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#search term: film
2000ghosts · 12 days
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december 27, 2009
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calliethetrekkie · 1 year
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Triumvirate Prompts: Day 3
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(Prompts Link)
#3. Favorite Star Trek Headcanon
Hopefully this one counts. It's been brought up in the novels before, but IDT the actual canon ever confirmed it, so...
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One of my favorite headcanons is that, after the fal-tor-pan in The Search For Spock, Spock and McCoy became bonded. You can view it as romantic or as friends or whatever way you see fit. Either way, they've become linked, and it actually doesn't really bother them when they found out. It does however mean that they can read each other incredibly well and know each other on a level that most couldn't achieve. Even after Spock becomes an Ambassador and McCoy remains in Starfleet as a doctor and thus are frequently apart, they are always there for one another for the rest of their lives. For these two, I think that means a lot.
And yes, maybe Jim got added later on (again under whatever lens you choose) so he's also there XD
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mariocki · 1 month
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Betty (1992)
"You know, I wanted to ask Thérèse when I saw her in the cellar. I wanted to say: 'Show me your wound.' I wanted to have a wound, too. I've always been chasing that wound. I must be looking for pity. I'm not a victim. I'm not to be pitied. No one ever hurt me. I'm the one who did the hurting. I'm a fool. Say it! I blew it all. I've soiled everything, myself included."
#betty#1992#french cinema#claude chabrol#georges simenon#marie trintignant#stéphane audran#jean françois garreaud#yves lambrecht#christiane minazzoli#pierre vernier#nathalie kousnetzoff#pierre martot#thomas chabrol#yves verhoeven#henri attal#coco bakonyi#emmanuelle bataille#mélanie blatt#powerful and devastating in equal measures. a tightly focused study of one vulnerable soul in freefall. as the titular Betty#Trintignant gives a truly phenomenal performance; her character is a self destructive alcoholic who has just broken up her marriage to the#high society son of a general and signed a document promising not to contact their young children. in a drunken reverie she stumbles into#the reassuring figure of long term Chabrol collaborator (and former wife) Audran‚ who takes it upon herself to try and nurse the younger#woman back from the brink of oblivion. what follows is a quiet‚ unhurried study of a desperate psyche‚ all the more affecting for the#subdued‚ nearly vacant performance Trintignant gives: she is a woman hollowed out by her experiences and her addictions#i was surprised to read reviews with negative responses to the character (even in reviews that appreciated the film); i felt nothing but#pity for poor Betty‚ as much a victim of her vices and her psychological makeup as the people around her‚ perhaps more so#some took issue with the very ending in which she appears to 'win' and to start a new life but i think that reading ignores everything that#comes before: there can be little doubt that Betty will destroy this too‚ that we are simply witnessing the end of one cycle and the#beginning of another. challenging‚ soul searching stuff but a truly great central performance from an actor soon cruelly taken from us
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jellogram · 1 year
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Every time I read a horror movie review that says "This movie is so great because it doesn't rely on jumpscares or violence" like please stop reviewing horror movies I am BEGGING you. If you A) think horror movies lacking those traits are rare or B) think a movie is bad because it has those things then you might as well just write "I don't know dick about horror but I happen to like this one" because that's about as much as your google user review is worth. Yes there are bad horror movies that rely too heavily on those things! There's good ones that use them too! There's also long pretentious horror with no gore and jumps that totally sucks ass! Quality and amount of jumps and gore are completely non-correlated please stop you are sending me to an early grave
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withlovebinnie · 1 year
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Day 4
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I know I'm always a bit late, but oh well
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blue-ravens · 2 years
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Found a couple extra DOS interviews from the Utah Digital Newspapers Archive that I thought I’d share <3
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 - Provo Daily Herald, 14/05/1984
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 - Salt Lake Tribune, 17/11/1989
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back2bluesidex · 5 months
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Novice - JJK (18+)
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Pairing: Pornstar!Jungkook X Fem!Reader
Theme: PWP (porn with tiny plot), SMUT, pornstar au
Wordcount: 3k
Summary: The need of some extra money lands you on a weird job. But you are not complaining, not when you get to fuck Jeon Jungkook.
Warnings: Explicit sex, porn movie shooting, mentions of pros**tution, Jungkook is a smooth flirt, reader is nervous and shy, inexperienced reader, a little bit of flirting, missionary position, unprotected sex. NSFW!!
Minors are not allowed in this blog!!
Read the sequel: We Need Practice
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Honestly, you have no idea what you are doing here. 
You have been zoning out for the past ten minutes. 
Keeping your focus trained on what’s waiting for you ahead is a little tough. Especially when it’s 2 degree celsius outside and you are wearing nothing but a thin camisole and flimsy underwear. 
Even though the heater is in full blast, you require to have some clothes on your body to enjoy whatever warmth it has been offering. 
You question your sanity once again. Are you really doing this? You out of all people? You - the goodie two shoes? 
Yeah, the situation has been like that lately. 
You are in need of some extra money because some fucker voiced-phised you and you, being dumber than ever, gave them your company card number and pin. Now you owe 200 million won to your company and you don’t even have 10% of the amount to do anything about it. 
Right at that time, one of your friends knocked on your door asking for a favor. 
“Please, Y/N! You are perfect for the role!” she pleaded. 
“What are you even saying? I don’t even have any experience-” 
“That’s exactly what we want - a novice.” 
And you landed on the deal or role or whatever the fuck it is, in an exchange of 250 million won. By the way, did I mention that they have paid you 50% of the amount already?  
It’s good money and a one-time opportunity. All you need to do is to get fucked on camera, get the pay and avoid showing your face around this place anymore. 
As simple as that.
Or as simple as you thought. 
But now that you are already at the set and ready to feature in a porn movie.. You are rather nervous. 
Even though they assured you and added the “blurred-face” term to your contract, it’s nerve-wracking and for multiple reasons. 
First, you have almost zero experience of sex. And must I mention that you never had an orgasm in your entire life? 
Second, the concept of the film is complicated. There is only one male lead but three female leads (including you). But it’s not poly. The guy plays the role of a male prostitute, who pleasures three different women with three different stages of experience. The first woman is a pro, second one is amateur and third one, you, is a novice. 
The first shoot was almost over when you arrived at the set and the cast went to prepare for the second shoot. Hence, you haven’t gotten to see the guy you would be having sex with. 
And it’s unsettling. 
You only heard his name but couldn’t muster up the courage to search him up. What if you don’t like his face and back off? You will have to repay the 50% of the advance along with a 5% of contract violation fee. And you certainly can’t afford to do that now. 
So you held on, arrived at the studio as per instructions, got your clothes and hair done and now you are waiting for them to call you outside. 
“Ms. Y/N?” A voice calls you from the door and breaks your reverie. “Let’s go” the staff smiles. 
You stand up and follow her outside the green room. 
As you approach the main shooting set all you hear is, well, moans and groans. And those get louder and louder with each passing second. 
“Sit here.” the staff says. “You can observe what they are doing and prepare yourself in the meantime. We’ll brief you on the scenes once they are done.” she places a reassuring hand on your shoulder. 
Too bad, ‘cause you are anything but reassured now. 
“So this is how you like to be fucked? Like the bitch that you are? You slut!” the groan of the man invades each of your senses and you are shocked to say the least. 
Is this how you are going to be treated here? You think to yourself. A shiver runs down your body when the sound of a sharp slap echoes inside the almost calm studio. Then another, then another. But the woman seems to enjoy it all. Her moans and whines keep getting louder. 
You find your throat closing up with fear. Will you be able to enjoy it too? Or will you fuck things up?  
You suddenly feel hot and sticky right between your legs. What the fuck? Are you really getting wet? Just with the sounds? 
Squeezing your eyes shut you try to think of all the things you can do with the extra 50 million won. 
“Great work, guys!” a loud cheer and sound of applause halt your activities. You open your eyes to measure the surroundings. 
First you see the female lead coming out of the set with a cloth wrapped all around herself. She disappears with her assistant within seconds, even before you could see her face. 
Then the man walks out, wearing almost nothing. 
A towel is wrapped loosely around his torso and his bare body is on full view for you to enjoy. 
You gulp. 
The man is chugging down water as if he has been wandering in deserts for years. Your eyes fall on his Adam's apple at first, then on his glistening collarbones, his built chest, his toned abs, small waist and then on his torso. 
Your anticipation makes you gulp again. 
When you finally manage to drag your eyes up, you see him already staring and smirking at you. 
And fuck! You choke on your own spit because you have never seen a more handsome man in your life. 
Initially you thought Jeon Jungkook would be a pervert-looking middle aged ajussi but this guy looks like he is your age. 
Your friends would actually pay to get fucked by a guy this hot. But you are getting it all for free? Must’ve saved your country in past life or something. 
When Jungkook winks at you, you realize you have been staring at him for too long. And now you feel embarrassed. 
Lord! What have you been doing! 
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“That’s it. I hope you have understood, Ms. Y/N?” The director peeks at you expectantly. 
“I guess.. So.” You reply with a lot of doubts still playing in your mind. 
“There is nothing to be nervous of,Y/N. We are not gonna send this movie to the Oscars, so you don’t have to think too much about your acting. Just do the bare minimum. Do what you are told. Jungkook will take care of the rest.”  He gives you a kind smile. 
You nod, reminding yourself that you need money and this is the only way. 
“You guys will blur my face right?” you ask him with a low voice. 
“We will. You can sue us if we don’t.” he chuckles. 
You feel your nervousness and fears subsiding a bit… only to reach the peak in seconds. 
“Hyung, are we good to go?” Jungkook appears from one of the green rooms, wearing his casual outfit - a white t-shirt with loose jeans. 
He smiles down at you and you struggle to return his courtesy. 
“Yeah, we are almost done here. Take care of Ms. Y/N, Jeon. She is very nervous.” the director gestures Jungkook to sit beside you. 
Jungkook sits down with a respectable distance between you two and takes a tentative look at you before saying, “hyung, we have some time before the shoot starts right?” 
The director nods a yes. 
“Then.. let me talk to Y/N for a bit.” 
“Yeah sure, go ahead.” 
And they leave you alone with your co-star. 
“Hey.” Jungkook says sweetly once you are alone in the makeshift secluded space. 
“Hi.” you reply with a quiet trembling of a voice.
Jungkook chuckles at that. 
“Cute.” you hear him murmuring under his breath. 
“This is your first time, I guess?” He asks. 
“Yeah and the last time as well.” you reply urgently, avoiding meeting his eyes as much as possible. 
His eyes widen at your response, “why so?” 
“I just need some extra money. So you know.. It’s a one time thing for me.” 
“Oh..” Jungkook breathes out and then says, “then I will make sure it’s something you remember your entire life. I know you don’t have much experience but I won’t push you to do something crazy. I will be gentle, don’t worry. Just leave yourself up to me, relax and enjoy.” with that he rests one of his hands on top of yours and gives you a sickeningly sweet smile. 
Now you don’t know how you are supposed to stay calm when your co-star’s mere presence is this nerve-wrecking. 
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“Okay. Cut” the director screams as you and Jungkook complete shooting the non-sexual scenes. 
“You are pretty good, you know?” Jungkook slides beside you as you stand there preparing yourself for the big thing ahead. 
“Ah. thanks. You are very impressive as well. I mean three times in a row is no joke. Aren’t you tired?” you reply, finally staring into his eyes. 
Jungkook’s big doe, beautiful eyes almost defy the fact that he is in this business. Almost because once your eyes move lower on his body, you’ll have to admit that this is certainly his place to shine. 
“I have a record of six times in a day, sweetie.” he smirks at you while winking at the same time. Your stomach flips involuntarily. 
“Jungkook, Y/N, are you ready?” The director screams from his seat. 
Jungkook raises his thumb to affirm him and then he looks back at you. 
“As I said Y/N, don’t be nervous. I will take good care of you, okay?” Jungkook holds your hand again. 
His sincere tone really melts your heart. 
You nod, “okay.”
You don’t know how things will turn around but you are determined to enjoy it. You will not be seeing Jungkook anymore, anyway. So, why not take the advantage? 
“Action!” the director screams. 
When you look at Jungkook again, his doe eyes have turned dark. 
From now on, you don’t have any dialogue. It’s only Jungkook who will do the talking, you will have to say yes or no as a response. 
“So, you want me to fuck your virgin cunt because you are a bad bad girl. Is that right?” Jungkook speaks in a sultry low voice. 
Your head starts spinning. 
“Yes.” you reply. 
He takes a step towards you as you take a step back. 
“Oh. you got a voice I see.” Jungkook steps towards you again. 
You know he is just acting but you can’t help but feel a burning sensation in your stomach. When you take another step back, your thighs come in contact with the bed. 
He pushes on your shoulder gently, making you sit down. 
“Then.. let me take care of you.” Jungkook says while sinking down on his knees. 
He takes one of your feet in his hand and kisses on top of it. When his mouth wraps around your big toe, your breath hitches. 
Were your feet always this sensitive? 
He sucks on your big toe briefly, making it tough for you to breathe normally. 
“Do you like it?” he asks, looking up at you, lips still close to your foot. 
“Yes.” you mutter.
“Good girl.”
Jungkook places a kiss on your ankle next, then on your knee. His other hand kneads on your other thigh gently. 
His mouth reaches to your inner thigh and hovers above your skin for a brief second.  Then he kisses down, pulling out a moan from your throat. 
“Lay down for me.” he requests and you oblige. 
Jungkook’s fingers hook on the waistband of your panty and he slowly pulls that down revealing your glossy slit to not only him but to the entire crew. 
But surprisingly you are not self conscious. Jungkook has somehow made it feel like it’s only about the two of you. And you like it that way. 
“So pretty” he whispers, as if talking to your cunt. 
His actions make you leak even more. You suck in a deep breath when you see him, lowering his face down to your pussy. 
He places a soft kiss on your folds at first and then licks a stripe along it. 
Latching his lips around your clit, he sucks on it. You lose your senses with that. Some incoherent words fly out of your mouth but you know you are not really making sense to anyone, not even yourself. 
He keeps performing his ministrations, licking, sucking and occasionally biting down on your clit. 
This is the very first time someone has their mouth on your cunt and you never thought it would feel this good. 
“Umm.. you taste so good, sweetie.” Jungkook mumbles on your clit. 
His tongue probes into your entrance, lapping up all the juices that you leak. 
You grab the sheets to find something to distract the overpowering pleasure that Jungkook has been providing you with. 
Your knees buckle, caging Jungkook between your legs. 
Soon you feel something akin to a finger pressing down on your clit, then drawing slow circles around it, and then the circles are fast.
Your eyes roll back and your throat produces some sounds you never knew you could make. 
“Fuck! So tight. I have never fucked a pussy tighter than this” Jungkook groans and it vibrates your folds. 
When he pokes into your entrance again, while circling your clit, you find something coiling in your lower abdomen. Something so strong that you can’t contain it anymore. 
And you have it. The very first orgasm of your life. 
Your juices drain Jungkook’s mouth and chin. 
“Fuck, sweetie!” Jungkook stands up, “look what have you done?” he says while climbing on the bed. 
He grabs your camisole and tears it in an instant. 
Even though you are in your post-oragsm glory, it shocks you regardless. You hear mumbles coming outside the set but then the director seems to say something that shuts everyone up. 
As soon as your tits are on display, Jungkook grabs both of those with both of his hands. 
He kneads the muscles while his mouth latches to your neck. 
There is so much happening at the same time that you don’t know what to focus on.
Jungkook’s kisses drop down to your collarbone, bruising your skin and then to your tits. He wraps his pretty lips around your perked nipples, suckling those as if his life depends on it. 
Your moans know no bounds. And you already feel heat building up in your stomach again. 
You leave the sheets and grab Jungkook's hair instead. He groans in pleasure. 
“You are driving me fucking crazy, sweetie!” Jungkook manages to say, “do you think you can take my cock now?” 
“Yes.” you say desperately. 
You are actually very desperate to have him inside you already. 
Jungkook climbs down the bed and starts stripping. You stare at him as if he is the best mountain view in the world. 
Your eyes widen upon seeing his cock and your first thought is if it will fit or not. 
“Don’t worry. I will make it fit.” Jungkook replies as if reading your mind. 
He then comes closer to you and lines his cock on your entrance. Putting his lips on yours he pushes his length in. 
A loud earth-shattering moan comes out of your mouth, which Jungkook swallows immediately. 
He grabs one of your thighs and wraps your leg around his torso, your other leg follows the suit. He takes the chance to accommodate his cock inside your hole comfortably. And once he is sure you have adjusted, he starts moving. 
At first he is slow but then he starts picking up his pace. 
“Does it hurt?” Jungkook mumbles in your mouth, not ceasing to kiss you all while. 
“No. It feels good.” you spill the truth. 
Jungkook groans at your response, emptying you for a second only to thrust his full length inside you harshly.  
You whine.
He pins your wrists above your head and stares at you while fucking you dumb. His eyes are so dark that they demand you to keep staring back at them. 
The skin slapping sound makes your head spin and the coil in your stomach starts getting loose. 
“I-I am cum-” and before you could finish your sentence, you cum. 
It Triggers Jungkook’s own orgasm. He pulls out your cock from your hole, pumps it twice and then spills his cum all over your body. 
And all you could do is to stare at him dumbly with your mouth ajar. 
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“That was so unlike you, Jungkook.” you hear the director talking to your co-star. 
Even though you don’t want to eavesdrop, you want to know what was not like him. 
“I know, hyung. For the first time ever in my career I lost control.” he sighs “Y/N was… something else.” 
Your face grows hot with the complement. But you know you are not going to see him again so it’s better not to think too much about it. 
You grab your bag and head towards the exit, stopping to greet everyone on your way out. 
“Hey” you greet him with a small voice. 
Jungkook gives you a big toothy grin in return. 
“Are you leaving already?” he asks, staring at your bag.
“Yes. I- um. Thanks, Jungkook. I really enjoyed it.” You tell him sincerely. 
“My pleasure, Y/N. And honestly, I think I enjoyed you a little too much as well.” he replies scratching the back of his neck. The tips of his ears turn pink. 
You giggle. 
“That’s great. So… yeah. That’s it. I will take my leave now. Bye” waving your hands, you turn your heels to leave. 
“Y/N?” but his voice stops you. 
“Yeah?” 
“Maybe if you don’t mind… Can we exchange numbers?”  
“Umm.. maybe we can do that.” 
Maybe this deal has more than just money to offer. 
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Taglist:
@phenomenalgirl9 @variety-is-the-joy-of-life @chimchimmarie @coffeedepressionsoup @meowstake @vonvi-blog @nochuel @chimmisbae @i-have-no-life-charlie
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ms-demeanor · 3 months
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Do you know of any resources for physical film photo manipulation? Not sure if there's different terms for non-digital stuff, but I'm having a hard time finding anything.
Okay so there are, I'm going to say (casually, informally, and inexpertly - photography experts feel free to correct me or add on to what I've missed), four major types of photo manipulation that are common with non-digital photography. They are: exposure manipulation, compositing, actually photographing weird bullshit, and just straight up painting.
Exposure manipulation gets you things like Ansel Adams "Moonrise." This is what it looks like if it's evenly exposed:
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And this is what it looks like with significant modifications to the exposure:
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That is. Like. SEVERAL layers of different exposures for the final print. This can be achieved through processes called "dodging" and "burning." "Dodging" is creating a physical mask so that the parts of the negative you want to remain darker are exposed to less light. "Burning" is creating a physical mask so that the areas you the negative you want to be brighter are exposed to more light.
This is a process that is really, really easy to do in photoshop, and really really hard to do in film.
Here is a very comprehensive writeup of how to dodge and burn, and why you might want to.
Compositing is a fancy way of saying "copy/paste". But more so. And with more techniques. Compositing is basically combining two or more images to create one new image. You can do this by making multiple exposures (exposing the negative to light multiple times), splicing film negatives together (physically cutting the negatives and taping pieces to each other), or by combining negatives and prints into a new print. For instance the image below is made up of six different photos, which were composited into a single image by Henry Peach Robinson in 1877.
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This is an article written by a photographer who walks you through the process they used to make a composite print in 2020. It involves a lot of planning, cutting, pasting, masking, dodging, and burning. This is a writeup from a photographer who uses a more blunt method of splicing negatives together to create more abstract images.
Actually photographing weird bullshit is what I'm calling "in camera effects." There are all kinds of tricks that you can use while taking a photo to create surreal or magical effects. One that a lot of people know is the speeder in Star Wars:
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The floating speeder wasn't achieved through later manipulation of the film, but instead through mirrors hanging in front of the wheels and vaseline smeared on the camera lens to create a blurred effect.
Light painting is perhaps the most commonly used of these kinds of effects:
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That's a 6-second exposure, the first three seconds were of the cup and saucer still, then the light was lowered as the cup was lifted and light was swept up when the cup was in place to make it look like it was floating.
The Cottingley Fairy Hoax is one of the best known examples of manipulating photos by just photographing weird bullshit. In 1917, two girls cut pictures of fairies out of a book and took pictures of themselves with the paper fairies propped up in trees, then swore up and down that they actually found fairies.
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This seems crude, but hey they couldn't reverse image search the fairies or anything back then. Some of the photos also make good use of forced perspective, which is something that we still use for in-camera manipulations (it was how a lot of Lord of the Rings was filmed in order to make the hobbits look small)
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Here's a listicle with a bunch of "hacks" for using your camera and for testing out some types of in-camera effects.
Just Straight Up Painting is what I'm calling photo retouching. It's a bit of an exaggeration to call it "painting" but yeah sometimes it was literally putting paint on negatives or etching away parts of negatives. It's how you end up with photos like this:
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Here's an article about retouched photos of Joseph Stalin (maybe the most well known examples of pre-digital photo retouching) and an article about the art of portrait retouching. These examples are relatively subtle, but you can also use these kinds of retouching and airbrush techniques to exaggerate parts of an image or add objects to an image (see the text added to the flag in the article about Stalin).
I can't think of any comprehensive resources offhand, but photographers love to tell you how they pulled of their photos (which is why quite a few of the links above are from photographers discussing process). This is by no means a comprehensive list of non-digital photomanipulation techniques, but hopefully it's enough terminology to get you started on what you're looking for.
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Real talk, I came to the Fallout series a total newb, knowing nothing about the lore/games and came away with a new favorite show, easily in my top five. In particular, something it does exceptionally well is narrative payoff. Nothing in this show happens just to happen; every choice the characters make shapes their future arcs. As a SFF writer myself, I'm not only impressed--I'm inspired.
I feel this way about the entire story, but in terms of Lucy and Cooper specifically, we get so many great payoffs from their interactions. When he doesn't share his water, it seems like he's just being a dick until we learn that his canteen is full of dirty water. (Yes, he was still being a dick, but he knew she naively thought he was drinking clean water.) When he forces her to use the knife in the "ass jerky" scene, he's absolutely being cruel, but he's also extremely fatigued to the point of near collapse, which only becomes clear only after she's out of sight at the Super Duper Mart. When he cuts off her finger, it seems like nothing more than him "getting even," when he actually took a much-needed replacement part for his hand (from someone he assumed wouldn't be alive much longer).
These interactions are all brutal, give us new insights into both characters, and also set up a massive payoff in Lucy's "golden rule, motherfucker" moment. Even after everything he put her through and how he treated her as disposable, she does the opposite and shows him empathy and kindness. To put it plainly: Her choice in this scene wouldn't carry half as much weight if he hadn't repeatedly treated her like shit. Coupled with her ability to self-rescue, the scene cements who Lucy is as a person--both for the viewer and for Cooper. (And what happens next? He watches a film clip where his old self looks right at him and delivers the line about a villain being ugly and strong but having no dignity.)
The moment when Lucy gives him the vials could have been enough of a payoff for their arc by itself. But it sets up an even better one: The next time they cross paths, he treats her differently. Having already seen himself in her, and knowing that they both want answers to the same (or very similar) questions, he invites her to accompany him on his journey this time--no longer as a pawn, but as someone he trusts and respects at least a little. As a direct payoff for her memorable act of kindness toward him, this fucking rules. It's surprising while also feeling completely earned. "Golden rule, motherfucker," isn't just a satisfying moment (or my favorite line), it shapes the characters' future.
On Lucy's side, when she decides to follow him, she has no reasons to trust or respect him (yet); she likely just recognizes that he's currently the only person who will lead her to the truth. But she's only met the Ghoul so far, not Cooper Howard. She doesn't know that his primary motivation has been searching for his family this whole time. She doesn't know that she's seen him before, in those old movies she watched at home. She doesn't know why he shot the billboard.
Now, I'm not making predictions about how their future arc will play out (nor am I asking for them), I'm just along for the ride. But I feel confident that there will be many more great payoffs to come now that they've gone from "hostile forced proximity" to "traveling together by choice." I've rarely been so pumped for a second season. <3
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clazaries · 3 months
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Old Love, New Dream (NSFW)
(JonathanLevy! x f!reader)
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Summary: Just when you think you've recovered from a debilitating breakup with Jonathan Levy, all those feelings come rushing back when he walks back into your life again as your best friend's boyfriend. w/c: a whopping 10.1k Warnings: angst, Mira is included in this, NSFW; smut, fingering, p in v, oral (fem rec.), eventual fluff a/n: HELLOOOO! I'm back. Sorry took a small hiatus to finish off college and I really struggled to finish the end of this so apologies if it's shit. I also watched a spanish film called a treves de mi ventana (specifically the third one) which I loved and took inspiration from while I was writing this. Anyway hope you enjoy!!!
Fuck Jonathan Levy.
Fuck him and everything he stands for. Fuck him in the past and fuck him in the future. Fuck him and the way he treated you with love in his heart, with stars in his eyes, and with you at the heart of everything he did. Fuck him for being the best boyfriend, partner and friend that anyone could’ve asked for. Fuck him for promising you that it would last forever, that you would always have him for as long as you live. 
Fuck him, especially on that unassuming Tuesday morning when you woke up to sadness on his face, pain behind his eyes and the truth on his lips. Fuck his ‘I think we should take a break, we need to spend time on ourselves, by ourselves.’ Fuck him for making you think that life’s not fair; because how were you to know that after six years of a strong and stable relationship, especially one that guided you hand-in-hand into adulthood, would be ripped from you in a day. 
Fuck him for making you miss him so, so fucking badly to the point where you struggle to get through your day without thinking about him. The countless number of occasions where you’ve had friends and family members tell you so naively to ‘move on’, or to ‘get over him’, or that ‘you don’t miss him, you miss what you had with him.’ 
And in all honesty, they’re exactly right. You can’t bear to reflect upon what could’ve been, so your only alternative is to miss what you had, and therein lies that problem of why he still subconsciously worms his way back into your mind. Because he’s tied to it, intertwined so deeply that he’s the knot you just can’t unravel. 
It’s not like you think about him purposely, in fact, if you had the will-power to compartmentalise everything associated with him into a box, you would lock it and throw away the key. But he left such an imprint on you that in the quietest moments of thought, his name, his face, his eyes and Jesus, even the memory of his scent appears when you least expect it. What’s worse is that they’re good memories, not the ones that broke your heart, not the ones that should be reminding you of how much of an arsehole he is, but the ones that you look back on with nostalgia. 
It took a long time to come to terms that he’ll never be a part of your life again, to shake hands with the devil and accept that he will always be the one that got away. That’s the part that will never leave you. He is the big gaping wound in your heart that will never heal. 
The best you could do was move away to another state, to start afresh with the hopes of finding someone new that could give you everything he did and more. But it’s proven to be a bigger challenge than you anticipated because your desire to find someone capable enough to fill the hole and let it scar has never been satiated. No one, not even in the three years since your break up with Jonathan Levy, has come close.
You had gone for such a long time thinking that this level of pain and heartbreak was exclusive to you only and that there was no one else in this world who could empathise with you. That was until you met your next door neighbour Mira who was shockingly similar to you in every way; broken from a relationship that ended years ago, desperately searching for something or someone to alleviate years of hopeless longing and the need for fulfilment. She was the therapy you always knew you needed and vice versa. There were many nights spent drinking wine, talking about ex-lovers with the same yearning, indulging in each others’ wishes of how they could relive what you both once had. Surprisingly, divulging each others’ woes became a temporary fix to your problem and soon missing him turned from a daily issue to a weekly issue. Now, he’s a quiet thought just once a month. 
But things started to change one night in Mira’s dining room when she announced something you hadn’t seen coming.
She’s got a new boyfriend.
~~~~
You sit there, quietly in shock, at her oak dining table directly across from her, listening as she talks of her newly-established relationship as if she had been blessed by all the godly-deities of every power and religion. 
“You have to meet him,” she says with a mouthful of spaghetti bolognese, “he’s just the sweetest guy.” 
A twinge of bitterness and jealousy has your stomach clenching. “Yeah? Where did you meet him?” 
“I’ve always kind’ve known of him, like, I met him last year when I was travelling for work, but recently we’re just really hit it off.” 
“Do you think it’ll turn into something more serious?” 
The lips of your friendly neighbour beam wider, a subtle coy sparkle evident in her eyes. “I would like to think so, I think we’re both in a really good place.”
“That’s great Mira, I’m happy for you.” 
“I was actually thinking about hosting a dinner with the neighbours, like what we used to do years ago, but I might bring him along this time.” 
“Wow, so really serious then. Must be something really special if you’re willing to dig up an old tradition just for him.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Well you know, I miss those dinners. They were always so much fun. They introduced a lot of new things to us including you, and I feel it would be a good way to introduce him to the street too since they’ll be seeing a lot of him ‘round here in the future.” 
The Maple Avenue dinners were once the highlight of your week, plucked from a suburban neighbourhood’s dream. It was a tradition you inadvertently started when you first moved into the street, a way of getting to know the neighbours around you. Mira, being your next door neighbour was one of the first to receive an invite and was also the one to convince others to join. Surprisingly, the occasion started a chain of events where other neighbours wanted to host their own dinners, play games, chat and share their life over wine. It happened so often that it became a weekly ritual that you all cherished, until organising a roast for ten to fifteen people became too overwhelming, especially for those who had started a family, or who had taken a promotion at work. Having no such responsibilities, you and Mira became the only two to keep the tradition alive.
“I’d like that. Want me to get in touch with the neighbours?” 
“I’ll handle it.”
Two weeks pass and the Friday you have been silently dreading finally arrives. You had been prepared for it up until about an hour ago when you couldn’t remember who drinks white wine and who drinks red, who has an intolerance to dairy and who has an allergy to nuts. 
Spotting Mira’s open window across the way, you decide to lean out your bedroom window, hoping to catch her attention. “Mira!” Within seconds she’s mirroring you, her hair still pinned in curls and her body wrapped in her satin robe. 
“What?” 
“I was going to bring my roasted hazelnut cookies but I can’t remember who has a dairy intolerance and who has a nut allergy.” 
“Don’t you remember? Alan doesn’t have dairy, it could get hairy, and Steph doesn’t have nuts, no buts. You don’t need to worry though, they can’t make it tonight.” 
“See, this is why you’re the better neighbour. Red or white?”
“Go for red. Jonathan drinks red.” 
For a moment, your heart stutters a little in your chest, a small sense of unease tightening your muscles, but you need to remember, it’s just a name. A popular boy’s name. “Jonathan?” 
“Jonathan as in boyfriend Jonathan. As in the-reason-why-we’re-doing-this Jonathan.”
“Oh right,” you nervously laugh, “you’ve always referred to him as ‘the boyfriend’ it made me forget that he actually has a name.” 
“Yeah, well he’ll soon have a face too. Although he said he might be a little late tonight and doesn’t mind missing the starter. He'll be here for the main.” 
“Okay, can’t wait!”
Having food preparations sorted, you take the remaining few hours to present yourself; washing, bathing, moisturising, curling your hair, applying that little extra bit of makeup, and finally choosing an outfit. Despite it only being Mira and a handful of the neighbours who have seen you in worse states, you still feel the need to look presentable in front of a new face, perhaps the result of your mother’s behaviour rubbing off on you when she faced similar situations. ‘Always presentable, always welcoming. First impressions matter.’ 
Her words stay true to this day. It’s what banked you a job, friends amongst the neighbourhood, and impossibly so, Jonathan Levy’s attraction many, many years ago. 
Since the weather had transitioned well into the Spring’s warmth, you settle for a sundress knowing that Mira fully intends to use her beautiful backyard to see off the sunset after dinner. It fits you perfectly, complimented by the sparkling golden necklace that sits squarely between your clavicles; the very same Jonathan had gifted you on your 21st birthday, which to anyone should be reason enough to get rid of it, but just like how you can’t completely get rid of the thought of Jonathan, you can’t get rid of the necklace. At least, not yet. 
You arrive a little earlier than Mira had instructed but with good intentions. You help her set the table, stick the necessary food in the oven and ease her nerves. You’re glad to see her dressed similarly, having put in that little extra glamour on top of her usual appearance to appease her guests and, of course, her boyfriend which you both casually joke about.
Soon, one by one, the neighbours start arriving and quickly settle into their own seats as the first course gets plated out. Only one seat across from you remains empty. 
You’re surprised by how quickly it starts to feel like nothing’s changed at all; being here together conversing over a roast, clinking glasses and laughing over memories and you remind yourself to give thanks to Mira’s new boyfriend for reigniting a fire that burned out long ago. However it seems like you might need to wait your turn with how engrossed the rest of the neighbours are in Mira’s new boyfriend, everyone wants to meet him. His name fails to fall out of conversation with now being the only chance to ask about him before he arrives.
“So how did he ask you out?” Lisa, from number 32, asks, sitting next to her husband Tom. 
“He took me on a date to Rosano’s, very generously paid for my meal, and then we went for a walk along the pier where he surprised me with a bouquet of pink peonies that he had the ice cream vendor keep before the date. He had it all planned out.” 
Everyone around you awes with adoration, their lips pouting and their hands over their chest, almost identical to the way people reacted when you told a similar story to your friends when they asked you how your Jonathan asked you out. Only after you swallow the soft lump of potato do you force yourself to respond in the same way, too caught up in your own memories to give an immediate reaction. 
Pink peonies. Your favourite flower. 
It takes everything in you to ignore the blaring alarm in your head, screaming and fussing over the coincidences. You boil it down to emotions running high and how everything lately has been reminding you of your ex, subconsciously relating everything back to the time you spent with him. Fuck, you didn’t even need to try that hard to link the lentil soup you’re eating back to him. The first meal you had together when you both moved into your new apartment…
The starter course and the conversation concluded when Mira’s boyfriend chapped on the front door. With an understanding nod, you take the plates from Mira’s hands, offering to take them to the kitchen while she answers the door. While there, you can hear through the walls, listening to the cacophony of people greeting one another, sharing names and pleasantries while you stand over the kitchen sink. While the tap runs, you look up to your reflection in the kitchen window, twisting your strands of hair to re-curl that one piece that had fallen flat. First impressions. Better make it a good one. 
You enter the dining room once again with a beaming smile on your face ready to welcome him in, and standing there, by Mira’s side, is the last person you want to see. 
Jonathan. Fucking. Levy. 
It is by chance, or perhaps by fate's cruel hand, that you find yourselves face to face once again in the most unexpected of places. There’s barely enough time to react when your eyes meet from across the room, picked out from a sea of people being none the wiser to the unfortunate predicament you both face. In that moment, amongst the din of the dining room, time almost comes to a stand still and you’re left waiting in the doorway with bated breath, overrun by a wash of emotions as Jonathan’s eyes are confronted with the same feeling. 
Between you and him, Jonathan seems to keep up the pretence better than you do as his smile barely dips, but enough to know that he recognises you, enough to know that he too is filled with the same amount of dread and confusion as you are. And as Mira walks him over to introduce you, he doesn’t let the facade fall. 
She introduces your name to him and without a seconds’ hesitation, he offers his hand. “Hi, I’m Jonathan, nice to meet you.” 
There’s a moment’s delay before you take it, his warmth no stranger to your skin, and with a little wobble to your voice you relay his words back to him. “It’s…it’s nice to meet you too, Jonathan.” 
His eyes stay on you as Mira thankfully takes control of the conversation. Poor, oblivious Mira who is unaware of the fact that your Jonathan has just become her Jonathan…because surnames were never mentioned. “Is the food ready to come out?” 
“Uh, yeah. I can…I can help out if you need.” 
“Perfect! Jonathan, honey, you go sit and get yourself a drink, ‘kay? Dinner won’t be long.” 
You watch agonisingly as Mira peppers his cheek with a kiss and follows you into the kitchen where you finally get a chance to navigate the minefield of unresolved emotions without a roomful of witnesses. 
Mira instantly tends to the roast slowly cooking away in the oven leaving you to stand in the corner, almost not knowing what to do yourself. An explosion has just gone off inside you yet Mira and a roomful of people are expecting you to carry on as normal, as if years and years’ worth of recovery hasn’t just been stripped from you within a single second. Thousands of layers of hurt have been peeled back and left you bare and vulnerable to your biggest fear, and yet Jonathan’s pretence to not know you has forced you to deal with it as if it’s nothing. 
What the fuck are you supposed to do?
“So what do you think?” Mira pulls you from your musing and peers up to you, a proud smile on her face. Her. Mira. It’s all for Mira’s sake, the innocent party in all of this. The realisation hits you like a freight train. If she knew anything about Jonathan being the ex you talked for hours about, it would destroy her. “He’s nice, right?” 
“Lovely,” you gleam back, kickstarting your limbs to dish out the cooked vegetables. “He seems very nice.”
“I knew you’d like him.” 
If only, Mira, if only. 
Not enough time passes before everyone is sat at the dinner table once more, tucking into the delicious food warmly prepared by Mira. You wouldn’t even know, you’ve barely touched it. You can’t find it in you to enjoy the food nor engage in the jovial conversation happening around you because Jonathan Fucking Levy, your ex of six years, is sitting right across from you behaving so casually it makes your stomach churn. 
The little ball of stuffing rolls across your plate, dancing from side to side over and over again. You take the small amount of comfort you can find in the hypnotic motion, stuck in a trance of watching this stuffing ball roll back and forward while Jonathan Fucking Levy drones on about his endeavours. You try to pay him no attention of course, but when everyone else around you is sucked into his conversation narrated by his smooth-like-honey voice that used to whisper sweet nothings in your ear, it’s harder said than done. 
You dip in and out of his story telling every now and then because you can’t stop your curiosity from wondering just how different the last three years have been for him. Apparently he took ‘personal growth’ seriously and you come to realise that it wasn’t just a shoddy excuse to break up. He’s become a reputable academic, striving in the industry and made quite a name for himself which he explains so beautifully, so fluent with expression and elegant with his choice of his words that hooks everyone in which, given his career choice, makes all the more sense. Then, when you throw in his confident manner and the slightly animated way he presents himself when he speaks passionately about something (which, back in the day, used to be you), it accumulates to something you can’t help but admire. You see it in the eyes of your neighbours around you, afraid to blink for fears of missing something spectacular. 
It really makes you wonder how he can act so calm and collected. It’s been three years. Surely there has to be one little atom inside him that's swayed by your being here. There has to be. 
Oh, there definitely is. 
You don’t know it because you refuse to look at him, but every part of Jonathan is burning with anxiety. If you could just spare him one glance you would see that his fingers twitch around the thin stem of the wine glass, that his whole body shakes with his bobbing knee, and that his teeth incessantly chew away at his bottom lip. At least he has the red wine to thank, staining his cheeks with enough colour to conceal how pale he would be otherwise. 
Because he’s terrified. Terrified of not only seeing you, but missing you. Desperately, hopelessly, and unquestionably missing you. He feared he would never see you again to tell you. Yet here you are, sitting an arm’s length away from him, unknowingly tormenting him with the scent of your perfume that consumes every particle of air around him, effortlessly resurrecting memories of how he used to wish that scent would wake him up every morning like it used to. If only he could reach out to feel the buzz of your skin on his, just like it did when you shook his hand, the electricity that flowed through him when your eyes found his. He’s already experiencing withdrawal and he craves for your attention but you won’t look at him anymore. He needs you to look at him again, he needs you to know that he’s been plagued with regret since the moment you split. How can he get you to look at him? 
“So what do you do?” 
His question cuts through the running conversation like a sharp knife, demanding the attention of everyone at the table as they silence and wait for your answer. It takes you a second to realise he’s talking to you and had it been without everyone staring at you, you would’ve ignored him. But you don’t want to come across as rude to the other guests, and you settle for answering coldly. 
“Just corporate work, just a simple nine-to-five-Monday-to-Friday kind of job. It’s nothing special.” 
Mira interjects and you happily give her your attention if it means taking it away from Jonathan. Only, she’s leaning against his shoulder, softly patting his thigh affectionately. “Oh she’s being modest, she’s a finance manager, runs the full finance department with an iron fist, don’t you?”  
“I manage a small team of bookkeepers and accountants, it’s barely a department.”
“Interesting, how did you get into that?” You pan back to Jonathan who’s munching away, glaring at him through the furrow of your eyebrows, almost vehement at his audacity because he already knows how you got in financing. It was him. 
“A friend.” 
“What do you mean?” This bastard. 
“A friend convinced me to do it. I didn’t have the confidence at the time and he motivated me.”
“That was nice of him.” Sarcasm drips with every word. 
You bite back. “Yeah, he was nice. Until he wasn’t. Anyway, that’s a different story for a different time. More wine, anyone?” There’s a few mumbles of agreement, giving you enough of an excuse to rise from the table and make your way to Mira’s pantry in search of a stronger, more bitter tasting wine because God knows you’re going to need it to get through the rest of this dinner. 
Dessert comes and goes at an agonising pace. With the help of wine and the particularly boozy dessert, you become less inhibited, detangling yourself from the thick tension that’s lassoed tight around you and Jonathan. 
Instead, you find solace in Harry, who lives at number 30, sitting next to you, telling you about the struggles of being a single dad to two troublesome toddlers. It’s quite a depressing conversation and not the pick-me-up you were looking for, but anything is better than having to quietly observe the flirting that’s happening across the table. You deceive Harry into thinking that he’s got your full attention but really you’re hyper aware of Mira and Jonathan in your peripheral vision, sharing small, intimate touches, glancing at each other with stars in their eyes, embraced by the bliss of new-found love. 
That used to be you. You haven’t had anything like that since. 
“So…uh…” You have all intentions of continuing the conversation with Harry but you weren’t listening well enough to remember where he left off. “Who’s looking after the kids tonight?” 
“I hired a babysitter. Which reminds me,” he checks the time on his phone. “I said I’d be back by 8 and it’s 7:57. I better go.” To your dismay, your distraction rises from the table, grabs his jacket from the chair, thanks Mira for the meal and bids everyone a good night. Damn. There goes your distraction. 
Everyone around you is locked deep in conversation under the lowlights of Mira’s dining room. All except you. With a heavy sigh, you reach for your wine glass to once again relish the dry, bitter taste of the alcohol as it trickles down your throat. You slouch further and further back against your chair, wallowing in your isolation that no one seems to take notice of. 
But Jonathan does, and to your surprise, you feel something tentatively brush against your leg. At first you thought you had gotten too close to the table leg, but when it starts creeping up the length of your leg underneath your dress, your only option is to consider the man sitting directly across from you. Your eyes burn into the side of his head, ignorant to you while he talks enthusiastically about something you’re not privy to. Not that you want to be, especially when the tip of his shoe caresses the back of your calf, pulling it out from underneath you and hooking your ankle closer to him. He remains unfazed as your foot gently rests atop his underneath the table, tracing small circles over your achilles heel. 
Your heart beats widely inside you, violently disorientating you as much as the twisting in your stomach does. The gesture is so provocative you’re almost sweating in your seat. It’s scandalous, outrageous, and downright inappropriate, but you’ll be damned to hell if you don’t admit to yourself that it feels mildly arousing. 
Only when Mira leaves for the bathroom does he catch a glimpse of you over the tip of his wine glass and old sparks fly as you read the words in his eyes that his mouth can’t say. I miss you. I want you. I need you. 
Shaken, you draw back your leg and pull your eyes from his, feeling completely lost and indecisive about what to do. The hidden touches, the secrecy, it’s all too intimate for you to be opening an old wound that still hasn’t fully healed. You’re not ready for three years of hardship to manifest. 
Yet again Mira comes to the rescue when she returns from the bathroom and ushers all the remaining guests out into the backyard where you sit yourself as far away from Jonathan as possible, but it’s not without the touch of Jonathan’s hand to the small of your back as you all walk out through the glass panel doors, unnoticed by everyone else. There isn’t a doubt in your mind that he saw the momentary shiver that wracked your shoulders the moment his fingers splayed across the bottom of your spine, virtually feeling the heat of your body through the cotton sundress as if it was your own skin. You make a mental note to yourself to never get close to Jonathan for the remainder of the night. 
Once you get outside, you look up to your bedroom window, visible from all areas of Mira’s garden, wishing that you return to the comforts of your own bed, lost in your book and free from this emotional torment. It takes just a glimpse of your window to see everything inside it, something you hadn’t realised was possible until Mira had to awkwardly knock on your door the second week of you moving here and gently warn you to draw your blinds when you were changing. And just as the thought arises…
“Do you remember,” Mira hiccups, perhaps on her sixth glass of wine of the night, “when I had to tell you to close your blinds two weeks after you moved here? I actually thought you were maybe trying to seduce me!” She laughs wholeheartedly, nearly spilling her wine onto Jonathan’s lap. 
A blush blooms on your cheeks. “I didn’t realise you could see in! If I had known I would’ve! Jesus, Mira, way to make me out as a flasher in front of the neighbours.” 
“Listen, if it makes you feel any better, some guys would’ve paid thousands to have seen what I saw every  morning.” 
With a nervous glance of your eyes, you see Jonathan’s glare hard on you. 
“Do I need to contact the HOA and tell them we’ve got a pervert in our neighbourhood?” 
The neighbours laugh but Mira rushes to her defence, unknowingly giving Jonathan that all important detail that he might take advantage of later. “My window is right there! How could I not see you?” 
“Conversation over.” 
Against your wishes, Mira dives into many conversations of a similar nature provoked by Jonathan who annoyingly asks all sorts of questions that involve how you and Mira became friends, forcing her, in her now drunken state, to divulge all the memories you share together, including the many nights you spent talking about ex-lovers. The minute she starts spilling everything, nausea starts to pool inside you and the colour trickles away from your cheeks. Knowing none the wiser, she talks on and on and on about how you bonded over the troubles and hardships of being single, detailing everything about how you would reminisce over ex-lovers and compare them to every shitty cheesy romance film you watched together. And with just a few stories, she single-handedly exposes all of your inner thoughts and feelings towards Jonathan. Right in front of him all for him to hear. 
You silently plead with your eyes, solid in their gaze in the hopes that Mira would catch on and shut up, but she’s seven, no, eight glasses of wine deep that she can’t hold anybody’s gaze let alone yours. 
Jonathan merely sits and listens, amused by everything that is pouring out from Mira’s loud mouth. 
“I mean, it’s hard. And you’ll agree with me on this, that trying to get back into the dating scene as a single woman isn’t an easy experience! You go on dates with guys that bore you to sleep, clicking with absolutely none of them and it just leads to you going home and dreaming about meeting the one guy that sweeps you off your feet. Of course, you’ll know what I mean because you’ve already met him--”
“Mira--” 
She turns to Jonathan to give him context. Knowledge that he already knows himself. “She had this one guy that she dated years ago, the one-that-got-away kind of guy. We used to laugh about him--”
Jonathan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh really? How so?”
Fuck. 
“Mira--”
“Just the usual girly stuff, what we would wear at our weddings, thinking about baby names, and talk about owning the perfect house in the suburbs, that kind of stuff.” 
Jonathan turns to you with an emotion you can only only describe as being distressed, possibly on the verge of being disturbed and you don’t blame him. You’re sure that he could see the very same feeling in you through the gaps of your fingers as they hide your face in embarrassment. 
This is possibly your worst nightmare come to life. The entire night had dwindled into absolute ruins and there’s nothing more that you want than to bury yourself into the ground, away from Mira, away from this mortifying feeling, away from Jonathan. You know it’s not her fault, but everything in you is wanting you to blame Mira, to be judge, jury and executioner and lay out all that she is guilty of in front of her. However in reality, you’re projecting. You were the one to tell her about Jonathan. You were the one to feed her all this information believing that not a word of it would ever reach Jonathan’s ears, and when you consider all that has led up to this exact moment, you are just as at fault as she is. 
And you need to make a run from it while you can. 
“I’m…uh, I think I’m going to go home,” you announce, not realising how shaky your voice is until you speak up. Mira’s expression falls with disappointment, coming immediately to a stand and trying her hardest to convince you to stay. But you know nothing could. 
“Do you want us to walk you home?” 
“Mira, I live next door, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” 
She persistently follows you back into the house. “I’ll walk you to the door then.”
“I know where the front door is--” 
“I just want to make sure you get home okay--” 
“Mira, honey, you go sit, I’ll walk her out.” Jonathan’s voice appears from behind you both, reassuring enough that Mira follows his word and returns to the back garden with a mousey ‘okay’. Once gone, Jonathan, stoic as ever, catches you in his stride, escorting you to the door with a hand to the back of your shoulder. 
This time, when you speak, you can’t stop the sniffle as your emotions run high. “If I don’t want Mira walking me out, I sure as shit don’t want you walking me out.” 
He merely looks down to you and sighs, not listening to a single word you say. Within a matter of seconds, you exit through Mira’s front door, ready and willing to slam it in Jonathan’s face but he’s just a pace too quick and is already following you through the front garden. Your body goes into high alert, having no idea what he’s about to do now that for the first time in three years, you have a moment alone together. 
“Jonathan,” you warn. “Go back inside.” 
“Just let me walk you home.” 
“Why?” 
“Why? Because I want an explanation as to what the fuck just happened in there.” 
“You’re not getting one. You don’t deserve one. Go back inside, Jonathan, your girlfriend is waiting on you.” 
“Like hell. Will you just talk to me for one second?!” He reaches out and grabs your arm, swinging you around to face him where your bodies stand inches apart. It’s not in anger nor frustration but in desperation, as if this is the only chance he’ll ever get again to speak to you alone and he’s not willing to let it slip by him so easily. “Is…is what Mira said true? Did you really talk about all those things?” 
You look down to your fingers wringing them out while you wait for the courage to build. “That wasn’t her information to share. But what does it matter anyway, it’s…stupid.”
“It matters to me.” He tilts your chin with the gentlest of touches, his hand lingering close to your neck as he picks up the necklace sitting delicately around your neck, one that he’s all too familiar with. “I miss you.” 
“Don’t…don’t say that to me.” You begin to feel the tethers keeping the remains of your composure snapping, your mouth sinking deeper into a frown the way it always does when you’re about to cry. “You don’t get to say that to me.” 
“Nonetheless, it’s true. And I think you missed me too.” 
You roll your eyes and he immediately scorns you. “No, no, don’t do that. Don’t invalidate it just because I said it. I’m not trying to be smug or patronising, I want to know the truth. Did you miss me?” 
The wobble in your lip becomes uncontrollable. You don’t have the option to lie because he can read every minute feature on your face like it’s laid out for him in words, he would know if you didn’t tell the truth. With a deep breath, you push out the admission. “Every. Fucking. Day.” 
He nods understandably, retracting his hand from your necklace and sinks it deep into his pockets. He looks up to your window before quietly murmuring words suggestive in tone, “then keep your window open tonight.” 
And it takes your breath away.
~~~~
It’s late. A little past 1am. It’s been all too silent since the last of Mira’s guests left about an hour ago leaving only her and Jonathan next door. 
His last words to you before you separated still echo loudly in your ears but you just can’t figure what he meant. It’s the only thing that’s kept you up this late, and even as you sit on your bed just a few metres from your open window that lets in a cool, calming breeze, you still can’t fathom what he’s intending to do because her window across from you is closed, her curtains drawn and her lights out. 
Is this a joke? Is this Jonathan’s cruel twisted idea of a joke to make you watch as he and Mira settle for the night? Teasing you with something you can’t have? The foundation of that idea had developed a little less than half an hour ago and the more time ticks on, the more bricks are added to it. 
Having enough, you turn your back to your window, taking your duvet and slinging it over your head and around your shoulders, blocking out the world behind you. There’s no point trying to sleep, the embarrassment and the emotional trauma of tonight are still too raw for you to find any peace, so you reach for the half-finished book on your nightstand. 
Fuck Jonathan Levy. Fuck him and everything he stands for. Fuck him in the past and--
Wait, what was that? 
Just then, not even two lines into your book you hear the small creak of a door opening and closing coming from outside. Your eyes dart to your digital clock reading 1:10am. It could be Mark coming in from his backshift. It could be Erin, Alan’s teenage daughter sneaking in from a night out. It could be Rebecca, taking her dog out on a late night walk. All options are plausible and wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary. But there’s one option that you’re afraid to consider.
What if it’s Jonathan? 
You don’t look to check because you wouldn’t know what you would do if it was him, and so in the meantime, you continue to anxiously sit and listen out for any other clues. 
In time, they come. The rustling of the ivy that weaves in and out of your lattice fencing on the side of your house. The breaths of a man as he scales up the wooden structure to your window. The heaviness of his boots as they thud against your floorboards. The raspiness of his voice as he mutters your name. He’s here. In your room, and yet you still can’t bring yourself to turn around to face him. Your breaths are tremorous as he makes his way closer to you, almost shaking with anticipation of what’s about to happen. 
He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t make any rash decisions. For a moment, he pauses by the side of your bed eyeing you up with your duvet slung over your head and decidedly reaches for it, taking a fistful of the sheets and dragging it slowly away from you until you’re exposed to him, still dressed in the sundress you couldn’t bring yourself to take off. The tension locks you in a chokehold, unable to move, unable to speak, waiting for the moment where Jonathan’s hand reaches out to touch you once more but you know it’ll be different this time. No more gentle touches hidden in plain sight, no more casual excuses to lay his hands on you, everything that will happen here on in will be the result of three years of separation and withdrawal. 
The bed dips under his weight and only then do you turn your head to look over your left shoulder. He’s closer than you expected and you see the tufts of his curls hanging over his forehead come into sight, low and looming. His nose comes into contact with your shoulder and even the slightest touch sets you alight. He scales up the curve of your neck to hide deep within the locks of your hair behind your ear and inhales.
“That fucking perfume,” he whispers softly into your hair. “It’s just as perfect as I remember.” 
“Jonathan, we…” you heaved a breath, fighting temptation. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“You have no idea, do you?” He murmurs directly into your ear, his arm coming around to circle your waist and hug you closer to him. “No idea just how much I missed you, how much I regret what I did, and every day I spent not being with you was a reminder of the mistake I made to the point where I thought I would never get to hold you again.” 
He renders you speechless when he scrapes away the strands of your hair and mouths at the curve of your neck, humming into your skin. It’s almost the same as before, soft pillowy lips showering you with unreserved passion, except this time they’re followed by the slight scrape of his beard grown in the years you hadn’t seen him. It makes his kisses more exhilarating, stimulating. While your body screams for more, your morals just can’t shake the guilt of betraying your own friend. 
“But Mira--” 
“Mira knows.” 
You detach yourself from his lips to face him, still half-lidded and unfazed by his admission. You’re almost nauseous with the way your heart drops in your chest. “What do you mean she knows?” 
Despite your surprise, Jonathan simply tilts his head as he assesses your face in the sheen of the streetlight like he’s seeing you for the first time all over again and doesn’t stop his fingers from intertwining with the short baby hairs at the nape of your neck. 
“She had an inkling that there was something going on between us. There was a reason why she brought me up in the conversation earlier in the garden because she knew from the moment she saw the look on your face when you saw me. So I came clean. We decided to be completely honest with each other and we talked for a while.” 
“And?” 
“Well, she knew your thoughts on me…and it was more than I had ever thought to hear.”
Your cheeks flush angrily, wincing at the thought of Mira revealing every confession told with such a lack of restraint. Back then, telling Mira these things felt like securing all of your secrets into a vault, trusting that they would be safe, trusting that they were secure enough that no one besides you would have access to them. In hindsight, you should’ve perceived her as more of a time capsule, planted, hidden for the time being, and when after enough time passes, they are bound to be found by someone else. 
“I know that you hated me for a while - and I did too. I always wondered whether you resented me as much as I did, for a while I thought it wasn’t possible. And while I knew the resentment was one sided, there was a part of me that wished that missing each other wasn’t. I guess I found my answers tonight.” 
“Was Mira mad?” 
“No, darling,” he grazes his chin over the curve of your shoulder, lips inching closer and closer to your own. “She considered you to be too much of a friend to get in the way and cause you any pain, not after all that you had told her. She knew you would’ve done the same for her.” 
“I…I don’t know what to think. It’s all just a mess.” 
You turn your head towards the book in your hands, fingers fiddling with the page, while you try to figure out where your loyalties lie. With your head? With your heart? It’s a wonder how the same body can feel two entirely opposing feelings and yet still wonder which one is the right one. 
“Maybe…” Jonathan whispers, his hand reaching for the book and sliding it from your grasp, “maybe, you don’t need to think at all. Let me do the thinking for you. Let me show you just how much I’ve missed you, because fuck, as much as I love this dress you have on, I’m much more interested in what’s underneath it.” While one hand pulls you tighter against his chest, his other hand comes to slide down your thigh until curls around your knee, bunching the fabric tight in his fist and pulling it higher and higher. You watch with eager eyes, succumbing to Jonathan’s temptation and letting go of all of your inhibitions. Your eyes grow heavy, wanting to relish the feeling of his fingertips tracing the length of your inner thigh as they gently pull your legs apart, but it’s much more satisfying to watch. Jonathan doesn’t need to watch, not when he can taste the supple skin of your neck. 
It’s almost agonising how slow his pace is, how he stalls every couple of seconds to trace circles on your skin and devilishly chuckles when you whimper. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed though, talking about our life’s plan without me.” 
Just as his fingers feel the outer rim of your underwear, you tilt your head back to lean against his shoulder with a sinful sigh. Opening your legs just that little bit wider tells Joanthan everything he needs to know. It’s been years. Years since he’s had you like this, so he has every reason not to take it slowly and fuck you like a man starved of your touch, but there’s something in him, perhaps the little devil on his shoulder, that persuades him to take it slowly, to exploit the part of you that has missed him and prove to you that the years spent apart, however painful, was worth the wait. 
“Tell me,” he urges, “tell me what you had imagined.” 
Call you ignorant but you’re not quite in the talking mood. However, you feel he won’t do a single thing to you unless you do as he asks. “That…that we’d get married in the small church near the vineyard where we grew up. I imagined a quiet house in the suburbs, just us two, at least for a while.” 
“Hm, what kind of house?” 
“One that wasn’t too big that we’d feel far apart, and not too small that we would get in each other’s way. One with a garage and a garden where our dog could run around.” 
“Good,” he praises into your ear. A single digit slips beneath your underwear which instantly gets a feel of your warm, wettening cunt, and you grow impatient.  “What else?” 
“After a while, we…shit…we’d have our own kids. A boy and a girl. I’d hope they’d have your eyes.” 
After doing a few rounds of your entrance, the tip of his finger rests upon your clit, barely moving. Your hips start moving fluidly, all of their own volition but he eases his touch. Instead he gives a gentle tap tap tap, urging you to continue before you can get any more.
The hand that keeps you stable around your middle eventually slithers up to wrap around your neck squeezing with a dizzying pressure. 
“Keep going…” 
“We’d take an early retirement so that we could grow old together. Taking vacations to places we’d never been to before, being the same couple we were when we were younger.” 
“Oh yeah? I love the sound of that. Just as much as I love the sound of those moans you make. Keep singing little siren.” The moan that leaves your lips the minute he nibbles on your lobe is unrecognisable. You haven’t been seduced like this in years and every atom of you is buzzing with anxiety and in your physical form, you can’t sit still. It takes the weight and pressure of Jonathan’s thighs resting either side of your hips to keep you anchored. 
His fingers make quick work of building you up, conjuring that deep, guttural feeling of pleasure and desire to stir within you. Even after years, he still knows you so well, still knows what makes you tick and what makes you scream. There isn’t an inch of your neck that Jonathan’s lips haven’t touched; sucking, licking, biting until you’re coloured with bruises. 
“Seems like you have it all planned out, darling. But why don’t I tell you how I imagined tonight would go?” 
“Please.” 
Just as his words flow from his mouth, two fingers slide easily into you and curl into that spot makes your body restless and your lungs heaving. “Just as I did, I’d find you here, confess that there wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t think of you, tell you how I yearned to have the sweet taste of you on my tongue again and the tight squeeze of that cunt around my cock. I’d seduce you every way I knew I could and I’d want you to want it. I’d want you to tell me that you want it and once I knew I had you again, I’d get on my knees, lift up that dress of yours and taste you. Get you nice and wet, ready to take me.”
“Fuck, Jonathan--” 
“After years, I thought my patience would get the better of me if I ever had this chance again, but seeing you here like this,” his fingers pick up the pace, drilling into you and filling the room with sacrilegious sounds. “I think I might want to take my time, let each minute that passes reflect what I have been thinking about every day we were apart.” 
“Please,” you whisper, growing evermore impatient. It all sounds too good. The more he speaks his feelings into words the more you want it. To have the feeling of him touch you everywhere, to feel him inside you, snug and shaped by him and bringing you to the precipice of losing your mind the way only he could. “I need you, Jonathan, need you now.” 
His lips come to your cheek, shaped by a smile of satisfaction. “You will, darling. Soon. I just want to savour this right now.” 
His fingers slip from your cunt, trailing all that he’s gathered up the length of your slit to come crashing down onto your clit. While he circles and swirls his fingers, you twist your head to lock eyes with him and even in the cover of darkness, you can still make out the fire that’s burning within him leaving no doubt that he truly wants to ravish you just as he has described. But it isn’t a roaring fire, it’s a slow burning candle, flickering away to slowly dissolve all of what’s left of his patience. 
Like instinct, your lips clash together hungrily not sparing a second before your tongues and welding together and tasting the remnants of the red wine you both had earlier. Inexplicably, it tastes sweeter on his palate. 
The fingers that curl around your neck tense as if they’re fighting to keep you stable, surging to keep your restlessness at bay and all of this is making you wonder ‘why not just get on with it?’.
You decide to hasten the pace, raising your hips closer to his fingers with the tips of your toes, feeling his cock grind against the small of your back where it should be grinding against your cunt. Though that may be how you truly feel, you make do with his fingers toying with you with his palm flat against your pubic bone to keep you close, once again making you twitch with anticipation and hum with desire. You’re close, so close that with just another lap of his fingers would make you explode. 
Holy shit. You’re going to cum. You’re to cum on Jonathan Fucking Levy’s fingers.
“Don’t you think we should maybe close your blinds?” He taunts, suddenly halting all of his movements. “Surely you wouldn’t want the neighbours to see how easily you fall apart for me.”
Jesus. Where did this side of Jonathan come from? 
“Um…y-yeah. Close them.” God, it’s starting to take effect on you. When was the last time a man made you stumble over your own words like that? 
With a gentle kiss to your cheek, he rises from the bed to leave you attempting to find relief from the friction of your thighs, chasing what you were seconds from having. 
When you begin to wonder what takes him so long, you turn to face him staring out of the window, his silhouette blocking the light of the streetlamp that normally floods in through the glass. The fingers that were toying with your cunt seconds ago twitch by his side rubbing together the remnants of your slick, so sensual that it has you biting your bottom lip. Before he closes the curtain he takes those fingers and puts them in his mouth as if he’s just swiped the whipped cream from atop a pudding he’s forbidden to have. But sometimes that’s what makes it all the sweeter. 
“Jonathan?” you whisper to pull him from his reverie, your patience waning. 
“Coming,” he says gently. “Just taking it all in. You, me…” he snaps the curtains closed and plunges you both into darkness, “your taste on my tongue.” 
Slowly and somewhat menacingly he turns around and his shoulders are hunched, his fists are clenched, his breathing is audibly racing. The tone instantly changes when he comes to stand over you, his fingers tilting your chin up to look at him directly. It hooks you in immediately, suddenly feeling the compulsion to do whatever he wants, to go wherever he guides you. 
Jonathan’s voice slithers through the air like a snake through the wreaths, worming its way into the valley of your ears so clear and precise. “I know I said I was going to take this slowly and I whole-heartedly intend to follow through with that. But just so you know, I don’t think I can be gentle. Can you allow me that?” 
“Yes, Jonathan, yes.” 
“Good.” 
It amazes you how one short syllable completely changes the aura of the room, how easily Jonathan commands control of the situation because all of a sudden, the gentle traces of his fingertips circling your chin changes to a clawed hand around your neck, drawing you into an all-consuming kiss that’s more powerful than before. Without missing a single beat, he forces you onto your back and hovers over you, caging you in and anchoring his weight down onto your pelvis. It should feel claustrophobic and intrusive, but instead it feels like a sanctuary; warm, safe, secure.
Where it feels like he belongs.
Shivers race up your spine and throw your hands into motion as they cling onto his shirt, luring him even closer until the beat of his heart is pounding against yours. Not only that, but you can feel his hips thrusting into yours, grinding his contained cock against your heat and it elicits a moan from both of you. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, he races to undo his belt, pulling himself free and you almost squeal with the anticipation of knowing how well he can undo you with one swift thrust. But like Jonathan promised, he isn’t going to rush this. He slowly peels off your underwear until you are well and truly exposed.
Not without a few pumps of his fist, he lines himself up and anchors you down, teasing your entrance with the head of his leaking cock, giving you a taster of what’s to come. 
“You drive me fucking insane,” he grumbles into your mouth. “Always have, always will.” 
“Please stop talking.”
“Or what, huh?” he chuckles. He takes the head of his cock and batters it against your swollen clit. Deliberately, you guess, to render you speechless. And it works, the snide quip hot on your lips quickly loses all conviction and you’re back to moans and whimpers. “‘S what I thought. You and I both know how much we want this. How much we’ve missed this.”
This time you take the chance to bite back before he robs you of it. “Well get on with it, then.” 
Now driven, he snags your bottom lip with his teeth dragging it out until it’s released with a pop. “Fine.”
Giving you a final taste of his lips, he comes to a stand taking your legs with him with a mighty pull until your hips lie just over the precipice of the bed. He hugs your legs to his chest, his cock lining up with your exposed cunt perfectly and with powerful thrust, he sinks deep into you. All of the air punches out of your lungs in a single beat and you claw at the bed sheets while you fight for your breath back. You’re momentarily debilitated while you acclimate to his size, filling you so effortlessly. Despite being slightly uncomfortable, it’s a welcome intrusion and you’re thankful that he gives you a minute.
“Fuck, you’re so tight. Holy fuck.”
Not a moment later, he pulls his hips back, completely withdrawing and just when you think you’ve got your breath back he charges into you again, snapping his hips against your ass and sending aftershocks up the length of your body. It’s a motion he repeats over and over again, giving you that pleasurable feeling of being so full of him as he grinds into you all to be taken away within a moment leaving utterly empty. You have just enough awareness to listen out for the staccato notes of his hips slapping against yours followed by your sheepish sobs. 
It’s insatiable. He never changes pace and the power of his thrusts never falters. He certainly doesn’t allude to breaking his promise of rushing things and frustratingly so, continues his slow rampage, finding pleasure in that little sweet spot where the swollen ridge of his cock drags from your cunt. It’s enough to get you going, but not enough to finish you off. 
“I need more,” you beg between breaths. “Please.” 
Jonathan doesn’t respond, and instead waits until the cheeks of your ass are red raw from his poundings (which feels like a lifetime) and only then, does he take a new approach. Your legs swing apart, forced wide open by his greedy hands and you’re left to watch with bated breath as he drops to his knees and devours you.
“Fuck, Jonathan!”
“Mm, that’s right, baby, say my name.” 
“Jonath--fuck!” His mouth completely consumes every inch of your cunt, lavishing the taste of you with his tongue from deep within you to the tip of your clit. Amongst the buzzes of his hum, the soft scrape of his beard, and the crescent-moon marks pressing into your waist, your back arches as desire slowly morphs into a desperate pain, needing to give his hot mouth more access to your cunt if it was at all possible. And just when you think you are ready to give in, he steals the moment from you. With two fingers, he slots them easily into you and starts working your pussy at a torturous pace. 
“Look how soaked you are.” His lips brush against your clit as he speaks, a depraved grunt rolling from the back of his throat. 
“I’m gonna cum.” 
“Do it. I want it. I wanna taste you. I want you.” 
Your heart grows, a small smile appearing on your lips. The warmth of affection stills you momentarily to appreciate how you have your old love back, the man you could never really get over, that all those years of waiting and wanting are over. You don’t know what it was about the sudden softness and love-drunkenness that washed through you, but God, he was stunning. Everything about him was annoyingly perfect. Stupidly, annoyingly perfect. Yet, here he was, lavishing you as if you were an elixir of life.
Your fingers itch to race through his locks to pull him closer, tempted to never let him go. Through his dark lashes, his lust-heavy eyes find yours as if he knew what you were insinuating.
“Don’t worry, baby, I’m never leaving. Let go for me.” 
You didn’t need to be told again. With the final swipe of his tongue across your clit, you internal combust, your entire body folding into itself with Jonathan trapped between your thighs. 
----
You and Jonathan spent the night catching up on all the years you spent apart, sharing orgasm after orgasm until you were completely and utterly spent. Despite only having just a few hours of sleep, you awoke early in the morning, just in time to see the sun rise over the peak of your neighbours’ houses. All is calm in the street aside from the few birds tweeting in Mira’s tree and Jonathan’s steady breathing beside you. The tranquil, blissful few moments of consciousness fills you with a sense of rejuvenation from all that has happened within the last 24 hours. If it hadn’t been for Mira’s approval beforehand, you would be drowning in guilt. You make a mental reminder to talk to her and apologise later. 
You roll over on your side of the bed to find Jonathan sleeping peacefully beside you, his hand tucked under his chin like it always did when he was deep in slumber and you quirk a smile when you realise that nothing’s changed. With a delicate finger, you sweep away the curl resting against his forehead, careful not to wake him but yet he still stirs, readjusting himself subconsciously. Though not fully awake, he reaches out for you as if it was instinct and little do you know, it is. Every morning since you split, Jonathan had always reached out for you to find nothing but empty cold space on the other side of his bed and it was a sad reality he couldn’t quite accept. But now, when his fingertips feel the warmth of your skin against his, he doesn’t hesitate to lure you into his embrace to relish the lingering scent of your perfume, the slow beating of your heart, the little content hum singing from your throat. You’re here. You’re real. And he’s certain to never lose you again.
In his drowsy state, he puckers his lips in a timid kiss to the surface of your forehead. 
“Love you,” he quietly murmurs. 
With a breathy laugh, you return his kiss, whispering the same words against his bare chest directly over his heart. 
I love you too, Jonathan Fucking Levy. 
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2000ghosts · 13 days
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december 18, 2010
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rwrbmovie · 1 year
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BTS of #RWRBMovie: NYE kiss
via Consequence:
It was important for Henry to be the grab-and-kiss-er in this scenario, Lopez says, because “there’s something very striking about a character such as Henry, who has spent up to that point in the film being very buttoned down and seemingly in control of his urges in that moment, losing the ability to control his urges and give into the desire to kiss Alex.” Plus, there’s the additional context of Henry being literal royalty: “There’s something very sexy and romantic about a prince dropping his guard. And taking things that are old movie tropes and letting two boys do it — that was definitely the romantic gesture that we wanted to go for.” Of course, on a practical level, the grab-and-kiss has certain practical elements to consider. “The only danger on set was that sometimes [Nicholas Galitzine] would come at [Taylor Zakhar Perez] so forcefully that they would just bang faces. We were really worried about fat lips and bloody noses,” he laughs. It wasn’t just the passion of the actors that was an issue, but the terrain — according to Lopez, “they were on a slope. So Nick was going downhill.” (Passion with a little help from Newtonian physics.) On set for this as well as the film’s other, more graphic scenes was intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt, who oversaw shooting the kiss in two different ways: “We had one where Alex is completely taken by surprise and doesn’t respond to the kiss. And then we did Version B, where Alex is taken by surprise and then does respond to the kiss. Because I wasn’t quite sure what was going to work, so I gave myself the option of having both.” Process-wise, this meant rehearsing both versions and then shooting different angles and framings, which means “those lads kissed easily like 40 or 50 times that night,” Lopez laughs. “There’s nothing like having to kiss someone 40 times in a row to really, really take the allure out of kissing.”
While the grab-and-kiss is the best term I’ve been able to come up with for this maneuver, it’s not my favorite — if only because if you Google the phrase “grab and kiss” today, the search term pulls up very unsexy results. These unsexy results (including phrases like “attempted sexual assault” and “Donald Trump”) do serve as a necessary reminder of how delicate a balance one has to strike with this particular maneuver. As Lopez puts it, “there is a gray area and I think you see it in some older movies, in which they do the grab-and-kiss and it’s icky — it just feels not consensual at all, or very uncomfortable.” What’s so powerful about the grab-and-kiss is that it’s an embrace with purpose. There’s a backstory to it, usually one involving repressed emotions and deeply held longing. That was the strategy Lopez used with Red, White & Royal Blue, using the scenes leading up to the kiss beneath the tree to emphasize “the pull between them.” (Specifically, Lopez got what he calls his “West Side Story moment” during the New Year’s party, when a crowd dancing to Lil Jon’s “Get Low” does as instructed by the song, leaving a still-standing Henry and Alex to gaze at each other across the dance floor.)
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yeoldenews · 3 months
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hello! i was wondering if you (or any blogs you think might know?) had any resources for edwardian fashion, more precisely edwardian teen fashion? i'm writing a story centering on two edwardian ghosts and would like help on their style of speech as well if you can't help on the fashion aspects. thank you!
In my opinion, if you want to be able to portray the authentic feel of a time period, there is nothing better than diving head first into primary sources.
Whenever I start any large research/writing project that’s centered on a particular year, I usually spend at least a couple of days just immersing myself in the era.
We live in an extraordinary age when it comes to primary source research (especially for the early 20th century) - there are literally millions of period newspapers/books/magazines/films/recordings floating around online.
Find out what books were popular and check them out! Read the newspaper! Listen to popular music! Watch silent movies or newsreels!
For teenagers, school yearbooks are a particularly great source to get an idea of how young people spoke, their senses of humor, common slang, casual fashion, as well as the daily routines and general vibes of the time period. Most universities have their yearbooks digitized and available online and can be pretty easily found on google (try searching: [year] [location if desired] yearbook digital collections).
As for fashion - there are so many great fashion history tumblrs, that it’s pretty hard to go wrong if you just explore the “Edwardian” or “1900s” tag a bit. One thing to keep in mind though - most dresses that end up in museums were owned by very, very rich individuals. So, though a great place to start, scrolling through blogs full of museum pieces to learn about fashion history is roughly the equivalent of learning about modern fashion by only watching Chanel runway shows.
By the Edwardian era most young people were wearing pretty much the same thing as adults by the age of 14/15. You were, however, starting to see the very beginning of what would become the modern “juniors’ section” - usually termed “Misses’” for girls and “young men’s” or “collegiate” for boys. Here are a few examples of this can be seen in period catalogs from 1912, 1911 (starting on page 21) and 1908. 
It’s also important to keep in mind that fashion changed much, much more quickly than it does now. A woman in 1906 and a woman in 1911 would have noticeably different styles and silhouettes. I'd recommend scrolling through some fashion plates (going to shout out chic-a-gigot here who has a great collection of French fashion plates organized by decade and year) to get a basic handle on how the silhouette changed year by year.
In my past life I was fashion history specialist for high-end auctions, so I could go on in A LOT more detail about this subject, but I'm going to end it here before this gets too long.
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dusty-daydreams · 1 year
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I saw someone suggest the idea that the Ushers all represent a deadly sin - here is which I think they are and why
Prospero - Lust
Camille - wrath
Leo - gluttony
Vic - sloth
Tamerlane - pride
Fred - envy
The Twins (Roderick and Madeline) - greed
Prospero is Lust, not only because of his hedonism but his unabashed Lust for power - he is filming his anonymous orgy so he can blackmail powerful people and dies in the midst of his orgy - but I could also see him as sloth (wouldn’t come up with a proper business proposal, didn’t bother to check that the tanks held water not acid)
Camille is Wrath, she approaches everything - her siblings, her job, her assistants/lovers and verna in the end with rage - and she gets killed by an angry animal
Leo is Gluttony - he indulges himself in abundant drugs and abundant sexual partners, despite having a relatively good situation - he has a successful career that doesn’t put him directly under his fathers control, he has a committed caring partner but still he gluts himself on everything that comes his way, he dies chasing a cat that hunts far more than it needs too
Victorine is Sloth - she doesn’t want to put in the work needed too make her device work, she just takes shortcuts to make it seem like it is working, she kills her partner in part because her partner who is actually the skilled surgeon doesn’t want to do the work anymore (admittedly this one I’m not as sure on - she might be pride, refusing to admit her device doesn’t work out of fear of failure)
Tamerlane is Pride - Of all her siblings she is the most proud of being an usher, and the most obsessed with her own image, obsessed with beauty, obsessed with being a success, she will not take anyone’s advice not even her husbands, she is proud and controlling in her relationship forcing her husband to go along with her voyeuristic kink when he doesn’t want too. This is a double-edged sword as she is also deeply insecure, outsourcing intimacy and dying as a result of smashing mirrors attempting to prevent Verna taking her place (alternatively she could be envy - envious of Verna etc.)
Fred is Envy - he is envious of his father and his effortless command presence and his fathers success, and he is envious of his wife, punishing her horrifically purely because he believes she cheated on him, (even though she didn’t, all she did was think about it and go to a party where she was alone) he is so envious that he even makes an attempted coup against his father. (He could also be gluttony - his drugs, and dying because putting more and more nightshade in his coke)
Finally the Twins - Roderick and Madeline are Greed - They set everything in motion because they both always wanted more, more money, more recognition, more power, even immortality - through AI in Madeline’s case and in the creation of a bloodline legacy in Roderick’s
I also have one thing to add I think that Lenore (and Annabel Lee and Juno and Morella - Lenore’s mom) represent the seven capital virtues: these are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
Chasity - Lenore dies before she ever has a relationship, she is in gothic story terms a chaste innocent
Temperance - Lenore seems disgusted by her dad having done drugs (also Juno is Temperance, her wisdom in coming to her own conclusion to wean herself off Ligodine)
Charity - As Verna says the charity her mom starts is a result of Lenore saving her mom (also Juno and Morella donating to charity)
Diligence - Lenore sticks to what is right even when it’s hard, giving a statement to the police about her dad, caring for her grandfather, searching for treatment options for her mom (also Juno diligently weaning herself of drugs, Morella’s charity work, Annabel Lee caring for her children)
Patience - Lenore patiently encourages her family to do better and be better
Kindness - Lenore saves her mother, and creates a ripple effect that saves millions of lives (Annabel Lee being kind to everyone)
Humility - Lenore thinks that losing their fortune and company could be a good thing that leads to a moral good for her family
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Re: Red Cross not visiting Israeli hostages. Red Cross has been visiting and working as diligently as possible towards getting hostages released. It is a difficult situation and dangerous for everyone.
Source: I work for the Red Cross
That’s literally a lie as multiple hostages have said otherwise. Just because the organisation claims to do this, doesn’t mean they did…
Your Source: trust me bro
Well, I’m an Israeli who does her research. The Red Cross only got involved recently with transportation of the hostages- and they have not been handling it well either:
1. The hostages did not receive proper health care while held hostage for almost 2 months.
The Red Cross didn’t even contact them at all until the recent exchange deal!
-Many were rushed to surgery as soon as they were returned to Israel .
-An elderly woman has been airlifted to hospital, and she is currently in critical condition.
2.Violent mobs are attacking those transportation cars while they’re delivering the hostages.
3. Hamas terrorists continued to threaten the hostages as they were exchanged: they posed them and told them to wave / smile.
They filmed it all and made a spectacle out of it.
4. Unlike the deal’s terms, families were separated: fathers and uncles left behind, mothers separated from their children…
5.Women were tested for rape / pregnancy for the first time in the Israeli hospitals.
6. Hospitals were used by Hamas to hold hostages - where were the Red Cross?? How did this happen under their watch?
The Red Cross has failed these people time and time again.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point.
Did you even do a simple google search or do you hate Jews/ Israelis that much?
Once again, don’t believe Hamas’ propaganda.
Sources / relevant information:
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Text
Canon Destiel Timeline Masterpost
I wrote this all in a fugue state while listening to Green Grow the Lilacs on repeat so forgive any mistakes. @gay-fae ask and ye shall receive
So much has happened in the long and storied history of his fandom so I've decided to try to document it. I've started by looking up every time that canon destiel, destiel event, misha collins, jackles, or some other search terms have spiked on Google and cross referenced them with tumblr or twitter posts from that day. I know a lot of this is Misha stuff, but he does tend to be the one to say things
November 5th, 2020: Season 15, Episode 18 "Despair" airs and Castiel declares his love to Dean. The presidential election, Georgia turning blue, the presumed retirement of Vladamir Putin, Dabi from My Hero Academia, Ouran Host Club season 2, Sherlock season 5, the president of Bolivia being attacked with dynamite, ongoing BLM protests, a twitter artist making racist art of Ted Bundy, Hetalia returning, a dead man being elected Representative for North Dakota, V for Vendetta, scientists discovering a "hell" planet that rains rocks and has lava oceans, and half of Europe being in lockdown all became tumblr news around the same time. Some of these are true, some not.
November 8th, 2020: Misha Collins, in a panel with Richard Speight, states that the confession scene was a "declaration of homosexual love", and that when Castiel goes to the Empty, it is an example of the "Kill your gays" trope.
November 19th, 2020: The finale airs and it is not well loved to say the least. The episode is short, Dean dies by falling on a nail to death fighting vampire clowns, and there are several characters left with dangling unresolved plot threads and arcs, including Castiel. The car is in heaven though. There is very little heard from the cast and crew, if anything.
November 22nd, 2020: Misha Collins, in a livestream, tells a fan that Castiel and Jack are remaking heaven together, Cas has his wings back, and they are rainbow-colored. He had, however, mentioned the rainbow wings before.
November 24th, 2020: The Spanish dub of the confession is released and a "rogue" translator has written "Y yo a ti" or "I love you too" as Dean's response. Destiel goes canon in Spanish. Tumblr stops working as a result.
November 25th, 2020: tumblr user @thebloggerbloggerfun claims Jensen Ackles said "I had a member of the film crew record the confession scene on my phone for me" #unsourced #releasethetapes
November 26th, 2020: Misha doesn't appreciate the rogue translator, but walks that opinion back later the same day
November 27th, 2020: A "leaked" Italian dub of the confession scene shows a mutual confession.
November 28th, 2020: President Obama follows a destiel account on Twitter
November 30th, 2020: The supposed "Italian dub" is revealed as a fake created by user @iotiamo using sound clips from other parts of the Italian dub on show.
December 1st, 2020: Twitter user @mothdean says "misha I know you have a stan acc and spy on us so can we have a hazel update please"
December 3rd, 2020: Misha tweets about Hazel snoring and this is taken as possible confirmation of Misha's secret stan account
December 11th, 2020: A script from Cas's perspective leaks. It says "We see Cass's POV of Dean again - his face drawn, drained of hope. But still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester."
December 16th, 2020: Newsweek runs an article about an article that Misha wrote about the Lewinsky affair while interning in the Clinton White House in which Misha comes off as rather thirsty for Bill
December 20th, 2020: All Supernatural related materials disappear off the CW's website due to a copyright dispute with Warner Brothers
December 31st, 2020: Mishapocalypse redux
February 9th, 2021: Spn cast members Chad Lindberg and Samantha Ferris tweet about a party at the Roadhouse and it grows to become a full Destiel wedding
February 16th, 2021: @steveyockey made a fairly benign post about Jensen Ackles. The notes went wild in a variety of ways and started a rumor that Spn writer Steve Yockey was dead
February 20th, 2021: Steve Yockey is not dead and he should say it
March 3rd, 2021: The German dub drops and it is also romantic in tone
March 6-8th, 2021: A virtual con happens where Jensen discusses Chaos Machine and Jared says he wants to be in their next project. They also show that WAP video. Jensen is giving full mountain man preparing to play Soldier Boy.
March 10th, 2021: The French dub is released. Cas says, "I love you, Dean" and Dean now responds, "Don't do this to me, Castiel"
March 13th, 2021: The company Amazon tweets about Castiel and Misha Collins asks if they ship Deancas or Wincest. Subsequently apologizes.
March 16th, 2021: Misha says he can't speak as Castiel because Warner Brothers" specifically forbade it. #cwsniperconfirmed
March 17th, 2021: Sam and Eileen are getting married! I have no idea how this came about but I'm happy for them
March 23rd, 2021: Chad Lindberg and Samantha Ferris claim on Twitter that the Roadhouse party was about Valentine's day and not a wedding. Ferris specifically said that she worked on the show and that people tried to make Dean/Cas into "something that it wasn't", She also stated she doesn't "know what queerbaiting is" and that it was due to an "agenda". This led to #deanisbi trending on Twitter and Tumblr.
March 31st, 2021: Some possibly fake leaked scripts come up for sale on eBay. Also, Jensen is Batman.
April 1st, 2021: Mishapocalypse redux
April 6th, 2021: Leaked scripts from the 2 final episodes pop up and have several mentions of Cas in them that were omitted. Dean even thinks about Cas's confession when confronting Chuck.
April 18th, 2021: Scripts from seasons 12 and 13 leak. These include scenes from after Cas's death
May 17th, 2021: Jensen's band Radio Company releases an album including the song Watching Over Me
June ~5th, 2021: Misha says at a convention that Watching Over Me is about Castiel. Jensen neither confirms nor denies this when asked about it
June 11th, 2021: It is announced that Misha is publishing a book of poetry
June 18th, 2021: The Russian dub airs and Dean's line is changed to "Don't you dare, Cas"
June 24-28th, 2021: Jensen and Daneel Ackles reveal that they are making a Supernatural prequel series following John and Mary Winchester (a story that NOBODY was asking for). Jensen will reprise his role as Dean and will narrate. Misha hints that he would like to be involved, as do Ruthie Connell, Samantha Ferris, Matt Cohen, and Julie McNiven (the perils of having a cast of mostly immortal characters). But Jared Padalecki first says that he is happy for the Ackles's, he later said he was "gutted", then responded to Robbie Thompson's tweet calling him a "coward" and saying "what an awful thing you've done". The next day, Jensen and Jared both do damage control and say they'll always be brothers
July 17th, 2021: People are asking if Destiel will be canon in Space Jam, Misha's poetry book's cover is revealed to lukewarm reviews and people are talking about a particular poem about piss, and Perfume Genius releases an article that is a self-insert vore fanfiction about having sex with Jensen Ackles
August 2nd, 2021: Perfume Genius is at it again with "Last Friday, I had my eyes removed by Jared Padalecki". No, I do not know why she is doing this.
August 9th, 2021: Destiel fics hit 100k on Ao3. Misha tweets his support and people remember that he sometimes reads fanfiction and theorize he has an A03 account
September 1st, 2021: Misha makes his first Tiktok. There is a short intro before he calls cut, walks behind a screen, and strips his clothes off
September 3rd, 2021: Jake Abel uses Michael and Adam to help sell his hot sauce brand
September 4th, 2021: Misha confirms that the love between Castiel and Dean was "reciprocated"
September 9th, 2021: A clip of the real Italian dub of the confession scene goes viral as it is revealed that, unlike the Spanish dub, they change the line to "ti voglio bene" or essentially "I love you like family". Misha responds with a video saying "Ciao Italia, ti amo" with the subtitle "Love is love in any language"
September 21st, 2021: Misha drops the fact that one of his poems is from Castiel's perspective.
September 30th, 2021: Jensen will be appearing at a con on the same day as Misha and not with Jared for "professional reasons"
October 4th, 2021: Misha responds to a fan's tweet by saying that Jensen has "crazy eyes and a knife in his pocket"
October 10th, 2021: Daneel posts a picture of Jensen intently reading Misha's poetry book in front of a roaring fire on Instagram. Misha responds that he misses them even more
October 12th, 2021: Jensen is cast in Rust, a (rather ill-fated) western and Misha says "Yippie-ki-yay" and calls him a stud in the comments
October 16th, 2021: Denvercon. Jensen and Jared reunite for the first time since THE INCIDENT
April 24th, 2022: Misha Collins says in terms of being an extrovert, an introvert, or a bisexual, he joked "I'm all three". This led to the internet celebrating Misha's newly revealed bisexuality.
April 25th, 2022: Misha Collins comes out as straight. Oops!
June 19th, 2022: According to Misha, Dean's heaven was supposed to be at the Roadhouse with all his friends and Cas was going to be there with him
November 7th, 2022: Misha calls Elon Musk a snowflake
November 12th, 2022: Tumblr starts planning another Mishapocalypse
January 24th, 2023: Jensen and the cast of the Winchesters throw Dean Winchester a birthday party, including wearing silly little hats
February 26th, 2023: At JIBcon 11, Jensen sings an improvised song about an angel while Misha sits cross-legged on the floor looking up at him
April 1st, 2023: 10 year anniversary of the Mishapocalypse
April 16th, 2023: A year after his bisexual whoopsie daisy, Misha says that Warner Brothers asked him to "let it go" and keep pretending to be bisexual.
August 23, 2023: Rogue Spanish translator is revealed to not have gone rogue at all but instead to have followed the script he was given, confirming the existence of a mutual love confession that was cut at some point.
If you can remember any events and dates that I haven't found, please let me know and I'll add them! I haven't really rounded out 2022 and 2023 yet.
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