “Slim Pickins.”) Likewise, casting Keoghan in the video for “Please Please Please,” a song about begging her actor boyfriend not to embarrass her, pretty much eliminated the possibility that anyone would think it wasn’t about him. 

Carpenter won’t say specifically who she was thinking of when writing any of her songs—no savvy pop star would—but she is willing to talk about the feelings within them. “It'll probably bite me in the ass at some point,” she says, knocking wood, “but it's been a really therapeutic album to be able to just say what I'm thinking.” One example: “Please Please Please” captures a love-hate dynamic that will be familiar to anyone who’s found themselves wondering if they’re in the wrong relationship. “I’m so blunt and forward. I feel like, what is the reason that we're all hiding from each other when these are just real things? Sometimes men embarrass you. That's super normal,” she says.

Now, starting to see crowds sing along with her on tour, she’s recognizing how relatable that song in particular is. “This just really hits for the girls that have every right to go back to someone who isn't good for them, and know that those mistakes are absolutely human to make, and repeatedly.” She takes a bite of chocolate mousse, a dollop of whipped cream and a few cookie crumbles on top. “The amount of times that we've all been with people we shouldn't be,” she continues. “We either learn it the hard way, or we are a miracle and we end up marrying that person.”

When the lights dim before Carpenter takes the stage at Madison Square Garden two nights later, the collective scream is head-splitting. She dashes onstage in a towel that she opens, eyebrows raised, to reveal a glittering yellow Victoria’s Secret bodysuit. The show takes off from there, an hour and a half of glitzy group dance sequences, intimate ballads, and winking innuendos set in a two-story New York City penthouse. There’s a fireplace in the living room, a moody, after-dark balcony, a pink satin bedroom, and even a bathroom, where, in an offbeat highlight of the show, Carpenter sits on a toilet and ruminates as she sings about a hot dummy who jerked her around. “Some songs feel like bathroom thoughts to me, like when you're at a party and you go to the bathroom to cry or judge yourself in the mirror,” she says. “It's comical but also brings a little groundedness to the show.”

Despite Carpenter’s years of experience—including opening for Swift on the massive Eras tour—the intensity of playing her own arena shows is new. “The first two shows, there were enough technical difficulties to ruin my life,” she says. There’s a part when she gets lifted 18 feet into the air on a giant heart—on the first night, she got stuck at the top. “I was up there far longer than I was supposed to be,” she says, a reminder of why, after seeing Matty Healy perform on a rooftop set for a 1975 show, she thought playing with heights on tour would be too scary. Suspended over the crowd in Columbus, Ohio, she just kept singing and hoped that someone offstage was working to get her down. (They did.) “If one thing malfunctions, it can affect the whole show,” she says. “So I've just been learning, rewiring my brain, to be able to handle stuff like that.” Aside from tech issues, the hardest part is not tripping—Carpenter is constantly running up and down stairs. There was no intensive pre-tour training regimen, and her body is feeling it. “I've started doing ice baths like a little spiritual man,” she admits, a tad embarrassed.

Throughout the concert, Carpenter quite literally wears her sexuality on her sleeve. “Femininity is something that I've always embraced. And if right now that means corsets and garter belts and fuzzy robes or whatever the f-ck, then that's what that means,” she says. She adds a babydoll negligee over the bodysuit in the first act, changes into a black lace catsuit and slips into a slinky robe, both by French designer Patou, in the second, and, in the final set, steps out in an ultra-sparkly two-piece halter top and skirt from Ludovic de Saint Sernin, made with crystal mesh donated by Swarovski. Carpenter’s stylist Jared Ellner teases that there will be different lyrics printed onto Carpenter’s tights throughout the tour: they did “Taste me” for night one and “I’m working late” for Madison Square Garden. The singer notes that this is the first tour where she has doubles of her outfits. “In the past it would be like, if that outfit has stains on it, good luck,” she says. Some of the corset dresses she wore on the Eras tour were in pale colors: “I would sweat, and it would just be terrible.”

With all the lingerie and innuendos in mind, I ask Carpenter if, a generation later, she has been spared the vilification that artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera suffered for daring to incorporate their sexuality into their work. “No, I definitely get that as well,” she says. She’s trying to remember that social media is an echo chamber. “Someone told me this, whenever I would get upset or feel like I'm the only one getting criticized for something other people are able to do seemingly so freely: I'm the one that's seeing all the negative sh-t about myself. My friends don't see that.” 

Artists like Madonna, Aguilera, Spears, Beyoncé, and Rihanna all helped pave the way, Carpenter says. “But you'll still get the occasional mother that has a strong opinion on how you should be dressing. And to that I just say, don't come to the show and that’s OK. It's unfortunate that it's ever been something to criticize, because truthfully, the scariest thing in the world is getting up on a stage in front of that many people and having to perform as if it's nothing. If the one thing that helps you do that is the way you feel comfortable dressing, then that's what you’ve got to do.”

Her approach seems to be working. “Juno,” a seductive pop song that references the 2007 teen-pregnancy movie, brings a show-stopping moment when Carpenter drops into a suggestive position and delivers the line, “Have you ever tried this one?”—then rises into the air on the heart-shaped platform. At Madison Square Garden, she bends on her knees, whips her hair, and jumps up and down above the crowd, ebullient. 

Somewhere in the arena is Carpenter’s mom, seeing the show for the first time. Her dad and 94-year-old grandfather came to opening night in Columbus. “My fans online are like, I can’t believe she's bending over in front of her grandparents!” Carpenter says. “I'm like, girl, they are not paying attention to that. They’re just like, I can’t believe all these people are here.”

It feels a little absurd to ask Carpenter what’s next—she’ll be on the road through March, and isn’t that enough? But she’s already tinkering with new songs (a constant practice) and she hints that there are “a few projects” she’s working on for after the tour. In the nearer term, Halloween is coming up; she’ll go big, and she’ll take it as a massive compliment if you choose to dress up as her. And in December, she’ll release a holiday special on Netflix. “It's an hour of literal nonsense,” she says. “If people are expecting boring, me singing by a tree, it's not that. It's so fun, so chaotic. There are so many guests that I’m excited about.” 

To Carpenter, it’s all still a bit surreal. She says she’s been looking out at the crowds at night, checking to make sure they’re really all there to hear her songs. It makes her easy to root for: the girl who found her way into this world before she knew who she was, finally finding the success she’s worked so hard for only now that she can trust herself to do it all her way. 

I make a comment about how much experience she has behind her, despite being so young. She says thank you, and it’s clear she means it. “People like to make you feel like, when you’re above 21 in this industry, you’re haggard,” Carpenter says, her laugh filling the air. “But I’m trying to remember that I’m still quite young.”'